The God Mars Book One: CROATOAN (22 page)

I take a deep breath, sit back. No one says anything
for awhile.

“Sounds like the rule is if we go where the people
are, there will be shooting,” Matthew grumbles.

“What kind of weapons are we facing?” Carver chimes
in, thinking practically. Paul frowns.

“As I said before, you likely outgun most of the
survivor tribes,” he tells her heavily. “But that doesn’t mean they
will not fight you to the death if they feel threatened. And you
will likely frighten them more than any raider come to—as Colonel
Burke put it—rape and pillage. They expect you would exterminate
them.”

“Then probably best if we avoid direct approaches at
first,” I suggest. “Explore. Recon. Let them see us. Keep our
distance—remember: some of the colonies stocked surface-to-air
weapons.”

“Where to first?” Tru asks.

I select northeast Melas.

“Might be a good first place to go,” I offer. “Hop
the Feed Lines. Swing by Avalon, Mariner, then Melas One—look over
the abandoned sites up close, see if we can get a sense of
survivors and where they may have gone. Depending on how the ASVs
hold up and how well the feed tapping works, we could go on and get
a careful look at Industry.” Then I assure Paul: “From a safe
distance.”

“While Paul takes you home to meet the family,”
Matthew snipes, pointing out what Paul identified as his home
Station, high up on the northeast Melas rim at the point where
Melas opens into Candor. Matthew turns to Paul. “Anything else we
should know before blundering out looking for our fellow
humans?”

“Beware the Nomads,” Paul tells him matter-of-factly.
“Their locations are purposefully changing, unpredictable, but they
do effectively control the Melas Valley floor. And they survive by
hiding, and by fighting off stronger competitors. They do not try
to engage us because they fear our ‘magic’.”

“Great,” Matthew gives back sickly-sweet.

Paul gets up and walks out.

“I apologize, Colonel,” Paul tells me when I catch up
to him in the short corridor outside, between Briefing and Ops. “I
find myself in a difficult position. And it’s not just that I
forget how much you do not know of what has happened in the past
fifty years. It’s that I truly do not know how much I
should
be telling you.”

“Because of your Council?”

“More than that…” He looks away. “Please understand:
it is not that I do not trust you. But we have established trusts
of our own with peoples who in turn trust that we would not
‘betray’ them to an Earth that they so greatly fear. And I
do
expect violence when you encounter them. Lives will
almost certainly be lost.”

“Which is why I need your intel,” I tell him. “I need
to know what to expect, how to approach.”

“And what would you do if I told you about a certain
group of survivors, and then insisted that you absolutely do
not
attempt to contact them?” he confronts.

I don’t have an answer for him, at least not one he
wants to hear.

“Imagine Mars as being like Earth during the Dark
Ages,” he tries. “Struggling, embattled, fearful, competitive,
xenophobic peoples all vying for territory, dominance, resources.
What became of that era, Colonel? What created civilization from
chaos? Powers arose—nations with greater resources and
technologies—conquerors. Civilization was built out of wars, order
asserted by violence, even genocide. The most peaceful peoples were
trampled underfoot first, the most warlike surviving to hopefully
mature.

“Now you suddenly come into this world with your guns
and your aircraft… And what happens when you call Earth back? How
will they come? Now imagine what the various native tribes of
Earth’s history suffered when the technologically advanced
Europeans made landfall on their shores. And remember: not all
Europeans came just to conquer and profit. Some insisted they had
come to better the natives’ lives, to ‘save’ them.”

I digest that for a moment.

“Then we need to open talks with your people,” I tell
him. “You talk about history. What went furthest to bring us out of
the violence was when the superpowers struck a balance—that started
people trying to understand each other, to cooperate. Communication
was the key.”

I leave him to think about that—staring out of one of
the slit viewports across our base and Marineris beyond—and I go
back in to Briefing.

“So what’s the plan?” Matthew asks when I come back
to the table.

“You hold the fort,” I tell him. “Lisa, Tru, Anton
and I go try to meet with the ETE.”

“No guns?” He already knows the answer.

“No troops, not for the ETE visit. Just us.” Then I
look back at the map. “Plot out some tap-sites on the Feed Lines
between here and the City of Industry. Lieutenant Carver, I’m
giving this to you, since you seem to have The Luck: take a few
squads in one ASV. Heavy Armor and weapons, but defensive ROEs.
Start with a sweep of Avalon and Mariner, then hit Base One. Look
for supplies and signs of survivors, get us a good close scan. Any
sign of human life, avoid direct engagement for now. If you have
fuel, air and daylight—and the ship is still running smooth—you
make the call whether to go on to get a look over Industry or come
back.”

“Yes, sir,” she says without hesitation.

“You still taking the Flash Gordon Special?” Matthew
prods me.

“As soon as I find a pilot.”

14 July, 2115:

Our pilot finds he has little actual flying to
do.

First Lieutenant Wilson Smith is one of only two
combat pilots with us when we went into Hiber-Sleep. He was injured
in a gunfight with the Discs—a shrapnel wound in his calf
muscle—and was still grounded when we sent every able pilot skyward
before the bombs fell. Halley’s given him clearance to fly, and he
appeared more than eager to get in the air again (especially at the
stick of an aircraft twenty years more advanced than anything he’d
seen), but I think he started to reconsider once we got
airborne.

Once the flight-plan is entered, the Lancer does much
of its own flying, so Smith has little to do besides watch the
reads and stare at the virtual screens as the Martian landscape
whips by beneath us.

Paul told us that it did not matter which ETE Station
we approached, since his Elder Council could all make themselves
present through VR at any site. (The individual members apparently
rarely leave their own Stations.) The closest Station just happens
to be his own home “Blue” Station. (Each Station’s population is
identified by a different color sealsuit). So we started out on the
same course northwest as Carver’s team, her loaded ASV barely
keeping up, even with the Lancer using only a fraction of its
thrust.

It only took an hour to get to the ruins of Avalon,
where we left Carver to set down and take a closer look. We circled
the site a few times before moving on, but there was little to see
but the remains of cracked concrete and rammed-earth foundations
and shield walls. The ESA colony of Avalon had been cleanly
stripped, right down to chiseling the native steel reinforcing out
of the concrete. There is nothing at all left of the nanotech labs
and fabs, but neither is there any sign of contamination or
outbreak. All the stripping was done by blast wave, slide battering
or (most encouraging) human tools.

“Processed metals are a precious commodity among all
of the survivor factions,” Paul explains. “They will dig the
reinforcing bar out of the deepest cast foundations. Unfortunately,
they use most of it to blacksmith armor and weapons.”

“Sounds medieval,” Lisa comments.

“Very much so,” Paul tells her. “Every colony had
stockpiles of guns, and those weapons have withstood the test of
time and the elements, but ammunition began getting scarce within a
few years because of all the fighting and raiding.”

“So we’re looking at—what?—swords and axes?” Tru
asks.

“And bows, crossbows, all manner of basic projectile
weapons,” Paul explains. “But there are groups who still keep
stockpiles of ammunition like treasure.”

“And they might break it out for a special occasion,”
Anton considers.

Paul nods heavily.

Fifteen minutes later, we make our own pass over
Mariner on the way to Paul’s home Station on the western tip of the
Melas Northeast Rim.

The site of the first United Nations’ continuously
maintained base, Mariner grew into a sprawling set of habitations,
shuttle facilities, supply depots, and a groundbreaking biotech
campus. Tragically, it had to be completely evacuated back in 2057,
after the main structures were hopelessly fractured when a
two-dozen-mile-wide section of the nearby rim collapsed because of
careless water extraction. The slides rumbled down from the
miles-high canyon walls, sending billions of tons of rock and sand
flowing over twenty miles before striking the colony and the
original Melas One site. Five hundred and twenty people were killed
at both sites. Thousands were injured.

While UNMAC attempted to fund the reconstruction of
Melas One (which was relocated another two dozen miles from the
Melas rim for added safety), the Mariner survivors worked with
whatever they could get to rebuild their colony in its original
historic location. But both the Eco War and the Discs got in the
way, and neither site was properly reinforced when the bombs did
worse than the slides.

Tru had lobbied hard to come on this run, desperate
for any sign of what might have happened to several hundred of her
fellow Mariner colonists. I considered shutting her out based on
the risk, but she’s seen her share of violence, and her presence
might go further with the ETE than mine.

I’m regretting my decision the instant we get a
visual of the colony site. Where Mariner was once promisingly close
to being reborn, there is now little more than a few traces of
unrecognizable, shredded wreckage: twisted scrap and broken
concrete. It looks very much like test videos I’ve seen of nuclear
shockwaves burning, shattering and blowing away target structures
like so much ash. Whatever hope that there might have been
survivors—or descendents of survivors—fades in a few seconds of
scans. Tru just watches the screens in silence.

“The metal that’s left wasn’t salvaged because it’s
still radioactive,” Paul explains softly.

Everything exposed above the drifting dunes is dusted
with an undisturbed frosting of fine red sand. It doesn’t look like
there’s been any activity here since the bombs did their worst. Our
radiation detectors confirm Paul’s assessment: the site is still
too hot for safety. I let Carver know to skip it.

We turn north and begin climbing.

The North Rim of Melas Chasma begins as thirty-degree
slide slopes that rise over twelve-thousand feet, before
terminating in almost sheer cliffs that tower another several
thousand before they terminate at the plateau of the Datum-level
Ophir Planum.

The ETE Station is “planted” on the top of the slopes
just at the base of the great cliffs, where a “point” juts several
miles into the valley where Candor Chasma once “flowed” into Melas
(this may have been due to ancient water—the central chasmata may
have once been seas—or due to geologic upheaval and collapse). Paul
tells us the location was chosen so that the Station would sit at
the ideal elevation below the cliff line, but not directly under a
lot of rock wall that might tumble down on top of it. (The Station
is also almost atop the origin slope for the very slide that came
down on Mariner and Melas One. The Station was planted after that
slide, the ETE engineers and geologists confident that the slope
wouldn’t break loose any further. A comparison of pre-bombardment
maps against the Lancer’s later versions proves them right: the
Station managed to sit put even through a nuclear bombardment.)

The Station itself is larger than I’d expected—I
never got the chance to tour one before the bombardment—comprised
mainly of a cluster of four massive and highly reinforced conical
towers that rise several hundred feet out of the rock, making the
Station look like a combination of an old nuclear plant and a
medieval fortress. This illusion is enhanced by the heavily
bunkered multi-story Operations Complex that fronts the
tower-cluster’s huge foundation, which is in turn cut into the
cliff rock. A refinery-like cluster of tanks sits adjacent to the
big towers. Huge feed pipelines snake out of the processing plants
and take root into the slopes. I consider how intimidating the
Stations must appear to the low-tech surface survivors, looking up
at them from literally miles below, and remember what Paul said
about the ETE being called wizards and demons. A steady pillar of
steam billows out of the top of the tower-cluster, flattening and
spreading out like the massive anvil top of a storm cloud when it
hits what must be the atmosphere net barely a few hundred feet
above the towers. It forms what’s probably a permanent dark shroud
over the Station, adding significantly to how foreboding it looks
from down in the valley. Then I realize that the valley is ringed
with these stations—six of them around the broad bowl of Melas,
spaced about a hundred and twenty miles apart—which must make
anyone who has lived down in the valley feel hemmed in by these
simultaneously essential and terrifying fortresses.

“Most of the habitation and research facilities of
the Station are underground, deep in the cliff-face,” Paul
narrates, “bored out after the Station was ‘planted.’”

I remember other facts from my original briefings:
The main masses of each Station—the tower-cluster of the nuclear
processors and the tank-cluster of the chemical and resource
refining plant—were manufactured in Earth orbit, moved by shuttle
“tugs” and then carefully dropped (with huge “parachute” balloons)
into a massive hole prepared in advance by engineering teams based
at neighboring colony sites. The Station’s onboard mining drills
then began cutting taps into the planet to draw raw materials,
while the engineers built facilities for the teams of scientists
and operators, often in the very caverns the Station drills started
cutting out. The Stations’ own terraforming process produced the
raw materials for the construction, and for the Feed Lines to
spread the new oxygen and to send water and hydrogen fuel to the
colonies, the Lines themselves mostly assembled by automated
rover-bots.