The God Mars Book One: CROATOAN (24 page)

I give them a moment to process, to respond. They
continue to stand still as statues. And because of their damn
masks, I can’t tell if they think we’re stupid, insignificant or
frightening.

“I’m sure you’ve already spent decades thinking about
all of these possibilities,” I prod. “So I ask: Have you forgotten
your mission? To bring life to this dead world, to preserve it for
all mankind?”

“It is all we live for,” Paul says, stepping forward
to stand at my side.

Another blue suit suddenly steps into the light. The
mask folds away to reveal Simon.

“What is it you are doing, Paul?” Simon accuses.

“Honoring our mission,” Paul tells him.

“Defying our laws,” Simon returns.

“I have not defied our laws.”

“Silence, my sons,” the Blue Suit scolds sternly. And
I wonder if he’s speaking figuratively (as what Paul called an
“Elder”) or literally—Paul did say his father was on the Council.
Either way, the brothers stop, but still look like they’re ready
continue the argument.

“I’ve seen a small part of what you can do,” I throw
out. Simon suddenly looks sheepish, guilty, but the “Council” suits
appear to ignore him. “Earth will fear what you have, but I know
you have the power to stop violence without killing, and I trust in
your convictions to avoid bloodshed. If you use your abilities and
your knowledge to help us avoid unnecessary violence in our
contacts with the survivor tribes…”

“It is not our way to interfere,” Red interrupts me.
“We provide. We let the humans make their own way.”

“’
Humans
’?” I question his choice of words.
“What else have you forgotten?”

“Naturals,” Blue corrects evenly. “That is what we
call anyone not altered by technology such as ours. It is no
inferiority. We have chosen to change ourselves to better perform
our primary task, which you have correctly stated. And we have not
forgotten how people respond to outside control. How would
you
respond if
we
attempted to exert control over you
by force, however non-violent and well-intentioned?”

I am struck numb by their blatant denial: They
did
exert control over us—however non-violent and
well-intentioned—by deciding to keep us asleep for half-a-century,
and it seems they do not consider this non-consensual act
significant. My jaw grinds. Anton’s jaw is halfway to the floor.
Tru feels like she’s about to explode. Even Lisa tenses up.

“The obvious hypocrisy aside, that’s not what I’m
suggesting,” I let my venom leak out through my diplomacy, but they
don’t flinch at the blow—either they have no remorse or they really
don’t see what they did to us as at all objectionable (back to what
they’ve forgotten about being human). In any case, I try to keep
things focused, moving forward. “What I’m proposing is that you
help us keep things from escalating into violence, that you use
your abilities to save lives, that you provide us intelligence so
that we can best approach the tribes without stumbling into
tragedy.”

“And you want us to help you contact Earth,” Red
doesn’t make it a question (still completely discounting the issue
of “containing” us in Hiber-Sleep).

“If clear communication can be established, we can
give Earthside Command a proper picture of what’s happening here,”
I offer. “Allay their fears. Introduce them to you and your work in
a positive light, create a dialogue so you can try to explain your
intentions. And hopefully we can keep them from blundering into
tragic conflicts with the survivors.”

They don’t respond, don’t say anything. The light
shrinks, then reforms a tight circle of avatars around the blue
Council member. They appear to be having some silent debate—heads
move, but the rest of their bodies stay still.

“You made an impressively diplomatic argument,” Paul
tells me quietly.

“But will it convince?” Tru asks him in whisper.

“You still have me,” Paul offers.

“Even if it means defying your Council?” I ask him.
He looks down, won’t meet my eyes. Simon glares at him from the far
side of the light. The Council continues its wordless
arguments.

My Link beeps at me suddenly, but all I get is choppy
noise, fragments of an urgent voice I think is Sergeant Horst.

“Ram here,” I try answering it, turning away from the
light, hoping for better reception. No improvement.

“I can patch you into our arrays,” Paul tells me. I
don’t actually see him do anything, but suddenly I have a much
clearer signal.

“This is Ram.”

“Sergeant Horst, sir!” the voice sounds urgent, out
of breath. “Explorer One just came under attack! They came out of
nowhere, sir—they were buried in the sand! Carver’s been hit! So
has Spec-4 Linns and Private Summers. We returned fire, drove them
back, then fell back to the ASV dragging our wounded. Colonel Burke
is sending support…”

I feel the shock pour through me like ice water, but
only for an instant. Then my old programming takes over, my
conditioned rage—I feel my blood burn. I am back in the Terror War.
I am ready to kill my enemies.

“Colonel Ram, this is Colonel Burke,” I hear Matthew
chime in with equal urgency. “The other ASV is inbound on full burn
with Rios and another two squads—ten minutes. We can track these
fuckers from the air—they’re on foot…” I hear it in him, too: He
wants so badly to hit back. It’s reflex. It’s what they made
us.

“Sergeant Horst, is your position secure?” I need to
know.

“For the moment, sir,” he reports. “But these
bastards are stealthy. And their goddamn arrows can find gaps in
our H-As.”

“Maintain defensive posture,” I order. “Stabilize
your wounded for evac.”

“We
running
?” Matthew wants to know, his voice
edged with the frustration that comes from helpless distance.

“No,” I assure him. Then I stuff the rage back down,
do my job. “Sergeant Horst: Hold if you can. I’m coming to you. But
if they come back hard, bug out. No unnecessary kills.”

I turn and approach the Council circle. They have
been listening, but I make it clearer for them, let them (finally)
hear my simmering anger:

“It’s too late. It’s already started.”

Then I turn and tell Paul: “Take me back to the
Lancer.”

I watch it happen, replaying the armor video feed on
my heads-up, as Paul guides Smith—however unnecessarily—through the
takeoff sequence again.

“Lieutenant Carver’s group had moved on from the
Avalon ruin,” Rios is talking me through it from his own inbound
flight. He sounds tense, and it’s more than his eagerness to get
there. I’d heard rumors that he and Carver had become intimate,
though they managed to keep professional when eyes were on them.
“Her team had found signs that someone had made a try at rebuilding
there, but there were also signs of violence—damage from small
ordnance. It looks like they bugged out or got overrun a long time
ago. No recent signs of life. Nothing worth salvaging.”

He hesitates, his voice getting edgier. I check his
progress: he’s still five minutes out. We’ll get there about the
same time he does.

“They packed up and headed for Melas One. Touched
down at one of the marked tap sites in the open desert on the way.
Carver took her squad out to get a look at the tap in the Feed
Line. She had plenty of guns and eyes. The site looked secure. No
one saw anything but cold rock, not even on infrared.”

The camera is bouncing as Carver skips over the
rough, rocky terrain toward the big exposed pipes of the ETE Feed
Line. There’s a makeshift valve setup welded into it.

“Somebody’s been here recently,” I hear Carver say on
the recording, looking down at a jumble of footprints in the dirt
around the tap, which appears to have been packed down by repeated
traffic. “Looks like a popular place.”

Someone shouts and Carver’s camera spins. I hear the
sound of metal hitting the laminate armor of the H-A suits, but it
isn’t the sound of bullets. I can see the blurs of
objects—projectiles—flying through the air. Then I hear the rattle
of ICW fire.

“Hold…!!” Carver starts to shout, then her camera
jerks back and swings skyward. I see her heavy gloves claw at her
neck. I hear her choking.

Another view—from the ASV—shows Carver’s squad fan
around the tap, weapons ready. But then the ground erupts in dozens
of places all around them, shapeless masses shoving up from under
the rock and sand, and the projectiles—arrows, javelins, jagged
throwing axes—start flying. The sheer density of the storm of metal
flying at them takes them off balance. They begin firing back,
their AI-assisted targeting cutting down the nearest half-dozen or
so attackers that try to charge them—I can see now that they are
human, only wearing heavy cloaks painted with camouflage patterns
and laden with what looks like assorted scrap. The ICW shells clang
as they cut metal (Paul had mentioned homemade armor). One of the
H-A suits—the ID code is Summers—staggers and falls—I can see the
red-camo hardshell of his heavy-armor suit stuck with arrows like a
pincushion. Carver shouts for a hold-fire but is hit between the
neck-guard and helmet by what looks like a crossbow bolt and falls
back.

Lieutenant Acaveda—our only other combat-experienced
pilot—spins up the ASV and lifts it over the fight, then uses the
nose guns to cut a swath of chain-fire between Carver’s team and
the swarm of dirty cloaks. It takes a second strafing before they
start running.

“Incoming!” Acaveda shouts as a rocket comes
streaming at them out of the hills. The ASV’s auto-turrets spin and
cut it down just before impact. Acaveda fires another spray after
the fleeing cloaks, then sets the ASV down almost on top of Carver.
Carver is face-up, her hands grabbing at the short shaft stuck into
her. The occasional arrow ricochets off the rocks. Short bursts of
ICW fire answers.

The ruins of Mariner Colony flash past below us.

“Weapons?” I ask Smith. He keys up the Lancer’s
forward and rear gun turrets, extending them from the smooth
hull.

“You planning on using those?” Tru wants to know.

“I’m hoping the display will be enough.”

The second ASV is coming in for a landing next to the
first by the time we arrive. Rios’ H-As start piling out before the
landing gear even makes firm ground. A few run to help carry the
wounded inside, while a circle of red suits forms a perimeter of
guns around the landing site—Rios’ squads makes the circle bigger
and meaner. There are perhaps a dozen cloaks scattered around the
tap-site in the sand, lying unmoving where they fell in the initial
exchange. It’s difficult to see blood against the red
landscape.

“Lancer to Explorer One, your priority is to evac the
wounded,” I order as the Lancer slides into a hover over the
tap-site. “Explorer Two: Rios, hold the LZ to cover the evacuation.
Do
not
pursue the hostiles.”

“Understood, sir,” he accepts, however reluctantly. I
can almost feel his teeth grinding over the Link.

The ambushers headed south as fast as they could run,
likely counting on the terrain and their homemade camouflage to
cover their escape. The floor of Melas Chasma is rich with shallow
ravines and rises, natural cover ideal for ground warfare, setting
ambushes, or to shoot a missile at an unsuspecting aircraft
(tactics the Ecos made devastating use of before UNMAC sent the
nimbler and more heavily armed ASVs). With thermal imaging scans,
ground forces became easily visible in the cold of Mars, unless
they insulated themselves and dug in deep. And digging in was
exactly why Carver’s team didn’t read their assailants until it was
too late.

But as long as the enemy is on the move, they’re
visible from the air.

Smith brings the Lancer southward, climbing to two
hundred feet to get a better vantage. Heat and motion imaging
highlights two dozen or so running shapes barely a klick away—they
move with surprising speed, bounding over the rocky ground,
leap-frogging each other in a well-practiced, synchronized rhythm,
to let one wave move while another turns and covers their retreat.
And they’re careful not to cluster to avoid becoming tempting
targets.

“SAM!” Smith yells as the screens pick out the flare
of a small incoming missile, its size and smoke trail reading like
a shoulder-fired unit. The Lancer’s own auto-defenses lock the
Gatling guns and shred the projectile before it gets halfway to us.
Another follows after it, originating from a rise well ahead of the
retreating cloaks—they apparently have support nearby.

“Saved for a special occasion?” I ask Paul about the
missiles. He looks frozen, paralyzed, well out of his depth. The
Lancer’s guns knock out the second missile. Now bullets start
pinging off the hull.

“About what you said before…” Paul finally manages to
say, pulling a Sphere from his belt and heading with purpose for
the forward lock, his chrome mask folding itself into place. The
hatch seals behind him, and I hear the lock’s lift take him up
through the topside hatch.

External cameras show him standing on top of the
ship, holding his Sphere out in front of him, his head down as if
concentrating hard. The pinging of the bullets stops. I can see
flares in the air around us, the same effect I saw when Matthew
tried to shoot Simon. Another rocket flies at us, only to turn to
dust before the Lancer can shoot it down.

“Does this thing have a PA?” I ask Smith. Anton
swivels in his seat and keys one up for me.

“THIS IS COLONEL RAM OF UNMAC,” I send my voice
booming out of the ship as it circles over the mass of running
bodies. “HOLD YOUR FIRE. YOU WILL NOT BE HARMED. I REPEAT: YOU WILL
NOT BE HARMED. I WISH TO SPEAK WITH YOUR LEADERS. WE WILL HOLD THIS
POSITION AND AWAIT YOUR REPLY. REPEAT: THIS IS COLONEL MIKE RAM OF
UNMAC. HOLD YOUR FIRE. I WISH TO SPEAK WITH YOUR LEADERS.”