“He would be proud,” Kaiden said, looking over to her. “Proud of how far we’ve come. And how far we’re going to go. We’re going to make this happen.”
“All right, enough sappy crap,” Titus said, playfully pushing Kaiden as he strode toward the kitchen. “Let’s get some dinner. Then we can get back to talking about how much ass I kicked in that tournament.”
Chapter Forty-Three
Location Discovered: Aqukinho
Faction Alignment: None
Resident Guilds: None
“This is... it?” Kaiden asked, standing at the open rear door of the Borrelly. As far as he could see, the planet was entirely ocean. And the scans had confirmed it: there was no land here. No continents, no islands, nothing. Just water and wind across the surface of the entire planet.
A crashing wave reached up and broke against the bottom of the shuttle, spraying him in a fine salty mist as Thorne and Titus joined him at the rear door. Zelda came last.
“This is the meeting place, but there’s nothing here. Nowhere on this entire planet. It’s just empty space. One of the dozens of procedurally generated planets they have in-game waiting for content.”
“It’d be a fine place for an ambush,” Thorne said, eyeing the skies.
“I’ve got the engines primed to go if so,” Ellenton said through comms from the cockpit. “If anything unexpected shows up I’m ready to bolt.”
“How about that?” Kaiden asked, pointing to where the surface of the ocean had suddenly begun to boil. “Is that unexpected enough?”
“Oh, come on,” Titus said with a low laugh. “Now they’re just being dramatic.”
“Who is?” Kaiden began to ask, then paused. He’d just noticed the ocean wasn’t boiling, it was bubbling. And as he watched more, something began to emerge. The bubbling water was mostly white foam, but then it darkened as a shape neared the surface. A metal shell made of interlocking plates. There were no windows in it, or anything to indicate what it was. Water rushed off its smooth sides as it broke the surface then bobbed in place.
“Is that some sort of ship?” Kaiden asked, trying to focus on it with his visor but getting no results. Even as he wondered, though, the metal plates at the top of the shell retracted, sliding back and into each other to reveal a hollow interior with two figures standing on it. PlayaSlaya and Nando.
“‘Sup?” PlayaSlaya said with a casual nod.
“Let’s go,” Nando said, waving them over. “You don’t want to be late.”
“Where are we going?” Kaiden asked as Ellenton eased the shuttle down, coming in slow seeing as she was flying backwards in order to line it up so they could step off the ramp and onto the platform.
“Down, dude. Duh,” PlayaSlaya said. “Come on, we don’t have all day.”
Zelda took a small jump and landed on the deck of the platform with a thud that reverberated through the metal.
“This thing’s like a space elevator,” she said, bending down to get a closer look at it. “Except it’s in the ocean. So... a sea elevator?”
“Pretty much,” Nando said.
Kaiden went next and the others followed until it was just Ellenton left on the Borrelly.
“I’ll be waiting here in case you need a quick evac,” she said. “Never much cared for water anyway. Swimming’s bad enough, but that?” She paused, and Kaiden could imagine her shudder. “No thanks.”
“Hit it, Nando,” PlayaSlaya said and the second in command flipped a switch on a panel off to one side of the platform. The metal plates extended back into place, shooting out over the top of one another and extending to close completely around them with a series of clanking bangs. A whirring sounded from somewhere below them and then they lurched downward. As they did, video screens on the inside of the metal plates flashed to life. They took a moment to get focused, then all at once, Kaiden could see the Borrelly and the sky, and the water around them. They were moving down, though, and the view was quickly lost as they sank below the surface and the ocean swallowed them.
Once fully underwater, the platform picked up speed and the light began to darken, diffused more and more by the deepening water around them. The result was a strange blue half-light that transitioned to green, then to an ever-darkening black. Kaiden kept his eyes peeled for any signs of wildlife around them – only partially out of worry at the thought of what might happen to them if the shell were breached at such a depth – but nothing seemed to be nearby. Only more and more water. And then the light was gone and it was black all around them.
“Well,” Thorne said, the first to break the silence. “This explains why we never found Syndicate HQ. Scans can’t penetrate this deep, and there’s no surface infrastructure here to give anything away.” She paused a moment, then looked to PlayaSlaya. “It’s gotta be a pain to get people in and out of here, though. You can fit, what? Eight people in here at once?”
“There’s other elevators,” PlayaSlaya began to say but Nando quieted him with a hiss.
“Ah, right. We’re not supposed to talk about the base.”
“We’ve agreed to help you raid Warden HQ,” Nando said. “But as far as our friends go, today is just a meeting of general interest. Feeling you all out. They don’t know you and they certainly don’t trust you, so don’t ask any prying questions.”
“We were invited here,” Kaiden said. “Surely that means The Syndicate – er, your ‘friends’ – have more than a passing interest in what we’re trying to do?”
Before Nando could answer, a groan moaned out through the platform, no doubt the contraption battling against the increasingly intense pressure of the depths they were traveling through.
“It’ll be fine,” Nando said, waving away the noise, then returning to Kaiden’s question. “Being invited here means you have their attention. But if you want their help, you’re going to need to capture their curiosity. You’ll have five
