Kraken Mare Read online

“So I learned,” I remembered the initial lightheadedness when my unit had first landed on the planet, many months before. Soma’s “air”, with a slightly higher nitrogen percentage than Earth’s, caused some breathing difficulties for noobs as their bodies adapted to the lower oxygen levels. It was almost the same as living at higher altitudes on Earth. Thus, the planet's original colonists had been selected from regions of Earth like Peru, India and Pakistan.

  Unfortunately, this combination of ancient tribal feuds and religions led to the current war on the planet. Human beings were a stubborn species who harbored grudges like no other.

  “Never fails,” Piotr stated. “Just when I'd gotten used to Soma's air, it's right back on a flight to Earth.”

  “Such is the life,” I quipped. Piotr flashed me a strange smile.

  “I'm going to take a quick nap.” He pushed his seat back to recline. “We'll talk more later, chill?”

  I grunted and turned back to my book.

  Chapter Three

  We're not so old in the Army List,

  But we're not so young at our trade,

  For we had the honour at Fontenoy

  Of meeting the Guards' Brigade.

  –Rudyard Kipling, “The Irish Guards”

  “Welcome to Kraken Mare,” a booming voice greeted me as I exited the shuttle. I looked around the cavernous hangar in awe as a short, burly man with an impressive beard approached. I quickly refocused and accepted the proffered handshake. “More specifically, Mayda Insula Research Station. I'm Gerry Martin, security supervisor here for Xanadu. You must be John Manning.”

  “That's me, yes sir.” I nodded, looking behind me as I shouldered my small bag containing all of my belongings. With the exception of the flight crew, I was the only person getting off the shuttle. That was weird. I would have thought the others on board would depart as well. I turned back to Gerry. “So you're my new boss? They spoke highly of you back at corporate.”

  “That's one way of putting it,” Gerry said, waving for me to follow. “Another is that I'm a tough but fair bastard to work for. I bet you were wondering why you landed such a posh but boring assignment, am I right?”

  Truth be told, I hadn’t given much thought about it. I had practically sailed through the interview on Earth, personally meeting the CEO and founder of Xanadu. I’d impressed him enough to be offered a spot on the top security team right then and there. Shocked, I agreed to the offer even before we talked numbers.

  The six-figure salary had been an extremely pleasant surprise, as had the initial-signing bonus. An influx of money tended to make one forget the harsh and stark realities of military life in a hurry.

  On second thought, my discharge paperwork did just as good of a job.

  “I don't know,” I admitted after a moment. “I was surprised to hear that the station was even operational. I thought I was going to be running some sort of location security while they were working on the place. I heard that the atmospheric pressure was slowing down construction.”

  “Heh. A lie with a kernel of truth inside makes it that much more believable,” Gerry said, chuckling. He gave the flight control officer a wave and led me out of the large hangar towards an elevator. The doors opened and we stepped inside. “The atmospheric pressure is why there are liquid methane lakes here on the planet. The station is a self-contained structure that is able to withstand five thousand tons of pressure per square inch. We tested it by dropping it here from orbit once we had it built.”

  “Damn,” I whistled, impressed. That's one way to see if your engineers were full of crap or not. “Is this place almost indestructible or something?”

  “Pretty close,” Gerry nodded. “Without going into the technical details of the station, you could say this place could survive…quite a bit.”

  “That must have cost a fortune,” I guessed. “Why'd they spend so much money on a station here, anyways?”

  “Why, indeed,” Gerry said. “Must be something pretty damn important here for them to lie about the timing of the construction, as well as pouring almost fifteen dreadnoughts worth of money into a planet-bound science station.”

  He was good, but I didn’t take the bait. I wanted to play it cool.

  “A crewman of the shuttle that brought me in mentioned that there's a Navy task group above the planet. What're they up there for?”

  “Well, Titan is technically claimed by the United States,” Gerry explained. “But since Russia and China protested the US claiming planets within the home solar system, it's under UN jurisdiction for the time being. But this is a moon, and one that doesn't orbit Earth, so things are in legal limbo, for lack of a simpler description. The US task group above is there to maintain a UN presence until a relief force can be provided.”

  “But we're the nation primarily funding the UN,” I looked at him, surprised. “Who's going to be sending a ship – much less a small fleet – here to operate under the flag of the UN?”

  “Who, indeed?” Gerry's smiled was filled with mirth. “We expect that a coalition of Chinese and Russian military vessels will arrive to relieve the US of security duty here at this station in three years. At which time, we'll pack up and leave.”

  “And the station?” I asked, though I had a sneaky suspicion I already knew the answer to that question.

  “What station?” Gerry looked at me as innocently as a child caught with his hand in a cookie jar was able to. “It's not scheduled to be completed for another five years. We were running so far behind that the station was never completed.”

  “Devious. Of course, there is still a station here... I bet there's a plan in place to render it unusable and uninhabitable, like we used to do at embassies in hostile countries back in the day. Maybe even sink it to the bottom of this lake and call it an ‘engineering accident’.” At Gerry’s silence, I pursed my lips in thought. “Okay, so perimeter security is handled by the Navy. So what, exactly, are we here for?”

  He pushed a button, holding it down until it turned green. The doors slid closed. “Fingerprint scanner. Just in case.”

  “That was a weak dodge,” I said. “Should have tried something a little more subtle, like talking about the amenities or chow.”

  “Yeah, good catch on that one. There's always a good reason why they send a noob here. It's easier for me to show you than to explain everything, though.”

  “Show me what? And who're you calling a noob?”

  “What we're doing here,” Gerry explained. “Why we need security when the Navy is orbiting around the moon with enough firepower to take on a small fleet.”

  “That's no moon…” I said in a mock-somber tone.

  “What?” Gerry looked at me, confused. “This is a moon. Why would you think it wasn't? Didn't you see that big blob in space while you were en route? You know, Saturn? Of which this hunk of rock is a satellite of, which by definition makes it a moon?”

  “Never mind,” I sighed. Some people had no respect for the classics. “It's a geek thing.”

  “You're a weird guy, you know that?”

  “So…the elevator shows that there are fifteen levels,” I said as the elevator began to descend. “That tells me that this station is a hell of a lot bigger than it looks from the outside.”

  “Yeah. That's only because only the top two levels are above the lake's surface, though,” Gerry explained. “The observation deck and the hangar. Not including The Well, we have…a few levels below. Most you're cleared for, a few you aren't. So according to your knowledge, at this time there are ‘a few,’ okay?”

  “Fine. So what is The Well?”

  “Ahh…caught that, did you? Smart kid. It's something else better shown than explained, sorry.” My new boss shrugged apologetically. I struggled not to sigh. The elevator's descent ceased and the doors slid open. “Welcome to Central, the main level of the Mayda Insula Research Station.”

  I immediately began to size up the room and started nodding before we had even stepped out.

  L
ow plasteel walls were placed throughout the large open room, creating avenues for foot traffic which led to a primary control station set in the middle of the room. The room was fairly well lit, with the transparent plasteel fulfilling its dual purpose as a steel wall and a glass window.

  To the left was a guard station, manned by a solitary individual who appeared bored yet attentive. I was impressed. She quickly gave me the once-over and dismissed me just as fast. She had the look of a former special operations soldier, though I couldn’t think of any off the top of my head who recruited Amazonians.

  A strange object distracted me. It was a bit of a conundrum. A solitary tube of what looked like liquid methane ran through the room, which made absolutely no sense at all. I didn't understand why the designers included it. Best guess? Something to do with buoyancy. Perhaps this Well he mentioned earlier acts like a keel or something, I thought.

  “What's that tube for?” I asked, curious. I pointed at the cylinder filled with liquid. Gerry smiled.

  “You'll see in a bit.”

  I sighed a little more loudly and rolled my eyes so hard that I almost hurt my brain. “You like to build up the suspense a bit, don't you?”

  “Like it? Nope.” Gerry's grin was wide. I could already tell he was one of those guys who would kill you with suspense. “I absolutely love it.”

  “It's annoying.”

  “Oh yeah, you're going to fit in nicely here,” Gerry said, laughing. We walked towards two men who were seated in the center of the large room at a large circular desk filled with electronic equipment. It reminded me of the control desk at Xanadu's headquarters in Chicago. The two guards had their heads down and were watching various monitors at their station, their faces shadowed by the lights of the screens. One glanced up and nudged his fellow guard with an elbow.

  “Control desk,” Gerry confirmed my earlier assumption as he nodded to the two contractors on duty. They looked almost like twins, close enough for me to comment on it. Gerry chuckled and replied, “That's Gary Poole and Kelly Lockhart or, as they like to be called, Thing One and Thing Two. Not twins, not even distantly related, though they look exactly alike. We know this because the scientists here thought that they were lying and performed a DNA sequence test when they first arrived. Strange, though. Just creepy if you ask me. Still, solid guys. You'll be working with them a lot, actually. They run Control during their shift, with five roving guards moving around the station independently. Their fifth slot is open after Regina retired, so you'll be working on the job with them. It's less about guarding our prisoners and more about making the scientists comfortable about security in the first place. Control runs the ops, Central is the backup in case something weird happens.”

  “Wait…prisoners?”

  “For all intents and purposes, we're both a research station and a military prison,” Gerry stated. We passed the control desk and into a small corridor. Inside were ten white spheres separated by walls. The corridor was brightly lit with a stark white light. It took me a moment before I realized that this was a cell block, though it was unlike any I had ever seen before. The honeycomb and white design reminded me of a wasp nest a little bit. I mentally shuddered at the thought. I hated wasps with a passion.

  “Military prisoners?” I tore my thoughts away from traumatic childhood memories involving flying murderous rage insects as we neared the first prisoner's cell. “What sort of military prisoner gets transferred to a top secret research station? That doesn't make any sense at all.”

  “It's actually easy to explain. You see, we only get certain types of prisoners. Volunteers, actually. For instance…” Gerry stopped and pressed a small silver button next to the cell. “They accept a plea deal, they don't get executed. It's a solution to advance science while ensuring that the most dangerous convicts are removed from both a general prison population and still legally remain in military custody. Win-win.”

  The protective barrier changed from cloudy white to perfectly clear, revealing the sparse interior of the cell. On one side, a cot, a table, and a chair. On the other side, a low wall afforded some privacy to the privy.

  A man sat reading, his dark skin contrasting sharply with the cell’s sterile white interior. His bearing was that of a lifelong military man, as though he wore Dress Blues, not just dark blue scrubs and slippers. I turned away, taking a step before recognition set in.

  I stopped, eyes narrowing as the man's familiarity slowly dawned on me. I glanced over at Gerry. He read my expression, nodding before I could ask the question.

  “Yeah, that's him,” Gerry acknowledged. “Captain Emery Holomisa, United States Army.”

  “I thought he was still locked up at Leavenworth,” I muttered as I inspected the prisoner from outside the protective barrier. The man inside the cell was a legend, one that gave me a smidgen of respect for the Army. It was also one of the few times when I wasn't entirely sure that I was the best in the room; a strange sensation for any Marine. It was especially unsettling for my ego, since it knew I was the best and yet it was also convinced I was looking at the best. It was all very confusing.

  “He escaped from there twice,” Gerry explained. “So they stuck him in the Maelstrom on Mars. He somehow rigged a breathing apparatus out of an apple juice box and a lump of charcoal and escaped from there as well. Survived for three weeks in the Martian wilderness before they found him. He'd almost completed building a transport shuttle out of spare parts in a waste disposal pit outside Antiquity. He was shipped back to Earth and put in prison of all his own. He escaped, despite having two guards watching him at all times. He was sentenced to death for that one, since a guard died during the escape. They say he murdered the guard, but…well, they offered him a deal instead of shooting him right then and there, so something smelled a little fishy to me. But the deal? Come here and help with some science experiments, or death by lethal injection. Unsurprisingly, he chose this.”

  “I heard what he did at the Battle of the Pyre,” I breathed as I locked eyes with the only man to win both the Congressional Medal of Honor and the Hero of the Russian Federation Medal, the two highest awards of separate rival nations. The Pyre Front had been nasty, a dirtier fight than Soma could ever have been, and the casualty ratio had cracked ninety percent at one point. The Battle of the Pyre was the culminating effort at bringing the rebellious colony world of Delphin back under UN jurisprudence. I was glad that I had managed to avoid that hellish pit of despair, though a tiny part of me was embarrassed at my relative good fortune. “He's a hero. A bonafide hero.”

  “CENTCOM thinks otherwise, and he was convicted of war crimes at The Hague when the EU demanded his head after embarrassing them at Delphin.” Gerry shrugged, disgust evident in his tone. “Not that I believe the original charges for a moment, if you can't tell. For now though, we mostly just babysit him. He helps the scientists do their thing and is a pretty compliant prisoner. No escape attempts so far, but we try to take care of his needs without pissing off the military or annoying him. Plus, you've seen what it's like out there. We treat him with respect and don't let him forget that he is a man. He's more inclined to stay put and be a model prisoner this way. Plus, he has some hellaciously funny war stories. And some…not so funny.”

  I had my own opinions of the united central command of the US military (or CENTCOM), so I completely understood the implications. “So he's fairly sociable? I can talk to him sometime?”

  “He talks only when he feels like there is something to talk about,” Gerry said, pressing a button next to the cell. The material frosted over once more, obscuring the view of the prisoner. “As I said, we try not to bother him. We have a dozen condemned men down here who volunteered to take part in what the scientists are trying to do here. Captain Holomisa is the only one who I don't find revolting and actually is worthy of my time.”

  “The others?” I asked and turned away from the cell. I felt a little ashamed at the idea of imprisoning a war hero.

  “Murderers and rapists,” Ge
rry explained as we continued down the hallway. “Convicted of crimes that would have normally gotten them hung after a military tribunal. A very short tribunal, I'll add. Other than Captain Holomisa, the men who volunteered are truly damned men. They're just prolonging their lifespan by volunteering for this project.”

  “So…what are they volunteering for, exactly?”

  “You'll see.”

  Yeah, I thought as the tour continued, extracting information from this guy is going to be a pain in the ass. Just like I thought.

  ঠ

  “Welcome to The Well.”

  I’d been introduced to some strange things. Fascinating things. Things all over the Galaxy. The Well beat them all.

  Ok, definitely top five.

  I have to admit, it took me off guard just how far down it ran. Intellectually, I knew that a well could be deep, hundreds of feet at times, depending on where the water was trapped beneath the surface. Still, it never hit home until I had the chance to stand at the top and see all the way down.

  The Well extended below the station, delving into the darkest depths of the lake. I found out later it went deeper than anyone had originally anticipated, with some of the craggy valleys reaching as far as five miles down. Inside the station, it was over forty feet across, filled with the same liquid methane as the lake.

  A thick layer of plasteel covered the reflective surface. People could walk across it without any danger whatsoever; a few of the civilian contractors and scientists did just that as I watched.

  For the record, I am not afraid of heights. I had made orbital drops onto battlefields before, as well as jumped out of perfectly functioning aircraft from two miles up. I had never flinched when looking down from the highest peaks and trees when I was a kid. I used to hang glide for fun. Simply put, heights had never bothered me before.

  Standing above The Well, however, drove home just how alien everything in the universe truly was when compared to Earth. The station’s lighting, leaving faint, colorful ripples where it touched, allowed me to see for quite a ways through the clear liquid. Beyond the reach of the light, however, the liquid methane became very dark and foreboding.