Battlecruiser Alamo_Depth Charge

by Richard Tongue

   “I don’t believe it,” Salazar said. “The amount of power that thing must be generating could be more than Alamo’s primary reactor.” He paused, then continued, “It’s a heating element.”

   “What’s the point, though?” Foster asked. “If whoever built this had that much power at their disposal, why tie it up down here? If they wanted to terraform the world, there are better ways, and there’s no evidence of habitation.”

   “Not on the surface. We don’t know what we might find down there, and my guess is that we never will.” Frowning, he added, “Tie your datapad into the sensor pickups. At least we can get a record of this.” He paused, then said, “What if we’re looking at this the wrong way?”

   “What do you mean?”

   “We’re thinking that this might be some sort of heater, boiling the ocean. What if that’s not the explanation at all, but instead this is part of some huge, buried power complex. A radiator of some kind, dispersing waste heat.”

   Foster whistled, and said, “Never mind a starship. That’d be a reactor larger than anything ever conceived. One that would require a subsurface ocean to handle.” She paused, and said, “That might explain the lack of life, as well. The surface is cracked to pieces. What if, sometimes, the surface actually does melt, before freezing over again. Even thermophilic bacteria have their limits, especially if the environment constantly changes.”

   Nodding, Salazar said, “I think we’ve found the power complex of some long-lost alien civilization, buried under the ice. Long-dead, or it would have been functioning when we arrived. We triggered it with the probe. Or someone else did, and we’re experiencing the consequences of that. All of this looks like it might be automatic.” His eyes widened, and he said, “A defense mechanism.”

   “Against who?”

   “Us.”

   “What?”

   “Anyone who might turn up.” Adjusting the trim again, bringing them back to their previous attitude, he continued, “Think about it. A culture that wants to remain hidden from the universe, buried away forever. One that has a technique of jamming sensors, even if anyone manages to penetrate the ice field above them.” Warming to his topic, he continued, “Add in an element of xenophobia. It makes perfect sense if you think about it. That’s why there’s no life out there. They exterminated it, everything. It has to be artificial. It can’t possibly be anything else.”

   “But...”

   “Then they die out. If they hadn’t, I’d bet that we’d already be dead. A culture like that?” Shaking his head, he continued, “So they set everything to go up if someone finds them. A last resort, a doomsday machine, set to detonate.” Gesturing at the surface, he continued, “What happens if a power complex that large overloads?”

   “An explosion.” Her eyes widened, and she said, “Something large enough to throw mass into orbit. The gravity’s not much higher than Io, and the volcanoes...”

   “Something that could be large enough to tear half the planet apart,” Salazar said. “And we’re stuck here with a front-row seat.” He slammed his hand on the circuit breakers for the tenth time, but as before, nothing happened, not even a flicker from the control panel. “That charge knocked us out completely.”

   “Why would Kolchak want to trigger it, though?” Foster asked. “I don’t understand.”

   Closing his eyes, Salazar sighed in quiet desperation, and said, “That isn’t Kolchak. It’s the not-men. We’re getting close to their territory now, and I’d guess that they know that there is something down here, might even have records of the race that once lived on this world. Enough to know what might happen if everything goes wrong.” Shaking his head, he said, “If they’re caught in low orbit, without warning, it could take out both ships. Not to mention Spartacus Station.”

   “Then we’ve got to stop it,” Foster said. “We’ve got to get down there, find some way...”

   “How?” he asked, bitterly. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but we’re already beginning to overheat. I hate to think what the stresses on the outer hull are at the moment, but that heat is going to leech through and roast us alive, and we’re thirty thousand feet from the surface.”

   “Then we’ve got to go up,” Foster replied. “Get back up to the ice sheet. Get into contact with Alamo and Kolchak, find some way to warn them, even if there’s nothing they can do to us.” Gesturing at the ceiling, she said, “The ice sheet will be thin right now. If we crash into it with enough speed, then we might be able to break through.”

   “It’ll take hours,” Salazar replied. “Six hours at least to get to the surface from here, and I’m by no means certain that we have time for that. Not to mention that we won’t reach the surface with anything like the force you’re talking about.” He rubbed his forehead again, and said, “There’s another way, but I don’t like it.” Reaching to the ceiling, he tugged at a bar, dropping it into position, and continued, “Quinn and I came up with a last-resort system. It jettisons everything but the internal pressure sphere. All the ballast, all the instruments, everything. It’ll work, just half a dozen small charges to rip us clear, and we’ll go shooting up to the surface like a rocket.”

   “That’s exactly what we need,” she said with a smile.

   “Except that we will go shooting up to the surface like a rocket, and if we’re wrong about the ice thinning out on top, we’ll be smashed to pieces. Worse, we’ll have no control at all, no way of altering course. We go right up from here, no matter what we find. We won’t even have the viewscreen. All the exterior pickups will go. Just the depth gauge.”

   “And that changes the situation how, exactly?” she asked. “We’re dead in the water now, Pavel, and you said yourself that we don’t have time to wait. Pull the damn trigger already.”

   Nodding, he said, “Check your restraints. Make sure you’re locked tight. There’s a five-second delay from when I work the mechanism, but I want to make sure you know exactly what we’re getting into here. We’ll pull multiple-gravity acceleration on the ascent, and if there’s anything in our way...”

   “Rocks fall, we die, I get it,” she said, tugging her restraints into place. “Do it.”

   Taking a deep breath, Salazar reached for the ceiling controls, tugging them into position, then quickly clicked his restraints tight, his hands locked onto the armrests, his eyes locked on the depth gauge. With an ear-splitting crack, the explosive bolts fired, and the sphere was immediately detached, hurling towards the surface far faster than they had descended. All their systems were out, only the light of his datapad illuminating the depth gauge as they shot through the sea, racing towards the ice cap above, praying that it had been sufficiently weakened to allow them to escape.

   “Twenty thousand feet, ascending!” Salazar said.

   “Inside temperature dropping,” Foster replied. “About as estimated. I think we’re going to make it yet. Pressure stable, all monitors stable.”

   “Fifteen thousand feet! Damn it, we’re really moving!”

   The force of the acceleration was pushing the two of them back into their seats, but there was no way they could influence their ascent anyway. Either they would penetrate the ice on the first try and end up reaching the surface, or they’d fail, and either die from the force of the impact, or slowly as their air supply ran out. The life support systems had failed along with everything else, and all they had left was the air in the cabin, already beginning to grow stale. They had the respirators in their suits, but they’d only last for a few hours, nowhere near long enough to save their lives, even optimistically. There was no chance of rescue. Even if the eruption they feared failed to occur.

   “Five thousand feet! Any time now. Hold on!”

   A thunderous crack echoed from the roof, and Salazar’s eyes widened as he looked around the cabin, looking for the breach that would seal their doom. Then he felt a strange feeling in his stomach, churning over and over.

/>    He was sea sick.

   They were on the surface. They’d broken through.

   Instantly, he pulled on his surface suit, connecting the oxygen supply and feeling an immediate boost. Even now, they didn’t have long before they’d freeze over again, and they had to move, as quickly as they could. Foster was only a few seconds behind, fumbling the last of her connections into place, and he reached for the last functional control, blowing the emergency hatch.

   Starlight bathed the cabin, and he scrambled up, out of the trap the submersible had become, and looked out at the ice sheet beyond. It couldn’t be more than an inch thick now, was on the verge of breaking up entirely, but one of the few, isolated rocky outcrops stood only a quarter mile away, close enough that they must have come within meters of crashing into the rocks under the surface.

   As he slid down the sphere to the surface, he reached down for Foster, belatedly detecting a new danger. The ice was thin enough that it was cracking underfoot. As Foster skidded down besides him, it began to buckle under the weight, and the two of them sprinted across the steadily melting ice, racing for the safety of rock, shattering the surface behind them as they skidded and slid their way to safety. They barely reached it in time, climbing to the top rapidly enough to see the surface shatter behind them, steadily growing thinner as the sea temperature rose.

   “Damn, that was close,” Foster said.

   Shaking his head, Salazar replied, “What do you mean, was? I hate to break it to you, but we’ve got no equipment, no idea where we are, and no means of leaving this rock. Got any good ideas for our next step?”

   Foster reached to her communications controls, then said, “Foster to Alamo, Foster to Alamo, calling on emergency frequency. Come in, please. Come in, please.”

  Chapter 22

   Orlova’s hands rested on the controls, gently guiding the shuttle through the increasingly turbulent atmosphere, crosswinds tossing them around as she struggled to make the needed corrections, to keep them on course through the maelstrom below. The once-pristine surface had become a crazy jumble of cracks and fissures across half a hemisphere, columns of steam rising into the sky in a dozen places, patches of open ocean spreading across the surface like a strange virus.

   Harper, in the co-pilot’s seat, rode the sensors, keeping them locked on to the faint beacon from Cooper’s communicator, guiding them over now-strange landscape below as they raced to their target. Behind them, glaring at the controls, was Riley, fierce anxiety displayed on his face as the shuttle sped through the clouds, racing to the surface.

   “There,” Harper said. “Three degrees port. About thirty miles. Better hurry, skipper. There’s a lot of open water around there.” She looked at the fuel gauge, and said, “Seventy-three percent fuel remaining. Plenty for a quick escape.”

   “Any idea what the hell might be going on down there?”

   “Not a clue, ma’am,” she replied. “Surface temperature is rising like a rocket, and with about the same result. At this rate, the ice cap will be completely melted in a matter of minutes. I’ve never seen anything like it.” Throwing a control, she added, “Water temperature in the local area is up to three hundred and twenty Kelvin and still rising. Someone’s throwing around a hell of a lot of power down there.” Turning to her, she said, “You think Pavel might have triggered something?”

   “Or the other submersible,” Riley said. He sighed, and added, “If you built your submersible from the same specifications as ours, then that’s over the rated heat capacity. I doubt there’s much chance that they’re still alive.” Glancing at his watch, he continued, “And according to your estimates, they’re still twenty thousand feet down. It would take hours for them to get to the surface.”

   “I don’t know about the United Nations Space Fleet,” Harper said, “but in the Triplanetary Fleet, we don’t write someone off as dead until we’ve seen the body!”

   “”Kris,” Orlova began. At a look from the hacker, she shook her head, returning to her controls. She could just spot the destroyed base on what was left of the ice now, a battered, deflated dome sprawled across the surface, and could see three figures next to it. As she watched, a bright point of light rose from one of them, a flare that left no room for doubt that they had found what they were looking for.

   She reached down with a hand, deploying the landing legs, then carefully fired the retrothrusters to bring them to a smooth touchdown, as close to the three men as she dared, keeping a hand on the lateral jet controls at all time, the surface creaking and cracking under the weight of the shuttle. Behind them, Riley was working the airlock, urging them inside, one after another, the grateful troopers tearing off their suits and quickly stowing them into the storage lockers as they took their seats.

   As she had expected, Cooper was the last one inside, sealing the lock with a grateful nod at Riley as he walked up to the cockpit.

   “All secure, Captain. And thanks for the pickup.”

   “Any time,” she replied. “Prepare for full acceleration. I don’t like the looks of the neighborhood any more, and as soon as we can get out of here, the better.”

   “Wait one,” Harper said, playing with the communication controls. “I’m picking up something. Low power, like a damaged suit communicator at a distance, but there’s a definite pattern out there.” She worked the controls while Orlova watched, and said, “I can’t make it out, but it’s about a hundred and thirty miles north-west of here.”

   Calling up a satellite feed, Orlova replied, “Orbital imagery shows that area completely flooded out, Kris.”

   “The submersible floats, doesn’t it?” Harper said. “And there are plenty of rocks out there at the moment, though that will change as the water levels rise.” Her hands danced over the controls, and she said, “We can get there, Captain, but only if we go right away.”

   “Fuel’s at sixty-one,” Orlova warned.

   Riley looked at the monitor, and said, “She’s right, Captain. If we don’t make the attempt now, then we won’t get a second chance. It’s not that far to fly, and if it turns out to be a spurious signal, we should still have enough fuel to get us into a safe orbit.” He paused, and added, “I think we should go for it.”

   “This isn’t a democracy,” Orlova snapped. Taking a deep breath, she added, “Having said that, Kris, give me your course. We’ll take a look, but we only go down if I think it justified. Is that quite clear?” Looking at Harper, she added, “And if in my judgment there isn’t any chance of a safe touchdown, we punch out for Alamo. There’s always a chance that another shuttle might make it down to the deck.”

   “Course computed and programmed,” Harper said, as Riley retreated to the rear of the cabin. “Signal still weak and distorted, but I’m certain there’s something there.”

   “We’re going to find out,” Orlova said, kicking the lateral thrusters to throw them back into the sky, running the engine as low as she dared to send them over the slowly-melting terrain, the cracks growing wider almost as she watched, steam rising all around them, the shuttle rocking from side to side in the ever-greater thermals. It was getting tougher to keep a straight heading, but somehow she kept them moving, flying low over the landscape to husband her fuel, warning lights snapping on anyway as the tank drained away. This hadn’t been in the mission plan. Just a quick landing and liftoff, punching all the way back to orbit.

   “Signal getting stronger now,” Harper reported. “Definitely a Triplanetary frequency. One of ours.” She paused, then added, “I think it’s a standard distress beacon.” Her hand reached out to a control panel, and she continued, “Foster’s suit, ma’am. The signal codes match perfectly.”

   “Could they be duplicated?” Orlova asked. “Could it be some sort of a trick?”

   “Anything is possible, but I don’t see how. Or why, for that matter.” Gesturing at the battered landscape on the monitor, she continued, “Anyone able to throw around
that much power should be able to swat us out of the sky without any trouble.”

   “Good point, if not exactly reassuring,” Cooper said, dropping into the chair behind them.

   “Strange, though,” Gurung said. “When we were captured by the not-men, we figured that we were as good as dead. They just asked us some rather perfunctory questions and kept us alive. Did they try and ransom us, make any demands, ma’am?”

   “We didn’t even know that you were still alive, Sergeant,” Orlova replied.

   “That doesn’t make sense,” Cooper said. His eyes widened, and he said, “Abort to orbit, Captain.”

   “What?” Harper asked. “Pavel’s your friend, and...”

   “And if he was sitting here and I down there, I’d expect him to do the same for me. It’s a trap, ma’am, and we’re falling right into it. The not-men couldn’t force our ships to fight it out, though they had a damn good try with everything that happened back on Spartacus Station, but they can still knock Alamo and Kolchak out of the game.” Gesturing at the viewscreen, he added, “Look at that landscape. Just look at it! If the temperature keeps rising, we’re going to start running into all sorts of problems.”

   “Are you talking about a device capable of...” Orlova said, turning to look at Riley. “Christ, Ensign, do you think someone else...”

   “Our people had to get the idea from somewhere, didn’t they?” he asked, keeping his voice to a whisper. “We’ve seen the effects of an antimatter bomb, Captain, but we never did work out just where Tramiel and his Merry Men got the idea. Spartacus Station isn’t that far off the map, and it’s been here for long enough...”