Page 80 of Fallen from the Stars

“Yep.”

“If there is not?” Dracchus asked.

Theo spread her hands out in front of her. “Then we just wait for the inevitable.”

Kane made a throat-clearing sound. “I have found a potential alternative source for the part we need, should the storage room prove fruitless.”

“There is no fruit in the storage room,” said Dracchus. “We keep the food in the kitchen, as Macy told us.”

Theo smirked, scratching the back of her neck. “It’s a saying, Dracchus. He just means if we don’t find what we’re looking for.”

“Why not just say that?”

“We did. Just in a different way.”

Dracchus scoffed and shook his head.

“What is the alternate source?” asked Vasil.

“I cross-referenced all the records kept in the computer system here and discovered three submarines listed as having been used to transport supplies to and from this base. They are military-grade vessels, each one hundred meters long and able to accommodate over one hundred crewmen. One of them seems to have gone missing entirely — vanished without a trace — but I have locations for the other two. Locations from just before the communications here were cut off, anyway. According to the plans, all three submarines were equipped with filtration systems very similar to this one. Close enough that Theo would be able to make the piece work.”

Theo clapped her hands together. “Great! Now we just need to figure out if the part is here, or if we’ll need to go searching for a missing sub.” She glanced between the Vasil and Dracchus. “Who’s escorting me?”

Vasil offered a hand to Theo. “There is no need to ask.”

Dracchus’s brows lowered. “I will speak with Larkin. If we need to search for thesesubs, it will be best to do so in a hunting party.”

“One of the submersibles is located in a sub bay in another building of this facility,” Kane said.

Dracchus and Vasil exchanged another glance.

“That place is abandoned,” Vasil said, looking back to Theo. “There is nothing but broken metal and debris there. Much of it has been claimed by sea life. The old stories say there was an explosion during the uprising.”

“Even if that component had survived in those conditions after all this time, it wouldn’t be usable,” Theo said with a frown. “Guess that leaves the other one if we can’t find what we need here.”

“Go look in the Underneath,” Dracchus said. “I will speak with Larkin and a few others to ensure we are ready to move if necessary.”

Theo followed Vasil out of the control room and through the facility’s corridors. He was silent, and she couldn’t blame him for it; she’d have been speechless herself if she’d been told her home could become a deathtrap at any moment. Though the kraken could live in the flooded portions of the facility, which would not be affected by the failure, this was still their place. It was where their people came into existence, where they’d lived ever since — and that was without mentioning the humans who stayed here with their kraken mates.

They stopped at an overly-wide, sturdy-looking door. Vasil pressed a button on the wall. The door slid open with a light scraping sound, revealing a large service elevator. Theo entered just behind him. She’d used similar elevators on IDC cruisers more times that she could count to move parts between various decks.

Being closer to the control panel, Theo pressed the button markedMAINTENANCE. The door rumbled closed and, a few moments later, the elevator descended.

“So, you called this the Underneath?” Theo asked, rocking on her heels with impatience. She hadn’t realized how much she missed fixing things; it felt like it had been so long.

“Yes,” Vasil said. “My people rarely come down here. Some of the rooms are filled with devices we do not understand. It has always seemed best to let most of it remain below.”

The elevator rumbled to a stop, and the door opened. Countless pipes, ducts, and conduits ran along the walls and ceiling of the dimly-lit tunnel before Theo. The air itself hum with the whirring of unseen machinery.

Theo grinned;thiswas her element. “I see why your people don’t come here. It’s nice and creepy.”

Vasil turned his gaze toward her, brow furrowed. “Creepy? No, we are not afraid of this place.”

Kane’s voice projected from Theo’s wrist. “That’s exactly what someone who is afraid of this place would say.”

Theo clicked her tongue. “Hush, Kane.”

“It has nothing of use to us,” Vasil said, “and the air here is…uncomfortable. It makes my skin feel like it is…crawling.”

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