“We have reached the trench,” Pandora added. “Taking us down.”
“That was good timing,” Addy said.
Lucien saw the glassy smooth surface of the methane ocean snap into sharper focus as they slowed down. Small ripples appeared, waves produced by surface winds. Then their forward movement ceased entirely, and the galleon started down. The hull touched the surface with a loud slap, and a dim, fuzzy wall of liquid methane swept away the orange haze of Snowflake’s atmosphere. Pandora turned on the galleon’s landing lights, and rippled black sand appeared on the ocean floor far below. The trench was as a broad black slash of impenetrable shadows coming up directly below them.
Muffled explosions sounded over the bridge speakers.
“What was that?” Lucien asked as the galleon rocked in the shock waves.
“Enemy missiles are exploding on the surface,” Pandora replied.
Lucien smiled. “Tyra’s plan is working.”
“Tyra’s plan?” Pandora echoed, her voice shrill. “It was I who suggested it, sir.”
“Doesn’t matter whose plan it was,” Lucien said, while inwardly smiling at the bot’s outrage. “What matters is that it’s working.”
“Yes, sir,” Pandora said. “I am detecting evidence of cryovolcanic activity at the bottom of the trench. There are places where the ice is very thin from repeated eruptions of liquid water.”
“Interesting,” Lucien replied. “So we could blast a hole and fly down into the other ocean.”
“We would need a great deal of firepower, but yes, I believe that’s possible,” Pandora said. “We’d have to time it perfectly, however, as the hole would freeze back over very quickly.
“Why go down there?” Addy asked.
“If we can get deep enough, there’ll be too much quantum impedance for their cruiser’s jamming field to reach us,” Lucien said.
“Or for ours to reach them,” Jalisa replied. “They could jump their cruiser down right next to us and have at us with their cannons.”
“Possibly…” Lucien trailed off with a frown. Something about venturing into the subsurface ocean seemed like a viable strategy, but with the bottom of the trench still so far away, he had more pressing concerns. “How long before those enemy fighters reach us?”
“Not long, sir. Less than ten minutes,” Pandora said.
“If they join us below the surface, they won’t be able to shoot us,” Lucien mused aloud. “Their missiles’ propulsion systems won’t work, and lasers will dissipate instantly in liquid methane.”
“They could still shoot us with hypervelocity cannons,” Jalisa said.
“Assuming they have any,” Lucien replied.
“They might also try to ram us,” Addy put in.
“They’ll be limited to grav lifts for propulsion, so they won’t be able to reach a high enough velocity to do any damage,” Lucien replied. “Besides, they’ll be easy targets for our hypervelocity cannons. Tyra’s plan is fool-proof.”
“My plan,” Pandora insisted.
“How much longer before we can jump out?” Lucien asked.
“Twenty minutes, sir.”
“Any luck finding the virus they’ve been using to track us?”
“My scans haven’t found anything yet. I’m running another, deeper scan to double-check.”
“Keep me posted.”
“Aye.”
“Maybe it’s not a virus?” Addy asked. “We assumed they put a tracking device on our shuttle, but they might have put one on the Inquisitor instead.”
“They would have needed to disrupt our shields long enough to attach the device,” Lucien said, shaking his head. “The Inquisitor’s shields never failed, did they?”
“No, sir,” Pandora said.
“What if they fired the device into our hangar bay when our shuttle was coming aboard?” Addy asked.
“Or the tracking device was on our shuttle, but it detached and found a new home inside the hangar bay as soon as we came aboard,” Lucien said. “Pandora, send a detail of bots to scan Shuttle Bay One.”
“Aye, s—”
“And figure out how many missiles we’ll need to blast a hole into the ocean below this one. Try to maneuver us into position over the thinnest section of the trench floor.”
“Aye, sir.”
“What about the enemy cruiser?” Addy asked. “If they jump down into that ocean to follow us…”
Lucien considered it for a moment. Then he realized what it was about the plan that interested him. “They can’t jump down there. Liquids are extremely difficult to compress, and with all the pressure the subsurface ocean is already under, I doubt it can compress any further. Quantum jumping into the ocean will displace water, but it won’t have anywhere to go. The pressure will be so immense that it will crush them in seconds.”
“Won’t that happen to us, too?”
“Not if we blow a hole between the oceans and fly through. As we cross from one ocean to another there’ll be a natural exchange of liquids around our ship.”
“The commander is right,” Pandora said. “Tyra’s plan will work.”
“Tyra’s not even here… how could it be her plan?” Lucien asked.
“Oh, I thought that was something we were doing—giving all the credit to our illustrious captain.”
Lucien smiled. “Touche.”
One of the trench walls swept up in front of them as they started down into the trench. They fell past endless layers of ice and black sediment that shone brightly under the Inquisitor’s landing lights. Sensors revealed they were now at a depth of more than fifteen hundred meters, but they still had a long way to go to get to the bottom of the trench.
Time passed at an agonizing pace. The enemy fighters joined them in the ocean at a range or depth disparity of almost three kilometers.
“Enemy fighters are dropping missiles on us!” Jalisa said.
“Dropping?” Lucien asked with a knowing smile. The missiles would never reach them propelled by gravity alone.
“Wait—no, enemy ordnance is speeding toward us at… fifty-two meters per second and climbing,” Jalisa replied.
Lucien blinked. “How is that possible?”
“They appear to be using some type of grav guns on their fighters to accelerate the missiles,” Pandora said. “ETA to impact is less than one minute.”
“Intercept the missiles with our hypervelocity cannons,” Lucien ordered.
“Already on it, sir,” Jalisa replied.
Hypervelocity cannons were too slow to hit most targets in space, where engagements were fought at a range of thousands of kilometers. But down here, with a range of just three kilometers, those cannons would hit their targets almost instantly. The projectiles would move slower in liquid methane than vacuum, but still more than fast enough.
Lucien watched on the sensor grid as a golden stream of cannon fire flashed up from their galleon to eradicate the descending waves of enemy ordnance. Explosions flared, peppering the grid with light. Moments later, the Inquisitor began rocking violently in the shock waves. Those explosions were more powerful than Lucien had expected, but he should have anticipated that. Millions of liters of liquid methane were boiling into a gas with each explosion, and that rapid expansion was magnifying the shock waves.
“We’re not going to get them all…” Jalisa warned.
“What? Why not?” Lucien demanded.
“We don’t have enough cannons!” Jalisa said. “Brace for impact!”
The first missile streaked in with a boom that rattled the bridge speakers. Vibrations shuddered through the deck, and an ominous groan sounded somewhere deep inside the galleon.
“What was that?”
“That hit must have weakened a beam somewhere…” Pandora said, her holoreceptors scanning the ceiling as if it might cave in at any moment.
Boom! Another missile hit, followed by another, and another, and then four more in quick succession. Beneath the rumbling roar of those explosions, Lucien
heard the ship’s hull groaning insistently.
“They’re targeting the same spot!” Jalisa warned.
“Something’s wrong…” Addy said, her eyes tracking the ceiling as the hull gave another, much louder groan.
Lucien looked up from the grid to gaze out into the shadowy depths of the methane ocean. “What pressure is our hull rated for?”
“More than five hundred atmospheres, sir,” Pandora said, “but with shields at maximum strength, we can theoretically withstand over thirty thousand.”
“And current pressure is?”
“Only one hundred and eighty.”
The galleon’s hull should have been able to resist that pressure handily. The fact that it wasn’t meant those missiles were somehow disrupting their shields.
Two more impacts sounded, followed by a sudden shriek of fatigued metal. Another explosion roared through the bridge speakers, and this one was louder than all of the others combined. The Inquisitor listed suddenly to one side.
Lucien’s eyes flew wide. “Report! What happened?”
“We’ve sprung a leak!” Garek replied.
“Liquid methane mixed with the atmosphere in one of our compartments and ignited, blowing a hole in the side of our ship,” Pandora added. “Multiple compartments are flooding now. If there’s another spark…”
Lucien didn’t need further explanation. “Vent the air out of all of the affected areas!” he ordered.
“We can’t vent the air without fans, and fans could generate sparks,” Garek said. “I’ve shut down all the machinery and electrical conduits in those sections and sealed them off. That should prevent another explosion.”
But Pandora shook her head. “There’s still a chance of electrostatic discharge as the air trapped in those compartments cools.”
“How likely is that?” Lucien asked, his heart pounding.
“Hard to say,” Pandora replied. “I’d estimate our chance of survival at approximately one in two.”
“A coin toss,” Lucien replied.
“Yes, sir. We’ll know which side we come out on in just a few seconds.”
Lucien glanced out the viewports once more and sucked in a deep breath, unconsciously holding it in anticipation of liquid methane bursting into the bridge and flash-freezing them all in an instant…
Chapter 26
A full minute passed without any more explosions.
“All compromised compartments are fully flooded,” Pandora said.
Lucien let out the breath he’d been holding in a sigh.
“Enemy fighters have stopped firing missiles at us,” Jalisa announced. “They’re leaving!”
“Why?” Lucien said.
“They must be out of missiles,” Addy suggested.
“It would appear so,” Pandora said.
“What’s our current depth?” Lucien asked.
“Ten kilometers,” Pandora replied. “Just another one hundred and ninety-seven to go before we reach the bottom of the trench.”
“Can’t we speed that up?” Lucien asked.
“We could plot a micro-jump to the bottom of the trench, but then we’d have to wait another twenty-six minutes to jump out of this system.”
“We still need to find that tracking device, so we’re going to be waiting either way,” Lucien pointed out.
Their view of the trench wall rocked suddenly, as if from the shock wave of another explosion.
“What happened?” Lucien demanded, already imagining another internal explosion from methane mixing with their atmosphere.
“The enemy cruiser just jumped into the ocean with us,” Pandora replied. “They are at point blank range.”
“Taking cannon fire!” Jalisa added.
The bridge speakers roared with a sound like water hissing on a hotplate.
“Jump us to the bottom of the trench!” Lucien ordered.
“Jumping…” Pandora replied.
The viewports flashed white, dazzling their eyes, and then the trench wall reappeared, looking much closer than it had before.
“We are now hovering at the bottom of the trench,” Pandora announced.
“Blow a hole into the subsurface ocean and take us down,” Lucien ordered.
“Aye aye… sending target telemetry…”
“Got it! Dropping missiles!” Jalisa said.
Lucien watched on sensors as their missiles drifted languidly down from the Inquisitor’s hull.
“I don’t suppose the clerics added any grav guns to their Star Galleons?” Lucien said, remembering that the enemy fighters had accelerated their missiles that way.
“No, sir,” Pandora said.
Their shields began hissing with enemy fire once more.
Lucien grimaced. “That didn’t take them long. Return fire!”
The hissing noise quickly intensified to a deafening roar, forcing Lucien to turn down the volume.
“Shields at 74% and dropping,” Pandora warned.
“Pandora, how’s our plan coming along?” Lucien asked.
“Our missiles will reach the trench bottom in 57 seconds. I am accelerating us in their wake. Timing is critical.”
Lucien watched the trench wall go sliding up once more as they followed their missiles down. Seconds passed like hours, with Pandora and Garek periodically announcing the state of their failing shields.
“Shields at 24%! Garek warned.
“Missiles detonating!” Pandora said.
The galleon rocked in the shock waves of the explosions, and suddenly the viewports were clouded by an upwelling rush of sediment and pulverized ice from the trench floor.
“We’ve broken through!” Pandora said. “Taking us down!”
The churning sediment made it hard to see, but Lucien did get a glimpse of the passage as the galleon turned to fly bow-first through the hole. The viewports in the ceiling of the bridge revealed a flicker of movement, and Lucien looked up just in time to see a giant chunk of ice land on one of them with a muffled thunk.
The trench walls were cracking away and collapsing on top of them.
“Pandora!” Lucien warned.
“I see it…” Pandora said.
Lucien gripped the armrests of his chair and leaned forward, willing the galleon to fly faster. The sides of the passage blurred by uncomfortably close, and frost formed on their viewports as liquid water mixed with liquid methane and began to freeze. Their shields roared with impacts and hollow thunks sounded over the SISS as more chunks of ice fell on top of them.
Then they cruised down into the subsurface ocean and the frost on their viewports melted. Distant booming and crashing sounds echoed over the bridge speakers as the trench collapsed behind them, sealing the passage. When the noise faded, a ringing silence took its place.
Lucien breathed a sigh. “It worked.”
“You’re sure that they can’t jump down here after us?” Addy asked.
“Positive,” Lucien replied.
“They could blow a hole like we did,” Jalisa pointed out.
“They’re a long way from the bottom of the trench, and their capacitors are still charging from their last jump,” Lucien replied. “Besides, the trench collapsed behind us. Who knows how much ice they’ll have to blast through now? At the very least, it’ll take them a while, and by then we’ll be out of here. Any luck finding the tracking device in our hangar?”
“Not yet, sir,” Pandora said, “but I have every available automaton on the job. If there’s a tracker, we’ll find it.”
“We’d better find it, otherwise all of this will be for nothing.” Lucien turned his attention to sensors and ran an underwater scan. The ocean extended at least another three hundred kilometers below them. If that depth was consistent throughout the planet, it had enough water to entirely flood New Earth several times over. Though water wasn’t entirely accurate. Sensors reported that the subsurface ocean was actually a mixture of H2O and ammonia, just as Tyra had predicted.
Long minutes passed as they descende
d ever deeper into the ocean. The galleon’s external lights vanished endlessly into the murky water. Sensors reported that it was clouded with organic sediment.
“Pity we can’t take any samples of the water,” Lucien said. “That sediment might contain alien microbes of some kind.”
“Unidentified contact on sensors!” Pandora announced.
Lucien’s blood turned to ice. “They can’t have followed us already!”
“No, sir,” Pandora replied. “It’s not big enough to be the enemy cruiser, and there’s no jamming field to accompany it. Sensors indicate the contact is biological in nature.”
Biological. It took a moment for that to sink in. “Take us in for a closer look!” Lucien urged.
“Aye, Commander.”
Before long, a strange, luminous creature came swirling out of the murky ocean. Its entire body glowed brightly, and it trailed hundreds of thin tentacles from its bulbous center. Pandora hovered the galleon in front of it, and the creature swam up to them, pressing several of its glowing tentacles to the viewports. Black circles that might have been eyes stared at them from the underside of those tentacles.
“Incredible…” Lucien whispered, standing and walking up to the nearest viewport to stare into one of those black eyes.
“I wonder if it’s intelligent?” Addy asked.
Lucien tapped a finger against the viewport where the nearest eye was, and the luminous tentacle reared back from the viewport, regarding him from a distance. After a moment, it came inching back. The tip of that tentacle met the glass where his hand was…
And then it seemed to reach through the glass and wrap around his wrist with a glowing band of light. Lucien felt nothing, but the hairs on the back of his hand stood straight up, as if from a static charge. He recoiled from the viewport, blinking furiously.
The tentacle reared back to regard him once more, then the entire thing swam off, zipping up over the bridge and out of sight.
“Did anyone else see that?” he asked.
“You scared it,” Addy said.
“No, I mean…” What did he mean? It couldn’t have actually reached through the viewport. He’d been up all night. He was tired, and now he was seeing things.
Dark Space Universe (Books 1-3): The Third Dark Space Trilogy (Dark Space Trilogies) Page 17