Labyrinth of Night by Allen Steele

bustled aboard the Burroughs before he had more than a few fleeting seconds to accustom himself to the one-third normal gravity, let alone the red-tinted landscape.
    So this was Mars. It looked like…no, not like hell. He had been in hell, and it looked nothing like this. Like limbo, maybe. Purgatory. Kansas on a really bad day. The way your head feels after a hard summer night in a seamy bar in downtown Memphis when the crowd has been apathetic and the summer heat has sucked the cold out of your next beer before the barmaid manages to bring it to the stage, but you put down ten bottles anyway while you dumbfuck your way through Willie Dixon’s greatest hits. Just like that: desolation of the mind and soul. Mars was a planet suffering from God’s own hangover…
    ‘Okay, we’re outta the shit and we’ve got some safe distance,’ Boggs said. ‘How’s the envelope, Katsu?’ Shimoda silently cocked a thumb upward. ‘Fine. Fifteen miles downrange should be enough room. Let’s heave-to here and watch the show. Anything on the scope yet?’
    ‘Negative,’ Shimoda said, eyeing the radar screen.
    ‘That’s negatory, dammit! We speak English on this ship!’ He feigned a swat at the top of Shimoda’s crew-cut head, which the co-pilot easily ducked. ‘One would think you were still hauling kangaroo meat up from Australia on Shin-Nippon, the way you talk.’
    ‘Beef,’ Shimoda corrected. ‘I was hauling beef, not…ah! Radar contact. Two objects entering the atmosphere at fifty thousand feet at Mach Two, forty-two degrees north by thirty- five degrees west…faint third and fourth objects dropping away from them just now, off the scope.’
    ‘That’s the aeroshells breaking loose,’ Boggs said. ‘Five bucks says they’ve developed STS fighters since we’ve been gone.’ He glanced back at Cassidy again. ‘You were up there. Ain’t that right?’
    ‘I dunno.’ Cassidy was still transfixed by the scene outside the gondola windows. ‘Where’s the Face?’
    ‘Left it way back there. Shoulda been looking. What was aboard the Shinseiki ?’
    ‘There were a couple of Marines aboard when…’
    ‘A couple? Only two?’
    ‘Three. I meant three.’ Cassidy thought about it a moment. ‘Three from the First Space, but they didn’t let me in on anything, so I don’t know what…’
    ‘Hell, no, but I do!’ Boggs cackled and slapped his right palm against the yoke. ‘See, Katsu? Told you so.’ He looked back at Cassidy. ‘Musician, huh? No kidding. I’m named after a musician myself. Waylon Jennings. From Nashville, Tennessee. My hometown.’
    ‘I think that’s wonderful.’ Cassidy burped and felt a little bit better for it. His guts were no longer in knots; there was nothing left in them to vomit anyway. ‘Now will somebody give me a straight answer and tell me what’s going on?’
    Boggs laughed. ‘What’s happening is that Major Oeljanov and his robots are about to get smeared by the United States-fuck almighty-Marines Corps, and if you watch out this window you can see the whole show.’ He motioned to the triple-paned window next to Shimoda’s seat. ‘They’ve been asking for it and now…’
    ‘Two o’clock high,’ Shimoda said, pointing out his window. ‘Two vapor trails.’
    ‘There we go.’ Boggs leaned over to stare across Shimoda’s shoulders. Two thin white streaks were lancing across the dark purple stratosphere. ‘So,’ he added absently, ‘you’re the guy who’s going down into the Labyrinth?’
    ‘Yeah.’ Cassidy clumsily tried to rise and balance himself on his knees, fighting the constant motion of the deck. ‘I guess I’m the person.’
    ‘Lucky you. I hope you make out better than the last guy who was down there.’
    Cassidy forgot about the vapor trails for a moment. He looked sideways at Boggs. ‘The last guy? What about him?’
    ‘They brought him out of there in a bag…what little they could find of him, that is.’ Boggs stopped and looked back at