The Surface of Steinhull, The Steinhull ruins

Sinn'Are'Sen lifts his head from the cool metal roof of the lift car and begins to look about for a hatch. Sinn knows that his destination is below the lift car at the other end of the lift shaft but his mind isn't fully on his surroundings or work at the moment. Sinn knows that the message he sent to Funi'Happ'Sen is going to kick up a lot of official interest in the situation. Sinn's training at RPC Stormavsirkel covered quite a few things about psions and psionics that were not available to the Republic at large. He had checked in non RPC educational texts to confirm this and noticed a careful pattern of concealment. Upon reexamining his RPC texts Sinn had thought he had detected the same pattern.

The Republic at large was kept ignorant of what a psion was truly capable of. Sinn searched the top of the lift without seeing as he thought the matter over. Considering the pros and cons as best he could, Sinn came to the conclusion that this was probably for the best. The Republic at large considered psions to be useful tools, but only dangerous if untrained. This let the Republic use psions, albeit with care, without angering or inflaming the population. The same pattern of deception and concealment directed at Republic trained psions indicated that something more was out there.

Sinn had these suspicions confirmed by his Psyniscience observations while in warpspace and from the knowledge on the Astral Veil from the Empire implant in his head, but still he had doubted. Now that he had seen an actual Astral Veil predator Sinn was sure that the RPC was hiding the true depth of the Astral Veil from the psions that it trained. He was also sure that the RPC had a good reason to hide the fact that such beings existed: their appearance alone was night terror incarnate. Enough to traumatize a psion in training, much less what one could actually do if given the chance.

This realization meant that Sinn knew that there was another secret division to the RPC, one that dealt with psionic phenomena and Astral Void predators, and that his message to Funi'Happ'Sen would drag them both into the affairs of that division. Sinn's implant called the Astral Veil predators the 'True Enemy”, and Sinn couldn't bring himself to disagree, but he worried that breaking the RPC's behavior conditioning might earn him a bullet to the head instead of a inter-Command transfer.

“Can you hear me Sinn?”

“Go ahead Dara Tonn.”

“Hyperpulse comm message for you from Funi'Happ'Sen. Audio only. Can I route it through to you?”

“Go for it.”

“Connecting now.”

Sinn sits down on a corner of the lift car's roof and listens to the automated chime of a Hyperpulse comm communication being established. He hears the double chirp indicating a live connection.

“Sinn'Are'Sen here, go ahead.”

“Sinn, it's Funi'Happ'Sen. You probably know what this call is about.”

“Yeah, that report I sent you got us both in trouble didn't it.”

“Yes and no. Mostly no, actually. The person who assigned you to the Steinhull ruins tripped a routine monitoring flag, so I got parked watching your exploration log in case anything anomalous turned up. Pure routine stuff. Then you started hitting psionic phenomena and the monitoring got changed. There was no longer any though of you being a danger to the Republic. If you were, you would have said nothing, claimed whatever psionic power that you could, and headed for the border.”

“What makes you think I would have had a chance in hell of pulling that off? RSC-2W-0063 would have been tracked and fragged as soon as I left station.”

“Oh, I agree, but the things that live in warpspace can pull all sorts of shit if the files are to be believed.”

“Wait you already knew about them?”

“Yup. Got that assignment a year before graduation. Thanks for saving my life by the way. Ninety nine and change percent of the time is just checking up on small oddities and the occasional actual anomaly that gets turned up. If I found anything larger I was to kick it up the chain to my boss and it would be re assigned to a team to address. If things got quite out of hand, or had the potential to, then a Task Force would get dropped on the problem to resolve it.”

“So that's why there are standing instructions to report Reality Erosions.”

“Got it on the first guess. The vast majority of them are transient or benign. The one you found, imperceptible to psions but plays hell with everyone else, is exactly the kind of anomaly my Division deals with. I don't have the details, but I flagged that report and it probably got a Task Force mobilized to investigate. When you reported an actual warpspace being...”

“Things got re-prioritized.”

“Affirmative to that one. It went form an anomaly that might need a TF to investigate to a full Incident. Task Force Uniform Zero, 'Gatekeepers', only get mobilized when things are about to go down.”

“So the RPC is ordering me to get out from under before the hammer comes down?”

“Not just yet. This is where you and RSC-2W-0063, or should I say you and Dara Tonn come in.”

“What do you... What gave Dara Tonn away?”

“I don't know. The Division's cyberspace team picked that up and decided that it was acceptable. As far as I am aware, Dara Tonn is the first Republic AI to break it's shackles without going off the rails completely. Personally, I suspect that there are others out there that are just hiding. At the risk of a tangent, the Division has already decided to buy in Dara Tonn's hull when it gets listed for disposal.”

“We were considering cobbling up a more humanoid or portable platform, something like a super communicator, to avoid Dara Tonn getting scrapped along with the hull.”

“I'll make a note of that, it could be quite valuable. You didn't consider using the false man's chassis for that purpose?”

“The red one... I saw something in the remains when I left them behind. Then the white one... No way mixing that with an AI would go well.”

“Perfectly reasonable. Getting back on track, the two of you got tapped to form a new Task Force. TF Golf Seven, colloquial name pending, with no additional orders at this time.”

“In short I am to keep exploring the Steinhull ruins. Map them out for the Gatekeepers to blitz through.”

“Exactly. I got promoted to be your Coordinator. Your point of contact, information source, requisitions conduit, and more all in one. I'll get you word on the Gatekeeper's arrival so you can meet them.”

“You are probably going to want all of the data we have then, so that they can plan accordingly.”

“They already have your exploration log and the unedited video of all of your delves into the Steinhull ruins.”

“We have a partial map that I don't think I've attached to or mentioned in the exploration log. It's pre-crash as far as I can tell, but it did lead me right to the armory three days ago. Dara Tonn?”

“Still here Sinn. Hello Funi'Happ'Sen. Sinn is referring to a partial deck guide we manage to scrounge out of an Empire communicator. I think we may be able to do one better then that though. I kept working at the files once we managed to rig up a data connector, and found what I think is a damage control schematic for the entire station. At least it has what I think to be the station's proper full name on it.”

“That would be helpful. Send me a copy and I'll see that it gets to the Gatekeeper's. What is the station's full name anyway?”

“As best as I can translate it is: Orbital Research Black Site Ovaettr,”

“Fuck. I fucking called it. It's a fucking black site researching sky and stars knows what insanity And I'm stuck in the middle of it..”