The God Mars Book Six: Valhalla I Am Coming (35 page)

I keep my mouth shut, but I think the disdain on my
face is sufficient.

“If we make it down the inner slope to here, then cut
straight east toward the colony site, we might be okay,” Simmons
continues to trace. “If we go any farther south inside the bowl,
the crater sinks pretty fast—the southern two-thirds get down over
a klick lower than the valley floor out here, and it’s really rough
down in the bottom: monolith-sized rocks,
craters-within-craters…”

“Sounds like an ideal place to hide,” Corso
decides.

“But the only way we’d get in there is on foot, and
there’s a good thirty square klicks of difficult terrain to
search,” Simmons tries to caution her.

“How much time do you want to spend on this?” Horst
keeps an open mind. “We could do short recons, grid search, but it
could take a week or more.”

“We need to be sure,” Corso insists. “But I want to
get a look at the colony first.”

“That could also be problematic, sir,” Simmons keeps
giving bad news. “The rim between the bowl and the colony goes up a
sharp two klicks. There may be small passes, too small for the
‘Horse, but if not, it’s a hell of a climb. And we’d be out of link
range as soon as we topped the crest.”

“We might be better off if we hit the bottoms first,
then climbed out here,” Horst draws us a course clockwise around
the worst of the bottoms to the southeast rim of the crater.

“But then we’d have to double-back north and
northwest,” Corso complains, plotting, “through these mountains on
the crater’s northeast quadrant, or the long way around them, to
get to where Liberty was.”

“Those mountains also make great places to hide,”
Horst counters smoothly. “We need to be sure.”

I get the impression Corso was hoping to get this
mission over with quickly, and not just because of its urgency. A
couple of days out and then back to the relative comfort of base.
She doesn’t seem at home in the field (and we haven’t even been out
a day yet). But she also doesn’t want to crawl home empty-handed.
She’s probably hoping to earn herself a commendation big enough to
lever a promotion, and to score a win big enough to take the heat
off of her UNCORT handlers. I’m tempted to tell her that she and
her crew would do better to fail, because if they succeed in
finding Asmodeus, I expect I’ll be the only one walking away.

I wonder what the fuck she thinks is going to happen.
Does she really believe she’s going to find the sick shit (the
real
sick shit) and pound him with nuke after nuke, scrape
his ashes into a containment tube and roll back to base to a hero’s
welcome?

Unfortunately, I really think she does.

“How long can we stay out?” I ask Horst.

“We can run indefinitely,” he tells me, like he knows
the idea makes his CO squirm. “We’re sitting on a nuclear power
plant, with O2 condensers and water recyclers, food for three
months and after that we can forage…”

The thought of eating the local engineered plants
makes the new-drops shudder. I’m sure they’ve been warned that the
slightest taste will mutate them into organic jelly or consume them
from the inside-out, despite the fact that all of the survivor
descendants as well as over a thousand people at Melas Two have
been eating the stuff without ill-effect.

“The only things we have to worry about are running
out of ammo or needing medical evac,” Simmons concurs. “This is a
Long Range Recon.”

Corso keeps her eyes on the map, but I can feel her
coil.

“Smith,” she calls forward, “make best time for the
pass through the crater rim. Get us in close and we’ll do a scout
through to make sure it’s clear.”

“Yes, Major,” he accepts from his pilot’s seat.

“The rest of you: secure for travel.”

Looking over the battered and twisted wreckage, it
seems appropriate to say something cliché about best-laid plans,
but everything I’ve seen about this mission insists that there was
barely any planning involved, too inexperienced and too desperately
focused on the target.

In any case, we didn’t get very far today.

First came two hours of relentless jarring over rough
terrain, a lot of climbing and dropping, all endured blind, sealed
up inside the hull of the ‘Horse. Finally, the climb began to
become more consistent, less snail-crawl roller coaster ups and
downs, but I could feel us slowing even painfully further, until I
could feel every individual boulder grind under our treads.

Then I could feel us change direction, turn south,
and our angle of attack got increasingly steeper, until we either
had to strap into harnesses or hang on tight or tumble into the
rear bulkhead of the bay. I assume that meant we were heading into
the questionable pass through the crater rim.

It quickly became clear that the pass might possibly
be too steep for the rig, as we would slip and slide backwards
every few minutes without warning, which was a new kind of torture.
And then we would suddenly dip sideways, one set of treads or
another abruptly dropping into a pitfall. More than once, the deck
listed so far I thought we might tip over, but Smith would wrestle
us back to some semblance of upright before that happened (though I
could hear him cursing even through the hatches).

After nearly another two hours of
that
abuse,
we came to a dead stop, and Horst came back from the midsection on
visibly shaky legs to announce that we needed to secure the rover
because it couldn’t manage the terrain anymore. While he went
outside with Simmons and Jenovec in shells, I got hold of one of
the ‘scopes long enough to take a good look around. We were wedged
in a tight sheer-walled ravine, climbing over car-sized boulders,
with what I guessed was the crater rim rising on either side of us.
Ahead, it looked like we still had a long way to climb before
cresting this pass, assuming it was really even passable. If it
wasn’t, I couldn’t imagine how much fun it would be to back us all
the way out of here.

Enjoying having a view, I turned the ‘scope aft and
watched our EVA team hoist the rover up with a hull-mount winch and
strap it to our rear deck just next to the aft lock, it’s gun stuck
out and pointed up at the sky. And what narrow strip of the sky I
could see was already looking late in the day. The evening winds
were starting to whip dust across the pass behind us. And then I
saw other motion, deliberate, sixty or seventy meters down the pass
in our wake.

“We have company, Major,” Horst called in on his
short-range link. “It’s that busted bot from the crash site.”

“Following us like a dog…” Jenovec decided,
incredulous. Horst prodded him back to work.

“Orders, Major?” Horst asked.

Corso brooded into her own ‘scope for a good long
minute.

“It is likely to give away our position?” she asked
back.

“Less so than what it would take to disable it,”
Horst calculated.

The bot stopped on its own, as if hearing our debate
to destroy it, about sixty meters from our tail.

“What’s it doing?” Corso wondered out loud.

I had my theories, but decided not to share.

We were moving again in twenty minutes, but the climb
seemed even slower and rougher now. Horst broke out rations, but
most of us were in no mood for food (especially new-drop MREs) with
all the jarring, so we stuck with hydration. Only Jenovec seemed to
have an appetite. When Scheffe asked him how he did, he shrugged
and guessed it was because he’d already done time on Long Range
Recon, riding the Leviathan Three. He said that while that rig was
bigger and had better suspension, the pressure hull sat up a lot
higher, and that made for more sway.

Then Horst had a misadventure with the locker-sized
head, thanks to an ill-timed jolt, so we all got to stifle a laugh
at his expense.

We stopped dead again after forty-five minutes.

Corso went forward through the Comm section and had
Smith pop the cockpit hatch. I could hear him quietly warning her
about what was ahead, but it sounded like our only option was to
roll backwards down the way we came, assuming that didn’t wreck us,
and take the long way around, which also meant no look inside the
crater. After a few tense minutes, Corso sealed the cockpit, came
back and ordered everything secured and everyone into harnesses,
including herself. That done, she gave Smith a go.

I felt us grind forward, then tip forward, start to
teeter. Smith yelled back for everyone to hang on to something like
he was about to take us on a real coaster ride.

And then we did.

And then it became a car wreck.

We seemed to be fighting to slow our slide down a
slope as steep as the one we’d just come up, but now with very
little to no traction. The loose regolith roared under our treads
as we skidded and skied on it. Smith would manage to decelerate us
for a few seconds at a time, but as soon as we hit another slick
patch, we’d accelerate again.

Within hellish minutes, we started to fishtail. I
realize now that Smith was intentionally turning us to port despite
how fast we were sliding, trying to turn us out of going straight
downhill into the crater bowl. The deck listed again, starboard out
of the turn. Horst, Jenovec and Lyra had been looking alternately
nervous and grinning at each other as if to takes turns at
reassuring their crewmates, while Scheffe was white-knuckled into
her seat, eyes wide. Simmons had been impressively stoic, but when
the turn got tighter and the hull tipped just a bit further, he
went as tight as Scheffe, and that was a bad sign.

The ‘Horse creaked, groaned and then tumbled over on
its starboard side, slamming us all in our harnesses. I could feel
the welded-on flank armor crunch and scrape on rock like a massive
sled, bearing weight it was never designed to, and we started to
twist and slide downhill tail-first. I was worrying about the two
warheads on that side of the hull when we hit something big and
hard, broke it (or us), and rolled all the way over.

And over. And over. (I lost count after the third
flip.)

Scheffe was screaming all the while we tumbled, right
up until we came to a stop with a sharp jolt, miraculously landing
with a bounce on our treads. I could hear sand and gravel pouring
off the hull, but we didn’t move anymore.

“Is anybody hurt?” Horst wanted to know after we’d
gotten our senses back.

Lyra gave him a breathless “I’m good,” Jenovec did a
thumbs-up and Simmons a jerky nod. Scheffe looked like she was in
shock.

“Specialist!” Horst tried barking her out of it, and
she finally came around, looked at him and gave him a quick
nod.

Corso popped the Comm section hatch and came
staggering out, gripping the handholds like we were still listing
(even though we were remarkably level). Smith was calling back,
asking if we were all okay.

“We need a damage report,” Corso ordered, still
hanging on for dear life. “Jenovec: Check the hull integrity.
Scheffe: inventory. Check the supplies and gear, make sure we
didn’t smash anything important. Horst, Simmons, outside. I want to
know how much of a beating we just took. Bring a kit to check the
warheads.”

“I can help,” Lyra offered. Corso nodded, chewing her
lip.

“You may need some muscle,” I offered Horst (not
Corso). Corso didn’t argue.

When we cycled outside, it was getting dark, and
darker because we were down in the bowl of the crater, the rim
towering up a klick-plus all around us. We weren’t all the way down
into the bowl, not by a long way, but we’d slid and tumbled over a
klick from where I’m guessing we passed through the rim. It looked
like Smith tried to ride a talus slope at a reasonable decline
southeast, but miscalculated the unknown ground and wiped out
sideways over a much steeper drop that he must have been turning to
try to avoid. Thankfully we didn’t lose it higher up, or we would
have done a lot more tumbling, and then flew rather than rolled
over the drop. As it was, we got relatively lucky: after a about a
hundred meters of skidding and (mostly) rolling down the sharper
decline, the bowl leveled out, and the regolith was soft enough to
“catch” us, thankfully topside-up.

But not unscathed: Most obviously, our flank armor
was trashed on both sides, having taken a pounding during the roll,
twisted and dented and nearly torn-free in places. The starboard
catwalk was curled partly upward around the upper tube, while the
port was smashed downwards.

Fortunately, the tubes themselves were all
structurally if not functionally intact in spite of their beating,
as were the warheads inside. The starboard upper tube was, however,
clearly damaged beyond firing, and Simmons couldn’t guarantee the
others without time to break them open and inspect them
properly.

The rover had been torn loose during our tumble, and
was lying on its side about forty meters upslope like discarded
junk.

Horst climbed up top to check our guns, but it was
obvious we’d be getting no use out of the main battery until we at
least swapped the primary gun barrels, as they were bent down into
the upper deck. The boxed launchers and smaller turrets looked
better, but everything was caked with soil and crushed plant life,
so would probably be disastrous to try to fire until they could be
cleared, assuming they could still be aimed or fired at all.

Down below, the treads were all relatively and
miraculously intact. The starboard forward tread had been popped
out of groove, but all the idler and drive wheels were still
attached (if not completely straight on their axles). A quick
inspection proved that the suspension linkages were abused to
near-failure, however, and Simmons declared that we couldn’t afford
another rollover, or any more serious rock climbing, not until he
could have the time to do some significant part-swapping and
welding. Corso, still hoping to make this mission a quick and
glorious off-road jaunt, didn’t want him doing the work where we
were, citing how exposed we would be in the open crater bowl.