by Peter Telep
Looks were exchanged, looks that asked, "Are you all right?"
"There was a time when I used to like being buried in the sand," Carter said.
A cursory inspection revealed that the dune had been through not a meteor shower but something akin to one. The fine sand was freckled with rocks.
"Storm picking up speed and changing direction slightly," Low said, reading her SIR. "Good news. Don't think it'll hit the ship."
"We've burned some valuable O2 here, people," Shane said, releasing Nathan's hand. "Check your gear and let's hustle."
They stood atop a hillock, looking down at the tracking drone which sat a half dozen meters away. It was like an old piece of furniture sitting in an alien living room, eroded, half-buried in the sand, its solar array foil flapping in the freezing breeze.
"Didn't they count on storms when they built that piece of junk?" Pags asked.
Bartley aimed her directional Geiger Counter at the drone. "Point-oh-one-seven rads."
Damphousse arrived next to Bartley, sloughed off her pack and withdrew the circuit storage box. She opened it and produced three small plug-in modules.
Seeing that Damphousse was on the ball, Shane said, "Good. Replace the transceiver units and let's get back. We have about ten hours of daylight."
"Hey, Coop. Pags. I'll need your help diggin' it out," Damphousse said as she descended the slope.
Pags and Hawkes dropped to their knees before the tracker and used the butts of their rifles to shovel away the sand and small rocks that had collected there. Seeing that they weren't making much headway, Nathan signaled for Stone and Wang. The three Marines joined Pags and Hawkes, and in less than five minutes they were using their gloves to wipe the tracker's legs free of sand.
"All right, gentlemen. Let me in there." Cautiously, Damphousse reached down toward a small, square compartment, its surface etched with line drawings of Earth that the briefing said were the same ones carried by two ancient spacecraft: Pioneer Ten and Eleven.
"There's an eject switch in there somewhere," Low said.
Damphousse found and pressed a button. A small drawer containing a micro-CD slid toward her. She lifted the golden disc from the drawer. "This it?"
"That's the Earth message," Wang informed the group. "They made it a requirement in the twenty-first century that all off-Earth installations had to have one. It has pictures and sounds of Earth in case an extraterrestrial found it."
Hawkes stepped around the tracker, then got on his haunches before another door. "Let me have it."
"What're you doing?" Shane asked.
"Read about this," Hawkes said. "Don't worry. It won't explode."
Damphousse looked to Shane, who shrugged, then gave Hawkes the micro-CD.
The tank tapped open a door, then inserted the disc into a tiny, metallic disc drive. "Everyone. Set your links for proximity scan and lock. You're gonna like this." He tapped a switch.
Nathan, along with the others, adjusted two knobs on the com-panel at his hip.
And his ears filled with slow, sad, passionate music. "Mozart."
"Yeah, I know this one, too," Bartley said. "My sister used to play it all the time at home. It's his Piano Concerto in D-minor."
"K Second Movement, to be precise," Carter said.
"Why, Carter. I didn't know you were a connoisseur of the arts," Damphousse said.
"I'm not. There was a list of the disc's contents in the briefing. Guess I was the only one who read that part."
"If only this had been our first contact with them." Shane groaned and looked askance to Nathan. "They never would have killed the colonists."
Nathan was about to say something, but thought better of it. He listened to the music, tones like waves that bobbed him and carried him closer to Kylen. There was no way of knowing how the aliens would have responded to this. Ironically, it might have incited them to even greater violence. If Shane wanted to believe that a first contact of this nature would have prevented what had happened, then that was all right. But Nathan had already tried, convicted, and sentenced the aliens to death. Their first contact with him would be a salvo of laser fire from his fighter.
Mozart was cut off, replaced by a Scottish Highland fling with heavy bagpipes blaring.
"Aw, I was liking that," Stone said. "Put it back, Hawkes."
"If they had heard this," Wang began, in a poor attempt at a Scottish accent, "they would've wiped us out a long time ago. And I wouldn't have blamed them."
"Hmmm. I'll see if I can skip a sector—" Hawkes stopped himself, or rather was drowned out by what had to be the strangest thing Nathan had ever heard.
The Marines broke into laughter as a singer seemingly shouted over noise that was supposed to be music but sounded more like a racing combustion engine.
"What the hell is that?" Damphousse asked.
Nathan glanced at Pags, who moved subtly to the racket, "I know this," Pags confessed. "I heard this in my twentieth century history class. This was called rock 'n' roll. I think this group was called... The Pink Floyd. They went like this." He spread his legs and fanned an air guitar, bouncing from side to side, then dropped to his knees and leaned back as far as he could, his face contorted in agony or pleasure.
Nathan chuckled.
"But Pags, this ain't The Pink Floyd," Carter said. "It's The Ramones. Listen. You'll hear the title of this one. They called it the 'Blitzkrieg Bop.'"
But Pags wasn't listening; he was too caught up in singing along. "Hey. Ho. Let's go! Hey. Ho. Let's go!"
BOOM! BOOM!
The thunderous sounds had come from behind him—
BOOM! BOOM!
—and then overhead.
"Look!" Carter shouted, pointing to the near horizon.
A fiery streak arced eighty degrees across the sky and vanished behind the summit of a volcano. The sky above the volcano strobed with flashes of light so intense that, for a second, Nathan could see the lava lines of the elevation before he had to shield his eyes.
Pags gasped. "Whoa!"
"One one thousand. Two one thousand. Three one thousand..."
An explosion echoed Shane's words, followed by a quake that knocked Hawkes onto his butt and made Nathan and the rest of the Marines fight for balance.
"On Mars," Shane said, even before the tremor ceased. "About fifteen or twenty klicks out."
"A bolide, maybe?" Bartley guessed.
"A ship?" Wang asked.
"If it's one of ours, then that crew might need help," Low said.
Shane considered the horizon. "Twenty kilometers there, twenty back. That cuts into our O2 ration in a big way."
"I'll lower my O2 flow during sleep," Pags said, his tone just shy of begging.
"Me too," Damphousse added.
Nathan studied the others. Hawkes looked doubtful, but he didn't voice an objection. Everyone else appeared as charged as Pags.
Shane looked to him for a decision. He nodded, and she addressed the group. "We all go. Check supplies at regular intervals and report."
Nathan removed his rifle from his shoulder and pointed its business end at the volcano. "I got point. Stone, you're pulling rear guard."
The big Marine brandished his weapon. "Ready, willin', and loaded."
fourteen
Nathan led the Marines toward the fallen object, leaving the repaired tracker and the dunes far behind. Their orange halogen helmet lamps did little to rob the night sky of its beauty. The stars shone nearly as brightly as they did from a vantage point in space. Mars's two moons, Deimos and Phobos, were up from their daytime slumber. Deimos appeared as Venus, perhaps a tad brighter. Phobos was a little smaller than Earth's moon but someone had taken a hammer and chisel to it, banged the once-perfect sphere into an irregular lump of coal, then dug out long, parallel grooves as if in preparation for canals.
As the team hiked around the volcano, the plains gave way to the lazy rises and falls of the hardened lava flows. Jagged boulders occasionally obstructed their path, then be
came more frequent the farther they trekked.
Nathan grew tired of kicking stones out of his way and decided to simply step on them, despite the fact that he could lose his balance. He forged on, growing weaker.
Then he slipped, caught his balance, lost it, then caught it again. If it wasn't the wind knocking him over...
"I'll take point for a while," Shane suggested.
He agreed and she crossed in front. He shot a look back to Stone. "How are we doing back there?"
"Fine, if you like rocks," Stone moaned.
They came upon a small but steep hill that Nathan guessed hid a valley beyond, a valley in which the object had presumably made impact. Above the crest of the hill, he spotted a mysterious orange glow that, from this angle, appeared to be emanating from the rock itself.
He grabbed Shane's shoulder. "You see that?"
"Yeah, come on," she said excitedly, slinging her rifle over her shoulder.
"You'd better—"
"You cover me," she said.
Throwing her hands forward to help her keep balance, Shane climbed the steep hill. Nathan followed and found it increasingly difficult to keep up with her while holding his rifle.
She dropped to her chest just before the peak, then slid forward to peer furtively over the other side. "Holy shit..."
"What? What?" Nathan picked up his pace, and, after an eternity plus thirty seconds, lowered to all fours and crawled beside her.
The hill dead-ended in a nightmare cliff that would kill anyone who went over it, even in Martian gravity.
But that wasn't what Shane had commented on, nor was it the reason Nathan's mouth went dry.
Littered with boulders, the valley was a natural maze of rock that had a trench newly dug through it. At the far end of the trench lay a black metallic craft, partially masked by two boulders and veiled in its own smoldering. He heard Shane click her night vision face shield into place and he did likewise. Night became a green day, but the craft remained a mystery.
"Is it a Mars orbiter?" Shane asked.
By now, the rest of the Marines were spreading out along the crest of the hill, crawling on their bellies as if under concertina wire.
Stone dropped his NV shield over his eyes. "Maybe it's a classified recon ship."
"Yeah," Carter agreed. "Something to do with the war."
"Damphousse, West, Pags, and me. The rest of you provide cover."
Hawkes, who had assumed a position next to Shane, nudged her. "You want me to go?"
"Stay here. In case something happens."
"You trust me that much?"
"Yeah. I guess I do."
"Thanks," he said, surprising Nathan with the level of sincerity in his voice. He edged backward on his hands and knees.
Shane, Pags, and Damphousse followed Nathan around the north side of the hill and into the valley. The beams of then lamps sliced into a fog that prowled at their knees and mixed with the fumes of the wreckage. Nathan's breath was so labored that he feared he'd short out his suit's exhaust system. The resultant breaths of the others created an unsettling, odd metronome that marked the seconds as they drew closer to the craft. "Radiation levels?"
Pags, who had taken Bartley's directional Geiger Counter, consulted a gauge on the instrument. "Let's say we don't stay long."
Nathan tossed a glance back at the hill, spotting the heads of Hawkes and the others. They readied their M-590s, throwing their weight from elbow to elbow.
He moved around a boulder that stood some three meters taller than himself and froze as the craft came into full view, just a dozen or so meters away.
Like a pair of shark's teeth glued together and fitted with metallic skin polished to a breathtaking luster, the ship hinted at the potential for great speed and incredible atmospheric maneuverability. It had no identification markings, and its dorsal fin and right wing had been torn to ribbons by either laser fire or boulders, the latter seeming more likely since there weren't any scorch marks on the ship's hull. The nose of the craft was buried in the soil, but there was a bump in a likely place for a cockpit.
Nathan edged forward, his light and the lights of the others crisscrossing over the craft. Chic-chic. He locked his rifle. Pags crossed in front of him. "Hey," Nathan said. "What're you—"
"I'm taking point, West. Relax. We're a team. Remember?"
"Yeah," Nathan murmured. "Just stay close. And wired."
"Michael Close-and-Wired Pagodin. That's me."
Pags moved to the left side of the craft where a half-open hatch invited entrance.
Damphousse, her gait stiff, her head sweeping from side to side, let her rifle lead the way to Pags. "What the hell is it?"
"Looks like it's open," Pags said. "There's electronics, a console of some sort." Pags used the barrel of his rifle to shove the door aside—
—something fell toward him.
"Ahhhhhh!"
Pags drew back as it dropped to the rocky surface. A yellow light flashed on the Marine's suit: his Urine and Fecal Collection Device was full. He sighed, his cheeks reddening.
Nathan grimaced as his light illuminated an alien body lying on its side. It was a shade of gray that Nathan speculated was not its natural color, as if it were pale from death. The muscularity of the thing was either natural or heightened by armor; it was hard to tell flesh from synthetic material. Some sort of grillwork took the place of or was a face. The thing was short a few fingers and probably wore boots, which would account for the smoothness of its feet. Some sort of fin jutted from the middle of its chest, not unlike the dorsal fin on the spacecraft; however, the appendage hung half-off and, along with the being's heavily ribbed chest, was slick with a liquid that resembled crude oil.
Nathan voiced his thoughts. "It looks like... I don't know... Like it's... like it was... alive."
ZZZZ-POP-POP!
"What the—"
Something came from the left and sprayed across Nathan's face plate. He cocked his head and saw Pags falling onto his back, intestines and pink viscera spilling from a gaping hole in the Marine's abdomen. A smoke ring pulsed as the young man's arms and legs repeatedly pounded the dirt.
"Pags!" Damphousse screamed.
"West! Report!" Hawkes demanded.
Nathan hit the deck as Damphousse seized the now inert Pags, lifted the Marine over her shoulder and took off. Nathan crawled to the ship, put his back to it, then, with Shane at his side, unleashed a volley of unforgiving M-590 photon fire.
"Got a sniper, Hawkes! Somewhere northeast."
At that, a fireworks show fueled by six Marines lit up the sky, bolts of energy razoring down and blanketing the probable position of the sniper.
The hull above Nathan's head took a hit that ricocheted to strike the ground a meter away, blasting up a cloud of debris. Under a shower of residual sparks he faced Shane. "We gotta move!"
They darted toward the path they had originally followed into the valley, a path marked by the tallest boulder and a few remaining boot prints. They ran stooped, to avoid the freeway of laser fire a scant quarter-meter above them. But then she stumbled and fell sideways. Her rebreather tube got caught on the base of a knee-high rock and was torn from her suit. Pressure escaped in a sickening hiss that Nathan heard despite the cacophony of weapons' fire. Then a more terrifying sound rose above it all: her scream.
A ball of energy pulverized a rock face behind her. Then another came. Still another. Blue energy flickered, and lightning-like threads splayed across the stones like varicose veins. In the eerie light, Shane began to choke.
Nathan tried to reattach Shane's tube, but the coupling had been ripped so badly that a tight seal was impossible. He shut down her O2 flow, then held his breath, threw two sealing latches, and removed his own rebreather tube. He flipped up Shane's visor and stuffed the tube into her mouth. "Breathe," he managed to order.
After drawing in a long breath, trailed by several short, quick ones, Shane cried, "Can't stay here!"
Nathan threw up his own v
isor and nodded. He helped her to her feet. Arm in arm, sharing a single lifeline, they moved out, threading from boulder to boulder, pausing behind each to switch the tube.
They spotted Damphousse as they neared the edge of the valley. The woman, still with Pags over her shoulder, regarded them with a face creased with exertion. "Move out!"
Not about to protest, they arced around the side of the hill and began their ascent.
Once on the summit, Damphousse lowered Pags to the ground. Wang and Low quickly attended to Shane. They patched her rebreather tube with sealant tape from Low's pack, then repressurized her suit. Meanwhile, Nathan reattached his own tube and thumbed the auto-pressurize button.
He looked at Damphousse, who was now on her knees, weeping softly. "Pags... is dead."
Nathan felt the world begin to spin, and he fell onto his back. Hands not his own began to fumble with his suit's control panel. He saw Carter's face flash, then Stone's, then a bright light. He closed his eyes.
"He ain't pressurized," Stone said.
A familiar and wonderful sound commenced: Hissssssss. The air actually smelled sweet. He sat up, concentrating on his breathing. He found the rest of the Marines huddled around him, their gazes sweeping the landscape, their weapons at the ready. Shane, still an unhealthy shade of violet, smiled wanly. Over her shoulder, Nathan saw Pags's body. He shivered and gritted his teeth.
"We got a casualty. We're low on air. Whatta we do now?" Wang asked.
"I say we go down there and hunt that mother. We're Marines," Stone said, then eyed Pags. "Time to kick ass."
"No. We spread out and wait for it," Shane said.
"For how long? We don't got time to wait for it," Hawkes argued. "Stone's right. Pags is dead. Based on the fire I saw, there's only one of them."
"Yeah. That makes it nine on one," Carter said.
"But if it corners one of us..." Damphousse started. "Nathan, you think one of us could—"
He cut her off with a wave of his hand. "I say we strap on our NVSs and assume positions. We'll give this bastard about ten minutes. Then we gotta go."
