AS ALWAYS, THERE’S a delay—the landers have to wait for something, the pilots don’t say what. A few Russians get picked for sentinel duty. Most of us climb into our assigned vehicles to stay warm. It’s toasty inside the new Tonka, toasty and stuffy and boring. The sisters are making small talk in the back. They seem to be picking up from a previous conversation.
“Meeting the guy just before you go transvac,” Jennings says to Ishida. “That’s luck.”
“Is he nice?” Jacobi asks Ishida.
Despite myself, I’m fascinated—their talk is low and private, but I can still wonder how a Winter Soldier gets along that way.
“A little,” Ishida says. “He was curious at first. Then… after, very gentle, sweet. Yeah. Nice.”
“I’ll bet he’s curious,” Jennings says. “Shiny sister, strong like tank.”
“Fortress heart,” Jacobi says.
Ishida takes this stoically. “Right after, he asked about my nick.”
“Did you tell him?” Jennings asks.
Ishida suddenly looks forward and sees I’m listening. She leans in, looks sharp straight up the aisle, and says loudly, “It’s Gadget, sir. Inspector Gadget. Like the TV show.”
The others raise their eyes to the roof. I am such a perv. I want to say something clever and complimentary to make up for my blunder, for being who I am—make up to her for what she has become, but really, that’s not in it. I don’t know what I want. I’m like a kid caught staring into the girls’ shower in high school.
“Athena, bringer of victory, whose glory shines in war and peace,” I say. “None dare look on her nakedness without fear and envy.”
A long, stunned silence. Borden regards me with honest pity.
“What the fuck?” Ishikawa says.
“Cut the guy some slack,” Jacobi says. “You’d blast him like a stump, Gadget.”
“I would, wouldn’t I?” Ishida says, languorous.
I lean back, scorched wasteland. Victory is theirs.
I USE THE next hour to close my faceplate and study the battle reports screed to our helms. Some are still locked, orders of Commander Borden. No doubt she wants to explain them to us personally, with Kumar watching over her shoulder. There are a few open launch and landing reports, however. We didn’t see any of the first part of the so-called Battle of Mars, since my platoon arrived later and was spread out across Chryse by a badly broken drop. I flip back through the logistics, looking for Russian and Korean launch dates. Their fast frames were sent out after our own frames departed from Earth orbit, but arrived nearly a month earlier. As some of us surmised, command on Earth—generals? Wait Staff? Gurus?—had decided something big had to be done and done quickly—and so they had arranged for a major and very expensive push.
And fucked it up.
ELEVEN HOURS. EVERYONE’S asleep in the Tonka except the Russian shotgun. It’s totally black out. Low clouds obscure the stars. One small moon rises, a swift, misty little ball. I catch a light doze myself.
Then Litvinov radios that the ships are leaving and we’re about to move out. Everyone rouses. One of the Russian corporals, perhaps fresh from a good dream, rubs his eyes through his open faceplate, bumps arms with me, smiles. He has a clean, square little-boy face. I return his smile. He sobers, looks away. Warm and cozy in here.
We focus on the growing roar outside. Two brilliant blue torches rise through the dark on silvery plumes. Vapor drifts back in the diminishing glow and freezes to a fine, powdery snow, like confectioner’s sugar, vanishing before it touches the dust. We’re on our own.
The perimeter guards climb onto the Skells. We begin to roll. Kumar keeps his eyes on the dark flats out beyond the wreckage. The first Drifter—what’s left of it—is about ten klicks away, maybe fifteen or twenty minutes. I’m not at all sure I want to go back. Our fallen are still out there, freeze-dried into rag-shrouded jerky….
Or buried deep in the Drifter.
I keep expecting Captain Coyle to fill in more word balloons, to call out for vengeance from her grave. But I still don’t feel her. Maybe I left her back on Earth. How do ghosts find their way around?
The cordon forms a loose W with Skells taking the rear and sides, the Chesty and Trundle on points, weapons bristling, and Tonkas rear and center. Litvinov rides in the Chesty—namesake of imperialist bastard. I would, too, if I had a choice. Chestys are packed with good, strong hurt. I don’t see the point of returning to the Drifter, really; if the bombardment was anything like what I remember, and went on after we departed, we’ll find nothing but a big ditch. But Kumar’s goal is clear. We’re here to see for ourselves.
He wants me to look.
MESSAGE UNCLEAR
Morning begins with high, pale clouds turning orange before light touches the land. Winds are at work up there, cross-shredding the clouds into faded lace. Then the flats of Chryse emerge from darkness. We’re rolling at about thirty klicks over smooth basalt, but that’s going to change; I remember the terrain, some of it, far too well.
Wind doodles are everywhere. Dust devils scour random lines across the flats like phantom fingers. I count seven through the windscreen: thin, high, twisting pillars, bright pink this early, far out near the northern horizon as dawn throws rosy light through the Tonka’s side ports. They’ve been scribbling on the Red for billions of years and nothing comes of it, they never remember what it is they really want to say, but they never get bored trying.
Our ride turns bumpy. I move away from the pilot’s nest and peer through the dust-fogged plastic of the nearest side port. The landscape looking west is rugged and fresh. Recent craters dimple the basalt, bright at the center and surrounded by silver-gray rays. More chewed over than I remember—what little I remember before we were lifted off.
“Familiar?” Kumar asks.
The entire cabin listens.
“I don’t recognize any of it,” I say. “Too much has changed.” It’s not hard to figure out, from the nature of the craters, that a lot more heavy shit fell from on high, whether comets or meteoroids or asteroids, no way of knowing. One crater on our right is easily three hundred meters across. “Must be Antag bombardment,” I say. “We don’t drop comets… do we?”
Kumar shakes his head.
We’re passing signs of less cosmic conflict: blasted revetments, crushed and burned space frames, the melted ribs and skins of big vehicles: Chestys, deuces, Trundles. We roll past six slagged weapons platforms in a hundred-meter stretch, just off the path we’re following, which curls through the worst of the wreckage. I assume this action took place not far from our retrieval. But it spread over dozens, maybe hundreds of klicks.
“What were they fighting for?” I ask. “To hold ground, repel occupation?”
“I thought you could tell us,” Kumar says.
“I didn’t see that much. But this was big. This was nasty.”
Is Kumar trying to draw me out, open up my head and see if I know important shit but am too stupid to realize it—just as he did back in the cell at Madigan? He’s still the whirly-eyed inquisitor. He can’t help himself. My gloved fingers form claws. I work to maintain.