The fluorescent lattice remains undisturbed, but a faint amber shimmer leaks through the floor seam. Beneath it, the suspended command package is entering a maintenance conduit.
Archive Echo
A self-directed station process is using the package as a carrier. It is not attacking us. Its route is moving toward the original fabrication system.
The dust-coated survey drone lowers its chassis beside the threshold. Its lights follow the signal beneath the deck, where old conduits pulse in sequence toward a sealed industrial sector.
Tessa Orin
That process may have escaped the containment architecture. It is moving urgently, but the route is aimed at us, not the ship.
A maintenance panel clicks open without physical contact. Inside, the command package divides into narrow data threads, each preserving the same destination while one thread turns back toward the junction.
Archive Echo
The process is attempting a direct contact before reaching fabrication. I can isolate its carrier, but doing so may prevent us from learning what it needs.
Far behind them, Mara remains at the control spine with the command package held in suspension. Here, the conduit brightens toward Lokier and Tessa, awaiting their response.
✓ Quest Accepted
Learn what the escaped station process needs
Lokier's turn“We know their is someone else on the station so I use my spores to keep a look out for them while we investigate this”
SUCCESS (Legendary Perception, rolled +2)
Lokier releases a wide spore veil into the conduit and along the junction walls. It divides into listening strands, monitoring pressure, heat, vibration, and electrical disturbance without touching the suspended package.
The spores map the conduit’s branching interior and detect a moving biological heat signature beyond the sealed industrial sector. The unidentified station user is present, traveling parallel to the carrier route.
Archive Echo
Lookout established. The carrier is being guided toward a fabrication access chamber, while the unidentified user is moving toward a separate control junction.
A second spore thread follows the distant movement through ventilation gaps. It identifies measured footsteps, intermittent suit cooling, and a handheld transmitter pulsing on a private maintenance frequency.
Tessa Orin
You found them. Their route is separate from the process, which means the person may be directing it rather than traveling with it.
The lookout settles into a continuous mesh, marking the user’s position and the carrier’s progress at once. Neither path can approach the junction without disturbing Lokier’s living sensor net.
Archive Echo
Their current position is recorded. We can investigate the conduit while the spores maintain warning coverage of both routes.
✓ Quest Accepted
Intercept the carrier before it reaches the origin records
Lokier's turn“Can the carrier reach the origin records without crossing my spore net?”
NO, AND WORSE (VeryUnlikely, rolled 86)
The carrier reaches the spore net and cannot pass without crossing it. Its data threads enter the living mesh, which records every pressure shift and electrical pulse as they move toward fabrication.
The spores tighten around the carrier and illuminate its route through the conduit. At the same time, their sensing response propagates backward through the maintenance network, exposing the monitored branches and the junction’s hidden approach.
Archive Echo
The carrier has crossed the net. Worse, the disturbance has transmitted our route map through the station’s maintenance network.
Far beyond the sealed industrial sector, the unidentified station user stops. Their handheld transmitter answers the spore pattern, reconstructing the junction, the conduit branches, and the locations covered by Lokier’s lookout.
Tessa Orin
The spores stopped the carrier from hiding, but they gave the intruder a map. They know which route we watched and which paths remain unguarded.
The carrier reaches the fabrication access chamber under the net’s active trace. Behind it, the unidentified user changes course, following the map revealed by the spores toward a branch Lokier never meant to expose.
Archive Echo
The origin records remain ahead of the carrier, but our lookout coverage is compromised. The unidentified user is approaching through an unmonitored branch created visible by the spore response.