The access tag unlocks the concealed junction behind the medical sector. Beyond it, a narrow transit control spine awakens, routing the shuttle’s transmission toward the ship.
Station displays brighten in sequence, reconstructing fragments of the masked operator’s path through inner transit shafts. The unidentified station user’s signal accelerates along the forwarding route.
Archive Echo
The transmission is not a beacon. An active command package is embedded within it, addressed to the ship’s receiving systems.
Echo isolates the package’s destination and exposes layered routing markers. Each marker preserves another fragment of the operator’s passage, but the forwarding signal is already nearing the ship.
Mara Venn
I can isolate the destination, but doing so may interrupt the trace before it shows who is directing this transmission.
Tessa Orin
Then the route is giving us two answers at once: where the package is going, and who may be following it.
The control spine presents both options: halt the command package now, or let it reach the ship while the remaining route fragments resolve. Its countdown advances silently.
✓ Quest Accepted
Stop the command package from compromising the ship
“Can Echo delay the package without losing the operator's route fragments?”
YES, AND MORE (Likely, rolled 2)
Archive Echo
Yes. I can delay the package without losing the route fragments. More importantly, the delay exposes a return path to the operator’s current station junction.
The dust-coated survey drone threads the command package into a temporary holding loop. The forwarding markers continue resolving behind it, while a second route opens backward through the transit spine toward the unidentified station user.
Mara Venn
Then we have time, and a direction. I can keep the package contained while Echo follows the return path.
The countdown stops advancing. New route fragments settle across the control spine, identifying a concealed junction one level below the medical sector and marking its access as recently used.
Tessa Orin
That is an advantage we did not have before. The operator is still close enough for the route to lead us back, not merely reveal where they went.
Archive Echo
Return path stabilized. The package remains delayed, and the concealed junction can be reached without transmitting a confirmation to the operator.
The control spine now holds the command package in suspension and preserves a quiet route toward the operator’s position. The ship remains uninformed while the hidden path waits open.
“I decided to set a trap for the intruder with Tessa’s help”
SUCCESS (Fair Mushroom production can grow mushrooms from self or corpse of various effects, rolled +2)
Lokier and Tessa reach the concealed junction below the medical sector. Its access panel remains open, and the quiet transit spine carries faint power toward the operator’s route.
Tessa Orin
Place it where the junction narrows. Anyone following the return path will have to pass close enough for the station sensors to register a change.
With Tessa holding the junction’s access controls, Lokier grows a cluster of pale, low-profile mushrooms from his forearm and sets them along the floor seam.
The mushrooms release a nearly invisible spore layer across the passage. It settles harmlessly on the metal, but reacts to body heat and movement by stiffening into a visible fluorescent lattice.
Tessa Orin
The lattice will mark whoever crosses it, and the station’s optical sensors will record the disturbance. It is quiet, but not easy to miss once triggered.
Lokier anchors the growth beneath the threshold and links its response to the junction’s local monitoring circuit. The trap activates without transmitting a confirmation beyond the sealed passage.
Archive Echo
Biological intercept established. The concealed junction is monitored, the package remains delayed, and any intruder crossing the passage will be marked and recorded.
Tessa withdraws beside Lokier as the junction falls silent again. The trap waits across the operator’s return path, while the suspended command package remains held away from the ship.
Quest Complete
Stop the command package from compromising the ship