Dead Space: Martyr (6 page)

“Tonight?”

“Weigh anchor just before dusk. I want you in position by 2100 hours and ready to go by 2200. No need to tell your two pilots anything or do anything to make them suspect or get word back to someone if you’re wrong and they’re spies. Just wake them up and get them on board in time to drop the F/7 well before midnight.”

“Yes, sir,” said Tanner.

The Colonel reached out to disconnect the link, then stopped. “You look tired, Tanner,” he said. “Everything all right?”

“I’m fine, sir,” said Tanner. “Just a little headache. I’ve been having trouble sleeping. But nothing to worry about.”

“Tomorrow may be a historic moment,” the Colonel speculated.

“Yes,” said Tanner.

“What do you think is down there?”

Tanner had been wondering the same thing for days now. How could something seemingly man-made end up at the bottom of the crater, buried under miles of rock?

“I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe it’s just a natural formation that somehow doesn’t seem natural. Or maybe it’s something man-made that’s been placed there God only knows how. Or maybe . . . ,” he said, but couldn’t bring himself to finish the sentence. It was too big to get his mind around.

“Maybe what?” asked the Colonel.

Tanner shook his head to clear it, which just made the headache throb more. “I really don’t know, sir,” he said.

“I’ll tell you what you’re thinking since you’re not man enough to say it yourself,” said the Colonel. “You’re thinking, ‘Sure, it may be constructed, but not by us, not by humans.’”

Tanner didn’t say anything.

“Believe it or not, Tanner, it’s a genuine possibility. That’s what we’re hoping for. The first contact with intelligent life other than our own.”

It made Tanner dizzy to think about it, even scared him a little. If that was what it was, if that’s what happened, it could change everything. “With a little luck, we’ll know soon enough,” he said in as steady a voice as he could muster. “I’ll keep my fingers crossed, sir,” he added, and then cut the link.

13

He was trying to run, but wasn’t getting anywhere. His arms and legs were flailing in the air, but nothing was happening. He couldn’t even feel the ground beneath his feet. And there was something wrong with the air. Every time he tried to breathe it, he ended up coughing, choking. He was slowly suffocating. He looked frantically around him, but on every side it was the same—an endless gray expanse, nothing solid, nothing definite, just he himself, alone, floating in a void, dying.

He knew he was dead, but he still, somehow,
was
. He was floating, his eyes open but seeing nothing, his body turning slowly around and around. There was nothing there but him, but he wasn’t exactly
there
. He heard something. Quiet, like the sound of an insect scuttling over paper. It slowly got louder. It blossomed into a loud whisper. A human voice, speaking to him.

Hennessy,
it said. It was a familiar voice. He wished it would speak louder than a whisper so he could be sure about who it was.

Hennessy,
it said again. He heard it close to his other ear, and then in two slightly different whispers at once. It wasn’t just one voice, he suddenly realized, but legion, all of them whispering, all of them saying his name.
Hennessy
,
Hennessy
,
Hennessy
.

And then, spinning around, the gray space around him suddenly didn’t look so gray anymore. It was changing. Transforming. Becoming something else.

He knew he was dead, and he couldn’t move. All he could do was stay there, floating, body spinning slowly about, listening to the voices, as the blank gray void that had been there all around him quickly became more and more textured. For a moment it was striated, run through with creases and lines, and then those shifted and crumpled in a way that reminded him of a human brain. And then these, too, tightened and shifted, beginning to take on vague features. It was not a void, he realized, but a tightly packed mass of bodies, stuck to one another, fading into one another, all of them dead.

He wanted to close his eyes but couldn’t. There were thousands of them, maybe more, and as the faces became more and more differentiated, he began to realize that they were people he knew, all of them dead. There was his wife there, her neck broken from the accident, his mother and father, both withered and decrepit just as they had been after the cancer took them, and others, many others, whom he hadn’t forgotten but who, upon noticing them, he knew were all dead.

Hennessy
. The word came from one of those open and unmoving maws, like an echo from deep within a cave. But which?
Hennessy,
said another. And soon, they were all saying it, pressing closer and closer to him, and there was nothing that he could do to stop them. And then their fingers were sliding under his skin, threading through his bones, insinuating their way into him.

“Hennessy!” someone was yelling. “Hennessy!”

Something was grabbing him, shaking him. Hands. Someone
was screaming, Hennessy realized, and then he realized that that somebody was him.

He lashed out and scrambled backward, out of the grip of whatever it was, until he struck a wall. It was only then that he was able to stop screaming and consider where he was. A normal room, in the DredgerCorp complex, in Chicxulub. There was his bed. It was his room. It was okay. He was back in the real world.

There was a man bent over near the bed. An ordinary-looking man wearing glasses.

“Jesus,” said the man. He was covering his nose. Blood was dripping through his fingers and onto the floor. “What did you do that for?”

Behind him, Hennessy saw, were two larger men. They looked like they might be brothers, or even twins. He’d seen all three lurking around at various times within the complex, but never was quite sure what they did.

“You want us to rough him up a bit?” said one of the larger men.

“Soften him up a little?” said the other, and smacked his fist into his palm.

“You know we can’t do that,” said the man with the glasses. “We’re just supposed to fetch him.”

“I’m sorry,” said Hennessy to the man with the glasses, confused by what they were saying. “I was having a bad dream.”

“Bad dreams seem to be going around lately. It must have been one hell of a bad one,” said the man with the glasses. He tilted his head back and moved his hand away. The bleeding seemed to have mostly stopped. He gave an experimental sniff.

“What are you doing here?” Hennessy asked.

“We were sent to get you,” said the man with the glasses. “Get dressed.”

Maybe I’m still dreaming,
thought Hennessy. “Get me? For what?” he asked.

“You’re needed elsewhere. Just get dressed and come on. Or do you want me to let Tim and Tom work out some of their nervous energy on you?”

They took him down to the dock, Tim and Tom to either side of him, the man with the glasses leading the way. There was a large speedboat there, Dantec already inside it, seemingly at ease, sitting straight-backed, his arms crossed. Unlike him, Dantec didn’t have an escort. One of the vaguely military men from the freighter was standing with one foot on the dock, the other on the deck, ready to cast off.

“Where are you taking us?” Hennessy asked the man with the glasses.

He was still rubbing the bridge of his nose. “We were told to bring you to the boat. That’s all I know.”

“Get on,” said Tim, behind him.

“Or do you want us to put you on?” asked Tom.

Hennessy scrambled aboard, sat down next to Dantec. The soldier cast off, pushed away from the dock, and scrambled into the pilot’s seat. A moment later the engine was screaming and they were tearing across the dark water.

“Do you know what’s going on?” Hennessy asked Dantec over the roar.

Dantec gave him a hard, dead look. “We’ve been activated,” he said.

Activated?
wondered Hennessy.
What does that mean?

·  ·  ·  

With the wind and the spray of the water, Hennessy was soon freezing. His teeth were chattering by the time they arrived at the freighter. They climbed out and up the ladder to find Tanner waiting for them on deck.

“You made good time,” said Tanner to the motorboat pilot. “Well done, son.”

“Thank you, sir,” the man said.

Tanner turned to Hennessy and Dantec. “Well,” he said, “I bet you two are wondering what the hell is going on. Come onto the bridge and we’ll talk.”

After Tanner had finished explaining, Hennessy felt there was something wrong. Sure, he was excited to go down to the center of the crater, excited to find out what was there and see where it was from. It could, as Tanner said, be amazing, maybe even the first signs of intelligent extraterrestrial life. But maybe it was nothing, just an anomaly. He had to try not to get too excited.

Plus, something just didn’t add up. Certainly DredgerCorp wasn’t the only one to have detected the object. And even if they were, didn’t they have an obligation to report it? Didn’t they have to go through proper channels, consult with the Mexican government? Shouldn’t it be a joint project, something that DredgerCorp was in on but which the government controlled, instead of a hurried and sudden operation in the dead of night?

No, they were definitely up to no good, and in a way that might have serious consequences. Maybe he was a little naïve, maybe in the past he’d sometimes looked the other way when things were questionable, but he wasn’t
that
naïve. He knew that if anything
went wrong, it wouldn’t be either Tanner or DredgerCorp that got stuck with the blame, but he and Dantec. DredgerCorp would cut them loose without a second thought.

He looked over to Dantec, who turned and met his gaze. He seemed as cool as ever, his gaze dead, his eyes predatory.
He doesn’t care,
Hennessy realized.
He’ll do whatever he’s asked.
So Hennessy took a deep breath and turned to Tanner.

“Why at night?” he asked.

“Why not?” said Tanner. “The F/Seven has lights. You’d have to use them anyway once you got far enough down, and would definitely have to use them once you started digging.”

“I don’t think that’s what he’s asking,” said Dantec coolly.

“No?” said Tanner. “What’s he asking, then?”

“If it’s legal.”

“Is that right?” said Tanner, turning to Hennessy. “Is that what you’re asking?”

Hennessy hesitated a moment, then nodded. “It just seems a little odd to me,” he said. “Isn’t all this, this whole crater, owned by Mexico? Wouldn’t it have been leased by a local retrieval organization? And what’s going on with the crew of this freighter? Are they military or not? If they are, why aren’t they wearing uniforms? Whose side are they on? If they’re not, then what the hell is going on?”

“You don’t need to think about that,” said Tanner. “I’m handling all the details. There’s no reason for you to worry.”

“But we’re the ones who will bear the brunt of it if things go wrong,” said Hennessy.

Tanner didn’t say anything.

“Aren’t I right?” asked Hennessy, appealing to Dantec. “Shouldn’t we be worried? Don’t you have a problem with this?”

Dantec said nothing.

Hennessy turned back to Tanner. “Shouldn’t I be worried?” he asked.

Tanner said, “I’ve already given you an answer.”

Hennessy sighed.

“Look,” said Tanner. “Don’t you want to be in on this? It could be extremely important, but that’s not to say there aren’t some risks. You have to decide for yourself, Hennessy. If you don’t want to go, you don’t have to go, but you have to decide right now.”

Hennessy hesitated a long time. Whatever this was, legal or not, it was big, important. He couldn’t trust Tanner, but then again, he couldn’t really trust anybody at DredgerCorp. He’d known that when he signed on. But he’d always managed to avoid getting into scrapes before. Whether what they were doing was legal or not, he told himself, he could make sure that his part in it was legal. Besides, if things got too bad, he could walk later. He’d go along with them, but he wouldn’t trust Tanner as far as he could throw him.

He finally nodded.

“Good,” said Tanner. “Off you go, then, the both of you.”

14

He’d never been inside the bathyscaphe at night before. The fluorescent lighting, with darkness all around, struck him at once as harsh and dirty, like the office of a deranged dentist. It cast both his face and Dantec’s in stark relief.

They strapped into their seats, Hennessy at the controls and in front, Dantec just behind and to his right, beside the ballast release. The hoist lifted them up and over the water. They hung there swaying for a moment and then, suddenly, were released.

They crashed into the water, and the darkness became even more total. Dantec flicked on the exterior lights, which dimmed the lights inside. Hennessy checked the controls. He put in his earpiece and adjusted the microphone so it wasn’t scraping against the side of his cheek. He ran the F/7 briefly forward and backward, turned on the drill, and watched it swirl. He checked the sonar signal. He checked the fathometer and had Dantec verify the porthole seals. Everything seemed to be in order.

“This is Plotkin,” Hennessy said, speaking his code name into the mic. “Are you there, dropship? Are you reading me?”

Tanner’s voice crackled to life in his ears. The man was there on the holoscreen as well, his image crisp, well defined. “Hearing and seeing you loud and clear,” Tanner said. “Everything a go?”

“Roger,” said Hennessy. Dantec confirmed.

“Proceed when ready, Plotkin,” said Tanner.

Hennessy stayed for a moment with his hands on the controls, then cut the vid link and dived.

Now it is just a matter of time,
thought Hennessy,
four or five hours
. He leaned back and stretched. At first they went down slowly, then a little faster. He was careful to adjust. The air in the F/7 had grown thick and noticeably warmer. He had Dantec check the oxygen recirculator even though he knew it was just the climate system kicking in, that it was deathly cold outside.