The angel flashes purple, still collating—then chirps. Here’s some good news. The advancing Antag front is driving a line of human transports. Not many, no more than twenty or thirty, but they’re clipping along at a fair pace and will likely reach the arc that includes our position before the Antags.
“Not’ing but dust,” Teal says, pushing back the scope. “What do you see?”
I’ve been quiet, except for clucking my tongue and tapping my gloved fingers, a habit when I see shit coming down. “Ants chasing rabbits,” I say. “Cavalry, maybe.” I don’t say aloud, but not enough, and followed right on their heels by a whole lot of Indians. The biggest Antag push I’ve ever witnessed.
I try to raise Gamecock, but as before, RF is blocked by the density of metal and rock. I remember DJ is outside the southern gate trying to pick up a sat signal. He’s on the wrong side of the Drifter and won’t see what we see.
“Far Ot’ers? Do t’ey know we’or here?” Teal asks.
“No idea,” I say, and lean in close to the plex, hoping my laser will carry that far. I murmur a message to the angel and it shoots a beam through the port, varying frequency to find a sweet spot. Not much chance it will get through, it tells me. Plex too thick. Too much dust between us and the advancing vehicles.
“No good?” Teal asks.
“Depends,” I say. “We got to go. Shut the port. Don’t want heat giving us away.”
Teal closes the louvers. We descend and run back to the southern garage.
Gamecock and de Groot have agreed to a loose armistice, against the wishes of Captain Coyle, who does not enjoy being outranked. Gamecock has somehow convinced de Groot and the Voors to help us begin defensive prep. All the twisty-ties have been cut and discarded. Makes me nervous, but what the hell—it’s our only option.
“I shot a helm burst east,” I say.
“Might not have been a good idea, bringing them here,” Coyle says.
“We need help,” Gamecock says, frowning at her in puzzlement.
“Maybe.” Coyle isn’t happy about any of it. Again, her reaction seems wonky.
Kazak and Tak, with the help of Rafe and Andres, have sketched a crude map in the green dust of the key tunnels and external points of access, and when I pass along what I’ve seen, the Skyrines go into overdrive. Coyle orders three of her team lower into the Drifter to check out the supply situation, and asks Teal if she could act as a guide. Teal, with a glance at me, and to my nod, agrees. She trusts me. But fuck if I know what’s going on.
They head out.
Rafe conferences with the Voors while de Groot talks over final things with Gamecock and Tak. If our forces received my burst and are speeding to join us, we’ll open the northern gate and let them in—all the troops and as many of their vehicles and weapons as the garage can hold. Then we’ll hunker down, hope the Antags pass us by—
But they won’t. We sense that. They’ve laid down a heavy hand, they mean to stay, and that will take all the resources they can grab.
They still have eyes in the sky.
And they know we’re here.
SHIT ALSO FLOATS, SOMETIMES
Before I exit, Teal returns with our three sisters. Her glum look leaves me with a strong impression that she suspects something is wrong, something that she does not feel at liberty to divulge. Does it involve our collaborating, even under necessity, with the Voors?
I wish I knew more about their history from an unprejudiced source, but on the other hand, Green Camp has been closer to the problem than anyone on Earth, and the tall dust widow is a serious, sober sort; she’s suffered through her own kind of shit, her own kind of betrayal. Green Camp effectively forced her out on the Red. Then they alerted the Voors she was heading their way, all just to preserve a share of the Drifter, de Groot’s pipe.
And now, she sees we’re cozying up with her enemies.
Blows huge, all of it.
The generators are doing well, Coyle’s team reports, and Teal agrees. Gamecock instructs Tak and me to post ourselves outside the northern gate, hiding behind the rock ridge, peeking over the top. We’ll have a direct view of the approaching dust.
I check out the vehicle lock. It will only take three Skells or two Tonkas at a time, end to end. We won’t be able to get all the vehicles inside, even those that will fit, before the Antags are upon us.
We pass through the personnel lock, which is big enough for maybe ten. Outside, it’s coming up on mid-afternoon and very cold, but we aren’t quite freezing; shivering knocks my teeth together, but that’s okay, that’s what we’re used to. We can only hope the Antags and their sats don’t spot our slim IR signatures and take potshots.
The wall of dust doesn’t look any closer, but it does look higher. We can make out a few vehicles on the leading front with our naked eyes. Then the dust closes in. They must be fleeing in thick haze, and surely they know what’s behind them. Makes me shiver.
Tak and I tap helms and talk to pass the time.
“How many days between space frames?” Tak asks. We both know the answer, but I say it anyway,
“Forty-three on average, depending on the season.”
“How much equipment on the average sled?”
“Six hundred tons.”
“How much of that is weaponry, how much transport and tents?”
We’re not worried about fountains for the moment, because it’s obvious we’ve found the mother lode of water and other resources.
“Forty percent transports, twenty weaponry,” I say, rattling off the stats we’re used to dealing with. Each delivery and drop can vary widely, and we won’t know until we’re updated; all this talk is snotsuck. But we’re hoping our cavalry is traveling with platforms that can carry big hurt. Tons and tons of it, and lots of spent matter to mow down Antags.
“I could go for a steak,” Tak says.
“Cue sad harmonica,” I say, but grimace at the thought of sizzling meat.
“Play ‘Danny Girl,’ ” he says. “The captain is hot.”
“Captain Coyle is not hot. She’s total big sister.”
“Big Mama, you mean.” Tak has dignitas, but he’s no less male for all that. Irritating a watch partner is a true art form. Too little, and we might relax, become inattentive; too much, and we lose focus on the Red and start paying more attention to the argument.
“Guy can violate protocol on the Red anytime he wants,” Tak says. “In his head.”
“Hope angel doesn’t note it.”
“Duly observed. Angel, absolve me.” Tak looks aside. “I heard Coyle went special ops.”
“Something like that,” I say. “And nothing about her after Hawthorne.”
We think this over. Separate goals, separate orders. Special ops is like a hidden reef. Could protect, could sink.
Our angels are quiet. We never know what they record. So far, no Skyrine has ever had his loose talk or death video splattered over media; maybe we’re too trusting. Or maybe we’re too damned select and valuable to be messed with. Or—maybe we just can’t afford to pay for the right video feed.
“How far?” Tak asks. We don’t dare lase for range, a) because dust will absorb and scatter, and b) because the helm plates can guess almost as well with their incident angles and magnification transforms, like a camera finding focus. So Tak already knows.
But I say it anyway. “Five klicks for the lead group.”
“Reinforcements. Transports and weapons.”
Our angels now feed us rough approximations of what’s stirring the closest dust. “Tonkas, four big ones,” I say. “A bunch of Skells. A Chesty. And maybe a Trundle or two.”
“Jeez. What’s on the platforms? Stuff we trained with, or sci-fi crap we don’t know how to use?”
Skyrines dream of that possibility. Major upgrades—MPHF, pronounced mmph, acronym for Mega Plus Hurt Factor—in our dreams these fabulous, decisive weapons are delivered by surprise, ready to link to our angels and upload instant training and serving suggestions.
But training vids are the weakest link in Earth’s military-industrial complex. Gurus leak us ideas for shit to use, but they don’t tell us how best to use it.
Thinking there might be MPHF coming at us is too much to hope for. Hurts deep in my warrior soul. So we change the subject.
“That dust widow likes you, Venn,” Tak says.
“She’s in a tight angle.” I tell him about her situation with the Voors.
“Shit,” Tak says. “They want to paint her?”
“They would if they could.”
“No wonder Coyle wanted them separated. I thought only enlightened nerds colonized Mars.”
“Not hardly. Lots of folks wanted to get the hell off Earth. Rich and poor, nerds or just pissed-off.”
“I do get the impression our guests don’t much like brown people. Me, they don’t know how to take.”
“Nobody knows how to take you, Fujimori,” I say. “Besides, why would any of them like Skyrines? Antags dropped shit on their settlement. It’s our war, they claim, not theirs.”
“Well, she likes you. What was it you found in those dungarees? What did Neemie say it was?”
“Platinum.”
“Is there beaucoup platinum down there?”
“Maybe.”
“Shit, let’s do a Dirty Dozen!”
“You mean Castle Keep,” I say. “Or maybe Kelly’s Heroes.” Most Skyrines play Spex combat games or watch war movies when they’re not crossing the vac or training or fighting. Some read. Tak does it all, but unlike Vee-Def, doesn’t file away trivia.
Tak scoffs. “How far?”
“Three klicks and closing.”
“See anything behind the Tonkas and the sleds?”
“Could be Millies. And high up, aerostats.”
“Aerostats mean germ needles,” Tak says.
“Wear a hat.”
“Shit yes. Big steel sombrero.” He holds his hands over his head, spreads them wide, pretends to hunker down more than we already are, squeezed into a narrow crevice in the rock.
Air support over Mars is difficult, because wings have to be so damned huge; anything like an airplane has to be big, clumsy, hard to maneuver—a perfect target. Antag aerostats are huge and even more clumsy, and in theory make good targets, but they seem to be cheap, easy to replace, and are surprisingly tough to shoot down. You pretty much have to slice away or burn out a few dozen meters of the aerostat’s surface before it’s fatally wounded and descends slowly to the dust, slumping like a big jellyfish on a terrestrial beach. We don’t use them. I’m not sure why. We don’t use germ needles, either. I’d say Antags know more about our biology than we do about theirs.
I rub the surface of the old basalt with my hand, feeling the age, trying to psych out some deeper truth.
Tak watches my hand. “Spirit of the Red? What you receiving?”
“Zip.”
“Fucking superstition.”
I’m not so sure. I keep seeing the coin, the platinum disk with its spiral of numbers, and it doesn’t fit. It doesn’t fit that some Voor miner would leave something so cool and valuable in his overalls—unless of course he died and nobody else knew. Still, Teal seems to know. Possibly her father knew something and told her.
And maybe, just maybe, the previous owner of the dungarees was a caretaker, left behind…
And decided to go naked, without his dungarees?
Leaving his coin?
Maybe he’s still down there, deep down, wallowing in green dust.
SNKRAZ.
“Three klicks,” Tak says.
“Can’t get a fix on how far behind the Antags are.”
We’re both thinking the same thing about the gates. Their outer doors will be like toilet tissue against Antag weapons.
“I say it’s another five klicks. Gives us a minute or two to welcome reinforcements.”
We enter the personnel lock and cycle through. We’ll be back outside soon enough. The rocks look jagged enough to hide more than a few warriors. We’re going to have to erect a slim sort of defense around both gates, set up a 360 atop the basalt hump-head, maybe find a kind of natural, high-point revetment for the lawnmower—the strong-field suppressor. It looks like a compact barbell with two handgrips and two nodes thrusting forward from the gray balls on each end. A triplex of spent matter cartridges hangs between the grips. Flip your guard and squeeze both grips and you spread tuned nasty over a wide arc.
We exit the inner lock hatch and stand before DJ, who is all alone and looks confused.
“Where is everybody?” he asks.
“Where’s who?”
“Everybody. The Voor wagons are still over at the southern garage. The ranch wife’s buggy…” He points. Teal’s cylindrical vehicle is still parked beside the older hulks. “But all the people—gone.”
“You passed through from there and didn’t see anyone?”
“Just tunnels and dust.”
“Where’s the colonel and Captain Coyle?” Tak asks.
“Wherever they all went, I suppose,” DJ says, exasperated and scared. “Nobody said a thing to me. How the hell should I know?”
I walk around the garage, examining the floor. There’s a general trample of boot prints in the green dust, ours upon arrival, and then paths heading in several directions—nothing more.
“Goddamn Voors,” DJ says.
“How the fuck could they overpower Skyrines when we have a lawnmower?” I ask. No answer. Tak is thoughtful.
Tak, DJ, and I are alone in the northern garage, with guests soon to arrive, and no plan how to greet them.
DRIFTERS AND HOBOS
Alice settles into our couch, draping her pleasingly plump arms along the back, feeling the leather with her well-manicured fingers.
“How did the Drifter get there?” I ask.
She looks at me. “Didn’t Teal or Joe tell you?”
“I don’t know what I don’t know,” I say.
“You’re testing me.”
“You test, I test. I’m asking meaningful questions. Doesn’t that mean I’m on the mend, Doc?”
She lifts a corner of her lips, takes one last look at the platinum coin, and delicately deposits it on the glass table between us. I don’t think she covets it. I think it scares her. “Nobody thought such a formation could exist,” she says. “We’ve been telling ourselves an old, old story… trying to get it to make sense, not quite succeeding.”
“Who’s we?”
“Experts and doubters,” she says.
“You do geology?”
“I used to analyze orbital surveys. For a year, I even guided tactical mapping. First time I went out on a space frame, crossing the vac, to get up close and personal with the Red, we were caught in a massive solar storm—about halfway. Lasted six days. Fourteen space frames, everyone got full dose. Cosmoline couldn’t absorb near enough. We arrived and parked in orbit. Fortunately there was an Ant lull at the time, perhaps because they were too smart to go out when it’s that hot. Our frames got shipped back before we could drop anybody. Twelve frames returned, but two are still out there, endlessly orbiting—dead. I rode a hawk down to SBLM, ended up spending six months in Madigan rehab. Ended my career. Officers don’t rise in ranks if they’re stuck on Earth.”
“And for that, they court-martial you?”
“That came later,” she says.
“At least you’re alive,” I say.
She looks out the window, moves one arm on the back of the couch, lifts her hand. “I returned to civilian life, paid to get bored and blow my head off inside a year. That’s the gamble, right?”
All too familiar among those mustered out of service for whatever reason.
“So I expanded my study program. Took all the available courses on settler history—what few courses remain. Universities have been dropping them right and left as funding dries up. Gurus don’t like them, I guess. I took more science, then geology, focusing on Mars in deep time. Lots of civilian science about Mars, even now. Pe
aceniks, pure space types, libertarians. I fell right in with them, after a time, once they got over suspicions I was a spy. But nobody saw this coming.”
“You split sociology, history—and geology?”
“Pretty much. After that, I interviewed with settler advocacy groups in Sacramento and Paris. Got picked up by a splinter of Mars Plus in New Mexico.”
“Sandia Space Studies,” I say. “Isn’t that Air Force?”
“Yeah.”
“Teal got a message through to them? Or Joe?”
“One or the other, I don’t know,” Alice says. “But Joe told us you might have something interesting to say. Describe this Drifter to me again.”
I do. I’m full of metaphors. I tell her it’s like a huge mandrake root almost submerged in a sea of cold basalt, descending many miles into the Martian crust. A lot of metals. Very heavy, no doubt. “Why didn’t it sink?” I ask.
“Everyone wants to know that. I assume they’re checking all over the Red now for others like it.” She watches me too intently.
“Probably,” I say. I feign ignorance—easy for me at the best of times.
“But maybe not,” Alice says, drawing herself up. “Did you ever think the Gurus don’t want us to know about this Drifter? Or any Drifters?”
“Why?” I ask.
“Not wanting to find them could explain why we’ve never paid attention to our own gravimetry. Which I had a hell of a time digging up.”
Okay. But we’re dodging the main issue. “So what is it?” I ask.
“Best guess, and not a bad one, is that it’s a chunk of big old moon,” Alice says. “One of many, maybe the biggest, that hit Mars a few billion years ago. Nine hundred miles or so in diameter, about the size of Rhea around Saturn. Metal and rocky core. Thick layer of ice and other volatiles. Probably got deflected by another passing object in the outer system, then fell downsun, approached Mars, and broke up as it passed through the Roche limit—the distance before tidal forces break a body into smaller pieces. The biggest chunks swung around Mars half a revolution or so—then fell right about where Hellas is now. The impacts melted through the mantle and wobbled the whole planet, rang it like a bell—also melted half the crust. Pretty much created the division between the southern highlands and northern lowlands.