Not that the worst part is over. I was hoping that was the worst part, but I know it isn’t. In jerks and starts, I try to continue. My voice is steady—for a while.
She pours a couple of juice glasses. We hoist, toast Earth, the Red, all of it: the dead, the living, the irrational and unfinished. Silent but comprehensive. The wine tastes good. Crisp, green, like rain over spring hills. Alice pours the fish stock through a spaghetti basket, puts aside the bones and shriveled fish heads—stuff that brings back bad memories. Could be like what fills the skintight of a Skyrine stuck with a germ needle…
Then she whisks the scraps aside and returns the stock to the pot, adds more vegetables, sluices in a little more wine.
“Never enough wine,” she murmurs. “Fish and crabs come next, in a few minutes. Clams at the very last. They’re still alive…”
She pulls back, regretting that bit of information, but it’s not life and death per se, or going into the pot, that gets to me.
“Tender morsels,” I say.
We return to couch and chair.
“How are the legs?” she asks. “Sore?”
“Steady.”
Alice crosses her legs, holds up the last of her wine in the twilight, suspended in her fingers, city lights twinkling in the juice glass. I manage to say some things. Then more things. It doesn’t hurt as much.
She gets up to add the fish and crab. In a few minutes, she adds the clams, and a few minutes later, serves it up. Oh my God. It is good. I eat four bowls. Airplanes pass in the night sky. A double-egg and hawksbill crosses the Sound, heading for SBLM. More Skyrines returning from the vac. I put down my bowl and stifle a tremendous belch. First time I’ve done that in modern memory.
“I’m ready,” I say.
And she listens.
WHAT THE BIG BOYS WANT YOU TO KNOW
There are thirty-two of us in the garage, including DJ, still up in the high booth, and Tak, who’s standing clear of the new arrivals, the survivors, and standing clear of me; we might have more darts. Before they had to close up for good, before the shower of germ needles, they managed to bring in twenty-three of Joe’s troops, three Skell-Jeeps, and two medium-sized Tonkas. Teal’s buggy and a few of the smaller vehicles are still outside, some in the shelter of the giant’s arm, but they all might as well be gone.
We don’t know if any of the other vehicles and big weapons made it around to the southern gate.
Joe tells Tak to check us over and don’t touch anyone.
One of the new Skyrines, the one with the needle pouch, fishes a handful of fresh pouches out of his leggings and gets ready to receive more. Tak does a thorough job of checking us over, telling us to spin, lift our arms and then our legs, show the soles of our boots. All our skintights are clean, no rips, no poke marks.
DJ descends from the booth.
“Got water? New filters?” Joe asks.
“I’ll look,” DJ says. He sounds sad, guilty to walk among the strung-out newbies, who are still shivering and wild-eyed. He climbs up into a Skell-Jeep and rummages through the bins, manages to retrieve a clutch of filter pads, then climbs onto a Tonka, accesses the heating system, drains clean water into a can, and passes it around.
One of the newbies—Corporal Vita Beringer, young, baby-faced, and almost completely zoned, is slowly, methodically trying to peel out of her skintight. Joe slaps her hand down, reseals a loose seam, tells her she’s better off for now keeping it on. We don’t know whether the Voors can selectively flush air in the Drifter—suffocate us. I know he’s thinking that, but he doesn’t say it out loud. He just knows when’s the right time to be blunt, and when it’s better to be quiet and soft. Gently persistent. Joe is good that way.
DJ tells me, in an aside, that he doubts the outer gate can withstand much of an assault. No news there. “They’re pretty rusty,” he says. “I wonder the Antags aren’t already knocking.”
“They’re patient,” I say. “No need to rush in.”
Or is it some other reason? They can skip around the Drifter, leave it alone, leave us here, if they want. Island hopping. I suppose the Drifter is the closest thing to an island there is on the Red.
Joe approaches us, waves Tak over, tells us to gather behind a Tonka, away from the others. He and Tak served together three or four times, shared a few weeks of OCS prep at McGill. We huddle behind the Tonka like boys getting ready to play marbles and brief Joe on what little we know about the Drifter, transfer what little knowledge we have managed to collect.
“Thanks for the reception,” he says. “Our drop was a shitty blender. Sisters and brothers, different frames, broken platoons. All mixed up.”
“De nada, sir,” Tak says. “Par for this course.”
Joe points down. “How deep is this thing?”
“More than a mile, maybe a lot more,” I say. “Deep mining interrupted by a hobo—a wandering subsurface river. It’s been flooded up to here for at least twenty years, Earth years—but now the water has subsided, opening up the workings. We haven’t been down very far.” I lift my hands. “It’s mostly guesswork.”
“How far has anyone gone?” Joe asks.
“DJ’s been back and forth a couple of times to the southern gate,” I say. “Teal took me through a few side tunnels. There are a couple of watchtowers, lookouts, up in the head—the mound. The western gate is welded shut. The eastern gate was supposed to be closed up and welded as well, but that could be where a second pack of Voors entered.”
“We don’t know that for sure,” Tak says. “But it makes sense.”
“Settler equipment and supplies?”
“A depositor mothballed in a side chamber. Looks to be in decent shape.”
“Barrels of slurry?”
“Some. Maybe a lot.”
“We have to check that out,” Joe says. “We have to secure whatever resources we can find. So… DJ knows his way around.”
“And can operate the southern gate,” I say.
We’ll end up repeating what Gamecock tried to do, but we have no choice. And maybe the newbies will do it better.
“First order of business—let’s send a welcoming party to the southern garage. Then let’s get the fuck away from here before Ants come knocking.”
Tak calls over three of the survivors, a tall major named Jack Ackerly, an equally string-bean warrant officer named George Brom, as well as a shorter corporal, a sister, Shelby Simca. As the trio stands at attention, Joe reaches to open his faceplate, as if to rub his eye or his nose, but Simca stops him with a cautionary hand.
“Dust, sir,” she says. “We haven’t had time to brush down.”
“Right,” Joe says. “Thanks. You two go with Corporal Johnson, DJ—accompany him to the southern gate and let in as many of our team and big vehicles as you can, post guard, then reconnoiter. Leave bread crumbs. One of you will return and report. We’ll rendezvous halfway.”
“Yes, sir,” Simca says, and the trio runs off to gather up DJ. I’m sure he’ll be delighted to have company.
Joe lays down more orders to the rest to form up, prep weapons, charge bolts, finish stripping the Skell-Jeeps and Tonkas of supplies—make ready to move out.
“Let’s not join our friends right away,” Joe says to the assembled troops. The specters of dead, bloated Skyrines on the other side of that lock are enough to motivate everybody. After what they’ve just been through, the newbies move fast.
Joe rejoins us behind the Tonka. “What the hell happened?” he asks. “Vinnie shot some of it at me on the Red, but we were distracted. Give it to me again, slower.”
Tak takes a stab at summing up. “A month ago, Sky Defense must have dropped a battalion of Eurasians on the Red, to prep and defend fountains, cache weapons, get ready for later drops.”