Critical Mass, Chapter 27: Battle On Deck

She quickly reacquired her weapons from her locker and charged outside by way of the cargo room bay door, which was just in the process of being closed to keep the inside of the ship sealed off from attack. People were running all around the deck looking to the sky and over the side, trying to prepare for the next attack. The ship shook violently every few seconds, the result of a bombardment of the underside by mines being placed in their path and then sucked up into the ships own magnetic collection device.

For the most part, the ship remained undamaged, due to its own defense shield; a transparent field of energy that displaced and repulsed all solid matter from passing through. Consequently, the ship's shield generator, the same device that was responsible for the operation of all of the interior cell doors, as well as many of the ship's benign functions, created an elliptical bubble of protection around the entire ship that the indigenous creatures could not send any projectiles through. They had, however, developed the ability to pass through it themselves, and were getting bolder and bolder with apparent suicide runs at the deck and the bridge.

The mines were more of a nuisance than anything else. As part of an earlier campaign, surface rovers were deployed to explore and assess the mineral content of the small planet, and were initially greeted by all manner of hostile worm and burrowing insect. They were forced to drop mines in front of, and behind themselves, just to keep from being swallowed or pulverized by any of a dozen different burrowing creatures. What had by most of their early assessments seemed to be a barren wasteland, rich in resources, but nearly devoid of life, turned out to be quite different indeed.

The movement of the indigenous was masked from above by the fact that everything lived almost entirely underground. With Sigyn, a neighboring colossus of a planet, three moons, and the binary sun, Algol, making passes every three and a half days near a third star, there was so much seismic and electromagnetic activity that it was impossible to do an accurate sub-surface scan. There was also a constant threat of meteor activity from the suns on the other side of Sigyn, such that they needed to be capable of evasive maneuvering at a moment's notice, ruling out any kind of time-lapse analog scan.

The large planet shielded them for all but the end of each three and a half day cycle, but when they neared the third sun, the orbital ellipse of Sigyn widened for just long enough, while Algol endured additional strain, to make the little planet vulnerable to magnetic disruption, solar flares, and bombardment by meteors pulled in toward the augmented gravitational field. Though this cycle had apparently been going on for millions of years, the planet shook with such intensity during those hours, that every time it happened, it seemed to be the end; as if it was coming apart from the inside out.

The truth is that the complex blend of situations here existed nowhere else in the universe, leaving the scientific community nothing to base their hypothesis on, meaning they really had no idea how long this system had existed, or would continue to exist… The only thing they seemed in agreement on is that it was highly unstable, but had worked itself into some kind of uneasy equilibrium for eons, and that it was on a decaying spiral of uncertain length and magnitude. Under constant threat, the rest of the fleet was forced to spend impulse fuel to "hover" just out of orbit in the least affected zone nearby while a mining ship harvested the radioactive crystal they used for all their fuel and energy production; a substance found in abundance in the acid-rich orange sand of this planet‘s dry, wind-torn desert plains.

Fire erupted twenty feet into the air on both sides of the deck, not two feet out from the knee wall from the exploding mines pulled up into the magnetic field that the giant harvester generated to extract mineral in large quantities from the surface, and though they didn't damage the ship from underneath at this magnitude, they did offer a degree of cover fire for the strafing attacks from the one real threat they had encountered… Sand Dragons.

The most advanced life form found on the planet, thusly named by the humans because of their appearance, had figured out that they could collect unexploded mines and group them together in bundles, then place them directly in the path of the ship to deliver a significantly larger payload. They had even learned to camouflage them within larg e deposits of crystal in order to appeal to the humans' greed and lure them straight in over the explosives. This suggested not only intelligence, but strategic and analytical thinking, as well.

Little else was known about them, aside from the fact that they lived underground in vast networks of caves, and seemed to respond to each other's behavior and flight patterns in much the same manner as bees or bats. Though no language had been detected, or communication with them attempted, they obviously communicated with each other somehow. It had been speculated that they used some sort of pheromone, possibly in conjunction with the crystal, which was definitely organic in nature, but the growing complexity of their actions suggested something much more advanced. One theory was that they functioned through a collective intelligence; a form of telepathy, possibly generated by a leader, much like the queen of a hive. In any case, they were regarded with fear and treated with hostility, without much provocation, and this had always put a bit of a wedge between Sky and Captain Parnell.

Sky was a warrior, and would kill without hesitation to defend her ship and her people, but every time the smoke cleared, she was left standing with a bad taste in her mouth about the means by which the Captain accomplished their goals. This wasn't the first time they walked all over a lesser species to steal resources they needed in the name of Humanity and its short-sighted goals, but it was getting harder and harder to abide for her. Though little was known about their “hosts,” she sensed their connection was much deeper than anyone here realized.

Just when it seemed that maybe the attack was subsiding, they got hit from below so hard that the concussion knocked several people right off their feet. They scrambled to get up while the rest either grabbed onto something nearby, or dropped into prone position, nervously staring at the sky and the flame wall. The ship shook intensely and pitched hard forward before leveling out; the flames radiating so much heat from all around them, they had to cluster toward the middle of the deck, disorganized and distracted, shielding their faces.

"Spread out and form ranks!" Sky yelled at the top of her lungs. "Now! We're sitting ducks!" They scrambled to obey, but it was too late. Just as the flames dissipated into a smokey haze, a flash and a roar came out of nowhere and took the head right off the man standing closest to the edge. It rolled across the deck, stopping face up, to the horror of his comrades, and before they could digest what had just happened, the winged creature snatched the man standing opposite of him, pulled him right over the edge, then disappeared straight down into the haze.

The return fire from the ambushed troops was grossly late and over-reactionary at best, and a few of the less experienced ones were firing randomly over the side, yelling like angry children at the loss of two of their friends. Sky fired a shot in the air to get their attention. "I said form ranks!" she yelled in their ears, "Two circles! Backs to the center! They're coming from above... Center circle, cover high! Outer circle, cover the rail!" she ordered.

Before the men were quite in position, as if to taunt them, it came up from underneath the vessel and swept straight in sideways, cutting the circle in half by flying low and fast. It knocked over several men right down the middle, then dropped out of sight, right over the opposite rail, before they could fire a shot. Now that they were all facing each other, it struck again in exactly the same manner, from exactly the same direction, without hesitation, causing one of the less disciplined soldiers to shoot one of his own in the chest. It was gone again before they could blink. The body of the dead soldier slid to a stop about 10 feet out on his back, leaving a large swath of fresh blood on the deck.

In the distance, hazily obscured by vapor clouds released from the ship's pull on the soil, the being rose high above the surrounding hills, slowed to a stop and hovered with instinctively timed wing flaps. It stared at its prey, still kicking and squirming in vain, like a mouse caught in an eagle's talons. It lifted him up to face level and paused, staring deep into the young soldiers eyes with a penetrating gaze, and the man froze, petrified with fear and sure that he was about to die. The creature stared at him silently... intently. He could almost hear it trying to ask him something, but there were no words, no sounds, nothing but those dark, penetrating eyes.

"What the hell do you want from me? You fucking freak-show! What??!!" he screamed at the creature, now kicking and thrashing again. The creature's eyes slowly closed, as if it was saddened by the whole thing, and giving up on them quickly. Slowly, they reopened into a full, intense glare of absolute rage, and the creature discarded the little human with a small preamp followed by a powerful backhand toss to the right.

Back on deck, Sky looked up just in time to see the young soldier being tossed into the hazy abyss below, and the creature diving straight down and to the left, toward the tallest cluster of hills in the distance. In the aftermath, four men were helping to carry off their fallen comrade while others stood post, looking nervously about. She was apparently the only one who saw the body fall and truly knew it was over. As she looked around, unable to spot the creature anywhere, she lowered her eyes, saddened for her friends and for her situation. "I want no less than four of you outside at a time tonight! I mean it, nobody gets caught out here alone!" she ordered, then turned to walk back inside, tapping on her belt com to report to the Captain.

As she entered the bay door back into the cargo hold, she ran into three of the men, talking very one-sided about the creatures and how they should be dealt with. This always pissed her off about them, as she knew damn well there was a better way of dealing with other species, even after their careless exploitation of indigenous resources brought on natural hostility.

Try as she may to impart even a shred of decency or higher level thinking on the very people she risked her life to defend, her words always fell on deaf ears. They didn't get it. They wouldn't get it even if it was finally happening to them. It was this very tendency that put her kind in the position they were in; homeless scavengers roaming the cosmos looking for the next meal-ticket, but too nearsighted to create anything sustainable out of it when they finally found it. Frustrated at the simpleton barbs and brainwashed, alpha-male, jerk-off clichés, and still not convinced at all that the actions of this one creature were as random of an attack as was perceived, she made her way to the bridge to bark a little higher up the ladder. It couldn't hurt to try one more time.

"Captain, I witnessed strategic behavior out of one of the creatures this time..."

"Sky, I know. We've been over this... they're quite clever, but there's no reasoning with them, and if we don't finish what we set out to do, every one of us will die out here. It might come down to us or them!" the Captain reasoned, not wanting to hash up any previous debates at this point in the game.

"Sir, with all due respect, that's just it... us or them... what makes you so sure it will be us if we push them that hard? I mean, we have no idea what their true numbers are, but I saw one rogue pick us apart like we weren't there, and it could've kept going! It wasn't attacking us, it was testing us! I think it even tried to communicate with one of us!"

"By ripping a man's head off? Nice way to start a conversation!"

"They didn't start the conversation! Anyway, hear me out... The bullshit on deck was a ruse! It took one of us! One of its own choosing, then got to a safe distance and tried to interrogate him. It may have found out what it needed to know... Or maybe it was trying to see if there was something more to us besides the obvious. I don't know, but I watched its reaction, and it was one of frustration, not blind aggression. Even its attack was elaborate and premeditated. If they possess strategic reasoning, they possess a culture, and we're destroying it without any plan for their sustained survival after we're gone!" she yelled, slamming her fist down on the map table they were standing over.

"Look, Sky, you know I respect you, and I know you're probably right about this, but need I remind you how little control we actually have over this situation? There's a whole fleet of brass a lot heavier than mine who are losing power and fuel daily waiting for us to get this done. They're even sending another Carrier to help speed things up. I am a little concerned that this action will bring about unprecedented hostility from the natives, but the decision is not ours to make. What control do you honestly think we have?" he posed, trying, for what it was worth, to remain diplomatic with her.

"We're the ones down here right now... Not them! If we spent some time focusing on a larger solution, maybe we could all win... maybe not... but I believe we are morally obligated to try."

He put his hand gently on her shoulder, looking deep into her ice blue eyes. "Your mother would have been so proud of you. Your father too. You're a fine leader. Don't let the bastards bring you down."

“Which bastard?” she mumbled, started to leave to go bring up more workers from the Cryo-pool, when she remembered Stanton. "Hey, by the way, there's one particular Cryo you might be interested in seeing. I think there might be something special about this one. He had a ridiculously fast recovery... I mean, I've never seen one recover anywhere close to this fast. He's in the brig right now, at least until we interrogate him and find out who he is."

"I don't know, Sky, you remember what happened last time we tried to trust one of them with something that mattered... that suicidal basket case almost got all of us killed!" he reminded her with a skeptical look in his eyes. "Just give it a while. We'll see what happens. There's too much going on right now, anyway. Besides, we need as many as possible out and working the crystal stores right now! If he's as strong as you say, maybe that's where he belongs! Remember, most of these assholes were criminals, be it physical or in business...."

"Aye," she saluted, walking off feeling like she usually did after talking to him... like trying to clap with one hand. "Let's just give it some careful consideration and keep a close eye on him... It's not like we couldn't use to replenish the ranks a bit, we're getting shorter and shorter on good personnel," she added, smiling, mainly just trying to see if she could get the last word in.

"You've got a point there, we'll see...."