The God Mars Book One: CROATOAN (51 page)

I watch them form a kind of bond as they go at it,
and I hope it helps ease Rios’ wariness of her—he’s never seemed
comfortable with her presence, no matter how much she seems to look
after me (probably still freshly remembering those multiple
trouncings she gave him and his teams).

“I should send you on a turn at drilling the Guardian
teams,” I tell him as they take a break. He’s sweating and panting
where Sakina is barely breathing heavily.

“He is a worthy fighter,” Sakina admits easily. “And
he was holding back when he fought against you.”

“I expect a better accounting next time, Lieutenant,”
I let him know.

“You’ll get it, sir.”

23 October, 2115:

The ETE have apparently come up with an interesting
and unexpected solution to their Shinkyo problems.

First came the confirmation that they do indeed
possess their own working aircraft: Five transports “converted”
from the civilian model AAVs that were in use by the Stations
before the bombardment, kept in storage all these decades because
the ETE preferred to travel lower-profile.

The Council’s official word (at least from Mark
Stilson) is that they want to avoid putting us in any more
unnecessary danger, especially given the high risks that the
Shinkyo have presented, so they decided to invest in making their
small air fleet viable (meaning compatible with their current level
of technology).

The final products are impressive if disturbing: The
ETE transports have been refitted with less concern for armor,
allowing more plexi viewports and domes for visibility, and the
quad lift engines have been replaced with field generators similar
to Spheres. Each ship maintains a backup hydrox engine, but the
craft glide and hover almost silently without particulate thrust.
The craft also lack visible weaponry, either an attempt to convince
others (or perhaps themselves) that their intentions are benign,
but Paul vaguely admits to the installation of “defensive
systems.”

Despite their repeatedly-voiced concern for our
safety, the Council invites us to fly out with them in the Lancer
to observe their “operation.” I invite Tru to join us this time, my
effort to prove to her why I need her “conscience” here.

The last time I was here in person, I was in far too
deep a state of shock to appreciate the scale of the Shinkyo’s
attempt at nuclear defense. The landscape is almost geometrically
reshaped by an arrangement of three fresh and almost colony-sized
craters, staggered and overlapping, almost entirely obliterating
the original fake one. (The devices had been ejected from below
ground to airburst, thereby giving the best spread of effect for
their yield and reducing the subsurface shock that would have
crushed the colony.)

The ETE position three of their craft in low hover,
in a spread a half-klick east of the buried colony, and—without
actually touching down—they each lower something that looks like an
artillery weapon out of their bays. Anton is particularly
mesmerized by the design: sleek, clean, more like sculptures than
guns—in fact they appear to have no actual barrels, just a stacking
of geometry, the liquid-metal nanotech common to all ETE tools
swimming through their core workings.

“We have already warned the Shinkyo to stay inside,”
Paul tells me. “But we will keep close scans just in case any
purposely ignore us. We chose to plant our equipment at this
distance to minimize any impulsive resistance attempts. And we hope
to have come and gone before they realize the extent of what we are
doing. Please assure Colonel Burke that my people have valued his
instruction.”

“What…?” Tru barely gets out before we see it begin.
I heard no coordinating communication, no order given, but the ETE
“cannons” begin to hum, and I feel a vibration through the ship,
through my uniform, through my flesh. I feel warm and light. Then
it looks like a storm has come outside.

The landscape blows in a wind, and huge dust clouds
billow up over the colony site. It gets more and more intense,
until I realize what I’m looking at: Not a wind, but some kind of
force against the blasted soil, coming from the ETE devices. It
looks like someone’s using giant blowers against the hill that
covers the colony, and the dirt and rock is being scooped away,
pushed away, blown away (though there’s no sound of wind except the
rattle and crackle of moving regolith).

“Holy crap…” I hear Anton mutter. I feel Sakina coil
in her own skin next to me. Tru is just shaking her head in dazed
shock, eyes wide.

“Am I seeing what you’re seeing?” Matthew asks over
my Link.

“No sir,” Smith discreetly answers him. “You
really
need to be here.”

All we can do is watch as the colony structures begin
to be revealed as the land that covered them is smoothly stripped
away. A great dune of moved sand and rock grows a few hundred yards
west of the colony, pushed against the very foothills that the
retreating Shinobi disappeared into.

“A calculated benefit,” Paul points out the new
hillside. “If they have secret tunnels in those slopes, it will
take them time to dig them out. And the way we are smoothing the
landscape will make any new tunnel opening much easier to
detect.”

The clock says the entire action takes just less than
twelve minutes. The colony now sits in a variation of what it
looked like before it was buried, only stripped to foundation level
and built downward: It had been three domes like flower petals
around a central complex crowned with a spire-like tower, the
“flower pot” being a cluster of rectangular fabs. The domes and
tower are gone, but the basic shapes remain—it looks like the
entire colony has simply been inverted into the ground like the
reflection of a mountain in a lake. The only remaining indication
of their decades under thousands of tons of Martian rock is the
pervasive scuffing and pocking of the once-pristine white
thermoplastic overcoat, stripped through in some places to reveal
the anti-radiation layers of the habitat sections. The white has
been unevenly dyed rusty by the iron in the soil.

The ETE ships retrieve their “artillery” and turn and
glide noiselessly away for home.

“We should go, too,” Paul suggests.

“Give them nothing to shoot back at,” I agree,
starting to understand the wisdom behind their strategy, however
shocking.

“We have withdrawn our physical presence from the
colony,” he confirms. “Now we can monitor their activity from a
distance, including what comes and goes from the colony. If we
detect renewed threat, we will intervene before it can be realized.
On an irregular schedule, we will ‘re-sweep’ the surrounding
terrain to check for tunneling, and perform scans to monitor for
changes to the colony structure.”

“And if they try to draw you in by sabotaging the
colony infrastructure?” I test. Paul takes a moment to answer, but
says with quiet resolve:

“We have connected them to our Feed Lines. We will
continue to provide oxygen, water and hydrogen fuel. Beyond this,
their survival is their own responsibility. They have thrived well
enough for five decades. If they choose to obliterate themselves,
or allow themselves to be exterminated for the profit of their
leadership, then that is their own affair. Our responsibility is to
the future of the planet. We can only hope that they will evolve
themselves to be a productive part of that future.”

What he’s not saying is the other obvious part of
their strategy: They’ve just demonstrated that they can literally
move mountains. Even if the Shinkyo have bunkered in deep, the ETE
can dig them out.

“Good speech,” Tru finally says, her voice shaky.
“Let’s hope for your sake that Earth will see it your way.”

“And how do you see it, Miss Greenlove?” Paul gives
her back with unexpected arrogance. He doesn’t sound anything like
the man who defied his people—his own father—to help us.

She doesn’t answer him.

He then lets us know he’ll be returning to his
Station—sounding very much like nothing unusual has happened here
today—seals his mask and turns for the airlock.

“Paul…” I catch him away from the others as he’s
about to cycle the hatch. “Something I need to ask: I was concerned
enough by what Earthside would make of fresh nukes going off here
two weeks ago. What are they going to think when they see the
Shinkyo Colony suddenly reappear on the surface in one piece?”

He only gives me a little bow of his helmeted head,
then shuts the hatch and lets himself out. On the monitors, I see
him use his Rods to propel himself skyward like a man shot from a
cannon in an old circus.

“We’d been pushing them to send a message out to
Earth for us,” Anton tells me quietly, letting me know he was
listening to what I asked Paul. “Maybe this is their way of doing
it.”

I keep staring at the newly unburied colony on the
screens as Smith begins to pull away for home.

“How soon until you’re ready to take your transmitter
out to Candor?” I ask Anton.

14 November, 2115:

At first light, barely minutes after we launch Anton
and his transmitter-building team in a pair of our most-functional
ASVs, MAI flashes us the real-time of an attack on Melas Three.

Rockets come flying out of the desert to the west,
roughly aiming at the launch pad where Morales and her crew are
trying to get the newly refitted AAV off the deck for a test
flight. Long-range optics pick out the familiar cloaks of Nomads,
flutters of red-ochre camo against the rocky landscape like the
rocks themselves are moving. The outer batteries fire back,
selectively tearing up rock and sand, but by then—barely a few
seconds delay to confirm targets and firing orders—there’s no sign
of cloaks or movement of any kind on our sentry systems. Either
they dug in after the volley, or they’re disciplined enough not to
give away their positions even when they’re getting cut to
pieces.

The first two rockets fall just short of the pad,
banging into the rammed-earth slopes that dampen the bunker
sidewalls. Morales begrudgingly runs her team for cover below
decks. A third rocket is better aimed. The AAV pilot—Lieutenant Jen
Samuels, a trainee before the Big Bang—does probably the best thing
she can do under the circumstances: she cranks the maneuvering jets
and turns the big aircraft, its landing legs lifted only inches
above the pad, and takes the hit on the starboard wing. The
projectile blows away about a third of the sizeable delta wing,
kicking the whole ship sideways and punching scrap metal through
the empty utility carrier pod beneath it. But the scream of the
engines sounds clean, and there’s no potentially catastrophic
hydrogen leak, only Samuels spitting a few choice obscenities
because a chunk of shrapnel cracked her cockpit plexi.

“Can you get air?” I hear Lisa—who’s moved over to
Melas Three to serve as base commander—coaching her on the Link.
Samuels answers by burning up off the pad, then performs an evasive
jag to avoid another rocket. Her broken wing collapses and hangs
off the side of the ship, dragging on the deck. A sequence of short
bangs kicks both wings off the ship as she blows the pivot assembly
explosive bolts, and the ship shoots higher (but less gracefully)
without the extra weight. Bullets are pinging off the hull. “Get
some distance, Lieutenant,” Lisa orders, but then I hear Matthew
cut in before Samuels can confirm.

“You got belts in your turrets, Lieutenant?”

“Minimal load only in Nose A and B, sir,” she tells
him, “and I don’t think MAI’s got targeting tuned.”

“Then fly, Lieutenant,” Lisa repeats. “We’ll make you
enough room for a Gopher-Hole landing as soon as we can give you
some cover.”

“She’s got a lot of wobble, Colonel,” Morales puts
in. “Not advised.”

“I’m also not keen on opening a drop bay with the
red-sheets so close,” Matthew counters. “Last thing we need is
something hot lobbed into our innards.”

“Can you pop a few Pinballs over their heads?” I
chime in to ask Lisa, feeling like I’ve just done what Matthew did:
trod over her authority. Even though this is her first base
command, she’s as competent as any of us.

“Kinda mild response, given the sitrep,” Matthew
criticizes face-to-face as I get myself into Ops.

“Best spread without a good target,” I remind him.
“And it’ll hurt.”

Lisa’s already taken my advice and launched a pair of
the anti-surface warfare weapons over the heads of the Nomads’
firing position. Pinballs airburst over a potential enemy
entrenchment, spraying tens of thousands of flechettes capable of
piercing light body armor. The idea during the Eco War was to pop
pressure suits and discourage anyone on the ground from continuing
the fight. But since there’s no longer a risk of suffocation, I’m
hoping to just wound, and to give Samuels an opening.

“Bay Two, Samuels,” Lisa orders. “Gopher!”

The Gopher was developed to get a damaged ship down,
assuming it was under fire by pursuing Discs, and was a signature
of the Melas Three airbase. The elevator pad on Bay Two drops fast
down to hangar level, making a hole in the bunker. The incoming
ship flies over, brakes hard and drops as quickly as it can, then
the blast doors seal up over it. But it does leave the hangar
vulnerable for several seconds. Hopefully the Nomads are too busy
bleeding to take advantage.

Samuels looks like she’s fighting the controls as she
brings the ship over the open bay. But before she can line up,
MAI’s blowing alarms because another rocket is heading for her.

“Drop hard!” Lisa shouts. The rockets blows the tail
off the ship before Samuels can react. The ship lurches and the
nose catches the edge of the bay as she tries to keep stable. I
hear her curse again. Then she cuts the engines back a little too
hard and the broken AAV slams down hard into the deck, crumpling
the landing gear. I can see pressurized gas bleed out near the rear
engine assembly.