A Verex attached to Pvt. Lane slammed into me from above, hung there for a second, then crashed another five meters to the next landing. The two stayed beside the base of the deck ladder—thrashing—gunshots ringing out. Then the Shifter drug him out of sight.
Pvt. Harris landed a moment later, drawing his Juniper sidearm and firing at the back of the hunched-over Shifter. As soon as he realized that Lane wasn’t moving and precision didn’t matter, he swapped it for his Pegasus—delivering an auto-burst just as the Verex turned and bounded toward him.
As soon as it fell, a ghastly, wrenching pain hit him from the other direction, razors at once sinking and tearing into the back of his thigh. He fired blindly behind him, but only had a few rounds left—and the teeth stayed in. Seeming to go all the way through, opening up a black void in his consciousness that swallowed every other sensation. Blurring the emergency lighting. Collapsing everything down into a needle point of horror. Yet somehow shots were still sounding and they were both collapsing—fastened together—a into a puddle next to Pvt. Lane.
There was silence for a split second and then Harmsworth was screaming from the bottom of the ladder, “Back up! Back up!”
Harris saw two Shifters catapulting toward him and remarkably was able to get to his feet again, climb a few rungs, and clear the hatch before he and Harmsworth flung back two fragmentation grenades into the tube.
With no time to plug his ears, a ringing slammed into my skull—combining with the blast to knock us halfway off the ladder, swinging with one hand to the side, then back on again—and climbing down. Pvt. Harmsworth swept his gun both directions at the base, but the Verex were all in pieces on the walls, two quarter-meter craters blown into the floor.
“Jesus, you got tagged pretty good,” said Harmsworth, looking down at my thigh. Then pulling out a compression bandage and wrapping it around me.
His voice felt distant. Tinny. Mine even more so when I answered, “Just a little skin in the game now,” sounding like I was simultaneously calling up from a well and through a closed airlock. “Now you don’t have to worry about me running off.”
“You should’ve run off.”
“All personnel please make your way to the escape pods or shuttle bays. Captain Jeffries has given the order to abandon ship. The self-destruct sequence will be running in T-minus four minutes.”
The ringing persisted as we made our way down the corridor and by the time we reached the next junction, a thin trickle of blood was coming out my ear. The med locker just beyond was little more than a storage closet. The door had been blown off—probably by people who didn’t have clearance after the main power had gone down—and the shelves were disordered. Combed through. But my marine was still able to find two cases of antidote buried deep in the back.
The syringes were field grade and in a second both of us had the bottoms off and jammed them into our legs.
“How long are these supposed to take? I’ve never been bitten before.”
“Forty-five seconds. A minute tops.”
“Tango 29, Tango 29. This is RP Beta. We’re three links away from Pod Bay 32. No Verex so far, but hearing signs of possible activity. They can’t be far away.”
“Copy that, Beta,” said Pvt. Harris. “Don’t wait up for us but we’re proceeding to the lift now. Over.”
“Fuck. Let’s go.
Even though I was horrified for each marine I’d been tied into, the way this guy was risking everything for his friend made me wish that I knew him. That we were friends. And the thought of losing him seemed somehow unbearable. Catastrophic. So much that I could feel my own dread bleeding into the tie in, mixing in with his. At once together and separate, making it hard to tell who was feeling what.
The announcement rang over the speakers again as they stumbled into the lift. The doors were open and it was lit a dim shade of red—a shorted-out track light on the side flickering on and off.
“It’s still got emergency power. Deck 62, right?” asked Pvt. Harmsworth.
I felt Harris nodding, then mashing his hand against the close button and punching something into the lightboard.
“And you said a minute for the antidote?”
“It should be working . . .”
“I don’t know—it feels like the stinging’s gotten worse. And now it’s all yellow.”
Gunfire sounded outside and they raised their rifles. When the doors opened, though, there was just a handful of Fleet officers and marines—including the two ensigns from Beta.
“There’s no Verex . . . Bravo company’s already here, saying they just cleared most of the deck.”
“Then what was the shooting?”
The announcement rang out again.
“I don’t know. But we gotta move.”
After jogging into a tube junction and down another length, we saw five or six marines gathered around the pod doors. “How many do you have?” the nearest one shouted.
“Fourteen,” called back the ensign from Beta.
“There’re two more pods so we should be good.”
“Any venom cases?” asked what looked like a marine lieutenant or captain. But his suit was singed bad enough that it was hard to tell.
“Uh, two, I think . . . these guys here,” said the ensign as we pulled up a couple meters from Bravo. “But they got antidote.”
“It’s not working. The Verex modulated again.”
A few steps closer I noticed blood stains on the wall and the bodies of three more marines a little father down, blood still running out from under them.
“They can’t board.”
“What do you fucking mean? We’ve got antivenom!”
“And I’m telling you it doesn’t work!” cried the marine. “We’ll shoot if you come any closer!”
My marine looked over at the bodies again. That must’ve been where the gunfire had come from.
“How do you know it doesn’t work?” shouted Pvt. Harmsworth. “Of course, it fucking works.”
“Look at their fucking spores.” The marine captain pointed at the bodies. “It’s been all over the comm channel, too!”
A Verex howled in the distance.
Two of the marines raised their rifles. Another two began searching the ensigns and the rest of Beta for spores or yellow rashes.
“All personnel please make your way to the escape pods or shuttle bays. Captain Jeffries has given the order to abandon ship. Self-destruct sequence will commence in T-minus one minute.”
The last part was drowned out by more howling Verex—sounding like they were just one tube over.
“We gotta go!”
Harmsworth made a move toward the pod bay door—now open—but my marine held him back. “No, no, no. Not like that that, man! I don’t want to go like that,” he said, eying the marines with their guns drawn. “They waited for us—they’re alright. Let’s just . . . buy’em a few more seconds.”
Harmsworth shook his head. “Fuck! Fuck!” He checked his bottom cartridge and grenade belt, and started to turn around with me. But then, just as fast, he spun and fired at the marine captain and the two privates behind him who’d lowered their weapons slightly to start shepherding the rest onto the escape pods. They fell, as did another handful a few meters farther down at the next pod. Though one of the ensigns and the sergeant who’d came with us were firing back, hitting Harmsworth in the neck and then my marine a moment later, who’d just been standing there, frozen.
The pain was all-encompassing. Cataclysmic. My heart or lungs or brains had been struck because it all felt wrong. Not just that I couldn’t move or breathe, but I couldn’t think to do those things. I was being consumed by a red, jagged nothingness. My vision going in and out, catching only hints of the Verex passing by me on their way to the pods.
I awoke flailing and screaming—still feeling halfway tied-in, the breaths starting shallow and stilted until I realized I could control them again. I looked around everywhere at once as slowly the darkened booth’s contours sta
rted to fill in, giving me the it was all a dream feeling. But since I knew it wasn’t—that the ship had been obliterated—it made me panic more. At once frantic, but raw and empty, too—like I’d been hollowed out with a scalpel. That part of me was obliterated, too, and there was no way I’d ever get it back.
Chapter 28
“Good morning, Aaron.”
“Good morning, Mom. I thought you were flying out early.”
“I was until I double-checked the shipping lines and realized I had to recuse myself. If your father keeps expanding the business there’s not going to be a planet in the Confederation I won’t be precluded from working on.”
“You’re the one who thought it could grow faster,” said Dad, unfolding and turning his electronic paper.
Mom gave him a peck on the cheek as she set down two mugs of coffee. “I know, I just didn’t think you’d do it.”
They both laughed.
“Mom, why do you have to recuse yourself?” I asked.
“Well, some places your father ships to charge fees, called tariffs, for letting goods onto their planet. And the higher the tariff, the less business he’ll do there. The Fleet worries that I might use my position to negotiate for lower tariffs or try to get certain kinds of goods excluded in exchange for helping a planet get other concessions.”
“But you would never do that,” I said.
“But I could do it, and coulds are what count in the government, kiddo. You might trust someone not to abuse their position, but since people are always coming and going, you have to have rules to keep everyone from doing it. Does that make sense?”
“Yeah, it just kind of sucks for the people who wouldn’t.”
“Tell me about it,” said Mom. “I just wish we’d follow our own advice more. The laws Mars has”—she made a little flicking gesture with her hand—“we’ve been passing, trying to get these exemptions for our biotech companies . . . aren’t a fair thing to ask for and it’s putting me in an awkward position.”
“That blows, too.”
“‘Blows,’ huh? That’s a charming word,” said Dad.
“It’s more charming than a lot of things people say at school,” I said, looking back at him, shrugging. Frontline vets returning from tours on the Rim were bringing back a harsh frontier vernacular and appropriating it had become the “cool” thing to do at my school, since so many of the rich kids were always hunting for ways to appear less pampered.
“Somehow, I don’t disbelieve you.”
“I’m telling you now, Paps, you guys have it good. Maybe too good. Like I’m not testing your parenting skills enough—so if Celsia turns out to be a nightmare, you’ll have no clue what to do.”
“Don’t give her any ideas,” said Mom.
“You’re not going to be a nightmare, are you, Celsia? You wouldn’t do that to ol’ Ma and Pa,” said Dad.
“Maybe I will or maybe I won’t,” said Celsia, giggling.
“See.”
“He does make a good point, Diane. And since rules have to be good for everybody like you were saying . . . maybe we shouldn’t let him go to Tessa’s tonight.”
“But wait, this is completely different,” I said, laughing.
“It always is,” said Dad.
Mom winked at me.
Mom and I had always had this kind of special relationship. Her imagined opinion was the filter I viewed things through because she was so smart about everything, and therefore I rarely let her down. It was mostly the same with Dad, but he was a bit more unpredictable, so sometimes I felt like I’d accidentally disappointed him—that is, until I figured out the new thing he wanted.
“That’d be the wrong message to send, wouldn’t it? You getting stricter with me because I was too good?”
“Too’s a bit of a stretch,” said Dad.
“And no, we wouldn’t just out of the blue make more rules,” said Mom. “We’d wait for you to slip up first, which you inevitably will because you’re thirteen. And then we’d clamp down.”
Dad nudged me in the side. “This is a Fleet diplomat you’re dealing with here.”
“Nothing I can’t handle.”
“That’s what your father said and now look at him,” said Mom.
I got up and looped around the stainless steel island to grab a box of cereal. Outside the large kitchen window the sun was spilling onto the lake, reddening the blue into an evening gloss. Summer was passing but, as if the shoreline were holding me in place, I didn’t fully appreciate it—the melancholy of its disappearance never hitting me until a few days before school.
“You have any big plans for the day?” my mom asked.
“Oh, you know it. Drugs, sex, and violence are kind of go-tos.” I looked down at the counter in a pose of deep thought, bringing my hand up to my chin. “And this seems kind of like a violence day. Maybe torture some squirrels.”
“Where did this sense of humor come from?” Mom looked at Dad and he shrugged. “It feels like it just appeared.”
“I’m going through puberty, Mom. A lot of things are just appearing.”
“No, don’t eat that,” said Dad as I started pouring the cereal into a bowl. “I’m making omelets.”
“Sounds great, but I’m meeting up with Verna and Marco in a minute. His cousins are visiting, so we’re taking them to the summit. Get the whole three-sixty Mount London experience.”
“Make sure to pack smart,” said Dad. “Weather changes on a dime up there.”
“Dad, come on. Look who you’re talking to.”
“Yeah, the guy who left the basement window open during the storm last night and now the floor’s soaked.”
I froze and racked my memory. “That seems more like a Celsia thing to me.”
“Normally I’d agree, but it’s not a Celsia kind of thing to be up at three a.m. monkeying around with your friends down there. And really, throwing your little sister under the bus?” asked Mom.
“It would pass right over,” I said, walking around the counter with the bowl and mussing up her hair. “So no one gets hurt. Right, pal?”
“Buses can’t get me because I’m itsy bitsy,” said Celsia.
“No, but I can,” said Dad, as he scooped her up into his arms and started tickling, the kitchen suddenly alive with shrieks and laughter.
It was perfect then, and the way the memory contrasted with the station made it even more perfect now, terrifying me when I awoke in my hammock, shaking and disoriented. The five or ten first seconds up being the worst since you weren’t sure what you were coming from; dreams and tie ins increasingly starting to blend together. Almost as real as what you woke up to.
“Aaron. Are you okay?” someone whispered.
“Yeah, it’s just a . . . just a nightmare,” I said, still not sure what to call it. I’d never had them so vivid before, where I could remember everything—exact lines even from a conversation four years ago.
“Oh, well. I know how that goes.” It was Daries.
“Sorry I woke you up,” I said.
“Nah. Probably saved me from a nightmare of my own. I could feel a big one coming,” Daries said.
“You get them a lot?”
“Not as often as most, but they hit hard when they do, more like flashbacks than anything else. Simon has a lot, and I reckon Brandon gets them every night, the way he tosses and turns. How about you?”
“Just now and again.” It was strange lying. It felt all wrong coming out and made me vaguely nauseous but, on the other hand, revealing how vulnerable I was to somebody I distrusted didn’t seem right either.
“I wish I could say it gets better, but . . .” He stopped and pointed at something that was draped over my hammock. “It looks you’ve been visited by the Blue Fairy. That’s usually worth a nightmare.”
Through the planet’s reflected starlight shining through the window, I recognized the outline of a brand new blue uniform.
Chapter 29
Instead of the coma-like numbness of before, I wa
s attuned to the slightest change in the environmental controls as I headed toward the Science Wing, experiencing the contours of the ladder and the smooth, icicle burn of the pole as I slid from level seven to six.
Eve shot me a skeptical smile as I walked through the door. Behind her the lab was buzzing with other students working on their projects.
“I see you got the white coat,” she said.
“Gotta look the part.”
“Did you read that stuff I sent you?”
“And then some.”
She’s what matters, I thought. The fact that I was there with her, in that room, at that table. I could trust that. It didn’t matter that everything else was a nightmare; nightmares were only terrible when you didn’t have anything to be awake for. And now I did. I took a deep breath and felt it all rush out of me: All the guilt. All the anger. All the fear. Each evaporating on contact with this foreign sense of possibility.
Eve half-grunted, half-chuckled as she punched a few more things into her biopad before turning back to me. “You know what we’re basically trying to do, right? Design a particle that the virus treats as a host cell. I’ve already gotten Topacocylne to kill it—you think that’d be the hard part—but the trick’s getting the two together long enough for the drug to consistently bind to the enzyme. So, let me ask, what would turn you on if you were a virus?”
I thought for a second. “Uh . . .”
“It’s got to be available, first off; lipid compatible, and most importantly have the kind of enzyme machinery that can churn out a lot of new virus—or, in other words, reproductive potential. They’re the headliners. Available was the easy part, but the virus still won’t attach if it senses the Topacocylne.”
She pointed to a lightboard showing a static image of a cell. “So we’re trying to fit as much of it in the center of the bait particle as we can without it touching the membrane.”
“Like a puzzle?”
“Exactly. I’ve got a Student Access Permit to Main Lab B on the Inner Ring, where I design the molecules. But they only let you on their supercomputer for a few hours each week, so I build them down here,” said Eve as she moved around the corner workstation, prepping instruments and typing into terminals, making all kinds of colorful molecular models and dosage charts bloom on the lightpanels.
Lakes of Mars Page 18
