CHAPTER 29
South Pole
ANNOS MARTIS 238. 4. 0. 00:00
The sled slams into a snowbank ramp. Sails over the barricade. Threads churning frantically. Turbine pouring vapor jets.
We’re going to die, I think, and cling to the handlebars.
Vienne pumps a thousand rounds into the Dr?u, whose snowmobiles weave like choreographed dancers in a mechanized tango. Three mobiles charge into range of the gun, and Vienne feeds them a strafe of bullets as we land.
Hard.
The nose of the sled hammers the ice, and the handlebars almost rip loose from my hands. Behind us, two Dr?u snowmobiles hit the snow ramp. They soar high into the air—engines and drivers screaming—then crash, scattering the savages like grotesque rag dolls across the permafrost.
They’re all dead, I think.
Until one of them stands up. Raises a battle rifle to his shoulder as my sled bears down him—Kuhru!
“Vienne! Get down!”
Kuhru fires a three-shot burst. Brrrp! Brrrp! Brrrp! The barrel burns orange, and the bullets whistle past my head.
“Wà kào!” I curse. “That was close!”
Then Vienne stops firing. “I’m hit!” she yells and leans against a box, a hand covering her heel, one of three weak spots in symbiarmor. Blood seeps between her fingers. Then I see a laser sight dance across her face.
“Down!” I bellow, and veer right.
Kuhru’s second burst whistles past. But now his mouth drops open, the sudden realization that the sled’s not stopping. He fires wildly, panicked, and breaks into a run.
“Qù sui!” I bellow. “Nobody shoots my crew!” Then slam the brakes.
The sled whips around, and the treads slam into Kuhru, knocking him out of his boots. His body floats off the ground, then falls, as if a giant hand has lifted it gently and placed it on a row of rusted-out generators that are half buried in snowdrifts.
It’s a beautiful death. Too beautiful for a killer, I think as I veer toward the mine entrance, where Fisher Four opens like a black mouth.
As we reach safety, I sneak a glance backward. The queen stands atop her machine, marshaling her forces, shouting for them to form up. Clearly she’s not ready to give up and go home.
Then I turn my attention to the pitch-black tunnel ahead, steering between fallen boulders and wreckage.
“Status report,” I ask Vienne. “How’s the foot?”
“It has shrapnel in it.”
Ask an obvious question, get an obvious answer. “How bad are you bleeding?”
“I’m bleeding pretty well.” She’s leaning against an ammo box. Her knee’s propped up, and she’s applying pressure to the wound.
“Mimi,” I ask, navigating around several hunks of scrap metal. “How is she?”
“My scans suggest that the injury is minor.”
“Signs of shock?”
“Affirmative. She should administer a dose of epinephrine.”
“I’ll be sure to tell her you said that.”
A junked mine car appears ahead of the sled, and I cut hard to avoid it. The passageway is getting too bumpy, so I cut power. Letting the Dr?u catch up.
“Stupid miners!” I shout. “Don’t they ever throw their crap away!”
Then the lights come on. The tunnel is swamped by floodlights placed high in ceiling. I can make out the shape of the rocks as we pass, the colors of the stone walls, and the shapes of the shrapnel still stuck into my armor—it’s going to take hours to pull all of it out.
“Greeting party ahead,” Mimi says.
“Please tell me they’re ours?” I say, taking a worried glance at Vienne, who’s beginning to shake.
“Affirmative. It’s the good guys.”
Beyond another broken-down harvester, Jenkins, Fuse, and Ebi are positioned in a skirmish line. They kneel behind a concrete partition, ready to fire.
Mimi opens an aural link with them. “Regulators,” I bark. “The Dr?u are crawling up our backs! Hold position. Do not advance!”
Fuse confirms the order. “Hustle your buttocks, chief. The miners say there’s fifty Dr?u heading this way. At least fifty. Might be more. You know the miners and their lack of counting skills.”
Fifty? Impossible. There were only about a hundred in the base. How many did we take down? Twenty? Thirty? Makes no sense.
“Mimi,” I ask. “Am I counting wrong?”
“Negative, cowboy. I estimate thirty-nine Dr?u fatalities and twenty-one wounded.”
“Then the miners really can’t count.”
“Negative,” she says. “Sensors now indicate several dozen Dr?u biorhymic signatures.”
Damn. A moment later we pull up to the concrete barrier. “New plan,” I tell them. “We’re bugging out. Now!”
Fuse takes one look at Vienne and runs to the back of the sled. “What’s happened to you, love? You look pale as a dungy worm.”
“Don’t…call…” Vienne’s head wobbles to the side. “Shoot…you…”
“She took shrapnel,” I say, and give up my seat. “Fuse, you drive. Jenkins, Ebi, get on this bucket!”
Fuse slides into the driver’s seat. “In the heel. That’s where they always get you, innit? You’d think the minds sharp enough to dream up bioadaptive cloth could figure out how to make a decent boot.”
“Shut up and drive!” I bellow.
Ebi helps Vienne into the jump seat, then joins me at the back of the sled. “Did you find Jean-Paul?”
“He’s wrapped in that tarp.” I have to fight the urge to give it a kick. “Check his pulse or something. Make sure his worthless hide is still intact.”
“Yes, chief.”
Jenkins vaults into the cargo bay, his arms thrown wide. “Oh, baby, it’s been too long. Come to papa.” He hugs the chain gun. “You’re so beautiful. And look at all this ammo. It’s like Christmas, and Jenkins’s been such a good boy. Yes, he has.”
“Re malaka,” I mumble, then shout, “Fuse, get us out of here!”
“What about Ockham?” Fuse asks, revving the engine.
“We lost him on the tundra,” I say. “He’s dead.”
Because Fuse is a better driver than either Vienne or me, we quickly reach the Zhao Zhou Bridge and the wide gorge it spans. A contingent of miners, led by Maeve, Spiner, and áine, is waiting when we cross the long bridge.
Fuse kills the engine. Ebi hops down from the seat and draws her armalite. She takes position beside the sled while Jenkins aims the chain gun at the black hole of the tunnel.
Behind us, the sounds of the snowmobiles grow louder, then fade.
“C’mon, c’mon, you fine cannibals,” Jenkins mutters. “Baby’s itching to dance. C’mon, ain’t you wanting to dance?”
“What happened?” áine says when she sees the blood on my hands. “You’ve got yourself hurt. I knew it! I knew you couldn’t ride off without coming back in pieces.”
“It’s not me. It’s Vienne,” I say, then brace for impact as áine throws her arms wide.
And slams into Fuse. Lays a great sloppy kiss on him. “You’re safe! I’d got afraid that it was you’d been shot.”
Fuse, embarrassed, unclasps her arms from his neck. “Not now, lovey,” he says. “We’re on the job.”
“Step to, people! The Dr?u are crawling up our ass!” I sweep Vienne up in my arms. Her head lolls to my shoulder, the touch of her forehead on my cheek colder than it should be, and her teeth are chattering. “She’s going into shock.” I say, turning to Maeve. “We need to keep her warm and get the bull—”
Maeve bunches up her face. “I’ve been pulling metal of one kind or another out of miners for twenty plus annos. I know shock when I see it. Spiner!”
Spiner opens his arms, motioning for me to hand her off. “We’ll take care of her, chief,” he says.
But I can’t let go. She’s so light in my arms, so fragile, even as her whole body shakes against me, and I find myself wishing that I could draw her inside my suit, let my armor wrap around her, to protect her the way that Mimi protects me. The Dr?u are coming. My davos needs me. But how can I just give her away?
“Chief,” Mimi says. “Her vitals are distress—”
Yes, I know, a broch! I know. “Be careful,” I tell Spiner as I slide her into his arms.
“We’ll get her right,” Maeve says. She pats my arm and smiles sympathetically as they hurry Vienne away.
Brrppt! A burst from Jenkins’s chain gun gets my attention. “Heewack!” Whooping joyously, he sends bullets flying into the tunnel, where a Dr?u advance party has emerged into the light.
I grab the omnoculars. Like before, the Dr?u are screaming and leaping around, jumping on one another’s backs, growling and raging like they’re in the last stages of rabies. I can almost smell their feral stink from here.
“And some things never change,” I say. “Jenkins, hold your fire. You’re wasting ammo.”
Fuse leans over to me. “So Ockham’s carked it?”
Vienne’s accusation rings in my ears. How could you do that to him? “That’s what I said.”
“Heads up, chief!” Jenkins barks. “Looks like the beasties brought the heavy stuff.”
Jenkins points to the tunnel on the other side of the bridge. In the cover of darkness, the Dr?u have gathered silently, showing restraint that’s definitely not barbaric. They march out in three lines. The first line drops to the ground. The second line kneels behind them. The third line stands, and they all aim their weapons at us.
“Ha!” Jenkins snorts. “Like them plasma dots can make it halfway across the bridge.”
“Is that her?” Fuse asks as he points toward the slim, dark-haired figure striding from the tunnel, a mortar launcher on her hip.
“One and the same,” I say.
Then I watch frozen in awe as she hops onto the back of kneeling Dr?u. Then vaults to the shoulders of the tallest Dr?u.
Raises the launcher.
Fires.
“Move!” I yell.
We sprint away from the sled. Jenkins, reluctant to leave his chain gun, is the last to go. His boots hit dirt as the shell strikes the bow.
The explosion flips the sled. It catapults. Slams against the stone walls. Slides down with an earsplitting squeal, coming to a rest on its side. Fuel begins to leak out, and the stink of it fills the air.
“My gun!” Jenkins starts toward the wreckage.
“Wait!”
But Jenkins doesn’t listen. He runs to the sled, and with fuel pooling under his boots, begins throwing boxes of ammo aside, trying to reach the latches holding the gun to the sled.
“She’s about to fire another mortar, Jenks!” Fuse shouts.
“Take cover!” I gesture for them to get behind a rock formation. “Jenkins! Hit the deck!”
Foosh!
The mortar leaves a stream of bluish exhaust at it roars toward the sled and Jenkins, who is working on the fourth and final latch.
“It’s all bent up, I—” he says.
“Incoming!”
“Outgoing!” Jenkins yells.
He forgets the latch. But not the gun.
With the shell bearing down on him, he rips the chain gun from its last latch, then dives across the slick stone floor. His momentum and a burst of accidental fire push him ten meters from the sled as the shell lands.
A spark lights the fuel, and as it burns, the air swells in an ever-expanding series of pockets that move so quickly and violently that it breaks the sound barrier. The explosion throws the sled twenty meters into the air, a twirling, whirling twisted metal mass that seems to hang like a kite for a few seconds, and then falls with a woofing sound into the Zhao Zhou gorge.
“Gah!” Jenkins cries out, and I think it’s just a reflex reaction to being so close to death.
Then I do a double take. The explosion has also ignited the trail that Jenkins left in his wake. Fire rips toward him at lightning speed. Flames hit his boots. Ignite the soles.
“Gah!”
He stomps his feet. Tiny fireballs fly out around him like he’s dancing on fireworks. The flames race around to the back of his symbiarmor and flare out on his buttocks, whereupon he starts jumping around and smacking himself on the rear end, alternating hands when they get too hot.
Mimi starts laughing.
“Is he in danger?” I ask.
“Only to himself.” She cackles. “The suit is fireproof, you know.”
“Stop dancing!” Fuse says. “It’ll burn out, you great barking fop.”
“It’s hot!”
“Jenks always says he has a hot butt,” Fuse says, laughing. “Now he has proof.”
“This is not the time for humor!” Ebi fumes as she fires a few rounds toward the queen, who ignores the gunfire as if it can’t hurt her. “We are being attacked!”
“Au contraire, mon ami,” Fuse says. “Things are always funnier when you’re under fire.”
I’m about to tell Jenkins to roll around to put out the flames, but they die out before I can. Jenkins is smoldering, inside and out, his gloves blackened with soot and his face red with rage.
“Fragging rooter cannibals!” He hoists the chain gun, aims in the general direction of the Dr?u, and opens fire. The bullets bounce impotently along the Zhao Zhou Bridge. A useless waste of ammunition. But a good show for the Dr?u. Let them see that we’re not going to lie down for them.
When the belt is empty and Jenkins’s rage is out of ammo, the queen comes forward out of the darkness, striding ahead of the Draeu. She’s confident, I’ll give her that much.
Then she rips the mask from her face and tosses it aside, and the porcelain shatters on the stone. She lifts her chin proudly. Her face is as beautiful as the mask.
I feel myself gasp. That face. Vittujen kev?t ja kyrpien takatalvi! I know it.
“Jacob Durango,” the queen calls out. “The queen of the Dr?u would parlay with you.”
“She knows your name?” Ebi raises an eyebrow.
Fuse looks shocked. “Oy, chief. Your first name is Jacob?”
“What did you think it was?” I ask.
“Durango.”
“And my last name?”
Fuse scratches his head. “Er, Durango?”
“Durango Durango.” I tap my head like I’m thinking. “Interesting name.”
“Eh,” Jenkins shrugs. “I once knew a Regulator named Peter Peter.”
“What happened to him?”
“Chigoes digested him.”
“Thanks for that pleasant image.” Standing, I remove the armalite from my back. “Ebi, she’ll be in range of your sniper rifle once we meet. Keep an eye on her. If anything goes wrong, drop her where she stands.”
“With pleasure, chief.” Ebi checks the safety on her weapon.
“Jenkins,” I say as Jenkins joins us, wisps of smoke still rising off his buttocks, “not a single shot from that chain gun. I don’t want to be sawn in half because of your itchy trigger finger.”
“It’s not itchy. Just toasty.”
“Jenkins,” I scold him.
“Yes, chief. I promise not to accidentally kill you just so I can cark out the farging rooters who lit my ass on fire.”
“Good man.” I hand my weapons to Fuse. “Watch these for me, no?”
Fuse accepts them, but says, “You’re going out there unarmed? Either you’re the bravest son of a dunny rat I’ve ever laid orbs on, or the stupidest.”
“She asked for parlay. You go unarmed. It’s our way.”
Fuse blocks my path. “The way of Regulators, sure, but the way of the Dr?u is to eat first and grunt questions later.”
“She’s not a Dr?u,” I say as I step around him and start for the bridge. “It’s worse than that.”
“Maybe she’s just a pretty Dr?u or something?” Fuse calls after me. “The only pretty Dr?u. How do you know that she won’t kill you?”
“Because,” I say without looking back. “I went to battle school with her. She’s a Regulator, too.”