Green World

by B. V. Larson

People always tended to focus on their current enemy when they were at war, to the exclusion of all else. Unfortunately, now that we were part of the frontier club of fledgling civilizations at the fringe of the known galaxy, we never did seem to catch a break. Times of long-lasting peace were just a faded memory for Earth.

  -50-

  After the last monster was driven off our island, people kind of figured the dome of hot ice that encapsulated us would… I don’t know, melt?

  But it didn’t. The damned thing just sat up there making the sun look all weird and wavery. In fact, it kind of got real warm inside the dome after a while. The techs said that it was a greenhouse effect. Cut off from wind and rain, the temperature under the dome kept creeping up. The ocean got all weird, too. Not only was it full of dead monster-meat, there were no more waves, either. The whole mess was turning into a crock pot destined to cook up a nasty stew.

  “Hmmm…” I said the morning after. “You know, those huge bodies are already smelling bad, and they’re going to get a lot worse after a while.”

  “That’s right, they will,” Carlos said. He was standing next to me on the beach like he was my date or something. I guess there wasn’t all that much for a bio to do now that the battle was over. “I think they’re pretty stinky already.”

  He was right. Nothing smells worse than seafood rotting on a beach. Things like giant squids always seemed to rot real fast, too.

  Turning to look at Carlos, I frowned. “Why are you wandering around out here and pestering me anyway? Aren’t you supposed to be working long shifts in some revival chamber somewhere?”

  “I would have been—but they aren’t reviving anyone here anymore. They’re reviving them up on Dominus.”

  “Yeah? Is that because they don’t want to waste the effort when we’re trapped under glass?”

  “Partly. But it’s also because the lifters took off with a lot of our revival machines. They only left us a few down here, and the raw materials aren’t going to last. They hauled the rest of them back up to the transport when things started to get weird down here. Didn’t you notice the lifters were gone?”

  “Oh… yeah. I guess they would have used their anti-personnel cannons in the battle if they’d been sitting on the sand.”

  “Right,” Carlos replied. “The lifter pilots bugged out when a freaking dome started rising out of the sea. We were busy playing kamikaze on the beach, so we missed it.”

  “Ah-ha. I get it. They didn’t want to chance losing valuable machines. Three thousand troops are no big deal—but a few lifters and a half-dozen revival machines? Well, that’s real value right there.”

  “You said it brother. At least the legion isn’t losing her most treasured equipment. That should take the edge off the corn-holing we received from these giant aliens—at least as far as the brass is concerned.”

  We walked along the shore another dozen steps before I frowned at him again. “Hold on…how come you didn’t die in that battle?”

  “Uh… well… I got away. The monster didn’t go for me.”

  “Yeah, sure. What you mean is you ran off early, and you didn’t turn around until you made it to safety.”

  “Well… come on, McGill. Cut me a break. I’m just a bio in pajamas on any battlefield. I couldn’t do anything against that monster, and you know it.”

  “Yeah, that’s true. You’re forgiven.”

  After a few more steps he looked at me with an odd expression. “Wait a minute—how come you’re alive, too? Almost no one else in our whole unit made it off that beach. You know that, don’t you?”

  “It’s no secret.”

  “How’d you do it? Did you pick up your skirts and run screaming? I’d like to have seen that.”

  The truth was, Carlos’ description was pretty accurate. I couldn’t confess like he had, however. Carlos had the biggest mouth in the unit. Not even a good killing would keep him quiet.

  “I ran to help Manfred,” I lied proudly. “His unit was the next one down the beach, and the star-falls knocked out the squid attacking his troops.”

  “Why help a unit with a dead monster when there’s a live one tearing up your own men?” Carlos was looking a mite suspicious. I knew I had to clamp that down right away.

  I stopped walking, and my voice rose. My arms made big sweeping gestures toward the dead monsters nearby. “Because those things didn’t just die all at once. They toppled over right into Manfred’s unit, crushing people and burying them under mounds of meat. The difference was they could be helped.”

  Carlos looked disgusted. He sighed. “Of course. McGill charges into danger to help, while Carlos scuttles away. I’m pretty sure that’s why you’re a centurion, and I’m still a loser bio.”

  “It’s that, plus your ugly looks—and don’t forget your sheer pig-ignorance.”

  “Thanks.”

  We started walking again, and I breathed a sigh of relief as the topic of conversation shifted. I’d been contemplating drowning him and tampering with his tapper—but it wasn’t necessary. He’d bought my pack of lies, and his big mouth would soon become an asset when my unit was reunited. He wouldn’t be able to stop himself from telling everyone I’d been rescuing Manfred’s troops instead of running for my life.

  Bored, we made a seven kilometer tour, which took us halfway around the island. That’s when Graves came looking for us virtually using his officer’s tracking system.

  My tapper lit up and displayed his ugly mug. “I see you and Ortiz are having a romantic stroll on the beach.”

  “Not so, Primus sir. We’re reviewing the situation at the front lines.”

  “There are no front lines. We’re inside a dome, and all the monsters are dead or they’ve escaped.”

  Graves was correct, but I didn’t feel like letting him know that. Not yet, anyway.

  “I don’t think so, Primus. Some of those monsters got away, sure. I saw them swim out to sea and disappear—but what if they’re still lurking just off shore?”

  “They’re gone, McGill. We have drones and satellite lidar. We’re tracking them to the depth of a kilometer or more. They seem to be able to move through the barrier they constructed—maybe because it’s essentially compressed water anyway. The surviving enemy all swam off into the sea.”

  “Huh… well, that’s good news. How do we get out of this dome? Do we have a way to switch it off or something?”

  “No… not yet. We’re trapped here. I suggest you stop wasting time on the beach and try to figure it out.”

  “How, sir?”

  “You could take a walk down underwater again. That special railroad you found that goes to the ocean floor might go right through it.”

  I stopped walking and stared out to sea. I realized he was right. “It’s worth a try. But I’m not sure what I can do out there even if I do find a way out. I mean, I’ll still be stuck on the bottom of the ocean.”

  “Not so. We’ve been trying to set up some gateway posts to take us back up to the ship. This damned dome isn’t allowing it. There’s too much interference. You can’t even teleport through it.”

  I whistled long and low. I hadn’t found too many things you couldn’t teleport through. “Is it that dense? Like the star-matter hull of a Skay?”

  “I don’t know, but those who have tried have splatted on the dome.”

  I looked up and craned my neck. I tried to spot a crushed body smeared against the dome. I didn’t see any, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there. The dome was pretty huge, after all.

  “What are we going to do, Primus sir?”

  “What you’re going to do is take a walk on the ocean floor. If you can walk about a kilometer down that path, it will take you out of the dome. From that point, you should be able to set up some gateway posts, and then maybe—”

  I slapped my gloved paws together with enthusiasm. “Then we can march everyone left alive down there and roll them right through. What a sneaky way to escape!”

  Graves looked at me seri
ously. “We might do that—march the troops, I mean. But really, what matters most are the star-falls. Those babies don’t come cheap, and Turov wants them back on her ship safely stashed in a stasis field.”

  I blinked, absorbing his words. He was saying that marching all the men down there in a conga line to the bottom of the ocean wasn’t that important. They wanted to save expensive artillery pieces. That figured—Varus brass always thought like that.

  Sucking in a breath, I nodded to Graves. “I’ll do it, sir. Just let me eat some dinner and take a crap. I’m your man after that, and I won’t disappoint.”

  “No dinner. If you need more than four minutes to crap, do it in your suit. I want you marching down that path to the seabed inside of fifteen minutes.”

  “You’re all heart, sir. McGill out.”

  I began trotting after that, and Carlos trotted after me. Normally, he wouldn’t have been able to keep up. But when I was in armor and he was in his light spacer suit, we were evenly matched. Even so, he was huffing and puffing long before we reached the Wur building that led down to the passage under the sea.

  “Why are you following me around, Specialist? Are you trying to get a date?”

  “Chill, Centurion. I just don’t want to miss a possible underwater perming. I’ve never seen one done that way before. You’ll be my first.”

  -51-

  As it was, Carlos wasn’t the only guy waiting to send me off. As I entered the chute that went straight down to hell, a whole pack of curious techs were hanging around the place.

  “What’s this?” Carlos demanded. “You ghouls! You’re all here to make vids when he dies down there, aren’t you?”

  “Settle down, Specialist,” I told him. “Ladies? What’s up?”

  I ended up regretting that I’d asked the question. They dressed me up with six kinds of cameras, instruments and sensors galore. I had more wires on me than a Christmas tree.

  Carlos found my predicament particularly amusing. “Wow, Graves is a cold man. This is cringey. He played you so hard this time. It’s like he blames you for the destruction of his entire cohort.”

  “Shut up. I’m going down there, and I’m coming back up. You just wait and see.”

  “Oh, I’m waiting, sir. If you make it back up here alive, you’ll have the right to flex all you want to. I’ll even brag on your behalf.”

  “That’s a kind offer, now piss-off.”

  He backed away and the techs pulled open the doors. The sea was right there, lapping on the other side. I would have thought it was high tide, but I knew that we didn’t really experience tides anymore. All that kind of happy normal behavior was on the far side of the dome.

  Striding with purpose, I walked into the water and kept going until it was over my head. Then, after swimming a few strokes, I was able to get to my feet again. That water did that weird pressure-shift thing, allowing me to move almost as I would normally. Since seawater between the rails was less dense, I wasn’t floating anymore.

  About a thousand steps later, I couldn’t see the surface anymore. I couldn’t see much of anything other than the cold dark water all around me. It seemed like looking up was brighter than looking down—but that was about it.

  Turning up my suit-lights to high, I kept walking. At a certain point, I thought I detected the dome. It was out there, a region of the sea that looked kind of… warped. It was like a sheet of clear glass in the water, hard to detect, but it was there.

  Pausing, I played my lights up and down over the area. Here and there, I caught what looked like a glint from the walls.

  “I’ve reached the dome,” I said into my intercom. A long monofilament wire ran from me all the way back up to the shoreline. “Do you read me?”

  A stern female tech answered. I didn’t know her, and I didn’t want to. “We hear you, Centurion. Keep going. Report back if the barrier stops you from making further progress.”

  I was still really needing to take a crap somewhere better than inside my suit, and my belly was starting to grumble something fierce, too.

  For about half a minute, I considered walking into that wall. I didn’t know if it would kill me or save the star-falls—but either way, I didn’t want to go any deeper.

  Two more steps. That was all I took, then I halted. With all the art of a mime working at a shopping mall, I reached out and began touching the water in front of me as if it was a solid surface—but there was nothing there.

  “Damnation!” I exclaimed. “I found a tunnel right through the dome! Right here, the pathway cuts into the wall.”

  “We’re not sensing an opening, McGill.”

  “Well, I can’t help you there,” I said, poking my fingers into the region ahead of me. “I’m not a tech. I’m just a dumbass combat soldier. Do you want me to walk through it?”

  “Are you sure you can proceed?”

  “Absolutely,” I said with certainty.

  “Standby. We’re doing a scan with the instruments you’re wearing.

  I groaned aloud. “All right. I’ll just stand around here for a minute, so you can take all your measurements and whatnot.”

  I heard the techs talking, and they seemed to be baffled. I couldn’t blame them for that, as this alien tech wasn’t like anything we knew about. I had to wonder if the water density changing system that had created the wall was the same technology that had put a hole in it right here.

  I’d encountered this kind of thing before on other alien worlds. Nonhumans tended to be better than us at a given specialized technology. Humans were better generalists, but every civilization had their bright spots.

  Back on Death World, for example, we’d met up with the finest in organic tech, courtesy of the Wur. Then there were the Dust Worlders who made great nanites—or the Edge World people known as Shadowlanders who had built the revival machines. In every case they’d developed advanced tech due to a specific need others didn’t share.

  This case seemed no different. These kraken, or giant male squids, or whatever the xenos would call them in the end, needed to deal with deep water and high pressures. They’d mastered the technology, which no doubt allowed them to walk on the surface of their world or the bottom of their deep, deep sea.

  After about four minutes I became bored, and I started to walk back up again. I really did need to go to the bathroom. The techs hadn’t approved of this move, but I’ve always been a man who preferred to ask for forgiveness, rather than permission.

  It took them over thirty seconds to realize I was moving away from the site.

  “McGill? Centurion? You haven’t been cleared to move from your position. Please return to your station. We’re not done scanning the vicinity yet.”

  “What’s there to scan? I found the frigging hole in the dome, just like you wanted and that’s that.”

  They complained, but I kept right on walking. Finally, someone said something that caught my attention. That was quite an achievement, because I’d already decided to ignore them.

  “Centurion? There’s movement behind you.”

  I paused mid-step, and I turned around. My rifle was slung, but I readied it smoothly even as I moved to face the other way.

  But my action came too late. A pack of humanoids were right in my face. They’d come up from the depths, using the path I’d been on like a highway. The worst thing was I could see there were lots of them behind the first man. Hundreds of them, at least.

  My gun began to chug out bolts. The first struck the leader’s foot, then leg, then belly as I brought my weapon into line. He exploded with a dark cloud of blood and gore. Overall, I’d have to say that I don’t prefer fighting in the sea over fighting on the land. You’d think that it would be cleaner, what with the water and all—but it isn’t.

  The trouble is the liquid stuff turns into a kind of fog. When you shoot a normal man in an atmosphere, or in space, his guts don’t turn into a cloud of mist that clings to everything. But as the saying goes, beggars can’t be choosers. I was in this, an
d there was no easy way out.

  “I’ve got humanoids in diving gear coming at me. Zillions of them!”

  “What are they, Centurion? We can’t identify the enemy.”

  Ignoring the question, I kept spamming bolts downrange. The approaching figures returned fire with something lighter—snap-rifles?

  “They might be humans,” I said. “They’ve got snap-rifles.”

  “Identify your attackers, McGill.” This last order came from a new voice. It was Graves. He must have gotten a heads-up from the techs that something big was going down. “That’s an order.”

  “Uh… I’m kind of busy, sir.”

  “Identify them. If you die before you report, this whole scouting mission will have been in vain.”

  I could kind of see his point, but I just wasn’t in the mood. I was shuffling backwards up the slope, firing frequently into the cloud of blood. Every now and then an outstretched hand or a foot came close, but then I fired again and the man went down wriggling. Sometimes, they slipped outside the protective region of the pathway. Once they put a single foot past those shiny rails, they were crushed and killed faster than anything I could do to them.

  Their snap-rifle shots were striking me all the while, but their penetrating power was vastly reduced by the water. Even low-density water was thicker than air. Inside my armor, I rocked this way and that as they dented up my chest plate. Now and then I felt a good hit and grunted, but I kept on fighting.

  “McGill, damn you, stop trying so hard to survive. I order you to rip the facemask off one of those frigging troops.”

  I must have killed thirty of the enemy, but they kept on coming. Sighing, I took a step downhill and drew my combat knife. My morph-rifle was about out of juice, anyway.

  The next man came out of that dark cloud of gore, and he came at me with a knife of his own. Fortunately, I’m well-trained and practiced with a wide variety of weaponry. I slid past his blade and planted mine in his throat. Then, with a deft twist I sawed at his neck, and his whole head came free.

  Shuffling back again, I dodged several more reaching, claw-like hands. When I was able, I looked down at the trophy in my fist.