The God Mars Book One: CROATOAN (28 page)

“Son? Grandson?” I wonder idly. He described himself
as “second generation.”

“Apparently they got a little generous with the field
promotions,” Matthew jabs.

I switch back to the locals’ channel, give Janeway a
few seconds of dead air, then: “Colonel Janeway, I’m only here
because this is closer than Pioneer or Frontier. Maybe I should try
them next?”

“
Strongly
not advised,” the voice comes back
sternly.

“We came all this way,” I tell him. “Hate to just
turn around and go home.”

Answering me, another round hits the rocks, this one
several inches closer.

“Thinking you should’ve brought Blueboy?” I hear
Matthew back on the main channel, where Janeway can’t hear.

“Haven’t changed my mind yet,” I assure him—I’d
specifically requested that Paul stay behind so that we wouldn’t be
seen coming with an ETE vanguard.

“Planning on shooting your way in, then?” Matthew
presses the obvious point.

“Ram to Janeway,” I call on the local channel.
“Neutral ground. You pick it. I just want to talk.”

“I’m quite comfy where I am, Colonel Ghost,” he
replies. “Born here, in fact. And I’m not feeling social. No
offense, but I’ve heard stories about you lot, and the planet has
the scars to prove ‘em. You call yourself UNMAC—based on last
contact, that means you come to kill and burn, sterilize. As far as
I know, you’re still under those orders. Look northwest of what’s
left of our domes, you’ll see where the colony labs were. It all
broke open in the big boom. I admit we made it look scary to keep
off the idle curious—you’d figure that out on your own soon enough.
But if there was actual danger cooking in there, I wouldn’t be
talking to you. This site is
clean
. So send your report up
your chain and move along. Don’t come back this way.”

I don’t feel like taking the time to try to convince
him that UNMAC didn’t pull the trigger on the Shield.

“Listen, Colonel Janeway, my team just crawled out of
fifty years of Hiber,” I try. “I have no orders, being that I have
no way of calling for any. I’m as downed here as you are. I just
came hoping to find a little support, or at least some intel.
Apparently a lot happened while we were sleeping.”

“You
are
a piece of work, Colonel Ghost,” I
hear him laugh. “And the only reason I haven’t holed you is that
your voiceprint says you’re actually who you say, so you may
actually be telling me straight. But that doesn’t mean I have any
use for you and yours with or without orders, and I got precious
little to be in a sharing mood. Best get back to your own hole and
stay there—that’s all the intel you’ll get today.”

“Our uplinks are scrap—if they weren’t, I’m sure
you’d have been listening in. So you know Earthside doesn’t know
we’re here, not yet,” I lay it out for him in a way I hope he’ll be
willing to hear. “Still, I expect they’ll stumble back here sooner
or later, whether we get a call out or not, maybe in our lifetime.
My team, I expect we’d like to go home. If you don’t want that kind
of attention, I could omit certain things from my report, but I’m
sure they’ll have their own look, having come all this way. Do what
you want, but I think it would be better to be standing together
when they show up so we can convince them you’re fine with staying
put.”

“Quite comfy where I am,” he repeats. “And, trust me,
you’d all do best not to come again. Last warning.”

I hear a sharp crack, and one of the H-A troops on
the ridgeline next to me snaps his helmet back. I realize it’s
Rios’ Platoon Sergeant. There’s a blast of frosty air from his
faceplate, and he rolls back down the slope, hands flailing at his
visor.

“Hendricks!” Rios shouts out, running over to his
downed NCO as best he can in the loose gravel. I hear coughing on
the Link. One of the other troopers is helping get the shattered
helmet off while Rios digs out a backup mask. Once the big helmet
is off I can see a pale face, bloodied but otherwise intact,
gratefully gasping air out of the mask. “He’s okay,” Rios confirms.
“Shell just broke his visor.”

I hear more shouting, more shooting. MAI
automatically switches me to the squad left with the ASV. One of
the troopers is down, clutching his left leg. I see another suit
get hit in the arm.

“Where’s that fire coming from?” Rios demands.

“They’re everywhere, sir!” someone is shouting. MAI
traces back at least five separate trajectories, though the
shooters remain well hidden in the rocks. ICWs spray at the
hills.

“Hold fire!” I order.

No more rounds are incoming.

“Time to turn around and go home, Colonel Ghost,”
Janeway comes on. “I hope I’ve made that point clear, ‘cause you’re
wasting my air.”

“Pull out!” I order. But before I go, I stand up over
the top of the ridgeline, let them see me from the colony, let them
know they’ll see me again.

1 September, 2115:

“The man is amazing—he’s teaching himself our
interplanetary communications engineering out of MAI’s database,”
Anton almost breathlessly praises as we watch Simon “study” in the
small sealed tech-lab.

Simon—if he hears us at all—barely registers a smirk
on his half-exposed face as he intently manipulates graphics
through his silver goggles, his gloved fingers working the empty
air in some sort of invisible VR interface. We can see what he’s
reviewing on MAI’s screens. He scans almost faster than we can see,
much less read. I wonder how much his brain has been changed by ETE
nanotechnology.

“I can’t build you micro-processors, Colonel,” Simon
tells me the same thing Paul had. But then he takes it further by
offering: “But for a higher power-cost, we could manufacture
something using older technology. I’ll have to go back to the
schematics on some of the first probes. Viking. Mariner. Voyager. I
studied their designs when I was still in the Crèche. The result
won’t be crisp, fast or more than a simple data stream, but it
should cut through the EM ceiling.”

“
Should?
” Matthew picks apart.

“I don’t even know if I can assemble a viable
unit—I’m going on theory.” Simon actually sounds irritated. “And
there is no guarantee that the signal will be understood even if it
reaches Earth. But if you want the best chance of being heard, we
would do best to wait until the planetary alignments are
better.”

“Which is when?” Matthew pushes, suspicious of the
delay.

“We’ll have our best position in between three and
five months,” Simon tells him like the span is only a few days. “I
estimate it will take a month or more just to craft the parts.”

“And if we miss that window, we don’t get another for
two years,” Anton qualifies, anxious.

“We’re very grateful for your assistance, Simon,” I
try to shut down any further naysaying.

He raises his goggles so I can see his eyes, and he
gives me a sad, lopsided grin.

“I’m not sure you’ll be thanking me after you’ve had
contact from Earth.”

“You think he’s shining us?” Matthew asks me as we
take the stairs back up to Ops.

“Stalling?”

“None of these people seem eager to get a message
out. And Simon: the first time we met him he didn’t seem to like
anyone except his own.”

“It might not be his idea to be here,” I
consider.

“That’s what worries me.”

“And Paul?” I ask him directly.

“He’s growing on me,” he admits. “He takes it hard
when we bleed.”

“Incoming signal,” Kastl announces, jarring me out of
my haze.

I’d spent my morning reviewing MAI’s best estimates
of what the so-called “PK” colonies might have cached in weapons
and ammunition (with and without what they might have taken from
Melas One, which Rios’ recent ASV recon proved had been completely
stripped). Then I went back to staring—frustrated—at the tactical
maps MAI prepared of the City of Industry site, flashing through
the AI’s estimations of what the real inhabitable structure might
be under the façade of ruin, and comparing the firing patterns they
used on us to try to understand their defenses.

“No signature, but it reads like what we’ve seen the
ETE use when they hack into our Links,” Kastl clarifies.

“Put it up,” I tell him.

“Colonel Ram,” I get greeted by a chrome ETE mask and
blue sealsuit as the main screen comes alive.

“This is Ram,” I confirm. “What do I call you?”

“Council Blue,” he tells me with condescending
officiousness. “My name is otherwise unimportant for the purpose of
this communication.” The voice matches the Blue Station Council
representative who met us, the apparent father of Paul and
Simon.

“Do you wish to talk to your team members?” I
offer.

“I can speak with them whenever I wish, Colonel,” he
talks to me like I’m a child in trouble with some great authority
figure. “I called to speak with
you
. About your reckless
encounter with the City of Industry PK.”

“I was under the impression your Council had decided
to take no interest in such affairs,” I give him back coolly.

“You have involved us,” he accuses back. The image
shifts to add a feed showing three figures, all wearing some kind
of light-armored uniform in a Mars-red pixilated camo pattern
similar to our own suits. They are kneeling formally, hands on
their thighs, staring straight ahead with stoic discipline. All
three appear to be young and oriental, two male and one female. “We
apprehended these three attempting to break into our Blue Station
using what appears to be UNMAC lock-breaking technology from the
Eco War. A fourth individual jumped to his apparent death rather
than be captured. They will not speak, but their uniforms carry a
variety of dust indicating a long journey across the valley. They
were armed with these…”

The screen shows a selection of light PDWs favored by
some of the corporate site security, grenades, knives, and a kind
of simple short sword: slightly curved, single edged, “tanto”
point, non-reflective blade, square guard. Further views of their
gear show masks, goggles and head-shrouds that look almost Nomad in
design, down to their headbands which bear small metal plates.
Zooming back in on the captives (who seem to be restrained in
position by some invisible force), their uniforms are not UNMAC,
but show similarities to the UNMAC contract LA suits supplied to
corporate security forces during the height of the Eco conflict,
only modified to include additional armor in the torso, shoulders
and forearms. Their boots are wrapped in strips of material in
Nomad fashion to preserve them against the abrasive terrain.
Otherwise, the outfits bear no visible colony markings.

“Those are Colony Guard suits,” I tell him. “The PK
are supposedly using UNMAC military gear.”

“This was our analysis as well,” he talks down to me.
“But if it was not your engagement of the PK that instigated them
to attack us, then it was certainly your active presence on the
surface that has motivated someone else to.”

“But why attack you?”

“Paul assisted you visibly in your engagement with
the Nomads,” he keeps up his accusatory tone. “You have shown us to
them. You have broken our passivity.”

“But why attack you?” I repeat. “They had to know how
futile that would be.”

“A great prize might inspire a great risk, Colonel,”
he considers, then holds up a canister where I can see it—it looks
like one of the nano-containment canisters we found aboard the
Lancer. “They carried these as well.”

“They sought to steal your nanotech?” I confirm,
trying not to sound completely naïve. He nods with surprising
tolerance.

“Failing here, they may try elsewhere, Colonel,” he
tells me, his tone becoming more respectful. “They know our people
are with you.”

“Understood,” I tell him. Then offer: “They may also
have learned from their initial failure, Council. Expect further
visits.”

“We shall.”

“We’ll let you know if we have any visitors here.
Thank you, Council.”

He drops off without saying goodbye.

2 September, 2115:

MAI registers the breach at 02:35, less than twelve
hours since the call from “Council Blue.”

There wouldn’t have been an alarm at all if we hadn’t
have recalibrated MAI’s security net to scan for our own SOF lock
breakers—something I’ll have to thank Council Blue for. And we keep
that alarm silent, letting our visitors proceed with their
break-in, not letting them know they’re being watched.

We also left one of the airlocks—Airlock One, closest
to high value targets as well as the perimeter wall—conveniently
unguarded, so they meet no opposition when they pop the hatches.
They do this with impressive skill and technique (breaking into a
pressurized facility undetected is no easy task, even with the new
denser atmosphere):

They use the breakers to disable the pressure
sensors, then seal themselves to the outer hatch with a portable
shelter. They manually bleed out the airlock, pop the hatch, slip
inside and seal the outer door behind them. They disable the pumps
(which certainly would be detected), then they repeat the
bleed-and-pop process on the inner hatch. This process allows them
to slowly equalize pressure as they pass into larger and larger
spaces, so the decompression is minimal by the time they get
through Staging and into the corridors (which we’ve also kept
cleared).

“They’re good,” Lisa confirms. “They’re even
monitoring our common Link bands to see if we’re talking about
them.”

They move quickly but silently: checking each hatch
and corner with wand-cameras before advancing, using the breakers
to hack in and disable the motion-sensitive lights and sentry
arrays as they go (the hack sets the internal video feed on a loop
of empty corridor). Thankfully, they don’t notice MAI’s override,
which simulates a successful hack while keeping the arrays
functional.