“Thanks for the reception,” he says. “Our drop was a shitty blender. Sisters and brothers, different frames, broken platoons. All mixed up.”
“De nada, sir,” Tak says. “Par for this course.”
Joe points down. “How deep is this thing?”
“More than a mile, maybe a lot more,” I say. “Deep mining interrupted by a hobo—a wandering subsurface river. It’s been flooded up to here for at least twenty years, Earth years—but now the water has subsided, opening up the workings. We haven’t been down very far.” I lift my hands. “It’s mostly guesswork.”
“How far has anyone gone?” Joe asks.
“DJ’s been back and forth a couple of times to the southern gate,” I say. “Teal took me through a few side tunnels. There are a couple of watchtowers, lookouts, up in the head—the mound. The western gate is welded shut. The eastern gate was supposed to be closed up and welded as well, but that could be where a second pack of Voors entered.”
“We don’t know that for sure,” Tak says. “But it makes sense.”
“Settler equipment and supplies?”
“A depositor mothballed in a side chamber. Looks to be in decent shape.”
“Barrels of slurry?”
“Some. Maybe a lot.”
“We have to check that out,” Joe says. “We have to secure whatever resources we can find. So… DJ knows his way around.”
“And can operate the southern gate,” I say.
We’ll end up repeating what Gamecock tried to do, but we have no choice. And maybe the newbies will do it better.
“First order of business—let’s send a welcoming party to the southern garage. Then let’s get the fuck away from here before Ants come knocking.”
Tak calls over three of the survivors, a tall major named Jack Ackerly, an equally string-bean warrant officer named George Brom, as well as a shorter corporal, a sister, Shelby Simca. As the trio stands at attention, Joe reaches to open his faceplate, as if to rub his eye or his nose, but Simca stops him with a cautionary hand.
“Dust, sir,” she says. “We haven’t had time to brush down.”
“Right,” Joe says. “Thanks. You two go with Corporal Johnson, DJ—accompany him to the southern gate and let in as many of our team and big vehicles as you can, post guard, then reconnoiter. Leave bread crumbs. One of you will return and report. We’ll rendezvous halfway.”
“Yes, sir,” Simca says, and the trio runs off to gather up DJ. I’m sure he’ll be delighted to have company.
Joe lays down more orders to the rest to form up, prep weapons, charge bolts, finish stripping the Skell-Jeeps and Tonkas of supplies—make ready to move out.
“Let’s not join our friends right away,” Joe says to the assembled troops. The specters of dead, bloated Skyrines on the other side of that lock are enough to motivate everybody. After what they’ve just been through, the newbies move fast.
Joe rejoins us behind the Tonka. “What the hell happened?” he asks. “Vinnie shot some of it at me on the Red, but we were distracted. Give it to me again, slower.”
Tak takes a stab at summing up. “A month ago, Sky Defense must have dropped a battalion of Eurasians on the Red, to prep and defend fountains, cache weapons, get ready for later drops.”
“You found them?” Joe asks.
“Some,” Tak says. “All dead, at first. We found a few tents, one darted but two functional, enough to keep us alive. No working fountains. Then Lieutenant Colonel Roost found us, he was driving a Skell, alongside a Korean general. They took us over to where more survivors, mostly Eurasian brass, had holed up around an old, broken fountain. They had a command tent but not much in the way of resources, not for so many. Mostly injured, some severely. The fountain was beyond repair, at least with what we had. By the time a Muskie buggy arrived—”
“Driven by Vinnie’s girlfriend,” Joe says.
“She’s from a settlement called Green Camp,” I pick up, ignoring the gibe. “A refugee—an outcast. Her name is Teal. She saved us just as we were about to crap out on the Red. The only survivor from the command tent was the Korean major general, named Kwak. Kwak and Gamecock, Tak, Kazak, DJ, Neemie, Vee-Def, Michelin—she picked us up, shared air and water and filters, and transported us here. She called it the eastern Drifter.
“Shortly after, Captain Coyle and her troops arrived at the southern gate. Another scattered drop, I guess. They forcibly hitched a ride with less savory settlers, the Voors. The Voors were also coming to the Drifter, maybe to intercept Teal.”
“Voors—Voortrekkers?” Joe asks again, and there’s a glint in his eye, the same glint I saw the first time he asked—as if this was not unexpected.
“Yeah. Then, while Tak and I were outside—something happened inside. All but DJ vanished. He didn’t see or hear a thing. We’d asked him to go outside the southern gate and try to establish a satlink.”
“Vinnie thinks another wagon full of Voors showed up, maybe at the eastern gate, and took our people by surprise,” Tak says. “But that gate was supposed to be welded shut. We just don’t know what the hell happened.”
Joe looks down at the green dust, scrapes it with his glove tip. Rubs the dust between his fingers. Most of it sifts to the floor. “How come we didn’t detect the Ant forces in solar orbit? Flying downsun to intercept Mars?”
“How come we didn’t detect comets?” I add.
“Fucking shambles,” Joe says tightly. “Lousy coordination, crappy intelligence. If we get back, I am definitely going to write a letter.”
We update Joe on the character of the Voors, who could become a second front in our little set-to.
“They hate us, I get that,” Joe says, “but enough to destroy all chances of survival?”
“Maybe,” I say. “The patriarch, de Groot, is a real strutter. His son, Rafe, may be more sensible. The others… pretty strung out—and in mourning. They lost their settlement to the comets. They may be the last of their kind.”
Joe’s eyes get bigger. “Are the Voors expecting to team up with the Ants?” He looks us over with his wild, pale stare, and I hope I’m not seeing the last hope drain out of him, because frankly, we’re all going to need a little of that, just a sip, from his cup.
“I doubt it,” I say. “They won’t be beholden to anything or anybody.”
“Just like my pappy,” Joe says, slipping into drawl. “Biggest sonofabitch in Memphis, ran a plumbing outfit, cheated on his customers and his women, never paid his taxes, but at least he wasn’t a fucking joiner.”
Tak and I reward him with weak grins. Joe’s pappy is famous—and various. Joe never knew his father.
“Who’s on top of our pyramid?” he asks with a sniff, and covers the silver leaf with his hand.
“Gamecock.”
“Never here when you need them. Let’s grab our shit and move.”
Just then, to emphasize our situation, the outer lock doors resound like they’ve been hit with a fistful of boulders. It doesn’t take us long to gather what supplies we can carry and abandon the northern garage.
TWO BALLS, ONE HEAD—YOU’RE GOOD TO GO
The reconnaissance group sends Ackerly back. We meet him a third of the way through the tunnel going south, just where a side jog took Teal and me to the first lookout. All clear to the southern gate, Ackerly says. DJ worked the locks and brought in the survivors who made it around the Drifter’s shoulders.
“Needles fell in a second wave from the aero. They were caught outside, trying to get from the Tonkas and the Trundle. We lost all but two of the Tonkas and couldn’t fit the Trundle. The Chesty is inside, but it’s badly damaged.”
“How many got in?” Joe asks.
Ackerly lowers his eyes. “Thirteen,” he says.
Joe’s lips work. He turns to Tak and me. “We have to assess, find out how many can fight, get our teams back in order,” he says. “Then we have to locate Captain Coyle and the Voors.”
Ackerly leads us to the southern gate. The thirt
een new arrivals are of all persuasions, all walks of life, all colors, tired and stretched to breaking, but all are beautiful. Six corporals, three sergeants, a warrant officer—CW5, black eagle eyes surrounded by wrinkles; could be outstanding, another major, a tough-looking first sergeant, and another captain who’s too zoned and beat up to do anybody any good.
In addition, we now have two lawnmowers, six heavy bolt rifles, eight boxes of spent matter cartridges, and kinetic projectiles of all sorts. Plus the Chesty—the General Puller, a long, narrow tan and red carriage sitting on eight tall wheels, supporting four side-mounted Aegis 7 kinetic cannons and the big draw: a triple-rail, chained-bolt ballista—but only ten percent charge remaining.
Joe asks how many of the new group have more than a few minutes’ reserves in their suits. Two hold up their hands. We start distributing the filters and tanks taken from all the vehicles, including the Voor wagons. The survivors are quiet, trying to deal with their emotions, their short-term shock response to what they’ve been through. The usual acid mind-burn that comes after an engagement, when there is still no relief, no chance to really think, just adrenaline and bad shit dogging us while we run and pretend that we’re still iron-ass Skyrines and not damaged goods.
It’s going to take some real leadership to bring us back up to snuff. Joe picks the warrant officer, Wilhelmina Brodsky, a tough old bird with a face carved from teak. Brodsky is given the task of organizing new fire teams. Tak helps with the distribution of hand weapons. Not all of the weapons will be carried by rated Skyrines, but we’ll make do.
“We’re going to defend this gate with all we have,” Joe says. “Most will stay here for now, rest up, scrub suits.” He turns to Tak. “I want to station three sentinels just before the northern gate. Comm doesn’t seem to work very well down here, so make sure they can all run fast. Vinnie, pick three. Then, I need to know about that eastern gate, and wherever the hell everyone else might have gone.”
DJ says he understands the tunnels pretty well around here, and even down a few levels. I ask how he knows that.
“I seduced the panel in the southern watchtower,” he says. The same place that Teal took me when we saw the Voors arriving. “Time on my hands while you were out on the playground. All dead-dude crypto. I got me some pretty pictures.”
“Upload?”
“Eyeballs only. No way to link, like I said.”
“But your angel recorded, right?”
“Some of it. Then the console crapped out—all the displays went blank. But it’s still up here.” He taps his head—not the angel, the skull beneath his helm. I remember Teal saying that the digs continued even while the Drifter was deserted, even while it was flooded. I say nothing about that. No sense confusing people with things I haven’t seen and don’t yet understand.
“Eastern gate open and receiving visitors?” I ask DJ.
“If the Voors or the Algerians welded it shut, they didn’t inform the console,” DJ says. “But the map says it’s definitely there. Entrance lies about five hundred meters that way,” he points to our right, then down, “and fifteen meters below… Comes in at a heavy mining level, meant to receive big equipment, maybe send out shipments of ore.”
“Any visitors logging in or out?”
“I asked the booth AI about that multiple ways, but no joy, no grief, nothing one way or the other.”
“Can we get there from here? No flooding, no other obstructions?”
“I think so,” DJ says, thoughtful.
“Can the booth AI here tell us if someone breaks through the northern gate?”
DJ shrugs. “It really doesn’t seem to care. It’s pretty old and worn-out.”
“Sentinels,” I say to Joe. Brodsky continues putting together teams. She enlists Tak to help refresh two teams on the rifles.
“Yeah,” Joe says. “DJ, stay here and tell them how not to get lost.” DJ does his best.
Joe sends Beringer, Stanwick, and the burned-out Captain Victor Gallegos north, then leans against a wall and makes motions like he wants to smoke a cigarette. A couple of minutes of this odd charade and he’s up straight, brushing the imaginary cigarette against the wall. I’ve never known him to smoke.
“Now, Vinnie… can we go take a look around?”
I lead Joe back to the southern watchtower. The console is indeed dead, so we pull down the periscope and do a 360. Soon enough, we understand our situation. The Drifter is surrounded by a solid circle of Antags standing back at about a klick, black Millies lined up with the big shiny heads forward, like a string of beads draped over the hardpan—platforms just behind them, dark gray with faint gleams of light as they are charged and tended by their gun crews. A full division, if we can effectively judge Antag order of battle—at least five infantry brigades carried and supported by over a hundred Millies, six mobile weapons battalions, other groups we can’t make out to the rear of the forward forces.
They’ve completed the perimeter—and haven’t just bunched up before the gates. Holding all fire. Waiting. A hell of a lot more than enough to obliterate us. If we decide to break out.
Not cautious. Confident.
Fucking arrogant.
Joe pushes up and stows the periscope with a grim look. “They could take this place in an hour,” he murmurs. “What the fuck are they waiting for?”
“Orders?” I suggest. “Maybe they’re as screwed up with tactical as we are.”
“They’re just playing with us, I think. Cat-and-mouse.” His hands keep clenching. He hasn’t slept since maybe before their drop. He whispers, “Take DJ and Brom and Ackerly and reconnoiter the eastern gate. Check integrity, evidence of another Voor team—wagons, supplies, whatever. Explore at will, grab what you can, expand on DJ’s map—and get back as soon as you can.”
“What do we do if we encounter the Voors?” I ask.
“Avoid getting killed,” Joe says, eyelids heavy. “Tell them the truth—if we don’t pull together, we’re all going to die in here.”
Back to the southern gate. Tak sees Joe’s situation and takes him away from me, arm over his shoulder, with a backward glance.
“Take a break, sir. Five minutes,” Tak says to him.
Rugged.
“Ackerly, Brom, DJ—on me,” I say.
ANT FARM
When I was a kid, I used to love ant farm tales—the kind of stories where a clutch of ordinary folk are cooped up on an island or isolated in something strange, like a giant overturned ocean liner or a lost starship, whatever—didn’t matter. Cooped up, the people all started to act like ants in an ant farm, digging out trails through the sand between the mysterious plastic walls, acting out little dramas, retracing familiar old trails, bumping into each other—like that. And what I loved was, all the inhabitants of the ant farm seemed oblivious to any larger drama, careless of what the farm might actually be—a child’s toy, for example. Most of the characters hardly gave a damn about the big idea of their situation, paid the large questions almost no attention, because, I guess, it was insoluble at their level of information and smarts and faced with that, we all revert to what we do best—socialize, mate, preen, strut, fight, talk a lot, wonder a lot. Ant farm stories are just like life. We have no idea why we’re here, what we’re doing alive, or even where we are, but here we are, doing our best to make do.
And that’s another reason I prefer not to think of the Antags as Ants. Because if I do, then it means they’ve somehow managed to escape their glass walls, their farm, and cross the stars. Ants are peering in at our solar system. Peering in at us, on Mars, stuck in the Drifter.
Wonder what they think of us? Do they pity us, so backward and stuck?
SNKRAZ.
Note to self: Stop thinking. Follow orders. Rely on training. Those are a Skyrine’s protective glass walls.
DJ takes the lead again, right up to a tunnel that veers abruptly to our right. “This way,” he says. Brom and Ackerly exchange glances with me as they pass. Our guide whistles. The sound echoes
eerily ahead. All Tom Sawyer stuff to DJ. Gotta love him. Drives me nuts.
A few minutes, and we arrive at a wide spot in the tunnel, with a railing surrounding a shaft about seven meters wide. The walls of the shaft have been carved to shape a steep flight of steps, a spiral staircase, like something Basil Rathbone and Errol Flynn would have a sword fight on, running up and down—the first of a number of such shafts and far from the worst.
The deeper we descend, many meters, maybe a hundred or more, the shinier and more purely metallic the walls become, reflecting our flaring helm lights—big metal crystals, what are they called? Formed in deep space over ages of slow cooling…
NEWS OF JOE
Widmanstätten patterns,” Alice Harper says. “Nickel iron crystals. How big?”
I spread my hands apart. Fifty centimeters, maybe. Chunky as hell, but smoothly polished, like an art project.
“My Lord,” she says. “You were descending through the core of the old moon. Right there on Mars!”
“Right there,” I say. My head aches like fury. My neck is stiff with talking, remembering, and I want to delay like anything what’s coming up. “I got to take a couple of pills.”
“Go take,” Alice says. She looks at her phone, as if expecting a call.
Vac supplements are recommended while coming off Cosmoline. I’ve been avoiding them the last few hours because sometimes they flush the system. Part of the glamour of being a spaceman. I’m in the bathroom, staring into the large mirror, disembodied head swimming in my filmy gaze—seeing nothing I like or respect.
I rest my hands on the sink. A phone wheedles in the living room, not mine. Alice answers, her voice low. I’ve left the bathroom door open for the moment and clasp the vitamins in my hand, deciding whether I want to become human again—find firmer ground through more food, good company—or give in to the vac in my head.