Dark Ice

Torch-beams lit the room almost instantly, revealing a mixture of panic and calm faces. O’Zaxx’s mouth had dropped open, the suddenness of the power cut for a moment making him forget he even had a torch clipped to his belt, while Jaisyl was trembling. Dustin glanced around the group and nodded at the other two. Yril’k had hit her light the same moment he had and was already taking up a position by the door, ready to defend against anyone trying to breach their chamber, while Aricia had followed the warrior woman’s lead a moment later and was now looking at him with the utmost confidence written on her face.

Tapping his communicator, Dustin frowned. “Rye, come in. What’s going on?”

For a moment, there was nothing but static, then the voice of the Rabyth engineer echoed through his helmet speakers. “No fuckin’ idea, Dusty. I looked at seven, then Heran took me over to reactor one as that was supposed to be the most stable. Right as we get there, the fusion bubble just falls apart and now I’m looking at a massive chunk of cold metal. Worse, looks like the initialization pulsar has fried.”

O’Zaxx looked shocked at the Rabyth’s words. “Ambassador… we’ll need to **** the doors to get to the surface; can I request your ship evacuates the staff? If we’ve lost all the power, we’ve lost heating, and the next cold snap will freeze this place solid. If the pulsar isn’t working, we won’t be able to get the reactors back up and running and…”

Rye’s voice cut through the base commander’s request. “Gimmie ten, maybe twenty minutes to finish jury-rigging something and I’ll get the lights back on. It’d be easier if the damn fuel injector wasn’t a sealed unit, but… oh, hold on…” Dustin flicked his speakers off just in time before the bunny girl’s swearing filled his ears.

“Well. In answer to your question, commander, yes you’re welcome to evacuate. But if Rye can at least get the lights on, it’ll make doing so much easier. The bigger question though is why the reactor failed - I’m not a fusion engineer, but I’m pretty sure just **** cold and seismic activity shouldn’t be enough to cause a fusion bubble to collapse. There’s something else going on here.” Dustin glanced at Yril’k and gave a nod, sealing his visor and indicating for the rest of his team to do the same. A moment later, the insect woman worked the manual release for the door, cranking a wheel set into the wall before slipping out the gap she’d opened into the darkness beyond.

O’Zaxx looked from the dark portal to Dustin and back. “What…?” he began, before Dustin moved to the wheel and began to close the door behind the warrior woman.

“Yril’k will be fine out there on her own. She’s just going to check the vicinity in case there’s anything nearby while Rye gets the power back on,” Dustin explained as the door slid shut. “She’s the only one of us that’s armed currently; I don’t want to risk the other ladies out there without weapons or we’d have all gone. Once the lights are working again, we’ll head topside and see about getting some extra equipment down from the ship. If Rye thinks this is abnormal, then that means it’s probably not equipment failure.”

The commander frowned, then blinked as Dustin’s meaning got through to him. “You suspect sabotage? But who would want to sabotage a research facility? And why?”

Shrugging, Dustin turned from the door, walking back to the others as he replied. “At this point, no idea - although there are some people I usually suspect whenever weird stuff happens. I don’t want to assume it’s them however, but either way I intend to find out.”

It was twenty minutes before the lights flickered back to life. The door, however, remained resolutely unpowered. A moment later, Rye’s voice through the communicator explained why. “Got reactor one back up, but it’s limping at best, Dusty. Still no idea what caused it to drop, and I don’t want to stress it before I leave it to go look at the others so we’re running on minimum power. I’ve toggled everything off bar the lights and the topside doors, I figure ya probably wanna get in touch with Sola and get some more eyes down here.”

“That means no lifts, and no gravity-assist on the stairs,” O’Zaxx said as he worked the handle, forcing the door open. “It’ll be a tiring climb, in the cold - good thing you’re wearing your suits. Excuse me a moment…” he left their sanctuary first, before reaching into an alcove and pulling out a crude communicator on a cable. Tapping it experimentally, his shoulders sagged with relief. “Good, emergency comms is still running at least… I’ll get everyone up from the lower levels, just in case.”

Soon, Dustin and the team were climbing up the long stairs back to the surface. Peering over the railing they could make out other figures emerging from more secure rooms beneath them as the base staff began their exodus from the deeps. “Do you have an accurate head-count?” Dustin asked as he climbed, the number of people filtering up from below appearing to be far more than he’d expected.

“Around eighty scientists, plus a further hundred and twenty-odd support staff.” O’Zaxx replied, hesitating on the next step before turning back to look at his guests. “Why? Will it be a problem for your ship if we have to evacuate?”

Dustin shook his head. “No, but I want to know if anyone’s missing when we all get someplace a little closer to the surface. I’ve encountered far too many technical issues that turned out to be attacks or sabotage to be entirely comfortable that everyone will be safe otherwise.”

O’Zaxx nodded and resumed his climbing. “Well, apart from Heran and your engineer, we should have everyone out of the lower levels in short order. I’ll get the section leads to run a head-count for you and we can go from there,” he said - before the rigor of the climb in the rapidly cooling facility made further talk unpleasant.

Dustin’s muscles ached by the time they stopped a level below the shuttle pad. The floors further up from this point were smaller and so would be more cramped for the assembling staff - and more importantly, were more exposed to the surface and thus were losing heat a lot quicker. Even here the temperature was plummeting, leading O’Zaxx to issue a short-term fix in the form of face-masks and additional thermal jackets for those not wearing vacsuits like Dustin and his crew.

The section heads were busy counting and checking in with their staff, reporting to O’Zaxx and as a result Dustin and the others were left more or less alone. Leading the group to a small out of the way corner, he glanced at Yril’k and tapped his communicator, switching to internal comms for privacy. “Thoughts?” he asked the wary Vex’ess warrior while the others followed his lead, switching to the private line.

“I did not’k detect any’k unusual movement’k when I investigated in’k the dark. But I am’k not Defia - I might not pick up on’k things she’k would spot.” Yril’k glanced upwards before continuing, “It is’k possible we are jumping’k at shadows. But I recommend’k retrieving armaments’k from the shuttle regardless. And I will request’k one of my teams to join’k us. Better safe’k than sorry?”

Jaisyl frowned and glanced between warrior and ambassador. “Why would we need weapons - or a security detail - for a simple power cut? Surely, Rye will get the rest of the power back on shortly the way she did the lights and then we can get away from this iceball?” Her words were terse, but Dustin could hear the tremor in her voice; apparently, the princess was frightened of more than just large crowds.

Aricia reached out and squeezed the other woman’s hand. “Dusty and Yril’k are talking about Fractals, your highness. Or Durathisians. Or something along those lines. We… well, mostly they, have had situations like this before where there’s been an attacker lurking in the basement. We should be fine with all these people here, but if we’re exploring the causes of the power cut in a smaller group then we’d be potential targets.” Turning to Dustin, the butterfly woman glanced down at the floor before adding “like Rye probably is right now?”