She stepped back with a nod. Arkon grasped the hand and pulled; the door groaned, and he leaned his weight to one side, muscles tensing.
If he had to strain to open it, she would never have managed.
Finally, metal scraped against metal, and the door slid aside. A gust of cool, clean air hit Aymee. The corridor beyond the threshold was lit by a faint red glow from above, just enough to cast everything in deep shadow.
Arkon straightened, and they turned their flashlights forward.
Though crafted from the same slate gray concrete as the rest of the building, the walls inside were cleaner and showed little of the wear evident in the exterior. The corridor led first to an intersection, where another hallway bisected it, and ended at a door some fifteen meters beyond that.
She followed Arkon inside.
He stopped at the intersection and Aymee glanced up at the red overhead lights. Though they were solid, they all seemed to flow from the ends of their respective corridors to this meeting place, from which they led to the entry door.
She raised her flashlight to look past Arkon, down the center hall. The small sign beside the door at the end read CONTROL ROOM.
“There,” she said.
They moved toward it, passing more doors on either side.
“Control room lock has been disengaged,” Sam said. Aymee started at his voice; it had been amplified by the concrete.
Arkon grasped the handle and pulled, nearly falling into the wall — this door slid smoothly, and he’d likely put too much force into it. Arkon met her eyes when she chuckled.
“Everything in here has been protected from the moisture and salt outside,” she said.
“Well, it is nice to hear you laugh, even if it’s at my expense, in this case.”
Smiling, she turned her attention to the control room. It was lit with the same dim glow as the hallways, but movement ahead caught her attention — a blinking red light. The beam of her flashlight revealed a control console, atop which the light blinked beside a handle. Both were set within a square of striped red paint.
“That must be it!” Aymee stepped into the room, wrapped her fingers around the handle, and turned it counterclockwise.
There was a low rumbling in the floor. Instruments flickered on along the console, and holographic projections of screens materialized in the air.
“Primary power restored,” a female voice said from overhead.
“That is the voice of the Computer in the Facility,” Arkon said from beside Aymee.
The red emergency lights went out, replaced by bright white illumination an instant later. Aymee squinted against its intensity. She turned off the flashlight and placed both it and the suit atop the console.
“Performing diagnostic scan,” the computer said. “Structural damage detected in submarine pen. Rerouting power from damaged lighting. Communications array non-operational. Submarine pen ventilation system operating at thirty-five percent efficiency. All other systems operational.”
Aymee turned to glance behind her. “And we now have li—” She shrieked as she caught sight of something in the corner of her eye and leapt back against Arkon.
He encircled her with his arms and turned her away, shielding her with his body. The tenseness in his muscles quickly faded.
“It is all right, Aymee,” he said gently.
Heart pounding, Aymee peered around him.
A skeleton lay face up on the floor. Bones yellow with age, its empty eye sockets stared blankly at Arkon and Aymee, and its dislocated jaw hung open in an awful grin. Its uniform, though intact, was filthy, and the floor beneath it was stained dark. One of the skeleton’s arms was outstretched, fingers curled over the grip of a pistol.
Slowly, Aymee crept from behind Arkon and walked around the skeleton, gingerly avoiding the stain — she knew it was blood, even if it wasn’t the right color anymore. By the uneven lay of the skull, she guessed the back had been shattered by an exit wound.
“He killed himself,” she said.
Arkon clicked off his flashlight and set it on the console beside hers. He lowered himself near the remains and reached out with a hand, delicately turning the skull to get a better look. “Is that normal for humans to do?”
Aymee pressed her lips together and furrowed her brows. “Sometimes…”
He lifted his gaze to her, tilting his head to the side. “Why?”
“I mean, it isn’t normal. Self-harm is often a result of mental illness, distress, or extreme fear…” She glanced around the room before her eyes settled back on the skeleton. “Do…the kraken know of this place?”
“Jax, Dracchus, and myself, but only the main chamber. If our people knew of it before, that knowledge was lost before I was born.” Arkon rose. “Is there... something we should do?”
Aymee shook her head. “For now, no. We can take him to sea later...and hope there are not others.”
“Your people give your dead to the sea, also?” Despite the morbidity of the situation, there was unmasked curiosity in his voice.
She carefully returned to Arkon’s side. “We do. Families take their loved ones out for their final goodbyes.”
“We do not have families in the same manner you do, but the hunters carry our dead away from the Facility to be reclaimed by the sea. It is symbolic of the cycle of life — the sea provides for us and sustains us, and in the end, it claims us all.”
Aymee took his hand and traced a fingertip over his knuckles and down to the webbing between his fingers. “I wonder what things would be like now, had our people lived together peacefully.”
“No one can say with any certainty.” He raised a tentacle and brushed its tip across the back of her hand. “But, selfish as it may be, I would not wish to change any of that history.”
Aymee tipped her head back to look up at him. “Why?”
Arkon smoothed his palm over her hair. “Because I would not want to place the chances of us meeting in jeopardy.”
Warmth blossomed in her chest as she stared into his otherworldly violet eyes; they were layered with color and emotion, and she wasn’t sure there were enough shades of purple to encompass their depth.
Her hand tightened over his. Perhaps her earlier fears were unfounded; how could he say such things if he didn’t desire her? He showed it in his every gesture, his every touch, word, and glance. Whatever had happened between them that morning on the beach, there’d been good reason for his retreat. Arkon would never purposely hurt her.
She stood her toes and placed a light kiss on his lips. “Me too.” Smiling, she released his hand and stepped back. “Let’s see what we can find on the console.”
“Yes,” he said distractedly.
Aymee touched the main screen. The projection presented a variety of choices; she perused them slowly, not sure what she was looking for. Maintenance, Temperature Control, Core Monitoring, Surveillance, Personnel Records. She tapped Operations Logs.
“Please enter your access code to—” the computer said, and then the screen — and all the others around it — flickered. “Computer security systems have been rebooted. Welcome back, Captain Wright. Please create a new access code.”
Aymee looked at Arkon.
He leaned forward and entered a series of numbers. “Zero eight one three zero five,” he said.
“Access code reset.” The projection displayed a series of still images, each with numbers at its bottom, arranged in neat rows — five across and five down, with an arrow at the bottom indicating more. All the images were of the same man, though the background and his clothing differed in some of them.
“That is the same code we use to enter the Facility,” Arkon said. “I didn’t know what any of these symbols were until Macy taught me.”
“The kraken can’t read?” Aymee asked.
“In the beginning, I believe at least a handful knew how. But it was not a skill that was passed down through the generations.”
“And the code was all you knew?”
/> “We learned by the pattern.” He smiled to himself, and moved his finger in the air, pantomiming entry of the code. “Always the same buttons in the same order. Jax and I later realized that we recognized the symbols on the buttons, though they held no meaning to us.”
“I’m glad she was able to teach you.” She turned her attention back to the screens. “Do you think that’s him?”
He glanced over his shoulder at the skeleton. “I do not see a particular resemblance, but it’s possible.”
Aymee stared at him. She waited for the hint of a smile on his lips, for a glint of humor in his eyes, but his expression remained serious.
Arkon furrowed his brow. “What?”
Unable to hold it in, she laughed. As horrible as she felt about it — that had been a living human being, however long ago — it was liberating to find some humor in the situation. “I can’t believe you said that.”
“But...it is true. Isn’t it?”
“Yes, but of course there’d be no resemblance now.”
“Hmm.” He glanced at the remains again. “You’re right. Though the bone structure influences a person’s facial features, it is difficult to picture without the overlying musculature and—”
He paused when he saw the smile on her face.
“I think I understand,” Arkon said. “You were amused by the absurdity of my initial response?”
Aymee chuckled and brushed her fingers over his arm. “You’re adorable.”
His skin took on a faint purple tinge. “I do have a tendency to overthink things.”
“I don’t mind, Arkon. It’s what makes you you.” She turned back to the console and swiped her finger down, scrolling through the stills. The numbers on each one, she realized, were dates and times. “These are all marked in Standard Galactic Year. That hasn’t been used on Halora for at least three hundred years.”
Arkon leaned closer to study the numbers on one of the images. “How can you tell?”
“The colonists keep the year based on when our ancestors first landed, three hundred and sixty-one years ago. I think they switched sometime after we stopped receiving supplies from off-world. The only time I’ve seen dates marked like this have been on old medical records and holos from before the colonization.”
“What is the purpose of these images? Are they meant as a record of how this man aged during his time here?”
“No. Some people used holo logs to record information. My father, and many doctors before him, used holos to document new medicines, toxins, and diseases they encountered on Halora. It’s our most reliable means of passing information from one generation to the next, though we’ve had to start writing more and more of it down by hand as the old technology fails.”
She continued to scroll down, then paused and swiped back up. The dates had been spaced out with weeks between them in the beginning, but the more recent ones were recorded closer together — daily entries, sometimes more than one on a single day, and the man’s appearance grew more haggard with each one.
Aymee tapped on the first of the daily logs.
The hologram expanded into a three-dimensional image — it was like looking through a window into the control room, with the man from the image positioned close to the hologram’s edge, his body cut off from the chest down. He was clean-cut, dark brown hair slicked back and his face shaved. He wore a dark blue uniform with silver buttons and trim.
The clothes on the skeleton might have looked the same once, long ago.
“This is Captain James Wright of the Interstellar Defense Coalition, officer number one-five-three-bravo-six,” the man said, “in command of Darrow Nautical Outpost. The date is August twenty-third, SGY 2509.
“Four days ago, we received a series of communications from the offshore underwater facility, Pontus Alpha, indicating a massive security breach. The limited information I have received regarding that incident is detailed in my log dated August nineteenth.
“We have received no further communications from Pontus Alpha since then. Today, at eleven hundred hours, one of the submersibles, the Nautilus, appeared on the tracker for thirteen minutes and disappeared. We received a distress message from the crew during that window. I…am currently under official orders not to discuss the contents of said message.”
Wright’s features were strained, and there was a far-off gleam in his eyes — he’d seen something disturbing. Aymee suspected it was humans being killed by kraken. Had he known of their existence before seeing his men slaughtered?
“Since that message, we have been unable to establish further contact. There are no vessels remaining at this location, and therefore I was unable to dispatch a search party.
“At twelve hundred hours, we received official orders from Central Command in Fort Culver. We have been instructed to hold the line against anything that might come and defend the colonists to the last man. Due to the simultaneous declarations of war in eight separate star systems earlier this year, the IDC will not send additional troops or equipment to reinforce our positions. The sensitive nature of the situation at Pontus Alpha has left me unable to brief my soldiers on our enemy and their potential capabilities.
“Central does not want panic to spread through the populace. Our directive is to hold this facility at all costs and maintain a base of operations for any future underwater endeavors. We are not to send any communication to Watchpoint Echo, which is the base closest to Pontus Alpha.”
“Watchpoint Echo?” Aymee asked quietly, brows drawn. “Does he mean The Watch?”
“I will record another log as soon as there is more information relevant to the situation. Captain Wright, signing off.”
The holo flickered out, reverting to the collection of still images.
Aymee glanced at the skeletal remains on the floor. She crouched and extended a hand, carefully adjusting the worn, dingy material. A name had been embroidered on the coat, hidden beneath a crease — WRIGHT.
“Computer, what is Watchpoint Echo?” Aymee asked as she stood, wiping her fingers on her skirt.
“Watchpoint Echo is a military outpost established as a drop-point for supplies delivered from space and a shipping hub for seaborne materials on this side of the Halorian mainland. Civilian settlement was permitted three years after Watchpoint Echo’s establishment.”
A three-dimensional map appeared in the air. Though she’d never seen it from that angle, the land it depicted was familiar to Aymee. All the old buildings were there — the most prominent being the lighthouse on the cape. It was The Watch as it had looked hundreds of years ago.
“That’s your home,” Arkon said. He pointed to a spot to the west of the settlement. “This is the beach we met on for the exchanges, isn’t it?”
“It is.”
“The technology your people once commanded is fascinating.”
“So much of it has broken down or stopped working over the years that we’ve learned to do without. I can’t say things wouldn’t be easier if we had access to some of it again, though.” Aymee tilted her head, staring at the map. “Computer, why did the deliveries to Watchpoint Echo stop?”
“Halora was declared too remote and unstable for continued support from the Interstellar Defense Coalition after war began in 2509 SGY. The final shipment was dropped in April of the same year.”
Aymee looked at Arkon. “They abandoned everyone.”
She shouldn’t have felt any emotional attachment to the event; it was a wrong done by people she’d never heard of to people she’d never known hundreds of years before her birth. Anger flashed through her, nonetheless. The people who were supposed to protect the colonists had turned their backs and left the settlers to their fates with little care for their chances of survival.
However, had reinforcements been dispatched, Arkon and the kraken would likely have been wiped out.
It was a sobering thought.
The people of Halora — human and kraken alike — had persevered through abandonment, and Aymee had met Arkon be
cause of it.
“It is talking about...about things beyond this world?” Arkon asked.
“You mean space?”
“Space. That is the darkness between the stars, is it not? Where your people originally came from?”
“Yes. Humans originally came from a planet called Earth, though we visited many other planets and solar systems before we came to Halora. We had huge ships that flew through space, from world to world.”
He turned his attention back to the map, which slowly rotated to display the topography of The Watch from different angles. “Even with all I’ve learned, with all I know to be true, that seems so unlikely. So impossible.”
“Creating a being from two different species seems impossible, too,” she said gently.
Arkon smiled and spread his arms slightly, glancing down at himself. “Not so to me, when I have the proof right here all the time.”
Aymee’s eyes trailed from his broad shoulders down to his narrow waist and beyond, drinking in every detail of his form. Beneath these lights, his skin was more cerulean than blue-gray, the color of the sea on a sunny day.
“It is jarring when I recall that our people are so closely related, given the violence and hostility between them in the past,” he said, calling her gaze back to his.
“If only they’d seen what Macy and I do when we look at you. Physical differences aside, we really are the same.” Aymee sighed and faced the console. She swiped the map away. Captain James Wright filled the screen. “Looking at the past and a lot of the present, it’s hard to envision a peaceful future between our people.”
“It can be achieved. Even if it’s only one...or two...people at a time.”
She smiled at him and took his hand again before tapping the next image.
They viewed the logs in silence, one after another, and found each more harrowing than the last despite the lack of new information presented. After the first few had played, Arkon curled a tentacle around Aymee’s waist and drew her close. She slipped her arms around him. His presence and quiet strength provided her only comfort.
Jewel of the Sea Page 17
