The surface of the Slumbering Empyrean was crowded with the high-activity coordination of Delta Site’s primary hangar. Nchọ stood upright, their HUD blooming with a waterfall of local-net handshakes and diagnostic requests that felt crowded after the quiet of the crash site.
Obi-me was hung from the hardpoints, a mangled silhouette of titanium and ceramic suspended like a carcass in a butcher’s shop. A swarm of repair drones clung to its chassis, their maneuvering thrusters puffing pale vapor as they worked with fast, clinical precision. Nchọ watched the diagnostic feed of the titan’s somatic bus; Obi-me’s frame was making continual, tickled motor responses, but they were blocked and numbed by safety lockouts so that the enormeus limbs didn’t crush the drones or the engineers working inches from the joints.
The moment the SAR medic’s final diagnostic ping cleared Nchọ’s somatic bus, they quickly disengaged their own safety lockouts, disconnected from the repair bay’s cooling tendrils, and moved toward the titan. The clatter of the hangar—the heavy thundercrack of the site’s power regulators, the distant, bone-deep grind of Team Khepri’s drills chewing into the composite rim—traveled through Nchọ’s frame with a physical clarity. After the crushing, staticky silence of the debris field, the noise felt almost aggressive, a violent demand to return to the present.
”i’m here, Big guy. let’s get you back in one piece, we got shit to do.”Nchọ reached out, caressing the sapphire-glass of Obi-me’s lower optics. Their hand brushed the warm metal of the cheek plating; beneath it, the core’s rhythm was steady again, a familiar, deep, thrumming pulse. Nchọ picked up an impact wrench and started removing what remained of a mangled leg casing. Nearby, an automated arm was lowering a fresh ceramic plate onto Obi-me’s shoulder. The panels were a dense composite; whipple shielding for kinetic survival, and the ceramic itself acting as a massive resistor designed to catch the excitation flux and bleed it away as heat.
Obi-me’s optics shutters clicked in a fast, focal greeting. > ❤️🩹
The briefing was a high-bandwidth tactical scramble. Nchọ stood leaning against a heavy tool-rack, feeling the vibration of the site’s power distribution through their chassis as they watched the leads gathered around a central table. A shared visualization was pushed to every HUD in the room, highlighting the nightmare unfolding above and below.
Baku’s lead took the vacant speaking role on the shared feed. “The Slumbering Empyrean isn’t just targeting Nysa’s Wake; it’s microwaving it. Primion flux densities are climbing at an exponential rate, a microcosm of the broader mission. We’re having trouble reading such a powerful excitation, but the beam is strong enough to pass through the primary hull shielding like it isn’t there.”
Engineering’s report followed with a heavy, numerical finality. “We tried remotely piloting Nysa’s Wake to a new orbit. No dice; the beam follows it with laser precision, and is actually leading our mothership’s movements slightly - it knows where we’re going before the thrusters even fire. We have about 73 days until the ship’s radiators saturate entirely, but the heat buildup in the neural lattices is expected to hit lethal thresholds for the AI crew by the 16th day. We can’t rebuild everyone from backups; we don’t have nearly the neurocrystalline stock to spare, and the backups are unlikely to survive much longer anyway.”
Talus’s lead highlighted the chasm walls, hundreds of openings radiating outward from the abyss. “You’ve all been reading the reports. We’ve lost drones to localized anomalies within the first three kilometers, but those are just the predictable hazards. More recently, we’ve encountered topographical recursion where the tunnel geometry repeats with enough fidelity to break most pathfinding heuristics. Expect the map to lie to you as often as it helps. I wish I had more details for you, but we’ve barely had days to start mapping the place.”
A chorus of experts began chiming in over the local net, a rapid-fire sequence of warnings.
”Watch your anchor piles in the transit zones; the strata there is less like rock and more of a crystalline structure, with simple cleavage planes. It’ll shatter if you over-torque." "I detect several specific gravitational anomalies besides the event horizon at the bottom of the abyss, mes amis. Make sure you are keeping an eye out for unusual IMU readings; they will be your first indication of danger." "Magnetic flux in the third quadrant is spiking. If you’re running heavy induction, watch for eddy current heating in your joints. If you cross the field lines too fast, your actuators will start to bake from the inside out.”The SAR Lead waited for the chatter to settle, then broadcast a high-priority packet burst that silenced the room. “This is not an ideal situation. Without the Antikythera’s usual guidance, I know we’re all feeling a little off-kilter. We’re expecting casualties, but there’s five expedition teams and one SAR team, so we really need you to exercise caution. Still, we go fast, or we don’t come back at all. Get in there.”
The mobilization was a physical shift in the site’s noise, a transition from the static of the briefing to the purposeful grind of departure. Amur Team joined Nchọ and the newly-patched Obi-me at their gear-lock, the shared trauma of the crash hanging between them in the way every limb tightened and every radio-check came back a moment too quickly. Nchọ moved between the team members, their focus narrowed to the ritual of the logistics check - handing over fresh sets of reflector-pylons, itemizing toolkits, and double-checking that everyone’s parrots relays were synced up.
”Nchọ, glad to see you’re not in pieces. Obi looks… shiny." "it’s a quick heal, we’re lucky to have gotten the specific attention of the whole engineering wing, what with the circumstances." "Mm. We’ll unpack the trauma report once Nysa’s Wake isn’t melting.”Obi-me settled into the cradle of an exploration shuttle, the dull orange glow of blackbody radiation spilling from the throats of its fresh drive cones as they pre-heated. It highlighted enormous spare limbs, folded and magnetized into the shuttle’s cargo bay, on Nchọ’s HUD, before likewise confirming the emergency kits of the other team members.
> DRIVE INTEGRITY: STABLE > VECTOR: AMUR-01 > 🏮 The lantern glyph hung in Nchọ’s vision, a shorthand for ‘the path is lit’.
The vectors were plotted. On Nchọ’s HUD, five lines stretched out from the lip of the abyss. The hangar’s deck shivered as five sets of thrusters kicked in sequences. Vehicles roared in the vacuum, throwing long shadows across the abyss as they launched. Sarus and Amur punched out in shuttles, their silhouettes quickly shrinking against the opaque depths.
Others, like Kūaka and Bennu, moved on foot. Their frames were augmented by heavy expedition gear, banking on the freedom of movement over the shielding of a hull. They used thruster-assisted bounds to clear the rim, their trajectories carrying them down toward the dark, circular openings in the side-walls of the Slumbering Empyrean. One by one, the lights of the expedition vanished into the architecture, leaving Delta Site behind in its perpetual, indifferent day.