Seafall, One Hundred and Five Kilometers Below

Lumiara, Survivor’s Refuge

4454.2.29 Interstellar

“What just happened?” Janus asked. “Callie?”

There was utter silence in the control room.

“Ma’am?” one of the compartmentalist mechanics said. “I’ve got a new subsystem active.”

“Show me.”

Janus barely noticed. “Callie?” he said in barely a whisper.

“Invarian, get over here,” the commander said. “Tell us what this means.”

Something about her tone brooked no argument, and he walked over to the maintenance control station.

It was some kind of failsafe system—a backup to the PSS Callie had found.

“Boss?” Mick said over the team channel.

“What is it?”

“We’re trying to get through the airlock, but there was some kind of explosion. It’s jammed.”

Callie. A little of Janus’s self-control reasserted itself.

“I asked you a question, Invarian. Are my people in danger?”

Janus glanced at the screen again, and said, “No, I don’t think so. It looks like you have control of the PSS from here.”

“Thank the Survivor,” the commander said.

“Thank Callie. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to find out what happened to my sister.”

He didn’t wait for her response. He just walked out.

Lira was already in the passageway, carrying his gear. “What happened?”

“Callie’s in trouble.”

“Janus… She’s not responding to her comm.”

Janus took his pack from her. “All the more reason to go help her.”

“Invarian!” the commander said. “Where are you going?”

Janus turned to look at her.

“The job’s done, Invarian. You can call in your submarines. We’ll gladly trade you protection from the exceptionalists in exchange for some of your technical personnel.”

“That’s great,” Janus said. “But right now, I need to get my team out of there.”

“How?” the commander said. “I’ve heard from my people at the airlock that the rescue team can’t get in.”

“Then we’ll go around. We can cut through the hull if we have to.”

“I can’t let you do that,” the commander said, and Janus noticed she wasn’t alone. Several of her soldiers had followed her out of the command center, and they were armed. “My technicians aren’t qualified to tamper with a system as complex as the PSS, but they were able to review the logs, and from what they’ve seen, we were moments from catastrophe.”

“Are you saying my sister made a mistake?”

“What I am saying is that we shouldn’t be hasty to waste her sacrifice,” the commander said. She was speaking soothingly, like someone trying to calm an animal. “We don’t know exactly what happened. You’re welcome to review the logs with us. But we can’t risk a failure of the main habitat for the sake of recovering her body.”

Janus had only been an aspirant for a little over two years, but the cool calculation of their odds happened as quickly as a reflex. “Of course. I was distraught. I understand.”

The commander sighed in relief, and her soldiers relaxed, too, but not so much that they slung their weapons.

“If you’ll forgive me, Commander, I need to bring my team together. We need to grieve, and prepare for the arrival of our teams.”

“Of course. You may use the briefing room you used earlier.”

Janus nodded, like someone who’d just let his beloved sister go.

Janus? Lira sent over the comm.

This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

Yes.

This feels a lot like we’re running a Gemini Point.

Gemini Point had been the last stop of their first Trials, where Janus had pretended to surrender to the cult while Syn, who everyone thought was dead, distributed the Promethean memory drives across Irkalla, unbeknownst to Lira and Mick.

It’s not a Gemini Point, Janus sent her. I’m letting you know about it, this time.

The two of them headed back to the briefing room.

Once they were there, Janus opened his pack and started rigging grenades.

“Just to make this clear,” Lira said. “We got what we came here for. The compartmentalists are going to help us, and this whole situation is going to be over, but we’re going to save Callie.”

Janus set the grenade he’d just assembled down. “Is that a problem?”

“It will cause problems,” Lira said. “I like her, too, Janus, it’s just… what if she’s dead? Are you going to be able to live with the consequences of this if the compartmentalists withdraw their support or, worse, if this gets their people killed?”

Janus thought about it. Really thought about it. But this was Callie. “Yes, I’ll live with it, and the problems it creates.”

Lira sighed and picked up her weapon.

“You’re with me on this?” Janus asked.

“When have I not been?” she answered with a tired smile.

Mick, Egan, Duncan, and Devere entered the room, fully suited up. Mick took one look at Janus and Lira, and said, “We going after Callie and Vix?”

“Yes,” Janus said. “Get your gear.”

“The comps look a bit edgy,” Devere commented.

“They don’t know the plan yet,” Janus said.

Duncan and Devere looked at each other, then at Mick. Mick nodded.

That left Egan. Janus looked at him. “You have a problem with us going after your partner?”

“You mean your sister,” Egan said. “I have family on the Chapo. Is this going to harm them or my chances of getting back to them?”

“We’ve gotten through worse,” Janus said.

“Not what I asked,” Egan responded.

Janus stared at the other man. There wasn’t much he could say. Yes, this could affect all of their chances of surviving the journey, and yes, Egan might get hurt trying to leave the facility, but that was the mission, now, and Egan wasn’t enough to stop them. “You can stay here, or you can come with us.”

Egan sighed. “I’ll get my gear.”

“Everybody, suits on and seal checks,” Mick said.

Janus had already locked his helmet in. There were still two members of the away team unaccounted for, however. He activated his comm. Captain? Is Fury with you?

She is. I’m assuming the commander has told you not to rescue your sister, and I’m assuming you’re going to do it anyway.

Janus chuckled. And you’re making the survivor’s choice?

Something like that, the captain said. Do what you have to. We’ll catch up.

Janus sighed. It was probably better that way. He preferred not to have Fury in the middle of a firefight. He looked at the team. They were geared up and ready. “The captain is on his own to get out. Let’s try not to hurt these people, but nobody stops us.”

“You got it, boss,” Mick said.

There was a somewhat less enthusiastic agreement from the others.

Janus sent them their first waypoint. “Egan, you’re on point.”

The man winced, but he nodded.

They stepped out into the hallway.

The Seafall commander was no fool. She was waiting outside with a dozen soldiers. “Invarian.”

“Commander.”

“They make compartmentalist officers study your decisions during the Trials, you know. It’s like you can’t help but wreck things.”

“We’ve learned to be wary of gifts from the cult.”

The commander opened her mouth to respond, and Janus shot her with a knockout round as soon as his pistol cleared the holster, along with the man next to her. Clac, clack, clack clack! Mick followed suit, and then the rest of the team followed suit.

Within seconds, all twelve of the compartmentalist soldiers were on the ground, moaning. They’d have bruises and headaches, but they’d be fine.

“Come on!” Janus said, shoving Egan in the direction of the waypoint.

They took the exit on the left—opposite the way to the diving decks and the docks.

“Where are we going?” Egan asked.

“Environmental control,” Janus answered.

The plan was simple. The compartmentalists had an abundance of soldiers and not enough technicians. They only thought in terms of positions and firepower. By Janus’s own experience, they hadn’t trained to deal with aerosol contamination, and by the commander’s admission, they were used to how he usually operated.

He shot two more soldiers, and Egan triple-tapped another on their way to the main environmental unit. The team guarded the door while Janus stepped inside.

There were two military techs at the consoles.

“What are you—”

Janus shot them before they could ask a full question, and swapped magazines. He found the main oxygen scrubbers, ripped the panel off the ventilation unit, and pulled the pin on three gas grenades, dropping them in one after the other.

As the thick knockout gas hissed and flowed through the vents to the entire compartment, Janus walked back to the others, and they headed toward the docks.

Their trip to the security checkpoint was mostly unopposed, except for a few soldiers with gas masks who preferred to tend to their comrades rather than fight. They had to disable the sentry guns on their way, but that turned out to be a simple affair when approaching them from behind.

The captain and Fury were waiting for them on the second level. “Any problems getting out?”

“None worth mentioning,” Janus said. “Any idea how we’ll get past the turrets?”

“I’ve solved that problem,” the captain said.

Janus nodded. He’d suspected as much. In a way, they’d both chosen their people over the mission. “Let’s get this over with.”

***

Callie was running out of time. She still had some connection to her implants, but no connection to the network. Her suit had sealed her in, although not before she’d been exposed to the high-pressure septic water. She was bleeding. Broken.

Her body wouldn’t move.

As she lay there, one foot on the deck, partially floating and drifting in and out of consciousness, she’d had time to think of what had gone wrong. What she’d done wrong.

She should have taken more advice.

She should have voiced her thoughts.

She should have let Janus come with her. That last thought burned most bitterly. She could have trusted her brother not to go against her instructions. He would have trusted her to know what she was doing.

There was no blaming Vix for it. The woman was floating next to her, after all. Trapped in the same compartment. Dead.

Callie had allowed her to be killed. So much for predictive maintenance.

She drifted again, the clock in her retinal implants advancing by minute leaps.

She regretted how things had ended with Matthias. Not that she’d made the decision, but that she hadn’t done it sooner, so he would have had time to process.

He would have remembered her differently.

This wasn’t the worst end.

She’d done what she promised

There was a shift, a flow of water, and then Callie was being dragged through the compartment.

Brother…