The Architect Codex

Four's Logbook

Aliens. Actual, honest to god, alien ruins. I won't lie, this isn't at all what I was expecting to find here.

This discovery does provide a few answers, though—namely, why the IMC have been so hush-hush about everything pertaining to Erebus and Project Atlantis. Clearly, if word about this got out, everyone in the frontier would be scrambling to protect themselves from such a threat, especially the Militia. The IMC wants to catch them unawares, and intimidate them into submission from there.

But that still leaves a few blanks to be filled in—like, what does Spyglass have to do with this? As far as I know, the AI went rogue and isolated itself and its forces, but we found Erebus's location from the Kraken's direct link to his wartime network. And what is it that they're looking for? We still don't know what key component they're missing, but we have to stop them before they find it.

And that means getting off of this rock to warn Briggs.

—X—

The IMC outpost wasn't particularly impressive to look at, but it was the first sign of any sort of life other than themselves on this forsaken planet, so they weren't exactly complaining.

Tobias tossed a ration bar over to Tyra. She caught it easily, and gave a small nod of thanks. He looked over at where KT and the other Titans were standing guard, their backs to the Pilots as they watched the outpost for activity. It was roughly a klick away and they had the high ground, but one could never be too careful.

The compound itself was fairly average in its layout; a dockyard for ships, a main base, infantry barracks, and what looked to be a large garage. It wouldn't be of real significance if it weren't for their current situation; in the four days since first finding the ruins, they had discovered several other dig sites as well—all of them abandoned like the first. They still didn't know exactly what all of this was for, not for sure. But with the clues they'd collected, the Heartless had decided it was high time they pieced together the puzzle.

They just had to get back to the Militia and share what they found—but that was easier said than done.

An extraction from Erebus was not an option. Their own dropship had been shot down almost immediately upon entering IMC space, they didn't have a reliable way of calling for help, and that was assuming anyone would come to their rescue now that they'd gone AWOL. That left Plan B, one that involved the IMC outpost they'd stumbled upon ... and the Goblin dropships parked in its dockyard.

"How much longer until we want to make a move?" asked Tyra, glancing over at him while he sat against a mound of snow. He checked the time on his HUD, now synced up with Erebus's day cycle.

"Give it another twenty minutes. It'll be getting dark out then, and that'll make it harder to detect us."

Tyra nodded, then looked back down at her hands as she absentmindedly fidgeted with her fingers. Vale stood off to her right, checking over the Titans like Tobias had done a few minutes ago. McFarlane was drawing shapes in the icy sand, breaking apart frozen clumps with his fingers. He looked up sharply, noticing Tobias watching him, and took on an unusually curious expression.

"You know," the other Pilot said out of the blue, drawing everyone's attention to him, "you never told us why you made the decision to say 'to hell with it' and go rogue. What convinced you to do something like that?"

Tobias tensed up slightly. "What do you mean?"

McFarlane shrugged. "I mean, you basically just threw away the second chance everyone gave you, all to go off on some wild goose chase." He held his hands up before Tobias could protest. "Don't get me wrong, we thought you were right to do so—we wouldn't have come with you if we didn't. But I gotta know; what made you think that, beyond a shadow of a doubt, Briggs was wrong about all this?"