Introduction
Aaaaaaand just like that, they ended faster-than-light travel for three quarters of the population of The Reach. And they call me an agent of chaos.
-The Memoirs of “Gentleman” Jack Cartwright
13 August - 25 September, WY603 – Jericho, Solace
The morning after the briefing with Benny, a Master Chief Forbes shows up at the airlock. Forbes will be supervising the refit. Curiously, he requests permission of Calliope to come aboard. The crew his reminded that AGIs are legal citizens in the Republic. He asks Calliope to run a diagnostic she’d never run before, explaining that they’d discovered that AI neural networks adapt to their “bodies”, and they need to be cautious about major refits to avoid a sort of rejection.
As they’re shuttling the ship over to the yard, they see a fleet led by a massive ship forming up to depart. Forbes identifies the ship as the Republic Battleship Golden Path, which, incidentally, houses Calliope’s “little sister” Melpomene.
Several days into the refit, the crew receives a notification that Prime Wheeler wishes to meet with them. They assemble in the secure conference center at the Naval base where they’re met by Wheeler. They have a brief conversation about why the crew set loose the alien machine, and they explain the n-dimensional creatures, and their desire to put an end to the Council’s war of aggression.
Wheeler reveals some intel from Whistler:
- They’ve attempted to get the gate to Demeter to work, but have not been successful
- Stephano Wren, the Council Seat for the Miners, has been arrested for treason on evidence of collusion with Jericho
- The whole Whistler system is under martial law
- Widespread chaos about what is obviously evidence of alien technology
- No word yet on what Admiral Rourke on the Damocles intends to do with the 1st and 4th fleets
- Jericho has sent agents to get Julian and Tomoe to Demeter - but they couldn’t find Harvey
Turning to Solace, Wheeler informs them that they know very little. There’s undoubtedly a BioGen facility on the planet, but beyond that the defenses are uncertain. He informs them there are four total artifacts, codenamed Golf, Juliet, Quebec, and November. The first two are large, the size of small vehicles, the last two are small and could be carried by a person.
The crew agrees to hand Cordova over to Jericho, in addition to sharing Aiden’s research. They also negotiate for more modern small arms for the crew and their marines.
The refit completes on August 28th and the crew departs for Solace. On the final jump into Solace, Dirk foregoes the medication in case he’s needed to help bypass the shield around the system. During the dive, he looks to galactic “east”, coreward. In the the next coreward spiral arm he senses a massive civilization, spanning thousands of stars, all using tech that dives substantially deeper than that of the Reach. Cordova obviously meant they need to be warned about the creatures from the depths.
Legitimate Salvage arrives in Solace on September 25th. Orbiting Solace they find a small station that is the source of the gravitic shield around the system, a Piranha-class system patrol class, and WDF Dauntless.
Dauntless hails the ship, and Komiko Halsey appears on the screen.
“What the fuck are you guys doing here?”
