Derelict creaked ominously.

It always did. The going hypothesis supposed that it was just the structure straining against its own immense bulk, mass and gravity and thermal expansion slash contraction twisting metal in on itself in a ceaseless dance of perverse machine tectonics. Hypothesis offered little comfort out here in the field, where Derelict’s pained groans echoed for klicks and klicks through twisting cracks and tunnels like the howls of metal banshees.

Anna Viera listened. It was those very cries that had guided them off their planned course home and into untraveled territory, now crawling on fours through some life-forsaken hole at about one klick's depth. Her ears were no good, but her tools were: the mapper in her hand displayed a labyrinthine network of lines stretching around them, denoting areas they’d charted before or passed on their way. If there was a pattern to the mess, it wasn’t obvious. 

A few meters up front, Sashi Balakrishna had apparently found enough space to stand up. The pale glow of her headlamp disappeared for a moment, before peeking back down the tunnel at Viera. Not bright, but bright enough to blind eyes acclimated to the dark. Thankfully the glare dimmed as her visor adapted, but details at the periphery fell casualty to encroaching shadows.

“Should be just up ahead,” Sashi’s distorted voice played in her ears. Sound carried poorly in Derelict’s thin atmosphere, and it took the aid of technology to isolate and amplify the waves of a voice over the all-consuming din. Some noise always made it through.

“What is it any–“ Viera’s reply was cut short by a deafening shriek of metal from somewhere deep in the machine’s bowels, the tendrils on the mapper’s display stretching rapidly outwards as the screech echoed throughout the structure.

“Man-made tunnel, looks like,” Sashi sounded as the noise died down to normal levels. “Steep, but walkable.” Viera crawled out and stood up, stretching her legs as she confirmed with her mapper. They’d charted this area before, but there was a new line cutting straight through. Their current path would intersect with it about eighty meters up ahead.

“How the hell can you tell?” She hadn’t seen Sashi use her mapper a single time during their trip; it still sat dark on her belt.

“Intuition,” Sashi shrugged and pressed on. Viera didn’t buy it, but she let it slide. The woman had had a lot of work done under the hood.

They continued in what passed for silence in Derelict, squeezing through a tightening passage shaped like a vertical incision stretched open. It was slow going, as it took some care to avoid getting their boots stuck between the converging walls at the bottom. Balakrishna inevitably pulled ahead, maneuvering the terrain with finesse borne from hard-earned experience, periodically stopping to allow Viera to catch up.

“Here we are.” Sashi unslung her backpack and rested against the wall as she rummaged through it. Just past her, a mass of deformed metal protruded up from the empty space in the larger tunnel below, twisting towards them from the edges of their exit: material pushed aside into adjacent crevices as whatever came through had displaced it. 

The opening looked too narrow to squeeze through, and even if they tried those jagged edges would tear them to shreds. Sashi gave the mass a few experimental kicks, but it wouldn’t budge. Viera checked her instruments: no light, no radio, no sound discernable from the cacophonic background. Whoever dug it had left it vacant – for now, at least. She looked back to Sashi, who pulled something from her pack: a half-meter long rectangular case, which she unsealed and revealed a long tube in white polymer with a pistol grip. She grabbed it and slotted a heavy-duty battery atop it. 

“Better set your visor to dark. This’ll be bright.” Sashi stuffed her pack into the tapering bottom and knelt atop it, inspecting the displaced hunk for a good angle of attack. Viera followed the recommendation, and the world faded into dim, shadowy shapes.

“I’m good,” she signaled. Thumb up, though Sashi couldn’t see it with her back turned. She imagined a tactile [i]click[/i] as Sashi flicked a switch above the grip, the instrument responding by lighting an indicator at the base. 

The tube was pointed at some strategic point. A pregnant moment passed. 

Then: a miniature sun blazed in the dark, sparks flying as metal glowed white-hot and parted. In half a minute she’d cut clean across the whole chunk, and with a kick it loosened and fell into the open tunnel below. That thing wasn’t a tool; it was a fucking weapon.

“Holy shit,” Viera exclaimed as detail bled back into her surroundings.

“Pretty cool, huh?” Sashi replied, her tone indecipherable through the distortion. The face was hard to make out through the visor, but Viera could swear she saw the faintest hint of a grin.

Sashi calmly detached the battery and sealed the portable star back in its casing. The case went into her pack, and the pack was slung onto her back. “Let’s go.”

She stood over the breach, assessing it for a moment before stepping forth and falling gracefully out of view. Viera carefully edged over and looked down: two and a half meters, by her reckoning. Sashi was looking back up, patiently waiting. Reason told her it’d be a safe fall in half a G, but instinct was not so easily convinced. She took instinct’s advice and inched slowly off the edge feet first, until she was hanging by her hands. Part of her marveled at how light she was. The rest of her clung on, afraid to let go.

“You’re half a meter off the ground,” Sashi droned from somewhere below and behind. “You’ll be fine.”

She looked down; it was true. Hands let go, and she landed steadily on the sloped floor. Her legs didn’t even buckle. She let out a small sigh of relief and looked around the new space: a mostly circular shaft, running down a slope angled somewhere between thirty and forty degrees, by her estimate. Derelict’s echoes seemed to carry further here, the ambient din somehow even louder than before. She pulled out the mapper and switched on its display. It flickered for a moment, lines shifting subtly as the map recalibrated from familiar reference points.

“It… comes all the way down from the main shaft,” she said. Sashi nodded faintly, but her gaze was fixed the opposite way.

“And it runs…” Viera paused at a sudden realization. “Oh.” 

Sashi nodded wordlessly. About a klick downtunnel, the line on the display was almost touching the monastery.