by John Murphy
“I said cut the chatter,” Kerrington warned.
“Hey, it’s pertinent to the mission.”
After a moment, Mitchell answered, “The atmosphere is high in oxidized nitrogen, which you know as nitrous oxide or laughing gas, commonly used as an anesthetic in dentistry. It can make you feel dizzy and euphoric, and it decreases your inhibitions.”
“Shit. Does that mean Spalding will talk more or less?” Dohrn asked.
“Oh, more, without a doubt,” Mitchell said.
“Shit!” came over comms from several simultaneous sources.
“I’m gonna have to put a fist in his yap if he does,” Tucker said.
“We don’t need to be throwing around idle threats,” Sowell said. “We’re only starting out.”
“There was nothing idle about it,” Tucker said.
“Catch me if you can, ginger,” Spalding retorted.
Vasquez joined in. “He plays rugby. I’m pretty sure he can, especially if I’m holding you down.”
“And don’t call me ginger, fuckface,” Tucker said.
“Ginger,” Spalding muttered.
Tucker turned and shoved his way toward the back of the line to get at Spalding, who jerked back to evade him.
Vasquez intercepted Tucker. “No, no, no, man! Don’t do this.”
Kerrington pushed his way back through the line. “Knock it off, ladies!”
Tucker eased off.
“Spalding,” Kerrington said, “you need to stop your shit and stop it now!”
Everyone tensed up for several moments.
Mitchell said quietly, “If we don’t figure out how to control our emotions now, it’s only going to get worse when the masks come off.”
“They said there were no enemies to shoot at us,” Killian said. “But they didn’t say we wouldn’t shoot each other.”
The candidates looked back and forth at one another as Killian’s words sank in.
“Spalding, you wouldn’t want to bring us all down for the sake of a joke, would you?” Sowell asked.
Spalding paused, then shook his head. “No…no. I’m sorry, man. I’ll back off.”
“Fair enough,” Sowell said.
“All right, you two guys cut the shit and avoid each other,” Kerrington said. “Agreed?”
“Yeah, sure,” Spalding said.
Tucker nodded, then pushed his way forward.
As they resumed their march, Killian thought of Mitchell’s words: “when the masks come off.” A new worry seeped into his mind. They didn’t yet know the full effects of the atmosphere, but tempers were hot already. Would he snap and kill someone out of instinct? He had already suggested as much. His stomach churned.
They walked for nearly five minutes before Mitchell spoke again. “We’ll feel drunk, and that will impede our judgment, which, I suppose, is the point of the mission. Get everybody high and see how we behave under stress, so we’ll have to be cognizant of that.”
Killian’s stomach churned even more.
“All right! I can deal with that,” Benson said. “I am definitely a happy drunk.”
“You might think so now,” Mitchell said, “but the lower the altitude, the higher the concentrations of nitrous oxide. It will make you nauseous after awhile. Extended exposure over months can cause brain damage, making you permanently insane.”
“So…it’s not going to hurt us, is it?” Benson asked.
“Not in small doses. However, mining operations have proven unworkable because nitrous oxide is heavy and seeps into the mines in high concentrations, where it becomes toxic. In liquid form, it’s used as rocket fuel, if that gives you any indication. Even climate-controlled, land-based operations couldn’t stave off the effects.”
“How’d you know all this?” Benson asked.
“Science classes. I’m surprised you didn’t know this.”
Killian winced. He hadn’t had the benefit of science classes for several years.
* * *
The group stopped in the shade of a rock overhang. The large “floor” was matched by a ceiling, as if a giant rock had split and the bottom layer dropped down twenty feet. Loose rock slivers echoed loudly as the candidates’ footsteps kicked them aside.
“All right, candidates, take ten,” Kerrington said. “Be sure to hydrate. Feel free to remove your helmets and cool off. It’s hot out here.”
The candidates detached their oxygen tubes and removed their helmets and backpacks. They drank from their quart-sized foil packets. They sat on whatever broken rocks were around.
The candidates looked only slightly worn, but their faces showed signs of salt residue from evaporating perspiration.
Goreman approached Killian with her arms outstretched. “Killian, help me take off my guards. I’m so hot, I gotta take them off!”
Killian complied. Goreman flaunted her ample breasts by tugging on her crew neck supraskin collar and blowing air down her chest. Killian noticed Kerrington frowning at the exchange.
Tucker leered, “You sure are hot, Goreman—smokin’ hot!”
Killian did his best to ignore Goreman’s flirtation, handing her armor top back to her, then turning away. She was smokin’ hot. It was hard to resist staring at her. He forced himself to ignore her. He had to stay focused.
“Killian, I want you to look at me,” Goreman complained.
Killian looked at her with surprise. “Sorry, Goreman. I, uh…Remember, combat mission?”
“I want you to look at me,” Goreman said, louder this time. “I’m so horny.”
She covered her mouth as soon as the words slipped out.
Shocked expressions hung on everyone’s faces—Goreman’s most of all. Kerrington dropped his water pouch, took two aggressive steps toward them, and stopped, his gloved hands in tight fists.
Spalding broke the silence. “I’ll help you out, Goreman. I’m horny, too!”
Dohrn stepped forward. “Damn it! You all should be disqualified. You’re a bunch of oversexed miscreants. I can’t believe this disgusting lack of discipline!”
“Blow me, ya tree-huggin’ bitch!” Spalding retorted.
Dohrn lunged for him. Sowell intercepted her easily. Spalding backpedaled from Dohrn’s angry advance.
“Stand down, ya bunch of douche bags!” Kerrington shouted. “How about some military discipline?” His face reddened, and veins throbbed in his neck. “God, you’re all a bunch of undisciplined bitches!”
“Hey, hey, hey. Come on, calm down everybody,” Benson called out. “It’s the atmosphere, remember? Take a breath and relax.” Benson took a deep breath, exhaled, and then took a deep breath again. “See? Feels good, doesn’t it? Everyone just relax.”
Dohrn pulled away from Sowell, huffing with anger.
“Benson’s right,” Kerrington said. “The atmosphere is obviously having an effect on us. We need to mentally overcome these effects. Come on, people, man up.”
“Yeah, Dohrn, nut up and shut up!” Spalding taunted.
Dohrn raised a fist, ready to lunge at Spalding again. “Shut up, you weasel, or I’ll shut you up.”
“Spalding! I thought you agreed to back off your jokes,” Sowell said.
Mitchell waved the nav tablet in the air. “I think we’re running a bit behind schedule.”
Kerrington turned to her. “What?”
“We’ve been traveling two hours.” She pointed to a location on the topographical map on the tablet. “We should be here by now.”
Kerrington looked at the map. “How is that?”
Tucker pointed at Pima. “It’s her. She can’t keep up.”
“It is not me,” Pima protested. “Why do you always pick on me?” In her anger, she allowed a trace of her familial Indian accent to seep into her voice.
Sowell jumped in. “We’re not picking on you, Pima. T
ucker’s just stating the obvious.”
Carmen came to Pima’s defense. “It’s not her fault. Her legs are shorter. She can’t help it. For every thousand paces you take, she has to take two or three hundred more.”
“It is not fair!” Pima said.
“We’re not trying to assign blame or fault, Pima. I’m identifying the obvious source of the problem. It’s an objective observation.”
“The pacing is too fast,” Carmen said. “We need to slow it down so she can keep up.”
“Yes, that is it,” Pima agreed. “Slow down the pace. That way, we don’t get worn out too quickly.”
“That won’t solve the problem, Pima,” Sowell said, struggling to maintain an even tone. “You need to step it up. We’ve only got seventy-two hours to complete the mission. Going slower is not the solution.”
“But my legs are shorter than yours. It isn’t fair.”
“Life is unfair,” Killian said.
“We should probably check in. It’s been two hours,” Mitchell said, noting the time on her nav tablet.
“All right, I’ll check in.” Kerrington pushed the communication button on his chest armor. “Blue Orchid, Blue Orchid, this is Mission Veritas, doing a comm check. Over.”
A voice came back, cluttered with static. “Missi…tas, you…br…ken…say again.”
Kerrington took off his backpack, opened it, and removed the main communications unit for closer inspection. He turned the unit over, pushing a few switches off and on. He tried the transmission several times again but received only broken static in return. The final things he heard were a strange warbling tone, clicks, and a long hiss.
Puzzled, Kerrington shook the device. “Maybe the battery is too low to broadcast a good signal. Hey, that sounds a lot like Morse code. Does anyone know Morse code?”
“I do,” Mitchell replied, “but that’s not Morse code. It’s electronic gibberish. It could be we’re too low in this canyon to get a good signal. That, combined with possible electromagnetic interference from the high concentrations of metal ore on this planet. The terrain has a great deal of iron oxide, hence the red color. ”
“Daddy says too many metals used in industry interfere with Earth’s polarity,” Goreman said. “He’s in charge of the Global Magnetic Shift Commission.”
“What do we do now?” Dohrn asked, her voice tinged with worry.
“We carry on,” Killian said.
“Wait a minute, we can’t carry on without communicating with command,” Kerrington said.
“Sure we can,” Vasquez said. “We still have our nav. We can make our way out of this gorge and try later.”
“What if something goes wrong?” Dohrn asked.
“That’s right,” Kerrington said. “Without comms we could be stranded.”
“We can figure it out, then,” Killian said. “We’ve got a mission. Let’s go!”
“Hey, you’re not calling the shots here!” Kerrington warned. He took a moment to deliberate. “I say we continue on out of this gorge and try comms again later.”
Vasquez rolled his eyes. Tucker tossed his hands up in exasperation. Killian put his backpack and helmet on, and walked off in the direction they’d been heading.
“Hey, Killian! Damn it,” Kerrington shouted. “Come back here and get in formation! I say when to move out!” He paused a beat. “Okay everyone, mount up and let’s get moving. Move it, move it!”
Others began to saddle up and hike in the direction Killian had gone. They found Killian standing around a bend in the path, waiting for them to catch up.
As Kerrington approached, he stopped. “Hey, goddamn it. You don’t move out until I say so. You got me?”
Killian stood motionless. He’d endured Gahn’s irrational tirades; he could endure this.
Kerrington flipped up his face shield so he was off comms. “Don’t you dare undermine my authority again, or I’m going to have you disqualified for insubordination! You got me, street punk?”
Killian stared him down. “Yes, I understand. I apologize.” His tone was controlled and calm, and it went out over comms. He envisioned Captain Leon taking the same tack.
“Watch it, General Issue. Your street thug, dog-eat-dog mentality doesn’t belong in Black Saber. Don’t you dare disrespect me again or I will take administrative action and have you thrown out!”
“You’re right, and I do apologize,” said Killian. He knew Kerrington had merely been given the lead for the mission and doubted he possessed the sway to disqualify anyone. Still, he didn’t want pettiness to get in the way of completing the mission. He turned his head, his face shield concealing his disgust.
Kerrington snapped his face shield back into place. “Keep moving, candidates. We’ve spent too much time squabbling. Move it, move it!”
Kerrington scurried to the front of the line, shoving candidates out of his way. Killian waited until he was behind Pima once again and fell in with the group’s pace.
After a few minutes, Sowell stopped and stood aside to let the single-file line pass him. He fell in next to Killian.
Sowell flipped up his face shield. “Dude, did you really get those nasty scars in a street fight?”
Killian marched on for a bit, not looking at Sowell. Eventually, he flipped up his face shield so he would be off comms. “Don’t ask me any more questions, okay?”
“Whoa, seriously? Did you really kill the other guy?”
Killian realized Sowell wouldn’t give up the inquiry easily. “It was self-defense.” Immediately his mind reeled. Why had he said that?
“Damn! I never knew anyone who killed somebody before. You serious? You wouldn’t be shittin’ everybody, would you?”
Killian mentally flogged himself for saying anything. Somehow, though, he couldn’t hold back. “I’m high on Veritas. Would I lie to you?”
“Damn! Killian the killer!” Sowell whispered in amazement.
Killian stopped and pointed at Sowell’s face. “No! No stupid nicknames.”
Pima, the only one within earshot, glanced over her shoulder, then turned forward again and kept marching.
Killian snapped his face shield back down and marched off before he revealed anything more.
“Sowell! Get back to the head of your fire team,” Kerrington said. “Quit falling out!”
Sowell snapped his face shield down and hurried back to his place in line.
“Come on, people,” Kerrington said. “Show some goddamned discipline here!”
CHAPTER 14
64 Hours to Extraction
DISTANT THUNDER RUMBLED as the candidates neared the canyon bottom. They looked up past the sheer cliffs to a narrow stretch of sky. They had been so focused on descending that they hadn’t noticed billowy clouds gathering to the north.
“This could be a problem,” Mitchell announced as they stepped clumsily over river rocks and ankle-deep puddles.
“A little rain won’t hurt us,” Vasquez said.
“No, but this canyon was carved out by millions of gallons of rain funneled down from the entire valley.”
“You’ve got the nav,” Kerrington said. “Can we get to higher ground?”
“The route takes us through the floor of this gorge for another mile or so. Then we’ll be able to ascend.”
Kerrington looked up. “I don’t see any clouds overhead. Looks like clear skies.”
“That’s true, but any rainfall ahead of us is going to come right through here.”
“Can’t we go back?” Benson asked.
“We’d have to go back a couple of miles to where this trail dropped into the canyon floor.”
“That would take too long. We’d lose a couple of hours.” Kerrington shook his head. “We have to move forward.”
“I agree. But we’re going to have to be quick about it,” Mitchell said.
“Stay to the sides,” Kerrington said. “We should be all right.”
The gorge was almost one hundred feet wide, with turns ahead. They marched in the sand and rocks along the canyon walls, rather than through puddles at the lowest point.
Vasquez stopped abruptly. “Holy shit!”
The others gathered around him on a wide sandbar. They found a half-buried helmet, the orange oxygen tube bleached of its bright color. Kerrington pulled the weatherworn helmet out of the sand to inspect it.
“Looks pretty old,” Tucker said uneasily.
Kerrington examined it closely. “Looks just like our gear, only banged up.”
“Maybe we can hang out along the sides as high as we can get,” Benson said, his voice thin.
“That’s likely not good enough,” Mitchell said.
“How much farther until we can reach high ground?” Kerrington asked.
Mitchell consulted her nav tablet. “Half a mile, maybe.”
“Maybe we should head back until this blows over,” Benson suggested.
“We have no way of knowing how long anything will take,” Killian said. “It might not rain for another hour, and it might continue for a long time after that.”
“We’d fail,” Sowell said.
“We can make it,” Vasquez said. “It’s only half a mile.”
Kerrington chucked the helmet back into the sand. “Let’s be quick about it.”
* * *
The gorge narrowed as they went. The round rocks were replaced by larger, jagged boulders that had parted ways with the towering cliffs.
Rumbling thunder haunted them, urging them to move quickly. No one spoke.
The canyon walls closed in. Undulating curves carved by erosion concealed their height. The candidates could barely see the darkening sky above.
The calm, clear puddles turned into knee-deep muddy water that swirled around the rocks.
Killian had often thought of rain as his ally, providing cover and sending his enemies for shelter, allowing him freer movement. Now, it took on a different meaning.
The width of the canyon walls shrank even further. The candidates reached out instinctively and touched the walls on either side. The smoothly carved waves of rock were beautiful, yet unnerving.