The God Mars Book Two: Lost Worlds (35 page)

“What about the force that attacked us today?” I want
to know what he knows. So I give first: “We were approached by some
kind of nano-construct—
very
impressive—that called himself
Chang, claimed to be master of the Discs, even claimed to be from
the future. He was quite the talker. He identified his army as
being a mix of PK and Zodanga. Said he’d won them over by giving
them advanced weaponry.”

“We have contacts in the PK and Zodangan camps,” he
gives me, “quiet dissidents that do not agree with their masters.
You see, we have not forgotten the value of cultivating human
intelligence assets. From their information, it seems this Chang
told them just what he told you, and showed them his Discs to
impress them into collaboration.

“No one has seen Chang except as that walking shadow.
They have been working to build these new weapons for months,
forsaking all other priorities; you have seen the fruits of their
labors to date. They are busily working on more of the same: The
Zodangan airship factory is hidden somewhere high in the Northeast
Rim, difficult to reach, with all approaches highly fortified. But
despite their attempts at secrecy, word has come to us that their
shops have been producing day and night; their hangars are filling
with new and deadlier craft. The PK provide troops, and are
compensated with weapons and armor. Chang has also given them
better artillery to defend their settlements. This black shadow
does not appear to be a talented tactician, but he is a prolific
weapons manufacturer. And he appears to be as immortal as he
claims: early attempts to assassinate him and take his resources
were completely ineffective. Chang made the faction leaders execute
their own people in retaliation. He shows little care for human
life, despite what he preaches.”

“He made that quite clear today,” I agree. I realize
I’m starting to feel better about my decisions. The doubts that
came in the shock of the battle’s aftermath begin to fade.

“His soldiers are cannon fodder, a means to his
ends,” Kendricks almost growls.

“Let’s hope for their sakes they figure that out
before there’s none of them left,” I hope without faith.

“Why didn’t you contact us before this?” Tru
challenges.

“We know the benefit of patience,” Kendricks does not
take offense. “We have thrived in secret. We have watched you, as
we have watched over you—we have established an outpost in the rim
foothills to the north to maintain a close but innocuous presence.
We would likely have remained invisible, but we could not ignore
Chang’s threat. When our observers saw his fleet moving toward your
position, we knew we could no longer watch.”

“You came overland?” I try to get some sense of the
Knights’ operations.

“We ran,” Hendricks says like this is not at all
impressive. “Used the cover of night. Set up a staging area
out-of-sight beyond the ridgeline. Waited. Watched. At least until
the battle was engaged.”

“How do you operate so freely on the surface?” I ask
a practical question.

Hendricks hesitates, like he’s not completely sure if
he’s ready to be completely candid. Then he smiles, reaches under
his cloaks, and pulls his rigged cluster of air canisters around
where we can see it. They’re capped by a red plastic boxy device
that looks worn and battered to the point of falling apart.
Explains:

“Some of our long-range recycling scrubbers still
function. The rest…” And Sutter shows us his own unit on cue: a
stripped-down arrangement of motors and filters, held together with
metal tape and sealant. “Our technicians scavenged to make these:
they filter and condense the new atmosphere to a breathable
density.”

Rick and Anton lean in, enraptured by the home-shop
tech. Sutter looks to his commander for permission, and Kendricks
gives him a nod. Sutter unhooks his breathing gear and hands it to
Anton for a closer look-over.

“We’re certainly glad you came when you did,” I thank
him again. “I’m not sure we would have come through that without
you.”

“You are welcome, Colonel Ram,” he accepts warmly,
but then turns serious: “I am only concerned with what we will be
facing the next time.”

“As am I.”

Tru offers the Knights a tour of our greenhouse, to
which they politely agree. I uplink a transcript and video of our
conference with the New Knight Grandmaster, then I take on the next
phase of my intelligence-gathering task.

I have to mask up to take the walk across the
compound to the temporary shelters that we have again turned into a
POW camp. A ring of H-A troopers (with ICWs and chain guns and a
tractor-mounted electric cannon) surrounds the cluster of
pressurized tents, which look like a bunch of giant white
marshmallows arranged in the courtyard of our bunker complex. MAI
catalogues twenty four prisoners inside, all of them wounded, half
of them bedridden, and at least three who may not survive the
extensive burns they suffered. Despite their condition, all are
still in restraints.

Just outside are piles of their assorted gear:
disarmed weapons, masks, goggles, and their new sealsuit uniforms,
which look like black LA gear, but are plain and functional and
apparently (according to Anton’s analysis) recently mass-produced
on some kind of nano-fabric loom.

Rios is waiting for me inside the first airlock. The
smell that hits me as I step through the second lock is a mix of
blood and sweat and burned hair and flesh, but it lacks the
particular reek of beyond-poor hygiene that our last pirate prison
had—it does seem Chang demands a certain level of grooming from his
cannon fodder.

“I found at least one familiar face,” Rios tells me,
leading me into what functions as a ward for some of the
less-critically wounded. There are six prisoners in this chamber,
all stripped to whatever passes for underwear, all bandaged to
various extremes. I assume I can accurately tell the PK from the
pirates by the presence or lack of tattoos.

On one of the shelter cots is a fit twenty-something
female with a military-style bob of strawberry hair. Her right leg
and left wrist are in casts, and she has bandage patches on her
forehead and the side of her neck. There’s a distinctive old
burn-scar on the corner of her mouth. Her green eyes show
recognition when she sees me come in, but then she pretends to see
nothing.

“Lieutenant Straker,” I remember her. She doesn’t
reply, doesn’t look up. “I understand your loyalty to your
commander and your cadres. Know that I have no plans to harm you.
You can ask your Zodangan allies about what to expect from us:
we’ll probably keep you for a few weeks, observe and examine you
like you’re some kind of interesting wildlife, ask you all the
obvious questions, tolerate your silence with patience, and then
release you back into your home territories because we can no
longer spare the resources. This, of course, is assuming that your
involvement with this Chang character hasn’t hardened my Earthside
commanders against trying to ‘save’ all of you. The Disc issue is
still a painful one.”

I turn to Rios. “Do we have an accurate count of the
enemy dead?”

He hesitates, but quickly realizes I want to give our
guests certain intelligence to digest. “We’re still pulling remains
out of the wrecks, and bodies and parts fell all over. So far,
we’ve put together at least a hundred and twenty corpses.”

“Any sign of Colonel Janeway?” I watch Straker as I
ask—she doesn’t flinch.

“Nothing recognizable, sir.”

“What about Captain Bly?” This time I watch the three
apparent pirates in the room.

“Negative. He’s either burned meat, among the few who
managed to limp away for the long walk home, or he didn’t show up
for the party.”

The pirates give me what I need. They look like
they’re trying not to panic, straining against their bonds because
they want blood. I smile.

“So Bly
was
present,” I conclude. “Janeway was
not
.” Straker still doesn’t react. “It at least confirms
that Janeway’s smart. Maybe Bly was at least lucky enough to avoid
being one of Chang’s cheap sacrifices. Hopefully he’s smart enough
not to get back in line when Chang throws another few hundred
people into our guns.”

I turn to leave, to continue my “inspection” of our
prisoners.

“It’s good to see you again, Lieutenant,” I give
Straker. “Perhaps we’ll get to meet sometime under better
circumstances.” Then I address the pirates. “When we send you home,
you might want to give Chang some engineering advice: He designed
his new ship to survive our fire. He didn’t design it for your
crews
to survive our fire. You might want to bring that to
his attention for next time.”

I leave the seeds I’ve planted to germinate.

31 October, 2116:

We bury our honored dead in a mass ceremony just
after sunrise. It took Thomasen’s people three days to level the
ground up on the ridge and dig sixty-seven relatively neat graves.
UNMAC and Eco are laid side-by-side, former enmities now long
forgotten.

(Our enemies got a much-less-neat pit just out of
sight of the base to the west. The New Knights took their own dead
home with them, wherever home is, in heavy body-bags that they
brought with them to the fight.)

Tru and I both took turns speaking insufficient
words. I didn’t bother the play the recorded messages of condolence
and pride sent from the UN, Earthside Command and several of the
member nations. I left them available should anyone want to view
them on their own. I figured this moment was for us.

We all have a late and wordless breakfast after we
come in and dust off. Tru and Ryder make an impressive and
appreciated effort to lay out a spread of local-grown foods.

Kendricks (I still can’t bring myself to call him
Obiwan) went with his people to bury their own, but left his
apparent adjutant John Wayne Sutter and a pair of warriors (James
Bond Howe and Boudica Yanos) to serve as our “liaisons”, something
they do without much speaking and a level of personal discipline
that rivals Sakina’s.

The Knights have not shared the locations of their
“holds” or even the “outpost” they’ve been using to keep watch over
us. Kendricks insists that this isn’t a reflection of their opinion
of me (and they keep up this glow about them any time they’re in my
presence like I’m Jesus—or at least Michael Jackson—come back from
the dead). The issue of Earthside’s agendas—and they
have
been monitoring our transmissions—remains sensitive for them, and
Kendricks has made it clear that the Knights (like the PK) no
longer see themselves as under the command of UNMAC. I don’t have
them followed home as a sign of trust, despite how desperate
Earthside will be to have that information.

Time proves the Knights themselves are not all
discipline-robots. Rios has gotten them “loosened up” talking
tactics, battles, and doing a little fencing in our makeshift gym.
Boudica (a muscular square-jawed brunette) even made a decent
showing against Sakina in a mock knife fight (she still “lost”
three times in a row, but seemed to enjoy herself immensely).

Stripped at least of some of their armor (like
Sakina, they always seem to wear most of it any time they’re
potentially in the presence of other humans), the Knights are lean,
toned and well-groomed (military-short hair seems to be a
rule).

They also seem to eschew technology (except for their
cobbled breather gear) in favor of older tools: swords, non-AI
guns, and writing on paper—Kendricks gave me a visibly-aged
hand-written roster of his order’s “noble ancestors”, so I could
confirm through Earthside records that the names were indeed UNMAC
SOF personnel. He passed the document—sealed in a clear
map-cover—like he was giving me an archeological treasure. The
script is simple and clear, unadorned, but written with obvious
care and respect.

And they do drink: Sutter offered us a sample of what
they home-brew from the local grain-grass, which makes a passable
unfiltered wheat-style beer (“chilled just right in the brisk
Martian evening”), and offered constructive tips to Tru’s people
regarding their own efforts (which have been resulting in sweet,
strong syrupy concoctions).

Unfortunately, Rios had to mention (more than
mention—he spun quite the theatrical tales) that I got myself into
swordfights with not only the Shinkyo ninjas but also with Captain
Bly himself. And I go from rockstar to messiah in the eyes of the
New Knights of Avalon.

After the meal, I signal a meeting of the command
team and department heads. I’ve taken to recording these meetings
and sending them to Earthside unedited, so they can digest our
concerns and plans relatively unfiltered.

Morales opens with her report, since Earthside will
probably want to know about our most pressing deficits: We still
have only one flying ASV. She’s reasonably confident she can
restore a second by scavenging and patching. But that’s it. The
others are either burnt scrap or too badly shredded. And the Lancer
is far beyond her abilities and resources—it still sits where Smith
ditched it.

On the unexpected plus, her team has managed to
salvage enough parts to begin rebuilding four of the new Zodangan
light flyers. Smith and Acaveda have both volunteered to serve as
test pilots, but I hesitate to risk them further. Morales assures
me that she will proceed slowly and with care, and I agree.

She also managed to salvage eight heavy SRF cannons
from the wrecks of the frigates, which she turned over to Thomasen.
He’s put them up on our perimeter, with Rios’ troopers taking turns
learning ancient gunnery. It makes the base look like an
eighteenth-century fort, but Rios is confident his men could hit
something as big and slow as a Zodangan frigate if nothing
else.