“You trust them?” I ask.
“Fuck you,” Jennings says.
“Silicon plague turned everything upside down,” Ishida says. “Every one of our sisters who came back got locked up—and then executed.”
Pause on that.
“Enough trust, asshole?” Jennings asks me.
“We couldn’t save them all,” Borden says.
Another quiet spell.
“None of that tells us who’s in charge of the sappers,” Jacobi says.
Sergeant Durov says, “We return fire and kill. Not to ask or to think.”
“Why rations with vodka,” murmurs Federov.
I’m reminded of the MREs attached to the bunch of Russian tents that saved our asses last drop. Vee-Def straggled in off the Red and invaded our tent, scaring us and waking us up. He stuck a piece of reindeer sausage up his nose as a joke, then snorted it out, covered in snot. That nose is still out here somewhere. Along with the rest of his head. So why doesn’t Vee-Def talk to me, if I’m being haunted by dead Skyrines?
Because he did not turn glass.
That conclusion is so stunningly obvious that I wonder at my stupidity not to have thought of it before.
The Tonka rumbles and jounces over deep ruts.
“We should be in the Chesty and the Trundle, on weapons,” Ishikawa grumbles from the back.
“Our best soldiers man weapons,” Durov says. “Polkovnik riding with them, keep you safe. In good hands. He is why you are not dead.”
The Tonka slows and runs alongside a high gray ridge that stretches across our entire field of vision. We swing left with a shudder and a couple of slams and roll up a rise of undulating, cracked basalt about half a klick long that forms a bumpy ramp to the crest of the ridge. The Tonka noses down and halts. Sergeant Durov has expertly arranged to give us a tourist’s vantage. Skyrines and Russians crowd up front or glim through the side ports.
Jacobi, still brooding, is invited forward by Borden—a crook of one gloved finger. She squeezes in between me and Borden. Doesn’t want to touch me if she can avoid it. Weird fucking emotions. I did not know about the other executions. Somehow, I always assume my misfortunes are special. I’m suspect in part because I’m not dead and some of their friends are. Better and better.
Through the dusty plastic, we see the rim of the biggest crater we’ve yet encountered, maybe eleven klicks across, a massive, scythe-shaped upthrust that mingles old surface basalt and lower crust. The crater’s far wall is an irregularity along the horizon, interrupted by a dark, jagged peak that rises a few hundred meters out of the center.
“This is the Drifter?” I ask.
“Until recently,” Borden says.
“It’s gone.”
“Huge impact,” Borden says. “The smaller surrounding craters are backscatter, ejecta. The prominence is the central peak. There’s still a big portion of the fragment left below, but it’s pretty shook up.”
“With more activity than anyone could have expected,” Kumar says.
“Perhaps due to nitrogen from cometary ammonia,” Borden says. For the moment, I ignore that as irrelevant—though a conversation flashes into memory: the old Voor talking about essential ingredients, stikstof—nitrogen.
I make out a series of beige level surfaces this side of the peak. Could be lightly dusted frozen lakes—something I’ve never seen on Mars.
“The hobo is still flowing,” I say.
Kumar agrees and points. “Look there. And there. Those are not dust devils.”
Beyond and to the left of the peak rises a thin white plume, and then, almost invisible, four or five more. Venting steam. The magma under the Drifter is still hot, still coming in contact with the hobo. But it’s no longer capped off, no longer sealed under the fragment of moon.
“There’s magma close to the surface,” I say. “Too hot for Voors or miners. All that’s left down there is probably dissolved or melted.”
“Possibly not,” Kumar says. “As we said, there is still activity. We do not refer to seismic activity.”
“Everything in that hole is brown or gray but the center,” Jacobi says. “Why’s that peak so dark and shiny?”
“We think not everything in the mines below was destroyed,” Borden says.
“But what’s up with all that black shit—sir?” Jacobi asks.
Kumar is about to interrupt when comm crackles and Litvinov demands entry. He passes through the lock and the Russians brush him down before he carries forward a steel bottle and offers us hot coffee. The Russians distribute tin cups. Our Skyrines join in with the sudden manners of polite society. I don’t ask where the Russians got coffee.
“No doubt you see water and heat,” Litvinov says as we sip. “Before last and biggest impact, we sent exploration team inside Drifter—down deep. Instructed to bring back specimen from crystal pillar. Some brave fool attempted to cut away pieces. He turned dark glass—what you name silicon disease.”
“The sample that caused so much trouble—was it from here?” I ask. “Was it your soldier?”
“It is him,” Sergeant Durov says, and taps his head. “We bring him back, but do not touch him—very difficult. He is filled with lights. No lights when we pack him on return lifter.” The colonel’s look is intense. “He is dead—but I feel him. Do you?”
I shake my head. The shotgun, Federov, holds his finger to his lips, lightly grips Durov’s arm. What’s that about? No speaking of the dead? The undead in our heads?
Follows our fourth silence. The Russians are stony, mostly, but the square-faced soldier clutches his cup and weeps. He’s not afraid—he’s sad and bewildered. He reaches inside his helm and brushes away tears, then looks aside, ashamed.
“Satellites reported big incoming. We evacuate Drifter,” Litvinov says. “Before we get all out—biggest comet does this. Half of team, far enough distance, survives… Other half still inside.” He swallows hard. These are hard men and women, I know that—but what they’ve experienced is more traumatic, in some ways, than what our Skyrines went through. “Have you study mountain at center?”
We lower our cups, close our faceplates, and magnify that view. The central peak is not just dark. As Jacobi observed, it’s black—with shiny surfaces.
“That happen after comet. Everything in center of impact is black glass.”
“They blew it the fuck up,” I say. “It felt threatened.”
“What felt threatened?” Litvinov asks sharply. “It is rock! How can rock know fear? You are to give answers! Is it angry at us, Venn?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “I don’t know if anger is part of it.”
“I say it is angry, deep down,” Litvinov insists. “Everything it touches… black glass.” He lifts his bushy eyebrows into an arch above his thick, broad nose. “We leave here now. Too dangerous. Too strange.”
“I believe we’ve established that nothing practical can be done here,” Kumar agrees.
“You know madness from inside,” Litvinov says to me. “Old moons, crystal towers, make many things, dangerous, strange, and special. Including, what did you call it? ‘Ice Moon Tea.’”
“That was DJ—Corporal Dan Johnson,” I say.
“Affects a few of my soldiers. What is it doing to them?” Litvinov asks.
“I’m not sure, sir,” I say. “It could make us sensitive to something old. Something still down there.”
“Our dead?” Litvinov waves that question off. The colonel’s not a believer, and Durov isn’t going to convert him. “No understanding, no sense,” Litvinov says, then instructs Durov to back us off the rim and begin the long trek to Fiddler’s Green. “I will stay with you,” he says. “Best soldiers in Chesty, put on strong weapons.”