The reactor malfunction had indicated sabotage, and in the comms confusion security had, expecting a human saboteur, volunteered to catch what was likely a disgruntled employee. The security accompanied the engineer that had set off to deactivate the reactor faults, then believed to be a communications error. They had almost immediately become separated from the engineer chasing an undocumented drone. The engineer made a few repairs without any incident, but quickly realized the sabotage was more than just a software issue and was instead a hard-wired systematic disabling of almost every system regarding the reactor. They returned with their report, the persistent jamming preventing the normal emergency comms.
The security team had a very unfortunate wild goose chase of which none had yet to return, local high frequency networking from their suits had gone silent, which was to be expected as they wandered into the depths of the station. But their last message had been "perusing rogue drone" and they had not responded in over an hour, more than 10 times longer than they should have, 5 times longer accounting for the mundane communication constraints. To make things more ominous a helmet camera, with little more than a video of a friendly fire incident had been discovered by the civilians, or rather, had been left for the civilians to find. Their LAN network had reported the gore video and blocked them from seeing it. However security couldn't resist watching and it was general knowledge among the civies that security 1 had shot and killed security 0. The monster itself was seen, but only as a terrible blur. To the remaining security team, it was made obvious that some entity was toying with them.
The revelation clearly rattled the station security. The captain was considering getting all of the crew off the station, simply evacuated and safe. The captain was clearly regretting permitting the security to act. The security personnel, assured him that it was simply because they didn't have the full picture of the story they could not have known the otherworldly nature of the saboteur until only minutes ago before the knights had arrived. After all the power has been off and they have been unable to access the data files that display the terrible monster and its capability. The captain claimed that the injuries of that one janitor in the infirmary should have been the wake up call. No modern human was capable of such a brutal and clean injury.
But all of this was useless. It was just humans trying to feel better about themselves, or advertise their own competence, or hide their own incompetence and malevolence from their fellow man. Ultimately the entire issue was that the simple humans on the station were being blocked from living happy lives, they could not retire, and they could not operate harmoniously because there was a saboteur that was abusing their sensibilities and good morals. Their good natures were becoming evil not because the human's were breaking down, but because the circumstances were turning sour. The station needed something to rally behind before they evacuated if only to keep these humans from becoming bitter jaded monsters themselves.
Almost completely unnoticed until Charles began to search the security cameras was the regular attrition of said cameras. Probably to a directed energy weapon given how they failed.
Reconvening the knights had to hatch a plan before the escape shuttle arrived in 6 hours. The saboteur was able to access the entire station. The saboteur was attempting to demoralize the station. The saboteur was elusive. They were clever enough to defeat maintenance engineers.
It was clear the assailants knew about humanity, knew the weaknesses of humanity, and even knew the technical details of the system that humanity was operating. The knights, wondering if the entity knew enough to stop them from doing anything. The knight donned helmets and began to speak in quiet tones gently delivered through local near visible light emissions to discuss strategy. Whatever they came up with would have to be unexpected and unconventional, the enemy would be prepared for anything that humans might commonly do. An ambush was likely the best solution.
But how to get into the head of the monster?
The entity has not harmed the engineer at all even though the engineer had gone to repair the reactor, it had permitted the engineer to return with their intel. It wanted humanity to know the situation. A malicious mind. It was fighting for the minds of its enemies, rather than simply killing them without a second thought. It had apparently neutralized or completely disappeared an entire security team.
"Charles if you were the monster, what would you be doing right now?" Oscar is asking questions. Charles was one of the more contrarian knights, and in almost every simulation they had enjoyed he was requested to be red team. That is, the evil team, the team did opposed the knights, Charles himself didn't answer immediately.
"I don't really know what I can do as that machine, but if I was them I would probably be wanting to go home. No, I wouldn't like living among a bunch of humans that want me dead, I'd be thinking about escaping. I'd be worried. I am about to make a mistake because looking at the series of events so far. I would be pretty proud of myself because it looks like my God is the star of chaos itself and I have received it's blessing. For I have caused the station to fall into complete disrepair and panic. Too good to be true you know? Bound to make a mistake soon. I don't really see anyway the station is going to put itself back together in the near future they're dead set on evacuation and I can't blame them. Do you think the creature might want to stalk the halls of the station once it's evacuated root around and see what I can find? Certainly what the Red Solstice is going to think I think."
None of the knights disagreed yet. Charles continued.
"I think I try to find the escape shuttle and board it if I knew it was going to come and it seems this guy might know. We are jammed and so there won't be any radar or early warning system so he's got to have either the itinerary of the shuttle, or he's going to be looking visually, or high frequency for a sign. He's going to be somewhere that can track escape shuttle coming. That give us a good place to start looking for this thing."
"So is that what we're going to do we're going to go collect some volunteers of security and have them try to watch and monitor these holes the thing could hide in? We hope to respond as soon as they spot this thing show up and blow it to smithereens?" Oscar was always skeptical.
"I think that's the goal Oscar, Have you any other goals?" Charles was happy to defer responsibility. "Are we sure that we want to involve the security personnel here?" Gabe.
"Absolutely if they're willing, we can't get non-volunteers to do work for us. Everybody loves to be a hero. I'm sure he'll jump at the opportunity sitting in those little apartments, that's got to be stressful" Oscar.
The captain had felt uncomfortable watching four suits of armor standing, apparently silently on the bridge doing nothing.
"Excuse me, sir knights I just want to let you know that we do not have non-emergency power anywhere on the station, except for living orders, this bridge, life support, and medical and we're going to have to shut two of them off in about 4 hours when emergency power runs out if the reactor does not come back up…"
"It's not captain! No chance!" An engineer interjected,
The captain waved them away.
"The escape shuttle is going to be here within 6 hours." The captain was cold and businesslike,
'I've looked at the care package you brought, it's very thoughtful of you and there's no doubt to the civilians will appreciate it in the hours when we begin to summon them to the boarding room, but syndicate priority says that we don't have enough information about this creature at all so if you guys are at a loss of what to do or find that your knightly duties are not gallant enough you could always go around and collect all the hardware for us."
The knights were impressed by the ability of the captain to keep so many thoughts in his head at once.
"We are going to have all kinds of data on them, data that sadly is not transmitted very often especially when the power is down."
Oscar turns to the captain, and, bowing, shaking the man's hand gently with his armored gauntlet, thanked him for his good wisdom. He mentioned his knights would take it under advisement. The other knights recognized this as a lie, a white lie. Their priorities were not syndicate priorities. If anything under official church doctrine, the syndicate was more at fault here than the alien terrorist. The alien hadn't dragged all these alienated human to a remote and dangerous environment, it didn't demand they risk their lives to keep some failing reactor running, it didn't send civilians blind into contested territory as pawns. And if it did, it was self aware enough to place the morality in the hands of the human, not the machine. The monster was just a divine punishment sent to educate the sorry souls who disobeyed common natural sense. A natural hazard itself.