Path of the Hive Queen

“I didn’t think I’d see one of these again,” Leian said quietly.

“I never thought I’d see one with my own eyes,” Iseis mused. She stopped looking at the planar vessel for a moment and glanced at her patron, noting the pensive expression on her face and the crease of her brows. “Is it very different?”

She had seen vague images of things like these before, but this was different. Although she did not exactly get a good look at this one now, either. Under the circumstances, that would have been difficult.

They were currently looking at the vessel through magic, probably the only way to do it without actually breaking open the ice. Leian was using a technique anchored on Galatea, who was still down below, beside the vessel, inside the ice. Iseis tried not to imagine what that was like, reminding herself that Galatea didn’t have a physical body and wouldn’t actually feel it. She didn’t seem to mind being there, anyhow.

"Yes, they’ve clearly changed the design from what I last knew of such exploration vessels, but I also haven’t seen any in my recent trips,” Leian said a bit absently. “Not that I saw any planar vessels except from a distance. But their design seems  similar.”

Iseis tried to look past the strange design to more concrete details. “It’s damaged,” she stated the obvious. “Is this battle damage? Or from a crash landing?”

Leian paused, before she reached out and poked the projection. A small trace of mana traveled through her finger, but Iseis wasn’t quite sure what it did.

“Perhaps,” she said finally. “I’d say some of this is probably due to a crash landing, but not everything. The pattern of the damage doesn’t fit. They also clearly patched it up hastily. Or some of it, at least.” She shook her head. “My guess is that it was damaged and then landed here, perhaps in a partly-controlled descent. It doesn’t look like standard battle damage, either, though.”

Before they could continue, another figure appeared beside them. Alianais was scowling and crossing her arms. “I do not feel anyone aboard,” she said. “Do you?”

“No, I think it’s been abandoned,” Leian answered.

Iseis glanced at the rest of her team, who were huddled a bit further away. The goddess had created a small haven for them, with a more normal temperature, while still hiding the mana of it from detection. She would probably have to join them soon, as her mana was slowly running out, unless Leian employed hers again.

“Are you going to break it out of the ice?” she asked.

The two goddesses exchanged a look. It was a surprisingly normal sort of expression, one that reminded her they had been friends for a long time.

“Whatever surveillance they might have is probably anchored to the inside, I didn’t find anything outside,” Leian said. “Unless they canceled it to hide as soon as they noticed your presence, or ours. Regardless, I think moving it now does not meaningfully alter the chances of our presence being discovered at this point, and we do need to access the interior. We could teleport inside, but it’s easier and less risky to deal with the wards directly.”

Iseis glanced around, once again looking for any foreign mana, then stepped back. She would rather not be in the splash zone.

In the end, it was not as much of a spectacle as expected. She supposed divine power was like that sometimes, and neither of the goddesses would break a sweat from doing this. The ice around their position melted, forming a tunnel leading back down to the vessel. Iseis watched it carefully. After a few seconds, the ship rose, and she could see that they had left it encased in ice, with a platform of ice underneath severed from the rest, and that was how they were raising it — not touching the ship directly. They were being careful.

Finally, it rumbled and sat down, the creaks and groans of the ice and possibly the ship itself echoing across the plain. The now-open tunnel gaped like a chasm beside it, separated by a few meters. Iseis stepped closer to the ship, still keeping a healthy distance. In the sunlight, it looked different. Even more damaged, perhaps. The missing external hardware was somewhat noticeable, and there were more dents and scratches than she had thought before. Most of them probably didn’t come from the ice, or at least not from being moved right now.

“It’s interesting, isn’t it?” Galatea floated up beside her, clearly watching the ship with keen interest.

Iseis nodded. She would admit she was glad the mana-form was here. She was a good person to converse with, and the sort of company Iseis would want for an expedition like this.

“I do believe the wards are not capable of sending an alert,” Leian noted. She had stepped up and was carefully running a hand over the surface of the ship, beside where Iseis guessed the entrance should be. “Other surveillance measures might be.” She paused, cocking her head. “While I am not familiar with this design, I am fairly sure this breach was patched up before the ship landed in Antarctica.”

Well, that was interesting, Iseis supposed.

“Are we sure it landed here?” Galatea spoke up. “It wasn’t moved here later?”

Leian glanced at her briefly before looking back at the ship. “Oh, I’m fairly sure it was moved. If only to hide it under the ice. But considering the pattern of the damage, and that no one noticed its arrival, I’m also fairly sure it landed in Antarctica to begin with.”

They were silent for a moment, and she suspected Alianais was watching Leian closely as well. The sounds of movement from further away drifted over the wind, and Iseis glanced around to see the others getting up and making their way towards them.

“Take a step back,” Leian commanded. “I will open it.”

Iseis did as she was bid and watched closely. She noticed Leian’s mana reaching out as the goddess swiped her hand across what must have been a hatch. There was a crack. Some mechanism might have turned, and there was a screeching sound. Leian frowned and closed her hand, and Iseis noticed the mana wrapping around everything, moving individual pieces. Slowly, the entrance hatch was levered open. Given the way the vessel was listing to one side, it would not exactly be a normal doorway, but it was accessible now.

At least it didn’t look like any security measures had been triggered. Nothing stirred inside the vessel that she could sense.

Without further ado, Leian disappeared inside. Iseis glanced at Alianais, who moved forward to join her fellow goddess, and then at the others, who were coming up beside her.

“They finally opened it,” Dan said with a smile. “Come on, let’s see what’s going on.”

“Are you sure this is wise?” Zephyr asked.

The drone shrugged. “It seems safe enough, or they would stop us. Aren’t you curious?”

He had a point, Iseis supposed, and the others were clearly all just as curious as he — and herself, to be perfectly honest. She turned, letting Dan duck inside first before she gingerly made her way across the entrance into the ship. At least she managed to do it without touching the walls.

Inside, the ship was bare. Its halls were a featureless expanse of slightly different colors, mostly shades of gray, varying by compartment. There were more of those than she’d have thought, the ship being subdivided neatly into various sections. It was roomier than it seemed like from the outside. She also tried to assess it with her other senses. The mana inside felt almost stale, but still carried hints of tension that had previously lived here. It was a curious feeling.

But there was no time to explore everything in detail. Instead, Iseis followed the signatures of the goddesses, who had stopped at a location deeper inside the vessel.

It was probably some kind of engine room, she supposed. There were several curious mechanisms, anyway, most of them apparently set into the walls. One of them was clearly heavily damaged; it looked partially melted. Leian was leaning over another, looking at a screen, which seemed cracked.

She glanced up as they arrived and nodded, but clearly spoke mostly to Alianais. “The communications console is completely down, I doubt it could be recovered without extensive repairs. I am not sure what happened, but this kind of damage does not simply occur by chance. It is unlikely to be from the crash.”

“You think someone sabotaged it?” Galatea spoke up.

“Possibly.” Leian shrugged. “We don’t know enough about what happened here.”

“I am hardly an expert, but it does look like some of the damage is internal,” Alianais agreed. She frowned thoughtfully, looking at the ship.

“Galatea, did you notice anything else? About the ship’s mana or systems?”

“Nothing you probably haven’t already noticed,” Galatea replied with a headshake. “There are no signs of life that I could detect, either.”

Leian nodded. “Yes, the crew clearly left, one way or another.”

“Would it be possible for the ship to send a message from here?” Iseis asked. “Either before or with the damage, I mean.”

Leian looked thoughtful. “It’s not easy, but from what I recall and what I can infer, they probably do have the ability. Sending reports would not be something done lightly or continuously, but there is enough here to open very small, short-lived gates. I assume that’s part of the reason for the large mana battery. Enough to send a signal and some data, at least. Being here already, they would know the … coordinates, for lack of a better word, that are appropriate to send a message home. It is at least something I would expect an exploration vessel to try.”

“If someone or something didn’t destroy their capability to do so,” Alianais added with another look at the damaged equipment.

Iseis exchanged a glance with Galatea. “And did they send a report before that occurred or not?”

“That, my dear, is what we all want to know,” Leian muttered. She shook her head. “They might have had more portable equipment as well. It’s hard to be sure. The batteries are rather drained, but I would expect that regardless, given the damage and the rough landing.”

Iseis clenched her fingers a little tighter. The more answers they got, the more questions there were. I suppose I should be grateful we did not run into an ambush by Mesen soldiers here, she reminded herself.

“Is there any hint of where they’ve gone?” Galatea asked.

“Not that I’ve seen so far, but we should do a thorough inspection and analysis of the whole vessel anyway.”

After conferring for a bit longer, they split up and went over the ship, at least once Leian had declared it reasonably safe. Everyone else was still given strict instructions not to touch anything. Iseis knew that was reasonable. The chance that Dan, Edmund or one of the others noticed anything the goddesses wouldn’t wasn’t very large, but it was still worth doing.

There had been five crew members. That was pretty clear from the setup and remnants they found. None of them remained, of course. Iseis left the detailed scientific analysis to the others and tried to get an impression of the crew, of the way the ship worked. Or should have worked. Given it had clearly been stripped bare, that was not easy, but even the room layout could tell her some things. She also looked at the remaining mechanism — if there had been proper computers, they might have been taken out, or still anchored behind the walls — and rooted around in her memories for what she recognized of Aishan to read the few remaining inscriptions. Mostly just what had been stamped onto things too big and thoroughly bolted into the ship to remove, or occasionally parts of its walls themselves. Given it was partly technical terms, and the language itself a newer variant than she was familiar with, she didn’t understand everything.

Finally, they met again to go over their preliminary findings.

“There were five crew members,” Galatea started. “I’m assuming three or four men and one or two women. Is that disparity significant?”

“It’s probably coincidence,” Leian said. “Mesen aren’t noted for their sexism.”

“Okay.” She nodded. Iseis could see a few of the others looked faintly surprised, but Galatea just moved on. “I think two of them died, and three of them survived, but at least one of them was probably injured.”

That caused a few more raised eyebrows. Iseis was surprised herself. “How did you figure this out?” Alianais asked.

Galatea looked at her briefly, hesitating for just a moment, before she answered. “There is magic that lets you get a glimpse of what happened in a place, or the people who lived there. It’s tricky and I’m not particularly good at it, but it was enough to get some impressions.”

Iseis raised an eyebrow. She had heard of that before, it was the sort of obscure Ability usually granted by the System that few people would have. Learning the actual magic behind it to do it the old-fashioned way was impressive. And probably something Galatea picked up on her travels to some place farther away.

“How does it work?” Zephyr asked curiously. “Did you see images of them?”

Galatea shook her head. “It’s something I only learned recently,” she admitted. “I thought it might be useful, after everything. There is probably a version that works like that, but the spell I know only gives you impressions. It’s mostly running on motifs and sympathetic correspondence. That is why I’m not certain. I also couldn’t tell you what exactly they were doing. The inhabitants left more of an impression on this place than the last few hours or so of its operation.”

Iseis nodded thoughtfully. It was still good information. She glanced at the goddesses again, who didn’t seem surprised to hear it.

“This fits with my own analysis,” Leian said. “There is one more important aspect we need to consider.”

“Where they went?” Iseis asked.

She nodded. “This ship was hidden by being entombed in ice. Our search still found it, given time. We have not found anything else, even though people should be harder to hide in most ways. They would not be stashed several meters under Antarctic ice.”

“Probably not,” Alianais said. “There is one place they could be, where we would not find them, I think.” She paused for a moment. “If they are not simply far away from the world in a physical sense, but given their ship is here, that seems like a sensible assumption.”

“You think they aren’t on Earth?” Galatea asked, frowning.

“Perhaps not. They could be in the Mirrored Halls.”

Everyone was quiet for a moment as they considered this suggestion.

“It’s the one place our system couldn’t analyze,” Leian said, sounding contemplative. “We can search, and I have looked, of course — I’m sure you have, too? But I could hardly check everywhere, and if they are in parts of the Celestial Home not easily accessible to us …”

That meant in parts of it that other gods had cordoned off, Iseis supposed.

It was not a pleasant idea to imagine, although understood the logic, of course. I wonder what it actually means in practice, though, she considered. Are they working together? If some of these Mesen scouts died, and the rest might have been injured …

She supposed they would have to investigate further regardless, but Iseis could also tell they shared the concern she was feeling. At least they had something to go on, now. Even if it wasn’t much.

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