The escape craft locks against the orbital platform with a heavy magnetic thud. Kaelo steps out first, the override pad secured in both hands, while Anna and Winona follow Max into the restricted archive accessway. Rent is absent, left behind at the launch infrastructure on Necropolis.
A sealed archive entrance rises from the platform’s inner hull, its security bands shifting from red to amber as Kaelo presents the pad. Anna watches the access lattice while Winona scans the excavation references.
Kaelo
The override codes are here, Max. I am presenting them exactly as agreed, but this archive decides what we are allowed to see.
Kaelo slots the pad into the entrance console. Max’s cybernetic interface detects the transmitted research data immediately, matching its encryption to a quarantined archive tied to the Necropolis excavation site.
Anna
That quarantine seal predates the evacuation. If the archive preserved the original excavation logs, it may explain why the Dirge awakened.
Winona
Or it contains technology the corporations never knew survived. Either way, we need the full record before the platform purges it.
The archive opens a narrow decryption window. No alarms sound and no attack interrupts the investigation, but a countdown appears above the sealed interface as fragments of alien telemetry begin to resolve.
✓ Quest Accepted
Determine what caused the Dirge awakening
✓ Quest Accepted
Identify who is accountable for the Dirge awakening
“I start decrypting the archive's original excavation logs.”
SUCCESS (Legendary Cybernetics, rolled +2)
Max connects his cybernetic interface to the archive lattice and begins decrypting the original excavation logs. Alien telemetry unfolds in precise layers across his augmented vision.
His systems isolate the quarantine seal, reconstruct damaged timestamps, and cross-reference the recovered files with the excavation data already secured from Necropolis.
Max
The quarantine was applied after the first awakening event, not before it.
Anna
You found the chronology. The Dirge were not awakened by the evacuation failure. Someone opened their cryogenic chambers during the excavation.
The archive resolves into a complete record: corporate teams breached a buried Dirge vault, extracted its control technology, and concealed the resulting casualties from the federation.
Winona
That is impossible. The excavation reports said the vault was inert. They erased the entire first-contact sequence.
Kaelo
The logs are authenticated, and the archive has finished decrypting. Whatever happened below Necropolis, the corporations knew the Dirge would wake.
Quest Complete
Determine what caused the Dirge awakening
Quest Complete
Identify who is accountable for the Dirge awakening