by Linda Nagata
“There may be a reason, but it’s not one you need to understand. Get that helicopter fired up and get the hell out of there. That is an order.”
Kanoa is at least partly right. We need to be gone, and soon, before a call gets through to the Canadian military. So I gesture at Escamilla. “Check for the key, and then get things started.”
“You stealing my helicopter?” Jaynie asks, glaring at Escamilla as he opens the pilot-side door and leans inside.
“This your operation?” I don’t want to believe it. “Come on, Jaynie. You’re not going to Mars.”
“Key’s here!” Escamilla calls out. He looks in the back. “Seats have been pulled. Cargo configuration, but we can work with that.”
“Do it.”
Jaynie drops her chin like a fighter. “Mars is the goal we’re working on.”
“That’s fucking crazy.”
Escamilla peels off his pack and his helmet. He starts popping cinches on his dead sister because his rig has to come off before he can fit in the pilot’s seat.
Jaynie looks at him, looks at me. “I’m not the one walking around with wires in my head, Shelley.”
No, she’s just the one thinking about going to Mars. And it scares me because it’s possible. A one-way, privately funded expedition is under development. A lot of dragons are behind it. It wasn’t long ago that I heard chatter in the barracks about the pending launch of an advance robotic mission intended to deliver supplies ahead of a crewed expedition.
“Did you buy in, Jaynie?”
She nods. “I did.”
Dragon-scale money was in play on our last mission together. I did my part to see that Jaynie and Delphi wound up with it, because I wanted Jaynie to have the freedom to build a sanctuary somewhere beyond the influence of the Red. Mars fits that description, but Mars is a mistake.
“There is nothing on Mars for you, Jaynie. Not even air to breathe.”
“Were you sent here to tell me that?”
I hesitate. Jaynie has a paranoid fear of the Red and its influence over her life, but there is a resonance of truth in her words. “Maybe.”
I look again at the tunnel entrance. I want to be sure. “Delphi’s not here, is she?”
Jaynie follows my gaze. “She’s been looking for you. Did you know that? She never believed you were dead. I kept telling her there was no way—” She doesn’t get any further. Her control cracks; her voice climbs an octave. “Goddamn you, Shelley, why didn’t you come home?”
Roman is still standing watch, anonymous behind her visor, but I can see Escamilla’s face. He’s sitting in the pilot’s seat, hesitating over the checklist as he waits to hear what I will say. He made the same choice I did. Everyone in the squad made the choice to walk away from the lives they’d lived before. We all share that guilt—and I know better than to apologize for it.
“We are engaged in a war against Armageddon, Jaynie. No one goes home from that.”
Escamilla nods in grim approval as he returns to his task, but Jaynie’s eyes are glistening. She leans in close. Her gloved hand touches my arm; her eyes plead with me. “Stay. We’ll make room for you to go with us. We’ll get the wiring out of your head. You’ll be okay.”
I don’t believe in coincidence. I am not here by chance.
“I’m not going to Mars, Jaynie, and neither are you. It’s suicide. A mistake you can’t come back from.” She pulls away, but I catch her arm. “I need you to listen to me. I need you to understand the way things are, because there is a new standard in the world. It says that everyone has to be visible, everyone accountable. So don’t keep your secrets too close or some jackboot like me will kick in your door to find out what you’re hiding.”
She jerks her arm free of my grip and backs away. “Go to hell.”
Logan comes through the tunnel. “Load your gear,” I tell him. I shrug off my pack, but Kanoa intercedes. “You’ve still got Dr. Parris’s sample case.”
“You want me to give it back to her?”
Jaynie has retreated toward the tunnel, but she’s watching me warily.
“We’ve got no reason to keep it. It’s not biowarfare material, so hand it over.”
“Jaynie, wait.” I get the black case out of my pack. “This belongs to Dr. Parris.” I hold it out to her. “It’s biological material, microbial cultures. She says it’s not dangerous, but you should talk to her about it, use your judgment.”
Jaynie crosses her arms, raises her chin, puts on a skeptical expression. “You want me to return that to her?”
I don’t want to argue about it. “Do what you want.”
“I intend to.” Despite her defiant tone, she comes to take the case from me. Her hand is shaking. I think maybe mine is too.
Escamilla calls out, “We need to get the hangar doors open!”
Logan responds, “I’m on it!”
We are pirates, taking what we need. “Jaynie, listen. I’m sorry. About the helicopter. It’s just that we need to move fast, so we don’t really have a choice.”
She draws back. “You’re sorry about that? Don’t worry. It’s insured. Now get the fuck out of here.” She retreats to the tunnel. But as Logan opens the hangar doors, letting in the rush of the wind, Jaynie turns back. She projects her voice to make sure I hear her. “Hey, Shelley, maybe we’ll meet again—on Mars, after the war!” Then she’s gone.
Logan steps up to my side. His thermal mask is rolled up to expose his face. “I didn’t think that could ever happen.”
I tell him what I told Tran before this fucked-up mission started. “Never trust the Red.”
Never think you understand it.
• • • •
The wind is in our favor, ferrying the helicopter south to Sigil, but it’s still strong enough to generate white-knuckle turbulence. Escamilla says nothing, all his attention focused on the controls as he works to keep us on course and steady.
Logan, Roman, and Tran are in back on the floor, crammed in with our packs, our weapons, and the folded bones of our dead sisters. I’m riding in the copilot’s seat. All of us have our helmets on. Mine shows me the terrain in the green glow of night vision. I’m supposed to be helping Escamilla navigate, but mostly I’m thinking about Jaynie and Delphi and how hard it must be to get to Mars, and how utterly and forever beyond my reach they would be when, inevitably, things begin to go wrong. It’s a line of thought that links to a weird, familiar panic and for just a few seconds I’m back on the First Light mission, aboard the C-17, and Colonel Rawlings is telling me the harsh truth: You can’t do anything for her.
This time, though, I’m forewarned.
My short trip into low earth orbit required a twenty-million-dollar rocket. Mars is literally another world, vastly farther away. I know the transit will involve complex orbital dynamics and gravity boosts, but it will also require a rocket a hell of a lot bigger and costlier than the one that ferried me into orbit.
A rocket like that should be easy to track down.
My thoughts snap back to the present when my skullnet icon flicks on: fiery red veins against a black background. A flood of manufactured anxiety hits me, overwhelming my homegrown fears and bringing with it a premonition that death is on its way. I’m not the only one who receives the warning. Chatter erupts over gen-com as everyone speaks at once.
“What the fuck?”’
“Something’s up?”
“What is it? Anybody know?”
“Kanoa, you got anything for me?” I look out the windshield, but all I see is the rugged ice below us, its low peaks and pinnacles smoothed by the recent fall of snow.
Kanoa checks in, grim-voiced, speaking to the entire squad. “Warning, warning. Radar indicates a fighter coming in low and dark. Tracks back to a Chinese carrier off Greenland. Trajectory indicates an intercept. Shelley—”
“Full throttle!” I yell at Escamilla. “Get us into Canadian territory.”
I tell myself there is no way a Chinese fighter will shoot us down over te
rritory claimed by Canada, but Kanoa puts an end to my fantasy when he says in a deadly calm voice, “Ninety seconds to missile range.”
Dr. Parris suspected Vince Glover had a Chinese connection. It’s starting to look like she was right—and when the Chinese decide to clean up a dirty situation, they don’t fuck around.
“Down!” I yell at Escamilla. “Put us on the ice.”
“Roger that.”
Our airspeed slows; the deck drops away beneath me. I twist around to look in back.
Night vision details Logan, Tran, and Roman huddled on the cargo floor, their opaque visors turned in my direction. “Rig up!” I tell them. “Move, move! Claim your compass points, and when we hit the ice, scatter!”
Scattering is the trained response of an LCS under air attack. The more distance we put between each soldier, the harder a pilot has to work to gun us down.
Roman is first up. “North!” she says as she snaps open the folded frame of her dead sister.
Tran is right behind her. “West.”
There’s not enough room to extend the rigs all the way, not enough room to stand up straight. They strap in anyway. It’s a chaos of titanium bones and Arctic camo as they bend and crouch and help each other secure their cinches.
Logan eases his pack on, careful not to knock anyone down. Over gen-com, he says, “Escamilla! You—”
I cut him off. “I’ll take care of Escamilla.”
“Right, sir. I’m south, then—and you’d better get rigged.”
“Clear some room.”
They press against the walls. I get out of my harness and climb over the seats. Tran has my rig unfolded, the leg struts bent in a crouch. I cinch up. The deck sways, but Tran and Roman both grab me, keep me from falling. Logan helps me get my pack on. I grab my HITR from the floor and loop it over my shoulder. “Escamilla, you are east. Got that?”
“Yes, sir!”
“As soon as you get this ship down, roll out the door and fucking run for your life. I will get your gear to you.”
“Roger that, Shelley.”
Logan is crouched by the eastern window. Night vision shows me a slice of sky behind him, marred by a dark mote moving fast between the stars.
“Escamilla, why aren’t we on the ground?”
“We need a place to land, sir. There’s smooth ice ahead. Maybe twenty seconds.”
Too much time.
“Get us as low as you can. Logan, Tran, open the doors.”
A sliding door on each side gets slammed back, admitting a blast of arctic air along with the roar of the oncoming jet, audible even over the helicopter’s own engine noise.
“Ten seconds,” Escamilla says.
I wait with Logan. Roman and Tran are on the other side. The ice, shot through with broken pinnacles, speeds past, five meters below us.
“You are within missile range,” Kanoa warns.
“Rocket!” Logan yells.
“Jump! And not into the fucking rotors!”
A half second of blurred motion, and they are gone. It’s only me and Escamilla. I reach over the seat and pop his harness. “Get the fuck out.” Then I turn, grab his gear, pitch it out the left doorway—the doorway facing east, the one that shows me the fiery trail of a rocket slaloming toward me—and I follow the gear, rolling out the door, praying I don’t collide with Escamilla.
I slam shoulder-first into the ice. My momentum flips me into the air. I come down on my arm struts in an explosion of snow just as the rocket finds the helicopter. Flame enfolds the world and the pressure wave hits, knocking me back in time, all the way back to Dassari: my legs blown off, unable to move, and the fighter screaming overhead, the muddy ground trembling beneath me.
The Chinese fighter blows past and the vibration wanes. The present locks back in. It’s not mud I’m clinging to; it’s ice. I shove the terror away and make myself scan the squad icons.
Not all green, but none flashing critical red either.
“Escamilla! Status?”
“Moving, sir!” He sounds like he’s speaking through gritted teeth. “I think I broke a fucking rib.”
I slap the ice with my arm hooks, launching myself to my feet. In the west, night vision shows me the fighter coming around for another pass. “Enemy incoming! If you’ve got cover, take it!”
I race north, looking for Escamilla’s gear. I find it only twenty meters away. The squad map puts him southeast of my position. I scoop up his pack and the folded bones of his dead sister and take off in that direction, the leg struts of my exoskeleton powering me over the rough terrain.
The fighter is roaring in low, hunting us, hunting me. I’m the one in motion. I don’t want to lead him to Escamilla, so I look for a ridge or a pinnacle of ice high enough to hide me, but I don’t see anything like that. What I see is oily smoke curling over a pool of open water. No sign of the helicopter.
I hear a burst from the fighter’s autocannon. The pilot has found a target. My squad map assures me no one else is in motion, so I’m pretty sure his target is me. I drop Escamilla’s gear. I think maybe Kanoa is yelling at me, but I’m not listening. How can I listen? Despite the protection of my helmet, the jet’s roar is all I hear. It’s Dassari all over again—and maybe because I came so close to dying like this before, I opt for a different way out.
No less terrifying.
I drop my HITR and shrug off my pack, throwing it behind me, hoping it will provide a target to distract the pilot. Then I dive, sliding across the ice toward the open water. I’ll drown this time rather than being blown apart again.
Given a choice, though? I’d rather live.
Just before I drop over the edge of the ice, I pivot on my belly and hammer my arm hooks into the edge of the floe. My legs hit the water first. The weight of my dead sister pulls me down, plunging me under the surface. I am fully extended, hanging by my arm hooks, knowing that if those hooks slip or if the ice breaks, I’m heading for the ocean floor.
The full impact of the cold is tempered by my thermal layer, which keeps the water away from my torso and my limbs, but as my helmet floods, the water touches my lips, my nose, my eyes. I squeeze my eyes shut, imagining my shocked brain shrinking to a tiny, hot point.
It’s not imagination when I feel the ice snap away under my right hook. The hook slips, but it catches again. And then there’s a muffled boom! The ice shudders. The hook slips a second time.
I want to breathe.
Worse than that, the water is finding its way inside my thermal suit, seeping past the neckline and the wrist cuffs, climbing my thighs—it feels like razor blades slicing away my skin—and I change my mind about the kind of death I prefer.
I haul against the arm hooks, expecting them to slip. If they slip, my only chance is to un-cinch before I go too deep. Down on the bottom it’ll be so cold, my body might never rot. Buried in silt, I could become a fossil for some freaking ape to dig up in twenty million years. Or I’ll be food for crabs and starfish.
The arm hooks hold.
My helmeted head breaks the surface, the water drains away, and I breathe. Releasing my right hook, I reach across the surface of the floe, jam the point in, and haul myself high enough to get an elbow over the edge. The hooks hold me, so I don’t slide back. I reset them one at a time, dragging myself up onto the floe.
I lie there, watching the water drain out of my sleeve, amazed at the way it transforms into thin sheets of white ice before it quite escapes. I notice my body shaking uncontrollably. It’s a clinical observation. I tell myself I’ll be all right. My thermals are designed to hold in heat whether they’re wet or dry.
I make myself focus on the present. First thing: Scan my squad icons. They are green and yellow, but I’m shivering too hard to read the details. I push myself up to a sitting position. The wind is blowing, but I feel it only as a pressure. Maybe I’m too cold to feel colder. Maybe my gear is doing its job.
The night has gone quiet. So quiet, a stray thought questions if I’ve gone deaf—or ma
ybe the audio gear in my helmet has shorted out? I decide to test it, though my chattering teeth make it hard to talk. “R-roll c-call,” I say over gen-com.
It’s a relief to hear them respond:
“Logan.”
“Roman.”
“Escamilla.”
“Tran.”
“W-where’s the f-fighter?” I ask no one in particular.
Then I see it myself. It’s in the northeast, a ghostly arrowhead in night vision, halfway through a wide turn that will bring it around for another pass.
It never finishes that turn.
The sky is clear, but distant thunder rumbles in the south—and the Chinese fighter reacts, pulling straight up, rocketing toward the stars like it’s intending to leave the planet. In seconds, it’s too small to see, and then the southern thunder resolves into the roar of at least two more fighters streaking in pursuit.
I presume it’s a show of force, the Canadian Air Force scrambled to defend their offshore claims. I get up, as the two jets pass far to the east.
“Logan, y-you got an injury r-report?”
“Yes, sir. Escamilla thinks he’s got a broken rib. Me and Tran are just banged up and bruised.”
“Do we have mobility?”
Escamilla growls, “I can walk.”
“Kanoa, y-you there?”
“Here.”
“We need a n-new extraction plan.”
“In process. Stand by.”
I make myself stand up. I need to move. Generate some heat. Give my thermal layer something to work with. So I go looking for my pack.
I dropped it as a decoy and I guess the strategy worked, because I find a second crater where the pack should be. A film of newly frozen ice is already forming on the surface of the open water.
I look around, but my squad is hunkered down and I can’t see them. I don’t see Escamilla’s gear either. I’ve got a feeling the crater swallowed it too, and it’s on its way to the bottom.
“Escamilla, I think I lost your gear.”
“Goddamn it, Shelley. I can’t fucking trust you for anything.”