Adrift

by W. Michael Gear

  “Easier than building a diesel from scratch,” Ghosh agree. “But that leaves us back with the generator. Maybe one of the reactors from Freelander?”

  Kalico said, “We’ve had this conversation before, gentlemen. If you’ll recall, we figured it was easier to make holes and let gravity drain water from below than to pump water uphill from above.”

  “Got an idea?”

  “No,” Kalico said with a sigh. The notion that Alia and Stana’s corpses were lying down there in the waterlogged blackness, under tons of broken rock, kept haunting her. “My call? We refocus on the Number Two. Maybe run a couple of lateral drifts off the main stope that follow the uplift’s strike northwest. That will keep the crews busy while we figure out what the hell went wrong in the Number Three.”

  “We don’t know what’s in the mountain in that direction,” Ghosh reminded. “Let alone what cutting through that rock will contribute to the water make. We might drift that way and find nothing worth the cost of the magtex.”

  Kalico arched an eyebrow. “Bet you didn’t know it, but there’s a mining term for what we’re going to be doing.”

  Ghosh glanced nervously back and forth. “Yes, Supervisor?”

  “It’s called prospecting.”

  Ghosh almost hid his flinch.

  “So . . . ?” Ituri asked, “We’re just giving up on the Number Three?”

  Kalico traced her index finger down the scar on the line of her jaw. “We de-boarded Turalon with a little over three hundred people. Some spaced back to Solar System on Turalon. Some ran off to the bush or otherwise took their own fate in their hands. Some killed themselves. We came down here to Corporate Mine with one hundred and ninety-seven. A handful of us spaced back on Ashanti. I shot a couple. A few were deserters. Three were murdered. Most of the rest were taken by quetzals, mobbers, a couple by slugs, and some of the other wildlife. After the cave-in, we’re down to one hundred and thirteen of us.”

  Every eye in the room was watching her.

  “We’re a tight bunch here. We’ve made this our home. This mine is ours. Each and every one of us pitches in and does more than his or her share. Not a one of us is the same person who first set foot here. What you will earn by fulfilling your contracts will make you all rich back in Solar System. Think about it. That’s a lot of credit in the system. You’ll have the finest apartments, health care, pretty much anything you requisition through The Corporation. You’d never want for anything again.”

  Heads were nodding around the table.

  She added, “And compared to the plunder you’re taking back home, everything you’ve earned through Contract is like a pittance.” She paused. “When you go back, it will be to a different Corporation. Just by showing up, wealthy as you will be, nothing will ever be the same. The reason I bring this up is because I want you all to have the chance. I want you to make it home and show those white-assed Corporate bastards what it means to take a risk and have it pay off. I want you all to stick it to them.”

  Ghosh leaned back, straight-armed, from the table. “You sound like you’re not going.”

  Kalico shrugged. “I don’t know if I can. Shig doesn’t think so. Neither does Derek Taglioni. They think I belong to Donovan now. That somehow I wouldn’t fit into Transluna high society with my scars, pistol, and quetzal-hide cloak.”

  That brought a round of laughter.

  “So, hell, Ghosh. I don’t know what I’ll decide in the end, but it will be a while before I make the trip back to Transluna.” Assuming she ever did. “Meanwhile, I want us all to stand down for the next couple of days. We need to figure this thing out. Determine what went wrong. We owe it to Alia and Stana to make sure it never happens again.”

  44

  Three different times Talina had had to slap Dek Taglioni free of Demon’s hold. The miracle was that—smelling like a tasty Donovanian meal of blood and raw meat—they’d made it back across that kilometer of forest to the Two Falls Gap dome. She’d fretted the entire trip, driven by the gnawing realization that she was traveling with an empty rifle. Didn’t matter that nine times out of ten when she crossed forest, she’d never fired a shot. Just the knowledge that her gun was empty left her feeling as vulnerable and exposed as parading naked down the central avenue in Port Authority.

  They were back in the dome, her rifle safely reloaded and racked beside the door. Tal had used a hose to rinse off their gore-covered clothes, and they’d both showered. She’d needed most of a half hour to get the blood and guts out of her hair. Still didn’t feel wholly clean, but it had a glossy feel and sleek sheen as she dragged her comb through it.

  Dek had insisted on cooking. Said it kept Demon from taking over his thoughts. She had finished eating first, washed her plate. Now she leaned against the wall, crossed her arms, and watched Dek finish off the last of his breakfast of sautéed vegetables. What the hell was she going to do with the guy?

  Klea Morena? Seriously?

  She’d pried the story out of him on the way back as they dodged tooth flower, claw shrub, three sidewinders, and a bem trying to imitate a boulder on an outcrop. She tried to get her head around the notion that Dek’s father could just ask a woman like Klea to hop into bed with his spoiled teenage son, and the poor woman couldn’t afford to say no. What kind of power was that? What did it say about the kind of system The Corporation had become?

  “So, who is the real Derek Taglioni?” Talina wondered under her breath.

  “You’re not the only one wondering that,” Dek said after he swallowed a last forkful of broccoli.

  “Forgot you’ve got quetzal hearing now. I’m going to have to bite my tongue.”

  “Don’t. It hurts too much . . . and the scabs get in the way of tasting a good wine.” Dek used a sleeve to wipe his mouth.

  Talina figured old Claudio would have burst a vein if he could have seen his son do that.

  Dek took his plate, walked over to the sink, and washed it. Placing it on the rack next to Talina’s, he turned, thoughtful yellow-green eyes on hers. “So, let me help you with your little problem. I told you, you’re getting glimpses of my hell. I grew up as a Taglioni.”

  “You grew up like a sadistic Roman emperor. So, tell me, given all that, what makes you worth my time?”

  He turned, giving her a thoughtful stare. “You and Kalico thought I had a death wish when I got here. After my family, after the horror of surviving Ashanti, it was more of a life wish. It didn’t matter how long I lived. Hours, days, weeks, or months. I just needed to live. Free. On my own terms. I needed to be respected for being the kind of man I am, not who I was.”

  Dek smiled, paused, then said, “I was there, Tal. I made it. And then this damn quetzal comes along and starts dragging me right back down that same damn wormhole. Back into a universe I’d mostly come to think of as a bad dream. And I can’t shake it. Like right now, I can feel Demon inside my brain. Like he’s hovering over my memories, peering down into them, figuring out which one he’s going to pull from the bin and replay for my own personal humiliation and self-loathing.”

  “Sorry about that. But, given what you just told me, would you rather I had let you die that day out at your claim?”

  “For that kiss? I guess, win, lose, or draw, it was worth it.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding.”

  “Marry me.”

  “What?”

  He gave her a wistful smile. “Ah, there, see? That hesitation, the instant disbelief. That’s the same response you’d give Stepan Allenovich if he asked you. And, yes, you respect Step for his abilities as a man on Donovan. But he’s not worthy of you. I plan to be. In spite of my past and who I was.”

  She threw her hands up. “Pay attention here. Step’s a philandering, whoring, drinking gambler. He’s not my kind of man.”

  “Damn straight he’s not. But I intend to be when I get this thing out of my head.”


  “Thought you understood the biology. It’s all through you. And it’s not going away.”

  He seemed to sober. “Yeah. Guess I’m not sure who or what I’m going to be when this is finished.” His eyes started to lose focus, and with effort, he got control again. “I’d die for you, you know.”

  “Why?”

  “Because that’s what love’s all about, Talina.”

  45

  Michaela and her team had chosen the Pod’s location based on the original Donovanian surveys conducted by ships like Tempest and the ill-fated Impala before she vanished on her second spacing to Donovan.

  The reef where Ashanti’s shuttles had dropped the Pod registered as being particularly high in metals during the remote-sensor planetary scans. If the models were correct, the strata had been pushed up from the mantle, first by the impact, and subsequently by the quakes and altered tectonic pressures left in the impact’s wake.

  The Maritime Unit should be sitting on some of Donovan’s oldest rocks. Perhaps strata that dated back to just after the formation of the planet. From comparisons against baseline data derived from Impala’s initial survey, Michaela hoped that Varina Tam—their expert in planetary evolution and physical oceanography—could begin to assemble a tectonic model for Donovan. Tam hoped to identify, date, and track the movement of the crustal plates and how they interacted to form Donovanian seas. From there—working in tandem with Lara Sanz—it had been hoped that they would start the process of piecing together a history and theory of the planet’s oceans and marine phenomena. Now Kevina Schwantz would step into Lara’s shoes as the backup marine geologist.

  Today Michaela and her team would take both submarines, working in tandem, with Michaela and Casey in the second sub providing cover as Jaim Elvridge piloted the first sub in accordance with Varina’s instructions. As Varina began her mapping and sample collection transect from the surface down to two thousand meters, Michaela and Casey—armed with the new compressed-air-driven torpedo—would stand guard and keep watch for any threats appearing out of the deep.

  In the event that any large predators like the BMT approached, it would be Michaela and Casey’s job to first threaten, and finally—if no other option presented—to shoot the thing with the explosive torpedo Kel and Tobi had cobbled together.

  If the torpedo had no effect, the two subs would link up with the grapples, blow ballast, and retreat together to the safety of the Pod’s Underwater Bay.

  At least, that was the plan. The agreement was that anyone perceiving a threat—be it from some leviathan down to jellyfish—could call off the mission. On that they had total unanimity.

  Michaela, however, didn’t anticipate trouble. Fact was, unlike the circumstances where they’d lost Shin and Lara, no one was exposed. She could think of no place safer than being inside one of the subs. The vessels were Seascape Model 15s. They weighed tons and were constructed of steel, graphite fiber, sialon, and thick vacuum-formed drop-forged glass. Not exactly the savory mouthful of organic goodness that would appeal to any denizen of Donovan’s deep.

  Michaela sat in the elevated commander’s chair behind the glass transparency in the nose, while Casey Stoner sat in the driver’s seat ahead and below. The controls were situated so that the commander was sort of piggyback with the driver’s head between the commander’s feet. Both had a complete one hundred-and-eighty-degree view. Call it the next best thing to being in open ocean.

  Using her implants, Michaela interfaced directly with the submarine’s lights, diving controls, remote mechanical arms, and ballast. With a simple command, she could aim and fire the torpedo.

  The main cabin behind her had additional view ports as well as workstations and seating that would accommodate an additional two occupants. For this initial run, Michaela had made the decision that it would only be the two of them. Assured as she was that this initial voyage was low-risk, she was nevertheless unwilling to place any additional personnel in jeopardy.

  The others would be watching from the monitors aboard the Pod, and those with research interests would be able to make requests of the subs’ occupants if they saw anything through either of the Seascapes’ cameras that piqued their interests. Michaela suspected that group participation would be anything but limited. In fact, she suspected that once they got in position, the requests would be coming so fast and furious that she’d have to referee, or they’d never get past twenty meters.

  “Ready to go?” Casey called up from the driver’s seat.

  “We’re tight and charged,” Michaela told the woman as she checked the heads-up display where the sub’s systems were displayed. “Varina? Are you a ‘go’ for submersion?”

  “Roger that, Director. Tight and charged.”

  “Kevina, how do you read?”

  “My readouts for both subs are all green. I read tight and fully charged. Telemetry is at one hundred percent. Every system on my board is a go. You’re a go for launch.”

  “Let’s do this, people. Tobi, put us in the water.”

  Michaela felt the vehicle shove forward on its track. Through the sub’s transparency she watched the Underwater Bay’s interior slide past. Then, at the edge of the pool, the sub’s nose dropped and Michaela felt herself tilt forward.

  She saw the thick blue-green scum clinging to the side of the pool. The stuff that looked like algae. Yosh’s sample was still in Vik Lawrence’s backlog of specimens, waiting to be put under the scope and catalogued. In the days since they’d set the Pod, the pilings and the entire underbelly had collected a coating. In places it looked like it was ten centimeters thick and had started to climb up the Pod walls.

  Not that it would be a problem. Ruto said he’d been able to dislodge entire colonies with a power washer where they were creeping out onto the Underwater Bay floor.

  Then Michaela watched water rise around the sub’s nose as they slipped into the crystalline depths. A few bubbles trickled up around the transparency as Casey released the grapples, kicked on the motors, and sent them down and right to clear the way for Varina’s sub. As they passed from under the Pod’s shadow, the view was stunning.

  Capella’s rays danced in shafts as they refracted down through the swells to illuminate a wondrous aquatic world. Here was a wealth of fascinating biota. Michaela didn’t know what else to call it. Sure, it was easy to bias the nomenclature and call the blue-green growths sprouting from the sea floor plants, but were they? Falling into terrestrial terminology and classification before actually studying the specimens, was—if Donovanian land-based life was any guide—nothing more than a spurious exercise in futility.

  What she saw here was a wonderland of strange life-forms, some of it stemmed and sporting paddles, some a collection of waving green tendrils, others like a corona of stalks and pods, many of them incredibly colorful as they opened and closed. Here and there, taller specimens sent spears up that were covered with leaves or tentacles, sometimes with fan-like appendages, and even what looked like flexible arms with multi-fingered hands that fished around and tried to grab the zipping tubes as they squirted past. No matter how bizarrely different this was from Earth’s oceans, what was rapidly apparent was trilateral symmetry.

  “Holy wow!” Casey gasped as a school of paper-thin creatures flashed past the transparency in a full spectrum of color. In an instant, they flipped sideways, so thin they vanished into seeming nothingness.

  “We’re right behind you,” Jaim’s voice came through Michaela’s com. “We’re passing to your right and above. We’re going to start taking samples at the five-meter mark on the transect.”

  “Roger that,” Michaela told her. “We’re flipping on the instruments. We’ll take station ten meters off your stern and match depth.” In her monitors she kept track of the second sub as it passed above, turned into the reef, and nosed close to the bottom so that Varina could begin taking samples with the sub’s extendable arms.
Even as she did, the observers in the Pod began chattering. Michaela deleted the distraction, setting her com to react if a request was directed to her.

  To Casey, she said, “Point us out toward deepwater. I’m turning on the sonar.”

  “Got it. And I’ve got Jaim and Varina’s location on my instruments. They’re nosing into position now.”

  Michaela watched as the sub’s orientation shifted, swinging them around to the open water where it shone in a marvelous turquoise that seemed to fade into infinity. Beams of light danced from the waves above, reminding her of the magic of being underwater. The heads-up display reflected sonar hits on tubes and other creatures as tiny blips of yellow on the screen.

  “Michaela?” Varina’s voice came through the com, “Try the hydrophones. You’ve got to hear this. You’ll need to use the program to mask the mechanical sound of the subs, but this is amazing.”

  “Roger that.” Michaela accessed her implants to turn on the hydrophones, overwhelmed at first by the wealth of sound. Then, from memory, she used the program to remove the hum from the electric motors on the two subs.

  “How do you describe that?” Casey asked as she established neutral buoyancy at a depth of five meters, her eyes on the instruments.

  “Like that sound you hear when an orchestra is tuning up before playing a symphony.” Michaela made a face. “But not really. There’s so much more range here above and below our hearing. I’m getting readings from four hertz to two hundred and twenty kilohertz. It’s the tremolo, the harmony, almost a rhythm. Then there’s the bumping bass. Deep thrumming. A chorus of sound. Like nothing I’ve ever heard. Even more complex than the chime we heard outside Port Authority.”

  “You ask me,” Casey told her, “the whole ocean is singing.”

  For long moments, they just sat there listening. Fascinated and not a little awed as tubes darted past the transparency and occasionally hit it hard enough to give off soft thumps.