Getting the survey data is a convoluted process. The Persocoms had deleted the relevant information on the Kaiju Sea region as they were analyzing it - and presumably getting infected. Nora was able to recover most of the information from the actual data buffers in the scanning pods though.
"We've got gravity and topographical maps," Nora tells Tasha as they sit at Nora's terminal. "I'm running a filter on the ground penetrating and deep-radar scans," she notes. "If there was a rogue signal sent back to us, those would be the ideal pathways."
"If Abbaddon is the cause, it might be using non-standard communication methods too," Tasha notes as she leans in, peering at the screen as the data is loaded. She bites her lip a moment; the young woman desperately doens't want to think about the fate of the PersoComs nor bring up the memory more than necessary in her research with Nora, but she decides her next question constitutes a necessity.
"When you interacted with the, um, PersoComs. Did they say anything unusual? Not, um," Tasha pauses, muzzle twisiting in frusteration and no little pain as she has to word the PersoCom's insanity and thus consider it and what it must have been like, "Not ranting, or considered words, but did they give any suggestion they were under someone else's control? Someone else that didn't understand them or you?"
"They didn't say anything, no," Nora says quietly as she brings up the photographs of the impact structure. The crater is over 20 kilometers wide, according to the scale. "They turned into.. things.. and started smashing stuff."
"Things? They turned in to things? That they didn't talk makes me think of hits -- its -- tactics. It's not enough by itself, though. Did they look like creatures made of lava? Fire? Grotesque faces?" The hybrid woman shakes her head, still unable to accept what happened happened. The PersoComs were there, and now they're dead. Twisted. Her home was attacked -- how could this happen? "A-as for the scans, gravity might be the best indicator. We would be looking for something that suggests a rift or other disturbance in space and time. Something like what a D-Drive would generate, or, I don't know, a rift. A door."
"Like a Forbidden Zone?" Nora asks, and switches views. The gravity map shows areas of higher density.. and the center of the crater does have a distinctive shape - it looks like a seven-legged starfish. One that's nearly 2000 meters across. "That's solid," Nora points out.
"As for what the PCs turned into.. I really would rather not go into it," Nora says. "I can't get physically ill, but I really want to just thinking of it."
It looks familiar to Tasha, but where has she seen it before? The hybrid leans in further even though she doesn't need to; she could see the screen from across the ship if the walls were clear. An expresion of focus, intent. It comes to her in a flash and she clicks the talons of her left hand together in a gesture akin to a snap. "That's where I've seen that before, it looks like the thing that came out of my clone! It had the starfish-shape too." She doesn't sya more on the PersoComs, both not wanting to know the details herself and not wanting Nora to dwell on them, so she moves on and pushes the new topic forward.
"What clone?" Nora asks, and looks at Tasha with concern.
Tasha turns and blinks at Nora, frowning at the question until it strikes her just how many versions of her have cropped up in one way or another. One less, a voice in her head reminds her. She wishes it would have just kept quiet. "The plant-clone, from the overrun Imperial City. The one made by their old Seed. It tried to clone my Harrower connection. The starfish was the result."
"So.. this thing is probably related.. but if it's made of dark matter we won't know until we look at those active scans," Nora says, and chews on her lower lip. "What other means of communication does it have?"
"The last time it targeted only machines or else being with machine parts and links -- like my Khattan neural stud array. Harmonia also experienced its attempts to manipulate her, so she may be able to offer more detailed explainations and she might even know what method it used to contact her." Tasha glances at the screen again, then scratches her nose as she frowns all the more. "But maybe it's learned a new trick. It might have reached Hake, somehow. Through the monitors, or, through that book. Did you check Fred and Hake's quarters for any strange access requests?"
"I'll check now.." Nora says, opening a new window. "There's another potential explanation for Hakeber's reaction though.."
Tasha leans back, looking over and perking her ears. "What's is it, Nora?" She asks.
"That thing is way older than the Expedition," Nora points out. "You know that it can talk directly to machines.. but what if it has a more subtle influence on living things? The Expedition splintered as soon as it landed here, and the warring began. 6,000 years of it. It could already be in the subconscious of everyone born on Abaddon." She scrolls through the data before her, and notes, "Nothing in or out from Hakeber. I don't think she was even using her computer terminal since she started her work on that translation."
Nora taps the map again next. "They call this area the Kaiju Sea. They know the big monsters come from here.. but they never investigated, in all that time?"
"In everyone's minds ... " As Tasha voice trails off she shakes her head, running her hands back through her hair a moment later. "That might make anyone from Abaddon a liability around it. We'll have to keep an eye on Hake and the recruits." Her hands fall and she turns to study the screen, looking bleak. "At least it's good to hear Hake-bear wasn't the one responsible. I don't think she could handle that, not right now. Even Digger-of-Ancients and Miss Celeste look like they're afraid we'll throw them off the ship."
As she studies the map Tasha's brows first furrows, then scrunches as she considers it and Nora's words. "No, they never did, did they? They never seemed to care about it, or even about Lord Yama who sabotauged the entire Expedition. I know Henry Canaan was supposedly the source, and Lord Yama the instigator, but maybe Abaddon took advantage? It even calls itself Abaddon, it identifies with this world like it owns it."
"Why hide though," Nora mutters. "Look at the size of it. It could level a city all by itself.. so why send monsters or try to get everyone to fight each other? And.. hmm. It's vulnerable to the Sifras, that's why.. Think about the Pit!"
"The deeper you go, the stronger the Sifran Probability Matrix!" the Cadet agrees, turning to nod enthusiastically to her sister. "It might be paralyzed, or afraid to risk detection. It probably came here to attempt to ... uh, do ... things." Again Tasha avoids going too deeply in to the subject of the utlimate goal of beings like Katha-hem. It's thin-wire balancing act of enough-but-not-too-much, too easily shaken. "Maybe you, Fred, Mariel and the others like you are resistant too."
"Yeah.. we're magic," Nora says. "And the Pit had magic still when it showed up. The dams were built by Earth Mages before it ran out. And magic is back now on Abaddon. Maybe that thing is getting desperate as a result?"
"It might be," Tasha agrees, nodding her head. She leans back and spreads her arms. "And it failed against us, so now it might also realize we're a threat to it. It knows me and Hake knows that I live here and that this ship is important to me and our efforts on this world. This might have been a pre-emptive attack! It should be worried, the Titanians can detect and kill its kind, I now know, and soon I might tell the Progenitors. And if all of that isn't enough, the Sif- ... These worlds are regaining their fields."
And then Tasha's hands fall. A curious grin crosses her muzzle, lopsided and vicious. "I hope I'm the one though. The one to kill it," she adds. The grin only gets wider.
A notice appears on the display: the active scan data has been filtered. Nora brings up both the mundane and deep scans. The first shows the below-ground details - the thing is a dozen meters underground, and looks alive, at least. There are canals as well, one radiating out from the beneath each of the creature's limbs. The deep scan shows things as ghostly transparencies. There are bones and other dense structures, and a network of dense material that seems to mimic a vascular system.
Nora tweaks things, getting a false-color version of the neutrino scan. This makes her furrow her brow. "That looks familiar.." she mutters.
The grin's soon gone, replaced by slightly less vicious pursed-muzzle curiosity as she studies the new image. "It does look the starfish, but it also looks so alive. Flesh and blood, like us. I wasn't expecting that, I was expecting something more ... " She pauses, trying to quite explain her experience with the Harrower and the Source in a single word, " ... ethereal? Insubstantial, maybe protean. A dark matter blob, shifting bug-like things. Something less static. But this is good! If it's physical, maybe we won't need unusual methods to get in and hurt it."
Nora opens her mouth to comment, then stops and sits up ramrod straight. "Oh.. crap.." she says, then gets up and swiftly moves to the engineering station, where she opens the stator controls and switches them from Standby to Shutdown.
"Uh ..?" Goes Tasha, who watches her sister rush off with no small amount of worried bemusement. Her ears go askew and she asks, tenatively, "You think it can ... detect the stators?" The woman cocks her head to the side. "Or what's in the stators?"
Nora turns back around to face Tasha, and looks gaunt. "I've seen that spectrum before.. Maybe not exact, but.. but.. that's what stator rings look like under deep-radar," she says. "Never figured out where the Khattans got the material from. But I think that thing there is using it for blood."
"Oh." Tasha ears flatten completely. The implications of such large-scale gravitic control aren't something she can fully understand with her level of knowledge, but she knows enough to be afraid. Afraid, but at least not greatly surprised. "It makes sense," she says at length, "they're known for their powerful manipulation of mass, gravity, even space and time. The Harrower I met could move planets."
"This one isn't pure dark matter, it's normal matter.. well.. physical matter at least," Nora says. "It could throw up a shield though, I bet. Enough to deflect anything we could throw at it. Do you think this is where the Khattans actually get the stuff though? They get it from one or more of those monsters?"
"There's every possibility that's the case," Tasha replies, tilting her head the other way, back and forth as if weighing scales in her mind. "I have strong evidence they may have been assisted by their Progenitor, who would have been aware of these beings and their prisons. I know they ... " The young woman sucks in a breath, rememebring another in what feels like an endless list of horrible and sanity-jarring facts about these ebings, " ... that they ... they feed on souls. That's how you summon them. The Source told me. It assumed I knew. Rituals. Maybe that's ... " She looks up now, up and up, to where the stator rests upon the hull.
"The stators aren't powered by souls," Nora assures. "They can mess with your head if you get too close though. I heard one was used to literally drain and display a person's memories by creating a hyperspace anomaly around their head.. but that could just be a spacer-legend."
Tasha looks unconvinced, still staring up at the ceiling, thinking and fearing. "There was a machine in the Titanic, the oldest of the Titan starships, which rests on Sinai. It looked like nested rings, without any support, and it spun. It spun and it pulled. I could feel it, pulling at me. Tugging at something inside me. I almost gave in, I thought it was trying to talk to me. But it ... " The young woman frowns. "Lore saved me. He pulled me back, he then asked if I wanted to forget everything. That the machine would have eaten who I am. It flattens out space, part of their drive. A machine god. It eats memories too. There is something about gravity, and dark matter, and the way we disturb space. Souls."
"Well.. that makes a bit more sense then," Nora says. "That's.. scientific. A natural phenomena.. probably quantum interactions and observer-effect stuff. I don't know what would be gained by.. eating it though. Extra entanglement?"
"I don't know either," Tasha admits, haze lowering as she turns back to Nora. "I'll ask them some day. Maybe they'll tell me." She then turns and glances at the readout and shakes her head. "Or maybe I'll bring back some blood to look at? Whatever it is, or whatever it means, we still have to deal with what it's in. Firing the linear cannon at it probably won't do anything, or ... Maybe it will? It's trying to be subtle, what if we don't let it? What if we poke it and shoot it and keep at it until it doesn't have any choice but to do something flashy and obvious?"
"And then what?" Nora asks. "It's two thousand kilometers from the nearest settlement. There's no way a ground force could cover that distance. And anything big will surely be noticed, especially if it has a stator. No wonder it noticed Harmonia, she's all stator. And it noticed us looking at it. Melchior has the smallest stator I've ever heard of though."
"Really? I didn't know that," Tasha admits, turning now towards the external display and to her Titan beyond. "I always thought he was made from common technology from his era, but everything we've been learning suggests there's a lot more to him, so why not a special stator too?" She shrugs at the sher volume of mysteries in her life, then looks back. "Even if I can reach it, I'm not sure how to bypass its shield. The Markers will disrupt it -- they did when it possessed Balthasar -- but that's not much help if I can't get near it or it crushes me with a miles long tentacle."
"And it knows me," Tasha adds a moment later, " ... me and my Meddler friends. IF they're my friends."
"You say the Titanians have dealt with these things before," Nora points out. "How do they do it? And why haven't they done it to this one?"
"They're limited here too, I think. Besides I don't think Captain Rushfighter wants to blow up part of Abaddon, they already have enough problems being seen as legitimate and safe traders. Trading Titanians are unheard of anywhere else in Galactic Space that I know of," the Cadet replies, turning back to face Nora. "But even if all that's not a problem, they may just not know. These worlds may hide them just as they interfere with sensors, break our technology, and otherwise cause problems for anyone who isn't a Sifra. They didn't know about the Source after all, and the Source and Ka- ... Abaddon may not be the only ones."
"There are more of these things?" Nora asks. "How many? Does the book say?"
Tasha leans back, spreading her hands. "I don't know. They're the servants of the Ogdoad, their angels. They're also called Harrowers. They fera the Sifra and lost to them, but who knows how large the Sifran Empire was before it was crippled?" She shakes her head again. "We'll just have to deal with them one at a time. I don't think they're all out to get us, anyway. The Source hasn't attacked me, but maybe it's just waiting for me to spy for it? He-Who-Moves was worried about me remaining it its space-time though, it urged me to leave. They can show concern -- and hate."
"We shouldn't gauge their motives or intelligence by our own standards," Nora suggests. "The ones you've dealt with could be the equivalent of children.. or PersoComs. Servants." She taps the map again, and says, "This thing.. it's physical, not paraphysical. It's made to operate on this level of reality, for a reason. It may be subtle and is certainly manipulative. It can lie. That's a different level of self-awareness, I think."
Tasha snorts at the comparison. "Sounds like me, doesn't it," she admits in a moment of self-deprecating humor. her hands fall and she leans back, folding her arms. "It can lie. It lied to Harmonia and I, but it wasn't a good manipulator. I think half or most people on this ship culd come up with a good enough lie to manipulate me, to get me to pilot some monsterous machine, but it didn't come up with anything. Just empty self-destructive promises and threats. I could have done better! So either it thinks I'm beneath it and it couldn't bother to come up with a better lie, or it just doens't know how. Even with its attack on our PersoComs, it just broke things."
"Good point.. it may not know how to talk to people, or really understand them," Nora agrees. "If it's only been subtle all this time. And.. until we can be sure it isn't affecting Abaddonians, we can't tell any of them about this. They could have some odd urge to protect the thing implanted in them for all we know."
And then something occurs to Tasha, she tilts her head and raises her brow. "Maybe it can't, because it doesn't have culture? Society? For all its power, and age, and its vast intelligence and influene, it's not part of a society. It serves, it doesn't build. It doesn't feel embarassed, it doesn't want to make a home. It serves. Everything its done has been about result but not social. Impulses, emotions, actions. Like a ptera. You know when they're mad, you know when they want something, you know when they want something from you, but it's all just straightforward. Nothing like what we're doing now."
"So.. a trained animal.. or a trained dragon to be closer to the point," Nora says. "We need to figure out its goals then. Everything else should follow predictably from that."
Tasha bites her lip, suddenly looking off in the distance. She taps her talons against her arm a moment, then admits, "What if I know, but don't want to tell you? We're getting in to what I told you I would deal with, and I will. Is it enough that I know?"
"You don't trust me?" Nora asks, looking shocked. "Or.. you just don't want my help?"
Tasha's eyes widen, but she doesn't look back. She doesn't want to; she can't be tough to her sister and see her reaction too. "I don't want to burden you," she replies, sinking lower in to her chair. "But I know you're going to get mad at me for trying to protect you or act like you can't handle it. Maybe you can, but you don't have to and I don't have to tell you."
"And what makes you think I can't make you tell me?" Nora asks with an arched eyebrow. "Tell me, little sister."
"No," Tasha says flatly. She then stands right up, makes a deliberate turn, then walks for the door without looking over. "I'm not going to ruin you too."
"Hey! Isn't that for me to decide?" Nora says. "You can't decide that for someone else, unless you're their mother and they're a child. I am not a child, Tasha."
The hybrid pauses at the insistence, but then just keeps going, ears flat. "Sorry I'm just a dumb little girl and don't know anything," she insists. "Even if you are my mother or creator or what-ever!"
"And you can't control people, Tasha," Nora says. "Not by keeping things from them. But that's what you're trying to do here."
"I thought you'd learned that lesson on Orpheus," Nora grumbles.
Tasha stops again before th hatch, making a frusterated noise that's somewhere between a growl and a choke. She hunches her shoulders, staring at the flooor and mustering her courage until she can turn around and look at Nora. "You're always looking to break yourself, Nora!" She tells the other woman, hands raised and grasping at the air infront of her. "You always have to prove something, to be big! Well, isn't Abaddon enough for you? The JEF? I won't be here, I'll be gone and soon. But this is all for you, and soon you'll have the Themis-Skoll too! And you just killled our PersoComs! And now you wnat me to dump the most horrible secret I know, out of ... of ... what, bravado?"
"Out of respect for my abilities," Nora says. "And so you will have backup. I'm not fragile, Tasha. You know that. I don't need to prove myself anymore. The world were that mattered is gone."
"Pah," breathes Tasha, her hands falling as she stares at her sister. She knows everything Nora says is true, but that doesn't stop the fear and it doesn't make her feel any better about the situation. After what happened to Hakeber and seeing the fear in the eyes of the cadets, with knowledge to break the world, it feels like she can't be too safe. Too quiet.
But Tasha also knows her sister has been through hell and back and has kept going. She's the strongest person she knows, perhaps even more so than her Gabriel. Only the gods could stand up to Nora Argentine.
And so Tasha sighs, defeated. "Fine, you win, you terrible evil Karnor woman." She reaches up and wipes at her eyes, planting her free hand on her hip and turns away. "But if you break I won't forgive myself. There. You'll hurt your little sister, you bullied her! But fine." She lifts her hip-hand and waggles it Nora-ward. "Here's your well earned nightmare: The Sifra imprisoned the Ogdoad, the Progenitors defeated the Sifra, the Progenitors made a mistake and now when the Sifra fall the dark things will be free and they'll release their masters on Erebus and they will destroy us all. Eat us. Eve the Progenitors don't know what to do, and the Sifra are crumbling. Oh, and you know why the First and the Old are gone? The Sifra killed them all, they just keep on as their Clients to fix their things until they replace them. But the Progenitors didn't know that when they made us. Oh and they're almost out of Clients. The end is coming."
"But how does that help us with this monster?" Nora asks, pointing at the map image. "What does it want? Why is it doing any of this stuff if it just has to wait when it's already waited for a million or ten million or a billion years already?"
Tasha looks back, brows raising. It amazes her Nora can hear the big picture and not bat an eyelash, not even wince! It's what she admires about Nora -- it also irritates her greatly. "Well," she stammers, trying to get past the Karnor's brush off of the apocalypse, " ... it's probably detected that the Sifra are running out of Clients. They'll begin their cycle soon, and if they can't begin it, the Sifra may come and handle it themselves. They imprisoned the beings from the Dark, they can't beat the Sifra. If the Sifra beat the Progenitors and get their new Clients, then the dark things lose. This is the bets chance they've had in ages. Warloq had even been kiling the Aelfin, to speed it all up! And the Progenitors are fractured, they're not the same force they were back then. The Sifra may still win, wipe us all away and lock their prisons tight! It wants us dead, so they can't have new Clients locally. It planned to use me to kill the Progenitors and everyone on all of these worlds so th
at the Sifra failed."
"But how does it know any of this?" Nora asks. "You have the big picture. This thing.. what does it know, exactly? What is it reacting to. That is what we need to find out. How to get inside its head, so to speak. Is it using spies? Drones?" She brings up the deep-radar map, and zooms out. "These bright veins are Sifran crystal. Notice how the crater is in the one spot where none of them cross. It's isolated itself from the network deliberately. So it can't be using the Sifra technology to keep abreast of things. It knows of the Progenitors.. but did it already know about them before it contacted you, or did it learn about them from you?"
"And if it is afraid of Sifra tech.. how was it able to use the crystals to take over Balthasar?" Nora asks as well. "Is it because those crystals came from Sinai? Do the crystals vary from world to world somehow?"
"It ... It already knew," Tasha replies, taken aback by her sister's force of personality. She can see why Gabriel said she was fit to captain a ship, and that was six-thousand years previous! "It wanted us dead, it hates us. "Slithering snakes, crawling felines," and it called us its "Enyo," which means, "Destroyer of Cities" in Olympian. It detected Balthasar and me, probably because we were in flight. It ... " Her expression falls; a frown. "It spoke to Hake-bear. It knows her. But how? She doesn't have plugs, didn't use her computer ... Hake said the book read her back but ... maybe it can see through the eyes of the Abaddonians?" Her head shakes. "I don't know, I always though each world had its own controller. I thought it was the controller, but now I don't know. Maybe another one of its kind prepared it?"
And then the younger woman blinks. "The Kampfengruppe?" Her head shakes. "Is it using the Kampfengruppe through their books? Or can it control Abaddonians directly? But the Kamp have been so active lately, and for what? Why?"
"Or it figured it wouldn't be detected," Nora posits. "A lot of First Ones also used Sifran crystal in their own technology. That could be important: on its own, the crystal isn't controllable by this thing - but when it's connected to a machine this creature is able to gain access. So.. It's probably good that you had the Stack disconnected from MOTHER before. We need to test all of this. First order: does it have a connection to Abaddonians? Someone else has to read Hakeber's translation. It can't be me or one of the ghost crew, and can't be anyone critical like you or Gabriel or.. any of us, really. Have Yue read it."
"It's nice you think I'm critical," Tasha admits, sounding genuinely appreciative. "It's a real change from how we used to deal with things." She then walks over and, instead of sitting down in a chair, sits beside Nora and pulls in her knees with her arms. "Yue's probably already reading it, I don't think she could resist. I left her with Hake, she's doing a good job calming Hake down."
"Good," Nora says. "Dr. Sen is the best choice for guinea pig. She's a xeno-archaeologist so knows how to approach the material, she's from outside of Sifran space so likely doesn't have any influence 'hooks' in her.. and she's expendable."
"The only downside is that you can't take her out in a fight, so bring a pistol when you go check on them."
"Hey I need her, and that's a surprisingly mean thing for you to say about a human. can't give them orders, but they can be expendable?" Tasha gives her sister a sidelong look. "You're scary sometimes. A pistol? She has my sword. Well I'm glad I'm wearing armor ... Unless my sword cuts through armor. At least it's quiet in the Med Bay." Her head shakes and she reaches for her datapad. "I cna contact them now?"
"I'm being realistic.. she's a Terragens Agent. They go into life-threatening situations and know they're likely to get killed. But they do it anyway," Nora says. "Go ahead and call them.."
"And here I do that and I'm just a cadet. I should ask Gabriel for a more impressive sounding title like ... Cadet Supreme, or something." Tasha pushes herself to her feet, still in her armor. She hasn't even had a chance to change clothes. "Well, how bad can a tiny Human be?" She asks as she heads for the corridor, holding her hand up a moment later. "Don't answer that. I know. She can crush me." Andthen she's out.
Ultimately Tasha decided to avoid contacting the two before visiting, not wanting to give them time to ambush her if they attack her in a possessed state. Instead she fetched her helmet and then went about the convoluted search for more serious weaponry, which ultimately took her across the ship twice as she hunted down the necessary equipment and checked with Nora personally to further avoid tipping their hand. In the end she was able to locate the duffle bag with her raid equipment, loading a supressed Vartan submachine gun with its fat, heavy-duty bullets, paired with a matching pistol -- also for Vartans -- though in lighter and mmore easily supressed caliber than a heavy Vartan pistol might otherwise use.
Finally equipped she returns to Fred's Quarters where Hakeber is staying and puts her helmet on, knowing it's an obvious move, but also not wanting to have her muzzle inverted by a tiny Human foot. It strikes her that she's had to prepare for and struggle against her friends as much as enemies, a thought that does her mood no good as she overrides the lock and steps inside.
"Hi you two, it's me. Just being careful out here ..," the young woman offers, hoping to deflect suspicion as she heads in.
Yue is on the bed, with Hakeber still sleeping with her head in the human's lap. She strokes the Karnor's head with one hand while holding a sheaf of papers in the other. "Are we being boarded?" Yue asks the armored hybrid.
Tasha turns to secure the door, locking it and punching in the code to seal it -- and show Nora she's inside. Why didn't I send Nora? Nora's can't even be injured.// She wonders as she turns back around and faces Yue. "Sorry Yue, but I assumed you'd be reading Hakeber's notes and I can't be too careful after what they did to Hakeber -- and to what Katha-hem might have done to the ship." She then tilts her head and asks, "So how are you doing?" as she studies the Human's face and searches for the signs of lunacy.
"This is the most rambling and elaborate suicide note in history," Yue comments. "And I don't credit much of it. I suspect some of the priests added in things. Like a previous human civilization that Eve shared her 'divine fire' with, but who wiped themselves out - meaning my humans are the second version that weren't artificially evolved. Granted, that would go far in explaining how young our species is compared to some of the other Galactics."
Tasha leans back against the door. Yue can't see it, but her ears are perked. "How much of it do you think is real? What stands out to you?" She asks, still observing even as she takes an interest.
"There's still a lot to go, and a lot that is.. gibberish.." Yue claims. "Hakeber started writing in a different language at some point. Not all at once.. first it was just words and phrases inserted into the rest of it, but then it got to where I could only make a few words. No idea what the symbols mean either, and I'm not going to try and scan them to the computer to find out."
"And there are a few rabbit-holes as well in the narrative," Yue adds.
"It might be Katha-hem, we think there's the possibility it's been influencing Abaddonain citizens since they arrived," the Cadet explains, head tilting to the side. "The language could be Katha-hem's or something he placed in the minds of the Abaddonains for whatever reason. Hake is also very talented, though, so she may know the language from her other research. Did she say anything about Katha-hem's influence on her? Do the notes mention it? Rabbit holes and a narrative?" She then glances at the sleeping woman and adds, "We think we know its physical location. There is a massive creature located in a crater deep inside the Daikaiju Sea."
"She's been sleeping," Yue says. "I didn't want to ask her anything that might trigger another breakdown. And by rabbit-hole.. well, paths that go to weirder and weirder places. The stuff about 'Ogdru-Hem' seemed to be the pivot point, so I focused on that. Eve.. or the Vril-ya, or whatever agency.. knew about them, that they were created to return the Ogdoad to rule.. because the Ogdoad knew their enemy would find them eventually. That enemy wasn't the Sifras though. They made the Ogdru-Hem and planted them before the Xilfrim or whatever they were called originally came to be. This isn't the first universe they've done this too, and apparently they were stopped in previous ones, and expected the same to happen again. The translation isn't very descriptive, but Eve assumes these enemies are the 'Waybuilders' or 'Transgods' or something. Basically the gods of the Progenitors."
"More gods," Tasha exhales with the air of someone well beyond her own limit. She slides down the hatch slightly, feeling herself want to curl up in to her own little ball. "More and more and more of them. I thought I had the whole picture with the Triad: Progenitors, Sifra, Ogdoad. Three armies, three groups. But now there are more of them? And they're greater than the Ogdoad? The Progenitors? Is that was Adam is?"
"I think Adam is one of the Progenitors," Yue says. "And yeah, more gods. It's gods all the way down.. instead of turtles.."
Tasha shakes her head, then shakes it some more. Gods on top of gods on top of gods. She decides she's going to need a heirarchical chart and some databases to keep track of all the gods in her life! "So Adam is the lead Porgenitors, and beyond Him the are ... Waybuilders. Are the Waybuilders here yet, then? Because if they are I should probably go try and find them. They sound like they know what to do."
"Haven't found much on them, but the Progenitors think they created.. the Way," Yue says. "Which.. means something? Eve calls her people Wayfarers too. I don't know if the Way is a spiritual path or an actual physical road.."
"And more universes ... Gods, and universes. Bumper said they might be infinite, so now it's not just a galatic or even intergalactic war, but a interdimensional war! But I shouldn't be surprised, should I? I've seen Hyperspace, and D-Space. Gods of more than space and time ... Everywhere." Tasha reaches up and pulls off her helmet, deciding if Yue is possessed that she's hiding it too well for her to detect as it is -- and her helmet makes her feel like the walls are closing in on her. She puts it on a neraby chair and returns to the hatch. "The Way could be anything. I don't have any information on it, although I do think I know where both Katha-Hem is and vaguely where Erebus is. But lets focus more on Katha-Hem. Does it mention anything about a weakness, or the way the Waybuilders could defeat these angels? We can't safely head to the Hall of Souls with that thing ready to jump at us."
"Nothing useful like that yet," Yue says, shaking the papers. "It took me awhile just to get these in proper order. It doesn't sound like the Progenitors bothered with the Ogdru-Hem or the Ogdoad at all. But, they may have just found out about them along with everything else this Cill species uncovered. I haven't gotten to the parts where she bitches about the other Progenitors and their agendas."
""Bitches?"" Asks the Cadet, her ears going up and eyes wide. "Hakeber is bitching? That doesn't sound like her, she's spent her career trying to learn more about them. Have they failed her that much?"
"No no, Eve.. and of course a female Karnor would bitch! That's what a female wolf is called. Or a dog. Both, probably," Yue says. "I've dug up First Ones ruins that had graffiti on them. Some things are universal - must be in our DNA. Hmm, should look into that. Really.. if the Starseeds really did 'seed the stars' then we might have stuff hidden in our DNA.."
"I've been wondering about that," Tasha admits as she pushes off the door, then walks over and sits on the bed closest to Hakeber where the Origin Marker of Silent-Ones rests. She picks it up and resumes staring at it, just as she had hours ago. "So, was it the Ogdoad that created life? The original life, the Starseeds? or was it the Proegnitors? I had thought the Proegnitors arrived after the Sifra, but it sounds like they arrived long before and then returned at some point. So did they make them?"
"Some think it was the Outsiders," Yue says. "Since by all accounts they are the oldest and most alien species. And there's lots of evidence that life just happens too. If you happen to be the first people to invent writing, then you get to claim you created the universe due to seniority or something. But the universe is big. We know there was life in other galaxies, but we don't know if it started in ours and spread, or just sprung up all over and got co-opted. Compared to what came before, the current known Galactics might as well be cousins - we've all got too much biology in common. Enough that we can eat each other without getting sick. And now we've got hints of other civilizations out there, like the Jotoki, beyond the edge of Known Space."
"No wonder the Library needs librarians on top of librarians. I'm tempted to hire on someone just to keep track of all my notes," Tasha admits. She leans down to peer at the artifact, staring in to the strange distortion. Well, Neith? Am I flying in to a storm, should I just go home and be a good and tiny little mortal? Stay with Gabriel, leave it all alone after all? As usual, she doesn't expect a response. "Are the Outsiders the same as the Progenitors? I've heard Hake use that name too. Outsiders. Being from outside, but outside of our galaxy? Universe?"
"Outside of life as we know it," Yue says. "They don't live on planets. They don't have biospheres of any kind. They live in the vacuum of interstellar space, moving in slower-than-light colonies and are probably immortal, if biology can even be applied to them. But they're the ones that supposedly invented hyperdrive, which they never use.. and sold it to the Khattans."
Tasha snorts a laugh at that. "And we can all trust the Khattans, who as we know also invented heat and light and only lease it to the rest of the galaxy," she jokes, head shaking. "Why would they invent something and never use it? Though if they're immortal then it probably doesn't matter, since they'll get where they're going some day. It does make me think that hyperspace is a risk for them, which makes me wonder how immortal they really are. Immortal as long as they don't kill themselves?" Her head shakes again. "What a mess, Yue. What a mess. Too late to stop now, isn't it? Am I a total fool for thinking I might actually be able to fix any of this? That I can actually help at all?"
Yue shrugs. "Fools get things done," she points out. "Because they don't realize they can't do them. You think one of these Ogdru-Hem is on Abaddon, and you know they're nasty in any case... so what is there to lose in trying to kill it?"
"Not much now. We're enemies, through and through. It's not just a legend or a distant god lurking on a planet somewhere -- it's right here. Here and now, on our world, in our time -- and it killed my PersoCom! It tried to kill everyone here, and it tried to erase me! No, one of us has to die and it's not going to be us. If I have to I'll call the Titanians, the moon base, the Bellerophon, Harmonia and everything else and hammer it so deep in to the planet it'll be in the Sifra's lap," replies Tasha, who balls a fist and thumps it down on the Marker. "Even if it was just me. I hope it has fangs, or a head, or something because I'd like to drag it back here and give it to Gabriel."