Battle On The Marathon

by John Thornton

  The mechanical voice came on again, “Please secure all loose items, and buckle your safety belts. Your destination was to be Oceanography Station 16. Unfortunately, there is a malfunction, of unknown origin, and communication has been lost with Oceanography Station 16. Instead, you will be transported to the functional hub which is nearest that location.”

  Brett was looking at his wristwatch. “Hey, we have a display tracker here. We can watch our progress on our watches.”

  There were several groans about his attempt at humor, but I looked at my own wristwatch and saw the new information which was being received. Submenus and additional connections were now active.

  “Phil-4? Would you please elaborate on the nature of the malfunction?” I asked.

  Before the AI could respond, Matkaja interjected, “Phil-4 is a subsidiary system to the artificial intelligence system Philippides. That is one of the Marathon’s primary AIs, and the one which oversees all transportation systems. Phil-4, here, will not have significant diagnostics. You should be directing your questions to Diodorus of Machine Maintenance, or some of that systems subsidiary AIs, the Dio series.”

  “Cadet Matkaja is correct, in so far as she goes,” Phil-4 replied with its mechanical voice. “I am indeed a subsidiary system of Philippides. However, we are all linked together via the nonphysicality.” Then the Phil-4 system took on a condescending tone. “That means we are all interconnected. The subsidiary artificial intelligences do report to the primaries, but we are not limited to only that. We have cross linkages and couplings. That is in the basic fabric of the nonphysicality. Therefore, when I stated that there was a malfunction of unknown origin, that was a comprehensive report. It was not due to my individual reporting. Nor was it due to my specialization and my inherent limitations, but rather it was a report which was approved by the lattice of compeers from all the available information. That did include all twenty of the Dio series artificial intelligence systems which do report to the primary artificial intelligence system Diodorus of Machine Maintenance. May I help you in any other subjects? Or should we progress to the destination?”

  “Wow! Told off by a subsidiary AI. Maybe it will teach you basic quantum mechanics or some other rudimentary area?” Timofei chortled. It was much funnier to him, than to me. “Maybe you should just ask for executive level access to the lattice? Get all your answers there!”

  Phil-4 replied, “I meant no disrespect to Cadet Kalju. However, executive level access is not for cadets. You have been granted the appropriate clearances for cadets of the militia. We are now departing. Our destination is the nearest functional transport hub to Oceanography Station 16. Please remain seated while in transit.”

  “Foreigner, here we come!” Carol said.

  Phil-4 then went on to lecture Carol about her calling that habitat by its common name and not the official designation. I still cannot recall the official nomenclatures for any habitats, oh well. While that vehicle carried us along, the others were arguing the merits of common names, as opposed to official names. I know someone brought up our gimps and how that was easier to say than calling the sidearms a RSW Model G1MP, all the time.

  Here I was on an adventure, and all I saw were the people I knew from the academy, inside a vehicle which looked just like the simulators. I wished we had a window so I could see outside on my very first trip away from Kansas.

  So, instead of gawking at scenic vistas, I kept thinking about our mission. Something had gone wrong, somewhere. It was unknown to the artificial intelligence system, well, at least the only AI with which I had ever spoken. “Did Phil-4 actually have access to all the information?” I wondered. Apparently, that malfunction was of such low priority that we were sent. So, it was not important enough for the Marathon Defense Forces, but it was not insignificant, lest no one would have been sent. Then it hit me. So, I asked myself, “Where were last year’s senior class members? Where was the class the year before that? Maybe they were all part of that Operation Barnacle? Or could this all be an elaborate training exercise in the real world? Had we moved beyond the simulators, and needed actual experiences? If we thought it was a real mission, we would act differently than if we knew it was training, right?”

  Oh, how my mind spun like carousel.

  Upon arrival at the hub, we unloaded, and on the way out, I said, “Thank you Phil-4.”

  “There is no need to flatter the AIs!” Brett teased me.

  “There is also no call to be rude, or ungrateful,” Matkaja surprisingly defended me.

  “Do we make progress reports?” Brett asked.

  “Mister Fisher said to maintain a low profile, and that is what we will do,” Bartlet replied. “Besides, we do not need any help to complete this mission.”

  The hub was smaller than the one we had left, with only two docking hatches. Bartlet had us check all the operations at that hub, and everything was functional. She had us review our weapons, and our supplies. Then we left that hub and heading down the corridor which would lead us to Oceanography Station 16.

  Stepping out, I expected to see some totally different place. It was disappointing. I expected the shell of a whole different habitat, Foreigner, to look different. But it looked pretty much like the garage and lower levels under the Raven Academy. That made me think it really was just an elaborate training exercise. Oh, how wrong I was.

  Bartlet assigned Kulm and Radha to take the point positon, and Matkaja and I were assigned to trail along behind. All of our wristwatches displayed the same information, meaning, where the malfunction was located. As we walked along, I reviewed some of the deck plans for the area. I knew we were under the aquatic portions of Foreigner. Well, in Foreigner it was hard to not be under the aquatic portions, as it was composed of almost all water. Foreigner, like Styx, was where vast amounts of water were kept. Of Foreigner’s roughly thirteen hundred square kilometers of surface space, about a thousand were open water. The rest was divided between the eight islands spread across that sea. I know, it was not a sea like the Earth had prior to the 90 Hour War, but it was huge anyway. Thinking about all that water, I involuntarily looked up. As if somehow I could visualize that vast volume of water located over my head. The ceiling was just a ceiling, even though I knew somewhere up there was all that water. As I thought about that, I realized I was mistaken. I double checked my deck plans, and then remembered that we were on the unique subsurface level which traversed between the biome’s sea—above—and the water reservoir which was at gravitational bottom of the habitat. So, I looked down, and saw only the floor, but knew there was a large reservoir of water, about two kilometers deep, beneath me, while the biome’s sea was about six kilometers thick above me. I felt surrounded by water, knowing all that was there, and yet it looked just like a corridor under the lodge back in Kansas. I really had wanted to see that other biome. Being born a habitat dweller, a term I now understood a bit better, would always make me want to see natural stuff, and not the shell which surrounded the biomes.

  “Keep alert for any dangers,” Bartlet called out. “Do not bunch up. We do not know what caused these malfunctions. Nor do we know what might be down here.”

  “Broken equipment?” I suggested. That elicited some chuckles. “Could this all be just some elaborate training exercise? Like some fieldtrip testing?”

  “You think so?” Timofei asked. “I wondered about that.”

  Bartlet’s tone was sharp. “Do not diminish or mock this! It is not a simulator, and remember, we have loaded weapons. We are not carrying training handguns. We have a mission to do, and we should do it right.”

  I felt chastised, and rightly so. I remembered Radha getting shot, and the killing of Marie, and mentally beat myself for not being more serious. We walked onward, but the doors we tried, and the consoles we opened up all seemed perfectly functional. Not even a flickering light anywhere.

  Kulm and Radha stopped at an intersection where a bulkhead door was sealed. We all halted where we were, without closing ranks. I
keep looking ahead and watched for what to do next. Kulm and Radha were carefully examining the bulkhead door. I checked my own wristwatch, and adjusted it to display more of the area. I could see from my own readings, that we should be taking the left-hand corridor in order to get to Oceanography Station 16.

  “This door is on backup power,” Kulm called out. “I am trying to trace where the primary power was cut off, but it looks strange.”

  Hearing Kulm say an energy or power system “looks strange” caught my attention. He knew those things very well, and he should be able to identify the problem easily. I could see he was taking apart a panel on the wall near the door to get a better assessment. Radha was standing over him, alert and watchful.

  “The whole corridor behind this bulkhead door is flooded,” Kulm called back. “Some kind of polluted water. Strange mix of contaminants.”

  “Maintain position where you are everyone,” Bartlet commanded. She flipped her head around and her blond ponytail swished from side to side. She still looked like the teenager she was, but her command presence was shown in her voice. “Can you repair it?”

  Kulm looked over the panel and then popped open another one. “That is the strange part. Outside in the sea the pressure is roughly 1.08 × 108. In the corridor here, it should be about that same pressure, if it was leaking in from the sea. But from what I can measure, in the corridor, that junk is under much less pressure. Check it out.”

  I checked by wristwatch and compared the readings he was feeding to us through those links.

  Kulm went on, “So, it must be from a water supply line or something. Maybe a waste or sewage system ruptured near here?”

  “What about water from the reservoir?” I called out. “Could it come up from there?”

  “Huh? That is all sealed, baffled, and secure,” Brett added. “Well, it should be anyway. How would that water reserve get from down there to up here? Reservoir water is treated, stored, and then used as needed and the cycle starts over. Besides, it is stored at typical pressures throughout the whole reservoir.”

  A couple other people made some other suggestions, about possibilities, but I could only see three sources for the flooding: the biome’s sea water coming down from above, the sterile water of the reservoir bubbling up from below, or some plumbing or sewer system leaking.

  Radha called out, “I set up macroactinide capacitor enhancer to link to that station.” While Kulm had been assessing the corridor, she had rerouted some of the utilities and spliced in the supplementary module.

  Kulm looked again at his diagnostic equipment. “Great job Radha! I can run some more scans, but I think no matter where it originated, if I pump it out, it must go into some holding cell or tank. That gunk must not go into the biome, or the reservoir. It is toxic sludge. Um… that is just too weird.”

  I was adjusting the feed on my wristwatch, getting some new information.

  Matkaja joked, “So, we do all that swimming and training in water only to come here to fix a sewer leak? It does look like all the corridors, well, the three I have on the deck plans, all seem to be flooded in the same way. Could be just a big, but random leak.”

  Carol added, “Really? Seems too targeted. Since Radha connected in that link, I can see that those corridors are full of fluids, but the station looks intact and air pressurized. It is too precise to be accidental.”

  Radha replied, “Still no response to messages I am sending.”

  “I found a way to pump out the one corridor and drain that… foul water. I can shove it into a tertiary sewer holding tank which right now is empty. Just enough to open that one corridor. I think, well, maybe, the corridors filled from some ruptured sewer, but I cannot see where that was. I do not see anywhere large enough to shunt all that foul gunk. I can clear only a single passage, I think. I have to use the return air ducts to channel the foul water.” Kulm adjusted a few controls item and then shut the panel. “The pumps are running. It should be clear in about ten minutes, but I am not sure where the junk came from, or how fast it might refill. I also set the air filters at maximum to clean and scrub what we will be breathing in there. Pneumatics can fight hydraulics, but poorly. Where did that sludge come from? The air pressure, and hydraulic pumps will help force the sludge out, but it will be a short-term fix. Air recycling must happen in there, but the return air vents are worthless now. Major repairs needed. Way beyond what we can do here.”

  “Listen!” Bartlet called out. “This seems to be some kind of mechanical breakdown, but was it accidental or deliberate? I agree it looks too targeted to just be an accident, so, spread out and check every readout and link in this area. If this was deliberate sabotage, and not just an accidental mechanical failure we need to know. And where are the automacubes which should be automatically repairing this stuff?”

  “Why would anyone cause flooding with filth?” Brett asked.

  “A toilet pirate?” Pilliroog laughed, but no one else did.

  I walked over to the nearest door and saw that it was still fully functional, and still connected into the nonphysicality. I moved about a meter along to the next junction point, and reassessed. That was where I ran into the first traces of the fractured nonphysicality.

  “The corridor is now about half empty,” Kulm announced.

  Suddenly, the bulkhead door he was standing near, shook. He jumped back. Then that door slid partially open. A waist-high surge of water came pouring out from the dark corridor. The fluids were not much lighter in color than the dark space above. Kulm nimbly jumped back and away, as did Radha, keeping out of the pouring torrent of brownish colored, soupy fluids. Sparks shot out from where Radha had been working on the communication equipment.

  Even back a distance from that spilling of fluids, I could smell the acrid air that was also wafting into the corridor. My eyes stung. It gave me a sort-of metallic taste in my mouth, and burned my nostrils. The others were running toward me, fleeing the muck pouring in. From where I stood I could see that the fluids were not going to reach me as they were spreading about the deck on my side of the door. As the liquids poured in, the level was visibly dropping beyond the door, while pooling and flowing into the new corridor. I had not realized until then that the corridor I was in had a slight slope to it. I was somewhat uphill from the bulkhead door, and was thankful for that angle. The gunk was a rotten mess.

  I coughed from the putrid air.

  Something was moving in the darkness beyond the bulkhead door, and it was more than the waters. Flashes of light jumbled around. My first thought was that I was seeing people in spacesuits. For two figures were wading along with the flowing muck of water as it came into the corridor. The bulkhead door was jammed about half-way open, and that was not quite enough space for the figures to both move through together. Their shadowy forms were big and bulky, and jostled for position. Finally, one turned sideways, and stepped through the doorway, as the water was slowing down. Then I realized they were not spacesuits.

  I never thought to draw my gimp, but others had. I glanced around and saw that Radha and Timofei were aimed right at the figures. Knowing they were my teammates, I drew out my weapon, but I was unsure why, except it was a reflex.

  As I looked back, it was apparent that two people were wearing standard issue, Marine Pressure Suits, which in training we called MPSs. Each MPS was white and silver colored and carried its own propulsion system for underwater use, magnetic boots for walking on surfaces, multiple tool compartments, and internal air recyclers. Twice in simulations we had used those. They were self-contained with atmospheric pressures inside which were normal. They were strong enough to resist any external aquatic pressures found on the Marathon.

  For some reason, I thought of Captain Nemo’s crew and their submarine. The MPS was sort-of a one-person submersible system, which had an roughly anthropomorphic form. Whoever was inside those MPSs were moving out from that formerly flooded corridor. The elaborate pressure joints of the MPSs allowed for articulation water or out of water. T
hey were amphibious. The suit looked sort-of like a person surrounded in large, padded, bubbles, or like comfortable pillows had been wrapped around someone. The snack food marshmallows came to my mind. Unlike the real spacesuits, the MPSs could not function in vacuum, and did not have a full bubble helmet. Rather, the MPS had a flat, clear permalloy faceplate in the front. Inside, the wearer had heads-up displays which showed the surrounding area, even though their window to the world was small. I could see that the first person was a man, and the next was a woman.

  “Halt!” Bartlet commanded, and spoke into her wristwatch. She too had drawn out her gimp and was aiming it at the people in their MPSs.

  Radha adjusted her wristwatch, and then I heard their responses.