The round-faced starshina waves the vehicles off. The settlers are leaving first. We all wait quietly, if not patiently. I can imagine the quiet inside the mine—the second Void. Except for the kobolds. What are they doing to prepare? Because I know beyond a shadow of a doubt what our sisters have done. They’ve laid a network of spent matter charges, enough to collapse the mine, incinerate the Void, put full fucking stop to everything the Muskies have been doing. Expediency rules. They won’t leave a thing for the Antags, and there’s no way of knowing what they’d do, anyway. Maybe blow it up, too.
Two squads of Russians gather to either side of us as we watch the eastern skies. Together, we track the lancets of descending landers—eight sharp white needles spaced about two klicks away.
ANOTHER HOUR PASSES before the rolling stock returns and the vehicles line up to receive us. Two of the landers off to the east ascend on pillars of torch fire. Two more follow minutes after.
KUMAR AND BORDEN emerge from the hatch beside the accordion, DJ in tow. I wonder what he’s feeling. I know what he’s feeling, but I won’t acknowledge it. This is a solemn moment. Something huge is about to happen down in the mine, something beyond logistics and spent matter and physics. Because we both know that spent matter can only poke this place in the eye and make it mad.
But when it gets mad, when it feels afraid…
Difficult to believe whoever’s in command above Kumar is doing everything right. We’re all expecting that before we go, the Antags or more sappers will arrive in force and there will be another fight. My emotions are narrowing. I’ve missed that sensation for so goddamned long…. The instincts it took a claw-nailed handful of DIs to beat into me over weeks and months at Hawthorne, Mauna Kea. We’re all expecting to die, but we hope, we want, we desire with hot pink passion to fight and kill before we go.
The round-faced starshina waves her hand, all aboard.
“Ready, ladies?” Jacobi asks.
High overhead I see a fast-moving object brighter than the nearby spot of Phobos. It slides quickly east to west, opposite the typical orbital track of our space frames. My plate enhances enough to show me an elongated, slightly blurry thing like a tied-up bundle of handkerchiefs. I point this out to Borden. “Is that our ride?” I ask.
She looks up. “I think so,” she says.
“Spook?” I ask.
“Fastest thing in the solar system.” But she doesn’t look happy or secure.
The last group of Russians climb onto the frame of a Tonka.
“Sorry about the crap they’re putting you through,” I tell her.
She shakes her head, then straightens. “You’re coming with us in the Chesty. Jacobi’s team will join us. Kumar’s orders.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Kumar is coming, too.”
“Terrific,” I say.
The settlers are nowhere to be seen, but the ships that lifted them off the Red have left black-rayed smudges on the basalt.
“Godspeed,” Borden says to the vanished ships.
I instinctively look west. Over the low rise that marks the second Drifter, the second mine, and the reduced horizontal lines of the domiciles, four dust devils spin out their syncopated dance, twisted little pencils moved by invisible hands. I hope nobody will be left behind on the Red or down in the mine to experience what I sense in my hindbrain and deep in my gut. Nobody human.
We pack into the Chesty, into the tight spaces between weapons and stores. Joe goes last. Ishikawa sits beside him. DJ sits beside me. “Amazing tea,” he says. “I’m going to miss it.”
The Chesty moves out. Ten minutes’ ride to the last two landers.
Then it all blows.
The whole Chesty shimmies on its wheels. Something subsonic booms up into the chassis and through our flesh and bones. The boom rises to a roar and everything shakes and rattles as the shock wave passes under us. The Chesty heels over on its springs, lifts, and bounces back with a squealing jolt. The driver revs to full speed, ponderous at best, then spins us to face into the aftershocks. Those of us in the back crowd around the six small ports, all but our sisters, Jacobi’s team.
They stay seated.
“Oh, good,” Jacobi says, utterly deadpan. “It’s beginning to work.” She folds her hands and looks between her knees.
Kumar perches behind the Russian driver, looking through the windscreen. “Blessed Siva!” he says.
A cloud of dust towers over the mine. The domiciles are obscured—maybe they’re already gone. I see the landers, our landers, sway like trees in a high wind. Three more ships are descending despite the activity off to the west. There are now five, enough to carry the rest of us.
“Out!” the driver shouts. “Move it!”
We seal our plates and abandon the Chesty, leaping and running toward the landers, Kumar straggling—having difficulty—until Borden and I lift him by his belt pack and sling him along between us. The sound is incredible. Definitely no need to look back. Pillar of salt.
The crew chiefs of each lander grab us at random and push us toward the ladders. We climb like monkeys, all but Kumar, whose feet can’t seem to stay on the rungs. Takes far too long. Takes forever. The landers are still swaying. From kilometers off, we hear the crust complaining: deep throaty screams made worse by the thin air. I look left in time to see the dust tower into a mushroom, then spread out. Around the mushroom’s stalk, a crackle of basalt spreads from the low dome of the mine. The crust shatters like glass hit by invisible hammers and collapses, forming a vast, bowl-shaped pit, the edge too fucking close and coming closer. Yeah, Siva indeed—our wicked sisters did a real number down there.
I’m almost at the hatch, shoving at Kumar’s butt. Then I make the mistake of looking back again. The color at the center of the pit is changing. Swift, dark, riverlike branches fan out to the expanding perimeter—
“Get the hell in!” the crew chief shouts, pulling me through the hatch and shoving me back into the cabin, which is crammed with people in skintights scrambling for their lives, maybe for their souls. Borden straps Kumar into a seat and looks at me, frightened out of her wits. I strap into my own seat.
“Two minutes!” the pilot shouts over comm.
There are people still climbing as we hear the other landers begin their motor ramp-ups to launch. And then we feel our own ship rise. The hatch hasn’t closed. Alarms go off inside the cabin. We’re launching and not everyone’s in a couch, but the downward tug is just moderate—the pilot is hovering over the Red, up and away from the debris and collapse—
Maybe it all ends here.
“Sorry,” Jacobi says from behind me. And again, “Sorry.”
I can’t see a thing. Hope to hell that Teal is up and away. The hatch has closed. We have pressure. I open my eyes. Borden and Kumar are across the aisle. Our seats realign and the pods roll into position. The pilot issues safety instructions. I don’t listen. I look back over the edge of my seat. Everybody made it, we’re all strapped in, that’s a miracle, isn’t it? I make out Jacobi and a few of the sisters and a few of the Russians. I see DJ behind and to my right. He looks like he’s napping and having a bad dream. Where’s Joe? Where’s Tak? Mushran? Presumably in another lander. We’re climbing fast. The acceleration is probably at max. Leaving Mars isn’t like leaving Earth. You can stand, if you are strong and fit—