AN: I've got a larger chapter of this coming out in a few days but for now here's one of the 'mission' type chapters. The episode here is 4x10 'Beneath the Surface'. Actually I'm breaking this chapter into two to increase the update rate. The other half of it will be out in the next couple of days. Wrote this one pretty quickly so haven't checked it over for errors I'm afraid. New arc though! Exciting!

-x-

"Nothing for it." Remarked Taman, "The bearing's come loose, they've been wearing away at it, that's what's been causing all this rattling."

He threw a dirty rag over the transmission he was inspecting and hauled himself up, accepting Ulen's hand as he stood.

"Overseer's not going to like that." Said Ulen, glancing in the direction of the office over on the west side of the pit.

"Yea I know." Taman shrugged, "But what do you want me to say? The whole assembly here will have to be replaced, first it was rattling but if the bearings themselves have come loose in there-"

"Which they obviously have…"

"Which they have, then the whole thing's shot."

"But this is one of the older models, we can't even replace the shaft and make do with another transmission at the end!"

Taman regarded the machine with a frown, but then turned as he heard footsteps around the corner.

"How's it going lads?" Nica walked up. The man had a belt full of tools and a coil of wire around one arm, his broad shoulders covered in a sheen of sweat.

Ulen groaned.

"That bad eh?" Nica asked looking at the other man.

Taman had been a mechanist at the pit for the last month after coming over from the mines previously but he'd already found a whole host of problems littering the machinery that kept them all alive. "I just don't know how it's gotten this bad. Why didn't anyone report it?"

"We did, or Yar did anyway, before… well, you know." Nica trailed off.

Taman had heard about that, some fool had gotten Night Sick and tried to climb up and open one of the skylights. The Bluecoats had shot him on the scaffold before he'd managed to kill them all in his delusions. It was sad really but there wasn't anything for it.

"Who was Yar working with before? I'll need to ask them if anything else needs work, this list is obviously wrong if this transmission has been put down as low priority." Said Taman patting his pocket.

"It was Clars wasn't it?" asked Ulen, "They seemed pretty close, or so I remember."

Nica considered it. "Yea I think you're right. He's over in Refining."

Taman nodded and thanked them, shouldering his own tools instead of putting them around his waist as the corridors between the machines were too narrow and everything tended to catch on them. He went off toward the south side of the pit near the entrance of the mines. All around were men taking their breaks, old and young alike, all taking a breather after working all day in the gas haze of the furnaces and cracking machines. He'd asked once why they didn't install extraction fans in the Refinery but just gotten a truncheon to the back for his trouble. There were odd boxes on the top of the plant there, which looked just like the fans nearer the Overseer's office so Taman thought there was probably already the parts and set-up necessary for the fans in place but clearly the Overseer had decided a few out of breath workers dying twenty years early wasn't that much of a price.

One man, his grey beard streaked with soot held up broken hands as Taman passed by, begging for a crust of bread. Taman didn't look at him, there was little enough food to go around without giving it away.

"Ivano, Ivano we've got a problem in the Salium line!" he heard the call across the pit and looked up, a man was beckoning toward him. Taman ran forward without thinking, throwing his tools up the ladder and climbing up after them.

"What's wrong?" he demanded to the man.

"Who in Gorsten's name are you?" replied the man angrily. "Where's Evani?"

Taman opened his mouth, was that who the man has asked for? What had he heard?

Ivano- no, Ivanovich!

"Nevermind that now, I'm an engineer, I can help."

"On your head be it." Said the man, "The Salium line's blocked and if we don't cut the flow right now we'll have a breach!" and he pulled Taman along, running over boards haphazardly laid over the running wheels of the Refinery.

Taman didn't have time to shudder or turn back. Salium was nasty stuff. He wasn't sure what exactly it did but he knew it went into some of the more complex alloys. There was an old woman who sat most days by the sleeping quarters, he'd heard rumours that she used to be a Yes-Girl but then she'd got splashed by some Salium. It that was true it was no wonder she ate alone now, never showing more than her eyes behind her coverings.

They turned a corner and dropped down into the Salium injection system, ports all around them with rubber hoses running all around them. One was failing around like a serpent and Taman abruptly had the imagine of stamping down on something, but then it was gone and he was to his work.

"What do you need?"

"Hold it steady!" Taman cried, wrestling the hose back into place, one part of it thwacking into his side and almost knocking him over. "One breach in this and we're both done for!"

"I've have it!"

Taman worked quickly, drawing a chain up and around the hose, binding it back into its socket before realigning the flow-limiter. "There it is." He said finally. It wasn't a proper solution, there was only a chain holding the assembly together but it would have to do for now. He made a quick inspection of the pump and found several loose connections which had probably caused the build-up in pressure.

After that was done he check the assembly again and when he was satisfied turned back to the man from before.

"You're a cool one under pressure Comrade!" His fellow exclaimed.

"Not like the pump then." Taman grinned and they both laughed, he ignored the strange word the man had used, perhaps it was some sort of slang? Taman was new there after all.

"I'm Clars." Said the man, "Who're you then, if not Evani?"

"Ivano-" Taman began, then stopped himself, what was wrong with him? "Taman." He corrected, "Actually I was looking for you."

"Really?"

He quizzed Clars over the transmission issue he'd found earlier that day, getting a good list of things from the man. For some reason Clars seemed familiar but he put it down to the frantic work they'd just been through.

"We should probably get along and report this." Said Taman.

"No need, Salium's so important someone else will have noticed the problem by now and be on their way. I send a lad off to get help as well and look, here's the same now."

Taman looked and indeed, a party of workers lugging gear were making their way over. There was a pair of Bluecoats with them, their visors down and padded armour probably not helping them over the rickety gantries. There was a blonde girl at the front carrying a case.

"She's a pretty one." Remarked Clars under his breath, "Surprised the Overseer's didn't keep 'er for themselves."

"Certainly better than the ones you see on the Exchange." Taman agreed.

The party marched up, one of the Bluecoats barging to the front. "Alright, what's going on, which one of you stopped the flow to Forge 4?"

Taman nodded at him, "I did, we were looking at a breech and one of the sockets blew out. We didn't have the tools to fix it here."

"Well I do." Said the girl, "Show me."

Taman went down to the pump again and opened it up, then turned on the Salium extractor again, showing how the hoses danced about, trying to free themselves from the fix he'd made. "And that's only on 20%." He said with a nod.

"The system'll have to be flushed, Salium can't be kept static like this, it degrades rapidly." The girl said, "I'm Kaya by the way." and she nodded at him.

Taman introduced himself but the Bluecoat brute above interrupted him. "What's going on down there? What's the hold up? We've got to resume production!"

Kaya protested that it wasn't safe yet but the Bluecoat shouted her down. "Just fix it!"

"I'll have to weld it in." she muttered to herself.

"Is that sensible? I know this stuff's flammable." Taman said.

Kaya looked at him, "Can you work a torch? This is an L6, you'll have to manually regulate the temperature while I work on the socket."

Taman nodded. The L6s were notoriously unreliable. Fine when they worked, better than the new welders actually, but they didn't have the automatic filters the new ones did. The Overseer's had put all resources into production rather than the equipment to fix the machines needed for production. The end result was more injuries among the workers and Bluecoats breathing down their necks.

Kaya sang as she worked, a little tune half-muttered that Taman could only just about hear it, something about red berries and pines. There was something he recognised about the music but he couldn't put his finger on it. Eventually they finished and climbed back up. By this time a larger crowd of workers had assembled and more Bluecoats were there.

They tried to explain the problem and why they'd have to flush the system of all the Salium in it currently but the brutes wouldn't listen. Clars chimed in, as did a few more of the Refinery workers and the mood became almost mutinous before the Bluecoats drew their batons and their leader pulled a pistol. "You three are coming to see the Overseer." The leader growled at them. "You'll explain to her why production's halted."

They followed the Bluecoats over to the other side of the pit where they were led up to the office embedded in the side of the works. "Go on then." The leader shoved them in.

Taman hadn't ever been in the Overseer's office but he was impressed when he arrived. There were actual paintings on the walls, not good ones but still, oil on canvas, the expense of which would have been his month's wages in the Exchange many times over. The table was wood, a dark varnish on top while the Overseer herself was a rather fat woman with too much cosmetics like some of the uglier Yes-Girls.

"Explain yourselves." The corpulent woman demanded as the workers came to stand in front of her desk.

Clars began and Taman later explained his own actions while Kaya joined in as needed but the Overseer wasn't interested.

"Half rations for all of you for the next week." She sneered, "You're banned from the Exchange for the next month.

Clars gave a small groan and Taman restrained a sneer. Without access to the Exchange they wouldn't even be able to barter their skills for extra food. It wasn't worth going outside it either, even with the Overseer taking a cut of every transaction as the Bluecoats would monitor all the workers' storage to check for unrecorded transactions.

"I'm not punishing you for what you did." Lied the Overseer, "You've got to realise you can't work alone! I know you're all new here but this whole system only works when we all do what we can to contribute. For the City!"

"For the City." They dismally coursed, recognising it as a dismissal and heading out.

Kaya stayed though, "Overseer can I speak to you?"

Taman didn't really care what the woman was going to say, just thinking that he should have actually used the secret storage spaces he had been thinking about creating before he'd been banned from the Exchange.

The two workers waited at the bottom of the stairs for Kaya. It seemed the right thing to do as workers should always stick together. It wasn't really her fault they'd been punished and she was very pretty after all.

The girl herself appeared after a while, angrily pulling herself away from a Bluecoat who'd been escorting her out of the Overseer's office, throwing her out more like, thought Taman.

"Got any Rol?" Kaya asked as she reached the bottom.

Clars wordlessly reached into his pocket and gave her a chunk and Taman took some of his own out as well and they went to sit behind one of the larger auto-sorters to hide as they chewed the algae. The plant was mildly hallucinogenic and was one of the few pleasures available in the pit.

A little light-headed they began to gripe.

"I was telling her all this could be automated." Explained Kaya, the Rol staining her teeth red. "If you laid it out better, had Processing next to Refining instead of half way across the pit. You could have ore go in one end and alloy out the other, no workers needed."

"None?" asked Clars.

"If you build it properly. You'd need people to check it, but that's about it. I just think we should be doing something more important than this."

"Speak for yourself, I was in the mines before, at least here I can make a difference and not be shovelling ore all day." Said Taman, leaning back against the wall.

"True." Acknowledged Kaya.

Clars was looking at them with a strange expression on his face.

"Does the word 'Soviet' mean anything to either of you?"

"No, what does it mean?" lied Taman, he'd dreamt of that word a dozen times since he'd been at the pit, dreamt of red banners and shouting, explosions and desperate fights. He'd thought them nightmares or worst, that he was getting Night Sick.

"You're a bad liar Comrade." Grinned Clars. "I was hoping you'd remember something at least."

Clars leant in, "Just you come find me when you're ready to hear more. We're all meant to be doing something more than this. I haven't got it all figured out yet myself but we don't belong here."

With that he left. Kaya obviously remembered… at least something as well, though Taman didn't know what. In the end though he tried to put it out of his mind through days of half-rations and monotonous work on machines that were bound to fail due to botched maintenance in the past. He asked Ulen and Nina, carefully, about what Clars had implied but they just looked at him strangely and Nica said he should go see the doctor. Taman agreed, but only to deflect suspicion, telling the doctor he'd had strange dreams, but blaming it on inhaling some Salium vapours when the doctor didn't have any answers for him.

At night though instead of sleeping Taman found himself drifting in and out of consciousness, straining to find the knowledge he knew was missing. He realised more each day and knew that Clars was right. Then one day he ran into Kaya.

"How are you?" he asked, she had deep bags under her eyes.

"I'm not sleeping very well." She admitted as if it was nothing.

"I'm meeting Clars tonight by the boilers." He said simply and left before they were spotted. He didn't see the tools Kaya had out on the table in front of her on a grease-stained red towel. There was a hammer lying diagonally on the cloth and a curved blade for cutting rubber tubing lying on top of it. Though Taman had already left, Kaya stayed standing there for a while, touching the tools and wondering why they felt so significant, they were just a hammer and sickle after all.

They found Clars later in the shadow of one of the pumping stations, the groans and rumbling of the boilers around them making it impossible for anyone to overhear them.

"Gemut realised something was wrong first." He told them, "The man who was shot? You remember? He started drawing things on the walls near out bunks but he didn't know what they were. They said he was Night Sick and well, maybe he was, I don't know, but he knew something was going on. He'd been here three months, I came here a month later and you both came a month after that." He said looking at them both. "I think we all came from somewhere else and the Overseers, they've, I don't know… They've done something to us!"

"What?" asked Taman simply.

Clars shrugged and rubbed his brow. "I don't know, and I don't know why, but I remember things I never knew, places I've never been to and people I've never met. You're both the same right? You have the dreams? The red banner?"

Taman nodded reluctantly.

"I been trying to remember more myself." Began Clars, "I remember a few of the people from… before." He held up a hand and ticked off fingers as he spoke, "One was this big guy, I remember his laugh. He used to be on our team I think."

"Grigory? Grigory Yefimovich?" asked Taman, no, he was Ivanovich, Captain Valentin Ivanovich of SG-2! The sudden realisation of his own name! "I remember him. I remember him being my friend. Who else can you think of?"

"Lubev, I remember fighting alongside him."

"I think he's dead." Said Ivanovich. "Didn't we go to his funeral? He died in a battle."

"Did he?"

They fell silent.

"I think your name is Petrov." Said Kaya, looking at Clars.

"Really?"

She nodded, "And the man who was shot, I think he was Dragolov, I don't know his first name sorry."

Ivanovich nodded, "Yes, yes I think that's right. I remember someone else, he had a big beard, like a mane on a lion."

"What's a lion?" asked Kaya.

Ivanovich shrugged, "Something with a mane I suppose. An animal?" he shook his head and swore under his breath, "This is so strange…"

They fell silent for a while.

"Marx." Said Ivanovich, "I think the guy with the hair is called 'Marx'. I think I knew him."

"Is he important?" asked the newly remembered Petrov.

"I don't know; I suppose I wouldn't remember anything about him if he wasn't."

"What about 'the Colonel'?" Petrov said.

Ivanovich looked at him quickly. "Durov. Colonel Durov. Short hair? Sort of flinty eyes?"

Petrov nodded enthusiastically, "Yes, yes! I remember him now. He's our commander!"

Kaya was flushed from the heat of the boilers beside them and her face was red. "I remember him quite differently." She said.

They spoke a little more but soon dawn came and they all had the day shift.

"Both of you, think about what we've forgotten more. Anything you can think of. Don't write anything down, don't do anything unusual, I'll talk to you both later today." Ivanovich instructed them. "Anything else?"

"My name." said Kaya, "I've remembered it, I'm Chaya Vozchik, I'm a chemist."

"Congratulations." Grinned Petrov, "We'd better get away from here before the Bluecoats get up."

The other two nodded and they slipped off into the works, Ivanovich taking a turn through the refinery back to his bunk.