Europa Strike(131)

If that was what happened when he fell asleep in the presence of that alien thing down there, he wanted no part of it. He would stay wide awake, thank you, until they were back out of this strange, dream-laced, ice-locked sea.

Even awake, he couldn’t escape the thing’s baleful influence. When he closed his eyes, it was as though he were seeing…another place. Sometimes he saw vistas of stars. Sometimes it was that…place, that place so eerily like Mars, except that the air was breathable and people with strangely shaped faces were going about their business beneath a deep, pink sky.

And sometimes, he seemed to see the ocean deeps, the spires and domes and eldritch curves of the Ship eighty kilometers below, where black smoke boiled into water compressed to a thousand atmospheres, and pseudomosses waved in the alien currents.

But through whose eyes was he seeing these things?

He was having trouble staying awake.

Warhurst,

Manta One, Europan Ocean

1048 hours Zulu



“The ELF signal is increasing in strength,” Chesty told them. “And it is certainly affecting Sergeant Major Kaminski. I’m getting infrasonics from his skull again.”

Jeff reached out and peeled back Kaminski’s left eyelid. The pupil appeared slightly dilated. He checked the right eye, and noted the pupil there had constricted, was much smaller than the other. The symptom suggested a skull fracture, or a severe concussion. This was…something else.

“Is it hurting him?”

“Unknown. Physiologically, he does not appear to be under stress. His heart rate and respiration are slightly increased, but not to a dramatic degree.” Chesty hesitated, as though unsure of whether or not to venture a suggestion. “I have a possible means by which we might proceed. A kind of experiment, in fact.”

“What kind of experiment?”

“The ELF wave is…just that. A constant wave at a specific frequency and amplitude. I could use it as a kind of carrier wave to access the communications system that is putting it out.”

“Can you do that?”

“It’s more complex than that, of course. During our first passage, however, I was aware of a very great deal going on at the source of this wave. I sense other frequencies, RF leakage, if you will, especially at the longer wavelengths, which better penetrate the ocean. It’s as though I can sense the Singer’s thoughts. Perhaps I can, in a way, follow the ELF wave back to where it originated, and learn something about the intelligence behind it.”

Jeff stared at his PAD for a moment, even though he was well aware that only a tiny fraction of Chesty was resident there. Most resided within the Manta’s computers, and that was only a fraction of the full program, running back at the E-DARES facility.

“The experiment should pose no danger to me, this vessel, or the expedition,” Chesty went on after a moment. He seemed to be interpreting Jeff’s silence as disapproval.

His first thought was that he didn’t really give a damn about the Singer any longer.

Jeff was able to acknowledge to himself that his depressive funk was almost certainly postcombat letdown. The Singer was still the entire reason for the Marine presence on this ice ball, and the reason for all of those deaths. All of those deaths…

Tears burned hot in his eyes. Too many deaths.

He also knew he had to hold himself together a bit longer.

“If you think you can learn anything useful, Chesty, go to it. I’m not sure I see the point just now.”

“The Singer, simply by virtue of its evident size and power, represents a potential threat. The more information we have, the better able we will be to prepare ourselves against that threat, whatever it might actually be.”

“Go to it, then. But…be careful? I know you’ll be sending a copy of yourself, but we don’t know what that thing down there is…or what it can do.”

“That, Major, is at least part of the reason that we must do this.”

Kaminski appeared to be unconscious again, his eyes twitching rapidly beneath his eyelids.



Chesty Puller

Manta One, Europan Ocean

1050 hours Zulu



Strangeness…

Chesty Puller did not have a mind that considered things in terms of visual images. He was undeniably intelligent and self-aware, even in the abbreviated version of himself running on the Manta’s onboard system, but his thoughts were the thoughts of gates opening and closing, of charges flickering down select pathways, of forces and balance, of numbers and logic and Boolean rhythms unheard by humans.

Still, he could interpret images when he needed to; that, after all, was what sight was all about, and to operate within a world dominated by humans, he needed to have access to the senses humans relied on.