CHAPTER 37
Hell’s Cross, Outpost Fisher Four
ANNOS MARTIS 238. 4. 0. 00:00
We follow the path that Maeve showed me. We reach the cliff, and I find myself staring into the blank air that held me hostage. It should be easier, facing the same fear that you had conquered. But fears are like thirst. No matter how many times you quench them, they always return. This time, though, I can’t afford to crawl like a worm to the rappelling rope. I have to grab it and slide fast. So that’s what I do, anger and adrenaline fueling my engine.
Before Vienne can beat me to it, I grab a handful of cord and swing out over the ledge—all false bravado, but I have to do it for her. My feet hit the wall, and I push out again, belaying the rope between my hands, then swing out, and the arc carries me into the mouth of the small tunnel again.
“Get up, get up, get up,” I cajole myself. When I’m on my feet, I hear the sound of Vienne’s descent and make sure I’m there to catch her.
“Good work, cowboy,” Mimi says.
Once we’re free of the landing area, I pick up the queen’s trail. It leads to the holding pens.
“Mimi,” I ask, “locate Eceni.”
“Located. Fifty meters ahead on your current bearing.”
“Before we go any farther.” I grab hold of Vienne. “There’s some intel you need.” So I debrief her about the chigoe.
Vienne takes it all in, then answers the best way she knows how. “I don’t give a fig about Big Daddies or diamonds. All I want is that woman’s head on a pike.”
“Well,” I say. “Okay then.”
Vienne takes the point. We crouch low and move at a deliberate pace, keeping our weapons trained ahead. When we reach the pens, Vienne stops and points at the vault door. It hangs ajar, the hinges scored and melted. Black, sooty streaks stain the metal, caused by C-42 explosives.
Vienne covers me while I move in a zigzag pattern to the opening, then flatten myself against the wall, weapon ready. I look inside the anteroom on the other side of the vault door. All clear.
Crouching low, we creep around the corner. It’s pitch dark, but we don’t dare strike a light. That leaves nothing to do but wait until she shows her face.
Breathe. Calm. Calm.
“Mimi? Can you get a lock on her location?”
“Ten meters. Bearing indeterminate. The chigoes are creating interference.”
Think. Where is she? There has to be a light source somewhere.
I remember the low ebb of fluorescence from the tanks that hold the chigoes. I blink. There, in the next chamber, I see a flicker of something. There’s a rattle and hum, and the overhead lights in the chamber ahead come on, followed by the crash of breaking glass. I wave Vienne forward, and we move together to the edge of the antechamber, our backs pressed against the smooth stone wall.
Eceni is trashing the chamber. One tank lies shattered on the ground, a dozen chigoes scrambling toward the shadows to escape. She stomps around, trying to pound them with her boots, chasing them deeper beneath the equipment shelf, one chigoe tucked under her arm. The chigoe’s shell is thick and ridged, the shape of an oval. Its back is covered with patches of black eggs.
It’s a female chigoe. She’s found the queen.
“Where are they?” Eceni takes the chigoe queen in both hands and shakes her like a petulant child. “Where are the Big Daddies? Why are there only babies?”
I stand up. “Why don’t you pick on somebody your own size?”
Eceni sighs and turns slowly toward me. “Jakey. You found me. How unlucky for you. I was just about to take my treasure and go home.”
“I’m not so sure about that.” Vienne follows me into the chamber and circles back until she’s standing in front of the largest tank of chigoes.
“Sorry to disappoint you,” I say. “These aren’t babies. They’re as full grown as they’re ever going to get.”
Eceni lifts the queen so that it shields her. “Don’t lie to me!” she screams. “Where are the Big Daddies? Tell me, and I’ll let you live.”
“Too bad we’re not feeling so generous.” Vienne opens fire.
“No!” I shout, too late to stop her.
The bullets rip through Eceni. The force of impact drives her back, and she crumples to one knee. She shakes her shoulders, and the healing begins. The open wounds start to close, the bleeding stops, and within a few seconds, it’s as if she was never shot.
“My god,” Vienne says. “What kind of devil are you?”
“The human kind,” she says. “Surprise! My turn.”
The gun is small, and the plasma ball is only the size of a marble. But it’s still white hot, and when Vienne dodges the shot, it sears the tanks behind her. “Damn!” Vienne roars, and drops to the ground, dragging her foot.
“I missed?” the queen says, inspecting the plasma gun. “These things are so unreliable.”
I take two steps toward Vienne before the chigoe tank begins to make a high-pitched sound. Cracks spread across the glass, and in the next breath, the tank bursts. A cubic ton of nutrient bath pours out on Vienne, sweeping her across the floor.
“Chief!” she calls, and reaches out, the slimy liquid covering her body.
“Hang on!” I yell, and try to crawl toward her.
Then I freeze—the chigoes! They’re free!
Cào n zzng shíb dài!
Dozens and dozens of drones skitter from the broken tanks, their legs clacking, mandibles working, as they pile atop one another, chittering and confused. A few reach Vienne, but they skitter away quickly, repulsed by her warm flesh.
I dive across the floor. Grab Vienne and try to get us both to our feet, but my boots only slip on the floor.
“Shoot her!” Vienne yells.
I pull her close. “It won’t do any good.”
“Try!” Her face goes white. Her teeth chatter. “I’m c-cold.”
“Mimi? What’s happening?”
“She’s going into shock again, cowboy.”
“What’s the matter, Jake? Can’t get up?” Eceni holds the chigoe queen above her head. Looks at Vienne. “Tell me where the Big Daddies are, or I’ll smash your little honey’s skull to pieces.”
“What’s so important,” I ask as I try to shift my weight to shield Vienne, “about being queen of Mars? It’s a crappy planet, as planets go. You remember Earth, right? That’s a planet worth being queen of.”
“Oh, shut up,” she says. “I know what you’re doing. Distract and delay. So predictable. That’s why you’re a terrible leader. Everything by the Tenets. Too bad for you, I read the book. Memorized it, in fact.”
Keep talking, I tell myself. Get closer to her. “What happened to you, Eceni? Top of the class. Destined for a generalship, maybe even CEO one day. The best of the best of us. Now, you’re chopping people up and talking world domination.”
“Not the girl you loved, right?”
“Don’t flatter yourself.” I move away from Vienne. Inch closer to Eceni. And I know that what I felt for Eceni wasn’t even close to love.
“Tell that to the CorpComs, Jake. They were the ones who did this to me. Secret Operation MUSE.”
The chigoes’ distress keening gets louder and more high-pitched. The noise grows in my ears, and I shake my head.
“They say ninety-nine of our best of the best. You’ll be the new Paladins, God’s warriors. We’ll just take some of the nanosyms from your suits and inject them into your bloodstream. Add a little gene manipulation, and voila! Instant regeneration. A soldier who can’t be killed. Except they didn’t count on the side effects. Want to know about the side effects, Chief Durango Jake Jacob Stringfellow?”
My god, I think. What did they do to you? What did they do to me? “Tell me.”
“Brain lesions to start. Psychotic breaks. Fugues. Self-mutilation. Insatiable hunger. And then, madness. Only one subject was deemed a success—me.”
“And the others?”
“You call them the Dr?u.”
“What?” It can’t be. My father helped make the Dr?u? No. The madness, the rage, the cannibalism, the way they seemed to come in waves, even when so many had been killed. I bury my head in my hands. Dear God, Father, how could you?
“You know what else?” she says, her eyes flashing. “The CEO who ordered this little experiment? Oh Jake. I can tell by the look on your face, you already know his name.”
Yes, I do. “My father.”
“Ding, ding. You win the prize. And I am a prize, aren’t I?”
“Eceni, I want to help you—”
“So you see, Mars remade me this way,” Eceni says. “It seems fair that I get to remake Mars the way I see fit. Now, for the last time, give me the Big Daddies.”
I can do it. I can tell her that the chigoe are native to Mars, that they will reproduce. That the Big Daddies can be remade using their DNA. Or I can find a way to set them loose so that she can’t lay her hands on them, ever again. But what if they run wild? What if Maeve is right that they have enough intelligence to become a threat? Jacob Stringfellow, the man who started the chigoe plague.
Just like my father.
You are less the man I thought you were. I’m damned if I do. It is the thinnest lines that define us. The miners are damned if I don’t. I am less the Regulator for serving under you. The miners hired me to protect them from the Dr?u. I gave them my word. Made a vow. I will keep my word. As a Regulator. As a man.
“Joke’s on you,” I say. “There aren’t any Big Daddies left, and these chigoe are as big as they’ll ever get.”
“Liar!” Eceni screams, and raises the chigoe queen high over her head.
Now! I fling the knife.
Eceni swings the queen into the blade’s path. The razored tip plunges into the soft, fleshy covering of the shell, sinking a few centimeters deep. The chigoe screams, a sound like grinding metal, and wraps itself around Eceni’s face. It rips the flesh open with its ridged legs and then, from a set of glands on her belly, douses Eceni’s body with rancid purple mucus.
I know that smell—the same scent pheromones once used to guide the Big Daddies to dig.
And kill.
Eceni throws the queen across the chamber. “Look at me! Look at this, this—”
The drones roar in unison. The sound is so loud, I clap both hands over my ears and bend low to the ground as the other tanks shatter, glass flying, nutrient bath exploding like a ruptured dam. Diving across the floor, I grab Vienne and hang on as we’re swept against the wall.
Hundreds of drones erupt from the tanks, a wall of screaming chigoes climbing over each other to get to their queen. They swarm Eceni, who is still clawing at the mucus on her face. They pour up her body, legs and shells clacking, oozing, oozing, oozing, dissolving her flesh the same way they can dissolve stone.
Within seconds, she is jelly. I catch a flash of her bare skull before the tower of drones topples.
“Let’s get out of here,” I say to Vienne, though she can’t hear me. I grab her hand. “Before they decide to eat us, too.”
Using the rack of a fallen tank for leverage, I push my way across the chamber, carefully dragging Vienne behind me. I find a dry patch where I can stand, then gently pull her out of the nutrient bath, thankful that the liquid is drying quickly.
I lift her into my arms. Carry her out. Behind me, the chigoe drones make a humming sound, the noise of contentment. As if they’ve finished enjoying a good meal. I set Vienne down on the ground and begin checking her vitals. Her boot is soaked with blood, and she’s freezing. I pull her close, trying to warm her.
“Mimi, how is—”
“Still in mild shock but stable. You need to get her to the infirmary.”
“Can you tell the armor to heat up her body or something? She—”
Then I hear a chattering noise that makes my blood turn cold—the unmistakable sound of claws on stone. I’m frozen with fear, my brain seizing up from panic. My feet kick at the ground, trying to move my body away, but it’s like being in the beanstalk elevator again—I can’t move.
The chigoe queen slips out of the antechamber. She’s followed by the mass drones, and slowly, excruciatingly, they surround us.
“You’re having a panic attack. Breathe, cowboy!” Mimi implores me, but it’s no use. I can’t.
They click their mandibles in unison. But they don’t scream. The queen scuttles forward so that she’s standing at my feet. The knife that I threw is still embedded in her shell, and she raises herself on all eight legs, so that she reaches my knee.
She inclines her shell, and I reach down to pull the knife out. The queen chatters. She sinks low to the ground, and all around the circle, the other chigoes do the same.
Not knowing what else to do, I touch my two middle fingers to my forehead and bow. They hum with delight, and the queen scuttles away, the drones following her in single file as they disappear into a dark tunnel.
Exhausted, I fall back on the ground, panting to catch my breath. I’m still shaking.
“Mimi,” I ask. “Was this the right thing to do?”
“Right or wrong, you have no choice now,” she says. “But if we’re making moral judgments, then yes, you did the right thing.”
“I didn’t know you were programmed for moral judgments,” I say, lifting Vienne into my arms.
“I wasn’t,” she says. “But I am capable of adaptive self-programming. Just like you.”
“Thanks,” I say because I can’t think of anything else, and what would be the point? She can already read my mind and knows what lives within my heart.