It is not that obvious to find the Drifter homes that are not monitored by the Empire. Conflux Eyrie is controlled by the State, and since our alliance cooled down they are not that forthcoming with information.
I did not receive a direct answer to my request about the location of an entrance wormhole. Mr. Firth took some notes and looked annoyed, even though he says this is to be expected. Nevertheless, on our own we did find an entrance, and proceeded to scan down the system and investigate.
What I found there is deeply disturbing.
Contrary to what I saw in Sanctified Vidette, there are plenty of bands of roaming Drifters in Conflux Eyrie. We located the stalactite asteroid, and when I went over to scan it down for detailed telemetry, I found a host of Drifter ships at the small station at its foot.
They appeared to be interacting with the disabled sentry guns around the abandoned station (or colony, or prison, who knows what it used to be). Luckily, the
Indagatrix was cloaked and I could observe undetected. Several battleships and many cruisers were present:
And then it happened. The entire stalactite asteroid seemed to phase, or rather, to be enveloped by some sort of Drifter overshield shimmer,
They must be drawing energy from this rock, interacting with it, using it in some way that the sensors on the
Indagatrix could not make out. I have not seen this before in the other stalactite asteroids. Does it contain some hitherto unknown ore, providing a kind of radiation they can use? Are these rocks more than just ancient relics of a bygone Talocan religion? Is this really a rock, or could it be some camouflaged mothership or station?
After the "powering-up", some sort of entrance tunnel lit up, in the middle of the rock:
At this point, I am not allowed to share anything else since mr. Firth wants our full report with telemetry to stay under wraps as it gets sent to the Ministry. But let there be no doubt - the Drifters are far from vanquished in the systems that we have conquered. The Empire may have a firmer grip on Sanctified Vidette than the State on their hole, but the Drifters are up to something.
This has strengthened my conviction that I need to revisit the Takmahl Stalactite asteroid. I also want to keep a closer look on the Conflux Eyrie artefact, and perhaps try to enter the asteroid via that tunnel. I could not approach it too closely with the Drifter fleet patrolling it - any accidental uncloaking of the Indagatrix would mean its immediate demise at the hands of the nearby Apollo Tyrannos. Finally, I also need to figure out what sites the other Drifter homeworlds still hold, perhaps there are more of those asteroids or related objects.
