Disclaimer: I do not own Subnautica. Unknown Worlds does.
Thanks to A Mage's Apprenctice for editing.
Chapter published 7/2/17.
Varien
Miraculously, the storm cleared up the next day. With his Gravsphere, Varien had almost no trouble at all catching fish to eat or, in the case of bladderfish, melt down into bottles of water. If he thought drinking water after one day of dehydration was amazing and thought-clearing, then after two days it was heavenly. He almost threw up, he drank so much so quickly.
Sitting atop his life pod and baking in the sun's rays, Varien tossed his latest water bottle into the ocean where it'd soon dissolve into biomatter. He sighed. How quickly he came to thinking even of water and food as miracles. All his life, food and water had been beyond abundant, beyond scarcity, produced and distributed by robots who cared nothing for turning profit or even gathering money at all. And now...?
How the mighty had fallen.
Varien slid back down the ladder into his mildly air-conditioned pod. He wanted to try out his seaglide; he needed to make a computer chip somehow so he could make a habitat, so he wouldn't be at the mercy of the weather. The habitat builder was designed to make habitats capable of withstanding everything up to the surface of Venus. It'd be able to withstand a little ocean storm. Maybe the seaglide was what he needed to find gold.
He dipped into the water with his seaglide in hand and let its weight carry him down. He inspected it, turning it left and right by the handles. There was a holographic display of the surrounding terrain, not that he saw much use in that. Maybe if it was dark, but that was what the pale blue flashlight attachment was for, wasn't it? There was a propeller on the back which would hopefully, well, propel him forward at great speed.
Varien braced himself, gripped the handles, and held down the lever on the left handle to turn his seaglide on.
"WHOA!" he shouted into his helmet. The force of the seaglide ripped it out of his grip, sending it tumbling a few meters forward before crashing into a rock formation with a thud. He winced as the seaglide tumbled onto the ocean floor, as did the few pieces of purple table coral it had impacted.
Beating his arms and legs against the water to stay in place, Varien sighed. "Stars damn it," he muttered, swimming over to his seaglide. "Better not be broken," he groused, picking it up and inspecting it. The paint was a little chipped, but other than that it looked perfectly functional.
Thud. Another chunk of table coral landed on his head before tumbling aside. He brushed it off irately, but on a whim decided to take his scanner to it. He held down the trigger, watching as the glowing lights of his tool reflected of the jewel-like pieces of the coral as it scanned. A moment later it was done, and he read through his PDA's new data entry.
Then he smacked his palm into his helmet. "Exploitable in computer chip fabrication," he muttered. "Exploitable in computer chip fabrication! I've been swimming right by these things and - aaaaahhhh!" He swam down and grabbed a few more of them, letting his dive suit swallow them up. Four should be enough. That left just the gold.
He turned back to his seaglide and hefted it in both hands, this time pointed firmly away from anything he might crash into. "Let's try this again..."
Varien activated the seaglide.
"Hoolllyyyy shhiiitttt!" he blubbered.
The seaglide was much faster than he'd expected. Water rushed around him deafeningly, his entire body laid out lengthwise from the sheer speed of the machine. The water coming out from the propeller tickled as it rushed along his suit, and Varien's hair - his mohawk long ago defeated by salt water - flopped around on his head. Rock formations swum in and out of his view as Varien struggled to keep the seaglide under control. Eventually, he had enough. He relaxed his iron grip on the lever and the seaglide turned off. Water resistance brought him to a halt soon after.
Deep, jolly laughter sounded around him, and Varien screamed like a little girl. No, no no no, was it a giant one of those bleeders? Was it -
He looked around. It was just some weird alien manatee, colored a grayish green. It looked like it had a gas mask on its face, with a bulbous protrusion from its back covered in glowing yellow spores.
"New creature discovered. Naming: Gasopod," his PDA informed him.
Hesitantly, he swum closer to the thing. It beat its flippers to face him, then emitted a deep bellow. It turned its tail on Varien, swimming away. Good, good. So some of the larger fish weren't all out to get him.
Then it did what he could only describe as fart on him.
From its glowing protrusion, yellow spores burst out into the water around him, hovering in place with an eerie stillness. Varien's eyes widened and he swum down to the ocean floor. Not a moment too soon, as their glossy shells wore away and they filled the water with some unimaginable, toxic-yellow fog. Then the fog started drifting towards him on the currents. He saw a peeper get caught in the fog and its scales just melted right off.
Varien pointed his seaglide away and turned it on.
Alright, lesson learned. Even fish that weren't out to get him could still kill him. Good to know.
After some more exploring - and a break to eat and drink - Varien found himself swimming before a colossal tube of coral, embedded into the landscape and filled with irregular chunks of limestone. He checked his air; still a good thirty-five minutes left. He could get in, get out, and slowly surface without any problem. Purple light glowed from within, but a quick glance confirmed it was just some mushrooms and other flora. Nothing he hadn't seen before.
All the same, as his seaglide took Varien deeper into the enormous tube, he kept his eyes and ears open. The water was remarkably clear; he could see so far in all directions. It grew dark as he delved deeper, the local star's rays swallowed up by the water as he swiveled his head left and right.
Near the end, he saw the coral tunnel give way to a kelp forest off in the distance. The fronds of creepvine were far enough that he didn't mind going to the very edge of the cavern. He glided to a halt and looked around. To the left and right were both holes in the coral tunnel, leading into caves. He approached the one on his left and frowned. Caves were bad news. He could get lost and suffocate very easily, and he hadn't made a dive reel yet. But maybe there was gold? He'd just go in, poke his head around, and come right back. Varien even put his seaglide on the ground with its flashlight still on, just as a makeshift waypoint.
He swam forward into the cave. It was... really short. Just a narrow indentation in the surrounding rock, striped with black and tan stone. But looking closer, Varien saw that the tunnel didn't strictly end. There was a smaller tunnel, maybe three meters across, blocked by an irregular boulder.
Varien landed on the ocean floor and walked towards it, hands outstretched. He leaned up against the boulder, his palms brushing against the course texture, and pushed. He grunted and strained, but the giant rock started to roll. Slowly at first, but then faster as it hit a ramp. It slid down and fell to the floor of the neighboring cave, kicking up a cloud of sand.
Once the sand cleared, Varien took a good look. Sure enough it was another cavern room, dimly lit by his seaglide's light. Triple-tentacled shuttlebugs swam around as they clicked quietly, but he already knew they were friendly. Some more tunnels in it led off to unseen places, but he resolved that no matter what shiny thing he saw in them, he was not going to go explore them. Especially since he could've sworn he saw a few of those exploding fish traps.
In the center of the cave was a raised slab of stone. Varien swam closer, straining his eyes in the dimming blue light. On the slab were more of the stone features that he'd come to learn grew around valuable metal deposits. He didn't think much of them, though when he scanned the limestone his PDA seemed almost puzzled about them being unaffected by erosion.
These didn't seem like limestone, though. The rock was darker, grainier. More like sandstone, in fact. He took out his scanner, swum over to the trio of sandstone chunks, and brought the handle of his spectroscope onto one.
It cracked down the middle. A few more whacks and Varien cleared away the coarse rock to see... a solid chunk of a yellowish metal. "Holy shit," he whispered. "This is gold!" Nevermind computer chips. This was a chunk of gold the size of his fist!
That was right, this was an unexplored planet. It had never been mined. All its resources were still in place, untouched by man. If he ever got off this planet, he was going to be rich.
The next piece of sandstone, once it broke, didn't give him any gold. Instead he got a lump of dull gray metal, with a few chunks of rock clinging to it. "Gold based - " his PDA began as he grabbed it.
"AH!" he yelped, leaping into the water and beating his legs to stay in place.
" - computer chips are an essential component of the habitat builder."
"Alright," he muttered, gripping the silver ore tightly and placing it in his suit's stasis. "Good to know." He swam back down to the third and final piece of sandstone, broke it, and found a second piece of gold.
With the trio of sandstone chunks broken, Varien took a moment to look around the cave. Quartz shards and more limestone, but he wasn't going to risk getting closer to the explosive fish just for some quartz. He got some gold and silver. With the silver he could upgrade his oxygen tank to a high capacity tank that could hold nearly three hours of air, not just one. With the gold he could make a computer chip, and then a habitat builder. Then he could finally, finally start phasing out his unstable, rocking, nerve-wrecking life pod.
He held the computer chip in his hands and cringed. This was the sort of tech his fabricator was programmed to build? He understood he was roughing it, but this thing probably wasn't even quantum!
It wasn't much. Just a foundation with a small metal tube on it with a hatch at one end, fabricated by his habitat builder's lasers. There were yellow spokes on the outside, and the end without the hatch looked like plastic. Waves of sediment beat around the foundation's legs, but they were anchored firmly into bedrock. A shame the terraforming feature seemed to be broken, but he'd chosen a flat area, far from any kelp forest, to make his home so it didn't really matter. If he really needed to do some landscaping - which he doubted - he could just fabricate a terraformer. The point was, he had a habitat.
Varien swam before it and stared at his shelter longingly. Finally. Stars above, finally. He swam in and opened the hatch, watching as the water was held out by advanced surface tension technologies. He swam in head-first, feeling the water rush off him, its weight leaving his body. Before long he was inside, his fins and feet clanging against the metal surface -
"Warning!" a feminine voice intoned around him, the chamber black as pitch. "Emergency power only! Oxygen production offline!"
... he'd forgotten the damn solar panels!
A little while later, Varien went back into his base. "Welcome aboard, captain!" his base told him. He chuckled a bit at that. Captain. Hah.
His legs shook like noodles, and after unhooking his oxygen tank he collapsed onto his back. Even with his seaglide, he still had to do a lot of swimming and it wore him down. His muscles had no time to rest and recuperate. Just pain stacked on pain stacked on pain. With a heave of effort Varien pulled out two rolls of fiber mesh and, after some struggling with his exhausted body, laid on them like a mattress and pillow. Sure it was a little cramped, and the ceiling was low, but it beat the lifepod. It let his muscles quiver beneath his skin in peace.
Alright, alright. So he had a shelter going, he wasn't at the mercy of the storms anymore. What was next on his list?
Find survivors. He had to find other survivors. And for that he needed to...
Varien smacked his helmet.
For that he needed to fix his communications relay, which had totally slipped his mind even though he had a repair tool!
Muscles straining, Varien got up and walked to his hatch, putting his oxygen tank back on. He opened the hatch and slipped back into the warm ocean. It took him a few moments to swim up to his lifepod. He panted, sweating, but grasped the hatch on the bottom and pulled.
Nothing happened. His arms strained, but there was so little strength left in them. He pulled and pulled, but could barely make it budge. Eventually he gave up and let gravity pull him to the seabed.
After his little moment in the base, his oxygen tank was full. He still had three hours. He'd... he'd just rest a little bit.
To add insult to injury, his PDA spoke up again. "Great job, survivor. You have just exceeded your weekly exercise quota by five hundred percent. Data indicates that swimming was your favorite activity."
Oh fuck off, he thought half-deliriously.
"Be sure to vary your routine for uniform muscle development."
Once he was rested, he pulled himself back into the life pod with his welder at the ready. He approached the blinking, charred communications relay and went to work. It took some time, but he got it into working order. Mostly. The transmission was broken beyond his ability to repair, so he wouldn't be using it to talk to anyone. Still, he'd take what he could get. Varien gingerly welded the last two wires together, and...
The red LED light on its side lit up. "Captain!" it immediately intoned in a robotic woman's voice. "A new message has arrived!"
"Play message," he said instantly, his voice half muffled from his radiation helmet.
"Playing message!" it confirmed. The communicator went silent for a moment, then came to life with another monotone female voice, covered in static. "This is an automated bounceback from the Aurora Lining Vessel!" it chimed. "Your distress signal has been received."
Varien's heart soared. Received?
"An emergency relief team equipped with seaglide personal propulsion vehicles will be dispatched to your location. ETA..." Varien held his breath. "Nine, nine, nine, nine, nine, hours!" The message went silent.
He stared at the communications relay. "Shit," he said at last.
If he was ever going to find survivors, he needed better mobility. The seaglide just wouldn't cut it for long trips, its battery would run out and he was strapped for resources as it was without carrying another ten batteries with him at all times.
In his PDA's blueprint tab, there was something called a 'seamoth'. It looked like a submarine. The data was corrupted though; while he knew it could only be built from a mobile vehicle bay, none of the needed materials were listed. If he could find enough seamoth wrecks his scanner would take care of that problem. But that just left him with one problem.
What the hell was a mobile vehicle bay?
There was never any realization, like in the movies and books of survival. No sudden dawning moment of 'No, I'm not going to die here!'. Just a steady back and forth between 'It's hopeless' and 'I've got to try!' that left him drained and weary.
With his seaglide in hand, Varien found what he assumed to be the edges of the shallow region he made his base in. The ocean floor just fell away, with a few flat crevices jutting out, to a vast field of sand and red grass-like plants. It must've been a hundred meters down. Rocky pillars stuck straight up from a sea of crimson grass and enormous wedge-shaped creatures, with pulsing undersides and a trio of tentacles out their backsides, swum in pods. Even from so far away, their bellowing moans made his bones shake. He could only hope they were similar to whales, and not aggressive.
While the stomach-churning depth of the plateau before him was absolutely fascinating to absolutely no part of him, Varien was far more interested in the ledge. An enormous amount of wreckage had fallen onto it, just shy of spilling over the sides. He descended, watching his HUD's depth counter go up. Twenty meters. Thirty meters. Forty meters. The weight of the water on his chest was immense, like a crate on his lungs, but he could still breathe.
It was an impressive pile of wreckage. Metal girders the length of a corridor. Sealed crates, torn-apart maintenance corridors lined with ladders. Varien's eyes scanned over the entire thing, until it settled on a spherical piece of metal. Curious, he swam closer and began scanning it.
A moment later, his scanner's menu lit up with the image of something it labeled as a bioreactor. Seemed pretty useless; he already had solar panels, after all, and those didn't need to be maintained.
Varien continued searching through the rubbish, pushing aside metal beams and salvage. It was harder than he thought it'd be. Sure the water made everything feel lighter, but they were still monstrously heavy. Soon though, he found something that looked like... a crate? Inside his radiation helmet he raised an eyebrow, but held the scanner to it and held down the trigger. Before long and it was done...
... mobile vehicle bay! That was it, that was what he needed! Were there more pieces around?
As it turned out, there were! Something that looked almost like a magnifying glass. Another crate-looking thing, but that was a duplicate and did nothing to help him put the blueprint together. There was a console screen, and a chassis with an orange streak. There were more pieces for the bioreactor too. Just some broken, dented fan-looking devices. All the same though, his scanner finished transmitting the data. His fabricator could now build a mobile vehicle bay, and his habitat constructor could build a bioreactor.
Whatever that was good for.
Varien sat with his back up against the wall of his habitat. With one hand, he held his PDA to read. With the other, he held one of his cured boomerangs and nibbled it. Next to him were a few bottles of water made of bladderfish. Some of them were empty.
"Titanium ingots... I think I have enough to make those." He brought his food to his mouth and took a nibble around the cartilaginous fin. It was salty enough to bring tears to his eyes and the flesh tasted weird, especially now that it was cured. But over all, it was good eating.
"Lubricant..." He hummed. "I don't actually remember what I need for that." He flicked his PDA's screen and found it. "Ah, the creepvine seeds. Right."
He flipped his boomerang over and started gnawing down the other fin. The first fin was gone, there weren't any bones. The cartilage was chewy, but his teeth were up to the task. "Last one is power cell, power cell..." He read over the blueprint for a power cell. "Seems easy enough." He shuddered. He did not want to head back into the kelp forests, but he was in a survival situation. Varien just had to bite the bullet.
Finishing up the boomerang's other fin, he pulled it away and inspected it. Just the head was left, with its eyes staring back at him, de-toothed mouth hanging open. Oh god, he was eating something that had been alive. He felt his stomach churn, imagined feces and urine sliding down his throat and -
"Urk!"
He forced his bile back down. He was not going to vomit all over his PDA. He was not going to vomit all over his PDA. He...
... vomited all over his PDA.
The kelp was all around him, choking out the local star's light with their emerald aura. He pulled a frond of Creepvine seeds off its parent plant and stored it in his suit. Roars surrounded him, echoing through the water, but he wasn't worried. As long as there wasn't any of that horrible, dream-haunting laughter...
Some fish swam around him. Not like the standard ones he'd seen, either. Reptilian fish that had pads for feet. Another was almost entirely an eye. When he caught one, his PDA had stupidly labeled it an 'Eyeye'.
"That's one... and two!" he said triumphantly, placing the last of the fronds in his suit's storage. He looked around, swimming in place by kicking his legs. "Alright, where's my lifepod's ping..." He thought he saw something blue hidden amidst the gently-swaying vines, and swam a little closer to it.
It wasn't his ping. It was another fish, just a little bigger than his head! It looked his way with two yellow frog-eyes, and opened up. Varien's eyes widened as it displayed four beautiful, iridescent wings to him. The wings began to wiggle, sending wave after wave of color along their lengths.
"Ooh," he cooed, slowly swimming closer. This thing was beautiful! And that shell. Those wings! Who knew what he could make with that? "Pretty."
"It is imperative you swim closer to that amazing creature," his PDA droned.
Yes, it was imperative he swam closer to that amazing creature. It locked eyes with him, continuing to wiggle its wings.
"Closer now. Swim closer," his assistant continued.
He was closer now. He swam closer. He could make out a strange, mouth-like ridge along the front of its shell.
"It looks so friendly."
It looked so friendly.
"Everything is alright."
Everything was alright. The colors from its wings swam outward, coloring the whole world around him.
"Don't struggle."
He didn't struggle.
"Go closer."
He went closer.
Suddenly the wings folded back, taking with them the beautiful colors. The world returned into focus... just in time for the creature's head to split open four ways. It snarled and a quartet of gooey, fang-tipped arms leaped out and bit down on his torso.
Hard.
Varien screamed so hard he could've sworn his voice tore instantly. Pain flooded his senses, blinding and crippling. He couldn't move, he couldn't breathe, the pain went up his spine and shot into his brain like a plasma round.
The hypnotic fish retracted its mouth and closed its shell, before swimming away with a wiggle of its folded wings. Varien's blood, dark green from being so far underwater, spilled forth from his pair of rapidly-mending suits. Oh stars, oh stars that was his blood. He was losing blood. He was going to die. His head hurt. He couldn't breathe. Did it even matter if he could breathe? Without blood his body couldn't circulate oxygen. He was going to die here. He was going to die. He was a failure. He was -
Sinister laughter cut through his panic like a butcher knife.
Varien screamed like a little girl, grabbed his seaglide, and rocketed out of the forest. He kept screaming all the way back to his life pod. He kept screaming as he pulled out a first aid kit. He kept screaming as he changed out of his suits and bandaged his wounds. He kept screaming as he injected the nanites. He kept screaming as he returned to his habitat.
By then, he couldn't scream anymore. But when he fell asleep, he kept screaming in his nightmares as his body was drained by the bleeders as they latched onto his arms, his legs, even his face...
When he woke back up, he went about making his mobile vehicle bay. He melted down the oil in the seeds he'd collected into rubber and a bottle of lubricant, the latter of which made his inner nine year old chuckle immaturely. Turning back into an adult, he went about gathering the rest of his materials. Batteries into a power cell. Titanium into a stack of ingots. And, standing in his lifepod, he fed the fabricator all the materials it needed to construct his mobile vehicle bay. The machine went to work, twin lasers atomically assembling it piece by piece.
Varien guessed it would take about twelve or even fifteen minutes for it to finish, so while he waited he went and added a four-way intersection to his base with his habitat builder. He wanted to put a glass locker inside for storage, but he didn't have any glass so that would need to wait. Not like it'd matter; once he found any survivors he could just go share their habitat.
By the time his base was enhanced, the fabricator was done. Varien climbed up the ladder outside his escape pod and slid in through the top hatch, smiling. The vehicle bay was a huge piece of equipment, he had to admit. It was a massive box, patterned white and orange, so heavy it brought him to his knees. Varien had some trouble holding it close enough for his suit to absorb into its stasis. When he exited back into the water and pulled it back out, it was still unwieldy. He needed both arms to carry it and even underwater the bay was heavy enough to take his breath away.
With a gasp he let it go and gave the thing a gentle shove. With the sound of grinding gears and activating electronics, it flung away from him and unfolded, releasing four orange flotation rings as it clung to the wavy surface. He swum after it and got a good look; the four flotation devices formed a square, atop which was a metal floor. Yellow handles along the floor would probably let him climb onto it, with a white panel beneath a black touchscreen.
Varien reached onto the bay's floor and started hoisting himself up. He grabbed the handles and pulled. His eyes widened when the entire thing started to lean over, and for a sickening moment he feared it would capsize. But then it righted itself, pulling him up with it. He stumbled on top of the platform, and at that moment four robots shot up from the bay's wheels.
The small drones hovered in place around him, each equipped with a fabrication laser on their bottoms. He smiled and eyed them each in turn as they waited patiently for a command. Before him, the wreckage of the Aurora lay patiently like an elder god.
"Nice," he breathed, lightly tapping the touchscreen. It showed him a picture of the simple, stylish seamoth submersible. It wasn't much more than a glass dome, around which sat a nearly-complete ring of metal that grew thicker over the back. He even had the blueprint ready; he'd found and scanned a few shattered seamoth pieces in another wreck closer to the Aurora while gathering copper for the bay's power cell. He read over the materials and couldn't decide if he wanted to sigh or grin.
On one hand, it wasn't that much. All he needed was basically the same materials for a mobile vehicle bay, plus a bit of glass. One the other hand, he'd already used up all those materials building the damn vehicle bay in the first place. And that meant he had to go...
Varien gulped.
... back into the kelp forest.
Some swimming, waiting out decompression, and mini heart attacks later, Varien had all the materials he needed to make his seamoth submersible. He climbed atop his vehicle bay, went through the touchscreen's menu until he was on the seamoth, and hit the giant button that read 'Fabricate'.
The four drones waiting around him sprung to life, and he eagerly fed them the materials needed to make his submarine. Once he'd given them everything, they flew higher into the air and a fair distance ahead of him. They shone their lasers out, forming a pale hologram of what would soon be his seamoth, vivid against the backdrop of distant storm clouds. Before his very eyes it came to life, metal and wire and glass crawling over the hologram as it took shape over the course of several minutes.
His PDA chimed in as the seamoth neared completion. "While the seamoth is a fast and safe method of travel, try to continue meeting your weekly exercise quota. Swimming is fantastic for your glutes and endorphin levels."
He rolled his eyes, but by the time his PDA was done nagging him, the sub was done. The construction drones turned their beams off, and just like that gravity grabbed his new vehicle, dragging it below the waves with a splash that left a new set of drops on his helmet's visor. Rubbing his hands, he dove headfirst back into the choppy waters. He approached his seamoth, which hung in place in the waters. It didn't sink. It didn't float. It perfectly balanced its buoyancy in real time!
Swimming over to his seamoth, Varien took a moment to take it all in. The smooth, reinforced glass. The power cell below its sleek white chassis. The water-vibration thruster in the back, looking like a series of black rings around a pearl. And the hatch on top. He pried it open, watching as the surface tension enhancers kept the water out. He sunk through and closed the hatch on top of him. He reclined into the seat and smiled. It was plush. Sure it was made of titanium, but if you knew how you could make even metal feel like cushions.
"Welcome aboard, captain!" it chimed in a feminine voice.
He smiled and replied, "Yeah, that's right. I'm the captain!" Varien leaned forward and gripped the steering wheel in both hands, placing his legs into comfortable positions. A glance up confirmed that his HUD's depth marker had new additions; the depth he was at was now a fraction out of two hundred. There was also even a compass addition to his HUD.
He puttered around with his seamoth for a moment, grinning widely. He felt... safe. Not even his habitat had done that. He could go places, and be safe. What were those bloodsuckers gonna do to him now, huh? This thing was made of metal!
"Fuck yeah," he whispered under his breath. "Technology!"
Varien took a few minutes to get used to the seamoth's controls. Right foot on the accelerator, left foot on the brake. Turn the wheel left or right to turn. Push it in to descend, pull it out to ascend, pull it back to go in reverse. Simple enough.
Alright, now what. He eyed the interface plastered to his eyesight's lower left, and frowned. Hunger seemed a little... depleted. Which didn't make sense, because he'd eaten a floral-flavored garryfish not long ago. His stomach felt like it was going to burst! With a flick of thought, he dismissed the other three orbs and enhanced his nutrition display.
His gut dropped. Proteins and amino acids were fine. But something called 'carnosine' was depleting, several vitamins and minerals were also going down... of course. He was only eating meat. If Varien kept that up, he was probably going to develop all sorts of deficiencies. He needed fruits and vegetables of some kind, and some way to grow them. But where was he going to find fruits and vegetables on a stars-damned ocean planet?!
As soon as he thought that, the blue symbol of his communications relay appeared in the top right of his vision. He frowned, but stepped on his seamoth's accelerator and steered towards his lifepod. He brought it up close and surfaced, then climbed out the hatch and made his way inside the pod.
"Captain!" his communicator chirped once he entered. "A new message - "
"Yeah yeah, play message."
"Playing message!" it sassed. Suddenly, it was replaced by a man's voice, hurried and excited. "This is Officer Keen in Lifepod Nineteen!" Varien's heart jumped straight into his throat. Someone was speaking! Someone was ALIVE! "I am broadcasting to all survivors. The captain is gone, and I have assumed command. Our scans have shown dry land approximately one kilometer south of the crash site. That is, almost straight back from the Aurora's engines. Stay together and regroup there. This message will now repeat." The communicator returned to its regular voice. "Rendezvous coordinates corrupted. Transmission origin coordinates downloaded." The communicator spat out a tiny chip from its side, which he could link up to his HUD. He left it where it was.
He puts his hands on his helmet. "Dry land, dry land! Rendezvous. Other people. Holy shit." How long had it been? A week? A week since he'd last heard another person. It even explained why he hadn't seen anyone; he'd been out for three hours. In that time they'd gone to the island and had been living it up! He was ready to dance. He was ready to sob in joy. "No, no. Focus." He'd need supplies. Water and his cured food. Probably the nutrient blocks too, just in case. He rushed back down into the ocean and hurried to collect his supplies.
Scant minutes later, he was in his seamoth, with ample food and water stored in his dive suit. He looked through the round glass and spotted the Aurora, its tormented frame still as stone. "Straight back from the Aurora," he whispered giddily. He angled his seamoth as needed. He couldn't see any land, but it did get very foggy far out there. Maybe there was something hidden in that mist. Varien's foot came down on the accelerator, and his seamoth lurched forward at full speed.
The crashing waves forced him to submerge before long, as they tossed his vehicle back and forth. Underneath the water, he glanced up and smiled. "Wow." He'd never had time to appreciate it before, but the shifting lines of the waves, combined with the golden rays of the sun, were beautiful.
As he traveled on and on, hitting a few smaller fish with his windshield and watching them burst into clouds of yellow-green blood, the ocean floor dropped away beneath him. He leaned forward and looked around. There was another grassy plateau here, filled with ribbons of crimson grass and strange fish he'd never seen before. One looked like a shovel with an eye. Another had a pink mohawk. He liked those.
As he cruised by, a deep groan shook his bones. He look up and saw another pod of those gigantic creatures with coral stuck to their skin, their undersides pulsating nauseatingly. He made sure to stay away from them.
Varien traveled and traveled, sometimes dipping above the surface to see if he was making any progress. Before too long, he slid into the bank of fog. It obscured his vision for kilometers around, to the point where he wasn't even sure if he was moving. The ocean floor had long ago dropped so far beneath him he couldn't see anything. Nothing except open, empty water in all directions.
Then, from the gloom before him, a jagged spire of rock appeared.
His foot jumped off the accelerator, and the other slammed on the brake. "Oof," he grunted as he was flung forward onto his steering wheel, accidentally turning on the seamoth's headlights in the process. Once he got a hold of himself, he came up to the surface to get a good look.
Sure enough, it was an island. An actual, proper island. Suddenly he salivated. Land. He could actually stand on proper, sturdy land for a change.
It took some puttering around the island's perimeter given that it was mostly a sheer cliff face, but Varien found a sandy shore carved into a canyon between two rock walls. After making sure his seamoth wouldn't get pulled out to sea, he opened the hatch and climbed out.
The first thing that hit him was the heat. And it hit him hard. Sometimes it was easy while living in his air conditioned habitat, or surrounded by the cool water, to forget that it was forty degrees outside. He needed to find the survivors' habitat quickly, he'd be sweating up a storm until then. Varien was suddenly overjoyed he'd brought so much water with him.
The next thing that hit him was how sturdy his footing was. He laughed weakly. Land. Actual land. Not a rocking lifepod, or a habitat supported by struts. Land! Oh he could lean down and kiss the beach.
He climbed up the slope of the sand, and, after a moment's hesitation, took his radiation helmet off and stored it in his suit's storage. His PDA didn't start blaring warnings about radiation to him, so he assumed all was fine. He took a deep breath through his nose, flooding his senses with the scents of plantlife and dirt. Waves lapped quietly at the shore. He scanned the surroundings, looking for anything of note. And sure enough, there was!
Sticking up from the island were two mountains, or maybe cliffs. Whatever they were, they were narrow rocky protrusions up into the sky and, atop the closer one, he could see the unmistakable form of an artificial habitat! There was even a narrow, sandy path towards it!
With a grin, he started towards it and dared to hope. He could go find survivors. Hold a conversation with someone again. He could find Silvia and hold her in his arms and tell her how much he missed her, how much she meant to him and how horrible the past week had been without her. He could brush away her black hair, hold her and kiss her and make love to her under the stars and even if they never got off this planet, everything would somehow be alright as long as they had each other.
With the gargantuan red moon hanging in the sky like a dumbbell, Varien started hiking. His legs burned, but it was a good burn. It wasn't swimming, and that made it alright in his book. Above him, strange white birds flapped and screeched quietly, paying him no mind. Strange trees dotted the land. Their bark was a strange metallic hue and their tops glowed blue beneath the leaves. There were other plants, too. Giant orange cups. Pink-capped mushrooms. Polka-dotted fungi that rattled dryly in the breeze. Now and then he passed beneath a stone arch and the shadows splashed their calming chill onto his dark skin.
Varien arrived at the mountain and started climbing, passing through tunnels and pushing aside vines. It was fairly precarious in some places, and more than once he thought he heard rocks tumble to the ground nauseatingly far below. The ray-birds shrieked around him like vultures and a chill wind whistled around him, teasing him with the possibility of tearing him off the side of the mountain. But finally - finally! - he reached the top of the cliff and saw that the shelter was...
... was...
... destroyed. Corroded. It was a small thing, just a pair of metal corridors with a spherical glass observatory at the end. The only way in was a half-busted bulkhead that he almost numbly scanned to add to his habitat builder's list of blueprints. Outside, resting on the ground, was a broken spotlight half covered in sand. He scanned that too, then turned his attention back to the shelter.
How could this have happened? There was no way a shelter built at most one week ago had degraded so much, especially with people here to maintain it.
Unless there aren't any people here to maintain it, whispered a traitorous thought.
No. No way. Varien pushed into the habitat and looked around. There was a crate right next to him. He opened it and found... a bottle of disinfected water. It looked about twice the size of the bladderfish-bottles he'd been living on, with a screw-on cap. He stowed it away reflexively, and kept searching.
He didn't need to search long. Next to the crate was an abandoned PDA, long ago run out of power. He brought his next to it and told it to download the data. His PDA sent a surge of battery power into the other one, lighting it up just long enough for it to transfer any information on it. A moment later, it took the electricity back and the abandoned PDA shut off.
Varien didn't bother to sit somewhere. Standing straight up he scanned through his data entries to find what he'd just found, and frowned. "Bart Torgal's third log?" He started reading it. "I messed up, badly. Two days since... shouldn't have left the island... we're not wanted down there... I knew it and didn't say... they're stuck down there, and I'm up here. I deserve this." A light turned on in his head.
The Degasi.
The Degasi had crashed on this planet years earlier. He'd found the survivors' base. From what he could understand they eventually - for some reason! - tried to make a base underwater. The other Degasi were separated from this 'Bart', and he'd spent who-knew how long, up on the island, utterly alone.
A chill traced its way down his spine, and suddenly the thirty degree weather seemed far too cold. Varien had heard that isolation... did things to people. He'd been alone only a week. How long had this Bart Torgal been alone? Months? Years? The voice log mentioned that 'they' didn't trust the Degasi, that 'they' didn't want them down in the water. Poor guy'd clearly gone off the deep end. Given how he'd mentioned he 'deserved' to be alone, Varien felt he could guess pretty well what finally ended the man's life.
Was that going to be his fate, if he didn't find anyone? No, no that was ridiculous. There were people here. The rendezvous was set to this island. It was absurd to consider that Varien, and only Varien, survived.
He turned around and blinked. "Whoa." In the observatory was a small garden. A small tree with hanging orange fruits along with a tall fern and orange cut-up looking plants. Varien approached, and a spark of inspiration lit up in his brain. "Farm!" he said aloud, his voice quiet and small in the oppressive shelter. He scanned the growbed; apparently it was good for interior spaces only. Then he scanned the plants one at a time and reviewed their data. Of note was the so-called lantern tree. Edible staple, that was exactly what he needed! Fruit!
Varien grabbed one of the odorless fruits and took a bite. Watery flesh, tasting like mildly spicy oranges, flooded his mouth and he groaned. Oh, he'd missed fruit. So succulent and delicious, and more importantly it'd never been full of blood or shit.
He finished off the fruit and, with his stomach full, took another one to look for seeds. He unwrapped its orange flesh and searched through it until he found a collection of seeds; they were dispersed evenly throughout the fruit and he hadn't even noticed them in the one he'd eaten. They were small, like little candies, and he could hold dozens of them in the palm of his hand. He took the five from the fruit and stowed them in his suit's storage, rendering it about three-quarters full.
His scanner hadn't indicated any of the other plants were edible, so he left them. Besides, he still had to find the others. Just because he'd found an old, ruined Degasi base didn't mean there wasn't another base somewhere else made by the Aurora crew.
He got a bird's eye view, and searched. Far away, on the other mountain peak, he saw another small habitat. Probably a second Degasi base, but who knew what he'd find?
With considerably less enthusiasm than before, Varien made his way down the cliff, hiked over to the next, and started climbing it. As he walked he shouted, raising his voice and screaming into the air.
"HELLO?!"
"ANYONE THERE?!"
"IS THIS THE RENDEZVOUS?!"
"SOMEONE, PLEASE ANSWER ME!"
But nobody answered his cries.
Before he knew it, it started getting dark. By the time he climbed the second cliff, slipping through tunnels and skirting around precarious drops, the ocean swallowed up the local sun and the stars came out in full force. Mercifully, the temperature plummeted. Just as well; he'd already gone through four of his five bottles of bladderfish water. And the giant bottle of disinfected water he wanted to save until he really needed it. Water was, ironically, worth its weight in gold on this planet.
The other base was an almost exact replica of the first. Same corroded walls, same dirty observatory that, this time, he didn't forget to scan for his habitat builder. Not that he even knew what he'd do with an observatory.
The bulkhead for this second base was blocked by an old metal crate, which forced Varien to squeeze in through the top. A glance to the left showed there was no garden in the observatory, just a desk and a chair. Across from him were a few flower pots, in which strange plants grew. He took a moment to scan both them and their pots, and a quick read through his PDA confirmed them to be imported Chinese Potatoes. Edible vegetables. He grabbed a few spuds and stored them.
The desk had another abandoned PDA. He downloaded it just like the other, and opened it up. "Degasi voice log number one, habitat location?" he pondered. "Play recording," he instructed.
After a moment, a woman's voice spoke up, as sharp and scornful as it was accented. A Mongolian accent, if he had to guess. "Not gonna work, chief. There's nothing left of the Degasi. There's no building materials on this island. And I can smell the weather turning. We need to get our feet wet."
A man's voice responded, similarly accented and with that tone that spoke of old age. "This island is safe, Margeurit. No sea monsters. We can grow food. Why would we ever leave it?"
"Your kid says we just can't grow enough. Not without more growbeds which we can't build because, again, no building materials. Come on kid, speak up."
A third person's voice. He sounded young. "Dad, it's true. The natural growth rates are just too slow to support three of us. Especially if the weather gets worse."
"All I'm saying is," Margeurit cut in. ", the ocean's got us surrounded. We may as well get some use out of it."
"I don't believe it," the old man responded. "I'm the captain and I've made my decision. You two want to forfeit your commissions and go for a swim?!"
"Believe me, chief," she responded gravely. "I'm considering it."
The message ended, and Varien frowned. That didn't sound good. But it did explain why the Degasi left the island. The weather must have indeed gotten worse. Forced them underwater, where they were then separated. Bart came back up to the island and lived in isolation. The other two must've died. It conflicted him. Did a base on this island even seem like a good idea anymore? It was susceptible to weather. But in the ocean, there were monsters that could kill him.
Alright, focus. He'd found two of the Degasi bases on this island, but still no news on the Aurora survivors. He had a good vantage point from atop the cliff, so Varien walked out of the habitat and scanned the island.
The massive wreck of the Aurora hung in the distance, its engines barely visible through the clearing fog. The treetops formed a dense canopy, dimly lit by their odd blue light. The birds weren't about anymore, but the wind still howled. His HUD showed the blue symbols of both his lifepod and seamoth in the distance. Varien spotted an oasis inside the island. He looked and looked and, just when he was about to give up, he found it. A base nestled down below, between the two clifftop bases. It was on the opposite side of the island from the Aurora, so no wonder he'd missed it until now. Carefully, with sleep tugging at his eyes, Varien made his way down.
His heart slowly fell as he came closer and closer to the base. Sure it was much larger than the others, with a colossal circular room buried in the hillside. But...
"No," he moaned. "No!"
It was just another ruined Degasi base.
The tiny four-legged critters scuttling about the place were easy to scare off with some shouting and sudden movements. They fled into the forest with hops and chirps and squeaks. He sighed and searched about. There were a few boxes, one of which held about half of what his scanner revealed to be a stasis rifle. More importantly he saw another growbed, this one modified to support life outside. He added it to his habitat builder's collection, and gathered the seeds of the strange 'marblemelon' plants growing on it.
Inside the gigantic shelter, half buried in mud, were more abandoned PDAs that supported the story of the weather forcing the Degasi survivors into the ocean. There was a wall covered in synthetic plants for decoration. The room itself was enormous and he readily added the multipurpose room to his PDA. He couldn't wait to build one and have all that space.
But what really caught his attention was the strange purple device sitting on a table inside the shelter. He hefted it in both hands; it was heavy. It looked like some odd computer chip, with two short spiral arms sprouting off the top and bottom. It was made of a dense black metal and filled with symbolic holes. In the very center was a curious, bright purple symbol that glowed with otherworldly energy.
His PDA wasn't warning him about radiation, so he assumed it was fine and stored it away. Then he frowned at himself; was he getting too careless? Probably. But what if he needed to take risks? Sure the Degasi survivors had apparently regretted going into the water, but if they'd stayed on the island...
... well, the collapsed mud around their shelter spoke volumes. He'd take the risk and keep the strange purple thing. It was probably just some obscure Mongolian tech.
But worse than that, there was no shelter made recently here. There were no other survivors. The island wasn't that big, someone would've surely heard him. Where was everyone? Where was Silvia?
Like a zombie he traced his way back to his seamoth, thoughts alternating between a dull standstill and a frantic rush. They were all dead. They'd probably just chosen a different rendezvous. But then why was everything so untouched? They couldn't all be dead. They couldn't! That would mean he was all alone on an alien planet with no rescue ever coming. His luck couldn't be that bad. Maybe it was. No, there had to be SOME things that hadn't gone belly-up. Surely the resourceful and knowledgeable Aurora crew had managed to do better than some nobody programmer like himself, right?
He climbed atop his seamoth, opened the hatch, then sunk into it and closed it off. He reclined into his cushioned seat and closed his eyes, twitching their lids as tiny lights danced around behind them. He'd sleep here, then head back to his base. He could not afford to be sleep deprived, not in a situation like this. And his vehicle's oxygen generator would keep him from suffocating despite the airtight seal the submersible had.
Loneliness clenched his heart like a cement hand, sapping what little energy he had left. He whimpered quietly, and slipped into uneasy sleep.
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