Chapter 15
Painfully Hot Waters
By itself, the cyclops' depth upgrade took several hours to fabricate and install. The crew considered spending the last few hours of the day camped out, doing maintenance, tending the garden, fretting over time lost. Briefly considered. For the sake of considering. Quick consensus had them pushing forward.
The chasm continued for kilometers, gradually widening as it went. Rekha sensed a sudden blossoming of open space before the cyclops did. A massive open space. Mostly open. Near the edges they could see were pillars soaring from sinister bottom to gloomy ceiling, half a kilometer above, big, black things that glistened in the red glow of lava.
"Incredible," whispered Venjie.
The molten river below them plunged down to the cavern in a rushing, splashing lavaflow that joined a dozen others. Lava pooled in boiling puddles and lakes. Black smoke spewed from a thousand vents, joined floating ash and mineral-heavy water to cloud visibility, make it impossible to see more than a dozen meters forward.
And among it all, fish, sharks, and other strange life thrived.
"Did," Rekha gaped. "Did that fish just swim through the lava?"
"Not possible," came from Alandris.
Not possible? Had she been paying attention to the pinnacle weird that was this planet? Rekha cast a disparaging glance over her shoulder.
"Keep your eyes ahead, pilot."
She set the cyclops on a slow course, straight ahead into the gloom. Her eyes darted from camera to camera, from lavaflow to lavaflow, from weird fish to weirder fish. She barely noticed the veritable mountain looming in front of them until its hulking form nearly swallowed them. The hard bank she forced had the cyclops groaning and the collision sensors screaming.
"I told you to keep your eyes open!" Alandris barked.
Jaw clenched, she growled epithets.
"It doesn't reach to the ceiling." Venjie broke the tension.
What?
"This thing, this mountain. It has a power signature. No, Rekha, keep us on a slow course. It might be hollow. I'd like to find a way in."
Nerves jittering, Rekha kept them close until Venjie called out a halt, that sensors had found sign of precursor tech. Squinting, Rekha could see a hint of green in what appeared to be a tunnel mouth ahead and above them. She glanced at her crew. No one would be able to sleep tonight if they left this unexplored until tomorrow.
As she angled the cyclops into position, she stretched her mind, feeling for predators within the mountain. Aggressive, hungry glimpses of several small ones, probably sharks. She turned her mind outward. Nothing new.
"Are we exploring?" She turned around.
Venjie checked the time, shrugged at it. "I'd like to."
Alandris sighed. "I doubt any of us will sleep well if we don't."
"I agree."
Alandris sipped at her water. "Venjie, you've been dancing in your chair for an hour. Go unload."
Venjie was up and dashing for the ladder before Alandris finished.
The cyclops was almost in a good position for a camera to peer into the tunnel. Just a… Rekha frowned at a strange feeling. She did a quick psi sweep and gasped. There was a massive presence coming toward them. Pinnacle massive. She cut off the lamps and switched the engine to silent running mode, had the cyclops come to a stop.
"Rekha?" Alandris wheezed from her chair.
Leviathan. She replied as the interior lighting switched to red. She brought up the dorsal camera, aimed it in the direction she sensed the presence. A huge shadow moved in the gloom.
Soft footsteps announced Venjie's return. "What is it?"
"Leviathan," was repeated in a whisper.
"I'd hoped we left the ghosts behind." Venjie muttered from her station.
Rekha did her best to determine its physical characteristics. The density of the water and the strange way it felt was making it hard. "I don't think it's a ghost." She frowned. It seemed to have multiple tails and long fins. Oh no. She flashed back to the skeleton under the research facility. Was this one of those? Were those arms and hands, not fins?
Something new? Alandris asked.
I think so.
"What the… cyclops power levels are dropping fast!" Venjie announced.
Power loss?
"How?" Alandris demanded.
"Not sure. I…" she gaped at her displays. "There's minor damage in the hull. Twelve separate locations!"
"Rekha?"
She was already scanning the immediate waters. "There's nothing, no, wait, there's fish. Or some sort of fish?" They weren't that big, less than a meter. No fins. "All over the hull."
"Some kind of parasite feeding off our energy? Rekha, can you remove them?" Alandris wheezed, fell into coughing.
Psi prodded at one of the squishy creatures, found the gills, and stabbed. It detached and scampered away. She did the same with another. "Two off."
"Power drain slowing," reported Venjie.
Rekha methodically removed each parasite, then two more. "Remus, keep an eye on that. More will probably show up."
"Of cour-" She choked. "What is that?"
"What?" she stepped back to let Venjie get closer to the screen.
"That!" The camera feed Venjie was pointing at seemed like one big blur. Was there a tech issue? A fish darted by, clear as could be. Not a tech issue.
"How big is that thing?" Venjie hissed.
The leviathan. Oh. It was big enough that it didn't fit in the camera's frame. The screen blurred, the tentacles vanished. Her eyes flicked to movement seen through the window. Oh no. Mottle greens and reds flashed across the creature, from powerful, teeth-filled jaws, to clawed, terrible hands. Four searing yellow eyes, flaring dorsal sail, whipping tentacles. No tail, yet for all intents and purposes, the thing looked like a dragon. A dragon!
"How does this planet keep getting worse?!" Venjie wailed.
Rekha's heart was drumming in her throat. Her eyes were fixated on the veritable dragon that was patrolling the hellscape. It was easily the size of the Aurora. Possibly longer. And it was thriving in painfully hot waters, didn't seemed fazed by the bubbling lava or the vents that spiked the temperatures to literally past boiling. How? How wa-
The dragon reared and spit a ball of fire.
"What?!" burst out of her. What the fireball hit, she couldn't tell. It was a black something that the dragon grabbed with its hand and tossed it in its mouth for a snack.
Venjie stumbled backward from the window, right into Rekha. Reflex embraced the trembling body pushing into her. Venjie gasped, turned, flung arms around her, and buried her face in her neck. "Someone tell me I'm dreaming," came her muffled protest.
"I'd appreciate being woken from this nightmare as well." Rekha groaned back.
"I'm going out on a limb here and saying one of those is what wrecked the precursor base." Alandris whispered.
"Yea."
Despite the morbid situation, the feel of Venjie in her arms was like coming home. Her heart buzzed like a prawn drill at the thought, the closeness, the feeling of rightness of Venjie pressing close, warm breath tickling Rekha's neck. She wanted nothing more than to hold Venjie forever, to keep her safe, to comfort her, to love her and get all of that in return.
Frozen, they stood there until the dragon was a faint blur again.
Venjie was the first to move. She stiffened, as though she just realized the position they were in, dropped her arms, and when Rekha dropped her own, took a step away. "My apologies." She mumbled.
Throat too dry to respond, Rekha shrugged.
"Do the cameras see anything?" Alandris sighed.
Not yet. Rekha finished easing the cyclops into position. Two green lamps stood guard in the mouth of a five meter wide tunnel. Both were meter tall structures similar to ones on the island around the precursor base that seemed to serve no other function than lighting the way. Beyond them, the tunnel immediately dipped down.
"Two precursor lamps and a tunnel that goes down." Rekh reported. "I'd suggest dropping the prawn, but we're beyond its depth limit. We need a moonpool to fab another upgrade for it."
"We aren't thinking about going all the way back to the mushroom forest, are we?" Venjie challenged.
"No." Rekha met her gaze. "We don't have time for that."
The fight went out of her. She nodded. "Building here doesn't seem like a pinnacle idea."
"It's been a long day." Alandris rasped. "We need to eat and rest. We'll tackle this problem tomorrow."
Rekha nodded. Her stomach was grumbling, she was thirsty, and her feet ached. She locked the cyclops in place, checked for parasites, removed one. Dinner was a quick endeavor. Fish and kelp salad. After, they separated as usual.
Within ten minutes, Rekha and Alandris were back at the table.
Rekha chose a psi channel to save Alandris the physical effort. We can speak like this to save your voice.
A smile appeared. I appreciate that.
You're welcome. Rekha's smile was brief. We don't have time for long, quiet evenings anymore. I'm going to work until my eyes won't stay open.
Of course you will, came Alandris' unimpressed drawl.
Rekha kept on. This area is massive. And with that, that dragon swimming around, we won't be able to move quickly. Since we have to build a moonpool for the prawn, we should build a scanner room too. It will save us a lot of trouble.
Scanner room? Alandris opened the file on her PDA. Yes. That's a good idea. Do we have the materials for it?
I believe so.
They flicked through their PDAs, looking at blueprints and other ideas. Would designing and building a harpoon gun would be worth the effort? It would have to be massive to do any damage to the dragon. Otherwise it would only make the dragon angry. They didn't have the time or resources to devote. Bad idea. Stealth and speed were the best.
Venjie is here. Alandris alerted her.
Rekha looked up from her PDA. "We're discussing options."
"For what?" Venjie took her seat.
"Exploring this place. It might be worth it to build a habitat."
"Do we really need a habitat? We have the cyclops." Venjie asked. "And what if that mountain has the disease facility?"
"Whether the disease facility is in that mountain or somewhere else, we need to upgrade the prawn. Fastest way to do that is to build a moonpool here instead of backtracking home or building elsewhere. I don't think we'll be lucky enough to find the facility in there. I'd love it if we did, but we aren't at the notated depth. Second reason for the habitat is to build a scanner room. Fast exploration by cyclops ceased to be an option the moment we saw that dragon."
Venjie shuddered.
"The prawn will have a hard time navigating with all the lava around, even if we equip the grappling arm. The scanner room's sensors are significantly more powerful than what we have. It can map and search for specific minerals. We might be able to input precursor data, have it search for that before we take the prawn out. The room also has significant energy costs, but that's actually a nonconcern here."
"Why?"
"We have blueprints for a thermal generator. These waters are more than hot enough for a thermal generator to spit out enough energy for two scanner rooms."
Venjie was nodding. "How are we going to build this? I know the dive suits' specs can handle the pressure and temperature for a limited time, but hab building can take hours."
The suits handle this temperature? She'd almost been burned getting out of the prawn earlier! No way. The suits couldn't handle temps of 80 degrees Celsius. Blood would boil in her skull before the first support strut was finished.
Could you use the builder from the prawn? Alandris suggested.
Rekha considered it. Maybe. We'd have to input directions and attach the hab builder to the arm before launch. I don't know how long it will hold up in this environment. We should be prepared to fab a couple.
At Venjie's furrowed brow, Rekha repeated question and answer aloud.
"Prawn d-pocket can hold all these materials, right?" Venjie held up her PDA with a scanner room's building requirements.
She considered the mass. "With room to spare."
"Room for the thermal generator? If we can build that and the scanner room at the same time, it'd be better."
Rekha cleared her throat again, frowned at the lack of relief, cleared it again, took a drink of water. "I believe so."
Venjie studied her for a long moment, shook her head. "Thermal generator, moonpool, and scanner room. Is that all?"
"We'd need a multipurpose room for the hygiene closet alone. Extra space for long use would be good. I can't think of any other necessary sections. Moonpool and generator are first priorities."
Fingers moved furiously across her PDA. "We're past the prawn's current depth limit. We should rethink going back up a bit, building in that chasm."
"There wasn't much solid ground to build on in the chasm. The prawn barely had enough room to mine. And the closed space might interfere with scanning this chamber. We need to build out here. We aren't so far past the limit that the prawn will immediately implode. I'll have time before the hull gives way. What we don't have time for is building somewhere else only to take it down and rebuild it here."
"Rek-"
Alandris held up a hand. Can you use psi?
For what?
Could you stay in the cyclops' cockpit and direct the hab builder?
Could she? She was probably adept enough to handle manipulating the device. But how would they get the materials to it? D-pocket link was extremely limited in range.
Venjie's fingers drummed on the table.
"Alandris suggested I use psi from the safety of the cyclops. I think I can manipulate the builder from distance, but there's the matter of getting the materials down there."
Thought creased her face. "We could build a standing locker. Can you move one of those from a distance?"
The wall lockers were fused to the cyclops' wall for access to its power source that enabled d-pocket use, but a freestanding one could be moved. They were larger to accommodate their internal battery. Slightly heavier. Not as heavy as a person, yet it would strain her ability, especially with the overload damage she was suffering. Once it was in water, it should be easy enough to maneuver alongside the builder.
"If you fab it by the hatch and leave the builder on it, I shouldn't have any trouble." Rekha said.
I suggest we build by the lavafalls.
"By the entrance?"
Alandris nodded.
"There seemed to be pillars and ledges we can hide the base in back there." Venjie said.
Sounded good to her. "We can get this done this evening. Morning, we'll bring the prawn back to investigate this tunnel unless the scanner room finds something overnight."
Consensus reached, they returned to the cockpit. The dragon wasn't causing mayhem nearby. Rekha could barely sense it off in the distance. She set them on a backtracking course. Sweat poured down her face with every thrum of the engine. What if the dragon suddenly came back? What if it heard the engine this time? Came to investigate?
Her nerves nearly exploded before they made it safely to the lavafalls without a dragon attack or some other horror descending upon them. She glanced up at the kilometers of rock above. It could fall at any time, crush them, or worse, trap them until they all died of Kharaa.
"Rekha?"
She jerked out of her trembling thoughts, blinked at her crewmates. "Yes?"
"Direct the cameras to the west. I'd like to see that area again." Venjie suggested.
She did, and they discussed its merits, then other directions and repeated the process until they found a spot they could agree on. She brought the cyclops in as close as she dared.
A locker was built, filled, and a prepped builder set on it. Rekha grabbed the bundle with psi and ported it next to the chosen site. Eyes open, she aimed it. Eyes closed, she felt out the controls and set it to work. The thermal generator went up without a problem.
Psi probed at the builder. Was it cracked? She brought the thing up to the cockpit window, squinted at it. Battery was low. There was a definite crack in the screen. Edges seemed a bit soft.
Venjie appeared with a drink, looked like she had a question.
"Hab builder isn't holding up well. I don't think it'll make it much longer."
She nodded, made to leave, turned back. "Rekha?"
The builder chose that moment to give out. A spark of light signaled its death. She sighed and set the thing down. They could retrieve it for recycling after the moonpool was up. "Yes?" She gave her full attention.
Venjies eyes were on her toes. "I…" She sucked in a breath, her gaze coming up. Determination made them glow. "I want to apologize for my behavior last night. I was angry and upset about being infected and I lashed out. You were right to take the bottles from me. If even one had broken, not only would we have lost valuable resources, but one of us could have been seriously injured. I'm not happy with how you went about it, but that's a separate issue."
Rekha stared.
"My reaction was inappropriate. I always overreact when I'm emotional." Her gaze dropped again. "Being near you always makes me emotional." She bit her lip, glanced up.
"Thanks?" puffed out.
Another nod. "I've already fabbed a couple builders." She held one up. "I'll go open the hatch."
"O-okay."
The second builder didn't survive an hour. The third didn't make it through the end of the moonpool. The fourth lived long enough to finish the job and build two power extenders.
Moonpool readings stayed red for an agonizing minute before spinning to green with sufficient power levels.
Rekha brought her results to a yawning crew. A yawning Venjie. Alandris was coughing in bed. "Hull needs reinforcement. A couple days here will crack it like an egg. I can add some after I get the prawn into the moonpool."
"You aren't planning on doing this tonight?" Venjie objected. "It's already 2300!"
By this time, she'd normally have been asleep for an hour. At that thought, a massive yawn overtook her. "No," came through the yawn. "In the morning." She still needed to fab protective gloves and shoes.
Ideas for them spun in her head while she readied for sleep, and they were still spinning when she woke up to Alandris' coughing a few hours later. Her sore throat, gummy eyes, and aching body throbbed in sympathy with every cough. She wanted to roll back over and sleep until next year. That coughing and the mountain of work to do got her up and moving. How did Venjie sleep through it? The woman slept like the dead.
Her feet touched the deck. She flinched out of habit, but after a minute of blinking, she realized that it wasn't icy and she didn't need her shoes. Shoes. Yesterday's ideas snowballed into a cohesive plan. An hour later, she was fabbing high density, heat-resistant gloves and shoes. Based off the reinforced dive suit plans, enlarged to fit over her dive suit, they weren't hard to shape. It was adding the layers of non-conductive material that had been the real difficulty. Difficult, requiring some interesting mental acrobatics, but not impossible.
Thoroughly pleased, she made breakfast with a slight smile.
"You're still cold?" Venjie asked.
Rekha looked up. Venjie was talking to Alandris, who had her blanket wrapped tight, was shivering, looking more miserable than a fish out of water. Venjie was flushed, sweat starting to mat her fuzzy hair. Thinking about it, sweat was beading on her own face, dripping down her spine, making her clothes stick.
Hungry? Rekha asked her sick friend.
Alandris fussed with her blanket. Yes, but the idea of food makes me queasy.
I made soup this morning. At least try the broth. She set bowls in front of her crew. Steam drifted up, was probably what convinced Alandris to spoon a mouthful up.
It's good. Alandris tried to smile. It was awful, weak, strained, and looking unpleasantly like a broken grimace.
Rekha focused on her own breakfast. The warm broth felt incredible going down, momentarily soothed her angry throat and sinuses. She was slurping the rest directly from the uplifted bowl when Landris' coughing changed note. Liquid splattered on the deck.
Bowl down from her face, she saw Alandris bent over, heaving. Yellow mess was at her feet, dripping from her mouth. The rancid stench of half-digested goop hit Rekha, and she nearly lost her own breakfast. She had to hold her breath, avert her eyes, get up, and run away.
Half an hour later, Venjie found her sitting by the lockers, head on her knees. "It's cleaned up. I put Alandris back in bed with a crate to catch… there's an empty crate beside her."
"Sorry I ran." Rekha mumbled.
"Our big, bad psionic isn't just scared of small, dark places, she can't handle a little vomit either."
She could! But the smell, oh light, the smell.
"It's fine that you ran. Really. I would've hated cleaning up two messes instead of one."
Rekha looked up at the teasing tone. Venjie was offering a little grin.
Venjie jerked her head toward the ladder. "Come on. Get up. You have an impending death by crushed prawn to squeak out of."
Rekha shuddered at the mental image. Why'd she have to put it that way?
A bare foot nudged at her. It was in sore need of a pedicure and moisturizer. "Get up."
"Yes, cap'n." Rekha grumbled. She cast a glance at her own poorly kempt feet and rose. "I love starting my days with vomit and impending death."
A/N - The game talks about the Kharaa being awful. Degassi crew logs said it was like the flu. Scanner says it makes everything super aggressive. But the pc doesn't really show anything except the green dots mid-game. It left a lot to the imagination. A game mechanics thing I suppose.
I like working with extra aggressive fauna, but not for the human crew. Awful respiratory response and fevers, then vomiting sounded much better.
Same thing with the game mapping. I can't imagine this giant dragon living in such a cramped area as the game portrays. It's like the equivalent of a shark in a fish tank, even that giant one at the zoo. My fic needed more space. More tunnels :)