The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction, Vol. 2

by George Mann

  He had a rifle at the ready and his sword at his side, driven point-first into the ground.

  Swearing under his breath, Yao turned to Zong and brought his fists together, knuckles touching. When Zong’s faceplate touched with his, he said, “Bei is dead. We’re walking into a trap.”

  He handed Zong the remote-viewing mirror and slid back down the rise to join the others.

  Yao hated to risk using the radios to communicate to the others, but time was of the essence. He signaled with quick hand gestures for everyone to turn their broadcast settings to the lowest power. With any luck, down in the slight ravine, and with the last of the dust storm passing overhead, their radio signals wouldn’t carry as far as the nearest Mexica, whether waiting in front of them or still in position around the farm behind.

  “Listen up,” Yao said, after motioning the others to huddle together. “We’ve got to find another way out of here. Our crawler is out of the question.”

  “What do you mean?” Thien glared through her faceplate at Yao. “There’s really only forward or back, isn’t there? And I tell you now, I’m not about to head back to that thrice-damned farm.”

  Zong, taking a few long leaps from the base of the rise, came to stand beside Yao, tucking the remote-viewing mirror back into the sheath at his side. “I concur with Bannerman Yao. Bei is dead, and the crawler compromised.”

  “How can you be so sure?” Min objected.

  “Bei was obsessive about his equipment, his weapons in particular,” Zong explained. “He would never have stuck it into the ground in so reckless a fashion.”

  “Most likely,” Yao said, “he was picked off at a distance by Mexic sniper fire and left as bait. The Mexica will capture the rest of us alive, if possible, to torture and execute at their leisure.”

  “No, thank you,” Thien said, shuddering. “I’m in no hurry to die, but if I am to do so, it better be damned quick.”

  “No one’s dying,” Yao said sharply, then added, his tone more reserved, “No one else is dying, at least.” He turned, glancing from one faceplate to another. “Listen, there’s got to be an alternate mode of transport available to us. Kuai, you mentioned a crawler. Where’s that?”

  “It’s still parked on the far side of the bacteria farm,” Kuai answered.

  “It should still be parked there,” Thien interjected, “but the Mexica could have driven off with it, or buried it for all we know. We haven’t been back there since we first reached the farm.”

  “Well, at the moment, it’s our best chance. The Mexica must have seen our approach, and sent enough warriors to subdue us back at our crawler. The fact that they haven’t attacked us yet means they don’t know that we’ve gotten back out of their lines. They must still think we’re inside the farm. If we can work our way around to the north, skirting the Mexic line in a broad circle, we should be able to stay safely out of view of the Mexica still in position around the farm.” Yao paused, glancing around those gathered before him. “Any questions?”

  Silence was their only response.

  “Fair enough,” Yao said. “Then let’s move.”

  It took the better part of several hours, traveling in a wide arc, as near to the farm as was absolutely necessary, but finally Yao signaled the others to stop. They had gone far enough. He motioned to Zong, retrieved the remote-viewing mirror, and trotted ahead, keeping as low to the ground as the gravity would allow with each short step. Finally, peering around an outcropping of rock, he trained the remote-viewing mirror on the scene before him, surveying the situation. To his left, obscured by plinths and yardangs, rose the bulk of the farm’s dome. Here and there he could see little flashes of bright, garish colors, indicators that Mexic warriors were still in position. To the right, outside the Mexic line and some distance from the farm, was Thien’s crawler. Smaller than that of the bannermen, it was lying on its side, a burnt husk, surrounded by a halo of broken machinery in bits and pieces.

  Yao made his way back to the others. With their radios set to the lower broadcast setting, and squatting low to the ground, he described the state of the crawler, left demolished, burnt, and inoperable.

  “But how could anything burn here?” the Green Standard soldier Xun asked, waving his arm to take in all of Fire Star, with its oxygen-poor atmosphere.

  “They must have used magnesium charges,” Thien said. “That stuff’ll burn like crazy in carbon dioxide.”

  Yao nodded, impressed. “You must have been on Fire Star a long while,” he said to her.

  Thien shrugged, the movement obscured by the bulk of her surface suit’s carapace.

  “At this juncture,” Yao went on, “we don’t have any choice but to proceed on foot. I’ve got to do an inventory, but I can’t imagine we’ve got enough oxygen and water to last us for more than a few days. Now, is there any safe harbor in that kind of radius?”

  “None that I know of, chief,” Zong said, his head shaking within his helmet.

  “Damn,” Yao said. “Okay, here’s the order of the day. Zong, Jue, and Seto, I want you three to range out and scout the terrain. See what our options are, and report back. I’ll work with Thien on getting a full accounting of our resources, and then we’ll see where we’re at.”

  The three bannermen saluted and turned to head out.

  “You’re with me,” Yao said, pointing a finger at Thien.

  In the following hour, Yao and Thien supervised as Kuai, Min, and Xun checked and rechecked the levels on their oxygen tanks and water supplies. When the numbers came up distressingly small, Yao ordered them checked again, and finally insisted on personally verifying each of the numbers individually. But each time, the answer was the same. Divided amongst the eight of them, their supplies could last no more than two days, three at the absolute maximum.

  Yao sat on a spur of rock, considering their options, waiting for the three bannermen to return. After a long while, Thien came to sit beside him. She switched off her radio, tapped first her faceplate, then his. Yao, curious, switched off the broadcast on his own radio and leaned in until their faceplates touched.

  “Listen, something just occurred to me,” Thien said, her voice buzzing in Yao’s helmet, “but I didn’t want to broadcast it to everyone until you had a chance to think it over. I’m not absolutely certain, but I think there used to be an old research facility about a two-day walk to the north-east from here, in the direction of Bao Shan. But it’s been a few Fire Star years since I last saw it, if this is the place I’m remembering, and I don’t know if it’s still up and running.”

  “So it’s a long shot?” Yao said simply.

  Thien only smiled, weakly. “Basically, yes.”

  A few moments later, Zong, Jue, and Seto returned from scouting the terrain. No good news lurked in their reports. When their findings had been collated, it appeared that they had wandered into the one gap in the area, with large concentrations of Mexica to the northwest and the southeast. Behind them to the south lay the bannermen’s crawler and the trap baited by their dead comrade, and the farm to the west. Their only option was to travel northeast.

  It appeared that Thien’s long shot was the only chance they had.

  For the rest of that long afternoon, they traveled across the yardangs. The bulk of Bao Shan loomed on the horizon before them, the tallest mountain in the solar system. The evening meal was eaten on the march, water and liquefied field rations fed through nozzles set inside their helmets. The storm had abated, somewhat, though there was still too much atmospheric interference for them to have any hope of radioing for assistance, even if their small helmet radios could carry more than a kilometer at best.

  At Yao’s orders, they kept communication to a minimum. Unless absolutely necessary, they were to maintain complete radio silence and to keep their radio transmitters turned down to the lowest broadcast signal in the event of an emergency. Only when they stopped to rest, periodically, erecting temporary shelters of metallic fabric pulled from the bannermen’s survival kits, were th
ey able to communicate freely. The reflective material served not only to block out the bright rays of the sun coming in, but also blocked any outgoing radio transmissions from within.

  They weren’t able to remove any part of their suits, even when they stopped to rest. The external pressure was far too low and the thin atmosphere was far too cold for their skin to handle. So they stayed suited up at all times, helmets pressurized and locked to their carapaces, their skin growing ever more chafed and worn.

  They traveled in a narrow column, Zong and Jue in the lead, followed by Kuai and Min, then Yao, then Thien, and finally Seto and Xun bringing up the rear. They made slow but steady progress through the fossae, with the sand-sculpted yardangs to either side of them. These streamlined ridges were shaped like inverted boat hulls, some of them no more than a few centimeters long and fewer high. Others ran several kilometers from end to end, standing almost thirty meters tall.

  At sunset, they made camp. Seto carried in his survival kit a tent capable of being pressurized and filled with air, but Yao had no intention of using their already diminished oxygen reserves needlessly. He ordered Jue and Seto to erect the radiation shade instead. Everyone would sleep the night in their suits, however much they chose to grumble.

  “Chief,” Zong said, coming to sit beside Yao beneath the radiation shade. The other two bannermen were setting up watch for the night. The survivors of the work crew stretched out on the ground some distance away, resting their sore and complaining muscles, their eyes on the stars dancing overhead. The bright, gray-white moons moved in their courses, the smaller making its way slowly from east to west, the larger speeding from west to east.

  “Yes, Zong?” Yao tongued the water nozzle back into position on the side of his helmet, licking his lips. The stale, reconstituted water they’d scavenged from the bacteria farm was acrid and foul on his tongue, but it beat dying of dehydration.

  “This is something that… maybe we shouldn’t…” Zong paused. He made a show of switching off his radio transmitter, and then brought his fists together, knuckles first. Yao switched off his own broadcast and leaned in, faceplates touching. “I think we’re walking into another trap, chief,” Zong said at last, the faceplates vibrating with the sound of his voice.

  “What makes you say that?”

  “It was just too convenient to find that the Mexica had left such a large stretch of terrain to the northeast of the bacteria farm unguarded. Maybe the Mexica anticipated that we might not take the bait at our crawler, and so put a secondary trap in place, somewhere out here. We could be walking into an ambush.”

  “I can’t disagree,” Yao said, after a long pause, “but I don’t see that we’ve got any choice, do we? We can’t radio for assistance, and if we entrench here, waiting for them to come after us, we’ll run out of oxygen within a matter of days. We could try to make it back into the farm, but the Mexica would pick us off before we could make the airlock. So our only choice is just to press on and be ready for any attack when it comes.”

  “Well, you’re the chief,” Zong said with a sigh. “I’ll go check on the pickets, and then catch a few hours’ sleep before it’s my watch.”

  Yao sat in silence until Thien appeared before him, lifting the edge of the radiation shade with a gloved hand and peering in at him.

  “Am I interrupting your thoughts?” she radioed to him.

  “No,” Yao said. He realized his transmitter was still off when she repeated her question. He switched his radio back to broadcast, at the lowest signal, and then said, “No, you’re welcome to join me.”

  Thien slid beneath the metallic canopy and maneuvered herself into a sitting position, her legs stretched out before her, leaning back on her elbows. The position, the most comfortable one could achieve in a surface suit, gave her a relaxed appearance which her tone did not reflect.

  “I’ve just checked on Xun’s status,” Thien said, pointing out across the sands to where the Green Standard soldier lay against the gentle slope of the nearest yardang. “It doesn’t look good. I can’t tell through his suit, of course, but I think he’s feverish. He’s started complaining of chills, and through his faceplate he looks even paler than before.” She drew a heavy breath. “I think his infection is getting worse.”

  “Yes,” Yao said, nodding, his voice low, “I noticed that at our mid-afternoon stop. It’s unpleasant, I know, but there isn’t anything for it but to press on, and hope that his body can fight off the infection long enough for us to reach proper facilities.”

  Thien turned from the waist up, so she could look directly into Yao’s faceplate. “And just what are the chances of that happening, Yao?” From her tone, she didn’t seem optimistic.

  “There is every chance that none of us will reach safety. But there is that same slim chance every time any of us go walking out on the surface of Fire Star. So, in that respect, current circumstances just aren’t that unusual.”

  “Humph,” Thien answered, expelling air through pursed lips. “That sounds like a pretty pessimistic view, doesn’t it?”

  Yao sighed and squeezed his eyes shut. Then he leaned in close, his voice low. “Listen, morale amongst the men is low. Not just my men here, but all of the military on Fire Star. The Mexica have made some significant advances in recent months, disrupting the supply train of nitrates to the bacteria farms, impeding the flow of halocarbon gases from the refinery on the northern plain. Meanwhile, construction on Heaven’s Ladder, the orbital elevator that was to rise from the highlands south of Tianfei Valley, has been all but halted and won’t continue until we’ve been able to pacify the region. The Mexica have even managed to hit Burning Mirror from an orbital gunsling, knocking the fixture out of alignment and sending it on a slow course down to the planet’s surface. Technicians are currently working on righting the mirror, but the process is slow and laborious. And there is every chance that, once Burning Mirror is repositioned, the Mexica will be able to strike at it again.”

  Thien nodded, her expression grave. “Yes, and every day that the sun’s rays aren’t being redirected down onto the south polar cap is another day that the temperature doesn’t rise and the carbon dioxide remains frozen. And another day longer until Fire Star is inhabitable.”

  “Look,” Yao said. He spread his hands, fingers splayed, palms up. “I’m just a simple soldier, and I don’t know too much about that kind of thing. All I know is that people of the Middle Kingdom are in jeopardy, and that the orders of the Dragon Throne aren’t being fulfilled. And that’s why I’m here.”

  “How long have you been here, anyway?” Thien asked. “On Fire Star, I mean?”

  “Nearly ten terrestrial years,” Yao said, without having to think. “Almost five and a quarter Fire Star years. Before that, I was stationed in Vinland, doing maneuvers along the border with the Mexic Dominion.” Yao paused, tonguing his helmet’s nozzle into the open position and taking a long sip of acrid water. “How about you?” he asked, licking his lips. “How long have you been on planet?”

  “Twenty terrestrial years,” Thien answered with a long sigh. “Eleven Fire Star years.”

  “That long?” Yao was impressed.

  “When I was young, just a girl, really, I found employment with the Ministry of Celestial Excursion, translating intercepted Mexic transmissions and documents. My grandmother had emigrated from a satellite state of the Mexic Dominion, and still spoke Nahuatl when I was growing up. But I really just wanted to work with my hands, not spend all day trapped indoors translating cold, dry technical documentation. And so I transferred into the technicians’ arm of the Ministry and found a place with the Treasure Fleet to Fire Star. I returned with the Fleet to Earth, but when the Emperor sent the first wave of colonists and technicians back to begin the permanent habitation, there I was among them. I’ve been operating at Fire Star gravity for so long I don’t think I’d ever be able to walk under Earth-normal gravity again. I can’t complain, though. I once met a technician who had spent ten terrestrial years stati
oned at Cold Palace on the surface of the Moon. When he finally returned to Earth, his muscles had atrophied so badly that he could hardly walk. When he did manage to take a few tenuous steps, so much calcium had leeched from his bones that his legs broke beneath his weight. He hopped the first transport back to Gold Mountain, rode the line up to Diamond Summit, and went straight back to the Moon. He’d had enough of Earth to last him.” She sighed again, peered out under the edge of the radiation shade, and turned to Yao. “How about you? Ever intend to head back to Earth?”

  “Me?” Yao gave a muffled shrug. “I’ll go where my Emperor sends me. It’s not like I have any family to go home to, so it matters little to me.”

  “I used to dream about returning to Earth,” Thien said, wistfully, “in my first years on Fire Star. But now? This is my home now. If not for this damned war, it would be perfect. If we were ever to find peace with the Mexica, it might be perfect again. But either way, I don’t think I’m ever going to leave it.” She chuckled, ruefully. “Of course, I might die any time now and my bones will rot unburied beneath these pink skies, in which case the choice is taken out of my hands, isn’t it?”

  Yao couldn’t help but laugh. All around them, the night’s darkness deepened.

  Xun died in the night. Thien spoke some words over him about the mutability of life, which Yao vaguely recognized as a Taoist prayer, while Zong ordered Seto to retrieve the dead man’s oxygen supplies and weapons. The weapons were to be distributed to the technicians in the event that circumstances were such that they’d need them, and the oxygen put with the remainder of their supplies. Thien was given Xun’s knife in a sheath-which she attached to a loop at the waist of her suit. Kuai was handed the soldier’s rifle, and Min wore his saber.

  At Yao’s orders they struck camp and set out again. They marched in the same order as the day before, traveling in silence. A dust storm blew, though whether it was the same as the day before or another following in its wake, Yao couldn’t say. With the increased interference, they were scarcely able to radio to one another, even from a few feet away. And so they continued on through the morning.