The God Mars Book One: CROATOAN (48 page)

I turn on Sakura, dropping my sword down to my side,
giving her full opening. She sets herself to charge me, her claws
dancing. Then I hear Zauba’a bark out a challenge, and Sakura
calmly ducks as a torpedo flies at her head.

“Useless…” Sakura growls at her through her mask, but
I see Zauba’a’s eyes grin above her own mask. Her eyes look past
Sakura, and Sakura turns in time to see her father topple over
limply with the torpedo sunk through his left eye and out the back
of his skull.

Sakura jerks her sword out of its scabbard, and looks
like she doesn’t know who to go for first. Zauba’a tries to make
the decision for her by advancing, a “borrowed” Shinkyo sword in
each hand.

“Enough!” I hear Paul bellow, and Sakura flies
sideways like she’s been hit by an invisible bus. The energy wave
knocks her and the handful of Shinobi still in the fight through
the panel walls. Zauba’a freezes in her tracks, glaring at the
now-unconscious Sakura, and then shoots Paul a look that makes me
fear for his head.

I get over to Hatsumi’s body, and search him for any
kind of control mechanisms I can find. If he had any kind of
communication system, it must all be implanted. His last breaths
are sputtering out of him. I feel for his pulse.

“He knew he wasn’t walking out of here,” Simon
assesses. I nod gravely. Under his black robes are all white
ones—the color of death; the color one wears to funerals, or to
one’s own ritual suicide.

“His heart is stopping,” I announce. “If he does have
a final device, he’d want more than one way to set it off. His own
death might suffice. We know he’s got implants—if it’s triggered by
his vital signs to go with him, we’ve got seconds.”

“He’d sacrifice his own daughter?” Paul is having
trouble believing.

“She is a cripple,” Zauba’a tells him coldy.
“Disposable.”

“Or not,” Simon calls our attention to the fact that
Sakura isn’t where she fell. She and all of her surviving Shinobi
have made an effective escape.

“We need to find his last bomb
now
, or we need
a fast exit,” I remind them, but Paul is already signaling for
help. I see blood starting to spot Hatsumi’s white robes, and
realize it isn’t his. When I stand up, blood is dripping at my
feet. The gashes in the sleeves of my LA uniform tell me I’ve
probably got fairly significant cuts to both arms, and I’m starting
to shake because of it. There’s also a slice through my jacket just
below my web belt over my right hip, and my pistol rig has been
cleaved through. So much for my skill as a swordsman…

The ETE take all of three seconds to coordinate a
response that I expect was a much harder decision than it appeared.
Paul and Simon took hold of Zauba’a and me, and I got to experience
what it’s like for an ETE to move through solid matter as they took
us the shortest route out of the colony. I had a fraction of a
second to decide to drop my “gift” before getting dragged through
concrete and rock—it flashed into my shock-addled brain that the
trigger for the threatened last-strike device might be built into
it, the bomb set off by me taking the blade out of the colony. Even
cut up and feeling old and stupid for it, I still found it hard to
let go of the weapon.

The ETE were already sending the majority of their
Guardian force back out of estimated harm’s way, each Station team
leaving only one member who came specially equipped to detect and
neutralize nuclear devices.

The surface was still masked in a confusing haze of
smoke and dust when we came up out of the ground and went flying
into the air. Still, I could see disorganized groups of Shinobi
running west for slopes of the Dragon’s Tail. Most of them had been
at least partially stripped of their armor and weapons by their
encounters with the Guardians, but a few of them seemed to be
clutching precious prizes as they ran.

I blame the combination of blood loss, the shock of
the “phasing” through dozens of meters of rock (which felt like
being pelted with electric hail), and the likelihood that Paul (in
his zeal to get me clear) forgot I wasn’t wearing a mask for
passing out.

“That’s it, Colonel…” I vaguely recognize Rios’
voice. I feel hands easing me down, other hands pressing a mask
over my face. The first face (or mask) I make out is Zauba’a’s, as
she kneels over me, wrapping my mangled arms in pressure tape, not
bothering to take off my uniform jacket first—it must be bad enough
that it has to wait for a surgical unit.

I realize I’m in the open bay of an ASV troop module.
But instead of squads of bulky HA armor, I’m surrounded by a
rainbow of ETE suits. I can only assume the blue suit closest by my
side is either Paul or Simon, since I’m still too bleary to read
their name tags. But then I realize that some of the ETE are in
worse shape than I am: Several have mangled hands, fingers gone.
One is missing a leg at the knee. Two are missing arms. I remember
Shinkyo running away carrying prizes.

Several have tools missing from their belts.

“We need to get back to Station!” I hear someone
demand. I lift my head enough to see a stretcher coming in. The
green suit on it is being tended by two ETE who look like they’re
trying to hold his body together at the waist.

“Go…” I order like I’m still in command of
anything.

I numbly assume I’d have noticed another nuclear
explosion.

9 October, 2115:

I wake up back in my own rack, and I have a lot of
company wedged into my small quarters.

“We recovered this from the colony after we secured
it,” Paul starts. He’s sitting at the foot of my bunk, and he shows
me he’s brought the sword Hatsumi gave me. “It’s been scanned. No
surprises.”

I reach up to take it and see the heavy bandages on
my forearms. They ache, but my hands seem to work. I lay the weapon
across my lap and try to sit up a bit more. I feel burning pain
deep into my right hip. My head swims from whatever they gave me
while they closed my wounds.

“So how
did
having large metal testicles get
equated with bravery?” Paul asks, in way of making a joke.

“It
should
be equated with stupidity,” Matthew
chimes in, standing by the hatch, arms crossed. “Not the dumbest
thing you’ve ever done, Mikey, but it definitely makes the top
five.”

I expect to see Zauba’a giving him some kind of
death-glare, kneeling at my bedside like one of Hatsumi’s personal
guard. But she keeps her eyes down, almost sheepishly.

“The ETE are indebted to you, Colonel,” Simon offers
as a way of rolling over Matthew’s flippancy.

“I don’t remember it going particularly smoothly…” I
deflect.

“We were able to find Hatsumi’s colony destroyer,”
Paul gives me happily. “We estimate a full kiloton yield—four times
the tactical warheads he used on the surface. And someone
did
try to trigger it remotely, but we had it masked in
time.”

“The triggering attempt coincided with the instant
your ASV flew clear,” Lisa lets me know, standing in the corner
behind the Stilsons. “Whoever was charged with blowing the place
may have watched and waited until you were safe.”

“If it was Sakura, it’s probably because she wanted
another crack at us in person,” I speculate drowsily, glancing at
Zauba’a, who still does not look up.

“Or they had other reasons,” Simon gives me back
gravely, letting me know he’s been paying attention to my
lessons.

“Like giving me a sword that really
is
just a
sword,” I play. “I could make myself crazy figuring out all the
possible reasons for that one.”

“Or Hatsumi walking into that room fully planning on
not walking out,” Matthew stokes the subject. I decide to change
it:

“Your people didn’t all walk away unscathed,” I
confront Paul and Simon as gently as I can. “I saw…”

“You did,” Paul confirms solemnly. “They came at us
in surprising numbers, and did things we did not expect…” He seems
to stall on the words.

“You were shot,” I remind him needlessly. “They had
bullets that could get through your Sphere fields.”

“It was an unexpectedly inventive two-stage system,”
Simon explains as objectively as he can. “They must have managed to
analyze our fields during previous encounters. When the shell hit
the shield field, its outer shell detonated, forcing an ionized
core through the field. Each core was then frangible upon
penetration to maximize trauma and slow the healing process. The
effectiveness of their gunfire was both unexpected and withering.
It wasn’t lethal, but it gave them an opening.”

“We have since recalibrated our fields to counter
this advantage,” Paul interjects like he’s telling me about some
minor mechanical problem.

“We tried to dissolve their weapons,” Simon continues
over him, “but they would charge us in twos, guessing that our
bond-breakers would not penetrate a living body if set to attack
inorganic matter only. One Shinobi would act as a shield for the
other, even though it meant bare-skin exposure. And even naked,
they were not hesitant in using grenades to stun us. Not all of us
were quick enough to shift to acceptable offensive measures—using
blunt pressive shock to batter them.”

“Your reluctance to do harm,” I interject, hoping it
sounded more like validation than criticism.

“Your lessons were invaluable,” Simon allows, “but
you were right about there being no substitute for experience. We
were no match for the Shinobi at close quarters. Their blades did
damage that their guns could not, even given our upgrades. Nine of
our people sustained cuts severe enough to cost them parts of
limbs. One—Dawson Epps from Green Team—was nearly cut in half.”

“All are in rebuilding,” Paul tries to soothe, “what
was lost can be replaced.”

“I saw the Shinobi retreating,” I challenge. “Can
they profit from what they managed to take from you?”

“We can’t be certain,” Simon admits after a pause.
“We also lost several tools. They
should
be useless, but the
Shinkyo have proven themselves to be impressively resourceful.”

“And they’ve left us with other problems,” Paul lets
me know heavily. “Although the scattered Shinobi successfully fled
into the hills while we were focused on stopping their colony
self-destruct, they did leave over three hundred apparently
non-military colonists behind. They have not offered resistance,
but they remain under our supervision.”

“Most are women, children, elderly or physically
fragile—the few able-bodied adults appear to be workers or
low-level technicians,” Lisa catalogues. “They have no apparent
weapons, but at least some are likely to be Shinobi planted to
serve as insurgents, so the situation is far from secure.”

“This number is only a third of the population we had
originally estimated,” Simon reminds. “The colony has also been
stripped of manufacturing equipment, and their stores appear to be
gutted. All of their files have been erased. It’s clear they have
relocated somewhere, leaving behind what could only be described as
sacrifices.”

“Including Hatsumi,” I point out.

“Hatsumi had a metastasized cancer eating him alive,”
Lisa tells me. “The Shinkyo didn’t have cancer-killer
nano-cultures.”

“It may be what he wanted from us,” Paul tries.

“I don’t think so,” I disagree. “He was too much
about the greater benefit of his precious corporate guild. And I
doubt he’d want his Shinobi to know he was that sick. They’d have
replaced him.”

“Maybe they did,” Matthew considers. “Maybe that was
the point.”

“Halley looked at the autopsy scans your teams sent
us,” Lisa tells the Stilsons. “He was too far gone for anything
short of your regenerating technology, and he wouldn’t have had the
time for his people to adapt it even if they could take it from
you.”

“He knew he was dead,” Matthew concurs, reinforcing
his point. “He just wanted to go out in a scrap. Better in a fight
than in a bed.”

I glance again at Zauba’a, who remains still as a
statue.

“We should have advanced on them sooner,” Simon
grumbles. “We gave them too much time to prepare.”

“Time
you
needed to prepare,” I remind him.
“Things could have gone much worse.”

“The one signal was the only detected attempt to
trigger the self-destruct,” Lisa continues updating me. “Hatsumi
wasn’t
wired to do it—we checked his implanted Link gear,
and there was no detonation program. Either he wasn’t in charge
anymore or specifically wanted someone else to pull the
trigger—maybe he did figure he’d be dead before the time was right.
And he lied about the facility being laced with sensors to set the
bomb off if the ETE used their Spheres inside.”

“Delaying tactics,” I calculate grimly. “First he
slows you down by making you afraid to use your tools effectively.
Then he leaves us to try to find his last bomb—waiting to detonate
meant more time for his Shinobi to make their escape while we were
all focused on finding the bomb instead of chasing them down.
Leaving a few hundred apparent innocents behind in the colony made
doubly sure the bomb had our attention—he trusted that you wouldn’t
abandon those people to die.”

“The ones left behind, they will not talk to us,”
Paul complains. “We cannot even know if they were abandoned to
their fate or volunteered for it.”

“The Shinkyo seem adept at profiting no matter which
way a battle goes,” I allow after a deep breath. “I did confront
Hatsumi about the obvious conundrum: Telling me his people have
been trying to maintain some kind of secret R&D in hopes of
giving their sponsor corporations an edge when they come
back—assuming they’re still even in business to come back—and then
blatantly revealing themselves by attacking us. He didn’t even
blink when I pointed out that his use of nuclear weapons would be
detected from Earth. He
knew
their efforts to stay hidden
all these decades would be wasted when he decided to attack.”