by M. D. Cooper
Movement to their right caught Tanis’s eye, and she saw a group of mermaids swim past. Their heads were together, and bubbles trailed from their noses as they cavorted around one another.
One with a long blue tail and luminescent pink hair swam toward their bubble and passed through its walls as though they were nonexistent. Even though it had passed from water into open air, the mermaid continued to swim, spinning around the group and laughing at their amazement.
“Welcome to the great Oceanus!” the mermaid said after she had made several loops around them. “Here, at the bottom of the sea, may your deepest desires come true!”
She flicked her tail against Tanis’s thighs, and caressed Sera’s arm before planting a kiss on Petra’s cheek.
Then the mermaid passed out of the bubble once more and joined her friends in twisting around one another in their sinuous dance.
“Well that’s not something you see every day,” Tanis said as she watched the mermaids disappear over the edge of the deck. “That looked like a permanent mod; not just the sort of thing you put on for work.”
“I imagine it is,” Petra replied. “Takes some amount of effort to get the a-grav generators in their tails, too—or so I’ve been told. Without the a-grav, the ocean would crush those poor women.”
“Easy on the eyes, though,” Sera said approvingly. “Did you notice that both the man up top and the mermaid had no small amount of double entendre in their greetings?”
“There’s a lot of fun behind closed doors down here, but it’s not required, and it’s not the main theme,” Petra assured them. “The food really is to die for, and the setting is amazing, don’t you think?”
“It really is,” Tanis agreed. “I’ve been a lot of places, but never this far beneath an ocean. It’s a tiny bit claustrophobic, but it also feels a bit like space.”
“A lot of people say that,” Petra replied with a nod.
By then the bubble had reached the doors, and they could see into the ship.
Two men stood at the top of the stairs and reached into the bubble. “My ladies,” one of them said. “Welcome to Oceanus. We’re so glad to have you with us this evening. Please step down into the ship.”
Valerie brushed past the two men and walked down the stairs first, peering about before nodding. Tanis had her nanocloud out, as well; she had no desire to be ambushed down here. She’d also set the nanoscopic bots to let her know if the air pressure changed, or if they heard anything that sounded like a leak.
Despite her annoying trepidation over being so far underwater, Tanis was determined to enjoy the evening. She realized that there had been almost no downtime since Elena’s arrival in New Canaan half a year ago.
Tonight, there was little she could do to drive any of her goals forward. She would enjoy herself like the attaché to the president she was supposed to be and push all her worries aside.
Once they were assembled at the bottom of the stairs, Tanis could see that they were standing on a landing above a vast open foyer. The glass above gave a view of the looming rift wall and the odd mermaid swimming by. Tanis noticed that there were more mermaids within, as well, swimming through the air around and cavorting above their heads, laughing as they went.
Petra led them down the curved staircase to the foyer’s floor, where other guests stood, drinking from fluted glasses while men and women whose bodies were half-snake—or perhaps eel—moved between them, offering hors d'oeuvres and refilling glasses.
“We’ll be called into one of the dining rooms when they’re ready for us,” Petra said. “I didn’t get to pick, since I booked so late. I nearly had to kill someone just to get an opening.”
“You didn’t, though, did you?” Sera asked with a raised eyebrow.
Petra tittered. “Of course not.”
A man slithered up to Tanis and hissed. “A drink, madam?”
“Brandy, straight,” Tanis replied and the man slithered on to the others, dutifully ignoring Valerie and Sean.
Tanis looked at the other people standing in the foyer and felt moderately underdressed. She wore only a simple black dress with brushed steel bands around her waist and above her breasts. Her hair was pinned back, since she couldn’t abide having it in her face, and her shoes were low and comfortable.
Sera was sheathed in black from neck to toe, with blue lights tracing slowly across her body in mesmerizing patterns. She was wearing towering heels, however, putting her a few centimeters above Tanis for once. Her hair was down and curling around her shoulders.
Petra was a vision in white in a thigh-length sheath dress, with her rose-colored legs peeking out before disappearing into white knee-high boots. Her arms were also rose in hue, ending in white gloves. Her normally dark hair was also rose-colored this evening, as were her lips and eyes.
The other patrons were a far more diversely dressed assemblage. Some were attired not much differently than Tanis or Sera, but many were in outfits—and modifications—so elaborate that they made the staff look positively normal by comparison.
Angela chortled.
Tanis frowned.
Sera directed a mental laugh at Tanis.
Tanis only sighed and shook her head in response.
Sera nodded.
Petra said.
They only had to wait ten minutes before a chime came to the group over the Link.
“Oh, wow, we got the fire room!” Petra said. “You’re in for a real treat now. I didn’t tell you about this because I didn’t think we’d get it, but it’s going to blow you away.”
Petra led them though the crowd to a glowing red door, which a man—who looked like some sort of strange crustacean—opened with a bow. On the other side was a long, twisting staircase, which Valerie took the lead in descending.
Tanis saw a dull red glow below them and realized that the staircase was lowering as they descended, as though it were drilling down into the rock below. With the staircase speeding their descent, they reached the bottom in a minute. Then they stepped out onto a balcony looking out over a great crevasse.
There were only twelve tables on the balcony—three were occupied—and Tanis wove between them to look out over the edge. There was no railing, so she leaned over carefully. Her unaided vision could barely see the bottom, but as she cycled various modes, she realized that the deep gouge in the planet was over ten kilometers deep, and that at the bottom lay a lake of magma.
“The ocean floor above is just a plug,” Petra explained as she reached Tanis’s side. “In front of you is the Icanus Plate, and behind is the Homerian Plate.”
“Seriously?” Sera asked, her voice filled with awe. “We’re going to have our supper halfway through the planet’s crust, staring down at its mantle?”
“Is it good enough for Madam President?” Petra asked with a grin.
Sera laughed. “I suppose it will have to do.”
“Ahem,” came a voice from behind them.
Tanis turned to see a man who appeared to be made of basalt rock, on top of which flowed rivulets of lava. Even his eyes were red; streams of lava flowed from them down his face.
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“Crap,” Sera said, and laughed. “You scared me.”
“Of course, Madam President. You may have your selection of tables this evening. Would you like to sit at the edge?”
“I sure would,” Sera replied, and the magma man led them to a table further down the balcony.
Tanis eased into her chair and looked down at the planet’s mantle far below. “Gotta say, this is a first. Granted, I’ve been deep inside of planets before, but never one with an active core.”
“Nice rhyme,” Sera said with a soft laugh.
Their server approached—a magma woman this time, and instead of hard angles and jutting rock, her body appeared to be completely molten, her form sinuous, and her voice sounding like hissing steam as she asked what they’d like to drink.
“It’s going to feel weird when we’re done here and we get back out into the shit,” Sera said after the woman left.
Tanis checked their nano-suppression before replying. “We travel around on a country-sized starship with almost one hundred square kilometers of parkland. We don’t really do normal, either.”
“Slumming it on the I2, that’s how I roll,” Sera snickered.
The three spoke of trivialities for a time, and then selected their appetizers while Valerie and Sean stood watch at either end of the balcony. Before long, all but one table had filled up, and their molten server returned to clear their plates.
“Would you like to sssselect your nexsst coursssse now?”
Tanis had considered a dish called ‘the mermaid tail’, but a part of her worried that they might actually cut the tails off the poor women to make it, and she didn’t want to ask for fear of an affirmative answer. Instead, she selected the seafood bisque. Once the server hissed and steamed away, Tanis rose to visit the ladies room.
The room was down a stone hall behind the augering staircase, and Tanis walked into it, aware that Sean was following behind.
She really didn’t need the High Guard to escort her, but it was his job—a job she had given him—so she wasn’t about to deride him for it.
The facilities were a series of individual rooms along the hall, and Tanis took the first one. She was washing her hands when her nanocloud detected a new set of probes moving down the staircase.
Every patron of the restaurant had probes deployed, but they were large, ungainly things; the smallest were a dozen micrometers across. These new probes were under two micrometers—clearly more advanced technology than most people on Alexandria possessed.
Tanis directed her nanocloud to intercept and examine the probes. From what she could discern, they were of Transcend design.
Tanis passed her feed to Petra.
She switched to a combat net and brought the entire group in.
Major Valerie said.
Tanis said.
Angela chuckled.
Valerie gave Sean a significant look and then pressed the call button for the lift. A moment later, the door opened, revealing a figure in wet, powered armor.
Tanis’s lightwand was already in her hand, and she slashed at the figure’s rifle while Valerie and Sean both fired shots from their pulse pistols at the figure’s head.
The enemy fell back, and Tanis reached forward, grabbing his rifle while planting a foot on his knee. Though she pulled with all her strength, the enemy’s powered armor was too much, and she couldn’t wrest the rifle free before the attacker fired a series of shots.
Pulse blasts thrummed out into the corridor, one catching Sean in the shoulder and spinning him to the side. Petra stood in front of Sera as Tanis slammed her lightwand into the rifle’s trigger mechanism, cutting it apart and taking off the attacker’s finger.
The man reared back, and Tanis could hear a bellow from within his helmet. By then, she had analyzed his armor and found a data port on the upper right side of his torso. She slammed her palm against it, feeding nano into the armor’s control systems.
The attacker’s armor seized, and Tanis could hear him grunting and straining.
“That’s what you get for bringing a gun to a knife fight,” Tanis said with a smirk, and then drew the man’s sidearm, easily disabling the biolock. “Even so, I think I’ll borrow this.”
“You OK?” Sera asked Sean.
“Just fine. The Mark X armor comes to the rescue again.”
Tanis considered the risk of splitting up the team versus them all riding the elevator together.
She saw a cook peer out from the kitchen at the far end of the hall. The cook’s eyes widened at the sight of the group standing over a frozen—yet still menacing—figure in powered armor with their weapons drawn.
“Is there another way up?” Tanis called down to the cook. “Other than the stairs out front and this lift?”
The cook shook her head, and Tanis made the call. “Everyone in the lift. Val, Sean, help me move this guy; he’s going to be our shield. Let’s face him outward so if his buddies are out there, they think he’s walking out, not holding someone inside.”
They managed to turn the armor-locked figure around, and his angry yelling barely made it through his helmet.
“Think I should take his helmet off so they’re less likely to shoot at him?” Sean asked.
“He’ll be too loud,” Sera shook her head. “Keep him in there. If he’s his head’s exposed and they shoot, they could kill him. Then they won’t hold back anymore.”
“Good point, Madam President.”
“Sean, when we’re in private, you can call me ‘Sera’.”
“Of course, President Sera,” Sean said with a wink.
“Stars, you’re incorrigible,” Sera muttered.
Tanis pushed the button for the top floor, which read ‘M’. She suspected it was the foyer where they had initially waited for their table.
Tanis gave a mental sigh.
Valerie had reached the first intersection, and was checking down the hall visually after scouting it with nano. She looked back and waved the rest of the group forward. They stacked up in the hall, and then Valerie and Sean advanced to the door at the far end.
Tanis looked back to see Sera grab the armored soldier’s arm and rock him forward, so his right side would block the lift door from closing. Then she followed the others into the hall.
Tanis’s nano flushed out around the cracks, and they saw the foyer nearly deserted—if one ignored the six armored figures holding a group of patrons and staff at gunpoint.
Tanis sighed.
Three minutes later, the man was unconscious and tucked in an alcove around the corner. Sean was now in the soldier’s armor. It wasn’t the auto-adjusting type and it fit him the best, so he was the sacrificial lamb—not that Tanis expected to lose anyone.
Sean pushed the door open and yelled through the armor’s speakers, “They have some sort of Link suppressor and are holed up in the lower kitchen. We need backup!”
He stood half in the doorway, and the four stealthed women slipped past him. Petra and Sera moved to the door that led to next lift, and Valerie and Tanis headed toward the six enemy troops in the foyer.
“What happened to your finger, Larry?” one of the enemy soldiers asked as she walked toward him.
“Damn thing almost got blown off,” Sean replied.
The woman who had approached him shook her head. “Wrong answer. Larry’s behind me; you’re supposed to be Johnny.”
