Rock Work

Suda’s file had the Tick working alone.

It had worked the same rock for as long as the file went back. Forty metres from end to end, twelve hundred tonnes, slow enough that its path could be read from one count to the next.

Marek put the file on the bench between them.

“It has no guns.”

Rin looked at the shape again.

“No light guns?” Nove asked.

Marek tapped the file. “No guns. None at all. It is a working machine. It cuts, it loads and it crawls away when something comes near.”

“How fast?”

“Walking pace, if the walker has had a long day.”

Nove leaned over Rin’s shoulder. “That’s almost unkind.”

“It may recover.”

Rin moved the file back to the first count. The Tick had been stripping one long cut through the rock, turning black ground into loads for the road.

They had been robbing that road for months.

“This is where the cargo is made,” she said.

Nobody added anything to it.

Marek closed the file. “First thing we’ve gone after that cannot hurt us.”

That was the whole plan.

They took Twelve and the Kettle. Nove rode the Stinger above them, and First through Fifth came out behind, five guns moving in their clean new order.

The rock filled Rin’s glass slowly.

At first it was only a broken black shape against the dark. Then the cuts showed. Blue-white ice lay open wherever the Tick had passed, long wounds drawn across the crust. The old cuts had darkened at their edges. The fresh ones caught what little light there was and held it.

The Tick crawled along the newest cut.

It had seen the craft. Rin could tell by the slow change in its path. It turned away from them and began to flee.

Nove watched it through the Stinger’s glass. “I think it may be gaining.”

“It is not,” Marek said.

“Then I am being generous.”

The five guns spread above the rock. First and Second held over the cut. Third went wide with Fourth. Fifth stayed near the pods while they came down.

Rin had flown under guns before.

She had flown behind them, beneath them and through the spaces they could not reach. She had watched one come about the way a hand turns.

Today five of them belonged to her side of the glass.

Twelve went down without haste.

The rock rose beneath the pod. There was no landing frame waiting, no light to take her in, no mark showing where the deck began. Rin brought Twelve over a broad piece of black crust and eased it down until the struts touched.

A faint knock came through the frame and into her boots.

“Rin. Twelve. Down.”

“Marek. Kettle. Down.”

“Stinger holding above,” Nove said. “First through Fifth all fair.”

Rin shut the drive back and looked through the forward glass.

The ground went away in every direction until the bends and ridges took it from sight. Beyond it there was nothing overhead. No deck. No wall. No hull laid around them.

She knew there were kilometres of rock beneath Twelve.

Knowing it did not make it fit.

Rin opened the hatch.

She went down the short ladder and put one boot onto the crust.

For a moment she kept the other on the ladder.

The ground held her, but only just. It did not give the small answer a deck gave through the sole. It was simply there: black, hard, older than any hand that had touched it, going down farther than anyone had ever gone.

She moved her second boot off the ladder.

The rock had not been made for standing on.

It did not care that she had.

Marek climbed down from the Kettle a little way off. He stepped from the ladder as he would have stepped onto a bay deck and travelled twice as far as he meant to. He came down slowly, both arms out, boots raising a cloud of black dust that remained around his knees.

Rin watched him settle.

“Useful demonstration,” she said.

“I thought so.”

He tried a shorter step. This one carried him only a little too far.

Rin pushed away from Twelve.

The push was right for crossing a pod.

Here it sent her up.

She rose slowly past the pod hatch, past the top of Twelve, and kept going.

Nothing hurried her. That made it worse. She had time to look down at Marek. She had time to see Nove’s glass turn toward her from above. She had time to understand that the rock meant to give back every part of the mistake at the same patient speed.

“Stinger,” Nove said. Her voice was very careful. “Twelve appears to be leaving on foot.”

Rin reached the top of the rise.

Then she began to come down.

“Not helping,” she said.

“I have five guns available.”

“I need a hand.”

There was a short pause.

“That service is not fitted.”

Rin came down a long way from Twelve. Her boots touched, slipped and found the crust again. Dust lifted around her and stayed there.

Marek arrived in three careful bounds. “Short steps, girl. The ground is doing less of the work than you think.”

Rin said nothing.

She took a short step.

It worked.

They crossed toward the Tick with lines and cutters fixed close to their suits. Each step became a small bound. The first few carried Rin too high. After that she learned to keep her boots near the crust and let the ground take her back when it was ready.

The dust did not settle behind them. It hung over their track in a thin black line.

The Tick kept crawling.

Its tracks were broad enough for Rin to stand inside one. The machine rode close to the ground, heavy plating turned down toward the cut. Scars covered its underside where rock had struck it and ice had broken beneath it.

The top had almost none.

Rin could see the thin joins from twenty metres away.

“You take a Tick from above,” Marek said.

They did.

The Tick moved at walking pace, but walking pace had become a less certain thing. Rin let it come past, made one long bound and caught the top edge with both hands.

The machine carried her with it.

Marek landed farther back. His boots slid along the plating before his line took the weight. He pulled himself down and clipped on.

“Nearly graceful,” Rin said.

“Entirely graceful. You were looking from the wrong way up.”

They went to work.

The top plate gave under the cutter. Rin opened a hand-wide way through it while Marek held the loose edge back. Below lay the tasking line, feed and control runs exactly where Brix had told them to look.

The Tick continued to crawl.

Rin reached into the opening.

Nove’s voice changed above them.

“Stinger. Traffic on the band.”

Rin stopped with one arm inside the machine.

“What traffic?”

“The Tick. It’s screaming.”

Nothing reached Rin through the rock. Nothing moved in the dark above except the five guns and their craft.

Then Nove said, “Three shapes coming round the far cut.”

First and Second turned together.

Third went toward the ridge. It could hang above the rock, but it had nothing to put down on it and no way to cross the ground. Third turned with the shape until the ridge came between them.

“Stinger has one,” Nove said. “No. Lost behind the rise.”

The first Flea came over the ridge.

It was five metres of lightly plated machine built around its legs. The legs folded beneath it, drove down and threw nine tonnes clear of the rock.

It rose into the dark.

Then it hung there.

Rin watched it come on without seeming to move. Its legs gathered close beneath the body. The whole machine had left the ground and now took its time crossing the space between.

First turned toward it.

The Flea dropped behind another rise before the gun had a clear way to it.

The second came over farther down the cut. Then the third followed.

All three launched again.

“Keep working,” Marek said.

Rin put her arm back into the Tick.

The tasking line was almost free when a Flea landed on the other side of the machine. The strike came through the Tick’s frame and into Rin’s chest. Her fingers closed on the line hard enough to bend it.

She pulled her hand out.

The Flea rose beyond the Tick’s edge.

A burst walked across the top plating. Bright marks appeared in a row ahead of Rin. She flattened herself against the machine, one glove in the opening and the other searching for the line at her belt.

First and Second hung above them.

Neither fired.

Rin could see the reason without looking up. Marek was on the Tick. She was on the Tick. The Flea came down beside it, too close for any clean way between them.

The five guns held the rest of the sky.

Down here they could not give her a hand.

The Flea landed again. Rin felt the blow through her ribs before she saw the machine settle.

Marek had his line out.

“Don’t follow the hop,” he said. “Take the place it comes down.”

The Flea folded its legs.

Rin understood.

“It has to land before it can leave again.”

“And it puts the whole weight through one set of springs.”

The Flea launched.

Rin watched the ground instead of the machine.

Its shadow crossed the cut. Slowly. The body hung above them, moving toward the Tick’s forward end.

Rin clipped her line to the open plate.

“Marek. Far leg.”

“Go.”

They moved while it was still in the air.

Marek took the far side. Rin crossed the Tick’s back in two low bounds, paying line out behind her. The Flea began to come down.

A burst marked the Tick’s flank.

Rin’s mouth had gone dry. She held the line in both hands and watched the folded legs open.

“Not yet,” Marek said.

The Flea dropped lower.

Rin felt the first touch through the crust.

“Now.”

She cast the line.

It crossed beneath the near spring. Marek caught the other end and pulled. Rin hauled with him, and the line came tight against the Tick’s open plate.

The Flea tried to launch.

One side rose.

The caught leg did not.

The machine turned slowly in the air. For an instant it seemed it might complete the movement and come down under itself.

Then nine tonnes rolled onto its side.

The landing passed through the ground and up Rin’s legs. Black dust lifted around the whole machine, hiding half of it.

Nove came over the channel. “One down. Other two turning.”

The second Flea launched toward the far ridge. The third followed it. First and Second tracked them until the ground took them away. Third and Fourth moved wide over the cuts.

Nothing came back.

Rin stayed with both hands on the line. Her breath had fogged the lower edge of her faceplate.

Marek gave the line one more pull.

The Flea moved only a little.

“That’ll hold,” he said.

Rin looked at the Tick beneath her.

The opening still waited.

She went back to it.

Cut the tasking line. Splice the feed. Offer new work through the wire.

The fourth time was no different from the third.

The Tick stopped crawling away.

Rin gave it a turn.

It turned.

For a few breaths nobody spoke. The five guns hung above the cuts. The two Fleas were gone. The Tick waited beneath Rin’s boots, taking its work from the wire in her hand.

Marek sat down on the top plate.

Not hard. Simply down, with both boots stretched before him and one hand still holding the loose edge open.

Nove laughed once on the channel.

Rin looked along the bright cuts.

They had come down onto the rock. They had crossed it. They had climbed onto a machine working there and made it theirs. What had come to stop them had left one of its own behind.

The Tick made cargo.

It did not carry what another machine had cut. It opened the ground and made the first part of the road.

Rin put her hand against the plating.

The working hum came up through her glove.

“Well,” Marek said.

This time he found another word.

“Two.”

The disabled Flea lay where it had fallen. One sprung leg had folded beneath it. The others remained drawn close around the body.

Rin looked from it to the Tick.

“It’s right there,” Nove said.

That was the whole decision.

They turned the Tick alongside it. In the small pull of the rock, the Flea came up under the lines with less complaint than a loaded frame aboard. Marek guided it while Rin drew the lashings across the Tick’s back.

The Flea settled there, five metres of legs and light plating riding on forty metres of work machine.

Rin stood beside it.

Everything in the Flea had been made for the ground. The body was only the place where the legs met. Springs filled the joints. Each foot spread wide against the crust. It had crossed the cuts in long, patient arcs while she had taken half the morning to learn a short step.

She ran one glove along the folded leg.

Then she went back to the haul.

First through Fifth took the tow. The guns could not walk the rock, but they could hang above it, and once the lines came tight the Tick began to move.

Getting it started took care.

After that the rock barely kept it.

The Tick lifted behind the five guns with the dead Flea lashed to its back. Black dust came away in sheets and remained over the cut long after the machine had risen clear.

Twelve and the Kettle climbed after it. Nove held near the tow and watched the lines while the rock fell behind.

Nothing followed them.

The haul went slower than anything Rin had flown beside. Five guns worked in a patient spread, sharing the pull. The Tick followed with no drive of its own, too large to hurry and too heavy to stop carelessly.

Home took a long time to grow in the glass.

Suda asked for the run.

Rin gave it in the usual form.

“Craft fair. Scarring only. Crew fair. Tick taken working. Flea taken dead. Two machines.”

“Filed,” Suda said.

The line remained open for another breath.

Then the work continued.

By the time the ship took the tow, black dust had worked into Twelve’s hatch seam. Rin found it after shutdown, packed into the narrow join where only the fine grey dust of dead hulls had ever gathered before.

She opened the hatch and brushed one glove across it.

The grey came away first.

The black stayed in the seam.