Keepstar on the Edge of Infinity

 

The desire to seek remoteness is not about adventure, it's about escape - from other people, from yourself. It's a calling. An obligation, to save your soul.

from Essays on New Eden's Sociological Evolution, 3rd Edition

I've been performing a series of experiments with Needlejack Filaments: those devices that came about as a by-product of the Triglavian Invasion.

I'm loath to get into this sort of thing, as it is experimental technology that is still not completely understood, which is why nobody has yet to get past the pseudo-random nature of the result of using one. Something this small, that doesn't need the power of a stargate, that burrows so deep into hyperspace that you end up 50 or more light-years away from where you activated it, but you won't know where, is to be handled very carefully. Yet these things are available on the open market, to be treated like an amusement. A laugh.

Sometimes I wish I didn't have an imagination. These things are dangerous. You could end up in another dimension. You might not ever come back. I mean, do you know of anyone that this has happened to? Of course not, because they don't come back to report on the experience. How many capsuleers do you know that have just disappeared..?

I ran this series of tests using a basic Probe-class frigate, rigged and fitted to a very basic exploration capability but with a couple of missile launchers for a token feeling of safety.

I bought ten of the 'Noise' filaments, had them set up to interface with the ship's systems and warp drive, and departed from my home system of Kor-Azor Prime. The first filament took me back to Syndicate. There was one other capsuleer in the system, ice-mining in an Endurance. I thought about hitting it for a few minutes but then thought better of it as it would be waste of ammo. No way am I going to catch an Endurance, not in a Probe.

The second 'Noise' took me to the Catch region. I'm not really familiar with it. I've never had much cause to go there. I wasn't interested.

The third one flung me way out to the extremely remote outer limits of the cluster - Cobalt Edge!

I've been here once before, six years ago. To this same system, HB-5L3. This is the end of the line - the last system on the network in the north-east. The one with the stargate that reaches out all the way through the centre of Jove space (or what's left of it) to the Tenal region in the even more remote, empty, godforsaken far north. 

But I understand why people want to go there...

The last time I passed through HB-5L3 six years ago there was nothing here, no human presence to speak of except the maintenance crews in the stargates. One of the system's four terrestrial worlds had a few automated weather stations broadcasting faint signals in the radio bands from its surface, but that was it.

But now, to my great surprise, and despite me going on about remoteness and emptiness, there's a damned Keepstar here:  

Pandemic Horde has two industrial facilities, a couple of Ansiblexes, a Pharolux Cyno Generator, and this thing, the whole complex probably housing a population equal to a small planetary colony, out here on the edge of the cluster. 

What in God's name are they doing out here?

It's possible that by advertising this facility's existence in the public domain like this has violated some sort of Horde opsec, but I doubt they'll care. The sheer remoteness of the system is its best defence. If they're building supercaps out here then there is no better location.

Of course the machinery of the faceless bureaucracy even reaches this far, which means the 'sov' out here is actually owned by the enigmatic Pan-Intergalactic Business Community, but these are Horde structures. Some kind of renter arrangement, presumably.

I couldn't hang around too much because a) this Probe is so cheaply-fitted it does not have a cloaking device, b) the ops crew of that Keepstar will have noted my presence here and told somebody, who would have undoubtedly been on their way here right now, and c) the Rogue Drones eventually showed up with those horrible mutations of ex-capsuleer ships with their probably-forcibly-cyborgised crew facing a deathlife worse than that of a Sansha zombie. 

See what I mean about having too much of an imagination..?

Legion: Shakedown Trials in the Drone Lands

Prologue: Morning - The Ni-Kunni Tea Ritual

My alarm clock goes off at 06:37 NEST. It's actually more of a gentle, benign chime through the oversized holovid on the wall opposite which is all cutting-edge multi-purpose media centre with no expense spared. It currently displays the time in the top right corner in faint green numbers a metre tall. I ignore it. It doesn't stop.

"Cease."

Silence, except I can now discern a gentle, faint humming in the background that my foggy and semi-awakened brain attributes to traffic noise outside. I lie there in bed with my eyes shut for a few more minutes. Then the snooze alarm triggers and the lights in the room begin to grow in brightness. No escape now.

"I said cease."

I sit up in bed and look around. I welcome the quiet since I'm not jacked-in and my implants are banded-down and not functioning, so there is no cluster-noise being transmitted to my head whether I want it or not. I feel grounded.

Planetside.

My bedroom is only the size of a small lounge and has a low ceiling. I went for various shades of 'warm' with the decor: pastel oranges and reds that suggest sunrise or sunset. I've furnished the room with some ancient Ni-Kunni artifacts like a thousand-year-old tapestry rug that I've hung on the wall behind me and opposite the holovid; a kind of cultural juxtaposition that makes me feel less like a capsuleer and more like a normal person who has a normal life. There is a bookshelf by the bed with some actual books in it, such as a hardcopy of The Achuran Book of the Dead (Translated & Unabridged) because I'm riffing on Caldari-lit right now. The wall to my right has a couple of other small displays with some random wall art completing the decor. I have a walk-in wardrobe in here too, which is awesome.

I turn my head in the direction of the holovid and say "Scope News, audio only, low volume. Summary."

Alton Haveri's disembodied dulcet tones emerge from the wall. It's something about the Sisters of EVE again. I get out of bed, do a few stretches, then walk round the end of the bed and out of the door that swishes open as I approach it, then enter the kitchen next-door. The small bathroom is opposite. The lounge area is over there to the right. Lights activate in each part of the apartment as my presence is noted. Haveri's voice follows me from room-to-room.

The kitchen is full of seamless doors and is all sleek metal utilitarianism everywhere, except for the fifty-year-old boiler that I bought in one of Mishi IV's many bazaars, and which now sits on the shelf by the sink. A day started without a properly-brewed fine chai is a day wasted, and synth-chai is totally unacceptable. Haveri is still talking about the SoE as I switch the boiler on. Ahead of me and the sink is a large, closed, slatted blind that is set into the wall and merely an affectation - a style statement - because behind that is a window that is currently electrochromically opaque, so I don't need a blind; but since when did necessity outweigh style?

Then I reach up and open the blind in front of the window and say: "Kitchen window, clear, medium shade." In a nanosecond the window changes from opaque to clear, so quickly that its previous state seems like a false memory.

This is the view out the window:

The vivid torchlight from the blue giant out there is startling. This is the captain's lounge in Empress of Amarr, in high orbit above a gas giant in some system-or-other - I'm not sufficiently awake yet to remember where this is.

"Aura, status please."

Alton Haveri is muted.

[Good morning Cassandra. All systems and subsystems are nominal except for the Scorch frequency crystals' critical serviceability status. I estimate they will become unserviceable by the end of this day based on rate of use. Tactical: no threats observed otherwise I would have woken you. In any case we are cloaked, so we are as invisible as a Caldari's conscience]

I like this new Aura. She could present Scope News with Haveri.

"You're learning..."

[I already know everything that has ever been known about everything there is to know]

"There are always unknown unknowns."

[The unknown is merely a known that is yet to be discovered]

"Never mind. Prep the capsule. Give me thirty minutes and then I'm jacking-in. We have a busy day."

The boiler starts to whistle like the ancient kettle that it is - it's that thing about staying grounded again. This ship is the most exotic kettle in New Eden. A Tech-III-class chai machine. My father always said make no big decisions before chai.

The Molden Heath Sessions

It wasn't long before I moved Empress of Amarr from Mista over to the other ESOCI citadel in the Horaka system in Molden Heath.

There is nothing wrong with Mista. At nine light years it is 'close' to Amarr, yet still quiet and underpopulated except for its fair share of industrialists, but the geometry of the stargate network in the Heath is more favourable for access to a better - lower - classification of space for the sort of operations I was conducting. The biggest bonus is that hardly anybody else lives here so it's easy to get around without attracting attention, which is good when you're learning to operate a ship worth half-a-billion ISK.

In a very short space of time I've developed a fascination with the Heath. I assume the general lack of activity here is in part due to the Republic's position on the Heath being 'open to all and claimable by none', so in consequence nobody bothers with it. I say 'nobody', but I really mean nobody legit. There is a large mining presence because of the prevalence of ancient cometary ice fragments and asteroids; there are some settled planets in the highsec constellations; there is some general industry, and a lot of ruined and derelict ex-industry, but that's it.

I saw all this industrial detritus all around me. Evidence of speculators and of fortunes won and lost. Shattered dreams.

In Horaka, The Wanderers Den is largely empty for most of the time except for the token support staff that live there, so I can do what I like. I can even get my favourite Impetus feeds more easily from here in the Den than I can from Zoohen because the Republic is the Fed's closest ally in New Eden, so FedMart shopping channel still rules, although shipping to here would be problematic (lowsec premiums).

I know that some of our current 'war targets' patrol this region because I've seen the occasional lone roamer show up in Local. They're no big deal - all I see there is the desperation of the unfocused wandering opportunist. The dominant criminality in the Heath is the Angel Cartel, which is a new breed of antagonist for me. I've even seen a new class of vessel here. I know the Dramiel because I owned a civilianised version for a while, but I've never seen one of these before:

I skirmished with the Cartel as part of my weapons workups. Brief encounters lasting less than a minute each. Thing is, Legion vs Cartel is never a fair fight, not when I'm packing Tech-II-class Heavy Pulse Lasers and nanobot-enhanced armour with explosive and kinetic resistances up around 90%. Empress hardly noticed.

'Tis but a scratch, especially when you're carrying nanobots & a repper

Sidebar: do you know what a Matari Hummingbird is? It's spent projectile ammo fired at relativistic speed that misses its target and disappears off into interstellar space, forever, unless it finds someone else, maybe even a millennium from now, when orbital mechanics dictates that some other unfortunate is in the way. It might be you. You'll feel a ting on your hull and put it down to micrometeoroids.

This is why energy weapons are more pure. They're cleaner. There's enough pollution in New Eden already.

But that red nebulosity: it's everywhere.

You see it reflected on the interior walls of stations where those walls face a window.

You see it on the back of your eyelids even when you're jacked-in. You start seeing it in every possible facet of your own future. Amarrian ships always reflect their surroundings better than any other faction's designs because of that armour plate. In Domain, the Legion is yellow. In the State, it is blue.

Out here, it is bronze.

I couldn't even get away from it when I took Empress into the centre of a hollowed-out asteroid to test the finesse of its manoeuvring thrusters.

This is no cave

The frontier vibe that I've mentioned previously is deceptive because the Heath is, in stellar cartographical terms, at the very centre of the New Eden cluster. Even though that 'frontier' is merely a political boundary, abandonment is everywhere. The long-discarded, massive solar harvester arrays in the cam drone still below, summed up the region. Long-since powered-down and without station-keeping capability, orbital precession has turned them away from the star they're supposed to face. Now they're looking in the wrong direction, towards decay.

And yet in spite of that, I could grow to like this vibe, where you can sit in a system for an hour and know you're the only starship for three light-years in any direction, because there are no intra-system shuttles, hardly any InterBus and just the occasional supply ship for whatever it is that passes for settled planets out here. It always activates my inner ancestral homeworld memories and makes me think of the wastes of Mishi IV, which is a full thirty-five light-years from here.

But in low-security space it's always a false quiet. I did think that Molden Heath was to the Republic what Khanid was to the Empire: mostly lowsec, with a quiet that could shatter at any minute if you betray your own vigilance by getting complacent. However Khanid doesn't labour under the contempt of its overseers like the Heath does.


Molden Heath is a lot like the nullsec that borders it; two regions of which are right next-door in stargate terms, but they're both across the other side of the huge cluster-bisecting void known as Divinity's Edge.

To stay on schedule with the Legion's workups, I needed to go there next.

Etherium Reach - Face-to-Face With Several Demons

The aftermath of Operation Spectrum Breach and the rise of the strong-AI Rogue Drones saw the eventual genesis of the Drone Lands. Once capsuleers started going in there, all the regions to the galactic east of the Republic have invited mostly contempt from the Empyrean community for various reasons: either a dearth of exploitable resources or a lack of people to do crimes against. It doesn't stop many of them living there and establishing 'sov'.

Etherium Reach is accessible from Molden Heath through the disputed Skarkon system: controversial after what happened on Skarkon II when the Cartel spontaneously orchestrated the equivalent of a sov grab there.

The Rogue Drone collectives that are to be found in Etherium Reach attack on sight, just like they all do everywhere they occur. One wonders why. Do they just want to be left alone to do their Drone thing? Whose territory is this? Is it really the Drone Lands now or, in the case of the constellation I daytripped in, is it the territory of 'Hells Pirates'?

There are occasional oases of tranquillity in nullsec but very few of these benign-looking terrestrials have anybody living on them other than capsuleer 'PI Colonies' or isolationist weirdo setups that are escaping from something. The planets are deserted partly because these are (supposed to be) the Drone Lands, and partly because not all of them are habitable. Just because an ocean is blue doesn't mean the air is breathable.

In fact I might set up an operation of my own here. A mine, run by bots or contract temps shipped-in. How long would it be before anybody else noticed it? With easy access from the Heath, how can it fail?

I'm digressing. The thing that disturbs me the most about Etherium Reach is that thing over there: the Ginnungagap Nebula. Etherium Reach is close enough to it that you feel like you're staring it in the face. Whatever process is at work in this active bipolar emission nebula that is forming stars like a conveyor belt, casts an enveloping ambience over the region like a warm fireside glow that reflects in every facet of the Legion's armour.

That's what this thing is: a cosmic furnace. It's totally unlike the giant blue pool of The Cauldron that dominated my home planet's night sky for five years at a time. That spectacle felt reassuring and its return to Eclipticum's night was always celebrated by massive festivals.

Not this.

Out here you even get a glimpse of what's behind it: the ghostly white nebulosity in Outer Passage.

Here be more Drones.

As I travelled around the 1VN-XC constellation, I looked out for sporadic Drone presences and exercised the weapons system on them wherever I found them. Some of them are as big as battleships.

And yet for some reason I felt bad about killing them. Do they hit us because we hit them or is it the reverse? 

Are they as bad as Sleepers, or Drifters, or post-Jove or whatever in Divinity's Edge those people really are? I don't believe so. Maybe I should configure Empress to hack into one of these things again before they fall apart: 

All these distractions made it easy to forget why I was really here in nullsec: to fine-tune the ship's antennae and scanning subsystems by tracking down some sites.

Here in the Drone Lands, any sites of archaeological interest have long since been corrupted and absorbed by Rogue Drone infestations and turned into something else entirely.

These sites can still be hacked with a Data Analyzer module. The Legion is effective - better than expected - at hacking sites, although some of that capability is enhanced by my own cybernetic connection to the ship. A Hacker-Legion doesn't match the capabilities of a covert ops frigate (nothing does), but with the subsystem optimization it is close enough to be reliable and exactly what I need for the long-duration excursions I commissioned it for.

The other essential system for hacking sites in a Legion is a large-capacity, battleship-class 'prop mod' for crossing the often large distances between hackable containers, which otherwise would take forever and leave you fully exposed; but my God it gives the Legion the acceleration and manoeuvrability of a Titan. Definite downside there; some more tactics need to be refined.

On the whole though, these tests were a complete success. I even scored some quality Augmented Drone blueprints in the process along with most of the components needed to build them.

On this basis I called an end to the workups and decided that Empress was ready - that I was ready - for its first excursion. 

Apart from the drones, no other entities saw me while I was here, and nobody found me. Covert ops subsystem rules.

I'm a Signaleer, so I enjoy a kind of freedom of the cluster where not everybody wants to kill me. If I operate in a nullsec region like this, no doubt I'll be reported on somebody's intel channel and the 'nv' code will be issued in my name. It means 'No Visual'.

Some of you might say she's with Signal Cartel and leave me alone. Some of you might try to hunt me down anyway; but with Combat Probes on board too, I'll have seen you long before you ever find me, and you'll never find me anyway because I conduct ops when most of the rest of New Eden is asleep.

Sweet dreams, boys...

Back to the Heath

I flew back to Horaka and conducted some final tests with a Mobile Depot facility outside the citadel's front door. Then I docked, and declared the Legion fully serviceable and ready for action.

I needed a few days to take care of some loose ends before launching in the Legion again, so I headed back to Mista in an Ibis 'rookie ship' - known as a Corvette now - that I had found abandoned near the Horaka - Orien stargate and taken possession of.

I do this rookie-ship-repo thing often. I just keep them and use them as shuttles. Although I do wonder whether this is in fact Grand Theft Ibis and is strictly credo-compliant.

This ship's designator said 'Dave Stark's Ibis'. I looked up Dave Stark and checked out his history. Turns out he's ex-Pandemic Horde, ex-WiNGSPAN, and appears to be a 'wormholer'. I don't really care to be honest, which means some of Molden Heath must be rubbing off on me.

I mention this because I flew from Horaka back to Mista on the day that the first generation of 'Alpha Clones' was announced, along with some other info on new sightings of Drifter activity in the cluster. If the Drifters are back, then that is perfect justification for disappearing into nullsec for a while. From what I've heard about this new incursion, I may be gone some time.

Alphas: welcome to New Eden. Your timing is perfect because space is about to get very busy. My advice: be careful what you wish for, because there are plenty of other capsuleers out there who are willing to give it to you and then take it away again.

We're heading for interesting times...

Signal Cartel @ The Devil's Dig Site - 9/7/118

Prologue: Theology Council Tribunal station orbiting Zoohen III - 1900hrs

Signal Cartel is incredibly professional. The outwardly-informal, communal, inclusive, egalitarian and chilled-out vibe that the corporation projects externally, has a deep specialist knowledge of the craft of exploration at its core. Signal Cartel therefore manages the rare feat of walking the walk and talking the talk. Then there is the strict non-aggression ‘credo’ that is enforced by the velvet-glove/iron-fist policy of the boss, reformed pirate Mynxee. Flight data recorder telemetry aka the ‘killmail’ tells no lies and if you appear on one that is not your own, then it’s tea & biscuits with management. If you don’t believe me then check the feed below:

As well as access to an unparalleled knowledgebase, members also have access to hangars full of exploration-equipped frigates provided at the corporation’s expense and much more. This means we also act as an education and training facility for new capsuleers that is far more effective than the cookie-cutter syllabi of the basic training academies. Here in Signal it's all about the practical operational advice that does not appear in any instruction manual. Yet in no way does access to any of this resource imply an obligation in return. Members are entirely free to base themselves anywhere and do their own thing if they want to so long as they refrain from killing people, which is fine by me, because as I’ve said many times on this journal, I’m a lover, not a fighter.

I became a capsuleer for science: to learn, to discover, to see parts of the cluster that my long-dead baseline self would never have experienced.

This is why I fit right in here.

So I was excited when shortly after I joined Signal, management announced an expedition to the Devil’s Dig Site in The Forge. It would be a fleet exercise, focused on exploring and investigating an archaeological site in the Otitoh system that is known to contain evidence of human occupation of the cluster in the pre-Dark Ages epoch, possibly even pre-dating the collapse of the EVE Gate.

This was exactly what I joined Signal for: not just doing my own thing, but playing an active part. I signed up for the expedition immediately.

In the meantime, since I started operating from Zoohen I've found that having a base in an outlying system just a few light years away from the Fed means it is far easier to procure trashy holofeeds from across the border, even in this Theology Council station which conveniently does not have its own Censor.

It's easier because there is a Core Complexion station right here in Zoohen that receives the feeds direct, so thanks to corruptible comms engineers and several untidy hacks through that station into this one, I’ve got into this drama series from Impetus (who else?) called UUA Is So Far Away, about an exiled Jovian trying to return to his homeland but discovering that it no-longer exists; so it's got historical accuracy, existential crisis, philosophical quandary, a torrid love triangle and totally inaccurate science.

For my sins I was binge-watching the seventh series of this compulsive dreck when a familiar chime sounded the arrival of a message. New corp, new message. It was the Devil’s Dig Site Expedition Briefing from expedition leader Markus Vulpine.

This is what I mean about total professionalism:

After reading the briefing I decided to raise my game. I joined the ‘Hacker Wing’. I would bring another Anathema; not my regular Hayabusa, now docked in Thera, but a new, purpose-built Anathema. The comprehensive briefing ensured the liberating certainty of a known objective, so unlike a standard exploration/investigation fit where contingency is everything, with this operation there was no need for either a cloaking device, a suite of Scan Probes or a Data Analyzer, because we were hiding from nobody, we knew exactly where we were going and exactly what was there. I could specialize my ship’s fit around the required Relic Analyzer and the need for some armor tank against an expected hostile intervention from Rogue Drones known to inhabit the site. Even then, the Hacker Wing had at least ten combat-equipped vessels to call on as a defensive screen - the ‘DPS Wing’ - some of which would be battleships and Tech-III-class cruisers.

This would not be amateur night.

Total professionalism.

So I resolved to spend some time equipping the new ship (which would be named Hacker Republic), before starting the long transit to the Okkelen constellation in The Forge, where the fleet was due to assemble in a few days' time at the Lai Dai station orbiting Otitoh IV's tiny 500km-diameter moon.

I would have time to kill because I intended to arrive early, however from this Caldari megacorp station there was no way I was going to be able to receive Impetus broadcasts, so I couldn’t finish the seventh series of UUA Is So Far Away.

This was probably a good thing.

Part 1: Gods Walked Among Us

Two days later…

The expedition fleet assembled in the Lai Dai place. Some had rushed over here that afternoon from the first day of the SeyCon5 conference in the Seyllin system. All of top management were here and there were nearly 30 of us in total. The docking bay was a fabulous sight, with far more than its normal share of exotic ships that are designed to be neither seen nor heard, using the language of curiosity rather than death. I’ve seen a Nestor precisely once before and here there were two in one place. Several examples of the ubiquitous (to us) Astero, some Stratios, a Navy Omen, three Tengu and a Drake, and a ‘Logi Wing’ that was assigned to repair the Hacker Wing if any of us were attacked by the Drones. Conversely, my Anathema was the sole example of its type.

Unlike in Darwinism where a fleet departure time was always an abstract concept that was communicated to nobody until after Jzma and Mechoj had already left, here in Signal we had a precise zero-hour and we damn-well stuck to it. At the exact appointed time we undocked from the Lai Dai station and assembled at a pre-determined safe-spot elsewhere in the system.

[sidebar: it was good to see Kobura Juraxxis in this fleet. He won’t remember, but a year ago I crossed paths with Kobura somewhere in Cobalt Edge and we did comms in an otherwise empty Local channel for a while. This is how I knew about Signal Cartel back then, and how I knew it was meant to be.]

At this staging point we finalised briefings, at least four of us took some cam drone stills and we set up the live broadcast feed (!) for the rest of the corporation to tune into from afar. Then we set off for the site. Being part of a fleet, this was where I got a chance to see the new instantaneous vector symbology at work on tactical, which is another of those mandatory capsuleware upgrades that fall into the category of 'solutions in search of a problem'. At least it looks nice.

The nominal entrance to the Devil's Dig Site was where the baseliner scientists, academics and archaeologists live in those standardised hab modules you see all over the place. They appeared to be guarded by Caldari warships who didn’t see fit to bother us, probably because it wouldn’t have lasted long (for them).

We briefed some more while slowboating over to the acceleration gate at the site entrance, then we hit a point-of-no-return. This was it: it was on.

 

 

When we activated the gate and warped to the first part of the Devil’s Dig Site itself, we split up as briefed and the Hacker Wing got to work. There were a large number of artifacts to investigate. A couple of times I got to the required distance from an artifact and discovered somebody else was already hacking it, so that wasted some time, but I found one eventually and went through the usual drill with the Relic Analyzer. All of this while under constant threat of attack from hostile Rogue Drones.

 

These were difficult hacks that were full of restoration nodes, and I thanked God that I’d had the foresight to fit Hacker Republic with an Emission Scope Sharpener modification otherwise I would not have completed them.

The artifact I found contained the expected evidence indicating this site’s builders were the Talocan civilization, which dates this site to at least 15,000 years-old. This site in Okkelen was where the first evidence of this pre-Dark Ages civilization was ever discovered; a civilization that is now suspected - believed - to have attained a higher level of technological achievement than we have now, even surpassing the Jove, and going on to inhabit Anoikis an unbelievably long time before we ever found it by accident. 

You’ve heard the rumours about what Anoikis is; the feeds about Caroline’s Star; wondered what all those Talocan structures are doing in Thera and elsewhere in Anoikis; the arguments, theories, papers about not only what Anoikis is, but where it is and when it is. Anoikis was manufactured they say. Anoikis is New Eden in the future, they say. Caroline’s Star was no accident of nature they say. The spacetime metric in Anoikis was modified by the Talocan to suit their purposes they say. The Talocan could remake the universe in their image. The Talocan are Gods and we are not fit to look upon their likenesses.

Rumours, not answers.

If I’d had more time - with less external risk - to riff on the significance of these objects being tractored into Hacker’s hold, I think I might have put them back. I have some small-scale Talocan stuff in my own collection of hangar artifacts along with Sleeper Data Libraries and other related, incredibly ancient and utterly inscrutable relics. Sometimes it scares me. I look at the alien symbols on them and I swear they say don't get too close because you are not yet ready for the truth.

Then again, my own ship contains tech derived directly from relics appropriated from this location. The databases classify the object I retrieved from here as a ‘Solid Atomizer‘, which is used in the production of cloaking devices. I’m already flying around with Talocan tech. What kind of explorer-scientist would I be if I didn’t follow this experiment through to its conclusion?

While I was once again taking a cosmic perspective, the Hacker Wing cleared this part of the site with no failed hacks and a complete take, but sadly, Cali Estemaire’s Catalyst got the full focus of the Drones’ attention and was destroyed before the rest of the fleet could intervene. We knew that the Drones would deploy this focus tactic at some point so we were ready for it, but now the DPS Fleet was one ship down.

After clearing this section, the rest of us gathered our composure, made repairs, recharged, re-briefed, and got ready for the core of the Devil’s Dig Site. To her eternal credit, Cali stayed on the field in her capsule and did some media when she had every right to leave the site.

Total commitment.

 Part 2: The Ancient Temple and the Sun Reader Monolith

We warped into the site’s centre and saw for ourselves how the ancient Talocan temple based here has been desecrated and transformed into a monstrous Drone Hive. There were even more hackable artifacts here with correspondingly greater opposition from the Drones, which one must assume have all learned to adapt and absorb the Talocan tech into their own architecture. What in Divinity's Edge will eventually emerge from that obnoxious mashup?

This part of the site is also the location of the ‘Sun Reader Monolith’. There is, to our knowledge, precisely one other example of this bizarre structure in the whole of New Eden: the monolith in the Dead End system more than 30 light years away in Genesis. There are known to be considerably more of them in Anoikis. The monoliths emit nothing, reflect everything EM including visible light and are, to us and our tech, essentially gigantic dead mirrors. I was sad that I didn’t get chance to view this one close-up because I was so busy hacking and busy not getting killed, but then if I had, who knows what it might have done to me?

The scientific principle of the simplest-explanation-being-the-truth would dictate that the Sun Reader Monolith is also of Talocan construction given that it is co-located with the ancient temple. It could be anything: a monument, a tomb, a nav beacon or even a transit conduit of some kind, and if it is, can it be activated? Would anybody want to? Where the hell would it lead to? To the other monolith in Dead End? To Anoikis where the others are? To wherever the Talocan went? Did they transcend themselves out of this reality into one of their multiple dimensions of hypereuclidian mathematics?

Maybe the monolith is just an inert lump of material, taunting humanity’s dislike of an information vacuum. Maybe seeing this thing from afar means I just became a more ardent believer in the Old Earth Myth. The implications of this place, its contents, and the ancient, long-extinct culture that built it here are that our civilization is playing around in somebody else's house. One day its owners might return and take it back.

Sometimes I get scared by this career path I chose. Possession of knowledge requires responsibility.

As before, the DPS Wing drew the attention of the cruiser-sized Drones and kept them away from the hackers, although one of the Drones got within 6km of me - thank God for the Anathema’s low observability and signature otherwise, even with armor hardeners, I would have been toast. The hack during this phase was more difficult and took three attempts to get through another forest of restoration nodes. I may even have been the last of us to finish the operation, which meant for a short time I had every defensive ship in the fleet watching my back, which was nice. 

By the end of the operation we had successfully hacked every single artifact. A 100% success rate, with just one ship lost to the Drones. With more Drones arriving on the grid, we wasted no more time and returned to the safe-spot outside the site. 

 

Part 3: The Aftershow Party

As is usual when I visit scientifically-important places, I left the Devil's Dig Site with more questions than I'd arrived with, and with answers to none.

Talocan. 

What were you? 

Where are you?

On the other hand, a fleet of ships in one place is always an impressive sight.

Time for a post-op photo op:

 

Then we invoked the standard post-op fireworks procedure:

 

 

 

We returned to the Lai Dai place and docked with the collective satisfaction of a job well done: our raid on the Devil’s Dig Site was a resounding success, a testament to sound planning and perfect execution. The whole thing took less than an hour too. A speed hack in every sense.

Hacker Republic had performed perfectly. I was never targeted even once by any of the Drones, not even during that close pass. Covert Ops ships are awesome.

So are fleet warps:

 

We even laid down some more fireworks outside the Lai Dai station. This is why the Zkillboard service - that ceaseless accountant of competitive killing - rates Signal Cartel as 98% Snuggly.

Some of us (including me) stayed at Lai Dai and didn’t leave the Otitoh system until the next morning, with the safe knowledge that capsule neuroembryonic fluid cures hangovers. A few of us left immediately to head straight back to Seyllin for day two of SeyCon5. Some more left for parts as-yet unknown.

We don’t hang around. We only look forward.

Because the explorer's path never ends.

Because you can’t stop the signal.

Footnote:

As I mentioned briefly above, I wasn't the only one of us who documented this expedition. For more righteous imagery of the cosmos, the Devil's Dig Site and more ships, check out Cali Estemaire’s image file, Thorin Shardani’s image file and Razorien’s image file.