Deepsix

by Jack McDevitt

  Books by

  Jack McDevitt

  ANCIENT SHORES

  ETERNITY ROAD

  MOONFALL

  INFINITY BEACH

  DEEPSIX

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  EOS BOOKS

  An Imprint of Harper Collins Publishers

  10 East 53rd Street

  New York, New York 10022-5299

  Copyright © 2001 by Cryptic, Inc.

  ISBN: 0-06-102006-0

  Map on pages xii-xiii by Brooke Reyna

  www.eosbooks.com

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information address Eos, an Imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

  First Eos paperback printing: January 2002

  First Eos hardcover printing: March 2001

  First Eos special printing: September 2000

  Eos Trademark Reg. U.S. Pat. Off. and in Other Countries,

  Marca Registrada, Hecho en U.S.A.

  HarperCollins® is a registered trademark of HarperCollins Publishers Inc.

  Printed in the U.S.A.

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  FOR WALTER CUIRLE

  who continues to provide

  the special effects

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I’m indebted to John Spencer of the Lowell Observatory for collision data; to science fiction writer Sage Walker for dietary assistance; to Les Johnson of NASA for showing me how it could be done; to Ralph Vicinanza, for timely help; to EOS editor Caitlin Blasdell, who seems to have all the right instincts. To Maureen, for infinite patience. To Sara and Bob Schwager for their work with the manuscript. To Brian A. Hopkins for his suggestions. And special appreciation to Henry Mencken, for a glorious half century.

  On that final day, we stood bent against the wind at world’s end, and watched the churning hell-lit clouds. Somewhere out there, over the eastern peaks we could no longer see, dawn was breaking. But it was a terrifying dawn, cold and lethal and black.

  —GREGORY MACALLISTER, Deepsix Diary

  CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE

  PART 1

  BURBAGE POINT

  I

  II

  III

  IV

  V

  VI

  VII

  VIII

  IX

  X

  XI

  XII

  PART 2

  OVERLAND

  XIII

  XIV

  XV

  XVI

  XVII

  XVIII

  XIX

  XX

  XXI

  XXII

  XXIII

  XXIV

  XXV

  PART 3

  SKYHOOK

  XXVI

  XXVII

  XXVIII

  XXIX

  XXX

  XXXI

  XXXII

  XXXIII

  XXXIV

  XXXV

  XXXVI

  EPILOGUE

  PROLOGUE

  October 2204

  “They went in there.” Sherry pointed.

  The afternoon was quiet and deadly still. The sun rode in a cloudless sky. It was not, of course, a bright sun. The dusty Quiveras Cloud, within which this system had drifted for three thousand years, prevented that. Randall Nightingale looked around at the trees and the river and the plain behind him, and considered how rare, in this equatorial place, was a summer’s day.

  In his mind, he replayed the screams. And the staccato sounds of the stinger blasts.

  His pilot. Cookie, was checking his weapon. Tatia shook her head, wondering how Cappy could have been so dumb as to wander off. She was redheaded, young, quiet. Her usually congenial expression was bleak.

  Andi watched the line of trees the way one might watch a prowling tiger.

  Capanelli and his two colleagues had started just after dawn, Sherry explained again. They’d entered the forest despite the prohibition against getting out of sight of the lander. And they hadn’t come out.

  “But you must have heard what happened,” said Nightingale. The three members of the party had been wearing e-suits and talking to each other on the allcom.

  She looked, embarrassed. “I went in the washroom. Tess called me when it started to happen.” Tess was the AI. “When I got out, it was over. There was nothing.” Her lip trembled, and she looked on the edge of hysteria. Tess had recorded a few seconds of screams. And that was all they had.

  Nightingale tried calling them, and heard only a carrier wave. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s go.”

  “All of us?” asked Andi. She was blond, chunky, usually full of wisecracks. One of the boys. At the moment, she was strictly business.

  “Strength in numbers,” he said.

  They spread out across the hardscrabble grass, glanced at one another for mutual support, and started toward the tree line. “There,” Sherry said. “They went in there.”

  Nightingale led the way. They proceeded cautiously, drawing together again, weapons at the ready. But these were researchers, not trained military types. To his knowledge, none had ever fired a stinger in anger. Seeing how nervous they were, he wondered whether they didn’t have as much to fear from themselves as from the local wildlife.

  The sunlight dimmed beneath the canopy, and the air temperature dropped a few degrees. The trees were tall and fleshy, their upper branches tangled in a canopy of vines and large spade-shaped leaves. Thick cactuslike growths were everywhere. The ground was covered with vegetable debris. Overhead, an army of unseen creatures screeched, scratched, ran, and flapped. As was the case in forests everywhere, he knew, the majority of animals would be found living in the canopy and not on the ground.

  The e-suit reduced his olfactory sense, but imagination came to his rescue, even in this curious woodland, and he could smell the pines and mint of his native Georgia.

  Biney Coldfield, the starship’s captain and pilot of the third lander, broke in to inform him she was approaching and would join the search as soon as she was down.

  He acknowledged, letting his irritation show in his voice. Capanelli had embarrassed him, ignoring the established guidelines and plunging into an area with such limited visibility. It made them all look like rank amateurs. And had probably gotten him killed.

  Nightingale scanned the ground, trying to spot footprints, or any sign Cappy’s group might have left in passing. But he saw nothing. At last he turned to the others in his party. “Do we have a woodsman, by any chance?”

  They looked at one another.

  “Where were they going?” he asked Sherry.

  “Nowhere in particular. Straight ahead, I guess. Following the trail.”

  Nightingale sighed. Straight ahead it was.

  Something raced up a tree. At first glimpse he thought it resembled a squirrel, but then he saw it had extra legs. It was their first day on Maleiva III.

  A couple of birds circled them and settled onto a branch. Redbirds. They looked like cardinals, except that they had long beaks and turquoise crests. The colors clashed.

  “Wait a minute,” Sherry said.

  “What?” demanded Nightingale.

  She raised her hand for quiet. “There’s something behind us.” They whirled as one and weapons came up. In their rear, a tree limb fell. Nightingale backed into something with spines.

  Cookie and Tatia went back and looked. “Nothing here,” they
reported.

  They moved out again.

  There was little space for walking. They were constantly pushing through bushes and fighting their way past brambles. He pointed out a couple of broken stalks that suggested something had come this way.

  Then he stepped into a glade and saw them.

  All three were lying still. Their force-field envelopes were filled with blood. Their faces were frozen in expressions of terror and agony.

  Sherry came out behind him, gasped, and started forward.

  He stopped her and held her until she calmed down a bit. The others scanned the trees for the attacker. “Whatever it was,” said Tatia, “it’s not here now.”

  Sherry freed herself from him, approached the bodies, moving progressively more slowly, and finally dropped to her knees beside them. He watched her whisper something. Watched her rock back on her haunches and stare into the trees.

  He joined her, put a hand on her shoulder, and stood wordlessly, looking down at the carnage.

  Andi came up beside him. She’d been a close friend of Al White’s for years. She sighed and began quietly to sob.

  Tatia remained at the edge of the glade, glancing first at the bodies and then hardening her gaze and surveying the ring of trees.

  Biney, listening from the third lander, broke in: “What’s going on, Randy?”

  All the blood was trapped inside the Flickinger fields, so it was difficult to make out details of the wounds. But each of the three looked as if he’d been jabbed, bitten, gouged, whatever, numerous times. The wounds looked small, he thought. The attacker had been small. Attackers. There had certainly been more than one.

  He must have said it aloud. “Small?” said Biney. “How small?”

  “Rat size, maybe. Maybe a little bigger.”

  Whatever they had been, they’d succeeded in tearing off a few pieces of meat, although they hadn’t been able to eat any of it because they couldn’t extract it from the e-suits.

  The area had been the scene of a battle. Scorch marks on some of the trees. Pulp blasted away from the soft-bodied vegetation, and a green viscous liquid bleeding out. Several overhead branches were blackened.

  “They were shooting up,” said Nightingale.

  They, gathered almost unconsciously into a circle, backs protected, and stared at the trees and the canopy.

  “Man-eating squirrels?” said Andi.

  Several shrubs were burnt-out. One tree down. But no corpses or other remains of large predators. “There’s no sign of whatever did it.”

  “Okay,” Biney said. “We’re just setting down. We’ll be there in a few minutes. You might want to head out. Forthwith.”

  “Can’t leave the bodies. And we don’t have enough muscle here to move them.” Cookie was the only full-size male. Nightingale himself was barely as big as Andi, the smallest of the women.

  “Okay. Wait for us. We’ll be with you as soon as we can.”

  A couple more birds settled onto a branch. The ugly cardinals.

  “You all right, Andi?” asked Nightingale, putting an arm around her.

  “I’ve been better.”

  “I know. I’m sorry. He was a good guy.”

  “They were all good guys.”

  Tatia’s head came up. “Over there,” she said.

  Nightingale looked, but saw only trees.

  The e-suit tended to dampen sound. He turned it off so he could hear better. The cold bit into him. But something in that direction was padding around.

  Nightingale’s instinct was to get everyone out of the woods. But he couldn’t just leave everything. The stinger had a comfortable heft. He glanced at it, felt the hum of power inside the grip. It would bring down a rhino.

  He pushed past Tatia. Cookie whispered to him to stay put, but he felt that his position as leader somehow required him to lead. To get out front.

  Something moved rapidly, squealing, through the canopy. At ground level, a pair of eyes watched him through heavy shrubbery.

  Cookie moved up beside him. “Lizard, I think, Randy. Wait—”

  “What?” asked Tatia.

  It came out into the open, a long reptilian head with a crest, followed by a thick mud-colored body. It had short legs and nictitating eyes. Its jaws were open, and it was watching Nightingale and Cookie.

  “Croc,” said Cookie.

  “Croc?” Biney’s voice.

  “Same general order,” said Nightingale. “More like a small dragon.”

  “Is it what killed Cappy?”

  “I don’t think so.” It was too big. Anyhow, this thing would gore and mangle. Cappy and the others appeared to have numerous puncture wounds.

  Its tail rose slowly and fell. He wondered whether it was issuing a challenge.

  Nightingale reactivated his e-suit. “What do you think, Cookie?”

  “Don’t do anything to provoke it. Don’t shoot unless it attacks. Don’t make eye contact.”

  His heart was pounding.

  The dragon snorted, opened its jaws, and showed them a large gullet and lots of razor teeth. It pawed the ground.

  “If it takes another step toward us,” said Nightingale quietly, “take it down.”

  The dragon’s gaze shifted. It looked above them, toward the upper branches of the trees. Its jaws opened and closed, and a serpentine tongue flicked out. Then it was backing away.

  Backing away.

  Nightingale followed its gaze.

  “What’s happening?” asked Cookie.

  “I’d swear,” said Nightingale, “something scared it.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “I don’t think so.” A couple of the furry spiders were chasing each other through the canopy. One leaped across an open space, caught a branch, and hung on for dear life while the branch sank halfway to the ground. There was nothing else up there. Save the redbirds.

  Biney was a tall woman, almost as tall as Cookie. She had hard humorless features, a voice loaded with steel, and the easy grace of a linebacker. She might have been attractive if she’d ever loosened up. Ever smiled.

  She arrived with the full complement of her team, two men and a woman, all with weapons drawn.

  She more or less took over, as if Nightingale no longer existed. And in truth he was pleased to hand over responsibility. This sort of thing was more in her domain than his.

  She directed Tatia and Andi to stand guard, and assigned everyone else to construct slings from branches and hanging vines. When the slings were ready they laid them on the ground, placed the bodies within, and began the cumbersome effort of withdrawal.

  She gave crisp directions, ordered the march, kept them together. There’d be no wandering off and no idle sight-seeing.

  The trees forced them to travel single file. Nightingale was assigned a position at the rear, behind Cookie, who had charge of Cappy’s body. It was hard not to stare at the corpse as they walked. The terrified expression of the dead man held him in a kind of tidal lock.

  Biney had brought a laser cutter, which she wielded with grim efficiency, slicing away the undergrowth. Nightingale, as the smallest of the men, or possibly because of his position as project director, had been spared the effort of trying to drag one of the slings. When he offered to help, Biney told him on a private channel that he’d be more useful as a lookout.

  So he watched the tiny forest denizens, the ubiquitous spiders and redbirds and a dozen other animals. A barrel-shaped creature literally rolled past, apparently oblivious of the presence of the rescue force.

  It was an intriguing beast, but there’d be no further investigation on this world. At least not for Nightingale. He knew that Biney would insist on allowing no one to return to the surface until the incident had been reported to the Academy. And he knew how the Academy would react. They’d have no choice, really.

  Come home.

  To his right, a half dozen of the big-footed redbirds sat on a branch. There was something in their manner that chilled him.

  Their beaks w
ere the right size.

  Had it been redbirds the dragon had seen?

  Their heads swung as the party passed. The forest grew deadly still.

  The trees were full of them.

  As they walked, birds in their rear took flight, glided beneath the canopy, and descended onto branches ahead.

  “It’s the redbirds,” he said softly to Biney.

  “What?”

  “It’s the cardinals. Look at them.”

  “Those little critters?” Biney could scarcely keep the derision out of her voice.

  Nightingale picked out a branch from which four, no, five, of the animals were watching. He sighted on the middle one, set the intensity low since it was such a small creature, and knocked it off its perch.

  As if it had been a signal, the redbirds descended on them from a dozen trees. Off to his left, Tatia screamed and fired her weapon. They were like scarlet missiles and they came in from all sides. Stingers crackled and birds exploded. A cactus erupted and burned fiercely. The air was filled with feathers and fire. One of the people who’d come in with Biney, Hal Gilbert, went down.

  The stinger was a discriminating weapon. You had to aim it. That meant it wasn’t of much use against this kind of attack. But Nightingale used his as well as he could, keeping the trigger depressed, and just swinging it around his head.

  Biney’s laser was a different matter. He saw it flash through the air, watched whole legions of the redbirds spin wildly and go down. Down in flames, you sons of bitches.

  Other cactuses blew up as the stingers touched them.

  Then something ripped into his back. He bit down a scream and fell to his knees, thinking he’d been hit by one of the weapons. But when he reached behind, his fingers closed on a feathery thing, which struggled frantically to get free. He crushed it.

  The injury was in an awkward place, near his shoulder blade. He tried to reach it, gave up, and fell down on his back, gaining some relief by pressing it against the ground. He got off a couple more shots when something hit him again. In the neck.

  The edges of his vision turned dark, his breathing slowed, and the world began to slip away.

  Tatia was bending over him. She smiled when she realized he was awake. “Glad to see you’re back with us, boss.”