by Jael Wye
To her horror, she felt her chin wobble slightly. “No, no, no!” she said, pulling her hands out of his hold. She yanked her hood up sharply. “M’Chan, as soon as we are no longer in mortal danger, you may be as charming and sexy as you please.” She jerked on her gloves. “Until then, please try to treat me like a betentacled brain sucker, like usual. Otherwise I will melt into a sobbing puddle on the floor, and you will be forced to scoop me up and carry me out of here.”
Cesare’s eyes had gotten wider and wider as she spoke. Then, suddenly, he threw his head back and laughed. Eventually, Bianca found herself smiling too, if a little weakly. Still laughing, Cesare stood and pulled her feet.
“You have a mag way of putting things, Spacebabe,” he said, grinning down at her.
Just then, the navigation panel chimed an alert. The other rover was drawing near.
Cesare’s smile vanished instantly. “Time to get gone,” he said.
Following Cesare’s lead, she quickly guzzled down a hydrocarb pouch. Then they snapped on their visors and left the rover, climbing down to the polished stone floor of the entry building. Thick, dusty shadows pressed close around them. At the back of the chamber was the mouth of the tunnel proper, a black hole gaping wide. They tapped on their suit lights, and a pale golden radiance spilled out around them, pushing back the dark.
Cesare called up his maps on his suit cuff. “We’ll be at the next entrance in about forty-five minutes. Stay right behind me.” He paused, glancing at her from behind his visor. “You really think I’m charming and sexy?” His voice rumbled in her ear com.
She gathered herself. “You have your moments,” she sniffed. “When you’re not driving like a moony.” She took a deep breath and let him draw her into the darkness.
* * *
Javier Woods stared at the crushed-up, empty rover blocking the entrance to the old mine. Chan thinks he’s a clever zazhong, doesn’t he. Woods chuckled to himself.
He turned back to his own rover opened up one of the smaller bot bays. Inside was a military-grade spy drone he had gotten hold of for this type of situation. He lifted the compact little bot out of its crate and set it on its launcher in a relatively clear space a few meters away from his rover. He tapped out a few commands to the thing on his cuff and stood back to watch. Slowly, its translucent solar sails began to unfold until it looked like some kind of giant insect. It launched itself into the rusty sky and quickly vanished, its camouflage and disrupter programs rendering it invisible to most sensors, as well as the human eye.
Those mookies would have to surface eventually, and when they did, the drone would be on them. They were on foot. It would be almost too easy.
This time, there was no one within range to come to the rescue. He had managed to eavesdrop on Chan’s com with his brother this morning. He knew that they were all alone out here. All alone with him.
Woods got back in the rover. He had to be ready to go when the drone found its prey. Soon. Had to be soon. He had been waiting too much lately.
To pass the time he began putting together different scenarios of what he would do once the mookies were in his hands. He would make it worth the wait, he promised himself. So many possibilities.
* * *
For the seventeenth time that day, Bianca had to clamp her teeth down on an urge to ask Cesare “How much farther?” Not going to act like a greenie. Not going to do it. But the past four hours since they abandoned their rover in the old mine had been pretty damn grueling.
There had been kilometers of abandoned mine tunnels, then flight after flight after flight of ladders to climb to get back up to the surface, and now there were more kilometers of rocky slopes and icy fissures to get through before they found to the bolt-hole that would finally take them to safety. The entire time, Cesare had been leading the way, moving with unflagging, fluid energy like some kind of Mars-walking machine. Funny how mortal danger had snapped him right out of his earlier moodiness.
She, on the other hand, was feeling a distinct lack of optimism, as well as a creakiness in her stride. Her usual exercise regimen had left her woefully unprepared for this hike.
How does one usually train for getting chased across the surface of Mars by homicidal maniacs? Something to ponder.
They had begun climbing up a talus slope at the foot of a gigantic canyon wall. The vertical cliff face was seamed with smaller fissures running back into the rock until they disappeared into icy shadow.
Suddenly, with a few long strides, Cesare climbed to the top of a lichen-encrusted boulder and stood, scanning his visor specs over the furrowed wall before them. Bianca took the opportunity to plop down on another rock and rest for a moment.
Cesare peered intently at the map on his cuff, and then lifted his hand to point. “See that big crack just over there? The bolt-hole is in there somewhere.”
“You don’t have the exact location?”
“The Earthers never made any record of their secret tunnels. Otherwise they wouldn’t be secret, right?” He flashed his grin down at her. “There’s a transponder set to mark the entrance. We can latch on to its signal when we get close enough.” He jumped down from his perch, ready to go.
Bianca suppressed a sigh, looking down at her aching feet. Then she paused. Tucked up against the boulder she was leaning against was a little plant. Its small, furry leaves were an almost shocking green against the red rock. “Cesare, come take a look at this,” she said. She knelt down to examine the plant more closely.
How amazing that something so delicate could live and grow in such a harsh place as this. Carefully she lifted up the leaves. Hidden at the heart of the plant was a single small, perfect flower. Five white petals around a little golden eye. “Exquisite,” she breathed.
Cesare’s shadow fell across the rock as he crouched down beside her. “Ay, nearly as beautiful as you are,” he said softly.
She looked up, and her breath caught. He was looking at her with that devastating smile smoldering behind his visor.
Her heart began to pound in a familiar, fierce excitement. Then she quickly got control of herself. He was just doling out an easy line he could have used with a hundred women. Playing with her. But she couldn’t play. Not anymore. She carefully let down the leaves of the plant, drawing her usual look of polite distance over her face as she did. “We should get going,” she said.
He drew back from her slightly. The wicked fire in his gaze banked, and something like confusion, or disappointment, took its place. He stood up, and then reached down to help her to her feet. “Not much longer Spacebabe,” he said in a casual tone. “Home in time for dinner, right?”
“You said home in time for tea.”
Cesare started walking. “It was just an expression. You take everything too seriously.”
“And you don’t take anything seriously enough,” she returned.
She saw his broad shoulders shift slightly at her words. But he said lightly, “I’ve already been informed of that several times, don’t worry.”
Bianca instantly felt sorry. She knew first hand that her accusation wasn’t true at all. “I didn’t mean...”
“Nobody meant anything,” Cesare said.
“Right,” she mumbled.
They had begun working their way up the slope toward the canyon wall. After a solid half-hour of hiking, they finally reached the fissure that Cesare had pointed out earlier. It had looked insignificant against the backdrop of the towering cliff face, but when they stood at the tall, narrow opening in the rock, Bianca saw that it was nearly a kilometer long, the steep floor a chaos of cracks and rills, with a liberal scattering of giant boulders and curtains of ice. It was going to take some doing to find the bolt-hole entrance in there.
“Stay right behind me,” Cesare said.
“Wait. If we split up, we can find the transponder faster,”
Bianca said. A meal and a cleanser were almost within reach. She couldn’t get them soon enough.
“All right. As long as we stay within shortrange,” he said.
He tapped the transponder wave over to her suit cuff and they started off, each of them moving along opposite walls of the crack, scanning for a signal as they went.
It was slow going. Up and down, over and around rocks of every size and shape. Frost and dust slipped under her boots as she climbed. The wave remained stubbornly silent.
About a third of the way up, ice began to swallow up the rock. She paused for a moment, looking up along the cliff. A long spill of a glacier flowed down the side of the canyon and over the ground. She gingerly started picking her way up and over the tumbled ice. Suddenly, she heard a faint ping on the wave. She paused, then moved back the way she had come a few steps. There it was again. No sign of the transponder, though.
She scanned carefully over the slope of dirty, pinkish ice. It was deeply cracked and ruptured with chunks of rock.
“Find something?” Cesare’s voice came over her com.
She turned, and found him watching her from higher up across the fissure, the golden circle of his visor turned down toward her.
“Not yet,” she said.
Cesare turned back toward the wall he was scanning. Bianca started for the nearest crack in the ice. She looked down into a narrow pit. Nothing there but rubble. She moved on to an opening between a jutting spire of rock and a tumbled pile of ice. There was the ping again.
She climbed down into the opening and found herself in an ice cavern just large enough for her to stand upright. The floor was rough, but, she thought, not nearly as rough as it should be naturally. The chamber sloped toward a rock wall a few meters down at the end of the chamber. Bianca moved quickly to the wall, and lifted her cuff to scan. Ping, ping, ping. She found the transponder and a doorpad tucked into a hand-sized crack near the bottom of the wall. The seemingly solid rock was actually a well-disguised door. She smiled, feeling inordinately pleased with herself.
“Cesare! I found it!” she said. There was no answer on the com. Just a low hiss of interference. The thick ice and rock must be blocking the shortrange. Quickly she hurried back up the ice tunnel, a new energy in her steps. Cleanser! Food! Just a few minutes away! Heaven be praised!
She climbed out of the ice and rounded the bolder next to the entrance. She opened her mouth to call out to Cesare. And froze.
A short, broad figure was crouched behind some low rocks not five meters from where she stood, his back toward her. In his hands was a long, lethal charge rifle. Her gaze shot to where the gun was pointed.
Cesare stood about fifty meters away, scanning the cliff, his back to them.
All at once, a terrible series of frozen pictures and sounds flashed in front of her. Her wordless scream ripping through the com, making both men flinch. The rifle firing. Cesare jerking halfway around. Falling to the ground. Lying still.
Her breath was loud in her ears as the gunman leaped to his feet and turned toward her, gun up. Through his visor, she glimpsed the face of Javier Woods, spread in a horrible rictus of a smile.
Then she spun around and ran, leaping boulders, stumbling, catching herself, careening headlong down the canyon. Her only thought was to make Woods chase her. Draw him and his gun away from Cesare. Because Cesare isn’t dead. He isn’t.
* * *
He lay stunned, he didn’t know for how long. Fire was spreading over his lower back. Shot. He had been shot. He turned his head slightly. There was no sound, no movement. No sign of the shooter. Slowly he moved his hand around to his back, feeling for the epicenter of the pain. Low down on his left side was a rent in his m-suit. Just the outer layer. The inner layer was intact. One centimeter to the right, and he would have been dead. If he hadn’t moved when Bianca screamed...
Bianca. Where is she?
He levered himself up into a sitting position, grunting with pain. His com crackled in his ear. The ventilation stuttered in his visor. His suit was shorting out.
He reached out for the rock face beside him and clawed himself to his feet. Waited for the haze to clear out of his vision. Then stumbled forward, down the canyon. One foot in front of the other. Find her.
* * *
He hadn’t shot at her, so he wanted her alive. Somehow, that merely added to her terror. She raced down the canyon, planting her feet recklessly on the treacherous ground, all her exhaustion burned away by a flood of adrenaline.
He was coming. Picking his way over the terrain slowly and carefully behind her, but still coming.
She burst out of the crevasse and on to the scree slope beneath it. Looking around frantically, she spotted a shallow ravine running down the slope toward the canyon floor. She darted for it, seeking any cover, any place to hide. She half slid, half jumped down the shallow incline and ran along the ice-slicked floor, crouching down as much as possible. Her breath came in labored gasps. She couldn’t go on like this much longer. She was almost at the end of her resources. Have to find a place to hide.
She scanned around as she ran. There! A shallow ledge about two meters up. She scrambled up the side of the ravine and flattened herself on the short length of jutting rock, wedged behind a few low boulders. She lay there panting for a minute, then scrabbled around for a chunk of rock. Rocks against a charge rifle. Mag. Clutching the jagged stone in her fist, she went still, waiting.
She listened to the high wind hissing past her exterior sensors, straining for any sound of pursuit. The cold of the rock beneath her seeped through her m-suit and into her bones.
Minutes crawled by. She would wait as long as she could before she crept out of the ravine and back up onto the cliff. She would find Cesare, and get him into the bolt-hole and back to the hab. Then they would be safe.
The faintest sound buzzed across her com. Every nerve fired to painful alert, and she glanced around frantically. She didn’t see Woods. But something was not right.
Something... There, a few meters up and across from her, the dusty air was swirling strangely. She strained her eyes, peering through her visor specs with mounting dread. She was able to make out something hovering there, something with wings, the colors of the rusty sky rippling over its skin. A drone! Horrified realization washed over her. A spy drone had found her.
She gathered herself to run. A scuffle of pebbles nearby made her spin, crouching in fear, the rock clenched in her frozen fingers.
Javier Woods stood on the slope of the ravine a few meters away. Over the length of the charge rifle he held trained on her, his sick grin gleamed through his visor.
Over her com, she heard him say, “Gotcha.”
* * *
Cesare leaned heavily against a jagged outcropping at the mouth of the crack, breathing away the darkness crawling at the edges of his vision. The punishing cold seeping through the hole in his suit had begun to numb his injury, thank Heaven. He couldn’t let himself feel any kind of weakness yet.
Cautiously he peered around the rock into the canyon branch below, scanning through his visor specs for any sign of movement. Utter stillness. Not a hint of Bianca or the shooter. No signs of their passage on the rocky ground. Nothing...
The dim gleam of sunlight on composite caught his eye. There, maybe half a kilometer down slope, the corner of a rover peeked out from behind the low ridge of an old crater. The shooter’s rover. That’s where they had to be.
He started working his way down the rocky slope, keeping boulders between himself and his goal, lunging from shadow to shadow.
He was panting and sweating by the time he reached the canyon rim. He flattened himself against the stony ridge and quickly raked his gaze over the shallow bowl of the crater below. The rover hulked big and dark a few meters away. It was the same one that had chased them into the old mine, he was sure of i
t. The viewports had been left untinted, the interior lights dimmed. He watched intently for a few seconds. No movement inside.
Feck! She isn’t here. His first wild impulse was to turn around and start running down the canyon, scanning for her everywhere, though he knew how pointless that would be. He forced himself to think.
Get inside the rover. Get a weapon. Use the com and sensors to find her. He fought back a sudden wave of dizziness, and darted for the lock.
Standard lock. Standard security. I could jack this rover in my sleep.
He interfaced his suit cuff to the doorpad and started a decoy test. Then he took a couple of e-threads out of one of his pouches and plugged them into the manual port. A series of commands through the e-threads, and he was in.
A few seconds later, he was through the lock doors and inside the rover. He quickly looked over the cab, galley and bunk, finding nothing. The shooter had to have more weapons in here. Shock rods, cutters, even more guns. Cesare had never shot a gun in his life, but he would fecking learn fast.
He strode to the lockers and pulled one open. M-suits. He opened another door. Spare parts and supplies. The third door he got to was locked. Jackpot. He started working on the lock. It was a higher level of security than the rover lock, but he could jack it. He just had to do it fast. Every second that ticked by was another second Bianca was out there, in danger.
His visor crackled and stuttered air, shorting out again. Impatiently he ripped it off and dropped it on the floor. He stripped off his gloves to free his fingers, bent over the lock pad, and set to work.
* * *
“What were you two mookies doing up there? Looking for a hidey-hole?”
Bianca drew up every mil of the icy calm she had developed over her life, and pulled it around her like armor. She couldn’t help herself or Cesare by giving in to the panic.