The Phobos Maneuver (39 page)

He shook her.

“This isn’t your mission! You have a different mission. Do you remember, Tiangong Erhao? Do you remember?”

She just shivered.

Lorna slumped, letting his head rest on the pillow. He could feel vibrations that suggested the operation of heavy hydraulics. Maybe it was already too late.

“I should have gone with Mendoza, I suppose. Oh, well.”

He hadn’t wanted to leave her. Couldn’t bear to leave her, even now. He’d never felt like this about anyone … or anything … before.

★

Mendoza clomped onto the bridge of the
Monster.
His crutch skidded on trash held to the floor by Tiangong Erhao’s deceleration. His helmet lamp pierced the darkness.

Clouds puffed up from his boots, eddying in the beam.

He swept his glove through the fine particles. They adhered to the fabric of his suit. When he rubbed his fingers together the stuff smeared.

“Soot?!”

He lunged through frozen stalagmites of foam around the captain’s workstation.

A hollowed-out shell. The wooden housing had burned. A plastisteel skeleton remained, with melted globs of plastic adhering to it. That was how old the
Monster
was: its primary flight controls had not run off crystal processors, but
printed circuit boards.

Kiyoshi’s throne, behind the workstation, had acquired a sooty patina. The cushions had melted. Looked like Kiyoshi’s cigarette charging outlets had sparked another fire.

“Jun!” Mendoza shouted. Checked the frequency, tried again.
“Jun!”

Terror dried his mouth. He limped to the end of the bridge. The door of the data center was closed. He was afraid to burst in. The data center’s containment might be intact—this door had a pressure seal. He banged on it with his fist.

“Jun!
Are you in there? Are you alive?”

“Get going.” It was barely a whisper.

“No. I’m not leaving you like this.”

“Tell me what you can see.”

Mendoza was about to shoot off a crisp comeback when he realized the cameras on the bridge were down. Jun couldn’t see what had happened to him. He was asking for information.

Mendoza took a step away from the data center. He forced a smile, so Jun would hear it in his voice. “It’s not that bad.”

“It feels bad.”

“Things are just a bit … singed.” He limped over to the refrigerator in the corner, where their own Ghost lived. Or,
had
lived. The fridge had lost power, like everything else on the bridge.

He shone his helmet lamp on the other workstations, realizing that some of them might be salvageable. “Get an emergency generator up here,” he pondered aloud. “Run diagnostics. Break the load-switching automation, use all the undamaged channels—”

“There’s no time for that,” Jun said. “Anyway, it wouldn’t help. I’ve lost my primary flight instrumentation. Do you understand what that means? I won’t be able to escape. I’ll have to go down with Tiangong Erhao. But that’s OK. I told her I’d stay with her.” A whispery laugh. “God has a way of making us keep our promises, sooner or later.”

“How close are we now?”

“Seven minutes past your scheduled launch window. You’ll have to approach Stickney on a shallower trajectory. I’ll send Ron Studd with you to astrogate.”

“Why him?”

“He’s bugging me,” Jun said indistinctly.

Mendoza rocked on his crutch, considering. Then he clambered up onto Kiyoshi’s throne. He settled his butt on the melted cushions and rubbed his stump through his suit. It ached. Actually, his left shin ached, but that wasn’t there anymore, so he had to settle for massaging the stump.

“What are you doing? Where are you?”

“I’m on my way to the Superlifter,” Mendoza lied. “How’s Tiangong Erhao holding up? Is this going to work?”

“It will.”

“It better.” Mendoza’s back teeth buzzed. “I can feel some kind of weird vibration. What’s that?”

“Tiangong Erhao is experiencing goal confliction.”

“That doesn’t sound good.”

“It’s only to be expected. She’s about to land on Mars. There are second thoughts. Regrets.” Jun phrased that oddly. “Hey! I can’t see you.”

“I lied,” Mendoza said. “I’m still on the bridge.”

There was a silence. Mendoza glanced at his oxygen and fluid gauges. He’d topped up in the labs, so he was set for another day. He’d be in good shape when Tiangong Erhao touched down.

“I’m gonna be the first human being to visit Mars since the twenty-second century.” He chuckled. “I think Elfrida would have been proud.”

“She might still be alive, Mendoza.”

“Let’s be honest. The chances of that are slim at best. But that doesn’t mean she’s not watching.” Mendoza’s memories of his near-death experience were never far away. That was what gave him the strength to sit here calmly instead of panicking.

After another minute, Jun said, “You mean I lugged that Superlifter all this way for nothing?”

“Yup, that’s about it.”

“You’ve been hanging out with me too long.”

“Oh, come on,” Mendoza said, smiling. “Give me some credit.”

xxxiii.

The
Thunderjack
was under siege.

As soon as the Flattop crashed, Reldresal’s garrison of Martians had swarmed it. Wielding the same kind of DIY blasters as their cousins on Stickney, they’d hacked their way in through the ship’s weakest points: the launch doors on the flight deck.

Everyone still alive on board—Marines, crew, and Fraggers—had put aside their differences to meet the invaders. That was a nice silver lining, Elfrida guessed.

She lay on a randomly selected bunk in the Space Corps quarters, her arms and legs jerking.

Through the eyes of a former elder-care nurse called April 4922SCM, she saw Martians pouring in through No. 18 launch door. She started running along the catwalk above No. 16 launch avenue. She didn’t have her flechette cannon anymore. None of the phavatars did, because they’d been repurposed to quarry rocks. But they’d taken laser rifles from dead Marines and held the enemy back long enough for the human defenders to escape from 03 Deck. Now Elfrida was trying to reach safety herself.

The Martians had seen her. The catwalk glowed in patches. A section in front of Elfrida sprang up like a drawbridge, severed. She leapt down to the rails and jinked through an arch to No. 15 launch avenue. Pushed off and flew up to the catwalk. All the launch avenues led in the same direction, back towards the keel.

A voice crackled in her ears. “We are regrouping on 01 Deck. We will not attempt to hold 02 Deck; there aren’t enough of us.”

A Marine sergeant-major, Wilson, had taken command of the Flattop’s motley defenders.

“Phavatar operators, you’re doing great. See if you can deny the keel tube to the enemy. Do you have any smoke grenades remaining? Over.”

Elfrida didn’t have any smoke grenades. “Sir, do I understand correctly, you want us to come to 01 Deck?”

“That is correct, Agent. Over.”

Elfrida’s HUD lit up. She was taking pulses on her carapace. A knot of Martians skirmished through an arch below and behind her. Without slowing down, she sprayed them with a sweeping burst from her laser rifle. “Sir, we’re regrouping in officer country?”

“That is correct, Agent. Is there a problem with that?”

“We’re just going to let them overrun the lower decks?”

“It is too fucking late to keep them out of the lower decks. They may attempt to fuck with the drive, yes, but there is nothing I can do about that.”

“Sir, we’re down here on 04 Deck! There are only a few phavatars left but there are
hundreds
of us! We’re in our cabins!”

“Oh, shit,” Wilson said. “I forgot about that.”

Elfrida kept running. “It’s all right, sir. You’re under a lot of stress.”

“I was just kinda like, there are the phavatars. I forgot you’re not them.”

“Sometimes I forget, too.”

She caught up with her platoon as they dived into the keel tube. A former therapist called Solomon 476AX covered the launch avenues with a scavenged blaster in either gripper. Martian corpses bumped gently over the yellow lines and the STAND CLEAR warnings on the floor. Thumb-sized craters dotted Solomon 476AX’s body armor.

“Go down to 04 Deck!” Elfrida shouted. It wasn’t necessary to shout but that was how she felt. “Grab any weapons you can find. Everyone who is not operating a bot, get suited up. When you’re in your suits and not before, assemble in the mess.”

“OK,” Wilson said to her. “You made that call, and I respect that. Good luck.”

“Good luck to you too, sir.”

Solomon 476AX fired a last pulse and tumbled into the keel tube. Elfrida followed. She found herself pushing on the pressure-seal plate as it hinged up, willing the hydraulics to work faster. A Martian squeezed through the closing gap. Solomon 476AX shot it in the head, ending it before it became a problem.

“Thanks,” Elfrida said to Colden.

“Don’t mention it.”

They flew down the tube to 04 Deck. Agents filled the mess, bubble-helmeted, in the cumbersome UN-blue EVA suits that had been issued to the Space Corps. Petruzzelli moved through them like a noisy shadow, passing out carbines. “There’s a shooting range next to the gym,” she told Elfrida. “That’s where I got these. Kinetic darts. Best thing for putting Martians down.”

“It’s almost like she’s trying to help,” Colden said on the operator chat channel.

“I didn’t tell you what she said upstairs.” On the verge of repeating what Petruzzelli had said about feeling like a failure, Elfrida changed her mind. That confidence should remain between herself and Petruzzelli. “I think she expected to die in the crash. But she didn’t die, so now she’s got permission to try and stay alive.”

“That makes no sense.”

“It was in our therapist training manual.”

“I’m a shit therapist. I just told her to fix her goddamn attitude.”

“Maybe it worked.”

“Well, if she can help these kids stay alive, I’ll take it.”

The lights in the mess went out. The public channel seethed with frightened yelps.

“Calm down, everyone,” Elfrida cried. “All it means is the auxiliary gennies went down. Divide the weapons and split up into five groups, one per exit.” The mess had too many exits. But it was the only place big enough for all of them. If they could just hold those four doors plus one airlock, they might be able to survive for the next little while.

“We’re losing air pressure,” someone shouted.

“That, also, was bound to happen,” Elfrida said. “The ship’s been breached. That’s why we all got into our—”

“Goto,” Petruzzelli said. “Colden.”

“Um, yup,” Elfrida said. “I know.”

“Good. Dump the bots. I got this.”

Elfrida pulled off her headset. Her heart raced, and she couldn’t get a deep breath. It felt like waking up from a nightmare. Except she’d woken
into
a nightmare. In the pitch-dark cabin, she heard the agents who’d been in the rearguard platoon bumping around, searching for their suits. She already felt fuzzy-headed from lack of oxygen.

Colden’s hand brushed her cheek, ice-cold. “Help.”

First secure your own oxygen supply, then help others.
Basic training overrode her instincts. Mercifully, she was already in her borrowed Marine suit. She found her helmet beside her pillow, sealed it on, and sucked in a huge, delicious breath of canned air. Colden patted weakly at her faceplate.

She jumped out of the rack and searched desperately for EVA suits. The fleeing agents had scattered their belongings all over, a big floating mess, and she only had her helmet lamp to search by.

★

Petruzzelli flew from group to group, shouting encouragement and shooting through the gaps between the willing but untrained agents. The Martians had blown all four of the doors leading into the mess. Those damn shaped charges of theirs. The blasts had taken several agents down. Death by art supplies.

This isn’t working,
she thought.

We can’t hold out.

In her mind, she heard Bob Miller saying,
You CAN.
She heard Harry Zhang saying,
Hold it together, Zuzu.

Her borrowed suit gave her access to the Marines’ comms channel. “This is Alicia Petruzzelli on 03 Deck. Do you copy?”

“This is Wilson, what is your status, Petruzzelli?”

“Oh shit,” Petruzzelli said. “You’re the guy I punched in the face.”

Wilson chuckled. “Forgiven and forgotten. Having fun down there?”

She quickly filled him in on their perilous situation. “Sir, I intend to blow the airlock. I’m going to try and retreat in a controlled fashion. Based on the microgravity we’re experiencing, this airlock is facing away from the rock, so the Martians will not be able to target us from the surface. That’s if they’re not crawling all over the hull already, but even if they are, I think we can knock them out from the higher ground. If we make it to 01 Deck …” She amended that. “When we reach 01 Deck, will you be able to let us in?”

“I can try,” Wilson said. “But there’s something you need to know. Your buddies in the Combat Intelligence Center have been firing the CP cannons for half an hour. Reldresal’s thickness isn’t more than a hundred meters right here, and those guns can ablate a cubic meter in half a second.”

Petruzzelli drew a sharp breath. “Acknowledged,” she said. “I will not be able to contact you once we’re outside the hull, but I hope to see you in a few, sir. Over and out.”

She flew through the chaotic scrum, collecting people to help.

★

Elfrida pushed the last handful of agents down the hall towards the mess. Their brush with hypoxia had left them dazed and talkative. Colden was the worst off. Hardly aware of her surroundings, she kept asking where Kristiansen was. Elfrida was going to tease her mercilessly about that later.

If there was any ‘later.’

Trash fluttered past, overtaking them. The last of the air was leaving 03 Deck. They blundered into the mess and found out why. The airlock had been manually jammed open by mess tables wedged into the valves, one at each end.

The airlock framed Mars perfectly, like a shot for some antique tourist brochure.