Ian Douglas - Abyss Deep

“Ahh … you couldn’t know, Doc. Hell, I didn’t know either. The damned newsies slipped their netbots in to spy on the operation. I should have known they’d be keeping an eye on you, especially.”

“I’m nothing special, sir.”

“Maybe. But they know your name, and they have your ID tagged so they can track you on the Net. They remember you from the Bloodworld affair, so the second you go on-­line with a query or a message, they’re going to be swarming all over you. You been getting harassed by the sons-­of-­bitches at all?”

“My secretary tells me I’ve had a lot of calls, requests for interviews, requests for bios and backgrounds, that sort of thing.” I managed a grin. “I haven’t been answering them. In fact, that’s why Ivarson came looking for me.”

“Good. And in another ­couple of days, they won’t be able to find you.”

That made my blood run cold for a moment. “Sir? You’re shipping me out?”

“That we are, Doc. Your new orders just came through.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Between you and me, I think General Craig just wants to be rid of you.”

Major General William Craig was the commander of One MarDiv. Shit. It’s never a good idea for a lowly enlisted man to attract the attention of a general.

“Yes, sir.” I desperately wanted to ask where they were sending me, but knew better than to appear anxious. He would tell me, but he’d tell me in his own time.

He must have read the worried expression on my face. “Don’t worry, Doc. You’re not going alone.”

“I’m pleased to hear it.”

“You’ll be deploying on the Haldane with a Marine scout-­recon element. Five Corpsmen, pulled from the company as science-­tech staff, plus a ­couple of xeno experts. One of the other docs will be your buddy Dubois. Net media has been after him as well.”

“They have?” It was news to me. “Why Doob?”

Singer shrugged. “Maybe one doc is as good as another, to them. He was at Bloodworld too. And he’s your buddy.”

“Not for long. The guy’s gonna kill me.” HM2 Michael C. Dubois had a snug and happy billet for himself in Alpha Company. He had an under-­the-­counter deal with the lab to use their assemblers to manufacture paint stripper … ah, ethanol, rather, and he was the original cumshaw artist. He wasn’t going to appreciate being yanked out of his comfortable little world because he associated with the likes of me.

“The seven of you will be the expedition’s scientific survey team.”

That caught my attention. “What are we surveying?”

“Ever hear of a place called Abyss Deep?”

I refrained from pulling down the data off the ship’s Net. “No, sir.”

“It’s not much. GJ 1214 I. A lot like Bloodworld, so you ought to feel right at home. Just be sure you pack your long flannel undies. It’s a hundreds-­of-­kilometers-­deep ocean covered over by ice. Doc, this place is cold.”

Great, I thought. Just what I really like. Ice …

As soon as I left Singer’s office and got back to my quarters, I downloaded the Net information available on GJ 1214.

I had a strong sense of déjà vu as the data scrolled through my in-­head window. GJ 1214 was another red dwarf, one even smaller and cooler than the primary of Bloodworld we’d visited the year before. I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised at that. In all the Galaxy, out of 400 billion stars, something like 80 percent are class-­M red dwarfs, at least out in our general stellar neighborhood. Red dwarfs range from something like half the mass of our sun down to cool, red stars of only .075 solar masses—­the cut-­off line. Any smaller and they’re not stars anymore, but brown dwarfs.

In our galactic neighborhood, twenty of the thirty nearest stars are red dwarfs, but they’re so small and dim that we can’t see any of them with the naked eye. The closest star to us outside of the Sol System, Proxima Centauri, is a Type M5 red dwarf, and you need a pretty powerful telescope to see it from Earth at all.

Proxima’s partners in the cosmic dance, Alpha Centauri A and B, are very much like our sun … and, damn it, someday I’d like to be deployed to an Earthlike world of that kind of star, instead of another of these dim, cool, blood-­red misers.

This time, though, I was stuck with another tide-­locked split-­personality planet: half ice, half steam. The readout wasn’t pretty at all.

Download

Commonwealth Planetary Ephemeris

Entry: GJ 1214 I

“Abyssworld”

Star: GJ 1214

Type: M4.5V

M = .157 Sol; R = 0.206 Sol; L = .0033 Sol; T = 3000oK

Coordinates: RA 17h 15m 19s; Dec +04o 57’ 50”; D = 42 ly

Planet I

Name: GJ 1214 I; Gliese 1214b, Abyssworld, Abyss Deep

Type: Terrestrial/rocky core, ocean planet; “super-­Earth”

Mean orbital radius: 0.0143 AU; Orbital period: 1d 13h 55m 47s

Inclination: 0.0o; Rotational period: 1d 13h 55m 47s (tide-­locked with primary)

Mass: 3.914 x 1028 g = 6.55 Earth; Equatorial diameter: 34,160 km = 2.678 Earth

Mean planetary density: 1.87 g/cc = 0.34 Earth

Surface gravity: 0.91 G

Surface temperature range: ~ -­120oC [nightside] to 220oC [dayside]

Surface atmospheric pressure: ~0.47 x 103 kPa [0.47 Earth average]

Percentage composition (mean): H2 54.3, CO2 20.3, H2O 11.2, CH4 9.3, CO 4.2, NH3 3.1, Ar 0.5; others < 500 ppm

Age: 6 billion years

Biology: H2O (exotic ices), C, N, O, H2O, S, PO4: mobile submarine heterotrophs in reducing aquatic medium in presumed symbiosis with unknown deep marine auto-­ or chemotrophs.

Human presence: The Murdock Expedition of 2238 established the existence of large deep-­marine organisms known as cuttlewhales. Subsequent research at the colony designated Murdock Base demonstrated possible intelligent activity, and attempts were made to establish communications in 2244. Contact with the colony abruptly ended in early 2247, and there has been no futher contact since… .

The Commonwealth government had decided that word from the research colony on the ice out there on Abyssworld was too long overdue, and they were dispatching a small Navy task force and some Marines to find out what had happened. The Marines were volunteers drawn from First, Second, and Third Platoons, plus the headquarters platoon of Bravo Company, forty-­two men and women in all, and all of them blooded both by combat and by experience on extrasolar worlds. Lieutenant Lyssa Kemmerer, Captain Reichert’s exec, would be leading us.

The five Navy Corpsmen, however, were not volunteers. Where the Marines went, we would go as well.

The company’s senior Corpsman was Chief Richard R. Garner, an old hand with gold hash marks running halfway up his dress uniform sleeve, each stripe showing four years of good-­conduct duty. He was a bluff, craggy, no-­nonsense sort, and when he barked at you he meant business.

Garner called us to a briefing the next morning. There were four of us sitting in the lounge in front of Garner—­me and Dubois, plus HM1 Charlie “Machine” McKean and HM2 Kari Harris.

There was another man present as well, a Navy lieutenant commander with the gold caduceus at his throat indicating he was Medical Corps.

“Good morning, ­people,” Garner began. “We’ve been tapped as tech support for an important mission, and it’s important to get this off on the right foot. We’ll be transferring to the USRS Haldane tomorrow. There’s a download waiting for each of you giving billeting information and duty schedules.”

DuBoise and McKean both groaned. Harris remained impassive.

“Knock it off,” Garner said. “First off, it is my pleasure to introduce Dr. Lyman Kirchner, fresh up-­El from Sam-­Sea. He will be our department head on this expedition.”