The Symbionts of Murkor Read online

  The Symbionts

  Of

  Murkor

  By

  Gary Tarulli

  Copyright © 2014 by Gary Tarulli

  All Rights Reserved

  First Edition

  Cover Design by Mallory Rock

  Malloryrock.com

  eBook editions by eBooks By Barb

  for booknook.biz

  Thanks, Doc

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  The Worst of All Possible Worlds

  Base Nadir

  Zenith

  Out and About

  Nadir’s Atmosphere

  That Which Has Value

  Sorely Tested

  Worse Than Bad

  Remembering the Past x2

  Reaching Out

  Ghosts to God

  We Don’t Die Alone

  Expedition

  Down Payment

  The Symbionts of Murkor

  The Best of All Possible Worlds

  A Question

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  1. The Worst of All Possible Worlds

  SHE HAD BEEN FOREWARNED. But a handful of holographs and a terse description offered up by a disgruntled mining tech who had toiled on the planet were insufficient preparation for how grim it appeared, even at a great distance. Murkor, the tech made a point of saying, “was toast,” the cataclysm which had incinerated the surface eradicating nearly every form of indigenous life. It had earned the dubious distinction of being called the worst of all possible worlds.

  As the unrelenting force of gravity grasped and drew the shuttle downward, Commander Jennifer Ellis reflected on the burden that lay ahead—the demand placed on her shoulders she was secretly determined to resist. After harboring only a shred of doubt, she was now absolutely certain that her prospective assignment was intended as a decidedly unique and unpleasant form of punishment. For the next year, the devastated planet below was to be her new home. If her command survived that long.

  The twenty-one Standard Earth Day interstellar journey from Varian to the remotest region of the Orion Spur had been a constant fight against tedium and lethargy—yoga meditation in zero gravity the most potent of her few weapons. Floating up from the exercise pod, she sat next to the only other person onboard, the pilot of the Coalition C5-Class shuttle, a space-hardened veteran who looked as battered as his ship, the psychophysical effects of prolonged interstellar travel having extracted their inevitable toll. In spite of the unrelenting boredom, it had suited her fine when she discovered he was a simple man of few words.

  Early in the voyage, when asked what name he went by, he had simply said, “Pilot.”

  Velcroed to her utility belt were a series of encrypted files. Compiled by Coalition bureaucrats with a self-serving political agenda, they described the troubles looming at Zenith, the mining base that was to be her final destination. During the outbound voyage, she had dutifully assimilated the information the reports contained, judging the conclusions rendered as biased and verbose. In her experience, accuracy was most often associated with brevity.

  Gazing out the starboard viewport afforded the last completely unimpeded view of the planet’s orange dwarf star, a pallid sun inferior to Earth’s Sol in size and magnitude. Murkor was the eighth distant planet of eight, the only body in the system with a surface density capable of supporting the weight of a person. In the galactic scheme of things, it had nothing else to recommend itself other than isolated pockets of a vital mineral—and that, too, was disadvantaged by the processing required to render it suitably stable for hauling the long reach to the nearest inhabited system.

  Hopes of discovering flora or fauna of economic or scientific value were dashed early on. Biosweeps had detected only a handful of organisms. None were more interesting than a dull brown splotch resembling a simple form of lichen—dim prospect indeed if you were an aspiring astrobiologist seeking the notoriety or career advancement so easily found on the glut of newly discovered worlds teeming with complex forms of life. After a brief flurry of research, Murkor was ignored, its few surviving organisms receiving only the minimum attention necessary to determine they presented no threat to humans.

  The prematurely aged look of Pilot prompted a comparison to her own face reflecting off the shiny surface of the control console in front of her. In contrast to Pilot’s skin, most of the lines and creases she bore were the temporary kind: Furrows on the forehead from concentrating on the difficult task that lay ahead. A few permanent wrinkles, shallow crow’s-feet, spoked outward from the corners of her eyes. Premature engravings caused by wincing through a lifetime’s worth of grueling training and exercise regimens. Or, more likely, from laughing or crying at human folly, be it others or her own. They gave her the appearance of being older than thirty-three. If there was a trade-off, the lines imparted a look of hard-earned experience. Otherwise, the almost gaunt face staring back at her had clear complexion, a small, turned-up nose, and sharp cheekbones. Pleasant enough features framed by straight, dirty-blonde hair. Close-cropped, of course, to be less bothersome in zero-g.

  Superficialities. How much does a face really communicate about a person? What would it tell the uninitiated about her? That it was being used as a facade, a mask hiding something troublesome within? It is the eyes that reveal the most, they being, as the saying goes, “mirrors to the soul.” And if you refused to believe in the soul? Her orbs were merely hazel.

  Musings to pass the non-relativistic time.

  Pilot was the first to break the long silence with an oblique reference to a topic they had both avoided discussing during the journey.

  “It’s a long way from the Varian System just to drop off a solitary passenger and a few supplies.”

  “No choice,” Ellis replied.

  “There is always a choice,” Pilot responded, frowning.

  “That might be so,” Ellis answered, unsure if Pilot was commenting on what he knew of her assignment on Murkor or, slim chance, was making a much broader philosophical affirmation of free will.

  In either case, silence resumed. Attention had to be paid, for the near-approach to Murkor was known to be a hazardous one. The planet was completely encircled by a debris field; objects sufficient in mass to destroy a ship accelerating into orbit. Here, too, in the form of countless particles of glistening ice, resided a significant portion of what had once been the planet’s ocean.

  “There are alternate ways to slip through that cloud and enter into orbit,” Pilot said, studying the visible demarcation line of the field’s outer edge. “The direct approach, which is the fastest, is also the riskiest.”

  “Direct approach would be my preference, though I will defer to your better judgment,” Ellis said, adding, “Don’t misconstrue my meaning. I’m in no particular hurry to arrive.”

  “No one ever is,” Pilot replied. The matter decided, he quickly donned a miniature headset, directly linking a portion of his thoughts to the ship’s navigation and propulsion systems. By eliminating muscle reaction time (and saving two-hundred milliseconds), the device allowed him to initiate near-instantaneous course corrections. As the field approached, simulations of its largest objects, and vectors to avoid them, hovered in the air in front of him. On the periphery, despite his best efforts to suppress the distraction from his mind, was the faintly glowing image of a massive class C-40 supply ship.

  Ellis immediately recognized it as the Trillion. The waiflike image had a sobering effect. The Trillion had the tragic misfortune of having its hull breached, disintegrating above Murkor’s surface while attempting to navigate the same debris field that she and Pilot were about to enter. A crew of
thirteen souls, never recovered, had become a small part of the field that had destroyed them.

  “I knew her captain well,” Pilot said, the apparition fading in and out of view. “Well enough to know what happened was no way in hell a miscalculation on his part.”

  “Sorry,” was all Ellis thought fitting to say.

  “Still want to proceed on this heading?”

  “If it’s all the same to you,” Ellis said.

  “Good. I love a challenge.”

  “They say if you get to hear the impact it’s a good thing,” Ellis said, knowing full well it wasn’t true.

  “Yeah, they say a lot of incredibly stupid things.”

  Immediately upon entering the field the first disconcerting sound, a muffled thunk, was heard, causing the holo image to burst into colorful life.

  “That reminds me,” Pilot said. “Seat… Mold.”

  Responding to his voice profile, his seat began to reshape until it had securely ensconced the entirety of his torso, leaving only arms and head free.

  “I suggest you do the same, Commander,” Pilot advised, a note of caution entering his voice for the first time.

  Having verbalized the instruction, a doubtful Ellis inquired, “Really? For safety?”

  “Mostly for someone else’s convenience,” Pilot answered, interrupting himself to contemplate a correction. “It’s a lot easier for a recovery team to locate human remains when they’re attached to a big chunk of ship. That’s if anybody’s crazy enough to—”

  The next audible was that from the ship’s brain, its mindstor.

  Shield loss twenty-seven percent… repowering commenced.

  Pilot glanced sideways at Ellis. If he expected to see alarm, he was disappointed.

  There was a substantial thunk, sharper this time, a high-pitched sequence of pinging sounds, then a short, unnerving lull—followed by a shockingly loud boom which reverberated throughout the ship.

  Shield loss thirty-one percent… correction… fifty-seven percent… repowering… forty-nine… correction… shield loss seventy-one percent.

  Not a healthy sign. The audible was warning that shield strength, even with constant repowering, was a diminishing quantity. Hull integrity would be compromised by another large impact.

  “We have no intention of joining you, Max,” Pilot said, visualizing an intricate course vector that sent his ship into a gut-wrenching six g-force yaw.

  Ellis understood that Max referred to Maxwell Hendrickson, distinguished captain of the Trillion. He and a crew of twelve were drifting out here—somewhere.

  Moments later, the planet-side edge of the debris field came tantalizingly into view.

  “We’re almost through,” Pilot said, believing Ellis needed reassurance, unaware that her thoughts had already gravitated elsewhere.

  “I understand there is a well-equipped gym at Zenith,” she said.

  Pilot again glanced over at his passenger. Discovering she wasn’t joking, he laughed and said, “It would be interesting to see you wear this imaging headset.”

  “You’d probably think it’s malfunctioning.”

  Ellis, on multiple occasions, and as part of her military training, had practiced using a device similar in function to what Pilot was now using. And while most wearers were unable to prevent the formation of stray images, she could do so with ease, and for long duration. A small benefit of the yoga meditation she practiced.

  Leaving debris field… shield loss sixty-one percent. Returning to full power.

  “It appears, Pilot, that your ship shall remain intact,” Ellis said. “Well done.” The compliment was earned. In comparison to the audible impacts that the shield sustained, there were many too small to be heard, and countless avoided.

  “Hell, the ship handled the majority of it,” Pilot answered, obviously pleased by the recognition of a difficult skill acquired through many years of experience. “But I have managed to prove a point—again. The loss of the Trillion wasn’t Max’s doing. He was a far better pilot than I am.”

  “You’ve been to Murkor before?”

  “This transit makes it two times too many. I’ll spin the ship to give you a better look.”

  When Murkor came into full view, Pilot tried offering up a description. “What’s it look like to you? A scuffed, misshaped baseball?”

  “I see a blackening, decomposing orange,” Ellis said.

  “That’s good,” Pilot said in appreciation, “though we’re being way too flattering.”

  “The sight does take your breath away.”

  “Quite literally when you’re exposed on the surface,” Pilot said.

  From the vantage point of deep space, what first captivated attention was a planet which only roughly approximated the shape of a sphere. Closer in, transecting the entirety of Murkor’s crust, a webbing of pinched mountain ranges came into focus—protuberances inspiring Pilot’s baseball analogy. Snaking and intersecting a celestial body violently torn asunder and carelessly sewn back together, they more closely resembled the puckered stitches on a freshly autopsied cadaver.

  At an altitude of three hundred kilometers, the mottled skin further resolved to reveal the deep black of solidified lava and patches of a sallow yellow-orange—areas where shallow oceans had once existed, the meteor which had deformed the planet a million years ago vaporizing every trace of surface water.

  This is what could be seen. Much of the surface remained hidden from view, buried behind a dirty shroud of particle-laden gases extending into the upper reaches of the stratosphere. Pitchforking within the murk, visible in both the nighttime and daytime atmosphere, were jagged streaks of blue lightning—electromagnetic discharges similar to those seen in the clouds above erupting volcanoes on Earth.

  “With such a foreboding landscape, you can see how the story got started,” Pilot said, mesmerized by the garish surface. “Have you heard it?”

  “You mean down there lurks an undetected life-form?” Ellis said dismissively. “Every planet I’ve been to has a similar mythology, the modern-day equivalent of werewolves, vampires, and things that go bump in the night.”

  “True enough,” Pilot said, with a slight grin. In his many years as shuttle pilot he had heard his fill of such stories, though Murkor made it more believable. “Nevertheless, I have no intention of staying longer than I have to.”

  “Pilot, I’d like to make one complete orbit before we touch down at Zenith.” The opportunity to study the terrain from altitude was an advantage that would disappear with Pilot’s return to the Varian System tomorrow. Thereafter, only ground transport would be at her disposal.

  “At what altitude?”

  “A maximum of one-hundred kilometers. Lower, if you can manage.”

  “I can manage. Should be interesting to see how precisely the ship’s AI—it’s a new mindstor—compensates for the planet’s wobble.”

  The shuttle descended through the thermosphere, the planet giving no indication that its grotesque appearance would improve. Extensive tracts of the surface, that from a distance appeared pockmarked and blemished, could now be identified as perforations into the planet’s bowels that planetary geologists had labeled fumaroles. Resembling gigantic open-topped termite mounds, many were expelling a yellowish-green discharge which, slowly rising and commingling like so many polluting smokestacks, managed to deposit a significant amount of haze into the atmosphere.

  What once appeared to be flat surfaces were now distinguishable as fractured and foreboding plateaus where molten rock had once flowed, slagged, and solidified to create a broken terrain of lava lakes, tracts of pahoehoe lava, and escarpments. At the foot of some small percentage of these escarpments were the yawning mouths of a vast network of lava tubes. Ellis took a long, second look, for inside these tubes was a substance common to Earth, except here it had the potential of igniting a conflict.

  Navigating the uneven terrain by ground vehicle, Ellis thought, would be treacherous. Nevertheless, overland excursions were, out of nece
ssity, routine. Correction: Commonplace. Nothing in such a hostile environment should ever be viewed as routine. To consider it so would be to invite danger.

  Having completed one circumnavigation of the planet, Pilot transitioned the shuttle into a lower glide path. On the fringes of a bleak and barren lake of hardened lava, appearing like a mirage in the shimmering heat haze of an Egyptian desert, a squat pyramid emerged. Ellis immediately recognized the structure as base Nadir, handiwork of the opposition, Unión de Naciónes de la América Latina. Unión being the widely accepted abridged version.

  “You have to ask yourself,” Pilot mumbled aloud, “why establish a base here? It defies reason.”

  “Do they have a defensive system?” Ellis asked, avoiding the question.

  “Not to my knowledge.”

  “Take us in for a closer look.”

  “Your definition of ‘close?’”

  “Let’s not rouse them. Five hundred meters should suffice.”

  Pilot closed the distance and banked his ship, a maneuver that afforded Ellis a better view.

  There wasn’t a great deal to see. A four-sided pyramid ten meters in height. In one direction and stretched toward the horizon, a long line of fumaroles were emitting puffs of acrid smoke, otherwise the outlying terrain was mostly pahoehoe lava and escarpments containing a large number of lava tube openings. Makes sense, Ellis thought.

  The base showed advancing signs of wear. Metal alloy and palladium glass panels, once lustrous materials, had been etched to a dull patina—the effects of windblown pumice and corrosive gases. A small number of the highest panels appeared improperly fitted. For the base’s occupants, assuming they were aware of the defect, a disconcerting state of affairs. Atop the structure’s apex a small metal mast, whose function she identified as a weather monitor/communications spindle, was bent off-angle. Likely the result of being buffeted by wind. If repairs were needed, it would be difficult in the extreme to have them affected. Two large ground vehicles were stationed at the base of the structure. One, dust-covered, had evidently seen better days.