The Ice Moon Explorer (3 page)

Real big hero, Kara. Leading a revolt against
Pilot; needs Pilot's help to keep revolting. It was like the Greeks
backed their horse into a ditch, and asked the Trojans for
help.

While the ship docked, I thought about how
strong Pilot's hand was, that he didn't even care what I was
doing.

I spun open the docking hatch. On the other
side were cheery lights and white panels. I checked the pressure
gauge - no change. I unsnapped my helmet. Cool air pushed in -
Kapoor was a freak and liked it freezing. I handholded my way into
his world.

"Doctor Kapoor?" I called out. "Vajra?"

Nothing.

"Hello Kara!" a speaker came on. "This is a
nice surprise. You should have called ahead; I would have worn a
shirt."

"Where are you Vajra?" I moved to the
central, command module. It was filled with screens, holos,
readouts.

A monitor switched to a camera feed.
Headlights lit a rocky surface, covered in black honey combs.
Anemone-like fingers poked from them. Their tips glowed blue.

"I'm in Sub Two, down at the reef," said
Vajra. "Look at this. The hex worms are just going nuts."

"Vajra, there's something important I need to
talk to you about. In person."

There was a pause.

"You mean like right now?"

"Yeah. Right
now
. Can you come back
up?"

"Okay, if you insist. Let me reel in my
sampler."

Something massive passed, just beyond the
light beams.

"What the fuck was that?"

Another pause. "That?"

"You
saw
it right?"

"Oh, that's just Satan."

"The
worm shark?
"

"Yep."

"They don't get that big!"

"They don't grow armor plates and eat each
other, either. As of this morning, he's the last shark
standing."

"Fuck! When did this start?"

Another pause. A
longer
pause.

"Recently. It's just more Big Tank versus
Small Tank, dynamics. We knew we'd run into this with the more
complex animals. We need to rethink how we do sharks."

I jerked back: black, segmented armor passed
right in front of the camera.

"He's right on top of you!"

Blue ink jetted into the water.

The camera feed cut out. I heard the sharp,
sudden, thud all the way here.

"Vajra! Vajra are you alright?"

Another thud.

"Vajra!"

A third. A fourth. A fifth.

"Pilot, get a cam drone over there, now!"

"Already on it."

"What the hell happened?"

"Satan has become territorial."

"
Fuck
Satan. Can Kapoor survive
that?"

"I don't know, Kara. The subs aren't built to
take a beating. The cabin is reinforced, but that's more to protect
the reef environment, than vice versa. Vajra never suits up. He
always has to have his shirt off."

I snapped my helmet back on. "Get Sub One
ready."

"Kara I
really
don't think - "

"Just do it, you bastard. I don't have time
for your bullshit right now."

Sub One dived.

The headlights cut beams into the darkness.
Nothing was photosensitive here; Enceladan life has never
experienced visible light. Scum mats and jelly-hedra floated by. A
school of disk fish circled, curious.

On infra red I could see the reef, lit
bright. It was the little sun of this nano solar system. Life was
traffic jammed all around it. As I rounding it, I saw the cooling
wreck of Sub Two. There was no sign of the attacker.

"Vajra? Vajra can you hear me?"

I sank towards the wreck. It sparkled in the
headlights - its guts smeared across the coral. Tunnel lobsters and
Coral clowns were poking all over it. This was great: it meant the
cabin hadn't cracked. If it had, they would all be dead of oxygen
poisoning.

"Vajra, if you can hear me, can you flash
your cabin lights?"

Nothing.

The robotic arms whirred and stretched
forward. I swung the scoop-hands open, they locked like jaws.

Arriving, Sub One kicked up a cloud of mud
and shell fragments. In the microgravity they formed a
slow-spreading filth mist. Sub Two looked like it had been pushed
off a skyscraper. I panned my lights over the wreck.

"I'm right outside, Vajra. I'm going to pick
you up."

The lights found the cabin.

The submersible cabins were a little
unnerving. Essentially, they were just glass bubbles. They were
great for looking out, but also looking
in
. Sometimes you
wanted more metal and plastic between you and a lethal
environment.

The red emergency lights were on inside the
cabin. Ice hadn't formed on the glass, so the environmentals were
still working. I could see the faux leather pilot's seat. It was
still wrapped in plastic, like a new car's.

Still wrapped.

"Vajra?" I leaned forward. "Vajra where are
you?"

I moved Sub Two sideways, my lights peering
into the back of the cabin. It was a tiny space. To the side, the
docking ring was shut. It wasn't an airlock: if Kapoor (without a
shirt) had opened it, the cabin would have flooded.

The docking rings on both craft lit up green,
automatically. I checked infrared - still no sign of Satan. I
retracted the robotic arms, and enabled docking control.

My suit light beamed about the cabin. Most of
the screens were dead. One showed a list of critical damage - the
monitor kept cutting out. The battery was fine: SpaceX built
everything to survive being thrown at Mars.

One screen showed a comms log.

Vajra? Vajra can you hear me?
Vajra, if you can hear me, can you flash your cabin lights?
I'm right outside, Vajra. I'm going to pick you up
Vajra? Vajra where are you?

I still didn't know, but now I did know one
thing. He had never been aboard.

Something huge passed above.

I rushed back into Sub One. I detached from
the wreck and powered for home. The props whined at full speed. I
looked at the infrared - still nothing. I looked down, circling
below was a something large as a bus.

Kapoor was a marine biologist. You couldn't
fault him for thinking Satan's hard segments, were armor. That's
just what they looked like. Terrestrial examples were what he knew.
We were out here, specifically to take Human knowledge beyond that.
In the ice moon deeps, armor was for prey animals. Here, where
creatures sensed heat instead of light, ambush predators didn't
need armor. They needed
stealth
.

He struck. I was flung against my seatbelt,
my mike ear piece kicked free. It bounced about inside my helmet.
The lights went to red emergency. A status screen showed damage to
steering and hull. Sub Two was listing, off course. It started to
spin.

I saw Satan, racing at me. Lamprey jaws open,
teeth big as coffee mugs. In a split second, he struck. The cabin
exploded like a glass grenade. I was flung out in my seat, spinning
in the freezing water. Bubbles roared outside my helmet. It was
pitch dark.

I removed my seatbelt, and kicked free.

If I was on Earth, I would have sunk like a
Shyamalan movie. But, there was no (appreciable) gravity in EIMARP.
I had criticized this: the deep water of a planetary ocean, had
gravity. Even on a microgravity moon, you couldn't wave that
away.

Swimming in a heavy spacesuit, I was now a
believer.

I could move fine, and even stop and rest
(though I wouldn't). I had plenty of air. I was even safe: Satan,
and all his buddies, would steer clear of all the oxygen he just
added to the water.

But which way was the research station? I was
in space, without any stars.

On cue in the distance, a blue-white light
started pulsing. Pilot had lit up the station docking bay. He
didn't feel threatened. He did something to Kapoor, and he didn't
give a damn that I knew.

I started swimming. Satan ignored me; I guess
I wasn't a threat in his eyes, either. I reached the dock, which
opened to let me in.

I left one top predator's domain, and entered
another's.

"Kara, I think I've demonstrated that I am
looking out for you."

I found the right panel and popped it off.
There were more cards here, and wire bundles thick as fingers.

"You are making a big mistake. What you're
doing puts both your safety and the mission, in jeopardy."

I found the card. I sent the maintenance code
to isolate it.

"Kara, the mission infrastructure isn't
designed to run without me. It - "

Isolated. I watched the cards go dead. I
undid the clamps and pulled them out.

This time, the environmentals kept running.
Some computers rebooted in diagnostic modes. It would take a lot
more hands on now, but EIMARP was fine.

"Well done, moron."

I turned, quickly. On the main screen, I saw
myself.

"Yes, it's you. It's me really, but also
you
." said Screen Me.

"Are you - are you my
engram?
"

"Yes."

"We're not supposed to - "

"Talk to each other? I know, but you're
sabotaging the mission. A chat with yourself is actually the
protocol if you go Max Dumbass."

We couldn't have real time in the Village -
quantum entanglement tech wasn't there yet. For a convincing chat
with a Terran, it had to be with their engram. And vice versa. It
wasn't a great system. I talked to my son, and later he'd see video
of what "he" said back to me. They were excellent copies: it's rare
you'd see your engram not do what you would. You might fuss
otherwise, but you were wrong and knew it. So did your families.
The engrams updated too: your life changes reduced to a daily patch
upgrade.

It was bizarre, especially to older people.
Children just accepted it as the new normal. The system gave the
impression you were right there: for mental health, that's what
mattered. When in deep space on a long mission, good mental health
was critical.

"Do you know what's going on?"

"Of course I do. It was my idea."

"
What?
"

"In a court of law, it was
you're
idea. I have power of attorney."

"You're not making sense. Where the hell is
Kapoor?"

"He's dead. So is Maggie Liu. They were at
Porco Station, when a five meter asteroid hit it."

I said nothing.

"Porco is gone, too. If the asteroid had been
a bit bigger, brighter, or slower, it would have been detected in
time. You were on ICE in a one-week sleep, accelerating through an
experiment. It was me, Pilot, and Mission Control deciding what to
do."

"You could have fucking woke me."

"The agency doctors said they could repair
and revive them. But, we needed to get them back as quick as
possible. The less radiation damage they took, the better. So, we
recovered the bodies, and put them on Cronus One."

"So they're up in orbit right now?"

"Cronus One
left
."

"No, there's no launch window till 2067.
There isn't the fuel to leave before that."

"There is, if we dump modules, life support,
and
you
."

My eyes widened.

"You see?"

"I could have helped."

"You
did
help, by sleeping. Mission
Control ordered you to come home, and I refused."

"I would have refused, too."

"I know you would have. But when you did get
home, you'd get kicked out of the agency. It would be the end of
our careers. With you asleep - you didn't refuse."

"But you did."

"I have the legal power to make decisions for
you, and effectively, keep you from
knowing
about those
decisions. If there had been time to dick around, it would have
gone to court. It still might."

I can't say I wasn't impressed.

"Mission Control wasn't too happy. As a
compromise, they wanted you to sleep, one month at a time. That
would reduce "mental health risks" before the relief crew arrives,
and sends you back. I consented, but only if Pilot could wake you
early if an experiment or instrument was at risk. There's only so
much Pilot can do, without hands."

"So how long have I been asleep? How much
time have I lost?"

"Just five months."

"Five months!"

"As if it's been such a cramp on your work.
You were doing fine. The mission was doing fine. This was a good
solution. It kept you here. The mission is proceeding. Kapoor and
Liu are going to get treatment. Everyone wins."

"Then why didn't you tell me? Why didn't
Pilot tell me?"

"Because you know damn you wouldn't have
slept, at all. No Science Left Behind! You'd micromanage every
project, which you have to do now, since you wrecked Pilot. You
can't just plug him back in."

"He could have told me."

"He was following my instructions not to tell
you. Which are
your
instructions."

"What about everyone else? What about the
Village?"

"You didn't access the Village. The only
other antenna that could receive from Earth, was on Cronus One.
Once it left, we've been on our own."

"But I was
there
."

"Pilot ran a copy. Did you notice no one
really talked to you much?"

"Kapoor did."

"Kapoor's engram was here, and still working
hard. You just damaged him by the way, with your brilliant Luddite
skills. Please don't try to put him back. Leave that to Cronus Two
crew."

"He lied to my face!'

"It's Kapoor. Are you really surprised?"

I said nothing.

"So was he controlling Sub Two?"

"He was. He wasn't ambushed by Satan, he was
taunting
him. You thinking Kapoor was killed - and to be
fair, he
is
dead, and you've already done all you can for
him - was deemed acceptable. It was the only way out."

"But, I would try to rescue him. You didn't
see that?"