Green World

by B. V. Larson

  “Sir? How are we supposed to proceed? This water-tunnel, or whatever it is, appears to lead to a certain point, and then it kills the guy walking in it.”

  “Exactly. You’ve got two ghosts, right? Send the other one down there. Have her investigate and report on what happened to Cooper.”

  That didn’t make me happy. My other ghost was Della, who happened to be the mother of my only daughter Etta. Ordering her to a pointless and possibly heinous death might put a damper on any Thanksgiving celebrations in the future.

  “But sir, maybe the thin nature of Cooper’s kit is what killed him. The pressure down at a couple of hundred meters—”

  “McGill, I don’t care if you send down Harris, or Sargon in an armored weaponeers’ kit—hell you can go yourself, dick-first. Just find out what happened and keep moving. This entire campaign so far is a cluster, and the brass wants a win out of it. Give me something. Something good.”

  I accepted my orders and sighed.

  “What? What did he say?” Harris asked me.

  “He said he wants someone in armor to go down there. A kit that can take pressure—like yours.”

  “What? That’s crazy.”

  “I’ll do it.” said a third voice.

  We both turned to see Sargon. He was standing there in a veteran’s kit, which was a pretty big chunk of metal. I found it hard to argue.

  “Leave your rifle behind,” I told him. “Let’s pay out a monofilament line clipped to your belt—we should have done that with Cooper, actually. We could have reeled him back in.”

  Soon, Sargon was walking down between the two metal rails. He moved faster than Cooper had—at least at first. After all, he knew it was safe up to a point.

  A few minutes later, Sargon’s labored breathing came back to us.

  “I’ve reached him, sir—or almost.”

  Using the monofilament, we were able to get video. Seawater interferes with radio transmissions, but a direct line got past all of that.

  From Sargon’s point of view, I could see that Cooper was lying on the seabed. He was kind of twisted-up looking.

  “What do you think happened to him, Sargon?”

  “I don’t know. He looks… like he died in agony, honestly. He’s wound up like a pretzel. But I’m not reading any special pressure levels. I’m not sure what happened.”

  Sargon turned and took a single step toward the corpse, but Natasha suddenly shouted at us. She’d come up and was watching the video feed like the rest of the officers were.

  “Freeze, Veteran!”

  Sargon obeyed. He didn’t move a muscle. In fact, it looked to me like one of his armored feet was suspended in the water over the sandy bottom.

  “Step back to where you were, Sargon,” Natasha said in calmer voice. “Don’t go out there. Don’t leave the space between the two metal rails.”

  “Uh… okay.”

  I turned to Natasha. “What’s wrong, girl?”

  “That’s how Cooper died. He stepped away from the two metal rails. It took me awhile to figure it out, but I finally—I think I have it.”

  “Explain it to me. Quickly,” I told her.

  “It’s about the pressure—the sudden change of pressure. I think these steel rails somehow exert a field that normalizes the pressure down here at about two bar. That’s very low. That should be the pressure level at only ten meters under the surface, and—”

  “Listen, Specialist, I know you went to all those lab classes full of math and stuff, but I didn’t. What are you talking about?”

  She took in a deep breath. “As you go deeper underwater, the pressure gets higher and higher.”

  “Okay, I get that.”

  “Well, this little, um railroad, whatever it is, this path keeps that pressure minimized. I realized it when I saw Sargon’s readings. He’s not under that much pressure. He’s at least two hundred meters down, but he’s experiencing about two bar—two atmospheres of pressure. Normally, he’d be at around twenty or so.”

  “Huh… okay. So what?”

  “So, when Cooper walked off the path, he was hit with all that pressure at once. It messed him up, gave him the bends, whatever. In fact, I think it must be worse that than. He shouldn’t have died instantly. Maybe the field itself somehow crushed him. I really don’t know.”

  “That’s very weird, but okay, I can see how it fits the evidence. Let me contact Graves again.”

  I did so, and I reported in like I’d discovered Christmas for the first time.

  “That’s right, sir! It’s the damnedest thing. These aliens have built some kind of undersea railroad… what’s that?”

  “Where does it go, McGill? This railroad of yours, where does it go?”

  “Uh…” I said, looking down that long, long pathway. It seemed to me that it went straight down to Hell. “I don’t rightly know, sir.”

  “Well, find out. March your whole unit down there. Leave a monofilament line paying out behind you, all the way to the surface. That way, if you’re crushed or something, you won’t be permed.”

  “Always thinking of your troops, huh sir?”

  “That’s right. Get going.”

  With a sigh, I disconnected and relayed the good news to the rest of my unit. There was a lot of pissing and moaning and carrying on, but soon we were all marching single-file down that long, long pathway into the depths of an alien ocean.

  -42-

  “This has to top everything in recent Varus history,” Carlos complained to me. I was of the long-standing opinion that Carlos had remained my friend for decades mostly because I listened to his bullshit longer than most people did. “What, just what, has Graves ordered us to do that was worse than this?”

  “Are you kidding?” Kivi demanded. “This is small-potatoes, Ortiz. Remember when we were sent out into the wilderness on Death World to follow Claver around? They called it a ‘deep patrol’ as I recall. Then they left the planet and forgot about us.”

  “Oh yeah… but that hardly counts. That was punishment for McGill that we got caught up in. Besides, Drusus ordered that one, not Graves.”

  “But Graves blew us all up with a missile in the end.”

  “Ha-ha, yeah…”

  They went on like that, but I was soon bored. I moved down the line, nudging past people to the front of the column where Barton and her lights walked with a paranoid demeanor. As I passed them, they reacted like I was going to shove them into the field, or something.

  “Nervous nellies,” I laughed. “Your troops are whizzing in their suits, Adjunct.”

  “With good reason, sir. One misstep and any of us is likely to be dead.”

  “Yeah… but we don’t really know that, do we? Maybe it was a glitch.”

  She looked at me darkly. “You can give it a try at any moment, sir. Just step over that metal line.”

  I looked down at the tracks we were following. The gleaming, silvery metal lines were unbroken and seemed innocent enough. You couldn’t see the effects of the field holding back the water pressure—but you could feel them.

  “We’ve got to be about a kilometer down now, maybe more. But I don’t feel a thing. Honestly, I think the pressure down here is less than normal water would exert on you ten meters down. It’s almost like walking in thick air.”

  Natasha must have heard that, because she wandered near and started dumping nerd-data on me.

  “We are in a low-density liquid region. It’s very strange. Almost as if the water has transformed into an unknown state.”

  “Huh?”

  “You do know that water has several forms, right? There are the familiar three: vapor, liquid and solid.”

  “Solid…? You mean ice? You’re talking about steam and ice, right?”

  Natasha suppressed her urge to do an eye-roll with difficulty. I’d noticed that people did that more frequently these days. It was probably due to my rank. Out of respect, they kind of stared and blinked a few times, instead of openly laughing and rolling their eyes at
my dumb questions.

  “That’s exactly right. But there is another state, one we don’t see often. It’s when water transforms into a kind of hot ice. That’s due to massive pressure, tens of thousands of meters down.”

  “Uh… are you saying we might be marching that far? Because our suit-batteries will die way before that.”

  She nodded, and her eyes looked kind of glassy inside her faceplate. “That’s a pity.”

  I could tell the idea excited her. She wanted to see “hot ice” up close and personal.

  As we kept going, the ocean became still and quiet. Overhead, it darkened to pitch black. That was partly due to the sun going down, and partly due to our great depth.

  “Sir?” Harris said, coming to talk to me. “I’ve been doing some math.”

  “Whoa! Don’t break your streak, Harris.”

  He tossed me a look of reproach. “No, seriously sir. Think of our batteries. We can’t just march until we’re at half-power.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because we’re going downhill. On the way back up, the exoskeletons my heavy troopers are wearing will have to work twice as hard.”

  “So turn them off for now. Save them for the return journey.”

  Harris made an unhappy face. “That will suck.”

  “Yep. Good idea you’ve got there. Tell the troops you’ve figured out the answer to their problem.”

  Grumbling, Harris wandered back to his platoon. I knew he was just trying to come up with reasons to turn back. I could hardly blame him for that. It was getting kind of spooky down here in the dark.

  “Is Harris complaining already?” Leeson asked me.

  “He sure is.”

  “That weasel. His men are at an eighty percent charge still. We could walk down this slope for days.”

  At around midnight, I called a halt to the main column. We would rest while the light platoon scouted ahead. They had a ninety percent charge left, after all. I also ordered that two thirds of the men were to shut down their lights at any given time. The lights burned juice, and with people looking every which way, we didn’t need to use them all at once.

  These conservation measures were met with sullen disappointment. Many of the troops were counting the hours until we did a U-turn and went back to the world of light and air.

  “This is ridiculous,” Harris complained to me over command chat. “How does Graves expect us to search an ocean on foot? If he wants to know what’s down here, all he has to do is dunk a probe or a mini-sub or something.”

  “I don’t think he thought we’d have to march this far down to find anything. Besides, Legion Varus isn’t well-suited to underwater campaigns.”

  “You can say that again. Remember those robots they loosed at us on Green Deck? That was hilarious.”

  I could have mentioned the robots weren’t as funny to most of the units as they were to us, but I didn’t want to dampen any relief in the mood.

  We ate ration-paste, sipped some fresh water and whizzed in our suits to make more water for later. After about twenty minutes, I got a message back from Barton. She’d gone down with the monofilament line trailing behind her.

  “There’s something down here, Centurion—” I heard her say.

  I stood up and tapped at my helmet. The signal was rough. “Say again, Barton? Have you made contact?”

  There was nothing for about ten seconds. During that time, my men watched me with growing concern. They knew enough to stay quiet, however—even Carlos.

  “Barton? Have you made—”

  “Sir! Sir! We’re in action!”

  I could hear her weapon firing when she transmitted. It sounded weird as it was underwater. Both her voice and the gunfire cut out suddenly.

  For several long seconds, nothing happened. We all stood around, eyeing one another and listening intently. Barton had to be pretty far down. If we didn’t get a good sitrep report soon, I was going to have to make some hard decisions.

  “It’s been too long,” Harris said at last in a hushed voice. “Maybe she’s gone.”

  “Shut up and listen. She’ll report in.”

  We waited another long count to ten, and then, at long last, something did happen.

  The monofilament jumped under our feet. It began to pay out—fast.

  “Looks like something grabbed our fishing lure, sir!” Carlos called out.

  “Everyone step back from the line—don’t try to stop it!”

  But my warning came too late. No less than four fools had their gloves on that squirming line already. When it snapped tight, it jerked them off their feet. Two of the four were thrown up into the water. They were instantly crushed by the field that protected us from the fantastic pressure of the ocean around us.

  “Let go of that line! Let it go!”

  The others did as I ordered, and the monofilament flew up out of sight.

  “It’s like something big just grabbed the line and swam up toward the surface,” Natasha said. “Whatever it is, it must be a magnificent creature.”

  Harris turned to me and pointed upward. “The monofilament is gone. That was our only lifeline to the surface, Centurion. We have to turn back.”

  I thought about it. I really did. What stopped me was one simple fact: if we didn’t determine what had happened to Barton and her platoon, they were permed—all of them.

  “What are you talking about?” I demanded. “We finally found what we’ve been looking for. I’m not sure what it is yet, but I am sure of one thing.” I jabbed a finger down into the dark depths of the ocean. “Whatever it is, it’s down there. Let’s go find it.”

  Soon we were marching again, and I couldn’t tell you the last time my troops had looked so forlorn.

  -43-

  The water got colder and darker the farther we went down. Soon, it was icy and above us the sea was pitch black. We shivered in our suits, unwilling to run our heaters. The Lord himself only knew how badly we would need every ounce of power we had to get back to the world of air and light.

  Going down deep in the ocean is normally a peaceful experience. Sure, it was creepy down here, with big weird growths and rocky cliffs to fall off of, but at least it was quiet and still.

  That’s not how we felt this time out. We were all on edge. No one could forget the way that monofilament had jumped and twisted, like a steel cable tied to a dinosaur’s neck. What could have caused it to move that way? We really didn’t know, we could only conjecture.

  “What if it was, like a huge whale or something?” Carlos asked aloud. “Or maybe a massive killer shark?”

  “I doubt it,” Natasha told him. “Even a megalodon from Earth’s prehistoric period wouldn’t have that kind of strength. It was more likely a submarine, something else that’s artificial with a motor.”

  “What’s a megalodon?”

  “A shark the size of a whale.”

  “Oooo… cool.”

  Conversations like that proceeded in earnest all along my column of struggling troops. Everyone wanted to know what we were walking into, but there weren’t any easy answers—yet.

  After a long half-hour of slogging in Barton’s wake, we reached a wide flat area. We’d been marching downhill all this time, sometimes winding around rocks and cliffs, but always downward.

  This spot was different. It was wide, sandy and flat. What was more significant was the fact the two rails we’d been following had split apart, spreading in a great arc to surround the flat area.

  “Natasha!” I shouted.

  She came rushing to my side. I ordered everyone else to take a knee and keep their eyes peeled.

  “What’s this?” I asked.

  “It’s like a tableland. A plateau.”

  “What? Underwater?”

  “Sure. Undersea geography isn’t all that different from what you see on the surface of any planet. There are mountain ranges, valleys—everything. It’s just underwater.”

  “Uh… yeah, I get that. But the rails have split apart. Why
?”

  Natasha looked around and took readings. She tried to send buzzers ahead into the dark regions, but they failed to operate just as they’d done far above in the shallows. After a few minutes, she came back to report to me.

  “It seems like the field is still in place. The pressure here is still lower than standard water at any depth. But James—I found something else.”

  She showed me a boot. At first, I thought maybe it was pulled off one of our troops—one of Barton’s unfortunate lights. But then I saw there still a foot in the boot, and a gray-white shinbone sticking up out of it. This soldier hadn’t just lost a boot, he’d lost his life.

  I dropped the boot and lifted my rifle. “Unit, weapons out. Advance with caution. Let’s search this flat area. Whatever you do, don’t step over the rails!”

  The troops did as I ordered, fanning out. The heavies were the first rank, then the weaponeers strung along a few paces behind them. A belcher would put out a lot of heat and bubbles underwater, but it was still an effective weapon at short range.

  In the rear of the group were Leeson’s softies. They were bio people and techs for the most part. They looked more nervous than anyone else.

  When we finally met up with the enemy, we were just as surprised as Barton’s troops must have been. They sprang up out of the sands at our feet. Cephalopods—better known as space-squids—grappled with our front line.

  Many of the heavy troopers stepped right onto the squirming enemy, who’d buried themselves in the dirty seabed to lie in ambush.

  Bolts flew, blasting bubbles as they super-heated the water they passed through. Surprised men shouted while huge, three meter tall squids battled with them. I was right there, but I didn’t use my morph-rifle like most of my troops.

  Instead, I extended my force blades a meter out from each of my wrists. These weapons slashed through the low-density water very effectively. Soon, a dozen other heavies followed my example. The squids were in close on us, and they were wrapping their heavy tentacles around our bodies. Each heavy trooper that faced a squid had a tough time of it. I felt like I was wrestling a pit full of boa constrictors.