Treading Water (Subnautica SI) by Firehawk242

Words: 9.4k+

Links: https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/treading-water-subnautica-si.944981/

(Inserted into the body of Ryley Robinson of Subnautica, but the hostile planet and killer super-plague are the least of my concerns.)

Chapter 1

A/N: Well this has been beating against the inside of my head for a while now. Let's see how this goes.

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"Work, damn you," I snarl, poking at the kludged together thing I've built. Why the survival blueprints list doesn't include a fucking transmitter is beyond me, but with some manuals I managed to pilfer from the Aurora's database and some clever tweaking I've managed to hook up a modified version of the beacon buoy's transmitter to a radio, something that should at least let me send a signal. That part actually works just fine.

Now if only the power system was working as well. There must be a short somewhere in the circuit, because the breaker tripped instantly. Frustrated, I decide that, with the tools at my disposal, replacement is easier than repair. I rip out the power assembly, a modified version of the power cell port from a Seamoth, and set my fabber to produce a new one. It takes a few minutes but I soon have the assembly ready, then go back to my kludged transmitter to wire it in properly.

Testing, testing, circuit is... running! Yes, it works! And just barely in time too. I key the transmitter to life.

"Sunbeam, this is Non-Essential Systems Maintenance Chief Ryley Robinson of the Aurora, now Acting Captain. Do not attempt rescue. I repeat, do NOT attempt rescue! Planet 4546B is not safe, I repeat do not attempt rescue, planet is hazardous! Do not approach planet, do not enter orbit! Stay outside the orbital debris field! Confirm hard copy, Sunbeam."

What follows is the longest two minutes of my life as the lightspeed delay makes itself known. Then the radio crackles to life.

"Hard copy, Captain Robinson, please confirm that rescue is not desired," Captain Avery Quinn's voice says.

I let out a sigh of relief. "Confirmed, Captain Quinn," I say. "At best, you'd just end up trapped here with me. More likely you'd end up joining the debris field. The planet is under interdiction by an unknown weapon. It shot down the Aurora, the Degassi, and at least three other ships just from the debris I've personally found."

"Understood, Captain Robinson. What's your situation?"

"...surviving, Captain Quinn," I reply after some consideration. "I have both food and shelter, but am currently infected with a local disease. I've been staving it off with a substance sourced from a local fauna species, but until I can work out a proper treatment I cannot consider leaving the planet."

"Understood, Captain Robinson," Avery Quinn says. "Is there anything we can do for you at this point?"

"Yeah, actually," I say. "I need some blueprints not contained in the standard survival package. Specifically, I need a solution for sixty meter long predatory leviathans. Simply put, I need a really big gun."

"Captain Robinson, please confirm. Sixty meter long predatory leviathans?"

"Well the one I managed to kill was only fifty five meters, but it was one of the smaller ones," I reply. "I haven't attempted a scan of a live one for obvious reasons."

"Understood, Captain," Avery Quinn replies. "I'll relay your status to Alterra and... we'll see what we can do about getting you a gun. Maybe someday you can tell me how you killed a fifty five meter leviathan without a weapon over drinks."

"Maybe someday," I agree. "Thank you for attempting to provide assistance."

"It's in our charter, Captain," Avery Quinn says. "We'll call you when we have your gun ready."

With that, we both close down our transmitters. I drop into a chair nearby and let out a sigh of relief. I just saved the crew of the Sunbeam and got myself a weapon to deal with the freaking deep sea monsters that I'll need to deal with to get the cure.

Oh god I hate this place so much when it's real.

It's been... an interesting three weeks. Reality and the game have quite a few differences. The biggest one is that farming is nowhere near as fast. I still don't have my first crop of marblemelons, and getting that set up was one of the first things I did. Grav traps are frankly the only thing keeping me from starving, even if I am getting very sick of seafood.

Resource gathering is also very different. No smashing rocks to get materials and then stuffing them in a magic backpack, no, I have to grab entire rocks and drag them back to my fabricator. The fabricator then eats the rocks, stores the materials... somewhere, and then constructs things for me. On the plus side, a lot of things that are rare in the game are actually super easy for me to get. Rubies? Pah, just aluminum oxide with a bit of chromium in the mix. Kyanite? Literally just aluminum silicate. Aluminum's easy, just load clay into the fabber, and silicates are just as common in the form of sand. And don't even get me started on just how stupidly cheap diamonds are to make. I can make diamonds out of fish.

On the flipside, good titanium is a bitch to find. I've had to rely almost entirely on salvage from the various wrecks in the area, not all of which are from either the Aurora or the Degassi. Copper was similarly problematic at first, but I got lucky and found a vein of chalcopyrite, a close relative of iron pyrite, better known as fool's gold. Gold and silver have been annoying as well, though lithium is at least plentiful.

My oxygen tanks are good for a lot longer than a minute or two though, which is very useful. On the other hand, up until I got my hands on the reinforced dive suit, which I swear is fucking witchcraft, I had to deal with the fact that humans are not meant to exist more than about twenty meters underwater, and avoiding the bends was a constant challenge. But then I got the reinforced dive suit, which is witchcraft and somehow prevents all of that. Do not ask me how, I do not understand it. Also the seamoth has decompression procedures as well, so that helps a lot too. PRAWN too.

Which of course brings us to the elephant in the room: the Kharaa.

Yes, I am infected. Thus far it's been little more than a slight itchiness, and I've done my best to keep it that way. Hence my main base being set up pretty much on top of the vent in the mushroom forest. Peepers that come through from the Sea Emperor's containment chamber get caught in a grav trap, milked for the Enzyme 42 they're carrying using another kludge device of mine, fed, and then sent back down the vent. Is it selfish of me to do this at the expense of the local ecosystem? Yes, but this is survival. Survival is inherently selfish. Everything exists at the expense of something else.

Oh, you want to know how I killed a Reaper Leviathan, don't you? That... I think both I and the Reaper used up all of our bad luck in the space of a bare few minutes, and it turned out I had less bad karma to burn than it did. Short version, the Reaper that likes hanging out near the front of the Aurora wandered a bit past the edge of its usual territory while I was out in my PRAWN suit gathering more salvage. I noticed it and promptly fled, but speedy a PRAWN suit is not, and it was able to keep pace with me, following me into the mushroom forest. There, its size ended up working against it, letting me evade its attempts at eating me. Using the PRAWN's grapple arm I was able to snag it by the tail and then anchor it to a pair of mushroom trees, leaving it just close enough for me to rip it open with the drill arm, and that was all she wrote for that thing.

At least, I'm pretty sure that's how it happened. I don't really remember much of the fight except lots of panic, screaming, and the invention of at least four new pieces of profanity, but based on the corpse, that is what seems to have happened.

Side note, Reapers are actually really tasty.

However, all of this is secondary. Stuff I am at least somewhat capable of dealing with and solving. Even the Kharaa is a solvable issue.

No, there's a much bigger problem lurking.

I've already decided: I'm not turning off the gun.

I'm not leaving this planet.