Orbs III

by Nicholas Sansbury Smith

  His earpiece came alive as he walked across the metal platform, Irene’s smooth Russian accent spouting off data. Harrington ignored her and paced around the outside of the sub. From his vantage point he couldn’t see any portholes, only the smooth black surface and an emblem that read Destiny 1.

  He made his way around the backside and studied the oval-shaped acrylic observation window. Through the glass he could see a panel of manual controls and buttons; some that had to be over twenty years old. Despite her age, she looked strong. The acrylic glass was thick and the titanium plates on the outside were solid.

  “Engineering says she’s ready to go,” Diego said over a private channel. He came up behind the sergeant and patted the sub’s exterior; the metallic clanking echoed through the chamber.

  Harrington gave the younger soldier a once-over. His matte black armor appeared polished, and his visor was so clear he could see Diego’s handlebar mustache. It was at an odd angle, twisted to the right.

  “Feeling all right?” Harrington asked when he saw Diego biting his bottom lip.

  “Yeah. Just a bit nervous.”

  Harrington nodded. The man had every right to be nervous. Shit, he was nervous, too, and he’d seen some horrible things in his seventeen years as a soldier. They were seven hundred feet beneath the ocean’s surface, hiding from an advanced alien race that had successfully wiped out over 95 percent of the world’s population in just a few months. NTC was outnumbered, outgunned, and on the run—another reason it was so important to save anyone who might be left aboard the X-9.

  Diego slung the strap of his pulse rifle over his shoulder and followed an engineer in fiery-red coveralls to the other side of the platform, where Commander Le’s team stood waiting. Their automatic helmet lights had clicked on in the dimly lit space, and for a second the group reminded Harrington of an astronaut team.

  The engineer stopped in front of the group and stepped toward them nervously, a trail of sweat bleeding from his receding hairline. He grabbed the handle of the mini sub’s steel door and struggled to open it. One of the Chinese soldiers offered his assistance and the mechanism unlocked with a groan.

  The man in red coveralls wiped his forehead with his sleeve and spun to look at the group. After he took control of his labored breathing he said, “Gentlemen, you are about to board Destiny 1. Make no mistake, this mini sub was not meant to carry passengers. She was designed as a research vessel, and NTC commandeered her for that purpose only. But due to our current depth, we can’t use any of the other submersibles.”

  “Is this shit safe?” Diego blurted.

  “We wouldn’t send you out there in something that wasn’t,” the engineer said curtly.

  “Of course,” Harrington added. “Commander Le, after you,” he said, gesturing with his armored hand to the port door.

  Inside, the mini sub reeked of mold. Harrington could smell it through the cheap plastic breathing apparatus built into his helmet. He squirmed through the opening, the smell hitting him as soon as he ducked into the cramped main compartment.

  Taking a step into the sub, his foot splashed in a puddle of stale water. He hesitated in the doorway, glancing back at the engineer. “I thought you said this thing was safe. Looks like it has a leak.”

  The man shrugged and pulled his arm across his forehead again. “If Engineering said it’s good to go, then it’s good to go.”

  Harrington snorted and moved to the last two empty seats in the back. Irene’s voice filled his earpiece as he ducked under a metal pipe snaking across the ceiling.

  “All life support systems at one hundred percent. Prepare to disembark,” the AI said.

  “Good luck,” the engineer said. He swung the massive steel door shut behind them. There was a loud thud and a metallic clicking as the door’s automatic locking mechanism kicked in.

  Harrington settled into his seat, waiting for Irene to activate the sub’s systems. Seconds later her voice emerged over the cabin’s speakers.

  “Be advised, Destiny 1 will be ready in T minus thirty seconds.”

  A shallow rumbling vibrated through the metal walls as the engines flared to life. Harrington twisted his helmet so he could see out the port window. He flinched when the hissing started. Seconds later the sub shook again and he could hear a faint splashing sound.

  “Descending,” Irene said over the com.

  Harrington watched several of the Chinese soldiers reaching for grab bars that hung from the metal ceiling. They had to be more nervous, not understanding English. They were counting on Le, who seemed to have very limited knowledge of it himself, to relay information.

  The hissing grew louder and a trail of large bubbles rose outside the port window. Within seconds, the floor of the GOA’s Cargo Bay 1 disappeared and the vast darkness of the ocean consumed them.

  A pair of overhead lights flicked on automatically. Warm red light filled the compartment.

  “Destiny 1 now in open water,” Irene said. “Activating exterior lights.”

  An audible click echoed through the sub’s interior and two beams of white light tore through the darkness. “Descending at one hundred feet per minute.” The AI’s undeviating voice normally sounded calming to Harrington, but the black depths of the ocean made him uneasy. Even with the rays of artificial light guiding them, he felt nervous. The metal box surrounding him felt more like a coffin than a vehicle. Harrington focused on Irene’s voice.

  “In three hundred feet you will stop at the edge of an underwater trench, where I will deactivate autopilot and manually steer the Destiny 1 along the ravine until you reach the X-9.”

  The very mention of an underwater trench sent chills down Harrington’s legs. He’d read that some of them were miles deep, with molten rock spewing from cracks in the Earth’s crust. Odd creatures lived there. Strange bacteria and alien-looking fish. Things he’d seen only in documentaries.

  It made him wonder if perhaps the Organics had come from somewhere similar, in some other galaxy or universe, or God knew where. It wasn’t Harrington’s job to question where they came from—his job was simply to kill them.

  The sub lurched forward. Besides the intermittent vibration in the walls and the random bump, there was virtually no other sense of motion. Microscopic flakes that looked like dust floated by the filthy porthole windows.

  His stomach tightened. His lunch of mashed potatoes and salted pork had seemed like a good idea at the time, but now he felt heavy. Not exactly the way he wanted to start a mission.

  In an attempt to suppress the growing nausea he focused on compartmentalizing the task ahead. Without a solid briefing, he had no idea what they were going to face aboard the X-9. The thought terrified him. He couldn’t remember a time when he had absolutely no intel before embarking on a life-threatening mission. When he had been Diego’s age, he would have been shitting his pants.

  You volunteered for this, Harrington reminded himself. He closed his eyes and focused on his family. He knew they were dead. He’d accepted this a week into the invasion. But his faith led him to believe that he would see his family again, probably sooner than later, in the afterlife. He wanted to make his family proud before he saw them again.

  “Eight hundred fifty feet,” Irene said.

  Diego nudged Harrington’s leg and gestured with his chin over to the porthole. The exterior lights had gone dark, and Irene had cut the interior LEDs to a single panel.

  “Why are we going dark?” Diego asked.

  “Must be getting close.”

  Diego nodded and bowed his head.

  Harrington had watched the solider turn into a man over the past five years. They’d lived and fought next to each other, and over time he’d shared his religious beliefs with the younger man. Watching him pray brought Harrington great satisfaction.

  He turned away from the porthole and blinked his infrared on. His HUD fired up
and the other soldiers’ heat signatures emerged on his display. Next he checked his night vision.

  With his HUD working properly, he relaxed a bit. But the moment he let his guard down, the sound of emergency sirens startled him back to reality.

  “Warning. Warning. Brace for impact,” Irene said.

  “The X-9?” Diego asked.

  Harrington grabbed for a handhold and tightened the harness around his armor. “Hold on!”

  The sub jolted. There was a hollow thud and then a grinding sound as the bottom dragged along the ocean floor. A sickening crunch followed; the sub had collided with something, sending a violent tremor through the metal walls. Harrington tightened his grip on the grab bar and fought to stay upright. He spied a cloud of sediment churning outside the cockpit that looked like a small green tornado on his HUD.

  He eyed the fist-sized bolts that secured the glass to the walls. They looked strong enough, but even a microscopic leak could turn Destiny 1 into a two-ton coffin.

  “Irene, what the hell is going on?” Diego shouted over the com.

  Several of the Chinese soldiers turned in Harrington’s direction. He held up a hand to calm them.

  “My apologies, my system’s autopilot misjudged the descent. Preliminary scans are reporting limited damage,” Irene said.

  “Limited damage?” Diego replied. His voice began to get louder. “You just crashed us one thousand feet below the surface!”

  Harrington chinned his com pad and opened a private channel to Diego. “Get a fucking grip, and calm down. You’re not helping anything.”

  Diego nodded and bowed his helmet toward the floor for a second time.

  “Irene, how far are we from the X-9?” Harrington asked.

  “Sir, you are still two clicks to the south. Please switch on your NVG if you haven’t already. You should be able to see the X-9 in T minus five minutes.” She repeated the request in Chinese.

  “Did you pick up on that, Commander Le?” Harrington asked. He wasn’t sure if the slight nod from Le’s helmet was an acknowledgment, but the sergeant didn’t press the point.

  The sub loped forward, and the sediment that had stirred around them vanished in a cloud of bubbles. Within seconds Harrington could hear the vibration of the motors somewhere beneath the tiny sub’s hull.

  “T minus four minutes,” Irene said.

  Squinting, Harrington scanned the green shapes of the ocean floor on his HUD. The terrain to their right looked rough, with hunks of rock protruding from the muddy surface. On their left they followed the trench Irene had described earlier. The channel, which looked to be about one hundred meters across, snaked away as far as he could see. It reminded him of a black river. The sight chilled Harrington, and he wondered what lived in the inky darkness below.

  White noise crackled over the com and Irene said, “Two minutes. Visual imminent.”

  Diego fidgeted. Harrington couldn’t blame the younger man for being nervous when his own heart was galloping. In an effort to calm his nerves, he mentally counted the seconds. This was a little trick his commanding officer had taught him years ago. And it usually worked.

  Scanning the seafloor, he still didn’t see any sign of the X-9. Just the same slopes of uneven seabed.

  Harrington kept counting, scrutinizing the ocean floor for any sign of human engineering.

  “There,” Diego whispered, pointing.

  The sergeant followed the man’s finger to a curved outline that formed a perfectly oval shape, much too perfect to be part of the seabed.

  As the Destiny 1 puttered closer, the Chinese submarine came into view. The bow had disappeared deep into the muddy surface, but the body of the sub still looked to be fully intact. There were no visual cracks or exterior damage.

  “My God,” Diego said in a hushed voice.

  Before Harrington had a chance to reply, something smashed into the cockpit. The chirp of warning sirens and the intermittent flash of red lights spilled over the compartment. He swallowed hard and spied an object spinning away from the window.

  “What the hell was that, Irene?” Harrington shouted.

  “Scanning.”

  Unbuckling his harness, Harrington crouch-walked to the front of the vessel. Blinking on his infrared vision, he scanned the darkness for any sign of life.

  “Destiny 1 made contact with a—”

  “We see it,” Harrington said, forcing his eyes away from the floating corpse of one of Captain Quan’s crew. He returned to his seat and took in long measured breaths, trying to maintain his composure.

  “Xi,” one of the Chinese soldiers shouted from the front of the sub, pointing at a body floating by the nearest porthole. The man struggled with his harness, but Commander Le stopped him, restraining him with the help of another soldier.

  From across the aisle Harrington could see more corpses floating by. There were dozens of them. He focused on one of them, noticing something odd. The bodies had been decomposing for a while. Most were missing eyeballs and chunks of flesh, but that didn’t explain their shriveled skin. They looked like something had sucked them dry. Fish weren’t the only creatures that had fed, the Organics had as well.

  The sergeant shivered at the sight. The corpses were just sacks of skin now, their bones weighing them down as they drifted in the abyss.

  “We’re in a fucking graveyard,” Diego blurted over the private channel. “GOA didn’t pick this up with its sensors?”

  “They’re dead. All of them. Sensors pick up the living,” Harrington replied grimly.

  A new voice crackled over the main speakers. It was Captain Noble.

  “Commander Le. Is everyone okay down there?”

  “Okay,” Le replied.

  “Sir, there are bodies everywhere,” Harrington added.

  “I’m watching a live feed. I’m well aware,” Noble said. “Sensors are still picking up heat signatures inside the X-9, so I am going to leave this one up to Commander Le. This is his mission.”

  Harrington saw Diego fidget in his seat again, but held up his hand to silence him before he could object. The captain was right. And they had volunteered. The decision was not theirs to make.

  Silence washed over the dark compartment as Le spoke to his men in Chinese. Harrington quickly gave up trying to make out what they were saying. He already knew what Le’s decision was.

  A beat later and Irene was back online. But Harrington was hardly listening to her. Closing his eyes, he prepared himself for what was to come.

  “Prepare to dock in T minus two minutes,” Irene ordered.

  CHAPTER 3

  DR. Emanuel Rodriguez ran a hand through two weeks’ worth of facial hair and watched Dr. Sophie Winston sleep. She’s been so tired, he thought.

  “Alexia. How long has she been out?” he whispered.

  The AI mimicked the volume of his voice. “Approximately twelve hours, Doctor. Would you like me to wake her?”

  Emanuel waved his hands. “No, absolutely not.” Sophie began to stir. She awoke with one eye open, gripping her back with one hand.

  “Oh my god,” she moaned. “I feel like . . . like I just got run over by a Humvee,” she said with one of her eyes still closed. “And . . .” A sudden alertness streaked across her face. Emanuel knew right away she had remembered something from one of her dreams.

  “Sophie?” he asked.

  She removed her hand from her back and placed it on her forehead, whispering, “They came for me again.”

  “The Organics’ leaders?” Alexia asked.

  Sophie nodded and lay her head back down on the pillow, letting her frustration out with a long sigh. “I’m never able to communicate with them.”

  The AI console glowed a light blue, and Alexia’s face emerged. “Doctor Winston, the multidimensional aliens are likely so far advanced that they do not communicate in ways y
ou would recognize.”

  “I know,” Sophie said.

  “Alexia, let’s give her a break. I’m going to go grab a coffee, Sophie. Do you want your usual?” He realized she was staring at him. His cheeks grew warm when it occurred to him she was scrutinizing his beard.

  “Not a bad look,” she said, her face still stern.

  “You didn’t notice it before?”

  She shrugged and said, “Need coffee.”

  Emanuel nodded and hurried to the mess hall. On his way he heard what sounded like an unsupervised field trip. Sure enough, when he walked into the hallway leading to Biome 4, he passed Dr. Brown and Corporal Bouma. Behind them ran three screaming children. Emanuel immediately brought a finger to his lips.

  “Quiet, guys. Smith is still sleeping, and Sophie is not in a good mood.”

  “Sorry,” Bouma replied. “We were just heading to Biome 1 so the kids could get some exercise.”

  Emanuel scanned the group. After two months inside the Biosphere the kids were starting to grow. It dawned on him that they all needed haircuts. Especially Owen. His hair had started to creep down over his eyes.

  “Have fun,” Emanuel said, patting the boy on his head. Owen laughed and took off running, ignoring the request the biologist had made moments before.

  Emanuel continued to the kitchen, where half a pot of cold coffee sat on a stainless steel countertop. A dozen wrappers from prepackaged meals littered the area.

  “Damn it,” he said, grabbing a handful and tossing them into the trash. Things had slowly slipped into chaos after Sophie’s injury in Colorado Springs. The Biosphere had gone from a well-oiled machine to a disaster zone.

  He shook his head. After he got Sophie on her feet they were going to have a team meeting. A very frank one.

  Two hours later, Emanuel had fed Sophie enough caffeine to get her into the CIC. The main oval display at the front of the room replayed hours of information the AI had filtered through. With the magnetic disturbance outside, most of the Biosphere’s exterior sensors were down. But the AI was much more resourceful than Emanuel had given her credit for. A few days earlier, she had discovered an NTC stealth satellite prototype named Lolo orbiting the planet. Lolo’s feeds proved that the Organics hadn’t knocked out all of Earth’s defenses after all. By hacking into the satellite, Alexia had provided the team with mountains of new data including current ocean levels, average temperatures from around the world, and estimated population counts.