Chapter Text
Mie leans against the wall of the submarine, letting the vibrations of the engines vibrate through her skull. The pulsing rhythm is overwhelming, dragging her down into comfort as deep as the waters she currently sits in, drowning out all her cravings and pains.
There’s a loud snapping noise, and she returns to the present, to see her boss, Scientist Madhav standing over her with a stern look. “Mie. Warrior Mie. Are you listening to me? Stupid vatborn, pay attention to your betters. We cannot hold the mobility test without you, and at this point, we are going to be behind schedule if you do not get it together.”
Mie nods rapidly and apologizes fervently as she finishes pulling on her piloting suit. Unlike the usual skintight ProtoMech pilot suit, this is a touch more padded, making up for the stripped back padding in most of her rides to accommodate for data collection equipment, the sacrifice of being a test pilot.
The Laborer crew of the submarine salutes to Madhav when he passes, and meet Mie with a sneer as she follows behind him. Just another thing she has to accept with the changed status quo of the Society. Under the normal order, the way she had grown up, she would still be a year out from her trial of position. Instead, she had been handed to the Scientist Caste and trained as a test pilot.
The submarine’s nose mounted hangar is a tight affair, more of a cargo space refitted to be floodable and fit the objects of the test. As Mie enters the hangar, the test’s other pilot walks up, towering over her like everyone else does. Un Commander Davies grins down at her. “Well well, looks like tonight's star finally made it, quiaff? You got instructions for us Madhav, or are we just going to improvise out there?” Unlike Mie, who’s just here because she has no option, Davies is a real loyalist to the Scientist uprising.
Scientist Madhav sighs. “Aff, there are indeed instructions. As you both know, the test objective here is mobility and weapons integration testing on the amphibious equipment for the Basilisk quadruped conversion. To facilitate this, Davies, you will be working as Mie’s observer using the Cephalus , which has been configured as a pseudo-U type. Mie, you are to test mobility on the sea floor, UMU mobility, target firing, then you will advance three kilometers to a deep-sea trench and perform depth testing of your systems.”
“How deep? Can the chassis withstand that much pressure?”
Madhav nods. “We are currently at 50 meters, and will be deploying for seafloor operations at 60 meters depth. Calculations estimate that you can reach 90 meters safely, and may be able to reach 120 before you will have a chance of instant destruction.”
Mie nods. Davies walks over to his Cephalus while she boards her Basilisk . The techs quickly seal her up, and she feels the usual warm rush of connection, before she becomes embodied in lithe, four legged machine. She takes a moment to flick through the various camera feeds By the time she ‘opens’ her eyes, the techs have evacuated the hangar, and it is beginning to flood. She tests the actuation on her UMUs, and looks up at the Cephalus sharing the hangar with her.
Davies’ voice comes into her head. “You better not fuck this up for us.”
She cocks her head, and thrashes her bladed tail. “I could say the same to you. Just keep recording and I’ll take care of the rest.”
“You two, keep the channel clear.” Madhav’s glare is clear even through audio only, and is quickly followed by two “yes sir”s.
The water reaches the top of the hangar, and the white and orange test colors of the two machines inside are filtered oddly through the blue haze. Thermals are even shorter ranged than visuals, but everything else is running fine.
Madhav comes on the comms line again. “Alright. The time is 14:59, Ironhold CTZ on February 21st, 3074. We are now beginning the underwater mobility test of the Amphibious Basilisk Quad . The testbed machine and the observer machine will now launch.”
Mie is the first out of the hangar, pulling herself across the floor, and then paddling out into the open water. Davies follows behind, relying on his UMUs the whole way. Once she’s out, and sinking towards the silty mass ten meters below, Mie activates her UMUs, and tucks her legs into her body, maneuvering by waterjet and tail motion. She cuts a few circles around the almost comedic legged pod of Davies’ Cephalus .
“UMUs are responding well, I’m cutting through the water like it's nothing.”
Madhav responds. “Copy. Move out some, and we will fire the first target drone.”
Mie pulls back from the nose of the submarine, and watches as one of its torpedo tubes erupts with bubbles, and a target drone is spat out, streaking off. Mie maneuvers after it, and locks onto it with her torpedo launcher. A volley of two shots later, and the drone is a cloud of bubbles. “Targeting is looking good.”
“Excellent. Move to part two. Descend to the sea floor.”
‘Aff,” Mie stops her UMUs and descends slowly down towards the murky surface. Dust billows up around her when she lands, and Davies lands shortly after. Her movements are sluggish, like she’s wading through, well, water. She settles on a leaping motion, bounding off the ground and briefly engaging her UMUs to launch herself forward. Davies hovers alongside, maintaining camera contact.
“Alright. Seafloor mobility is about what I expected. Begin stage three and move to the canyon.”
Mie leaps back off the surface and begins swimming ahead, Davies following. “Copy that, ETA four minutes.” The murky seafloor passes by almost undifferentiated beneath her.
Davies is sending her a closed channel request, so she reluctantly opens it. “You are not doing half bad, for you. Though, this test has not required actual skill so far.”
“Davies I dare you to squeeze in here and slowly lose your mind about it. How about you try to stay functional with the feralize addiction you got from training.
The abyss looms ahead. The seafloor falls away into a dark blue void. Mie settles at the edge, and peers down. “Beginning descent now.” She steps off, and begins her descent, Davies hovering above her. The wall of the canyon slides past, the other side obscured in the fog.
“70 meters, 75. 80. Nearing safety limit. 90. Safety limit exceeded.” Davies hangs back at the safety limit, his Caphalus not rated for the same depths as the Basilisk . At 95 meters, Mie begins to hear creaking. “Madhav, I am hearing some structural stress. Should I abort?”
“Neg. Continue to 110 and then ascend. Davies, descend to your maximum safe depth”
Mie continues to descend, and Davies descends further.
Past 100 meters, the creaking gets worse, until Mie reaches 110 meters, safely above her crush height. “Point reached. Returning,” She begins to ascend, but then all at once, her UMUs whine and then fail, leaving her to continue to descend. “UMU failure at 110 meters, descending at a more rapid pace now.”
Madhav still sounds calm even now. “Davies, descend beyond maximum safe depth and prepare for recovery. Mie, do what you can to recover the testbed before crush depth. If you fail, you should be able to successfully bail out and make it to the Cephalus .”
Mie silently tries the UMUs again. With no response, she disconnects from the EI interface in her cockpit, and shifts around in the cramped space to find the hatch. She breathes deeply, in and out. The depth reader ticks over 120, and she breathes in as fully as she can.
Then she pops the hatch and the freezing water floods in, flowing around and pulling her out of the cockpit. The sea water stings her eyes but she keeps her eyes open, searching through the gloom for the Cephalus . It floats above her, maybe five meters up, well below its safe limit. She kicks towards it, but deep in the freezing ocean, breath aching in her chest, five meters feels like a million klicks.
Bubbles erupt from the Cephalus as one of its legs collapses under the water pressure, and it begins to descend, having lost some of the UMUs holding it up.
Finally, frantically kicking, she pulls herself onto the top-mounted hatch, and opens it, revealing that the back half of the Cephalus ’ cockpit had been thankfully converted into a temporary airlock. She slides inside and closes the hatch, and swallows gasping breaths as the water level goes down. Davies’ voice crackles in her ear.
“Welcome aboard. I will bring us back now.”
She unzips the airlock and comes up beside the cockpit seat in the narrow space of the cockpit, in time to feel something thump off to the right.
“Stravag! That was my torso. I am going to pull the ejection.”
Mie scrambles for the folding rumble seat as Davies reaches up, and pulls down on the ejection handle. The front cockpit glass spiderwebs briefly, then goes dark as the screen dies, moments before there’s another thwump, and the entire cockpit rockets upwards. The change in pressure from the outside to the cockpit finally hits Mie, and she doubles over in pain and dizziness as the staged airbags inflate and the entire cockpit block races for the surface. Mie groans, and doubles over as the pod surfaces, waves splashing against the side monitors.
Davies looks back, and opens up the visor on his neurohelmet. “I will contact Madhav for recovery. Stay with me Mie, It is just the bends.”
Mie groans again. “The bends fucking suck. I am in so much pain right now. Oh savashri.”
“Hey. Mie. Do not fucking vomit in my Cephalus .”
“M'not going to…”
“I can see you, I can see that- hey! No, no! Stop!”
Mie retches, and the contents of her stomach spread out on the plating of the Cephalus ’ cockpit floor.