Standing at the edge of the rock shelf, Vonnie made herself small. She knelt and tucked both arms against her chest, concealing her laser.
—What are you doing?
Her posture was submissive, yet she also tried to project resolve and strength, keeping her face up, turning it from side to side in an attempt to convey alertness. The sunfish understood at least some of her physiology. They knew her sensory organs were in her head.
—Von, listen. It’s the only chance.
“No,” she whispered, making her decision. “Off.”
—Wait.
“I said off.”
The sunfish sang and sang and sang, measuring her, crowding her.
A lesser woman might have wished them dead. Vonnie hoped to befriend them because ultimately the sunfish were like her. With their carvings and their architecture, they’d had exceeded all expectations — and merely by coming to Europa, so had she.
Thousands of candidates had sneered when her file was announced as the third member of the science team. They’d swamped the boards with insults. Nice tits. Picked for the cameras. I guess she’s sleeping with the right people. Her abilities had been questioned by every jealous shithead on Earth. That they would’ve complained about anyone was no consolation. The disrespect was hard to shrug off, but how many of them would have survived the ice?
How many men would have lowered their weapons?
Vonnie was ruled by her desire to make things work. If that made her gullible or too patient or too curious, so be it. She didn’t want to fight.
16.
The first sunfish hit Vonnie from behind like a silent missile. It struck the side of her head. Then the rift exploded with bodies.
She screamed uselessly. Whipping her fist into the monster on her head accomplished nothing, either. The sunfish had landed its body against the rough mark where her gear block had been, cinching its arms around her helmet, chewing with its beak. The sound was a rubbing squeal.
Somehow she managed another sweep of the rift. The echoes from her terahertz pulse were close and frantic, overlapping. There were more than twenty sunfish in the tightly choreographed launch. Most of them had gotten past her explosives.
“Are you still there!?” she shouted.
—Von, listen. Don’t close me down again, please.
She was already yelling over the ghost. “Auto assault, max force!” she shouted. “Lam! Lam! Combat menu AP, auto assault! Confirm!”
The delay felt like another kind of blindness and separation. Vonnie screamed again, beating at the arms covering her face. The sunfish’s cartilage skin was like pounding on leather. Her cutting tool would pierce that hide, but she was afraid to use the laser.
Something yanked her sideways, hurting her spine. At first she thought she’d been hit by a mass of sunfish.
—Auto assault.
The suit threw her in a cartwheel. As it rolled, it put her fist to her temple and drew the laser across the sunfish’s arms, a precise stutter of four burns. It tossed her onto her hip and met the incoming wave with a kick.
Impacts shook Vonnie’s boot and shin. Then she was up again. Three arms clunked against her back. Some of the sunfish must have gone overhead when she dropped — they must have surrounded her — and the suit spun and rammed into the rock, scraping itself clean.
Whatever triumph she’d felt gave way to claustrophobic terror. The suit did not use its shape like a human would. It pinned one monster with its chin, then used its hip like a club against another. Again and again it hurled itself against the rock. It wasn’t squeamish. It did not flinch at the wretched shrilling of a sunfish caught between its hands or even turn from the burst of entrails. In normal gravity, against larger enemies, Vonnie would have been seriously injured. Even here she was so shaken, she didn’t immediately realize the fight was over.
Nor did she remember when she’d regained her left eye. She felt elation, then shock.
“I can see,” she said. “Lam?”
Her visor was peppered with chip marks and abrasions. It was opaque in the middle. A gouge the length of her finger ran across her nose. The sunfish had almost bashed through.
Given another chance, they might succeed.
Vonnie glanced through two unmarked portions in the synthetic diamond, bending her head to improve her vision.
She stood at the top of the landslide beneath the cliff near her explosive charges. The rock was streaked with rimes of salt. Crusty white patches had seeped from the ceiling, but she was unable to peer into all of the holes overhead. Were there more sunfish above her?
Half of her display was inoperative. The rest of her visor glowed with heat signatures, although the only living shapes were fading as the sunfish retreated. Eleven bodies lay impaled against the black lava. In the minimal gravity, the air was fogged with blood.
Mute, she tried to turn away. Crying out, she knew she was paralyzed. The suit didn’t respond to her arms or leg or head.
“Lam?” she said. “Lam, it’s over. Off-line. Lam, off-line.”
If the sunfish attacked again— If the ghost controlled all suit functions— Her body choked with that heavy new fear, and she fought without thinking inside her shell. She screamed when she was unable to move even slightly.
He spoke in a hush:
—I have an additional threat.
“Let me go!”
—Von, quiet. Something’s coming.
“What?”
—There were new sonar calls right before the sunfish withdrew. Something scared them off.
“Is it one of our probes?”
—No, these are new lifeforms.
Vonnie nodded bitterly. Food here was scarce. Any commotion would draw every predator within hearing.
If there was good news, it was that the ghost’s voice had changed. He seemed cooler and more confident. This was the first time he’d called them sunfish. That he’d said no instead of negative was another indicator of health. Had he actually written out his glitches? With access to more systems, he could have duped himself and then cut away his flaws in a microsecond. She was overdue for a little luck.
He said:
—Do you want to stay and fight? I estimate they’re four hundred meters away.
“How fast are they moving? Are they big?”
—Judging from their sonar calls, they’re at least as fast as the sunfish. They’re also louder. They may be larger. They’re within two hundred meters now.
Each breath came in a short, tight rhythm. Vonnie tried to calm her lungs and failed, hating her own seesaw of emotions, hating the darkness and her pain. She felt like apologizing even though he was a goddamned program. She felt grateful.
Would he pass a diagnostic? If he’d attained full logic, the two of them would be a force to reckon with now that she could see again, but she was reluctant to put him to the test, not in combat, not even for the chance to take recordings of another major lifeform.
“Run,” she said. “All these bodies, that should be a fat meal for whatever’s coming. They’ll stay to eat. Let’s get out of here.”
17.
Her suit leapt down from the cliff and hurried away, putting distance between them and the new predators. Unfortunately, Lam changed course seven times in five minutes through the spongy, jagged rock.