Salvation

by voroshilov

The Past

Penumbra turned back to the console, the researchers content to let her work - swayed by her ability to activate the console that had stumped them for so long - and began searching through its activation records. How she could read the script, she didn’t know, but it didn’t really matter so long as she could - the time for rigorous scientific investigation of unknown phenomena was sometime after the galaxy was saved.

Sure enough, after a few commands, a list of activation dates and their destinations appeared on screen. The latest being a little over a thousand years previously.

Which should have been impossible.

A thousand years ago, the Rift was gone, a result of the catastrophic damage to the Omniverse by the War in Heaven. Transportation over long distances was next to impossible during that time, and there were no inhabited plants within ten light-years of the Gateway. Unless someone had remained aboard since the end of the War in Heaven and it had taken them three thousand years to activate the Gateway’s portal, there should be no activation data. But, of course, there it was.

It should have been impossible. But, Penumbra had long since stopped believing anything was impossible.

From the appearance of the WarSynth in her tower, it would be safe to assume that Celestine was the one who had the Gateway activated. However, Penumbra had encountered Celestine on the other side of the galaxy, and, as far as she was aware, Celestine had not travelled with them to Cradle. It was possible, she granted, that Celestine could have made it over to the Gateway whilst the Battle of the Aether was raging, but how?

The Battle of the Aether had been the climactic battle of the War in Heaven, ending with the Smothering of the Great Light and the destruction of the Rift and the Aether itself. Though Penumbra had only experienced travel before the Battle began, she knew that the Veiled Edge - the border between the Aether and the material universe - had begun to leak. Similarly, she had been informed in passing that Rift travel had become different, more unpredictable and potentially volatile. Supposedly, during the height of the Battle, the Rift had been torn open, creating permanent entrances into the Aether from the Rift itself. Vessels would have had no choice but to enter the Aether, though it would have been possible to almost immediately leave.

Either; Celestine had travelled through the Rift to the Gateway without entering the Aether - unlikely but possible as far as Penumbra was aware; Celestine had travelled through the Rift to the Gateway and had entered the Aether without being seen - far more unlikely due to the vigilance of Imperial soldiers and the sheer amount of traffic moving through; or, Celestine had a way of travelling to the Gateway which did not require usage of the Rift. Penumbra had witnessed Assembly constructs teleport before - a method of transportation that did not require the Rift - but she had no evidence that suggested they could travel long astronomical distances without at least entering the Rift at some stage - which is what she believed Celestine’s WarSynth had done in Sanctuary’s Watch. If they could, that was her little mystery solved.

“Cain,” she asked, “how far can Assembly teleports go?”

The WarSynth hummed. “I do not know.”

Well, so much for the easy option. She could always ask Celestine when they found her, she supposed.

Though Penumbra couldn’t really read Dominion astronomical coordinates, she knew that the coordinates on the activation record did not fit into that system. She wondered about that for a moment, before realising that the Gateway was not built by the Dominion and hurriedly removing all thought of it from her mind in the worry that one of her comrades might see it.