19: The Briar Patch

terminal 0

unfinished

Sorry for the rough landing. It appears the wormhole was cut off from this end and began to collapse at the exact moment you entered. I guess it's pure luck that you weren't lost in the void somewhere. Even more luck that you didn't appear a couple inches higher and fuse your head with the ceiling. Looks like some of the things you were carrying got lost, though I'm thankful the chip wasn't one of them! This ship is powered by matter/antimatter recombination, and that gives it a LOT of power. Much more than it needs to move through space. Most of this power is reserved for opening an enormous wormhole, capable of passing entire ships. The wormhole endpoint had to be moved here via slower-than-light travel, but once this ship opens its wormhole, an enormous fleet of ships will pour through from the Chtakt homeworld instantaneously. Earth resistance will be effectively eliminated within hours. The wormhole will be established as soon as the ship moves within range of power transmission satellites orbiting just inside Mercury's path around the sun, ensuring constant power once the matter and antimatter plasmas run out. The ship will be in position in about 2 hours. As I've said before, I want to avoid this. You humans are far more useful to me than these nasty bugs. So what I'd like you to do is smash the matter and antimatter plasma flow control circuits. Once the manual controls are gone and you've wreaked havoc among the Vrakt, there will be nothing to stop me from shutting down all power to the wormhole inducer. The Chtakt won't dare attempt to retake this ship, since I can just shut down the matter/antimatter containment fields if they succeed. By the way, it is important to smash these circuits in the proper order, otherwise it is possible to generate an antimatter surge, which would destroy the ship. To prevent mistakes, I'm only exposing one circuit panel right now -- I'll expose the other once you've smashed the first.

success

I need you to find another transport pad. This pad appears to have a burned-out circuit. I believe that there's another pad in one of the other forward bays.

terminal 1

unfinished

terminal 2

unfinished

success

Go find the transport pad in one of the forward bays. I'll give you instructions from there.

terminal 3

unfinished

success

Go find the transport pad in one of the forward bays. I'll give you instructions from there.

terminal 4

unfinished

success

Go find the transport pad in one of the forward bays. I'll give you instructions from there.

terminal 5

unfinished

success

Go find the transport pad in one of the forward bays. I'll give you instructions from there.

terminal 6

success

I need you to make a few manual adjustments inside the main wormhole inducer. This inducer is considerably larger and more complex than the usual transport pad. It is also placed slightly outside normal space, in order to better handle such a large wormhole endpoint. I'm opening a minor hole on the pad beside you leading to the main induction core. Once there, I won't be able to communicate with you, but I need you to find and activate three switches. Whatever you do, DO NOT disturb the Vrakt in the core! They ARE the control mechanism for this wormhole. If you interrupt them, the wormhole mouth could be released to snap back across 29 lightyears, spreading our atoms more or less uniformly across that distance. I really don't want to be destroyed that way.

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