Part 7 [spoiler]"Brendus, can you give me a comms check?" "Aye, sure thing laddy." As Brendus did so, Davidson cut him off. "Your comms are separated now right?" "Aye. I can hear you fine laddy." "Don't reconnect!" "What?" "Don't reconnect to them!" "Aye, sure thing laddy. What's the problem?" "I don't want anyone to hear what I'm going to say." "Oh? And what would that be?" "You said they found me drifting, partially covered up in my suit, but still in cryo right?" "Aye, that's what they said, I think." "And everybody thought that I opened my suit to give myself some time to hopefully live a bit longer, and so happened to end up back here right?" "Aye, sure is laddy." "I didn't." "What?" "I didn't do any of that. My suit was opened." "Aye, say what now?" "My suit. It was opened by something else." "Yer pullin' me chains." "I'm not joking, Brendus. I found something down there." "Oy, ye mean like an animal? There's loads of those down here." "No. Not an animal. Something else. It was intelligent. Sapient life." "Aye, that seems like a far stretch if it opened yer suit up." "It's not like that. It's, hard to explain. It's intelligent. Curious. I looked into its eyes. And it wanted to see me for what I was under the suit. When it triggered the failsafe, it must have brought me back over here. I need to go back Brendus. I've never seen anything like it before." Brendus was silent for some time. "Aye, why didn't you tell anyone?" "Because, I thought it should remain that way. It seemed, so fragile. And it was so far down there. Anything down there isn't meant to be found." "Then why go back?" "Because. It saved me. I need to see it, before I leave this place. I need to know." Brendus was quiet again. "You'd better not be pullin' me leg. I need time to think about this." "I've already got a plan. I'm going to go to back there with a suit. But I need to make modifications to it. I need help. But you can't tell anyone!" "Aye, yer right bloody serious then ain't ye? Okay then. Give me some time to think about it." 265 Days until end of Contract Davidson cut through ice with his lance, working away as Brendus did as well. So far, the plan had been going well. They had traded places on the work rounds, because it was necessary for what Brendus was going to do. Even though they were monitored slightly more than down below, they had their best chances up here. The plan was, over time Brendus was going to illegally modify Davidson's suit to fit the changes he needed to do this, and, every day, one of them would skip all breaks, and make a quick trip over to the old ice harvesting field that shattered, use their lance, and carve a path, straight down, until they hit the ocean. Davidson figured, that if they didn't recover all of his suit, then part of it must have still been down there. If they got close enough to it, it may still have had power to send its signals, which they would pick up. If Davison could pick them up, then he could find his suit. And if he could find his suit, there was a slim, but low chance he would enter area of the strange being he had encountered so long ago. It was a sound plan, and so far, things were going well. The only problem would be what would happen when Davidson went under for a day or two, if he was down there for that long. Brendus would have a lot of potential problems to work out. Hopefully, Davidson wouldn't need to be down for a day or more. And, in the meantime, hopefully their plan would stay on course as they slowly dug deeper piece by piece, and upgraded Davidson's suit for what he had in mind.[/spoiler]