by David Brin
—Goddamn!—
—What? What’s happenin’?—
“Laser!” Carl flattened himself against the grimy ground. “Get down everybody!”
—What the hell— who’d go and—
“Arcists!” Carl realized “They must’ve heard the successful test over comm.”
Jeffers shouted,—But why? I thought Quiverian agreed.—
“Damned if I know.”
All across the field, people were ducking for cover. An ice tower farther away dissolved silently into mist. This time Carl saw the flash of light as the beam struck.
“They’re firing from that hill— over there. South twenty-five degrees of west.”
Jeffers squinted at a distant speck atop a heap of leftover slag from one of the mining operations.
—They moved one of those big industrials. Tryin’ to hit Six, but those things, they don’t aim all that good.—
The comm rang with outrage.
A bolt gouged into ice near a crouching form and Carl heard a startled tied cry of pain.
“Takeda! Get that woman sealed and to first aid!”
Carl crouched behind a hummock and watched fierce laser bolts send fountains spurting skyward. “Bastards!”
—We gotta do somethin’.—
“I could have Virginia send some mechs around behind, outflank them…”
—Yeah, right,—Jeffers said.
“No, wait…” He checked Virginia’s channel. A hiss. It was cut off. Of course. Only an idiot would attack without cutting off the defender’s source of support.
Another wail of pain over the comm.
Carl nudged Jeffers’s shoulder. “Launcher Six-can you pivot it?”
—What?—
“Tip Six down? Aim it at the horizon?”
Jeffers looked surprised.—The safeties aren’t in. I dunno… that’s a pretty low angle.—
“Try it!”
As Jeffers crawled into the launcher trench, the ice-tower fulcrum for Launcher 5 exploded behind them, sending cables and cowlings into a slow, fluid fall to the surface. Lost components, lost construction time, hurt crew— people who were his responsibility. Carl glowered at the distant dots working around the laser cannon, a murderous anger building in him.
He tuned out the comm channels, where voices swelled and swamped one another. People called for lovers and friends, sputtering in impotent rage. Mechs asked innocently for orders. Then Virginia’s voice intruded on his private line.—What’s going on? Somebody jammed my channels. Who…?
“Get some weapons up here!”
—But, but, what’ll we use?—
“Those small lasers in Three B— that’s all we’ve got that we can move right away.”
—But won’t they just pick off anybody who comes close enough to use small lasers?—
Carl swore. She was right.
—I can send some big mechs from the north pole.—
“We’ll be toast by then!”
He whistled a search-and-contact command for Joao Quiverian and had a channel in seconds. “Quiverian! This is Osborn. You—”
The man’s voice was strained. —Those are not acting under my orders. Arcists they are, yes, but I cannot control them.—
“You expect us to believe that?”
—You must. It is the truth.—
Carl gritted his teeth. So the enemy was faceless. Anonymous. The people using those big lasers weren’t going to allow anyone else to take over the Nudge options, to try another orbit. With them it was all or nothing… and they would take all.
On the general comm, more screams as an invisible laser bolt struck a hillock and dissolved a deep pit into it. Carl saw a body roll away… someone hiding there.
He used command override on channel A. “Get those people off that slag mound by Launcher Two! All of you, take shelter down in the feeder tunnels.” A babble in reply. “And use ident codes if you want to be heard!”
He spoke a quick command in mech-talk and the noise cut off as the channel controller went over to formal mode. Now suit radios would not even work until the system passed on your code-ordering. For a moment there was only an eerie hiss. Then,—Jones, BQ code to Osaka and Osborn. Leading party of five down to shaft now.—
—Lomax, DF code, to command. Got a good view from a safe height. Everyone P-code your sitings to me. I’ll relay situation to Osborn.—
Carl nodded. A few good spacers who remembered their training were worth battalions.
—Jeffers, GH code to Osborn Got it I think.—
“Osborn, GH code. Got what?”
—Jeffers, GH. I’m tipping the launcher down. Got to turn it toward the south. You line it up, okay?—
Carl realized that the steady hammering of Launcher 6 had stopped some time ago. Now, as he watched, the assembly turned laboriously toward the distant low hills, its snout tipping downward. Carl got to his feet and swiftly moved behind the slowly swiveling launcher. The only way he could think to aim the thing was to eyeball it directly, sighting along the barrel.
Great. Real high-tech.
And the Arcists were undoubtedly watching them closely. Their objective must be this site. They had destroyed the easier targets while they were getting the range right. Launcher 6 was much harder to hit, buried in its trench. But now that it was slowly emerging…
He squatted down onto a patch of orange stain and closed one eye automatically, lining up the launcher barrel with the specks on the distant hill.
—Lomax, DF to Osborn. Got a tactical sketch of known enemy positions. Prepare to receive. They’re bunched up pretty close.—
Carl threw the picture over half his faceplate. Benchley’s rough drawing showed a main group and two wings— probably outlying spotters.
Not many of them. I count five. But they’ve got the best ground.
The Arcists were settled into a notch, taking advantage of the shelter. As he watched a bright blue flash winked— and he ducked automatically. Which was ridiculous; if he was in the full focus of the laser it would have blinded him instantly. Instead, they had aimed high. Only the fringing fields had struck him.
He checked Jeffers. Almost tipped enough…
He blinked to clear his vision; it didn’t help much. “Open her up!”
—I… I can’t just shoot that hillside with a full load! That’s a kilogram of iron at ten thousand KPS… it’d be like setting off a ten-kiloton bomb!—
Carl thought furiously. “Empty casings! They only mass a couple grams. Have you got any?”
—Uh. Yeah. I’d better go at low power, too,—Jeffers said.—Take a minute… lessee… one percent setting…—
Someone screamed. Another near miss. “We’ve got to return fire. Open her up!”
—Okay, okay.—To his relief, Carl heard the braaap braaap braaap resume. The sound was different. Lower, rougher.
—It’s not tuned for this! It’ll shake apart!—
Carl thumbed over to telescopic. All up and down the hillside, plumes of vapor spouted as pellets struck.
“A-Comm auto-override. Jeffers, left!”
—Yo.—
The small gouts of fog leaped high, several a second.
A blue flash from the hilltop, brighter this time. The enemy, too, was zeroing in. Carl turned and saw the ice not far behind him flare and suddenly explode into pearly mist.
“Higher!”
—Gotcha!—
A line of bursting fog walked tip the hillside, erratic but rising, steadily rising toward the specks who manned the big, cumbersome tube.
Two antagonists, each wrestling with weapons too big and powerful to be used deftly…like fighters flailing at each other with steel beams. The first to score a hit…
Carl wondered what would happen if the laser struck him fully. His suit would reflect some, and at this angle the beam was spread over a much larger area… still; he didn’t want to find out.
“Go right! And higher!”
The jittering gouts of fog l
eaped, swerved, steadied-and struck the milling specks.
Soundless destruction. Carl lay on the ice and watched the pellets pound endlessly into the targets— mere writhing dots and splintered, rolling parts of the laser— as the fog of the assault gathered, spread, and finally obscured the scene.
“Okay. You can… shut it down.”
—We get ’em?—
“Yeah. Yeah, we did.”
Carl felt no elation, no zest. It had all happened so fast, so abstractly. A bunch of dots moving on a hillside. Brilliant, sudden flashes of blue. Then the distant spurts as streaking casings struck ice, struck steel, struck yielding flesh and cracking bone. A science of strict geometry and easy death.
—Hey, we did it! That’ll teach the suckers!—The launcher fell silent. Jeffers leaped out of the trench, exuberant.
“So… so we did.”
He heard Virginia’s voice, and others, and with the returning babble running in his ears Carl walked slowly toward the hammered hillside, not wanting to see what was there but knowing he should. It was part of his job.
Suddenly his mind cleared and he remembered the rest of the poem, the lines that he had idly recalled only a few minutes before…a time that seemed months in the past, now.
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
VIRGINIA
Spacesuits were aggravating. They reminded Virginia of how out of shape she was— of the passage of years.
She struggled with the adjustment bands, loosening some and tightening others in all the wrong places. Flab! No wonder Saul’s been so…
Virginia clamped down on the thought. Anyway, she was sure their troubles had little to do with her recent lack of exercise.
Maybe nothing was meant to last, she thought. Perhaps everything good self-destructs in the end.
The image of a red world, new volcanoes bursting forth to greet the dawn…
For the first time since the abortive Arcist attack, Carl had given permission for her to come up and see him in person. Being indispensable had its drawbacks. With human guards and watch-mechs standing in layers around her lab to protect her, she had lately begun feeling like a queen ant, a slave to her own royalty.
Though a queen ant, at least, creates eggs…
Another bad thought. Why were these things all coming to the surface right now?
Because we’ve begun killing each other, here and now? Is that why I’m so depressed?
Or is it because I’m lonely, and no longer young?
Virginia finished dressing and slipped a worn tabard over her suit. She didn’t even have one of her own— had never bothered designing one. This one— depicting a sheaf of wheat above three gold balls— had belonged to Dr. Evans, a Hydroponics man firmly dead for twenty years, now. The suit matron had reregistered it to Virginia and she had decided to live with it.
I wish it weren’t necessary to come up here in person at all, she thought as she began cycling through the lock.
But this business was too important to discuss over any comm line. It wasn’t just fear of being tapped. She wanted to watch Carl’s face when she confronted him.
The outer doors opened and the scene was briefly obscured by a fog of condensing vapor. The snowflakes blew away into space and she looked out across the open icescape.
In a sense it was a bit disappointing. Her linkage with remotes had grown so good that her vision on the surface actually seemed better in surrogate than in person. Skim-walking carefully out onto the grimy crust felt somehow more removed than controlling a mech out here.
There was a fluttering sensation of nakedness, too. After all, she had many mechs, but only one body. And it was out on the surface now, under the unwinking stars.
The landscape was less scarred, out here by Shaft 6, than where her mechs and Jeffers’s factory hands had gouged and rutted the ancient comet. Here the dominant feature was a looming edifice that looked something like a cross between a glass Ferris wheel and a web spun of liquid spider’s silk.
A number of spacers were gathered at its base, gesturing from it to a point in the glittering blackness. She recognized the tabards of Carl Osborn and Andy Carroll, as well as several others— mostly members of the Plateau Three and Survivors’ factions. Virginia mumbled command phrases until she was able to latch on to the frequency they were using. It was child’s play to break their coding.
—… tell you I think the thing is just too damn small! They may have made advances since we left, sure. But even that hot fusion torch can’t have pushed more than twenty tons at that kind of acceleration for so long.—
—Yeah? Well, even if it is just twenty tons, think of all that could include. Faster logic quips for better computers and mechs. Hybrid seeds to improve our hydro. And tritium fuses! Twenty tons of stuff like that could make all the difference.—
They were talking about the Care Package, obviously. As she approached, skirting a cracked area in the ice, she heard Carl’s voice cut in.
—You’re hoping the Christmas gifts will change the Arcists’ mind Andy?—
—Or give us something to use to wipe ’em out. I don’t really care which. Anything that’ll shake them out of the south pole so we could go back to the Jupiter maneuver and save the original mission. Th’ Mars fling’s all right, as a second choice. But Captain Cruz would’ve wanted us to…—
The words stopped as Andy Carroll noticed that Carl had turned to greet Virginia.
—Osborn, open channel to Herbert. Hello, Virginia.—
His stained spacesuit was a mixture of cannibalized parts. Over it was draped a dingy white cloth emblazoned with a picture of a red crustacean. His visor cleared and she saw his face. Gray at his temples and lines on his brow had not robbed Carl of his strong-jawed, boyish charm.
—It was good of you to come up, Virginia. There is something special we’d like to ask you to do for us.—
She nodded, then remembered that she was facing the distant sun. Although it was not much more than a very bright star now, her visor might still have automatically dimmed and hidden the gesture.
“I’ll help any way I can,” she began. “But…”
—That’s great. ’Cause we’re getting concerned about the first Care Package from Earth. Don’t want anything to go wrong when it arrives.—
“What could go wrong?”
—How — bout it fallin’ into the wrong hands?—Carroll suggested.
Carl shrugged.
—Quiverian denies responsibility for that attack down at the equator. Says they were renegades, acting without sanction. Still, I see your point. I don’t think we want the Care Package coming down at the south pole by mistake. It may be better to have a mech go out and escort the cargo vessel in.—
Virginia understood. It wouldn’t do to have the rescue package hijacked. Then the Arcists would have a total lock. They’d be in complete control.
“Fine. I’ll start working with Jeffers on the details,” she said. “There’s something else I wanted to talk to you about, though.”
—Sure. What is it?—When she shook her head and remained silent, he turned to the others.
—Be right back. guys. See if you can tune this antenna better, will you? I want a good fix on that thing as it gets nearer.—
—Right, Carl.—
He led her over behind a great pile of mine tailings. Making sure she could see him do it, he reached up and switched off his transmitter. Nodding, she did the same. He bent over to touch helmets.
“What’s bothering you, Virginia? You seem so… subdued. Is it Saul? I’d heard—”
“No,” she cut in hurriedly. His face was so close. The double layer of separating crystal seemed to pass a warm breath. “No, that’s not it, Carl.”
At least it’s not the reason why I came up here.
“But there is something the matter, between you two,” he insisted.
She nodded, a quick, short jerk. “Nothing, really. Just, well, one of those things. Time.”
“Time changes all of us, Virginia. I never did apologize to both of you for the way I behaved, so many years ago. I was an idiot.” There was an earnestness in his eyes.
“You were young, Carl. We were all younger.”
Except for Saul. With the perfect immune system, won’t he live forever? Is that, maybe, a source of friction between us?
Carl looked down for a moment, then met her eyes. “That doesn’t mean my basic feelings have altered, Virginia. If you’re ready for a change…” Carl let his sentence hang, and Virginia suddenly could see something deeper than earnestness, deeper even than the sternness of command. Her gloved hand came up, touched glass.
“Oh, Carl. You’ve hurt so much.”
He shrugged, caught between conflicting feelings.” You came up to see me because—” There was hope in his voice.
Virginia shook her head, blinking aside the weakness that threatened her determination. “Carl…” She swallowed. “Carl, I want to know why you are planning to kill us all.”
“Uh.” He stared. “How… What do you mean?”
Her hand dropped. “Oh, you were always a lousy liar, Carl. At least to me you were. The others seem to have swallowed your Judas goat act, thinking Earth really plans a rescue, all that crap about a tight flick past Mars, then on to Jupiter and Venus, then back to Mars and quarantine…”
“What are you.”
“Come to think of it, though, Jeffers and his bunch would back you even if they knew the truth, wouldn’t they?”
Carl broke contact, stepping back before she had even finished. His lips were drawn tight. When he spoke, the movements of his mouth seemed to convey a pungent if silent, bitterness. Virginia gestured at her ears. With an impatient shake of his head he brought their helmets back together jarringly.
“What are you going to do?” he asked.
At least Carl did not insult her intelligence with further pretense. He knew she would have run simulations a dozen different ways before ever accusing him like this.
“What am I going to do?” Virginia asked. “First off, I’m giving you a chance to explain. I want to know why you’re fronting for this trick of Earth Control’s, sending us on a direct collision course with Mars!”
