Silver Enigma

by Rock Whitehouse

  The deafening drumbeat finally caught up with her and the building behind her took an impact, pummeling her back with small rocky debris. The shockwave and sonic boom lifted her and then slammed her to the pavement. As she looked up, the fine dust that was starting to fill the air sparkled with bits of Inori masonry, and she had the sudden impression of being trapped in some kind of hellish snow globe.

  She got up, reluctantly leaving Marty where he was, and moved away from the building, fearing it would collapse on her. Her Ground Combat instructor's voice echoed in her head as she ran: Get your ass down, Hansen, and get under cover. You're no good to anyone dead. There were impacts all around her now, and she looked for some kind of shelter, finally crawling between a two large piles of rubble that had fallen from a small building. Shoving her growing fear to the side, she got down as low as she could to wait it out. She prayed for Marty. She prayed for Liberty.

  Aloud she said to herself "Oh David, you're going to be so pissed you missed this."

  The Countryside North of Inoria

  Saturday, January 15, 1078, 1000 UTC

  After a bumpy ride north out of Inoria, while Carol and Marty were enjoying the city, Rich Evans and Matt Carter had followed their guides into the rolling countryside along a well-worn path. After an hour of hiking, they had stopped just past a grove of what passed for trees on Inor, where a small stream flowed into a lake. The trees were short, compared to Earth, no more than three or four meters tall. A single patchy white-and-black stem rose a meter or so from the ground and then spread out into several main branches, each of those splitting quickly into numerous sub-branches. The leaves were darker than most trees on Earth, and far more complex in their structure.

  They sat on the bank and watched the creatures in the stream, which on the one hand were obviously fish and on the other like nothing they had ever seen before. As they sat together by the stream, Rich asked the Inori a question that had been on his mind for some time.

  "May I ask about Ino?"

  "Yes, RichEvans, what is your question?"

  Rich sat up straighter, a subconscious expression of respect. "In human religions, there are books - collections of stories really - that tell us about God, that teach us what a religion means, its traditions, its morals. Are there stories of Ino? Is there a book of Ino?"

  The Inori made a low rumbling growl that Rich understood was laughter. It went on for what seemed a long time. Rich felt slightly silly now, hoping he hadn't offended them with the question. Finally, they stopped, and one spoke.

  "Yes, we have heard of this practice among humans. We do not understand it. The world, RichEvans, is the book of Ino. The sea, the sky, the land, we sitting before you, are all the stories Ino requires. So, no, there are no stories, and there is no book. Ino is present everywhere."

  Evans nodded his understanding, thought a moment, then asked again. "How are the young taught about Ino? Do any ever refuse to believe in Ino?"

  Again, laughter.

  "Ino does not need to be taught, RichEvans. The young know the presence of Ino in their teachers, in their food, in their litter-mates. As to your second question, it is even stranger to our ears than your first. To refuse to believe in Ino is to refuse to believe in the sunrise, or the stars, or ourselves. Ino is as tangible for us as the ground we sit on, as the water flowing before us."

  They rested there, taking time for excellent English tea, and talking to the Inori about the animals of the countryside, their habits and how similar animals behaved on Earth. It was a pleasant, nearly idyllic scene, one the NetLinks' shrill alarms shattered.

  Evans looked at his in disbelief. He looked over at Carter who said, "Combat Recall? What the hell?" Evans acknowledged the message on his NetLink but was unable to raise the ship by audio.

  "We gotta go. Now." As Evans stood, he could see bright streaks in Inor's deep blue sky, leaving thin lines of smoke as they headed towards the city.

  "What the hell, indeed," he said to Matt.

  They watched for just a moment as hundreds of streaks passed over. Shortly after they heard a whistling sound followed by a rapid sequence of sonic booms. Evans and Carter and the two Inori moved as quickly as possible back the way they had come. Hills and creeks and ponds that had been pleasant diversions on the way out had transformed into unwanted obstacles on the return.

  Evans had only a vague idea what was happening, but the smoke now rising in the south could not be good, and Liberty's Chief Intelligence Officer was impatient to get back into the city and back on the job.

  The Streets of Inoria

  Saturday, January 15, 2078, 1015 UTC

  It had been several minutes since Carol last heard an explosion nearby. The attack, whatever it was, moved off to the east. Carol crawled out of the rubble, covered in dust and bits of masonry from the buildings. Fire crackled and an acrid, unpleasant smoke tainted the scent of the breeze. She brushed the dust off as best she could. Her hair was getting in her face, so she pulled out the band she kept handy and shoved it into a ragged ponytail. Her earlobe stung where a shard of something had cut her, but she was otherwise unhurt. She pulled the guide map from her thigh pocket, slightly surprised it was there as she had no memory of putting it away. She could feel heat at her back, so she moved west, away from it, and toward the central north-south thoroughfare, Meridian Street, a few hundred meters away. She soon encountered the remains of Liberty's Chief Navigator, the gregarious Nicolai Roskov. He had been her direct superior, a very good man with a touch for teaching that Carol doubted he knew he had. He looked worse than Marty, almost unrecognizable but for his uniform.

  "Oh, sir, I am so sorry," she said as she looked down at him. She marked his position on her map, Marty's too. They would need to be able to find them again later.

  "Ensign?" called a voice through the smoke and dust ahead of her. She looked up from the map in surprise at the sound of a human voice.

  "Yes! who's that?"

  "Cornell, ma'am." Weapons tech, kid from Kansas, if she remembered correctly.

  "You all right, Cornell?"

  "Yes, ma'am," he said sadly, "but you should come with me."

  Cornell, head down, led her a block north, then back northeast. There he showed her the most senior enlisted man on the ship, Chief Scranton, with an IT tech Carol had spoken to only yesterday next to him. Just ahead, another crewmember laid in yet another pool of blood.

  "That's Davey, ma'am, the cook?" he said, indicating the body ahead.

  Carol nodded her recognition.

  "Did you see it happen, Cornell?"

  "No, ma'am. I just got down as low as I could and prayed for it all to be over."

  "Cornell, for what it's worth, that's exactly what I did, too."

  Carol looked carefully at the bodies, trying to understand what she was seeing. Scranton had a makeshift tourniquet on his arm.

  "This is not the first place they were hit."

  "Ma'am?"

  "Look at the tourniquet, and the blood on Whitfield."

  Cornell nodded in response but she wasn't sure he was following her thinking. Looking around, there was an obvious blood trail in the street.

  "They were heading east." She indicated the direction of the blood to Cornell.

  Cornell looked at her blankly. "East?"

  "Back to the shuttle pad." She made another mark on her map and looked at Cornell, who was still staring at the human wreckage in the street.

  "See anyone else?"

  The young man shook his head in response. Carol didn't know where to go or what to do next. She wasn't all that much older than the twenty-ish Cornell, but she had the Fleet University's best education and training. She knew her job now was to take the lead and do it well, and she expected no less of herself. She would just have to take whatever came one thing at a time. She turned back to Cornell, speaking with more confidence than she really felt.

  "OK, well, let's go."

  "I knew all three of them," he said quietly, not moving.
>
  Carol waited just a moment, then reached out, took his shoulder, and gently pulled him away. They walked away to the southwest in silence, Carol looking for Meridian Street and whatever was next, Cornell absorbing the shock and fighting down his fear.

  The sunlight was fading now, the orange star gradually overwhelmed by the gathering overcast of smoke.

  Inoria

  Meridian Street

  Saturday, January 15, 2078, 1130 UTC

  Lieutenant Commander Teresa Maria Santos Michael, Executive Officer of Liberty, was helping a desperately wounded Inori when the sky lit up low on the southern horizon. Without thinking, she instinctively dove to the ground, covering the Inori, afraid of a nuclear attack. When she realized she had time for a second thought, she knew it wasn't so. Her NetLink to Liberty had gone offline a few minutes before. That was probably my ship she thought. She half-pulled, half-carried the Inori, a very young Builder, along a street covered with debris. "What the hell do they build these things with?" she wondered aloud to no one. Whatever the Inori used for building materials, it did not agree with the human nose and lungs when burned. Unclear in the smoke where she was, Terri worked her way downhill towards the sea and eventually arrived at a makeshift hospital on the beach. She left her burden with the Helpers there and headed back into the city, hoping to find her crew.

  It took time for her to get back uphill from the sea, debris and death frequently blocking her path. As she climbed the streets, Dean Carpenter's words kept running through her head. "I will fight while I have a ship." Carpenter had said to her before the NetLink went down. "Get the crew together and help as best you can. If they land, you'll have to fight them. I suspect you will shortly be the Senior Officer, Terri. You will know what to do." Cutting off her protests Dean Carpenter had suddenly said "Gotta go, Terri. Goodbye. Good luck. Give 'em hell." He clicked off, leaving her staring for a moment at the now-silent NetLink. In her mind she could see his calm face, surrounded by long gray hair, his carefully manicured beard, that pale complexion and his shockingly dark brown eyes. Keep working the problem until there was no more to do. That was Dean's response, she knew. After all, he had taught her exactly that during the last few years she had been on his ship.

  She reached a large intersection, where two hours before fine buildings stood and wide boulevards met. There, Terri finally spotted someone familiar.

  "Ensign Hansen!" she yelled. Carol Hansen looked up, waved at Terri, and then turned her back to call and gesture to someone out of sight behind her. Eight Liberty crew appeared from behind a ruined wall, and they walked towards Terri.

  As they came closer Terri was surprised at Hansen's appearance. The trim young woman usually looked like a recruiting poster. Now, she was covered in fine dust and grit from the buildings, blood on her uniform slacks and on her shoulder. There were tracks in the dirt on her face where tears had flowed. But her eyes were active and alert, and her posture was solid. She did not walk like someone in fear. Terri took a second to consider her own uniform, and found it just as grimy as Hansen's, with the dark purple Inori blood splattered down one side where she had helped the Builder down to the shore. She was unhurt, which she knew was just luck. But you take luck when you can get it, especially in combat. Sometimes the lucky happen to live, and this seemed to be one of those times.

  "Hello Commander. I have these eight, and I saw Commander Davis with three more."

  "Where?" she asked, still a little breathless from the climb up from the shore.

  "Further up Meridian Street. He was looking for Lieutenant Evans and Engineer Carter someplace about eight klicks north. That was, oh, an hour ago. I found these in the meantime."

  Carol Hansen and Terri Michael silently looked over their shipmates. They were young enlisted crew, three females, five males, and all deeply frightened. But they didn't run, and they tried hard not to let the officers see their fear, just as the officers tried not to show their own.

  "Well, Ensign Hansen, Len Davis has to go a long way in this shit. He can't possibly do better than two klicks an hour. We won't see him for a while. See anyone else?"

  Carol frowned and motioned to Terri that she should step back around the corner.

  "Well?" Terri asked, impatiently.

  "Commander Roskov is dead, ma'am. I saw him maybe a hundred meters north of here and one street over. These weapons - it's hideous what they do. Roskov was ripped open from head to his kidneys." Terri's brows narrowed. "Marty Baker, too. He was killed right in front of me." Carol paused a second to control her feelings, the memory of Marty's fading eyes suddenly fresh again in her mind.

  "Chief Scranton, Davey the cook, and that IT tech Davey hung out with, Willie, they called him."

  Terri nodded her recognition. Scranton was always one to take the newest, least confident techs under his wing and help them adjust, and the project he had made of Whitfield was just the latest example.

  Carol continued. "It was a little east of here. It looked to me like he was trying to get the Chief back to the shuttle landing pad when they were hit again. There was blood trail in the street, and there was blood all over Willie. Looked like he'd put a tourniquet on the Chief. Then, I guess they were both hit again. They were brave, ma'am, so brave..."

  Terri focused on the blood on Hansen's shoulder.

  "Are you hurt, Carol?"

  She smiled a bit on hearing Michael call her by her first name. "Something cut my ear. It's nothing. A building went up right in front of me. Marty and I were just sitting in a cafe after walking the city. It...was...so beautiful."

  "What about that?" she asked, pointing to the blood stains on her slacks.

  Carol frowned. "Marty. Classmate, you know? But there was nothing I could do. It happened so fast."

  "Yeah, I know, Carol. I liked him, too. He was sharp, had potential. Listen, Carol, this hurts like hell, I know. But make sure you deliver that pain to the enemy, whoever they are, don't carry it around inside you. For now, we fight."

  Carol nodded her acknowledgment, still fighting back against the mix of anger and grief she was feeling. Terri moved further away from the group, leaving Carol, and working her way to the center of the intersection, then climbed to the top of the rubble of a twenty-meter tall fountain.

  The Inori, not far removed from their amphibian roots, were obsessed with water. Fountains, some enormous and surprisingly elaborate, were at nearly every significant intersection. From above the pile of rubble, Terri looked north, where Len Davis should be. Even with her electronic binoculars, there was too much dust, smoke, and heat. Visual, IR, UV, it was all a mess.

  "Nothing?" Carol asked as Terri returned.

  "No. Too much crap in the air. Too much heat. Damn."

  With that pronouncement she abruptly sat down next to one of the enlisted crew members, her face in her hands.

  "Commander?" he asked.

  She paused a beat, then raised her head and looked at the man.

  "Alvis, leave the Commander alone."

  Carol let her irritation show, perhaps a bit too much.

  Terri gave her a glance and turned back to the crewman. "No, it's OK. What is it?"

  The engineer pursed his lips as if having second thoughts. "Are we stuck here, Commander? I mean, the ship is gone, and we're like sixteen light-years from home."

  Home. One of the first thoughts in a disaster, she knew, is how do we get back home?

  "For now, yes, we're stuck. But word will get back to Earth pretty quickly, and they'll come after us."

  He was unsatisfied. "What if the enemy comes down here?"

  Terri turned sideways to look him directly in the eye. "Then we fight, just like Captain Carpenter fought. You're a soldier, Tom Alvis; along with being an engineer, you're a soldier. We all are. And we fight when we must."

  She paused to let that register with all of them. Along with Alvis and the others she was preaching to herself as well. More gently she finished "Let's all just hope it doesn't come to that."

&n
bsp; They nodded in agreement. Terri was satisfied with the man. He's a good crewman, she thought, just needs to know the score. Honesty went a long way with this crew. They were cynical and suspicious about authority in general but understood and respected individuals who demonstrated integrity and competence. Not bad material, she thought, not bad at all. She let her head rest against what remained of the wall behind her and closed her eyes. Think! Think! Teresa! What do you do next?

  As Carol looked around their location for the first time, she saw that they were on a small side street to a large intersection. The southeast portion of the intersection was behind them. The northeast area was more or less intact, damaged but not flattened. There was rubble all around, but some parts of what must have been a café remained intact. It was time to check their perimeter - she'd feel a lot safer with more information. This little group was still her command, as far as she was concerned. She decided it was time to get them moving, doing something useful, and get their minds off home.

  "Johnson, Smith, Sanderson; get up and circle this block. Roberts, Alvis; go across the intersection and try to get around the southwest corner. Cornell, Phillips, Glass; you three take the northwest. Stay together, no heroics. If you find more crew bring them back if you can. If you can't, make sure you have a positive ID."

  She paused, looking from face to face to make sure they understood her meaning.

  "OK, get going." The groups got up, brushing off the dust and ash that kept settling out of the smoke overheard, and moved out as she had directed. Her assignments left four young Marines behind. Their tall, dark-skinned corporal spoke up.

  "You have other plans for us, Ensign Hansen?"

  "Corporal Jackson, I need you and your men to stand by Commander Michael."