Killing Titan Read online

  “The Ants told you that?” Ishida asks.

  The older pilot smiles. “No, dear,” he says, like a patient grandfather. He doesn’t look that old, but the grayness of his reflected light gives that impression. “We sent out surveillance machines, both crewed and automated. Most didn’t come back. That was the only killing going on that season, until the very end.

  “Then we learned the Antags were digging deep. They’d broken through to a polar sea and were sinking big machines and fanning them out through the canyons and around the ridges, up to the shelving slopes and crustal caps, as far as they could reach. They made it down first, but we were right on their heels, and we began a two-pronged push on the surface to close up their ventrances—cryo-volcanic fissures and blowholes. We were delicate, because we wanted to preserve as much as we could. We used methane jets to carpet bomb the northern polar regions with conventional explosives, then sent our best big machines on long marches overland. We thought we’d surround and seal off and just vent-hop until we’d closed all of them. Didn’t work.

  “Our first-stage product wasn’t that efficient. The Antagonists were better at converting raw materials. Their machines grew faster and became bigger than our machines. They chewed us up on the surface, and we never made it into the deep oceans. First season came to an abrupt end just as we were able to defend and finish our own ventrance. A very brave force descended during the short pause to see what they could see. We had to abandon them.”

  I can feel Coyle listening, agreeing. I was there. Bad season, worst season of all—highest percentage of casualties. She stuck around for the second delivery of soldiers and seeds, new product, new designs—after taking in the lessons of the first season.

  “Season two was different,” the pilot says. “We lasted, though still with many casualties. We cleared more vents, finished our exploratory journeys from the southern poles to the equator—even claimed vents north of the equator, old Antagonist entrances—surrounded them, sunk in and defeated them, kept the enemy from digging out—thousands of their machines were destroyed or lost. We lost dozens. Finally, a good season for us, terrible for them.

  “But the Antagonists had learned. Season three was the most important of all. That’s when we came upon the saline jungles. Some called them cities. They were old and seemed deserted, but our Wait Staff advisors communicated with the Gurus, and they were very interested.”

  Mushran regards our dubious expressions with a dignified nod. The pilot defers to him, while Kumar moves around our little group as if conducting a diagnostic survey. He seems concerned about too much knowledge being added all at once. Knowledge can change the mix.

  “We thought this was more archaeology than battle, which was fine by me,” Mushran says. “I like to learn and live. The saline jungles were intricate mazes made of compacted salts and waxes and plastics, hard as granite. Traveling between their branches was like seeing coral reefs from a worm’s point of view. They stretched for hundreds of kilometers, rising to touch the crust like pillars—mostly around the equatorial regions, where the tides were strongest, where the aurora sang bright, and purple currents flickered like lightning. Really. Just like that. Continuous and unbelievably beautiful.”

  “You were on Titan?” Jacobi asks him.

  “Along with Captain Coyle,” Mushran says.

  We regard Mushran with more respect. This does not affect him in the least. “When we first explored the saline jungles, we thought some parts might still be alive—but there was no life. They were barren, populated only by electric currents and ionized, oxygen-free membranes, like cell walls but many kilometers across. Nothing like triple worms or spider castles.”

  “What are those?” Jacobi asks.

  “You’ll see them. Still, the jungles seemed dynamic—the way the purple discharges and exchanges moved. Some of our observers were especially interested. They formed a cadre within the battalion and called the purple flows inside the cities ‘I/O,’ without explanation. We thought they meant the Jovian moon. But later we learned they meant Input-Output. The saline cities might be dead, but they were still active—still very much in use.”

  “By who?” I ask.

  “We did not know,” Mushran says. “About the time of the sixth season, we heard rumors about the old mines on Mars. Our I/O experts were again interested. And when they heard that Antags were dropping comets to destroy the Martian mines, the old fragments of moon, our experts quickly returned to orbit. We were told to abandon the saline jungles and fall back to our fortified deep-ocean stations. Many of us returned through our few open vents to the surface and caught gliders back to Lady of Yue, which returned us to Earth. Some of our experts were already anticipating what happened in season seven. Kumarji referred to these new activities as a ‘war on information.’ But none of us knew whose information was being targeted. That’s when our stations began to get seriously pasted. And that’s also when we saw evidence that Antags were attacking not just us. They were going after each other.”

  “We can’t know what we’re supposed to do here,” Jacobi says. “Who are we defending? What’s left to defend?”

  The others murmur and nod agreement.

  “What’s our mission, Commander?” Jacobi asks Borden.

  “We have no combat orders,” Borden says. “Division Four tells us to deliver Corporal Johnson and Master Sergeant Venn to Titan, get them as close to the saline jungles as possible—and wait for results.” She looks exhausted and folds her arms.

  The older pilot picks up the narrative. “Our last orbital season, we saw that Titan was being repeatedly bombarded by comets.”

  “Antag?” Litvinov asks.

  “We presume,” the pilot says. “Nearly hyperbolic orbits. The maps made for the previous season are useless. River networks, plains, and highland landmasses have been extensively reworked. Eleven out of twelve installations have fallen silent, presumably destroyed with all personnel. However, cap training—instructions for operating your equipment and weapons systems—is up-to-date. As for the strategic situation, and whether there are still Antagonists—nobody knows.”

  Without farewells, the pilots depart. We’re quiet for a time. Then Joe taps Tak, DJ, and me, taking us aside, and pulls us in close. “Captain Coyle served on Titan years before she was sent to Mars,” he says. “She expressed her opinions and got busted down. When they sent her back to Earth, she promptly re-upped, went full MARSOC at Camp Lejeune, and rose to major in record time. Then she talked back some more and got demoted again, but they still gave her tough assignments. They gave her Mars. Anyway, Borden thinks you two might have a special connection with Coyle that could help us down there.”

  “That would have been years ago,” DJ says.

  “Even so, that’s a big reason you were plucked out of Madigan. Kumar and Mushran and Division Four believe in ghosts.”

  “Do you, sir?” I ask.

  Joe’s look is veiled. “Prove me wrong,” he says. Tak stands by looking rock steady. Bless Tak Fujimori.

  STATS

  Titan grows hour by hour. Bug and I like it in the bubble. Well—Bug doesn’t actually express an opinion, but I speak for it.

  Borden and Kumar persuaded the other Skyrines to leave me alone. Borden wants me close to Titan. In full sun, the old moon looks like a big dusty orange shot a little out of focus. Dim at the edges (it’s not very bright out here), brownish in places. Foggy. Most of the details we see are the frilly, tortured edges of high methane clouds. Methane. Swamp gas. Right. There are methane oceans down there and methane rivers. Liquid methane falls as rain in drops bigger than marbles, slow and steady, washing down in rivulets from the waxy, sandy, icy land. Titan is orange and brown and frilly and mysterious.

  Operations have come to a strategic halt. Ishida and Jacobi think we’re on the ragged edge of completely pulling out. They anticipate, they hope, that the entire mission could be aborted. Borden and Kumar know better. They say nothing. Litvinov is hiding somewhere with
his troops. This waiting isn’t good for any of us. Hanging loose on Lady of Yue is really weirding us out.

  Despite the survey that says half our seeds are damaged beyond recovery, I think we’re dropping soon. DJ agrees. Joe agrees.

  No word from Captain Coyle.

  Borden asked me a few hours ago if I felt a stir, like I was closer to something important. I don’t. Maybe we are, but I can’t force it. DJ and I don’t compare notes. Mostly we avoid each other.

  JOE DISOBEYS BORDEN’S strong suggestions and visits me in the bubble. We don’t speak, just watch as the ship enters Titan’s long shadow. Saturn-shine partly fills the moody darkness. There’s lightning in the high methane clouds, dozens of silent flashes like giants trying to light cigars. Did I say Titan was big? Bigger than Earth’s moon, over half the diameter of Mars. Everything is poison down there. Atmosphere consists mostly of nitrogen. And it’s old nitrogen, maybe from the far reaches of the Oort cloud, that somehow drifted down long after Titan was formed. Titan’s nitrogen differs from that in the gaseous nebula that helped shape Saturn itself, which…

  More useless crap? I don’t know. Bug likes it. Bug is compelled to acquaint itself with how much things have changed since his day. They’ve changed a lot.

  To me, all by myself, listening to nobody and watching only with my own eyes, Saturn is a big piece of art glass dropped “swish” through a banded platinum hoop. Bug sees it different. He remembers Saturn as green with no ring. Something big happened a long time ago. Isn’t that what this is all about?

  Did Bug come from around here? The rings are new, Bug decides. But yeah. This system is where home was, probably a moon just a little smaller than Titan. Then something big happened. I think it could have been another planet or a wandering dark sun. It shoved some moons out and pushed others into Saturn itself, changing its color and maybe helping create the fickle beauty of the rings. What I read back at Madigan, though, tells me the rings are fragile and maybe they just come and go. Bug doesn’t express an opinion. Neither does anyone else.

  In brief, however, this is where we all began. Yada yada. One can only hear about the birds and the bees so long before it gets boring. Any thoughts, Captain Coyle, any guidance? Nothing. That’s okay, I can put that aside, because suddenly there’s a shitload of data pouring into our helms from Lady of Yue, supplementing cap learning. I drift in the bubble with Joe beside me, taking it all in.

  The supplement is gentle at first, taking us back to basics—more detailed stuff about Saturn and its moons. There’s Iapetus, famous for being a yin-yang moon, white on one side, black on the other. Iapetus’s white is deposited water ice, its black is spray-painted by dust kicked up from impacts on another moon, Phoebe. Bug seems to remember Iapetus, but remembers it as neither so black nor so white. There’s Enceladus, which is pretty small but has a lake of water under one region. Bug doesn’t know anything about Enceladus. Or Rhea and Tethys and Dione and lots of much smaller moons.

  Then the Lady’s data turns harshly practical, adding more layers over what the caps have already infused. As a battlefield, Titan is unbelievably difficult. Most of the water in the surface layers is mineral ice—like rock or sandy grit. Lava on Titan is water mixed with ammonia, rising from Titan’s seven inner oceans through deep vents—cryo-volcanoes. All but two of the oceans are salty in the extreme, and not just table salt. There’s ionic sulfur and potassium—a devil’s brew that at times generates amazing electrical currents, which some of our machines—especially the excavators—are designed to use to advantage.

  Basically, Titan is a giant wet cell battery. No one in his right mind would choose it for fighting ground. Our basic protections need to be stronger than anything made for Earth or Mars. To that end, there’s one new plus: Water, along with hydrocarbons scooped up from the surface, can be woven into a superstrong fiber. Don’t ask how. The structural diagrams make my head hurt. Did you know that concrete contains water even after it sets? I didn’t.

  Then—basics again, like a break between bad news.

  Titan’s brown color comes from complex hydrocarbons called tholins. There are lots of different gases down there, many of them poisonous, some flammable (if you have a lighter filled with oxygen!), but mostly there’s nitrogen. Because there’s lots of lightning and other electrical discharge between the methane clouds, billions of tons of tars and waxes and precursors to more complex chemistry are made and scattered over the surface or swept into the basins of the methane seas. These organic compounds will provide many of the raw materials used by our weapon and vehicle seeds to double and even triple their present mass.

  Follows more harsh. We’ve been fighting down there for six years. Lady of Yue fills us in on what those battles were like, how they were fought and with what. First impression: big and scary. Second impression: worse.

  Joe’s eyes close and he curls up. I feel the same way.

  But there are some things Lady of Yue and cap learning can’t teach us. Having been hit by quite a few comets in the last year or so, as the pilots told us, Titan’s topology has been massively altered. It’s possible even the number of inner seas has changed, not to mention the outer methane lakes. Titan now rocks to a different music.

  It’s clear Borden and Kumar and maybe even Joe are of the opinion that the Gurus know what’s really down there. Question remains, why is it so dangerous that they’d jeopardize the entire war?

  Final bit of info: We’ll be descending in twenty-eight hours, a ship’s day—if the landers can be pried from the twisted frames, if the seeds can be salvaged, if there’s still any good reason for us to drop. The grunt’s delight is that matters of life and death are rarely his responsibility until he’s deep in the shit.

  LAST CALL

  Two of the five gliders respond positively and check out to Bueller’s satisfaction. With our reduced force, all we need is one to put us down on the Wax and complete the mission. We’ll get just one chance. Lady of Yue will station-keep for as long as she can.

  Bueller escorts us down a tight, cold aft corridor to inspect the best glider. It’s a genuine aircraft, not the pop-up-and-down landers used on Mars. The fuselage is almost eighty meters long, bulbous and heavy at the nose, oval in profile at the middle, where the wide delta wings are currently upswung, casual and awkward. About five meters behind the blunt nose circle twelve intakes, each two meters wide. Farther back, behind the wings, the glider’s middle tapers to a more slender V, followed by three jet exhaust nacelles spreading wide the profile. The whole thing finishes with a screw-twisty triangle of ailerons.

  As we watch, the glider’s fuselage opens long hatches to allow stowage of seventeen parcels, varying in size between five and twenty meters. These are so-called seeds from Lady of Yue’s aft bay. They look like presents for a grim Christmas, long and lumpy, concealed by black plastic wrap cinched down by red strapping. Stowage in the glider is accomplished by slender and flexible mechanical arms, watched over by a skinny, naked crewman enclosed in another bubble on the end of a boom—the only crew member we’ve seen so far. His outline is exceptionally fuzzy, for which I am grateful. He pays us no attention whatsoever.

  “These are your rudimentary seed packages,” Bueller says. “Some will combine in place to form more complicated structures, like excavators or centipedes. Others will take more time and grow out to full size by themselves, mostly the vehicles supporting big weapons—zapguns, ionics, penetrators. Once placed in their cradles beside the station, all the seeds will dip from the station storage tanks, and they’ll also start pulling in gases and liquids from the local atmosphere, plus solid raw materials arranged for them just outside the installation’s perimeter. I’m being told that the station itself may be recycled if those supplies are not sufficient, so you’ll want to get in and get prepped quickly.

  “Seeds are hungry,” she says. “Don’t fuck with them. Don’t get between them and raw material reserves. Don’t mess with anything growing. Half-finished product has been known to a
bsorb whatever it touches. Stay the hell away from developing product.”

  We all nod. Respect your weapons. Nothing new. Then why am I trying to swallow my Adam’s apple?

  The ship’s now-rigid skirts form a pale backdrop around Lady of Yue’s damaged midsection. I try again to assess the ship’s overall condition. Doesn’t look great. Optimism always leads to disappointment. Pessimism is wiser anytime we’re about to land in the shit. And that is surely where we’re heading. Maybe this was a suicide mission from the start.

  Bueller has let us absorb long enough. “Time to load,” she says.

  DOWN TO A DISTANT SEA

  Our cleaned and repaired skintights are handed back and we clamber gingerly down the dim passage into the glider’s main cabin, equipped to carry fifty. We’re only thirty.

  Bueller hands out another stack of caps and taps her head. “Ready?” she asks. “Part two. We save the best for last.” We shuck the doilies and inspect them. Damp and fibrous, as before. Again we paste them over our crowns. Ishida’s cap folds in half away from the metal side, and settles down on softly fuzzy hair and flesh. She looks at me, looking at her. “I’ll be fine,” she says. “What about you? How many haunted heads can you handle?”

  Jacobi grimaces.

  We push ourselves back in the glider’s narrow couches. Bueller checks us over, nodding at each fitting. DJ’s cap squirms on his crown and he reaches for it. Bueller slaps his hand.

  “Bon voyage,” Bueller says as she returns to the hatch. “Wish I was dropping with you. I surely do. Suck smog and come back soon.” She withdraws. The hatches seal. Behind us, muffled groans, clangs, sounds of machinery and fluids.

  Cap works faster than last time. There’s an odd taste in my mouth, my entire body. “Hey!” I say out loud. I now see and understand, very clearly, that the liquid oxygen necessary to burn a portion of Titan’s atmosphere is being pumped into the aircraft at the last, after the seeds are stowed. Our so-called glider is more of an ice-sucking jet designed to enter atmo, inhale combustibles, light them off, then power along for a few hundred klicks and coast to a tightly controlled landing.