Mustafa and Suleiman cling to each other. Vee-Def is huddled beside them, head down. Michelin and I have temporarily ceased firing the multigauges because we could hit our own vehicles, flying across the rock and dust, escaping from the Drifter.
Five klicks!
By God, we’re going to make it!
And then there’s this black thing right in front of us, so fucking big it blocks the Voor wagon, the Chesty, the Tonka. Like an entire ridge of rock just flew up out of Mars, only it didn’t fly up, it came down. The impact throws us all up off the Red a couple of meters, and now we’re landing hard, bouncing, and Mustafa and Suleiman have been knocked off the Tonka and I’ve been snapped out of my harness. I’m clinging to the barrel of the cannon, which is still hot, and my gloved fingers are starting to burn so I let go, drop slowly off to the side, land on my feet, just stand there, fighting spasmodic chest muscles to get my breath back.
A hundred meters of Drifter, a shard from the half-buried swimmer, the deep homunculus, has been lofted by the concussions and dropped almost upon us, and something in me feels utterly lost, such a turnaround from the exaltation of believing we might have actually made it—
All finished, ended, done with—after billions of years!
I don’t know how long it’s been, I’m rattled, but Vee-Def is beside me and amazingly he has his shit together.
“Sidearms, ladies!” he shouts.
And then the Antag infantry is up and coming at us.
I see two Skyrines running from the Chesty, which has landed on its side, and just behind them, a smoky wave of Antags, recovered enough to search around this side of the fallen ridge, and the dust storm has been completely interrupted by the rockfall, and I’m on one knee, aiming at Antags, hoping I’m seeing them clearly, not aiming at Skyrines in dust-covered skintights.
They’re returning fire, moving in to clean us out. It’s going to be close.
We’re suddenly silent in our helms. No more words. Coordinated fire. I look left, cringing, just as Vee-Def’s head flies off, right beside me, and the bolt that took it whangs and fries and sizzles against the side of the Tonka. All those bad jokes, those movies, now hot pink mist. At leisure, his body begins to slump.
My pistol is getting off bolt after bolt, and then, just as an Antag weaves to within a few meters, it runs out of charge—of course—
And I’m down to bullets, and then they’re gone, and I’m down to waiting for one of the Antags to build up the courage to come in and grapple. Why not just shoot me?
Because the Antag has dropped its weapon or I can’t see a weapon. Maybe they long for hand-to-hand or claw-to-hand or whatever, for honor, for glory. And then it’s on me. God, it is strong! Those long, flapping arms and three-fingered gloves wrap around my chest, lift me up, and I see another Antag stand atop the Tonka, firing blindly down at Michelin, but Michelin is firing back, and that one topples, and I’ve got my own gloves straight on the Antag’s helm, and I’m digging in my fingers, trying to grab and grip and rip, and I can see its face through the wide, narrow plate, above the long jutting of the helm, the nose, the beak, but mostly just its eyes, looking up at me, as it lifts me, my ribs starting to give.
I look right into its eyes. It has four of them, a smaller central pair, red and shiny, between two large outboard eyes, staring expressionless, but I’ve brought my pistol up and am using the butt like a hammer repeatedly on the plate, and then it lets go, but too late, I’ve cracked the plate—it has other issues to deal with.
And then I see two Skyrines come around the sides of the Tonka. One is Tak; the other is Joe. Tak is hefting a power supply that must mass two hundred kilos, and Joe’s got the rail gun, wrenched from the Chesty, and they’re laying down fire, clearing the area around the fallen ridge, the rock, which must have landed on a whole battalion of Antags, clearing a way, because they toss the heavy shit aside, grab me, grab Mustafa, who’s still alive—Suleiman nowhere in sight—and we join Michelin and run, leap, around the right of the sizzling ridge of rock—crackling and splitting and powdering from all the energy unleashed by the blast that tossed it here—around to open dust and lava, familiar Red stretching out before us, air clear like there was never a storm.
We keep running. Running forever. I think Kazak may have joined us, can’t be sure, because there’s six of us running in a line.
And then we stop. We all fall over.
Into a gully just deep enough to cover us.
Instinctively, I roll and start to check integrity, first on my suit, then on the skintight of the Skyrine next to me, Kazak, and then I’m up over to Joe, who pulls me and shouts, “Keep fucking down,” but I check him anyway, picking nits, social as shit in a chute, my eyes sliding into narrowing tunnels.
Joe grabs my shoulders.
“Hang on, Vinnie,” he says.
“Sure!” I cry out. “Love this shit! Love it!”
We’re all crying in our helms.
“The wagon,” I say.
“It was up ahead,” Joe says. “I think the rock missed it.”
“Chesty got wiped,” Kazak says.
“Sure as shit that rock took out the Antag line!” Tak says. We eyeball each other for a long moment, too tired to say anything. Then we flop back in the gully, studying the bands of dust that flow overhead like pink and gray rivers, and we jerk in unison as a stray bolt draws a sparking trail to the north, perk up as our angels try to come back online—flickering displays and crackling comm, voices out there, so few, far away—maybe from where we all go when our heads get vaporized.
We’re back where we started. Before Lieutenant Colonel Roost, before the ranch wife in her buggy, before so many saviors—and who can expect another such round of saviors?
We’ve worked through our supply.
Power low. Maybe ten minutes of air.
If I slow my lungs down. Stop gasping.
Stop crying.
INVALUABLE
Alice and the driver have stepped outside. I’m still strapped into the bench seat, best place to be, because it’s quiet in the van.
Seven men and women from the hover-squares approach us, weaving through the other stalled vehicles: cars, trucks. They aren’t cops, they aren’t MPs—the hover-squares are unmarked.
And now the seven are interested in the van.
COMING HOME AGAIN
Joe pulls off my blaze, grabs my helm, smashes the angel with a rock. He reaches into his pack and hands me the helm from a dead Voor, tells me to switch it out, put it on in the pop-up, discard mine—then get back to Earth as best I can.
“For God’s sake, after all that’s happened, stay away from MHAT,” he says.
“Pop-up being delivered right now,” Kazak says.
Joe gives me Gamecock’s blaze and pins me with his own broken silver leaf.
“Aren’t you coming with me?” I ask him.
“Right behind you. Second pop-up. I’m going with DJ.”
“He made it?”
“As much as DJ will ever make it,” Joe says.