by Ian Neligh
Its mouth gaped big enough to swallow the world and made a sound like all the damned in hell. Jacob decided then he would return to the army. He would, one day, return to his wife. He fired the pistol; he was no longer afraid. He emptied the firearm and when he was done the forest was quiet. With a thing that shouldn’t be dead at his feet, 2nd Lt. Jacob H. Casey felt alive.
The white ship traveled over an ocean of death. And still she felt nothing.
Beneath a bone-white hull, the waters hissed by. Waves the size of mountains rolled across the planet’s surfaces, some hundreds of miles long. A shattered moon rose and cast a fractured glow on the rippling world. Waters covered every inch of the giant planet.
The sole occupant of the ship sat in the crew deck, picking at her meal. Through the mess hall’s porthole, Lauren Smith watched as rain began to fall, streaking her vision of the blue nightmare outside. Electrical discharges crackled and jumped between the clouds like skeletal dancers.
Smith had gone to more unpleasant planets in her role as a planetary biologist—but none more deadly. And yet, as she examined her fingers in the light, she felt nothing. For all its teeth this world was going to be eaten like the rest.
As she sat in the perfect comfort of the automated ship, a titanium hull and four inches of a repulsion field kept it just off the water. Beneath the surface was an ecosystem unique in the explored universe. Over millennia the planet’s evolution had produced an ocean full of creatures perfect at hunting. All sizes and shapes, they churned the water in a frenzy of carnivorous instinct.
Only hours before, Smith had watched from the observation deck as something similar to a Cargo shark swam past. While like the giant sea predators of Crius, this new creature was ten times larger—and covered in armor.
The new planet, now called Theia, had been first discovered weeks ago by one of the long-range system drifters. Inhabitable planets of this type were discovered only every few years in the dark corners of the galaxy. When they were, the financial markets went crazy.
In the early days, before the Colonial Jurisdiction, new planets were stripped by anyone and everyone who could touch down on their surface. Wars were fought, resources were taken, and planets were turned to bones in the wake of expansionistic dogma.
For the past hundred years the Colonial Jurisdiction had governed the discovery and use of new planets. Because of the increased volatility to the market, the Jurisdiction took thirty days from discovery to create the definitive report of what a planet had in terms of resources and life forms. Thirty days to decide how, or if, it should be divided up among market shareholders.
The time from discovery to formal committee submission was always a period of premeditated chaos. Because of the many interests, those cataloging the planet worked for various divisions of the Jurisdiction and had no contact with other planetary specialists besides those in their own fields.
Because of a century-old embargo on interspecialty fraternization, Smith rarely got to make connections with other employees of the Colonial Jurisdiction. Biologists were few and far between, and the different fields were kept separate. With planetary economics riding on how they performed their duties, it had long ago been decided that there couldn’t be any chance of consorting on any level.
This rule created an almost monastic lifestyle for Smith and others. Occasionally, her off-planet handlers would notify her to stay away from other employees located in her area. With the exception of the carefully-monitored transports, she was alone.
For almost a decade Smith had traveled on the fastest ships in the universe to newly discovered worlds. In the rush to meet market deadlines, safety was often overlooked. Transports were timed improperly for gravitational pulls or shelters were unsuitable for extreme weather or geologic conditions. And, sometimes, the planet’s biology surprised or overwhelmed—or just ate—the specialists.
A Jurisdiction planetary employee was considered to occupy one of the most dangerous jobs a citizen could have, which was not to say it wasn’t profitable. Two-and-ahalf tours were considered the average life expectancy of an employee. Smith was a veteran of fifteen.
Long ago she had stopped doing it for the money. It had become a way of life, a thrill, to see a virgin planet unspoiled by mankind, by prying eyes. The excitement of unknown dangers and new species kept her hopping from one assignment to the next. One tour might see her traveling across a planet made up of ammonia or metallic hydrogen, and having four-hundred-mile-per-hour winds. Another planet might include diverse ecosystems and insects the size of horses.
She found, however, with each new world the thrill of its discovery lessened. The dangers became more commonplace. Now she was on the first known world that had all three hundred million square miles of it completely covered in water, an ocean teeming with an ultra violent array of species—and she felt nothing. Smith watched out the window as high above a pair of scout ships tore the rainy weather asunder with orange flames. She wasn’t sure how she stopped feeling or when it had happened—but it caused her to wander through her days like a walking corpse.
On her first trip, as they had neared the spaceport, a faulty rail had caused the high-pressured winds of Endrin 9 to rip the transport ship in half. She remembered the pure horror of being strapped to a seat and watching the ground and the azure sky whip around and around as the wreckage and people spun away into empty space. The memory had kept her awake for weeks.
Or the time in the brush desert of Crius, while standing beside a mobile track and trying to calibrate her reader, when she had been attacked by something like a savanna lion and dragged by her arm screaming into the brush. She had survived a metal-melting oxygen fire on a long-sleep transport between Tanos and Kasus.
After her third tour she was awarded the Colonial Jurisdiction’s Specialist of Distinction Award—and a host of other recognitions from the guild of planetary biologists, which she took. After five tours they gave her a serious promotion and an off-season gig lecturing to graduate students, which she also took. After ten tours they gave her a nice back-office job, with tenure and an incredible salary, which she promptly turned down.
She could never work at a desk. Despite the extreme physical danger of being in the field, she had never felt more alive. The more alive she felt, the more people—the limited few she had contact with—began to fear her. She had become something they couldn’t understand. But that didn’t bother her so long as she continued to feel the exhilaration. And for a long time she had.
Then it began to change. With each new planet, the feeling, the heart-pounding euphoria, began to slip through her fingers like a dry wind. And now, on arguably the most dangerous planet in the known system, she felt nothing. Nothing at all.
Smith got up from the table and walked through the ship to the piloting cabin one deck up. There she looked out the window at the rolling ocean and moved her fingers over the sleek control interface. She would have loved to go onto the outer deck, but the rain and poor visibility made it impractical.
She checked the built-in reader and saw a shadow of the life beneath the ship. Millions of fish not unlike Earth’s own ravenous Pygocentrus nattereri moved in giant groups. She spotted a member of the species similar to the prehistoric Megalodon; she even saw several Jaekelopterus rhenaniae—a type of giant underwater scorpion.
If the Jurisdiction decided to preserve the new planet, it would be a treasure trove of evolutionary learning and prehistoric biology. But given the cutting-edge equipment and ship she had been assigned, Smith doubted they would. They intended to pick it clean.
She listened as the onboard engine increased its power output to accommodate a mile-long wave. The slight incline caused her to shift forward to keep her balance and gave her a better view of the sky. It was beautiful with its broken moon and sapphire-blue night atmosphere that peeked out from behind the clouds.
Her job allowed her to act as the defense attorney for many planets on the verge of a death sentence if she found it “uniqu
e.” Her report could help sway the board if she fought for it. But for a planet like this she would be in for the fight of her life. This much biology would equal an amazing amount of raw material for fuel. After centuries of space travel the preference was still to fuel human expansion on the remnants of dead species.
Just then, the two scout ships flew overhead once more, ripping apart the sound barrier as they mapped the surface under the water. In the past Smith may have winced at the loud sound, but now she hoped it would trigger some type of sensation. It didn’t. She was about to turn away when something happened that left her stunned.
As the ships neared the horizon, an airborne electrical burst collided with one of the crafts, causing it to explode in a blossom of orange flame. It veered to the left and collided into the second ship. Even from as far away as she was, the sound was deafening, shaking the cabin.
If there were any survivors, they wouldn’t be alive for long in that water. Taking her ship off automatic, Smith put full power into the engine with one hand and headed for where she thought the accident had occurred. With the other hand, she contacted her off-planet controller. After a pause, a pale man’s face appeared on the blue-lit screen.
He looked at her in surprise, but there was also something else. There was always something else. Even though she looked like a thirty-year-old scientist, something in his expression made her feel like a monster.
“Specialist Lauren Smith, is everything alright?”
“No,” she said, eyeing the column of smoke. The ship was now whirring over the ocean at an impossible speed. “I’ve just witnessed an accident involving two scout ships at my coordinates. Please notify their rescue team.”
The man turned to one side, his gaze off camera, then shook his head in the negative.
“The planet is on lockdown, nothing in and nothing out till the survey is completed,” he said, adding, “I’m sorry.”
“Then I’ll intercept and carry out a rescue,” she said, urging more speed from the ship.
“Lauren, you cannot do that,” the man said, looking concerned. “You know that would be an ethical breech and could jeopardize the entire survey.”
“We cannot let them die.”
“Please, listen, there is a very good chance that they could survive until the end of the lockdown. I promise rescue teams are standing by.”
Through the rain out the front window, Smith spotted the emergency green smoke of a downed aircraft.
“That could take hours; they’re lucky if they have minutes,” she said, turning off communications. Slipping on a microfine Kevlar buoyancy vest, she opened the hatch and climbed on deck.
Wreckage littered the water. Propellants, burning white hot, spit from the tangle of ships. The engines screamed as they were pulled into the water. Rain cut from the sky and lightning crackled above her. A sudden explosion sent shrapnel whistling over her head.
She squinted in the deluge and saw one pilot strapped to a floating ejection seat. It bobbed in the water and threatened to tip over. She wouldn’t be able to get her own ship any closer; the fire of the crash would set it ablaze. The helmeted pilot struggled, noticing the things in the water for the first time.
With the rain hitting her in the face, Smith looked around, hoping to find an answer. She saw only one. She exhaled, ran across the deck, and dove into the ocean.
The cold enveloped her, and for a moment she saw what was hidden in the dark. She jerked up and bobbed in the water and was almost at once dragged down. Hammering with her fist, she got free and continued to swim, to fight, and to stay alive.
There were teeth and poison in the water, but she swam undeterred until she reached the sinking ejection seat. Grabbing it from the bottom she towed it behind her. Gritting her teeth, she continued to fight to stay above water and to swim.
The Kevlar buoyancy vest was becoming shredded, but it still held together. Reaching the ship, she held the seat steady so the pilot could climb on board.
She’d done it. The pilot, a woman, scrambled forward to help her, then stood back in shock. No longer numb, Smith climbed from the water like a metallic skeleton. Her robotic limbs, stripped of coating, flashed in the light cast by lightning. Her body was the price of her experiences.
“Are you okay?” Smith asked the pilot, who in turn nodded. “Let’s get you inside.”
She could feel her fingers again, could feel her heart beat strong in her chest.
The Lauren Smith of yesterday wouldn’t have tried to break the ethical restrictions of the survey—it would have been unthinkable. The Lauren Smith of years past wouldn’t have gone in the water, knowing all too well what it hid. And of course, Lauren Smith the new recruit wouldn’t have survived. But she was no longer the same. She would never be the same.
She grinned as rain whipped across the bow. She knew she would fight for this planet. The wind battered the ship, the rains tore the air, and a world of violence was contained within an ocean.
One
He awoke hungry and cold. The cabin’s hearth had grown quiet in the night, leaving heavy ashes.
Months ago Asmund had moved his bedding near the fireplace to keep warm. The rest of the house was left in a perpetual chill. He was alone. His father’s and brother’s rooms were silent and frozen like tombs. Asmund had reached his fifteenth winter, and so, like an intruder, he forced open his brother’s frozen door, breaking its seal of ice.
The room was small, like all those in the house. Sigurd’s few belongings lay scattered about. A half-built mail hood lay in one corner, and some scraps of leather for a bow lay in another. Everything glittered with frost.
Shivering, Asmund walked to where the sword hung from the wall. The blade was crude, made of iron, and held an edge that might cut if persuaded. It was the same sword Asmund’s stepbrother had trained with before heeding the doomed call of Gotthorm Gjukisson and traveling west to fight and die at the hall of Mad King Slagfid.
For practice and building strength, the ancient sword was for a stronger boy of sixteen. As Asmund sat alone in the empty house by a struggling fire, he decided there was a good chance he might not live to see his sixteenth winter.
He had hoped this would be the weapon he began his story with, the story the gods would see from their halls, sitting on their savage thrones.
The iron sword had been originally presented to Sigurd during his All’s Day celebration. When Sigurd had become of age, their father spent a month’s wages to pay for a proper ceremony. Asmund remembered peering up over his father’s wooden table at the food brought in from Larkshum, which lay to the south. Meat, pies, and wine made from honey had been piled high for the guests.
Friends and neighbors had made the long journey across Slaheim Pass to present Sigurd with gifts and praises. Many were old fighters, friends of their father. Songs had been sung that night of the old gods, the trials of heroes, and the hopes they all had for Sigurd.
Tales had also been told of impending wars, locals gossiped, and as the sky grew dark, stories were spun to scare children and remind men why they kept their axes sharp. Words were woven of Tänder the Great Bear, the Weeping Woman, or of Fox Skin, the king’s executioner.
A favorite story, told with particular relish by Viktor Holdenson, the one-eyed elk hunter, was that of the castle Moarlos Derm. A castle that stayed in perpetual winter. The tales went that it had done so for a thousand long years. Built by a family of self-proclaimed kings, whose paranoia caused them to raise stone and mortar, the walls were designed to guard against an invisible army. Yet the army bent on destroying Moarlos Derm lay not outside those thick walls but inside and among the thoughts of the castle’s rulers. Over the generations their minds grew thin, like their bloodlines, and turned from battalions of paranoia to nations of madness.
And, as if by invitation, the cold crept into the halls of Moarlos Derm. Cracking its doors, freezing its hallways, and leaving the recent dead to lie under glistening sheets of blue ice.
What night
mares took place before the cold reached out with its skeletal hands to grip those still alive had been lost to memory. But its tomblike presence on the side of the brooding mountain Galhoud sat as a reminder of the ancient family. Over the years, many were those who claimed to have seen its last queen, Agneta Stolk, peering out and grinning at them from the keep’s broken windows.
Children squealed in terror and adults chuckled in good humor as the story had finished. The leather strap, which hid Viktor Holdenson’s empty eye socket, had creaked with strain as he laughed and told another story. This one was of Valkyrja, a shield maiden who chose to fight among men, unlike her sisters, who pulled them dispassionately up from among the battlefield dead.
It was said she once was human, and so great was her love of battle and the bravery of great warriors that she broke her kind’s creed to raise a shared battle standard among living men. So strong was her spirit that the gods decided not to punish her.
“Stories are the entertainment of men, but our life stories are the entertainment of the gods—so make them worth telling,” Holdenson had said, his baleful eye glaring at the children.
After the stories, a handful of the young boys had stormed off to play, while Sigurd stood silently aside, at the border of the two worlds, ready to take his first step into adulthood. Sigurd was ever ready to lose the shackles of being a child and as such didn’t care for the stories, but that didn’t stop Asmund from listening. He loved the old tales; he wrapped them around his thoughts like a familiar blanket and thought of their meanings and lessons.
Asmund kept that day’s reveling and storytelling locked safe in his memory. Such happy times had been few in the following years. The winters grew harsher, the next worst than the one before. Their father had traveled further and further from their home to find good timber not splintered by the brutal frost.
Sigurd left after his seventeenth winter to fight for ill-fated Gotthorm. A year had passed before news came back that his army had been crushed, its survivors hung from the tall branches of the dark forest, Mörk Skog. Sigurd found in adulthood a life cut short by a tyrant, his story ending among the wails of the defeated.