Frozen Sky- Battlefront

by Jeff Carlson

  She was delighted.

  Technically, they were still inside the chimney, although it could hardly be called a chimney anymore. Even limited to passive sonar, their AIs drew sims of enormous hollows all around them, although they couldn't see far. Their sonar was impaired by high levels of silt.

  "I would like to say something," Ribeiro announced. "This is an unprecedented event for our countries."

  Everyone waited as he seemed to collect his thoughts.

  "It is important to perform well," he said. "Our crew set a high standard in the ice. We must adhere to the same high standard now."

  They waited for more.

  "That is all," he said as DeBrun added, "Thank you, sir."

  Vonnie snorted. Ribeiro wasn't exactly poetic. He could dish out complaints or compliments about their work, but he hadn't touched their hearts.

  At least he tried, she thought. Then, more generously, maybe he's maturing, too.

  She would have liked to say something. She wanted to commemorate Christmas Bauman and Choh Lam, whose footsteps -- the first human steps on Europa -- led them to this moment, but many others had also given their lives. She couldn't mention her friends without mentioning everyone who'd died. Listing them would take too long. Also, invoking those names might cast a bad omen on the Lewis, so she kept her thoughts to herself.

  She listened and watched.

  In a cavity where the water sighed placidly instead of thrusting or billowing, their crew spent twenty minutes repairing the anechoic coating, which had been torn on their nose and portside. They had four exterior mecha and the doppelgänger. Troutman and Hunt walked these mecha around the hull, patching it with tanks of spare material they'd stored in both air locks.

  Lock two had been fixed -- mostly -- but they would use only lock one. Their consensus was the seal on lock two might not last. Prudently, Ribeiro decided to minimize the number of times it opened and closed.

  The surging water inhibited their work. In places, the new coating bubbled, but there was nanotech in the spray and it smoothed the material for them.

  As the Lewis held position, they listened with passive sonar, sending no signals, releasing no probes.

  Their propellers had milled blades. Even at full power, the blades were noiseless and therefore undetectable. Running silent, PSSC subs and hunter-killers would be equally difficult to hear, although every vessel left a trail in its wake, which could betray its presence because the water was so dirty. The faster anything went, the larger its disturbance through the silt -- and they weren't listening only for the PSSC.

  Fresh water downwellings and heated upwellings combined for a godforsaken muddle of riptides, rogue currents and obstacles. Great floating shoals of loose ice rattled like bones in a tub. Bergs creaked ponderously.

  Staining the ice and threaded among the currents were sticky conglomerations of rock dust, iron, sulfur, salt. They also found bacteria, some black, some albino.

  Their tool pods provided close-range analysis with chem packs and spectrometers. They gathered samples, which were sealed in lab packs but not brought inside the Lewis. Dawson and Harmeet ran tests remotely.

  They identified two previously known black strains, which grew in familiar mats. They also identified six new albino strains, which grew in stranger shapes.

  All were hyperthermophiles that lived near magma chambers or in the extreme temperatures of volcanic vents. All were dead or dying. They appeared to be torn-off, cast-off pieces of larger organisms. Recreating the mats in sims based on their molecular and physical structures, Dawson hypothesized that the different albino strains formed in clumps like cheese curds or short, pliable fingers.

  There was life in the Great Ocean, albeit very simple life which was constantly subjected to destruction. Some of the dead chunks appeared to have been refrigerated and preserved by the freezing water for centuries.

  Still, the presence of thermophiles sparked new energy in many of the crew. Bacterial mats could serve as the foundation of a diverse ecology.

  Ribeiro gave the command to descend.

  Ash brought them downward at about half speed, creeping along at fifteen kilometers per hour.

  Thermoclines, the layers of water at the Great Ocean's surface, limited their passive sonar to a range of two klicks -- and most of that was at low resolution. Ribeiro wanted better maps before they went faster. He expected their passive sonar range to quintuple after they penetrated the thermoclines.

  For active sensors, the Lewis was equipped with neutrino pulse and 2MS, multibeam model- and sim-assisted sonar. Using a broad spectrum of frequencies, 2MS might increase their vision to a sphere almost fifteen kilometers across, but active sonar would be like screaming into the ocean. Anything with ears could trace active sonar to its source. Anyone with technology could also follow a neutrino pulse.

  Ash took them down slowly, warily.

  They heard no sign of living creatures, perhaps because they'd taken the Lewis away from the nearest mountains. The mountains were a possible home for advanced lifeforms, so they would investigate, but they wanted to approach the mountains from open water. Descending directly onto the rock might have been a death sentence. The currents and the debris in the water were both worse near the mountains.

  Two klicks to their northeast, a trio of narrow peaks speared into the frozen sky. The ice leaned noisily against each peak, dragging and grinding. Reciprocating with another kind of violence, two of the mountains expelled magma and gas. The heat spread upward, creating hollows of melted ice. Cold water gathered in lakes or flowed in rivers, which sent downwellings to collide with the upwellings and the brutal tides of the Great Ocean.

  Temperature gradients added to the havoc of the middle zone. Colossal, fickle currents met the Lewis. More than once, a barrier from cold-to-warm or hot-to-cool strummed through their mecha like ghostly hands stroking at a harp. Pushing through fast currents into slow currents or vice versa did the same.

  Loose ice tapped at their nose and their sides. A thicker pocket of silt whispered against them.

  Inside hab one, toying with their new sonar interface, the sunfish were transcendent. They buzzed and clacked at every disturbance on the hull. Even more eagerly, they clung to Brigit, who was connected to the interface.

  She was older than Angelica and not as fertile, so she'd risked herself with the human device. Vonnie had assisted in adjusting its bandwidths to ultrasound and lowering its volume. Otherwise the furor outside would have painful after Brigit attached two microphones to the protected nubs of her ears, again with Vonnie's help and two dabs of stickem.

  The sunfish were locked together. Brigit and Angelica communicated busily in the language of the matriarchs. Tom and Hans added their knowledge as veteran scouts. The four of them were a living computer, willfully apart from the two women in the room, although Angelica stayed in contact with Vonnie by wrapping an arm around Vonnie's ankle. Angelica also maintained less intimate contact with Harmeet by touching her side.

  The two women were on the periphery of the foursome's group mind, no more -- and no less. Angelica conveyed questions to both women and answers to Brigit while simultaneously absorbing feedback from Vonnie and Harmeet.

  Vonnie shared their euphoria. She envied their lack of fear. To them, the middle zone was not particularly deadly or unpredictable. They saw room for ten thousand offspring.

  They were certain they'd find food. If not, they would bring eels and bugs... and if the eels failed to reproduce in the nearby lakes... if the bugs could not thrive among the impermanent catacombs... then they would kill hundreds of savage males and freeze their larder in the ice.

  The AIs recorded every impression flashing between the sunfish. Translations were posted on the display, a mad scroll of distances and numbers.

  Before leaving the ice, the Lewis ceased to exchange data/comm with their three ice busters, which now served as clumsy submersibles. The ice busters had extended wire probes to the Lewis, connecting via hard line
s. Now they were tied to the Lewis like balloons, with two on the starboard side and one on the portside.

  Brigit heard as clearly as the Lewis’ sensors if not as far. Her range extended less than three klicks, yet her depiction of the varied currents was exquisite. She appraised the ever-shifting gestalt of water and ice with an accuracy that stunned no one, not even Ribeiro.

  He included Brigit's information in their sims. He asked Vonnie, Ash and Troutman to improve her range. The sensor arrays of the Lewis reached ten klicks -- also with blind spots -- by combining passive sonar with temperature readings, infrared and high-gain cameras, but visual mediums were no good to sunfish. Their crude photoreceptors were like exposed nerves, not eyes, and signaled pain more than sensing light.

  Troutman and Ash were conjuring plans to reengineer their temperature readings for Brigit's physiology. Troutman's initial idea had been a box like a VR unit. Put a sunfish inside. Radiate heat or cold in small and large amounts to indicate distance and intensity.

  Ash agreed they could build it, but it would take time. Meanwhile, Vonnie had suggested sending the busters deeper into the ocean. Two of them hovered within five hundred meters of the Lewis. The third went as far as a thousand.

  The wider they cast their array, the farther Brigit could listen, but Ribeiro didn't want their hard lines to catch on an ice berg. Vonnie thought that was stupid. The lines were flexible and detachable, and the busters could easily reconnect with the Lewis if they popped loose.

  She wanted to see more and see it sooner.

  "Colonel, I'm trying to explain how we'd communicate hot and cold to the sunfish," she said. "They don't want to be encased in a machine."

  "They're encased in one now," Ribeiro said.

  "Entering the Lewis and using the sonar interface has been a lot for them to deal with. Look at your display. They're trembling. The ocean is like heaven and hell to them. We don't want to push them over the edge."

  "We can design something simpler than a VR unit," Ash said. "If they don't want to be stuffed in a box, I get it. We can arrange metal plates for them to touch with their arms, bake 'em, refrigerate 'em. I don't know how accurate that'll be if it's not three dimensional."

  "We can calibrate it to show vertical depth," Troutman said. "Then we'll move to the VR unit once they realize we're not hurting them."

  "Good," Ribeiro said. "Vonderach, tell them what we've decided. I want the sunfish to get a feel for the mountains. Listening to the currents is a start, but they need to be aware of the volcanoes, too."

  "Yes, sir," she said.

  Like the sunfish, she felt galvanized to the point of distraction. Would they find a spacefaring civilization, or, at least, the remnants of an empire with radio and metallurgy? The Great Ocean was vast enough for multiple civilizations -- multiple species -- that could have battled each other for eons. Every klick, every meter, was like traveling through time.

  They might stumble into a war. They might appear during an era of peaceful trade and coalitions.

  In Dawson's opinion, the Lewis was descending through plain simple muck. He envisioned a grand but ultimately finite expanse where fossils and possibly ruins were interred among the natural features, but there were no monsters waiting to pounce.

  Maybe they would be safer if he was right.

  Worrying, Vonnie patted Angelica again as she glanced at the display from the conn. "There are magma spills on the rock far below us," She said. "Can you hear the water boiling? Can you trace the heat to the land?"

  Brigit and Angelica writhed in body shapes that meant yes and sing more as Vonnie attempted to explain what the sunfish couldn't see.

  The ocean wasn't dark, not on this incline near the third peak. 2.7 klicks down the mountain's fattening trunk, orange magma squeezed from a vent.

  The magma crusted and oozed along the mountainside, casting an eerie glow as well as heated columns of water.

  The gauzy light revealed more details for them to incorporate into their sims. It captivated the astronauts. Vonnie and her crewmates were peering down the long, burning slope when Brigit screamed:

  --Danger! Above us to our port side!

  Vonnie looked up. She didn't see anything on her display. "Colonel! Do you...?"

  Brigit sketched coordinates against Angelica and Vonnie. Her pedicellaria drew maps on their skin, using the contours of their bodies for breadth and height. The AIs tracked every miniscule wriggle or swipe.

  "We have two bogies west of our position," DeBrun said. "They're above us but moving lower. I can hear the wakes they're causing through a thermocline."

  "They were hiding against the ice," Ash said.

  "I put them at five-point-three klicks bearing north by northwest almost parallel to our course," DeBrun said.

  "Organic or steel?" Ribeiro asked.

  --Four, not two! Brigit cried. --There are four of them! Metal warriors!

  She traced new dots on Angelica and Vonnie, identifying another pair of objects below them to the south. The AIs posted her maps on the group feed.

  "Sir, the matriarch is correct," DeBrun said to Ribeiro. "We have another pair of bogies south of our position. They're at three-point-seven klicks and nearly stationary. Sonar's picking up a faint sound as they push against the current."

  "It's the PSSC," Ash said.

  "Maybe not," Ben replied. "They could be native vessels."

  "They were waiting for us."

  "Sir, they're smaller than the Lewis," Troutman said. "Preliminary readings suggest a needle shape. They're compact -- too compact for human crewmembers. I think they're a meter wide and two meters long."

  "Permission to hail their ships," Wester said.

  "Sir, I'd like active sonar or pulse," Ash said.

  "Negative," Ribeiro said. "They might not have seen us yet. Commander DeBrun, have they made any changes in course or speed?"

  "No, sir."

  "That small means they're HKs," Ash said, but Wester protested from hab two, where he was monitoring their displays with Ben and Dawson.

  Wester said, "We've never seen this design before."

  "We've never fought the PSSC in a low-grav ocean before," Ash said. "That needle shape would fit through a chimney, it'll knife through these currents, and small means easy to hide. Sir, there could be more of them tucked into the ice or the landscape. If we make a run for it, we need to know where we're going."

  "Steady, Sierzenga," Ribeiro said. "DeBrun, Hunt, prepare to fire. Sierzenga, maintain our heading, but I want you to plot evasive actions through the mountains. I also want options to attack. Vonderach, how did Brigit hear so far? You stated that her range was three klicks."

  "Unknown, sir," Vonnie said, but she thought, the sunfish are at their best when they're defending their tribe. How many times have we seen them exceed their limits?

  We turned her into a cyborg with our sonar. Then she overachieved. She caught glimmers of sound that the AIs missed, echoes off the ice or the rock. She knows the bogies are metal. What kind of propulsion do they have? Acceleration? Weapons? We don't want to--

  "Torpedoes!" DeBrun said. "The two above us are launching torpedoes! I count five! Twenty! The warheads are splitting into multiple payloads!"

  16.

  Brigit screamed as her sonar conveyed the torpedoes' noise. Accelerating, the torpedoes were brazen and loud. They spread into a horseshoe formation.

  --Attack! Attack! Tom cried as Vonnie sought to calm the sunfish. "Quiet!" she hissed. Their instinct was to challenge their enemies, but posturing was useless. Brigit's talents were better spent marking the warheads' incoming trajectories or defining any avenue of escape.

  "Thirty seconds to impact," DeBrun said.

  "Countermeasures," Ribeiro said, and the hull reverberated with drumming sounds as their weapons pods disgorged weapons and flares. Tunk tunk tunk.

  At the same time, the Lewis blazed with active sonar and neutrino pulse.

  "Dammit!" Hunt shouted.

  A phenom
enon called scattering degraded the effectiveness of their 2MS. The water was embroidered with billions of specks. The silt formed immense blankets and flags. It reflected their sonar, camouflaging the approach of at least one torpedo.

  Vonnie's display swarmed with red and green lines as her crewmates guided hundreds of flares, smart magnets, smart mines, decoys, and interceptors through the water.

  "I want CEW from our ice busters," Ribeiro said. "Sierzenga, keep the helm. Troutman, you have the busters. Shield us."

  This was why he hadn't sent the ice busters deeper into the ocean. He'd kept them to defend the Lewis.

  Vonnie appreciated his pigheadedness now. When they were adversaries, she'd wanted to strangle him. Now that they were on the same side, she welcomed his testosterone.

  Clashing with the decoys and interceptors, five torpedoes detonated within half a klick of the Lewis. The concussions boomed against their port side, but Vonnie had had the foresight to install an auto cut-off for high decibel sounds. Brigit's interface shut down. Otherwise she might have lost her hearing.

  In the next moment, the interface cut in again and Brigit scraped furiously, wriggling and scratching as she tracked their sonar pings. --Up! Up! Brigit cried.

  Blending the matriarch's projections with their sims, Ash raised the Lewis's nose, racing northward and upward.

  Troutman yelled, "You're listening to the sunfish!?"

  "She's leading us toward the farthest side of their horseshoe!" Ash said. "She bought us a little time! If we--"

  The middle section of the horseshoe was upon them. Nine more torpedoes exploded among their defenses. A tenth was befuddled by their CEW. It overshot them and sped away, impacting the foot of a mountain.

  As the Lewis convulsed, alarms reported superficial damages to the hull. There was also an electrical fire in air lock two.

  The two GPs inside lock two fought the fire.

  Vonnie looked for the last torpedoes at the end of the horseshoe. There were five. There had been twenty total. A human number, she thought. These aren't natives. It's the PSSC.