Outer Sector Outpost 7, Imperial Periphery
The arrival of the 7th Battle Group's lead elements didn't bring immediate calm, but rather a shift from the sharp terror of imminent destruction to the controlled, complex tension of a full military integration. Navy officers and specialists moved through Outpost 7 with purpose, their presence a constant reminder of the shift in authority. Security protocols tightened visibly; access to certain sectors became restricted, sensor sweeps intensified, and garrison personnel found themselves subject to new routines and reporting structures.
Valerius navigated this new landscape with careful precision. He successfully smuggled the confiscated, unstable plasma core back to his quarters during the initial hours of transition, leveraging the general confusion and shift changes. The core, roughly the size of his fist, pulsed with a contained, volatile energy that made the nanites beneath his skin hum with anticipation and warning.
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Twenty-five percent per cycle. A massive potential boost, enough to make a real difference quickly. But the instability rating was dangerously high. He couldn't simply tap into it in his quarters; the risk of an energy spike tripping Navy sensors or causing a catastrophic failure was too great. He needed a shielded location and undisturbed time – both increasingly scarce commodities.
He attended further debriefings, providing consistent accounts to Navy intelligence teams and engineering specialists assessing battle damage. Investigator Thorne's sharp gaze missed nothing, and Lieutenant Commander Jian's questions remained probing, but Valerius stuck meticulously to his established narrative, supported by the System's data consistency checks and the fabricated logs. He projected the image of a competent, resourceful, perhaps slightly lucky junior officer who had performed exceptionally under duress.
During one such debrief focusing on outpost systems, he subtly used his Spatial Sense. He felt the steady M3-Peak energy of Jian, the sharper, more potent but tightly shielded signature of Thorne (confirming his earlier guess of M4 or higher), and the familiar, agitated energy of Kaelen, who was also present. Kaelen kept interjecting with questions about sensor ghosts and energy fluctuations near specific conduits, clearly still pursuing his suspicions, though Thorne and Jian seemed to dismiss his points as within expected parameters for battle damage and sensor noise. Kaelen's persistence, however, kept Valerius on high alert.
Later, Valerius reviewed the System's ongoing search for a suitable location to tap the plasma core.
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A decommissioned testing bay, shielded and relatively isolated. It was the best option available. The reactor maintenance shutdown provided crucial cover, minimizing the chance that the energy drain or potential minor fluctuations from tapping the unstable core would be noticed amidst the broader system power-down. The risk was still moderate, but acceptable given the potential gain and the closing window.
News from Moon 7C remained limited. Thorne's NIT team continued sifting through the wreckage, focusing on the faint 'Omega-734' signal. They reported finding more exotic material fragments consistent with Void Stone applications and further evidence of hasty, deliberate destruction, but the core mystery of Project Chimera and the nature of the contained entity (if the Omega marker was accurate) remained unsolved. The main Scorpion fleet in Grid 11 also remained static, seemingly waiting, though for what, no one knew.
As the cycle drew towards the scheduled reactor shutdown, Valerius made his final preparations. He secured the unstable core within a portable, nanite-reinforced dampening case provided by the System's internal schematics (materialized using trace elements scavenged by the nanites over time – a slow, energy-intensive process he rarely used). He gathered his multi-tool and prepared the necessary security overrides via the nanite interface.
The outpost was settling into its new routine under the Navy's oversight. The immediate crisis was over, but for Valerius, the personal stakes felt higher than ever. He needed the power locked within the unstable core, not just for his ambition, but to face the unknowns hinted at by Void Stone, Omega markers, and the persistent shadows lurking both within the outpost and beyond the system's edge. Tonight, in a forgotten testing bay, he would take another calculated risk on the razor's edge.