Imogen takes a pile of technology and her splitting headache to Egon’s lab, where she sadly notes that the Xel’naga artifact is no longer floating in the middle of the room. “Egon, where’s the device?”
“Huh? What?” Egon looks up from his computer, startled that he has company.
“What do you mean, what? You don’t know what I’m talking about? It was right there, just days ago!” Imogen drops her armful of equipment and weaves her way over to the railing that is no longer protecting anything.
“Oh, yeah. We made the delivery, got the payout. You missed it by like four hours? Or five minutes? I don’t know.”
Right, right. That’s what Jimmy said, Imogen remembers. Her head hurts so much that it is really hard to focus. “Were you at the hand-off?” she asks.
Indeed Egon was. He had to prove the integrity of the goods to the receiver. “Like someone could fake those power readings!” he says with a shake of his head.
“Can you tell me anything about where you did it? Or who you gave it to? Or where it is now?” Imogen rattles off the questions, still looking up at the empty space.
“Yeah… uh… are you all right?”
Imogen unslings the Umojan stun rifle that now houses a detector of Xel’naga emanations and begins fiddling with the controls. She points it around the lab, but it picks up no residuals. Egon suddenly appears at her shoulder.
“Can you just sit down for a second?” he asks. Imogen does not even seem to notice as he takes her by the elbow and guides her to a seat. “Uh-huh… Yeah…” Egon continues to nod along to whatever she is saying, but his focus is on diagnosis now. The enormous bruise on the side of her head does not look good.
A sudden flash of light in her eyes causes Imogen to snap her mouth shut in surprise. Then Egon’s hand brushes lightly against her hair, and she twitches away from the painful sensation. “You know what? I think you’re right. I probably should sit down.”
“Yeah, you are. It looks like you got a nasty bump on the head. Are you aware of that?”
“Right… right…”
“Did someone take a metal plate and instead of putting it in your head, put it on your head?”
“No, the ramp of a ship came down on me when I was trying to open it. Oh, and I have something for you from it.” She turns and tilts. Egon catches her and suggests they look at her head first, and then whatever she brought him later. He is curious about that—it was so nice of her to bring a gift—but Imogen seems really out of it right now. Normally he would be the scattered one, not her.
Egon administers a drug cocktail designed to reduce the swelling. “There’s side effects to this, but trust me, it will be much better. I know. I got whacked in the head once by a rowdy marine.”
Imogen’s headache improves from pounding to dull, but it does not go away completely. Fortunately, though, the brain fog fades, and her thoughts grow sharper again. She parts a section of her hair to show Egon the scar from Mira’s medic. Egon is not surprised to learn where Imogen got the scar; he has heard bad things about healthcare on Dead Man’s Rock. “This is why I wanted to put in at Hyperion before we go down there,” she tells him.
“You’re going down there?”
“Aye. Tell me about this hand-off that you did.”
Egon obliges. It was a standard affair as far as he was concerned. He describes the fancy young man from Moebius Foundation who received the artifact from Raynor. Something about the description niggles at the back of Imogen’s memory, but she cannot resolve it. That person was not dressed as a scientist from Egon’s perspective, though there were a couple technicians in lab coats. “They had some fellows with guns there, too, to make sure it all went smoothly,” he adds. Unfortunately, he did not pay close enough attention to know their armaments. He is more interested in the inside of large-scale weaponry than in the casings of personal arms.
“And, where was the hand-off done?” Imogen asks. “Was it a Moebius facility or just some randomly chosen safe spot?”
Egon shrugs, but he provides her with the coordinates. “To me it looked like any other spot among the junk.” The raiders needed to use a crane to transfer the artifact onto the receiver’s sled, and then the Moebius people took it inside the debris pile. “Their fancily dressed boss was talking down to the techs, telling them they could ‘play with their toy later.’ I don’t think they’re going to keep it here on Dead Man’s Rock too long,” Egon adds.
Imogen shows Egon the Xel’naga detector she built based on the research findings he shared with her at their last meeting. He is fascinated by it. She points it down through the deck, hoping to be able to tell if the artifact is still in the same general part of the planet as the coordinates Egon gave her. After Imogen does the initial scan, Egon helps her retune it so they can try again. The signal down on the planet is far too weak, so Egon gets out some cables to hook the detector up to Hyperion.
As they juggle the device and leads, Imogen touches a live wire, shocking herself into the readings. She discovers that she can psionically interface with the detector, amplifying its ability and pulling awareness from it. The Xel’naga artifact is indeed still where Egon and Jimmy left it. Even with that knowledge, though, Imogen does not break her connection with the detector. She pushes it further, trying to analyze the artifact with the psychometry technique Selendis taught her. She gets a dim view of the space in which the object now sits, a ruined storeroom that once served as a hold on a ship. And she sees the artifact’s current owner. He is in fancier clothes than she has ever noticed him wearing, but she should not be surprised. Jefferson Duke did once tell her that this man’s family was “a big deal.” It is Norm, the intern she and Lilly pushed all their paperwork at back in their FRAWD days. Now, though, he wears an ambitious smirk, not the vaguely friendly expression she remembers from the office.
“Imogen? Are you okay?” Egon asks tentatively.
“Aye,” she replies, slowly drawing her mind back to her surroundings.
“It looks like it worked,” Egon says happily, pointing at a monitor. “It’s still at the same coordinates.”
“Aye, aye, it is,” Imogen confirms from her own psionic understanding. Then, shifting gears, she announces, “I need your help with something.”
“Sure! What do you need?”
“I have some sweet tech for you if you help me with this,” she says, going over to the pile of equipment she brought to the lab. “This UED ship-cloaking unit is for you.”
“Interesting!”
“But what I need help with is this communications device.” She holds up the spear-like object.
“Ah! A UED long-range transmitter! You ripped all this out of a ship?”
“Aye. I need to be able to send a message with that.”
“I can give you some tips, I guess. But you’re going to need a crazy amount of energy… oh. That’s why you want the artifact.” Imogen nods. Egon smiles back, pleased to have worked that out. But then he gives an awkward laugh, as there is a catch. “Uh, I don’t think anyone has wires strong enough to hold that kind of energy. When you go to power that transmitter, you need to attach it to the top of the artifact itself—as directly as you can.” There is an inherent directionality to the artifact, requiring the transmitter to go on its very top, not just touch it at some conveniently lower position. He provides additional insight into how to set up the transmitter and arrange the broadcast. Together they slap together the necessary interface.
When Imogen meets back up with Lilly at Saffron, they craft the actual message warning the UED to stay away from the Koprulu Sector. They make sure to include an appropriate header, including the odd date formatting used back on Earth. This lends additional verisimilitude so that the recipient will believe it truly came from a UED operative.