My patrons voted, so here it is: another chapter of The Serpent’s Garden. The Meer Colhara arc continues, with Red One given a briefing full of assurances that the situation in-system is completely under control, which isn’t even untrue… but all it takes is one slip-up and everything could go sideways. And as we know, while some horrors hide in the light, others grow in darkness.
Below find a snippet of the search for a hidden Meer-Ulson installation, but full chapter (and what was on sonar), check out the link above! Thank you and hope you enjoy!
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“One thousand kilometers depth,” the synth noted, still in its flat, matter-of-fact tones, just like Radiant Endeavour’s own cognitive would have spoken. “Leaving twilight zone and entering midnight zone. No hard returns.” Here and there, blips appeared on the sensor screen, marine life caught briefly by sensors and sonar boards, vanishing just as quickly the probe continued its headlong rush towards the deepest parts of Meer Colhara.
“There won’t be,” someone said, but to Iljta that statement sounded more like an attempt at self-assurance than contradiction.
“Steady,” Omaw-Kresz admonished. The hierarch kept a close hand on his crew. “Eyes on stations, everyone. Maintain watch. There’s nothing until there is nothing.”
The probe was descending over a subduction zone, where one continental plate was sliding beneath another at the bottom of a vast oceanic trench. The overseer hadn’t known how Red One had calculated that this would be the best place to begin looking for underwater facilities. He didn’t even quite believe that this would be fruitful.
“You’ve never had to hide like they have,” it had told him when he’d asked if it thought it would find anything. “Like I have.”
He couldn’t argue with that assessment. The Hegemony had been pushed to the brink of collapse, not extinction. The latter would have followed the former had the Meer-Ulson been victorious, but thankfully that had never come to pass. Iljta tapped his fingers on his chaise’s armrests. Like the unknown speaker, he hoped that there would be nothing on this or any of the additional probe missions that would follow, but right now, that hope was all he had, since the alternative was far worse.
More moments of uneventful silence passed as Implacable Agent of Retribution’s probe descended deeper and deeper. “Four kilometers depth,” the synth announced. “Leaving midnight zone and entering abyssal zone.” Not even the weakest of light from the surface reached this point. The abyssal regions of the ocean were truly void of light, a darkness more absolute than the most distant reaches of intergalactic space. Even there, the faintest glimmers of far-off galaxies could be seen. In these waters, nothing but the bioluminescent flashes of unknown animals intruded upon the suffocating blackness, the faintest glimmers of light that flashed and vanished like dying stars.
“Five kilometers.” The submersible never stopped, never slowed. If there was anything down here, speed was its best and only defence. “Six kilometers. Leaving abyssal zone. Entering hadal zone.”
The deepest part of the oceans, the final descent into underwater trenches and gulleys that could swallow mountains, and Meer Colhara’s were vast indeed. “Seven kilometers. Seven point five kilometers. Eight kilometers.” Down. Down, and still further down. There was nothing here. There couldn’t be. It was impossible. Pressure, corrosion, tectonic instability. This was a place that, while not totally inimical to life, might as well have been. Any attempt to create a foothold here would face such opposition from the elements that it was inconceivable that anyone would think of building here. It was-
“Nine point five kilometers,” the synth’s voice continued counting. Then: “Sonar contact.”
-impossible.
~
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