Empty Night

Nicole Taylor

Doctor Cormac

(Selected log entries from the TUS Resilience log, 2015-10-31)

TUS Resilience, Captain's Log, 2015-10-31, A-1
We departed from the Cop in good speed on a mission to entropic space. On board are our local team, our new pilot Quicksilver and a team of gunners fresh from the Cop. Also along is Xerxes Jones. The objective is to destroy a device in entropic space which poses a grave threat to the gauntlet and reality; Jones has a specially modified bomb with him to ensure it's destruction.

TUS Resilience, Captain's Log, 2015-10-31, A-4

We're coming up to Mus, a known Nephandic stronghold. A safe route past it would take too long, so we're going to coast closer by, engines cold, at the ready to spring into action if we are detected.

TUS Resilience, Captain's Log, 2015-10-31, A-5

The manoeuvre past Mus was mostly successful. One ship did pick us up, but it was a light ship, quickly dispatched with a salvo of Beta's. We return to our regular operation and course.

TUS Resilience, Captain's Log, 2015-10-31, A-6

We've come up to our realspace locations, and found hole in space, a patch somehow blacker than the surrounding emptiness. Dimensional scans confirm that this is a spot where entropic space is blending into realspace. And it's growing.

I've logged the location marked as extremely hazardous in the spatial map database. We're heading in.

TUS Resilience, Captain's Log, 2015-10-31, A-7

We've emerged in entropic space into a gigantic storm network. I've reminded the crew of the importance of our mission; spirits are high considering the circumstances.

This storm network seems to be the maelstrom of entropic space. Beyond this lies our destination. The storms are difficult to navigate, but I've constructed a route through a Dimensional procedure to help us along; Quicksilver is taking us along with good speed.

TUS Resilience, Captain's Log, 2015-10-31, A-10

The Resilience can take us no further; we've set down on a structure close to Oblivion and must proceed on foot from here.

Levi and Quicksilver are to remain on board, to keep the ship ready for departure. The gunners too will remain. Command is transferred to supervisor Levi, and this leg of the mission is hereby complete.

TUS Resilience, Uncataloged log recording, 2015-10-31

We're back at the ship, and Quicksilver shot us off as soon as we got on-board. I'm turning the sensors back to record what happening; something big is going on. Wait, that can't be <loud noise>

<static>

(The following is an audio transcript of Nicole Taylor, timestamp 2015-11-01, 03:27)

Okay computer, start voice recording.

Mission report for mission... What do you even call something like this? And what's above Top Secret?

Anyway. Preamble. The last few months, we've been dealing with a reality terrorist group called the Orphic Circle, which was planning to eliminate the gauntlet. Among other thing. We thought we had a friend inside in Merces, but things came to a head yesterday, as it turned out she was, in fact, one of the Nephandi masterminding the plot.

We've dealt with their little distraction, and now it was time to head to Oblivion itself to deal with the device they planted there, on the orders of Tychoides himself. We knew the consequences of failure.

<sigh>

We just didn't know the consequences of success.

So. Background. Well, I've dealt with some of it. Xerxes has a bomb to blow up the device that the Orphic Circle placed at Oblivion, to stop the end of the world. Or at least, that was the plan. Were he to go along, he wouldn't make it - The Resilience had the speed and manpower to see him there safe.

We departed, with Levi on board, bringing our new pilot, our friend Sofie Derde, who turned out to be an excellent helmsman during training. As our own teams were still in Antwerp, we requisitioned some gunners to man our Alpha's, as well as some well needed additional armor and medical supplies. Tychoides plotted a course to a point in realspace where we were to head into entropic space.

So, Synopsis...

The mission was... well. Oh god.

<sounds of a drink being poured and drunk>

Well that part I can do later. Let's just get the story part over with.

So we set off from the Cop... actually skip that part too, I'll just transcribe the ship logs. We arrived on the... thing near Oblivion and got ready for departure. Computer, remind me to find out what we were actually on. Actually, scratch that, that's a terrible idea - I can't get any sleep as it is. The five of us - Levi and Quicksilver stayed behind - suited up, after instructing Jane and Cormac on proper suit use.

There was a corridor of... stuff before us, and we headed in. We performed various scans, with agent Jane detecting a massive but dormant mind ahead, with with various lesser ones throughout the complex. Less opposition than would normally be expected was found though, most likely due to them being funnelled into the attacks on Charon's battle, which would be happening around now.

We soon encountered the first hostiles, a pair of Watchers. Luckily, the pair didn't notice us, which offered us two options. A direct confrontation would be dangerous, as these entities proved to be quite dangerous even in single confrontation. So we went for the second option - a cramped shaft down some ways off. Analysis showed both would would bring us closer to our target. Xerxes used a procedure to make the shaft more manageable - adding spurts and such - while we scanned if the destination was clear. That made it so we could get down without issue - we closed off the way above to make it harder to be pursued.

Once down, we found ourselves in a larger area. Shortly after heading out, however, we felt violent tremors, coming from something... *big*. Quickly analyzing the forces propagating through the structure, we found the source. It wasn't from there at all - it was all the way from where we believe Stygia to be. Apparently Charon used his bomb, and the clock was running.

To get a clearer picture, I mapped the local gauntlet and other dimensional fields, getting a good impression of our surroundings, and noticing a massive localized drop in the gauntlet nearby, spreading and deepening. That should be the device.

Heading that way, we suddenly encountered something we didn't expect - two figures resembling Levi and Merces walked our way, telling us to following them to the device. Puzzled, Cormac scanned the pair to see if there were any oddities, while I, unsuccessfully, tried hailing Levi. Cormac detected various inconsistencies. Xerxes in turn told the pair to lead the way, at which point they turned around to do so - which was the cue for Xerxes, Salisbury and me to open fire. Quickly dispatching the pair, they dissolved into ectoplasm.

After the encounter, I used a procedure to strengthen the signal back to the ship, to re-establish contact. As expected, Levi was still safe on board.

Drawing very near to the low point of the gauntlet, we encountered a fork in the road. On the right side, clearly visible, was the device - a strange looking, and extremely well-protected device of unknown function. Disabling would be impossible indeed, except through extreme firepower. On the left side, nothing. As in, *the* nothing. Oblivion was staring in our face.

Xerxes explained to the others what I already knew - someone had to stay behind to detonate the bomb. As Xerxes was the only one familiar enough to ensure a successful detonation, the choice was simple - the question was what the rest of us would be doing. We decided that Xerxes would start erecting barriers around him and the bomb to keep him safe, with us keeping the area safe for the first while, before bugging out back to the ship. We had half an hour warm up time to go, which left a minute of 8 for us to hang around. I started erecting cover around to prepare for attacks, while Jane was talking to Cormac, who appeared to be in distress.

No attack ever came, but something else did: Charon. Seeming to emerge from oblivion, he started pleading to us to stop what we're doing, that what we were doing was a big mistake which would destroy his world. We tried to explain to him that it was the only choice - that we saw what would happen if we did not destroy the device, and that he himself explained that this needed to be done.

While we managed to keep him calm, it was clear that we weren't convicing him, and we couldn't leave him here with Xerxes - left alone, there's no idea what would be done. To give us some clarity, Cormac started to compare the data he took of Charon back in the future - I mean, back in our hallucination of the future (oh who am I kidding). They were close, except that future Charon was affected more strongly by entropic energies. When he analyzed the future data in more detail, he noticed it smelled like freshly baked cookies.

Okay, that sounds insane. Note: talk to Jane on how I can make that sound sane before I write my final draft. It was Jane, with her Enlightened Psychology, who mapped the significance of that associations. Somehow, Cormac managed to make the crucial link in his subconcious. Freshly baked cookies - Charon smelled like Grandma. The personification of Oblivion and hunger. She's the one who convinced us that detonating the bomb was essential.

I must confess that the topologies are too complex for me to fully phantom, but it makes sense - Grandma is hunger personified. And what has more raw power than an atom bomb? It's likely that the energies of the bomb would be the last thing she needed - once the device did it's work of lowering the gauntlet - to wake her up fully. In the other timeline, Xerxes did not fail to detonate the bomb - without the information we had, Charon was unable to convince him. At least, that's what I keep telling myself probably happened.

Still, the device remained, and we still had nothing else to destroy it. And it was still chipping away at the local gauntlet - the bomb may be the quickest way, but the device had to be stopped or Oblivion would be released eventually.

There was only one other thing we could think of that we had available to destroy the device. We were standing next to oblivion, the end of all things. And the device was still a thing. So, we took a fateful decision - the device would be taken to the other side. Xerxes volunteered once more, with full knowledge of the implications - chances are not even a backup clone would bring him back after this. Still, he argued, he was the best choice - he was the only one who could bring the bomb along. If there was something waiting at the other side, he had a shot at hurting it *there*.

And so, the die was cast. Xerxes was preparing to enter Oblivion, while Charon - citing his role as "Ferryman" - ferried us back to the ship.

The ship was already spun up, and we headed off, keeping the sensors trained on where we came from. What happened... I looked at the data, and I still can't decipher exactly what happened. Maybe reality snapped back with the device gone. Maybe we were wrong, and something came out. All I know is, reality exploded there. Even though we were already far away when it happened, the shockwave nearly destroyed the ship outright. And it kept going, never receding in strength.

What happened next...

<another drink being poured>

Well, not sure if that even needs to be in the report. It's not like we saw it or anything. But yeah. The shockwave never stopped. I assume the gauntlet kept earth safe, somehow - and well, that got changed in the process as well. But everything outside - everything. Gone.

I don't know what we could have done better. Could we have stopped the device sooner? What would have happened if we didn't stop by Ravnos first? For that matter, what if Charon was wrong about the bomb?

Like we said, whatever we did, we would either save the world or doom it.

And I'm still not sure which we picked.