North of Noctis Labyrinthus, Tharsis Plain
Zealand Prefecture
ANNOS MARTIS 238. 7. 18. 12:52
Picture a wide-open plain as broad and flat as the open sea, interrupted by only the occasional stone outcropping. Beneath one of the outcroppings—a green, rolling field split by a narrow dirt road. A warm zephyr blows the tall grass, gently, softly. A swarm of bees rises from the grass, gathers itself into a tight knot, then disappears behind a hill, right before—
Roar!
Over the outcropping we come!
Riding a three-wheeled bike that’s two parts motorcycle and one part rocket. Trying to outrun a Noriker armored truck that’s hot on our six, caked in mud and dirt, its red and blue lights flashing, a warning that we’d better stop if we know what’s best for us.
Ha! Vienne and I are dalit Regulators, mercenary soldiers who do dirty, dangerous jobs for very little pay. We never know what’s best for us.
“The Rangers are back!” I yell into Vienne’s helmet, shouting above the roar of the engine as she leans over the handlebars.
“What did you expect?” Her visor is flipped down, but behind it, she’s beaming as battle rifle shots zip by. “That’s what you get for stealing top-secret military data!”
“It’s your fault they chased us in the first place!”
“My fault?” she calls back. “You’re the one who said to move it! If you’d let me take them out in the Circus—”
“Then there’d be a hundred Rangers, not just two!” Two Rangers who’d tailed us all the way from Christchurch. Twice, we thought we’d ditched them, but they kept picking up our trail. Nothing motivates a Ranger like a runner with a bounty on his head.
A forty-five-caliber bullet whistles past my ear. It hits the handlebars of our motorbike and shatters into a million tiny pieces.
“We’re taking fire! Again!” I shout, my face streaked with sweat, teeth chattering from the choppy road. “You should let me drive! You’re the better shot!”
“I’m the better driver, too!”
Vienne punches the gas, and the engine finds an overdrive I didn’t know existed. We rocket along the hard-packed dirt, almost leaving my stomach behind. For a second the bike seems to float—all three wheels rising above the ground—and my queasy stomach rises with them. Then I make the horrible mistake of looking to my left, where the narrow trail takes us to the thinnest cusp of the canyon.
A kilometer below, a green valley full of wheat and corn stretches out as far as the eye can see.
I’m going to hurl.
“Vienne! We’re going to crash into the canyon!”
She laughs. “Suck it up, Durango!”
The world turns swirly, and my head lolls to one side. Vertigo—it’s my biggest weakness. I wish I could bury my face in Vienne’s back, squeeze my eyes tight, and pretend that we’re not doing 120 kilometers per hour, only centimeters from certain, horrifying, mangling death. But I’m lousy at pretending, and Vienne wouldn’t take kindly to the head-burying idea.
Instead, I turn to the right and face the horizon. The Labyrinth of the Night stretches out like broken fingers across the Plains of Tharsis, forming canyons so deep and wide, they make Earth’s Grand Canyon look like a drainage ditch. Beyond the vista, the mountains of Tharsis rise like triplet mortar shells from the plains. In turn, they are overshadowed by the snow-capped monster of Olympus Mons, the largest mountain in the solar system. It’s so mammoth, Earthers can see it with a handheld telescope.
That’s what they tell me, anyway. I wouldn’t know firsthand. I’ve never been to Earth, and the Hell’s Cross mines will see daylight before I ever go.
“Oh, that’s quite a bit of poetry for somebody being shot at,” says Mimi. “Perhaps you should extricate yourself from Vienne’s admittedly impressive midriff and return fire.”
“I’ll pass,” I subvocalize.
“You will pass?” Mimi says. “Have you forgotten that you are a Regulator? Regulators are required by the Tenets to shoot back. It is a time-honored tradition and an excellent means of survival.”
“Yeah, see, I’m not so big on the Tenets anymore,” I say. “Plus, their bullets can’t penetrate our symbiarmor, which means they can shoot all day, and it won’t amount to a hill of beans.” I check on the Noriker, which is weaving around a rut in the road. “I’m a lot more afraid of crashing to a burning death at the bottom of this canyon than I am of a couple of CorpCom Rangers.”
“Your penchant for stating the obvious is remarkable,” Mimi says.
“Thank you.”
“That was not meant as a compliment, cowboy.”
“Knew that—ow!” A rifle round pops me between the shoulder blades, and I flinch. “That one stung!”
“Explosive ammunition,” Mimi says. “May I suggest, oh, returning fire?”
“This is a waste of ammo, you know.” I pull my armalite from its holster. Flick the switch to full auto and spray a clip of bullets at the Noriker.
Headlamps shatter.
The windshield cracks, and lines spread across the glass, blocking the Rangers’ view. The driver doesn’t even swerve.
The Noriker eats up more trail.
Getting closer.
“They’re gaining!” I say to no one. And no one answers, which is surprising because Mimi always has something smart to say.
“Not always,” she says. “Sometimes, silence is the wisest response.”
Crash! A Ranger’s boot appears through the Noriker’s windshield. The passenger kicks out the rest of the damaged safety glass, and I can see plainly the sunburst insignia on his uniform—Second Cavalry. My father’s old division. It would’ve been mine, too, if not for a string of unfortunate decisions on Father’s part, as well as my complete lack of interest in following in his deep footsteps.
“The irony is thick today,” Mimi says. “So is the manure.”
I start to remind her of the wisdom of silence, as useless as that would be, when the barrel of a rocket launcher appears on the Noriker’s dashboard.
My armor is the most technologically advanced suit on the planet, controlled by a network of nanobots that in turn are commanded by my overly conversant AI. But no symbiarmor ever made can stop a rocket.
Like the rocket that explodes from its launcher with a puff of smoke and comes slithering toward us like a pissed-off scorpion.
“Evasive!”
Vienne jerks the bike hard to her nine. The front wheel catches the lip of a rock slab, and we swing so close to the precipice of the canyon, dislodged rocks and debris fall over the edge. Where they go—
—down, down, down—
—with nothing to stop them.
“Re malaka,” I murmur.
Five meters ahead of us, the rocket explodes.
“Chief!” Vienne shouts. “Get them off my tail!”
The sound of her voice, and the wild swing she makes to three o’clock, rocks me back to reality.
There’s nothing left to do but shoot. “I hate when this happens!”
I let go of Vienne’s waist and climb atop the seat, then engage the grenade launcher attachment on my armalite and reach for my ammo belt.
One grenade left.
One lousy grenade.
“Ja vitut!”
“Waste not, want not,” Mimi says.
“Thank you, George Washington.”
“Ahem. Poor Richard’s Almanack?”
“Thank you, Poor Richard,” I say. “What kind of fossiker would name their son ‘Poor’?”
“Benjamin Franklin wrote Poor Richard’s Almanack!” Mimi yells in my ears. “How does a Battle School graduate who was tops in his class not know the basic literary canon of his forefathers?”
I jam the shell into the chamber. “I’m a soldier, not a hopeless Romantic.”
“No, you’re just hopeless.”
“Har, har.” I pull the gas-powered trigger to launch my last grenade.
The shell tumbles through the air and lands with a clack on the hood of the Noriker. For a nanosecond it hangs there, suspended by wind and gravity, before it rolls forward and out of sight.
The driver points and laughs at me.
I make a hand gesture that calls his parentals’ marital status into doubt as my grenade, which has lodged in the grill, explodes.
Debris blows back into the Noriker cab. As the driver throws up an arm to shield his eyes, the truck hood—unlatched by the explosion—rises up like a metal sail. It flaps in the wind for a second or two, then breaks at the hinges and hammers the empty windshield.
Wham!
The Noriker veers off the trail, a cloud of butterscotch-hued grime encasing it.
“Heewack!” I yell. “That’ll fix the fossikers for shooting at us! Right, Vienne? Right?”
She doesn’t answer, which is weird because as stoic as she pretends to be, Vienne loves a good shoot-out. So I turn around in time to see—
A narrow bridge.
A hundred meters off and closing fast.
Marked by a bright red sign—DANGER: BRIDGE OUT.
“Danger! Bridge out!” I scream. “Vienne! Stop! The wà kào bridge is out!”
“I can read!”
“Then stop! I order you to stop!”
“You’re not giving the orders anymore!”
“No! I take it back! We’re not equals! I’m your chief again, and I order you to halt!”
“If I halt now,” she calls, “those Rangers will stay on our tail! Let’s get rid of them once and for all!”
“And us, too!” I scream. “What part of ‘danger’ don’t you—ieeee!”
Our front wheel hits the lip of the entryway. I bounce back into the seat and squeeze my legs against the growling engine, the pipes so hot they would burn my flesh if not for the symbiarmor.
The bike eats up meter after meter of the bridge. Chunks of pavement fly from the road, flinging themselves into the chasm, and fall, fall, fall into the valley below.
“Why does everything need to fall so far?” I groan.
“Do I need to look up the word chicken in my thesaurus data bank?” Mimi chimes in. “Again?”
“No!” I say. “Because I’m not chicken! I’m just not stupid!”
“Acceptance,” Mimi says, “is the first step to recovery.”
Ahead, a ramp appears out of nowhere, and I’m wondering how a ramp got there when I realize that no, it’s not a ramp; it’s a fallen piece of sheet metal that’s part of a barricade. A barricade that’s also marked DANGER. And beyond the DANGER, there’s a hole. A big, carking gap that separates one side of the bridge from the other.
“Vienne! There’s a huge, carking gap—”
“Lean back!”
That’s the last thing I want to do. I’d rather wrestle the handlebars from her grip. And avoid all areas marked by words written in capital letters. But it’s too late for that. All I can do is think about what my former chief said when I was still a green Regulator: It’s not that heroes don’t know fear, it’s that they don’t let fear stop them from doing the job.
“I love it when you quote me,” Mimi says.
I grab Vienne’s shoulders. Plant both feet on the seat like a snowboarder coming down Tharsis Mons. And hang on for dear life as the bike—
Slams against the ramp.
Sails across the gap.
Lands hard on the other side, with enough force to vault me over Vienne. I roll along the bridge’s metal decking and slam!
Into a concrete barricade.
My armor seizes up to protect me. But for a few seconds, I’m frozen like a statue, my visor flipped up, eyes filled with road grit.
Tires squeal as Vienne slams on the brakes, the front wheel
sliding,
sliding,
sliding toward my head.
“Mimi! Armor!”
“Negative. System is overloaded, cowboy,” she says. “Rebooting now.”
I try to raise a hand to shield my face but can’t budge. I squeeze my eyes shut and mentally brace for the collision . . .
. . . that never comes.
Something lightly touches my forehead. I take a peek. It’s the tire. Tendrils of smoke drift from the rubber, and tiny bits of gravel are wedged between the treads.
“The word danger, “ I tell Vienne, “is not French for go faster.”
She jumps from the bike and throws her arms around my statuelike body. “Yes! Wasn’t that fun? It was just like flying! I always wanted to fly!”
“Next time you do,” I say, sighing, “use a velocicopter instead of a motorbike, okay?”
Mimi chimes in. “System ready. In two.”
The symbiarmor relaxes, and I fall into a heap. I pull off my helmet and gasp, swallowing something that rises from my gut. Then collapse spread-eagled on the decking.
Why is it that I can order a whole crew of Regulators into battle against enemy soldiers, bioengineered insects the size of elephants, and even bloodthirsty cannibals, but I almost wet myself every time I’m more than ten meters above the ground? No matter how many times I face my fear of heights, the acrophobia never goes away. In fact, I’m starting to think it’s only getting worse.
“It is only getting worse,” Mimi says. “Data from your cerebral cortex reports an unprecedented level of corto-steroids in your bloodstream.”
My eyes roll back as relief washes over me. “Thank you for that disheartening report, Madame Curie.”
“I aim to please, cowboy.”
Vienne kneels beside me. “Are you hurt? I didn’t mean to throw you off the bike.” She laughs. “I thought you had better balance than that.”
“And I thought you had more sense than that,” I say. “You. You are going. To get us killed.”
“Poor baby,” she says, patting my cheek. “Your symbiarmor took the hit. Not a scratch on you. Well, maybe one. On your cheek. Right. There. Want me to fix it?”
She brushes my face with the back of her hand. Then leans in for what I hope is a kiss. I lift myself on an elbow, waiting for her, watching her lips purse, her eyes close halfway, then—
Honk! A truck horn sounds.
She jerks away and stands, aiming her armalite at the Noriker as the Rangers pull slowly up to the barricade on the opposite side of the bridge.
“Jacob Stringfellow!” The gunner climbs out the shattered window and stands on the hood. “You’re under arrest for trespassing, capital theft, and destruction of corporate property! Surrender! Or I’ll blow you both to hell and drag your carcasses all the way back to Christchurch!”
“Ow! That’s harsh,” I say. “Whatever happened to ‘Put down your guns’?”
“I can take the gunner out.” Vienne pulls her weapon. “Just say the word.”
“Whoa.” I block her line of sight. “Let’s discuss this and come to a rational decision.”
Giving me a glare that would melt titanium, she drops the armalite on my shoulder, using it as a gun rest. “A Ranger is threatening to defile your corpse, and you want to be rational?”
“Let me try mediation first.” I carefully move the armalite aside and turn around. “Ranger! My friend wants to shoot you. Personally, I’d rather negotiate. What do you say?”
The gunner jumps into the bed of the truck. He throws aside a heavy tarp, revealing a Seneca gun. It’s the same type of chain gun our old Regulator buddy, Jenkins, liked so much. Only it’s bigger.
And fires faster.
With five times more ammo.
“Negotiate this!” A wild spray of bullets rips through the pavement, tearing up a line of divots.
Chunks of asphalt ricochet off my helmet.
“That’s a little close for comfort.”
Vienne squeezes off four quick shots—one to scare the driver and three to chase the gunner off the gun. “Since you won’t let me actually shoot them,” she says, “I see no point in standing around.”
“But—”
She holsters her armalite, then hops on the motorbike. “Going my way?”
“What way would that be?” I slide onto the seat. “Seriously, we’re in no-man’s-land out here. No food. No shelter. Very little coin to speak of.”
She steers around debris, even as the gunner, cursing, sends a wild volley into the steel framework above the bridge. “You want to go to Tharsis Two and steal the rest of your data, right?”
“Of course,” I say, “but we’re not ready to hit the outpost yet. We still need to scout the area, plan the job—”
“Then this is your lucky day,” she says. “Because I know the perfect place to hide out while you do all that scheming and plotting.” There’s a little glint in her eye that scares me. “Hang on tight. We’re going to meet my family.”
“Fam—?” I realize now that I was right to be scared. “Did you say ‘family’?”
“Unless you’d rather stay here and get shot at.”
“Maybe,” I say to tease her and because, well, it’s true. I didn’t even know Vienne had a family, much less one within driving distance.
“When you meet Ma and Pop,” Mimi chimes in, “make sure you do not mention the phrase ‘well-oiled.’”
“Oy,” I say, after trying to think of a smart retort. My brain, however, is no longer connected to my tongue.
Mimi has a laugh at my expense. “You’re so cute when you’re paralyzed with fear.”
“You’re so not cute when you’re trying to be funny.”
“I am not programmed for humor.”
“And I’m not programmed to meet the parents.”
We’re almost clear of the road debris when the Ranger makes a last-gasp effort to stop us. “Halt!” the Ranger screams. “I said, you are under arrest!”
A Hail Mary of bullets chases us. Several rounds hit the metal decking and one bounces off my shoulder, stinging my skin but not causing any damage.
I turn back, lift my visor, and blow them a kiss.
Poor Rangers. I really do feel sorry for the jacks. They chased us hundreds of kilometers for a bounty, and now they’re going home empty handed, having to explain to their superiors why they’re AWOL. Personally, I’d rather be shot than face that punishment.
When we reach a clear stretch, Vienne hits the throttle, and the speed needle surges to a hundred kilometers per hour. The road rises to a hill. Beyond the hill, the ground levels out again, and I see a massive cloud bank, black and angry, floating above the valleys.
The air crackles with energy, and I smell ozone on the wind. It’s a weird sensation to watch a storm from above, to see lightning dance through the clouds, chains of yellow sparks that snap the air. It’s an even weirder sensation when the road suddenly veers toward a narrow gap in the rock formations, and we plunge headlong into the tempest.