Exodus: Tales of The Empire: Book 2: Beasts of the Frontier. (24 page)

One little
problem
, she thought, walking toward the building where their quarters were
established. 
And one we’re here to take care of.

*     *     *

THE DEEP, ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-FIVE KILOMETERS SOUTHWEST
OF HUBOLT.

“We’re at
twenty-three thousand meters, ma’am,” reported Master Sergeant Kama, operating
the sensor suite of the submarine.  “We’re picking up sonar returns from four
thousand meters.  Returns are consistent with mud and rock.”

“Give me a take
from the remote,” ordered Jensen, sitting in the command chair of the small
bridge of the submarine. 
Argonaut
had come along with them from New
Tahiti, where it had been their primary oceanic patrol craft.  New Tahiti had
some very deep trenches, at least as far as most ocean planets went, some
reaching as deep as ten thousand meters.  The ninety-six meter submarine was
built of the strongest materials known to the Empire, and could dive to a depth
of over fifty thousand meters.

The image from
the remote diving vehicle showed the bottom illuminated by the bright light of
its forward dome.  It was as predicted, mud with some rock rising from it in
places.  And totally devoid of life.  Even the deepest trenches of New Tahiti
had some animals at their deepest points, but this bottom was more than two and
a half times that depth.

“How are the
engines responding” she asked Warrant Officer Sarnai Zaya, who had the helm.

“At twenty-eight
percent thrust, ma’am,” responded the WO.  “Current speed is eighty-five
knots.”

Jensen nodded. 
The sub was armed, heavily, but she was depending on its speed to get them out
of any trouble they couldn’t fight.  Right now eighty-five knots was about all
they could do, since some of her people were out in the water.

“Status report?”
she said into the com, sending the sonic signal out to the men and dolphins who
were accompanying the sub.

“Everything
nominal at the moment,” reported Corporal Detweiler, in charge of one of the
teams.  A moment later Sergeant Tomas reported in for the other team, that made
up of the dolphins.

Humanoids and
cetaceans were all equipped with specialized diving armor, capable of taking
them down in comfort to thirty thousand meters, while propelling them at a
maximum of a hundred and twenty knots.  Cruising speed was just below ninety
knots, and Jensen didn’t want to strain the capacity of the suits when she
didn’t have to.  The humanoid suits looked like particularly streamlined heavy
battle armor, while the suits the dolphins wore looked nothing like any other
suit.  They made the dolphins look like robot versions of themselves, and they
were capable of a much greater turn of speed than the humanoid suits.

“OK,” said
Jensen, looking at the holo that showed everything for twenty kilometers in
every direction.  “Let’s see what we can stir up.”

Compared to
space that twenty kilometer radius sphere seemed tiny, but this was a different
environment. 
Argonaut’s
sensors could pick up objects for thousands of
kilometers that were radiating sound, engines, sonar, noises that traveled
great distances through the water.  Objects that weren’t radiating were a
different story.  Still, with the suited constables and a number of remote
vehicles, they could see just about everything in that sphere.

Jensen looked at
the holo, noting the schools up deep water fish about three kilometers beneath
the surface, the ten icons of her suited constables, and little else.  Now it
was time to see if they could attract something else.

“We’re going to
pulse sonar in ten seconds,” said Kama over the com, warning the suits to turn
down their pickups.  “Pulsing, now.”

Using the power
of her fusion reactor, the submarine pulsed her sonar with a powerful signal
that would travel hundreds of kilometers with enough power to rattle any
creature in the path.  The school of fish high above acted stunned for some
moments, then tore away at their fastest speed.  Several seconds later the
sub’s sonar pulsed again.  It kept it up for several minutes at five second
intervals, letting any predators in the area know that something was here.  The
smaller creatures would use that signal to avoid what to them would seem to be
a large animal, too big for them to handle.  But they were hoping that
something that didn’t have a rival in this ocean would decide they were
something that needed checking out.

And now we
wait
, thought Jensen after the last pulse went out.  A half an hour later
they got their first sniff at whatever lived down in the Deep.

“We’re picking
up motion in the water,” reported Kama, looking over at his commander. 
“Estimated range six thousand five hundred meters, depth, four thousand
meters.  And ma’am,” continued the Master Sergeant, a frown on his face, “it’s
big.  Really big.”

“Switch to
active sonar,” ordered Jensen.

Kama nodded and
turned back to his board.  “It’s hard to track, ma’am.  I‘m boosting the
signal.”

Jensen looked to
the holo, seeing the return outline of the unknown coming up at them.  The
eight beings out there in armored suits were scattering, trying to get out of
the way of the thing that was moving at almost a hundred and fifty knots.  The
thing was almost eight kilometers across, and it looked like a couple of the
suits were not going to make it.

“Prepare to fire
sonics,” Jensen ordered.

Kama nodded and
turned back to his board. 
Argonaut
had lasers, useable on the surface
or for com.  In the water lasers were more or less useless, heating the liquid
ahead of them and gaining little traction over distance.  But sonics were
perfect for the liquid environment, and now the same mechanism that produced
the ship’s sonar emitted a focused beam of sonic energy that transmitted
through the water like it was a perfectly transparent medium.  On striking the
target it would vibrate that matter to the point where it would disrupt its
structure, eating it, ripping apart cells and structures down to the molecular
level.

“It’s not
slowing, ma’am,” called out Kama.

“Is the beam
having any effect?”

“We’re picking
up a heat source on the surface of the unknown.  It appears to be working,
ma’am.  But there’s no way to tell what the effect is on the entire creature.”

“It’s got me,”
yelled out Constable Lewinsky, his icon blinking on the holo.  That holo showed
that the creature had extruded something, a pseudopod, and had captured the
Constable who had been unable to outrun it.

“Can you break
free?” yelled Jensen, anxious that a huge creature of unknown capabilities had
captured one of her people.  His suit was as tough as the Empire could make it,
with its own sonic weapons.  Unknown capabilities was the rub, she didn’t know
what this thing could do, but she remembered seeing the pitted foundations of
the village on vid, and realized that this thing had the ability to dissolve
some tough substances.

“I don’t know,
ma’am,” said the stressed voice of the Constable.  “I’m activating electrical
shock systems, but it doesn’t seem to be doing anything.”

The com was
silent for a moment as Jensen considered hitting it with torpedoes, rejecting
the idea while she had one of her people trapped within it, at risk from the
weapon.

“Oh God,” called
out the Constable.  “The surface of my suit is showing damage.”

“Hang tight,
Lewinsky.  We’ll get you out.”

The submarine
shook as the massive creature hit it, pushing it away while it sent its fluid
mass around the sides.  Kama hit a switch on his board, setting the skin of the
vessel to carry a charge directly from the fusion reactor.  The creature shook,
then recoiled away, obviously hurt by the greater charge from the submarine.

“Hit it with
every energy weapon we have,” called out Jensen.

Kama nodded and
worked his board, sending sonics, electrical charges, even the laser over the
short distance into the biomass of the creature.  It shook and started to move
away, trying to escape this small object that was causing it so much pain.

“Sergeant Tomas,
get Lewinsky out of there,” she ordered over the com.

The dolphin NCO
acknowledged, and he and his team moved toward the massive creature, toward the
retracting pseudopod that contained the suited Constable.  As soon as they were
in position they started sending out their natural sonar call, amplified a
thousand times by the suits.  The waves of sound hit the biomass of the pseudopod,
searing into the living matter at a point where the extrusion entered the
body.  They blasted away, tearing at the mass, vaporizing, cutting through.

The creature
extruded additional pseudopods to attack the dolphins.  The sea creatures,
trained to take full advantage of the augmentation of their suits, dodged away
while hitting the new pseudopods with sonic beams, then swept back in to strike
at their original target.

“It’s going
deeper ma’am,” called out Kama.

“Keep on it,
Zaya,” ordered the Major.  “I don’t want it hauling Lewinski down into the
Deep.”

The Warrant
Officer nodded and piloted the submarine after the creature that was dropping
down at a high rate of speed.  It wouldn’t be more than a minute before the
depth exceeded the capacity of the suit to withstand the pressure.  The
Argonaut
continued to follow, continued to hit the creature with sonics, trying to
kill it before it got away.  That had not been her initial plan, which had been
to injure it enough to force it back to its lair so she would know where it had
come from.  Now the entire mission was to save her Constable.

The dolphins
swept in again, striking at the weakening attachment point.  With a loud pop
the pseudopod came loose, turning it into its own much smaller creature. 
Argonaut
continued hitting the main creature with its sonics, driving it away from
its lost member.

“Lewinsky. 
Shock it, now.  Tomas, hit it with electricity.”

The Constable
sent out all the juice his suit could generate, while the dolphins rammed the
noses of their armor in the biomass and sent their own shocking electricity
into the matter surrounding the human.  It didn’t take long to drive it off of
Lewinsky, and two of the dolphins linked their suits to his and started to move
him away from the danger zone, while the other two continued to attack the
small piece of biomass with sonics.

“Keep a lock on
that thing,” ordered Jensen, looking over at Kama.

“You want me to
hit it with torpedoes?”

“Not on your
life.  I want to see if it goes back to its home.”  She looked at the holo that
showed the creature dropping down at two hundred kilometers an hour.  It would
reach the bottom in a little over ten minutes.  “Lewinsky,” she said next into
the com.  “Are you OK?”

“The suit’s a
little messed up, ma’am.  But I’m OK.”

“Good. 
Everybody repair back aboard the
Argonaut
.  It might get a little rough
out there.  Tomas.  You and your people get me a sample of that thing before
heading back.”

This would be
the first opportunity to get am intact sample of the thing, and the suits were
all equipped with sample tanks that were said to be proof against any
biological hazard.  They were even resistant to nanotech, to a point.   The
dolphins quickly filled the small tanks, then destroyed what was left in the
water with their sonics.  They rocketed back to the sub, actually passing some
of the humanoid suits on the way.

There were four
airlocks on the sub, two for regular suits, two for the dolphin versions.  The
people would come through the airlock and be lifted into the garbing room where
they could get out of their suits.  The dolphins would also be able to remove
their suits and get into the small tank that would keep them comfortable, at
least physically.  In a battle situation like this they would stay in the
suits, in case they needed to deploy immediately.

“We’re reaching
our maximum depth,” reported Kama as the depth gauge approached thirty thousand
meters, while the creature continued down to the bottom.

“The return is
faint, but we’re still getting enough signal to track,” said Kama as the
creature started to move along the bottom.

The creature was
moving along at a hundred kilometers an hour, on a heading that was taking it
out into the deeper areas.  It was dropping at a hundred meters a minute,
consistent with the slope of the ocean bottom some kilometers below.

“Arrogant
bastard, isn’t it?” asked Kama, staring at the plot which showed a three
dimensional image of the creature swimming through the sea.  It wasn’t a
perfect image, but the sensors were doing a pretty good job of filling in the
blanks based on radar returns.  “I mean, didn’t we just kick its ass.”

“I wonder if it
even knows the concept of losing,” said Jensen, also studying the plot, trying
to determine where the creature was going.  “It’s obviously the dominant
predator on this planet.  Or it was,” she finished with a predatory smile of
her own.

“Coming up on a
drop,” said Zaya, her own attention on the scan of the bottom, the only real
hazard to the sub out in the open sea.  The ship was also scanning ahead and to
all sides, as any maritime vessel would.  “Looks like a drop off of twenty
kilometers.  Absolute depth, fifty-three kilometers.”

“It goes a lot
deeper than that,” said the Master Sergeant, pointing to the larger map that
was projected onto one of the side bulkheads.  “I doubt that this is the final
redoubt.”

“Assuming that
it actually lives in the deepest depths,” said Zaya, looking back over her
shoulder.  “We have no way of knowing how deep this thing can go.”

“Since it’s made
up of liquids and solids, as far as we can tell,” said Kama, “pressure should
not be a concern until it reaches the point where water starts turning into a
solid.”