A new chapter for some more of The Hungry Stars is here! We transition back from Rally to Nibiru and Fata Morgana for the final twenty-eight seconds of the First Battle of Fata Morgana, and a little bit longer span of time on Samhain, as Echo and Lydia travel into the belly of the beast. Or maybe just the dermis or subcutaneous tissue. Somewhere thereabouts.
For a quick look at the latter encounter, check out the snippet below but for the full story, there's links above. Enjoy!
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"The power grid in this part of Samhain can be finicky," Fischer had explained on the way down. The elevator ride was long. The lift hadn't been used in a long time and it shuddered occasionally as it ground its deeper into the moon. "The basic framework is solid, but as the colony expanded, we needed to run connections from down here up to the facility. They grew right through the shell into the lowest sections, though normally we run the facility off its own grid. These connections are here as a backup. After you decided to blow the Hell out of half of the moon, we needed that extra juice for repairs, cooling the surface and... let's call it operational restructuring."
"Can you define 'operational restructuring'?" Echo queried.
"I won't need to. You'll see if for yourself. Anyways, these connections are basically adaptors hooked into the ichor so it will interface with our tech without triggering a feral response. There's a lot of hybridization and sometimes we get hiccups. Two days ago, some of the security protocols failed while Jacobi from delta shift was working inside one of the conduits. It responded like he was an intruder and, well..." he let out a breath. "He didn't get rebirth, but at least that's not something we need to worry about. The work order I created is for a quick diagnostic on key points in the grid. We're not going to get underfoot of the tech teams, disrupt what they're doing or hopefully run into anyone else. We just hit a few junctions to make sure the power flow is within spec. Five-ten minutes at each. We still have nearly two hours, so there's plenty of wiggle room. We only need to hit three or four before we get where we're going."
"And if we go there first, it might get us noticed," Echo surmised.
"Exactly. Standard protocol is to confirm the adaptors first, then move down the line. I don't want to switch it up if we don't have to. It might not mean anything, or it might mean a lot. The alerts protocol is based on flags. How many are tripped, how big they are and how many you cause in a set period of time. Right now, all that we've done is use an elevator that doesn't see much activity. That's not a very big flag, but if we start creating more, the system will respond to what we're doing. At the very least it will query you... and you don't have any implants for it to contact. I said that nobody knows for sure where you went, but if security tries to talk to us and gets dead silence from two of my team, that will raise a lot more flags than anything we've done. The biggest worry is Brother. He's normally quiet, but all the activity has woken him up. He shouldn't bother with any non-alert flags, though. That's what Observers and the new Silat are for."
He pointed down the hallway to a dock for several five-person carts. "We'll need one of those."
"This doesn't look like the rest of the base," Lydia noted as they made their way towards the destination on their cart. They zoomed down the right side of the corridor. Scientists, soldiers and technicians and the drivers and passengers of other carts barely paid any attention to them. Fischer had worked throughout these decks, and after the bombardment, his engineering staff were an even more common sight as they were called to assist these engineering sections, both above and below the shell. Though the latter decks were untouched by the Confederate assault, there was still a great deal of work to be done; damaged tram lines and destroyed deep-core elevators had to be repaired, cargo had to be transferred in and out, ensuring the labs and research centers received enough power for their experiments and studies.
Fischer hadn't thought about it in years, but the Confederate was right. The architecture here was very different than that of the lunar colony. Beige and pastel colours, not the industrial white and grey of the structures above. For humans, it was a psychologically soothing colour palette that would help put them at ease. Wider hallways to create a sense of openness, despite being buried under kilometers of rock. There was an artisanal quality to the facility here, more than the just the pure functionality of the lunar colony. If you thought about it for too long, you began to realize there was an insidious, calculated edge to everything here. This place hadn't been built; it had grown, shaping itself to the needs of its human herd. It looked like beneficence and care, but in reality...
You never show the lamb the knife.
~
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