The Red Frontier: Wrath of the Vanquished

One-Shot: Beneath the Surface

With a single thought, Ah'mun'del commanded his propulsion engine to turn off. As he did so, the thick currents rushing past his face gradually became less severe, the whirring piece of equipment that was fixed to his back falling silent over time. Thanks to the pressure of the water, his momentum ceased almost immediately, and he slowly began to descend straight down into the depths.

Ah'mun'del's eyes gazed down and focused on what lay below him. He was only a short distance from the seabed, and soon enough, he watched his legs come gently to rest on the stone-coated ground.

Four legs, that is, with pincer-tipped feet. As he landed, those curving, articulate claws pressed tightly together, forming pointed tarsals that pressed into the ground and supported his weight.

As he landed, wispy trails of nitrate sand arose from amidst the corals and crags, kicked up by both the mass of his body and the act of his feet stabbing into the granule-covered ground. The dust wafted upwards, making his antennae twitch and sending flickers through his brain, pricking his thoughts like needles.

Uncomfortable? Not really. Such a trifle was tolerable and easily fixed.

Sweeping the contamination away with one of his two-fingered hands, he waited for the dust to drift off before he scuttled forward, his pointed toes tapping upon stones and stabbing into the sand, guiding his movement while the flat tail that formed the end of his horizontally-held abdomen gently padded up and down to propel himself forward. Golden grains of eroded rock washed outward in a curved arc as his tail swept the water down, but the speed at which he moved kept it from touching his antennae.

As he swam, his eyes scanned the seabed, peering and scanning for anything of interest amidst the cracks and corals. Lifting his four legs carefully and keeping his quartet of arms close to his chitinous chest, he took great care not to scuff, scrape or scratch the wildlife around him.

He enjoyed being out here, away from the urbanised enviro-zones that he lived within. Ah'mun'del, or just Ah'mun if one wished to be informal, felt at home out in the wilder places. While others of his kind might twitch or chitter in irritation as the dust stuck to their sternites or clung to their antennae, he was alright with it.

It only ever got really bad when you went out onto land, where the water couldn't wash it away.

Besides this, he liked to exercise. A quick swim without using his engine helped to clear his mind after a period of work, and scanning the seabeds helped to train his mind for his all-important expeditions. In his line of work, an attention to detail was often rewarded.

He was an archaeologist, you see. A job that required many skills, including a keen eye and a sharp mind.

Continuing to move forward, his eyes scanned the vibrant colours of the reef. Beneath the rippling ocean surface high above, outcrops of coral burned as bright as plasma, their colours ranging from warm orange and fiery red to cool emerald green as they grew in their spires, mounts and coiling helixes, forming an intricate wonderland of biological constructs that curved, rose and fell like the hills and dales of a mountain range. Paths of bare sand wove through this landscape like brine currents through water, twisting and turning into a network of open trails and clearings.

Ah'mun's segmented fingers gently brushed a stream of seaweed, feeling the soft surface against the sensitive bristles that lined his palm. However, there was nothing unusual to catch his eye today. No glimmers of metal, no sharp points of cut stone, no ancient scraps of rubble to be analysed back in the lab.

But his spirits were unphased. In fact, at precisely that moment, something electrical ticked within his head. A holographic screen flashed up in his gaze, blinking the time straight into his face.

"Back to work!" he chirped merrily to himself, immediately turning about and scuttling towards an open area of sand before kicking upwards with his legs. As he rose upwards, he thrashed his tail some more, moving a safe distance from the reef before he finally activated the engine on his back, the device kicking swiftly back into life with little more than a thought from the one who was wearing it.

The cool caress of mineral-rich water swept across Ah'mun's face and through his gill slits, the cyclic whirring of the engine gently punctuating his journey as he drifted above the seabed. Moving up the crest of an undersea cliff that ascended up to a point ahead of him, an anticipation grew within his body, building up like lava within his hermantlia and spilling onto his gills.

And as he ascended over the crest, his gaze fell upon it. Nestled between the rock walls of a great ocean ravine, its weight supported anti-grav projectors and held up by titantic nano-weave gantries, was a city. It was a collection of towering vistas, interconnected by tall walkways and rippling with incandescent lights that beamed through the water like lasers. Holographic signs and screens, bright as solar fires, anointed every wall and tower, adding even more glow to the beautiful sight. Between these gleaming and glittering structures, hundreds of other figures could be seen from porthole to porthole, carried by the lightweight and ergonomic propulsion engines strapped to their backs or by the city's magnet-tunnel mass transport systems that pulled individuals through their transparent constructions at a steady and consistent pace.

Enaamuraen, the Light in the Trench. A place planned, designed and built by the finest minds that the planet Ulonn had to offer. And they were fine minds indeed.

Ah'mun swam forward, the water pressing harder against his face as he slowly built up speed. Propelled down the cliff and descending deeper into the trench, he felt the pressure of his surroundings build up over time, pushing his exoskeleton harder against his innards. Turning himself upwards, he ceased his descent and swam forwards, moving towards Enaamuraen. Below, a black void extended for miles down below him, lit sparsely by the glimmering lights of the mining centres and processing plants that lay far below the city.

However, he did not enter the city proper. Instead, Ah'mun made for a small, rounded building that hunkered on the walls of the trench, its small structure fixed against the blue-black stone in a way that could not be moved. As he came towards the porthole entrance, the archaeologist bent back his thorax and lifted his legs, coming in to land on one of the building's windows. His pointed legs tapped upon the glass as he landed, the sound echoing through the water to create an ominous, resonating thud.

As he landed, he saw his reflection in the translucent, titanimo-reinforced composite. His skeleton, which formed a shell on the outside of his body, was a dark, sandy brown in colour. Interlocking plates of hard chitin, their sizes ranging greatly - some were as large as dinner plates, others as small as human fingernails. Stiff, barb-like hairs studded the bottom of his legs, and two antennae protruded from the peak of his pointed head, just above his bulging eyes, as black as opals and without eyelids to blink with.

He was a Viruun. A citizen of the Technocracy.