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It's been centuries since the Autonomous Union waged a sudden war against the universe. With the AU on the verge of victory, a strike team from the best of the remaining forces of the universe destroyed the AU central command ship. With such a blow the AU was quickly defeated, having lost all strategic coordination and communication. While most AU units where accounted for after the war, some special units and their weapons were not. Now in orbit of a desert planet with a large debris zone built up around it you're ship has detected small energy signatures along with a faint SOS beacon on the planets surface.

(If you have questions, pm me!)

A sleek, black starship hung in orbit around a nameless desert world. It was a small vessel, ideal for a crew of perhaps half a dozen - though only two were aboard now. At least the trip had been comfortable. It was moderately armed, moderately armored, moderately agile and moderately stealthy - a solid, well-rounded ship with no particular specialties, and no particular weaknesses. This had, admittedly, not helped Special Agent Royanna Kallenger in the past. Despite having much of the Empire's best technology at her disposal, she always seemed to run into trouble that made all the tech in the 'Verse as useful as sticks. But at least it would be able to handle a few good hits getting through that debris field, and certainly the mounted autoguns would be a reliable means of dispatching with any automated defenses down planetside.

Even considering the 'briefing' documents that her new pseudo-comrade had delivered before they left, Kallenger was not comfortable with how this was starting out. After all, the information she had been given was hardly worth the paper it had been printed on - at least, in her opinion. But then, Kallenger's primary skill in life was the gathering of information. She considered herself one of the best in the field, so it would be hard to live up to her standards.

But no name? Well, that wasn't terribly unlikely. Probably this planet had a few different designations, but those would be meaningless numbers and letters. There would be little she could infer from that alone - and there simply had not been enough time to do her own research before leaving.

So she was going into this mostly blind, and she didn't like it - but what else was she going to do? The hunt had been slow - she had lost her ultimate target yet again, and he could be anywhere among two hundred billion suns. The best place to start would be wherever she could find interesting technology - and the documents had definitely enticed her in that regard. Ancient or lost technology was her favorite, after all - and this stuff hadn't been touched for centuries! If she could get even the minutest bit closer to understanding the mystery of how Duros Aller created the Devil's Eye, it would be worth it.

But as she stood there at the controls, staring out with disapproving green eyes at the rusty desert world that hung in space before her, something happened. A beep. Eyes darted to the relevant screen and, sure enough - it was a distress call.

Royanna frowned, and just looked at the reading for a minute.


This was bound to be trouble.

She was here for lost technology, not for a rescue mission. Whoever was sending out that signal was of no interest to her. Royanna Kallenger did not aid strangers - often not even if she would receive something in return.

But then again, it was likely that anyone coming to this planet would be doing so for the same reason as herself - and there was a good possibility that they would know better than she did how to get to the good stuff.

Still, she would have preferred this to be a scavenging and exploration sort of mission, not a halfhazard, quixotic search-and-rescue operation.

After a long while, she spoke up without taking her eyes from the readings on the screen.

"Lennox. What do you make of this?"

Plugging a information jack into her neck, Amber takes a more direct 'look' at the signal. With a scowl she stays quite for several long moments before finally replying "According to the IFF data I have available it's an old AU signal...or it could be an old GE one from around the same time frame...but it's leaning more towards an AU signal."

Going silent for several more moments before groaning in annoyance she continues on "They appear similar and this one we are hearing now is either corrupted...or the centuries old data I have is. I honestly cannot tell much more, other then maybe guess at the size of the ship the beacon would have come from. As big as the signal radius is, it'd have to be a titan sized ship. None of those floating in the debris though. It may have fallen to the planet.

Unplugging herself from the ship, she looks at Kallenger with a questioning expression "So...check the shoal zone first for what we need? Or planet side for the titan? Did the GE or pre-GE even Have a titan sized ship class back then? I know the AU did....and that it would likely have what I...we need....maybe even more then that."

All the while, Kallenger's gaze would shift between Lennox, and the occasional glimpse to the monitors and instruments - though when Lennox spoke, she had her full attention - as intensive as that might be - nodding slowly and thoughtfully along with her words.

She pondered this last question for a moment, looking down at the floor before coming to a decision with a shake of the head. "No, it wouldn't be one of ours. We've only had ships of that size for, maybe a century now. Unless they had something before Earth IV...No, wouldn't be ours."

She turned to the frontal window again, leaned on the control board with both hands, and considered their next move.

"We'll head down. Chances are that anything worth scavenging in the debris belt would have been picked up already - though, I'll take us around in that direction first, so you can keep an eye out just in case. "

Whether she liked to admit it or not, Kallenger was inexperienced in this particular division of technology. She would know in theory what was useful - but she was no engineer and the one who had been using the tech for ages prior would definitely be the better one to be looking for it.

With practiced ease, Royanna maneuvered the little ship in toward the debris belt, navigating carefully so as to avoid collisions. There was one good hit on the starboard side which rocked the ship slightly and elicited a guttural series of explicit curses from the irritated pilot - but the instruments showed only an unseemly dent.

As they approached the geostationary position above where the signal was emanating from, though, something occurred to the Agent and she turned to look at Lennox suspiciously - not of her, but of the point she had noted.

"So. Any idea as to what might have kept scavengers away for all this time? I imagine ti would have to be a pretty compelling argument."

Scanning the debris for whatever could be a significant find, Amber leans back in her seat while thinking on the question of why there was no evidence of scavengers "Normally I would say it's possible some automated ship defenses are still active, but I've not detected any modern vessels wrecks nor weapon signatures in the area so that could not be it. Records show colonization attempts happened here before the war but ended badly. This is a pretty out of the way system even for scavengers....maybe it's all just been forgotten. That does happen someti...Hold it. Take us back to the object that hit us."

Sharing her screen over to kallenger, Amber leans in close to her screen and highlights a extremely faint energy reading from the object "That's the main section of a AU large mobile weapon. It's pretty badly damaged but it looks like the reactor is still active. That's worth taking a look at. It could still have good data in it's systems...that and a working reactor would be a good find. Not many survive the war to be recovered, least in a working condition."

While technically special units in their own right, enough mobile weapons had been recovered during and after the war to learn about most of their secrets. How the reactor worked was one of the few things not learned, due to the fact that disabling or destroying the reactor was the best way to stop a mobile weapon. What was known however was that the reactor was a single, scaled up model of the type used by twin-reactor androids.

She listened carefully as always, nodding along here and there in that habitual fashion which seemed to say yes, I see.

A forgotten planet? It was definitely possible. It had happened before. The Galaxy was a very Wide place. With all the habitable planets spread out between the two-and-some billion stars, it was not uncommon for even inhabited plantets to become isolated for one reason or another. In fact, it was common enough that the Empire recognized a class of civilizations which had become so isolated that they reverted to a technological dark age and barbarism - M-Class.

Tie in the sheer sum of planets with the immense, and often underrated complexity of startravel and it made for a pretty solid case of a planet ripe with valuable scavenge to go unnoticed for hundreds of standard years.

Yet while acknowledging the possibility, Royanna Kallenger did not quite believe that it was the case here. Multiple colinization attempts meant multiple records of the planet's inhabitable - and inhabited status throughout the Galaxy on the planets which had bore the colonists - which would be leads for persistent scavvers. Mutiple colonization failures meant not only records which would point to a positive scavver's goldmine - but also to a simple and unnerving implication - that there had been a sinister reason for the failures of the colonies.

It meant that the colonies had failed to report back. There had been no slow decline, presumably - it had not been a matter of unforseen environmental issues which the home planet was not able to send aid for. It meant failed colonies - and it brought images to Royanna's mind of ancient horrors buried in the sand.

But she did not have time to address any of this with her new comrade, because her train of thought was interrupted. Practcally before Lennox had finished her sentence, Kallenger was already redirecting the small ship, bounding it back along the probable rebound course of the object to get in close. "On it."

Once they had closed in on the thing and she had gotten a lock, it was only a matter of staying near enough to the object that taking a closer look wouldn't have one or the other floating away on them. Tractor beam tech had always proven buggy in Imperial science, so Kallenger's ship would be capable of using complex mathematics and autoprocessors to keep the vessel within a reasonable distance from the target - though a human pilot (Particularly an experienced one) was always a safer option.

"Your call." she said, once they had gotten in close so that the ship's various scanning systems could pore over the thing - and they could have a nice physical view too. "Send a probe? Or do you want to go out there and get a closer look?" She didn't feel the need to add that she could come along too, if for any reason Lennox wanted her along - doubtless Lennox would already be aware of Kallenger's availability for this.

Staring at the object for several long moments and making several notes on where key items would be located on the shared screen, Amber finally says "We'll have to get out there and manually retrieve what we want. There should be a reactor release control either inside the cockpit or on the mounting cradle itself. The power output is low enough that it's likely in a dormant state. That means transporting it will be easier."

Standing from her seat, Amber begins to head for the ships airlocks but pauses at the bridge door to comment "Please go ahead and open a cargo bay for when we get the reactor out of it's cradle? While you do that and get into a suit, I'll go ahead and start trying to pop the cockpit hatch and retrieve any data still in the systems...and try to find the cradle unlock mechanism so we won't have to manually unlock it all the locking lugs."

Exiting the bridge and heading straight to the airlocks, minus the time to grab her tools, Amber is quick to cycle herself outside. Not needing and EVA suit for space walking was one of the perks of being an android, and in this case it meant she could begin working while kallenger readied everything else. Clipping herself to a safety tether, Amber pushes off the ship and heads straight towards where the cockpit should be, saying over her internal radio "Here I go."

The agent nodded promptly, and immediately began flipping switches and entering commands to depressurize and open up the cargo bay. It was a simple task - what she was really focused on was the autopilot protocols that would keep both them and the ship in consistent, matching orbit with the hunk of valuable space debris. One wrong program and they could be bumped off-course and begin an uncontrolled plummet to certain doom below.

But finally she was satisfied, and she hastily moved to get into her suit.

It was, like everything else she was lucky enough to have at her disposal, top-of-the-line Imperial technology, with all the latest advancemends...And no risky 'prototype' systems that might malfunction and leave her breathing carbon monoxide or something. It was a sleek, shiny black thing mounted in the wall nearest the inner airlock door. Shrugging off her coat and tossing it on some fixture nearby, she stepped backwards into it, flicked switches until it went ahead with enclosing around her.

The suit functioned as an exoskeletion and relied on complex, but reliable plate meshes which interacted mechanically with one another and resulted in a curious, scaley texture. This allowed the thing to be put on and removed with great ease and rapidity. The faceplate was, of course, tinted to blackness - though she was quick to turn that off. After all, the ability to convey ones' emotions or intentions in the event of a radio failure had proven life-saving before, and doubtless it would again, eventually.

Stepping into the airlock, she depressurized and was out with reasonable haste. Exposed to vacuum, the artificial gravity was no longer functional - relying on the pressure from oxygen or other gasses to direct the gravitational flow 'downward' into itself. Clipping on to the safety tether, she was off, crossing the gap between the two ships and landing delicately on the opposing vessel.

She examined the locking pins closely, making her first priority to determine where exactly the thing would open up - the last thing she needed was to be flung off by an unexpectedly opening door or something. She was able to stay 'attached' to the ship with magnetic pads in soles, knees, elbows and palms, all configurable, of course.

After some seconds, she said over the common band "There's a manual unlock over here, if the controls are too damaged or not present. But I think it'll eject the core rather than just releasing it. If that's the case, I guess we could just aim for the cargo bay and hope for the best. I'll be able to remotely manipulate the gravitational field so it won't strike the wall with excessive force...But if there is a regular release up there, you're definitely going to want to use it. I'll keep clear just in case."

Then, she added "Clear. Finding anything shiny up there?"

Several impacts vibrate the wreck followed by a single heavier impact before Amber responds "Understood. I have the cockpit hatch but it took quite a beating to get it back in shape. But now I know why this things reactor is still working. The pilot was taken out. But the cockpit is a two seater. Which is nice. Now please walk to the forward section. Should be a fair sized hole there and take a look in it." of course, if Kallenger did look she would see Amber waving from the rear cockpit seat

Once done waving, Amber sits down in the rear seat and begins hooking her scanning equipment up to the various data jacks in the consoles. After several moments of configuring her equipment, she radios Kallenger "I've got live systems. Do you want to come look at the data yourself or do you want the short version? Also, it seems that in order to unlock the reactor cradle from here, I need to plug myself into this thing...but you are right, what you found is a reactor ejection handle. "

On her screens, there was a wealth of useful information. Most importantly it told Amber that her data was wrong, the beacon they had heard was in fact operating properly. It was her own IFF data that was corrupted. She wasn't going to tell Kallenger that though, at least not right now. But she was at least right in that the beacon had come from a titan class ship.

Royanna, peering through the hole at the waving Lennox, couldn't help but grin imperceptibly and give a small wave back. She'd had that sort of enthusiasm once. Before years of letting the sole purpose for her existence slip between her fingers.

The invisible fingers of microgravity tugged her aside slowly, until she was just out of sight again. She was focused on the screen on the inside of her visor now, interacting neurally with the menus and data readouts there. "Now that it's powered on I should be able to...There. Got everything I need." With the device activated, Roy's advanced Imperial tech had little trouble getting a lock on the inner frequencies of the banks and hijacking it. The transfer of data was at an astounding rate - from the source, to her suit, to her wrist device and then to the ship, where it would be automatically encrypted with pre-programmed Imperial code. Good stuff.

Though, she was discouraged to find that a hasty overview of what she had collected did not look mind-blowingly exceptional. There could still be useful information overlooked in her brief glimpse, but nothing had jumped out at her. Oh well.

With that out of the way, it was time to access the ship's interface and maneuver it into place to assure that, whether they released or ejected the core, it would be safely captured in the cargo hold.

"Boat's in posi-@#$%!!" Her words were cut off by a sudden curse shouted in sheer surprise. There was a slight thud which followed it in rapid succession. Seconds later, she was saying urgently "Some kind of defense bug back here. The thing- rgh - sonofa@#$%& latched on- Spacebe@#$%edyoustupidthingwouldyouquitit!"

The thing had come out of nowhere it seemed, jumping from some shadow or notch that her keen eyes had overlooked. A small thing, bulbous body the size of a baseball with four sharp, pincer-like legs and a retinal eye on the top and bottom. There were what appeared to be different tools on each leg - which, of course, ended in an almost razor tip which would allow the creature to cling to the side of just about anything.

It had leaped at her face and latched on like something out of a movie, sending the agent flying across the compact machine and into the opposite wall. There, she was able to get a footing, and proceed with wrestling the pest off with lots of grunting and cursing. During the struggle, it latched on to her left arm. One of the little tools on the leg fired up, causing Roy's eyes to widen.

"The mother@#$%er's got a buzzsaw. @#$% nicked my suit."" And it had, unfortunately. Though it was a slight abrasion that the inner membrane was able to repair almost instantly, there was still going to be a small bruise on her arm, but that would be it - so long as she returned to the ship within fifteen minutes to allow full repair in the dock. The membrane could hold for that long, at least.

After that, the obnoxious thing managed to skitter around behind her - this sent a jolt down the woman's spine as she realized it was going for the power source - that would be a pretty rapid death sentence, considering that her air supply was only a very small reserve and a very powerful recycler. Luckily, she was still positioned near the wall, and with one hard kick she was able to push off, and slam her back violently into the opposite wall, where she had started. The thing crackled and died instantly.

"....Got it."" She said, after a moment. She was examining the thing now, suit extracting what little data it could from the remains. "It doesn't look like it belongs on this ship." She surmised. "The design scheme is different and the tools on the legs look like...yes, it's meant for assault rather than defense. Keep an eye out for them. Ready to extract that core? I've got...twelve minutes before this suit will need repair. I'm in position."