by Ian Douglas
Civilization type: 1.026 G
TL 19: FTL, Genetic/cybernetic Prostheses, Advanced nanotechnology
Societal code: VTRB
Dominant: close associative/predatory/pro-active—invasive/sexual
Cultural library: 4.024 x 1016 bits
Data Storage/Transmission DS/T: 4.01 x 1011s
Biological code: 045.422.836
Genome: 5.1 x 1010 bits; Coding/non-coding: 0.622.
Biology: C, H, N, O, Cu, Mg, As, H2O, PO4, Fe
GNA – Glycol Nucleic Acid
Cupric hemocyanin free-floating in hemolymph as circulatory fluid.
Mobile heterotrophs, carnivores, O2 respiration.
Upright jointed-limb locomotion.
Highly gregarious, Polyspecific [1 genera, 10 species]; asexual.
Communication: modulated sound at 100 to 1000 Hz.
Neural connection equivalence NCE = 9.3 x 1013
T = ~240o to ~290o K; M = ~7.6 x 104 g; L: ~4.7 x 108s
Vision: ~600 nm to 1200 nm; Hearing: 12 Hz to 7000 Hz
Member: Galactic Polylogue
Receipt galactic nested code: 7.22 x 109 s ago
Locally initiated contact 0.11 x 109 s ago
Star: Unknown.
M = 6.2 x 1027g; R = 5.5 x 106m; G = 8.4 m/s2
Atm: O2 10.2, N2 53.0, CO2 33.9, NH3 2.6; Patm 0.67 x 105 Pa
Librarian’s note: EG data suggests possibility of a Steppenwolf planet. First direct human contact occurred in 2201 C.E. at Xi Serpentis. Immediate hostile response/reflex led to three-month “Guck War,” followed by the Treaty of Tanis in 2202, with no contact since. Threat level—9.
I had to ask for the definition of “Steppenwolf planet.”
Back at the beginning of the exoplanetary discovery period, astronomers and cosmologists began learning just how chancy the process of planetary formation truly was. Early in a planetary system’s history, newly formed planets tended to migrate in or out. Gas giants formed in the system’s cold outer reaches might find themselves as “hot Jupiters,” circling their parent sun in a matter of days, or shifting back and forth in response to orbital resonances with other worlds. In Earth’s solar system 4 billion years ago, orbital resonances moved Saturn farther out, and actually caused Uranus and Neptune to switch places. Most planetary scientists believe that the late heavy bombardment that cratered worlds throughout the inner system was generated as the gas giants shifted in or out, disturbing the orbits of countless asteroids and comets.
One consequence of this game of planetary billiards was that some planets would be ejected from the system entirely. Deprived of their sun, they would wander the frigid wastes among the stars, orphans lost within the vast and empty night. The term “Steppenwolf planet” had been coined a couple of centuries ago by planetary scientists who described such a world as “like a lone wolf wandering the Galactic steppes.” Others had suggested that such rogue planets were simply “born to be wild,” which seems to have been a cultural reference of the period, long since lost.
The first rogue planet ever discovered—and confirmed not to be a brown dwarf—was a world with the ungainly designation CFBDSIR 2149-0403, discovered by an infrared survey back in 2012. Current estimates suggested that there might be twice as many rogue planets as there were stars in the Galaxy, as many as 800 billion.
What had not been expected was that some of these worlds, at least, might be abodes of life. Several mechanisms for this outlandish possibility had been proposed. All required that the planet begin with an ocean of liquid water. In one, radioactive minerals deep in the planet’s crust might keep the oceans liquid beneath a kilometer-thick crust of solid ice. Another possibility suggested that extensive volcanism could pump large amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, where it would freeze, fall as CO2 snow, and ultimately blanket the oceans in insulating dry ice long before they could freeze. Enough volcanic activity might create underground caverns warmed by lava flows, as well as heating the oceans enough to keep them liquid. Calculations suggested that such worlds might maintain heat enough within their cores to keep their oceans liquid for as long as 5 billion years.
If such a world had already evolved life at the time when it was ejected from its star system, that life could be expected to adapt to slowly changing, cooling conditions. Whether that life could develop intelligence or, even more unlikely given the nature of the environment, technology, remained a hotly contested question.
But the fact that certain key planetary stats weren’t listed in the Gykr entry in the Encylopedia Galactica—no orbital radius or length of year—suggested either that the Gykr had somehow managed to delete those from the record, for whatever reason, or that those data were not relevant—that the world didn’t have a star.
If the Gucks had evolved within a rogue planet, they most likely would be a very different form of life. The supposition was that they did develop a technical civilization, possibly by developing metallurgy and advanced chemistry among the fiery volcanic vents in deep underground caverns; a purely marine civilization could never discover fire, could never smelt metals, could never venture into space . . . at least as we understand the processes of cultural and technic evolution and development.
“One thing’s certain,” Hancock said, scowling, “those little bastards mean trouble.”
“We haven’t even seen them since the Guck War,” Lance Corporal Brady said. She shook her head. “Maybe they learned their lesson?”
“Not fucking likely,” Hancock replied. “My daddy told me about them. They’d sooner shoot than say howdy.”
“Fight-or-fight response,” I added. “It’s built into their genetic structure.”
The Guck War had only lasted three months, and basically consisted of two battles: the first at Xi Serpentis, the second at Tanis, where the Fifth Fleet came down on a Gucky supply depot like a hypernova. The Treaty of Tanis was established by laser com, and the two parties never met each other. All we knew about Gykr physiology came from dead and often mangled bodies found inside space armor, plus what was listed in their entry in the Encylcopedia Galactica when we finally dug it out.
Someone in that war had described the Gykr as “overgrown fleas,” and they had that insect’s overall look—a hunched-over body plated with natural armor, like overlapping strips of leather, long and spindly legs, bristly sensor hairs emerging everywhere—from legs, between body segments, and from the center of what might have been a face.
They weren’t actually insects, of course, but the product of a very different, very alien evolution. They had internal skeletons, breathed with triple lungs, and the body armor was not chitin, but a kind of tough, plastic skin. The more I looked at the computer-modeled images of Gucks in our library database, the less they looked like terrestrial fleas, and the more they looked like something horribly else—hive-minded nightmares so different that the human mind struggled to find any point of contact, any overlap with the known and the familiar simply to make sense of the things.
The most disturbing aspect of the Gykr, though, was not their appearance, but that “fight-or-fight” response I’d mentioned. Any perceived threat was attacked, immediately and violently . . . and we never did learn exactly what it was that even constituted a threat from their point of view.
It surprised the hell out of us, then, when the lone Gykr starship suddenly accelerated, breaking orbit with a burst of gamma rays, X-rays, and high-energy neutrons, and streaking off into the outer system under high-G. After our experiences with them at Xi Serpentis and Tanis, we weren’t sure the little bastards could run away. Scuttlebutt had it, though, that there were Gykr vehicles still on the surface of the planet—worse, that they were down in the vicinity of where Murdock Base had been established. Either the Gykr ship had abandoned its landing force . . .
. . . or they
were coming back soon with help.
And that was not a pleasant thought at all.
“This,” Lieutenant Kemmerer said over our cerebral links, “will be strictly a volunteer operation. We want twelve Marines.”
In our heads, we saw a schematic diagram of the Haldane dropping into planetary orbit, then releasing a small, manta-ray-shaped shuttle.
“They’ll be deploying in a Misty Junior,” she continued, as the schematic focused in on the manta-ray landing craft as it flew down to the edge of the ice. “Their orders will be to investigate the colony site on planet, investigate the Gykr presence, and report by laser com back to Haldane. They are not, repeat, not to initiate hostilities, but they will defend themselves if attacked, and hold the LZ until Haldane and the rest of the MSEP can arrive.
“Since this will be a potential first-contact situation, I want two Corpsman volunteers as well . . . that does not include you, Chief Garner. I want you to manage the technical end of the op here on the Haldane, along with Dr. Montgomery and Dr. Ortega. Understand?”
“Aye, aye, Skipper,” Garner’s voice replied over the link. He didn’t sound at all happy about it, though.
The “Misty Junior” the skipper had mentioned was one of Haldane’s two onboard D/MST-28 TMVs. Like the Marine’s larger MST-22 Misties, the Misty Juniors were trans-media vehicles that could operate in hard vacuum, in atmosphere, and both on and under the water. Each was designed to carry a full section—twenty-four Marines. Haldane was configured to allow her to land on a planet, as she’d done at the base on Europa, but the Misties allowed her to deploy just a few Marines as a scout/recon force without endangering the entire ship and all of the expedition’s MSEP Marines.
As Lieutenant Kemmerer continued to describe the mission, I thought about whether or not I should volunteer to go in with the recon group. I was damned tired of the ship by that time, and of being restricted from sick bay for fear that I would bump into Kirchner.
Well . . . why not? That was why I was here, to go down to the surface of Abyssworld and investigate the disappearance of our research colony there. There was no sense in putting it off. The downside was that the situation was complicated by the Guckers, but that would have been a problem whether I went in with the first recon force or arrived later on the Haldane. Kirchner, certainly, would be staying with the ship. So, too, was Garner, and he’d been riding me pretty hard these past couple of weeks.
So . . . yeah. I volunteered.
There’s an old saying in the military: never volunteer for anything. But I was amused to find out that every Marine and every Corpsman had volunteered to go down on the Misty Junior—even Dubois, who consistently maintained a pretty cynical attitude about sticking your neck out. Just my luck, I suppose, that of the four available Corpsmen, they picked me. Kari Harris was the other one.
The Marines would be Gunnery Sergeant Hancock, Staff Sergeant Darlene Callahan, plus Tomacek, Gibbs, Dalton, Hutchison, Masserotti, Colby, Aguirre, Wiseman, Gonzalez, and Woznowiec. Good people, all of them. I’d served with most of them at the Bloodstar, and all of them had been part of the Capricorn Zeta op. I wondered if the decision process had been guided by the fact that these Marines were combat veterans, and that they’d all worked with one another before.
Two hours later, we glided into orbit around Abyssworld, passing first over the day-lit side and its titanic swirl of storm clouds. Radio messages beamed on several frequencies to survivors of the human base went unanswered; messages deliberately beamed to the Gykrs in an attempt to open communications likewise were ignored. After several orbits, we made our way to the embarkation deck and began filing through the narrow connector rings into the Misty Junior. Both of the landing craft were actually mounted externally to Haldane; once aboard, we strapped ourselves down, sealed off the entrance, and broke the magnetic docking ring locks.
We fell toward the planet above the nightside, with the night-cloaked ice below a dark, blue-gray blur. The comet’s tail arced above us like a vast, faint, dome of silver mist. The mechanism was simple enough. Water vapor—steam from a boiling ocean—rising high on the dayside above the storm, was snatched away by the solar wind at the edge of space and whipped back around the planet. A couple of thousand kilometers above the nightside, the water cooled enough to turn to microscopic flecks of ice, a cloud reflecting the star’s light like the huge solar reflectors in Earth’s Synchorbit.
The ride became bumpy as we entered the upper atmosphere. Abyssworld’s air is mostly hydrogen, with a large dollop of carbon dioxide. The hydrogen comes from the dissociation of water molecules by the intense radiation from the sun. Oxygen is created by this means, too, of course, but free oxygen must recombine with hydrogen as quickly as it appears; we’re not sure why so much more hydrogen remains, especially when the lighter hydrogen should more easily escape Abyssworld’s gravity. Theories presented by the sub-zero base suggest that most of the free oxygen mixes with methane to create CO2 and more free hydrogen.
Where does the methane come from? Good question. There’s a hell of lot of methane—CH4—dissolved in Abyssworld’s enormous planetary ocean, but whether that comes from volcanism eleven thousand kilometers down or from the local ecosystem is unknown.
I was following the entry and approach on my in-head. Light glared from the viewall of the cargo deck as the swollen red sun edged above the horizon. When I opened my eyes, I saw that the interior of the cargo bay had switched to red as well.
“So, what do you think, Gunny?” Hutchison asked as we bumped deeper into the atmosphere. “Did the Gucks wipe out our colony?”
“That’s what we’re here to find out, Hutch,” Hancock replied. “Everybody check your armor and your weapons! We hit the LZ in eight minutes!”
All of us were wrapped up in standard Mk. 10 MMCA combat armor with nanomatrix camouflage skins. We sported M287 jumpjet packs on our backs that would give us limited flight capability in Abyssworld’s nine-tenths-G surface gravity. Most of the Marines carried standard Corps-issue Mk. 24 laser rifles, while Sergeants Dalton and Tomacek each were lugging a man-portable M4-A2 plasma weapon. My own weapon was a lightweight Sunbeam-Sony half-megajoule-pulse Mk. 30 laser carbine, with a holstered Browning Five slug thrower as my backup.
We just hoped that we weren’t going to need to use any of that hardware. There were only the twelve of us—the TMV was piloted by an AI—and when I linked in through my in-head again, I saw a lot of Gucks already on the ice. At least a couple of dozen of squat, armored shapes were scattered across the ice down there as we banked over the site of the research colony. I could also see two heavy vehicles that appeared to be picking their way across the ice on a number of jointed mechanical legs, and a dark gray egg-shaped landing craft propped up on landing legs close by.
“Two minutes,” Hancock said. “Hang on!”
“They’re not shooting at us,” Colby said. “That’s encouraging.”
The Misty TMV jolted hard. “Fuck! You spoke too soon!” Aguirre yelled.
“Negative, negative,” Callahan said. “They’re cold.” That meant that our sensors had not picked up the heat of weapons discharging. Still, on the in-head display I could see turrets atop the legged vehicles and on the Gykr landing craft pivoting to follow us as we banked sharply left.
“The wind is something awful,” Hancock said.
“Why aren’t the Guckers shooting?” Tomacek wanted to know. “I thought those ugly little bastards shot at everything that moved!”
“Quiet down, people,” Callahan said. Her voice was tense, sharp edged. “Clear the channel.”
“Listen up, people!” Hancock called a moment later. “We are at Delta-Romeo Two, repeat, two.”
Delta-Romeo Two. That stood for “Defense Readiness, condition two . . . meaning just short of actual hostilities. The only thing hotter was con
dition one, an actual, all-out firefight.
“We’ll be touching down well back from the edge of the ice, about two klicks,” Hancock continued. “I want you to deploy fast, slick, and by the numbers. I want to see blurs going down that debarkation ramp! Set up a full perimeter, and do not fire until and unless I give the order. I’m unlocking your weapons . . . now, but you will observe fire discipline on the ground. You hear me?”
“Ooh-rah!” chorused back from thirteen throats, the centuries-old Marine battle cry. I checked my carbine again, and saw that it was hot. Circuitry built into our combat armor could lock our weapons until the person in charge unlocked them, but Gunny Hancock didn’t believe in crippling the Marines in his command that way, not when an instant’s decision might mean life or death. He trusted us . . . and every one of us would have followed him into hell for that reason.
I glanced at the frigid icescape below through the cockpit feed. There were plenty of cultures on Earth that pictured hell as a frozen wasteland just like the one we were looking at.
“Marines! Stand up!”
In two columns, we stood, facing the TMV’s rear door, which was already beginning to grind open. I managed to snatch a glance back at the cargo bay’s viewall, and noticed that we had gotten well clear of the Guck landing area, and were coming down now on our own.
There was no sign of the Sub-zero base. What the hell had happened to it? I did see a large circular patch, like a shallow crater, lying in the ice between the alien LZ and ours, and there were some structures of some sort—small buildings, possibly—just outside the crater rim. It appeared that a perfectly circular section of the ice cap had simply vaporized, and if that was where the base had been, that would explain why it wasn’t there any longer.
Was that what had happened? Had the Gykrs blown the whole base up? A kinetic-kill projectile would have punched through the ice like that . . . or a fusion beam. Damn it, Sub-zero had been a research station, strictly peaceful! The more I thought about it, the angrier I got.