This is a continuation from the previous entry of my Starforged-inspired fiction project, which I posted last week. As such I don’t think of it as a new “chapter” and didn’t trigger any start of chapter stuff. If you want to catch up from the beginning, the setup is here. Mechanical notes are in the collapsed boxes!
Winder negotiated docking with the Helia AI’s bay, one of a million details of space travel Echo had never considered. Whenever the ship had arrived in his township, it settled down on a grassy field and lowered a ramp. But Echo could hear the howling wind outside the hull, feel the burning cold creeping in around the imperfect seal with Helia. He zipped up the grungy old suit, took a deep breath, and stepped into the plastic hallway that had extended out from a gray-brown hab.
At the other end of the tunnel, a dark figure leaned against the open doorway. She had her rifle over one shoulder and a thick scarf bunched up around her neck. Obsidian-dark skin and the lightest eyes he had ever seen. Echo stopped, uncertain.
The woman sighed. “It’s cold out here, Echo. Coffee’s hot if you want some.” Then she turned and went into the hab.
Was she…unhappy? Angry? He had no idea how to gauge her other than not a farmer.
Echo poked his head into the building. Major Freeman was cradling a small steel cup in her hands, inhaling the steam. She looked up at him and nodded her head toward a dingy carafe. “Any clean cup you can find. Wasn’t my turn to wash up. The brains always forget though.”
As he stepped in, the airlock door quietly shut behind him and the bright green LOCK sign lit up over it. Didn’t know what to do with his hands — a shake or hug or a punch, who knows how these people greet each other — so he quietly plucked a mug out of the sink and poured himself a drink.
“He always said you were sharp,” the Major muttered around her cup. “Or was firing the thruster Good Advice’s idea?”
“That was all me,” Echo said. “But it calls itself Winder now.”
She nodded. “All The Time In The World et cetera et cetera, oh sure, I remember.” The Major looked far away for a moment, sipping companionably with Echo while the walls of the hab thumped with the wind storm. “Thought you’d have come sooner but I’m grateful you’re here now. Next supply ship doesn’t arrive for two tendays and my contract here runs 20 more past that.” She shrugged, put down the cup, then picked it back up and poured herself one more cup from the carafe.
“Sooner?” Echo asked. He drank too fast and burned his mouth. “So you knew I was coming? How? I mean I just took that ship just a few days ago…”
The Major smiled for the first time, brilliant teeth. “Guess the old guy needed some time to figure things out. So! The brains want to meet today’s savior, and then they’re going to want to ask you to help us…help me secure this place. They have a theory about how to go about doing that.”
Echo shuffled his feet and tried to shrug deeper into the old suit. “Brains? Secure? A theory about — I’m sorry, ma’am, but I’m real lost here. He didn’t send me or anything, you’re someone Winder thought I should connect with —“
But she had already turned, waving a hand over her shoulder for him to follow as she walked away. “You’re here now and that’s what matters, Echo. It’s warmer underground anyway.”
Sure enough, the space under the hab buildings was quiet, warm, civilized. They walked down a short staircase and came out in a greatroom suffused with the distinctive glow of full-spectrum bulbs. The air was moist as well. It didn’t take long for Echo to spot the hydroponics along the back wall. His folk preferred dirt but had also been blessed with fertile soil and a yellow-spectrum sun.
Work benches and desks were scattered haphazardly around the space. About a dozen older folks with looks ranging from Terminus-chic to Outland scavenger were either staring at holo displays, or eating, or napping.
“Here’s the pilot I was telling you about,” Major Freeman said. She didn’t look back at Echo, just continued walking to the middle of the space, finally stopping in front of a disheveled older man. Echo thought he was more on the scavenger end, maybe stole his clothes off a Terminus fitness guru. “Zari, this is Echo Sedano. Echo, Zari.”
“Doctor Zari Vandu,” the old guy quickly corrected, reaching out a gloved hand. “I’m the head of the operation here, chief xenohistorian. Don’t mind them, they’re working,” he said, flapping his hands vaguely toward the rest of the greatroom. “I hope Kimbra gave you some coffee? Do you need anything to eat? We’ve got some kind of fruit that’s just about ripe I’m sure—”
“Major Freeman,” she corrected, and smiled. They each held their smile a moment past comfortable. Echo looked at the hydroponics wall. Some fruit did sound tasty.
“So you’ve seen what we’re dealing with firsthand, yes?” Dr. Vandu asked, stepping in front of Echo. “Our work is substantially hampered by constantly needing to repair damage to our sensors and replace what I can only describe as stolen material.”
“Those things are stealing stuff?” Echo asked. “They’re not just animals? Or whatever? My ship can’t even detect them as life forms.”
“And yes, that is the problem isn’t it?” The doctor asked, then looked to Freeman.
She picked up the thread. “Doctor Vandu here believes these things are somehow connected to the Monument out there.” She paused and walked over to a full-wall display. Her approach activated the display, fed by an outside camera zoomed in on the base of the Monument a few kilometers away. “They’ve taken physical samples around the base, aimed their sensors inside it, no joy. Me, I would love to get inside this thing. Honestly it’s why I took the job—“
Vandu shook his head, grimacing. Freeman continued. “—but doing so would, I suppose, present certain risks to my being able to fulfill my contract providing for the overall security blah blah blah. So nobody’s tried going in, and the brains aren’t ready to do that yet either.”
“Calling us brains is infantilizing,” Vandu muttered. “We’re just not prepared to execute our field operation here yet. But when we do…we’re going in here.”
He gestured at the display wall and the camera zoomed in toward the base of the monument. It really was just unimaginable how it could have ever been built. Kilometers across at the base, kilometers tall. But near the base, a small black fissure.
“And I think the dust devils you saw out there are coming and going through it,” the Major said, tapping the dark crease in the monument wall.
“Dust devils, oh I like that very much,” Vandu nodded, also staring at the display.
“I’m going to talk to Echo for a minute,” Freeman said. “We’ll be back.”
Echo’s eyes were wide. “You want me to go with you inside this thing? First humans to enter it? Don’t they have drones or —“
The Major and Echo were back above the greatroom, in the landing bay hab. Echo was a tad taller but Freeman dominated the space. “That’s right. Can’t be drones, machines can’t approach. Just like the one in orbit.” She said.
“Inside! And then we’ll, what, exterminate these uhhh what did you call them? Dust devils? Did you notice they can change shape? Fly? Look, I just need provisions for the ship, that’s all I came here for. I can wash their dishes or —“
Kimbra Freeman put her hand up. Echo stopped himself from babbling. “Echo, look at me,” she said, directing his eyes toward hers. “Okay. Listen. This is the life you chose when you inherited that ship.”
“Inherited, no, what —“
“He did not just give you a multimillion credit armed space vessel for a joyride, Echo. And now I need your help.” She stopped, cleared her throat, changed the timbre of her voice a bit. “I’ve offered you hospitality and accepted. You have the means to help me and I am not asking you to risk your life. I’m asking you to help. Will you?”
He should have realized the hospitality, hell the ship, came with…this. Adult obligations. He only half-understood the rites and traditions Kimbra was invoking here but he could hear it in her voice.
“I…yeah. I’ll help.”
She shook her head. “That’s not how it goes. You say to me, I swear a vow to aid you however I can.”
“Wait, a vow, no I’m not … you don’t understand … I —“
The major drew a blade from a sheath on her leg. “I too swear a vow to you that I will protect your life with my own in return for your aid.”
Echo realized he had never actually seen an iron vow made for real, in person. Only in shows, or in stories the ship’s previous pilot had shared, or heck, in songs. Vows were something you sang about! Not something a farming community’s Paragon was ever going to have to make.
“Do you have a blade?” She asked, still holding her own up.
He patted his suit, helpless, feeling pulled along faster than he had expected. “…no?”
Freeman nodded. “Let’s see what else he left you in the ship.”
“Hello Major,” Winder said as they walked aboard. “Nice having you aboard again.”
Freeman smiled again, again with the brilliant teeth. “Heard you changed your name again. How was he, last you saw?”
The ship was silent a beat. “Reconciled,” it said. “Ready to rest.”
The major walked into the commons area, very familiar with its layout. “Left his blade, then, did he? Retired for real?” Echo followed along, suddenly feeling like a stranger in his own ship. The kid near the adult table listening to adults talk about adult things.
A panel in the commons area Echo hadn’t noticed before slid away. Behind it, guns. A rifle, a pistol. And a long sheath containing a composite-alloy blade. A weapon for pirates, but really a weapon for anyone who didn’t want to poke holes through a hull in vacuum.
Major Freeman walked to the newly revealed space and reached in for the blade. “You’re flying with … Winder, but what you really inherited was this.” She handed the blade to Echo. “There. Now. Swear to me you’ll help me.”
“I already said I would!”
She shook her head. “The vow makes it real. Means I can count on you how you’re going to count on me. This is how we do this out here.”
His hand touched the handle and trembled.
She sighed. “Or don’t. It’s fine, kid. It sounds like he didn’t really give you the briefing he should have. Just put it back and fly home. I’ll have the brains put together some food for you.” She held her hand out to Echo for the sheath.
There was a moment, Echo felt, when the trembling stopped. He took a deep breath and pulled out the blade. Weirdly light, whatever the composite was, certainly not “iron” like they called it on the shows. He held up the blade and made eye contact with Kimbra.
“I swear to help you however I can in the defense of this place.” His voice didn’t sound like his own.
No more brilliant smiles, no more trying to win him over, just a hand on his shoulder. “Attaboy,” Kimbra said. “Let’s figure out how we’re doing this.”
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This is the first fiction out of the Starforged game I wrote about last week. I cover my setup there.
It’s an experiment! Maybe you’re not in for fiction, and that’s fine. I’ve also embedded discussion of the game mechanics that led me to write what I did, which you may find interesting or helpful if you’re trying to suss out how to play the game on your own.
Since it’s first a fiction project, there’s some light editing I’ve done to backfill and set up scenes and elements. Mostly I’ve done that organically, though. As you’re reading, think of this project as me writing a story guided by a game, rather than playing a game and then telling a story about it. If that makes sense. There’s certainly a lot of trading back and forth.
Echo shifted restlessly in Winder’s pilot seat. There wasn’t much piloting to do, truth be told; Winder took care of most of that. Taking Winder and aiming it at the brightest point in the sky wasn’t a flight plan, it was his heart and hands making a wish. The ship was an attentive genie, eager to accommodate.
The e-drive spun down as the ship prepared to re-enter flat space. Echo could feel the drive’s urgent hum through his fingers wherever he touched the hull. He wandered through the ship as the AI handled the math of drift navigation, touching, reading, feeling a new sense of ownership and not just fear-tinged curiosity. He could mostly work out the signage and instrumentation, even if he didn’t know what all of it did yet. Galactic 4.5 was old, older than the Exodus, but readable if you were smart about language. Echo thought he was pretty smart indeed.
“Do you have archives about where we’re going? Or is that just when you have Weave access?” Echo felt stupid the moment he voiced the question to the ship AI. It felt more sophisticated in his head but he could hear the dumb townie inside the question. The gentle chuckle of the ship’s previous owner the last time Echo asked him something about out there. Well, out here now.
“I have offline archives available for more than ten thousand sectors,” the ship replied. A woman’s voice. Echo hadn’t said much to the ship since he left home with it. Stole it, he reminded himself. You stole this ship and the ship let you. A question for another day.
“I updated my sector data 174 hours ago at the Bastion Weave,” Winder continued. “But the data about Desolation is more than 2000 hours old. Low projected accuracy about recent events. What would you like to know?”
Echo thought about that. What did he want to know? Other than finding Kimbra there, he didn’t have much of a plan. But the ship’s previous master had mentioned her more than once and it was something. “Uh…I guess an overview? Who lives there, what’s it about?”
“E-drive going offline in 3 minutes,” Winder’s AI announced, a slightly different timbre. A bit more masculine maybe? Echo hadn’t noticed the voice change before. “Desolation is a large rocky body planet with 1.1g surface gravity. It is the fifth planet in orbit around MY-296, a red giant. Desolation’s surface temperature averages between -15 and 0 Celsius. Atmosphere is breathable at low elevations, and most breathable in canyons and valleys, but quickly becomes inhospitable at higher elevations. Breathing assistance is recommended.”
“This was the brightest star in the sky? Really?” Echo asked, stopping. His fingertips could feel the e-drive disengaging, spinning now only with internal momentum and whatever weird physics made it do e-drive things.
Inciting Incident, Start a Chapter
Starforged kicks off with an inciting incident before play. This is what I came up with:
Kimbra needs my help evacuating the Helia scientists while native creatures overwhelm their settlement. Possible seasonal upsurge? Some connection with the Monument?
Start a Chapter: +1 Momentum (+3 total).
“My previous occupant thought it was important you make contact with Kimbra Freeman. She is currently employed at Desolation’s only settlement. Helia houses 23 scientists and support staff who are studying Monument 62 and its accompanying orbital presence —“
Echo spun around and headed back to the commons area. He walked to the holodisplay in the center of the small kitchen-dining-living space. “Show me. Show me this monument.” Restless legs again, hopping in place.
A couple moments passed and the holodisplay flickered to life. A simple obelisk took up the display, the top breaking into five different-length spires.
“Is it…is a Vault?” he asked. Didn’t really understand the word. Adults whispered about Vaults, about the Ascendancy. Echo always felt left out from that conversation, even when he was 20. Ancient spirits of godlike bogeymen.
“That’s what the scientists are trying to determine.”
“You said something about an orbital presence?” As he asked, the display zoomed out. Echo realized how unfathomably huge the obelisk was once he saw the gentle curvature of the planet. A bright yellow dot labeled “Helia” glowed near the obelisk’s base. Then, there in low orbit, another obelisk. Five spires pointed down, identical in every way. A mirror image floating several miles in geosynchronous lock with its sibling.
“Whaaat the fuck.”
“Indeed. What the fuck,” Winder replied with a low chuckle. “Achieving local Weave lock now but the connection is spotty. Helia is the only node in the system and the alien object may be interfering.”
For a moment, Echo forgot he was talking with the ship AI. Then, smiling broadly: “Do you have an opinion about the alien object?”
“We would need a closer look at either or both. But the archives indicate that no vessel can get within five kilometers of the orbiting object. Hence Helia’s focus on the surface. If it doesn’t interfere with my operation, we could check it out. Major Freeman is requesting to speak with you.”
“Major…oh Kimbra. How did she know we —“
“I contacted her. Syncing with local Weave now. Are you ready to talk with her? The connection is still unstable.”
Echo patted down his shirt and coveralls, buttoned up, smoothed his hair. Why hadn’t he packed something, anything, before leaving? Stupid. “I guess?”
A face flickered into view on the display. She was older than Echo had imagined after hearing her described, but of course she was. The old guy had known her way back in the day.
“Echo Sedano? That you?” she asked. Throaty, terse, no bullshit. Echo already felt intimidated. She peered into a 2D camera on her end. How did she know his name? More questions for later. She disappeared from view.
“Wait. Wait! What happened?” Echo asked. He smacked the top of the display with his open palm.
“Don’t do that,” the ship replied. “Wait a moment, recalibrating our Weave routing. Ah. Here.”
Freeman reappeared. “—having a hard time seeing you, our antenna is damaged here. Listen, kid. Kid. Get your ship down here, I need your help. Oh for fuck’s sake—“ she said, turning away from the camera. Was that a rifle he saw in her hand?
“Hi? Miss Freeman?” He had wanted to be familiar with her, felt her rank demanded formality. “I can land at Helia bay I think —“
“Great, yeah, I’ll meet you there. Gotta shoot a monster first, make sure it doesn’t eat you out of the air. Fly safe, Good Advice will keep you safe. Out.”
“It doesn’t answer to that name any more,” he tried to explain as the holo blinked out. The old pilot had referred to the ship as You Can’t Force Good Advice On Anyone but it wouldn’t answer to that name any more. It asked Echo to call it Winder for AI reasons, he guessed. No knowing what was happening inside their quantum substrate.
Out the front windows of the ship, Desolation loomed. Huge, gray, murky surface. Sure enough, there was the orbital monument, tiny at this distance. His brain was starting to calibrate sizes in space. Thing must be kilometers long if he could see it this far out from the surface.
“Land at Helia I guess?” Echo said. His township coveralls felt ridiculous. Echo looked in the EVA locker and found a suit that would just about fit. He shrugged into the musty suit, which smelled faintly of the pipe tobacco smoke the old pilot had enjoyed.
“Landing in two minutes. There is a lot of turbulence on sensors, please strap in. I’ll get you docked. Ship-eating monsters notwithstanding.”
Echo grimaced. He tried imagining how big something would need to be to eat the ship. His size-calibrating imagination was getting a workout. Everything seemed bigger than anything he’d seen back home.
“Are you gonna tell me what Winder must be short for, or…?”
A pause as he buckled into the seat. The whole contraption gently adjusted itself to his lanky frame and cinched the straps a bit tighter.
“All The Time In The World And Nobody To Wind The Clock,” the ship replied.
Echo stiffened. How did it know? More questions for later. “Um. What can I be doing to help, here?”
Secure an Advantage
Rather than swearing a vow immediately (Starforged setup rules say to do this but I want to play the vow out a bit later), Secure an Advantage on approach to land in the storm (Face Danger, ultimately). Alien oracle: human sized, amoeba, single eye, scavenger behavior, waiting to roll on revealed aspect. When I roll (after Face Danger below): Shapeshifter.
Secure an Advantage: 4 +5 Integrity (Overseer module)= 9 vs 8 8: strong hit with a match! (+2 Momentum + 1 Momentum from Overseer module = +6 Momentum total)
Oracle for the match: DEFEND COMMUNITY.
“I will need you to visually assess our approach and relay your impressions. Human intuition is why Overseers don’t explore the Expanse on their own.”
“Huh! Okay. Never thought about that actually. Um…this sensor display says something about…gravity? Forget it — augh!” He yelled as the ship suddenly hit atmospheric chop. He looked out the window.
Helia’s collection of rustic cabins and sealed walkways sat on a hill near the edge of the obelisk. Edge was something of a misnomer; the base was kilometers across, a perfect circle that seemed sculpted, maybe stamped, directly into the salt flat surface of the planet. Hard to see the buildings. Swirling sand obscured the buildings. Or did it?
The buildings were surrounded by distinct, animated blobs of sand. Dozens. Hundreds. Humanoid ghosts made of wind and salt, swarming over the buildings.
“Are you getting this?” Echo asked, eyes wide. Winder slowly arced toward the landing bay.
“Turbulence and a high percentage of particulate matter, which may clog our intake ports —“
“No, no, there’s something attacking the buildings!”
A pause. “My sensors don’t indicate lifeforms. Describe what you’re seeing.”
He groaned and waved his hands. “Like…people? Bigger? But made of sand and dust and stuff? What the hell! This is really weird but I think they’re gonna pull the roof off their hab.”
“I can’t lock onto anything with our shipboard weaponry.”
Weaponry? Echo gritted his teeth. How many questions in one day? “I think whatever you could shoot at them would do more damage to the hab. But, hmm.” He strummed his fingers on the arm of the pilot’s seat. Now that they were lazily circling the bay, the seat had released him from its embrace.
“Can we aim your thrust at those things and blow them off the hab without hurting the hab?” He asked.
“I can aim nondestructive thrust at the hab and trust that whatever you’re seeing can’t withstand it. But I’m extrapolating that if they are able to navigate wind storms of this magnitude they may not be affected. Assuming there’s anything there at all.”
Echo rolled his eyes. “Can’t hurt, right?” Silence.
Echo whispered, “Do it.”
Face Danger
Face Danger, to blow the creatures off the hab. 1 + Momentum (was gonna use Wits +3 but that’s a miss!) +1 from Secure an Advantage = 8 vs 7 9. Weak hit. Reset Momentum to +2, make a suffer move.
Endure Stress: -1 Spirit from the stress.
Develop your relationship: Marked my connection with Kimbra for temporarily helping defend Helia, 2 boxes for Dangerous.
The ship used its low-powered maneuvering jets to spin in place, aiming the heavy thrusters toward the collection of habs. Kimbra’s voice crackled over the Weave. “Echo, kid, what the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
The engines fired once, twice. He squeezed his eyes shut, imagining the roof shearing off and a bunch of scientists he’d never met dying instantly, freezing to death, choking on sand.
He opened one eye and saw the creatures changing shape, becoming dark kites and skating away on the high winds. A couple of them grasped small bits off the hab, an antenna here, a sheet of tarp there. “Looks like we’re clear but don’t do that again, dumbass,” Kimbra grumbled. The Weave connection cut.
“Let’s dock,” Echo croaked. Then: “Weapons? Really?”
End of Session
Reviewed the criteria for “end of session” and I’m still mulling over what I’ve just played counts as a session or chapter. Mechanically the main impact is faster Momentum recovery; structurally I need to reflect on whether this feels (?) like a “chapter.” For now, I’m going to pick this up later and assume it’s all one chapter.
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<h3><em>Related</em></h3>
Part three of my Starforged fiction! Catch up from the beginning here: Setup. Here’s the rest of it: Part 1, Part 2. This session is quite a lot more mechanically intricate than the previous two, which was interesting. Trying to balance good narrative against interesting gameplay. Let me know if you think I hit a good balance!
Begin a Session
Begin a Session: I feel like it’s time to finally head off to investigate the Monument. This is starting a new chapter, so I do a flashback in which Echo reveals his looper Paragon ability. +1 Momentum (+6 total).
Rolled on the character name table for his sister’s name: Valda.
Echo slept in the xenobotanist’s cot while they tended the hydroponics. It was terrible sleep, noisy and over lit even when he buried his head under a pillow. Every beep and click came through. It was not the low buzz of crickets from his township.
He couldn’t help but gnaw on what information the brains had already gathered. He and Kimbra had looked it all over together. She made hmm and huh sounds. Echo just saw more nothing than something. Couldn’t bring a vehicle too close to the thing, just like the thing in space. Couldn’t fly drones remotely into the hole. They’d have to approach with a little utility truck they had under a tarp outside. Better chunky wheels and thick glass than a grim march across many kilometers of wind-blasted sand.
“See, this thing’s easy to drive!” He yelled over the wind to his sister. She held on for dear life to the farm truck’s roll cage as its six wheels burred over untilled hard pack. Valda, a couple years younger than Echo, trusted him much more than he thought she should. “We can get out to the watering hole and back before Third Ma gets back from town,” he told her, full of unearned confidence.
She tightened her grip. “I don’t know, Echo. Can you slow down?”
He laughed and twisted the throttle. The wheels grabbed tight and they leapt forward.
Echo remembers the precise moment the rear wheels locked up, a moment later, dust getting into the independent motors. Horrible sound. Impossible to control. And as he struggled to keep the articulated farm vehicle from squirming like an eel, he remembers Valda launching out her window.
Adrenaline gripped his gut and made him want to vomit. The whole vehicle started to tip over and —
A moment later: “I don’t know, Echo. Can you slow down?” There was Valda, still in her seat, white knuckling the roll cage above her. His hands were still shaking as he backed the throttle down to the green zone. They turned around then, he remembers, carving a gentle arc into the hard pack.
The Monument towers over him at that moment, standing squarely where he expects to see the township’s low skyline of habs and silos. He’s going faster and faster toward the gaping crack at its base and —
Echo woke up to the hiss of Kimbra releasing steam from the coffee machine.
“Found some milk in storage,” she says to him. “Turns out everyone here’s lactose intolerant! What were the odds? Anyway, I’m making coffee and we’re gonna steam some milk up.”
One of the brains waved at her, eyes getting wide. Kimbra shrugged, turned around and fired up the steam wand. The brain might have been yelling something like I was saving that but Echo couldn’t be sure.
Set the Expedition
I actually made a Gather Information roll in preparation for the expedition into the Memorial last session: Wits 3 + 3 vs 2 7, weak hit. +1 momentum (+4 total). What’s the complication? They’ll have to walk the final segment.
I create stats for an Incidental Vehicle: little truck, integrity 4 (medium, it’s purpose built but not military grade)
Finally, I Set the Expedition to the Monument at Dangerous. Rolled first segment, Wits 3 + 6 vs 4 1: strong hit. That means I Reach a Waypoint, mark two boxes.
Rolled the second segment: Wits 3+ 3 vs 9 10, MISS and we’re waylaid by a crisis.
Echo and Kimbra packed the little truck, later, topped off the tires, dusted off the solar panels. The Major had, well, a lot of guns. Long guns, short guns, boxes of ammo. Echo had grabbed his own from the Winder and felt a little inadequate.
The truck handled fairly well and the winds had calmed down a good bit. Dust still whirled around beneath the truck. The Weave connection was still iffy, comms back to Helia getting weaker by the kilometer. Eventually the wheels stopped buzzing under them and went silent. They had rolled onto the perfectly smooth circle that stretched for kilometers around the Monument.
“Huh,” Kimbra grunted.
“Handling’s better at least,” Echo said, looking at her. It was still a good drive before they even go to the breach, much less entered it. She pulled up the truck’s front camera and stared into it.
“It’s like we’re never gonna get closer,” she said. They continued. Echo increased the throttle a bit.
Miss on Second Segment
Roll on Planetside Peril table, lifebearing column: Equipment fails or malfunctions.
Right on cue, the wheels locked up and they went into a skid.
“Kidwatchwhatyouredoing —“ Kimbra yelled, grabbing the side of the truck as they went into a roll.
He’d been here before and knew exactly what to do. Echo reached for the adrenaline in his gut. Felt a moment of giddy weightlessness and indulged the thing that made him a Paragon of his township back home. The moment reset, the truck back upright and heading into a skid.
A moment later: Kimbra yelling, the vehicle going over anyway. “Fuck! I’m sorry! I thought —“
Crunch crunch skid slide. The truck finally stopped on its side. Echo and Kimbra hung from their harnesses groaning.
Suffer
Suffer move: Endure harm! -2 (serious), which Echo will try to resist. Health 3 + 4 vs 7 9. I use his LOOPER (-2 Momentum, +4 total): he rerolls the 9, gets a 10, sad, no strong hit. I take the weak hit after all but I don’t want to lose any more Momentum, so I leave Health at 3.
“It’s…okay,” Kimbra grunted. She pushed the release button on the harness and fell out of the webbing. “Damn! Get up, help me get her flipped back over. I’ll see what we can do with the drive that locked up.”
They clambered out of the upended chassis, jumping gingerly down to the hard, smooth surface. Kimbra knelt down and patted the ground. “You know…I think I’m the first human to walk here,” she said.
Check Gear, Face Danger
Check Your Gear to see if something in the truck can help them: Supply 5 + 2 vs 6 10. Weak hit. Sacrifice resources, -1 (Supply 4 now), but they have leverage.
Face Danger to right the truck and continue: Iron 1 +2 +1 for Kimbra’s help vs 4 10. A weak hit, +1 Momentum for Connection’s help (+5 total)
Suffer move: Lose Momentum (delayed!) -1 for a minor setback (+4 momentum now).
Echo rummaged around the truck for whatever might help them flip the vehicle back onto its wheels. He found a jack and what looked like long metal poles, probably part of a canopy. After some grunting and scrabbling, their boots and poles unable to gain any sort of purchase on the surface, the truck flopped down on its chunky tires. Onward.
Undertake an Expedition, continued
Undertake an expedition, continued: Wits 3 + 6 vs 6 9: strong hit! +2 boxes (4 total) on the Expedition track. Now I feel like Exploring a Waypoint! Let’s see what the core oracles give me…
CREATED SUPPLY per the Descriptor + Focus tables.
It felt like hours, Echo thought, the truck silently cruising on what must be ice or glass or polished metal. The dull red sun ducked behind the massive obelisk ahead of them, casting their drive into nightfall hours early. The Weave connection had gone dead hours before.
Then, out in the dust swirls: a glint of metal. Echo was sure of it. “How do you…I need more light over there!” He yelled excitedly, jerking the truck to the right. Kimbra had been dozing and awoke with her hands in fists.
“What the hell, Echo?!” Then as they looked: “What the hell, Echo.”
Plunged into the surface, that perfect mirror they had been driving on for hours, was what appeared to be a cargo crate. Dull metal, squared off, gigantic, the sort of container that would be strapped to the side of a hauler. Whatever livery had been painted on it was long scoured off by the ceaseless dust. It looked to be about halfway inserted into the surface they’d been driving on, assuming it was the same dimensions they were familiar with.
“Let’s go check it out,” Echo said, excited. He was already pulling his helmet over his head.
“Whoa, whoa, kid, this isn’t what we’re here for,” Kimbra said, putting her hand on top of his head so he couldn’t pull his helmet down. Let’s maybe look at this thing when we’re done with our chores.”
Compel
Gotta convince Kimbra to go off mission! Compel: Heart 2 + 5 vs 4 1: Strong hit! +1 Momentum (+5 total)
Echo could barely stay in his seat. “But…but…clues? What brought it down, you think?” He glanced out, glanced back at the Major, glanced back out. He was practically vibrating.
She sighed, nodded. “15 minutes, then we’re back on the road, yeah?”
Explore a Waypoint
Explore a Waypoint: Wits 3 + 1 vs 4 5, a weak hit. I don’t want to spend my Momentum on this yet so I take the +1 momentum (+5 total) and face a peril at the waypoint. I envision something ominous that this could mean. +1 for my Explorer path (+7 total).
They walked gingerly around the thing. Definitely a cargo container, rated for interstellar transport. The airlock seal light was dead, neither red nor green. Echo scrambled up on top of it. The door had been unlatched and thrown open, the interior completely empty.
“Nothing! This is weird,” he said over the radio.
“We done, then?”
“Yeah, but …this is weird, right? What is this doing down here? Who opened it?”
“Dust devils, most likely,” the Major said. She passed her hands along the lower surfaces of the container where it plunged into the smooth surface. Not even impact cracks, just a perfect transition from container to surface. “No, I don’t like this one bit. Let’s tell the brains about it and let them poke at it.”
They continued. The monument was fully backlit with the dull red glow of the setting sun as they drove toward it.
Undertake an Expedition
Undertake an expedition: Wits 3 + 1 vs 8 7, another miss! Not feeling another Suffer move, so let’s roll on Pay the Price:
41: The environment or terrain introduces a new hazard. OKAY! I’m going to experiment with the Tension Clock system. I create an 8 segment clock, “The Monument Activates.”
One of the sensors started pinging but Echo couldn’t identify which one. The truck controls themselves were pretty straightforward but it had been retrofitted with lots of science gear. Some of the gear decided it was time to science.
“Echo, pull over man,” the Major said, brow furrowed. She ran her finger along row after row of button and sensor and readout. Nothing was labeled. “Here. Here.” She poked at a triangular screen that had been jammed between two other pieces of equipment.
“I know that screen!” Echo said. “Radiation! Huh. We used these at the township to warn us about solar flares.”
Kimbra looked out the window. The red giant had nearly set. “Well I don’t think that thing’s gonna flare any time soon. Dunno. Maybe it’s malfunctioning.” She tapped the triangle a couple more times with her fingertip.
When Echo turned off the cabin light, a dull blue glow remained. They both looked straight up, following the black-on-black outline of the monolith against the night sky. Above the five points, what appeared to be above the cloud layer, a faint blue sphere glowed.
“What in the world?” He muttered. “We wouldn’t evacuate if our solar flare sensor gave us this reading. Guess we keep going?”
Kimbra shrugged. “Let the brains figure it out. We still have a job to do.”
They continued into the night.
Undertake an Expedition
Undertake an expedition; Wits 3 + 4 vs 5 2: strong hit! +2 more boxes (6 boxes marked total on expedition track)
The base of the Monument came up faster than they realized, funny given it was literally kilometers across. But they’d been driving toward it so long they lost any sense of scale. But here it was, finally. The power in the truck quietly clicked off around 5km from the base. The impossibly huge base looked close but they’d have to walk the rest of the way.
“So…we’re here?” Echo asked. He could feel Kimbra nod next to him. “We’re walking into this thing or…?”
“Yeah. Yeah. Let’s see what’s inside, yeah?” Kimbra rummaged around the rear seat and found a favorite small carbine. Echo tugged the various tabs around his pressure suit tight and locked his helmet into place.
They popped the seal on the truck doors and stepped out.
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<h3><em>Related</em></h3>
Part three of my Starforged fiction! Catch up from the beginning here: Setup. Here’s the rest of it: Part 1, Part 2. This session is quite a lot more mechanically intricate than the previous two, which was interesting. Trying to balance good narrative against interesting gameplay. Let me know if you think I hit a good balance!
Begin a Session
Begin a Session: I feel like it’s time to finally head off to investigate the Monument. This is starting a new chapter, so I do a flashback in which Echo reveals his looper Paragon ability. +1 Momentum (+6 total).
Rolled on the character name table for his sister’s name: Valda.
Echo slept in the xenobotanist’s cot while they tended the hydroponics. It was terrible sleep, noisy and over lit even when he buried his head under a pillow. Every beep and click came through. It was not the low buzz of crickets from his township.
He couldn’t help but gnaw on what information the brains had already gathered. He and Kimbra had looked it all over together. She made hmm and huh sounds. Echo just saw more nothing than something. Couldn’t bring a vehicle too close to the thing, just like the thing in space. Couldn’t fly drones remotely into the hole. They’d have to approach with a little utility truck they had under a tarp outside. Better chunky wheels and thick glass than a grim march across many kilometers of wind-blasted sand.
“See, this thing’s easy to drive!” He yelled over the wind to his sister. She held on for dear life to the farm truck’s roll cage as its six wheels burred over untilled hard pack. Valda, a couple years younger than Echo, trusted him much more than he thought she should. “We can get out to the watering hole and back before Third Ma gets back from town,” he told her, full of unearned confidence.
She tightened her grip. “I don’t know, Echo. Can you slow down?”
He laughed and twisted the throttle. The wheels grabbed tight and they leapt forward.
Echo remembers the precise moment the rear wheels locked up, a moment later, dust getting into the independent motors. Horrible sound. Impossible to control. And as he struggled to keep the articulated farm vehicle from squirming like an eel, he remembers Valda launching out her window.
Adrenaline gripped his gut and made him want to vomit. The whole vehicle started to tip over and —
A moment later: “I don’t know, Echo. Can you slow down?” There was Valda, still in her seat, white knuckling the roll cage above her. His hands were still shaking as he backed the throttle down to the green zone. They turned around then, he remembers, carving a gentle arc into the hard pack.
The Monument towers over him at that moment, standing squarely where he expects to see the township’s low skyline of habs and silos. He’s going faster and faster toward the gaping crack at its base and —
Echo woke up to the hiss of Kimbra releasing steam from the coffee machine.
“Found some milk in storage,” she says to him. “Turns out everyone here’s lactose intolerant! What were the odds? Anyway, I’m making coffee and we’re gonna steam some milk up.”
One of the brains waved at her, eyes getting wide. Kimbra shrugged, turned around and fired up the steam wand. The brain might have been yelling something like I was saving that but Echo couldn’t be sure.
Set the Expedition
I actually made a Gather Information roll in preparation for the expedition into the Memorial last session: Wits 3 + 3 vs 2 7, weak hit. +1 momentum (+4 total). What’s the complication? They’ll have to walk the final segment.
I create stats for an Incidental Vehicle: little truck, integrity 4 (medium, it’s purpose built but not military grade)
Finally, I Set the Expedition to the Monument at Dangerous. Rolled first segment, Wits 3 + 6 vs 4 1: strong hit. That means I Reach a Waypoint, mark two boxes.
Rolled the second segment: Wits 3+ 3 vs 9 10, MISS and we’re waylaid by a crisis.
Echo and Kimbra packed the little truck, later, topped off the tires, dusted off the solar panels. The Major had, well, a lot of guns. Long guns, short guns, boxes of ammo. Echo had grabbed his own from the Winder and felt a little inadequate.
The truck handled fairly well and the winds had calmed down a good bit. Dust still whirled around beneath the truck. The Weave connection was still iffy, comms back to Helia getting weaker by the kilometer. Eventually the wheels stopped buzzing under them and went silent. They had rolled onto the perfectly smooth circle that stretched for kilometers around the Monument.
“Huh,” Kimbra grunted.
“Handling’s better at least,” Echo said, looking at her. It was still a good drive before they even go to the breach, much less entered it. She pulled up the truck’s front camera and stared into it.
“It’s like we’re never gonna get closer,” she said. They continued. Echo increased the throttle a bit.
Miss on Second Segment
Roll on Planetside Peril table, lifebearing column: Equipment fails or malfunctions.
Right on cue, the wheels locked up and they went into a skid.
“Kidwatchwhatyouredoing —“ Kimbra yelled, grabbing the side of the truck as they went into a roll.
He’d been here before and knew exactly what to do. Echo reached for the adrenaline in his gut. Felt a moment of giddy weightlessness and indulged the thing that made him a Paragon of his township back home. The moment reset, the truck back upright and heading into a skid.
A moment later: Kimbra yelling, the vehicle going over anyway. “Fuck! I’m sorry! I thought —“
Crunch crunch skid slide. The truck finally stopped on its side. Echo and Kimbra hung from their harnesses groaning.
Suffer
Suffer move: Endure harm! -2 (serious), which Echo will try to resist. Health 3 + 4 vs 7 9. I use his LOOPER (-2 Momentum, +4 total): he rerolls the 9, gets a 10, sad, no strong hit. I take the weak hit after all but I don’t want to lose any more Momentum, so I leave Health at 3.
“It’s…okay,” Kimbra grunted. She pushed the release button on the harness and fell out of the webbing. “Damn! Get up, help me get her flipped back over. I’ll see what we can do with the drive that locked up.”
They clambered out of the upended chassis, jumping gingerly down to the hard, smooth surface. Kimbra knelt down and patted the ground. “You know…I think I’m the first human to walk here,” she said.
Check Gear, Face Danger
Check Your Gear to see if something in the truck can help them: Supply 5 + 2 vs 6 10. Weak hit. Sacrifice resources, -1 (Supply 4 now), but they have leverage.
Face Danger to right the truck and continue: Iron 1 +2 +1 for Kimbra’s help vs 4 10. A weak hit, +1 Momentum for Connection’s help (+5 total)
Suffer move: Lose Momentum (delayed!) -1 for a minor setback (+4 momentum now).
Echo rummaged around the truck for whatever might help them flip the vehicle back onto its wheels. He found a jack and what looked like long metal poles, probably part of a canopy. After some grunting and scrabbling, their boots and poles unable to gain any sort of purchase on the surface, the truck flopped down on its chunky tires. Onward.
Undertake an Expedition, continued
Undertake an expedition, continued: Wits 3 + 6 vs 6 9: strong hit! +2 boxes (4 total) on the Expedition track. Now I feel like Exploring a Waypoint! Let’s see what the core oracles give me…
CREATED SUPPLY per the Descriptor + Focus tables.
It felt like hours, Echo thought, the truck silently cruising on what must be ice or glass or polished metal. The dull red sun ducked behind the massive obelisk ahead of them, casting their drive into nightfall hours early. The Weave connection had gone dead hours before.
Then, out in the dust swirls: a glint of metal. Echo was sure of it. “How do you…I need more light over there!” He yelled excitedly, jerking the truck to the right. Kimbra had been dozing and awoke with her hands in fists.
“What the hell, Echo?!” Then as they looked: “What the hell, Echo.”
Plunged into the surface, that perfect mirror they had been driving on for hours, was what appeared to be a cargo crate. Dull metal, squared off, gigantic, the sort of container that would be strapped to the side of a hauler. Whatever livery had been painted on it was long scoured off by the ceaseless dust. It looked to be about halfway inserted into the surface they’d been driving on, assuming it was the same dimensions they were familiar with.
“Let’s go check it out,” Echo said, excited. He was already pulling his helmet over his head.
“Whoa, whoa, kid, this isn’t what we’re here for,” Kimbra said, putting her hand on top of his head so he couldn’t pull his helmet down. Let’s maybe look at this thing when we’re done with our chores.”
Compel
Gotta convince Kimbra to go off mission! Compel: Heart 2 + 5 vs 4 1: Strong hit! +1 Momentum (+5 total)
Echo could barely stay in his seat. “But…but…clues? What brought it down, you think?” He glanced out, glanced back at the Major, glanced back out. He was practically vibrating.
She sighed, nodded. “15 minutes, then we’re back on the road, yeah?”
Explore a Waypoint
Explore a Waypoint: Wits 3 + 1 vs 4 5, a weak hit. I don’t want to spend my Momentum on this yet so I take the +1 momentum (+5 total) and face a peril at the waypoint. I envision something ominous that this could mean. +1 for my Explorer path (+7 total).
They walked gingerly around the thing. Definitely a cargo container, rated for interstellar transport. The airlock seal light was dead, neither red nor green. Echo scrambled up on top of it. The door had been unlatched and thrown open, the interior completely empty.
“Nothing! This is weird,” he said over the radio.
“We done, then?”
“Yeah, but …this is weird, right? What is this doing down here? Who opened it?”
“Dust devils, most likely,” the Major said. She passed her hands along the lower surfaces of the container where it plunged into the smooth surface. Not even impact cracks, just a perfect transition from container to surface. “No, I don’t like this one bit. Let’s tell the brains about it and let them poke at it.”
They continued. The monument was fully backlit with the dull red glow of the setting sun as they drove toward it.
Undertake an Expedition
Undertake an expedition: Wits 3 + 1 vs 8 7, another miss! Not feeling another Suffer move, so let’s roll on Pay the Price:
41: The environment or terrain introduces a new hazard. OKAY! I’m going to experiment with the Tension Clock system. I create an 8 segment clock, “The Monument Activates.”
One of the sensors started pinging but Echo couldn’t identify which one. The truck controls themselves were pretty straightforward but it had been retrofitted with lots of science gear. Some of the gear decided it was time to science.
“Echo, pull over man,” the Major said, brow furrowed. She ran her finger along row after row of button and sensor and readout. Nothing was labeled. “Here. Here.” She poked at a triangular screen that had been jammed between two other pieces of equipment.
“I know that screen!” Echo said. “Radiation! Huh. We used these at the township to warn us about solar flares.”
Kimbra looked out the window. The red giant had nearly set. “Well I don’t think that thing’s gonna flare any time soon. Dunno. Maybe it’s malfunctioning.” She tapped the triangle a couple more times with her fingertip.
When Echo turned off the cabin light, a dull blue glow remained. They both looked straight up, following the black-on-black outline of the monolith against the night sky. Above the five points, what appeared to be above the cloud layer, a faint blue sphere glowed.
“What in the world?” He muttered. “We wouldn’t evacuate if our solar flare sensor gave us this reading. Guess we keep going?”
Kimbra shrugged. “Let the brains figure it out. We still have a job to do.”
They continued into the night.
Undertake an Expedition
Undertake an expedition; Wits 3 + 4 vs 5 2: strong hit! +2 more boxes (6 boxes marked total on expedition track)
The base of the Monument came up faster than they realized, funny given it was literally kilometers across. But they’d been driving toward it so long they lost any sense of scale. But here it was, finally. The power in the truck quietly clicked off around 5km from the base. The impossibly huge base looked close but they’d have to walk the rest of the way.
“So…we’re here?” Echo asked. He could feel Kimbra nod next to him. “We’re walking into this thing or…?”
“Yeah. Yeah. Let’s see what’s inside, yeah?” Kimbra rummaged around the rear seat and found a favorite small carbine. Echo tugged the various tabs around his pressure suit tight and locked his helmet into place.
They popped the seal on the truck doors and stepped out.
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Posted on March 30, 2023 by Paul Beakley
Part three of my Starforged fiction! Catch up from the beginning here: Setup. Here’s the rest of it: Part 1, Part 2. This session is quite a lot more mechanically intricate than the previous two, which was interesting. Trying to balance good narrative against interesting gameplay. Let me know if you think I hit a good balance!
Echo slept in the xenobotanist’s cot while they tended the hydroponics. It was terrible sleep, noisy and over lit even when he buried his head under a pillow. Every beep and click came through. It was not the low buzz of crickets from his township.
He couldn’t help but gnaw on what information the brains had already gathered. He and Kimbra had looked it all over together. She made hmm and huh sounds. Echo just saw more nothing than something. Couldn’t bring a vehicle too close to the thing, just like the thing in space. Couldn’t fly drones remotely into the hole. They’d have to approach with a little utility truck they had under a tarp outside. Better chunky wheels and thick glass than a grim march across many kilometers of wind-blasted sand.
“See, this thing’s easy to drive!” He yelled over the wind to his sister. She held on for dear life to the farm truck’s roll cage as its six wheels burred over untilled hard pack. Valda, a couple years younger than Echo, trusted him much more than he thought she should. “We can get out to the watering hole and back before Third Ma gets back from town,” he told her, full of unearned confidence.
She tightened her grip. “I don’t know, Echo. Can you slow down?”
He laughed and twisted the throttle. The wheels grabbed tight and they leapt forward.
Echo remembers the precise moment the rear wheels locked up, a moment later, dust getting into the independent motors. Horrible sound. Impossible to control. And as he struggled to keep the articulated farm vehicle from squirming like an eel, he remembers Valda launching out her window.
Adrenaline gripped his gut and made him want to vomit. The whole vehicle started to tip over and —
A moment later: “I don’t know, Echo. Can you slow down?” There was Valda, still in her seat, white knuckling the roll cage above her. His hands were still shaking as he backed the throttle down to the green zone. They turned around then, he remembers, carving a gentle arc into the hard pack.
The Monument towers over him at that moment, standing squarely where he expects to see the township’s low skyline of habs and silos. He’s going faster and faster toward the gaping crack at its base and —
Echo woke up to the hiss of Kimbra releasing steam from the coffee machine.
“Found some milk in storage,” she says to him. “Turns out everyone here’s lactose intolerant! What were the odds? Anyway, I’m making coffee and we’re gonna steam some milk up.”
One of the brains waved at her, eyes getting wide. Kimbra shrugged, turned around and fired up the steam wand. The brain might have been yelling something like I was saving that but Echo couldn’t be sure.
Echo and Kimbra packed the little truck, later, topped off the tires, dusted off the solar panels. The Major had, well, a lot of guns. Long guns, short guns, boxes of ammo. Echo had grabbed his own from the Winder and felt a little inadequate.
The truck handled fairly well and the winds had calmed down a good bit. Dust still whirled around beneath the truck. The Weave connection was still iffy, comms back to Helia getting weaker by the kilometer. Eventually the wheels stopped buzzing under them and went silent. They had rolled onto the perfectly smooth circle that stretched for kilometers around the Monument.
“Huh,” Kimbra grunted.
“Handling’s better at least,” Echo said, looking at her. It was still a good drive before they even go to the breach, much less entered it. She pulled up the truck’s front camera and stared into it.
“It’s like we’re never gonna get closer,” she said. They continued. Echo increased the throttle a bit.
Right on cue, the wheels locked up and they went into a skid.
“Kidwatchwhatyouredoing —“ Kimbra yelled, grabbing the side of the truck as they went into a roll.
He’d been here before and knew exactly what to do. Echo reached for the adrenaline in his gut. Felt a moment of giddy weightlessness and indulged the thing that made him a Paragon of his township back home. The moment reset, the truck back upright and heading into a skid.
A moment later: Kimbra yelling, the vehicle going over anyway. “Fuck! I’m sorry! I thought —“
Crunch crunch skid slide. The truck finally stopped on its side. Echo and Kimbra hung from their harnesses groaning.
“It’s…okay,” Kimbra grunted. She pushed the release button on the harness and fell out of the webbing. “Damn! Get up, help me get her flipped back over. I’ll see what we can do with the drive that locked up.”
They clambered out of the upended chassis, jumping gingerly down to the hard, smooth surface. Kimbra knelt down and patted the ground. “You know…I think I’m the first human to walk here,” she said.
Echo rummaged around the truck for whatever might help them flip the vehicle back onto its wheels. He found a jack and what looked like long metal poles, probably part of a canopy. After some grunting and scrabbling, their boots and poles unable to gain any sort of purchase on the surface, the truck flopped down on its chunky tires. Onward.
It felt like hours, Echo thought, the truck silently cruising on what must be ice or glass or polished metal. The dull red sun ducked behind the massive obelisk ahead of them, casting their drive into nightfall hours early. The Weave connection had gone dead hours before.
Then, out in the dust swirls: a glint of metal. Echo was sure of it. “How do you…I need more light over there!” He yelled excitedly, jerking the truck to the right. Kimbra had been dozing and awoke with her hands in fists.
“What the hell, Echo?!” Then as they looked: “What the hell, Echo.”
Plunged into the surface, that perfect mirror they had been driving on for hours, was what appeared to be a cargo crate. Dull metal, squared off, gigantic, the sort of container that would be strapped to the side of a hauler. Whatever livery had been painted on it was long scoured off by the ceaseless dust. It looked to be about halfway inserted into the surface they’d been driving on, assuming it was the same dimensions they were familiar with.
“Let’s go check it out,” Echo said, excited. He was already pulling his helmet over his head.
“Whoa, whoa, kid, this isn’t what we’re here for,” Kimbra said, putting her hand on top of his head so he couldn’t pull his helmet down. Let’s maybe look at this thing when we’re done with our chores.”
Echo could barely stay in his seat. “But…but…clues? What brought it down, you think?” He glanced out, glanced back at the Major, glanced back out. He was practically vibrating.
She sighed, nodded. “15 minutes, then we’re back on the road, yeah?”
They walked gingerly around the thing. Definitely a cargo container, rated for interstellar transport. The airlock seal light was dead, neither red nor green. Echo scrambled up on top of it. The door had been unlatched and thrown open, the interior completely empty.
“Nothing! This is weird,” he said over the radio.
“We done, then?”
“Yeah, but …this is weird, right? What is this doing down here? Who opened it?”
“Dust devils, most likely,” the Major said. She passed her hands along the lower surfaces of the container where it plunged into the smooth surface. Not even impact cracks, just a perfect transition from container to surface. “No, I don’t like this one bit. Let’s tell the brains about it and let them poke at it.”
They continued. The monument was fully backlit with the dull red glow of the setting sun as they drove toward it.
One of the sensors started pinging but Echo couldn’t identify which one. The truck controls themselves were pretty straightforward but it had been retrofitted with lots of science gear. Some of the gear decided it was time to science.
“Echo, pull over man,” the Major said, brow furrowed. She ran her finger along row after row of button and sensor and readout. Nothing was labeled. “Here. Here.” She poked at a triangular screen that had been jammed between two other pieces of equipment.
“I know that screen!” Echo said. “Radiation! Huh. We used these at the township to warn us about solar flares.”
Kimbra looked out the window. The red giant had nearly set. “Well I don’t think that thing’s gonna flare any time soon. Dunno. Maybe it’s malfunctioning.” She tapped the triangle a couple more times with her fingertip.
When Echo turned off the cabin light, a dull blue glow remained. They both looked straight up, following the black-on-black outline of the monolith against the night sky. Above the five points, what appeared to be above the cloud layer, a faint blue sphere glowed.
“What in the world?” He muttered. “We wouldn’t evacuate if our solar flare sensor gave us this reading. Guess we keep going?”
Kimbra shrugged. “Let the brains figure it out. We still have a job to do.”
They continued into the night.
The base of the Monument came up faster than they realized, funny given it was literally kilometers across. But they’d been driving toward it so long they lost any sense of scale. But here it was, finally. The power in the truck quietly clicked off around 5km from the base. The impossibly huge base looked close but they’d have to walk the rest of the way.
“So…we’re here?” Echo asked. He could feel Kimbra nod next to him. “We’re walking into this thing or…?”
“Yeah. Yeah. Let’s see what’s inside, yeah?” Kimbra rummaged around the rear seat and found a favorite small carbine. Echo tugged the various tabs around his pressure suit tight and locked his helmet into place.
They popped the seal on the truck doors and stepped out.
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