“And for that, they court-martial you?”
“That came later,” she says.
“At least you’re alive,” I say.
She looks out the window, moves one arm on the back of the couch, lifts her hand. “I returned to civilian life, paid to get bored and blow my head off inside a year. That’s the gamble, right?”
All too familiar among those mustered out of service for whatever reason.
“So I expanded my study program. Took all the available courses on settler history—what few courses remain. Universities have been dropping them right and left as funding dries up. Gurus don’t like them, I guess. I took more science, then geology, focusing on Mars in deep time. Lots of civilian science about Mars, even now. Peaceniks, pure space types, libertarians. I fell right in with them, after a time, once they got over suspicions I was a spy. But nobody saw this coming.”
“You split sociology, history—and geology?”
“Pretty much. After that, I interviewed with settler advocacy groups in Sacramento and Paris. Got picked up by a splinter of Mars Plus in New Mexico.”
“Sandia Space Studies,” I say. “Isn’t that Air Force?”
“Yeah.”
“Teal got a message through to them? Or Joe?”
“One or the other, I don’t know,” Alice says. “But Joe told us you might have something interesting to say. Describe this Drifter to me again.”
I do. I’m full of metaphors. I tell her it’s like a huge mandrake root almost submerged in a sea of cold basalt, descending many miles into the Martian crust. A lot of metals. Very heavy, no doubt. “Why didn’t it sink?” I ask.
“Everyone wants to know that. I assume they’re checking all over the Red now for others like it.” She watches me too intently.
“Probably,” I say. I feign ignorance—easy for me at the best of times.
“But maybe not,” Alice says, drawing herself up. “Did you ever think the Gurus don’t want us to know about this Drifter? Or any Drifters?”
“Why?” I ask.
“Not wanting to find them could explain why we’ve never paid attention to our own gravimetry. Which I had a hell of a time digging up.”
Okay. But we’re dodging the main issue. “So what is it?” I ask.
“Best guess, and not a bad one, is that it’s a chunk of big old moon,” Alice says. “One of many, maybe the biggest, that hit Mars a few billion years ago. Nine hundred miles or so in diameter, about the size of Rhea around Saturn. Metal and rocky core. Thick layer of ice and other volatiles. Probably got deflected by another passing object in the outer system, then fell downsun, approached Mars, and broke up as it passed through the Roche limit—the distance before tidal forces break a body into smaller pieces. The biggest chunks swung around Mars half a revolution or so—then fell right about where Hellas is now. The impacts melted through the mantle and wobbled the whole planet, rang it like a bell—also melted half the crust. Pretty much created the division between the southern highlands and northern lowlands.
“The impact in Hellas instantly converted most of the volatiles to superheated steam and blew them off into space. Some of the rest bubbled out through the molten impact basin for the next few hundred thousand years. Like a soda bottle.” She grows flushed describing all this. To her, it’s sexy. “The Martian crust and mantle congealed, solidified. But the big chunks of moon weren’t completely absorbed. A couple of plumes of upwelling magma kept thrusting up the chunks—the last, unabsorbed remains—and floated them in place, like feathers on a jet of air.”
“Jesus,” I say.
Alice takes a deep breath. “Those days are long gone,” she says. “The plumes are a lot colder. Most are solid. The Drifter has been sinking for a couple of billion years—but its head still pokes through, and there are lots of deep vent tubes carved by superheated lava, pushing tunnels right through to the deep roots, down to the main bulk of all those spectacular metals. Sound about right?”
It does. Perfect, in fact.
“All right, do I pass?”
“You pass.”
“So do tell,” she says, attentive without being needy.
GO DOWN IN HISTORY, DAMN YOU ALL
We’ve made our way to the southern garage and back, and now we stand beside Teal’s buggy and the abandoned hulks. The tunnels between are deserted, as DJ described—as far as we could search. The weapons carried by Captain Coyle’s squad are nowhere in sight, and so it seems likely that the tables have been turned and our Skyrines have been overpowered and taken away to be disposed of.
“The Voors must have had a weapons cache,” Tak says, wandering around the walls. “They got the drop on the rest.”
All we have are sidearms.
“No bodies, no blood,” DJ observes.
No blood in the garage is a positive. Teal would likely be the first to get shot. After that, there are no positives. I’m not even sure we know how to open the gate and operate the locks fast enough to let in our reinforcements, if they arrive—if they are reinforcements and not prisoners driven ahead of the main column of Antags just to absorb our fire.
“We know the layout around here. I bet DJ can lead us through to the eastern gate,” Tak says.
“Teal thought it was sealed,” I say. “Like the western gate.”
“Did you check?” Tak asks. “And what would it take to unseal it? The eastern garage makes the most sense.”
“But the Voor wagons are still back at the southern gate!” DJ says.
“Maybe there was a wagon left outside,” Tak says. “They could all fit into one now, right? Leave us behind, or kill us—get the hell out before the Ants arrive.”
“I don’t think they’d leave,” I say. “It’s too dangerous out there. If they get caught up in a battle, they’re smoke and scrap, even if they have Coyle’s weapons, which they can’t use.”
“Right,” Tak says. “That could mean they have a dungeon down deep, hard to find—harder to get into. But how in hell did they overpower Coyle and Gamecock?”
I’ve considered all the possibilities, and one hypothesis remains unassailable, based on what little we know. I share it. There must have been one or more Voor wagons outside that Captain Coyle did not see and could not have commandeered. These latecomers could have arrived after the others, saw that something had gone wrong, and circled around to the eastern gate, then pushed stealthy raiders through the tunnels—where they got the drop on our comrades.
While those of us outside heard nothing.
I share this cheerful scenario. Tak considers with growing calm, not even frowning. The worse things seem, the calmer he looks.
“Shit, man,” DJ says. “Why not leave somebody to take us out, too? We could all be stain by now.”
“Because we don’t matter,” Tak says.
We quickly share the maps captured by our angels during explorations, with distances, elevations, quick video and photo notes on what was seen and where. Battlefield record keeping. Nowhere near complete, but we come up with a good possibility for a passage to the eastern garage. And if the green dust in that tunnel is scuffed by lots of feet, we’ll know we’re on the right track.