Abyss Deep (15 page)

“Okay, Chief. Thanks.”

It sounded as though Chief Garner was struggling to . . . to
control
Kirchner, to contain him, and that was serious stuff. It also sounded like Kirchner was spending an unhealthy percentage of his time in sick bay. He was at least spending his evenings there, times when I would have been down there pulling my extra-­duty shifts.

I began then to seriously consider the possibility that what we were witnessing in Kirchner was some kind of pathology. He wasn't just an asshole; there was something
wrong
with him.

But what? There were no other doctors on board, certainly no one who could intervene with Kirchner, challenge his behavior, or get a solid diagnosis. Even if we had a diagnosis, it would take an act of God—­meaning Captain ­Summerlee—­to remove him from duty and force him to accept treatment.

Besides, both the military and the medical hierarchies are weighted heavily in favor of officers and doctors over enlisted personnel and nursing staff. There's an old saying that you can't fight city hall. Turns out you can't fight the medical old-­boy network either,
or
Commonwealth Military Command.

I considered linking in to the medical AI that ran sick bay. Its name was Andries, short for Andries van Wesel . . . a physician and anatomist back in the sixteenth century better known by the Latin version of his name, Andreas Vesalius. Andries would have a complete program subset for diagnosing psychiatric problems. Military units, after all, had more problems with psychological conditions—­depression, anxiety disorders, PTSD, suicidal ideation—­than they did with sprains, strains, and broken bones.

But . . . no. Andries worked for the medical department, and out here that meant Dr. Kirchner. I wouldn't want him to see a report from Andries that suggested that I was checking up on his mental health. Besides, Andries was where Chief Garner had gone to find the deleted STS data. If I or he ended up in front of a court-­martial board, a record of my rummaging around in the sick bay AI's files looking for psychiatric symptoms in my department head would look uncomfortably like mutiny.

That was what we were looking at here, right?
Mutiny
. . . a damned ugly word.

There was an alternative, though, another source of information on human psychiatric disorders.

Its name was Ludwig.

Ludwig was named for Ludwig Wittgenstein, an early twentieth-­century philosopher who'd done important work on the philosophy of language and how it intersected with the philosophy of
mind
—­mental functions, mental properties, and consciousness itself. Language, and how we use it, affects the way we think. We take that for granted today, but it was pretty revolutionary three hundred years ago. And the idea that language affects how we think becomes vitally important when trying to establish meaningful communication with a totally alien species.

I knew that Ludwig had a
lot
of data stored on human psychological or psychiatric conditions. Wiseman had been right about one thing, though he'd been having trouble expressing it: nonhumans think differently from humans, and those differences can make them seem crazy. Ludwig had to know about
human
mental problems in order to understand how an alien might be thinking.

I grew a chair for myself near the viewall, dropped into it, and opened the channel, passing up-­link my authorization code as I did so. “Ludwig? I need a fast consult.”

“What is the nature of your question?”

“Somebody on board is acting strange. I need to assess his psychological condition.”

“Why not consult with Andreis? This would be his specialty, rather than mine.”

“My reasons are private.”

“Understood. Select the behaviors that are troubling you.”

A list of symptoms ran through my in-­head. Most I easily discarded. But a few . . .

Difficulty conforming to social norms:
In this case, “social norms” might mean military protocol and common courtesy.

Acting impulsively; failing to consider the consequences of impulsive actions:
Well, he'd decided not to give Pollard an STS, and hadn't listened to my reasons for giving him one.

Display of aggressiveness and irritability, possibly leading to physical assault
: Okay, Kirchner hadn't attacked anybody, but it sure felt like he was out to get me.

Difficulty feeling empathy for others; an inability to consider the thoughts, feelings, or motivations of other ­people, sometimes leading to a disregard for others:
Bingo.

Displays no remorse for behavior that harms others:
That and the lack of empathy together were beginning to sound like sociopathy, but the diagnosis Ludwig was working toward turned out to be something else—­antisocial personality disorder.

Some of the signs and symptoms were bang on. Others were borderline; Pollard's case had resolved well, with no physical harm to him, so it was tough to judge whether Kirchner had shown any remorse or not. There simply wasn't enough solid evidence for a diagnosis. That was the hell of psychological profiles like this one. Every person is different, and
every single symptom
can show up in a healthy individual. Psychiatric pathology, it turns out, is often a matter of degree.

And if Kirchner could be clinically diagnosed as suffering from APD, it turned out there wasn't a lot that could be done about it. Very few ­people with the condition ever sought treatment on their own; most ended getting treatment after some sort of altercation with the legal system. The only recognized treatment was something called cognitive-­behavioral therapy, which involved teaching the person to find insights into his own behavior and to change those behaviors and thought patterns that were socially maladaptive. It took a long time—­years, often—­and if the person wasn't personally convinced that he was having trouble in social situations and that he was the cause, all the therapy in the world wouldn't help him.

Sure, I could just see it.
Excuse me, Doctor, but your bedside manner sucks and you're making impulsive decisions without thinking through the results. I think you need to seek professional counseling
. . . .

That would go over
real
well.

So . . . was it even my business at all? I mean . . . some ­people, some
doctors
are simply just assholes, and it's not up to me to fix any of them. I was no longer on the case, in a manner of speaking; I was under orders to stay out of Kirchner's way. Fixing him was not my job.

But there was another side to the issue. Navy Corspmen are responsible for the health of everyone on board ship, and that includes their mental health. Much more than on Earth or at a Commonwealth Navy base somewhere, the tight little community of men and women that make up a starship's crew and passengers depends on the medical department to keep everyone's mental health on an even keel . . . and that means watching out for developing problems before they reach critical and someone gets killed in a fight or as a result of bad judgment.

I couldn't do anything, but Chief Garner was the senior medical department petty officer. Maybe he could.

I thanked Ludwig for its help, then composed a written message in my head.

HEY, CHIEF,

I'M NOT
TRYING TO SECOND-­GU
ESS YOU OR DR.
K
IRCH
NER, BUT I'VE NOTICE
D SOME DISTURBING BE
HAVIORS AND I THOUGH
T I SHOULD PASS THEM
ON TO YOU. YOU MIGH
T BE IN A BETTER POS
ITION TO JUDGE, SINC
E YOU'RE SEEING HIM EVERY DAY.

THANKS MUCH.

ELLIOT CARLYLE, HM2

I appended a link to the list of signs and symptoms I'd observed, and sent it off. I used a written message partly because I didn't want to get into an argument with Garner, but mostly because I wanted him to see the whole list of signs and symptoms before he told me to shut the hell up.

On the downside, it established a records-­trail that would be most useful for the prosecution if they decided to give me a court-­martial.

I didn't care, though. I hadn't done anything actionable—­not yet—­and I really was concerned about Kirchner and the effect he might have on shipboard morale.

I addressed it to Garner, marking it to his attention only, hesitated for a long moment, and then finally hit the
SEND
icon.

Then I tried to get back to work, which meant going over the health records of the Marines in MSEP-­Alpha, making sure immunizations were up to date and that nanobot counts were within acceptable limits.

And I tried to forget about the damnable fact that, at that moment, Kirchner was the only physician within something like thirty light years.

M
y note to Chief Garner turned out to be something of a mistake. He came up to the squad bay the next day, furious, and reamed me a new one for sticking my nose in where it wasn't wanted.

“
Damn
it, E-­Car,” he growled, while a number of the Marines looked on in amused silence, “can't you just leave well enough alone? I've got all I can handle juggling . . . problems in sick bay, hassles with the skipper, and Dr. Kirchner on the rampage. I do not need you trying to be helpful!”

“I understand, Chief.”

“No, I don't think you do! Are you an expert in psychological pathology? Have you been trained in psychiatric medicine? Taken downloads teaching you intervention techniques in social path cases?”

“No, Chief, but—­”

“ ‘No, Chief,' ” he mimicked, then glared at me. “But me no buts, E-­Car. You wouldn't know antisocial personality disorder if it jumped out and bit you. And linking in to a psychiatric subroutine won't cut it.”

“I'm sorry, Chief. I was worried and trying to help.”

“You'll help best by staying here, staying out of the doctor's sight, and staying the hell out of my hair!”

“Aye, aye, Chief.”

There was more . . . but eventually Garner ran down and stalked off, leaving me with a bunch of grinning Marines. “Don't take it too hard, Doc,” Colby told me. “Chiefs and gunnery sergeants—­they think they're God.”

“Uh-­uh, Colby,” Sergeant Tomacek said, shaking his head. “Captains
think
they're God. Chiefs and gunnery sergeants
know
they're God. Basic law of the universe, that.”

A week and a ­couple of days later, we dropped out of Alcubierre Drive. GJ 1214 is a pipsqueak even compared to a red dwarf like Gliese 581. It's sixteen-­hundredths of the Sun's mass—­about half of Bloodstar's, and our navigational program popped us into normal space less than half an AU out.

And almost immediately, we realized that we were not alone in the system.

Someone else had gotten there first, and was already in orbit around the planet.

 

Chapter Eleven

K
ari and I stood silent on the mess deck, watching the final approach to the star and its watery world. A ­couple of dozen Marines were there as well, uncharacteristically silent. From a scant 2 million kilometers away, the star GJ 1214 spanned eight degrees, sixteen times the width of Sol in Earth's sky, sullen red, glowering, a good 20 percent of its face blotched and pocked by black starspots. I could see the granulation of the photosphere, the roil and churn of the deep stellar atmosphere, the ghostly reach of prominences along far-­flung lines of magnetic force.

And the world . . . was it world or titanic comet? As the digital avatar of Dr. James Eric Murdock had showed us in the docuinteractive briefing two weeks before, the planet called Abyssworld had a misty white tail streaming out from its nightside, stretching far out into the darkness away from that cool red ember of a sun. Abyssworld's dayside showed as a deep violet ocean beneath the hurricane swirl of clouds that covered most of the hemisphere. The nightside was made dimly visible by light reflecting from the cometary tail, and by the pale ring of aurorae around the planet's north pole. What we could see of Abyssworld's nightside reminded me forcibly of Europa—­ice from pole to pole, streaked and webbed and crisscrossed by filamentous networks of dark lines.

A world divided, half ice locked and frigid, half boiling, storm-­tortured ocean.

And an ocean, I reminded myself, that was ten thousand kilometers deep.

What a world, I thought.
What
a world!

Haldane
's instruments picked up the presence of the alien ship long before we were close enough to see it with our naked eyes, of course. The bridge threw an inset window up on the viewall showing the vessel, a gnarled and organic-­looking shape, vaguely like an egg but with blisters and twisted surfaces that made you dizzy if you tried to follow them with your eye. The color overall was black or a very dark slate gray with sky-­blue highlights or detailing; the color was a bit uncertain because we were seeing it by the ruby light of GJ 1214.

“Do we know who builds ships like that?” I asked.

“Maybe
Haldane
's AI knows,” Gunnery Sergeant Hancock said.

I linked through. Dozens of others were asking exactly the same question.

“The design,” the AI's voice replied, “is similar to Gykr vessels encountered at Xi Serpentis in 2201. I estimate the probability of identity at eighty-­five percent.”

In the 128 years since we'd made our first ET contact with the Brocs, Humankind has directly met perhaps twenty alien species, though we know of hundreds more through the Encyclopedia Galactica. I remembered something about a short war with these guys, but not the details.

“Tell me about the Gykr,” I said. And the data cascaded through my mind.

Encyclopedia Galactica/Xenospecies Profile

Entry: Sentient Galactic Species 12190

“Gykr”

Gykr, “Guckers,” “Gucks”

Civilization type
: 1.026 G

TL 19: FTL, Genetic/cybernetic Prostheses, Advanced nanotechnology

Societal code
: VTRB

Dominant: close associative/predatory/pro-­active—­invasive/sexual

Cultural library: 4.024 x 10
16
bits

Data Storage/Transmission DS/T: 4.01 x 10
11
s

Biological code
: 045.422.836

Genome: 5.1 x 10
10
bits; Coding/non-­coding: 0.622.

Biology
: C, H, N, O, Cu, Mg, As, H
2
O, PO
4
, Fe

GNA – Glycol Nucleic Acid

Cupric hemocyanin free-­floating in hemolymph as circulatory fluid.

Mobile heterotrophs, carnivores, O
2
respiration.

Upright jointed-­limb locomotion.

Highly gregarious, Polyspecific [1 genera, 10 ­species]; asexual.

Communication: modulated sound at 100 to 1000 Hz.

Neural connection equivalence NCE = 9.3 x 10
13

T = ~240
o
to ~290
o
K; M = ~7.6 x 10
4
g; L: ~4.7 x 10
8
s

Vision
: ~600 nm to 1200 nm;
Hearing:
12 Hz to 7000 Hz

Member
: Galactic Polylogue

Receipt galactic nested code: 7.22 x 10
9
s ago

Locally initiated contact 0.11 x 10
9
s ago

Star
: Unknown.

M = 6.2 x 10
27
g; R = 5.5 x 10
6
m; G = 8.4 m/s
2

Atm: O
2
10.2, N
2
53.0, CO
2
33.9, NH
3
2.6; P
atm
0.67 x 10
5
Pa

Librarian's note
: EG data suggests possibility of a Steppenwolf planet. First direct human contact occurred in 2201 C.E. at Xi Serpentis. Immediate hostile response/reflex led to three-­month “Guck War,” followed by the Treaty of Tanis in 2202, with no contact since. Threat level—­9.

I had to ask for the definition of “Steppenwolf planet.”

Back at the beginning of the exoplanetary discovery period, astronomers and cosmologists began learning just how chancy the process of planetary formation truly was. Early in a planetary system's history, newly formed planets tended to migrate in or out. Gas giants formed in the system's cold outer reaches might find themselves as “hot Jupiters,” circling their parent sun in a matter of days, or shifting back and forth in response to orbital resonances with other worlds. In Earth's solar system 4 billion years ago, orbital resonances moved Saturn farther out, and actually caused Uranus and Neptune to switch places. Most planetary scientists believe that the late heavy bombardment that cratered worlds throughout the inner system was generated as the gas giants shifted in or out, disturbing the orbits of countless asteroids and comets.

One consequence of this game of planetary billiards was that some planets would be ejected from the system entirely. Deprived of their sun, they would wander the frigid wastes among the stars, orphans lost within the vast and empty night. The term “Steppenwolf planet” had been coined a ­couple of centuries ago by planetary scientists who described such a world as “like a lone wolf wandering the Galactic steppes.” Others had suggested that such rogue planets were simply “born to be wild,” which seems to have been a cultural reference of the period, long since lost.

The first rogue planet ever discovered—­and confirmed not to be a brown dwarf—­was a world with the ungainly designation CFBDSIR 2149-­0403, discovered by an infrared survey back in 2012. Current estimates suggested that there might be twice as many rogue planets as there were stars in the Galaxy, as many as 800 billion.

What had not been expected was that some of these worlds, at least, might be abodes of life. Several mechanisms for this outlandish possibility had been proposed. All required that the planet begin with an ocean of liquid water. In one, radioactive minerals deep in the planet's crust might keep the oceans liquid beneath a kilometer-­thick crust of solid ice. Another possibility suggested that extensive volcanism could pump large amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, where it would freeze, fall as CO
2
snow, and ultimately blanket the oceans in insulating dry ice long before they could freeze. Enough volcanic activity might create underground caverns warmed by lava flows, as well as heating the oceans enough to keep them liquid. Calculations suggested that such worlds might maintain heat enough within their cores to keep their oceans liquid for as long as 5 billion years.

If such a world had already evolved life at the time when it was ejected from its star system, that life could be expected to adapt to slowly changing, cooling conditions. Whether that life could develop intelligence or, even more unlikely given the nature of the environment, technology, remained a hotly contested question.

But the fact that certain key planetary stats weren't listed in the Gykr entry in the Encylopedia Galactica—­no orbital radius or length of year—­suggested either that the Gykr had somehow managed to delete those from the record, for whatever reason, or that those data were not relevant—­that the world didn't
have
a star.

If the Gucks had evolved within a rogue planet, they most likely would be a
very
different form of life. The supposition was that they did develop a technical civilization, possibly by developing metallurgy and advanced chemistry among the fiery volcanic vents in deep underground caverns; a purely marine civilization could never discover fire, could never smelt metals, could never venture into space . . . at least as we understand the processes of cultural and technic evolution and development.

“One thing's certain,” Hancock said, scowling, “those little bastards mean trouble.”

“We haven't even seen them since the Guck War,” Lance Corporal Brady said. She shook her head. “Maybe they learned their lesson?”

“Not fucking likely,” Hancock replied. “My daddy told me about them. They'd sooner shoot than say howdy.”

“Fight-­or-­fight response,” I added. “It's built into their genetic structure.”

The Guck War had only lasted three months, and basically consisted of two battles: the first at Xi Serpentis, the second at Tanis, where the Fifth Fleet came down on a Gucky supply depot like a hypernova. The Treaty of Tanis was established by laser com, and the two parties never met each other. All we knew about Gykr physiology came from dead and often mangled bodies found inside space armor, plus what was listed in their entry in the Encylcopedia Galactica when we finally dug it out.

Someone in that war had described the Gykr as “overgrown fleas,” and they had that insect's overall look—­a hunched-­over body plated with natural armor, like overlapping strips of leather, long and spindly legs, bristly sensor hairs emerging everywhere—­from legs, between body segments, and from the center of what might have been a face.

They weren't actually insects, of course, but the product of a very different, very alien evolution. They had internal skeletons, breathed with triple lungs, and the body armor was not chitin, but a kind of tough, plastic skin. The more I looked at the computer-­modeled images of Gucks in our library database, the less they looked like terrestrial fleas, and the more they looked like something horribly else—­hive-­minded nightmares so different that the human mind struggled to find any point of contact, any overlap with the known and the familiar simply to make sense of the things.

The most disturbing aspect of the Gykr, though, was not their appearance, but that “fight-­or-­fight” response I'd mentioned.
Any
perceived threat was attacked, immediately and violently . . . and we never did learn exactly what it was that even constituted a threat from their point of view.

It surprised the hell out of us, then, when the lone Gykr starship suddenly accelerated, breaking orbit with a burst of gamma rays, X-­rays, and high-­energy neutrons, and streaking off into the outer system under high-­G. After our experiences with them at Xi Serpentis and Tanis, we weren't sure the little bastards
could
run away. Scuttlebutt had it, though, that there were Gykr vehicles still on the surface of the planet—­worse, that they were down in the vicinity of where Murdock Base had been established. Either the Gykr ship had abandoned its landing force . . .

. . . or they were coming back soon with help.

And that was not a pleasant thought at all.

“T
his,” Lieutenant Kemmerer said over our cerebral links, “will be strictly a volunteer operation. We want twelve Marines.”

In our heads, we saw a schematic diagram of the
Haldane
dropping into planetary orbit, then releasing a small, manta-­ray-­shaped shuttle.

“They'll be deploying in a Misty Junior,” she continued, as the schematic focused in on the manta-­ray landing craft as it flew down to the edge of the ice. “Their orders will be to investigate the colony site on planet, investigate the Gykr presence, and report by laser com back to
Haldane
. They are not, repeat,
not
to initiate hostilities, but they will defend themselves if attacked, and hold the LZ until
Haldane
and the rest of the MSEP can arrive.

“Since this will be a potential first-­contact situation, I want two Corpsman volunteers as well . . . that does
not
include you, Chief Garner. I want you to manage the technical end of the op here on the
Haldane
, along with Dr. Montgomery and Dr. Ortega. Understand?”

“Aye, aye, Skipper,” Garner's voice replied over the link. He didn't sound at all happy about it, though.

The “Misty Junior” the skipper had mentioned was one of
Haldane
's two onboard D/MST-­28 TMVs. Like the Marine's larger MST-­22 Misties, the Misty Juniors were trans-­media vehicles that could operate in hard vacuum, in atmosphere, and both on and under the water. Each was designed to carry a full section—­twenty-­four Marines.
Haldane
was configured to allow her to land on a planet, as she'd done at the base on Europa, but the Misties allowed her to deploy just a few Marines as a scout/recon force without endangering the entire ship and all of the expedition's MSEP Marines.

As Lieutenant Kemmerer continued to describe the mission, I thought about whether or not I should volunteer to go in with the recon group. I was damned tired of the ship by that time, and of being restricted from sick bay for fear that I would bump into Kirchner.

Well . . . why not? That was why I was here, to go down to the surface of Abyssworld and investigate the disappearance of our research colony there. There was no sense in putting it off. The downside was that the situation was complicated by the Guckers, but that would have been a problem whether I went in with the first recon force or arrived later on the
Haldane
. Kirchner, certainly, would be staying with the ship. So, too, was Garner, and he'd been riding me pretty hard these past ­couple of weeks.