The annals of the Deathwing : A Guardian Adventure
12 Feb 2021Sawlcatcher
I was early for the meeting but was surprised to see that almost everybody was already there. I greeted everyone and joined Slevin Kelevra, the Deathwing’s Leader.“Were having very motivated commanders today.” I said winking at him.
“Yeah, I’m glad that they are eager to know what’s coming to them. That announces good times ahead! You warmed them up pretty well.”
“Thanks. And it’s not done, the officers are not here yet and I don’t see some of the soldiers who told me they’d be here. I’ll get someone to fetch us some food and drinks to have something to wait on before the rest arrives.”
“Right, we still have an hour before the meeting starts. That’ll make them come.”
A waiter brought some snacks, Fujin Tea, and of course, Leestian evil juice – my favorite. Meanwhile the officers showed up with a few more soldiers and we were ready to begin.
Slevin took the stand and spoke in a decisive and glorious voice:
“Alright guys. As you all know, we are going back to Colonia in about a month from now. The departure date isn’t settled yet, but you’ll be noticed in due time.
You are here today because you expressed the wish to follow us on our journey to regain our Fleet Carrier Ad Astra, currently stationing there. It is not an easy task to travel over 22,000 light years, and you will need a proper ship in order to do so.
We made sure that everybody here today has already acquired an exploration Vessel, but that will not be enough to make that journey an easy task. You will need to upgrade your ships with special modules, and who says special modules says special materials to craft them.
Tonight, we will go to Zende System and dock on a Ferry called Sadler’s Song. We’ll spend the night there and tomorrow morning, we’ll be in Synuefe EN-H d11-96. The Ferry arrives at 07:00.
Once there, we will bring you to some remains of a very ancient civilization called “The Guardians”. We will land on the planets where the structures remaining are still active. This mean trouble of course, since there currently still are some AI defending those structures.
Our goal will be to scavenge those sites in order to collect the required materials and data each one of you need to craft a Frame Shift Drive Booster. This Item will be essential to your journey to Colonia. It increases your jump range by 10 light years.
The Officers and Squad Leaders already have this module. Our purpose will be to support you and help you get as much as you need, as quickly as possible.
We will spend a couple of days in the zone to make sure everybody gets his share. Then we will come back here on Friday night.”
He then went on with details about the mission. Armaros and myself joined him to answer the questions asked. A few minutes after the end of the meeting, every commander was aboard his ship, on his way to Zende.
On the ferry, the two Officers, Akephalo and Yoshino, engaged a card game with some strangers they had met on board. Slevin tried to warn them not to party too much, as they usually do after such an event, because we would need their help on the morrow. They were supposed to guide the soldiers and to get the job quickly done to use the leftover time to get Guardian weapons and vessels blueprints. But the two fellows were on a winning streak and were unreasonable. They did party all night long anyway, and at our arrival in Synuefe EN-H d11-96, they were nowhere to be found. We assumed they were probably dealing with an epic hangover, and decided to resume on our mission without them.
We had some intelligence provided by Gourou Lubrik, one of my friend from the bubble, of to find the different sites we had to investigate. We all regained ship and departed from Sadler’s Song to Synuefe NL-N c23-4, where our first target was located. It was not the first time I visited some of these ancient places. Nevertheless, I own that it always gives me a strong feeling when I fly over these abandoned settlements. A feeling of grandeur mixed up with astonishment and despair. How could such a clever and powerful civilization be wiped out and overruled by its own technology? It will always make me wonder. Would that be our future fate? Is that the destiny of advanced civilization?
Save for Gatlor, Dante and myself, everybody was flying an Anaconda. That made the landing uneasy for most of them, for the land around the structure is mostly bumpy. I had less trouble with my Krait Phantom, and neither did Gatlor and Dante with their Asp Explorer. We all deployed our SRVs and rallied before the ruin.
Their first sight of the Guardian structure awed the soldiers. Armaros had selected a little hill that overlooked the site, so while we gave instructions everybody would see what we were talking about.
“See the tilted pillars with some glowing parts on it?” We heard Slevin say through the Com-Link.
“It’s glowing because the components we are looking for have this blueish glowing color. That means inside this pillar they are some valuable materials we are looking for. Just shoot at the panels that contains it and you will be able to collect it.” He went on.
“On the left you can see there’s an upper part of the structure with a unique building. We will need to activate this building in order to scan the Ancient Data Terminal. To do so, we need to approach this data terminal first. That will activate the pylons. There are six pylons around the place, which we will have to activate as well, but only whence we found them all. To activate them, you have to be in front of it and shoot at the glowing center to load it with energy. At some places, some columns will rise from the ground that are not pylons. At the top, there will be a Guardian Relic: pick it up.
Once the six pylons are loaded, one of us will drop a relic in front of the data terminal, in the cross on the floor with a blue light coming from it. Then the Ancient Data Terminal will activate. A sphere will rise from it and that is what you need to scan to get the blueprint.”
“What about the AI you talked about?” asked Mangaflo.
“There are all over the place will spawn any time. Be on your guard the whole time.”
“You can put 4 pipes in your systems to have a stronger shield. Or at least 3” I added.
“Now, Sawlcatcher, Armaros and I will open and load the pylons, and kill the Guardian Sentinels as we go on. Dante, Gatlor and Benja, you focus on the looting. If you are attacked, warn us and we will come to your help. Mangaflo you will be the first to scan the Data Terminal.”
“Yeah, as the Data Terminal is very ancient, is crashes every time it delivers data. So we have to reload the pylons to give it enough power to deliver another.” Explained Armaros
“You can help us with the pylons and the sentinels, but first you find a Guardian Relic.” I said
“Once you’ll have the blueprint, you will switch with Benja. Benja you switch with Gatlor. And Gatlor with Dante. Oh and one more thing, there are some obelisks that are active. You can see they are since they are glowing. Scan them to collect some other king of data.
Are you guys ready?” Everybody cheered.
“Let’s go!!!”
As soon as we approached the base, a sentinel spawned. It was destroyed very quickly. Manga went to the Data Terminal and sprung the first pylon. Slevin took the left side of the structure, Arma the right side, and I went at the far end. We took down four more sentinels and we started to load the pylons. Benja, Dante and Gatlor were shooting every piece of metal concealing the materials, and Manga was collecting the relic. Once the pilons loaded, four sentinels showed up. Their missiles were pretty violent and sometimes flipped the rovers upside down. Still we managed them quite easily. Mangaflo went to the Data Terminal and dropped the Relic on the spot. A Huge sound blared from it, and the sphere began to come out of its slot. It was all glowing and sending sparks of electricity. Manga scanned it, the sphere went back down and the Terminal shutter down. Meanwhile, four other sentinels had popped. We killed them and we were ready to reload the pylons.
We did so, and it was Benja’s turn to scan the Data Terminal. Then came Gatlor’s turn. No sentinels showed up meanwhile, so we guessed that we had taken down all of them.
I looked at Armaros and said: “What are you doing there Arma ?” He was with his SRV on the top of the data terminal, where the sphere is supposed to come from.
“I’m waiting for sentinels to show up… Ready to blast them!”
“Get out of here, Gatlor dropped the key, the sphere is about to pop…”
I warned him too late…
In a second, the sphere went up right where Armaros was, and he was shot out of space. I targeted him, and saw him going up, and up, and up, farther and farther away. “WHAT THE HELL!!!!!!!!” He was yelling. Slevin and I were laughing so hard. I almost peed my pants! Some of the soldiers laughed and other looked at the scene with astonishment. He stopped his ascension about 1.8 kilometers away and began his fall. We knew Armaros, and never doubted he would deal with it without much damage. He landed on his wheels at 2.5km from our position, safe and sound.
We finished what we had started, and it was quick for Dante since there wasn’t any sentinels left. All this laughing had set our minds on entertainment and we decided to race to Armaros with our rovers. What a fun experience that is! We all aligned inside the Guardian structure where there was a sort of straight line drawn on the floor, and began a countdown. The funny thing with low gravity planets is that you feel more like a bouncing ball than anything else. Once you have enough speed, the slightest bump on the terrain sends you in the air like a bird taking a flight. Of course, Slevin won the race. Why wouldn’t he? I mean, he is the most skilled pilot of the team.
Our Job was done on this site. Everybody got the data from the terminal and there was no more materials to be found. It was time to move on. I gave to the team the coordinates of the next structure we had to visit, and we all recalled our ships and took off. We visited three more structures and everybody had enough to craft the FSD booster. But we were not done yet. Slevin, Armaros and I had something else in mind. We wanted Guardian vessels and weapons. I gave to the soldiers the locations of some ruins where I was sure they would get no trouble, for even the sentinels abandoned it. They would find there Obelisks Data while we would get the Vessels and Weapons blueprints we needed. Akephalos and Yoshino were supposed to lead them but they were not here. Anyway, this was easy enough to leave them on their own, and they would be able to contact us in any circumstances that would require to.
First, we went to a Guardian beacon. It is a huge satellite created a long time ago by the Guardians. It has a strange square shape, with three “arms” that moves forward as you approach it. At the end of theses arms they are blue lights, pretty much like the ones you can see on the pylons in the ancient site; and like the pylons, you can load them with energy. Three pilots, three arms, it’s useless to say how fast we loaded them. Once filled with energy, the whole structure opened up to reveal a data sphere that gave us the coordinates of the structure where we would find the blueprint. The beacon then closed and at the bottom of it, where sprung a sort of short tail, a key appeared. It was the key that would replace the relic to open the data terminal on the Guardian structure. To get the blueprint it was all the same as before, except that we were three to deal with a lot more sentinels. We handle them without much damage. We took the blueprint and went on to another beacon, then another structure, and so on until we all had what we needed. The only message we received from the soldiers were when they were done, and perfect timing, we just had finished!
We gave them rendezvous at Sadler’s Song to have a drink before we went back to Cubeo, and hopefully make a grab on Ake and Yosh ; and the bar would be right where we would find them after all. That wasn’t the case though. I asked the place’s manager if he, or one of his staff, had seen them, but the answer was negative. I decided we had lost enough time upon them. However, we should really start to worry if we did not have news from them within a few days.
“So how did you liked it?” Slevin asked as we were all sitting around a table enjoying our drinks.
“That was awesome!” Gatlor answered.
“So different from what we usually do in the bubble.” Added Benja.
“I own the lights and the shape of the structures were much unexpected. It felt majestic and mystical.” Manga said.
“Yeah and the sound when the data terminal opens. Damn! That was something!” Exclaimed Dante.
“I’m glad you all enjoyed it” Slevin said. “Well, now that you all know the locations, and that you know how it works, you will be able to come here on your own. Today you collected all you need to get the FSD booster, but they are many other Items you can craft from these materials and blueprints. Did you checked twice that you all have the requirements needed for the FSD booster?” Everyone nodded. “Great! Then finish your drinks, it is a long road to go back to Chelomey Orbital.”
The way back was relatively quick for us who already had the FSD booster. It took the soldiers a little longer to come home.
But when we arrived, Cubeo was at war!