by Cain Hopwood
“No sir, it would have been dire.”
Jon agreed with a nod, leaving his Aussie underling to his weapons. On his way back to his tent he wondered what other surprises this place held for them. Then he remembered, this was just an artificial environment; the missions they’d soon be on would be occurring somewhere completely different, and possibly even stranger.
— 17 —
“I can see it, sir”. Skip’s voice held a hint of awe. He was lying prone between two small shrubs at the crown of the hill while the rest of Jon’s scouting squad waited below. They’d been making for that hill since they’d noticed it. It wasn’t much taller than those surrounding it, but it still made a better observation post than any other point.
They were trekking east, tasked with investigating something odd in the chamber’s detailed scan. Unlike the other walls, the eastern one didn’t have an image of sky. Also, it changed color. Sometimes it was deep green and at other times it was much lighter.
“We can observe later Skip. What’s the situation on the far side of the hill?”
The spotter took a few moments to answer. “Just more dirt and shrubs sir, it looks like we’re alone here.”
Jon consulted the basic contour map the scan of the chamber had produced. Over this rise seemed a good spot to stop for the night. “Peggy, get some eyes on this side of the hill, we’ll be making camp on the flat just past Skip’s position.” He put a marker on the map, then looked up at the never changing sky. “Skip, you’re on overwatch.”
Skip pulled four sparrow obs-drones from his pack and released them. They shot up into the air with a whistle and were soon out of sight. They would stay on station all night, such as it was.
Moments later Jon had full visuals for all the surrounding landscape. He marked out the intended campsite. “That’s the perimeter everyone. Movement alarms are set.”
A sequence of grunts from the squad signaled acknowledgment, and they prepared to bed down for the evening.
Camp set up didn’t take long. All they had to do was find or make a suitable hollow in the sandy alien soil, drop their packs, and make the best bed they could. After he’d found a suitable spot, Jon picked through his ration pack, trying to decide what to eat. He settled on stew, and pulled the warming tab.
While he waited for the food to warm, he gazed eastwards. East was in fact an arbitrary designation that the scanning software needed in lieu of a compass reading. But it had stuck.
“What do you think it is sir? Did the colonel tell you?” asked Skip, still lying down on his belly between the bushes, one eye glued to his spotting scope.
Peggy interrupted Jon before he could reply. “If the colonel wanted us to know, it would have been in the briefing. Right lieutenant?”
“That’s right Peggy. It does defeat the purpose of a reconnaissance exercise if you already know what you’re supposed to find. Although in this case, I understand that line is a mystery even to the colonel. The topographic scan had little imagery of the wall, and what we see from here is better than any image we could get from base camp.”
“Right,” said Skip. “Surely you’ve got some idea of what it could be though.”
Jon took a good long look eastwards, then shook his head. “Hard to say”
“It looks like a river to me,” said Murdoch. He was standing nearby.
“What do you mean?” said Skip.
“Where I’m from, if you go far enough west you’ll eventually hit country kinda like this. Flat, old wiry shrubs and lots of sand. The only place you’ll find trees are on the banks of rivers and creeks. They’re usually dry, but coolabah trees have deep roots. So when you’re low on water, you climb a hill, and look for trees. If you’re lucky, you’ll see a line of them off in the distance, kinda like that.”
“I don’t know about trees, it looks like a big green glacier to me,” said Skip.
Peggy snorted. “Green glacier my ass, it’s too hot.”
Skip lowered his scope and looked in Peggy’s direction. “I don’t know about too hot, but your ass does look nice.”
Peggy gave Skip the finger, then plonked down in front of her pack and started rifling through it. I’ll need to keep an eye on those two, thought Jon. Fraternization wasn’t against regulations, and wasn’t even discouraged in this kind of situation. But, it was Jon’s job to make sure it didn’t impact his squad’s performance.
Jon sat and opened his stew. He stuffed a spoonful in his mouth and swallowed. “Whatever it is, it will wait until morning. We’ll see it up close soon enough.”
It wasn’t until lunchtime the following day that Jon and his men got a good look at the thin green line of the east wall. For most of the morning they’d been trekking along a small canyon that ambled in a generally eastward direction. Even though it meant more distance, walking along the firm rock floor made better time than scrambling over sandy hillocks.
But the canyon had ended in a sheer rock wall.
Skip, who reached the canyon’s end first, looked up the face. “If I didn’t know we were inside a starship, I’d have said this was a dry river bed, and that, a waterfall.”
“Just no water,” said Murdoch, from behind them.
Skip turned to face the gangly sharpshooter. “I wonder whether they constructed all this, or if they hoisted a slab of terrain off some planet and installed it.”
“Does it matter?”
“I dunno, I guess. It’d be good to know what these lizards can do.”
Murdoch’s shoulder gave a non-committal twitch. “Probably, but it’s above my pay grade. I’ll just concentrate on keeping my eyes up, and my hide in one piece. Lieutenant Pascale and the colonel can worry about the lizards.”
“Sure, still, it’d be interesting to know how all this was put together.”
“Interesting it may be, but it’s not going to get us over this face.” Murdoch turned to Jon. “Lieutenant, are we going up and over, or around?”
Jon looked at the face, it was a fairly easy climb, but they’d need to belay just for safety. The alternative was the scree like sides of the canyon. “Let’s try going up the sides, it’ll be a scramble, and if we can’t make it, we’ll climb the face.”
Skip nodded and he, Murdoch, and Peggy started up the slope. It wasn’t all that steep, but the slippery surface meant for slow going. Any stumble meant a significant slide back, so everyone paid close attention to their footing.
Peggy made better time up the slope than the rest of them. She didn’t sink into the scree as far as the others, and her careful footsteps meant she didn’t slip and stumble as often. She was first to reach the top.
But when she got there, she didn’t move on, look for cover, or scan for hostiles as she was supposed to. Instead, she just stood, saying nothing. A moment later Jon was at her side, and he understood why.
“Well, I’ll be fucked,” said Murdoch as he scrambled up to join them.
“You’ve got good eyes Skip,” muttered Peggy. “It does look like a glacier. A big green glacier.”
Skip’s reply was quiet. “It’s no glacier, it’s jungle, dense jungle. Someone’s gone and cut a big long slice of the Amazon and dropped it here.”
Murdoch looked left and right. “Yes, a suspiciously straight slice of jungle in fact. Are we sure it’s not just imagery, like the red sky on the chamber’s other walls?”
“Damn impressive imagery if that’s what it is,” said Skip.
And impressive it was. What before had been a thin green line off in the distance, had now resolved into a two hundred meter high wall of solid vegetation. But, as he looked closer, Jon realized it wasn’t actually solid. He could see huge trees that tapered up, then expanded into a dense green canopy. There were creepers and vines dangling below the canopy, and ferns making up the undergrowth. But it wasn’t a flat image, he could actually see into the greenery.
After looking at nothing but red sand and ochre rocks for weeks, the massive expanse of verdant greenery drew their eyes l
ike a magnet. Jon broke the silence first. “I know we’re only on an exercise, but let’s keep our wits about us. Peggy and Skip take point, lets move in closer. Murdoch, stay back, keep a broader view. I don’t want something coming out of that jungle and flanking us.”
His orders jolted them into action and they started marching eagerly towards the wall of jungle. It wasn’t far away, a kilometer or so, but as they breasted each small sandy dune, the wall of green grew larger and larger.
Murdoch hung back with about three hundred meters to go, his Barrett out and scanning. At the fifty meter mark Peggy stopped and looked silently back at Jon. He scanned left and right, checking for anything that might be hostile, then motioned her forward.
She headed towards the base of one huge tree. The forest giant had a trunk as thick as a railway carriage and soared up into the canopy.
Then she stopped, and her helmet kinked to one side. “Lieutenant, there’s something odd here.”
“What?”
“I’m…” She paused. “I’m not sure. This doesn’t look right.”
Jon jogged up to join her. Before he came too close, she held up a hand to stop him. “Look.” She pointed out along the line where the jungle met the desert. “It doesn’t just look straight, it is straight. It’s laser straight.”
Jon looked down the length of jungle and saw immediately what she meant. From the ferns on the floor to the canopy above, not a single piece of vegetation extended past an invisible line that demarcated jungle from desert.
Peggy’s voice was low and soft. “That’s just not natural.”
— 18 —
Katona stood and stretched, working on the kinks in his back and neck. He was much too old for long periods of reading, tallying figures and cross checking reports. This kind of work sent him cross-eyed, and he itched to move.
Still, he understood the need for this administrative busywork. Even in Stetlak’s depleted state, his fleet still posed a significant management burden. And, with the majority of his usual staff back on Marbel managing the ongoing war effort, he had precious few here that could be trusted with any critical delegations.
These jump readiness reports were a prime example. The power surges that occurred during a starship transition caused dangerous gravity fluctuations. So as a matter of safety, grav-plates were all powered down. Securing ships and vehicles seemed simple enough. But, ensuring everything actually was, and establishing a chain of responsibility should it turn out not to be, involved a mountain of administration. As a result, everything in the starship’s holds and chambers, from the smallest stingship to the largest super carrier, needed to be checked and signed for.
It was an ancient starship regulation, and largely pointless in a fleet starship. The internal shielding in military vessels was capable of damping down starship field fluctuations. They had to; they operated in close concert with the starship. And while Katona’s superior, Shaiken, happily ignored many regulations in Marbel’s declared war zone, the Assembly of Centarchs would expel him in a heartbeat for ignoring one outside of it.
And for a political climber like Shaiken, losing his Assembly membership would end any possibility of ever serving on the Convocation Council. Should that ever happen, everyone responsible would suffer. So Admiral Katona made doubly sure that everything under his administration was correct and accounted for.
His com pod trilled. “The human colonel has arrived admiral.”
“Understood, fetch a translator and send the colonel in.”
Katona had been meeting every ten watches or so with the colonel. Initially the purpose of the meetings was to ensure that the colonel’s company’s physical needs were being met, and their training was progressing as expected. Katona could, and did, use the chamber monitors to determine the veracity of the colonel’s reports. To date though, the colonel had been scrupulously accurate, and unflinchingly honest in his evaluation of his troops’ progress. Even when that progress was not as expected.
The human’s candor was a refreshing change from Katona’s Ka-Li commanders. It wasn’t as though his fellow Ka-Li overtly misled him — there was much dishonor in falsehood of all kinds — but anything that could reflect on a commander was invariably optimistically reported. It was as if they told him what they thought he wanted to hear, not what he needed to. So determining the actual combat readiness of his entire command was more of a challenge than it should be.
He was looking forward to deploying this human colonel’s forces. Not only would it be interesting to see how they dealt with the challenging environment on Marbel, but he had the feeling that he’d be able to rely on them. That would make for a pleasant change. It was only a feeling mind, they still had to be combat proven. But the outcome of that test would be interesting indeed.
His aide ushered the human colonel in, shadowed, as always, by a translator.
“Fair watch to you admiral,” the colonel said in quite passable, though heavily accented Galingua. The translator gave a little chirp of surprise.
“You are learning Galingua remarkably quickly colonel. Can I assume that translators will no longer need to attend our meetings?”
The colonel opened his mouth, then seemed to change his mind. He turned to the translator, gave it the ‘begin’ signal and then continued in his own rumbly tongue. “Not quite yet admiral. While we are making good progress at understanding Galingua, speaking it is still a challenge for us. So I imagine it will be many watches before we will be able to dispense with the translators.”
“I still do not understand why you are pursuing this goal. The translators are a precursor uplift, created for this very purpose. Are they not true and fluid mediators?”
“They are. There is the occasional inconsequential confusion of course, but the main reason we are learning Galingua is to assist in operational matters.”
“Operational matters?”
“Yes, for example, during the heat of battle, we may need to help one of your own units, or instruct a non combatant and there may not be time to call in a translator. In combat, speed is often of the essence. Particularly when the instruction is something like ‘put down the weapon or I’ll shoot’.”
“Of course,” said Katona. He chided himself for not having considered this situation. “I recall now that you have many languages on your own world.”
“It’s a problem we’ve encountered before.”
“Well colonel, I admire the thoroughness of your preparation. It is not something we would have considered, all worlds speak one form or another of Galingua.”
“Even Marbel?”
“For the most part, yes. Marbel has been part of the convocation for several hundred cycles although some of the mountain clans still cling to the native languages. Of which there are many.”
“I wonder if the same will happen on Earth.”
Katona paused. This was the kind of question he would expect from an elder, not a soldier. Elders often spoke in similar half riddles. “I would imagine so. But I am a soldier. I concern myself with military matters, not politics or philosophy. Speaking of which, how is your unit’s progress towards full combat readiness?”
The colonel tilted his head forward and began to report. “The vast majority of my soldiers have already fully adapted to the increased gravity. Our standard fitness tests put the unit as a whole at ninety eight percent of what we were when we left Earth.”
The colonel’s use of the word adaptation piqued Katona’s curiosity. “How exactly do you adapt your troops colonel? You’ve used the term before but I don’t understand the process. I can understand adapting equipment, but surely your men cannot change.”
“What makes you say that admiral?”
“Your troops can lift a given weight, they can run at a given speed. I would expect that in a gravity well one hundred and twenty percent stronger than they are used to, those capacities would be proportionally reduced. Are you talking about adapting the way you use them?”
The human colonel
’s unusually mobile mouth changed shape, its edges curving upwards. “I understand your question now, and the misunderstanding. But no, in this case I am talking about adapting the troops themselves, their bodies in fact. It’s part of human physiology that our bodies can change as a result of use. The process is slow, and there are limits, but by exercising the troops in this environment they increase muscle mass, bone density and adjust reactions. They are currently embarking on multi watch treks through the chamber. It will get them used to functioning in this gravity. Training the mind to accommodate how things move in higher gravity is also an important part of the process.”
Katona opened his mouth in surprise, then snapped it shut. “Training of the mind I understand. Warriors gaining ratings on new equipment do the same. But I was not aware that your physical form was so mutable.”
“Is that not the case with you Ka-Li?” The colonel made a pumping motion with his arm. “If you repetitively lift a weight like so, doesn’t your arm get stronger?”
“No, it grows weaker.”
“Sorry, I meant over time. Doesn’t your body become accustomed to physical labor, and change to become stronger?”
“Not at all. Ka-Li grow into their strength as they grow from a hatchling into an adult, and that is the strength they have until shortly before they die.”
“Interesting,” said the colonel. “Are all Galactic races the same?”
“All the martial ones at least. This broadens your potential even more than your tolerance of environmental variation. I will need to bring this to the centarch,” Katona made a note to do just that. “Now, continue your report.”
“Of course,” said the colonel tilting his head again. Katona made another note to query a translator as to what that particular human gesture meant. The colonel seemed to use it a lot. “The unit has been familiarized with the weapons you supplied. My engineer is trying to establish a way in which we can accurately aim them. Did you not include sights? Aiming equipment?”