Gaining access

The door was annoyingly solid - and more importantly, didn’t have a manual release handle unlike the doors to the safe rooms further up. Dustin checked it over, before reaching a conclusion. “With the power out, we can’t get through to you Rye.” He said, his voice terse in the communicator as he ran his eyes back over the solid wall one final time. “The door to that floor looks like it was built to handle a reactor explosion.”

Rye’s voice was wobbly with concern when she replied. “Gimmie a sec, Dusty. I’ll see… Okay, I can reroute power for a moment - should push the doors open, but you’re gonna lose the lights out there. Not gonna hold it for longer than needed to make a gap for you to get in tho, I don’t want to be stuck here in the dark.”

Dustin hovered his hand over the dead door controls and gestured to the others. “Ready, Rye. Lights on everyone.” A moment later, the stairwell lights flickered and went out - but the control panel glowed a dull green, just enough illumination for Dustin to punch the open command. Heavy machinery went to work, the massive blast door sliding back with a grinding noise; the movement held for a few seconds before stopping, the lights blinking on again in the corridor on the far side as it did so.

Not hesitating, Dustin unholstered his pistol then shuffled awkwardly through the gap. On the far side, he glanced around before beckoning the others through. One at a time, the three women pushed in after him - Yril’k struggling slightly to fit her body in the available space between the door and it’s frame due to her additional arms, despite her otherwise lithe form. As she joined the rest of them, the Vex’ess woman flicked her gaze down the corridor and frowned. “The walls’k are uneven’k,” she observed, gesturing with one of her blade arms as she too pulled her pistol. “That is’k unusual for this’k facility.”

Jaisyl moved closer to Aricia, her hands trembling. The Tho’unn woman had after some difficulty managed to clip her weapon to it’s mount on her suit - even now she seemed hesitant to touch it. “I… I am unsure this is a wise idea.” She said softly, her communicator toggled to only reach the butterfly woman. “Surely we should wait for security from the ship or…”

Aricia cut her off by joining Dustin and Yril’k in readying her pistol. “Don’t worry, your highness. We’ll keep you safe - but we don’t leave anyone stuck in the dark, or underground.” There was a note of steel in her voice as she reassured the Tho’unn, adding “besides, Dusty is strong. You’ll see.”

The group moved off, creeping slowly down the tunnel in response to Yril’k’s concerns. As they reached a T-junction, Dustin paused, checking both directions were clear before turning and inspecting the corners of the walls. “You’re right, Yril’k. These walls aren’t what they should be. It almost looks like somethings eaten into them… acid or something.” Toggling his communicator, he tried to raise the ship to query Defia as to whether Fractals could cause the kind of damage he was seeing but to no avail. It looked like the blizzard above them had made communications into orbit from this far underground impossible.

“Well, we keep our weapons ready, and if we see anything that looks Fractal shaped we shoot first and let Defia ask questions later,” he decided after a moment, before glancing at the others. “Anyone know which way the reactor is?”

None of the three women had known the way, and despite O’Zaxx’s promises there weren’t any maps nearby. Fortunately, Aricia’s habit of taking pictures of everything hadn’t been left behind on the ship - unbeknown to Dustin, she’d been snapping pictures with both her tablet and suit camera ever since they landed - one of which was of the base map. A few moments to pull the relevant file from the reel of images and zoom in and the group had a path to follow.

The lights were still flickering on and off as they trudged through the increasingly battered looking concrete passageway. The temperature readings on their suits showed that the outside air continued to plummet as well, as if the ice crystals underfoot didn’t already inform them of that fact.

Each corner, each junction was checked in the same way - Dustin leading, pistol first, then Yril’k sweeping out wide, followed by the other two as the Vex’ess woman dropped back into her rear-guard spot. It was slow going, but safe. It also let them spot the corpse before they reached it.

Dustin knelt by the body while his security chief kept her eyes trained down the corridor ahead of them. Hevan had clearly been dead for a while, judging by the layer of ice that had grown to cover his upper torso. No obvious wounds - no marks at all. It looked like he’d just been walking towards the exit and then dropped dead in the passageway.

Behind him, Dustin could hear Jaisyl’s rapid breathing over the communicator but he didn’t have any time to deal with her worries right now. Flipping out a handheld scanner, he ran it over the body of the dead engineer before frowning and standing up. “Problem.” He said, then stepped back a pace or two from the man on the floor. “I’m detecting heat in his core.”

Yril’k held her guard position, not even glancing down as she replied. “He is dead’k but warm? Despite’k the ice?”

Dustin gestured Aricia and Jaisyl past the body, his concern for Rye growing rapidly now that his suspicions of Fractal or Durathisian sabotage had been ruled out. “He’s dead,” he answered, backing away from the corpse before turning to follow the others “but something inside him isn’t. We need to get Rye and get out of here, rapidly. Whatever is down here… it’s nothing we’ve faced before.”

When they reached the reactor, Rye practically flew into Dustin’s arms. For a moment, he held her, letting the trembles subside before he gestured back the way they’d come. “We’re leaving. I want everyone out of this facility as soon as the storm breaks, then we’ll sweep it properly with a security team. There’s something down here with us, and it’s not Fractal or Durathisian as far as I can tell.”

The bunny girl nodded, glancing at the reactor. “Want me to see if I can get some more power going first? I did a bit of tinkering while I waited - I’d already got the pellet dispenser running… well, kind of. And I’m pretty sure I reset the field generators enough that this reactor should run.”

Dustin took a moment to consider the request before nodding. “Aricia, Yril’k, cover us. Jaisyl… keep your eyes open. Rye, how can I help?”

Between the two of them, it still took almost five minutes before the reactor coughed back into stable fusion, the bubble weak but sustainable. Rye looked at it in disgust, then picked up a nearby screwdriver and wedged it into one of the breakers. “That’ll make sure anything lurking around here can’t accidentally turn it off, but won’t stop the fuse from blowing if the containment fails. Let’s go.”

The group hurried back along the passageways, ducking around corners with the same precision as before - only now with Rye holding the gun that had previously been Jaisyl’s, the princess all too happy to hand it over to someone better qualified. It wasn’t until they were only a couple of corridors from the stairwell that the Tho’unn woman suddenly froze, causing the others to halt and turn to look at her.

“What is it?” Dustin asked, glancing ahead of them with a worried expression. “I really want to get us all out of here before the power goes completely.”

Glancing back the way they’d come, the princess gestured vaguely. “Back there… the dead junior engineer? Hevan?”

Dustin frowned. “What of him? There’s nothing we can do for the guy now, even if we got his body back to the ship he’s been dead too long for any kind of emergency first aid.

Jaisyl shook her head rapidly. “No, that’s not it. It’s… we’ve passed where we left his body, right?” Dustin nodded slowly, horror dawning on him as the princess spoke again. “But… we didn’t pass any bodies on our way back since we rescued Rye. Where did his body go if he’s dead?”