Salvation

by voroshilov

Vigilance of Tiberius

The Tiberius System had been the sight of a great battle millennia ago. Little remained to remind anyone of that fact, however, with the wrecks of the ships long since salvaged and transported away, save a few pieces of debris that had crashed onto one of the system’s two rocky planets. The records of the battle had also been lost, they were from that time of the Irenton Empire’s history that remained all but a mystery to the vast majority of Dominion citizens, due partially to wear and tear of the archives but also the very lax record keeping of the early Empire.

During the time of the Empire, the system had been apparently used as a mining facility, the planet closest to its yellow main sequence star bearing all of the scars of brutal and efficient stellar mining, with entire continents all but missing. Evidently, the system’s limited mineral resources had been expended long before the Empire’s fall, though several facilities orbiting the star indicated a form of Hydrogen mining, wherein powerful electromagnets were set up above a star’s surface to pull Hydrogen from it, which could be processed into fuel for reactors and transported across the Empire.

All but one of these fuel extractors lay derelict, little better than floating husks in space, their vital components long since stripped - most likely by pirates or salvagers - with their hulls left to orbit the star, useless until their orbits decayed and they crashed into its surface. The intact fuel extractor bore signs of a battle, with scorch marks consistent with relatively primitive plasma weaponry along its hull. Evidently, the extractor’s automated defence grid had still been active when the would-be salvagers decided to attempt to strip it.

The lack of destroyed ship hulls nearby suggested the systems had only driven the salvagers off, not destroying any one of their ships. Lending further credence to the theory was the residual radiation left by an emergency Rift jump some ten thousand kilometres from the extractor station.

As the Retaliator approached, however, the station did not engage them. A communications ping by the Luminary to the extractor informed them that the station believed them to be allies, though a remote diagnostic ordered by Ablazed Glory indicated that the station had been tampered with recently.

“Luminary,” she said, “can you pinpoint the source of the location data in system?”

“Affirmative,” the Luminary replied instantly, a red targeting circle appearing over the image of the station, “data received from this platform.”

Ablazed Glory shook her head. “Why was this platform’s classification redacted?”

“It is not,” the Luminary said, “this is an FE-22 Hydrogen Extractor, built in 8646 by the Calypso Shipyards on order of the Imperial Ministry of Labour.”

“Then how,” Ablazed Glory started, before she trailed off, “a remote source,” she said, nodding to herself. “That’s it. Someone’s used the Extractor’s communications array to send us its own locational data, to draw us here. But, it couldn’t be a trap - or, if it is, it isn’t a very good one - because the Luminary could detect the source, it just doesn’t want to tell us.”

“Whatever she wanted us to find is aboard that station,” Penumbra said, with an unarguable certainty, “I’m going in.”

“Now hold on,” Ablazed Glory said, rising to her feet and closing the bridge’s exit with telekinesis, “this time, we’re doing it the proper way. We’re going to board properly and we’re going to board together. No running off like you’re possessed.”

The two nodded to each other, Ablazed Glory accepting no compromise and brokering no argument, which Penumbra was fine to accept, it would do her no harm to simply let Ablazed Glory feel safer.

“Luminary,” Ablazed Glory ordered as she unlocked the door and trotted over to it, “move to dock with the station, prepare Airlock 3.”

“Affirmative.” At the Luminary’s silent order, the ship started forwards, the blocky hull of the Extractor platform gradually approaching.

Ablazed Glory and Penumbra walked to the airlock, checking every once in a while the screens that dotted the walls to see their approach, which revealed the true size of the platform.

Its main hull was the size of a city, made up of about a hundred black metal blocks of varying size, dotted with millions of tiny lights that no doubt were shield emitters. Beyond the blocks of the hull was the extractor itself, two vast cylinders that angled towards the star’s surface, feeding into a hemisphere that connected to the edges of the rest of the hull, no doubt once containing incredible volumes of hydrogen, ready to be shipped to refineries elsewhere. According to the simple schematics one of the screens displayed, a jet between the two cylinders would fire out the non-Hydrogen elements at near-relativistic speeds, keeping the station from simply falling into the star.

The docking port they were approaching extended a good forty metres from the rest of the station, allowing for the new arrivals to truly appreciate the immense size of the installation as they docked. When they finally did, evident by a single thud as the utilitarian ancient Imperial system connected to the aesthetic modern Dominion system, the airlocks opened into the past world, the world Penumbra had thought had been left behind forever.

The floors and walls were both gunmetal grey, with white circular lights at intervals of a metre all along the bridge’s length. There were no windows, so the space appeared far more cramped and claustrophobic than it really was. At the bridge’s centre there were a pair of screens, both offline, with announcement speakers above them. Once they would have blared out orders in robotic tones, now they lay, dormant and unused for millennia.

The bulkhead at the end of the bridge hissed as it opened, whining when it had opened fully. Beyond it were two spots, areas on the ground where the grey colour had been worn down from the presence of guards. Millennia prior, the guards had left their stations, called off to serve elsewhere, never to return.

Ahead of them lay a labyrinth of empty halls, all expressionless save the odd deactivated screen or locked door. Once the station had harboured a great deal of activity, the acquisition and refinement of fuel was vital to the Imperial war effort, and thus its economy. The air was stale, dry and smelt slightly of oil, the life support systems slowly ticking over, without any sort of maintenance. The air vents that dotted the ceiling were filthy, full of black dust that had accumulated over so long, forming small patches of the stuff on the ground beneath the vents. Penumbra and Ablazed Glory were the first to venture down the halls in a very long time.

“Any idea where we’re going?” Ablazed Glory asked, “I’m certain I’ve seen this door before.”

“We should find the control room,” was her companion’s answer, “maybe there we’ll be able to find out where the person who accessed this station is.”

“That’s an uncharacteristically simple plan.” Ablazed Glory tried to pull open a door with her telekinesis, but gave up after a few seconds. “One problem, though, where is the control room? I don’t see any map around here, or person we could ask.”

Penumbra thought for a moment. “The station still clearly has power,” she said, “so at least one of these screens must still work. If I know Imperial technology, it doesn’t tend to break easily.”

Ablazed Glory scoffed. “Yeah, but it doesn’t tell you when it is broken. Case in point, every door in this station, apparently.”

Penumbra tapped one of the black screens, trying to figure out if they had any mechanisms. Each one was built into a slightly raised pillar in the wall, so their workings must be hidden behind the pillar. However, although a look with her magical sight showed various wires and circuits, none of them appeared to be a switch of any kind.

“Luminary said this place was built in the 8600’s,” Ablazed Glory said, watching Penumbra stare at a dead screen, “that was a good twenty millennia ago. This place has been out of commission for at least four thousand one hundred years, I wouldn’t be surprised if the screens don’t work anymore. Plus, if they’re late-9th millenium tech they’ll be a real pain to fix, it was only around 9200 that they finally started to build stuff properly again.”

“Well, it doesn’t hurt to try,” Penumbra said as she checked over each individual wire and connection with her magic, “this place seems like a maze, it could take days to search it on our own. We don’t have days.”

“I doubt whoever called you doesn’t plan to wait, especially after giving us the run-around like this. If I was in your place, I’d have ignored it.” Penumbra turned and gave her a warning stare. “I’m just saying,” Ablazed Glory countered, “this all seems a bit suspicious to me. Now, I’m sure whoever wants to meet you is a perfectly lovely person - just like the last one - but they could’ve made it way easier, you can agree with that.”

Penumbra sighed. “It’s not my place to demand she make it easier.” She continued working with the wires for another ten seconds, before shaking her head and relinquishing her magical grip on them, the damage must have been done elsewhere.

“I’m sure it’s not. But, I’m perfectly allowed to. After all, we’re a team, so my word’s as good as yours.” Ablazed Glory kicked the next door along, with it hissing and clearly trying to open. She kicked it again, far harder, which dislodged something and allowed the door to open halfway, jamming with a squeal once it had made a gap enough for her to just squeeze through.

“See what you can find in there,” Penumbra ordered, whilst she checked the wiring of another screen, “if it looks like an on switch then flick it.”

Ablazed Glory was an expert with machines, or so she told just about everyone she met. The reality was far different, though she would never tell anyone, she was sure that machines seemed to like her, like they reacted well to her presence. She had fixed a generator on New Horizons simply by going near it, having walked out of the shelter that housed it with a theatrical flare and declared herself the resident engineer. She was no expert when it came to machinery, even if she pretended to be, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t at least good at working with them - she knew a thing or two.

When she passed through the gap in the door, she came immediately upon a machine, shrouded in darkness. Though the lights were long dead, no doubt having failed the microsecond after the station’s complement left, she could just about make out some of the machine’s console, with the rest being illuminated by her burning body.

Like all Imperial machinery, it was very utilitarian, without even so much as a coat of paint. Each of the buttons were grey, the levers the barest metal outlines, with their respective jobs written in simple, black runes beneath each one. Attached directly behind the console was a large cuboidal block, with half of a cylinder above, giving away very little as to its purpose.

“Thean?” She read one of the runic sets aloud, “I swear I’ve read this before. Was it on that engine back on New Horizons? Thean, meaning engage? No, it can’t be, that’s yol. Wait, are these runes Standard? Surely they are, it’s Imperial tech. Does that one stand for ‘th’ or ‘ya’? I swear in Standard it’s ‘th’, but then that one couldn’t be ‘e’ it’d have to be ‘u’.”

She scratched her head, she blamed it on the poor light and decay of the letters. Regardless of the cause, she didn’t know fully what she was reading, too concerned as to potential damage to simply push a button and find out.

“Penumbra,” she shouted through the gap, “what’s the word for engage?”

“Eiro,” her companion shouted back, “though you’ll probably be looking for Eirus if it’s a machine.”

“What’s the rune for ‘Ei’?”

Penumbra’s head appeared in the gap a few seconds later. “What do you mean?”

Ablazed Glory looked down sheepishly. “Like, what’s it look like?”

Her companion blinked silently. “It’s a crook and handle with a dot in the centre of the crook.”

“Oh right, okay.”

Ablazed Glory turned back to the machine, hunting for the word ‘Eirus’ or anything similar. She found it in the form of a button, which she pressed to reveal nothing but a mechanical clunk. Evidently, the other buttons and levers had some use in preparing the machine for ignition.

“I’m alright now,” she called back to Penumbra, who she knew was still there, “you can go back to your screen.”

Her companion eventually did, allowing Ablazed Glory to focus fully on the machine. A few more translation errors later she sat back on her haunches and examined the whole panel.

“This machine,” the Shining amulet said, startling Ablazed Glory slightly, “bears a fragment of a soul. An animalistic soul. You must sate it before you activate it, it is linked to many more like it across this station.”

“A soul? How does it have a soul?”

“The one you seek,” Shining said, “implanted this machine with an artificial fragment of a soul.”

Ablazed Glory nodded gravely, thanking the Shining amulet before rising to her feet. She pressed a button she understood, before half-chanting, “soul of this engine, I request your aid, let your mechanical life blood flow through you and ignite at my call.”

She’d read a book about cult practices three centuries prior.

A second later, she tested the engage button, which gave another mechanical clunk. Ablazed Glory lamented that she had failed, that it would take her hours to fully translate and work out an order for each of the buttons and levers, before the machine roared to life, a content aura within it - though that could have just been her imagination.

Penumbra reappeared at the door. “The screens are back on. I think that machine must have been a generator of some kind, I can get us to the control room now.”

Ablazed Glory gave a theatrical bow, clambering out through the broken door and back into the slightly more illuminated hallway. The screens all flared blue, Penumbra quickly locating an interactive map of the facility, with the control room marked in runic writing.

“Okay,” she said, thinking aloud as usual, “down this hall, right turn, ahead fifty metres, left turn, ahead twenty, right again, then up four levels.”

Ablazed Glory, meanwhile, was almost silently muttering to the screen, hoping to placate the soul inside of it - if one was even present. Penumbra was too busy rambling to herself to notice.

“Alright,” she said eventually, “I’ve got us a way, follow please.”

She set off regardless of Ablazed Glory’s affirmative, knowing she would follow regardless. She did, indeed, but not after muttering a thanks to the screen - just to be on the safe side. Everytime she did so, it felt less and less like she was mental - which was an upside.

Aside from the screens, which were all identical, the hallways were completely featureless. Only slight differences in the intervals between doors stopped them from thinking they weren’t walking in circles again. Eventually, though, they reached an elevator, with working doors and console.

Penumbra keyed them in for four levels up, Ablazed Glory mumbling a thank you to the elevator.

“Huh?” Penumbra turned to her. “Did you say something?”

Ablazed Glory shook her head.

Penumbra hummed. “Must be my imagination.” She chuckled wryly. “That or there’s someone about to drop down and kill us.”

The Shining amulet assured her telepathically she was doing the right thing, the vast majority of machines in the installation had the fragments he described within them, placating them would make their lives considerably easier. She would rather not deal with a murderous elevator.

The hallways leading towards the control room were considerably larger, wider and taller generally. The whole space felt far less cramped, even though the actual size difference was fairly small.

The control room was sealed off with a bulkhead, by Penumbra’s estimation it was about a metre thick, more than too much for them to simply breach through. Penumbra tried the console by its side first, but gave a frustrated snarl after a minute or two.

“Something’s wrong with it,” she said, “it’s like it’s trying to keep me away from the open command. You try it.”

Ablazed Glory stepped up to the console, bowing her head slightly and riffing a statement of appeasement. “Soul of this machine, I request your aid, let your spark run through you and open the way before us.”

Okay, maybe she had read several books on cult practices before.

Though she sensed Penumbra’s confusion and partial displeasure behind her, she could also sense a more neutral aura with the machine, it seemed more relaxed in her presence than Penumbra’s.

Not letting her good work go to waste, she continued unabated, “we are humbled in your presence, noble machine, we petition you for our safe passage.”

The machine accepted her, the open command appearing directly before her claw. With a push, the bulkhead opened, revealing the control room, the machine’s satisfied aura behind her.

Unlike the machine however, Penumbra was more than dissatisfied. Ablazed Glory knew full well why.

Penumbra had been a strong adherent to Emperor Nicholas’ philosophies, even though she had no understanding of the conditions that had birthed them - and even though she clearly hated the man. Amongst many of the Emperor’s philosophies that had begun as personal biases - although there were very understandable reasons for them - had been his hatred of religion. Whilst the Dominion remained firmly atheist, it permitted religious practice and generally didn’t care much about religion as a whole, the Irenton Empire had been brutal in its opposition to religion, destroying every faith it came across. Penumbra had inherited that hatred, more out of reverence for the Emperor than an actual conflict. What Ablazed Glory was doing would have been regarded in the days of the Empire as ‘superstitious activity,’ not a crime but very close to one - even without any religious connotations.

“They have souls,” Ablazed Glory told her as she entered the control room, which increased her ire further, “fragments of them, Shining told me. Your new friend put them there.” Ablazed Glory was proud to admit herself as a master at manipulating conversation. “Thank her, not me.”

That seemed to get Penumbra off her back, with the alicorn accepting for the time being she was incorrect.

The control room was at least three times the size of the Retaliator’s command bridge, with about ninety sets of consoles excluding those built into the walls, which held thick, reinforced windows looking out over an immense hangar bay, the doors firmly closed at the end.

All of the terminals were active, analysing the now empty fuel tanks and ensuring the electromagnet systems were all functioning correctly, quietly ticking over down the millennia. The two alicorns searched the consoles for a good few minutes, before Ablazed Glory found what she believed must have been the command console. She understood only a few of the words written on it, but that was enough to discern that not only were the electromagnets functioning perfectly and the fuel tanks fully secured and eagerly awaiting the time they would be needed again, but also that someone had placed a message onto the console - one she couldn’t read.

“Penumbra,” she called her comrade over, “this one’s the main terminal, I think. There’s a message on it I can’t read.”

Penumbra checked the console over within a few seconds, reading the message thoroughly and memorising each segment, making good use of her uncanny knack to remember even the most obscure of information she had taken, at most, a cursory glance at.

“It says it’s from the edge of the Cloud,” she said, “there’s coordinates attached. I think this is it.”

“This is it?” Ablazed Glory questioned. “You mean, this is the source?”

Penumbra nodded. “Yeah. We’d best get moving.”

She had practically sprinted off, only conscious of the arbitrary time limit she had given herself. Ablazed Glory muttered thanks to the console, which gave a cheerful magical response, before herself dashing off, following her companion.

Penumbra practically jumped aboard the Retaliator, immediately ordering the Luminary to the coordinates she had memorised. Ablazed Glory, meanwhile, tried her best to be fast, but was so caught up thanking every console or door she saw that by the time she dashed into the airlock - thanking that even though it was from her own ship - Penumbra was already on the bridge.

The Retaliator undocked barely half a minute later, Ablazed Glory slowly walking to the bridge, content that she didn’t really need to be there for the time being. Penumbra, for all her faults, wasn’t incompetent, she could handle being in charge for a little while.