The God Mars Book One: CROATOAN (32 page)

The inside of the chamber is an open space perhaps
ten meters in diameter. Suspended in the center of it are three
slight pale figures, held rigid, arms pinned to their sides, all by
some unseen force. All three are completely naked, and their hair
has been shaved off.

“They even had implements woven into their hair,” the
Council continues, his voice edged with frustration. “And hidden
inside their bodies. The female’s fingernails were
prostheses—nano-material razor claws and poison-injecting
syringes—they had to be removed. And some of their teeth were
implants as well.”

I look at the woman’s hands and see that the tips of
her fingers are raw and missing the nails. Their bodies are lean
and wiry—all muscle and tendon. They do not seem to be fighting
their bonds, but also seem to remain tautly alert. Their black eyes
glare back at me coldly.

“They are weapons, Colonel,” the Council assesses.
“Apparently disposable, even to themselves—they will begin to fight
again if they are not completely immobilized, no matter how
hopeless or what the risk to themselves. What do you suggest I do
with them?”

“And they haven’t said anything?”

The Council shakes his head. “We have no skill at
interrogation, and certainly no taste for torture.”

“I do,” I admit grimly. “But I’ve been abstaining for
quite some time now.”

I lock eyes with them and they return my gaze,
unblinking, jaws clenched tight.

“Shinobi,” I identify them. “Ninja. Or some new
variation of that basic concept.”

“What?” Paul starts, incredulous. But there’s a
glimmer in the prisoners’ eyes.

“
Shinobi
,” I repeat. “Assassins and spies. Not
soldiers. Not Samurai. Not even people, as far as the elite are
concerned. Just disposable pawns with no honor. They attack with
stealth, deception, cheap tricks. They don’t engage a man
face-to-face; they prefer an unsuspecting, distracted or
defenseless target. That’s what the
Kanji
—the symbol for the
word—resembles: Stabbing a prone man in the heart. Murdering.”

I give that ancient insult time to process, watch for
little ticks in their features.

“The aristocratic Samurai considered the Ninja
honorless dogs for what they were and what they did,” I continue,
“but they served the ends of the Machiavellian warlord well enough,
so they had their tactical value, no matter how distasteful that
was with the code of Bushido. And that’s what makes them so easily
disposable.”

I look them over, narrowing my eyes like I find them
repulsive, pathetic, even pitiable.

“Who are your lords, little assassins?” I ask them
finally. “The Shinkyo Techno-za? You come wearing their product
like an advertisement.”

They keep still, but I can smell them starting to
sweat.

“Does Shinkyo even have Samurai? Do they bother? Or
is theft all your corporate masters value now?”

Paul is looking at me with confusion in his eyes, and
more than a little discomfort.

“I expect they raised you to be this,” I continue,
softening just a bit. “Programmed you from birth so that this is
all you know and all you’re good for: to kill and die without
question for your masters’ petty profit. Disposable tools to do a
distasteful job. And what is that job? Do your masters even grasp
what they are trying to take? Do they care that they may doom
everyone? Or do they hold all life in equal contempt? Are they
warriors, or are they just greedy merchants?”

I give them a lopsided, predatory grin.

“
My
people are soldiers. Warriors. If all
Shinkyo has is thieves and murderers, what will they do when my
army is at their walls, when my aircraft swarm overhead? And you,
in your unforgivable carelessness, have let us know that Shinkyo
Colony is indeed still standing, I expect right where it was fifty
years ago, buried under that poorly-crafted bomb crater. And more:
you have let us know that you are a threat to us all—I will be sure
to spread that intelligence to the other tribes. I know you can at
least think ahead, anticipate your enemies. What do you expect we
will do now?”

I give them a few more moments, but don’t expect them
to break their silence no matter what I say.

“Too bad your Daimyo sent thieves instead of
diplomats. We could have all profited from an alliance.” Then I
turn to Council Blue. “My advice is to keep them restrained, fly
them out into the valley in the morning, then dump them with
minimal daytime survival gear fifty kilometers from their colony. I
expect they can make it home by nightfall. I even expect they will
avoid the Nomads who will certainly be taking offense that they are
interfering with God’s will by threatening your Stations, but it
will make their walk more interesting. Of course, even if they
survive, I expect their own masters will kill them—or order them to
kill themselves—for their disgrace. But they will deliver my
message first.”

I look the prisoners in the eyes again—the female
seems to be particularly appraising me like prey, but there’s
something else in her eyes. (Recognition? Respect?)

“You don’t actually expect us to send them home?” the
Council confronts me later, after we have sealed the prisoners back
away in their concentric spheres and he and his entourage escort me
back through the bright, clean “Global Engineering Sciences
Hive”.

“You really think they’ll be executed?” Paul asks me,
sounding honestly distressed.

“I’m sure they know it, given how suicidal their
fellows were—I’m surprised these three haven’t found a way to kill
themselves despite your precautions,” I tell him. “And they’ve had
every chance to rethink it, but they’ll still go back. It’ll be
their duty to report, even if it’s their last duty. And no matter
the larger consequences. I don’t think they can imagine any other
option.”

“We could keep them,” Paul considers almost
desperately. “Try to re-educate them…”

“And in time—rather soon, I expect—you’ll be
collecting more ‘students.’ Assuming they don’t successfully take
or destroy your Station.” I turn to the Council. “They
will
keep coming, and eventually they’ll break through your best
precautions. That’s their advantage. If I’m right, where they’re
weak is that they’ve relied on stealth for their own security all
this time, and getting caught just ruined that.”

“And you just told them so,” the Council assesses.
“They may start to fear for their own safety, shift to a defensive
posture.”

“Or consider negotiating,” I offer. “Not that I’d
trust them, at least not until we could put them at a severe
disadvantage.”

“’We,’ Colonel?” the Council returns to his haughty
tone.

“You can’t win a defensive war against this kind of
enemy. I know how much you’ve valued your isolationism, your
neutrality, your invisibility. But like it or not, a line has been
crossed. You won’t be able to keep your low profile anymore, and
now we’ve had at least one competently-armed group stand up and
declare that your scary-magic reputation is no longer going to
protect you. Who’ll be next? The PK? The Air Pirates? The
Nomads?”

“
You
, Colonel?” the Council throws back at
me.

“You know what I want, Council,” I give back.
“Earthside won’t be impressed by your toys when they come back, but
they
will
be afraid. I’d very much rather they weren’t
afraid of you, because we both know what they do to things they’re
afraid of.”

He seems to brood on that. Paul is looking like a
nervous child.

“Do what you want,” I tell him. “But I suggest you
have a talk with your sons before you decide.”

We got back to base before nightfall. Paul
immediately went to meet with his brother.

“I’m not sure what bends me more,” Matthew wryly
processes as I call up maps in Ops that should show me where
Shinkyo Colony is, “that the Blues Brothers are the Councilman’s
dysfunctional kids, or that we just got attacked by
ninjas
.”

“Mark John Stilson,” Lisa calls up a file biography.
“Top xeno-geologist. Helped pick the Station sites, got here years
before they planted the first ones to do the initial surveys. His
wife and two boys came up to join him a year before the big
bang.”

Matthew wrinkles his nose as he sips the “tea” we’d
acquired from Abbas in trade for some extra boots and goggles.

“I’m thinking I probably met him sometime between
when we landed and when we went to bed,” I try. “Can’t put a face
on him, though.”

Lisa puts up an old ID photo. Mark Stilson looks like
an older, harder, sharper version of his sons.

“And he never takes off his mask?” Matthew asks
incredulously.

“Not around us,” I tell him. “Either some kind of
decorum or Abbas was telling us the truth about their being
contact-phobic. In any case, I think I got more intel about the ETE
than I did about our Shinkyo intruders, which is still almost
nothing.”

“Except that they’re definitely out there and still
running production facilities, developing nanotech,” Lisa
allows.

“And Rick found something disturbing,” Matthew adds.
“Their guns were old, but the ammo they used was new. So either
they’re manufacturing or they’re getting resupplied from home.”

“And that could give them the advantage over us in
the long run,” I grumble. “It makes me wonder what else they’ve
been making.”

“You willing to risk stirring the nest to get a
better look?” Matthew presses me, sounding like he’s got a
plan.

“I’d rather avoid more funerals,” I tell him, “but I
know better than to sit back and play defense. It’ll only be a
matter of time before they hit us again, and probably smarter each
time.”

“Good. Because Rick worked up something while you
were off being social.”

4 September, 2115:

We now have four working ASVs. I risk two with
minimal crew.

Shinkyo Colony’s original location, in the opposite
corner of Melas southwest from us, is almost two-hundred miles
away. That means the ASV’s will have just enough fuel to get there
and back with what their low-altitude engines burn, plus enough to
make the necessary passes. If they have to do any more than that,
we’ll be sending the remaining ships to meet them out in the
valley.

The aircraft lift off an hour after sunrise, once the
temperature gets mild enough to keep ice off the hulls and not
cold-stress the patchwork airframes. This means our targets will
see them coming, but I fully expect they have more ways to detect
incoming visitors than just their eyes.

The flight out takes an hour. Smith and Acaveda risk
enough elevation to get us a look at the site while they’re still
ten minutes away.

“Visual,” Lisa announces.

Shinkyo was planted below the eastern slope of the
sixty-mile long ridge that extends north into the valley from the
South Rim, the crest miles high, it’s lazy curve inspiring the name
“Dragon’s Tail”. The apparently fake nuclear crater is clearly
visible just below its foothills, salted with almost-convincing
blast debris. Paul—in his role as Martian geologist—begins pointing
out signs of excavation—although very careful excavation—that
reshaped the landscape, piling regolith from the foothills over the
top of the colony so that it would look natural, at least to the
untrained eye. It’s an unbelievable amount of Mars-moving, belying
significant resources. Too bad it fails to hold up to a
surface-level examination: the ground has been raised at least a
dozen meters, and the crater is built up on top of it. (Matthew is
immediately reminded of bad spy movie villains with secret bases
inside volcanos.)

“If this works, we can use it to locate Melas III,”
Rick reminds us while we wait.

“Would it give us a look into the PK colonies?” I ask
him.

“If they’ve built below ground,” he offers. “It won’t
translate well into the above-ground structures.”

We’d already tried conventional imaging and
scans—whatever resources the PK have, they’ve gone to great lengths
to mask them, and to mask them against UNMAC technology.

“Get low again, Shadow One,” Lisa warns Smith over
the Link. “No sense tempting a pot-shot.” The visual feed drops low
to the rolling valley floor.

“You really think they won’t just open up when they
see us coming?” Matthew asks me again.

“The Ninja-thing is about hiding,” I tell him.
“They’ll pride themselves on how well they can be invisible.”

“And when we shine the light on them?”

“That’s why we’re hitting and running. But by then,
they’re screwed—it’s not like they can easily re-hide a whole
colony once we’ve revealed it. I’m hoping that will put
them
on the defensive.”

“Especially after you’ve given the intel to the Power
Rangers,” Matthew uses his most recent colorful descriptive for the
ETE.

“Coming up…” Lisa announces as the ASVs split, taking
opposite arcs around what should be the colony site. “Targets
locked… Planting… Now!”

Hull cameras show a large projectile fired straight
down into the soil from each aircraft. They impact, penetrate. Then
the ASVs pivot, rise, and fall back. There’s still not a sign of
life from where Shinkyo should be.

“Bang the drums,” Rick calls into the link. Both ASVs
fire a missile into the ground—penetrating bunker-busters. They
shatter the landscape, but do so hundreds of meters from where the
colony should even begin to be.

“Hopefully they didn’t build outwards,” Lisa
considers in hindsight.

“Feedback…” Rick lets us know anxiously. He’s glued
to the screens as the shockwaves from the blasts get read as
Ground-Penetrating Radar by the probes the ASVs planted—a
modification of the technology used to get deep-strata mappings
when the ETE Stations were sunk, then later to pick more
slide-resistant colony and base sites.