by J. S. Morin
“Holy—” was as much as Hughs was able to get out before a shot took him through the eye. At this point, Roddy was just showing off his laaku reflexes.
“You know,” Mort said dryly. “In the holovids they usually leave one fellow alive to question.”
“Ah, shit,” Roddy said. “But hey, at least now we don’t have to watch them like owls to make sure they don’t cut themselves free and escape.”
“There is that,” Mort admitted. Truth be told, he knew where they had come from. The description of a city made it all clear. There was something out in the jungle causing the localized magical disruption. He could sense the tug against his counteracting arguments, and that tug had a direction. That city had to be where it originated.
# # #
The path through the jungle wasn’t back the way they’d come. Though it had been dark during the trip to the survivors’ chasm, Tanny caught frequent views of the mountainside crash site of the Odysseus along the way. That wasn’t the direction they headed. Niang had taken them on a path that kept that particular mountain a fixed distance from them. Not once did he ask Tanny for guidance.
“If you knew where we’re going, what did you need me for?” she demanded. Everything ached. Her muscles, her joints, even her hair felt strained to the breaking point—though the latter was her imagination, she was certain. At least her brain was functioning for now. The drugs in her systems weren’t all equally ineffective. The Sepromax must still have been hanging on, or she wouldn’t have been worried.
“Our scouts found your ship a few hours before you woke up,” Niang said. “But from a few things we picked up listening to you, we didn’t want to approach it without someone from your crew. Ramsey always had a habit of falling in with rough types, and that was even while he was in the service. No offense, Sgt. Rucker, but you’re not high on the list of people I’d trust to approach unannounced, either.”
“We found the grave sites,” Tanny said. She paused for a few breaths before continuing. Just talking while hiking was wearing her down. “We knew there were survivors. We’re not a kill first, ask questions sort… crew.”
“Callin’ it,” Niang said. “Take five.” The group of naval scouts dropped their packs and sat on them. Moen and Szczerbiak pulled out dried meats and tore into them. Belinsky drank from her canteen.
Tanny stayed on her feet. Bending at the waist, she took long, deep breaths, using a technique Mriy had taught her—one of the few that worked for both azrin and human physiology.
“You gonna survive the afternoon?” Niang asked. “You not being active duty, figured you wouldn’t be hitting withdrawal like the marines did.”
“Never… gave it up.”
Niang shook his head. “Criminal, what the corp does to you no-necks.”
“They didn’t… leave me on a… nowhere moon for six… years.”
Niang narrowed his eyes at her. “All right. Move out!” There was no way it had been five minutes.
The trek through the jungle continued. When they first caught a glimmer of steel ahead, she thought that they had arrived at the Mobius. But instead, they had come across the overgrown wreck of a craft Tanny couldn’t identify. It was angular and thin, half-buried in the ground at the end of a meter-deep furrow.
“What’s this?” she asked.
“There are sites like these scattered all over. Ships, probes, you name it. If some civilization’s science put it in orbit, this place yanked it down with magic.”
“Does that mean there are other species—sentient species—living here?” Tanny asked. It was bad enough being caught in a feud amongst her own kind. The prospect of a xeno faction, possibly several, made things that much worse.
“Can’t say no, for sure,” Niang said. “Doesn’t mean they’re not out there. We stripped anything that might be useful, so no point loitering here.”
It reminded Tanny of basic training. Instructors push her and the other recruits to their physical limits, let them collapse, and did it again. This was before any of them had started their physical conditioning regimen. Muscular alteration surgeries, neuron priming, psychological conditioning, and of course the chemical treatments—all had turned fifty-kilometer hikes from Darwinistic cullings into afternoon strolls. Tanny was back nearly to square one. Her physique was abnormally rugged, but she was worse off for withdrawal from the drug regimen than if she’d never begun.
“Hold up,” Niang said in a harsh whisper. He pointed. “There. Up ahead.” They had passed a few more downed vessels and various debris from probes and satellites, but this time it was the Mobius. The ugly bird had never looked so pretty. “You first. Go let them know we’re out here. We’ll gather up anything useful and make camp… head back tomorrow.”
Tanny nodded. Carl was probably going out of his mind worrying over—oh, who was she kidding? Carl would probably give her a rash of shit for being late getting back. They were probably playing poker and drinking up the ship’s stores of beer.
But as she approached, she spotted the bodies. Two huge humans, naked from the waist up, lay sprawled in the undergrowth, only visible from a few meters away. The insignias on their shoulders marked them as marines. Not knowing the full tactical situation, she inspected the corpses, noting the blaster holes. The one without the charred hole through his eye had been good-looking. But if there had been blaster fire, Mort must have steadied the…
Tanny didn’t know what it meant. Mort’s explanation of undoing the magic that undid science was bullshit, just like every other time he’d tried to explain magic. It made sense to crackpots, lunatics, and other wizards, and damn well nobody else. But someone had managed to use a blaster here, and considering that Ithaca seemed to hate science in all forms, that someone had gone to a good deal of trouble to get it to fire.
But what did it mean? Had the marines overpowered the crew and dragged them off? Were they waiting inside in ambush? If the Mobius crew had won, why hadn’t anyone spotted her on her way in? Mriy had enough sense to post a sentry after an attack, even if Carl was too numb between the ears to take simple precautions. Hell, Kubu should have smelled his Mommy coming from a kilometer away.
Then again, if the marines had prevailed, why had they left two of their own lying in the underbrush? That went against the tenets of the corp. Leave no man behind. It applied to women, too, but it was an ancient phrase that predated women entering the service. No upstanding marine would leave their comrades’ bodies behind to rot in the jungle.
Prying a spear loose from the hand of one marine, Tanny hefted it and tested the balance. It was solid steel, a lightweight alloy, but there was a limit to how light steel could get; there was no getting around the inclusion of iron atoms. It took both hands to lift and wouldn’t have made an effective weapon. She drew a survival knife from the same marine’s belt. “Sorry, pal. I need this more than you,” she whispered to the body. Stealing from the dead seemed unfair, since they couldn’t defend against it.
Creeping over to the socket where Carl’s quarters had been attached prior to ejection—prior to the crash she’d forgotten they even doubled as escape pods—she listened. Nothing. A few faint sounds she dismissed as her imagination. Without her proper chemical balance, even her hearing was like listening through mud. Tanny couldn’t trust her ears. But there was also no sign of anyone just inside.
Gripping the knife between her teeth, Tanny leapt for the edge of the escape pod socket. It was only half a meter overhead, yet the soft jungle soil sapped the strength from her jump. She barely caught hold. Niang and the others must have been silently mocking her from afar, watching as she struggled to perform a single pull-up, the only maneuver required to climb aboard the ship. Unable to lift her body weight in one fluid motion, she swung side to side and heaved, managing to get one elbow up over the edge. She nearly sliced her other arm open in the process with the knife’s point jutting from the side of her mouth.
But with an elbow hooked, she managed an undignified scramble aboar
d the Mobius. Taking her stolen knife in hand, she wiped the spit from the blade on her pants. She crept through the common room, taking note of the remnants of a meal. The crew quarters were all left with doors open—all empty.
There was a clatter, faint but distinct, followed by muffled cursing—Roddy. Tanny flung open the cargo bay door and hustled down the stairs. The sound of her clanging footsteps brought Mort and Roddy running out of the engine room. Roddy took one look in her direction and lowered his blaster pistol—correction: Tanny’s blaster pistol, which he’d obviously pillaged from her quarters.
“You’re back!” Roddy shouted. “About fucking—”
“Where’s Esper?” Mort demanded. “And the others? Did you find Carl out there?”
“What? Wait. No,” she replied. “Esper, Rhiannon, and Charlie are at the survivors’ camp. They picked us up at the wreck of the Odysseus. But what do you mean? Carl isn’t back yet with Mriy and Kubu?”
“No,” Roddy said. “We were starting to think you got off-world without us.”
“Those marines said they had Carl at a city of theirs,” Mort said. “But they didn’t mention Mriy or Kubu.”
“Mriy wouldn’t have ditched him,” Tanny said. “She might imply she would, but she wouldn’t.”
“Do you think…” Roddy said.
Tanny swallowed. The world was moving too fast. She had just found the crew, only to discover that the rest of them consisted of just Mort and Roddy—the second and third least helpful people on the ship. “I don’t know. She might be. But… wouldn’t Kubu have found his way back for help by now?”
Mort and Roddy exchanged a tentative look.
“Wouldn’t he?” Tanny pressed.
Mort cleared his throat. “One would think.”
“I’ve got to go look for him,” Tanny said. “I’ll start at the city. Where is it?”
Roddy backed away a step, putting Mort between himself and Tanny. “Billy the Kid here shot them both before asking,” Mort said.
Tanny shook her head. “Doesn’t matter,” she said. “I’ve got a naval escort here, and one of them has to know where that marine city is. I’ll get them to take me.”
“You look like hell,” Mort said. “You’re in no condition to—”
Tanny whirled on him. “Don’t you think I know that? Sometimes being a marine is about pushing on when you’ve got nothing left.”
“You’re not a marine anymore,” Roddy pointed out.
“There are no ex-marines,” Tanny said. With that she climbed the stairs, muscles protesting every step. She was going to find Carl, and he was going to either tell her what became of Kubu or help her find him.
Or she was going to kill him.
# # #
For the most part, the jungle was level ground. Sure, it rose and fell in long, gentle rolls, but at least it wasn’t a spiral ramp twisting 100 meters up the outside of an obelisk. If the jungle had been anything remotely so grueling, Carl would have already collapsed from exhaustion; instead, he was merely miserable.
“Couldn’t we have stopped off at the Temple of War on the out?” Carl asked. “I mean, what good would a little strength and endurance do me in escaping? I still can’t find my way around worth a damn, and in a fair fight I’d get my ass kicked by either one of you anyway.”
Vasquez forced his way through the underbrush, letting a tangle of vines snap back into Carl’s path as he led the way. “For a commander, you whine a lot. How the hell does anyone take you seriously?”
“Or hell, a hover-cruiser,” Carl continued. “Maybe ask at the Temple of Fucks-With-Science and—”
“The Temple of Order,” Messerschmidt cut in. “It’s called the Temple of Order, and it’s the only reason we can hold out against the navals. Without tech, one of us is worth five of them. Give everyone a blaster, and they’d have us with numbers.”
“I was joking,” Carl said. “I didn’t think there was—wait, was that the white obelisk I saw, just as tall as the Temple of Listening?”
“No, the gray one,” Vasquez replied. “The white one—”
“Shut up, you idiot,” Messerschmidt snapped. “Azrael put us on this detail because Ramsey hadn’t turned us. Don’t go losing it now.”
“But he—”
“You guys are what… the special forces of stubborn?” Carl asked. Despite every muscle from his feet to his lower back burning, the thought brought a smile. “Immune to my boyish charms?”
“Cut the crap, Ramsey,” Messerschmidt said. “If Azrael didn’t realize what a holovid drama star you were, he wouldn’t have sent you to take care of the navals.”
Carl cleared his throat. “I thought we were all looking at the same file—this is a suicide mission, at least for me. It’s my life, or my crew’s. I kill Kwon. Kwon’s people kill me. Azrael is top dog on this moon. You two are just here to make sure I don’t get lost.”
“And to make sure you don’t back out,” Vasquez added. It might have been Carl’s imagination, but the hulking marine seemed to have quickened his pace since the conversation began.
They passed the corpses of a pile of beetle-like creatures that were larger than any insects had a right to be. Swarms of smaller, normal-sized insects buzzed around the site. Vasquez veered around the gruesome scene. Carl had momentarily been tempted to ask what sort of animal slaughters beetles but doesn’t eat them. But before the words escaped him, he had a suspicion that he knew the answer already. Carl and his two-marine escort were heading roughly toward the Odysseus crash site. Mriy and Kubu must have passed right through here.
“You think I’d back out?” Carl asked. “I’m a lot of things, but I’m no coward. I’ve talked my way out of some bleak shit before. Maybe I can make Kwon’s death look like an accident, or slip out before anyone finds the body. Um, I don’t have to, you know… cut off her head and bring it back with me, do I?”
“Word’ll get back,” Messerschmidt said. “It’s a small moon, and we do have informal contacts with the navals. Hell, you think all those kids over there are pureblood navy?”
Vasquez chuckled. Carl didn’t think it was wise to point out that the genetic differences between the two groups were non-existent. He got the larger point. There were political differences, and there were cultural differences. But biology was biology, and biology was bound to happen.
Carl kept the conversation going as breath allowed. It was hours before they reached naval territory and Messerschmidt called a halt. The sun was threatening to disappear over the horizon in a proper nightfall, unlike the planetary eclipse that had heralded the prior night.
“All right, Ramsey, you’re going in alone from here,” Messerschmidt said. She pointed off in a direction that, based on the sunset, should have been east. “About two klicks that way, you’ll get spotted by their sentries. I assume you’ve got your plan worked out.”
“To the last particle,” Carl said. Of course, his plan was to take an eyeball scanner reading of the situation and go from there. No need for Messerschmidt and Vasquez to know that, though. They’d just get worried.
“You get in trouble, you’re on your own,” Vasquez said, poking a hotdog-sized finger into Carl’s chest. “We’re no rescue party. Find your way back to our turf and one of ours will bring you in.”
Messerschmidt sighed. “For what it’s worth, Ramsey, good luck. Sephiera Kwon has caused a lot of misery on this moon. To be honest, I don’t think you’ve got it in you, but I didn’t think anyone would have survived… what did you call it?”
“The Battle of Karthix,” Carl said somberly.
“Well, you pulled your own ass out of the fire then. Do it again and you and your crew are welcome with us,” Messerschmidt said. She turned her back on Carl and disappeared into the jungle. In the twilight, it wasn’t a long way.
Vasquez hung back a moment, watching Messerschmidt go before leaning in conspiratorially. “Did you really sleep with Kwon, back in the day?”
Carl shrugged. “She was fresh ou
t of a cushy academic post. Whatever the hell her specialty was, Earth Navy didn’t have many of them, so she pulled the Odysseus as her first Black Ocean assignment. She was wide-eyed, and I was a squadron commander… hell, she was easy.”
“What happened?”
“Aside from the obvious?” Carl asked, and Vasquez nodded. He wondered if it was simple voyeuristic curiosity, or whether the marine had a more personal stake here. Either way, what could the truth hurt? Vasquez needed him alive. “I was a squadron commander, and she was one of twelve hundred women on the Odysseus. I mean, she was all woman, but no fun.” Carl gave Vasquez a friendly backhanded slap on the shoulder. “Hey, how’d you think I ended up marrying a marine?”
Vasquez grinned. “Dammit, Ramsey, you’re a hard guy to hate. You be careful in there. And do her quick. Kwon’s the enemy, but she’s no monster. This thing between her and Azrael is personal.” He gave Carl a slow marine salute and disappeared after Messerschmidt.
Rows of digital readouts in Carl’s head resolved one-by-one into a passcode. That was the missing piece. The marines weren’t zealots—believers perhaps but not mindless cultists. The navy survivors didn’t hate them, especially not the ones fraternizing with the enemy out in the jungle. The impasse was a result of a six-year lovers’ spat. The marines needed Azrael to commune with Devraa and receive magical relief from their drug withdrawal. The navy personnel were beholden to the ranking officer on site.
Carl cracked his knuckles, stretched his legs, and headed in to destroy the naval command structure with the most devastating weapon he knew, one he rarely unleashed. The truth. Or at least a brick wall of truth, mortared together with some stuff he’d make up. Raising his hands in surrender, he blundered into the jungle toward the naval sentries.
# # #
The mountain path was tinged with four scents Mriy recognized as belonging to Tanny, Esper, Rhiannon, and Charlie. They had made it this far, at least. If nothing else, it meant that she and Kubu were going to have to venture inside the derelict human vessel to retrieve them. There was no sign of them on the mountainside, and there was planet-light enough that she would have seen them from any number of vantages along the ascent—unless they were hiding.