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  Designed to transport mercs from space to a planet’s surface, dropships were balanced between combat capabilities, cargo capacity, and the ability to quickly drop from orbit to a planet’s surface. It was a capability Human mercs greatly coveted.

  “What are we going to do?” he asked.

  “The Selroth don’t negotiate well,” Doc said and put a hand on his shoulder. “My team can fight, but we’re pretty badly outnumbered.” On the viewer, one of the transports’ doors were open and huge crabs were skittering out.

  “Great, we’ve got crabs,” Piano said. Tina elbowed him hard in the ribs.

  “There are at least three platoons,” Tina said, examining the images. “Assuming they don’t have even more in orbit, of course.”

  “They’re tough bastards, too. The Selroth came loaded for Oogar,” Doc quipped.

  Terry gave a half chuckle at the pun.

  “First thing they did was shut down our link to the satellites in orbit,” Tina said. “They’ve got backdoor codes to everything.”

  “Did the Izlians set us up?” his mom asked Doc.

  “I doubt it,” he said. “They weren’t happy with the Selroth when they up and ditched the project. I think the Selroth left because they saw potential here. A lot of potential. So they hatched a plot to convince the Izlians there wasn’t much here, while the truth was the vents are a rich score. They set the extractors to automatic and left. They were probably planning to come back eventually, but the program was a safety switch in case their plot was discovered.”

  “And I triggered it,” Terry said.

  “We triggered it,” Doc corrected. “Did you find anything else in the files from the extractor? Something that could help us?”

  “They sent it there on purpose to set up a depot to store the other extractors’ haul,” Terry said. “It looks like there’s a facility under the extractor; I don’t know what kind, but I know it’s suitable for air-breathing life.”

  “Did the Selroth make it?” Doc asked. “What’s it for?”

  “I don’t know either of those things,” Terry said. “I only just figured some of it out.”

  Doc nodded in understanding and turned to Terry’s mom. “We have to get the kids out of here.”

  “What?!” she said. “Where do we take them? The surface is our only way to get off, and without a way to call for help, we’re trapped.”

  “To the place Terry found,” Doc said. She shook her head and he help up a hand. “No, listen. As long as the children are here, we have no ability to fight or negotiate. The Selroth will all be mercs. They don’t care about civilians; to them they’re just a liability for our side.”

  “No,” she said. “It’s too dangerous.”

  “It’s more dangerous to stay here.” Doc’s mercs nodded in agreement.

  “He’s making sense, Dr. Clark,” Dr. Jaehnig said. The others were reluctantly nodding as well.

  “The orcas can help protect us,” Terry said.

  “Send some of the staff with them, then,” she said.

  “In all frankness, Madison, I’ll probably need them to help fight. The Selroth might be coming to kill us and take the resources, and the presence of Xiq’tal troopers adds weight to the theory.”

  “It’s what I would do,” Toothpick said.

  On the display, Selroth in heated suits were supervising Xiq’tal unloading submersible craft into the water, one per dropship. Doc pointed. “We don’t have a lot of time.” Some of the big crabs were slipping into the water.

  “This plan is crazy,” she said, shaking her head.

  “No, just desperate,” Doc replied. He turned to Terry. “You can operate the submersible?”

  “It’s a lot like the minisub?”

  “Quite a bit, yeah,” Honcho said and nodded. “I can get you up to speed in just a few minutes.”

  “A few minutes might be all the time we have,” Doc said. “Madison, you’re in charge. Make the call. Get the kids out of here, or give the oldest ones guns.” He looked right at Terry when he said the last. It was exactly the push she needed.

  “Get ready to evacuate the kids,” she said, then grabbed Terry in a fierce hug. She kissed him on the forehead and turned his face up to hers. “You stay out of this, you hear?”

  “Yes, Mom.”

  “I’m serious. No matter what you hear. Do not come back until at least two of us tell you it’s safe. Do you understand?” He nodded, eyes big. “I’m going to tell the cetaceans what’s happening and have them go with you.”

  Doc scribbled on a piece of note paper and handed it to him. “This is the only frequency we’ll transmit on. Ignore everything else. Like your mother says, only come back if at least two of us,” he gestured around the room, “tell you to.”

  “I will.”

  “Honcho, activate the sub and get him up to speed on the controls.” He moved next to the cowboy hat-wearing merc, said something in his ear Terry didn’t hear, and passed the man something. “Terry, get your dive gear and head for the sub dock. The rest of you, let’s round up all the kids, some supplies, and haul ass!” On the display a crowd of Selroth were trotting out of the dropship and into the submersible. A group of Xiq’tal submerged. “Times a-wasting.”

  * * *

  Terry ran all the way to the moon pool to collect his dive gear. He had it all stuffed into a duffel, including extra rebreathers and batteries, when he saw the feeding cart and its milk synthesizer. “Damn it,” he said, and rushed into the equipment room. He unloaded the biggest cart he could find, shoved his duffel onto the bottom shelf, and rolled it out into the main room.

  Honcho was standing impatiently next to the submarine when Terry came huffing and puffing through the submarine lock door, pushing the equipment cart laden with a massive pile of equipment.

  “Kid, what the hell?” he asked when he saw.

  “Pōkole will starve without food,” Terry explained. “He’s not old enough for fish alone.”

  He’d just gotten the cart up to the sub when the door opened again. Tina, Toothpick, Piano, Hutch, and Peyto were escorting in all the other children. The youngest, a 5-year-old girl, was being helped along by her older brother. A few adults were there carrying babies, and a couple looked pregnant. He’d known there were pregnancies among the colonists, though not how many.

  Terry’s friends Dan, Colin, Taiki, and of course Katrina, were helping. Each of the children had a bag with them, some several. He was surprised to see the mercs wore body armor and carried various weapons. When did they have time to gear up? he wondered and lugged a crate onto the sub.

  “Forget that shit,” Honcho urged.

  “I can’t leave it,” Terry insisted.

  Honcho snarled another curse, then gave a sharp whistle. The mercs looked up. He pointed to the cart, made a whirling gesture over his head, and pointed to the sub. Piano gave a thumbs-up. “It’ll get done, now come on, damn it.” Terry followed him into the submarine.

  He took him into the craft and forward to the cockpit. The controls resembled a minisub in the same way a turkey sandwich resembled a living turkey. “Oh, wow,” he said at the dizzying array of gauges, controls, computer screens, and instruments.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Honcho said, squeezing down to fit through the driver’s hatch next to Terry. He had to remove his cowboy hat, something which seemed to annoy him. “Hop into the driver’s seat, and I’ll give you a crash course.”

  “Can you not say crash?” Terry asked.

  Honcho laughed and mussed his hair. “Compared to stabbing a dinosaur in the eye while it’s trying to eat you, this ain’t nothin.”

  “I was scared to death, Honcho,” Terry admitted. “I didn’t know what I was doing.”

  “Being brave doesn’t mean you can’t be scared, kid. It just means you can act when most people wouldn’t. You’ve got the knife Toothpick gave you?”

  “Sure,” Terry said, and looked down. He’d strapped his dive belt on before taking the rest
of the gear. The knife rested there in its sheath.

  “Good, Doc said to give you this.” He held out a holster. Inside was one of the mercs’ custom-printed laser pistols.

  “Oh, holy cow,” Terry said, staring at the weapon.

  “Don’t go all soft on me now, kid,” Honcho said and shoved it at him. Terry took it and Honcho drew his own. “Never put your finger on the trigger until you’re ready to fire,” he said, and Terry noted how the man held it with his finger along the side of the trigger button. “Safety here, magazine release here. You got 12 shots, then reload. One extra magazine in the holster. Got it?”

  “Yeah,” Terry said, “but I’ve never shot a gun before.”

  “We all start sometime. If you need it, shit’s gone sideways. Selroth are tough, but not too tough. Aim center mass.” He patted his chest, then stomach. “Two shots each. Remember, under water it’s only good for a couple meters. Got it?”

  “S-sure,” Terry said and put the gun in his lap.

  “You’ll do fine. Now, here’s how you run this beast.”

  * * *

  Halfway through Honcho’s crash course, Terry grabbed his slate from the carry bag and began recording and making notes. The older man was right; the necessary controls to operate the submarine weren’t overly complicated. However, there were hundreds of additional controls that were complicated. Messing with many of them could cause major problems. He also needed to keep an eye on a whole series of monitors to avoid needing some of the controls he wasn’t learning how to use.

  “That’s about it. Got it, kid?”

  “I’ll manage,” Terry said and showed Honcho the notes and recordings. In the 10 minutes it had taken Honcho to explain, Terry had taken full panoramic images of the control systems and had furiously noted everything Honcho had mentioned.

  “Damn, that’s pretty good.” He pointed to a note. “Put a note on this one,” he said and pointed to another. “If you try to use the dump ballast control to equalize buoyancy, you’ll be on an express trip to the surface.”

  “Oh, crap,” Terry said and changed the notes. “Anything else?”

  Honcho finished scanning and shook his head no. “All good.” He glanced at his watch. “You still have thirty minutes.”

  “Honcho?” Terry heard Doc’s voice over the man’s miniature earpiece/radio.

  He reached up and tapped the radio. “Go, boss.”

  “Fishes in the water, get the kid wet inside of ten minutes.”

  “Roger that,” Honcho said and turned to Terry. “You hear? Okay, I’m going topside to make sure the sub’s 100%. I’ll be back in five.” Then he was gone, leaving Terry alone and scared. He spent a minute going through the various checklists of function; fusion reactor power output, hydrogen storage, oxygen generator, main pressure pumps, backup pumps, and on, and on.

  “You okay?”

  He turned his head and saw Katrina crouching in the hatchway of the small cockpit.

  “Oh, hey, yeah...kind of,” he said, not realizing he was shaking his head.

  “Do you need help?”

  “Yes.” He was about to say he didn’t know where she would fit when she slid in and made a seat appear out of nowhere. It flipped down from under a console. He hadn’t known it was there, but she’d apparently noticed it.

  “What can I do?”

  Terry put his slate where she could see it and quickly showed her the various systems, paying particular attention to things he’d been told to avoid upsetting. At first he was unsure whether Katrina would be of any real help, but after less than a minute, his concern was gone. He’d known since they met how intelligent she was, and he should have remembered. She jumped in immediately, taking over some functions from him.

  Honcho returned and stopped in the hatch when he found the two kids busily working together, talking through the various functions and how they were delegating them. Terry didn’t notice him for several seconds.

  “You kids got this?”

  “Yeah,” Terry said, a little surprised.

  “Okay,” he said and left them in charge.

  They both settled headsets in place, checking comms functions, and got ready.

  “Terry, you there?” Doc called over the headset.

  “Yes sir, all set,” he replied.

  “I hear you got Katrina up there helping you?”

  Terry glanced over at her, and she winked, making him smile as Doc replied, “Honcho said you got it squared away, so I’m only going to tell you to keep your eye on the objective—keep those kids safe. A lot of the parents are freaking out about this, but despite your screw up, I have faith you can do this.”

  “Thanks, we won’t let you down.”

  “You have 29 kids on board, and six adult women. All are either parents of babies, or pregnant women.

  “We’ll try to send the other sub if we have time, but nobody else has experience operating them, and we’re going to try and put up as much of a fight as possible. Don’t forget, you don’t come back unless two of us call. There’s enough supplies on there for two weeks, maybe three if you push it.”

  “Got it,” Terry said, shaking slightly with pent-up nerves.

  “Help him out, young lady,” Doc added.

  “Yes sir, I will.”

  “No time for romance.” Terry felt his cheeks burning at his words. “Opening the lock, you are clear to dive.”

  “Roger that,” Terry said, swallowed hard, and used the lateral thrusters to push them slightly away from the dock. “Dive 5 meters,” he said.

  “Five meters,” Katrina repeated, the sound of whooshing air through the hull echoed as the sub’s ballast tanks took on water, and they slipped below the surface.

  Through the ball-shaped cockpit glass, he had a wonderfully panoramic view underwater of the submarine pen as he oriented himself on the slowly opening iris valve lock.

  “We’re really leaving them?” Katrina asked. “My mom and dad, your mom, everyone?”

  “Just for now,” Terry said. He’d promised Doc he wouldn’t come back until two of the leaders contacted him, no matter what. The truth was, he’d come back as soon as all the children were safe, and his friends had them under protection.

  Honcho had skipped over the vessel’s defensive systems during his instructions. Terry clearly saw them, though. The submarine was armed with both close-in defense lasers and torpedoes. It could make a significant difference in the defense of Templemer. He fully intended to return and help in the fight. Just about everyone he knew was in the big ruby dome. He wouldn’t abandon them.

  Carefully managing the sub’s engines, he moved them forward and through the lock as soon as it was open. “Godspeed,” Doc called over the radio. “Everyone sends their love. No more transmissions until we call you.”

  “Good luck,” Terry replied, and Katrina turned off the transmitter, then Terry turned on the rear passenger area PA. “We’re away,” he said. “Everyone sent their love to us. We’ll be fine.” Despite his words and the sound of the sub’s various systems, he could hear crying from the rear. He swallowed back his own fear for his mother, Doc, and everyone else.

  Outside a pair of bottlenoses shot into view and circled the submarine, while a single orca appeared; the big male named Byk.

  “Who in tin fish?” Byk asked over the hydrophone.

  “Terry,” he replied. “Did my mom tell you what’s happening?”

  “Yes, she tell,” he replied. “Pod going to machine. We meet. Lead you.”

  “Thanks,” he said. Outside, the big orca took up a position in front of them as he matched course and speed. The two bottlenoses raced ahead to scout.

  They sailed on, and Templemer’s lights were quickly swallowed by the dark ocean depths. The sub continued on, slowly descending toward the extinct volcano where they’d found the excavator. Terry took out the slip of paper with the frequency Doc had given him and typed it into the radio. The frequency was active, and multiplexed with a video feed as well. A
screen came alive with an image inside the dome.

  “Maybe we should go back?” Katrina said.

  Terry was thinking about what to say when he saw movement—Xiq’tal shapes were on the outside of the dome, although the distance made them appear tiny. There was a flash, and the dome he’d thought of as invulnerable cracked. A huge chunk exploded inward, leading a tidal wave of water. In an instant, the camera was hit and knocked out. Templemer was destroyed.

  * * * * *

  Chapter 12

  Volcanic Valley, Planet Hoarfrost, Lupasha System, Coro Region, Tolo Arm

  May 11th, 2038

  The conditions inside the modified extractor were unchanged since Terry and Katrina had last visited it. Doc and his team had explored it afterward, but nothing more had been done. Terry numbly piloted the submarine to the site then docked at the same lock he’d come through before. He sat in his seat for long minutes, trying to decide how to explain what he’d seen to his passengers, only to find out they already knew. The monitor in the cargo area had faithfully shown the same images.

  Eventually one of the adults came forward and asked if it was okay to open the lock. Terry forced himself to concentrate on the responsibility he’d taken on, and went aft to verify it was safe. It was, and he equalized the sub’s pressure with the extractor’s before opening the heavy submarine door.

  First, heaters were moved in to warm the frigid interior. Then portable cots were moved into the larger interior spaces of the extractor, and living spaces were set up. The adults took charge of the kids, leaving Terry to battle his own personal demons.

  Doc was dead, his mom was dead, all the doctors and researchers of the institute were dead. He was alone with the younger children and a handful of adults who weren’t part of the institute’s personnel. There was nowhere to go, and no chance of rescue. In short, they were dead once the food ran out.

  The submarine would provide air and water for months, thanks to its small fusion reactor. It took Katrina’s level-headedness to remind him they were in an ocean full of fish, and the cetaceans could provide them all they needed, so they could survive for quite some time. He was embarrassed that Katrina seemed to be dealing with it better than he did, so he’d asked her how she was doing so well.