“The impact in Hellas instantly converted most of the volatiles to superheated steam and blew them off into space. Some of the rest bubbled out through the molten impact basin for the next few hundred thousand years. Like a soda bottle.” She grows flushed describing all this. To her, it’s sexy. “The Martian crust and mantle congealed, solidified. But the big chunks of moon weren’t completely absorbed. A couple of plumes of upwelling magma kept thrusting up the chunks—the last, unabsorbed remains—and floated them in place, like feathers on a jet of air.”
“Jesus,” I say.
Alice takes a deep breath. “Those days are long gone,” she says. “The plumes are a lot colder. Most are solid. The Drifter has been sinking for a couple of billion years—but its head still pokes through, and there are lots of deep vent tubes carved by superheated lava, pushing tunnels right through to the deep roots, down to the main bulk of all those spectacular metals. Sound about right?”
It does. Perfect, in fact.
“All right, do I pass?”
“You pass.”
“So do tell,” she says, attentive without being needy.
GO DOWN IN HISTORY, DAMN YOU ALL
We’ve made our way to the southern garage and back, and now we stand beside Teal’s buggy and the abandoned hulks. The tunnels between are deserted, as DJ described—as far as we could search. The weapons carried by Captain Coyle’s squad are nowhere in sight, and so it seems likely that the tables have been turned and our Skyrines have been overpowered and taken away to be disposed of.
“The Voors must have had a weapons cache,” Tak says, wandering around the walls. “They got the drop on the rest.”
All we have are sidearms.
“No bodies, no blood,” DJ observes.
No blood in the garage is a positive. Teal would likely be the first to get shot. After that, there are no positives. I’m not even sure we know how to open the gate and operate the locks fast enough to let in our reinforcements, if they arrive—if they are reinforcements and not prisoners driven ahead of the main column of Antags just to absorb our fire.
“We know the layout around here. I bet DJ can lead us through to the eastern gate,” Tak says.
“Teal thought it was sealed,” I say. “Like the western gate.”
“Did you check?” Tak asks. “And what would it take to unseal it? The eastern garage makes the most sense.”
“But the Voor wagons are still back at the southern gate!” DJ says.
“Maybe there was a wagon left outside,” Tak says. “They could all fit into one now, right? Leave us behind, or kill us—get the hell out before the Ants arrive.”
“I don’t think they’d leave,” I say. “It’s too dangerous out there. If they get caught up in a battle, they’re smoke and scrap, even if they have Coyle’s weapons, which they can’t use.”
“Right,” Tak says. “That could mean they have a dungeon down deep, hard to find—harder to get into. But how in hell did they overpower Coyle and Gamecock?”
I’ve considered all the possibilities, and one hypothesis remains unassailable, based on what little we know. I share it. There must have been one or more Voor wagons outside that Captain Coyle did not see and could not have commandeered. These latecomers could have arrived after the others, saw that something had gone wrong, and circled around to the eastern gate, then pushed stealthy raiders through the tunnels—where they got the drop on our comrades.
While those of us outside heard nothing.
I share this cheerful scenario. Tak considers with growing calm, not even frowning. The worse things seem, the calmer he looks.
“Shit, man,” DJ says. “Why not leave somebody to take us out, too? We could all be stain by now.”
“Because we don’t matter,” Tak says.
We quickly share the maps captured by our angels during explorations, with distances, elevations, quick video and photo notes on what was seen and where. Battlefield record keeping. Nowhere near complete, but we come up with a good possibility for a passage to the eastern garage. And if the green dust in that tunnel is scuffed by lots of feet, we’ll know we’re on the right track.
Or we stay and let the reinforcements in. DJ says he might be able to operate the vehicle airlock from the control booth, but maybe not fast enough to get all the vehicles through… or any big weapons.
We’re just churning.
I think I’m going to have to make the decision. I got my stripes before Tak. I get down on one knee. The others do the same, as if we’re about to form a prayer triangle.
“Our buds out there don’t even know we’re here, unless they got my flash,” I say. “We don’t have time to get them all in, and besides, the doors won’t hold long. Tak, you and DJ stay. I think I can operate Teal’s bus. I’ll go out and meet the approaching line, help them set up a defensive cordon around the northern gate, while DJ gets into the booth and you both try to cycle as many as you can. Maybe we can bring in enough to deal with the Voors.”
Tak looks dubious but DJ looks energized. “Right!” he says. “They’re looking for a place to turn and fight.”
“What about the Antags?” Tak asks. “Won’t they just cut through the small force, then blast the doors and swarm in?”
“Nothing better,” I say. An old Skyrine nostrum. All that we deserve and nothing better. We glance at each other in the gloom. Tak and DJ tilt their heads, push out their lips, spit into the green dust.
Teal’s buggy was not personally coded, as far as I could tell. Maybe she had an implant or a key fob, but I never saw her use it. The buggy was stolen anyway. We work our way to the buggy’s hatch and push the big flat entrance button. The hatch opens. I climb into the lock. Then I look back at Tak and DJ. We nod. Last time into the breach.
As the big kahuna, our DI on Mauna Kea, told us on our graduation, Last time no see anymore.
Nothing better.
It’s on.
ZULU TIME
I can barely see DJ in the upper booth through the buggy’s front windows. The bus’s controls are not much different from a Skell or a big Tonka—a two-handled wheel on a stick and foot pedals. There’s enough charge left in the batteries to get me out the gate and maybe ten or twelve klicks beyond—no time to wait for a full charge from the Drifter’s generators.
Tak pulls the plug. DJ opens the inner doors. I rumble through, learning as I go—and manage to just scrape the edge of one door. Hope I haven’t punched a hole, hope the door seals tight on the way back…
Hiss surrounds the buggy, the suck of retrieved air. Pressure drops in the lock. My ears pop. When the hiss is down to a light puff, DJ opens the outer doors and I shove the stick forward and to the left to go around the low end of the giant’s arm. The only communication I’m going to have is radio. Can’t rely on the helm laser this time—too much dust. So I start broadcasting across multiple shortwave digital bands. The dust looks thick and the vehicles are likely tossing up big grains—enough to interfere with microwave. But what the hell. If anybody human’s listening, I can rev up the bus motors and wind them down in a kind of dogtrot EM pulse.
Soon, in just a couple of minutes, that arc of fleeing Skyrines and the Antags chasing them will arrive at the Drifter’s northern gate. If the Skyrines know we’re here, if they got my laser burst, they’ll be heading for the gate. If not, they’ll sweep around this bump in the Red like waves around a rock.
The air in the buggy smells like sweat and electricity. The batteries are old; the wiring may be shorting out as well. And all those pads from our skintights are doubtless festering in the rear hopper.
Outside, the air is an amazingly beautiful shade of lavender, shot through with high stripes of pink. The dust raised by the oncoming tide sweeps over the buggy, over everything.
Then it gets dark, very dark—black in just a few seconds. Martian night falls almost instantly and the only residual light has to come through the dust tops down to where I am—which it doesn’t. Everyone out there in the dar
k and the dust is traveling blind, chasing blind, fleeing blind. And I’m moving out, broadcasting like a sonofabitch, pumping the engines up and down…
Then, to my left, a Skell-Jeep rolls up and throws a beam, almost blinds me, and passes so close it grazes a tire. The buggy shivers and complains. No doubt they know I’m here, but do they think I’m a Muskie? Or the idiot Skyrine who lased them?
Another vehicle passes me—this time a Tonka. My radar is shooting quick blips. I can make out hazy return in the general scatter and I’m still rolling forward, chuckling like an idiot child, when something or someone dogtrots a shortwave carrier. No voice—just up-and-down frequency variation. Answering my motor pulses.
“Someone wishes to speak to us,” my helm says. “They want to know where we come from.”
I then go all out on the shortwave and tell them we’re friendly, give a call sign I hope is still good, ask to speak with the ranking CO. A rough, raspy voice gets back to me in seconds. “Who the fuck are you, and what are you doing way out here in the boonies?”
My face lights up in a big grin. Even with all the distortion and drop-out, I know this guy. It’s Joe—First Sergeant Joe Sanchez.
“No time,” I say. “We’ve found a rock up ahead with a door in it, leading to a bunch of caves—a pretty good refuge, but you’ll have to buy time to get us all inside. Can you form a line on me?”
I am the only game in town, the only hope they have. My radar shows a fair number of our vehicles—at least ten, if I count through the ghosts and guesses—now forming a dirty curve about two hundred meters from end to end, like a mitt flexing to intercept a ball.
“If you’ll just hold still a minute,” Joe says, “you beautiful bastard.”
“Gladly, First Sergeant.” I pull back the buggy’s wheel and pump the brakes, about a kilometer from the northern gate. This is where we’re going to have to hold until or if the Antags decide to halt and reconnoiter. Not likely. But a battle in the dusty dark is nobody’s ideal.
“Time to plow a hole with whatever you’ve got,” I say. “You have to make the Antags hesitate. Then we’ll withdraw in proper order to the rock.”
I send the coordinates.
“Do you know how many Ants are on our tail?” the familiar voice asks, weaker and more raspy. “We haven’t taken time to look over our shoulder.”
Night is upon us. Nobody can see shit. Maybe the Antags are having the same difficulty.
“Rough guess,” I say, “a hundred times your force, airborne and ground.”
“Pick targets for maximum disruption,” the raspy voice orders.
Another voice responds: “Sir, we’ll provoke immediate fire. I don’t know how we’ve—”
Another voice, female, shrill: “Die screaming, sweatrag!”
“Just fucking light ’em up!”
Then the dust glows in bright, quick flickers, like lightning seen through a filthy window. That makes me want to cry. We’re in a real fight. We’re all going to die, finally, and it’s the best feeling in the world—kill and be killed! I wish someone was in the buggy to share it with me. I wish Teal could see me now. Or my dad. My uncle Karl.
Anyone.
The murk starts to really glow, almost steady, like a weird sunrise. Our buds are lighting up with all they’ve got, and judging by the purple tinge, they’re using at least one big bolt cutter.
God, it’s awful pretty.
Thumps rise through the bus’s tires, shaking the frame. I hear ascendant whines cut through the thin air—through the muffling dust—and rise beyond human hearing. A Chesty’s twin disruptors are hitting targets, slicing and dicing and electrifrying. Other sounds, other weapons. The Antags are firing back, I think, but it doesn’t sound coordinated. It sounds confused. Of course, what do I know. I’m a blind duck in a truck.
Happier and happier.
I start singing.
Someone on the shortwave joins in. We’re an insane duet for about ten seconds.
The murk fades, then the dust pulses again with pink and purple and finally green. Another big transport rolls up and around—a Deuce and a half, four sets of whanging tires, twice as big as a Tonka. I cheer out loud. The first part of our line is withdrawing to the Drifter.
At the same time, someone raps on the outer hull of the buggy, hard. I rise out of the driver’s seat and go back to see who it is. At this stage, I’m loopy enough not to mind if it’s one of the far-traveled enemy. Any change, please, to break the goddamn suspense, the awful grind of not knowing shit. Someone’s cycling through. I’m tapping my feet and pushing off against the ceiling not to fly around in the cabin.
The hatch opens. A Skyrine pushes inside—and it is Joe, finally! Old friend. Old training buddy. Veteran of four previous mutual actions on the Red. Only he’s got a lieutenant colonel’s silver oak leaf pinned to his chest—rather, half of one, and there’s blood all over his skintight, mostly dry, but some still foaming from the vac. Apparently not his own.
“Master Sergeant Michael Venn, my lucky day,” Lieutenant Colonel Joseph Sanchez says, opening his helm.
I snap back and salute him.
“Screw that, it’s brevet.” Joe doesn’t bother to brush down before he moves up front. I don’t care. The cabin is already full of dust. He glares through the windshield, observing the withdrawal, then flops down on the step behind the controls. “Comm flashed they’d intercepted a hinky beam from somebody with your name—is that right?”
“Yes, sir!”
“So did the goddamn Antags, I bet. Where did you find this heap?”
I explain quickly about Gamecock and the Sky Defense brass in their sad, sagging tent. “Teal, the previous driver—a ranch wife—picked us up and took us to a lucky rock with a big door in it. After she unlocked the door and let us in, we accepted a visit from Captain Daniella Coyle and eleven sisters, who themselves hitched a ride with twelve hostile settlers—Voors. But they’re gone now. Coyle and all her team, the Voors, the rest of my team—Kazak and Vee-Def and Michelin—seem to have disappeared deeper into the rock. We don’t know where any of them are.”
Joe stares at me through bloodshot, pale blue eyes, then shakes his head. “Outstanding! A dozen Voors. As in Voortrekkers?”
“Sort of. There could be more, if there’s an unsecured gate… if they got reinforcements and overpowered Captain Coyle. They may have all the weapons, including a lawnmower. Which they can’t use.”
“Outstanding to above!” He’s feverish from exhaustion.
“Sir, have you got recent tactical?” A silver oak leaf stomps any invitation to intimacy, especially when there’s blood.
“Recent as of forty-eight hours, but they got most of our sats, and our new ones are being swatted down faster than we can find them.” He grips my shoulder with one hand, and we exchange tactical. I close my faceplate to make sure I got it all. Little angel alarms and flashing pink dots in the upper corner.
I got it—but the angel is not happy. Position-wise, we are screwed—we should not be anywhere near where we are. I open my faceplate. “Angel’s frantic,” I say.
“Fuck it. Take the wheel and get in line.”
I get behind the wheel and roll us into the retreating caravan. Another volley of purple pulses lights up the dust; the platform will withdraw last.
“Have you uplinked any of this with orbital?” Joe asks.
“Maybe DJ sent up something, but unlikely.”
He rubs the bridge of his nose. “Vinnie, tell me how long before it gets so bad we shit our pants.” We monkey-grimace and laugh. The thing about skintights is it’s no fun pissing or shitting your pants because it doesn’t matter—that’s what you do all the time. So to signal that we live in fear, to express that we’ve lost all hope and fuck the big stuff—we don’t relax our rectums. We just laugh. But not too long.
Time for Joe’s story.
“Big Hammer two days back, we dropped right around a comet strike zone, lots of sparkly, lost maybe two-thirds of our
frames, but three sleds came down intact, carrying six Trundles, five General Pullers, fifteen Skells, and six Deuces, all fully charged—but only ninety-two Skyrines. Most of command hit hard. And so…” He taps the bloody half leaf. “We salvaged what we could.”
Another pulse and we can see the outline of the Drifter ahead.
“How many can you cycle through at once, and how fast?” he asks.
“Ten troops through the personnel lock, plus maybe three Skells or two Tonkas through the big gate. A Chesty won’t fit, and I doubt the Trundles will, either. There’s another gate on the opposite side, about a mile around the head—the hill. Might be big enough to take more Tonkas and maybe the Chesty. If there’s time, maybe we can unload the platform.”
Joe doesn’t take long to think it through. “Cycle all the troops first. We’ll divert big stuff around the head.”
My angel gives him precise southern gate coordinates and he passes them along. I broadcast plain and loud to the Drifter and hope DJ and Tak are on the alert and haven’t been swept by Voors.
Then I look left, south, on the driver’s side vid. Three banged-up Deuces and the Chesty are pulling out of line to go left around the head. I can just hear them rolling behind us. Rear vid shows four Skells and a Tonka passing our buggy to cross right over the lava and old mud, preceding us toward the Drifter’s arm. They’re carrying troops and will go first.
“We’re in sad shape, Vinnie,” Joe says. “Save our sorry assets, and I’ll hook you up with my seester.”
“It would be my honor.”
“She’s ugly as sin.”
“Sin rhymes with Venn, sir.”
“Fuck you.”
Outside, the dust is clearing, revealing night-dark sand and an amazing starry sky. We spin around and I scan the opposite line through my faceplate magnifier. The movement of Antags has stopped, but a few bolts are still being thrown out from the trundle to a largely quiet and unmoving line. They’re just sitting and taking it, waiting, like a row of wolves curious as to why the rabbits have turned and bared their teeth.