The God Mars Book Two: Lost Worlds (16 page)

I sit right by her pod for the next four hours, so I
can be there when they open it. Matthew brings me down a cup of
now-scarce actual coffee. Tru comes in just long enough to put a
hand on my shoulder, kiss me on the head, and thank me again for
giving her people the chance to fight for us. I barely notice she’s
got drying blood all over her.

Rios stops by, stays for an hour without saying
anything, then goes back out to lead another patrol looking for any
bodies or stragglers out beyond the perimeter.

It’s 09:00 when Ryder’s surgical team starts on her.
Sakina’s eyes are closed when the pod opens. Her mask has been
pulled aside in favor of the pod’s own nasal oxygen feed, and it
looks like she’s vomited a lot of blood—there’s still a suction
tube in her mouth. The trauma pod has packed her abdominal wound,
but her plate and mail are crusted with her blood. Her skin is pale
and cold when I touch her face, and for a moment I’m sure the
read-outs are wrong and she really is dead, but then her eyes
flutter open and she tries to smile at me. And I’ve been running
all the things I really want to say to her through my mind for the
last four hours but I can’t manage to say a single thing.

“We’ve got her, Colonel,” Ryder assures. “It’s
nothing I can’t fix.”

And they take her in to surgery.

Paul and Simon are waiting for me in the officer’s
mess. Their modified AAV has been sitting prominently visible on
our Pad Three since they arrived, several frustrating minutes after
the Dutchman had retreated beyond our guns. I expect they brought
at least a “team” of blue-suited Guardians with them, but only the
brothers have left their ship to speak with us.

At least they’ve taken their helmets off so I can see
their faces.

“I’m so sorry, Colonel,” Paul offers with his usual
soothing calm as soon as I walk in. Simon looks coiled, hard.

“They misdirected us with a second ship,” Simon gets
to the point, though simply rehashing the conversation I had with
his father in the moment. “They either had it hidden or managed to
cobble it together in the last few months—we had no idea.”

“They used it to cover their move on your base, then
to delay us getting here,” Paul also reviews the obvious, like
repeating the excuse is absolutely essential to any sense of
competence they still have. “We came under fire as we launched,
then they turned their guns on our Station, trying to get us to
turn around. But as soon as we approach, they reverse…”

“They’ve learned our effective ranges,” Simon
elaborates bitterly, now sounding like he’s looking for wisdom or
at least professional sympathy from me. “And they exploit our
idealism. They know we won’t go chasing after them if they are not
actively threatening, so they run at us, attack and then turn tail.
And just like the Shinkyo, they learn something each time.”

“You monitored the last transmission from General
Richards,” I shift the subject somewhat, sinking down into a chair
and gesturing for them to join me. They sit like they’re
uncomfortable being here, like they were when they first came to
us, despite all the months they both spent living here, helping us.
“You know I’ve been authorized to work with you again, at least to
consult.”

“Only because we are the lesser of evils, Colonel,”
Simon returns, barely keeping his anger in check. His gloved fists
ball on the table in front of him. “It’s not just that we terrify
them; we
offend
them. They think we are playing god with the
planet, with the survivor factions…”

“The survivor factions might agree if asked,” I
counter, keeping my voice level. “It’s not like you’ve been
actively trying to dispel that image.”

Paul looks at me like I’ve called him something
obscene, then he looks like he might try to sink down and disappear
into his chair. Simon chuckles sadly, unclenching his fists and
spreading his fingers on the table.

“Scary science combined with arrogance, is that it?”
Simon distills, shaking his head. “The classic makings of an
apocalypse?” His choice of descriptive is pointed: it was the
fear
of arrogant science that brought down the last
Apocalypse, not the science itself. It was that same fear that
apparently kept Earth away for lifetimes, and let this situation
evolve as it has.

“We also read the report sent to Doctor Halley,” Paul
admits quietly, deciding it’s time to change the subject almost
entirely. “I am sorry, Colonel. I have come to consider you a
friend in the short time that I have known you, and you have always
treated us with respect and consideration, despite all of our
secrecy and condescension. I can assume what Colonel Burke must
mean to you given what I know of your long history together, and I
myself have come to respect him. Yet you have not asked us for the
thing that would save his life, and heal the other members of your
team.”

“You’ve made it clear that you wouldn’t give it, not
to anyone,” I remind him, not accusing. “I understand your
reasons.”

“This is too important,” Paul pushes. “You aren’t
just another survivor’s descendant scraping to find their own way
on this world. Nor do you seek our technology to exploit for power
or profit. You have become a key part of what we are today, you
woke us up to our true duty and taught us how to perform it, and
you are the only real bridge we have between our world and Earth.
And it was us that extended your hibernation so long that it caused
your current conditions.”

“Does that change things with your Council?” I ask
the obvious. Neither brother answers. I look at Paul. “Would you
break your own laws to heal us?”

Paul chews his lip. Simon’s face hardens, his jaw
clenching.

“And would we break our own laws by accepting your
help?” I shift when they still don’t answer. “If any of us were to
accept your nanotech into our bodies, Earthside would make us
pariah.”

“What would they do to you?” Paul wants to know
specifically.

“If I were to agree to putting your nanotech into
anyone under my command, they would probably arrest me and
quarantine the base indefinitely,” I tell them flatly. “And Matthew
would live out his days in an isolation chamber.”

“Would you flee instead?” Paul asks. “You could come
to us…”

“Completely defeating what you need me to do as your
so-called ‘bridge,’” I remind him, “assuming Matthew would even
agree.”

“Would
you
accept hybridization if your life
depended on it?” Simon confronts me.

I hesitate like I’ve been struck. I find I don’t have
an easy answer for him. I try:

“It would depend on what was at stake,” I manage.
“For myself, I really don’t know. But then I’ve been known to do
some reckless things, especially if others hang in the
balance.”

It’s the most honest thing I can come up with to say,
and it only makes sense after I’ve actually said it. And it shocks
me: Would I really choose to make myself immortal, into something
very much like a god, just because I believed that I was
that
indispensable to saving the world?

“I don’t know…”

I feel weak, shaky, and not just because I’ve missed
another night’s sleep. I feel how much my aging joints ache and how
deeply tired I am and I
do
want to be what I was when I was
young. I remember how hard it was for me to just stand in Ops and
bark orders when I so badly wanted to be in that fight against the
pirates myself, like I would have when I was Mike Ram the hero of
the Terror War. I see Sakina, huddled in a ball with a bullet
through her guts that she got trying to take on those pirates
alone. And I know I would have gone and done the same thing, and
not all that many of my own years ago, but I doubt my body would
cooperate even if the politics would let me.

Paul gives me an empathetic smile, gets up, walks
around the table and puts his gloved hand on my shoulder.

“Ask Colonel Burke. If he wants to be healed, I
promise I will make it happen. And neither of you will be confined
by ignorant, fearful men.”

Simon’s silence is his own agreement. They don’t wait
for mine. They go back to their ship and fly off.

15 June, 2116:

Sakina is being stubborn again.

Doc Ryder is threatening her with another surgery,
since she’s already managed two epigastric hernias by pushing her
healing abdominal muscles too far. I made things worse by joking
that this time we should implant a bullet-resistant nanocarbon mesh
between skin and muscle to ensure her abused guts stay put. Sakina
got even quieter than usual after that, and she continues to push
her obsessive “rehab” despite all cautions.

Being so badly injured has proved a greater
aggravation for her than getting so badly injured. While I’m not
sure she’s forgiven herself for getting shot, she’s made it clear
that being down for so long and losing so much of her physicality
in the bargain has been a daily trial. I’ve been shot up and blown
up (and more recently sliced up) and I’ve been surly trying to
recover, but I’m not nearly the physical perfectionist that Sakina
is. Ryder had to keep her sedated for weeks while her surgeries
healed, and threatened restraints on several occasions.

Even worse perhaps was being served by her “master,”
while I cared for her through the worst of her immobility; feeding
her, bathing her, and helping her move around our little room.
Ryder did good work, leaving minimal incisions in the bargain, but
Sakina lost a few feet of small bowel, and her right kidney and
liver needed patching. And she absolutely needed to rest.

Instead, she was back at her training within two
weeks, making herself move despite the pain and weakness (the
latter likely being the most uncomfortably new sensation). And
while she will defer to my direct orders when I am present, she’s
been caught multiple times exceeding the Doctor’s strict limits
when I’m off attending to actual work.

This morning I woke up at my usual time and found her
already gone. Security sentries tell me she’d left almost an hour
before, and gone out for a “run” around the perimeter. “Running”
for Sakina—between the terrain and the gravity and Sakina
herself—consists more of gymnastics than actual feet alternating on
ground. And with the speed she’s pushing, I expect that she’s
trying to “correct” whatever mistake or weakness got her shot to
begin with.

I mask up and go walking out to meet her. The
regolith crunches still frozen under my boots, and I can see frost
form on my coat by the time I get to the south perimeter wall.

She’s leaping and flipping and darting so fast I can
barely track her, which is what she needs to be able to do to avoid
anybody sighting in on her, but I think she’s actually faster now
than she was before. I’m quite sure I couldn’t hit her, even with a
computer-assisted ICW. She leaps down from the top of Main Battery
Three when she sees me coming, and I see her convulse with pain and
grip herself as she lands, but then she walks toward me like she
isn’t hurt at all, her armored demon facemask hiding all but her
eyes through her goggles.

“I’d have Rios get a team out to shoot at you, but I
think you’d like it so much you’d want him to do it every morning,”
I tell her. Then I get softer, more serious. “How does it
feel?”

“Better,” she pants—and she rarely breathes hard. Her
gloved hands prod the freshly repaired mail and scale over her
abdomen (something Rios got both Rick and Thomasen to help him with
while Sakina was still confined to bed). I’m sure she’s noticed
Rick’s “upgrades,” but she hasn’t said anything other than to offer
a polite but sincere thank-you. “Not good. Not acceptable. Not yet.
But better.”

“Do I need to have Doctor Ryder check you out?”

“I… I don’t think so.”

“Better,” I smile. “If you’d just said ‘no,’ then you
would
be off to Medical.”

I send General Richards my latest status report after
breakfast.

“Sergeant Thomasen has managed to repair most of the
bunker reinforcement damaged by the Zodangan attack with local
materials. We’re all sealed and hard again. He also finally got
Main Battery Three partially online by scavenging parts from the
other systems. My larger concern is that Melas Three still has no
big battery guns, since everything was either stripped by the
slide, or more likely sometime after by the crew or scavengers
since we still haven’t found debris in the slide mass around the
base to account for those guns. Luckily, Melas Three seems to be
beyond the pirates’ range or comfort zone, and the anti-personnel
batteries we’ve set up should continue to discourage the local
Nomads, assuming they get past the ETE patrols. In any case, we
still have had no further incursion attempts on either site since
the Zodangan incident.

“We continue to hold the eleven Zodangans that were
left behind in the makeshift brig we cobbled out of that old AAV
module. Doctor Halley has cleared them all medically—they’ve
healed. Her exams indicate that they do all suffer from
developmental signs indicative of living at very high altitude, and
they show skin and retinal damage from UV—I’m sending along her
reports. Several of them have melanomas, though mostly benign
growths, likely from background radiation. They still refuse to
talk to us at all, despite patching and feeding them. Monitored
conversation among them is minimal, and exclusively in that garbled
slang they speak. Mostly they just tell each other to keep strong
and wait us out because Zodanga apparently still is the sky. Their
gear is all scavenged and patched together from perhaps a
half-dozen colony sites, and a few have bits of UNMAC equipment.
Morales took a look over the gliders we shot down: Like the last
batch, the materials are mostly new manufacture, so they must have
some way to spin out basic nano-weave materials from local
resources in significant quantities. It isn’t fancy, but it’s
enough to build effective light airframes. It’s likely how they
were able to put together a second Dutchman-class airship in a
short time, assuming they didn’t already have it in reserve. It
also explains how expendably they treat their small gliders.