Seafall, One Hundred and Five Kilometers Below
Lumiara, Survivor’s Refuge
4454.2.28 Interstellar
As the team entered the commercial district, several things became clear to Janus: the floor had been converted into a killing ground, with numerous barricades and switchbacks, there were many more compartmentalists here than a simple garrison, and all of them looked at the Apostate with unabashed hatred. The commander held the soldiers at bay with gestures and stern looks, but it was clear they were shocked that a post-human was being allowed to walk in their midst—shocked and betrayed.
“This will cost you,” Janus said to the commander.
“It will,” she agreed. “A simple choice, when it comes to protecting one’s family, is it not?”
“It is,” Janus said, glancing at Callie.
The commander and the armored soldiers with her led Janus and his team through the passage between what had probably been intended as a shopping district within the sprawling base, where the residents from above could meet the visitors from below—the ones who were allowed past security. “What was the purpose of this place?” he asked.
“Was?” the commander countered.
Janus met her eyes, and she scoffed and looked away. “My faction has seen the writing on the wall for decades. The Consensus is being held together by the Survivalists, some old habits, and the absence of a faction strong enough to take control.”
“The compartmentalists weren’t in control?” Lira asked before Janus could.
“I’m not a politician, Administrator Allencourt, but I think you’ll find our attention was focused outward. We left the Cult to its own devices, for the most part.”
“I’m sure that felt noble to you,” Janus said, and the commander sneered at him before leading them into a central building with reinforced walls.
This building, too, was a deathtrap. The sentry guns were obvious, but there were armor plates attached to the walls, and possibly some sort of explosives rigged to blow on command, or under the right conditions. If a tide of post-humans invaded the base, they would be funneled here, and they would die in their hundreds or thousands.
The commander opened the door to a meeting room with a long metal table and sturdy chairs. “I’m going to go check the security footage, make sure your ‘friends’ have stayed put. You’re welcome to use this room for storage or to get out of your suits. No one will touch your equipment.”
“Thanks,” Janus said, although he had no intention of shedding his gear.
But then again, it would probably be a good idea to switch over to the base’s environmental system. There were limits to how long a suit’s scrubber could function without being connected to a larger unit, and the commander hadn’t said how soon she would be back. “Helmets off, everyone. Let’s get some basic maintenance done.”
“Thank the Void,” Callie said, and Janus hid a chuckle. His little sister was a lot of things, but she hadn’t spent as much time outside a dome as him, Lira, or Mick.
***
Seraphine, One Hundred and Five Kilometers Below
Lumiara, Survivor’s Refuge
4454.2.28 Interstellar
“How are the prisoners?” Nikandros asked the chief engineer.
“Still in shock, I think,” she said. “With only ten of us split between three ships and over one hundred and seventy-five of them, I’m surprised we haven’t seen more acts of resistance by now.”
“The outlier is gone, Lee and Xander are under watch, and Ivan Invarian is still injured,” Ryler said. “The worst of the remaining Irkallans were part of the away team, and for good reason. Furthermore, any submarine that manages to mutiny knows we will punish the remaining two. I think you’re overestimating what Irkallans are capable of without their leaders.”
The chief engineer stared at the librarian, processing his response. She wasn’t sure what had happened in The Deeps, but he’d come back as cold as a full-conversion chip-head, something she’d steadfastly avoided despite her role as part of her faction’s militarized cyborgs.
She wasn’t sure what was scarier: that he might be faking, or that he genuinely thought that way as the result of a system fault or some kind of psychotic break.
“The Hunters among them could still be a problem,” Nikandros stated.
Ryler shrugged. “No more than the other aspirants Ivan trained. If they rebel, we detonate this ship.”
“With us on it?” Nikandros said, raising an eyebrow. “I admire your returned zeal, Ryler, but I think the ch’eng and I would rather survive this—within the parameters of the mission, of course,” he said, with a hint of sarcasm.
“Of course,” Ryler said without a trace of humor. “It’s been four hours. What do you think is happening in Seafall?”
“Another one of Janus’s miracles, no doubt,” Nikandros mused. “No doubt he’s wooed the compartmentalists with his good intentions, or done them some favor so that they’ll fall over themselves to help him.”
“And then what?” the chief engineer asked.
Nikandros considered the question.
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
She knew what the doctrine said, of course. When the true outlier was found, they would, of their very nature, diverge from the Cult.
As members of the exceptionalists, it was their duty to stand aside.
“The situation is not the one our predecessors anticipated,” Nikandros finally said. “Allowing Janus to secure the Oracle would prevent the emergence of every outlier after him. The first law is clear. We would have to destroy him.”
Ryler nodded without other signs of emotion, and the chief engineer felt a chill pass through her. She understood Nikandros’s sometimes self-serving use of the doctrine. No man was without at least some hypocrisy, and that malleability made them tractable. She saw nothing of that in Ryler Abraxxis.
Only faith, which was its own form of madness.
***
Seafall, One Hundred and Five Kilometers Below
Lumiara, Survivor’s Refuge
4454.2.28 Interstellar
“Out of the question,” the commander said, shutting down yet another line of negotiation.
Janus sighed. The away team was seated on one side of the table, while the commander and her second in command sat on the other, ostensibly to come to an agreement for their desperately needed assistance. Instead, all he was getting was resistance. “Can you at least explain to me why you won’t let us call in our convoy? We have supplies you can use, and technicians who could help get the base back into working order.”
“And a hold full of exceptionalists.”
“Ten of them,” Janus said.
“Combat cyborgs,” the commander said. “Assuming you’re even telling the truth about needing help against the people who sponsored you into the Consensus in the first place, they’ve either retaken the ship already, or they haven’t. If they have, they might fire on the base if we let them get within range. If they haven’t, our neutralizing them gives you what you wanted, and we have no more leverage to bargain with.”
Lira frowned. “Do you really think it’s likely that a Cult architect, even an exceptionalist, would break your taboo on killing each other?”
“Did you see this place?” Mick asked. “I don’t think that taboo applies here.”
“It wasn’t our intention to kill anyone!” the commander said. “The damned things tried to overrun us.”
“I doubt that,” the captain said. The commander’s eyes narrowed, and her second in command started to protest, but the Apostate raised his hand to stop them. “I’m not saying they didn’t try to kill you and destroy this base, I’m saying they were provoked.”
“How would you know that?” the commander said with a sneer.
“Because,” the captain said, “most of them have regressed to an animal state. They aren’t hunting you. They are afraid of you.”
The commander looked at her second in command, and he pressed his lips together.
“There might be some truth to what you’re saying,” she said. “I’m sure you noticed the central towers that extend beyond the crater?”
“We thought they were for heat management,” Callie said.
“That, also,” the commander said with a nod. “But their primary purpose was to be a new form of communication device, using gravity pulses to communicate with bases and submarines throughout the inner sea.”
“I wouldn’t have thought that was possible inside a gravity well,” Callie said.
“Why not?” Janus asked.
Callie shrugged. “It’s just never been done. Small pulses get lost in the noise of a planet’s gravity. That’s why gravimetrics are starship technology.”
“I’m not a scientist,” the commander said. “They all died when those things first attacked. But my understanding is that it works down here for the same reason the core is hollow and the water pressure is a fraction of what it should be.”
“Okay,” Janus said, unfamiliar with that level of physics and not sure it was relevant. He had 170 people waiting for him back on the subs, and the future of Irkalla, Krandermore, and all the other habitats of Survivor’s Refuge might depend on them getting through this discussion. More importantly, Xander and Lee’s safety did. “So, you built a big antenna, you turned it on, and every post-human in the inner sea rushed in to kill you. Don’t do that again.”
“We haven’t,” the second in command grated. “We’re not stupid, but that was also our only means of communication. The fish men sunk our subs.”
“But you won’t let us call our people in,” Janus said.
“No,” the commander said, crossing her arms. “We won’t.”
“And you won’t collaborate with the group that’s trapped here?”
“You said it yourself. They’ve regressed. What can they offer us?”
“One of them, at least, was one of the most brilliant minds the Cult ever produced,” the captain said.
“Doesn’t seem that way from the results, does it?” the second in command said.
The commander sighed. “Even if they were useful, it’s still a Tenpenny Tower scenario. It won’t end well for us or for them.”
Janus sighed and stood. He’d learned a thing or two from Lira about negotiation, and sometimes, the best thing to do was walk away—or at least pretend to. “This is a waste of time. We’ll just take Nikandros to the Oracle and hope he cares enough about the people here to send a rescue mission when he’s done taking control of the Consensus.”
“Already?” the commander said in a shocked voice, looking from Janus to Lira.
Janus and Lira looked back at her.
“You were expecting this?” the captain asked.
“I don’t know what ‘this’ is,” she answered. “Seafall was built to serve as a safeguard against the collapse of the Consensus. If someone took control, the people here were going to seal off the inner sea and protect the Oracle until order could be restored.”
“This should have been coordinated with the survivalists,” the captain said. “They could have helped. Why must your faction always stay isolated?”
The commander sneered. “Your faction turned into monsters, Parameter. A little humility might be in order.”
“You both failed,” Janus said quietly and firmly, and both the commander and the captain looked at him. “Captain, I will find a way to help your people. You have my word on that. In the meantime, I need enough compartmentalist soldiers to offset ten exceptionalist cyborgs. The goal isn’t to start a war with the post-humans or the exceptionalists. The goal is for all our people to survive.”
The captain gave him a curt nod, and the commander and her second-in-command looked at each other before the leader of Seafall responded.
“This base was made to sustain itself for centuries, but we didn’t anticipate it would be attacked before it was fully activated. There was a malfunction of some kind in the science wing; we have it contained for now, but if it were to be replicated in one of the populated areas of the base…”
“What happened?” Janus asked.
“We have no idea. One minute, the science team was doing their best to protect the base’s systems while we fought off the… post-human attack,” she said, glancing at the captain. “The next thing I knew, every scientist, soldier, or civilian in that wing was dead, the airlocks sealed, and space filled with water.”
“And you’re afraid that could happen again,” Janus said.
“We know it will. We lost another unit adjacent to the first one, although, thankfully, that one was unoccupied.”
“I understand,” he said. “You can’t consider helping us or worrying about the posts, and you can’t afford to send anyone away. Not with your families at risk like this.”
The commander sat back, letting her hands drop into her lap. “That about sums it up, yes. We’ve been living with the threat of this hanging over our heads for weeks, with no one on my team able to find out why, and no way to contact our faction for help.”
Mick opened his mouth to say something, but Lira kicked his leg before he could speak.
“Callie?” Janus said, looking at his sister. “I can probably help fix it, but you’re the most qualified person on our team to figure out what happened.”
“She’s a child!” the comparmentalist second in command protested.
Callie gave him an icy smile. “I’m a child who’s qualified as both a colony and submersible maintenance officer, and if we’re adding up old scores, I’m a child who spent a year on the run from compartmentalist kill teams, so shut it.”
Janus didn’t bother holding back a grin.
“I don’t care how old she is as long as she can help,” the commander said reprovingly. She looked at Callie. “What do you need?”
“Blueprints, schematics, maintenance manuals, and recordings,” Callie said, her voice all business. “I don’t know if this is something fixable, but give me a few hours and I’ll find out.”