Abyss Deep by Ian Douglas Read Free Book Online

stabilize the rock’s orbit.”
    So, the bad guys had sabotaged Capricorn Zeta’s controls so that no matter what we’d done, the station and a one-­kilometer asteroid would have burned into Earth’s atmosphere and impacted somewhere on the surface moments later. First Platoon had been on an approach vector above and behind us, with the goal of landing on the asteroid itself and securing the thruster complex. Evidently, the plan had worked.
    â€œWe were thirty-­five minutes from re-­entry,” Hancock added, “and about forty from impact.”
    â€œWhere?”
    â€œSomewhere just south of Japan.”
    In many ways, an ocean impact is far worse for the planet than having an asteroid come down on solid ground. Billions of tons of water flashed into vapor . . . a thick cloud ceiling over most of the planet reflecting the heat of the sun back into space . . . and, oh yes, titanic tidal waves racing across the ocean at the speed of sound. The western coast of the Americas would have been hard hit.
    But it would have been a hell of a lot worse for Japan and both Chinas. Again, it didn’t seem logical that the North Chinese were behind the terror attack on Capricorn Zeta. They would have been vulnerable to an impact anywhere in the Pacific basin—­a bull’s-­eye covering one-­third of the planet. But if not them, who?
    That, however, was for the politicians to argue about. Right now, it was our job to finish securing the mining station, making sure the black hats hadn’t planted any bombs or otherwise compromised the base. We also had to process the rescued hostages, still floating around with their hands zip-­tied behind them. This meant interviewing each one, comparing their story with both station computer records and records off the Net, checking their DNA to make sure each man or woman was who he or she claimed to be, and evacuating the wounded shoreside. The Marines were taking care of that part of the evolution.
    My job was to prep our wounded for evac . . . and to pull suit recordings on the Marines who’d been hit. Marine combat armor has simple-­minded AIs resident within the electronics that keep a log of events in a battle. What a Marine does wrong during a firefight can be helpful as a basis for Marine training sims, a means of keeping other Marines from making the same mistakes.
    Second Platoon had suffered three wounded and one dead—­not a bad casualty ratio, actually, for space combat, where even minor damage to vacuum armor can very easily mean a fast and unpleasant death. We’d lost Lance Corporal Stalzar going in; the others we’d been able to treat or stabilize. We still didn’t know about Private Donohue . . . wouldn’t know about her until we could get her to a proper med facility. I didn’t have a report yet from 1st Platoon. I tagged HM2 Michael C. Dubois, the 1st Platoon Corpsman, over the company Net. If he needed help out there on the rock’s surface, he could yell for me.
    â€œCarlyle!” Lieutenant Singer called. “What are you doing?”
    â€œGrabbing suit recordings, sir,” I replied.
    â€œThat can wait. I need you sweeping the station for goo threats.”
    I sighed. No rest for the Wiccans . . .
    â€œAye, aye, sir.”
    â€œThat includes the prisoners. Especially the prisoners. We can’t allow the medevacs in until the mining station is declared clean.”
    Shit . “I’m on it, sir.”
    I wondered whether that order was coming down from Washington, or if it represented the technoparanoia of the local brass—­at a battalion or company level, or even of Second Lieutenant Singer himself.
    No matter. Orders were orders. I pulled out my N-­prog and began resetting it.
    G ray goo . That was the old and fear-­entangled term invented by Eric Drexler, one of the twentieth-­century fathers of