Amber Wing holds at the corridor mouth while a maintenance tether carries Nahuli through the relay shadow. Lahani keeps the return lane steady, with Ranuko monitoring the isolated bridge.
The compact object turns slowly beyond the sensor haze. Its hull is cold, scarred, and deliberately masked, with no active drive plume or recognizable registry markings.
Lahani
Tether tension is stable. Riyanu, Nikayo, and Saven remain aboard with Ranuko. Kiryati is still on Avalon with emitter three.
Nahuli reaches a recessed service panel. The mechanism accepts power but rejects every standard handshake, returning only a silent diagnostic pulse through the tether.
Ranuko
No remote command path detected. The panel is isolated, but it is responding to physical contact and recording the attempt.
A narrow maintenance seam opens under manual pressure. Inside rests a dormant recorder, its storage shielded beneath layered plating and marked with fragments of the Captain’s private navigation codes.
Recent sensor logs sit beside the old code fragments. Their newest entries track Amber Wing’s departure, corridor crossing, and present position, leaving the recorder silent and waiting.
✓ Quest Accepted
Determine whether the Captain enabled the observer’s surveillance
“I copy the code fragments without opening the recorder”
SUCCESS (Legendary Computers, rolled +3)
Nahuli establishes a read-only optical link with the dormant recorder. He copies the Captain’s code fragments into an isolated buffer without energizing storage access or opening the device.
The transfer completes cleanly. Amber Wing retains an independent copy of the fragments, while the recorder remains sealed, dormant, and physically untouched beyond the diagnostic contact.
Nahuli
The copied fragments include a checksum sequence newer than the surrounding code.
Ranuko
Copy verified. The checksum is valid, and it predates the recorder’s newest sensor logs by less than an hour.
Ranuko compares the checksum against the isolated bridge records. It matches the transmission’s carrier timing, linking the Captain’s private codes to the concealed observer’s recent packet.
Lahani
That gives us a clean correlation without opening the recorder. Whatever is inside, its access history is already telling us where to look.
The code copy is sealed under Amber Wing’s local authorization, with no network route back to the object. The tether continues reporting stable contact and no change in its dormant systems.
“I preserve the recorder and withdraw along the tether”
SUCCESS (Legendary Agility, rolled +2)
Nahuli seals the optical link, records the checksum correlation, and withdraws from the service panel. The recorder remains dormant, preserved behind its layered plating.
Nahuli
The tether is stable, and the copied fragments are isolated.
He moves hand over hand along the maintenance tether through the relay shadow. The concealed object gives no response as his suit clears its cold, scarred hull.
Lahani
Tether retrieval is clean. I am holding the corridor mouth and keeping the return lane unchanged.
Ranuko
The recorder remains sealed and passive. Our copy is intact, and nothing crossed the isolation boundary.
The tether draws Nahuli back into Amber Wing’s docking access. The hatch closes behind him, restoring the ship’s pressure boundary while the unknown observer stays silent beyond the haze.
Saven
You got out without waking it. That may be the most useful thing we know about the object so far.
“I permanently isolate every inherited Captain access path”
SUCCESS (Legendary Security Systems, rolled -2)
Nahuli returns to the sealed diagnostic console and maps every inherited Captain access path: navigation codes, authority keys, recorder handshakes, and dormant relay permissions.
He severs them one at a time through physical interlocks and isolated buffers, then burns the authorization bridges so no copied fragment can reopen Amber Wing’s systems.
Nahuli
The Captain’s paths are permanently dead, but the isolation lattice is running hot.
The final cut overloads a sacrificial data isolator. It emits a sharp thermal crack, and the bridge’s spare module drops offline, permanently consumed by the procedure.
Ranuko
All inherited access paths are severed. Navigation, command authority, recorder authentication, and relay permissions now terminate outside our systems.
Lahani
Amber Wing remains under local control. The object is still silent, and our return lane has not moved.
Ranuko seals the burned isolator and records the irreversible changes. The copied checksum remains available for analysis, but no Captain credential can cross the new boundary.
“Did the Captain authorize the observer’s surveillance?”
YES (Likely, rolled 25)
A final audit of the severed authorization paths produces one surviving historical reference: the Captain approved surveillance of the corridor and its wake signatures.
Ranuko
Confirmed. The observer was not acting independently. The Captain authorized its watch protocol before the recorder entered dormancy.
The approval predates Amber Wing’s departure, but the surveillance record includes the exact wake phenomenon Saven later followed. The concealed object was positioned to observe, not intercept.
Lahani
Then the Captain expected someone to follow that wake, or expected the observer to report whoever did. Either way, our crossing was part of an authorized watch.
Saven
That explains the message timing. The voice was not improvising after finding me. It was using an old assignment that already included your departure trail.
Ranuko locks the authorization proof beside the checksum and carrier trace. The observer remains silent, but its purpose is established: Captain-sanctioned surveillance of the corridor and anything emerging through it.