Vivid Stars Online

The strain was intense as we lowered into the depths. While it no longer took as much energy as when I'd first kick-started the system, it still demanded a constant stream from my reserves. If starting it had been like lifting a heavy weight, then maintaining it was like jogging a marathon with that same weight on my back.

By the time we came to a halt at the bottom of the shaft, I was panting and holding myself up against one of the smooth metal walls. Linnea had moved to help support me, but I’d waved her off to watch the door instead. With power still present in the system, it slid open a moment later.

It revealed a corridor formed from dull concrete, and I almost dragged her out before releasing the system from my control.

"God, that's better," I sighed in relief as I slumped against the wall. "I'll need to be back at full power before I take us up again."

"That's fine," Linnea said, laying a hand on my shoulder as she stared down the corridor. "Maybe we can find a way to power it down here. We need a way to get people down here to mine, after all."

"True, I can hardly bring a work crew down manually every time. A generator, as you suggested, might work, but this place draws a lot of bloody power. I can't imagine it being cheap to keep the place running like that."

She only shrugged in response, maintaining her vigil as I slumped against the wall. When no danger presented itself, we extended the rest for a full hour, leaving me on nearly a third of my maximum reserves. We would have waited longer, but I wanted to make sure we'd secured the area before it was time to rest.

I still had a bad feeling that there was something dangerous in this facility, and I wanted to be sure we had a safe place to spend the night. It might just be paranoia stemming from the dangers we'd faced in all the previous facilities, but I wasn't going to leave it to chance.

The last vestiges of the power I'd provided were long gone, and the light had faded to pitch black. That left us with the same high-powered flashlights we'd taken on our last trip underground. They weren't as good as having the place properly lit, but were enough to give us solid vision in a single direction.

With our lights focused on the corridor ahead, I could see that it extended for about twenty feet before ending in an intersection. Signs in the Arkathian language hung just within view, each having an arrow pointing either left or right. I gestured Linnea forward as nothing reacted to our light.

We advanced until just before the intersection then ducked to either side against the wall. I paused for a moment to make sure we were both in place, then signed that we should advance. In a simultaneous movement, we stepped out, each of us covering one of the two side passages.

All I saw was another empty corridor. and from behind me, I heard a shout of "clear" from Linnea. I responded with my own call, only relaxing slightly at the lack of danger. This is going to be tense, I mused with a sigh. I'd rather something came at us, at least that way I could stop waiting for the other shoe to drop.

"Keep watch for a few minutes please," I asked as I turned back towards the signage on the wall. The quickest way to get a translation would be to scan the words into my database, but I could use the XP for my Translation skill. its lack of use had left it as one of my two lowest skills and it could use all the help I could give it.

Minutes passed as I carefully looked up each word in my database, cross-referencing it with both the explicit meaning and what little cultural norms we had documentation on. It was a slow and somewhat painful process, but I could feel myself getting more proficient as time went on.

Whatever governed the strange game-like mechanics we had in this world seemed to agree with me as I got a level-up notification just before I finished. It still didn't have any obvious benefits beyond what an automatic translation would provide, but I lived in the hope that it would be useful one day.

Looking up, I read from the notes I'd put together. "Living quarters, storage, and power generation to the right, mines to the left. The rest is just emergency evacuation plans and safety reminders, I've got them noted down if we need them. I figure we start with the right path. It would be great if we could get the power on, but even just a map of the mines would be useful. "

"Sounds like a plan."

With a nod back at her, I began carefully progressing down the corridor. Before long, we came to a closed door, forcing me to flex a little of my restored energy to get it open. Through the door, we found a network of rooms connected by more secure doors, each of which I had to force open.

As the signs had promised, there were living quarters with a kitchen, bathrooms, and even what looked to be an entertainment facility. There were also several storage facilities, though most of what they contained had long rotted to dust. The rest I left for the follow-up team I still intended to send.

At the back of the facility, we finally came to a large machine connected via pipes to a fortified tank buried deep in the concrete wall. Or at least that was what my Technokinesis was suggesting to me. It gave me much the same feeling as the reactor core on my frigate, giving me confidence that it was the power supply for the base.

This gave me considerable pause as I carefully approached it. All the tests that Elana had run against the Psi fuel the Arkathians used showed that it was highly reactive and could explode if treated poorly. If there was anything wrong with this reactor it could cause catastrophic failure.

"At least the place is defensible," I said as I turned to where Linnea was covering the door. "I’ll have to go over this thoroughly before we can risk turning it on. We’ll likely have to stay the night."

"It's probably safer than on the surface," she responded with a shrug. "Particularly if you can get that door closed again. There’s enough space in here for us to camp out. Though that's assuming we don't run out of air?" she finished a worried tone in her voice.

I paused as I thought that over. While the Arkathians must have had a way to get fresh air down here, we were deep enough that I suspected the system required power to run. I was pretty sure you'd have to pump the air down.

"Thanks for bringing that up, I hadn't considered that it might be an issue. I'll try to get the power on before we go to bed, I think we'll be fine until then. The air is too pleasant down here for it to have been undisturbed for thousands of years. It must have cycled the system when I was powering the elevator. Given the place’s size, there should be plenty of air for a few hours."

"Understood, I'll guard the door. You get that sorted."

True to her word, she leaned against the still-open doorway, relaxing against it while still keeping her gun easily at hand. There was an empty forty-foot corridor between us and the rest of the base, presumably for safety reasons, so she would have plenty of time to react if anything came at us.

I thanked her before turning back to the machine and focusing all of my senses on it. My Technokinesis was great for giving me an intuitive understanding of technology, but I'd learned to take it with a grain of salt. The ongoing work I'd been doing back on Earth had provided me with precious experience that I'd been lacking before.

I'd found that there was a world of difference between a machine feeling generally healthy to my senses, and it functioning well. When I focused on an entire machine, what I got was more of an average of all of its parts. If it was in otherwise good condition, I could easily miss a couple of broken or worn pieces among the whole.

In a lot of cases, it would be easiest to just turn the thing on and see what failed to start. But when you had a machine where a failure could be dangerous, you had to do it the old-fashioned way. Working through it piece by piece. It would be a slow process, but it was better than being blown up, however unlikely it was to go that badly.

Even before I'd figured out that this was real life and not just a game, I’d been wary of the consequences of dying. The XP penalties were significant, and the social consequences could be dire if my death exposed our differences to the local government. Now I knew the truth I was even more worried about what might happen.

Could it affect how my powers were integrating on Earth? Or could it even inflict some kind of backlash against my body back in the real world? I hadn’t read anything like that on the forums, but I’d seen the extent of the information control that was used there. It was best not to take any unnecessary chances.

That wasn't even to mention the considerable value of the gear we carried, all of which could be lost in a large enough explosion. Given that, I intended to go over each part of the machine carefully, using my powers on each component to get an idea of its actual health.

Months ago, I would have lacked the understanding required to see how each part was tied into the greater whole. Now I had enough of a knowledge base to figure it out even with an unknown machine, and worst case I had the skills to physically take it apart if it became too complicated to do via just my powers.

All that took time, however, and my watch told me it was late into the night by the time I finally felt safe to power the reactor up. As I'd feared, several places had severe damage from rust or wear. It probably wouldn't have been bad enough to bypass the safety systems built into the reactor, but it would have at least caused additional damage if I'd fired it up without checking.

With no spare components on me, I'd been forced to repair them almost entirely with Technokinesis. This had drained almost all the power I'd recovered, leaving me feeling exhausted and with a pounding headache. I would have to ask Linnea to take the first watch when we went to bed.

“Get ready to run if I tell you," I said to Linnea as I prepared to begin the startup sequence. "I'm pretty sure it’s safe now, but be prepared if the worst happens."

"Got it, " her voice echoed from behind me along with soft clinking sounds I associated with her armor moving. "Whenever you're ready."

"Okay, turning it on now," I said as I took a deep breath and pressed the ignition switch. I could have turned it on with my powers, of course, but my current headache was enough that I didn't want to worsen it. Besides this, it would be useful to know if anyone I sent down here could turn it on without my abilities.

A text readout sprang to life as lights flickered on all over the machine. Lines printed and zoomed past faster than I could have understood, even if it was in English. With a frown, I pulled my phone up to capture a quick picture and fed it through my database.

That gave me just enough context to understand that it was a standard diagnostic, and I kept the phone out to video the remaining output. if the start-up failed, I could hopefully find a clue there. Roughly a minute later, the screen flashed again, before a single, much larger line of text printed to the screen.

Reactor online, starting up base systems.

"Looks like it worked!" I shouted with glee, turning and grabbing Linnea into a protesting hug.

"Let go, you doofus," she said with a laugh. "I've got to keep watch. For all we know, you just turned on the murder robots or something."

"Okay, okay," I responded with a laugh of my own before turning serious and unslinging my rifle. She was right, of course, if there was anything dangerous down here we would know soon enough.

The lights flickered on around us, bathing us in a soft, warm glow, and I turned my flashlight off with a sigh of relief. While having it strapped to the front of my armor kept my hands free, it was a pain to only be able to see in the direction I was pointing my chest. If anything came at us, I'd be much happier with the external lighting on.

Then a loud screech echoed through the facility. It was a strange sound distorted by distance and intervening objects, but one thing was clear. Somewhere down here there was a very large, very angry creature.

And it was almost certainly between us and what we had come to acquire.