He shrugs. “Don’t care. I’m not sure Amundsen cares either. He doesn’t trust you, and he doesn’t want you with his people. Drake actually suggested pulling a half dozen copies of you out of the tank to bulk up their numbers, but Amundsen said even if Marshall would permit that, which he would not in a million years, he’d rather put accelerators in the hands of the tomato tenders.”
“Oh.” I’d actually been assuming that I’d be going into the tunnels. It’s a suicide mission, right? Ordinarily, that’s kind of my thing.
“Look,” Berto says, “don’t worry about Amundsen. That guy’s a prick, right? You’re better off in the air anyway. If you’re with me, you can keep track of what’s going on. Maybe even keep some control of the situation if something goes sideways. You can still communicate with the creepers, right?”
“Yeah,” I say. “I think so, anyway.”
“Okay, then. Maybe you can keep this from being a slaughter—you know, negotiate some kind of surrender or something?”
I sigh. Who knows? Maybe I actually can. “Sure, Berto. I’ll keep you company. What are you expecting to do out there, anyway? If the fighting is happening in the tunnels, a lifter isn’t much use.”
“Yeah,” he says. “I’m well aware. It’s the heaviest weapons system we’ve got, though, and I guess Marshall wants it out there as a show of force, if nothing else. After the new creepers take over, we need to make sure they don’t get any ideas about taking us out as well.”
“That’s exactly what Speaker said would happen, isn’t it?”
He looks momentarily confused. “What?”
“When we were talking about abandoning the rover. He said that if they pushed his people out, the next thing they’d do would be to come after us. Too much metal in the dome to pass up, right?”
“Yeah,” Berto says. “I guess he did. He wasn’t thinking that we’d have formed an alliance with them, though.”
“No,” I say. “I guess not. He was thinking we’d already formed an alliance with him.”
Berto lets that sit between us, his expression completely unreadable. I’m starting to think I’m going to have to follow that up when my ocular pings.
<DDrake0813>: Barnes?
<Mickey7>: Drake? What do you need?
<DDrake0813>: I’m on perimeter duty, a hundred meters out from the main lock. There’s a creeper here. A big one.
<Mickey7>: Okay. What do you want me to do about it?
<DDrake0813>: I don’t want shit from you, Barnes. The creeper does. It says it wants to talk to you.
021
IT TAKES ME twenty minutes, give or take, to get down to the main lock, get geared up, and get out to the perimeter. When I get there, I find Drake in full combat armor with his back to a hot pylon, accelerator up and trained on not-Speaker, who’s curled over a boulder maybe thirty meters off.
“Thanks for coming,” Drake says without taking his eyes off the creeper. “Took your goddamned time, huh?”
“I got here as quick as I could,” I say, and I can hear the fatigue in my own voice. “Stand down, Drake. It didn’t come here to fight.”
Drake grunts, and conspicuously does not lower his weapon. I sigh, step in front of him, and walk out to meet not-Speaker. It doesn’t react. I stop when I’m two strides away, fold my arms across my chest, and say, “Well?”
“You are Mickey,” it says. “You are Prime.”
“Yeah,” I say. “So I’ve been told. What do you want?”
“You made an agreement,” it says. “You are Prime. Your words bind your nest.”
“Yes,” I say. “I remember.”
“It is time,” it says. “It is … it is time … it…”
“You agreed to return our device. Where is it?”
The creeper’s mandibles clack against one another, and a shudder runs the length of its body. “The device is … you agreed…”
<DDrake0813>: Barnes? What’s going on over there?
<Mickey7>: Not sure. I think it’s glitching.
“You agreed,” the creeper says. “You promised to defend … to…”
To defend?
“Speaker?” I say. “Is that you in there?”
It shudders again, more violently this time.
<DDrake0813>: Step aside, Barnes. I don’t have a shot.
I wave to Drake to lower his weapon without taking my eyes off of Speaker/not-Speaker.
“It is time,” it says. “Time to … the collective is coming. All of it, all of its ancillaries. Coming to … your device … Fulfill your promise. Today, Mickey. Soon. Fulfill your promise.”
It shudders once more, then curls back on itself and scuttles away.
I watch until it’s gone, then turn and walk back to where Drake is still standing, weapon lowered now but still in hand.
“What the hell was that?”
“Good question,” I say. “You might want to get some breakfast, though. I think we might be in for a long, ugly day.”
“YOU READY?”
I take a deep breath in, let it out slowly, and nod. Berto touches the control panel. The hangar bay door slides open above us. His right hand engages the gravitics, and we ascend.
The human army of Niflheim is not an impressive thing. They’re filing out of the main lock as we rise up over the dome. First come nine of our eleven remaining Security officers kitted out in full armor. I try to pick Cat out of the line, but honestly they all look the same from here. After them come a dozen reserves—folks from Agriculture and Physics and Engineering who were cross-trained in weapons and tactics back on Himmel Station eleven years ago. They’re not armored, and most of them are carrying burners, not accelerators. That’s probably for the best, because the odds that any of them have touched a weapon since we boosted out are probably close to nil. I don’t know what orders Amundsen gave them, but if it’s anything other than stay out of the way and try not to get hurt, someone should hold him criminally liable.
So that’s it. Twenty-one foot soldiers, maybe half of them actually semi-competent, and me and Berto hovering above them in a fully loaded lifter that will be completely useless once they’re down in the tunnels.
“Is this what you promised them?” Berto asks as we rise up to a thousand meters and slow to a hover. “Tomato tenders with hand weapons? I’d say our people are cannon fodder down there, but that’s probably an insult to cannon fodder.”
I shrug. I sat through Amundsen’s briefing to the Security people with Cat. His advice was to advance down the tunnels in a three-deep phalanx, using staggered fire to make up for the accelerators’ slow repeat rate and trying to avoid getting swarmed from more than one direction at a time. It’s basically the approach that the Spartans used at Thermopylae.
That worked out great, right?
Snark aside, it should probably keep them alive as long as their ammunition holds out, and as long as they don’t get themselves caught in an open space.
They’re each carrying four hundred kinetic energy rounds. I remember the image of the crèche that Eight sent me right before he died. Their ammunition is not going to hold out.
I guess the only real question is whether they kill enough creepers before they go down to satisfy the collective.
Once everyone is clear of the lock, they start off into the hills in a single-file line. They’re aiming for the same entrance that Nasha and I used, the same one that Speaker’s Prime used to set me free when I fell into the labyrinth two years ago.
Best not to think about that now.
“I’m gonna scout ahead,” Berto says over the general comm.
“You do that,” Cat replies. “I assume there’s going to be some kind of coordination with those things before the rounds start flying, right?”
“That’s Mickey’s job. Right, buddy?”
“Yeah,” I say. “Right. I’ll see what I can do.”
Berto engages the thrusters, and we surge ahead. We pass over the tunnel entrance, then over the ridge beyond.