Грег Бир - The War Dogs Trilogy

Vee-Def and Neemie come stumbling out of the last unwinding mist. They spot us. Shamble our way. Tak holds up seven fingers. Praise Jesus. We gather around the one intact tent, brush ourselves off as best we can, and crawl one by one through the tent’s tight canal. No immediate appointments. No place else to go. We are tired, lost, beat-up little puppies. Too many for the tent, regulation, but nobody cares. We’ve got air, water.

The ground is still vibrating as I manage to find some sleep. Then, maybe five minutes later, Michelin wakes us by flashing a beam around, and says, sitting up straight, hair on end, full of revelation, “That ice—some of it was dry ice, methane, ammonia—really old shit!”

“So?” Kazak asks, ticked off.

“The Antags dropped a fucking comet !” Michelin concludes, and stares around at us, one by one, jaw agape, impressed by his own intelligence.

We stare back. Fuck yeah. No disagreement.

“Heavy hand, man,” Vee-Def says, shaking his head in admiration. “Taking charge.”

Caught in a weird, ethereal glow as we wake, we untangle, sit up, and one by one, peer through the clear tent panels. Tak’s face when he looks shines like hot bronze.

The sunrise is amazing. I’ve never seen such colors on Mars, like a Pacific island postcard, great streaky plumes of dust catching first light of morning, all red and orange and gold. Our resources are not encouraging. Plus, we’re hungry. We don’t complain, but now we think on it.

We suit up and emerge. The world outside doesn’t seem to have changed substantially, after all the hurly-burly. The brown blur is back, just about where it was. The sky is a little lighter—more dust kicked up—but the snow is gone and the puddles have all fizzed away. It’s once again a dry, desolate hardpan.

Dust settles quickly on Mars, once the wind stops.

We stand out in the cold like anyone would, wrapped in crossed arms, whapping our shoulders, waiting for salvation or at least something different. Skyrines do not stay impressed for long. About the only thing that would impress me now is a portal opening directly ahead and taking me straight to a Jack’s Popper Palace. Beer. Burgers and fries. I’m hungry enough that that would impress the hell out of me.

Kazak hears something. “Sounds like a mosquito.”

“Skell coming,” Vee-Def says. He has the best ears of our small bunch. Tak has the best eyes of anyone in the company; new eyes, brilliant blue. Even so, I spot the Skell-Jeep first, a little bug whining over the horizon. It flies a big chartreuse flag, the color most obvious out here—green and yellow severely lacking on Mars.

The Skell veers to avoid fresh pits and then it’s upon us. Glory yet again—we have our division deputy commander! Lieutenant Colonel Hal Roost, Gamecock to his troops, is driving the Skell while a United Korean sojang , a major general, two small stars attached combat-style to a blaze strap on his chest, rides shotgun. The general cradles a Facilitator—a wide-mouthed rocket launcher. The general also has two Tchikoi flechette pistols strapped to his belt, wrapped in transparent Baggies with finger holes, dusty-desert fashion.

This pair is grim, abrupt, no congratulations, no small talk. Gamecock signals radio silence is still on. Our bad. We are, however, under the circumstances allowed to communicate by scree or laser, angels targeting each other, or by shouting in our helms, and that gives us a chance to clearly hear Gamecock announce that our forces are in temporary disarray.

“We took major sparkly on delivery. The drop was severely fidged. Some orbital jock must have spooked at the first G2O.” Ground-to-orbit. That could explain our high stick release.

“Well, they’re all dead now,” Gamecock says. “Good to see you made it.” Gamecock gestures over his shoulder. “We need to reevaluate our leisure activity. See that blur? That——is a game changer. Probably some sort of Antag factory. We don’t know whether it came down with the dirty ice or was lying there waiting for supplies.”

“Master Sergeant Venn saw it before the strike,” Tak says.

Gamecock nods, good info. “Whatever, now it’s got everything it needs to crank out adverse goodies.”

And to think we were moving toward it. Like jacklighted deer, I guess.

We look at the Korean general, wondering if he’ll contribute anything. His face, behind a dirty faceplate, is haggard. His skintight is exceptionally dirty. He’s been out in the open for some time.

“Pardon,” Gamecock says. “This is General Woo Jin Kwak. He dropped with an eastern platoon the week before we arrived. Lost most of his men. The survivors are south of here. Good news, they’ve found an old Chinese fountain and may have the codes to activate. So that’s where we’re going to regroup. Then, we’re going to attempt to establish two-way with whatever sats are still working and conduct some recon. Learn what’s going on. What’s expected of us. For now, that Chinese fountain is our destination. And it is over there. ” He points south. “We’ll know nothing more about the Antags until we have orders and command tells us go see,” he says. “And to do that, we need to stay alive and accumulate resources.”

“Leave now,” Kwak says, and swings up his arm. Command structure among the signatories in our fight is not supertight, despite the fact we’re supposed to be buddies and cooperate fully. Korean general and all, we don’t move unless Lieutenant Colonel Roost tells us to.

“Climb up, travelers,” Gamecock says.

The Skell-Jeep is big enough to carry us all, if three hang from the waist bars. Tak and Vee-Def and I hang. Gamecock drives us south. Judging by the bent frame and a skewed wheel that thumps us about, the Skell has taken a couple of tumbles and a roll or two since it popped out of its capsule. It’s a real beach buggy ride.

Pretty soon, recent craters become more obvious. The comet chunks split before striking atmosphere. A lot of loose ice skipped around way up there, creating a total impact zone of maybe ten or twenty thousand square klicks. Just guessing. Pinpoint aim considering where comets usually dwell.

I’m asking myself—we’re all amateur astronomers up here—how the Antags can maneuver fucking comets without our knowing, since trans-Martian space is scanned from Earth and the Moon every few hours. Maybe the Antags covered it in soot before moving it downsun. No matter. That level of theory is way above my pay grade, but I stuff it aside in a mental cubby to ponder later, perhaps before returning to timeout.

I like having things to ponder as the Cosmoline sinks in, the bigger and weirder the better. One of my favorite ponders is the Galouye question—is all this, the entire perceived universe, a gigantic computer simulation? There’s a philosopher named Thaddeus Cronkle way down in London who claims he has proven that it is, and that we can run what some boffin or other called a Taylor algorithm to figure out which operating system is running the show. We’re all Neos. Cool shit, that, real calming. Better than contemplating heaven, because all Skyrines go to heaven, not an exclusive club, and if it lets us in, I doubt it’s much like what we’ve been told. Paradise, like Mars, is never what it’s spozed to be.

The Skell takes us through even rougher scenery. There was fighting south of us before we dropped. Remnants of bivouacs lie all around, scattered as if by massive S2G—sky-to-ground—laser or bolts or torpedoes. We watch in respectful silence. There are bodies. Lots of bodies, and they may have taken orders from the Korean general.

He doesn’t look left or right.