W. J. BOGGS watched the digital chronometer mounted above the pilot’s seat: the green-lit display told him it was now 1725 hours. His gaze shifted down to a status board next to his left elbow, to a single LED which stubbornly remained dark. He stared hard at the tiny light, willing it to blink, but it defied his silent admonition to come alive.
C’mon guys, he thought, you can still make it…
The indicator next to the one in question suddenly flashed red, fooling him for a moment until he realized that it was the main airlock light. He let out his breath and looked over at L’Enfant; the commander was sitting in the left-hand co-pilot’s seat, apparently watching the last scarlet glow of sunlight fading over the western horizon. Although L’Enfant’s mind seemed to be focused elsewhere, the palm of his right hand still rested on top of the gun in his lap.
‘Has Lieutenant Swigart come aboard?’ he asked without looking away from the sunset.
Damn, but the bastard hardly missed a trick. Boggs prayed that L’Enfant hadn’t noticed his attention to one particular idiot-light. ‘She’s cycling through the airlock now,’ Boggs replied. L’Enfant didn’t say anything, but a corner of his mouth twitched downward and his hard eyes darted toward him. ‘Sir,’ Boggs added.
‘Hmm. Very well. You may initiate lift-off as soon as she’s with us.’ L’Enfant’s gaze moved back to the gondola windows. ‘You know,’ he said conversationally, ‘it has always amazed me how the autumn sunsets here are so much like those on Earth. Just as there, the sun goes down a minute earlier each day as the winter solstice grows closer, until we begin to see darkness in late afternoon. All we miss are the leaves changing color…’
He looked towards Boggs again. ‘Quite a bit of synchronicity between the two worlds, isn’t there, Mr Boggs?’
‘If you say so, sir.’ Boggs glanced up at the chronometer again. 1727 now. ‘We ought to wait until the sun’s completely down, y’know, before we take off. The wind picks up quite a bit right at sundown, so taking off before it gets calm could be tricky. I had sort of the same trouble a few days ago when we were leaving Arsia. The ship bucked like a…’
‘No.’ L’Enfant’s response was cold and flat, leaving no room for argument. ‘We lift off at seventeen-thirty precisely, as we agreed earlier. No later. I’m certain you’ll be able to manage the wind-shear, Mr Boggs.’
Boggs silently nodded his head, pretending to study the checklist in his lap. L’Enfant’s eyes moved away once more; Boggs surreptitiously checked the status board again. The indicator had yet to flash red.
Goddammit, Nash, get in there! Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten already…!
He heard footfalls on the gangway leading down into the gondola, then a heavy weight was dropped into the passenger seat behind him. Boggs looked around to see Megan Swigart—still wearing her skinsuit sans helmet and gloves—pushing an airtight aluminum attaché case the rest of the way into the seat. ‘I’ve gathered the remaining records, Commander,’ she said. ‘All the CD-ROMs from the command module are in the case and the mainframes have been scrubbed.’
‘Good work, Lieutenant,’ L’Enfant said distractedly, still watching the sunset.
‘Nothing to it.’ Swigart smiled casually as she tugged the strap of her Steyr off her shoulder and carefully propped the assault rifle against an armrest. ‘Piece of cake.’
Boggs clamped his jaw together as he forced his eyes away from the attaché case. The bitch had just destroyed all the hard data gathered by the science team over the past three years, and she called it a piece of cake. All records of their labor were collected in the attaché case. Although only L’Enfant knew what he intended to do with the CD-ROMs, Boggs could well imagine their final fate: a small cache of information, classified Top Secret and hidden within some Pentagon AI system, where the names of Kawakami and Isralilova and Verduin and all the others would appear only as minor footnotes and indices.
Perhaps that was the whole point of Kentucky Derby, the hidden agenda of those who had sent L’Enfant to Mars in the first place: to steal information, carrying it off in the night like a half-ass thief snatching gold-plated candlesticks from a church altar. All this, just to gain a temporary advantage over imaginary enemies…
‘Very well.’ L’Enfant sat up straight in his seat, shifting the gun around in his lap as he began to buckle up for takeoff. He paused halfway through pulling down the harness straps and glanced over his shoulder at Swigart. ‘And, ah…just to be on the safe side, did you…?’
‘Yes sir, I checked the base perimeter.’ Swigart was seating herself behind L’Enfant, obviously to keep Boggs within gun-range in case he had any homicidal notions. ‘Nothing moving in the vicinity. All clear.’
‘Very well,’ he said. ‘Just checking.’ Was it his own imagination at play, or did Boggs detect the slightest hint of relief in L’Enfant’s voice? The commander buckled his waist and shoulder straps, then looked over at the pilot. ‘Mr Boggs, it’s now seventeen-thirty hours. Please take us out of here.’
Oh, Christ. Miho…
For an instant, Boggs was tempted to reach across the aisle, grab the smug asshole by the throat with both hands, and ram his balding skull straight through the cockpit windows. Even if he or Swigart managed to plug him during the act, at least he’d have the satisfaction of seeing the sick fuck die before instant decompression snuffed out all their lives. If Boggs was going to hell, he might as well take this raving maniac down with him…
‘Yes sir,’ he murmured instead. He let out his breath and swiftly buckled his own seat harness. The blind obedience of a coward who wanted to stay alive just a little while longer.
The Akron was already refueled and powered-up; all he had to do was sever the mooring cables, vector the engines and throttle up. Boggs deliberately forced all thoughts of Miho Sasaki from his mind as his eyes swept across the myriad gauges, screens and LCDs, automatically checking to see that all systems were flight-ready. Everything was copacetic, except for the stone in his chest.
As he grasped the yoke in his left fist and curled his right hand over the throttle, he stole one final glance at the aft maintenance-hatch indicator near his left elbow…
The LED was pulsing a vivid, bright red.
He stared at it, blinked…and, just as suddenly as it had appeared, the indicator went dark again.
Someone had opened the aft maintenance hatch in the lower stern of the Akron and closed it again. Just like all those times at Arsia Station when he had to bug the ground crew about making sure the damn thing was latched. Except, this time, there was no flight crew on hand to resecure the hatch.
Nash was alive…and he had remembered.
And if Nash had made it out of the Labyrinth, there was a good chance Miho had escaped as well. There was no way to make sure that they were both aboard, though, without tipping off L’Enfant and Swigart. All he could do was hope.
Nonetheless, it was difficult to refrain from grinning. Boggs quickly coughed into his fist to hide an involuntary chuckle, then wrenched his attention back to his controls. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Everyone strapped in? Okay, let’s hit it…’
He reached up, grasped the cable-detach bar, and yanked it down.
There was a sudden lurch as the airship freed itself from its mooring lines. Nash had already anticipated it, but Sasaki was unprepared for the abrupt motion. Caught off-balance, she was thrown across the catwalk railing; it caught her in the stomach and she nearly toppled over before Nash grabbed her by the hips and hauled her back. Through her helmet, he caught a glimpse of her blanched face.
No wonder. If she’d gone over the rail, Miho would have fallen twenty feet until she ripped through the skin of one of the internal gas cells…and then it would have been another fifty-foot drop through the cell itself until she smashed against the Akron’s internal skeleton, or even hurtled through the Mylar outer fuselage.
She grasped the opposite railing with both hands and placed her feet firmly on the gridded catwalk. Already they could hear the drone of the engines as they were throttled up; there was the familiar rising sensation as the Akron began its ascent. Miho started to place her helmet against Nash’s, but he signaled for her to reactivate her comlink, raising three fingers to indicate the third channel.
They had deliberately continued radio-silence even after they had reached the top of the secondary tunnel and climbed through the partly-disassembled roof of the great cavern. As Miho had predicted, they had emerged from the catacombs in the City Square, amidst the four major pyramids. It hadn’t been difficult to climb through, since most of the groundcover had already been removed by the pseudo-Cooties. Even then, however, they had barely been able to reach the Akron in time; they had been forced to hide behind a corner of the C-4 Pyramid until almost the last minute, when Swigart finally boarded the airship and enabled them to make a frantic dash for the maintenance hatch beneath the dirigible’s stern.
Sasaki hesitated, then tapped her fingers against her skinsuit’s right gauntlet. ‘Are you certain we should be doing this?’ she asked.
It was a relief to be able to hear her voice distinctly again, without the muffling effects, of helmet-to-helmet communications. ‘Positive,’ Nash said. ‘They won’t be using the comlink themselves while they’re down there, and I doubt they’ll wander up here.’
She still looked worried. ‘What about Waylon?’
‘If he’s been paying attention, he must know we’re back here. He won’t get them to make an inspection.’ Nash could only hope this assumption was true; they were running thin on luck already. ‘C’mon, we have to get to the blister. Just make sure you always keep one hand on something firm.’
She shook her head, completely grim-faced. ‘Don’t worry. One lesson was enough.’
It was dark inside the envelope, but not completely opaque; the luminescent fiberoptics that lined the central catwalks and ladders radiated an orange glow across the mammoth gas cells. Nash led her down the center of the Akron, retracing the path he had taken during his previous in-flight inspection of the envelope, pulling against the railings to compensate for the upward tilt of the deck. The airship shuddered as it gradually ascended to cruising altitude, its engines moaning on either side of them. It was the second time in the last hour that they had been forced to make such a steep climb; first the upper galleries of the Cootie underworld, now this. Again, Nash felt his battered stomach muscles cry in pain. He clenched his teeth and forced himself onwards.
He located the central ladder and began to make the long climb to the upper gangway, pausing now and then to look down and make certain that Sasaki wasn’t running into any more trouble. If she was having any problems, though, she didn’t show it. She carefully clung to the ladder rungs, never once looking down. She paused on the ladder, resting for a moment, and glanced up at him.
‘Much further?’ she asked, her exhaustion plain in her voice. Her breath was coming in ragged gasps; the woman had been through a lot today.
‘Not much.’ Nash was whipped as well. He waited another few seconds until they had both caught their breath, then continued to scale the ladder. ‘We’ve only got a little further to go. Then we can relax.’
They reached the upper gangway several minutes later; once they were there, Nash gave Sasaki a few minutes to get her wind again before he retraced his steps to the topside observation blister. There was room enough for both of them to squeeze inside comfortably; unfortunately, though, it wasn’t pressurized. Nash regretted that omission. The inside of his skinsuit was already beginning to smell, and he had no doubt that Miho’s suit also had the odor of stale sweat.
‘No food, but I guess that can’t be helped.’ He bent down and pulled the hatch shut behind them. ‘You’ll have to ration your water intake, too.’ He grunted as he dogged the hatch shut. Now that it was closed, the rumble of the engines was effectively muffled. ‘It’s going to be a long ride home, that’s for sure.’
She didn’t answer. When he looked up, he saw that she was standing beneath the Plexiglas bubble, silently gazing toward the rear of the airship. He stood up and huddled against her to look out of the dome.
Darkness had fallen over the Martian landscape. During their long climb, the Akron had reached cruising altitude and had leveled out. The ground below them was completely invisible; the airship’s navigational beacons flashed blue and red on either side of the delta-shaped fuselage, reflecting dully off the solar cells. Above them, the stars were beginning to appear in the night sky, cold and untwinkling in the black depths of space.
‘When it comes,’ she said, ‘shut your eyes and turn away. Don’t look at the flash, whatever you do.’
For a moment, he didn’t know what she was talking about. Then the chill realization hit him and he glanced at his heads-up display. The chronometer read 1829:45:38…fifteen seconds and counting.
Had it taken that long to make it up here? Worse yet, he had almost completely forgotten about what they had left behind.
‘God…’ he murmured.
‘God has nothing to do with it,’ she said, her voice low and tense. ‘Get ready.’
Nash instinctively fastened his arm around her shoulders; after a moment, he felt her arm slide around his waist, yet he felt no comfort in her embrace. Had Boggs been able to gain sufficient distance in time? It was impossible to tell. He fastened his gaze on the changing digits of the chronometer.
‘Five…four…three…’ Sasaki repeated the countdown as a steel-voiced monotone. ‘Two…one…don’t look! Get down!’
He caught the briefest glimpse of a silent white-hot flash in the far distance, illuminating the line of the western horizon, before Sasaki savagely yanked him beneath the lip of the dome. Nash hugged her against him as they crouched within the dome, squinting against the sudden glare that surged through the blister.
Even though his eyes were tightly shut, for an instant it seemed as if he could see through his eyelids: a silent blast of nuclear light, bright as a supernova.
The glare intensified, then seemed to recede. He started to stand up, but Miho held him tight against her. ‘No!’ she shouted. ‘Wait for the noise! Wait for the…!’
An immense sledgehammer of sound, impossibly loud and dense, swung solidly against the airship. He felt the Akron careen forward as the Shockwave slammed into its broad stern, its nose tilting toward the ground.
Still clinging to each other, he and Sasaki were hurled against the far end of the blister. He barely heard Miho scream through the comlink as the impact knocked the air from his lungs; there was a sharp, ragged pain in his ribs as his skinsuit backpack drove itself against his bruised rib cage. He gasped, fighting for breath, feeling his bladder involuntarily void itself…
They were going down. The blast had nailed them. The Akron was going down…
Then the violence and the roar faded away, and as it did, he felt the airship slowly begin to rise again. The floor of the observation blister gradually became horizontal once more.
Nash hesitantly opened his eyes. There was a suffused reddish-white light coming through the blister, spreading outward from the direction of the detonation. Sasaki disentangled herself from his arms; he let her go and struggled to his feet, staring out of the bubble at the unearthly light.
The false dawn of the nuclear explosion was already diminishing, but that wasn’t what attracted his attention. Against the black sky, a new star was quickly rising into the heavens: a small, indistinct orb, strangely flattened at the bottom, was climbing into space atop a streak of fire. Hurtling towards an escape velocity it had awaited since the dawn of human civilization.
‘Pikadan,’ Miho said softly.
He looked at her, but said nothing. ‘They called it the pikadan,’ she said in response to his unasked question. ‘The survivors of the Hiroshima bombing gave it a name…the “flash-sound” of the bomb going off.’
Her eyes remained fastened upon the ascending alien vessel. ‘My grandfather used to tell me about it when I was a child. He was blinded by the explosion, but he could still remember the last thing he saw before he…’
She stopped talking as her legs suddenly buckled beneath her. Nash grabbed her in his arms as she collapsed; he carefully lowered her to the deck and laid her on her back, then checked her oxygen feed and examined her face through the light of his helmet lamp. For a minute, he was frightened that her life-support system had somehow failed. He checked the digital readings on her chest unit and let out his breath. No, that wasn’t the problem. She had simply fainted.
‘It’s okay,’ he muttered. ‘Sleep now…you deserve it.’
Nash stretched her legs out and folded her hands together over her stomach, then squatted next to her within the blister. The glare of the explosion had disappeared; looking up through the bubble, he could see the shooting-star ascending into the galactic heavens.
‘You’re going home,’ he whispered, watching the new star. His eyes felt heavy-lidded. ‘I hope it was worth it.’
He let his eyes close and his head fall backwards as a warm, comforting darkness reached in to take him for its own.