Semper Mars (20 page)

“Now just a damned minute!” The protest came not from one of the Marines, but from Dr. Kettering, standing off to the side with the other scientists. “You can’t seriously be thinking of dragging us all across four hundred miles of Martian desert!”

“You are welcome to stay, Doctor,” Garroway replied. He turned to face the Marines. “In fact, this is strictly a volunteer-only mission. Any of you who want to stay behind may do so. There’s plenty of food, and we’ll leave the drilling equipment.”

That brought a startled reaction from some of the Marines. “Sir!” Ostrowsky said, raising her hand. “You mean we’re crossing the desert without water?”

Garroway exchanged glances with Devora Druzhininova, who silently nodded. “I’ve discussed the plan with Dr. Druzhininova,” he said. “Maybe I should let her tell us about that.”

Druzhininova didn’t leave the group of scientists. She simply folded her arms and began addressing the entire group. “You all know that most of Mars’s water—a whole ocean of it, in fact—exists beneath the planet’s surface as permafrost… essentially frozen mud buried beneath anywhere from two to twenty meters of regolith.

“The permafrost layer is not uniform over the entire planet, however. It’s much thicker in the north polar regions, especially north of about forty degrees north latitude, where the Boreal Sea existed once. Cydonia Prime depends on the permafrost left when that sea froze, billions of years ago. It’s almost nonexistent around the equator, though. Here in the Mariner Valley, most of the ice was melted a billion years ago by the raising of the Tharsis Bulge to the west.”

“We’ve got water wells here,” Lance Corporal Julia Higgins called out. “What do you think that drill out back is for?”

“Subsurface fossil water. There are deep pools kept liquid by volcanism, even yet. Heinlein Station and Mars Prime are both positioned over fairly large water traps, but we can’t expect to find more between here and there. I’m afraid we’ll be limited to what we can carry… and what our suits and the life-support gear on the Mars cat can recycle.” She looked at Garroway. “I wish I had happier news.”

“That’s okay, Doctor,” he replied. “Lieutenant King and I have gone over the numbers. We’ll be able to carry enough with us to last, if we’re careful.”

He paused a moment, taking the time to study the expressions on the faces of the men and women before him. Some looked afraid or worried, some determined. Most simply looked attentive, as though this were simply another briefing at the start of a rugged but routine training exercise. He suddenly felt incredibly, inexpressibly proud of these people.

“I need to know,” he told them, “how many of you are coming along.”

Almost as one, people began standing up… Ostrowsky and Jacob making it to their feet first, but the rest within a second or two. They stood before him at attention, as though on the parade ground, and Garroway felt his pride swelling even more.

David Alexander and Dr. Druzhininova both crossed the floor and joined the Marines, followed a reluctant moment later by Edward Pohl; Craig Kettering and Louis Vandemeer remained where they were, arms folded, expressions shuttered.

Well, he hadn’t expected the civilians to embrace this madness. He needed either Alexander or Druzhininova—he’d discussed the matter with them an hour ago—and was pleased that both of them, and Pohl, would be coming along. The other two should be safe enough here until someone came by to pick them up.

He did know that he wanted no one along who wasn’t committed to the mission’s success. “Thank you, everyone,” he said. “I knew I could count on you all. Be seated.”

“What we’re about to do,” he told them as they resumed their places on the floor, “is going to be difficult. It’s never been done. But it’s also not without precedent. How many of you remember Presley O’Bannon?”

Perhaps a dozen hands went up—mostly those of the older Marines, the NCOs and senior people. Some of the younger ones looked uncertain. Others wore blank expressions that suggested they’d read about the incident in their Corps manuals and promptly forgotten it. The O’Bannon saga was required reading for every Marine.

“Lieutenant Presley Neville O’Bannon was a twenty-year-old Marine from the Blue Ridge Mountains of Kentucky who, in 1805, commanded a detachment of seven US Marines on a march from Alexandria, Egypt, to Derna, in what is now the People’s Glorious Jihad of Islamic Revolution. The march was led by Thomas Eaton, the US consul to Tunis and, besides the Marines, included about five hundred Arab revolutionaries and Greek mercenaries.

“That was during our war against what were then called the Barbary States… Tripoli, in particular, the worst of the lot. Eaton had hatched a plan to help an Arab exile named Hamet overthrow his brother, who was pasha of Tripoli at the time, and install a government friendly to the United States, ending once and for all Tripoli’s habit of capturing American seamen and holding them for ransom.

“O’Bannon and his Marines helped Eaton achieve the impossible. They prevented an Arab mutiny along the way by seizing the expedition’s food stores. When they reached Derna, they led a charge that carried the defenses of the city, which happened to be Tripoli’s most important territorial holding. Two Marines died in the attack, and two more, including O’Bannon, were wounded. O’Bannon himself raised the Stars and Stripes over Derna’s fortress, the first time the American colors were raised in battle in the Eastern Hemisphere. The action won for the US Marines both the line in the Marine Corps Hymn referring to ‘the shores of Tripoli’ and the Mameluke design of the Corps officer’s curved dress sword.” He grinned. “And you Marines who didn’t know all that have some studying to do!”

He paused as the men and women laughed, then went on, more seriously. “O’Bannon and his men accomplished an impossible march, six hundred miles across the Sahara Desert in something just over six weeks. We’ve only got four hundred miles to cross, and we have a Mars cat to do it with instead of O’Bannon’s camels. I think we’ll be able to do a bit better than he did!”

“So how long is it going to take us, Major?” Corporal Hayes asked.

Garroway took a deep breath. He’d had two answers ready, a short one based on the assumption that everyone would be able to travel inside the captured Mars cat, and a longer one calculated on the need for some to ride—or walk—outside. If only six or eight had volunteered, it would have been possible to make the trip to Mars Prime in less than two days.

But that, of course, would have raised rather serious additional difficulties; taking on the UN contingent that was probably stationed at Candor Chasma with eight Marines would have been chancy at best.

“If we’re lucky,” he told them, “we’ll be able to complete the trip in about a week. Since we’ll be facing extreme conditions, however, and uncertain terrain, I’m planning on the march taking at least two weeks, and quite possibly more.”

“Major, you can’t seriously be considering this,” Vandemeer said.

“You two will be safe enough here,” he told them. “The UN soldiers in the cat were supposed to report in every so often. When they don’t report in tonight, someone will be on the way to check up on the place. When they get here, you’ll be able to tell them, quite truthfully, that you wanted nothing to do with this scheme.”

“We’ll tell them where you’re going!”

“Go ahead. They’ll know as soon as they find out we’re gone.” He grinned. “Even with us following the Mars cat’s tracks all the way to Mars Prime… well, it’s a damn big desert!”

“Damn it, Major!” Kettering said. “You could be starting a war!”

“Those people have already started it, Doctor,” Garroway said, nodding toward the airlock and the bodies of the UN troops now lying on the cold Martian sand. “All we’re going to do is finish it.”

F
IFTEEN

Monday, 28 May: 0705 Hours GMT

PRA Flight 81

60,000 feet above the Pacific Ocean

1605 hours Tokyo time

According to the data displayed on the seatback screen, the Pacific Rim Airlines Amagiri transport was nearly at its maximum altitude of sixty thousand feet. The countdown readout in the corner showed 30… 29… 28…

Kaitlin double-checked her seat restraints, then gripped the handrests firmly, not from terror but from excitement. She’d never flown a suborbital before, and this one—one of the Lockheed Ballistic 2020s, better known to the businessmen who flew them as Yankee Bullets—was just about to drop from the Amagiri and boost for space.

Space. She was excited by the idea, more excited than she’d thought she would be. Star Rakers employed on intercontinental runs typically cruised at 100,000 to 150,000 feet, but suborbitals actually grazed the arbitrary boundary of space—264,000 feet, or fifty miles. People who’d crossed that boundary were entitled to wear astronaut wings; PRA handed out gold-plated wings as souvenirs, she knew, as a promotion, to everyone who’d ridden one of their sub-Os. They could afford to, of course. She shuddered to think what her AmEx bill would look like next month, but it was worth it!

The countdown reached zero, and, for a few precious seconds, Kaitlin felt the elevator-descent sensation of free fall as the delta-winged sub-O fell from beneath the broad, twin-fuselaged wing of the Amagiri transport.

The rocket boost, when it came, surprised her by being so gentle. The acceleration built steadily, though, until she was pressed deep into her seat. What a ride! She remembered her father’s v-mail description of the exhilaration he’d felt during his boost into orbit last year. “Like a real kick in the pants,” he’d told her.

I know what you mean now, Dad.

The boost dragged on until she almost wondered if the pilot had made a mistake and was going to take them into orbit after all, but then she began to feel lighter and lighter and then… nothing. The engines cut out, and she was weightless. The screen readout on the seatback in front of her showed altitude in both miles and kilometers. They were passing forty miles, now, and still rising higher with every passing moment.

Though it might have been fun, she thought, to float about the cabin, she was glad for the seat restraints. She was also suddenly very glad for the tridemerin patch on her left arm as she heard the unmistakable sounds of someone across the aisle being sick. Pacific Rim attendants had offered the antispacesickness patches to all the passengers, requiring all who refused the medicine to thumbprint a waiver; apparently at least one of her fellow passengers had availed himself of the waiver option… and was now availing himself of his complimentary comfort bag.

Fifty miles… fifty-one! She was in space! There were no windows in the sub-O’s passenger section, but a repeater screen at the front of the cabin showed a nose-camera view of the sky ahead, black above and black below, separated by a curved band of glorious blue radiance. The Bullet was passing the terminator now, plunging into night. She grinned suddenly. She’d actually made it past the magic fifty-mile barrier before Yukio! He’d be so jealous if he knew. It’d be good for him!

Now for Uncle Walt. She’d not wanted to transmit on one of the Japanese e-nets, not and run the risk of having her call intercepted. The suborbital, though, had a direct feed to a comsat, and the channel ought to be secure. Checking her wrist-top, she did a quick conversion in her head. With the eight-hour time difference, it would be about twelve-twenty at night at Camp Pendleton. She didn’t want to wake him… but she didn’t feel like hanging on to this message by herself for another eight or nine hours either. Tuning her wrist-top to the seatback screen in front of her, she pinged his home account. All right! He was in and hooked up. She transmitted a connection request… and in a few seconds was looking at the worry lines and prematurely receding hairline of one of her oldest friends.

Colonel Walter Fox broke into a huge grin when he saw her. “Kaitlin! So good to see you! How’re you doing? What’re you doing? Where are you?”

“That last is the easiest to answer, Uncle Walt,” she said with a mirror grin. “I’m at, oh, about fifty-five miles up over the Pacific right now.”

He whistled. “Flying high in more ways than one, aren’t you, Chicklet?” he said, using his own mangled version of her Japanese nickname. “Those suborbs don’t come cheap.”

“Well, it… seemed important to get back to port right away. Listen, Uncle Walt,” she said quickly, before he started asking questions. “I got a message from, ah, a mutual friend. I’d like to transmit it to you now.”

He nodded and said nothing while the message was being transferred from Kaitlin’s wrist-top to the suborb’s communications relay to a communications satellite in geosynchronous orbit and then to a downlink station at Camp Pendleton and finally to Fox’s wrist-top. He stared at his display, raised his left eyebrow, then studied the screen some more.

“Did our… mutual friend transmit this to you in the clear?” he asked.

She shook her head. “No.” Walter Fox knew all about the Garroways’ penchant for codes. There was no need for her to be more specific, especially over a channel whose security she wasn’t able to verify. Maybe she was being paranoid—there’d been no indication that she had been followed or was being watched while she was in Japan—but, hey, just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.

“Good. Okay, what flight are you on?”

“PRA 81 inbound for LAX. Uncle Walt? Do you suppose I could stay with you and Aunt Melanie for a few days?” She laughed, a mirthless chuckle. “My vacation sort of got interrupted, and I’m somewhat at loose ends right now.”

“Mmm,” he grunted, deep in thought. “Kaitlin, do you know how to get a message back to… our friend?”

“Yes. The, ah, normal channels seem to be down, but we have a back door.”

“Excellent. Okay, this won’t wait. Look… I’ll talk to you later.”

And Kaitlin was left staring, dumbfounded, at a blank screen. Uncle Walt wasn’t usually so abrupt. He probably wanted to let the base commander know about the message before it got any later. She was stunned, though, and a little hurt, that he hadn’t even responded to her inviting herself over. Well, she could always spend the night at an airport hotel and then call Aunt Melanie in the morning.

Then she realized that his abruptness was a confirmation. She’d been right. Getting her dad’s message through was important. She was now very, very glad she’d followed her hunch and taken the suborbital. If what had happened on Mars was a prelude to war, and if she’d stayed on in Japan, she might have found herself unable to leave. And she would have been the only one on the planet to know what had gone down … and she wouldn’t have been able to do a damn thing about it.

In a surprisingly short time the descent warning sounded, followed by a period of gradually increasing weight and a growing shudder. The nose-camera view was beginning to show a pearly opalescence, deep red, tinted pink on the edges, as the Bullet plowed back into thicker atmosphere, killing velocity with a series of vast, computer-controlled S-sweeps across the northeastern Pacific.

She thought about what her father had always said, about the Marine Corps being like a family. She wondered what other members of that family would do when they found out about the takeover at Cydonia. Uncle Walt cared because he knew her dad, but what would his superiors think… and feel? Would they care… or was what happened to a few Marines a hundred million miles away not worth the risk of going to war?

She saw little of the actual landing—a sudden blur of city lights as the suborbital swept in over the coastline somewhere near San Jose, followed by a rapid descent and a final burst of power from the craft’s traditional ramjets as it maneuvered into the LAX landing pattern. By the time the suborbital touched down with a bump and a squeal she had worked herself into a real state. Kaitlin knew just how precarious the survival of the Marine Corps was right now. Damn it, nobody cared. Her father’s message would probably be ignored… or dismissed as a fake. It was a peculiarly helpless feeling, knowing that Dad was in trouble on another planet, and there wasn’t a thing she could do to help him.

As the aircraft came to a halt at the terminal, a warning sounded and display screens flashed in several languages, instructing all passengers to stay in their seats. “Miss Garroway?”

She looked up at the flight attendant who’d just materialized by her seat. “Uh, yeah?” He smiled politely. “Would you get your things and follow me, please?”

What? As she followed the attendant out the main door of the craft and into the transport tunnel, she heard rustlings behind her as the other passengers were at last allowed to move. Since when did she rate VIP treatment?

Then she wondered if her message to Uncle Walt had been intercepted by the Japanese government after all… but she was on American soil now. Surely, they couldn’t detain her here, no matter what the current UN situation might be.

Two Marines in khaki uniforms, a gunnery sergeant and a staff sergeant, were waiting for her in the terminal, and she felt a hot rush of relief. Marines she could handle.

“Miss Garroway?” the gunnery sergeant asked, and she nodded. “Please come with us, ma’am.”

As she sat down in the waiting transfer cart, she turned to the gunnery sergeant. “Colonel Fox sent you, didn’t he?” she asked.

“No, ma’am,” was the uninformative reply.

“He didn’t? Well, who did? Where are you taking me? What’s going on here?” She was getting more than a little annoyed.

“Our orders come directly from Commandant Warhurst, ma’am. We’re taking you to Terminal E for transfer to a military Star Eagle transport.”

“The commandant! But why? What’s going on? Where am I going?”

The man finally turned and looked at her. She had the feeling that he was as puzzled about his orders as she was. “Ma’am,” he said apologetically, “we don’t exactly know what’s going on ourselves. But our orders are to take you by fastest available military transport to Andrews Aerospace Force Base and from there to the Pentagon. The commandant himself will be waiting for you.”

Suddenly he grinned. “Don’t know what you’ve done, ma’am, but I tell you, I haven’t seen the brass this worked up since the Colombian War… and believe you me, that takes some doing!”

Tuesday, 29 May: 1830 Hours GMT

National Security Council Conference Room, Executive Building Basement, Washington, DC

1430 hours EDT

I never thought an electronics specialist would be the one to start a damned war, General Warhurst thought, as he showed his special pass and ID to a grim-faced Army guard at yet another checkpoint. He followed Admiral Gray through the x-ray scanner and into the bustling subterranean labyrinth that was the Executive Building’s deepest basement levels. Still, given the high-tech nature of warfare these days, an electronics specialist and computer programmer was as likely to push the war initiate sequence button as anyone else, and maybe more so.

He thought about his son. He’d been thinking about Ted a lot, lately. It had been eighteen days since his death in Mexico, and eleven since the funeral at Arlington. Life, these past weeks, had become a vast and yawning emptiness… one that Montgomery Warhurst had been trying to fill with work.

He felt guilty about that. Stephanie seemed to be covering up her grief pretty well, but Janet was in a bad way; she and Jeff, Ted’s son, were staying at the house in Warrenton for a while, until things could settle out. At least he had work, something to occupy his mind.

The nights were rough, though. He hadn’t been sleeping much…

This new crisis on Mars was almost welcome. Any distraction was welcome now.

Admiral Gray led him down a long and gleaming passageway, guided him left into a comfortably appointed lobby, then ushered him between two more sentries and through an inner door that would have done a bank vault proud.

The room was lavish enough, with its rich oak paneling, thick carpet, and executive-style leather chairs, but it somehow didn’t match the mental image Warhurst had formed of the place when CJ had asked him to attend this morning’s meeting. He’d expected something larger and grander, frankly, a corner room, perhaps, with a splendid view of the White House grounds next door and the Capitol Building beyond. The room was large, with a low ceiling lit by fluorescents concealed behind plastic panels. One wall, the one opposite the room’s only door, was taken up by a floor-to-ceiling display screen which currently showed the NSC seal and was flanked by the American flag and a flag bearing the presidential seal.

There were no windows and, in fact, the entire room was a kind of vault more secure than any bank’s. It was easier to maintain security here, of course, four floors down from street level in the warren of tunnels, passageways, and rooms that honeycombed this part of the nation’s capital. For a good many years, now, the joke circulating through official Washington was that the city was like an iceberg; nine-tenths of the place was below ground, hidden where you couldn’t see it.

And beyond the reach of laser eavesdropping devices or cruise missiles or remote-piloted microdrone assassins. Even the president, these days, spent more of his time in the hardened bunkers of the old Situation Room Complex beneath the White House than he did upstairs in the exposed Oval Office. Especially these days, with a dozen terrorist groups sworn to strike at Satan America, with the threat of war looming so large and desperately close.

“Have a seat, Monty,” Gray said, gesturing. Other men were already filtering in and taking their places at the table. Admiral Gray had met Warhurst personally in the basement lobby and walked him through the security gates. Now, for the first time, he found himself inside the National Security Council’s main conference room, a place he’d heard of often enough but never seen.