by Baen Books
Belinda said, “None of your business. Now, please, get out of the way. I want to get to the road.”
The one on the left shook his head. “To the road? Damn dangerous there, sweetie. Me and Skip, we saw a bug skitter up there not more than five minutes ago.” He took two more steps forward, and his voice got quiet. “What you got there in that satchel?”
Belinda stepped back. “None of your business.”
The one called Skip licked his lips. “Food. You got food in that there satchel?”
“Stay away!”
The other one said, in a crooning voice, “You a courier? You bringing that bag up to the soldiers? Ain’t that right nice of you. Very nice.” He stepped forward again. Belinda nearly stumbled again.
“C’mon, girly,” he went on. “Give the bag over. Give the bag over and we’ll bring it right up to those brave soldiers. Me and Skip . . . we just joined up the other day. Haven’t gotten our haircuts and uniforms yet, but we can take that satchel up, so’s you don’t have to worry.”
Skip said, “Ah, for Christ’s sake, Johnny, stop haggling, will ya? I’m gonna take that satchel . . . and whatever else I want.”
Belinda nearly yelled, “You stay away!”
Skip laughed, started toward her. “What, you gonna plug me with that shotgun?”
“Yes,” she said, and she pulled the trigger.
Even though she had fired all of the firearms back home during target practice, the flash of light, the boom, the hard recoil, all surprised Belinda so much that she nearly dropped the shotgun. Both men yelped and since Skip was closer, he caught most of the pellets and collapsed, rolling over, moaning, both hands across his gut. Johnny fell back as well, holding his right upper leg, and then Belinda started running, got past Skip and—
Fell.
Johnny’s hand on her ankle.
“You . . . you little bitch!”
Belinda scrambled away, got up, started fumbling in her pockets, wondering where she had put the two spare shells. She got up and Skip wasn’t moving any more, and Johnny was cursing at her, one hand on his bleeding leg, the other one going under his jacket, looking for something, maybe a revolver or a knife or something.
Belinda started crying. She dropped the shotgun, picked it up by the barrel, went forward and swung the shotgun like the softball bat she used at school, and slammed the wooden stock into the side of Johnny’s head. He fell back and his baseball cap flew off, and she started running again.
Belinda broke out onto the road.
She went left, started running up the road, still crying.
Now the smell of cinnamon was strong, the scent that Creepers were nearby. The gunfire from the troops up there had dribbled off, and now she was close enough so she could hear the firing of the lasers and the flame weapons from the Creepers. Belinda stayed close to the side of the road, walking slowly, taking her time.
She was also trying very, very hard not to think of the two Coasties back there.
And Grandpa’s voice came to her: “One of the few victories of this war,” he once said near the fireplace, “is how we’re still keeping civilization going. We still have farms, we still have factories, still have doctors and a government, weak as it is. Keep those things alive, Bel, and don’t worry about those who die trying to tear it down.”
She wiped at her nose and eyes again, and resumed walking, and then she stopped.
Somewhere to the right, across the road, a branch snapped.
And another.
“Hello? Is there somebody there?”
Then she remembered—dope!—that she hadn’t reloaded the shotgun since shooting those two Coasties back there.
Belinda started going through her pockets again, when the strong stench of cinnamon washed over here, a Creeper crashed through the woods and skidded to a halt next to her on the dirt road.
Click-click came from the Creeper.
Click-click.
She froze.
She dared not move.
She didn’t even want to blink her eyes, or turn away, as much as seeing the Creeper in front of her terrified her so.
Her heart was hammering so hard she thought she might faint.
No, she thought. Freeze. Remember what Grandpa said.
Freeze.
The Creeper looked like a Battle Creeper, not the Research or Transport version. At school they had to memorize flash cards that showed the three different kinds of Creepers, and this one was for sure a Battle version. It was about the size of the larger shed back at home, with eight legs and a segmented body in the center. The head was where the Creeper—a scary-looking insectlike creature sat—and it swerved and moved, and Belinda was so scared that it was staring right at her.
God, she wanted to close her eyes, but no, freeze.
Always freeze.
It had two larger legs—or arms—that also moved around, and those had weapons, either lasers or flames, and other versions of the Creeper, one of the arms had pincers, so it could pick up things and examine it.
The cinnamon scent was so thick it nearly made her choke.
Freeze.
Don’t move.
Just over two years ago, she was out picking apples in the far orchard, when she saw a Creeper attack the farmhouse of their neighbors, the Colemans, for no apparent reason. It skittered across a field, came up to the house, burned it with a flame weapon, and when the mom and dad and Billy, Tom and Jenny ran out, the flick-flick of its laser weapon killed them all, slicing off their heads.
She was so close to this Creeper she could hear the whirring and clicking of the machinery from inside. There was a spot in the center where it “breathed,” taking in Earth air and somehow converting it to its own atmosphere, and that was the only real vulnerable spot on the damn thing. The Army and Marines had the Colt M-10 one-shot weapon that fired a gas shell that if it exploded nearby, could kill a Creeper, and that—except for a nuke—was the only thing that could stop it.
Her shotgun was useless.
Freeze.
The sound inside whirred louder, and Belinda couldn’t help it, she closed her eyes, and she hoped it wouldn’t hurt that much, and—
A clattering noise.
She opened her eyes.
The Creeper was gone.
And she realized that she had peed herself.
Belinda waited, cried some, and then started up the road again, sticking to the side, and the sound of the fighting seemed to ease off, and she thought she was getting closer, just when a man hidden in the woods said, “Hold it right there.”
She froze again.
A slight rustle and a soldier came out, tired-looking, with helmet and dirty fatigues and heavy boots, carrying an M-4, and he said, “Mike, come look at this, will you.”
A second soldier limped out, carrying a heavy-looking weapon with a big tube at the end, and Belinda recognized it as the Colt M-10, and Mike said, “Crap on a cracker, girl, what the hell are you doing here?”
She pointed her thumb at her knapsack.
“I’m here to help.”
The two soldiers led her into the woods that were being used to conceal a foxhole. It was wide and deep enough for the three of them, and the first soldier—Brian—said, “You mean you came up all the way up here by yourself?”
“No,” Belinda said. “My Grandpa helped. But he got tired and he’s waiting for me down the hill.”
Mike said, “What’s in the knapsack?”
“Food, water, some first aid stuff. Burn cream.”
Mike wiped at his face. Belinda said, “Where are you soldiers from?”
Brian said, “K Company, 1st Battalion, 14th Army Regiment. ‘Kara’s Killers.’ And right now, we’re trapped and getting our butts scorched.”
Being in the foxhole with these two soldiers made her feel safe for the first time in a long time, and she said, “Can I leave the knapsack with you?”
The two soldiers exchanged looks and Mike said, “Hon, that’d be great, but the gu
ys up at the top of the hill . . . they should get it. We could bring it up but we can’t leave our posts.”
Belinda said, “Please?”
Brian said, “Sorry, we can’t leave our posts. It’s not that far. Honest.”
Belinda bit her lip. “It’s just that I’m . . . I’m so scared.”
Mike said, “We all are, hon. We all are.”
Belinda then crept out of the foxhole, got back on the road, and started running. She couldn’t remember running so fast, even with the knapsack bouncing on her back and the heavy shotgun threatening to slip out of her hands.
The road widened and now she was at the top of the hill, which was shrouded with smoke. She had been up here at least twice with Mom, Dad, and Grandpa, for picnics on top of the fire tower, but the tower was down, a crumpled heap of metal and wood. There was a small wooden cabin near the fire tower, and a tarp was strung over by its side, and she felt queasy and a bit sick, seeing at least five lifeless shapes on the ground, wrapped in canvas.
Dead soldiers.
There were other foxholes and soldiers trotting back and forth, hunched over, and there was a dog barking, with a young soldier who seemed to be in charge of some of the foxholes. A girl about her age stopped and said, “What the hell are you doing up here?”
She gratefully shrugged off the knapsack and dropped it the ground.
“Here. Some food. Water. Medical supplies.”
The young soldier picked up the bag and smiled. Her face was smeared with soot and there was a sharp scratch on her left cheek. The helmet she wore seemed huge.
“Thanks,” she said. “We sure as hell need it.”
Belinda took a moment to look around. The cabin seemed to be the center of what was going on, and to the left and to the right, there were other foxholes and soldiers inside, staring down at the slopes of the hills. On one of the slopes were two dead Creepers.
The solider said, “Unless you plan on sticking around and enlisting, you better get a move on.” She picked up the knapsack and in a tone that was a mix of a laugh and a cry, “Because before the day is out, we’re all gonna be charcoal.”
Belinda ran down back the road, quicker since she didn’t have the weight of the pack on her, and then there was a shout out from the woods, “Hey, girl, can you come back over here?”
She didn’t want to do anything but keep on running down this hill, but she went over, and the soldier named Brian stepped out of the woods and said, “Wow. You made it.”
The other soldier came out and dug into his shirt, pulled out a creased and dirty folded over piece of paper. “Here, this is a letter to my folks. Will you see it gets delivered?”
Belinda said, “Sure,” and Brian did the same, and with the two warm letters in her hand, she resumed her race away from the hilltop battle.
A few minutes later she found the trail opening, and started down that, and remembering the two Coasties, she broke through some of the bramble and brush, and managed to pick up the trail below where the ambush had taken place.
She was feeling pretty good, excited and happy to be coming down the hill, and then she saw Grandpa sitting there, waiting for her, and she yelled out, “Grandpa! I made it! We did it! I got the supplies up there!”
Belinda skidded to a halt, smiling, breathing hard.
“Grandpa?”
His eyes were closed.
He wasn’t moving.
His face had grayed out.
“Oh, Grandpa,” she said.
It was near dusk when two other soldiers appeared, coming up the path. They were older than the ones at the top of the hill, and both were carrying knapsacks. She had moved Grandpa off from where he had been sitting and took a washcloth and put it over his face.
The soldiers paused and the shorter of the two said, “What happened here?”
Belinda sat on the ground, legs up, hugging her knees. She had stopped crying a few hours back.
She said, “Grandpa and me, we were going up to where the fight is, to bring them some supplies. He got tired and stayed behind. I went up by myself, and when I came back . . . he was gone.”
“Oh, you poor dear,” the soldier said. “Do you have any place to go?”
“We have a farmhouse a couple of miles back,” she said dully. “My parents have jobs in Detroit.”
The other soldier went over to Grandpa and knelt down, took the washcloth off his face, and then respectfully put it back down, and then came over.
“Miss . . . ” he said. “Is your Grandpa’s name, is it David Craft?”
“Unh-hunh.”
“Jesus . . . your Grandpa, he was General David Craft?”
“I guess so,” she said.
The squat soldier said, “Who was General Craft?”
The other one shook his head. “Man, don’t you know your history? He was a retired Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Top soldier in the country at the time. When the Creepers invaded . . . Christ, he must have been at least eighty years old, he came back and helped organize the first defenses in the Northeast. Without him . . . shit, who knows.”
Belinda sat still. Tears streaming down her face. Why oh why didn’t the damn bugs attack later or earlier. Grandpa would still be alive.
The two soldiers were staring at her. The one on the left said, “Girl . . . what the hell was he doing up here?”
Belinda looked at them both, surprised.
“His duty,” she said.
Feldspar
Philip A. Kramer
Grand Prize Winner of the Jim Baen Memorial Short Story Award 2017
The soft Martian regolith shifted beneath the rover’s wheels. The automated systems detected the motion and ceased all forward progression. The rover compiled a diagnostic and sent the packet of data through its antennae to a satellite above the red planet, which relayed it to a distant blue dot.
Eight minutes later, within a studio apartment in San Francisco, a computer console beeped in warning. Blake caught sight of the flashing red light out of the corner of his eye, and his stomach sank. He sprang up from the futon and navigated through the piles of dirty laundry and pizza boxes to the opposite wall.
He sat down in his black ergonomic chair and considered the eighty-five inch screen in front of him. The status window in the lower left quadrant contained a new update.
His eyes flicked to the rover’s camera feed in the upper half of the display. He let out a long breath upon seeing the desolate surface of Mars. The rover was still upright.
He rubbed at the stubble on his cheeks in thought as he skimmed through the attached diagnostic.
Feldspar, his rover, sat at the edge of a shallow depression. It wasn’t anything as natural as a crater, but a hole dug by one of a hundred identical rovers that roamed the surface of Mars. A kilometer distant, across the plane of Chryse Planitia, sat the squat shape of the MRS, the Martian Regolith Smelter, affectionately known as the Missus. The Missus didn’t allow any digging within a kilometer radius, so it was inevitable that the laziest of rover operators would travel just beyond the boundary to collect dirt. Here and there, larger holes were visible. Someone had even seen fit to print a flimsy-looking bridge across one such trench.
Project Regolith began four years ago when the MRS and its complement of one hundred rovers descended on a plume of exhaust to the Martian surface. At that moment, Mars became host to the largest sandbox game in human history.
TerraForm Games accomplished what the space industry could not by appealing to the most dedicated workforce on Earth: gamers. Gamers like Blake were willing to spend thousands of dollars on consoles and pay exorbitant monthly fees to perform tasks that others might have considered work. It may have been pocket change to some, but for Blake it had taken his entire savings to purchase the operating rights to one of the rovers.
He cracked his knuckles, and his fingers flickered across the armrest’s integrated touchpad. The
sequence selector appeared on the monitor, and he scrolled through the list.
Due to the current position of Earth and Mars in their respective orbits, it took eight minutes for a transmission to reach Mars, and eight more minutes to return. The rover’s automated systems could detect, predict, and solve problems in real time, allowing the rover to operate on even the vaguest of commands from its operator.
Sixteen minutes and a slice of pizza later, Feldspar initiated the pre-programmed sequence. All six wheels spun at top speed, and with a plume of fine dust, the rover climbed free of the depression and was on the move again.
The MRS grew steadily in his field of view. It was a cylindrical structure constructed from pieces of the very booster that had brought them to the red planet.
Feldspar maneuvered up to one of the three vacant docks on either side of the structure.
Blake filtered some cloudy water from the tap in the kitchen and poured himself a glass as he watched Feldspar perform its transaction with the MRS.
When prompted, Feldspar soundlessly dumped a compartment full of rust-red dirt through a fine mesh screen and provided the coordinates of its collection. The MRS, equipped with an Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer, reported the content of iron oxide within the regolith a moment later.
The transaction was not over. The rover opened a second compartment, and a dust as black and fluid as ink poured out: pure, elemental carbon. It was a resource he quite literally pulled from thin air. Each rover’s AIR, Atmospheric Ionization and Recovery, module housed an ultraviolet laser within a chamber that pressurized the carbon dioxide-rich atmosphere. The laser reduced carbon dioxide into elemental carbon and oxygen gas. The carbon was an essential reducing agent in the smelting of iron, and the oxygen, if he chose to believe the propaganda, could eventually terraform the planet.
When the battery was fully charged, the MRS would heat the high-strength ceramic lining each of its chambers to 1300 degrees Celsius. After discarding the slag, the MRS would cast and form the metal into a spool of wire and exchange it for more regolith and carbon. The iron wire was the currency of Mars. With it, a rover could 3D print any structure its operator could conceive.