The Seraphine, Twenty-Six Kilometers Below
Lumiara, Survivor’s Refuge
4454.2.24 Interstellar
The captain spoke again over the ship’s net. “All hands, transition complete. Officers, report your station statuses.”
Janus frantically checked his damage control readouts. The submarine’s hull was still groaning and settling, and the two crew members who’d thrown up were trying to respond to the captain’s order without making more of a mess of the situation than they already had. Janus had a sinking feeling in his gut that had nothing to do with nausea, but when his link to the damage control station finally opened, his readouts were… “DCA reports all systems in the green, captain. What the hell just happened?”
“A line-crossing ceremony, Mr. Invarian,” the captain said cheerfully. “Many people have sailed around this world, but few have made it halfway into it—at least half as far as humans are able to go. We’ll celebrate properly after we dock.”
Janus sighed, and the captain grinned.
They’d passed through the zone of brightness, which was only a few meters deep and now above them, although the water around the submarine retained a faint if noticeable glow. It was light blue and quite transparent. Schools of fish climbed into or descended out of the bright layer, although it seemed like the larger creatures were giving the convoy a wide berth.
That wasn’t the most remarkable thing, though. According to the ship’s hull sensors, they were only a few meters below the surface. The sound they’d all heard hadn’t been because the hull was getting crushed, but instead because the hull was being suddenly relieved of pressure. “I don’t understand what just happened.”
“You and the rest of the Cult, emissary,” the chief engineer said, ruefully.
“Didn’t you ever wonder why the Survivor chose to site the Core facility and the Oracle down here, Janus?” the captain asked. “After all, the majority of the activity in Survivor’s Refuge happens on the habitats. Wouldn’t it be more efficient to house the Oracle on a starship, where it could easily receive data from the various habitats of this planetary system?”
“Hold on a minute,” Janus said. “Let’s set aside for a moment that these are simple choices to consider, whether to construct something at the depths of the ocean or on a ship able to travel between the stars. Are you saying the Survivor—the actual Survivor, not some metaphor or hereditary title, is physically located at our destination? It’s not a turn of phrase?”
The captain smiled at him. “My question, Janus. Think on it. Ask the Survivor, when you see him.”
Janus’s mind reeled. He’d almost gotten used to the idea that the captain was over twelve hundred years old. That the Survivor revered by many Cult and secular residents of Survivor’s Refuge was real and not some deity—an embodiment of the human will to persist, as he’d always thought of it…
The Seraphine, Chapo, and Deep Rider sailed into the Deep’s submarine docks and breached alongside the piers, for all the world like they’d pulled into a surface port.
***
“We’re just leaving the ships?” Lee asked.
“We’ll leave a skeleton crew behind,” Janus answered. “Our people. Rotating watch.” Not Nikandros’s, he meant. For a few hours, the ships would be completely devoid of the exceptionalist's minions, allowing them to do a proper search for surveillance devices. “Callie’s teams are going to use the time to do a bow-to-stern check of the Seraphine’s hull plates. We can dive alongside the hull, see it from the outside with our own eyes—we won’t get another opportunity like this one.”
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“Makes sense,” Lee said, her expression telling Janus she’d grasped both the obvious and hidden senses of his words.
Per the captain’s orders, they would get as many people as they could ashore to have a party—a steel beach picnic, he’d called it—to commemorate their passage from the undersea to the inner sea. It was also a final opportunity for their people to decide to go ashore. They couldn’t stay in the Deeps indefinitely, but the facility did receive supplies and shipments from the surface, not to mention the occasional convict, and so anyone who wanted to turn back would be able to from here. Unlike the floating monasteries they’d visited, the Deeps were anchored on the bedrock of Lumiara’s third shell and, therefore, had no ballast requirements, only a limited amount of people it could supply with food, fresh water, and air.
“And we’re taking Xander?” Lee asked.
“Can’t think of a reason not to,” Janus said. “This is supposed to be the safest place in the whole planetary system, one hundred percent secure, and beyond the influence of the Consensus’s factions.”
“That’s what’s got me worried,” Lee said, looking him in the eyes. “The old Janus might be tempted to strand people he was trying to protect here.”
Janus looked at her, then shrugged. “I’m not going to lie and say I didn’t think about it, once I saw how big and secure this place is. I’m still thinking about it.”
Lee punched him in the shoulder.
“But we’ve made all our deliveries,” Janus said with a grin, “and now that mommy and daddy are getting along…” he said, touching her lower back and leaning in to kiss her as she turned into him. “I promise we’ll discuss it first.”
“The answer is no,” Lee said, although she wasn’t as hostile about it as she’d been in New Prometheus.
“I know, I just…” Janus swallowed. “I’m still waiting for the other boot to drop. Did you see the external feeds? This place is a wonderland. I’m half tempted to say we should all stop here.”
“Could we?” Lee asked. “I’m sure they’d make room for a famous Emissary, and I could learn how to dive.”
Janus chuckled. “So you could bare-knuckle fight a glow-shark with Xander strapped to your back?”
“You’re confusing me with Mick,” Lee said, giving Janus a playful shove. “I would hitch a ride on the glow-shark.”
“It would be a heck of an adventure,” Janus said.
It was nonsense. Pure silliness. Both of them knew it. But it was comforting, at that moment. Janus could see that life for the two of them, living on the edge of the inner sea, free from the wider concerns of the planetary system and the burden of protecting the people of Krandermore and Irkalla. It wasn’t hard to do. It was right there, on the other side of the mirror, in a world where he could pretend that people wouldn’t die if he gave up, and that people like Nikandros would just allow him to stop before the architect was done with them.
Will Nikandros really let us go? he thought for maybe the hundredth time since his private conversation with the architect. Like the thought of ending their race and living here, in the Deeps, where no one could get to them, the idea that Nikandros would just allow them to escape into anonymity was seductive. It begged Janus not to fight, to just go along with Nikandros’s plans and allow whatever that entailed to happen. It might even work. All Janus needed to do was let go and trust that fate and the good intentions of others would carry them through to a happy ending.
Janus snorted.
“What?” Lee asked.
“Wishful thinking. See the two of you topside?”
“Yeah.” Lee leaned in to kiss him on the cheek. “Janus?”
“Yes?”
“Whatever happens in the next two weeks, you’re not alone.”
Janus gave her a crooked grin. “I know that.”
“You’d better.”
And he did. He’d come a long way since his early adulthood in Prime Dome. Callie could take care of herself, and Ivan worked for him, now. He gave his partner and kid one more fond look, trying to fix this moment in his mind.
***
He found Callie and Matthias waiting for him in crew berthing. Callie looked heartbroken, which in turn made Janus’s heart break for his kid sister. Matthias had all his belongings in a canvas bag at his feet. The kid was trying to look stoic, but Janus could tell the reality of the moment was crushing him. He could no longer hide from it in working shifts, in making out with Callie, or in pretending he was just another part of the crew.
They’d reached the Deeps, Matthias’s prison for the foreseeable future.
“It isn’t fair,” Callie said, and Matthias took her hand.
Janus wasn’t unfamiliar with how things had to seem for the kid, neither was he unsympathetic. It wasn’t that long ago he’d faced the Council of Prime Dome while the news and a good part of the dome’s citizens clamored for his exile. He’d spent long hours in a cell in dome-sec agonizing over what would happen to his family without him, and thinking bitterly that if he’d only stayed a bystander instead of trying to save the people he could. It was hard to remember that time—hard to remember because of how much of his ability to process and grieve had been overwhelmed by his anger and guilt over Meg’s death, and over the completely preventable nature of the airlock failure. “This will work out,” he said.
“How?” Callie asked, her expression and tone harsher than her boyfriend’s, and Janus remembered she’d also been furious on his behalf, back then.
“It always does, bug,” Janus said with quiet conviction. “We make it work out, one way or another.”