Hammered by Elizabeth Bear Page B

anybody. He turns away. “Funny thing.”
    Razorface turned back, frowning over his shoulder, watching Maker’s skinny form slink northward through the darkness.
She probably parked at the train station.
He let a breath roll out through his frustration and shook his head slowly, rubbing his jaw. “Derek.”
    “Razor. My man.”
    Don’t you forget it, little boy. I know you think I getting old, but I ain’t so old I can’t take your ass.
Razorface peeled lips off a glinting smile and slid it up the kid and then over to Emery, who was strolling back down the hill, stride swinging. He gestured up the hill to the ornate white building at its crest, taking in the whole of the park, the hookers and the dealers and their clientele with a sweep of his hand. “You boys get this trash off my lawn.”

 
    Ten Years Earlier:
1500 Hours, Thursday 15 February, 2052
Hellas Crater
Hellas Planitia
Mars
    Valens watched excursion-suited Charlie Forster stop at the lip of the extensible, the xenobiologist’s right foot planted on its metal rim. Valens himself checked his glove and mask seals one final time, smiling when Forster snuck a glance over his shoulder. He knew the man was wondering if Valens was really in command of Scavella-Burrell Mars base, or if anybody but Unitek could really be said to be calling the shots.
Money talks.
    Bare overhead luminescence stung his eyes. Valensglanced around one last time, thinking how mundane the whole apparatus looked.
Like a big gray vacuum cleaner hose.
No different from a jetway, or the access tube leading into the Unitek-Brazil beanstalk from the bustling equatorial port. The Galapagos and Malaysian orbital elevators weren’t much different: a train station is a train station the world over, and beyond.
    The differences lay before him. Beyond the improvised transparent atmosphere lock—just a foot or two ahead—he could make out the ragged outline of a hole torched in the hull of the alien vessel.
    Valens took a breath of recycled air and stepped through the airtight film after Forster, broadside into a corridor like nothing he would expect a human engineer to design. Work lights on yellow cabling had been strung the length of the gangway, their steady light revealing curved, ribbed walls and floor mottled black and red like cocobolo wood. Charlie moved to one side to clear the lock, turning to watch Valens, who gestured him forward. “The bridge—what we think is the bridge—is on your left. Follow the lights.”
    “What you
think
is the bridge?” Charlie stepped over a raised, gnarled ridge in the floor. Valens couldn’t tell if it was buckled plating or a design feature. “Haven’t the engineers looked the ship over yet?” The xenobiologist paused. “I’m walking on a
starship,”
he said, and Valens felt a slow thrill run from his rubber soles to the crown of his head.
    Concealed behind his breathmask, Valens saw Forster’s shoulders go up in delight and grinned himself.
Like an idiot. And so what. This is
an alien starship. He wanted to yank his gloves off and run his hands over the waxed-looking surface of the walls. “They have, briefly,” he said instead. “Of course we left everything that looked like biology to you. We’ve identified what we think are the engines.There’s some residual radiation; they’re set away from the ship on a shaft.”
    Valens kept talking, giving Forster a few moments. The xenobiologist took advantage of the time to marvel at the low, knotty-looking ceilings. A seam or a spine of sorts ran down the center of the passageway, knobbed at regular lengths. “The front of the ship seems to have been largely destroyed, although the pilot’s skill must have been enviable. Both recovered craft were in very good shape, considering what you might expect a space vessel found planetside to look like.”
    Forster nodded inside his heated suit, leaning closer to examine the smooth, mottled wall: polished as paneling, but without obvious joins. “I