“You do not build with it directly. But it is a component. It adds rigidity. Or flexibility, depending how you use it. Like in bones.”
I look through the eyepiece of the sensor mast array and pan over to where the Lanky village stands, twenty kilometers away but very obvious on the red Mars dirt. Now that I see one closer up and in daylight, I am reminded of the skeletal remains of a long-dead animal.
“Like in bones,” I say.
Underneath the Weasel, the ground shakes a little. Dmitry and I look at each other. Lieutenant Stahl slows the vehicle down and scans around for falling rocks or other signs of instability.
Then the ground shakes again, stronger than before. Small rocks and pebbles start bouncing down the slope in front of us.
“Volcano?” I offer.
“This part of Mars isn’t volcanically active,” Lieutenant Stahl says.
The shaking repeats, stronger still than the first two times.
“Helmets on,” I suggest. “We need to get off the hillside before we end up in a rockslide.”
A fourth tremor jolts the ground, and this one is so strong that it makes the Weasel move sideways a little. Then there’s a deep, sonorous rumbling that starts in the valley somewhere and doesn’t let up. It sounds like an earthquake, and it gets a little louder with every passing moment.
“Down there.” Dmitry points. “Look.”
A meter-wide crack has appeared in the plateau just to the south of the Lanky village. As we watch, it extends north, parting the ground like a world cut deeply with the world’s largest and sharpest knife. We hear the sudden cracking and whiplash snapping of rock layers pulling apart. The surface crack races up to the Lanky village and disappears under the structure at its southernmost point. The sound that started out as a distant, rumbling cacophony is rising sharply in volume, and the tremors that accompany it get stronger by the second.
“Earthquake,” I say. “A big-ass earthquake. Just what we needed right now.”
“Not earthquake, I think,” Dmitry says.
Over by the Lanky village, the ground has started to churn. The smaller rocks and the rubble are visibly bouncing on the ground with the vibrations of whatever is going on below the surface. The rumbling from below fills the whole valley and rolls across the plateau, a steady and energetic bass growl. It looks like two square kilometers of ground around the Lanky village have suddenly become semifluid. Then the crack bisecting the Lanky village widens. The earth on either side of it rises—five meters, ten, fifteen. The whole patch of ground around the Lanky structure heaves up, as if something huge is pushing through from below. Our vehicle, parked on a hill slope over ten kilometers away, shakes with the sonic energy of the low-frequency rumbling that increases with every second.
Then three kilometers of ground erupt upwards, and a gigantic oblong shape appears at the top of the new opening in the Martian soil. The top of it is rounded, and even though most of the object is still buried in the ground, I can tell just by looking at the curvature of the top part what it is that is bursting upwards through the rock and soil like the planet is giving birth. It’s the sleek, deadly torpedo shape of a Lanky seed ship.
“Oh, fuck me running,” I say.
Dmitry utters something at the same time in a low voice, probably the same sentiment expressed in Russian.
The Lanky village, the whole roughly dome-shaped structure, is connected to the top of the seed ship’s hull. Now that the ship is breaking through the surface, soil and rock sliding off the hull like water off a surfacing submarine, the structure starts breaking apart. It looks like the seed ship is shedding itself of the latticework edifice, as if it’s some component it no longer needs.
Maybe they aren’t shelters after all, I think. The only logical conclusion is that every last one of the Lanky “settlements” is the surface component of a buried seed ship. Feelers, or roots maybe, but not Lanky housing. We still treat them as if they think the way we do, and they constantly show us that alien means alien.
“It’s taking off,” Lieutenant Stahl says with amazement. “How is it taking off? In atmosphere? It’s enormous.”
“I have no idea,” I say. “But if that thing makes orbit, it’ll slice through the fleet like a sword through a soy block.”
I fire up my combat-controller kit and dial in the direct link to Phalanx C2.
“Priority traffic. Phalanx C2, this is Tailpipe Red One, come in.”
“Tailpipe Red One, copy four by five. Go ahead on priority traffic.”
I send the video feed from the Weasel through the visual interface of my suit along with the next message.
“Request priority fire mission, nuclear release. There’s a Lanky seed ship taking off from the surface eighty-three klicks northwest of LZ Red.”
“Confirm your last, Tailpipe Red One. Did you say a Lanky seed ship is taking off from the surface of Mars?” The C2 officer’s tone makes it clear that he thinks I’ve lost my marbles.
“Check the visual feed. He’s halfway out of the ground right now. If he makes upper atmo and then orbit, nobody will go home today.”
The C2 officer takes a few moments to check the feed and then breaks radio protocol by transmitting a very elaborate swear.
“Repeat, request priority fire mission, nuclear release. You have got to put some nukes on top of him before he’s high enough. Do it right now. I am uploading TRP data.”
“Tailpipe Red One, stand by.”
I know that the C2 officer is making a panicked dash across CIC right now to tell the skipper, who is going to pick up the intership-comms handset in a few seconds to talk to the general in overall command of the task force. I predict that the answer won’t take long, and my prediction proves correct. Twenty seconds later, I get a reply from Phalanx.
“Nuclear strike is authorized. The closest nuke-armed unit is Kirov, and she’s repositioning right now. Shots out in seven minutes.”
“Make it faster if they can,” I reply. “Who knows how high this thing will be in four minutes.”
“That impact will be an air burst for all intents and purposes,” the C2 officer says. “You may not have enough time to get clear.”
“There is no alternative, Phalanx. We need nukes on that ship now, or we all die today.”
“Affirmative.” The C2 controller pauses for a moment. “We passed the TRP data to Kirov. You have seven minutes to clear the area and get to cover.”
“Copy that. Tailpipe Red One out.”
I turn to Dmitry. “Talk to your pals on Kirov, and ask what kind of yield they’re going to dial in for that nuke. Tell them to make it at least twenty kilotons. A hundred would be better.”
Dmitry is on the radio for a quick and terse exchange. “Two megatons, single warhead,” he says afterward.
“Shit,” I say. “That’s a big bang.”
“Russian targeting systems are not so good as Commonwealth. We have to make up with bigger warhead.”
“Get us out of here, Lieutenant,” I say to Stahl, who is already spooling up the Weasel’s engines.