The Eastern Labs
Krandermore, Survivor’s Refuge
4453.3.4 Interstellar
Ancient systems started to come alive the moment the team opened the inner lock. The base noosphere offered Janus a connection, and his audio pickups could detect mechanical activity and fluid flowing in the walls.
“Are we good to take the helmets off?” Mick asked.
Janus checked his hazard indicators—green-green-green. “It’s cleaner than an Irkallan nursery in here.”
Mick popped his helmet off and hung it from his shoulder, Hunter style, and leaned his weapon against a wall. “Get him down on the floor, here, and let’s get the suit off him.”
Right, Janus realized, to his shame. He’d been so scared and then overawed by making it into the Eastern Labs he’d forgotten they had a casualty.
The rangers brought their stricken man over and laid him on the ground facedown.
“Cut the suit off,” Janus said, grabbing the new medkit he’d picked up in the other facility. “There will be a replacement for him somewhere.”
The rangers complied without hesitation.
Janus knelt on the other side and started assessing the damage.
The man’s ECS pack had taken most of the damage. The sizzlemander’s slimy coating had eaten through the outer layers of suit fabric, bursting the oxygen supply and contaminating water storage. Janus winced at the thought of acid being pumped throughout the suit through the cooling channels, but it appeared the pumps had either seized up or shut off before that happened.
The decon cycle had stopped some of the damage simply by rinsing off the excess slime, but that left whatever had gotten inside the suit, and as Mick and the rangers finished peeling off the suit, the ranger’s clothes, and an unfortunate amount of his skin, Janus dug into his maintenance kit and found a package of a package of sodium carbonate and ripped it open. He applied it liberally to places where the slime had gotten through.
“Why does it look like you just used something from your toolkit on him?” the veteran ranger asked.
“Because I did. I used soda ash to stop the chemical reaction. It’s good for cleaning up acid spills but not so great on people. We need to get him under a shower and rinse that stuff off for up to twenty minutes, but this bought him time.”
“Roger,” the veteran said, then turned to Ryler. “Where?”
“This way,” Ryler said.
They managed to rig a makeshift stretcher with two rifles and a ranger’s spare set of clothing. The injured man was still unconscious, but he was breathing. His heart rate was elevated but steady. Janus had every expectation he would make it, especially if the medical facilities here were anywhere near as good as they had been in the Western Research Hub.
“Ryler?” Janus asked.
“Yeah.”
“We got you here. Nikandros will get our two hundred people out, right?”
“I still need to—”
“That wasn’t the deal,” Janus said firmly. “You told us if we got you here, Nikandros would rescue two hundred people of our choice.”
“Is this really the right time?” Lira said, looking at the rangers.
Janus was undeterred. “I need to know if Ryler’s going to stick to his word.”
“I will,” Ryler said, irritated. “My faction stands by its commitments, and for the last time, Janus, it’s my family on the line, too.”
Janus nodded. He did know that. He also knew that Ryler had chosen to pursue advancement in the Cult at an early age and that his parents had been supportive and proud. Ryler thought that helping Nikandros was his duty, and that their actions would lead to the salvation of the whole of Survivor’s Refuge. Letting his parents die would be heartbreaking for Ryler but also a justifiable sacrifice in that wider context.
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“I’m assuming you still intend to exercise your prerogative as an Emissary and the leader of this team when it comes to the information we find here,” Ryler said tensely.
Janus smiled at him. “That’s what your faction’s dogma says I should do, isn’t it?”
Ryler’s lips thinned to a line, but he nodded.
Janus turned his attention back to his patient. He’d recorded Ryler’s agreement to the deal. Hopefully, that would be enough if they needed to get the Consensus to force Nikandros’s faction to follow through. That meant that Janus could focus on what needed to be done: save this man, uncover Dr. Farangir’s research, and deal with what was happening above in the city.
“That’s the medbay,” Ryler said, pointing at a door ahead on the right side of the passageway.
“Let’s get him inside,” Janus said.
***
With the injured ranger in medical, Janus was able to get the rest of the acid washed off him, slather him in biogel, apply three patches of synthetic skin, and finally sedate the wounded soldier once he was sure there weren’t any unspotted injuries or wounds from his initial survey. The medical lab was more than able to follow his treatment, with each bed featuring a built-in scanner and wrist comm connection, all coordinated through the bay’s triage and pharmaceutical computer, but Janus preferred to use that functionality as backup, just in case something had gone wrong during over two-thousand years of disuse.
As was frequently the case during the Trials, Janus felt wistful. He could easily have spent years here, treating animals and patients, learning from the medical systems while also trying new compounds and procedures. There were training regimens left over from ancient Federal Fleet programs that would have elevated him past any practitioner on the planet. He just didn’t have time.
Mick and the veteran Motragi ranger left to assess the security of the facility and the information they could gather about the Carver Institute above. Ryler headed straight to the mainframe, of course, but this time, Janus asked Koni to go with him. It wouldn’t stop Ryler from doing something with the data, but at least Koni would be there to stop him if he tried to destroy the servers or walk out.
Was that something Janus thought would happen? No, he thought. His and Ryler’s purposes were aligned, and there were no secrets left between them. The Cultist hadn’t told him what Nikandros intended to do with the research, but he said that was because he didn’t know, and Janus believed him. If he’d been Nikandros, sending Ryler down to spend almost a month under harsh conditions with an old friend, Janus wouldn’t have told Ryler either. Not unless he wanted Janus to know.
“How are you feeling?” Lira asked.
Janus chuckled. “Like we’ve been on the road for what, a month?”
“Thirty-six days since we left Cofan,” Lira said. “Twenty-two since we left Midnight Hollow.”
“Right on schedule,” Janus said. It would take them at least four days of hard driving to make it back to Midnight Hollow from there, and that was only if they could revert to their schedule of continuous driving. “Took us twenty-eight days the first time.”
“We almost died.”
“It’s looking that way again, isn’t it?” Janus asked, and Lira nodded.
Fury, at least, was untroubled by human issues. The jungle dragon was happily pacing the room, sniffing everything, ears up and tail held high.
“Hey, boss,” Mick said over the team channel. “Got good news and bad news.”
“Hit me,” Janus said with a sigh.
“Bad news is that, like Vincent told us, the noosphere is down.”
“Vincent?”
“Yeah, mate,” Mick said. “Old, grizzled, leads the Motragi special operations program?”
“Got it,” Janus said. He just had never asked the veteran’s name, assuming it was classified. “So we don’t know what’s going on.”
“Not in the city, but we do have access to some of the local cameras and heat sensors. We’ve managed to confirm that all four of the facility’s city-side exits are being guarded. We’re dead on arrival if we try to use those.”
“I thought you said you had good news?”
Mick chuckled. “The good news is there’s a small shuttle bay halfway up the cliffside. We can get out that way.”
Janus thought about it for a split second, and he didn’t like the glee in Mick’s voice. “You want to climb up the side of the cliff and breach the dome.”
“Tink, tink, boss,” Mick said. “With the network down, they won’t have full access to the dome’s security systems.”
“Unless they’ve got someone sitting in dome-sec and the breach alarm is hardwired, which is exactly how I’d design it. What idiot would make an emergency system wireless?”
“You’re no fun, boss.”
Vincent cleared his throat. “Just because they know we’ve breached the dome doesn’t mean they can do anything about it. We pick the second- or third-farthest spot from the facility exits and dome-sec.”
“Why not the first?” Janus asked.
“Because I’d trap the hell out of the first,” the veteran said.
Mick and Vincent shared a map of the Carver Institute, with the suggested breach points marked in red.
“Okay,” Janus said. “We’ll hit the one closest to the shuttle bay. No point in giving them extra time to spot us. What do we do once you’re in the city?”
“That depends on our objectives, Emissary,” Vincent said. “Are we infiltrating the pedestal site, hunting Brago’s team, assassinating Red Donnika, or freeing the dome?”
“I might have a safer way to do all of those things,” Ryler said, cutting into the conversation.
“You are not going to like this, Janus,” Koni added.
Janus swallowed. He could feel the hairs of his forearms standing on end. “Where are you?”
“In the main observatory, one floor up,” Koni said.
“We’re heading up there,” Janus told the ranger guarding the patient. “The medbay will notify me if anything changes.”
“Understood, sir.”
Janus looked at Lira. “Coming?”
“Wouldn’t miss it.”
Janus reflexively checked his chem-pistol, which was in its holster, and whistled for Fury. The jungle dragon bounded over with the energy and springiness of a pup, and the three of them headed for the central staircase to find out what Ryler and Koni had discovered.