Abyss Deep (36 page)
Authors: Ian Douglas
In orbit
. But I worked out the numbers later. Abyssworld has an escape velocity of a bit less than eleven kilometers per second. The speed of sound is roughly a kilometer per three seconds . . . a bit less in Abyssworld's thinner atmosphere, or call it a thousand kilometers per hour. Forty times that is a bit more than eleven kilometers per second.
Cuttlewhales could spit at escape velocity, and with careful aim could hit a starship in low orbit. I don't know if what hit those ships was solid ice, liquid water, or gaseous steam, but whatever it was carried enough kinetic energy to do some serious damage, even after transiting a Âcouple of hundred kilometers of atmosphere. We found out later that one Gykr starship had been destroyed, and two others damaged. The others pulled back in a considerable hurry.
And Walthers was able to open a Gal3 dialog with them a few minutes later.
The entire engagement, from the moment when the first cuttlewhale had broken through the ice to the Gykr ships' retreat, had taken two minutes and five seconds.
“All I can say,” Summerlee said, grinning, “is that I'm sure as hell glad those things are on
our
side!”
“Having a super-Âintelligent planet on your side doesn't hurt either,” I said. I don't think she heard me, though. There was too much wild cheering and thunderous applause going on in the background.
Some hours later,
Haldane
's AI worked out the Gödel algorithms for another set of transmissions into the Deep. The message was pretty simple, though it took a long time to work out the math.
“Thank you,” it said. “We will help.”
If it took Humankind a million years, we would help. . . .
Â
T
wo weeks later, I was back on Earth . . . well, at the Commonwealth's Starport, anyway, up-ÂEl.
Haldane
had pulled into port alongside the
Clymer
. Liberty had been granted, and most of the Marines were elsewhere now, down on Earth, or enjoying the entertainment facilities at Geosynch.
Me . . . well, I wasn't up for partying much.
The message from Personnel had been waiting for me when we pulled into port. It told me that Sergeant Joy Leighton had deployed with Marine 1/1 to Dushanbe a week after
Haldane
's departure. Her Cutlass had grounded just outside of Dushanbe, where she'd participated in a ground assault against a heavily fortified missile base.
She'd been killed, one of fifteen Marines caught in the open by a pocket nuke. Not even Mk. 10 MMCA combat armor can stand up to a one-Âkiloton warhead going off a Âcouple of hundred meters away.
They'd recovered her body. They'd flown her back to NNMC Bethesda.
And they'd brought her back with CAPTR technology: Cerebral Access PolyTomographic Reconstruction.
The trouble was that her brain had been badly damaged in the blast; parts of it had been fried by the radiation pulse. What was left had not been enough to take the implant download.
“
Treatment is continuing
,” the message told me, “
and massive infusions of stem cells may yet restore Sergeant Leighton's cerebral activity in full. Partial success has been achieved in personality reconstruction. However, Sergeant Leighton as yet has no memory of her life more recently than approximately ten years ago. She does not remember her time with the Marines, and cannot remember acquaintances and relationships developed since that time. We request that you not attempt to contact her directly, as such contact would be disturbing or upsetting, and might possibly interfere with her recovery
. . . .”
Apparently, that message had gone out to a number of her friends in the serÂvice. Our personnel records keep track of the friends we make while we're inâÂand those who are more than friendsâÂjust in case this sort of thing happens.
Of course, what the records didn't show,
couldn't
show, was that desperate battle to save Joy's life during the fight on Bloodworld, or her intense, desperate gratitude later, when she'd thanked me for bringing her back
without
turning her into a zombie.
And here she'd become a zombie after all, her life saved by CAPTR, but her mind a recording downloaded into her brain . . . and an incomplete recording at that.
I'd prayed for CAPTR technology when Paula had her stroke. I'd not been able to get her help in time, and she had died.
And now Joy
had
been CAPTRed . . . but it seemed that I'd lost her as well.
Gods!
Dr. Kirchner, it turned out, was doing just fine, thank you. He'd been shipped down to SAMMC, where the cause of his psychosis had finally been diagnosed. It turned out that there'd been a problem during his last rejuvenation treatment. Certain types of schizophreniaâÂand autism, tooâÂcan be caused when for some reason new proteins in the brain don't fold quite right. One bad fold can actually trigger a cascade of identical mistakes, and the result can be a serious imbalance in brain chemistry. They were using nanobots and stem-Âcell injections to repair his brain's physical problems, and CAPTR technology to fill in the holes. He was going to be fine.
And Kari Harris? She'd been shipped down to Bethesda in her S-Âtube. The official word was that she would live, though an awful lot of her body would need to be grown from scratch. There'd been enough brain damage that they'd used her CAPTR backup as well. Apparently, that had gone okay, but they wouldn't know for sure for a few weeks yet.
Gunny Hancock was well on the way to having a whole new lower left arm. I was happy for him, at least. D'dnah was doing well, too, as were all three baby Broccolets.
Everyone
was doing great, apparently . . . except for Joy.
Damn it, and
she'd
been worried about
me
when I'd shipped out!
Yeah, I was feeling thoroughly sorry for myself. Survivor guilt, I guess. Why had
she
been killed, and not me?
For that matter, why had they been able to bring Kirchner back, but not Joy?
That
was a disgustingly unworthy thought . . . but I savored it anyway. It hurt. Damn it, I
wanted
to hurt. . . .
“How's the hero?” Gina Lloyd asked.
I was in my old quarters on board the Clymer. I'd not been aware of the door opening; maybe she'd used an override. But now she was there, wearing civilian clothes . . . though her garment appeared to be more light than anything else, a shimmering, rainbow sheath of radiance hugging her form.
“What do
you
want?” I asked. Okay, I was being less than welcoming, probably even less than civilized . . . but I really didn't want to see anyone right now.
“Doob and McKean and Chief Garner and a few others are headed down-ÂEl,” she told me, ignoring my poor manners. “We're celebrating!”
“Celebrating what?”
She shrugged, the movement doing delightful things to the light hugging her skin. “Getting back from Abyssworld? That new treaty with the Gucks? A formal long-Âterm mutual-Âassistance protocol with the Deep? I'll bet
that
makes your dad happy!”
“I suppose.” I'd shot off a file to him while we were still inbound, with as many details as I was allowed to share. The military would be looking for civilian corporations to follow up our contact with the Deep. General Nanodynamics stood to make a lot of money with the work out there . . . especially when full communication was established with the Deep and it began to share with us everything it had been thinking about for the past billion years.
There was also talk of using Gödel encoding with the Medusae at Europa.
“Damn it, Elliot, you've made a real difference on this voyage.”
“I suppose. But Joy . . .”
“You couldn't have helped her, even if you'd been there with her, okay? And she knew the risks when she raised her hand and swore in as a Marine.”
“But I'm alive, and Joy . . . the real Joy, the Joy I knew . . . she'sâ”
“
Fuck
you, Carlyle!” The profanity on her lips startled me. “Get a grip, okay?”
“What . . . ?”
“You lost your friend. I'm sorry about that, I really am! But you have
other
friends who love you and care for you and want to help! Damn it, you've pulled off the coup of the century and saved all of our lives in the bargain, and we're going to celebrate with you if it kills you! You hear me?”
I knew what she was doing, of courseâÂtrying to shock me out of the doldrums. Maybe distract me from myself. Maybe even remind me that life was still worth living.
I didn't want to be jollied along, no . . . but she wasn't jollying me. She was metaphorically giving me a swift, hard kick in the ass.
I sighed. “Okay, okay. Let put on some civvies.”
She watched while I dissolved my utilities and then slapped on a conservative black skinsuit. I wondered what Doob would say about his girlfriend watching me dress, then decided it didn't matter. He . . . they . . . we were friends, with a bond forged in blood.
“Ready?” she said. She reached out, grabbed my hand, and yanked me toward the door. “You've been healing so many
other
Âpeople, E-ÂCar, it's about time you had some for yourself! Let's go!”
I went. And . . . she was right.
I felt myself starting to heal.
Â
IAN DOUGLAS, one of the many pseudonyms for writer William H. Keith, is the
New York Times
bestselling author of the popular military SF series The Heritage Trilogy, The Legacy Trilogy, The Inheritance Trilogy, and the ongoing Star Carrier series. A former naval corpsman, he lives in Pennsylvania.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Cover art by Fred Gambino
ABYSS DEEP
. Copyright © 2013 by William H. Keith, Jr. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition NOVEMBER 2013 ISBN: 9780062198099
Print Edition ISBN: 9780061894770
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