The Mars Shock (24 page)

“Go! Go! Go!”

The usual gale whipped across the roof of the MFOB, carrying horizontal streamers of dust. It felt like a gentle breeze. The Martians stood in a confused huddle, not knowing which way to go. Colden waved her carbine towards the catwalk. They had to get down to the staging area, and all the way across the launch pad to the ramp, and then she had to lower the ramp for them, and they had to
hurry.

Skeletal fingers of light stabbed up past the edge of the roof.

Into her eyes.

Dim, hulking shapes bounded through the dazzle, onto the roof. The lights behind them silhouetted a dog’s-head helmet and a gun the same as the one she was carrying.

Hawker’s voice ripped into her ears. “Colden! What the fuck are you doing?”

“Well, I started off trying to throw them out,” she said. Her laugh sounded strange, not like her. “But now I think I might be helping them to escape. They aren’t at all keen on this place, you know. Didn’t care for our freshly grown corn and beans. And the entertainment confused them. But mostly they think they’re not safe here, and Hawker, they’re bloody well right.”

“We’ve taken every fucking precaution!”

“You haven’t taken any precautions at all!”

“Well, we did not plan for this eventuality. Nope, I admit that. It did not occur to anybody that one of our own would sign for a carbine and come up here and shred the fucking refugee center.”

“I haven’t
shredded
it. You can take the airlock out of my back pay, although that would be a bit unfair considering I’m saving our lives,
and theirs!”
Colden pushed some Martian children forward. The helmet lamps that were shining in their eyes clumped and regrouped. The grunts were blocking the way to the catwalk. “Hawker, please!”

“I am ordering you to stop.”

“Just let them go!”

She got in among the grunts and began to shove them apart. When they wouldn’t move, she kicked them in the balls. These suits had no crotch protectors. Howls of agony ensued … but for once, no one laughed.

A few Martian children darted through gaps in the cordon and fled down the catwalk, like rabbits let out of a cage.

“Colden, I am pleading with you. Look, I’m from Brixton. Did you know that? I bet you’re from not too far over. You’re posh and I’m not, but we’re in the same fucking boat out here. Colden, don’t give up. This is a huge breakthrough, and you
will
get credit, Squiffy told me so himself …”

The suggestion that she was pissed off because she hadn’t received her fair share of credit did it. She swung to face him. In a furious gesture, she pointed her carbine at him, as she would have if she were a phavatar, if the carbine were attached to her arm.

“First of all, I’m not posh. And second of all, have you forgotten what I told you? I’m not from the bloody FUK at all. I’m from Rwanda.”

Pain whited out the right side of her body. Threw her writhing to the deck. Pain dragged a raw, inhuman scream from her throat.

She understood that Hawker had shot her.

She even understood why.

The last thought that whispered through her fading consciousness was:
Suit breach. Suit breach. Suit breach.

xv.

Infantry captain Roland Hawker sat on the edge of his bunk, his elbows on his knees. His fingers worked at the thin places in the knees of his jeans.

“I thought she was going to shoot me.”

“I know.”

“So I shot her first.”

“Of course, it’s natural.”

“It’s what I’ve become.”

“You couldn’t have known …”

“I didn’t know she was out of ammo!”

“I don’t blame you,” Kristiansen said. “Nobody blames you.”

“No, that’s why I’ve been taken off active duty.” Hawker looked up at him with red-rimmed eyes. “What makes it your fucking business, anyway? This whole clusterfuck is your fault, you NGO asshole. If it hadn’t been for you, twatting around with your fancy medibots and your patronizing attitude, none of this would have happened.”

“That’s precisely why it’s my business,” Kristiansen said levelly, “and I’m going to ignore your extreme rudeness because I know you’ve been a friend to Colden.” He paused. “I was a friend of hers, too.”

“Fucking hell, she’s not dead yet!”

Hawker’s words hung in the stale air of the cabin, at once a warding-off and an omen.

“I mean,” Kristiansen stumbled, “I was a friend of hers in the past, but I don’t know if I am anymore. We haven’t been in touch in years.”

“Oh.”
A spark of interest gleamed in Hawker’s eyes. “You were shagging her.”

“We were engaged to be married.” This actually wasn’t true, but Kristiansen felt the need to shield Colden’s reputation from Hawker’s vulgarity.

“Wow. Strike me blind.” Hawker shook his head. His animation ebbed. He resumed picking at the knees of his jeans. “I actually thought you’d come down here in your professional capacity.”

“Are you having symptoms?” Kristiansen asked automatically. Hawker clearly
was
having symptoms—of shock and depression. Kristiansen didn’t need the medical dictionaries that had been on his BCI to make
that
diagnosis. It was quite obvious. He also suspected chronic morale juice abuse. That could have played a role in the shooting.

“No, not me,” Hawker said. “I thought you were coming to ask about her. I’m not thinking straight.”

“Is there something I should know?”

“Her condition’s not changed, has it?”

★

No, it hadn’t.

Down on 00 deck, in the scrubbing area, Colden lay on a narrow bunk in a hastily constructed quarantine cell. It wasn’t the same one Kristiansen had occupied for 48 hours, but it was identical to it. For a few hours they had unknowingly lain next to each other, separated only by thin sheets of plastic.

Hastily constructed didn’t mean flimsy. The cells had been printed in one piece, and were non-porous to sound and smell, as well as, of course, nano-particles. Lying in there—it was possible to stand, but only just, in the crack alongside the bunk—Kristiansen had felt like he was in a coffin waiting to be buried.

They’d let him out this morning with a clean bill of health. It had felt like a second chance at life. It was also a gratifying vindication of Medecins Sans Frontieres’ technology. He’d
told
them he was OK, because the only time he’d taken off his suit was inside the Evac-U-Tent. Their skepticism had had him doubting it himself for a while, but he’d been right. His survival was the best possible testimonial for the excellence of the Medimaster 5500. He’d been elated.

Until they told him what had happened to Colden.

She’d been shot.

But that was nothing next to the
consequences
of getting shot, outside.

Nanites.

He stood outside her quarantine cell, looking through the plexiglass observation window. He was looking at the top of her head, the same stubbly braids that he used to see on the pillow next to him in the morning. She had a centimeter of fuzz at her roots. He remembered how she used to complain about getting her braids done, how long it took and how hard it was to find anyone who knew the technique—apparently, braiding African hair was one of those things bots just couldn’t manage. He used to one-up her with humorous complaints about how hard it was to find anyone who could put up with … well, a certain attribute of his masculinity! And how lucky he was, he would say, to have found
her.
Then she would punch him, quite hard.

God, what a dickshit he’d been.

Now she lay on her back, immobile. A blue Star Force blanket covered her from neck to toes. It was tucked in so tight he could see the outlines of the bandages encasing her torso. Her chest rose and fell. They’d sedated her while her wounds were dressed, and she was still out cold. He felt selfishly glad of that.

Her awakening would be terrible.

Unless he could save her.

He left the scrubbing area and went back out to the garage. Grunts and mechanics edged away from him as if Colden’s ill luck might cling to him. He walked to the entrance of the garage and pretended to look out at the weather. As usual, the sky was overcast with a high chance of dust storms.

He hadn’t been able to help Murray.

He was going to help Colden, or die trying.

★

Danny Drudge saved his game of
PlanetKillr X
and logged out. He’d won a bottom rack off Watty in their latest gin rummy tournament; it gave him extra space to store his stuff. He reached under his bunk and pulled out his gecko boots. Then he pulled out a large, knobbly bundle of shrinkfoam, with a horsetail of twang cords sticking out of the top.

Carrying this nonchalantly over one shoulder, he crossed the forest to the EVA staging area.

He already wore a spacesuit liner. It was chic to lounge around in your liner. You looked rude! The girls could see your package, uh huh! He pulled on one of the heavy spacesuits hanging in the supply closet. Botched it first try—he’d forgotten you had to take your gecko boots
off,
then put them on again
over
the suit—but that was OK. No one had been watching. Well, except for the security cameras, of course.
Fuck you, Security.
He showed a middle finger to the cameras as he dropped into the airlock.

Fuck you, Squiffy Jackson.

YOU let her get a suit breach.

Down in the garage, the Engineering hombres and chicas nodded hello. Hawker, waiting by his refurbished Death Buggy, gave him a fist-bump

They did not exchange a word until they were well out of Alpha Base’s wireless range.

“Did you see that?” Hawker said.

“Did I see what?”

Loose sand squirted from the Death Buggy’s wheels. They rounded a butte, and lost sight of Alpha Base.

“When we were leaving the garage.”

“All I saw and all I see’s this ugly fucking planet.”

Drudge knew people back home in San Diego who didn’t believe Mars existed. Some of them thought the UN had invented it to cover up an invasion by aliens from the Andromeda Galaxy. Others didn’t even
know
Mars existed. All they knew was the location of the Guaranteed Basic Income machine, and the alternate universes that they simmed on their cheap BCIs.

Drudge had volunteered for Star Force to get away from all that. He hadn’t regretted his decision for one minute. But Mars sure was one ugly piece of real estate. This rocky desert made southern California look like the Garden of Eden. He remembered the NASA terraforming model in Conurbation 243. Trees covering these red slopes, no more dust clouds boiling down off them, but waterfalls … Those medieval dudes had been smoking some sick shit, if they had truly believed they could make
that
happen.

Hawker’s voice jolted him back to the present.

“He was climbing the catwalk.”

“Who was?”

“Kristiansen. He was going up to the refugee center.”

“Ain’t he seen enough of those muppets yet?”

“They’re not muppets, Drudge. They’re people.”

“Whoops.” Drudge glanced uncomfortably down at his bundle. “People,” he repeated. “Yeah.”

“Kristiansen was probably going up there to take piccies for his next presentation. His outfit is going to bid for the contract to build a refuge in the Belt. That’s what it’s all about, Drudge. What it was all about from the start. Money, money, money.”

“True that.”

★

Kristiansen cycled the airlock of the refugee center. Breathing his suit’s air supply, he watched clean—but unsafe—air jet out white from the pressurization vents in the chamber. The airlock had been fixed overnight, the born-agains caught and herded back in.

The children were asleep, sprawled on top of their sleeping-bags, a jigsaw puzzle of mostly-naked brown limbs. Stephen One was making the rounds, checking on each child, singing snatches of their song, like a lullaby. He didn’t acknowledge Kristiansen’s presence until Kristiansen turned up his external speaker. “It’s me, Kristiansen.”

“Doch?”
[And?]
Stephen One gave him a frosty look.

“Are they OK?” Kristiansen stooped over the nearest child, peering at its closed-off sleeping face.

“You might tell them to turn down the heat. It’s too hot in here.”

The temperature in the refugee center was a comfy 25 degrees.

“Noted,” Kristiansen said. Of course, it made sense that the Martians were used to spending most of their time in a sub-zero environment. No one had thought of that. What
else
hadn’t they thought of? He knew he should inquire further, but he was in too much of a hurry. “Stephen One, I need you to do something for me.”

“What?” Stephen One threw himself down on an ergoform and tore open a packet of gorp. He sang softly:
“Stephanus, vir sanctus …”