The God Mars Book Six: Valhalla I Am Coming (36 page)

She wasn’t wrong: most of the growth down here is
head-height and lower. There’d be no easy way to hide the flash and
heat of a welder, especially in low-light. At the very least, we’d
need to wait until midday, set up a canopy screen.

But we had another problem that became instantly
apparent when we tried to test the drive train. As soon as our
treads dug in to move us forward, it took barely seconds for them
to dig themselves trenches in the soft and almost slushy regolith
until we were practically beached, undercarriage to the ground. We
would have to dig out by hand, then wedge rocks in for traction.
Assuming we didn’t just sink ourselves again as soon as we were
out.

It was clear we’d never be able to make any
significant progress by nightfall, and shortly after that we’d
start having icing to deal with. We were definitely stuck here
overnight and through a good part of tomorrow, exposed, though I
could tell Simmons was worried that we might not be moving again at
all, not without an airlift.

“Charlie Foxtrot,” Horst sighed in his helmet, his
H-A shell covered in muck, using the old NATO abbreviation for
cluster fuck.

“I was always more partial to FUBAR,” I told him
aside, trying to lighten.

“So…
How
strong are you?”

I looked skyward, distracted, trying to listen for
signals, anything from Orbit that might indicate that they’d even
seen our predicament.

There was nothing. Dead silence.

Corso agreed with Horst and Simmons to wait on the
dig-out and drive train repairs until morning, but insisted we
needed to reinforce our position by getting as many of our battery
guns back to operational as we could, assigning Horst and Simmons
to the task. With Simmons working from inside the turret, I offered
to help Horst topside. Corso shot him a look as if to warn him to
keep an eye on me at all times, but begrudgingly gave her approval
with Horst’s endorsement.

We stayed out and got to work while the others took
the opportunity—having finished inventory and declared the hull
intact—to get some hot food (a more appealing prospect now that we
weren’t being bounced around inside a can). Then, while Scheffe and
Jenovec hiked out to recover our rover bot, Lyra brought us out MRE
packs (thankfully a reasonably inoffensive bean stew) and some
recycled water. She sat with us topside with her rifle as a
volunteer sentry, watching the last colors of sunset over the
western crater rim while we ate and got back to work.

We dug and scraped and brushed out the worst of the
packed-in dirt, then pulled all of the barrels, visibly bent or
not, just in case. At Horst’s request, Jenovec brought out a set of
replacements and more tools from the stores, but it soon became
clear we’d need more than what we had to get the job done.

The carriage, cradle and elevators on the main gun
array were all mangled—it almost fell off its mount when we turned
the gun by hand. The main trunnion pivot was trashed, and half the
linkages were snapped or twisted beyond function.

“How bad do you want this gun online?” I muttered
conspiratorially to Horst. He didn’t give me a verbal answer, so I
subtly shifted my position to block the view of the Comm ‘scopes,
where I was sure Corso was watching me from. He got my hint, and
shifted his own position accordingly, giving me more cover, then
watched as I set the tools aside and started systematically laying
hands on the damaged parts one-by-one, letting my nanites do the
fine machining. I could see his eyes go wide, but he wasn’t about
to protest, even risking getting his own gloved hands into the
works so it looked like we were doing the job together.

It took me three hours to declare the main battery
functional, though I really couldn’t guarantee it wouldn’t jam or
blow up the first time we pulled the trigger. What repairs my tech
did would only be as good as my enhanced eyes and limited knowledge
of the mechanisms, and I was thankful these were all manual
linkages, not more complex automated systems. Still, Horst gave me
a nod of impressed approval. Then Simmons ran some dry-fire tests
from inside the turret, and declared the result good enough to risk
loading live ammo (not that we could test it without potentially
drawing unwanted attention). Then I did what I could for the other
guns as it dropped below freezing in the dark, having earned enough
trust that Corso allowed Horst to go inside long enough to get
fresh canisters and use the head to dump his in-suit urinal.

Above my head, the night sky was clear and ablaze
with stars. This is a view I could never get on Earth, no matter
how remotely I travelled. The much thinner atmosphere and almost
total lack of light pollution made for spectacular gazing. Even
being out in interplanetary space—the view from the shuttle that
brought me here (in this version of reality, anyway)—didn’t
compare, because there was always layered polycarb in the way.
Here, it was just me under the heavens, and thanks to my Mods, not
even a pair of goggles between me and infinity.

“You don’t see nearly this many stars from Earth,” I
tell Lyra when she catches me lost in it, bundled in her cold
weather gear. “Barely any, most places.”

I see her shake her head in the dark, like she can’t
imagine such a limited sky.

“You should go in,” I prompt her.

“We should
all
go in,” she returns as Horst
cycles back out.

“I think Corso and a few of the others would probably
rather I slept outside.”

“But then they won’t be able to keep a close eye on
you,” Horst counters as he climbs up in his bulky armor. “Unless,
of course, one of us gets assigned to sit out here with you.”

We finish the gun we were working on—the port-forward
antipersonnel turret—and Simmons checks it from inside, knocking
his approval through the hull. Then Horst calls in, looking into
the lens of the Comm ‘scope, to ask Corso if we can call it a
night.

“Perimeter check?” she asks back curtly on link.

We all take another good look around in night-vision
and infrared.

“We’re still alone,” Horst reports.

“Then come in. Jenovec takes first periscope
watch.”

I can imagine his eye-roll.

We climbed down, and Horst took a final look over our
abused rover. Overall, it fared better than we did, limping home
with one bent but still-functional wheel, and gave us one more gun
to defend our position if need-be, sitting like a guard just in
front of the rear hatch. He gave it a pat on the gun breech like a
loyal pet, took one last scan of the darkness around us, and then
cycled us inside to light and warmth.

The fold-down racks were bare-minimum narrow, thin
pads on metal frames. As there weren’t enough to go around with the
extra passengers (Jenovec and Scheffe actually shared a rack
hot-bunk style on alternating shifts), Horst gave me a roll and a
blanket and I took a spot on the metal deck at the rear of the
bay.

I picked my spot to be as far away from the other
sleepers as possible for their comfort, but Lyra especially.
Though—as I settled onto the hard deck—I realized I hadn’t been
plagued by my urges for quite some time now. Perhaps the work had
proven an effective distraction, but it wasn’t coming back now even
though we were idle.

“There’s been a problem.”

Dee is sitting on the deck next to my roll,
cross-legged like he’d been meditating, waiting until I woke up to
notice him.

“I haven’t been able to reach you. Jackson took the
Main Melas Uplink down. Blew it to pieces. Then he cut all
communication with Orbit, pulled every uplink transmitter
on-planet, including the secure laser systems. Even his aircraft
are running on short-range link only.

“There was an incident at Melas Two. Richards is
there, locked down, cut off, situation unknown. The new-drops at
Grave-Base are panicking.”

In the back of my mind, I know I’m dreaming. I don’t
feel the drowsiness of truly waking. The bay isn’t quite right—it’s
far too big and open. And where’s the rest of the crew? Everyone is
gone.

“They’re looking for you. But you’re off-course—they
can’t find you. They won’t risk linking to Orbit, and without
Richards or a channel to Earthside, they can’t get the codes to
signal you.

“Jackson thinks you may have taken the Warhorse,
taken it for Asmodeus, killed the crew.”

“How are you talking to me now?” I automatically play
along, sucked into the internal reality.

“I’m not. I can’t.”

It’s not Dee anymore. It’s Doc, giving me a lazy
grin. But then his face goes serious.

“Don’t let them find you.”

I snap awake, but it takes me several seconds to be
sure I
am
really awake this time. Everything looks normal.
The only change is that Jenovec is in his rack and Scheffe is up,
slowly turning one of the ‘scopes. My internal clock tells me it’s
05:42.

There’s no sign of Corso. She’s probably sleeping up
in the Comm Section.

“Anything, Specialist?” I ask Scheffe.

“Nothing… um… sir,” she struggles over how to address
me (and whether she should). “All quiet, all spectrums.”

“I think I’ll go outside, start working on the
dig-out,” I tell her. She seems to fumble with that, wondering if
she should give permission or wake her CO.

“Let him, Specialist,” Horst mutters from his rack.
“And for God’s sake, somebody put some coffee up.”

It’s still below freezing. The sunrise is obscured by
the northeast rim of the crater, which rises up as a ridge of sharp
almost teeth-like mountains. I know Liberty sits (or sat) on the
far slopes of those mountains, but we’d have to climb a
klick-and-a-half up to get over them. If that ridge wasn’t an
issue, it’d only be about seven klicks from here as the proverbial
crow flies. But the circuitous course this cumbersome but
surprisingly tough vehicle can manage will be more like two-dozen
klicks, assuming we can even get it rolling again.

The hull of the ‘Horse is thickly frosted over from
overnight condensation, which won’t really start to melt until the
sun hits it, but the ground isn’t frozen, despite the surprisingly
high water content in the soil making the sand all crunchy slush
under my boots. My Mods tell me it hasn’t frozen hard due to a high
salt and perchlorate content (which also makes it pretty toxic and
corrosive), and that also explains why we sank: the crater is
filled with saturated dust and sand that never quite hardens into
ice. Digging out is going to be a messy, exhausting task, and the
next patch like this we hit will sink us again. Fortunately, it
does seem to vary in depth and density, so we may be able to limp
our way out of this bog to more-stable ground, but we’d better be
sure of our course before we proceed, or we’ll be sunk again.

I still hear nothing from Orbit. I can’t be sure if
that was Yod or an honest dream crafted out of my own paranoia. I
don’t hear any aircraft engines over the whistle of the building
morning wind, but then it’s probably too early to fly, especially
since the Grave base doesn’t have bays to keep their aircraft out
of the elements. And while it may not get as cold at night as it
did in Melas, it is much wetter down here in the Vajra, so the
icing is thicker if not harder, as the layer all over the ‘Horse
can attest to. I scrape a handful of it off the rear hatch, taste
it—it tastes of rusty soil, salts and traces of plant pulp from
what’s still caked all over the rig.

I decide to start by collecting rocks and branches
that we can use for traction, being careful to spread my foraging
so I don’t visibly disturb the landscape any more than our crash
did, and that takes me a good forty or fifty meters from the
Track.

I hear it before I see it: The distinctive whir of
Box motors, grinding with damage. Our broken, mute friend has
followed us. But kept a distance: I find it all the way up on the
crest of the slope we just tumbled down, as if watching over us,
hunkered down in some almost-shoulder-high growth that’s gone thin
as the leaves are still closed against the overnight freeze.

I climb up and approach it slowly, indirectly, trying
to look non-threatening. It looks like it’s managed the terrain
better than we did, but that’s not surprising, as Boxes are solid
rolling masses of metal by design. It starts to shift back away
from me on its sections when I get within five meters, and I show
it an empty hand, then two. It sits put, lets me come close.

“If you’re not ready, I won’t kill you,” I do a poor
job reassuring. “Why did you follow us? Why didn’t you head for
Katar?”

Of course, I get no answer. So I decide to offer:

“I can help. I may be able to fix some of your
systems. Just…”

It lets me touch it, lay hands on it. I reach in, try
to hack its systems. I find a lot of damage. Transmitter. Receiver.
Vocal interface. The sensor clusters are mostly intact, so it can
see and hear, but it can’t talk to me. The nav system is also shot,
so without a command signal, it doesn’t know where it is. It
couldn’t find Katar—it probably couldn’t navigate a straight
line—so it followed us as its only choice. But for what? Repair?
Purpose? Or just company, the comfort of other beings (beings who
showed it mercy)?

Unfortunately, I can’t fix any of the more delicate
systems. I’d need Bel or Dee or Azazel. (This makes me think of
what Asmodeus said: That if I simply took the opportunity, I could
have absorbed their skills, downloaded their knowledge, and then
I’d have everything I needed to restore this abused thing, or at
least its mechanical components.)

I start where I can: Motors, linkages, bearings, hard
connections. I could even get the guns working, if I could borrow a
few parts and ammo from the…

I hear boots on the regolith, sliding, climbing.