Abyss Deep: Star Corpsman: Book Two

by Ian Douglas

  “Elliot?” It was Joy. My secretary had orders to always route her calls through. I was surprised to find she was standing right outside my compartment. “Can I come in?”

  I thoughtclicked the hatch open and she stepped inside. She palmed the touchpoint on her shipboard utilities just below the throat and they evaporated as she came into my arms, gloriously nude. “I had to see you,” she said. “I . . . I volunteered for the Haldane expedition, but they wouldn’t take me!”

  “I know. I looked up the personnel manifest.” They were only taking twenty-four Marines, after all, out of a company numbering almost two hundred people. Someone had to stay behind.

  “I was trying to swap assignments with Gibbs, but he wouldn’t agree to it.” She looked disgusted. “The idiot wants to go.”

  “Well, apparently, so do you.”

  “Because I want to be with you.”

  I reached up for my own touchpoint and clicked my uniform away. By that time, I didn’t even need to go to my in-head menu and turn on my CC-PDE5 inhibitors. I was ready. . . .

  But of course Sergeant Tomacek chose that moment to come through the door.

  Bruce Tomacek was one of the three Second Platoon Marines with whom I shared a berthing compartment, a nice enough guy, but with a nasty tendency to tease newbies unmercifully.

  “What the fuck?” he asked when he saw our embrace. “Hey, E-Car, if you’re on restriction you’re not supposed to enjoy it!”

  “Do you mind?” I asked. “We’re saying good-bye.”

  “Nope,” he said, grinning as he dropped into the chair at the compartment’s small desk. “I don’t mind at all!”

  Privacy was always tough to come by on board a Navy vessel, but we did have an answer. The compartment’s rack-tube hatches occupied the bulkhead to the left of the door, four circular openings that cold be sealed shut with a thoughtclick. At just a meter wide, they were a bit on the claustrophobic side for two, but it could be done. I helped Joy into mine, gave the leering Tomacek a dirty look, then skinnied in next to her. I thoughtclicked the hatch shut, and we were alone.

  Each rack-tube had internal lighting, Net connection pads, environment controls, and a flow of fresh air from hidden vents. The padding was warm and soft, as was Joy. I took her in my arms and we snuggled close.

  “Just like the hoteru,” she said, smiling into my face.

  “Well, except for the gravity, yeah.”

  Rabu Hoteru was the Japanese honeymoon hotel in Geosynch. Joy and I had spent a couple of nights there on liberty once, just after we’d come back from Bloodworld. Zero-gravity sex is a lot of fun, but it helps if you and your partner are . . . restrained, somewhat. In microgravity, every movement has an equal and opposite reaction, and what is euphemistically called “the docking maneuver”—and staying docked—can be a bit tricky.

  The answer was softly padded tubes in the honeymoon suites, where you and your partner could get plenty of purchase for your more energetic acrobatics. The ends were left open, so you could look toward the head end of your tube and see the endlessly wondrous spectacle of Earth hanging in star-clotted space.

  I pulled up my in-head menu, made a selection, and clicked it; a view of the shrunken Earth, taken by external cams on the Earth-side of the Starport asteroid, appeared on the head-end of the tube.

  “I can’t do anything about the gravity,” I said. Well, not without convincing the ship’s skipper to shut down the hab module rotation—like that was ever going to happen. “But I can provide us with a room with a view.”

  “I think the best view was that time at Yellowstone,” she told me. That had been last fall. We’d taken a few days of leave, rented an e-Car at San Antonio, and driven up to Montana. The weather had been bitter cold and snowy—we’d been way too close to the Canadian ice sheet for my peace of mind—but the view from the hotel in Jackson had been spectacular.

  “The best view,” I told her, “is you.”

  I was having some trouble with the docking maneuver. Damn it, thinking about ice always did that to me. I’d been ready enough a few moments ago, but having Tomacek barge in, and then remembering the ice sheet . . .

  This time, I did switch on my CC-PDE5 inhibitors. Phosphodiesterase type 5 is a natural enzyme found within the corpus cavernosum, the smooth muscle responsible for the guy’s part in the proceedings. Certain drugs and appropriately programmed nanobots can act as PDE5 inhibitors, which relax the smooth muscles preventing erection.

  No good. The ice was winning.

  Well, not the ice, specifically . . . but the thoughts of Paula that I associated with glaciers, with sailboats, with cold, with loneliness . . . with anything that took me back to that afternoon off the chill coast of ice-locked Maine when Paula had died in my arms—those were circling in my brain, now, relentless and anxious. Damn it, why couldn’t I put that crap away?

  “It’s okay,” Joy whispered. “Just hold me.”

  And that only made it worse, somehow.

  At some point during the night, however, ice and loneliness gave way to soft warmth and caresses, and thoughts of Paula were submerged in rising passion.

  At least for a time.

  I reported aboard the USRS J. B. S. Haldane late the next day, along with the rest of the Marine Special Expeditionary Platoon, now dubbed MSEP-Alpha. One of the Commonwealth’s Scientist-class research ships, the Haldane was a no-frills ride, a minnow to the Clymer’s whale when she docked alongside for the payload transfer. She was named for the twentieth-century British geneticist and evolutionary biologist who’d famously said, “[T]he universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.”

  And that had been long before we started meeting extraterrestrial species, or visiting the worlds they lived on.

  The Haldane was only eighty-one meters long and thirty broad, and the trip out to GJ 1214 was going to be a bit on the cramped side. Technically, she was a civilian research vessel, but Commander Janice Summerlee was a Navy officer, and most of her crew personnel were Navy as well. Haldane was listed on the rolls as a research ship, which meant she served a wide range of roles. One of her most important missions, though, was transporting personnel and supplies to the far-flung science colonies across near interstellar space.

  I floated out of the boarding tube and into her quarterdeck compartment, where I saluted the officer of the deck. “Permission to come aboard, sir.”

  “Granted,” the man growled. You don’t go through the military formalities on a civilian vessel, but if the Haldane was being pressed into military duties, the niceties of tradition were maintained. “Pre-screen records?”

  I thoughtclicked the appropriate icon in my in-head, giving him access to the results of the med scan I’d gone through a few hours earlier. Purely routine stuff, that. Haldane would be out and on its own for at least a couple of months, and it wouldn’t do for anyone on board to come down with something nasty while we were in deep space . . . especially something that might contaminate the entire crew.

  That sort of screening is anything but simple, and it takes a pretty powerful AI to carry it out. The human body is host to thousands of species of bacteria, but in terms of sheer numbers, our bacterial hangers-on are overwhelming. The typical person has about 10 trillion cells in his or her body . . . and ten times that number of bacteria in their gut alone. Something like 3 percent of our body mass consists of microbiota: bacteria, archaea, and fungi. All of these actively help us and keep us healthy, in a symbiotic relationship with their human host. We couldn’t digest stuff like carbohydrates without them, and for that reason they’re known as the “forgotten organ.”

  Generally, when we get sick it’s because our immune system has been compromised in some way—generally by stress of one sort or another—and that allows some otherwise innocuous organism that was there all along to get out of hand. So a screening for pathogens doesn’t mean spotting Eschericia coli in the colon, for example, but determining whether the population of E. Col
i is out of balance with all the rest, whether the patient’s immune system is functioning properly, and whether normal body cells in the area are showing signs of inflammation are all part of the process. Picking up problems caused by viruses can be even tougher.

  So the screening process concentrates on whether or not the person is showing an immunological response or not. It doesn’t rule out the possibility of an infection breaking out later, but it helps spot trouble before it gets out of hand.

  My scans had come up clean.

  The OOD downloaded the scan results, then recorded my ID data on his e-pad. “Carlyle,” he said. “Welcome aboard. I’m Lieutenant Walthers, the ship’s exec.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “Says here somebody wants to see you. Mess bay.”

  Curious, I followed the thumb down a short passageway, swimming through the corridor in microgravity. There was technically a faint echo of spin gravity here. Starport was on the out-most end of the space elevator, and as the asteroid whirled about Earth on the end of its 70,000-kilometer tether, it created a six-hundredth of a gravity . . . scarcely enough to feel. Drop something, and it would “fall” a bit less than a centimeter in the first second.

  The mess bay was the Haldane’s common area, which served as mess deck, recreation lounge, briefing room, and social space for the small ship. Three Brocs were floating in front of the big viewall, which was set to look past the swell of the Clymer close alongside, and off along the line of other naval vessels entangled within a forest of docking ramps, boarding gantries, and connector cables, the business end of Starport.

  My personal ID was pinged, checking my name and rank. Obviously, the M’nangat had as much trouble telling humans apart as we had with them.

  YOU ARE DOCTOR CARLYLE. The translation flowed across my in-head. I could only tell which one was speaking by the almost spastic twitch of its tentacles. YOU SAVED D’DNAH. YOU SAVED OUR BUDS.

  “Not ‘Doctor,’ ” I said. “I’m a Navy Corpsman. They just call me Doc.”

  DOC CARLYLE, THEN. WE WISHED TO THANK YOU FOR SAVING OUR BUDS.

  “All in the line of duty,” I said. The Broc in the middle of the three was D’dnah. I could tell by the patch of skinseal still glistening on herm’s side. “How are you feeling, D’dnah?” I asked.

  I AM WELL, the M’nangat said. YOUR PEOPLE TRANSPORTED ME TO THE NAVAL HOSPITAL IN SAN ANTONIO. WE WERE TOLD THAT YOU HAD DONE EVERYTHING NECESSARY, THAT NO FURTHER TREATMENT, SURGERY, OR NANOTECHNIC INTERVENTION WAS NECESSARY.

  “Sometimes we get lucky,” I said. “I’m glad to hear you’re okay.”

  I’d not done anything for the M’nangat life carrier beyond pretty basic emergency first aid. Sure, I’d pulled the unexploded nano-D bullet out of herm’s torso, which was something usually best left to well-equipped operating rooms, but there’d not been a lot of choice, there, and no leeway if I’d guessed wrong. Apparently, the nanobots I’d put into D’dnah’s body had managed to seal off all of the internal bleeding, and the skinseal had taken care of surface bleeding. The M’nangat, evidently, had fairly robust biological repair and recovery systems. I’d slapped the equivalent of a bandage on D’dnah’s wound, and the M’nangat’s physiology had taken care of the rest.

  Even so, it had only been three days since the battle on board Capricorn Zeta. “I’m surprised they released you so soon,” I added. “I would have thought that they’d want to keep an eye on you for a few days, just to make sure you were healing okay.”

  THEY DID, the Broc on the right said. THEY STATED A DESIRE TO KEEP HERM UNDER OBSERVATION. OUR CONSULATE MISSION WAS ABLE TO CONVINCE THEM THAT THERE WAS NO NEED.

  Well, the M’nangat would understand their own emergency medical needs better than we did.

  I felt a bit awkward. Two of the M’nangat I’d met on Capricorn Zeta, of course, but the third had been on Earth during the attack. I recognized D’Dnah, but I had no idea which of the other two was which. I wondered how to ask for an introduction.

  “So, D’dnah,” I said. “I take it this is your triad?” It was a lame ploy, but it worked.

  I AM D’DREVAH, the one on the left said. I AM EGG BEARER.

  I AM D’DEEN, said the one on the right. I AM LIFE DONOR. FORGIVE US IF WE MISUSE YOUR PROTOCOLS OF SOCIAL INTERACTION. THEY ARE . . . AS YET UNFAMILIAR TO US.

  “Not at all,” I said. “You’re doing great.”

  WE WERE DIRECTED TO COME TO EARTH AS POLITICAL LIAISONS, D’drevah told me, AND TO ASSIST YOUR PEOPLE WITH YOUR ACCESS TO THE DEEP TIME EPHEMERIS—WHAT YOU CALL THE ENCYCLOPEDIA GALACTICA. I WAS, UNFORTUNATELY, INVOLVED IN WORK AT OUR CONSULATE ON EARTH WHEN OUR LIFE BEARER WAS INJURED. BUT D’DEEN TOLD ME WHAT YOU DID ON THE MINING STATION, ABOUT HOW YOU SAVED OUR BUDS.

  “I was glad to be able to help,” I told them. If I’d felt awkward before, I was downright uncomfortable now. The introduction seemed to have released an avalanche of personal information, as if we’d passed some sort of privacy threshold to enter a new level of intimacy. More than that, I was increasingly aware that the male and female of the triad, D’drevah and D’deen, seemed much more concerned about the safety of their offspring than they were about their bearer, D’dnah.

  Well, that’s the thing about aliens. They’re alien . . . different to the point of incomprehensibility.

  In Corps School, when they were teaching us about alien cultures and social norms, they spent a lot of time hammering home the idea that just because a particular cultural belief set is different, it’s not wrong. I’ve never necessarily subscribed to that notion, not wholeheartedly. I mean . . . look at radical fundamentalist Islam as practiced a couple of centuries ago during the Troubles . . . or even today in places like the Central Asian Caliphate that recognize only Sharia law. Ask the inhabitants of what once was Tel Aviv about the morality—or the validity—of a god who glories in murder, vengeance, and genocide.

  But the rule is that alien environments, alien physiologies, alien psychologies produce worldviews that are fundamentally different from ours. The M’nangat would have developed ways of thinking, patterns of beliefs, that fit their particular evolutionary backgrounds.

  And according to the xenosoc downloads I’d taken in school, it was wrong to judge them for simply being what they were.

  “So . . .” I said, “was that what you wanted to see me about?”

  TO THANK YOU, YES, D’deen told me, AND TO MAKE A SPECIFIC REQUEST.

  “Oh?”

  THE THREE OF US HAVE BEEN ASSIGNED TO THIS MISSION, D’drevah said. WE ARE TO HELP YOUR SCIENTISTS WITH ACCESS TO PORTIONS OF THE EPHEMERIS DURING THIS EXPEDITION TO THE PLACE YOU CALL ABYSSWORLD.

  There’d been M’nangat in the Murdock colony, too, I remembered. The chances were good that they were also there to look after their own.

  D’DNAH IS DUE TO RELEASE OUR BUDS IN ANOTHER THREE OF YOUR WEEKS, D’deen said. WE WILL REQUIRE MEDICAL ASSISTANCE. WE WISH FOR YOU TO PROVIDE THAT ASSISTANCE.

  I gaped at them. They wanted me to deliver their young.

  And from what I’d learned so far of M’nangat physiology, that would mean allowing D’dnah, the being whose life I’d saved, to die.

  Chapter Seven

  I’d hoped for a last chance to say good-bye to Joy, but it didn’t happen. I was still on restriction, which now meant I couldn’t leave the Haldane, and security had been stepped up and no one was allowed to come on board who wasn’t part of her assigned crew or an appropriately tagged member of the Starport work crew. War fever—the worsening situation in the Caliphate—had everyone on edge, and the CAC’s views on scientific research were well known. Privacy would have been an issue on board the cramped science vessel in any case. We had a final in-head conversation late at night. “Damn it, you come back to me, Elliot,” she told me. “That’s a goddamn fucking order.”

  “You don’t outrank me, Sergeant,” I said, grinning into the darkness. A Marine sergeant and a Navy second class both were E-5, the same rank. “But I’ll be back for you. Promise . . .�
�

  We departed from Starport at 0700 the next morning.

  Our immediate destination, though, was not the world of GJ 1214 I, some forty-two light years distant. Instead, we used our Plottel Drive to tack on the sun’s magnetic field out-system to Jupiter, making the passage of 9 AUs in eight and a half days.

  During the outbound passage, I pulled down the ephemeral data. I’d actually been scheduled to deploy to Europa at the end of my FMF training, but the deployment to Bloodworld had intervened.

  Commonwealth Planetary Ephemeris

  Entry: Europa, Jupiter II

  Star: Sol

  Planet: Sol V, Jupiter

  Satellite: Sol Vf, Jupiter-f

  Name: Europa

  Type: Ice-covered world ocean, kept liquid by tidal heating; rocky core

  Mean orbital radius: 670.900 km; Orbital period: 3d 13h 13m 42s

  Orbital eccentricity: 0.009; Inclination: 0.47o

  Rotational period: 3d 13h 13m (tide-locked with primary)

  Mass: 4.7988 x 1025 g = 0.008 Earth; Equatorial diameter: 3,121.6 km = 0.245 Earth

  Mean planetary density: 3.01 g/cc = .545 Earth; Surface gravity: 0.134 G

  Surface temperature range: ~ -160o C to -220o C

  Surface atmospheric pressure: 0.1 υPa, or 10-13 bar [0.000000000001 Earth average]; Percentage composition: O2 100 [Molecular oxygen]

  Age: 4.6 billion years

  Biology: Diverse marine forms; no surface forms present

  Human presence: Conamara Chaos research colony, established 2110. Fifty scientists, xenobiologists, and technicians in residence as of 2247. The base is an inverted cone hanging from the underside of the ice cap, at the bottom end of a 600-meter access tube from the surface. Further human presence in Europa is prohibited pending additional study of Europan biosphere, and in particular of the Medusae, which show evidence of being sapient. . . .

  Well, that’s the sort of information you can download from the ship’s library to your in-head memory. But how do you convey the sense of an entire, living world . . . even one as small, as bleak, and as ice bound as Europa? Like many moons and tide-locked planetary bodies of this type, the world has a very slight eccentricity to its orbit—0.009 in this case. When Europa is closest to Jupiter, it’s stretched slightly by Jove’s massive gravitational grip. A little less than two days later, at its farthest point from the gas giant, the squeezing relaxes. This constant stretch-relax cycle through every three and a half Earth days creates internal heat, kneading the core like a lump of clay in a potter’s hands.