Chapter 7: Supernova

The lieutenant turns his head towards Lola, first a look of confusion shows on his face, seemingly processing the odd inquiry in his situation. Then a vein on his forehead swells up and he yells again. "Now is not the time! Can't they see we're dealing with a situation here? Do they think I want to trade pearls and trinkets now? Out!"

The flashlight flares up, making Elan wince and holding his eyes thanks to the sudden increase in brightness. He slowly uncovers his eyes again and opens them, now being able to see the entirety of the room, thanks to the refracting light spreading in the room.
Taelors view point is mostly restricted to the area she is lighting with the slab.
The room has a line of terminals on the left and right side of the room. The screens are dull or broken, spiderwebs are ubiquitous.
In the center of the room is a circular platform. It is covered in mysterious symbols that don't have any obvious meaning to neither Taelor nor Elan.
The far end of the room has a door on the left side of the wall, the rest is a large window to the room behind. It's still unbroken and has no cracks.
Behind the window is another room that is empty except for a table with some crystal cube on it.

"Well there aren't skeletons scattered around," Elan says, encouraged.

"But that means they left that there intentionally," he adds, pointing to the crystal cube on the table in the room behind the window.

He goes over and raps on the window, seeing if it's reinforced.

"Only two doors here: the one we came in and the one that the room with the cube. That means this is a dead-end, the destination of that caved-in hallway."

He goes over to check on the door that leads to the room with the crystal cube. If it's locked, he'll see if he can pick it.

Taelor puts down her dataslab, flashlight up, on one of the terminals so that it bathes the room in a dim light. She then lowers her goggles onto her eyes and turns them back on. "Imma see if I can get something out of this old shit."

She kneels down next to one of the most intact terminals and opens it using her metatool. She examines the interior, trying to locate the memory core or drive, hoping she can salvage some data. If the terminals look like access points only, she tries to locate the wires leading to the main computer core.

While the healing process was harder on the healed than on the healer, Samara is exhausted nonetheless; this is a level of violence that she had never been exposed to before now.  Moreover, not every patient had the physical strength to be healed, another terrible first on a list that did not seem to be getting any shorter.

Wrung out emotionally, she looks for Elan who had been nearby when she had started how long ago had that been?  Not seeing him, or any of her crewmates nearby, she is wracked with panic and chokes back a sob.  Everyone is fine. You've not been left behind. Everyone is fine...  

In a quasi-daze, Samara approaches the doctors and nurses, hovering by them in silence until one of them pays her any mind.  "I don't know where my friends are," she blurts out. Saying the words out loud makes her feel both selfish and self-conscious, as her losing track of her friends could not possibly be these people's priority right now - how could it?  "But... but I can still help if anyone else is hurt. I won't get in the way, I promise!" She gives them a tearful, tremulous smile, and manages to bite back a plea not to be forced to leave.

The glass of the window to the room with the crystal is enforced or very thick. No crack shows on the entire window and when Elan knocks on it, it sounds like knocking on solid stone.
The door to the room, however, although being very heavy and thick, is not locked. It takes a lot of effort to push it open, but it gives way.

The terminals are beyond salvage. Wires have withered away, possible plastic turned to dust, just some ceramic parts seem to be intact still, albeit Taelor has never seen anything like it and has no idea what each part might have been for. There is also no wiring going out of the room.

On one of the stations Taelor finds a weird device. It looks like a lense, about have a centimeter thick, round and in the faint light it shimmers in all colors of the spectrum. On the top rim of it are two small arrows, one to the left and one to the right.
Taelor turns it around, there are no jacks or connectors of any sorts. Given the lense-like shape, she holds it in front of her dataslabs light and gasps in surprise, when a holographic presentation of what seems to be a logbook appears.

Quote :

ᬩᬦᬰᬩᬭ: ᬦᬰᬢᬧᬭᬢ᭄ᬡᬮᬭᬤ: ᬠ᭄ᬡᬦ! ᬣᬰᬤᬧ: ᬮᬧᬡ᭄!
ᬤᬰᬧᬡ: ᬡ᭄ᬮ! ᬠᬭᬦᬤ: ᬠᬢᬠᬣᬭᬢᬤᬡᬮᬭᬠ: ᬩᬡ᭄ᬪᬤᬡ᭄!
ᬡᬭᬧᬡ: ᬢᬭᬡᬧᬤᬮᬧᬭᬠ: ᬡᬭᬠᬡᬭᬦᬤᬧ: ᬢᬧᬭᬦᬡᬭᬠ: ᬤᬢᬤᬮᬭᬧᬭᬦᬮ!
ᬤᬰᬢᬡ᭄ᬠᬧᬡ: ᬠᬤᬢᬠᬣᬧᬭᬡᬢ᭄ᬡᬮᬭᬠ: ᬤᬭᬧᬡᬤᬮᬧᬭᬡᬧᬤᬮ!

Elan is not large and it is difficult to move the heavy door. But he eventually succeeds by leaning on it with his full weight.

Elan approaches the crystal cube for closer inspection. He uses his panspectral optics to see if it is radiating unexpectedly.

He'll hold his hand out close to it to see if it feels like it it giving off any heat, although his thermovision should pick that up long before his skin does.

"Whoa... Elan, check this out!" Taelor says looking away from the projection to see the thief has made it into the next room. "Nevermind, it can wait." She tries taking a picture of the projection with her dataslab's camera.

She checks the symbols from the projection again and compares them to the symbols on the side of the circular platform, trying to see if they're from the same alphabet. "Some ancient local language maybe?" she mutters. She pockets the lens, then sets her slab's camera to panorama mode. She takes a panoramic picture, walking around the circular platform so she can get the entirety of the writing around it.

If there aren't any warning signs, Elan will try to lift the cube. He'll turn it around and try to examine each side. Does it open up? Can he see through it? Why would they leave it behind?

It occurs to him that it might not be worth anything, but crystal is one of those things that just tickles the back of his cat burglar brain.

Elan staggers out of the backroom to show it to Taelor. He expects that she'll shine her datapad flashlight on it. Maybe that will reveal some markings that he can't see in the other spectra of electromagnetic radiation.

A nurse looks puzzled at Sam as if she only now noticed her presence. The woman seems tired, dark rings under her eyes give her a sad, old look. "I think your friend left earlier. Maybe that direction?" she points hesitantly into no specific direction. "Please, pick up another bag of solution and exchange it on that private over there." She points to one soldier close by, who has a large cut on his upper thigh.
When Sam approaches the man to do as asked, she hears the soldier mutter "Those bitches. Somebody must have told them. Uff, this we'll pay them back"

Meanwhile in the old bunker. The cube seems dim in the low light. There seems to be no radiation. On one side Elan can see some kind of input device, but it does not look like any lock or panel he has seen before.
He lifts up the cube, which is heavy, but not too heavy to carry.

As soon as Taelor moves the lense from the light of the dataslab, the display disappears. She slides it into her pocket and turns her focus to the circular platform. When she brushes away the dust a bit, she can see small engravings all around the platform. They are written in the same foreign letters as the holographic display of the lens. The platform is perfectly smooth and entirely flat, except for a small rectangular depression, in the middle.
The material is most puzzling. It seems like it shimmers in colors from time to time, but Taelor cannot make out a pattern. She can't tell whether it is inherent to the material, or refracting light. But the platform is cold to the touch and otherwise completely silent and still.

Elan comes back to main room with the cube and sees Taelor investigating the platform. Whenever she shines the light of her dataslab on the platform where it is cleared from dust, Elan can see a faint energy radiation from it. But oddly his eyes cannot classify the kind of radiation.
When he places the cube on a table and the shine the light on it, they can see that it is dim because of dirt and dust. After rubbing off the dust and shining the light at it, they can see mostly through the crystal. The cube seems to be a container or storage device for some dark artifact. It's impossible to see in the bad lighting, with the crystal refracting part of the light, what it is exactly. But they can see the line where the crystal can open, the input device Elan saw earlier seems to be an opening mechanism. But neither metatool, nor good will seem to open it.

The nurse's weary voice is a soothing reminder of the glaringly obvious: Samara was not alone here and chances were that her crewmates had not gone very far. And I didn't even try to reach anyone on the compad! Oh! And maybe there's messages! When taking the IV bag, she places her hand on the nurse's and beaming gratefully. "Thank you. Thank you for your help, and for helping all of these soldiers. Rejoice and overcome." Samara extends her power towards the woman in hopes that the nurse's body is able to be healed and refreshed, and if not, she hopes that she'll at least have the chance to take a nap soon.

She listens to the soldier's muttering while switching the IV bag, eager to finish with this task to then set about finding her friends. "You think that you were betrayed‽ That's a terrible feeling! I'm so sorry - trust is very important... Speaking of which," she shifts from speaking to the whole soldier, to only his leg; taking a moment to remind the edges of his wound of a time when there was not this chasm between them, when they had been united in purpose and essential to one another's well-being.

"If you were betrayed," she begins returning her attention to the whole man. "We can hope that the person had good intentions. Or at least was made to feel like they had no choice... But when the payback for harm is more harm, everyone loses." She gives him a soft smile, but is braced for his response. People had often reacted strongly when their feeling of betrayal was not met with outrage or calls for retribution - understandably.

Elan relays what he's seen to Taelor. "Whenever you shine the light on the platform, I can see a faint energy radiation where it is cleared from dust. But my eyes cannot classify the kind of radiation."

Elan wishes they had Rena's big brain there.

"I don't know what would cause that. It seems like it must be absorbing the electromagnetic radiation from the dataslab and then emitting it back out, maybe after transforming it to a different form.

"Should we get it back to the ship? We can examine the cube more closely, maybe figure out if there are some tools we can use to engage the opening mechanism."

Taelor nods at Elan's explanation of what he sees around the platform. "Maybe it's kind of like a bigger version of this thing?" she says showing him the lens. She shines the light through it to show him the holographic writing. "Like a holographic projector of some sort. If we clean it and shine more light into it, we may get something out of it."

"As for that," she says, pointing at the cube, "we might as well take it. We'll have what we need at the ship's workshop to pry it open."

The soldier's eyes widen in surprise, as the gentle touch of Sam's fingers make the pulsing pain leave his leg. Involuntarily he sighs in relief. "What are you? This... My leg... Thank you! If I can ever help you with something, say the word!

Yes, I think someone gave away our position and plans. We were supposed to move out today. But how will we ever change anything, if not by force?"

Taelor pockets the lens and turns towards the entrance. Elan grabs the cube, but then places it back on the pedestal in order to do one more sweep around the lab. On the wall he notices scorch marks. But it looks like the marks are made by different states of decay, almost like different states of aging, instead of markings of heat or force. When he gets closer, he notices something extremely odd. A small piece of debris flies about a half meter from Elans left to his right, away from the center of the room, towards the wall, but then disappears in mid-air and reappears where he saw it initially, again flying the same path. Over and over and over again.

"Well you don't see that every day," Elan announces with his hands on his hips.

"Taelor, come look at this. We have this little piece of... I don't know, detritus, flying about half a meter before it teleports back and does it all over again."

He clicks his tongue.

"Someone with Metadimensional Extroversion Syndrome is capable of channeling the metadimensional energies that allow for things like telekinesis and teleportation. MES opens a channel between our minds and 'the churning maelstrom of energies that boil in metadimensional space' is I think how Rena put it. It looks like we have some of that going on here too, between the teleportation and the perpetual motion."

He points back to the platform. "I wonder if that radiation I'm seeing but not identifying is metadimensional, or something similar." Not that he knows what would be similar, but there are a lot of things that Elan doesn't know.

"This wasn't doing this before, was it? Here, grab the cube and take it off the pedestal. See if that changes anything." He watches the flying debris closely.

Samara refrains from telling the soldier that she is a cook as she is fairly certain that would not satisfy him, opting instead to shrug. "That is very kind! My friends and I," she places a hand on her compad, as if the device somehow contained said friends.  "I'm Samara by the way - we're here to do some trading. Maybe once I find them, you can help us speak to your... um, inventory guy? I wish that it was food and medical supplies, but I think that it mainly things that will help you to fight...  Anyhow, get some rest!"

She finally takes out her compad and is overwhelmed by a combination of joy at seeing measages from her friends and shame at having ever doubted them.

//Hi!!! 🫂  Heading back 2 ship 4 food//
//@ruins?//

Elan grabs a small pebble and throws it into the disturbance. It vanishes a bit before the field of the flying stone and reappears behind and falls down on a normal trajectory.

"Curiouser and curiouser," Elan murmurs.

The debris is moving quite quickly. Taelor suggests intercepting it by putting something in the way. Elan nods.

"Let's make sure it's a physical effect, not a psychic one," he agrees. "MES can be mental, like with telepathy, so it's possible this is some sort of psychic echo. That would explain why the pebble I threw passed through the space without interacting with it. Maybe it physically flew through the space, but our minds saw something different."

He finds a tablet-like device near one of the terminals. He grabs it and, with a loose grip, readies to pass it in front of the flying debris. If it delivers a lot of kinetic energy he'll let the tablet get knocked away rather than trying to keep a firm grip on it.

The tablet can be held without resistance into the phenomenon, but disappears when touching the area of the trajectory and a little around. Behind the affected area, it reappears and when held in place looks like it has a hole. But the tablet is whole again, when pulling it out of the area seemingly unharmed. Elan is about to put away the tablet, when he notices an effect, like a slight brief flicker of distortion. Before he can point it out, it's already gone again.

"Well, whatever it is, it's indifferent to the laws of thermodynamics," Elan says, pointing out that the speed and trajectory of the debris do not change loop by loop.

"Is it an illusion? An alternate reality? The detritus of a past or coming war?

"Notice the marks on the wall? They look like they're from aging, with the different bands correlated with different states of aging.

"Something is unusual here but I don't know what, nor what to do about it. Let's head out."

The way back to the ship is dominated by everybody exchanging impressions. Lola reports the snappy lieutenant, Sam glows with satisfaction about the healing and more important the advice she could give and Taelor and Elan share the bizarre impressions they gathered in the lost bunker. Taelors coarsely pixeled images and videos give an idea of what was found, but thanks to the bad lighting, the details are hard to discern.
The crystal box however is very well visible and even more intriguing in broad daylight.
The item inside seems to be roughly rectangular and flat, vaguely the shape of a dataslab. But details cannot be made out as the light refracts too strongly in the crystals faults.

"At first I was super focused on helping all of those injured soliders! And then I realized that I was all by myself! And then I kinda freaked out, because I didn't know where anyone was! But then the nurse was really nice, and I helped a soldier, and then I checked my pad! Which I should have done to begin with, but I was focused and then freaked out and... Short version is, it took my a while to check for your message. That thing is neat! What does it do? Do the soliders know about it? They might be interested in weapons by the way! Apparently their location was compromised, maybe even by a friend! Isn't that terrible?"

Did Samara breathe while speaking? Or maybe she had found a way to process oxygen like those mushrooms she seemed so fond of.

Taelor smiles at Sam, the cook/medic's good cheer infectious. "Glad you were able to help, kiddo. As for what Elan and I found, we haven't had time to ask around about it yet. Could be smart to play it close to our chest until we know more about it. Maybe show some soldiers the bunker and see what they say?"

"We should also see to our merch before starting on a whole other thing. We can meet with the commander again and Elan can do some negosh. If we want to keep flying, we're going to need that cash."

"We do need that cash," Elan agrees.

"Did anyone see the state of their armory? If it got shelled then we could be in the right place at the right time."

Elan privately confronts the possibility that their potential customers are broke. If so, perhaps the have valuable trade goods that are less contraband-y that they can exchange.

His eyes dart over to Samara. Elan didn't really know what to do in the medical tent so he watched Samara for tips. There was much more hand-holding than he expected, along with whispered words of encouragement that he wouldn't have expected to be helpful. But yet... Elan knows himself that things are not always what they seem. If Samara is blessed with certain ... feelings? visions? instincts? Then perhaps she has other gifts as well.

He grabs the crystal slab. "Let's take this to the workshop, and see what there is to see." Elan leads the way to the Undertow's workshop. He doesn't know his way around it like Taelor does, but he knows the basics. He starts to apply the workshops various sensors to the crystal slab... although he might need Taelor's help to interpret the results.

"I didn't see their armory, but I can go back! Although, I don't really know anything about weapons..." Samara isn't particularly keen to head back on her own, and so doesn't immediate suggest that she could ask the Private.

When Elan suggests heading to the workshop, she is more than happy to do so even though she'll not have much - if anything to contribute.

The available tools and sensors yield little, but the realisation, that crystal is very hard and shields from most kind of radiation.
The lock is something nobody had seen before. There is a sensory field, but it does not seem to analyse the finger print. Taelors best bet is that it analyses DNA.

The lid closes tight on the box. The hinges are part of the crystal and accordingly tough. Elan thinks that the lock is the weak point, if there is one.

"Let me have a look," Taelor says as she sits down next to Elan. "Hmm... might be best to leave it closed until we know more. See this reading?" She says, tapping one of the screens. "We can't get any radiation reading beyond the surface of the crystal. Whatever's inside could be The Cancer Giver for all we know."

Taelor leans back and looks up, her eyes unfocused and moving around as she thinks. "We could always open it in the airlock while wearing EVA suits. Should keep us safe if it's radioactive."

The plan is straight forward enough. Taelor suits up, the vacc suit being even more clumsy in gravity, and shleps the box and her tools into the lock. She has worked in these suits enough to not let the restricted mobility of her fingers, due to the tough gloves, influence her. It only takes about fifteen minutes for her to pry open the lock and expose it inner contents. There is a safeguard in place, albeit she is not sure what it will do. The lock consists of a bio scanner and a compute unit. Her suspicion, that it reads DNA can be confirmed, but she does not manage to override the compute unit.
She however does manage to get the signature of the dna markers, it is looking for.

Elan puts on the vacc suit to see if anything inside the lock looks recognizable to him.

"DNA, eh?" he asks, although a moment later he realizes that sounds like "DNAA". He shrugs.

"Aren't there like 70 trillion viable combinations? And that's just if it's looking for human DNA. What if it's looking for someone's pet cat, or some ancient alien?"

He leans back.

"Can we sleaze it at all?" he asks nobody in particular. "Fool it into seeing what it wants to see?

"If not, can we bypass it physically without busting what's inside?"

"I think I got the signals it's looking for, but as for how to fake them, I got no clue. Statton might. We could keep this thing in storage until we head back to Astyoc or we can try to find someone here." Taelor shrugs. "As for breaking it open, there's always going to be a risk of damaging what's inside. Could be fragile. We got no way to know."

She looks at Elan. "Look, man, I'm curious about this thing too, but it's not why we're here. Can we put this on the back burner until we get our merch sorted out? We put all our cash into this cargo. We need to sell it. This thing's been down there for a loooong time. It can wait a few more days."

"Okay," Elan tells Taelor. "You make a valid point.

"Let's not forget the lens though. Is there anything we can do with that holographic script? Does it look like a written language, or some sort of programming code?

"Let's continue on. Are we going to try Lieutenant Blackthorn again once he's not in triage mode, or are we going to fly our way up the chain of command to find someone who has some resources at their disposal?

"Samara, you made a friend in camp, right?" Samara always makes friends through sheer force of will. "Do you think that they could point us in the right direction?"

"I did make a friend! He said that if there was anything that he could do to help to let him know, and so I told him that we were here to trade and that once I found you guys that we'd come back and then he could help us." Samara's run on sentence leaves her short of breath but no less enthusiastic.

"And if he cannot help, I'm sure that he'll know someone who might!"

"Delightful!" Elan claps once. "Excellent work, Samara. Let's start there."

"Yay! I can't wait for you guys to meet Don. He's really nice." Samara begins packing up to head out, beaming from both Elan's praise and getting to see her new friend.

The base itself is still pretty scary to her, but this time she is determined to not be get separated from her crew (or at least to remember that they are but a message away).

"Let's make a copy of the lens' script before we go. Maybe someone will be able to read it campside." After taking off the EVA suit, Taelor heads back to the workshop. She sets the lens down on a light so it projects its script. She then copies it into a drawing app on her dataslab. "Okay, let's go meet your friend, Sam."

Samara leads the group back to the field hospital. If the private is no longer there, the medical team would have the best idea of to what unit and where he had been discharged to.

"Aw man! I forgot to bring treats for the staff and patients! We could go back to the ship... No, focus! Mission first, right?" Samara answers her own question with a nod, and does her best not to be too disappointed about arriving empty-handed.

The activity in the camp calmed down a little bit. It seems most of the injured had been taken care of, and besides the clean up crews, the entire camp fell into exhausted apathy. G.I. Joe is quickly found and after a chipper inquiry from Sam, he points the team to Sergeant Hauser, supposedly in charge of inventory and acquisition. The sergeants tent is a bit to the side of the camp and still intact.

"Thanks Don! See you later!" Sam chirps happily before leading the way towards the Sergeant's tent, practically skipping. The literal war zone did not seem to be fully registering this time around; but what was the harm in a little dissociation among friends? She manages to be relatively sober in her final approach, clearing her throat so that the Sergeant would not be surprised by their entry.

"Sergeant Hauser, hello! We're here because you are the inventory person and we are people with inventory. Exactly what inventory, I leave to my esteemed colleagues." Samara is quite pleased with how she passed the baton to her friends.  Esteemed colleagues felt like something Elan would say when he was being more business-y.

Lola was following up directly behind Samara and when the other paused she nodded at the non com.
"Sergeant Hauser. My name is Lola. We are with the trading vessel just parked up outside. As you can maybe tell from the accents, we are spaceside and came here to trade not realizing what was going on. We've no prior links here. That's as maybe but as my colleagues has just said, we have resources that might be useful to you. Weapons and supplies. Plus of course, once our holds are emptied, if you need anyone taken to triage, we are happy to help. Do you have need or the credit for these?

Leaving a moment for the soldier to parse her words, she kept her expression still and calm. She didn't want to appear too friendly. Straight after an attack, that would arise suspicion. Eagerness too might give the impression that their group were carpetbaggers, seeking to profit after misfortune. She'd met too many in her time, and had seen officers spite the nose from their face just to deny others satisfaction. In other situations asking if the other had the coin might come across as rude, but Lola had dealt with enough Quartermasters before to know that people were less likely to get sensitive about what wasn't actually their money.

Sergeant Hauser is setting at his desk in his office tent. When the crew enters he is bent over a plate of stew, holding a spoon and a chunk of bread. When asking whether he is having a late lunch or an early dinner, the answer might easily be "Yes".
The massive body of the man barely fits onto his chair, his hips spilling over the arm rests on both sides.

"Goods, weapons? Well, the sisters cooked up a meal for us, but I mean to add some seasoning to it myself. Can't say that we don't need any supplies for that, so I will send one of my guys to inspect what you have to offer." , he spoons up another large mouth full and continues with full mouth, "Where are you flying in from? And how did you acquire the goods? You must understand, I need to make sure I'm not buying a pot full of problems with the material."

"We flew in from Astyoc, in Xenthra. It's where our outfit is based. We bought the goods. No trouble attached," Taelor says casually. The deal may have skirted the law in Staconago, but she was certain it wouldn't lead to trouble for their prospective clients.

Elan wishes that he had one of those Ghost Talker Transceivers in his head where he could immediately alert the others to what he has noticed. But for that to work they'd all need to have those in their heads too so that they could receive the message covertly.

He decides to press the conversation a bit to see if he can get the phenomenon to repeat itself. If so, perhaps the others will notice it too.

"I'm sorry, sir, I was never one for school. Metaphors are lost on me. What is the meal that the Council of the Sisterhood of the Eternal Flame has prepared for you? Are we talking about the artillery shelling, or the conflict as a whole?"

He's hoping that he doesn't think that this offer is a trap. Given that Elan is the only male here, and he isn't the one pitching this deal, it would be easy for the Sergeant to assume that this is an elaborate set-up.

He watches closely for the Sergeant's response to see if he glitches again. He makes sure his panspectral optics are running to check the man's heat signature; he looks at the bowl of stew too to make sure it's expectedly stewy.

The sergeant looks at Elan with an expression that seems to say "it was such a good expression, how did you not get it?" "The escalation, I was referring to the escalation."

Nothing about the sergeant or the stew looks unusual.

Lola nodded back at the Sergeant when he replied about getting his guys to check their cargo. This was all fairly normal, and she would have been suspicious if he'd said anything else. It was always possible that in a warzone like this, that this group could just commandeer their cargo, but such was the risk trading in the frontline. Him repeating himself was a little weird but she'd seen worse in the aftermath of an attack. Men and women who she'd known intimately, now completely alien to her. You started picking up tics and quirks like, well the ticks and diseases which would occasionally ravage their community.

"How is the conflict going? You say their meal wasn't particularly spicy but in general what kind of serving size are we talking in this area? Stalemate or do you have the upper hand?"

"Young lady, I can tell be your posture and vocabulary, that you have military background. So you will know, that I can't discuss an ongoing situation with external parties." He again bows over the bowl and attacks the stew.

"Very good, sir," Elan says. "When may we expect your men to inspect the inventory?"

Once the pleasantries are concluded, Elan makes meaningful eye contact with the others and leads them out the door.

Outside, somewhere private, he shares what he saw.

"Look, I know I have some new cyber but this is not one of its features.

"When the sergeant repeated his message about the metaphorical meal, he... glitched. Like there was a distortion of... everything." He shakes his hands erratically to demonstrate.

"I don't know what would cause something like that. Him repeating himself makes me think of a temporal hiccup, or maybe some psychic ping to his brain.

"Like, what if there isn't a traitor in camp, but the Sisters have some sort of technique to spy on them? Or what if these discontinuities let them know what's about to happen, or are evidence of their surveillance?"

He looks concerned. He turns to Samara.

"I'm worried that we may have tipped our hand to the Sisters and made ourselves a target. Sam, do you have any gut feelings about what might happen during the inspection?"

Taelor looks at Elan dubiously. "May not be a feature of your new cyber, but it could be a glitch. I can give you a once-over. Rule it out before we start entertaining crazy sci-fi theories like time loops and aliens. I mean, people repeat what they say all the time. My first thought wouldn't be time loop."

She looks around at the camp. A small group eating their meal. A patrol doing its rounds. A couple of bandaged soldiers smoking outside the infirmary. Everything looked... normal. "While we're here, we should ask around to see if one of these grunts knows anything about the lab we found," she says, turning her attention to more concrete matters.

She walks over to the nearest group of soldiers that don't look busy. "Hey, I'm Taelor. Do you guys know if anybody around here is a huge nerd? I've got questions for a history buff."

After a bit of asking around the crew is pointed towards private Ryan, the record keeper of the camp. He does fulfil the expectations in terms of nerdiness and when shown the sample of the writing, his eyes light up in surprised recognition. "Interesting" , he adjusts the position of his glasses and starts studying the writing. "Where did you find this? I haven't seen this writing in a while. It is very old, I don't even know from when. I read about it in some historic records. Beautiful font they are using. I myself cannot read it, but there are public records that have been deciphered, so it can be done. Maybe check the records of the historic library of Yanarta, I think you could find something there. It is all digital, so you don't even have to go there. Seriously, where did you find this, this is most fascinating! "

Taelor listens to the nerd with mild interest. She pulls out her dataslab and starts looking up the Library of Yanarta. "We found it not too far from here. Stumbled onto a ruined lab or something in a hole just outside your camp. I could show you if you want."

While Taelor begjns her nerd hunt, Samara mulls Elan's question. "Elan? I don't have a gut feeling about the inspection, but I haven't..." She leans in to whisper the end of the sentence "peeked." She gives him an apologetic shrug and follows Taelor and the rest of the crew to the record keeper.

While the young man speaks, she sifts through her thoughts to figure out why she is worried; being in a war zone has made the prospect of looking ahead kind of scary.