The God Mars Book One: CROATOAN (11 page)

I watch Matthew’s face go dark. His chest heaves with
a deep, strained breath.

“Which gets us back to our friends from the ETE
Corporation,” he growls.

“This may not have been intentional,” Anton defends.
He calls up the old maps on the main screens, showing us the deep
gashes in the planet’s equator that are the conjoined Chasmata that
make up the greater Valles Marineris. “And we should have
anticipated it, given the atmospheric density.”

First, he highlights the positions of the ten ETE
generators that were operating before the Bombardment. Six are
positioned around the roughly clam-shell shape of the central Melas
Chasma, three-quarters of the way up towards the Datum line in
elevation. The other four dot the narrower and much longer Coprates
Chasma that connects to Melas on its east side, two generating
stations on the canyon’s north rim and two on the ridge that
separates the main canyon from the narrower Coprates Catena that
runs parallel to the Chasma to the south. Both the Chasma and
Catena open into Melas, but the Catena doesn’t run as contiguously
long as the Chasma, which eventually “empties” out into the
delta-like Eos Chasma three hundred miles to the east.

“The receivers we set up topside have so far
triangulated electrostatic field emissions from at least twelve
points, all above fifteen-thousand feet from the Melas floor, five
thousand feet below the Datum line of the Planae,” he points out,
lighting up new points that form a relative perimeter around Melas
that includes the existing generators. “We expect there are
probably more of these lining Coprates.”

“And they’re holding the atmosphere in?” Matthew
questions like he’s not willing to believe it.

“In a way, Colonel,” Anton tells him. “This design
was in the original ETE long term plan. They knew that they’d be
facing a losing battle down the road, if they didn’t figure out a
way to keep the air and free water they made from simply bleeding
out into space because of the lack of a planetary magnetic field. I
remember there were several proposals, including going so far as
trying to re-liquefy the planet’s iron core.”

“Which would have destabilized the planet’s crust and
maybe even the planet’s orbit,” Rick dismisses the fantasy.

“This option was the least invasive and least
costly,” Anton continues, “creating an ionization ‘net’ that would
help keep the atmosphere ‘held’ below certain elevations, by
charging the particles that hit the field, creating a perpetual
down-flow and using the walls of the valleys to contain the effect.
The high iron content in the airborne dust makes it very effective,
and it gets easier as the upper atmosphere thickens. Once the
initial ‘small scale’ proved effective down here in the Chasmata,
which is geologically ideal for it, they planned to eventually go
global, but that was potentially centuries down the road.”

“It looks like the ‘small scale’ works pretty well,”
Lisa allows.

“But it conveniently blocks our transmissions, and
fries our gear when we try to punch through it,” Matthew
accuses.

“There’s an incredible amount of power involved,
Colonel,” Anton offers. “No idea how they’re generating it, but the
air up there is hot enough to fry anything that isn’t
EM-shielded.”

“Would it jam incoming signals as well?” I ask.

“It might play havoc with weaker ones,” Rick
calculates. “But the bigger concern is that it’s likely keeping
Earthside from detecting signals from smaller transmitters on the
surface, at least inside the colonized valleys. Getting through to
Earth from where we are would require an uplink powerful enough to
handle cutting through the interference. Even then, we’d probably
need a satellite geosynchronous above us to boost signals
through.”

“Which we don’t have,” Matthew concludes
bitterly.

“Any chance Earthside would have picked up on our
last attempt?” Ryder wants to know. Anton can only shrug at
her.

“Odds are that we might be able to scavenge what we
need to build a better tower if we can find the other bases
reasonably intact,” Rick considers. “Or maybe the corporate
colonies might have what we need—I’d have to review
inventories.”

“But even if we can find them, there’s still the
issue of getting there and back,” Lisa calculates. “The rovers we
have won’t manage.”

“Same reason we can’t just fly up out of the valley
and call out,” Anton kills the most obvious solution. “Not to
mention the conditions outside this ‘atmosphere net’ are probably
not much different than the Mars when we went to sleep. We’d have
to work in shelters and pressure suits, and a long way from
support.”

“We need the ASVs back up,” I conclude. “I’ll have
Morales put priority on just getting them flying—we don’t need them
to go into orbit, we just need the range. We’ll need them to go
looking for survivors and supplies anyway.”

“We’re overlooking the obvious,” Matthew counters,
and I feel him get angry. He turns to Anton: “What was the ETE’s
planned projection for being able to build this atmosphere
net?”

“Two decades, on the original designs,” Anton tells
him. “But even that was still in the theoretical stage before it
all went boom.”

“The technology didn’t exist before the Big
Bang?”

Anton shakes his head. “Back to the power issue.”

“Somebody’s been busy, and
after
the
bombardment,” Lisa tries not to sound worried.

“What would this ion net look like—or sound like,
whatever—from Earth?” Matthew wants to know, sounding like he’s
playing prosecutor. “Assuming that Earthside believes this kind of
tech is still non-existent?”

“Widespread electromagnetic chatter,” Rick gives him
after considering for a moment. “Blanketing the valleys—at least
wherever the air was.”

“And what would widespread
nano-contamination
look like from Earth?” Matthew takes his next move. The look on
Rick’s face answers for him. Anton’s eyes go wide.

“Convenient,” Matthew accuses.

“You think someone at ETE conspired to take the
planet, and keep Earthside away from whatever they were doing with
it by convincing them the planet is badly contaminated?” Lisa tries
to challenge the idea.

Matthew locks my eyes across the table. “
We’ve
seen worse than this in our time—it can’t be that surprising. And
yes, I did meet the ETE geeks. Enough to know they’re all dreamers
and environmentally-sensitive hippie scientists. But that’s not
where the money came from. And we know what kind of money Mars
meant to those that knew how to exploit it. Imagine what they could
do if they could get all the restrictions and resistance from
Earthside to go away, by getting Earthside to go away.”

I give him a nod, chewing the inside of my lip. It’s
an extreme (and extremely dark) possibility, but he’s right: we’ve
personally seen humans do worse than this.

“I’ll tell Morales to make sure those ASVs are armed
before we take them out.”

Day 154. 5 June, 2115:

“I don’t see anything.”

Except the red ochre of the distant cliffs at the top
of the valley rim, its nearest point over twenty miles away and
three miles above us. Our best imaging is enough to bring out
individual boulders on a section of the steep slide-scarred slopes,
but that’s all I see where Rick is insisting I look.

“I doubt you will, Colonel,” Rick reassures it’s not
because of my age. “But that’s where the nearest emitter is. It’s
either well buried or very small, or both.”

“And that’s what’s keeping the air in?” Matthew
challenges. He shifts his weight on his “walking stick,” adjusts
his goggles, shuffles his boots in the thin layer of grit that
remains on the roof of the Command bunker.

“I’ve gone over Dr. Staley’s analysis,” Rick defends.
“Each emitter’s putting out enough EMR to charge the upper
atmosphere across the canyon, slowing down the air loss. That’s an
incredible amount of energy. And with no discernable radiation
bloom—that means no reactor, or an incredibly well-shielded one.
Whatever it is, the power output of
one
of those things
would run this base. We need to get up there and get a closer
look.”

And he’s looking forward to it, I can tell by the way
he talks about it. He’s more than curious, he’s
impressed
.
He wants to see what science and technology has become in the last
fifty years.

“As soon as we get wings,” I assure him. “Unless you
plan to walk?”

“Not out of the question,” Anton chimes in, coming
down from his work trying to repair his “tower.” “I’ve been
thinking: There
may
be another way to get around on the
surface. The ETE generators all run ‘feed lines’ down into the
deeper valleys, dispersing the air they generate, as well as the
dedicated lines that fed O2 and water and hydrogen fuel directly to
the colony sites.” He pulls his flashcard out of his working
coveralls and brings up a map. Colored lines crisscross the
valleys, showing the flow-lines of precious air and water. “Even if
they got severed by nuke strikes or slides, they were designed to
seal automatically, so they’d be at least partially intact; and if
the generators are pumping, they’ll be full of everything we’d need
to get around on the surface except for food. They’re too far out
to feed the base in any practical way, but if we created some kind
of portable ‘tapping’ system, we could use the lines like oases, to
top off our tanks on a long hike.”

“Or our flight range,” Rick considers. “Assuming we
get something flying.”

I find myself staring out into the vast Melas
valley—hundreds of miles of rolling, mountainous desert.

“Makes me wonder if anyone else has been doing that
very thing,” I find myself saying to no one in particular.

Matthew is kicking gravel off the side of the bunker,
watching the slightly slower way it falls in the low gravity and
settles into the bulldozed mounds below, like light powder.

“They certainly could,” Rick takes my thought to
heart.

“Assuming they survived long enough for the air to
thicken,” Matthew criticizes.

“Not necessarily, Colonel,” Anton counters him. “They
could have used the feed lines to refresh pressure suits, set up
shelters. Even if their hard sites were hopelessly compromised, all
the colonies were well-stocked with survival gear.”

“The hardest trick would be to stay warm,” Rick adds.
Then thinks about it. “If I didn’t have heaters that I could keep
fed on hydrogen or solar, I’d move close to the terraforming
generators. Dig in where it’s warmer. Digging in would also protect
you from solar radiation.”

“What about food?” Anton engages him, the two
beginning a merry game of hypotheses.

“Some of the colonies were developing renewable
sources.”

“Assuming no one is actively trying to kill you,”
Matthew interrupts.

“We’ve still had no sign of Discs, Colonel,” Rick
discounts. “Not in almost six months.”

“What about our neat little jamming net?”

“There’s still no proof that its intent is
malevolent,” Rick returns. “I’ve run the figures—the output,
however impressive it is, is barely keeping up with the need: the
atmosphere is still bleeding out at a ratio of about fifteen
percent of what the generators produce. The jamming effect we’re
experiencing is probably just incidental interference. Remember,
we’ve only got scavenged short-range gear to work with—it’s pretty
fragile pushed as far as we’ve got it. If the net was designed to
cut us off from Earth, or keep Earth blind to whatever’s been going
on down here, then I’d think it would be more dedicated to that
purpose. Or something else would be set up to do the job better.
The net is just cutting us off because we don’t have the equipment
to push through it and not burn out in the process.”

“You’re assuming an innocent little tale of survival,
Doctor,” Matthew is getting edgier. He’s grinding the tip of his
stick into the bunker’s casting. “But the simple fact that those
things are up there tells us that someone’s been busy, someone with
significant resources. If it was Earthside, we wouldn’t be having
this conversation—we’d be sleeping through our ride home.”

Rick leaves it at that. He’s used to having
conversations like this, though his eyes glance up and lock on mine
just long enough to make the obvious point: he’s used to having
these kind of arguments with
me
. Anton just looks worried,
and he doesn’t have all the history between us.

Rick goes back inside. Anton goes back to pulling
parts from his tower.

My O2 gauge is edging into yellow when I head for the
airlocks. Matthew is still doing his ritual vigil, eyes on the
horizon.

“Colonel Ram, this is Metzger in AirCom.
I have a
contact.
”

Metzger’s voice is impressively professional, holding
back what sounds like edging on panic. And suddenly I’m thinking
the same thing Matthew has been, as I fall naturally into expecting
the worst. “Incoming?”

“Yes, sir. Fast and low.” I hear Metzger gulp in a
breath. “Nearly five hundred knots and only a few hundred feet off
the deck. Bearing west-southwest. Fifty klicks out and closing
fast—it’s coming right for us…”

“Signature?” I’m already climbing back up onto the
bunker roof (and remembering that Matthew is still up there).

“No signals. Small radar profile.”

“A Disc?”

“It’s coming in straight and steady, Colonel,” I hear
Lisa chime in. “No evasive maneuvers—it doesn’t fly like a Disc
drone would.”

“Rios, Carver, I need guns on the surface,” I order
anyway. “Kastl: Get the batteries up. Defensive fire only.”

They chime back to confirm. I can already hear the
battery guns humming to life, rotating into position. I plug my HUD
unit into my goggles so I can see what Metzger sees. When I get to
Matthew, he’s done the same, half-hunkered down below the bunker
roof’s three-foot “rampart” line, his ICW shouldered and linked for
firing.