“Where the hell are you going?”
Lea slung the rifle over her shoulder. “To make sure this wasn’t a waste of time.”
She bounded up the stairway, almost at a sprint, not even bothering to take precautions. Lea knew that Avalon could be around any corner, waiting in ambush, but she had since detached herself from the possibility. Her own hubris had already gotten people killed. Another casualty, more or less, wouldn’t make any difference.
Lea concentrated on the labor of her breathing and the narrow stairwell above her. Charging ahead, she burst through the heavy door at the top of the stairs and hurled herself into the foyer. It was exactly as her team had left it—except for the two prone figures that lay in front of the open elevator shaft. Lea knew they were dead even before she went over to check them, their blood cooling in thickened pools that mixed with the filth of this decaying place.
The image of Avalon escaping into the night blossomed into a feral loathing. Lea made a start for the front door, stopping when she realized that chasing the Inru agent through the streets was futile at best—suicidal at worst. She would gladly trade her life to watch Avalon die, but she wasn’t about to throw it away.
Lea ran back to the stairs. She looked up, into the twists and turns that led to the roof.
Up there, she might have a chance—but only if she had help.
She popped the speedtecs without hesitation.
Time became liquid when you were using, but nothing was quite like this. The tecs flooded Lea’s bloodstream in a power load, stretching her muscles taut and filling her mind with an intense euphoria. Step after step, flight after flight, Lea kept accelerating, the consumption of her body fueling a kamikaze need. The more she broke down, the more invincible she felt.
Lea didn’t know how many minutes ticked off. She ignored the mission clock in her visor, measuring progress only in how much closer she got to the roof. When she shot past the seventeenth floor, she kept going at full tilt even when she saw the access door looming in front of her. Without slowing down, she flipped the rifle from her shoulder and put two quick blasts at center mass. Dangling feebly from its hinges, the door split in two as Lea ran right through it.
Night enveloped her when she stepped outside.
Bitter cold seeped through the seams of her armor, recoiling against her white-hot skin. Lea felt the undulation of her musculature beneath—a precursor to meltdown, slowly abating as the tecs reverted to dormancy. The crash left her with a terrible case of the shakes, made even worse by the overload of chemical transmitters still pumping through her nervous system. It also catapulted her mind into a hyperactive state, her eyes darting wildly through shadows, seeing Avalon in every shape and profile.
Easy does it, girl.
That thought seemed increasingly remote, a tin echo of sanity. Lea’s finger itched on the trigger, demanding action as she jerked in one direction, then the other, the edge of the rooftop giving way to the dead city crowding the horizon.
She’s not here. You know she’s not here.
The infrared was dark, forcing reality into Lea’s narrow sliver of perception. She came down by degrees, a painful balancing act of highs and lows. Control was tentative, but within her grasp.
The streets. Out there. That’s where she’ll be.
Now go.
Lea tore across the roof, stopping at the edge. Leaning over the parapet, she stared into the murky channels that cut through town, maxing the res on her visor and searching out heat signatures. Avalon wouldn’t be waiting around for Lea to call in reinforcements, which meant she would be on the move, getting out of the city as fast as she could. If that was the case, her body would stand out on the infrared—and make a perfect target in Lea’s sniper scope.
Come on, bitch. Where are you?
Lea circled around the roof, traversing each side. Nothing turned up on the most obvious points of exit, so Lea walked the path again. Her pace took on the fever of frustration, each pass pushing her deeper into a tec-induced, paranoid hole. Her enemy was slipping away. Lea was all but certain.
Think, Lea—THINK. Avalon would never set foot anywhere unless she had already planned a way out. She knows you’re watching. What’s the best place to hide?
She stopped cold.
The old reactor glowed off in the distance, bleeding energy. The streets ran like rivers from that island of heat, so bright that Lea had to pull away with her visor to keep from being blinded. Pockets of radiation turned the whole area into a minefield, so Lea hadn’t thought of looking—but Avalon, with her physiology and sensuit, could easily navigate there.
Son of a bitch.
Lea almost threw herself off the roof as she leaned over the side. She switched the mode on her visor, going to motion sensors and scanning each avenue for any hint of movement. Windblown debris instantly cluttered her field of vision, forcing her to reduce the trip threshold. Then, gradually, a regular pattern started to emerge. Something broke away from the east side of the reactor complex, into the cratered remains of a parking lot.
Avalon.
Lea switched over to pure visual, augmenting the area. Avalon beat a path across the old blacktop, leaving herself vulnerable in the wide-open space. Lea couldn’t believe her luck, but didn’t have time to question it. Tecs resurging, she assumed a sniper stance and sighted her rifle on the target. The scope bobbed up and down, jostled by the wind and her own trembling hands, while sweat dampened Lea’s vision in spite of the cold.
Take the shot.
Avalon fell in and out of the center eye, eluding Lea without even trying. Lea blinked, her pupils dilating from drugs and stress, her focus blurring and snapping back. She shook her head, trying to clear her line of sight as Avalon slowed.
What are you waiting for? Take the goddamned shot.
Avalon stopped. She turned toward the building, searching the skies expectantly. Her head now rested squarely in the cross hairs, inviting Lea to shoot.
Lea flexed her finger, knuckle popping as it put pressure on the trigger.
No coming back from the dead this time.
She fired.
Engine wash exploded in Lea’s face in a white fury, knocking her back with a blizzard of ice particles and turbine fumes. She landed flat on her back, knocking the breath out of her lungs and the rifle from her hands. She gulped toxic air, trying to stand as a frozen hurricane pummeled her from above, dirty sleet plastering her visor and blinding her. Forced to retreat, Lea hunched over and ran for the rooftop door. There, in the shelter of the doorway, she yanked the helmet off her head and looked skyward.
Over the building, a scant few meters above Lea, an unmarked hovercraft floated. It had swooped down on her while she wasn’t looking, turbofans blasting the rooftop so hard that entire strips of ossified sheeting peeled away and blew into the night. As it banked around, Lea got a look into the cockpit window. The pilot stared back at her, his attention darting between Lea and his altitude. He descended even farther, the scream of his engines whipping up a gale. Lea held on to the doorway with both hands, but it was just no use. The stairwell behind her was now a howling wind tunnel and sucked her in like a tornado.
Lea rolled down the concrete steps, cracking her head against the railing before catching herself. With speedtecs boiling, she barely felt any pain—only a debilitating disorientation, which took an eternity to fight off. By the time Lea could get up again, the hovercraft had withdrawn, the potent echo of its wake trailing off toward the reactor complex.
Lea lurched back onto the roof. She remembered the rifle, almost tripping over the weapon when she reached down to grab it. Shuffling toward the edge, she felt like a zombie. The tecs had narrowed her world, leaving her with only one purpose.
She fell to her knees at the parapet, peering through glassy eyes at the hovercraft. It had already touched down in the parking lot, its engines still running at full rev. Avalon climbed into the open cockpit, slamming the canopy shut as the ship rose into the air. Wearily, Le
a hauled the rifle up to her shoulder and took aim.
“No,” she said, her voice a hoarse whisper. “You’re not leaving.”
Lea clicked the weapon’s aperture to widest dispersal. Tantalizingly, the hovercraft crossed her sights in an almost leisurely maneuver. At that range, she would be lucky to score a single hit—but that was more than enough to bring such a fragile ship down. Even a glancing blow would spin the hovercraft into oblivion, splattering it into a flaming mass as it plummeted into—
Oh, Jesus…
The hovercraft nudged itself over, assuming a position directly over the power plant. The pilot turned so that the nose of the ship faced the apartment building, the cockpit glass neatly centered in Lea’s scope.
The pilot didn’t budge. He just hovered there, within bumping distance of the cooling tower, his jets rattling the rusted sheet metal covering the old reactor. Beneath that, only the brittle sarcophagus that entombed the melted core held back a radiological disaster. There was no way it could survive even a mild impact.
Go on, do it. What the hell do you have to lose?
It was the speedtecs talking, urging her to take action—any action, so long as it satisfied her thirst. It would be so satisfying to watch Avalon fall, dying in a light the entire world would see. The price, her own life, was cheap in comparison.
Think of it, Lea.
She did. For seconds that jumped a relative curve into hours, she played the scenario over and over again. Each episode ended in her own death, which was fine by her. But then she thought of her team, their loyalty, their sacrifice—and of those who had died, and those who had yet to live. Nobody gets left behind, she had promised them.
It would have been easier to sever a limb—but slowly, painfully, she lowered her rifle.
The hovercraft remained where it was. Lea stood and raised her hands into the air, making plain to Avalon the terms of her surrender: Leave now, fight another day. After a few moments, the pilot acknowledged by flashing his landing lights, then pulled straight up into the night. He went slowly, staying above the power plant the whole time, waiting until the hovercraft was out of firing range before kicking in the main engines. With a slingshot roar, the ship disappeared into the low cloud cover. Its dying echo settled over the city, soon carried off at the behest of a relentless wind.
“Another day,” Lea said, and lost herself in the dark.
Lauren Farina climbed into Almacantar’s flight ops booth, joining the two officers on duty there. The flight boss was the first to see her and snapped to attention as soon as she entered. “Captain’s on deck,” he announced, grabbing the attention of the landing signals officer. Both of them stood rigid, until Farina put them at ease with a smile and a wave of her hand. She loved the old-timers, and their strict observation of mariner protocol. They were a dying breed in the service—a relic of those salty days when exploration was a top priority at the Directorate. With this mission, Farina hoped to give a little of that back to them.
“Sorry for the intrusion, gentlemen,” the captain said, walking up to the window that looked down on the landing bay. Below her, flight crews locked down the deck and sealed the hatches, moving with precision and purpose. “I just like to get off the bridge and hide once in a while. Hope you don’t mind.”
“Not at all, Skipper,” the flight boss said. “We’re almost ready to bring Ghostrider home. Shouldn’t be more than a couple of minutes.”
“By all means,” Farina said casually, taking a seat next to the ops console and getting out of the way. “Carry on.”
The flight boss acknowledged her with a nod and went straight back to work. Farina considered it a measure of trust that the flight officers didn’t put on a show for her. They just rolled through their checklists, smooth and by the numbers, and prepared Almacantar for the technological ballet of bringing a landing craft on board.
“All crews,” the flight boss spoke into the intercom, “acknowledge status.”
A dozen voices responded in a steady chatter, all signaling go. From there, the flight boss passed control over to the LSO, who opened up a channel to the approaching craft on his monitor.
“Ghostrider, base,” he said. “Assume parallel course, two-one-seven. Maintain distance of three-zero meters, Z–minus five.”
“Base, Ghostrider,” the console speaker crackled back. Even at close range, Pitch seemed a hundred light-years away. “Roger that at two-two-seven. Assuming formation.”
Farina leaned into the microphone. “Nice to have you back, Ghostrider.”
“Likewise, Skipper. Thanks for the welcome.”
With the rest of the ship secured, the LSO reached under his shirt and took out an old manual key that hung from a chain around his neck. He inserted it into a secure console, unlocking the control for the landing bay door. A lever rose on a hydraulic motor as the overheads on the flight deck dimmed, the encroaching darkness supplanted by a swirl of red siren lights. Loudspeakers piped in automated warnings to clear the area, punctuated by the repeating drone of an alarm Klaxon.
“We’re go for decompression,” the LSO announced, ticking off his panel indicators one last time before turning to Farina. “Awaiting your command, Captain.”
“She’s your baby,” she told him. “Whenever you’re ready.”
“Aye, sir,” the LSO replied cheerfully. Coordinating with the flight boss, he opened all the exterior vents, slowly purging atmosphere from the landing bay. Alarms faded to a tinny nothingness outside the glass as ambient pressure reached zero. The LSO then eased the console lever forward, engaging the mammoth gears that opened Almacantar’s belly to the hostile vacuum of space.
A deep groan pounded against the bulkhead walls, making the tiny space of the booth seem even more confined. Farina knew every sound her ship made, but her grip was still tight on the sides of her chair. A lot could go wrong during flights ops, even with an experienced crew. In spite of that, the whole process was a wonder to behold.
Doors parted on a blanket of twilight that tapered into a rusty shore. The disc of Mars dominated the horizon, cutting a swath across the hazy stars that glistened in the great beyond. Farina could just make out the sleek lines of the lander approaching from below. It moved gracefully, matching Almacantar’s bearing and speed as it nudged itself closer. Gas plumes popped off the leading edge of its delta wings, control jets firing off a cascade of a hundred tiny course corrections.
“Ghostrider, we have you on visual.”
The LSO’s steady voice seemed to steer the landing craft all by itself. The small ship responded to his cue, leveling off just aft of the landing bay. The LSO then hit the landing lights, illuminating a green strip that ran down the center axis of the flight deck. At the same time, a series of circular projections appeared on the forward bulkhead, showing Ghostrider its optimal path of insertion.
“Call the ball,” the LSO said.
“I have the ball,” Pitch radioed back. “Initiating final approach.”
A blue glow momentarily erupted behind the landing craft, its main engines giving the ship one last push to close the remaining distance. From there Ghostrider coasted, firing retro jets to slow down as it slipped into the landing bay.
“Looking good, Ghostrider.”
An optic scoop descended from the tail of the landing craft, catching a stream of pulse light that crossed the edge of the deck. Once ensnared, the ship lurched to a gradual stop. Pitch then throttled back and allowed Almacantar’s gravitational field to take hold. The LSO modulated g-force levels to bring Ghostrider in gently, the ship’s mass and weight converging in delicate phase. Its gear touched down on the deck without so much as a quiver.
“And that,” Pitch said, “is how we do that.”
Entry to the landing bay was secured by a vaulted hatch. An analog barometer showed pressure on the other side, which quickly rose as Farina watched. When it reached one atmosphere, a light above the hatch clicked from red to green, followed by an escaping hiss as a magnetic seal
disengaged. “CLEAR FOR ENTRY,” the voice of the flight boss boomed from above, echoing through Almacantar’s narrow corridors.
Farina spun the wheel and pushed the hatch open, stepping into a frenzy of activity. Already the flight crews swarmed around Ghostrider, refilling the fuel tanks and scrubbing away accumulations of Martian dust, as per Farina’s orders. She wanted all ships ready to go at a moment’s notice—especially in light of the discovery her landing party had made.
Farina walked toward the landing craft. Pitch was still in the cockpit, going through his roster of postflight checks and downloading telemetry for later analysis. He spotted the captain through the canopy glass, acknowledging her with a casual salute before getting back to business. Farina returned the gesture, then stood back as another member of the flight crew opened the belly hatch and pulled down an access ladder.
Eve Kellean emerged first. She appeared exhausted—spent was the word that came to Farina’s mind—though there remained a kinetic latency to the way Kellean moved, as if she still rode some unseen high. Farina knew the look. It was the reason she had placed the landing party under strict orders to maintain silence about Olympus Mons. She didn’t need loose talk among the crew about what had happened down there. They would find out about that soon enough.
Nathan Straka, on the other hand, was inscrutable as ever. He climbed down and handed his gear off to the flight crew, even stopping to chat with one of them. If Farina hadn’t known him so well, she could have sworn that this was just another mission for him.
“First boots on Mars in ten years,” she said, nodding at them in admiration. “If I weren’t captain of this tub, I would’ve fought you for the chance to be on that landing party. How are you two doing?”
“I’ll be fine, as soon as I can get a drink,” Nathan deadpanned. He was damp with sweat, his face glistening. Kellean was in the same shape, long strands of hair sticking to her forehead and cheeks. “We can send a ship across the solar system, but we still can’t make an envirosuit that doesn’t wear like a damned heat sink.”
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