Red Planet Run (29 page)

“Got it.”

I gave him a fierce hug. “All right. Bring us down. The rest of you listen up. So far as we know, we got six bad guys down there, and two friendlies. We don’t know that one group has encountered the other, but we go in on the assumption they have, and that the good guys are prisoners. Remember that before you pull the trigger. All right? Okay, suit up. Sean, you keep your pistol. Paddy, where’s the spare?”

“Here.” She shoved it at me. “It’s charged. Here’s an extra pak.”

“Okay.” I hauled everything out to the corridor and started climbing into my suit. As I was about to lock down my helmet, the
Kayak
gave a sudden jar and I almost lost my balance.

“We’re on the hook, Mom!”

“Okay.” A moment later there was another jar. “Are we fast?”

“No. Yes! Yes, we are!”

“Start the winch.”

My helmet sealed into the neck ring and his voice came tinnily over the headset. “Starting winch, aye.”

“Okay, everybody got their headsets on?” De Caro didn’t but he switched it on quick enough when I smacked his helmet with an open gauntlet. “Everyone switch over to Channel One. It’s an in-house frequency we use for maintenance; it doesn’t work farther than ten meters, so even if Kwan’s got it, he won’t hear us until we’re in his lap.” I switched back to Channel 9 and told Sean. “You monitor both channels, in case Woolley or the Champollions have something to say.”

“Roger that.” We all felt the nudge of the gondola as it sidled up to the Pyramid. “We’re down.”

“All right, one at a time through the lock. Paddy, you first, me last. Sean?”

“I hear. Paddy, watch Mom’s back.”

“I will.” She rotated into the lock, the light went red, then green, and the Fab Four followed. I would have sacrificed a goat if just one of them had been Caleb.

When I emerged on the Pyramid’s surface, the sun was split in two by the horizon but there was daylight to spare for the view that had been wished on me. The gondola hovered over our heads. The surface of the Pyramid was caked with red dirt set like cement. Sestieri, I saw for the first time, had a length of line coiled around her torso with a jury-rigged grappling hook at one end. She dug it into the surface and tossed out the coil of line. Leaning all her weight on it, she tugged hard. It held, and she offered it to me with a flourish.

I looked at the grappling hook, made of half a sample canister with the edge made jagged, and said dubiously, “You sure that thing’ll hold?”

“I’m an alpinist,” she said. “It’s one of the reasons I’m on this trip.”

Considering the general height of the structures at Cydonia, it was the first thing that made sense all day. She showed me how to loop the line through my legs and over one shoulder. “Sean? One hour from my mark. Mark.”

“Mark, fifty-nine minutes, fifty-nine seconds, and counting.”

He’d never sounded so forlorn, and before the last words were out of his mouth I was on my way down the side of the structure, taking it the way I had taken ladders on the
Kaia
out in the Mother of Storms, sideways and fast. In spite of the angle, I was able to dig in with my boots, although the slant of the building was severe enough that I could see all the way down to ground level between them. The
Kayak
had done her usual sturdy job of putting us right in the gold; in the waning light I could clearly see the crawler and the black rectangle in the wall beside it.

Five minutes later I slid to a halt next to the entrance. I belayed my end of the line while the rest of them scrambled down. “Art, check the crawler, the rest of you—” With the exception of Paddy, the rest of them had yet to unsling their weapons. I’d had my pistol in my hand from the instant my feet touched down. “Man those rifles, dammit, and train them on the entrance! No, Sukinek, that means point them at the door, not at my daughter. Art, check the crawler.” Paddy had already flattened herself against the door frame. “Do you see anything, Paddy?”

“I think there are stairs, like the G—like the other structure. And light, same thing, but it’s up a ways.”

“Anything moving?”

“No.”

“Art?”

He came panting up behind me. “It’s our crawler. It’s empty, and it looks like it’s been looted.”

“Sounds like Kwan, all right. Paddy, ignite a flare and toss it inside.”

“Something else, Star,” Art said. “Those tracks we saw the rover making? They’re all over the place.”

“Maybe they’re all still on board,” de Caro quavered. “Maybe only Tom and Jeannie will be inside.”

That was so silly I didn’t bother answering it. Paddy twisted the top of the flare and heaved it inside the open door. A moment later, the interior lit up. Nobody shot at the flare, and as Paddy had said, there was a flight of stairs leading back up in the direction of the top of the Pyramid. I groaned to myself. “I’ll take the point, Paddy; you bring up the rear. Shoot anything that moves behind you. You people got your safeties on?”

“Yes.” “Yes.” “Yes.” “I think so.”

“Who said that?” I fairly screamed.

One p-suited figure held out his rifle. “Uh, me.”

“The red button, Art—depress the red button; depress the green button only when you mean to fire. You think you can keep that straight?”

“Yes.”

“See that you do. I’m in front. You stumble one time and that thing goes off, then
you’ll
be in front. Okay, Paddy?”

“Okay, Mom.”

“Okay. I’m going in.” I took a deep breath and ducked inside, knees bent, pistol swinging to cover the stairs. There was no one on them. “All clear. Come on.”

As in the pillar in the Tholus, the stairs went up forever, and then they went up forever some more. I stopped counting after I reached a thousand. Sweat was running down the inside of my suit, and my life support systems were operating in the max. At this rate my waste receptacle would be full before it could recycle enough to make room for more. Even as the thought passed through my mind, a red light flashed inside my helmet. “Damn. Hold it. Everybody check your johns.”

“I’m almost full, Mom.”

“Me, too. Okay, everybody take five and empty them out.”

“What about dehydration?” somebody said. “Shouldn’t we wait for the fluid to recycle?”

“There’s no time—just do it, dammit!” I bent over to fumble at my leg. I could feel the liquid inside sloshing around, and groped for the manual drain. It popped and I watched the fluid pour out to puddle on the step. It took a second to hit me.

“Mom!”

“I see, I see.” I felt around my utility belt. “I can’t reach my sniffer.”

She shoved past the four scientists. “Here. I’ve got it.”

“Turn it on.”

She turned it on, and we hunched over the several digital readouts on the face of the instrument. “See?”

“See what?” de Caro said. “What’s going on?”

I looked up and pointed at the liquid draining from his honey bucket. “This is Mars, right? That should be boiling away into the atmosphere the instant it hits air.”

“It’s oh-two, Mom, and nitrogen, and even a little hydrogen!” Paddy’s voice announced excitedly. “And there’s pressure, almost a thousand millibars!” She looked up at me. “I don’t believe it!”

“Me, either,” I said. The last drop of water drained from my waste collector. I twisted the manual drain closed. When I straightened, I realized that, as in the pillar in the Tholus, the stairs were lighting before us. I switched off my torch.

“Do you mean we can breathe without helmets?” de Caro said.

“That’s what the sniffer says, but it could be wrong. Don’t—”

Too late. De Caro already had his helmet unlocked. I was in front of him in two leaps and I slammed his helmet back down over his head so hard his knees bowed beneath the pressure. “Don’t do that!”

He sounded aggrieved. “Why not? The air smelled fine, if maybe a little stale.”

“It might get you maybe a little dead if you’re not a little more careful. We haven’t come through any locks. Until we do, keep your suits sealed.”

We climbed again. The only communication over the headsets was heavy breathing. I called another halt, made sure everyone drank water and took a salt tablet from their helmet dispenser. Overheating was something the human race had down to a fine art. Not even the best pressure suit could entirely compensate for it.

After a while it seemed I’d never done anything before in my life except climb stairs. My knees felt like spaghetti. Every ten steps I called a halt just to inhale. Hadn’t these frigging Cydonians ever heard of elevators?

I stumbled into the room before I was aware it was there.

There were people there before us.

There was something odd about them; for a moment I couldn’t figure out what. I sucked air into my lungs and blinked my eyes, squinting.

They weren’t wearing suits.

For a second I just stood there and gaped.

They were alive, they were breathing, and they weren’t wearing suits. Most of them weren’t wearing anything at all.

A piece of wall shattered next to my helmet.

They were also shooting.

Acting on a sudden flood of adrenalin, I yelled, “Stay back!” and dove for the floor, coming down arm extended and locked. Through the sight I saw a body sprawled in one corner, naked, with another rutting over it, and without conscious thought I fired. The laser burned through his side with such force that it knocked him off her. His body rolled twice before crashing into the far wall. There was a flurry of shots in our direction and a confused scurry through a doorway on the far wall.

“All right—the rest of you, come on in!” I scrambled to my feet and ran to the woman. She was unconscious, bruised, and bleeding from every bodily orifice. “De Caro! Over here!”

He thudded up next to me. “Oh, Jesus, Jeannie!”

“You’re with her, the rest of you follow me!”

“Mom, wait up!”

I charged out the door, exhaustion forgotten, running on rage. There was another flight of stairs and I took them three at a time without waiting to see if anyone was following me. It was a short flight and one of Kwan’s men was waiting for me at the top with a weapon he’d forgotten to take off the safety. Before he remembered I whipped my pistol across his cheek and with my other hand caught the back of his head and flung him down the stairs behind me.

Someone screamed over my headset. “Oh God, oh Jesus, oh God, oh Jesus,” someone else chanted. “Mom, wait up! Mom, dammit, wait up!”

My last leap took me over the threshold of a room the twin of the top floor of the Tholus, only about five times as big and crusted over with 500,000 years of sand and debris. A line of light ran around the perimeter of the room where the floor met the dome wall. It was empty but for three men, one struggling into a pressure suit, a second banging frantically at a section of the dome with the butt of a rifle, and a third covering me, and this one was ready. But I was pure of heart and mad as hell—and faster. A small red light burned its way into his chest and through his pressure suit, blood flowed out, and he fell, face forward. The first man, suit halfway up his legs, turned to blunder toward the second. It was the last move he ever made. The second man saw him fall, turned and saw us, and started to raise his rifle. “Drop it or I’ll shoot!” The rifle continued to rise, and I burned him down where he stood. Some people never learn.

“Mom?”

Paddy’s voice was high and afraid and I whipped around, only to freeze in place. “Paddy? Baby?”

“Mom?”

The muzzle of a laser pistol was pressed against my daughter’s helmet. He had both bare legs wrapped around her waist, a bare arm around the neck of her suit. He rode her back in a parody of a child playing piggy-back. His face was so contorted with rage that it looked simian, whatever intelligence there was eclipsed by the berserker in all of us. I looked deep into those mad eyes and saw myself looking back. Not again, please, no, not again. Through her visor Paddy’s frightened eyes begged me for help. “No!” I chinned the helmet’s speaker. “Kwan! Let her go!”

“Drop your weapon, bitch, or I’ll kill her!”

I dropped it. It bounced twice and landed a meter away from where Paddy had dropped hers, both of them well out of reach. I held up both hands, palms out. “I’ve dropped it, it’s down. You can do anything you want to me, Kwan, just let her go. Let her go!”

He laughed, a guttural, satisfied sound I remembered all too well, and tightened his hold. Paddy stumbled back a pace. “Kwan! Let her go!”

“Not a chance, darling Star. You know I’ll always love you best, but let’s face it. Your daughter’s younger. She’ll last longer.”

He laughed again, and then suddenly he cried out like a dog whose toe has been stepped on, a high-pitched, indignant yawp. He looked astounded, and in an involuntary movement turned to look behind him. In his moment of distraction Paddy flung off his legs and arm and staggered forward toward me. I shoved her down to the floor and hurtled over her, clawing at the back of my suit for the spare pistol. When I got it out and up, over the sights I saw Kwan fire and a figure fall through the doorway. I squeezed the trigger, and a rose-red flower blossomed between Kwan’s shoulder blades. It spun him around, and he looked down at me with an incredulous expression. Sweating, straining, his trembling hand began once more to bring his pistol up. I shot again, and another flower bloomed on his chest.

His face seemed to collapse in upon itself. He fell, body twitching, pistol dropping, to lie on his back, staring up at the opaque dome curving gently overhead, hands opening and closing as if they were still reaching, clawing for us.

Paddy’s shaken voice broke the silence. “Mom?”

She started to her feet and I pulled her up the rest of the way. “Don’t look,” I said. I holstered my pistol and drew her into my arms, clumsy in my pressure suit. “Don’t look.”

She pulled free. “No. I want to look. I want to know that he’s really and truly dead.”

She walked steadily to the body and looked down.

I walked over to the figure that had pulled itself up to lean against the door frame. It was Evans. I knelt next to him. He had his helmet off and was fashioning a makeshift tourniquet above his right knee. The leg of his jumpsuit was soaked red. His face was white and drawn, his eyes clear and alert. “It’s not as bad as it looks. Second-degree burn, I’d say.” He shifted. “Hurts like hell, though.”