“And it should lead us out near the river?”
“Probably.”
Then it’s a case of following the river until we reach a settlement. Many of the newer oases resorts are located near natural reservoirs fed by Arctic rivers just like this one. The older ones depend on fresh water being transported long distances by rail or pipeline. Of course, they don’t require much fresh water anymore; their recycling plants are top-notch. But there will be a collection station at some point along our river. We’re heading roughly south-west, going off the recent sunrise. That should take us toward some of the richer but more remote oases.
How far will we have to walk? Without food, will we have enough strength to reach civilization at all?
It’s quite gusty the next day. No red-outs, but umpteen dust devils suck their way across the desert to the west. Between Sergei’s cheesed-off-with-the-galaxy attitude, and Lohengrin’s always calculating perfectionism, I expected a long, silent trudge. But what we’ve got instead is a full-on gab-fest. Honestly, I’ve never seen either of them so talkative!
The main topic of conversation is the strange and spectacular light-shows in the sky. Some are distant, perhaps extremely distant—elsewhere in the solar system—no more than coloured pinpricks that flash, sometimes in clusters. Other lights appear much closer, Mars-bound, reflecting off the clouds and the atmospheric strata like widespread electrical storms with many layers and colours. Occasionally, when there’s a lull in the wind, we can hear faint peals of thunder.
I’ve never seen anything like it before, and I was born here.
Lohengrin, as usual, has a theory. “You can even include the attempted kidnapping,” he says. “It’s all linked. I think this is the first wave of an invasion of the Core system—Mars, Earth, Lunar One, Europa, maybe all of them. It’s inevitable, and classic Finagler strategy: misdirection. While everyone’s focused on the Wing Worlds, an obvious play, the Finaglers do something so outrageous no one could have expected it. Remember the raid on Altimere? Our so-called impregnable command hub for the OC forces?”
“Yeah. The Finagler ships breached the neutrino shield during a ten second window,” answers Sergei, recalling the famous Baltacha documentary we’ve both watched numerous times. It’s one of the scariest things we’ve ever seen because it really happened, and no one expected it.
“Five second window,” Lohengrin corrects him. “We completely underestimated their strike capabilities. They had sub-warp tech we didn’t know existed. And I think they’re trying something similar right now. Look, the flashes high up there! If I had to guess I’d say there’s a battle underway in Mars orbit.”
“And the electrical storms?” Sergei asks.
“It’s a satellite net.”
They both look at me like I’ve just woken up and said something totally random. It is the first time I’ve joined the conversation in a while. Mostly I’ve been listening.
“ISPA would want to protect the Hex, right? It would make sure no craft approached the facility without authorization,” I explain.
“I’m with you,” says Lohengrin. “Go on, Jim.”
“I just can’t think of a better way to protect it than installing a sat net in orbit over the North Pole. Nothing gets through those things. All the nature preserve planets have them, to bar poachers and illegal terraformers. And I reckon there’s one over the Hex, maybe over the entire polar region. Those flashes we can see, they’re enemy ships trying to get through. Maybe some have got through and our forces are fighting back, trying to stop the bombing raids. That might account for the storms. It’s a full-on firefight up there, in orbit and in the skies. What do you guys think? Does that make sense?”
“All kinds, brother.” Sergei stops for a rest, crouches, gazes over his shoulder to the north. “You’ve just...complicated my plans.”
“I have?”
“What were they, out of curiosity?” asks Lohengrin, limbering up.
“That we should steal ourselves some sand bikes and sidecars and make our way north—try to reach the Hex on our own.”
Hmm. The plan definitely has Minsk Machine graffiti’d all over it. It sounds brave, reckless, plenty idiotic but also kinda cool. The sort of thing you’d suggest if you were trying to impress a girl. Underneath that, though, is a sly logic, and I can tell he’s put a lot of thought into it.
“But we don’t know the coordinates,” Lohengrin points out. “We could look for months and never find it.”
“I know. So either they find us or we never see them again. We need to make it as easy as we can for them to find us. The only ways I can think of are either going back to the canyon or making our way north, toward the Pole. Okay, we’re definitely going back to the canyon—first thing. We hook sidecars onto the sand bikes, steal some supplies, then we go get Lys and Rachel as soon as we can. The others as well. If they’re still there, we rescue ’em and head north, try to find the Hex. I figure the Initiative monitors that whole region.
“Didn’t figure on the sat net, though, or a raid on the Hex. If that’s true then we’re in deep crap. But I say we at least try. Thorpe-Campbell wouldn’t give up on us so easily. He might not be able to fetch us from the canyon—he might not know anything bad has happened to us in the canyon yet—but if someone sees us on the Hex’s scope, it might persuade them to come get us.”
“And if Lys and Rachel aren’t in the canyon? If they’ve already been rescued?” asks Lohengrin.
“We head north on our own.”
The prince crouches beside him. “Or we could wait in the canyon? They might figure that if we’re still alive, our best chance of being rescued is to go back there. If they’ve picked up the others, there’s a good chance they could pick us up too.”
Sergei rises to his feet and continues the hike. “We can decide that later. First we need some concrete news, see if you two are right about this invasion.”
“Pravda,” I recall the name of the Soviet podnet news channel we watched a few times. No, I didn’t understand a word. Sergei only understood a few.
“Da. Pravda.”
The light begins to wane as we approach an atoll of red rock inside a large lake. There are at least two water collection rigs on the near bank. Both appear deserted. No lights. A maglev railway runs from one of them out into the lonely wasteland to the west. It disappears around a sharp escarpment topped with teetering rocks. It looks as though the slightest sound would bring down the whole shebang. Kinda figures we’d need to go that way.
As sunlight fades, the night sky reveals the extent of stellar combat. Thousands of new stars burn briefly and brilliantly across a narrow swathe to the east of Deimos, but much farther away through space—in the direction of Earth. Solitary white flashes low in the Martian sky flatten like squashed boiled eggs that don’t quite burst. Here and there a flaming streak blazes down to ground, but we never see it land. It’s a war all right, but it’s just out of reach.
“Guys, is this really happening?”
I don’t get an answer.
The first settlement we reach along the levway is a scruffy little mining town called Gunther’s Folly. It’s built mostly into the mountainside, with just the freight depots and the heavy goods trading warehouses flanking the rail track outside. Dirty-looking security personnel stop us at gunpoint on the way in, but quickly let us pass when they see how young we are and how far we’ve walked. They direct us through an airlock to a corrugated metal shack inside the cave, marked ‘ALL ENQUIRIES ANSWERED HERE’ and just below that, in luminous graffiti paint,
‘...WITH A FOUR-LETTER WORD. YOU'VE BEEN WARNED’
We remove our breathers and taste out first unfiltered air in days. It smells strongly of rubber tires and Butane gas, not the most welcoming combination.
An elderly woman wearing yellow waders and an orange life jacket is about to lock up the shack when Lohengrin interrupts her. “Excuse me, ma’am, the man outside said you might be able to help us.”
“Howz
at?” She tightens a strap on the life jacket as she speaks: “You boys been trekking? Where from?”
“We were on a field trip, north of here...”
“We were caving,” I add. “Got separated from our group, couldn’t find the way back.”
“So we followed the river,” Sergei continues, “then the levway, and it—”
“I don’t need a blow-by-blow, Sonny. Where are you from? As in, where do you need to get back to?” The old woman studies us carefully as we struggle to find a reply. Oops. I assumed Lohengrin or Sergei had a cover story ready to go. And they probably assumed I did, or each other did. A full day of gabbing and we’ve left out the most important detail!
“Can’t help y’all if you won’t give me a Bethlehem,” she says. That’s OC slang meaning ‘a starting point’ or ‘a place of origin’. “But I tell ya what, boys: help me fetch up my Fagin’s and I’ll dole you out some travel money. It’s got stuck on the lagoon bed. A lot of folks panicked the other night, wanted to leave in a hurry. Wouldn’t wait for ol’ vaultie to fish up their cash lockers for ’em, all legal-like, so they ended up looting half the town’s fortune down there. Tried to, anyway. Smashed up the electronics and the pulley wheel. ’S why I’m having to go out there in my fishing duds to try and wriggle mine out. I’ve got the sonic key, but I’m not much of a diver, never have been. Here, you, Brawny—” Referring to Sergei, who else, “—grab that crowbar, just in case.”
Not that any of us fully understand what she’s going on about, but travel money sounds like a fair wage for helping her fish.
She leads us down a hectic subterranean street full of vendors emptying their stores and families driving packed trolley carts to the station. Gunther’s Folly doesn’t look like it will last beyond today. I’d never heard of it before, but it’s really an impressive titanium mining settlement, built among the prehistoric stalagmites of a cavernous sanctum. Its streets are the spiral arms fanning out from the shore of a vast, elliptical lagoon. A single silver walkway reaches the centre of the water, but part of it has collapsed, so it’s no longer crossable. Its security gateway entrance at the shore lies mangled on its side.
“Excuse me, ma’am—”
“Abs,” she corrects me. “The name’s Abs. No Miss or Missus or any of that bull. Just Abs.”
“Your professional name?” asks Lohengrin.
“Long time ago, Sonny. Diggers all got nicknames. Me, I was a helluva drill-girl once upon a time—Ton-a-Minute, they used to say. Then it got shortened to just Tummy. Then Tummy became Abs, ’cause I had abdominals like you wouldn’t believe. Digging will do that for ya.”
“And you’re a foreman now?” Lohengrin follows up.
“Nope. Part-time assayer, payroll officer, and union rep. I’ve been doing this longer than practically anyone down here, so I know it all inside-out. You need a question answering, you seek out old Abs. I’ll give you directions, one way or another.” She snorts a laugh all over her life-jacket, then wipes the snot off with her sleeve. “So, how much do you boys know about what’s happened? About the assault?”
“Nothing,” Lohengrin admits. “We were caving when it started. We’ve only seen the flashes. It must be major.”
“Word is we’ve stonewalled it now, out in orbit, but there could be another wave any time.”
“Is it Finaglers?” asks Sergei.
“Yep. Those vile things always sneak up on you, blind side. Just like Altimere and the Vike Academy all those years back. Before you know it they’re in through your defences and that’s all she wrote. Only this time they hit a snag—some kind of defensive countermeasure over our North Pole—least that’s what I’ve heard.”
“A satellite net,” I say.
“My guess too, Sunshine. Nothing gets through those things without an okay from the spiffs in charge. ’Cept this time an entire armada must have tried to squeeze in all at once, ’cause dozens of ships did get through. I guess even net sentries can only take out so many hostiles. Anyways, most of our major oases have been hit. Some destroyed. Far as I know we’ve brought down all the birds that got through, but they wreaked havoc first. Mars is almost done. Another blitz like that and we’ll be counting corn. If you’ve got families to go to, my advice is get there as quick as you can and hope they’ve made definite travel arrangements for y’all. Earth is no good. They’re fighting for their lives right now. A good bet might be Titan or Europa: they’re dug in like cat claws on curtains out there. Harsh life, on the edge, but they’re survivors. And not even the Finaglers are dumb enough to tangle with their Jupiter blast.”
“That’s where you’re headed?” asks Sergei, hanging on every word—just like Lohengrin and I are. The scale of this is beyond me. Mars, to me, is life. When one goes, so will the other. I don’t have any other way of seeing it because this is all I’ve ever known. It’s all my family has ever known for two hundred years. So you can tell me life will go on when Mars is no longer here, but it’s a brick wall in my reality.
“If they’ll have me,” the old woman replies. “’S why I need my Fagin’s. The only chance I’ve got with somewhere like Europa is to buy my way in, else they wouldn’t look twice. A lifetime of digging—it better get me someplace. Okay, here we go. Beanpole (Lohengrin), you cast us off. This should only take a minute, then I’ll make sure you boys get fed before your trip.”
A trip to where, we still haven’t decided. Abs hasn’t let us. She’s roped us in to this surreal underground underwater bank heist, or something. Our dinghy is decorated in several years of grime. The oars are warped, the grips worn and flaky to the touch. Sergei offers to row for her but the old woman won’t have it. “You just be ready to dive if I need you, Brawny, and bring that crowbar down with you. You can swim, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Settled then.”
As we approach the cut-off bridge section, really nothing more than a tiny metal island in the middle of the lagoon, Abs waves to a man who’s perched on the edge and staring down into the water. He waves back, tips his hat in our direction, and we see that the top of his head is missing. The reason: he isn’t a man at all! He’s some sort of android turnkey guarding the vault. Dressed in a pair of overalls, a flak jacket and an industrial safety helmet, he’s got a solid, don’t-mess-with-me profile from a distance. But closer to, his skin is very rubbery-looking, and he has a fixed smile that’s a bit gormless but quite endearing.
Sergei, Lohengrin and I look at each other in astonishment. We’ve literally no idea what we’re going to find next in Gunther’s Folly.
“Boys, say hi to Percy. He’s here to raise the alarm in case there’s another raid on the vault. He’s the last of our deep-shaft automata. ISPA loaned us eleven initially, to work the really dangerous sections. We named them after the Knights of the Round Table. Cute, huh? The old union rep’s boy’s idea. The other bots have all been re-allocated, but Sir Percival here was allowed to stay on. His positronics blew out during a roof collapse a while back, so he reset. Lost some important neural coding. He saved eighteen miners in that collapse, but he ended his own career as a digger. We keep him around for his problem-solving. And his strength. Not much use apart from that, I’m afraid, are you, old Perce?”
“Good evening, Abs.”
“Hey, fella. Has anyone else been out here?”
“No, Abs. Not since Mayor Prendergast executed those looters.”
“Didn’t think so.” She throws Percy the mooring line. He ties it to a cleat, then holds the boat steady while we disembark. “Okay, so how’re we looking?” she says. “The program still zonked?”
“I am afraid so,” he replies. “The vault field sensors are all out of alignment. Some have been destroyed altogether. There is no way for the retrieval arms to lock onto the correct deposit boxes. So you will have to dive down to retrieve them manually.”
“Thought so.” She unclips her life-jacket and hands it to Percy. “Here. Look after these three for a minute, will you, Perce? They’
re good kids.”
“Of course, Abs. Be careful down—”
The old woman’s in the water before he finishes. It’s more of a belly flop than a dive, though, and as grateful as I am for her offer to help us, I can’t help thinking she should have gotten someone else to do this for her. One of the young men of Gunther’s Folly?
We watch the water in silence, on tenterhooks. Percy watches us watching, his ever-present dopey smile not quite a comfort. A positronic blow-out? Not exactly a lifeguard poster-boy, then.
Abs slaps her palms on the other side of the metal island when she resurfaces. We all rush over to help her out. She waves us away, instead calls for Sergei, with his crowbar, to go down with her. “Don’t forget to alter your breather, Sunshine. Close filter. Set to underwater.”
He does it and leaps in. They disappear together.
“How far down is the vault?” I ask Percy.
“Approximately eight metres.”
“Why have it underwater?” queries Lohengrin, which is a pretty fair question if you ask me.
“To protect it from the people of Gunther’s Folly. The vault was installed with state-of-the-art security measures to prevent anyone gaining unauthorized access.”
“Wait a minute. To protect their own money...from themselves?”
“Yes. This was a lucrative mine. Too many instances of robbery and murder forced the Union to take drastic measures. The Aqua Vault reduced the town’s crime rate by seventy-three percent.”
“So how did the looters break in this time?” I ask.
“By collapsing a roofing crane onto the bridge. This severed the electromagnetically-sealed power cables. They then raised the crane and dropped it onto the vault itself, damaging many of the boxes. None of the looters escaped with any valuables. However, they killed several colleagues and security officers in the attempt. Mayor Prendergast had them summarily executed, to deter any more such crimes during the exodus.”
“And that worked, I take it?”
“Yes. The only crimes reported since then have been petty offences.”
Star Binder Page 22
