Happier and happier.
I start singing.
Someone on the shortwave joins in. We’re an insane duet for about ten seconds.
The murk fades, then the dust pulses again with pink and purple and finally green. Another big transport rolls up and around—a Deuce and a half, four sets of whanging tires, twice as big as a Tonka. I cheer out loud. The first part of our line is withdrawing to the Drifter.
At the same time, someone raps on the outer hull of the buggy, hard. I rise out of the driver’s seat and go back to see who it is. At this stage, I’m loopy enough not to mind if it’s one of the far-traveled enemy. Any change, please, to break the goddamn suspense, the awful grind of not knowing shit. Someone’s cycling through. I’m tapping my feet and pushing off against the ceiling not to fly around in the cabin.
The hatch opens. A Skyrine pushes inside—and it is Joe, finally! Old friend. Old training buddy. Veteran of four previous mutual actions on the Red. Only he’s got a lieutenant colonel’s silver oak leaf pinned to his chest—rather, half of one, and there’s blood all over his skintight, mostly dry, but some still foaming from the vac. Apparently not his own.
“Master Sergeant Michael Venn, my lucky day,” Lieutenant Colonel Joseph Sanchez says, opening his helm.
I snap back and salute him.
“Screw that, it’s brevet.” Joe doesn’t bother to brush down before he moves up front. I don’t care. The cabin is already full of dust. He glares through the windshield, observing the withdrawal, then flops down on the step behind the controls. “Comm flashed they’d intercepted a hinky beam from somebody with your name—is that right?”
“Yes, sir!”
“So did the goddamn Antags, I bet. Where did you find this heap?”
I explain quickly about Gamecock and the Sky Defense brass in their sad, sagging tent. “Teal, the previous driver—a ranch wife—picked us up and took us to a lucky rock with a big door in it. After she unlocked the door and let us in, we accepted a visit from Captain Daniella Coyle and eleven sisters, who themselves hitched a ride with twelve hostile settlers—Voors. But they’re gone now. Coyle and all her team, the Voors, the rest of my team—Kazak and Vee-Def and Michelin—seem to have disappeared deeper into the rock. We don’t know where any of them are.”
Joe stares at me through bloodshot, pale blue eyes, then shakes his head. “Outstanding! A dozen Voors. As in Voortrekkers?”
“Sort of. There could be more, if there’s an unsecured gate… if they got reinforcements and overpowered Captain Coyle. They may have all the weapons, including a lawnmower. Which they can’t use.”
“Outstanding to above!” He’s feverish from exhaustion.
“Sir, have you got recent tactical?” A silver oak leaf stomps any invitation to intimacy, especially when there’s blood.
“Recent as of forty-eight hours, but they got most of our sats, and our new ones are being swatted down faster than we can find them.” He grips my shoulder with one hand, and we exchange tactical. I close my faceplate to make sure I got it all. Little angel alarms and flashing pink dots in the upper corner.
I got it—but the angel is not happy. Position-wise, we are screwed—we should not be anywhere near where we are. I open my faceplate. “Angel’s frantic,” I say.
“Fuck it. Take the wheel and get in line.”
I get behind the wheel and roll us into the retreating caravan. Another volley of purple pulses lights up the dust; the platform will withdraw last.
“Have you uplinked any of this with orbital?” Joe asks.
“Maybe DJ sent up something, but unlikely.”
He rubs the bridge of his nose. “Vinnie, tell me how long before it gets so bad we shit our pants.” We monkey-grimace and laugh. The thing about skintights is it’s no fun pissing or shitting your pants because it doesn’t matter—that’s what you do all the time. So to signal that we live in fear, to express that we’ve lost all hope and fuck the big stuff—we don’t relax our rectums. We just laugh. But not too long.
Time for Joe’s story.
“Big Hammer two days back, we dropped right around a comet strike zone, lots of sparkly, lost maybe two-thirds of our frames, but three sleds came down intact, carrying six Trundles, five General Pullers, fifteen Skells, and six Deuces, all fully charged—but only ninety-two Skyrines. Most of command hit hard. And so…” He taps the bloody half leaf. “We salvaged what we could.”
Another pulse and we can see the outline of the Drifter ahead.
“How many can you cycle through at once, and how fast?” he asks.
“Ten troops through the personnel lock, plus maybe three Skells or two Tonkas through the big gate. A Chesty won’t fit, and I doubt the Trundles will, either. There’s another gate on the opposite side, about a mile around the head—the hill. Might be big enough to take more Tonkas and maybe the Chesty. If there’s time, maybe we can unload the platform.”
Joe doesn’t take long to think it through. “Cycle all the troops first. We’ll divert big stuff around the head.”
My angel gives him precise southern gate coordinates and he passes them along. I broadcast plain and loud to the Drifter and hope DJ and Tak are on the alert and haven’t been swept by Voors.
Then I look left, south, on the driver’s side vid. Three banged-up Deuces and the Chesty are pulling out of line to go left around the head. I can just hear them rolling behind us. Rear vid shows four Skells and a Tonka passing our buggy to cross right over the lava and old mud, preceding us toward the Drifter’s arm. They’re carrying troops and will go first.
“We’re in sad shape, Vinnie,” Joe says. “Save our sorry assets, and I’ll hook you up with my seester.”
“It would be my honor.”
“She’s ugly as sin.”
“Sin rhymes with Venn, sir.”
“Fuck you.”
Outside, the dust is clearing, revealing night-dark sand and an amazing starry sky. We spin around and I scan the opposite line through my faceplate magnifier. The movement of Antags has stopped, but a few bolts are still being thrown out from the trundle to a largely quiet and unmoving line. They’re just sitting and taking it, waiting, like a row of wolves curious as to why the rabbits have turned and bared their teeth.
Not scared. Just curious.
“It’s a big drive,” I say. “What are they hauling?”
“Major hurt, we assume. No time to stop and peek under their skirts.”
The settling dust opens a space between us and the Antags. They have big black Millies, long and segmented like millipedes, little round wheels reaching out on a hundred legs. Haven’t seen Millies that big before—at least fifty meters long and ten meters wide. Each looks like it can carry a couple of platoons, and there are lots. Plenty of parallel rollers as well, like big massage wheels on a rope—some supporting hooks to anchor the aeros, which float a couple of hundred meters above the hardpan like fat, shadowy jellyfish. Weapon mounts squat on flatbeds very like our Trundles, ready to deploy tuned relaxers, neural exciters—cause us fits. We call them shit-rays. Could be used to ease capture. But mostly they’re prelude to unbridled bouts of execution—converting paralyzed, befouled humans to stain on the Red.
“We ain’t paid enough,” Joe concludes, a sentiment so universal it doesn’t even register.
I see one of our bigger bolts has carved a Millie right down the middle, lengthwise. At that distance, I can more imagine than actually see movement of the injured, the dying. Hope and imagination combine forces. Die, die. Breathe out and boil whatever you have for lungs.