The God Mars Book One: CROATOAN (53 page)

“The little bastards are crawling all over us!”

Another of the tiny craft collides with us as we
turn, sacrificing itself to deposit more unwanted passengers on our
hull.

“Prepare to repel boarders, sir?” Rios asks me,
trying to keep decorum despite the insanity of the situation.

“I’m hoping that will be much funnier later,
Lieutenant,” I tell him.

“They will expect you to open a hatch to confront
them,” Sakina warns him.

“Point taken,” Smith agrees. “Hold on to something.”
And then he sends the ship spinning, first one way, then back. The
external eyes show two of the figures get shaken loose, but they
appear to have secured themselves with lines attached to magnetic
anchors. Two more cling fast despite Smith’s best efforts.

“Head back for camp,” I tell him.

The big “mother ship” is still moving away into the
night, its guns silent for now. It appears to have recalled the
rest of its light flyers, but our attached parasites are back at
trying to crack our hull. I call into the Link: “Sergeant Horst, we
have a few un-ticketed passengers on our back.”

“I see ‘em, Colonel.” Through their feeds, I can
watch their ICWs get locks on our “borders.”

“Alive would be nice, Sergeant.”

16 November, 2115:

“They dropped on us, literally out of the sky,” Horst
tells the tale, after we’ve made reasonably certain our attackers
are still in retreat and our prisoners are secured. Horst had them
forcibly stripped of their battered and weirdly painted pressure
suits, searched with uncomfortable thoroughness for hidden weapons,
bound wrist and ankle, then tossed in an inflatable portable
shelter on the sand between our ships. If they try to escape, it
will be a race to see if anoxia or embolism kills them first.

Their weapons and aging pressure suits are on display
like trophies in the fire damaged bay of ASV 2. The suits are the
lighter “Type 2” work models favored by colony construction
engineers during the height of the Land Rush, only battered to the
point I’m surprised they have any integrity at all. They’ve painted
the suits and helmets with red and black and yellow in patterns
that look more tribal than camouflage, but did not add any homemade
armor as the Nomads do—it might add too much weight for their light
flyers and dirigible ship to carry. Their weapons do resemble what
the Nomads carry, though: a few well-used firearms, but otherwise
handcrafted primitive weapons: knives, short swords, axes, throwing
weapons, crossbows, and an assortment of grappling hooks on cables
that look like they’re designed as much for use on enemies as for
climbing.

A Link monitor in the shelter lets me get a remote
look at them: Our four “guests” are uniformly lean and wiry, and
not particularly clean or well-groomed. Horst says their sour scent
reminds him of the early colonial construction crews that had to
live in their suits for weeks at a time. Their clothes under their
pressure suits are mixed worn work wear, colony overalls and even
bits of colony security uniforms. Their hair is either chopped
short or matted into dreadlocks or artistic combinations of both.
Their skin shows the telltale blotches and burns of too much
chronic exposure to UV and low pressure, telling us that they do
live or at least travel under the atmosphere net long enough to
spend time unprotected in the open air. All four sport at least one
significant wound scar, and two of them are missing parts of
fingers.

They also flaunt a liberal assortment of facial
piercings and tattoos (and the scars of infection when such
modifications went septic). In the primitive hand-needled ink work
I can see fanciful versions of several colony crests, though the
most prominent on each of them is the “Screaming Eagle” crest of
the Zodanga Colony on the backs of their necks.

And they do look very much like pirates.

Besides our four breathing prisoners, there are the
bodies of six more, two of which Horst insists died by their own
hands when they were too wounded to escape under their own power,
their ruptured suits threatening a difficult death. On closer
examination of their corpses, their musculature looks like it’s
mostly tendon, with long, skinny limbs that make their joints look
swollen in comparison. They have the lack of body fat that makes
the elderly look like they’re paper-thin skin over bone. I’m
reminded of photo records of concentration camp victims or
chronically starved POWs, but this lot is strong and agile and
quick—Horst and his men had a time subduing them and finally had to
resort to bleeding enough air from their suits to make them pass
out.

“Doctor Staley was too eager to get done, so he kept
trying to work out in the cold with a few men at a time in short
rotations,” Horst continues. “I think this lot had been watching us
for awhile, then took their opportunity when we opened the doors to
change shifts. I’m surprised they didn’t break their necks or crack
their suits—they must have jumped from those light flyer things,
and you saw how those things flit around like bats.

“Still, I don’t think they were quite prepared for
what they got. They counted on surprise and tried to rush us with
numbers, hot to get inside the ASVs. Those that made it went
straight for the cockpits, like they were trying to steal the ships
out from under us while the rest of them kept us busy, tried to
force us outside. They were like wild animals, Colonel—not like the
ninjas. It was like being in the monkey habitat at a zoo, only the
monkeys had crossbows and tomahawks. Mr. Staley got cut in the
first rush, and I had to take two of my men out of the fight for
cracked faceplates and another for a torn seal. The skinny little
bastards jump around like bugs, leapfrogged right over our heads to
get behind us, made it so it was hard to shoot without hitting our
own or our ships. And they knew where they were going. They even
had breakers to open the hatches with. We’re just lucky they
weren’t smart enough to realize there was no way they could hijack
an AI-driven UNMAC ship. That’s when one of them set off a firebomb
in Number Two—maybe they figured if they couldn’t steal our wings,
we shouldn’t get to keep them either.

“Mission ‘raqed, they tried running for it, which
gave us a better field of fire. But that’s when they started in
with their big guns, hitting us from distance while those little
flyers swooped back and scooped them up on their grappling lines.
We spun up our turrets to shoot back at the big blimp thing, but by
then we also had a good dozen of those flyers swarming us, trying
to cripple our turrets and pop our tanks with small-arms fire.”

The damage to ASV 2 is mostly in the bay, but ASV 1
has a punctured hydrogen tank on the port rear quarter, and two of
its turrets are damaged. But despite a few serious dents in their
wings from the “mothership’s” cannon, both craft should still fly
enough to limp home. Morales won’t be cheerful.

The sun is coming up over the Candor mountains. The
sky is clear in all directions—no sign of flying pirates or sailing
dirigibles.

And I’m thinking the pirates may have broken their
usual pattern—got much bolder that Sakina’s description—because we
left such tempting prizes sitting relatively unguarded in their
hunting grounds. Hopefully we’ve proved ourselves adequately
discouraging. But I’m not counting on it.

“Get the ice off. We need to evac the wounded,” I
tell Horst. “Take ASV Two. Call Colonel Burke once you get back
inside the net—he’s waiting to send relief. Give him the sitrep and
tell him I want two more good ships, loaded for a fight.”

“You going to try to hold this ground, sir?”

“We need to make the call home. That means we need
this relay.”

I cycle into ASV 1’s bay, and talk with Anton while
they start moving him and the other wounded to ASV 2. He’s groggy
from the pain meds they shot into him when they packed his wounds:
he’s got bloody pressure bandages over his chest, and his pressure
suit has been sliced through just over his heart. Horsts’ squad
medic Jakovenko assures me he just got cut enough to rake his ribs,
charged by a pirate with a short sword who kept running right over
the top of him. The two techs working with Anton got him inside as
soon as Horst had ASV 1 re-secured, thankfully before the
depressurization did him much damage. He didn’t even really start
bleeding until he warmed up.

“I know how you feel,” I try being comforting. He
looks pale.

“…guess I was jealous, Colonel…you have all the sexy
scars…” he mutters without opening his eyes. I lay a hand on his
shoulder. “…want to stay…finish…”

“Give Rick a turn. He needs to get out more. You’ll
be back before we dial home. The part before that’s pretty dull,
anyway.”

“…better be…” He at least does his best to give me a
smile.

I watch them carry Bailey to the airlock. He’s still
in his H-A, tourniquet module stuck where his right leg ends at the
knee to keep him from bleeding out and keeping him pressurized. I
can’t see whether he’s awake with his helmet on, but he doesn’t
move as they lift him through the hatch. There’s drying blood
smeared all over the deck of the ASV bay.

Our other casualty—and possibly the most critical—is
Lieutenant Hanson, the pilot of ASV 2, who got knifed in the gut
and upper right chest when the pirates broke into his cockpit. He’s
sealed in a field trauma pod, his lung re-inflated and his bleeding
under control, but he’s going to need a lot of Doc Ryder’s
attention.

“Heal up fast,” I tell Anton as he gets sealed in his
own trauma pod for the trip. “Then remind me to schedule you some
quality time with Zauba’a—she’ll teach you how to dodge a
blade.”

He looks worried (at least he can worry about
something else) but gives me another weak smile through the clear
acrylic viewport.

Outside, I watch ASV 2 lift off and fly south through
the pass without incident.

Smith is up on the Lancer hull, surveying the damage
now that the light is coming back.

“’Raqed the sweet paint job,” he complains over his
suit Link. “No breaches, but I wouldn’t risk taking this thing into
space. Or even run it out here very much longer. Worst is that I
don’t think Sergeant Morales can fix it properly. It’s all
nano-shit. Maybe the ETE might be able to homebrew some kind of
patching, assuming they care to.”

I can see the denting and gouging in the once
pristine black hull: big concaved and pocked patches from the
cannon rounds, and smaller tears from our “boarders” attempts to
cut in.

Given where I’m headed next, I have to take the time
to breathe in the confines of my helmet, to remind myself that the
Lancer is an unexpected asset, that we could well be doing without
it entirely, and that I’ve been expecting it to have taken worse by
now. But the damage is one more insult from this planet, added to
the real injury of three more of my people.

My shadow is long on the red sand and gravel: a man
in a space suit, wearing a gun and a sword.

Rios stands with me as I cycle into the shelter we’re
using as a brig. He keeps his helmet on, but I want them to see my
face, no matter Horst’s warning about the stink. It’s as bad as he
said, and it reminds me that all humans are still animals, still
human.

Our unwilling guests glare up at me from their bonds,
baring their rotting teeth, trying to look fierce. I’m struck with
the overwhelming urge to kick those teeth out.

“If you are from Zodanga, I assume you still speak
something like English,” I tell them without introduction. “I don’t
expect you to tell me anything. I don’t care if you say a single
word. But I expect you will listen, because you and your people
will benefit from what I say.”

They maintain their theatrical glares and snarls, but
I can see them calculating their options behind their eyes. They
are paying attention.

“I assume your base is still somewhere on the
Northeast Rim. If so, you can see across the Melas valley. You saw
the clouds of the nuclear blasts to the south and southwest. You
also recognized what we are, because you tried to use lockbreakers
preset to old UNMAC codes.”

I give them several seconds to digest. They maintain
remarkable discipline. Or rage.

“I want one of you to volunteer to be released,” I
get to the point. “We will give you your suit, fill your tanks and
let you go free. I only ask that you tell your leaders I must speak
with them. If they refuse, tell them to expect more bombs.”

I cycle out and give them privacy to think my offer
over. I watch them on the Link: they keep whatever conversation
between them too quiet for even the amplified microphones. But
within ten minutes, they let us know they can speak something like
English.

“Look east sunrise,” their volunteer—a
copper-dreadlocked coiled-spring with metal teeth, construction
rivets in his earlobes and a variation of the Zodanga phoenix
tattooed on his forehead—instructs us through his close-range
helmet mike before we let him go, jabbing a gloved finger toward
the cliffs of the Melas Northeast Rim. “Ya’ll see deh Dutch comin’.
If ya see men on deh sand, come meet in good faith. If ya don’, ya
bes’ fly ‘way home, ‘Maker. Zodanga is deh sky.”

We hopped him back under the atmosphere net before
letting him walk, hoping to increase his chances of getting where
he needs to go. It also gives us a clear Link back to base while we
wait for a replacement relay.

The pirate shuffles off slowly at first, looking over
his shoulder repeatedly like he fully expects us to shoot him in
the back. Once he gets about fifty yards away, he turns to face us,
then repeats in a defiant shout: “
Zodanga is deh sky!
” Then
he starts to run in an almost simian scurry, leaving a trail of
dust to follow after him.