The Seraphine, Two Kilometers Below the Surface
Lumiara, Survivor’s Refuge
4454.2.12 Interstellar
Janus reached the second deck and headed forward, passing through the crew quarters on the way to his bunk. The Seraphine had space for eighty crew members—thirty-nine bunks for the crew and eleven for the officers. The crew was expected to hot-rack, two people sharing a bunk and working on opposite shifts or using the additional bunks that seemed to be stuffed wherever they would fit. The whole situation with New Prometheus collapsing meant they were short on real crew and long on passengers. They only had thirty aspirants instead of fifty, which meant more shifts for them until their family members could be trained.
It helped that a submarine wasn’t that different from an Irkallan dome in terms of jobs and space. Callie, for example, was working as the deputy chief engineer. It still meant that crew quarters were crowded with old people and children while the next shift tried to rest. The bunks were stacked in threes. They had curtains for privacy, but they were too close to each other for an adult to sit up, so people stood or leaned awkwardly in the passageways if they didn’t feel like lying down. They could go down to the mess and sit if they wanted to, but Janus still got a number of envious looks as he and Fury passed through the forward hatch into the officers’ cabin.
He didn’t see Matthias, Callie’s friend, but he would probably keep to his bunk until they found a way for him to be useful.
The officer quarters weren’t that much roomier than the regular crew’s, but they did have more privacy. There were four rooms: two rooms with four bunks each, the executive officer’s cabin, and the captain’s stateroom. The Apostate had the captain’s cabin—it was one area he’d been unflinching on when he’d negotiated the terms of his engagement—and Nikandros and Ryler were sharing the XO’s cabin. That left Janus, Lee, Xander, Mick, and Fury in the first junior officer cabin and Lira, Elsbeth, Callie, and Syn in the other. Mick popped his head up in his bunk as Janus and Fury walked in. “Hey, boss.”
“Mick,” Janus said, his eyes drawn to Lee’s, and she smiled.
Fury squeezed past him and claimed the bottom left bunk.
“Oh no you don’t!” Janus said, laughing, grabbing at her leg.
Fury wriggled her way deeper into the space and huffed, extending her claws just short of puncturing the mattress.
Xander squealed in delight.
Janus sighed. “This is going to be a long trip if I have to fight you for the bed. Jungle dragons sleep on the floor!” he said, knowing that was a baldfaced lie and that it was far too late to train her otherwise.
“Xander and I can share a bunk,” Lee said with a smirk. “That should leave room for you and the dragon to have your own beds.”
Xander can bunk with Fury, Janus almost said, but he hesitated, worried she might take it for more than it was. Then the moment was past, and Lee turned away, and he just felt like he’d missed an opportunity because maybe he’d wanted it to be more than it was.
Everyone’s eyes glowed blue as the captain made an announcement over the ship’s net.
“All hands, secure the ship for departure,” the Apostate said in his deep, harsh voice. “Morning watch, man your posts. Afternoon watch to damage control stations. Evening watch, stand by for maneuvers.”
“I’d better go,” Janus said, dropping his bag and shoving it into the bunk with Fury. She grumbled at him, but she didn’t puff fire or smoke—that was one thing Janus had been quick to teach her, as her usual outdoor behavior would put significant wear on air filters.
“Good luck, boss!” Mick said.
“I’ll head out with you,” Lee said. “I’m in the afternoon watch.”
“Already?” Janus said. “You’ve only been training for a week!”
“Do you really think I waited for your approval to start training, Janus?” she answered, her voice dropping half an octave as she looked at him with hooded, mischievous eyes, and suddenly the bunk room felt very small. “Excuse me,” she said, squeezing past him, the scent of soap and Hunter suit balm filling his nostrils, and Janus felt like every nerve in his body had just been scrubbed with a wire brush.
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Mick looked like he might burst out laughing.
“You mind watching Xander and Fury?”
“No problem,” Mick said, giving him a wink.
Janus took a deep breath and followed Lee out of the cabin.
Lira was coming out of her bunkroom at the same time.
“Aren’t you on evening watch?” Janus asked her, surprised.
Lira winced. “Last minute check on ships’ stores. We can’t delay departure, but I’m going to have to do a full inventory.”
“What’s wrong with the last one?”
Lira gave him a pained smile. “Elsbeth disappeared last night, along with two aspirants and two civilians. I don’t think anything important is missing, but…”
“Better safe than sorry,” Janus said, feeling the excitement of the departure and the warmth of the moment with Lee go cold as he stomached the blow.
He didn’t blame Elsbeth. She was a former champion of the Krandermore Trials, more than capable of surviving on the surface of Lumiara and skilled enough to find her place in one of the Cult settlements. He hoped the five deserters would stick together; that would give them the best chances. He hoped their choices wouldn’t harm the rest of them.
“Strength through struggle, Janus,” Lira said, punching his shoulder before heading aft with Lee.
The Void takes, Janus thought, and he followed after them.
***
The operations compartment took up the majority of the first deck, and it was a place of quiet intensity. Syn was seated next to the sonar tech, and she gave him a brief smile. Other watch officers sat at their stations, running through the last of their checklists, and the captain was having an intense, whispered conversation with the pilot—she was leaning slightly back, which Janus well understood given his appearance, and the Apostate was tense and pointing at the plot of the currents.
Janus cleared his throat. “You asked for me, captain?”
The captain turned to look at him, and for a moment, an expression of intense hatred flickered over his face. Janus thought the other man wanted to kill him, but the Apostate smoothed his features over so quickly that Janus wasn’t sure it had really happened. “Yes,” the captain said. “I’m sure you’ve heard by now that some of our crew have missed the ship’s movement, and I find myself short a damage control assistant. You’ll have to do.”
Janus didn’t immediately respond. His brain was still stuck processing that he’d just been given orders, that he didn’t know what a damage control assistant did, and that he felt a deep unease from the look the captain had given him.
“Good,” the captain said, apparently assuming he was in agreement. “I don’t usually allow spectators in the control room, but we had better get you used to things.”
“I’m sorry, but I’m not sure what a damage control assistant does,” Janus said.
“We’ll get you squared away soon enough,” the captain said, reaching up to pick a piece of lint off Janus’s coveralls. “You won’t be needed during the initial dive. Things are a bit more turbulent than they usually are.”
Janus frowned. “Doesn’t that mean you’ll need someone competent in the role?”
“No, Mr. Invarian,” the captain said with a smile full of fangs. “It means that if we make a mistake, we won’t need a DCA, and what’s left of us will sink to the depths.”
Janus felt unease roil within him like a bad meal. There was a casual disregard in the captain’s voice that didn’t make him feel at ease with the journey they were about to undertake. He glanced at the pilot, who returned the worried look, but by the time Janus turned back to the captain, the man was leaning over the communications officer with a webbed hand on the man’s shoulder. “Word from the Deep Rider and the Chapo?”
“Both ready for departure, captain,” the communications officer, one of Nikandros’s exceptionalists and a veteran sailor, said calmly.
“Good,” the Apostate said. “Good man. Pilot, ahead one-third and steady, make your speed fifteen knots.”
“Aye, ahead on third and steady…” the pilot said, repeating the order.
Janus felt like a fish out of water or, perhaps, under the circumstances, just out of his depth. There was a faint vibration throughout the hull, or maybe he imagined it… No, it was definitely there. The sounds of steam and pistons and the slight choppy sound of the propeller churning water. He was suddenly very conscious of their being trapped in a metal tube commanded by a mad captain who was going to sink them all the way to the Core. He was used to the idea that there was a ravenous void outside the walls, seeking to take everything from them, including their last breath, but this was different. There would be kilometers of water and ice above them, and all that pressure would break in and crush them if they made the slightest mistake.
“Mister Invarian!” the captain said, his voice calm and conversational and yet somehow holding an edge to it. “You can follow our progress on the holo-tank.”
Janus nodded and turned his attention to the navigation display. It was a meter-wide round holographic projection table that currently showed the Seraphine pulling away from the submarine base and the Deep Rider and Chapo falling in behind her. They had an interval of approximately two hundred meters, as Janus saw it, which wasn’t that much considering the other subs were one hundred and ten meters long.
“Come left, pilot,” the captain said. “Maintain your distance from the sides of the borehole.”
“Coming left, aye, captain.”
The holo-tank offered to link with him, and Janus realized it was, in fact, both a physical and virtual display. He accepted the connection. The display immediately paired with both his wrist comm and retinal implants, providing him with an enhanced view both within the tank and outside the submarine. He could “see” the outline of the borehole walls in the distance and the shape of the two subs following behind them. He also knew at a glance that their current separation meant that they were two hundred and three meters apart, which translated to a little over thirty seconds at their present speed. He could hear the water rushing by the hull. As the pilot adjusted the bow planes, the bow of the submarine slipped under the water, and the submarine started to dive.