The God Mars Book One: CROATOAN (47 page)

“Except the ETE,” I play in. “But the ETE do not seek
profit. They will not share their advances with anyone.”

“Environmental Terraforming Enterprises is a
corporate
endeavor,” he corrects me, “and more insidiously
so, because they set out to make
all
industry on this world
dependent on them. Then they exploited the violence of the early
colony years—the Eco and Disc threats—to gain even greater
advantages, by pirating the technologies entrusted to their
safekeeping. And when the bombs conveniently wiped out their
colonial ‘partners,’ none were left to challenge their claim on
those technologies. I’m sure you have had your own suspicions about
the origin of the Discs, Colonel.”

“The ETE have voiced similar suspicions regarding
you,” I return, “especially given your recent activities.”

He doesn’t answer immediately. He sips his cooling
tea.

“And what suspicions do
you
have, Colonel
Ram?” he probes.

“Anonymous drones effectively destroy all corporate
interests on the planet.
Any
productive agency that remains
is suspect.”

“Can you remain so objective?” he presses, still all
polite semi-smiles.

“I suspect you’ve had no contact with Earth since the
planet fell silent.”

“Neither have the ETE,” he counters. Then softens:
“No transmission could be made that would not risk detection by the
wrong people. The risk was neither acceptable nor necessary—our
interests were secure and have remained so without assistance from
home.” I note that he doesn’t address the issue of stealth craft
like the Lancer.

“And how did you intend to go about revealing
yourselves once Earth returns?” I address the obvious problem.

“I would tell you that we did not plan to, that we
would wait patiently and then covertly contact our Guild some time
after Earth shuttles begin returning in numbers that would mask our
activities. Our Guild could then ‘rebuild’ on this site, and
shortly thereafter would be able to export our work as new
development.”

“But you’ve already revealed yourselves to us as well
as the ETE,” I expose, giving him an edge of a grin.

“You are correctly confident that I do not intend to
kill all of you in the hope of re-concealing our existence,” he
says almost sweetly.

“Or you know such an outcome is too far from
certain,” I argue. “That, and your most effective weapons against
the ETE are messy enough to be seen across space. I’m sure you’ve
considered how Earthside might interpret nuclear detonations on the
surface well before you used your first weapon. You would know that
fission explosions are very likely to renew their fears of some
extreme nano-horror. You’ve already formulated another plan.”

Hatsumi smiles and gives me a little bow.

“I find I enjoy speaking with you, Colonel Ram, even
more than I expected I would. An alliance between us could prove
mutually profitable. Your people struggle for a foothold, and I
expect you will face many adversaries. And if you are willing to
enter into a small deception with us, it would go a long way to
smoothing re-integration with Earth.”

“I had heard you had little tolerance for
Gaijin
.”

“Abdullah Rashid proved what a filthy animal he was,”
Hatsumi explains with the slightest edge of disgust coming through.
“I count myself wise in choosing to remove him from our midst
before he could further contaminate us. And no, Colonel, I am not
speaking of his pathetic faith or the color of his skin. Has his
daughter not told you?”

I start to respond in cool defense of Zauba’a, but I
hesitate when I realize his choice of word.

“She told me that Rashid was her
grand
father,”
I make an attempt at correction that I already know I’m going to
regret.

“He was that as well,” Hatsumi takes barely-masked
glee in telling me. “What did you think those trash did, living
like animals in the sand?”

I am not at all surprised when I feel the air whistle
next to my ear. Neither is Hatsumi, or at least his daughter:
Sakura is almost as fast as Zauba’a, up on her feet and in front of
her father, swatting the thrown torpedo away only inches before it
hits Hatsumi square between the eyes. Her arm in her sleeve clangs
when it makes contact with the heavy metal projectile—she has her
own armor on under her delicate ceremonial gown. The torpedo
skitters across the mats and bounces off the left wall between two
of the guards (missing one by less than a foot). The guards all
come up on one knee, and hands go to sword hilts, but they do not
draw, nor do the ones with guns fire.

I shift and pivot on my knees but do not get up,
turning to watch Zauba’a part the panels I had entered through.
Instead of continuing her attack, she strides calmly into the
gauntlet of guards.

“Rude,” Hatsumi criticizes, absolutely calm, “but not
unexpected. Your offer of violence is accepted, animal. My daughter
has been as eager to test herself against you as you are eager to
challenge us.”

“I am eager,” Zauba’a confirms, her voice almost a
growl through her demon mask, “but I can delay my
satisfaction.”

On cue, two blue ETE sealsuits—Paul and Simon—drop
through the ceiling of the chamber. Simon lands behind Zauba’a and
Paul is at my side, their Spheres creating defensive fields around
us as I get to my feet. Paul slides a pistol into my right
hand.

Hatsumi responds less to us than he does to the
earpiece he must have in his left ear, and I see him grin.

“Your friends have arrived in amusing numbers,” he
lets me know, then commands: “
Ichi!
”

We can hear and feel the deep booming rumble of a
nuke going off somewhere on the surface above. Hatsumi must also
have an optical implant or contact lens that lets him see tactical
feed without a visor or glasses, because his eyes dart as if
scanning something we can’t see.

“
Ni!
” he barks after a long minute, and
another boom rattles us.

I watch his eyes and his expression. He betrays his
confusion and frustration only barely.

“Your friends are resilient,” he tells us, his voice
struggling to keep its serenity. “I didn’t expect they would run to
their deaths so readily. Still, we are well prepared.” He watches
his feed intently, then barks “
San!”
A third blast shake us,
feeling much closer. I‘m surprised the ceiling doesn’t come down on
us all.

“You were right about multiple bombs,” Paul whispers
to me.

I keep watching Hatsumi process what he’s being fed
from the surface. His eyes narrow, his jaw clenches. I can imagine
what he’s been hearing and seeing:

At the same moment as the Stilsons’ theatrical
entrance, the perimeter of the colony was suddenly swarming with
ETE. Hatsumi detonated a device in their midst, the blasts and EMP
radii likely calculated for maximum defensive coverage (I expect he
would have waited to catch the largest number of his enemies in the
lethal range). But even before the dust storms of the first blasts
settled, Hatsumi would have seen the colorful sealsuits still
coming on, apparently undiminished. And so he detonated his second
and third devices.

He will still be seeing ten colors of sealsuits
bearing down on his hill.

“
Uke!
” he almost screams the word I recognize
as “block” or “receive.” None of the cadre of guards he has in the
chamber budges—he must be confident he has more than sufficient
numbers of soldiers to intercept the ETE.

“Is he out of nukes?” Paul quietly wonders. Hatsumi
is smiling again as he must be watching his forces engage.

“Can your gear cut through their signal jamming?” I
ask Paul. His helmet nods.

“Fuzzier since the bangs,” he tells me. “Hopefully
it’s making it even more difficult for them. The visual I’m getting
from topside looks like videos I’ve seen of anthills: His Shinobi
are going up in force to engage us face-to-face. Too bad we aren’t
actually there.”

In a blur, Hatsumi’s daughter leaps off the dais and
stops just at the edge of our protective field, her mirrored lenses
looking like they could bore right into us. She knows better than
to try to challenge a Sphere field directly.

“One thing we do know is that your toys cannot
maintain significant power output for very long,” Hatsumi taunts.
“That is why you all carry several. And I will warn you not to use
your un-binding fields to dissolve our weapons—this facility has
been laced with triggers made of the same alloy, and you would risk
detonating our final defense: a device more than capable of
replacing the entire colony with a real crater.”

“You would sacrifice everything rather than have it
taken,” I return, making sure my statement doesn’t sound remotely
like a question.

“You have your answer,” Hatsumi tells me flatly.

“You have
your
answer,” Paul agrees in
whisper.

“My scanning equipment tells me that your Spheres’
output is already beginning to fluctuate,” Hatsumi challenges. “You
can maintain your barrier at that strength for another minute at
most. Can you concentrate enough to switch to a fresh Sphere
without giving us an opening to cut you to pieces?”

“Won’t have to,” Paul returns with impressive cool.
Then he whispers to me: “Cavalry’s here.”

To “Move the Shade” means to feint an attack to see
how your enemy responds.

To “Hold Down a Shadow” means to make an aggressive
move, then keep changing your attacks as your enemy tries to
respond, keeping him off balance so that his prepared responses
can’t be effectively used.

The lazy pass that the Lancer made over the colony
hill when it dropped me off did more than kick up dust. It dropped
a number of “decoy projectors” the ETE had developed to give not
only the visual image of a hundred attacking Guardians, but also a
convincing energy signature to match. Now that the illusion has
instigated Hatsumi to detonate his surface nukes, it’s likely the
dust and radiation has made his own defenses functionally
blind.

Confirming this, I don’t hear his anti-aircraft guns
and missile launchers engage, but I do start hearing the more
familiar sounds of our own missiles slamming his surface positions.
That would be Matthew coordinating the Lancer and our ASVs in a
rapid sweep and drop, their bays loaded with the actual ETE
Guardians. For their part, the ETE had to do this maneuver without
the benefit of a trial run (that might have been observed), but I
trust that their skills with their tools will suffice in “flying”
them out of our aircraft before we pull back to give them air
cover.

Paul taps me on the back with the Rod in his right
hand, and I take my cue, dropping to the deck. Zauba’a should be
doing the same. This lets Paul and Simon have a clear “sweep” of
the chamber, and they give their Spheres one last “pulse” before
trading them. They heed Hatsumi’s warning not to risk
disintegrating anything, using only blunt pressive force to hit the
Shinkyo like a wave, slamming them back off their feet, and giving
us time to take the offensive.

Paul and Simon lash out with their Rods, and I can
hear the energy pound the armored Shinobi like something solid. At
least two of the gunmen open up with their PDWs, and I see Paul
jerk as he gets hit in the left thigh and shoulder, proving the
Shinkyo have developed a nano-projectile that can somehow pass
through a Sphere field. I choose to ignore the ETE’s feeling about
bloodshed and return fire with my pistol, trying to nail what I
assume are the most effective gaps in their armor: face, neck,
armpit, inner thigh.

I only manage to take out two of them before a foot
slams down on my weapon, knocking it out of my grip and pinning it
into the mats. I can see the flash of black kimono, and roll
sideways in time to mostly avoid a slash from Sakura’s claws—she
manages to tear into the sleeve of my LA uniform. She comes in for
another swipe, but her arm gets stopped by the scabbard of the
sword they gave me as I get it between us with both hands. I throw
a boot at the leg she’s got most of her weight on, and she has to
shift to avoid it—that gives me enough room to roll out away from
her and draw the blade as I get up.

A well-aimed torpedo from Zauba’a distracts her,
buying me another second. But I can feel another Shinobi charging
me from behind, and I have to spin into him, combining my cut with
my parry. He’s good enough to take most of my blade on his own, but
I pivot and angle enough to make sure my tip is set just far enough
through his guard to drive it into his throat as my cut turns into
a thrust in the same action. While he’s choking on blood, I hack
his sword-arm. Then I have to keep my spin going to receive another
attacker.

This one loses a few fingers to my cutting parry,
opening him up enough for me to get in a nice, strong angular cut,
but I don’t get enough warning to pick my targets so I have to go
for whatever’s in my way. Hatsumi’s smiths do good work: my
“nano-forged” blade cleaves armor enough to put the sword through
the Shinobi’s clavicle and down into his torso, deep enough to open
his aorta. His blood hits me in the face.

I “test” my new sword on a third Shinobi, snapping it
down hard into the more vulnerable back of his blade, snapping his
sword and letting the “bounce” of the impact set me up and quickly
down to split his head open. But before I can strike, he flies back
away from me, and I glance sideways to see Paul with his Rod on
him, hoping to minimize the slaughter. Then Sakura swats Paul in
the face, sending him reeling with his silver mask almost knocked
off, blood flowing from his jaw line. She follows with a solid kick
that sends him down, his Rod flying from his grip.

Simon and Zauba’a have been “managing” the gauntlet
of guards nearest the entrance. Simon has converted two of his Rods
into batons and is showing off by trying to strike in multiple
directions at once. Zauba’a is at his back, spinning into any
Shinobi that gets close enough with her heavy knives. (Simon, for
his part, doesn’t seem as bothered by the bloodshed as Paul.)