Planetary: Mercury, page 9
The spaceport passed quickly, even as I dictated instructions to the A.I. With the satellites out of commission for the solar flares, I’d have to rely on the computer’s maps and my own dead reckoning. The nascent A.I, still sleepy from being turned on a mere hour ago, put forward green dashes for my route.
I followed them for a while, talking with the A.I. to get it up and running faster. The more it spent time learning my thought patterns, the better it could help me. Also, it provides a great straight man to cool down with some snarky banter. You’d be surprised how much of a hit your sanity takes when you’re alone and a ding-bat takes a bite out of your exhaust.
For the first few hours, I followed the constructed pylons and network systems until the A.I. informed me that I was beyond the reach of Schubert’s network. I was on my own now.
The Mercurian Night is a lonely thing. The stars are out there, but they are strange, warped and unnatural. Well, they’re natural enough. I mean that that sky is not the earthen sky. I’ve seen pictures. No one I’ve ever talked to forgets Orion or the Dippers or Cygnus. There’s just something about them from Earth’s perspective. The soul knows. Also, it impresses some chicks to soliloquize on our nature, if she’s the type that likes to think she’s intellectual.
Away from Schubert’s floodlights, the mountains would loom as presences unseen. The hulking crater walls could be felt, brooding over me. I moved east, and I began to see the sun lighting up the highest peaks. These triangles and ridges seemed to float, ghostlike, above the dark slopes.
The dust rose up behind me. I could see, when sheltered by the crater walls or in some otherwise untouched locale, the faint trails of others who had made this journey. I had been traveling six hours when the last of them turned away, likely to Stravinsky or on some other errand. There weren’t many of us, but we took the time to run on each others tracks, just to show we aren’t alone.
I started to get cocky around hour twelve, when I passed the crater Praxiteles. It was only a few tens of miles from the first of Hugo’s reaches when the A.I. alerted me. “Warning, ding-bats in vicinity.” I swerved, and a ding-bat landed where I would have been a second later.
I got too damned good a look at the alien lifeform. It was the only ‘living’ thing on Mercury, feasting on the heavy metals on the ground, each other and, well, unlucky couriers. I like to think of myself as the lucky type. The thing had just landed, gray and black rocky back outward, protecting it against counter attack. Six or eight crab-like limbs jutted out, each one powerful and coiled like a spring to leap again towards the delicious morsel that put on more speed to get away from it. I saw it rear up its head, a perfectly featureless slate with only one enormous mouth. The maw opened and, instead of mammal like teeth or insectoid mandibles, a rotating wheel of fangs and molars spiraled within to an abyss I hoped to never see the source. I turned away even as I felt vibrations through the ground and atmosphere, there was no sound in that wispy atmosphere, but rather, a rumble of the hunting call!
Before it could leap again I turned aside down a series of canyons that connected the various craters together. Best to run when it’s just one of them. I trusted the A.I. to guide me through and focused on not faceplanting into the walls. Behind me, I could feel the call redouble as other ding-bats were made aware of the food that passed near to them.
One eye I kept on the road, another I kept on the cameras behind me. Were those simple rocky outcroppings or the ding-bats lying in wait? Was that a large stone or a young thing, not yet excreted its reef of regolith? I could not tell, I had to watch at all angles. They could sense any vibrations I put out, from footstep to, well, the rumbling of my engine and, I’m sure, my beating heart. The first one detached itself from the canyon wall, where it likely had been hibernating during the long night, and dropped to fall on me.
I could only escape by diving down into a turn to the right, fortuitous in timing. Like I said, lucky. I did not judge it desperate enough for combat, and though the canyons restricted me, I did not have to start smashing my way through the hunting ding-bats. The A.I. warned me that we were now forced to go through the Driscoli crater system. I thanked it for warning me that the chances of my death were high.
I pulled out my fasces and smashed one of the faceless monsters. It leaped away, but I saw it land on one of its own. The blood of the beast was more caustic than strong sulfuric acid, and it burned the one under it, who rumble-roared in what accounted to them for pain or shock and leaped away, flipping the one under it onto its back. The other returned, and shoved the head of the unfortunate one into its own grinding maw. I turned away from the cannibalism, which happened in scant seconds.
I shouted in fury, branding the fasces. They would not take me so easily! Many put their heads up on the walls. Each grinding maw and flat face-plate turning with eerie precision on my location.
The weapon I held was a large ax bound with a series of impossibly strong metal rods and shields that would protect me against the acid blood or even the grinding teeth, for a moment. The head crushed the exoskeleton and opened the insides to the cold or heat and then to death. I could only wield the several hundred pound fasces with the assistance of my suit. I could have crushed the heads of those beasts with my bare hands, but no substance on earth had been made yet could overcome the acid blood of the monsters forever.
I dodged again and again in that narrow, grey corridor of death. Many times striking with my ax at the scuttling metal-eaters. The ding-bats fell, one after another. Looking in all directions, I saw one leap, the legs making one great motion upwards. The exoskeleton had opened slots, from which membranes unfolded and, at the zenith, caught the first hints of the sun. They blazed with the fury of earth’s life giver and I could see teal and violet channels, otherwise invisible, shining throughout the rocky skin. For that moment, I could see facial features, geodesic and twisted. The channels pulsed as the thing looked directly at me and an intelligence, not unlike the stories I’ve read of earthen wolves, appraised me.
I had slowed a little to make the turns within the canyons, but I sped up, heedless of my own safety. When something totally alien looks at you, it is best not to look back. Not that I’d ever tell the ladies, unless they were looking for a scare.
I crushed another’s head before I left the canyon’s craggy walls. Driscoli, a crater valley a few hundred miles wide, lay before me. The ding-bats do not usually come out to the open plain, nothing to protect them against meteor strikes or other hazards during their hibernation. I zipped through, no time to stop. I told the A.I. to give me chemicals to soothe me after the harrowing canyon shortcut. I had not noticed this, but the computer had given me several ccs of physical enhancement drugs. I could burn out before I could even get past Hokusai or Abedin. One more damned roadblock!
I still had about thirty-four hours before Herbert had to close the doors to keep out the sun’s power. I could still do this! I pushed my machine to its full limits and passed through Holbein and into Echegaray in record time.
The black and grey of Mercury never ended. On my right, I could see several of the mountain peaks wholly illuminated by the sun. My thermometer showed that the temperature had risen from negative two hundred Fahrenheit to negative one hundred. The Mercurian sunrise had no atmosphere strong enough to soften or lengthen the time it took for the sun to hit full strength. Within hours, the whole hemisphere would be so hot you could fry entire barbeques in the shade and risk burning.
The peaks were a mix of white, gray and bits of black. Flecks of some metal would occasionally shine at me, though, I had no desire to discover what kind, nor did I have the surveying equipment to mark it. Nor did I have any desire to turn miner. Even after ten years of heavy mining, not one of the colonies, stations or relays had gone dry and had to be abandoned.
I made a slow turn around the mountain range, ramping between various hills. The inertia dampening had not been perfected yet. I could feel my stomach move to exit my mouth during particularly severe jumps. I couldn’t slow down too much. If I did, I might dig myself into the ground trying to build momentum.
Above, those stars that I could see faded from sight as the light grew more and more. I looked behind me, to judge the sunrise. I nearly fell from my bike when I saw the solar flare. The light was far too much for human eyes, and would have blinded me painfully. The visors dulled it for me enough so that I could see a shining white rope thicker than worlds curving up from the horizon and back down again, curving towards the direction of Mercury itself! I shouted in sheer amazement at the vast loop of energy. I had the A.I. record all the data it could. I could not even begin to measure the energy output of the plasma being shot unimaginable distances and then curving back down towards the sun. No wonder all the Solar meteorologists were panicking!
I turned away and back to the road ahead, it’s never good to stare too long into the light. I checked my clock. Thirty-six hours since I left Schubert, I started to relax a little. I skirted Monet and sped towards Hodgkins. I would skip the Calypso Rupes to the south and then come up Rachmaninoff the same way.
I dragged myself out of my reverie, observing the Mercurian plains. With little to no warning, a meteor of the size of several mineral haulers fell down before my eyes! A mile in front of me I saw the dust shoot up with great violence and cracks appear in the ground underneath me. I pulled to the left and searched for a place to hide myself before the shockwaves, dust and thrown boulders reached me. I cried out in surprise as the first of the shockwaves tossed me up and around, faster than I thought possible. By a miracle, I landed on the wheels. The A.I. stopped functioning, unable to handle the data being poured into it, from the solar flare and the immense meteor strike. Damn machine!
I saw, flying in the air towards that rapidly moving dustcloud, ding-bats. Hundreds of them! Whether they were thrown up by the force or they had cast themselves forward to eat of the vast amount of heavy metals thrown up by the meteor I don’t know, but they swarmed it. I saw them jump up like sharks in a feeding frenzy, darting through the kicked up dust in straight lines like arrows.
I felt another shockwave hit me, but it didn’t knock me off my feet. Instead, the ground shook harder than it had when the meteor struck it. I didn’t slow down, but instead made for the Calypso Rupes! I had to get out of the plains and into some sort of cover!
Rupes are ripples in the planet’s terrain. Imagine a stone being thrown into the water, then watching the expanding rings. Rupes are like that, but stone and not nearly so orderly. Many a courier has died, lost in the Rupes when his electronics lost signal and map information. What’s more, the Rupes are the haunt of the largest concentration of ding-bats. The many folds and hills can hide them from the meteors, and the unique nature of the landscape brings the best of their food nearer to the surface for their gluttonous pleasure.
I chinned the A.I. to manually reboot and prayed that it would come back on soon. Instead, I decided to go by dead reckoning, having no other options. The solar flare rose on my left. The computer told me I headed north. As the Rupes rose and fell before me, I readied my fasces for the next round of ding-bat attack!
I ramped the first rupe. This area, though chosen during a near panic, didn’t rise as severely as most rupes. The slopes were manageable, and what’s more important, I could drive the bike up them without stalling. I cast my eyes about at the zenith of my jump. In the far distance, I could see the foothills of Rachmaninoff. I ignored them for a moment, too far ahead. In the route, lay a series of jumps, skirting along cliffs and avoiding the few pits that lined the area from meteor strikes or collapsed caves.
I could see, as I started to fall, the top edge of the sun. Mercury’s day may be months long, but the morning came faster than you expected. The filters of my suit blocked the worst of it, but in the second I glimpsed it, I watched the vast sphere of limitless fire shoot the temperature reading of the suit up hundreds of degrees. I did not have long before Herbert had to close the gates.
I tilted the machine to a proper angle to take the force of the landing. The shock ran up my arms. The A.I. was still rebooting, and I didn’t know how long it would take before I got to Rachmaninoff. I didn’t realize how much I relied on that or similar machines to manage the minutiae of the ride. My bones jolted in their sockets and I was nearly thrown from my perch. There was nothing to dampen it or manage the pressure of the absorbers.
I dodged a ding-bat and then aimed for the second escarpment. This one rose more steeply, and I struggled with the scree that made up the slope. I had outran the dust cloud thrown up by the meteor so far, but the first of the wisps were beginning to wrap themselves around me.
I heard the rumble of ding-bats as they fed. I crested as I saw the first of them pass by. I barely got my head down as one flew by me. The head twisted to face me when it missed and I had a way too good of a view of the grinding maw. Other ding-bats had been resting on the slope down, and I dodged between them. I smashed one that shot its head at me from a turtle-like carapace of some green mineral. Another jumped at me, but I slid down the loose rubble underneath it, sliding on the sides of the wheels.
I built up speed I lost going up the second escarpment and hit the third, which was thankfully more solid than the previous. The dust now began to obscure my vision. I could only see about thirty or forty feet ahead of me, and that was before the distraction of the ding-bats intensified. The beasts pounded into the ground around me from the force of their leaps into the dust cloud.
What’s more, the rumbles intensified. I had heard their rumbles before, many times, even on this trip. This was nothing like before, it started to overcome the rattle of the bike and shock of the jumps. The suit itself started to shake from the vibrations. I only hoped it was the sound of the feeding frenzy, but it came from in front of me, over the next couple of ridges. The dust had not reached there yet in any substantial amount.
I pulled to the right as I rose and fell. I couldn’t go left, as the Calypso Rupes peaked in that direction. I’d be trapped and delayed as I searched for a way out. There was too much we did not know, or that the satellites just did not tell us about Mercury. The risk was that I’d run into the fresh crater, or be hit by a boulder thrown up from the crash or fall down a hidden crevasse.
I rued the reputation I had built up over the years of excellent work. I could have been relaxing in Schubert right now, too incompetent for this mission. I could have been sitting a bar, drinking the best whiskey I could buy. I could have been sitting in AIR CONDITIONING! I was frying alive in the damned sun!
The sun threw out enough heat that the temperature within the suit, without me even noticing, had risen beyond human comfort levels. The suit could compensate for it, but the A.I. was still booting up! Damn thing wasn’t there to help me! I swore that I’d never rely on them again, no matter how much processing power the tech-heads said it had. Using dials accessible through my visor, I tongued the dials until the temperature regulated itself back to comfortable levels, from heating to cooling. I could have died of heat fighting the ding-bats, providing the bastards with a warm meal!
I smashed another one with my ax-like fasces and then another as they leaped at or next to me. These were small fry, barely a few hundred pounds, without a carapace to speak of. I cursed as I looked around, trying to anticipate the next hungry ding-bat. I did not notice it at the time, but I had not seen any old, advanced ding-bats with super ornate carapaces.
I passed through another rise and fall. The dust itself began to vibrate from the noise. I could see gusts of the stuff halted in its momentum when it began again. I couldn’t change my course too much, I was barely making enough momentum to keep climbing.
The number of ding-bats increased. I swiped at one, before I realized that they weren’t coming for me. They weren’t trying to take a bite out of my bike or slam into me. They scuttled or jumped around me, going towards the source of the sound.
I examined the sound again. It was more than rumbles now. Squelching, writhing screaming sounds came from the dust. It got louder. I started to hear impacts and crunches, the same sort that I heard from my fasces when I struck a ding-bat. My suit shook and rattles came from my bike as I struggled to keep from falling.
The rumble stopped. The sounds of flesh slapping, breaking and growing continued. The lack of substantial atmosphere did not seem to hinder the immense sound in the least. My blood began to chill as I heard one sound rise above the others. Teeth grinding.
The dust changed direction. I had been moving with it, having travelled so far, fast enough, that the impact was behind me, and so was the source of the dust. It pulled to my left, gradually at first, then stronger. I could feel it pull at me. The vacuum effect increased until the front wheel kept wanting to pull towards the source. I turned to the right, until I faced away from the vacuum. I couldn’t see whatever drew all that dust into it at all.
I felt myself being dragged in. I pushed the bike hard, hitting the safety limits faster than I liked. I tried to tongue the bike’s overdrive function. It didn’t work. I tongued it again and again. An error message popped up seconds later. Damn the A.I.! I switched the view screens to behind me. For a few seconds, I saw nothing. Despite the power under my legs, several thousand horsepower, the suction on my bike barely kept it better than in place. If I wasn’t strapped into my bike, I’d fly back into the source.
