“From below?” Kazak asks.
“From above,” Tak says. “Bombardment.”
“Antags getting ready to move in.”
“I strongly doubt it,” de Groot says. “You do not see at all, do you? What is happening, who is working behind you?”
Joe assigns Kazak to watch over the garage and prepare for our exit. Then he picks four of us and signals for us to move out. “DJ, you’ve still got some sort of map in your head, right?”
“I think so,” DJ says.
“Find that hatch again. We’re going to locate Captain Coyle and see what her disposition really is. Try and get her team to come back with us.”
Joe says, in a low voice, so that Rafe and de Groot can’t hear, “I don’t get these fucking kobolds. What are the chances the Voors invited the Ants in? And the Ants killed some of them for their trouble?”
“Not likely,” I say.
Joe absorbs this. “Then it’s true. Coyle and her orders, Major General Kwak, what the Voors have been saying…”
I’m about to ask what the hell else could possibly be true when DJ comes trotting back. “Found the hatch,” he says. “There’s a shaft, something like steps but cramped as hell, not designed for people. I don’t know how our sisters made it down.”
Rafe comes forward. “It is old and for the Church,” he says. “Not for us.”
Joe acknowledges this contribution with a nod, then points for us to move out. DJ leads the six of us to the shaft opening and lifts away the hatch. Christ it is small—just two meters wide, steps tiny and tall; we’ll be crawling down more like worms or snakes than men.
DJ says, “If you’re down here digging long enough, maybe you get all big-eyed and greasy like, you know, Gollum.”
I’m actually fingering the platinum coin in my pouch, but when he says that, I stop.
Joe has had enough of DJ’s nervous chatter. “Cram that shit back in,” he says. “We go down, find Coyle and our survivors, find Teal and what’s left of the Voors. That’s that.”
We begin one by one to drop through the hatch. I volunteer to take point.
“Dick down the hole,” DJ says.
I hear murmuring up above, establishing order as the defensive lines break and join us, until there are just two covering our rear, awaiting a signal we’ve come out in a better place.
Beams bounce and flare.
One sidelights Tak grinning through his faceplate like a lacquer mask.
HOW LOW CAN YOU GO BEFORE IT’S UP AGAIN
Just a few meters down. On top of everything else, like a final fillip of perversity, the skinny shaft is really getting to me.
We did mine training at Hawthorne Tactical in Nevada, suspecting there were going to be circumstances where we might have to worm around under the Red, and there was a particularly awe-inspiring old turquoise and silver mine shaft that we, a squad of ten, plumbed for almost a quarter of a mile, taking instruction from a fifty-something DI named Marquez about how to stay calm under an overwhelming burden of rock. “There’s a whole goddamned mountain over your head right now,” he kindly informed us. “Look at those braces, look at those beams—think there’s termites in that old wood? Are there termites in Nevada? You know there are. Wood-chewing, white ants. I think there’s termites in all this old wood… Plus, fidging overburden shifts all the time, seismically active, wow, did you just feel that?”
As we stooped and crawled, he lectured on how to conduct live fire in a confined space, he’d learned it from a guy who learned it from a guy who once went after Viet Cong in their spider holes, and he learned it from a guy who did the same in Korea, and he learned it from a guy who sent in Dobermans to clean out tunnels in Okinawa and then took in gunny sacks after—
Jesus, I hate this fucking place.
I do not want to think about other places that were worse because my skintight is already filter-clogged and I’m sweating like a bastard, dripping from the lip of my faceplate, and Joe’s boot takes me across the back of the neck when he slips, and I start thinking about my integrity; maybe he’s ripped the fabric and if I fucking get out of this I’ll just hiss out on the Red.
Why is the air still good down here? Who set up diffusers to spread clean, breathable air throughout the Drifter? The Voors? Kobolds are more likely. Better engineers. Hell, the old silver mine at Hawthorne, the deepest shafts, was reputed to be filled with sulfurous fumes from deep under the mountain—so that syphilitic cunt of a sadistic motherfucking DI told us—but nobody had ever been that deep, it was off-limits, he said, maybe we’re already over the boundary, and then he taunted, “Smell anything, Skyrines? Whiff that stink? Other than your own butt-gas?”
He was just trying to flunk us out but no way, that pay hike shined over our heads every day we trained at Hawthorne bigger than claustrophobia, stronger than deep-Earth butt-gas.
Joe and I and the eight others had already been through seven circles of Skyrine hell. Only two would not finish. But they gave that DI immense satisfaction, those two. They flunked out in the drowning pool, floundering in skintights in zero-g prep. The DI had issued suits with leaks. Pointless, we thought, so much water—that much water on Mars! Seemed ridiculous, unfair, but I survived the mine shaft and kept my calm in the drowning pool, I made it, Joe made it, the other six made it, who were they? Fuck I’m forgetting so much, is the oxygen really all that good down here?
“Off-limits,” Joe mutters above me. I’m still mad because he hasn’t apologized for the boot in my neck, but my own boots are slipping on these inhuman steps.
“Fucking off-limits,” I affirm, banging my knee, and again integrity will be an issue. I’ll have to check myself all over and hope somebody brought the right patches.
“Don’t remind me of that fucking old mine,” Joe says. We’re in memory sync. “I hated that place,” he says. “Didn’t you?”
I’m trying to hold on to the edge of a long, long step. “Loved it like my mother,” I say. “A total stone vagina squeezing out born-again Skyrines. Just like here.”
Joe snorts. I’m paying him back for his boot in my neck. Orderly descent. All an Antag has to do is lay down a couple of bolts from below and we’ll cook, we’ll fry in this shaft like—
My foot hits something that gives. That clacking sound again, only like rocks or plastic striking, not metal. I know that sound. I can imagine what’s making it. I shine my helm light straight down between my legs and something shines back up at me just for a moment, like the lens of a camera, not an eye, not wet or alive—but shiny and round.
I suck in my breath.
They’re keeping track of us.
And then it’s gone. The spiraling shaft below is empty, as far as I can see—a couple of meters—but for a moment, I’ve come to an abrupt, stunned halt and Joe is right above me, knees doubled just behind my head, cursing.
“What?” he shouts.
“Tell DJ I just stepped on Gollum,” I say, still processing the visual, hoping my angel caught it and we can all replay and judge when we’re at the bottom. Then I see a black void and my boot kicks out from a step into empty air.
“Bottom, I think,” I say.
“Shove through, goddamn it,” Joe says.
I do that and then I stand up in a bigger darkness, a blessed black openness, and start shining my helm light around.