The archive in Ainu Depot was a completely different world than much of the rest of the station. As soon as a Sister passed through the ample library security, she was greeted with warm lighting, wooden furniture, and the smell of old dusty books. While the vast majority of the Sisterhood's data archives were kept digitally, they had amassed enough physical journals, research notes, and old-fashioned books to fill several large rooms with both paper and the smell of old books. You could access all the digital archives from the Matsuda, but the physical archives were still kept on Ainu.
"There's that wonderful smell again", thought Ayane as she paused to take a slow, deep breath in the small library foyer. She had received a tip about a possible research lead, so even though she was in an excited hurry, she still paused for a second to take in the dusty smell of the books before she got used to it. As she rounded the corner she noticed Maiko, the research librarian, reading some bodice-ripper romance novel behind the desk. She looked up when she saw Ayane and smiled over her reading glasses.
"You look in a hurry today. Big breakthrough?"
"We'll see,"smiled Ayane. "One of the newer recruits told me about a file she stumbled into - research notes from a Sister named Kanae Ito - who claimed to have found some writings about some old artifacts from Earth. I almost dismissed it, but she has a pretty keen eye. The notes were from the 760s or so."
"Well, you know that everything we have back there is indexed, so since you have the name I can definitely help you find the file. What kind of artifacts was she researching, out of curiosity?"
Ayane paused for a second, she knew she might not be taken seriously if she revealed her true research intentions, but Maiko had always been nothing but helpful. After a few silent seconds, she decided it was worth the risk of embarassment to tell Maiko.
"You've read those theories claiming that one or all of the Imperial Regalia of Japan made it onto the Kusari sleeper ship, right?"
"And they're hiding around Sirius, waiting to be found? It's the oldest conspiracy theory in Kusari. Don't tell me you're going down that rabbit hole. I told you to ease up on the cardamine and synthetic marijuana!"
"I know, I know, it sounds crazy. I was researching the origin of the myth, actually, and I stumbled across some research that made me think it's based on the existence of one or more objects. I'm skeptical the object or objects actually came from Earth, but I'm starting to believe that there's something behind the story. Maybe an artifact unrelated to Earth, maybe something else."
"It can't hurt to look, I guess. Fact check and all that. The computer says Ms. Ito's notes are on the 2nd floor, in section 5B. Should be the bottom shelf on the left, but I'll write down the call number for you."
"Thanks,"smiled Ayane as she turned and walked up the stairs towards the Physical Collections section.
The call number led her to a large box of research materials that included several notebooks and a few piles of loose notes. They didn't look like they had been put back with quite the same care that she expected from Maiko, so Ayane suspected she had found the same notes her younger friend had rummaged through. She hauled the crate to a nearby table, got a large cup of coffee from the front of the library, and got to work reading through Kanae's research notes.
. . .
What Ayane found was initially unremarkable on its surface, but Ayane was impressed by the diligence of Kanae's sourcing. She found drafts of several historical research papers concerning the Imperial Regalia, and all included copious footnotes to assert even the most mundane assertions. The bulk of Kanae's research seemed to detail what she kept referring to as the Jewel of Kusari. In addition to meticulously detailing the history of any and all documentation Kanae could find concerning the Jewel , her research also claimed that the Jewel of Kusari was extant somewhere in Sirius. Kanae had been unable to track down a physical location, but she had documented several possible leads on locations.
As she scanned through Ms. Ito's footnotes, Ayane noticed the reason her student had probably tipped her off about the notes. Many of Kanae's footnotes referenced collections housed in two libraries Ayane had never heard of, and these sources were heavily cited in sections that discussed possible locations for the Jewel. The citations referenced two data archives, both compiled in the late 700s and comprised of earlier sources. Notes in the portfolio suggested these data archives were hidden in several spots around Sirius. Discovering digital copies of ancient documents that had since been destroyed would been an incredible boon to Ayane's research.
As she continued to read through Kanae's work, Ayane found a document detailing the location of one of the two data archives. Surprisingly, one of the archives referenced was on Planet Malta, in the Omicron Alpha system. Ayane was ecstatic that the archive had yielded at least some actionable data. The other archive was somewhere in the Barrier Nebula, but parts of the exact location were too damaged for Ayane to make them out. She decided to make the archive in Omicron Alpha her first priority, and hoped it would shed some light on the location of the other. She also reasoned that wherever the other archive was in the Barrier Nebula, it would probably be more difficult to reach than Malta. The Barrier was full of forces hostile to the Sisterhood.
. . .
As she packed up the materials for the evening, Ayane thought about how she would manage a trip to Malta. Ayane had trafficked cardamine when she was younger, so she had several connections on Malta likely to help her out upon her arrival.