“Thirty meters,” said Mazer. “You got three seconds.”
“All right,” said Wit. “You’re set. Go go go.”
Mazer sprinted toward his drill sledge, firing erratically behind him. More Formics fell. The swarm continued forward, their fallen companions forgotten.
Mazer scurried up the ladder and into his cockpit. He saw Wit out of the corner of his eye climbing up into the other one. Mazer yanked in the ladder and closed the cockpit just as a wave of Formics slammed into the machine, climbing up the stilts and pounding on the canopy. Their weight rocked the drill sledge, and for a terrifying moment Mazer thought they might tip the sledge over or break the stilts. But the drill sledge held, despite the pounding they received.
“This won’t work,” said Mazer. “Calinga won’t be able to get out of his sledge. They’d overrun him. We have to abort.”
“Destroying this lander is more important than Calinga,” said Wit. “It’s more important than all of us. He knows that. If we leave now, the Formics could shield the underside. It’s now or never. Let’s burn him a hole.”
He was right of course. The mission trumped all other considerations, even their lives.
Mazer cranked up his drill. Then he put the drill sledge’s tracks in reverse and slowly lowered the drill to the surface. Lava shot upward and hit the lander. The tracks in reverse countered the forward propulsion of the drill, but the opposing forces caused the drill sledge to buck and bounce. Mazer stayed at it. Wit did the same. Lava spewed. The underside of the lander began to melt.
The pounding on Mazer’s cockpit had stopped. The Formics had fallen off. Mazer hoped they were getting a hot lava shower. One minute passed. Then two. The sledge bucked and bounced across the floor of the air pocket. Mazer was careful not to eject lava toward Wit’s position, and he hoped Wit was doing the same.
A large chunk of the lander’s underside fell away, like the floor in a burning house crashing through. A gaping hole remained.
“Calinga!” said Wit. “You’ve got a hole. I’m sending you scans now. Get in, drop the nuke, and get out if you can.”
“Roger that. You two get clear. I don’t want to hit you on the way up. I’m coming in hot.”
Mazer stopped the reverse motion of his tracks and collapsed the stilts. The drill sledge immediately dropped and shot downward, churning through earth below the air pocket and diving deep.
Mazer called up Calinga’s position on the holo. They passed each other, Mazer going down, Calinga going up. At the last one hundred meters, Calinga put on a burst of speed and shot up through the air pocket. He aimed for the hole perfectly. But since he was coming in at a slight angle, the drill sledge hit the lip of the hole as it entered the lander and flew inside. The contact spun the drill sledge in the air, and it crashed on its side in the lander.
“Calinga,” said Wit. “Report.”
The voice that answered was pained but upbeat. “You two get deep. I’ll detonate the nuke.”
“Hold on,” said Wit. “I’m coming for you.”
“Negative,” said Calinga. “If you try to make the jump up here, the same thing will happen to you, and we’ll both be dead. I got Formics swarming the sledge already. We couldn’t make the transfer anyway. You two dive. I got this. I’ll give you twenty seconds.”
“It should have been me,” said Wit. “I should have taken the nuke.”
“Time to let someone else have the glory.”
“It’s been an honor,” said Wit.
“It’s been mine,” said Calinga.
How could they talk about this so casually? thought Mazer. How could they resign themselves so easily?
Because they’re MOPs, Mazer realized. Because they’re intelligent soldiers, because they know there’s no other way. “Ten seconds,” said Calinga. “They’re starting to tear into the canopy. I can’t delay here.”
Mazer punched it, going hot. He counted down the seconds in his head, watching the holo on his dash. At zero, the blip that was Calinga’s drill sledge winked out.
*
Mazer headed for the predetermined location on the map where they had agreed to resurface. None of them knew what the blast radius for an underground nuke would be, but the reach of the radiation would likely be wide. The best they could do was pick a spot ten kilometers away, or the maximum distance the drill sledge could travel.
Mazer broke through the surface at the designated spot and was surprised to see a number of vehicles there on the scanners. He unbuckled, stood, and opened the cockpit.