Грег Бир - The War Dogs Trilogy

Tak and Kazak find the pallet of three tent boxes and we cluster around as Vee-Def and DJ and Michelin slice the containment straps and separate the boxes, check the stripes—safe—then pop the seals. Two tents spring out, nearly hitting me and Michelin, and then roll and lie there, all innocent and beautiful. The third won’t disengage from the box. Its air reserve is empty. It’s not quite useless, however—Vee-Def harvests its water packs.

We got maybe four minutes to get one or both of the remaining tents to inflate before we climb inside, but even if we do that—

The first object hits the atmosphere. It draws a superfast ghostly white flame across the sky. The flame lingers and turns pale purple. The object strikes beyond the northwestern horizon. It is gone . Not so bad. Then a brilliant flash seems to roll out of the west, quickly fades to a gloriously supernal mauve, while a pinkish dome shot through with coiling white clouds blooms at the center of the strike. The dome rises into perfect mushroom cap, supported by—nothing! No central pillar of smoke or cloud at first, but finally it seems to fill in, condense, and we see the mottled grayish stalk, tossing out curving streamers of purple and white.

We stand in awe. I’m gasping—Cheynes-Stokes breathing, not good.

The first tent has nearly inflated.

Then the ground shakes— heaves violently, tossing us like bowling pins. We end on our butts, clutching at the hardpan, while all around, dust leaps and pebbles and rocks do a crazy, jiggling dance.

A few dozen meters away, the hardpan cracks open , taking in the pallet and the bum tent—swallowing them whole. Almost gets DJ as well, but he scrambles toward us like a desert beetle. The crack stops a few arm-lengths from my faceplate. The sound is awful, a hard-packed, rhythmic pounding that shakes our skulls, our bones, makes the fabric of our skintights ripple, like standing too close to a Japanese drummer in full frenzy. My head pulses with each wave, and then—the waves seem to bounce off something and come back from the other side, from the east. What the fuck is that about?

We look west again.

A translucent wall of air passes over, buffets us, and suddenly we are surrounded by a muffled, pressing, scary quiet.

“Cone of silence!” Tak calls out, lying flat beside me.

“What?”

“We’re in the cone! The shock wave’s bounced against the upper air and arced over!” he says.

I have no idea what he means.

“More coming!” Michelin shouts. We all manage to look up. The sky, the horizon, is a soundless, eerie sort of awful, shot through with gray streaks spreading from that too-perfect mushroom cap, then obscuring it. That might have been the big one. If it wasn’t, we won’t survive, because it isn’t over. A half dozen others skip this way and that across the sky and through the clouds like stones on a pond, finally plunging…

The shock is amazing. I’m tossed maybe five meters up and flip over and land on my back, hard enough to knock me silly. I try to breathe. Everything hurts. Broken ribs? If my skintight tears, I’m cold meat, but that may not matter, because the stars have fled—there’s only a low gray ceiling, seemingly solid, impenetrable. But white specks fall through the ceiling.

I’m just a big ball of pain but then, old memories, I reacquire an agonized pair of childlike eyes and say, It’s Christmas, look! Snow. Snow is falling all around. Flakes and chunks, some like grapple, some big as my fist. Falling all over, bouncing off me, off the hardpan. I don’t bother to get up. Maybe I can’t and I don’t want to know that.

Pretty soon I’m buried in it.

Damn, we were almost in the tent.

Then come the rocks.

Iwake up and see Tak leaning over me, looking into my face. Fingers do the ICU, UCME?

Yes. Yes.

It’s heavy outside.

The air is like nothing I’ve ever felt on Mars, warm and dense. My angel has been sounding a continuous wheep-wheep of alarm. I get up on one elbow. There’s a blanket of ice and snow all around, punctuated by black rocks big as my fist, big as my head—new rocks, flung from hundreds of klicks away. Some are still smoking.

Impact heat.

Scattered between the snow and ice and the rocks are pools of fizzing liquid water, bubbling like hot springs. Terrific. We’ve made it to Yellowstone.

We’re on Planet Perrier.

I try to say that over comm. I want to show Tak I’m still clever, still able to make jokes, but I’ve bitten my tongue and my mouth is full of blood and it splatters on my faceplate when I try to talk.

Tak shakes his head. Holds up two fingers. I get up to help him find the others. DJ is buried in a drift. We shove aside rocks and ice. He’s limp when we pull him out, but recovers enough to join our search. Kazak we find next. He’s alert and looks as if he might have just had a refreshing nap. Leaps up out of the rubble, brushing snow and dust from his plate and shoulders.

Michelin is also still alive, but his helm took a rock or something and the plate is cracked, not yet through the seal. Still pressurized. All our skintights are okay, miracle of miracles. No rips.

We immediately try to relocate the other tents. Maybe the one has finished inflating. If it hasn’t, or if both got swallowed by another crack or pierced by rocks, we’re down to nothing, don’t know how we lasted this long, must have been mere minutes yadayada all the shit that fills one’s head as the body does, like a robot, like a trained dog, what it’s supposed to do to keep your pretty soul wrapped in flesh.

We find the tent. It inflated, but then—ruptured, big holes where rocks went through. But the canisters still have air and we take turns charging our skintights. Just a few minutes’ worth.

Where’s Vee-Def? Neemie?

We find the second tent box. Shadows close in around my eyes like groping fingers. My lungs are awful balloons filled with fire.

Tak inflates the tent. The noise all around has returned. It’s unrelenting. Mars is cosmically bitching: whistling, hissing, sighing—then, letting out with a shrill, high scream as something much too grand shoots overhead. More big stuff coming down? No way to know. The gray canopy of clouds still looks solid. The local pools still bubble and spit mud, local air still feels thick, but everything is cooling rapidly, and now the water is turning into steaming, crusty, carbonated ice—sinking into the dust or soaking into hardpan.

Fog suddenly condenses all around. It’s like a big Walt Disney brush painting us over. We can’t see much of anything. Wiping my faceplate, fingers streak away dust and water. The water vanishes from my fingertips and leaves just the dust. Never even had time to become mud.

I pick my way around and kick at the last of the snow, vanishing before it can liquefy. This stuff is not water! Like dry ice or something else. Weird.

Something in me remembers where Michelin was, and I turn just enough to walk back and find him. He’s trying to get up. Tak bumps into me. We both check Michelin over. His eyes are wide, concerned. He swipes at the fog.

Tak holds up five fingers.

My cheeks hurt I’m grimacing so hard.

Kazak joins us. The fog begins to clear, swirling up and away in ghostly eddies. The sky shows patches of grainy black. Funny I haven’t noticed the sound for a while, but it’s down to a constant brumble-grumble with odd pops that make my ears hurt.

Then it gets real quiet. That’s not much better, in my opinion. We all stand hands on shoulders, supporting each other, supporting Michelin, who’s regaining his balance, some of his strength, touching his faceplate, no doubt wondering how he made it through.