Exigency: The Old Guard

A bizarre sight as the two perform dance steps before an audience of hunched-over, dominated Mercenaries.

"Erdain..." Lilen sighs. "I was there, Wilhelm. Right at the heart of it. I was there when molten stone dripped through the cracks in the walls. When it rained on screaming masses and pooled on the floor.

"Do you know how I first realised my power?" Lilen whispered, leaning closer. "I had to make a roof, and a raft, shelter from fire above and below. I had to get out. And all I had were bodies... scorched, ruined, melted flesh. I wrapped myself up in death and got out alive. Do you know what that does to a person?"

Her voice now lacks its usual sing-song confidence. Lilen disengages, pulls away. "Afterwards the High Council comes with their ships and their medics and they act out being the heroes... But they knew it was going to happen, and did nothing! Not until it was too late!"

---

Pudge keeps himself shielded from the sensory component of Lilen's psi and gets to work. The system is complicated beyond measure, drowning in backup subroutines and security measures, but Pudge already has a feel for the Vault's wider network.

For it's grander than expected: there's a shaft beneath this chamber, a shaft housing dozens, perhaps a hundred additional stasis pods. The machine in the chamber is designed to retrieve them on demand, swapping out the four present for their fellows below ground.

Moller, then, must be seeking the deepest, most secret part of the Vault. Pudge analyses his options. He's not sure how much time he has...

Hack Hack Hack!

Pudge pulls out his microtool and quickly removes the DNA lock panel. He rips off two of the wires and quickly splices them together, singing his fingers. He barely notices, and continues working frenetically. He bites his lip hard, then dips his finger into the small pool of blood forming around his gums. Rubbing it on the sequencing panel, he begins recoding the receptors, and successfully bypasses the lockout. Now he doesn't have to do EVERYTHING through the back channels, saving himself precious seconds.

Overcoming his suprise at the sheer volume of the stasis array, he quickly moves on to dismantling it's operating system. He begins by infecting the self-repair modules with a virus, so anything it tries to fix will be permanently and irreparably damaged. Then he severs the connection between the array's control systems so they can't communicate with each other.

The network is incredibly advanced and well-secured... but Pudge is nevertheless a master hacker. He's always two steps ahead. None of the security responses faze him.

Until the most innocuous of notifications cycles through his updates. The database— surely thousands of years old— is reporting a match. It is claiming, without any prompting from Pudge, that his DNA is already on file.

---

Armani has frozen. Then, slowly, she breaks away from Wilhelm's embrace.

"Save me? Save me? I'm too far gone, Wilhelm. I'm wrapped up in it all, as thickly as I was wrapped up in burned flesh.

"You can get out now, if you want. I won't stop you. But I need to do this, you understand? It's all been building up to this moment.

"Erdain bled fire, but not because of some accident! It was deliberate! There was another Vault, on Erdain itself, and the High Council drowned the world in magma to stop that knowledge getting out!"

Lilen's skin ripples. Her twisted Mercenary allies stretch and lurch in response to her every furious word.

"And I needed to know why!" Lilen thundered. "I needed to know what was in there, what was so bad that they tried to murder a planet!"

The fact that the system reports Pudge's DNA as already on file barely registers. His hacking is almost reflexive; any information not immediately pertinent gets filed for sorting later. He presses on.

Unfortunately, he runs into a section of code that appears to be written in a language he's never seen, and doesn't have a translator module for. Blast. He'll have to go around.

Lilen Armani seems lost in thought. Then she relents. She raises an arm and the warped Mercenaries slowly slump to the floor.

"Intruder detected."

The voice is quiet, calm, and is felt rather than heard. Some kind of automated neuro-transmission? Pudge is not the only one to hear it: it flits through the minds of Wilhelm and Serana too. Armani looks up, startled.

She touches a finger to the expensively fashionable communicator bracelet on her wrist. "Moller, report in."

The four stasis pods begin to descend. Including the one that Pudge is inside.

"What's going on?" Armani demands angrily.

The only response from Moller is a scream. A scream that's abruptly cut off.

Pudge can't override the command in time but he's not particularly concerned. He can see the pod's destination on the system map: the very bottom of the shaft, deep beneath the Vault's main chamber.

The descent occurs at great speed and Wilhelm and Serana have to make an effort to hold on to their respective pods. Armani is left behind. She shouts something, but it's lost in the rush of air as the party plummets.

The pods begin to slow. The smooth walls of the shaft widen and soon they're lined with rack after rack of containers: some are the familiar life-support pods, others are so small they resemble trinkets and jewellery, some are so massive that it takes an age for the party to descend past them.

Eventually they reach their destination: a V-shaped antenna, situated at the very bottom of the complex. At first its purpose isn't apparent. Then it hits Pudge: this is some kind of phase beacon. A phase gate, if you will.

The "Vault" on Valon is barely a vault at all: it's a retrieval station for a far greater transdimensional hub. And if Pudge is interpreting his readings correctly, the party's arrival has triggered the gate to come back online. And someone, or something, is about to come through.

The pods come to rest at the base of the shaft, locking into place with secure clamps. Pudge is surveying the wider network when he detects a massive power spike...

The phase gate flashes, a brief but blinding emission that sears the eyes and stings the skin. A pod now rests between the two prongs of the emitters.

This container is somewhat larger than the coffin-sized stasis pods the party's seen before. It plinks and clanks as the metal cools, apparently having been subjected to great heat during its journey. It opens, revealing Moller... and a man holding his corpse by the neck.

The newcomer regards the party coolly. And they all feel his psi clawing and biting at the back of their minds.

He's of average height, young but white-haired, clad in a nondescript skin-suit. But somehow everyone is acutely aware that his name is Valon.

The same name as the planet. How curious.

Valon throws Moller's body to one side. His expression is one of disinterest and distaste. "How far we have all fallen."