Ilium (24 page)

Mahnmut hesitated.

“I’m still functioning,” continued Orphu. “Or at least still communicating. I even have O
₂
flowing through the umbilical and some electrical energy coming in. I must be in the hold, even if it’s flooded. Why don’t you get
The Dark Lady
working and drive us somewhere more comfortable before we try to get together again?”

Mahnmut went on external air and took several deep breaths. “You’re right,” he said at last. “Let’s see what’s what.”

The Dark Lady
was dying.

Mahnmut had worked in this submersible, through its various iterations and evolutions, for more than an Earth century, and he knew it was tough. Properly prepared, it could take many metric tons per square centimeter of pressure and the stresses of the 3,000-g flux-tube acceleration in stride, but the tough little sub was only as strong as its weakest part, and the energy stresses of the attack in Mars orbit had exceeded those weakest-part tolerances.

Her hull had stress fractures and unmendable flash burns. At the moment, they were buried bow-down with most of the sub in more than three meters of silt and harder seabed with only a few meters of the stern free of the mud, the hull and frame were warped, the hold-bay doors were warped shut and unreachable, and ten of the eighteen ballast tanks had been breached. The internal gangway between Mahnmut’s control room and the hold was flooded and partially collapsed. Outside, two-thirds of the stealth material had burned away, carrying all of the external sensors with it. Three of the four sonar arrays were out of action and the fourth could only ping forward. Only one of the four primary propulsion jets was operable and the maneuvering pulsers were a scrambled mess.

Of greater concern to Mahnmut was the damage to the ship’s energy systems: the primary reactor had been damaged by energy surge during the attack and was operating at 8 percent efficiency; the storage cells were on reserve power. This was enough to keep a minimum of life support running, but the nutrient converter was gone for good and they had only a few days’ worth of fresh water.

Finally, the O
₂
converter was offline. Fuel cells weren’t producing air. Long before they ran out of water or food, Mahnmut and Orphu would be out of oxygen. Mahnmut had internal air supplies, but only enough for an e-day or two without replenishing. All Mahnmut could hope was that since Orphu worked in space for months at a time, a little thing like no oxygen wouldn’t harm him now. He decided to ask the Ionian about it later.

More damage reports came in over the sub’s surviving AI systems. Given an e-month or more in a Conamara Chaos ice dock with a score of service moravecs working on her,
The Dark Lady
could be saved. Otherwise, her days—whether measured in Martian sols, Earth days, or Europan weeks—were numbered.

Keeping in touch with the mostly silent Orphu on the hardline—afraid his friend would cease to exist without warning—Mahnmut gave the most positive report he could and launched a periscope buoy. The buoy was deployed from the section of the stern still above the silt line and it still worked.

The buoy itself was smaller than Mahnmut’s hand, but it packed a wide array of imaging and data sensors. Information started flowing in.

“Good news,” said Mahnmut.

“The Five Moons Consortium launched a rescue mission,” rumbled Orphu.

“Not quite that good.” Rather than download the nonvisual data, Mahnmut summarized it to keep his friend listening and talking. “The buoy works. Better than that, the communication and positioning sats Koros III and Ri Po seeded in orbit are still up there. I wonder why the . . . persons who attacked us . . . didn’t sweep them out of space.”

“We were attacked by an Old Testament God and his girlfriend,” said Orphu. “They might not deign to notice comsats.”

“I think they looked more Greek than Old Testament,” said Mahnmut. “Do you want to hear the data I’m getting?”

“Sure.”

“The MPS puts us in the southern reaches of the Chryse Planitia region of the northern ocean, only about three hundred and forty kilometers from the Xanthe Terra coast. We’re lucky. This part of the Acidalia and Chryse sea is like a huge bay. If our trajectory had been a few hundred klicks to the west, we would have impacted on the Tempe Terra hills. Same distance to the east, Arabia Terra. A few more seconds of flight time south over Xanthe Terra highlands . . .”

“We’d be particles in the upper atmosphere,” said Orphu.

“Right,” said Mahnmut. “But if we get
The Dark Lady
unstuck, we can sail her right into the Valles Marineris delta if we have to.”

“You and Koros were supposed to land in the other hemisphere,” said Orphu. “North of Olympus Mons. Your mission was to do recon and deliver this device in the hold to Olympos. Don’t tell me the sub is in good enough shape to carry us up and around the Tempe Terra peninsula . . .”

“No,” admitted Mahnmut. In truth, it would be an amazing stroke of luck if
The Dark Lady
held together and kept functioning long enough to get them to the nearest land, but he wasn’t going to tell the Ionian that.

“Any other good news?” asked Orphu.

“Well, it’s a pretty day on the surface. All liquid water as far as the buoy could see. Moderate swells of less than a meter. Blue sky. Temperature in the high twenties . . .”

“Are they looking for us?”

“Pardon me?” said Mahnmut.

“Are the . . . people . . . that slagged us looking for us?”

“Yes,” said Mahnmut. “Passive radar showed several of those flying machines . . .”

“Chariots.”

“. . . several of those flying machines crisscrossing above the sea in the several thousand square kilometers of the debris impact footprint.”

“Looking for us,” said Orphu.

“No register of radar or neutrino search,” said Mahnmut. “No energy search spectra at all . . .”

“Can they find us, Mahnmut?” Orphu’s voice was flat.

Mahnmut hesitated. He didn’t want to lie to his friend. “Possibly,” he said. “Almost certainly if they were using moravec technology, but they don’t seem to be. They’re just . . .
looking
. Perhaps just with eyes and magnetometers.”

“They found us in orbit easily enough. Targeted us.”

“Yes.” There was no question that the chariot or its occupants had some sort of target acquisition device that had worked well at 8,000 klicks of distance.

“Did you reel in the buoy?”

“Yes,” said Mahnmut. There were several seconds of silence except for the creak of the damaged hull, the hiss of ventilation, and the thump and hum of various pumps working in vain to clear the flooded sections. “We have several things going for us,” Mahnmut said at last. “First, there are tons and tons of metal debris from the spacecraft in this footprint, and it’s a long footprint. The first impacts weren’t that far south of the polar cap.

“Second, we’ve settled in bow first, and the only section of the sub above the silt line, the stern, still has some tatters of loose stealthwrap on it. Third, we’re powered down to the point that we have almost no energy signature at all. Fourth . . .”

“Yes?” said Orphu.

Mahnmut was thinking of the dying power supply, the dwindling reserves of air and water, and the doubtful propulsion system. “Fourth,” he said, “they still don’t know why we’re here.”

Orphu rumbled softly. “I don’t think we do either, old friend.” After a minute of no communication, Orphu said, “Well, you’re right. If they don’t find us in the next few hours, we may have a chance. Or is there any other bad news?”

Mahnmut hesitated. “We have a slight problem with our air supply,” he said at last.

“How serious a problem?”

“We’re not producing any.”

“Well, that
is
a problem,” said the Ionian. “How much in reserve?”

“About eighty hours. For two of us, that is. Certainly twice that, probably more, if it’s just for me.”

Orphu rumbled slightly over the intercom. “Just for you? Are you planning on stepping on my air hose, old friend? My organic parts need air too, you know.”

For a second Mahnmut couldn’t speak. “I thought . . . you’re a hardvac moravec . . . I mean . . .”

“You’re thinking that I spend long months in space without topping off from the Io tender,” sighed Orphu. “I produce my own oxygen from the internal fuel cells, using the the photovoltaics on my shell to power them.”

Mahnmut felt his pulse slow. Their chances of survival had just gone up if Orphu did not need ship’s air.

“
But
my shell photovoltaics are blasted to hell,” Orphu said softly, “and the fuel cells haven’t been producing O
₂
since the attack. I’m surviving on the ship’s supply. I’m sorry, Mahnmut.”

“Look,” Mahnmut said quickly, strongly. “I was planning to keep the air running to both of us anyway. It’s not a problem. I did the numbers—we have about eighty hours at our present consumption rate. And I can lower that. This whole control room and enviro-niche of mine is flooded. I’ll pour it back in and parcel it out. Eighty hours easy, and then we’ll come up for air. Their search should be over by then.”

“Are you sure you can get
The Dark Lady
out of the mud?” asked Orphu.

“Absolutely positive,” lied Mahnmut, voice firm.

“I vote we lie doggo in the seabed for . . . say . . . three sols, three Martian days, seventy-three hours or so, to see if their chariot search is really called off. Or twelve hours after our last radar contact with them. Whichever comes first. Will that give us enough time to get out of the mud and to the surface, plus leave some oxygen and energy to spare?”

Mahnmut looked at his virtual wall of red alarm and non-function lights. “Seventy-three hours should be plenty of extra time,” he said. “But if they go away sooner than that, we should get to the surface and head for the coast. The
Lady
can do about twenty knots on the surface with the reactor at this level, so it’ll take the better part of the day and a half to get to land anyway, especially if we’re picky about where to put in.”

“We’ll just have to avoid being picky,” said Orphu. “All right, it looks like the only thing we have to worry about for the next couple of days is boredom. Shall we play poker? Did you bring the virtual cards?”

“Yes,” said Mahnmut, brightening.

“You wouldn’t rob a blind moravec, would you?” said Orphu.

Mahnmut stopped in the process of downloading the green baize card table.

“I’m
kidding,
for Christ’s sake,” said Orphu. “My visual nodes are gone, but I still have memory and parts of my brain left. Let’s play chess.”

Three sols was 73.8 hours and Mahnmut did not want to stay in the seabed that long. The reactor was losing power faster than he’d estimated—the pumps were draining more energy than he’d planned on—and all the life support was flirting with failure.

During their first sleep period, Mahnmut went on internal power, took pry bars and cutting equipment, and descended the narrow crawlways and corridors to the hold. The interior spaces were flooded, the vertical gangway without power and pitch black. Mahnmut activated his shoulder lamps and swam lower. The water here was much warmer than Europa’s sea. Beams and girders had crumpled, blocking the last ten meters of the approach. Mahnmut cut them away with the torch. He had to check on Orphu’s condition.

Two meters from the airlock to the hold, Mahnmut was stopped cold. The impact had buckled the aft bulkhead, pressing it almost flat against the forward bulkhead. The already narrow corridor had been squashed into a space less than ten centimeters across. Mahnmut could see the hatchway to the hold—closed, dogged, and twisted—but he couldn’t reach it. He would have to cut his way through one or both of the thick pressure bulkheads and then probably use the torch to cut through the hatch itself. It would be a six- or seven-hour job and there was a basic problem—the torch ran on oxygen, just as he and Orphu did. Whatever he gave the torch came out of their air supply.

For several minutes, Mahnmut floated head-down in the darkness, silt floating in front of his lenses in the twin beams from his shoulder lamps. He had to decide
now
. Once Orphu awoke and realized what he was doing, the Ionian would try to talk him out of it. And logic dictated that he be talked out of it. Even if he got through the bulkheads in six or seven hours, Orphu had been correct—Mahnmut wouldn’t be able to move the huge moravec while they were still embedded in the seabed. Even first aid would be limited to the kits and system inputs that Mahnmut kept onboard for himself—they might not even work with the huge hardvac moravec. If Mahnmut could really get
The Dark Lady
free of the silt and to the surface,
that
would be the best time for Mahnmut to get to Orphu—even if he had to cut through the hull bay doors or outer hull. O
₂
would be plentiful then. And he could remove Orphu if he had to, find a way to lash him to the upper hull, in the sunlight and air.

Mahnmut kicked his way around and swam upward in the tilted and torn corridor, letting himself through the airlock into his personal space again. He stowed the cutting equipment.
Later
.

He was no sooner in his acceleration couch again when Orphu’s voice came over the comm. “You awake, Mahnmut?”

“Yes.”

“Where are you?”

“At the controls. Where else would I be?”

“Yes,” said Orphu, his deep voice sounding weary and old on the hardline. “But I was dreaming. I thought I felt a vibration. I thought you might be . . . I don’t know.”

“Go back to sleep,” said Mahnmut. Moravecs slept, if only to dream. “I’ll wake you for the buoy check in two hours.”

Mahnmut would deploy the periscope buoy for a few seconds every twelve hours, quickly scan the skies and gentle seas, and reel it back in. Flying machines were still crisscrossing the skies day and night at the end of the first forty-nine hours, but further north, nearer the pole.

Mahnmut was fairly comfortable. His control room and connecting enviro-niche was undamaged, warm, and tilted only slightly bow-down. He could move about if he wished. Several of the other habitable chambers had been flooded—including the science lab and Urtzweil’s former cubby—but although the pumps soon cleared these spaces, Mahnmut didn’t bother flooding them with air. In fact, the first thing he had done after their initial conversation was to hook into his O
₂
umbilical and drain his enviro-niche and control room. He told himself it was to save the oxygen, but he knew that part of the reason was that he felt guilty being so comfortable in his cozy niches when Orphu was in pain—existential pain at least—and floating in the flooded darkness of the hold. There was nothing Mahnmut could do about that yet—not with three-fourths of the damaged sub embedded in the ocean floor—but he went into the vacuum-filled science lab and cobbled together comm units and other things he’d need if he ever managed to free the Ionian.