CHAPTER 15 – Surface of unknown planet, Cylon territory, Spattered Raindrop Nebula – 18,000 light years from Milky Way. Actors: Deepak Climch, Suit mind, various other marines.
"Fuck. Fuck it. Fucking shit. Who else is dead?" said Deepak exasperatedly while he stared out into the murky depths of the planet's soupy atmosphere. He swung his fist through it in frustration as if to smite an invisible enemy.
His suit spoke up, "Aziri and Kvaalczyk among others. You want me to read you the entire list of casualties?"
"No fuck it. It's bullshit" he swore with feeling, "Just give me a number and our status. How many are left?"
"We have 29 marines left with a total of 51 dead. All died of the same thing, suit failure."
Deepak shook his head, "What a fucking disaster. How is that even possible?" He sighed and looked at his feet as best he could through the misty goopy air. In his ears he could hear the heavy whining of his suit's air conditioning as it struggled to eject waste heat in this intense, heavy atmosphere. He though he could hear a slight fluctuation in the fan. A surge of adrenalin kicked in and his stomach lurched.
"Shit fucking shit. Okay what happened exactly?"
"The various different organics in the air combined at a particular frequency with the pressure wave moving in front of the marines on their way down. This created a standing wave effect which overloaded the cooling systems of the suits. Additionally the particular characteristics of certain clusters of the organics ate through the faceplates in some cases. This is a nasty, nasty place."
"Well dammit. How come the ship couldn't predict this?"
"There was a very low probability that this could happen. As you know, there is no way to predict with 100% accuracy. As they say, all plans fail in the fog of war."
Deepak laughed sarcastically, looking at the goop circulating around him in strange gloopy slow moving vortexes. "Well, there's nothing can be done now. What do we do about the suit's sentiences?"
"They knew the risks. Anyways, there is only one still active. The rest suffered the same fate as the humans. Possibly it could be backed up onto a flash card. As for the humans, they have been backed up previous to the mission as well you know. The suits failed because they were lower grade technology. As you know when dealing with potential sublimed or other involved in covert ops we cannot give away that we are operating. You know what happened with the Chelgrians. The suit's sentiences also knew what was going on, they couldn't escape by transmission because they are configured to look like nano-material insulation rather than computational substrate. Even level seven tech civilizations would struggle to detect them. And under no circumstances could there be any advanced comms kit like effectors."
He sighed heavily, "Yeah I get it, we have to use fucking level four tech at best, but it's a fucking waste...Kvaalczyk is barely twenty years old actual. He's never been revented not even a single time. Me, I've been through it six times and even though I know there's no real difference between a n exact copy of a person and the person themselves I ask myself often if I'm really me or am I just a copy. I feel like me right, and I understand the principle of equivalence and all, but would the original of me think I was him? I really don't know. Anyways.."
He said feelingly and sighed, " OK so gimme the skinny. What's the next step?"
The suit's voice paused momentarily, "We get the bodies out of the suits and let them degrade. I expect them to be fully degraded in less than a week. They won't be detected as anything strange even if they are found because everyone in this mission has within an acceptable standard deviation of the average colonial body type and as you know everyone is modded back to human basic. If they are found, yes of course the Cylons will think there is something going on with regard to the Colonials, but no way no how will they suspect anything else. The suits themselves will ultimately degrade if left out in these organics. As for the mission itself, though I can see nothing through this crappy atmosphere I have a perfect 3D geospacial model of our surroundings gleaned from the stealth nano-second ultrawave scan the ship did before it dropped us here. We're about 0.8 clicks due west of the artificial Cylon structure of unknown purpose we were dropped here to investigate. All of my sibling suits on your compadres also have a copy of the simulated landscape and should be able to guide all of you even with limited resolution heads up displays. Just start walking and I'll let you know if you're on the right track. The terrain is even so I make it about a twelve minute walk at the slow pace we're projected to move at without overheating the tolerances of the suits. Some of your compadres are pretty close to tolerance limits so I suggest we don't pick up the pace or they could be overloaded."
Deepak shook his head slowly and meaningfully and said into the intercom, "Move out marines, two by four, broad sweep formation."