14 Sukatar  I

16.03.2024

The hole was fixed. That was a start.

The damage to the Twilight wasn’t as extensive as they had feared, but severe enough to doubt it was a simple malfunction. At least as far as Sukatar was concerned.

They had begun the repairs as soon as possible, but Sukatar had made sure to take a very detailed scan and visual record of the damage as well as getting access to all accessible visual feeds.

Besides her own memories, Moakatar’s would be most trustworthy, even with caution and paranoia running high, she would trust that wizard with her life.

Xaronzul’s memories would be most valuable, as the one directly at the point of the explosion and closest to whatever fault had occurred, but he had also died in that explosion. Hence the memories his other parts still had access to had an almost two second gap right before the explosion, cutting out the most crucial moment.

The soldier, Esa, had survived as well, his visual record would be the least susceptible to tampering, at least by Esa himself, but he had also been the furthest away and had not paid very much attention to that part of the CC.

Every wizard and soldier could freely share their memories if they wanted, but one could never be sure they hadn’t been altered. That was why Mezchinhar had their Mindcrawler. And sometimes Sukatar wished they had their own. She was aware that she probably only thought so because she had never met that wizard in her past (or at least she couldn’t remember it) — and so she kept that opinion to herself. But hell, she would even just be happy to have him for the sheer magical power or even the ungodly amount of izthra that undoubtedly had to be weaved into a wizard that large. The mere idea of a wizard with enough izthra shoved into himself to probably rebuild herself three times over was just ludicrous.

While Sukatar kept her Engineer working on the repairs to the Twilight still in the docks of the Dark Citadel, her Warrior on the Edge of the Universe dug into finding out what had happened. Reviewing footage, testing connections, speaking to survivors and even some of the Dark Citadel’s soldiers. The latter she shoved between the Engineer’s work because she would rather vaporise in the freezing nothingness of hell as to be present with two of her Parts on the Dark Citadel or anywhere else close to Quadirymir for that matter.

That one was trouble — they all knew that. And his clear obsession with Zenozarax appeared to become more of a problem than an advantage. But there was a reckoning coming. Slowly but steady. And if she could pin this one on that irritating piece of shit it would be a great first step to that. Once upon a time, when she had still been a Seeker in the Order, she had made a decorated career out of hunting down void trash like him — and she found a bitter comfort in falling back into that mindset like she had never stopped in the first place.

The array of screens before her showed a synchronised loop of the events leading up to the explosion. At her side was an estimated blast pattern pinpointing the source of the explosion and size by the damage it caused in accordance to the visual records she had.

Approaching the blast again she slowed the footage down once more. Her own memories filled in the conversation in the room at the time.

Cab and Jennax Fen spoke to Xaronzul, pointing out the power lines of the channelling device that ran through the subdeck and maintenance shafts to the engine room and which they had chosen to replace. She had put a mental pin in that. The use of the device was a strain on the entire system, depending on the level of chaos it could put an enormous amount of stress and wear on the existing wiring and systems. It was still working, but they rather replaced them long before they needed replacing instead of running into failure when they couldn’t afford it. After all, they weren’t short on any resources — besides izthra. Everything the multiverse could provide they had plenty enough of to be wasteful with it. It was unlikely something had failed due to bad maintenance, but a fault in the system still wasn’t impossible. The bathtub-curve of expected failures applied even to magical devices.

The goblins left for the maintenance shafts and Xaronzul stepped up to the front facing panels. Her own attention in the displayed memory was taken away from the front panels as Moakatar commented on the way the thrusters had performed at their Little Halo approach, noting a small failure of the starboard Sektor 3 cluster which had cut out for 0.34 seconds before the redundancies had kicked in. Another mental pin.

Sukatar herself had made a little joke at that, poking fun at Moakatar’s sense of perfectionism, though only in hushed whispers and only meant to be heard by Moakatar who had chuckled. Now Sukatar cursed herself for that joke because just as she had made it, the visual feed from Xaronzul’s memories turned black. Two seconds away from the blast and she was looking at Moakatar.

From the corner of Moakatar’s point of view she could see Xaronzul still standing at the panels. She slowed the visuals down even more. Esa had stood in the back at Nav control, having told them a few seconds earlier in that monotone voice of his that the docking clamps would be readjusted slightly. Followed by a slight vibration and a low thumb. She also put a pin in that. Esa was looking up to Xaronzul, another low thump, who in that moment had started to say something, turning towards her.

“Can anyone tell me—“

These were his last words. Had he noticed something? If so, he didn’t seem alarmed. A pin in that. Milliseconds before the blast Sukatar stopped the playback completely. She zoomed into the displayed panels as best as she could. The resolution wasn’t bad, but not exactly amazing either. Their subconscious mind picked up a lot more than they processed on the fly, and sometimes they could find information in their memories they had disregarded in the moment. But these subconscious details could be hazy — especially if they were this out of focus.

But from every view she had, Xaronzul till his death, Moakatar’s slightly off centred, Esa in the back, her own slowly turned forwards, even the static camera overseeing the CC; there was no flashing alarm. No errors. Not even a minor note telling of anything wrong with the system itself.

She hit play again, there was a slight vibration in the feeds accompanied by a third, low and dull sound (another pin) and within the fraction of a second the blast tore through the CC. Emitting from a point below the front panels where Xaronzul stood.

Carefully she checked through the logs again. Just making sure she wasn’t missing anything, but every task logged again gave no indication of any malfunction.

Layer upon layer of events were put over the timeline, and then she halted. Reversing the playback, she heard Esa tell them about the docking clamps again - then the slight vibration and dull thump right before the explosion. The specific layer was pulled up to the front of her mind, Esa’s control over the clamps with the exact time stamps. Three of them. Releasing, adjusting, reattaching. One after another. Each time a slight vibration in the ship followed by that dull thump. Only the last one happened at the exact moment the CC exploded.

Feverishly she checked which clamp Esa had adjusted last and tensely she wished through her teeth.

“You piece of shit….”

The last clamp had reattached itself right below the CC.

*

We need to follow up on that.

Sukatar had already stood up when her Warrior’s conclusion of the analysed footage came to her memories.

Already on it.

She left the repairs of the Twilight rest and, not wanting to vent the ship again or risk teleporting into the still present debris outside, left the ship through the airlock. The cold vacuum stung a little in the destroyed parts of her face and right arm where artificial nerve had fused ill together. Her right eye still wasn’t working correctly and she knew that it probably needed to be rebuilt as much as the weave of izthra that ran below the skin. Without it she felt weirdly numb on that side of her face and her hearing felt still distractingly one-sided. At least the latter wasn’t a problem out here in the vacuum of the docks.

Her heart sank as she saw the amount of drones and soldiers swarming the blown up dock. Pushing herself first off the ship and then steading herself in the vacuum with her own magic she made her way over to them. The soldiers naturally lacked the kind of magic that allowed Sukatar to move freely in the vacuum of space, so they relied on small thruster packs and magnetic boots.

She quickly spotted the soldier overseeing the repairs by the unassuming mark on his uniform. He stood near the side of one of the clamps, anchored to the structure by his boots and almost 110 degrees turned to Sukatar’s own orientation. He saw her and halted, a neutral but questioning look on his face. He didn’t stop her as she flew over to him and took his hand. The designation of this unit was CE-BI.

I need you to stop immediately. I need to check something at the docking clamps. I might have caused the accident.

She told him in Vaeh, the complete request was transmitted to the Soldier almost the very moment their hands touched.

CE-BI frowned slightly.

You have to speak to the Controller. I have orders, CE-BI said.

Yes, and now you have new ones. I need to have a look at these and you may be destroying valuable information that might prevent another accident like this.

You have to speak to the Controller.

I don’t. And you need to stop right now.

Their entire conversation happened within not more than two seconds when the magic in Sukatar’s fingertips lit up, a light burst flashed up in the soldiers eyes. Then she drew her hand back.

Ignoring the soldier who now went to get his datatab while he reordered the workers and drones to pause their work, she turned to what was left of the docking clamps.

She of course quickly found the one that had attached itself to the CC since it was the only one half blown up. The others had taken damage too as the Twilight had tore itself out of their grasp but for now those were of no interest to her. She waved CE-BI back over to her and he followed immediately.

Taking his hand again she said,

I want you to collect all the debris in the docks. First priority. Get this area safe again. Bring all you collect to this storage unit. Don’t recycle it yet, I want to have a look at it first.

The soldier acknowledged and she let go of him again to let him and the rest of the soldiers and drones get to work.

Focusing on the top part of the destroyed clamp, she ran a few different scans that checked from simple explosives to potentially hidden magical tampering.

A few of them came up positive, but with the lingering radiation in the air and the residue of the explosion of the Twilight’s systems itself she wasn’t too confident as to see any of them as sure confirmation yet. But she put a pin in that.

If she could find the missing parts of the clamp and check them the results could be more conclusive. If the cause for the explosion had been located directly at the clamp’s grasp, it surely would have left traces.

Sukatar was just running another scan, this time on the rough edge of the leftover clamp when suddenly, out of the blindspot on her right side, her hand was grabbed.

A screaming flash of alarm and terror shot through her body, she pushed up, janking her arm back — but the body holding her was firmly anchored to the metal of the clamp and the grasp unyielding.

And she looked directly into Quadirymir’s eyes, an amiable smile on his face. His hand still tightly grasped around her wrist with seemingly no intention of letting go.

I just got notified that someone’s been tampering with my workforce.

Sukatar felt nausea bloom in her stomach as Quadirymir used the faintest of connection between them to speak to her like this. Just the way she had done earlier with CE-BI. Just that she had the luxury of realising the mortal danger of it. Still connected to all her other parts, should Quadirymir overload her systems now with a corrupting burst of chaos, causing a cascade of errors that would immediately spread into her other parts, she would be truly dead.

Trying to calm her thoughts and focus on the fact that Quadirymir surely would be stupid enough to just kill her she answered.

I’m sorry. I’m just trying to be thorough. You know, ruling out all possible points of failure to prevent this from happening again. After all, we still don’t exactly know what happened.

Quadirymir smiled, almost saddened as he glanced towards the Twilight, like he was very much empathetic to what had happened, it looked genuine and friendly. Of course it did.

Of course, I wouldn’t expect anything else. But please don’t simply override them without checking with me first. They have purpose and function beyond this task.

It won’t happen again.

I would hope so.

For a moment it seemed as if Quadirymir was about to let go of her, and her heart rejoiced at the thought — the more tense she got when he didn’t. Instead he added.

I can fix that.

He nodded at her face.

I’m fine.

She said and then added reluctantly, Thank you.

Come now Su, I can appreciate pride, but there is no reason to carry that damage around like a badge of honour. I have a bit of izthra left I can spare.

Again, Thank you. I’ll consider it. But right now I need to focus on this.

As you wish. Consider it a standing offer until you have time. And please, if you need any assistance, tell me. I’m as invested in not having my station blown up.

Sukatar nodded and then, as Quadirymir was actually about to let go of her she instead grasped his hand, keeping him there. He looked reasonably surprised at that, but more amused than worried.

Speaking of, can you give me the feeds of the docks? From the cameras and drones? I only have an inside perspective right now.

She had to ask. If he agreed the data would be near useless she was sure, if there were any clue to be had Quadirymir would make sure to erase it before she got it. But if she didn’t ask, she might as well just tell him she suspected him. He probably knew that too.

Quadirymir didn’t miss a beat.

Of course, I’ll get them to you as quickly as possible.

Thank you.

Now she let go of him and with another charming smile and a swirl of light and dark he was gone again.

And Sukatar shuddered, and she would have let out a deep sigh of relief if it weren’t for the lack of a sigh-able atmosphere.

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