“Eastern gate open and receiving visitors?” I ask DJ.
“If the Voors or the Algerians welded it shut, they didn’t inform the console,” DJ says. “But the map says it’s definitely there. Entrance lies about five hundred meters that way,” he points to our right, then down, “and fifteen meters below… Comes in at a heavy mining level, meant to receive big equipment, maybe send out shipments of ore.”
“Any visitors logging in or out?”
“I asked the booth AI about that multiple ways, but no joy, no grief, nothing one way or the other.”
“Can we get there from here? No flooding, no other obstructions?”
“I think so,” DJ says, thoughtful.
“Can the booth AI here tell us if someone breaks through the northern gate?”
DJ shrugs. “It really doesn’t seem to care. It’s pretty old and worn-out.”
“Sentinels,” I say to Joe. Brodsky continues putting together teams. She enlists Tak to help refresh two teams on the rifles.
“Yeah,” Joe says. “DJ, stay here and tell them how not to get lost.” DJ does his best.
Joe sends Beringer, Stanwick, and the burned-out Captain Victor Gallegos north, then leans against a wall and makes motions like he wants to smoke a cigarette. A couple of minutes of this odd charade and he’s up straight, brushing the imaginary cigarette against the wall. I’ve never known him to smoke.
“Now, Vinnie… can we go take a look around?”
I lead Joe back to the southern watchtower. The console is indeed dead, so we pull down the periscope and do a 360. Soon enough, we understand our situation. The Drifter is surrounded by a solid circle of Antags standing back at about a klick, black Millies lined up with the big shiny heads forward, like a string of beads draped over the hardpan—platforms just behind them, dark gray with faint gleams of light as they are charged and tended by their gun crews. A full division, if we can effectively judge Antag order of battle—at least five infantry brigades carried and supported by over a hundred Millies, six mobile weapons battalions, other groups we can’t make out to the rear of the forward forces.
They’ve completed the perimeter—and haven’t just bunched up before the gates. Holding all fire. Waiting. A hell of a lot more than enough to obliterate us. If we decide to break out.
Not cautious. Confident.
Fucking arrogant.
Joe pushes up and stows the periscope with a grim look. “They could take this place in an hour,” he murmurs. “What the fuck are they waiting for?”
“Orders?” I suggest. “Maybe they’re as screwed up with tactical as we are.”
“They’re just playing with us, I think. Cat-and-mouse.” His hands keep clenching. He hasn’t slept since maybe before their drop. He whispers, “Take DJ and Brom and Ackerly and reconnoiter the eastern gate. Check integrity, evidence of another Voor team—wagons, supplies, whatever. Explore at will, grab what you can, expand on DJ’s map—and get back as soon as you can.”
“What do we do if we encounter the Voors?” I ask.
“Avoid getting killed,” Joe says, eyelids heavy. “Tell them the truth—if we don’t pull together, we’re all going to die in here.”
Back to the southern gate. Tak sees Joe’s situation and takes him away from me, arm over his shoulder, with a backward glance.
“Take a break, sir. Five minutes,” Tak says to him.
Rugged.
“Ackerly, Brom, DJ—on me,” I say.
ANT FARM
When I was a kid, I used to love ant farm tales—the kind of stories where a clutch of ordinary folk are cooped up on an island or isolated in something strange, like a giant overturned ocean liner or a lost starship, whatever—didn’t matter. Cooped up, the people all started to act like ants in an ant farm, digging out trails through the sand between the mysterious plastic walls, acting out little dramas, retracing familiar old trails, bumping into each other—like that. And what I loved was, all the inhabitants of the ant farm seemed oblivious to any larger drama, careless of what the farm might actually be—a child’s toy, for example. Most of the characters hardly gave a damn about the big idea of their situation, paid the large questions almost no attention, because, I guess, it was insoluble at their level of information and smarts and faced with that, we all revert to what we do best—socialize, mate, preen, strut, fight, talk a lot, wonder a lot. Ant farm stories are just like life. We have no idea why we’re here, what we’re doing alive, or even where we are, but here we are, doing our best to make do.
And that’s another reason I prefer not to think of the Antags as Ants. Because if I do, then it means they’ve somehow managed to escape their glass walls, their farm, and cross the stars. Ants are peering in at our solar system. Peering in at us, on Mars, stuck in the Drifter.
Wonder what they think of us? Do they pity us, so backward and stuck?
SNKRAZ.
Note to self: Stop thinking. Follow orders. Rely on training. Those are a Skyrine’s protective glass walls.
DJ takes the lead again, right up to a tunnel that veers abruptly to our right. “This way,” he says. Brom and Ackerly exchange glances with me as they pass. Our guide whistles. The sound echoes eerily ahead. All Tom Sawyer stuff to DJ. Gotta love him. Drives me nuts.
A few minutes, and we arrive at a wide spot in the tunnel, with a railing surrounding a shaft about seven meters wide. The walls of the shaft have been carved to shape a steep flight of steps, a spiral staircase, like something Basil Rathbone and Errol Flynn would have a sword fight on, running up and down—the first of a number of such shafts and far from the worst.
The deeper we descend, many meters, maybe a hundred or more, the shinier and more purely metallic the walls become, reflecting our flaring helm lights—big metal crystals, what are they called? Formed in deep space over ages of slow cooling…
NEWS OF JOE
“Widmanstätten patterns,” Alice Harper says. “Nickel iron crystals. How big?”
I spread my hands apart. Fifty centimeters, maybe. Chunky as hell, but smoothly polished, like an art project.
“My Lord,” she says. “You were descending through the core of the old moon. Right there on Mars!”
“Right there,” I say. My head aches like fury. My neck is stiff with talking, remembering, and I want to delay like anything what’s coming up. “I got to take a couple of pills.”
“Go take,” Alice says. She looks at her phone, as if expecting a call.
Vac supplements are recommended while coming off Cosmoline. I’ve been avoiding them the last few hours because sometimes they flush the system. Part of the glamour of being a spaceman. I’m in the bathroom, staring into the large mirror, disembodied head swimming in my filmy gaze—seeing nothing I like or respect.
I rest my hands on the sink. A phone wheedles in the living room, not mine. Alice answers, her voice low. I’ve left the bathroom door open for the moment and clasp the vitamins in my hand, deciding whether I want to become human again—find firmer ground through more food, good company—or give in to the vac in my head.
Alice is speaking on her cell. Something’s up. She sounds energized, but I can’t quite hear what she’s saying. I swallow the vitamins and scoop water from the tap to chase them. Then I emerge. The food in my belly is behaving. My legs are behaving. My vision is clear. I feel stronger.
Alice stands on the step up to the hallway, smiling a very odd smile. “That was Joe,” she says. “He wants you out of here.”
“And go where?”