Blue Mars(15)

Then another barrage of missiles must have been launched at the cable, for overhead Ann caught sight of an ascending line of brilliant explosions of light, no sound to them at all; but after that, big black fragments rained down on the tents around her, crashing through the invisible fabrics or smashing onto the invisible framework, then falling the last distance onto the buildings like the dropped masses of wrecked vehicles, loud despite the thin air and the intervening tents, the ground vibrating and jerking under her feet. It went on for minutes, with the fragments falling farther outward all the time, and any second in all those minutes could have brought death down on her. She stood looking up at the dark sky, and waited it out.

Things stopped falling. She had been holding her breath, and she breathed. Peter had the Red code, and so she called his number and tapped in a patch attempt, heard only static. But as she was turning down the volume in her earphones, she caught some garbled half phrases— Peter, describing Red movements to green forces, or perhaps even to UNTA. Who could then fire rockets from the cable defense systems down onto them. Yes, that was Peter’s voice, bits of it all cut with static. Calling the shots. Then it was only static.

At the base of the elevator brief flashes of explosive light transformed the lower part of the cable from black to silver, then back to black again. Every alarm inside Arsiaview began ringing or howling. All the smoke whipped away toward the east end of the tent. Ann got into a north-south alley and leaned back against the east wall of a building, flat against concrete. No windows on the alley. Booms, crashes, wind. Then the silence of near airlessness.

She got up and wandered through the tent. Where did one go when people were being killed? Find your friends if you can. If you can tell who they are.

She collected herself and continued looking for Kasei’s group, going to where Dao had said they would be, and then trying to think where they would go next. Outside the city was a possibility; but having come inside they might try for the next tent to the east, try to take them one by one, decompress them, force everyone below and then move on. She stayed on the street paralleling the tent wall, jogging along as fast as she could. She was in good shape but this was ridiculous, she couldn’t catch her breath, and she was soaking the inside of her suit with sweat. The street was deserted, eerily silent and still, so that it was hard to believe she was in the middle of a battle, and impossible to believe she would ever find the group for which she was looking.

But there they were. Up ahead, in the streets around one of the triangular parks— figures in helmets and suits, carrying automatic weapons and mobile missile launchers, firing at unseen opponents in a building fronted with chert. The red circles on their arms, Reds—

A blinding flash and she was knocked down. Her ears roared. She was at the foot of a building, pressed against its polished stone side. Jaspilite: red jasper and iron oxide, in alternating bands. Pretty. Her back and bottom and shoulder hurt, and her elbow. But nothing was agonizing. She could move. She crawled around, looked back to the triangle park. Things were burning in the wind, the flames little oxygen-starved orange spurts, going out already. The figures there were cast about like broken dolls, limbs akimbo, in positions no bones could hold. She got up and ran to the nearest knot of them, drawn by a familiar gray-haired head that had come free of its helmet. That was Kasei, only son of John Boone and Hiroko Ai, one side of his jaw bloody, his eyes open and sightless. He had taken her too seriously. And his opponents not seriously enough. His pink stone eyetooth lay there exposed by his wound, and seeing it Ann choked and turned away. The waste. All three of them dead now.

She turned back and crouched, unclipped Kasei’s wrist-pad. It was likely that he had a direct access band to the Kakaze, and when she was back in the shelter of an obsidian building marred by great white shatterstars, she tapped in the general call code, and said, “This is Ann Clayborne, calling all Reds. All Reds. Listen, this is Ann Clayborne. The attack on Sheffield has failed. Kasei is dead, along with a lot of others. More attacks here won’t work. They’ll cause the full UNTA security force to come back down onto the planet again.” She wanted to say how stupid the plan had been in the first place, but she choked back the words. “Those of you who can, get off the mountain. Everyone in Sheffield, get back to the west and get out of the city, and off the mountain. This is Ann Clayborne.”

Several acknowledgments came in, and she half listened to them as she walked west, back through Arsiaview toward her rover. She made no attempt to hide; if she was killed she was killed, but now she didn’t believe it would happen; she walked under the wings of some dark covering angel, who kept her from death no matter what happened, forcing her to witness the deaths of all the people she knew and all the planet she loved. Her fate. Yes; there was Dao and his crew, all dead right where she had left them, lying in pools of their own blood. She must have just missed it.