Power Down

Rye frowned and kicked the pellet feeder again. Reactor one had started without too much trouble, once she’d jury-rigged an ignition sequence at any rate, but reactor three (the nearest one that could be re-purposed to purely provide heat to the icy facility) was being stubborn in the ****. The cold wasn’t helping - she was insulated from the worst effects by her vacsuit, but it didn’t do anything to protect the machinery from the ever present ice.

Heran scowled beside her. “It was jammed before, and this cold isn’t making things any easier to unjam it. Why are you still kicking it? I told you, it was jammed before…” he trailed off as the feeder made a sound rather like a **** pigeon, vibrated, and then began to dispense pellets of fuel directly onto the reactor floor before Rye reached forward and turned it off.

“There ya go. If all else fails, percussive maintenance always works. Or at least, makes ya feel better.” Rye wiped her hands off on her suit and glanced around. “Now we got the pellet feeder working again, all we need is ignition, and that looked in better shape. Let’s try a start-up sequence and see where we end up.” Scrambling down from the side of the reactor, she turned to the console and flipped one of the row of massively heavy switches to the on position.

Electricity whined through frozen circuits as the reactor’s starter coughed back to life. Rye frowned and tapped a dial then threw another switch. Something in the depths of the reactor began to make a grinding sound, causing the entire machine to shake violently before she toggled it back off and swore. “Cogging thing’s not got a stable field generator. That’s going to be a massive pain in the ass to get working if the coils have demagnetized.” Pulling a scanner from it’s holster she scrambled back up the side of the reactor and popped one of access hatches before leaning almost fully inside.

“Can’t quite… Oh, hang on. Got it… I think?” Rye scrambled back out and blinked. “Heran? Where are ya?” She slid down the side of the reactor - and her foot caught on something. Bending, she picked up the engineer’s flashlight and winced, before backing up slowly so that she had the reassuring bulk of the reactor pressed against her back. “Heran? Not funny, dude…”

Dustin felt a lot more comfortable as he checked the safety on the pistol before hooking it onto the suit’s attachment point. The shuttle didn’t have much in the way of an armoury - just a weapons locker with a half-dozen small arms in it and a handful of stun charges. For anything larger, they’d have to wait for the security detail Yril’k had ordered to arrive planetside - but that wouldn’t be happening for some time for three reasons. Firstly, it was night - and nights were long on this world. Secondly, there was a blizzard; if it weren’t for their suits Dustin and Yril’k might have been blown clean off the mountain when they went to retrieve the weapons. And thirdly - with the power out, so too was the guidance beacon for the landing pad.

With the beacon, the gloom of night and the sheer walls of snow that were moving horizontally across the mountain side wouldn’t have been a problem. But without it? Dustin didn’t even give Sammie much of a chance of landing a shuttle safely in the conditions outside, and had more or less ordered the pilot to not even try until things improved. He had no wish to have his lover and a handful of security staff turn themselves into paste in a crash - but that did mean that for now all he had to work with defensively was the limited number of pistols and grenades.

At least the evacuation of the lower levels had gone smoothly. All hands were accounted for except for Rye and… “Dusty, the local just disappeared on me!” Rye’s voice was shaky as it came through the communicator, and Dustin’s calm shattered like the ice that was slowly forming on the walls. For a moment, all he wanted to do was turn and bolt for the stairs - but that could lead to a panic, so he **** himself to move slowly.

“Aricia, Jaisyl?” He called the pair over, and handed them each a handgun. He knew Aricia had at least done basic firearms training with Yril’k - the Vex’ess woman had insisted on it, arguing that given the Lieviran’s traumatic past she should at least know how to use weapons safely in the event the ship was boarded… Or they got into a situation exactly like the one they now appeared to be in. The princess meanwhile just held her weapon between her forefingers as if it might explode while she watched open mouthed as the usually airy Lieviran racked the slider, checked the charge pack and nodded before clipping the weapon to her belt.

“What’s happened, Dusty?” Aricia asked once she’d finished checking her firearm; he flicked communications to private and filled them in while he lead them across to where O’Zaxx was busy talking to one of the meteorologists. The base commander’s face fell when Dustin explained Rye’s distress call and his intent to lead his tiny group to answer it. The Rabyth woman had more or less barricaded herself into one of the reactor’s maintenance ports for the time being, a plasma cutter primed to take the head off anything that tried to attack her - but Dustin didn’t intend to leave her alone in the depths for any longer than utterly necessary.

O’Zaxx worried his hands as he led Dustin back to the stairwell a moment later. “I wish I had some security **** to send with you, Ambassador - but we’re an isolated group of scientists. If someone gets out of line we usually just group up and talk it out. I can’t think what could have happened to poor Heran…”

Dustin frowned and offered the man the last pair of pistols from the shuttle’s armoury. “You know how to use these?”

The base commander nodded, taking the weapons distastefully. “I did a tour in the council fleet - mostly support work for the pirate hunters, but we were all expected to be weapons trained. It’s been almost a decade since I touched a firearm, but it looks like the designs haven’t changed much. Are you all seriously heading back down there? The longer we’re without power, the more ice is going to build up…”

Nodding, Dustin gestured to the other three. “I don’t want to leave Jaisyl or Aricia alone, and more eyes is always better when dealing with some of the things I’ve fought off in dark tunnels like this place keeps threatening to become. And I’m not going to leave my chief engineer without backup. If we can find your man as well, then we’ll bring him back out with us - but my priority is going to be getting Rye and the rest of my crew up here safely so we can bunker down until the storm lifts enough to get reinforcements.”

The stairwell was slippery with ice as O’Zaxx had predicted when they began their descent, the lights flickering intermittently in a concerning fashion. Dustin had faith that whatever patch-job Rye had done on reactor one would hold, but equally if something had snatched the junior engineer (or worse, if he was a saboteur), then at any moment they could be plunged into darkness alongside the ever present cold.

Taking the lead, he kept his helmet light on as a precaution and advanced slowly, allowing his suit’s magnetic boots to get a good grip on the thick metal that sat just beneath the treads of the stairway. Ice crunched as equipment designed to keep him stuck to the hull of a spaceship locked him down onto the slippery concrete platforms, his pace measured to ensure no risk of falling. Behind him, the others followed - Yril’k keeping a watchful eye at the rear, Aricia moving softly with the gentle hiss of propellant as her suit’s stabilizers compensated for the fact that her wings were kept locked tight against her body where they’d not yet managed to get a fully custom built suit, and Jaisyl practically vibrating with nerves.

Dustin had been expecting something - anything - to happen on the way down, but they made it to the floor containing reactor three without any trouble. Getting to the reactor on the other hand, would prove more difficult. “Is… is that a blast door?” Jaisyl voiced what they were all thinking, staring up at the thick black-and-yellow painted slab of steel and concrete that blocked their onward path.