Approaching the Core Facility, One Hundred and Thirty-Two Kilometers Below
Lumiara, Survivor’s Refuge
4454.3.5 Interstellar
The end of a journey is also the beginning of something new, or maybe a return to old things with a new perspective. Janus pulled on his coveralls and laced up his boots, making sure they were tight. He shaved off the stubble he’d allowed to grow for the past week and, at the appointed time, made his way down to the mess hall for his last meal on the ship.
The mess crew had taken out the best of what remained. Their stocks had suffered from the detour to Seafall, but they laid in with the seasonings and the result was edible, if not remarkable.
Janus smiled to himself at the thought. He’d eaten food just like this for twelve years, until Lira Allencourt came along and introduced him to the finer art of field cooking.
As he returned his tray and left the mess hall, he passed Ivan, and the two shared a short but meaningful look.
Nikandros would be expecting something from them, surely, but he expected them to be unarmed and helpless in the face of his cyborgs.
Here’s hoping we prove him wrong.
When the convoy was twenty kilometers away from their destination, Ryler opened the crew’s access to the external cameras, and even Janus linked in to see the destination they’d worked so hard to reach.
He was surprised by the light. This deep beneath the inner sea, it should have been pitch black, and yet a glow suffused the surrounding waters, getting stronger up ahead. They were descending toward the facility at a ten-degree down angle, but it was like there was a star beneath them, in the still distant center of the planet. A pale, cool sun. The imminent confrontation with their captors aside, Janus wished he had access to more extensive instruments—temperature, salinity, viscosity, currents… There was a unique phenomenon happening outside the hull, and he was practically blind to it.
He also checked the cameras to make sure the post-humans weren’t visible.
They weren’t, which brought with it its own worries, and he didn’t dare use the implanted device while the comps were doubtlessly on high alert. Had they survived the increase in pressure, and whatever conditions existed outside? Or had they somehow made it inside the ship unnoticed?
In the distance, the light was split by a hair-thin band of black. A slight thickening became apparent as they powered closer, until, a half hour later, Janus was able to make out the facility.
The Core facility was like a jewel setting on a ring whose dimensions defied the imagination. It was dwarfed by its surroundings—smaller than Seafall, certainly—although the ring itself, now as thick as a pencil mark against the bright depths, continued from horizon to horizon. They were still thousands of kilometers over the true center of the planet, but Janus felt like they were approaching another boundary, like the one between the undersea and the innersea, except these depths were devoid of life.
The Chapo and the Deep Rider had formed up on them, now a mere hundred meters away, two fellow shadows in the glow.
Nearer, now, the Core facility looked less like a ring and more like a crown. The facility proper was lozenge shaped on its sides, rectangular from above, with slender docking arms held out toward their approach like they were being welcomed.
The ring’s surface rippled with heat. Radiators, Janus saw, and suddenly he understood. Heat management for the Oracle, the greatest computer their civilization was currently able to construct. This was where all the data from the Trials and the cult’s other monitoring programs was delivered, an ever-devouring maw that swallowed the past to spin out survivable futures.
They floated into the facility’s shadow, and Janus disconnected himself from the ship’s network. Their journey was at an end.
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***
The Irkallans from the Seraphine, Chapo, and Deep Rider, were herded out onto the docks, taking their belongings with them.
No weapons.
No aspirant suits.
Janus was back to the way he’d been before it all started. After a few moments of standing around, Fury bounded and squirmed through the assembled crowd, and Janus dropped to one knee and bumped into him, squirming with excitement.
“Hey, girl,” Janus said and the jungle dragon clicked and purred happily.
The captain followed close behind.
Janus looked up at him in surprise. “I thought the ronin were being allowed to stay on the ships.”
“I felt like my people were here,” the captain said.
“That doesn’t sound like the most survivable choice,” Janus said, eyes searching the crowd for signs of Nikandros’s cyborgs.
“But it’s not boring, young man.”
The captain kept moving through the crowd, and Fury squirmed out of Janus’s arms to follow him.
Janus sighed and stood up. It was tough to compete with someone who could communicate with her in several more senses than a regular human, but it was still tough getting dumped for an old guy who looked like a walking fish.
The crowd parted as Callie was brought out on a life-support gurney. Ivan and the cult medic he’d flirted with walked at her side. Janus picked up his seabag and walked over to join them. “How is she?”
“Stable,” the medic answered. “We had the supplies for that, but they should have the facilities here to restore more of her function.”
“You mean cybernetics,” Janus said, and it was a lead weight in his gut.
“Maybe,” the medic said. “From what I’ve read, they do have advanced biotics labs, here—the kind of stuff no one’s seen since the Second Interstellar War. Cybernetics are fast, and they’re usually better than Standard in terms of performance, but they’ll give her the choice if she’s able to make it.”
A warm hand touched Janus’s shoulder, and he turned to find Lee standing beside him, with Xander holding her hand and standing on his own.
He gathered both of them into his arms.
“Hey, mate.”
“I almost like hearing me call you that. Xander’s walking.”
“Yeah. Won’t take to the sling anymore. All grown up.”
Xander looked up at him with big dark eyes and smiled.
Family, Janus thought. The word was like a spell to him. It was warmth, safety, and worries all wrapped into one. It was his duty and his future. It filled him to bursting with joy, even in the hard moments.
Even though it had cost him a piece of his soul.
That warmth was almost enough to make him abandon his plans and consider this home.
“All new arrivals, all new arrivals, please make your way along the docks to the arrival hall for registration.”
Janus fought back tears. He wanted to believe in this, that they had somehow walked through the fire of two Trials and their journey to the Core, and they’d come out almost whole. They could have the life Nikandros had promised them. That this was an end to their struggles.
The aspirant in him didn’t believe it, though. No, this wasn’t the end. This was a trap, and the worst had yet to come.
“All new arrivals, all new arrivals…”
“Let’s go,” Janus said to the others. “We need to get Callie to a proper care facility as soon as possible.”
The tide of people flowed down the docks, as they’d been instructed, and Janus walked with the others, passing the lone compartmentalist cyborg left to make sure they all complied.
As they reached the end of the docks, their parties merged with others from the Chapo and the Deep Rider, and there were many new joyous reunions: Mick, Syn, and Lira, of course, but also many from the Hunter contingent seemed to gravitate toward the Invarians. Janus thought he saw Egan, but the man either didn’t see him or pretended not to.
They all passed through the massive blast door, nearly twenty meters wide, that separated the docks from the arrival hall.
***
“Everything is going as planned, Architect,” Ryler said, monitoring the security feeds. “One hundred and forty-three Irkallans accounted for. One dead in Seafall. Twelve deserters that were subsequently picked up by our infiltration teams. I’d call this a complete success.”
He was plugged into security central, having relieved the compartmentalist who had been occupying the room and who surrendered his post with surprising equanimity. With his chest connector plugged in directly to the terminal, his brain implants were able to process the whole facility’s flow of information—or at least the parts dedicated to monitoring the visitors and residents.
“Any trouble from the Core crew or the Oracle researchers?”
“No,” Ryler said. “I’ve been reviewing the feeds, and it seems like they stopped their activities almost an hour before we docked. They ate a meal, or cleaned up their rooms, packing their things but leaving the bags in the corridors.”
“You think they know?”
“I think they might,” Ryler said with a sense of wonder. “It certainly wouldn’t be outside of the Oracle’s capabilities to predict it.”
Nikandros nodded. “Well, no time like the present, then. Let’s get the Irkallans settled, and then we’ll see if our outlier is broken or just pretending to be.”
“I’d like to be there,” Ryler said. “To witness it.”
“Of course,” Nikandros said. “Let me know if anything changes.”
The architect left Ryler to keep watch on their charges.
And Ryler said nothing as nearly forty post-humans came running out of the Seraphine, emerging from their hiding places aboard at last. The lead eccentrics made quick work of the cyborg guarding the dock, pulling her limb from limb, while those behind them carried weapons and equipment from the ship’s armory.
And Ryler smiled, with the painful relaxation of someone playing a harder game than was reasonable for longer than anyone—including Nikandros—had thought possible.
Everything was going as planned.