Seafall, One Hundred and Five Kilometers Below
Lumiara, Survivor’s Refuge
4454.2.28 Interstellar
Janus and the rest of the away team followed Emersus and his troupe of post-human creatures farther into the facility. The post-humans went first, followed by Mick, the captain, and Fury. Fury stayed close to the captain, but she seemed relaxed, which in turn gave Janus some small confidence that they weren’t all about to be killed. Janus had holstered his pistol, but not before swapping the magazine out for a deadly nerve agent that would drop anything living before they realized they’d been hit. He kept Callie close, just behind him, followed by Lira and the rest of the team.
“Do your people live here?” Janus asked Emersus.
“Yesss,” the fish creatures said. “My pod and five others-sss.”
The hallways got worse the farther they went, with more scratch marks on the panels, and a green, slimy buildup around the vents. Janus had accessed his suit sensors through his wrist comm, but there was nothing inherently harmful to the funk that had permeated the halls. It was just a lack of maintenance, something that would have been maddeningly simple to prevent and now would require painstaking work to undo.
“What my brother is trying to ask is,” Callie said, with a glance at Janus, “‘Why is this base in such a state of disrepair?’”
Janus winced, but he still wanted the answer.
Emersus looked back at them with his large, black, liquid eyes, and hunched his shoulder somewhat, a set of four quills rising partly on either side of his spine. “We came for h-help. Pursued. Damaged by turrets. Many died. Our kin here did not welcome us-sss, and so we would like to leave, but the lights and the defenses are too much. We are stuck. They are stuck.”
“You could still have maintained this space,” Callie said with the callousness of the young.
“We cannot, young one,” Emersus said, with great pain. “We have forgotten how.”
They arrived at the mess hall where Emersus’s people were staying. Janus asked Mick, Callie, and the others to wait for them in the hallway while he, Lira, and the captain went in.
The mess hall was a simple affair of five long, steel tables made to sit ten each. Large brushed steel storage lockers lined the back wall, and a small kitchen with only what was needed to warm up large vats of food stood off to the left side. This was clearly a workman’s mess, probably intended to allow construction divers and mini-sub crews to eat quickly between shifts. There would be no eating in here, now, however. Emersus’s brood covered every surface. Some of them sat at the tables, like the humanoids they were, while others sat on the floor, laid out on counters, or wedged themselves on top of the cabinets.
As one, the post-humans who had been waiting in the annex turned to look at them with dark, unblinking eyes.
Fury sniffed the air.
“Come in, come in,” Emersus said, gesturing to the benches. “Take sss-seats, if you like. They will make room.”
Janus wasn’t so sure of that. Emersus had said his people represented six pods. There seemed to be about fifty individuals packed into the room, several of whom looked at the captain or even Janus with an unmistakable air of challenge.
“All right,” Lira said. “I can tell a lot is going on, here, but we don’t have a lot of time.”
Emersus looked at the captain. “She sss-speaks for you?”
“She speaks for him,” the captain said, nodding toward Janus.
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“Lira’s right,” Janus said. “I’m sorry, we’d like to help, but we were expecting to find compartmentalist soldiers.”
One of the post-humans hissed angrily.
“They are here,” Emersus said. “They are above. They wait for us-sss to leave, but they will not let us-sss go.”
Janus looked at Lira. Are you getting this? he sent, over the comm.
Not any more than you are, she answered.
“You asked if I was here to save you, Emersus,” the captain asked. “What are you running from?”
Janus and Lira looked at the leader of the post-humans struggling to formulate an answer. “How have you been able to sss-stay yoursssself?”
Janus got a sinking feeling, hearing the post-human’s words.
“It’s hard, isn’t it?” the captain said softly. “I don’t think I could have if I hadn’t spent decades in the Deeps, kept away from the urges of our new bodies.”
“Kept away from ussss,” Emersus hissed, and there was a touch of an accusation in it.
“Yes,” the captain said. “I almost attacked my team when I came aboard. The social instinct was an unanticipated effect of the change.”
Janus was starting to understand. Just like Fury had reacted startlingly to her first meeting with the captain, there was a complex interplay of scents, stature, and structure happening between the post-humans that was pulling at the more animalistic parts of the captain’s brain. He’d reacted like Fury had when she had been exposed to the Greed Leaf compound on Krandermore, and her first instinct, other than to fight and set things on fire, had been to run to Janus, the person she recognized as a member of her pack.
“I fff-feel like I have been t-t-t… I cannot awaken from this dream. We are happy in the dark. Life is slow, and then it is fast, joyful, fierce!” Emersus’s eyes shone with tears. “I cannot remember, anymore, Parameter. Only that I have losss-st something. We thought… I came here for help.”
Janus could feel a lump in his throat. He was overcome by the horror of it. This had once been a man, he thought, and there was perhaps a remnant of that person trapped inside Emersus’s post-human body, but he was clearly struggling to form not just the words, but the thoughts behind them. Some of the other post-humans silently shed tears, while others stared blankly, or shifted their positions with little awareness.
“I’ll do my best to help you, my friend,” the captain said.
“We should talk outside,” Lira said, not unkindly. Emersus’s words had clearly affected her. “Come on.”
The captain nodded, and the three of them, along with Fury, headed back into the hallway.
“Survivor’s mercy,” Lira said to the captain as they stepped out. “What in the Void were you all thinking?”
“That we would live forever,” he said, smiling wryly.
“And you weren’t worried you might actually make it?” Lira said.
“This isn’t the time for this,” Janus said, touching Lira’s shoulder. “Is there something we can do for them?”
The captain shrugged. “Get them onto the subs and transport them back to the Deeps.”
Janus hesitated.
“Can’t they swim there?” Lira asked.
“A two thousand-kilometer journey?” the captain asked, giving her a harsh look. “Of course they could make it. They can probably swim fifty kilometers a day, so it would only take—”
“Too long,” Janus said, and the captain nodded. “It’s not the distance.”
“No,” the captain said. “It’s the dangers, the distractions, and the dark. Emersus is barely hanging on, and the others are only together because he’s leading them.”
“You could lead them,” Janus said, looking at the captain. “They’re your people.”
“We’ve already had this discussion, Janus. I have no interest in risking a fall like Emersus and his people.”
“But you did this to them,” Janus said, knowing he shouldn’t, unable to stop himself from saying it anyway. Callie and Lira stiffened, while Mick laughed.
“Crickey, Janus,” Mick said, his eyes sparkling, then he gave the captain a more steady look. “He’s not wrong, old man.”
“Even so,” the captain said, showing no signs of embarrassment or remorse.
“Well,” Janus said, “We can’t take them ourselves, not with everything going on, and I’m not comfortable leaving them to their fates, so what are our options?”
“We do what we came here to do in the first place,” Lira said. “We make contact with the compartmentalist garrison, and we negotiate their support.”
“Including taking care of these people,” Janus said.
“If we can,” Lira said. “I know these are the captain’s people, but we don’t have the full picture of everything that’s happened here, or what Emersus’s people did to get in.”
“Fine,” Janus said.
“Janus, I’m serious,” Lira said. “I need to know you’re going to put our people first.”
“I’ve always put our people first,” Janus said.
He caught a look from Callie that said she disagreed, but he wasn’t about to have that conversation again. In a few weeks or months, once they were safe, he’d have that discussion with her, and part of it would be getting her to accept that he’d kept his people alive and hers had wound up dead.
As Lira and Callie led the away team back down the hallway toward the stairs, Janus felt a tug on his arm. It was Emersus, the leader of the post-humans here.
“It was-sss me,” Emersus said in his halting speech.
“What was you?”
“Head researcher. Thought I underssstood her work. It was me.”
Janus frowned, but the others were waiting and he needed to move on. Something about the moment reminded him of the time he’d accused Councilor Bennin when the man had just lost his son and had been trying to make amends.
“We’ll find a way to help you,” Janus said, gently removing Emersus’s hand from his arm and hurrying after the others.