by Dain White
“Yak?” Pauli called on comms.
“Copy”, I replied.
“The orbitals on this planet have been wiped, but Janis is working on recovering data. We don’t really know what this colony was, but Janis’ best guess based on an analysis of Morse-Webber holdings is that this colony serves a methane pump, or possibly petroleum drilling. In either case, she thinks there is probably a refinery of sorts on location, though what its exact purpose is, she doesn’t know.”
A refinery is a pretty standard platform, and Jane and I have trained for this sort of mission – I have been operational on a few, both onshore and off, so this should go well.
“Thanks Pauli, we’ll keep our eyes open. What sort of environment do we have down there?”
“I’m afraid we don’t know – though Janis assures me that there’s nothing inherently lethal down there, she’s confident that you’ll be navigating a very dense organic plant-like structure. Maybe trees, maybe not… given the way things work, I’d be surprised if anything is remotely recognizable. Stay alert, plant-like and animal-like may not present the same sort of visual indicators that we’re used to.”
“Yep, I know the drill, Pauli. This isn’t my first rodeo.”
He laughed. “The atmosphere has a very high concentration of oxygen—“
Jane broke in, “Can we crack our seals?”
“No Shorty, I wouldn’t. There’s also a very high concentration of nitrogen. In the density and temperature, there’s also a correspondingly high concentration of nitrous-oxide—“
“That doesn’t sound so bad…” I said with a smile and a wink towards Shorty.
“Well, no… but you’ll also have some ammonia, hydrazine, probably a pretty corrosive precipitation with nitric acid, and possibly some highly poisonous azides as well. I definitely wouldn’t recommend breathing down there.”
“Point taken, Pauli… we’ll keep our heads on.”
Captain Smith came aboard, and slapped us both on the shoulder as he passed by, with a tug to make sure we were locked in.
“There’s one other thing, Yak…”
“Yes?”
“Uh… you should try at all times to avoid sparks.”
“What’s that son?” Captain Smith joined in, as he clamped himself down and started flipping switches.
“Sir, the atmosphere down there is volatile. The clouds have a high percentage of particulates, and imaging shows a number of locations on the planet that are… ah… on fire.”
“The air is on fire?”
“In parts, sir, mostly in areas where it’s dry enough, and the humidity drops enough… but even where it’s humid, it is volatile. If there’s enough static, lightning or other static discharge would probably ignite it… sir.”
“Well, we’ll drop her in nice and easy. The crab’s lifters don’t cause heat. Janis, is there anything hot enough on the crab that might cause ignition?”
“The crab is completely shielded against heat, sir, to the lowest observable profile I could engineer”, she replied immediately.
“That’s what I wanted to hear. Nothing to worry about then, folks… right?” he swiveled his chair to look back at us.
“No sir”, Jane replied, “we have knives if needed.”
“Just don’t charge off that stun knife, Jane”, I replied softly on suit comms.
“I won’t… unless it’s very deeply buried in less flammable material”, she winked in reply.
“Ew.” I made a face.
“Well, here we go. Gene, you’re in charge. Everyone clear? Gene says go to bed, you all have to go to bed.”
“Certainly sir”, Janis replied smartly.
“Good girl. Good luck on those orbitals, we need to know where they went, dear.” He rotated back around and continued with his pre-flight procedures.
Her reply was immediate, “I will not fail, Captain.”
“That’s what I want to hear. Gene, cycle open the keel hatch please, we’re ready to drop.”
“Open now, Skipper” he replied after a moment.
“Moving out now, folks”, he replied, and with the slightest lurch, the crab articulated across the cargo bay and straddled the opening.
The captain worked a little more on a side screen, then called out on comms, “Ready in 3… 2… 1… drop!”
The drop was comically underwhelming. As we were in orbit, it was more of a gentle shove through the opening, and the deck of the cargo bay and the open hatch doors slowly slid past.
“Everyone okay back there?” the captain called back on suit comms.
We laughed. “I think I broke a nail, sir”, Jane replied.
“Well, it’ll have to keep, Shorty. Stand by for maneuvers”, he replied sternly.
We looked at each other smiling as the Archaea slowly tumbled past the forward ports as he rotated us away. The grey cloudscape of the planet below filled the forward screen.
“I’m just going to bring her in nice and smooth, folks. We’re in a hurry, but not in a hurry to die in a fire. Immolation was one of the things they taught us to avoid in Captain School, along with how to properly jaunt a cap.”
As often as I’d felt completely at the mercy of the captain as he hurled me around the sky, this was completely out of character for him. He smoothly decelerated against the spin of the planet below, and brought us down into the clouds as softly as a leaf. After that we didn’t see much at all for a while except for what looked like water running across the forward screens.
The crab buffeted around a little bit as we dropped, but way less than I expected. Other than the terrain map on the captain’s screens, there wasn’t anything else to look at. The beacon was coming up as he brought us in lower towards the surface.
Vague shapes loomed at times out of the fog, enormous dark green cylinders, shiny and wet. On his screens, the surface layer was broken up into what looked like a series of columns, stacked and layered against each other.
“Hmm… there doesn’t seem to be a landing platform here, folks”, he called back. “I’m going to bring us in close, and we’ll try to get in overland.”
He aimed for a gap in the tubes, and as he dropped us down, I understood what it was I was looking at. The giant cylinders I was seeing from time to time were the tube structures in his screens. They were vast, 50-60 meters across, and we were a considerable height off the ground yet, dropping smoothly past.
The sidewall of the closest tube loomed through the fog ahead of us, barely lit by our forward arcs. They were mostly featureless, but appeared to have a section join every hundred meters or so as we descended, a sort of indentation and ridge arrangement that overlapped the upper section and joined it to the next lower section.
“What are these tubes, Captain?” Jane asked.
“Beats me, Shorty… probably a critter of some sort, they look pretty organic. Maybe these are the ‘trees’ of this planet? They look like some form of giant bamboo or grass stalk, or possibly the casing of a giant tube worm.”
“Um”, she replied. “Let’s go with bamboo, sir.”
“Sounds good to me, Shorty, I want them to be safe, plant-like critters as much as anyone. I can’t imagine they’d drop a colony into the middle of something horrible.”
He paused for a moment.
“However, as this was a glom colony… I guess anything is possible where profits are being made.”
*****
“Ew, Yak… it’s going to be muddy out there”, I said, wrinkling my nose appropriately.
“Mud is just dirt that wants to give you a hug, Jane”, he replied. “But, yeah… it’s going to be nasty, no doubt”, he added after a lurch dropped the crab a few meters into the slimy muck.
The captain had brought us in smoothly, but now we were slipping and sliding through what looked like waterlogged mulch soup, festooned with stringers of some sort of slime that occasionally splashed across the forward screen.
The closer we dropped to the surface, the more congested the growth became, until he had
to resort to walking us down the side of a long-collapsed tube into the dank surface below. We had no room to fly and hardly enough room down here to walk.
Right on cue, the walker slowed to a halt, blocked by a nearly impenetrable mass of growth. He pivoted us to the left and right, looking for an opening, then lowered us into the mud.
“The beacon isn’t far from here, kids, but I can’t get us any closer. Time for a little hike, it looks like.”
I grumbled something about hazard pay, and made my way aft to the lock.
“Jane, we can’t take chemsers, right?”
I cringed, looking wistfully at the rifles. “No, Yak. We should leave them here. Our railers as well”, I added, and unclipped my holster from my chest harness.
“Hmmm… but they’re non-sparking, Jane. Sodiumite should be safe, right?”
I laughed. “Yak, what does a sodiumite dart do when it hits organic matter?”
His face fell. “Yeah, we don’t want any ‘splosions… got it.”
“Knives and knuckles, Yak. I’d suggest full mimetics as well”, I flipped my suit on as he stowed his railer on the shelf next to mine.
“Roger that, Jane”, he said glumly. We shared one last final wistful look at our beloved weapons and then made our way into the lock, waiting for ambers.
“Stay sharp out there folks”, the captain called on comms. “I did see some critters on the way in, though they looked more slimy than dangerous; watch your back out there.”
“Good grief”, I replied, slipping the lanyard of my commando knife around my glove, and making a fist. The outer hatch cycled and lowered down; making a diving board to leap into the depths of whatever sodden hell waited for us out there.
It looked absolutely horrid, and I was really glad that I couldn’t smell it. The mud was covered with about a meter of what looked like rotten cane stalks of some sort.
“Ladies first”, Yak said politely.
“Ugh, fine…” I replied, and gingerly dropped a leg off the ramp into mud that apparently had no bottom.
“Tether, Jane”, he reminded me, handing me his clip.
“Good idea, Yak.” Clipping our tethers together seemed pretty wise, when slithering chest deep through a nightmare. I grimaced, and dropped off the ramp up to my thighs in muck.
“Good deal, it’s not too deep”, he replied, and stepped off with a mighty splash. A roaring rattle echoed through the gloom ahead of us, and I just about leaped back into the crab.
“Easy Jane… Janis says nothing lethal… that could be anything” he said reassuringly.
“Pfft… nothing down here more dangerous than me, Yak”, I replied. I set off into the gloomy muck confidently, despite not believing my own bravado for even a single moment.
We had to duck down and slither along the bases of some smaller tubes that had blocked our way, but we made it through. Coated in mud as we were, our mimetics were completely useless, though we were probably camouflaged well enough for what we needed to do.
The beacon was only a few hundred meters ahead of us, but it was the hardest terrain I’ve ever tried to navigate. We had to clamber up, over, around or through the most unimaginable tangle of rotting slimy… things. I guess some of it could be ‘branches’ or ‘limbs’, but to be honest, none of it looked even remotely familiar.
There were definitely critters. The mud was full of worms of all sizes, some of which were as big around as my waist. As we fought our way along, it seemed like half of the things I tried to grab for support moved when I touched them. Every time we stepped up out of the mud, the slime that ran down our suits crawled with black worms about as long as my fingers – maybe they were some sort of leech, or slug… I am not sure. They looked like worms to me.
Cruising along the surface from time to time were these enormous… millipede looking creatures, though with a sort of slug-like cilia instead of legs. Whatever they were, they were huge, easily 10 meters in length and at least 2 meters thick. Thankfully, they were either blind, or just didn’t care about us at all. Either way, Yak and I had to almost physically restrain each other from getting stabby every time one of them slithered out of the gloom past us.
We hadn’t seen what was depositing the slime nets that were strung through and around everything, but I was convinced they were a form of web or net. Yak thought they were probably more like a form of fungus, but their tenacious stickiness seemed more trap-like to me. We avoided them as best as we could.
“Hold”, Yak said, and crouched into the muck ahead of me, so I hunkered down and tried not to think slimy thoughts.
“Ahead of us, Jane… it looks like a wall.”
He was right, though we almost walked right into it in this gloom. It was covered with the slime netting, and piled high with bracken and muck – but it was definitely a wall.
“Captain, be advised, we appear to have reached the colony”, I called on comms. “We’re at the perimeter wall now, looking for an entrance.”
“Copy”, he replied smoothly. “Keep me posted, Shorty.”
Yak waved me ahead to our left and I took point – or at least I tried. What I actually did was flounder and struggle through a mess of rotten slimy muck, grabbed a worm that pulled me chest deep into a pit of something horrible, then foundered for a bit kicking and sliding on my butt trying to keep my helmet up.
“Smooth, Jane.”
I looked back at him, nonchalantly standing knee deep.
“Captain, what’s our policy on murder?”
“You mean, in the line of duty, Jane?” he said seriously.
“No, I mean… if I were to just up and kill Yak out here and leave him for the critters… would that be okay?”
“Oh sure… that’d be just fine, Shorty. I’ll take his coffee ration, and we’re good to go.”
Yak laughed, and reached out his damn hand, which I took happily. He hauled me up, and we moved out a little more cautiously along the wall. There was a sort of foundation extending past the wall, which made it a little easier going – though we had to fight our way through the debris and netting piled up.
We didn’t have to go far. One of the larger tube structures had fallen through the corner of the colony and crushed the wall into the depths of the mud below. We were able to scramble and pull ourselves between the tube and the wall and dropped down inside.
“Hold up here for a moment, Jane”
“Holding”, I replied while he climbed up onto a pipe support. The interior of the colony was a refinery of some sort, emphasis on the ‘was’. What it was now was furry green with corrosion, streaked with rust, covered with some sort of gelatinous vine growth – and everywhere covered with the sticky trap-like netting. A fine mist started to fall through the haze.
“Jane, I see movement, 20 meters low.”
I hunkered down and stared at the streaked pipe race above me, where Yak was perched. “What is it, Yak?” I hissed on comms.
“No idea, Jane… just a brief glimpse of motion around the side of that tower.”
“Was it a critter?”
“Possibly… I couldn’t tell. It looked like something ducked for cover though.”
That got my hackles up.
“Call it in, Jane… I’m going to work my way along these pipes to get a better look around that tower.”
“Be careful, Yak”, I replied, never taking my eyes off the tower.
“Captain, be advised, we’re inside the colony.”
“How does it look?”
“It’s pretty overgrown, sir, and looks abandoned. Yak spotted something moving, so we’re going to check it out.”
“Survivors?” he replied, concern in his voice.
“Possibly, sir… we don’t know… might also be a critter.”
“Well, use all caution, Shorty. I’ve seen a few slither past me here that I wouldn’t want to meet formally. Stay frosty, Shorty.”
“Will do, sir”, I replied with a grimace, looking at netting strung from stem to stem as high as the eye c
ould see.
Knives and knuckles… what were we thinking?
“Jane, covering, roll up”, Yak called on comms.
I grumbled something unladylike, and started moving forward toward the tower. The plasteel plating beneath my feet was a lot easier to walk on than the mud, but it was slimed with some sort of ooze that shuddered when I touched it. Nothing about this was fun.
The netting was everywhere, and tenacious. I avoided it as best as I could, but the closer I got to the tower, the harder it became. The ropy strands clung like mucilage from every surface, stretching to infinity. This was just awful. Being abducted from a colony like this would be like winning a prize.
“See anything, Jane?”
“Nothing, Yak… go ahead and come on down. I’ll cover you.”
“Roger that”, he replied, and climbed down the pipe support through a tangle of netting. Kicking and pulling, it tangled and snarled, and he just about went ballistic hurling his arms around and through, trying to come down through it.
“Easy Yak”, I cautioned. The strands throughout the complex were thrumming like my nerves as he hacked and kicked his way through them.
“This stuff is impossible, Jane!”
I was just about to snap off a witty remark, when sudden motion caught my eye beneath and behind Yak.
“Yak – behind you!” I yelled and started moving closer. He spun around, wrapping himself in more strands of the netting and swinging his ka-bar wildly through the mess.
I couldn’t see what it was behind him, but it wasn’t a colonist. It was underneath the netting, and his frantic whirling blocked my view. The glimpse I had was of a wet-looking rubbery sort of creature moving low along the ground.
“What the—”, he dropped to a knee, slashing wildly. “Jane, it’s on me!”
He suddenly dropped to his back and started sliding back into the recess underneath the pipe race. I hurled myself forward and caught his outstretched hand, and just managed to wedge a boot along the side of the support. He pulled his legs in close and hacked his knife into the netting below his leg, flinging a clear ichor from his blade with each swing.
“Pull!” he hissed, as he yanked against me and kicked his legs convulsively. I clenched my teeth and pulled as hard as I could, and suddenly he was free and kicking hard, pushing us both across the slimed plating.