The God Mars Book One: CROATOAN (36 page)

“Tactical mini-nuke,” Rick appraises, his voice
sounding distant, numb.

“
How?
” I hear Lisa demand over the still-fuzzy
Link from Melas Three.

“I was afraid of this,” Rick offers, shaky. “Incoming
nukes got picked off during the Big One. There had to be warheads
that came down at least partially intact.”

“And these fuckers found one?” Matthew wants not to
believe.

“That was too small,” Rick tells him. “Looks like
less than half-kiloton yield. Likely they broke one down into
smaller devices.”

“Which means they have
more
?” Matthew sounds
like he wants blood.

“Smith?” I ask. He disengages from the makeshift
remote flight control Anton had installed in the Lancer’s cockpit,
and turns to me with a sheepish but accepting nod.

“Yeah. I’m dead,” he answers me matter-of-factly,
then turns back to the Lancer’s own controls.

Imaging tries to cut through the billowing dust, but
the surface isn’t visible for miles around.

“Our friends are making their move,” Metzger lets me
know. The remaining two jets come back up, but their radar contacts
are fuzzy with all the crap in the air.

“Are we done with these fuckers yet?” Matthew asks me
on Link.

“Let’s drop in and say hello, Lieutenant,” I tell
Smith.

“With pleasure, Colonel. Hang onto something…”

The Lancer drops us quick. I wonder if they even see
us coming through all the mess they’ve made.

“Weapons free. Fire at will,” I add, almost as an
afterthought.

We’d moved the Lancer the day before, as soon as it
was clear they weren’t going to try to intercept anything that
wasn’t carrying an ETE. It went casually with the regular salvage
traffic to Melas Three. Then in the dark of this morning, at the
same time our “bait” transport was lifting off from the Melas Two
pads, the Lancer went straight up. And she stayed up, hovering just
over the electrostatic atmosphere shield, hoping that its
interference, combined with the Lancer’s own stealth-skin, would
effectively cloak us from the Shinkyo (especially if they weren’t
focused on Melas Three).

The ASV’s sudden southward dash wasn’t a blind
retreat: it brought them closer to Melas Three, which the Shinkyo
likely considered of little consequence—they’d expect any
significant armed response to come from Melas Two.

While we watched and waited, Smith did dual duty
remote piloting the “bait” ASV (the least air-worthy of our
salvaged ships—Morales wasn’t even sure it would survive the hard
burn), then took back manual control of the Lancer. Now that he’s
flying the ship he’s actually in, he moves with a vengeance.

Smith locks the guns and starts shredding the two
closest enemy jets before they likely even see us through the
radioactive dust cloud. They never get off a shot. I watch them
break up and tumble into the billowing grit.

The remaining two coming in from the north realize
their situation and turn to run home.

Now all we need to do is find Paul and Simon.

The Shinkyo “ninja” always seem to have at least two
purposes for everything they do—that’s getting more apparent with
every encounter. Their various attacks on the ETE were not just
about the obvious objective of obtaining nanotech—I even doubt they
had any real confidence of succeeding with that on their prior
raids. It became clearer each time I reviewed the ETE video records
of the attacks: What they were really doing was probing their
targets’ defenses, getting them to show their capabilities, and
maybe even their limitations (and the ETE
do
have
limitations—I can see that myself on the playback).

Somewhere in there they figured out how to scan for
whatever energy signatures ETE gear emits when it’s active, or how
to read a nano-enhanced body from a distance. That’s why they
wouldn’t go for a ship that didn’t have an ETE on it, but went
right for the ASV when Paul and Simon got on board. And that’s what
forced us to put the brothers at risk (no matter how willing they
were to go along with the plan).

Then they proved time-and-again that conventional
weapons couldn’t pierce whatever field an ETE Sphere could project.
They also knew they couldn’t risk trying to attack faster than one
of the brothers could respond. But from the attacks on the Stations
they learned three very important things: One, that the Spheres and
Rods have very limited range; two, that the concussion of a big
blast could send their operators reeling; and three, that it takes
both concentration (and in most cases a physical grip on the tools)
to make them work.

From there came the extrapolation we weren’t sure
about: how would they hit hard enough to guarantee the Stilsons
would be out of play, or at least unable to effectively defend
themselves (but not obliterate them in the process). What we missed
was that they thought more specifically: they chose a weapon that
had punch, but would also throw out EM interference that would
potentially interfere with the ETE tools.

And now I’m feeling particularly stupid to have
assumed that none of the “primitive” surviving factions would have
both the technology and the sheer genocidal lunacy to make
themselves a nuclear arsenal.

“Matthew, make sure those jets stay on the run,” I
tell him over the Link, which is still suffering from all the
charged air between us. “Anything incoming is suspect—we need to be
ready to intercept while it’s still well away from us.”

“Already on it,” he assures me, though I can hear the
edge in his voice. “And I’m having the ASVs watch the ground, too:
quietest way to deliver a bomb is to walk it right up to our
doorstep.”

“Rick, I’m going to need some kind of
countermeasures. Some way to detect an incoming nuke from the
greatest distance. Coming in by air or by ground.”

“I’m sorry, Colonel,” he starts apologizing. “I
should have seen this coming. I should have.”

“Me, too, Doctor. I’m going to assume that since they
didn’t just nuke us directly, they either didn’t care to or assumed
we would intercept them,” I try to reassure. “They knew they only
had this one shot and after that we’d know what they had. Lisa, get
on the line to the ETE and let them know what happened. Maybe they
can whip up a defense better than we can.”

“Yes, sir,” she replies officiously, only to soften:
“Have you found them yet?”

“Too much crap in the air,” Smith inserts by way of
an answer. “Can’t see the damn ground…” Then he yelps as an
electrostatic arc cuts through the clouds just in front of us.
“Jesus…”

“How hot is it out there?” I need to know. “Can we go
outside?”

“The H-A Troopers can,” Rick answers. “Otherwise, I
wouldn’t be out there without a full surface-suit. And then you’ll
all need a hell of a scrub before you come back inside.”

We’d turned the crew section of the Lancer into a
makeshift squad-bay, anticipating that we would need to engage the
enemy on the surface. Rios hand-picked a dozen seasoned armor
troopers to cram into a space not really made for their bulk.

“Any signal?” Matthew wants to know, even though his
screens back at Ops should be showing him the same as everyone
else’s.

“Bastards calculated it just right,” Anton tells him,
monitoring the surface from his “station” in the Lancer cockpit.
“Detonated so that our ship got caught hard in the EMP, but not
close enough for the shockwave to blow it apart. Every circuit on
that thing is likely fried, even the tracking tags.”

I’m wondering if ETE healing nanotech is EMP-proof.
Worry is starting to cut through the rage I focus into doing the
job.

“MAI’s modeled the blast,” Lisa offers. “Matched with
the last trajectory of the ASV. Location should be good to
within…”

“Got ‘em!” Smith rejoices. Then: “Fuck…”

I’m watching it myself on the Lancer’s screens: The
dust clears enough to show us the battered and torn hulk of the
ASV. It’s lying on its side, both wings gone, every surface
smashed. The trench it dug as it came down tells me it did a lot of
rolling. I’m hoping the Stilsons did what they were told and stayed
in their crash-couches. But I’m not sure how much good the
harnesses would have done, given the damage. The ship looks like
it’s been thrown at the ground.

“Bring her down close,” I order, even though Smith is
already doing so. I signal the troopers to seal up and I
depressurize their section so they can just drop out of outer
hatches without cycling the airlocks. I feel a crunch as the Lancer
touches down on the rocks. The lower hatches pop and the armored
troopers drop out fast and start moving. They fan into a defensive
posture, watching all sides as well as the wreck. There’s no sign
of life for a few tense moments. Sergeant Jensen is the first one
to the ship, and she shows me the transport module has been torn
open. There’s no one inside, but there is blood. I feel my stomach
sink. It gets worse when Jensen finds Paul’s helmet. Then
Simon’s.

“Got ‘em!” Smith shouts. “Due east of you. One
hundred meters…”

I can see a blue suit waving from the crest of a
fissure—likely an ancient wash—in the valley floor. I’m guessing
they got away from the ship and tried to hide, just in case. But I
only see one of them. He’s wearing one of
our
masks. There’s
blood on his face and on his suit and he’s covered in dust. It
takes the troopers several seconds to bound over to him. He waves
frantically, gesturing them to follow, to hurry, then hops back
down out of sight into the fissure. I follow Jensen’s visual feed
as she skips over the rough ground to the edge of the fissure. The
waving figure is now cradling another blue suit, which he’d
apparently concealed beneath a small rock overhang. This suit is
also wearing one of our masks, and is bloodier by far than the
first. The limbs look tangled in ways that tell me they’re broken.
Jensen gets me a good enough shot of the face to tell me it’s Paul.
His eyes are closed, his body shivering in shock or pain or both.
Simon pushes his face close to Jensen’s faceplate.

“
I need to get my brother home!
” he shouts
like he’s deaf. “
I need to get him home now!!!
”

We turn the aft lab section into a combination
ambulance and decontamination chamber, and shut hatches to seal it
off from the rest of the ship. Paul gets strapped onto a trauma
gurney (one of two we’d brought just in case), and the med-gear
gives him a quick scan. He’s snapped both legs (one at the femur),
cracked his pelvis and several ribs, and his right arm is out at
the shoulder joint. Both his spleen and liver are bleeding, and we
had to mechanically re-inflate his right lung. He’s also got
head-trauma. Simon has a nasty cut on his head, a bad limp and is
nursing one arm, but he won’t let anyone examine him.

Because of the radiation, I can’t go back to see him.
I order Smith to get us in the air and burn straight for Green
Station. Then I go back to watching Paul on my screen. I’m waiting
for him to heal, waiting for his marvelous technology to put him
back together before my eyes, but it isn’t happening. And Simon’s
head is still bleeding.

“Why didn’t he heal?”

“He tried to,” Simon tells me after we’ve touched
down and a brace of green sealsuits meet us on the pad to take Paul
into the Station. He touches his own bleeding forehead, looks at
the blood on his fingers, looks like he’s either going to laugh or
be sick.

“Big secret, Colonel Ram,” Simon gets quiet but I can
still feel his rage. “EMP
does
fry our nanites like any
other micro-tech. The body itself provides enough insulation to
keep it all from being killed, but we’re both working at severe
deficits right now. Paul may need full re-implantation.”

More green suits come for Simon, but he waves them to
wait with his bloody hand. Then he touches his fingers to his wound
again. Grimaces. Giggles.

“Never felt this… not like this…” he mumbles. “Paul…
His couch broke loose. I saw him… He bounced and broke all over as
we tumbled. I carried him. I dragged him out…”

I nod in understanding but don’t interrupt him, don’t
tell him he needs to go with the green suits.

“Our masks didn’t work,” he continues. “Our tools
didn’t work. I used your masks, your masks worked, got him to
breathe, carried him…” He’s staring blankly at the hatch into the
Station, the same hatch his brother was just taken through. The
green suits move closer, ready to catch him because he’s starting
to fold up on his feet. They’re all masked, so I can’t see their
expressions. I wonder how much this is unsettling them. Then Simon
turns his eyes to mine. Shows me his bloody fingers like a child
who’s found something fascinating.

“Is this… Is this what it’s like for you?”

The green suits take hold of him and lead him away.
They don’t say a word to me at all.

18 September, 2115:

The tapsite where Carver died is chosen as neutral
ground.

We land the Lancer a respectable distance away and
hike in; just myself, Tru (who effectively argued that a civilian
should be included in representing us), Lieutenant Rios, and a team
of H-A troopers as a show of “muscle”—too small to be really
threatening, but enough for appearances (in line with what Abbas
recommended). Matthew has two fully-loaded ASVs hot and ready to
come if we need more support, but if I need to make that call, I
know I’ll be ordering a massacre.

Abbas is already waiting for us, his adopted son at
his side, along with a handful of his own cloaked and armored
personal guard. They all carry firearms, which I discreetly
question as Abbas had described meeting at a tapsite to be ideal
for discouraging gunplay so as not to risk rupturing precious Feed
Lines. Abbas grins and tells me that arming everyone with guns in
such a place has proven best at discouraging violence, because any
firefight would cost every tribe dearly. (Paul had told me that the
lines are maintained by automated repair bots, but also suggested
it would be better to keep the Nomads worried about destroying
their resources.)