The worlds I left behind

[theworldsileftbehind]

The worst part? Well I know it sounds a bit stupid but for me it was the brine.

Starts with some jackass in the brass with a dick to measure setting off something nuclear up on the surface. Sometimes you can hear it down under, sometimes not.

It doesn't matter if it's a real crust popper or a firecracker, if it goes off in the wrong spot you're fucked.

Look, they don't teach you this in boot, but the ice up there isnt all one piece yeah? There's layers, and in those layers you get pockets. Lithium brine usually, sometimes other salts. So when one of the genius rocket jockeys up there slaps the big red button theres a chance they crack one of those puppies open.

Close to the surface it's a problem. Big loud vent, blasting supercooled ice into low orbit along with anything unlucky enough to be above it.

Down below? Thats where it gets BAD. Crack opens and you get a stream of brine sinking like a tub of rocks. It's what, maybe eighty, a hundred below freezing? Flash ices regular water on contact.

So now you got a pillar of death a hundred meters wide coming down at you like a depth charge.

Dead quiet.

If you're lucky you have sonar pointed up when it happens so your pilot can pancake the crew a moment and dodge.

If you're running dark though? You only find out it was coming when you and everyone else get thrown outta your bunks as it grabs the sub. Freezes you in.

We were running an op with our sister crew when they got caught. Some frantic yelling over shortwave while we tried to figure out what happened. Ice hit them in the stern, instantly froze around the rear half. Snapped the prop shaft like a twig.

I remember the moment they figured it out. Someone screamed on their end. Leaned against the hull, skin stuck like a rook's tongue on the airlock during hazing. Cold started coming through even with the insulation.

It got real quiet really fast.

We tried to free 'em. Risked the mission with a torp into the ice above them, see if we could sever the column and tow them out. Brine was still flowing in there, spilled out and just froze them faster.

We started to lose shortwave when it passed their comms. Last thing we heard from them was a call to keep going. They'd wait out the thaw and catch up after some repairs.

We did.

We just left.

I like to think that I heard a thump about a half hour later when they blew their payload, went out on their terms. Can't be sure, but I'd like to think so.

Only other option is that they're still in there, last breaths crystalized to steel that won't see light till all the stars are cold and dark.

So yeah, I'd say the brine was the worst part.

- A serviceman's interview on their time in the ice war.

[showmeyourxylophone]

There's no windows on a sub. They started adding 'em to subs back on cradle once they figured out the first metallo glass alloys. Helps stop the crew from going too crazy.

Not on Europa. Not even the new stuff is rated for the depths you need to hit to dodge by sub-crust sonar installations. Not that it would matter, no light gets past even the first click of opaque surface ice, let alone ten.

You undock, drop through the bay tunnel, dodge a couple of skyscraper sized spires of brine ice sticking down from above, and then nothing. Pings don't find anything bigger than sediment for weeks, and you know it's darker out there than it is on the surface.

Sometimes you gotta do a walk, hop out to check external equipment, so you slip into the clamshell and hope the last guy didn't sweat too hard. Then you sit through inspection. Rooks always complain about inspection, but when your CO points out you didn't bother to tether for the first time you shape up.

Yeah the clams have maneuvering, you could get up to about half fhe speed of the sub at full if you had to, but thats not what the tethers for.

You step out that hatch for the first time and you see the little bits of crud floating in the black, lit by torch like stars? That's magic.

You step over to the side, look down, and see the black that goes forever? Well, that's when you feel the jolt, hear the rattle of the tether going tight at your back and Ops shouting into your headset. Dangling maybe 20 meters under the hull, nothing between you and eternity.

Heard someone say that if you dropped for real you'd sink for a month at least before you hit anything solid, if theres anything solid at all.

I believe them.

And look, I know that after all that you're nodding your head and shootin' a look at your friend accross the table. The SO sardines have the crazies, always so sad to hear it you know? But believe me when I say that when you're falling asleep you can hear them, tapping on the outside of the hull, right by your head.

There's something out there, and if I'm really lucky I finish my tour before we find out what.

-blackbox retrieval, author unknown.