Caines mutiny, p.38
Caine's Mutiny, page 38
part #4 of Caine Riordan Series
“Commodore?”
Riordan turned. Melissa Sleeman. Smiling. She and Tygg had managed to steal a few hours together, now that both Puller and Wedge One were on the ground and in the same spot. “Hello, Doctor. Can I help you?”
She nodded. “I hope so.” And she waited.
Which was unlike her. Sleeman, while unfailingly polite, was also unfailingly direct. He smiled. “Doctor, some details would help.”
She glanced away. “I have reservations speaking about this…matter.”
The exchange was becoming more atypical with every passing second. “I can see that, Doctor. But I also know you would not make a request unless it was very important.”
She looked back at him quickly. “I think this could prove to be more important than our primary mission.”
“More important that saving these men and women and preventing another war?”
She looked him square in the eyes and nodded slowly. “Yes. Which is why I am reluctant to make this request. Because it could—no, it will—put lives at risk if you grant it.”
Riordan was used to surprises, but not from Melissa Sleeman. Which made this the biggest surprise of all. “Understood. Please explain what you have in mind.”
“Commodore, I think it is important—no, imperative—that we survey that anomalous site to the south, the one that fired the missiles at us.”
Suppressing objections—not the least of which was to point out that there could be more missiles and other defenses—Riordan leaned closer to her. “Why is that imperative?”
“Because, if I am right—and I might not be—I believe the Hkh’Rkh found something important there. Very important.”
Riordan frowned. “I take it you mean something more important than a vein of ore, or some other natural resource.”
She nodded. “Yes. I’ve been studying the images we took of that site. It’s some kind of impact site. But I’m not sure that it is, well, natural.”
Riordan recalled the outline of the area. “It certainly did not look like a meteorite crater.”
“Exactly. The impact path was elongated, and there was no evidence that anything broke up before it hit the ground, like at Tunguska. Also, no sign of tree-fall or fires radiating out from the center. It looks more like—”
“—like a crash,” Riordan finished, nodding. “And if the Hkh’Rkh built some kind of facility around a crash site—”
“—then it probably wasn’t something of theirs that crashed.” Sleeman’s slow nod matched his own. “It could be Arat Kur, of course. They were present here centuries ago. Which is much longer than the Hkh’Rkh have had shift drive.”
“If we can trust their self-report.”
“We can, sir.” Sleeman shook her head. “The Custodians were watching the Hkh’Rkh. Would the Dornaani have allowed a false date to stand?”
Well, damn. “Okay, Doctor, what do you need? Note my wording: need, not want.”
Sleeman’s features—an exemplar of the complete ethnic mixing toward which the globe was finally heading—were transformed by one of her wide smiles. “I was working as a researcher before I was out of my teens, Commodore. We never get what we want. So here’s what I need: a security team, some of the Lost Soldier submariner officers to help me collect samples and data, and transportation.”
“Doctor, we have two spacecraft on this planet. Tomorrow, we’ll have two more. I might be able to detail one to you, briefly, if the Hkh’Rkh decide to stay away. Which is looking increasingly unlikely.”
“I know. I’ve been monitoring it.”
“Then you know it’s a very large threat force: at least a hundred vehicles, many of which are tracked. I expect there are at least a thousand hostiles inbound. Maybe twice that.”
Sleeman nodded through the whole unpromising report, her smile only dimming slightly. “Yes, sir. I understand. That’s why I don’t want to take one of our ships to the site. The wedges need to keep loading and Puller needs to stay on defensive overwatch. I’m asking to take two of the helicopters.”
“You want to—?”
“Commodore, hear me out. There are no Hkh’Rkh in striking range yet. You don’t need the helicopters, and you yourself said they’re the last elements you’re going to break down.”
She sure has thought this through, but—“Dr. Sleeman, everything you’ve said is true…at this moment in time. Unfortunately, what’s true right now might change drastically over the course of the next ten minutes.”
“Yes, sir. I understand. But if there is a wreck out at that site, or even signs that one was there and then removed, that might tell our brain trust something about the strange technology gaps we’ve noticed in the Hkh’Rkh. And that might be strategically significant intelligence, would you agree?”
As if you have the slightest doubt. “Okay, Doctor, you’ve made your point. You’ll get an Mi-8 and a ‘Huey,’ an escort pulled from the Lost Soldiers, and five or six sub officers.”
She nodded. “I will gather my sensors and—”
“Don’t rush it, Doctor. You’re not leaving today. It’s getting late and I am not putting anyone out beyond our perimeter at dark. Too many unknowns. Gather your gear and assistants today. Brief them tonight, then wake predawn, lift at first light, and get back in time for an early dinner. That’s the deal; take it or leave it.”
She nodded once. “I will take it. And sir—?”
“Yes?”
“Thank you.”
No, thank you for being courageous and smart as hell. But he said, “Just make every minute at the site count and get back here safely. That’s all the thanks I need.”
She turned away with a smile, and over her departing shoulder, he saw Duncan Solsohn approaching.
Riordan grimaced. Given yesterday’s dispute, it was possible that the first battle on Turkh’saar might be the suppression of an internal revolt. In which case—
—Come get some.
Chapter Thirty-Three
BASE CAMP DANTE, BD+56 2966 TWO (“TURKH’SAAR”)
Surprisingly, the first words out of Solsohn’s mouth were not a continuation of the civil war he’d initiated the prior night, but a peace treaty. Possibly a surrender. “Commodore, I apologize. Saying that is the first order of business, I figure.”
“Apology accepted, but that doesn’t correct the problem, Major. Granted, according to you, you were following orders. But I disapprove of how and where you carried out those orders. And if you ever again cut my legs out from under me at a meeting with—”
“Sir, you have my assurances: it won’t happen again. But I—well, look: I let my emotions lead me, not my head.”
“Your emotions? How do you mean that, Major?”
“Sir, these Lost Soldiers, they’ve been hanging on by a thread, physically and mentally. They want, and have every right to hope, that our arrival means that all their troubles are over.
“But they might not be. There’s been some nasty inter-bloc crap going down back home, sir. And no, you wouldn’t have heard about it: it’s all behind closed doors. But some of the blocs which were less involved in IRIS feel they’ve been kept in the dark, that we’re operating with impunity and not really accountable to anyone.”
“Not accountable? Damn, I wish they could see all the ‘accountability’ and ‘control’ straitjackets I’ve had to wear for the past two years.”
“No argument from me, sir. I’ve worn some of those jackets myself. But from the outside perspective, we are evidence that the political equality of the blocs is a sham—until and unless all of them have an equal say in what we’re doing, and when, and how. So Mr. Downing instructed me to make sure that if we found humans here, even if they hadn’t gone to Turkh’saar of their own accord, that it would be unfair to let them get their hopes up. And sir, that’s what was happening when I—er, interrupted, at the meeting.”
“Fair enough. But why wait until then to tell me?”
“Mr. Downing knows you’re, um, sensitive, to not receiving complete information. Says you’ve had a few particularly nasty surprises. So he advised me not to spring this on you until and unless it was determined that the presumed human raiders were victims rather than rogue operators. If we had to kill and capture rather than negotiate and extract, well, they were going to be swept under the rug anyhow.”
Well, that’s true enough.
“However, by the time we conclusively determined that the Lost Soldiers were victims, we were already in full tempo operations. No time for any explaining—particularly not Mr. Downing’s special instructions to me.”
Again, true enough. They walked on in silence for several very long seconds before Caine responded. “Major, I believe you will have a decision of your own to make.”
“What’s that, sir?”
“I am accustomed to how Mr. Downing operates. His job requires that he is always cautious and foresightful, regardless of whether or not he is happy or even comfortable with all the precautions and contingencies he has to put into place.”
“Yes, sir.” Solsohn sounded puzzled.
“So I know that Mr. Downing has probably anticipated that, if push comes to shove, I will not blithely hand these Lost Soldiers over to him or any other authority without assurances about their treatment, their fate.”
Now Solsohn was conspicuously quiet.
“So, since I must presume he will anticipate such actions on my part, I must further presume that he decided to put an asset in place on this mission to ensure that I did not obstruct the final disposition of the Lost Soldiers, whatever that might involve. Such an asset would necessarily have sufficient proximity to me, and knowledge of the operation, to be able to assess when and how my potential ‘interference’ should be circumvented or removed. That asset would also need to have a high enough rank—and special clearance codes—to subsequently take charge of the operation, even over the authority possessed by my XO, Major Rulaine.”
Solsohn was even more quiet, if that was humanly possible.
“Lastly, since the Cold Guard were awakened after me and my team, none of them could have been operatives for Mr. Downing. So that rather limits the field of possible persons that he could have assigned to this job. Doesn’t it—Major Solsohn?”
Duncan’s response sounded as though he was being choked. “Yes, sir.”
“So as I see it, Major, if we get back home, and if the Lost Soldiers are not being given any reasonable, verifiable assurances regarding their treatment, you’ll have a choice to make. And you’ll have to make it swiftly, when and if that moment comes.”
“What choice is that, sir?”
“Whether you stand with me, or against me. Now, there’s something I need to show you in the inner compound.”
The silence that followed was not broken by either of them.
* * *
The silence lasted until they entered what Caine had come to think of as “the mausoleum.” In the middle distance, Newton Baruch was comparing data with Ike Franklin. They looked up at the same time, demonstrating the same species of perpetual alertness that was the hallmark of their shared profession, even though they had been born more than a century apart. “Sirs,” they chorused, started salutes that Riordan waved away as he approached.
“Save your energy,” he recommended. “What have you learned, gentlemen?”
Franklin grinned. “I learned that Newton here is a damned genius, with a hundred years of learning on me. I’m back to being just another grunt.”
Riordan glanced at the folded maroon beret protruding from his cargo pocket. “Lieutenant, I’ve been learning a little bit about all the units represented among the Lost Soldiers. As I understand it, the personnel who wear that beret—pararescue jumpers—are the furthest thing from ‘just grunts’ that your century ever put into the field. And you were in your final year of a surgical internship when you joined, is that correct?”
Ike’s grin widened. “I see that Colonel Paulsen has been telling all sorts of pretty lies about me again.”
“So you deny it?”
“Well…I didn’t say that, exactly.”
Riordan smiled. “So I notice. Now, what have you found out about these?” He gestured behind him at the various cold cells.
“Not as much as I’d like,” Newton said sourly. “The technology is not merely extremely advanced; it’s also not developmentally consistent.”
Riordan frowned. “You mean, not consistent with ours?”
“Or each other. They are all cold cells, but they don’t follow—or even share—any discernible pattern of advancement.” Evidently Duncan looked as perplexed as Caine still felt—and maybe looked—himself. Newton restarted: “Consider how most technology advanced on Earth once ships connected different cultures. Advances in one region influenced similar advances in other regions. The evolution of technology became more or less collective, even among rivals.
“But go further back into history, when centers of civilization had less contact with each other. Different communities frequently developed entirely different technological solutions to the same problems.” He hooked a thumb over his shoulder, indicating the cold cells. “That kind of nonconvergent technological evolution is evident here.”
Duncan frowned. “So, could some of these cold cells be Ktor and others, well, come from someone else?”
Newton shook his head. “No. What little writing I have found is not only from the same basic family of signification, but I’ve even found words—or parts of words—that are identical. If I had to guess, the maximum linguistic variation among the creators of these cryocells is analogous to the differences between German and Icelandic. Maybe less. Also, the quantitative notations are identical: all base ten, all the same character set.”
“Even on those cystlike units?” Riordan gestured further down the gridwork toward the irregular brown-maroon cells that looked like acrylic art projects gone horribly awry.
“They’re a special case. I’ll get to them later.” Newton ran a hand back over his widow’s peak, smoothing the hair down against the sharply receding hairline on either side. “Some basic facts about the rest. They show very different levels of manufacturing sophistication. Some utilize alloys and batteries, and possibly capacitors, that I don’t have any way to analyze here without risking an explosion or worse. On the other hand, many use materials, power technology, and biological support systems that are not too different from our own in principle, just vastly more advanced in terms of efficiency and elegance.
“Then there are the systems that use such revolutionarily different approaches to cryogenic suspension that I can only guess at what they’re actually doing. Some seem to change the occupant’s blood chemistry more slowly, increasing the level of glyceration while also triggering what might be an epigenetically coded hibernation reflex. That minimizes the need for quick perfusion of the glycerin, one of the biggest risks that our current cold-cell technology is struggling to reduce: that cells in a body’s core have not been sufficiently saturated by the time their temperature reaches one or two degrees centigrade. That causes either decay of the unprotected tissue or, if the temperature variation is inconstant across the body, pockets of crystallization—which almost always result in brain death or fatality.”
Riordan could feel his frown deepening. “Let’s go back a step. Humans don’t have a hibernatory reflex to activate, so how does that work at all?”
Franklin tilted his head slightly. “Well, sir, we don’t have a hibernatory reflex anymore. And maybe hominids never did. But apparently, if you go deep enough into what we used to call our ‘junk DNA’—before later research showed why that old stuff was being kept in the attic—you can find some, well, ‘deactivated code’ for hibernation.”
“And this cryogenic technology finds and activates that code?”
“Apparently, sir,” Newton murmured. “Although I don’t have much evidence to support that hypothesis. But even with my crude instruments, it looks like the subject’s DNA has undergone some kind of cascading trigger to reexpress various latent strings. Or maybe produced some compound that isn’t native to our system anymore, but for which the recipe is lying hidden in our epigenetic matrix.” He ruffled his thinning hair. “It’s really just guesswork at this point, sir.”
“Pretty impressive guesses,” Duncan asserted under his breath.
“I agree,” Riordan said. “Anything else jump out at you?”
“Lots. But I’ll stick to highlights. A number of the cryocells also incorporate a mix of compounds—possibly synthetic, possibly natural—that maintain a very low theta rhythm in the brainwave. That avoids one of the other major problems that can occur during cryosleep: permanent impairment, or even total loss, of the ability to encode short-term memories.”
“Don’t our cold cells have a system which prevents that?”
“Yes, sir. But its electric: crude, unreliable, and the longer the subject is in cryosleep, the greater the chance of recollective impairment.”
Duncan squinted. “Is that a fancy way of saying amnesia?”
“No, sir. Recollective impairment is when the subject can’t add any new memories. The subject remains limited to the archive they have at the time they suffer the impairment.”
Solsohn’s face went slack with horror as Riordan asked, “But for this brainwave maintenance cocktail to work, doesn’t the subject still have to be awake—or dreaming, at least? And doesn’t that mean they are at temperatures too high to be considered functionally cryogenic?”
Newton shrugged. “Well, that’s what I was taught and what I thought—until about four hours ago.”
“Then how are these chemicals, natural or otherwise, making this happen?”
“My best guess is that the compound must also contain some kind of smart chemical or nanite that brings the necessary parts of the brain on line just enough to run a few of these pulses, then allows the cold to reassert for a certain amount of time. There is some evidence pointing to an underlying chemical mechanism: that the compound leaches out just enough glycerin to reprime the target cells, pumps in a little heat along with a bioelectric stimulus to get the wave going, then backs off and lets the baseline cryogenesis reassert.”
