[Interactive Fiction] The Solless Galaxy - Part II

The hatch was just barely wide enough for the captain in his powered armor. On the other side was a tunnel. Metallic plates and grates lined its interior surfaces. A line of bright white lights tracked along its ceiling, while a long metal bar went through the center of the floor. His powered armor probed the tunnel, and the machine mind presented a map on the inside of the visor. To their right, the tunnel continued for a good hundred feet before hitting a dead end, and to their left it continued for at least half a mile at a downward slope, before reaching either an end-point or a corner that continued into even more tunnel. Both of these pieces of information Pyrrhos could’ve discovered perfectly fine with his own eyes. The machine mind asked if it should release a ‘drone scout’, because for some reason it never remembered that it ran out of drone scouts eons before Pyrrhos had gotten this suit.

“Is this just going to be several miles of tunnel?” Lieutenant Kaleisch said.

The witch chastised him for his “lack of faith,” before admitting that she wasn’t sure how long the tunnel was either, just that there was something at the end of it.

The captain’s faith was little greater than the lieutenant’s, but he had other clues as well. “Something’s keeping the lights on,” he said.

In a normal situation, the functional lighting, whatever kept it powered, and however much of the plating they could manage to tear loose, would be an acceptable haul even if this was just tunnel. But right now they didn’t have the luxury of taking their time and strip-scavenging the place. They needed something really expensive, and relatively easy to remove, or else this whole expedition would become a waste of time and a needless risk. Pyrrhos equally disliked both of those.

So, they began to trek down the tunnel. Pyrrhos led the way. Both because he was the leader, and because that was his combat role. If there was anything dangerous in here, his powered armor would make him a nine feet tall and three feet wide mobile shield for the others, especially the lieutenants, to take cover behind and return fire.

A few minutes into their walk, Lieutenant Reis started making small talk with Ensign Fierro. “You ever been scavenging before, Draha?”

She said she hadn’t.

“Well, just stick close to me. Anything comes at you, I’ll burn a hole through them before they get within twenty feet.”

She laughed, “thanks, lieutenant.”

In truth, this was lieutenant Reis’ first scavenging mission as well. The lieutenant didn’t share that piece of information with the ensign, but of course the captain knew. Reis was a good shot though, he wasn’t bragging about that.

After a few more minutes of inane attempts at chatting, the witch pulled her sister aside. The captain didn’t catch why, nor cared, he was just happy to have some silence. As they came close to the bend, he told everyone to stay sharp.

Around the corner... was another mile of tunnel leading to another corner. Lieutenant Kaleisch groaned, Reis made a quip he thought was very funny, and the captain just kept walking. The next time, as they got closer to the curve again, they began to hear something. It was faint at first, but the closer they got to clearer it became. It was some kind of voice, speaking in some ancient forgotten language, seemingly repeating the same words at set intervals.

“Machine, can you translate what we’re hearing?” The captain said to his suit.

The machine mind stuttered, then began to project broken sentences onto the suit’s visor. “THE HIGHWAY OF PEOPLE AND ANIMALS, THE CENTRAL ECHLEDO, THE SYUPHIS STATION, THE ISLOTSHIRE HEADQUARTERS WILL NOT RUN AT THIRTY-THREE SIXTEEN. HIGHWAY FROM ECKLEDO, SERIHUBIS STATION, ISLOTSHIRE HEADQUARTERS WILL NOT RUN AT THIRTY-THREE SIXTEEN. SORRY FOR DISTURBANCE.”

The captain sighed, but hadn’t expected anything more from it anyways. The voice from up ahead kept growing louder, echoing through the tunnel walls. By the time they reached the corner, they could barely hear each other speak unless if they were right next to each other. Then, as they turned the corner, the tunnel opened into a large chamber.

The tunnel’s ceiling had been tall, at least a dozen feet, but the chamber’s ceiling looked at least thrice as high. The chamber’s floor was raised about three feet above that of the tunnel. The chamber’s surfaces were covered with the same kind of metallic plating as the tunnel, but here they were painted with shades of white and blue in various esthetically pleasing figures. To their right the floor was only a small strip, after which there was another tunnel that ran parallel to the one they’d come from. To their left, however, the chamber continued for over a dozen yards, with numerous sets of doors, archways, and stairs leading deeper into the structure. The first thing to catch their eyes was the floor, which was littered with skeletons.

The captain ordered his suit to raise his volume so he could shout over the still continually broadcasting voice. He turned to the witch, “these looked plague-struck to you?”

The witch didn’t have anything to amplify her voice, but she didn’t even try, she just looked back at him in defiance. The captain sneered, he was pretty sure he knew what she was going to say anyways. He told the rest to be careful, and to follow him as he climbed up to the chamber’s floor.

By the clean look of the skeletons, whatever had happened here, it had happened long before this place got buried. Piecing all the clues together, the captain was pretty sure this place was a transport hub. Some kind of station for moving people and goods around. He’d been in a functional one a handful of times. They weren’t all that rare, actually. Roughly half of all inhabited planets still had something of the sort. But the captain had spent most of his life in space, and a space station or ship both big enough for a transport network and pristine enough to still have it functioning, that was a rare sight. Still, it helped knowing what the place you were in was supposed to be for, once upon a time, that is.

The captain looked around. There wasn’t much lying around the main platform, except for bones. Perhaps these people had all been civilians carrying nothing more but the clothes on their backs, now rotted into dust. But just as likely the captain and his crew weren’t the first scavenging expedition to find its way down here in the however-many-millennia since these people died. Of course, that didn’t mean there wasn’t anything left worth the captain’s time.

By now, he was a veteran of these kinds of expeditions, and he knew some of the more common patterns. Earlier scavengers, from when the blood would’ve still been fresh, would’ve focused on weaponry, armor, tools, food, basically things of immediate use to them. The captain would love to find any of those, but his profit margins could also do fine with more niche items such as cooling devices or mindless calculators. That’s why he chose the archway that seemed to lead into some kind of shop, built right on the platform, to go into first.

He called for the rest to follow, and stepped through. Inside were more skeletons, a counter, a dozen or so tables, and many, many doors and hatches. Two of which seemed to lead to other rooms, but the rest looked like closets and cupboards used to store things. The captain moved towards the counter, where some of the equipment still seemed to be intact.

Lieutenant Kaleisch followed behind the captain. When he was halfway through the archway into the building, a set of doors that the captain hadn’t even noticed were there slammed shut with such force that they went straight through the lieutenant’s torso, slicing him in two. A shower of blood painted the back of the captain’s powered armor red as the lieutenant’s torso dropped to the floor with a wet thud. If he’d had time to process what happened and screamed, it was drowned out by the announcements which were now repeating constantly at an ear-deafening volume.

The captain turned around just in time to see Kaleisch’s blood-soaked blaster roll to a standstill against his armored foot. Then, abruptly, the announcements stopped. The doors opened, almost disappearing back into the archway. They’d be impossible to spot if it wasn’t for the blood staining their edges now. On the other side stood the captain’s remaining three crew members. They looked at the lieutenants lower half, and then at the captain. The station was silent like the tomb it was.

(Source: https://pixabay.com/en/corridor-tunnel-underground-subway-957757/ )

END OF PART II - PART III IS UP HERE

So, to anyone who came back for more after part I, thank you very much. For anyone new, you can read part I here.

So, for the interactive part: not entirely unexpected, no one voted last time. So I elected to stick with the captain's perspective. For now, I think I will keep the 'interaction' (at least the potential for it) the same. In the long run I am interested in giving readers more substantial choices that shape the plot and effect who lives and who dies. But while it's still an open question whether there are readers/voters to begin with, just point-of-view is easier for me as it means I can plot ahead regardless of whether or what is voted upon.

 From which character's point-of-view should the next part be written?

1) Captain  Pyrrhos Kolbe (same as this and the previous part)

2) The Witch, Achinoam Fierro

3) Ensign Draha Hedda Fierro

4) Lieutenant Blasius Gordan Kaleisch (deceased)

5) Lieutenant Alwin Reis

Please vote by stating your preference in a comment. As per before, there's no voting threshold. If there's no votes I'll decide for myself again, but if there's even a single reader vote, that vote decides how it goes. Regardless, once more thanks for reading! :)

PART III IS UP HERE