Secrets of the Ancients - The Dark Gate, Part 2

 The Crew battles an old acquaintance and travels to the planet Zoe in search of Seven’s archive.

This chapter is based on Kay’s and Carl’s notes from our November 12, 2023 session. Since we are scattered around the country, we use Discord for voice communications and the Roll20 online virtual tabletop to connect with each other.

Continued from: The Dark Gate, Part 1

Location: On the planet Daeksuzaethukue in the Uthe Subsector, Vargr Extents
Date: 067-1111

We were in the throne room of Aethgors, a Vargr warlord, talking with him about why the Church of the Chosen Ones were searching for us.

The priests of the Church had asked the Council of Captains to look for us, and Aethgors wanted to know why, before he would turn us over to them.

We told him, we don’t know, but what we DO know is that there was an Ancient War that started 200,000 years ago; two Ancients were still fighting it until very recently, (like yesterday), one of them won, but it’s the one who wants to see our galaxy burn. We have a chance to stop him, but we need to find a specific planet, and we give him the specs. We gave Aethgors a summary of our last few months, and he had a scanner that verified that we were telling the truth, not just telling a wild story. He grasped the importance of our mission immediately.

He used his database and it spat out a name, “Zoe;” Aethgors pronounces it “Zouri.” The world is four parsecs from Daeksuzaethukue. It is a non-aligned world, outside 40th Squadron territory. He brought up a map on his holographic display.  It is two jumps away for a jump-2 ship like the Far Hunter.

We figured out that the Church of the Chosen Ones is under Seven's influence/control.

Kipenzi asked him if he has a 4-jump ship we can borrow, getting there faster is a plus. He checked and there is: an 800-ton corvette with a crew to operate it, and 12 marines as a backup.  Saving the galaxy would be the payoff, but maybe getting access to some Ancient Tech to boot would be the gravy.

His 4-jump ship was one of the ships that escorted us here. We had already met the captain, Rrurrkho. We’ll be the mission specialists; she’ll get us there. We loaded the Far Hunter’s air/raft and the star trigger into the cargo bay.

Aethgors told us about Zoe. Few Vargr live there; the 40th Squadron doesn’t go there, but Church ships are seen coming back from the system; he didn’t know why.

As we were getting the last agreements from Aethgors, we could hear some commotion out in the hallway.

Suddenly we heard a sound from outside the door, chanting/howling, and 8 Vargr come into the hall, Vargr priests wearing voluminous white robes, some with ceremonial wings.

Their leader stepped forward and said, “Lord-Captain Aethgors, the Ancients will bless you for your aid in this matter. Strangers, your arrival has been foreseen by our seers and it is foretold that you will be the ones who guide the Vargr people towards apotheosis. Please, accompany me to the Temple of the Chosen Ones, where all secrets will be revealed.”

From our time in the past, we could recognize one of the priests in the second row. A Vargr named Nvor, who we encountered in the war against the Dyabyuse (machine race that invaded the Droyne Empire). Nvor was with one of the Sons that came to rescue the uplifted human colony on Cordillon. He came in with the rescue fleet, working with One-Seven-Four. He must be over 300,000 years old now.

Fig’s reaction to the invitation was, “Absolutely not;” and then Nvor pulled out a weapon and pointed it at Aethgors... game on.

Arisa reacted first, hitting Nvor with her disintegrator gauntlet. He was also wearing a shimmersuit, but not for long after getting hit. The gauntlet stripped him of everything he was wearing but his fur, which was singed. His weapons, shimmersuit, and clothing were gone and he was temporarily incapacitated. Fig shot his gauntlet at a priest in the first row and disintegrated him. Sam ducked behind the table and waited.

Kipenzi moved out of the way of the guards’ likely weapons’ path and yelled to Nvor, “Nvor, you saved us on Cordillon, from the mechanized race, the Dyabyuse, when you were working for One-Seven-Four, please can we talk?” Apparently not.

The situation devolved quickly.

Nvor got to his feet and ran for the door. Arisa and Fig fired at him but missed. The other priests did not fare so well.

Medicus fired, but hit the ceiling above Kipenzi’s head.

Aethgors yelled, “Guards, attack!” pulled out his gauss rifle, and shot at the priest that Medicus was aiming at, hitting him. He was wearing a concealed vacc suit for armor, but was knocked over by the impact.

Leon moved forward and punched a priest with the gauntlet at full strength, he vanished in a flash of light, and Nvor got hit with energy spillover. Two of the priests were dead and disintegrated.

One of the priests pulled a gauss rifle, aimed at Kipenzi and hit, but her shimmersuit took the brunt of it. Another pointed a laser pistol at Kipenzi but missed. One priest shot Leon with a gauss rifle, but again the shimmersuit reduced what would have been a fatal blow to a large bruise. The last priest shot at Fig and missed.

The guards charged forward; the first guard shot at Nvor, but missed. The second guard shot at the priest next to Leon, and injured him through his armor.
Nvor struggled to his feet, ran to the door, and yelled, “Cover my retreat!”

Aethgors had locked the door remotely from his console. Even with the disintegrators dialed down, Nvor was killed as he tried to flee.  Back to the cloning vats for him.

The battle was over after about 20 seconds, most of it total chaos.  One of Aethgors’ guards shot Leon in the back while aiming at one of the priests. One he realized what he had done, he said “Sorry!”
The battle over, Kipenzi and Leon’s injuries were tended to by Medicus.

Aethgors went on comm, “Round up all the priests, I’m going to talk to them.”

The door was unlocked and there were 20 guards on the other side.

Two of the priests that died had arrived with Nvor, and none of the others knew them. No one on the planet knew much of why the church wanted us.

They knew Nvor to be a higher up in the church, a troubleshooter, but had no knowledge of his mission.
Nvor had the credentials and put it into motion. Nvor never said anything more than, “Find them”.

“We were Chosen Ones. Aethgors will hear from the Church about this!” they said.  Aethgors thinks it’s a power struggle. We explained it’s something completely different.

Medicus scanned Nvor and detected a 'thing' much like what was in the brain of Uncle Vlen.  A recorder of some sort, we now know. If we could have recovered it, we could learn a lot, but we don’t have the means to do so. Medicus put his disintegrator to the body's head and fired off. No restore of this one...Bahahaha.

Aethgors, who was not pleased that we brought in weapons, re: our gauntlets said, “You told me they were jewelry.”

Fig, “Dude, this weapon is a gem.”

Aethgors: “Well, I guess I can trust you. We’ll call it even if one of my techs can scan it for our sensors.”

Arisa wanted that info, too. Arisa wanted to send mail back to the Empire with a progress report to the Scout Service.

We calmly finished our meal, and discussed our upcoming trip to Zoe.

Later we moved the air/raft and star trigger to the corvette.

068-1111  0105
WE JUMP... it’s weird to be passengers...  Zoe here we come. 

075-1111  0815
Morning arrival in Zoe.

Three moons, planet is highly populated by sea slugs (Rynkatropa) in the millions, and some Vargr in the thousands. The starport, listed as E-Class, is VERY basic, just a landing pad.

Zoe’s population is several thousand Vargr and several million Rynkatropa. Vargr factories were located along the shore and produced low tech products; sweat shops using sea slug slave labor. The Largest settlement of natives is at the port, 12 guards with rocket launchers guard the starport.

1100
In orbit. The ship refueled first, using the ocean water, while we searched for the Ancient underground installation using sensors. The ship takes 328 tons of fuel, and processes 83 tons per day; it’ll take three days to refine it.

We scanned, and scanned, and scanned.  Gotta hope that the “deep beneath the crust” installation would be detectable.  The G-band scanner was also used liberally... no reason to have a tool and leave it in the box.

One of the sensor crew was absolutely sure that, IF the site is here, it is NOT detectable by sensors from orbit. 

Kipenzi whooped and celebrated a find, but then realized the G-bander was only detecting the Star Trigger. There was too much rock, or it was shielded, or some such.

During the three days scanning, Fig realized that there was a second personality living in his head that is the source of his dreams. The second personality told him, “Use the star trigger to scan for the power plant, it can pick up solar activity at very fine levels, it will pick up a fusion power plant.”

Fig explained the second personality to us, Kipenzi asked him if he knows who it is.

“Yaskoydray”, he said.

Using the Star Trigger, we found a strong power source 15 km under the surface of the ocean.

We wondered if the sea slugs would know anything about it, and we would have to talk to them to ask.  Time for a landing. Slugs are being used as slave labor, which will complicate things.

The starport was as miserable as we thought it would be. E- category. Smelt like dog.

The local commandant met us, wondering what was going on. Zoe was not in 40th territory. The captain said we were here for a scientific mission and hoped to get some information. We met Songak, local commandant, and spoke with him.

Fig said the magic words, “Cash infusion?”

Songak replied with a toothy grin, “OK.”

Do the sea slugs know anything about the undersea cavern? Arisa transferred him CR1000 and we got a tour of the local factory and were able to talk to the slugs. They have Gvegh language translators that let them talk, but our own could bypass the local Vargr from hearing what we were saying.

Songak looked amazed at our translators and asked, “Is that Imperial stuff?”

Kipenzi replied, “It is now.”

The local Vargr think the Rynkatropa are just intelligent animals, but with our translators we discovered they have a rich oral tradition and culture.

They have stories of a Dark Gate on the sea floor. The ones we spoke with gave us the same approximate location that we found with the Star Trigger.

The location is near the equator; they’ve seen ships going down from the sky every couple of months. This had been happening for a long time, as long as they’ve known.

None of them goes near there. They tell us only animals and monsters go down there.

“Monsters?” Medicus asked.

We thought that maybe we could talk to some non-slave slugs and learn when the last visit was.
The installation is 15 km under the surface of the ocean; if we use our shimmersuits, it’ll take 2 hrs to drop that distance. Our suits only have 8 hours of oxygen before they need to regenerate.

Fig was getting the feeling that he needed to do some work on the Star Trigger before going down, but we would have to go down to deal with things. Blowing up the star would only hit the surface and leave the family archive intact.

Yaskoydray stepped forward and took over Fig and introduced himself.  He spoke about what to do. Go down to the installation, fix the archive so it will NOT upload the personality, and then blow up the whole thing by using the star trigger to detonate the power plant.

He needs all of us to get through Seven’s area. Fig re-asserted himself, “We need breakfast first.”
Perhaps some analog of the space suit maneuvering units could work underwater...

Yes, the ship does have something that should be suitable. We get our Grav Belts and check the seals.
If the ship went down as far as it could safely go and we went out there, it would cut off a little bit of time.

The Plan: We can take the ship down, land in the ocean, go to the ship’s limit of one km depth and then sink with grav belts. We have meson communications in our suits; we need lights; we can’t talk to the ship in orbit. The star trigger can pinpoint a small star power plant.

078-1111  0900
After breakfast, Yaskoydray programmed the star trigger to activate when we come back up or on a timer of about 24 hours.

Medicus asked for compressed canisters to inflate bags for hauling up items or ourselves if something goes wrong with our grav belts. Everyone agreed that it was a great idea.

1100
We were as deep as the ship could get (about 1 km), and out the airlock we went. It was a “Leap of faith”.

Radar on the ship located a hole with a half-km diameter and a cylindrical shaft going down. From there, the shaft went about 15 km straight down. The shaft was metal with barnacles and mud on it, and large enough to admit a capital ship.

To avoid detection, we turned off our lights and comm.

On the way down we could see bioluminescent cubes and sea slugs. We were alone with our thoughts as we sank.

A couple of hours later we were down. A hole about half a kilometer in diameter was only about 2 Km below the surface, so we knew we were on the right track.  

The shimmersuits creaked...  Argh, that was NOT a design plus.

Eventually we could see lights flashing below.

We passed through a shimmering shield and suddenly our gravity inverted – we were upside down with the core of the planet over our heads.

Around us was a huge hangar, much like any other hangar. Two 200-ton Vargr courier vessels were there with Church of the Chosen markings on them, and an iris valve on the ceiling that would allow coming and going for a ship the size of a battleship.

A teleport panel about 3-4 meters across and a train station also offered us options for travel around. At first the station seemed inert, but then a few minutes after we arrived, the walls began to gently glow and a train arrived, landing at the platform.

We checked our instruments and the air was breathable. We opened our helmets and let the suits recharge at least a little bit.

Kipenzi finally remembered that the time deadline for the collapse of the pocket universe was 080-1111, two days from NOW.




Continued in Secrets of the Ancients - Conclusion