Recovered document. Reproduced as found; spelling and gaps are original. The archive does not vouch for its claims.
Excerpts from the upper relay buffer since the launch of the C-9. Floor numbers are taken from the carrier’s telemetry. Order is the order of arrival, which is not always the order of events.
Floor 1-3VENNCommanders. Little gold things. Kill one and everything around it slows down. Why does nobody put that in a manual.
Floor 1-3OKAFORIt’s in the manual, Venn. Page four.
Floor 2-6VENNIt’s a hundred degrees in the cab. The basalt’s been dug. Someone came down here with a very big shovel and took something.
Floor 3-1OKAFORResearch sent a shield calibration. Graf signed it. Don’t tell anyone she signed it.
Floor 3-10VENNThe Warden opened. Two seconds. That’s all you get. Tell research the cannon calibration is the only thing that matters down here.
Floor 4-4VENNThe foundry’s fixing itself. I watched a vat seal over. Sana, they’re building Crawlers. I can see the line.
Floor 5-2VENNFound a cache. Our crates, Directorate stencil. Dust on them. Sana, who put a cache at sector five?
Floor 5-2OKAFORNot us. I checked every manifest. Not us.
Floor 7-4VENNThere’s a workbench. There’s a coupler housing on the workbench. Serial L-1. That’s — Sana, that’s Ilyan’s lift.
Floor 7-4OKAFORL-1 is in lab three. I can see it from my desk.
Floor 7-4VENNThen there are two.
Floor 9-?VENN—reading floor nine-seven. Mark.
Floor 9-5VENNSana, did you just hear me say nine-seven? I’m on nine-five.
Floor 9-5OKAFORI heard it eleven minutes ago.
Packets from sector 10 are held for review by order of Commander Graf.
Related articles
ARCHIVE RECORDSana OkaforNight chief of Asterion Relay Control and Marek’s only voice from the surface. She saw his launch request ninety seconds early.
ARCHIVE RECORDThe descent (2217–)The solo descent of the C-9: what the archive knows of Marek Venn’s route so far, sector by sector.
WORKING THEORYThe cachesSealed Directorate supply crates found where no Directorate vehicle has been. Their scratches match crates still sitting in Asterion’s stores.
ARCHIVE RECORDVoid PassageSector 9. A stretch where light and radio arrive out of order. The Phantom is fast, hard to track and rarely alone.