[h1]New Auslassia[/h1] [h2]Central Auslassia[/h2] The computer screen flickered as the robot rolled down the corridor of rock. Debris and untouched machines littered the passage, the only light being what shown out of the remote piloted drone as it inched along. On the terminals next to the pilot's controls diagrams and readouts measured various atmospheric conditions. The humidity and radioactivity were high, however neither sufficient to damage the robot. For the time being, the increased level of radiation had an irritating effect on the live-feed, indiscriminately flickering the screen and filling the live-feed back with a soft static. It was not much to make anything inoperable, but it cast a feeling of uncertainty on the crew as they moved ahead. Turning a corner the robot's cameras looked on the corridor where the blast had occurred. In the humid air of the cavern a soft blue glow enveloped the cavern, emanating from a side tunnel. There was some murmuring at the control center. The pilots pointing out in awe the radioactive phenomenon. The conditions were plainly obvious: the radioactive source was active in humid conditions underground. The humidity itself was enough that the suspended particles of water were interacting with the direct contact with radioactive waves that they were lighting up. The robot progressed and went down the passage. At the very end a large fissure had been opened in the wall. Beyond a solid blue light bathed out and the additional intermingling of further passages and chambers beyond. There was awe at the control center as they went ahead. Never before had anyone seen anything like it, and as the drone approached the opening there was excited chatter. What lay beyond wasn't simply a natural cavern, another chamber eroded away by centuries or a millennia of the dissolution of limestone by water, but something wholly different. At the edge of the opening the robot's camera looked down at a chasm of pipes, ventilation, conduit and catwalks. A great pool of water filled the bottom and the sensors read sharp rises in all areas. Radiation spiked violently, ebbed suddenly, only to erupt again in a great explosion. The live feed repeatedly ebbed from absolute static back to a hazy if clear screen. There was shock and awe as the men at the controls looked on and saw the industrial chasm opened to them. Who would have believed that thousands of meters below them there was something such as this buried there. There was excited talk of calling in for more gear to scout the ruins further, rejoinders that the radioactivity was so high, it was unlikely they ever could. Then in the excitement someone hit the joy stick for the robot wrong and the little robot lurched forward to the precipice, swayed back and forth for a little, and plunged down ward. The men at the controls screamed as the expensive piece of equipment took a final plunge into the radioactive depths, the screen filling with static and flickering violently. Briefly a sign passed by written in a familiar script, but they could only make out “oy”. It splashed down into the water there, and drifted into the radioactive depths with its live-feed full of a blue light. But as the heavy machine turned into the abyss its cameras passed by to look at a set of violently blue glowing rods deep in the water. And the radioactivity killed it. Somewhere deep in the chasm, a system activated. [hr] At 299,792,458m/s a beam of energy erupted from the ground roughly near the mine. The thunderous clap it produced as it broke through thousands of kilometers of packed rock and sand in a single punch was enough to send tremors rumbling across a wide area. At the coast an earthquake measuring a 5.4 was recorded sending geological experts into a puzzle. But closer to where the beam had come the energy was far more absolute, though no one had bothered to measure it. There was such a force that rocked the ground that it felt as if the sand and dirt all around was going to rapidly liquify. And it was very close to being so, loosening so much that standing structures were absorbed down into the ground. The entrance to the mind itself collapsed, trapping some eight-hundred miners who had gone in to work the least dangerous parts of the mine and to work on meeting some level of production quota. Nearby several houses collapsed killing several, and the tent the robotic survey crews had set up in folded and fell down on top of the survey men, trapping them under disorienting fabric and bruising more than a few heads from falling metal framework. Traveling through space, the yellow beam of energy interrupted space operations and vaporized one freighter in the beam's way. Observers noted the suddenness of its appearance, like a flash of halogenic light that appeared in a single stretch of space before crackling out of existence as quickly as it had come, leaving no trace. But all of this was much slower than the beam was traveling, and by the time all this had been done it had reached its final destination at the edge of the orbital system where in a silent crack it erupted in a blooming cloud of golden roses that spread out like a nebulae in miniature at a distance, the light of which was so strong that back in the orbit of Novira its presence was a faint haze in the distance, like shreds of wax paper on a window pane. It persisted there, taking on the second transmission from the thing in the ground, with far less dramatic flair than before. As its job was completed, it though held open the door. [hr] [h1]???[/h1] “Oy ya bungers get outta ya hampers we got ourselves a ringa.” “You what, cunt?” “Tis what I thought but we got a ringer, oy what a ripper of one too!” “Cor, what the blimey hell is it?” “Take a look ya shit.” “Oh, bloody hell. It's the Angle I tell you that much. What she doing?” “Hella I know. Cor, how long has it been since we've last heard?” “Blimey, that's a hard doovalacky mate. A year or two, mate?” “That's a bludger a statement, cunt. Ya missing a few zeroes there me thinks.” “You troppo, mate? Couldn't be that long. When we leave home?” “With or without Black Hole time?” “You what?” “If you hadn't insisted on surfing the waves around a few black holes, the numbers wouldn't be as big of an issue. But fucking hell ya cunt you hadn't decided on that time keeping wouldn't be such a doozey.” “You accusing me of wasting all your time on rippin' on a few gnarlies mate?” “How'd you think the Canberra did so much in so little time?” “...I thought they were just nerds.” “Fucking hell. Wake up the others and put on some jocks at least.”