Abyss Deep

by Ian Douglas

  “Yes,” Montgomery said, “we can. But if we have the opportunity to actually meet the whales . . . or whatever is behind them, don’t you think we should do it in person?”

  “But what’s the point?” Chief Garner asked. “I mean . . . seriously. If the person making contact is locked up inside a twenty-­meter CM cigar, he’s not exactly going to be able to step outside and shake hands or tentacles or whatever, right? Not at those depths.”

  “There’s another issue too,” I pointed out. “A practical one. I think the maximum cable length on an RRS is . . . what? Something like fifty kilometers? Beyond that, we wouldn’t be able to control them.”

  Radio signals do not propagate more than a few meters through water before they’re absorbed and lost. Blue-­green lasers can penetrate perhaps a hundred meters of crystal-­clear water before they’re lost. Sonar can be used to teleoperate remotes, but it doesn’t pack anywhere near the information density of electromagnetic radiation—­radio or light. Besides, there was the possibility that the cuttlewhales were angered by our sonar.

  Remotes like the one I’d piloted beneath the ice on Niffelheim-­e were tethered to their base by fiber-­optic cables transmitting laser light, signals carrying electronic commands from the base to the probe, and returning sensory data. They worked quite well . . . but even cables as thin as a human hair were limited in how long they could be grown before they broke under their own weight. Sierra Five was more than a thousand kilometers down, well beyond range of a cable-­directed remote.

  “He’s right,” Ortega said. “If we’re going to go down there at all, it has to be in person.”

  “We could take along a small fleet of Double-­R-­esses,” Lieutenant Kemmerer suggested. “Remote-­operate them from the Walsh.”

  “If we can do that without compromising the Walsh’s hull integrity,” Lieutenant Ishihara observed. “Under tons of pressure per square centimeter, the slightest weakness in the hull would be fatal.”

  “So how many of us are going?” Lieutenant Kemmerer asked. “The Walsh is big enough for eight—­maybe ten—­­people.”

  “We could manage fifteen or twenty if we’re very friendly,” Montgomery said. “Food, water, and air supplies won’t be a concern, since we’ll be making our own as we go.”

  “But do we need that many?” Walthers said. He shook his head. “I’m with Gunny Hancock. I’m still skeptical about this whole idea.”

  “Right!” Garner’s voice said over our in-­heads. “Paying a personal visit may be a luxury we can’t afford.”

  “What luxury?”

  “A suicide mission, of course. How many lives can we afford to throw away?”

  “It won’t be suicide,” Montgomery told him. “And there are way too many opportunities for misunderstanding if we try to make contact long distance.”

  “Perhaps. But I’m . . . concerned. The Walsh is not armed, and we still have a hostile submersible down there someplace . . . plus some very large creatures that have already attacked us.”

  “I am going,” Montgomery said, and the tone of her voice blocked any thought of argument. “It’s why I came on this godforsaken mission in the first place!”

  “Me too,” Ortega said. “We’re still guessing about conditions more than a few kilometers down. This will be an unprecedented opportunity.”

  “I would suggest two Marines,” Kemmerer said. “Myself and one other, preferably a pilot. Plus a ­couple of Corpsmen as technical staff.”

  “Why Marines?” Walthers wanted to know. “They won’t be able to shoot, can’t threaten the bad guys or scare off the Gucks. Nobody will be able to board the Walsh without opening her up, and under those pressures, that would instantly kill everyone on board. In fact, they won’t be able to do anything but take up space.”

  “Point,” Kemmerer said. She sounded disappointed.

  ONE OF US SHOULD BE THERE, D’deen, one of the M’nangats, printed out in our in-­heads. IF THERE IS INDEED ANOTHER INTELLIGENCE BEHIND THE CUTTLEWHALES, IT LIKELY WOULD BE EXTREMELY ADVANCED. YOU WILL WANT AN EXPERT ON GALACTIC CULTURE AND LANGUAGE ALONG.

  “Just one of you?” Montgomery asked. “Or all three of you?”

  ONE SHOULD BE ENOUGH, AND I ADVANCE MYSELF AS THE LOGICAL AND EXPENDABLE CHOICE.

  That seemed a cold-­blooded way to look at the situation. But then, D’deen, I remembered, was the life donor of the triad . . . the equivalent of a male in human reproduction. For millennia in human society it had been the male who risked his life in warfare, with the idea of protecting women—­the egg bearers and life bearers—­back home. It wasn’t that different with the Brocs.

  “We still need a mission commander,” Kemmerer said. “A military commander.”

  “Why military, for God’s sake?” Montgomery said. Her face wrinkled in what I swear was disgust. “Like Mr. Walthers said, you won’t be able to shoot anything down there . . . or threaten it. This is a civilian research operation. . . .”

  “A civilian research operation under the aegis of a military mission,” Kemmerer said firmly, “and one, I will remind you, facing hostile military forces. We need someone down there capable of making key military judgments and command decisions.”

  “Jesus!” Garner exclaimed over the link. “What the fuck will it matter?”

  “Chief Garner is right,” Walthers said. “You won’t be able to give orders to the Marines from up here. If anything goes wrong down there, we won’t even know about it.”

  “Not quite true, Captain,” Kemmerer told him. “Walsh has a bail-­out sphere, right?”

  “Well . . . yes . . .” Walthers said with obvious reluctance.

  “If the Walsh is destroyed, even if she’s completely crushed, the bail-­out sphere will break free and pop to the surface. And it can carry a complete log recording of everything that happens down there.”

  The bail-­out sphere, in essence, was a one-­man escape capsule, a sphere of ultradense collapsed matter with space enough inside for one or, just possibly, two, embedded within the submersible’s hull just aft of her crew compartment. It would still be a long shot, of course. If the sphere popped up underneath the ice—­a good chance of that—­the ­people at the surface base or on board Haldane might never hear its emergency transmissions.

  I pulled down a set of engineering stats to check. Okay . . . the sphere did have through-­ice capability. If it was trapped beneath an ice ceiling, it could release nano from an external unit that would chew through the ice in order to send up a radio antenna . . . but there were limits. The ice would have to be less than about a kilometer in thickness for that to have a chance of working.

  Most of the ice on Abyssworld’s nightside was between ten and a hundred kilometers thick.

  “I think you will all agree that this is a military situation,” Kemmerer went on, “and that it may require trained military judgment. If whatever we encounter down there is, in my judgment, a military threat, I will be able to communicate that to the surface, even if the Walsh is destroyed.”

  “With respect, ma’am,” Gunny Hancock told her, “your place will be here with the rest of the Marines, not gallivanting off on your own with the civilians.”

  “Command prerogative, Gunny.”

  “There’s no such thing, ma’am. Your responsibility is to the entire unit . . . and to the mission.”

  “Then who do you suggest?”

  He grinned at her. “Why, me, Lieutenant. Who else?”

  “He does have FO experience, ma’am,” Thomason pointed out. FO—­Forward Observer—­was a military specialty involving sneaking in close to an enemy and passing information back to the artillery, air, or space units that could actually do something about it.

  And in any case, that’s the way of it in the military. Any officer worth the cost of his or her training knows you rely on the experience, the training, and
the judgment of your noncommissioned officers—­NCOs like Gunny Hancock or Staff Sergeant Thomason or Chief Garner. The gunny could assess any military threat we encountered in the abyss and make suggestions as well as a lieutenant could, and probably a hell of a lot better. The lieutenant would be in a better position to evaluate the threat from her office in the base topside, or on board Haldane, and give the appropriate orders to the Marines under her command.

  The various naval officers didn’t count. Walthers was needed topside to command the ship, and the other officers under his command all were specialists, each running his or her own department. They were needed topside as well . . . and none had the type of combat experience necessary to make command judgments of the sort Kemmerer and Hancock were talking about.

  “Very well,” Kemmerer said. “You’ve made your point. But we still need a pilot.”

  “The AI will serve that function,” Walthers said.

  “I’d like a human pilot if we can . . . a drone driver for preference.”

  “How about ET2 Lloyd?”

  I didn’t know the name. I looked it up on my in-­head, from Haldane’s personnel roster, and found her quickly enough. Gina Lloyd. She was a Navy ET, an Electronics Tech Second Class in Haldane’s flight squadron. She wasn’t a fighter pilot like the Marines flying the two Star Raiders, but was part of the research vessel’s flight control staff who teleoperated various recon drones, fueling remotes, and robotic vessels from the Haldane’s combat command center.

  “Is she linked in?” Kemmerer asked.

  “I’m here, ma’am,” a woman’s voice said.

  “Do you want in on this craziness? It’s volunteers only.”

  “Wouldn’t miss it, ma’am.”

  “Okay,” Kemmerer said. “Last but not least, which Corpsmen?”

  “I think only one, ma’am,” Hancock told her, “not two. With Harris in cold storage and Chief Garner hurt—­”

  “I’m not hurt bad. I could—­”

  “ . . . and Garner needed up here to run tech-­support and sick bay,” Hancock continued, ignoring him. “That leaves—­”

  “I’ll go,” I said, cutting in. “I have some experience with deep diving.”

  There was no objection from either Dubois or McKean. I wondered why there wasn’t an objection from me.

  “Carlyle would be my first choice, Lieutenant,” Hancock said. “He’s piloted a submersible . . . and he’s been in first-­contact situations before.”

  I wasn’t sure my stint of duty running a tether-­teleoperated remote beneath the ice of Gliese 581 VI-­e would count for something like this, but I did carry a lot of data in my in-­head RAM on pressure and exotic high-­pressure chemistry. I guess that counted for something. And apparently, so did talking to a wounded Qesh pilot on Gliese 581 IV.

  But in any case, wasn’t this why I’d signed on with the Corps? Not just giving first aid to wounded Marines in the field, but learning new wrinkles in exobiology and alien biochemistries.

  And we couldn’t get a whole lot more alien than a hundred kilometers down.

  In any case, it was first-­contact work that I loved the most.

  “Damn it, I outrank E-­Car,” McKean said. “I should go!”

  “They’re both nuts, Gunny,” Dubois said. “If you want expendable . . .”

  “It’s Carlyle,” Hancock said, with a tone of that’s final in his voice.

  “Young Carlyle’s understanding of cuttlewhale biology,” Ortega said, “and especially insights into the possibility that there is another intelligence behind the cuttlewhales . . . that alone recommends him.”

  Hancock grinned at me. “You should’ve kept your big mouth shut, E-­Car.”

  “Hell . . . getting to look at exotic high-­pressure ice?” I said. “How could I pass up an opportunity like that?”

  I was suddenly remembering just how much I hated ice.

  But then . . . in the oceanic abyss of this watery world, I’d actually be about as far from the surface ice as it was possible to get.

  “Very well,” Lieutenant Walthers said. “Drs. Montgomery and Ortega as mission specialists. D’deen as Galactic cultural liaison. HM2 Carlyle as technical specialist. ET2 Lloyd as pilot. And Gunnery Sergeant Hancock as operational CO and military liaison and forward observer. That’s six. Are we missing anything?”

  “I think,” Hancock said, “that we’re good to go.”

  “You be careful down there, Hero,” McKean told me. We were standing on the ice, clad in our Mk. 10s, as the dayside wind hissed and whined around us.

  “Yeah,” Dubois added. “What’s the matter with you, anyway? Didn’t anyone tell you never to volunteer?”

  “I’m a slow learner, I guess.”

  “Well, watch your tail down there.”

  “At least you won’t have to worry about Kirchner,” I told him. I hesitated, then added, “You have the records I sent you?”

  “Yeah. You know you could get in a lot of trouble doing that.”

  “Doing what?”

  “An enlisted guy prying into the medical records of an officer?” McKean said, shaking his head. “Checking up on him . . . keeping covert records of his behavior? That’s heavy shit, my friend.”

  I’d already started worrying about a court-­martial once I got home. Oh, there was no question that Kirchner was totally batshit—­another of those technical medical terms—­but a court of inquiry likely would be taking a very close look at what I’d done in the time leading up to his mental break.

  “The only way to prove schizophrenia,” I told him, “is by keeping records of the patient’s behavior over time . . . and putting that together with whatever he cares to tell you. At least in the absence of a brain scan. They’ll need those records to legally order a deep brain scan when we get him home.”

  “Carlyle,” McKean said, “they’re going to hang, draw, and quarter you, and then hang you out to dry.”

  “And then they’ll keelhaul your sorry ass,” Dubois added.

  “Getting keelhauled on a starship sounds pretty serious,” I told them. “I think I’ll take my chances a thousand kilometers down.”

  “Good luck, E-­Car,” Dubois said.

  “Yeah,” McKean said. “Remember you’re still needed back up here to play midwife to a stalk of broccoli.”

  “How could I forget?” In fact, I had forgotten. The pregnant M’nangat, D’dnah, and its consorts still wanted me to deliver its buds . . . probably within the next ­couple of weeks.

  I still wasn’t looking forward to that.

  A boarding gangway had been lowered between the ice and the deck of the Walsh. I was about to step onto it when Dubois added, over a private channel, “Hey, E-­Car?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Do me a favor?”

  “If I can do it a thousand kilometers underwater, sure.”

  “Keep a close eye on Gina, would you?”

  “Gina Lloyd?” I stared at him through my visor for a second, and then realization dawned. Maybe I am slow. . . . “Not you and—­”

  “Yeah. Me and Gina.”

  “So she’s your secret girlfriend?”

  “Fuck. Why do you think I volunteered to come on this wild goose chase? And if you hadn’t beaten me to the punch during the meeting earlier . . .”

  “From the sound of it,” I told him, “she doesn’t need anybody taking care of her. Certainly not me!”

  “Yeah, but I’d like her to come back topside, y’know?”

  I thought of Joy Leighton, waiting for me forty-­two light years away.

  “I know. Don’t sweat it, Doob. We’ll be back. All of us.”

  I almost believed that.

  I clung to the safety railing as I made my way across the submersible’s deck, gripping it tightly in the teeth of that unrelenting wind. Walsh
was a simple, blunt-­ended cigar shape—­no conning tower, no control surfaces, and with only a very low swell of her dorsal surface visible above the choppy dark water. She was slightly flattened, however, with a lateral bulge that included the active nanomatrix part of her hull that allowed her to maneuver underwater. Her airlock hatch was open on the flattened portion of her deck’s dorsal surface. Once I descended the ladder to her interior, the airlock wouldn’t simply close, but would be completely filled in with compressed matter. As Haldane’s chief engineer had pointed out, even the slightest weakness in Walsh’s hull would be deadly.

  The interior of the submersible was cozy, an oval space just eight meters long, three wide, and two high. They’d grown enough seats out of the deck for the six of us, including all the linkages we would need to communicate with Walsh’s AI and direct the craft. The entire curved forward surface of the compartment was a permanent viewall, though the other surfaces could project images of our surroundings as well. There was nothing so primitive on board as portholes, of course. Even the strongest, thickest glasstic would shatter under the pressures we were about to encounter.

  This was definitely a no-­frills cruise. We would sleep in our chairs. There was a tiny compartment aft, next to the entrance to the bail-­out sphere, that would absorb our wastes right through the deck, and which would serve as a sonoshower. Privacy? What’s that? I wondered how Dr. Montgomery and ET2 Lloyd felt about being crammed into a narrow sewer pipe with three guys and a Broc for as long as this mission would require.

  Thirty hours—­over a day—­to reach the mysterious Sierra Five.

  And then what?

  After removing our suits, we settled down in our seats and let them partially enclose us, the palms of our hands on the palmpads on either arm. D’deen, I saw, was positioned in a special seat individually programmed for him, a flat, padded board rising at a slant from a round bucket. He nestled his tentacles into the bucket and leaned back against the upright, which gently closed around his narrow torso. “Are you going to be okay there?” I asked. I was concerned about the cabin being too warm for him.