She opens her eyes, stares about wildly, and fumbles for the belt clasp, but it refuses to open. This really pushes her buttons. Her hand clutches at the straps, then at her neck, and I get concerned. But she forces herself to relax. Takes another deep breath, this one squeaky.
“Enjoy the moment,” I say, not trying to be cruel. “Try the little tube.”
She fumbles the tube between her lips. Her cheeks dimple.
I turn away with mixed emotions. “Five and a half hours,” I say. “Right?”
“That’s all,” she says around the tube. She folds her arms and keeps sucking. That’s almost more than I can take. High cheekbones, deep dimples.
“First time?” I ask.
She pulls the tube out. A little red liquid sticks to her upper lip, like wine. “Obviously.”
“Did you volunteer?”
“Yup.”
“Why?”
“The Gurus have been lying to us for thirteen years,” she says.
“Gurus lie?” I tsk. Still, the confirmation isn’t pleasant.
“About everything,” Borden says. “I’ve spent the last four years gathering evidence and convincing the right people. Now, I have to get up here and see for myself.”
“Well, the Antags like to kill us,” I say. “That much is true.”
“How many Antags have you killed, Master Sergeant?” Borden asks.
“A few.”
“Did it always make sense, the way this conflict has played out?”
“No war makes sense. Not if I read history right.”
“You’re invested. You’re well paid.”
“Could be better.” I’m just yammering to keep her talking. She might spill facts I shouldn’t know.
“They caught us in a velvet trap,” Borden says. “We fight and die for a cause, we’re paid in beads and trinkets, and we think it’s a fair trade.”
“Then why blow up the Drifter?” I ask.
She shakes her head. Maybe she’s already said too much.
“Isn’t that the heart of the argument?” I say. “There’s something in the Drifter that neither Gurus nor Antags want us to find.”
Another shake.
“You must have some reason to stay so close to me. You’re not in love, and keeping me stupid won’t help, will it?”
Her jaw muscles shape little ridges. I’m not making this easy for her.
“So…?”
“If I had all the facts, and proof of what I know—and if I could make it all make sense—I’d tell you. But what we’ve put together is crazier than a sack of spiders, and twice as unpleasant to pick apart.”
“Spiders,” I say. “You have something against bugs?”
This elicits a weak smile. Her jaw relaxes. “You never said you dreamed about being a spider.”
“More like a big crab.”
“Not quite so creepy,” she says. “You think you can see everything from the crustacean perspective?”
“Not really,” I say. “All that is remarkably vague, for being so weird and important.”
She’s settled now and focuses in. “The Drifter. The crystal pillar. The green powder. The silicon plague. Your dreams… Captain Coyle.”
“Not just delusions?”
“We don’t think so,” Borden says. “We’ve convinced the CNO.” Meaning the Chief of Naval Operations—a four-star admiral. “And we’re working on SecNav. Next up the line, SecDef—but he’s Wait Staff.”
I look to Kumar. “Tougher nut?”
“The toughest,” Kumar says. “To the positive, the top brass and governments of three signatory nations seem to agree with us, as well as your vice president.”
“Not the President?”
“He may be persuadable,” Kumar says, “if we can bring back proof. And cancel out the messages coming from the Secretary of Defense.”
“Proof… from where? Mars?”
Borden points up, around, shifting her shoulders. Then she slips on her goggles and motions for me to do the same. “Ready for something special?”
I goggle up but can’t see much, so instinctively I strain against the belt as if to peer around a corner. The external cameras are still seeking. Then they find their targets. Below us, still only half visible, is a tight cluster of large, featureless cylinders. Tough to guess size from where we sit but the cluster looks about four hundred meters in length and half that across the beam. Larger, but not so different from the space frames they pack us into to go transvac. Above that, relative to where my butt is planted, rises the limb of the Earth, now slipping into night. I can make out southern India, Sri Lanka.
The lifter’s voice tells us a passenger tub will arrive in the next few minutes to ferry us to our next ship, once the arrangements have been made. Boarding fees, tickets stamped, visas presented to the proper authorities?
Usually Skyrines crowd into a sheep dip station to get sedated by the transit crew, after which we’re bagged and slipped into tubes. The tubes are then inserted into the rotating cylinders that make up the rotisseries. After we’re loaded, the rotisseries are arranged by number on their respective frames, and that determines how and when we disembark and drop. Before that, we indulge in mostly blank sleep until we arrive. Warm sleep, some call it.
Now we can see what’s on the other side of the cluster. It’s something new, to me at least, and by looks alone makes my body feel numb and my brain more than a little left out of the bigger picture.
“What in hell is that?” I ask.
Borden shakes her head.
Kumar leans forward. “Some call it the Spook. Perhaps the prettiest of our new toys.”
Spook—fine name, I hate it right off—is a triplet of very long white tubes almost obscured by longitudinal sheets of glowing, pearly film. The sheets are attached to the cylinders and each other by thousands of twinkling strands, like nothing so much as burning spider silk. Whether the sheets are made of matter or energy is not obvious. All together, Spook—if it is one ship—must be over seven hundred meters from stem to stern. The sheets ripple slowly, like a flowing skirt in a slow breeze.
I’ve seen it before. But it wasn’t me. Coyle saw it. Rode on it. No words this time, but she shares a glimpse of a line of soccer balls where you sleep on the way out to…
I desperately try to ignore her input. “How does it move?” I ask. “What pushes it?”
“She is called Lady of Yue,” Kumar says. “I do not know what makes her go. She has been traveling back and forth to Saturn, carrying soldiers and machines, for over five years.”
Carrying Coyle, apparently. That means Coyle made it to Titan. Why return to Mars? Why not cash out and retire a fucking hero? I wonder when the captain will deign to fully manifest and completely clue me in. “Is she our ride?” I ask, my voice barely a squeak. Coyle aside, it all scares the bloody hell out of me.
“No,” Kumar says. “Not this time. Perhaps soon.” He gives his finger a twirl. We’re still rotating. A shadow passes over our little ship as something even larger, much larger, passes between us and the flare of the sun. We’re swinging into view of an object at least five times the size of the Spook, in any dimension—and vastly greater in volume, like a gigantic, silvery Rubik’s cube with the different faces separated and expanded. Between these faces twinkles more silken fire. This cubic monster is at least four thousand meters on a side.
Our rotation locks, but one last wobble gives us a slender glimpse of what might be the business end of the cube. It’s black, no details visible—shadow within shadow.
“What’s this one called?” I ask.
“Some call it the Big Box,” Kumar says. “Larger than previous versions, and special to Division Six. I know very little about it.”