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FREE Story: Tomb
by Z. S. Adani
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Silent and cold, hidden beyond uncharted space and harboring dreadful secrets, Tomb danced between the uneasy concord of two stars. Commander Tivor Corlin had argued against physical ground exploration after he saw the alien structures and the remains of bodies from orbit, but he was in the minority. He shook his head and turned off the shower. And stopped. Snatches of whispers drifted from their room. He plastered his ear to the prefab door and listened, dripping water on the plaz floor. "Have you disabled it?" he heard Anna's voice. "Purge the EI's memory and transmit only the data I left you." What was she talking about? Anna was his wife, also the senior xenobiologist of the ground crew. Why was she whispering? They shouldn't have secrets between them. Instead of switching on the dryer, he grabbed his skinsuit and pulled it on. The smart machines sandwiched between the bucky weaves soaked up the moisture. "Be careful, we don't want the NP commandoes down here." The tension he heard in Anna's voice made him stiffen. One hand clumsily fumbled with his suit belt while the other one grabbed his wrist unit. The EI, a Cloned Human Brain Cell Nanoelectronic Enhanced Intelligence aboard the Celestis automatically sent down the Nano Police if the data transmitted contained even a hint of a biohazard. Corlin pushed the door open and entered the room. Anna turned and flicked off the 3D image, but he had seen enough. "Tiv, I thought you already left." She reached for her suit, fingers trembling. The limp grayish skinsuit conformed to her body as she slipped it on, turning flesh color. She had been talking to Kate, a junior xenobiologist, but he asked anyway, "Who was that?" "Tom. He was checking if we needed supplies." Anger suffused him. Anna had been acting strangely for the past few days, but he had never caught her lying to him before. Corlin was tempted to remind her that the ground crew was cutoff from the starship. All the landers had flown back two weeks ago, even before the construction robots finished erecting the base. Instead of starting an argument, he sealed the head flap of his suit and left her standing there. Through his implant, he ran through the checks: air-handlers, visuals, interfacing nanites, suit integrity. All functions appeared in green on his visual field. He hurried through the long corridor of the residential complex and turned into the supply shack. A small float pallet detached from the rack. Corlin slaved its simple system to his wrist unit, then piled on a handheld analyzer, a vibraknife, and a queser gun. He was about to leave when his wrist unit projected a flustered image of Zephan, the senior medic. "Commander Corlin, please come to the science complex. I'm in the sickbay." "On my way," he said, swallowing his annoyance. Normally, each department functioned on its own, collected and analyzed specimens. Then every night they collated the pooled data, discussed it, and transmitted everything to the Celestis. But the archeological site on Tomb was far from normal; it stretched their individual and collective expertise to the limit. Before the ground crew landed, orbital surveys and surface probes had confirmed the remote probes' data: alien ruins and the remains of a humanoid race. Though the small settlement and its many oddities bothered him from the beginning, the most recent find undermined his faith in Coalition technology, because none of the probes had shown the bones Mara had found in the central structure yesterday. How did the probes miss them? He left the supply shack and hurried across the frozen ground. Tomb was slowly slipping into an ice age. Remote from Coalition space, it was in the region of the Mantus Nexus, the newest wormhole. The Mantus station was still in the process of assembly when they had passed through the nexus, and the Neumanns had just finished constructing the CoalNet sats. The Celestis was the nearest ship, just one wormhole away when the probes' data had reached the headquarters of Exploration and Survey Corps at Mars. Corlin looked at the orange sun rising above the serrated mountains, limning the ice plains into an illusion of saffron warmth. Through the containment field, the landscape shimmered slightly, lending it a sinister specter. He quickly entered the science complex. Portable lab units lined the central passage, each one with its own containment field. When he saw the shimmering field encasing the sick bay, his stomach lurched. The field detected his suit and allowed him to pass through. "How's Sam?" he asked the medic. "His spinal cord fell apart during the night," Zephan said. "Four of his vertebrae show spots like these." He stabbed a finger into the diagnostic screen that hovered above the autodoc containing Sam. It was a smooth buckyglass resembling a coffin, resting on a mobile sled and humming quietly. The screen showed a dark, star-shaped smudge and four lacy vertebrae that seemed like delicate spider webs rather than solid bones. Sam had broken his back three days ago while eating dinner. With the medchines in his body working properly, there should be some improvement. "The trouble is," Zephan continued. "The autodoc doesn't know what's causing this. According to the analyses, his immunites are working, so it's not viral or degenerative disease. The autodoc's disassemblers can't even crack that cloud surrounding the anomaly. Look at this." The image changed, displaying the nucleus of a nerve cell. Chromosomes appeared, like chewed clumps of yarns amidst a silver cloud. The view panned and individual genes unfolded. "See those shiny snowflake shapes? We can't get a larger image, but I'm guessing they're flywheels, though they look different from ours." Zephan pointed to tiny twirling machines that seemed to move with purpose. "They're generating the fog." "So what's the fog?" Zephan looked distressed. "Well, the fog, I don't know. You can barely see the flecks, the flywheels that manufacture them. But that's not important." He flicked a wrist in a dismissive motion. "I'll put Sam in stasis, because it's spreading." Corlin nodded, stifling a stab of fear. "Tiv, We must get him up to the Celestis." "We can't." "We must." Zephan grabbed his arm. "The medical bay aboard the ship could reassemble his spinal cord and vertebrae." "Do you see any landers?" Tivor sneered, gesturing outside the building. He lifted a hand to forestall further arguments. "No lander would come. Nothing goes up until we're finished here and cleared by the Nano Pol." "This is an emergency." Corlin turned away, unable to meet the man's eyes. He felt like a monster as he said in passing, "Put Sam in a stasis unit, then activate an individual containment field around it." The door slicked shut behind him. He kicked at the frozen ground, scattering ice chips around. When he reached a designated port site at the edge of the base, the system reacted and formed a bubble in the shimmering side of the containment field. He slipped inside and stood patiently until an individual containment field built up around him. His implant informed him that he could step through. He shivered but not from the cold. Zephan's anxiety was another indication that Tomb was getting to them. For a medic to risk breaking quarantine when a stasis unit would keep his patient stable indefinitely didn't bode well for morale. Face set in hard lines, Corlin took long strides away from the base. He would be remiss in his duty as a senior xeno-archaeologist if he didn't check the remains Mara had found yesterday and, though he should be thrilled at such a find, he felt his initial fear growing. "Tiv, wait for me," Anna said through his wrist unit, running after him. "I want to take tissue samples of the bones." Her black eyes sparkled and held a devilish gleam, a slight reddish tint caused by her containment field. Rarely was such extreme caution necessary; the skinsuits ESC used were normally more than sufficient protection on alien worlds. Not on Tomb, though. Her small float pallet trailing behind her reminded Corlin that he had left his in the supply shed. "Going to the center, aren't you?" He nodded and took her hand reluctantly, still upset about her secret talk with Kate. "I didn't sleep much, kept thinking about Mara's find." "I was actually tempted to sneak out last night." "We better not start breaking rules." He gave her a severe look. "No night excursions on this world." "Fine." As if dismissing the dangers, Anna waved at the alien ruins. "Some of the crew still hopes we could get Tomb approved for colonization. The planetary engineers could fix the ice age. Between the two suns, this wouldn't be such an awful place." "It's not worth the resource expenditure. The red star is receding, Tomb will get colder and colder. Be content we're allowed to study the ruins. This place will never be another colony." The star system of Tomb was a physical binary of a K8 orange dwarf and an M10 red dwarf. Tomb was the second world of the orange component, and Tomb Guard, the large gas giant, the third. "Dex has a viable plan to reengineer the deep core drillers. The Neumanns could incorporate his designs and in a year or two we'd have enough drillers to heat a continent," she said, but her voice sounded hollow. "Tomb is at perihelion now. Let's just take one day at a time, Anna. We're all desperate to find another world to colonize, but I'd rather err on the side of caution." "And forgo an earthlike planet." Corlin chose not to argue. He was glad they arrived at the edge of the alien site, a circular maze of streets and buildings constructed from a fused material that the analyzer registered as some form of carbon compound bonded by an unknown force. It was not buckyglass but perhaps something even more enduring. Considering the age of the settlement, over seven hundred millennia, it was in good shape. He pushed aside the crumbling gate and walked along the curving street. Walls and stairs were streaked with hues of cinnamon and henna. Rubble stood in heaps here and there, collapsed roofs and fence-like structures moldering under the alien sun. "Commander Corlin," he heard through his implant. "Go ahead, Kate." "Is Anna with you? She's offline." A flash of fear crossed Anna's eyes before she said, "What's up Kate?" "The EI is finished with the new analyses." "About time," Anna said, giving him a sidelong glance. "Yeah, well, the EI got confused." Kate gave a nervous laugh. "The result is shocking. It could've addled its brains." Corlin deduced by Kate's prattling that she must be perturbed, so was obviously the CHBC EI. The probes had already determined that the alien colonists had not originated on Tomb. The cellular structures of the local marine life differed considerably from the one tiny creature whose bones lay naked outside the settlement, which they had designated Site I. The other 407 bones inside the settlement, Site II, were humanoid, covered by a greenish glassy substance that the probes' disassemblers couldn't penetrate. "Vex you, Kate," Anna said. "Just tell me what the EI came up with." "Fine, but you're not gonna like this. I ran it twice to be sure. There are three different types of genetic structures at Site II, even though the bones all look the same. All three types match the human genome to ninety-six percent." "What?" Anna stared at Kate's image, eyes full of disbelief. Corlin felt his stomach knot. Even aboard the Celestis, before they landed, he dreaded this. He had known when the shapes of large ribcages, femurs, and skulls first appeared on the probes' data. They were so obviously human bones. Despite its earthlike atmosphere, liquid water, and lack of microbes in the biosphere, he knew something dreadful had happened here. "Yes," Kate said. "The EI can't even analyze the other four percent. Its main theory is that they could be super genes. The Chief Science Officers are in conference with the Captain." Anna swallowed. "Thanks, Kate. I'll get samples from the specimens at Site III. Finish collating data on the marine fauna." Corlin flicked off the view and turned away. He didn't want to see Anna's fear. But whatever frightened her didn't matter; what he had overheard was treason, Anna asking Kate to purge the EI's memory. He wondered what she wanted disabled. "What do you make of this, Tiv?" Anna hastened along the maze, following the curving structures. He shrugged, disturbed by her behavior. Perhaps she had found something important she didn't want to share with the other departments. Professional jealousy was not unheard of among ESC crews. Exploration was clearly the playground for the xenobiologists, because most worlds didn't have ruins. ESC had found some derelict human settlements on marginal or hostile planets, abandoned by early colonists of the 'Ark Ships' era, but those were barely millennia old. He always felt that even the probes neglected xeno-archaeology, programmed to seek only earthlike planets. Regretfully, his chosen field was considered a minor branch of science. Until Tomb. Corlin found it hard to fathom that human bones had moldered on this world for over seven hundred millennia. Or nearly human, he reminded himself. Where did they come from? Parallel evolution was out of the equation; besides, nothing else on the world supported it. But he said nothing about his thoughts. "Let's see what info the other bones yield." "Right," she said in a tone of contrition. "Too bad we can't use the gravbelts." The alien field that partially covered the maze and its environs interfered with the mechanisms of the gravity belts. Instead of risking accidents, he had decided not to use them. "Be glad the float pallets also have wheels." Most tenement walls were intact at places, laced with frost. Fluted columns adorned large gates. Balconies and tongues of slabs extended from the top stories. Geo-imagers had shown a large chamber hundreds of meters below the ice, and the bots had started digging yesterday. A drilling bot churned inside a concave cavity, its upper chassis and shovel arms glinting orange with the rising sun as it threw out piles of ice. Analyzer units sifted through the sludge and recorded its composition. As they neared the central complex, Corlin slowed imperceptibly. They paralleled the curving avenue and turned at the final junction. He found this route the shortest to the inner compound, but now he wished it were longer. His heart pounded and he looked around, eyes searching for the growing webs that had started in this ring of the maze. He called up a grid image of the maze, slowly turning it, checking for any spread. Though he had run a quick surveillance at the base last night, he wanted to be certain. Some of the sensors they had placed inside the structure disappeared during the past few days. "Wait up," he called after Anna. She was already at the edge of the path that bled into the central plaza. In a quick bound, he was at her side. "Don't rush this, Anna. I mean it." She stopped. "Sure, Tiv." He read tension in her rigid shoulders, and urgency in her voice. They crossed the frozen ground in silence and reached the least damaged section of the alien energy shield. It was the color of a brown dwarf star, and it ebbed and flowed. A little further it fragmented into sharp ebony cracks, then thickened to murky brown corroded sections at the bottom. Corlin turned away, his eyes smarting. They passed an amalgam of mechanical and biological jumble. Large pieces of machinery were fused together by filaments of barely seen webs, glinting with crystalline sheen at places, and then abruptly jerking into coarse black surfaces that seemed to suck light out of the surrounding area. Anna entered a grisly tunnel, corrugated and lumpy. It seemed to undulate at their passage, like an esophagus of a large beast struggling to swallow them. According to the experts, it was a trick of the senses, because none of their sensors had ever registered any movement. When the tunnel ended, they ducked under a shiny blue arc. He consulted the map grid again. "Below us to the left." He pointed across the large chamber. Anna activated her light and it bobbed up in the air. She hurried after him. Gossamer strands of crimson and violet fluttered at their passing. From his peripheral vision, they looked like they would touch him at any moment, but when he turned his head, they became still again. It was a nightmare scene, obscene and wrong. None of the disassemblers was able to analyze the samples they had taken thus far from the maze. They stopped. Corlin felt his gorge rising. His skin flushed. Fortunately the containment field was more than protection, it also concealed his fear. "This is it." He stared at the wall. A mosaic of thick olive slime, wet fur, red pulsing sphincters, wrinkled yellow hide, and sharp spikes covered it. The entire tapestry looked like an experiment in biological outer coverings. Only the bodies were missing. They had passed it several times on previous visits, keeping well away from it, but Mara had stumbled and fell through yesterday. "Come one." He grabbed Anna's hand, closed his eyes, and they stepped into the wall. Corlin couldn't help shuddering at the sound of sucking noises and moist embrace as they passed through. Large machines littered the chamber. His suit enhanced the images while he recorded everything for further study. The scene became even more disturbing, flowing into fractal patterns of chimerical shapes, playing havoc with his neural implants as his eyes strained to fit them into some perspective. Almost like a span of caterpillar thread, a ribbed wheel, and cranes with serrated mouths marched at the edge of his awareness. Sections of the machines had liquefied and then froze after the cold penetrated the settlement. With a sigh, he moved his scanner in a wide sweep. The data downloaded automatically into his implant. Glancing at the device, he said, "Background dating only, a little over seven hundred thousand years old." He approached the crystallized bones timidly, aware of Anna shuffling beside him. A sense of unreality gripped him at the sight. Preserved by whatever the glassy casing was, the white bones radiated an ancient warning. They were the partial remains of humanoid figures, giants of at least two and a half meters tall. Corlin stood there and stared, palms slick with perspiration until his suit absorbed it. The bones were not just humanoid; they were human. But the time, the time, the time, it echoed in his mind. The time factor was all wrong. Some of the skeletons were nearly intact, others covered by purple mossy growths. A humerus lay detached from a shoulder bone, the green casing cracked. The skeletons were dotted with brown holes from which violet tubular structures burst out in clusters. A ribcage leaned sideways, poking curved bones skyward, as if imploring the heavens. Between the arcing bones, bundles of oyster masses protruded. Corlin moved closer and squatted, adjusting his vision. He gasped and scooted back, landing on his rump. "You all right, Tiv?" "Fine," he said after his suit adjusted to his rapid breathing. He stood up and approached again. From the glistening globs, tiny faces glared at him, mocking human faces. He blinked and shook his head, but the vile scene remained. Some of the glassy coverings showed fractures and the faces underneath those looked like shriveled prunes. He stood up, legs shaking, and started recording each of the sixteen bodies by moving his scanner over them. Corlin didn't blame Mara for having neglected to take visual records last night; she was a greenie. He was not, but this place touched something primordial in him. "Let me." He reached over his shoulder and removed the specimen gun from Anna's float pallet. She stood in silence and stared, too paralyzed to protest the usurping of her work. Corlin crouched next to the least damaged giant figure and pressed the specimen gun at the large femur. It punched through the pale green crystalline sheen that covered the bones and took a few grams of tissue sample. He checked the stasis window on the gun and saw it blink green, preserved and isolated. The question rose in his mind again: why were the probes unable to obtain tissue samples? "Let's find the Hall of Statues now." "Mara said that's even worse." Anna walked before him but kept glancing back. They carefully wove their way below the hanging mucus and gossamer threads, ducking to avoid contact. Seven more skeletons lay at a short distance, barely recognizable through the layers of petrified organics and frozen crust that entombed them. He ran his analyzer over them, and again, it didn't register what the material was. "We could've done this by using the VR program and we probably should have." He couldn't help the reproach in his tone, as Anna was among the scientists that had argued for landing. "Physical surveys yield more answers. There's always something the drone sensors miss. Besides, the probes couldn't take tissue samples." "Don't you find that odd? We're using the same tissue guns the probes did." A chilling thought occurred to him, so ominous that it nearly paralyzed him. "Maybe the probes got damaged." Corlin nodded, but he couldn't suppress his gnawing suspicion. He routed the data to the EI of the Celestis in mechanical motions. The physical specimens would be analyzed by the portable EI at the Base. They walked through another arch, then a short tunnel, and finally stepped into a chamber. The Hall of Statues, this must be where Mara had seen the standing figures. Barely discernible fractal patterns played on his retinas. The hovering light seemed to dim a fraction. The figures were a variety of shapes, all exceeding three meters. Standing upright and nearly jet-black with a faint luster of viridian and wine, like oil on water, they presented a menagerie from hell. The shine skidded across the hard surfaces of long knobby appendages that had five joints and looked like gears. They were undamaged and seemed full-fleshed. No bones showed. Misshapen large heads displayed deeply set ruby eyes that he could've sworn were animated by malice. All had long hair, but the way it hung in neatly coiled fleshy tassels gave the impression of slim tentacles. Two had four arms coiling around their torsos, and one sprouted clusters of pincers from a human-looking mouth. The fourth had six legs, but two of those dangled in the air. Its head was only a protoplasmic blob, folded and creased like a swollen brain from which scarlet cilia sprouted. Some were connected to a round black disc. Heart pounding, he reached over and tried to pry away the disc. It didn't budge. The grisly statues stood in a rough circle. Some had tails with metallic-looking spikes, and others were covered with round mirrors. Some sported tiny black clusters of eyes sprouting from shoulders, abdomens, and backs. He tried to guess the function of the overlapping blue flat organs covering a triangular head. Corlin gave up as they passed each one. He took the tissue gun again and pressed it to a leg. And pressed it again. It emitted a shrill sound, but the covering of the statue remained unbroken. After he checked the stasis window, he tried another one. Nothing. He circled around the chamber and repeated the procedure, but the hard casing didn't yield to his tool. "Looks like we'll have to skip these specimens," he said. "Let's go, there's nothing more we can do here." He guided Anna across the hall and then through the slimy wall. They hurried toward the exit, taking long strides in doubled up positions. He could've sworn the filaments hung lower, fluttering at their passing and extending barely visible strands to reach them. "So what do you think?" Anna's voice trembled. "Something from space attacked them." "They could be runaway replicators engineered by the colonists." "No, it's more like a tailored swarm or a set of virulent replicators, something to kill the colonists." He wondered why she argued her point when the evidence was against it. "Perhaps they were refugees fleeing from an enemy. And the enemy found them." None of the native life had suffered the same fate. The marine sediments and crust samples showed no great extinction in the timeframe when this happened. The ancient colonists were killed by a plague that had not originated on Tomb. Analyses showed that much, even if their instruments couldn't decode the structures of the pestilence completely. Corlin called Dan at the base. "Allocate four robots to install sensors in the new chambers Mara found." "Right away," Dan said.  Corlin ate dinner in the science complex, sitting by the portable bioanalyzer and munching a clish sandwich that Anna had brought him from the mess hall. Impatience gnawed at him, and he silently cursed the strident protocols of quarantine that slowed the analyses by adding numerous safety features. Disturbing scenarios crossed his mind: Maybe the central complex was a testing site, an ancient battle ground where a molecular battle had been waged, subsuming foreign agents, decoding secrets, and forging alliances by wielding molecular armies within the silent tombs of each encased bodies. The shrill sound of the alarm almost made him choke. He dropped the sandwich and jumped up, coughing, then blinking at the blurry image his implant generated. The Nano Pol. A chill exploded in his stomach. Silvery red forms stormed the corridor of the residential complex, stunners and blasters glinting with cold intent. They shoved crewmembers out of the dorms. The seasoned crew fled instinctively, but some of the greenies milled around, staring, until one of the NP commandoes barked at them. Another one of the commandoes pointed a finger at a room, and a containment field formed instantly. "Biohazard in room six," said the base system. "Residential section is presently—" Another image popped up, showing Captain Norris aboard the Celestis. Distress lines marred her face. The curses and grunts emanating from the residential section nearly drowned out her voice. "Commander Corlin, the Nano Pol landed. Response to a biohazard." He stood in numbed silence, looking stupid with his mouth hanging open. Finally, he said, "It's Rob's room." "Yes," said the Captain. "From the images we've got, it looks like something's replicating in there. It started from the tissue gun he used at site II. He took one of the EI units into his room." Corlin swallowed and felt his heart turning to stone. He didn't understand how this could have happened. The sealed systems were nanoimmune, hacker-proofed, and heuristic. His earlier fear returned. The plague that infested the alien colony was not nano-based. He remembered Sam's bone cells and how those giant machines churned out millions of miniscule ones inside his genes. He barely heard the Captain voice. "The NP will investigate if there might have been a human mistake. They'll examine the analyzer in—" It happened silently. Rob's room buckled and turned vermilion, as if lit from within. Liquid fire oozed and burbled and consumed furniture, walls, and equipment, melting them rapidly. The NP commandoes were backing out, their cyber arms spitting more thermnites into the residential building. Corlin ran outside, yelling to people, "Get back! Clear the area." His eyes frantically searched for Anna, while he questioned the base system, "Where's Rob?" Four commandoes stood outside, pelting the residential complex with thermnite pallets. "Is everyone out?" Tivor yelled. "Anna." Then he saw her angling toward him, whispering urgently to Kate. "Where's Robert?" "Rob was in his quarters," said the base system. Corlin felt like a punch in the gut. He ran to the confused crowd and herded them toward the science complex, wondering who else might have remained inside. They were halfway across the open field when the residential building began to glow. The plaz walls swelled, bubbled and frothed, emitting a deep rumble until the entire structure began to collapse. The crimson goo kissed the ice with a loud slap, oozed and sizzled for a few seconds, then slowly crackled into pewter ash. Four large figures stood in a ready stance around the inactive thermnites, cyber arms running analyzers over the ash. The sun stood high in the sky, etching their shapes into caustic shadows. No one talked about Rob's death the following day, but some people looked cowed, others stoic, and the majority seemed neurotic, eyes shifting left and right. Anna and Kate looked guilty. A small crowd gathered behind Dimitri in the science complex. He wore an interface design cap, its glistening convoluted surface like an extra brain, flickering with blue sparks. Corlin walked over and glanced at Dimitri's slowly turning 3D image. It showed a tubular, yellow object with blue spikes and barbs arranged around its outer surface like a cylindrical brush. "It's a new disassembler he designed," Eli whispered. "He's running a final check, then we'll test it." Dimitri had developed the disassemblers that traced some of the plague's structures. But his machines had halted at a certain stage. "All right," Dimitri said and snatched off the interface cap. His black hair was matted but his eyes sparkled with enthusiasm. "These might do the trick. I just routed them to the sealed specimen container that has the bone tissue from site II." The image showed Dimitri's large yellow machines swimming to the site of chaos. Silver flywheels spun in a blur, spewing out snowflakes. Or at least they looked like snowflakes. They watched in silence, as Dimitri's machines started rotating also, snagging some of the silvery flakes. People began to cheer halfheartedly. The yellow nanomachines attenuated some of their spikes, but they seemed to be quivering. Clogs built up rapidly, and the tool arms stiffened. After about thirty minutes of painful struggle, they just circled the alien particles in a vague disorder, quickly losing their functioning abilities. Dimitri zoomed in on one of his machines. It was covered by millions of snowflakes, busily winding filaments around it. When the snowflakes stopped spinning, his machine looked like a moth cocoon, the greenish substance similar to the casing of the bones. "God, we're all going to die!" Carrie screamed. She began to cry, covering her face. Corlin rushed over and led her away from the group. "Calm down, Carrie, we'll be fine," he whispered. "We have the best suits, plus the containment fields." Her body shook with great sobs, and she tried to shake off his arm. He felt sympathy for the greenie scientists. Tomb was a cruel blow to their illusion of grandeur, that Humanity could do anything. Mark, one of the medics appeared at their side. "I'll get her a tranq." He led Carrie away. Corlin shot him a grateful glance and returned to the group, gauging the reaction of the others. They milled around nervously, glancing covertly at the cocooned machines. "Blast it," cursed Dimitri, as if unaware of the commotion. "I know the plague eats protein, carbon, and even necronites." He looked down at his boots. "But they don't react to Tomb life," Ryan said. He was with the marine biology section. "We've just tested them on tissues and bones of several sea fauna." Dimitri looked up. "Hey, you've just given me an idea." "It's been a long day." Corlin slapped Dimitri on the back. "You can start fresh tomorrow." "Twenty-one-hour days," Dimitri snorted. "Not long enough. I couldn't sleep anyway, so I'll run some combination programs of the Tomb life and the colonists'. See if I can come up with something new." Corlin left and walked to the supply shack, their quarters since the destruction of the residential complex, and hoped that Dimitri's hybrid disassemblers would work. Anna lay on the airbed the robots had installed, wearing only a white shift. Though not as comfortable as the variforms that conformed to bodies, an airbed was better than the bare floor. Ground crews weren't too fastidious. She looked up from the image she was scrutinizing, then turned it off and gave him a careworn smile. "You look as tired as I feel." While he removed his clothes and suit, his conclusions kept running through his mind. He lay down next to her. "Our probes activated the plague." "What?" Anna looked away. She fiddled with the cover, hands shaking. "The interstellar probes ESC sent through the Mantus Nexus activated the plague particles." "Oh," she said, and still didn't look at him. "The probes couldn't take tissue samples from the bones, they've been sealed by that greenish substance, but they reactivated something dormant that reacted to our own disassemblers. Whether it's a lure to get us here physically or just an automatic recognition subroutine I don't know." "You're saying it was premeditated, but I can't believe that." Her voice sounded false, and when she finally looked at him, her expression held fear. "If someone wanted to infect us with the plague machines, they couldn't have gone through the probes, because the probes only transmit data to the Coalition. They had to get us here. Our curiosity did the rest." "Tiv, if what you're saying is true. . . ." She looked sheepish before she buried her face into his chest. "I'm so sorry." She began to sob. "We knew, Kate and I, from the initial samples. I ordered her to falsify the data sent to the Celestis, because—" —you were afraid. Her body was shaking, and he pulled her closer. "I, I suspected since the Site II samples that, that we were dealing with femto-scale replicators." She pulled away and wiped her eyes with the blanket. "Dimitri may design something useful." Corlin embraced her, feeling his body responding to the warmth of hers. He didn't want to talk anymore, so he covered her mouth with his own. They made love, then without the aid of their implants, they fell into a natural sleep. Corlin woke up rested. After they ate a couple of cold ration bars, they went to see Dimitri. A bustle of activity greeted them at the science complex, visual fields flickering with data loops, portable analyzers humming. A few stasis capsules passed them on floating sleds. He wondered why they were being moved when he saw Dimitri sitting alone and staring at a holoscreen. Anna shook her head slightly, and he gazed at the images, trying to swallow his disappointment. Dimitri's hybrid disassemblers didn't work either; they just sat at the edge of the sub cellular structures of the ancient colonists. "Commander," he heard from behind them. Eugene Thomas, the geophysicist waved at him, his voice filled with trepidation. "Please step over here." He dashed to the other end of the room, Anna behind him. "Something's tunneling through the ice." Thomas pointed to his visual field. The base with its flickering containment field and the alien site above ground was rendered in color. The images below the ice looked a ghostly monochrome, but he could clearly see a bullet-shaped object heading in their direction. "What is it?" Thomas shook his head. "It's coming from here." He pointed to the central construction in the alien maze. A convoluted passage began below the ice, moving even as they were watching, not fast but relentlessly. "Site III," Corlin whispered. He contacted the base EI. "Track the object's progress and work out the location of its emergence." "I am tracking and prepared to isolate the intruder," said the EI. "Keep an eye on it," he said to Thomas and left. The containment fields had been borne out of the Plague Years centuries ago, a brutal span of eighty years during which billions of people died and thousands of ecosystems were ruined. Everyone had worn them outside their communes and enclaves back then. As the plagues had reorganized themselves and adapted, people invested more and more in field developments. He sighed and opened the general com. "This is Commander Corlin. Everyone suit up and activate a personal containment field. This is an order." Then he transmitted his report and recommendation to the Celestis. The eye symbol, a classified reply to his report, appeared on his retinal screen at 1400 shiptime. In a cold dread, Corlin blinked away the icon and left the science complex. Walking behind an ice rover, he activated the security program through his implant. He closed his eyes, hoping the scientists aboard the Celestis disagreed with his assessment. When he opened them, he gasped. DATA RECEIVED NECESSITATES A LEVEL FIVE BURN. BETWEEN 2000 AND 2400 HOURS. PREPARE CREW. Tomb lingered in the wan sunlight of its orange primary before slipping into the long night. Corlin gazed out the plaz window of the science complex, between the jagged mountain peaks at the mauve sky, and dreaded the sparks that would soon appear on the horizon. Anna was awake somewhere, but the rest of the ground crew slept. By regulation, they should be as well, perhaps dreaming about the future and a tomorrow. But he couldn't bring himself to sleep through the coming Burn. A guardian of dreams now rather than a Commander, he grimaced and stood up, heading to perform his last duty. The prefab plaz door moved aside at his approach, and he stepped into the makeshift corridor. Robots had turned sections of the science complex into a dorm, partitioned them into tiny cubicles after the contamination of the residential building. A futile gesture to keep up morale, for they could have slept anywhere or nowhere for the short time, but ESC Quarantine Law was specific. He stopped at the first door and interfaced with the base system. The occupant was in deep sleep. Nora Stanley, planetary geologist, the image of the woman appeared on the holoscreen before him. She was young, thirty-six, and this was her third ground exploration. Corlin felt the guilt eating at him, but he had to remind himself that they had all signed the ESC contract. I'm sorry I ordered your death, Nora. He left the sleeping woman's cubicle, his boots making loud clangs on the floor. At the next cubicle, he closed his eyes to blot out the images of Dimitri working until Corlin had released the sleepnites into the compound. Interface cap on his head, Dimitri slouched in the chair in front of his data streams, face lax in sleep like a child's. The scene twisted Corlin's heart. Dimitri was the youngest crewmember, barely out of Space Force Academy, his very first exploration of an alien world. He hung his head and left Dimitri's door, then proceeded to check the next one. From here on, he did them automatically, just making sure they were in deep sleep, then onto the next crewmember. By the time he finished, he was exhausted and emotionally drained. Anna waited for him by the door of the supply shack. He walked slowly, trying not to think about what was coming. The Burn was a rarely mentioned topic among the crews of ESC, but it always hovered below the surface of their consciousness. A subliminal monster, it was the ultimate cure for a plague. The low hum of the field generator barely penetrated his awareness when he passed the compact machine. They could even turn the force field off now. But then again, they had more power than they could ever use. A bitter laughter escaped his lips. "You all right?" Anna held their suits. Corlin shook his head and didn't take his suit. "No, I want to go outside and see this world with my naked eyes." Her full lips tightened into thin lines, but she nodded. "I suppose it doesn't matter—" He looked down, unable to face the despair in her eyes, though grateful she didn't state the time. He didn't want to know, needed to pretend for a while yet that these were not their last hours. They had agreed after he recommended the Burn—which he shouldn't have told her—that they wouldn't act, speak, and think morbidly. It's over, it doesn't matter now, we're dead, wouldn't enter the remainder of their lives. But they crept in more and more as the hour neared. Anna shoved the suits into the supply shed and took his arm. He avoided looking at the two contained alien substance, baleful red domes protruding a meter above the ice and glimmering faintly. The containment field was fighting a losing battle, visibly dimming as the alien disassemblers rendered it useless. When they reached the edge of the main field, Corlin asked the base system to form an aperture. Alarms rang through his implant, informing him that he needed a suit. The 3D schematic of the base was stitched with red blinking lights. Then all the pre-designated exit sites fused, and a biohazard sign hovered before him. "Damn," he cursed. The stupid system thought there was still something worth protecting. He consulted the main program and found the override algorithm. From there, he shut down the field generator. Beginning at the top of the coruscating dome, the containment field slowly etiolated and flickered once. In the next instant, the field shimmered up again, making a sizzling sound as its energies singed the atmosphere of the world. It wavered above their heads for a second and righted itself. "Shit," Corlin cursed again. "I forgot about the backup generator." Anna's hand slid up his arm. Her eyes filmed over as she sent the command through her implant. "Fixed." The field shuddered. Its rainbow colors rippled and lost coherence, turned red, and the field bled into the bruised sunset of Tomb. He hesitated and looked back at the building that housed the sleeping crew. For both Anna and him, the next landing would have been their hundredth on an alien world. Neither of them would achieve that now, not in this body. A level five Burn. He visualized the planet bombarded by thermnite missiles, consuming the atmosphere, the ice, and the ocean, liquid fire circling around. Dirty missiles would follow, exterminating whatever remained and thoroughly wiping away any chance for life for the unforeseeable future. A pang of sympathy stabbed through him at the thought of the native life, but then the full horror of their predicament hit him. He gritted his teeth and led Anna from the base, lacing her arm through his. They walked in silence. The clouds had parted before the spilled ink of the sky, bejeweled with stars. The wind tugged at them with icy claws. Tomb had no moons, but Tomb Guard the gas giant shone bright, its light flickering above the jagged teeth of the frosty mountains. Corlin sought calm by counting their steps. Slowly, reason started nibbling chunks out of his fear and the tapestry of his life appeared in his mind's eye. He had woven that by threads of hard work, ambition, accomplishments, love, and even courage. How would all that reside in a new body? As if reading his mind, Anna said, "I wonder how the reppers feel. You know, when they first realize . . . ." "Maybe they don't know." Or maybe they're not allowed to know. "We won't remember this." He detected motion from her body as she spread an arm to indicate the world. Corlin agreed, but couldn't stand voicing that their new bodies would be robbed of the events on Tomb. He felt cheated. He dug his nails into his palms as a silent rage swelled inside him. He blamed ESC, but mostly Defense and Intelligence, because they had enacted the Quarantine Laws and carried out the, the . . . . What was he thinking? Murder. Except they had all signed the consent forms and left tissue samples in stasis and memory records on file at ESC headquarters. Murder with consent, then. "It's the price we pay for traveling between the stars," he said finally. "The universe is exacting a steep price for expansion." Anna sounded resigned, her voice inflectionless, words falling on the darkness like stones. Corlin wondered if he'd be happy being a cocoa farmer, or a corporate executive, or a virch designer, or a historian. "What if we'd gone through a Burn before?" "We could have." The possibility had occurred to him recently, because he had never seen or talked to a repper before. There were ways that ESC could alter individual records and keep the identities of replicated persons classified. "You think the Johannists are right?" Anna sidled closer to him. "About what?" "Our souls, that they're embedded in quantum packets of the universe." He didn't put much credence in the Johannists' claims that some of them tapped into the inter-dimensional cracks and read the soul-memories. He wasn't even certain he believed that souls went into another dimension. But for Anna's sake, he said, "They've published enough True Human History, so it's quite likely." "Our souls will wander around for some time before the Celestis reaches Coalition space. It'll take time to grow the clones even with the accelerators, then more time to imprint them. I wonder if our souls will recognize our new bodies." Her voice sounded distant, as if she was preparing for a long journey. They stopped by the rise of a low hill and sank down on the ice. Their thermal clothing would protect them long enough not to freeze. "I would've liked more time to study the sites since—" Anna shuddered. "Perhaps not, because we don't know how long it would take to end up like the bones." Worse than that, whatever killed the colony could still be out there among the stars. He regretted that they would never know why a race of super humans died on Tomb seven hundred millennia ago. Fear clawed at him again. How could the Coalition defend Humanity against a threat like that? Corlin was glad that he had slipped a small dose of tranq into Anna's coffee at dinner. She seemed calmer than was possible under the circumstances. He pulled her closer, and she leaned into him. Her even breathing calmed him eventually. The wind stopped tugging. There was stillness in the air, as if Tomb held its breath. Abruptly the sky lit up with tiny red sparks, growing into fireballs, and then into a sheet of plasma. A feeling of déjà vu gripped him as he stared, mesmerized. The next instant, pain seared through him as the heat slammed into them. Corlin held Anna in a melding embrace and felt their bodies blistering. Captain Norris watched through the view port of her cabin, blinking to stem the flow of tears, useless moisture that didn't wash away the pain. Crimson worms crawled over the world as the thermnite missiles landed, expanding into blankets of fire. The oceans boiled as the nuke-tipped missiles ruptured Tomb's crust, throwing up steams of cloud and dust. She turned away, wiped her face, and prompted her implant to file her report, "Celestis Log, Inner League date March 8, 3821, 2310 shiptime. Successful Burn at Coordinates: MNX-006485979. Interdiction filed, see data attached." Number nineteen on the list of interdicted systems, she thought. But the scourge must be contained. During her long career in Defense and Intelligence, Captain Claire Norris had watched four other worlds going through a Burn, though not in this replica of a body. Despite the enormous expense invested into opening the Mantus Nexus, the wormhole would be dismantled. Tomb, a world that should never have been named, has been named. A plague that should never have been awakened, has been awakened. Tomb was first published in Desolate Places, edited by Eric T. Reynolds, Published by Hadley Rille Books Tomb © Copyright 2009, Z. S. Adani
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