Sonata in Orionis (Earth Song Book 2)

by Mark Wandrey

  "Where did that come from?"

  "No way to tell."

  "Probably natural seepage," Pip volunteered. Cherise and Chester had no reason to disagree, so they didn't.

  "As for waste water," Chester said, "we didn't bring that sort of gear. Chosen have stuff that will filter almost anything, including that radiation; we just didn't think to bring it."

  "We’re equipped more than sufficiently for a simple mission," Cherise agreed. "We estimated three days in the field, and we'll make it six."

  "Right out of the manual," Minu said. "Be sure to update the database on this world so the next team won't expect ground water.

  Cherise nodded then continued. "We've considered improvising something to reclaim used water."

  "Filtered piss?" Pip laughed. "I'll go thirsty."

  "You might change your mind in a couple days," Minu said over her shoulder to where he sat comfortably on a bed roll and worked on one of the multitude of tablets he'd brought. He looked up with a stunned expression.

  "You can't seriously be thinking about staying after the water runs out."

  "Try me," she snarled, "I'm not choking on my first mission."

  "Your first mission, is that all that matters? You want us all to die of thirst so you don't look bad?"

  "Watch it," Cherise warned. Too late, the gauntlet was thrown.

  Minu rounded on him and stomped over next to where he sat. His eyes got big and he hid his computer under one leg. He didn’t fear for himself, it was his precious research he was worried about. "Yes, my first mission. And your first mission, and her first mission," he pointed at Cherise, "and his first mission," she pointed at Chester, "this is our first mission. Don't you fucking get it yet? They've thrown us another damn curve ball on purpose. This is just a test, another one of their stupid freaking tests. I'm in command; I see all the missions and planning sessions. I'm the first of our class to go out into the frontier, and with an all-rookie team. How are we going to look coming back half dead and our tail between our legs?"

  "The rest of you won't look too good," Pip observed.

  "Oh, you figure you'll be under the radar on this one?"

  "Hey, I don't even know why they bothered with me on this little picnic."

  "Then you're stupider than you look." This time it was his turn to look angry. Minu threw her tablet in his lap, the one showing the search grids on the map. He managed to catch it before suffering testicular damage. "Tell me, genius, is the map essentially accurate?"

  He opened his mouth to say something then thought better of it and looked down at the map. It was covered in Minu's notes and details added since they arrived. "Yes," he finally pronounced, "it is accurate except for certain details."

  "Okay, so what we want is here, and the map is accurate. X might well mark the spot, only they've moved the spot. Assuming this is a test, it looks like a mathematical challenge to me. Maybe the answer is hidden in the map? Who knows, but there’s a good chance a computer person can find the answer. We end up going home and abandoning this mission with the answer right there on that tablet, how do you think you will look?"

  "Like a moron," he admitted with a pathetic look on his face.

  "Or worse. So get off your lazy ass and get to work. We've been here three days and you haven't done shit."

  Pip looked hurt. "I've been doing valuable research."

  "And eating valuable groceries," Chester said.

  "And drinking invaluable water," Cherise said. "So now get your well-nourished ass into gear before we cut off the chow." It was a good threat because he was down to the task in short order.

  With nothing more immediately required of her, Minu took a short walk to calm down. She berated herself for letting Pip get under her skin. William and Pip were both well skilled in needling her at just the right time and she couldn't figure out how to disarm them without resorting to threats or a heated confrontation. She hated letting her anger get the better of her, especially since it happened far too often for her liking. Leaders were like Jacob, Dram or Jovich, always calm, collected, and in command of the situation. Like her father, Chriso. She had no memory of him ever losing his patience with her, even when she broke a valuable off world artifact as a young child. Despite being very upset, he still remained in control of his anger.

  Her wanderings took her past the ancient town square where the portal rested. Minu knelt down next to their monitor probe to be sure it was in good working order. Of course it was, should it malfunction in the slightest Pip would have instantly informed her. The device would act as their link off world should anyone attempt to communicate with them and monitor the portal for inbound traffic. She moved past the square and onto one of the five broad avenues leading away like spokes on a wheel. The little square with its portal had once been the center of this community. A common Concordia design for small cities.

  The town spoke of its long dead builders in hushed whispers. The wide roads said they used large vehicles, while the buildings that still stood possessed very narrow doorways and strangely horizontal slits for windows. Pip said it looked like the world was full of jails, all buildings made to make escape impossible. Pip also said the city lay abandoned for thousands of years. The water in the deep aquifers gave testament to some ancient calamity. How did the Concordia wage war on a planetary scale? Did they lay waste to entire worlds? The one time residents were long gone and could provide no answers to Minu's thoughts. The world was now considered open territory. And for good reason since it was almost uninhabitable. Minu wasn't sure if any species would find it desirable. Maybe a toxic waste dump or a nuclear weapon test site?

  "Where is the oxygen coming from?" she'd asked Pip on the second day.

  "There might be a sea somewhere, or surviving plant life. The oxygen carbon dioxide balance suggests something is maintaining it." It seemed as good an explanation as anything she could come up with.

  Minu was meandered for about an hour in the remnants of a large building, poking through a pile of interesting looking trash when her radio went off. "Minu, I have something."

  "Damn it, report correctly."

  She heard a sigh, then the voice spoke again. "This is William reporting, sector eleven, I have found something."

  "Acknowledged," she replied, "can you send me an image?"

  "It won't record. It has a stealth field."

  "I think you found the cache," she said and checked her map. He was less than kilometer from her.

  "No, it isn't the cache. At least I hope not or we've wasted our time. You want to come see?" She felt her anger begin to rise again. Why did he have to be so darned difficult? Why didn't he just describe it to her?

  "Okay, I'm in route."

  Minu found William outside a crumbled building no different than a thousand others in the town. He had a self-satisfied grin on his face owing to the fact that he was the first to find anything of note. She gave him a look that said 'give it a rest' and walked past into the dim interior of the ruins. Sitting perched on a cracked beam was a very elegant dragonfly-bot. Tiny gossamer sensors resembling antennae turned to regard her as she entered. The bad part was realizing William was right, this was important for several reasons. It couldn't have been there for long, the bots could only operate a year or two on standby, and this particular one belonged to the Chosen. Even in the twilight of the ruins she could see the metallic green and black paint on its thorax. She knew a serial number would be laser etched into its dualloy armor. "And what are you doing here?" she wondered aloud.

  "Weird, isn't it?" William asked. "I mean, they're worth thousands of credits, right? My uncle is a police investigator in Tranquility. A couple years ago they bought five from the Chosen, old used ones that were having maintenance issues. He acted like the Tog blessed the department in person, and they started to investigate closed cases. Damn things can scan a hundred year old fingerprint, do its on-board genome analysis, and follow a chem trail ten times weaker than a dog could."

  "No dou
bt, these are just about the most sophisticated bots available. My father said they have a form of AI, but I couldn't make sense out of half of what he meant. I was pretty young then." She took a step toward it and the robot made a deep warning buzz vibrate through the air with it's four sets of crystalline wings. She froze in place. While it might appear like a delicate insect, it could also be a deadly weapon. Armed, armored, and possessing reflexes the fastest human could never hope to match, it was super advanced Concordia tech.

  "What's wrong," William asked, refusing to come inside.

  "It's in sentry mode," she said, "passive sentry or I'd probably be dead."

  "What is it acting as sentry for?"

  "If I knew that, I wouldn't be trying to get past it." Minu thought for a moment. How to approach the deadly machine without risking its wrath? It would be programmed with a control phrase with limitless possibilities. Then it came to her, a Chosen wouldn't leave one of these bots without a way for any scout team to get past it. She drew out her portal control rod and held it out. The robot buzzed once more, a more mellow tone this time, and settled back. When she took a step forward, this time the bot remained docile. "That was easier than I expected." William continued to guard the rear as she advanced next to it. That was when she noticed it was damaged.

  One of it's eight wings were missing and the armor around the missing wing was scorched to such a degree that it looked like melted chocolate. Minu took out a tablet and held it out toward the robot. With her thumb she pressed the communication tab that would open it up to incoming transmissions. "Report," she ordered the robot. It's dimly glowing green eyes flashed twice and her tablet beeped to tell her it was receiving data.

  Minu turned at a sound from the doorway to see Luke and Gregg were now watching her with William. Like William they seemed unwilling to enter, as if what was going on was somehow private. The tablet beeped, the file transfer was complete. Minu took out a small equipment hard case from her pack and opened it. The instrument it contained went back into the pack and she held it out to the bot. "Stand down," she ordered. Its eyes flashed understanding and its wings buzzed to life. Despite the damage it smoothly flew over and delicately landed inside the case, folded itself to conform to the container, and powered down. Minu closed the lid and put in in the pack. The Chosen logistics would be glad to get this expensive piece of hardware back in the arsenal.

  She turned and walked out into the brutal sunlight, shielding the tablet with a hand so she could see the file opening. The others were joined by Aaron now as well; all the scouts were accounted for. The waited with varying degrees of patients while she read. To make their wait easier, she spoke highlights as she went.

  "This bot was deployed with a frontier scout unit," she read. The file was a log from the robots memory which began when it was activated, just over sixteen standard months ago. "It participated in two small missions on previously explored worlds," she noted, skipping onward for anything interesting. It was unlikely she would find anything of use. The robot's memory was etched in permanent computer crystals similar to their regular computer chips, except that it was not erasable. The bot would record everything it saw and did until either the memory was full, or it was replaced with a new array. "Fourteen months ago it was taken on a mission in the frontier to scout for a particular type of salvage." She paused to click the icon for the search file uploaded to the robot. It was a piece of equipment she'd never seen before so she went on after reminding herself to ask Pip what it was.

  "It flew several guard missions for camps and one skirmish operation as a diversion!" she got excited at the last. Sure enough, there was the damage log during that mission. She clicked the file and watched a miniaturized view from the bots eyes as it darted in and out of a wrecked town that almost looked like the one they were in now. A smaller display showed complicated sensor data as the robot landed and waited. Before long it showed a number of lifeforms crossing its path. With blinding speed it darted from cover and let fly a flurry if hypersonic projectiles before spinning away. Energy beams lanced at it and one connected, sending it crashing through a window and into a pile of debris. As it was programmed to, it evaluated the damage and pretended to be dead. The damage was not disabling so it did not self-destruct. It sat and waited until the lifeforms were out of sensor range before circling back to its masters.

  "Who was it fighting?" Gregg asked. The others muttered agreement, all of them wanted to know.

  "Let me see," she said. The images were very high definition though being viewed on the small computer screen. She enlarged them to fill the screen and used a finger to control the image position, then move the movie backwards. Soon energy beams were flying backwards and the view swooped in reverse over the targets. "There," she said and carefully advanced the image. The enemy was only visible for a couple frames, due to the speed the bot was flying. She backed it up, froze the frame and punched up a maximum enhancement.

  The target was lit up by a streak of brilliant flashes. They all recognized the effect of a hypersonic round hitting a personal shield. No real detail could be discerned from the target except its serpentine outline, slitted eyes and bared fangs were unmistakable. "T'Chillen," Minu gasped.

  "Without a doubt," Aaron agreed.

  "Who the hell was fighting T'Chillen?" William gawked. "Who would be that stupid? I mean, wouldn't we have heard? ROE says we run any time we encounter a higher order species, and the snakes are as high as they come."

  Of course Minu knew that, every Chosen knew the species on the red list as well as about a hundred fifty more of note either because they were friendly or more often hostile. Encounters with any of those deadly species often resulted in dead Chosen. And regardless of the outcome, they were ordered to retreat against them. The T'Chillen were mortal enemies of the Tog, and as such of the humans as well. Minu slid her finger quickly along the bar controlling the playback position until it was almost at the end, then let it play forward.

  The bot took a circumspect course back to its masters, minimizing the chance of it being followed. Finally it flew through a narrow window opening and hovered. Minu saw several Chosen stand as it entered and she strained to recognize any of them. Then she heard a voice speak the "stand down," order. The robot turned and flew onto a hand. The last frame froze with her father's face looking back at her from the computer. "Dad," she mouthed and almost dropped the tablet.

  "Isn't that the First?" asked William.

  "You think?" Gregg snapped. Minu wasn't really listening; she was still staring at the image in shock. Her father, missing for over a year and soon to be presumed dead, and here he was in a message from beyond the grave. Or was it?

  "What's the big deal?" William persisted, "Haven't you seen the First before?"

  "Search the building," she said in a hushed voice, "every square inch. Move all the ruble piles. Leave no stone unturned." Gregg and Aaron both nodded and went in to begin the search. Luke looked confused but complied just the same. Only William remained obstinate.

  "I don't understand what the big deal is? The First has been missing forever. No one even knows why they haven't picked a new First, he's got to be long d-" he was cut short as Aaron's well-muscled arm reached back and jerked William into the ruins by his collar.

  Minu took a few steps away and leaned against a mostly intact wall. She began going through the robots logs in more detail, looking for any more signs of her missing father. He could still be alive, she told herself. He was alive when he sent the little scout robot on its harassment mission some fourteen months ago. That meant he'd been in the field for a couple months already. If he could make it two months, he could make it until now. Maybe they were just trapped, or cornered? Maybe they were hurt and waiting for rescue? The bot must be an attempt to reach out for help. Her father knew that sooner or later a Chosen team would come looking for this cache. Somehow her father had gotten into a fracas with the deadly snakes and this must have been the only way he could get a message out. What has h
e been up to? What kind of mission would bring him up against the T'Chillen? She meant to find out.

  Minu put the tablet down and stood up to stretch. Night fell over the cities ruins casting long shadows from the tiny tidally locked moon. She glanced at the chronometer on her wrist before she realized she'd been working at the file for almost eight hours. Next to where she'd sat were two empty ration packs and a fresh canteen. Her friends, caring for her needs without interrupting her. Minu knew Pip probably could have done the computer search twice as fast, but this was personal.

  "So what did you find?" asked a feminine voice. She turned and saw Cherise standing a few meters away. Between her dark skin and the black jumpsuit she was nearly invisible in the night. Minu could still see concern on her face.

  "Not a lot," Minu admitted and gestured to where the computer lay. "He shows up in only three images, always handling the bot."

  "SOP," Cherise said and Minu nodded. It was standard operating procedure that the commander handle expensive scout bots. "What's the newest recording?"

  "Just over a year ago."

  "Then he was alive after being reported missing." Minu nodded her head. "Did he include a file with his location?"

  "No, and that's the frustrating part. The robot was programmed to come here and settle on the cache, then wait for a Chosen to find it." She tapped her portal control rod in its holster. "In sentry mode it is almost impossible to detect, and it held enough power to stay in standby for years. Why send it here and not include a file or a message to whoever would found it?"

  "Maybe they were in too much of a hurry?"

  "Then they wasted their time. The portal was already open when they launched the robot. I didn't even get a look at the terrain. Earlier images looked a lot like the world they were now on, only with sparse green plant life. It could be any of a thousand worlds."

  "We need to report this to Jacob."

  "Once the mission is complete."

  "Minu..."

  "Don't you start too," she growled at her friend.