Looking over their shoulders, Jon saw that the tunnel system had only been partially mapped. Some levels were clearly delineated, while other portions were vague. And in other spots, even these tentative markings faded out into large empty voids populated only by question marks.
“These are the maps the science team was using,” the Lieutenant explained. “From what we can tell from their logs, they used ‘bots to perform their initial explorations, and then went in on foot to explore the sections themselves. Their main base camp is down this tunnel in a chamber they called the ‘Inner Ear.’ They were doing some kind of experiments with ultrasonics there.” She indicated the route with her finger.
“Everything down there’s just like they left it, right down to the lunch they were eating. We don’t know what happened to the group, but something must have occurred that made them all leave together in a hurry.’
“We think they went out of the Inner Ear and deeper into the tunnels through this structure, which they labeled the ‘Cathedral.’ At the end of it, there are three separate tunnels, each leading off into its own set of sub-tunnels and chambers. The other two S and R teams are already covering the left and middle sectors. Your search area will be down the right hand tunnel, with the Cathedral as your starting point.”
“Any recent aural tracings or bio-spore?” Bel Taralynn asked.
“Only for a short ways away from the camp, then nothing. Not even good old fashioned foot prints,” the Lieutenant responded. “The sci-team just plain vanished. Once you get past this spot,” she said, pointing to the furthest mapped tunnel, “there’s nothing except dust and the microbes that have been there since the Drow’Voi left. So, we know that they managed to vanish somewhere within the mapped portions, but we don’t know how, or why. We’re missing maybe ten or fifteen women.” She nodded back towards the curved wall behind her where a holo showing the pictures of each member of the party floated as a reference for the rescuers.
“So, you neomen afraid of ghosts?” a Marine to Jon’s left asked him.
Jon didn’t reply, but another trooper did. “Nah, zat’s probably why zhey zent him. Denn gaasten will get vun look at his ugly face and zhey’ll go runnin t’otter vey, yah?”
“Yah” the first replied, “maybe. I would if I saw him coming up on me in the dark.”
“Seal it!” Bel Taralynn said sharply. “We don’t have time for jokes. We need to get focused, ladies. There are a lot of things that could explain what happened here and ghosts aren’t at the top of my list. The Sci-team might have been caught up in some kind of trap, a cave-in, or maybe just gotten lost. These passages go on for kilometers and we’re going to have to walk careful or find ourselves in the same situation.’
“Corporal Astridsdaater and Corporal n’Wendi, you’re going to work with me and we’re going to devise our search plan. The rest of you double check your gear and suit up for S and R.”
With a reconbot scouting ahead, and accompanied by two marshals, the team worked its way from the base camp and down a gently spiraling tunnel that emptied into the second level. The descent proved easy enough; the ancient tunnels were smooth and reasonably free of debris. The wind’s roar was a thing of the past now, and except for the crunch of their boots on the gritty floors, the passage was completely still.
Eventually, the tunnel opened out again into a large ellipse shaped chamber, and Jon could appreciate the name the researchers had given it. The room was gently curved with odd folds that flowed seamlessly into the clean white walls. It was overlooked by a large balcony or platform that stretched away into the silent darkness. Just as the Marshal had told them, everything in the chamber was exactly as the scientists had left it. Folding bunks and tables were neatly arranged around a group of work tables and to one side, a makeshift kitchen still held the desiccated remains of the researcher’s lunch.
The Marines didn’t tarry, and quickly ascended to the balcony level, which in turn led into another chamber filled with delicate pillar-like structures that fused with a high, arched ceiling. The space had been aptly named, resembling in every respect an ancient Gaian cathedral. The awesome structure was at once familiar and utterly alien to Jon’s eyes.
Marching among the pillars, he wondered at the nature of the beings that had built the place. Nothing had ever been found at any site anywhere in the Galaxy depicting the ancient architects, and none of the structures that they’d left behind had ever yielded any clues either. The neoman found himself imagining the master builders as everything from humanoid life forms to strange insectoids, all the while feeling in his gut that the truth was probably far, far stranger.
At the end of the Cathedral, the search team took the tunnel to the farthest right. The minutes stretched into hours with no results.
Finally, the Troop Leader called a halt, and after setting markers and a ‘bot to act as a sentry, had them turn around and go back the way they had come. Once they were back at the Inner Ear, she called the base camp on her com. By the time that she’d finished speaking with them, however, she was wearing a deep frown.
“It seems that the nice weather we had on the surface is ending,” she announced. “The Athena just reported a major storm front moving in on our position from the east, with winds estimated at 321 kilometers per hour and higher. Our shuttles are leaving for the night, which means that everyone is stuck here. The storm should pass in about 12 hours and the shuttles will return then.”
A few of the troopers groaned their displeasure and Bel Taralynn waved them to silence. “Let’s make camp and break out the rations. We’ll plan on returning down the tunnel and go deeper in tomorrow morning.”
Aside from setting out sentrybots on the perimeters and laying out their sleeping bags, there was little more to do than eat and socialize. Jon was used to being an outcast and didn’t force himself into any of the conversations. Instead, he sat off to one side and worked at his meal. A few sentences still came to him now and again, and he pretended not to hear them. They were mostly about him, and none were flattering.
Finishing his meal, he bedded down for the night. His fellow troopers did the same not long afterwards, and the camp became quiet except for the faint hum of the sentrybots patrolling around them in the darkness.
Then, dreams came. At first they were nothing extraordinary; just visions of endless tunnels being walked in darkness, and howling winds. They soon morphed into images of the Inner Ear chamber, but the walls were glowing, and pulsing with a strange energy that seemed to emanate from somewhere behind them.
There were also women there, not Marines, but civilians, and they were running through the camp. Their bodies were transparent and they seemed as if they were part of another reality, just one step removed from the world that the troopers were sleeping in. Jon saw one woman clearly and the expression on her face was utter terror.
He tried to reach out to her, but she ran through him as if he was not even there. The sensation as she passed felt as if a warm wind had somehow blown through his body and the vividness of this shocked him.
Suddenly, he heard alarms sounding and realized that someone was shaking him awake. When his eyes fluttered open, he saw that the walls around them were glowing, though not as brightly as they had in his dream, and fading rapidly in intensity.
That wasn’t all. The troopers were standing around something lying on the floor and Bel Taralynn was having a hurried conversation with the Ops officers up at the main base camp on her com.
“That’s correct, ma’am,” she was saying, “the bots’ proximity alarms went off and then we woke up and found the survivor right here in the middle of camp.’
“No, ma’am she is not conscious and there seems to be something very strange about her. Yes, I’ll send you a feed right away. Wait one.” She pushed her way through the small crowd of troopers and bent over the prone figure so that her suit cam could capture the image.
Edging closer, Jon recognized the unconscious woman immediately. She was a member
of the missing science team, and one of the few non-Sireeni’s in the party, although her name escaped him. What definitely qualified as ‘strange’ was her skin.
Weird lights, each no longer than a centimeter, were traveling underneath it, giving off a soft, bluish-white glow. They were everywhere, moving in and through the layers of flesh as if they were following some unknown purpose.
And when the paramedic opened her eyes to examine her pupils, there was another surprise waiting. Instead of finding an iris surrounded by sclera, the victim’s eyes were featureless and smoldered with the same unearthly light as the motes. A few of the Marines made signs against evil and backed away, but Bel Taralynn was having none of it.
“You and you,” she said, singling out two of the more squeamish troopers. “Get a stretcher and help the ‘medic prep her for transport. The rest of you break camp. We’re taking this survivor up to the base and putting her aboard a shuttle as soon as the weather lifts.”
***
The survivor was positively identified as Dr. Shandra n’Aida, an assistant to the still missing team leader. Just as soon as the weather had more or less settled down, the Marine shuttle returned and she was transported up to the Athena.
Once aboard, N’Aida was put in a portable isolation chamber and everyone in the S and R team was whisked to the medbay for isolation and examination. Even the shuttle and its crew were quarantined until they received passing marks from Dr. elle’Kaari and her staff.
The glowing lights had disappeared by this point, and N’Aida’s eyes had returned to normal, leaving no clues about what had caused the phenomena. What was clear though, was that N’Aida was in a deep coma that resisted all efforts to revive her.
Then N’Aida’s s lab results came back. Dr. elle’Kaari reviewed them personally, and as soon as she was certain that they were accurate, she contacted Lilith.
“Commander,” she said over a private com channel, “I can’t find any reason for my patient’s present state. Other than a genetic anomaly, she seems to be perfectly healthy and should be alert and awake.”
“An anomaly?” Lilith asked, relieved that nothing had been found that might have posed a danger to her ship and crew. “What kind of anomaly?”
“Ma’am, I’ve never seen anything like it in all my years of practice. It appears as if half of her DNA structure has been altered. I can’t explain why this happened or even recognize what the new genetic pattern is. The Ships Computer has been consulted, but so far it has found no match with any race, or species anywhere. For all intensive purposes, our patient is half human and half…something else…with a lot of blanks left in between.”
“I see, Doctor,” Lilith replied thoughtfully. “Let me know if you arrive at any definite conclusions. She’ll be your patient until we make port at Thenti and I’m sure that the doctors there will appreciate any advance work that you can do for them.”
***
That afternoon, Jon came to the medbay for his usual testing session with Dr. elle’Kaari, but the physician was busy analyzing more data that had been gathered from Shandra n’Aida.
“I’ll be right with you, Jon,” she said, hurrying past him into her office and waving impatiently for an assistant to follow.
With nothing else to do, Jon wandered over to N’Aida’s bed. The scientist had not been found to be contagious, and had been released from her isolation chamber. Now, she lay on one of the beds in the central medbay, with only a simple sheet covering her motionless body.
He looked down at her features, wondering as everyone else had since their return, what strange processes the woman had experienced that had put her in such a state and, for the thousandth time, what had happened to her companions. He’d heard the rumors of course; that she was now only half-human, and having seen the bizarre lights dancing in her body, and the eerie glow in her eyes, he fully believed them.
Then an inspiration came to him. The sisters back on New Covenant would be fascinated with a genetic sample from such an odd hybrid, he reflected. It was even possible that the woman’s altered DNA would provide the vital components that they needed for the completion of the Great Work.
This was the special calling that Sister n’Avenal had mentioned to him, he realized. God wanted him to serve His church by getting a sample to the Sister-Scientists. He was as sure of this as he was of Mother Mari’s love.
Glancing around to make sure that no one was watching, he plucked a few hairs from her head and put them in his pocket. How he would get them back to New Covenant completely eluded him, but he was certain that Jesu and Mari would open the way.
Seconds later, Elle’Kaari came out of her office. “I’m sorry for the delay, Jon, but our patient here has taken up just a bit of my time. Please, come in. We can still spend a few minutes together.”
Jon smiled and walked through the light barrier into the doctor’s office as casually as he was able. Inwardly, however, he was terrified. The Sisterhood had been born from a plague, and the Regs on the importation of any biological material were stringent. The only thing that separated him from a military courts martial and lengthy imprisonment, was the thin fabric of his uniform pocket.
***
Jon wasn’t aware of it, but he was not alone in his interest in obtaining a sample of Dr. Shandra n’Aida’s altered gene structure by any means. Shortly after he had left the medbay, Ophida n'Marsi paid her own visit to Dr. elle’Kaari.
“I saw Fa‘Teela go by in the passageway,” she remarked. “What did he want?”
“Nothing special,” the physician replied. “He was reporting for his usual testing session.”
“Is he still pretending not to have any talents?” N’ Marsi asked.
“We only touched on the incident briefly, and he seemed to be taking the same line that we’ve been. That it was a fluke and nothing more.” Elle’Kaari handed the priestess a sealed vial of n’Aida’s blood, and the woman quickly put it into the folds of her robe.
“Thank you,” Ophida replied, “I’ll see to it that this makes its way to Thermadon right away. As for fa‘Teela, I’d suggest that we play along with his little charade for now. In the meantime, we’ll continue to maintain our surveillance and see what more we can learn. The Agency will need all the information that it can get about these psychic neomen before any recommendations can be made to shut the Marionite project down.”
Elle’Kaari nodded. “I understand, and I’ll keep you updated on any new information we gather. If he stays consistent, I think that we’re looking at percentages that would easily qualify him to work as a military grade psi--if he were a woman of course.”
“Of course,” Ophida agreed.
With that, they parted company and the priestess hurried back to the temple with her sample, and started making her arrangements to get the vial to Thermadon immediately. What Elle’Kaari didn’t know, what she didn’t have the security clearance to know was that the vial wouldn’t be traveling alone. Instead, the notes from the science team’s lead researcher would accompany it. One of her other agents among the Marines, had seen to it that they were handed over to her, and that all other copies had been destroyed.
Although Ophida was no theoretical physicist, she had understood enough of the seized material to realize how revolutionary the find on Storm had actually been. If what the scientists had concluded was true, then the entire balance of power in the Far Arm stood on the brink of radical transformation, with the Agency, and by extension herself, basking in the glow.
USSMC Training Facility, 75th Training Battalion, Hella’s World, Hecate System, Artemi Elant, United Sisterhood of Suns, 1043.02|27|02:93:65
“Atten-shun!”
In perfect unison, Platoon Carli snapped to attention, the crack of their boots sounding across the open parade ground. Sa’Tela walked down the line, looking for even the slightest deviation from the prescribed positions. She did not find any of the recruits lacking however.
“Parade, left!” she ordered.
&nbs
p; “Parade, right!”
She marched the group across the parade ground. “Forward!! Your left, your left, your left.”
The recruits performed flawlessly, keeping in perfect step with her. All of their daily drills had paid off. Like the rest of them, Kaly was able to change smartly from position to position, and march with the group with movements that had become second nature.
After a few minutes of this, Sa’Tela halted them. “Well, I see we can finally stand like Marines and even march like Marines,” she remarked dryly. “Now, we’ll see if we can run and maybe even manage to sound like Marines. Shall we give it a try, ladies?”
“Ma’am, yes, ma’am!” the platoon replied.
“Parade, right. Step off and reply.” Sa’Tela instructed. The DI started off at a slow run, with the platoon keeping formation with her.
“1, 2, 3, 4, Sister-hood Ma-rine Corps!” she chanted, glancing over her shoulder to make sure they were keeping together. “Let me hear you reply, ladies!”
“1, 2, 3, 4, Sister-hood Mar-ine Corps!” the recruits answered.
“Yes! Good and loud!” Sa’Tela said. She started calling the cadence, “I’ve got a blaster on my back, a helmet on my head and a 30-kee pack! Sound off! 1, 2, 3, 4, Sisterhood Mar-ine Corps!”
“1, 2, 3, 4, Sisterhood Marine Corps!”
“My mommas said that I was crazy. Said I should go and join the Navy! Sound off!”
“1, 2, 3, 4, Sisterhood Marine Corps!”
“I didn’t listen to what they said. I went and joined the Marines instead! Sound off!”
“1, 2, 3, 4, Sisterhood Marine Corps!”
“Signed my name the same day and they just watched me march away! Sound off!”
“1, 2, 3, 4, Sisterhood Marine Corps!”
“They say the Navy’s pretty grand. But when trouble comes, they need our hand! Sound off!”
Sisterhood of Suns: Pallas Athena Page 49