Europa Strike (29 page)

“Then you'll be more than welcome, sir. Any other questions?”

There were none. The meeting was dismissed.

Shigeru was waiting for him by the door. “Perhaps one question more, Major.”

“Shoot.”

“Since we are passing so close to the Singer, I was wondering what research opportunities there might be. I am a xenoarcheologist, and the whole point of my being on this world was to attempt to make contact with that…artifact.”

“If you mean can we stop and sightsee, no. I'm sorry.
My
whole point for being here is to protect this base, and at the moment, that means by making sure this raid goes down without a hitch. Stopping off to visit at underwater alien cities would complicate things, and risk costing us the mission.”

“Of course. I had to ask.”

“Understood. And you're welcome to make whatever observations you can as we pass. To tell the truth, though, I'm going to make sure we give that thing a wide berth. We might not get that close at all. I do not like surprises during combat ops.”

“The Singer is not positioned exactly a straight line between here and Cadmus, Major. It will be off our line of travel by several kilometers. Still, it seems a shame to get so close without a getting a good, close-up look, eh?”

“Doctor Ishiwara, when this campaign is over, the Chinese have been kicked off this ice ball, and Ice Station Zebra is safely in friendly hands, I will personally deposit you on the front porch of that thing.

“But until then, I'm going to keep my distance.” It was a promise he intended to keep.

 

E-DARES Facility

Cadmus Crater, Europa

2024 hours Zulu

 

“Gently…gently…
gently, goddammit
!” Kaminski clung to a handy line with one hand, and waved the other, a gesticulating fist. The submarine swayed wildly for a moment in midair, after a sharp drop of about a meter. “What are you people trying to do, kill me? There are better ways of winning a promotion, you know!”

His was a precarious perch, but a necessary one. He was standing on top of the dead-black hull of one of the Mantas, a safety line clipped to his harness as the eight-meter craft was slowly lowered, wings folded up and over its back, toward the fog-shrouded, churning blackness of the Europan sea below.

A working party of five men were atop the Manta with him, armed with long, strong poles. Their job was to fend off the ice wall if they started to swing too close; it would be a damned crying shame if one of these subs had made the voyage all the way out from Earth, missed getting vaporized on the
Roosey
, survived repeated Chinese attacks, and then got dinged badly enough to be put out of commission because she swung a bit too hard into the ice.

They'd rigged an A-frame to lower the boat, a makeshift structure frozen into the ice much as they'd done to mount the International Cannon. They were using the expedition's one remaining tractor to do the lowering, slowly backing toward the A-frame and letting the sub, riding in a cradle of bucky-fiber lines, drop toward the boiling water.

“Sorry, Sergeant Major,” Brighton called over the radio channel from the tractor. “Hit a patch of bleach and slid a bit, there.”

“You have your anchor lines out?” These were lines running to stakes driven into the ice on either side of the tractor's path as a precaution. Marines walked along both sides of the path, unhooking lines as they grew taut and reattaching them further along. No wanted to see the sub drag the tractor over the side, especially since it would hit the sub on the way down.

“Try again…and slowly, damn it.”

“Aye, aye, Sergeant Major. Hang on, here we go.”

The sub's gentle descent began once again. Holding tight to the cable above his head, Kaminski leaned over and looked down at the water. Another ten meters to go, about. Easy…

The first sub was already in the water, wings opened full, moored to the E-DARES facility and with a gangplank rigged to an airlock in the stern-high vessel's hull. A few more meters and this one would be down, safe and sound, as well.

The sub started swinging again, stern pivoting toward the ice. “Wilkes! Vottori! Get those boathooks out there! Stop that swing…stop it!”

This
, he thought,
would be the perfect time for the Charlies to come blazing up out of the badlands
. But they didn't, and the Manta continued its descent.

Ten meters
, he told himself.
It's the same as 1.3 meters on Earth. If you fall, it won't mean a damned thing
.

Yeah. Not a thing except falling into water boiling and freezing at the same time.

Frank Kaminski had never cared for heights, and he'd never cared for deep, cold water.
What the hell am I doing here?

It was a question with no satisfactory answer. He'd been a Marine for a lot of years now, and he'd been in some damned strange places—on Earth, on Mars, on the moon, and now on the alien ice of Europa. In fact, he was one of the handful of people who were members of the Three Planets' Club, a rather elitist organization consisting of men and women who'd walked on at least two worlds besides the Earth. In fact, he'd been wondering if he was going to get to organize a
Four
Planets' Club, once he got back to Earth.

He was no stranger to strangeness.

But the sight of that boiling, steaming water…

It was like an infinitely deep, churning pit, calling to him with a terrible, wrenching vertigo. It would be so easy to let go…to fall…

It was as though he could sense something, no—
some thing…
calling to him. Some thing filling him with a vast and swirling fear.

But that was impossible, right? There was the Singer, sure, but he couldn't hear the sound waves that thing was putting out. No, he was just letting the situation, the surroundings spook him. That was it.

“Ski!” Tom Pope grabbed him by the arm, tugging him back from the edge. “Ski! You okay?”

“Eh? Yeah. Yeah, I'm okay. Just a little dizzy, is all.” He turned and saw the others watching him.

Shit. Ever since he'd passed out the other day, the men hadn't quite believed he'd recovered, as though they expected him to faint at any moment. Doc McCall had suggested that his unconscious spell had been induced by the EMP from the International Gun causing the old, experimental VR implants in his brain to vibrate a bit. Made sense.

But it didn't make him a freaking cripple, for Christ's sake.

“Well? What are you all staring at? Get back to work! Watch that wall, damn it…we're starting to swing! Brighton! Slower on the drop!”

“Aye, aye, Sergeant Major!”

They continued their slow descent into strangeness.

 

C-3, E-DARES Facility

Ice Station Zebra, Europa

2310 hours Zulu

 

“Enter.”

Corporal Leckie entered the C-3. “Sir, may I have a word?”

“Center yourself on the hatch.”

“Aye, aye, sir.” Leckie entered and came to attention.

Jeff looked him up and down. He was wearing OD utilities, and seemed healthy enough. “What can I do for you, Lucky?”

“Sir, I've been hearing the scuttlebutt. I mean, about the sub raid. I want to volunteer to go along.”

“How are you feeling, Lucky? How are the legs?”

“Absolutely four-oh, sir!”

“That's not what Doc McCall told me yesterday. He said you'd torn a ligament in your right leg, and you were going to be hobbling around for two weeks at least. He said you came
this
close to frostbite, and you were damned lucky not to lose any toes.”

“I think the doc was exaggerating, sir. I'm fine. And I want to go on that op!”

“Well, I'll tell you, Lucky. There are fourteen other Marines on this station who aren't going. Six of them have already been through that door to volunteer or to gripe at me because I won't take them along. You're number seven. Lucky seven! Why should you be any different?”

“Sir…I am different. I really have to go along. Sir.”

“Why?”

“Because…well…sir, I'm in love.”

Jeff's eyebrows crept higher. “That seems to be one hell of a reason to volunteer for what some are calling a suicide mission. Would you care to explain yourself?”

“Major…I mean, well, it's like this. I just sort of got to know her, y'see? And she volunteered, and she's going on the mission. And I have to go along too. Sir.”

“I see. You care to tell me who the lucky lady is?”

“Not if it's going to get her into trouble, sir.”

“It's okay, Lucky. I'm not supposed to encourage, um, romantic entanglements within the unit, but I know how these things are. I'm sorry, though. We have the squad TO&Es and assignment lists worked out. I'm not going to change them to help your love life.”

“But, begging the major's pardon—”

“Can it, Marine. Your girlfriend is a Marine and perfectly able to look out for herself. You, according to the company corpsman, can barely walk, despite that act you put on coming in here.”

“It's not an act, sir. The leg's fine. I can walk fine.”

“I'm glad to hear it. But the answer is still no.”

“But—”

“No, Corporal. You're on the sick list until McCall takes you off. Of the two of you, I'd much rather have your girlfriend at my back in a firefight than you any day! She, at least, will be able to carry a wounded buddy out of the kill zone! Don't worry, though. There'll be plenty for you to do here while you're waiting for us to get back! Dismissed.”

“But, sir, I—”

“Dismissed, Corporal!”

He snapped again to rigid attention. “Aye, aye, sir.” He gave a crisp left-face and strode from the compartment.

After a moment, Jeff rose and walked to the door, quietly leaning out and looking down the passageway. Leckie was walking toward the mess hall, leaning heavily on a makeshift cane with each step. The scam artist must have left it in the passageway while he came in to make his pitch.

He was just about to duck back into C-3 when Sergeant Vincent Cukela rounded a corner at his back. “Oh, excuse me, Major. Can I see you for a moment?”

Jeff sighed, closed his eyes, and jerked his thumb at C-3. “Come in,” he said. “But the answer is
no…
”

26
OCTOBER
2067

The Mantas rested side by side, their tapering aft sections low in the black water, their noses pulled up onto thin ice and moored both to the E-DARES facility's hull and to rings mounted in the Pit's ice wall. Their wings had been unfolded and locked, and the black carbon-weave finish was already thickly encrusted with ice.

As the twenty-meter patch of open water was exposed to hard vacuum, it boiled, creating a tenuous and fast-changing local atmosphere of cold steam, the roiling cloud of fog that hung over the depths of the Pit. That steam condensed on any surface it touched and quickly plated out as ice. That could be a problem when the subs were launched, so electrical heating nets had already been draped across most of their exposed surfaces.

Jeff stood on the icy walkway at the bottom of the Pit, watching as the Marines filed out across the gangplanks and boarded the subs. They were having to pass through the Mantas' airlocks two at a time, and the process took a while.

But it was almost time.

Captain Melendez stood at his side, as always quiet, stolid, and competent. “Take care of the place while I'm gone, Paul.”

“I still wish I was going with you, Major.”

“Of course you do!” Jeff replied, putting as much sarcastic bite into the words as he could. “No one in his right mind would want to stay and try to hold this place with fourteen men! It'll be
much
safer where we're going. But someone's going to get the short end, and that someone is you!”

Paul chuckled. “Well, take care of yourself, sir. We'll have the lights on and the covers turned back when you return.”

“Seriously, if you get into trouble, haul ass back to the E-DARES and hunker down. I don't think the Charlies will risk damaging the facility.”

“Hell, it's not the Charlies I'm worried about, sir. It's all those scientists. They outnumber us now, you know!”

“Carry on, Number One.”

“Aye, aye, sir.” He touched his right glove to the corner of his helmet's visor. “Good trip.”

Jeff returned the salute, turned away, and started down the gangplank, gripping the butt of the 580 slung over his back to keep it from slapping at his thigh as he walked. It was an unaccustomed presence, something he'd not felt for years. Marine Corps dogma held that every man was a rifleman, right down to the cooks and bakers, ground crews, personnel clerks, and fat-ass battalion commanders…but it had still been some time since he'd qualified with a laser rifle in field conditions.

Footing on the gangplank was treacherous with the ice buildup, made worse by the patches of fizzing, H
₂
O
₂
slickness that kept appearing and disappearing like mirages. He kept a tight grip on the safety line all the way out. It was a tight squeeze through the narrow hatchway into the sub, especially with his bulky PLSS on his back.

The airlock was just barely large enough for one man. He stood inside the tiny compartment, red-lit by the warning light, listening as silence gave way to a thin, fast-swelling hiss of incoming air. The red light was replaced by green, and the inner hatch cracked open.

Inside, the compartment was dark except for the constellation of moving lights on the helmets of the Marines, and the glow of HUDs and chin consoles stage-lighting Marine faces behind their visors. Age-old naval custom held that the senior officer was first onto a small boat, last off, but this was one time, Jeff thought, when custom should have given way to practicality. He had to literally crawl—the compartment's overhead was to low for him to walk upright in his suit, and a stoop was too clumsy—all the way forward between two seated ranks of five men each, men who were already so close that their knees were practically touching in the passageway. Everyone except the boat's SEAL pilot, by orders, was still suited up.

At the forward end of the Manta, there was a bit more room. Machinist's Mate Chief Randolph Carver already had his PLSS, helmet, and gloves off, and was seated in the elevated pilot's chair, a bright red VR helmet masking his features.

“It seems a long time since the Bahamas, doesn't it, Carver?” he asked.

“Yessir, it sure does.”

“I'm sorry your first test flight of a Manta under Europan conditions has to be under combat conditions as well.”

“Well, I guess water is water, sir, and water is the SEAL's friend. We'll be just fine.”

“Hoo-yah,” the other SEAL said, a quiet SEAL battlecry. Quartermaster First Class Mike Hastings was squeezed into a jump seat to Carver's left and behind him. Two SEALs were aboard each Manta on this op. The idea was to provide a backup in case anything happened to one. Everyone aboard was expected to fight at the other end, and having two men qualified to pilot the Manta gave a little extra measure of security, a better chance that they would make it back home.

“What's the matter, Hastings?” Jeff said, grinning. “Getting tired of being cooped up with so many jarheads?”

“Jarheads are okay, sir,” Hastings replied. “They're not
SEALs
, but they're okay.”

“Hey, don't you worry, Hasty,” BJ Campanelli, who was sitting next to him, said. She slapped his thigh with the back of her glove. “We've had a vote and decided to make you guys honorary Marines!”

“God help me!” Hastings's expression, stage-lit inside his helmet, made Jeff laugh.

“Okay, people!” he called. “Listen up. Amberly!” Sergeant Roger Amberly, a quiet, good-looking kid from Kansas with two husbands waiting for him back home. Steady, dependable, and a good hand with a Wyvern.

“Yo!”

“Campanelli.” Big, blond, bold, and a bit of an attitude. A damned good Marine.

“Hot and tight.”

“Cartwright.” Was she the one Leckie was hot for? It couldn't be BJ.

“Here.”

“Carver.”

“Go.”

“Garcia.” The man's record mentioned he'd been arrested for activity in a pro-Aztlan march in San Diego, a long-time advocate of an independent Hispanic homeland carved out of the American Southwest. He was a tough guy with a bad attitude, but an outstanding Marine.

“
Aquí!
”

“Hastings.”

“Hoo-yah!”

“Kaminski.”

“Ooh-rah!” A Marine battlecry challenging the SEAL's hoo-yah. He saw Kaminski grin at the SEAL and wink.

“Lang.” Maybe she was Leckie's love interest, a good-looking black girl from Virginia. She was married, though, with both a husband and a wife at home. Not that
that
meant anything, necessarily.

“Nodell.” Big, rugged, and a hard drinker, in and out of trouble, but deadly with a SLAW, a 580, or his hands. Three times divorced, a Marine lifer.

“Yeah.”

“O'Day.” A quiet, red-haired corporal and a member of Humanity First, though he never voiced any political opinions that Jeff knew of.

“Yo.”

“Peterson.” A straight-laced black kid from Ohio. Seemed determined to prove himself, no matter what. Another Wyvern ace.

“Present.”

“Wojak.” One of the company clowns, but a good man.

“Right here.”

“And…Doctor Ishiwara.”

“
Hai
! Yes.”

As he called off each name, a status light winked green on the list scrolling down the side of his HUD. Chesty, still resident in his PAD as well as in the E-DARES computer system, was interrogating each suit as he called off the name, and reporting back that the suit systems were powered up, intact, and go.

Twelve men and women, plus the two SEALs up front and the lone civilian passenger. Fourteen Marines—if you counted the two SEALs, and their experience and training was worth their mass in antimatter. Twelve more on Manta Two, under the command of Lieutenant Biehl. Twenty-seven men and women to challenge the Europan Ocean, followed by the main Chinese base on this world.

The longest and slimmest possible of long, slim shots.

“Cold Zebra, this is Icebreaker One,” he said over the Company frequency. “We are loaded, hot, and tight. Ready to proceed.”

“Icebreaker One, Cold Zebra. Icebreaker Two reports ready to swim.”

“Very well. Single up on all moorings. Stand by for release.”

“Roger that, One. Singling up on all moorings.”

Ashore, working parties of Marines would be releasing the webwork of cables securing the two research subs to the ice and taking in the electric blankets, though he couldn't see them. The Manta had only the two tiny windows forward, plus a dorsal navigation dome amidships still covered over by a protective shell. The only one with a view out was Carver, using the HUD optic feed on his VR helmet.

“Icebreaker, Zebra. Lines singled up. Ready for release.”

Jeff looked at Carver. “You ready?”

“Engines green. Intakes green. All green. Let's get it on.”

“Zebra, One. We're go here.”

“Hang on, then, Icebreaker. All boats away!”

“Very well, Zebra. Let 'er slide!”

He felt a gentle lurch, and the soft, grinding slide as the sub slid backward into the water, pushed by a team of Marines linked together by safety lines in case the surface ice broke. The slide picked up speed, and Jeff heard the loud cracking and popping of ice giving way outside the hull.

Then there was a single shock, a roll to port, and the gentle, rocking sway of a small boat on a heavy swell. Ice continued to crack and snap as the hull flexed slightly, breaking the half-melted icy coating that had embraced the craft.

Jeff almost immediately felt an unpleasant tug at his stomach as seasickness took hold. It was worse, he thought, with an empty stomach. All he could do was hang on and hope he didn't disgrace himself with a fouled helmet.

The Manta was heavier than water, though, and was settling fast, stern first. Carver tapped some icons on his touch console, and was rewarded by the throaty, rising hum of the sub's engines. “Zebra, Icebreaker One,” he said. “I have power. Engines at 20 percent. I have helm and maneuvering. Ice is coming off the wings. Cast off the safety.”

A single safety line, the end run through an eye on Manta One's nose and back to the shore to double it up, had remained in place during the launch. Mantas didn't rely on ballast tanks, but literally flew through the water like an aircraft through air. If the engines hadn't started, the boat would have sunk, and only that doubled-up line through the nose eye would have saved them from a very
long
fall into the abyss.

With the engines whining smoothly, though, the shore party released one end of the safety line and dragged it rapidly through the eye and back to shore. “Icebreaker One, you are clear to navigate.”

“Roger that, Zebra. Going down. See you in a couple of days!”

Jeff felt the deck tilt sharply to port as the Manta turned away from the dock. The rolling subsided too, a clear indication that they were now beneath the surface. He wished he could see what Carver was seeing on his VR input; it might alleviate the dank and claustrophobic closeness of the compartment a bit.

Reaching up, he broke his helmet seal, then pulled the heavy half-sphere off his head. He stowed it with his M-580 on a bulkhead rack, and unsnapped his gloves as well.

“Okay, people,” he said. “You can unseal. But stay in your suits, and no unnecessary moving around.” Carver was going to have enough on his hands flying this thing through the murky waters beneath the ice without having his Marine passengers constantly changing his center of mass. “There's space for your helmets and gloves beneath your seats,” he continued, “and racks behind you for your weapons. Move two at a time, and watch out for that overhead. It's a killer.”

Carefully, he lay down on his stomach on the starboard forward couch, pulling himself along with the handholds to either side until his face was a few centimeters from the viewing port, a tricky maneuver given the ungainly reach of the PLSS perched mass-high on his back and shoulders.

Outside, the water was a deep and murky blue-green, with pale green light still filtering down from above. Powerful searchlights mounted on the upswept stabilizer tips of the Manta's wings illuminated a swirling blizzard of particles trapped in the brilliant white beams. At the moment, pools of light were sweeping across the gray, white, and black surface—all smooth planes and crisp angles, but lightly covered with uneven patches of fuzzy brown growth.

He felt someone sliding into the port-side couch, bulky in his space suit. Shigeru pressed his face close to the view-port, his face illuminated by the bright, white reflections from outside. “I had to see,” he said. “You have no idea how I've wanted to see these things with my own eyes, instead of through the optics of teleoperated probes!”

“Is that Europan life, then?” Jeff asked. Some of the brown stuff looked a lot like moss, with long filaments waving in the current created by hot, upwelling water.

“We think so.”

“You think so? Don't you know? Haven't you gathered specimens?”

“Oh, certainly. And we've given it the provisional genus name of
Muscomimus
, the ‘moss-mimic.' But Dr. Red-mondson, our chief of exobiology, is not yet convinced that it is a true life form. It may simply be an unusual accretion of sulfur and carbon compounds in long-chain molecules, a purely nonorganic process.”

“It looks like it's growing…and reproducing. All over the E-DARES' hull.”

“We've seen whole forests of the stuff growing on the
bottom
of the ice. And it is gathering raw materials, food, if you will, from the water, and it seems to carry on this process by drawing energy—in this case, thermal energy from the hot water coming up from the E-DARES' anti-icers—from its surroundings. But, well, we're still working on finding a good definition for the word
life
.”

Jeff chuckled. “That's a hell of a note.”