David Macinnis Gill - Black Hole Sun

Outpost Fisher Four, South Pole, Mars
ANNOS MARTIS 238. 4. 5. 17:11

Now come the mousies nosing out their hole, thinks Kuhru as he wipes fresh bone marrow from his snout. Three pretty little mousies. Humans. Females. Ripe and soft and full of warm blood. He shudders. It will be ecstasy to hunt them down.

Steady, you mongrels! Kuhru growls at his snipers, both built like him, with gnarled manes of black hair, matted beards, their faces cratered with pox marks and battle scars. Miss the shot, and Ill flay your miserable hides.

He tracks the girls as they scurry from the closed mine shaft onto the tundra. Ore buckets in hand, they fight the lacerating winds, oblivious to the snipers red laser dots dancing on the backs of their heads.

A dozen meters from the shaft, they begin digging. One keeps watch.

Kuhru snarls when he sees pillars of their cold breath. Careless. Stupid. Soft. Such easy prey. Fire, you dogs!

Crack! Crack! Two girls drop.

Crack! The third girl falls writhing on the ice, a bullet hole in her calf.

Not the leg! Kuhru roars. He punishes the snipers with the bone he sucked dry, slamming the heavy knot of the hip joint against their skulls. I said, not the leg!

Then he bounds down the rise, his knuckles almost touching the ice. The wounded girl doesnt see Kuhru until he blots out the sun. She screams and tries to crawl away.

Dru! she cries, her voice a rasping whisper. No, no! God, please no.

Kuhru kicks her wounded leg. Laughs as she passes out, her head striking the tundra with a clack. An amusing sound. Lovely little mousie. How easily he could snap her soft neck and suck the life out of her body.

He squats and breathes her in, then notices something clutched to her chest. A shell? Here? He plucks it from her grip. It is as wide as his hands, the ridged back marked with a hexagonal pattern. He stuffs it in his belt.

Wake up, mousie, he growls, spitting into her face. Crawl back into your hole and tell the miners this, he says, when her eyes open. My queen demands six for her table.

No! the girl screams, and pounds him with her fists. Youll take no more from us.

Dru take what the Dru want! Kuhru backhands her, and blood flies from her mouth. Six children. The queen gives you ten days.

What about she says, her voice fading, my friends?

He stands and slings the dead little mousies over his shoulder. The Dru dont waste good meat.

Above the Fossiker Line, Mars
ANNOS MARTIS 238. 4. 7. 06:01

Mars stinks. From the depths of its rock quarries to the iron-laden dirt that covers the planets crust, it has a pungent, metallic tang that you can taste in your mouth. And it isnt just the soil. Our polluted air is poisoned with the stink of human waste and burning fuel. The terraformed oceans stink; the newborn rivers reek; as do the lakes, which spew a perpetual efflux of sulfur. The whole planet is a compost heap, intentionally designed to rot and burn endlessly so that one day, its air will be completely breathable, and its waters capable of supporting life. But tonight the stink is so powerful, I can smell it up here. Ten kilometers above the surface. Where Im standing on a small square platform. Looking straight down.

About to wet myself.

Oh, quit whining, Durango, Mimi tells me. You are such a melodramatist.

Thats not even a word. I flip up the visor of my helmet. Take a healthy sip of oxygen from a tank I brought along for the job. This high up, the atmosphere is as thin as a layer of old lady skin, and Im seeing black spots dance before my eyes. Its bitter cold, too. Ice crystals have formed on the metal platform like its sprayed with quartz, and my exhaled breath stretches out like a frozen rope. Forget the poetryits cold enough to make pashing an icicle feel like puckering up to a hot capstove.

Melodramatist isnt listed in my thesaurus data bank, she says. But I am capable of adaptive self-programming.

Bugger. Its bad enough having an artificial intelligence flash-cloned to my brain, now said AI tells me shes spawning new words.

I heard that, she says.

Which comes as no surprise. Mimi hears everything. I meant for you to hear me, I say.

Did not.

Did so.

Are you arguing inanely for a reason? Or just stalling?

Just stalling. I peek over the edge of the elevator platform. No railing. No lifeline. One missed step, and youre a human meteoroid. My knees start shaking. Vertigo hits, and I almost pitch headlong over the edge.

Speaking of my thesaurus data bank, Mimi pipes up. Would you like me to look up the meaning of chicken as well?

I drop to hands and knees. Im about to die, to cark it, to shuffle off this mortal coil. Your talking is only going to make it happen faster.

Wee, sleekit, cowrin, timrous beastie, Mimi quotes from her favoriteand my most despisedpoem, written by some fossilized Earther. O, what a panics in thy breastie!

Why did I ever agree to this job, anyway? What kind of idiot takes a space elevator ten kilometers into the atmosphere just to jump off it? Thats a rhetorical question, I forewarn Mimi. Dont answer it.

Youre so cute when youre terrified.

I lean over the edge again. A few meters below hangs an escape pod. Beanstalk operators use them when the space elevator gets stuck. All I have to do is hop from here to the pod.

From here to the pod. Here. To the pod.

Might as well ask me to jump from here to Earth.

You are wasting time, Mimi says. Your acrophobia is simply a manifestation of your desire to control every aspect of your life. To defeat it, all you have to do is adjust your heart rate and breathing. And then, let go.

Easy for you to say, Madame Freud. You dont have any hands.

Also? You should use the mask again. My sensors are reporting a drop in blood gas levels.

Are you accusing me of passing gas?

No, of being full of hot air. Now shut up and get on with it.

Fine.

I suck down enough oxygen to saturate my lungs. Set the tank aside on the platform. Cinch the strap holding the assault rifle to my back. Then check that the small fortune hidden inside my body armor is safe. The fortune is to pay a ransom, and the rifle is for the criminal Im hired to killif the fall from space doesnt kill me first.

Cowboy, Mimi says, you have less than one minute to begin descent protocols. Move.

Miststck! I swear. Im too young to die. But I flip my visor shut. Clench my eyes tight. And drop into nothing. A second later my boots hit the top of the escape pod. My stomach keeps going.

That was very anticlimatic, Mimi says.

Tell that to my stomach.

Is it too young to die, too?

No, but its good at passing gas.

I slide the pods air lock open. Then drop inside. On the floor, I peek through the porthole of the second lock and get another eyeful of atmosphere. The plan calls for me to drop through the lock. Then slide down the chute. Its a bad plan. A bad, bad plan. And Im the whacker who thought of it.

Im an idiot, I say aloud.

Some truths are self-evident.

Ha-ha.

I stare at the clear polymer tube that extends almost the length of the space elevators elephantine cable. Almost . Right. The almost part of the equation really bothers me. Almost can land you several kilometers from the drop zone. Maybe in a nice, quiet sand field. Or maybe in the middle of an acid-rain retention pond. Both mean a quick funeral, and I cant afford a funeral right now. The squad I command, my davos, is so flat-busted broke, weve eaten nothing but red dust in two days. Its my job to make sure we get fed, and Im doing a lousy job of it. Which is what brought me to this.

After pausing to do a final systems check on the nanobots that regulate my body armor, I search the night sky for a fixed point of reference. Phobos and Deimos, the twin moons, are potato-shaped lights on the horizon. In the distance is Earth, pretending to be a star, taunting us with its arrogant blue oceans. I fix my eyes on the false star, a technique for reducing nausea. If it works, I wont puke in my helmet this time.