by Tim Marquitz
My stomach is shoved back into position, and then some. If I survive this, my mixed-up organs are going to have to sort themselves out. The crushing sense of gravity increases as the thrusters push in the opposite direction, slowing the descent of more than a thousand tons of mech. My lungs compress, the air slowly pushed out. The lack of oxygen, combined with the blood being siphoned through my veins to my feet, which feel ready to burst, fades my vision. Spinning tops of light swirl in my vision as darkness consumes me. I’ve trained for this. How to fight it. How to outlast the darkness. But sometimes, there is nothing you can do about the limits of human physiology.
A survey mech is only as strong as its operator.
That’s what they taught us.
And they’re the last words that flow through my mind before it’s switched off.
I awake for the second time in minutes, this time with a shout of surprise, despite the lack of alarms or danger. The shaking is gone. The crushing gravity has been replaced by something close to Earth-like. And the view…rock. A wall of it. Red, like parts of Arizona lit by a sunset. Or Mars. They’re pretty similar. Looking through the windshield, I turn my head down. The mech, operating on auto-pilot, which was the last command I entered as my mind slipped away, set down just ten feet from a cliff face.
For a moment, I get lost in a visual assessment of the strata, looking for familiar bands of color, hinting at minerals or metals hidden within. But then I realize—I can see it.
The first moments on a rogue planet are often spent in pitch darkness. The only light source is the cosmos, which can be enough to see by with enough time, or with light-enhancing night vision. Gazing from the lit interior of Daikoku’s head, my unadjusted eyes should see nothing but black. And yet, I can see. I double check the external lights, confirming they’re extinguished. Then I make a slow turn around. I’m inside a valley that’s mostly stone, similar to the Grand Canyon in depth, but more narrow. The auto-pilot must have aimed for this area, giving Daikoku an extra two thousand feet to slow down.
While the size of the valley is impressive, and would no doubt have been a tourist location back when people still indulged in such things, its most impressive feature lies at the center. Although valleys on Earth, and pretty much every other planet I’ve heard of, are carved by water and wind, this canyon has a river of molten magma running through it, bathing everything in bright orange light.
“Note one,” I say, activating the voice recorder. It will transmit back to command—along with any data recorded by Daikoku—once an hour, until I get a new set of spatial coordinates and take off into the unknown once more. “Rogue 57 is geothermally active on the surface. Will conduct an aerial survey to confirm how prolific the activity is…once I get dressed. Landing was…rough. Someone did their math wrong. Nearly pulsed into the surface. But I am alive, and Daikoku, while displeased, is fully operational. Just find out who bungled the numbers and slap them on the wrist for me, okay, Nina? Out.”
I lean back in the control chair, feeling slick and warm. I look down at my naked self, still shimmering with moisture, though most of the gel has been shoved down around my legs and balls. In all my travels, to fourteen rogue planets, not to mention my home solar system’s inner four, I have never been so uncomfortable.
Facing the stone wall again, my fingers work the array of keys, punching in commands for Daikoku to follow while I’m getting cleaned up. Atmospheric measurements. Gravity. Pressure. And sure to be most interesting, a sample of the cliff face. In response, Daikoku, whose AI interface handles the minutia of mech controls, like balance, responds to my commands by setting them in motion. Other pilots like to have their mechs reply audibly before taking action. They say it’s so they know their commands have been received accurately. I think it’s because they’re lonely. I like the quiet. The sound of Daikoku’s arm drills firing up is comfort enough.
I linger in the chair as the big mech leans forward at the waist, planting its large metal hands against the cliff face. I can’t see it, but I know that two three-foot-wide holes have opened in the mech’s palms, the already spinning drill heads sliding out and punching through the stone, sampling all the elements within, the way a snake tastes the air.
The job will take a good thirty minutes, which should give me just enough time to clean off, get dressed, eat a ration, and then airvac the command chair and keyboards. I unbuckle, nearly slip out of the chair, and then skate my way back to the small, one-person living quarters, which was designed less for living and more for surviving.
3
Dressed in my maroon flight suit, which matches Daikoku’s exterior, and with a nourishment bar now in my stomach, I’m feeling a little more human. The shower—in water that started out as drinking water before becoming recycled and filtered urine—helped, too. This batch still smells and tastes fresh, but the filter has its limits. I’m going to have to find a comet eventually, mine some ice, and swap out my several-times reused waste for some fresh from-the-beginning-of-the-universe H2O.
The mech is still as I slide into the command chair and buckle up. I take my time, savoring the dry, cushy surface. It took some work to get the gel out of all the folds, but it’s back to normal, and it even has a little shine to its well worn, synthetic leather. I sink in and let out a relaxed breath. The consoles and viewscreens close in around me. With the windshield closed to prevent scratching as the drills burrow into the ground, I’m now viewing everything through the octagon of high-def screens.
Still just red rocks.
I turn my attention to the data that’s been gathered, looking over the list of elements contained in the stone. I scroll though the list, which is long. I see the usual suspects, and I flag a few interesting elements I’ve been trained to eagle eye out of any list. First, we look for common stuff, like iron, silicon, and gold, but then there are the rarer elements, like lanthanum, europium, oscilium, erbium, and neodymium. Those are the keywords that really get the Interstellar Resource Division excited. If I spotted any of that in high enough concentrations, they’d pulse a colony here inside a few months, and in galactic terms, that’s fast. I see none of those things, though. In fact, there’s very little to hold my interest, until…
Holy shit.
There’s oxygen in the rock. A lot of it. And nitrogen. And water.
None of these things are rare in the galaxy. Comets and moons are covered in water. Gas giants contain massive amounts of nitrogen and oxygen, not to mention scads of other gases. But finding all three together, on a rogue planet…
No way, I think, and I look at the atmospheric readings.
The first thing I notice is the temperature. The surface of most rogues is the same temp as the open space through which they sojourn alone: minus 455 degrees Fahrenheit. But the temperature here is a balmy 120 degrees. A little hot for my taste, but survivable for a time, and probably because there’s a river of lava flowing a few hundred feet behind me.
So, what’s the temperature above? I wonder, and then I see the chemical breakdown of the atmosphere. Two numbers jump out at me. Nitrogen: sixty-seven percent and Oxygen: twenty-four percent. The numbers aren’t exactly Earthlike, but I’ll be damned, it’s breathable.
As I retract Daikoku’s hands from the wall, revealing two clean circles that reach hundreds of feet into the rock, I fire up the boosters. I’m so in tune with the giant mech that, despite the lack of a mental interface, I feel like it’s my body rising off the surface and out of the valley. When I clear the valley floor, my mouth gapes a little further with each hundred feet of altitude gained.
Rogue 57 is alive.
The clouds above are luminous, shimmering in greens and blues, like an aurora, but bright enough to illuminate the ground. Bioluminescent airborne life, I decide, like the Dinoflagellates in Earth’s oceans. And that’s not the end of Rogue 57’s surprises. From three-thousand feet, the terrain below looks like a kind of thick fungus. Or endless giant broccoli. But then there are clearings. And rock formati
ons.
The place is an alien paradise.
Motion makes me jump. On all the planets I’ve visited, I’ve never seen anything, other than a storm, move. But here, creatures—alien creatures—that remind me of featherless ostriches, run away from Daikoku, disappearing into the fungus, which I now realize is elevated, like trees, but not.
I’m about to direct Daikoku down for a closer look, maybe sample some of the tree-like stuff and see what it’s made of, when I notice an aberration in the view. The luminous sky, which roils with clouds, is also on the ground. For a moment, I wonder if I’m hallucinating, but then I realize it’s a reflection of the sky. I zoom in for a closer look and see a rippling surface.
Waves.
Could be water, I think. Easier to collect than ice from a comet. Seeing that the strange fungus trees reach nearly for the shoreline, I direct Daikoku toward the liquid, cruising over miles of land, watching a variety of life forms scatter. And then I arrive, hovering at the shore for just a moment, before setting down in a few feet of liquid. Sensors on the outer hull automatically break down the elements and deliver the news: H20. A saltless ocean for as far as I can see. While the siphons in Daikoku’s feet kick on, washing out the water tanks and then refilling them, I decide to break a thousand protocols.
Like I said, I take risks, and the people who are best at this job know when to take them. After checking the temperature—eighty-three degrees—and the atmospheric pressure—a comfortable 16psi, if slightly higher than Earth’s—I climb out of my seat and say, “Note two. While I have yet to detect rare elements, Rogue 57’s value is beyond measure. Nina, I’m not kidding. This place is habitable, and if the readings are correct, it might damn well be a paradise. Will know more when I get back. Marshal Gunn, out.”
4
The beach is sandy. I’m not sure what the mineral composition of the grit beneath my feet actually is, but it feels like sand, shifting beneath my weight with each step. After exiting Daikoku through the back of his head and being lowered to the ground by a rather unsophisticated line with a loop in the end for my foot—to be used in only the most dire of situations—I stand at the edge of the lake, between the mech’s twenty-five-foot-tall legs. I glance up at the machine. It’s been a while since I’ve seen it from the outside.
It’s as impressive as ever, standing at fifty-five feet tall. Its maroon armor plating, each section framed by black lines, reflects and diffuses the cloud light. Bold yellow stripes stretch from shoulder to wrist, and waist to ankle on both sides, matching my flight suit. The name, Daikoku, along with the serial number HMJ-091795, is stenciled on the back, between the shoulder blades, though the machine doesn’t really have them. The internal framework of the mech, minus the armor, is impressive on its own: a network of gears, hydraulics and human-like joints all working in tandem to function like a giant human being, dressed in armor the protects that machine, its human pilot, and the surveying systems held inside.
But Daikoku, with all his modern glory, pales in comparison to what I’m seeing. The water beyond his legs is steaming. Geothermal activity on the surface and below the water. That explains the thick atmosphere and temperatures. Without a star to keep it toasty, Rogue 57 is heating and lighting itself. I crouch and dip my gloved hand into the water. Sensors relay composition and temperature to a display built into the arm of my flight suit, through which I can control Daikoku, if need be. I quickly translate the information into a smile-inducing conclusion. It’s bath water. Sliding out of my boots, breaking more protocols, I step into the hot water, letting the liquid’s heat slide up through my body. Showers on Daikoku are lukewarm at best. This…is like a spa. I stroll out to knee depth, watching small creatures swim away from my feet. I place a hand on the side of Daikoku’s leg, patting the big mech affectionately. “We really did it this time, big guy. I’m thinking we hang around here until the colonies start dropping from the sky.”
They’ll screw the place up in the long run, of course. Turn it into a vacation destination, and in fifty-odd years, a slum, but I’ll probably be dead by then. Rich and dead. Surveyors get two percent of whatever they find, and two percent of a habitable planet is more money than I can imagine. Not that I want to live like a king, but Daikoku will get some upgrades, and then we’ll really go places. Maybe even past the outer limit, previously known as the red shift.
Lost in reverie, I only half-notice the first waves lapping against Daikoku and me. But when they get strong enough to shake my body, I’m pulled back to the present. Five hundred feet from the shore, a steaming wave rises, large enough to engulf me. I take two steps back, ready to ascend back to the safety of Daikoku’s head, when I notice something strange about the wave. It’s darker than the water around it.
There’s something inside it!
I turn around, still clutching my boots, and run to the pulley line. I shove a bare foot through the loop and tap the controls on my wrist. I’m yanked upward at a speed that would have gotten me a stern reprimand during training. But it gets me to the open entrance on the back of Daikoku’s head in seconds. The hatch closes behind me as I hurry to the command chair, throw myself in and buckle up. The consoles and screens close in on me, coming to life just in time for me to see the wave, now large enough to consume the mech, closing in.
I have just enough time to take a defensive posture, dropping the mech to one knee and raising both thick forearms like an old-school pugilist, forming a shield. The impact comes a moment later, first the roar of water and then the jarring shudder of something big striking Daikoku head on. The mech is lifted off the ground and flung backwards. In response, the command chair conforms to my body a little tightly, and the pneumatic shock system keeps me from feeling the jolt of being struck—and of landing. The command chair slides forward and backward to compensate, and it keeps my brain from being jumbled. It has its limits, but it does the job this time.
When I look up, Daikoku does the same, but the shoreline where I’m expecting to find my adversary is empty. The water is frothing, but I’m pretty sure it’s now empty.
Where did it—oof!
Daikoku is struck from the side before it can stand all the way up. It pitches sideways, legs scrambling, automatically compensating for the sudden angle change. As Daikoku stumbles, I direct the mech to swing out a blind back-hand. The fist and forearm connect with something solid.
The impact is followed by a roar.
The sound is transmitted inside the head by Daikoku’s auditory system, but it’s loud enough that I can also hear a muffled version through the hull.
Keeping the mech’s stance wide, Daikoku spins at the waist, poised for action…but not for what I find.
Teeth, I think.
And lots of them. It’s only a blur before I hear a clang on Daikoku’s hull, followed by the shriek of alien teeth gouging the metal surface. We’re thrown back by the weight and ferocity of the thing. After the pneumatic shock system saves my life again, lying on my back, I work the keyboard and joysticks, finding my rhythm. I’m pissed, and while that makes most people lose focus, it does just the opposite for me.
All I can see is darkness, but I have a pretty good idea of where this thing’s head is. I reach up with both arms, and watch the PSI increase as the powerful limbs compress the creature. But it’s lodged on tightly and not giving up. Metal shrieks as the monster shakes its head back and forth.
“That’s it!” I shout, activating the drills in both palms, setting them on full speed and maximum penetration. The response to my attack is immediate. With another roar, the thing reels its head back, giving me my first clear view.
It has a wide, black head and mouth, full of teeth. No eyes that I can see, though there are four dots tracing up the sides of its head. Armor plates rise over its flat skull, giving it the appearance of a salamander-dragon hybrid. It roars once more, sneering at me, but before it can attack, I pull Daikoku’s foot up under its torso and kick hard while simultaneously igniting the booster. The one-tw
o kick does the job, flinging the monster away.
As it sails up, I catch sight of a bulky, wide body with long arms that end in what look like two large claws. The legs look powerful, ending in three-toed webbed feet. A long, flat tail snaps out behind it, like a beaver’s tail, but with spikes that give it an appearance closer to that of a chain saw. And the tail is the problem. As the creature falls away, the tail thrashes out, snapping against Daikoku’s leg.
Warning lights flash, but I ignore them. There’s no time to make repairs now.
The ground shakes when the thing lands, writhing about with a fury bordering on a tantrum.
Now, we’re both pissed.
But I’m not here to fight. I trigger Daikoku’s boosters; only three out of four fire. In open space, or on an asteroid, or a moon, or even a smaller planet, this wouldn’t be a problem. However, lacking one of the main boosters tucked away inside Daikoku’s feet, we’re not leaving the planet. I can fix the problem. There’re replacement parts on board, and Daikoku can do the work himself, but that’s not going to happen while this thing is around.
Recovering from its rage-spasm, the giant spins back toward me and charges on all fours. I rush to meet it. The thing has savagery on its side, and size—it’s at least seventy-five feet from head to tail, but it’s facing off against the best of mankind, who have conquered universes in pursuit of resources.
The creature lunges, its jaws engulfing Daikoku’s outstretched arm. I pull it in close and punch it twice in the head. The impacts seem to do little damage. Warning lights flash, telling of damage to the arm. But it’s not enough to prevent me from activating the torch housed in the forearm.
A high-pitched wail bursts from the creature. It writhes and yanks back, letting go of the arm and revealing the blue-hot flame. Smoke seeps from between the creature’s teeth, its throat no doubt a charred mess.