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Project Codename: PILLAR - Thexare - 05-07-2018
The installation known among the Octavarium Intelligence Commission as "the Pillar" was a truly massive structure, formerly (Note: Current status undetermined.) occupied by an unidentified "cultist" faction. The cultists were, as far as the Minister of Intelligence could determine, nowhere to be found, acting instead through mechanical proxies.
Given the canisters of biotoxic nanobots salvaged from their wreckage, this was probably for very good reason.
A lone Ahoudori-class exploration corvette slowly worked its way through the Makassar field, carefully keeping emissions minimal to avoid drawing attention. This was not the Victoria they had hoped for; Octavarium shared the space with Crayter, the IMG, and Unione Corse. And other things best left unmentioned. That corvette, OCS Save Yourself, was staffed by fully double the usual crew, and her hold had unusual cargo.
At the bridge, a blonde woman looked over the structure. "Fuck me that's a big base," she said, her accent clearly betraying her Bretonian roots. "I'm not sure the signal will carry far enough."
Behind her, the pale Minister of Intelligence stood utterly still, watching the base intently. "This will take a while, Eve," he said in his typically cold, some would say almost dead way. "We must be thorough. The Yersinia-type nanobots we seized likely originated on this station. Nothing can be left to chance."
Evelynn Fairfax had been with Natio Octavarium on their previous colony in Kansas, where she got to know Victor as a calculating plotter, unaccustomed to working for the benefit of others. Their exile to the void had changed him... somewhat. "Bring us in," she said to a red-haired woman at the helm. "We need to get ready for the operation."
"Understood Be careful."
Evelynn and Victor silently made their way to cargo access, where a series of consoles had been added and modified. As they arrived, the proximity alert beeped, beeped again, beeped a third time, and then rapidly beeped three more times. "We're in range. Deploy Drones 1 and 2," Evelynn ordered as Victor activated the consoles. Each had four monitors, arranged in an inverted T shape. These corresponded with the four cameras mounted on the Aquila Defense Systems RD-3 Mellori drone - forward, left, right, and rear. The two black drones gracefully made their way out of the airlock and approached the base, sending a docking signal as they did. The docking bay dutifully complied, and a followup signal upon entry closed the doors and, approximately thirty seconds later, opened the way into the base.
The completely black base.
"That's odd," Victor started. "There's clearly power..." he muttered, cycling through the Mellori's vision enhancements. "Thermal isn't helping much, light-amp is coming up completely blank. Didn't want to draw attention, but turn on the lights."
"The drones tending this base may not need vision, if they're programmed with the layout," Eve mused, following the Minister's lead. "Or there may be a central administration office where we can turn on the lights. I doubt it'll be that easy though."
"Unlikely. Activate mapping, we'll work our way up. It's a shorter trip than the rest of the base."
The entry level of the Pillar was vast and utterly empty. Huge rooms flanked the airlock, and seemed likely to be meant as cargo warehouses. A bit further in were a series of identical smaller rooms - temporary visitor lodging? Offices? Those were the most likely explanations, but neither could be completely sure.
"Could be a shopping mall," a voice from behind Evelynn said suddenly.
"Darren, what the hell are you doing here?" she asked, her hand resting on her electrolaser pistol.
"Oh, did I forget to tell you?" Victor replied, completely focused on the drone's operation. "Wilson here is on the Pillar project. We need a competent engineer, and he's the best Jones has. Even with that little... arm problem." He paused, and his drone came to a stop. "Shopping mall, though... there's an idea. Unlikely, but... a useful one in the future, maybe."
In the center of the structure, the two drones reached an elevator shaft, and neither drone operator could find a gap for access. Eve chimed in, "If we could get some sort of manipulator arm on these things, an inverted vice setup might work."
"Doubt it," Darren responded, shaking his head. "The Mellori platform can't support the weight of a hydraulic spreader and retain power efficiency. Probably need a miniaturized thermal cutter if we can't get the power restored from this level. A light manipulator arm would be good anyway, safer to interface with the station's equipment that way."
Victor nodded agreement and resumed mapping, quickly realizing that the 'back' half of the entry level was completely identical to the half already mapped. That was no excuse to not be thorough, but the entire floor was completely, utterly, worryingly empty. The suspected warehouses had nothing in them, not even an empty box. The floor had nothing but a thin layer of dust. There were no furnishings, and the only light fixtures were those built into the walls and ceiling. The station was nearly pristine, as though it had just been built and was waiting for a new owner.
But the drones that had departed from the Pillar a few days prior made that seem... unlikely.
"Wilson, call Jones, get the Fort Resolution out here. Now. I want full scanner coverage all around this station - thermal, etheric wake, light-amp, electric flux, signal interception, everything. If we're lucky enough to have intercepted a convoy supplying a new structure, we need to keep it from getting occupied."
Evelynn spoke up immediately. "Idea. Leave the Melloris here. We'd have to run them through extreme decon to retrieve them safely, and if we leave them on the base..."
"... then we'll know if there's any onboard activity. Wilson, can the Mellori be armed?"
Darren scratched the back of his head with his artificial arm. "It'll have to be kinetic, and low-recoil, but yeah. Worried about them being weaponized?"
"It's a legitimate risk. If we get back and those two drones are gone, I want to be ready."
A few hours later, ADSV Fort Resolution arrived and began deploying detection satellites, and the Commission left the two Mellori drones inside the base. Without the drones powered on, signals wouldn't be able to get to the satellites, but it was the best option they could come up with.
Project Codename: PILLAR - Thexare - 05-15-2018
Another day saw OCS Save Yourself hovering near the Pillar, and the Dorado-class ferry Green River drifting into the dock. Upon landing, the Green River's aft door opened, and eight bipedal drones marched out. The drones were heavily based on the standard service robots used on many small outposts, but had remote-control functionality added to override the onboard basic automated functionality.
"Shiranui, first deployment complete. Standing by," said a voice through Save Yourself's comm system.
"Sundog, acknowledged," the blonde operating half the drone controls replied. The same arrangement was used as with the Mellori recon on the previous visit, but revised due to the different drone systems in use. Each monitored four drones, with one designated as the lead and the other three set to automatically follow in formation, preserving the same near-360° vision the Mellori drones provided. This time, though, the two squads moved with distinct purpose rather than general exploration. Evelynn's squad moved toward the floor's administration controls, and Victor's to the elevator.
The administration room was barely distinguishable from any other on the floor, its only distinct feature being a console built into the wall which Evelynn's drones dutifully marched toward. Typing wasn't in the programming for the drone's movement, so using the console involved laboriously hunting and pecking with one finger. "This is absurd. I'm controlling a drone and stuck typing like this."
"Safest way to do it," Darren said. "A direct code interface would expose the drones to potential viruses."
"I know, but it's just so weird. Almost as weird as these systems being so familiar. Who built this thing?"
"I sometimes wonder," Victor mused as his drones waited by the elevator, "if this cultist tech is like ours, or if ours is like theirs. What did Ageira find on Manhattan..."
"Alright, looks like you can reactivate... some of the base," Darren said, reading the display over Evelynn's shoulder. "Not much, the reactor's pretty weak. It doesn't seem to be particularly damaged, just drained. Should be easily fixable. Let's do the elevator and one level up, that should be well within its capacity."
Evelynn followed Darren's instructions and, in a few minutes' time, the elevator doors opened behind... in front of... in the vicinity of Victor's drone squad. Their march into the elevator was a little clumsier than Evelynn's squad, but without incident. The elevator itself moved slowly, but steadily, subtly picked up some speed. About one minute of elevator travel later, the doors opened. Another dimly-lit floor greeted Victor, with a layer of dust over everything. Floor, walls, ceiling, and lights. This place had been abandoned for some time. As with the entry level, there seemed to be little equipment here to point to any particular purpose, and without the docking bays it became harder to determine one. Hallways led to smaller rooms, perhaps administrative offices, At the end of the first corridor, the room to the squad's right had something in the corner. Victor guided the drones in and turned on their lights.
"That's.. Huh. That's unexpected."
"What is," Evelynn asked flatly, focused on monitoring the console in front of her lead drone.
"A pile of corpses."
Project Codename: PILLAR - Thexare - 05-29-2018
Several further excursions into the Pillar met with the same results. Empty rooms, no equipment, occasional pile of corpses. Though beyond unlikely, Evelynn couldn't completely convince herself that this wasn't simply an extremely large and ill-managed mortuary.
By now, though, exploration was done and a solution to the contamination had been devised. It was so simple, really. All stations use recycled air. To avoid stagnant odors, auxiliary fans are strategically placed in every room, and can be powered on to forcibly recirculate air. The air then runs through a filtering system. These filters can then be sealed off and disposed of, in case of airborne pathogens. Yet somehow, perhaps due to the stresses of their deep-space exodus, this had not occurred to the Octavarians investigating the Pillar. Instead, a Crayterian visiting Melbourne Station suggested it when Darren and Evelynn were brainstorming ideas.
ADSV Darebin, a Sunburst freighter, docked and deployed fifty semi-autonomous worker drones and ten remote cargo haulers, with each hauler loaded with airtight polymer coffins. Nothing fancy, just enough to keep the corpse-pile neat and orderly. The drones were programmed to properly package the deceased so the Aquila technicians aboard the nearby OLV Headlong Flight wouldn't have to observe the morbid work, only needing to direct the drones to each floor in sequence.
Headlong Flight was well-suited to the role. Originally a Bison-class cargo frigate, she served as the final prototype test platform for the Limelight-YYZ array before its implementation in the Huginn project. While the full array was removed, many of the internal components were kept, and the signal boosters were being put to use keeping all the remote drones orderly.
Cleanup proceeded with mechanical efficiency. Aquila technicians directed the drones, the drone AI took over to pack and sort the corpses, and then they proceeded to the next floor. As haulers filled, they returned to Darebin, where one remaining drone unloaded them and replaced their cargo with cases of nanoscale xenobiotic filters. While the polymer coffins were completely opaque, corpses are heavy.
The Pillar's vertical orientation sped work along as well, thanks to the existence of numerous elevators. Each of course had an emergency stairway nearby, in addition to several other stairways around the facility, but running a cargo drone up the stairs is a daunting task.
Over the course of approximately eight hours, 97 corpses were found, packed, and removed. The staff working on the operation slept aboard Headlong Flight, so they could begin the filter installation as soon as possible. Filter installation was a more tedious, time-consuming process, in part because the drones weren't programmed for that. Instead, Aquila technicians had to directly control the drones for the installation, adding a level of slow clumsiness to the affair that added literal days to the work.
The recycling systems were activated once all the filters were in place, and the Pillar was left to refresh its atmosphere for one day, with the drones left where they worked. Then, the process repeated - new filters, further atmospheric cycling. After a third cycle, when even dust was gone from the air, the filters were replaced one last time.
Scanners picked up no contamination within the installation. The Pillar was clean.