“I know,” Freeman whispered.
“He’s going to breathe in fumes,” I said. “Most of his face is exposed. You saw what that stuff does.”
“I’ll take care of him,” Freeman said.
“We’ll carry him as long as we can, but when he falls behind …”
“I’ll take care of it,” Freeman said. I knew better than to argue.
I took one last look around the kettle. The men stood ready to fight, but I sensed something brittle in their resolve. Burton stood at the head of the company, a man ready to take any risk because he feared losing control of the situation or possibly control of himself. The men fell into lines. William Sweetwater, who now held nothing more than a small penlight in his hands, kept himself apart from the Marines. He orbited around Freeman like a child keeping an eye on a protective parent in a crowd.
“Let’s move out,” I said, giving the order in an unnaturally quiet voice.
The bright ion curtain sky shone in through the open ramp as we marched out. It had rained recently. My boots sank a quarter of an inch in the mud-covered ground.
“It’s 2100 hours,” Burton said. “Maybe we’ll see a night sky when we come back out. I’d be willing to nursemaid a nuke through a cave of gigantic alien spiders to see a real night sky.”
“Did Sweetwater mention that most of those spiders are mindless drones that are no more dangerous than a footlocker as long as you stay out of their way?” I asked.
“Yup,” Burton said.
“Did he mention that some of them are as big as jeeps?”
“The hunter spiders?” Burton asked.
“I think there are live aliens controlling the big ones,” I said.
“Yeah, that’s what Dr. Sweetwater said, that they’re avatars, just like the soldiers we’ve been fighting,” Burton said.
“Yeah, avatars,” I said, still stunned at how much more easily the men accepted the idea that they were fighting avatars than the generals had. “There aren’t very many of the big ones.”
“Good to know,” Burton said.
We stood and watched as the men filed out of the transport. Thomer led the riflemen, each of them carrying particle-beam cannons—guns with slightly better range than our standard-issue particle-beam pistols. They also had rockets. Every man in the company carried rockets.
Next came Herrington and Boll, leading the team carrying the first of the nukes.
“Harris, you’re not going to go berserk on us, are you? I mean, you’re not going to get so hopped up on that combat hormone that you start killing us off, are you?” Burton asked over a private channel.
“If you have to die, wouldn’t you rather be killed by one of your men?” I asked.
Burton turned and let the ranks walk past him until only Sweetwater, Freeman, and I remained in the ship. He raised his right hand as if preparing to salute me, then flipped me off.
Standing at the base of the ramp, Sweetwater saw Burton flip me the finger. He looked from Burton, then to me, then back to Burton. “Does that mean the same thing to Marines that it means to scientists?” he shouted through his oxygen mask.
“I’m sure it does,” I said.
“Trouble among the ranks?” he asked, then waddled off to stand nearer to Freeman.
Breeze had parked beside a different entrance than the one Freeman and I used. We would not need to scale the mountain to reach this one; it was level with the ridge.
“Get ready,” I said over the open frequency, as we neared the entrance. The men lugging the nuclear devices pulled their pistols out of their holsters. The company grenadiers unstrapped rocket launchers, and the riflemen readied their particle-beam cannons. Seeing the other men with their weapons, Sweetwater pulled out the particle beam pistol I’d given him. He held it like an old-fashioned dueler—the barrel only inches from his nose, the muzzle aimed toward the sky.
“Last chance for you to turn back,” I said to him through the speaker in my helmet. My respect for the diminutive scientist would not have changed if he’d soiled his pants and run back to the transport, but I knew he would not. Sweetwater turned toward me and pointed at the back of his hand. His skin was already turning an inflamed red as if he were having an allergic reaction. Given a little more time, blisters would form. The skin on his cheeks and forehead had a ruddy look as well.
“It’s too late to turn back now,” he yelled through the mask. He did not need to yell for me to hear him, but he did not know that.
“You took a reading before you left the ship. Did you know this was going to happen?” I asked.
He shrugged and walked away.
“Plucky little son of a bitch,” I whispered to myself. That was heartfelt praise in Marine-ese. From where I stood, with their backs to me, Freeman and Sweetwater looked like a father-and-son act. Freeman, tall and broad, Sweetwater short and stubby. Sweetwater stayed in perfect sync with the big man. When Freeman turned left, so did Sweetwater.
Noticing Sweetwater’s physical deterioration, Thomer fell back, and asked, “Is he going to be okay?”
“You mean Sweetwater?” I asked.
“Yeah, is he going to be all right?” Thomer asked.
“He’s melting. The air out here is like acid.”
Like the entrance Freeman and I used when we explored the mines, this entrance led to a foyer filled with light from the ion curtain. Burton and two of his riflemen led the way in. I entered next, followed by the teams carrying the bombs. Freeman and Sweetwater came next, with more riflemen and grenadiers bringing up the rear.
Burton hiked ahead, checked for enemies, then doubled back. “It looks clear this far in,” Burton said.
“Did you see any openings along the walls?” I asked.
“I did,” Burton said.
“The fun starts once we enter one of those openings,” I said.
“Fair enough,” Burton said. “Harris, do we really need two bombs? I could use four extra guns.”
“We need them …both of them,” I said.
“We’re not just bringing the second in case we lose one?”
“Major, did you ever fly through Mars Spaceport on a busy day?” I asked.
“Sure, it’s a real zoo,” he said.
“Shoulder-to-shoulder crowds; you can’t even swing your arms without hitting someone. That’s about how crowded it was last time I stepped into those caverns—except instead of people with suitcases, you get drone spiders.”
“You said they weren’t any more dangerous than a footlocker,” Burton said.
“I meant a footlocker with a forty thousand-volt charge. If one of those spiders so much as rubs against you, all the electronics in your armor go dead, then you either have to walk around blind or breathe whatever that lethal shit is in the air.
“I’m betting that we lose both bombs long before we reach the target area. This is one of those ‘the fate of humanity is resting on us’ moments, sir. Do you really want to cut the odds in half by leaving one of the nukes behind?”
Burton made a laughing noise, but it sounded short, sour, and forced. “So we’re going to set off a nuclear bomb to save humanity? Did I ever mention that my parents left Earth and moved to the Norma Arm because they did not approve of all the violence?”
“They’re probably dead now,” I said. “Norma was one of the first arms to go.”
A bat came flapping down from the ceiling. It was hit by green flashes from so many particle-beam cannons that all that was left was a fine, red mist and a few shreds of fur.
“Steady,” I said over the open frequency, just glad that no one had fired a rocket at it.
“They probably are dead,” Burton agreed. “Are you a praying man, Lieutenant Harris? I heard somewhere that you read the Bible.”
“I stopped reading it,” I said. “I lost my faith.”
“I’ve never been much for religion, but I said a shitload of prayers on the flight over here.”