What’s the alternative, though? I don’t want to go down the corpse hole any more than he does.
“Look,” I say. “We can figure this out. Let me change my clothes and clean up a bit here. You go hit the chem shower on three, get the rest of the tank gunk off of you, and meet me at the cycler in thirty.”
He gives me a wary look, then gets to his feet. “Fine,” he says. “Thirty minutes. I’ll see you there.”
He takes two steps to the door, turns the latch, and pulls it open. He starts out into the corridor, then hesitates and looks back at me.
“Hey. You’re not planning on being a dick about this, are you? I mean, you’re not gonna call Command while I’m in the shower and try to make this judicial, are you?”
“No,” I say. “I won’t do that, even though I’m pretty sure I’d win if I did. We’ll settle this ourselves.”
He smiles. “Thanks, Seven. I’ll see you in thirty.”
The door swings closed behind him.
* * *
I FIGURE EIGHT probably actually needs at least an hour. Tank goo is a nightmare to get off of you, and the chem shower isn’t the ideal way to do it. I’m just settling in for a quick nap when there’s a soft knock-knock-knock at my door.
“Come,” I say. The door swings open. Berto pokes his head in and looks around, then steps through and closes the door behind him.
“Hey, buddy,” he says. “How’re you feeling?”
Berto takes a seat at my desk, just like I did when I walked in on Eight. Unlike me, though, he doesn’t really fit into the chair. Berto’s almost two meters tall—a rarity on a beachhead, where compactness is important both for comfort and efficiency. I barely crack one-point-six myself, and I’m pretty average around here. Between the caloric restriction and the fact that he has to slouch and scrunch most of the time, Berto looks an awful lot like a pasty-pale, redheaded stick bug.
I sit up in bed and push my hair back with one hand. I keep my sprained wrist under the blanket. “I’m okay, I guess.”
“You look pretty good for being fresh out of the tank,” he says. “Been through the scrubber already?”
I nod. He stares at me for a moment, then looks away.
“So,” I say. “What happened this time? What happened to Seven?”
Berto shakes his head. “Brother, you do not want to know.”
“Huh. Isn’t that exactly what you said about Six?”
He looks back at me. “Maybe. I don’t know. Does it matter?”
“Yeah,” I say. “It kind of does. You’re a pilot, right? What’s your last, most important duty if you go down?”
His eyes narrow. “Always let them know what killed you.”
“Right. It’s the same way with Expendables. That’s why every time Marshall murders me, he makes me upload right before I check out. I’d like to know what happened to Seven, so I can make sure it doesn’t happen to me. And while we’re at it, you might as well fill me in on Six too. Whatever got him, I’m sure my constitution can handle it.”
Berto stares me down, then shrugs and looks away again. I make a mental note to invite him to play poker for rations sometime. He’s a terrible liar.
“Six and Seven both went down the same way,” he says. “Swarmed by creepers.”
“Okay. Where did this happen, and what was I doing at the time?”
He sighs. “You were out doing one of Marshall’s stupid-ass walk-arounds. Over the past few months, he’s had you spending most of your time mapping out the crevasses around the dome and scouting them for creepers. Personally I don’t really get it, but he seems to have developed some kind of obsession with them.” He hesitates, then continues. “Sometimes it seems like you have too, actually. When he first started in on this shit, you complained all the time. A week or so after Seven came out of the tank, though, that stopped. The last few weeks, you just saluted and went. Any idea what that was about?”
I shake my head. “My memories are six weeks out of date. Apparently Seven wasn’t keeping up on his uploads.”
“Yeah,” Berto says. “He mentioned something about that last night when he realized he was going down.”
I scratch my chin with my good hand. “Huh. Really? In the middle of getting torn apart by a swarm of creepers, the thing he had on his mind was that he hadn’t been uploading?”
Berto’s mouth opens and closes twice without making a sound, like a fish pulled out of water. I have to grit my teeth to keep from laughing. He really is a terrible, terrible liar.
“It was before that,” he finally manages. “I guess he had a premonition?”
“A premonition.”
“Yeah. I mean, I guess so.”
I could push on this, but I’ve got my own secret to keep here, so I decide to let it go.
“Anyway,” Berto says, “I dropped Seven off near a crevasse about eight klicks out from the perimeter yesterday afternoon. He had a burner with him. Per usual, he was supposed to be mapping the area and scouting for creepers, with the goal of bringing one back if possible. I was supposed to pick him up on my next circuit.”
“But it didn’t work out.”
“No, it didn’t work out. They came up out of the snow all at once, almost as soon as I dropped him, twenty or thirty of them. I was hovering right over him, but they tore him up before I could get the grapple deployed.”
I get that he doesn’t want to admit that he left me to die down there. That’s the kind of thing that could definitely crimp a friendship. I’m wondering now, though, about what really happened to Six. Did Berto lie to me about that too?
“Anyway,” he says, “I just wanted to come by and make sure you were all set. I thought we could file a quick report with Command, and maybe go grab some breakfast.”
I definitely do not want to file a report with Command. Not until I settle things with Eight, anyway.
“You know,” I say. “I’m actually still pretty whipped. You go ahead and get something to eat. I’m gonna take a quick nap. I’ll register with Security when I wake up, and we can file with Command after that.”
He gives me a searching look. He knows something’s not right here. I usually head straight to the cafeteria after I come out of the tank. Nobody voluntarily skips meals around here, but beyond that, the bio-printer doesn’t print any food into your digestive system. When you wake up, your stomach is pretty much where it would be after a seventy-two-hour fast.
“Okay,” he says. “But don’t take too long. You know synthesizing your ass takes a huge bite out of our protein budget. Command will want to know what happened, and why, and how we’re planning on making up the deficit. This is your second regen in the last eight weeks, so we’ll need to come up with something good this time.”