FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

There were times when Toreselia found his job somewhat boring. There are times when it was extremely important as his job protects the entire station and everyone within it. And then there were times like this. He really didn't have to do it himself. Checking on incoming freighters was something that could be easily delegated to other ships in the fleet. But there unfortunately wasn't anything else for him to do. Made even worse in that they did not have any sort of specific timeline for the potential threat to arrive if it ever did. So several days in a row when he has nothing to do but stand guard and wait to see if any threat arrived.

There were a few of the ships that had left to handle a few bandits in the area, especially chasing after ships just on the edge of the system on their way out or in. It had been discovered by one of the fighter patrols earlier, though this particular group was known to be hanging around that particular area. But though he could have also engaged with that he had opted out and instead let one of the more inexperienced captains have a chance of having a command. And if he joined in just because he was bored it would say he didn't trust them to handle simple bandits.

That most definitely did not mean he regretted his position. In fact he took quite a bit of pride in the position of being in charge of one of the largest fleets in the entire sector, and could cause any of the other empires to pause when just threatened with the full might of their fleet. That is the whole point of the fleet. By having each system have to donate a single warship to the fleet to get a vote, it meant that it wouldn't be so much of a drain on any one system, but at the same time it also means just about every system within a couple hundred lightyears has a ship in this one fleet. And though it couldn't be relied upon in a fight against the Consortium, it would be able to turn the tide of any battle it joined.

The only downside is that with the privilege of being in charge of this massive fleet is that it also comes with the incredible responsibility to not abuse his position. As with everyone else on the Council, if any of the races felt that he was not performing his duties respectfully they could very easily choose to pull him in favor of someone else. Not that that has happened in the history of the Council, but it is a provision that was put there just in case. And that meant at times he literally had nothing to do. Occasionally he'd fly off with a portion of the fleet to run drills or skirmishes to keep everyone fresh and able to coordinate, but with part of the fleet already gone and a potential threat on its way he had no choice but to just sit idle and wait. Thankfully in this time his helmet did help quite a bit. In fact there were times on his vigilance that he actually dialed the helmet even more, to spend hours at a time in a sort of mental fog, though his crew is aware of such and have more than the capability and permission to dial his helmet all the way back down should his attention be required.

He was given the list of all the ships expected to come from Raeshael space and as they come through he scans them more thoroughly than normal but doesn't find them of any importance. And none of the ships seemed to have any problem with the slightly increased security from their sector, possibly from their representatives giving them forewarning or them just being used to stuff like that. In fact, when the warship arrives and replaces its counterpart, the moment its gone through their own scan and reported for duty they immediately turned around and started helping to scan the other Raeshael ships coming through the Gate. Of course, just because they don't find anything doesn't mean there's nothing to find. That was kind of the point of the warning, that it would be quite likely something their sensors wouldn't be able to detect. Toreselia half considered whether or not they were shipping in mages to cause the destruction, but that wouldn't necessarily comply with the term of a shipment of it. If the Language of Intent was in use, calling it a shipment would only have come up if Ret had intended on that word. So Toreselia is fairly certain it will be an object, just not sure on the what.

Late into the hours when much of the station has gone to sleep a few ships show up from Raeshael space, half of them not of Raeshael design. One's a Fringeward, one's a human vessel and one's a habenceun ship. All three seem to pass the inspection from their scans, finding absolutely nothing wrong with any of the three ships. But he goes about flagging them for access to the station. On an impulse to improve his own capabilities he actually takes off his helmet, letting his mind roam free. It is from this and looking at the manifest that he is able to notice that the weight of the total cargo for the human vessel is larger than the listed sum of all the cargo mentioned. He still lets them all through but flags the station. It seems they may have actually found their shipment, whatever it is. He'll definitely continue keeping watch for a little longer. If nothing else then that he hasn't actually gotten anything out of the ordinary when it comes to what's on that ship. Toreselia is definitely quite content at his finding, and especially relieved in his choice to take his helmet off for a moment or two. But as he puts it back on he still questions the validity. All of the bits of information they have so far would imply that it definitely could be that ship in question. But nothing else at all stands out. Like all freighters it has next to no armaments, relying on some freelance protection to try and keep it safe from raiders and the like.

Anon and Riu both board the ship as it is docked in the outer ring. As a safety precaution there are very few ships that are allowed to actually connect to the station proper. Some of the more influential and wealthy politicians have bought the rights to own a station docking space, often sharing the same area as the station fighters. But these ships and the fighters are the only vessels allowed to go straight into the station proper. Everything else has to go through the outer ring. There are special shuttles to make sure that the cargo makes it from the ring to the station proper once it has gone through customs and plenty of warehouses on both to make sure the freighters are allowed to still go about their business. And though he really has no reason to be here, Riu exerted his position to demand he see what all the warning is about. Even still, between Anon, a good two dozen other Guardians well trained to handle invaders and a few soldiers borrowed from some of the fleet they're fairly safe barring the ship deciding to self-destruct, though Toreselia said they don't have the power to do that and the engines were shut down already. The people running the freighter were completely complacent in regards to the sudden search, offering up all of the paperwork for their cargo and had said the reason they went to into Raeshael space first is that they were picking up a shipment of some kind of root that was used recreationally. The root was legal on the station and in Raeshael space, but the human systems had outlawed it for its slight hallucinogenic effects. They enter and don't see any real resistance of any sort, which is to be expected. They go through a cursory glance of the cargo, all in various crates for easy transport. Anon would be almost certain that they might have been on the wrong ship if not for the fact that she feels a slight sense of something wrong. She tries to figure out what it is and crouches down for a moment. Riu and a few of the others see her do this and move over in her direction, trying to figure out what her course of action is going to be. The rest are doing a standard sweep of the cargo hold to see if there's anyone else in here. The freighter has said that everyone is already off the ship and is waiting in a side room while they do their search.

"Something wrong?" Riu asks.

"Yeah," Anon says, "Stand still a moment, I want to check on something."

Anon rotates around, telling Mia to face Riu the entire time. As she does so, she notices that her perception of direction is being messed with. There is one direction in particular where if she moves slowly, she finds herself instead turning back into the other direction, but if turning fast it has no problem. So someone is trying to keep her from something, which reinforces the warning Ret had given them. She takes a deep breath and knowing that her sight is not to be trusted she closes her eyes and starts pulsing out her own Sym magic. Not so much with an intent on actually doing anything but merely feel where objects are. By pushing a very thin wall into everything in front of her she can feel out where walls are located, making sure that she won't walk into something. Periodically she opens her eyes and compares what she is seeing with what she can feel.

"This way," she says, "But try to stay at the same angle as me. I'm using you as a sort of compass."

Riu obeys, but looks around trying to figure out what it is she's doing. The other Guardians and soldiers all start to converge on their position in regard to where they're heading now that they have some direction.

"There's some form of Con magic going on in here," Anon says, explaining her thoughts to everyone in the cargo bay. Her pulse had not found any sign of anyone else here. "Considering how there are no people it has to be automated. It's messing with my sense of direction and likely everyone else's. But with Mia looking back at you I can instead walk based on keeping the direction she's facing and bypass the illusion. It definitely seems to be rather intricate, but designed to stop people from walking towards it. But if I'm not walking towards it but rather in a straight direction away from you and everyone else is only following me it should be fine. But they might have something else there as well so let me know if any of you are having trouble in following me. I imagine they likely have some form of camouflage as well. Either way if it is automated then it won't stop us from finding it. An automated signal can't change to what we're doing against it. And if we can't find any sign of it after this knowledge it means there's someone we aren't seeing controlling everything."

Eventually Anon runs into a completely transparent block. Using her Sym magic she can feel the edge of the container as being as big as all of the other ones, just she cannot see it. And when she reaches her hand out she can't even feel it, though her hand does stop moving on its edge. It was a very clever mechanism, and she's certain that any ordinary or routine survey would have never found this thing. And she would have never even thought to check for a illusion in such a regard herself if it wasn't for the fact that she had Ret's warning about something like this might be coming to the station. Whatever it was that was on that box would have made it onto the station uncontested without all of this. And she can understand a bit now why Ret was being so vague about the threat. If Ret had flat out told them this particular ship they'd put it on another one and if he told them it'd be protected by Con magic they'd simply remove the spell and they wouldn't have found it. It was just the notion of having to be suspicious and trying to find something not there that they were able to find this thing. First, though, she has to figure out how to get into this thing. She feels along the surface of the container with her Sym magic and feels for anything that might be slightly amiss. Hopefully the focus is on the outside, or they may have some trouble getting at it. She eventually manages to luck out from them being somewhat sloppy and putting a small receiver on the top of the crate, probably so they can turn it off remotely without having to deal with the effects. She tosses up Mia into the air.

"Mia, fetch!" She shouts.

Mia soars up into the air and as soon as she is above the top of the crate as telling from Anon putting a colored barrier just on the upper lip of the container she unleashes a small burst of energy from behind her, launching her forward at an incredible rate. She then begins slithering along the top of the barrier. It was an interesting sight, seeing her slither on top of something that to everyone else it looks like she was moving across nothing but air. She eventually makes it to the location of the receiver, grabs it with her mouth and excises it from the container, burning a mall hole in the container in the process. Thankfully the act didn't seem to cause any explosions. She then drags it back to the edge and drops back down. Anon catches the now beaming creature.

"So what do we do with this? I had half hoped the container would be visible again once we removed it. I don't want to just destroy it, especially because it is evidence."

"I can take care of that," Riu says, taking the invisible object away from Anon and Mia and just grabs it at each end and starts slowly increasing an electric charge until he causes it to short circuit. He can hear the small click coming out of it and then the container is just there.

One of the other Guardians comes up and gingerly takes the receiver from Riu and places it into a large bag so it can be documented for later. The rest of the Guardians and soldiers move around the container, looking for any sign of a trap. One of them even goes up to the top of the container and looks into the hole Mia had made, but didn't see anything of note. Eventually once they've cleared it as noting suspicious beyond the fact it was being hidden. They move up to the normal opening to the container and slowly open the thing up, expecting to see some sort of device or anything somewhat threatening. And instead, all they find is stack after stack of packaged boxes. They all stare at it confused, not having expected this to be what they would have ended up finding. They even go through and pick up some from one of the stacks to verify there's not anything being hidden amongst all these little boxes but even with sophisticated equipment it is just the boxes and nothing else. And the boxes just contain a little plastic doll of one of the popular fictional series. Even taking one out of the box proved nothing conclusive. There wasn't anything on the thing, didn't feel weighted down all that much. Definitely not threatening in any regard and definitely not something that would qualify for the warning of being a shipment of nothing. Just in case there is another crate somewhere in the cargo hold Anon repeats her experiment from earlier, having Mia focus on Riu's direction and slowly turns around in a circle. But this time she's able to make a complete rotation without any trouble. So if there is anything else in here, there is no other device creating more illusions to distract them. Of course part of her mind thinks that it would be really clever of them to give them something to latch onto and then hide the real threat elsewhere.

"Well, now what?" Riu asks.

"Well, there is something here, so probably best to just take it out of the ship and hold it in quarantine until we can figure out what we're dealing with. And we'll keep it under secure lockdown and hopefully the Shadows are able to find out more information," Anon shrugs. "At the very least I still would want a sweep of everything else in this hold and compared with the manifest. Just in case. But that can be for the normal customs people. For now we're going to need to get some equipment to get this particular crate out."