“Good,” Marshall says. “Is that clear to the rest of you as well?”
“Yes, sir,” we mumble, more or less in unison.
“I should hope so. Now. Barnes and Adjaya are the only ones of you who have a complete understanding of what’s at stake here, but I assume that will no longer be the case five minutes after you’ve boarded the rover, so I won’t waste your time with a pep talk. It should suffice to say that failure, as they say, is not an option.” He pauses to glance around the room. “Questions?”
For some reason, everyone turns to look at me.
“No, sir,” I say. “No questions.”
“Very well,” he says. “Godspeed, Barnes. Please try not to fuck this up.”
012
THE ROVER WAITS for us outside the main lock, looking like nothing so much as a giant creeper with six fat, deep-treaded wheels and a burner turret on the roof.
“Nice,” Nasha says. “Does it have a door?”
Jamie knocks on the hull, and a moment later a clamshell hatch swings open at the vehicle’s rear, the door forming a stepped ramp into the cabin. Nasha turns to look at him.
“Are there keys?”
“Nope. It’s keyed to my ocular.”
“So what happens if you get eaten?”
He shrugs. “Unless one of you wants to clear enough space to download the rover’s operating system, you’re walking home.” He climbs the three steps up, then ducks to step through the hatch. “So I guess you’d better make sure that doesn’t happen, huh?”
“SO,” NASHA SAYS. “Are you gonna tell them, or am I?”
“Tell us what?” Jamie asks from the cockpit.
I sigh. “You’re gonna want to stop just past the crest of this hill.”
“Really?” Cat says, and reaches for her rebreather. “Are we there already?”
“Not quite. We’re just stopping to pick up a passenger.”
“It’s a creeper,” Nasha says. “We’re picking up a creeper.”
Lucas leans forward and turns to look back at her. “What?”
“We’re picking up a creeper,” Nasha says again. “It’s a kind of … liaison, I guess? They made it just for us, so try not to be a total ass about it.”
“Uh-huh,” Lucas says. “And where, exactly, are you expecting this thing to ride?”
“Curled up in your lap,” Nasha says. “This is happening, Lucas. Get over it.”
We should be in comm range by now. I blink to a chat window.
<Mickey7>: Speaker? You still out here?
<Mickey7>: Hello?
<Mickey7>: We’re ready to go now. Please respond.
<Speaker1>: Hello, Mickey.
<Speaker1>: Where are you? I have been very unhappy waiting here.
<Mickey7>: Should be near your position now.
<Speaker1>: A large metal thing is moving toward me. Should I be alarmed?
<Mickey7>: Nope. That’s us. I’ll be out in a minute.
“Jamie,” I say. “Hold here.”
The rover slows, then comes to a gentle stop. I pull on my rebreather and get to my feet. The passenger compartment is a tube maybe six meters long, with benches running along both sides, storage lockers above, and just enough headroom in the center for me to stand. It doesn’t have a proper air lock, but it does have an atmospheric trap at the rear, just in front of the hatch. I move to the back, wait for the trap to close behind me, and then punch the exit button. The hatch opens, and I climb out into knee-high ferns at the crest of the hill.
<Mickey7>: Where are you?
The ground erupts a dozen or so meters down the slope, and Speaker’s head emerges from the hole.
“Hello,” he says. “Thank you for coming back for me. Is that a weapon?”
I look back. The turret on the top of the rover has come to life. As I watch, it rotates around to orient on Speaker, and the focusing crystal at its tip goes from flat black to a dull, angry red.
“Hey!” I wave my arms over my head and step between Speaker and the rover. “Stand down!”
Jamie’s voice comes from a spot just below the turret. “Move aside, Mickey! You said we were picking up a creeper. What the hell is that thing?”
Right. They’ve only ever seen the little ones. Should have been a bit more clear on this, I guess. “This is what we came here for, Jamie. Stand down.”
“No,” Jamie says. “For shit’s sake, Mickey. That thing’s the size of a—Ow! What the hell, Nasha?”
I don’t hear Nasha’s answer, but after a brief delay the turret rotates back to its original position.
“Great,” Jamie says. “Why not? Bring it aboard if you want. I’m sealing the cockpit.”
“Come on,” I say as Speaker pulls the rest of his body out of the ground. “Let me introduce you to your new allies.”
“CAN I PUT my feet on it?” Berto asks.
“No,” I say. “You can’t put your feet on him, jackass.”
Honestly, though, I can see why he’d want to. Speaker fills most of the center of the rover’s passenger compartment, and Berto’s tall enough that he’s practically chewing on his knees right now.
“Chen,” Berto says. “Switch spots?”
Cat and Lucas are back by the hatch, where there’s plenty of leg room. Cat gives Berto the finger without looking up from her tablet. Berto shoots her a poisonous glare, then turns to me. “This is the one we saw up on the ridge the other day, right?”
I nod. “Speaker’s been watching the dome for a while, apparently.”
“This is true,” Speaker says. “I was awaiting an opportunity to make contact.”
Berto starts to answer, but Cat cuts him off with a giggle. He turns to look at her. “Something funny?”
“Yeah,” Cat says. “That thing sounds exactly like you.”
Berto’s eyebrows come together over the bridge of his nose. “No, it doesn’t.”
“In fact, I do,” Speaker says. “That was one of my design parameters.”
Berto looks to me. I shrug.
“No,” he says. “I don’t sound like that.”
“You do,” Lucas says. “Eyes closed, I couldn’t tell who was talking.”
Berto opens his mouth, hesitates, then closes it again.
“It’s not so bad,” I say. “Think of it as an homage.”
Berto looks like he’s got something obnoxious to say to that, but then he shakes his head and says, “Whatever. Anyway, it would have been nice if you’d warned us beforehand that we’d be traveling with a creeper, Mickey. Any other surprises we should know about?”
“No,” I say. “Not that I’m aware of, anyway. Speaker hasn’t told us much about where we’re going, though.”
“South,” Speaker says. “We are going south.”
“South is a big place,” Jamie says over the intercom from the sealed cockpit. “Can you be more specific?”
“No,” Speaker says.
That gets us ten seconds of silence.
“Mickey?” Jamie says finally. “Can you be more specific?”
“Head south,” I say. “I guess we’ll know when we get there.”
WE’VE ACTUALLY GOT decent survey maps of the entire northern hemisphere at this point, so we’re not exactly heading out into the unknown here. The terrain south of the dome rises up pretty quickly into a series of sharp ridges a hundred or so klicks wide with deep, glacier-carved cuts in between. Some of the deeper ones are still packed with ice. We’ll want to avoid those, because they’re probably undermined by runoff and terminally unstable after two years of warming, and if we wind up breaking through the surface somewhere it’s gonna be a long walk home.
Farther on, the terrain flattens out for a while before running into a mountain range that peaks out at almost fifteen thousand meters. Hopefully where we’re going isn’t farther than that, because there’s no way we’re getting through that range in this vehicle.
We’ve packed supplies for a couple of weeks. That should get us to the foothills and back with plenty to spare. If that’s not enough, I guess we’re going to need to reconsider.