by Peter Telep
It took him, he estimated, nearly twenty mikes to juggle the lines enough to untangle them, and when he accomplished that, the chute suddenly blossomed into a nylon flower that wrenched Nathan out of the hole.
What he forgot to do was release his grip on the chute, and it whipped him over the top of the slope. He began a face-first descent of the other side, the AOD nearly forty-five degrees. So he freed the chute and found himself still racing down the hill, sans the Flexible Flyer sled of his youth. He slid sideways and broke into a roll, his utility belt and sit-harness jingling, his face and bare left hand wet and tingling. He had been quite satisfied with himself over coming up with the idea to use the parachute to escape. As he hit the bottom of the slope and came to a halt on his back that partially knocked the wind out of him, he decided that the next time he lay trapped in the snow, he would try not to be so "inventive."
He sat up, finger-combed the snow out of his hair, then stood. The parachute lay about fifty yards ahead, tangled and snagged on a boulder. He trudged toward it, hearing a faint yet familiar hum of aircraft in the distance. Nathan looked in the direction of the sound, but nothing cut across the moonless twilight. He wrapped the chute into a ball, used his gloved hand to dig a shallow hole at the base of the boulder, stowed the chute, and covered it with snow. Only a determined observer could spot it. Feeling about as enthusiastic as a cherry before his first hump, Nathan tried to electronically locate his rucksack one more time before setting out after it. The beacon was still out of range. Deciding on a direction that was truly arbitrary but justified by gut instinct, he drew his pistol and marched off, cursing that if he had been able to wear the sack during the flight, he wouldn't be searching for it. However, between the close quarters in the AP-V and the heavy weight of the sack, which made wearing it on a HALO drop all the more dangerous, the techies had decided that the sacks would be dropped in separately. They hadn't counted on an out-of-range beacon nor the fact that Nathan had made a standard drop and could have worn the gear. But all of it was just him complaining about the situation.
He had better watch out; he was becoming another Cooper Hawkes. Nathan chuckled to himself, thinking about what Cooper would have said had he been piloting the malfunctioning AP-V:
"LIDAR down! Gyroscope down! Guidance system down! Ejection system down! I'm gonna die here, man. I'm gonna die. Nothin' is workin', and I'm gonna die. I've only been alive for six years, and it's over already. Do you know how mad I am right now? Do you wanna know? Get me Commodore Ross on the link. Get me the old man. I'm gonna tell both of 'em just how pissed off I am for their stuffing me in this shitsicle. I'm serious, man. Get 'em on the line."
Cooper would have inserted on planet successfully, since his specialty was hitting targets. But everyone else might have crashed and burned due to the Marine's griping.
After rounding a boulder that stood at least two meters taller than himself, Nathan got a better look at the path ahead, an uneven maze of snow and rocks that made for excellent and swift cover in the event of a Chig encounter. Yet it also provided cover to the enemy to launch an ambush. Rigid and bug-eyed, Nathan let his weapon lead the way.
Packed powder lay beneath him, and his boots only sank about an inch into the snow. He didn't need the bearpaw snowshoes in his rucksack and was glad for that. The shoes made much larger tracks. As it was, his bootprints were still visible but might be swallowed up by the wind in less time than the prints left by the shoes.
When he was about seventy-five meters into the journey and still not picking up the rucksack's beacon, he moved to an ice-slick, jagged formation of rock, sat, and took a breather behind it. He thought that if Sergeant Major Bougus could see him, the senior D.I. would be firing enough barbs and epithets to address an entire company. The sergeant had always known how to get to Nathan, and he knew even better in the daydream.
I got a lot on my mind, Nathan thought. He laughed aloud at the understatement. A blink ago he had been training for the Tellus mission with Kylen. A blink later, Kylen was lost, and his brother, Neil, was dead. I'm a pilot in the Marine Corps, Nathan thought, and I'm sitting on a piece of rock so far from home that if I had to drive there in a car it would take me maybe a million years. As a boy, he had always longed for a more exciting life than that of his parents. And after graduating high school, he knew that he would someday, somehow get into Aerotech's colonial program. The rushed pace of his life had begun there, and now with the war on, he feared it would never let up. Life aboard the Saratoga carried with it a never-ending undercurrent of tension. You had time off, but you could easily be summoned into battle. So you never really had time off, never had a true chance to forget about everything. You were always "on," and you got tired of that, really tired.
In one sense, that's what Nathan guessed was happening to Shane. The everyday tension was finally taking its toll on her. He perfectly understood how she felt, but he was absolutely unaware how to help her since he wasn't able to help himself. Thinking about her made him also think about Bougus's remarks. Nathan had been saving himself for Kylen. She believed in him in a way he had once thought no other woman could.
But Shane believed in him, too. On a daily basis, she entrusted her life to him. And though they had already established a working relationship that never crossed those boundaries, he wondered if she had the same thoughts about him that he sometimes had about her. They wouldn't be the only members of the fifty-eighth who glanced longingly at each other; Wang and Damphousse had been trying unsuccessfully for months to hide their feelings for each other. Nathan wasn't sure exactly what was going on between them, and he would never ask, but he was positive that it was much more than Marine Corps camaraderie. And when Charlie Stone had asked 'Phousse out for drinks back on the Haldeman, Nathan had seen how Wang's expression had soured. Nathan could sympathize with Wang, for he had even felt a little jealous when one of Shane's old loves, Captain John Oakes of the thirty-fifth, had come aboard the Saratoga.
If there was anything to conclude from all of the wondering, Nathan told himself, it was that he still believed he would find Kylen, but his heart was vulnerable. He still loved her, but they were cut off by time and distance and the unknown. He trembled with the idea that all it would take was the right person, and he would fail a test of loyalty. Or did he tremble from the cold? He wanted to believe the latter.
Standing to work out the kinks, Nathan flipped a glance to his compass. He jerked his head back as he saw the coordinates of his rucksack. Excellent. He would not have to hide from the enemy and live off the land like a pilot who had been shot down. And that was good, since Bulldog's Belly didn't support insects or small reptiles or other assorted munchies. According to the report, there was some hearty though inedible foliage, and the snow was safe to melt and drink, but a plate of lasagna smothered in meat sauce was not to be found. At a pace much faster than he had traveled earlier, Nathan went after the rucksack, actually relishing the thought of downing one of his Meals Ready to Eat, the Pasta Italiano MRE, to be sure.
eleven
The storm began with a pre-game show off flurries that further darkened Shane's mood. Cooper had already done a wonderful job of laying a major guilt trip on her, and she wondered if she would be able to forgive herself if something happened to Nathan. With command always came that dreaded sense of responsibility. You didn't just make decisions and have the rest follow. Were it that easy, people like Cooper would be generals, she thought. Tough decisions were forged by iron wills, but Shane doubted hers was still made of iron. She didn't need Cooper to cast doubt in her mind; she was doing a perfectly adequate job of that herself. What she needed, what McQueen had said her goal in life was, was to figure out why the hell she felt the need to drive the squadron so hard. And she wanted to get rid of that feeling fast. She knew it might cloud her judgment. The time had come to be sharp and brimming with quick reflexes and confidence, yet she felt hollow and dull, lost. And once again, so tired. So very tired.
They had left
their original rendezvous point some hundred mikes ago, and the terrain had slowly evolved into what at first had seemed like a smoother, far more traversable path but what was, in truth, a deceiving sheet of snow and ice. The silicate, who had been walking point, had been the first to suddenly drop to a depth of about a meter. Though Shane had suspected the A.I. weighed more than them, she nonetheless ordered everyone to don their snowshoes.
"I just hope we're not walking over a snow-covered lake," Damphousse said. "If I get wet I'm never getting that chill out of my body."
Cooper, who was reluctantly pulling up the rear, said, "I just hope Nathan didn't walk over a lake and fall in. There'd be no one to pull him out."
Shane clenched a fist and shouted back, "Shut the hell up, Hawkes. You're so damned immature sometimes."
"He is only six years old," Damphousse reminded her.
"Permission to speak," the silicate said, his gaze still locked on the course ahead.
"What is it?" Shane asked.
"We're heading into a storm, Captain."
"Tell me, Mister 404. How much does it cost to construct and program a silicate?"
"I'm not sure I follow, Captain."
After rolling her eyes, Shane asked, "Can you answer the question or not?"
"Well, the chip market is highly volatile right now. I wouldn't be able to give you an accurate figure."
She rolled her eyes again. "Could we say that silicates are expensive? Very expensive?"
"Yes."
"Then why don't you put the taxpayers' money to better use and tell me something I can't see with my own damned eyes. Of course we're heading into a storm, you idiot. And we're also heading toward the duct."
"Hey, Captain. Why don't you lay off him?" Cooper called. "He's right. We're walking into a blizzard. And I know you got a plan."
"Coop, you're pissing me off again," Wang said. "We know you don't wanna be part of our team. But now you are. And Shane's in command. And that's it."
"I wanna be part of the team," Cooper said. "I am part of the team. I just don't like the way the team plays."
Shane put her hand up to signal a halt, an act usually reserved for the Marine walking point, but there was no Marine up there, only the silicate. She turned around to face them. "Yeah, we're walking into a blizzard, but we don't got a choice. I'm taking us in on a straight line for the target. Shortest distance. I know you're cold. Helmets on, lights off, and flip down your night vision shields. We'll string up." She turned to Wang. "Break out the line and the ETC monitor." Then she addressed the group. "Set links for short distance, low freq. I don't wanna use them, but with SDLF, I don't think the Chigs will pick us up."
As Shane unclipped her helmet from the bottom of her rucksack, she watched Mister 404 walk by. Without a word, the silicate handed his helmet to Cooper, who lacked one since he'd chosen to wear a lighter, initially more comfortable O2 mask.
"What about you, man?" Cooper asked, accepting the loaner.
"They say we don't feel. But in some ways we do. When I'm damaged, that data sets off alarms. And the reactions to those alarms you could call feelings. We want to preserve our own existence. Call it data or desire, it's still the same. I might feel cold. But I'm here to help. And local destruction of body tissue as a result of freezing will not cease my functioning, yet it could cease yours."
"You could've just told me you don't need a helmet," Cooper replied, then he slipped the dome over his head.
The silicate grinned. "I love to talk." Then he turned away.
Shane didn't know whether to be impressed by Mister 404's altruism or maddened by it. He could be putting on an act meant to soften the squadron's guard. It was hard to fully hate the A.I. after watching him give up his helmet, but Shane still held fast to her mistrust.
"I got the spare end of the line that Nathan would have had," Cooper announced, but his comlink wasn't on and his voice sounded muffled.
"Didn't fully hear that, Hawkes," Shane said into her link. "But don't repeat it."
She took her section of the line from Wang. There was a D-shaped carabiner clip attached to the white, nylon rope, and she locked that clip onto the metal ring fastened to her sit-harness. She handed the final section of rope to the silicate. The squad was now linked, each member attached to the rope at three-meter intervals.
"We could have used a tow line like this one on Mars," Wang said. "When we rode out that sandstorm. Instead we had a séance."
"Holding hands in a circle worked," Damphousse said. "It was a good idea."
"Thanks, Vanessa." Shane regarded her compass and faced in the direction of the aqueduct. "Break time's over, Marines. Let's punch back in."
Damphousse snickered. "If they were paying me by the hour, I'd be able to retire after the war to a seaside mansion in the Hamptons."
"Electronic Targeting Coordinator on line," Wang said. "Signal's weak. No way to triangulate and confirm, but our compass heading is correct with an MOE of less than point-five."
"We'll get that down to nothing once we get close enough," Shane said. "Mister 404. The storm causing you any visual problems?"
"I'm equipped with the standard Night Optical Sensors which do a fairly nice job of cutting through," he said, but it was difficult to hear him, since he was exposed and the roar of the wind filled his link. "I can still see the clouds lit up above the duct."
"You can?" Cooper asked. "I don't believe that."
"Aerotech engineering," the A.I. replied. "Not bad, eh?"
"Sorry, Teddy, but there isn't anything you can say about Aerotech that will impress us," Damphousse said. "We think they might be responsible for starting the war."
"Shuddup!" Shane ordered. "That's compartmentalized."
"No one said anything—"
"Shuddup," Shane repeated, cutting her off. "Now, Mister 404. You're going to be our ears, too. You already know what a Chig patrol sounds like."
"I have that sound stored in my cache."
"Yeah, that's a nasty habit of yours. Well, you pick up something, I wanna know in the next millisecond. The mikes built into these helmets suck."
"Didn't the Corps buy these helmets from Aerotech?" Wang asked.
"Environment suits are manufactured by a private contractor employed by Aerotech," Damphousse said.
Wang sounded impressed. "And I thought I was the trivia king. How do you know that?"
"It's on the label, right next to the washing instructions."
"Wang? How's that ETC signal holding up?" Shane asked.
"Still weak. Breaking up a little. We might lose it. Compasses should keep us on course."
"I don't know about you guys, but my shield ain't helping me see a hell of a lot," Cooper said. "And my damn suit's either too hot or too cold. You know, we don't ask for much. We really don't."
"No, we don't, Hawkes," Shane said. "All the rest of us ask is that you, for once in your life, keep your bitching and moaning to yourself."
Though the silicate was less than three meters in front of her, Shane still had a rough time picking him out. The NVS did illuminate the scene into a somewhat clearer green-gray image, but Cooper was right; it did nothing to eliminate the heavy snowfall. She strained once again to see Mister 404, but he was fully obscured.
Then she heard him cry out. And suddenly the line jerked. Slammed onto her stomach, Shane was dragged forward.
"Whoah! Whoah! Whoah! What the hell—" Cooper said, then cut himself off.
"Lock and load!" Wang screamed.
Shane slid over a cliff of ice and fell headfirst into midair. Then, jerked at the waist once more, she flipped around, right side up, and was able to lock one hand on the rope, which was still slowly coming down. She looked up and saw Damphousse slow to a stop at the edge of the cliff.
"I don't know what's going on ahead, but all that's holding us is one of my snowshoes caught in a wedge of ice," Cooper said.
Mister 404 hung below Shane, rocked chaotically by the wind. "Captain. I believe we strayed
over an impact crater that didn't show up on my scans of the terrain. A precipice of ice formed on this side and created the illusion of a flat surface. The crater's bottom is some fifty meters below us."
"I thought you said your vision was pretty good," Shane said angrily.
"In many ways, my eyes were meant to mimic human eyes. Therefore, they, too, can be fooled by illusions."
"Probably not a good time for this conversation," Damphousse said, her voice creased with exertion.
Shane flipped a glance to the crater wall, a seventy-five-degree slide of rock dappled with knobs of snow and ice. Then she lifted her gaze to Damphousse, who grimaced and fought to stay on the ledge. "Don't let go, 'Phousse."
"I'm trying not to."
With her heart beating and her mind racing, Shane realized she was drawing a blank on what to do next. Only the obvious was hitting her. Orders. They needed orders. We need to save ourselves, she thought. She and the silicate were hanging in midair, the rest on their stomachs and fighting not be dragged over the edge. All right. Situation is clear. Or is it?
"Hawkes," Shane called. "Can you secure better footing?"
"Negative! I move, we all move."
"Can you get a hand into your pack? Get out an anchor?"
"Maybe."
"Go for the snowstakes, Coop," Wang said. "I think I got my shoe hooked on a rock or a piece of ice under the snow."
"All right," Cooper began. "Pucker up, Marines. Here goes nothing."
Repressing the urge to close her eyes, Shane instead tightened her grip on the rope. She felt herself drop a little, but only a little, inches maybe.
"You got it?" Wang asked.
"I'm trying to remember which pocket I packed 'em in." Cooper said.
"Think, Hawkes! Think!" Shane told him.
Cooper groaned, and though Shane couldn't see him, she imagined him twisting his arm back to the limit in order to get into his pack. "I got my hand on something. No, that's my extra pair of boots. Damn. Wait, wait. Yeah, here they are. But how am I gonna hammer it in. Can I let go?"
