by Greg Bear
Because what Brom and I saw in the useless and welded-tight hangar of the eastern gate was not a long-dead fossil stuck in a hole. What I saw had the same single, shiny camera eye—but it had moved.
These tunnels are new.
Kobolds may still be hard at work.
DJ IS LOSING focus, distracted—frazzled. He’s murmuring to himself and leading us back to the eastern gate, hoping, I presume, for another branching tunnel, another shaft, something we missed. Brom is telling us all about kobolds, which he knows from a game he played as a kid on Earth. Ghostly diggers, spirits of dead miners; in the game they were horrible, flesh-eating wraiths that pickaxed you in the top of the head, caught the spurting blood in pelican-like beaks, then tore into the rest of you, bones and all, leaving nothing behind.
He’s no better than listening to DJ, and finally, Ackerly tells him to just shut it.
“Right,” Brom says. “Sorry.”
This time, I’m the one who shines his helm light to the left at just the right moment, and instead of seeing metal crystals or black basalt, I see—a wide opening. A branch to the left, pretty straight, sloping down about ten degrees.
DJ inspects this with a puzzled look. “Don’t remember any passage at this kind of angle,” he says.
“You don’t remember shit,” Ackerly reminds him.
“This one’s new, too,” Brom says, pointing to the grooves.
We begin the slight descent. The tunnel grows wider, which I appreciate. DJ insists on taking the lead, and I don’t deny him that much; he may still have a clue. The rest of us do not. He’s stopped mumbling. Ackerly and Brom are silent as well. As the saying goes, it’s quiet, too quiet.
“Will you please just whistle, DJ?” Brom asks after maybe ten minutes.
“No spit,” DJ says. “Running dry.”
All our suits could use a good, long recharge. We’ve been away from resources for hours; suits can typically run for two or three days, but ours have not been fully charged since prep before our drop. They can take all kinds of abuse and keep us alive, but staying comfortable is once again not an option.
“Where are we, anatomically?” Ackerly asks.
“Below the neck, in the chest, I think,” DJ replies.
“Anywhere near the bowels?”
“We might be below the eastern garage, down around the heart,” DJ says. Then he pulls up short, hunching his shoulders and letting out a moan. We’ve come to a round chamber, older, with rust on the walls and a damp floor. His helm light flashes up, around, and he backs off to show us what he’s found. A body.
Human.
I walk around him, and then we gather and focus our lights, which are now almost orange. The sight is ghastly. A man has been cut in half and the walls have been scored in a weird, elongated spiral, all the way down another passage to the right… into darkness.
“Lawnmower,” Brom says.
“It’s a Voor, isn’t it?” DJ asks, staring at me as I turn my light up to his face.
“Yeah,” I say. “The one they called Hendrik.”
“Here’s another,” Brom says. He’s gone about six meters down another passage, also sloping, but this time up. “What the hell?”
“Must have been a firefight,” DJ says.
Just two bodies. Both Voors, both cut to pieces while running away—by a lawnmower shot indiscriminately into the passage. Way overkill.
The evidence chills me.
“We need to get back now,” I say.
Our discoveries are not over. DJ leads us past the second body, up the ascending tunnel, and a few dozen meters beyond, in another circular chamber with four more branching tunnels, we find three more Voors—lined up against a wall and shot with bullets: back-of-the-head-shots, execution-style. No recognizing any of them. Hendrik and the other may have lit out in desperation to escape this organized carnage.
“This is bullshit!” DJ shouts.
“But was it authorized bullshit?” Brom asks. “Who the fuck’s in charge?”
Not Gamecock, I’m pretty sure of that. I’m having to revise everything I’ve thought about our situation. No additional party of Voors from the eastern gate, no reinforcements, no Antags breaking in yet—we’d probably be dead by now or see a lot more destruction if that last were the case.
Looks as if Coyle and our sisters might have scratched an evil little itch, all on their own. But why leave the southern gate? Why abandon both gates? We’d support them no matter what they did because that’s what Skyrines do.
What are Captain Coyle’s orders? What does she know that we don’t?
Does Joe know what she knows?
DJ has fled up the widest tunnel. We’re losing cohesion. Then he starts shouting, not more than twenty meters ahead. “It’s a fucking boneyard! They’re all over in here!”
Very reluctantly we join him in the biggest chamber we’ve found yet, about sixty meters across, a great, dark stone hollow surrounded by a head-high shelf of foggy-silver metal. I’m expecting to see dead Voors and Skyrines smeared all over—a hecatomb of combat mayhem.
Nothing of the kind.
“More kobolds!” Brom says, voice down to a hard whisper.
Hundreds, maybe thousands of them, massed around the walls like a river-piled deadfall, their jointed tubes and pads jumbled in with long heads and camera eyes—still pale, still supple, but motionless, silent, and in such confusion I can’t begin to figure out what the mass would have looked like alive and working.
Maybe the kobolds had come together like Tinkertoys to become a single machine, to more efficiently carve out the lava and metal with hundreds of grinding, cutting pads, still busy, still digging—
DJ splashes through an ankle-deep pool. The chamber appears to have been expanded within the past few days or weeks. Water could have been kept longer in the lower tunnels, allowing the kobolds more time to keep digging—until they connected with a dry passage and everything drained. But draining water wasn’t what killed them. They can move around for some time even after the water is gone—I saw one do just that. Maybe they can even keep working.
A gigantic mining machine, a big operation—
Until somebody—possibly Captain Coyle herself, or Gunny de Guzman, whom I first saw with the lawnmower—ran rampant and sprayed beams all through the hollow. Spiraling scorch marks rise across and around the walls, cleaving the thick masses of kobolds, up to the rugged ceiling. By definition, a lawnmower is excessive—so what’s an excess of excess? Mad, thorough destruction.
Our sisters might have figured they were about to be attacked. Maybe they were attacked. But we see no blood, no human bodies—except for Voors.
Ackerly and Brom and DJ stand at the center of the hollow, stunned. “This is our shit!” Ackerly says, his voice very low now, trying to reason through the threat, the cause. “What if these fucking kobolds are Ant scouts—little buggy drones or shit? They’re inside, checking things out, making their moves, so our sisters righteously carved them into lunch meat!”
“These aren’t Ant drones,” Brom says quietly.
I agree. They don’t fit any known pattern, don’t carry weapons, and haven’t hurt us or even threatened us.
“Maybe it doesn’t matter if you’re a kobold whether you’re alive or dead,” Ackerly says. “Maybe they can revive and spring up and grab you… like zombies! Soda straw zombies.”
“Shut up,” DJ says in fierce disgust.
They’re all looking right at me. It’s never good when Skyrines start plumbing the depths of their intellect.
“We have to get back to Sanka,” I say. It’s all I can think to do: finish our mission, pass the buck—inform our commander the eastern gate is locked, we haven’t seen any Antags in the Drifter…
Only kobolds, whatever the fuck they are.
DJ walks ahead and we follow, muttering in the shadows and damp as he flings his arm right, then left, guiding us. We’re moving fast. Our heads hurt from all the pressure changes.
He halts at a wide spot in the tunnel and slams his hand against a hatch set into the wall, covering an opening in the floor about two meters wide, not an airlock but maybe watertight. “Okay,” he says. “I know this one. This covers a shaft that takes you down maybe fifty meters, to where nobody’s been except maybe the Voors. If we can get it open.”
“And you know that because…?” I ask.
“I told you!” he shouts. “The booth. It’s… up here, you know?” He taps his head again and I feel a sudden anger, an outrageous urge to just start kicking him and the walls, because it’s all so nuts. Would a little certainty and sanity hurt whoever’s in charge, please, just this once?
Instead, I ask, “Will it take us any closer to the southern gate?”
DJ thinks this over. “No,” he says. “Deeper, down to a big void, no idea what’s inside.” He kneels and manages to pry up one side. “Look, it’s not locked.”
The door is light, not steel—probably some polymer printed out by the depositor.
“Is there space down there for a good-sized group to hide?”
“Definitely,” DJ says. “Really big.”
“Fucking hold fire!” someone shouts from down the tunnel—a woman. “Seventh Marines, Akbar!”
I recognize the voice. It’s Captain Coyle.
“Fuck,” Brom says under his breath.
First down the tunnel walks Vee-Def, pushed out front by Sergeant Mustafa, and he doesn’t look happy. He gives me a warning glance as helm lights flash. Theirs is not a cordial relationship.
“Fuck this shit,” he says wearily, and Mustafa taps him on the back of his neck with the butt of her sidearm. He reels forward and falls to his knees.
Ackerly, Brom, and DJ form a tight square around me, and we all palm sidearms.
Mustafa glares. “He’s being an asshole,” she says, then reaches to help Vee-Def back to his feet.
Coyle and four of our sisters come out of the shadows and join us in the wide spot, where they surround us like it’s old home week, checking us over, casually checking status of our sidearms, monkeys picking nits, social as shit in a chute—but my head is buzzing, my adrenaline is way up.
Shrugging off Mustafa’s help, Vee-Def stands. His eyes are heavy, and not just with pain. Betrayal. Rage.
“What the hell happened to you?” I ask Coyle.
Without meeting my eyes, she softly, gently tells us about the unexpected arrival of twelve more Voors, coming in through the eastern gate, fully armed with pistols and assault weapons. Her voice is flat, deadly calm, like she’s on some sort of drug.
“The Voors drew down,” she says, pacing around the hatch. DJ bends and swings the hatch up. At Mustafa’s scowl, DJ backs off. “There was a brief struggle, nearly everyone returned fire. Two Voors were killed by bolts, two of ours were killed by projectiles, and we overwhelmed the rest. Some broke loose and ran down here. When we got here, they ambushed us, attacked us again.”
“What about Lieutenant Colonel Roost?”
“Killed in the first attack.” Coyle suddenly looks right at me, face like an angry little girl’s, defying me or anyone to say she’s a liar, but that’s exactly what she is, a liar—and we all know it.
The ladies have sidearms out and charged. De Guzman levels that goddamned lawnmower, expression total trigger. I idly observe that if she fires she’ll take out not just us but half her team.
“Ladies, ladies,” Ackerly says, holding up his hands.
DJ’s sweating, losing focus.
“Where’s Teal?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” Coyle says. “Doesn’t matter.”
The sisters loosen their ring but not their vigilance.
“Listen up,” Coyle says, her voice ringing against the walls as if she’s addressing a platoon. “We have orders. New orders. The Antags are going to overwhelm this place, and command doesn’t want it to fall to them. So we’re taking all our spent matter and mining explosives and shit… rigging it to release all at once. We’re going to collapse the upper works.”
Brom and Ackerly shake their heads and look dubious. DJ stands aside, back hunched, like he’s going to be sick. He keeps looking at the hatch.
“Sir, why not mount a defense until they reinforce?” Brom asks pertly, as if rational questions are still in order. Ackerly pokes Brom in the ribs but it doesn’t seem to register. “We have the weapons, you say we have enough charges—”
Coyle ignores him and turns to me. “Where have you been?” she asks.
“The eastern gate,” I say.
“Find the Voors?” she asks, bold as whiskey.
“We’re on board, Captain,” I say. “Carry out your orders. We’ll move back to the southern gate and wait for all of you before we abandon the Drifter.”
“I need your assurance that you understand my orders supersede any others,” Coyle says. There are dark moments coming, that’s what I get from her weird, don’t hit me, little girl look. Orders are orders whether you like them or not. Captain Coyle does not like her orders. Not one bit. But she’s an excellent Skyrine.
SNKRAZ.
“I don’t know why you didn’t confide in us in the first place, Captain,” DJ says dreamily, rubbing his neck. There are streaks on his cheeks, I notice for the first time, like he’s been rubbing them with green dust.
“What’s with him?” de Guzman asks.
“He’s tired,” I say. “Like all of us.”
“Execute in sequence,” Coyle says. “Need to know. Anyway, it’s all out now. We came back because our detonators aren’t up to the task. We’re taking another pair down to the Church, and then we’ll climb up and join you at the southern gate. Apologies, Master Sergeant. We’ll leave Lance Corporal Medvedev with you.”
So she, too, knows about the Church.
The ladies slip down the hole beneath the hatch, covering us as they depart. De Guzman goes last. And just as suddenly as it began it’s over, like a wicked, ugly dream.
“Don’t listen to them,” Vee-Def says. “They want us dead. All of us. It’s a suicide mission.”
DJ says, “Strong tea, ain’t it?”
COLD COMFORT
Alice Harper has called a minivan to the curved drive outside our building. In the rearmost seat, far away from the driver—who sits behind a plastic shield anyway, and probably isn’t listening—I continue my story, speaking low, eyes darting at the bright, cloudy day, wondering where she’s taking me but not really caring.
I feel very funny indeed. This isn’t Cosmoline, nor is it getting used again to Earth air and gravity. My mind is filling again with ghostly thoughts, visuals, details, all fragmented and swirly. Not direct experience, not sensual input or something I read or saw, more like a direct feed into my cortex. Maybe it’s another kind of angel taking form in my skull, trying to awaken. It hurts, sort of—but this is an interesting sort of pain, like freshly exercised muscles.
Then my mood flips. All things unexpected turn out badly; that’s the truth of battle. Most of the things we do expect turn out badly, as well. I’m not a happy camper, in any case, and my innards are knotting—both stomach and brain.
“I’m going to be sick,” I say.
“No, you aren’t,” Alice says.
“I am sick, inside,” I say.
“Not really,” she says. She sounds like she knows something but she doesn’t want to tell me, not here, not yet. And suddenly that’s okay. I’m compliant again, complaisant. I do feel strange, but I trust her. That makes no sense, even if she is pretty and a good cook and knows how to take charge.
She fed me cioppino. Fish and clams and crab and vegetables. Delicious.
“Did you drug me?” I ask.
“No,” she says firmly, and pats my knee before unhitching and moving up front to talk to the driver. When she returns, she tells me, “You didn’t come back as Master Sergeant Venn, did you?”
“No,” I say.
“Joe sent you back with another ID, and in the crowding and confusion,
out on the dust and on the orbital—nobody checked, right?”
“Or didn’t care. Focus on getting us all home.”
“Joe figured the brass would take a couple of days to start putting together all your stories. A couple of days before they decided to round you all up and isolate you. That’s why he told you to stay away from MHAT.”
“Right,” I say.
“He didn’t think it would be a good idea for him to join you right away. Too many eggs in one basket. So he sent me. And no, I did not drug you. But you are now full of essential supplements and vitamins.”
“Are those making me sick?”
“You’re not sick,” she emphasizes, a little ticked. Her patience is wearing thin. I am trying her patience. I am trying her patience on for size and finding it’s just too sheer. I can see through it. I can be either patient or impatient.
Shit, I am drugged—looping out and in, flying free…
And then, not.
My head is clear as a ringing bell.
“What the fuck happened up there?” I ask her.
“You tell me,” she says. “But not here. We’ll be where we’re going soon, in an hour.”
“And where is that?”
“Safe, quiet, remote. Joe says he’ll try to be there when we arrive.”
“We both made it, you know. We both got off Mars.”
“I know.”
“They wanted to kill us. All of us.”
“So I heard.”
“But you want me to wait before I learn the truth, don’t you? Before I figure it all out, or somebody tells me.”
She nods. “Patience. Won’t be long, Vinnie.”
On the return trip, before we slipped into the Cosmoline, the orbital crew promised us all campaign medals stamped with our company blaze. But what’s inside my head, what’s happening to me, and maybe to others besides me—to DJ, for example—
Will shove all that aside.
I’m being hustled away by a zaftig, pretty female who’s a great cook, knows how to sling and deliver the right supplements, claims she knows Joe—and also knows what’s good for me.
“One last thing,” I say.