The Seraphine, Twenty-Two Kilometers Below

Lumiara, Survivor’s Refuge

4454.2.21 Interstellar

Janus was in DCC, sitting at the damage control station, humming to himself, when Mick walked in and sat across from him at the security station. “You’re in a good mood. I take it you and Lee were able to ‘resolve your differences?’”

“How do you do that?” Janus asked.

“Do what, mate?”

“Make the sound of air quotes without moving your fingers.”

Mick chuckled and started checking the ship’s cameras.

Janus focused his attention on his screens. It had been a few days since he’d stood the watch; he’d been focused on preparing for the assault on the station, and so he’d trusted the job to Lee and one of the civilians.

They’d done a good job of it.

None of the readouts showed anything but green.

But the main panel readouts were just averages, and eight years as a mechanic and a year in the hot labs at Cofan had made Janus even more cautious than he’d already been. He started with the reactor. Janus was no nuclear engineer, but the chief engineer was, so he contented himself with going through each of the sensors in detail, running a diagnostic on each of them before checking the readouts against the reactor’s standard ranges.

Everything was within tolerances.

Since it didn’t seem a reactor failure was in their future, Janus started working through the Seraphine from bow to stern, starting with the torpedo hatches, sonar system, battery room, and comm suite. It would take him a few hours, but he intended to have checked every system on the ship by the time his shift was done.

***

Callie popped her head into DCC. “You called me?”

“Yeah,” Janus said, bleary-eyed from the past three hours of detailed work. “Got something weird for you to check out.”

“I have a lot of things to check out, Janus.”

“Humor me,” he said, getting out of his seat and patting the back of the chair.

Callie sighed and sat at the damage control station. “What is it?”

“You remember, during the initial dive, when we hit that growler? I think we damaged something.”

“What makes you say that?” Callie said, looking at the screen. “All the readouts are great.”

“I know,” Janus said, flipping to the hull integrity sensors. The Seraphine used a combination of pressure, vibration, and noise sensors to detect damage that might lead to water ingress or, worse, hull failure. “Take a look here,” he said, dialing the data back nine days to the time they transited the borehole. “This is when that impact occurs.”

“I know that,” Callie said, crossing her arms. “We checked that section over thoroughly, and there was no damage.”

“How long ago?”

“Nine days ago, when it happened,” Callie said. “All of us pulled a double shift to make sure it got done.”

“I’m not saying you didn’t do a good job,” Janus said, mindful of his tone. He had years of experience with maintenance managers getting frustrated with him. That this one was his sister didn’t alter the fundamental dynamics. “Check out how it changes over the next nine days.”

He ran the data forward so that forty minutes passed every second, and the whole nine days played in a little over five minutes. “See that?”

“Yeah,” Callie said. “It’s faint, but the vibrations in that section are increasing.”

“So is the amount of water the bilge pumps have to evacuate every hour. We’re taking on water.”

“All submarines take on water. That’s why they have bilge pumps.”

“But it’s something,” Janus said.

“It’s something,” Callie agreed. “But it’s not enough. With all the changes in personnel and shifts we had to do so you could pull off the mining rig assault on top of the Chapo and the Deep Rider pushing hard to get back on the route schedule, I need us to get back on top of the regular maintenance before I go chasing one of your hunches.”

“It’s not just a hunch,” Janus protested.

“I know. There’s data. It’s marginal. I can’t waste time or people on it, not until we’re caught up on the things that definitely will cause an accident.”

Janus crossed his arms and wrinkled his nose. “Okay. You’re probably right.”

“I know I’m right,” Callie said with a crooked grin. “Get me something more if you want me to put a team on it.”

“I will,” Janus promised.

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

“I’m sure.”

Janus smiled as she left. Would he have preferred that Callie drop everything to look into his problem, but he was also proud she hadn’t.

Nikandros cleared his throat from the ladderwell doorway. “Janus. I hope I’m not interrupting.”

“I was just leaving,” Callie said.

Nikandros gave her a friendly smile, and Callie rolled her eyes at Janus before heading back toward the reactor room.

“What is it, Nikandros?”

“We need to talk.”

“I’m still on shift,” Janus said. “You’re welcome to come in.”

“After shift will be fine. My cabin?”

“Okay,” Janus said.

Nikandros nodded and turned away, heading below toward crew berthing.

“Is it just me, or did he seem nervous?” Janus asked.

“Yeah,” Mick said. “Don’t know if I’d want to be stuffed in a barrel with him nervous, boss.”

“Me neither,” Janus said. “Guess I’d better find out what’s wrong.”

***

Once his shift was over, Janus headed down through crew berthing to the officers’ quarters. The stateroom Nikandros and Ryler shared was the last one on the right. Janus had seen very little of his childhood friend during the trip, and he wondered if he’d be there for the meeting.

He knocked and opened the door to find only Nikandros in the room.

“Come in, Janus,” Nikandros said. “Close the door.”

Janus stepped in and pulled the door closed behind him.

The room was about the same size as the captain’s, only it was made to sleep two people instead of one. Janus could tell which bunk was Ryler’s by the variety of material samples and data storage devices that were placed on the small shelf above it.

“Sit,” Nikandros said, offering Janus the chair in front of the small desk and terminal while he pulled a foldout chair from the wall.

Janus took a seat while Nikandros unfolded the chair and sat down with eerie precision.

“Will this take long?” Janus asked.

“No,” Nikandros said. “I don’t believe it will. I noticed you’ve been talking to the captain.”

“Everyone talks to the captain.”

“Not in his cabin behind a privacy filter,” Nikandros said. “I just need to be sure we’re still on the same page.”

Janus and Nikandros had never had a conversation like this one before, one in which the architect was forced to operate with incomplete information. “Why do you think what I talked about with the captain has anything to do with you?”

“Why would he activate a privacy screen otherwise?”

“To annoy you.”

“Ah,” Nikandros said, his eyes momentarily going out of focus. “Yes, I suppose that would make sense.”

Janus was doing his best to stay calm. He’d learned a lot in the past three days, things he probably should have known before. For example, he knew that he and his aspirants could handle Nikandros and his cyborgs if they needed to, but a lot of them would die in the process, especially if they decided to damage the submarines. That was why, if anything happened, it had to happen away from the Seraphine, Chapo, and Deep Rider. He also knew that Nikandros was almost fully cybernetic, including his face, and that he paid special attention to the nonverbal cues he produced. It was just Lira’s opinion, not fact, but Janus agreed with her that Nikandros would be almost impossible to lie to. “This trip is very important to you, isn’t it?”

“Learning to elicit information, Janus? I’m a poor target to practice on.”

“You’re the one who said we should be on the same page,” Janus said, crossing his arms and leaning back the same way he’d seen Ivan do countless times growing up.

Nikandros chuckled. “That’s what makes you special, you know,” he said quietly. “Everyone thinks it’s because you take action and change the world around you in unpredictable ways, but it’s not. It’s because you keep learning from what you see and experience.”

Janus took the compliment—or maybe just a self-congratulatory observation—at face value, but he said nothing.

“Oh, very well,” Nikandros said with a sigh. “Yes, of course, this trip is important. I’ve cut myself off from the running of my faction for a minimum of a year by personally embarking on this journey, and it took decades of planning and waiting to reach this point.”

“You anticipated everything?”

Nikandros chuckled. “Did I anticipate that, when he finally emerged, our outlier would breach containment on Irkalla, destroy Dr. Jahangir’s legacy, and start a Verazlan crusade on Krandermore, all within two years? No, Janus. I’ve developed a few quirks after two hundred years, but I’m not crazy.”

Janus grunted. Phrased that way, it did make his actions seem rather more impactful—or catastrophic—than Janus usually pictured. Still, he said nothing.

He waited.

“What do you want, Janus?” Nikandros asked. “What has he promised you?”

“As far as I know,” Janus said truthfully, “the captain could care less about either of us as long as we keep him entertained and we don’t endanger his life.”

“He’s that transparent, is he?” Nikandros said, frustration seeping into his tone.

“No,” Janus said, uncrossing his arms and putting his hands on his thighs. “He’s inscrutable and alien, but he explained that much to me. Everything he does passes through the filter of eternity. He calls it the survivor’s choice.”

“That’s… very interesting,” the architect said grudgingly.

“Maybe. If he wasn’t so terrifying, I’d call it a very elaborate form of cowardice.”

“Hah!” Nikandros said, real pleasure creasing his synthetic features.

Janus clasped his hands between his legs. “As for me, I just want my family and my people to be safe, Nikandros. I want to be left out of the Consensus’s political struggles and your schemes, and the only way I’ve found to make it work is by being useful to all sides.”

Nikandros nodded to himself and sat back, eyes unfocused again, then said. “May I offer you a piece of advice, Janus? Something I’ve learned from my own elaborate cowardice.”

“Please,” Janus said openly. He felt like this might be his best chance to understand the real Nikandros, here and now, commiserating about the captain twenty-two kilometers beneath the surface.

“Cooperation breeds conflict, and dependence leads to war. Your need for my support has made you suspicious and uncooperative, which in turn would ordinarily push me to take measures against you. That would be unfortunate and unnecessary.”

“I agree about the unfortunate part,” Janus said, his throat so tight he had to focus to keep his voice calm. “Why is it unnecessary?”

Nikandros’s eyes bored into him as the architect answered. “Because I’m going to give you everything you’ve asked for, Janus. Once we reach the Core and take control of the Oracle, I won’t need you anymore. My faction will have the means to identify hundreds of outliers, each of them empowered to lead us toward humanity’s next step.”

“You mean I’ll be disposable.”

“I mean, you won’t be worth killing,” Nikandros said. “You won’t be an exception anymore, and if you choose to stay in the Core, you’ll be beyond reach. The compartmentalists have held the Oracle for almost nine hundred years, Janus. Your family will be safe.”

***

Janus returned to his quarters to find Mick and Lee armed and Fury watching over Xander.

Lee cocked an eyebrow at him.

Janus shook his head. “Just had a chat with Nikandros.”

“Oh?” Lee said as if she was just curious. “What did he have to say?”

Janus reached under his mattress and retrieved one of the hardened personal terminals they’d gotten from Port L’Évèque as payment for agreeing to check on the miners. “He wanted us to know that, once the Core trip is over, he won’t need us anymore. We’ll be free to live the way we choose.”

[Stand down, but stay ready] Janus sent over the secure network before returning the device to its hiding place.

“Do you believe him?” Mick asked.

“I believe that as long as our interests are aligned, we can’t afford not to trust each other,” Janus said, and he meant it. The longer they had to train for what was likely an inevitable confrontation, the more of his people would survive.

With any luck, Nikandros would never know how close they’d been to an all-out war on all three ships until he proved he’d been faithful to his word or until Janus and the New Prometheans were ready to take control of their future.