<RedHawk>: Huh. Water’s heavy. I could probably manage a few liters, but not much more than that. That’s assuming I’ve still got enough juice left to get back there in the first place, of course.
<Mickey7>: Right. Let’s put a pin in that. If we’re still hanging around here tomorrow afternoon, we may need to give it a shot.
<RedHawk>: You’re assuming nothing eats me in the meantime.
<Mickey7>: Yeah, well. If anything does, let me know, and I’ll try to come up with an alternate plan.
<RedHawk>: Thanks, Mickey. You’re a pal.
<Mickey7>: No problem, buddy. Sleep well.
I blink the chat window closed.
“You were messaging Berto, right?” Nasha asks. “How’s he doing?”
“About the same as all of us,” I say. “Hungry, thirsty, and scared.”
JAMIE WAKES ME at 02:00. He hands me an accelerator, then curls up on the ground between Nasha and Cat with one arm tucked under his head.
“You good?” Nasha says.
“Yeah,” I say. “Get some sleep, huh?”
I get to my feet. It’s colder now, but the air is soft and still and the sky is so packed with stars that I don’t need my ocular to see. I yawn and stretch, then strap the accelerator across my back and wander over toward the opening to the labyrinth. I’m not entirely sure what I should be watching for at this point. I can’t think of anything that I’d need an accelerator to fight that I’d actually have a chance in hell of fighting off. If the spiders catch us here? I could take a few of them down, maybe, but there’s no way I could keep them from killing us. The same goes for the creepers.
What if it’s something like the diggers? I spend an uncomfortable few minutes wondering if I’d have the courage to do for Nasha what Cat did for Lucas, before deciding that some things are best not considered.
It doesn’t matter whether I’m actually doing anything useful, I guess. There are forms to be followed. So I pretend to be a good soldier, and spend the next three hours walking slow circles around my sleeping friends and trying to flog my brain into coming up with some sort of plan for the next day. I’ve had a low-grade dehydration headache since before we got here. By the morning it’ll be worse, and by tomorrow evening I’ll barely be functioning. The others are probably in more or less the same boat.
I’d like to hold off giving up our only reconnaissance platform if I can, but if something doesn’t happen soon, Berto’s going to have to give it a go. If he doesn’t make it to the dome and back, then Nasha’s right. We’re all going to die here.
The night grows colder. The stars make their slow way across the sky.
At 05:00 I nudge Cat awake, hand her my weapon, and curl up around Nasha. She murmurs something unintelligible and throws one arm across my shoulder.
Much to my surprise, I sleep.
“MICKEY? WAKE UP, boss.”
I open my eyes to the flat gray of predawn and Cat crouching over me with her accelerator across her knees. I blink to my chronometer: 06:10. Nasha groans and pulls away from me. I sit up.
“Cat? What’s going on?”
In answer, she points back toward the opening to the labyrinth.
Speaker crouches there, watching us.
“He wants to talk to you,” Cat says.
Hope surges inside of me with a physical intensity. Is it possible that for the first time since we left the dome, something has actually broken our way? I scramble to my feet and fast-walk over to him.
“Speaker!” I say. “It’s great to see you. We were afraid—”
“You are Mickey?”
I pull up short. He doesn’t sound like Berto anymore. His voice is as flat and affectless as a text-to-talk translator.
This isn’t Speaker.
“I am,” I say. “Who are you?”
“Unimportant,” he—no, it—says. “This unit should not have brought you here. It has been repurposed, and now speaks for the collective.”
019
THE FIRST THING I do is send a priority ping to Berto.
<RedHawk>: Mickey? The sun’s not even up yet.
<Mickey7>: Pay attention, Berto. Things are happening down here.
I blink the window closed.
Jamie, Nasha, and Cat are arrayed in a semicircle behind me now. Jamie and Cat are holding accelerators more or less at the ready. Nasha has both of her burners in hand.
This looks uncomfortably like a last-stand scene from an adventure vid.
“The collective,” I say. “That’s the name for the ones who took Speaker yesterday?”
“The portions of your language that we were able to extract from this unit lack the words to convey our name in a way that would be meaningful. The collective is the nearest term we could retrieve. This will serve as a placeholder.”
“Is Speaker dead?” Cat asks.
It rises up, and its attention shifts from me to Cat, then back. “Which of you is Prime?”
Oh boy. Need to nip this in the bud.
“We all are,” I say. “All of us are Prime.”
It hesitates, then settles back onto its forelegs. “This seems unlikely.”
I fold my arms across my chest. “Nonetheless.”
“We will only speak to one of you as Prime.”
I roll my eyes. “Fine. Speak to me, but please understand that each one of us is an independent, sentient entity. None of us are expendable. Clear?”
It shuffles its feet. “You seek to drive up your price in an exchange of ancillaries. I must warn you that your position here is not strong enough for this.”
“No,” I say. “You’re not hearing me. There will be no exchange of ancillaries. Our kind has no ancillaries. If you attempt a forced exchange, there will be violence.”
“You are too few to threaten us with violence.”
Cat chambers a round, takes aim at the cliff face, and fires. The resulting explosion leaves a massive gouge in the rock, and rains a cloud of hot, sharp bits of gravel over an area twenty meters wide. “You’d be surprised,” I say. The thing that was Speaker scuttles back a few steps, mandibles clattering.
<RedHawk>: Was that an explosion? I can’t see what’s happening down there.
<Mickey7>: It was a demonstration. Nobody’s dead yet. You might want to get your glider ready to go, though.
<RedHawk>: On it.
Not-Speaker rises up to face me now, mandibles spread. “Why have you come here?”
No point in dancing around it, I guess.
“You have something that belongs to us. We have come here to get it back.”
It hesitates, its first two segments weaving back and forth like the head of a cobra.
“We must consider,” it says finally. “Wait here.”
With that, it drops to its feet and scuttles back into the labyrinth.
“Dammit,” Nasha mutters. “This shit again?”
THE CREEPER RETURNS less than an hour later, just as I’m starting to think maybe I should send Berto on a water run. The sun is over the horizon now, and the air has warmed enough that even half-starved, I’m not shivering anymore. I get to my feet as it scuttles toward us.
“We have considered,” it says. “We know what you want. We do not wish to give it to you.”
“Listen—” Nasha begins, but I stop her with a look.
“This thing,” I say. “I know it appears benign, but it is not. It’s dangerous—much more so than you can probably imagine. If you won’t return it to us, the most likely outcome is that you accidentally kill yourselves with it.”
“Interesting,” the creeper says. “You came here out of concern for our well-being?”
“No,” I say. “Clearly not.”
“Clearly,” it says. “Thank you for not attempting to mislead us on this point.”
“However,” I say, “that doesn’t change the fact that if you refuse to return our property to us, it will eventually kill you.”
The creeper raises its first segment and wags it back and forth in a gruesome parody of a head shake. “We do not believe you. We believe that you are attempting to convince us that your device is dangerous in order to enhance your bargaining position. We have studied this object. We do not understand the things that it contains, but we do not believe that they are dangerous.”