The colonel stopped about a hundred meters from the column base, and motioned for them to remain still.
“What’s wrong?” Maung asked.
“The lift.” The man knelt and removed his pack, pulling a series of tubes from it; soon he’d assembled a small grenade launcher, which he used to point at the column’s base. “This post has been unmanned for months. But look at the lift entrance.”
Maung squinted at a tiny door at the base. It was open, a dark square, slightly blacker than the tower itself.
“It’s open but I don’t see anything,” he said.
“It should be shut. The door doesn’t open for anyone except me or personnel assigned to the specific outpost. Get your pistols out and shoot anything that moves.”
Maung drew his pistol. He wished for the vacuum of space, which prevented any kind of sounds from traveling, when he heard a kind of loud chattering from the open lift doorway. Something else responded, chattering in the distance behind them. Maung crept forward behind the colonel.
“Why not just use the damn grenade launcher?” he asked. “Something is obviously inside there.”
“You stupid? You guys have to live there until I can get rid of you and grenades could damage the power conduits—render the outpost uninhabitable. I’m saving the grenades, in case things get bad out here or behind us. Move, but stay close.”
As soon as they got within ten meters of the tower base, a loud warbling rose from inside, almost making Maung open fire, and he watched as the colonel reached for one of three small cylinders on his belt. He flicked a button. The colonel threw the cylinder and it clanked against the far wall of the shaft. Maung instinctively moved back a step when screaming figures fell past the open doorway from somewhere above, inside the carbon tube.
“What the hell are those?” he asked.
“X-75A,” said the colonel. “The things you’re here to watch, to make sure they don’t break the perimeter. This isn’t really a prison. Mars is a weapons proving ground, a laboratory, and a factory all in one. They’re combat units—genetically engineered for use in a variety of planetary atmospheres.”
“This is all wrong,” Than said. “They’re some kind of monster?”
The colonel laughed. “You don’t know the half of it; that’s all I can tell you. If you knew why we’re making them, you’d sit down and let them eat you. But I’ll be dead by the time we need these things, so to hell with it. And the scientists worked in a fail-safe for us, so we can handle them until they’re deployed for combat missions.”
“That thing you threw into the shaft,” said Maung.
“Yeah, a UV flare.” The colonel moved toward the doorway, motioning for them to follow. “For now they can’t survive in sunlight or UV. It burns them. Stay loose though, sometimes one or two of them resist and stick around.” He stopped at the doorway and peered in. “They’ve been digging again; broke in through the door at night and are trying to get down to bedrock. They do a lot of tunneling, so we call them gophers.”
Maung leaned inside. It took a second for his eyes to adjust to the dim light, but where there should have been a concrete base, it looked as though someone had taken a jackhammer to it, leaving a rough, maw-like hole that descended into darkness. It was so black that it hypnotized him. Maung flinched when the colonel dropped another UV flare, this time into the hole, and from far below they heard loud shrieking, as if from thousands of the creatures. His wetware heated up to process everything. This was another data point, another clue added to the mysteries of the Sommen on Karin and why the drifters wanted to come here.
“What do they eat?” Nang asked. Maung heard the fear in her voice.
“We feed them but that won’t be one of your jobs. Come on.” The colonel reached for the rungs of a ladder affixed to the tube side. “It looks like the elevator is out. I’ll have someone come out here for repairs but until then you’ll have to take care of yourselves. You’ll have plenty of UV flares, though.”
Maung followed him upward and within a minute his arms screamed with the effort of lifting himself in gravity and he despaired that it would take forever to get his strength back. He willed himself to keep going. Soon, near-total blackness enveloped them except for the narrow cones of helmet lamps, and he stopped himself from looking down, not wanting any idea of how far away the ground was. When it hit home that they’d be living this high up, he wondered: How far underground did carbon tube go, and how safe was this thing?
“This tube,” the colonel explained as if reading his mind, “goes hundreds of meters down. A network of smaller tubes filled with UV light surrounds these outposts, to keep the gophers inside their perimeter. The secondary tube network goes down, also all the way to bedrock. There’s really no way for them to escape. But every once in a while they test our safeguards and we have to send a construction crew to fill their tunnels with reinforced concrete and push them back. This is the first time they’ve tried getting into an outpost, though. That’s not good. It shows that they’re getting smart, learning. You’re going to have an interesting night; construction won’t get here until tomorrow to patch the hole and fix the elevator.”
“What are we supposed to do out here?” Maung asked.
“I’ll go over everything when we get to the post. But basically you’ll be responsible for patrolling the surrounding area, and for making crawl inspections through the perimeter tubes—once a week to keep these things from penetrating and to replace burned-out UV lights. There’s an access bunker close by.”
Than broke in. “But what if we meet one of those things? Underground?”
“Kill it. And do your best not to die.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Maung looked out the post’s main viewport and over the surface of Mars toward a series of jagged peaks, fascinated by thousands of shades of red. It would be sunset soon. Already the lower parts of the sky turned blue and in the lengthening shadows there was movement. At first Maung thought his eyes played tricks—the result of exhaustion, from hiking such a long distance and then climbing—but soon it was clear that the creatures gathered, waiting for night. They poured out of camouflaged holes. Maung couldn’t get a good look, even if he put his helmet on and zoomed in; the things were too far away, and the dim light caused static. But before the sun set, Maung got a better view of the perimeter, a vast area enclosed by electrified fence and UV lightposts, inside of which stood towers like the one they now sat atop. Maung lased the closest one with his range finder.
“How far is it?” Than asked.
“Ten klicks. Far enough. We don’t even know if it’s manned.” Maung smelled smoke and lowered the grenade launcher that the American left with them, looking over to see Than take a drag on a cigarette.
“Real cigarette?” he asked.
“Real. I traded part of my first month’s salary with one of those tall guys back at the main facility. This is a weird duty assignment and normal regulations don’t apply. Smoking allowed.”
Maung stared until Than snorted. “No way, Pa. I’m not sharing. I only have one and this weenie cost me a fortune; get your own.”
“Weenie?” Maung tried to inhale as much of the secondary smoke as he could, moving closer to Than, but it did nothing.
“That’s what they call cigarettes here. Those funny-looking, tall Americans.”
Maung watched as the cigarette slowly disappeared. “I hate you, Than,” he said.
Nam broke in and pointed at the elevator airlock. “Sorry to interrupt you girls, but it’s getting dark and I don’t have confidence in the colonel’s fix to our problem. What if we lose power?”
The sun would be gone in minutes. Before he left, the colonel helped the group set up emergency UV lamps to shine down into the broken elevator shaft, to keep the “gophers” from crawling up and into their quarters. Maung flicked them on. The lights were inside the shaft, on the other side of an airlocked entryway, so he couldn’t see them but prayed that they worked.
“We’ll be OK,” he said, at the same time arranging a pile of UV flares, just in case.
“She was crying this morning,” Than said.
“Who?”
“Who? Right.” Than pointed to Nang, who disappeared into one of the small bedrooms off the main living area where he and Than sat, their backs to the viewport. “The only girl for a hundred miles, Pa.”
“So?”
“So nothing. I just thought you’d want to know. She’s not like the rest of the Allies, Maung. She doesn’t hate me and Nam.”
Maung stared at her shut door for a few seconds. He sighed and shook his head. “I know. But right now I have to risk linking up with the local network. We came here to figure things out and I have more questions now than I ever did.”
When Maung disconnected from the data port, the sound of screaming met him; he jumped up, sore, and drew his pistol. The airlock doors were still shut and everyone was awake, sitting across from the airlock and staring at it with weapons drawn, including Nang.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
“They’re screaming,” said Nam. “We think they’re way below us but the metal elevator cables are carrying the noise. The way sound travels on this rock is freaking me out.”
Than asked, “What did you find out from your linkup?”
“Nothing. They must have all the high-level classified stuff on an air-gapped system. I say we try and get some sleep; they won’t get through and if they do, we’re dead anyway. We can go exploring tomorrow.”
“Out there?” asked Than.
“Where else?”
“Screw that,” he said. “I’d rather deal with drifters and Chinese. Gophers my ass.” Than glanced at Nam, who looked away, and then back at Maung. “We made a mistake coming here, Pa; this place is not for our people.”
It was early when Maung rose. Nang already moved in the common area, and he watched as she made breakfast; her ponytail shone in the little sunlight that filtered through a narrow window in the kitchen, and the smell of coffee wafted toward Maung making him realize that there were so many things he’d missed. Before long he sank so deeply into his thoughts that his family appeared again and Maung almost heard them.
Nang jumped when she noticed him. “I thought you were one of those things.”
“I don’t hear them anymore,” Maung said.
“They stopped screaming about an hour ago.”
“Hopefully the Americans will fix the elevator today and we can sleep better tonight.”
Nang nodded. She moved past Maung but then stopped with her back to him, and at first she said nothing. Her shoulders slumped. Maung saw that she wanted to talk and he struggled to think of something to say but even with the help of his semi-aware he couldn’t see through the confusion—of everything that had happened. She smelled like flowers and Maung wanted to bring her in close, never letting go.
“Everything’s really messed up,” he said. “Between me and you.”
Nang turned and looked at the floor. “I’m sorry I spied on you, Maung. But if you’d read the data I did, you’d understand.”
“Tell me.”
“I can’t. It’s all classified and I’d go to jail. But you have to understand something: The Americans aren’t your enemy and they didn’t kill all the Dream Warriors; they didn’t murder your wife. You have it wrong.”
Maung slid an image of his wife from wetware storage. A Myanmar sunset backlit her as she stood before jagged purple mountains, and her training uniform was the deep Chinese green they’d both been so proud to wear. He wanted to reach for her.
I remember that day, his semi-aware commented.
Stop, Maung thought. So do I.
Maung moved into the kitchen and poured a cup of coffee, listening to Nang’s footsteps as she returned to her room; when she was gone he threw the coffee away.
Sweat streamed from Maung’s forehead. The four of them had been hiking across the red terrain for almost an hour, and the sun crept upward over mountains in the distance. They’d already had to rest twice. It took Maung a while to get used to the way sound barely traveled and the suits had a hard time processing it, sometimes relaying comments through helmet speakers, other times through the radio headset. With such a thin atmosphere, sound couldn’t make up its mind. They took a break again, sitting on a wide flat piece of basalt when Nam pointed at a patch of red dirt.
“Look there.”
“What?” Nang asked.
“We’ve been seeing those things’ footprints everywhere. Like they swarm the entire surface at night.” Nam stood and pointed with his pistol at the dirt. “This section is perfectly flat and clean. No sign of gophers at all.”
“Careful,” said Maung. “The colonel warned us that they dig traps for the guards. We’re supposed to stay on rock when we can.”
The patch was about ten feet across and formed a perfect circle. Maung picked up a large rock. He tossed it into the circle’s center and they stepped back when the ground cracked open and the rock passed through a one-inch layer of salt, revealing a perfectly cylindrical shaft that descended into darkness. Maung put one hand on his pistol. He shivered at the thought of having to be careful with every step they took, and worried Nam might have been right; maybe coming to Mars had been a mistake.
“Come on,” he said. “Let’s keep going.”
For the next hour they walked in silence. One by one, each of them took a turn at the front of their small column, and Maung tried to pick the best route, heading toward the mountains and what he thought must have been the center of the prison perimeter. Than mentioned more than once that they needed to turn back before midday if they wanted to reach the perch before sunset, but Maung shrugged off the reminder. His wetware had already calculated it. They could keep going for one more hour before he’d turn them, long before midday, in case one of them got injured. Plus, they were still out of shape; Maung didn’t want to risk pushing too hard only to have someone sprain or break an ankle.
Fifteen minutes later they reached a low set of hills. Maung moved to the front and led the column up a slope of loose scree, doing his best to stay on sections that consisted more of solid rock than of dirt. At the top of the hill was a notch between two huge boulders. It went strangely quiet. The whisper of wind across his helmet pickups stopped as soon as he passed between the rocks, and when Maung reached the other side, the notch opened into a huge bowl, the sides of which consisted of smooth volcanic glass that glinted black. Maung punched at his faceplate controls to deactivate filters and nearly shouted with the pain of brightness. He snapped them back into place. What looked like smears of blood covered portions of the bowl, and bleached human bones rested along its edges, near the lip.
Nam nudged one near his foot as the others gathered, panting. “Human skull.”
“What the hell is this place?” Than asked.
Nang whistled. She knelt and ran a gloved hand along the volcanic glass. “Whatever it is, this bowl is slick. Don’t step on it; you’ll fall straight down. And be careful of the edges, they’re razor sharp.”
Maung looked down. The bowl narrowed gradually to form a huge funnel, the “hole” of which was about a hundred meters down, and he thought he saw movement. Something vanished when he blinked.
“There have to be gophers down there,” he said. He scanned the ridgeline in the distance and then looked downward again. “We should get going back soon. This place will get a lot of shadows and we don’t know if they can move in shadow.”
Nam clicked in. “Ghosts here too, Pa. You remember that major typhoon once, during the war, that killed so many people that bodies washed up in Yangon for months? Look at all these bones. Lots of men died here, violently, and you know like I do: where men die like that . . . always ghosts.”
“We shouldn’t even be near this planet,” Than said.
Maung’s wetware completed its analysis. It reviewed the morphology of the visible bones and body parts, and had drawn data from sensors integral
to the Mars station environment suits, and Maung wasn’t surprised at the results.
“They’re feeding the drifters to these creatures,” he said.
Than shook his head. “That’s impossible!”
“It’s not just possible,” Maung said, “it’s probable. I can see leftover tubes, and there are tiny holes in all these skulls, in the same places you’d expect for a drifter.”
“But how—” Nang said.
Maung cut her off and grabbed at her arm. He pulled Nang at the same time he gestured for the others to follow, leading them back into the notch between the boulders. Nam started to say something over the radio but Maung gestured for him to be quiet. A moment later they rested in the shadows when Maung pointed out toward the bowl and over it, in the direction of the sky. At first there was only a pinpoint of light—a spacecraft. The craft reflected sunlight and made it impossible to identify until it got closer and slowly descended over the bowl, where its engines roared in hover mode. It was a cargo shuttle, Maung realized. Long objects fell from a rear hatch, objects that Maung’s wetware identified as corpses, more and more of which cascaded out of the craft to form a stream of dead. The naked corpses reminded Maung of grisly rain, a downpour of flesh and limbs whose open eyes stared as if surprised.
When the craft left, Than asked, “Why? Why feed them drifters and not regular food?”
“I have a guess,” Maung responded. “But I need more data. I think there’s a food shortage, but it’s also possible that this way is cheaper; cheaper for Karin, cheaper for Mars.”
“We better go, Pa,” said Nam.
They made it back before sunset. This time the tube door was shut, and when Maung punched the access code to open it he saw that fresh concrete had been poured into the hole and chem cured to near total hardness; they stomped on it to make sure. A series of UV lights had also been fixed to the wall, probably, Maung thought, to keep the creatures off it until the material fully cured. Above him the elevator hummed. A few moments later it scraped downward, knocking the UV lights off the walls in a shower of sparks and glass, until it squealed to a stop, its door sliding open. Nang shook her head.
Tyger Burning Page 28