by Wil McCarthy
The Six formed a half-circle whose ends were perhaps two meters from the wall. Like worshipers at a monument. No, like chess pieces on a strange, curved board: Sipho, Shenna, Josev, Marshe, Ken, and Roland. Queen at the center, Rooks on the ends. But then, perhaps they were all just pawns, their royalty lined up invisibly behind them, urging them forward, spending their lives like so many copper ducats.
“I'm opening it,” Roland said, stepping forward, his face grim beneath the equipment. He placed one hand at the upper right corner of the door, the other on the middle of the right edge. Then he pressed, grunting slightly.
Metal rasped against metal. Hinges groaned. New flakes of paint pattered down onto the floor. There was a sound like a shallow intake of breath. The left side of the door swung out into the room, revealing blackness behind it, the cavernous maw of a beast preparing to devour.
“Tunnel,” Roland said, stepping away from the doorway.
Marshe pointed to Sipho Yeng. “Flatscreen,” she said.
Sipho nodded, taking two steps forward and leaning into the tunnel. He held up a flatscreen in his hand as though showing it to somebody on the other side of the doorway. Darkness retreated, revealing a corridor whose dimensions matched those of the door.
“Ooh,” Josev said quietly. “Tight fit. Who goes first?”
“Jonson does,” Marshe said without inflection. She turned to Ken, pressed an object into his hand. “Your handgun scores are best in the group. Plus you've been in combat.”
Ken looked down at the thing Marshe had handed him. A small thing, crafted of metal and black plastic. A gun. He stared at it for several seconds.
“Standard issue navy stunner,” Marshe said. “No safety, just point it and pull the trigger. Fires a charged particle beam in a laser track, so watch for the blue dot. Or, uh, yellow I guess, with the goggles on.”
“Hey,” said Josev, leaning around Marshe to look Ken in the face. “You going to be okay with that?”
“He's going to be fine,” Marshe said, looking at Ken, her voice more than a little threatening.
“#Yes#” Ken said. “#Circumstance is-proper is-proper I/I know how to fight#”
He hefted the gun, got a good grip on it. Loose, not tight. Finger near, but not on, the trigger. He stepped toward the doorway.
A hand dropped down onto his shoulder. Josev's. He turned.
Josev's lenses glittered in the flatscreen light. “Chum,” he said. “If Ken Jonson is still in there somewhere...”
“#Yes#” Ken said.
Josev pulled his hand back, dug uncomfortably at his collar. “Listen, there's... When Yeng and I were poking through the data system, we ran straight through fleet logistics, and we saw... The, ah, the Marine transports that are left are all hiding in the Saturn B-ring. If... we don't make it...”
Ken pictured the armada sweeping down into near-Saturn space, burning moons, making plasma of proud space cities. Gunboats flashing, dying, Waister fleetships pursuing them down, toward the rings of the jewel of Sol system. Toward the battered remnants of the U.A.S. Marine Corps.
He nodded, to indicate his understanding.
“Nob Witan is one of the transports,” Josev said. “I... thought you'd like to know.”
Ken nodded again.
Josev seemed to have nothing further to say.
Ken turned away, raising the gun a bit, and stepped into the doorway.
“Wait,” said Sipho Yeng. “Take this.”
Without turning, or stepping out of the darkened tunnel, Ken reached behind him and held out his left hand. He felt a rectangular object being passed to him, grasped it. A flatscreen.
He held it out before him, illuminating the secret corridor with the diffuse, purple light that he saw as a greenish white. As Sipho had said, the corridor seemed long, stretching out seamlessly, featurelessly, for as far as Ken could see. Which, he supposed, was not far, not more than about ten meters; the flatscreen was not all that useful as a lamp.
He started forward, hearing the bump and rustle of bodies packing in behind him.
“#Dark#” He heard Shenna say.
Then Sipho's voice: “Quiet, little one. Go in the—That's right.”
“#Speak as Hwhh#” Rasped the voice of Marshe's voder.
“I can't give directions in the #Hwhh#,” Josev whispered.
“Cut the chatter,” Ken said, aloud, in Standard.
Behind him, the group fell silent.
Steel walls seemed to press in against him. He faced forward, both hands stretched out before him, brandishing the tools of warfare, of treachery. With every step, his shoulders brushed the walls, first right, then left, then right again. The voder mask seemed to magnify the sound of his breathing, making of it a deep-drawn hissing that reminded him of hardsuit rebreathers.
It was not difficult to imagine boogeymen in the darkness ahead, Waister Drones leaping wall-to-wall in their rush to meet him. It was not difficult to imagine his arms covered with the red, the blue, the sticky white of drying blood.
“Ladder up ahead,” Josev called out quietly.
“Are you sure?” Ken whispered back. “I can't see one.”
“I'm reading the God-damn chart,” Josev said. “Just keep moving. It'll be on your left.”
Ken kept moving. Ahead of him, there was nothing but darkness. True darkness, he thought, of the sort not found on Earth. Here, in the core of a giant fortress a billion and a half kilometers from the sun, the thick shield of rock and metal that surrounded him concealed merely the further black of deep space. Darkness here was a solid, smothering thing, existing in the eye and in the mind, in the churning gut in a way that could not be imagined even in the caves and catacombs of Earth's deepest ocean.
Interesting. His fear was returning, along with his voice. Was that a good thing, or a bad one? Was fear a better feeling to have than simple emptiness?
Ahead in the darkness, a shape darker still. Gasping, Ken raised the stunner and pulled its trigger.
A yellow spot appeared on the wall ahead, crackling with faint lightning, illuminating a rectangular gap that ran the height of the left wall. Ken was firing into an empty doorway.
He released the trigger. The gun, which had hummed and vibrated in his hand, fell silent. The dot on the wall glowed briefly, then faded into the darkness.
“What! What!” Called Josev's voice, somewhere behind him.
Ken let out a breath. “Twitchy finger,” he said. “My fault. I think we've found your ladder.”
He shuffled toward the new doorway, shining his light into it, looking for the ladder. He found it: in the niche behind the doorway, a pair of metal poles, connected by rungs widely spaced, connected to the back wall by twin braces. The ladder ran up through an opening in the ceiling, ran down through an opening in the floor. He moved forward, into the niche, shining his light down into the hole. The floor was thick, nearly a meter thick, but he could see another level down below it, another opening in the floor. The ladder stretched down, deep, into a shaft that might lead all the way to the rim of the station. What was that, a hundred meters below? Two hundred?
He shined the light upward, and saw that the shaft continued into the higher levels, as well.
“Up or down?” He whispered over his shoulder.
“Up or down?” He heard Sipho Yeng repeating behind him.
Josev said a sentence or two that Ken couldn't make out.
“Up,” Sipho said, repeating Josev's words. “Three levels. Then continue in the same direction.”
“Right,” Ken said. He looked at the ladder, looked at the deep shaft, looked at the objects in his hands. “Uh, Sipho, would you point your light for me? I need my hands free.”
“Certainly.”
Ken tucked the gun into his right pocket, the flatscreen into his left, and leaned forward to wrap his hands around a ladder-rung. Then, stepping out over empty space, he placed a foot on a lower rung, and stepped the other foot in beside it. He reached upward...
“Wait a minute,” he said, aloud. Echoes of his voice climbed the shaft above him. “Sipho, how are we supposed to get the Dog up this ladder? Huh?”
Silence.
He turned his head, craned it out over one shoulder. “Sipho?”
“Oh,” said the Martian astronomer. “Oh my. I suppose we'll have to pass her up by hand!”
“Sweet names of God,” somebody whispered, back in the corridor.
Ken sighed, feeling exasperation seethe through him like a new and evil drug.
“Shit,” he said. “Let me think. Uh, Roland is tough, right? Got that high-gravity frame. He'll have to stay at the bottom, holding onto the ladder as tight as he can. That way if Shenna falls, she won't fall any farther than that. The rest of us will have to space out between the levels, and pass her up. And Sipho, I think you'd better explain this to her. She's not going to like it.”
“No,” Sipho agreed. “No she isn't.”
Ken waited while his plan was passed down the line. Among the voices, he heard the Waister groan and hiss of Shenna's voder. The words were muffled, garbled. The Broca web tingled on the back of his brain, but meanings eluded him.
“Marshe says to go ahead,” he heard Josev whisper, finally, from around the corner.
“Go ahead,” Sipho repeated.
“Yeah,” Ken said. “I'm going.”
Sipho's light was not a great help to him as he climbed. It seemed, somehow, to produce shadows above him and on the back wall, without producing any light spaces for the shadows to contrast with. A dance of black against black. But the opening in the ceiling was narrow, his elbows bumping the edges of it as he climbed past.
He continued climbing, brushing past a second level, a third. He stopped, and in the absence of climbing noises his breath seemed loud. There was nothing beneath him. If he slipped, he knew, he would burst like a melon at the bottom of the shaft. The air smelled of darkness, of stillness, of dust that was centuries old.
“I'm here,” he called, looking down. Vaguely, he could see the gray rectangle of Sipho's flatscreen.
“Yes,” Sipho said, ten meters below him. “Can you get your light out? I'm coming up behind you.”
Silently, he pushed his legs through the ladder, one on each side of a rung, and hooked his feet together, bracing them against the back wall. Then, freeing a hand, he reached into his pocket and extracted the flatscreen. He pointed it downward.
He heard a whisper, a prayer, perhaps, as Sipho stepped out onto the ladder. The tap of shoe-soles against metal rungs was mingled with the rustle of clothing. Sipho's climb was a slow one, and the puffing and panting of his breath suggested genuine physical stress. What was gravity here, about point-seven-gee? Sipho was born on Mars, and had been stationed, for the past three years, in the high northern lattitudes of Ceres. Low gravity environments, all. And again, Sipho was by no means a young man.
“Okay?” Ken called down.
“Yes,” puffed Sipho. Ken could see the astronomer's outline clearly now, could see the motion of his arms as he pulled himself up past the second level. Once through, he was even more clearly visible, his yellow-brown Martian skin looking dismally gray, his hair and uniform gone black as space.
The climbing stopped.
“Hook your feet through the ladder,” Ken said. “You'll need to have both arms free to hold Shenna. Get your light out, for now.”
There were noises, movements below, as somebody else mounted the ladder.
“Sludging hell,” a voice muttered.
Sounds of brisk climbing rattled upward for several seconds, then quieted.
“Hook your feet through the ladder,” Sipho whispered.
“Yeah, yeah,” said the new voice.
More noises, as Marshe climbed to the top of the first level.
“#Fear#” Said Shenna's voder, far below.
“Come on, puppy,” Marshe answered softly, in her maternal Queen-voice. She grunted. “Uuup you go. Mmph.”
“Good Shenna,” said Josev's voice. “Good—Oh. You're heavy. Sipho, lean... get... Marshe, shine your clodgy light up here, would you?”
Ken watched Sipho struggle beneath him. Shadows danced against the walls.
“#Fear#” Shenna said again.
“The Dog is heavy!” Sipho said, his voice tight.
“Pass her up,” Ken ordered.
“I—” Said Sipho. I can't, he was going to say.
“Pass her up, damn you! I am not kidding!”
Shenna's head appeared, her forlorn face looking upward alongside Sipho's. The man was grimacing, as if with intense effort.
“Can't!” Sipho groaned. “She's slipping!”
“Damn,” Ken said, leaning down as far as he could, letting the inside of his right knee take his full weight against the ladder rung. “I'm sorry, Shenna.”
He grabbed the Dog's collar with his left hand, and lifted her by it.
“Aah!” Sipho cried as his grip slipped a little.
“Shut up!” Ken said, then opened his mouth, placed the flatscreen in it, bit down. His right hand shot down to grip the scruff of Shenna's neck.
“#Pain#” Shenna called out. “#Pai—#”
The voder squealed, staticked, died, and there was only the sound of plain, canine whimpering.
“Goog gog,” Ken said around the flatscreen. “Goog, goog goggie.”
Straining, he leaned upward, lifting his own weight and Shenna's by the bending of his waist. He got her head and front legs into the opening in the floor. Continued lifting. Her nose and paws reached floor level. Yelping, she scrabbled against the smooth metal. Ken moved his right hand underneath her, under her belly. He pushed upward.
Shenna found purchase, scrambled out onto the floor, into the darkened corridor beyond, whining like an abandoned puppy.
“Is she up?” Sipho called.
Ken took the flatscreen out of his mouth. “Yes,” he snapped. “Get up here.”
He put his hands on a higher rung, lifted himself, put his knees down on the floor.
“Good dog, Shenna. Good doggie!”
He got to his feet, stepped into the corridor. He shined his light to the left, then to the right.
Shenna sat on the floor, her tail wagging slightly. She whined again.
“Oh, Shenna,” Ken said, leaning over. “I'm sorry, doggie. I'm sorry.”
Shenna rose partway, strained forward, and licked Ken's face, her wide tongue slathering up along the side of his voder mask.
“Oh, that's a good dog,” Ken said, feeling a tickly warmth run through him. He'd gone many years without the kiss of a dog. He reached forward, fondled Shenna's collar. “Did we hurt your voder, doggie? Can you speak?”
She looked up at him, with loving eyes, and remained silent. Her tail wagged back and forth against the metal floor.
“Did you damage her prosthetics?” Said a voice behind him.
He sighed. “Yes, Sipho, I did. Are the others coming up?”
Turning, he saw Sipho nodding in the dimness. Josev Ranes crowded into the corridor behind the astronomer.
“How's the dog?” He asked.
“Voder's broken. Otherwise, she's fine.”
“Ah.”
There ensued several minutes of shuffling and jostling, as the Six filed into the corridor and arranged themselves for further horizontal travel.
“You ready to go, Jonson?” Marshe called ahead.
“Yes.”
“Well get going, then. You're doing a good job.”
“Thank you,” Ken said, feeling strange. The art of conversation had seemed so difficult before, but now...
They began walking.
“Should be a left turn up ahead,” Josev said.
Ken grunted. “How fa—”
There was a slamming sound, and half a moment later Ken collided, face-first, with a metal wall. “Ah!” He cried.
“You found it,” said Josev.
“No,” Ken groaned, stepping away from the wall, feeling the corridor pres
s in on both sides of him. “This is a dead end! There's no turn!”
From far behind them came another slamming noise, like a massive steel gate dropping into place. Farther still, and more completely muffled, the sound repeated again. Very, very distantly, Ken seemed to hear the screaming of alarm klaxons.
“Combat drill!” Josev cried out.
“Real combat,” Marshe said darkly. “The Waisters must be forming up for attack.”
“The MI said three hours,” Josev protested.
“Well,” Marshe said, “I haven't heard any shooting yet, but maybe there's been a change in schedule.”
“The tunnel is sealed,” Ken reminded them. “How are we supposed to get to the control center?”
“Uh,” said Josev, “There's... ah... an exit about a hundred meters behind us.”
Ken clicked his tongue. “Didn't we just hear that close off?”
“No. That gate is in a branch on the right. This tunnel exits into somebody's sleeping quarters. My, the Clementines must have had interesting nights, eh?”
“Turn around,” Marshe said. “Get moving. Now!”
In the gray light of the flatscreens, Ken watched the Six reverse direction ahead of him. Sipho was a shadow, small and dark.
“Hustle!” Marshe said. “Move, move!”
They began to trot.
“Fifty meters more,” Josev said, looking at diagrams on a flatscreen he carried in his left hand. In his right, held forward, was another 'lamp' flatscreen like the ones Ken and the others carried.
“Roland,” Marshe said. “When we get to the door, open it and run through. If there's anybody on the other side, let me handle them.”
“Yes,” the Cerean acknowledged.
“Ten meters,” said Josev. “There!”
The corridor hooked to the right, and at the bend was a rectangular recess a few centimeters deep, as wide and tall as the corridor itself. Josev's doorway.
“Opening it!” Roland said, slapping his hands against the edge of the door, pushing. There was a cracking noise as layers of paint gave way. The door swung open.
Marshe rushed past Roland as he cleared the doorway, nearly knocking him over. Shenna followed, barking excitedly.
“Empty!” Marshe shouted back.
Josev and Sipho filed into the room, Ken behind them with stunner drawn.