by Peter Telep
Lying prone and propped on her elbows wasn't exactly her favorite position, and the muscles in Shane's back grew tense. She lowered her binoculars and rolled over to stretch.
The others had fanned out ahead of her to observe the Chigs. Cooper lay the nearest, and he looked determinedly through his binocs. While the blizzard had begun to taper off, the winds still held fast, and a thin layer of snow covered his legs and most of his back.
"Chigs got a lot of hope," Wang blurted out, his the first words from anyone in a long time.
"What do you mean?" Cooper asked.
"Look at them down there, going over and over that debris. No Chiggie could survive that. But I guess they keep believing."
"Maybe they wanna see if there's anything down there they can salvage," Damphousse said.
"Dead pilots are down there. And the Chigs are afraid of their dead. They should be hightailing it out," Cooper said.
"That's just what you want them to do, Coop," Damphousse corrected. "So we can get moving."
"I could give them a buzz," Cooper suggested. "Let 'em know we're freezing our earlobes off waitin' for them." He addressed Shane in a mock-serious tone. "Captain, permission to contact the enemy."
Shane rolled onto her stomach and resumed her gaze through the binoculars. "They don't move in a couple of mikes, and I'll save you the trouble."
"Roger that," he said. "Wish I had an SSM right now. A pair of missiles down their throats would speed things up."
"And alert their flying buddies back home," Shane added.
"I don't know why we're so worried about that. Our counterintelligence was blown to hell when we made the insertion," Cooper said. "They know we're here. We're stupid if we think otherwise."
"I'm fine with believing that, Hawkes," Shane told him. "But we still don't wanna be spotted. Tends to get you killed. Don't you think?"
"Wait a minute, wait a minute," he said excitedly. "You wanna know what I think? I think I'm getting a faint signal from Nathan's rucksack. Yeah. There it is. And, oh, dammit it's gone."
"You sure?" Shane asked.
"I'm telling you, I read it right. The signal was there. I had my DC set for his gear back when we split up, and I forgot I still had it on. I don't know why I'm not reading it now. Maybe he moved out of range."
"I hate to be negative, but that still doesn't mean he's alive," Wang said.
Shane crawled to Cooper. "You get an origination?" He turned to her, his face pale save for his cheeks and nose. "Negative. But it came from the northeast, maybe 285 or 290 degrees. Fairly close to the aqueduct."
"Stay on that frequency. You might pick it up again as we get closer."
"Oh, I know I will," Cooper said.
She crawled back to her position and regarded her own digital compass. She had set it to read Mister 404's Personal Locator Beacon, and had told the others that she was receiving his signal but that it revealed the silicate lay inert, which had been the truth. But when she had noticed that the A.I. had somehow survived the drop into the crater and was moving, she had conveniently failed to inform the rest. The signal now showed that Mister 404 had circled nearly three quarters of the way around the crater and was apparently initiating what she had dubbed plan B. Shane knew that if she led the squad to the other side of the crater, they would probably meet up with the android.
But why hadn't she informed the rest? She still wasn't sure about that. When the silicate had fallen into the crater, she had felt a pang of loss that still deeply troubled her. She had been sorry to have lost the A.I. And that sorrow had been ridiculous. She had reasoned that she should have celebrated the silicate's destruction. Yet he had acted by the numbers and had gone out of his way to promote peace between himself and the rest. He had even voiced that desire. And he had effectively made Shane feel bad about losing him.
Still, questions lingered. Could she continue to he to lie to the squadron? Could they complete the mission without the silicate, whose argument that they could not had been fairly convincing?
It dawned on Shane that she was playing a little game with herself. Torn between liking and hating the silicate made her believe that she shouldn't go out of her way to save him, but if he managed to rejoin them, then she would welcome him back. Could she, however, voice the notion to the others? Uh, people, the silicate is functioning and moving to the other side of the crater. And if he finds us, great. And if he doesn't, well it's no major loss, right? She looked at Hawkes and knew he would have a huge problem with that.
Deciding it was better to just report the silicate's movements, Shane muttered, "Just checked my own DC. Tracking 404's beacon. He's headed east along the wall of the crater. He should be below our course in about ten mikes."
"No way," Wang said.
"He land in a snow drift or what?" Damphousse asked.
"I don't know, but he's moving," Shane said, feeling a wash of relief over telling them.
Just then, the Chig fighters rose out of the crater and turned simultaneously on their wings. Shane kept her head low and listened as the ships rocketed away. Then she looked up. "All right, Hawkes. Wait's over."
On the opposite side of the crater, Damphousse peered over the edge and spotted the silicate about halfway into his ascent. "There he is."
Shane guessed they were close enough to him now to open a comlink. "Mister 404, you copy? Over."
"Yes, Captain."
"We'll run a sitting hip belay from here. Wait for my signal," Shane said, one part of her regretting that she was actually going to help the A.I.
"Lemme be the belayer," Cooper said. "I think I did pretty good at that in the class." He took a seat facing the crater, about a yard away from the edge.
"Okay, Hawkes. You got it."
"We'll help anchor him," Wang said.
It took a few minutes for Damphousse and Wang to drive three snowstakes into the ice bed. Then they attached lines from the stakes to Cooper's harness. Had Cooper been sitting on a bed of rock, the others would have attempted to find a more suitable way of anchoring him, such as throwing a line around a boulder or a similarly heavy outcropping.
"Anchors are set, Coop," Wang said.
"Thanks." Cooper slipped off his rucksack and withdrew his pair of crampons. He attached the metal frames to his bootsoles and dug the thirty-two-millimeter-long points at his heels into the ice.
Shane handed him the carabiner end of her rope, and he attached the locking clip to his harness. Then she turned toward the cliff. "All right, Mister 404. Look for the rope." She tossed the circle of line over the side.
They had learned in climbing class that every team should have a set of clearly understood and well-defined signals. Shane had become familiar with a number of systems, and the instructor had said that it doesn't matter which set you use so long as everyone knows exactly which one is being used. Problem was, Mister 404 had not attended any of the training sessions, and Shane wondered just how much programmed training the A.I. had received. If Cooper and the silicate got their signals crossed, an accident could prove fatal.
Yet fatal for whom? Why, the silicate. No big loss. What am I worried about? Shane asked herself.
"Belay on?" Mister 404 asked, employing the first and most common set of verbal cues.
"On belay!" Cooper answered.
Then, to Shane's mild astonishment, the silicate indicated with the cry "Ready to test?" that he would like to check the belay by pulling on the rope. Shane had learned that the practice is helpful for both climber and belayer to discover which way the rope will pull and to confirm the strength of the belay. It had taken her a few minutes to assimilate the information. The silicate had received the same training in a billionth of a second.
"Test," Cooper said.
"Testing." Then, satisfied with the belay, Mister 404 reported, "Ready to climb."
"Climb."
"Climbing."
The silicate learned fast, all right, and he could scale a crater wall with equal expediency. Shane guessed
that he didn't pick hand or foot holds based on gut instinct and outward appearance; he probably did the math on every movement he made, calculating his mass, the pressure points, wind velocity, and whatever else might affect his ascent. But he wasn't infallible, as his previous fall attested. Occasionally he would shout, "Slack!" And Cooper would let out rope. Then he would call, "Up rope!" And Cooper would take in rope.
It wasn't long before the silicate completed the pitch and came crawling over the edge, wearing what Shane deemed a stupid smile on his face. He took a seat and did his best programmed impression of being out of breath, then said, "Off belay."
"Belay off," Cooper responded, then he proceeded to remove his crampons while Damphousse and Wang detached the anchors.
"Permission to speak, Captain," the A.I. said as he unclipped the rope from his harness.
"We'll lose that rule for now," Shane said.
"Thank you. There have been some noncombat situations where communication between us was essential."
Why does he always make me roll my eyes? Shane thought. "Yeah, whatever. What do you want?"
"Actually, I wanted to talk to Lieutenant Hawkes," he said, turning his attention to Cooper, who raised a brow. "I want to commend your mountaineering, Lieutenant First rate. Really, first rate. And I know you didn't have much time to train."
"Well, I like to think I got a little bit of the mountain man's knowledge of bushcraft," Cooper said, more in love with himself at the moment than Shane had ever witnessed.
Damphousse winced. "Mountain man's knowledge of bushcraft? Where the hell did you hear that, Coop?"
"Yeah," Wang said, joining Damphousse. "And how many mountains did you climb back in Philadelphia?"
"I mean, maybe its genetic, like a talent for music or something," Cooper said with a shrug. "And I read about bushcraft in the manual they gave us. Didn't you read it, Wang?"
"You know, Coop. That's one manual I didn't get to," the lieutenant confessed.
Cooper turned his attention to the silicate. "So you look all right. How'd you manage that?"
"I popped the mini-chute on my pack, and I also landed on a bed of snow about a meter thick. Besides that, my 'bones', if you will, can take a lot more beating than yours."
"All right, let's shag it," Shane ordered. "I wanna move at least another klick before the long break."
They sighed and cursed but complied.
After about twenty mikes of hiking between another stretch of sastruga, Shane got thirsty and pulled out her vacuum-insulated canteen for a drink of yellow-colored, high-energy, bad-tasting Marine Corps "power juice." She would have been satisfied with water, but one wasted a lot of power melting snow. She had learned in CWS class that seventeen cubic inches of uncompacted snow yields only one cubic inch of water. So power juice it was.
She raised her helmet's faceplate and lifted the canteen to her lips. As the cold liquid began to slide down throat, she heard the report of a weapon. Nearly choking, she dropped the canteen and slammed onto her stomach.
Multiple, glowing orbs of Chig laser fire tore holes in the snow ahead of her. Beyond the squadron, the sastruga gave way to the deep shadows of a ravine about ten meters wide that was adjoined by a rocky bank.
"Guess they know we're here!" Cooper shouted, his voice betraying his fear.
The Chigs continued to unleash rounds into the shallow valley between drifts. They appeared and ducked behind the crest of the sastruga to her left. Shane rolled onto her side, and, one-handing her weapon, she fired wildly at the aliens. "Get to the ravine! Now!" A laser blast struck the surface less than half a meter away from Shane's face, kicking up a spray of pulverized ice into her eyes.
"Teddy, ain't you got a weapon?" Cooper screamed.
"Negative. The captain said—"
"Here. Take my pistol."
Shane crawled forward, shouting, "No. Hawkes. Do not arm him."
"Too late," Cooper said.
Under continuous enemy fire, the others stood and bolted for the rocky bank. Shane fell back to the rear to lay down a shower of suppressing fire with her rifle and pistol that inspired the Chigs to keep themselves hidden behind the slope. But in less than a mike they realized they were being fired upon by only one individual and let loose with enough multiple salvos to make Shane abandon thoughts of continuing. Rarely did she turn her back on the enemy and run.
"C'mon, Shane!" Damphousse urged. "Come on!"
She took a path between two sharp-peaked columns of icy rock, then abruptly she turned right and put her back to the stone.
Suddenly, the top of the column was torn off in a tremendous explosion, and a deluge of stones and pebbles ricocheted off Shane's helmet. Then the top of the pillar next to her was blasted away, and another spate of stone replaced the first.
The shots had come from ahead. She sidestepped up the bank to a deep impression in the hill that resembled a cave entrance but was merely an ice-covered pockmark. She slid into it, then rolled onto her side to stare into her M-590's scope. The green tint of simulated day enabled her to count one, two, three Chigs moving from behind stone cover to the north.
"Shane," Cooper called. "In like ten seconds they're gonna have us pinned down."
"Wang, get an MT on line. Let's acquire these targets," Shane ordered.
"On it. Damn, this thing takes a long time to boot up. Waiting. Targets. Multiple."
"Smart scanner," Shane muttered darkly.
"Four advancing from the south, less than thirty meters away. Three to north." Then, with his nerves creeping into his voice, Wang said, "And now I got a pair both east and west."
"I told you, Shane. We're gettin' boxed in here," Cooper said, then swore under his breath.
Things needed to slow down in order for Shane to think clearly. Things like her heart. She drew a mental picture of the battlefield, the positions of the advancing Chigs, and then the image of the ravine came to her. She crawled out of the icy ditch and shot to the nearest boulder as weapons' fire resounded behind her. She snaked her way between the stones and arrived before the rather intimidating crack in the earth that was the ravine. Once on her hands and knees, she took a stone, tossed it into the shadows, and watched it plunge into a bed of snow about ten or twelve feet below. And now she could see light coming into the ravine from the left. The ravine wasn't just a deep crack in the ground but, perhaps, part of a cave or tunnel system. "Silver Bullets. Lock your compasses on my PLB. I'm at the ravine. I think I found a way out of here."
fourteen
Nathan wedged his gloved fingers into the horizontal crevice for a cling hold, pulled himself up a step along the rock wall, then looked up and asked, "Why do you gotta show me what happened here anyway?"
"You must see it," Kyoko said enigmatically.
The two Marines of the twenty-first squadron were above him, and Penny ran a top-down belay for him. The rock face contained many foot and hand holds; however, most were clogged with chunks of snow and ice that occasionally forced Nathan to kick or punch his way into a perch. After fifteen mikes of that, the bottom of his right fist was sore.
They were climbing above the makeshift lookout because Kyoko had said they needed to be closer to the aqueduct. Nathan had argued that the only reason he had to get closer to the duct was to destroy it. Then again, he had said that in passion, forgetting that they did need to gather as much intelligence as possible, which included taking digital photographs and recording troop movements and cargo departures. This was all in an effort to figure out the best line of approach into the enemy facility. Cooper would say that the best line of approach would be with an M-590 blazing in front of you. Though he participated in them, Cooper wasn't much on stealth Ops.
"Ready to climb?" Penny asked.
"Climbing," Nathan responded.
"Looking good, West. Watch those boots. Lots of good holds down there. A dream climb," Kyoko said.
"More like a bad dream," Nathan mumbled.
"What was that?" Penny called.
He blew off her question and asked, "Are we almost there yet?"
"You sound like my little sister when we go on vacation," Penny said, fighting back a chuckle as she did so.
Nathan sighed deeply. "No, I sound like a Marine officer who is a hell of a lot more than ticked off."
"Last one, Lieutenant," Kyoko promised him. "So just think about the pitch." Her voice did have a calming effect.
Kyoko and Penny had been well trained, as was evident in their climbing skills. They hadn't received a crash course in mountaineering the way the fifty-eighth had; they had spent four weeks in both classes and in the climbing gym, where they had perfected their holds, belaying, rappelling, and arrests. Around them, Nathan felt very much like the amateur he was, but at least he knew he was in good hands. The first rule of climbing: Do it with someone more experienced than yourself.
With a final groan, Nathan hauled himself onto the wide ledge where Kyoko and Penny had already dropped their packs. He rolled onto his back and remained there, breathing, staring up into the twilight, hoping the two women had something damned important to show him.
"Good job, West," Penny said.
"Yes, and welcome to the land of escape, solitude, adventure, and beauty," Kyoko added. "So far from Earth, yet so familiar."
Nathan sat up to regard her. "You sound like you wouldn't mind being stranded on this snowball."
"Quite the contrary," Kyoko said. "We've been watching the comings and goings of those Chig fighters for some time now. And we've yet to spot a moment to steal one and fly home. Believe me. Robinson Crusoeing around here isn't my idea of a good time. But you can't deny that the landscape is incredible."
Nathan nodded, then he turned to take in the view of the aqueduct.
They were much closer, and he didn't need his binoculars to pick out the traffic running along the conduit's bridgeway. He also saw a Chig guard posted here or there, and then he spotted an A.I. soldier among them, which didn't surprise Nathan since the Chigs had already used silicates at the Kazbek Penal Colony. But he did wonder how Teddy would react to the news. "Okay. Here we are. I've indulged you. I've climbed for you. I've sweated for you. Now, what the hell's going on?"