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Gilchrist—cued by Colden’s warning to wait by the public vidphone in her own base—picked up.
    “Hey, Jen. Guess what?”
    “Huh?” Colden said. “I just wanted to tell you something without frightening the noobs. I have a theory about how the PLAN’s targeting us. It uses the muppets as spotters. They see us, they call it in.”
    “With what, telepathy?”
    Gilchrist’s tone was skeptical, but Colden nodded into the phone. “Telepathy. Or think up something more sciencey to call it, I don’t care.”
    “The grunts here were actually saying something like that the other day. They think that’s why the PLAN doesn’t target our MFOBs—we make damn sure no muppets ever get close to us.” On the phone screen, Gilchrist glanced around to make sure she wasn’t being watched. She tucked a strand of blonde hair behind her ear. “The other theory is it’s seismic.”
    “Huh?”
    “You know how the whole planet is supposedly crawling with nanites. Well, according to this theory, whenever we walk on them or crush them with our vehicles, that information gets transmitted back to the AI. So the PLAN actually knows where we are and what we’re doing at all times. We can’t take a step without being watched.”
    Colden shivered. But if she let herself get that paranoid, she’d be finished. She scoffed, “If that was true, they would KKV the fuck out of us on a daily basis.”
    “Unless,” Gilchrist said, “they’re deliberately luring us … further and higher …”
    Gilchrist’s MFOB, Theta Base, was higher up than Alpha Base, crawling across the northwest slope of Olympus Mons.
    “They might be luring us into … a trap.”
    “Woo-oo-oo!” Colden clapped her hands to her cheeks, mimicking fear.
    They both laughed.
    “I don’t even believe in the nanites,” Colden said. “It’s just a story to scare the grunts, as if they aren’t scared enough already. But what I wanted to say is, I think you’re right: the farm was not just a lucky hit. Assuming active targeting of whatever variety, it might be an ambush. Blow something up, wait for the first responders to arrive, and then blow them up. I think we should come up with some way to get the humans away from there.”
    “Jesus, Colden, you’ve got a twisted mind.”
    Gilchrist slipped back into calling Colden by her last name, and Colden, feeling that her idea had been rejected, said snippily, “No, I just researched irregular warfare tactics back when we were fighting on Stickney.” When you were flapping around moaning about how terrible it all was, she thought. But it would be a whole lot more terrible if WE were the ones getting killed. Elfrida and I understood that from the beginning. The only way to stay alive is to do the job right.
    “I remember Goto used to do her research, too,” Gilchrist said. Their minds were running along the same track. “She really took the job seriously. Ugh, I can’t get over her being gone.”
    Colden’s throat tightened with grief. Elfrida Goto had been her best friend. She’d died in Mars orbit, thrown off a fragmented moonlet, her body lost forever in the chaos of the Big Breakup.
    “There was some rumor, I remember,” Gilchrist went on, “that she was special. She was some kind of an outlier who could survive anything.”
    “All that was, was lies, damn lies, and statistics.”
    “And I keep thinking, if even she could get killed, what are our chances?”
    Colden was about to snap back something about Gilchrist being as self-centered as ever, when she realized that she was witnessing a moment of vulnerability. Gilchrist was scared to death, just like everyone else.
    “We’ll be fine.” Colden managed a grin. She snapped her fingers sassily. “Fat girls don’t go out like that.”
    “Guess I’m screwed, then,” sighed the sylph-like Gilchrist. Then she crossed her eyes and stuck out her tongue. She was an OK chick at heart. “So listen, what I was going to tell you! Oh my God, Jen, are you