Semper Mars (19 page)

The EVA-suited man in the hatch, staggering a bit still from the shock of the abrupt decompression of the cat’s cabin, was raising a French FA-29 assault rifle to his shoulder. Garroway was already in position, the Ruger pointed straight at the UN trooper’s helmet visor. He squeezed his hand almost convulsively; he felt nothing through the glove, heard nothing in the thin air but a sharp snap, but a white star appeared squarely in the center of the dark visor, and the soldier dropped his rifle, staggering back, groping at his face.

Garroway leaped into the cabin, colliding with the downed man as he thrashed on the deck and nearly falling. Regaining his balance, he swung left, checking the cabin’s rear, then right, toward the control deck. He saw three other men, all down, all unarmored, all clutching faces or throats as they desperately tried to breathe.

“I’m in,” he yelled over the tactical channel. “Four down! Jacob! Seal the hatch!”

“Working on it, Major.”

The inner hatch slid shut a moment later, but it was too slow… too slow. The three unsuited men were still now, or nearly so. The suited man continued to claw at his visor. Garroway knelt beside him, trying to keep his hands away from the starred plastic. Several of the high-velocity fléchettes had penetrated the visor, their finned tails sticking out of the tough plastic like tiny arrows, but air was seeping through myriad tiny cracks. As the gas expanded, it grew cold, and a layer of frost was forming around the impact point. Water was condensing on the inside of the visor, and bubbling wildly through one of the larger cracks. The life-support indicator set into a pop-open recess in the man’s chest armor showed his suit’s pressure at a quarter bar and falling, his heart and respiration dangerously high and shallow.

Garroway fumbled at his armor’s utility kit. If he could get a patch in place, he might save the man’s life… but to do that he would have to pull the fléchettes out, and the suit would decompress completely in those few seconds, even if he managed not to shatter the plastic.

The man’s eyes, just visible through frost and dark plastic, were panic-wide and bleeding. He clutched at Garroway’s wrist as the Marine tried to tamp down a pressure seal around the cluster of fléchettes… but before he could complete the task, the man’s life-support indicators flatlined.

“I think the poor bastard’s had it,” Kaminski said. Garroway started. He’d not realized the other Marine had entered the cat.

With the short, sharp fight over, Garroway felt numb, barely alive himself. He’d not been in a firefight for a good many years, and he’d managed to forget how terrifying the experience was… and how much he disliked it. He hadn’t even been shot at, but his senses had been keyed to such a high pitch that now, as the adrenaline rush receded, he could hardly stand.

Kaminski was checking the other bodies. All showed the bruised faces, the blood at nose, mouth, eyes, and ears characteristic of explosive decompression.

Not a pleasant way to die at all…

Garroway forced himself to keep moving, keep working, as he checked through the cat to make sure they’d caught all of the UN troops. The interior of the Mars cat was about the same size and shape as the inside of a large recreational trailer. There were four bunks aft, and a doorway leading to the supply lockers and fuel-cell storage. Forward was a tiny galley, a sitting area, and the forward command suite, which included the driver’s seat and a small communications console on the cab’s right side.

Sergeant Jacob was already sliding into the chair at the communications console. One of the dead men lay sprawled at his feet. “Hey, Major? Today’s our lucky day!”

“What’s that?”

“Doesn’t look like they got a message off.”

Garroway leaned over the Marine’s shoulder, studying the main screen. The unit was set for satcom relay, and the screen showed the cryptic legend SATLINK ACQUISITION and the winking word SEARCHING. One of four smaller display monitors above the console showed an image—the inside of the hab module, as viewed from one corner of the room, high up near the ceiling. The fuzzy image showed Lieutenant King talking to three other Marines. They had missed a bug, then… though it fortunately had been positioned far enough away from the table that the UN troops wouldn’t have been able to overhear their planning sessions.

“Let’s see if we can get an uplink,” Garroway told Jacob. The younger Marine’s fingers flicked across the touch screen on the console, tapping in a chain of commands. A moment later, the SATLINK ACQUISITION line was updated with a CONNECT: MARSCOMSAT4 and a passcode entry blank.

Garroway stared at the screen for an unpleasant moment. All nonmilitary communications on Mars had used a programmed passcode; the human operators didn’t need to enter a thing. If the computer was demanding a code entry now, it was because someone had added it. He’d seen Bergerac insert a computer memory clip in the com console back at Cydonia. “Try the standard passcode,” he told Jacob.

Jacob complied, and a new line appeared on-screen. PASSCODE INCORRECT; ENTER PASSCODE:—

He’d been right. The UN had changed the access codes for all communications links on Mars, and not just the military ones, either. It only made sense. The key to any successful coup was communications; Bergerac and the Joubert woman obviously wanted to keep the takeover on Mars a secret, at least for now, and the only way to do that was to lock up the Marines and take over all communications on the planet. By changing and then controlling the access codes, they could do just that.

“What do you think, Sarge?” he asked. “Can you hack it?”

Jacob shook his head. “I could try, sure… but you know what kind of wall we’re up against here, sir. Without a trapdoor or the code key back at Cydonia or Candor, I could sit here for a century or two typing in random alphanumerics and never get anywhere.”

“Okay. See what you can do, anyway. Maybe you’ll get lucky.”

“Yeah, and maybe we can fly this thing back to Earth,” Jacob replied, but he immediately began tapping away at the touchscreen.

Kaminski had finished checking the bodies. “I’ve got their IDs and stuff, sir,” he said, holding out a handful of tags.

Garroway accepted them without comment, slipping them into a thigh pocket in his suit. They would be returned to Bergerac or some other senior UN representative when this was all over.

He was troubled on several counts, not the least of which was the blunt and bloody fact that if a war started now, he couldn’t be entirely certain whether the UN had started it by imprisoning the Marine section… or whether he had by killing four UN soldiers. His orders—to “protect American scientific and research interests on the planet Mars”—were unsatisfyingly vague when it came to reactions against hostile or potentially hostile UN moves.

He’d also just committed his tiny command to combat, and while he knew his next move would have to be to reach Candor Chasma, he wasn’t quite certain yet just how he was going to accomplish that.

His first duty, though, would be to inform his superiors at the Pentagon about what was going on. He was alone and cut off as no military officer had ever been cut off before, tens of millions of miles away from reinforcements or relief. He knew well that he could expect no help from Earth, that his decisions on Mars would be dictated by what he had on hand and could hope to achieve with just twenty-five Marines.

But he was also painfully aware that his decisions here would affect American policy back home… and UN policy as well. If there was any way to keep US policymakers informed, he had to find it.

“Major?” Jacob said. “I’m not getting anywhere with this. We’re locked out, and unless we find that code…”

“Understood.” He thought for a moment. “Okay. You and Kaminski start going through the cabin. See if they left anything written down that might help us.”

“They’d be pretty damned stupid if they did, sir.”

“Agreed, it’s unlikely, but we have to cover all the bases. Let me sit there.”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

He slid into the seat as Jacob vacated it and stared for a moment at the screen. Mars possessed no ionosphere—not in the sense that Earth did—and that meant that all radio communications were restricted to line of sight. There were microwave relays like the ones at Cydonia scattered about those regions where travel and exploration were common, but most parts of the planet relied on the handful of communications satellites in Martian orbit—the Ares Constellation of five low-orbit comsats, plus one in areosynchronous orbit, permanently stationed seventeen thousand kilometers above Candor Chasma.

Access to any of those satellites, however, required certain comm prefixes, codes, in other words, all of which would have been changed by now precisely to stop unauthorized personnel—like Garroway—from doing what he was about to attempt.

There might be, however, an alternative. When the first Mars Expedition had arrived in Mars orbit in 2019, a communications relay had been positioned on Phobos, the planet’s inner moon. When Colonel Johnston and Polkovnik Reztsov had set foot on the sandy regolith of Candor Chasma and unfurled their respective nations’ flags, the televised images and historic first words had been transmitted to a waiting Earth via that relay. It could only be employed when Phobos was above the horizon, but the minor worldlet made an easy visual target for a satcom dish.

That relay was still there. He knew it was and, better yet, he knew the activation codes. His original assignment on Mars, after all, had been to service and run computers and commo gear used by both the Marines and the civilians. Usually, messages to Earth were routed through one or another of the regular comsats, but during periods of heavy traffic to and from Earth it was always good to have a backup, just in case the available bandwidth was cut to unacceptable levels. The Phobos relay station provided an alternate means for reaching Spacenet.

His first step was to link his wrist-top into the Mars cat’s display and call up his Beale code routine. It worked, and that was one less worry. Swiftly, then, he began typing at the keyboard, calling up a com request routine and checking to see that the crawler’s satellite dish was still on-line after the rough handling it had received. So far, so good. He had the com routine up and running, and the tracking system indicated a lock on Phobos, now just fifteen degrees above the eastern horizon—which meant it was on the way down. With its seven-hour-plus period, Phobos was one of the handful of satellites in the solar system that rose in the west and set in the east. It also moved so quickly across the sky—a half a degree in about a minute—that you could actually see its drift with the naked eye. He had about thirty minutes before the moon set.

He touched a colored rectangle on his plastic console and pinged the relay. He had it! And now to compose the message…

A message from Heinlein Station directly to Earth was out of the question. The UN would have people on Earth listening for any unauthorized transmissions inbound from Mars… and if they picked one up, they could almost certainly block it simply by jamming that frequency. They would have people at both Cydonia and Candor, too, who would come down hard on the Marines if they picked up his broadcast.

What Garroway was trying to do was a little more underhanded than phoning home without permission. He needed to tap into Spacenet, the electronic web linking all operations in space with one another and, through the primary node at the International Space Station, with Earthnet. He couldn’t do it overtly, but he could squeeze a short message into a tiny packet of data that could be layered with routine, outgoing transmissions—the “housekeeping” talk between the computers on Mars and Earth that basically kept tabs on one another and ensured from moment to moment that all communications channels were open and functional. He couldn’t send an open message; there might be watchdog routines running at Mars Prime or Cydonia specifically watching for anything tagged for Pentagon HQCOM, Washington or any other government or military installation on or near Earth. Hell, Bergerac probably had routines running right now listening for words like “Marine,” “Lloyd,” or “UN.”

But he had one hidden ace… the Beale code link with Kaitlin. If he could slip the code—a long string of numbers—into the housekeeping traffic going back to Earth, he could address it in such a way that it would automatically be routed to Spacenet’s e-mail service. The next time Kaitlin downloaded her mail, his message would be waiting.

He hated dragging her into this, but it was the only chance he saw. She should be safe enough, after all, in Pittsburgh.

F
OURTEEN

Monday, 28 May: 0030 Hours GMT

Kinkakuji Temple garden

0930 hours Tokyo time

It had been eight days since Kaitlin had seen Yukio, since he’d left for his base way to the south on Tanega Island, and now her v-mail was being flagged as undeliverable. She’d placed a long-distance call to the base, but all she got was a recorded vidloop, saying that no calls were being accepted at this time. She wished she knew whether the Japanese military routinely closed their bases to outsiders during a drill… or if this was an indication that something serious was brewing. There’d been nothing in the papers or on netnews to help her make sense of the situation. It was very puzzling… and a little disturbing.

She’d come to the temple this morning looking for a quiet restful place in which to think. To think about herself and Yukio, about their future… if they had one. They’d had a few days to travel around Japan before Yukio had to report to his base, and as she had feared, he’d become only slightly less formal away from Kyoto than he had been in his father’s house. It wasn’t just the absence of sex—she’d experienced dry spells before, and she could live with that. It wasn’t even the lack of those public displays of intimacy that she’d become accustomed to back home, holding hands, walking arm in arm, calling each other pet names. Being in Japan and speaking Japanese constantly made her almost feel Japanese. The day after they arrived, in fact, they’d seen a young couple holding hands on the maglev to Tokyo, and she’d been shocked… as well as amused at her own reaction. No, the problem went deeper than that.

She feared that Yukio was seeing her now as hen na gaijin, as someone who would never fit in, no matter how well she spoke the language or understood the customs. She remembered times before, back in the States, when they had discussed the difficulties that a mixed couple would face. He’d been the practical one, pointing out the problems foreigners still had in Japan, and the provincialism of large parts of the United States. She’d always countered with her belief that anything was possible… if they’d loved each other enough. And that was probably it. Yukio must have realized that his love for her wasn’t strong enough.

A high bamboo fence bordered the path to the temple. She ran her fingers gently along the bamboo as she walked along, head down. Abruptly the fence came to an end as the path ran along the edge of the lake. She saw it first in its reflection and caught her breath, as she suddenly knew why it was called the Golden Pavilion. Three stories high and covered with gold leaf, the temple gleamed with a dazzling brilliance both above and below the water. She found a spot next to the water and sat down, thinking how strange everything was. Her love for Yukio was stronger than ever… just when it seemed that his love for her was fading.

She unclipped her PAD to check the netnews again. Nothing. More rumblings with Mexico.

Anti-American and aldetech riots in Quebec and Paris. A new messiah in Rome who promised the aliens would soon return for the faithful. Nothing, though, to indicate why Japanese military bases might be going on alert. Well, time to check her v-mail. Something from CMU, her grades. Hey, all right! She grinned. Too bad Yukio wasn’t here. They’d always had a friendly rivalry going with their grades, even though he was taking graduate-level courses. Of course he always tried to claim that a B for a grad course was equivalent to an A for an undergrad, but she never bought that line. Not that he often got anything less than an A anyway.

What else? Hmm, something from her dad. Funny. She’d just gotten a long vid from him yesterday, and he usually didn’t comm her more than once or twice a week. Strange, too, it was text only… and the whole thing was in code. What the…? As she opened her Beale routine to decode the message, she found herself hoping it wasn’t something stupid—like that silly mix-up with the two archeologists.

It wasn’t.

Kaitlin:

This is urgent, Chicako. Pass the following message on to Uncle Walt. You’ll know how. The cat’s probably watching the mousehole right now, so you’d better come to Japan for the return trip. Thanks!

Love!—Dad

Walt, you sorry-assed son of a bitch, listen up and listen good. The blue boys pulled a Pearl Harbor 1207 GMT 27 May. The boss is down, but okay. Forcibly relocated to Red Planet. Have capped guards and secured cat. Am marching on Derna, with complete openness.

Semper fi.—Mark

She had to read the message through three times before she grasped it. Her mouth was hanging open as she worked her way through her father’s circumlocutions. “Blue boys” would be the UN. Pearl Harbor… a sneak attack? Forcibly relocated… as in imprisoned?

But the Marines obviously didn’t believe in staying where they had been put. A strange and unfamiliar feeling welled up inside her as she read about their escape. It took her a moment to recognize it as pride, both in the Marines… and in her father.

Something had happened to her father. The man who’d written this was not the same man who’d been planning to arrange an out after the Mars mission, the man who’d been just marking time doing his job… but not really caring. The man who’d written this was a man who was taking charge. She wondered what had happened to Colonel Lloyd; the message sounded as though Major Mark Garroway was the one in command.

She grinned as she figured out his cryptic reference to Heinlein Station. So, Dad, she thought, I guess all that science fiction I gave you did some good after all.

So now, what to do about this message? Obviously she needed to pass it on as soon as possible. But how?

Uncle Walt, of course, was Colonel Walter Fox. He and her dad had been buddies since before she was born, and she’d grown up thinking of him and his wife as uncle and aunt. In fact, it was Walter and Melanie Fox who’d taken care of her after her mother died, whenever her father was stationed overseas. The question was, could she risk sending this message in the clear? She had several other encryption programs, including one of her own design, but she didn’t know what Uncle Walt had.

She took another look at the second part of the message, translating to Tokyo time. The UN forces had taken over at 2107 Sunday… yesterday. Her last message from Yukio was dated Saturday, and yesterday her messages started getting bounced. That was too much to believe of coincidence. The Japanese government must have closed the base in response to word from the UN. No, she didn’t dare put this message on the net from inside Japan. She would have to go back to the States… and fast.

She thought about splurging on a taxi to get back to the youth hostel but then decided that the subway would be quicker. It didn’t take her long to pack her bag and check out, and then another subway ride got her to the maglev station, where she got on the first direct car to Kansai. She immediately shut herself in one of two enclosed comm stations to check out flight times. Damn! By the time the maglev got to Kansai, she’d have less than ten minutes to make the next Star Raker for the States, and the first one after that wasn’t for another four hours… all of that assuming she could get a seat. The Star Raker coming over had been pretty full; she hadn’t seen any empty places.

So. What other options did she have? It probably wasn’t all that urgent to get this message through quickly. After all, what could they do… send a message back saying, “Reinforcements on the way, ETA six months”? Still it would be important for them—she wasn’t exactly sure who she meant by “them”—to know what the UN had done.

Besides, ever since she’d put the timing of the attack together with the closing of Yukio’s base, she’d had an increasing feeling that it wouldn’t be healthy for her to stick around here much longer. The words “enemy alien” came to mind, and she shivered.

So was there anything sooner than that second Star Raker? Ah, that would do it. It was only going as far as Los Angeles, but maybe she would stay with Aunt Melanie and Uncle Walt down at Camp Pendleton for a few days before heading back East. She checked the price and whistled. Well, what’s the point in having an American Express account if you can’t use the thing when you really need it? She connected to Reservations and pressed a button on her wrist-top to send her AmEx code through. Now she was all set… except for one more little chore.

She’d decided to wait and do this on the maglev rather than in the train station because she’d wanted an enclosed comm station where she could take her time recording the message… messages, actually. The first one was no problem; expressing thanks for hospitality received and sorrow for an unexpected but necessary departure was easy to do in Japanese. The second one, though, that was another matter.

There was no established custom for what she had to say to Yukio. She wanted to tell him how much she loved him, but she also wanted to set him free. Between his feelings of obligation and loyalty to his family and his country and whatever of love he still felt for her, he was being pulled to pieces. She wanted… she needed to release him.

Several times she broke down in tears and had to erase the message and start over, but finally it was done. She played it back one last time, nodding in satisfaction. Yes, she had walked the tightrope successfully. Making sure her smile was in place before she pressed RECORD, she added, “Look me up when you get back to the States. We can have a cup of cha and talk about old times. Sayonara, Toshiyuki-san.” STOP

The messages complete, she took a deep breath, opened her address book, and selected the Ishiwara household. The minister would certainly not be in at this time of day; probably his private secretary—what had Yukio said his name was? Nabuko?—would answer. Just as well. She wasn’t sure she could face Yukio’s father right now.

The screen in front of her dissolved into an image of a young man sitting cross-legged on a tatami behind a low table with a PAD. She thought she’d seen him the night she had dinner there, and he obviously recognized her. Of course, it would be a large part of his business to remember names and faces. After the initial pleasantries, she made her request.

“I find I must leave this beautiful country and return to my home. I have recorded a message of farewell for the Honored Minister. May I transmit it now?”

Nabuko bowed in assent, and she selected SEND. She had embedded the message to Yukio inside the one to his father, asking the senior Ishiwara to pass the message along when it became possible to do so. As a government minister, he might even be able to get around the difficulty of the base being closed.

“I hope your journey will be a pleasant one, Garroway Kaitlin-san.”

She bowed and ended the connection, then slumped back in the seat. Done. It was done.

0143 Hours GMT

Heinlein Station, Mars

Sol 5636: 1320 hours MMT

He didn’t want to see the Corps die.

Garroway had been a Marine for twenty-three years, now. He’d seen the Corps during the frenzied build-up during America’s involvement in the Colombian Civil War, in ’27, and again during the disastrous intervention in Andhra Pradesh six years later. He’d seen the BCs—the slang pejorative variously meant budget cutters, bean counters, or things less savory—come that close to strangling the Corps, particularly in the years since the fighting in southeastern India. The argument ran to the effect that amphibious operations were a thing of the past; indeed, the last large-scale combat amphib deployment had been at Tavrichanka in 2012, when the First Marine Division had waded ashore to save Vladivostok from the invading Chinese. The other major Marine interventions in recent years had been by helicopter or Valkyrie. The Army Special Forces routinely deployed the same way, and they had better and more modern equipment.

So who needed the Marines?

And that, Garroway was increasingly convinced, was what had been responsible for his ROAD-like behavior, his determination to put in his time and get the hell out. He could do a lot better on the Outside; hell, he had a standing job offer from Vince Mayhew at Moravec. He didn’t need this shit.

Only now he was finding that he did… and that his dedication to the Corps had less to do with his oath to the country or the reason the Marines existed than it did with the people who were depending on him for leadership right here, right now.

Maybe the country didn’t need the US Marines, but he did.

The entire group was gathered once again in the main room of the Heinlein Station hab, the Marines in rows seated on the bare floor, the five scientists by themselves off to the left. Garroway had started, an hour earlier, to try to put together some sort of inspirational speech, but nothing he’d written down had worked. He would just have to ad-lib this one.

“People,” he said. “In the absence of specific orders from the military command authority, we have to assume that, as of this morning, we are at war.”

He had their full attention now. There was not a sound in the hab, and every eye in the room met his. “Our orders were to safeguard American interests on Mars and, specifically, to protect the civilian research outpost at Cydonia, which, as I’m sure you all know, was somewhat, ah… controversial in certain quarters. That outpost has now been taken over by the UN. Two of our people were hurt. In the absence of specific orders from Earth, I must assume that that action was a hostile one. By capturing the Mars cat this morning, we have made our first strike back against the enemy. We now have the means to leave our prison and to carry the battle to the UN forces occupying our facilities.

“I’ve discussed my intentions with a number of you this morning, so you know what I have in mind. It is my intention to take the Mars cat and march on Candor Chasma, 650 kilometers east of here. I intend to leave this afternoon, within the next hour, if possible.”

A babble of voices rose from the Marines and from the scientists as well. Garroway raised both hands, motioning the room to silence. “The march,” he continued, “will be difficult… and dangerous. Nothing like this has ever been attempted before, and we have only a very spotty knowledge of the terrain between here and there. Our biggest problem is going to be water, because, as I understand it, permafrost tends to be kind of patchy along the Valles Marineris, and we can’t count on finding drill sites that will come up wet. We’ll carry as much water as we can manage, but I’m afraid we’re going to be on short rations for most of the trip.”