The God Mars Book One: CROATOAN (2 page)

“Then the Discs hit us on the ground. Not as heavy as
what was happening above us, but enough to keep us busy, to chase
us to cover and keep us there, especially since we’d just sent all
of our air support toward orbit. We managed to pick off a few of
the Discs with our batteries, but they hit our main uplink, like
their priority was to cut us off. No more direct contact with
Earthside. No way to let them know what was going on.”

Hard to breathe. I feel like my heart wants to quit,
like I’ve run ‘til I’m dropping. I need to stop talking now, to
take a break and get my wind before I pass out. But the words keep
coming:

“Ares Station—the orbital dock—was wrecked and
knocked out of orbit. All we could do was watch on Radar as they
fell down at us like so much junk. Then the drones turned from
shredding Phobos to swarm Ares’ Shield. But not to destroy it.

“The Shield had only been online a month. It was like
whoever was running the Discs had been waiting for it to be put in
place just so they could use it against us. Somehow the drones
hacked into it, disabled the hold and set it off. They initiated
sterilization.
Full
sterilization. The nukes—all of
them—started dropping on all twenty-one colonies. General Ryder
tried to send abort codes before Phobos went silent. With the
transmission delay, Earthside Command probably didn’t know it was
happening until it was done. The missiles were armed and away…”

The rage helps cut the haze, and keeps me going
despite my lungs threatening to fail, but it gets me shaking.
Badly. Reminding me how weak my atrophied body is, even in the low
gravity. Reminding me how helpless I am. And how helpless I was
then…

“So we tried to stop it from the ground. Used our
land batteries as a makeshift missile shield. We’d worked out
firing solutions just in case, keeping it quiet to avoid an uproar
with the terrified majority back on Earth that had pushed to place
the Shield up there in the first place. And we also got word that a
number of the colonies—even the ones without UNMAC garrisons—were
taking similar actions: The corporations were bent on protecting
their multi-billion dollar investments. And the colonists were bent
on keeping Earth’s paranoia from killing them. They’d smuggled in
portable anti-missile ordnance, rockets and big guns and
jammers...”

Breathe. I make myself breathe. My skeletal ribcage
threatens to collapse. The vitals monitors insist I’m not really
dying, not having heart attack. Stress Tachycardia is normal after
chemical hibernation, asleep so long with all of your metabolic
functions—down to the cellular level—reduced to less than ten
percent of norm. It takes days to get over it, to get the drugs out
of your sluggish system, and then weeks to get used to moving and
breathing and pumping and digesting again. And I’ve only been awake
maybe an hour. Maybe two. (I haven’t been able to see a clock.) I
remember it took a full
month
of hard rehab to get over the
seven months I slept on the ride here, and maybe I’ve forgotten but
I’m sure this time is worse…

Sitting up and talking is like running a marathon.
Just walking the fifty meters or so from the hibernation cells to
the Command Deck—even with handholds and less than 40% Earth
gravity—almost made me black out twice. At least I got to cheat and
take the Medical elevator from D up to A Deck, but I had to sit
down on the floor because it felt like I was being launched into
space (and the Medical elevator is slow and gentle for transporting
the critically wounded). And then the worst part: the only ways up
into the Command Ops “Tower” (just one more deck, really) are a
flight of steep stairs or a ladder. I picked the stairs (because
you can stop and sit on stairs). One flight. I felt like I was
climbing a skyscraper (something I‘ve had the pleasure of suffering
more than once in my youth, and that wearing heavy body armor). I
honestly felt like making camp for the night when I was halfway
up.

Just getting here should be all the test MAI needs.
But it waits for me to finish my story, unsatisfied.
Aggravating.

(And where the hell is Cal?)

“They—we—managed to bust some of the incoming
missiles on the way down, and throw some others off target. But it
wasn’t enough. In a few minutes, the nukes started hammering,
hammering everything. The whole Marineris Valley. Melas. Candor.
Coprates. Just one could erase an entire colony. A near miss could
shatter and burn one. Even the ‘clean’ misses were devastating,
kicking loose the big valley walls, causing slides the size of
small countries.”

I know there hasn’t been food in my stomach since
before I went under, which I can only assume has been at least
several weeks, if not months. But I feel like I’m going to heave
(and probably would if I was strong enough to). I blame it on the
hibernation drugs, and the incredible effort it takes just to sit
here and talk.

I know the IVs have kept me well-hydrated, but I want
a drink of very cold water very, very badly.

“The Discs managed to knock out some of our surface
guns. More missiles got through, and we had detonations
close—critically close. One sent a shockwave of superheated Martian
rubble that ripped across the topside of the base, turning
everything above ground that wasn’t as hard as the bunkers into
scrap. That included most of what we had left that flew or wheeled
overland. There was no time to get it all below ground, we were
just glad we got all of our people indoors and the structures held.
Then we picked up a big slide headed our way. We’d gone a long way
to harden against slides since the big 2057 colony-wreckers, but
this one was bigger than the one that took out Mariner Colony and
Melas One. The best we could hope for was that it would roll over
us and bury us mostly intact, that the bunker sections of the base
would continue to hold. And it looks like they did. But it cut us
off from everything, buried us. We couldn’t reach another living
soul, couldn’t call out, couldn’t even dig out and repair the
Uplink because it was too hot topside, would be for months. And
even if we could get outside safely, we couldn’t get to any of the
other bases or colonies without aircraft, and none came home from
orbit.

“So Colonel Copeland ordered everyone into
hibernation, figuring how long it would take for Earthside to get
to us and dig us out.”

Copeland… What happened to Cal?

“Colonel Cal Copeland was Base CO. Probably planetary
CO if General Ryder was dead. Doc Halley tried to get him down
too—worried that he wouldn’t be able to get himself put under right
without at least a med tech to help him—but he pulled rank on her
and sent her and everyone else to bed. He was planning on staying
awake, hoping to hear something… Anything… Then he could wake us
up.”

I keep blinking my eyes, trying to clear my vision.
Hoping if I can see straight, I might see some sign of life down
here, something to indicate there’s been activity since Cal shut us
down. But the only smears in the dust I can see are the ones I’ve
made myself coming up here. And now I’m apparently the ranking CO
with Cal god-knows-where.

“I don’t remember going under. They say that’s
normal—I didn’t on the shuttle flight, either.”

I remember guilt, though: helpless guilt because I
didn’t want to go down and leave Cal to sit waiting for a call on a
smashed uplink, waiting for rescue that could be as long as a year
or more out. Alone.

“
Go
, Colonel!” I think I remember him finally
shouting at me. “I’ve got no use for a shooter now. Nothing you can
do by staying awake but suck resources.”

Because it’s the end of the world, or at least of
everything we built here. And over ten thousand people—everybody
but us—were very likely dead.

So I left him. Because I really couldn’t do a fucking
thing. Except maybe survive.

I’d hoped he’d decide to go into Sleep with the rest
of us, but he wasn’t in his couch. And that means he’s been alone
for all this time. Assuming…

“What happened to Colonel Copeland, MAI?”

No answer.

“Has there been any contact with Earthside?”

Still no answer. I take the time to work my eyes, to
try to focus. The vitals monitor still says I’m okay, despite how
close to passing out I feel. MAI’s screens only give me text of the
transcript of what I’ve been narrating.

But then I finally can see enough to notice there are
things missing from the standard display.

The date… There’s no date.

“MAI, how long have we been under?”

It’s actually worse getting back down to the
Hiber-Sleep chambers than it was getting up to Ops. And going down
stairs in this condition isn’t much nicer than climbing up
them.

Then the stress from dealing with MAI—
What the
hell is wrong with MAI?
—only added to it. And still no sign of
Cal.

More questions than answers, and more questions every
moment as my brain starts working again.

I barely make it back, and that’s with stopping to
rest four times. No way I’d be remotely able to search the base
further for Cal (and he would have come if he could, as soon the
wake-up cycle started). I barely have the wind to shout for him—I
tried anyway a dozen times, but the corridors just echo like a
horror movie. With every dragging step, I hoped he’d just pop
around a corner, call me a busted old man with that obnoxious grin
of his, tell me everything is under control and he had better
things to do than watch us drag-ass out of Sleep. But he
doesn’t.

I’m running on rage—rage at being helpless.
Again.

At least I’m not sitting on the floor when the
elevator gets me back down to D Deck (though I am hanging onto the
rail for dear life).

“CO on deck!”

I recognize Lieutenant Carver’s voice barking the
reflexive announcement with as much wind as she can muster. The
almost two hundred assorted enlisted troopers and junior officers
in this chamber actually try to snap-to for me—at least the ones
who can stand—and that’s more than I expected from them so soon
after the systems brought their metabolisms back to something
resembling normal. (The two-dozen-odd techs and other non-military
supports don’t bother to stand, but they at least try to assume
some kind of alertness.)

I wave them back down, still needing to hang onto the
elevator hatch to keep myself on my feet. They all almost fall back
into their couches. But they all look at me—two hundred and twenty
three just in this one chamber (capacity is one more, which should
have been Cal, but his couch looks unused)—and their bleary eyes
ask for news I haven’t got. Their faces look drained of blood,
their bodies look starved. I feel like I’ve walked into a
death-camp. And most all of them are less than half my age.

“Where’s Colonel Burke?” I ask Carver as she offers
me a shoulder to lean on to get across the room. She points back to
one of the bodies who didn’t bother to budge off his couch when I
came in.

I realize why I needed to ask: I can barely recognize
the man I’ve known most all my life, or at least the parts that
mattered. He’s beyond pale, and his muscles have wasted so badly
during sleep that he looks desiccated. At first I feel my stomach
sink because I’m afraid I’m looking at a corpse, but then I can see
the readouts quietly reassuring that he’s got all his vital
signs.

“Status?” Colonel Burke—Matthew—looks up and asks me
as I sit down on the edge of his couch. His voice is a rasp.

“If it weren’t for the readouts telling me otherwise,
I’d be throwing dirt over you,” I tell him. He grins. Coughs.

“Not what I was asking…” he manages like he
is
dying.

“I know.” I look around. The chamber is crowded, the
couches stacked three-high (at least they rotate down to deck-level
so you don’t have to climb) with little enough privacy even if all
the ears in the room weren’t waiting to hear what I might have to
say. “Can you move?” I nod toward a discreet corner where we can
talk, behind the plexi partial barrier of the chamber’s small
monitoring station. It’s only a few yards away, and has a couple of
reasonably inviting chairs.

“I hate you…” he grumbles, and I can see the effort
it takes him to get himself even half-sitting. I offer a hand, but
he waves me off. Carver is there almost immediately, and she’s
smart enough not to ask if he wants help. She just puts her arm
under his shoulders and lifts him. I remember Jane Carver being
muscular, square-built, a fanatic for weight training. Most of that
muscle is gone now, but what she’s got left is a lot more than what
I’ve got. The two of us get Matthew up and across the room and ease
him into a chair. Carver gets us water, then looks to see if I need
anything more, as I sink into a seat of my own. I give her a nod of
thanks, and she takes the hint to give us space.

My head feels like it weighs a hundred pounds, and my
body feels like I’ve been hit by a truck. But Matthew looks like
he’s going to die on the spot. He has an excuse: he’s a few years
older than me—75 to my 71, and that’s still damn old despite the
extra years and health the best military grade regenerative medical
treatments bought us.
And
he’s had both knees replaced.
Taking the trip to Mars and its low gravity bought him maybe
another decade of being able to serve as an officer (though I doubt
he did it for health reasons).

And Hiber-Sleep recovery is brutal even on the
young.

“What’d you find?” he presses me.

“Doctor Staley…” I see our Chief of Technical
Engineering moving around, and I wave for him to join us. Anton
Staley is young, lanky. Of the crew that slept in this chamber, he
manages to look the least wiped, but not by much. I offer him a
stabilizing hand sitting down, but he waves it away with a weary
grin.