We Dare by Chris Kennedy & Jamie Ibson

Author:Chris Kennedy & Jamie Ibson [Kennedy, Chris & Ibson, Jamie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Theogony Books
Published: 2019-05-28T22:00:00+00:00

* * *

The plan was to drop in from above, swift and stealthy, like in the movies—only it was an empty desert and cloudless skies, the drones could see by night, and there was nothing stealthy about any of it. For the price of one airlift from the PMCs who still funnelled ammo, socks, and expired MREs into the hills around Samarkand, Valentine found them three desert-battered Volkswagen camper vans, stained with just enough of the local flavor to make the trip in real stealth. They’d been at it too long now to suffer any amateurish pretense to coolness in the face of practical objectives. A little before dawn on the first day, they were off the main roads and into the desert, and Terry blasted Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries from his smartphone for irony’s sake as they rolled downrange at twenty-five miles an hour.

Turner had found them maps, and geosyncs, and the usual boy-scout toys, and even though they stayed mostly in sight of each other over the next four days, they had picked out a rendezvous in the foothills to gear up, down their anti-rads, spend the night throwing up, and head up into the Anthill at dawn. Disco had a heavy foot and the van with the best suspension, and she was the first to arrive. Having brought most of the support gear, she had the tent up and the three-tower Geiger imager going by the time the others arrived. She’d brought her civvies and luggage for a quick departure—nobody expected to stick around for a drink when it was done—and they found her hunched over the Geiger’s central display, drenched in sweat with a lavender floral print shirt draped over her head to keep the sun off.

“How are we doing?” asked Valentine.

“Not too shabby,” she said, tweaking the dials. “It’s too windy to get a sharp image right off the bat, but we should have more detail over the next couple of hours.” She pointed up into the mountains to the southeast. “Our big gamma bloom is that way. More or less, give or take a mile or two, everything’s exactly where it’s supposed to be.”

“Is that pink?” Terry asked, grinning.

Disco didn’t look up from her dials. “Fuck you, it’s purple,” she snapped.

“Are those little flowers?”

“Oleanders,” she said. “They’re poisonous.” She pulled the shirt off her head, wiped down her neck, and threw it back into her van. “What’s for dinner?”

Turner slammed the squeaking door of his own van and tossed her an orange bottle of pills. “For dessert, Love,” he said, “the finest in gourmet nanotherapeutic anti-rads.”

“Tasty,” she said.

He set down his duffle bag, rummaged through it, pulled out a few glossy brown packages and started handing them out.

“And for your main course dining pleasure,” he said, “you blokes are treated to—looks like Number Four. Cheese and Vegetable Omelet.”

Disco cracked up. Terry shot him a look that could peel the paint off a tank.

“Seriously?” he said. “Ten years out, I come back to a Vomelet?”

“Mister Valentine’s getting on in years,” said Turner.

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