Archaea 3: Red (29 page)

I followed my tether into the dust and tried to keep from filling my helmet again.

I wasn’t successful.

*****

I was starting to
stink; running as fast as I could for the ravines I hoped would be somewhere ahead. My heart was up a little more than I would have liked, but I had a lot of run left in me. Hopefully they are still back there, playing cowboys and me.

I laughed, despite the situation.

I was running downwind, which was incredibly disorienting with the dust blowing by. I felt like I wasn’t running at all, but flying backwards. The wind would veer, and damn near trip me every time. It didn’t help most of the time I couldn’t see anything at all, just a red haze. My amps were useless in this.

I checked my map, and
the inertial tracker had me close enough to the drop that I needed to dial it back just a little bit. A low rock with a stream of dust parting around it loomed out of the right, and reminded me how close I was to a cracked suit at this speed, and I decided to dial it back a lot.

The edge was there, at any rate, right in front of me. The swirl and eddy of the dust as the bottom dropped out from under it was unmistakable. I couldn’t see anything down there, as I feared. I spent more time than I wanted hobbling around with my leg dangled over the edge, feeling for a slope I could walk on. Not that I was complaining, but there’s nothing
that motivates like a good solid sniper itch between your shoulder blades.

As soon as my boot stuck, I stepped.

*****

“Think we’ve gone far enough?” I called back down the line
. I know we weren’t moving very fast, but we’ve been moving for quite a while.

“Yeah, Shorty… there’s nothing behind me now. No lights at all.”

“Thanks Captain. I sure wish I knew where we are”, I added. The night was a roar of dust, it filled our world completely. I raised myself up to a low crouch, and angled off to the right again, trying my best to use the wind as a compass in this featureless expanse.

“Nice night you picked for a stroll, Captain”, Gene groused.

“I’ve seen worse.”

“Well, so have I, but this is pretty damn awful nonetheless.”

“Yeah, I’d have to agree, Gene. We shouldn’t be very far away at this point. I keep expecting to see the lights of the outer pans.”

I looked up into the sky, but there wasn’t even the radiant glow a light source might cast through the dust… just inky black with the occasional star flickering by.

“How’s everyone doing for air?” Pauli asked quietly.

I checked my pack and gasped at the orange gauge. “I have about a half hour left”, I answered, shaking away a crushing wave of panic that threatened to sweep me away.

“Same here”, Gene offered.

“Let’s go a little farther, and then curve to the right a bit more to see if we can’t pick up some lights. We’re not in trouble yet. We’ve got to be getting close.”

“I wish we were in range of Janis”, I said softly.

“You are in range, Jane
”, she replied in a burst of static.

*****

The slope below me was getting steeper, and this was starting to look like a no-go. If I breathed slowly, I’d have another fifteen minutes of air left, and there was a few hundred meters of slippery ravine above me. I might be near the bottom, but I might also be near a nasty drop into the rocks, as well. My luck was running out.

At least I was sniper-proof… though the moment I thought that, I checked my
six, and I cursed myself for false hope. It’d just be my rotten luck to see mercs poking their heads over the lip above me.

At least it would be quick.

I looked again down the slope… this was really, really dumb. I didn’t have enough reserves to make it to the Archaea in this. If I drop off this lip, I’d have almost no chance of making it out.

On the other hand, having a
lmost no chance is the same as having some chance, and that’s better than none.

I stepped into the dark.

*****

“JANIS!” I yelled on comms
, relieved almost beyond description. We had to be close now! “Where are you, my darling angel?”

“I am right here, Captain.”

I laughed out loud. “Of course you are my dear, of course you are. Blast pan 13! I guess I need to know where I am!”

“I am not aboard the
Archaea, Captain. I am here.”

*****

My leg hurt, but it was serviceable. My tanks were holding, so I wasn’t hulled. I felt like an idiot, but I was alive. I made it most of the way down the slope, pretty much to the bottom. Not quite all the way, unfortunately. My last step into darkness was about a meter farther than it looked, and I had fallen full length into some of the most uncomfortable rocks this side of the Columbia Gorge. I’ve spent many times at close quarters with rocks of all shapes and sizes, but these were definitely among the least friendly rocks I’ve had the pleasure to meet.

I laid there for a few moments, running through every swear word I knew, doubling down on some of the good ones.

My goose was cooked. I knew the Archaea was vaguely off towards my right, but I didn’t have the air. I was out of time.

Rejecting the inevitable,
I struggled to my feet and started to run.

*****

A light started to glow through the dust ahead of us, and I held up my hand, dropping to a crouch.

“At ease
, Shorty… Janis?” Captain Smith added nonchalantly.

“Yes sir?”

“Is that you?”

“Yes, sir”, she replied, deadpan.

“Where are we?”

“
Literally or figuratively?”

“Figuratively?”

“Oh, you’re lost.”

“Literally?”

“You’re right here. Come on in.”

As she spoke, the walker
loomed out of the howling dust and the hatch cycled open, beckoning us with a soft red glow. I broke all standing Martian speed records skipping up that ramp and diving into the interior.

“Janis, we need to get Yak”, I said
while helping Gene climb in.

“Yes Jane, w
e will. Please secure for travel, everyone. I have lit the rechargers for your tanks. Come forward through the inner lock, and get warm.”

*****

“This is awesome”, I said, cementing my position once and for all as the supreme master of understatement.

“Thank you sir”, Janis replied. “I am very glad you like it. I have decided to call it a crab.”

“That is a perfect name. Does it stand for anything, like ‘Crab Roving Armored Bus’, or is it just a name?”

“Yes, it does.”

I waited… warm in the glow of the soft lights of the console screens, I waited.

“Well, what does it stand for?”

“Sir, it stands for Crab Roving Armored Bus.”

“I guessed it
?” I exclaimed, amazed.

“Guessed what, sir?”

“The name, my sweetest flower… I actually guessed the name?”

“Sorry Captain
. I do like your name however… it’s very recursive.”

“Why did you name it crab, then?
It doesn’t walk sideways, does it?”

“
It certainly could, but that isn’t where I draw the reference, sir. I selected the name based on a resemblance to
limuladae
.”

Shorty
cut in. “A limula-what?”

“A horse
shoe crab, Jane” she replied, “from the depths of Earth’s oceans.”

That made
some sense. I thought the legs articulating along either side of the forward ports looked a little more like a spider, but who was I to judge. I’ve never really seen a horseshoe crab.

Whatever it looked like, the ride was smooth
and fast. Other than inertia from movement, I couldn’t feel the slightest wobble or bump. We were moving right along, too. She had the topography of the plain bump mapped across the forward screen and it was really rolling by... not that there was much to see except the occasional rock, but it looked better than the black swirling dust outside. At least I could tell we were moving.

A thought occurred to me.

“Janis… how did you know where we were? You didn’t have any way to track us, did you?”

“I did not, sir. That I did find you is self-evident, however, so I worked backwards from that point and set off on patrol.”

My head spun a little. “So you just decided to set off into the dark, and go looking?”

“Yes, C
aptain” she said sweetly. “I knew that I would find you, though I wasn’t exactly sure where you were, aside from a rough guess as to position provided by Yak. To try and resolve your position more precisely, I performed a quite complex series of statistical calculations to try and work out your precise position from the gravimetric returns on airborne particulates. Unfortunately, I couldn’t refine my solution beyond a 49.235% variance.”

“Good grief
!” Gene blurted out.

I laughed. “You had a 50/50 chance?”

“Yes, approximately…” she paused a brief moment as a figure lurched out of the gloom ahead of us.

“Yak?”
she called on comms.

“JANIS?” he gasped, as he stumbled into the forward arcs of the crab and tried to peer inside the forward port.

“Steady son”, I replied on comms, waving. “The hatch is open, come on in!”

“Copy that
!” he replied, and disappeared out of view.

I rotated my chair and looked at the dusty, disheveled… and in Pauli’s case, miserable crew arranged around the cockpit in jump seats.

“I have never seen such a sorry set of dust-crusted crewmembers in my entire life.” I chided good-naturedly.

“You should see yourself,” replied Shorty with her standard-issue smirk.

I looked down, and realized every non-smooth surface of my suit was almost completely covered with packed and crusted dust. Every crevice, every joint… I flexed my gloves and the dust seemed to shatter into a soft cloud that fell to the floor.

Right then, Yak cycled through the lock, his helmet popped to make room for the biggest smile I think I’ve ever seen. He kept looking from person to person, as if to lock away a memory.
He looked like a survivor, with his suit covered in dust and frost, smoking lightly in the warm air of the cabin.

I tossed him some water, and he drank it all with a horrendous sloppy gurgling
sound. Pauli’s tone took on an even more pallid green tinge.

“Ah… thanks Captain”, he
choked, folding down a jump seat and throwing himself into it. I noted a slight shift as we started moving again.

“Sure thing son”, I replied. “Did you have all kinds of fun out there, all by your lonesome?”

“OO-rah, sir”, he chanted. “It started out well, anyway. I took care of business on the third sniper—“

“Third?” interrupted Shorty.

“Yep... Janis located one neither of us had noticed, posted up even farther back towards the dome. He was dug in pretty well, set up in support of the others. If she hadn’t told me about him, I wouldn’t have done as well.”

“Well? You kicked a screamer, Yak”,
chided Shorty, handing him a refill with a smile.

“Correction,
mon petit ami,
I actually tossed a rock at it. It was the only thing I could do, and it flushed out the sniper well enough…” he trailed off sheepishly.

Shorty’s eyes grew wide. “You intentionally set off a screamer… close enough to feel it?”

“It was practically at my feet. I was barely out of proximity range.”

“What was that like?”

“Unforgettably horrible… I wouldn’t recommend it for my worst enemy.”

“I can’t imagine… those things are nasty.
Why didn’t you just turn it off?”

Yak nodded and took another pull off
the bottle. “Well, I lack the skills, naturally. You’d have to be a pretty serious gun geek to know how to defuse a screamer.”

Shorty beamed, and he continued.
“In any case, I knew as soon as it lit off, I’d be pulling all attention to myself… but I couldn’t think of anything else that I could do to give you all a chance to make a break for it. I just hoped they didn’t realize I was just a distraction.”

“You big stupid dummy”, Shorty said
softly, with wet soppy eyes. “Next time… I’m going with you”, she sniffed.

He laughed. “I wish you had! We c
ould have easily handled those mooks!” He paused to take stock of where he was. “So you made it back to the ship and came looking for me in… this?” He reached out and touched a bulkhead as if to make sure that it was real.