The God Mars Book One: CROATOAN (49 page)

“Blowing up the colony could have been a convincing
way to disappear again,” Paul reasons. “Without the colony, there’s
no proof at all of what they’ve been up to.”

“But he would have considered the outcome of us
beating his last bomb and having the colony intact to show to
Earthside,” I counter. “That may even have been his ideal
outcome.”

“And how does he win from that?” Simon criticizes.
“The Guild corporations—assuming they still exist—would be
scandalized to be associated in any way with what the Shinkyo were
doing here.”

“But they took the hard evidence and vanished,” Lisa
reminds him. “They could argue that they were a colony of innocent
refugees just trying to survive.”

“Worse,” I let them know what I’m thinking. “They’ve
left you as an occupying force. How will that make you look to
Earth?”

Lisa and Matthew hang back after Paul and Simon take
their leave.

“Are you thinking about making the ETE an offer to
take over the policing of the colony?” Lisa asks before Matthew
can.

“No,” I tell them flatly. “We’re spread thin enough
between holding our two bases and planning our little expedition
north to set up Anton’s transmitter. We don’t have the resources to
take care of an extra three hundred bodies, even if we could trust
they had no hostile intent.”

“Which isn’t likely,” Matthew agrees.

“We’d have to use lethal force to deal with even the
slightest insurgency, especially given the suicidal tenacity we’ve
already seen out of them. I think that alone would make the ETE
unwilling to let us try.”

“But maybe we could make an agreement with them,”
Lisa offers. “They stand down and let us take over as soon as we
can get reinforced. In the meantime, we keep working
side-by-side.”

“I think Paul got bent enough when I had to use
deadly force in our little joint skirmish,” I let them know.
“They’re not going to be comfortable with us in situations like
that. They’d have to put as much energy into making sure we don’t
kill anybody as making sure the Shinkyo don’t.”

“So they wouldn’t want to leave Shinkyo to us even if
we were operating with max support,” Matthew takes it. Lisa looks
uncomfortable. I can only shake my head, and so does Matthew.
“You’re right: Hatsumi gets to stick it to the Power Rangers—and us
in turn—no matter which way it falls.”

Zauba’a remains a seated statue after we’re finally
left alone, her eyes glued down at her crossed ankles.

“What Hatsumi said about your father,” I finally try.
“It doesn’t matter to me.”

I can hear her breathing coming heavier.

“Apparently it matters to
me
,” she finally
says, her voice barely above a whisper. “Enough that Hatsumi could
manipulate me. Enough that my anger interfered with your
mission.”

“Hatsumi told me all he was going to,” I try to
reassure. “And likely everything he said was manipulative
half-truth.”

“He did not lie about my father. My grandfather.”

“That doesn’t diminish you,” I insist. “And I have no
right to judge him.”

“Incest is a fact of survival among many tribes,” she
says matter-of-factly, then goes dark again. “That does not mean it
is accepted practice. I understand the reasons for the taboo, and
the stain upon those that break it. So did my father. We were
outcast for it, untouchable. My mother and I only had value because
we were weapons, but we were always less than human no matter how
well we served.”

“It doesn’t change how
I
value you, Sakina,” I
tell her. But I almost immediately realize I’m lying: I
do
see her differently now, but only because I think I’ve seen more of
what’s shaped her, what she’s lived with. Before I was a soldier I
was briefly a social worker—it’s what I went to school for—and I
saw children who lived with incest and sexual abuse who thought it
was normal—who were
taught
it was normal—until they collided
with larger society and were shocked to find they’d been victim (or
sometimes willing participant, at least in their own eyes) to an
abomination. The damage to their developing identities was
devastating, the stigma scarring everything they were and would
be.

“You told me you had done evil things,” she gives me
back after a few moments of silence. “I have not seen this in your
history.”

I realize she’s reaching out, trying to connect.
Warriors comparing scars.

“My ‘history’ was created by my handlers when I
agreed to work for UNACT,” I tell her. “Mike Ram is a manufactured
hero, a public face on what they called their ‘Ratings War.’ I
served as propaganda more than as a weapon. Do you understand?”

She shakes her head slowly, but it isn’t an absolute
denial—her breathing and posture betray that.

“It was an ugly war even as wars go,” I continue.
“The violence was personal and cruel, the enemy righteous in their
viciousness. I did things… The only way I’m different from them is
that I only preyed on those who would specifically harm the
innocent, but I repaid atrocity with atrocity. I never cut an
enemy’s genitals off, but I’ve been tempted, and I’ve certainly
gone beyond what was required of me professionally.”

I sit up in bed—careful of the heavy dressing I find
I have taped over my right hip—and slowly pivot my legs over the
edge so I can sit up facing her. The effort winds up placing her
kneeling at my feet, but I no longer feel confident (especially
with how deep my hip wound appears to be) with my original plan of
getting down and sitting with her on her bed roll.

“There was this one…” I give her softly. “A father
had put a bomb on his young daughter and sent her to blow up a café
full of innocent people. She was thirteen years old. I couldn’t
stop her in time, so I had to shoot her down before she could get
to her target. I had to kill a child to save dozens of others. I
was about your age at the time, and I was still very new at
killing. Then I went to visit her father. He was watching a video
of the two of them celebrating her pending martyrdom, and he was
praying. I shot away both his kneecaps, then sat down and explained
to him with his own scripture—the Holy Quran—why he was wrong about
his God. But all he cared about was that everyone who didn’t
believe the way he did would burn in hell. He had made God an
excuse to take out his rage on the world, and made his own child
his willing weapon. He had no remorse, no regret, only sick
satisfaction. I set him on fire.”

We sit silently for a long time. Zauba’a doesn’t look
up once.

“I barely knew my father,” she says very quietly. “I
was young when he left, and my mother didn’t speak of him after he
was gone. My mother was my teacher. She became Hassim’s father’s
personal guard, and she also sometimes shared his bed, even though
she was never made his wife. I do not believe Hassim knows who I am
now; he probably thinks that little girl died long ago. My mother
died defending his father, and he did not seem to miss her. He told
me he would keep me to perhaps be his guard one day, or his son’s
guard, but I left, disappeared during one of the battles with
Farouk. I spent five more years training, living on my own,
fighting when I had need or opportunity, before I presented myself
to Farouk, defeating his best fighters. I do not really know if I
chose Farouk because I bore a grudge against Abbal Hassim, but I
admit feeling satisfaction in eliminating some of his best
warriors, hurting him.”

“What did you feel when you killed Farouk?” I ask as
objectively as I can. She takes a few deep breaths, then finally
meets my eyes.

“I held hope for some small redemption, for righting
a wrong. But…” She looks away again.

“But you don’t feel any better,” I finish when she
can’t. “I can’t tell you that anything you do will erase what guilt
you might feel for your past actions, or the shame you feel has
marked you. Just know that I accept you as you are, Sakina, and I’m
grateful to have you with me.”

She doesn’t respond except to barely nod her head.
Then she deflects: “Your wounds are significant. You should
rest.”

I don’t argue. I get dizzy just trying to stand, and
my arms and hip burn and ache under their dressings.

When I awake in the dark some hours later, I feel her
body curled up against mine, her head on my shoulder, her hand on
my heart. She’s taken off her armor, her weapons, but still wears
her sealsuit.

I’m careful not to wake her.

20 October, 2115:

“Conventional warfare is about engaging your enemy
when both of you are in the same place at the same time,” Matthew
explains to his multi-colored audience. “But ideally, you don’t
confront your enemy directly unless you have a significant
advantage: position, surprise, weaponry, numbers…”

The ETE team leaders keep attentive, sitting around
our Briefing table. (I’d tried to talk Matthew into visiting the
ETE Stations, but he’s been reluctant to leave the base given
recent events.) Helmets off, I can see their faces, but more
telling: the fatigue and frustration of their recent
experiences.

“Well over a hundred years ago now, we ran into
opponents who changed the rules of warfare. Lacking an advantage in
direct confrontation, they realized they could attack us in
place
, without being present in
time
. That’s the
war-college way of saying the bastards set traps for us, ran away
and hid.”

“Which is what the Shinkyo are doing now,” Green Team
Leader—Rhiannon Dodds—confirms the point with an uncharacteristic
edge in her voice.

The ETE overseeing the care-and-feeding of the
Shinkyo left-behinds have so far walked into six separate
explosions, some that collapsed entire sections of the colony.
Three Guardians are still in “rebuilding.” But
nine
Shinkyo
were killed, and fifteen wounded severely enough that the ETE are
concerned that they can’t provide adequate medical care to
“Naturals”. And more than half the colony is now without
survival-sufficient air or heat.

“The key is to not be
predictable
,” Matthew
tells them. “They need to know where you’re likely to be and
roughly when you’ll be there in order to hit you. They
also
need to know when you’re
not
likely to be there in order to
set the trap.”

“That’s why we had no problems for the first week,”
Paul assesses correctly.

“
Avoid routine
,” Matthew warns. “Don’t
establish patterns. And learn to identify the obvious kill zones:
places you can’t watch all the time but still have to visit, routes
where you have a limited choice of path. And I’ll tell you this up
front: you won’t see them all. Best you can do is reduce your
vulnerability.”

One or two of the sealsuited Guardians glances back
at me now and again, but I keep silent in my seat off in the corner
by the entry hatch. Matthew is doing an excellent job despite his
reluctance to take a turn at playing “advisor”. But after the
slicing I took assisting the fledging Guardians against the
Shinkyo, I expect Matthew would agree to anything if it meant I
would step out of that role. And the “young” Guardians seem to be
respectfully attentive (Matthew says it’s just because he’s
actually older than they are).

“If they can’t take advantage of your patterns, then
they’ll try to get you to
come
to
the trap. You’ve
already started to see that: They do something you can’t
ignore—take out life support, start a fire, threaten to collapse a
section on top of a bunch of kids—and they know you’ll be coming.
Best you can do then is not come the way they’re expecting.”

I watch their faces: They look so much older—at least
in the eyes—than they did when they were just training. They aren’t
dealing well with what they’ve had to face since they took over the
colony. The Shinkyo continue to prove willing to make almost any
sacrifice for a chance at hitting the ETE, and they’re blatantly
exploiting their targets’ respect for life.

Though so far immune to being killed in action,
attrition in the teams has been high—almost a third of the original
fifty have quit. Stations have had to combine forces until new
recruits can be trained, and the replacements aren’t keeping up
with losses. Worse, the ETE leadership already seems to be losing
the commitment they had when they formed their experimental
commando force.

“There
have
to be options,” Red Team Leader—a
wiry “kid” named Jaden Fox who reminds me a lot of Anton—blurts out
his protest. Again, a few of them look back in my direction, only
to get my nod toward Matthew, who takes a heavy breath and breaks
out of his “instructor” posture.

“Bottom line is about what you’re willing to do. I
served a group of nations that claimed ideals almost as high as
yours—at least in public—ideals our enemies were happy to exploit.
Most choices we made ended ugly in one way or another. But—much to
my personal surprise—it turned out that holding onto those ideals
is what eventually started to turn the tide. In the meantime,
you’ve got imperfect choices.”

He flashes a graphic of the colony up over the
table.

“You can turn your technology to try to harden your
control over the site, but the fact is: Your opponents aren’t much
impressed with your magic toys and your death-proofing. Outcome:
you invest a lot of time, resources and likely blood into securing
the place, and they figure out a humiliating way to beat you within
a week.

“Now don’t give me that look like I’m just telling
what
won’t
work,” he snaps before anyone can comment. “I
know you’ve been thinking about this, so I’m trying to save you the
grief. Better options… Well, if it were me—and it isn’t—I’d
consider two plays…”