The Black Pod Read online

  The Black Pod

  By Martin Wilsey

  This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this novel are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual events is purely coincidental.

  The Black Pod

  Copyright © 2015 by Martin Wilsey

  All rights reserved, including rights to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.

  Cover Art by Martin Wilsey

  For more information:

  Blog: http://wilseymc.blogspot.com/

  Web: http://www.baytirus.com/

  Email: [email protected]

  The Solstice 31 Saga:

  Still Falling (2015)

  The Broken Cage (2015)

  Blood of the Scarecrow (2016)

  Short Stories:

  The Outer Ring (2015)

  Kill Valerie Hume (2015)

  The Black Pod (2015)

  "When it began… I was just a man."

  --Solstice 31 Incident Investigation Testimony Transcript: SecTech Chief Anthony Adams, Senior Security Technology Specialist on the Ventura.

  <<<>>>

  SecTech Chief Anthony Adams witnessed, more than experienced, the destruction of the Ventura and the death of the crew. He watched missile after missile detonate its nuclear payload and never felt so much as a vibration from inside the Black Pod.

  The pod was designed to survive anything, even a direct strike from a nuclear bomb. It had to survive. It held the story of the demise of the Ventura. That was the Black Pod’s purpose. The hull was Polycarbon, and made of a fiber more than a meter thick. The internal power system was comprised of dual dark matter reactors, and would last 200 years without additional fuel. The internal inertial dampeners were so powerful, Adams never felt the initial blast. There was no sense of the three axis spin that the Black Pod was in, as its orbit decayed. It housed the Ventura’s main data store and Central Artificial Intelligence SYstem, CAISY.

  The Chief’s eyes welled with tears as he watched via the external camera array, as the plasma cannons hammered the life pods and shuttles.

  “Box, I need a status,” Adams said, the words catching in his throat. At his command, virtual computer screens opened all around the dome. He sat in the center, in the single, massive command chair. His fingers flashed across the huge curved control console.

  “The Ventura has been struck with a total of eleven Javelin nuclear missiles,” AI~CAISY said in a cautious tone. “Automated re-entry systems are fully functional. Grav-plates will be activated when we are 50 kilometers from the surface.”

  “Caisy, how did this happen?” There was despair in his voice. AI~CAISY knew Adams was upset, because he didn’t use the nickname ‘Box’.

  “There was an automated defense grid. It had stealth satellites with weapons platforms. There was no warning, no hail, no radio challenge of any kind.”

  “Did I ever tell you why I call you ‘Box’?” Adams asked AI~CAISY.

  “No. It’s the primary user’s privilege to call the AI anything he likes.”

  “Back home, commercial craft used to have a recorder called a Black Box. It was the seed concept for the Black Pod. The same idea, except for… me…” Adams sat in the command chair staring out at nothing.

  “You call me Box and I will call you Tony.” It sounded as if the AI had decided something. “Tony, we are now in hostile environment survival mode. Passive sensors only. No beacons. Besides, all the external antennas have been burned off,” Box said as the dome view changed to external simulated static positioning. Adams could see the virtual Black Pod in the center of the virtual screen of the dome, tumbling end over end. Inside it, however, he felt nothing. He didn’t even have his five-point harness buckled. He never did.

  “What else?”

  Box continued, “We are coming in really steep. We have less than another orbit before we are down. Entering the atmosphere in seven minutes.”

  There was debris all around them, moving at the same velocity and vector as they were. “Hold off on the grav-plate and thrusters as long as possible. If we want any choice at all where we set down, we will need all we’ve got,” Adams said. The Black Pod was not a spaceship. It was even less maneuverable than a lifeboat. It was an incredibly dense rock that was fitted with a large grav-plate so the builders could move it. It could hit the planet without the grav-plate activated and Adams would probably not even feel the impact because of the powerful dampeners.

  As they entered the upper atmosphere, chunks of the Ventura surrounding him began to burn up. At 50 kilometers, the thrusters halted the spin and oriented the grav-plate towards the planet surface. As the pod started to slow, the rest of the pieces around him appeared to speed ahead.

  Long-range optical sensors indicated that they would land in a heavily forested area. Already he could see the debris impacting the forest in great explosions. In a rapid series of decisions, he navigated the pod toward an area between two small, elongated lakes. At the final moment, he spotted a level clearing and guided the pod to it, landing it expertly.

  The forest was ablaze all around the clearing.

  Adams stood to examine his new home. The pod’s Heads Up Display (HUD) provided a view as though he were standing on a platform ten meters across, his command chair and console in the center.

  “Box, I want external audio.”

  The sound came in as a low roar. The fires raged. Animals were fleeing the forest, into the clearing, to escape the inferno. He could hear the birds crying out in panic. He saw deer and foxes and bears. There was also some type of elk, and smaller animals of various species.

  “So much like Earth,” he said out loud without meaning too.

  “Gravity is .89G and the atmosphere varies from Earth less than one percent,” Box confirmed. “The animals fleeing to the south will run directly into another fire. This entire area will be engulfed in less than a day. If they move to the lake in the west, they may have a chance.”

  The fire was jumping rapidly from treetop to treetop. Adams had thoughts of Hell. He considered cracking the hatch and just walking out into it. It might be easier.

  Then he saw her.

  There was a little girl perhaps ten years old stumbling out of the forest. She was about 200 meters away. She had some kind of animal, like a large dog, with her that she leaned on for support. Its shoulders were as high as hers.

  “Box, zoom in.” Before Box could zoom all the way in, she disappeared in a dense cloud of smoke that persisted for a full minute. By the time the wind cleared it away, the girl was gone; only the dog-like creature remained. Adams realized it was standing over her, protecting her, or trying to nudge her awake.

  It was not a dog. It was a broad-chested beast the likes of which he had never seen before, with a mane like a lion’s that wasn’t fur, but rather feathers. It was a reptile. Mostly.

  “Box, open up!” A square trapdoor opened directly behind the command chair. The ladder was in fact part of the back-structure of the command chair, and Adams slid all the way down to the next level without touching a rung. A locker quickly gave up a survival pack and vest. He already had a Glock on his belt and he grabbed an AR-79 out of a ready rack. He ran down to the ground before the ramp was completely deployed.

  SecTech Adams had left running to the younger people long ago. He regretted now the polite refusals he had made to Worthington, Rand and Barcus to join them on runs in the 2G outer ring of the Ventura. He did keep the gravity at 2Gs in the Black Pod as his one concession to fitness. The gravity here, however, was light, and he ran smoothly through the tall grass.

  He should have grabbed a breather unit though. His lungs burned as the waves of smoke billowed over him. Eventually, he stopped running and had to lie down in the grass to breathe the pre
cious unpolluted air near the ground.

  When the smoke finally cleared, he found he was just 10 meters away from the girl. The beast had already seen him. It’s ruff was up. The mottled gray feathers were trembling a warning. He could see that they were singed in places. It was behaving like a giant cat, its cruel-looking tail swishing side to side, revealing the creature’s agitation.

  Adams approached, his assault rifle targeting the animal. It began to draw back its lips, showing teeth like steak knives, serrated on the inside edge.

  Just then the girl’s hand reached up and touched its front leg. It was as if she had switched it off. It completely ignored Adams and began licking the girl’s sooty face with a large black tongue.

  When Adams’ eyes met hers, he didn’t know what to do. So he just let the rifle swing to his back on the sling and waved for her to come with him back to the safety of the pod. She started to get up and fell again, her one hand never leaving the beast.

  She reached out to the Chief with her other hand.

  Suddenly, beyond her, he could see another great cloud of smoke coming their way. Decision made, he risked a bite from the beast. He lifted her up in his arms and ran. The creature ran alongside. The girl extended an arm out to it in reassurance.

  That’s when Tony saw her burns. Her clothes had been half burned off. He knew his jostling must be agony for her. They had covered maybe half the distance back to the pod when he paused and gently set her down. She immediately cried out in pain and rolled onto her belly.

  He unslung his pack. As the beast tried to lick her wounds, she screamed and pushed it away. It whimpered like a pup even though the thing was huge. Adams had never seen this species.

  The med spray brought instant relief. The pain was numbed, and the nanites would have the second-degree burns completely healed in just a few hours. She was able to stand before he was even done treating her.

  She patted his shoulder. Speaking rapidly in a language he didn’t understand, she pointed to the beast. He realized it was also severely burned, even worse than the girl. There was a scorched area on its right flank, and both its front paws were burned horribly to the first joint. Its muzzle was also severely blistered.

  Adams didn’t know if the beast’s physiology was compatible, but he treated it with the nanites anyway. When he sprayed its muzzle it sneezed, and the girl actually laughed for a moment, until the creature began to push her forward with its lowered head.

  It wasn’t just smoke coming their way this time. The grasses were on fire, and it was moving towards them. The girl led the charge to the ramp leading into the Black Pod. With all the gear down, sitting in the tall grasses, the pod looked like a great, black dome of a building that had been there since the dawn of time.

  They ran.

  ***

  The hatch closed behind them just before another cloud of smoke engulfed them. Safe inside the lower deck of the pod, the girl fell flat on her face as soon as she hit the heavy gravity plating.

  “Box, grav-plates off, please.” He saw the girl react when it returned to normal.

  She sat up and started speaking rapidly to Adams. He could tell by the upward inflection in her voice that she was asking questions. He thought he recognized a single word: “Keeper.”

  He started to speak over her, “Please, I cannot understand you. Do you speak English? Are you a colonist? What is the name of this planet? I am here from Earth.”

  She became quiet. Adams did not know what he said to cause this, but she fell to her knees and placed her forehead on the floor at his feet. The beast slowly moved to position itself protectively between the girl and Adams.

  Alarms sounded in the otherwise quiet room. Not so loud as to panic his guests, but urgent nonetheless. Box reported, “Passive sensors have discovered that there is comms traffic. Sat-based. Air traffic has also been detected.”

  “Oh shit,” he said as he climbed the ladder to the control room. “Tactical display, Box.” A map appeared to Adams’ right. It was more detailed than he had expected of this continent. It had distant cities annotated and comm signal points of origin. It even had their position and the best guess at the fire’s progress around them.

  Tony was worried that ships would come to mop up. The tactical map revealed that only four were currently detected in the air, all on vectors away from his location. They were easy to track because they emitted constant ident codes on a side beacon.

  Box speculated, “They look like old colony shuttles, based on these protocols. And not many of them.”

  “Where did you get these maps?” Adams asked as he looked closer.

  “A prior survey. No dates. No additional information. How odd.” Tony had never heard Box sound puzzled before.

  He hadn’t noticed when the girl climbed the ladder to stand behind him. Her mouth was wide open.

  ***

  Together they watched the entire forest burn nearly flat over the next days. When it began to rain, it was too late. Now all was black, as if to welcome and hide the pod. They watched the night sky as more debris fell, burning up in the atmosphere.

  The girl seemed to assume that when he spoke out loud to Box that he was talking to her. After the second day, she began to talk a lot. She spoke to Adams. She spoke to the beast. She just talked. Adams gathered that her name was Wynn. The beast’s name was either Telis or Lane. She seemed to refer to him as both.

  And she healed.

  The beast called Lane recovered as well. The nanites must have been working. It drank enormous amounts of water. The girl only had a slight fever. He managed to convey to Wynn that she should not scratch and she somehow communicated that to Lane.

  On the second day, they had let the animal outside. It ran full speed into the scorched remains of the forest.

  “Tony,” Box said, “I think she is speaking a heavily accented and colloquial version of English. If this is true, with time, I can begin to translate via your personal Heads Up Display. With your help, I may be able to engage her to do a vocabulary session.”

  Tony was sitting in the command chair and said, “Wynn, come here.” She seemed to understand the word ‘come,’ much as a dog would. She climbed up and sat on the wide armrest of the massive chair. Tony was amused when she handed him an oatmeal protein bar. She had one as well. She loved them.

  An image of the Chief displayed on the screen. He pointed and said, “Tony.”

  She pointed to him and said, “Tony.”

  The image changed to a still of the beast. Tony said, “Telis.”

  She said, “Lane.” She pointed to herself and said, “Wynn,” without prompting.

  The image changed to one of fire. She said a single word, then “rain” and “trees” and “water,” and it went on like that for a long time. It was like a wondrous game for her.

  “Box, how do you think she would react to an Avatar? It might make things easier. If we pick one that is gentle, female, soft spoken?” Adams asked.

  In his personal HUD, Box showed him an attractive woman wearing the same type of homespun dress that the girl had been in when he found her, minus the char and damage.

  Wynn was wearing a man’s T-shirt from stores now. She seemed to love it. It hung down below her knees, she was so tiny.

  As they spoke, Lane reappeared from the char of the forest. He held a deer in his jaws, dragging it back to the pod. Wynn shot down the ladder and was literally hopping up and down, she wanted the door opened so badly.

  When the ramp was completely down, Lane was waiting for her, with the deer as an offering.

  ***

  “She is requesting a knife. A sharp one.” Box translated in his HUD-like subtitles.

  Adams drew out his own belt knife and handed it to her saying, “Careful. Sharp.”

  She looked at the blade critically. It was black and indestructible. The edge was just a few microns thick. It was sharper than any steel blade ever made. She was quick with it.

  She did an odd kind of butchery. Firs
t she split the deer’s hide along the length of its spine and quickly extracted long, thick sections of meat from either side of its backbone. She handed these to Adams and moved on to one of the rear legs. Starting at the lowest joint, she peeled the hide back until the haunch was skinned and the meat exposed. She expertly removed the entire leg at the pelvic joint.

  Lane sat nearby all the while, scanning the area in all directions. Wynn had communicated that Lane was in fact a “he”, and that he was a Telis Raptor. The species name, Adams presumed.

  Wynn stood and lifted the haunch of meat to her shoulder. She stepped back and paused saying, “Lane.” The beast looked at her face at full attention. Its lips drew back in a parody of a horrific smile. Its long fangs reminded Adams of a saber-tooth tiger’s.

  It waited.

  She clicked her tongue, and the beast tore into the deer. Savage ripping of flesh followed. It gorged itself on the guts, meat and bones. In short order, there was only some hide, hooves, and the skull left. Adams had not realized just how savage the beast really was until then.

  Turning back up the ramp with a satisfied smile, Wynn began speaking quickly again. In the small galley kitchen, she placed the meat in the sink and began washing it. He knew as she talked she was demanding something.

  “Box, help me out here,” Adams said.

  “She seems to be requesting a container of some kind for the meat.”

  Adams opened a cabinet and took out a large pot. She grabbed it from him, and as she finished washing each piece she placed it in the pot. The single hoof comically stuck out the top. She set the pot in the refrigerator.

  Wynn washed her hands quickly as she continued to talk fast.

  “Tony, I think she is going to collect wild onions and some sort of root. She is also asking for her own knife and belt,” Box translated with 80% certainty.

  He collected another knife out of stores and was looking for a belt in the lockers when she was suddenly at his side handing him his freshly cleaned knife back. He traded it for the other sheathed one. Without asking, she reached into the locker and grabbed a belt before he could pick one. She threaded the sheath onto it and then wrapped it around her waist three times before buckling it.