“This isn’t gonna work,” Berto says. “There’s no fucking headwind. We’re not going fast enough. Those things are gonna tear me apart.” He doesn’t stop working, though. Thirty seconds more, and he’s finished with the last connections. The glider really is bucking now, catching the air and trying to haul itself out of our hands. Berto steps through the harness and grasps the control bar. “I’m serious,” he says. “This is suicide. You know that, don’t you?”
“Yeah,” I say. “I know a bit about suicide, Berto.”
I glance around. There must be at least a hundred of the things out there now. They look like six-legged spiders with the creeper’s cutting mandibles jutting from their faces. They range from a meter or so across the legs to a few that could be half the size of the rover. They’re mostly scattered along our flanks maybe fifty meters off to either side, running with us, holding pace as others move to surround us in front and behind.
“Okay,” Berto says. “This isn’t getting any better, is it? If we’re gonna do it, now’s the time.”
Nasha and I move in closer to him, hand over hand along the wings, until we can rotate the frame around to face the front of the rover. The wind kicks up again, from the direction we’re traveling this time, and the glider nearly pulls itself out of my hands.
“Shit,” Nasha says. “There’s the headwind you were looking for. You gotta go, Berto. I don’t think I can hold this thing much longer.”
“Just a sec,” Berto says, and runs a finger along his control bar. The thrusters under the wings begin to hum. “Okay. Ready?” He takes a deep breath, holds it, then lets it out slowly. “Let go.”
As soon as he’s free of us, Berto runs for his life. In three strides he’s barely touching the rover. He leaps, kicks hard off of the burner turret, and takes flight.
Well, “takes flight” might be a bit generous.
As soon as he’s past the nose of the rover, Berto begins a slow, steady descent. He’s pulling away from us, so he must be accelerating, but over the course of five seconds or so he goes from an altitude of three meters, to two, to barely avoiding dragging his toes in the turf.
“He’s not gonna make it,” Nasha says.
“He will,” I say. “He has to.”
I’ve given him enough shit over the past two years for killing me. I really don’t want our friendship to end with me killing him in turn.
As he accelerates away from us, Berto’s gaining ground on the things ahead. He’s not sinking anymore, but he’s not rising either, and the distance between him and them is dropping precipitously. Thirty meters. Twenty meters. Ten. At that point, they seem to notice him. The two running directly in front of him peel off to either side as he sweeps toward them, seemingly confused as to whether he represents a threat or an opportunity.
That’s all the opening Berto needs. He cuts through their line, wingtips nearly brushing the spiders on either side. After a moment’s hesitation the things give chase, but it’s too late. Apparently he’s managed to build up enough speed now, because he abruptly leaps away from the ground in a steep, sweeping climb.
“Holy shit,” he says over the comm. “Holy goddamn fucking shit. Did you see that? Did you see how close that was?”
“We saw,” I say. “I’m glad you made it.”
“Yeah,” he says. “Thanks. Me too. So what now?”
“Now?” I say. “Now you stay up there and watch what happens to us. If we get through this, we’ll pick you up again when we’re clear. If not, you haul ass back to the dome and let them know what happened. They’ll need to put together another expedition. Maybe this time Marshall will authorize a lifter, huh?”
“Maybe,” Berto says. “Hopefully it doesn’t come to that, though. You gonna fire up the burner now?”
“No,” I say. “I don’t think so. I’m pretty sure there are too many of them to fight. I’m hoping they eventually give up the chase.”
“I don’t know, buddy. They look pretty determined from up here. They’re closing the noose on you, you know.”
I glance around. He’s right. They’re closer on the sides now, and the ranks in front of us are filling in.
“We’ll see what happens,” I say. “Whatever it is, though, make sure you stay out of it, right? I need you to make it home safe.”
“You got it,” he says. “Good luck, Mickey.”
“Yeah,” I say. “Thanks.”
Nasha’s already swinging herself back through the hatch. I give one more look around, then follow her down.
“HELP US, SPEAKER. What do we do here?”
Speaker rises from the floor of the cabin until his mandibles are at my eye level. “I am unsure. As I said, this behavior is uncharacteristic of our friends, so my experience may be a poor predictor of what they intend. Can you destroy them?”
“Maybe. If the burner does more damage to them than it does to your people, or if they hold their distance long enough for Nasha and Cat and Lucas to pick them off one by one with their LAs. What do you think?”
He seems to consider. “I do not know what your burner can do, or how well armored these creatures are. I know they will not stay back and allow you to hunt them, however. As soon as you initiate hostilities, they will certainly attack.”
“Do you think the rover’s armor will hold them off?”
“Again,” Speaker says, “I do not know what this machine’s properties are. If it is similar to the armor your fighters wear, or the substance of your nest, though, I think not.”
“Lucas? Cat? What do you think?”
Lucas is running a diagnostic on his accelerator while Cat stuffs ammunition into every pocket of her jumper.
“We’re the muscle here,” Lucas says without looking up. “You’re the brains, remember?”
“I vote we start shooting and see how they like it,” Nasha says. “They’ve never seen anything like what we can do to them. Maybe they’ll spook.”
“These are most likely all ancillaries,” Speaker says. “They will not be frightened, even if you manage to kill them all. I am sure they see this machine as a miraculous source of rare metals. They will not let it go.”
“They’re getting close,” Jamie says from the cockpit. “If I’m going to use the burner on them, I need to do it soon.”
I close my eyes. The rate of fire for the linear accelerators is about one round per second. Assuming Nasha, Cat, and Lucas don’t miss a shot, they can kill three of those things per second among them. What can the burner do? If they’re anything like the creepers, it’ll need a dwell time of a few seconds at least to take one down. There looked to be a hundred or so of them out there, all told. That means we’d need probably thirty seconds to take them all out at an absolute, optimistic-beyond-all-reason minimum. Thirty seconds with Nasha, Cat, and Lucas exposed on the roof of the rover …
If I had three random goons with me, I might risk it. If one of them was Drake, I almost definitely would. With Nasha, though, or Cat?
“We can’t fight them. Speaker, what are our options?”
“Well,” he says, “if fighting is not an option, I suppose that only leaves surrender.”
“No,” Nasha says. “Hell, no. I’m going back up top.”
She pulls her rebreather down over her face and starts for the hatch, but I catch her arm.
“Speaker, can we negotiate? I get that they want the metal in the rover, but surely they don’t actually want to lose half their ancillaries or more to get it, right?”
“I would not be so sure,” Speaker says. “You may be underestimating the value of rare metals to us. Half of their ancillaries for the opportunity to scavenge this machine would be more than a fair trade.”
“They don’t know how many of them we can kill,” Lucas says. “They don’t know anything at all about our capabilities. Can we bluff them?”