Archaea 3: Red (40 page)

I choked
, “Relative to what?”

He
sobered up a bit, “Relative to the mission, Gene.”

*****

We were on final approach to the seventh planet in the H3342 system, and Jane and I were getting suited up. I wished the power suits were ready, but Janis was putting the finishing touches on their armaments. We’d have to make do with these old, dusty, crusty, dingy, dirty, nasty suits that smelled like feet. Well, my suit did. Jane’s suit smelled like exotic perfume… or maybe it was sweat. Either way it smelled a damn sight better than mine.

Under acceleration as we were, we had to remain clipped in to the suit rack as we worked through the procedures, to keep from bouncing off of bulkheads as the captain hauled us around. It wasn’t too bad, but we had a few moments where we came off the floor and tumbled around a little bit.

We didn’t really know much of what we were getting into. Pauli said the seventh planet was near the hotter inner section of the temperate zone, and H3342 was a pretty energetic star. It was probably going to be hot, though on scope the planet looked green enough through the few breaks in cloud cover. Probably had a little bit of a greenhouse effect, though their analysis was that it was an oxygen and nitrogen rich atmosphere – there were enough clouds down there it was probably about as muggy as it could be.

That didn’t scare me too
much, as I’ve been to Yakima in August. Not even a tour on Venus would compare.

“Are you kids ready to roll?” Captain Smith called on comms.

“Ready, Captain”, Jane replied, snapping her railer into its chest holster, and standing ready to unclip from the suit rack. My pressure sensor held through the sixty-count, so I was good to go as well. We stood easy, but ready.

“Very well, stand by. There isn’t enough clearance down there for us to land, so we’re going to leave her in orbit and drop the crab.”

“Sounds like a plan, sir” I replied. “Can we get situated?”

“Almost, stand by for final insertion burn in 3, 2, 1…”

T
he Archaea lurched below us, leaving us at the mercy of our tethers for a moment.

“That’ll do it -
Yak, go ahead and get aboard.”

We
unclipped and kicked across the cargo bay to the crab. An assembler was topside, snapping and popping arcs, working on something.

“Are you sure, sir?” I called on comms. “There’s an assembler working on it at the moment.”

“Right to the wire, son. Janis is still working on tasks that that have to be finished, and can’t wait. We are on mission Marine!”

“OOOH-RAH!” I hollered in my best parade voice, and got a firm shove from Jane as a reward.

“Use your inside voice, Yak”, she chided good naturedly, and waved me ahead up the companionway.

We stowed weapons,
connected our suits, and got all snuggled in our crash bars.

“Yak?” Pauli called on comms.

“Copy”, I replied.

“The orbitals on this planet have been wiped, but Janis is working on recovering data. We don’t really know what this colony was, but Janis’ best guess based on an analysis of Morse-Webber holdings is that this colony serves a methane pump, or possibly petroleum dri
lling. In either case, she thinks there is probably a refinery of sorts on location, though what its exact purpose is, she doesn’t know.”

A refinery is a pretty standard platform, and Jane and I have trained for this sort of mission – I have been operational on a few, both onshore and off, so this should go well.

“Thanks Pauli, we’ll keep our eyes open. What sort of environment do we have down there?”

“I’m afraid we don’t know – though Janis assures me that there’s nothing inherently lethal down there, she’s confident that you’ll be navigating a very dense organic plant-like structure. Maybe trees, maybe not… given the way things work, I’d be surprised if anything is remotely recognizable. Stay alert, plant-like and animal-like may not present the same sort of visual indicators that we’re used to.”

“Yep, I know the drill, Pauli. This isn’t my first rodeo.”

He laughed. “The atmosphere has a very high concentration of oxygen—“

Jane broke in, “Can we crack our seals?”

“No Shorty, I wouldn’t. There’s also a very high concentration of
nitrogen. In the density and temperature, there’s also a correspondingly high concentration of nitrous-oxide—“

“That doesn’t sound so bad…” I said with a smile and a wink towards Shorty.

“Well, no… but you’ll also have some ammonia, hydrazine, probably a pretty corrosive precipitation with nitric acid, and possibly some highly poisonous azides as well. I definitely wouldn’t recommend breathing down there.”

“Point taken, Pauli… we’ll keep our heads on.”

Captain Smith came aboard, and slapped us both on the shoulder as he passed by, with a tug to make sure we were locked in.

“There’s one other thing, Yak…”

“Yes?”

“Uh… you should try at all times to avoid sparks.”

“What’s that son?” Captain Smith joined in, as he clamped himself down and started flipping switches.

“Sir, the atmosphere down there is volatile. The clouds have a high percentage of particulates, and imaging shows a number of locations on the planet that are… ah… on fire.”

“The air is on fire?”

“In parts, sir, mostly in areas where it’s dry enough, and the humidity drops enough… but even where it’s humid, it is volatile. If there’s enough static, lightning or other static discharge would probably ignite it… sir.”

“Well, we’ll drop her in nice and easy. The crab’s lifters don’t cause heat. Janis, is there anything hot enough on the crab that might cause ignition?”

“The crab is completely shielded against heat, sir, to the lowest observable profile I could engineer”, she replied immediately.

“That’s what I wanted to hear. Nothing to worry about then, folks… right?” he swiveled his chair to look back at us.

“No sir”, Jane replied, “we have knives if needed.”

“Just don’t charge off that stun knife, Jane”, I replied softly on suit comms.

“I won’t… unless it’s very deeply buried in less flammable material”, she winked in reply.

“Ew.” I made a face.

“Well, here we go. Gene, you’re in charge. Everyone clear? Gene says go to bed, you all have to go to bed.”

“Certainly sir”, Janis replied smartly.

“Good girl. Good luck on those orbitals, we need to know where they went, dear.” He rotated back around and continued with his pre-flight procedures.

Her reply was immediate, “I will not fail, Captain.”

“
That’s what I want to hear. Gene, cycle open the keel hatch please, we’re ready to drop.”

“Open now, Skipper” he replied after a moment.

“Moving out now, folks”, he replied, and with the slightest lurch, the crab articulated across the cargo bay and straddled the opening.

The captain worked a little more on a side screen, then called out on comms, “Ready in 3… 2… 1… drop!”

The drop was comically underwhelming. As we were in orbit, it was more of a gentle shove through the opening, and the deck of the cargo bay and the open hatch doors slowly slid past.

“Everyone okay back there?” the captain called back on suit comms.

We laughed. “I think I broke a nail, sir”, Jane replied.

“Well, it’ll have to
keep, Shorty. Stand by for maneuvers”, he replied sternly.

We looked at each other smiling as the Archaea slowly tumbled past the forward ports as he rotated us away. The grey cloudscape of the planet below filled the forward screen.

“I’m just going to bring her in nice and smooth, folks. We’re in a hurry, but not in a hurry to die in a fire. Immolation was one of the things they taught us to avoid in Captain School, along with how to properly jaunt a cap.”

As often as I’d felt completely at the mercy of the captain as he hurled me around the sky, this was completely out of character for him. He smoothly
decelerated against the spin of the planet below, and brought us down into the clouds as softly as a leaf. After that we didn’t see much at all for a while except for what looked like water running across the forward screens.

The crab buffeted around a little bit as we dropped, but way less than I expected. Other than the terrain map on the captain’s screens, there wasn’t anything else to look at. The beacon was coming up as he brought us in lower towards the surface.

Vague shapes loomed at times out of the fog, enormous dark green cylinders, shiny and wet. On his screens, the surface layer was broken up into what looked like a series of columns, stacked and layered against each other.

“Hmm… there doesn’t seem to be a landing platform here, folks”, he called back. “I’m going to bring us in close, and we’ll try to get in overland.”

He aimed for a gap in the tubes, and as he dropped us down, I understood what it was I was looking at. The giant cylinders I was seeing from time to time were the tube structures in his screens. They were vast, 50-60 meters across, and we were a considerable height off the ground yet, dropping smoothly past.

The sidewall of the closest tube loomed through the fog ahead of us, barely lit by our forward arcs. They were mostly featureless, but appeared to have a section join every hundred meters or so as we descended, a sort of indentation and ridge arrangement that overlapped the upper section and joined it to the next lower section.

“What are these tubes, Captain?” Jane asked.

“Beats me, Shorty… probably a critter of some sort, they look pretty organic. Maybe these are the ‘trees’ of this planet? They look like some form of giant bamboo or grass stalk, or possibly the casing of a giant tube worm.”

“Um”, she replied. “Let’s go with bamboo, sir.”

“Sounds good to me, Shorty, I want them to be safe, plant-like critters as much as anyone. I can’t imagine they’d drop a colony into the middle of something horrible.”

He paused for a moment.

“
However, as this was a glom colony… I guess anything is possible where profits are being made.”

*****

“Ew, Yak… it’s going to be muddy out there”, I said, wrinkling my nose appropriately.

“Mud is just dirt that wants to give you a hug, Jane”, he replied. “
But, yeah… it’s going to be nasty, no doubt”, he added after a lurch dropped the crab a few meters into the slimy muck.

The captain had brought us in smoothly, but now we were slipping and sliding through what looked like waterlogged mulch soup, festooned with stringers of some sort of slime that occasionally splashed across the forward screen.

The closer we dropped to the surface, the more congested the growth became, until he had to resort to walking us down the side of a long-collapsed tube into the dank surface below. We had no room to fly and hardly enough room down here to walk.

Right on cue, the walker slowed to a halt, blocked by a nearly impenetrable mass of growth. He pivoted us to the left and right, looking for an opening, then lowered us into the mud.

“The beacon isn’t far from here, kids, but I can’t get us any closer. Time for a little hike, it looks like.”

I grumbled something about hazard pay, and made my way aft to the lock.

“Jane, we can’t take chemsers, right?”

I cringed, looking wistfully at the rifles. “No, Yak. We should leave them here. Our railers as well”, I added, and unclipped my holster from my chest harness.

“Hmmm… but they’re non-sparking, Jane. Sodiumite should be safe, right?”

I laughed. “Yak, what does a sodiumite dart do when it hits organic matter?”

His face fell. “Yeah, we don’t want any ‘splosions… got it.”

“Knives and knuckles, Yak. I’d suggest full mimetics as well”, I flipped my suit on as he stowed his railer on the shelf next to mine.

“Roger that, Jane”, he said glumly. We shared one last final wistful look at our beloved weapons and then made our way into the lock, waiting for ambers.

“Stay sharp out there folks”, the captain called on comms. “I did see some critters on the way in, though they looked more slimy than
dangerous; watch your back out there.”

“Good grief”, I replied, slipping the lanyard of my commando knife around my glove, and making a fist. The outer hatch cycled and lowered
down; making a diving board to leap into the depths of whatever sodden hell waited for us out there.

It looked absolutely horrid, and I was really glad that I couldn’t smell it. The mud was covered with about a meter of what looked like rotten cane stalks of some sort.

“Ladies first”, Yak said politely.

“Ugh, fine…” I replied, and gingerly dropped a leg off the ramp into mud that apparently had no bottom.

“Tether, Jane”, he reminded me, handing me his clip.

“Good idea, Yak.” Clipping our tethers together seemed pretty wise, when slithering chest deep through a nightmare. I grimaced, and dropped off the ramp up to my thighs in muck.