Starforged Solo: Session 8

More clues in the dark, a blocked passage

From the Journal of Zaramirra Wolfe

I need a light if I’m going any further. I toggle RIA’s lowlight stealth flashers and suddenly notice the floor of the interior. It’s covered in some kind of fungal growth that glows in reaction to RIA’s lights (roll: biological growths, energy discharges; roll: radiant fortification). I trace the veins of it using RIA’s lights, up the walls and across the metal flooring. There’s a design to it, a lazy patchwork pattern or crooked grid, and it appears that it’s keeping the whole place together from the inside, like a kind of fortified fungal glue. Do I dare take a sample? The dissonant, alien music plays all around me while I debate this question with myself. This is the reason I came, is it not? I’m an exobiologist, how could I resist an opportunity like this? The clock is ticking but I’m here to get the whole picture — this might be my last chance in this sector. 

I take a small sample tube from my belt, and bend down carefully to extract a sample. I scrape it into the container with ease. It has the consistency of a jelly cake — a specialty dessert I like on Delta Four. I don’t dare get my nose close to it in here. I put the cap on and add it to the others on my belt. We must press ahead. I can’t analyze any samples if I’m dead, or worse, apprehended and snuffed out via the Keepers’ patrol guard. RIA nods mechanically and we move forward. 

The alien music adaptation of the popular portal song is jarring. I nearly lose my footing on the next tract of fungal glue. RIA turns up her sensors after I catch my balance. This is suddenly starting to feel like a dream. This was hardly what I was expecting when I landed on tranquil Demeter. We have to press onward. 

I press ahead, following the trail of glowing fungal glue in the dark. I enter a new area of the site through what seems a heavy gate (roll: scrawled markings, important gear malfunctions) and turn the lights up. The walls are much higher here in this new chamber, I realize instantly, and they appear covered in some kind of undecipherable alien code or design. Looking closer, I realize that these markings are much newer than what I’ve encountered in other relics. Somebody or something came here before me, and recently too. It’s unlikely the Keepers would have found this already, had that been the case they would have blasted it with their area-phasers, wiped it clean. 

There’s a sudden clank overhead and RIA’s sensors divert me to jump out of the way just as the heavy gate we just passed through comes crashing down. An intensified rotation of heavy metal gears from the interior of this machine resounds throughout the space. The music has stopped. I realize, with a faint panic, that I’m now trapped. There’s no way out of here from where I came. The only way is forward if I’m getting out alive.  

I ask myself — I can’t help shake the exobiologist even in moments of peril — do I dare make a rubbing of this alien code while I still have time? These markings have to be important, perhaps directly related to the heart of my quest. I signal to RIA that I need my charcoal and my xeno-pad. I get as much as I think will constitute analysis — happy with the quality of my work — before we press on to the next chamber.