The God Mars Book One: CROATOAN (46 page)

“What the hell was she thinking?” Matthew asks the
air between us again. I know better than to offer an answer.

His casualty report is more troubling than expected.
Doc Ryder was badly hurt in the blast. She’d been in her
greenhouse. The techs and volunteer gardeners with her report she
froze when she heard the call to get sheltered—no, not exactly
“froze.” They say she simply turned and faced the direction of the
attack, stood there watching it come.

“Tru was there,” he tells me. “She saw it. She’s
pretty shaken up. Tried to make a grab for the Doc, but one of her
hippie henchman—that skinny Jericho kid that fawns over her—grabbed
her and threw her into the tube. Tru’s banged up, but she got her
fanboy in the nuts with that plastic leg of hers when he fell on
her. Then she threw on a mask and limped back out to help drag the
wounded. Probably bought herself a decent case of radiation
sickness for it, but she got Ryder out of there.”

Ryder took a scary but not lethal dose of radiation
from whatever the Shinkyo bomb was “dirtied” with—the worst of it
being what contaminated particulates she might have inhaled without
a mask on—along with dozens of cuts and punctures from the
translucent composite and aluminum frame blowing in, including a
serious scalp wound. Tru and the other gardeners got her inside
before she suffered from lack of oxygen or decompression edema.
Luckily, she was the only severe injury, and Halley’s tending her
personally. Less fortunately, Allison Ryder is our best surgeon. We
can only hope she won’t suffer long-term consequences from her
exposure. Matthew tells me Rick hasn’t left Medical since they
brought her down.

While the base is built to withstand radiation, we
don’t know how badly our “crop” may have been poisoned. The
Mars-adapted plants are hardly the worse for wear from the blast
and decompression, but—like Ryder—they got dusted with some of the
bomb’s radioactive load. Tru’s people have begun careful clean-up
and testing. The ruptures have been temporarily patched over with
shelter fabric while Thomasen tries to recycle shattered acrylic
into useable panels. I pass along the ETE offer of assistance.

“I was waiting for this,” I let Matthew know after he
gives me the formal report. “I was just hoping I didn’t see it so
soon.”

“Are we talking about Ryder, or the latest ninja
jackass stunt?” he tries to confirm the subject.

“I didn’t think she’d be the first,” I tell him,
“even with the loss of her husband.”

“We’re all going a bit goofy here,” he surrenders,
“all bunkered down and eating paste recycled from our own shit.
Getting shot at by freakshows that used to be our fellow colonists.
No contact from Earth.”

“Everyone’s done the math,” I accept. “Even if we get
a call out this cycle, it could be another year or two before we
see relief.”

“At least you’ve made us some friends,” he gives me.
“I feel like the fucking Pilgrims, cold and starving and hoping for
the locals to bring us Thanksgiving to get us through the
winter.”

“I’ll drop some hints,” I assure him. “Just don’t
expect turkey.”

“I’d be afraid to eat if they brought one.” He’s got
his old humor back, at least. And his rage: “We doing something
about this?”

“Holding Down a Shadow,” I tell him.

8 October, 2115:

The Lancer kicks up a lot of dust as it turns lazily
and slides off, leaving me behind. Alone.

I turn and face the slopes of the built-up crater I
know covers the Shinkyo Colony, find myself a fairly level and
un-rocky patch of sand in easy view of it, and sit down formally on
my knees. I unclip the Shinkyo sword from my belt, scabbard and
all, and set it gently at my right side, hilt forward. I hope this
is still recognizable as a traditional gesture that I come with no
violent intent, to meet with an enemy on peaceful terms. Then I sit
at meditative attention and wait, breathing slowly and calmly to
make my canisters last.

To their credit, they leave me like that for almost a
full hour, testing my resolve (and my preparation, since I’m well
into my second can of O2). Thankfully, sitting on one’s knees is
much easier in Martian gravity than I remember from hours spent
doing so in martial meditation on Earth in my youth. Also
thankfully, it’s a mild morning, just above freezing, and the sky
is clear except for the “thunderheads” created by the ETE Stations
that dot the far horizons. The wind is gentle enough to make the
sand dance just a bit around me. It makes enough of a low howl to
help mask the grinding even the lightest footsteps make on the
loose gravel.

I
do
hear them coming, but still they appear
more suddenly and in greater numbers than the sounds they made
betrayed. I am surrounded by at least two dozen now-familiar
Shinkyo armored sealsuits. They cover me with their colony PDWs—all
very professional, no theatrical posturing with swords or other
medieval weapons. I don’t move as one of them collects my sword. I
slowly and deliberately offer him my sidearm as well.

They don’t need to speak. Their gestures are clear
enough. I get up, stretch my legs, and walk in the midst of them
toward the crater. Not surprisingly, my Link is no longer receiving
or transmitting.

The entrance to the colony—or at least the one
they’ve deigned to show me—is hidden in a shallow rut: a space
between rocks barely big enough to wedge a body through. (I
immediately consider what a good choke-point it makes, but then
notice that several of my guards have already vanished from the
surface—it only makes sense that they have multiple entries.) The
hatch hidden in the fissure would not be visible unless you were
within a few meters of it.

There is absolutely no light once they prod me inside
the airlock (and as soon as it’s pressurized, they’re quick to take
my mask and goggles, which would have given me a night-vision HUD).
And then there’s no light in what must be the corridor beyond. I
can only hear the shuffle of soft-soled boots, the whisper of their
uniform fabric as they move, and my own breathing. The walls feel
like they should be close, but when I reach out my hands I only
feel my guards as they gently but firmly guide me in the general
direction I assume takes me under the crater. I wonder if the
darkness is just to disorient me for the sake of prisoner control,
or if they don’t want me seeing their facilities. I count over two
hundred steps before a hatch opens and nearly blinds me.

Another two-dozen Shinobi flank my path—I can’t tell
if any of them were the same ones who met me on the surface. No one
says a word, and I assume I need to keep moving forward.

The storage-bay-sized chamber in front of me reminds
me of a combination of ETE architecture and Japanese neo-corporate
aesthetics: Two stories high, brightly lit, the walls a facsimile
of traditional shoji panels. There is one raised platform centered
on the opposite wall. In either corner are small gardens with water
running over rock. The floor is all a kind of woven tatami mat
(though I doubt it’s made of real straw), and there’s a strip of
red cloth forming a pathway for me to walk on into the center of
the room—I presume that they provided it so that the barbarian
wouldn’t have to take off his boots indoors. The air smells of
sandalwood.

A handful of guards kneel in a neat row along each
side wall, at stiff attention, swords sheathed at their hips. In
each corner is another guard armed with a colony PDW. They all wear
their masks.

The opposite wall slides open—it’s apparently made of
shutters—and two figures walk in onto the platform: The first is a
Japanese male I guess to be in his late sixties, his white hair
shaved to a stubble, heavy-set, wearing a black silken robe
patterned with Shinkyo corporate crests. He has narrow eyes and a
slight thin smile that looks like it’s been frozen on by some kind
of stroke. The second is a much younger female wearing a
traditional kimono of similar black fabric, her hair done up in
traditional style, large ornate hairpins (possibly weapons)
protruding from the bun on the back of her head. I cannot see all
of her face, because she’s wearing small mirrored goggles and a
breather mask. A more ornate version of the Shinobi sword is shoved
into her crimson sash.

The man faces me and gives a slight bow, which I
return. His smile widens at my display of manners, and he gestures
for me to sit on the floor before the platform. He takes a seat in
front of me on the platform, the girl kneeling just behind him at
his right. Without a word being said, two more girls—these in white
kimonos without masks—bring a cup of steaming tea, one for their
master and one for me, which I accept with a slight bow. From the
smell of it I can tell it’s not Martian tea, but actual green tea
(either from Earth or some on-planet garden). I lift the cup to
drink, but then hold until my host drinks first. Again, he widens
his smile.

“You are as unexpectedly civilized as they say,
Colonel Ram,” the white-haired man says with only the slightest
accent.

“Thank you for the tea,” I return. “It’s very good,
and the morning air was quite brisk.”

He grins again, as if appreciating that my manners
are a means of keeping my intentions masked. He sips his tea, then
sets the cup aside. As if that was a signal, the panel behind him
opens and one of his guards comes in, carrying a sheathed katana in
his hands. The guard walks forward and presents the weapon to me. I
glance at the white-haired man, who nods his permission, and I take
the weapon reverently and examine it. It’s a traditional design:
long, black cord-wrapped hilt in the diamond pattern, with a plain
round iron guard cut with the eight-spoke wheel symbol of the Noble
Eightfold Path. The plain scabbard is mirror-black lacquer. I use
my thumb to pop the seal between blade and scabbard-mouth. It has a
brass collar, and the first inches of the blade reveal a fine
“watering” that belies thousands of folded layers. It has the
clouded edge of a weapon differentially tempered—diamond hard on
the cutting surface, while the body maintains resilient
flexibility.

“May I?” I ask before drawing the blade all the way.
The guards do not even shift positions as I slide the slightly
curved blade out into the air. It’s light, the balance making it
feel almost weightless. I nod in approval and slide the blade back
into its home.

“The blade looks traditional,” the white hair tells
me, “but it is nano-forged: stronger and sharper than anything our
best smiths could have made by hand. And now it is a gift to one
who can appreciate it, Colonel.”

I give him a bow of thanks, then gently set the
weapon at my right. I expect he knows my taste for swords, and
calculated the offering to strike a personal chord.

“I assume I am addressing the Daimyo Hatsumi?” I
press us forward. He nods.

“You have learned my name from Rashid’s abomination,”
he assumes, keeping his polite tone and grin. “I expect she will be
joining us shortly?”

I don’t answer. He gestures to the masked woman at
his side.

“You have already met my daughter Sakura, Colonel,
when she made herself a willing prisoner of the ETE…” The mirrored
lenses stay locked on me as her head bows. I finally recognize the
lines of her face. She must be wearing a wig, unless they have a
means to grow hair back that rapidly. “The ETE took your advice:
they dropped her and her confederates within a day and night’s
walk, stripped to only a plain worker’s jumper they provided,
supplied with barely two days’ worth of air and water each.
Unfortunately, an increase in the patrols of your sand-dog allies
delayed their progress.

“They say that survival is dependent on doing things
you would never consider under other circumstances. My daughter
sacrificed first one and then the other of her comrades. She wore
their clothing for warmth, slept under their bodies for shelter,
used their air, drank their fluids, and thus she returned to us
after three days and two nights, bringing your warning. Exposure
damaged her eyes and her lungs, but as she did not fail in her true
mission, she did not need to forfeit her life. Her fingernails have
also been replaced.”

The girl draws her hands out of her oversized
sleeves. Her prostheses now make no attempt to mimic life: her
fingertips are coned in sharp steel.

“Be assured she bodes you no ill-will, Colonel. In
fact, you made quite an impression on my daughter. Her experience
with the creatures who call themselves men on this world has been
only of slaves, victims, cowards and animals. She tells me you live
up to your legends, and I can see this now myself.”

“Then perhaps we can get to the business at hand?” I
shift the subject aggressively. Hatsumi nods.

“You come here because your ETE friends have decided
to pretend to be warriors,” he coolly derides. “I expect you have
many doubts about the wisdom of this course of action. You know
that toys do not make
bushi
.”

“And you already know what their toys can do,” I
allow him.

“You have given us more than enough time to prepare
contingencies,” he says like I’ve been conspiring with him all
along.

“The winner of any battle is just the one who can
claim to have lost the least,” I try. “The skilled general will
find a way to win without fighting. Is there an alternative to
what’s coming?”

“What you really want to know is
why
it must
come, Colonel Ram,” he corrects me. “You want to know our reasons
for setting this chain of events in motion.”

“Knowing what you seek, any number of men would have
reason,” I give him. “But I don’t believe you seek the prize for
your
own
gain, Daimyo.”

“You have seen clearly,” he tells me. “Our mandates
were made plain before the bombs fell. We continue to serve the
dream of our Guild Corporations—our lives are theirs. They
will
come back, and we will be ready with a competitive edge
no other conglomerate or nation can match.”