“ Sys check,”

We had been drifting in the Greenland Sea dark all so we could avoid the sonar sweeps of patrolling submarines for the past two or so weeks. Getting to the optimal launch position required some form of ingenuity and there Irina truly got to shine as an Interstellar Reconnaissance, Intelligence and Navigation Assistant.

They’d plotted the courses of submarines, icebergs, whale pods and even the naval craft patrolling above water. The rigors and blur of activity that had preceded D-Day had been all but enough to keep us from going stir-crazy. Truth be told, we might have taken to it because of the pandemics that ravaged the planet a couple years ago.

““Green,”” Lucas and I replied

“Comms check,”

““Green””

We’d come a long way to back out.

“ Weapons check,”

““ Green,””

“Confirm Psychoneural Handshake,”

“ All green,” “ Confirmed,”

“ Countdown begins in T-Minus 5 minutes. Approaching launch position,”

That was Cassandra’s voice over the comms. She was helping the SI take care of mission detail while Lucas and I lay in two sarcophagi sized torpedoes. It hadn’t been easy to stay still inside of the things, the fear of small spaces was stifling in the confines of the composite shell. Drilling had taken the edge of some of the claustrophobia and earned us a few points in Fortitude for it too. And as soon as Fortitude had reached 10, we finally started interfacing with our undersuits.

“ T-Minus 3 Minutes,”

The undersuit had added to both Endurance and Vitality. It showed up on the Psychoneural Interface, PSI we called it as its own green bar with an upside down greek symbol ᛦ which meant Aegis. Irina’s explanation was that Greek had been used as an intermediary language when they were adapting the PSI for human compatibility. The runes just happened to be close enough equivalents for Nyvari letters.

All I could think as I stared at the HUD counting down on my visor was that all the drills and training that had preceded that day had been worth it. After Cassandra’s tweaks with her own interface we’d been able to recall our starting baselines after Insertion.

ν ∆

Dexterity: (5) 9

Endurance: (6) 9

Energy : (7) 10

Vitality : (5) 9

Æ ∆

Acuity: (6) 9

Insight: (5) 8

Fortitude : (5) 10

Affinity: (6) 9

Discounting our enhanced physiques we were also carrying along our ion pulse rifles and nothing else but vibroblade tactical daggers.

“T-Minus 1 Minute to launch.”

I felt my heart rate hike in anticipation. There was none of the nervousness of doing something for the first time because we'd gone over this thing in our drills; even if it was just simulations. Irina had been exhaustive in their scenario planning. It was conceivable that they would have breached the hull by then and we planned on ensuring that it stayed that way.

“T-Minus 30 seconds”

Our mission was to re-engage the main reactor and establish the Q-Nex communications array. Thereafter Irina could take over from the Machine Intelligence running things on standby mode. Day in and day out we'd studied the layout of the ship until we knew it like the back of our hands. For plan B we'd also done pilot simulations. I had been designated the primary pilot with Cassandra as my secondary.

“T-Minus 15,”

“Bruv?” Lucas' voice came over comms. There was an almost feverish tone to his excitement.

“Yeah?” I responded. I didn't even realize my hands were clenching around the panic bars. I had to be careful to regulate my strength or I'd crush them through the exosuit's active mode.

“10...”

”Whatcha doing after this?”

“8...”

“A vacation maybe? Honestly I feel like I'll wash out if we do another week of this” I replied.

“6...”

“Same, I guess...,” He replied. “ I was thinking how about we go to the moon eh?”

“4...”

“ Haha, ” I couldn't help but chuckle. “ We'll see”

“2...”

“ Okay—Godspee—”

”Launch!”

The comms cut out as I sucked a sudden breath. Even though our gear took some brunt off 9 Gs of acceleration was still a lot. It was like putting the pedal to the metal and suddenly accelerating from rest to 300 kilometres an hour in one second. All I could do was keep my eyes on the countdown rapidly falling as the distance to my target closed in. Claustrophobia and vertigo warred with each other enough to make bile want to come up my throat. Despite the fact, there was no leeway to burf—it would have been unpleasant too if it happened in the visor.

Before I knew it, my pod was decelerating. As the countdown hit zero, it peeled away from me into parts that disintegrated as soon as the inside was exposed to water. My momentum had eased low enough that I was moving at a comfortable pace without snapping my neck from sudden exposure to a denser medium. The exosuit I wore kept my back and legs rigid via the exoskeletal plates running the length of my spine and servos on my knees and hips like a human bullet.

Ahead, loomed the glacier. Jagged chunks of blue ice took up the majority of my vision. It looked like a mountain inverted into the ocean, a gargantuan scale inspiring both awe and dread as I zoomed into my destination. To say it was oppressive was an understatement. I knew what the feeling of being an insignificant blot against a vastness could do. Cassandra had such experiences and I did too when Irina simulated the vastness of space and zero gravity.

I kept my head straight as I stared at my navigation cues. As comms came online, the HUD on the inside of my visor zoomed further to show my mission objective dead ahead. There were other miscellaneous readings like my orientation, oxygen and temperature levels. All other clutter was minimised until I called it up.

A series of dashes to my left showed Lucas’ position relative to mine. His trajectory would take him to a hatch at the aft section while my destination was one at the front. Lucas and I would be in communication when we were inside of the main hull but we would be in comms blackout with the rest from the primary hull. At least until the communications array in the main hull were re-established for the Q-Nex transceiver to work. The first part of the plan hinged on me restarting the communications array—we were on a clock so to say.

Checking that my ion pulse rifle was secure, I drifted, following the last of my navigation cues. Being caught between the oppressive depths and the weight of rock and ice above was nothing compared to being stuck in a claustrophobic pod, but the silhouettes of things swimming in the frigid water gave me the shivers.

‘ I am invisible,’ I breathed in the visor as my fortitude recentred me. Even a Great White would have been hard pressed to bite through my exosuit. Not that there were any in cold currents of the Arctic Circle. The pods of Orcas were also too far from the ice shelf to be of any bother, the hunting grounds in the north were too lean for them to bother.

A couple more minutes and I found myself at the location, the Velastra's secondary hull was directly above me. A large hulking piece of javelin shaped body hung encased in glacial ice like an insect preserved in amber. I sucked a breath at the immensity of the thing, separated from me by layers of translucent ice.

As I corrected my orientation using the tiny micro-vectoring thrusters on my back and feet, Lucas was already at his position working his way through chunks of ice. I pulled the ion pulse rifle from its magnetic lock on the camelback on my spine before my HUD demarcated where I would find the hatch. The ion pulse rifle could be used as a laser cutter for a couple seconds at a time.

“ Continuous fire end,” I breathed, shutting off my improvised plasma cutter. My suit's temperature regulation systems meant I didn't get my sighs fogging up my visor. I had used Phase Shift part of the way through, essentially liquifying some of the ice. The mechanics of the Art were not lost on me. I could agitate molecules and atoms and transfer kinetic energy to material.

Despite that, I had discharged enough energy to raise the ambient temperature by a degree. The water turned to slurry from the ice that had sloughed and melted.I would have used the Vibroblade dagger to cut through the ice but I couldn't trust that it wouldn't slip with the water.

It was also less taxing to use Phase Shift since the very first time. Thanks to that I had shaved several minutes off my time as the hatch was only an ice-sheet away. I put my hand on the ice for the last pulse that would bring me to contact with the hull . Over time I’d learnt to feel the matter I was interacting with to discern how best to displace its composition.

Our tutor on matters Arcana mentioned that a psychometric scan, psyscan for short, was an inherent ability any arcane would need to interact with their environment. Denser materials were more resistant to intrusion therefore needing more aether for their psyscan. In my psyscan the Ouranthyl hull was a blank impenetrable wall which made my work all the easier for me.

I imbued my will to raise the kinetic energy of the ice melting it at a speed discernible to the visible eye. My wristcom beeped and pinged my HUD with a notification that somewhere in the indiscernible mass was a hidden hatch. Like the undersuit, it was requesting a psychoneural handshake to interface,

“ Confirm Psychoneural Handshake,” I murmured.

“ Psychoneural Handshake Confirmed,” the machine intelligence responded through my exosuit speakers. Nyvari arcanotech was a breeze to use if you knew how to use it. It was the best version of hands-free where all you needed was your intent.

The closest similarity was a speech-to-text translator where you replaced speech with thought. It was essentially a rudimentary type of telepathy or in the case of using arcantech, technopathy. The psychoneural handshake was akin to biometrics reading thought patterns and psychic signatures.

“ Access Authorization Code?” the machine intelligence prompted, displaying through my HUD and exosuit speakers.

“ Authorization Rylith-Aero-Nevidia-Two-Avaruus-Null,” I answered. It helped to make my intent concrete when I spoke; I hadn’t mastered it that far yet.

“ Authorization Confirmed, Access Accepted. Welcome Ryan Zeus O’ciaran,” . No sooner had the impersonal machine intelligence replied than a service hatch receded into the hull, splitting two ways to show the interior. That the water did not start climbing confirmed the hatch was still pressurised. Emergency chaser lights flickered on, bathing the surrounding water in a crimson glow as I breached the surface.

I pulled myself up by way of the rungs leaving the hatch to close behind me as I started my ascent. The rung conveyance system was also powered down which confirmed that it was running on auxiliary power.

Life support and internal sensors were both offline so Lucas and I were both expected to keep our visors on. Likewise I’d also lost Lucas' relative position but I check if he’d made it in.

“ Comms check, Vanguard to Warden. Sitrep ” I called as soon as I made it to a platform of sorts where service hatches intersected. “ Lights,” I said. illumination poured from lights sitting on the exosuit’s shoulder plating. The interior was a ceramic white with bulkhead reinforcements ribbing the hatches on all my axes.

Chaser’s lights pulsated, demarcating each hatch with Nyvari script plates showing which went where. I checked the Nyvari runes that spelt my destination to confirm which way to the communication array.

“ Warden to Vanguard, I’m in,” came Lucas' voice. “ Heading to the reactor room, you?”

“ Looking for the communication array service hatch,” I said, humming as I examined the Nyvari glyphs . “ Found it, call me as soon as you have some power. We’re not going anywhere without it.”

“ Will do. Warden out, ” Lucas replied. I ducked into the hatch as soon as it slid up the bulkhead to let me in.

“ Vanguard out,” I responded, crawling on all fours as the sound of my shuffling echoed through the hatchway.

There were no alien roaches nor alien rats. I doubt they would have survived for the same reasons the owner did not exist or did they? That was a question that had been bothering me since my first acquaintance with Irina. It was understandable that they would not want to trust because their directives prevented them from taking outright action against us.

Understandable again that a convoluted set of circumstances happened to set everything in their favour resulting in a situation where each one of us had something the other wanted. Why I was even thinking about that in the first place only reiterated that I had the headspace for it. No longer was I worried about where the next meal or the next place to sleep would be because I was not alone. I had friends. Though it barely felt like three weeks, we had come a long way.

I sighed, banishing the thought of how I would finally raise the issue; I'd cross the bridge when it came to it. I had finally come to the compartment that would allow me access to the Q-Nex transceiver. Save for bridge controls I was not proficient in arcantech to the level of knowing what exactly did what. I brought my wristcom, that nifty quantum computer on a bracer with multitool levels of peripherals.

Detaching a cable from its side I plugged into the port to reboot a powerless console by routing power from my suit. My HUD displayed the boot-up sequence in a string of the esoteric Nyvari script. I caught snatches of what I knew and what I didn’t until the main interface had loaded.

I’d been memorising my mission specifics enough to know what the communication array was like, what junctions I would need to reset the subsystems and which switches to flip so that I could have an uplink to the bridge hull. Lucas was a resident arcantechnician in training and seemed well on his way to becoming a hybrid weaver.

“ Bingo,” I muttered as Irina’s modified code patched into the system. I sat, my visor helmet barely scraping the low ceiling of the hatchway as I turned to sit cross legged. My HUD was projecting a mock-up of a screen and a keyboard that I could use without the encumbrances of having to revert to a Nyvari dictionary. I was essentially booting up the communications array from external hardware, like using an OS on a flashdrive.

“ Warden to Vanguard,”

“ Yeah?”

“ I have that power you need,” Lucas said. “ In two minutes you should have 20 percent, should be enough to initialise systems without shutting off auxiliary,”

“ I’m ready when you are,” I said, typing away a patch program that would ensure auxiliary and main power run concurrently. I did not become a programmer overnight no, the patch was just a macro with a set of instructions set to auto-execute. As soon as the comms array went live, Irina would take over from there.

“ Bruv, this auxiliary power draw is way off the charts. Life support and main electricals are offline but eh…never mind. Here we go, on my mark―Mark!”

I slammed the AR keyboard that did not exist but that I could feel by virtue of my exosuit’s tactile feedback. The thrum of power rumbled through the bulkheads while chaser lights flickered from crimson to amber in tandem with the execution of the program showing through my HUD.

“ Initializing Communication Array,”

“ Initializing Lepton Particle Synchronisation,”

“ Initializing QC Uplink,”

“ Pinging QP address,”

“ Connection Successfu―” the connection was suddenly interrupted by communications from Cassandra and Irina.

“ Sentinel to away team, we have a problem!”

“ What is it?” Lucas answered for both of us.

“ Hostilities above ground,” Irina answered. “ I am trying to initialise as many systems as possible,”

“ Ah…” I slumped back. Relieved that whatever was happening was above ground.

“ What do you mean ah?!” Cassandra snapped with some bite to her voice. The hysteria in her voice was as if the sky was falling. “ There’s a fuckwad of intercontinental ballistic missiles enroute. Someone said fuck it if we can’t have it you don’t too,”

I jerked up banging my helmet against the hatchway with a curse.

“Where are they coming from?” I asked, retracting cable from the service port.

“ Erm, rocket-man?”

”“ Who?!”” both Lucas and I yelled in disbelief.