Lakes of Mars

by Merritt Graves

  After checking Castor and Bluerine’s pulses, I put the gun in my belt and began dragging the commander down the hall by his arms. I met two more Reds at the next junction, but they were instructors rather than security and they ran off when I waved my gun.

  The next junction was the C-side Membrane and I was flooded with anticipation. They have to have made it. They have to be there, or it’s over. I lifted Marquardt’s finger all the way up to the side of the biometric scanner and it flicked green.

  Chapter 61

  Pierre, Daries, Brandon, and a bunch of others were standing there and suddenly, despite the breathtaking gruesomeness that had just erupted, I felt like it was somehow going to be okay. Pierre slapped my shoulder as he bolted past me in the direction of the armory, but I shouted after him, “No, go down the other way! There are guns. Dead Reds’ guns. Lots of ’em!”

  I wasn’t sure if he’d understood me, but even as the words left my mouth more Reds appeared from the way I’d come and I had to yell out again, signaling him back. I bent down to pull Marquardt along, but Daries was already there, using the laser pocketknife he’d hacked through the top of his bunk with, to cut off the commander’s finger.

  Brandon and another Blue had their Pegasus rifles trained on the Reds, shouting and making as if they were about to shoot, bluffing their way into a standoff until the rest of the Blues were through the Membrane and Daries had finished with the finger. They slipped around the corner just as chunks of the floors and walls flew into the air amidst the gunfire, tailing me as I sprinted to catch up with Pierre. The armory on deck five was probably guarded and it was critical that we reach it before the Reds stationed there got a clear idea of what was happening.

  “Pierre—everybody—we’re going to have to bluff them again,” I puffed, winded, sickened that we weren’t able to get the ammo off the fallen Reds in time. “Going in pretending they’re loaded—trying to close as much space between us and the guards as possible. You guys got that?”

  Pierre and the others at the front nodded as we dashed from one corridor to the next, every corner we turned and pole we slid down a chance that we’d run into more Reds. We met some instructors and a few wrenches and gears in engineering suits, but no security and no guns. And then we were there, forming a semicircle around the entrance—standing in rush stances—as Daries brought Marquardt’s finger to the door.

  “They’ll believe it if you do,” I said, not fully aware that I was forming the words.

  The light flicked green and I was in, shouting, “It’s a drill! Drill! Drill! Get the fuck down, motherfuckers!”

  The Reds inside looked like they’d already been alerted and had their guns drawn, but they glanced at each other, seemingly surprised to see us all nonetheless. “Put it down! It’s a drill—it’s just a drill!” I screamed, moving right at one of them.

  There was a two-second window when the guard could’ve shot me, but by the time he reacted I had the butt of my sidearm in his face, twisting the Pegasus rifle out of his grasp and bringing the stock down into his stomach.

  A string of shots was fired, but they went into the floor as Daries grabbed another Red’s gun and swung him, reeling, into the weapons rack.

  A third Red came down an aisle between ammo cabinets, shouting at us to drop our weapons. But he looked baffled, swinging his gun around wildly, pointing first at me, then Daries, then another Blue, before reversing the arc. Daries had just gotten the Pegasus wrestled free from his Red, though, and shot the armed one through the chest before he could make it back around. We all did quick sweeps to make sure we were clear and then rushed toward the ammo cabinets, loading clips into empty magazines and stuffing extras into satchels and Velcro pockets.

  We needed the ammo, but there’d be more Reds coming, and the last thing I wanted was to get trapped in the armory or the adjacent hallway. “Hurry up, guys! Let’s go! Let’s go! Let’s go!”

  Daries and Stya bounded for the exit and the hallway outside erupted into gunfire.

  “Go! Go!” I shouted. “We’re going to get cut off!”

  I only had time to take two ammo belts before I sprinted for the door, arriving just in time to be hit by a warm spray of blood and then knocked backward by a collapsing Stya. It felt like I was tied into a marine again, horrified, but worse because I was the one driving now—responsible for the chaos unfurling around me. For the fact that there was blood everywhere and everyone was shouting and confused, with some still scrambling to grab grenades and jam magazines into their rifles.

  I let Stya slip to the floor, and then I started firing at the Reds down the corridor, who were now accompanied by UFM marines wearing full combat gear and hoisting Pegasus rifles. The recoil felt distant, like I still wasn’t really the one pulling the trigger, but the bullets flying back down the hall at me felt like they were all millimeters away, bringing me back even with the action, cycling faster and faster until it all became one continuous stream.

  I saw Daries on the opposite side of the hallway, concealed in a nook, keeping the Reds’ heads down with a barrage of cover fire. After a few seconds, he paused just long enough to draw one of the Reds out, then we both nailed him the second he emerged. Feeling his need to reload, I willed myself to sink deeper into the moment, merging with the stock and the sight as I’d done at the range at home, and firing a hail of bullets at all the doorways the Reds were tucked inside. I knew the guys were rushing out of the armory behind me, exposed, and even when a Red managed to send a string of shots ricocheting off the wall next to where I was crouching, I didn’t let up.

  Timing myself so I ran out just as Daries finished reloading, I grabbed another magazine and was about to open fire again when I realized everyone had gotten out and Brandon and Whistler had maneuvered farther down the corridor, setting up cover so we could fall back. I tapped Daries on the shoulder to let him know and then hunched down, chest heaving, I raced toward the group. As soon as I got around the corner, I yelled, “If we get held up, they’ll surround us and we’ll never make it. We’ve gotta r—”

  Gunfire erupting from another hallway cut me off—and a split second later there was a mist of red as Fin jerked to my left, dropping with all of her weight to the floor. I was about to bend down and check on her, but I heard a grenade rolling and dove into an open doorway. The explosion sent a shock wave and then hornet stings of shrapnel flying into the part of my right leg that didn’t make it through in time.

  I lay there for a few seconds, stunned, but alarm threaded its way to the surface. In the Box and Weapons Rooms I’d been a measured, methodical kind of fighter who’d take a lot of time clearing out enemy positions, exposing myself as little as possible. But glancing at my U-dev as the countdown I’d set ticked to eight minutes, I knew there wasn’t any time for that now.

  I ducked out of the doorway, limping a little, and made it over to where Pierre and Fingers were. “We’re not going to make it like this.”

  “Yeah we are,” said Fingers. “I’m into their network again.”

  “How does that help?” I yelled, shooting a Red who’d surfaced further down the corridor.

  “I can tie in to the Reds—jump around and see where they all are—but you’ll need to carry me.”

  A few moments later, Daries had Fingers over his shoulder and Fingers had the syringe diving into his arm. After twenty seconds, he was out again. “They’re swarming. We gotta break right down that tube and take it to the end or we’ll be cut off!”

  “But there are four or five of them—”

  “It doesn’t matter, you’ve got to get through!” Fingers screamed, his eyes red. “We’re surrounded!”

  I exchanged a glance with Pierre and suddenly we were both flying down opposite sides of the corridor. He was the exact same kind of soldier as he was a person: generally cautious, but brave when he needed to be, hurling himself at the biggest problem. Putting himself in the most danger. I saw him unclasp a grenade from his belt and I waited until just after it ex
ploded before sprinting into its wake, hitting two Reds as they emerged, escaping the blast, then hitting another who had dived into an adjacent room. “Go! Go! Go!” I screamed.

  A Red instructor stepped into the corridor and Simon clocked him in the face with the butt of his rifle as he ran by, then dove on the floor as a pack of tracers sailed past from the same direction. I returned fire and then hauled Simon to his feet, catching pieces of Fingers’ directions as he emerged from another abbreviated tie-in.

  We bolted around a corner toward the hydroponics bay like he told us to, blue emergency lights flashing on every second or third bulkhead, bathing the pipes and white walls in a watery reflection. Through it the door seemed hundreds of meters away, the distance making me heave all the harder, spit gathering at the sides of my mouth. But no matter how hard I ran, it didn’t seem to be getting get any closer—as if the tube were elongating itself and the bay was some kind of hovering mirage.

  Red marines materialized in front of it a few moments later, seeming to crawl out of an unseen maintenance shaft, but they’d oriented themselves the wrong way and Pierre and I downed them before they could get a shot off. After we hurdled their bodies and the large, rectangular floor grate they’d removed, it finally felt like we’d reached the apex of some hidden rise and we were descending, eclipsing huge lengths of floor tile with each stride forward.

  Seconds later Pierre mashed Marquardt’s finger against the scanner and we were in the bay, tunneling through a leafy forest of citrus. We turned almost immediately onto a side path at the behest of Fingers, taking us through a tinted glass door and a pair of draping, transparent partitions. Behind them, lettuce and tomatoes bloomed from horizontal shafts while webs of strawberries and blackberries tumbled from the ceiling, with space left on the surrounding walls for row after row of beans and squash and Rapunzel greens to twist their way up, straining toward the kaleidoscope of grow lights.

  I flashed back to the first time Eve had taken me there and the memory made me run even harder. “Get down!” I screamed at a handful of technicians who were standing and staring amidst a sea of leaves. “Get the fuck down!”

  Rifle reports sounded and Pierre and I sent bullets spraying back, catching only flashes of red through the tangle of foliage.

  “Turn right. Right! Right!” shouted Fingers, and I swerved down a narrow path between the rows. “Take it all the way down!”

  More weapons fired and I felt for everyone behind me, knowing that one lump of metal could extinguish things forever. It seemed crazy to be fighting in that second, and I wanted to fling down my rifle and disappear into the leaves, but a second later Eve’s words about her brother flashed through my head: it would be crazy not to. And given what was happening, it would be crazy not to now, too. What kind of worlds would there be if people invented monsters and no one tried to stop them?

  We dashed out of a side exit into a wide, well-lit walkway, scattering Reds of various ranks and varieties. For all I knew, a good number of them were in the dark about things and I felt like I had to give them the benefit of the doubt.

  “I’m sorry,” Fingers gasped as I fell back beside him. “I . . . I didn’t think they’d get there in time to—”

  “You’re doing great, buddy. What’s the next move?”

  “Left into Commroom A,” he said, but it was weak, so I echoed it louder for everyone to hear.

  The UFM marines we’d met in the hydroponics bay emerged onto the walkway and I joined Brandon and Reiman in firing on them. They both had great aim, but Brandon especially was proving himself a surprisingly deft fighter—who like Pierre, was willing to put himself at risk in the open, only dropping back to reload. The way, too, that he’d just pulled Woodrow out of an exposed firing zone made me think that maybe Sebastian hadn’t been so wrong about him after all.

  Glancing around after we’d turned a corner and I’d swapped in a fresh magazine, I saw that Fingers had slumped down awkwardly against Daries. I called out for someone farther up to check on him, but I was drowned out by a wave of gunfire opening up from the opposite direction and everyone had to duck and weave the other way. Junctions, pipes, and bulkheads flew by as I followed the rest, backpedaling, firing through the smoke at the muzzle flashes of Reds shooting at us. They seemed to come from all angles now, everything smelling like cordite, everything seeming to stop one moment and speed up the next. I had taken so many stims and hits of tie-in fluid that cause and effect were decoupling, both realities bleeding together into a terrible, disorienting mesh.

  Fingers reanimated just as I caught up with Daries to check on him, calling out, “That door. That door!”

  Pierre had already opened it with the severed finger, though, and we moved into a massive room filled with lightboard after lightboard, manned by at least thirty or forty Reds.

  “Get down, now!” Daries shouted, and they dove under chairs and tables, tripping over themselves to get out of the way as he fired warning shots at a row of hanging panels.

  “It’s okay, they’re just Ops people. Go!”

  As I swiveled around, making sure nobody was trying to shoot at us, I caught glimpses of the screens: There were rows of tanks and UFM marines in dropships on some, and charts and updating data tables on others. It was hard to take any of it in since we were moving so fast, but it looked like they were preparing for a surface battle on the planet.

  After all the bright splashes of light, the hallway we stumbled into coming out seemed dim and the blue emergency lights appeared washed out and distant.

  “Up!” Fingers shouted and I swung my Pegasus around to my back, unholstered the sidearm I’d reloaded at the armory, and began climbing the deck ladder. I was vulnerable doing so; if a UFM marine appeared in the hole above us, it would all be over, but I trusted Fingers. I had to trust Fingers. There were only three minutes left until the sterilization lockdown would be completed.

  I made it to one of the landings and crouched down, covering the area while everyone else sped past, and then fell in behind them.

  There were another eight of these landings to get through and then we were on level 15, the same level as Main Lab C, and sprinting down the corridor. Fingers was shouting something, but I couldn’t make it out. Pierre and Brandon rounded the corner first and immediately there was gunfire. I rounded it a few seconds later, worried that both them had been hit, but instead saw a cluster of five Reds sprawled out on the floor, where they’d been packing what looked like sticky charges against the biolab door.

  “I’m still not getting a signal,” Fingers hissed.

  “There’re still fifty seconds on the lockdown. Let’s blow the charges!” I urged. We couldn’t just sit around here; there were bound to be more Reds coming any moment.

  The others nodded, exhausted but determined. Pierre finished packing the charges, we ducked around the corner, and fire and debris shot past us in a heaving exhalation. I waited a second or two and then rushed through the smoke and ash into the lab, plowing past upended tables. Eve’s backpack was right where she’d left it: All we needed to do was detonate the bomb.

  “All right—all right—I’m getting a signal now!”

  “Now?” asked Brandon.

  “Yeah, now,” said Fingers.

  “But you weren’t out there?” asked Pierre.

  “Fucking shit!” cried Brandon.

  Both Pierre and I put our hands on our heads.

  “We’re going to have to detonate it from inside then.”

  “We? Why ‘we’? It only needs one person to detonate it,” Brandon said.

  “Fingers, go out there again. Maybe we can get halfway out the door or something.”

  “I already tried. I was watching the signal the whole time. We have to hurry—they’ll be here any second,” he said, pressing the syringe once more into his arm.

  “Goddamn!”

  “I’ll do it,” I said.

  “Do what?” asked Pierre.

  “I’ll stay behind and trigger it.”r />
  “Like fucking hell you will! We can figure this out. We can build a barrier and . . . and—”

  “Pierre, there’s no time. You know it; we all know it. Don’t make this harder than it needs to be.”

  “Fuck that, we need you!” Brandon cried, grabbing me as I as I tried to grab Fingers’ U-dev.

  “Get the fuck off me!”

  “Aaron, don’t be an idiot, you’re the one that’s got to—” I threw Brandon to the ground before he could finish the sentence but by the time I got to Fingers, Simon was already holding his U-dev.

  “He’s right, Aaron. They need you as a pilot.” Simon had a strange expression on his face. “And I don’t think I’m going to get much farther anyway.”

  I followed his gaze down to his leg, which was bloody and ragged from shrapnel. “You just have to promise me that you’re going to get her out safe, okay?”

  “Simon,” I said, watching the tears begin to streak down his face. I hadn’t even processed losing Fin and the others yet and now I was losing him, too, all because I’d involved them in the Box Room. He’d been right—I’d had no fucking clue what I was doing. Yet here he was, trying to give himself up for the rest of us anyway. “It should be me. You know it should be me!”

  “Fuck off.”

  “Simon, just give me the U-dev.”

  “I said fuck off!”

  “Sim—”

  “Just promise me, okay? There isn’t time!”

  I didn’t know what to think. There was logic to it; his leg looked like it had been turned inside-out, patterned so tightly with bands of intersecting red tissue that I had no idea how he’d made it so far with us. And he was pale. Not the washed-out, Zeroes kind of pale, but an intense, traumatic ghastliness that seemed to be getting worse by the second. But I’d gotten us into this. I’d twisted his arm to come. I’d tackled him when he’d tried to run away. Dying terrified me now that I’d found Eve, but the idea of letting someone else take the hit for something I’d started sickened me even more.