Wallflower Session 5: Ghosts On The Wind
Touching Base
Returning to Evergreen, Thunderbird Squadron met with Patience for a debrief on the situation in the grey towns. Patience heard the pilots interpretations and fears that the enemy had elected to use greater force with the pilot's presence.
Patience in turn reported that the op-for pilot whose remains had been recovered did not match any genetic stocklines known to Patience. They do not share ancestry with anyone in Evergreen or the grey towns.
The henna-analogous design eluded deeper understanding, but structural analysis implies that there is a semantic payload of some sort. The design is meaningful.
Patience also accepted the remains of the compromised comp-con from the Châus farm. They will establish a forensic partition and carry out what analysis they can of the shattered drives.
Dropping off their mechs to be repaired by the ever-enthusiastic Kyle, Thunderbird Squadron departed to The Bottom Of The Well for some much needed rest after the hectic extended deployment.
Preparations
Pilot Sen spent some time in the militia training gym, finding it peaceful, and her status as a pilot granting her a degree of aloofness.
Afterwards, Pilots Sen and Lyndale met and worked to improve their model of the sniper-teams motions, so it could ideally be used in a predictive role. After the majority of the day, they'd pushed it as far as they could for the day, and needed higher level data access from Patience.
Wiki-walk
During the evening and night, Pilots Lyndale and Sen carried out ommni-net research on the history of Hercynia and the Egregorians. Most of the returned data validated Patience's account of the Egregorians being a large, anthropoidal eusocial species, with limited tool-use through rote mimicry.
They were rendered extinct by Union under the Second Committee, as part of colonization efforts.
New information included that Egregorians constructed large Hive Stacks, nests comparable to termite mounds, accounting for the relative size of an Egregorian and a termite.
Several Hive Stacks are marked on the regional scale map, and although records indicate no exploratory mission was ordered, mapping data for the interior of one the hive stacks exists on the local net.
Some questions to Patience later, and an interview with Nim Hadura, perpetrator of the mapping, was arranged.
Talk With Nim
Nim was friendly, and he explained that he explored the Hive Stack on a dare, and produced video proof of him exploring the darkened internal tunnels on foot.
Notable is a large (2.5 meter) pattern in one of the main tunnels. It was on a defined disk, and bore great similarity to the design found on the pilots head and face.
After Nim had departed, the pilots decided that it would be prudent to investigate the Hive Stacks, however, the tunnels shown in the footage seemed purpose-built for ambush.
After much deliberation, the pilots decided to approach in mechs to about a kilometer out, and then deploy the one-shot stealth drone that Kyle had managed to fit into their print-time budget. Additionally, a 'routine patrol' of Militia will be on a conveniently close sweep should infantry support be necessary.
Exploring The Stack
The first Hive Stack's overall structure is toroidal, with a central spire. The passageways that riddled its outer walls were labyrinthine, and varied in size. Some would permit mechs, but most would not. The passages did not have any concept of floors, and changed slope arbitrarily. Lower levels, including the floor of the central 'courtyard' were flooded.
The internal tower contained circular, lobed rooms in a radial pattern. These rooms had drilled hardpoints for apparently retrofitted weaponry, suspected to be from Union forces.
Finally, evidence of recent habitation was discovered, including several burned out campfires, and what is suspected to be a grave with faded funeral offerings. This was attributed to the op-for, and added to the predictive model of their movements.
The Second Stack
The pilots proceeded to a second nearby Hive Stack, and found this one to be in comparative ruins. The central tower and a large section of the outer wall were levelled, with the debris patterns suggesting a massive explosion.
Finding a hot radiation signature, the drone investigated an area in the courtyard, in the penumbra of the blast. The wrecks of several mechs were present, with cold-cores in an active state. Poses and layout suggest these mechs were engaging in combat, and were wrecked by the explosion.
Further silhouette analysis indicated that with sufficient reverse engineering work, a viable set of blueprints for these frames could be achieved, but the drone had reached the end of its lifetime, and fell beside the ancient wrecks.