Already she felt the blame from some of them, ones who had lost friends when the Higgins fired its weapons, because it had been San’s plan—her idea to hide in the gas giant to ambush. Why does this bother me? San wondered. Because the crew would be right to focus their anger on her and Wilson; what experience had either of them except training on Ganymede and the one Fleet assignment—this one? Her knowledge of ship’s systems and combat maneuvers came from what had been crammed into her mind as a child, in a tank, and for ships entirely different from the one she currently occupied so that she and Wilson had overestimated its capabilities. If the plasma weapon had been aimed one degree over, the Jerusalem would have been lost entirely; the captains may have led their ships, but it had been her plan that got so many killed. San collected herself, and climbed back into her environment suit.
“Are you okay, miss?” the lieutenant asked.
“No, Eugene. We are to continue on mission. Pass word to the executive officers on both ships that the abbess orders them to assume command and that the Jerusalem’s repairs will be conducted while underway.” The lieutenant pointed at one of his men, who made for the hatch. When he turned back, San had started crying again. “I nearly got us all killed.”
“Nonsense, miss. This is war, and that’s what happens in battle. And we didn’t lose everyone; most lived because of you.”
“Who am I to make suggestions for ship-to-ship combat, for Fleet strategy? Why would anyone listen to my suggestions in the first place? I’ve never actually been in combat. These deaths? They’re on me.”
“San Kyarr,” the lieutenant said. The word rang in her ears and she recognized the Marine’s tone sounded grim. “Fleet is Fleet. The crew, and the ships’ captains, are going to listen to you and Wilson because none of us has been in combat and you have special skills that none of us share. And you will continue offering battle plans because that’s why you’re here; it’s your job.”
“I don’t want it anymore.”
The lieutenant helped San into her helmet, locking it in place; San’s eyes widened with a start when he grabbed both her shoulders, hard enough that it hurt. “Forgive me, miss, but I need your attention. Listen and don’t forget: What you want isn’t at issue here. There are greater things at stake than you or your remorse—the future of humanity, for one. Pull it together. The crew needs you the same way they need a captain.” The lieutenant released her shoulders and took hold of her wrist, escorting San to the hatch.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
“While you had your helmet off, an order came from the new captain. Both navigators, along with a Marine detachment, are to take all the landing craft down to the surface of SX-1777 for water collection. Now that we’ve entered Sommen space you’re to go on every planet-side landing, with us, in case we find something that requires your skills. Artifacts, machinists, whatever we discover.”
San and a group of Marines sped to the hangar in silence, her gliding movements through the pipe galleries somber as if heading to an execution. She struggled to keep from crying again. The emotions of some crew members, still mourning the loss of their captain, leaked through her skull and seeped into her mind, making it so San began to have trouble distinguishing between her own feelings and those of the crew. With every second that brought her closer to the hangar San felt more excited about leaving the ship. It would distance herself from so much sadness. She boarded the closest landing craft and strapped into a couch, waiting for the other vessels to prepare.
“San,” the lieutenant said. “You’re in command of the refueling operation; the pilot is waiting for you to give the word.”
San lifted a handset to communicate with all the ships, pressing it against her helmet speakers. “Take off when every ship is ready. No radio communications until we reach the surface. I want melt mats and collection tents up as quickly as possible.”
After replacing the handset, she closed her eyes. Wilson, take off as soon as your ships are ready; we’ll meet you on the surface.
San, I don’t like this.
We’re almost out of hydrogen. So are you.
I know; I’m not saying we shouldn’t do this, I’m just saying we haven’t had time to launch any drones and get sensor readings of the surface. There could be anything down there.
That’s why we’re bringing so many Marines, San sent. The moment we sense any trouble, we’ll take off with the water we collected.
San’s ship lifted off the deck and accelerated into space, the relief immediate. With every second, the mass of feelings that threatened to suffocate her on the Bangkok became more diffuse until they evaporated altogether, replaced only by the uncertainty of a few refueling crewmembers—a pervasive anxiety, arising from an imminent landing on an alien planet with no survey data. San considered launching a drone. At least it would be able to do one pass over the ice fields and although there wouldn’t be time for a full survey, it would have a chance of detecting any Sommen or dangerous native life. Closer to Earth, the water-ice moons of Jupiter and Saturn had already been surveyed, their undersea organisms known and catalogued as harmless things to those on the icy surfaces, albeit some life-threatening if one ventured into their pressurized worlds.
San decided against it. Instead she watched as the gas giant’s moon loomed larger in the ship’s forward sensors, gravimetric readings showing that they’d have an easy time on the surface; it was half the mass of Earth, with almost no atmospheric pressure, which would make the business of sublimating ice into water gas even easier. By the time the ship touched down, she felt better. San waited for the compartment to evacuate then opened both airlock doors to step off, drifting down to the planet’s surface in a puff of ice. The other ships came in, one after another. She grinned at the sight of them, their silent engines fiery against the backdrop of space just as their braking engines kicked up storms of crystals that pattered against her helmet and faceplate. The sound made her cold. By the time the last craft from the Jerusalem landed, San had begun to shiver and cranked up her suit heat to send warmth through undersuit capillaries.
Her crews extended hoses and melting mats. San sighed with relief; soon the tents would be ready, trapping and pumping water into the ships’ tanks, filling them with not just a hydrogen source, but also oxygen and water—everything they’d need to survive and power the two ships now in orbit. Wilson gave the order to begin heating the moment equipment had been emplaced.
I actually love this process, he sent. Look at it. Out here, water and ice are the most precious commodities of all, more than any precious metal or gem.
Someday, maybe when I’m too old to prepare for war, I want to visit a sapphire planet.
Never heard of them.
There are several known ones but nobody has ever found a transit close enough to visit.
What are they? Super-rich with gems?
Sapphires rain from the sky. The planetary masses are at least five times that of Earth and the atmospheres have so much calcium and aluminum that gems form in the clouds themselves.
Wilson didn’t respond. The pair waited and San watched for close to an hour as water vapor escaped through imperfections in the tents, wafting upward so that a white cloud assembled overhead. Her ship’s tank was almost full when the lieutenant broke in via radio.
“Miss, movement. Near the perimeter.”
“What kind of movement?” San asked.
“Point source. Deep. Sensor network places it about three hundred meters from me in the direction of the closest pole, still about a kilometer under the ice but moving upward.”
San slapped her forearm controls, scraping the ice off and punching at the keypad. All the mats shut off. The crew began tearing down hoses and tents but, San knew, this was the slowest part of the process; nobody could touch the delicate webbing of the mats for at least a few minutes until they cooled off or the things would be ruined, their permeability destroyed. She relayed a status report into orbit, then bounced across the ice
toward the lieutenant’s men, telling Wilson to join her.
“It’s out there,” the lieutenant said when she arrived, pointing first at a holo map that spun in the air, and then at the ice field. “It’s moving upward fast. Now five hundred meters down, shifting in this direction.”
“We should have done a drone scan,” said Wilson.
“There wasn’t time. Even if we had detected something, then what? We need the fuel and would’ve landed anyway. How long before its arrival?”
“Two minutes.”
San broke into the radio. “Water operations; how long until you finish break down and can take off?”
“Five minutes, ma’am.”
San froze. The Marines checked weapons and she felt alarm emanate from them, the mental nudges of fear almost bringing with them an odor, the pungent rot of bog and mud. A blinking blue dot marked the thing’s progress through the ice. San closed her eyes and reached out, placing a hand on Wilson’s shoulder so she wouldn’t fall while thinking of the ice, willing her mind and thoughts to brush up against whatever came toward them. Her eyes snapped open.
“What is it?” Wilson asked.
“That thing!”
“What thing?”
“It’s a monster, under the ice. Nothing but rage and hunger, and it thinks we’re a competitor. Apparently there are other creatures that live under and on the ice, only coming up to reproduce; they are its primary food source, and it thinks we’re one.”
“Tell it to go away!” the lieutenant suggested.
“It’s an animal. All emotions and intensions. I can’t communicate with it.”
Wilson backed up. The Marines noticed and San sensed their disdain.
“What do we do?” he asked.
San glanced at the display again. The creature was on the verge of breaching the ice in front of them, and crystals jumped from the ground near her feet, breaking loose with vibrations.
“Miss!” the lieutenant insisted, grabbing her elbow.
“When that thing breaks through,” San said, “kill it. At all costs, you are to prevent that thing from getting to our landing craft. If you don’t, we all die after the Jerusalem’s and Bangkok’s reserves go dry; we can’t get all our fuel from a gas giant, we need this water. As soon as our ships launch, run. One will stay behind for you and your men.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And lieutenant.” San paused, unable to look at him. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. This is the kind of crap that Marines live for.”
San was about to turn when the ice erupted. She flew backward in a cloud of white chunks that slammed against her chest, knocking the wind out with a gasp and sending her to slide several meters. Wilson landed next to her, rolling over and over and slamming to a stop against hard-packed snow.
Whatever had erupted from the ice, it yanked a memory from deep within San’s subconscious: Some scientists from ancient Earth once speculated that the octopus was never native to the planet, but had been transported there—an invasive species. This wasn’t an octopus, but it was similar. The thing had chewed its way through the ice with a sharp beak at the top of its head, which even now clamped shut and open as if unaware that it had broken through. It had no eyes. San guessed that the heat had attracted it, because it used more than thirty long, barbed tentacles to pull itself toward the ships, the thing scuttling past Marines too stunned to fire.
“Shoot it!” San screamed into her radio.
As if broken from a trance, the Marines opened up, but the vacuum and cold must have caused tracer fléchettes to malfunction because they wouldn’t ignite; a silent ballet played on the ice as bursts of flesh tore from the creature with every hit the Marines’ scored, and the monster began thrashing. Chunks of ice flew in every direction. At first it swung blindly. Then, one of the thing’s tentacles swept out and knocked the lieutenant’s legs from underneath him, sending the man spinning upward, head over foot, after which its spikes buried themselves in the next Marine’s head. The man’s voice rang through San’s helmet; he managed to gurgle a cry for help before another tentacle wrapped around his neck, ripping the man in two. When it had finished, the creature searched, its mass of tentacles feeling its way from Marine to Marine, each one ripped apart as soon as it grabbed them.
“We’re ready, ma’am,” someone radioed.
San had forgotten about the water collection operation; the announcement voice gave her a burst of hope.
“Take off! Get back to the ship. Leave my vessel here; we’re making for it now.” San waved her arms at the Marines and shouted over the radio. “Eugene, run! Get back to my ship now!”
San took off, scrambling through snow and ice with Wilson close at her heels. The lieutenant had landed just behind them after tumbling overhead, and San grabbed him by the backpack unit, dragging the man to his feet. It didn’t matter that San couldn’t see behind her; she felt the frenzied vibrations in the ice underfoot, a rhythmic pounding that resulted from each impact of the creature’s spikes as it pulled itself after the launching ships and fleeing Marines. Her pilot gestured from the airlock. San and Wilson launched themselves at the opening and soared forward to impact simultaneously against the man, sending him backward into the craft’s passenger spaces, after which San turned. The lieutenant leapt through the opening, followed by several more Marines, but the number was far fewer than what they had brought with them. She saw the remains of the others, strewn across the ice in bright red streaks, the one color visible on an otherwise barren moonscape.
“Take off,” she said.
“The airlock door is open.”
“Launch. Now!”
The monster was ten meters away when the craft’s engines ignited, thrusters under the hull sending blue flame in every direction and charring the first set of tentacles that came too close to the ship. It was the first indication that the thing could be hurt. San’s body pressed downward from the force of acceleration, the weight so great she was barely able to reach the door control. She looked out. While the ship banked away, the thing continued on its rampage throughout the ice, looking for some remnant of what had attracted it in the first place, the warmth that had now disappeared in a terrorized flight to the Jerusalem and Bangkok. She lost sight when the outer door inched shut.
“How many Marines did we lose?” she asked.
“Twenty. I wasn’t expecting anything like that, miss; I’m sorry.”
“And how much water did we get?”
Wilson clicked in. “With radio silence we can’t know right now. But I think every ship got away with almost a full load. Including this one. Plenty to get us to the next transit. We’ll know for sure upon our return.”
“Captain,” the lieutenant started, but San held up her hand.
“I don’t want to talk right now. When we get back, take me to the tomb. And Wilson . . .”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t forget to give your new captain a full report on volume of water collected.”
San crawled under high-g forces, making it to her acceleration couch where she strapped in. Images of Marines appeared behind her closed eyes, replaying the fight on the ice where that thing had ripped them apart, its nervous system failing to register coil-gun fire. It had been invincible. Would this be what war with the Sommen held? If any of their ships had been within range, the enemy could have detected the battle with the Higgins and the thought that every death was her fault still whispered. San blinked, trying to erase the visions of dying men. Instead tears flowed from both eyes, forcing her helmet to engage moisture recirculation so it could ingest the floating droplets, preventing them from fouling electronics.
Visions of death swirled, so real that San never remembered arriving at the Bangkok. She concentrated. Memories welled up from her subconscious, fusing with the Proelian mantras so that San barely knew they’d been added but sensed they came from a deep place, from wars long ago fought and ended. Mathematics is truth, death the only absolute. Thr
ough death we find our worth, and in threats we gauge our potential for they are the mirror of our courage. Decisions create results. Actions cause reactions. Through mathematics we build the foundations of our strategies and let the dead accumulate. Mourning is only for the end, when all has been decided. Feelings have no place for those seeking the perfection of victory in His name; His, not ours, is the role of Secretary for the Exchequer of Fates.
It took San longer than normal to reach out, making the connection with Ganymede.
Both ships refueled. We lost twenty Marines on the moon’s surface. Local fauna, undetected in our rush to stock water.
The response took forever. San was about to send again when it arrived. Abbess didn’t expect to hear from you so soon. She wants to know if you are under way yet, if you have found another transit to bring you closer to their home world.
No. I am about to start the search now. In the meantime, we will burn out of our current system to put distance between us and the site of our battle.
I am supposed to let you know something: Fleet found a hidden station near Childress transit. They raided it. Zhelnikov’s allies had perfected ship-mounted plasma weaponry in secret; they hid the discovery from the Admiral and Fleet.
I know of this weapon, sent San. They damaged one of our ships with it.
It is Christmas, Captain Kyarr. The abbess says to remember all that is holy. Now that we have this weapon, all future Proelian vessels are being fitted with it. End communications.
San refused to disengage. She latched onto the person on the other end and, for a split second, saw through a boy’s eyes, a candidate she didn’t recognize—but then again years had passed since she’d been on Ganymede. The boy turned from his station. It was the abbess’s room and in the corner a tree had been erected, shining with bright colored lights and ornaments that glittered against the dark stone walls. The abbess was there. She said something but the words failed to take shape and San disengaged, returning to the Bangkok in an instant with the memory of an abbess aged beyond her years, hunched over in a chair and connected to a medical bot. Her face had creased with deep lines and both hands trembled with palsy.
Tyger Bright Page 24
