A seam opens beneath the auxiliary terminal. Small maintenance drones slide out in a tight cluster, their housings stamped with the authority’s sterilization code and pale inspection lights.
They do not fire or approach Lokier. Instead, the drones seal the alcove vents one by one, then extend hair-thin sensor filaments across the floor and into the conduit gaps.
The terminal’s display floods red. A quarantine warning identifies the navigation relay’s classification: Lokier’s dispersed spores are an uncontrolled biological contaminant.
Mara Venn
They have detected you. The sterilization authority is using the relay to build a containment profile.
Mara stays beside the terminal, one hand hovering over its controls without touching them. The drones continue their methodical work, narrowing the air passages and mapping every filament.
Mara Venn
I can interrupt the diagnostic link, but that may mark this alcove as compromised. We need to know what the relay has already transmitted.
Beyond the sealed vents, the maintenance shaft falls silent. The drones’ sensors turn toward Lokier’s spore network, waiting for movement while the terminal counts down to automated quarantine.
Mara remains with Lokier in the equipment alcove. No one else has entered the command spine, and the ship offers no sign that the authority’s recovery team has arrived yet.
✓ Quest Accepted
Determine what the navigation relay has already transmitted
✓ Quest Accepted
Understand what happened aboard the Asterion-6
“I look at the little robots and ask if she could access them like she does the doors”
FAILURE (Mediocre Diplomacy, rolled -2)
Lokier
Could you access them the way you accessed the doors?
Mara studies the small robots, then brings the personnel tag near the terminal. The drones pivot their inspection lights toward it, filaments tightening across the floor.
Mara Venn
I can try, but the doors accepted an old ship credential. These are already under an active sterilization authority protocol.
Mara routes the tag through the terminal and reaches for the drone interface. Red symbols multiply across the display before access can establish.
Mara Venn
No. They reject the ship system and classify my connection as unauthorized. I cannot take control of them through this terminal.
The failed handshake changes the drones' behavior. They retract their filaments from the conduits and form a sealed sensor ring around the terminal, cutting off its external diagnostic link.
Mara Venn
The relay is no longer transmitting through this console. We have lost the direct interface, but the drones are still observing us.
“I look at the little robots and ask if she could access them like she does the doors”
FAILURE (Mediocre Diplomacy, rolled -3)
The sensor ring tightens around the terminal. Its four drones project overlapping red grids, isolating the personnel tag and severing every route from the console to the navigation relay.
Mara Venn
They will not accept borrowed authority. The failed connection has made this terminal a quarantine boundary, not a control point.
A thin tone rises from the ring. The drones record the tag, Mara's interface attempt, and the spores threaded through the conduit gaps, then compress the data into a sealed transmission packet.
Mara Venn
I can still read local status, but I cannot command them or reopen the diagnostic link. Touching that interface again would only confirm their containment profile.
Mara withdraws her hand and switches the terminal to passive display. The red warning remains, while the drones hold position and watch the spore filaments without advancing.
Mara Venn
We need another way to observe the relay. The console is no longer useful for access, but the drones have exposed exactly where the authority is listening.
The sensor grids reveal a narrow gap beneath the terminal housing, separate from the sealed interface. It leads toward the maintenance shaft, beyond the drones' ring.
“I look at the little robots and ask if she could access them like she does the doors”
FAILURE (Mediocre Diplomacy, rolled -1)
Lokier
Could you access them the way you accessed the doors?
Mara brings the personnel tag close to the sensor ring. The four drones pivot together, red grids tightening until the tag, terminal, and her hand are isolated beneath a warning lattice.
Mara Venn
I can try, but they are not listening to the ship. They are listening to the authority protocol.
Mara routes the old credential through the passive display. The drones accept the tag's image, then reject its authority and clamp their ring around the terminal's interface.
Mara Venn
No access. They have sealed this console as evidence, so trying again would only give them a cleaner profile of us.
The failed handshake exposes a narrow optical bus beneath the terminal housing. It runs toward the maintenance shaft, outside the ring, carrying raw relay light without accepting commands.
Mara Venn
But that line is still open. We cannot control the drones through it, yet your spores may be able to observe the relay without touching their quarantine boundary.
“I look at the little robots and ask if she could access them like she does the doors”
SUCCESS (Mediocre Diplomacy, rolled +2)
Lokier
Could you access them the way you accessed the doors?
Mara studies Lokier for a long second, then accepts the question as permission to risk her standing. She places the personnel tag against the optical bus.
Mara Venn
Yes. Not as their commander, but as a recognized quarantine liaison. They will let me issue a limited inspection handshake.
She enters a compact authorization sequence. The drones uncurl one filament, accept her credential, and expose their sensor telemetry through the optical bus without surrendering control.
Mara Venn
There. I can read their profiles, their transmission queue, and the relay path. But the authority now records me as responsible for this contact.
The red grids shift from a sealed ring into a measured scan. Through the bus, Mara reveals the drones' compressed packet and the navigation relay's listening channel.
Mara Venn
You wanted an answer, and I gave them a reason to watch me. We have access now, but I may owe the authority an explanation.
“I look over what I can find trying to see if the authority knows any more than us about what happened here”
SUCCESS (Good Reasoning, rolled +0)
Lokier threads his attention through the optical bus, comparing the drones’ quarantine profiles with the relay’s transmission queue. Mara keeps the liaison channel open while red telemetry scrolls across the terminal.
Lokier
The authority received the containment alert, but not the complete incident record.
The packet contains impact data, failed containment timestamps, and a priority order to sterilize the fabrication bay. It also preserves a fragment from before the crash: an unauthorized command opened the bay and sealed the command spine.
Mara Venn
They know the breach was deliberate or at least authorized by someone with internal access. They do not know who issued the command, and they have no surviving identity attached to it.
Further telemetry shows the authority has only reconstructed the same partial timeline available aboard Asterion-6. Their analysts flagged L-09 as an active laboratory organism, but the packet contains no creation record or confirmed survivor account.
Mara Venn
The authority has less than we feared in one respect. They have classified you, but they have not identified what you are or why you were made.
The inspection costs several minutes of open telemetry. During that time, the relay compresses older logs into a restricted archive, leaving the command author and the final crash sequence unresolved.
Quest Complete
Determine what the navigation relay has already transmitted
Attribute Upgrade: Reasoning Good→Great