Kraken Mare (3 page)

The ghosts of our past haunt us all, and some things should remain a memory.

I thought it over for a few more seconds before I began to nod, decision made. “Oh, what the hell. Why not? I'll go in for an interview. Where's it at?”

Piotr grinned and pulled out a PDA. He tapped the screen a few times and it chimed in response. His smile grew wider. “I just bought you a first class ticket back to Earth. Chicago, actually. You leave Friday at 1700 local.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that. We don't waste time when it comes to talent.”

“That's a nice change of pace.” I hoped that out-processing would be done just as easily, though past experience in dealing with the military suggested otherwise. Still, one could hope.

ঠ

Despite what I had expected, out-processing was done in an efficient and timely manner. I found myself boarding the lift to the orbital station precisely on time, which was a rare thing indeed. From there it would be a two-week trip back to Earth for my job interview. It would be a very tedious fourteen days, but I had downloaded a few books to my PDA and planned on reading almost the entire trip. Either that, or sleeping.

Flying first class on someone else's dime meant all of my meals would be free, even the booze. While I wasn't a heavy drinker by the standards of your average marine, I did enjoy the occasional bourbon, a habit I'd picked up while serving with a guy from Kentucky. And this flight, I guessed, would have top-shelf bourbon. I'd been eager to try some of the more refined stuff since my first sip. First class business did offer some amazing perks.

As I settled into my seat and tried to get comfortable, the attendant came by to take my meal order. Since it would be four hours until they could serve anything due to the need for constant acceleration to break free of Soma's gravitational pull, I was a little confused by their promptness. The attendant glanced over at me and immediately recognized the look on my face. She explained.

“During that boost time, it's difficult for some fliers to adjust to the sudden loss of gravity and the artificial gravity coming online. You never know who suffers from severe space adaptation syndrome and they'll usually not want to eat or drink. But because they run the risk of dehydration, and we like to use IV lines as a last resort, we take their orders now and gently remind them to continue ingesting fluids while lifting until they become acclimated to the change of pressure and loss of true gravity.”

“So no booze?” I asked, just to make certain.

“Oh, after the initial burn, you can order an alcoholic drink, sir,” she stated. “For the time being, may I recommend a mineral-infused bottle of water?”

“Sounds good,” I nodded. The attendant smiled and moved on to the seats behind me. My eyes followed her posterior for a moment before I looked away, mildly embarrassed. It had been awhile since I had received anything more than passionate disinterest from a female and, even though the attendant was merely doing her job, it was nice to have the attention.

Once I was fully situated and strapped in for liftoff, I pulled out my personal digital assistant from my jacket pocket and began searching for something to read. After a moment, I found something I hadn't read since I was a kid. I pulled it up and tapped the screen to go to the first chapter.

I'm a bookworm at heart, and love nothing more than going back into a book I had already read once or twice before and discovering more in it.

“This flight is going to be fuller than expected. Glad I bought the seat next to yours,” a familiar voice interrupted from near my elbow.

“Oh, hey.” I looked up from my PDA at Piotr.

“You didn't think I'd let you fly to Earth all by yourself now, did you?” the recruiter asked as he sat down. He smoothed his tie before strapping himself in. “That would have been rude of me.” He jabbed a finger at my PDA. “What're you reading?”

“
Beowulf Ascending
,” I replied. Seeing Piotr's confusion, I added, “It’s a science fiction novel. Written a long time ago.”

“Oh! I didn't know anyone published those anymore,” Piotr admitted. “I just read a lot of thrash fic myself. And famous ships, you know?”

“There are a few publishers out there still, putting out this kind of stuff. Picked the habit up when I was a kid,” I said after marking my place on the PDA. “It's about a boy who is the reincarnation of Beowulf, a legendary king and hero, stuck in the middle of an alien invasion. It's pretty good, actually.”

“Aliens, huh,” Piotr nodded thoughtfully and pulled out his own PDA. He tapped a few commands into it. “You comfortable with the idea of aliens?”

“We've found them already,” I said. “Soma has creatures that are like nothing we've ever seen before and they're on an alien planet. So, aliens.”

“I meant aliens that are, well, like aliens from your book,” Piotr amended.

“Uh… I guess I'd be okay with them,” I nodded thoughtfully. “If we ever found any who were smart.”

While it was true that humanity had discovered alien life ten times over as it had begun traversing the stars, none of the beings found had been any more intelligent than a loyal family dog. We had not found any gleaming cities of diamond on rogue worlds, nor had they made contact with peaceful, enlightened races. Initially, humanity had been depressed at the idea that it was truly alone in their corner of the universe. Then it sank in that unlimited colonization meant staving off an all-consuming “final war,” and the idea quickly gained in popularity. At the end of the day, it wasn’t just the granola crunchers that wanted to save the earth, but guys like me, too. Just different ideas on how to do it.

However, on a few worlds such as Soma, aliens were few and far between. There was an argument amongst scientists as to why this was. Some believe that the odd atmospheric combination on Soma – which was not harmful to humans, though it took a little getting used to – inhibited the development of life on the planet somehow. The more popular belief was that Earth's sun and water combination had led to life emerging faster than the rest of the universe. This asked more questions than answered, however. The general consensus in the scientific community was that humanity was alone – for now.

It still didn't stop people from dreaming about a real First Contact and all that humanity could learn from it.

“Aliens.” Piotr's face had the barest hint of a smile on it. “No qualms. Ever wanted one as a pet?”

“God no,” I said, chuckling. “The base's PAO tried to keep one of those little somacats as a pet. Had it for about a week. The demonic little thing shit acid and chewed holes through his housing wall. Ended up getting the captain docked two months at half-pay and restricted to base. He got off easy, too, in my opinion. No thanks.”

We shared a laugh at the idea of some unsuspecting public affairs officer having a demonic alien pet from Hell. It was karmic justice, really.

“We'll be slowly transferring from Soma's atmosphere to Earth's on our trip back home,” Piotr said, “You know that Soma's oxygen content is different from Earth's, right?”

“So I learned,” I remembered the initial lightheadedness when my unit had first landed on the planet, many months before. Soma’s “air”, with a slightly higher nitrogen percentage than Earth’s, caused some breathing difficulties for noobs as their bodies adapted to the lower oxygen levels. It was almost the same as living at higher altitudes on Earth. Thus, the planet's original colonists had been selected from regions of Earth like Peru, India and Pakistan.

Unfortunately, this combination of ancient tribal feuds and religions led to the current war on the planet. Human beings were a stubborn species who harbored grudges like no other.

“Never fails,” Piotr stated. “Just when I'd gotten used to Soma's air, it's right back on a flight to Earth.”

“Such is the life,” I quipped. Piotr flashed me a strange smile.

“I'm going to take a quick nap.” He pushed his seat back to recline. “We'll talk more later, chill?”

I grunted and turned back to my book.

Chapter Three

We're not so old in the Army List,
But we're not so young at our trade,
For we had the honour at Fontenoy
Of meeting the Guards' Brigade.

–Rudyard Kipling, “The Irish Guards”

“Welcome to Kraken Mare,” a booming voice greeted me as I exited the shuttle. I looked around the cavernous hangar in awe as a short, burly man with an impressive beard approached. I quickly refocused and accepted the proffered handshake. “More specifically, Mayda Insula Research Station. I'm Gerry Martin, security supervisor here for Xanadu. You must be John Manning.”

“That's me, yes sir.” I nodded, looking behind me as I shouldered my small bag containing all of my belongings. With the exception of the flight crew, I was the only person getting off the shuttle. That was weird. I would have thought the others on board would depart as well. I turned back to Gerry. “So you're my new boss? They spoke highly of you back at corporate.”

“That's one way of putting it,” Gerry said, waving
for me to follow. “Another is that I'm a tough but fair bastard to work for. I bet you were wondering why you landed such a posh but boring assignment, am I right?”

Truth be told, I hadn’t given much thought about it. I had practically sailed through the interview on Earth, personally meeting the CEO and founder of Xanadu. I’d impressed him enough to be offered a spot on the top security team right then and there. Shocked, I agreed to the offer even before we talked numbers.

The six-figure salary had been an extremely pleasant surprise, as had the initial-signing bonus. An influx of money tended to make one forget the harsh and stark realities of military life in a hurry.

On second thought, my discharge paperwork did just as good of a job.

“I don't know,” I admitted after a moment. “I was surprised to hear that the station was even operational. I thought I was going to be running some sort of location security while they were working on the place. I heard that the atmospheric pressure was slowing down construction.”

“Heh. A lie with a kernel of truth inside makes it that much more believable,” Gerry said, chuckling. He gave the flight control officer a wave and led me out of the large hangar towards an elevator. The doors opened and we stepped inside. “The atmospheric pressure is why there are liquid methane lakes here on the planet. The station is a self-contained structure that is able to withstand five thousand tons of pressure per square inch. We tested it by dropping it here from orbit once we had it built.”

“
Damn
,” I whistled, impressed. That's one way to see if your engineers were full of crap or not. “Is this place almost indestructible or something?”

“Pretty close,” Gerry nodded. “Without going into the technical details of the station, you could say this place could survive…quite a bit.”

“That must have cost a fortune,” I guessed. “Why'd they spend so much money on a station here, anyways?”

“Why, indeed,” Gerry said. “Must be something pretty damn important here for them to lie about the timing of the construction, as well as pouring almost fifteen dreadnoughts worth of money into a planet-bound science station.”

He was good, but I didn’t take the bait. I wanted to play it cool.

“A crewman of the shuttle that brought me in mentioned that there's a Navy task group above the planet. What're they up there for?”

“Well, Titan is technically claimed by the United States,” Gerry explained. “But since Russia and China protested the US claiming planets within the home solar system, it's under UN jurisdiction for the time being. But this is a moon, and one that doesn't orbit Earth, so things are in legal limbo, for lack of a simpler description. The US task group above is there to maintain a UN presence until a relief force can be provided.”

“But we're the nation primarily funding the UN,” I looked at him, surprised. “Who's going to be sending a ship – much less a small fleet – here to operate under the flag of the UN?”

“Who, indeed?” Gerry's smiled was filled with mirth. “We expect that a coalition of Chinese and Russian military vessels will arrive to relieve the US of security duty here at this station in three years. At which time, we'll pack up and leave.”

“And the station?” I asked, though I had a sneaky suspicion I already knew the answer to that question.

“What station?” Gerry looked at me as innocently as a child caught with his hand in a cookie jar was able to. “It's not scheduled to be completed for another five years. We were running so far behind that the station was never completed.”

“Devious. Of course, there is still a station here... I bet there's a plan in place to render it unusable and uninhabitable, like we used to do at embassies in hostile countries back in the day. Maybe even sink it to the bottom of this lake and call it an ‘engineering accident’.” At Gerry’s silence, I pursed my lips in thought. “Okay, so perimeter security is handled by the Navy. So what, exactly, are we here for?”

He pushed a button, holding it down until it turned green. The doors slid closed. “Fingerprint scanner. Just in case.”

“That was a weak dodge,” I said. “Should have tried something a little more subtle, like talking about the amenities or chow.”

“Yeah, good catch on that one. There's always a good reason why they send a noob here. It's easier for me to show you than to explain everything, though.”

“Show me what? And who're
you calling a noob?”

“What we're doing here,” Gerry explained. “Why we need security when the Navy is orbiting around the moon with enough firepower to take on a small fleet.”

“That's no moon…” I said in a mock-somber tone.

“What?” Gerry looked at me, confused. “This is a moon. Why would you think it wasn't? Didn't you see that big blob in space while you were en route? You know, Saturn? Of which this hunk of rock is a satellite of, which by definition makes it a moon?”

“Never mind,” I sighed. Some people had no respect for the classics. “It's a geek thing.”

“You're a weird guy, you know that?”

“So…the elevator shows that there are fifteen levels,” I said as the elevator began to descend. “That tells me that this station is a hell of a lot bigger than it looks from the outside.”

“Yeah. That's only because only the top two levels are above the lake's surface, though,” Gerry explained. “The observation deck and the hangar. Not including The Well, we have…a few levels below. Most you're cleared for, a few you aren't. So according to your knowledge, at this time there are ‘a few,’ okay?”

“Fine. So what is The Well?”

“Ahh…caught that, did you? Smart kid. It's something else better shown than explained, sorry.” My new boss shrugged apologetically. I struggled not to sigh. The elevator's descent ceased and the doors slid open. “Welcome to Central, the main level of the Mayda Insula Research Station.”

I immediately began to size up the room and started nodding before we had even stepped out.

Low plasteel walls were placed throughout the large open room, creating avenues for foot traffic which led to a primary control station set in the middle of the room. The room was fairly well lit, with the transparent plasteel fulfilling its dual purpose as a steel wall and a glass window.

To the left was a guard station, manned by a solitary individual who appeared bored yet attentive. I was impressed. She quickly gave me the once-over and dismissed me just as fast. She had the look of a former special operations soldier, though I couldn’t think of any off the top of my head who recruited Amazonians.

A strange object distracted me. It was a bit of a conundrum. A solitary tube of what looked like liquid methane ran through the room, which made absolutely no sense at all. I didn't understand why the designers included it. Best guess? Something to do with buoyancy.
Perhaps this Well he mentioned earlier acts like a keel or something,
I thought.

“What's that tube for?” I asked, curious. I pointed at the cylinder filled with liquid. Gerry smiled.

“You'll see in a bit.”

I sighed a little more loudly and rolled my eyes so hard that I almost hurt my brain. “You like to build up the suspense a bit, don't you?”

“Like it? Nope.” Gerry's grin was wide. I could already tell he was one of those guys who would kill you with suspense. “I absolutely love it.”

“It's annoying.”

“Oh yeah, you're going to fit in nicely here,” Gerry said, laughing. We walked towards two men who were seated in the center of the large room at a large circular desk filled with electronic equipment. It reminded me of the control desk at Xanadu's headquarters in Chicago. The two guards had their heads down and were watching various monitors at their station, their faces shadowed by the lights of the screens. One glanced up and nudged his fellow guard with an elbow.

“Control desk,” Gerry confirmed my earlier assumption as he nodded to the two contractors on duty. They looked almost like twins, close enough for me to comment on it. Gerry chuckled and replied, “That's Gary Poole and Kelly Lockhart or, as they like to be called, Thing One and Thing Two. Not twins, not even distantly related, though they look exactly alike. We know this because the scientists here thought that they were lying and performed a DNA sequence test when they first arrived. Strange, though. Just creepy if you ask me. Still, solid guys. You'll be working with them a lot, actually. They run Control during their shift, with five roving guards moving around the station independently. Their fifth slot is open after Regina retired, so you'll be working on the job with them. It's less about guarding our prisoners and more about making the scientists comfortable about security in the first place. Control runs the ops, Central is the backup in case something weird happens.”

“Wait…prisoners?”

“For all intents and purposes, we're both a research station and a military prison,” Gerry stated. We passed the control desk and into a small corridor. Inside were ten white spheres separated by walls. The corridor was brightly lit with a stark white light. It took me a moment before I realized that this was a cell block, though it was unlike any I had ever seen before. The honeycomb and white design reminded me of a wasp nest a little bit. I mentally shuddered at the thought. I hated wasps with a passion.

“Military prisoners?” I tore my thoughts away from traumatic childhood memories involving flying murderous rage insects as we neared the first prisoner's cell. “What sort of military prisoner gets transferred to a top secret research station? That doesn't make any sense at all.”

“It's actually easy to explain. You see, we only get certain types of prisoners. Volunteers, actually. For instance…” Gerry stopped and pressed a small silver button next to the cell. “They accept a plea deal, they don't get executed. It's a solution to advance science while ensuring that the most dangerous convicts are removed from both a general prison population and still legally remain in military custody. Win-win.”

The protective barrier changed from cloudy white to perfectly clear, revealing the sparse interior of the cell. On one side, a cot, a table, and a chair. On the other side, a low wall afforded some privacy to the privy.

A man sat reading, his dark skin contrasting sharply with the cell’s sterile white interior. His bearing was that of a lifelong military man, as though he wore Dress Blues, not just dark blue scrubs and slippers. I turned away, taking a step before recognition set in.

I stopped, eyes narrowing as the man's familiarity slowly dawned on me. I glanced over at Gerry.  He read my expression, nodding before I could ask the question.

“Yeah, that's him,” Gerry acknowledged. “Captain Emery Holomisa, United States Army.”

“I thought he was still locked up at Leavenworth,” I muttered as I inspected the prisoner from outside the protective barrier. The man inside the cell was a legend, one that gave me a smidgen of respect for the Army. It was also one of the few times when I wasn't entirely sure that I was the best in the room; a strange sensation for any Marine. It was especially unsettling for my ego, since it
knew
I was the best and yet it was also convinced I was looking at the best. It was all very confusing.

“He escaped from there twice,” Gerry explained. “So they stuck him in the Maelstrom on Mars. He somehow rigged a breathing apparatus out of an apple juice box and a lump of charcoal and escaped from there as well. Survived for three weeks in the Martian wilderness before they found him. He'd almost completed building a transport shuttle out of spare parts in a waste disposal pit outside Antiquity. He was shipped back to Earth and put in prison of all his own. He escaped, despite having two guards watching him at all times. He was sentenced to death for that one, since a guard died during the escape. They say he murdered the guard, but…well, they offered him a deal instead of shooting him right then and there, so something smelled a little fishy to me. But the deal? Come here and help with some science experiments, or death by lethal injection. Unsurprisingly, he chose this.”

“I heard what he did at the Battle of the Pyre,” I breathed as I locked eyes with the only man to win both the Congressional Medal of Honor and the Hero of the Russian Federation Medal, the two highest awards of separate rival nations. The Pyre Front had been nasty, a dirtier fight than Soma could ever have been, and the casualty ratio had cracked ninety percent at one point. The Battle of the Pyre was the culminating effort at bringing the rebellious colony world of Delphin back under UN jurisprudence. I was glad that I had managed to avoid that hellish pit of despair, though a tiny part of me was embarrassed at my relative good fortune. “He's a hero. A bonafide hero.”