The four Team members stood motionless. For an instant, Unnerby’s soldier persona was blown away, and all that was left was awe. He stumbled away from the sled, and laid one hand on Sherkaner’s back. His voice came faintly across the poor connection: “What is it, Sherkaner?”
“Don’t know.” He could feel Unnerby’s arm trembling. “But someday we’ll understand…. Let’s keep moving, Sergeant.”
Like spring-driven marionettes suddenly kicked into motion, the Team finished loading up, and continued on their path. The show continued overhead, and though there was nothing like the four searing suns, the lights were more beautiful and extensive than any aurora ever known. Two moving stars slid faster and faster across the sky. The ghostly curtains of their passing spread all the way down to the west. Now high in the eastern sky, they flared incandescent, miniature versions of the first burning lights. As they dimmed and spread, legs of light crept down from their point of vanishment, brightening wherever they passed through the earlier glows.
The most spectacular movements were past now, but the slow wraithlike movement of light continued. If it was hundreds of miles up, like a true aurora, there was some immense energy source here. If it was just above their heads, maybe they were seeing the Deep Dark analogue of summer lightning. Either way, the show was worth all the risks of this adventure.
At last they reached the edge of Tiefer cantonment. The strange aurora was still visible as they started down the entrance ramp.
There had never been much question about the targets. They were the ones Underhill had originally imagined, the ones that Victory Smith came up with that first afternoon at Lands Command. If somehow they could reach the Deepest Dark, four soldiers and some explosives could do various damage to fuel dumps, to the shallow deepnesses of surface troops, perhaps even to Tiefstadt’s general staff. Even these targets could not justify the research investment that Underhill was demanding.
Yet there was an obvious choke point. Just as the modern military machine endeavored to gain advantage at the beginning of the Dark by fighting longer to outmaneuver a sleeping enemy, so at the beginning of the New Sun, the first armies that were effectively back in the field would win a decisive advantage.
Both sides had built large stockpiles for that time, but with a strategy quite different from that of the Waning Years and the beginning of the Dark. As far as science could determine, the New Sun grew to its immense brightness in a space of days, perhaps of hours. For a few days it was a searing monster, more than a hundred times brighter than during the Middle and Waning Years. It was that explosion of brightness—not the cold of the Dark—that destroyed all but the sturdiest structures of each generation.
This ramp led to a Tiefer outreach depot. There were others along the front, but this was the rear-echelon depot that would support their maneuver force. Without it, the best of the Tiefer troops would be compelled to stay out of combat. Tiefer forward elements at the point of the Crown’s advance would have no backup. Lands Command figured that destroying the depot would force a favorable armistice, or a string of easy victories for the Crown’s armies. Four soldiers and some subtle vandalism might just be enough to do it.
…If they didn’t freeze trying to get down this ramp. There were wisps of airsnow on the steps, and an occasional shred of brush that had grown between the flags, but that was all. Now when they stopped, it was to pass forward pails of sludge from the sled that Nizhnimor and Unnerby were pulling. The darkness closed in tight around them, lit only by an occasional gleam of spilled exotherm. Intelligence reports claimed the ramp extended less than two hundred yards….
Up ahead glowed an oval of light. The end of the tunnel. The Team staggered off the ramp onto a field that had been open once, but that was now shielded from the sky by silvery sunblinds. A forest of tent poles stretched off all around them. In places the fall of airsnow had torn the structure, but most of it was intact. In the dim, slatted patches of light, they could see the forms of steam locomotives, rail layers, machine-gun cars, and armored automobiles. Even in the dimness, there was a glint of silver paint in the airsnow. When the New Sun lit, this gear would be ready. While ice steamed and melted, and flowed torrents down the channels that webbed this field, Tiefer combateers would come out of the nearby deepnesses and run for the safety of their vehicles. The waters would be diverted into holding tanks, and the cooling sprays started. There would be a few hours of frantic checking of inventories and mechanical status, a few hours more to repair the failures of two centuries of Dark and the hours of new heat. And then they would be off on whichever rail path their commanders thought led to victory. This was the culmination of generations of scientific research into the nature of the Dark and the New Sun. Intelligence estimated that in many ways it was more advanced than the Crown’s own quartermaster science.
Hrunkner gathered them together, so they could all hear him. “I’ll bet they’ll have forward guards out here within an hour of First Sunlight, but now it’s just ours for the taking…. Okay, we top off our panniers and split up per plan. Gil, are you up to this?”
Gil Haven had weaved his way down the steps like a drunkard with broken feet. It looked to Sherkaner that his suit failure had extended back to his walking feet. But he straightened at Unnerby’s words, and his voice seemed almost normal. “Sergeant, I didn’t come all this way to sit an’ watch you cobbers. I can handle my part.”
And so they had come to the point of it all. They disconnected their audio cables, and each gathered up his appointed explosives and dye-black. They had practiced this often enough. If they double-timed between each action point, if they didn’t fall into a drainage ditch and break some legs, if the maps they had memorized were accurate, there would be time to do it all and still not freeze. They moved off in four directions. The explosives they set beneath the sunblinds were scarcely more than hand grenades. They made silent flashes as they went off—and collapsed strategic sections of the canopy. The dye-black mortars followed, completely unimpressive, but working just as all the Materials Research work had predicted they would. The length and breadth of the outreach depot lay in mottled black, awaiting the kiss of the New Sun.
Three hours later they were almost a mile north of the depot. Unnerby had pushed them hard after they left the depot, pushed them to accomplish a final, ancillary goal: survival.
They had almost made it. Almost. Gil Haven was delirious and strangely frantic when they finished at the depot. He tried to leave the depot on his own. “Gotta find a place to dig.” He said the words again and again, struggling against Nizhnimor and Unnerby as they tied him back into the row of safety lines.
“That’s where we’re going now, Gil. Hang on.” Unnerby released Haven to Amber, and for a moment Hrunkner and Sherk could hear only each other.
“He’s got more spirit than before,” said Sherkaner. Haven was bouncing around like a cobber on wooden legs.
“I don’t think he can feel the pain anymore.” Hrunk’s reply was faint but clear. “That’s not what worries me. I think he’s sliding into Wanderdeep.”
Rapture of the Dark. It was the mad panic that took cobbers when the inner core of their minds realized that they were trapped outside. The animal mind took over, driving the victim to find some place, any place, that might serve as a deepness.
“Damn.” The word was muffled, chopped as Unnerby broke contact and tried to get them all moving. They were only hours from probable safety. And yet… watching Gil Haven struggle woke primeval reflexes in all of them. Instinct was such a marvelous thing—but if they gave in to it now, it would surely lead them to death.
After two hours, they had barely reached the hills beyond the depot. Twice, Gil had broken free, each time more frantic, to run toward the false promise of the steep defiles alongside their path. Each time, Amber had dragged him back, tried to reason with him. But Gil didn’t know where he was anymore, and his thrashing had torn his suit in several places. Parts of him were stiff and frozen.
The end had come when they reached the first of the hard climbs. They had to leave the sled behind; the rest of the way would be with just the air and exotherms they could carry in their panniers. A third time, Gil ripped free of the safety line. He fled with a strange, bounding stagger. Nizhnimor took off after him. Amber was a large woman, and until now she’d had little trouble handling Gil Haven. This time was different. Gil had reached the final desperation of Wanderdeep. As she pulled him back from the edge, he turned on her, stabbing with the points of his hands. Amber staggered back, releasing him. Hrunk and Sherkaner were right behind her, but it was too late. Haven’s arms flailed in all directions and he tumbled off the path into the shadows below.
The three of them stood in stupefied paralysis for a moment; then Amber began to sidle over the edge, her legs feeling down through the airsnow for some purchase on the rocks beneath. Unnerby and Underhill grabbed her, pulled her back.
