The evacuation

Dustin had posted a guard on the doorway that led to the stairwell. Admittedly, guard was a rather grand term for him, O’Zaxx and Yril’k taking turns watching the door they’d hand-cranked shut and then wedged with a crowbar one of the scientists had brought up from the depths without thinking about it during the earlier escape. Aricia had been tasked with keeping an eye on the only other route in to the level - an access shaft leading to an elevator that only went up to the floor directly above, intended for use in speeding up deliveries. As it led directly to the main entryway - which was currently sealed - it seemed unlikely as an attack route, but Dustin had wanted eyes on it regardless.

Jaisyl was sitting quietly with the butterfly woman, and had offered to take a turn watching when the Lieviran needed to sleep - which seemed to bode well for her mental state moving forward. The Tho’unn had been lost in thought since their frantic scramble up the ice tunnel; Dustin didn’t have the energy spare to question what was going on there while there was still the risk of further attacks. He was pretty sure the improvised charge had destroyed the tunnel beyond repair- but who knew how many more tunnels there might be, or if the monsters could dig around the collapse somehow. Heran’s body was another question that loomed in his mind - what had happened to it?

The storm howled above them. At least this close to the surface it was just about possible to get a call through to Sola, so Sammie and the others were aware of the situation. Defia had offered to risk a landing on her own, stating that she’d be able to survive even if the shuttle crashed and that the **** temperatures would only slow rather than kill her, but Dustin had forbade it. He didn’t want to risk losing touch with any of his crew, and in any case Sola’s sensors had confirmed that the weather was changing.

They’d have (according to Sola) a two hour window between the end of the blizzard and another snow front moving in that was the advance edge of what was going to be the cold snap O’Zaxx had mentioned. It wasn’t a large window to move two hundred-odd people off-world; they’d need to run the shuttles pretty much constantly (and full to capacity) to handle it safely, although Sammie holding Sola in an orbit so low that it was scraping the top of the atmosphere would do a lot to give them more time.

As the last of the wind and snow above began to die down, Dustin’s communicator crackled. “Dusty? We’ve got the shuttles ready to go - as soon as the one you took down lifts off, the next one will leave the shuttlebay; we’ll keep rotating them in transit.” Sammie’s voice was authoritative, and with good reason - in matters of organizing the available pilots on board, she was the one in charge.

Dustin nodded, mostly to himself, and replied. “Roger that Sammie. We’ll start moving up to the entrance now. Can you get Bleu and her team to sweep everyone for parasites when they arrive? We’ve not gotten any further with figuring out what happened to the local engineer and I don’t want to take any chances.”

The climb up to the entrance was nerve-wracking. Dustin had Rye and Yril’k go ahead, the Rabyth having slept off her previous ordeal during the long hours of the storm; between the pair of them, anything that had decided to make the entryway to the base into it’s nest would have a very bad day. On the plus side, that meant they weren’t all walking into a trap - on the minus, it meant that guarding the stairwell to ensure nothing came at them from the basement was essentially left to Dustin and Aricia, both of whom were on edge already after staring at sealed doors for hours.

Beneath them, the stair spiralled down into darkness. On waking, the first thing Rye had done was hook her tablet into the outpost’s network, adjusting the power grid on the fly to kill power to the lower levels in order to allow them to work the main door. While it was technically possible to release the catches and operate the massive entrance manually, hours of ice build-up would by now have frozen the wheels solid, they were pretty sure - and nobody fancied standing in the cold with blowtorches melting ice while their window of escape closed.

From above him, Dustin heard an alarm sound as O’Zaxx overrode the base temperature safeties and **** the external door open without sealing the internal door. A wall of cold air rippled in, Dustin’s suit sensors chiming alarmingly as the temperature rapidly dropped. It was still night outside, and Bleu’s prior warnings about the importance of protective gear hovered in his brain as he peered down into the void below, his and Aricia’s helmet lights the only spots of visibility in the darkness beneath.

As soon as the first shuttle launched, the second came in for a landing. Dustin was pretty sure Sammie had accelerated the transfers for some reason; he’d need to ask about that when he got to the ship. For now however, it made things easy - once the shuttle doors opened, the next wave of evacuees hurried out into the frozen wastes to scramble inside. As the last escapee was closing the door behind them, the pilot was already spooling the engines - while overhead the lights of the next shuttle could be seen descending towards the landing pad.

Jaisyl and Aricia left with the fourth group - Dustin had pulled Yril’k back down to help keep watch, while Rye was sat with O’Zaxx monitoring the increasingly dubious state of the two reactors she’d gotten working. “Reckon we’ll probably lose all power around about the time we’re on the seventh or eighth lot,” the bunny girl said with a worried frown as she tapped her tablet. “Something’s messing with the fusion bubbles, badly, and I’m having to adjust the projectors on the fly… but there’s only so long I can keep dancing remotely before the bubble fails and we lose a reactor.”

Having her actually monitoring in real-time as whatever had presumably knocked out the rest of the base’s power attacked their only means of keeping the lights on was a benefit, in that it proved to O’Zaxx that there was definitely something down there - but it was also increasingly alarming as it meant that whatever the monsters Dustin had fought were, they had either survived the cave-in and explosions… or there were more of them.

Jaisyl bit her lip in frustration as Bleu ran the main medbay scanner down her body. “I keep telling you I’m fine” the princess muttered, mostly to herself - there was a queue of people waiting under guard for the medic’s attentions, and she felt useless just lying there. Even with all the Queri’s assistants and all the medbay scanners working at once, it still took time to process a shuttle-full of people - not to mention the varied species meant that each group required the scanner settings to be adjusted.

The fact that both Jaisyl herself and Aricia also had to be scanned despite their sealed vacsuits had irritated the princess at first, but looking at the queue as she’d arrived in medbay had helped her understand why. If some people were able to skip the procedure, it would no doubt lead to resentment amongst the lower classes; that kind of thing could lead to riots and with almost two hundred new arrivals - who would most likely be bunking in converted berths in one of the warehouse hangers… It would not be good.

So, she endured as the scanner beeped over her form, before the doctor peered down and smiled. “Nothing of note. Asides from a minor calcium deficiency - I’ll let Naera know once this whole business is over. It’s nothing serious,” Bleu added as she helped the Tho’unn up, “but it’ll make your horns crack if it goes on long enough. Now, if you don’t mind…”

Jaisyl fled the medbay the instant she could. With the evacuation underway and no medical training, there was little she could do to help, and a lot she could do to hinder by getting in the way. So, instead, she headed to her room and closed the door. As an afterthought, she thumbed the lock. “Computer?” she paused, unsure of herself as Sola chimed, before adding “notify me when the captain comes back on board.” Then, she pulled off the leggings and top she’d been wearing under her vacsuit and dropped them into a washing hopper, followed by her underwear.

“Shower, pajamas, sleep,” she repeated like a mantra as she closed the hopper. The tumble, the climb, the fear… her body had been drenched in sweat on that horrid iceball, and now she felt disgusting. As hot water cascaded down her body, her black and white hair slicking against her head, the princess groaned. Leaning forward, she pressed her forehead against the cool tile of the shower. “Stupid human…” she muttered to herself, trying not to think too hard about how quickly he’d jumped to save her.