DEADLY FATHOMS

FREE WORLDS™ BOOK ONE

KEVIN MCLAUGHLIN

MICHAEL ANDERLE

This book is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Sometimes both.

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Version 1.00, January 2023

eBook ISBN: 979-8-88541-836-2

Print ISBN: 979-8-88878-115-9

THE DEADLY FATHOMS TEAM

Thanks to our Beta Readers

Rachel Beckford, Mary Morris, David Laughlin, John Ashmore, Malyssa Brannon, Kelly O’Donnell

Thanks to our JIT Readers

Zacc Pelter

Dorothy Lloyd

Dave Hicks

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Angel LaVey

Editor

The SkyFyre Editing Team

For Kelly O’Donnell, whose love of coffee may have inspired certain bits of this tale...! Thanks for all your work helping make this and so many other books possible!

CHAPTER ONE

Darkness stretched on for more than a lifetime. Then, light.

George Dane didn’t want to go into that light. He feared what it meant. He still had work to do. He had lost so many people in the war, and he didn’t want to join them. Not yet. He might be approaching sixty, but that didn’t mean what it used to with the rejuvenation treatments the Space Force had developed. The Alliance of Democratic Nations had defeated the Coalition, but considering the state of the world, there was no guarantee peace would last. He shouldn’t have retired. He could still help…

“Colonel Dane! Time to wake up…er, sir!”

The light grew brighter. Dane had to face it. Funny, he thought the afterlife would be more chill.

Knuckles rapped on glass, immediate and uncomfortably present.

“I’m going to open the pod.”

Memories swirled in Dane’s head. Alone in the cockpit of a tiny star fighter, dogfighting in microgravity and zero atmosphere. A medal being laid on his neck for the people he couldn’t save in those damned unnecessary skirmishes. Standing on the bridge of what the grunts in the Space Force called a rock dropper, knuckles white as he stared down the captain of a Coalition ship built for the same distressing purpose. Another medal, this time for the millions of people who had lived, thanks to him.

Still, there were craters where cities had been. Ash choking out cropland. Both sides had suffered too many losses. Dust in the atmosphere blocking out the sun and making climate change go the other way. Wearing a jacket in July and complaining about the cold. His retirement announcement. The media wanting to talk to him. Politicians wanting him not to talk. Laying his gloved hand on the hull of the ADN Cosmos before it got underway.

A hiss of air, the smell of coffee, and the light strengthened.

“You’re going to feel disoriented for a while. That’s normal.”

He knew that voice now that it was less muffled. It belonged to a man named Eric Winters.

George Dane opened his eyes. The lid of his hibernation pod rose, and the gasses inside spilled out onto the floor of the first colony ship humanity had ever built. He took a deep breath and filled his lungs with the artificial atmosphere of the ADN Cosmos. His head still swam with memories, but the relatively fresh air helped. Though he could have used another few seconds to collect his thoughts before Winters popped into view.

“Vitals are looking good, sir. Not that we should be surprised about that, of course. Give yourself a minute, then try to step from the pod. I have some fresh clothing for you when you’re—”

Dane stepped from the pod. There was a slight resistance as the various pieces of monitoring equipment suction cupped to his chest and neck popped loose, then a decidedly more uncomfortable tug as the needle in his arm reached the end of its tether.

He gritted his teeth and pulled the IV out of his arm.

“Protocol is to leave that in for a few minutes, but I guess I should have told you that sooner,” Winters remarked with a wry smile. Dane knew Winters well, though at times, he felt the XO knew him better than he knew himself. If Winters had told him not to touch the needle, he would immediately have grabbed for it. If the XO truly didn’t want him to take it out, he would have explained its purpose.

“Where are we?” Dane asked, trying to force his mind from the past and into the present.

“I’m pleased to say humankind’s first foray into the stars was a success, sir. We have arrived at Teegarden’s Star, twelve-point-five light years from Earth. We’ve been braking for a while and should be dropping into orbit before too long.”

“Twelve and a half years? Shit. Does that mean I’m technically seventy-three now?”

Winters bit his lip for a second. Laser eye surgery had rendered glasses irrelevant, but Winters still wore a pair. They no doubt had a heads-up display. Yet Winters removed them and polished the lenses on a corner of his shirt. “There’s bound to be some confusion. You might want to get dressed before I attempt to clear some of that up.”

Dane grabbed pants and pulled them on. He reached for a shirt and caught his reflection in the glass of another sleeping pod. His broad chest and shoulders had not atrophied despite being asleep for more than a decade. The rejuvenation treatments helped prevent decline, but an affinity for resistance training laid the foundation for a healthy physique. Though he might have preferred his chest hair to remain black instead of peppered with gray.

“I don’t know, Winters. I don’t think I look that bad for a seventy-three-year-old.”

“Fair enough, but you look positively fantastic for someone poised to celebrate his two hundred and tenth birthday.”

Dane chuckled at the odd compliment before the gravity of the statement made him sit back down on the edge of the sleep pod.

“What are you saying, Winters?”

“Teegarden is twelve and a half light years from Earth, sir, but the ADN Cosmos can’t travel anywhere near as fast as light. Even with the nuclear pulse engines performing better than expected, it took us one hundred and forty-eight years to arrive.”

“One hundred…forty-eight?” The number took Dane’s breath away, but even as he struggled to comprehend it, he remembered agreeing to it. He remembered the speeches, the promise of their mission, and making contact with Earth after reaching their destination in two hundred years. With so much of the Earth devastated by the war, everyone needed something to look forward to.

The Alliance of Democratic Nations had promised several things. New food technologies for the colder world, to share the rejuvenation treatments those in the Space Force had needed simply to maintain their bodies for extended times in zero-G, and to do something with their fleet of spacecraft besides knocking things down onto Earth. They had even promised an end to warfare, though that last one had been tricky considering the political clout of the world’s most famous war hero.

Dane had understood all this. He had seen the writing on the wall despite a lifetime devoted to the military. He had first met Eric Winters after agreeing to serve as “security chief” for the Cosmos. The role seemed a little symbolic and mostly like a decent way to get rid of a political pawn who’d nearly reached the end of the board. Dane had half-expected never to wake up from the sleeping pod. But now, one hundred and forty-eight years in the future, he had.

“I know it’s a lot, and I’d say you’d get used to it, but I certainly haven’t yet. Though there is coffee, which helps.” Winters raised a cup and took a sip. Dane remembered liking the XO and being especially impressed with how quickly he learned people’s working habits. He likely remembered exactly how Dane took his coffee and that he would be desperate for a cup of it.

So Dane reached for his shirt and pulled it on.

“This way to the bridge.” Winters gestured.

“That’s where the coffee is?”

Winters nodded. “Also where you’ve been ordered to go once capable.”

“Well then, by all means.” Dane followed Winters on shaky legs that had not been used for nearly fifteen decades.

He followed Winters across floors made of metal lattice to save weight, past sleeping pods still foggy with the mix of gas needed to protect human lungs. He marveled as Winters led him down a ladder. He had traversed these pathways before, but never in gravity.

The Cosmos had been built in orbit to save the fuel costs of launching it. Dane had been given a tour and even made token recommendations about offensive and defensive capabilities, but all that was accomplished in free fall. Now that the ship had activated its engines, there was the impression of gravity. It made the ship feel like an entirely new space.

“This is my first time actually walking these hallways,” Dane announced.

Winters nodded. “I know. Walking in a spacecraft feels weird to me, too. I’d say it gets better when you realize our feet are actually pointed at the planet right now, and the ship is actually decelerating, but that would be a lie.”

“We’re slowing down?”

“Have been for years. Only way to trim the speed and not crush all of us squishy humans.”

Dane had not even begun to fully wrap his head around the geometry of the situation before they reached the bridge.

“Colonel Dane, good morning, and welcome to the bridge,” the ship’s captain, Kelly Adams, greeted over a cup of coffee. “This is Darrin Thompson. Former Space Force pilot and the best helmsman we have. Don’t let his age fool you.”

“Oh, and how old are you, Thompson?” Dane asked.

Thompson glanced up from the screen and control panel in front of him. “One hundred and seventy-four, sir.” He looked young enough to be a cadet, though his hair was completely shaved.

“There’s coffee in the pot.” Captain Adams gestured toward a machine with a mostly full pot of coffee steaming happily. “I’m about an hour ahead of you coming out of the pod. Believe me, the coffee will help.”

“You take it with one sweetener, sir?” Winters checked, already shuffling over to pour a cup.

Dane blinked as he watched the XO. Now that was something he had never seen. A liquid being poured inside a spacecraft. The Cosmos really was something special. When he had worked on the rock droppers, coffee came in bulbs with straws. There was certainly no adding sweetener or whitener if you picked the wrong bulb.

“Thank you, Winters.” Dane graciously accepted the steaming cup. “And thank you, Captain, for brewing enough to share.”

The captain dismissed his gratitude with a curt gesture. “I didn’t summon you up here to talk coffee. I need you at your sharpest.”

From what Dane’s still-hazy memory could recall about the captain, she was always at her sharpest. She wasn’t former military, but she had a decade of experience at NASA as an astronaut before the war. Once the fighting broke out, she managed to get elected and worked as a politician throughout those troubled times. Dane couldn’t remember if she was a senator, a congresswoman, or what, but he remembered she was one of the few politicians who wouldn’t shy away from talking about the big losses.

Not that her rhetoric had ever been particularly friendly toward the military. He recalled her giving an impassioned speech from Miami, or from where Miami had been, anyway. There had been talks of her running for president or chief of the ADN, which was arguably becoming more powerful than the president.

Becoming more powerful, Dane thought bitterly. It was a hundred and forty-eight years later on Earth. They must have settled that particular squabble for power long ago.

Dane recalled that her authority extended beyond the Cosmos, though. She would be the colony's first governor and would serve until they set up elections, which would take…some time. That was the best Dane’s brain could currently give him.

She needs you at your sharpest, his brain told him. That meant bad news.

“What seems to be the problem, Captain?” Dane asked.

That earned him the tiniest of smirks from Adams. “First, the good news. We didn’t miss the planet.”

Dane had taken a sip of his coffee and thus had the honor of performing the first spit-take under simulated gravity on a spaceship.

“We didn’t miss?”

“I know you were brought on as chief of security, so I’m not sure how much you actually read about the mission's logistics. The engineers gave us a three percent chance of missing our destination completely.”

“But we didn’t.”

“Correct. Better yet, our readings of the atmosphere look good. The long-range scopes put our target world’s atmosphere as mostly nitrogen with plenty of O2. They were right about that. Should be breathable down there.”

“So the planet’s there, and we can live on it. Compared to those issues, we should be able to solve the bad news easily enough.”

Adams frowned. “It’s difficult to tell at this range, but it appears this world is covered by water. We can’t be certain yet since we’re still too far out. We have already determined that there are no large continents. When we get closer, we’re hoping to find some islands, but we need to prepare for the possibility that there is no land. We may have arrived at a true water-world.”

“What’s the plan for that?”

“Well, step one was to have Winters wake you up. I want your help to come up with one.”

“Me?”

“And all the colony’s senior staff. After everyone is up and adequately caffeinated, we’ll discuss options. I want you to consider as many as you can.”

“Along with the security implications of each one, of course.”

The captain’s expression possibly said he was too paranoid, but that might have been the lack of caffeine.

“The first thing that comes to mind is going home. Has Thompson run calculations for using the sun as a gravitational slingshot to send us back to Earth? We should be able to get close enough to the planet for a good look, and we could bake in an exit strategy.”

Captain Adams clenched her jaw and glanced at Winters before answering. When she spoke, she chose her words carefully.

“I know you just woke up, and the doctors said it could take up to seventy-two hours to get back all of your memories. You should know the one thing we can’t do is go back. Not easily, anyway. The ship was a one-way trip, despite what you heard on the news or from my political allies before we left. The sleeping pods worked better than expected, even for the people who rotated through waking up to run maintenance. Maybe we could put ourselves on ice for another hundred and fifty years. To do that, we’d have to find a fuel source and mine enough of it before we could even begin to plan a return voyage. Not simple or easy.

“I’m saying this is our new home, Colonel Dane. I would like your help figuring out how we can enjoy it without having to wear a swimsuit.”

CHAPTER TWO

It had been a long time since Dane had been this winded from jogging for only twenty minutes. One hundred forty-eighty years and then some, if we’re being accurate. However, he couldn’t simply shrug off increased gravity.

They were nearing the planet now, and Thompson was putting the nuclear pulse engines through their paces. Dane had piloted plenty of ships in his day but never anything like this. He didn’t envy the kid the job of cutting their pace while simultaneously hitting the exact right spot above the planet to get caught in its gravity and fall into orbit. Too much deceleration and it would be a struggle not to crash into the water world. Not enough, and they’d risk missing the planet completely, forcing them to make another pass.

Dane told himself the regular increase and decrease of gravity was a good thing, even though it made his chest burn and his legs feel like concrete as he took a ladder down past another row of sleeping pods. More of his memories were coming back as promised, but he still couldn’t wrap his head around the size of the ship or the number of sleeping pods. Big and a lot were the only answers that came readily to mind.

“All senior crew report to the conference room,” came over speakers and echoed through the halls. The Cosmos wasn’t particularly cavernous, as that would be a waste of space. However, the grated floors let sound pass right through them. Every surface but the floor was either solid metal or hard plastic, which bounced noise back rather than absorbing it. Dane wondered what the ship would sound like with people walking around. He wondered when that would happen, if the status of the planet kept people on ice for longer than planned. He wanted to do everything he could to get people safely awake.

Right now, that meant sitting through a meeting.

He walked the rest of the way to the meeting room to cool down but was still sweating when he got there.

“Good morning, George. How are you doing?”

For a moment, Dane didn’t recognize the speaker’s freckled face or auburn hair, but her name came to him. “Dr. Alvarez. Fine. Getting a little cardio in after a century-plus of being sedentary.”

“Well, it’s good to see your sense of humor survived the voyage. And please, call me Ginger. Otherwise, my husband and I won’t know which one of us you’re talking to.”

“Right,” Dane demurred, not wanting to brush her off but also not wanting to get involved with the “head of social services.” In other words, a glorified shrink.

“If you need to talk about anything at all, that’s what I’m here for.” Ginger didn’t let Dane’s cold reply get to her. “Our daughter is still in a sleeping pod, so it’s not like any of us are feeling all right with this new situation. It’s normal to feel out of place, but we’re all a family now.”

Before Dane could decide whether to reply, a copper-skinned man with an enviable mustache wrapped Ginger in his arms. “Ah, I miss Amanda too, but at least we have some time to ourselves. I don’t think we’ve had an evening alone for four years! Or one hundred and fifty-two, I should say.”

“Dr. Alvarez?” Dane asked. He obviously had to be Ginger’s husband.

“Call me Carlos.” He extricated himself from Ginger. “What, no love on the hundred-and-fifty-two years joke? Too real? I’d say too soon, but that seems to miss the point.”

“Leave Colonel Dane alone and come sit down,” Captain Adams ordered.

Ginger gave Dane one more sympathetic look, then turned and headed to the large round table in the middle of the room. Carlos took the seat next to her. The table was big enough for a dozen or more people, but there were only six. Seven, counting Winters, who was moving about filling coffees. It made the room feel too large, like the mission before them was greater than anyone had anticipated. Dane supposed it was.

Dane took a seat a few over from the Alvarez doctors to better see everyone assembled.

Across from him sat a man with icy blue eyes and blond hair slicked back and cropped tight on the sides. The style would not be out of place in the military.

“Colonel George Dane. Your reputation precedes you,” the blond man claimed in accented English.

“You seem to have me at a disadvantage…”

“I’m sure it happens often. Konrad Thorson. Not that you should have heard of me. Iceland’s place in the war was generally one of support, as was mine.”

“You’re a surgeon, right?” Dane suggested, the hard stare of the icy blue eyes coming back to him from his still-cloudy memories.

“He does for people what I do for spaceships,” the last person at the table said. She had her uniform sleeves rolled up and looked too young to have that many tattoos on her arms.

“Natalie Granger?” Dane seemed to remember her from the early tours of the ship. “You’re our engineer, right?”

“Dr. Granger is our lead engineer, and thus she will need to approve the details of our plan as well as implement it,” Captain Adams explained as she joined them without sitting. Though the table was round, the captain’s presence at one end made it feel like she stood at the head.

The engineer smiled. “I’m open to bribes in the form of sweets, so if anyone smuggled any cookies from Earth, I could 3D print you something awesome. Also, you can call me Nat. Like the bug, which hopefully didn’t make it onto the Cosmos.”

Carlos and Ginger chuckled at that, but no one else did. Dane got the sense that, like him, Konrad and the captain could not ever drink enough coffee.

“Now that we’re all introduced, let’s go over what we know.”

“It’s what we don’t know that’s more important,” Nat put in.

“Which is becoming less and less.” Captain Adams didn’t seem perturbed about being interrupted. “Darrin has managed to use our sensors to their full capabilities even as he brings us into orbit. Readings on the red dwarf that our planet is orbiting show it has not changed substantially in the last hundred and fifty years. It’s stable enough to make Teegarden II eminently livable. Closer readings of the atmosphere show great compatibility. Plenty of O2 and low levels of carbon dioxide.”

“So, a happy climate?” Nat asked.

“More like we won’t inadvertently die from CO2 poisoning,” Thorson voiced.

“Still a good thing, either way,” Nat declared.

“What about somewhere to land?” Dane asked.

“That continues to be the problem. We haven’t seen a full revolution of the planet with our close-range scanners yet, but so far, no land. Only open water.”

“Surely, we have a plan for that? I can’t exactly study the planet if we can’t land on it,” Carlos pointed out.

In a flash of memory, Dane remembered Carlos was the lead research scientist. His job was to have more questions than answers.

“Believe it or not, the brilliant minds who built this ship and the sleeping pods didn’t foresee every eventuality. That’s why they equipped us with a manufacturing bay and Dr. Granger.”

“Okay, wow, no pressure,” Nat blurted, then covered her mouth with a tattooed hand.

“Do we know anything about the depth of the ocean?” Carlos asked.

“Not yet. The planet has weather, so between the wind, the clouds, and the turbidity of the water, we have not yet seen beneath the surface,” the captain replied.

“Then we shouldn’t plan on manufacturing anything that can reach the sea floor. Depending on the geologic history of the planet, it may be relatively uniform in elevation, at least compared to Earth.”

“Meaning?” Ginger asked her husband.

“Meaning the oceans might have had billions of years to grind down any land beneath their surface.”

“You think we should build something that can float?” Nat asked.

Carlos shrugged, but Thorson and the captain were nodding.

“I was thinking along those same lines,” Captain Adams admitted. “If we built some modular floating pieces, we could lower them by shuttle and link them together. That would give us somewhere to build a small base on the surface, and we could reassess from there.”

Nat had taken out a tablet and started scribbling notes. “We could utilize a hollow internal structure. That would make them light and stable as well as minimize resources. Are we going to want to land the Cosmos on them? We’d need to know the composition of the ocean first to figure out relative density and effectively calculate buoyancy. Especially with the lack of land, the materials of the ship itself represent a significant resource. We’ll need the metal to build our new home.”

“That would be a major security risk,” Dane said.

All eyes turned to him.

“I understand we’re not making any plans to land the Cosmos before we see the entire surface of the planet. However, assuming there’s no land, we’ll have to be extra careful.”

“You are worried about storms?” The slightest Central American accent slipped into Carlos’ otherwise American English.

“Not exactly. Captain, you said that with the weather, we can’t see into the water, correct?”

The captain nodded.

“That means we won’t be able to see any threats from beneath the surface. If we’re floating, we would be highly vulnerable to attack.”

“You’re not talking about killer fish, are you?” Winters asked incredulously.

“Oh, now that would be something to see!” Carlos quipped and drew a round of laughter before Dane could answer.

“We need to be prepared for every eventuality,” the captain uttered. “No matter how paranoid they might seem. There’s no help coming if we end up in trouble here, so caution is warranted. Nat, I want you to start working on the specs for landing platforms. We should be able to land multiple shuttles as well as have a central structure to conduct research and keep ourselves dry.”

“How many people?”

The captain bit her lip. “I’ll have to get back to you on that one. Every person we take out of a sleeping pod cuts into the supplies we have on board. Dr. Thorson, I want hard numbers on that, both life support system status and food reserves. We’ll need people power to make this work, and I’d like to know how many people that can be.”

“Can Amanda be one of them?” Ginger put in. The captain didn’t respond to that, probably because there was no easy answer for such a quandary.

“Nat, let’s start with the platforms and go from there. While she works on that, Dane, I want you to prep a security plan for the landing mission.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

CHAPTER THREE

It had been less than seventy-two hours, and already the ship felt different. No longer did Dane’s footsteps echo through the quiet. Now the sounds of machines at work added their own distant din to the vessel’s timbre. The captain had given Nat approval to take four people out of the sleeping pods to help her engineer and build the rafts. They had taken to their job with enthusiastic professionalism and rarely left their place of work. Though sometimes Dane saw them scarfing food in the kitchen or passed them while he ran through the ship.

George Dane had spent a lot of time in space, which had given him a near-superstitious concern for the conservation of resources. If anything broke on a spaceship, it could be life or death. On Earth, that had meant calling for aid from one of the space stations or calculating a reentry and hoping it went well. Frightening prospects, but nothing compared to the threats they faced in an alien star system.

It wouldn’t have been so dire if they knew what was going on with the surface of the world. Despite having scanned the entire surface, Darrin had yet to identify any land masses. It might not have been so bad if they knew how deep the water was, but that information still eluded them. If they knew the depth, they would know if their mining and resource-gathering machines might work. Without that information, they had to continue making floating platforms.

They needed to get to the surface so they could work out the water depth and what sort of raw materials were down there. Until then, everything they made would use part of the finite resources they had brought with them. Dane did not like being in that position. It made his job far too important.

He had a rough security plan, but it relied on going to the surface before he could implement it. Given the limited quantity of supplies, he thought he had figured out the best use of resources. He wasn’t sure if the captain would go for it, though.

Which was what brought him to her cabin. Captain Adams insisted on having an open-door policy, at all times, for any reason. There were too few of them, and the stakes were too high to pretend anyone had a right to privacy for the time being. Still, Dane felt odd knocking on the door to her room rather than talking to her on the bridge. He’d wanted to speak in private, so she could refuse or approve without other people watching her decision-making process. Now he’d started to think since she was the captain, making decisions in front of others was in the job description.

Then the door opened, and the captain was there.

“Dane. I can hear you breathing through the door. Are you ever not working out?”

“Never been able to properly exercise in space before, Captain. Trying to enjoy it while I still can. Once we’re in orbit, it’ll be back to zero gravity and pedal bikes.”

“Fair enough. I take it you’re not here to talk workout regimes.”

“No, ma’am. You said to come up with a plan, and I have one. The beginnings of one, anyway.”

“Always good to start at the beginning. Come in.”

Dane entered and glanced around the cabin. It was barely less spartan than his own. A map of the Earth took up one of the walls, a few photos of people and animals that would never be seen again, and that was it for decoration.

The captain gestured to a chair. “Shoot.”

Dane took the seat. “Well, I want a device to go down on the first trip.”

“What kind of device?”

“High-powered sonar. Ideally, something mounted to the bottom of these rafts so we always have eyes on what’s beneath us. One per raft would be best.”

“You’re really worried about these alien fish, huh?”

“This planet was chosen because spectral analysis made it a decent contender for supporting life. We’ve confirmed it has a breathable atmosphere. Our oceans teem with life, even after all the ash from the war. Stands to reason that this ocean could support life, too. I only want to be prepared if it's big enough to shoot.”

Adams didn’t argue, though she hesitated before answering. “Engineering is already running full tilt. Making something like that is going to eat up a lot more manpower than rafts. Do you really think it’s worth the time investment?”

Are you being paranoid? he felt like she was asking.

“Even if there is no life, sonar would be useful for mapping the seafloor. Depending on Nat’s capabilities, maybe it could be used to detect the composition of what’s down there.”

The captain nodded. “If it can be done, Natalie can do it. Still, they’re pressed thin as is. I’ll send the order, but I want you to go over there and explain what you’re thinking in person. Let them know it’s not only their captain making insane demands.”

“It’s not insane to be prepared.”

Captain Adams held his gaze for a minute before she shrugged and got up to fix herself a drink. She pulled a carafe of what looked like cold coffee from her mini-fridge.

“Every part of this is insane, George. No human has ever done anything like this before. We are so far away from Earth, we had to sleep for more than a century to get here. So far from our own sun, I can’t even pick it out in the sky. Despite our engineers somehow choosing a planet where we can actually live, we are now discussing the very real possibility that our new home already hosts creatures that you fear are going to eat us. It’s our reality, but it’s also insane.”

“I guess I can’t argue with that.”

“Tell me about the team you want to send down on the first shuttle.”

Dane had an answer, but he hesitated. He had not looked forward to this part of the conversation. If the captain didn’t think he was crazy before, she probably would now.

“I want to go down there by myself.”

“Absolutely not. Out of the question.”

“I can explain.”

“You damn well better try.”

“The security personnel on board are mostly young, and few of them are military.”

“That’s not completely true. Cassandra Athanas has military experience, and Mathew Stark used to serve under you.”

“Athanas is a top choice, but Stark’s not right for this. Too hotheaded. Those are the only two with military priors.”

The captain paused slightly before answering. “The committee who crewed the Cosmos didn’t want to deal with the political blowback of sending too many soldiers on a colony ship.”

He wondered if she was being honest in her answer. He was a veteran, while she was not. Some soldiers would respect his orders over hers, at least in regard to security. Mathew Stark might be one of them. Maybe she had said something to preempt that concern.

“Especially not after the war,” she added, doubling down on either her story or the simple truth. Didn’t matter. Dane didn’t want to take control. He wanted to keep the security people asleep. She would realize that soon enough if she hadn’t already.

“You mean no soldiers besides worn-out war heroes they needed to get rid of,” Dane pointed out, using his own bitterness to change the subject.

The captain nodded slightly to indicate he was at least somewhat correct.

“Worn out or not, I don’t think we want to send our only war hero down there alone.”

“I’ve looked at the security personnel files, and I don’t think bringing any of them is a great plan. At least not yet. With the exception of Athanas and Stark, they’re more police than soldiers. Trained to deal with people and to de-escalate situations. To be clear, I don’t really think there’s anything down there. I only want to be cautious. If there is, though, de-escalation is not the response we’ll need.”

“What’s wrong with taking some backup, then?”

“Nothing in a normal situation. As you pointed out, this is not that.”

“Explain.”

“We’re intensely resource-limited until we get some sort of base on the surface. We can’t manufacture fuel or much of anything until we establish something.”

“That’s true.”

“I don’t think it makes sense to wake up a bunch of people who aren’t engineers or scientists. Not yet. Not until we know if we’re going to be moving down or heading home.”

“I told you, heading home isn’t an option.”

“Right. I get that’s how you feel, but we don’t know what’s down there yet. We need to know before we can decide how to proceed, right?”

“It’s our biggest priority, yes. Which is why I want you to take a security detail. Just in case.”

“Yes, ma’am, I understand that. Still, once we wake someone up, they’re up to stay, right?”

“That’s right. Those sleeping pods could be refitted, but I don’t want to do that. Dr. Thorson doesn’t think putting someone back under so soon after being brought out would be wise. It’s a three-month minimum.”

“Sure, plus telling someone to get back in would be… Well, it’s already been so long. The idea of sleeping even longer—”

“Would be unpalatable, sure. I can see that.”

“Which is why we should wait. We are going to need to wake people up, but the question is how many and for what purpose. I’m proposing we get some answers before we decide who gets the honor of joining us a hundred and fifty years in the future.”

“I can’t believe I’m telling the security chief this, but you do understand that we’ll need your team to de-escalate situations, correct? People have disagreements. Always have, always will.”

“I know, but I’d still like to understand what we’re dealing with down there. I’ve looked at the security team’s files. Everyone has strengths and weaknesses, and I want to bring out the best people for the right situation first.”

“What situations are you foreseeing?”

“Well, likely nothing more than de-escalation and keeping the peace. If there’s another ship coming after us, we’ll be able to see them a long way out, and I can make adjustments. I have a few choices for that, depending on who might potentially send a ship. However, on the slim chance I find something hostile down there, I would reprioritize my choices.”

“Reprioritize for what?”

“Combat.”

CHAPTER FOUR

A blue marble flecked with white. So tranquil. So quiet, at least from up here. Then a ring of fire, and another. Clouds that were not clouds, that tasted of ash.

“We need a location, Colonel.”

“I… I have some. I did them last night.”

“Did you?”

Digging through a backpack. Papers of misspelled words and math equations that didn’t make sense. There! The worksheet he was supposed to do! He pulled it out, and the ink slid off the page and onto his lap.

He sat bolt upright, not wanting to stain his uniform… But he wasn’t wearing one.

“Sir? Did you forget your pants again?”

He put his homework in front of his manhood and tried to hide.

“It’s okay. I have your insignia right here.” A woman with no eyes pushed the pointed end of the insignia into his chest, just above and in from his left nipple. A drop of blood ran down his torso as his chest hair faded from black to white, then fell out.

Dane woke up, grabbing at his chest.

For a moment, he was completely disoriented by his spartan surroundings combined with the presence of gravity. Was he back on a rock dropper? Those were sometimes kept spinning for days so they could drop asteroids on the enemy if needed. It was never needed. Dane had argued against it time and again, but they never listened. When would this damn war be over? Would there be a world left when it was?

Then Dane remembered the war was long over, and he wasn’t going back to that world.

He stumbled out of bed, half expecting to float to the ceiling. When he stayed on the floor, he untangled himself from the sweaty sheets and tried to pace around his room.

‘Room’ might have been a generous term, as that implied there was space, and there was definitely not. He had a bed, a tiny desk, and a closet built into the wall. The exception was the tiny personal bathroom. In his rock hopper days, he and a crew of hundreds all shared a head. Worse, he had spent days at a time in a star fighter with only a copilot, eating nutritional paste and hooked up to a catheter. A private bathroom, no matter how small, was a luxurious amount of space. His time as a ‘hero’ where the media would fly him to five-star hotels for interviews had skewed his ideas of luxury.

Dane splashed water on his face and stepped out of the bathroom. It only took a single step. Splashing water was the real novelty. The Cosmos had been designed to travel the stars under constant acceleration, so it had the feeling of gravity for most of the trip. Not that many had been awake to appreciate it. Soon enough, they’d reach orbit, and a sink with actual running water would be a thing of the past.

Dane wondered what it was like for the people who had woken up to check on the systems while they had been underway. He was deemed ‘essential’ to the colonization efforts and had not been allowed the risk of coming out of the sleeping pod for a tour of duty. Waking up with Winters’ help the other day had been his first time awake on the ship. What did it feel like to have this place all to yourself for a span of six months? In reality, people came out in groups of two or three to keep the automated systems running. Yet three people in a space with close to six hundred sleeping still had to feel pretty empty.

Dane felt alone, and he was in a room that barely fit only him.

“What’s our current mission status?” he asked the computer on the wall in his room. He still liked having a keyboard, but that made him a dinosaur. Most people had become accustomed to fully voice-activated systems. Dane wondered if he would have too, had he not spent so much time in space with his hands on controls, waiting for orders that were simpler to give than complete.

“The Cosmos will reach orbit in seventeen point six hours,” the stilted, robotic voice replied. “The crew is five percent active. Water and air reclamation both operating within acceptable parameters. Ship stores are at eighty—”

“That’s fine, thank you.” Dane rubbed his stubbly face. Five percent. That meant, what, thirty out of the entire six hundred sleepers had been brought out? Such a tiny number of people tasked with so much responsibility. This wasn’t how the mission was supposed to go. At this point, they should have well over fifty percent of the crew up and preparing to land on the surface. There should have been teams working on habitation buildings, agriculture, resource extraction, and manufacturing. They were supposed to be setting up Earth’s first extrasolar colony and had brought all they needed to have as much chance at success as possible.

“Too bad they didn’t send boats,” Dane muttered and tried to find the status report for engineering. Frustrated with the computer’s lack of a keyboard, he decided to do what seemed to be his new normal and go for a run.

Afterward, he grabbed a quick rinse in his shower. Hot, running water felt like a luxury, even if he bumped his elbows on the walls when he scrubbed. Within thirty minutes, he was ready to work. He still didn’t have anyone working under him, so the next best thing was to see how close Natalie Granger was to making their surface visit a reality.

He followed the sounds of machinery to the engineering bay. Though it was the middle of the ‘night,’ the room was still alive with people and machines working. Progress had already been made. Along a wall of the engineering room stood a line of massive drop capsules, like clunky, upside-down cones. They almost looked like something out of a historical film, like the first pods the first astronauts used to return to Earth in the 1960s. However, these were bigger and had no windows.

“Believe it or not, I actually argued against bringing so many of those splashdown pods,” Nat remarked, appearing from underneath a large machine that Dane could not readily identify. She was smeared with grease, though it didn’t look out of place against her tattoos.

“Didn’t think we were heading for an ocean world?” Dane asked her.

“I believe my exact words were something like, ‘It would be a waste of time and resources to fetch these things. What do you think we are, Labrador retrievers?’ I had a dog that loved swimming. Labrador.”

Dane chuckled. “It was a suspiciously specific reference.”

Nat shrugged. “I’m glad no one in that meeting listened to me. These are going to save us a ton of work. Plan is to load them up with the pieces needed for the deck plates. That way, we don’t have to worry about making sure all that stuff can survive the descent through the atmosphere. Those things should handle it, no problem.”

“You sure about that?”

“Pretty sure. I designed them.”

“Wait, you designed these things, but you also argued against bringing them with us?”

“Have you not met me?” Nat laughed. “I only regret every tattoo I’ve ever had.”

“But you have, like…a lot of them.”

“I’ve eaten even more cookies, and I regret those too.”

“Yet you keep working, despite all the, uh…”

“Self-doubt? Of course I do. What other choice is there? I mean, I’m brilliant.”

“Brilliant?”

“Textbook definition. Though it rarely feels that way. For example, I should be overseeing the 3D printed deck pieces, but I can’t help jiggering with the buoyancy controls on this.” She gestured toward the machine she’d crawled out from under.

Whatever it was, it was not very attractive. Shaped like a soda can with pieces glued onto it. Dane didn’t see what it was supposed to be.

“These pods have boosters to slow them down, then?” he asked, trying to steer the conversation back to familiar territory.

Nat shook her head, but she was grinning. “Parachutes, believe it or not. One thing the boys back on Earth figured out correctly was the atmospheric composition of this planet. They should work the same way they do back home.”

Dane nodded, though in truth, he had little faith in parachutes. They didn’t work in space, which was where he’d spent most of his career.

“They’re for gear, right?”

“Only parts, correct. Well, and some tools for said parts as well. Your team will go down in a shuttle.”

“My team? I told the captain I wanted to go alone.”

Nat blanched and immediately shrugged. “Not that I know anything about that. I mean, it’s not like the captain told me to run the numbers on nine people in the shuttle or anything. If she had, and if I could crunch those kinds of numbers in my head—which I can—I would have told her nine people should be no problem. Nor would ten, for that matter.”

“Hmm.” Dane crossed his arms. “I guess you can’t slip anything past engineering.”

“On this ship? No. Not really. Once we get to the planet, and there’s biology again? Yech. Too complicated.”

“Biology? You mean—”

“Not my department. Carlos would be the man to talk to about that.”

Dane nodded, thanked Nat for her time, and left engineering.

He didn’t need to exercise right now, yet Dane found his pace had quickened to a light jog by the time he reached the joint quarters of both Doctors Alvarez.

He knocked and tried to compose himself, though that seemed unnecessary when the door opened and Carlos smiled as he clapped his shoulder.

“Security Chief Dane! How are you? I hope you are not here on…official business. We were not being too loud, no?”

Dane didn’t want to fully process that, so he didn’t. “Are there likely to be alien life-forms down there?”

“Yes!” Carlos’s grin spread across his face and under his mustache once more. “That had been hypothesized before we left. Biological life, and specifically plant life capable of photosynthesis, is the only explanation we have for the amount of oxygen in the atmosphere of Teegarden II.”

“A hypothesis is different from proof.”

Carlos shrugged. “Come inside. For researchers like me, sometimes the data es suficiente.”

“Are you really telling me you’re not getting a rush from knowing there’s actual life down there?”

Carlos’ smile lit up the room. “Of course I’m excited! Yet for me, that’s one of the many facets of this place. Yes, there is an analog to phytoplankton in that water, but we knew that already. There are a lot of other things to study as well. This is humanity’s first time touching a world outside our own!”

“There was Mars.”

Carlos waved away the red planet. “Eh. Despite all the billionaire excitement, Mars was a bust. Little water, no life, no nothing, no? But this world…this world has everything. Well, except land on the surface, I guess.” Carlos chuckled at his own joke, and Dane felt himself smile. The research scientist’s enthusiasm was infectious.

“Carlos? What are you doing up?”

Dane turned at her voice. “Oh, Mrs.—er, Doctor Alvarez. Pardon me. I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“It’s fine, and please, I’ve told you to call me Ginger.”

“Sure thing, ma’am.”

“Let me fix you boys some tea.” Ginger gave her warmest, most motherly look.

“Oh, no, I can go—”

“It’s fine. Carlos won’t go to sleep once he’s excited about a new development. I’ll get you two some tea.” She turned, realized she did not have a kitchen inside her apartment, and blushed enough to make her freckles vanish. “Which means I’ll be taking a quick walk to the cafeteria.”

Dane wanted to apologize further, but Carlos was already talking again. Besides, Ginger didn’t seem to mind much. Dane wondered if everyone’s sleeping schedule was as screwy as his.

“We confirmed the plant life via an algae bloom or something like it, you understand. We also saw a school of something like fish or squid.”

“Pretty big difference between fish and squid, Carlos.”

“Es cierto.” Carlos winked.

“Can you at least tell me what’s at the top of the local food chain?” Dane asked. That was what truly made him nervous.

“Oh, no, we’ve nothing like that. Darrin saw a school of something beneath the surface. He’s quite good with those telescopes. We’re still not close enough to make out body shape, but based on how the objects moved compared to the wind and ocean currents, we’re certain they were moving themselves. Entonces, life!”

Dane nodded. At this point, his memories were all back. At least, he thought they were, but how did one remember something that was missing? He did seem to recall being briefed on the ‘surety’ of some level of life on Teegarden II. It was different knowing they saw a school of something through their own scopes.

Carlos was not any more impressed with this development than the others.

“We’ve figured out the planet’s rotation period. That’s no small task, given the water motion and the clouds that keep forming and precipitating with this much moisture. There are tiny ice caps, which gave us our best reference. There could be some rotation of those as well, but we should be close enough to verify rotation based on underwater landmarks soon.”

“How long is a day down there?”

“About fifty hours, so two Earth days.”

“Wow, those are some long shifts.”

Carlos appreciated others’ humor as much as his own, and he smirked and chuckled before immediately correcting him. “A slower rotation is good news! Without continents to break up the wind, our models show that a faster spinning world would have made higher wind speeds and bigger storms. We still don’t have a full bead on the weather, you understand. However, the surf looks manageable enough for the captain’s floating platform plan.”

“Huh. Interesting that it's slower than Earth. Don’t a lot of planets rotate faster?”

Carlos nodded, eager to explain. “The slowdown was caused by a large moon. It’s almost a third the size of Earth, so even bigger than Luna, which of course is unusually large as moons go.”

“Of course.” Dane didn’t know what else to say.

“Its interaction with this world’s oceans have caused drag and slowed the planet’s rotation over hundreds of millions of years.”

“You don’t know what kind of fish are down there, but you know the moon is putting the brakes on the planet?” Dane asked.

Carlos chuckled. “It’s merely physics. We’re probably off by a couple of million years one way or another, but orbits are simpler than biology. The water itself is a problem too, really.”

“Because it obscures what we can see?”

“That, plus the vapor clouds. The moon here has no liquid water or atmosphere, which makes things easier. We’ve already gathered initial spectrometry data on that. Suggests it might have a lot of useful minerals for mining. Helpful for sure, since mining the sea bottom will be tricky!”

“You said there are small polar ice caps. Does that mean the planet is warmer than Earth?”

Carlos nodded. “It’s tricky to compare without landmasses, but our working model is defining most of the world as tropical and subtropical. Temperate closer to the poles. We’re digging through some of the data the instruments gathered on the way over to figure out how much the ice on the poles expands and contracts, but there’s little axial tilt, so the variations should be minor.”

“Yet we still don’t know anything about what’s under the surface?”

“We have a little. Broad strokes, I guess you could say.” Carlos activated a screen. Pages of data scrolled across the surface, as well as an obviously rough model of the subaquatic surface. “We are pretty certain the planet has active tectonics, though we can’t say how they compare to Earth.”

“Tectonics? You mean like volcanoes and stuff?”

“Volcanoes, yes, but also the other hallmarks of an active molten core. There seem to be ridges and undersea mountains. Really, the more we look, the more we can thank the people back home who picked this planet. It’s a lot like Earth.”

“Earth, but with a few extra thousand feet of water.”

“That’s right!” Carlos chuckled. “And with the taller mountains sanded down, por supuesto.”

“You mind if I take a look?” Dane asked.

Carlos scooted aside and let Dane scroll though some of the data.

He scanned for a few minutes, nodding as Carlos pointed out where hot spots seemed to be, as well as shallower and deeper areas of the ocean. The data was continually being updated, which might explain why Carlos was wide awake despite the late hour. It was kind of exciting to watch an area of the ocean floor go from unexplored “flat” to showing some variation.

Dane started to feel his lack of sleep catch up to him when something caught his eye and sent his heart pounding.

“Carlos. That…that can’t be right, can it? It looks like a radio signal.”

“No, no, es imposible. There’s nothing down there to make a radio signal,” Carlos declared. Yet, for the first time since Dane had seen him in this solar system, his voice lacked peppy enthusiasm. “The scanners must be malfunctioning. Maybe there’s a piece of metal down there reflecting our own radio back or something.”

Carlos fiddled with the controls, then pressed part of the screen. Sound poured out from the monitor.

Static. It was nothing but static. Some sort of anomaly to be filed away and sent by radio wave back to Earth, traveling for a dozen years by tight beam. Dane wondered if the scientists back there would get the same thrill he had. Would they think there was intelligent life? Or would their reaction be more tempered?

Ginger reappeared in the doorway with three thermoses. “What are we listening to?”

“Eh, it is a blip or something,” Carlos replied.

“That didn’t sound like a blip!” Dane insisted. There had been something…

“What didn’t?”

“I heard it too,” Ginger agreed. “Can you replay the last ten seconds?”

“Can I replay the last ten seconds? What kind of scientist would I be if I could not do something so simple? I wouldn’t respect myself at all if I couldn’t even, uh, do that one simple, er, thing.” Carlos’s fingers slowed as he tapped at the touchscreen until they finally stopped. “Ginger, mi amor?”

Ginger gave each of them a thermos of tea. Then, with a few deft strokes and verbal commands uttered so quickly that Dane hardly caught them, she called back up what they had heard.

It was garbled, but Dane’s blood ran cold all the same.

“Repeat and enhance.” Ginger’s fingers flew across auditory filters on the screen.

When the sound repeated, it was unmistakably a human voice speaking a word Dane had overheard from dozens of star fighters he’d shot down.

“Opasnost? What does that mean?” Carlos asked.

“It’s the Russian word for danger,” Dane shouted as he ran from the room. “Carlos, send that recording to the bridge! On second thought, Ginger better do it, so it gets there before I do.”

CHAPTER FIVE

For once, Winters did not greet Dane with an offer of coffee. That was fine with him, although it was a reminder he’d forgotten his tea with the Alvarezes.

“You got my message?” Dane asked by way of greeting.

“I did. Appreciate it, though we have half a dozen systems all looking for exactly this kind of thing. We’re trying to get it cleaned up some.”

“The captain?”

“Already knows. I pinged her as soon as I confirmed it was radio. She doesn’t know it’s a Russian warning, though.”

“God damn it, you heard that too?”

“Haven’t gotten much besides ‘danger’ and ‘keep away,’ but yeah. It's Russian.” Winters nodded, obviously reading off the heads-up display on his glasses.

“How in the hell did the Russians get here before we did?”

“They could have launched before us.”

“We had eyes on the sky during the war. We would have seen them send a colony ship!”

“It’s more likely to be a probe. They could have launched that after us, and it could have traveled at much higher speeds.”

“How much faster?” Dane asked.

Winters shrugged. “If they didn’t have to worry about living organisms? I’d say twice as fast isn’t out of the question.”

“Shit. That’s worse. You’re saying they could have waited, then launched a probe that’s what, fifty, maybe a hundred years ahead of us in tech? It could be bristling with God knows what.”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, Dane,” Captain Adams proclaimed as she strode onto the bridge.

“The radio signal—”

“A Russian warning, I know.” The captain tapped an earpiece to indicate she’d been briefed. “Let’s find out what we can. Tran, can you pinpoint it?”

“I’ll do my best, Captain.” Dane hadn’t met Tran yet, but if his enthusiasm was any indication of his skills, they were in good hands. His fingers flew over various touchscreens, as well as a few analog-style controllers that made Dane miss flying his star fighters. That was an odd emotion to feel. Though the war had been hard and, in many ways, left him broken, he at least knew he’d belonged to it. He had been good at what he did. It made sense that some of his memories would be positive.

“Captain, I think I’ve pinpointed the location. It’s coming from a chain of mountains on the far side of the planet.”

“Mountains?” Dane blurted. “On the far side?”

“We sent satellites ahead to orbit the planet,” Adams explained. “I assume the mountains are submerged, Tran?”

“Yes, ma’am. It appears Dr. Alvarez has marked the spot as an, um, ‘sub-plate hot spot?’ Sorry, I don’t really know what that means.”

“Don’t worry about it, Tran. Above your paygrade. How deep are these mountains?”

“Dr. Alvarez had been paying close attention to them, so they’ve been scanned moderately well. Depending on the tides, they’re as shallow as twenty meters. There’s some variation, of course.”

“Can we see the object making the radio signal?”

Tran fiddled with his controls for a minute or two but had to admit defeat. “We can’t redirect a satellite. Even if we could, they’re not made for picking out particular objects.”

“A probe is what makes the most sense,” the captain mused.

“Or a weapon,” Dane suggested. “We’ll need to check it out. Could be booby-trapped.”

“I don’t know why they’d leave a trap—”

“Because we are at war!” Dane snapped.

The captain turned from the data and graphs of water depth that Tran had brought up. She appraised Dane with a cool gaze. “We were at war with the Russians. That’s been over for a century at this point.”

“Unless they launched this thing during the war. If our people spotted this planet, they could have too!”

“They could have,” the captain allowed. “If they did, I think it would be more likely they’d send a reconnaissance probe than a weapon. Resources were even tighter for their side during the war. Sending a weapon to a planet light years away, in the middle of a war as devastating as that one was? It feels like a stretch.”

Dane nodded. She was right. Of course she was. At the same time, caution prevailed. “We still need to check it out.”

The captain eyed him a moment longer before she nodded. “Of course we do. It will have to be our first priority. Unfortunately, we only have two shuttles, and neither was designed for submerging underwater.”

“We can figure something out. We can't ignore this!”

“We’re not going to. I granted Granger approval to work on a submersible. We’ll simply have to speed that up.”

Dane thought back to the odd, ungainly machine Nat had been working on. It must have been the submersible.

Adams was already entering commands into a terminal. “I’d ordered the landing pads to be the top priority. We’ll upgrade the sub to be the next priority and order a backup or two.”

“Okay. Okay, sounds good.” Dane tried to remain calm while he thought about Russian weapons hidden beneath the watery surface of this alien world.

“We’re still some days out. I want you to use that time to get some of your people woken up, briefed on the situation, and ready to move.”

Dane nodded. “You want them to go down with me and check it out.”

“Yes. Because you’re head of security, and I won’t consider us secure until you get eyes on whatever the Russians put down there. I also don’t want you going anywhere near it without backup. I doubt they sent a weapon all the way out here, but that doesn’t mean whatever they sent is safe. Pick the four you think are best suited to the job and have Thorson wake them up ASAP.”

CHAPTER SIX

Three days later, the Cosmos felt alive. Even in the meeting room, Dane heard people moving about the ship. Nat now had enough engineers and techs to work the engineering bay at full speed, twenty-four—no, fifty—hours a day. That meant when they weren’t working, they were everywhere. His security team had been up for nearly two days and had recovered most of their memories. They were taking the idea of a Russian probe on an alien world about as well as could be expected, which meant not well at all.

“I don’t understand why a probe would be sending a message about ‘danger.’ It makes no sense,” Carlos opined as he floated above the table. They’d reached the orbit of Teegarden II, which meant they no longer had the simulated gravity caused by the ship decelerating. Dane already missed being able to jog around the ship, and it hadn’t even been a full day.

“They can’t be sending all their data back to Earth. Someone else could intercept it,” Ginger pointed out.

“Like us, you mean.” Thorson’s expression was craggy and jagged. Dane liked him for that.

“Not necessarily,” Nat debated. “If they launched a probe a substantial amount of time after we launched, it could be using a type of technology our instruments can’t detect.”

“Then why can we detect the danger message?” Dane challenged.

“Let’s say that theoretically, the peace held after the war. Maybe the Russians worked with the ADN on a probe. They might use a better type of technology to send data back to Earth and employ the older stuff for safety reasons, to warn us,” Natalie mused.

“If Russia and the ADN are allied and built this probe, or whatever it is, together, wouldn’t they want to share all the data they could with the people who actually reach the planet?” Dane asked. “Also, the message would be in Russian and English if that were the case.”

Hard expressions met his question. The captain entered before anyone was able to muster anything like a response.

“Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the orbit of Teegarden II.” Captain Adams floated into the room and took her place at the table. It was obvious she was former NASA. She moved effortlessly in microgravity.

“Let’s start with what we know so far,” the captain began. “Then, we’ll get to thoughts about what we need to find out next. Thanks to our satellites, we can confirm the entire planet is indeed covered in water, with the exception of the polar ice caps. Carlos, do you have an update on that?”

“Not yet, Captain. The reflectivity of the ice makes it difficult for our instruments to penetrate. There could be land beneath that ice, but we don’t know yet.”

“Regardless, we don’t want to touch down in the only frozen part of the world. We’re currently looking at places with shallow water. There are a few spots where the ocean is only twenty meters deep. In some spots, we believe it's something like five kilometers. You weren’t arguing about the depth of the water when I came in, though, were you?”

“No, ma’am,” Dane answered for all of them.

“As everyone knows by now, we’re not the first people here. You’ve all heard the message, but we have discovered more on that front. Winters?”

“It’s not a probe down there. It’s an underwater compound.”

Everyone started talking at once, except for Dane, who’d already been briefed on the discovery.

“So when you asked your question about not sharing data, you weren’t being hypothetical,” Nat said to Dane.

“Not exactly, no.”

“We don’t have a ton of details on the compound itself yet. The water makes it tough to ascertain what it’s made of and whether it’s still populated. We don’t even know if it’s a recording or a live person,” Winters continued once everyone had calmed down. “Although it’s repeating, so it seems more likely to be a recording.”

“What do we know about this community?” Ginger asked.

“That they put it in the right place,” Winters commented. “It’s in a chain of mountains formed by a geological hot spot under the crust.”

“Like Hawaii,” Carlos added.

“Exactly. Except here, there either wasn’t enough magma to reach the surface, or the eroding forces of the sea have already weathered it down.”

“Does that mean we need to worry about volcanoes going, you know, boom?” Nat asked.

“The hot spot is currently three hundred kilometers to the west, so not a threat.”

“Still, maybe we don’t want to live near the Russian volcano?” Nat persisted.

“We, and apparently the Russians, think the benefits outweigh the negatives. The mountain chain seems to break up the wave action and create an area of relatively calm water between them. We still don’t have full readings on this, but we’re seeing movement on the surface.”

“Alien fish,” Dane asserted.

“Clearly, we need to investigate this place. Granger, can you give us an update on what you’ve been doing in engineering?”

“I’ve got everyone working as many hours as they can without collapsing to get things ready. We’re on track to send everything down for a basic shuttle landing pad that we’ll have to assemble once we’re on-planet. In addition, I’ve been working on a submersible. That’s been the fun part, actually. I took apart one of the trucks we had and scrounged its hydrogen fuel cells and electrical harness for the Gup.”

“The Gup?”

“It’s what I named the submersible. The truck was called the Graviton Upward, so this is kind of similar. I figured the truck wouldn’t be useful on this planet. As for everything else, we’ve got the 3D printers on that, as well as some hand-crafted parts. It’s going to be tight, but we should have it ready before launch time. I should say, though, it’s not going to be pretty, and it won’t take much to put holes in it. Oh! And don’t bring it too deep.”

“How deep is too deep?” Dane asked.

“It should be able to make it to the compound or whatever is down there at twenty meters. I would trust it up to a hundred, but beyond that…well, I’d come back up, is all.”

“Dane, you’ll be comfortable with your people running security on this mission?”

“Yes, ma’am, I will. I have four security troops ready to go. They’ve been briefed, and we’ve been training on clearing exercises. Hallways and rooms, that sort of thing.”

“Not worried about fish anymore?” Thorson asked.

“We have weapons that can fire underwater,” Dane pointed out, which earned him both a nod of respect and a chuckle from Thorson.

“We? I think four should be ample. I want you up here with us,” the captain noted.

“With all due respect, ma’am, I don’t think that’s the best course of action.”

“You want to go down yourself?”

“I do. These security people are still green. We’ve got some collective experience, but only a few days of training as a group. On top of that, I don’t even know what the surface feels like. I don’t think it would be wise for me to sit this one out.” He didn’t say that he’d be happy to sit back if he had some of his soldiers from the war. Yet he didn’t, so he couldn’t.

“I don’t want to lose my head of security.”

“If I get compromised, you’ll know I’m past my prime anyway. I’ve left a letter for you with my recommendations about who could fill my role.”

The captain considered it for a moment before she nodded. “We need to find out what this place is, how it got there, and most importantly if there’s still anyone in the compound. If not, we’ll need to know why. You say being down there in person is the best way for me to get these answers? Down you’ll go, then. Once we get some answers, we’ll bring more people out of sleep and get our colonization efforts properly started.”

Dane was relieved the captain said once and not if they got some answers. He wanted to get down there and prove her confidence justified.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Dane found it wild that he’d spent more than a century traveling twelve and a half light years, and it felt like nothing at all. There had been dreams, but not a hundred and fifty years’ worth. The scientists said this was because all his metabolic processes had been slowed down, even his mind. He’d passed asteroids and vast clouds of dust. He’d traversed the endless void without breaking a sweat.

Now, they had to enter the atmosphere of a planet, something he’d done dozens of times, and he had none of that tranquility.

“Security, check in,” he barked over his headset, attempting to give his crew some of the normalcy of the routine they’d practiced.

“Athanas is strapped in. Weapons locked and ready to splashdown.” Cassandra Athanas was Dane’s second in command and one of the few people aboard with real military experience. She seemed unshakeable and extremely proficient at her job. Dane was happy to have her.

“Stark strapped in and ready to brain some alien fish, sir!” Mathew Stark had worked under Dane before, which was why Dane had taken him out of the sleeping pod. If he was honest, the kid could be a bit hotheaded. Yet considering Carlos had finally confirmed organisms that were larger than people down there, Dane counted on Stark’s fearlessness being an asset.

“John Good, strapped in. Shuttle is communicating with my HUD, and the sonar devices are packed up snug.” John Good was Dane’s tech guy. A background in corporate security rather than the military had seemed like a disadvantage on paper, but it turned out John was highly educated in all manner of tech. Dane was glad to have him, even if he insisted on everyone using his full name at all times. At least it sounded like a single word when he said it.

“Danger, Paul Robinson! Danger! Nah, I’m kidding. That joke worked really well when I was working neighborhoods.”

“Robinson, are you strapped in or not?” Dane asked, regretting his choice of this kid. He came with an impeccable police academy record, but now that he was awake, it was obvious he had zero experience.

“I am strapped in and ready to go, sir!”

“You sure that mustache is going to make the drop?” Athanas asked.

“Of course my mustache will make the drop. It’s not fake—oh. Ho, ho, ho! Good one, Athanas. Ribbing the young guy. I get it.”

“We can tell it’s not fake. Fake mustaches look good,” Stark interjected.

“Oh, man! Why don’t you tell me what you really think?” Robinson chuckled into the comms.

“Ms. Lopez, is your team all right?” Dane asked. Haley Lopez was in charge of the team of four engineers that Dane’s security team was escorting to the surface.

“Reynolds barfed, which isn’t great, but at least he can’t barf again, right? Oh…oh, I guess he can.”

“We haven’t even launched yet!” Stark exclaimed.

A thin smile spread across Dane’s face. “You remember your first mission, Stark?”

“Of course I do, sir! Your orders saved a rock dropper that day. Took out six Russian star fighters. I bet that record still holds, even if it’s a hundred and forty-eight years old.”

“Well, this is like that for them, except they have no training.”

“Still doesn’t mean the little twerps should upchuck before we’ve even—”

“They’re civilians, Stark. Your job is to make sure they stay safe. If that means making them a cup of tea and holding their hair back, that’s what you’ll do,” Athanas asserted.

“Yes, ma’am,” Stark replied.

Dane continued to be thankful to have her aboard. Stark treated him like a hero, which could be problematic when it came to following orders. Athanas had none of that effect on him, though.

“Anderson, can you take us through what’s going to happen?” Dane asked the pilot, the final person aboard their shuttle.

“You got it. The Cosmos will launch the drop pods with the supplies inside. We’ll give them a few minutes to get ahead of us, then we’ll follow. First thing to go out the back of the ship will be the submersible, then security, then engineering. Then I go back up into the gentle embrace of the holding bay of the Cosmos while you all make the biggest raft this planet has ever seen.”

“Everyone got that?” Dane questioned. They replied in the affirmative. It was painfully obvious the submersible had to be dumped first. The bulky object occupied the middle of the space they sat in, as close to the bay door at the back of the shuttle as possible. Dane told himself he trusted Nat’s skill as he examined the bizarre-looking vehicle. It was still shaped like a soda can but with a bulging half-sphere on the front end and a pair of outboard motors on the back. Very much jerry-rigged.

“Here we go. Capsules away!” Anderson announced over the shuttle comms. Everyone sat tight while the dull clanks of doors opening and large objects being jettisoned reverberated through their spacecraft. The engineering team was in the passenger section of the shuttle, but there wasn’t room for the security team up there as well. That would have been fine if not for the submersible. It was strapped in every way possible, but Dane still didn’t trust it. The thing appeared it might break free if someone looked at it wrong, and they were about to do a lot more than look as they descended to the surface.

“Sixty seconds!” Anderson announced.

“Everyone comfortable in their envirosuits?” Dane asked.

“Comfort is irrelevant, sir,” Athanas replied.

“Totally badass answer, no denying that, but mine is chafing a bit. Do you think that will go away when we land in the water?” Robinson wondered.

“You better hope it does. You can’t take these things off down there under any circumstances,” Good remarked.

“Some of us have experience in space. We get the drill,” Stark said.

“This ain’t space, though,” Good noted. “In space, you bust a hole in your suit, you have a patch kit on hand to repair it.”

“Having a patch kit on hand is not the same as being able to use it. I’ve lost brothers and sisters hit with a piece of shrapnel somewhere they couldn’t reach. Whatever’s down there can’t be worse than decompression,” Stark snarled.

“That’s one way to tell the rest of us you didn’t read Alvarez’s report,” Good drawled.

“You mean the fish?” Stark snorted. “These little carbines have supercavitating bullets. Shoot through water like a hot knife through butter. Plus, fighting underwater means next to no kickback on these babies.” Stark patted the weapon on his lap.

“No, not the fish,” Good replied sardonically.

“Can someone tell me what the tech-nerd is talking about? Oh, you’re worried about the Russians, is that it?”

“I think he’s talking about bacteria, viruses…heck, even prions down there could do some serious damage to us. Public health is a major concern and should always be treated as such. The triple plague of the mid-twenty-first century proved that,” Dane lectured.

“Bacteria? Seriously? What, are we worried about getting the runs?” Stark did not sound concerned.

“While the runs are less than desirable, it’s the chance of getting a virus we have no resistance to that worries me. The captain can’t risk something like that getting on the colony ship. It’s going to be a risk even with our decontamination procedures, and we don’t have anything that can find an alien virus inside our system,” Good stated matter-of-factly.

“We got rejuv treatments and smart vaccines. We can handle it.”

“Not if we don’t know what we’re looking for.”

“Yeah, but—”

“Whether you agree or not is irrelevant,” Athanas interrupted. “Alvarez’s briefing makes it clear to never remove your suit. If you do, you’re not coming back up. End of story.”

“But what if someone gets—”

“And we’re off!” Anderson shouted over the comms, and the ship lurched to life.

Dane had the sensation of something grabbing him by the stomach and yanking backward, then the acceleration evened out. The next sense of gravity he felt would be the gravity of an alien world.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Dane managed to stay strapped at the back of the shuttle for about nine minutes. That was when his curiosity overcame him, and he asked Anderson if he could come up front to see how this ship worked.

“Yeah, man, of course! It would be an honor.”

Dane unstrapped himself from the wall and floated toward the front of the shuttle. He opened the door to the official passenger compartment and found the four engineers tightly gripping their harnesses.

“Everyone okay in here?” he asked.

“Reynolds has stopped throwing up!” Lopez reported cheerily.

“Good news, I guess. You all let me, Athanas, or anyone else on the team know if you need anything. Getting this platform set up is a huge priority, and we need the four of you to make it happen.”

“No pressure, then,” Reynolds grumbled.

“You can count on us, sir,” Lopez replied. “Let me know once we’re in the atmosphere, and I’ll make sure the sub is ready to drop with its parachutes properly calibrated.”

“There’s a screen for that.” Dane gestured to a screen above and opposite Lopez’s seat.

“I’m really more of a swimming-hiking-camping sort of person. Even a little regular skydiving. Dropping from outer space onto alien planets is beyond me.”

“We’ll be swimming soon enough. Glad to have you aboard, Ms. Lopez.”

Lopez saluted, then blanched. “Wait, should I not have done that? Sorry. I’ve seen so many people on Earth salute you that I kind of went for it.”

“It’s no problem. Let me know if you need anything, all right?”

“Right.”

Dane continued to the pilot compartment and pressed the button for entry. A moment later, the doors opened, and Anderson welcomed him in.

“There he is! The best star fighter pilot the ADN had,” Anderson proclaimed.

The copilot said nothing. He only stared at Dane with wide eyes and a slowly expanding grin.

“If you want to take the helm, it’s yours,” Anderson invited.

“Oh, I couldn’t possibly. This shuttle is different from what I’m used to flying.”

Anderson laughed. “Bigger and bulkier than the star fighters and way smaller than the rock droppers, huh? Don’t worry. I wouldn’t have given you free rein of the controls. If you did anything wrong, either myself or the autopilot wouldn’t allow it.”

“So you were going to do the equivalent of letting me sit in your lap and pretend to drive like a six-year-old?”

“Yep, pretty much!” Anderson laughed. “I mean, I know you’re a war hero and all, but just because you can drive a sports car doesn’t mean you know how to back up a trailer.”

“That is…actually a pretty damn good comparison,” Dane praised. “I imagine this thing is way less maneuverable.”

“Oh, yeah. That’s the problem with flying something like this.” Anderson’s hands flew over the controls. “Technically, we have a bigger engine than those star fighters did, but we out-mass them by a lot too. That means if you notice a problem, it’s already too late. It’s all about anticipation in a rig like this.”

“Sounds more like a rock dropper than a star fighter,” Dane said.

“I wouldn’t go that far. Here, let the war hero have the controls,” Anderson offered. The copilot unstrapped and switched places with Dane.

“You sure that’s safe?”

“We’ve got AI as a backup, and I’ve already practiced this drop a hundred and fourteen times. We’ll be all right.”

Dane nodded and settled into the copilot’s chair. “Looks like a Hands On Throttle and Stick system.”

“That’s right.” Anderson nodded. “We got systems for guidance and all that, but moving the ship where you want it happens with your fingertips. Big difference between this and what a war hero flies is that level of haptic feedback. If you tried to go into a barrel roll in this puppy, you’d find the stick won’t let you.”

“What if you hit a debris field?” Dane asked as he rested his hands on the HOTAS controls and moved along with what Anderson was doing.

“Then you’re dead. This thing couldn’t make it through a debris field any more than an eighteen-wheeler carrying eggs could make it through a Formula One race. I can override that haptic feedback to let us try a barrel roll. Though considering all the people we got back there, not to mention the submersible, it’ll be better if we don’t hit anything we have to actively dodge.”

“You can do stuff like that?”

“There’s three levels of operation. Right now we’re in the most controlled one. That means no sudden moves because we don’t want anyone back there to go splat. Say we hit something like bad weather or—I don’t know, a flock of flying alien birds. I’d go to level two then. That might let people slosh around back there, but we should be fine.”

“And level three?”

“Level three is what happens if the Russians launch a star fighter from that underwater base. I can use these engines to their full potential, but it risks passengers blacking out and the ship tearing itself apart.”

“It’s really strong enough to do that?” Dane regarded the clunky pilot compartment with newfound respect.

“Oh, yeah. It would flash red lights and beep and try to get me not to, but we built these things originally to shuttle cargo between Earth and the space stations. Not all those flights went by unmolested. Of course, you know that.”

Dane nodded. He had seen his share of cargo vessels torn apart and spilling their contents into the void. He supposed some of their pilots had willingly done it in an attempt to escape. Still, being confronted with it here gave him a greater respect for the people who’d served with him in every capacity.

“You want to give it a shot?” Anderson asked.

“I wouldn’t want to mess anything up.”

“It’ll be fine for the next few minutes. You only have to keep her steady while we approach the atmosphere. I’ll take it back from you long before it starts to get bumpy.”

Dane couldn’t resist the offer to do what he’d done for so long. He focused on following the line the AI had painted on their view screen. Despite everything Anderson said about the ship being bulkier and less maneuverable, it felt surprisingly clunky, even in the void of space. Still, after a few minutes, Dane felt he was piloting reasonably well. The engineers had stopped complaining, anyway.

“Capsules are through the roughest part of the atmosphere,” Anderson reported, pulling Dane from his zone. “If they were going to break up, they probably would have already. Might still sink, but that’s engineering’s problem, not ours.”

“Good news,” Dane commented. “Does that line on the screen mean we’re about to enter the atmosphere?”

“Yes, sir, it does.”

“Great. Thanks for letting me sit up here. I’m going to head back and get ready to drop everything. I’m sure the crew would prefer someone experienced at the helm for our first flight down to the surface.”

“You’re probably not wrong there,” Anderson replied amicably.

Dane waited for the copilot to get settled, then headed back and stopped in the passenger area.

“We’re about to enter the atmosphere, which is likely going to be the roughest part of our descent. Couple minutes of turbulence, all right?”

Lopez nodded eagerly. Reynolds looked up from the mess he’d made and bobbed his head weakly. The other engineers looked ready for this to be over so they could get back to work. Dane respected their professionalism in this insane situation, as the captain called it.

“Then we skydive out, right?” Lopez asked, her smile so big it looked like her cheeks must hurt.

“That’s right. Submarine, security, then your team, unless you want someone to stay behind to help with that.”

“Nah. Skydiving’s my jam. I’ll make sure everyone gets off.”

Dane nodded, glanced at Reynolds once more, then returned to the cargo hold.

As he sat down and strapped in, they hit the atmosphere.

“Hold on tight!” Anderson shouted as the ship started to shake all around them.

If anyone on security was uncomfortable with the vibrating shuttle, they didn’t let on. Dane had been through smoother reentries, though he supposed this was not a reentry since they were going to the planet for the first time. Still, it wasn’t bad. The worst part was watching the fragile-looking submersible in the middle of the room shake and rattle against the straps.

The shuttle lurched, and one of the straps snapped. The sub shifted. For a terrifying moment, Dane’s stomach did too. Yet the double and triple redundancy of the straps held it in place, and it neither broke loose nor squished anyone.

Then they were through the worst of it, flying instead of falling.

“The capsules have splashed down safely! Floating within a kilometer of each other. Good placement, I gotta say. We’ll be in position for you to jump in a few minutes. I’d love to take you all the way down, but with nowhere to land…well, I gotta keep this bird dry.”

They leveled out, and for the first time since being inside the shuttle, it felt like the floor was the actual floor.

“Security, check the sub’s parachutes and get this thing ready to drop.”

“You heard the man. Let’s do this,” Athanas called.

Everyone sprang into action. Dane was pleased that despite some friction in the team, they took the job seriously. They had practiced this in the engineering bay, and it showed. Within minutes, all the straps were removed and stowed.

“Parachutes look good, sir,” Good announced from atop the sub.

“We’re ready to open the bay doors when you are,” Dane told Anderson over the comms.

“Opening bay doors,” Anderson stated a minute later, and the doors opened. Wind rushed into the cargo hold. Dane wished he could feel it or smell it, but his suit kept him insulated from the sensations of this world until they took the samples Dr. Alvarez had demanded. Still, there was something exhilarating about the air from another planet rushing into this shuttle built from resources mined and refined on Earth, light years away. This was his first personal contact with their new home, and it felt great.

“Leveling out,” Anderson reported. “We’re dropping the submersible a little wide of the capsules. It’s got no guidance, so we can’t risk it.”

“That’s fine,” Dane acknowledged. “Everyone ready?”

The security team moved into position, except for Good, who was manning a remote control.

“On three...two…one…”

“Wait, did you want us to push on three, on—“

“Push!” Dane commanded, ignoring Robinson.

They pushed, and the submersible slid across its rollers and out the back of the shuttle. It wasn’t protocol, but Dane could not help grabbing a handle near the cargo door and watching the submersible fall toward the watery world. It completed a single end-over-end flip before Good activated the parachutes. They deployed, caught the atmosphere, and hid the submersible from view.

“All right, here we go! Follow my lead,” Dane said. The plan had been for him to leave the shuttle after the rest of the security team, but he couldn’t wait. This was a new world, a new start. A new everything!

George Dane leapt into his future.

Despite not having jumped from a perfectly operational aircraft in quite some time, Dane’s body had not forgotten the sensation. Gravity pulled him faster while the air rushed all around him, buffeting him and slowing him down. He kept his arms out at his sides, elbows slightly bent, and his legs out with knees slightly crooked and feet pointing above him.

Below him churned an endless ocean, broken up only by the four massive splashdown capsules and the comparatively small submersible. He couldn’t hear the wind in his ears through his helmet, but he felt it push against him, and it felt good.

“There a speed limit, sir?” Stark shouted over the comms as he rocketed past Dane. His arms and legs weren’t extended at all. With less air resistance, he fell like a stone.

“Stark, control your descent! This isn’t a race!” Athanas barked. It was a good thing she did, too. Despite Stark being less than half Dane’s age, his first instinct hadn’t been to tell him to slow down but to adjust his own posture to fall faster.

“Yes, ma’am!” Stark replied, then his parachute shot out from behind. From Dane’s perspective, the chute dragged him upward.

Which meant Dane was now closest to the water and the most in danger of splatting on the surface of the sea.

He pulled the cord on his own parachute. It tugged at the harness built into his envirosuit and dramatically slowed his descent. He grabbed the guidelines and steered himself toward the submersible. Though it was farther out than the clumped capsules, it would be essential to setting everything up.

He glided down and looked through the relatively clear water to see shoals of…fish, or something like them. His cheeks started to hurt, and he realized he was grinning. He didn’t think he’d been this happy since before the war. Certainly not since agreeing to leave Earth behind. There were more colors below the surface, too, but Dane couldn’t see them clearly yet. The idea of an unexplored, unknown world had appealed to him before. Now, being on the cusp of touching it, he felt giddy.

He glanced up once. The rest of his security team were parachuting down, following his lead, and the engineering team had made it off the shuttle as well. Then he released himself from the parachute and fell the last few meters to the surface of the ocean.

He splashed into the water with a decent foot-first landing. Despite the suit, the water felt warm, and it was relatively clear. He could see the tops of some of the taller mountains below him.

He was on another planet, another world that one day might be humanity’s second home. He was here to build, to create, to make something new. The sense of untapped potential beneath him and around him overwhelmed any other feelings. For the first time in a long time, Dane felt wonder in his heart.

CHAPTER NINE

“Security, check in!” Dane ordered after he’d resurfaced.

“Athanas, checking in.”

“John Good, all good.”

“Robinson, not lost.”

“Stark, checking in.”

“All right, everybody. Our job is to help the engineers get us out of the water. I want Good with me. We’re going to fetch the sub along with Lopez once she splashes down. The rest of you gather the engineering team and make for the nearest capsule. I’m marking it on your HUD.”

Dane tapped a few controls on the wrist panel of his suit to activate the heads-up display. He highlighted the sub, the capsules, and the engineering team on the screens of their helmets.

All the engineers had splashed down closer to the capsules except for one.

“Race you to the submersible!” Lopez whooped over the comms so loudly that the speakers in Dane’s helmet clicked. He looked up. The head of the engineering team had yet to unclip from her parachute and was steering it expertly toward the submersible. She swooped over the security team, banked hard, and caught a current of air that would have eluded Dane to gather more height.

When she was less than fifty meters from the submersible, she unclipped from her parachute, executed a neat backflip, and splashed down into the water.

“You sure you’re going to be able to keep up with her?”

“You jealous, Athanas?” Stark asked.

“Hardly,” Athanas replied. Dane thought she sounded impressed if anything.

“Flippers on, everyone,” Dane ordered, and everyone obeyed. Their envirosuits had clips all over them, and the engineering team had used the 3D printers to make the flippers. It was awkward to put them on, and both Stark and Robinson complained about it. Yet after they’d attached them and started to move, the augmentation’s advantage became obvious. Considering the security team all had weapons in hand, they needed their legs to swim as efficiently as possible. The flippers enabled that.

Dane and Good started off toward Lopez and the submersible, while Athanas, Stark, and Robinson went the other way. Athanas checked in with engineering, and they seemed to be doing fine. Even Reynolds, who was more comfortable swimming than entering the atmosphere of an alien world and skydiving into an unexplored ocean.

Anderson’s voice came over the comms. “Everyone’s looking good from up here, Dane. I’m going to head back up if that’s all right with you?”

“Go ahead, Anderson. No point in burning fuel. We’ll let you know as soon as we get the first piece of the landing pad set up.”

“Affirmative. The capsules have long-range radios, so once you get to those, you’ll be in contact. With the satellites going overhead, you shouldn’t ever be blacked out for more than a few minutes.”

“We try not to use words like ‘should’ on missions like this,” Dane uttered.

Anderson laughed. “I hear that, but I should be getting back up there!”

Dane didn’t bother watching him go. The view beneath the surface of the sea was too spectacular to ignore.

The water was relatively shallow here, with mountain peaks rounded down from the churn of the ocean. Some were merely twenty or thirty meters below the surface. Between these higher portions, the elevation dipped. In places, only the murky blue of deep crags and crevices was visible. However, most of the area was no more than a hundred meters deep.

The most amazing thing about the view was the life forms.

They were everywhere, at every level of the water table. Tiny swarms of alien plankton, too small to make out individually with the naked eye, formed vortices near the surface of the water. Below them swam larger organisms, either singly or in shoals. There were things similar to fish, but they were the exception more than the rule. They looked less streamlined than Earth fish as if they were still fine-tuning and making evolutionary adjustments to their forms.

More common than the clunky-looking fish were creatures that defied any single category. Dane knew they had nothing to do with the evolutionary history of Earth creatures, yet his brain could not help trying to make analogies. There swam a school of something like squid, though they had shells instead of squishy bells. Near them was a larger group of smaller, shrimp-like creatures with legs jutting from the sides instead of underneath. Larger solo creatures at first reminded Dane of eels, though he refined that to more like worms.

The sea floor was more crowded than the water itself. Structures that had to be organic climbed up toward the tops of the sunken mountains. Things like corals or sponges but in unfamiliar shapes and colors. Softer-bodied organisms grew nearer the seafloor and waved in the unseen currents, while hard-bodied structures built atop each other to reach for the surface. In places, these coral-like structures were a scant few meters below the surface.

Dane wondered if the entire world was like this or if the mountainous terrain made this area special. Perhaps there were savannas of seagrass, forests of kelp, and translucent, colorless corals hiding in the depths of this world. He envied Carlos Alvarez, who would be in charge of cataloging, describing, and naming all these creatures, provided they fit into the definition of “animal.” Some of them had no obvious mouthparts. Perhaps they survived off the energy of the sun.

Everything below was obviously alive and vaguely familiar but undeniably alien. Structures that never appeared on analogous Earth organisms graced the creatures here. Shrimp-like creatures swam with crab claws. Clunky fish had rows of shark fins down their backs. Worms whipped back and forth, lined with the delicate ridges of eels.

Many of the organisms had too many spines to be properly streamlined, which made Dane wonder about their needs for self-defense. Why waste economy of movement on body parts like spines and bony plates unless it was necessary? Yet if these seas held larger predators, they were not visible at the moment.

They reached the sub without incident. Dane and Lopez removed the parachutes and made sure nothing was tangled in the propeller while Good went in through the hatch on the top and activated the systems.

“Everything’s operational, sir.”

“We’re clear out here as well. Hold her steady, John. Lopez and I are coming in.”

They climbed on top of the sub via the ladder attached to the side, then hauled up the parachute. The captain and Alvarez had been adamant about making sure they picked up all the pieces of parachutes when they could. They did not want to start their stay on the planet by littering it with their cast-off waste, and they needed to re-use as much as they could.

To ensure this didn’t happen, Nat incorporated the super-strong carbon fiber of the parachutes into the design of the floating platforms. A neat trick, Dane had thought. He felt differently now that he had to haul up the waterlogged material. They got it done, though, and clambered inside.

“I have all systems operating, sir, but…uh, do you want to take the helm?” Good asked.

“Not much of a pilot?”

“Not especially, sir. I prefer to make sure machines work rather than work ‘em, if that makes sense.”

“I feel exactly the opposite, so I get where you’re coming from.” Dane settled into the pilot’s seat situated in the bubble on the front of the cylinder and started the engines.

He was immediately confronted with the differences between a hastily manufactured submersible and a precision-built star fighter. For example, the simple impossibilities of steering a vessel at relatively low speeds when dealing with gravity. If he did any barrel rolls or flips, his passengers would topple to the ceiling. That was never a concern in space. He was thankful Anderson had let him try out the shuttle. This submersible handled more like that cargo craft than a fighter.

Once Dane understood the limitations of the craft, and there were many, he found it easy enough to pilot. Like driving a go-kart after a lifetime behind the wheel of a sports car. It was different and cumbersome but not challenging.

They caught up to the rest of the landing crew. Like the remora fish of Earth, those still in the water grabbed handholds and ladders on the outside of the submarine and hitched a ride toward the first of the four capsules. They reached it, and two of the engineers climbed aboard.

The engineers may have been unsteady in the shuttle cargo hold, but they looked confident now. They easily pulled in the capsule’s parachute. It had a winch, because of course the engineers had put a winch on the one they’d have to haul in. One of them produced a knife and began transforming the parachute into the guide rope they’d use to connect this floating capsule to the next.

“All right, they’re all set up, and we have the cable connected to the capsule. If you could take Reynolds and me to the next one, we’ll tether them together and start deploying the platforms,” Lopez explained.

“Sure thing,” Dane agreed.

Lopez and Reynolds joined Dane in the sub. He ordered Good to stay with him and Robinson to stay with the two engineers who were already hauling out long pieces of material and snapping them together into a large floating rectangle. Stark and Athanas stayed on the sub’s exterior like well-armed barnacles.

They made it about halfway to the next capsule before something pinged on the sonar.

“What’s that?” Dane questioned, not liking the size of the blip.

“No visuals out here, sir,” Athanas replied.

“Not on my side, either,” Stark confirmed.

Good chimed in. “Whatever it is, sonar indicates it’s big.”

“Big like a human?” Dane asked.

“Big like a whale.”

“Keep an eye on it.”

“Oh, you better believe I will.”

They reached the next capsule, and Lopez and Reynolds climbed aboard. They affixed the other end of the tether to that capsule and got to work hauling out the pieces of the platform to snap together. It really was ingeniously made. The capsules had been crammed full of long sticks and flat panels. In the hands of the engineers, they quickly became rectangular platforms that, in turn, snapped together to make a larger platform. The engineers used the tether to guide them, attaching platform to platform along the length.

The current plan was to use the capsules as the corners of the structure. Eventually, after they had checked out the Russian base, they would sink concrete pylons from beneath the capsules to form four permanent corners. In the meantime, they could move the platform around. Though of course they had to get it assembled first.

Dane wasn’t one hundred percent informed of the plan, but he knew the first iteration of the floating platform would be much longer than it was wide. A sort of airstrip with capsules at the corners to provide temporary shelter. They could widen and expand it as needed before they decided where it would permanently live.

Dane watched from beneath the water as Lopez and Reynolds completed the second platform, then the third. They used parachute cord to connect them, which let the entire structure undulate with the ocean’s movement. That would be problematic long-term, but right now, it was the quickest and easiest way to get something like ground beneath their feet.

“Looks like they’re doing all right. Stark, stay with them while Athanas, Good, and I retrieve the other two capsules.”

“Yes, sir. I’ll shoot any of these damn fish that so much as look at us funny.”

“Considering we don’t know if they even have eyes, let’s try to keep a low profile as long as we can,” Dane requested.

“Right, sir,” Stark affirmed.

Dane piloted the submersible toward one of the other capsules. As they affixed it to the sub to be towed, the big, as-yet-unseen fish turned and started toward the first capsule.

“Um, sir?” Good indicated the large blip on the sonar.

“I see it,” Dane acknowledged. “Athanas, disconnect that capsule. We need to make an intercept.”

“Already on it, sir. Thirty seconds.”

Dane nodded and waited for a long thirty.

“What are the odds this whale only eats the little stuff, like the ones on Earth do?” Good inquired while they waited for Athanas to undo the work she had done.

“Not good enough.”

CHAPTER TEN

“Lopez, that thing is coming back.”

“What thing?”

“The big thing.”

“Which big thing?”

“The big thing that might try to eat you. I want you and your engineers inside the capsules, got it?”

“Sure. Except, um… That might take a while.”

“I don’t care if you’re halfway through tying a knot. Get inside.”

“No, it’s that the other team is in the water. I’m a lot closer than you. I can—”

“No, Lopez, get Reynolds and yourself inside. We are not putting any more people in danger.”

Stark piped in. “You heard the man. Let’s get inside and sit tight. I’m sure there are supplies to organize or something.” He didn’t sound particularly friendly about it, but Dane let that go. They were stuck down here until they got more of the platforms assembled. They couldn’t risk an injury, but they could afford bruised feelings.

“You’re sure they’ll be safe in there?” Athanas asked over the security channel of their comms.

“That thing was designed to withstand the friction of the atmosphere and a potential ground landing. If a big fish can chomp through it, we have no business being on this planet at all,” Good pointed out.

Dane hated how much sense that made. “Athanas, how much time until we can move?”

“Getting the ropes clear now, sir. Sorry for the delay.”

“I’m sure you worked as quickly as possible. Now grab on. Good, I need you on the outside. This damn sub doesn’t have any guns.”

“Yes, sir,” Good replied. He excelled in tech, not warfare, so it was a relief that he didn’t complain or protest the order.

“Both of you, clip on.”

Dane was already moving the sub forward. When Athanas and Good confirmed they were connected to the submersible, he increased his speed. The craft may have looked ugly, but Nat had apparently spent more time under the dash than on it. The hydrogen fuel system shunted plenty of power to the propeller. They raced forward, trying to reach the two engineers swimming for safety before the creature did.

Yet it was obvious they weren’t going to. Dane had already increased the speed of the sub to its maximum level while the big fish was only getting started. Dane still didn’t have visuals on whatever it was. Too much water and too many smaller creatures in the way. The sonar system made it clear that it was increasing in speed, though.

“Sir, I have visuals! It’s…it looks like a freaking shark and a dinosaur had a baby.” Robinson sounded excited, even now.

“You’re saying it’s got teeth?”

“Sharp ones, sir, and it’s moving fast. It’s getting too close. I’m going in!”

“Robinson, that’s a negative! If it sees the engineers as food, it’s going to think the same thing about you. Fire from the capsule. I repeat, fire from the capsule.”

Robinson had already jumped into the water. He splashed in ahead of them, bringing a cloud of bubbles that obscured Dane’s view of the sharkosaur.

An alert popped up on his HUD. Robinson was firing.

“Robinson! Robinson, damn it, report! Are you all right?”

“I’m fine, sir, but I didn’t scare it off from the engineers!”

That was when Dane saw it. Robinson’s assessment of the creature was frighteningly accurate. It had a massive, shark-like body with an unnecessary number of fins on its back and jutting from its sides. Its head at the end of its incredibly long neck featured a ridiculous amount of teeth. It looked like a shark that had been injected with brachiosaurus hormones.

“It’s a goddamn plesiosaur,” Good blurted over the comms.

“It’s heading right for the engineers,” Athanas warned.

Dane adjusted course to head directly for it, but he was still too far. They wouldn’t reach the swimmers until after it did.

Then he had an idea.

“Good, blast the sonar, full power!”

He obeyed without question. Dane felt the sonar device rumble beneath him, then the aquatic monster pulled away.

“Robinson, get them to safety!” Dane shouted and saw the plucky former police cadet already doing that. The kid really was serious about civilian safety. There were worse priorities to have.

The sea creature turned and headed for the swimmers again.

“Hit it again, John!”

Good blasted the device. This time, the creature only flinched its long neck and did not pull off.

“Looks like we only startled it the first time. The sonar doesn’t actually do any damage.”

“That’s where we come in.” Dane piloted the sub directly at the monster. The creature outsized it, but the craft was also much larger than whatever it normally ate. Rather than risking a collision, the sharkosaur dodged and tried to go around them. It didn’t attack, though. Instead, it made for the engineers.

Dane did what any pilot would when an enemy was trying to compromise an ally. He gave chase.

“Fire at will! Let’s see if we can draw its attention!”

“You sure that’s a good idea?” Good asked.

Athanas was already firing. Dane saw the tiny disruptions of the bullets from her weapon through the water. She shot wide, likely because she was hanging on with one hand while trying to fire with the other. Dane could help with that. He adjusted the line of the sub’s attack to give her a better angle.

That was all she needed.

Athanas connected with a flipper. There was a flash of dark red, almost purple, in the water.

That got the bastard’s attention. Athanas had damaged it, but the creature had more than enough to make up for one injured limb. It turned on them and snapped at the front of the sub. Dane dodged at the last minute, and Athanas opened fire. Out of reflex, Dane had pulled the submersible into a barrel roll, which kept Athanas from connecting. Supplies that should have been stowed properly crashed around inside the sub. Fortunately, Dane had strapped himself in, also out of reflex. He pulled free of the roll and tried to turn back to get Athanas a shot.

Before he could, Good fired and pegged the monster in its belly. Another spurt of blood in the water. Now the monster was pissed. Its flippers blurred as it propelled itself toward the sub. Athanas and Good both fired, but the monster undulated past their shots and chomped its teeth onto the transparent pilot bubble.

The bubble didn’t immediately break, which was good. Yet when the creature chomped harder, it left deep scratches down the front of it.

“I got you, sir!” The water clouded with blood, and the sharkosaur pulled off.

“Stark, no!” Dane shouted too late. While they played tag with the sea beast, Stark had dove into the water and got within firing range. His shot had struck the sharkosaur, and the creature knew it.

It whipped its long neck around, then pumped its flippers to follow.

“Stark, get on a platform!” Dane shouted unnecessarily. Despite his brash actions, Stark knew he’d made a foolish move. He was already pulling himself up onto one of the floating platforms. Only his legs were still in the water, then his knees. His flippers. Then he was clear.

Until the creature’s head appeared above the surface. Its body jerked, and Stark splashed into the water around ten meters away. Even from their distance, it was obvious he’d been badly injured. His envirosuit was shredded, and his pale leg kicked weakly in a cloud of blood.

“Shoot it! Shoot that damn thing!” Dane shouted, wishing he had guns mounted on the submersible.

They were close now, and the predator was massive. Both Athanas and Good opened fire and connected. The water turned red with blood as the creature thrashed in pain.

It made one more run at the submersible, but Athanas shot it in the face. The bullet ruptured one of its frighteningly intelligent eyes but didn’t crack its skull or whatever lay beneath its glossy, scaled skin.

Rather than crashing into the submersible, it dove beneath and vanished.

“We’re surfacing!” Dane shouted. “Lopez, I need you to keep eyes on the sonar.”

“It’s dropping deep and heading off!” she replied, but Dane hardly heard her.

The top of the sub breached the surface, and Dane unstrapped himself before realizing he needed to pilot the damn sub.

“Get Stark on the sub and hold on. We’re getting him out of the water and into the nearest capsule. Last thing we need is freaking alien sharks!”

“I think we already met one, sir,” Robinson intoned.

“We got him,” Athanas announced a moment later. “He’s in shock but still conscious.”

“Hold on tight!” Dane steered the sub toward the nearest capsule. He pulled up alongside and was on top of the craft before it stopped moving.

Robinson was on deck with the two engineers. The three of them dragged Stark into the center of one of the floating platforms.

“Does anyone know first aid?” Dane had no idea what to do for a wound like the bloody mess of Stark’s leg. He was used to fixing suits before they lost their air or switching out air tanks in free fall. The Space Force had taught him how to deal with injuries like this, but that felt like a lifetime ago. In a literal sense, it was.

Fortunately, Good stepped up. “I’m EMT certified. First thing we need to do is put pressure on the wound to stop the bleeding. If anyone sees a tooth or other foreign objects in there, we’re gonna need to get that out sooner rather than later.”

Dane was dimly aware of Athanas tying up the sub while he moved to help Good with the injury.

“I don’t see anything in there, but that doesn’t mean a thing here. Get me some of that parachute material!”

Dane did, painfully aware that all the material was soaked with the water of an alien sea. He cut a few strips loose and squeezed out as much liquid as he could.

One of the engineers appeared from inside the capsule with a bright red box. “We have a first aid kit.”

Dane took it and pulled out blessedly sterile gauze pads. He gave them to Good, who applied them to the wound, one on top of the other until the blood finally stopped oozing through.

“I’ll take that parachute material now,” John requested, and Dane handed it over.

“Looks like three puncture wounds in a row. Outside the thigh, thank God, so nothing major was nicked. Still, he lost some blood, and that muscle suffered some serious damage.”

“God damn it,” Stark grunted through clenched teeth.

“I need you to lay back and relax, all right, Stark? You’re going to be okay, man.”

“Weren’t you saying not to take our damn suits off?” Stark rejoined.

“Hey, look at it this way. You’re going to be in the history books now. First man to make contact with alien life.”

“More like it made contact with me,” Stark grumbled, then let his head fall back and rest on the floating platform.

“Sir, a word?” Good motioned for them to move away from the hastily bandaged patient.

Dane nodded and followed. “How’s it look?”

“It looked clean to me, but there’s no telling what’s in there. Thorson is the man for a job like this.”

“We can’t bring down our doctor. Not without a way to get him back up.”

Good nodded, and Dane inwardly cursed the orders he had to give.

“We need to get Stark inside one of the capsules and out of the sun. While you’re all doing that, Athanas and I will take the sub to check on Lopez and Reynolds in the other capsule. If everything’s all right, we’ll bring them over here to minimize points to defend. Then we’re going to get back to work. Now more than ever, we need that shuttle to be able to come down and take off.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

They were able to tow the other two capsules into place without another attack. Robinson stayed with the engineers and let Dane and Athanas know when anything larger than a trout so much as thought about swimming toward them. Dane appreciated the kid’s commitment, though he could tell the constant check-ins of “everything is still all right” were getting to Athanas.

With the long sticks and panels connecting all four capsules as the corners of a rectangle, they no longer needed to be in the submersible. Dane ordered Athanas to mind the perimeter from the expanding deck so Robinson could lend a hand, then went inside to check on Stark.

“How’s he doing?”

“Stable. Not going to bleed out, but the wound is getting hot. Looks like he’s infected with something, and it’s spreading fast,” Good informed him.

“Is there anything you can do?”

“I already gave him the antibiotics we had on hand, but they don’t seem to be that effective. We’ll need supplies from up above.”

“Makes sense. I’m going to place a call to Adams. If there’s nothing else you can do in here, I want you out there keeping an eye on our perimeter and helping with these platforms. I’d rather not have to go for a swim to pick up the medicine.”

“Yes, sir.” Good excused himself and went back outside.

“You’re doing all right?” Dane asked Stark.

Stark nodded weakly.

“That was brave of you,” Dane contended.

“Stupid,” Stark replied.

“We all conflate the two at some point. I’m glad you helped our engineers. They’re going full-speed to make somewhere for the shuttle to land, all right? We might not be able to send you up, but we’ll get you taken care of.”

Stark nodded. He didn’t look happy about it, but happy wasn’t part of the job description.

“I’m going to call the captain. You let me know if you need anything.”

“Yes, sir,” Stark confirmed.

Dane went to the radio and placed a call to the Cosmos.

“Security Chief Dane, how’s our new planet treating you?”

“Me? Not so bad. Stark got bit by something big, though. We need antibiotics and whatever first aid supplies you can send down. I wouldn’t be opposed to Thornton joining us, either. Stark’s thigh is going to need some work.”

To the captain’s credit, she sobered immediately and did not balk at the bad news. “We can’t afford to send down Thornton until we have a better handle on the chances of infection down there and whether our decontamination processes work. But I’ll send a med tech who can stitch him up and a full slew of medical equipment.”

“Thank you, ma’am. Stark would appreciate that.”

“What about the Russian colony?” the captain inquired.

“Ma’am?” Dane asked, surprised by the abrupt shift of conversation.

“The Russian structure that we built the submarine for. Have you investigated yet?”

“No, ma’am. With Stark getting injured and the threat of this creature, we’ve been focused on getting the landing pad in place. I thought with these active hostiles, the Russians would be a lower priority.”

“You’re mistaken, Colonel. If anything, the creatures make finding out about this structure all the more important.”

“Ma’am?” Dane knew he should say more, but he was at a loss for words.

“You encountered this predator within an hour of being down there, correct?”

“Yes, ma’am. I think it was drawn to us. Maybe either the sounds of the construction or the submersible. It seemed to react to our sonar pulses.”

“Sure. Therefore, it stands to reason the Russians encountered this thing as well.”

“I suppose so, yes.”

“Well, if they encountered a predator this large and still decided to build a base in this location, I think the chances are good for biological compatibility.”

“Biological compatibility?”

“Not your wheelhouse, so you don’t need to worry about it. Basically, it’s whether we can eat the flora and fauna of this world. If we can, this planet is exponentially more valuable.”

“And if they can eat us?”

“I don’t want to minimize Stark’s injuries, but if they can eat us and not get sick, that’s a good sign. We’re sending down antibiotics and a med tech as quickly as possible. If we can treat this infection, it’s going to advance our colonization timeline substantially.”

“We don’t even know what the Russians found down here.”

“Which is why I need you to get to that underwater structure sooner rather than later. We still don’t have a great idea of exactly how big it is, but we know it's substantial. That means they were down there for a while, so it’s likely they encountered whatever is infecting Stark. They almost surely have the data we need, if not the medicine itself.”

“That makes sense…”

“But what? I can hear the hesitation in your voice.”

“I don’t want to leave Stark and the engineering team up here undefended. That thing could come back.”

“You didn’t kill it?”

“No, ma’am. We wounded it and scared it off, but it’s not dead.”

“Understood. In that case, leave one of your team with him. Good’s a former EMT. He might make the most sense, but I’ll leave it up to you.”

“Good can stay up here, ma’am, but if that thing or one of its sisters comes back, he won’t be able to drive it off himself.”

“He won’t have to. The engineers are armed.”

That was technically true. The engineers each had a handgun strapped to their envirosuits, loaded with supercavitating bullets. However, not a single one of them had reached for their weapons when the sharkosaur showed up. He would need to have a chat with them about what defending themselves actually looked like.

“You’re sure about this, ma’am? The platform’s not quite done.”

“Make sure the shuttle can land. I don’t want Stark to wait for antibiotics any longer than necessary, but as soon as it's big enough for Anderson to set his shuttle down, I want you in the submersible. There are too many questions about the Russians. Why did they come here? If they’re gone, as it appears, why did they leave, and how did they beat us here? Not to mention what happened to them.”

“What if they’re still down there and not interested in talking?” Dane posited.

“Even better. I can’t send down an entire medical facility, and until we run some tests, we won’t be able to bring Stark up. If the Russians are still in their facility, you can get Stark inside and into proper treatment right away.”

“I’m not sure they’d be willing to help an enemy.”

“You’re living in the past, Dane. The war you fought ended over a hundred years ago. For all we know, these Russians could have left before it started or after it ended. Heck, these could be rogue scientists who wanted nothing to do with dropping rocks on their home world. We have no idea who they are, what their story is, or what brought them here. I don’t want you going down there unarmed, but I don’t want you to prejudge the situation either. We need answers, not assumptions.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Dane agreed. The captain’s tone left no room for argument.

“The shuttle has docked. We need to scrub the outside and give it a once-over to ensure nothing hitched a ride up, but we’ll have it loaded with medical supplies and on its way as soon as possible. Is there anything else you need?”

“A fishing pole and an underwater camera. This place is incredible, Captain. Like Earth back before the oceans were spoiled. I never believed the stories of what it used to be like, but—wow.”

“We know. Granger put cameras all over that sub, and we’ve been watching the video on delay. I’m interested to see this thing that bit Stark, but I haven’t viewed that far yet. Great work so far, Dane. I look forward to your next report.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

The radio went silent.

“So everyone awake on the Cosmos is going to see me get chomped by the freaking Loch Ness monster?” Stark spurted. Obviously, he’d been listening to the conversation. It wasn’t like the inside of the capsule was all that large.

“I bet the captain is making popcorn as we speak. You heard her orders?”

“Yes, sir. I’ll be fine with Good. Go give those Russians hell, sir.”

Dane nodded, though he hoped he was wrong, and it wouldn’t come to that.

He climbed out of the capsule and onto the floating platform. It was coming along nicely. The engineers had been hard at work both while he towed the other capsules over and spoke with the captain. There was now an uninterrupted walkway about six meters wide stretching from one capsule to the other. Long enough for the shuttle to land if Dane was right about how good a pilot Anderson really was.

The engineers currently worked on doubling the width by connecting another long row of platforms to the first, between the two extra capsules. They would need plenty of space for the shuttle to land and take off. Dane imagined the surface dotted with structures and research equipment. The first attempts at a settlement here…well, their first attempts. The Russians had done a lot more than make a raft.

“Robinson, Athanas, Good. We’ve got orders.”

He went over their mission. To the credit of his security team, they didn’t have as many questions as he’d asked the captain. As they checked weapons and loaded up, Haley Lopez slunk over with a poorly concealed smile.

“I heard you briefing your security team.” Although it was a simple statement of fact, something in the way Lopez spoke made it seem more than that.

“Good is going to stay here, but if there are any issues with that thing, you’re going to all use your firearms this time.”

“We don’t need to go in the water anymore, and I have the sonar set up to warn us if anything bigger than a person comes our way. I told them at the first ping from it, they get inside one of the capsules.”

“What do you mean, ‘they?’ Are you planning on taking down that long-necked thing by yourself?”

“No. Nothing so grandiose. I was thinking I should go with you.”

“What? No, that’s not necessary.”

“You’re down two people. I saw you training on the Cosmos. That’s going to affect how you operate down there.”

“We’ll be fine. We trained with everyone because everyone needed to train. The plan was always to leave a person up here with you and your team.”

“Not two people, though.”

“We didn’t anticipate Stark getting hurt, that’s correct. I also didn’t anticipate you wanting to go for a swim with the thing that hurt him.”

“It wouldn’t be a swim. We’d be in the sub. Besides, even if it was a swim, I’d be the best person for that job. I used to go scuba diving back on Earth.”

“We might encounter another predator, or God forbid, enemy people.”

“I know, and I can handle myself in a fight.” Lopez unholstered her handgun with surprising dexterity.

Dane chewed his lip, thinking.

“Think fast!” Athanas tossed a bundled-up bit of rope into the air.

Lopez fired at the ball of trash and actually hit it.

She grinned when it landed on the deck with a hole through it.

“Did you guys see that?” Robinson crowed.

“That was a lucky shot,” Dane insisted.

“Maybe.” Lopez shrugged. “You could probably use some good luck down there, too.”

That forced a smile onto Dane’s face. “You really won’t take no for an answer. Fine. You seem qualified. Only problem is that your engineers need you up here.”

“They don’t. We’ve got most of the platforms done. Enough that the shuttle can land, anyway. Our priority is now the same as yours—we need to get Stark some help. If there's a chance of a medical facility down there, I should check it out.”

“Oh, so now you’re trained as a med tech, too?”

“No, but someone will have to turn it on.”

“You really are persistent.”

“And professional. Come on, you can’t go on the first underwater exploratory mission and leave me behind. This is literally my dream. My. Literal. Dream!”

“Come on, Colonel, have a heart! What’s the worst thing that could happen?” Robinson asked, grinning like a puppy.

Dane pushed away thoughts of what the “worst thing that could happen” might be. “Fine. Lopez, get in the sub. It’s a good thing I’m not superstitious, Robinson, or I’d be worried you made our luck way worse.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

Lopez took the longest to prep for their expedition in the sub, yet that made Dane more confident with her joining them, not less. Athanas, Robinson, and Dane brought only more ammunition and another first aid kit. There were two—thank the engineers for that. By comparison, Lopez brought a tool bag and a portable power supply she’d stashed in one of the capsules before it was jettisoned from the Cosmos.

“Pays to be prepared, huh?” Lopez waggled her eyebrows.

“I suppose so, yeah,” Dane remarked as he helped her into the submersible with her bags.

“You want us to keep our flippers on, or what, chief?” Robinson asked when he’d descended into the sub with flippers still intact.

“You can take them off and stow them. We’ll do a visual inspection of this place from the submersible first. Maybe we’ll find an entrance we don’t have to swim through.”

“Sounds good to me.” Athanas removed hers and settled on one of the narrow benches in the back of the sub.

“We ready?”

“To explore a sunken mountain range on an alien world? You bet we are!” Lopez replied with enough enthusiasm for everyone to feel.

Dane nodded, took the controls of the sub, and they departed.

First, he dove toward the seafloor. They had sonar to check their perimeter, but if they were near the bottom, it would eliminate one direction that a Loch Ness monster thing could attack from. He descended until they were a few meters above the oddly colored, coral-like structures, then started forward.

Down toward the bottom felt even more like an alien world than near the surface. The coral provided a habitat for all manner of things. There were a good number of plated fish and yet more variations of crustacean. Things like eight-legged beetles the size of car tires scuttled from one hiding place to another. Smaller shrimp-like organisms poked around on the seafloor with long, delicate arms. Based on their bright colors, they may have been venomous or simply trying to blend in with the technicolored corals.

There were other, simpler organisms too. Things like sea urchins and sea cucumbers crawled around so slowly they hardly appeared to move. Those without spikes often had dangling appendages that had to serve some purpose.

Dane wondered about Stark. He had been concerned about a bacterial infection or exposure to a virus, but maybe he should have worried about venom. The creature that bit Stark looked more reptilian or amphibian than any of these bizarrely colored, boneless denizens of the deep. He told himself Stark’s best shot was them finding something in the facility.

That was easier said than done, though. After the Nessie monster’s attack, Dane felt he had to check every creature he saw.

It turned out the ones he didn’t see posed the biggest problems.

Dane steered them through a narrow gap between two rising mountains and startled something out of hiding. It was big, with too many tentacles and nearly perfect camouflage.

“Hang on!” he shouted as the creature wrapped its arms around the front of the sub and probed for some way inside the armored meal. The submersible started to sink with the tentacle creature’s weight until one of its arms got stuck in the propeller. It let go and swam off.

When it wasn’t actively trying to eat them, it was sort of beautiful and not nearly as large as Dane had assumed. Maybe it wasn’t a predator. It could have only been used to attacking other creatures large enough to eat it. Good for their present situation, but perhaps not great to think about long-term.

“How big do you think the animals on this planet can get?” Robinson inquired, thinking along the same lines as Dane.

“There’s always a bigger fish,” Athanas contended. Despite being inside the submersible, she’d never put her carbine down.

They continued through the choke point and entered a completely different underwater biome. Here, instead of coral, were great masses of plants in all the wrong colors. Towering pillars of purple leaves attached to stalks swayed in the ocean current while along the seafloor, long, narrow blades of something like seagrass battled for dominance.

Dane slightly raised the sub’s elevation to avoid jamming the propeller, though it might have been an unnecessary gesture. The submersible may have looked like something out of a third grader’s imagination, but the powertrain worked, as evidenced by the severed tentacle of the creature that had glommed on to them.

“Oh, wow, what’s that?” Lopez pointed to a patch of the seafloor covered with one type of sea grass. It was more rigid than the other varieties and seemed to be growing in nearly the same direction.

“Are those spines?” Robinson blurted, aghast.

“I think so. It has a face. Do you see it? It’s like a ray but with spines to help it blend in with its environment. I don’t think it’s too much to assume evolution works similarly on this world as it does on Earth. It’s probably been happening for a long while, too.”

“Good thing I brought us higher,” Dane muttered. He could make out the rough outline of the buried creature. Although it was about the size of the submersible and not likely to think they were food, it only needed to puncture a hole to cause serious problems.

“Dr. Alvarez will need to know about all this,” Lopez mentioned. “I know scientists anticipated life here, but to find things at this level…it’s breathtaking.”

Dane breathed fine until they passed through another gap between mountains.

Again, they’d passed into a different biome, though this one lacked the grandiosity of the other two. It looked, in a word, mowed. The seaweeds and grasses had been scraped away, and without them, there was little reason for any aquatic creatures to call this place home.

The source of this biomatter reduction was clear. Directly ahead of them, alone and unattached to any other mountains, stood a volcano that had been transformed into the Russian base. The cone shape had been augmented with sections of sturdy hull plating here and there. A few windows could be seen, and the top of the volcano was completely surrounded by windows and capped.

“Why would anyone want to live inside a volcano? Are they supervillains or something?” Robinson queried.

Lopez offered an explanation. “The igneous rock would resist weathering and provide a natural defense against the corrosive properties of the ocean. Plus, the hotspot is a long way off from here, so that’s not a factor. They could construct a much larger base with a lot less material this way.”

“Everyone keep your eyes open and check for signs of movement, but we should assume they’ve spotted us. If anyone is in there, that is,” Dane announced as he watched for himself. He saw no movement in the windows, no blinking lights. Nothing.

“I’m going to approach. Attempting to hail,” he said and switched on the radio. “Hello. This is George Dane of the Cosmos. We come seeking medical aid and mean you no harm. I repeat, we are in need of help, and come in peace.”

“Couldn’t help saying ‘we come in peace’ on an alien world, huh?” Robinson joked.

Dane didn’t answer, but neither did the Russians. His radio comms stayed dead. That was unusual. During the war, the Russians would at least try to jam comms. It was rare they did nothing at all. Most likely, the base had been abandoned.

Still, he tried hailing them again in their language.

“Wait, you speak Russian?” Lopez asked in shock.

Dane grinned. “Knowing some of the enemy’s language can come in handy.”

“If anyone could speak Nessie, Stark would probably be all right,” Robinson remarked with a somber nod.

“Only if she responded more than the Russians have. Are you getting anything, Colonel?” Athanas asked.

“Nothing. No radio communication. No sonar pings. Has anyone seen any movement in any of the windows?”

Dane’s three passengers answered in the negative. They had seen as little as he had.

He wanted to assume the place was empty, but he’d still be cautious. Better to act as if an attack was imminent and be pleasantly surprised when it wasn’t.

“I’m going to bring us closer to that section of hull plating for a better look.”

Dane slowed the submersible and pointed it toward the Russian base. His pulse quickened, and the familiar buzz of adrenaline entered his system as he approached. A moment ago, he’d been totally fascinated with the life on this planet. Now he couldn’t care less about it.

This whole base could be a trap. They could have set things up to catch anyone trying to break in. Dane tried to push the paranoid thoughts from his head, but it was hard to silence them. The submersible handled differently than a star fighter, yet he still had the sense of moving a craft toward an enemy base. All those fears cultivated through years of war flooded back into his head. He was on an alien world, a hundred and forty-eight years in the future, and somehow he hadn’t escaped the Russians.

“You doing all right, chief?” Athanas placed a hand on his shoulder and brought him back to the present.

“Fine. Yeah. I guess I don’t know if I want this base to be empty or not.”

“I don’t think you need to worry about that,” Lopez commented. “Look at the hull. Do you see all those things on it?”

Dane did. Tons of hard-bodied creatures speckled the hull. He didn’t see anything like the corals from the previous valley, but these looked more tenacious. Most had shells like oysters or clams and appeared quite at home.

“Alienacles,” Robinson suggested.

“What?”

“Alien barnacles?”

“That is not what that sounds like!”

Lopez pointed slightly ahead. “Look over there. Even more of them.” Around the bend of the volcano, the dull-colored alienacles almost completely covered a section of plating.

“Seems like a hazard to let those things set up shop,” Athanas remarked.

Lopez agreed. “Oh, that’s definitely a hazard. Left alone long enough, they’ll ruin the plating. I think it’s safe to say if someone lived inside, they’d occasionally come out and clean those off.”

“Look, an airlock!” Robinson pointed out.

Dane hardly recognized it as such. It was corroded around the edges and overgrown with alienacles. He assumed if people still occupied this base, they would prioritize cleaning the airlocks. The mounting evidence indicating the base was abandoned made him feel less on edge. Logically, the Russians being gone represented a larger problem, yet he felt palpable relief. He did not want to face that enemy again. He came to this world for a new start, not to open up old wounds.

“Going in for a closer look,” Dane reported. “Let’s suit up, just in case.”

He hadn’t needed to give the order. Athanas had already donned her flippers and stood on the ladder near the hatch. They couldn’t let her out without surfacing, but if they were attacked, she’d be ready to fight back if there was a breach. Robinson noticed her and hastily pulled on his flippers too.

Up close, the airlock looked worse. Alienacles stuffed the crevice between the frame and the door. It would not be easy to open.

“Looks like we’ll need another way in.”

“I could cut through that in a pinch.” Lopez patted her tool bag. “We wouldn’t be able to close it behind us, though. So probably not our best bet, assuming it’s not flooded in there.”

“Let’s loop the place, then make our decision,” Dane suggested.

They continued circumnavigating the base and made it about halfway around before Robinson pointed through the submersible dome to something high above them.

“It’s a moon pool!”

“What?” Athanas asked.

“You see that overhang?” Robinson gestured. As they rounded the volcano, it became difficult not to see the overhang. It was artificial and stuck out fifty meters from the volcano like a giant metal clam tacked onto the side.

“We see it.” Athanas sounded unimpressed.

“It’s got to be a moon pool!”

“You keep saying that, and I keep not knowing what it means,” Athanas grumbled.

“It looks like it has an opening in the bottom,” Lopez said.

“Exactly! It’s a place for submersibles to surface. Or people in wetsuits, I suppose. The pressure of the air inside the room keeps the ocean from flooding inside.”

“So you’re saying if there’s air in there—”

“Then the atmosphere of the base is intact!” Robinson finished.

Dane took them up.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The sub surfaced in the moon pool, not that they could tell. The room was almost completely dark. Only a few tiny porthole windows on the sides let in the blueish light of the ocean.

“It’s lucky this thing is still accessible,” Dane proclaimed. “Let’s take a look from the top of the sub without the distortion of this bubble.”

Athanas opened the hatch and climbed out onto the vessel. Dane followed her, then Robinson, and Lopez emerged last.

The pool itself was larger than the sub and surrounded by a walkway, a few meters in width. A much larger open area stood toward the volcano. Beyond the general layout of the place, they couldn’t see a thing.

“Flashlights,” Dane ordered, and four bright lights ignited in the gloomy room.

Nothing immediately jumped out. No Russians lying in wait, no alien creature sitting atop a clutch of eggs. Not much of anything.

“Looks like we got one door in.” Athanas’ light hovered on the entrance. Dane’s stomach twisted at the damage to the door. It wasn’t ripped from the wall, but one of the hinges looked mangled.

“Are those spent casings?” Robinson shone his light on the floor, and Dane grimaced. Spent casings were not a good sign. He didn’t think it paranoid to assume the Russians had not been on a hunting trip inside their moon pool room.

He scanned the walls and found marks where bullets had impacted.

“At least they built this place to withstand gunfire,” he muttered, though the words didn’t inspire a rush of confidence. He cleared his throat and called out loudly in Russian, “Is anyone there?”

The only voice he heard was his own echoing back at him.

“Cover me. I want to take a look at these casings.”

Athanas raised her carbine in the empty room. No targets presented themselves.

Dane walked to the end of the submersible, then jumped the short distance across the open water of the moon pool. He landed with an echoing thud. He scanned the room through his helmet, hoping the HUD would identify anything he could not see.

When nothing moved, Dane paced forward, knelt, and picked up one of the casings. It was brass, and even through his gloves, he could feel it was badly corroded.

“Lopez, can you get a reading on the air in here?” Dane asked.

“Yes sir, already working on it…” She fiddled with something on her envirosuit. “Says here it’s definitely breathable.”

“That doesn’t add up.” Dane examined the casing. The air in the facility should have gone stale long before the casing corroded, yet it hadn’t. Either the Russians hadn’t been gone that long, or they’d left the power on. However, so far, there was no indication of that.

“What do you want us to do, sir?” Athanas inquired when Dane didn’t immediately give orders.

“We haven’t encountered any hostiles, so we explore the base, as the captain ordered. I’ll cover the water while you two exit the sub. Lopez, lock it up.”

Athanas jumped onto the deck while Lopez secured their vehicle. Nothing came for either of them, so Dane left Athanas and Robinson to help Lopez unload her tools while he looked at the heavy steel door.

It was still mostly in place, but considering the size of the door, “mostly” was not comforting. There was no evidence of explosives or a plasma torch. It almost looked like someone had taken a crowbar to the hinge.

“This is all insane,” Dane muttered, recalling the captain’s prognosis of the entire planet.

He glanced around the room. Robinson and Athanas performed a sweep while Lopez approached him, tool bag in one hand and wheeled power supply pulled by the other. He tried to fathom what could pry this entrance open. The door’s thickness gave him only one answer. Nothing. No human had that kind of strength, and most crowbars would give out before a door this big would.

He supposed heavy machinery was plausible, but that hypothesis only created more questions. If the Russians were attacked, who attacked them? If one of them had turned against the rest, what had happened to him? He could go on. The questions were endless, while the answers were nonexistent.

“All clear, sir!” Athanas announced over their radios.

“Me too,” Robinson added, not over comms but into the air of the room.

“Robinson, what in the hell are you doing?” Dane demanded.

“Confirming that the room is clear?” Robinson’s helmet was clipped to his belt almost as an afterthought.

“I meant, why the hell did you take your helmet off?”

“Oh! Well, modern regulations say policing should be done without a helmet as much as possible. This makes it harder to dehumanize the officer and shows we’re members of our community as much as protectors of it.”

“We’re not policing the goddamn inner city. We’re in an underwater Russian base on an alien world!”

“I, um…well, that is true. But see, the envirosuit said the air was fine, and I guess my training sort of kicked in?”

“This is wildly irresponsible, especially after what happened to Stark!” Dane shouted. “You were told during the briefing to keep your suit and helmet on, damn it.”

“It might be for the best, though.” Lopez spoke through the radio in her helmet, thank God.

“How is Robinson choking to death on an alien virus a good thing? I mean, besides the obvious that at least we won’t have to deal with Robinson anymore,” Athanas quipped.

“Get a time stamp. We should know if there are any dangerous pathogens in here within twenty-four to seventy-two hours.”

“Something dangerous? I can put my helmet back on.”

“Too late now,” Lopez disclosed cheerily. “If there’s a virus, you’ve already been exposed.”

“I don’t want to be exposed…”

“There’s probably not, though,” Lopez continued. “This base had to take time to build. If the air in here is still breathable—and Robinson, you’ve proven beyond a doubt that it is—it stands to reason they engineered a system to keep them safe inside.”

“You really think so?” Robinson asked. He was scared now.

“I mean, it could have been contaminated in the time since, I guess. I’d put it at fifty-fifty.”

“So, should I put my helmet back on?”

“Considering you haven’t done so yet makes me inclined to say no. You really have no space experience, kid? The helmet makes you that uncomfortable?” Dane asked.

“Dropping in through the atmosphere was only my second time in space. Well, technically the end of my first time, I guess. I only came up to the Cosmos to be put into the sleeping pod.”

“We should have done all our practice in helmets,” Athanas grunted.

“I thought practicing with the HUD would be enough. I didn’t realize that…never mind. I want you at your most comfortable, Robinson. If you feel uncomfortable enough in a helmet to take it off, might as well leave it off. At this rate, we’ll have enough biometric data for Thorson to recommend moving down sooner rather than later.”

“Wonderful,” Robinson said, though the word was forced.

“Any ideas how to get through this?” Dane gestured at the mostly intact door. The crack around it was perhaps six inches at its widest. Not too useful for them.

“Let me take a look at it,” Lopez approached and ran a finger along the edge. “That’s funny…it’s almost like it’s rusted.”

Dane didn’t see what she meant, as there was no discoloration. Rust examination was not part of his job, though.

“Is that a problem?” Athanas asked.

“Not for me!” Lopez reached into her tool bag and came out with a handheld plasma cutter. In less than a wink, she had it connected to her portable power supply. “If no one has any objections, let’s pop this thing open and see what’s on the other side, eh?”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Lopez’s tool looked more than adequate for the job, but it was immediately clear it would take time. Dane wanted to use that time to examine this room more. “Robinson, watch my back while I have a look around. Athanas—”

“Be ready in case something’s on the other side.”

“Precisely,” Dane agreed, pleased to have someone so experienced with him on this mission.

There weren’t any cracks or crevices to check, so Dane tried to evaluate the structure itself. The windows were small and made of thick material. Some had organisms living on the outside, but in general, they were comparatively free of life. Dane wondered if it was because the organisms had no experience with glass. Maybe they could tell it was transparent and thus not a suitable surface. Whatever the reason, the windows were mostly clear.

Outside, the cleared-out space around the volcano was visible. More organisms had entered the surrounding water as well. Not as many as either of the previous underwater valleys, but more than when they’d been out there. They must have hidden from the sub, afraid of the large, strange swimming thing in their waters. That implies a decent amount of predators in this world, doesn’t it?

Dane turned his attention from the windows to the walls. They were remarkably clean, free of grime or salt deposits. Though he realized he didn’t actually know if the oceans of this world were salty like the ones on Earth. A question for Carlos, but irrelevant until they could take off their envirosuits.

He ran a finger along a wall, feeling the rough steel until he reached a seam between one panel and the next. No moisture pushed through the seam. Perhaps there was more benefit to building inside a volcano than he’d realized. The Russians must have affixed this paneling to the cooled stone itself, leaving no gap for water. Dane had to admit it was an elegant solution.

The construction of the place lent no clues as to why it was abandoned. The idea that perhaps they’d simply run out of supplies or completed their mission and headed home formed a tantalizing theory. It would explain so much, including the warning. The Russians wouldn’t leave their toys around for the ADN or anyone else to find. Maybe they only wanted to scare us.

He approached the moon pool and ran a hand across the steel ringing it. Here, it was so rough he could feel the grain of it through his glove.

“Now that’s odd,” he murmured, not activating his radio. Steel was supposed to be smooth. Even burnished, it felt smooth to the touch. Yet this floor was pockmarked like brick, rock, or anything but steel. Lopez’s comment about rust made more sense to him now. Could water have gotten in here and caused this? It seemed unlikely, but what else would cover the entire floor?

It was indeed the entire floor. Now that Dane was looking for it, it appeared the whole room had been scrubbed with the world’s most powerful toothpaste. No rust, though, which made him doubt it was the sea water.

“I’m almost through,” Lopez announced over the comms. Dane ended his fruitless search and returned to the heavy iron door.

“Any second now.” The transparent shield on the front of Lopez’s helmet had darkened to protect her from the plasma torch’s light. “It should fall toward us.”

Dane took her not-so-subtle hint and got out of the way to avoid being crushed.

Lopez continued to work, cutting through what was left of the top hinge until the door’s weight took over and tore the last tiny metal strip asunder with a piercing shriek.

The door fell toward Dane and struck the ground with a loud bang. It shook the floor so hard that the water in the moon pool rippled. More importantly, Dane heard it echoing off the unseen halls of the Russian base. If someone was somehow still in there and had not heard them yet, that was no longer the case.

“Wow. Maybe I should have tried the doorbell?” Lopez asked. At that moment, it was clear that Athanas, Dane, and even Robinson were trained for combat situations while Lopez was not. The three of them had their weapons in hand and swiveled their heads in all directions, looking for fresh threats. Lopez simply stared down the newly revealed hallway as if expecting a package to be delivered.

There was some light in there. One was mounted above the door in the entrance. It cast a harsh glow that illuminated the immediate area but made it hard to see farther. There might have been another flickering light down the corridor, but it could have been Dane’s HUD trying to adjust to the unusual lighting conditions.

“Athanas, I want you on point. Robinson, keep an eye out behind us, but we should be clear.”

“Unless some freaky alien comes crawling through the moon pool!” Robinson announced. Now that he hadn’t coughed himself to death after being exposed to the air, he seemed to have regained his optimism.

“Right. That’s going to be your job. To protect us from hungry aliens.”

“To protect and to serve!” Robinson blathered, undeterred. Dane appreciated his buoyancy, given the surroundings.

“Lopez, I can help you with the power supply.”

“I appreciate the offer, but I can handle it,” Lopez insisted. “I’d rather work up a sweat and have your hands free to shoot Robinson’s amphibian if it’s all the same to you.”

“Robinson’s amphibian! I like the sound of that. You think I can get one named after me?”

“If you get eaten by something, I promise I’ll name it after you,” Athanas put in.

Dane smirked. “If Lopez is good, I’ll go left, and you go right.”

“Yes, sir,” Athanas said.

They entered the Russian complex.

The hallway only went a short way before branching to the right and left. The flat wall panels had been placed at slight angles to one another, so the corridor curved.

“It’s following the curvature of the volcano,” Dane pointed out.

They proceeded, the only sound the echo of their footsteps. Most of the lights were out, though not all of them. The base had some level of emergency power. That also explained why Robinson could breathe.

Before long, they reached a spiral staircase leading both up and down.

“Which way?” Athanas pointed her beam first up, then down the winding stairs.

“I think we should go down,” Dane replied.

“Down? Seriously, have you never seen a horror movie?” Robinson gulped.

“Don’t they always go upstairs in horror movies?” Lopez asked.

“Well, yeah, but obviously, the rules are flipped in underwater bases.”

“Sure. Obviously.” Athanas snorted. Dane wasn’t looking at her, but he could practically hear her rolling her eyes.

“I’m guessing whatever powers this place is at the bottom.”

“Could be water turbines running on the ocean,” Robinson suggested.

“We would have seen those,” Lopez pointed out.

“My guess, knowing the Russians, is there’s a nuclear reactor down there. If it’s in good working order, that could be a real boon for us. If not, this entire region of the planet may be a ticking time bomb,” Dane posited. “Either way, we need to find out.”

“Our envirosuits have built-in radiation detection,” Lopez explained. “It’s designed for solar flares, but they’ll let us know if it’s dangerous.”

“Good to know,” Robinson said.

Dane descended the spiral stairs.

They hit a landing not far down. A sealed door waited there, but it wasn’t electronically locked. They were able to operate the handle and open it. It had obviously been designed to protect each individual level from flooding if the one above or below was breached. Unlocked for safety. They shut the door and continued down the steps.

The next level had no power at all. Again, they didn’t stop to explore the pitch-black, uninviting floor. The level below was also dark, though the one under that had more lights. The hum of machinery still at work came from that floor.

“Seems like this level is critical infrastructure. Assuming the power supply is safe, checking back here will be a priority. It could have medical supplies.”

They continued down. The level below also hummed with electricity, but there was a faint bad smell, according to Robinson.

“It’s like a salad bar gone bad,” he reported. “Or maybe an old aquarium? Whatever it is, it’s faint. I can barely smell it.”

“It’s probably their hydroponics,” Lopez put forth.

The next level was the bottom, or at least the last floor accessible by the staircase. Dane couldn’t describe exactly why, but it felt underground as opposed to underwater. That made him uneasy, which was perhaps counterintuitive. The ocean would not flood in down here. More like they’d be buried by rock.

“Still no radiation levels,” Lopez announced.

“Or any people,” Robertson observed.

It was true. They hadn’t seen a single person, nor any sign of them. Dane kept expecting to encounter blood spatter, a body, or something. Yet there was nothing. Whatever happened here, the Russians must have had time to evacuate.

“Maybe they’re all hiding behind door number five,” Athanas quipped, training her gun on the door at the bottom of the staircase.

“Only one way to find out. Lopez, open the door. Athanas, go right, and I’ll go left. Robinson, cover us.”

They all acknowledged, and Lopez got to work spinning the lock on the door. She shoved it open, and Dane raced into the dark room. It was so vast that the beam from his light didn’t reach all the way across. His HUD tried to identify threats but found nothing.

“Damn it!” Athanas shouted and crashed to the ground.

“Athanas!” Robinson cried as he raced to her side.

“It’s okay. I hit my damn shin,” Athanas grumbled.

Dane kept scanning the room while Athanas got back to her feet. It was as empty as the rest of the station. His light traveled across it and occasionally picked out large pieces of machinery. There were no people. No bodies. No sign of life or death.

A loud clang sounded behind them. Dane whipped around and raised his weapon as a bank of lights on the ceiling turned on.

Light flooded the room and illuminated Lopez standing next to a large toggle, grinning.

“I found the light switch,” she said.

“Check the room and the corners,” Dane ordered. There were a lot of them. The room had to take up the entire base of the volcano. Perhaps it even extended beyond it, underground. Various workstations and machinery dotted the area.

They fanned out, looking behind long steel tables, around large machines of indeterminate purpose, and along the edges of the wide room.

No Russians. No aliens. Not a damn thing.

“I got something here,” Robinson called out.

Dane hurried over, wishing he could wipe the sweat from his brow as he did. It was warmer here than in the rest of the base.

The source of Robinson’s concern was immediately clear. A bank of what looked like computers had been trashed. Ripped apart like candy bar wrappers. The source of their destruction was nowhere to be seen, however.

“Good find, Robinson. Let’s finish our sweep first.”

They did but found nothing. Well, no people. Lopez did discover the source of the power. In the center of the room sat the largest of the machines. When Lopez got near it, she could not tear her gaze away.

“It’s a turbine built to use geothermal energy. They must have bored a hole toward the magma and used the super-heated water to power this place. It’s ingenious, really.”

“Ingenious that they tried to start a new volcano?” Athanas asked.

“If anything, this makes the area safer,” Lopez countered. “With the heat continually vented, no pressure can build up. Or shouldn’t build up, I guess. Whatever happened here, it doesn’t look like the turbine was the source. I think it’s still running. I have no idea why everything is so dark on the other levels, though.”

“We have an answer for that.” Dane led Lopez to the bank of destroyed electronics.

“Ah.” Lopez sounded more curious than anything when confronted with the damaged equipment. “That is definitely going to cause some problems. Although…” She trailed off and poked around inside the machinery. “Considering how damaged this is, but the emergency systems are still running, there’s got to be a backup control center somewhere.”

“You think you can get this place operational again?” Dane asked.

“Not right now. My toolbox is only so big. With some of the equipment from the Cosmos, I bet we could get everything running again.” She poked around more, then whooped in delight when she stuck two wires together and made sparks fly. “In the meantime, I think I got the lights back on!”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The abandoned base wasn’t any less creepy when flooded with bright light, but at least some of their questions were answered. Dane could read enough Russian to translate the signs.

“Uh…food source?” he hedged when they went up one floor to the stinky level.

“Sounds about right,” Lopez pushed open a door and revealed a room filled with the smell of decay, though the room itself was empty of life. There were tanks and pumps but no plants. Dane, Athanas, and Robinson were still on high alert, but Lopez’s engineering curiosity had surpassed any trepidation. “This must have been their hydroponic system. Looks like it’s in pretty decent shape.”

“Decent shape? It smells like the giant’s armpit from Jack and the Beanstalk,” Robinson muttered, a hand to his nose.

“If you hadn’t taken off your helmet, you wouldn’t smell it at all,” Athanas pointed out.

That was enough for Robinson to put his helmet back on, but he only left it for a moment before removing it again. “The smell got in there already. Can we keep moving?”

Almost the entirety of that level was devoted to hydroponics. A few office rooms were crowded with half-repaired pumps, lights, and tubing. What they didn’t find were seeds or plant matter of any kind.

The strange humming they’d heard on the level above proved to be refrigeration units in a medical facility.

“Everyone fan out and look for something that can help Stark.”

“How do we know what can help him?” Robinson asked.

“I’m sending a list of the antibiotics we already have to your HUD.”

“What the hell is this scribble? Are these even letters?” Robinson griped.

“They’re in Russian,” Athanas droned, and Robinson reddened.

“If you find anything that doesn’t match, grab it. That means it’s likely something they manufactured locally.”

They spent a good amount of time looking through rows and rows of refrigerated vials, but everything they found, they already had on record. Lopez found something that looked novel, but there was only a tiny bit, and the sample was far in the back of a fridge.

“Sorry, sir. Nothing for Stark we don’t already have.”

“That’s probably a good thing,” Dane contended. “It likely means the antibiotics they brought with them worked well enough. We’ll take one of each on our way out, but leave them in here for now, so they stay cold.”

The next level, third from the bottom, had some amenities. A gym, a cafeteria, more workspaces. All of it abandoned but clean. Empty but immaculate.

The level above that contained housing. Rows and rows of apartments filled the entire floor, broken up by a school and what looked like a children’s play area.

“Was that in use, do you think, or only wishful thinking?” Athanas wondered.

“I don’t know, but I’m sure Ginger Alvarez will be pleased to see there’s somewhere for her daughter to play,” Dane replied.

The next level up held more housing, though some of the rooms had been transformed into workshops. Dane got the sense that the Russians had been here for a while. Why had they left in such a hurry? Could they have seen the Cosmos coming and abandoned their base? Why would they?

It was bizarre to find such a large place so empty. Everywhere they looked, they found no sign of people. The only indication any of the facility had been used was the odd corrosion in some places as if someone had hired the universe’s most intense maids before they left the base.

The level above that was where they’d come in. In addition to the moon pool, there were various workshops and a sort of garage connected to the pool with an airlock large enough to let subs in and out for repairs. Dane had no idea what the door looked like on the outside, but he wasn’t about to open it. Some alienacle might jam it and flood the entire place.

At last, they found the command center.

“Oh. Oh, wow.” Athanas peered up into the room. It was positioned at the apex of the volcano, with windows easily ten meters tall and a third as wide all the way around. Another window capped the roof above them. Light filtered through the ocean poured in, making the space feel like a room where Poseidon or Aquaman might conduct meetings.

“I haven’t seen this material before.” Lopez rested a hand on another bank of windows that circled the base of the room like an aquarium. Those windows alone would have been impressive. Coupled with the taller windows above, they gave the space a dreamy, open feel.

“Looks strong,” Robinson remarked, asserting the obvious.

“I wonder if they manufactured it here and engineered it specifically to resist the ocean and the corrosion we keep seeing,” Lopez mused.

“Didn’t they manufacture all this here?” Athanas inquired.

“Definitely not,” Lopez mused as she walked along one of the lower windows and ran her hand across it.

“You’re going to have to explain yourself,” Dane commented.

“I mean, look at this room.” Lopez gestured to various workstations around them.

Dane realized that not only had they failed to clear the room, but he’d been paying entirely too much attention to the windows. Now, he was suddenly aware of how familiar the room felt.

“It’s like the bridge of the Cosmos,” Robinson professed, echoing Dane’s thoughts.

“I think it is the bridge from a ship like the Cosmos.” Athanas settled into a workstation with controls suited for maneuvering a spaceship, not controlling a building.

“I’m pretty sure it is,” Lopez agreed. “In fact, I think this entire base is made of whatever ship they used to get here, with the exception of the windows.”

“Maybe that’s why we didn’t see any evidence of the ship in orbit?” Dane asked.

She nodded. “I think it’s all down here.”

“Where did they go, then?” Athanas challenged.

Dane had no more answer than anyone else. He approached the commander’s station, or what would be the commander’s station if this were a ship in space. It was in the center of the room and seemed to incorporate truncated control panels from the other nearby stations.

He fiddled with the computer systems, but they were all dead. The consoles here looked beat up but not as badly damaged as those downstairs. With luck, they could get the things operational again. Somewhere in this place, a powered radio sent out a signal. He wanted to find that and their logs. “Hey, Lopez, do you think you can get this station working?”

Lopez answered with a scream.

Cursing himself, Dane leapt to his feet, carbine in hand, and raced toward Lopez.

She was on the ground, tangled in something that was definitely not a Russian.

He wanted to shoot, but he couldn’t. Not with whatever the thing was on top of her. And what a thing. It was bright orange, covered in spines, and seemed to be made entirely of tentacles. Lopez convulsed underneath it, no longer screaming but…laughing?

“It’s okay! I’m totally okay. Whatever this thing is, it’s dead.” She shoved it off and stood. Her suit wasn’t torn. She wasn’t bleeding and had no exposed skin. She seemed fine, though Dane was mostly relieved her suit remained undamaged.

They all came to stand around the thing.

“So, it’s like an alien starfish or something?” Robinson asked.

“With too many legs,” Athanas observed.

“Big, too,” Dane added. It was about a meter across from the tip of one arm or tentacle, whatever you called it, to the other side.

“Fascinating!” Lopez whipped a large plastic bag out of her tool kit.

“What the hell is that for?” Dane blurted.

Lopez answered with a look before she started to gently bag the alien sea star.

“You want…sushi?” Robinson guessed.

“I want to take a specimen!” Lopez enthused. “We need to learn as much about this world as we can. This is a great chance to get a sample without having to kill a local.”

“That’s fine, but if it moves, we destroy it. Keeping everyone safe is a higher priority than cataloging whatever that thing is right now,” Dane insisted.

Lopez finished bagging it up while Robinson, Dane, and Athanas properly swept the room. It was clear, save for the dead creature in the bag.

Dane returned to the command center. “Do you think you can get this thing running?” he asked again.

Lopez came over, fiddled with some controls, then shook her head. “I don’t think so. Not without redirecting the power.”

“Damn. I was hoping we could pull their logs, maybe find out what happened here,” Dane expressed.

“The base has power, so I think we can get these computers working again. It’s gonna take some elbow grease. Although…” She whipped out some tools and unscrewed the front panel of the console while Dane looked on, amused. When she found whatever she was looking for inside, she ran a cable from her tablet to the console. After a few minutes of fiddling, she beamed.

“Found a hard drive and yanked all the files I could.”

“Excellent! What does it say about what happened?”

Lopez operated some controls and frowned. “It’s encrypted. I don’t have the processing power to crack it.”

“The Cosmos can, though.”

“Even the mainframe on the ship will take a long time to decrypt this. I’m pretty sure we’re looking at military-grade encryption here. Which means we’ll need to be careful,” Lopez asserted.

“Viruses and such?” Dane questioned.

“Got it in one! You do know your way around computers, after all.”

Dane laughed. “Not as much as you’d think. The Russians used to leave malware on encrypted devices during the war, hoping we’d get careless. So, of course we’ll need to be cautious.”

Yet, he couldn’t help but think the intel in this base’s logs might be critical to their survival. The Russians ran into some sort of trouble here. The more info they could obtain about the previous operations in this base, the safer he would feel.

Dane looked around the space, trying to picture the base as a whole. He had no idea what happened here, but he could not deny the utility of the place. It was more than large enough and had all the facilities they would need. He didn’t know why the Russians had abandoned it, but surely the encrypted data would tell them something.

The simple fact was they’d come to this world ready for land but found none. The Russians had already solved this problem, though. They had found a way to live on this planet.

It was time to call the captain and make his recommendations.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

It had only been three weeks, and Dane already felt at home in his new quarters. Well, maybe home wasn’t the right word, considering his room’s window looked through the stone wall of a volcano and into an alien sea. Perhaps comfortable was more accurate. The room was more spacious than any spacecraft quarters Dane had ever served on, plus the construction itself was fascinating. Three walls of a material that would have been happy in space, plus a fourth wall made of raw volcano stone. That wall held the window.

Dane had already checked outside the base and knew the effect was more of an illusion. This entire section of the undersea volcano was plated on the outside. Despite the natural-looking interior, a sealed wall stood between Dane and the pressure of the sea.

Not everyone had accommodations this nice, but with over half the colonists from the Cosmos already living down here, that was to be expected. The Russian base was huge. Dane suspected they’d built it large enough to grow into, which meant plenty of available room for people. They still kept entire sections in the dark simply because they weren’t yet needed. People preferred to live near other people, even if that meant slightly smaller rooms without windows into the ocean.

Dane wondered if people were being superstitious at first, but he didn’t think so. There were no rumors of ghosts, spooky incidents, or anything like that. Which may have been simply because this base was so clean. They hadn’t found any leftover food. No dust bunnies or tangles of hair under any of the bunks. Hell, not even a dirty toilet. Hard to believe ghosts lived in such an immaculate place.

He checked the log decryption, as he did every morning, and found, like always, that it was nowhere near complete. If there were answers in the logs, they were not revealing themselves anytime soon.

Something bad must have happened to the people who lived here. Why else would they have abandoned the base? Dane had no answers, though. For most of the people of the Cosmos, scientists and engineers with no security background, it simply wasn’t an issue. They needed somewhere to live on this water world, and they’d found a place that was by almost all accounts better than anything they could have possibly built. Plus, by utilizing the base, they kept the Cosmos in orbit. This gave them an undeniable logistical and tactical advantage if the Russians, or anyone else, showed up.

Speaking of accountability, Dane had a meeting to get to. He took a quick shower in the private head that made his room even better and headed upstairs to the command center. Thorson had checked, rechecked, and triple-checked the air in the base and found nothing of concern, so helmets were a thing of the past.

This meant when Dane audibly gasped as he entered the meeting room, everyone noticed. The room never ceased to take his breath away. It was so tall and full of light, and although it narrowed at the top, the roof was transparent glass that appeared to fade away to nothing.

The captain had removed some of the obsolete Russian command consoles and installed a large table identical to the one on the Cosmos. One of many gestures meant to make this place feel more like their own.

“Pretty, isn’t it?” Nat’s spiderweb-tattooed elbows rested on the table. She didn’t seem to find anything out of place about Dane gasping and agreed the room deserved their attention.

Dane grunted noncommittally and found a chair.

After the last of the team leads trickled in and took seats, Adams clasped her hands behind her back and stood at her customary spot at the round table.

“Week four begins today. We have three hundred and forty-two people already living down here. Those above are in the process of reviving the rest. Tell me why I can bring more people down. Power report first.”

“Electrical generation is consistent and working well,” Nat informed them. She’d grown less nervous now that she knew everyone, and they had all seen her work technical wonders. “The turbine is in great shape. We’ve lubricated it a bit, only so we could have a reason to take a better look at it.

“The biggest problem was damaged consoles, but we had components on the Cosmos. They continue to work well. There may be power issues in the long term if we continue to make subs. As it is, we have a single hydrogen fuel processing unit. We’ll want to scale that up, but it’s nothing we can’t handle. Better yet, we’ve explored the machine shop down there and determined that it’s a custom job for this base. We can manufacture and replace any of the hardware, though there are power restraints to consider.”

“The door in the moon pool room?”

“Already fabricated. I have a team working on installing it this week.”

“That’s faster than you projected,” the captain approved.

“Should someone bake me some cookies? Maybe they should,” Nat suggested.

“All good news. Next up, I want to know about our food supply. I’m sure most of you have had the pleasure of meeting Dr. Richard Bryson. Dr. Bryson is our chief botanist and, therefore, our de facto head of food production.”

Bryson stood and waved politely. He had a weathered face, a salt-and-pepper goatee, and hair that looked like it had been through a windstorm.

“Food production is ramping up,” Bryson enthused. He seemed to enjoy delivering good news, as opposed to Nat, who simply reported it. “We have about a year of stored food aboard the Cosmos, but of course we’d like to get fresh food in our diet and keep the non-perishable stuff for emergencies if possible. We have refurbished the hydroponics level of the base and begun planting the ship’s stores. We’re still working in fairly small batches of succession plantings, but the seedlings we have are doing well. Don’t tell the crew, but I might be able to produce our first salad of microgreens within a month or so.”

Scattered applause met the announcement. The ship’s stored food was fine, but hundred-and-fifty-year-old green beans, rice, and tofu didn’t compare to fresh greens.

“Captain, if I may cut in—”

“Not now, Alvarez,” the captain rebuked the scientist. He was practically bouncing in his seat with excitement. “Dr. Bryson, as you were saying.”

“We still haven’t found any Russian seeds and no evidence of any plant remains. I pride myself on being thorough when it comes to cleaning, but that is remarkable. There’s always some debris left behind.”

“Is that a problem?” the captain questioned.

“If anything, it’s a boon,” Bryson replied. “If a virus wiped out the plants or drove the Russians to abandon this base, it could have lingered in organic debris. As it is, there’s no debris to linger in. Curious, though. Very curious.”

“If it’s a disease, I don’t think we need to worry too much.” Thorson’s ice-blue eyes sparkled.

“No new illnesses, then?” the captain asked.

“No, ma’am,” Thorson did not stand, but his posture looked as hard as his icy glare. “Only two serious injuries. Stark’s bite is healing well, and I’ve given him permission to walk on it, though I don’t want him in a wetsuit yet.”

“The infection?”

“Gone. It was spreading fast, but it responded well to the antibiotics we brought. Most of the bacteria and viruses we’ve found are at least physically similar to what we have on Earth. I am still advising people to wear full wetsuits and decontaminate before reentering the base after being in the water, but we might be able to relax regulations on that soon.”

“That will have to stay even more confidential than the salad news.” The captain smiled wryly. “If people find out they can swim safely, the moon pool will become our most sought-after amenity.”

“I’ll be sure to inform my staff of your concerns,” Thorson intoned. “Our only other injury was a welding incident. Minor enough that the person will be back to work in a few days.”

“Very good. All right, let’s get to—”

“Captain, may I—”

“Oh, very well, Carlos. Don’t pee your pants, all right?”

“Thank you, Captain, and I’ll try. When you all get a load of this, you’ll want to dance as much as me.”

Carlos looked around the table, mustache waggling like a caterpillar. “The fish analogs that live in the coral area. They are edible, and better yet…delicioso!”

While the salad had received scattered applause, the promise of fresh fish drew cheers and pounding on the table.

“We are still narrowing in on species and checking for parasites, but there is one species in particular that is quite good.”

“You hadn’t told me you were actually going to eat one of the fish,” Adams commented. She seemed slightly annoyed, but her excitement and the fact that Carlos wasn’t doubled over with stomach pain softened her temper. “I thought your news was about our little visitor.”

“Yes, Captain, that is undoubtedly a most interesting branch of life!” Carlos bubbled.

“You mean the sea star?” Granger asked. “The one that Haley found?”

Carlos nodded. “I prefer to call it a space star because it’s not much like Earth's sea stars at all. It’s far more complex, biologically speaking. We think its senses are fairly advanced, and it's more robust than a sea star from home. Faster, too. Most interestingly, it can survive out of water for days at a time.”

“Well, that makes sense,” Dane noted. “How else could it have gotten into the control room, right? It must have come in from the moon pool, gotten lost, and wandered around until it died.”

“A good hypothesis,” Carlos agreed. “Though the ability to survive outside the sea for any amount of time implies many things. We have mapped and remapped the entire surface and still found no land at all. Yet the biology of this space star implies being outside the water is a trait worth keeping. Why would this be if there is no land? Our leading hypothesis is perhaps the planet goes through seasonal or super-seasonal climate patterns. If enough ice freezes and accumulates at the poles, some land could emerge from the water. We are running models backward and forward on this as we speak.”

“Can we eat them?” Thorson asked.

“The space stars? No. They have glands along the undersides of their bodies. Not sure of their purpose yet, but it’s probably something muy feo. If you want seafood, it’ll be only fish for a while. They are the most abundant and the most similar to what we can digest. We are also looking at some of the smaller squids if anyone likes ceviche.”

“Fish is fine with me,” Thorson declared.

“Let’s table the lunch talk and move on to security. Dane?”

“I still think our biggest threat is not knowing what happened to the previous colony.”

“Any progress on that front?”

“The logs are nowhere near decrypted, so still no answers there. In the meantime, I’m having security teams run patrols around the base. No signs of Russian subs or boats yet.”

“Ah, but there is so much to see besides Russians!” Carlos remarked.

Dane smiled. One of the research scientists’ nerdy minions often accompanied the security detail on the sub patrols simply so they could observe and take notes. At least they had two submersibles now to switch between for the patrols. After the initial landing, Nat had almost immediately fabricated another clunky-but-powerful underwater vessel. She’d also mentioned she was working on a custom sub that would outperform the cobbled-together crafts they had now.

He launched into his report. “From a security standpoint, there’s not much. We haven’t had any other major predators approach the subs, although we have seen some of those Nessies around.”

“Often in small groups, no?” Carlos asked.

“That’s right. They tend to hunt together, so I think they’re at least somewhat intelligent. My concern is that if they strike at all, they’ll discover we’re a source of food for them. Then we’ll be in real danger.”

The captain raised an eyebrow. “I assume your teams already know this?”

“Yes, ma’am. Everyone is definitely following the don’t-get-bit-like-Stark-did model.”

“Excellent. Well, if there’s nothing else from security, let’s get to mental health with Dr. Alvarez.”

“There is one thing, ma’am,” Dane cut in, feeling bad since Ginger had stood to make her report.

The captain glanced at Ginger, who shrugged and spoke quickly. “The colony’s doing well. We’re at a hundred percent employment, and everyone feels like they belong. If we have community problems, they’re likely to arise later.” Ginger sat back down.

“Dane, your observation?”

“It’s this colony, Captain. I don’t see how such a ship could have left Earth without anyone noticing. It couldn’t have left during the war, which means it had to come later.”

The captain nodded, though she stiffened slightly.

“I’m wondering what Earth has to say about it. I understand we’re a hundred and fifty years away, travel time, but it’s only twelve and a half for our radio. Surely the Russians would have left much earlier to make it here before us. Has the ADN said anything about them?”

“I’m afraid there’s bad news on that front.” The captain drew a deep breath as she slowly appraised the room. “Some of you may be aware we only have transmissions from Earth for the first decade of our journey.”

“Those are the best parts! Our friends back home still look young as we do,” Carlos remarked.

The captain nodded. “Sometime after those transmissions, we think around the year-eleven mark, there was an incident. We are assuming a micrometeor because there’s some speckling on the hull, but we can’t be sure yet. What we are certain of, however, is that something damaged our long-range antenna.”

“You mean we can’t talk to Earth?”

“Wouldn’t that trigger an alarm and wake a tech to repair it?”

“How could we have missed this?”

The captain waited for the questions to stop flying before she spoke.

“We think it was a micrometeor because the only damage we can find is to a single component. The ship thinks the antenna is still recording, but it’s not. If the damage had been more extensive, the failsafes would have been triggered.”

“No one noticed the recordings didn’t get any more modern?” Nat asked.

“That’s a protocol thing. Being awake with only one or two other people while you travel farther away from your home is not easy on the mind,” Ginger explained. From her expression, this particular nugget of information was not news to her, but that made sense. Social services were definitely involved in communication. “We had a system set up for those coming out of their pods to do maintenance. No part of that involved staying abreast of news from Earth. The risk of catastrophic mental breakdown from watching all your loved ones age and seeing world events transpire out of your control was considered too much.”

“Those things happen anyway,” Dane commented, shocked that they hadn’t had communications for such a long time. “International events were always outside people’s control. We’ve all lost friends to old age, or worse.”

“And it is always hard on our psyche. The voyage part of this trip was always going to be the most difficult, mentally speaking. Because of that, we were careful about what people could watch.”

“If they couldn’t watch the news, what was there?”

“Movies, mostly. I know it seems crazy now, but the simple truth is that it worked. We suffered no casualties or mental breakdowns in-flight, with hundreds of people going in and out of suspended animation. By my metrics, it was a huge success.”

“Absolutely,” the captain agreed. “The simple truth remains, though. As far as we know, for the next twenty-five years it takes our messages to travel to Earth and back…we are on our own.”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

After the meeting, Dane headed out for a perimeter check. He was on rotation with his expanded security staff. He looked forward to the days when he was on active patrol. With the Russian intelligence yet to be decoded, there wasn’t much else for the security chief to do besides speculate, and that always felt less than productive. Checking the perimeter had yet to reveal any new threats, but it wasn’t monotonous.

“Oh, Dane, sir. There you are!”

“Well, if it isn’t Haley Lopez, the planet’s first engineer. What are you doing lounging around near the moon pool? Not going for a swim, I hope. Thorson said it’ll be a while before we know if that’s safe.”

“Nothing like that. I was thinking more like a submarine tour.”

“That right?”

“The base is boring, and you know that I love being outdoors!”

“If you come with us, I won’t let you swim around out there for fun.”

“I know that! At least I could get out of here and have a look around, though.”

“Well, I’d love to say yes, but we already have a scientist with us and—”

“Rodrigo got hurt in a welding accident.”

“A welding accident? I thought he was a scientist!”

“He is, but he wanted to see how the newer sub is coming, so he came down to engineering. Got hit by a hot bit of metal. Nothing big, but it’s on his face, so he can’t put on a helmet right now.”

“And you are telling me this because…”

“Because I know these perimeter missions normally have two security people plus a scientist. Since you’re down a scientist, I thought I could come on this one if I asked nicely because you’re the coolest and greatest security chief ever?”

“I don’t know what your sources are, but I haven’t cared about being cool in decades. The age rejuvenation might make me look younger, but it doesn’t make me understand young people any better. However…”

“However, what?” Lopez asked, unable to resist the moment of silence Dane let stretch out.

“However, I can see you really want to go and that you’re more than competent enough for a mission like this. Let me make sure it’s okay with Athanas, but I don’t see why you can’t come.”

“I already checked with her. She’s totally cool with it.”

Dane smirked. He had to admit he was impressed Lopez had gone through all this merely to bum a ride. “Well, come on, then. Let’s get suited up.”

They entered the moon pool room. The heavy door had already been removed, and a temporary one was in place. Athanas stood on a sub, going over a checklist.

“Anything we can help with?” Dane asked.

“You can check the calibration on the spear gun.” Athanas pointed to a device mounted above the transparent dome of the submarine.

“A spear gun? Well, that’s new, but why not something more heavy-duty? We have the firepower.”

“It’s all about the mounting,” Lopez explained. “With too much recoil, you’d rip it right off this material. Even if it stayed attached, the vibrations could cause some of the seals to fail.”

“Remind me never to doubt taking you along again,” Dane commented, and Lopez beamed.

Dane inspected the spear gun. He was surprised to find it was spring-loaded, though when he saw the spears, he understood the advantage. It could only fire once. This way, they could reload if someone could make it out of the sub. It looked to be positioned correctly.

“We’ll have to test it when we’re out there to zero in on the accuracy.”

“Granger’s already got something for that built into our HUD,” Athanas told him.

Dane nodded. He liked working with smart people!

The three of them climbed into the submersible, and they were off.

The kelp-like plants in the area directly around the volcano were starting to grow back. They were nowhere near as thick as in the next valley over, but there was already enough plant cover to lure fish, shrimp, and other aquatic critters to the habitat. That gave Alvarez an easy place to gather samples. Dane saw a pair of researchers in SCUBA gear, fishing. The other sub hovered nearby, keeping watch.

“This is security team Colony One, heading out on routine patrol,” Dane announced into the radio.

“Roger, Colony One. Colony Two has nothing unusual to report. Looks like we’ll have fish dinners sooner rather than later.”

“Stark, is that you?” Dane asked.

“Yes, sir. They let me get back to work as long as I stay out of the water. Got John in here with me, too.”

“Hello, sir.”

“Good to hear, and glad John’s there to keep you out of trouble. A sub needs a pilot, and they could do worse than you.”

“Thank you, sir, but they could do better too. I was reckless back there. I messed up.”

“We all mess up. It happens. Don’t let that stop you from taking immediate action next time, all right?”

“Yes, sir!”

“We’re heading west toward the hotspot. You two been out there yet?”

“No, sir. Let us know what you think,” Stark replied.

They signed off and continued on their way.

Between their base and the hotspot lay a chain of submerged mountains grown when the hot spot had been under their base before the plates shifted. These rocky crags were covered in life. Either coral, seaweed-like plants, or some mix of the two. Brightly colored fish, shrimp, and squid-like creatures zipped around, not oblivious to the submersible but familiar enough with things its size to know what distance to keep. It felt like being dumped in a primordial sea colored by a young child. Every color of the rainbow was represented, and likely many others they couldn’t see from their position.

“You think the whole world is like this?” Athanas asked.

“Every part we’ve seen is. Stands to reason there’s more of the same,” Dane mused.

“It's certainly possible,” Lopez agreed. “Though I think we’re in an area of particular fecundity.”

“Fecundi-what?” Athanas echoed.

“Lots of life. Both in quantity and diversity. The oceans of Earth are mostly empty, but the places where sunlight reaches the bottom are particularly rich because plants can set up shop there. I bet this planet is the same.”

“You think the deeper places are empty?” Dane asked.

“Not empty, but less dense and less diverse. I’m sure there are other microclimates besides depth that can affect the biodiversity we’ve seen so far. If there's an ocean current upwelling, for example, it could create an abundance of filter feeders. Or deep sea hot vents might enable bottom feeders to survive, like on Earth.”

“Do you think the heat from the hotspot makes a difference?” Athanas wondered.

“That’s beyond my expertise!” Lopez laughed. “I’m an armchair naturalist. I’ve probably seen every nature documentary out there, and I’ve gone diving and been on enough hikes to know that stuff is real…or was real.”

“Before the ash, you mean,” Dane suggested.

“That’s one of the reasons I left,” Lopez revealed after a pause. “I know all the scientists said things were already recovering, and we’d dodged the worst effects of climate change with the ash blocking out the sun, but…”

“It was hard for me to see, too,” Athanas sympathized. “Olive trees that had lived for thousands of years got so overloaded with the crap, their branches would break off. My grandfather said they’d be fine, that they’d grow back, but it wasn’t easy to believe that.”

“At least it sounds like the two of you had a choice in the matter,” Dane remarked.

“Oh, come on. Are you really saying National Treasure George Dane got stuck with a one-way ticket?” Lopez joked.

When Athanas didn’t laugh, and Dane only grimaced, Lopez’s grin fell. “Oh shit, really? I didn’t realize! With all the media attention you got, the interviews, the book…heck, the movie was pretty good, too. I figured you’d be able to do whatever you wanted.”

“Maybe that’s true,” Dane allowed. “Except everyone assumed I wanted to run for president, maybe ADN Commander, or Senate at the very least.”

“You didn’t?”

“Not at all. Try telling that to a politician, though. They all care about their own status too damn much. They assume everyone wants to be eels like them, but I didn’t.”

“So they got rid of you?”

“It’s not like anyone put a gun to my head,” Dane replied, not sure how to explain or certain he even wanted to. “I had a lot of choices. There are worse things to have. I picked the one that let me leave most of the rest behind. It just so happened quite a few senators were mighty pleased I made the choice I did.”

“Like a rival silverback pushed from its troop,” Lopez commented.

Dane smiled. “I guess so, yeah. To new jungles!”

“To new horizons! And leaving lousy friends on the last one!”

“Speaking of lousy friends. Aren’t those some of the space stars that got a little too touchy with you, Lopez?” Athanas pointed though the dome toward the side of a mountain below them.

Lopez scooted forward to look down. “Oh my God, that’s totally them!”

“Dang. I’d have thought you’d be more freaked out since one of them jumped you,” Athanas mentioned.

“It was dead,” Lopez said with a shrug.

“Corpses falling on someone tends to freak most people out,” Dane pointed out.

“I’m not most people.” Lopez smirked. “Can you take us in for a closer look?”

“I’m not going to say no to the person who already tangoed with one of them.” Dane took them lower. “Although I do remember you letting out one hell of a scream when it dropped on you!”

Lopez reddened, but she grinned gamely. “You try having something fall out of the dark on you! See how you like it.”

“Hard pass,” Dane replied with a laugh.

He had to admit there was something rather handsome about the creatures. They were bright orange, had a ton of arms, and moved with a strange, undulating grace.

“They’re faster than Earth starfish,” Athanas noted.

“No joke. It almost looks like fast motion watching them go,” Lopez agreed.

“What’s that behind them?” Dane pointed to a swathe of…well, nothing.

“They must have mouths on the bottoms of their bodies. They’re eating as they move,” Lopez theorized.

“Eating what, though?” Dane asked.

“Everything,” Athanas responded.

Indeed, they were. Any plant, crab, or shelled creature in their path did not survive the space stars catching up. Dane watched as a crab tried to scuttle away from one, but an arm grabbed it and pulled it under.

“Did you see that?” Lopez gasped.

“I did. I wonder if Alvarez can get us some crab on the menu,” Dane mused.

“No, the way it ate. After it pulled it under, it vanished. Sea stars on Earth push their stomach outside their bodies to eat. I wonder if these space stars are skipping a step and exuding acid.”

“Acid?”

“They’re moving too fast to mechanically chew or digest their food. What if they use acid to isolate nutrients they need, only instead of internally like we do, they do it outside their bodies?”

“That would mean—”

The sub shook, and Lopez crashed against the front dome. Dane wrestled with the controls and barely managed to keep them from crashing as a sharkosaur came around for another attack!

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

“I’m going to try to bring us around so I can get a shot off,” Dane tried to say, but it came out more like, “Gonna-bring-round-shoot-the-bastard!”

Athanas hauled Lopez to a seat and got her strapped in. She wasn’t bleeding, but she had hit the dome hard enough to knock her senseless. Dane wished he could see the sub’s exterior to check for damage, but now was obviously not the time for that.

“You ready?”

“We’re both strapped in.”

“Then let’s show this long-necked shark wannabe how we do things back on Earth.”

Dane banked hard and brought the sub around. The sharkosaur was quick, though, and followed. Dane didn’t think it was close enough to do damage, but he underestimated its long neck. There came a screeching as its teeth scraped the exterior of the sub.

“That’s not a problem,” Lopez slurred as she regained consciousness.

“Seems like a problem to me!” Dane increased the speed. If he couldn’t outmaneuver Nessie, he could hopefully outrun her in the newer, faster sub.

“The teeth can’t break through this material in one bite. It would take at least two!” Lopez pronounced with the giddy confidence of a drunk.

“I think that’s its plan,” Athanas growled. She had donned flippers and palmed her gun, not that it would do them much good unless they suffered a loss of pressure. The sub was too small for an airlock. If Dane wanted Athanas to fight, he’d have to surface, which seemed unlikely.

Dane looked out the bubble. The sharkosaur pumped its four flippers directly alongside them. It was keeping pace. Outrunning it was not an option.

“Hold tight!” Dane trimmed his speed and turned the sub to intercept the sharkosaur. The creature could have pulled off, which most pilots would have done, but it wasn’t accustomed to fighting this way. Instead of dodging, it increased its speed in front of the sub. Directly into Dane’s crosshairs.

He fired the spear gun, and the weapon shot through the water. Before it hit, the creature arched its long neck and pulled off. Its flippers pumped hard, and it cleared the spear. Dane didn’t think it even knew he’d fired at it. It was only moving through the water the way it normally did, which was decidedly not like a star fighter.

It was also coming around to attack them again.

Dane clicked a switch to release the rope trailing behind the spear. The last thing he wanted was for the creature to use it like a leash to drag the sub around!

“Damn thing must be hungry!” Athanas shouted.

Dane tried to steer them away, but he was far less agile than the creature, despite the sub being smaller. The sharkosaur easily caught up and slammed into the side of the sub. It nearly knocked them off course, but Dane got them moving forward again. Too bad the damn thing had sunk its teeth into one of their fins.

Dane increased the speed, but they weren’t going anywhere. The creature had enormous bite strength. It made Dane realize how lucky they were that Stark had lived.

“What about the sonar? They don’t like that, do they?” Lopez asked. She sounded slightly better. Adrenaline was a powerful drug.

“Hit it!” Dane shouted, and Athanas turned it up to maximum and blasted the sound wave.

It worked. The sharkosaur let go, though it did not retreat. If anything, it looked angry.

Dane didn’t want to find out. Desperate and wanting to live, he pointed the nose of the sub downward and descended.

“Not working, sir! The Nessie is keeping up!”

“For how long, though?” Dane said through gritted teeth. Instead of aiming for the coral and kelp growing on the sides of the underwater mountain, he went directly for a trench between them. Still the creature followed, keeping pace with them, nipping and snapping to test for vulnerable spots on this unknown prey.

Coral clung to the walls of the trench, though in duller colors and fewer varieties. Dane pushed them lower. The sub groaned as the pressure increased, but he saw no other choice. He couldn’t turn back unless he wanted to steer them into its waiting jaws.

They made it nearly two hundred meters down before the creature stopped following them. Dane pushed them a bit lower, aware they were in dangerous territory regarding the sub’s structural integrity, then he stopped. He and Athanas looked up through the dome and saw the creature swimming higher. Its belly was white, and with the sun streaming down from the surface, it was hard to spot. Amazing that such a huge animal could camouflage so well with nothing but the water. Sobering, too. Living with these animals in the oceans would be a constant challenge.

“Why do you think it turned back?” Athanas whispered. Funny how being in the dark and gloom made her lower her voice though there wasn’t a logical reason to do so.

“Ran out of breath?” Dane whispered back.

“No reason to think it breathes air,” Lopez muttered into the space between Dane and Athanas, which made Dane nearly jump out of his skin. He could face down multiple Russian spacecraft, but sneaking around in the dark was different. Star fighters didn’t make noise that carried through space, but they weren’t quiet when one was sitting in the cockpit, either.

“Jesus, don’t do that! You should be strapped in.”

“I’m feeling better.”

“Obviously.”

“We don’t know if they breathe air or not. I didn’t see any gills on it, but who's to say it can’t breathe through its skin?”

“It looks reptilian to me,” Dane offered.

“It does, but Earth reptiles lay their eggs on land, which doesn’t seem possible on this planet. Though, of course, there could be seasonal variations that reveal land.”

“Damn. When you bounce back, you do it well.”

“If it doesn’t breathe air, why can’t it come down here?” Athanas wondered. Still whispering, but then, they all were.

“It’s probably limited by a maximum dive depth. Plenty of creatures live in the water but can’t survive higher pressures.”

That gave Dane pause. “Do a lot of creatures have that? A maximum dive depth?”

“Sure. Like land animals, sea creatures have certain niches. There’s probably stuff down there that can’t come up, either.”

“Do you think the Russians could have gone deeper? You said earlier the mountains might be an unusual part of the planet. What if the Russians went somewhere with less life? Fewer predators to avoid, less stuff to clean.”

“Not a bad plan, really,” Athanas mused. “Could make operations more efficient, not having to deal with all this. The pressure would be an issue, though, wouldn’t it?”

“Not if they never came up. Or they could have pressurized subs. It might make sense if…” Lopez trailed off. Dane looked up, sure the sharkosaur was back, but he didn’t see anything above them.

“Not up.” Athanas pointed through the bottom of the bubble.

It was hard to tell in the gloom. At first, Dane thought he’d misjudged the depth of this trench and was looking at an underwater landslide. The entire floor beneath them seemed to move—creatures, corals, and all. Then he saw the ground undulate the other way and realized he was looking at a thing.

He couldn’t make out any details of the organism itself. Whatever it was, an entire ecosystem of stubby corals, alienacles, and grasping fish clung to its back. It had huge fins on either side, rows and rows of them lost in the gloom before they diminished in any noticeable way. As they watched, the creatures on its back grew clearer.

“It’s coming up,” Athanas warned.

“I say we take our chances with Nessie,” Dane blurted.

“No arguments there!”

“Yes, please!”

Dane pushed the controls, and they rose through the water.

“Sir?”

“What?”

“We’re not going anywhere.”

“Yes, we are!” Dane pointed to the walls of the chasm on either side. Corals raced by as they rose higher. However, he also saw Athanas was right that the “ground” wasn’t getting any farther away from them.

“I think it's following us,” Lopez whimpered.

“Starting to think the Russians did not hide down there!” Dane pushed them higher.

It didn’t take long for Nessie to find them.

The creature dove toward them, long neck slithering back and forth like a snake, flippers propelling it downward.

Then it tried to reverse direction.

Dane pushed the sub as hard as it would go as the water rushed past them.

His engines were better suited for this than Nessie’s flippers, and the beast was sucked past him and into a wall of teeth.

“Come on, come on, let’s go!” Dane shouted.

The mouth closed, chomping the sharkosaur like nothing more than a fish stick, and the massive creature sunk back into the depths.

They kept going, making for the surface with their hearts hammering. “Athanas, assuming the sea floor doesn’t try to eat us, are you comfortable getting outside the sub? I’d like to have that spear gun reloaded, but I’d prefer you and your carbine.”

“Getting soft, sir. My comfort doesn’t have shit to do with what needs to be done.”

“I don’t know. Those two seem to have other plans,” Lopez chimed in.

“Oh, now there’s more?” Dane griped as a pair of comparatively smaller sharkosaurs swam at the sub.

“Strapping in!” Lopez shouted.

“Athanas?”

“Just do it!”

Dane did it.

He pushed the nose of the sub above one of the creatures, then banked. It tried to follow and crashed into the other one. The two sharkosaurs snapped at each other and tried to untangle their long necks. From the way they wrestled and bickered, Dane got the sense they were younger. Juveniles, maybe. Less coordinated, not the greatest team players…but way hungrier than most adults.

Dane headed them toward the base and pushed it fast. “Athanas, I’m going to see if I can tire them out, but there’s a chance we’ll need to surface so you can shoot them.”

“They can reach their heads out of the water! That’s how they got Stark!” Lopez protested.

Athanas said nothing. She only nodded and checked her weapon.

The now-untangled sharkosaurs gained on them. Dane wished he understood the creatures better. Then he might have some reference of whether this was a sprint speed they wouldn’t be able to keep up for long or if they could maintain it all day.

“Sir, they’re getting close,” Athanas pointed out.

“Maybe we can lose them in the coral.” Dane pointed the sub down and headed for the sea floor. The sub cracked delicate branches of corals, shredded others in its propeller, and was jostled this way and that by the strongest of them.

“Anything?” Dane asked.

“They’re better at this than we are!” Athanas remarked, consulting her HUD.

Dane didn’t know what else to do. He couldn’t lose them, couldn’t fight them. Couldn’t hide unless he wanted to get eaten. He saw an open stretch and took it, traveling in the destructive wake of the space stars they had seen earlier.

“Sir! Sir, the creatures! They’re pulling off!”

Dane wasn’t wearing his helmet, so he had no access to the cameras. Plus, he didn’t want to crash. He had to ask Athanas for details.

“They found those space stars, and they’re eating them. They’re chowing down like an American with a cheeseburger and fries!”

“Maybe we should go back and check?” Lopez suggested.

“Hell, no!” Dane and Athanas answered in unison.

“It won’t matter anyway. The space stars are already gone. Nessie and her brother devoured them. There’s nothing left.”

They headed back to base. Dane felt high on adrenaline and life itself. They’d survived. They had been attacked by sea monsters and survived.

“We’ll have to tell Carlos not to bother checking if we can eat the space stars. Looks like the sharkosaurs already have them on the menu!”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

When it became clear the sharkosaurs were not going to chase them, Dane took the sub up to the surface.

“Athanas, I want that spear gun reloaded, then I want you back inside.”

“Sir, if I stay outside, I can do more damage with my carbine.”

“We’re not risking your life like that,” Dane insisted. “The spear gun will have to be enough.”

“Yes, sir.”

They surfaced, so the door was out of the water, but Dane did not slow. They checked and triple-checked for any predators. After not seeing any, Athanas headed to the surface with another spear.

It didn’t take her long to get the weapon in place and crawl back in.

“How did it look out there?” Dane asked.

“Not great, to be honest. The whole sub is scratched up. Nothing too deep, I guess, but the fact those Nessies can scratch it at all kind of freaks me out. Especially now that we know they’re not the top of the food chain. The fin is in bad shape. It will need to be replaced.”

Dane could feel that. He had to steer at a slight angle to compensate for the damage.

“It’s good Nat’s working on a bigger one, but we’re going to have a serious conversation about offensive capabilities,” he stated.

“Can we please?” Athanas implored.

They dove beneath the surface and continued to the base. The other problem with the sub was that it couldn’t contact the base over any serious distance. The mountains and the water got in the way of the radio. They could contact the ship in orbit, but only if there were satellites in position and if the weather allowed. That only worked if the sub was near the surface.

The danger of all this became frightfully apparent when they entered the valley surrounding the volcano base.

“—to base! I repeat, we are on high alert. All personnel return to base immediately. If you are in peril, contact Security Team B in their sub.”

“This is Dane and Team Colony One. Checking in.”

The message repeated once more, then garbled static, and finally, a familiar voice.

“Chief, you’re all right!” It was Good.

“I told you he would be!” Stark shouted in the background.

“What the hell happened? Why are we on high alert?”

“There was an attack. Still people missing. It’s good to know you’re not some of them.”

“The Russians?” Dane blurted.

“No sir,” Stark replied. “Those cowards still haven’t shown their faces, if they’re here at all.”

“I don’t think they are, sir. Not after what we saw,” Good added.

“Explain.”

“I would, but we’re supposed to keep channels open, plus the captain will want to talk to you. We all thought…well, it’s good to have you back, sir.”

“Very well. Colony One heading for the moon pool.”

“Colony Two acknowledges. We’ll see you when we get back inside.”

Dane piloted the sub toward the moon pool and surfaced into the room. They helped Lopez climb the ladder, walk across the sub, and get to solid ground. She seemed fine, but Dane didn’t want to take risks with a head injury.

“Can we get some help here? I need someone to take Lopez to the medical floor,” Dane shouted to a team of people working at the entrance to the room. They were installing a heavier door. Apparently, Adams had decided they needed it sooner rather than later.

“Sorry, Dane, no can do!” Nat glanced up and saw that Lopez was still on her feet. “Medical’s pretty busy right now, and getting this door in is top priority. You’ll have to take her yourself.”

“I can take her, sir,” Athanas volunteered.

“I’m fine, really.”

“Go with Athanas. I’ll tie up the sub and check in on you later.”

Lopez looked like she wanted to argue further, but Athanas’ firm hand on her elbow got her moving.

Dane turned back to the sub and, for the first time, noticed how bad the damage was. There were scratch marks on every surface. Most were superficial, but some were more than a centimeter deep. The sharkosaurs were more powerful than he’d realized. If they could get that far through the hull of the sub, they could surely punch a hole in it. Thankfully, they hadn’t attacked the propeller. If they had damaged even the casing around that, the maneuverability might have been severely compromised. He had to talk to Nat sooner rather than later.

Recalling that she was literally in the room with him, he glanced up and saw her working on the door. That was…troubling. Dane finished the docking procedures and made for the control room instead.

“Dane,” Adams breathed when he entered. “Thank God you’re all right.”

“What happened? The radio alert said something about an attack. Who hit us?”

“More like what. Those long-necked predators showed up while our team was out trying to catch fish. They attacked and killed a diver.”

“No,” Dane said, aghast. Then, “Who?”

“A researcher. Joe Miller. We recovered the body and drove off the rest of the creatures, but not before two more divers were injured. One of them is stable, but the other is in critical condition. The infection’s bad, and he’s lost a lot of blood.”

“What’s his blood type? I’m O negative, so I can—”

“Already working on it. We’re hoping he pulls through, but that’s not why I needed you here. These things hunted in a pack, using tactics. There were five of them, but the team only saw two at first. The first two engaged the sub, while the other three went for the divers. I know it’s hard to believe, but we need to assume they’re intelligent.”

“I believe it,” Dane confirmed. He recounted what had happened to them, how they had been attacked by three of the creatures. “Worse than that was the leviathan that ate one of them,” he finished.

“Ate one?”

“We didn’t get great visuals, but yes. Or at least killed it in a single bite.”

“How did you not get visuals on something like that?” Adams asked.

“Because we were trying not to be dessert!” Dane replied, a nervous chuckle escaping as he exhaled. “We found it in the depths. Or maybe you could say it found us. Saved our ass, really. We were under attack from a sharkosaur when it showed up.”

Adams cursed and paced around the room.

Dane looked at the huge windows lining the top of the volcano. Suddenly, they didn’t seem so beautiful. The room felt exposed. Obviously, the windows were strong enough to hold back the pressure of the water, but could they hold back that thing Dane had seen if it decided it wanted what was inside? For that matter, could they hold back the sharkosaurs? The creatures were tenacious and clever, and they seemed to already understand there was a new source of food in town. Dane now understood why Nat was already working to install that door.

“I want options, Dane. What can we do? How do we keep our people safe?”

“Well, one option is to pull back into the Cosmos while we look for somewhere else to live. For all we know, the Russians might have abandoned this base because of the sharkosaurs. Considering we have no idea how many of them are in the area or whether they’re globally distributed, regrouping from space might be our best option.”

“Spoken like a man who spent years of his life in freefall.” Adams chuckled darkly.

“Ma’am?”

“We can’t send these people back up there, Dane. We came here to colonize. Even before the radio got severed, we knew we would be out here by ourselves. It’s twelve light years from Earth. We can’t even correspond with them.”

“I understand that, ma’am, but we’re secure up there.”

“I know that statistically, you’re correct. The Cosmos is in good working order, and we’re mapping debris, so we shouldn't suffer any collisions. We didn’t take spacers with us, though. We took people who wanted to start a life on a new world. They’re different kinds of people than you, Dane. Now that we’ve found not only a planet where we can breathe and live but where there are animals we can actually eat, no one wants to give that up.”

“Even if it means being eaten?” Dane asked.

Adams shrugged. “It’s better than dealing with a goddamn plague. Our antibiotics work here. Heck, once we get a better handle on the biosphere, we can swim here without wetsuits. Maybe we can find somewhere else, though. We’d have to abandon this base, but it might be worth it for the security.”

“Have you talked to Alvarez about that possibility?”

“We’re entertaining every possibility, so yes. I’ve talked to him about it. Pros and cons, of course. He said it’s likely that any area with life will have either the sharkosaur or something in the equivalent niche. We could try to live somewhere that’s not near the shallows like this. If it's devoid of coral and seaweed ecosystems, there’d be fewer fish and fewer top-tier predators.”

“Those things aren’t top-tier, though. I saw one get eaten.”

Adams nodded. “You’ll need to tell Carlos about that.”

“I will, but Captain, doesn’t that mean moving out to live above the depths is even more dangerous? Obviously, I don’t know much about this leviathan, but I don’t think it could even fit between these mountains.”

Adams nodded. “Which would mean that this place is actually safer.”

“Except for the sharkosaurs, yes. If we’re not going back to the Cosmos, I don’t think we should abandon this place. Moving somewhere else on the planet will mean dealing with the unknown. At least here, we know what the threat is.”

“Do you agree that we can’t live in the same area as them?”

“That’s not really how humans have ever done things,” Dane observed. “They’ve had a taste of us now. If we don’t fight back, they’re only going to treat us as prey. At the least, we need to prove we’re more dangerous than most of the things on this planet.”

“How do we do that?”

“I can come up with a more concrete plan, but I’d start by giving the sub Nat is working on offensive capabilities. We know the supercavitating bullets hurt them badly enough to drive them off. If we can mount something besides a spear gun, we’ll be far more effective at defending our territory.”

“Define our territory.”

“We need to make the valley around this volcano completely off-limits to the sharkosaurs. If that means we keep the kelp to a minimum to discourage fish from coming in, we start there. We’ll need a sub in the water at all times. We need these things to understand that if they come into this area, they get hurt. After we create a perimeter around the volcano, we push outward.”

“Do you think you can do that with our current capabilities?”

Dane considered it, then shook his head. “The sub’s in bad shape. I don’t think I could use it offensively without a lot of modifications. If it's close to the base, and the people inside are armed to the teeth, we should be okay. We can’t go offensive until we have the bigger sub, though.”

“That’s going to take a week, but we can deal with that. We’ll keep everyone inside except your security patrols.”

“Makes sense.”

“What do you need to make that happen?”

“Honestly? I need more people, and you’ll have to let me train them how I want.”

“You’re talking about creating a military presence! That’s against the purpose of this colony.”

“Ma’am, if we’re supposed to fight a pack of smart-ass dinosaurs, I’m going to need more people.”

Adams bit her lip and paced the room, but she nodded after a minute.

“For the time being, how many do you need?”

“Well, we have two subs, and another one will be online soon. Ideally, we’d have four people per sub, minimum. If we want to teach these creatures that this place is off-limits, we always need at least one sub in the water. That means multiple groups of people working in shifts. When we go offensive, it’ll take more than that. Maybe twenty for the time being. Any engineers who understand the subs would be a good place to start. Also, anyone with pilot experience of any kind.”

“We can make that work,” Adams conceded. She eyed Dane, and he recognized the look. She was sizing up a political rival, wondering if he was a threat. Deciding if she needed to placate him, threaten him, or ship him off to another planet when this was done.

Dane didn’t think that would actually happen. Adams dismissed him, and he went on his way. He almost wished that political exile lay in his future, but how could it? They had been here for less than a month and had already found not one but two predators powerful enough to kill people and damage their machines. That was only in this one tiny corner of the planet. What else lay out there in the depths of this world? What could be hiding beneath the surface? It seemed likely things would get worse long before they got better.

After all, the Russians had built this entire base, then abandoned it. The more he thought about it, the more he felt it must have something to do with the creatures of this world. What did they know? What had they seen?

What answers awaited him on the other side of a wall of encryption?

CHAPTER TWENTY

“Makes a big difference when it’s intentional, huh?”

Dane nodded as he looked over the newest submersible. Completely streamlined, with fins and a propeller that flowed organically out of the main body. Instead of a half-dome tacked onto the front, the viewport was integrated. No longer would a sharkosaur be able to get its teeth into it.

A ridge down the center ran from the porthole to the nose. Ports would allow for various tools to be clipped in and out as required. If the old sub was Frankenstein’s monster, cobbled together from available materials, this one was more like a pharaoh’s mummy. The same size and shape, but every bit of it lavished with intention.

“It’s gorgeous,” Dane praised.

“I know it’s not much bigger, but I figured we wanted durability and maneuverability before we went for size. Besides, big subs are hard to make. It would be more fun to work on boats.”

“One step at a time. I don’t think we can have people in yachts while there are long-necked dinosaurs hunting us.”

Granger nodded. Lopez would have surely wanted to explain how they weren’t dinosaurs, but Nat didn’t care about such things. After spending some time with the other engineers, it became clear why Natalie Granger was the head of the department. Her genius was unrivaled. Only sweets and pining after more tattoos distracted her.

Lopez liked to get out there and see the world. Nat liked to know her projects were out there doing what they were supposed to do.

“It has a maximum dive depth of four hundred meters,” Nat explained, walking around the moon pool so she could show off the sub from all sides. “Plus, it’s faster. Max speed is thirty-five kilometers an hour, and we beefed up the batteries, so you should be able to travel well over a hundred kilometers, though not at top speeds.”

“Sounds like a great defensive vessel. Can take a beating, dive deeper, and escape.”

Nat grinned. “I hear you, loud and clear. The sub itself has defensive capabilities, but the captain wanted to be able to fight the sharkosaurs, not simply let them knock you around. You see the ridge on the top?”

“I did. I was hoping you’d tell me about it.”

“I had some of the boys work up a light machine gun.” Nat kept walking until she reached one of the underwater base’s ubiquitous plastic cases. With people still ferrying between the Cosmos in orbit, the floating landing pad, and their volcano base, there were always heavy-duty plastic cases changing places.

She opened it up to reveal one hell of a gun.

“Oh, wow.” Dane ran a hand along the barrel of the weapon.

“You mount it right above the nose. We can adjust exactly where it fires before you take off, but you can’t adjust it in the middle of a mission. We wanted it to be sturdy, above all things, which means no motors to let it point in different directions. Not to worry, though. The sub’s HUD should be able to calculate your target based on distance and speed. You feed it supercavitating rounds from inside the sub as well, so you won’t run out of ammo unless you really run out of ammo.”

“It looks amazing. Those Nessies are going to think twice next time they come for us.”

“I would hope so. I built this sub with them in mind. It’s called the Dinodestroyer. Or, you know, whatever.”

“I don’t think the sharkosaurs are actually dinosaurs, but I like the name,” Dane remarked. He really did spend too much time thinking about things like that. “Can we take it for a spin?”

“A few more things need to be calibrated. I’m not sure about the battery performance at high speeds, and the depth hasn’t been tested. Plus, there might be kickback on the—”

“So you’re saying I should attach this to the sub before we head out?” Dane snapped the lid of the case shut, then hoisted it onto the floating sub.

“I’m saying it’s not ready yet. It needs a final round of testing.”

“Well, who better to test it than a pilot and the head of engineering?”

“It’s not safe!”

“Sending one of your less brilliant engineers and one of my less skilled pilots out with it will be safer?”

Nat smirked. “Did you just flatter me and brag about yourself in the same sentence?”

Dane winked. “It only counts as flattery if it works.”

“That is not true…but I guess by your definition, it counts as flattery. Let’s take it out. Here, I have a checklist on my tablet we can run through.”

Nat climbed inside and busied herself with her checklist while Dane attached the gun to the clip-in mounting built into the sub. It fit perfectly, and the hardware gripped it like the world’s best-made truck hitch.

Dane entered the sub, closed the hatch behind him, and took in the updated interior. It had twice as many portholes as the other subs, storage bins under all the seats, and a well-provisioned medical station at the back. Dane found kilometers of gauze, liters of creams, antibiotics, and even a defibrillator in there. Apparently, the engineering team had talked with the medical department. They would be ready next time there was an injury. Dane didn’t like it, but he knew he needed to think about injuries as “when,” not “if.”

The storage under the seats was mostly empty, though he did find a small crate of ammunition. He took it out, thinking they’d most likely fill the rest of the storage with weaponry until they could force the sharkosaurs to understand the area around the volcano was human territory now and therefore off-limits.

Dane loaded the mounted weapon and found it surprisingly easy. He simply clicked the crate in, which would automatically feed the ammunition inside.

“Pre-flight checklists look good?” Dane asked as he sat at the controls and brought up the integrated display on the transparent pane at the front of the sub.

“You mean pre-swim?” Nat asked.

Dane chuckled. “Sorry. Figure of speech. Pre-swim checklist look good?”

“Batteries are full. All systems are operational.”

“Great! Let’s go!” Dane powered up the motor and sent the sub down.

Nat stumbled but grabbed a seat and strapped herself in.

“Wow. Already great speed.”

“It’s mostly hydrodynamics. Amazing what you can accomplish when you don’t have to cobble something together in a hurry.”

“You got that right,” Dane agreed and steered them away from the volcano.

“You don’t have to go quite so fast,” Nat griped, clinging to the arms of her chair.

“You said it was more maneuverable, too, right?” Dane decreased the speed slightly, then dropped them closer to the sea floor.

“I did,” Nat said through gritted teeth.

Dane steered them through the first valley into the area with the kelp. He turned right toward a towering growth of purple plants before swerving at the last minute. He was shoved against the straps of his harness, but that was fine with him. The sub was way more maneuverable than the others.

“It’s like an entirely different machine!”

“Same power train, but better batteries and steerage.” Nat grimaced. “It’s all in the shape.”

Dane steered them into the next valley, the one filled with coral. He slowed down even further as he dropped them to inches above the height of the tallest ones.

“Have you heard the scientists are starting to call these things zingers?” Nat remarked with her teeth still clenched.

Dane didn’t know why she was still scared. They were going much slower than they had been.

“I did hear that. Someone got stung, right?”

“Apparently, they leave a pretty bad rash.”

Dane shook his head. From a security standpoint, it didn’t make any sense to let people swim with bare skin, but try telling that to hundreds of people trapped in an underwater base with too many windows. He was only glad no one had been caught by a sharkosaur in the last week. He would have preferred for everyone to stay in, but that was easy for him to say as part of the team of people regularly leaving the base to explore this alien world. When a scientist had gotten stung, the rumors of the rash he’d earned from the zingers spread through the base like wildfire.

Dane leveled out and traveled slightly above the alien forest of zingers. In the other subs, he had never dared come this close, but he felt more confident in this one. If he misjudged any depth or distance, he’d be able to steer himself to safety.

“Okay, wow, you can really slow down.” Nat tightened her grip on her chair.

“I can…but I can also go faster,” Dane countered, and the sub lurched forward. It raced over the zingers. Fish and shrimp swam out of their way to take refuge in the structures below them. They raced faster until they reached the end of zingers and shot out into open water.

Dane’s pulse quickened. For the first time since he’d come to this world, he really felt like he was flying. Without thinking about it, he put the sub through its paces. He banked into a tight turn and reversed direction, pulled into a backflip, then came out of that and did a barrel roll.

“Can’t you fly straight?” Nat gasped. She was looking pale.

Dane grinned. “I can do that.”

He pointed the nose of the sub straight down, and they sank into the depths.

He slowed their pace as their depth increased. It was interesting to be in a sub. It handled like a clunky star fighter rather than stuck on four wheels like an automobile, but it didn’t feel like one. As they descended, he hung in place against his harness. There was no up or down in a star fighter. The only forces one had to consider were the abrupt changes in steering the ship itself.

The star fighters he piloted could reverse direction almost instantaneously, but the human inside could not. This sub, the Dinodestroyer, couldn’t reverse direction quickly enough to make him black out, nor could it descend fast enough to push him against his seat. Yet it was still a joy to pilot.

“Two hundred meters,” Nat reported. “Systems all looking good.” She stared at her tablet, even now, as they sunk into the gloom. They descended from the light of the sun into the realm of bioluminescent creatures whose anatomy Dane couldn’t even guess at. Nat seemed more comfortable looking at her tablet than out into this world’s sea.

“Is there a way to kill the exterior lights?” Dane asked.

“Why?”

“There are things bigger than the sharkosaurs down here.”

Nat pointed. “There’s a control in your display.”

Dane found the control and shut off the lights. After a little fiddling, he extinguished almost all the interior lights as well, save for a red glow.

“Red light doesn’t penetrate water this deep. Most creatures on Earth are blind to it, or at least that’s what Lopez said,” Nat explained.

Dane wished Lopez were with him on this venture instead of Nat. While the engineer was undoubtedly brilliant, she seemed less than interested in exploring. She didn’t even loosen up when the creatures around them started to illuminate more brightly after they’d turned out their lights.

“We’re at three hundred meters,” Dane told her.

Nat nodded. “All systems look great. Take it deeper.”

Dane smirked. For all her hesitance, she trusted her machines and wanted them to work. That was the most important trait for an engineer, as far as Dane was concerned.

“Going deeper,” he confirmed.

They passed three hundred and ten meters. Three-twenty. At three-thirty, the sub started to creak from the pressure, but Nat urged them deeper. “We’re doing fine. I know it sounds weird, but that’s how materials behave under pressure.”

Dane kept them close to the cliff face, pleased to see they had a sensor to help him measure distance. He didn’t want that massive leviathan to catch them out in the open.

They continued to descend past four hundred meters, which was what Nat had said never to do. Finally, at four hundred and twenty-five, she told Dane to stop.

“We’re getting close to danger levels down here. Consider this your limit.”

“Got it,” Dane replied, more than pleased with the sub’s abilities. “Batteries are looking great, but would you like me to take it slow on the way home?”

“That would be appreciated, yes,” Nat affirmed.

They ascended slowly. Dane found himself fascinated with the transition from bioluminescent creatures to those that camouflaged in dim light, then finally, the flamboyant surface dwellers.

His ears popped as the pressure in the sub changed.

“Is pressure going to be a problem?” he asked Nat.

“The sub’s engineered with that in mind, so no. It’s standard atmosphere in here. The shell does all the hard work of keeping the pressure out. Actually, it was a really clever inversion we had to do. See, we’re used to building things with zero pressure outside. External pressure is a similar but opposite problem. What we did was—”

Nat screamed as a sharkosaur’s head slammed into the front window.

“Hold on!” Dane shouted and fired the mounted gun. The sharkosaur’s body wasn’t above the sub, so the bullets shot off into blue oblivion.

Dane threw the sub into reverse to create some space between him and the sharkosaur.

It made a call, like a whale’s song but angrier, that rattled the sub and hurt Dane’s ears. Not enough to slow his hands on the controls, though. He backed up and lowered the nose of the sub, and the sharkosaur darted above them.

“You’re chasing it?” Nat screeched.

“It’s either that or dive back down. I’d rather take our chances with one of those than whatever’s in the deep.”

Nat shuddered but nodded.

“Besides.” The familiar surge of adrenaline started to flood Dane’s system. “We have a weapon to test.”

They rose past the edge of the cliff and into the reef. Many of the brightly colored creatures had been swimming in open water above the depths, perhaps dining on particles brought up on currents from the depths. Yet nothing compared to the vast plethora of organisms that called the reef of zingers home. Dane scanned the area, looking for the huge sharkosaur but not seeing it. Not until it reared its head and tried to snap at the nose of the sub again.

Its jaws couldn’t find purchase, so it swam off.

“If I didn’t know better, I’d say it was targeting us.” Nat’s voice shook.

“If they’re smart enough to know there are people inside this thing, we’re in real trouble.” Dane pushed the sub to pursue the sharkosaur. He didn’t have to go far before the long-necked swimmer pulled up and banked back toward them, increasing its speed on a collision course.

Dane had no idea what the sharkosaur thought it would accomplish by ramming the sub. Did it have a horn they didn’t know about, or did it use this tactic to scare off larger predators? He didn’t particularly want to find out. He fired the weapon seconds before the sharkosaur swam through the line of fire.

The first bullet missed, but the next three struck. Two in the neck and one in the body.

The sharkosaur made a mournful call, then swam off perpendicular to the sub.

Dane considered following it for a brief moment before deciding against it.

“You’re not going to try to finish it off?” Nat asked once it was clear they were heading back to the base.

“I don’t think that would be wise right now. They often hunt in packs, and I’d rather not risk this sub against multiple hostiles. Unless you think it would be okay, in which case—”

“No, no! That’s fine. I think we should head back to base as well.”

“Okay, cool.” Dane chuckled. “I was only teasing, you know.”

Nat shivered. “Remind me never to go on a test drive with you again.”

“Lopez can sit in next time.”

Nat snorted, which seemed to calm her down a little. “Haley would like this. She’s a solid engineer, but the more I get to know her, the more I think she only took this position to explore this planet.”

“Isn’t that why we all took the gig?” Dane asked.

Nat appraised him from the corner of her eye. “I don’t think so. I took it because I wanted a chance to make things without a global bureaucracy around me. I think that’s why a lot of the engineers signed up. And the research scientists are here for the work above all else. Getting to name everything on a new planet is a pretty big deal. I gotta say, though, it’s kind of refreshing to hear the chief of security isn’t here only for the job.”

Dane shrugged. “My military experience qualified me for the job. If I’m being honest, I thought it would be more about helping farmers sort out arguments about who got to use the space tractor first.”

Nat laughed. “You mean you weren’t planning on hunting alien dinosaurs in a submersible?”

“Not exactly, no. But with this sub, I’ll be able to do that. Your work will give us a toehold on this planet, Nat. If I do my job like I’m supposed to, the Dinodestroyer will go down in the history books.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

The moon pool room had never been so crowded. Despite all their progress, Dane still felt like they were playing a game of poker with extra cards in the deck. They had to clear the sharkosaurs from the area around the base, but the question remained. What had driven the Russians out? He looked at his security team. They appeared both eager and nervous. Apprehensive but ready to work. Dane could not let them see his doubts on the cusp of the first of what would likely be many missions.

“Everyone should know their positions at this point. Go ahead and form up.”

Ten people broke up into three groups. Dane had assigned four to each of the original subs and two with him in the newer sub. Everyone wore diving suits, but two members of each team also had flippers and weapons. They would be on the outside of the subs to shoot at the Nessies with their carbines. Despite her best efforts, Nat had not been able to mount weapons on the frankensubs without risking their structural integrity.

Each sub had a pilot and a copilot, with the exception of Dane, who would pilot his alone. He would have preferred to have someone else, but there wasn’t another suitable pilot. Well, more accurately, there wasn’t another pilot who was a lousy enough shot to justify keeping them inside the sub.

“We’re going to keep tight at first, then fan out. Our first mission is to destroy or drive out a group of Nessies. We know they work together, so we want to target a cluster of them. Alvarez thinks that might be enough to turn the tide against them and make them abandon the area.”

“What do you think, though?” Stark asked.

Dane took a slow breath before answering. “I think we’ve got some Nessies to shoot.”

The security team whooped and clapped each other’s backs at that. Good. They would need a sense of camaraderie and excitement before a mission like this. It was so far beyond what any of them had done. Dane hoped their practices would help, but there was no way to know how everyone would react to hunting giant swimming aliens.

The moon pool was too tight for more than one sub, so they loaded one at a time. Everyone made sure their carbines were loaded, they had extra ammo, and there was plenty of first aid gear. Stark was more than willing to describe how much getting bit and tossed by one of the things hurt, so no one had any preconceptions that this would be a walk in the park.

They had finished loading the first two subs and started working on Dane’s when Haley Lopez came through the heavy door into the moon pool room.

“Miss Lopez. Why am I not surprised to see you here?” Dane declared.

“I saw you were heading out today…and your sub is only being operated by three people instead of four.”

“You saw all that?”

“There’s not exactly cable TV in this place. What do you expect me to do for fun, knit? We’ve all been cooped up because of those dang Nessies. This expedition has been all anyone talks about. You think I don’t want to come?”

“Wait…you want to come with me?”

“That would be great, yes, thanks for asking!” Lopez winked.

Dane couldn’t help laughing. He should have known better than to let Lopez trick him.

“It’s going to be dangerous.”

“More dangerous than skydiving onto an alien world when we didn’t even know these things were here?”

Dane was forced to admit that, no, it was not that dangerous.

“Let me come with you! I’ve seen action out there with you already and know what we’re up against. Besides, you don’t have a copilot. You’ll be better off with me than without me.”

“If I agree to this, it’s with the understanding that you are not to go outside the sub.”

Lopez laughed. “You think I want to go outside while we’re hunting predators? I’m more than happy to stay in the sub. Plus, I know how to pilot it and how it works. I’ll be an asset.”

“Fine.”

“Also, if there’s a…wait, you said yes?”

“Against my better judgment, I did. Suit up. We’re going for a ride.”

Lopez had come already dressed in a wetsuit. All she had to do was shuck off an oversized shirt and pants, and she was climbing onto the Dinodestroyer before Dane.

They got everything loaded and locked down, then headed out.

Robinson was on the outside of their sub along with one of the newer people on the security team, a woman who went by Brick.

Athanas piloted her own sub with three newer folks. Stark had the third, with Good as copilot and two green recruits accompanying them as well. Dane hoped they’d spread out the experience enough, though honestly, counting a few weeks of swimming around with Nessies as experience seemed like an exaggeration. If all went well, diving with dinosaurs would be a resume bump they could all forget about having.

They set out from the volcano, creating some distance between the subs but maintaining visual contact so they could support each other as need be. The name of the game would be angles. They needed clear shots at the lizards. Dane’s sub could likely handle a potshot or two, but the others almost certainly could not. They couldn’t allow friendly fire.

They performed a lap around the volcano, shifting between a linear formation and a triangle where Dane’s sub took the apex. They didn’t even have to leave the area before they found their first Nessie.

“Nessie spotted!” Stark announced over the comms, and Dane’s screen display highlighted the approaching long-necked creature. Like before, it came directly at them. Unafraid, barely concerned about these new creatures in its territory. That needed to change.

“Stark, maintain position. I want your people ready to shoot on my mark. Athanas, be ready to push in and drive this thing off if it gets enraged instead of frightened.”

“Yes, sir.”

The sharkosaur approached, oblivious to how its life was about to change.

“Open fire,” Dane ordered, and the two people on Stark’s sub did.

The first shots went wide. For an awful moment, it seemed like one man would get munched, then his partner hit the monster’s chest with a few rounds. The creature immediately stopped its approach and turned off.

“Athanas, get in there. If it even thinks about coming back for them, I want you to blast it to pieces.”

“And if it doesn’t?”

“Then it’s mine.”

“Wait, what?” Lopez managed to yelp before Dane hit the acceleration, and they raced after the sharkosaur. It was swimming away from the other two subs, but Dane didn’t think it had seen them yet. It didn’t seem as fast as they usually did. He wondered if the shots had hit an organ, assuming the things had organs, and if it would run out of energy.

That would be useful intelligence, but Dane didn’t have the patience for that. The second the sharkosaur crossed their line of fire, he unleashed a torrent of rounds that struck its body in more than a dozen places.

It writhed in pain, twisting and thrashing its flippers and long neck as if trying to escape an unseen net. Its movements grew sluggish until it finally stilled.

For a moment, the comms blared with cheers and screams of victories. They calmed down so Dane could give his next set of orders.

“First off, great work, everybody! Do we have any injuries?”

“I think one of my armpits is starting to chafe,” Robinson joked, but no one else reported anything.

“That’s great. Everyone handled themselves well out there. Alvarez asked us to take one of these back if we could. Considering how close we are to the base, I think we can do that. Athanas and Stark, I want you doing laps around the volcano. We need to know the second any of these things come into the area. We have to assume they can communicate over distances. Since we didn’t kill that one instantly, it makes sense it talked to its friends.”

“Do you think it told them to run away or avenge it?” Lopez asked, thankfully not into the comms.

“We’ll tow this one’s body back to the base. Let me know the second you see a Nessie or anything else, got it?” Dane asked.

Only confirmations were returned.

“All right then, Robinson. Brick. Now it’s your turn to shine.”

“By shine, you mean it’s our time to tie that thing’s stanky body to the sub?” Brick asked.

“That’s correct, yes,” Dane affirmed.

“I think I like the way the chief said it more,” Robinson grumbled, but they got to work unspooling a long cable they’d attached to the ridge of the sub for this purpose.

They reached the sharkosaur and found it had only sunk slightly.

Lopez bubbled with excitement. “Maybe they have air bladders. They almost surely do, as that’s a pretty common way for animals to control buoyancy. I wonder if you ruptured one, and that’s why it’s sinking. This is so exciting! What if it turns out that they breathe air? That would totally change what we understand about the fundamentals of life and the history of this planet.”

“You sure you’re on the right career path? Maybe you should be on the science research team.”

Lopez giggled. “Do we get to change jobs now that we’re on another planet? I thought this was kind of it.”

“If anyone can change jobs, tell them there’s a security detail that didn’t realize wrangling dead lizard whales was part of the job.”

They heard the ratchet on the cable spool click as Robinson pulled out enough cord to wrap around the sharkosaur’s body.

“You never hauled anything on a truck before, honey?” Brick asked. “You do it like that, it’s gonna slip away. You gotta get it underneath the flippers so it can’t slide loose.”

“If you want to work the alien armpits, be my guest,” Robinson replied.

Brick swam out and took the cord. She wrapped it around one front flipper, then across the back, around the other flipper, and back to the sub.

“That should do it,” she pronounced. “We should probably get a move on, though. The water’s getting pretty thick with its blood.” If she was revolted, she did a good job not showing it.

“You two grab on,” Dane told them. Once they confirmed they had, he motored them back to the base.

“Base, this is the Dinodestroyer. We went fishing and caught a big one. Heading there now. Would appreciate it if someone can help us gut and scale this thing.”

“We’ll be there, ready to work!” Alvarez shouted back. He didn’t turn off the mic before he started celebrating.

They made it back to the sub garage and surfaced to find not only Alvarez but ten more research scientists waiting, as well as a tiny crane and winch to haul the Nessie out of the water and into the base for further study.

While the research scientists scrambled all over the sub and tied the Nessie to their tools, Robinson did the opposite. He unclipped it and wound their winch back in.

“Great work, Dane. Really great work. If you could get us a few more specimens, ideally of different sizes, that would be much appreciated,” Alvarez gushed over the radio.

“I caught a damn fish bigger than the sub, and you want an even bigger one?”

“Si…if there is a bigger one, that would be fantastico!” Alvarez beamed. “Smaller is fine, too. I’m assuming size will be indicative of age, sex, or both. Though there are other things to look for as well! If you see one with different coloration, that would be amazing.”

“We’re trying to create some distance between us and these things, not curate an art exhibit out of them,” Dane quipped.

Alvarez laughed, then they had the sharkosaur out of the water and onto more wheeled carts than Dane had known existed in the entire base. He wasn’t sure if they could get the thing through the door to the room. Maybe if they folded its flippers in or chopped them off?

“We’re heading back out,” Dane reported, glad that he wasn’t tasked with the job of butchering the alien sea beast.

Robinson and Brick both grabbed onto the sub, and they were off again.

“This is Dinodestroyer checking in. Leaving the moon pool and headed out for more action. Where is everyone?”

“We’re on the far side, sir,” came Athanas’ cool reply. “No contact yet…wait, wait! We see one now. No. Two.”

“We’ve got eyes on them too, Athanas,” came Stark’s reply, then he started screaming. “We’re under attack! There’s another one! There’s another one, and it’s got one of our fins!”

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Dane cleared the moon pool and raced for the other subs. He only made it about fifty meters before another Nessie came out of nowhere to attack them.

“We’ve got to find a way to beat their camouflage!” he said through clenched teeth as he pushed away from the Nessie.

It caught up to them, swimming fast, and tried to cut them off. Lopez took the opportunity to fire a few shots from the mounted gun, but they all missed. Dane heard more gunfire from Robinson and Brick, but their craft was moving too fast. Their speed was messing up their aim. Dane wasn’t about to slow down, though. He wouldn’t risk his people getting hurt.

Though it seemed that the sharkosaurs had other plans. Another appeared directly in front of them. Dane’s reflexes screamed for him to go up toward the surface, but that would limit what they could do. Nowhere to hide up there, and the sharkosaurs had already proven they were more than willing to reach out of the water. He went against his instincts and dove instead.

His people on the outside of the sub fired at the pair of Nessies, but neither beast retreated, which meant the shots went wide.

“Get on top of the sub,” Dane ordered. When both acknowledged they were in place, he dove further. There was a crevasse in the seafloor he hadn’t seen at first because it was overgrown with zingers. He pushed the sub through the growth, snapping many of the branches off, then felt the sub hit the seafloor with a thud.

“Everyone all right?”

“No stings here,” Brick came back.

“Good thing I decided to wear my wetsuit instead of my birthday suit!” Robinson rejoined. How the kid could stay so agreeable in times like this was a mystery for another day.

“Here we go.” Dane pushed the sub through the crevasse. The sunlight flickered as it filtered through the zingers above them. It would have been beautiful if there were not three Nessies on the other side of the stinging flora, following the sub like a pack of wolves.

“Wait, now there’s three? I thought there were only two,” Lopez blurted.

“Don’t count your alien dinosaurs before they hatch.” Dane pointed ahead at a fourth Nessie waiting for the other three.

“What do we do?” Lopez asked frantically.

Dane slowed to a stop. The three Nessies trailing them swam back and forth above the sub. They obviously didn’t like the zingers because they made no move to break through them and get to the sub. The Nessie ahead of them called into the water, and the three doubled back and vanished.

Dane wished he could enjoy the moment of calm. Heck, he’d settle for catching his breath. Yet now that they weren’t being actively hunted, he could focus on the calls for help coming over the radio.

“Shoot it! Shoot the damn things!”

“It’s coming in again!”

“There’s one behind you!”

“I can’t get a clear shot! They’re too close!”

Dane cursed. “We can’t wait here.”

“I don’t think that’s a choice anymore, sir,” Robinson prompted from outside the sub.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Lopez asked.

“The Nessies doubled back.” Brick’s stoicism slipped. “One of them entered this crevasse through the hole you busted in the reef. The other two are following!”

“I love it when I don’t get to make my own choices,” Dane grumbled and pushed the sub forward.

They barely got to speed before the fourth Nessie dropped through the coral in front of them. Despite its obvious intent to eat them, the zingers were a serious impediment. It thrashed and shook its flippers when the things touched it.

“Robinson, Brick, get on the underside of the sub. Tell me when you’re there! Shoot, Lopez. Shoot it now!” Dane shouted. He didn’t have time to focus on aiming. He needed to get to the other subs.

Lopez screamed as she activated the machine gun. Bullets sprayed, and the water turned red in front of them, obscuring the sharkosaur.

He heard Robinson and Brick move as they grabbed the handholds that studded the sub. They were moving too fast to clip in, so only the strength of their hands connected them to the craft. It would have to be enough.

“We’re on the underside, sir!” Robinson shouted.

Dane gave them half a second, then piloted up through the hole the Nessie had made in the zingers.

They passed through, breaking off more of the branches with the top and back of the sub, not the bottom. Lucky for Robinson and Brick.

“We good?” Dane asked.

“Uh…considering the other three Nessies just came out of that trench and are gaining on us? No. I don’t think we’re good,” Robinson replied, followed by the sound of gunshots.

“Four, sir! That one you hit in the flipper joined the others.”

“The flipper?” Dane grunted.

“I’m happy I hit the thing at all!” Lopez shot back.

“Robinson and Brick, we’re going in to help the other subs. You both need to strap back in.”

“Clipping in now, sir.”

“Good. Stay there and keep the cover fire going. I’ll try to get an angle on these other Nessies.”

“I’m not sure if these things understand the concept of covering fire!” Robinson shouted between blasts.

“Make ‘em understand!” Dane steered the sub higher. He needed the right angle on the creature, so he didn’t hurt the people outside the other two subs, or worse, damage the sub and doom everyone inside and out.

Up he went, hating that he had to delay. His team called for help as they fired at a pair of Nessies harrying the people outside.

Then, a stroke of luck! One of the Nessies pulled back as bullets tore into its neck, turning the water red. The two people outside the other sub used the opportunity to pepper its flank with more rounds. It swam off weakly, losing strength by the moment as it tried to make some distance from what had been its prey moments before.

In their moment of triumph, the other Nessie reached out its long neck and grabbed one of the people by the leg.

No one heard him scream as the long-necked predator dragged him off into the sea, but Dane knew he was terrified. He would be trying to fight, to reach his radio, to save himself from a fate mankind had not had to accept for centuries.

Dane wasn’t about to let an animal eat a man. Not on his watch.

“Hold on tight!” he shouted as he increased the speed of the Dinodestroyer as high as it would go.

He fell into the Nessie’s wake. It might have been faster than his tricked-out sub, but with a person in its mouth, it wasn’t optimally streamlined. The display screen flashed when they came into range, and Lopez fired.

The supercavitating bullets shot off through the water, leaving the slightest trace behind as the water refilled the space. They tore into the Nessie’s rump, and it released its prey. It thrashed, trying to snap at whatever was hurting it. Brick fired on it as soon as their man was clear and punched more holes into its scaled flesh. It writhed and spasmed, snapping at a foe that was not there. The creatures were clever, but they had not yet figured out humans could hurt them from a distance.

“You all right?” Dane called over the comms to the security officer floating in the sea, holding his mangled leg. “Joe, you all right?” he asked again.

“I…I lost a lot of blood,” Joe replied. “I…it’s all around me.”

“That’s not yours, Joe. That’s the Nessie. We got the Nessie.”

There wasn’t only one, though.

Three more Nessies swam up. The Dinodestroyer and the other team had killed three of the things, but that left three more. They swam past the Nessie that had taken Joe, churning the creature’s blood and making it hard to see. One of them stayed close to the dead sharkosaur and nuzzled it with its long snout. Not finding what it wanted, it vanished into the murky cloud of reddening water.

“No! Oh my God, no!” Joe shouted over the radio. Then static. Feedback. And nothing.

“Hang on!” Dane shouted and drove directly through the cloud of blood.

He shot out the other side and found only the three Nessies receding into the distance. “Bastards!” he shouted and fired the mounted gun until it was out of ammo. The Nessies were too far, though. They vanished into the blue of the ocean.

Of Joe, there was nothing to be seen.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Dane stared out into the ocean. He watched the waves crash on the surface above. So aggressive, so unrelenting. Fish ran from squids only to get tangled in the tentacles of what looked like snot, but what the scientists would call a jellyfish analog. He longed for the simplicity of space, where people died quickly or not at all.

This volcano base seemed safe, but only if you didn’t think about it. Here it was, inside a cooled molten rock structure, holding back an ocean that would flow inside and drown the occupants, not because it cared, but because it didn’t.

He had lost more people in space. A lot more people, yet he’d always felt that came with the territory. Nothing lived in space. The few creatures that could survive, tardigrades and some bacteria, only did so by creating a shell around themselves. Life didn’t thrive out there. Nothing did. Entering space carried an implicit risk. You didn’t go out there and expect it to treat you nicely.

The ocean, though?

How could any ocean be so cruel? It had been a source of food, life, and myth since prehistory. All oceans, even the blighted ones on Earth, choked with ash, too hot and too acidic, teemed with life. They were a fundamental environment. Yet they took life as well.

Space had no qualms about trying to kill you. There were no poems about space, no overwrought metaphors comparing space to a cradle or a womb. How could the ocean be crueler? How could it tear a man asunder? How could it be so dirty, so complex, so brutal when it was also so beautiful and so life-giving?

Dane felt guilty for losing his man. This wasn’t supposed to be a combat assignment. He was supposed to retire as a glorified sheriff. He had been hoping to settle disputes about fence lines or groundwater. There was no ground on this planet and no fences except the imaginary one they were trying to build to keep the predators at bay. Not even the top predators. Dane was haunted by what he had seen in the deep. What if the sharkosaurs lived in this mountain range not because it was a good source of food but because it was the only place they could avoid their own predators?

Predators. He had never spent much time thinking about how brutal they were. On Earth, there were so few left that attacks on humans were nonexistent. Here, though, they demonstrated why humans had hunted them to near extinction so long ago.

In space, he had lost men. He remembered awful conversations over comms. People floating, their tracker destroyed, hoping to get picked up and instead getting picked off by the Russians. It was nothing like this. There was no pain. There was only the oblivion of death, which was bad enough.

“Dane?” Lopez asked, pulling him from his thoughts. “There you are!”

“Oh, uh, Lopez. Didn’t you see there.” Dane tried to get his face back under control.

“Yeah, you probably didn’t see a lot of people holed up in this room. No one uses this one.”

“It’s because of the view. It feels like the ocean is pushing in. Like it’s coming for us…to consume us.” Dane shook his head and tried to push the darkness away.

“This might not be the best transition, but, uh…speaking of consumption. You hungry?”

Dane’s stomach growled, and he realized two things at once. One, he was hungry, and two, Lopez had a plate of something. It looked like chicken strips, which Dane had not seen in…well, over a hundred and forty-eight years.

“You want to try this? Alvarez’s special recipe. He recommends it with the salsa, but I think it's good as-is.”

Dane took one of the strips from the plate, dipped it in a salsa made of vegetables harvested from the hydroponic level, and took a bite.

“Oh. It’s good,” Dane enthused around a mouthful before taking another bite. “It tastes like chicken, not fish. It’s fresh?”

“My grandmother would have tanned your hide for saying all that with your mouth still full. Yes, it does taste like chicken. No, it’s not fish, and yes, it’s fresh.”

“What is it?” Dane asked after he took another bite, so his mouth was still full.

“Fried Nessie.”

Dane thought his stomach might have churned at the revelation, but instead, he felt vindicated. Those things thought they were predators? Predators didn’t get battered and fried, then served with a nice salsa for dipping.

Dane took another bite.

“Apparently, they’re close enough to Earth reptiles that they really do taste a lot like chicken. Good source of protein. Alvarez says they’re as easy to digest as food from Earth. If the hunting plan works, we can feed a lot of people with the meat.”

Meat…that word was too much for Dane. He dropped the fried nugget and turned away from Lopez. He couldn’t let her see his pain.

“Dane? Are you all right?”

“We lost a man out there because of me.”

“No, Dane. I was there too. It wasn’t your fault.”

“I was in command. Everything was my fault. I shouldn’t have taken that Nessie back in the first place. I should have been there.”

“That Nessie is what we’re eating. It’s going to completely change what we understand about this world. You did the right thing.”

“How can it be the right thing when someone died?”

“People die on Earth every day…”

“Not like that, they don’t. He was torn apart. We didn’t even find any of him to bring home. A man shouldn’t die like that. Not now. Not after all we’ve done.”

“You can’t let the guilt consume you. You did what you could.”

“Things change in the field. I could have made a different call. I should have made a different call.”

“Well, what about next time?” Lopez asked.

That gave Dane pause. “Excuse me?”

“What about next time? Or were you planning on sitting out the next away mission?”

“No…no, of course not. I’m not letting people risk themselves while I stay back.”

“So, should we do it the same way? Do we go out there and hunt the Nessies like we did this last time?”

“No.” Dane straightened. “Having people outside the subs is too big a risk. If we can’t mount guns on the other subs, we’ll have to practice with the spear launchers. Maybe we can make a difference like that.”

“The sharkosaurs are still too maneuverable. We might be barely faster in the subs, but we can’t outswim them.”

Dane had to agree. “What can we do, then?”

“People are great hunters, but aren’t we even better trappers?”

“I suppose so.” Dane took another bite of the meat.

“There’s no supposing about it. Did you ever hunt back on Earth?”

“I did, yes. With my dad when I was a kid. Duck. Sometimes deer.”

“You ever use a decoy? Me and my dad always did.”

“Funny, I didn’t take you for a hunter.”

“Oh, yeah? You think girls who skydive and SCUBA are afraid of guns? Or maybe we don’t like hurting cute little animals?”

“All right, all right. My bad,” Dane assuaged her. Nat Granger probably didn’t hunt, but of course someone like Haley would. “We can’t make decoys of those things, though. Like you said, they’re too maneuverable, plus they communicate.”

“You said you hunted deer, right?”

“We did, but we didn’t use a decoy. We used—”

“A feeder,” Lopez cut in, taking the word out of his mouth.

“That could work…except I’m not going to use my team as bait. It’s too risky.”

“Of course it is, but we don’t need to. Remember what the Nessies did when they saw the space stars?”

“They totally forgot about us.”

“Exactly. Using those space stars as bait instead of people would be like frying up more Nessie nuggets instead of reconstituted soy paste.”

“Nessie nuggets?”

Lopez shrugged. “Dr. Alvarez hates the name. He thinks we should call them free-range amphibotile protein, but everyone who's tried them calls them Nessie nuggets.”

“So you’re thinking we find some space stars, put them out in a defensible location, then attack.”

Lopez grinned. “That is definitely a military man’s solution, so no. Not what I was thinking. I’m an engineer by trade, which means I like to work behind a desk instead of treading water while I wait for predators to come along and hopefully go for the bait.”

“So what’s the engineer’s solution?”

“We build a trap. Like a lobster trap, but a big one. Stock it with space stars, make it easy to get in and hard to get out. If we put a camera on it, we’ll see the second a Nessie swims in, then you can do your bang-bang thing before it gets out.”

“That’s…not a bad idea.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

It only took a day to assemble the cage. Getting it to actually work was another thing entirely. The problem with a trap like this was it needed bait.

“Three space stars spotted,” Stark announced. He piloted the Dinodestroyer while Dane, Athanas, and Robinson had suited up to go outside and handle the space stars. Good was with them at the helm of an aquatic drone he used to maintain a perimeter. No Nessies yet, but their camouflage was deceptively effective.

The space stars were simple to track because of how they fed. They only had to look for the freshest swathes of destruction, and a space star would inevitably be at the end of one of the paths.

“Go ahead and surface, Stark. Athanas and Robinson will go out, then we’ll descend, capture these things, and bring them back in.”

“You sure you don’t want to kill them, chief?” Stark asked.

“What I want to kill is the Nessies. Alvarez thinks they’re more likely to go for live prey, so we try it his way. If we can get them in the sub, we’ll be all right. He said they can survive for days without water, so we can certainly get them back to the trap.”

Famous last words.

They rose, climbed out of the sub, then dove down for the space stars.

At first, it seemed like the many-legged crawling creatures were oblivious to the three approaching divers. That didn’t last long. As soon as Robinson reached for one, it puffed out some sort of gunk and started to scuttle away. The other two followed, so instead of harvesting the creatures, they had to swim after them.

Still, they weren’t that fast, and Robinson quickly caught up to one.

“Got it, sir!” Robinson cheerfully boasted before he shrieked and dropped the thing.

“You all right?” Dane raised his carbine at the damn space star.

“I’m fine, sir, or mostly anyway. Got this world’s version of a paper cut.” Robinson held up his fingers and wiggled them. The space star had corroded the tips of his gloves, so his fingers poked through.

“God damn it,” Dane grumbled. They had a cage and a net that were supposed to be resistant to the corrosive substance the research scientists had identified in the space star, but they’d overlooked their suits.

“We can do this without hands.” Athanas approached the space stars with a net. She dropped it on the slowest of the trio, and it quickly tangled in the leading edge of the net. This distressed it, so it crawled faster, but that only pulled the net more deeply under its body. Its thousands of tiny, grasping legs got all wrapped up in the net.

Athanas lifted the net off the seafloor, careful to keep her hands clear of the animal. It released another cloud of the substance. The net held, but when Athanas hauled it in, the space star thrashed, poked a leg through, and grabbed her thigh.

She yowled with pain and stabbed at the creature with a knife.

Dane swam over and grabbed the net. He yanked it from Athanas but inadvertently untangled the space star from the net. It tumbled to the seafloor, righted itself, and proceeded to crawl after its compatriots, the knife still sticking from its back.

“Sir, we got a Nessie on the perimeter,” Good reported.

“I can make contact, sir. You want me to shoot it?” Stark inquired.

“Hell, yes, I want you to shoot it.”

Gunfire sounded in the water, somehow both more present and more muffled, and Stark whooped.

“Got it in the face, sir. It’s retreating.”

“Good work, son. Now hold steady. I’m coming up to grab one of those spears.”

A minute later and still no sign of the Nessie when Dane returned to the seafloor with a spear gun in hand.

He took aim and fired through the center of a space star. It spasmed, then lay still.

Dane swam down to it and lifted it to show Robinson and Athanas. “Now that is how you kill a—”

The space star thrashed and sprayed more gunk. Dane’s forearms burned as the substance ate through his wetsuit.

“God damn it!”

The space star tried to scuttle away, but the spear sticking through it was tethered to the sub.

“That should work,” Robinson commented, though he sounded defeated.

“Do we want to get another one?”

“Not with that Nessie nearby. Let’s call this a victory.”

Stark surfaced so they could get inside the sub. It wasn’t a long ride back to base, but Dane wanted to play this as cautiously as possible. The thinking was this space star would suffice as bait, but they didn’t know how well it would work. The last thing Dane wanted was for a Nessie to come sniffing around and find people to eat instead.

As they headed back to base, Good tailed them with the aquatic drone. He didn’t spot a Nessie. Apparently, they didn’t enjoy being shot in the face any more than anything else did.

“Back to the surface, Stark. Let’s put this thing in the bait box, and we can get out of there.”

Stark obliged them. Once more, Dane, Robinson, and Athanas climbed out of the sub and into open water.

They held onto the rungs on the outside of the Dinodestroyer as it sank toward their trap at the bottom of the sea.

Dane had helped assemble the trap, so he thought he understood how it worked. However, trying to navigate it while managing a not-quite-dead space star made him question his comprehension of the structure.

It started simply enough. They grabbed the spear skewering the space star. Then it got more difficult. In the first part of the trap, “the kitchen,” Dane was about to put the space star in a smaller cube when the thing spasmed and popped off the spear. It had corroded part of the metal. They’d made the trap itself space-star-proof, but not their spears.

Still, they lasted for some time against the creature’s acid, so they all grabbed one and tried to spear the space star as it led them on a merry chase around the trap. First, it climbed the walls of the kitchen. This part of the trap was a rigid skeleton of composite materials lined with a net that Granger assured them nothing could break.

Actually, her exact words were, “If the Nessies can break this netting, there’s nothing to stop them from smashing the windows and eating us all like an anteater sucking termites,” which was not comforting.

Her assessment had been correct. The space star’s corrosive slime could not melt the netting, and the holes were small enough that it couldn’t escape either.

It could, however, find its way through the opening to the next part of the trap, “the parlor.” That part was three-quarters of the entire size of the trap, nearly forty meters long, and not lined with netting. Instead, composite mesh spaced about a meter apart lined the rounded top of the halfpipe. The net was small enough to trap the Nessies but wide enough to allow people through. Dane had been adamant about not wanting people in danger with this trap, which meant ensuring they wouldn’t accidentally get snagged in it.

The space star crawled through the meter-wide openings as easily as a human could.

How one squiggling, wounded animal could evade three trained professionals for so long confounded Dane, but they eventually speared it and wrangled it inside the bait box.

They returned to the Dinodestroyer, and Stark drove them home.

They emerged from the moon pool to a crowd of people applauding them.

Dane smiled and almost forgot the minor burns and scratches he’d suffered all over his body until Alvarez pointed them out.

“What did you do? Ask them to give you hickeys? We told you they were corrosive.”

The assembled scientists and engineers laughed.

“We had some trouble navigating the trap,” Dane admitted.

“Oh, we saw. At least it worked! If you didn’t get snagged doing all that, it must be safe for people!” Lopez surmised to more laughter and cheers.

Ribbing aside, Dane was glad to see the community coming together. That trap represented a substantial amount of mental and physical resources, along with multiple teams working together. If they could pull off projects like this, they would have a decent shot at building a life on this planet.

It took only eleven hours before they caught their first pair of Nessies.

Watching the video of the creatures exploring the trap was fascinating. They approached the parlor of the trap first and poked their heads through the meter-wide squares but were unable to push their bodies through. Next, they approached the kitchen, obviously interested in the trapped space star. They found the opening without trouble and swam through the crooked netting tunnel until it tightened and forced them to pull themselves along with their flippers. At this point, they’d either go in and get trapped or realize something was amiss and turn around.

With their heads so close to the space star, they were unable to resist. They both pulled themselves inside.

The cage holding the space star was designed to break, so the Nessies knocked it to pieces and devoured the space star clinging to life inside. After they’d dined, they discovered the entrance they had squeezed through was now too tight to escape. Yet no worries, there was another exit!

They squeezed through that one as well, only to find themselves in the parlor. Though it looked open, they couldn’t fit through the mesh any more than a human could the bars of a jail.

“Looks like it’s go-time,” Dane proclaimed and made for the Dinodestroyer.

He pinged the capture team on his way to the moon pool room and barely beat them there. They suited up and approached the trap.

With the creatures’ mobility limited, killing them was the closest Dane had ever experienced to shooting fish in a barrel. The Nessies were so stressed from being unable to move freely that they hardly noticed the approach of the sub. Dane took careful aim, and when one of their heads poked through a meter-wide space, he opened fire.

The other Nessie wasn’t smart enough to avoid the same fate. In less than two minutes, Nessie nuggets were back on the menu. Good minded the perimeter with his aquatic drone while Dane and Athanas opened the parlor end of the trap and attached the dead Nessies to the sub.

Six hours later, the base smelled of Nessie nuggets and sounded like a celebration. Adams declared the day a holiday, specifically a feast day, to be honored for years to come. Everyone was happy to help celebrate.

Dane slept well that night, pleased that he’d finally done what he set out to do. Solve simple disputes, fill empty bellies, and help this colony grow. When he woke to orders from the captain to build three more traps and install them around the perimeter of the base, he was thrilled.

With the traps plus sonar to watch for anything the size of the Nessies or bigger, it started to feel like they might have a chance on this water world.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Two things happened in the weeks after the Nessie traps were deployed. The first was the colony coming together to rally around the defense and harvest of these creatures. They went from being eaten to eating, and it changed their view of long-term survival on this alien world. The second was that no one called them sharkosaurs anymore. With Nessie nuggets on the menu, everyone saw the former monsters as something different—food.

The traps worked well. There was a lot of debate that first week if the Nessies would grow wise to the traps, but they seemed almost incapable of resisting the space stars. As long as they kept a supply of them in the trap kitchens, the Nessies kept getting stuck.

In the first week, they caught nearly a dozen every day. There’d been so much meat that they needed to freeze most of it before it spoiled. They added a fourth sub to their little flotilla, and better yet, Nat had found a way to create guns they could connect to the smaller subs. Between the spear launchers and guns, they no longer needed people outside the subs during patrols. They suffered no additional casualties. Dane considered that the greatest triumph of the last few weeks.

“Looks like we got a tear in that trap.” Lopez indicated the kitchen part of the one in front of them.

Lopez and Robinson suited up while Dane stayed at the helm of the sub. The netting worked well to keep the space stars in, but after three weeks, holes started to appear here and there. Fortunately, the parlor sections were all holding strong, though they’d implemented a maintenance schedule to make sure any pieces needing replacement were noticed and fixed before a Nessie got in there to test them.

Dane surfaced, Lopez and Robinson climbed out of the sub, then he descended to the seafloor. Robinson went to the top of a trap, carbine in hand, and scanned for Nessies while Lopez affixed netting patches over the damaged areas. Dane maintained a perimeter, but nothing showed up. There were a lot fewer Nessies around than there had been.

Lopez completed her repairs, and they moved to the next trap. They found it empty and in good shape, so they proceeded to the next.

“Look, dinner!” Robinson crowed when they spotted a Nessie in the parlor. They approached slowly, giving the Nessie plenty of time to see them. Like most of its kind, it showed nothing but aggression in the presence of the sub. It stuck its head through a net hole and snapped and yowled as the Dinodestroyer approached. The tactic might work to intimidate other predators of this world, but it only made Dane’s job easier.

With the Nessie’s shoulders and front fins pushing against the cage of the parlor, it was less mobile than it could have been, even inside the trap. It could have prolonged its existence by using its long neck to keep its head from danger, but it did not. Instead, its neck extended toward the sub as it gnashed its teeth.

Dane shot it with the spear gun.

“Nice shot,” Robinson remarked.

He’d speared it through a cluster of nerves at the base of the skull. Doing any damage to that cluster killed the creatures immediately. It was essential in keeping blood moving to their brain.

“We’ll give it a minute to make sure it’s dead, then we’ll drag it back,” Dane instructed, already moving higher in the water table so Lopez and Robinson could head outside.

“I gotta say, I’m glad we caught one. Haven’t seen any in the last couple of days,” Dane pointed out.

“Isn’t that a good thing?” Robinson asked. “The idea was to create a perimeter, and we’ve done that.”

“You’re right, of course. I’ve come to appreciate the taste of chicken of the sea!”

“You’re worried we’ve overfished them?” Lopez asked.

“Not exactly, no. I mean, fewer predators threatening our people is a good thing. There are still plenty of smaller fish and shrimpy things we can catch and eat, too. Yet hunting these Nessies—and who am I kidding, cooking them up every night—has brought the colony together. I hope we can continue to work as we have.”

Lopez frowned. “True. I’ve also been thinking about the Nessies’ place in the ecosystem, though. With them gone, we’re going to see their prey shoot up in numbers, right?”

“Probably, but we can eat most of their prey, too,” Dane pointed out. “More fish won’t be a net negative for us.”

“We’ll party tonight, that’s for sure,” Robinson commented before stepping out of the sub. They descended once more, opened the parlor, and tied the Nessie to the Dinodestroyer. They towed it back to the moon pool and radioed ahead so a team would be ready to haul the thing out and harvest it.

That done, Dane checked the time and found they still had a few hours left on patrol. They’d already checked the traps for damage and hadn’t seen any other Nessies, so they could call it a day…but where was the fun in that?

“You two want to go for a little spin?” Dane asked. “See some stuff we haven’t seen before?”

“Sure!” Lopez piped up immediately.

Robinson crawled back into the sub. If he had a tail, he’d be wagging it.

“Where to?” Lopez asked. “You want to check out the deep again?”

“I really don’t,” Dane chuckled.

“Then what? Where should we go? Somewhere new? Do you want to go somewhere new?” Robinson bounced in his seat.

“We’ll find a nice, big open field where we can play fetch. How about that?” Dane joked.

Lopez laughed, and Robinson flushed though he was still smiling.

Dane brought up the areas they had mapped with the sub rather than satellites. “What about over here?” He pointed out a spot a few kilometers away. “Data indicates it should be relatively shallow. A plateau or something like that, though no one’s confirmed it.”

“If you’re asking me to explore somewhere new, the answer is always going to be yes,” Lopez enthused.

“Let’s go!” Robinson practically howled. Dane suspected the kid was trolling him now, but that was fair. Troll and get trolled.

They set out and passed through a valley, then around a mountain, and out into the open sea.

“I’m going to stay close to the surface,” Dane explained. “I don’t want Nessies or anything else to attack us out here, and this will limit one direction they can come from.”

They had yet to discover any aerial creatures, so more people had been discussing sticking close to the surface and utilizing the platform and boats.

They pressed out into the open sea and watched the chain of volcanic mountains drop away in the blue behind them. Dane kept them moving forward, but out here, with no landmarks to anchor his sense of direction, it felt easy to get lost. Fortunately, they had satellites above to keep them oriented and a topographic map of the seafloor that automatically updated as they went.

Currently, they passed over a section so deep the system simply mapped it as “unknown depth.” That meant it was more than a kilometer. How much more was a question for another day.

“Look, there’s land!” Lopez pointed through the front window.

Sure enough, a gentle slope rose from the deep to create a surface at the edge of what they could see.

“I want everyone on high alert. I’m going down.”

They descended to meet the rising slope, not expecting much of anything. They were quite surprised when they found as much as they did.

“Are those space stars?” Lopez wondered.

“More than I’ve ever seen in one place,” Robinson agreed.

“What are they doing to each other?” Dane questioned.

That was the million-dollar question. It looked like a battleground. There were dozens, maybe hundreds, of the space stars on the slope, and nearly all were engaged in active…something with each other. Dane tried to tell himself that life might work differently on this planet, but it was hard to think tearing each other to pieces could be anything but battle.

The space stars were literally ripping each other apart. Legs were strewn about, though these dismembered limbs continued to grasp and move around. They watched as four smaller stars set upon a particularly large specimen. They surrounded the bigger one, then ripped it to pieces. They didn’t consume it, though. Instead, they released the legs, so they could wriggle and spasm freely.

“Are we getting this on video?” Dane asked.

“Oh, yeah.” Lopez sounded disgusted. “Nothing like videoing space star porn.”

“Are they…mad at each other?” Robinson wondered.

“Maybe. More likely, they love each other very, very much,” Lopez explained. “On Earth, sea stars reproduce by dropping an arm. Looks like it’s similar here. See the broken parts still moving? I bet a new space star will grow from each detached limb.”

“Should we capture one?” Robinson asked. “Granger built that grabber arm.”

“We can try that,” Dane guided the sub lower. The arm on the bottom of the sub was made of the same material as the trap netting. It was one of the few things that could withstand the space star's corrosive gunk.

They came in low, but the space stars didn’t seem to notice them. They went about their violent behavior as they had been.

Dane snagged one of the broken tentacles without much trouble.

“I think that’s enough bizarre aliens for one day. Let’s head back to base.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

“Ah, Mr. Dane! I assume you are here to check in on your little amigo?”

“Daddy says I can’t pet it!”

“That’s right, mi amor. It is muy peligroso.”

Dane had seen Amanda Alvarez, Carlos and Ginger’s daughter, a handful of times but had yet to enjoy the honor of a conversation with her, especially one about alien space stars.

“Is it still wiggling, then? Or did that bigger one eat it?” Dane pointed to a tank in the center of the room.

“It is a wiggler!” Amanda declared, giggling.

“Run and find your mother, mi amor. All right?”

“Yes, Daddy!” Amanda took off, running through the biology lab like it was a playground rather than a room stocked with highly valuable, irreplaceable equipment.

Carlos watched her go, his smile broad on his face. As soon as she vanished through a doorway, he released a deep sigh and ran his hand through his hair, then smoothed his mustache.

“How’s it going?” Dane asked.

“Eh. I’m thankful to have my Amanda. She lights up my day. But Ginger has her hands full with work, as do I, so the three of us hardly get to do anything together. We knew it would be like this when we signed up, but it is still difficult, no? Then, there’s this lab. Believe me, I am thankful the Russians left behind all they did. This tank alone would have taken a week to fabricate.

“I had wanted to rip it all out and replace it with cosas from the Cosmos, but the captain asked me to keep it. She was right. It is good to have all these tools, but half of them have the instructions written in Russian! I have a translator, but… It can be un poco confundido.”

Dane shook his head, shrugged, and grinned all at once.

Carlos immediately reddened. “You were not asking me about my life, no? You were asking about the alien tentacle you brought to my lab yesterday.”

“I speak a little Russian, so maybe I can help you with your lab, but…uh, you’re right that I was asking about the space star. I’ve never seen anything like what was out there. They were all ripping each other to pieces. Like two ant colonies at war, I guess.”

“As far as we can tell, we’ve only encountered one species of the space star.” Carlos pointed to the tank.

“Well, what about the leg I brought? What happened to that?”

There was only one space star in the tank. Large, bright orange, and covered in spiky armor. Dane could not imagine the leg putting up much of a fight against it.

Carlos smiled. “That is the leg.”

“No…it can’t be.”

“I assure you it is. We have taken other samples from the space stars used as bait, but the one you found was different.”

“A different species?”

Carlos shook his head. “I don’t believe so, no. I think it was in an agitated state. Part of its life cycle we haven’t seen, perhaps.”

“It couldn’t have regrown overnight.”

“Ah, yet that’s exactly what happened! Here. I have video, of course.”

Dane watched the space star for a moment, then turned and followed Carlos to a large video monitor.

“What you’re seeing now is our first sessions. Those are samples from the space stars you used as bait. Other than the acid they exude to eat, there was nothing remarkable. They can survive out of water, but we told you that.”

“So how is this one different?”

“My working theory…is that it was full.”

“Full? You’re saying—”

“Not hungry. Yes. Our current hypothesis is that it gains reproductive ability once it reaches a certain nutritional threshold.”

“How can you know all this from a tentacle?”

Carlos brought up a clip of a scientist dropping the tentacle into the tank. Dane noticed the tank was completely empty.

The tentacle wriggled like it had when they first captured it, though less intensely, as if it was running out of energy.

Carlos hit the fast-forward, and they watched the tentacle thrash and wiggle around the tank. Nothing much happened until a scientist came in with a bag of snacks.

“This is where things get interesting.” Carlos resumed the regular play speed of the video.

The obviously bored scientist paced back and forth with his snacks, tossing them in the air and catching them or trying to. He was not a great catcher and was an even worse pitcher because he tossed one, and it landed in a slot that opened into the tank.

“Man, if we ever do security versus scientists in a field day or whatever, you guys are going down.”

“Of this, I have no doubt, but it is not his poor eye-hand coordination I wanted you to see.”

The snack—a crispy soy bean, if Dane knew his freeze-dried, hundred-and-fifty-year-old food—splashed into the water. The tentacle reacted. It stopped thrashing and settled on the ground. Then it inched toward the snack and consumed it.

“Wait, what?”

“They have mouths in the central portion of their body, but also along their arms. This is one of the most interesting aspects of the space stars,” Carlos explained, hitting fast-forward once more. “They have decentralized organs. Each limb of their body has all the components needed to regrow the entire thing.”

Dane wondered why Alvarez had hit the fast-forward at this crucial juncture, but then he got the most human of explanations. Embarrassment. Carlos came in and saw the tentacle acting strangely while the researcher snacked, oblivious to the change. He proceeded to yell at the scientist. In fast-forward, all his hand waving and gesticulating was quite entertaining.

“You really let him have it,” Dane noted, unable to help himself.

“If I had known his dropped snack would lead to the single greatest scientific breakthrough on this planet, I might have behaved differently. However, even scientists need to be disciplined.”

Carlos resumed the video’s normal pace and zoomed in on the tentacle. Even with the slightly grainy enlarged image, it was obvious the tentacle had sprouted a second one at its base, nearly half the size of the first.

“That’s when things got interesting,” Carlos revealed. “We administered a variety of caloric sources and recorded how the organism interacted with the items. Our results?”

“Let me guess. It was hungry.”

“Exactamente!” Carlos chuckled as he stopped the video. “It ate everything organic we fed it. Ship stores, hydroponic produce including woody stems and fibrous parts that humans don’t eat, plus anything from the oceans here.”

“So when it eats, it grows?”

“We are still not completely certain about the entire life cycle of the species, but generally? Yes. We think it needs to reach a certain level of extra material before it attempts to multiply, but that does not seem to apply to this injured specimen. Its priority is to regenerate itself as quickly as possible, which it can do with shocking efficiency. We stopped feeding it when it was fully grown. At the captain’s orders, I might add, since all of us wanted to see what would happen. As you can see, it seems stable.”

“What happens if it gets hurt?”

“A scientist after our own research hearts,” Carlos chuckled. “Observe.”

A remote-controlled Waldo arm came to life inside the tank. It gingerly approached the space star, then deftly sliced the tip of one leg off. The space star did not seem particularly bothered.

“That piece is too small to have the necessary distributed organs to function. Watch what happens if we remove a leg, however.”

Carlos severed a tentacle. It thrashed and wiggled its way across the tank.

“Now we introduce food. In this case, some of the slow-moving crustaceans we’ve been studying.”

Chunks of unappetizing meat dropped into the tank from an automatic feeder.

The space star and its severed leg immediately moved toward the source of food. They reached the chunks at nearly the same time, and both pulled pieces to their undersides where their mouths were located. In less than two minutes, the space star had regrown its missing leg, and the missing leg had grown two other legs. Both were smaller than the original but spaced in a way to grant more range of motion.

Dane was shocked. Not by what was happening in this tank but by what it meant he’d seen on the reef. “Hundreds of those things were tearing each other apart out there. Are you telling me they were…spawning?”

“Spawning implies an interchange of genetic material, and we’re not yet sure if anything like that happens. We do know they can produce more of themselves without sexual reproduction, though.”

“You’re saying they can clone themselves.”

“We’re not sure the term ‘clone’ applies yet, but that seems to be the closest analog.”

“Why so many?”

“Based on the video you recorded, we are thinking that plateau may have until recently supported a colony of coral much like the one found two valleys over. The space stars consumed it and therefore had enough material to increase their population.”

“If every leg I saw could grow into a new space star, there could be hundreds by now. Thousands!”

“Si, por supuesto, but it’s not a big deal. They’re bottom feeders. Prefer to scavenge. They’ll eat shellfish and other slow animals, but that’s about it. They don’t seem to eat the coral, though based on that footage, we think in high enough numbers, they will. We know they can’t outpace a swimming human.

“The fact that they evolved this trait means this sort of thing must often happen on this world, so I’m not worried about it. We knew hunting down Nessies would boost the numbers of their prey. That includes the space stars.”

Dane thought furiously about his previous interactions with the stars. For all his brains, Carlos hadn’t been out in the open water with the things. Dane’s gut told him this could be a lot more hazardous than Carlos believed. “They won’t need to outpace us. All they need to do is—”

Before Dane could finish that thought, an alarm blared.

“I need to know if they have a weakness. All right?” Dane shouted to Carlos before racing from the room. A wall screen showed him the emergency was in the bottom level of the volcano, the power plant. That was where Dane ran.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Dane arrived at the bottom level of the base to find Granger and Lopez already frantic.

“What’s wrong?”

“The power plant is overheating!”

“Then shut it down!”

“Do you know the Russian commands to make that happen?” Granger growled.

“I—”

“Rhetorical question!” Granger snapped as her fingers flew over the controls at the console.

Dane let her work while Lopez cornered him and explained what was going on.

“Why are we overheating?” he asked.

“The plant takes in water via an intake line outside the volcano. The water is pumped into the engine, which boils it using geothermal energy. Steam spins the turbine, and presto, electricity. Except right now, there’s not enough water getting in, so the system is too hot. It could explode and take this whole floor with it!”

“Which would mean the entire base.”

“Right. Unless Granger can vent the pressure and shut it down.”

“Surely she can, right? I mean, even Russians would build a failsafe.”

Granger snorted and pounded on the controls, “The problem is this place went without maintenance for too long. The venting system is either shorted out or covered in alienacles.”

“You don’t know which?”

“There’s too many submenus! I’ve figured some out, but I don’t have time for them all.”

“Try that one.” Dane pointed to a folder marked “surveillance” in Russian.

Granger did and snorted in frustration when that opened another thirty or so lines of Russian.

“I don’t have time to test all these.”

“Then don’t. Try that one. It says intake.”

“Wait, you read Russian?”

“A little bit.”

Granger reddened, but she did not apologize for cutting him off earlier. Dane was fine with that. He would rather have bruised feelings than a flooded base any day. She clicked on the link Dane suggested, and a security feed appeared on the screen.

“That’s got to be the intake pipe for the whole system!” Granger was elated. “Wow, I didn’t even know these cameras existed.”

“What are those?” Lopez pointed to a familiar, many-legged creature.

“Space stars.”

“They’re crowding around the pipe,” Lopez pointed out. “Look, some of them have gotten inside.”

“They’ve clogged the intake,” Granger agreed.

“What’s going on here?” It was Captain Adams.

“Space stars are clogging the intake to our power plant,” Granger explained. “We don’t know how to vent pressure, or if we even can, so we need to get them removed ASAP. Also, I could really go for a cookie right now.”

“I’ll suit up and have them gone in five minutes,” Dane pledged.

“No!” Granger exclaimed. “You can read Russian. If there is a way to vent the system, I need you to help me find it.”

“I’ll go,” the captain said.

“You can’t,” Dane told her.

“I’m as good at SCUBA as you are, Dane. And you’re needed here. I’ve got this.”

“You’re our captain!”

“And you’re wasting my time.” Adams was already at the door.

“Yes, ma’am.” Dane didn’t like it but knew better than to argue when the base itself was at stake. “I’ll send you with backup, ma’am. They’ll meet you at the moon pool.”

“Do it,” Adams said, and she was gone.

Dane sent his orders, then turned back to the camera feed to watch the space stars. He couldn’t help thinking if they got in, the colonists would face a fate worse than drowning.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Dane tried to focus on translating the Russian commands on the computer, but it wasn’t easy to think about language when the leader of the entire colony was out there with the space stars. The creatures hadn’t done anything worse than burn a few fingers, and none of those wounds had needed more than a bit of ointment. Yet panic still rose in Dane’s gut. His attention kept drifting to the screen that showed Adams and the two security officers who’d been on duty in the moon pool. Athanas and a man named Murdok.

“What does this one say?”

Dane ripped his gaze from the video monitor to look at a line of Russian. “Um, something about release?”

“That’s what we need!” Granger opened the folder to find a long list of more Russian words.

Outside, Adams approached the space stars. Before she could get her hands on one, Athanas stepped in front of her. She mimed going first, and Adams acquiesced.

“Can we hear what they’re saying?” Dane asked.

“We need to focus on venting the power station,” Granger insisted.

Lopez grabbed a helmet, set it to the right channel, and turned up the volume.

“I’m going to pull this one off. Be ready to pin it down with a spear. If that doesn’t work, try the carbine.” Athanas’ voice came through the speakers of the helmet. Between them moving around underwater and the odd combination of technology, their voices were delayed compared to the video feed.

“We’re ready,” Adams announced.

Murdok brandished a spear. His carbine still hung around him. Dane hoped that was the right choice.

“Dane. Dane!” Granger shouted next to him.

“Oh. Right, sorry. What did you need?”

“To know what all these words mean,” Granger’s sarcasm was practically toxic. Though her words might have had a low pH, it was not their acid Dane was most worried about.

“Uh…top level. That one is…I don’t know, something about heat?”

“That’s got to be it!” Granger opened the folder to find yet another list of Russian words. They had to be more specific because Dane recognized even fewer of them.

Meanwhile, Athanas had successfully pulled off the space star. It didn’t seem to be resisting. It was hard to tell over the video feed, but it appeared to have something in its tentacles. Alienacles or some kind of clam, maybe.

Athanas dropped it a few meters away from the vent, and it went about its business, eating the organisms it had already peeled away.

“They’re filter feeders.” Lopez pointed to the vent. Now that Athanas had removed one of the space stars, they could see the intake valve was packed with organisms. “They must have colonized this area because there’s a constant current of food. If we can clean them off, I don’t think this vent would be a target for the space stars anymore.”

“What about the intake? Are we getting more water in yet?” Dane asked.

Granger stopped poking through the subfolder and checked a bank of gauges labeled with English. “Temperature and pressure haven’t dropped yet…”

“Damn it.”

“Though they seemed to have stopped rising or at least slowed down. If they can get another space star off, that might do it, at least in the short term.”

Athanas was already doing that. She grabbed a space star and pulled it off. It came away as easily as the first one had. Everything seemed to be going well until Murdok stabbed a third with a spear.

The space star immediately let go of the intake pipe and wrapped around the spear instead. As Murdok lifted it and moved it away, it crawled up the spear and got hold of him.

“You all right, Murdok?” Adams asked.

“I’m fine, ma’am. The thing only wants a hug.”

Adams nodded and made to grab another space star.

“Oh, crap, that burns!” Murdok sputtered, half-joking and half-serious.

“Get it off you,” Adams ordered.

“I’m trying,” Murdok claimed, but every leg he pushed away created space for another leg to grab him. One of the legs was already wrapped around his thigh.

“It’s getting too tight!”

“Here, I can help.” Adams drew a knife.

“Damn it, it’s burning me! It’s burn—”

Murdok’s radio went dead.

It only got worse from there. The rest of the space stars abandoned the creatures clogging the intake valve and scuttled toward the humans interfering with their meal.

When one of them climbed over the camera, Dane lost his patience with translating Russian.

“I have to go!” he shouted. Enough water flowed into the system to avert the immediate crisis here. The one outside was about to go critical.

“Wait! We’re almost there! I only need to know which one of these—”

“It’ll have to wait. I need to get outside!” Dane was already running toward the moon pool, shucking off his shirt so he’d be ready to don a wetsuit. His people were out there, as was the captain. He couldn’t lose anyone else. Not today. Not ever.

“Athanas, pull back! Pull back until I get there!”

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Dane made it to the moon room and found a cadre of engineers assembling a wall of tools. They’d piled all their stuff on top of the wetsuit locker.

“Damn it, not now! I need to get out there immediately!”

Most of the engineers looked terrified, but it was Reynolds’ turn to shine. No longer confined to the back of a shuttle or expected to skydive onto a new planet, he didn’t look nearly as sickly as he had when Dane first met him.

“We have something for that.” He grabbed an object that looked like the plastic torpedoes Dane used to play with in the pool when he was kid, except it had a handle on each side.

“We call it an underwater scooter,” Reynolds informed him with confidence as if that were the greatest name they could have given the thing. “It’s the fastest way to get around down there.”

“This makes it go?” Dane touched a switch on the scooter. It looked like he could activate it with his thumb.

“It does.”

“Help me get a helmet and wetsuit on.”

“No need.” Reynolds savored the moment and handed Dane a helmet with a curious sort of tail hanging off the back. “Proprietary property of engineering, but that’s a rebreather. It’ll pull all the air you need from the water itself.”

“Shouldn’t we just call it a breather?” one of the engineers asked, which seemed to be an old argument because everyone had an opinion about it.

“No time! Help me get it on!” Dane barked, and Reynolds obliged him.

A long minute later, Dane dove into the moon pool and activated the underwater scooter.

The thing had so much kick it almost yanked out of his hand, but he managed to hold on and slow down enough to calibrate himself. He carried only a carbine slung over his shoulder, and a small hand torch clipped to his belt. It would have to be enough.

He jetted around the volcano and spotted Adams, Athanas, and Murdok near the input pipe. Murdok looked bad. He was barely struggling. In fact, he moved so little that it could have been the water current pushing him around. Athanas and Adams fought with the space star on his suit, trying to pry it free.

Dane switched the scooter off and dropped next to Athanas and Adams.

He activated his radio and brandished the torch. “Let me try this.”

Adams nodded and backed off. Athanas held Murdok upright. Dane brought the torch against the space star.

He had never regretted doing anything so quickly. The second the cone of superheated flame touched the space star, all its arms tightened. Dane turned the torch off and cursed, but at least it had done its job. The space star floated away, dead.

“Murdok!” Dane grabbed the man and looked through his helmet. Murdok was unconscious, his helmet partly filled with water. Dane yanked his hand back as a finger started to burn. The space star’s acid had burned through Murdok’s suit in multiple places, and one of his arms looked strange. The bones should not have bent the way they were bending.

“We need to get him back inside,” Dane insisted.

“Agreed. Athanas, take him in while Dane and I finish off these—Ahh!” Adams screamed and yanked her leg, but it went nowhere. A space star had wrapped around her ankle and anchored itself to the ground.

The captain was no sitting duck. She grabbed Murdok’s spear and stabbed the creature through the back, but the damn thing didn’t let go. Dane cursed himself as he let Murdok go.

“We need backup! We have a man down and need someone to bring him to medbay! I repeat, we need backup!”

Dane attacked the space star on the captain’s leg. The thing hadn’t let her go, and because it had so many legs, it had grabbed the spear that impaled it, too. The space star appeared to shiver, then Adams really screamed.

“It burns! Oh, God damn it, that burns!” she shouted.

“I’m going to get it loose.” Dane came in with the blow torch. He risked snapping her ankle, but she was their captain. Better to get her back alive with a broken ankle than not get her back at all.

Before he could get close enough, another space star reached out and grabbed the torch. Dane pressed the ignitor, but it was aimed the wrong way and failed to do any damage. The creature pulled the tool under its body and crushed it.

Dane reached for his carbine.

“Stay calm, all right, Captain?”

“Just kill the damn thing!” she shouted.

Dane placed the gun a foot away from the space star and squeezed the trigger. Ten rounds tore through the creature, and it released her. She pulled her leg up, only to realize another space star had gotten her other leg.

“Damn it!” Adams shouted.

Dane checked on Athanas, but she was battling the space stars with her own carbine. She had killed one, and Dane had killed two, which meant there were three left. It proved more than a challenge for them.

The space star currently on the captain’s leg was already more agitated than the first one had been. Instead of waiting for Adams to attack, it tightened its grip around her ankle. Dane heard the bone snap. The sharp sound carried well underwater.

He tried to swim around to get an angle on the creature, but Adams’ thrashing made it hard to find a good shot.

“Sir, you’ve got incoming!” Athanas shouted. She fired at a space star as it crawled toward Adams. Despite being hit, the creature still grabbed hold of Adams. The captain screamed as this one crawled up her back and burned through her wetsuit. Dane didn’t think they were targeting her specifically. This was how they functioned. They found a food source and went for it.

Dane fired on the creature’s legs that weren’t wrapped around Adams, but it wasn’t enough to destroy the space star. Worse, he knew what those legs could become.

“I have a knife, sir,” Athanas asserted.

“Then use it!”

It was a painfully slow process. Dane tried to pull the creatures off so Athanas could cut them to pieces. The stars were strong, though, so it was a struggle to create distance between them and the captain. Athanas used every centimeter Dane gave her, though. She sliced and sliced again, trying to free their captain.

Adams tried to fight, but Dane saw her weakening. Between the broken bone and the burns, she was going into shock.

They kept working, sawing the space stars to pieces.

By the time a sub arrived with backup, the fight was over. Not that Dane could declare a victor. They had destroyed the space stars, but Murdok and Adams were both unconscious from the struggle.

Dane and Athanas clung to the knocked-out pair with one arm each while they held onto the sub that took them to the surface. They got the injured parties inside the sub and headed for the moon pool, leaving a half-dozen dead space stars behind. Dane had to get his people to the medbay, but he couldn’t stop wondering how much the space stars had eaten. Were those tentacles ready to regrow? He didn’t know, but as soon as he got the captain inside, he’d need a team back out here. If they weren’t already too late.

CHAPTER THIRTY

“All leadership, report to the command center.”

It was the third such call, but Dane had yet to leave the moon pool room. He couldn’t until the job was done. As soon as he got back, he sent the captain and Murdok off with Dr. Thorson and a few other medical personnel. He’d done all he could for them, but the security of the base was at stake.

“I want every piece of those space stars bagged up and put inside a Nessie trap. You hear me? Every single bit.”

“I think we’ve got them, sir,” Good replied.

“Check again.”

“We will.”

“While he’s doing that, I want eyes on the intake pipe,” Dane ordered. He’d already checked with Granger and discovered that without the space stars, they were getting plenty of water and had stabilized the power plant. He couldn’t risk a repeat incident, though.

Robinson pointed the camera in his helmet at the pipe. It had a heavy cage over the end, but that had not stopped all sorts of tiny creatures from affixing themselves to the cage, the exterior, and the interior of that pipe.

“All that needs to be scraped away. Remove the grate and get inside as far as you can. I want all of it gone, do you understand?”

“These things won’t grow big enough to clog the pipe for a while, sir.”

“It’s not them I’m worried about. It’s the space stars. If they show up to feed in greater numbers than they already have, we’ll be screwed.”

“I understand, sir.”

“And Robinson?”

“Yes, sir?”

“You see any space stars, you get the hell off the sea floor and radio for help. Got it?”

“You want me to run away and call for help? No problem.”

“Good man.”

Dane finally obeyed the summons and made for the command center. He walked in to find the meeting already underway despite multiple people missing. Both Carlos and Ginger Alvarez were present, as were Nat Granger and Richard Bryson. Notably absent were Captain Adams and Dr. Thorson because the latter was working on the former in the medbay.

When Dane entered the room, Winters turned to him. “Security Chief Dane, glad to see you here.”

Dane was about to apologize to the XO for being late, but Winters grabbed him a cup of coffee and brought it to him.

Dane accepted it, though he was not able to muster a “thank you.” With Adams in the medbay, Winters was temporarily in charge of the mission. He should have made Dane get his own coffee.

“Sorry I’m late,” Dane muttered.

When Winters said nothing, Dane turned to Granger, who he’d heard talking when he entered the room.

“What’s going on, Granger? How’s our power plant looking?”

“We’re fine. After the second space star was removed, the flow of water returned to its normal rate. We brought the temperature back down, and the generator is working well.”

“Can we prevent that from happening again?” Ginger asked. “I think it would do wonders for everyone’s mental wellbeing to know we’re not in danger of blowing up down here.”

“We’re working on a few solutions, yes. In the shortest term, we have people clearing the intake. Dane, is that still happening?”

“Yes, ma’am. There weren’t any space stars, but I have them removing potential food sources.”

Granger released a breath that Dane had not realized she was holding. “Okay, that’s good.”

“Something else could clog the intake, though, no?” Alvarez asked.

Granger nodded. “Definitely. We’re taking a multifaceted approach. By the end of the day, we want to have a backup water tank installed in the engine room. That way, if it does get clogged, we’ll at least have a bit of time to keep everything running. Medium-term, I need Dane’s help to translate some of the controls. In all the chaos, I wasn’t able to find if there was a venting system, but it seems like there is one. If we can get that operational, that will be two failsafes in case the intake gets clogged.

“Long-term, I want to build a space-star-proof casing around that intake pipe so we don’t have to send people inside it. I haven’t sketched any of those ideas out yet, but I’ll work on mockups when we’re done here. Unless you want me to prioritize the system translation with the security chief.” She looked at Winters for orders.

Eyes wide, Winters said nothing. He only took a sip of coffee. After a moment, he realized the entire leadership was staring at him and cleared his throat.

“What the hell happened down there, Dane? We knew the Nessies were dangerous, but the space stars? We should have anticipated that!”

“I wish we would have, sir. We knew they had acid, but we haven’t had a huge issue with them so far. We need to see them as a threat, though. Actually, before the emergency, I was talking with Dr. Alvarez about them. We found a huge group a few kilometers from here.”

“Does that mean they’re an immediate threat?” Winters asked. He sounded scared.

“We don’t know, sir. Dane found them on a plateau that’s isolated from this mountain range. Based on the video he recorded, there is a substantial population, but we’re not sure if they can actually get over here,” Carlos explained.

“How can we not know that?” Winters demanded, his voice shaky.

“Not knowing is a fundamental part of being on an alien world. We will continue to come up against problems we don’t fully understand, and that’s okay. What’s important is that we direct our resources in the best way possible to understand these threats,” Ginger placated.

Winters nodded, partially comforted, but he still appeared freaked out.

Dane’s gut said the answers were already in their hands. They simply couldn’t view them yet. “If we want answers, the Russian logs are our best bet. Their encryption has resisted the computers we have down here, but the Cosmos mainframe can—”

“Adams was adamant about not exposing the Cosmos to those logs and any malware they might contain. You said yourself that’s the sort of trick the Russians are known for, Dane! I’m not taking that risk,” Winters decided.

“If we want to find out more about these space stars, that’s our best bet!”

“There’s no guarantee there’s anything about the space stars. We’ll wait for the captain to make that call. In the meantime, what can we do?”

“We could keep eyes on the creatures,” Carlos suggested. “If we can track their movements, that could…”

Alvarez trailed off when the doors burst open and Thorson came in. Winters immediately offered the surgeon coffee. Thorson gladly accepted.

“How are things?” Winters asked.

Dane didn’t need to hear Thorson’s answer to know they were bad. The doctor’s normally slicked-back blond hair was a mess. Red rimmed his ice-blue eyes. Dane also noticed droplets of blood on his clothes.

“Not good. Murdok…well, I did everything I could, but…” Thorson shook his head.

“Damn it,” Dane cursed. “I should have been faster.”

Thorson looked up. “I don’t know if it would have mattered, Dane. The damage to his limbs was bad but manageable. He’d lost a lot of air, though. One of those things got him around the throat?”

Dane nodded, trying not to picture the nightmare he’d lived through.

“His body was under a lot of stress due to lack of oxygen. I think he could have survived, but the space star had also done substantial damage to his body. It wounded his chest and caused numerous chemical burns. We found acid in his blood stream, presumably from the space star. Carlos, we will need that confirmed as soon as possible.”

“Of course.”

“Because of the damage to his circulatory system, he suffered a heart attack, then struggled with a lack of oxygen. We weren’t able to get his heart started again.”

A somber moment passed around the table. This was why they’d been chosen to lead, to shoulder moments like this. That did not make such failures easy.

“Captain Adams?” Winters asked after a long drink of coffee. When he put the cup back on the table, it rattled because his hand shook so much.

“She’s alive but badly hurt,” Thorson explained as he slicked his hair back and seemed to regain some level of composure. “Her right ankle is broken in multiple places, along with her tibia and fibula. She’ll walk again, but it’s going to take a long time.”

“Well, where is she? Can we get her in a wheelchair or conduct these meetings in her recovery room?”

Thorson shook his head. “Unfortunately, I had to put her in a medically induced coma inside a medical pod.”

“What?” Winters gasped. It was the most assertive thing he’d said in the entire meeting. “For a broken ankle?”

Thorson nodded. “I am acting out of caution, but I believe it’s medically necessary until we fully understand the acid. I’m operating under the assumption that’s what triggered Murdok’s cardiac failure.”

“So putting our captain in a pod is your solution?” Winters demanded.

Thorson nodded, and his eyes seemed to refreeze as he appraised the distraught XO. “When she’s in there, her blood is not being cleaned only by her body, but by our equipment. It’s the surest way to make sure she doesn’t have a heart attack, too.”

“She’ll recover, though?” Ginger asked.

Thorson nodded. “Those systems have been tested on various toxins. It will take a week or so to fully heal her, but she’ll come out fine.”

“A week?” Winters was distraught. “I don’t know if we can wait that long.”

“Are you ordering me to wake her back up?” Thorson asked.

Winters grimaced, then turned away from the table, pacing as Dane had seen the captain do many times. “A week, you say?” he finally asked.

“Maybe sooner, depending on how much Dr. Alvarez knows about this acid. We’ll need to run some tests to make sure there’s nothing else that specifically attacks biological systems.”

“It’s possible there is,” Alvarez suggested. “We haven’t checked for biological compatibility, but we do know the space stars eat basically everything. I’ll get my team on that right away.”

Winters cursed under his breath but nodded. “We won’t take her out until we have answers to that, at least.”

When no more orders were forthcoming, Dane cleared his throat. “What are our other orders?”

Winters looked like a deer trapped in the headlights of an Earth vehicle. He chewed his lip before finally settling on something.

“I don’t want anyone outside in the water until we know about these space stars.”

Dane gave him a minute, then cleared his throat. “Are you sure about that, sir? I have a team cleaning the intake line for the power station right now, and Granger will need to send people out to work on the venting system.”

Winters doubled down. “Get them back inside. All of them. If these things have acid or venom or whatever it is, and it can cause heart attacks, we can’t risk people out there until we better understand them.”

“Do you want us to get a sub to track their movements like Dr. Alvarez recommended?” Dane asked.

Being challenged twice in a row was apparently too much for Winters. He waffled and barely managed not to shrug. “Subs are fine…but I don’t want anyone outside them. We need to know more about the space stars.” Again, awkward silence descended. Dane started to realize that while Winters was an effective manager who could keep everything running smoothly, he was not much of a decision-maker. However, with Adams healing, it was on his head to make the hard decisions.

“What else do we know about the space stars?” Ginger prompted her husband.

“Yes, right.” Winters turned to Carlos.

“Well, we do have some preliminary data. The most obvious comparison of the creatures is to the sea stars of Earth. They have a similar body style, many arms radiating out from a central hub with mouths underneath, but really they are quite different. For starters, they don’t only have a mouth in the center but on each of their arms. This allows them to reproduce when broken into pieces. I trust everyone has seen the video Dane recorded?”

Everyone nodded. The video had been interesting enough before the incident with Murdok and the captain. Now it would practically be required viewing.

“So we understand they are not so simple to kill.”

“How do you recommend we kill them?” Dane asked.

“It is not something we have studied yet. The space stars hadn’t shown themselves as a priority target for research until recent events. We do know many of them meet their end at the teeth of the Nessies.”

“We’re going to need something besides swimming dinosaur wannabes that eat people,” Dane remarked.

“Of course we will,” Carlos agreed. “We will look into efficient methods of eliminating them as a threat. For now, we know they have well-armored skin. There are chinks in their armor, so to speak, but they are conveniently placed, at least from the space star’s perspective. If you sever their limbs by paying attention to the breaks in the armor, you inevitably create limbs with enough organs to regrow.”

“Organs?” Thorson asked.

Carlos nodded. “They have distributed organ systems as well.”

“Can we poison them?” Granger wondered.

“We can try, but I don’t know what would work. We have yet to find anything organic they cannot simply devour and turn into more of themselves. That is probably their most fascinating feature, en realidad.”

“Most fascinating?” Winters cocked an eyebrow. He did not look fascinated. He looked like he’d had the living daylights scared out of him.

Carlos nodded. “They’re unusual in that they have rapid growth. We still do not fully understand their reproductive cycle, but given how efficient they are at regrowing themselves, it stands to reason this is part of their biological strategy. We have never seen anything quite like it.”

“Okay. Okay…” Winters paced again. “Then we should, um…we should prepare, in case they come. We’ll need to be ready to, um…”

“Would you like to write down your orders and send them to us a bit later?” Ginger suggested.

“My orders? Um, yes. I’ll send them to you later. I think that makes the most sense. For now, go ahead and continue your work. Alvarez, when you learn more, let us know, and Granger, we’ll see if anyone besides Dane here knows Russian. We’ve been relying on tablet translations too much. Time to change that! If there’s nothing else, um…hop to it!”

Everyone but Dane stood to leave. He’d seen this happen before with a young officer suddenly thrust into command due to unforeseen circumstances. He thought it wouldn’t be an issue since Winters wasn’t exactly young, but the poor man was flailing. They needed answers quickly. Dane didn’t want to overstep his boundaries, but he had to say something.

“Winters, a word?”

“Oh, um. Sure. Coffee?”

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

“Dane, how can I help you? Would you like some, erm…coffee?” Winters offered again.

“No, thank you,” Dane grated out. Winters was the commanding officer now, so Dane needed to respect him and do as he wished, at least in theory. However, the man was cracking up. With as much coffee as he was drinking, he was probably sweating pure caffeine.

“Well, what can I do for you, then?”

“It’s more like what I can do for this mission. I want into those Russian logs, sir. Have you made any more progress? The terminal in my room doesn’t show me anything, and I wanted to check if there was a secure system with that data yet.”

“I’ll be frank with you. It could take years to crack those logs with the computers we have down here,” Winters sank into a chair and wiped the sweat from his face. “Their encryption was very thorough.”

“Down here, yes. Which is why the computer on the Cosmos is our best bet.” The colony had plenty of computers, but most of them were general-use units. The mainframe on the Cosmos was much more than that. It was one of the strongest computers Earth had been able to design with the tech available at their time of departure.

Winters frowned, his face half-wiped but still sweaty. “I see where you’re going with this, Dane, and it’s not going to work. Our software techs were clear about this. The level of encryption is substantial enough to require a mainframe like the one on the Cosmos to crack. That alone means the whole thing could be a trap. Why else encrypt it?”

“Because the Russians are even more paranoid than we are?”

“I’m not paranoid!” Winters snapped and pushed himself out of his seat to pace. Considering how much coffee the man consumed, it was a small miracle he’d been able to sit still for even a short amount of time.

Dane raised his hands in a placating gesture. “I’m not saying you are. I’m saying encryption is par for the course for the Russians. I’ve stolen encrypted files from them that turned out to be recipes for borscht!”

“You think we should risk the Cosmos for a decent bowl of borscht?” Winters leveled in a withering tone.

“I think this entire mission is at risk because of those space stars. We still don’t know why the Russians abandoned this base. I’d be willing to bet the answers are in those logs.”

“Willing to bet what? The entire ship? Adams was not willing to take that risk.”

“Adams isn’t in control right now. You are. Things have changed. She would recognize that, and you can recognize that.”

“That doesn’t mean I want to risk Russian malware. They could mine the data on the Cosmos’ computer, or worse!”

“They’re twelve light years away. It would take decades for any sort of message to relay back and forth.”

“And if it has malware? If it’s code waiting to nuke our entire operation? That computer is the single most powerful piece of tech we have. It calculates all our orbits and the weather, and it collates all the data. Most of the HUD displays are still running off that computer. We cannot risk it. Adams understood the situation did not warrant it.”

“The situation has changed, though. The space stars represent a much bigger threat than we thought. The captain is unconscious right now because of them! Obviously, she didn’t anticipate that.”

“So you think the Russians have the answers we need hidden away? You think they have data on what to do? If they had that, they’d still be here, wouldn’t they? They wouldn’t have abandoned this base if they knew how to defend it!”

Dane nodded and tried to keep his voice level. Personally, he didn’t think the Russians had abandoned the base. The base was their ship, after all. It wasn’t like they could get far without it.

No, he suspected the Russian colonists were all long dead. Of what, he didn’t know. This planet had enough dangers that any one of them could have spelled doom for them.

Winters was yelling enough for the both of them, anyway. Dane had to stay calm, however difficult it was. “You’re right. I don’t think the Russians had the right answer, but if they came up against these things, they might have some wrong answers.”

“That’s not what we need right now. What are you even talking about?”

“They might have tried some methods already. Shooting them, flamethrowers, electroshock, poison. If one of those methods didn’t work, we need to know about it immediately. It will save us time and lives.”

“You could be right.”

“Great. Then can I—”

“You also could be wrong. I’m not willing to risk everything while countermanding the captain’s orders. You can ask her when she wakes up. In fact, I encourage you to. Until then, we are going to minimize risk and stay the course.”

“Those space stars could show up by the dozens! They would clog the intake pipe.”

“Granger is working on a solution. After she has one, I’ll consider implementing it. Until then, we stay the course.”

“Fine, sir.” Dane ground his teeth. He wouldn’t argue with the commanding officer, but he couldn’t stay here and watch Winters pour another coffee either. “Thank you for your time.”

“Of course. I’ll see you around. If you need anything.”

Like coffee, Dane thought but managed not to say.

Dane left the command room with a pit in his gut. He had felt this way before many times. The pit was a familiar combat sensation, and it was rarely wrong. He could not prove the space stars had wiped the Russians from the base, but his gut didn’t need proof. His gut skipped the steps that engineers and scientists spent so much time on.

They might be able to figure this out in a couple of weeks.

Dane didn’t doubt the capabilities of this crew, but after years of working in space, he also knew research and development took time. Yes, they could send out subs, gather samples, and reverse-engineer something based on their biology. Dane was certain Dr. Alvarez was already trying to come up with a dozen solutions. That was the problem, though. Science had to take a multi-pronged approach. Failure and time were fundamental parts of the process. It took time to find failures, rule them out, and refine them into something else.

The idea of taking their time made Dane’s stomach turn because the cost would inevitably be in lives.

He might have been willing to stay the course and support the research time, but fortunately or unfortunately, he’d thought of a solution. Had been thinking of a solution since they first arrived. The safety of this entire colony was his job, and he knew a way to keep it safe. The Russians had answers. They may have been his enemy in the war, but that only meant he respected them more. Their ships were as deadly as the ADN’s. Maybe Dane had survived every interaction with them, but a lot of his fellow soldiers had not.

The Russians would not have come here, been driven away or killed, and failed to document what happened. It was possible a trap lay behind their walls of encryption, but Dane didn’t think so. Wouldn’t it make more sense to lightly encrypt a trap so it would be investigated, broken open, and have its malware activated? Of course, it could be heavily encrypted for this exact reason. No one would suspect malware behind so many digital walls. Though Winters and Adams did suspect foul play, so perhaps that supposition wasn’t true.

At some point, without meaning to, Dane had started running. He was already sweating, and the knot in his stomach at the idea of doing what he had to do started to unravel. He decided to take a few laps, thinking the stairs would be especially helpful in dissolving that knot. He’d see where that left him with regard to directly disobeying his commanding officer’s orders.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

The knot in Dane’s stomach finally untangled when he ran past the engineering level for the second time. The first time he hadn’t paid much attention to the goings-on inside, but on the second pass, he saw Lopez standing beside a pile of supplies and checking things off on her tablet in a familiar way.

“Lopez,” Dane called in greeting.

“Dane! Nice to—oh, Jesus, you’re drenched in sweat! Is the station overheating?”

“No, I was just—”

“Is there a sauna no one told me about?”

“I was—”

“You wake up from a nightmare?”

“Exercise. I was exercising. Something your engineering team might want to do more of.”

Lopez snorted a laugh. “Most of them have already taken regen treatments, hoping it will prevent them from needing to exercise.”

“The treatments don’t work that way.”

“Oh, they’ll try to change that. Anyway, regen treatments aside, what brings you to engineering instead of, say, a shower?”

“I need a favor.”

“You got it! Anything for the chief of security. I mean, you can literally order me to do what you want.”

“Not if it’s treason.”

Lopez blinked three times before choking out, “Excuse me?”

Dane sighed and explained how he needed to know what was in the Russian logs, and how Winters didn’t have the capacity to take that kind of risk right now.

Lopez sighed and bit her lip. “I don’t know, Dane. Shouldn’t we do what he says?”

“Yes. We should. I served for decades in an agency where they drilled exactly that into my brain.”

“Why do I think there’s gonna be a—”

“But…”

“There it is.”

“I’ve also been in enough high-stress situations to know when people aren’t operating at their best. Winters is trying to act like Adams is in command, and he’s the steward of the role, but that’s not what’s going on.”

“I thought you said Adams should be up on her feet in a week or two?”

“She should be, but that’s not the same as she will. Not to be too dire, but a thousand things could go wrong. She might have an allergic reaction to the space star acid, or her pod could malfunction. We could be attacked by the space stars or some other creature. Hell, a meteor could hit and cause a tidal wave.”

“Yeesh. I thought you said you weren’t going to be dire.”

“My point is that while Adams is out of commission, Winters is not serving well in her place. He’s the boss. He’s in command, which means he needs to make hard decisions. I’m hoping he’ll come around to his responsibilities since most people do. Or that Adams is back out before we need him to step up. These space stars have got me freaked out, though.”

“Not a fan of undersea cannibalism?”

“I’m not sure it was cannibalism at all.”

“Ah, so you’re in the orgy camp?”

“Does that imply there’s a camp cannibal?”

Lopez shrugged. “I guess?”

“Orgies and cannibals aside, I think the Russian logs have answers, and the only way to get them is with the Cosmos’ computer.”

“That’s it? That’s what you’re asking me to do?”

“Yes. I want to read the Russian logs. That’s it.”

“And Winters said no?”

“He said we can’t risk the computers on the Cosmos. He’s worried about malware, I guess.”

“Oh! Okay, now this is making sense.”

“So you think he’s right? It’s too dangerous?”

“Maybe for some people.”

“Not you, though?”

“I know a thing or two about malware. I can run a baffle.”

“So in addition to skydiving and SCUBA, you’re also a hacker?”

“How do you think I afforded all those trips to the rebuilt reefs in the Caribbean?”

“Are you telling me you stole them?”

“I’m telling you, anytime you try to book a trip anywhere, a thousand scammers start fishing for your information. I’ve had my identity stolen three times. Learned to protect myself.”

“So you’ll help me?”

“Sure,” Lopez agreed. “You know I’m organizing a supply run, right? That’s what these boxes are for. They’re going to the Cosmos.”

“I had a suspicion you weren’t shipping them to Toledo.”

“Here, I thought you stopped by to chat and give me a whiff of your outrageous body odor.”

“Outrageous?”

“It’s not great.”

Dane raised his hands in a placating gesture, then realized that might make things worse and lowered his arms. “If you can get me up to the Cosmos and help me, uh, baffle the encryption, I will definitely take a shower.”

“Shower first, then we’ll baffle whatever you want, Chief. I’m supposed to head to the surface this afternoon. I’ll make a request for a security escort. Sound good?”

“Yes, thank you.” Dane sighed in relief. “I could hug you.”

Lopez winked. “Shower first.”

Dane nodded his thanks and went to his quarters. He showered, making sure to scrub twice, and checked for Lopez’s request. He found it waiting for him and accepted the assignment. There was little need for security on the Cosmos because the skeleton crew up there was so small, but the security chief going up to make sure everything was running smoothly was not out of the realm of his job.

A few hours later, a hard drive with the encrypted files stashed in a bag hanging at his side, Dane met Lopez in the moon pool room. Reynolds was with her. He looked almost as pale as Dane had ever seen him.

“Need a hand with all that?” Dane asked, gesturing to the boxes of supplies.

“There is no cause for alarm!” Reynolds babbled in a rather elevated tone of voice.

“Sure,” Lopez replied.

Dane appraised Reynolds and noted the rings of sweat under his armpits.

“Everything all right here?” Dane asked.

“Of course it is!” Reynolds replied much too quickly.

“Reynolds is a little nervous, is all,” Lopez commented.

“Oh. Reynolds, I assure you no one has to know about this, all right? It’s for the good of the colony, and we’ll come clean later.”

“Come clean? Haley, you said no one would know! You said they’d destroy the evidence.”

“And you said you could keep it cool.”

“That was before the chief of security was coming with us!”

Dane realized Reynolds was not worried about the hard drive in his bag.

“Reynolds, are you bringing up something that’s not on the manifest?”

“It’s Nessie nuggets!” Reynolds shouted loud enough to echo off the walls of the moon pool. “It’s my turn to spend a week in the Cosmos, and I don’t want to do it without Nessie nuggets, okay? The food on the Cosmos is disgusting. I didn’t see why I couldn’t bring a box. Only one! But Dr. Granger said we’re not supposed to contaminate the Cosmos, which means no nuggets.”

“I don’t see how a dead, butchered, and breaded Nessie is going to contaminate anything,” Dane assured him.

“That’s my point exactly!” Reynolds shrieked, and only then did he actually hear what Dane said. “Wait, you don’t?”

“No. I think it’s fine. Make sure you share, okay?”

“Yes, sir. Of course, sir. Sharing is caring, sir.”

“Let’s just load the sub, huh?” Lopez asked.

“Sounds like a plan,” Dane agreed.

They set up a tiny supply line. Dane carried the boxes from their place in the room across the top of the sub to the hatch, where Reynolds took them down to Lopez, who stacked them up. It was good, hard work, and Dane fell into it easily enough. As he walked, he noticed the moon pool room wasn’t as sparkling clean as it once was. Little growths of turquoise algae grew in tiny colonies here and there. He tried not to think about it too much, as there was enough on his mind already, but something didn’t seem right about that.

Before too long, the sub was loaded, they were underway, and algae became an unremarkable concern.

Dane let Lopez drive so he could focus on the landscape beneath them. Specifically, he looked for space stars crawling across the ocean floor, but he didn’t see any. Safe, for now.

They surfaced next to the landing pad, and an attendant helped tie the sub to the platform.

Dane didn’t spend much time up here, but that was a mistake.

The sea breeze blowing through his hair and the gentle sway of the waves beneath the floating platforms felt great. As useful as the sunken Russian base was, it didn’t feel like living on a planet. It was more like being inside a spaceship with manmade walls to protect them from the world they’d come to explore.

Up here, it seemed real. They had long since proven the air was safe to breathe, and with no aerial predators, the center of this platform was one of the safest places on the planet. He was too far from the edges for a Nessie to reach him, and surely the space stars couldn’t climb the thin cable anchoring them in place.

“Not Granger’s finest work, but not too bad, huh?” Lopez pointed out.

“Not at all.” Dane smiled and took the box from her. He carried it across the platform to one of the shuttles. Inside, he found a wheeled cart to aid with the rest of the boxes, along with an old friend.

“Anderson! Long time no see.”

“Same to you, sir. They keep you busy down there?”

“Too busy, yes. I’m surprised I haven’t seen you behind the wheel of a submarine.”

Anderson smirked. “If you think I’d give up flying so I can fart around in that underwater van, you’re not the same Dane from the vids back home.”

Dane laughed at the joke and Anderson’s sheer, brazen manner. “Better than simulations, I take it?”

“I got this job with nothing on my resume except virtual piloting. I’m not giving it up, sir, even if I have to spend most of my days up here, sitting in the sunshine and suffering through a gentle breeze. It’s horrible, sir. Truly awful. I’ll find a way to cope, though.”

“So horrible you have tan lines when you’re not smiling?”

“Have to keep morale up, sir.”

“And those poles over there. They’re for fishing? Looks tough.”

“Someone needs to try different technologies, sir. I like Nessie nuggets as much as the next guy who grew up playing too many video games, but even I have a limit. You don’t miss sushi?”

“No, Anderson, I do not. You mind giving us a hand?”

“Sorry, sir. Pre-flight checklist to go through.”

“You didn’t start that when you knew we were coming?”

“Regulation says it must be completed within fifteen minutes of flight. If there had been any delays, it would have been irrelevant and could have even cost us time.”

“How do you figure?”

Anderson only grinned.

“No heavy lifting and too much sun? I think you’re the only person on this entire planet who got the memo about how we’re supposed to live.”

“Happy to share my methods, sir, but I should get to the preflight check.”

“Hop to it, Anderson.”

Anderson got to work. Dane took the cart back to the sub. After not much longer, the boxes were loaded. It amazed Dane that a simple task like moving boxes could feel so different in the open air, with sunshine on his back and wind on his face. With the supplies loaded, they boarded the shuttle and went up to the Cosmos.

They reached the Cosmos without issue and found it running smoothly. The engineer Reynolds was there to replace eagerly helped them unload their supplies. Odd how a few months under the pull of gravity could make the weightlessness of orbit feel strange once more. The engineer was a godsend who’d added more fluid in the microgravity than anyone else. Dane got the sense the kid missed the fresh air even more than he had.

“All right, let’s go!” the engineer called when they were unloaded.

Anderson looked at Dane for confirmation.

“Sorry, kid, I need to make a few rounds. Shouldn’t take me too long, but you can’t go down quite yet.”

The engineer was crestfallen, but he knew better than to argue. He simply nodded and sort of floated off.

“Miss Lopez? Shall we?” Dane asked.

“Right this way.” Lopez kicked off to float down a hall toward the mainframe.

Dane launched and followed her. He had a lot more experience in space than she did, so he made it through the doorway without having to readjust. Lopez didn’t exactly crash into a wall on her way there, but she didn’t avoid it completely, either.

Dane chuckled as he held a handrail and waited for her to reorient herself. She might not have been as naturally graceful in microgravity as she was swimming in an alien ocean, but nothing about her was clumsy.

They proceeded past empty sleeping pods. Every person had been taken out and was either laboring on the colony below or keeping an eye on things up here. It was amazing to see so many pods sitting there unused. It made Dane appreciate what the Russians had done. The ship hanging out in orbit almost felt wasteful. He understood why the Russians had brought theirs to the surface and transformed it into an underwater base.

That had been the plan for the Cosmos, after all, though they’d failed to anticipate the watery world. They had hoped to land. Did that imply the Russians had better data about this planet than they had? It seemed so since they’d been able to repurpose their ship. Then again, they’d only been able to do that because of the volcano. Had they anticipated that? Surely not.

The entire train of thought made Dane wish they were closer than twelve and a half light years to Earth. It was insane to think every message they sent would still take twelve years to get home.

They reached the computer core to find the door locked.

“I’m all for helping the colony, but hacking a secure door like this is…well, I’m not so good that I can avoid all security.”

“Let’s try my access codes first.” Dane put them in. Predictably, the door opened for the chief of security. They entered the computer mainframe. It looked the same as everything else did under the hood. Oddly shaped pieces of metal and plastic covered every surface of the cylindrical room. Wires ran between them in an artificial circulatory system.

Dane was still looking for a screen or a control console when Lopez gestured for him to float toward her.

“Access port,” she said matter-of-factly as she pulled out a tablet from her own bag.

“What’s that for?” Dane asked.

“Winters and Adams aren’t completely bullshitting about the risk of malware. Pretty much every bit of data on projects like this is protected by something. We should assume, at the very least, any Russians still on this planet would know as soon as we break into the code.”

“Even if it’s only on a hard drive?”

“It all depends on what they coded. It’s possible their system sent off a warning the second you dumped all their files onto this drive. It’s possible decrypting this will unleash something that will try to take control of either the communication capabilities or the entire ship.”

“They can do that?”

Lopez shrugged. “Of course. You didn’t think your star fighters were safe in the war because you knew how to do a couple of flips or a barrel roll, right?”

Dane supposed it spoke to the strength of compartmentalization in the military that he’d never been concerned about digital security. In hindsight, it must have been a constant concern. The star fighters relied on dozens of sensors. If any one of those had been corrupted and made to spew out the wrong data, it would have been disastrous. He didn’t say all that, though. Instead, he mumbled a bland, “Of course not. Gotta love engineers.”

Lopez connected her tablet to the port and brought up a program. She entered a few commands, then gestured for Dane’s hard drive. He gave it to her. She hooked it up to her tablet.

“All right. Got the ship working on it. Now we wait.”

“For how long?” Dane wondered.

Lopez shrugged.

They waited. They waited some more. At some point, Dane dozed off to the hum of the room.

“Dane.” His name came as if through a tunnel, like one of the tubes he sometimes used to board a star fighter. “Dane, wake up.”

Dane sat up and reached for a weapon on his waist that wasn’t there.

“You all right?” Lopez asked.

“Fine. I’m fine,” he replied, wiping the sleep from his eyes.

“The decryption is working. There were a few Trojans hiding in there, but the baffle’s got them running around the tablet.”

“Do we have any entries?”

“Most of the stuff from the first few weeks. Translating the text files wasn’t hard. The videos are all still in Russian, though.”

“Show me some of the videos.”

Lopez nodded and brought one up.

The video showed a graphic representation of the surface of the planet. It expanded as more of it was scanned. So much blue made it hard to orient what part of the planet they were looking at. It changed color as it switched to thermal imaging. Now the volcano hotspot could be seen.

They fast-forwarded through the mapping, and when that file ended, they picked another one labeled “exodus2751.” It was a view from a camera mounted outside the Russian spaceship. As they watched, a massive chunk of the ship broke off and descended into the atmosphere. Dane knew it was headed for the dormant volcano.

They scanned the entries, trying to make sense of the original Russian or the tablet’s translation, or simply picking clips at random. There was a lot about how they chose their spot, set up their ship, and hollowed out the volcano, but nothing about either the space stars or the Nessies.

“Can we jump ahead?” Dane pointed to a file further down the list.

“I had them decrypt in chronological order.”

“Can we jump to their last weeks?”

“Of course. Give me a few minutes.”

They waited, then their answers finally started to trickle in.

It wasn’t pretty.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

“He’s saying that today is a great day or something like that. They've finally triumphed over the Chany.”

“Chany?” Lopez asked as the Russians passed around a bottle of clear liquid.

“I think it’s a monster? Not really sure, but there were a lot of them.”

“They must mean the Nessies. Russians wouldn’t use a Scottish folk tale to name the things.”

“Maybe…wait, wait. Pause the video and zoom in there!”

Lopez did. The body of a Nessie hid in the background, half-chopped and butchered. So it wasn’t only the crew of the Cosmos who ate the near-reptilian sea monsters. Though rather than breading and frying it, as Americans were wont to, it appeared the Russians had made a stew of the once-mighty beast. They passed around bowls between pulls from their bottle.

“Let’s check the next day.”

They scrubbed through a few days of security footage, though it was all pretty basic. It was hard to tell based on body language, but Dane thought the Russians looked happy, or at least relaxed. He thought back to when his own crew had finally gotten a leg up over the Nessies. It had changed the atmosphere for them and had likely done the same for the Russians.

It wasn’t until a week later that they noticed the space stars.

“God damn it!” Lopez jumped and sent herself floating around the room when they opened a file to reveal the mouth of a space star trying to get at the reinforced glass. That file showed nothing beyond the hungry creature not quite able to reach the camera, so they switched to another feed from the same day.

It showed a distant shot of the area surrounding the volcano. Dane recognized the general topography, though there was a lot more wildlife, both coral and the towering kelp “trees.” He’d assumed the Russians had intentionally cleared the area, but now he saw it had been the space stars.

There were a dozen of them, only visible in the shot from the swathes of destruction left in their wake. One tried to mow down a kelp tree while a Russian repeatedly fired at it with an underwater weapon. He managed to kill the space star, but only by focusing on it with such intensity that he failed to notice the others getting closer. One of them climbed on his leg, and he threw his arms up and waved them back and forth. Obviously, he was in pain. They couldn’t hear the audio, but Dane recognized a plea for help when he saw one.

“This is terrible.” Lopez’s voice rang hollow.

They switched to what they thought was the same camera on the next day. Now instead of ten space stars, there were over a hundred. In less than a day—nearly fifty hours on this planet, but still—the space stars had completely decimated the ecosystem. There was almost nothing left.

They checked the next day and found the space stars gone, as well as nearly everything else. A few Russians armed with something like spear guns swam through the frame, chasing a tiny school of squid-like creatures. From the way they doggedly pursued the squids, Dane got the sense they were hunting out of desperation.

“Before the space stars stripped this place, there was a ton of food,” Lopez pointed out.

“Why did they all show up?”

“No more Chany,” Lopez said in an awful Russian accent.

“What do you mean by that?”

“We know top-tier predators have an outsized influence on the food webs they rule. It was documented countless times on Earth before most of the ecosystems collapsed. Sea otters protect kelp forests by eating urchins, for example. Or wolves help riparian plants by hunting elk.”

“The Nessies aren’t the top of the food web, though.” Dane thought back to the monster he’d seen in the depths.

“Maybe not of the entire planet, but we haven’t seen anything bigger in this mountain range. Plus, we know they like to eat the space stars.”

“And we haven’t seen one in a week,” Dane remarked, then played video from the next day.

Instead of dozens, or even hundreds, there were thousands of space stars. So many that it was hard to tell where one ended and another began. The entire seafloor had been transformed into a writhing mass of armored orange skin. Slowly but inexorably, the space stars crawled toward the Russian base. Soon the view was lost, replaced by the underside of a space star.

“Can you find the cameras in the moon pool?”

“I think that’s more your department than mine.” Lopez navigated through a few menus while Dane tried to think of words the Russians might use to indicate the space stars.

He recognized something about submersibles and told Lopez to open it. He’d chosen right, and the inside of the moon pool appeared on Lopez’s tablet. It took them a few tries to find the right one. Most of the shots were static. The only thing that changed was whether a submersible floated in the pool or not.

Dane noticed the walls weren’t the highly polished interior he had grown accustomed to. Instead, they were covered with growths of turquoise algae. The same algae he’d seen when they loaded the sub, though a lot more of it.

It didn’t take a biologist to figure out what had happened to the growths.

Lopez continued to click through until the calm of the moon pool was ruined by space stars. One crawled from the circle of water, then another, and another, until hundreds filled the room. They covered every wall and every bit of the floor. They scoured everything with their acid, leaving the slightly burnished steel Dane had long associated with the room.

They checked the date, then cross-referenced it with a camera on the other side of the door. That was when the real horrors unfolded.

They watched the moon pool’s solid steel door in one video pane while the space stars surged against it from the other side. Obviously, the creatures could sense a source of food on the other side. Otherwise, they would have crawled off somewhere else. But they didn’t. Instead, they pulsed and pushed against the door until they forced one of the hinges to bend.

Dane knew the things were strong, but watching them pry open the steel door boggled his mind. One of them couldn’t have done it alone, yet together, they’d forced open a crack. Despite their armored bodies, they were still boneless creatures. Not hampered by a skull or a pair of shoulders, the space stars squeezed through the gap.

The Russians tried to stop them, of course. They posted armed guards in the hallway and blasted every creature that came through the gap. They killed the first one, the second, the tenth, but the space stars kept coming. Plus, it wasn’t simply a matter of killing them. The Russians had to actively destroy each tentacle of every space star. Otherwise, they could simply regenerate into a new creature.

This proved to be their undoing. At first, the Russians made a valiant effort to destroy each one that came through. When the first one dropped to the ground and continued to squirm, they fired at every piece of it until nothing moved. They maintained that for a while, but when the tenth or so space star crept through, there were simply too many bodies to see what was going on.

One of the Russians approached with a long knife, but before he could poke through the pile of bodies, a writhing tentacle grabbed his ankle. He crashed to the ground. More tentacles, apparently waiting for a food source, attacked. The Russians blasted these pieces to smithereens, but that let more space stars pour in through the crack.

In the chaos that ensued, Dane could not be sure exactly where the mistake had been made. Only that if it had not been in one spot, it would have been in another. Whether a star from the crack finally made it to the Russian firing line or one of the tentacles regenerated itself enough to continue its ambulation was irrelevant. When one of the Russian defenders went down, it was already too late. Gunfire went wide, took out another defender, and the space stars continued their relentless push into the base.

The next few clips were the hardest to watch. The hydroponics being overrun. People barricading themselves in their rooms to escape the invading tentacles. Heroes trying to lead the space stars away and dooming those they wished to save.

The final log entry on the hard drive was from the control room itself.

A handful of Russians cowered on one side of the room opposite the door. The windows let in no light. They were all completely covered in the grasping arms and hungry mouths of the space stars. The door broke under the creatures’ weight.

Dane turned off the video. “We know how this ends.”

Lopez nodded, obviously too shaken to comment.

“Can you get the rest of this decrypted? I think it’s compelling, but the more data we have, the better. I want to know what else they tried besides guns.”

“Of course, but it’s going to take some time.”

“We don’t have that.”

“Let me get a different tablet. We’ll put what we have on there, take that down, then have Reynolds bring the rest down when he can. If you can clear him to get into the room?”

“That works,” Dane agreed.

They worked with an efficiency of movement they had not bothered with when stacking boxes. In minutes, they had the tablet they needed and were ready to return to the surface of the watery world. Dane took Reynolds aside to task him with continuing the work. Thankfully, the kid didn’t ask too many questions.

Then they headed back to the shuttle as quickly as they could. There was no time to waste.

“That wasn’t so bad!” The engineer waiting to go planet-side grinned, though it faded when he saw the expressions on both Dane’s and Lopez’s faces.

“You ready?”

“Yes, sir. Is everything all right?”

“We have to stop history from repeating itself.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

Anderson flew them down to the floating platform. Strange how different everything looked after seeing those videos. Dane had noticed little besides the sea air and sunshine, but now he wondered how well the four corners of the platform would hold against the space stars. Would the structure built on one side of the base offer any sort of protection, or would it doom the ADN colonists as thoroughly as hiding had doomed the Russians?

“Penny for your thoughts, sir?” Anderson inquired.

Dane chewed his lip. He didn’t want to start a panic, but at the same time, Anderson was likely to play an outsized role in the events to come.

“Keep your shuttle’s fuel tanks full, pilot. Every time you fly up and down—unless it’s an emergency—I want you to fill up.”

“Oddly specific, but sure,” Anderson agreed. If he was shaken, he did not show it.

They landed and made for the submersible.

Rather than going straight back to base, Dane steered them further afield.

“Um, sir? Does this count for OT?” the engineer asked.

“Sure,” Dane invited.

“It was that way.” Lopez keyed some commands into the screen of the sub to help Dane navigate.

He piloted them to the plateau where they’d seen the space stars and found…nothing. No creatures, no writhing tentacles, and no more debate about orgies versus cannibalism.

“Oh, thank God,” Dane muttered.

Lopez beamed.

The engineer scratched his head and muttered something else about overtime.

They turned and headed back.

Dane caught sight of the mountains in the distance when Lopez cleared her throat.

“What is it?”

“I think you should go lower, sir,” she suggested.

“Lower? That’s where the big thing is.”

“Risk versus reward, sir.”

Dane grunted, but he made the sub dive. It didn’t take long to forget all about the bigger creature. The space stars had not vanished from the plateau. Instead, they had crawled down the side of it, across the ocean floor, and were now scaling the foothills of the underwater mountain range the colonists called home.

To say there were thousands would be an understatement, a falsehood that implied that the human mind could make sense of what Dane was seeing. Below a certain elevation on the mountain, the entire sea floor was space stars. There was no gap, no break in their bodies. Only an endless wave of orange tentacles slowly working their way up the mountain.

“Do you ever hate being right?” Dane asked Lopez.

“Every day, sir. No one likes a know-it-all, especially when it comes to ravenous, flesh-eating aliens.”

“Ravenous, flesh-eating what?” the engineer sputtered.

“God damn it. The Nessies really were keeping them back,” Dane grumbled.

“Keeping what back? Those things? Why the hell were we eating Nessie nuggets when they were protecting us from those?”

“We didn’t know better,” Lopez professed.

“What even are those things?” the engineer yelped.

“Space stars,” Dane told him.

Lopez grimaced. “Worse than that. They’re death stars.”

“Seriously? You’re going to quote classic film at a time like this?” Dane asked incredulously.

“I don’t think calling them ‘space stars’ fits anymore,” Lopez argued.

“What about murder stars?” Dane suggested.

“They’re going to murder us?” The engineer quivered. Dane found he would have preferred Reynolds’ company.

“They’re going to try,” Dane admitted. “Our job is to murder them first. Make sure the cameras are getting this. We won’t have any time to waste when we get back to base.”

Lopez activated the cameras as they turned back. It was frightening how rising a few meters made the space stars vanish into the blue of the ocean’s depths. Would this world always be host to unfathomable threats like these? Was it courage or insanity that had compelled humans to leave the Earth behind, travel across the stars, and try to make their way on this new world?

Dane knew what Adams would say if she wasn’t inside a pod, unconscious and healing. As for himself? He blamed politics for his presence here. Also, he considered it one of the only good decisions politicians had ever made. There was a threat to this colony, and Dane would be damned if he didn’t do everything in his power to stop it.

He pushed the sub to its top speed and raced back to the colony. They surfaced in the moon pool, only to find Winters waiting for them with a full complement of guards.

“Athanas, arrest this man.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

“Sorry, sir.” Athanas slipped restraints around Dane’s wrists. “Only following orders.”

Dane wouldn’t argue with her. It wasn’t her choice, and besides, he’d gone up to the Cosmos without telling her. He should have notified her and left her in charge, not snuck off. There wasn’t anything to be done about that now. Winters was the one who’d ordered him to be arrested.

“You’re making a mistake!” Dane insisted. “Lopez, play the video—”

“No, we’re not playing any videos you got from the Russians. You’ve already risked the integrity of the computer up there. You’re not going to risk these systems, too.”

“Winters, can you hear yourself? You’re worried about Russian files infecting the same computers we pulled them from!”

“I, um…they could have, erm…”

“Sir, I set this tablet up with a baffle. Its wireless capabilities are off. It can’t communicate with anything on this station at all. Please, watch the video.”

“This is not the time—”

“Then when is the time?” Lopez demanded. “If there’s any sort of trial or hearing, this video will be the first piece of evidence we show! We are under attack! Chief Dane is trying to protect us.”

The indecision was palpable on Winter’s face. He looked from Dane to the tablet, to Lopez, then back to Dane.

“Sir?” Athanas asked Winters. Despite slipping restraints on Dane the second he’d stepped from the submersible, she had not made him take another step.

Winters looked like he was about to pop, then as if he’d sprung a leak. “Play the damn video.” He sighed. “This had better be good, Dane.”

Dane grimaced. “No promises, sir. I don’t think I’d call any of what you’re about to see good.”

Lopez had the right clip ready to go. It showed the space stars flow into the moon pool room, the one they currently stood in, and break through the door. She had sped up the footage, which made the space stars’ relentless entry through the crack more terrifying, as if they were fighting a single super-organism instead of a mass of thousands. Dane supposed it amounted to the same thing.

“Those… That’s what happened to the Russians?” Winters blurted. He could hardly get his mouth closed again.

“It is, sir. They wiped out the Nessies in the area, the same as we did.”

“The Nessies?” Winters looked dumbfounded.

“You know how their favorite food is the space stars? Well, apparently, this is what happens when you close the buffet.”

“This all happened long before we got here, right? We’re not… I mean, we’ve been trapping the Nessies, but there aren’t this many space stars. Right?”

Lopez was ready with the clip of them climbing up the base of one of the mountains. “We took this less than a half hour ago. That’s why we didn’t come straight back here.”

“There’s hundreds…”

“Thousands. Maybe tens of thousands,” Dane corrected.

“How close?”

“Close enough,” Dane replied. “If we’re going to set up any kind of perimeter, the sooner we do it, the better. If we let them get too close, they’ll be too dense to hold back.”

“Sir?” Athanas asked.

Winters looked at her prisoner as if he’d noticed the cuffs for the first time. “Athanas, release Security Chief Dane.”

“Sir, yes, sir!” Athanas spouted and removed the restraints.

“You’ll answer for potentially exposing the Cosmos to Russian malware, but that’s Captain Adams’ concern more than mine. We’ll let her pass judgment once she’s back up and in command. In the meantime, the security of this base is at risk, Chief Dane. What can we do to help?” Winters smiled. “I have a pot of coffee ready, of course.”

Dane saluted. “I’ll take a cup! Took a nap up there, and I’m still a little groggy. We need to brainstorm ways to hurt these things. The Russians tried guns, and though they were technically effective, there has to be a better option. If you can get the engineering and research teams working on potential solutions, that would help.”

Like any decent XO, Winters knew how to get a hold of the right people. He called both teams over his comms and, in less than a minute, had them working on potential solutions.

At some point, Winters had also given orders for someone to bring Dane a coffee because one appeared in his hand.

“What else?” Winters asked. He looked far more comfortable in a support role than he had in command. Dane made a note to himself that until the murder star attack was over, he was the de facto commander of this entire colony.

“I don’t want to sit on our hands and wait for answers. Let’s get the subs out there and see if we can hold the line or at least thin the herd. Maybe if we apply enough pressure to strategic points, we can dissuade or redirect the murder stars.”

“Murder stars?” Athanas quizzed.

“Chief Dane thought ‘death stars’ was too much,” Lopez intoned.

“I still don’t think it's wise to risk people in the open water,” Winters pointed out.

“I agree, sir. Let’s send out the Dinodestroyer and a support sub. We’ll fill them with people and arm them, but only let them out of the submarines if it seems the mounted weapons are effective.”

“Very well. We’ll see what we can come up with while you’re gone.”

“Let’s go,” Dane ordered. He and Athanas made for the Dinodestroyer. Winters really was adept at using his tablet to manage people. Dane didn’t know when he’d given the orders, but by the time they checked the ammunition, Good and Robinson had both made it to the sub, suited up and ready for combat.

“Where’s Stark?”

“Someone’s gotta be your wingman,” Stark answered over the radio. He was in the sub next door. “We only have the harpoon mounted on this puppy, but we’ve got three men inside willing to risk their lives and expend some bullets to protect this colony.”

“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”

They started out with Dane at the helm, Athanas acting as copilot with her hands on the weapon controls, Good piloting a drone, and Robinson sitting in the back, slightly stinking from scraping away the organic life forms from the intake valve. God, that felt like weeks ago. Back when they had only been concerned about a couple of stars clogging the system and not devouring every man, woman, and child in this base.

They found the space stars in the valley next to their own. Beyond them was nothing but the whitish dust of their excrement. They had already devoured every single piece of zinger, every bottom-dwelling creature, every bit of color and beauty in the valley. They were working their way through the kelp forest as the subs approached.

Dane did not consider himself an environmentalist, but like everyone who had grown up post-collapse, he had a healthy respect for any living thing that could thrive in a chaotic ecosystem. He knew Carlos had done a few experiments on the pseudo-kelp, and it had looked like a promising food source before the Nessies turned out more delicious than expected. He had no particular affinity for the kelp. It was neither something he ate regularly nor a place where the colonists fished for food. Yet seeing the murder stars wreak havoc on it hit him in the gut.

It would have been different if they simply ate it, but the space stars weren’t smart enough to understand what they were destroying. They ate through the base of the towering growths, which severed their anchors and sent them floating listlessly through the water. Some of the mighty plants found their way back to the seafloor and were promptly consumed, but many floated off to die without purpose elsewhere in the sea.

Dane hoped they had a fraction of the regenerative abilities the space stars did. Maybe this was part of their life cycle, and they’d start a new forest, though he didn’t dare guess how long it would take to reach the state it had been less than an hour ago.

“Orders, sir?” Good asked. He had a gun mounted on his drone.

“Line of fire across the front of them. See if you can stop their forward march.”

“Yes, sir.” Good steered the drone along the space stars’ front line and opened fire. He didn’t waste a single bullet. There were too many creatures to miss, but he didn’t make much of a difference. The drone was moving too fast for any space star to take more than one or two hits. That wasn’t enough to destroy the regenerative aliens, especially after they had eaten so much.

Those that had been struck did not seem bothered. Most of them did not even slow their march. Those that did were simply swallowed by the horde behind them. Dane could not tell if they were torn to pieces or hidden beneath the rest of the murder stars, but he didn’t think it mattered. With so much food around them, the creatures would be unstoppable.

“Damn it. All right. New tactic. We fall back and set up a choke point at the base of the valley. We make these murder stars realize our valley is off-limits.”

They fell back as the creatures continued their march. They seemed to prefer the flattest part of the sea floor, either because travel was easier or most of the food was there. Either way, it only mattered that the murder stars started to crowd together as they moved into the next valley.

“Open fire!” Dane commanded, and Athanas obeyed.

Supercavitating bullets ripped through the water, obliterating any murder star that crossed the line in the sand Dane had marked on their displays.

Good hit the same spot with his drone’s gun, and Stark cheered over the comms. For a moment, at least, it seemed to be working.

“Reload!” Athanas shouted, and Robinson hopped to it.

“Already?” Dane inquired.

Athanas looked grim. “They’re tough little bastards, sir. I can hit that spot and make tentacle soup out of them, but I don’t know how much it’s actually helping.”

Dane only had to look at the mountains to see it wasn’t working at all. An entire case of ammo spent had simply encouraged the murder stars to climb the walls. They had maybe killed ten. Ten out of thousands.

“God damn it,” Dane cursed. “Return to base.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

They popped the hatch on the submersible and found a team of engineers waiting to replace the hydrogen fuel cells. Dane tried to tell himself it was good the colony took the threat seriously, yet he felt they’d already suffered a defeat.

“How did it go?” Granger came into the room so quickly she must have been watching them via cameras.

“The guns don’t work. Bullets can destroy the murder stars, but it takes too many. Plus, they don’t seem to respond to pain like most creatures do. Getting shot didn’t slow them down or spook any of the other ones.”

Lopez grinned. “We did come up with another idea.”

“It was Haley, really,” Nat nodded in respect of the other engineer. “She noted that when you went out there with a handheld torch, it sent the stars into convulsions.”

“Your idea was a cutting torch?”

“We thought you might want a bigger one.” Lopez gestured to a huge nozzle connected to a hose. “We can affix these to the subs. We have smaller ones as well.”

“You were busy!”

“It’s simple stuff. Shuttling fuel through a nozzle. The only issue is we don’t have a ton of fuel down here.”

“Anderson had some on the platform. I should have brought more down,” Dane contended.

“Don’t beat yourself up over what you couldn’t have known. Let’s get these attached to the subs, roast some space stars, and acquire more fuel.”

Apparently, attaching the flamethrowers was not as simple as creating them. The problem was how the superheated flame affected the water and the sub. If the fire blasted too close to the sub, it weakened the structure. Too far, and the heat dissipated too much. By the time they finally got one attached, the space stars had already reached the volcano that housed the base.

“Dane, what are we thinking here?” Winters sounded far more comfortable asking questions rather than giving orders.

“We can’t turn the flame thrower on the space stars if they’re on the base.” Dane watched the creatures start to ascend.

“What about the ones farther out?” Winters asked. “You could target them.”

“It won’t be enough. A hundred of these things will be hard to deal with, and there are already that many on the base. We… God damn it, I think we need to evacuate.”

“What? So soon?” A note of panic slipped into Winters’ voice for a moment. “Can’t we hold them to this room?”

“Granger put a new door on, but we can’t assume it’s going to stop the space stars. It didn’t before. Assuming that now will cost us lives.”

“What do you think we should do?”

“Load as many people into the subs as we can. Department heads and children first. Get them to the platform, then up to the Cosmos. While Anderson does that, the sub pilots can tank up on shuttle fuel, come back down, and maybe turn the tide.”

“If you don’t want to risk using flamethrowers near the base now, you can’t use them when the space stars have covered even more of it,” Winters protested.

“We can’t let this mission fail. We need at least enough people to get out so we can still have a viable colony in a different location.”

Winters paled, but he nodded. “The captain and I prepared a list for an emergency evacuation. I’ll get right on it.”

“While he’s doing that, Athanas, let’s roast some space stars.”

They climbed back into the sub and headed for the valley around the volcano. It had already transformed so much. Instead of kelp reaching for the light and zingers providing habitat for the bony fish and crustaceans, there was nothing but a bed of space stars. An endless mass of them. Even with Dane’s efforts to make the passage into the valley hostile, they had flowed onto the mountains. It looked like a slow-motion flood.

“I’m going to cut a break in there, see if the flames will dissuade them,” Dane announced.

“Ready on your mark, sir,” Athanas replied.

Dane piloted the sub on a line parallel to the bottom of the volcano. He didn’t want to hit the rock and risk damaging the base. That meant there were already dozens of space stars past where they would try to burn. It felt like a losing battle, but Dane wouldn’t give up now.

“Mark.”

White-hot flame blasted out, instantly vaporizing the water it touched and sending a great cloud of bubbles toward the surface. The murder stars fared no better. Those caught in the band of flame spasmed and twitched, their tentacles shriveling and falling limp.

“Overheating, sir.”

“Let it drop.”

Athanas ended the blast, and they surveyed the damage. In one strike, they had killed ten of the things. Better than the bullets, but still not enough. They needed a dozen subs out here, each with an unlimited amount of fuel, which they certainly did not have.

“We’ll try for another strike, Athanas.”

“Yes, sir. Same spot?”

“That’s the goal.”

If the space stars had any fear of being roasted alive, they did not show it. They continued to surge across the dead stars and onto the base.

They completed another three passes, each more successful than the last before Winters called them back to start the evacuation. Dane wanted to stay out, claiming they could turn the tide and were learning how to kill more murder stars with each blast, but he would not lie to Winters. Though they’d killed close to a hundred stars in total, it wasn’t enough. There were thousands more, all eager to fill the spaces the dead no longer occupied. Driven toward the base as if they could smell a food source inside. Dane was fairly certain they could.

“Sir, are we heading back or making another pass?” Athanas asked.

Dane glanced at the crude fuel gauge Lopez and Granger had fashioned and attached to the submersible’s screen. It was already more than half gone.

“We head back.” Dane steered the sub back toward the moon pool.

They emerged from the surface of the pool to find the place crowded with people in space suits.

“All right, you should all have your assignments on your HUDs,” Winters explained. “It’s going to be tight in the submersibles, and not everyone will fit on the first ride up. I need everyone to stay calm and be patient!”

“We can help!” a med tech with tears on her face shouted at Winters.

“You are helping,” Thorson called back from near the entrance to the room. Dane noticed he was not dressed in a space suit. “They’re going to need medical professionals up there. Someone could get their hand stuck in an airlock or suffer damage to their lungs if something goes wrong with a suit.”

“Then why are you staying?” the med tech shouted, her voice ragged.

“They’ll need a surgeon down here if those things get in. I’m the best we’ve got.”

“Come on. It is not what we want to do, but it is what we must do. Nos vemos,” Carlos Alvarez cajoled and led his wife and daughter toward one of the subs.

“The sooner we get up to the Cosmos, the sooner we can ready supplies to send down here and fight back against these things,” Ginger insisted from the back of the Dinodestroyer. “They need shuttle fuel more than anything, and they can only get that on the ship. This is our duty. No matter what you’re feeling right now, we need everyone here to do their duty.”

She helped her daughter down the stairs while Carlos waved more people aboard.

Dane and his security personnel assisted with loading the subs. They crammed them full, fitting dozens of people into vehicles designed to comfortably seat less than ten, but it still felt like too few. There were over six hundred colonists. A paltry handful was already above in the Cosmos, and a few more were on the floating platform. Yet the vast majority were still inside the base. Dane thought the lack of people trying to bum-rush the subs spoke to their bravery. He would not let their sacrifices be in vain.

“Farewell, Granger,” Dane called as Nat headed toward the sub.

“Maybe I should stay,” Granger proposed.

“Are you serious? Get out of here!” Lopez insisted. “You’re brilliant. Absolutely brilliant, but you’re terrible under pressure! We need you up there, where you can think of how to get us out of this.”

“I can help here.”

“There’s cookies up above, all right? Go get a cookie. These flamethrowers prove you’ve earned it.” Lopez gave Nat a gentle shove and sent the tattooed woman on her way. She climbed down a hatch and closed it behind her. Two of the subs left, with only the Dinodestroyer remaining. Carlos Alvarez stood atop it, helping a mom and a young boy inside.

He turned to them all. “That’s everyone?”

“For this round, yes. We’ll have more when you all come back.” Dane was careful not to say if, but he had been watching the space stars. They were nearly to the moon pool. They were already cutting it close getting these submersibles out of here. There would not be another run.

“Perfecto.” Carlos closed the hatch on the sub and climbed back into the moon room.

Immediately, a banging came from the hatch of the sub. Carlos pulled out his tablet, and the terrified face of his freckled wife appeared.

“Carlos, what in the hell are you doing? Amanda is scared.”

“Then you need to calm her down, mi amor.”

“You’re her father. You calm her down!”

“Ginger, mi corazón, that is your job. You are better at helping people control themselves than anyone I know. You need to get up the Cosmos and lead the people.”

“Carlos, you can’t stay down here.”

“My research should have anticipated this problem. This is my fault. I cannot abandon these people down here.”

“And I can?”

“Vidas, this is how it must be. Amanda must go up to the Cosmos with the other children. She cannot have both of her parents be heroes.”

“You foolish man,” Ginger snapped. Then the call went dead, and the sub started to move.

Carlos rubbed his mustache and seemed to lose himself for a moment, but he pulled himself out of it.

“I saw stars all around the entrance to the pool. They will be in here in less than cinco minutos. Do we set up a flame thrower here, or…?”

Dane looked at Winters, but Winters only held his gaze. “This is a security issue, Dane. What do you recommend?”

“We can’t hold this location. The moon pool is too big, and there are too many of them. We need to assume they’re going to break through that door. The last time they did that, they only made a space big enough for them to pass through one at a time. The flamethrowers might be enough to hold a gap that large.”

“You heard the man,” Winters barked. “Everyone out of this room. We weld it shut behind us.”

“What if the subs come back?” Robinson asked.

“I sent you up above!” Dane roared.

“I couldn’t leave you guys.” Robinson shrugged, his head half-cocked like a puppy.

“You excel at keeping groups of people calm. We could have used you up there.”

“There are more people down here than above, sir,” Robinson stated. The truth of those words was immediately clear when they stepped from the moon pool room into the hallway.

Colonists lined either side of the hall, all with somber expressions on their faces. Most wore the old envirosuits or the newer diving suits. Many had weapons, either knives from the kitchens, pieces of pipe, or construction equipment. All wore grim expressions. Dane understood he didn’t need to tell them the submersibles would not be returning.

“Robinson, I want these people grouped in teams and stationed throughout the base. Those who look like they can fight, I want on the upper levels. Anyone with an idea, get them brainstorming in the labs. Strong swimmers should be by airlocks. There’s one on each level. I need you checking with the surface. If that door breaches, the safest option might be to swim for it.”

“You got it, sir. You can count on me,” Robinson whispered back. He turned to the people. “I’m sure when you all agreed to voyage into the stars, you had something else in mind, am I right?”

Somehow, the kid actually got a few of those grim expressions to crack into smiles.

“I’m all for seafood, but this is ridiculous, huh?”

Something about his earnest attitude helped people relax. Some chuckled, and a few started joking with each other.

“I’m not going to say the next few hours will be easy, but it can go easier with your help. I need everyone to break into teams. You’re either going to work on research, be ready to fight, or be ready to swim. If you can’t do any of those things…well, I don’t know what compelled you to get into that sleeping pod in the first place.”

Robinson gave orders on where he wanted people to go, and soon the hallway was empty. The kid may have been a puppy in human form, but also similar to a puppy, people liked him. Dane made a note to promote him if they made it through this alive.

“Athanas. Can I leave you with the flamethrower?”

“Of course, sir. It would be an honor to barbecue some murder stars.”

“I can help too,” Stark offered. He still had a bit of a limp, but his expression was resolute.

“Are you sure, soldier?”

“Sitting still and blasting these bastards with flame is the job description. I may be slower than I was, but I’m still faster than these things.”

“Good man, Stark.”

“We set to weld the door shut?” Lopez asked.

Dane only considered this for the briefest moment. “Do it.”

Lopez got to work on the edge of the door. Dane was no metal worker, but he could tell she was welding over spots that had been welded before. The Russians had not been able to stop the space stars by reinforcing their barriers, so why would this time be any different? Even if they couldn’t stop the space stars from breaking through, the welds should slow them down. It might give them enough time to come up with…something.

“Contact us if they break through the door,” Dane ordered. “We’ll watch the moon pool room over the security cameras and give you a heads-up if we can. Burn them for as long as possible. We’ll be in the control room, finding a solution to this mess.”

Athanas and Stark both saluted. Then Dane, Lopez, Winters, Good, and Dr. Alvarez headed for the control room to make good on the promise.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

Dane rubbed his eyes. “I refuse to believe our best plan is laying a scent trail of urine.”

“Coffee?” Winters asked, a fresh pot ready and already pouring into Dane’s cup.

“We know the space stars are able to sense organic life at a distance. If they could not, it stands to reason they would have ignored the Russians hiding in their base, no?” Carlos asked.

Carlos glanced at the view screen that showed the video feed of the murder stars. Every inch of the moon pool room was completely covered in the multi-legged monsters. They didn’t seem interested in moving on to the next valley until they had completely exhausted the food sources in this one.

“Are you sure pee will do the trick?” Dane asked.

“I have no idea, honestly, but we know it cannot be a sight thing. Smell makes the most sense…oh! Unless they can sense electromagnetic signatures like sharks. In that case…” Carlos trailed off. Dane did not think that was a good sign.

“Fine. We tell the colonists to pee in jugs, and—”

“Sir? We got a problem.” Good pointed to the screen. At first, Dane didn’t see the issue since the murder stars were as tightly crowded as they had been for the last thirty minutes. Then their movement shifted. Rather than grasping randomly at this and this, all the creatures near the door synchronized their movements. Their arms stopped flailing and instead grabbed hold of the tiny ridge on the door. The centers of the stars all heaved at once.

“Sir?” Athanas came over the radio.

“We see it. I’ll be right there.”

“With a solution?”

Dane didn’t have the heart to tell her their best plan was to lure the stars with urine.

“With a gun.”

By the time Dane reached the hatch to the moon pool room, the solid steel door was undulating. Only a tiny bit, a few millimeters in and out, but that was far more than it should have moved. This door had been designed to withstand the pressure of the sea. The murder stars did not seem to care.

Athanas and Stark checked their flamethrowers one last time, then a tiny crack appeared near one of the hinges. A tentacle snaked inside the base, and Athanas let it know how unwelcome it was. After a spurt from her flamethrower, the arm performed a hasty, twitching retreat.

It took less than a second for another tentacle to appear in the tiny gap. Stark hit that one, and it retreated as well. A third did not push through the gap, which proved the flamethrowers were more effective than guns. Yet when the door started to shift again, Dane stopped counting it as a victory.

Something else gave, and the crack near the top of the door widened. Now a few space stars could get through simultaneously. Athanas blasted them with heat. Enough of their bodies poked through that a blast from her weapon killed them instead of wounding a tentacle. Still, as soon as they died, more took their place. Stark blasted those as well.

The flamethrowers were working, but hundreds of space stars filled the room on the other side of the door. Thousands more waited outside. The flamethrowers might have been able to hold the line if not for two problems. One was fuel. They simply didn’t have that much down here. The second was the heat.

Athanas, Stark, and Dane were already sweating. The hallway was getting hot.

“You two all right?”

“Sweat is only weakness leaving the body!” Stark shouted.

“Already used half my fuel, sir,” Athanas replied.

Dane cursed. Dead murder stars piled up in front of the door, but it wasn’t enough. Nowhere near enough. Stark hit the crack with another blast of flame, and the stars pulled back.

“I don’t think that’s a good sign,” Stark mentioned.

The door shook once more, and this time the locking mechanism gave way. With a thunderous crash, the door fell backward into the moon pool. Dane, Athanas, and Stark stood in the hallway, facing hundreds of advancing space stars.

“I hope you like spicy food, you freaks!” Athanas shouted. She squeezed the trigger on her flamethrower and didn’t let go until a hundred space stars were dead, and her weapon ran out of fuel.

She had bought them maybe five minutes. More stars were already climbing out of the moon pool, surging over the dead stars, slowing only enough to eat the cooked flesh of their own kind.

“I think I’m going to be sick,” Stark lamented.

“Have feelings on your own time,” Dane snapped. “We need to get out of this hallway and secure the door at the end. Stark, watch our back. I want some of that fuel in reserve, but don’t let any get out ahead of the others. They seem capable of some level or form of communication. Deny them their scouts.”

“Yes, sir!”

They fell back. The space stars did not hurry to follow, but they followed all the same. Inch by inch, foot by foot, they poured into the hallway, covering the floors, walls, and ceiling as they approached. Stark blasted those that pulled ahead of the others, but this only served to slow them down a fraction. They were unstoppable as a rising tide.

The three of them reached the end of the hallway, went through the door, and closed it behind them.

“I think I used too much fuel, sir.”

“That’s all right, soldier. Let’s get these refilled.”

“On it!” Lopez had been waiting for them on the other side of the door. She took both flamethrowers and hurried down a stairway toward engineering.

“How much fuel do we have, sir?” Athanas asked.

“Not enough,” Dane grimaced.

“Orders?”

“Let’s see what the science guys came up with.”

They returned to the command center and found a remote-control car loaded with a plastic bladder.

“You’ve been busy,” Dane noted.

“We’re going to try this, sir. The idea is to lead them on a merry chase and—”

“Let me guess, buy us some more time?” Dane asked.

Good bit his lip and nodded. “Best we got, sir.”

“This is all my fault,” Carlos repeated. “I should have prioritized different areas of research instead of what we could eat. We had not dealt with predators on Earth for so long! I believed they were the threat, not their prey, and I failed to anticipate the danger even a prey species can represent.”

“We should never have eaten all those Nessies,” Winters grumbled into his cup of coffee.

“Wait, what was that?” Dane asked him.

“Sorry. I let some of the old doom and gloom slip out.”

“No, what did you say? Say it again.”

“Well, I said we should never have eaten all those Nessies. If we’d left some of them around, they would eat the space stars,” Winters elaborated.

“They were delicious but clearly the lesser of two evils,” Stark agreed.

“So delicious we drove them extinct in less than six months,” Winters said.

Carlos sighed. “In this area, at least.”

“What do you mean by that?” Dane asked. “There might be more in other places?”

“There almost certainly are,” Carlos explained as if they were at an academic convention rather than waiting to be devoured. “We killed maybe a hundred individuals at the most. That is not enough for a breeding population. Not even close. Plus, they are large, carnivorous animals. It’s likely they are highly territorial, possibly migratory, and probably both.”

“You’re saying like on the other side of the planet?”

“I wouldn’t go that far. We have hardly explored the mountain range. I would guess there are more living in it, likely around the coral areas where we’ve been finding the space stars.”

“Doc, you’re a genius!”

“I mean, technically, yes, that es cierto. What do you mean, though?”

“No time.” Dane grabbed a wetsuit and tugged it on. “Are there cameras on the exterior of that airlock?” He gestured to the one in the command center.

“I can try to find them, sir,” Athanas assured him.

“I’m going to make a swim for it. Grab a sub and try to find some Nessies. With luck, I can lure them back here.”

“I have visual, sir. That airlock is clear, but it won’t be for long. If you go out there, it’s going to be a one-way trip.”

“A risk I’m more than willing to take. If there’s a way we can save these people, I have to try. When Lopez gets back with the flamethrowers, hold that door. Good, you go ahead with your rover urine thing.”

“I will, sir.”

“Very good.”

Dane stepped into the airlock.

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

Waiting for the airlock to fill with water was excruciating. It shot in from a tube at the bottom of the room and gushed around Dane’s ankles, then his shins, knees, and up to his thighs. By the time it reached his chest, he was pounding on the external door, willing it to open faster, albeit unsuccessfully.

When the door finally opened, it was nearly too late. Dane swam out only to get yanked to a stop. A space star had grabbed his flipper in its tentacle. He cursed and quickly removed first that flipper, then the other.

The space stars ripped apart the organic plastic, then consumed it. They swarmed across the door. By some stroke of luck, the flipper had distracted them so they had not actually gotten inside the door. They didn’t seem interested in it, either. Did that mean the water-to-air transition of the moon pool was a trigger for them or was it possible they somehow remembered the layout of this base from their last attack here? Dane didn’t know, and he had no time to answer such questions.

He kicked for the surface, angling himself toward the platform where the submersibles waited. He reached the surface long before the platform and swam across the water’s surface as he looked down below.

There were more murder stars than he could have possibly imagined. He saw now that they had not been limited to that one plateau. They must have been deep below on the seafloor. He did not see a break in their numbers in the valley with the volcano base, nor the next where the kelp forests had been, nor in the one beyond that where the platform was anchored.

More troubling still, the space stars had found the cable anchoring the platform to the ground. At the base of it, they clambered over and on top of each other in their haste to make for the surface. Yet as they ascended, it became trickier, so there was only a single file by the halfway point. Every now and then, the cable tightened or relaxed, and one of them fell off and floated down.

They did not seem dissuaded by being knocked off. They did not seem dissuaded by anything. Dane hoped the Nessies could change that.

He reached the platform and climbed aboard.

“Sir!” one of his security personnel said and saluted. About half the people who had taken the subs were still on the platform, waiting for Anderson’s return.

“I need a submersible.”

“I’ll get one prepped for you, sir. You heading back down with a flamethrower? We’re still waiting on that fuel.”

“Actually, I need to head away from the base.”

“Sir?”

“No time to explain. Winters understands. See if you can contact the Cosmos. I want satellites watching the water. If anyone sees any of the Nessies, I need to know their location immediately.”

“Sir!”

Dane hoped the kid didn’t think he was crazy. Not that he would blame him if he did.

He climbed into the sub. The first thing he noticed was the cable attaching the platform to the ground. It was almost as if Dane’s passage had stimulated or infuriated the space stars. They climbed faster than they had before and had nearly reached the platform. Dane fired up the sub and headed out. Only then did he check the external cameras and discover he had chosen the only submersible with murder stars crawling all over it.

“This is a good thing. Being attacked by murder stars is a good thing,” Dane mumbled as he pushed the submersible toward the active volcano. If there were stars on it, and a Nessie saw him, it might work like bait. The stars could be a real boon. It wasn’t like he had a plan on how to attract them without the stars. The only issue was that the creatures could chew through the metal, given enough time. Dane could deal with that, too. Time was certainly of the essence, after all. What was one more ticking clock?

He maneuvered through valleys nestled between volcanic mountains, looking for some sign of life. The valleys closest to them had all been decimated, but before too long, he started to see signs of life. Then he pulled into one that still had zingers and kelp forests. Of course, by then, the murder stars had destroyed one of his external cameras, so he could no longer track how well they were doing. Hey, small victories, right?

Dane pushed the sub faster, trying not to think of all the ways the space stars could kill him. They could puncture the submersible, and he could drown. They could clog the propeller. They could find some piece of wiring close to the surface and destroy a vital system. It turned out they went for the propeller.

Dane realized this when he suddenly lost power. Protocol was to go outside and check for damage, and doing that would doom not only him but everyone waiting for rescue back in the colony. He had to figure something else out.

“Damn it. I wish Lopez were here.” He slammed the controls in frustration. In doing so, he hit the propeller control. The craft lurched, then stopped, and suddenly Dane was moving again. He turned the submersible and saw that he’d shredded a space star behind him. The propeller had cut it into five or six pieces. They wriggled and gyrated as they slowly sank toward the seafloor. His heart started to hammer in his chest. If fire powered by rocket fuel was the only thing that could destroy these things, they were screwed. Anderson would have to bring down an ocean of the stuff to make a difference.

“No,” Dane said aloud, not allowing his darkest thoughts to fester. “We have a plan. We can do this.”

He steered the submersible further from the base and watched from behind a sheet of transparent material as one of the space stars inched its way across his view. Its set of mouths puckered and bit at the glass between them. They didn’t do anything at first until one of the mouths spit out some acid and left a smudge on the glass. That was the least of Dane’s worries, though.

There came a pop and a hiss from the back of the submersible. A single jet of water squirted into the area behind him. He locked the controls to keep moving the sub forward and stood to patch the leak. Before he got there, the jet of water abruptly slowed to a trickle and stopped. Dane inspected the hole and found the mouth of another space star on the other side.

He tried the patch kit all the same. It held for about nine seconds before the star used more acid to melt away the patch.

“God damn murder stars,” Dane grumbled. Its ring of teeth worked at the edges of the hole. It wouldn’t take long before its boneless body could fit through the widened gap. It was a Catch-22, though. As long as it was chewing at the hole, water couldn’t pour in. At the same time, every second it remained there made the hole larger.

The entire sub shook, and Dane was knocked to the deck.

Water sprayed in. Dane slipped and crashed to the bottom of the submersible twice before managing to get on his feet. The space star was gone, and the hole it had left filled the sub with water twice as fast as it had been a moment ago.

Patching it from the outside would be a snap, as the water pressure would hold it in place. From in here, Dane wasn’t so sure it would work. He had to try, though. Otherwise, the submersible would fill with water long before he got home.

He had gotten the patch prepped and was about to force it into the jet of water when the sub once more shook hard enough to knock him to the floor.

Dane crashed down. It didn’t hurt much this time because there were a few centimeters of water across the bottom of the sub. Then he saw what caused the blow.

There was a Nessie through the front view screen. In its exuberance to snatch the space star from the window, it had crashed into the sub. It made good use of its long neck and plucked the star from the viewing pane on its second attempt.

“Here we go.” Dane ignored the leak and stumbled toward the controls of the sub.

He plopped down in the pilot’s seat and turned the sub around, back toward the base. When he did, he noticed that there was not one Nessie but three nearby. They were all hyper-fixated on the space stars. Dane felt a pang of guilt as he recognized that look of hunger for a favorite food from the eyes of the crew when they ate Nessie nuggets.

“Help us out, and we’ll promote you from snacks. I promise,” Dane grumbled as he aimed the sub simultaneously back at base and toward the surface. He couldn’t go outside the sub now. Not with the space stars on board and the Nessies trying to snack. He still had a leak, though. Fortunately, it was on the top half of the sub, near the hatch. When Dane breached the sub, the water stopped spraying in and slowed to an intermittent trickle from the waves above.

That was when he noticed another leak along a side seam. It was smaller than the first and not spraying but weeping. It wasn’t as if he needed another reminder to hurry, but if he did, this was it.

He set the sub to steer toward the base and went to the hatch. He was risking his life, but he had to know what was going on with the space stars attached to the sub. If they’d all been eaten, the Nessies might abandon their pursuit, and all this would be for nothing.

He climbed the ladder to the hatch and opened it a crack. Three space stars clung to the top of the sub, and a fourth worked its way up out of the water, where it might be safe from the Nessies.

It wasn’t, of course. The Nessies’ long necks allowed them to easily snatch the creature from the top of the sub. It ripped loose. Something about the way the Nessies bit the stars seemed to nullify the strength of their grip, an observation Dane would share with Alvarez. The Nessie tossed the creature into the air and caught it before it reached the water.

At that moment, Dane came to terms with the cosmic irony of what he had to do to save his people. He needed to guide these Nessies back to the base, but the only way he could do that was to protect the murder stars trying to sink his sub and devour everyone.

Dane had fought battles in space against star fighter pilots. He could keep a few Nessies at bay.

He sat back in the pilot’s seat and swerved toward one of the Nessies. It pulled off, and he corrected course, always trying to keep the sub moving toward the base. He had no idea what would happen when the Nessies saw the first wave of space stars, but he had to get at least that far with the creatures attached. He had three of them left, and he had to make them last.

He swerved when he could and dove when he needed to, despite taking on more water every time he did. He made it through another valley and saw the broad swathe of destruction the murder stars left behind.

There was a thud, and a Nessie pulled off with a space star in its mouth.

“No! No, no, no!” Dane roared. He had been keeping careful track of where the Nessies had been. None of the three had been close enough. The murder stars should have been safe!

Dane looked out again. Another ten or so Nessies had joined the chase. It was both exactly what Dane needed and the worst-case scenario.

He couldn’t push the sub any faster. The batteries had already expended the majority of their energy. He couldn’t hope to dodge so many Nessies, either. He tried, but he accomplished nothing beyond taking on more water and getting slammed by a hungry Nessie.

“… in Dane…repeat…chief!” Lopez tried to hail him over the radio.

“This is Security Chief Dane. I’m inbound. About thirteen Nessies with me.”

“That’s great! How are they…” He lost her last words to static.

“There are murder stars on the sub. I’m using them as bait.”

“…at’s great!”

The sub shook, and the damaged seam started to let in more water.

“They’ve already eaten the murder stars.” Dane knew this not because he had eyes on the stars but because the Nessies were no longer swimming so tightly around him. They were heading back where they’d come from, away from the base.

“…This! You have to try…”

A file download appeared on Dane’s screen. Then three more.

“Play the… one!”

Dane watched as the Nessies swam off and the file tried to download. He was too far from the base. The water and the mountains created too much interference. Whatever Lopez had sent, it wouldn’t work.

“Chief Dane! There you are! Sorry it took so long to get a satellite overhead! We have visuals on you now. Sending over Lopez’s files.” It was Nat! She had reached the Cosmos and was watching the action from up there.

The files finished downloading, and Dane turned on the first one.

The sound of a Nessie played out. Both the sound itself and the sheer volume of it surprised him.

“How did you do that?”

“Doesn’t matter. It’s not working! The Nessies are swimming away faster now. Play a different one!”

Dane did. To him, it didn’t sound different, but he obviously didn’t speak Nessie. It was hard to see from his view, but with Nat watching from the satellites above, he got an idea of what was happening.

“They all turned around. They’re headed back toward you.”

“How do I turn it off?” Dane questioned. It didn’t look like the recording was still playing. He realized it wasn’t. That was the Nessies. They were repeating the call themselves.

“What did you do?” Dane pushed the sub ahead. Rather than attacking, the Nessies swam ahead of and beneath him. He was no biologist, but it looked like they were hunting.

“Lopez sent these recordings over. I only tweaked the files to make sure they played on the sonar device mounted outside of the sub.”

“Lucky that’s still there.”

“Luck has nothing to do with it. I welded that on myself. Keep heading for the base, Dane. And don’t be surprised when you have more company.”

Dane saw what she meant when he entered the next valley. It was completely empty of life, except at the very far edge where a few space stars hastened toward the volcano base, still a few valleys ahead. It wasn’t the space stars Nat was talking about, but the Nessies.

Three had swelled to ten, then to fifty.

They shot past Dane. A few of them dropped down to pick up the space stars, but the majority were interested in the buffet ahead of them. Instead of stopping to eat, they sang louder.

It was beautiful, in a way, how their calls echoed and bounced around the undersea mountain range. Like whales, but with more dolphin-like clicks. Dane felt certain he knew what they were saying.

“Dinner’s on.”

He was one of the last of his party to reach the valley with the volcano base. By the time he got there, dozens of Nessies snapped and munched on the space stars crawling all over the base. More arrived all the time. It still might not have been enough since there were so many murder stars, but there was another factor turning the tide.

“Alvarez, Lopez, can you read me?”

“We read you loud and clear, Dane! The murder stars! They’re retreating! What did you do?”

“Lopez’s calls worked! I lured some Nessies back here, and the calls made sure they kept coming.”

“They’re not inside the base, though. How did you make the murder stars in the base retreat?”

“You’re not going to believe this, but…I think they’re afraid of the Nessies’ hunting calls.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

The Nessies had completely forgotten about Dane, so he risked leaving his sub to patch the hole on the top. Not being under attack by two species of alien creatures made the job simple, and he accomplished it without breaking a sweat. He climbed back into the sub, then made for the moon pool.

The area around the Russian base could not have been more different than it was when he left.

Nessies were everywhere. Dane guessed there had to be at least a hundred of the things in various sizes. Obviously, this feast merited bringing the kids. They swam in loops and spirals, clearly enjoying themselves as they snatched up star after star with their long, sinewy necks. They sang while they ate, so the entire valley echoed with their music. It was clear this had started the space star exodus.

The fluids of the many shredded space stars clouded the water. Dane assumed some of the cloudiness was from the stars’ acid, but it didn’t seem to affect the Nessies. They feasted and sang as if nothing bothered them.

After working so hard to cover the volcano base, the murder stars desperately tried to flee. They scrambled over each other in their haste to climb down the mountain and back into the depths. Yet the Nessies understood how to hunt the space stars. Many of the larger Nessies, whom Dane thought looked older because their scales weren’t as glossy, herded the murder stars down the sides of the volcano and into the open jaws of the smaller ones.

Dane’s cameras were all broken on the sub, but he made a mental note of it. The Nessies were far more intelligent than anyone had realized. Alvarez would want to know this. Hell, everyone would want to know this.

He steered through the chaos and only got jostled by a Nessie once. One of the younger ones, he thought. For once, they seemed utterly disinterested in his sub.

He steered into the moon pool and surfaced. With a grunt, he climbed onto the top of the sub and looked around him. The door hung open, and the few murder stars still inside the base scuttled toward the moon pool.

Dane was about to hop down from the sub when the long neck of a Nessie shot out of the water beside him. After seeing what the things had done to Stark, his first reflex was to fight, but that was obviously the wrong call. This Nessie didn’t care about him. Instead, it extended its long neck into the room and daintily plucked an approaching murder star.

Dane climbed down, not wanting to press his luck with the Nessie, and shuffled out of its range. He was beginning to worry about the Nessie scaring the murder stars back inside when he heard the whoosh of a flamethrower from the hall.

“That you, sir?” It was Robinson.

“The one and only,” Dane replied.

“Dane!” Lopez rushed past Robinson and wrapped him in a huge hug. “I thought you were dead for sure!”

“I would have been. Hell, we all would have if not for your quick thinking with their calls.”

“Aw, shucks. I mean, should you give me a medal of valor or whatever? Yes. That can wait, though. We’re only glad you’re back.”

“Is everyone…”

“All safe.” Winters emerged from the hallway. He took Dane’s hand and shook it firmly. “We had one man suffer a heart attack. Thankfully, Thorson was able to stabilize him. The murder stars didn’t get anyone, though. Good work out there. You want anything? Coffee? You hungry?”

“Coffee sounds great, but, uh…no more Nessie nuggets, okay?”

Captain Adams’ eyes went from seeing only memories to taking in everything as the lid to her pod opened.

“I’m gonna need some coffee,” she groaned as she rubbed her face. Considering how bad she’d looked when she had gone into the pod, she appeared all right now. Her once-smooth skin was pockmarked with burn scars, and at some point, a space star had gotten her face. A tentacle-shaped scar ran up one cheek, skipped over her eye, and ended near her hairline.

She swung her legs over the edge of the pod.

“Take it easy, ma’am. You’re healed enough to come out, and we’ve completely nullified the space star acid, but you won’t be able to put your full weight on that leg for a while,” Thorson informed her, clinical as a glacier.

“What do I do until then?” Adams asked.

Thorson gave her a cane.

Adams raised her scarred eyebrow and took the thing. Stood up. Winced as she put some weight onto the leg but then moved around the room.

“Let me get freshened up, then meet me on the bridge. First, did we figure out the power plant situation?”

“We did, ma’am,” Dane assured her. “Though honestly, I didn’t even prepare a report on that. This week was…busy.”

“That bad, huh?” Adams smirked. “I guess it’s good to know you need me. You do all right in my absence, Winters?”

“It’s good to have you back, ma’am. I have a pot of coffee for you in the command room.”

Dane and Winters left the captain to shower and dress in her uniform. A few minutes later, she joined them on the bridge.

“Between this scar on my face and the cane, I look like a supervillain,” she grunted.

“And I look twenty years younger than I really am,” Dane pointed out. “Can’t always trust appearances.”

“I think you look distinguished, ma’am.” Winters placed a cup of coffee in front of the captain.

“I’ll take it, Winters. Thank you. So, Dane, what happened with the stars?”

“First off, I want to say we only suffered one casualty, and that was Murdok. One of the subs is basically inoperable, but Granger is working on that.”

“Damn, man. If that’s the good news, how bad did it get?”

Winters and Dane shared a look before both men burst out laughing.

“We had to use shuttle fuel for flamethrowers.”

“We thought a trail of pee was going to save our lives.”

“We made friends with the Nessies.”

“I need to sit down for this.” Adams sank into a chair. “Now, start from the beginning.

“It might be better for you to see it,” Dane suggested.

Adams nodded as Dane brought up the video he’d compiled on the screen. It showed the volcano base covered in space stars, the space stars crawling up the cable to the floating platform, every inch of the moon pool room covered with them, the door breaking, the space stars entering the hallway…then the Nessies, spiraling and swimming as they devoured thousands of the creatures.

Adams watched it all in contemplative silence. When the clips ended, she chewed her lip and nodded. Dane thought she wanted to pace, but with the current state of her leg, that wasn’t a great option.

“So, the Nessies serve as a sort of control on the space stars?”

“That’s right, ma’am,” Dane advised.

“How did you figure that out?”

Dane hadn’t wanted to get into this so soon, but he wouldn’t avoid a direct question from his captain either. “The Russian logs, ma’am. I decrypted them.”

“All of them?”

“Most of them, ma’am. Though honestly, I haven’t been through the entire set yet.”

“The files are up on the Cosmos,” Winters noted.

Adams’ expression hardened. “I thought we agreed using the ship’s computer for that was too big a risk, Winters?”

“We did, ma’am. Dane acted outside the chain of command, and thank God he did. If he had not discovered the Russians had also killed off the Nessies, we might not have figured it out. It was a close call.”

“So was decrypting those files. It wouldn’t take much to destroy the Cosmos. You understand that, Dane? Change the operating parameters by a few percentage points, and the entire thing could overheat and explode.”

“Ma’am, I understand that. The thing is—”

Adams raised her hand to silence him. He obeyed. “The thing is, it didn’t, obviously. You either protected the ship effectively, or the Russians weren’t as paranoid as we thought. I can see that. Your gut was right this time.”

“Thank you, ma’am.” Dane patted the aforementioned gut. It was a little harder than it had been a week ago. Not eating Nessie nuggets helped his BMI.

“How did you get the Nessies to come to the space stars? We’d barely seen any for a while. I assumed they were all dead.”

“I did too, ma’am, but Carlos hypothesized there must have been a large population outside our territory. He was right.”

“And they followed you. How?”

“At first, they wanted the space stars clinging to the submersible. Then Haley Lopez had the brilliant idea to try playing some of their calls. They followed me and started calling to each other. Dr. Alvarez’s working theory is that they live in smaller family units unless an opportunity like the one we inadvertently created arises.”

“Lopez is brilliant, huh?” Adams raised an eyebrow.

“That she is,” Dane enthused, meaning every word.

Adams nodded, and a corner of her mouth curled up.

“We’ve come up with a longer-term solution for handling the space stars, ma’am,” Winters reported.

“Excellent. Always able to anticipate my questions, Winters. That’s why you’re my XO.”

“Thank you, ma’am.” Winters nodded, then glanced at Dane to explain.

“The first thing we did was stop catching the Nessies. We converted the traps into feeding stations. There’s still a sizable population of space stars outside the mountain range. We’ve captured a few and placed them in the feeding stations to ensure some Nessies will stay in the area. We’ve also been implanting them with GPS trackers so we can follow their movements. It took us a few days to get that operation running, so most of the Nessies you saw in that clip had dispersed by then. We’ve still managed to get tracking implants into twenty-one specimens, though.”

“Tracking their movements won’t protect our people,” Adams pointed out.

“Correct, ma’am. We need them close to base, but we have to teach them not to eat people.”

“Teach them?” Adams asked.

“They’re far more intelligent than we realized. Our working comparison is dolphins. Complex language, large family groups, and even larger communities. We haven’t cracked their language yet, but we do think we can train them.”

“How do we know that?”

“Well, for starters, most of the Nessies that have eaten at our feeding stations have returned. That shows they’re adaptable.”

“Animals come to feeders. That’s not a sign of intelligence.”

“That’s correct, ma’am, which is why we’re working with negative as well as positive reinforcement.”

“How do you manage that?”

“Well, after Alvarez realized out of that twenty-one we tagged, only six of them regularly came into our valley, he started to focus on them. Currently, he has Granger working on a system to collar them.”

“Collar them? Like dogs?”

“Exactly. Alvarez is still working on an appropriate cocktail, and we’ll probably need people to wait in the feeding traps to tranq them. The plan is to knock out the six regulars and put shock collars around their neck. Then we can remotely activate the collar anytime they get too close to something we don’t want them near. Say, a submersible or a human swimmer.”

Adams frowned but nodded. “I like it. Elegant, in a way. Are we sure it will work?”

“Not at all, ma’am, but we’ve also identified a Nessie call that seems to mean ‘danger.’ It gets them to retreat fast, anyway. We can send subs and divers out with underwater speakers emitting that call if a Nessie takes an interest. The Nessies are this planet’s natural space star control, though. We don’t have any other solutions besides mounting flamethrowers everywhere.”

“I take it your dive into the Russian logs did not reveal a space star weakness?”

“No, ma’am. I haven’t looked through all the files yet, though. Not even close. With your permission, I’d like to head up to the Cosmos to do that. The information they left behind was invaluable. There’s no telling what other things we might come across.”

“Very well. Get up there.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And Dane?”

“Yes?”

“Good job. I know you had your hesitations about coming on this mission, but it looks like we wouldn’t have survived with you.”

CHAPTER FORTY

Athanas escorted Dane to the floating platform via submersible. As they ascended, they passed a Nessie. It glided through the water around the base, checking the space star feeders. When it found nothing, it headed off for deeper water. The display on the screen of the sub showed there were no other tagged Nessies nearby. Even if they couldn’t make the shock collars work, Dane thought tagging them and knowing their location was a huge boon to the humans’ long-term survival on this planet.

They reached the platform, and Athanas waved farewell as Dane made for the shuttle.

“Back so soon?” Anderson asked. “Told you those submersibles would get boring.”

“There’s nothing boring about anything happening down there.” Dane chuckled. “Imagine trying to navigate a ship while long-necked sea monsters eat space stars off your vehicle.”

“So that’s true, sir? That really happened.”

“Oh, yeah. You think you could handle that?”

Anderson thought for a moment and shrugged. “I guess I should give it a try. Supply runs are getting a little old.”

“Make one more for me, then we’ll see about putting you in for a transfer.”

Anderson nodded, and they left the water world beneath them as they ascended into the heavens themselves.

They reached the Cosmos and found Robinson waiting for them.

He greeted Dane with a hug while the rest of the skeleton crew left their stations long enough to congratulate him, shake his hand, and pat him on the back. For a time, it seemed he’d left his hero status back on Earth, but that time had passed. Dane’s reputation preceded him once more. He found he didn’t mind so much.

Before, there was something that didn’t sit right about being a war hero. It had felt wrong to know so many resources had been spent so he could sit in space and blast other ships to smithereens or threaten to drop rocks on people down below. War was inherently a messy, nasty business. Being a hero for a world choked in ash was bittersweet at best.

Yet being a hero for saving people from a faceless alien? That was a different kind of feeling. Dane felt like he’d driven back a monster. In a way, he supposed he had. Unlike the monsters of war, though, Dane didn’t think there was any risk of him becoming a murder star.

He headed to the security center and found the tablet Lopez had set up a week ago. It had finished the decryption, which meant Dane had the entire record of the Russian logs to go through. Between security videos, typed-up reports, and even a few journal entries, it was a lot. He didn’t know how long it would take him to go through it all. It might take days merely to grasp how much was here.

He was working his way through it and had maybe drifted off to sleep for a moment when Robinson called him to the bridge.

“Don’t tell me a murder star followed me up here,” Dane joked.

“No…” Robinson coughed. “It wasn’t a murder star that followed.”

With that ominous message in his mind, Dane hurried to the bridge. He had grown accustomed to gravity yet again and made a few overcorrections as he floated through the orbiting base.

“What’s going on here?” Dane asked.

On the screen was a visual representation of what looked like an audio file.

“We got this from Earth, sir,” Darrin Thompson informed him. “Or, at least, from that direction.”

“From that direction? What do you mean?”

“Well, the fact that we can pick it up means it must be closer. Our long-range antenna was damaged, remember? This was picked up on the shorter range gear.”

“What does it say?” Dane asked.

Darrin played the recording. It was faint and garbled, but Dane recognized the language, if not the exact words.

“It’s Russian.”

With that, Dane’s day was once again thrust into chaos. Darrin, Robinson, and he worked on every aspect of the message. They figured out that based on its distance and the quality of the message, the ship was about a year out. The message content was simple enough. It had been sent by a follow-up ship on its way to resupply the Russian colony.

The colony that wasn’t there anymore.

Dane doubted that anyone, least of all Russians, would react kindly to finding their people gone and their base occupied, but he could hope. He had no idea what the current political situation on Earth was. Maybe the Russians were coming to help. He doubted it, but then, he’d never thought they would make pets out of the Nessies, either.

However, another impending threat didn’t bother him. He was made for this life. He was navigating problems that didn’t exist on Earth. Pursuing a new frontier. He didn’t know if they could make allies with the Russians on this approaching ship or if they’d have to fight, but he’d face whatever came on behalf of the people of this colony. He was proud to fight for them, to help feed them, to find allies where none existed.

Whatever came his way, he would stand guard to keep this colony and the people living here safe.

THE STORY CONTINUES

The story continues with Free Worlds book two, Fatal Depths, available at Amazon.

Claim your copy today!

KEVIN’S AUTHOR NOTES

DECEMBER 22, 2022

Hi again! Michael and I are back with another fun series. This time, we’ve taken you into deep space, on a voyage far beyond our star.

I’ve always been a pretty eclectic writer. If it’s in the bounds of science fiction and fantasy, I’ve probably written it. If I haven’t, it’s just because I haven’t written it yet! I love voyages into the strange and unusual worlds those genres allow, and I enjoy the great breadth of possibilities represented there.

In fact, the very first story I ever wrote was science fiction. That was (gonna be dating myself here, but that’s OK) back in 1979. I was in first grade, they had a grade 1-5 writing competition, and I wanted to give it a try.

My mom, who was at the time trying to become a writer herself (it took her a while, but she’s gotten back into it and she’s got some terrific books coming out soon!), loaned me her old manual typewriter and I painstakingly taught myself to pound out pages on it.

That first short story was about a near-future scenario where the Earth was flooded due to global warming (which in my story was caused by an errant planetary body shifting Earth’s orbit slightly close to our sun). We’d built floating cities to keep ourselves going. Into this mix, I inserted first contact with an alien race of sapient lizards. The main lizard emissary, Slither, helped teach humanity how to build starships so they could explore the galaxy.

It took second place to a ‘purple people eater’ story. I was thrilled! That was pretty much it; I was doomed to be a writer.

I may go back and rewrite that story at some point. It had good bones, despite being originally written by a six year old. I think it was the first global warming flood story in science fiction, too, although I’m not sure.

Anyway, SF has been something I’ve loved for pretty much my entire life. Whether it was Monster Week, where we got to watch monster movies all day every day, or my mom taking me into NYC for a special premiere of the first Star Trek film (which had THREE standing ovations from the audience!), I was hooked from a very young age.

I still love SF. For me, part of the joy is about exploring what might be. I mean, our world has issues. We all struggle, sometimes. A reminder that the future will be full of unimaginable adventures, new discoveries, and crazy challenges is always welcome in my book.

The ‘Free Worlds’ series is about that sort of thing. We’ve got sea monsters and space-fighter pilots. Starships and undersea bases. And there’s so much more coming! We’ve got five more books on their way for you in this series, each gradually building an extraordinary universe full of wild adventures.

Thanks for coming along. I promise the ride will be one you can’t forget!

Kevin McLaughlin

MICHAEL’S AUTHOR NOTES

DECEMBER 22, 2022

Thank you for not only reading this story about but these author notes as well.

Is there a case for aliens? (Hey, you are reading science fiction.)

The possibility of intelligent life that did not originate on Earth has fascinated scientists and the general public for centuries and probably millennia. While there is still no definitive answer, several factors suggest the likelihood of extraterrestrial life existing in the universe.

One key factor is the sheer size of the universe. With billions of galaxies and trillions of planets, it seems unlikely that we are the only intelligent life forms in existence. Additionally, the discovery of exoplanets (planets that orbit stars outside our solar system) has increased the potential number of habitable planets that could potentially support life.

Another factor to consider is the presence of water, a key ingredient for life as we know it. Water is found in many places throughout the universe, including on other planets and moons within our solar system. This suggests that the conditions necessary for life to thrive might not be as rare as previously thought.

Furthermore, the existence of extremophiles (organisms that can survive in extreme environments) on Earth suggests that life can adapt and thrive in a variety of conditions. This increases the possibility that life could exist in environments that we might previously have thought inhospitable.

While there is still a bunch we don't know about the universe, the evidence suggests it is likely that we are not alone in the universe.

Fantastic! It means my writing might be about what we find rather than straight fiction.

I have a warp gate fetish.

This is a collaboration, so I can't put everything I like into it, but I thought I would admit something.

One thing in sci-fi really draws me in: warp gates.

These magical portals allow my main characters to travel all over the galaxy, meeting futuristic aliens both good and bad.

Part of the appeal of warp gates in science fiction is that they allow us to explore the limits of our imagination. In the real world, travel is limited by time and distance. In science fiction, warp gates allow us to jump from one corner of the galaxy to another in the blink of an eye.

Need something fun, but it's a few solar systems away? No problem. Jump through a warp gate and be back by 10:00 PM. Screw you, curfew.

Of course, warp gates alone don't make a good science fiction story, but when used in moderation, they can add excitement and action to a rocking yarn. Plus, who doesn't love the idea of traveling to distant worlds and encountering strange and exotic creatures?

Especially if you can ditch the hundreds of days (or years) it takes to journey between planets?

In short, I love both writing and reading science fiction because it allows me to imagine and explore new worlds and ideas.

And if those worlds happen to have the occasional warp gate? All the better.

Take care of yourself. I hope to talk to you in the next book!

Ad Aeternitatem,

Michael Anderle

P.S.

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BOOKS BY KEVIN MCLAUGHLIN

Realms of Power and Fury

Discovering Power (Book 1)

Finding Honor (Book 2)

Field of Valor (Book 3)

Undead Reckoning (Book 4)

Undead Center (Book 5)

Undead with Honor (Book 6)

Tomb of Malevolent Evil

Roll For Initiative (Book 1)

Cast of the Die (Book 2)

Natural Twenty (Book 3)

Steel Dragon Series

(with Michael Anderle)

Steel Dragon 1

Steel Dragon 2

Steel Dragon 3

Steel Dragon 4

Steel Dragon 5

Dragon’s Daughter

(with Michael Anderle)

Never A Dragon (Book 1)

Dead Dragon New tricks (Book 2)

Thicker Than Blood (Book 3)

Dragon Fire and Pixie Dust (Book 4)

The Cult of Tiamat (Book 5)

The Sum of All Magic (Book 6)

The Dragonclaw Sword

(with Michael Anderle)

Clawing for Survival

Clawing for Escape

Clawing for Honor

Clawing for Vengeance

Clawing for Battle

Clawing for Victory

Adventures of the Starship Satori (Space Opera blended with military SF)

Finding Satori - prequel short story, available only to email list fans!

Book 1 - Ad Astra: Book 2 - Stellar Legacy

Book 3 - Deep Waters

Book 4 - No Plan Survives Contact

Book 5 - Liberty

Book 6 - Satori’s Destiny

Book 7 - Ashes of War

Book 8 - Embers of War

Book 9 - Dust and Iron

Book 10 - Clad in Steel

Book 11 - Brave New Worlds (2019)

Book 12 - Warrior’s Marque (2020)

The Ragnarok Saga (Military SF)

Accord of Fire - Free prequel short story, available only to email list fans!

Book 1 - Accord of Honor

Book 2 - Accord of Mars

Book 3 - Accord of Valor

Book 4 - Ghost Wing

Book 5 - Ghost Squadron

Book 6 - Ghost Fleet (2019)

Valhalla Online Series (A Ragnarok Saga Story)

Book 1 - Valhalla Online

Book 2 - Raiding Jotunheim

Book 3 - Vengeance Over Vanaheim

Book 4 - Hel Hath No Fury

Blackwell Magic Series (Urban Fantasy)

Book 1 - By Darkness Revealed

Book 2 - Ashes Ascendant

Book 3 - Dead In Winter

Book 4 - Claws That Catch

Book 5 - Darkness Awakes

Book 6 - Spellbinding Entanglements

By A Whisker (short story)

The Raven and the Rose - Free novelette for email list fans!

Dead Brittania Series:

Dead Brittania (short prequel story)

Book 1 - King of the Dead

Book 2 - Queen of Demons

Raven’s Heart Series (Urban Fantasy)

Book 1 - Stolen Light

Book 2 - Webs in the Dark

Book 3 - Shades of Moonlight

Other Titles:

Over the Moon (SF romance)

Midnight Visitors (Steampunk Cat short story)

Demon Ex Machina (Steampunk Cat short story)

The Coffee Break Novelist (help for writers!)

You Must Write (Heinlein’s rules for writers)

BOOKS BY MICHAEL ANDERLE

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