A LITTLE KNOWLEDGE
Mushran makes sure the way is clear and leads us from the garage and equipment hangar through rough-cut tunnels to a hemispherical chamber about ten meters across and five tall, which leads to three branching corridors—all lined with the same pale gray plastic and lit by strings of low-power lights. Kumar is content to be quiet and follow, so Borden and the rest of our group follow as well. Mushran turns into a broader corridor, this one square in profile, with two long, parallel grooves like guide rails cut into the floor.
The sheets of plastic come to an end, revealing that walls and ceiling and floor are no longer dark stone but almost pure nickel-iron, shiny and etched with sprays of big metal crystals formed over millions of years deep in the heart of the old ice moon. The way the lights reflect on the buffed walls, we seem to walk in a shadowy fog. I remember that from the Drifter.
Mushran leads us up a gentle incline and then through a dogleg into a narrow, long room lit by three lamps on stands. I could be getting closer to seeing my buds again, and closer to Teal. Things might be moving forward at a real clip. And something inside me is reacting positively, as well—not my inner shellfish. Captain Coyle. If she thinks we’re making progress, finally getting somewhere, I have no idea how I should feel, because she’s past cark and care, right?
I am not a fucking ghost, Venn. Got that? And what the hell does cark mean?
All righty, then. The word balloon has filled in very clearly, accompanied by a voice that sounds at least vaguely female.
I’m not alone, wherever the hell I am. This place is full of extremely weird shit, the kind of shit nobody can train for—nobody has ever prepared for—and I’d like to know what the bloody hell is going on.
“Yes, ma’am,” I murmur. “Me, too.”
Borden sees my lips move. “You okay, Venn?”
“Yes, ma’am,” I say. “We’re fine.” Borden doesn’t even favor me with a pitying look.
Mushran has pulled a flat rectangle out from the wall. I wonder if it’s a door, a hatch, or maybe something exotic. It’s giving him difficulty, wedged behind a flap of insulation, catching on a plastic strap. We watch with wary fascination. What’s this fucker up to? What magic trick is he going to demo to our amazed and childlike eyes? If it’s a door, is there something weird behind it—more kobolds, or worse, something we’ve never seen before? The long rectangle is not cooperating. “Just a moment,” Mushran says, and gives it a jerk. It clatters back, rattles against the wall, and teeters loose into his hands.
Everyone lifts their weapons.
“Here it is,” Mushran says. “Not a problem.”
“Goddamn,” Borden mutters through her teeth.
Mushran frees the rectangle from the strap, lowers it to the floor, then looks up at us. “Some assistance, please?”
It’s a folding table. We’re all pretty strung out. All but Kumar, who has kept this disembodied, steady smile on his face the whole time, observing with his big, warm black eyes.
“A little help?” Mushran asks again around the group of stock-still Skyrines. “I believe there are chairs over there—behind those boxes, perhaps.”
Borden tips her head. The Skyrines fall out and chip in to set up the makeshift conference room. When the table and enough chairs to seat eight have been unfolded and arranged, Borden acts as mother and decides who sits where. She puts Kumar at the head, which Mushran accepts without protest.
I notice Rafe has joined us again. He’s standing in the doorway, listening.
“Mr. de Groot—please, come in,” Mushran says.
De Groot gives me a look, as if trying to think why my face should be familiar, then sits at the far end. He doesn’t like Skyrines. No reason he should. The sister who’s taken up lodging in a corner of my head would have killed him and his entire family. And after listening to Teal’s story, maybe I would have as well.
This is getting cozy.
“I will begin,” Mushran says. “Some years ago, a settler at Green Camp reached out to ISD troops and passed along descriptions of the Drifter and several other mines, which he thought might be of strategic importance—for their mineral stores.”
I assume this was Teal’s father. For his pains, he was eventually put out on the Red—left to die by the Voors.
“He thought that Earth would lavish more money and attention on the settlers if they knew of their expertise regarding these resources. The news caused a stir throughout Wait Staff. Contradictory responses emerged. The division charged with strategic planning for the war against the Antagonists expressed interest in exploring the old fragments, and in recruiting the settlers to help us secure their resources. But another division took a quite opposite point of view. They began to plan for the complete destruction of the settlements and any settlers who had visited these sites. No explanation was given, and such was our loyalty to the Gurus that none was requested.”
Rafe clenches his jaw.
“But some pushed forward a more reasoned plan. Before any drastic action would be taken, it was decided that a reconnaissance survey on Mars had to be conducted. The Gurus did not seem to object. As part of a larger strategic push, select groups of soldiers would be tasked with finding and describing the old mining sites. Despite our best efforts, however, our planning came a cropper.”
“What does that mean?” Ishida asks. “I don’t know that word.”
“Fucked-up,” Jacobi says.
“Yes. That.” Mushran continues: “Antagonists shipped many divisions of troops to Mars, along with a tremendous increase in orbital assets—and finally, a barrage of comet strikes. What appeared to be an attempt to disable or totally destroy our forces seemed, under closer observation, to more plausibly be an attempt to render the Drifter—the primary old moon site—inaccessible.
“Some of us—I credit Kumarji here—found this coincidental focus on the Drifter by both the Gurus and the Antagonists to be suspicious. Why would the Antagonists not want to exploit all available resources? Their supply lines were even more strung out than ours.
“And then, we discovered that those in Division Four responsible for long-range strategic planning—”
“And clandestine operations,” Kumar says.
Mushran defers. “They ordered that Special Forces be trained and sent to destroy the Drifter. Perhaps not coincidentally, my original division—Division One, release and promotion of technological benefits—was kicked into high gear to make available the technology necessary to produce far more powerful spacecraft. High-speed probes sent to Jupiter and Saturn added to our knowledge of distant moons with deep oceans of liquid water, encased in shells of ice. The same sort of ice moon that once fell on Mars. The technology used on those probes was expanded. When the first three ships were finished, because of their configuration, they were referred to by our construction teams as Spooks. The Russians called them Star Gowns.”
“There was one in orbit around Earth, last we saw,” Kumar says. “Along with a very large Box.”
“Yes. Well, each of these Spooks carried four divisions of Skyrines and forty scientists out to Saturn. The journey took three weeks. All in secret. We soon discovered that Antagonists had already begun extensive operations on Titan.”
“Old and cold,” I murmur.
“Old and cold,” Mushran agrees. “The Gurus insisted that we could not allow Antagonists to exploit the resources of the outer solar system, any more than we had on Mars. Our troops were supplied with very large, specialized weapons and vehicles. They journeyed down to Titan and soon engaged Antagonist forces on practically equal terms. That front heated up until it consumed more than half of our resources, which put a strain on our Martian operations.