Submarine Docks

Lumiara, Survivor’s Refuge

4454.2.12 Interstellar

Another two days passed in a blur, and then the day of the Alignment was upon them. As Janus had heard it explained, the interior of Lumiara was a complex and layered maze of currents, floating islands made of dense rock and buoyant ice, and one or more layers of spinning rock shell that somehow encapsulated an unscannable liquid core. It was an area of discussion that had always seemed more religious than scientific to Janus when he broached it with members of the Cult, and that mystery was why they’d chosen Lumiara as their home.

Now, on the verge of departure, he wished he had asked more questions.

It was a statistical fact that making a Core run was suicide. Travel to the Core had to be done in small steps, each carefully planned and checked against the day’s currents and the movement of navigation buoys, except during the Alignment. During that short time each year, it was a straight shot or, at least, a single continuous path—still suicide for most, but possible for others.

What was at least certain was that the Apostate knew his business, and the Cult members who’d been brought on as crew followed his instructions with a crispness and speed neither Janus nor Lira had been able to demand from them. Their new convoy captain had quickly taken over the loadout of all three boats, press-ganged aspirants into storing the supplies, and had the more experienced crew preparing the submarines for passengers and transit. He was poised, efficient, and sharp as a razor, no matter the time of day. Janus wasn’t sure where he found the energy, but then the Apostate wasn’t entirely human.

With the expedition so close to departure, Janus tried to make sure his personal affairs were in order. He took time to have breakfast in one of the restored spaces—the same one Callie had been working on, in fact—with Xander and Lee. Things seemed to have smoothed over with Lee since she was assigned to the expedition. Better than smoothed, actually, as they continued to train together, and they crossed glances more often. Sometimes, she touched him in passing, a hand on the shoulder or the arm, and they didn’t speak about it, but with how badly things with Callie had hurt him, he found himself craving human contact. It would be their last moment of privacy for a while, and Janus savored it.

They fed the scraps to Fury, who accepted them with the dignity of a jungle dragon who knew it was her due.

“You should talk to Ivan before we leave,” Lee said.

Janus stared at her for a moment.

“What he said during the mutiny—”

“I know,” Janus said.

“It’s just best not to hit the dust with things unresolved.”

“More Hunter wisdom?” Janus asked with a crooked grin.

“Yes,” Lee said sardonically. “It’s the sweet science of not being an ass.”

Janus took a deep breath and then nodded. He knew he should speak to Ivan—should have spoken to Ivan before he left for the first Trials, and should have spoken to him before he left Irkalla for Krandermore. Now that Ivan was joining the expedition, and since Ivan would be on one of the cargo ships to keep an eye out for another mutiny, there was a very real chance that things left unsaid would never be spoken.

“I’ll be right back,” he said.

Lee just answered with a smile.

Most of the colonists were getting settled in their berths, down in the boats, so the colony was eerily silent and empty. Janus quickly moved through the deserted forum, nodding briefly to a pair of maintenance workers who were doing a last-minute rip of water filters for ships’ spares. He walked the same path he, Lee, Xander, and the security team had walked during those first scary moments of the mutiny, making his way to the now defunct aspirant training grounds and Ivan’s small quarters.

Ivan’s apartment was small and bare, maybe half the size of Janus’s bedroom with an adjoining shower. Janus wasn’t sure if he could have stayed cooped up like this for a year. It reminded him too much of the room he’d shared with Callie back on Irkalla.

Ivan was already suited up, his meager belongings stuffed into a single duffel bag. A bottle of clear alcohol sat on the counter next to the hot plate, three-quarters full, with a shot glass next to it. There were a few knick-knacks and sundries left on the shelves, as well as mementos of Irkalla and gifts from aspirants on Lumiara.

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

The two things struck Janus as emblematic of their relationship. Exhibit A, Ivan the drunk, alone in his small room, isolated from everyone and everything. Exhibit B, Ivan the emissary, trainer of champions, owed the gratitude of many.

Ivan saw him looking at the bottle, and his upper lip twitched, but he said, “Want a drink?”

Janus walked over, unscrewed the cap, and emptied the bottle into the recycler.

Ivan grunted.

Janus screwed the cap back on and set the bottle down before turning back to his uncle. He leaned against the counter.

The two men stared at each other in silence.

“What do you want, Janus?” Ivan said softly, and there was brokenness to the moment. The old Ivan would have gotten defensive or, more likely, gone straight to fighting back. “Have you come to tell me I’m staying behind?”

Janus let the question sink in, and he realized that, bottle of booze notwithstanding, Ivan had changed in the year they’d been apart. Janus had as well. “Did I tell you about my first months on Krandermore?”

“You didn’t,” Ivan said, sitting on the edge of his bed.

The memory came on like a sudden plunge into dark waters, and he let them settle before he spoke. “When we first came to Krandermore, I felt untethered, like I’d lost the foundation of who I was. Everything was overwhelming, from the smells and sounds to the people. I couldn’t sleep for the first cycles, not that there was ever a proper day or night to go by. I’d stay up for twenty hours sometimes, then fall asleep and wake up exhausted.”

He looked at Ivan, who was watching him intently, and another silence wore on.

“Mick and Lira pulled me out of it,” Janus said. “They saved me from it, got me out of my house—”

“You lived alone?” Ivan asked in surprise.

Janus nodded and smiled. “First place I had to myself. But listen, the point I’m trying to make is, you saved my life and Callie’s. I believe you when you say you did what you did to train me, but you did it wrong, and I spent a lot of my teenage and early adult life feeling like crap about myself, and you don’t get to take credit for everything I’ve become. I earned it, sometimes in spite of you. But you do deserve some credit, and I’m grateful.”

Ivan’s eyes had taken on a sheen, and he looked like he might almost snarl. He lowered his eyes, looking at his hands. “You know, sometimes the only thing that stopped me from…” He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. I told myself I’d have been a better man if your parents had made it out with us. Lately, I’ve been thinking of what it would have been like to have Anika live to hate me. I don’t think I would have survived that. Maybe I would have taken it as penance.”

Janus blew out a long breath.

Ivan chuckled and looked up at him.

“I need you, Ivan. Thirty days under the ice with scared people who will turn on us at the first opportunity. I need an emissary, and I need him sober.”

Ivan’s eyes slid off his like ice on a hot pan, but he nodded.

Janus rapped his knuckles on the countertop, next to the empty bottle, and took one last look around the room before walking out. Nothing was ever easy, and he couldn’t undo the past for either of them, but he could use the people and tools he had at hand to make things as good as they could be.

It would have to be enough.

***

The Alignment had begun. Janus had been told what it would be like, had even tried to research the phenomenon, but his brain still hadn’t come to terms with the strangeness of the world they were about to enter. There was a thin fog around the docks, and the surface ice had all melted away. The normally placid waters lapped against the borehole walls. Two kilometers up, the sky was a bright circle, and the sun lit the western side of the borehole. Janus let his eyes drink in the complex layers of pure white and frozen blue.

He wouldn’t see daylight again until the Alignment was over, and maybe not for one or more years after that. They were racing into the dark, and the dark might never let them go.

They lowered Fury into the sub with a rope under her forelegs. The big animal did all right going up ladders—she was as nimble as Djahl lynx—but she had trouble going down them, especially in the confined space of the main hatch and ladder.

The lead submarine of their convoy, named Seraphine, was one hundred meters from nose to propeller and would carry a crew of seventy into the icy depths. It had no conning tower like a regular submarine would because it had never been designed to operate on the surface. Instead, it had a few hatches along the top of the hull and an airlock built into its side, like a spaceship, which was currently submerged.

Once Fury was on the deck and had wriggled free of her makeshift harness, Janus followed her down into the belly of the ship.

“Is my mess hall ready, bosun?” the Apostate called out.

“Spick and span, Captain!” the senior rating replied. “All stores stowed and provisions inspected!”

“Chief engineer!” the captain said, moving on without pause. “Control room, if you please. I want to go over the reactor readouts together.”

“Yes, Captain! Right away!”

The main ladder landed near the submarine’s control room. Janus was curious about the endless series of checklists that seemed to reside in the Apostate’s head, but he also didn’t want to get in the way.

“Down one deck and forward, Mr. Invarian! Stow your gear in the officers’ quarters. I’ll expect the pleasure of your company for departure!”

“Aye, Captain!” Janus said, getting into the spirit of it as he and Fury headed down the nearest ladderwell, which was thankfully more like a steep set of stairs than the rungs they’d come down on the way in.

He heard the hatch clank shut above. They had thirty days to make it thirty-eight kilometers down and a quarter of the way around the world. They would have to overcome resistance at ports of call, the chaos of the deep currents, and worse things that lurked in the dark.

If they didn’t, the Alignment would end, and they would have to wait an entire solar cycle or risk getting crushed or lost in the ever-changing landscape.