The signal was a siren song in a dead language. Level-9 Omega. Apocalypse-Class. The words resonated in the sterile quiet of the Orrery with the weight of dead empires. Isaac stared at the holographic map where the pulse originated—a point deep beneath the Shattered Spine, a mountain range known for tectonic instability and raw, chaotic geology. A place no sane survivor would go.
The Sergeant's analysis was exhaustive and chilling. "The signal is not a distress call. It is a status ping. 'Asset intact. Awaiting retrieval protocol.' The encryption is fractal, evolving, designed to be unbreakable by anything less than a Bastion Core-level authority… or the asset itself. The power source is degraded but persistent, likely a geothermal tap linked to a pocket of planetary mantle energy. Probability of hostile Gloom presence at that depth and concentration: 99.8%. The asset would be located at the nexus of a significant corruption sink."
It was a vault at the bottom of a poisoned well. A treasure guarded by the concentrated essence of the very thing he'd just learned to pacify.
The old Isaac, the Commander, would have seen only the tactical problem: secure the asset, deny it to the enemy. The Gardener of Chance wanted to leave it buried, a fossil best left undisturbed.
But the scholar, the inheritor of the dead commanders' legacy, couldn't. They had died with this signal still broadcasting. They had deemed this thing important enough to outlast them. What was it? A weapon that could truly end the Gloom? A seed bank of lost civilization? A map to the Architects?
He had the tools to find out. He had the Legionnaires, the Catapult, the Paladins. He had the quiet he'd engineered. But using them would be the opposite of the Gentle Hand. It would be a declaration. It would be war, not against the pacified Gloom of the plains, but against whatever festered in the lightless deeps.
He stood for hours in the Annex, the regular pulse of the Omega signal a metronome in his mind. It was a link to the past, a thread to the civilization whose ruins he scavenged. It was also the single greatest threat to his fragile, curated present.
He made his decision. Not as a commander, or a gardener, but as an archivist. The past had a right to be heard, even if its message was dangerous.
"We investigate," he said, his voice final in the silent room. "But not with an army. This isn't a conquest. It's an archaeological dig in a minefield. We go small. We go smart. We go silent."
Operation: Echo Dive was born. It was the antithesis of every operation before it.
The Team: S-001, the veteran Scout. Its chassis was upgraded with the finest stealth systems, enhanced subsurface sensors, and a new, non-lethal toolset for excavation and analysis. E-001, the Pioneer, modified for silent, precise tunneling and structural analysis. And one Paladin suit, stripped of its heavy weapons and painted in non-reflective black, to be piloted remotely by the Sergeant for heavy lifting and emergency defense.
The Method: No frontal assault. They would use the geology. The Orrery's deep scans had mapped a network of ancient lava tubes and seismic faults that ran close to the signal's origin point. They would find a stable tube entrance fifty kilometers away and tunnel the rest, silently, using the Pioneer's sonic excavators, staying within stable rock to avoid triggering collapses or alerting whatever waited below.
The Goal: Insert the Scout and Pioneer to the asset's location. Perform reconnaissance. If the asset was retrievable and non-catastrophic, secure it and exfiltrate the same way. If it was a weapon, or a hive, or anything too dangerous, they would plant monitoring devices and retreat, sealing the tunnel behind them.
It was a gamble of knowledge versus safety. Isaac would not go himself. His presence in the Paladin would be a liability. He would monitor from the Orrery, a ghost in the machine.
The journey to the tube entrance took three days of cautious travel. The entrance was a crack in the world, a slash in a basalt cliff face leading down into absolute darkness. The air that breathed from it was warm, metallic, and carried the faint, familiar ozone-rot of deep Gloom.
The team descended. Isaac watched through S-001's feed as the world turned to stone and shadow. The lava tube was immense, a cathedral of cooled magma. Their lights cast long, dancing shadows. They moved for kilometers, the only sound the soft whir of their motors and the crunch of grit underfoot.
Then, the tunnel began to change. The walls grew smooth, not from lava, but from some other process. They began to gleam with a faint, internal phosphorescence. Veins of the same black, glossy crystal that was forming in the dampening field appeared in the rock, growing thicker as they descended.
They were entering the Gloom's domain. Not its pacified surface expression, but its roots.
The signal grew stronger, a clear, digital heartbeat in the scout's audio pickups, cutting through the oppressive silence. The air grew warmer, thicker.
Finally, S-001's sensors painted the end of the natural tube. Ahead was a wall, but not of rock. It was a barrier of the black crystal, perfectly smooth, forming a seamless, organic-looking door. In its center, at chest height, was an interface: a depression shaped like a Bastion Commander's palm.
The asset was behind that door. And the door was made of crystallized Gloom, shaped by the Omega signal's energy into a perfect lock.
E-001 scanned it. "The crystal matrix is interwoven with the signal's carrier wave. It is both a physical barrier and a cryptographic lock. Attempting to breach it physically will trigger a massive energy feedback, likely collapsing the chamber. It must be opened with the correct key."
The key was a Bastion Commander's authorization. His authorization.
The signal was not just saying "I am here." It was saying "You are worthy. Come and claim me."
Isaac, sitting in the Orrery light-years away in spirit, stared at the image of the palm-shaped lock. The pulse from the grave wasn't just a message. It was a test. And he was now at the threshold. All he had to do was reach out his hand, through the Scout's manipulator, and see if the grave would open… or swallow him whole.