Burnt Ice (3 page)

The captain nodded. ‘OK, good
work, Fritz. Our task is to decide whether it is feasible to release the
information. We are also to try to find any tech and examine that. Some of the
hierarchy believes that there may be progenitor tech in the ocean.’

Everyone smiled, with Fritz
rolling his eyes for good measure.

‘Yeah, yeah. I know it’s dumb,’
said Harry. ‘But that’s the job at hand.’

‘That’s right,’ said the captain.
‘Use all available sensors, etcetera. And let’s see what we can find. And of course
we keep mum about what we’re up to. No pillow talk, OK? The official cover
story is that we are a specialist comms team working on a new marine
application communication system. The one thing that does bother me is that no
one’s done any serious deep-sea surveying of this planet. Then again, it’s
expensive and I know that the Administration wanted the mining operation in
full swing as quickly as possible.’

Everyone nodded.

‘Jan, you have experience in
piloting subs, so I’m making you pilot for the duration. You may even get to
like us and want to permanently transfer, eh? Could you check over the sub and
grab any other equipment we may need please? Your Q card is sorted with a
priority tech requirement, so no one will even blink an eye at any of your
requests. Is all the equipment we brought intact and working? I brought it
down, but have you eyeballed it, Harry? Yes? Good.’

The captain looked at his screen
then spoke again.

‘Harry, Marko, set up full search
patterns stretching out to five kilometres surrounding the islands. Harry, you
and I will fly those surveys. I note that they have a few Aurora here, so
requisition us a pair of those please. I’ve always liked that aircraft. Fritz,
start work on possible translations please. We are all here actually to support
you, but don’t push it, mate, OK? We’re going to start researching all the
planetary records as far back as we can go to see if anything has been filed.
Standard protocols apply. Anyone who finds anything of note — flash it across
to us all. The base AI has allocated a specific secured channel just for us,
and she is also keeping an ear on what we are up to. Classy entity, so don’t
upset her. OK, any questions? No? Right, go to it, people.’

~ * ~

Two

The
captain and Harry flew the two Aurora with the weapons stripped out to make
room for sensor equipment that enabled them to see down through the ocean. The
rest of the section manned multiple screens in the base headquarters, sifting
through the data streams, looking for anything that would be considered
artificial. The task was made easier as the base AI gave them any assistance
she could. Only one really interesting area turned up; it looked like some sort
of ruined underwater structure, so the decision was made to go and take a closer
look.

Early the next morning everyone
was assembled in one of the vehicle hangars, looking up at the submarine.

‘For those not familiar with it,
this is a Mark 3 Sunfish combat submersible.’ said Harry. ‘It can pick up,
transport and sustain a full section of troops for a month without having to
return to base. Two wet-locks can rotate three divers each every five minutes.
Good weapons systems. All the other specs are on your plates, if you’re
interested. Jan, if you would take the right-hand seat please. From your specs
I note that you are checked out on these. OK. We lift in three minutes.
Everyone buckle up.’

‘Thanks, Harry, like I really
need to know any of that,’ Fritz said sarcastically. ‘Sometimes I think that I
should call you “Dad”.’

‘Be nice, Fritz.’

Fritz wondered to himself why he
bothered with the section. He thought faster than any of them, could beat each
and every one in any game requiring mental agility and could — and on occasion,
did — do the same with any AI he met. Then again, he thought to himself, I like
the section and they treat me well enough. He had hacked all the mail coming to
the captain within a day of being adopted by Harry and subsequently became part
of the investigative engineering section. So he knew that the only reason he
was not hardwired into an AI hive was Captain Michael Longbow’s unusual
influence high up in the command chain and Harry’s family patronage.

Marko watched from the engineer’s
seat as Jan’s fingers danced over the controls, powering up the turbines and AG
units. She logged the flight and underwater plan and, after receiving clearance
from the local flight controller, lifted off.

Jan flew out across the bay
towards a point in the ocean some four kilometres offshore. She dropped the sub
towards the surface, coming to a gentle stop immediately above the low swell,
then lowered it into the water as the antigravity units powered down. The
sleek, wasp-shaped sub sank beneath the surface. Jan brought the four magnetic,
teardrop-shaped, water thruster pods online and the crew could hear the tone of
the turbines change as they came under load. Simultaneously, the atmospheric
thrusters rotated and folded into the smooth hull. They flew through the ocean
down to a depth of two hundred and twenty metres, with the system front screens
now displaying the underwater scene as if it were in sunlight, which of course
it was not — not even the very harsh UV falling on the planet would penetrate
much more than a hundred metres down.

‘Power up your boards, people.’
said Harry. ‘Give me whatever you find. Take images of everything, the local
flora and fauna in particular. We may find a key image in those to help Fritz
understand more of what is here. Standard survey orbit over the site please,
Jan.’

They cruised across the area with
Jan navigating in an ever-increasing spiral for a couple of hours, allowing the
marine radar, magnetic pulse and gravity-measuring tech to paint a picture of
everything non-organic down to a fraction of a millimetre for a
five-hundred-metre radius of the site at the centre of the ruins. Jan fully
relaxed for the first time in a long time, feeling the rhythm of the sub and
those working around her.

Harry summarised the data for the
captain.

‘They are ruins of intelligent
design and construction, captain. Even the most cursory glance at the first
images confirms that this was once an inhabited site. Pretty easy, really.
Something grown does not have ornaments of recognisable surface plants on it
like those, eh? Can’t determine the purpose of the buildings yet, but by
measuring the openings we can start to estimate the physical parameters of the
inhabitants. Appears that they were swimmers of some sort. Can’t see any
ground-level entrances.’

‘OK, thanks, Harry. Send in the
drones.’

The four two-metre-long Tigerfish
drone-class submersibles dropped out of their nested bays. They moved towards
their designated targets and opened their eyes, ready to supply 3D images back
to the section.

‘Drones away, boss,’ Jan
confirmed. ‘I’m putting two through that large break in the wall. I’ll control
those. The other two are directed to study the outer walls and surrounding
seafloor more closely. Marko, you have one and, boss, you’ve the other. Images
coming up. Filters on. Wow, look at that! A temple, maybe? Deities or monsters?
Deities. Those will excite you, Fritz.’

‘I’m already excited. Match! I
have a bloody match! Outstanding. Look at that carving on the left wall — three
o’clock high — the critter there. Look at the shape, now the pictograph.
Excellent! Shit, there’s more coming in. Plant type there, there and there!
Great.’

‘Boss.’

‘Marko?’

‘I have metal and ceramics. Do we
go for a recovery?’

‘No, not in our current brief.
Images only unless something is completely exposed, on the seafloor surface and
on hard strata.’

‘No, none of that,’ Marko said. ‘Drone
hovering over the deposit now. Bronze and ceramics. Interesting. How the hell
did the creators of these smelt and form metal and pottery in the sea? We have
biologicals as well. I make them a squid type. Yeah, I have a match! They seem
interested in the drones but aren’t getting too close. Big bastards. Various
fish types as well. Hey, that’s different. A paddle crab type has just hitched
a ride on my drone.’

Marko extended an eye stalk from
the top panel of the drone to get a closer look at the steel-grey crab-like
creature. It seemed to stare back until suddenly a titanium-blue tentacle shot
into the picture and pulled the crab off the casing. As Marko watched, the crab
was neatly broken in two by a pair of tentacles, almost as if it had been
designed that way. The squid then flashed a series of colours on its skin;
another squid came over to it and was given half of the crab. Both squids
seemed to hold a flashing-skin-colours conversation before the crab portions
were consumed. The squids then came to the main eyes of the drone and flashed a
different series of rapid colour changes. They then both rose up, away from the
drone, and departed into the ruins.

‘That was wild!’ Marko exclaimed.
‘You guys see that?’

‘Yeah, look up Old Earth species “cuttlefish”,
Marko. They did that.’

‘Yeah, but do they share their
food, Harry?’

‘Don’t know, mate. I do know that
squid tastes good, especially when stuffed with crab! Boss, we’ve mapped
everything. What’s next?’

‘Right, people. I’ll upload
everything that we have to the base AI. She will be interested and seriously
pissed off as well. The place is about to be overrun by boffins! If the
Administration is at all interested anyway. Jan, step a hundred metres out, and
another orbit please. Record and measure everything else, people.’

As she piloted the craft, Jan
quietly looked around her, considering the actions of the crew. She smiled to
herself, feeling secure that they were definitely odd types, but good people
all the same. She decided that she would have to discuss them with her seniors,
as she now understood they were not just
any
group of investigative
engineers.

An hour or so later they had not
found anything else to seriously interest them. Once the drones had all been
recovered the sub returned to the surface, lifted off and flew back to Base
Hawaii. The captain gathered the data and went off for discussions with the
base AI while the crew cleaned the data files on board, then hosed down the
ship as it sat in its cradle before moving back to the conference room.

The captain was waiting for them;
as soon as they were all seated he started the briefing, saying, ‘OK, now this
is going to interest you all. The base AI has gone through the survey records and
found another interesting site, fifty-two kilometres south of this island. She
looked carefully through all the data and is going to give us a five-day grace
period to explore it before informing the Games Board for one of their
general-interest stories, as Administration Head Office is already aware that
something alien is here. So if anything interesting is out there we have five
days to find it. Anyone got plans? No, sorry, Fritz, going to a concert tonight
does not excuse you. Provision the sub with fresh foodstuffs. No need to do
things hard. Harry, we’re off again in an hour.’

They walked back down towards the
aerodrome, Marko slowing as he passed the carnivorous plant he had seen eating
the insect, ramping up the magnification in his bioware. He spied a tiny skull
— picked clean — at the side of the plant. He quickly took some images.

‘Work now, play later, Marko.’

Marko turned and looked up at the
captain and grinned.

‘Sorry, boss, can’t help myself.’

Two hours later they were all
three hundred and twenty-two metres below the surface of the sea, slowly
circling down around a large seamount. As they passed a series of cave mouths,
the drone’s mapping radar showed them a wealth of information regarding a
long-dead aquatic civilisation. What appeared to be a relatively advanced
culture started to give up some of its secrets, and they spent the next two
days mapping everything that could be found within a two-kilometre radius of
the site. The architecture reminded them all of an elegant insect hive, with
hundreds of chambers all interconnected via avenues, shafts and tunnels.
Everything was covered in native life forms of weed- and coral-like materials —
the entire deep-water ecosystem alive and prospering in the outer layers. The
further the drones penetrated, the less plant life existed.