“The truth is we don’t know where they came from, but it hardly matters.” The intelligence officer gave a nervous glance toward the back of the auditorium, where a long row of mirrored windows hid whoever might be sitting in the monitoring rooms. “They’re taking planets we need, they fight us whenever we encounter them, and there’s one heck of a lot of them.”
“I understand that, sir. In fact, I think I’ve heard those exact words somewhere before.” More laughter ensued, as the briefer’s response was a verbatim recitation of the government line. “It’s just that it strikes me as odd that they can’t eat our food, can’t talk to us, and die off after they’ve been with us for any time at all. They can’t make little Sims, and even though they haven’t yet mastered the Step, they’ve traveled across an awful lot of space to snap up those planets you mentioned.”
“What’s your point, Lieutenant?”
“My point is that they’re identical to us with the exception of those traits that keep them from spending any time with us.” An earnest expression replaced the humorous one that he’d worn through much of the exchange. “They’re tailor-made to fight us without any possible way of joining us. So the real question is, who’s making them?”
Mortas awoke with a start much later, to see the plateau bathed in a dull blue light. The stars had come out while he’d slept, showing through the blackness arched over his head. Having so recently come from that void, he stared up at it for a long time as if looking at a picture of home.
Nature called after a short while, though, and he stood up and walked across the hard ground to where he could clearly make out the edge of the ridge. The floor below was too far away to be seen, but he took himself out and pissed on it anyway. The lack of sound, which he’d earlier considered so disturbing, now seemed to comfort him personally. The stillness created a similar sensation within him, and the slightest hint of a breeze finally played across his face as if a hand were gently ruffling his hair.
Finishing, he turned and saw that Gorman was also awake. The mapmaker stood many yards away, eyes and arms skyward, as if beseeching the heavens for a reprieve.
The sun was above the horizon when Mortas awoke. He’d slumped over on his side at some point, and came to with a sore neck and a raging belly. He slowly shifted to a sitting position, happy at least that he was still warm. This led to the thought of how much worse things could have been if they’d been deposited on a Hab planet in wintertime. From the look of things this planet didn’t have a winter, but even if it did they weren’t likely to see it.
Mortas came to his feet slowly, stretching his muscles and looking out over the plain. They’d arrived on the plateau too late the previous evening to see much, and he’d been mistaken in his belief that the region was barren. The sky still showed a purplish tinge, but there were no clouds to impede the sunlight and he could see for miles.
The ridge sloped away from him with a covering of yellowed grass that he’d missed earlier. Rocks of all sizes broke the topsoil in various spots, and not a mile away there was a minor hill that glinted with surface minerals. The dark outlines he’d seen the night before were indeed distant mountains of some kind, and even though the general hue was still orange and brown the whole region seemed somehow friendlier.
Studying the small hill, Mortas noted the way that the ground rose and fell as it approached the top. It reminded him of a game he’d played with the family cat as a child, where he’d moved his legs around under his bedcovers and the feline had jumped all over them as if they were prey seeking escape. That game had created myriad terrain shapes in the blankets, some of them similar to what he was seeing now. The contours of the hill suggested paths to the summit, and he allowed his mind to imagine the platoon he would now never lead, separating into squads and occupying the escarpment as they set up a defensive position.
A sound behind him interrupted these thoughts, and Mortas turned just in time to see Cranther emerge from a dark crevice in the rock near where he’d slept. He marveled at the way the short, wiry man had folded himself into the crack and decided a second later that all the Spartacans must have been taught to do things like that. Reconnaissance outfits relied on stealth and concealment to make up for what they lacked in firepower, and so hiding like that had probably become second nature.
Cranther squatted down, limbering up while his eyes roved all around. He adjusted the skull cap to make it sit more squarely on his head, and then approached.
“See any other Inserts?”
“No.” Once again Mortas felt like he was a step behind, as it hadn’t occurred to him to look.
“Their camouflage would have kicked in when they landed, so they might not be easy to see.” Cranther walked a little closer to the edge, his gaze slowly sweeping over the terrain. “Look for smaller wreckage, and disturbed ground. Our Insert left quite a gash before it ran into the rocks.”
He joined the scout and diligently searched the open plain for a full minute before speaking. “There should be others, right?”
“Depends. With a sudden shipboard crisis, factor in the time it takes to work up an emergency Threshold, and in the end maybe they don’t manage to get a lot of the Inserts launched. And if they were attacked . . .”
“Think they might have sent a distress call?”
“Of course they did. Before they even thought of launching the Inserts, you bet they sent the message trying to save their own hides. Problem is, an emergency Step isn’t like a normal one. It’s supposed to throw us at the nearest Hab, but sometimes that’s not how it works out.” Cranther looked up at him, actually smiling. “Did you know the original name for the Step was Transgression? It means ‘to step across’ but somebody decided that sounded too negative, like we didn’t have a right to go anywhere we damn well please, so they came up with nice words like Step and Threshold. Bet Command had something to do with that.”
Mortas tried to get back to the original topic. “Even with an emergency Step, a search party wouldn’t have too many places to cover, would it? I mean, starting from where the transport sent the distress call.”
“Search party? You kidding me? No such thing, El-tee.” As disturbing as the words might be, Mortas did find some small comfort in the less formal address.
“Really?”
“At least not for a bunch of nobodies like us. Have a general go missing, or a colonel with the right friends, maybe they’d send somebody. But the big boys don’t travel in the Coffin Ships. Nah, they’re always in fancy shuttles with big-tittied technicians and booze and lots of good food. I caught a ride on one of those, once. That’s probably where all our emergency gear went, to give the important people a double chance at survival.”
“Good morning.” The light female voice, coupled with the outlandish greeting, caused both their heads to turn. The dark green of Trent’s flight suit was tracked with orange where she’d slept on the ground. In the full light, Mortas now saw that her hair was a reddish-brown and that her eyes were a striking blue. “I haven’t heard any birds, or seen anything moving . . . at all.”
“Big surprise, huh?” Cranther’s friendly tone had changed to mockery. “With us being so familiar with this place.”
Mortas fired a disapproving look in Cranther’s direction and was pleased when the scout pursed his lips and resumed surveying the plain. Trent seemed not to have noticed.
“I just thought it would be helpful if we had some kind of indigenous life to observe. A flock of birds, maybe they’d show us where the water is.”
“Gotta be careful, though.” Cranther tilted his head skyward. “On Platinus the Sims had these incredible reconnaissance robots that flew just like the birds. Took Command forever to figure that one out.
“But there is something alive here other than the plants.”
“What? Did you see something?”
“No.” The scout pointed at the seat of h
is trousers, where a darkened area had bled across the camouflage pattern. “I slept in a pile of guano last night and didn’t notice it until this morning. Little bead-like things, no idea what made them.”
As hard as he tried not to, Mortas couldn’t keep from snorting in laughter. Trent joined in uneasily, but Cranther didn’t seem to care. Taking a step back from the edge, he canted his head toward a spot on the other side of the plateau. “Let’s see how the Wisp is coming along. He was making some kind of a rock garden last time I saw him.”
Mortas recognized the pejorative term for members of the Holy Whisper cult, but decided not to say anything. The modest connection he’d made with Cranther could be broken at any time, and he’d already laughed at him for no good reason at all. He was still dwelling on that when the trio arrived at the spot where Gorman had been praying the night before.
At first he thought that the objector had gone insane. Gorman stood in the middle of a broad arrangement of fist-sized rocks that were connected by shallow gouges dug in the dirt. The mapmaker was busily writing in the notebook Cranther had given him, and only detected their presence when he stopped to review a segment of his arcane artwork.
“Oh, hello.” Gorman tucked the notebook under one arm and pulled back the sleeve of his flight suit to reveal the timepiece Cranther had been sporting the day before. He unbuckled it while speaking to the scout. “I started the timer when the first rays came over the horizon, Corporal. Just as you asked.”
Cranther accepted the chronometer and replaced it on his wrist. He glanced at Mortas, who was once again kicking himself for having forgotten to track the movement of the strange planet’s sun. “I had to pee a few hours ago and the Wisp here was awake so I asked him to help out.”
Gorman didn’t indicate he’d taken any offense at the insulting term, instead returning his eyes to the rock pattern at his feet. “I was up anyway. Thought I heard thunder at one point, but it was somewhere on the other side of those mountains.”
Mortas looked at Cranther, and the scout shrugged in reply. Not knowing what to make of the thunder comment, he pointed at the chartist’s confusing handiwork. “What’s all this?”
“Well, it’s like I told you, Lieutenant. Sometimes you have to seek guidance from above. I studied the star formations last night, and tracked the movements.” Gorman grinned as he swept a hand across his primitive chart. “I know where we are.”
“This is the Tarlo system. Based on my estimate, I think we’re on the very edge of Twelfth Corps space.”
“That’s the Glory Corps. I was headed there for assignment.” Mortas looked at Cranther. “Know anything about this place?”
The scout was studying the makeshift star map. He walked back and forth slowly, as if orienting himself. “Makes sense. One of the Tarlo planets is listed as a Hab. And you say your orders were taking you to this sector. What about you two? Where were you going?”
“They almost never tell me. Psychoanalysts get rotated pretty frequently.”
“Must keep you from going nuts. How about you?”
“I’m assigned to the Jonas. It’s a cruiser with Twelfth Corps. I was granted leave to make a mandatory pilgrimage to Pacifica.”
“Wisp Central. Got it. So our transport was passing through the area, something happened, and they Emergency Stepped us to a known Hab.”
Mortas tried to keep his eagerness from showing. “But you’re familiar with this place, right?”
“Spartacans are required to memorize the locations and characteristics of all Hab planets in our sector of operations, Lieutenant. That’s so we can get to the nearest base when we’ve got priority intelligence.”
“The nearest base? Wouldn’t you head for Glory Main if you had key information?” Mortas asked, secretly proud that he knew the war zone nickname for the Twelfth Corps main headquarters.
“Spartacans don’t call it that. We get shifted around so often that half the time we don’t know who we’re working for. So for us it’s just Main or Forward. The forward headquarters is usually on a ship looking for trouble and nobody, not even us, ever knows where Main is. Nah, we just head for the closest base and then get passed up the chain.”
“Don’t they come get you?”
“Most of the time, yeah. Other times a ship gets diverted to scoop us up or we hitch a ride with a friendly unit, but sometimes they lose track of us and we have to make our own arrangements.” He waved a hand at Gorman’s model, his voice dropping and the words coming out more slowly. “It’s a funny thing, war in space. Fleets Stepping every which way, one minute they’re here and the next they’re not, but Command makes damn sure we know how to find the things that are more or less permanent. First the military bases, next the human colonies, after that the Sim colonies, and as a last resort the Hab planets that haven’t got anybody living on them yet, human or Sim.
“And we’ve landed on the last kind.” He looked up at Mortas. “There’s nobody here but us.”
Gorman seemed to have missed Cranther’s diagnosis. “Corporal, why would Command want you to head for a Sim planet if you carried important intelligence?”
“Like I said, we make our own arrangements when we have to. The Sims might not be completely human, but they’re human enough for us to use some of their ships. Wren shuttles work the best. You’d be surprised how easy it is to steal one of those on a busy base. But there’s nothing like that here, so it’s not like I’m gonna get a chance to show you how.”
“How can you be sure of that?” Trent’s voice was high, strained. “Just because they told you this wasn’t inhabited, why couldn’t that change? That’s what this war is all about, right? Grabbing up all the good locations? Maybe somebody is here, maybe somebody human, and we just have to find them.”
Cranther raised an open palm toward the sky. “Sure. Why not? Which way you want to go, Captain?”
“That’s enough.” Mortas was startled by the hard edge in his own voice. “That goes for both of you. We need to think here, not fight. Gorman’s given us the most important information we could get right now, and we need to use it.”
“Use it for what? An entry on a pile of stones?” Cranther’s voice maintained its irritating calm, even when he saw that they didn’t understand. “I’ve come across them on other planets, you know. Markers of all kinds, left by the maroons. Like it was important to convince future colonists that the heap of human bones they’d found knew what planet they were on when they starved to death.”
“I don’t accept that at all. There has got to be a way for us to survive. And to get out of here.”
“Really? No distress beacon on the Insert, and nobody’s coming to look for us even if there was. There’s no one else on this entire planet.” Cranther pointed at Trent and Gorman. “These two are gonna drop within a day’s walk—”
“You saying that because I’m a woman?”
“No. It’s because you’re a ship jockey and the most walking you do is to the galley.”
“This ship jockey runs ten miles on a treadmill three times a week.”
“Great. If running in place will save us, you’re in charge.”
“Enough!” Mortas stepped between the two, glaring down at Cranther. “Where, exactly, would we be doing all this walking, Corporal? Where does your experience say we should go from here?”
The scout smiled up at him, his face an animated skull. “My experience? My experience tells me to head for those mountains.”
Mortas looked into the distance, doubtful once again. So far. Too far.
“Why? Get up high? Maybe see something?”
“Nah. There’s nothing to see here. What we need is a nice tall cliff, several hundred feet at least.”
Mortas’s mind struggled with the riddle. “What would that do for us?”
“It’ll make sure we’re good and dead when we finally get so hungry that
we jump off of the thing.”
CHAPTER 3
Walking. Walking. Starving.
Mortas had managed to stay in charge for a full five minutes after deciding that they would move off the ridge. Cranther had walked away from the group momentarily, and Mortas had used that time to direct the others to get their meager gear together. He’d warned Trent and Gorman that the pace would be quick and that they would have to work hard to keep up, but that hadn’t turned out to be the case.
Cranther had rejoined them with his three water hoses draped across his chest and the sullen question of which direction Mortas felt was best. Despite the scout’s dark suggestion regarding the mountains, Mortas chose to head for the escarpment for the simple reason that he couldn’t see anything in any other direction. He also hoped that the mountains might be a source of runoff water, which he doubted they’d find on the empty plain. The day before, just before the sun went down, the mountains had looked like they might have clouds on top of them. And Gorman had thought he heard thunder from that direction sometime that night.
Hoped. Might. Looked like. Thought.
The sun was climbing high in the sky when Mortas asked Gorman to take the lead, intending to point him at the highest peak of the distant chain, but Cranther had stopped him.
“Just because nobody’s here doesn’t mean we can just go walking across the flat in broad daylight. There are some good ravines down there that we can use to hide our movements. I’ll take the first turn on point.”
The scout had addressed Trent and Gorman next. “Okay, the key here is if we do meet somebody or some thing, to meet them on our own terms. That means we walk at a nice steady clip, but not fast. Keep your eyes and your ears open, no talking while we’re moving, and only whisper when we’re stopped. Don’t go kicking any loose rocks no matter how bored you get. And we’re gonna be walking all day, so you will get bored.”
Cranther couldn’t have been more right. Mortas had been on many long marches during his training, but the terrain involved in those exercises had at least been interesting. Once they’d moved off the ridge and into the ravines, their world had basically folded in on itself. The canyons resembled huge cracks in the rock-hard orange ground, and they quickly swallowed the small group. The ravines were deeper than Mortas had first thought, and even though they provided excellent cover, the walls dramatically reduced his field of vision.
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