Cath

The Cradle

Freyr nodded. “An audible fossil…” She murmured, deep in thought. From the unfocused corners of her vision, she vaguely noticed the Rübezahl clamped to the underside of the cube like a tic. Information had begun streaming back to the rig, indexed and prioritised by the program on the fly.

“Is it possible those creatures on the audio file are having the same conversation we are, right now? Or could this just be another expression of the entity’s psyche. An imitation of life...” Freyr mused, looking up at the mission timer. Her mind was whirring away at top speed despite her outward tranquility.

---

595’s boot crumbled a fragment of masonry into dust. They advanced in as tight a formation as the labyrinth of destruction around them would allow. The Agent’s heart was pounding in her chest, but her breathing was measured and deliberate. Her suit’s internal sensory suite was going haywire, detecting threats and changes in temperature around every corner. In the end, she switched it off, focusing on her own eyes and ears.

Unfortunately, they were just as provocative. The closer they got to the shaft of light, the more footsteps 595 felt around her than those of the ground team. Snatches of conversation drove 595 to manually scan dozens of dark nooks, only to find nothing there after all.

The throne the Navigator had greeted them from before had been destroyed by a large chunk of the roof. They carefully crept around it, forced to skirt almost to the side wall. 595 gulped to wet her dry throat when she finally clamped eyes on the source of the light.

A pool of liquid, lapping at the stone edges of a narrow hatchway that headed into the depths of the floor below. The shaft of light shone right through the liquid and into the sky. The flying creatures above flew all around the light, avoiding its narrow blade.

The Cradle

595 paused, but didn’t turn to look at Vreta. She didn’t want him to see the conflicted expression on her face, so she stared into the shaft of light before them instead.

It would be a technical triumph to escort the ground team back to the rig with very little to show for their efforts. She could jumble the spectrometer, and return to her low-level sabotage of scientific data from on-board the mobile lab. Out here, she suspected they were in danger of making a discovery even bigger than in their last expedition.

And yet, she still couldn’t bring herself to stop now. She could feel the Navigator calling to her. Even though the thought filled her with cold dread, the Agent had to know what it was saying.

“You head back to the rig if you want - I’ll be right behind you. In and out, two minutes max.” 595 answered in the end. She looked at Vreta, her whole face tense, and nodded encouragingly. “It’s ok. I have my transit station. Just make sure you get the civilians out of here if something happens.”

With that, 595 took a deep breath and began edging forward again, her chin resting on the stock of her raised gun. She understood if the death-averse Rothians wanted to retreat, but for the first time in a long time wouldn’t have objected to a bit of company.

---

Freyr bristled when Marae interjected, but held her tongue. They only had hours left to make contact with this thing - they couldn’t afford to be cautious anymore. As much as she hated herself for coming to this conclusion, Freyr was willing to risk the lives of everyone on the ground if it meant saving billions. But she was also beginning to realise how the Rothians operated. Despite appearing fully invested, they still believed they could survive this unscathed.

She watched Vreta and 595 talking to each other while her head worked on the new information they’d just received. Someone had been there before them. “Let me hear the voice clip.” Freyr asked. Soon after, an exchange of guttural clicks and growls assaulted her ears. She understood none of it. “So, we aren’t the first to tread this path. What were they doing here?” She murmured to herself, eyes still glued to the screens.

The Cradle

“Maybe.” 595 shrugged quietly, next to Vreta. They stopped in front of a downed pillar’s splayed segments when he addressed the whole room. The Agent listened with everything she had, but could only pick up the howling wind and ten thousand wings fluttering overhead...

Wait! What was that? “You guys hear that?” 595 hissed. She moved past Eti, vaulting the pillar to utterly focus on the soundscape. She could have sworn she heard two people whispering in the back of the hall somewhere. “Come on out! We just want to talk to you!” The Agent called, visor slithering off her face. Her naked voice echoed around the chamber, and the sickly blue light of her eyes shimmered off the masonry close by.

She inched forward slowly, gun half-raised in front of her.

---

“Not yet.” Freyr soothed Marae in the hypnotic voice a mother assumes with their fussing baby. She never took her eyes away from a dual display of the Rubezahl’s trail through the mountain and video from the ground team. “They’re alright for a few more minutes. Just let me know if the field changes in any way. Dr Zimmermann, initiate contact with the underside of the cube, please.``

“Very good.”

“Marae, I’ve defragged some of the data from that hotspot you found. You’ll want to take a look at this.” Dr Wetherall crackled from below deck.

The Cradle

595 hauled her cargo up the stone stairs, pistol raised to cover a gap between two of the Rothian soldiers. The bottom edge of the spectrometer bashed against each step with a muffled *thud*. No one made a sound; each of them were completely focused on their surroundings.

The rig’s lighting didn’t penetrate the temple interior. Apart from a few long shadows in the doorway, the contents were bathed in blackness. The Agent let her Cradle-tech augments adjust to the changing conditions as they crept inside.

The place was a mess. The roof had been torn clean off, and great chunks of masonry had fallen into the grand rectangular hall. Most of the pillars on either side of the central causeway had collapsed, with the few that remained looming out of the dark like watchful sentinels.

“This will do.” 595 murmured, putting the spectrometer down on the floor a few metres inside the temple. She pulled her main gun off the magnetised holster on her chest and turned it on. Ever so slowly, she brought it up to her eye, scanning up where the walls used to meet the roof. “You sense anything here with us?” She asked over comms.

---

“Hmm, maybe. There is a strange energy profile in the back. Can you check it out?” Freyr replied, a consolatory ‘I want to talk to you about your interesting idea’’ finger raised to Artek. She then looked at the ceiling while addressing the whole rig. “Any chance we can clean this feedback up, guys? It’s all over the place.”

Freyr watched the grainy video coming in from Vreta and 595 for a few seconds, before turning back to Artek. She spoke quickly: “But why not use this energy in a more useful application? Why build a temple instead of, say, teleporting the first expedition right to it, rather than have them trek cross-country? Why did it even need to see them in-person anyway? It was likely speaking through that worm, couldn’t it have explained the situation there and then?”

The Cradle

595 awkwardly changed course in line with the rest of the team. Part of her wanted to investigate the patch of snow Marae had warned them of, just to see what happened. But she restrained herself, and tried to focus on the mission. She had been tasked with running interference on this expedition, but she could sense there was still so much for her to learn from the Navigator. This might be the last chance she got, before handing over to the Institute back on Outremer…

---

“Sorry, ‘traps’ might not be the best word for them in this context.” Freyr chuckled over comms, closely watching Rübezahl's progress on the holo-map at the same time. Their creation was trickling through the mountain structure, heading towards the underside of the cube - the part Freyr suspected wasn’t being protected. It had detected a couple of symbiotic organics inside the mountain, which were causing low-level vibrations they’d been querying. “There are just a few spots we can’t access that we’d best steer clear of for your safety.”

Freyr then switched to the rig-only channel, to avoid distracting the ground team. “Marae, can we isolate those dark pockets with your program, to avoid messing with them?” She looked at Artek, who had joined her on the bridge to work more closely on the alien structure. “Any thoughts on the architecture? It looks different from the recorded video, right? Damage excluded.”

---

The temple ruins loomed over them in the blackness. The roof had collapsed, and 595 saw piles of debris through the open entryway. “Woah…” She whispered, when she noticed the mess of vine-like growths winding their way over the masonry. The temple had lost its clean lines and classical shape, to become more...organic. They made their way toward the front steps. "Are you seeing this?"

Song Reference time

You want me to forget you?
Ok, forget me too
You tell me you hate me, baby
Yeah, I bet you do

The Cradle

595 shuffled through the snow in formation with the others. The transit station on her back and the spectrometer in her left hand were heavy and unwieldy; she had to lean slightly to her right to maintain good balance. The Agent could probably have moved faster if she’d gripped the sensory equipment in both arms, but then she wouldn’t have been able to wield her sidearm.

At any rate, her load became noticeably easier to bear once they crossed onto the top face of the cube. Either something was making the objects she was carrying lighter, or something was making her suit stronger. 595 smiled under her visor and pressed on with renewed vigor.

“Ground team, can you read me? Come in, please.” Freyr crackled and hissed over comms, kept open purely via the cables connected to Vreta and 595. “I read you.” 595 answered, looking at Vreta to check he’d heard it too. “Good. We’re getting readings from the spectrometer now too. Proceed to the structure - we’re going to check the field for booby traps.”

“Copy that. Good work on the countermeasures, boys. Keep it up.” 595 purred, looking up at the fingers of light stabbing the chaotic swarm of creatures above. A few of the things had peeled away from the pack and were flying about frantically at a lower altitude, seemingly confused. 595 observed that they definitely weren’t bats. She’d never seen anything like them before.

“Is your gear still working?” She asked the team around her.

The Cradle

The noise outside was eerie after the reassuring hum of the lab. The wind and snow howled, and a loud ‘ftftftftftfft’ sound swooped and ducked around them in the dark.

Keeping her cool, 595 jogged heavily to the cable housing, just off-centre from the rig’s vast front elevation. She put the spectrometer on the ground, unfurled a thick cable from one of the massive reels, firmly spun Vreta around so his backpack was facing her, then plugged the cable into his transit station. She then motioned for him to do the same to her, while she dealt with the spectrometer.

Once she’d received the green light from the bridge that all the equipment was working, 595 pulled out a thinner cable from the cable housing and handed it to Vreta. “This one goes in your butt.” She explained, before retrieving another cable which went into the small of her back, just underneath the transit station backpack.

595 had already created a sterile compartment for the video and sensory data to run through, taking out all metadata from her suit or biology. She gritted her teeth when the cable went in, with her suit fighting to reject it. “Enough!” She hissed under her breath, overriding its complex defense mechanisms. “Got to play nice with the friendly Doctor, haven’t we?”

Once everything looked functional, Dr Chanthara took the lead. “Ultrasonic package primed. Search lights?”

“Standing by.” Knossos confirmed, standing by an external control panel which gave him control of the rig’s large work lamps. He looked up the enormous swarm of flying creatures in the air around them.

“Ok. Deploying.”

The Cradle

“Yes, of course. Once you’re happy with the program, we’ll set it ready to go in if the cabling doesn’t work. Fortunately, there’s miles of the stuff in storage. We can feed it through to reels on the front of the rig.” Freyr explained, taking a holo-pad from its mount to check inventory. She deftly scanned through and selected the necessary cabling, along with a spectrometer and two mobile transit stations. “Nirann, can you activate the cargo conveyor and send that down to the team please?”

“Rübezahl ready to launch, Doctor.” Zimmermann reminded her. Freyr looked up quickly from her holo-pad. “Launch it.”

---

595 firmly thrust her sidearm back onto its mag-plate after checking the battery and looked over at Vreta, a sly look on her face. “Really, Vreta’Sori…Your reverence is flattering! But I’m afraid I'm just as clueless as you, sweetie.”

The agent flexed her fingers, arms and neck vigorously at this point. Strips along the thinner points of her armour pulsed the same blue colour as her eyes. Electricity crackled softly between her digits, and 595 inhaled deeply through her nose while biting her lip. “Ooh, wow…These upgrades are magic...”

The loading bay lights switched from bright white to deep red. Klaxons sounded from everywhere as the equipment around them was brought online. A compact conveyor belt began whirring frantically in one corner of the room.

Freyr’s voice crackled over the team chat. ”Loading bay - you should see the spectrometer and transit stations arriving now. Take it. In a couple of minutes we’re going to lower the ramp. Head outside and hook up to the cable housing.

595 moved over to the conveyor belt as a few bulky objects appeared. The first was the spectrometer, a spherical device contained within a lightweight metal cage with a handle on the top. The other two were modified transit stations, with handy arm straps. She grabbed a transit station and bashed it against Vreta's chest so he took it off her. Then she strapped the other station on her back and held the spectrometer in her off-hand.

"Ready."

The Cradle

“Hoo fuckin rah.” 595 purred through a wide smile. Her Cradle-light eye augmentations switched on, bathing Vreta in a sickly blue glow. “Lets deploy from the bow loading bay - I’ll head down there now.” She turned and clanked down the ladder they’d arrived up, holding both handrails with her gun magnetized to her chest.

Freyr looked up at the ceiling, mulling over her low-tech solution one more time before voicing it. “Marae, how confident are you we can open a hole without triggering any potential countermeasures? The thought has occurred to me that we could try physical cabling to capture the data and tandem the transit station with the rig. Might leave less of a footprint on the cube?”