Oh, and they were concerned that us messing around on a Dead World might attract the attention of the Sentinels, who had been mostly responsible for making that world become dead, and were almost certainly hanging around somewhere nearby.
I also was worried about that last one.
Finally, at the suggestion of Chang, I declared that we either needed to proceed with the mission now, or return to Earth to report the matter to the UN. The problem with the second option was that Slingshot was the softest target where we might find the WiFi range extender dingus Skippy needed to open a super-duty wormhole, and Skippy’s virus would be erased during the sensor network’s next scheduled update in seventeen days. Skippy warned that cracking the network would be more difficult a second time, for the very good reason that the Maxolhx network was not stupid, and would take steps to protect itself from a future virus.
When I issued my declaration, I set a deadline for the Commissioners to make a decision one way or another, within two hours. They protested that I was setting a deadline that was too short, but as they had been arguing uselessly for two days, I was not giving them any more time to delay. It was a simple choice: either we proceed with a mission they had already approved in concept, or we go back to Earth, and quite possibly lose the ability to explore potential beta site candidates beyond the galaxy.
I received a very grudging approval, three minutes before my two-hour deadline expired. The ship jumped within sixteen seconds of the Stooges telling me to proceed.
The view on the main bridge display changed from a typical generic starfield with a dim dot representing the local sun, to the bright disc of a rocky planet. By ‘rocky’ I mean this planet was not a ball of gas like Jupiter, it had a solid surface under a thin layer of atmosphere. That was the planet we had nicknamed ‘Slingshot’. The place had a legit name back when millions of Rindhalu lived there, but even the spiders no longer used that name. I suppose it was painful for them to refer to that now-desolate ball of ice and rock by the name it had, back when it was a lush world teeming with life.
We chose the name ‘Slingshot’ because of that unfortunate world’s current orbit. Instead of being nicely circular, the low point of its orbit was only two million miles farther from that star than Mercury was to our Sun. After racing past the star, it coasted outward farther than the orbit of Jupiter, and did it all over again. The surface of Slingshot alternately froze solid, melted as it arced inward, and briefly baked as it came too close to the star. The close approach to the star would have stripped away much of the planet’s atmosphere, except the star itself had been badly damaged in the conflict. Originally a yellow dwarf like our Sun, Slingshot’s star had a significant portion of its own mass blown out into space, so now it was smaller and cooler than it should have been.
The surface of Slingshot had been bombarded from space in the first wave of the Maxolhx attack, but the real devastation was caused by the Sentinels. They had disrupted the star, causing it to swallow the innermost planet, and creating a focused gravity wave that tore the system’s largest gas giant in half. The edges of the passing gravity wave also flipped Slingshot like a wobbling top, increasing the tilt of its axis to an extreme twenty-nine degrees.
When Skippy told me what the Sentinels had done, I thought they had directly thrown Slingshot out of its original orbit, similar to what happened to the planet we called Newark. He patiently explained I was wrong about that. Loss of the innermost planet, and having the gas giant turned into a sort of gassy asteroid belt, had disrupted the delicate balance of the star system. Stable orbits were thrown in wild directions, as the new configuration of gravity wells struggled to find balance against each other. The result was Slingshot being ejected into a highly elliptical orbit where it alternately froze, thawed, baked and froze again. Skippy estimated that world would ultimately settle into a circular pattern beyond the Goldilocks Zone, where it would freeze over permanently. There was also a seventeen percent chance it would collide with the remnants of the gas giant planet’s core, and be completely torn apart. He would have been happy to study the matter in depth, but I halted him before he could geek out. We needed him for the next part of the mission.
"Skippy," I asked as I stepped into the bridge compartment. “I want to know-”
“What to get your shower for Valentine’s Day? That is sweet, Joe, but-”
People in the CIC were choking from trying not to laugh. “That’s not what I meant, you ass. Why do you-”
“Oh. Well, heh heh, this is embarrassing. You didn’t see the note?”
“What,” I stole a glance to Desai in the command chair, she held up her hands in an ‘I have no idea’ gesture. “What note, Skippy?”
“Uh oh. Sorry. It was next to the mirror in your bathroom. Your shower is breaking up with you, Joe. It left a ‘Dear John’ letter on the-”
“That is not fun-”
“It certainly is no laughing matter, Joe. I did tell your shower that filing for a restraining order is premature at this stage, but I can see why-”
“Can we get back to my question?” I asked as I stared at my boots to avoiding meeting people’s eyes. In front of me, Reed and another pilot were making their best effort not to laugh, but Reed had a distinctive snort when she found something funny.
“Yes,” Skippy agreed. “I can certainly understand why you wish to avoid that subject.”
“Do we have a candidate site for landing?”
“We do, Joe,” Skippy replied with excitement. “Check it out on the display.”
“Uh,” I stepped forward and squinted at the image. “What am I looking at?”
It looked like something I was familiar with from living in Maine. A lot of frozen mud. The problem with trying to recover technology from Slingshot was that, most of that world’s year, it was covered in thick glaciers. As it swung close to the star, the glaciers melted with increasing ferocity, sending torrents of water to flush the top layer of soil down glacier-melt rivers and ultimately into the oceans. Slingshot had been freezing and thawing for so long, most traces of cities or technology had literally been flushed into the depths of the oceans, where it was too deep for us to explore in a dropship. I already had one experience using a dropship as a submarine, which is why I had been jokingly awarded a Submarine Warfare Officer insignia when we returned to Earth from our long stay on Gingerbread.
What we were looking for, and Skippy thought he had found, were remnants of civilization in the region close to the planet’s equator, that had slowly carried along by advancing glaciers and were now exposed. Slingshot had zipped past the star on its closest approach seven months before, so parts of the surface were now freezing over again. What had been boiling mud at the closest approach to the star, then cold sticky mud, was now frozen down a few meters. Anything on the surface would soon be locked in a glacier. The present moment was our sweet spot, the only time of Slingshot’s year when part of the surface was exposed and not under raging floodwaters. That fortunate timing was a major reason why Skippy recommended we go treasure-hunting on Slingshot.
“You are looking at a veritable corn-u-copia of advanced technology. A treasure trove of Rindhalu technology, Joe,” he boasted.
“Uh huh. It only looks like frozen mud.”
“Ugh. The cool stuff is under the mud, knucklehead. Or, hey, check this out,” the view dizzyingly zoomed in, to show what looked like a refrigerator half-buried in mud. “See? There is a juicy piece of treasure just waiting to be scooped up. Easy-peasy.”
Before I could think of a snappy reply, the face of the glacier cracked, and a chunk the size of the Empire State building broke off. Its base slumped to the ground, then the upper edge slowly toppled over, faster and faster, to splat full-force right on the unfortunate alien refrigerator, burying it under a thousand tons of ice and rock.
Skippy was silent for a beat, then, “Maybe that was a bad example.”
“Ya think?”
“That was just one small area, Joe. Most of t
he target area-” He shut up as an even larger piece broke off the glacier, leaning sideways so it fell onto the first piece, shattering both massive blocks of ice. Shards tumbled through the air, sticking into the mud like daggers. “Well, heh heh,” was all he could say.
“Why are pieces still breaking off the glacier?” I demanded. “The planet is heading away from the star now!”
“The surface is cooling, Joe,” his tone was nervous and defensive. “You can see the mud has begun to freeze. However, the internal pressure of the glaciers will continue to push them forward, and pieces will break off in a process called ‘calving’. We can manage the risk-”
Just then, a half-mile section of the glacier face broke off and crashed to the ground, sending a shockwave through the mud that was not so frozen as it looked.
“Um.” Skippy mumbled while I glared at him. “I’m going to shut up now.”
“Wow,” Reed observed from the pilot’s couch. “That is a lot of ice.”
I beckoned Smythe onto the bridge, and Desai rose from the command chair, despite me gesturing for her to stay. “No Sir,” she shook her head with a wry smile. “If you are arguing with the beer can, I don’t need to be part of it. Besides, our survey teams will be aching to get down there.”
“What? I looked through the glass into the CIC, meeting the skeptical eyes of Chotek. “Desai, we are not letting survey teams down there. That planet is not an amusement park.”
“It is not, Sir,” she agreed. “But it is a great opportunity to test personnel and equipment in an alien environment. It would be great to find out if any of our people or gear can’t perform, before we go way beyond the galaxy.”
Chotek tilted his head, giving me a look of ‘She has a good point’. The Stooges would not like taking the risk of sending civilians to the surface of an unexplored alien world, and I wasn’t thrilled about it either. I also had to agree that Desai was correct; the time to test gear and people was before they went into action. “Desai, I’ll think about it. Work with Chang to set up a rotation, I don’t want more than one dropship allocated to civilians.”
“Yes.” She wore a smile, having known I would agree with her suggestion. We had served together for so long, we knew how each other thought.
“Smythe,” I said as Desai left, leaving room for our STAR team commander to step onto the cramped bridge of our battered space truck. “What do you think? Could we use combots to remotely search through the mud down there?”
He had an answer ready, having, of course, already considered the situation. “Sir, I don’t wish to sound callous, but we have more people and armored suits than functional combots. We should not risk those machines by using them as JCBs.” Seeing the blank look on my face, he added “That is what we call ‘excavators’ in Britain. You Yanks might call it a bulldozer or backhoe?”
“Oh. Well, shit. Skippy, can you run the op using some of your maintenance bots?”
“No way, Jose,” he sputtered with horror. “Joe, I barely have enough bots left to perform basic running repairs. Taking the ship apart in Earth orbit was tough on my bots, I’ve had to cannibalize them to keep a basic set functional. Smythe is right. In this case monkeys, um, I mean people, are more expendable than our machines.”
“No one is expendable,” I pounded a fist on the armrest.
“You know what I mean, Joe.”
“This sucks. Is there an area safely away from glaciers, where we might find this whatsit you need?”
“It is possible,” Skippy conceded. “But, the stuff that was recently dumped by a glacier is our best bet for finding a working range extender. Farther away, items would have been pushed downriver by flood waters. We won’t know until dropships can get down there to fly low-level recon. To identify items under the mud, we must use active sensor sweeps.”
“Again, Colonel Smythe, what do you think?”
He stepped forward to peer at the display. “I think we have not had an opportunity for fun like this since we lifted off Newark.”
By the time we got into orbit around Slingshot and conducted a high-level survey, there were only fifteen days remaining before the local sensor network rebooted or whatever. I sliced two days off the end of the schedule, because the Dutchman had been experiencing annoyingly persistent glitches since Skippy put it back together in Earth orbit. The current round of glitches were different than the incidents that had plagued us, since we escaped from the Roach Motel, and Skippy assured me that overall they were less serious. Still, we could not afford to have a reactor fail, right when we needed to jump away from Slingshot. To assure we could jump away at any moment, we parked the ship in an orbit high enough that we didn’t need to climb before engaging the jump coils.
It was a trade-off, like most things in life. Keeping the ship in a high orbit meant it could jump immediately, which was good. It also meant dropships had a farther distance to travel for a rendezvous. If we were suddenly faced with a threat, we might not be able to recover all dropships before the Dutchman was forced to jump away. To avoid the potential of a dropship being captured, each craft that dropped down to Slingshot had to carry a tactical nuke for self-destruct, because Skippy judged only a nuke would erase all traces of human presence around the planet. Having to carry a nuke reduced the payload each dropship could carry, and reduced the enthusiasm of the civilian survey team for going down to the surface of an alien world. Well, it reduced their enthusiasm for a short time, until the first survey team rotated back, and the others were driven mad with jealousy.
Our dropships, flying low and slow and hammering away at the mud with active sensor pulses, identified three areas that contained a reasonable amount of alien junk buried beneath the frozen mud crust, and were a reasonable distance away from collapsing glaciers for safety. I could have sent only one team at a time down to the surface, to limit the number of dropships we had exposed, but I judged it was better to get the job done quickly and get the hell out of there.
“Hey, Smythe,” I said quietly as I helped him get his gear together, as the teams prepared to set foot on the ruined world.
“I know, Sir,” he gave me a wry smile. “No sight-seeing while we’re down there.”
“No,” I shook my head and handed the belt that wrapped around his suit’s waist. “I want you to sight-see, and to pick up souvenirs.”
“A snow globe from the gift shop, Sir?” He thought I was joking.
“No snow globes. Although,” I considered, “if you do find a personal knickknack like that, something that belonged in a spider’s house, bring it back.”
“Sir?” He paused in donning his helmet to look at me.
“I want souvenirs for the Commissioners. Give them something they can touch, something that used to belong to the Rindhalu, from before their war with the Maxolhx.”
“We will be giving them a bribe?”
“We will be giving them perspective,” I explained hopefully.
“Ah,” he understood. “Make them feel part of the team?”
“Yeah. Plus, every time they look at the ancient knickknack on their desks, it will remind them what will happen to Earth if we’re not successful out here.”
“I will instruct the team to look for something appropriately desktop-sized.”
“Not necessarily. It could also be something to hang on a wall, next to the photos of them with various world leaders and celebrities. Because you know they all have a ‘Me Wall’ like that in their offices.”
“Undoubtedly,” he grinned.
Smythe assigned six teams, two for each site, with his STAR teams digging through the partly-frozen mud. They used powered armor to excavate objects Skippy thought were good possibilities for the dingus he needed, and the civilians sorted through the objects as they were uncovered. On Day Eight of the thirteen I allotted for the mission, we had found trinkets but nothing useful, and we were running out of time. Smythe informed me they needed heavy equipment, to reach down deeper below the surface.
Shit. W
e had big, electric-powered construction equipment like bulldozers and backhoes, but each unit had to be brought down in sections by multiple dropships. Unless we used our one remaining big Condor dropship, which I was not willing to do. Moving chilly mud on Slingshot was a great test of the gear, but if we had to bug out quickly, we would need to leave our large equipment behind. I did not like that idea at all. We had a quick conference call, and I explained why I was having heartburn about big machines crawling around on the surface. “Smythe, your people will need to make sure not one bolt is left behind, if it falls off a tread down there. That’s assuming we don’t have an emergency, and have to bail out before we can recover the equipment.”
“Having machines that need to be disassembled, before they can fit into a dropship, is a bit of a sticky wicket,” Smythe agreed. “My people can scan the area for bits that might have fallen off, but if we have to evac quickly, that is a major problem.”
“Yeah,” I was glad he agreed with me. “We need to be sure we don’t leave anything behind. Anyone got an idea?”
Desai’s face lit up with a smile. “That’s easy, Sir. If we have to bug out, I say we nuke the site from orbit.” She winked at me. “It’s the only way to be sure.”
“That would certainly erase any trace of JCBs,” Smythe’s amusement came through in his tone. “What do you think, Sir?” He asked.
“Oh, what the hell,” I threw my hands in the air. “Desai is right. We have nukes aboard the dropships already, another two or three won’t make a difference.”
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