The False Admiral (22 page)

“All of our colonists?” I asked, looking at it sadly.

“Hard to say. It's actually a lot like ash. There's some calcium in there. I don't have the full makeup, though. The colonists didn't understand how they were doing it either.”

“I need you to do better.”

“At a molecular level it's got some similarities to carbonate, according to the Ganraens. I haven't looked for myself. The remains essentially disintegrate. When the ship depressurized, the bodies went with the air, along with clothing and anything else that might've been left behind. They must have done a true vent with the airlocks to get this kind of air movement in here.”

“How does that explain the damage to the ship?” I asked impatiently.

“The exterior damage . . .”

“From the planet. I'm talking about the doors and the shooting. Some of the marks on the walls make me think someone drove a cargo loader through the corridors or something. Your microorganisms didn't do
that
.”

“That I'm not sure—there could have been a disagreement about how to deal with this crisis. It's possible that the introduction of the alien organism to blood flow in the brain might have had something to do with it, influencing behaviors. They might've tried something crazy to fight back against it. Plenty of options,” Deilani said. “People get strange in deep space. There isn't always an obvious explanation. There's stuff out here that we don't know about or understand, Admiral. Signals, radiation. When things get strange, it's not always an easy answer. We've seen a lot, but we haven't seen it all. That's what makes deep-space colonization dangerous.”

“Some of this damage,” I began, but didn't finish. Some of this damage didn't fit those theories.

Nils returned, looking pale. He'd been listening over the com.

“Don't panic,” I told him, pointing a warning finger. “Let's get up to Medical. You can show us what you've got, and we can figure out what to do.” I gave Salmagard what I hoped was a reassuring smile. She was visibly exhausted. I didn't want to think about how bad
I
probably looked.

It was not a cheerful walk.

Deilani had made herself at home in medbay. There were several glowing readers showing half a dozen reports, casting blue light across the room. “The colonists didn't get far before things went to hell,” she told us. “None of this is complete. One doctor was convinced that the mist wasn't actually microorganisms, just a larval form of something else. The geological survey—which might have touched all this off—showed that the farther down they went, the larger the subterranean cavities became.”

“That doesn't make any sense,” I said. “This stuff isn't strong. Is the whole planet unstable? How does that even work?”

“It doesn't make sense to
our
thinking, but the galaxy doesn't have to play by our rules of structural engineering.” There was a light in Deilani's eyes that I hadn't seen before. Her inner scientist was coming to the surface again. “I'm going to guess that the makeup of the mineral is different deeper down, though.”

“How did they get these readings? I thought scanners were no good.”

“They sent a team to blast their way down. When they returned, that may be how they compromised the ship. Bringing the mist aboard.”

“That would count for
one
ship,” I pointed out. “Not all four.”

“I'm not saying I have the answers,” Deilani said, leaning on the table. “Just what I've read here. I'm still working the data.”

“Could the mist be behind this? Could a—a swarm of these things account for the readings just now?”

She shook her head. “Completely undetectable. The whole ship's probably contaminated. But our decontamination nanomachines won't let them bother us—until they run out.”

“How long do we have?”

“Not quite two hours.”

I winced. “So that green mist out there is actually a massive crowd of microorganisms. Or larva.”

“That's what the Ganraens thought,” Deilani replied.

I swallowed, feeling ill. We were breathing that swarm right now.

“They did try to decon, right? Wouldn't that be protocol for colonists?”

“Probably. But they don't have nanotechnology on their side, and we've seen that this planet has its own sensibilities. Commonwealth tech wasn't up to the job.”

“Wouldn't be the first time.” I folded my arms and thought. “Somehow, all four ships were compromised, there was shooting, and everybody died. Or left.”

“That's how it looks.”

“When did all of this happen?” I asked.

“According to these logs, over a month ago.”

I nodded. “So they'd pretty much just gotten here.”

“Looks like everyone was wrong about this planet.”

Nils shook his head. “Worst colonization program ever.”

“Yeah, like nothing ever goes wrong on imperial colonies,” I replied.

“Not like
this
.”

“Fine,” I said. “Back to our first plan. We'll stockpile supplies and establish a clean zone before the clock runs out. It'll have to hold until help comes, and we'll need a way to communicate with whoever does show up so they can avoid contamination. It's a lot to do, but everything we need is on this ship, and this time we've got power. We don't have a lot of time, but we'll manage.”

“I'm not saying it's impossible,” Deilani said. “But that won't be easy. Another option is to go back to the freighter for more nanomachines. There should be long-range flyers somewhere in this colony.”

“That was my first thought too. But for all we know, now the freighter could be at the center of this planet, especially if integrity actually lessens as you go down. Who knows if we could even reach it, much less get inside? The flight would take more than two hours anyway, so we'd have to think of something to keep ourselves alive that way too. I think we're better off here. This tech is a step down,
but it's a step up from no power. Besides, the freighter could be on its side or something.”

“This ship already sank once,” Nils pointed out. “What's to say it won't end up just like our freighter? I hate to be that guy, but I don't even want to think about what a ship this size weighs.”

“I'm not worried unless we do something to shake things up, which I don't plan to.” I rapped gloved knuckles on the bulkhead and thought hard.

“That's another thing.” Deilani showed me a reader, looking elated.

“What am I looking at?”

“A mineral formation.”

“Doesn't look like one.” The image showed a massive shape, partially buried in the rock of the planet. It jutted from the wall of the valley, as though it had been exposed when the stone had been knocked away by the ship when it sank. There was also a sliver of the colony ship in the frame, for scale. The formation was probably forty meters across, and roughly cylindrical. It emerged from the stone, curving down, and disappearing into the valley floor.

“What is it?” I asked.

“I don't know. What bothers me is the shape—it reminds you a bit of a pipe, doesn't it?”

“Like an L junction,” Nils said.

“Yes, but it's clearly mineral. It's probably coincidence, but it's
not
the same mineral as everything else. The colonists were interested in it,” Deilani said. “So maybe we should be too. I checked the status of the ship itself. We're half buried. This thing's partially covered, so we can assume it's part of a larger formation in the
ground. I don't see how that's a problem, but . . . I don't like it. We don't understand this planet, Admiral.”

We certainly hadn't seen anything like that formation on the way here. I looked closer. I could understand Deilani's concern, but it was just part of the scenery.

“That's an understatement,” I said. “The clock's ticking. Unless anyone objects, I say we draft ourselves a clean room and make it happen. You don't want to go out like the Ganraens, do you?”

“No, sir.” A chorus answered me.

“Good. Nils, hit the plans and find us a room. Deilani, containment measures are up to you. The private and I will stockpile supplies. Lieutenant, give us a safety briefing.”

“Hurry,” Deilani said.

“You heard her. Questions?”

“ADMIRAL,” Nils said over the com. Salmagard and I paused in the corridor.

“Yeah?”

“About your plan.”

“Yes?”

“It sort of counts on us getting rescued, doesn't it?” There was something in his voice I didn't like.

“It does, Ensign. That's what the beacon's for.”

“That's the thing, sir. It's active, but I think it's buried.”

I recalled the image of the landslide that Deilani had showed me, and the strange mineral formation.

“What? Would that be an issue?”

“It might, considering what this planet does to signals,” Nils said.

“You getting this, Deilani?”

“I'm listening.”

I rubbed my eyes, glanced at Salmagard, and spoke into the com. “Can we clear it?”

“I don't know. We might do more harm than good. It could already be damaged.”

“It received your ping, didn't it?”

“That could've been any one of these ships. They all have com arrays, and I don't have any reason to think they don't all have power. Admiral, if we're not broadcasting, we could be waiting for rescue for a very long time out here. Call it a hunch, but I don't think this planet's the first place they're going to come looking.”

“How do you want to handle it?”

“I'd better get out there and have a look.”

“Not by yourself.” It pained me, considering our tight schedule, but safety had to come first. “Change of plans. Nils, put down paths to the smartest airlock.”

“All of us?”

“Yes, everyone. I don't want anybody alone out there or in here.” I didn't want to share the details behind my concern, but the situation inside the ship still didn't add up. Until it did, I'd stay cagey.

This was time we didn't have. The trainees knew it too. It was a good thing both Nils and Deilani had chosen curiosity over rest, or we'd have been in real trouble.

In the airlock we all inserted the recharged O
2
cartridges that Nils had brought, and deployed our helmets.

“Hit it,” I told Deilani.

“Already started the cycle. There's an automatic decon—just
not a very useful one, clearly. This chemical mist.” She put out her glove, rubbing her fingers together. “For all the good it seems to do. There must be something about the matter on this planet that reacts to our materials and corrodes it. I think that's the cause of these burns, and some of the ways the ships have been compromised.”

The outer doors opened, immediately letting in tendrils of green mist.

“As long as this stuff can't get through EVs. There's probably a better way up, but we don't have time to argue over the map. Let's just go.” I activated the charge in my gloves and began to scale the side of the colony ship. We were starting from an upper deck, but it was still a long climb.

The mist was thin at the top of the ship, though we were still far below the surface of the planet. I looked around at the distant walls of the valley that had been created when the Ganraen colony sank. There wouldn't be any climbing out of this basin; we'd need a vehicle, but the pilot bay was blocked by collapsed rock. It was just as well; if there was no one left on the other ships, there was no reason for us to visit them.

The damage to the ship, and the large amount of debris that had collapsed onto it, was evident when we reached the top. We were half buried.

“Oh, hell.”

“What, Ensign?”

Nils pointed. “The array is in there somewhere.”

“No way we're clearing that. We could blast it.”

“We could destroy it, though. And there's no time to excavate it.”

“And that means no rescue.”

“Not until the Ganraens get suspicious about how quiet things are out here—they probably are by now. They'd have to be.”

“They might've written it off,” I said.

“What? How do you know that?”

I blinked and turned toward him, looking at him through his faceplate. “I told you,” I said. “Colonial safety isn't high on the Commonwealth's list of priorities right now. This colony launched at a bad time, and right now the Ganraen systems affected by the war just want to recover. Besides, there's a good chance these people were separatists. A lot of people jumped ship during the war, and it's one reason they might've risked a planet with sketchy surveys.”

“You don't think they'll send anyone?” Nils was incredulous. Spoiled by the Evagardian way of doing things.

The words hung as we all stood on the sloping side of the colony ship, surrounded by the vast emptiness of the misty valley.

“I wouldn't count on it. Especially if some of the colonists escaped,” I said finally.

“Then we're here until our people come looking,” Deilani said. “It could take them a while to find us. Maybe Galactic Rescue will come.”

The lieutenant was right. But it wouldn't be Galactic Rescue. It would be Evagardian Intelligence. Or Imperial Security. Or both.

“I don't think the GRs mobilize for stuff like this,” Nils said.

“They don't,” Deilani replied. “I was joking.”

“Back inside,” I said. “We haven't got all cycle. Oh. Hello.”

I stopped. Nils froze. Salmagard gave no indication of surprise or alarm, but Deilani let out a cry.

The thing was clinging to the side of a thruster that we'd
absently walked past to reach this point. We must have been within a meter of it. Now, facing this way, it was impossible to miss.

It was quite obviously a life-form. An indigenous life-form. The thing's black limbs stood out clearly against the gray metal, but it was the same color as the planet. It would be . . . invisible anywhere else.

Nobody moved.

I struggled to keep my bearing. “First time seeing a xeno up close, Lieutenant?”

“Yes—yes, sir.”

“Mine too. Don't panic.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I don't suppose anyone brought a weapon?” Nils' voice broke.

With its legs outstretched, the thing was nearly three meters across. It reminded me of pictures I'd seen of Old Earth arachnids and crustaceans—but those organisms were built with a meticulous symmetry. Artistry, even. This thing had none of that. The jagged, bizarre angles of its limbs made it one of the most intensely hideous things I had ever seen. I didn't see eyes or a mouth, nothing but joints and the lumpy carapace.

Where the spindly legs touched the metal, the metal was smoking faintly.

Deilani's readings hadn't been faulty. Something like this would have been tough to spot on the ceiling of that coolant tank, among all the piping and wires, even if you were looking for it. And we hadn't been.

“You told us not to touch weapons,” Deilani said. “Didn't want us to seem hostile.” She sounded distant.

“Right.” I swallowed. “No reason to think we might need them, anyway. This fellow might be friendly.”

But he wasn't. This was how the inside of the colony ship had gotten to this state; suddenly the weapons fire and damage all came into sharp focus.

“He's killed thousands of colonists,” Nils pointed out, a distinct quaver in his voice.

“Colonists,” I said slowly, beginning to back away. “Who were trespassing. For all we know, this ship might've fallen on his home. Anything he's done has been perfectly justified by Evagardian law. And Commonwealth law, for that matter.”

“So the mist is the larval stage of
this
? This
thing
?” There was no point telling Nils not to panic now. He already had.

And if what he said was true, it explained more or less everything, even Salmagard's allegedly faulty scanner readings. I saw her switch her scanner back on, and immediately look sharply over her shoulder.

“Contact?” I didn't take my eyes off the creature.

“I'm reading movement all over this valley.”

I began to swear internally.

“There's one over there,” Nils said, pointing. His finger shook.

Now that we were looking for them, they were very obvious.

“Guys,” I said. “Let's go inside.”

We started to make our way toward the edge of the ship, giving the creature a wide berth. I started a controlled slide down the slope of the hull. I reached the airlock and started the cycle.

“Incoming,” Salmagard reported, touching down beside me and looking over the railing.

One of the creatures was scuttling determinedly up the side of the
ship. It wasn't as large as the one we'd seen up there, but it was still more than a meter across, and apparently very keen to meet us. Deilani backed up until she hit the bulkhead. She wouldn't be any help.

There was no atmosphere out here, nothing to conduct sound. The thing was coming at us in absolute silence. I wondered how much we'd been oblivious to as we'd just climbed into this valley and approached the colony.

We hadn't been looking.

Salmagard vaulted over the railing to crouch on the hull. She pulled up a release for a maintenance hatch and raised the panel a few centimeters, staring the thing down as it got closer. It clambered onto the metal sheet almost faster than she was ready for, but she jerked it out of its clamps and gave it a hard shove, sending the panel and the xeno sliding down the side of the ship to disappear into the mist.

The airlock was open. I pulled her back over the railing, and we joined the others inside. Nils hit the seal, and the doors closed. The dim airlock filled with the impotent Ganraen decontamination spray.

“Did I just fire the first shot?” Salmagard asked worriedly.

“The colonists did. These guys were prejudiced against us before we got here. I bet four big colony ships crunching down like this killed a lot more of them than us. Halt that cycle—we need to talk.”

“I'm reading them inside the ship,” Salmagard reported.

“No doubt; the hull's breached in a dozen places. This changes things. Now, not only do we have no functioning beacon, but we've got active hostiles. Our clean room won't stay clean for long with these guys running around—were any of you looking at his feet?”

“I saw,” Deilani said, nodding. “There was some kind of reaction with the metal.”

“Hiding ourselves away and holding out isn't an option anymore.” I looked at the trainees, then at my chrono. “We have to get off this planet before our nanomachines fail.”

“Shuttle,” Nils said immediately. He was right. It wasn't polite to just swipe a transport, but there was no one here to object. “Most of the vehicles probably aren't on this ship, but there have to be some shuttles. Is the bay buried?”

“A colony ship has its atmosphere bay on top, so I doubt it. Or at least not
so
buried that we can't get the doors open. We'll get into orbit, hit the shuttle's subspace beacon, and go to sleep. And hope for the best. Questions?”

“You trust Ganraen sleep tech?” Nils still seemed dazed.

“More than I trust their decon. Ready?”

“Let's do it.” Deilani hit the release, and the inner airlock doors hissed open.

Nils went to the nearest console and keyed in a path to the flight bay. He seemed reluctant to disengage his helmet. I reminded him that his air supply was finite, and he shut it off.

“I didn't think I could hate this planet even more,” Deilani muttered. “These larger ones must have hit the colonists suddenly, because there's nothing about them in the logs.”

“I know why security's down,” Nils said, looking up from the console, realization dawning. “The security office is smashed all to hell. Someone must have tried to make a stand there.”

“That's where I'd have done it.” I kept moving.

“It didn't end well.”

“Don't be fooled,” Deilani said. “The larval ones are the most
dangerous. The mist. They can't be fought at all without a compound that'll kill them, or at least nanomachines to hold them back.”

“You didn't seem too bothered,” Nils said to Salmagard.

“I'm from Earth,” she replied distractedly, busy with her scanner.

“So?”

“You've never seen a Nipponese spider crab? Delicious.”

The fact that she was making jokes meant she was every bit as rattled as the rest of us.

The ensign shook his head. “Mad. The lot of you.”

“It was one of these—a little one, back on the freighter. In Medical,” I said, tugging at my collar. “Not a hamster. But how'd he get in?”

“What?” Deilani looked at me.

“The hull breach was at the other end of the ship.” I folded my arms. “How'd he get from there to Medical?” My eyes caught on a Ganraen vent cover. I felt ill, and this time it had nothing to do with my withdrawal.

“Got the atmosphere bay—two decks up. Let's go,” Nils said, disconnecting from his terminal.

“Private?”

“I'm not reading anything nearby.”

“Then let's move. I doubt there's much reason for there to be many in here, but when we repressurized we sealed them in with us. I think just now we might've agitated them.”

Now that we knew we weren't alone on the ship, its vast emptiness took on a new significance. There couldn't be
too many
of them in here with us, but that wasn't very comforting. I was looking around in a decidedly paranoid fashion, even when I knew that Salmagard would pick up anything nearby long before I'd notice.

As we ran through the deserted corridors of the colony ship, I knew how Captain Tremma and his pilot officer must have met their end. By blasting the spire, they had stirred up the locals. They must not have been quick enough to decontaminate when they got back aboard; that explained the mishap with the incinerator. Blind panic. I didn't know what it would feel like to have these things inside my body, turning it into their mineral—but I could imagine that it would be distressing.