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Chapter 25 - The Adjudicator[]
Word of Blake Prison Camp Ruins
Kittery Star System
Capellan Confederation
Late 3159
"We found something, Mum." Gunny Nui said. She'd traded the powered armor for a Work-Exoskeleton Suit, and begun helping with the scanning teams.
Lt. Clarissa Ngo looked up from the record-searches. "Found what?"
"I think we found our bunker, Mum." said Nui
She got to her feet, and followed the Gunny along a path leading through the erased village nearest the crime scene.
There was an unearthed manhole cover that once sat between two large buildings. A little prying brought it off, and down the ladder into a storm system drain remarkable mainly for being unremarkable.
The passage led to a set of steps built into the drain, and a reinforced, armored door with a dead biometric scanner.
"The other end of this...drain...opens into the ruin of a parking garage half a kilometer away." Nui explained, "It's easier just to use the manhole entrance, but we haven't forced the door yet."
"Force it." she ordered
The team's sapper used a fluid gun and exothermic compound designed for softening armor for field repairs on the door itself. Finishing off with a finger's width of incendiary cutting paste, a self-oxygenating combustible designed for search & rescue efforts in deep space.
The flash was bright, and the smell cloying. The crash of the door, however was deafening.
They entered.
The interior behind the door had the sword-and-signal of the Word of Blake emblazoned over a desk, there were more bodies in here. This time, cause of death was pretty easy to ascertain, as KD7 leaves a fine yellow residue when it settles. Clarissa donned her helmet and went on suit air before proceeding.
A search revealed a breaker panel a few rooms away, with the breakers set to 'off'. She powered it up, and the lighting came on. The dead Adepts in the front room, and in each subsequent room had died, but it was an organized thing. No sign of panic could be seen, nor violence.
"Mass suicide..huh." remarked Clarrisa
Each room was connected by pipe-like circular corridors, with the same ten by ten by ten meter dimensions. Most of the chambers were office and living quarters, there was a control panel arrangement with communications inputs like you see in every HPG site in the Inner Sphere...
And then, after descending a set of stairs next to an elevator shaft holding a broken cable and shattered car she found another tier of the cube-like structures. This time with monitoring gear and non-networked computer stations.
Quite a lot of the equipment here was very advanced, and a lot of it was clearly medical in nature.
Surgery theaters, a device like a dentist's chair, but with strange fittings, a 'Mech simulator pod...
"I've got something." McCrory announced, "There's files on this..."
She came back to his location. Clarrisa watched as the screen shifted from a typical coded menu to full motion holovid.
Projected was a child being instructed. It was impossible NOT to recognize the features, at least for a trained eye. "Hello, Devlin Stone." Clarissa said. "Grab everything you can off this, make sure it doesn't have some kind of heuristic data-eating worm built in."