Declassified field log from UNS Tsiolkovsky’s six-person landing party, led by Commander Jakub Novák, deployed to Pluto’s surface on 19 December 2131 following the orbital engagement. Timestamps in Mission Elapsed Time (MET).
MET 221:04:12 — NOVÁK: Touchdown confirmed, approximately four hundred meters from the marked surface anomaly. Visual confirms structure consistent with long-term wreckage — this matches the debris signature from Styx and Kerberos, not Pluto’s native geology.
MET 221:07:38 — TEAM 2: Commander, contacts. Multiple. Twenty-plus individuals, no EVA suits, holding position near the wreck site.
MET 221:07:51 — NOVÁK: Confirm that. Nobody survives out here unsuited. Get me a clean visual.
MET 221:08:20 — TEAM 2: Visual confirmed, no suits, no visible breathing apparatus, and they are not reacting to atmosphere or temperature the way a person would. Recommend treating as non-biological until proven otherwise.
MET 221:08:34 — NOVÁK: Copy. Six suited individuals holding back near the treeline of the debris field — mark those as probable Argus personnel, non-combatant until they demonstrate otherwise. All teams, weapons hot on the unsuited group only.
MET 221:09:02 — NOVÁK: Contact.
MET 221:11:47 — TEAM 3: Twenty-one hostiles down, zero landing party casualties. Confirming non-human — these are autonomous units, not personnel. Chassis is humanoid in profile but there’s no organic material reading on any of the twenty-one.
MET 221:12:15 — NOVÁK: Same as Crowbar. Whatever’s guarding this place, it isn’t a soldier that thinks for itself. It’s a gun that walks. Secure the six suited individuals, non-lethal if they don’t force the issue.
MET 221:14:30 — TEAM 2: Six Argus-affiliated personnel secured, identifying as research staff. No resistance. They’re — Commander, they say they’ve been out here for a while. Longer than makes sense for a standard rotation.
MET 221:15:02 — NOVÁK: We’ll get the full account back aboard ship. Right now I want eyes on that wreck.
MET 221:22:18 — TEAM LEAD: Inside the wreck’s forward section now. This reads as a command area — bridge, if the layout means what it looks like it means. One seat. No controls, no visible display surfaces, no windows. Nothing else in the compartment at all.
MET 221:23:04 — NOVÁK: One seat, and nothing to sit and operate. Copy that, log it exactly as described. Don’t touch anything until Directorate xenoarchaeology has a full imaging pass.
MET 222:41:19 — TEAM 3: Found the subsurface entrance, matches the Argus site markers. Descending now.
MET 222:58:07 — TEAM 3: Second contact, smaller group, same non-human profile as the surface units. Engaging.
MET 223:01:44 — TEAM 3: Hostiles down, zero casualties. Continuing descent.
MET 223:19:52 — TEAM LEAD: Commander, you’ll want to see this yourself.
MET 223:20:30 — NOVÁK: On my way.
MET 223:44:11 — NOVÁK: Logging directly. Interior is unlit — we’re running on suit lights only. Surfaces throughout are smooth, no seams, no visible panels or wiring, nothing reading as active electronics anywhere along the approach corridor. All corridors converge on a single large domed chamber.
MET 223:45:38 — NOVÁK: The chamber holds multiple reclined seats, similar construction to the one in the surface wreck, arranged in a full circle around the chamber’s center. These are considerably larger than the bridge seat — sized, best estimate, for an occupant somewhere between three and four meters standing height.
MET 223:47:02 — TEAM LEAD: One seat’s different from the rest, Commander. It’s got active markings — lines, some kind of illumination — the others don’t have anything like it. Argus’s own site markers were already flagging this one specifically before we arrived.
MET 223:49:15 — NOVÁK: Copy. Do not touch it. Full imaging, full perimeter, nobody approaches that seat until Directorate says otherwise. I’ll get closer myself first, visual only.
MET 223:51:42 — TEAM LEAD: Commander, hold up, you’re inside the marked radius —
MET 223:52:14 — NOVÁK: [no verbal response, channel open, eleven seconds of ambient breathing logged, no further speech]
MET 223:52:26 — TEAM LEAD: Commander. Commander, report, right now.
MET 223:53:04 — NOVÁK: [response delayed, audibly unsteady] I’m — stand by. I’m fine. Give me a second.
MET 223:54:19 — NOVÁK: All teams, I need this logged exactly as I say it, because I don’t fully understand it myself and I’d rather it go on record confused than not at all. The moment I was close to that seat, I received something. Not a sound, not an image on a screen — a presence, directly, like a memory that isn’t mine. A vessel. Old. Not ours, not built by anyone human. I read it as derelict, except it isn’t unoccupied — there are people there right now. Argus personnel. Vessels in proximity. Active EVA operations at the site. I don’t have coordinates. I have a direction, and a certainty about that direction I can’t currently justify to anyone, including myself.
MET 223:55:47 — TEAM LEAD: Commander, are you fit to continue command authority, I have to ask —
MET 223:55:53 — NOVÁK: I’m fit. That’s a fair question and I’m not going to hold it against you for asking. Nobody else approaches that seat — is that clear, all teams? Whatever that was, I’m not assuming it only happens once, or only happens to me.
MET 223:56:31 — NOVÁK: Full imaging of the chamber, then seal it. I want every team back at the extraction point inside the hour. We are not staying to investigate this ourselves any further. I want this reported to Boreas and the Directorate immediately, and I want a heading logged against whatever I just felt, however it reads written down.
MET 224:01:15 — TEAM 2: Understood, Commander.
MET 224:02:03 — NOVÁK: All teams, stand down from combat posture, hold current positions, maintain perimeter until extraction. Get me a channel to Tsiolkovsky — Boreas needs to hear this before anyone else does.
[End of landing party excerpt. Full imaging survey and Directorate xenobiology assessment logged separately.]