Carbon Life

by HR Ringer

  Perkins watched the rocket still coming at the Mako’s nose as the range-finder computed the rate of closure and began a beeping countdown; he calmly waited as the individual tones rapidly grew closer together.

  The instant the tone became one solid sound, he accelerated momentarily before dropping their mass and using the propulsion-jets to jump the vehicle straight up three-and-a-half meters. The Mako’s forward momentum carried them up, over and away from the rocket, which exploded some ten meters behind them as Perkins increased the mass and set the M35 back on the ground and stopped. “How we looking, Yuán?”

  “All targets eliminated, Sergeant. Nothing moving up there.”

  “Okay, get ready for evac. The ship’s almost here.”

  Xiùlán tracked the Hong Kong inbound using the cannon’s rangefinder; as it came to a hover five meters from the surface, Tobias brought the Mako around and jumped it onto the cargo bay ramp, which slowly began closing as the Mako rolled safely inside. The first part of their mission in the Hades Gamma Cluster was complete but, as far as Xiùlán was concerned, since they made enemy contact and had not completed the mission undetected as required, it was an absolute failure.

  * * *

  Chapter 12: Close Encounter With Batarians

  If by my life or death I can protect you, I will. – J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring (The Lord of the Rings, #1)

  * * *

  * HADES GAMMA / DIS SYSTEM • SATURDAY MORNING, 2180/02/26 *

  – SSV Hong Kong –

  The Systems Alliance SSV Hong Kong was a standard, frigate-class vessel with a small compliment of Naval personnel to fly and fight her and a squad consisting of two Marine fire teams led by a squad leader for ground missions. As the ship was so small, Sam and Xiùlán had bunked in the storage area behind the crew quarters on a pair of field cots.

  To characterize Yuán Xiùlán as unhappy would have been understating her mood; the woman, despite a reputation for not letting her emotions dictate her actions, was having a great deal of difficulty keeping those emotions in check. She was attempting to concentrate on her stance as she assumed the various positions of Neigong, a form of Tai Chi she utilized for her daily morning exercises. She was nearing the end of her routine with eyes closed as she crossed her arms in front of herself, then brought them up and stretched towards the overhead; after pausing momentarily, Xiùlán leaned forward, gracefully bending at the waist with her arms crossed to wrap her hands around her ankles, left for right, right for left. She again paused momentarily before returning to an upright posture while crossing her forearms in front of her, thumbs touching middle fingers, hands palm up at opposite elbows; taking a deep, cleansing breath, she exhaled slowly through her mouth.

  The exercises had calmed her for the most part, but she continued to mentally chastise herself concerning yesterdays’ operation.

  She and Samantha Traynor had returned from their first ground mission… one that was supposed to be simple reconnaissance with a ‘no outside discovery’ requirement. The recon portion had gone well – it was the ‘no contact’ portion that had been (from her perspective) an abysmal failure – their presence had been discovered and they’d been attacked by a suspected Cerberus squad as they were making their way back to their rendezvous coordinates. Their M35 driver, Marine Sergeant Tobias Perkins, had successfully dodged the one rocket fired at them by the unknown group of people. Xiùlán had fired the M35’s mass accelerator cannon before a second rocket could be launched; the explosive heavy-metal round completely destroyed the rocket launcher and obliterated all the people around it.

  She cursed their bad luck aloud in her native Chinese. “該死的混蛋!” [Bloody bastard(s)]

  Traynor jerked her head around at her lover’s exclamation. “There was no way to expect that second group of people, Luv,” Traynor said quietly. “They must have been attempting to retrieve the Grizzly before it slid off the edge and fell into the crater. If it really was Cerberus, it’s unlikely they will report seeing an Alliance team down there”

  “No excuse, Sammy!” Xiùlán shook her head and closed her eyes, reverting to Mandarin again as she quietly cursed. “We should have anticipated that second team… I should have planned on them having more people on the ground. I was careless.”

  Traynor was having none of it. “We were careless, Luv, not you.” Samantha caressed her lover’s arms from behind. “We are in this together, remember? Besides, we were able to retrieve a few pieces for the scientists to examine. The comm techs reported they heard no chatter concerning our presence on Jartar, and their ship totally failed to detect the Hong Kong.” Sam pressed her body against Xiùlán’s, enjoying the warmth as she planted little kisses on her neck. “It sounds as if our presence wasn’t reported; no one else saw the Mako on the planet, and the elimination of the one patrol that did see us will be attributed to batarian mercs protecting their turf.”

  “So, what should we do?” Xiùlán had calmed down as Sam continued caressing her arms and kissing her neck. “I’d like to poke around in that crater some more, see if there’s anything else buried where that… ship?… whatever… was sitting before the batarians retrieved it.” Xiùlán turned within Sam’s arms and looked intently at her. “We have time, and the XO told me the mystery ship retrieved the two grizzlies we saw, along with their crews.” She gave Sam a quick kiss of her own. “What about the one that fell from the crater’s edge… they grab that one as well?”

  “He didn’t say,” came Sam’s reply. “What he did say was those pieces we dug up are quite interesting! The smallest one has a slight compound curve; what’s surprising is the density of the material.” Traynor brought up her omni-tool and entered a code; she read off a couple of numbers from the resulting display. “The smaller of the three pieces retrieved is about 19.5 by 33 centimeters, but it weighs 56 kilograms in normal gravity.”

  Xiùlán was incredulous. “How can that be? That’s denser than any metal I know of.” She paused as she pondered what she’d just heard, then continued, “Now I definitely want to poke around down there a bit more. We’ll need to bring a few more tools for digging.”

  “Sounds good,” Sam replied, thankful she had turned Xiùlán’s anger at their discovery by a possible Cerberus team into a willingness to look around a bit more. “Let’s get some breakfast, then see if the captain is willing to loan us the M35 and Sergeant Perkins for another mission groundside.”

  The Hong Kong had dropped the Mako in the crater near the edge opposite of yesterdays’ retrieval coordinates, but only after scanning the tiny planet several times at low altitude in stealth mode. The sensor recon team on board had detected nothing on the surface but a barren wasteland, devoid of life or anything organics may have manufactured. There was also a complete lack of any other ships in the system, which made everyone breathe a little easier. Sergeant Perkins was once again their driver, and he quickly had the M35 in the depression left behind by the so-called Leviathan.

  They were starting at the end furthest from their initial entry point, exploring in the opposite direction from before. Tobias slowly maneuvered the Mako in a zigzag route designed to cover as much of the area as possible.

  Xiùlán was once again using the GPR to ‘look’ beneath the surface; she watched the monitor as Traynor split her attention between the GPR monitor and the viewfinder for the 155 mm cannon. She continued to search the upper reaches of the crater walls, as well as watching the horizon of the crater itself, particularly ahead of and behind their travel direction. Tobias was listening to the ship’s recon crew at regular intervals as they continued to search for any other traffic in the system.

  Traynor spoke with Tobias occasionally in order to break the monotony of staring at display screens. She learned the command staff on the Hong Kong was convinced the ship they’d discovered was a Cerberus light cruiser. It made sense to the captain, as it was suspected the Illusive Man was actively looking for any technology that would allow humankind to dominate al
l the other races in the galaxy.

  They had searched the depression and four meters out past both edges for several hours on each of the next three days; their efforts had been rewarded with the discovery of three more loose parts, all similar to those discovered on their first day, in that they were small, extremely dense (thus heavy), and in appearance were the deepest black any of them had ever seen. Xiùlán was about ready to call a halt to their efforts when Tobias abruptly stopped the M35.

  “Retract the GPR sled, Ms Yuán, quickly! There’s trouble inbound – XO says an unknown ship just dropped out of FTL at the edge of the system and it’s headed our way!”

  Traynor wanted to know, “Is the Hong Kong coming in to pick us up?”

  “Not yet. They’re going to hideout near the sun, try to remain undetected until we can determine who it is and what they want.”

  Traynor replied, “Not very likely they’re simply here to discharge heat – we’re at the far end of the system from Antaeus and the mass relay there. Slavers? Pirates?”

  “We’ll know soon enough,” replied the sergeant. Perkins had started a high-speed run for the side of the crater that would soon be shadowed by planetary sundown.

  Traynor was searching everywhere around them with the cannon’s rangefinder… after several 360° sweeps, she spotted something. “Sergeant, take a look!”

  Perkins spared a glance at the repeater monitor in front of him as he jigged the tank to the right and applied a touch of ventral thrusters to smooth out a rather severe ravine in the crater floor. “Looks like a batarian ship… smaller than a frigate… probably a corvette. Rangefinder puts it 3.8 kilometers behind us, moving to the north.”

  Xiùlán asked, “What do we do, Sergeant? If they see us, they’ll most likely want to start a fight. Not too many pirate gangs have their own Mako… it’d be worth the effort to steal it from us, particularly since we’re not really set up to fight back.”

  Perkins explained they would hide for a bit; by now they had had nearly reached the crater wall, an area with an almost uncountable number of heavy boulders and debris collected by the planet’s weak gravity from when the crater was originally created. The sergeant picked a heavily shadowed spot that allowed them a view of the entire length of the crater behind them; the broken landscape provided a bit of camouflage for the M35, its turret the only portion visible above the boulders surrounding them. Planetary sundown had arrived and Jartar had progressed far enough in its orbit that reflected light from the surface of Nearrum was not a factor; Jartar’s surface was now truly dark during its 2.8 hour night.

  “Set the rangefinder to its widest field of view, Ms Yuán,” Tobias instructed. “The less we need to rotate the turret, the better. I’m passively scanning for other vehicles on the surface, but I cannot imagine them wasting the time and energy of dropping a ground crew here unless they detected us during that one flyby. There’s nothing on this planet worth fighting for.”

  They settled in for the wait as they watched the countdown chrono tick away seconds until sunrise.

  The mystery ship, though still in the system, had traveled to Gremar, the fourth planet of the system that orbited Dis, just outside of the sparse asteroid belt orbiting the sun.

  The Hong Kong had retrieved the ground team and the Mako without incident after delaying for several hours to be sure the other vessel had moved away.

  The captain had the ship’s machinist perform some simple tests on the smallest of the several artifacts retrieved by Yuán and Traynor; the results, while disappointing, were interesting all the same. The metal could not be cut, even with the hottest plasma cutter; applying heat had no effect.

  On close examination, it was determined the material wasn’t actually black… it simply did not reflect white light from any angle, although it would glow a faint purple when exposed to strong ultraviolet light.

  The machinist working with the piece developed a severe headache within two hours of being exposed to it, confirming Xiùlán’s suspicion the pieces were giving off some sort of anti-organic radiation, even though every test device on the ship showed negative results.

  Xiùlán had looked at them, all sitting together in a cargo container on the hanger deck; she quickly realized the longer she stared at them inside the container, the more agitated she became. She had to really exert her will power to pull away from the container and have it sealed; afterwards, she felt as if a weight had been lifted from her shoulders.

  Once the container was sealed, Yuán had Traynor modify a personal body shield so the generated field would conform exactly to the container’s dimensions; they then positioned the container as close to the cargo ramp opening as possible. Traynor felt the location still wasn’t far enough away from the crew quarters one level above, but hoped the active kinetic shielding would keep all of them safe from the artifacts’ influence until they could offload the container upon their return home.

  It was time for Sam and Xiùlán to take a look at Klensal.

  * * *

  * HADES GAMMA / DIS SYSTEM • THURSDAY MORNING, 2180/03/08 *

  The third planet from its sun, Klensal was just over half the size of planet Earth. It possessed a thin atmosphere of carbon dioxide and ethane and a mean surface temperature of -35 °C, not a garden planet by any definition of the term.

  Xiùlán and Samantha had made planetfall in the Hong Kong’s M35 Mako shortly after local sunrise, insuring they would have several hours of light at a relatively low-angle, which should facilitate locating some of the foreign objects the ship’s sensors had detected from orbit. The M35’s operator, Sergeant Tobias Perkins, had expressed satisfaction that this planet’s gravity was only 14 per cent less than Earth’s, observing ‘… it should make it less of a chore to keep the Mako ‘glued’ to the surface.’

  The area in which they’d landed held a number of crashed probes, which Xiùlán hoped to inspect, possibly even retrieve. They intended to stay away from the numerous mining bases; though long abandoned, many were still being used as temporary meeting places for pirates and slavers; everyone agreed encountering anyone on this planet would probably not be in their best interests.

  They had traveled several dozen kilometers from their drop site; having seen no signs of anyone and having heard nothing from the Hong Kong in orbit above them, they were totally surprised when they crested a hill and discovered an abandoned mining site that was anything but! Armed guards kept lookout from atop several watchtowers, and there were even heavy cannons in turrets strategically placed so all approach avenues were covered. Two such turrets immediately zeroed in on the Mako and fired, forcing Tobias to blindly reverse off the ridgetop to dodge the rocket fire.

  Xiùlán was frantically calling for backup from the Hong Kong when the M35 was heaved skyward by a powerful explosion; the heavy tank landed partially on its side and gun turret when it fell back to the surface. ‘Must have tripped a mine’ was Xiùlán's fleeting thought as she lost consciousness.

  * * *

  * LOCATION UNKNOWN *

  Darkness. Cold. Pain. Lying on her stomach, one cheek pressed against a gritty, damp metal floor, she tried to move and immediately regretted it. ‘Something’s not right…’ She couldn’t feel her hands, but could sense her arms were somehow bound behind her. She struggled to open her eyes; it felt like her eyelashes were coated with something sticky… blood? After struggling for several seconds, she finally managed to pull one eyelid open. Wherever she was, there was virtually no light. ‘Abandoned mine? How long?’ Her memory had gaps she struggled to fill in. ‘Mako… on top of a ridge… cannon-fire!… backwards flight… explosion! Mako… tumbling! Shit! Traynor! Perkins! Where in blazes were they!?’

  “Xiùlán?” A whisper, somewhere close. She tried to raise her head, tried to turn to see. ‘Maybe if I can get my legs up…’ She groaned in pain as she raised her face from the floor and used her lower back, hips and thighs to sluggishly drag her torso up and over her legs, ending with knees at her chest, lower l
egs against the floor. After resting a few seconds, she slowly straightened up and looked around. She was inside some sort of metal cage, a cube of maybe one and a half meters. There were several of these in a row – Traynor was in the one to her left.

  “Sà mǐ! Nǐ shòushāngle?” [薩米！你受傷了？- Sami! Are you hurt?] “Can you hear me? Are you okay?” Even whispering, her words sounded as if she were shouting in the oppressive silence.

  Traynor coughed between words, “Think I cracked a rib… hard to breathe… keep coughing up blood… arm hurts like… all bloody ‘ell… same side. Must have… bounced off the inside of the Mako.” She spit a mouthful of blood, then asked, “You?”

  “Not sure… can’t feel my hands. Need to get them free somehow – get the circulation back. Head hurts like I’m recovering from shore leave. Where in hell are we?”

  “Underground… mine,” Traynor snarked. “Not so abandoned… as we thought. Looks like slavers have us, Luv… batarians. Overheard the bastards… talking.” She coughed again; Xiùlán heard her spit to clear her mouth. “They’re planning… to move us off-world… soon as the Hong Kong…” Sam was forced to pause as she was overcome by a fit of coughing. “…gives up searching… for us.”

  “Sergeant Perkins?”

  “Knife to the throat… left ’im in the Mako to bleed out.” She coughed and spat again. “He was banged up right bad… I guess women… even injured ones… bring more profit than men.” Traynor was coughing more frequently, and her breathing sounded labored.

  “Mā de, Sà mǐ!” [媽的,薩米！- Oh Shit, Sami!] “We’re going to have to get ourselves out of this – can’t count on help from the Hong Kong.” She was trying to think of a plan, despite the pounding in her head. “I need my hands free. You still have your omni-tool?”