“After we left, there must have been more campaigns lasting weeks, months,” I say. “They wouldn’t have kept concentrations of troops or stable positions. They would have moved, or been lifted out, then replaced by more drops—”
“Was four battalions,” the Russian driver says in heavily accented English. We look up front. His blaze identifies him as Sergeant Kiril Durov. This is the first time he’s spoken. He looks to be in his late thirties, with a rugged, finely wrinkled face and experienced brown eyes. He and the copilot, Efreitor Igor Federov—riding shotgun on a bolt cannon—scan the terrain, perhaps remembering the carnage. “Hero action. We do not bury Antags, what are left. But many.”
We pass within meters of the remains of a big Millie—an Antag millipede transport—carved down the middle, broken and burned, windblown dust obscuring the low-lying pieces of hull and canted wheels.
“Why Chryse, why the Drifter?” I ask.
“I cannot speak for the Antagonists,” Kumar says, “but Sky Defense was told that control of this sector was important enough to mount a major invasion force, earlier in this extended season than any of us had believed was even possible.”
Borden says, “They were instructed to defend the site and deny it to others, or, failing that, to render it inaccessible.”
Beyond the Millie lies the wreckage of six more Skyrine deuces, then, half-buried in dust and chunks of rock, a command orbiter and its lander, not unlike the one that brought us here but in no condition to ever fly again.
We must be near the first Drifter, but I don’t see any rocky swimmer trying to complete a billion-year backstroke. The mounded head, shoulders, and sheltering arms must have been hammered over and over—
Shoved under and drowned.
Kumar gestures for Jacobi and Borden to take the seats across from us. Soldiers and Skyrines rearrange. Here it comes.
“Commander Borden has thoroughly studied what some are calling the Battle of Mars,” Kumar says. “Before we arrive at our first stop, we should refresh ourselves on how it all transpired. Commander?”
Borden stands behind the pilot’s nest and releases the data loaded into our angels. As she speaks, we view diagrams, short vids, approximations.
“There were at least three major bombardments by Antag orbital forces—two comet strikes followed sometime after by a carpeting with megaton-class spent matter charges,” she says. “The first comet strike consisted of seven objects, all presumably redirected or harvested from the Oort cloud. These were the impacts that Master Sergeant Venn experienced on the surface, along with his comrades.”
“You were in the open?” Jacobi asks.
“Pretty far away,” I say.
Jacobi looks at me, solidly neutral. That’s an improvement.
“The first strike took out four settlements, including the largest Voor laager,” Borden continues. “Some of the pieces seem to have gone astray, or were intended not for the Drifter but for the Muskies. We don’t know, because of course we don’t have access to Antag planning and orders.
“Surprisingly, about a hundred and fifty settlers escaped—including a group of Voors who were traveling to the Drifter. They encountered Captain Daniella Coyle’s Special Ops team, and against their will, carried that team to the Drifter. Captain Coyle had been put on Mars with orders to destroy the Drifter, by any and all means at her disposal.”
“Who gave the orders?” Jacobi asks. “I mean, at the top.”
Borden looks to Kumar. Kumar hesitates but finally says, “The instructions were relayed by Wait Staff in Washington, D.C., to Joint Sky Defense.”
“You, sir?” Jacobi asks.
“No. I was not in that chain.”
“Coyle could have been me,” Jacobi says. “That team could have been all of us. Best we get that understood now.”
Kumar tilts his head.
Borden says, mostly to me, “Captain Jacobi trained with Captain Coyle. She was in command of the backup team.”
“We’d have died inside there like Coyle, if we’d been picked,” Jacobi says. Her comrades are somber. The Russians are quiet, attentive. All eyes turn to me, waiting for my reaction.
I look up and down the aisle. “Every one of you—Special Ops?” I ask.
“Yeah,” Jacobi says. “Make you uncomfortable?”
“Fuck yeah,” I say.
Jacobi leans forward. “We would have tried to kill you, Venn.”
“That’s enough,” Borden says.
Strain to breaking. Better get it all out now. I clamp my jaw and look down at my boots.
Borden pushes on. “Captain Coyle was unable to complete her mission, and she and many of her team met puzzling ends within the Drifter’s crystal chamber.”
“The Church,” Kumar says.
I’ve had quite enough. “They used lawnmowers on the Voors!” I shout. “They carved them into lunch meat!” The old anger, the disappointment—the sting of moral wounds. I was there. Now I’m here. So many aren’t anywhere now. “But when they set charges, the Church—”
“You saw the Church, didn’t you?” Jacobi asks, cool as ice. “You were inside. What was that like?”
I twitch along my entire back. “At the end, awful,” is all I can manage.
“Blood and treasure,” Jacobi says, with the respectful yet discouraged tone only an experienced warrior can manage. She gives me the benefit of another direct look, like a confession. I can guess what she’s thinking. It should have been her.
But that’s not it, not entirely.
I want out of this fucking Tonka. I’ll take my chances on the Red. I do not want to be any part of this cabal of butchers, whatever their rank, civilian or brass or grunt—dead or alive. I jerk forward as if to get up—but then close my eyes and force myself back.
I wanted to return. I wanted to see what really happened, how it all turned out. Now I’m here. Eyes back to my boots. I’m okay. The cup of my helm is filling with sweat. The suit draws it back but can’t hide my own stink.
I’m okay.
I can still feel Jacobi’s eyes.
Borden continues. “The survivors from the Drifter managed to organize and break through Antag forces—a remarkable feat considering the pasting a fresh flotilla of our own orbital assets was delivering to the enemy and to the Drifter at the time. During a lull, with the Antags in disarray, landers were dispatched, and our troops were lifted to orbit and returned to Earth.”
“Who ordered the pasting?” Jennings asks.
“Gurus,” Ishida says. Jennings elbows her, but it probably hurts—funny bone intersecting metal. “Everyone just fucking wants it gone!” Ishida insists. “Why? What’s so bloody important?”
That conversation won’t stop. The Skyrines buzz on. The Russians look aloof but don’t convince. Jacobi keeps watching me. She won’t give me a break. I’m the fucking linchpin.
We have to get this done.
“What happened to the Voors?” I call out, interrupting the others. “Litvinov carries pictures….”
“We’re here now to protect the settlers,” Borden says. By her look of nervous keenness, like a dog about to flush a partridge, she totally gets what’s happening in the cabin, the danger and the opportunity. We’re like a raw blade pulled from a hot flame. If she strikes with the right hammer, she’s got us—she anneals and strengthens. But one wrong blow… flying shards.
Borden strikes. “Since there was no way to evacuate noncombatants to orbit, the woman known as Tealullah Mackenzie Green, who rescued some of our Skyrines, and whose camp was destroyed in the first strikes, was handed over to the surviving Voors. The settlers made their way across a hundred and fifty kilometers to an emergency cache they had established years before. Five of them survived the journey, and joined hundreds of other refugees from other camps.”