Seafall, One Hundred and Five Kilometers Below
Lumiara, Survivor’s Refuge
4454.2.28 Interstellar
Janus and the away team made their way up the central ladderwell to the second floor. The stairs to the third floor had been barricaded with heavy metal furniture, lashed and welded together.
“Do we try to get past?” Janus asked.
“I wouldn’t,” Mick said. “It’ll be guarded, or trapped, or both.”
“We need to find the compartmentalists eventually,” Janus pointed out.
“Not that way, mate,” Mick said. “We want to meet them in a place where they feel in control, with plenty of room to take cover.”
Janus nodded and followed Mick out of the stairwell, into the second level of the base.
The second level connected, albeit distantly, to the submarine docks they’d seen on the way in. It was an arrival area, with clear signage and direction lines painted onto the floor. Like the diving level, there were signs of abandonment, here, but the decay wasn’t as apparent. The floors were dirty, but someone had gone through the trouble of shutting down and covering the ventilation, here and there were fewer signs of rust.
“Where do we go from here?” Callie asked.
Lira pulled up the maintenance map Callie had pulled from the systems on the diving deck, her eyes glowing blue as she looked it over. “I’m starting to understand the layout, here. It looks like the diving deck was one of the first sections that were fabricated when they started construction, and that’s why it’s a little bit separate from the rest of the facility. They might even have dismantled it, once construction was complete.”
“Okay,” Janus said. “So this is where most people would reach Seafall.”
“Exactly. And that means all the usual things—warehousing, inspections, transient quarters, and security.”
“Why security?” Janus asked. There hadn’t been a security checkpoint in the Reef, or any of the other Cult settlements they’d visited until now.
“Maybe they don’t call it that,” Lira said, sharing her map view with the rest of them. “But there’s a chokepoint, here, that anyone who isn’t part of port operations or coming from the dive decks would have to go through to get access to the level above.”
“That’s where I’d be waiting for us,” Mick agreed, pointing to the area Lira was talking about.
“Okay,” Janus said. “Let’s make our way there carefully, then. Same order of march as before, and let’s keep our heads cool. These people are going to be nervous about anyone or anything coming from below.”
“It might be a good idea to keep me out of sight,” the captain said.
Mick shook his head. “They’ll have surveillance on all the approaches, even if they had to strip it from somewhere else. We don’t want to make them think we’re hiding something.”
“That’s the plan, then,” Janus said. “Mick and I up front, followed by Callie and Lira. Lira, you’re on negotiations if they’re willing to talk to us; I’m not sure if I’m the best person to handle them right now.”
Lira nodded in agreement, and Janus kept himself from smiling. He was tired and cranky from the walk here, keyed up from facing their old opponents, and genuinely upset about what had happened to the captain’s people. He wasn’t sure if it was some sort of degenerative disease, an environmental exposure, or something behavioral from living like animals in the deep dark, but he meant to do something about it, even if it was just to buy himself time until after their trip was over to deal with the problem properly. “Captain, I’d like you and Fury in the center of the group so they don’t think they can deal with us separately. Vix and Egan, keep them safe. Duncan and Devere, it’s your job to cover us if we need to fall back.”
“Understood, sir,” Devere said.
Janus looked at Mick for confirmation, and the Hunter nodded.
“Let’s get this done.”
***
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The team moved past logistics, janitorial, and the port authority, which together comprised the administrative sector of the arrival level and were directly over the dive decks. Access to the sector was through a single reception area that held service counters, automated tellers, and waiting rooms. It had probably been meant to be a safe and efficient place for ship captains and their crews to arrange for the offload and transfer of the goods and crews, but there had obviously been some kind of battle, here. Furniture was smashed, glass shattered, equipment wrecked. There were bullet holes and scorch marks scattered around the room, as well as blood and ichor stains, with drag marks leading toward either exit.
Fury hissed and ducked down, skulking to the side as if she might at any moment come under attack.
“Ancient Stars!” Mick said. “There was a heck of a battle, here, boss.”
“Station security against Emersus’s people?”
“Looks like it.”
“It wasn’t,” the captain said. “At least, that’s not all it was. There are scent markers here that don’t belong to Emersus’s pods.”
“Is that because they died, or because we’re dealing with two groups of post-humans?” Mick asked.
“I couldn’t tell you,” the captain said. “But people died here on both sides, and recently. Reaching an acceptable compromise may prove complicated.”
“It’s never easy,” Janus muttered.
“Let’s just see if we can find something both sides want,” Lira said in response.
Mick’s eyes glowed as he continued to assess the state of the reception area while they moved through it.
“What have you got?” Janus asked him as they reached the far doors, which had been smashed open.
Mick’s eyes returned to normal, and he shrugged. “A lot of fish people came up from the dive decks. You can slime and ichor on the countertops and walls—they flooded in, almost climbing over each other to get through. People with guns in this side of the room opened fire. They took casualties, and they tried to drag them back with them as they retreated toward the checkpoint.”
Janus winced. “How many is ‘a lot of fish people?’”
“We prefer post-humans,” the captain said, “and it was more than the number of Emersus’s surviving people.”
Mick nodded. “Could have been as many as a hundred. Must have been a sight to see.”
“I’d have soiled my suit,” Duncan said, and Devere laughed.
“Me too,” Janus said, thinking of how uneasy he’d felt from just a few challenging stares from the post-humans, and then imagining what it would be like to have a wave of berserk fish people coming at him from the dive decks. “Anything to show who started it?”
“Security footage, if we can get access,” Mick said, and not for the first time, Janus wished they had Syn or even Ryler with them. He looked at the captain.
“I can’t tell,” the captain said. “There are echoes of the battle left, but it was almost a week ago. I smell blood, waste, gunpowder, fear, and rage, but nothing is clear about it.”
“We’ll just have to ask,” Janus said. “Everyone be ready. This could go sour faster than a suit breach.”
Mick nodded, shifted his grip on his assault rifle, and stepped through the broken doors into the hallway beyond.
There were more signs of fighting in the passageway. The chokepoint just beyond the doors had been splashed in ichor and fish guts to the height of Janus’s chest. There must have been so many bodies they blocked the passage. He was decidedly glad he didn’t have to smell the air, even if it had been a week. The defenders had continued to fall back, firing from doorways and using grenades without concern for the facility’s structural integrity. Void, but they must have been desperate, Janus thought. After all, the post-humans could survive the pressure and cold of these waters, while a human wouldn’t have the chance to drown before they were smashed against the bulkheads and every empty part of their body was explosively filled with freezing water.
“This is where they managed to hold them,” Mick said as they reached a small, four-way intersection between the end of the transient quarters and the beginning of the warehouse units.
“Why here?” Janus asked.
“Not sure,” Mick answered, looking around, “but the posts didn’t make it across this intersection.
“A simple matter of firepower, from the smell of it,” the captain said.
Janus shook his head. What in the Void happened here? It reminded him of the destruction of the original Prometheus Base where, to ensure no one survived to spread the Prometheans' forbidden knowledge, Red Donnika had set adult triliths loose inside the dome. Twelve years later, the hallways of the fallen settlement had looked like this, signs of battle still apparent but organic matter completely consumed.
Mick’s eyes were glowing again, and he looked back the way they’d come.
“What is it?” Janus asked.
“They took a big risk, here, boss. The first position was overrun, security teams falling back—getting pushed back—and losing people the whole way. Reinforcements met them here and threw everything they had at the posts. They had to know that, if another group attacked from the submarine docks, they would get cut off or bypassed.”
“Or they’d already lost the docks, sealed them off, and they were prepared to do the same here,” the captain said.
“Maybe,” Mick allowed.
“We’re going to find out in a second,” Janus said, stopping behind Mick.
The security checkpoint was just ahead.
“How do we do this?” Janus asked.
“Probably best I go out there, mate,” Mick said, handing off his weapon. “I’ll just let them know we’d like to have a chat.”
“And if they blow your head off?” Janus asked.
“Well, not much lost, then, am I right?” Mick gave them all a self-congratulatory grin, raised hands, then yelled. “I’m coming out! Just want to talk!”
“Then go back to your fish friends!” someone shouted from around the corner. “You step into our sights, we’re shooting!”
“Come on, mate! What’s the harm in—”
A loud burst of gunfire sounded, and everyone ducked as sparks flashed off the opposite wall. It was heavy fire, the kind from a heavy gun, and it broke off a shower of stone chips from the wall’s marble veneer.
After a few heart-thundering moments of silence, Janus said, “Your plan isn’t looking too good, Mick.”
“Maybe that’s just how they say hello, down here,” Mick muttered.
Janus clenched his jaw. He had a variety of compounds for dealing with this kind of standoff, and the gas grenades to disperse them. One way or another, they would find a way to get through.