The God Mars Book One: CROATOAN (12 page)

“Michael?” I hear Lisa on my link.

“Lock us down, Colonel Ava,” I tell her. “I want a
platoon of Heavy Armor on the perimeter walls, another ready in the
staging areas for support. Disc protocols—that means chain guns and
launchers. Everybody else inside. Shut the blast shields and seal
for breach.”

I hear her order everybody below. Carver’s unit (just
her luck) is up. They’re already dropping into their Heavy Armor
suits and getting booted. Three minutes later, my HUD gives me a
tactical map—thirty little red HA graphics come pouring out of the
staging airlocks to get to their positions. Looking back over my
shoulder, I can see the Mars-red hard-shell suits doing their
signature bow-legged run, dragging their heavy weapons, faceless
behind fully-visored helmets.

“Shouldn’t you be wearing a can, too?” Matthew scolds
me.

“What’s your excuse?” I dig back. We
are
the
only two bodies above concrete not wearing hard armor.

“I was enjoying the weather,” he plays. “Too nice a
day to wear all that bulky hardshell shit.”

I link in my own ICW, get the sighting graphic up on
my HUD, and point the over/under barrels of the weapon downrange.
West-southwest.

“Visual contact,” Metzger calls out barely a minute
later. “Decelerating. Still no course change… Doesn’t look like an
attack pattern.”

“Defensive fire only,” I remind everyone. Then I’m
straining to see the thing coming for myself.

First thing is the dust cloud—whatever it is, it’s
coming low, probably running VTOL jets. Then I get a speck of
something dark. It becomes spherical. Gets bigger, closer. I
realize what I’m looking at isn’t a sphere, but a long cigar-shaped
fuselage seen nose-on. But by then, it’s on top of us.

It comes in smooth, flies right over our heads, and
stops with unbelievable deceleration inside our perimeter. Then it
does a lazy turn over the landing bays like it’s just come home.
VTOL jets kick up dust, making it hard to see, but make little
actual noise.

Despite the rusty haze, I can get a decent look at
it: It’s art-deco sleek, like a prop in some ancient science
fiction serial—a tin rocket ship on a wire. Longer than an
ASV—maybe seventy-five feet from needle-sharp nose cone to
V-tail—with small triangular wings. It’s all smooth featureless
black, with no discernable markings or even a visible cockpit. And
I feel a sudden cold shock when I realize it looks very much like
some kind of missile. I’m about to order everyone to deep cover
(for all the good it would do if the thing really is a nuke) when
the visitor does a final graceful hovering rotation, then settles
down on one of the ASV pads, landing gear appearing like it had
just “grown” out of the smooth hull. Its engines wind down, letting
the dust begin to settle.

And that’s all.

Day 155. 6 June, 2115:

“…hull is some kind of nano-lattice composite,” Rick
is droning as he takes us on our latest walk around our silent
visitor. Each time I find myself expecting that the mystery ship
will do something, but it just sits as quiet and still as it did
from the moment it landed, over twenty-four hours ago. “Radar
reflective, likely meaning there was a specific intent to make her
stealthy. But there’s also enough ceramic quality—notice also the
lack of drag-producing features, the smooth lines—to indicate she
was made to enter atmosphere.”

“This is an orbital shuttle?” Lisa asks him. He
reaches up a hand to let his gloved fingers stroke the polished
black surface.

“Not a dropship or freighter,” he clarifies. “Too
light. Too small, at least in terms of draft. Not enough sign of
bay doors capable of loading and discharging anything or anyone in
quantity. Not even a sign of a universal airlock, at least not one
that’s compatible with anything we have. I’m betting this is a fast
recon vessel. Dropped from orbit, carried or boosted here.”

“Which means it’s from Earth,” Matthew makes the easy
conclusion.

“I doubt it was built here. Even if one of the
colonies—or the ETE crews—survived, evolved this kind of tech,
built ships capable of making orbit… But I’d think they’d have
built more than one, sent more than one empty ship to check us
out.”

“Unless they all left. Or something happened to
them,” Matthew keeps it dark. Rick shrugs.

“Won’t know until we get her open. Whoever made
her—or used her—didn’t make it easy by putting any identifying
markings on the hull.”

“Gets us back to that stealth thing,” Matthew goes
accusatory again. He knocks at the smooth black surface with his
“stick.”

“
Please
, Colonel!” Rick almost jumps him.
“Breaking the skin could compromise its heat shielding… If we ever
intend to take it into orbit ourselves…”

“And go
where
, exactly?” Matthew ridicules
bitterly, barely keeping his professionalism. “I thought there was
nothing up there? Does this thing have engines that can boost it
back to Earth?”

“I won’t know until we can get a closer look,” he
tries to stay even, hopeful. “But not likely. I was thinking in
terms of getting above the atmosphere net, sending a signal from
orbit.”

All Matthew does is shake his head and look away, his
way of passively conceding the point. Rick shoots me a look of
pained frustration.

“Still no sign of life?” Lisa changes the
subject.

“Nothing, Colonel,” Anton tells her. “Not even an
indication of a Hiber-Sleep system running inside. She’s dead
cold.”

I take a big step back, to take the long sleek ship
all in. It still looks more like a missile than anything intended
to be manned. The HA squad that’s been watching it in
shifts—surrounding it with guns and eyes—reflexively takes a step
back as well, like I stepped away for safety. I give them a little
hand signal to stand put.

“No sign of weapons,” Rick continues. “No exposed
cockpit or other viewports. Still not even sure where the doors
are. There are a number of seams—very fine tolerances, almost
invisible to the eye—that could indicate movable panels.”

“And no idea why it came here?” I press the obvious
point again.

“Likely responded to our signal, Colonel,” Anton
tries his theory again. “Some kind of automated protocol. She may
have been sitting somewhere unmanned for awhile, picked up the
first blip she’s had in however long, either mistakes it for a
retrieval code or is specifically programmed to seek a friendly
signal under certain conditions.”

“Such as her crew leaving her?” Lisa considers.

“No idea why until we get in,” Rick goes back to the
original problem. “No sign of any violence on the outside.”

“We know it’s fast. Why did it take so long to get
here after we started up the transmitter?” I ask.

“It might have had to spin up or something,” Anton
offers.

“There’s no sign of violence,” Rick repeats, “but
there is some scoring on the upper hull and wing surfaces, with
traces of common Mars dust. She may have been
buried
. Not by
a slide—maybe a sand drift.”

“Or hidden on purpose,” I consider, beating Matthew
to the more sinister explanation.

“MAI is running through our library of remote codes
and hail signals, also reviewing what we sent out before the
transmitter fried,” Anton reports. “Hopefully, we’ll hit the right
code, get her to open up.”

Matthew has wandered away, walking the flat of the
big aircraft elevator. His walking stick makes echoing bangs on the
reinforced deck as he paces, making a rhythm with the heavy
clumping of his boots. The bay in this section is empty except for
our visitor—I had Sergeant Morales and her teams move their
“projects” into other hangars, safely away from the black ship,
before we lowered the pad it settled itself on below ground, closed
the big blast doors over it and pressurized the bay so we could
work without masks (only surgical masks, just in case our guest
brought something with it).

I thank Rick and Anton and leave them to finish their
report with Lisa, then turn and follow after Matthew. I take my
time to make it look like I’m not chasing him, not concerned.

“Looks like our visitor puts a few things to rest, at
least,” I begin idly when I’m at his side. “New tech means Earth is
still kicking.”

“Unmarked stealth recon ship doesn’t sound like a
Search-and-Rescue,” he counters, keeping his voice down. “That it
may have been left buried with its crew MIA makes things even more
special.”

“I didn’t miss that, Matthew.”

“I know you didn’t.”

“I’ve got to keep it to what we can deal with,” I
try. “Right now, if it isn’t in walking distance or rover range,
it’s not on the priority list.”

“I know,” he cuts me off. Then I see him smile under
his mask, give his head a little shake. “You’re doing a good job
stepping into Cal Copeland’s boots, Mikey. We’ll make a base
commander out of you yet.”

Day 157. 8 June, 2115:

It takes a cooperative effort between MAI, Anton and
Rick to get the hatches to open, two days later.

The inside of the ship is a stark contrast to the
smooth black exterior. It’s all bright, sterile whites and chromate
greens. Mechanical instrumentation is minimal—Anton surmises
everything was run by shifting touch screens or heads-up graphics.
There isn’t much in the way of moving parts besides the
hatches.

There are two sets of airlocks—one fore and one
aft—dividing the habitable hull roughly into thirds. Each
pressurized section is laid out in a single line down the tubular
fuselage, like a plane or small submarine, so that personnel must
pass through the inner hatches of the locks themselves to get from
section to section. Rick surmises having each section so well
sealed from the others was designed to keep the air in if one
section got holed. Halley wonders if there were other isolation
functions in mind, especially after she gets a look in the aft-most
section.

Each airlock has two outer hatches, almost invisibly
flush with the hull when sealed, one above and one below. The lower
hatches offer retracting ladders to debark under the ship. The
upper hatches may have been for linking to other craft in orbit,
but Rick’s alternate theory is that the ship may have been designed
to be buried, that whoever sent it planned that it might need to be
hidden in the sand after arrival. (But from whom?)

The most forward compartment appears to be a command
bridge. Five couches are arranged in a triangle, with featureless
instrument panels in easy reach. MAI manages enough of an interface
with the main operating system to get a set of “ready screens” to
come alive on the otherwise bare walls. Mostly these show optical
views 360 degrees around the ship.

“As far as we can tell,” Anton explains, “whatever
memory or mission log the ship had were erased, either when the
crew left her or due to some failsafe.”

“Whatever they were up to, they didn’t want anyone to
find out,” Matthew surmises, idly rotating in one of the command
couches, his tone unusually calm considering his ongoing
suspicions.

“It seems that way, Colonel,” Anton agrees fairly
readily. “The ship also lacks any apparent registry or flight plan.
Nothing to say where it came from, who sent it, who built it, or
even what course it took. Only a signature on the operating system:
‘Lancer,’ which may or may not be the name of the ship, and a
copyright date of 2085, which only tells us when the OS was
created.”

“Is it an AI?” I ask him.

“If it was, it’s all been wiped or deactivated. I’ve
only been able to bring up basic operating and navigation.”

“Can we fly it?”

“Not yet,” he admits. “Too many systems are still
locked down. This thing has a lot of security on it. Makes me think
they anticipated someone trying to use it without
authorization.”

“Weapons?” Matthew wants to know. Rick steps forward
and leans over him, fingers tracing on one of the panels. A graphic
of the ship comes up on the main screen. Six points are
highlighted: one on each side of the nosecone, the other four
centerline: top and bottom, fore and aft.

“We haven’t unlocked them yet, but the ship has five
retractable turrets, armed with a kind of Gatling gun. Three
forward and two aft, covering both above and below. Small caliber,
but armor piercing. They wanted the ammo to be light, but expected
to be shooting more than flesh and bone. This unit on the underside
of the nose emits a directed EMP, probably designed to disable any
incoming technology. We were working on something similar to use
against the Discs, but the power demand and recharge times were too
great.”

“Lets us know they were expecting Disc-grade
trouble,” I concede. “I take it they solved the power problem?”

“Highly efficient fusion reactor of some type,” Rick
tells me. “Housed mid-aft. Well shielded. There’s evidence of a
system that will jettison the whole unit in an emergency, so we
could pull the thing for a closer look. Personally, I’m reluctant
to start disassembling her.”

“And no sign of the crew?” I ask again.

“The ship is
sterile
—no sign anyone was ever
on board, but that doesn’t mean she came empty.”

“There are food stocks in the form of
highly-compressed nutritional supplements,” Halley interjects,
coming in through the forward lock from where she’d been working
aft. “Looks like enough for five adults for a two-year mission.
Nothing fancy, but they’re labeled with different flavorings. Some
are recognizable—mostly fruit and vegetable flavors. Others tell me
times have changed—algae and sea kelp and something made out of
cultivated maggots, manufactured proteins. No meat flavors, mind
you.”

Matthew is wrinkling his nose.