Killing Titan Read online

  “Waste of energy,” Jacobi says. Hard sister. But this hurts her. It hurts her bad. Including the Russians, we’re down by half. Twenty-four of us climb into the Chesty and a Tonka, the only vehicles still functional and carrying charge.

  Borden and Kumar, Ishida and Ishikawa, Jacobi, the square-faced young efreitor, and the chess-playing gymnast, Starshina Ulyanova. Litvinov. They’ve made it.

  Jennings, Tanaka, Yoshinaga, Mori, Saugus, the pilot Durov, and his shotgun Federov—all dead.

  Inside the Chesty, with the Tonka trailing, we cross the last two klicks. The Russians sit toward the rear, near the lock, shivering and talking about what, I don’t know, just talking. I want to talk as well. Screw propriety and courage. Screw everything.

  “I heard the captain back there,” I say to Borden. It’s something to mention, something random that may or may not be important.

  “I didn’t hear anything,” Borden says with less than her usual focus.

  “I mean Captain Coyle,” I say.

  She stares.

  Litvinov lifts his gaze. “Ah,” he says. “You hear ghost.”

  “She’s not a ghost,” I say.

  “No? What, then? Others return, you know. Not just your captain. Federov heard! Now he is ghost, too.”

  Kumar watches with sleepy eyes. He’s in shock, I think. He’s not hurt, but that doesn’t matter.

  “If not ghost, what?” Litvinov asks.

  “Bored,” I say. “Waiting for shit to happen.”

  “On Mars, dead get bored fast,” the colonel says, then adds, in passable American, “Ain’t it the truth.”

  The Chesty’s driver calls out in alarm. Through the side port, I see burning hamster-maze domiciles laid out on the brown rock like PVC piping hit by hammers and torches. The camp’s temporary housing has been opened to the sky.

  I drop my chin and swallow hard.

  ARRIVALS AND DEPARTURES

  Rather than pass through the Chesty’s airlock, we hunker down and the driver opens the side loading hatch. There’s a brief gale, a frosty puff, and Borden, Kumar, and Litvinov exit first.

  The resettlement camp is in ruins, all but for a single quarter, which is surrounded by a couple of dozen Russian dead, Antags, a small Millie that seems largely intact but empty, until we walk around to the other side and see it’s been opened up as if by a can opener and scoured by lawnmower beams. The insides are gruesome.

  “They wanted the settlers dead, all of them,” Kumar says.

  “No shit,” Ishida says. “Willing to fight to the last warrior.” Jacobi touches her shoulder. She shrugs it off and takes point automatically, leveling her bolt rifle. I almost expect Coyle to add something, but once again she’s gone silent. No words, no word balloons—not even static.

  Borden watches me like a mother hen over a piebald chick. We walk through a little arched gate, very pretty, that once led to an outdoor tented garden, now flat and torn. Someone dug trenches around the revetments, which look to me as if they’re protecting the domiciles and not vehicles. Someone, probably Litvinov, decided on a strategy of mobility and rapid response: Keep vehicles and fountains below ground level, dig fighting holes around the perimeter at fifty meters, prepare the ground to protect what’s important.

  Six Russians emerge from the forward trenches to greet us. They’re all that’s left. They gave everything they had pushing back the Antag offensive, and Litvinov isn’t bringing them good news, except that—maybe—the last of the enemy have been dispatched.

  “All bad guys, toast,” a Russian says in passing, shouldering his bolt rifle and accepting a spent matter pack from Ishida. Unless there are human sappers out there with their own orders, ready to move in next. If I had any creep left, I’d be creeped the hell out.

  The Skyrines load up from the Chesty’s reserve. I’m left with the pistol. Litvinov barks instructions. Vigilance. No rest for anyone. Another Russian comes around the far end of the domicile carrying two lawnmowers, both blinking red—depleted. She stumbles along, worn down, a sticky wrap around one arm and another around her leg to help her suit hold suck. Without a word, she hands me one of the lawnmowers and Ishida the other. I hate lawnmowers as a matter of principle. I hate the noise they make, I hate what they do, and I’ve never used one in combat—trained with them, of course, back at Mauna Kea—but I’m glad to have it. The lawnmower means I’m no longer a fucking POG. Ishida passes me two spent matter packs and we lock and heft and wait for the lights to go steady green, then dark blue. Borden watches. No objections. She lends four Skyrines to the Russians. Jacobi goes with them and instructs Ishida and Ishikawa to follow Borden, Kumar, and me to the last intact domicile.

  Litvinov waves for Ulyanova to unlock a small fountain. We climb down brick steps to the tap. “Take what you need,” the colonel says. “The mine is two klicks north. We stay here.”

  “Understood, Colonel,” Borden says. “Apologies, but we’re taking the Chesty, sir.”

  Litvinov shifts his boot in the dust. “We do our best,” he says.

  At Borden’s nod, Ishida hands back her lawnmower. The Russian efreitor who gave it to her, in hopes perhaps that the Chesty would now be available, receives it with a side look at the colonel. Borden then gestures for me to give my lawnmower to Ishida. I hand it over. POG again, but it’s all good and we’re good to go. Six of us climb into the Chesty. All but three sentries head for the domicile to rest and organize. The domicile has a big lock on the north end, sadly adequate to pack them all in at once. Clearly we’re not taking time to stop and compare notes. I wonder who’s left inside. I wonder who’s at the mine. The second chunk of old moon.

  Jacobi drives. Kumar takes the side seat. Borden sits beside me. Ishida and Ishikawa take seats on either side of me. Nobody says a word.

  Ishida periodically taps her mechanical arm and grimaces. The wrist is softly clicking. Whatever tech they give Skyrines never works as advertised. I wonder what it’s like to be made one with your equipment.

  You’ll find out.

  Quoth Coyle. Only that, and nothing more.

  BAD MOON RISING

  The ride to the mine is quiet and swift. We seem to have temporarily run out of things that want to kill us. The weather gets weirder, however—spooky fog lies in a fine, low carpet over the basalt and dust, a few rocks poking through like tiny islands. Briefly, looking through the Chesty’s narrow slits, I feel like we’re in a jet cruising above overcast. Then, as if at the snap of a magician’s finger, the fog bristles into spikes and vanishes. Poof.

  We climb a rise. Ahead is a sullen gray promontory, blocky and crenellated like an ancient castle, about a hundred meters broad and thirty high. Not as impressive as the Drifter’s old swimmer, but more than enough to draw attention on the monotonous plain.

  As if pointing an accusing finger, a dust devil rises over the castle’s brow, dances a gray little jig, touches the Chesty’s nose, then picks up its skirts and dissolves. A scatter of sand rattles on the windscreen.

  “Coin?” Borden asks.

  I take it from my pouch and hold it up for her inspection. As returned by Litvinov, perhaps at Joe’s request. She says, “Good. Now we see who we can trust.”

  Jacobi draws us up onto a cleared square of brushed lava and gravel in the shadow of the castle. She parallel parks, as hidden from the sky as possible—and shuts down the main drives but leaves the weapons on full charge. Again, we disembark through the wide side hatch, never having pressurized the interior. Out of habit, I check the Chesty’s water and oxygen supply, prominently displayed beside the hatch. Levels are at one-sixth. Quick calculation tells me that if there’s nothing left in the mine, no taps and no reserves, and somebody finishes off their work at the camp, we’ll have about four hours of sips and gasps. Jacobi notes this as well. Our eyes meet over the helm readout. She gestures for me to follow Borden. Ishikawa and Ishida flank us as we step down. A tight little cordon. I feel like a Roman emperor. Speaking of Rome, I could use a good orgy. Wo
nder what Ishida’s skills are in that regard—that little conversation—

  Don’t think I’m a nutless, squeaky-clean Skyrine. I hope Coyle isn’t rummaging deep in my basement, and not because I fear she’ll run into old shellfish. Wonder if they all mix it up down there. Ghosts who aren’t ghosts, bugs who aren’t bugs, squared off in a primordial do-si-do.

  “Venn!” Borden calls out over comm. She’s found a tall inset in the rock, mostly hidden by shadow. A quick sortie by Ishida shows us, using her paler silhouette for scale, that the cavity is about ten meters deep and nine high. There’s a rusty steel hatch about the right size for a buggy or a bus, and a smaller personnel hatch beside it. Architecture may vary from mine to Muskie mine, but the basics are the same. Now to find the lock. We step into shadow and search around the hatch. Ishida finds the little panel first, on the right, behind an inset, spring-loaded push-plate that opens with a strong poke. The others form a cordon. I approach the panel, coin foremost, wondering if we could ever find it again if I fumbled—here in the gravel and dust—

  The insertion point is obvious, like a slot in a coin-operated clothes washer. Nothing fancy. Might be molecular-level recognition of the coin’s metallurgy, damned difficult to duplicate, plus the number spiral—an encrypted description of the coin itself—

  Maybe. How should I know? I am more nervous now than I was getting out of Madigan. Back there, I had adrenaline pumping and the sheer joy of breaking out of stir. Here—

  I’m down to piss, no vinegar. Don’t know what we’re going to find. Joe, Teal, the Voors—maybe the old bantam himself, de Groot, herding his sons around in the dark—

  Or everyone dead? Turned to black glass?

  The wide hatch shudders but does not open. Instead, the little personnel hatch creaks and shoves inward, giving us access to the smaller lock beyond. Bet it all. We push through, leaving the Chesty with just Ishikawa on guard—packing the bolt rifle to protect the Chesty’s weapons, in case we need to make a hasty retreat. Ishida carries the lawnmower. Within the walk-in closet of a lock, we brush off and cycle through. The inner hatch opens and, as always, our ears pop. On the other side, a long garage has been carved out of lava and sealed with plastic sheeting. There’s room for three buggy-sized vehicles. Currently the garage holds one buggy, plus, on shelves to our left, the suits and gear of the current inhabitants, which I estimate number forty or fifty. No names on the folded and packed skintights, just numbers. Farther back in the shadows, I make out plastic cargo modules, their transparent sides revealing hints of steel and round green surfaces, square gray surfaces, in-between bits filled with pipes or wires.… Equipment. Tons of it. And beyond those crates, a stack of more crates emptied, folded, and compacted. At some point, the mine received a lot of support.

  Kumar and I open our faceplates. The air inside is clean. Kumar sneezes, which is impolite up here. Colds that can’t be suppressed by antivirals spend about two weeks infecting all before they burn out their host reservoirs, kind of like brush fires, and we’re the brush. A cold in a skintight is less than optimal. Snot has nowhere to go—nowhere good—and sneezing is painful.

  “Just dust,” Kumar says, looking around. “I’m fine.”

  Funny how the trivial magnifies. We’d rather be thinking about cold viruses—not so much about turning glass.

  “Sir, Venn,” Borden says, “please close your plates. We keep sealed until we learn what’s happening.”

  “Of course, yes,” Kumar says. “Apologies.”

  We seal up again. Typical that those instructions weren’t made clear from the beginning. Then again, for me, does it matter?

  The garage’s far steel hatch opens with a clattering hiss, and a ruddy, middle-aged man in a white tunic steps through. He looks like a Greek in a college play. I don’t recognize him. “Welcome to Fiddler’s Green,” he announces in a voice at once oily and assured. “We hear you’ve had a bit of a trek!” He looks beyond Borden and Ishida and spots Kumar. His smile inverts and his face becomes a drawn olive mask. “Kumarji! You have finally decided to break with your masters and join us. Perhaps it is not too late.”

  “You left me in ignorance!” Kumar says, and moves through the press of Skyrines toward tunic man, who, as the distance closes, looks less and less sure of himself. Kumar backs tunic guy up step for step, until he’s against the plastic-wrapped rock. “We were attacked,” Kumar says. His head moves as if he’s examining the path of a fly zipping around tunic guy’s head.

  “What could you expect? I told you not to force their hand!” Tunic guy draws himself to his full height, hands clenching a fold of dingy cloth before his crotch as if afraid Kumar might punch him in the ’nads. “Division Four was in disagreement, we could not be sure you would accept. You were the last—”

  Kumar suddenly swoops. “You idiot!” he shouts and slaps tunic guy square on the face. He reacts with a snort, then leans against the wall. “If I could, I’d throw you out on the Red,” Kumar says. “I’d leave you out there naked. After you gave me your assurance we would work in tandem, stay in touch…”

  “How could I know? Division Four was split from the start,” tunic guy says.

  “We hadn’t finished our work! You always were a grandstanding son of a whore!”

  Tunic guy drops his gaze.

  Jacobi whispers to Borden, “Who the fuck is he?”

  Borden replies, also in a whisper, as Kumar and tunic guy continue to argue, “Krishna Mushran, head of Mumbai Research Authority.”

  “Wait Staff?” Ishida asks.

  Borden nods. “One of the first to be invited to meet with the Gurus.”

  Jacobi makes her mock-impressed face—eyebrows raised, lips pinched—and says, “Terrific. What now?”

  Kumar looks back to the rest of us, who are either increasingly concerned (Borden) or neutrally bemused (the Skyrines), and says, “Will someone please detain this man.… Is there a brig, a cell, a goddamned hole into which you can stuff him?”

  “You have no such authority,” Mushran says, rubbing his cheek. “And we are past that now. I have—”

  “You’ve been out of touch for months,” Kumar says. “Division Four is united and more powerful than ever. We’ve done your work for you.”

  “Did he order the attacks on the Russians and the camps?” Ishida asks Borden. The commander shakes her head—she doesn’t know. None of us moves.

  Kumar looks over his shoulder again at Borden, a kind of expectant glare. Borden rouses and says, “Captain Jacobi, please take this man into custody.”

  “Yes, ma’am. Where shall I put him? And how shall I log his detention?”

  “Just hold on to him.”

  Jacobi motions and she and Ishida flank Mushran, take him under his arms, and lift him until his feet kick.

  “There is no need of this!” Mushran squeals. “Kumarji, our meeting brings good news—”

  “No thanks to you!” Kumar growls. His eyes are actually popping a little and there’s sweat on his cheeks. “Soldiers have died. Wait Staff have died.”

  “Not my doing!” Mushran says. “I came here and beyond to supervise a difficult situation, in order to speed progress! I have arranged scientific work, medical exams—all this is far more important than the Gurus let on!” Then he gives in to his own anger and begins cursing in Hindi, loudly and with some talent, if I’m any judge—curses being what I studied most back at Madigan.

  Kumar steps through the hatch and we follow. Mushran and his Skyrine escorts come last. The tunnel beyond is bare reddish-black rock, no visible veins of crystallized metal. Little lights glow steadily in a shallow furrow along the ceiling.

  “You can’t begin to know what’s down here!” Mushran calls out. Ishikawa clamps a hand over his mouth, but Borden shakes her head, not necessary. She doesn’t let loose.

  Then we hear the cry of a baby. Louder, insistent.

  Mushran watches with concern as a trio of shadows emerges from the gloom at the end of the tunnel. The Skyrines rai
se their weapons.

  “Do not shoot!” Mushran shouts through the muffling gloves. “Do not fear! They are no threat! The only danger down here is you!”

  “Let us take this slowly,” Kumar says. Borden waves for the rifles and lawnmower to be lowered, then signals hold tight. The squad stands down—slightly.

  Two males and a very tall female pass from deep shadow to dim light. My heart skips a beat. I hope it’s Teal and Joe and maybe Tak, or maybe Kazak—our old team regrouping on the Red—but my eyes are watering and I can only make out that they’re all wearing white tunics stained with green.

  Borden leans in close to me. “Muskies?” she asks. I squint and recognize one of de Groot’s sons, Rafe, I think—and then DJ. The tall female beside DJ is not Teal but could be her sister. She’s carrying a baby, suckling now and quiet.

  “All Muskies except for the skinny dude,” I say.

  “Hey, it’s Vinnie!” DJ calls out, and steps ahead from the group, approaching until Jacobi shouts, “Hold your ground!”

  DJ looks surprised but stops.

  Jacobi asks me, pointedly, “Do you recognize them?”

  I nod.

  “I need voice affirmation!”

  “I recognize Corporal Dan Johnson, and I think that’s one of the Voors—Rafe, Rafe de Groot. I do not recognize the female.”

  “So noted,” Jacobi says, comparing DJ’s picture in her helm with the living article.

  DJ by now has realized how strung out we are. “Vinnie?” he says plaintively. “That is you, isn’t it?”

  I wave.

  “Fuck, I knew you’d find a way back! Joe and Tak—they’re here! We’ll be a team again!”