The lander continued rising, though at a speed that wouldn’t overtax its inertial compensator. The pilot did, however, continue random walking to the point where someone that wasn’t aware of what was going on might think that he was drunk. The vessel sure was swaying and lurching about like he was, anyway.They stopped briefly at the fifty kilometer mark, since that was the flight ceiling for the unmanned collection drones that had been sent to collect samples from the ocean. Even with gravity drives, there was still a practical limit for machines that small.Two of the drones were caught by the whipping root tendrils, but the other eight managed to return safely to the lander and deposit their samples in the stasis fields prepared for them. And the pilot wasn’t willing to wait around, as it seemed the roots were growing at a speed visible to the naked eye, so he rocketed straight up toward the Karman Line in a maneuver that the marines who normally rode in landers called “unassing th
Fleet Admiral Bianchi was the first to react. “What makes you say that?” he asked. He wasn’t surprised that they had found life—or rather, sentient life anyway; whether or not it was sapient was still in question. After all, liquid surface water was what made life possible in the first place, and if Proxima Centauri b had anything in spades, it was water.(Ed note: Sentience and sapience aren’t exactly the same thing. Sentient beings are capable of experiencing sensations and, perhaps, emotions. Sapient beings are capable of higher orders of rational thought. For example, dogs are sentient beings; they can experience physical sensations and emotions, but aren’t capable of rational thinking. Humans, on the other hand, are sapient. We’re capable of thinking beyond our urges.)“This,” Dr. Standing Bear replied, her eyes glazing over as she selected a file to play on the screen behind her. The recording showed the mana pulses detected by the Henry’s Eyes sensors moments before the “root”
“We should maintain our position and try not to provoke the being until we have an idea of how to communicate with it, Admiral,” Ayaka said. As the leader on the ground, Fleet Admiral Bianchi had looked to her to open the discussion. “After all, if you look at the situation from the being’s side, we’re the invaders that’re interrupting its life. So its reaction is... understandable, in that light, even if it is both sapient and purposefully hostile.”“Wherever we go, the law of nature still applies,” Captain Marinakis interjected. “The strong eat the weak, and mercy is a privilege of the strong. We have no idea if communication will even be possible, so I’d rather eat than be eaten, Sir.”Nobody else spoke, letting Fleet Admiral Bianchi weigh the two options presented to him. They were on opposite ends of the spectrum, which was rare for the command team of Ayaka and Dimitrios, who were normally rather synchronized in their approach to problem solving.The admiral, however, gave no si
Over the next few weeks, the researchers of Task Force Proxima conducted hundreds of different tests and learned a few things about the “root”. As it turned out, it was just one of an entire network of roots that covered the bottom of the entire ocean that they had jokingly named the New Australian Sea. After all, everything they knew lived in it had demonstrated that it was out to kill them, so the name seemed quite appropriate.The root network was incredibly dense, with nearly a hundred percent coverage of the ocean floor, and each root itself was equally dense. The water pressure in the deepest part of the ocean—which was a full twenty kilometers deep—applied over ten million PSI of water pressure. But even at that depth, they’d learned (at the cost of a few submersible drones loaded with mana batteries) that the roots could still move with the same blinding, predatorial speed as they had near the surface when one had attacked the crewed lander.Another incidental discovery was th
“What’re the odds of being attacked by ocean roots if we’re on land?” Ayaka asked. She had already been briefed about the assumed safety of the plants on land, but was still wary of the root network at the bottom of the New Australian Sea.“We estimate it at less than one in fifty, Commander. We stopped getting reactions from the roots at about a kilometer from the shore when we sent down the mana batteries as bait, but we’ll be testing it with a few landers full of marines before we greenlight any researchers or explorers landing. Begging your pardon, you just aren’t as trained as we are when it comes to havoc and mayhem, Ma’am,” Major Kelly O’Shanrahan answered. He was the commanding officer of the Farsight’s marines, and it was his job to ensure the safety of the exploration teams on the ground.“Once we’re positive that the surface is safe for extended stays, then you can come down and establish a more permanent camp,” he continued. “Before that, I can only allow brief expeditions
Two of the five squads of marines left their places on the perimeter of the landing zone and headed to the “decorated” containers. One by one, the containers cracked open, small clouds of fog drifting out of them and pooling in the low areas on the ground. The fog was the remains of the shock foam that researchers in Lab City had developed to allow for higher-speed impacts in yeet pods or cargo launched from mass drivers. The beauty of it was that it was a completely analog system; mechanical altimeters would detect when the pod or cargo container reached a set point—usually a hundred meters before impact—and trigger a valve that would allow two binary agents to mix. The resulting chemical formed a foam that expanded, bursting the relatively fragile containment tanks it was mixed in and allowing it to expand to fill whatever space it was in. It had a ridiculously high shock tolerance and would rapidly decay and sublimate into a gas composed primarily of nitrogen, helium, sulfur hexaf
A month later.Proxima Centauri b was a hub of activity. The initial construction phase of the exploration base had been completed, but the building continued, though the base was already home to a hundred-odd researchers and two reinforced companies of marines. There was also a constant flow of technicians directing the ongoing construction.But just because the construction was still ongoing, that didn’t mean the base wasn’t operational. It was, actually, though just at a minimum level; the ongoing expansion was more for creature comforts and wants, rather than needs. Everything the researchers needed was there, it was only luxuries that were missing.Well, most of the scientists considered their labs to be rather luxurious. After all, up until a few years ago, they were relying on prying research grants out of donors and benefactors of all sorts, and those grants practically never covered all of the equipment and other assorted materials required to “properly” carry out their exper
TES Farsight, geosynchronous orbit over Research Base New New South Wales.A detachment of two corvettes, a destroyer, a heavy cruiser, and a drone tender that Fleet Admiral Bianchi had ordered to take up escort duties for the Farsight had finally arrived and slotted themselves around the exploration cruiser like a protective shield. Except this particular shield had teeth, and knew how to use them; their job was to provide overwatch with constant flights of drones, and orbital strikes from the cruiser and destroyer, if necessary. The corvettes would be on constant patrol of the shoreline of New Australia, ready to report any activity on the part of the being, or beings, that inhabited the ocean floor.Terran spaceships had excellent sensor suites in general, but as corvettes were meant for pickets and patrols by their very design, they had completely outsized sensor suites for ships of their size. In fact, the only ships with better sensors were the cityships, as they had the room to