Introduction
Anderson Exploration self-selected out of the running. They apparently felt they could bring the town to heel despite a destroyer in orbit. But my friends weren’t sure about Northwinds either.
They decided to dig deeper. Literally.
-The Memoirs of “Gentleman” Jack Cartwright
14 January, WY603 – Helena, Jericho
Upon discovery of the markings, Aiden recalls the shuttle and returns with the rest of the crew and a squad of marines. After a brief discussion, the crew decides there will never be a better time to explore the cave. They leave Swan and the marines behind to guard the shuttle and the cave entrance and proceed into the dark. The crew explicitly disables any broadcasting of their suit recording devices.
The tunnel itself appears to be a lava chute and the crew has a relatively easy time traveling down the slope, though the entire cave is littered with Arnite shards. After about a half mile their comms lose contact with the surface, and another half mile later they come to a mining light stuck to the wall. The light is at the intersection of two lava chutes and clearly marks the way back and a specific chute down. They continue for another half mile into the dark before finding another mining lamp, this one pointing away from the chute and into a fissure in the wall.
The crew trepidatiously navigates the fissure, which is claustrophobic but not so tight as to be dangerous, and finally emerge into a massive cavern. This natural cavern is easily the size of a small town, a mile or more to a side and hundreds of meters high. The entire cavern is filled with a massive primordial forest of willow-like trees and vegetation growing out of several inches of Arnite fragments over soil. The flora is similar to what is found on Helena’s surface but appears to have thrived more in the subterranean environment. The trees glow with the soft bluish-purple luminescence that is the hallmark of the entire system.
The subterranean forest is filled with millions of little motes of light, flitting around like fireflies. As the crew approaches them they turn out to be just lights, winking in and out of existence, seemingly without any source. A small swarm of them encircle the crew. They almost completely disregard Cara and Angelica, a few more flit about Daniel and Julian, several more Aiden, Roland, and Din, more still Dirk, but eventually the entire cloud of lights surrounds Tomoe. To the rest of the crew they blink in and out and swirl around her, vaguely reminiscent to Aiden of gravity perturbations. But to Tomoe, they stop blinking and form incredibly sophisticated patterns. They remain for a long moment before flying away into the forest.
The crew sees another mining light against the far wall of the cavern and makes their way that direction. While en route, several more clouds of the dancing lights approach and show identical interest in the different members of the team.
At the far side of the cavern they find a small camp in front of a large passage that doesn’t appear natural at all. There are several mining lamps scattered around, along with two explorer packs and a small camp stove. On the far side of the camp near the passage they find the body of Wei Zhang. The body appears to be several months old, which correlates with the cave-in. He appears to have died of massive hemorrhaging, mostly in his head. His death seems to have been extremely painful. A basic toxicology screen using the tools on-hand reveals nothing. Aiden takes Wei’s Scout Service dog-tags. Tomoe gets a peculiar intuition of a hand closing within Wei’s skull, but she doesn’t mention it to anyone. The two scout packs have roughly two days of supplies consumed, and everything with data storage is missing.
The passage is ten meters high and thirty meters wide and perfectly rectangular. It was once lined with an inch-thick veneer of Arnite but chunks have fallen and shattered on the floor. There are subtle swirls and whorls carved below the surface of the Arnite that could not be naturally occurring. Another mining lamp sits a hundred yards down the passage.
At the end of the tunnel they find a spherical chamber a hundred yards in diameter, lined with Arnite. Intricate rings of the material spin and morph around the perimeter in dizzying patterns. Most of the crew find the machine hard to look at, but Tomoe perceives what appears to be a tunnel. In that moment, the crew all feel as if they’re pulled into a dive millions of times worse than any they’d ever experienced.
Tomoe finds herself in a small room (she’s well aware it’s not a real room, but her mind attempting to make sense of what she’s perceiving) with two doors and a small clock that looks like the machine. She finds herself inexorably pulled toward the far end of the room, so she approaches the door on the left and opens it.
In the blink of an eye, the crew finds themselves standing on a catwalk suspended in the center of an identical chamber from the one they left. The room is full of (very surprised) armed soldiers and a number of naval-grade cannons. The crew surrenders. All of their slates simultaneously re-sync their time and are roughly five minutes behind. Angelica recognizes the feel of the gravity and the air and informs the crew that they are on Jericho. Aiden caches an emergency message in case his phone ever establishes a connection to the net.
The crew is led through a massive set of metal doors and taken to a locker room, where they are stripped down to their skivvies and taken to a briefing room where they are left for nearly an hour.
Eventually, the door opens and admits Benny, who takes in the barely-clothed crew and sighs. He makes a crack about how they had discovered the “second biggest secret of the colonies,” but doesn’t elaborate. He orders up some coffee and attempts to figure out what to do with the crew. The following is revealed in the exchange:
- Benny is legitimately curious about how the crew got there. Benny guesses they found another ruin, either on Canto or Helena. The crew inadvertently tips him off that they found the device on Helena. The crew learns that until today, Jericho had only been aware of two, one on Jericho and one on Demeter.
- The two gates explain the uncanny ability of Jericho and Demeter to exchange goods past the WDF blockade, as well as the initial escape of the original Jericho colonists from the siege. Benny explains that several explorers died going through the gate until they figured out how to get back, and then they essentially dug their way to the surface of Jericho four hundred years back.
- Benny acknowledges that the crew is both “famous and useful” and not to mention “I kinda like you guys”. Their default position of killing or imprisoning anyone who finds out about the gate is in question.
- Benny doesn’t seem to know anything about exploding or hemorrhaging heads.
- When questioned about Anderson Exploration’s two scouts, the crew confirms Wei is dead. They note that Izzy Cordova was his partner and is unaccounted for. Benny says that no one has come through the Jericho or Demeter machines who wasn’t expected until the crew arrived.
- Benny describes how they have found a few relics of an ancient civilization and have kept it a closely-guarded secret, but not before the “myth” that became the Jericho Book of the Ancients got out.
- Benny inadvertently reveals to the crew that the Republic of Jericho doesn’t know how to operate the gates. They previously just thought it was a two way road. When Tomoe asks about the room of doors, he’s never heard anything of the sort. He even exclaims “not only do you murder titans of industry, but you can navigate alien gateways too? Who the fuck are you, lady?”
Roland asks Benny what the significance of Arnite is. At this point, the door opens and an older man in a fine suit enters. Angelica and those members of the crew politically savvy instantly recognize him as Prime Malachai Wheeler, the leader of the Republic of Jericho.
“Everything,” he says.
