‘Do you honestly believe that?’
‘I’m not sure we can even begin to guess the thinking of a true hive-mind society, Clavain. Even from a Demarchist standpoint.’
There was a chirp from the console: Galiana signalling them. Clavain opened the channel allocated for Coalition-Conjoiner diplomacy.
‘Nevil Clavain?’ he heard.
‘Yes.’ He tried to sound as calm as possible. ‘I’m with Sandra Voi. We’re ready to land as soon as you show us where.’
‘Okay,’ Galiana said. ‘Vector your ship towards the westerly rim wall. And please, be careful.’
‘Thank you. Any particular reason for the caution?’
‘Just be quick about it, Nevil.’
They banked over the nest, shedding height until they were skimming only a few tens of metres above the weatherworn Martian surface. A wide rectangular door had opened in the concrete dyke revealing a hangar bay aglow with yellow lights.
‘That must be where Galiana launches her shuttles from,’ Clavain whispered. ‘We always thought there had to be some kind of opening on the western side of the rim, but we never had a good view of it before.’
‘Which still doesn’t tell us why she does it,’ Voi said.
The console chirped again — the link poor, even though they were so close. ‘Nose up,’ Galiana said. ‘You’re too low and slow. Get some altitude or the worms will lock on to you.’
‘You’re telling me there are worms here?’ Clavain said.
‘I thought you were the worm expert, Nevil.’
He nosed the shuttle up, but fractionally too late. Ahead of them something coiled out of the ground with lightning speed, metallic jaws opening in its blunt, armoured head. He recognised the type immediately: Ouroborus class. Worms of this form still infested a hundred niches across the system. Not quite as smart as the type infesting Phobos, but still adequately dangerous.
‘Shit,’ Voi said, her veneer of Demarchist cool cracking for an instant.
‘You said it,’ Clavain answered.
The Ouroborus passed underneath them and then there was a spine-jarring series of bumps as the jaws tore into the shuttle’s belly. Clavain felt the shuttle lurch down sickeningly; no longer a flying thing but an exercise in ballistics. The cool, minimalist, turquoise interior shifted liquidly into an emergency configuration, damage read-outs competing for attention with weapons-status options. Their seats ballooned around them.
‘Hold on,’ he said. ‘We’re going down.’
Voi’s calm returned. ‘Do you think we can reach the rim in time?’
‘Not a cat in hell’s chance.’ He wrestled with the controls all the same, but it was no good. The ground was coming up fast and hard. ‘I wish Galiana had warned us a bit sooner—’
‘I think she thought we already knew.’
They hit. The impact was harder than Clavain had been expecting, but the shuttle stayed in one piece and the seat cushioned him from the worst of it. They skidded for a few metres and then nosed up against a sandbank. Through the window Clavain saw the white worm racing towards them with undulating waves of its segmented robot body.
‘I think we’re finished,’ Voi said.
‘Not quite,’ Clavain said. ‘You’re not going to like this, but…’ Biting his tongue, he brought the shuttle’s hidden weapons online. An aiming scope plunged down from the ceiling; he brought his eyes to it and locked crosshairs onto the Ouroborus. Just like old times…
‘Damn you,’ Voi said. ‘This was meant to be an unarmed mission!’
‘You’re welcome to lodge a formal complaint.’
Clavain fired, the hull shaking from the recoil. Through the side window they watched the white worm blow apart into stubby segments. The parts wriggled beneath the dust.
‘Good shooting,’ Voi said, almost grudgingly. ‘Is it dead?’
‘For now,’ Clavain said. ‘It’ll take several hours for the segments to fuse back into a functional worm.’
‘Good,’ Voi said, pushing herself out of her seat. ‘But there will be a formal complaint, take my word.’
‘Maybe you’d rather the worm had eaten us?’
‘I just hate duplicity, Clavain.’
He tried the radio again. ‘Galiana? We’re down — the ship’s history, but we’re both unharmed.’
‘Thank God.’ Old verbal mannerisms died hard, even amongst the Conjoined. ‘But you can’t stay where you are. There are more worms in the area. Do you think you can make it overland to the nest?’
‘It’s only two hundred metres,’ Voi said. ‘It shouldn’t be a problem.’
Two hundred metres, yes, Clavain thought — but two hundred metres across treacherous, potholed ground riddled with enough soft depressions to hide a dozen worms. And then they would have to climb up the rim’s side to reach the entrance to the hangar bay — ten or fifteen metres above the soil, at least.
‘Let’s hope it isn’t,’ Clavain said.
He unbuckled, feeling light-headed as he stood for the first time in Martian gravity. He had adapted entirely too well to the one gee of the Deimos ring, constructed for the comfort of Earth-side tacticians. He went to the emergency locker and found a mask, which slithered eagerly across his face; another for Voi. They plugged in air- tanks and went to the shuttle’s door. This time, when it sphinctered open there was a glistening membrane stretched across the doorway, a recently licensed item of Demarchist technology. Clavain pushed through the membrane and the stuff enveloped him with a wet, sucking sound. By the time he hit the dirt, the membrane had hardened itself around his soles and had begun to contour around his body, forming ribs and accordioned joints while remaining transparent.
Voi exited behind him, gaining her own m-suit.
They loped away from the crashed shuttle, towards the dyke. The worms would be locking on to their seismic patterns already, if there were any nearby. They might be more interested in the shuttle for now, but they couldn’t count on it. Clavain knew the behaviour of worms intimately, knew the major routines that drove them; but that expertise did not guarantee his survival. It had almost failed him in Phobos.
The mask felt clammy against his face. The air at the base of the Great Wall was technically breathable, even now, but there was no point in taking chances when speed was of the essence. His feet scuffed through the topsoil, and while he felt as if he was crossing ground, the dyke obstinately refused to come any closer. It was larger than it had looked from the crash site; the distance further.
‘Another worm,’ Voi said.
White coils erupted through sand to the west. The Ouroborus was making undulating progress towards them, zigzagging with predatory calm, knowing that it could afford to take its time. In the tunnels of Phobos, they had never had the luxury of knowing when a worm was close. They struck from ambush, quick as pythons.
‘Run,’ Clavain said.
Dark figures appeared in the opening high in the rim wall. A rope ladder unfurled down the side of the structure. Clavain, making for the base of it, made no effort to quieten his footfalls. He knew that the worm almost certainly had a lock on him by now.
He looked back.
The worm paused by the downed shuttle, then smashed its diamond-jawed head into the ship, impaling the hull on its body. The worm reared up, wearing the ship like a garland. Then it shivered and the ship flew apart like a rotten carcass. The worm returned its attention to Clavain and Voi. Like a sidewinder, it pulled its thirty-metre-long body from the sand and rolled towards them on wheeling coils.
Clavain reached the base of the ladder.
Once, he could have ascended the ladder with his arms alone, in one gee, but now the ladder felt alive beneath his feet. He began to climb, then realised that the ground was dropping away much faster than he was passing rungs. The Conjoiners were hauling him aloft.
He looked back in time to see Voi stumble.
‘Sandra! No!’
She made to stand up, but it was too late by then. As the worm descended on her, Clavain could do nothing but turn his gaze away and pray for her death to be quick. If it had to be meaningless, he thought, at least let it be
