¢ All electronics brought on board rendered 
immediately inoperable 


O Non-electronic means of communication and 
data collection will be established and used 
while within area of operation 


Deckhand George Montgomery held one hand up near his face, and 
the other pointed out to the side, extended index fingers 
representing the signal-flags he was rehearsing to use. "So, this 
is..?" he prompted Security Officer Peter Alves. 


"One-minute signal," replied Alves, with mock indignation at being 
given the simplest of options. 


"And you..." Montgomery pressed on. 


"Return the same signal to acknowledge." Alves answered, his 
indignant feelings now a little bit genuine. He mirrored George's 
hand placement, with his elbows tucked in to his sides. 


"Good," Montgomery replied. "Now, if you need immediate evac?" 
Alves pointed both fingers upward, then outward, then up again. 
"Right," Montgomery affirmed, "and if | give you that signal?" 


"Then you're coming to pick us up, ready or not." Peter was 
confident he had memorized the pertinent signals they'd be using. 
"Hey," he looked to George with one finger pointed upwards tracing 
circles, and the other hand in a fist rocking back and forth. "How 
about this signal?" 


"Oh," replied George thoughtfully. "That's... you signalling that 
giving some handjobs ain't no big deal." 


"Hey," Peter looked sternly at him, "it's only gay if you cuddle after. 
The two of them stared at each other for a beat before Alves' 


expression cracked a little, and they had to turn away from each 
other to avoid bursting into laughter. 


Contingency Plan 


¢ In the event of any unanticipated problems or 
emergency situation, all personnel must 
immediately evacuate SCP-2454 

* No recovery efforts can be made beyond the 
original allotted timeframe. 


"Roger that." Cannon slotted the radio handset back into place. 
"Care to make the announcement?" he asked Jones. Jones nodded, 
and turned to address everyone in the cabin. 


"Alright, listen up!" Jones waited until everyone gave their attention. 
"Support vessel's just reported a hit, and the next window is ours. 
That's action in ten minutes time, everyone be ready!" He concluded 
on that note, and everyone seemed to withdraw into their personal 
thoughts. 


Ken Jones opened his gearbag and re-examined his equipment. 
He'd given one of the stopwatches to George already; the other he 
took out now and hung around his neck, tucking it under his 
sweater. The 'Personnel Tethers’ for the D-Classes (actually not 
much more than retractable dog leashes) he left in. 


Two of the Ds turned over in their hands the disposable cameras 
they had been issued, the other two just gazed out at the rolling 
waves. Deckhands Rudy Lynch and Tim Holland, who had been 
sitting quietly near the cabin doors, stood and shrugged into their 
cold-weather coats. 


Hansen looked to Perry once more. It was a final, silent plea not to 
go, yet acknowledged that said plea was futile. Perry tried a 
reassuring smile; it faded to stoic determination after he turned 
away. 


The support ship radioed in their latest reading. Everyone donned 
their ear defenders. The boat made its way toward the objective. 


After Action Report 


Mission was a complete success. Although no physical items could 
be retrieved from SCP-2454, (sample collection bags containing 
various items were all found to be empty after disembarking) 
photographic evidence gathered has been very useful. 


| believe that this has provided an excellent baseline for how more 
information on SCP-2454 can be gathered moving forward. For 
reference, I've attached a copy of the original mission outline to this 
file. My recommendation, however, is that future undertakings might 
increase the number of participating personnel. With multiple 
photographers we could collect more data in a single exploit. 


Operation Plan 


Objective 


* To board SCP-2454 for the purpose of gathering 
data and recording observations 


Assigned Personnel 


Light Transport Vessel 04 


Pilot: Brad Cannon 
Deckhand(s): George Montgomery 

Rudy Lynch 

Tim Holland 
Boarding Party 
Security Officer(s): Ken Jones 

Peter Aives 
Researcher(s): Dorothy Hansen 
D-Class: D-3855 


Planned Procedure 


¢ Light Transport Vessel 04 (operated by Brad 
Cannon and crew) will transport all personnel from 


Support Vessel 01 to area of operations 

* Boarding Party will enter SCP-2454 with cameras 
and evidence bags, taking photographs and 
collecting articles for study 

¢ Light Transport Vessel 04 will extract personnel 
from area of operations and return to Support 
Vessel 01 for debriefing 


Specialized Tools/Equipment 


¢ Noise-cancelling Ear Defenders (x8) 
¢ Disposable Camera (x2) 

* Set of Semaphore Signal Flags (x2) 
¢ Retractable Personnel Tether (x1) 

¢ Analog Stopwatch (x2) 


Hazard Assessment 
* Constant vocalizations by SCP-2454-1 


© Noise-cancelling ear protection will be worn 
by all personnel within the area of operation 


¢ Bursts of radiation occurring at approximate ten 
minute intervals 


© Total time in area of operation will be limited 
to seven minutes 


¢ All electronics brought on board rendered 
immediately inoperable 


© Non-electronic means of communication and 
data collection will be established and used 
while within area of operation 


Contingency Plan 


¢ In the event of any unanticipated problems or 
emergency situation, all personnel must 
immediately evacuate SCP-2454 

* No recovery efforts can be made beyond the 


original allotted timeframe 


APPROVED 


7/21/1990: | CAN CHANGE 

10/5/1996: YOU CAN OWN ME 
2/12/1998: YOU'RE MY MASTER 
6/8/2001: DON'T LEAVE ME 

4/25/2004: WHATEVER YOU WANT 
4/15/2009: 1979-2009 

4/16/2009: TOO OLD 

4/17/2009: | CAN BE YOUNG FOR YOU 
12/3/2011: WHAT'S WRONG WITH ME 
3/8/2013: I'M SORRY I'M WORTHLESS 
8/31/2015: DADDY I'LL BE GOOD 


Footnotes 

1. Individuals with Klinefelter or Turner syndromes have not been 
tested with SCP-847 at this time and should not be considered 
eligible candidates for SCP-847 duties. 

2. Vocalizations were deeper upon initial acquisition and have 
become increasingly higher in pitch over time; see Audio Log 847-32 
for comparison. 

3. On 9/22/2013, Researcher Tyler Jensen was reprimanded, 
discharged, and stripped of all standing with the Foundation due to 
multiple Ethics Committee and standard procedure violations that 
resulted, over a period of two months, in the death of 9 D-class 
personnel, and ended with Jensen effecting the containment breach 
of SCP-847, resulting in an additional 2 fatalities. 


« SCP-846 | SCP-847 | SCP-848 » 


The First Fifty-Five 


Excerpt from Hunt and Gather: Stories from the Recovery , compiled 
and edited by A. Haley. Available for public access in United Nations 
Occult Coalition Archive 1, East Sector. 


Douglas Pangwar greets me in the cafe on Deck Twelve, 
North Sector, which is apparently his regular haunt. The 
former commander of SCP Foundation Orbital Task 
Force 7-3, "Cochrane's Children" is short and stocky, 
with the heavy build and hunched posture typical of 
heavy users of Foundation bone-density medication. His 
long beard is tied back underneath his chin, and his 
white turban is the only personal touch to his crisp, 
standard-issue Foundation jumpsuit. His manner is 
brusque and military, though there is an odd gleam to his 
pale green eyes. 


| should preface this by saying that | deny all- no. No, that's not how 
we should begin this. Erase that from the record, please. 


| think we were all surprised by how easy cooperation was in the 
early days. When 2047! occurred, the first thing everyone thought 
was technical issues, because all our ground connections cut out. It 
was only when we reeled in the fork? dish array and got our suits on 
for an EVA that we realized we weren't orbiting the Earth anymore. 
We were all shocked, of course- there'd been no warning, none of 
the usual K-scenario preparedness messages. Of course all the O5s 
but one? were gone, along with most of the command hierarchy- 
there was no one left to send those messages in the first place. 


The GOC contacted us first, actually- one of their Bastion stations 
was in a close geosynchronous orbit to us, and the first thing they 
asked us was "did you have anything to do with this?" Having a 
command structure on the moon and fewer facilities outside the 
Earth/moon system helped them recover much faster than we did. 
Everyone's first instinct- even dealing with the Soviets and the 


Chinese- was curiosity, and perhaps fear, not hostility. 


| don't think anyone seriously considered the nuclear option at any 
point, though God knows we had the arsenal up there in orbit to 
wipe out most of what was left of the species. It took us more than a 
month for the GRU and the Sids? to contact us, after... anyways. 
We on fork Three were quite lucky in that we weren't containing 
anything- several of the other forks were lost early on to containment 
breaches. 


| suppose what always surprises me is how little people know about 
the real extent of the Recovery. The UN forces on the Moon were 
quite proactive about gathering and recovering civilians, but the 
military and covert presence of the various Groups of Interest, 
Foundation included, was spread most of the way across the Solar 
System. A particular concern was getting back in touch with all the 
lost FTL ships out there- yes, faster-than-light. One of the worst-kept 
secrets of the Recovery, I'm afraid. The Foundation had never 
developed true FTL travel- we used 1822° to get around the 
system quickly, but otherwise our spacecraft were purely 
conventional. The GOC and the GRU had turned to other, more 
arcane methods, the GRU especially. Everyone saw the recovery of 
the GOCS Yeager, but the Soviets had had FTL prototypes in orbit 
since at least the 50s. 


| won't claim to understand the science behind them- I'm not sure 
the Russians entirely did themselves- but they ran off some kind of- 
I've heard the phrase "human-initiated quantum teleportation" used, 
but that's entirely incorrect. It's... something to do with psychics, 
yes. Suffice it to say that when the Earth went the... | don't know 
what you call them, psychic batteries powering the things went too, 
leaving several dozen engine-less ships drifting all over the system, 
as far out as Hera. The GRU had sent so many of them up that 
they'd spread too far to be easily recovered by the more 
conventional Soviet vessels. Which was where we came in, or So we 
thought. 


| can't recall if we decided to go after the Nikolai Fyodorov on our 
own or if the orders came from the UN, but regardless it was our first 
attempted joint mission with the GOC. Truthfully told, we could have 


recovered them on our own but we were all a little worried about 
engaging a ship powered by psychic ghosts. Golden age of space 
exploration it may have been, but we'd all heard the rumours about 
the... dangers and instability of Soviet anomalous technology. 


We arrived at the plaque in the Asteroid Belt within about twenty 
minutes, by which time all the GOC agents were looking pretty 
queasy. Everyone in Ga-3 was quite used to using 1822- the 
purpose of the task force was rapid response to orbital containment 
breaches, after all- but to instantly jump between two different 
planets without even a sense of movement takes a lot out of even 
the most well-trained agent. They were even more surprised to see 
the size of fork Eight at the transfer point- by that point the asteroid 
mining operations were well underway. 


It took us seven hours to home in on the Fyodorovs beacon, with 
their captain talking us in all the way- that was the strange thing 
about just about every mission we ran during the Recovery. No one 
ever had major technical issues beyond engine or navigation 
failures, for the most part. But people were scared. Really scared. 
Any ship with a decent radio telescope could see that the Earth was 
simply gone, and for a long time a lot of the main civilian channels 
were just unusable. 


| recall, from when | was in hospital, after... there was a woman's 
voice in particular- | believe she was from one of the Chinese 
research stations- just sobbing into the radio. None of us spoke 
Cantonese, but... She just left the channel open for about a day and 
a half, getting softer and softer before the signal cut out. | assume 
she made it, of course- though those were hard times. As far as we 
were concerned the veil of secrecy was still in place. The GOC 
could pass for UN representatives, but we couldn't reveal ourselves 
to civilians. There were a great many times when- well, we stopped 
scanning civilian channels after a while. Especially when- when- 


Pangwar is silent for a long moment. | have the sense 
that he is putting aside his feelings, compartmentalizing 
as only a Foundation agent can. He gathers himself up, 
takes a slow sip of his coffee, and continues. 


You know what, I've been dancing around the issue. We left the 
Fyodorov to die. Are you happy? Is this the big admission you 
wanted? There. You have it. I'm not going to make any excuses. 
The Ethics Committee and the UNOC Central Court have cleared us 
of any misdoings. 


When we arrived, we moved to less than twenty meters off, matched 
velocities, and suited up to cross. The Russians said their airlocks 
wouldn't be compatible with ours. Their anti-particle field was still in 
effect- a sensible choice, given the risk of impact with dust clouds or 
other small objects in an asteroid field. We didn't question it, even 
though it played hell with our anomalous activity sensors as we got 
close. 


They- there was a reason the Soviets didn't make contact. The GRU 
had received orders from the last remnants of the Soviet power 
structure to assume Foundation responsibility until proved 
otherwise. And the captain of the Fyodorov actually went along with 
it. We came back much later, opened up the wreck- he'd locked 
himself in the bridge and drained the oxygen out of the rest of the 
ship, and then- deliberately, well... 


He reaches up and partially unwraps his turban. His 
scalp is patchy and torn, stretching upwards and to one 
side like an apostrophe. In several places metal plates 
are visible through the skin. 


| had been outside the hull for 15 seconds when the top of my head 
was ripped off. Before | passed out | saw one of the GOC agents 
turn on his welding torch and cut his own faceplate open. When the 
ship's engines died, they didn't go quiet. Whatever goddamn unholy 
power supply they were using to run it had gone berserk, and the 
entire thing was surrounded by psionic anomalies. Nothing off the 
charts or unprecedented, but our instruments didn't show them 
because of the AP field and the Russians told us nothing. 


There were eighteen of us on that ship- Twelve from the Foundation, 
six from the GOC. Eleven came back, four of those, myself included, 
in need of serious medical treatment. Two died in hospital on 
Minerva Base. The Fyodorov had a crew of 45, not including the 
captain. 


And the Soviets denied it. A miscommunication, they said. The 
stress of the situation causing instability in the captain, they said. 
And the UN forgave them. 


I've often heard people complain that the Foundation is, given the 
circumstances, unnecessarily isolationist. That we keep too many 
secrets. Well, when we tried to open up and help our fellow man 55 
people died. 


| don't know who gave the order to fire on the Nikolai Fyodorov. | 
know the flight recorder was damaged. | don't particularly care. They 
were right to do so. 


« Straight On Till Morning Hub | All Along » 


Footnotes 

1. Foundation terminology for the Departure.