[Good evening, Dawn Rigor. Arriving at Coordinates 25.98, 71.23, in the Melsura Ocean.]
The thrum of the robotic voice resonated through the hollow piping of the submarine, echoing off the slightly corroded brass plates that lined the claustrophobic walkway.
At the end of the walkway was an open hatch filled with various tools of all sizes, where a scruffy young man was desperately scraping away at a glowing barnacle-infested barrel of an ornamental pistol, using both of his sweaty hands in rapid motion.
The barnacles squealed in response in a shrill tone, a few of them even lashing out with their sole purple tentacle in a bid to restrict the young man. However, he swiftly cut them off with his scraper, before removing them one at a time, grimacing at the constant harassment.
Once he removed a barnacle, he tossed into a barrel of water, where the barnacles floated happily, unaware of the fight they just went through, adhering to the inner walls in content.
“Time?” The young man, Dawn, spoke without even turning, his eyes focused on the prize right in front of him, still grinding down with chunks of alien barnacles continuously being thrown to the barrel at the side off the workbench.
A glint of gold could be seen clearly now through the incessant scraping, making Dawn even more excited. “Finally! This pistol will fetch a fortune at the next auction.” He could already discern the intricate engravings carved with care into the pistol!
[Twenty-six days since surfacing. Four days till your next appointment. A warning note has been issued as well regarding your last late arrival. The administration has emphasised punctuality when it comes to tourism.]
“Shit, it’ll take me days to decompress. Looks like I’ll have to focus now.” Dawn decided to put the scraping of the ornamental pistol on hold, throwing it back down on the workbench. The barnacles on the pistol squealed as they slammed against the hard metal surface
“You bastards are lucky I ran out of alcohol, otherwise I’ll have finished this by now.” He grumbled at the alien barnacles, who only continued squealing back.
He plunged his hands in the same barrel of water, washing them before sweeping his dirty brown hair back which curled gently in a wave-like pattern.
A fresh wound from when the barnacle’s tentacles had whipped him on the forehead was now clearly visible, causing him to wince as he touched it. “Fucking…”
Cursing under his breath, he stepped out of the workbench room, closing the hatch to reduce the annoyance that was starting to build up from the barnacles constant squealing. The first day he arrived here, he thought it was cute, but after two long years, the initial surprise and love had already worn off.
Walking down the walkway, Dawn headed to the cockpit of the submarine, reaching it in less than three seconds. The submarine itself wasn’t very large, only about 15 meters long and five meters wide. It had zero windows, forcing him to purely rely on cameras and sensors to navigate around.
“Spotted anything?” He asked as he jumped into the pilot’s seat, reaching under the chair to grab a tube of medical cream from a hidden pocket.
[Negative. No exotic metals detected.] Dawn winced as the cream singed into his open wound on his forehead, solidifying quickly to form a protective layer.
A display of all metallic reactions on a radar-like screen showed up. Dawn squinted, checking the readings. Sometimes there could be a false negative, but Dawn was running out of time for now.
“Alright, I’ll head out soon. Prep the drones for launch.”
The submarine whirred in acknowledgement, the systems within beginning to power up. On the dashboard, the displays of each of the three autonomous drones begin to spool up, powering the drones on one by one.
Lines upon lines of diagnostic outputs could be seen scrolling through the screen, detailing their boot up sequence.
Dawn’s hazel eyes rapidly checked each of the diagnostics. “Power lines check, current fluctuations within range, communication noise acceptable, memory chip uncorrupted… How are we feeling today, my babies?”
[Feeling just fine! Let’s go!] Ares replied happily with a upbeat tone
[I don’t really wanna go, must we do this?] Bolton sighed gloomily, it’s despair-laden mechanical voice reverberating through the hull.
[It’s what we were made for, shut up and do it! Just do it!] Carl shouted back even louder, enthusiastic.
The drones were all upgraded with A.I emotional software, seeing as Dawn was the only human on this submarine. If he didn’t have anything to talk to, he might have gone crazy during the long hours of work.
No one could spend twenty-six days alone in a cramped submarine and expect to come out sane!
Dawn liked to keep his current personality as intact as much as possible. It was what the ladies like anyway. At least according to his mom.
Chuckling upon hearing the feisty chatter between the drones, he loaded up a map of the area on the cockpit’s display.
“Okay, lets confirm again with the administration.” He leaned back on the captain’s chair, a nerval jack aimed at the nape of his neck plunging into an already prepared plug embedded into his spine.
A video screen appeared in his eyes, with a female human on the other end of the video call. Dawn knew it was just a representation of the autonomous AI working for the administration, but he liked to think he was talking to an actual human on the other end. “This is Dawn Rigor, License Number MEL-839, requesting confirmation of location and approval to begin mapping.”
[Standby for confirmation…. Location confirmed. Mapping Reward has been set to a fifty kilometre radius. Happy hunting.]
“You too…” Dawn instinctively nodded in response before the call cut off.
[You too?!] Bolton exclaimed. [Why are you wishing her ‘Happy hunting’ too? She’s not even a hunter! What kind of a response was that?!]
[Shh! Dawn still thinks she’s real, don’t let him know! If he knew it was a real female it would be a critical hit on him!] Ares tried to whisper, even though Dawn could still hear everything.
“OKAY, I get it, I suck at talking to females of any kind, alright? Sheesh…” Dawn grumbled as he got up from the captain’s seat, standing up to flick a few switches on the top, warming up the air pumps.
“Turn on the lights and clear the area, I don’t want to get in any trouble this time.”
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[Maybe it followed you all the way here this time as well, who knows! Probably the only female alien to ever get attracted to you.] Bolton sniggered.
A thought flashed past Dawn’s head, considering whether he should reprogram this little cocky fucker.
He shook his head as he stepped into his airlock, checking his diving exosuit. Dawn already paid more than 15,000 L-credits to upgrade his drones, it would be stupid to backtrack now.
The diving exosuit was bigger than him, fully armoured and completely airtight once sealed. Right now, the back of the exosuit was opened to reveal a human-size cavity, allowing Dawn to wear a inner diving suit on his body before entering the exosuit.
The exosuit began to close around him, the individual mechanical bits sealing around his arms and legs before an automated arm grabbed a spine from the wall, attaching it to the back of the exosuit. The tip of the spine had the same nerval jack, connecting with the plug in his neck.
The nerval interface was the norm these days – every bit and piece of advanced technology relied on the fact that the user had a nerval interface available. It was the only way Dawn could control the exosuit like his own body.
As the cold tip of the jack sent a shiver down his spine, his brain began to warm up with the massive amount of information that began flooding into his nerval system. The interface began to trick his mind into thinking that he was wearing something like a second skin.
[Running diagnostics, standby.] The various flaps and thrusters on the exosuit began to perform their manoeuvre testing, while various seals engaged, creating an air-tight system up to his neck.
Grabbing the helmet and donning, Dawn checked himself out by accessing the airlock camera. In his mind, he expected himself to have a sleek glossy exosuit, one that would eventually rise to fame!
Instead, what was shown on the camera was an exosuit that had a completely mismatched colour scheme. It was clearly obvious to anyone, even amateurs, that the exosuit was a cobbled up junkpile of various components.
Dawn himself was not even sure how he managed to keep it airtight, but it served its purpose for now. “If it works, it works.”
The exosuit slightly creaked as he tried moving his legs, the sounds of rusting clearly grating on his ears. [Warning: Corrosion level of right leg is at thirty percent. Recommending immediate replacement. Parts can be found at the local AquaSuits store for the low price of 2699 L-credits!]
“Terminate all other commercial advertisements, and ignore corrosion levels.” Dawn grunted as he manuevered the exosuit to grab a can of fast-acting epoxy and a roll of waterproof tape. Turned out the exosuit didn’t work that well.
He sprayed the epoxy on the corroded section of the right leg, which immediately sealed and formed a protective barrier. He was aware that the epoxy wouldn’t last long under the erosion of water - that was what the tape was for, or so he hoped.
The makeshift bandage made the exosuit look even more trashy, but Dawn didn’t care. Slinging a 3D imaging camera tool behind his back, he checked the status of the exosuit functionality on his heads up display.
“Bloody hell, this tin bucket really needs an upgrade… maybe after selling that pistol it’s not unreasonable…” Dawn mumbled, before closing and sealing the interior hatch of the airlock behind him.
Slamming a big red button, the chamber began to suck the air back into the submarine, filling up with water instead as the airlock was slowly flooded. Opening the airlock instantly was like asking to be crushed by tons of water!
Dawn could have purchased a submarine with a vertical airlock rather than a horizontal one, but there wasn’t much options considering the pitiful amount of money he had left in his bank account after being discharged from the military and losing everything he had ‘earned’.
“Alright, air check, hydraulic check, propulsion check. No leaks detected.” Dawn used the flooded airlock to check for any escaping bubbles from his diving exosuit. He bent down to check on the hastily repaired right leg, and the epoxy seemed to be doing fine.
Taking a deep breath, he unlocked the exterior hatch of the airlock, seeing the outside of the submarine. The exosuit slightly creaked as the water pressured the armour, but it held true.
Despite the incredible depths, the ocean was fully lit by bright fluorescent corals, absorbing energy from the lava flow deep below the sea bed.
Millions of corals lit the surroundings, with Dawn floating in the middle of the incredible kaleidoscope of colours like an astronaut. He could hear the various currents as they slammed into each other and into rock formations, the soundwaves travelling faster underwater.
A low-level continuous crackle could be heard, the sounds of quadrillions of alien crustaceans going about their daily routine at the incredible depths. Pillars of natural gas bubbles and kelp-like forests could be seen towering up towards the surface, where the starlight barely penetrated.
Shoals of both dreary grey and brave pink organisms swarmed around the bubbles, some trying to eat them. In the far distance, Dawn could spot a massive snake-like leviathan, gently grazing on the corals.
Dawn was pretty sure that they already had a human name for all of them, but he wasn’t a biologist nor did he really care. To him, it would be better if everything here was inanimate – that way he could do his job more efficiently.
[Eww! Get this thing off me!] Bolton complained as the autonomous drone spun around in the water.
The drones were designed like spheres with up to four arms that could be retracted and equipped with countless tooltips or devices.
Right now, an shark with an octopus-like mouth was sucking deeply on Bolton’s surface. Dawn sighed, moving over to the spinning Bolton. He gently grabbed the tail of the shark with a slow approach, before gradually trying to pull it off.
The shark complied, but instead of swimming away, it decided to latch onto Dawn’s exosuit instead! Before it could fully attach, Dawn activated the high-beam lights on his helmet, blinding the shark and causing it to be confused.
[Shoot it! Shoot it!] Carl egged on Dawn.
[No! Don’t shoot it! It’s just a boy! What about his parents?! Think about what his mom will say to the principal!?] Ares wailed as the three drones gathered around Dawn.
“I’m not going to shoot anything here okay? The submarine has a recorder, if I even fire a single shot the administration is going to hound my ass for months. And what the hell are you talking about, Ares?!” Dawn just simply let the shark writhe and wriggle as they floated away due to the current.
“You guys, check for drift currents. Don’t want to get caught in any stupid cave this time.” Dawn ordered, marking a few positions using his nerval jack.
[Roger!] Eight mini propeller engines appeared on the surface of the drones, allowing the drones to have full freedom of movement underwater.
The three drones soared away from Dawn while Dawn remained near the submarine, retrieving his 3D imaging camera from his sling.
“Once you guys are done, sweep the area with the camera.” Dawn ordered, beginning his camera sweep. Aiming the camera down, he slowly floated with the help of his thrusters, pushing him gently along over the fluorescent corals. A few plant-like strands got in his way, but he easily avoided them.
Crossing his arms and locking his legs, Dawn drifted like a log, simply taking in the scenery. It was times like this when he truly felt alive, at one with the universe.
He eyed the area, using his exosuit sensors to try and detect any signs of large metallic objects. However, there was no response after five minutes of drifting. “Another bust? I’m starting to think Melsura isn’t the Graveyard of Nations after all! How can I only get one ancient starship wreck in thirty days?!”
[Dawn, watch out! Several lifeforms headed directly for you!] Bolton suddenly cried out.
Dawn tensed up, immediately checked his surroundings, but all he saw was the same dense forest of corals, with thousands of organisms around him. He couldn’t really pick up anything heading towards him.
“Which direction?” Dawn desperately turned around, the panic building within him. He frantically checked all his sensors, only seeing corals, bubbles and rock formations around him.
[Huh, the lifeforms are gone now, they dropped off the radar…] Bolton replied with a confused tone.
“Fucking hell, you scared the shit out of me!” Dawn cursed slightly, but suddenly felt a looming presence near him. He could here the large movement in the water, like a swirling tide about to hit him.
Instead, he turned to look to his right, only seeing the same shark that he blinded before. The shark floated calmly, simply staring straight at Dawn. “Oh, it’s just you again. What do you want this time?” Dawn prepared to blind the shark again.
The shark suddenly let out a shrill scream, causing Dawn’s ears to tingle as he winced in reflex. “Fuck!” The shark swam upwards hastily, leaving Dawn’s narrow vision.
As if in response to the shrill scream, a low-bass tone grunt could be heard extremely close to Dawn, making him freeze. The sensors on his exosuit suddenly kicked into action.
[Warning: Rock formation overhead. Please watch your head.]
From the corner of his eye, he got a glance of a large, humongous tail right above him. The skin on the tail looked eerily similar to that of the small shark from before, though it was much more heavily scarred.
Slowly twisting his body and looking up at the ‘rock formation’, Dawn gulped in fear. “Uh, Ares? You were saying something about mothers and principals?”