“Sama, we just got a gravity spike on the nearest coreward Phlo.”

“A gravity spike?” I repeated, as Halise fed me the data, and I broke it down into all its components to look at. “The hell... the positive gravity stream looks like something a singularity might put out... wait, no, that’s mock gravity, it’s dominated by Dark Matter wavelengths, look at the spatial bending... someone is feeding Dark Matter gravity waves into the Phlo and using them as a speed multiplier...”

-Dammit, Mom!- all the Fantastic Ranthas /spoke up at once, as they had to start rebuilding the This Is Actually Possible With Physics models yet AGAIN.

“That’s an alternative to the new Rifling process, right? Would it, could it... stack?” Halise asked.

-DAMMIT!- All the other Ranthas with physics, math, and engineering Talents /joined in that time.

“There is the small matter of manipulating Dark Matter, then Dark Gravity, as it were. You try and mix that up with gravity phasing and I think you’ve just set the stage for tearing a parsecs-long rip in reality... which will not be appreciated.”

“Oh. So, a post-Twenty thing to worry about.”

There was a collective groan from the peanut gallery. I was sure I heard the /sounds of furious note-taking...

“There ya go.” I pointed at one of the seventy-three readings. “See that?”

She wasn’t the only one looking at it. She did some mental acrobatics. “That’s very close to the real mass of the Mount!” she inferred after a moment of thought.

“Dark Matter manipulation and real gravity distortion equivalent in size means?”

“There’s another Ruk Citadel coming, right on time.”

-They are slingshotting around the heliospheres using Mock Gravity tethers to the stars to keep their momentum up, then diving into another Phlo to keep going.- I /mused to nobody in particular.

-MOM!!!- they all /protested, and I laughed...

---------

We were about a million miles out, our mass and gravity shadow politely blurred into a local field of Kuiper objects, which coming from a star as excitable as the Sargasso’s were all kinds of elements, densities, and the like. As long as we weren’t under power, we were basically invisible to their scans... unless they got really active with molmech sensor spreads and the like.

We had towed the Citadel ship out way past the Sargasso’s heliosphere in an orbit that, if they calculated it back, would reveal that it had been slowly orbiting and drifting away from the star for at least twenty thousand years, and the numbers held up to a hundred thousand if they bothered to go back that far. The Citadel was actually older than that, but psi had verified the crew wasn’t, so we were good on that end.

Of course, it was all brightly lit up, and we’d left all the vivic generators there.

The gravity distortion as the incoming Ruk ship exited the Phlo was marked, and as I expected, they used Mock Gravity slingshotting to spin around the heliosphere and close in very quickly on the source of the signal.

They juked remarkably well around any Kuiper objects, approaching the Mount at FTL, and then came down out of Jam forcibly as they entered its gravity well several hundred leagues out, which was basically on top of one another for ships of their size.

There were a few seconds of light-lag, but we watched calmly as the ominous shape of another flying mountain closed in on its near-twin, and slowly circled it at about a mile distant. The heat readings indicated that there were a lot of weapons ready to go, but of course what they got was a mono-color Christmas tree and all the hangar doors open, with no sign of anyone within a million miles.

There were a couple active sensor pulses; one was a gravity wave, and the other a neutrino sweep. Neither was too much for Cloaks devoted to nothing but fooling them, and sure the Ruk were going to be suspicious, but that’s life when you’re a paranoid elder race who just found a missing capital ship out of nowhere... and someone else obviously got there first.

---

The boarding party was more like a boarding army, judging from the volume of the ships that came streaming out of the hangar of the new arrival, heading for the hangar door that was flickering with ‘land here’ lights, while the others just gaped open.

The Ruk came down on the massive pad, and basically it was almost wall-to-wall ships; some even stacked on top of one another in modular fashion as they marched out of them in tight ranks. They were squat and broad fellows in some power armor that looked extremely obdurate, obviously ready for a fight, and seeming kind of mystified that they weren’t getting one.

The beeping podium left behind with the big green rune on it that said PLAY ME in Geoic blinking at them was kind of an attention-getter to, even as they were gesturing and pointing at the odd machines plugged into the power conduits... and pumping out, not receiving.

I watched a guy in very ornate - meaning tricked out with power stones and some very deadly runecraft - power armor march up to the podium, which was obviously a holo-projector. Any scan would show that it was exactly what it seemed to be, and nothing else.

His visor lifted away, and glittering crystalline eyes over an axe of a nose and facial fur that looked like glass fibers were all visible. There was some discourse over what to do, and he held up his gauntleted fist, there was instant silence, and he slowly and determinedly tapped the button.

The hologram spun up, easily twenty feet tall so they could all see it, and the voice projection was psi-aided.

“Greetings to the Ruk. We found this vessel of yours floating out here several years ago, and finally managed to fire up the antimatter reactors and get its emergency beacon activated a short time ago. We figured you might be a little nervous about coming out here to get it, so we’ve evacuated the immediate area for your peace of mind.

“You may or may not be aware of the vivic energy whose discovery has spread through a good chunk of the galaxy.” There were simultaneous beeps from all their armors as a Ruk-correct transfer protocol transferred data to everybody’s systems there, while copies flared up to the sides of the hologram. “In short form, the vivic energy eats unnatural and corrupted energies and restores them to background energies of reality itself.

“The generators you see plugged into your power system are broadcasting that energy into it to keep it free of the corrupted Curse which has seized this vessel and would have kept all its primary systems inoperable otherwise.” Schematics and details in proper Geoic were downloaded on the broadcast to all of them, making a lot of confused heads turn.

This was definitely NOT what they were expecting...

“We were unable to cleanse the Curse; it is effective at a full Twenty and is probably responsible for allowing this ship to exit the Warp it had been consigned to, and why there is only moderate psychic remnants from the screaming star nearby that it left the orbit of.” We hoped they would not investigate too closely, but this was one of the ‘thinnest’ regions, and the horror wave came out a very long distance in this direction, and reality was plenty thin... as they could tell.

“However, we were able to contain it in these areas.” A holographic display of the mount came up, subdivided, and areas lit up and darkened in series, indicating where it was and was not safe to tread. The accuracy of the readout made them look a little grim, and they definitely didn’t know if they could trust the information... but the locations of the active anti-matter cores were clearly marked... as was the Dark Matter Core.

“You should be well aware that active use of magic in this ship will probably send both your vessels straight into the Warp, with results as you might imagine. The Curse that saved the crew of this ship might not be able to be broken by you... but you can contain it with active use of vivus and some caution, and bring this ship out of here.”

I saw the breath escape all of them when the holo mentioned the crew, and that they were Saved.

“Our supposition is this: There was a Magic Event, corrupted by the Warp, that sent this ship and its crew into the Warp. They tried to keep out the Id Demons and corruption, and were failing, especially as their fuel supply began to run out. With no way out, they hit on a brilliant plan.

“The Priests set a great Curse upon the Mount that would deter any invaders, especially those demons of the Warp. At the same time, they undertook a grand Ritual down in the Dark Matter Core, and effectively petrified the bodies and souls of the entire crew, leaving nothing living for the demons of the Warp to corrupt.

“Combined with the resistance to corruption of the ship itself, and the misery the Curse brought them, the ship basically was invaded, examined, and then abandoned in frustration. In time, it was pushed out of the Warp back into realspace here, near a Phlogiston river, which is how we stumbled across it on our scouting.

“There is lingering psychic residue in all places where the Curse is still strong. However, the Dark Matter Core seems to be secure, and has been purged repeatedly by vivic fire. We were of course unable to determine if the technology itself has been compromised by a subtler hand, but that is a question I’m sure your own engineers will be able to determine.

“We have the procedures and mechanisms in place to free the crew from their geostasis as soon as the Dark Matter Core is active. You can free them as soon as you can power up the drive and remove the attenuated Dark Matter from their bodies.

“The devices to do so are in place down in the Dark Matter core. Here are the schematics and operating instructions." Blip!

“The ships fallen down off to the sides hereabouts are the result of the Curse trying to drop them on our heads, our apologies.

“The rings you no doubt noticed on the primary ablation feeds are also vivic generators, streaming the vivus deeper into the core to help keep the Curse at bay. As your scans will indicate, they are doing no harm to your systems whatsoever, and are actually probably benefiting them in passing to some extent.

“Be careful of the unsecured areas; you will probably want to construct a great number more vivus generators, but by our measures, your Dark Matter Core should be ready to fire up and get your people out of here and home.

“Best wishes, Elders of the Galaxy. I am Sama Rantha of House Corunsun, if you care to contact me in the future.”

The holo winked out, and a standing signal of Hit Button to Replay replaced it.

-------

Yeah, we had cameras in there, clairvoyant in nature so they could relate things in real time. They were double-insulated from any Div Wards, first bouncing pictures and audio off reflections, then recording them, then relaying on the recordings instead of the originals. It wouldn’t work on anything serious, but hooked into the vivic harmonics, it wasn’t an issue, and they could dissolve into nanoslime and look like a puff of the Curse evaporating as they did so.

They definitely would scan for eavesdropping, so the things all went passive and the video cut out for the moment, the only indicators being vibration sensors that would register exactly where they were going, and maintenance indicators to see if they were stupid enough to shut off the vivic generators.

If they did that after we shared the complete data profile, and even translated the specs into their language for them, our estimation of their intelligence would fall right down to where Riggibuhl would be laughing.

They were spreading out through the ship, making sure nobody was there, and in turn, the Curse was starting to stalk them...