Origin (37)
Four hours after the operation began, near the refinery.
'Alpha is in autonomous mode.'
As I was walking, maintaining stealth, I realized that Alpha's movements were different than before. To the eye, they seemed the same as usual, but something felt off—the movements seemed more mechanical and lacked their usual vibrancy.
It didn't seem to be just a result of an upgrade to its durability. Eric, noticing I'd spotted Alpha, spoke up.
"Red is attached to the special cargo. She wrote a new program and applied it this time, but it seems like there are still some bugs, so she's paying more attention there."
No wonder she hadn't cut into our comms. If I requested communication, she'd respond right away, but I didn't particularly feel like it. We were all busy. It wasn't the right time for idle conversation.
The sky was still dark. The cloud-filled night sky even blurred out Saturn's overwhelming presence. Despite the passage of time, there was no sign of any artificial light source passing our altitude. Nights on Titan were long.
There were about three hours left until the artificial light touched the horizon. We didn't have much time, but it wasn't so urgent that we had to act immediately or face disaster.
I lowered my gaze and quietly observed the refinery that filled the horizon. The refinery, displaying an imposing presence rivaling even that of Saturn.
A tangled cluster of massive pipelines. In terms of sheer size, it was even bigger than the robot manufacturing facility we'd just come from. Unlike the manufacturing facility, which only had to meet Titan's production quotas, the refinery supplied refined blue crystal to society.
But at this moment, the thing we had to worry about was not the scale's pressure but the pipelines themselves. Vast amounts of raw blue crystal would be inside those pipes, each wide enough for an orbital vehicle to pass through.
Special treatment had been applied to the pipes, so even if we walked right beside them, the waves emitted by the raw crystal likely wouldn't affect us much.
Even so, caution was still necessary. If the pipes were ever damaged or ruptured, their contents would immediately spill out.
If it was refined blue crystal, we might survive, but if it was raw ore, then bizarre waves that induce space psychosis would spread everywhere.
Even though we had coated our cores with the material found in the cargo sector, it only provided a certain degree of protection—especially since it was only partial, not full, coverage.
That was also why Roxy's shuttle was to remain above the refinery until the timing was right. If the situation we feared happened, the shuttle could be in trouble as well.
I didn't upgrade it so thoroughly just to let it crash down in vain.
'There's a higher chance of ghouls or mimics than pureblood supremacists overtly waiting around.'
I partially agreed with what Eric had said. There had been no monsters at the robot manufacturing facility for some strange reason, but I thought the refinery would be different—the existence of the raw blue crystal explained why.
Blue crystal that seemed to grow inside a ghoul's body, mimics that fused multiple crystals into a core, and, further still, the buds using special abilities. Completely different looking beings, but the commonality was the blue crystal.
And those ores weren't just present in small amounts—they were piled up like mountains. It was unlikely that the creatures would simply pass by or ignore them. Even unique entities like buds had cores made of blue crystal.
When we'd almost reached the refinery, Eric quietly spoke. His cautious gaze swept from one end of the facility to the other.
"It's eerily quiet."
"It was like this at the production facility too. But we still have to be careful. It's not like there's really nothing inside."
The quiet was actually unfavorable to us. Sound means information. The lack of noise meant our information was extremely limited.
And ambiguity leads to errors in judgment, which can turn into bigger hazards.
Eric nodded in agreement. For some reason, his gaze at me felt odd. Was he looking at me like one would at a junior working earnestly?
Nadia, fiddling with a flashbang on her belt, whispered to me.
"Hyun-woo, do we really have to go inside? Can't that woman or this woman just remotely reclaim control and manage the facility? The protocol already activated anyway."
'That woman' was Licorice, and 'this woman' must be Celestia.
"That's—"
I wasn't really sure. Just as I parted my lips, about to say so, Celestia suddenly cut in. There was a bit of a height difference, so she slightly bent forward, even though she could speak just fine over our internal closed comms.
"I've been trying to remote control it from earlier, Nadia."
At the abrupt reply, Nadia twitched her tail nervously—startled, it seemed. She stuck close to me for courage.
"... You are?"
"Of course. It's just not working, that's all."
Celestia continued, sharing her personal hologram window with us.
"As you can see, the refinery system is completely locked down. The security protocol is active, but authority commands aren't taking effect. Or more precisely, it's remaining unresponsive, which suggests that a physical method might have been used."
"If you mean a physical method..."
"Yes, like how the pureblood supremacists wrecked the robot manufacturing facility, the inside here is likely damaged too. And they probably cut all external lines. They seemed to know the security protocol existed."
Celestia speculated that the supremacists tortured engineers at the robot facility or refinery to discover the protocol's existence.
"Can't you repair the lines?"
"It's possible, but it would take time. And a tremendous amount of energy, of course."
She explained the security protocol had several stages. What had just activated was only the very beginning, and what we had done so far was just priming the system.
"Everything is lacking. The protocol is designed to initiate even under such conditions, but the harsher the conditions, the slower the start—as a measure for more thorough handling."
When I thought about it, it felt odd. This was the so-called last bastion. But if it's only meant to be activated in desperate situations, how could it be so powerless under exactly those conditions? It didn't add up.
Both Nadia and I frowned. Eric merely offered a small sigh, as if he knew something we didn't.
"Deal with it? So we have to hold out until it kicks in for real? Or is it possible that it might never fully activate regardless of how long we endure?"
"Both, but there's a real risk of the latter."
"... Seriously?"
"The security protocol was never meant for those left behind on the satellite in the first place."
At Celestia's soft words, we stopped dead in our tracks. For a moment, I doubted my ears.
'Not meant for those left behind on the satellite?'
Then who was it for? Or what for? The heater in my suit worked just fine, but I felt like my blood was running cold. The headache was a bonus.
When we pressed for an answer, Celestia hesitated, then spoke.
"It's to ensure the safety of those outside the satellite. To keep any danger from here from spreading further. Strengthened even more after the Immortality Experiment."
"... So it's basically a quarantine measure."
One more restriction on top of communication lockdown—even if it didn't change much, I felt betrayed. As if I'd trusted a knife only to cut my own foot with it. The feeling wasn't pleasant.
Yet I had to accept it. Without activating the security protocol, we couldn't even have planned to drive out the pureblood supremacists from the refinery. It was still the last line of defense, one way or another.
"I've heard there are several names for the protocol, but I don't know the details. How it unfolds at each stage is ultra-classified."
"What about... even for Myosotis?"
"If it were the old Myosotis, sure, but..."
"Ah."
Myosotis is divided into before and after the collapse. Celestia had revived it through desperate effort, but its momentum hadn't fully returned to its peak.
It was a group that soared in its prime, then collapsed out of nowhere. There was never a chance to leave anything behind, and Celestia probably never got to inherit anything either.
She's considered the only surviving member, after all. That's a separate matter from Celestia searching for her lost brother.
"I honestly don't know how Red found out about the protocol—or about the Archive, for that matter."
"If even the pureblood supremacists know, there's no way she wouldn't. Besides, red's more impressive than you think."
When it comes to Titan, there's little she doesn't know. She's formed such a powerful faction that she's always escorted by an Alpha security robot.
So it wasn't that strange for someone like her to know about the Archive, was it? When I raised this, Celestia just fell silent.
She seemed to be suspicious of Licorice. Whether it was her true feeling or not, at least it looked that way on the outside.
Though Licorice was a bit lacking in social skills and speech compared to me, her competence was unequivocal. I had at least a dim sense of just how remarkable she was.
Maybe this was just a difference born from their ignorance. If this operation succeeded, I planned to preach the greatness of Licorice. She couldn't remain an 'ordinary engineer' forever.
Their views had long since crossed the line and could no longer be called simple prejudice.
We couldn't continue our conversation any further.
It wasn't because things got heated or we had nothing left to say. We were about to arrive at the refinery. From now on, we had to focus entirely on situational awareness rather than talking.
That resolve lasted only a moment. The closer we moved, the stronger the blue glow from ahead became. The tingling sensation coursed through us, and it seemed everyone felt it—without a word, we all came to a stop.
Just a little further and we would enter the refinery sector. We exchanged glances and set off again, this time moving slower.
Eventually, what appeared before us was a scene of raw blue crystal forming a hill.
I couldn't tell if the engineers inside had arranged them as a barrier or if the pureblood supremacists had just fired their guns recklessly, burst the pipes, and caused this. The scattered brass casings on the ground suggested it was more likely the latter.
I made a calm assessment. Even if we rode Carry and crossed one by one, there was nowhere to dismount. We had to avoid places where the pipeline had ruptured as much as possible.
Walking beside what was essentially a long, unstable bomb was nothing short of suicide. In the end, to enter more safely, we had to look for a different way in.
"We can't cross here. It's too wide, and going through that area as we are now is basically asking to die."
"Then we have to go around..."
"Let's try moving along the outer wall for now. With the damage, there must be spots where the wall's crumbled down. If not, at least we should avoid areas with dense pipes."
Before long, as we skirted along the exterior, we discovered several burrows that looked like they'd collapsed from battle shock. There was no characteristic blue glow, just a dark tunnel—and even when we shone a flashlight, it zigzagged out of view.
'Even with thick outer walls, flashlight beams should reach further than that.'
I tried tossing lumps of ice from the ground into the tunnel and kicking the walls. There was no notable response.
After a brief discussion with the group, I decided to send Alpha in first. This was exactly what Alpha was for.
On command, Alpha crawled into the tight burrow, and the monoscopic feed of the interior streamed to our screens. We saw the characteristic ruggedness of tunnels.
Just as Alpha reached deeper, trying to send back better intel—
TUNG—!
Suddenly the tunnel contracted, and the feed went dead.
【( °ᗝ° ).ᐟ.ᐟ】
Carry flinched and jerked backwards in alarm. It hurriedly checked its flamethrower, the fuel tank clanking into place at the same moment.
Though not as startled as Carry, the rest of us were still pretty shaken. No wonder: what had seemed to be ordinary scenery had suddenly turned into a monster the moment it was stimulated.
A bundle of tentacles shot out from the cracks, and the shell—which had been camouflaging itself—snapped open in an instant, as if to swallow everything in front of it.
What had looked like an entrance beyond the wall wasn't a real door, but a mimic that had bored into the wall and dug its own lair.
"... It wasn't a burrow after all."
Rubbing the goosebumps off my arm, I muttered quietly.
-------------= Clacky's Corner -------------=
【(；☉_☉)】