Seen from above, Caitanya-9 was eerily beautiful and desolate. The purple-tinged rock, threated with veins, looked almost like a painting.
On the ground, it was a different story. The rocks, palpitated into unusual shapes by the moons, limited your vision in any particular direction. It felt like being a rat in a maze.
And of course, the scarring everywhere. Impromptu canyons that had sprouted out of the ground days or hours ago. The boulders and debris, strewn for miles from what had perhaps been buckling of the ground. Everywhere on the planet was evidence of gross violence against rock.
“Nyphur, we had a moon overpass happening. Care to give me an ETA on that?” He asked.
Nyphur’s Vyres beat gamely, trying to keep up with the faster and lighter soldiers. “Uh, we’ve got Somnath twelve-arc-secs from the third meridian in two hours. Detsen will be following a few hours laters.”
“Either way, we’re in little danger so long as we’re in the air.”
“Correct. There might be hurricanes, but you’ll know them when you see them.”
They flew until they reached the site of the beacon: a low-hanging plateau.
That was bad. The drill had been sunk into the side of a mountain, and if no trace of that remained now, the beacon was probably buried. With their weight loadout limited by the Vyres and weapons, they had little ability to dig.
On the other hand, it can’t be too deep. He thought. Otherwise it wouldn’t be able to transmit to the Konotouri.
They zeroed in on the beacon, and landed on what seemed like an unremarkable patch of ground.
“How accurate is the beacon?” Wake asked, thudding to the ground and sheathing his Vyres. They retracted with two identical hissing sounds.
“It’s not the beacon that we have to worry about, it’s the signal. Magnetic interference can curve the signal and fuck us. Still, we’re probably within a few yards of it.” Nyphur said.
Wake nodded. “Zelity, Nyphur, get me some spectrographic scans. We want slices of the earth imaged as far deep as you can get. Look for anything – metal, rust, polyplastic, field gear. One piece of buried treasure might lead us to the whole hoard.”
Zordrak pointed at a nearby crest of rock. “We’ve got company.”
They paused to see a silver metallic glow at the top of the crest. After a few seconds, it vanished.
Wake felt ice run up his spine.
“Ubra, can you check it out for us? Stay frosty. And don’t get too close.”
She nodded, fired up her Vyres, and went in pursuit of the Sphere.
Mission Interruptus 2
In the 20th and 21th centuries, a brief literary fad emerged: science fiction.
It surged out of the transportation revolution, when technology boomed and mankind’s progress reached ever upwards. Trains. Planes. Combustion engines. Telescopes threw open the door to the universe’s attic. Microscopes lifted the trapdoor on the universe’s basement. “One small step for man…” Diseases eradicated. The hungry fed. Mankind felt a collective hope, and this fueled their writings: optimistic stories about starfarers planting a united Earth flag on far-flung planets.
Then it stopped.
We stopped going into space. Diseases started evolving, in defiance of our drugs. Speed records everywhere stalled. It was as fast for a commuter to travel from New York to Tokyo in 1955 as it was in 2005. We failed to invent cold fusion, and failed to achieve immortality. We failed.
Material scientists say that gallium is the most brittle element in the universe. Philosophers differ: optimism is even more prone to breaking. Do not be seduced by its brightness. A small splinter of failure shatters it, always.
Out of the ashes of World War III, which bore witness to the loss of three billion souls in thermonuclear fire and the near collapse of the biosphere, a moon colony was established. Selene.
The philosophical argument was that mankind should not put all its eggs in one basket. There might be another war, an even bigger one, and Earth might be rendered uninhabitable. Of course, since the moon is a barren wasteland that could only be sustained by supplies from Earth, it was more akin to taking some eggs out of a basket and throwing them blindly out of a 3 story window.
For years, the Selene colony struggled on, its population never rising above more than a few hundred. Its funding was perilously thin. Three times, referendums were held on whether to terminate the project and return the Selenites to Terrus (or Earth, as it was called then). Trillions were being poured down a slop chute, for no other purpose than what seemed an escapist fantasy. But let’s talk about compound interest.
It has the dual property of being incredibly predictable, yet utterly unintuitive.
A ducat, at 10% APR, compounding daily, will be $1.10 tomorrow. The day after, $1.21. Soon, hundred, a thousand, a million, then more money than exists on Terrus, than more of any substance that exist on Terrus, then a massive, unified front of ducat coins, moving across the universe at the speed of light.
Tiny differentials yield gigantic results, despite brains inducing that this isn’t the case. This is probably why, at the first available opportunity, we should get new brains.
In the case of Selene, it was a dramatic proof of selection effects. The original colonists of the moon were incredibly smart people. You needed an advanced degree in science, 10,000 hours in a flight simulator, 20-20 vision, and no history of congenital defects…and that was just to get a spot in line for a ticket. The Space Travel committee only selected outstanding individuals.
It’s estimated that by the year 2040, the median IQ of Selene was 160 points. Higher than Earth’s by several sigmas.
As time passed, an elite clade of humans emerged, selecting only the best from Earth to enjoy their company. One day, they called themselves the Selene Arm.
At some point, they asked why the Earthmen were in charge of Earth’s destiny, instead of them. And as war soon broke out, I suppose a satisfying answer was not forthcoming.
Earth had everything. Resources. Land. Weaponry. A six hundredfold population . Without supplies of water from Earth, the rebels would be dead in less than a year.
The Selenites said they had forty experimental antimatter bombs buried beneath the rock of the moon. Combined, they had an explosive force measured in teratons. And unless an incredibly favourable treaty was signed, they would detonate them.
Nearly a third of the moon’s mass would be obliterated, blown out like flesh from a rotten peach. Earth would be scoured clean by antimatter radiation. Perhaps a few humans would survive in deep bunkers…for a few days. Then thousands of rocks the size of the Matterhorn would crash down, ending life.
In one of history’s great debated decisions, Earth surrendered.
The Selenites returned to Earth, as conquerors. The rebranded themselves as the Solar Arm, for they had ambitions for the solar system and beyond. Science fiction always predicted invaders from other stars. In the end, the true enemy of man was man.
Ion acceleration drives enabling near-light travel were invented later that month.
[The Black Shift Project, by Emil Gokla, 2100 edition. Rights resolve with the Black Shift Archives.]
Caitanya-9 – March 14, 2136 - 1300 hours
Zelity and Nyphur were running a scanner through the rock, looking for changes in composition.
As solid as the earth, the charming linguistic anachronism went, even though nobody had called Terrus the Earth in a century. Here, at least, the earth wasn’t solid. Thanks to the moons, the earth danced, and at any moment it could be ready to dance you to death.
Caitanya-9 was uninhabitable, unmappable, unchartable. Its only state was near constant change. The ground they were standing on wouldn’t be the ground that was there tomorrow. They’d found the beacon, but it wasn’t really the beacon they were looking for. They were looking for the thing that the beacon had marked four years ago. And neither of them were too optimistic about finding it.
“I used to dream about studying the sky
, but that’s child’s play.” Nyphur said. “Studying the ground’s the real deal. We still know damned little about the way earthquakes work, how they propogate. We have a paucity of data because there’s still no decent way of seeing through solid rock. Sherlock Jones once said ‘I can’t make bricks without clay’. In this case, we can’t make bricks for the clay.”
“Did you know he was originally Sherlock Holmes?” Zelity said. “In the original texts by Arthur Conan Doyle? An ebook curator screwed up a text-to-speech transfer and now everyone calls him Jones.”
“No, I didn’t know that.” Nyphur said, in a voice that said please don’t correct me again.
“But I hear you,” Zelity said. “I always respected spelunkers more than mountaneers. I guess because the mountaineer seeks to conquer and dominate the earth, while a spelunker humbly descends to the level of the earth, and invites himself into its home.”
Nyphur changed the frequency range on the device. “I’ve never known a grunt so poetic.”
“Maybe I’m not a soldier. I’ve had memories implanted telling me I am, but how I can I trust them? Maybe they’re someone else’s.”
“It’s a constitutional violation to blank someone’s memory and give them false new ones.”
“Gosh, there’s a law. I feel so much better.”
“Also, you can’t just load any set of memories into anyone. The brain has a factor called neuroplasticity. The cortical size and the gyrus density is shaped by your own individual experiences, and the memories have to match this physical structure as closely as possible. Otherwise, you get schizophrenia, psychosis, insanity.”
“I don’t think that makes me feel better.” Zelity said, “considering I’m a guy who pisses in the toilet bowl at an angle to try and create a whirlpool.”
Ping!
The spectroscopal analyser picked up a difference. “We’ve got it.” Zelity said.
“Correction.” Nyphur said. “We’ve got something.”
“Hey, something’s an it.” They got out a sonic shovel, and set it to digging.
The femto-sharp edge cut and split solid rock, allowing them to shift it out and add to the pile of rubble beside the hole. A meter down, they saw something. A flash of white.
Nyphur reached down into the hole, and touched it with his hand. He grimaced in disappointment. “It doesn’t feel like metal.”
He pulled out, and dusted it off.
It looked like a curved piece of pottery snapped off a bowl. It was a smooth, rounded surface, with a single hard jagged edge.
They spectrally analysed it in greater detail, and soon the machine spat out an answer.
A fragment of human bone.
Ubra took to the air, following the disappearing point of light. She had no weapon drawn. It affected her aerodynamic stability, and the Sphere might interpret it as a threat.
It led her on a journey through the endless rocks. Caitanya-9 was a planet of contradictions: elaborate, but meaningless. Eerie, but dull. It was like wandering a land of Euclidean math from the dullest pages of a textbook.
She flew through fluted tunnels of rock, feeling gusts of wind knock her off-balance. Sometimes her boots scraped the ground, other times she was twenty meters in the air. She dodged and avoided obstacles, vaguely aware that she was gaining on it.
Just then, it stopped.
She got her first look at the strangest life-form mankind had yet encountered. Not a slime mold. Not a one-cell replicant creature barely visible under a microscope. A huge, advanced life-form that displayed promising signs of intelligence.
And strangest of all, a life-form with no visible pyramid of life supporting it.
Mankind hadn’t sprung from nowhere. It relied on an elaborate and convoluted chain of smaller creatures that had alternately given it food, materials, and DNA.
Here was an anomaly: a creature high on the ladder of existence…but there was no ladder in sight.
“Just what are you?” She whispered.
“What?” Wake said.
“Nevermind.” She’d forgotten about the earpiece, and the microphone wired close to her diaphragm. She’d forgotten about the rest of the team.
She contemplated turning off the microphones in her body armour. She hadn’t had a moment’s privacy since waking up from suspended sleep – it would be nice to be alone with your thoughts. Alone, and away from Wake and his nameless intensity.
Alone, with the Sphere.
She drifted closer. Entranced by it. Fascinated by it. Spellbound by it. As if it was the crystal ball in which she would divine her fortunes.
“I bet you’re full of surprises…” She whispered, hovering closer.
It fired a beam of light that punched a hole the size of a fist in her midsection, spearing right through her body and exiting in a spray of fried blood. Her mouth opened in a scream. That was a surprise.
Wake and his crew were scouring the ground in pairs, hoping to score a lucky find, when they heard Ubra scream through voice comms.
Then he lost her signal.
“Shit.” All six of them took to the air simultaneously. “Stay calm. Seven o’clock position. Nyphur, stay behind and get the shuttles ready for evac.”
They flew in the direction of the scream, unslinging weapons and chambering rounds. Combat instincts took over. They spread apart to the Koretsin distance – a space such that two of them couldn’t be killed by one shot. So named after a legendary ace shooter from two hundred years ago, who’d somehow managed to kill five men using only two shots and a biographer given to liberties regarding the truth. They fanned out into a chevron formation, so that they’d all hit firing range at the same time.
None of them heard anything more from Ubra. They assumed the worst, and were surprised when her signal suddenly reappeared on Wake’s HUD.
“Ubra!” yelled Wake.
“W…what happened?” She said. “What’s going on? Who am I?”
Another finger of ice to Wake’s spine.
They rounded a corner, and found her lying on the ground. They swooped down in defensive formation, covering her fallen figure.
She seemed completely unharmed, aside from a scorched-black hole in her combat uniform.
“I don’t know what’s happening,” she sobbed. “I just woke up, and there was this glowing ball thing watching me…”
The Sphere. “Where is it?” Wake asked as two of the men helped Ubra back to her feet. Her Vyres were crumpled by the fall, and she looked to have hurt her ankle, but beyond that, she seemed unharmed.
The question was answered by a flash of light, and a blast of fire that missed Wake by a hair’s breadth.
The Sphere was hurtling towards them, shrieking in aggression. “Fire at will!” Andrei launched himself into the air, disengaging the safety on his MeshuggahTech.
The heavy assault rifle fired explosive shells at nearly a thousand rounds per minute. They could punch through nearly a foot of solid steel. He fired two bursts, the recoil almost sending him into a mid-air spiral. The first missed. The second struck the Sphere at an angle, bathing it in flame.
It screamed again, and fired another blast of light, which Wake rolled to avoid.
Zordrak and Calypso unleashed a withering storm of gunfire from the flanks. When Wake had his balance back he joined them, blasting at the howling metal orb.
Three lines of fire were lancing out, with the Sphere at the epicenter. It wasn’t going down.
It swooped in closer, and began firing shots at the attacking marines – incredibly fast bolts of light that it took all of the men’s skill to dodge. Calypso was bowled over by the heat wave from a near miss. Zordrak went to ground.
“Take cover!” Wake fired another burst that skimmed off the surface of the Sphere. “Get Ubra back to the LZ, and spread the word – this evac’s going to be hot!”
The men, still ducking blasts of light from the enraged Sphere, hid behind rocks, behind outcrops, in the cover of hills, anywhere. They reloaded and began s
niping at the beast. None of their shots seemed to be doing damage.
“Harass it, try to get it to react.” Wake said. A blast from the Sphere nearly tore his cover apart, and he moved behind a thicker rock. “We’re data poor – we need to learn more to fight this thing.”
He looked, and saw Zelity and Yath flying the semi-conscious Ubra to safety. Nice time to take a nap, girl.
“Hey, Wake!” Yelled Zordrak. “Catch!”
Wake caught a clip of BurnKore ammunition - corrosive acid rounds that latched to the target, chewing through armor and flesh alike. He ejected the explosive rounds, fitted the BurnKores, and took a breath. A deep one.
Then he flew out from cover.
The Sphere noticed him immediately, and started launching a blizzard of light pulses in his direction.
He had time to get off one round.
Then, it was time to duck, and roll, and dodge, and evade. He tucked his feet to avoid a bolt of light whipping past at knee level. A second later, he dipped forward to avoid decapitation
Calypso popped up to his right, and distractd it with a quick burst. As it turned to fight this new threat, Wake sighted and blasted it with acid rounds.
Metallic squalls of agony. Oh, it doesn’t like that.
He sighted, and fired again and again, dodging the bolts of light. Not all of his shots hit home on the massive target, but soon it was festooned with burning acid welts.
Its luminous silver light started blinked on and off erratically. Its movements became uncontrolled and jerky.
Heartened by Wake’s success, the remaining marines attacked, pummeling it with a brutal weight of small arms fire. The attack was relentless, furious. Its light pulsed in and out, its whine grew fainter and fainter.
Then, it fell to the ground with a thud, and started to roll.
Whoops and cheers over the comms.
“Bag it and tag it!”
“We’ve got a live dead’un!”
They flew in closer, and suddenly, Wake realized the precarious of the situation.
Black Shift (The Consilience War Book 1) Page 6
