“Don’t,” I say, and grab Nasha’s arm as she spins back toward the door.
“Oh hell no,” she says, and tries to pull free.
“Come on,” I say, get my other arm around her, and pull her into something halfway between a fighter’s clinch and a hug. “This isn’t the time.”
She growls, low and angry, right next to my ear, then shakes free of me and stalks away down the corridor.
“Fine,” she says without looking back, “but I’m not forgetting that one.”
I glance back at the closed door, shake my head, and follow her in toward the hub.
“BARNES,” MARSHALL SAYS. “Adjaya. Come in. Sit down. Where’s the bomb?”
I pull a chair away from his desk and sit as the door closes behind me. Nasha folds her arms across her chest and leans back against the wall.
“Hello, Commander,” I say. “No preliminaries, huh?”
Marshall clasps his hands in front of him and leans across the desk.
“No,” he says. “No preliminaries. You are about to tell me whether this colony is going to survive the coming winter or not. I’m not interested in dancing around the topic.”
“Okay,” I say. “Well, I have good news and bad news, sir.”
“Barnes,” Marshall says through gritted teeth. “This is not a joke.”
“No, sir,” I say. “You’re right. Apologies.”
“We don’t have the bomb,” Nasha says.
Marshall’s eyes snap to her, then back to me. “You don’t have it.”
“No, sir,” I say. “We don’t. That’s the bad news.”
“And?”
“Sir?”
Marshall closes his eyes and takes a deep breath, in and out.
“The good news,” he says when he opens them again. “Tell me the good news, please.”
“Oh. Right. The good news is that we know where it is.”
“You do.”
“Yes, sir. We do.”
“Then please explain why you’re still here.”
“We need gear,” Nasha says. “We need people, and we need a lifter.”
Marshall’s eyes stay on me.
“Barnes,” he says. “I need for you to explain to me, clearly and concisely, exactly what is happening with that bomb, or as God is my witness, I will murder you both.”
I shoot Nasha a quick Shut up look. She shrugs and stares straight ahead. I turn back to Marshall.
“Well, sir, as you know, since Eight’s death, the bomb he carried has been in the creepers’ possession.”
“I am aware,” he says. “If you’ll recall, that is the situation you were supposed to be remedying.”
“Yes, sir. At your direction, Nasha and I went down into the creepers’ labyrinth yesterday to retrieve it. Turns out, though, that the bomb is no longer in their possession.”
“It’s not.”
“No, sir. Apparently they traded it away.”
“They didn’t trade it,” Nasha says. “They gave it away. There’s another, stronger bunch of them somewhere south of here. Our creepers gave up the bomb to them as tribute. That’s why we need people, and that’s why we need gear. We’re going down there to get it back.”
Marshall leans back in his chair and turns to face Nasha.
“Are you planning a diplomatic mission, or a raid?”
Nasha shrugs. “Plan for one, prepare for the other.”
Marshall grins. “Yes. Yes, that’s exactly right. I like the way you think, Adjaya.”
“So. Gear, goons, and a lifter.”
“Well,” Marshall says. “Weapons and Security officers we can give you. A lifter, though? No. We’ve pulled the gravitics from our lifters and drained them back into the primary grid. I can give you a rover.”
Nasha rolls her eyes. “A rover? Seriously?”
“Or,” Marshall says, “I suppose you can walk?”
“A rover works,” I say, before Nasha can talk us into crawling, probably with weights strapped to our ankles.
“Excellent,” Marshall says. “Now, how many people do you anticipate needing?”
“Ten,” Nasha says before I can answer. “All Security, obviously, and they’ll all need armor, accelerators, and a full kit of ammo.”
Marshall laughs, but there’s no humor in it. “Ten? All from Security? Are you sure you don’t need all twelve of our remaining officers? I’m sure we don’t need anyone here to protect the colony.”
“Look—” Nasha says, but Marshall cuts her off with a slash of one hand.
“No. Out of the question. We are not in a position to mount an invasion here, Adjaya. Diplomacy first. If that doesn’t work, I’ll give you enough of a team to attempt a forced extraction, but we’re going to need to be a bit more protective of our essential resources than that.”
“Fine,” Nasha says. “Give us six from Security. We can pull the rest from somewhere else. Gomez knows how to handle a weapon. I’m sure I can find five or six others.”
Marshall shakes his head. “This is not a negotiation, and I am not interested in you attempting to recruit colonists for this mission. Please remember that the issues we are having with our power supply are not general knowledge, and I do not wish for them to become so. As I said, I will provide you with an appropriate team. I’ll work out the details with Mr. Amundsen while you two get yourselves cleaned up and fed and rested. Expect to assemble at the main lock at oh-eight-hundred tomorrow.”
I look over at Nasha. She’s clearly not happy. I give my head a short, sharp shake when she opens her mouth to argue. Her eyes narrow, but she closes her mouth again and nods.
“Thank you, sir,” I say. “We appreciate the assistance.”
“Yes,” Marshall says. “I’m sure you do. Now go. I’ll be there tomorrow to see you off.”
“GOD, I HATE that prick.”
Nasha stabs a hunk of sweet potato with her fork, brings it to her mouth, and chews. Ordinarily I’m jealous of Nasha’s dinners. Tonight, though, I had a premonition that I might not need my ration card moving forward. For once, I splurged on the rabbit haunch.
I hope it wasn’t one of the ones I liked.
“It could be worse,” I say. “We’ve got a rover.”
She stabs another hunk of potato, hard enough that it falls off the end of the fork in pieces.
“How far are we going? Do you have any idea?”
I shrug. “You were there with me in the labyrinth, right? You heard as much as I did.”
“Their ‘friends to the south’ could be on the other side of the equator, for all we know.”
“Yeah,” I say. “Or they could be over the next hill. Given that the creepers don’t seem to have air travel and their friends to the south are apparently close enough to give Speaker’s group grief over us, that seems more likely, doesn’t it?”
“Maybe,” Nasha says. “Doesn’t matter, though, if we don’t show up with enough juice to do what we need to do.”
I sigh. “Yeah, that’s a valid point. You didn’t really think he was about to give us the entire Security section, though, did you?”
She rolls her eyes. “Why not? I mean, what are they actually doing around here? Hanging around outside the main lock with their thumbs up their asses?”
“Maybe not much now,” I say, “but if we don’t wind up bringing that bomb back, Security’s likely to be pretty important, no? Starving people aren’t happy people, and someone’s going to need to keep them in line and working until they’re dead.”
“Ugh,” Nasha says. “That’s dark.”
“Maybe—but tell me Marshall isn’t thinking about it.”
Nasha’s eyes narrow, and she scrapes up the last of her food.
“Anyway,” I say, “two goons or twelve goons, it’s not likely to make a difference, is it? If the creepers won’t give us the bomb, what are the odds that we’ll be able to take it from them?”
“I don’t know,” Nasha says. “Better with twelve goons than two, though.”
I sigh, toss the last of the picked-clean rabbit bones onto my tray, and push it aside. “Look, I told you yesterday what I saw in the labyrinth two years ago. There are thousands of creepers down there, and their friends to the south are apparently stronger than they are, which I’m pretty sure means there are even more of them. How many creepers do you think twelve goons armed with accelerators firing one round per second could take out before getting swarmed and taken apart? That’s not even considering the fact that we’d presumably be somewhere a half klick underground with no good way to find our way back out.”