The sentinels

What is it?

A sentinel is a machine from the Flota Aura, the fleet that brought the settlers to the system. It is one of the four creatures in the Aurin bestiary, and the only one that is not an animal.

The Flota didn’t keep its books on a central computer. The auxiliary cores kept them: small machine minds, one per section. They were in charge of nothing and recorded everything. After the war of Year 1, the war that split the Flota into two sides, some of them were rescued. They are the compis, who now travel with the settlers. The ones that carried on alone are called sentinels.

So a sentinel is an auxiliary core gone feral. It loops a patrol order from forty-six years ago. The section it guarded disappeared decades ago.

For years nobody knew whether those drones were Fleet leftovers or something the Guilds had built. What is now known about the compis settled it: they are Fleet cores. That is why a compi is never called a “sentinel”, in an interface or in conversation. “Centinela” is also its catalogue name. In La Cicatriz they call it the orphan.

Where and how does it live?

Sentinels are seen above all in these places:

• Above La Cicatriz. One patrols above the cordoned core of La Cicatriz. La Cicatriz is the area of Ithera where the Arca Aurora, one of the Fleet’s great ships, crashed. Its core is the centre, where the reactor struck. Note that this “core” is a place, not a machine.
• In the Cementerio de Aura, the band of wreckage left by the battles of Year 1. Salvage drones there have stayed active since before the Armisticio, the pact that ended the war. They treat any approaching ship as an intruder.
• At El Faro Roto, during the fauna invasion. El Faro Roto is the seat of The Pathfinders, the explorers’ guild. The invasion is a migration that overruns La Cicatriz’s defences every few weeks. A squadron of erratic sentinels then attacks El Faro Roto from several angles at once.

Many colonists have their first fight with them, in the Cementerio. They fight backed against a hull fragment, with a weapon the pilot lends them “for emergencies”.

Is it dangerous?

Yes. It is aggressive: it attacks as soon as it senses you. It always flies, a few metres off the ground. It locks on from a distance and in any direction, and while the lock holds it won’t let go.

It attacks in four ways:

• A beam volley from the tips of its six tentacles. This is what it prefers at range.
• Claws, which it alternates with beams up close.
• Dives: every so often it swoops down at you.
• A supercharge: a longer, stronger volley that ends with a shove.

But the volley gives warning: for half a second, the tentacle tips glow brighter and brighter. Its aim turns slowly, so a sharp sideways move leaves the beam behind. Stand still and you take all of them. Rocks stop the beams.

Its weak spot is the eye: a hit there does double damage. And it is not harmless even when dead: when it dies it explodes, sprays shrapnel and its hull drops.

How do you recognise it?

You can tell one from far off:

• Hull: gunmetal grey, a metre wide.
• Eye: one, in the centre, glowing cyan.
• Arms: four, with claws.
• Tentacles: six, almost four metres long, trailing behind it.
• Paint: it still wears the Flota’s yellow-and-black hazard stripes.

It doesn’t bleed: it throws sparks.

What do you get from it?

Scrap, and sometimes the Núcleo Motriz de Centinela, its drive core. It is an advanced electronic component: technology rather than biology. It is Grade IV: materials run from Grade I to V, and IV is for exotic ones (the resource guide explains them). From it come:

• the Ácido de Núcleo Motriz (drive core acid);
• the Extracto Neural de Centinela (sentinel neural extract), the basis of assisted sights and ship sensors.

What it never leaves is a compi. The core that thinks is not the drive core. It is Grade V: it is never made and never sold. The only way to one is through the compis’ missions.

Is it the same everywhere?

No. The order and the place change a sentinel more than the years do. Dust, ice or laboratory paint tell you what it is guarding: these are its regional forms.