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@Cerebrate  
Live camera-feed cuts out as soon as the drone leaves more than a few feet away. Scouting on it’s own volition, then returning, recorded footage shows a mass of armor, cybernetics, and bone–assumedly Rameshvara–swinging the rope, while surrounded by what look like large metallic pinecones scattered across the cave floor.
 
The footage only shows in backscattered X-rays, as down within the cave where the particulate-cloud is densest, the foglets seem to be rendering vision opaque to every other wavelength. At the end of recording, as the point of view soars back up the caldera, the shark can be seen shrugging toward the drone, then continuing with swaying the rope as a signal.

@Coriolanus  
a flying drone detaches from imos’ suit to check what’s happening.

@Cerebrate  
“Way I figured, if we’d see anything out here still moving, I’d get to use this;”
 
While saying, he unholsters and presents a handgun-like device. “…this here, keyed to the protocols to paint a target for orbital bombardment. Fed space fleet’s begun it’s molniya passover recently, so we’ve got plenty of time to decide if we’ll ever have to use this.”
 
Carefully stowing the WMD-hotline safely away, he unpacks a spindle for weaving cable, activating it to begin feeding a line down into the icy caldera. He then anchors the spindle into place with four spikes driven into the ice with one of his powersuit’s fists.
 
“I’ll go first, then tug on the line when I’ve reached the bottom…”
 
Lowering himself first down into the chasm, the shark leans back to test the cable; his cleated boots digging into place, while keeping a pair of amply-large icepicks deployed from his large remote-limbs ready if the line were to break loose… Slowly, he walks down vertically into the pit, disappearing into the opaque, billowing clouds of micromachines. For a while, nothing happens, until suddenly the cable slackens.
 
It then sways against the caldera wall, as if someone were whipping it side-to-side.

@Coriolanus  
“investigating here may be the better idea, already because it may get at our backs otherwise.”

@Cerebrate  
“Creepy bombed-out ruins it is, then.”
 
Entering the ravine, they navigate through what’s almost like a scrapyard, rife with derelict machinery poking from half-destroyed or repaired buildings, but no sign of rogue bugbot or stonekin remains anywhere… In a large plaza-like center however, surrounded by high cliff-faces, the two find what looks like a gutted anti-grav hovercraft, half-buried and slowly becoming nothing more than a dune-like snowdrift…
 
Moving past this, the path they take soon rises on a steady incline, their cleated boots now digging into solid ice, before finally surmounting what seems like a low volcano, with constructed towers and machine-pillars of unknown purpose sprouted everywhere, and the unidentified smoke they’d seen on descent pluming up from a deep caldera before them.
 
With his natural armorsleeved arms, the shark produces a small ampule from one pocket of many across festooned canvas-rigging, passing it to one of his suit’s larger remote-controlled limbs to capture a bit of the smoke for sampling.
 
“…This stuff, it’s foglets. Airborne micromachines, covered in quantum dots, like in contemporary TV-screens and monitors, or programmable paint… I guess that explains that false-sky film overhead. This isn’t the entrance Sada used though, but I’ve got readings on breadcrumb positioning leftover from her visit.”
 
“The way she took isn’t far from here… but should we investigate here? See what’s churning out this foglet-cloud?”

@Coriolanus  
“it’s usually advisable, especially for organics, to avoid harsh winds.”

@Cerebrate  
Rameshvara: “We could ditch it somewhere safe once back outside the arctic boundary, have it ping through the white-noise that it’s made an emergency landing, yes. I just don’t want the thing to turn on and track us back to home is all, nor leave it for wild bots to reverse-engineer…”
 
The shuttle soon nears the remains of Lumin’s hideout. At first, the area appears to be no more than upturned outcroppings of packed ice, but as the craft descends, the view suddenly changes as if a lens had been lifted, transforming into a flattened gridscape, with a steady white plume rising up from an industrialized square-plot at the center.
 
Rameshvara: “Well, whatever that screen is overhead, it looks like it’s presenting a false image up into space. This place’s landscape should be completely ravaged though, considering it was only bombarded a few nights ago… Ripli, let’s not put ourselves in the way of any ice, if it starts calving again for any reason. Set us down unto that moraine along the northern edge. We’ll walk the rest of the way,”
 
Ripli: “Yessir.”
 
To Imos. “-to where that smoke is rising at. It’s right where Sada’d ventured in through before.”
 
As the shuttle touches down on an open field of gravel and bare stone lightly-snowed over, Imos can see what look like partially-intact artificial structures within a gulch southward, in the way they’re to travel. In every other direction, the landing zone is surrounded by escarpments, with two ramp-like landforms east and west leading up to the wide-open fields of ice and snowdrifts.
 
[ 🎶 ] ^{The structures within the gulch:}  

 
Rameshvara, as he fits in through the top of an enormous agape powersuit:
 
“You’re the more experienced pioneer.”
 
“Should we travel through that built-up ravine south, or make way across the open tundra?”

@Cerebrate  
he quickly kissed her cheek before running off to go find him

@Coriolanus  
“wouldn’t it be easier to convince it it had an equipment malfunction and is actually squawking for help? if a drone is known to have crashed that’S one thing but if it disappears off the grid just like that they’re gonna investigate.”

@Cerebrate  
“If that were really the case, then we certainly wouldn’t be dead then, right, about… now.”
 
Nothing happens, the muffled sound of engines and air cycling continuing unabated…
 
“Well, I don’t know about you, but I think it’s because this part of the plan worked-” The shark says, while pulling a tarp off a section of tied-down cargo, revealing a partially-disassembled Federation starfleet’s hunter-killer drone.  
 
A power cable plugged into the center of the floor leads into an open port on the side of the small, unmanned drone, keeping it partially active.
 
“…its IFF tag’s keeping this shuttle disguised. You’d be amazed how much’s been propped up in the airspace just to keep the arctic cordoned off both ways. On the way back, we’ll release this back out into the interdiction-barrier–with it’s recording devices removed, along with no ammunition, or radio codes to squawk for backup, of course.”

@Coriolanus  
“tapped? have you seriously built a backdoor into a system you have full access to?”

@Cerebrate  
Rameshvara: “Seems every synth is finding a food they’re most-fond for as of late.” %”…mine’s beignets.” ^.p.%
 
Ripli: Shrugs while cronching into a finished cornetto, promptly starting with another while also ushering the two aboard to their seats in the passenger bay, while the kobold crew seen outside rush about on the hangar deck, preparing for takeoff.
 
In moments, the craft begins to levitate upwards until high past the skylight, unveiling the outside to their view.
 
With enough altitude, the shuttle then shifts its thrusters horizontally, boosting off towards the far north.
 
[ 🎶 ]  
 

 
Rameshvara: “Tapped satellite feeds’ve shown the spot we’re headed to is dead and deserted, at least on the surface, but no deep-penetrating scans. A drone sent out there noticed what looked almost like the linings of an AB-dome, before the recording cut out; when it returned, the camera lens was glazed over like it’d been scoured by an acid bath.”
 
“Whatever it saw may’ve just been a detached hemisphere drifting in the wind, or some classified Fed-tech in action. With what happened with the camera, who knows, really. Feds are still jamming the entire arctic circle to snuff out isolated pockets of rogue drones hiding in the ice, so at a certain point we’ll be off the global mesh. Like first landfall.”

@NyantaStarhunt  
“you go ahead.”
 
 
@Coriolanus  
“is this how i looked when i discovered curry dogs?”

@Cerebrate  
Makes ‘I dunno’ noise. “Maybe I just punched a hole through our worldvolume right to hell, for all I know.” ^%.p.%
 
The HOGfooted quadrobile they’re aboard begins to make turns on ramps leading back upwards, until reaching a hangar with an open ceiling. Disembarking, the two are greeted by a host of “biontified” kobolds working as a maintenance crew around the shuttle they’ll be taking to the north. At the shuttle’s ramp sits the crew chief and pilot for today, overseeing the others, %while indulging on icecream after her recent biontification.%
 
Rameshvara: “Imos, Ms. Ripli. She’ll be taking us where we’ll need to go.”
 
Ripli: “Wha’s poppin’?”

@Cerebrate  
he smiles do you mind if I go find the cheif?

@NyantaStarhunt  
“even if it is, medical technology is near singularity point by now. even new superviruses, as they sometimes still mutate together can in short time be figured out.”

@Cerebrate  
The sickness concerns me…. the Khaz used a virus to try and wipe us out. I’m worried. I hope I am wrong

@NyantaStarhunt  
“good thing the doctor got his name for a reason then. much as it makes me itch to travel to the south pole to find the blue weed touched by purest moonlight. this is a doctor’s job.”
 
@Coriolanus  
“so. ideally something a small army of copies of your mind should explore, because it’s akin to every possibility but will have to resolve to certainty the moment it is observed. Bohr would tell einstein to suck it, uncertainty wins.”

@Cerebrate  
“The Stonekin hold the key to that, I just found out how to follow them.”
 
“That wormhole I’ve made–I’ve got no idea where it leads into. From what I’ve seen so far, it’s like a branching network of hypergeometry, not quite untraversable, but not clearly leading anywhere… I think the most I’ve done really isn’t an Einstein-Rosen bridge, as much as simply magnifying the smallest of spaces, into some kind’ve metric labyrinth.”
 
“Even then, as it is I could probably learn alot. Higher dimensions folded into calabi-yau manifolds, n’such. It’s pretty trippy in there, though. It’d be relaxing and peaceful too, if it weren’t for the occasional animate shadows, n’ creepy whispers.”

@Cerebrate  
tge cheif nods and makes to explore more when he is gone her cat speaks up
 
Nyanra…its his daughter…its his only family left.

@NyantaStarhunt  
“they can sign up of course, in fact as an essential posting it’s training is subsidized so long as the grades are good. as for her, i’ll get my best medical on it.”
 
Jade: “on it boss, paging doctor Lazarus”

@Cerebrate  
he bows the one who is sick is a child so please I will do anything to make sure she lives….. a deep sadness fills his voice
 
Some of my people have volunteered to learn to be the doctors so I have no shortage

@Coriolanus  
“… wait a second, you have cracked how to make a quantum tunnel? i mean obviously spatial distance does not matter as both ends will be linked no matter what, but this is something else alright.”

@NyantaStarhunt  
“hmm, the one with the sickness will need to be brought here, but setting up a clinic and getting some of your people, ideally the fast learners trained up shouldn’t be too difficult, though until you have your own doctors it will take time.”

@Cerebrate  
“I guess you saw the biotech department’s work on the appetizer I decided not to serve to the federation delegates… but no.”
 
“It’s the prototype stages for something I plan to use for wiping out the Stonekin wherever they’ve run off to, and simultaneously just as well upgrade the Eriksson’s mission profile, if the boss’ll accept and take the ‘other end’ aboard the vessel.”