by C H Gideon
She focused her high-resolution optics on the arrivals and was taken aback by what she saw. Crawling up and out of the ice was a quartet of seemingly identical vehicles…but aside from their sheer bulk, it seemed as though they were living organisms of some kind.
Each was eighteen meters long, with a dark yellow-and-green exoskeleton supported by twenty-two short, curved legs. Their main bodies, or chassis, were curved from front-to-back with the highest point approximately a third of the way back. They moved with impressive speed, clocking in at just over a hundred kilometers per hour before they opened fire on 4th Platoon.
Elvira’s hull was bathed in plasma as two of the bizarre, insect-like vehicles concentrated fire on her. “AP up,” Xi called, more from routine than by necessity since she controlled the ammo-loading systems via her neural link. “On the way!”
Elvira’s fifteen-kilo guns were lowered as far as possible, so in order to aim them at the enemy, Xi crouched Elvira’s front and raised the stern to tilt them down even farther. At that moment, more than any other, the mighty battle mech resembled the Scorpion her class was named after. The fifteens thundered simultaneously, sending armor-piercing shells into the nearest of the four enemy vehicles.
Shockingly, the vehicle did not explode, but merely log-rolled from the kinetic energy of the impacts.
It quickly scrambled to its feet and re-oriented itself before returning fire with some kind of mortar near its “head” region. Elvira’s top-side was struck by the slow-moving shell, which did not explode and initially seemed to do nothing but go “splat.”
“What the fuck?” Xi growled in alarm, swiveling her top-side cameras to look at the damage. She set her jaw when she saw smoke rising from the heavy, composite armor shell just a meter behind her pilot’s chair. “Blinky!” she snapped. “Tap into the coolant line with the high-pressure hose. We’ve got some kind of acid burning a hole through the roof!”
“On it, Captain,” Blinky replied, scrambling to do as instructed.
A quick check of 4th Platoon’s status showed that Cave Troll had also been hit by acid, but its vertical posture seemed to have limited the damage. Heavy Metal Jesus had avoided an acid shell but was reeling from a plasma stream hit.
“All right,” Xi snarled as One Launcher finished loading AP SRMs. “You want to play? Let’s play.”
Locking onto the vehicle she had inexplicably failed to do serious damage with her dual fifteens, Xi sent four SRMs straight at the bug-looking thing. Shockingly, two of the SRMs missed entirely, exploding fifty meters behind the insect-like vehicle.
But the two that struck were aimed low and tore nearly all of the legs off its left side. The thing toppled, desperately trying to remain upright with the few motive limbs remaining on that side, but ultimately failed and came crashing to the ground.
Xi spun up her left flank’s anti-personnel chain guns and began pouring depleted uranium rounds into its exposed underside. Sweeping up and down its belly with her weapons, Xi whooped with satisfaction as it curled and contorted while fifteen hundred rounds found the mark and made a mess of its soft under-carriage.
She loaded HE shells into the fifteens and re-oriented Elvira’s artillery onto the helpless enemy. “HE up. On the way!”
Two high-explosive shells tore into the floundering vehicle, blowing it apart like a paint-filled balloon. The icy surface was covered in a forty-meter disc of greenish-blue gore, which confirmed that these things were at least as much meat as metal.
Elvira rocked from a plasma strike to her left flank, and both chain guns registered system failures before shutting down.
Another acid shell fell onto Elvira’s top-side just before Blinky popped the hatch open, hose in hand. “Over the cockpit first,” Xi ordered, pivoting Elvira toward another one of the new enemies. She sent four more AP SRMs toward the overgrown bug-thing, but this time just one of them struck true while the others inexplicably missed.
At these ranges, a miss should have been impossible. But here she was, three-for-eight with her latest missile launches.
Blinky began to hose the acid off Elvira’s hull, standing tall in his duty as the nearby, humanoid Heavy Metal Jesus sent a hyper-velocity tungsten bolt into one of the bizarre vehicle-creatures. The railgun strike punched a deep, glowing hole in the thing’s hunched back, but the damage did little to deter the beast as it spat plasma in reply and bathed HMJ’s left leg in fire. Heavy Metal Jesus, already down one railgun arm from a previous strike, fell when its left leg was critically damaged.
As soon as it hit the deck, a swarm of half-meter-wide crab-looking things sprang out of the damaged bug vehicle. They swarmed toward the fallen HMJ, and Xi growled, “This is a crabs-free outfit!”
Sweeping Elvira’s right flank toward the surging line of crab-things, she unleashed her still-working chain guns across the horde of skittering critters. Their bodies burst apart on impact, and half of them exploded so violently that their purpose was clear.
They were grenade-delivery systems.
She maintained focus, cutting the damned things down before they could swarm HMJ and kill its stranded crew. At her back, Cave Troll unleashed its super-powered plasma cannons on one of the less-damaged vehicle bugs. The thing was utterly annihilated, with a quarter-kilometer-long steaming rent in the ice behind it serving as the lone reminder of its existence.
The humanoid Masamune, recently re-assigned to 4th Platoon from 6th Platoon, fired its railgun and tore a second hole into the already-damaged vehicle. But the enemy seemed unfazed by the devastating attack, which tore six legs from its right side and burned a meter-wide hole in its lower carapace.
“Concentrate fire on the wounded,” Xi barked as the two remaining platforms began to withdraw into the icy tunnel from which they had emerged less than a minute earlier.
Cave Troll launched SRMs, but only three struck true, and they did little but slow the enemy’s retreat. Elvira and Masamune were unable to cycle their weapons fast enough to get another shot off before the bug-things disappeared beneath the ice.
Xi’s jaw muscles bunched angrily for several seconds before she said, “Blinky, Lu, and Samuels: take extraction gear and first aid materials over to Heavy Metal Jesus and get our people out of there. Move!”
Impressively, the reporter made no objection as she joined the team. Fortunately, HMJ’s crew had no serious injuries and were brought aboard Elvira, which had the most spacious interior of any mech in the platoon.
“She’ll walk again,” Xi assured the trio of battered crewmen before switching to the P2P link with HQ. “HQ, this is Elvira. We have repelled an attack by unidentified hostiles and have one mech down. Requesting repair-and-retrieval team to our location ASAP. All personnel alive and accounted for, but Heavy Metal Jesus is going to need a miracle from Lieutenant Koch’s team before it can walk again. Over.”
“Miracle en route, Elvira. ETA: Thirty-nine minutes,” Jenkins acknowledged, and by his tone, she knew he had taken her subtle meaning. By calling the enemies “unidentified hostiles,” she was suggesting it was possible they were the very alien species they had come to this barren ice ball to meet.
But why, if this strange new species wanted to initiate diplomatic relations with the Terran Republic like the Vorr had clandestinely suggested, would they ambush a Terran patrol rather than approaching them peacefully?
Xi shook her head. “Above my pay-grade,” she muttered before switching to the platoon P2P network. “Cave Troll, secure this site. Masamune, send one of your hunter-killer drones down that hole. I want to see where those bastards came from.”
“Roger,” Masamune replied. “HK away.”
A six-wheeled vehicle, just large enough for a human to sit atop but of similar design to the ATVs each of her mechs had been equipped with pre-deployment, dropped from Masamune’s left leg and sped toward the tunnel through which the alien vehicles had fled. HK drones were armed with high-explosives for largely the same purpose as the crab-things the bug had sent
to finish off Heavy Metal Jesus. Masamune was a rare, anti-mech design that was purpose-built to kill other mechs rather than to engage a variety of targets. Armed with four HKs, it could use them as mobile landmines, recon drones, or even launch platforms for one of its mid-range missiles. And while the lack of RF linkage made real-time recon impossible, if the drone survived, it would return with all the telemetry it gathered during the trip.
Seconds turned into minutes, and eventually, the HK emerged from the ice passage. A few seconds later, Masamune’s Jock reported, “They collapsed the tunnel a kilometer down, Captain. I could try to blow it...”
“Negative, Masamune.” She sighed irritably, “they’re long gone. Maintain position until the recovery and repair, R&R, team arrives, then we’ll resume our patrol.”
“Copy that,” both Cave Troll and Masamune acknowledged, and forty-five minutes later, with Heavy Metal Jesus loaded onto Kochtopussy and en route to HQ, Xi’s three-mech platoon resumed its patrol.
7
The First Thread
Colonel Jenkins looked up to see Styles close the hatch to his cabin, sealing the compartment off from the rest of Roy’s interior.
“What have you got, Styles?” Jenkins asked after the hatch was shut.
“I’ve inventoried everything from all four mine sites,” Styles replied, placing a data slate on the small table in front of Jenkins, “and compared it with the lists DIE provided. We already knew about the Delta Site’s missing data storage systems, but what we didn’t know about were the ice core samples.”
Jenkins cocked his head in confusion. “Ice core samples?”
“Yes, sir.” Styles nodded eagerly. “Fifteen of them in all.”
Jenkins leaned back in his chair. “The same as the number of Vorr underwater shafts.”
“Precisely!” Styles agreed.
Jenkins drummed his fingers in thought before venturing, “DIE found something on the surface of this planet…and that finding suggested to them that there might be something of even greater value on the bottom of the ocean.”
“But human technology…or at least Terran tech,” Styles amended, “isn’t up to the task of such a deep dive in near-freezing temperatures. The Bonhoeffer’s scans show a Vorr transceiver eight kilometers down, on the underwater slope of this mountain.”
“So, the Vorr drilled each of the fifteen sites,” Jenkins mused, “but ultimately settled on one. Why not shut down the other sites?”
“My guess is still that the fifteen separate shafts, their ice core samples, and even the transceiver are misdirection,” Styles explained. “Vorr are an underwater species with technology rivaling that of the Jemmin. Of all the races in known space, they’re the best bet to be able to retrieve whatever it is that DIE found down there. But the Jemmin probably aren’t far behind them in terms of underwater tech. They’ll likely work to modify a gas giant probe or some other ultra-high-pressure device with a return system, which they’ll then use to retrieve whatever it is that DIE found.”
“Any theories as to what that might be?” Jenkins urged, but Styles shook his head.
“I just don’t have enough information to work with, Colonel. I would know more about what we’re looking at if I could get my hands on those core samples,” he said leadingly.
“We don’t know where the Jemmin are storing them—” Jenkin shook his head firmly. “—or even if they kept them at all. They’re clearly trying to stop us from following this thread, so why not destroy the evidence?”
“That’s probable,” Styles reluctantly agreed before leaning forward conspiratorially. “Do you think this might have something to do with those…bug things Xi encountered?”
Jenkins shrugged. “It’s possible. The longer we’re down here, the more it looks like the Vorr had ulterior motives for bringing us here beyond the simple facilitation of a secret diplomatic meeting.”
“And they bugged out the minute we arrived.” Styles nodded knowingly before hesitating and seeming to resist the urge to continue.
“Go on, Chief,” Jenkins urged. “What are you thinking?”
“I’ve got Podsy running an analysis on the Vorr shafts,” Styles reluctantly explained. “The thing is…I think they were made from orbit—originally, that is.”
“I don’t follow.”
“If you precisely attenuate a high-powered laser,” Styles explained, “and I’m talking high-powered, the likes of which humanity has yet to deploy, you could drill straight down through an ice crust like this and leave a hole no wider than a few meters.”
“To what purpose?”
“That’s the part I can’t figure out,” Styles replied in obvious frustration. “I mean, if you wanted to explore a subsurface ocean like the one here on Shiva’s Wrath, there are better ways to do it than with a capital-grade laser fired from orbit. And if you were just sniping fifteen ‘somethings’ located on the surface, there would be no need to drill all the way through ten kilometers of ice. Someone wanted to access this world’s relatively-inaccessible ocean, but I can’t figure out why. And without those ice cores, I can’t even tell you when they did it.”
“Only two known species use lasers on the scale you’re talking about,” Jenkins mused.
“The Vorr and the Jemmin.” Styles nodded knowingly. “Which narrows down the list of suspects, sure, but we don’t know enough about their respective histories to have the first clue what they might have wanted with Shiva’s Wrath. For that matter, we don’t know why they would leave it essentially unmolested until DIE came along and started conducting private surveys. Whatever it is that’s valuable enough to make the Vorr and Jemmin fight over it was here long before Terran interests arrived, but they’re only now showing interest in it?”
“An honest-to-God mystery…” Jenkins boggled before chuckling. “Silly me, I thought the worst I’d face were treason charges for conducting unauthorized diplomacy with foreign nations.”
“Instead we’ve exchanged fire with the founding nation of the Illumination League and encountered another seemingly hostile alien species with whom we’ve also exchanged fire,” Styles snickered. “Makes treason look like a cake-walk.”
“I’m not sure I’d go that far,” Jenkins allowed. “Is there anything else?”
“Not from me.” Styles shook his head. “I’ll keep working with Podsy on those drill shafts. Once I know more, you’ll know. I’m hoping to come up with an estimated position of the ship that made them. If I can, it might tell us a little more about who cut the holes in the first place.”
“Keep after it.” Jenkins nodded approvingly.
“Oh,” Styles added as he went to open the hatch, “Doc Fellows was right behind me trying to get time with you.”
“Send him in.”
Styles left Jenkins’ cabin, and a moment later, the battalion’s doctor entered. “Colonel,” the doctor greeted, bearing a data slate that he solemnly proffered.
“Why the long face, Doc?” Jenkins asked mildly, taking the slate and viewing its contents.
“The short version is this.” Fellows sighed, sitting down in the chair opposite Jenkins. “There’s about six times as much radiation on this patch of ice as we anticipated.”
“What?” Jenkins demanded in surprise, and the doctor gestured to the slate. “This isn’t some kind of mistake?”
“I’ve been taking and re-taking surface samples of the ice here.” Fellows shook his head grimly. “Every area I’ve tested, which includes everything in our patrol circuits, has been covered with highly-charged dust that’s already worked its way into everything. Decontamination is going to be impossible. I’ve already run the numbers and checked with the Bonhoeffer’s inventory. There is no way to effectively contain this radiation. The best we can hope for is to sterilize the mech cabins and limit exposure to the crews within them, but the troopers are getting hammered.”
“Can we counteract the effects by upping the dosage of anti-radiation meds?” Jenkins asked in muted alarm.
“Recommendation?”
“Transfer the troopers to the mine sites,” Fellows replied. “We initially thought the mines would have double the radiation we’re seeing out here on the ice, but now the ice is hotter than the rock by nearly that much again. Coupled with the quarantine measures of each mech and its crew, we can maybe double our stay on Shiva’s Wrath before we all start to suffer permanent effects of radiation poisoning.”
Jenkins set his jaw as he asked the obvious question, “Was the ice this hot when we got here?”
“No, sir.” Fellows shook his head firmly. “While the stuff is no longer falling from the sky, it was coming down in such small amounts that it didn’t trigger any of our alarms. My guess is a low-orbit dispersal pattern which blanketed, oh, a five-hundred-mile radius, probably centered somewhere between us and the Jemmin base.”
“It wasn’t the nuke they touched off over our heads…” Jenkins mused, wondering how the Jemmin could have delivered what was essentially a dirty bomb into low orbit without anyone aboard the Bonhoeffer noticing.
“No,” the doctor agreed, “but it probably happened around the same time.”
Jenkins sat back in his chair and considered the situation. If there had ever been doubts as to the Jemmin intentions toward the Terrans on Shiva’s Wrath, those doubts were now eliminated. He had wondered why the Jemmin went silent after killing Gym Cricket, and now he had the answer: they had poisoned Jenkins’ people and were merely waiting for them to retreat or die from radiation sickness.
“All right.” Jenkins nodded decisively. “I’ll contact Sergeant Major Trapper and transfer all non-essential personnel to the mines. We’ll reverse the rest schedule, bringing whoever is needed out here to HQ while resting personnel inside the mines.”