Up Against It

by M. J. Locke

  It seemed to go on forever; he made his way amid crunchy, frozen slush, uncoiling his comm line to the bots as he went. Space suits were not designed for tight spaces; it was difficult to bend his elbow and knee joints far enough to get purchase on the pipe’s curved surface in the gunk.

  When he reached the chemical plant, the pipe bent sharply upward. Geoff kicked off and leaped up several meters to where the pipe leveled out again in a giant T fitting. He wormed into the level section of pipe, squirmed to face the way he had come, and looked across the gap. The manhole cover sealed off one end of the T. That was his exit.

  Geoff pulled a buzz saw from his tool pouch, braced himself at the edge of the dropoff, and cut through the bolts holding the maintenance cover on. Then he kicked at it with both feet. The big metal cover went tumbling into space. Geoff stretched across the drop, stuck his head out, and looked around. No one was in sight. The ship’s top fin jutted up above the ridge, and the arms of Cronus the earthmover towered over all. Amaya’s bike, which they had left propped up next to the rock near the vent pipe twenty meters away, was gone.

  He sat huddled in the pipe for a moment, gathering his nerve. They could be anywhere right now—they might be right behind him and he’d never know till they shot him. But there was no turning back.

  He tied off the communications cable that linked him to the lead minerbot, back at the longwall, then leapt out and down. As he settled to the surface, he twisted in all directions—up, down, sideways—looking around. No sign of his enemies. He touched down.

  How many would he be up against? Three, perhaps four. There had been six, but Amaya saw one injured or dead in the mine blast, and they had launched two others into space earlier that evening. Unless they’d managed to get those other two down from orbit.

  But no—there they were now, rising above the eastern horizon: two tumbling human forms, snarled in a mesh made gossamer by the sun. Geoff was surprised they were still in orbit. He’d expected them to fly off for parts unknown. He ducked into the shadow of a rock and timed their orbit; it took a good ten minutes for them to reach zenith. Then a set of silver tethers soared up from over the outcropping and snared them.

  Geoff crept forward to the crevasse and looked down at the ship. The biggest man, the one who had shot a hole in his bike, was reeling the tethered men in, using a hand-cranked wheel he must have jury-rigged from Joey Spud’s mining equipment. Amaya’s rocketbike lay on its side next to the ship’s ramp.

  A suited figure crouched near the wreckage of the cavern entrance. They were setting charges. Big ones—enough to blow the whole mine! Sweat sprang out Geoff’s face and he found himself panting. No time to go back now and warn the others. They could blow the charges any minute. He had to stop them now.

  A body was laid out in the cargo bay; he could see it from here. The one who had been setting the charges was standing guard with a large weapon. The third, slim man was nowhere to be seen.

  They’re distracted, he thought. There won’t be a better moment.

  Geoff returned to the maintenance pipe, plugged into his makeshift comm cable, and ordered the minerbots to come up. In a moment they began feeding the methane balloons and his tools up the chute. He helped them haul it all up. The minerbots scampered up over one another like mechanical ants, out the maintenance hole, and down onto the ground. The balloon squadron, as he thought of them, gathered the bladders and then joined the distress-call squadron. The twenty-four bots stood there in formation, awaiting orders.

  Geoff programmed Balloon Squadron to cross behind the ridge, out of sight of the ship, and await his signal. Then he crawled back to a vantage point closest to the earthmover, followed by Distress-Call Squadron.

  The earthmover was massive—much larger than the shuttle. They called them Planet Eaters for a reason. It looked vaguely like a giant mechanical lobster, with three arms that stretched high into the sky, and a big cab that rested on machineworks on treads.

  One arm was a crane with a grappling hook. The second was a gigantic, bucky-steel rotary saw for cutting into hard rock, and at the end of the third arm was a bucket shaped like an enormous Venus flytrap, for digging up and compressing material. A fourth appendage, a catapult, sat atop the cab. The earthmover, Cronus, stood between him and the shuttle, near the storage tanks. The operator cab was high up on its central cabin.

  Joey Spud had let Geoff operate Cronus once. It had been a terrifying experience—like driving a mountain range. Geoff prayed now that he could remember what to do.

  The men seemed to be finishing with their charges at the mine entrance. Now or never, Agre. He gave the minerbots their signal.

  Balloon Squadron went first. They spilled over the outcropping and their methane-filled balloons bobbed along behind them like hundreds of giant, wildly waving hands. The mercenaries looked up, saw them, and started firing. The maintenance bots were easy to hit—they weren’t very big or fast. Their balloons ignited as the explosive bullets struck. Fireballs erupted all around, and the bots’ casings turned to shrapnel. The mercenaries all dove for cover. Geoff reached the earthmover without being seen and began scaling it.

  By the time he neared the cab he was in plain sight, and the fireball spectacle was over. Far below, the big-suited figure spotted him and pointed. The others started toward him, but had difficulty with the sudden momentum changes. He could tell they weren’t Upsiders. They flailed and bounded too high and collided with one another in their haste.

  Geoff leaped easily up onto the landing outside the operator’s cabin. He ducked into the cab, locked the door, and sealed it. The small cabin pressurized as he pulled himself into the pilot’s couch. He left his helmet on but opened the faceplate to conserve air. The smell of must, tobacco, and peanuts conjured up Joey Spud—almost as if the old man was sitting here.

  “Talk to me, Joey Spud,” he muttered, and laid his hands on the controls. “I don’t know what the hell I’m doing.”

  He vaguely remembered Joey Spud talking him through the startup sequence. He visualized the old man’s hands on the controls, and followed suit, thinking: please please please work. He dashed sweat out of his eyes, activated the control panel with shaking hands. Hurry the fuck up! Stupid lag. It found his waveface and pinged him. He entered the security permissions.

  —Install PlanetEater 10.5? it asked. He selected Yes. —Password? He punched in Joey Spud’s old code, an esoteric miner’s joke: 197AquaRegia. The software downloaded and the main control face activated. It gave him access to all the functions: the crane, the catapult, the bucket. Everything.

  The machine was so big that he couldn’t see everything with his own eyes; instead, his wavespace filled with a three-dimensional map of his surroundings. The machine controls fitted his body’s contours like a ghostly second body. He put in the start sequence. After three tries, the machine roared to life. The entire cab began shaking, so hard it made his teeth chatter, and knocked him up out of the seat. He pulled himself back down, hung on, and pushed it into gear. It started rolling toward the ship, a palsied leviathan. He felt like a bug sitting between an elephant’s ears.

  Below, Cronus’s treads crushed three of his mining bots. Two of the tiny human figures scattered, but the third instead bounded alongside the earthmover, trying to keep his balance as he shot up at the cabin. Geoff closed his visor, in case the shooter cracked the cabin portal. But the bullets only pockmarked the portal glass—they did not penetrate.

  He maneuvered the digging wheel around to the side, to move it out of the way. Alarms bellowed—Cronus teetered dangerously—and Geoff remembered, belatedly: Set the pitons, idiot! He triggered the explosive cartridges that drove Chronus’s stabilizer spikes into the rock. Ouroboros rocked—dust and debris leapt high all around—the men outside dove for cover.

  Geoff chose the bucket. Through the cabin window and inwave, the massive Venus flytrap bucket opened on its towering arm. Geoff reached down and, clumsily, the bucket followed suit. He scooped up his distress-cal
l robots, who waited on the other side of the outcropping.

  Four suited figures were now firing weapons at him. More projectiles pocked the cab-window glass. Cronus shuddered and tried to buck, but the pitons held. Geoff smelled the sour tang of his own fear. He swung the arm over the catapult. It took him a moment to figure out how to move his hand so as to make the bucket tip over before it released. The bots dropped into the shallow bowl on Cronus’s top. He set trajectory and velocity, and punched execute. The bots went sailing over the horizon, transmitting their distress calls.

  More bullets. The glass cracked. Geoff thought, I need a plan.

  First things first. He used the bucket to scoop up the explosives and cording there. It was like picking up toothpicks with a backhoe, and he ended up taking half the cliff face, too. He dropped this mess into the catapult and sent it soaring into space. Then he reached down, and the bucket descended over the shuttle. This was a much better fit for the bucket scoop: he picked it up as easily as a grown man picks up a toy, and lifted it high. As he did so, two suited men fell out of the cargo hold. Geoff caught a look at the smaller man’s surprised face as he sank slowly groundward. The larger man clutched a big box and tried to pry it open. Not one, but two, corpses fell limply out, tumbling.

  Geoff batted the bodies aside and made a fist: the bucket closed on the ship, and the ship’s hull buckled. The shock of the compression carried through the earthmover’s frame. Geoff grabbed his armrest to keep from floating off again as the cab shuddered, and loosened his grip on the ship—the professor had said there were explosives and weaponry in the hold. He wanted to render the weapons useless, not cause another major explosion. Then he swung the arm over the catapult. It took him a moment or so to figure out how to move his hand so as to make the bucket tip over before it released. Next he set the ship, now crumpled like a badly made toy, into the catapult’s bowl and activated the catapult.

  The ship soared into the sky. The shock of the catapult gun bounced him hard against his seat and lofted him. Geoff flailed in midair, seeking a handhold. By this time the suited figure of the big man, the one who had shot at them when they rescued the professor, had alighted. He was pointing the business end of a missile launcher right at the cab. The box and the rest of the rockets were tumbling lazily around the large man, all slowly falling to the ground.

  “Shit!” Geoff got his fingers around a handhold above the control panel. He shoved himself over, kicked at the emergency switch, and was propelled out the door by the cab’s sudden decompression.

  A missile burst through the cab window and struck the wall behind the operator’s couch. The earthmover lurched—flames engulfed the cab—the giant arms buckled and the earthmover tipped. Geoff saw this while tumbling slowly above the stroid’s surface. Then the shock wave struck. Pain seared across his buttocks and side, and he blacked out.

  * * *

  Mitch Shibata, the dock’s shipping officer, met Sean in the docking bay.

  “We’ve outfitted the Michaelmas, sir,” he said. The cluster’s fastest and best-armed shuttle on hand. Sean nodded his approval. “I’ll be your pilot. We’ve coordinated with Cluster Security. Commissioner Pearce has put five armed troops under your command. They’re aboard now.” He transferred the manifest. Sean looked it over as they hustled toward the airlock. “Good.”

  Mitch said, “Shelley is tracking transmissions for us and says there have been more developments. She’ll brief you en route.”

  * * *

  The chime intruding on Xuan’s dream did not drag him fully from sleep—his fatigue was too deep—but the rumbling whup! that followed did. It threw him hard against the mesh of his hammock, and he rolled painfully out into midair, the explosion still ringing in his ears. The meds had helped, though—he felt stronger, and the sharp pain in his ribs had eased.

  Amaya and Kamal sleepily struggled out of their own hammocks. Geoff was … where?

  Amaya was first to reach Geoff’s hammock. She pulled out a sheet of scrip and looked at it, brow lowering. Then she crumpled it up and flung it away in disgust. Kamal caught the scrip and unfolded it. He read it aloud, and sighed. “What is he trying to prove?”

  Amaya asked Xuan, “Was that the explosion we heard? The charges he set in the pipes?”

  Xuan considered. The sounds of the blast echoed in his thoughts. He had been on many a stroid during blasting. “No. The explosion was up top—not down here. Get your gear.”

  They scrambled to gather their belongings. Xuan swam over to the lockers, braced himself, and tugged on his boots. Dull pain clenched in his rib cage, and he had to pause.

  “That explosion was very large,” he said. “We must admit the possibility that Geoff has been killed. However, if he is still alive, he’ll need help. So I am going out after him. After I leave, you two are going to seal yourselves in and wait for rescue.”

  “The hell we are!” Amaya snapped, and Kam said, “Geoff is our friend. We won’t leave him out there to die. No matter what you say.”

  Xuan looked at their two dirty, terrified, determined young faces.

  “Come what may,” Amaya said.

  They were adults, and it was their Dharma they followed, not his. Xuan straightened with a nod. “Very well. Come, friends. Let us show them what stroiders are made of.”

  * * *

  The squadron leader reported to Sean after takeoff. She climbed through the doorway (their rapid acceleration made for a topsy-turvy ship orientation) and stood at attention on the wall next to it. He looked down at the top of her head from his acceleration couch by the bed. It was no one thing—not simply her well-developed musculature, or her accent, or the way she stood—that suggested her world of origin. She was from Earth.

  He realized that this was a turning point. I’m acclimating, he thought in mild surprise. I read her. Who would’ve thought?

  He dropped down to stand before her. “A fellow Downsider, I surmise,” he said. She saluted—which felt both odd and completely natural to him—with a smile that exposed a dimple in her chin.

  “That is correct, sir. Sergeant Kayla Maez-Gibson of the Phocaea Cluster Guard, Sixth Spaceborne Division, at your service. Formerly of British Columbia, Canada, Earth. Commissioner Pearce had very little time to brief us,” she told him, “but I understand this is a rescue mission?”

  “Yes. We have four civilians in what we believe is a hostage situation. It’s on a faraway stroid about a kay-klick off the treeway—ETA twenty-eight minutes. The bad guys are tied to a Martian crime syndicate. We aren’t certain how many of them there are, but my dockworkers report there are at least four, and perhaps more.”

  “How are they armed?”

  “Unknown. They may have heavy weaponry in addition to hand weapons. How much experience does your squad have in hostile engagements?”

  “Limited, sir. The team is seasoned in rescue ops among the faraway stroids, and we have run up against pirates before. But it never resulted in an exchange of fire. We do train intensively with the latest simulations.”

  Here we go again, Sean thought grimly. “Well, you may finally get a chance to put that training to use. My chief engineer has a briefing for us as soon as you’re ready.”

  “No time like the present, sir.”

  He called Mitch and had him hail Shelley. Sean plugged the sergeant in, and Shelley appeared in their shared wavespace. “Chief, we’ve detected a blast in the vicinity of the target rock’s location.”

  Sean exchanged a glance with the sergeant.

  “Surface or subsurface?” he asked.

  “Surface. No sign of major damage to the stroid, but we’re tracking some unmapped debris that appears to have originated from the rock. It appears to have been thrown our way before the blast,” she said. “Which I can’t explain. Second, a series of distress calls has begun. There appear to be eleven separate signals originating from an orbit around the rock.”

  “Survivors?”

  Shelley shook her head. “We think th
ey’re remotes. Someone threw them into orbit only a dozen seconds before the explosion.”

  “OK. Thanks, Shelley. Hail me if you have any other updates.” He signed off and turned to the sergeant. “You look as if you have a thought.”

  “An unpleasant one, sir. The explosion may have been due to the launching of the distress-call remotes. In other words, the blast may be a reprisal.”

  “Too true.” Sean thought of Geoff and the others, and remembered his own words to them: everything is legit. He remembered telling their parents he would make sure they weren’t put into danger. Sean was never one for second-guessing past decisions. You make the best call you can with the knowledge you have. But his best call had not been good enough. He planned to make sure the perpetrator paid.

  * * *

  Xuan asked Kamal and Amaya to have their minerbots remove and pack up the charges Geoff had planted earlier. They also took automated distress beacons, spare air, food, fuel, compressed gas canisters, and some other supplies. The distress beacons should bring someone soon, but even if not, with sufficient supplies Xuan knew how to get them back to the treeways, and thus to Phocaea. If it weren’t for the mobsters outside the airlock.

  Kamal reported, “We’re missing minerbots—a good thirty or so. And a bunch of distress beacons. I think Geoff was trying to get a signal out.”

  “Let us hope he succeeded, then,” Xuan said. He checked the charges Geoff had set. They had radio-activated detonators. He spent a minute reviewing the detonator tutorial, and ran through the simulator twice to plant the knowledge in his body memory. Then they headed to the longwall.

  While they waited in the lock for the air to cycle out, Xuan asked, “Where does the slurry pipe exit?”

  Amaya answered, “The chem plant. There’s a maintenance hole at the distillation unit. That’s where Geoff exited. It’s the only logical place.”

  “All right. Now, there are only four possibilities.” Xuan ticked them off on his fingers. “The first is that our foes will not yet have found where Geoff exited. That is very unlikely—the explosion tells us they are on alert, and they will have explored the area while we’ve been preparing. So we should expect one of the other three possibilities: that they have posted a guard outside the pipe; that they have entered the pipe and we will encounter them somewhere along its length; or worst-case, that they have already climbed through the pipe and are at the longwall when we exit this lock.”