by Peter Telep
The tank did not react. His eyes were open, and certainly his ears were functional. Obviously he was used to the remarks, numb to them.
Taking a long breath through his nose, then rubbing his eyes, Nathan told no one in particular, "Hit the sack. When the time comes to face them, we'll all hack it fine." He folded his pillow the way he liked it, and was about to close his eyes when he heard Shane's bunk creak, and then saw her stand. She kneaded her palm with the thumb of her other hand.
"Why don't you let Vanessa get you something?"
She looked like a little girl, thinking it over, her lower lip protruding a bit. Then she wiped the sweat from her brow and nodded resignedly.
eleven
The psychiatrists had told Shane to record her dreams on paper. She had questioned their use of the word dreams.
Not dreams. It's the dream. It just keeps happening and happening.
She played out variations of it, switching around acts, beginning with the climax and working her way back, beginning at the middle and spiraling outward so that the start and end ran simultaneously.
But the result was always the same.
While she listened to the hum of the troop carrier's instruments, she felt that the cabin was too small, her bunk too cramped.
The way the crawl space had been.
Shane knew she was going to dream; it was simply a question of how intense the nightmare would be. With Nathan's bunk seemingly pressing down on her, she couldn't help palming the plastic, wishing she could drive it away.
I have to sleep. We went from the bar to cargo detail to the MHLV to the station to this ISSCV. My eyes hurt. I feel like I weigh a ton. Come on, Shane. Close your eyes.
She obeyed herself, and as always, the point when she actually fell asleep went unnoticed. Sometime during the night, the flecked darkness was burned away by a wrathful white light.
Shane lifted the door of the crawl space.
"Kim. Lauren. Stay here!"
She dropped into the hole and hit the floor. Looking forward, she saw her dead parents lying on their stomachs, cast in the twin shadows of the A.I. soldiers. The cyborgs' eyes were obscured by infrared visors, and their chins, though pink, looked as hard as the black armor plates strapped to their bodies.
One of them brandished his pistol and—
Shane sprang away, even as the closet exploded behind her. The pretty school clothes Mommy had bought her burned furiously, their hangers melting off of the rod.
"Take her out, '' one of them said tersely to the other, his voice sounding tinny, unnatural.
Darting toward one of the soldiers, Shane dropped to pass through the killer's legs; then, from behind, she tore away his pistol. Fumbling with the weapon, she finally wrapped her trembling fingers around it, took aim as the soldier faced her, then, at point-blank range, blew a hole the size of a basketball in the cyborg's chest. Fragments of blood-covered metal and wire splattered on the wall behind the soldier. He crumpled to the floor and lay there, writhing spasmodically.
Shane turned to the other' soldier, who, in one fluid motion, ripped the pistol away. He took a step forward, training two weapons on her, his gaze unreadable, his mouth unflinching.
She backed away to the window, thinking she might be able to crash through it and fall to the bushes below. Pressing her arms against the cold glass, she stiffened and braced herself.
Then the A.I. soldier spoke, his voice strangely familiar. "They had to die, Shane. Even here you can't save them. Even here. "
Shane balled her hands into fists, but then relaxed the hand that Lauren had bitten. "Liar."
"Do you know how many of us your mommy and daddy slaughtered?"
"You're not... human.''
"What does that mean, little girl?"
She glanced at her parents. "You killed them! And THAT means YOU deserve to die!"
"Isn't your life better now without them?"
"How can you say that?"
"They never loved you. They loved the Marine Corps. "
"What do you know?"
"I know everything about you. " He raised his infra-visor.
And Shane saw that the soldier was herself, her bloodshot eyes rising from the shadowy plains of her face.
"It's me, " the soldier said, now sounding feminine, sounding exactly like she should, exactly like herself.
"You killed Mommy and Daddy!"
"Yes, Shane. I did..."
She felt someone shake her. The nightmare rushed out of her head, making her feel as if she were sinking through her pillow. She realized she was out of breath and soaked in her own sweat. After gingerly opening her eyes, she saw Cooper Hawkes staring at her from his bunk. He looked fascinated.
Shane wanted to duck under her blanket, but she felt the need to say something, to sort of cover up what he had seen. She cleared her throat. "Sorry I woke you."
"Wasn't asleep."
They lay there, looking at each other, saying nothing, just there, alive, breathing, at a loss.
Finally, a curious thought worked its way into Shane's mind. "Don't take this wrong," she started softly. "I'm just wondering, I've always heard that In Vitroes can't dream."
Hawkes, revealing no pity for himself, answered matter-of-factly, "I dream."
Shane nodded, and her curiosity blossomed. What did the tank dream about? She leaned back and gazed at the blank plastic base of Nathan's bunk.
Then, as if reading her mind, Hawkes supplied, "I know they never lived, but when I dream I see my parents."
She shivered, then rolled onto her side to face him. "Me too—only I have nightmares about mine. The same one. Since I was five."
"What happens?"
Shane discussed her dream with few people. And she had found that talking about it was nearly as hard as experiencing it. Hawkes was moving pretty fast, not that she sensed he had any romantic or sexual intentions, but rather, he was diving headfirst into one of the most painful and private experiences of her life. She could either clear the water for him, or drain the pool and let him hit fiberglass.
"My mother and father were Marine Corps officers in the Artificial Intelligence War," she told him, half-regretting it as she spoke. "One day, an A.I. patrol attacked our house."
They're coming! The lights!
"My mom hid me and my sisters in a tiny crawl space in the attic. I saw them—"
The shadow of one of the soldiers raised his arm.
"—kill... my parents."
Hawkes appeared sympathetic, but there was something missing in his expression, something she couldn't discern. "Your sisters still alive?"
She nodded. "That night, during the attack, my sister Lauren tried to scream, but I kept my hand over her mouth. She bit me." Shane held up her palm. "I still have the scars."
Before she realized what was happening, Hawkes reached across the aisle to take her hand in his own. She felt a little awkward but still trusted him.
"That must've hurt."
"Yeah," she said softly. "And you know what's weird? My sisters and I aren't close. I guess I'm the parent they need to grow away from. And maybe they've always reminded me of... "
Hawkes looked up, puzzled.
"You know, they've always looked to me my whole life. I want to get away from people looking to me. I enlisted for me. My life. I don't want to take care of anyone for a while. Does that sound selfish?"
Hawkes shrugged, then ran his thumb across her scars.
"So what happened with you?"
"What do you mean?"
"With the cops..."
He sneered, looking away into some hidden memory. "One of those things."
"You didn't kill anybody, did you?"
"Not yet."
"You thinking of—"
"I'm just pissed off."
"Why?"
"I wake up every day shortchanged."
"I don't—"
"'Cause I'm a tank, all right?"
She hadn't intended to exasperate him. She slid her ha
nd under his, now holding him. "I'm sorry if—"
"You didn't." He sighed. "Some guys I worked with tried to hang me."
Shane flinched. "Ohmygod..."
"Yeah, my timing was pretty bad on that one."
"Things are going to change. It's already happening."
"Sometimes I think the only peace for me is six feet under."
"Now that's selfish."
"How?"
"What about the people who care for you?"
His grin was sarcastic.
"Really. Think about it. Did you ever lose anyone?"
He looked deeply into her eyes, as if probing for something. Leaning over, he gently placed his finger around the back of her neck. He pulled her close. She thought he needed someone more than ever now, someone to hold.
But then his grip tightened on her neck and he drove her face into his. He kissed her hard and tried to pry open her lips with his tongue.
Shane craned her head, pulled away, then drew back a fist and punched him in the mouth. His head lolled back to collide with the hull. Caging her desire to scream, she gruffly whispered, "What the hell was that?" Grimacing, Hawkes ran an index finger over his teeth, checking to see if they were all there. He wasn't exactly in a position to answer.
"How does 'did you ever lose anyone' translate into 'please stick your tongue down my throat'?"
His eyebrows drew together. "I don't know much about stuff like loss and nightmares. So don't get all in an uproar."
"You don't know much about women, either."
He turned on his side, his back to her. "What man does? Oh, I'm sorry. That doesn't work. What man or tank does?"
"Let's get something straight right now, otherwise—"
"Give it a rest. I won't be around much longer anyway."
Shane faced the hull, pulling her blanket over her shoulder. She hadn't thought about it until now, but she wondered if anyone had been listening.
Twice Nathan had held himself back from jumping down and pummeling the tank. He had known that would embarrass Shane to no end. He had let her handle the situation herself, and, to his mild surprise, she had been the one to whack Hawkes.
When Shane had told him that her parents were dead, he guessed that they had died of illness or natural causes. For some reason, he had not made the connection between their service in the Marine Corps and the Artificial Intelligence War.
She had seen her parents murdered. Her inability to sleep in the cramped bunk and the favoring of her palm all made sense now. Nathan tried to put himself in her position. He imagined himself in the crawl space with his two brothers. And then he imagined the pleading eyes of his mother and father a second before they got their heads blown off.
No wonder she couldn't rest.
And now he couldn't. He looked across the cabin to the opposite porthole. The sun was two-thirds its normal diameter and half as bright. For a moment, he couldn't find Earth; then he spotted the azure planet with its tiny speck of a moon floating nearby.
It was funny to admit it, and it made him feel childish, but he was homesick. He remembered going away to summer camp when he had been seven or eight, and after about a week, something had come over him, a sense that he might never go home again, never see his brothers or parents again. He had started crying and couldn't stop. One of the counselors had had to take him into her office and assure him that in another week he was definitely going home. At first, he hadn't believed her, but then she had called his parents and they had told him not to worry, that they loved him and would see him soon. It had taken him a couple more days to fully shake off the feeling.
It would take much longer now. Nathan was nearly twenty-one million kilometers away from home, and he felt that the farther away the ISSCV took him, the stronger the longing would become.
He closed his eyes, dug his head into his pillow, and tried to fall asleep.
twelve
Bored out of his skull, and unwilling to hazard a conversation with anyone, Hawkes tried to kill the hour before they made the Mars orbit by reading the briefing.
The Marine Corps had provided them with a detailed background on where they were going and what they were supposed to do there. The Marine Corps thought of everything.
Mars, fourth planet from the sun (no kidding), diameter: 6,788 kilometers. Mass, a large number in grams, mean density... what? Rotation period: 1.02 days. Revolution period: 1.881 Earth years. Two moons: Phobos, Deimos. And nothing about the data on those two kidney stones really caught his attention. He scanned down to the subheading: DESTINATION.
The report said they would touch down in the Hellas Plains as close to the tracking drone as best estimates permitted. Apparently, about 3.8 billion years ago, a giant chunk of something had struck the Martian surface. What was left now was an impact basin over 1,600 kilometers in diameter and centered at 293 degrees west, 42 degrees south. Within the basin were some 2,600 smaller craters and three channels: Dao Vallis, Harmakhis Vallis, and Reull Vallis, the largest channel in the southern hemisphere. Some of the oldest recognizable volcanoes on the planet were supposed to be near Hellas.
As for weather, the temperature would be a balmy minus-30 degrees Celsius by day, and one should take a sweater along if going out at night, when it dropped to minus-80 degrees Celsius. The report provided an atmospheric breakdown, all of which was to say that if your suit was breached, you'd be gasping to pull .1 percent oxygen out of a 96 percent CO2 environment. Good luck.
"Hey, Coop. Put that down and take a look at this," Damphousse beckoned.
He rose and crossed to the porthole near Damphousse's bunk.
Mars's red and orange surface features rolled slowly by. Hawkes spotted a canyon that he remembered was about the size of the United States. Vast craters and channels pockmarked and grooved the surface around the canyon. He wondered how close the ship was to Hellas.
"I didn't realize it would look this bright," Damphousse said.
Her excitement was infectious. Hawkes felt a smile come over his face. "Huh. It's..."
"Nearly time to fold 'em up and prepare for final approach," West finished.
Hawkes sent a glare the hotshot's way, then crossed back to his bunk. He rolled up the briefing and, as did the others, proceeded to make his bunk, sheet-in hospital corners, blanket pulled quarter-bouncing tight. He lifted the bunk up into the wall, then squirmed into his restraints.
Shane stood directly across from him. She pretended not to notice him, but every once in a while he caught her looking.
Mr. Hotshot West started a conversation with her. While watching Shane giggle over West's pathetic wit, and barely hearing the pilot's twangy notification that they were entering Mars's atmosphere and were in for a little chop, Hawkes made a decision about the way things were going to be down on the planet.
Sergeant Bougus had told them that the mission was to be a joint effort, commanded by the entire squadron. Hawkes had wondered what had happened to the military chain of command. Then he had reasoned that not assigning a team leader was probably part of the test. Bougus had told them they had still not learned to work together. Indeed, without a leader, they would all be responsible for what happened.
But West was carving out a position of leadership for himself. His authoritative tone was enough to make Hawkes realize that Mr. Hotshot thought of himself as team leader, despite the fact that the position was supposedly nonexistent.
If, for any reason, Hawkes felt that West was overstepping himself on the planet, then a small war would come to Mars.
The chop wasn't as bad as the pilot had made it sound. Hawkes had experienced rougher rides aboard commercial airliners. The bad news came a few moments before touchdown:
"Wind's blowing a little too hard over by the tracking drone. I'll get y'all in as close as I can, but you're still gonna have a little hike."
A chorus of moans followed.
"I'm trying to think of something important to say when I set foot on Martian soil, something I'll always rem
ember," Wang said. "Anybody got an idea?"
"Oh, come on," Carter groaned, splashing water on Wang's fire. "It's not like you're going to be the first man to step on the planet. You're making too big a thing out of this."
Hawkes usually kept to himself during most of the bantering, and the present conversation was no exception—especially since there wasn't any famous "First In Vitro On Mars" speech for him to emulate. And, in truth, the whole affair seemed anticlimactic. Yes, there was an element of suspense and adventure associated with coming to a new world, but the fact of the matter was that they were here to fix a broken tracking drone. They weren't well-muscled or buxom heroes embarking on a great quest to save the world. They were repair persons with sagging guts and underwear that failed to cover their big cracks.
"I got it!" Wang announced. "I'll dedicate each step to the important people in my life."
"Hey, yeah," Damphousse said. "This step is for my father. This step is for my mother..."
"All right, we don't need the whole list," Carter said.
"Hey, Nathan. You got anyone you're going to dedicate a step to?" Pags asked.
"Sure. Family... friends..."
"Someone who was part of the Tellus colony mission?" Shane asked West.
Mr. Hotshot didn't answer her. Interesting. West might know someone who was part of the Tellus mission. He had reacted strongly to Chartwell's announcement back at the bar. And maybe now he had a score to settle with the aliens. Hawkes would definitely have to watch this one. Perhaps West's private agenda would be his undoing. Perhaps Hawkes could make sure of that.
Touchdown was simply touchdown, occurring without incident. Damphousse, Wang, and a few of the others rushed to get out of their straps.
Hawkes took his time. Once free, he looked around, then thought he'd try something. "All right everyone, suit up, then get a buddy and check equipment. Don't forget about your links."
Surprisingly, the group complied, even West, without so much as a double take.
Fully suited, West crossed to the air lock. "We'll go five at a time, take a look around, then haul out the gear," he said. "And yes, Wang, you can be in the first group. Pags. Stone. You two grab a couple of persuaders for insurance. Low. You handle the GPS."