Zony Tixia’s crew mates had always been suitably impressed by her aptitude for hearing. Some reacted with wonder and awe at some of the feats she had demonstrated. Zony never took any of it all that seriously. After all, being a Signals Officer had always been a job that depended on above average senses. Picking a faint transmission out of a wall of static was simply beyond the physical capabilities of most bridge officers. Doing so was also occasionally the difference between success and failure for a ship and its crew, which is why Zony Tixia’s career had advanced so quickly.

Zony’s hearing woke her up, as it often did. What she saw when she opened her eyes, however, didn’t help explain what was going on. She was wearing operational power-armor and a fully functioning tac suit. However, all she could see outside her faceplate was murky blackness. It was like she was submerged in some kind of viscous oil. She tried to move her arms and found she was immobilized by some kind of weight or pressure.

The sound she had heard was her suit’s emergency subsystem. Although she still had nearly 80% reserve power, her life support system’s gas mixture was down to only nine percent oxygen reserves remaining. The calm, low tone of the emergency system was sounding at three second intervals. It was trying to alert her to the fact she had roughly 20 minutes left before her powersuit would be unable to maintain a breathable atmosphere. If she didn’t find a source of oxygen somewhere, she would start to suffer from hypoxia within a half-hour at the most.

“Position and orientation display.”

The heads-up display on her faceplate told a fascinating story. Her suit’s portable sensors were reporting her position at a depth of 44 feet relative to the planet surface. She was also apparently oriented with her head at a position of 191 degrees mark 35 on a true sphere. According to her instruments, she was upside-down and underground.

“Tac suit integrity diagnostic.”

A systems report scrolled serenely on her heads-up display. Her suit was in perfect working order except for the lack of available oxygen. Zony wondered how she could possibly be where she was without any damage to her suit. She had one more option to get the easiest clues as to where she was and what had happened.

“Surface condition analysis.”

This was the key command. Skywatch powered tac-suits were renowned throughout the galaxy for their formidable materials technology. The surface of an environmental or combat suit could be manufactured or equipped with anti-static shielding, anti-temperature reactive and haptic fields and could use its element-ionizing capabilities to perform rudimentary analysis of whatever atmosphere, liquid, surface or energy was in contact with any of its outer surfaces.

Another series of results scrolled past on Zony’s heads-up display. Even though she wasn’t a scientist per se, the Argent’s Signals Officer could tell by the element analysis she was underwater. The submerged temperature was 34.6 degrees Fahrenheit, and whatever body of water she was in seemed to be mixed with dangerously high levels of sulfur dioxide, which wouldn’t normally be a problem except for the fact it was gradually causing whatever substance she was in to become a vat of gradually more and more concentrated sulfuric acid. She concluded there had to be heavy metal content in some land feature nearby: Possibly mountains or fissures in a rock formation.

Even though her powersuit’s shielding was more than capable of neutralizing acids at the molecular level, there was little to be gained by staying submerged in an acid bath for any longer than was necessary.

She tried to pull her hands free again and quickly realized just how firmly she was stuck.

“Exterior lights. All directions.”

The murky water got brighter, but it was still difficult for Zony to see very far through her faceplate. Her head didn’t seem to be affected by whatever had immobilized her arms. She also discovered one foot was free, but it wasn’t entirely clear what she would be able to do until she figured out why she couldn’t move. Zony keyed her commlink.

“Tixia to Copernicus One. Come in.”

She waited the regulation ten seconds, then keyed her transmitter again.

“Tixia to Copernicus One, acknowledge.”

Nothing. Zony reconfigured her transmitter to activate all fleet-standard hailing frequencies.

“Landing party to Argent. Come in.”

Transmitting through forty feet of water wasn’t the problem. It was as if there was nobody there to hear the message.

“Landing party to Argent.”

Zony remembered jettisoning with the rest of the crew when their corvette had lost power. There were times when she really disliked standard procedures. Jumping out of a struggling spacecraft was never Tixia’s first choice. Everyone had been wearing the same powersuits, since they would provide individual crew members with the option for a soft landing regardless of the ground terrain or conditions. Yili and Able Crewman Tackett had stayed with the boat, believing they would be able to perform an emergency landing and at least try to keep the vessel intact.

The realization had left her with a couple of new problems to go with the existing set. There were several other people out there with the same or worse problems as she had, not counting Yili and Tackett.

There was also a 200,000-ton warship in orbit with a crew of more than a thousand Skywatch personnel that should have answered her hail, and didn’t.

Zony wasn’t sure which problem was more daunting.