Surface Detail

The ice seemed to creak and whine, the space which most of Vatueil himself was in tightened, shrinking by half a millimetre. Another part of him was in a cavity a little higher further up; this widened a fraction, trying to pull him upwards. He had to grip tighter, push harder, to continue his slow progress downwards, towards the core.

… All right, sir…? came the question from Lieutenant Lyske, who was next but one along the line.

… Fine, lieutenant… he sent back.

Vatueil had sensed them all stopping, freezing in position as the quake’s compression wave had passed around and through them. Freezing like that slowed them down a fraction and it did no real good unless you were in a wide fissure about to enter a narrower one, but it was just what happened, what you did; human nature, or animal nature, or sentient nature, however you wanted to characterise it; you stopped and waited, hoping and dreading, hoping not to be about to die and dreading the feel of the ice around you shifting, and dreading too the biochemical scream that might come pulsing through the single living net they had made of themselves as somebody else was so compressed by fissures closing around them that they were squeezed to single, separated molecules, crushed to mush, chemicalised out of existence.

However, the quake had gone, leaving them all intact and alive. They resumed their progress, insinuating themselves deeper and deeper into the water world’s ice. He sent electrochemical signals out to let everybody know that they were all okay. Still, they could not afford to relax just because that little instance of random danger had gone; they were approaching the level where they might expect to find defences and guards.

He wondered how you could characterise where they were now. It was not part of the main war sim. It was not another simulation running within that one either. It was something separate, something elsewhere; similar, but held apart from the other sims.

Byozuel’s sudden signal came flashing through the net of the unit, passing from marine to marine:… Something, sir…

Vatueil commanded a full stop; they all came to a halt as quickly as possible without causing any further disturbance.

He waited a moment then sent… What do we have, corporal?

… Movement ahead, sir…

Vatueil held, waited. They all did. Byozuel was no fool – none of them were, they’d all been carefully picked. He’d be in touch when there was something to report. In the meantime, best to let him listen, sniff ahead, watch for any scintillations in the glassy darkness of the ice all around them.

Not that they’d seen much since the submarine had offloaded them in the silt slush at the bottom of the ocean, hours earlier. There had been absolutely nothing to see there; no sunlight was visible below a quarter of a klick down from the ocean surface, never mind a hundred klicks.

Once they’d entered the ice, a few cosmic rays had produced distant flashes, and a shallow ice-quake when they’d been less than a kilometre into the hard ice had produced some piezoelectric activity including a few dim glimmers, but their eyes, such as they were, represented their least useful sense.

… Ha!… The exclamation came along with a chemically transmitted wave of elation and relief, pulsing through the company of marines as though through a single body… Sorry, sir… Byozuel sent… Didn’t want to risk communicating anything there. Enemy combatant engaged and neutralised, sir…

… Well done, Byozuel. Its identity?

… Here, sir… A complex set of chemical idents and gradients transmitted itself through the web of the unit to Vatueil. A guard. A single, highly aware but barely sentient unit secreted in a fissure within the ice ahead and sensed by Byozuel before it could sense him. So they had to hope, anyway. Studying the analysis of the paralysed, dying creature, Vatueil could see no sign that it had communicated anything before it had been speared by Byozuel and filled with poison.

Vatueil communicated the necessary details to the rest of the platoon… Let’s assume there will be more ahead… he told them… Byozuel… he sent… how’s the way ahead look from where you are?

… Good, sir. Good as we’ve seen. Not getting anything un toward, listening or smelling.

… Okay, we’re going to shift formation… Vatueil sent… Rest of squad one and squad two, follow behind Byozuel. Three and four, regroup with same internal spacing and keep probing as we descend. We’ve got one enemy profile so watch for that but be aware there will be other types. We’re tightening up here, concentrating. Stay as wary as you like.

He felt the formation change around him, the two squads slowly shifting to concentrate and gather above Byozuel, the other two pulling in from the other side.