Or we stay and let the reinforcements in. DJ says he might be able to operate the vehicle airlock from the control booth, but maybe not fast enough to get all the vehicles through… or any big weapons.
We’re just churning.
I think I’m going to have to make the decision. I got my stripes before Tak. I get down on one knee. The others do the same, as if we’re about to form a prayer triangle.
“Our buds out there don’t even know we’re here, unless they got my flash,” I say. “We don’t have time to get them all in, and besides, the doors won’t hold long. Tak, you and DJ stay. I think I can operate Teal’s bus. I’ll go out and meet the approaching line, help them set up a defensive cordon around the northern gate, while DJ gets into the booth and you both try to cycle as many as you can. Maybe we can bring in enough to deal with the Voors.”
Tak looks dubious but DJ looks energized. “Right!” he says. “They’re looking for a place to turn and fight.”
“What about the Antags?” Tak asks. “Won’t they just cut through the small force, then blast the doors and swarm in?”
“Nothing better,” I say. An old Skyrine nostrum. All that we deserve and nothing better. We glance at each other in the gloom. Tak and DJ tilt their heads, push out their lips, spit into the green dust.
Teal’s buggy was not personally coded, as far as I could tell. Maybe she had an implant or a key fob, but I never saw her use it. The buggy was stolen anyway. We work our way to the buggy’s hatch and push the big flat entrance button. The hatch opens. I climb into the lock. Then I look back at Tak and DJ. We nod. Last time into the breach.
As the big kahuna, our DI on Mauna Kea, told us on our graduation, Last time no see anymore.
Nothing better.
It’s on.
ZULU TIME
I can barely see DJ in the upper booth through the buggy’s front windows. The bus’s controls are not much different from a Skell or a big Tonka—a two-handled wheel on a stick and foot pedals. There’s enough charge left in the batteries to get me out the gate and maybe ten or twelve klicks beyond—no time to wait for a full charge from the Drifter’s generators.
Tak pulls the plug. DJ opens the inner doors. I rumble through, learning as I go—and manage to just scrape the edge of one door. Hope I haven’t punched a hole, hope the door seals tight on the way back…
Hiss surrounds the buggy, the suck of retrieved air. Pressure drops in the lock. My ears pop. When the hiss is down to a light puff, DJ opens the outer doors and I shove the stick forward and to the left to go around the low end of the giant’s arm. The only communication I’m going to have is radio. Can’t rely on the helm laser this time—too much dust. So I start broadcasting across multiple shortwave digital bands. The dust looks thick and the vehicles are likely tossing up big grains—enough to interfere with microwave. But what the hell. If anybody human’s listening, I can rev up the bus motors and wind them down in a kind of dogtrot EM pulse.
Soon, in just a couple of minutes, that arc of fleeing Skyrines and the Antags chasing them will arrive at the Drifter’s northern gate. If the Skyrines know we’re here, if they got my laser burst, they’ll be heading for the gate. If not, they’ll sweep around this bump in the Red like waves around a rock.
The air in the buggy smells like sweat and electricity. The batteries are old; the wiring may be shorting out as well. And all those pads from our skintights are doubtless festering in the rear hopper.
Outside, the air is an amazingly beautiful shade of lavender, shot through with high stripes of pink. The dust raised by the oncoming tide sweeps over the buggy, over everything.
Then it gets dark, very dark—black in just a few seconds. Martian night falls almost instantly and the only residual light has to come through the dust tops down to where I am—which it doesn’t. Everyone out there in the dark and the dust is traveling blind, chasing blind, fleeing blind. And I’m moving out, broadcasting like a sonofabitch, pumping the engines up and down…
Then, to my left, a Skell-Jeep rolls up and throws a beam, almost blinds me, and passes so close it grazes a tire. The buggy shivers and complains. No doubt they know I’m here, but do they think I’m a Muskie? Or the idiot Skyrine who lased them?
Another vehicle passes me—this time a Tonka. My radar is shooting quick blips. I can make out hazy return in the general scatter and I’m still rolling forward, chuckling like an idiot child, when something or someone dogtrots a shortwave carrier. No voice—just up-and-down frequency variation. Answering my motor pulses.
“Someone wishes to speak to us,” my helm says. “They want to know where we come from.”
I then go all out on the shortwave and tell them we’re friendly, give a call sign I hope is still good, ask to speak with the ranking CO. A rough, raspy voice gets back to me in seconds. “Who the fuck are you, and what are you doing way out here in the boonies?”
My face lights up in a big grin. Even with all the distortion and drop-out, I know this guy. It’s Joe—First Sergeant Joe Sanchez.
“No time,” I say. “We’ve found a rock up ahead with a door in it, leading to a bunch of caves—a pretty good refuge, but you’ll have to buy time to get us all inside. Can you form a line on me?”
I am the only game in town, the only hope they have. My radar shows a fair number of our vehicles—at least ten, if I count through the ghosts and guesses—now forming a dirty curve about two hundred meters from end to end, like a mitt flexing to intercept a ball.
“If you’ll just hold still a minute,” Joe says, “you beautiful bastard.”
“Gladly, First Sergeant.” I pull back the buggy’s wheel and pump the brakes, about a kilometer from the northern gate. This is where we’re going to have to hold until or if the Antags decide to halt and reconnoiter. Not likely. But a battle in the dusty dark is nobody’s ideal.
“Time to plow a hole with whatever you’ve got,” I say. “You have to make the Antags hesitate. Then we’ll withdraw in proper order to the rock.”
I send the coordinates.
“Do you know how many Ants are on our tail?” the familiar voice asks, weaker and more raspy. “We haven’t taken time to look over our shoulder.”
Night is upon us. Nobody can see shit. Maybe the Antags are having the same difficulty.
“Rough guess,” I say, “a hundred times your force, airborne and ground.”
“Pick targets for maximum disruption,” the raspy voice orders.
Another voice responds: “Sir, we’ll provoke immediate fire. I don’t know how we’ve—”
Another voice, female, shrilclass="underline" “Die screaming, sweatrag!”
“Just fucking light ’em up!”
Then the dust glows in bright, quick flickers, like lightning seen through a filthy window. That makes me want to cry. We’re in a real fight. We’re all going to die, finally, and it’s the best feeling in the world—kill and be killed! I wish someone was in the buggy to share it with me. I wish Teal could see me now. Or my dad. My uncle Karl.
Anyone.
The murk starts to really glow, almost steady, like a weird sunrise. Our buds are lighting up with all they’ve got, and judging by the purple tinge, they’re using at least one big bolt cutter.
God, it’s awful pretty.
Thumps rise through the bus’s tires, shaking the frame. I hear ascendant whines cut through the thin air—through the muffling dust—and rise beyond human hearing. A Chesty’s twin disruptors are hitting targets, slicing and dicing and electri-frying. Other sounds, other weapons. The Antags are firing back, I think, but it doesn’t sound coordinated. It sounds confused. Of course, what do I know. I’m a blind duck in a truck.