The emergency capsule plummeted to the foreign moon. Leigh braced for impact just in time.

[ONE SECOND.]

Her lungs were at full capacity just in case of a suit malfunction. Luckily, that wasn’t the case. The collision jarred every bone in her body, but the only additional wound she received was a small gash over her left wrist. It didn’t hurt, not when compared to her head. Her vision blurred from the pain and the wailing alarms only increased in urgency. Her temple throbbed, but the situation didn’t give her time to recover.

[HULL BREACH DETECTED.]

[VITAL LIFE SUPPORT SYSTEMS FAILING.]

[IMMEDIATE EMERGENCY EVACUATION RECOMMENDED.]

[SHUTTLE BUOYANCY FAILING.]

Leigh cringed as water started to fill the compact capsule. It was a slow trickle at first, but it quickly picked up in speed, urging Leigh to unharness herself with trembling fingers. The throb in her head was insistent, but Leigh tried not to let it mess with her concentration. She pumped herself with just enough painkillers to numb the pain, but not enough to slow her down.

She checked her suit for damage and had the nanites fill in the small patch over her left wrist. She’d deal with wound under it later.

The airtight headgear, at least, had not failed. Leigh didn’t want to breathe in the moon’s air before she was sure it wasn’t toxic, and she had no idea what kind or organisms lived in its oceans.

The dripping water filling the capsule had soon turned into small rivulets of icy cold water. The level had already reached her calf. Counting her breaths, Leigh methodically set out to control her breathing as she surveyed the capsule, simultaneously replaying the last five minutes of her CHIP. This was no time to lose composure.

Their shuttle had hit something, or something had hit them and it had broken into pieces. There were shots of other Selects being launched in every direction with the auto-deployed emergency capsules that enveloped them like bubbles of metal and synthetic glass. She watched her fall while using her CHIP to interact with the capsule. She needed supplies, rations and… the mission.

Leigh read over the mission parameters again just as the final seconds of her fall replayed in her CHIP. The communication array. It was their job to set up a communication array, but how were they going to do that now without their shuttle and the necessary parts and components? As if sensing her question, her CHIP asked:

[DO YOU WISH DETACH RT48-COMMUNICATION ARRAY BUILDING BLOCK 3?]

[YES | NO]

“Yes!” Leigh urged frantically, aloud. The cold water was reaching her thighs and the capsule was sinking. They were already five meters underwater and she didn’t know how deep the ocean was. She had to get out. Fast.

[RT-48 CABB 3 DEPLOYED.]

A small icon appeared on the edge of her visor. The block was floating up to the surface. At least its buoyancy seemed unaffected. With its separation from the capsule though, the metallic cage only sank faster into the unknown depths of the ocean. Leigh cast out a short-range, low-frequency scouting beacon. It would pay to err on the side of caution, she probably shouldn’t go around advertising her location. She still didn’t know what had shot them down.

Trudging through the now waist high water cascading in through growing rivers, Leigh spared the capsule a last look before diving for the exit hatch. At least she’d been lucky enough for the hatch to be located at the bottom of the capsule. She had already sunk eleven more meters. For a normal human body, exiting at the current depth would mean death. Her suit and nanites would be the only thing keeping her alive, but she couldn’t be sure for how long that would hold true. Even they were not infallible to high enough water pressures. She had to get out before it was too late, and if she’d have to wait for the water to fill the capsule, she probably wouldn’t make it.

Leigh counted her blessings and released the hatch. Pulling herself through, she gripped the sides of the capsule to pull herself around the exterior of it to the top where she launched herself upwards. Only then did she spare its sinking shape a final glance, watching as it fell into the dark unexplored depths of the moon’s cold ocean. The capsule sank faster and faster as Leigh kicked her legs, urging herself in the opposite direction, to the surface. The capsule’s lights flickered and then went out completely.

Breathing steadily, she looked up at the bright surface. She kicked her legs as quickly as she allowed herself to. Any more and she would be tiring herself out unnecessarily. Her oxygenation levels looked good and the beacon came back with its results. The ocean floor was more than 57m deep, but Leigh couldn’t know how deep unless she increased its magnitude. She wasn’t willing to risk that yet. She heaved a sigh of relief, she’d done the right thing to exit the capsule when she did. It meant that she missed on some potential capsule salvages, but she didn’t have time to dwell on it now. The building block, at least, was secure.

As Leigh steadily made her way up, she kept an eye on the block that had already made it to the surface. A strong wind at the surface had managed to carry it over a dozen meters away, she kicked her legs a little faster. Using her CHIP’s footage she tried to triangulate the other Selects’ locations. Unfortunately, most of the data was visual in nature. She hadn’t specifically configured the CHIP to keep track of her Tent’s positions yet. Stupid. It had been very stupid of her.

Giving herself a 10% margin of error, Leigh calculated a potential landing radius of 100km for eight of them There were two that had separated a few seconds earlier and could potentially be as far out as 120 or 130km. Leigh sighed. They only had seventy nine hours to do the mission, and part of it would need to be wasted in assembling her Tent again. She couldn’t complete the mission without them, even if she wanted to. She only had one of the ten building blocks.

Leigh opened the shuttle’s schematics, and sure enough, each Select had been deployed with one part of the Communication Array. Ironically though, without an active communication array, she couldn’t contact the other members without alerting everyone on the moon. Leigh breached the surface of the ocean’s waves and the wind knocked waves into her headgear, dunking her right back into the water. The wind was a lot stronger than she’d anticipated. Looking around, she found the direction in which the block was floating and swam after it. It had traveled a ridiculous 42m in the time it took her to swim the last 5m to the surface. Its flotation might still be working, but its automatic connection to her CHIP wasn’t. She’d have to physically find it to activate its propulsion system.

With a steady stroke, Leigh considered her next steps. Retrieving the sunken capsule was impossible, so she stopped monitoring its progress to the inky depths of the unknown moon. Instead she reverted some of her attention back to the Suit Initiation Procedure. Who knows, if she’d progressed further already, she might have more options at her disposal, like flying maybe? It sure as hell would have been easier than treading these perilous waves that cheerfully bashed into her, smashing her back and forth, hindering her progress a lot more often than helping it. Without any other supplies available, she’d need more of its functions unlocked as soon as possible.

Then, she looked through the CHIPs records until she found the last Select sighting in the crash. After retrieving the block, the first order of business would be to gather all of the Tent in one place, and the best place to start with that was finding the one closest to her. It was Torren, the kid with the loose strap in the shuttle. Previously ranked 879. Leigh didn’t want to immediately check his Rank, but it was an automatic tick she couldn’t seem to shake. She Leigh justified it by telling herself that knowing her partners’ strengths was more important.

Going by that information, and assuming East was where the sun rose, the guy was five to fifteen kilometers to her southwest. Leigh swam northwest until she reached the block. There, she removed the manual back-up link, if the landing hadn’t smashed so many of the capsule’s functions to bits, she would have been able to access directly through through her CHIP. The little link-up cube of nanitized metal flowed into a bracelet that clamped around her injured left wrist. She winced at the painful reminder, and then shoved the thought aside for later.

Having secured her building block, Leigh allowed herself to heave a small sigh of relief. Then, she changed her swimming direction to the southwest, directly against the wind, towards Torren. He had landed closer to land than she had. If she went for the shortest route to land herself, she’d save herself about 4-6% of the distance, but she considered it worthwhile. It was possible that Torren had encountered similar or even worse difficulties than she had. He might need help, but it was also a lot safer to proceed as a duo. If she’d been closer to land she would have either waited him out or swam toward him. It increased their chances of success in the unknown setting. It also made locating each other easier. The longer it took them to get together, the further wind, time and distance could get in the way. Leigh could get to land 50km from where he did, instead of the maximum 15km of separation they were currently experiencing.

Ascertaining herself that she’d made the right decision to seek him out first, instead of land. Leigh picked up her pace. The strong gusts made progress a lot more difficult than they had to be. Leigh reigned her emotions in. Everything was seemingly going against her, but she didn’t have time to pout over it. Without the wind, the 2-by-1m block would have managed to propel itself by itself. Instead, she helped the block along by pushing it a bit. The only upside was that its buoyancy helped conserve a fraction of the energy it was taking to move it forward.

With controlled breaths, Leigh resumed her swim and found the rhythm best suited for her, the block, the wind and the waves crashing over them. Every 100m or so she would send out a low frequency scanning beacon, trying to locate the other Select. She stabilized her swimming’s heart rate at 80% of its maximum strenuous potential, there was no point in tiring herself out too early. There were still over 79 hours left on the mission.

Leigh didn’t want to resort to direct communication until she got closer, but after swimming for five kilometers with still no sight of him on her beacon, Leigh took the chance for a very low frequency ping. She hoped the guy was smart enough to have all his receiving channels open and searching, otherwise they were doomed. After a minute, there was still no response. Leigh tried again, and still nothing.

Kicking her legs at a relentless, but manageable pace, Leigh continued to ping him while directing her EMs through CHIP-led exercises. After climbing the walls by forcing the EMs particles into her limbs, she’d had some kind of breakthrough, now the CHIP led her through a series of ever-growing challenges to control the discovery. It shouldn’t take every EMs in her body to make her skin strong enough to pierce metal. In fact, with the number of EMs available to her, she should be able to do it with less than 1%. At first, the challenges weren’t very difficult, requiring her to direct a couple dozen and then hundred EMs to link together at a certain location in her body. When she got the hang of how to form an unbreakable EM particle link, things got easier. After almost half an hour though, the exercises escalated leading her to link the particles in increasingly complex patterns.

Leigh was reaching the outskirts of the area she’d delineated as Torren’s potential landing zone when she decided to risk a little short-range communication. The frequency would be a lot more detectable than the pings she was sending out, but if Torren was anywhere in a one kilometer radius, he was guaranteed to receive her message.

“Torren,” she said calmly, “report if able.”

Thirty seconds passed, but nothing. Leigh groaned in annoyance. Why was she even bothering? The guy had probably already started making his way to shore. The better tactic would be for them to meet up first and then proceed as a team. She didn’t doubt that he’d also managed to roughly triangulate her position, but perhaps he was one of the ‘fraud’ haters. She’d already completely given up on his reply another half an hour after that. She still sent out low-frequency pings, just in case, but she was doing it for protocol more than anything. If anything, it might get her points in the Evaluation somehow. She was considering how to contact and reach out to the others, when she heard it.

“HELP!”, an agitated voice bellowed through all open communication channels, of all frequencies, “SOMEONE! ANYONE! HELP ME!”

It was Torren, and because of his loud cries for help, she was able to clearly place him, not 560m from her own location. The guy kept screaming, announcing their location to everyone that was willing to hear. Leigh shuddered at the possible implications, but immediately sent him a low-range message in response.

“Torren,” she said in a clipped tone, not even bothering to hide her irritation, “it’s me. Leigh. I’m in your Tent. I’m coming, what’s the problem? You need to stop screaming. You’re advertising our location to everyone!”

He replied immediately.

“McMann,” he said, “there are squids! They’re everywhere. Get me out of here! They’re taking me down!”

“I’m going as fast as I can!” Leigh picked up her pace, the guy was frantic. “Three minutes. Hold out for three minutes!”

Leigh swam as fast as her body would let her, still pushing her building block along. She meant to help the guy, but the block was more important than even Torren. Without it, her Tent would not be able to complete its mission. It did however, impede her quick progress. Speed was of the essence, but the crashing waves and heavy block made it impossible to gain any.

That’s when it happened. Something inside her clicked, and she knew what to do. It was almost as if the EMs particles inside her were talking to her, begging for her to put them to use. Not completely sure how she intended to use them to gain speed, she established a strong link to each one and then… listened to them. They surged forward like a wave inside her body, matching those that surrounded her. In synch with her strokes, they then retreated and surged again. The movement of EMs particles within her changed her center of gravity somehow and from then on she didn’t have to worry about the clashing waves anymore. Every time a wave tried to capsize her to the right, the particles would wash to the left and keep her on course, toward Torren.

Being careful, but still needing more information about what she would be facing, Leigh sent out a higher resolution scan, targeting the area straight in front of her, where Torren was. Her eyes bulged at the results, but she forced herself to keep swimming. There were three big masses encircling what she assumed was Torren’s capsule. By the looks of the low-definition image, they were completely surrounding him. The capsule’s frame was strong, but the masses were enormous. With enough time and pressure, the squids, or whatever they were, were bound to get in.

“Torren,” Leigh addressing Torren in the lowest detectable frequency she could, “talk to me.”

She tried sounding as calm and professional as possible, hoping it would incite the same reaction from Torren. Without a clear state of mind he would be useless at best and a hindrance at worst.

“I landed and as I was about to get out,” he said in a breathless, but somewhat more calm voice, “I was suddenly surrounded by these… things. Initially there were a lot of them. Over a dozen at least, their tentacles made it hard to get an exact count, but then they had some kind of skirmish and the rest left. Only these three stayed behind, and are now attacking my capsule. It’s cracking under the pressure… It’s starting to flood, but I think I’ll be condensed matter long before that becomes an issue…”

“How long?” Leigh asked, breathing heavily under her pushed exertion.

“Five minutes if I’m lucky,” he said, “probably less.”

“Okay, so what’s the plan?” Leigh asked. “We have to get you out. Do you have anything we can use as a weapon? Do they have any weaknesses?”

“No weapons,” he said, “their weakness is the base of their tentacles. From the skirmish earlier, I saw that they always aim for the base of each other’s tentacles. The rest of their body is covered in some kind of thick skin. From the way it’s taking apart the capsule… I’d say it’s tougher than nanite enforced steel.”

“Cog,” Leigh said, still swimming.

She only had one hundred meters left to go, and she thought she caught sight of some long appendage in the distance, swinging in the air before coming back to the ocean with a big splash. It looks like she’d found Torren and his offenders in time, but she still had no clue how to get to him.

“Look,” Leigh said, commanding the block to stay as close to her as possible, “the only weapons we have are ourselves and the Suits. What can you do so far?”

“I’d been going for the Internal Manipulation route,” he said, sounding a bit calmer, “but after getting in this situation I switched to external. There was no way I was going to progress enough to pose a physical threat to these guys, not soon enough anyways.”

“Did you manage to unlock anything useful?” Leigh asked hopefully.

“I think so… but I can’t try it out unless I get out of the capsule alive… and it doesn’t look like I can. The hatch is completely unusable.”

“I think I can get you out of the capsule,” Leigh said, thinking of how she’d progressed with the EMs particle links, she was already able to make her skin ten times stronger than she had for the ship-wall-climb. “I just need to get through the tentacles… without dying.

Leigh approached the tentacles carefully, trying to make as little movement as possible. She hoped that they would lose their menacing feel close-up, they didn’t. Biting her lip in thought, Leigh realized that going on a head-on fight would be inadvisable. Instead, she needed to distract them somehow.

“You think you can get out of the capsule on your own, if I lure them away?”

“… No,” Torren said. “I just tried. Using Internal Manipulation, I can only bend the nanometal slightly. I could probably do it with enough time, but I don’t think we have that. They’re very fast once they get going.”

“Okay…” Leigh said, discarding the plan that had started forming in her mind.

Now, how could she distract the tentacles without being the focus of distraction herself? The only other thing at her disposal was the building block and that… Leigh’s spine tingled with apprehension when she looked at it.

“Whats the float status of your capsule?” Leigh asked, daring to hope.

“Nonexistent, they’ve destroyed everything…” there was a slight pause before he added in a somber tone, “including the fourth building block.”

“They what!?!”

“By the time I tried to deploy it, it was already too late. The tentacles had already crumbled it to pieces.”

“And you tell me this… now?”

“I was afraid you might not come otherwise…” he said, somewhat guiltily.

Leigh sighed. She wasn’t sure if he was right about the statement or not, but she wasn’t going to spend time thinking about it now. She needed him. From what he said there were more of the tentacles around, and he’d already come up with a potential solution. She had nothing.

“Alright,” Leigh said, bringing them back to task, “I’m going to use a portion of my building block’s floats along with its propulsion system to bait them away… Any suggestions as to how I can do that?”

“… Blood. I think they’re attracted to blood.”

“… Of course they are.”

Less than a minute later, Leigh had carefully increased the wound on her wrist to draw out 500ml of blood. Using a patch of her nanosuit she made a little pouch to contain it. Her suit automatically repaired itself and was once again airtight. Linking some of the nanites in her body with EMs particles, she programmed them to substitute the blood functions in her body until she’d regenerated enough. She then detached four of the five floats from the building block. With most of the floats gone, the buoyance ratio was completely messed up and instead of staying on the surface, the block was slowly sinking about 1m every ten seconds. It was risky. If the final float malfunctioned, they’d be down two building blocks instead of one, but it was necessary. They would just have to be quick about it.

“Any idea how far away they have to be to sense the blood?” Leigh asked.

“No, but maybe another 50m out from where you are? I want to give us as much time as possible.”

Leigh agreed with him and set everything up. Maintaining the link to the propulsion device, she commanded it to go in the same direction as the wind. She hoped the added speed would give them a little more time to get Torren out. On the opposite end of the capsule Leigh asked Torren if he was ready.

“Yes,” he said, no longer able to keep the urgency from his voice.

“Go!” Leigh said and opened a small fissure into the blood bag. With the help of the wind, the propulsion device was already sailing away at full speed. Leigh too started approaching the capsule as much as she dared, monitoring the tentacles. Twenty seconds, then forty passed and still nothing.

“I don’t think—” Leigh began, but was cut short by the one of the tentacle’s sudden movement.

One moment it was wrapped around the capsule like a vice, the other it was whirling away in the direction of the distraction. Before she could even worry about the other two, they too were hot on the first one’s tails. Leigh dropped all her covert attempts and swam full-speed at Torren.

“Try the hatch!” Leigh said, almost upon him.

“I am!”

“Okay,” Leigh said, it had been worth a try, “then get out of the way.”

“And where exactly is—”

Leigh sent the vast majority of her EMs to her right arm, reinforcing it with was many tight EMs links as she could currently command. Lifting it up she punched into the capsule. She’d automatically braced herself for some pain, or at least some resistance, but her arm went through the metal hull like water. Leigh face banged loudly against the capsule’s exterior.

“What the!” Torren complained from the inside.

“Sorry,” Leigh said, quickly adjusting herself and tearing a hole into the capsule’s mangled hull.

Torren was scrunched inside the remainder of the water-logged capsule. He looked at her appearance with a mixture of fright and anger.

“You almost punched my brains out!”

“I said I’m sorry,” she said as she helped him out of the sinking capsule, “I didn’t expect it to be quite so… fragile.”

Torren gave her a sideways look, but said nothing else. They didn’t have time for it.

“It’s that way,” Leigh said, jumping into the waves. It had already sank eight meters, and if she didn’t get to it before the tentacles returned, they’d never be able to recover it again.

“Go ahead,” Torren said, “make sure your nanosuit insulation is working. I’m going to try something when they get back, so maintain a bit of distance…”

Leigh didn’t question him. If he thought he could do it, he probably could. Instead she dove for the now eleven meter deep building block. She struggled to reach it, and by the time she got it, they were already fifteen meters under water. With adrenaline rushing through her veins, Leigh grabbed hold of it and swam to the surface. On the way there she saw the tentacles return, but before she could worry whether or not Torren would really be able to take them on, there was a bluish light that flashed in the dark waters. It was accompanied by a slight tingling sensation Leigh felt around her body. The tentacles stopped dead in their tracks.

“What was… that?”

“External EMs Manipulation.”

“Oh…” Leigh said, slightly envious.

“Yeah, I felt the same way about yours,” he said, suddenly affable after the big threat was gone, “but we’ll unlock it soon enough.”

“Yeah…” Leigh said, agreeing with him, this was just the beginning, “but hey…” she added.

“What?” he asked.

“You going to help me schlugg this block to shore or what?”

He reached her and grabbed one side sheepishly. Combining their findings they decided on a course and started swimming.

“And ahmmm…” he added in the same tone, “thanks for coming to save me. I know you didn’t have to… since my block broke and all…”

Leigh looked at his contrite expression, came to a decision, and joked, “It’s not really like you gave me a choice…”

He looked at her in horror and she just grinned. An uncertain expression clouded his features for a moment longer, but then he just smiled back and said, “Thanks anyway… and… sorry for all the things I was saying about you in… back then.”

Leigh raised her eyebrows in surprise. So he had been one of the ‘anti-frauds’.

“I was afraid you’d ignore me because of it… which is why I went for broadband—”

“Don’t worry about it,” Leigh said, forgiving him. She’d reduce her enemies wherever she could,“but yeah,” she added, “that was stupid.”

He nodded, but continued, “Hopefully none of the other Tents picked up on it.”

“Wait, what?” Leigh asked, confused, “what other Tents? Isn’t our mission to just set up the Communication Array? This isn’t a combat CIM… is it? Shouldn’t they have their own CIM?”

“Well, yeah… but I’m pretty sure we were shot down by one of the other Tents.”

“How come?”

“I tracked down the source of our mid-air collision,” he said, “it was an EMs arrow.”

“An arrow?!”

He nodded, and Leigh didn’t know what to say. What was there to say? They would have to get the rest of the Tent together before they came up with a plan. By themselves, the two of them wouldn’t be able to do much of anything. Especially when others were already about shooting deadly arrows that could bring down shuttles. All the two of them had was a heavy burdening block, and what was a puzzle piece without its puzzle?

After they shared any other information they’d gathered over the last hour, they focused on getting to shore. It took them a minute to figure out a rhythm that worked well for them both, but after it did, silence reigned. It wasn’t however, uncomfortable. They were just both busy with their IPs and other than a rough estimate of the whereabouts of the other teammates, they had nothing to go on.

They were attacked twice more by the tentacle beasts, but Torren dispatched them with ease. Leigh was glad she’d gone after the guy, she probably wouldn’t have lasted to shore without him. In the end, it took them seven hours of relentless swimming against the angry waves. Finally though, they reached the pebbly beach and walked ashore, dragging the building block number three behind them. Leigh and Torren were both in peak physical condition, they had to be, but after seven hours of relentless exercise they couldn’t do much else other than pant for a minute.

“Now,” Leigh said, gasping for air, “now we just need to find the others and figure out what we’re going to do.”

“Yeah…” Torren said doubtfully, it was obvious he was thinking about the block he’d lost.

Leigh almost didn’t say anything, it wasn’t her duty to cheer up the guy who had talked Cog about her behind her back -she had time to review his Social entries on the swim-, but in the end she couldn’t help it. She might still be slightly bitter, but he’d apologized and if she refused to work with anyone that had bad mouthed her before, she’d be alone for the duration of the Academy.

“Don’t worry about it,” Leigh said carefully, not wanting to hurt the guy’s pride, “it’s going to work out.”

He gave her an annoyed glance, and she already regretted her decision. Why couldn’t she just have left him alone?

“Oh yeah,” he said, “and how do you suggest we do that? We won’t be able to complete the array with all the pieces. And if you went over the schematics… you know that building block number four was one of the most indispensable pieces. Without it, we might be able to receive transmissions, but we won’t be making any of our own.”

Leigh had read the schematics, and so she knew he was right. Her breathing had finally stabilized though, and she would be Cogged if she would let a small detail like that hold them back.

“Didn’t you say,” Leigh said with a smile, “that there were other Tents on this moon?”

“At least one…” he said.

“What do you think the chances are they have the same mission as us?”

“Why doe—” he paused and considered her suggestive words for a moment, before his eyes widened and he exclaimed, “OH!”

His head whipped around to look at her with what she thought was newfound respect.