Guidance’s Request

Ehu Hadif paced back and forth in the Cortex server room, his anxious footsteps beating a staccato rhythm against the tiles. Two of the kasatha’s hands were clasped behind his back, while the other two fiddled with his comm unit and datapad, restlessly checking his feeds for incoming messages.

Being inside the Archive’s Cortex always made Ehu feel out of place, as though he had walked into a temple of a god he did not worship. The constant hum of the towering servers and the flicker of electronic lights were strange to him. He understood exploration, space travel, and setting boots into dirt on new worlds—not the endless stream of digitized data, encrypted in unfathomable numbers and code, that filled this hall. But Guidance, the amalgamation of his deceased predecessors’ personalities, had requested a meeting with him here. So, here he was.

For nearly a year now, Ehu had served proudly as First Seeker of the Starfinder Society. He took this responsibility seriously. The late nights spent under a mountain of paperwork, early mornings waking on a cold crew quarters bunk, the distant smiles of Starfinders he once considered close friends—all those discomforts were worth enduring in exchange for the privilege of leading the Society. Despite the tide of fears and worries that constantly ebbed in Ehu’s mind, his initial year as First Seeker had been a success. He believed that. Under him, the Society had explored the far reaches of space, forging new alliances in the Veskarium and the Vast. Agents had also revisited familiar worlds, including Athaeum and Tabrid Minor. His work as First Seeker was far from done, but he was pleased with the direction he was steering the Society in.

And yet, the words he spoke at his confirmation echoed cruelly in his mind. We now enter a time of peace. That’s what he had believed. Now, Ehu scrolled through his comms history, and each message was a cold knife in his heart. Drift beacons still dark. Colonists all dead or abducted. Fleet sustained heavy casualties. Zigvigix missing in action.

“Thank you for attending us so quickly, Ehu.” The synthetic voice of Guidance startled the First Seeker out of his thoughts. Ehu swiped the screen to clear his message notifications and looked up. A green holographic projection of a lashunta of indeterminate gender stood before him.

“Is this about the mission to Siygess-4?” he asked. The failed mission, he thought, though he kept this assessment to himself.

“Yes,” Guidance answered. “I have more information about the missing colonists to share with you. It seems that the technological anomalies detected at their arrival locations are increasing. Other Pact Worlds have ceased responding to our long-range comms, and we—”

An insistent beeping cut Guidance short. The hologram flickered and shifted to a nebulous humanoid form.

“Guidance? Is everything alright?” Ehu asked.

“Unauthorized users detected,” a computerized voice that differed from Guidance’s boomed throughout the server room.

“We need more information,” Guidance responded.

“Attempts to access system failed. Recommending emergency protection mode,” the unfamiliar voice said.

Ehu couldn’t perceive anything about this new speaker except for its voice—was it the server itself, or some kind of AI other than Guidance that he didn’t know about? Celita would know, but she wasn’t around to ask at the moment. He was alone in exactly the type of situation he didn’t feel capable of dealing with.

“Guidance?” he asked nervously.

After a pause, Guidance spoke again.

“We are shutting down to protect our source code and the Archive’s data. I regret that there is no time to explain,” Guidance announced.

This was all so sudden. What was going on? Ehu opened his mouth to protest, but Guidance continued before he could voice his confusion.

“I do not know when it will be safe to come back online. Until then, we leave the Society in your hands, Ehu. Protect it.” Guidance flickered again, and the projection vanished before Ehu could react.

Ehu touched the screen of his comm unit to check for more incoming messages, hoping something he saw there would explain the guiding intelligence’s unusual behavior. Instead of his comm logs, a notification flashed across the screen: no signal.

“What?” Ehu grumbled. He was right next to the Cortex’s servers. This room had the best connectivity in the entire Lorespire Complex. How could he have no signal in here? Had Guidance affected something in the network when it shut down?

The overhead lights flickered and went out as the server room lost power. Ehu knew a backup generator would kick on in a few minutes—unless Guidance had disabled that, too. Cursing, he groped through the wall of solid black in front of him, wishing for the blinking lights of this room’s resident servers to return. Ehu stumbled down the hall as the sound of gunfire exploded from somewhere within the complex. Panicked cries and frantic footsteps echoed in the darkness all around him. It was impossible to tell if these noises came from outside the building or down the next corridor.

Dim red emergency lights blazed into view along the corridor, illuminating a path. Ehu broke into a jog and ran toward the distant sounds of combat that were steadily increasing in volume. Ehu was a warrior out of necessity rather than by choice; he preferred exploration to fighting, though he could handle himself. Yet now someone—or something—threatened the Lorespire Complex, and his Society. As First Seeker, he would do whatever he had to do to keep them safe. He would fight alongside them.

The sliding exit portal at the end of the hall was stuck. He pushed through the heavy doors with a grunt and stepped into the artificial twilight outside. Chaos unfolded before him. A group of veteran Starfinders battled black machines with strange silver runes glowing on their chassis. Ships dipped and arced drunkenly in the sky overhead, and in the distance, the retractable dome that protected the Station’s Eye stuttered and shook as it struggled to descend.

“Requesting assistance!” a familiar voice shouted. It was Celita. She crouched in a defensive position, firing into a group of the hostile robots. The rig strapped to her wrist blinked intermittently as she yelled into her nonfunctioning comms. Her target’s torso exploded into a fine mist of metal shards as her bullets found their mark, but the other bots kept barreling toward her. They would overwhelm her at any moment.

Ehu called upon his solar mote and charged, feeling the protective solar energy blaze around him. “I’ve got your back!” he called to Celita. Whatever force was targeting the Society, the First Seeker would stand by his agents as they faced down their enemy, together.

artist Mark Molnar

It’s time for the Starfinder Society to rally together against a mysterious new threat! A series of digital attacks unleashed simultaneously across the Pact Worlds throws the system’s status quo into chaos, leaving an opening for an army of unidentified robotic attackers to storm the Lorespire Complex on Absalom Station. Can the Starfinders defend their headquarters while navigating the technological pandemonium caused by this Data Scourge, discover who or what is behind these attacks, and stop them from destroying the Pact Worlds as we know it?

Welcome to the Year of the Data Scourge.

Jenny Jarzabski
Starfinder Society Developer