The Blockade

by Jean Johnson

  Li’eth frowned. “Tied into the . . . what? I thought this was all supposed to be biotech, not engineering.”

  Agneau smiled. “We mean biology-based jet propulsion. It’s like an esophagus swallowing something down. In this case, a series of tubes on the body open up and ‘swallow’ certain volumes of water in order to squirt it out the far end at high pressures and thus high speeds, increasing the Selkie’s escape velocity faster than the flukes and fins alone can impart through the artificial muscles. We do incorporate more mechanical means of engineering, of course. Those devices over there, the dive helmets,” she stated, pointing at a row of bubbles and curves that looked like old-fashioned bathysphere units, “are integrated into the suits, providing the wearers with portable scanners, communicators, and rebreather functionality.”

  “Rebreather?” Li’eth asked her.

  “Those things process oxygen for breathing, filter drinkable water, and even provide liquid nourishment from bladder-packs located within the torso compartments. All of that allows our soldiers to stay in the water far longer than a regular swimmer—literally, for days. We were a little concerned that the rebreather gills might not be able to process enough oxygen out of the local ocean, but that fear’s been put firmly to rest over the last three days of live-ocean tests.”

  Li’eth nodded. “That might be useful. I can’t think of ever hearing about the Salik staying in the water for days at a stretch; they might spend their first few years living with gills, but unlike the Choya, they do lose those gills in favor of lungs before their tenth year. They can hold their breath for up to five mi-nah or so, and even fight during that time frame, but they do have to carry respirators of some sort for actual underwater maneuvers.”

  “Yes, the Choya were quite impressed,” Ro-Shel agreed. He gestured at the aliens helping the Terrans roll some of the table-sized tanks toward another room. “However, for safety reasons, we haven’t had more than a few of these Dalphskin things in the water, and mostly only for only a few hours while the Terrans have been testing the oxygenation exchanges and making minor tweaks to adjust them to Ba-kan-tuu’s environment. Today will be their first full, mass deployment.”

  “We were going to do a lengthy stress test before full deployment,” Agneau added grimly, “but word came through just under five hours ago that the Salik are on the move underwater. They’re headed this way in definite numbers.” She gestured for them to move along the upper railing and flicked a hand at cases being trundled along the main floor from a storage room. “As you can see, we’re packing up extra weaponry for a full engagement. Those boxes contain microgrenades, coated in biofilm for ease of ejection during tail chases. Of course, if we use those, they’ll know we’re not normal native life-forms.”

  “As far as we know, no underwater life-forms shova v’shakk literally,” Captain Superior Ro-Shel stated. Then blushed a little, glancing at Li’eth. “. . . My apologies for the crudeness of my statement, Highness.”

  “Since you are being literal in your description, I have no objections to the language used. Though that does bring up the question of what happens to all the, ah, water and . . . liquid nutrients . . . absorbed by the users of these Dalphskin suits,” Li’eth said, hoping he wouldn’t have to ask more directly than that about a subject that was, well, unpleasant to contemplate.

  “It passes into holding bladders fitted with ultraviolet sterilizers, and only then gets squeezed out the rest of the way,” Agneau reassured him. “We have delicate coral reefs back on Earth where you don’t want the wrong biota getting excreted and washed into the ecosystem, so the sterilization treatments have long since been considered and integrated into the whole process—here, let’s get you a close-up look at one of the suits.”

  She led the way down a metal ramp to the main floor of the large chamber and approached one of the tanks. Starting with the information on the side—a string of number and letters in both machine-printed Terranglo and hand-scribed V’Dan declaring it to be the property of the Terran Space Force Special Forces, 1st Cordon, 7th Division, 2nd Brigade, 2nd Battalion, 2nd Legion Underwater Reconnaissance and Response Unit, A Company—she pointed out the many features of the oblong, pearlescent, mostly pale gray blob occupying the long, broad, chest-high tank. She did so by pointing both physically on the blob, and on the sketches visible on the control screen for the equipment monitoring the tank contents.

  “This is Sergeant Pian’s suit—A Company is on downtime at the moment, and B Company is asleep. C and D are fully suited and en route, E is suited and swimming in standby pods a few klicks away from C and D, and F Company is our tactical command. If the Salik have dropships that’ll be flying out to insertion points to try to ambush any troops on their way back home, A Company will have enough time to get suited up and deploy in the local waters, and B won’t be that far behind.”

  Li’eth eyed the Dalphskin suit, which looked sleek and powerful in the middle, neatly symmetrical and simple at one end, and rather . . . odd . . . at the other. “How do they move through the water? Wouldn’t those dangly bits over at that end drag too much?”

  “You’re looking at a suit that is suspended in a nutrient brine,” Agneau explained to him. She pointed to the opposite end from the end with all the weird, awkward angles. “The flukes, which are those big, broad, tapered paddle-things at our far right, provide most of the propulsion through a system of artificial musculature that is triggered through biometric contact sensors lining the interior—to put it in layman’s terms, the occupant flexes their own muscles a little bit, and the suit responds by contracting even more along the exterior portions, amplifying their effort in much the same way wearing swim fins on our feet amplifies our speed when we kick as we swim.”

  “Basically, they act like Salik feet,” Ro-Shel added. “But arranged in a different configuration and without separate legs.”

  Agneau nodded. “The odd flaps at the opposite end, to our left, actually wrap around the diving helm and turn smooth enough to be hydrodynamic when fully suited. They wrap around and adhere to the diving helm with special water-activated adhesives that are preapplied to the helms, so the actual donning of the suit only takes about five minutes, which is pretty close to five V’Dan mi-nah,” she explained. “That helm in turn is the most current Tauchersiebe Mark XX model, military grade, available back on Earth. As we like to say, it has all the bells and whistles an underwater soldier could want, and you will get to see at least some of them in action fairly soon, when C and D Companies engage the enemy.”

  Li’eth nodded. “I look forward to it, with the hopes they will be effective in combat. What about their operating parameters?” he asked. “I know our species has a limit on how far they can dive and so forth.”

  “Once they are sealed into a full suit, helm and all, the Selkies are rated to a depth of just shy of forty meters in the local waters,” Agneau told him. “Your Highness is just a little shy of two Terran meters in height, for comparison. They can do so without needing to worry about decompression whatsoever, so long as they don’t spend too long in the water. They can also dive to a depth of just over two hundred meters with minimal worries and minimal time spent decompressing to avoid the bends. The Tauchersiebe diving helm automatically compensates in its oxygen mix for hypoxic conditions in pressures found starting below twenty-five meters in all models. We will also have Choya compression ships following along with generously loaned V’Dan medical crews and hyperbaric chambers in case of injuries, but they’ll be kept at a distance for safety during combat maneuvers.

  “This particular model of Dalphskin suit,” Agneau continued, reading the fine print on the display, “has been fitted with composite spikes and blades on the control fins, compartments for escape ink, and transparent metals embedded in the exterior layers to help reduce thermal presence and confuse sensor readings that might otherwise make out a Human-shaped outline through the biomatter.”

 
“What is an M . . . S . . . L?” Jackie asked, squinting at the information on the display screen.

  “That’s shorthand for mantis shrimp limbs,” Agneau explained. “If you’ll look at those smaller limbs at the middle of the torso portion, the ones folded up and tucked against the underbelly, you can see where they’ve been grown,” she explained. “The mantis shrimp, which is a class of sea crustacean found in Earth’s oceans, has an incredibly powerful biomechanical punch. That punch takes advantage not only of spring-tension and muscle contractions to deliver the forces, but also utilizes additional cavitation forces from the water undergoing rapid compression and expansion during each strike.

  “Those forces form microscopic bubbles that collapse rapidly and cause additional damage—if you have fast-running propeller blades on a ship, you’ll notice them getting pitted and eventually developing holes from a similar process,” the Terran captain told them. “Mantis shrimp, despite being incredibly small for their strength, are almost impossible to keep in aquariums because they will punch at the tank walls, breaking them wide open.

  “If you’ll forgive me for not knowing the V’Dan conversions off the top of my head,” she added apologetically to Li’eth, “in Terran measurement terms, the mantis shrimp strikes at a speed of twenty-three meters per second, or resting heartbeat. The actual creature is only the length of your hand on average; the strike range in a slashing motion covers a distance of roughly the width of your thumb. But it travels so fast, if it kept going for a full second, it could travel over eleven, twelve body lengths in just one modest heartbeat. But that’s the sea creature.

  “Obviously, if you scale it up to Dalphskin size, we cannot achieve those same speeds simply because of the viscosity of water at that scale. A slashing attack does, however, travel at up to five meters per second over the span of half a meter, or about one-third of the Colonel’s body length,” Agneau told them. “These suits with the MSL designation have been grown with the design parameters to be hull-piercers, and thus release punching spikes that travel at about nine meters per second over a distance of half a meter. Reloading takes half a minute per spike and consumes a fair bit of nutrients, but it’s worthwhile in that they can be reused up to six times per limb.”

  “Are they effective against Salik hulls?” Li’eth asked her.

  Ro-Shel nodded. “Very. We’ve tested them on hull plates salvaged from the ships the Choya run in these waters—which we’ve been told are from the same suppliers as the Salik vessels—and these suits can punch right through most models.

  “The problem is getting close enough to do so,” Agneau indicated. “Which is why we’ve been practicing our biomaneuvers for camouflage. Now, the command center is this way,” the Special Forces officer added, gesturing toward a doorway smaller than the large one the tanks were going through. “We’ll be running Terran cetacio encryption tech for the surveillance relays. It’s low-profile, mostly used for outgoing broadcasts from the Squads, and will be relayed on bandwidths the Alliance don’t use and don’t usually monitor.”

  “What’s seh-tay-shyo tech?” Li’eth asked.

  “Yeah, what is it?” Jackie asked, equally bemused. “I haven’t heard of that one, and I’ve been rated for communications encryption. Junior grade, admittedly, but still.”

  “It scrambles the signal so that it sounds like whale song,” Agneau told them. “We’re always hesitant to use it on Earth because it confuses the Cetaceans to no end. It’d be like me shouting ‘Handbag! Teakettle! Barbecue!’ at my target audience while in the vicinity of V’Dan speakers—interspersed with garbage noises between the comprehensible words—instead of stating anything that makes actual sense to a native speaker. But we’ve revived the old programming tech for these missions because it’s a very organic sound that will blend in with the noises the local life-forms already make underwater.”

  “She explained to me that they will have fish-shaped microphone drones spaced out at a distance, just within audio range,” Ro-Shel added. “The noises produced by the suits themselves will mostly be audible transmissions, which will be picked up and relayed back to us via the usual Terran radio frequencies, where they will be fed into her people’s translation programs.”

  “It adds about a second or two of delay to the transmissions, but we’ll also be able to receive video broadcasts this way,” Agneau told them. They entered a room lined with neatly placed rows of tables bristling with monitors and workstation consoles . . . and a tangle of cables still being taped to the concrete floor by V’Dan soldiers working under Terran direction.

  Jackie recognized the bulky boxes the cables all fed into, converter units designed to translate between Terran power needs and the types of energies being supplied by the local V’Dan/Alliance power grids. She also recognized Lieutenant First Class Buraq. Standing at Parade Rest, slightly turned to look their way, the lieutenant nodded the moment their gazes met.

  “Good morning, Colonel, Grand Captain,” Buraq greeted them. “Embassies 1 and 14 are fueled, prepped, and stand ready for launch, sir.”

  “Prepped for launch?” Captain Superior Ro-Shel asked, frowning. He looked between the two women. “I wasn’t informed of an impending departure. I was told you’d be here for the next three days.”

  Li’eth stepped verbally into the breach of his confusion. “The Terrans have a policy of launching their representative to presumptive safety if the fighting in a war zone gets too close to them.”

  “Ah. That makes sense; there are a limited number of them in the area, whereas—no offense to the safety of Your Highness—there are plenty of us V’Dan to spare,” Ro-shel stated, shrugging fatalistically. “It makes sense to throw us into the fray while you escape. I’d choose to do the same thing if all the roles were reversed.”

  “Your willingness to fight a rear guard for us is deeply appreciated. Let’s hope it doesn’t need to happen. So, how close are they, Jasmine?” Jackie asked her security officer.

  “Conversion rates are a bit iffy off the top of my head, but they’re still at least a hundred klicks out,” Buraq reported, gesturing at the screens nearest her.

  The screen had Kai Kuul Isle and its nearby landmass neighbors outlined in brown, Choya troop positions outlined in orange, V’Dan in red, and the Salik marked in purple. Gray markers had been added to indicate the Terran troops. It had been weird for Li’eth to learn the Terran military preferred using red to mark enemy vessels; red was the Imperial color, and he didn’t want any of the Terrans thinking of his people as the enemy. Culturally stubborn and thus insulting at times, but not an enemy of the newest Alliance members.

  Thankfully, they seemed willing to adapt to using the Alliance’s programming conventions for establishing friends from foes. As it was, just looking at the screen, there were a lot of purple marks headed their way. Particularly compared to the tiny blot of silvery-gray Terran units. Buraq pointed at some geometric markings on the islands and on spots scattered around the coastal waters.

  “Choya point-defense systems located in these areas, mostly here and over here, are keeping Salik bombardments away from the islands—the locals could definitely teach us a few tricks, Ambassador, from what I’ve seen of their ground-to-air defensive capacity—so we’re safe so long as they stay more than twenty-five kilometers away. But even so, at the forty-mark, I want you in the shuttle, ready to launch,” Lieutenant Buraq added.

  “Understood,” Jackie agreed. “Estimated time to insertion?” she asked Captain Agneau.

  “Let me check on that—here, take a seat. Any of them, if they’re empty,” Agneau added. She gestured for them to take any spare seats available. “Make yourself comfortable while we wait. If a crew member needs you to move, we’ll ask; otherwise, it’s all open seating.”

  Just as Li’eth pulled back on a pair of seats for himself and the Ambassador, a cluster of monitors off to the right went black, prompting some rather exasperat
ed exclamations in Terranglo, and awkward commands in pidgin V’Dan to the techs, who had just disrupted the power supplies. He quickly looked down to make sure he had not pulled any wires, but realized there were none around the chair legs; the accident was someone else’s fault. On the edge of his mental awareness, he felt Jackie trying to keep track of the exchange between the two groups of soldiers in case they needed her translation abilities. He kept his attention more focused on the displays.

  “Here we are . . . twenty minutes, maybe less, depending on how fast the lead scouts push their speed, and whether or not the Salik advance remains steady,” Agneau reported. “The Selkies have just hit the water after sliding out of the transport ships. I had the V’Dan send your breakfast with your wake-up call so you’d have plenty of time to get ready and get down here for the show.”

  “And plenty of time to fill out form after form,” Ro-Shel added. He pulled over a couple V’Dan-style workpads. “We’re happy for your help, Ambassador, but we have a lot of costs that need authorization. Facilities, infrastructure, vehicles and fuel used, personnel to pay . . .”

  “The inevitability of paperwork. I’m used to it,” Jackie agreed, reaching for the displayed forms with a sigh. “Occupational hazard, you know.”

  “I’ll take half of those,” Li’eth agreed, moving to accept his share of the work.

  The two of them put their heads together over the various requests, arguing mentally instead of verbally over what was considered a good price and a fair trade, to help keep distractions in the hall at a minimum. Around them, Terran soldiers worked in their gray uniforms, sober-looking compared to the redder hues of the V’Dan trying to help fix the power issue, which did eventually get fixed.

  Several minutes passed as the pair progressed through the forms that way. Li’eth helped Jackie completely clear over half of them, adding his thumbprint authorization and signature wherever needed, particularly on the funding issues. The Empress had granted him broad discretionary powers on Terran-related budget authorizations . . . with the understanding that he would not spend the Eternal Coffers down to the last of the dust motes, of course.