They were, he supposed, like separate strands of sluggish oil seeping between the ice sheets on what he still thought of as a conventional world, a rocky planet with ice at the poles and mountain peaks.
He commanded a small but potent force a crack team of thirty, all highly trained and armed with poisons, chemical micro-explosives and packages of solvent. Most — perhaps all — of the marines and machines whose representations he’d inhabited over the subjective-time decades the great war had lasted to date would have regarded this as laughably inadequate weaponry, but it would be perfectly deadly down here, where not one of those marines or war machines would last for more than a fraction of a second. They were over-officered — he was here as a major, though in any other theatre he’d be a general — but that just reflected the importance of the mission.
He could feel the presence of each of the others, chemical gradients and electrochemical signals passing within and between each of them keeping him in literal touch with every one of the thirty marines under his command. Here was Corporal Byozuel on the right, slipping and sliding down a particularly wide channel, briefly beating the rest of them for penetration; here was Captain Meavaje way out on the left and spin-forward, guiding his squad’s four solvent-carrying specialists through a tricky sequence of fissures like a three-dimensional maze. First Byozuel, then the marines between them in sequence, reported a strong quake. Vatueil felt it himself an instant later.
The ice seemed to creak and whine, the space which most of Vatueil himself was in tightened, shrinking by half a millimetre. Another part of him was in a cavity a little higher further up; this widened a fraction, trying to pull him upwards. He had to grip tighter, push harder, to continue his slow progress downwards, towards the core.
…All right, sir…? came the question from Lieutenant Lyske, who was next but one along the line.
…Fine, lieutenant… he sent back.
Vatueil had sensed them all stopping, freezing in position as the quake’s compression wave had passed around and through them. Freezing like that slowed them down a fraction and it did no real good unless you were in a wide fissure about to enter a narrower one, but it was just what happened, what you did; human nature, or animal nature, or sentient nature, however you wanted to characterise it; you stopped and waited, hoping and dreading, hoping not to be about to die and dreading the feel of the ice around you shifting, and dreading too the biochemical scream that might come pulsing through the single living net they had made of themselves as somebody else was so compressed by fissures closing around them that they were squeezed to single, separated molecules, crushed to mush, chemicalised out of existence.
However, the quake had gone, leaving them all intact and alive. They resumed their progress, insinuating themselves deeper and deeper into the water world’s ice. He sent electrochemical signals out to let everybody know that they were all okay. Still, they could not afford to relax just because that little instance of random danger had gone; they were approaching the level where they might expect to find defences and guards.
He wondered how you could characterise where they were now. It was not part of the main war sim. It was not another simulation running within that one either. It was something separate, something elsewhere; similar, but held apart from the other sims.
Byozuel’s sudden signal came flashing through the net of the unit, passing from marine to marine: …Something, sir…
Vatueil commanded a full stop; they all came to a halt as quickly as possible without causing any further disturbance.
He waited a moment then sent …What do we have, corporal?
…Movement ahead, sir…
Vatueil held, waited. They all did. Byozuel was no fool — none of them were, they’d all been carefully picked. He’d be in touch when there was something to report. In the meantime, best to let him listen, sniff ahead, watch for any scintillations in the glassy darkness of the ice all around them.
Not that they’d seen much since the submarine had offloaded them in the silt slush at the bottom of the ocean, hours earlier. There had been absolutely nothing to see there; no sunlight was visible below a quarter of a klick down from the ocean surface, never mind a hundred klicks.
Once they’d entered the ice, a few cosmic rays had produced distant flashes, and a shallow ice-quake when they’d been less than a kilometre into the hard ice had produced some piezoelectric activity including a few dim glimmers, but their eyes, such as they were, represented their least useful sense.
…Ha!… The exclamation came along with a chemically transmitted wave of elation and relief, pulsing through the company of marines as though through a single body. …Sorry, sir… Byozuel sent. …Didn’t want to risk communicating anything there. Enemy combatant engaged and neutralised, sir…
…Well done, Byozuel. Its identity?
…Here, sir… A complex set of chemical idents and gradients transmitted itself through the web of the unit to Vatueil. A guard. A single, highly aware but barely sentient unit secreted in a fissure within the ice ahead and sensed by Byozuel before it could sense him. So they had to hope, anyway. Studying the analysis of the paralysed, dying creature, Vatueil could see no sign that it had communicated anything before it had been speared by Byozuel and filled with poison.
Vatueil communicated the necessary details to the rest of the platoon. …Let’s assume there will be more ahead… he told them. …Byozuel… he sent. …how’s the way ahead look from where you are?
…Good, sir. Good as we’ve seen. Not getting anything un toward, listening or smelling.
…Okay, we’re going to shift formation… Vatueil sent. …Rest of squad one and squad two, follow behind Byozuel. Three and four, regroup with same internal spacing and keep probing as we descend. We’ve got one enemy profile so watch for that but be aware there will be other types. We’re tightening up here, concentrating. Stay as wary as you like.
He felt the formation change around him, the two squads slowly shifting to concentrate and gather above Byozuel, the other two pulling in from the other side.
The ice-quake came without warning. The screams came from both sides, seemingly at the same time as the tortured shriek of the shifting ice and the hazy scintillations produced by ice contaminants’ piezoelectricity. The ice closed around Vatueil, squeezing him, producing a feeling of utter helplessness and terror just for a moment. He ignored it, let it all pass through him, prepared to die if it came to it but not prepared to show his fear. He was squeezed out of where he was, forced downwards by the sheer closing force of the ice above into a broader fissure beneath. He felt others moving out of control as well, felt three lose contact, tendrils between them broken, snapped, teased apart.
They all stopped again, those that were not writhing. Moments later, even they ceased to move, either dead or after self-administering relaxants, or being darted with them by their comrades.
Could it have been an explosion, enemy action? Had they set something off when Byozuel had neutralised the guard? The after-shocks moaned and rattled through the vastness above and around them. The quake felt too big, too comprehensive, to have come from a single-point detonation.
…Report, Vatueil sent, a moment later.
They had lost five of their total including Captain Meavaje. Some injuries: loss of senses in two, partial loss of locomotion in another two.
They regrouped again. He confirmed Lyske as his new second-in-command. They left the injured and one able-bodied marine to guard their retreat.
…Bastard blow, sir… Byozuel sent from his down-forward position, fifteen metres further down. …But it’s opened a fine-looking cleft down here. A positive highway it is, sir.