by Jay Allan
He sat, watching, as Bissel brought the ship in slowly—painfully slowly. Maneuver in water was very different than in space, or even an atmosphere. And one mistake, one gash torn in the hull by a chunk of jagged rock, and the landing ship would be ripped to pieces by the immense pressure.
Seconds passed, turning into a minute, then two. Finally, Caron heard a soft thud, and he realized the ship was down on the rock. An instant later, Bissel confirmed that with a brief report.
Caron tapped the comm unit again. “Lieutenant, confirm status.”
“All personnel suited up and ready, sir.”
“Very well…prepare to disembark.” Caron reach down and hit the controls, pumping water into the hold and equalizing the interior and exterior pressure. A few seconds later, a green indicator came on, and he pulled a large lever.
He could hear the grinding sound as the rear hatch opened slowly…and perhaps half a minute later, he could see Lieutenant Javais’s Foudre Rouge climbing out of the ship.
It was time to find the way in, to discover what lay in the haunted depths of the old base.
And to find the imperial artifacts all reports suggested were still waiting inside.
Chapter Fifteen
Free Trader Pegasus
Somewhere in the Endless Sea
Planet Aquellus, Olystra III
Year 302 AC
Jets of water were flying all across the bridge, shorting out systems and soaking Andi and Barret to the bone. She didn’t know what was going on elsewhere in her ship, but her gut told her conditions were no better anywhere else. Pegasus had come down hard, and her ship was sinking. It was dying.
Unless she could save it. Along with herself and her crew.
The ship was upside down, or close to it, at least. Andi’s harness had kept her in her seat, but Barret had apparently unhooked his, and he’d fallen to the ceiling, now serving more or less as a temporary floor. He was lying on his side below her and off to the side. He appeared motionless at first, and she felt a wave of fear that he was dead…but then she managed to catch a glimpse of his chest heaving with a series of shallow breaths.
She looked all around, unsure what to do. She had to get to the hull breaches, she realized, and patch them somehow. She had the tools. The bridge had a well-stocked repair kit, including one of the patching guns Durango had given her to repair hull damage. It was a temporary solution, but it was instant-drying and strong enough to hold out the vacuum of space, and according to the Samis shipyard manager, to hold back the sea as well.
She guessed Durango had been legit about that, but truth be told, she had no idea of the relative forces involved, how much harder it was to keep out the ocean at two kilometers depth. She would hope for the best. That was all she could do.
But how could she get to the tool chest? It was bolted to the floor, now hanging above her, but if she could get to it, maybe she could pry it open, and allow the contents to fall to the ceiling below. That risked damaging some of the tools, of course, but it was the only way she could think of that offered any chance at all.
How am I going to get over there?
There was no way to move across the floor now hanging above her. She’d have to drop down and make her way back up the port side wall. That seemed difficult—she deliberately avoided the word ‘impossible’—but it was her only chance.
She looked down at her shipmate. Barret had clearly been injured by the fall…but Andi was ready for the drop. She would come down in a more controlled manner, one that would allow her to reach the ceiling without injury.
She hoped.
She listened for a few seconds, her ears scanning for any signs her other comrades were trying to get into the bridge. But there was nothing. That could mean they were busy patching holes elsewhere in the ship.
Or it could mean…
She forced that thought out of her mind with brutal force. There was no time to think about such things. Not just then.
She gripped the harness tightly, even as her one hand moved toward the buckle and released it. She dropped hard, about half a meter, and then she hung there, her grip on the heavy material of the harness holding her above the ceiling below. She let her hands slide down as far as possible, getting as close to the to the bottom as she could before she let go. She was down within a meter and a half, perhaps a bit less. That was pretty close. It was still going to hurt, but she figured she had a good chance to avoid any major injury. At least if she managed the landing roll well.
She stared across the bridge, toward the main display. Most of the screens were dark, their mechanisms damaged by the water still spraying around the bridge. But the main panel was still operating. And the AI had helpfully put up a depth marker before it, too, had shorted out.
Three hundred meters. Pegasus was already three hundred meters down. Andi had no idea how deep the ocean was below her ship, but the only thing she could do about that was hope for the best. Pegasus could stand a good deal of pressure, but at some point, it would exceed the vessel’s endurance. That would be the end, unless the ship hit bottom soon enough…or something killed them all before the pressure did.
Like drowning.
The water on the ceiling was six or eight centimeters deep already, and the intensity of the water coming in was rising. The depth was increasing the water pressure and widening the holes in the hull. Andi had been dangling for perhaps half a minute, trying to find the best way to drop. But she was out of time.
She let go and fell to the bridge ceiling, a drop that took less than a second, but seemed like an eternity. She landed in the water, sending a splash all around as her feet hit the hard metal of the ceiling. She felt a jarring in her ankles, and up her leg, and a good deal of pain. But a few quick moves told her she hadn’t suffered any kind of serious injury.
Her urge was to race over to Barret’s side, to check his condition and see what aid she could provide. But she had to deal with the ship first. It would do Barret no good if she saved him only to drown, or to be crushed like a grape by the immense pressure.
She scrambled across the ceiling, now the bridge’s functional floor, and even as she did, she felt the surface moving under her feet. It took her a second to realize what was happening, and then she cursed under her breath.
Pegasus was rolling again, and before she could reach something to grab onto, she slid across the ceiling and slammed into the port side wall. She heard another thud, and she winced as she realized her wounded comrade had been thrown against the wall, too.
She shook her head, trying to remain clear. She’d hit pretty hard, and the cumulative effects of bruises and scrapes were getting harder to ignore. She seemed to have avoided any serious injuries, but it still took just about all the will power she could summon to force herself up to her feet, and to begin making her way across the slant of the wall. The incline was about thirty degrees, and far from stable, and the walls were smooth in most places, with little to grip or grab onto to steady herself. Worse, even as she made her way, the wall under her feet pitched around, the angle changing as the water currents and increasing pressure outside battered her tortured ship.
Still, the last pitch had actually helped her, putting her closer to the tools she needed. She scrambled a few more steps, and she grabbed onto the chest bolted to the wall, just as Pegasus pitched again.
Her fingers ached, but they held on, keeping her in place, and she popped open the lid, giving herself half a second’s relief that it hadn’t jammed shut.
She grabbed what she needed, before it slipped and slid down the wall, and then she swung her head around, looking over at Barret. He was still unconscious—and still breathing—but he’d landed on his side. The water level had risen considerably in the short time it had taken Andi to get to the tool chest. She figured she had three minutes, maybe four, before it rose enough to drown her friend.
She scrambled along the wall, rushing toward the closest leak. She had the patching gun in her hand, but she was far from certain it was s
till functional. It had a full compartment of the strange plastic-based compound that Durango had assured her would patch any gashes in the hull—as long as they weren’t too large—but she didn’t know if it would be enough. There was supposed to be a canister with more of the material in the chest, but she couldn’t have carried it with her, even if she’d grabbed it before it had slid away.
You’d never have been able to reload in time anyway. This is what you’ve got. If it works at all.
She reached out, grabbing onto the nearest handhold. It wasn’t an ideal position, but it was close enough. She gritted her teeth as she swung the gun around, shoving it into place and struggling to hold it there under the pressure of the water pouring through. It took her time, more time than she had, but she managed to wedge herself between the handhold and the breach, and keep the patching gun steady enough to pull the trigger.
The thing pushed back hard, and her arm ached from her shoulder to her hand. It slipped, spraying a clump of the patching material onto the wall about a quarter meter from the breach. She watched for an instant as it expanded, increasing its volume by a factor of ten. That was supposed to allow it to fill up a gash in the hull, but the misfire had resulted in nothing more useful than a large blob of instantly hardened, pinkish-gray material on the wall.
She shoved her arm hard, ignoring the pain shooting up to her shoulder, and she forced the thing back into position. Then she fired again, holding the gun steady with all the strength she could muster.
She wasn’t sure at first if she’d managed to get the spray where she needed it, but then she could feel the flow of water decreasing…and an instant later, stopping entirely. She paused for a second or two, staring at her handiwork. It was a mess, a wild and irregular mass of hardened high-tech plastic. It was a scar on Pegasus’s bridge wall, an eyesore on the normally streamlined and smooth metal.
But it was holding. The wild jet of water that had been ripping into the bridge had stopped, and as far as Andi could see, there wasn’t the slightest trickle still coming in, just the residual wetness all around.
That’s one…if it holds.
She looked around behind her. There were two more breaches, and they were in difficult places. She looked back down, checking on Barret again. Patching the one gash had bought her some time, maybe another minute or two, but a cold realization was setting in. She wasn’t going to make it, not in time.
And if she tried to move Barret, or to find some way to prop him up above the water, she wouldn’t have time to patch the holes and try to right the ship before she sunk too deeply to recover.
Before the growing water pressure crushed her beloved vessel like a discarded can.
She scrambled across the wall, back toward the floor, now pitched up at almost a ninety-degree angle. The next hole was on the edge of the port side wall, just a few meters from where she crouched. She sucked in a ragged breath, pushing back against exhaustion and pain, and she crawled back toward the gash. She tried to slip around the high-pressure jet of incoming water, increasing in strength with every passing second and every meter Pegasus sank. She was almost in place, but her foot slipped on the wet metal of the wall, and she dropped down and hit hard…and then rolled over into the column of incoming water. The jet slammed into her and sent her flying across the bridge, almost to the ceiling on the far end of the wall. Her head slammed into the hard metal, and her vision went dark. She could hear the water coming in, the normally lifegiving resource that was now going to kill her. That was going to kill all her people.
She struggled to cling to consciousness, to continue the fight for survival, but she felt it all slipping away, until all that was left was darkness.
Chapter Sixteen
Rock Shelf
Just Outside Sector Nine Landing Craft Alpha
Olystra System
Year 302 AC
“Lieutenant, I think I found something.”
Javais turned, and he moved toward the trooper who’d just spoken. Private Bescalon was on the far side of the formation, and it took some time to navigate his way there in the heavy underwater pressure suit and weighted books. He came up behind, and without ceremony, said simply, “Show me.”
Bescalon gestured toward a gap between two shafts of rock. No, it wasn’t a gap. It was a tunnel, a cave.
“Well done, Bensacon-2110. We’ll move forward, but let’s exert extreme caution.” He gestured for the soldier to move in the opening, even as he pulled his own rifle from the back of his suit and prepared to follow.
Javais was Foudre Rouge, and that meant he’d been cloned to serve as a soldier, trained to obedience since childhood. He didn’t usually spend much time considering the motivations of missions. He was there to aid in the search, and to provide security. But he was troubled by one thought. The imperial artifacts he’d heard of were sometimes buried under the ground, or even the sea. But that was usually the result of time, and of seismic activity.
But it was clear the facility laying before him—if there indeed was an imperial site beyond the cave—had been deliberately hidden. The surface was devoid of human life, but it hadn’t been blasted into a radioactive nightmare, either. Whatever had happened to Aquellus, it had lacked the raw power to sink a facility two kilometers below the sea. The facility that awaited the expedition had been purpose built where it was, and that meant it had been intended to remain hidden.
He pushed the thoughts aside, a lifetime of conditioning assisting in the effort. It wasn’t for him to worry about such things. But whatever was waiting inside, whatever threats might still be lurking in there, that was his problem.
“Calvais-2109 and Calvais-2110…report to me at once. The rest of the squad, continue searching for anything out of the ordinary.”
“Did you find something, Lieutenant?” Caron stepped up behind he Foudre Rouge officer. The Sector Nine operative was having considerably more difficulty navigating in the massive underwater pressure than the soldiers. Foudre Rouge weren’t trained specifically for underwater operations, but they were conditioned to endure combat conditions in space at high g forces. It wasn’t the same thing, of course, but it wasn’t entirely different.
Sector Nine operatives received some training for space maneuvers as well, but most of their indoctrination covered different specialties. And the deep sea operations suits were damned cumbersome.
“We don’t know yet, sir. There seems to be a cave here, but we have no idea what is inside. We are just about to investigate.” As he spoke, the two additional privates appeared. Javais was having difficulty adapting to the slow speed of movement underwater. When he called his soldiers, he expected them to jump, and he had to remind himself, the plodding, cumbersome gait his people were exhibiting was jumping, at least when operating two kilometers beneath the ocean.
“With your permission, Agent Caron, we will advance inside and scout the area. If all is clear, I will call for you.”
Caron nodded, an almost pointless gesture in the massive underwater suit. Then he spoke into the small microphone just in front of his mouth. “Very well, Lieutenant. Be careful…we know we’ve lost some people from previous expeditions…though we don’t know that they found this particular entrance, if that’s what it is.” A pause. “Did you find any signs of previous activity anywhere?”
“No, sir, but I do not believe that is a reliable data point. There is aggressive and fast-growing plant life all around, some of it apparently carnivorous, and strong water currents as well. Even if the previous expeditions had come this way, it is doubtful we would be able to track them.”
“Yes, of course, Lieutenant. Let us move on.”
“Yes, sir.” The Foudre Rouge officer was aware of the arrogance of the Sector Nine agents, and perfectly knowledgeable about just how focused on the acquisition of power they truly were. It was a culture that had its advantages, he suspected, but also its weaknesses. The Foudre Rouge were different, conditioned for obedience, and Javais’s opinions on the Sector Nine
personnel were purely academic. He didn’t think one way or another about it in terms of worthiness or anything of the sort. His was to obey, and that was all he had known, since the days he’d taken his first, halting steps.
He gestured toward his small group of soldiers, as well as he could in the suit. “Let’s move out.” He lumbered forward, just behind Bensacon-2110, but in front of the two Calvais privates. Standard organizational protocols generally avoided the assignment of crechemates or genetic identicals to the same squads, but the force pool assigned to Sector Nine operations in the Badlands was small, and it had proven to be unavoidable. There were schools of thought, Javais knew, two camps, arguing opposite sides of the question of whether having duplicates deployed in close quarters created problems, or streamlined operations. Javais suspected there were valid points to both arguments, but again, that determination existed for him in that strange theoretical domain apart from actual opinion. He’d have obeyed orders to separate DNA-matches without question, just as he would ones to organize them together in their own units. Obedience was the only salvation for Foudre Rouge.
The cave snaked into the rock wall, twisting and turning. Javais scanned every section, his eyes moving around over as much a range as his suit would allow. There were a few places that looked like they might have been carved by artificial means, but none where he could be sure. It could all have been natural, too.
Then, he turned the corner, and he saw a stretch of smooth rock. It was old, and deep sea mollusks and other life forms covered most of it. He stepped over and extended his arm, flipping a small switch that extended the blade stored in the suit’s arm. He poked at the wall, and he scraped along the surface, pulling off a series of small shells and other debris. And below, he saw what he’d been looking for. A section of flat rock so smooth, it could only have been carved by a plasma torch or some other manmade implement.
“Agent Caron, I believe we have found a section of rock almost certainly carved out by power implements. We are continuing on, looking for some form of access.”