Seafall, One Hundred and Five Kilometers Below
Lumiara, Survivor’s Refuge
4454.2.28 Interstellar
Janus scanned the hallway over the sights of his chem pistol, keeping two paces behind Mick as they swept forward. He checked for air vents and security cameras, or other places someone might hide with a weapon. As Mick darted across a T-intersection, Janus covered the adjoining hallway, and then he crossed under the cover of Mick’s weapon.
“Where is everyone?” Callie asked, taking position at the crossing. “This place looks deserted.”
Janus looked around and saw what she meant. There were small tasks that needed to be done constantly in order to keep a sealed habitat functional and clean if it was running. Things like dusting vents, changing filters, and scrubbing floors. The floors of this hallway were grimy in the corners, and there were small traces of rust around the screws of the air vent he was standing next to. He probably would have noticed it sooner if they hadn’t been wearing helmets, because of the smell. “About a month?”
“Yeah,” Callie said. “Six weeks at the most. More than that, and we’d see mold.”
Janus nodded. Seafall looked like it was heading toward a collapse, something Irkallans knew how to recognize all too well. It was the beginning of a cascade, easily prevented but impossible to stop once it crossed a certain point.
“My people have been here,” the captain said, blinking his black eyes, somewhat recovered from the lighting outside. “They are still here. It would be better if they didn’t find us.” The Apostate shuddered, and his left hand twitched, opening and closing seemingly without his awareness.
Fury whimpered.
“Let’s move,” Janus said. “Callie, were you able to get us schematics?”
“I have the maintenance blueprints,” she said.
That was good and bad at the same time. Maintenance blueprints weren’t always up to date when it came to module arrangements and any of the more cosmetic construction, but they’d be annotated with all the crawl spaces, white spaces, and access hatches. “Find us a way up.”
Callie nodded, her eyes glowing blue as she took them down the side corridor, with Mick still in the lead and Janus right behind her.
Things got worse as they pushed into the facility. Broken lights. Vent covers ripped off their fittings. Gouges in the metal that had been made by claws. This didn’t feel like an advanced military base. It felt like Janus was back in the Eastern Labs, only instead of the specimens being destroyed, they’d been set free. “What should we expect if we run into your people, Captain?”
“That depends.”
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“Not really the time to play coy,” Janus growled.
Callie hesitated at the next intersection, then made them go to the right.
“It depends on how long they’ve been away from a habitat,” the captain said, his voice ragged. “If they’ve maintained their human habits, the worst we’ll face is an extremely awkward conversation.”
“And if they haven’t?”
The captain glared at him, that same look of hatred he used to let slip from time to time now the dominant expression on his face.
Janus swallowed.
“Hey, umm… Boss?” Mick asked.
“What is it?”
“Not to bring one of my failures back to mind—”
“Short and sweet, Mick.”
“Greed Leaf. Remember what it did to Fury?”
Janus glanced at the captain. Back on Krandermore, Fury had been exposed to a mutation of a common plant, or rather, she’d been exposed to the drug the very human inhabitants of a Pugarian city had made from it. She’d gone berserk, setting fire to several huts before rushing to Janus for safety, and he’d been able to synthesize an antidote. “I might be able to do something for him if we can get to safety.”
The captain hissed, nails extending a centimeter as if they were claws.
“Let’s uh… Let’s do that soon, right, mate?”
“Yeah,” Janus said. “Callie, I need the nearest room with one exit.”
“I thought you wanted to go up?”
“I don’t think we have that kind of time.”
One of the Hunters moved to grab hold of the captain’s other arm, and the captain lost whatever control he had left. He slammed one Hunter into a wall, then slashed his claws across a second team member’s dome helmet, leaving scratches on the reinforced glass.
“Coming through!” Mick said. He charged through the away team, weapon hanging from the sling. He caught hold of the captain’s right wrist with his left cybernetic hand, and the servos whined as advanced robotics fought against enhanced flesh. The captain opened his jaws wide and lunged for Mick’s throat, but the Hunter ducked under his arm and slammed him into the bulkhead. “Any time, boss!”
Janus gritted his teeth. I guess we’re doing this here. He dropped to a knee and dug through his pack for the mini-synthesizer he’d brought, pulling up the antidote formulation from his compound library.
The captain slammed to the deck next to him, with Mick kneeling on his back and Fury dragging at his calf. In spite of the weight of the fully suited Hunter, the captain was managing to almost buck him off.
Janus retrieved the neon violet antidote from the mini-synth and screwed it into a jet injector. “Here’s hoping,” he said.
“What does ‘Here’s hoping’ mean?’” Lira snapped.
Janus shot the cartridge into the captain’s hip, and the man went still.
Janus let out a sigh of relief. Truth be told, there was a very small chance the captain would—
A rumble like an undersea earthquake came in over the suit mic, and the captain suddenly threw Mick off and kicked Fury off his leg. Spines extended from his back and arms, and he opened his jaws and shrieked, a sound that overwhelmed and shut off Janus’s sound pickups. Janus reached for his chem pistol, wishing he’d loaded something stronger than knock-out rounds, and the captain’s face swiveled to look at him. “That won’t be necessary,” he said, breathing hard through open jaws. “Not for me, anyway.” The captain’s eyes flicked behind Janus to the end of the hallway they’d been heading down.
I’m going to regret this, Janus told himself. He twisted around to follow the captain’s gaze and saw five or maybe six more fish creatures skulking toward them, their eyes unblinking, their greenish skin damp and slimy. Janus’s next thought went to Callie, and to Lee and Xander back on the Chapo. Void, forgive me. I’ve killed us all.
The fish creatures were still humanoid, but their features were more piscene than the captains. The clothing they wore was frayed and split, mostly consisting of old wetsuits or dive shorts. The one in the front cocked its head, mouth opening to make a hollow sound, which Janus suddenly realized was the creature’s attempt to form words. “O-Ordinal?”
“Emersus?” the captain said, a mixture of awe and shock in his voice. “Is that really you?”
“Have you re-returned to usss, Ordinal?” the one called Emersus asked, his raspy voice forming the word with a mouth unsuited to speech. “Have y-you come to sss-save us?”