Kraken Mare (23 page)

“I don't like that option,” Isaac whined. “What's the second one?”

“We stand around in here and wait to die,” I stated.

Isaac was silent for a moment before responding. “You know what? I've given it some more thought. I like the first option better.”

“I don't like either option,” I admitted with a shrug. The voice, whatever it was, did not offer me any more insight. Even in the classics, spooky voices inside people’s heads were always cryptic at best. I had to make do with what I knew, even if it was admittedly little. “But I hate sitting around and waiting to die. I'm very proactive. Ask anyone.”

Chapter Fourteen

No sooner does man discover intelligence than he tries to involve it in his own stupidity.

–Jacques Yves Cousteau

“The DSRV was added to the station almost as an afterthought,” Isaac said as we descended down The Well, the liquid methane flowing past us outside the plasteel windows someone had thoughtfully provided. “We thought it would be neat to explore the lake further. Unfortunately, once we discovered that the kraken weren't migratory and lived here, it was decided that we shouldn't traipse around in their yard.”

“You already dropped one ugly lawn ornament into it
from orbit
,” I emphasized, jerking a thumb over my shoulder. “What's a little tromping around in the yard and letting your dog shit all over the place after that?”

“That was Doctor Marillac's call, not mine,” Isaac replied hotly. I could see the veins in his temple popping out a little and his face was beginning to grow flushed. I must have been getting on his nerves a little. “I wanted to explore the depths, to see if the kraken made any sort of rudimentary housing down there. My proposal was politely but firmly declined.”

“What, you thought they were tool users from the start?” I asked as I toned back my sarcasm a bit. I was a bit surprised by this revelation, though. As far as I could tell, Isaac had been the most junior person on the team. At best he was the guy who ran for coffee. Well, that's what I always assumed the low man on the totem pole did. Coffee and answer calls for the big boss. “You're telling me that you're not the coffee guy?”

“Oh, you're hilarious,” he huffed, his hands glued to the steering controls. “I'm a grad student doing research on my dissertation for my doctorate in xenobiological sciences. My doctoral thesis was noticed by Doctor Marillac and I was chosen, from thousands of applicants, to further my studies under her tutelage.”

“Aw, shit. You
are
the guy who gets the coffee for the real scientists.”

“I'm also the only person still alive who's certified to drive this thing.”

“Great. Lattes to go. Oooh! Maybe I have a gift card...”

“Shut up.”

I'll be the first to admit that I'm kind of a dick when I'm nervous. Being in a miniature submersible vessel deep under a lake made of liquid methane and petroleum on a strange moon with an alien who could probably swallow me whole would definitely make anyone just a little twitchy.

The DSRV exited the open bottom of The Well and into Kraken Mare. I almost didn't notice at first, as the light from The Well kept the immediate vicinity well lit. The currents of the lake, though, pushed the DSRV around and reminded me quickly enough. Isaac did a good job keeping us both on course and level, which was impressive given that I don't think he had actually driven the thing before.

We stared out of the DSRV in silence as continued down into the depths of the lake. At over five hundred meters deep at some points, Kraken Mare was largely unexplored beneath the surface. A cursory survey had determined that the station could be landed safely in the lake without harming too much of the environment—though how they determined that a massive space station being dropped into the middle of a lake wouldn’t disturb things was beyond me—but beyond that, there hadn’t been too much exploration. I heard that scientific teams had journeyed across some of the land parts, but the atmosphere and weather of the moon was brutal enough to render almost all of the current environmental containment suits worthless.

I joked once that an army could be dropped right on Mayda Insula, the island which the station was named for, and all die before making it across. Gallows humor for certain, but it was valid as well. There was simply no way of safely trekking across the surface of the planet. Hell, even the shuttles which came down from orbit had to be strenuously cleaned and maintained before lifting off again.

The surface makes traveling beneath the waves of Kraken Mare a breeze by comparison, which is why I was so shocked to discover that nobody had taken the DSRV out for a spin to look at things. Granted, there were some nasty currents in the lake which could drive the DSRV way off course, but the majority of those were near Seldon Fretum, the so-called “Throat of the Kraken.” We were far enough away from that narrow channel that the currents shouldn’t have affected any sort of basic exploration.

Still, not my monkey, not my circus.

The deeper we went, the stranger the color the lake became. The lights from the DSRV created a rainbow effect throughout the methane, and as we went into the deeper, darkest part of the lake the colors began to change in hue and intensity. I swallowed nervously as the DSRV began to creak and groan as we descended further.

“Uh…” I glanced nervously at Isaac, who was sweating slightly.

“It’s okay,” he said in a tone that did not have much confidence in it, “it’s settling.”

“Settling?” I asked, the nervousness doubling my heart rate with his simple statement. “Houses settle. Lawsuits settle. Deep Sea Reconnaissance Vessels
do not settle!
”

“Ssshh,” he whispered at me, “concentrating.”

I left him alone and instead focused on my aching body. I had taken one hell of a beating from Jou, Gentry, and Baptiste. The sealant spray that Isaac had applied to the gashes Baptiste had created was holding for the time being, and while I was going to have some wicked scars from where the psycho cut me, they weren’t bleeding any longer. Isaac had done good work and had been thoughtfully prepared when we had made it to the DSRV by insisting on using the first-aid pack on me before we began our descent. I was also fortunate that whatever Baptiste had done with my brain, the effects were temporary, and faded after he died. I was sore, sure, but I wasn’t writhing on the floor in absolute agony. That was something, at least. I lifted my shirt and inspected the damage.

Aside from the flayed area, I had purple and red bruising on my ribs and stomach, a few scratches that weren’t very deep but burned like crazy, and a strange circular mark near my right hip that almost looked like a bike handle. I pulled my shirt back down and began to carefully inspect my skull with my fingertips. I winced at the egg-sized knot on the back of my head and wondered how I got it. Stairs? Probably. Or maybe when Jou slammed me into the wall. Or had that been Gentry?

Memories of the fights were fuzzy and blurred together. The main thing I remembered was getting hit a lot and running up and down those damned stairs. Oh, and Baptiste eating me, but I would give my left arm to forget that little incident.

“John,” Isaac’s tone and well-placed elbow shook off much of the fuzzy sensation in my head. He motioned out the window of the DSRV. I looked out but saw nothing important. Okay, maybe it was getting a little easier to see, but—

I stopped.
Why is it getting easier to see?

“It’s getting lighter out,” Isaac stated, “but we’re not going up to the surface. Some sort of artificial light is creating this.”

“Saturn’s light doesn’t reach down this far?” I asked. Stupidly, as it turned out.

“Saturn barely breaks through the cloud cover,” Isaac pointed out. “There’s no way it could be bright enough to reach down to this depth. On Earth, light can reach about six hundred feet down, but that’s rare. Considering that we’re at eight hundred feet, there’s absolutely no way.”

We crested a large rise on the lake bottom and the source of the light suddenly became apparent.

In the deep crevice lay a city larger than anything I could have imagined ever existing on this godforsaken rock. They were obviously buildings melded into the side of the cliff, but unlike any design that I had ever seen before. The light was coming from each building face, which were somehow glowing in the dark and murky liquid of the methane lake. The colors created by the combination made for varying hues to dance in the currents and swirl around. It reminded me of the old psychedelic paintings and movies, only better. Much, much better.

The sight before us made my soul weep. There was a pure, unadulterated beauty in the flowing designs. Each building seamlessly blended into the surroundings while still standing out and being original. The material looked to be a cross of white coral and opal, twisted and blended together to make them appear to dance within the hazy liquid methane of Kraken Mare.

The kraken had designed and built all of this, and we humans had not had a single clue that it even existed. I chalked it up to scientific arrogance. We should never cease to ignore anything from which we could learn, even if it’s something we cannot easily explain.

Look, I’m not that guy who appreciates beauty in art. I’m the guy who looks at the canvas with red paint and ask just how much they paid for it and then, afterwards, mock them mercilessly for paying anything at all. I don’t see the subtleness in a brush stroke or the layering that goes into it.

This, though…this was so utterly
alien
that I had little choice but to feel something.

“I thought you said that they ran an ultrasound scan on the lake floor,” I whispered as I drank in the view, my hand on Isaac’s chair as I leaned over his shoulder to peer outside. “How did they miss all of this?”

“It's beautiful,” Isaac said in a hushed tone. I silently agreed and continued to stare at the city. The longer I looked at it, the more I became enraptured.

How did they build all this?
I wondered.
Not like they have opposable thumbs or anything.

I couldn’t answer the unspoken question, not in a million years. The structures were magnificent, well beyond even the most architecturally stunning designs of Earth. There was a beauty in the designs which seemed to swim in the lake, the same way that the kraken seem to move.

It was simply a stunning sight, and it completely distracted me for the surprise attack on my mind.

I felt a strange consciousness reach out to envelope me, much like when I had seen Concy on the station. Isaac looked at me with a curious expression on his face. I grimaced as it continued to prod into my psyche and delve into the innermost reaches of my mind. The overwhelming
presence
in my head was almost too much. I jerked my head to the side and a strong sense of being drowned pushed aside most of my reasoning. I was about to lose myself to the presence and there was absolutely nothing I could do about it.

Everything went gray as the alien entered my mind. The foreboding sense of doom and despair was greater now. My heart felt as though it would burst from my chest. My head felt like it was trapped in a vice grip. My hands were cold, clammy. It was too great, too powerful for me to even begin to fully comprehend. Oil running down a canvas and creating images filled my mind. The alien was taking memories from me and trying to talk.

It hurt like hell. I began to scream.

Greetings,
came the soft emotion into my soul.

I wept, tears unwelcome upon my cheek. It was too pure, too familiar. The alien had tapped into a part of my mind that I had not wanted to have brought forth from memory. It had been a long time since I had seen her face in anything but a memory, yet there she was, regal, beautiful. Not a ghost, like before. She was not ethereal. She was here. Her dark skin was flawless, exactly as I remembered it. Her smile was wide and welcoming, the corners of her eyes slightly crinkled in amusement. Laugh lines at such a young age. Perfection like that would never be matched, plain and simple.

She was beautiful. She was long dead. She would always be my wife. She would forever remain my first and only.

Too many feelings, a rush of emotions that no human being should ever try to cope with alone, sentiments which were both alien and mine own, crashed over me. I tried to focus on her face, her cheeks, something which would let me push through the crushing weight of it all. I reached for her but, just like in the dreams that I refuse to admit that I still have, she remained just out of my grasp. I cried out for her, but she just smiled sadly at me.

No
, I cried out to her.
Don't leave me again
.

I couldn't handle the emotional onslaught. I was psychologically, emotionally and physically beaten. I was nothing more than a shell of who I once was. I was a broken man. I was ripe for the taking. Whatever that had forced its way into my head made certain of this. I was nothing more than a helpless child, finally ready to listen, to learn.

I clung to her memory. It was all I had left.

Please?

I blacked out.

Chapter Fifteen

Calon lân yn llawn daioni,

Tecach yw na'r lili dlos:

Dim ond calon lân all ganu

Canu'r dydd a chanu'r nos.

(
A pure heart full of goodness

Is fairer than the pretty lily,

None but a pure heart can sing,

Sing in the day and sing in the night.)

–
Daniel James
, Calon Lân

The grey matter was pushing against my subconscious, prodding me to wake up, so I pushed back. I was warm, comfortable and in desperate need of rest. The horrors of the nightmare had receded into the dark corners of the mind. Men were simply men once more, not horrible monstrosities which had been created from condemned men. The kraken would tear apart the station and everything would be okay. The mutated bodies of the dead prisoners would be hidden, their corpses eventually being devoured by the plankton in the liquid methane, lost to time and space. All I had to do was stay asleep.

No.

The force of the protest surprised me. It shocked me even more when I realized that the thought had come from my own mind. I was the one protesting, not…whatever else was there. The grey matter was trying to wake me up, but was going about it in a way that was not human.

I refused to stay calm. I let loose all the inner turmoil and anguish into the grey, the years of self-doubt and loathing, the hatred, the anger. The raw emotions became mental barriers to protect me from the grey. I’d been beaten, abused, manhandled and damn near killed, but I was not about to give up yet.

Concy would not have approved if I did.

I could feel the grey pressing back. Its anger and rage was palpable, pushing against the mental barriers I had erected. Beneath those emotions, however, I felt something else. Something far different. The gray was closing in around me, blocking out all thought and reason. Whatever was attacking me psychologically was too strong, too powerful. There was no way I could last much longer.

I reached.

Fear.

A bright flash exploded from within the gray. Reality shifted sideways. I wanted to puke but couldn't. There was something shrouding my mind, like a blanket had been thrown over it. The images of my mind, the grey, everything disappeared for a moment.

It was terrifying. I was convinced that I was dead. No, I was definitely alive. I was less than before, but at the same time I was far, far more. I was human and I was…not. Darkness was everywhere and the grey was gone. I screamed helplessly into nothing, my throat making not a sound. My lungs would not move. I was paralyzed, alone, and in the dark. I was dead. I had to be dead.

Just as quickly as the darkness descended, light filled my eyes. I was blinded for a moment as my pupils tried to adjust to the rapidly changing spectrum. I winced and tried to shield my eyes as best as I could manage, but the pain remained. Tears blurred my vision as my body sought to protect itself. After many minutes, I was finally able to make out my surroundings.

I found myself standing on the lake's edge, my toes inches from the liquid methane. The haze overhead prevented me from seeing the massive gas giant, but I knew that somewhere above sat Saturn. I could feel the gravitational pull, which was really weird. I’d never felt it before. I inhaled sharply but the gas had no effect on me. I blinked, surprised.

“I’m not dead?” It was supposed to be a statement. My mouth decided otherwise. Traitor.

I knelt down and touched the ground. My hands were bare and the strange sand clung to my skin. I felt it squish between my toes. I could feel the liquid methane on my feet as a tiny wave lapped against them. It was cool but not overly so. I wasn't wearing any shoes. A breeze cut across the lake and sent chills up and down my body. There was no protective gear on my person. In fact, I wasn't wearing anything at all. I was standing nude in a poisonous environment which would kill anybody.

“What the hell?”

“I'm sorry about that,” a sincere voice said from behind me. I turned.

Standing nearby was a normal looking man dressed in digicamo and wearing a strange-looking beret. It took me a moment to recognize the UN logo, though as I stared at it more and remembered how they looked when I had last seen them, the image began to sharpen, as did the details of the uniform.

I was in my mind. Or rather, someone was in my mind with me.

Probably.

“I can only dredge up images from your subconscious with a lot of effort,” the man explained, his voice annoyingly calm. “The more you think about things, the better that image I can use.”

“What?”

“You are confused,” the man said. “That is entirely understandable. Let me explain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up.”

Great. Now even my subconscious was stealing my best lines that I had stolen from movies.

I was suddenly bombarded with alien images and feelings, emotions and thoughts that were unlike anything humanity could even dream of. I could see it all. The seemingly endless war between the kraken and the invaders. The carnage it has wrought upon their home. The sliding of the scales as the great kraken began to slowly die off while the invading species continued to be born anew. It shattered my soul to watch such a beautiful and elegant alien race be wiped out as an invasive creature outbred and outfought them. I'd seen it before throughout human history and knew precisely what the being meant.

The figure before me nodded. “We've fought them for so very long, but we're dying. We cannot control the magma any longer. They will feast on our home and, when they are done, they will move out into the stars for more planets to devour.”

“You thought we were with them,” I began to understand. My mind was still reeling from the images. “That's why you attacked the station.”

“You placed your 'station' right in the middle of our dinner table,” the being replied in a brusque manner. “But yes, we only attacked when it became clear that some of you had become influenced by the magma.”

“Influenced by…what?” I was confused again.

“The magma.”

“How did it influence us?” I was confused. Lava? No, that couldn’t be it. I was missing something vital. My mind wasn’t translating something correctly. Magma meant something entirely different between our species, it seemed.

“Not you.” The figure smiled. It was disconcerting. “If it had been you, we would have eliminated you already.”

“Huh?”

“I am unfamiliar with that term.”

“Can you tell me how they influenced the…others?” I said, trying to wrap my head around everything. It was still very confusing, but the longer the being was in my head—and I'm pretty sure that's where we were—the easier it became to understand some of it. It was as though the kraken was influencing my thoughts and opening venues I could never have dreamed of finding on my own.

“The magma pollutes our younglings,” the being said as it began to pace around. The scenery changed as the lake began to ripple and lights appeared. The clouds of Saturn began to swirl madly, racing across at a maddening speed. I could see the entire length of eternity and the deepest pits of nothing. Metaphorically, I guess you could say that it was a journey through the soul. I would have said it was more akin to the universe’s worst acid trip. If everything hadn’t been in my head, I probably would have puked. The man continued to talk, ignoring my plight. “We have existed for eons as peaceful denizens of this part of the galaxy, and we believed we could handle everything the magma could possibly do to us—until it began to infect our children. This immediately heightened the state of war between our kinds. The one who traveled with you? He called the magma plankton.”

“Holy shit,” I breathed. “The plankton is the magma?”

“A byproduct of their habitation of our home. You would call it…their bio waste.”

Oh, wow. The scientists on the station had been pumping psychotic lunatics with shit of an invasive alien species on a planet inhabited by one of the oldest sentient species in this part of the Milky Way. Talk about strange days.

“How do I know all this?”

“You share your thoughts with me, and I share in return.” The being shrugged. “Once we too walked the stars, sailing the pathways of the elders upon great ships. Many eons before we explored every known pathway between worlds, charted the many stars, and delved deep in to the sciences.”

“What happened?” I asked. Images flashed before my eyes. Darkness. Light. Conflict. I saw stars exploding and black holes forming. I saw peril, danger, and war. There was no peace, only…death? I couldn’t tell, precisely. It was a dizzying and confusing vision.

“The End happened.”

There was such a finality in his tone that I didn’t want to press any further. Whatever had happened had been powerful enough to cause him a tremendous amount of pain. It must have been hell, though. I’ve only seen reactions like that from Marines who had seen some bad shit in their day.

Considering the mental fortitude it takes to become a Marine, bad shit would break a regular person.

“Is Isaac okay?” I asked, changing the subject.

“The young scientist is doing well for the time being,” the man answered. “We are probing his mind to see what he has done and what harm he has led in his pursuit of knowledge, but so far it appears that he was not using his knowledge to harm life. We approve of his curiosity.”

I sighed with relief. The little guy was my responsibility, since it had been my idea to go out of the safety of the station to meet the kraken. If anything had happened to him, assuming I made it out of this alive, I’d feel pretty horrible about losing him as well. He might not be some innocent kid, but he was a decent-enough guy.

“How do we stop the magma from spreading?” I asked. “How can we stop it from reaching Earth?”

“If not for your discover of space flight, the magma would have easily remained contained on this moon for time immemorial,” the man replied. “Since you have begun exploring the pathways of the elders, however, the magma can…‘hitch a ride,’ I believe the expression is. They will find your planet eventually, and devour it over time. It is their nature.”

So much for human progress.

“How can we stop it?” I wondered. “The magma…how do we stop it?”

“You must destroy it all,” the man said.

“Okay, so how do we do that?”

“You must destroy us.”

I hadn’t expected that.

“I’m sorry,” I blurted out before I could stop myself. “What did you just say?”

The man heaved a great and weary sigh. I could see the exhaustion on his face and in his body language. He had been around for a very long time, though he didn’t look a day over thirty. I realized that whatever I was seeing was a mental projection of something greater, something far older than I. The man before me was what the kraken wanted me to see, a way so that I could perceive his kind better than I would if I had been looking at his true form. Or hers. One could never be absolutely certain when dealing with aliens.

“Your species is so very war-like, so aggressive,” he began, his eyes staring off into the distance. “You have proven time and time again to be something that we do not strive to become. You frighten us, and make us believe that there is no room for a species like us in the coming millennia. And yet…your species may be the only chance for the continued survival the galaxy. Humans are the ones who are needed to protect the galaxy against what is to come.”

“We’ve created art, music, and made breakthroughs in science to better mankind!” I retorted hotly.

“Yet for all the times we have reached out to humanity, shared our voice with them, the only ones to ever hear our song and reply have been the warriors,” the man answered back, as calm as I was agitated. He saw how frustrated I was becoming and began shaking his head. “It’s not a judgement of you, more of the state of mind your warriors must attain. It is something we cannot fathom, but your minds are by far more flexible than any other human we have managed to reach. It is strange that warriors would be the easiest to communicate with.”

“How long?” I asked. “How long have you been trying to talk to us?”

“Hundreds of years.”

That didn’t surprise me much. We could barely talk to one another, and as a species we tended to be pretty insular looking.

“But to prevent the magma from becoming a symbiotic parasite with your species, you must destroy it here, now,” the man continued, waving away my protests as he continued on, directing the conversation back on course. “This threat must be contained.”

“But…to destroy you…” My thoughts drifted back to all the kraken that I had seen swimming around the station. I recalled something that Baptiste had said during his rantings. My stomach dropped as realization hit me hard. “That means I’d be killing kids!”

The man nodded. “Our youth, yes. It is necessary.”

“No,” I said forcefully.

“Why do you resist to acknowledge what you must do?” the man asked. He motioned around at the beach, the waves of the lake, and frowned. “I know what you are feeling, what you are thinking. This is inside your head. I already see that you have analyzed everything and agree with what I have said. So why do you continue to deny what must be done?”