Into the Maelstrom

by Loren L. Coleman

  Brygan Vassilyevich Nystolov relaxed back into the uncomfortable molded-plastic chair. He knew that most other Neo-Soviet military personnel in his position, being held by the enemy, would be sitting ramrod straight and answering any question with stony silence. Acting the part of regular military would be a fast way to the detention cells, at best, a firing squad, at worst. So he leaned back and scratched idly at his unkempt beard, grown long during his week in space, or ran blunt fingers back through his shock of thick black hair. He slurped at the American coffee provided for him, finding it weak and bitter, and smiled gregariously at the two men facing him in this game.

  Move and countermove, as each side worked its own strategies. His captors trying to ferret out the truth and he working desperately to hand them a carefully crafted story. Not a lie. Lies were too easy to break through. No, it was a variation so close to the truth as to be indiscernible. Brygan Nystolov, not represented as a military auxiliary but simply an exploration specialist. His background of exploring Mars would help him pass himself off as a minor scientist. He knew enough of the basics—no matter that the empire would never have trusted him with truly critical data.

  Already Brygan had identified the dangerous one of the pair, a thickly muscled man with black skin and an air of competence. The space-specialist rating on his Marine uniform gave his rate away and warned Brygan to be all the more cautious.

  The other one had so far demonstrated a tolerance not consistent with military bearing. Of medium height and build with dark sideburns that grew to sharp points, the Union major tended to be magnanimous, especially in front of the captain. At first Brygan had thought the affected behaviors a variation on the classic good-politburo, bad-politburo interrogation. Now, he wasn’t so sure. If these men were acting, they were very good.

  Better than he was, in fact.

  Captain Drake, the dangerous one, consulted a small electronic notepad. “Review of your ship’s intact logs bears out at least part of your story. That you left Mars over six days ago, according to the ship’s clock. A clock that is five days out of sequence with the correct time as we measured it here.” A disconcerting pause. “We found no evidence that you reset the internal clock, and Major Williams has pressed for acceptance of the fact that following Earth through the event cost you five days outside of”—pause again—“reality.” His tone suggested his own belief in that idea. “Where I have trouble accepting this is that the Kolyma does not have life-support capability for that long a span.”

  “You made some modifications to life support,” Major Williams said, his tone softer but dark eyes no less sharp. “With the extra scrubber you created, you might have extended it a few extra days, but five?”

  Brygan sighed heavily, because it would be expected of him. He had expected to give up this personal information, but there was no sense in seeming eager to do so.

  “Mistakes the empire has made,” he said carefully, as if worried his words might reach back to Moskva, “leave me with ability to breathe thinner air than most.” He spoke English, in deference to his captors, knowing that it wouldn’t be held against him. He knew that most Union personnel in space, military or civilian, also learned basic Russian. He preferred to believe his accent was not nearly so atrocious as theirs were likely to be. Besides, it would help him appear less the foreigner. Less the enemy.

  “This is why I choose space exploration for my specialty,” he added. The pair looked at each other. Neither one of them had completely bought his story—not yet—though the major seemed on the verge of doing so. Drake would be a harder sell.

  It was Williams’s turn to open a new gambit. “I’ve cleared you of most of the charges against you, including sabotage of a sensitive Union project under investigation. The pulses emitted from the crystalline formation interfered with the Kolyma’s improperly shielded electronics. It drew you in like a landing beacon and brought you down right on top of it. A regrettable loss, but if it hadn’t you might have flown off into the Maelstrom with no hope of recovery.”

  The Maelstrom, Williams called it, referring to the vast debris-choked system in which Terra was now one of many planets. Half a hundred detected so far, Williams had said, as well as a few very tiny suns, small but thick nebulae, and that strange sunlike body wounding the sky. An incredible count of asteroids and planetoid-size fragments told of worlds already lost through violent cataclysm. They had allowed Brygan to study the sky. It was dark and forbidding, a frightening and curious place. He hadn’t needed to feign a scientist’s interest.

  “Thank you for your assistance,” he said politely, nodding to Williams. “I would never wreck such a site as you describe.”

  The major deferred to his companion with a glance. “Actually, that was another of Captain Drake’s investigations.”

  The dark-skinned man smiled sarcastically. “I don’t believe in charging a man for crimes he did not commit.”

  Implying that the empire certainly would. Well, there Brygan could not disagree, especially after experiencing General Leonov’s iron rule over Red Mars. He remembered the general’s treatment of the Mental, the reason he’d been out in space to begin with, and winced at the memory. Had the Mental made it to Earth? Brygan suddenly found himself hoping so, though neither of his interrogators mentioned the Leonid Sergetov. Perhaps they were testing him. If so, it was a gambit he could turn to his advantage.

  “There was another vessel,” he said slowly, noticing the reactions of both Drake and Williams. They knew nothing about it. The bulk of his mission files were still safe on the Kolyma, then. It was time to play out toward his endgame. “An infantry vessel carrying men back to Terra. I was chasing it down when . . .” He paused, frowned as he hoped a true scientist would at being unable to put the proper name to any event or phenomenon, “. . . when storm struck.”

  Major Williams leaned forward with sudden interest. “I would be interested in knowing more about this storm you witnessed building around Earth.”

  “I would be interested in knowing more about this military transport,” Drake interrupted. “You said in your statement that you were sent to reestablish contact with Earth.”

  “We lose complete contact with Terra shortly around time the Leonid Sergetov left Mars. I was dispatched by General Leonov to carry several messages back to Terra, including news of your recent landing on Mars.”

  Neither Union man could hold back a satisfied grin. The intelligence Brygan had just handed them might once have been considered priceless, the news that Union forces were finally in the position to bid for a strong foothold on Mars. Brygan considered it inconsequential now, unless Terra could escape whatever held it. “I had hoped to meet with the larger vessel—safer for all concerned. Especially when storm struck.” He looked to Drake, the military man. “Did the Leonid make it through?”

  Drake held back a moment, then shook his head. “Not that we know of, though if you spent five unaccounted-for days coming through this Veil the major talks about, no telling where your other vessel ended up. And we experienced some gaps in our surveillance net when your empire launched missiles.” He features clouded, his dark eyes narrowing slightly in accusation. Not at Brygan specifically, but for his allegiance.

  The scout bowed his head in what he hoped was a manner properly subdued. “The empire makes mistakes,” he said again, softly. He looked back up at his interrogators. “Is the Union perfect?”

  Williams shook his head ruefully. “Not all the time. In fact, rarely. But we continue to try. Though certainly our advances in technology and space exploration prove that the sciences prosper.”

  There it was, the typical Union effort to encourage defection. Brygan thought it might have come off better if Captain Drake had handled the vague hint, but a tightening about the eyes argued for Drake’s distaste for encouraging defection.

  “I have duties . . .” Brygan said, hesitant to go too far along that road and playing to Drake.

  The Union captain read into the hesitation. �
�Understandable. Still, all diplomatic channels are closed right now.” A way of saying that the fighting continued. “You will continue to be . . . a guest here. Perhaps you would consent to opening your computer files to Major Williams and me, since you would be carrying no military secrets? Call it a gesture of goodwill.”

  And if Brygan had done a good job of doctoring the files, they would back up his story and exonerate him. He nodded slowly. “The encryption key is the date of Yuri Gagarin’s first flight into space—military time, day, month, and year.” There, they had their prize. Or so they thought. Drake and Williams looked surprised that he had caved in so easily on that point. “But I would make a request.”

  Williams nodded. “Yes?”

  Brygan stared hard at Williams, ready to test the scientist’s good word and seeming to dismiss Drake. “Any work my observations figure into, any conclusions they help you draw, they are to be shared with me for delivery to the Neo-Soviet empire.”

  They had the key. Here was where he moved his final piece into place, playing his role to the limit, and tested how well they bought in to his story.

  Drake started at first, obviously about to refuse on general principles, then seemed to think the better of it, as though he would bow to Williams’s judgment. A good sign, though Brygan thought it might have more to do with Drake’s proving a point to Williams than his actual leanings.

  Williams hesitated, his own ethics called into question on the idea, then nodded. “Very well, Brygan Nystolov. You have my word on that.”

  The familiar use of the scout’s name twinged deep inside Brygan, though he quickly wrote it off as Williams’s knowing no better. He leaned forward and offered his hand to the major and then to Captain Drake. Both accepted the handshake.

  “That is good,” he exclaimed, again the gregarious Neo-Soviet. “Then you had better reverse the reading of date I gave you. Enter it backward, or you will wipe the computer memory clean.”

  Williams started, shocked for the moment that Brygan would have risked the loss of data. Drake nodded once, a grudging respect. Not between equals, though, one military man to another. It was a military mind acknowledging a game well played by an inferior. By a scientist.

  Check and mate.

  15

  * * *

  K atya Romilsky had fumbled her field glasses when the creature’s monstrous head first reared up from the dark hollow of the hill. Seventeen years of service had dulled her unease when dealing with mutants or those disfigured through the more mundane violence of warfare. Her older brother had succumbed to a ruined genetic heritage, and she still remembered the forced pride in her parents’ voices when they told her of the honor he had reclaimed fighting and dying in a Neo-Soviet Rad Troop. Katya’s own touch of goryachee had manifested in more useful forms, though a physical reminder stared back from any reflective surface as the silverish stripe that marred her auburn hair. But this creature, this alien thing her Chem Grunts had awakened, it assaulted her sensibilities.

  It frightened her.

  Black chitin, ridged from the endoskeleton poking through from beneath, flared out at both sides. It lent the creature’s shovel-shaped head the hooded appearance of a cobra, though there any major resemblance to a Terran creature ended. Gray-green fluid runneled down from its head and neck, washing free of long stripes of fleshy, yellow muscle that ran along the outside of the chitinous protection and added to its more horrible aspects. A vertically slit mouth began under the hood and trailed down the neck, creating a fanged maw that looked capable of swallowing an Avalanche crawler whole. Several black tentacles reached out of the mouth, thrashing in the air as if looking for prey on which to lay hold. A tangle of bloated pustules and fat tentacles crowned its head. It rose up toward the sky, as if straining to reach that uneasy excuse for a new sun, and with its neck fully extended it released a shriek that set every soldier clapping hands to ears to shut it out. A broken scream of sharp nails scraping across slate, supported by a hideous crackling that reminded the colonel of dry, breaking bones.

  Scores—hundreds—of smaller creatures also poured forth, dripping the grayish green fluid as they jumped, crawled, flew, and even floated. Most of the winged creatures took to the air at once and raced away along eight cardinal points, perfectly coordinated. Katya watched a dozen wasp-shaped bodies on impossibly strong legs jump up toward the monster’s long neck, fastening into the ridges there and apparently feeding off one of the fleshy, ropelike muscles. Their translucent white bodies flushed a deep ocher. Others fluttered on diaphanous wings around its head like moths to a flame. Bloated creatures looking like nothing better than large balls of gas-filled intestine drifted out to ring the alien—the Sleeper, as Gregor called it.

  “Magnificent,” Gregor Detchelov said, moving up beside her.

  The two surveyed the Sleeper and the Union forces from a sharp ridge to the southwest, where the colonel had ordered the bulk of the army moved even before she’d gone to meet Sainz. It had taken the creature an hour to completely free itself of the confining shell. Clusters of chitin-covered legs sprouted out from beneath an armored carapace that protected its large body. The spiked limbs dug at rock and earth, pushing it forward. The long neck would reach out and settle its base onto the ground, dragging a great deal of weight forward in the manner of a serpent. Thick ridges occasionally tore themselves away from the back, exposing themselves as armored tentacles with a corpseflesh underside. They flailed the air a moment, then resettled over the back and resealed themselves into hardened armor.

  “Magnificent,” Romilsky repeated, her voice lacking his enthusiasm. “What do you see that is admirable in this thing?”

  “What is not to admire, Comrade Colonel?” Detchelov gestured toward the beast as it towered over the Union forces retreating before it. Heading westward, right past their vantage point. “Its sheer size. Its defenses. The way it works in concert with the smaller creatures for its own good.” He shook his head. “We have yet to perfect a symbiot program.”

  Romilsky had not even been aware that was a field the empire pursued, though it did not surprise her now. She compared Gregor’s current enthrallment to the man who had gone pale back in Noril’sk when she commanded him to accompany her on the front lines. But then Gregor Antoly Detchelov had come up through the ranks as a mutant trainer and later, with his commission, as a program evaluator. She had taken Gregor as her aide for his uncanny ability with mutants and Rad Troopers, and for his utter lack of ability to command disparate units. He was an asset in deploying the more exotic troops but would never be a threat to her command of the Fifty-sixth Striker. Naturally, he saw more to this Sleeper alien than she did. She wondered, however, if he was looking with open eyes.

  “Do you find it magnificent in the way it destroyed our auxiliary force?” she asked him, a touch of steel to her voice.

  The feint she had set on the Union’s eastern flank had tracked them right into the creature’s shadow. The on-site officer had ordered an attack without orders. Through field glasses they had both watched the monstrous alien shred several packs of Rad Troopers. A brave squad of Vanguard had scaled the Sleeper’s back while it fed on the Troopers and mutants, only to be struck down by electrical discharges that leapt from the back of the Sleeper’s head and danced over its armored carapace. Smaller drones had swept in, then, finishing off the balance of the force.

  Gregor had the good grace to wince at the bite of her words. Still, he quickly spun the unfortunate defeat into a positive light, in good Neo-Soviet form. “The Vanguard were an unfortunate loss. Rad Troopers and Cyclops we can easily request replacements for. And they taught us more of the Sleeper’s strengths. The creature is effective in smashing numbers, but not so well equipped to defend itself against individuals. For that it must rely on its symbiotic partners. And it has the electrical defense for those who work in too close, a mistake we will not repeat. And once we gain control of the Sleeper, learn its secrets, the empire will be stronger.”

&nbs
p; A goal she applauded. Except, “One thing, Gregor Antoly. You laud the Sleeper’s strong defenses and alien nature. How do you intend to control such a thing?”

  That visibly bothered the junior officer. He made several attempts to speak, then broke off each time. Finally, flustered, he said, “To control a thing, you must discover and control its needs.”

  A sound theory, when dealing with the mutants created by the Neo-Soviet empire. “And those needs are?”

  His shoulders slumped in defeat. “I do not know.” But to end on a strong note, he hitched up his chin, and said, “Yet. Perhaps that Mental can assist.”

  “Hmm.” Katya Romilsky nodded curtly and returned her attention to the view through her field glasses. The silence stretched out uncomfortably, until Gregor apparently could not bear it.

  “May I ask what it is that you see, then, Colonel Romilsky?”

  In the creature’s path, a rear guard of the Seventy-first Assault Group continued to fire at it but with little effect. It stretched its long neck out again, shrieking its soul-grating scream. If the Seventy-first were to turn its entire firepower against it, then perhaps they could injure the great monster. A few men buying time for the main force would do little but annoy such an alien.

  She swept her view forward to where the Union force loaded up their Hydra ag transports, pulling in all but the rear guard as they prepared for a fast run out from under the Sleeper’s immediate path. Where her auxiliary force had been intended to drive the Union forces into her ambush, now the alien monster did the same.

  “I see an opportunity,” she finally answered.

  * * *

  When Captain Drake escorted Brygan into Tycho’s Control and Direction area rather than back to the interrogation room, Brygan accepted it as a positive sign. Not that he had any doubt about his remaining under tight surveillance. Or that most classified material would be blanked from the console screens or, better yet, altered to provide false information. So he studiously ignored a tactical station and another running comms, and instead swung away to study a screen that ran a simulation. Near as he could tell, the simulation showed what it had looked like when the strange storm cleared away, leaving Luna staring up into a hostile sky. Terra remained lost behind the gray-glowing fog, and from around one edge of the glimmering shield that white-fury eye cast a hostile glare at the moon.