Joined In Battle

by Toby Neighbors

  “No change, sir,” Chavez said. “All’s quiet. But something is leaking hydrogen. Don’t go making sparks.”

  “Is hydrogen flammable?” Loggins asked.

  “What do you think the stars are made of, rookie?” Landin said.

  “I’m reading a high concentration of hydrogen in this area,” Tallgrass said. “It’s pushed all the oxygen out of this section of the platform.”

  “So either something or someone sabotaged a hydrogen tank,” Dean said.

  “Captain Blaze,” Hankins said. “We don’t mine hydrogen. I mean, we do, but we don’t keep it. There’s no money in hydrogen.”

  “So where would it be coming from?” Dean asked.

  “Those refining processors separate the gases we want from those we don’t, like hydrogen. It’s possible someone turned one on and vented the gas into the platform.”

  “Where does the hydrogen usually go once it’s separated?” Dean said.

  “We vent it back into the atmosphere.”

  “Do those vents close?”

  “No,” Hankins explained.

  “You can’t shut them off? How do you keep the gas from flowing back in?”

  “Positive pressure keeps the gas out. But even if it came in, it would just flow down to the processor. The venting system is completely enclosed.”

  “What are you thinking, Captain?” Chavez asked.

  “When I was a kid, we used to spend holidays at a cabin near the lake. One summer we found a dead snake inside the dryer vent. It had slithered in through the exhaust vent and into the tube that ran from the dryer to the wall. We had to flush it out with a garden hose.”

  “I don’t get it,” Loggins said.

  “He’s saying that perhaps the exhaust vents of the mining platform have let something in,” Tallgrass explained.

  “There’s something inside the refining processor?” the private asked.

  “The hydrogen readings would suggest that whatever it was found a way from inside the refinery to the interior of the rig,” Dean said.

  “Oh, hell no,” Loggins said.

  “Better an alien than a bogeyman,” said Landin.

  “We’re the aliens,” Tallgrass corrected her demolition companion.

  “Tentacles, strange lights,” Chavez said. “Could be the xynodrex.”

  “Sounds like it,” Dean said. “Hankins, have your people encountered the xynodrex on this platform?”

  “Not to my knowledge,” the miner said. “They’re not on this planet.”

  “That you know of,” Tallgrass said quietly.

  “Looks like our ghost hunt just turned into a bug hunt,” Landin proclaimed.

  “Alright, spread out,” Dean said. “Let’s see if we can find what we’re dealing with.”

  Chapter 10

  “Everyone switch to low-light vision,” Dean ordered, knowing that Chavez and Tallgrass had already adjusted their battle helmets to amplify the light.

  The area switched to a grainy black and white on Dean’s TCU. The inside of his battle helmet face shield acted not only as a view screen, but also a powerful interface that allowed Dean to keep track of his platoon, and it automatically adjusted to the low light of his surroundings.

  They moved slowly. Dean held his pistol in a two-handed grip, the aiming reticle already on his TCU view screen as he circled around the second refining processor. Loggins was close behind him, Landin hanging back in reserve, while Tallgrass and Chavez circled the other way. Dean swung his head around, inspecting the processor as well as searching for any sign of an intruder.

  “Captain,” Loggins tapped Dean on the shoulder. “Up there.”

  Dean looked up at the processor, following Private Cody Loggins’ direction, and noticed a thick hose sticking out from a nook on the large machine. It didn’t look broken or out of place, but he was surprised to see anything that might be venting from the processor.

  “Mr. Hankins, do you read me?” Dean asked over the open channel.

  “Loud and clear, Captain.”

  “Do your refining processors vent anything into the station?”

  “No sir, they do not,” Hankins replied. “What did you find?”

  “Looks like a hose sticking out from the second processor. It’s near the top.”

  “Those units have two exhaust vents. Both lead to a pressure gate in the roof. It’s completely sealed off. There shouldn’t be any loose hoses.”

  “Well, the good news,” Dean said, “is that if something came in from that exhaust vent, it can’t be very big.”

  “If there are saboteurs on the mining platform, flooding a compartment with gas would allow them to stop the work being done and give them plenty of time to get away,” Chavez suggested as he reached Dean’s position.

  “I can’t believe that anyone would put the mine workers at risk,” Hankins said. “If it were disgruntled people on our end, they would target the administrators on the space station.”

  “Either way, we still need to find whoever is doing this,” Dean said.

  “Or whatever,” Adkins chimed in.

  “Okay, don’t bunch up,” Dean said. “I don’t want anyone slipping past us. Let’s move on to the next—”

  Before he could finish giving commands, a strange light began glowing in the space between the large gas refineries. Dean felt the hair on the back of his neck standing up. The light wasn’t shining from a fixed location; it was glowing from what appeared to be a floating, gelatinous creature.

  Dean quickly switched his vision to infrared and was amazed to see the glowing creature. It was like a humungous jellyfish floating in the air, with dozens of long tentacles.

  “Holy shit!” Loggins exclaimed.

  “Hold your fire,” Dean ordered. “Everyone to my position, double quick.”

  “What the hell is it?” Landin asked as he moved up behind Dean, standing shoulder to shoulder with Private Loggins.

  Dean was racking his brain to remember everything he could about the mysterious xynodrex race. He knew they inhabited gas giants. They weren’t space travelers, but they had the capacity to venture into space, where they used complex organic satellites to communicate with other worlds inhabited by their kind. There were xynodrex on Saturn in the Sol system, but they were rarely seen and had no desire to interact with humanity.

  “What now, Captain?” Chavez said.

  “It’s a xynodrex,” Dean said. “Switch to infrared.”

  “Oh my god,” Loggins said.

  “What’d ya’ll find?” Ghost said as he and FAS Sergeant Emily Harper joined Dean’s party.

  “It’s huge,” Tallgrass said. “How did it get on board?”

  “I have a theory about that,” Dean said, switching to the open channel on his TCU. “Vice Admiral Anders, can you do a search on the xynodrex? Specifically what they feed on, over?”

  “You’ve got it, Captain Blaze. Stand by,” the vice admiral said.

  “The xynodrex are vestibulivores,” Lieutenant Myers said in his regimented diction. “They consume various gases such as helium, argon, xenon, and carbon dioxide.”

  “You refining any of those gases, Mr. Hankins?”

  “Helium is one of our most sought-after gases,” he replied.

  “You blowing up a lot of balloons?” Landin asked.

  “Actually, helium has a lot of applications beyond just lifting. It’s used in superconducting magnets, lasers, radiation detection, even scuba diving.”

  “And it looks like it’s a big hit with xynodrex,” Dean replied. “You’ve got a big one here.”

  “How big, Captain?” Anders asked. “Any chance you could just lead it through the station and out of the rig?”

  “No, sir—not unless they can squeeze through tight spaces, over,” Dean replied.

  The huge jellyfish creature began moving away from them. Dean switched his vision back to regular light and saw that the creature’s luminosity was fading quickly. In the dim lighting of the mining platform
, Dean couldn’t tell how large it was. Most of the xynodrex’s body was transparent. There were glowing spheres visible inside the creature’s body, which Dean found fascinating.

  “Should we stop it, Captain?” Chavez asked, aiming at the xynodrex with his sidearm.

  “No,” Dean said. “There’s no sense in that. Even if the non-lethals were effective, what would we do? We couldn’t move something that large.”

  “It’s floating, Captain,” Ghost said. “How hard can it be?”

  “The xynodrex have dangerous toxins secreted from their tentacles on contact,” Lieutenant Myers said.

  Dean heard the vice admiral admonishing his navigator to be quiet, but Dean thought it was fortunate that Lieutenant Sheldon Myers had such strong recall. He could answer questions quicker than a computer, even if he wasn’t much for casual conversations.

  “Okay people, let’s pull back,” Dean ordered.

  “That was the freakiest thing I’ve ever seen,” Loggins said.

  “That’s what the doctor who delivered you said,” Adkins teased.

  “You know that’s right!” Carter chimed in.

  “Enough, everyone,” Dean ordered. “Let’s meet back in the commissary.”

  When they were all together again, Dean took stock of the situation. He felt lucky that no one had been hurt. It was his first mission with no fighting, and he decided that combat ops were overrated.

  “You’re just leaving that thing down here?” Chip Hankins said, flanked by his cohorts. He looked angry, but Dean didn’t think his frustration was with the Recon platoon.

  “No, we need to help it get off the station,” Dean said. “Is there any way to open that section up?”

  “No, it’s a sealed compartment. That’s the way these rigs are built. They come in prefab sections that we hook together, but the refining processors are the most expensive equipment we have.”

  “Well, we can’t kill it,” Dean said. “EsDef has very strict rules for dealing with native species. The xynodrex aren’t necessarily allies, but they are a protected species.”

  “My boss isn’t going to like this,” Hankins said.

  “I don’t blame him. But if he wants the space back from the xynodrex, then he’ll have to get creative. Maybe we could cut open a section of the pod.”

  “Not without setting off the flammable gas,” Hankins declared. “This entire world is just one spark away from becoming a mini star.”

  “Well, then I suggest you close the section off, vent the gas, and wait.”

  “Wait for what?”

  “For the creature to find its own way out.”

  “So we can’t kill it, but we can starve it to death?” Hankins said.

  “It could still get sustenance from the exhaust vent it came in through,” Tallgrass explained.

  “And who the hell knows how long these creatures can go without food. It may live forever, for all we know,” Hankins argued

  “The rest of the station is usable,” Dean said. “I’m sorry, Mr. Hankins, but there’s nothing more we can do.”

  “Captain Blaze, this is Command. Do you read, over?” Anders said via a private comm channel.

  “I’ve got you, Command. Go ahead, over,” Dean replied, his battle armor muting his voice so that no one heard him except for the vice admiral in orbit.

  “The mining administrator has already filed a special request with EsDef. They're requesting permission for us to deal with the intruder, over.”

  “You mean they want my team to kill it, over?”

  “Unless you can think of a better option, I have a feeling that’s exactly what you’ll be doing. It will take forty-eight hours to get a reply. Until then, your team is to stay put, over.”

  “Beautiful,” Dean growled. “I’ll inform my platoon. Please keep us posted, sir. Over.”

  “I will, Captain. Anders over and out.”

  Dean switched back to the open channel. “Get comfortable, gang. Looks like we’re staying here while the adults decide what to do.”

  “You serious, Captain?” Ghost asked.

  “The mining company administrators have filed a special request for us to deal with the xynodrex.”

  “You mean kill it,” Tallgrass said.

  “If we can’t flush it out, then we won’t have a choice,” Dean said. “Our job is to remove the threat.”

  “We’ll kill an innocent creature just so the mining company can make money?” Harper asked.

  “In my country, we protect wildlife whenever we can,” Owando said. “But occasionally, an animal becomes a threat and must be put down for the collective good.”

  “I don’t think the mining company qualifies,” Harper replied.

  “If the mining company gets shut down, there’s a lot of good people going to be losing their jobs,” Chip Hankins spoke up.

  “And debating ethics is all fine and good, but we don’t make the decisions,” Dean said. “I don’t like the idea of killing a creature that is just acting on instinct, but remember: three people were killed by a methane explosion that was caused by the xynodrex. And we don’t know that when push comes to shove, it won’t do its level best to kill us all.”

  “Ah Captain, you have such a way with words,” Adkins said. “I feel better. Don’t you all feel better?”

  “You’re just happy because you get to loaf around for two days,” Landin said.

  “I volunteer to explore the kitchen,” Adkins said.

  “Captain,” Cody Loggins said in a quiet voice.

  “No way, Adkins, you’ll eat everything you find,” Carter said.

  “I hate sleeping in armor,” Ghost said.

  “It’s not so bad,” Harper said.

  “Yeah, well, your armor doesn’t have a built-in jet pack,” Ghost complained.

  “Captain,” Loggins said more loudly. “I have an idea.”

  “What is it, Private?” Dean asked.

  “I have an idea for how we can get the xynodrex out without killing it.”

  Chapter 11

  “What are you talking about?” Dean asked.

  “The refining section is like all the other pods, right? I mean, they’re constructed to connect to one another so that they can be built up larger and larger.”

  “Hankins,” Dean said, waving the mining employee over. “Is that right?”

  “Sure, but it’s got a cap on the far end,” Hankins said. “Damn thing weighs six tons. No way we can remove it without specialized equipment and a crane.”

  “So what I’m thinking is,” Loggins said with a note of excitement in his voice, completely undeterred by Hankin’s assessment of the idea. “If we take that cap off, it has to be at least as large as the passageway.”

  “Can the xynodrex get through a hole that size?” Landin asked. “It was pretty large.”

  “It’s been hiding in the refinery section for a while,” Loggins continued his case. “I’m betting that it can get into some pretty tight places.”

  “So if we remove the cap at the far end of the refining section, it can escape,” Dean said, thinking about the newcomer’s idea. “Can we remove that part of the platform?”

  “My guys can do it,” Hankins said. “But like I said, we need specialized equipment. And we ain’t going in there alone.”

  “No,” Dean agreed. “We would go with you and provide protection while the work was done. My concern is that even after we get the cap off the refining section, we might have trouble getting the xynodrex to leave.”

  “You don’t think it’ll just drift right on out of there?” Chavez asked.

  “Why would it want to leave?” Dean asked. “It has food, shelter, no competition. We’ll probably have to flush it out somehow.”

  “Sounds like a party,” Chavez said with a grin.

  “Can we still check out the kitchen?” Adkins asked.

  “No,” Dean replied. “I need you manning comms in the control booth. We have a lot of work to do before we get back into that sec
tion of the platform. Hankins, get your people ready to work. I’m assuming you have the tools and safety gear to remove the cap.”

  “We can get the cap unfastened, but we can’t lift it away. And we can’t just let it fall either. If it hits another section of the rig, the whole thing could come down.”

  “Perhaps the shuttle can hoist it away,” Dean suggested.

  “Killing the thing is starting to look a lot easier,” Ghost suggested.

  “No, we won’t attack it if we don’t have to. We have forty-eight hours to get this done, and I think we can do it. Tallgrass, contact Lieutenant Meyer and run scenarios on our non-lethal ammunition. If we have to use force, I want to know what to expect.”

  “Yes, Captain,” the Demolitions Sergeant replied.

  “Ghost, Harper: you’re on watch. I want you back in the refining section with eyes on that creature.”

  “Yes sir, Captain,” Harper replied.

  Ghost offered a lazy salute and set off with Harper. The next two hours were a frenzy. The administrator wasn’t happy that Dean wouldn’t simply kill the xynodrex and allow his workers back on the platform. There was quite a bit of back and forth until Lieutenant Myers informed them that the body of the xynodrex was probably highly toxic. Disposing of the huge creature would be much more difficult than the plan Private Loggins had suggested, and might even render the refining section of the mining platform unusable.

  The only real holdup to the plan was O&A Lieutenant Chappelander, who balked at the idea of hoisting the end cap free of the mining platform.

  “It’s highly risky,” Chappelander said. “The atmosphere is thin, but there are still strong air currents. I can’t guarantee that I won’t lose control of the shuttle.”

  “We’re running out of options,” Dean said.

  “Can’t we wait for the mining company to send in a crew with the appropriate equipment?” the Operator argued.

  “Essentially, you want us to do nothing,” Dean argued.

  “You found the cause of the problem,” Chappelander argued. “Why should we risk EsDef personnel and equipment to solve it, too? I mean, the mining company is better equipped to perform this type of operation.”

  “You are aware that EsDef exists to handle problems just like this,” Vice Admiral Anders said. “Dealing with alien life forms, especially those that pose a threat to humans, is our mandate.”