The God Mars Book One: CROATOAN (52 page)

“It’s okay!” Morales confirms, sounding more than
irritated. “It’s just O2. No mix.” MAI gets the blast doors shut
and cranks up the exhaust fans. Samuels pops her emergency hatch
and scrambles out, looking mostly intact on the sentry
monitors.

Lisa sends another Pinball. No sense wasting our own
rockets—the Nomads are smart enough to avoid giving us a
target.

Sakina immediately volunteers to deal with the
situation, but I insist she remain at Melas Two with me. Her review
of the video feed confirms that the attack was most likely by
Farouk’s band. A call to Abbas confirms that they’ve got a new
leader: Farouk’s nephew Mohamed, young and eager to make his name,
and by all reports smarter than his late uncle.

We keep close scans of the valley all day. I agree
with Lisa’s unwillingness to risk sending troops to flush out the
Nomads. They haven’t moved since the attack, likely unwilling to
show themselves no matter how badly they’re hurt.

Nightfall confirms this theory, as motion sensors and
night-vision show cloaks slinking away in the dark and cold. In the
morning, a flyover finds three bodies. We make a show of giving
them a quick burial in the gravelly soil close to where they
fell.

Morales needs two new wings, one tail assembly and
some cockpit plexi to fix the AAV, some of which she can scavenge
from the other wrecks, the rest she can patch together. Spare
landing gear parts are still plentiful in stores. Samuels was
offered another ship, but seems content with being grounded for
awhile.

But with all the excitement, we weren’t paying as
much attention as we should have to Anton’s mission.

15 November, 2115:

Day one was mostly uneventful.

The two ships took a course close to the Melas
Northeast Rim, keeping them at least fifty miles away from the PK
colonies of Industry, Pioneer and Frontier. It passes them under
the nose of the ETE Blue Station, but it also passes them close to
the original site of the Zodanga Colony, and that remains an
unknown quantity—something Matthew reminded me of when he
criticized the restraint I’d shown to the Nomads who fired on Melas
Three.

“I see this going one of two ways, Mikey: We fail to
contact Earth this cycle and we’re on our own, maybe two more
years, maybe more years than we’ve got. Or we
do
contact
Earth, and it’s at least two years until we see actual relief,
assuming
they’re not too scared of us to send it.”

“Which is why I’m not risking an escalation we can’t
afford,” I reminded him pointlessly.

“I know. But we haven’t managed to secure our own
sectors of this big ditch, much less gotten out into Coprates for a
look around. My point is: If Earthside Command is anything at all
like they were, I fully expect they’ll want to know what they’re
coming back to, so our first orders will be to survey and secure,
no matter how lean we are. And if we keep playing the besieged,
we’re going to run out of bullets.”

We watched the trip out over the Link feed. The
scenery alone has a lot of our personnel tapped into the video:
Candor Chasma is rimmed in deep, long sculpted ranges that radiate
like the ribs of a giant clam shell, carved either by mega-slides
or the draining of ancient seas down into Melas, when the surface
split as the planet went from having an Earth-like molten core to
dead cold solid rock.

We get views of endless mountain ranges, damascened
as the ancient layers of soil and rock lie exposed across their
declines, and a valley floor of fractured crust that looks like the
skin of some planet-sized reptile.

The sponsors behind Frontier Colony specifically
built here to explore this geological wonderland, and Zodanga
established itself on the junction between Melas and Candor—the
east side of the Candor Gap—in hopes of supplying the craft and
fuel to explore both environs. But since Candor isn’t as deep or
conveniently sheer-walled as the central rift valleys, the ETE
engineers excluded it from their “Marineris Phase” despite its
proximity to Melas. So Candor has no atmosphere net. The
electrostatic force field ends beyond the relatively narrow Gap,
just past the parallel mountain ranges to the west where Pioneer
Colony sits.

And our biggest surprise that day: The net is
closed.

We lost contact with Anton’s flight as soon as they
passed beyond the net, just at the point that the junction opened
out into the vast expanse of Candor. The ETE had failed to warn us
about this: the net descends close to the valley floor here to keep
the air and moisture in, like staking a tarp down over precious
cargo, an ionic dam across the fifty-mile-wide Gap.

Thankfully Anton had considered this possibility, and
came prepared to establish a strong Link through the net’s
interference by planting a pair of relay transmitters right on
either side of the threshold.

Surveys and tests to determine the ideal location for
the Melas-side relay took most of the afternoon. Sinking and tuning
it took another two hours, with an audibly nervous Sergeant Horst
maintaining a vigilant perimeter since the site lay within a
hundred klicks of both Pioneer and Frontier. Thankfully, there was
no outward sign that either PK stronghold took any notice of us,
though I have little doubt they would at least be keeping an eye on
our activities.

Once the signal was stable, they packed up and flew
just beyond the net to begin planting the Candor-side relay. The
sun was already starting to set. The ASV transmitters came through
snowy at best, so watching the mission became an exercise in
frustration and sensory strain.

Anton managed to give us a running list of complaints
about the working conditions beyond the net: Only a five percent
atmosphere and sixty degrees colder, which meant heavy pressure
suits for any work outside. (How quickly we’ve been spoiled…) More
problematic: once settled, the ASVs would succumb to engine icing
(a drawback of having steam as the exhaust product), and need long
warm-up time before they could move again. With night falling, that
committed them to a stay until morning, even if they got the second
relay done faster than the first. And a quick job wasn’t likely,
between the difficulty working in heavy suits and what the extreme
cold did to tools (even those supposedly designed to withstand
original surface conditions).

If that wasn’t enough, the cosmic radiation proved
almost more of an annoyance than the thin air and the cold. It was
the net (and not the density of the new atmosphere) that filtered
the worst of what bombarded the surface from space. That meant even
shorter working shifts on the surface, and increased interference
with the Link even with the relays. Even if they planted another
relay between the net boundary and the planned site for the main
transmitter, the Link would still be fuzzy at best, and
non-existent if anything happened to any of the relays.

Despite Anton’s drive to see his project completed,
they’d managed little more than surveyed a promising site for the
Candor relay by nightfall. Horst’s squad set up perimeter security,
and they huddled inside for what promised to hit a hundred below
zero. Until that point, they’d seen no sign of life anywhere along
their course.

At 24:30 Melas Mean Time (just before “Martian
Midnight” in a day that’s twenty-four hours and thirty-seven
minutes long), the Melas relay went down.

Morales discouraged me from taking out any more of
her precious refits, warning me that they wouldn’t manage well in
the icy night. So Matthew begrudgingly stood by with an assembled
relief force to wait for sunrise while I took the Lancer out to see
what had happened, its bay crammed with a squad of Rios’ H-A
troopers, Smith at the controls and an all-too-eager Sakina along
for the adventure. And I brought my sword.

The silence from the net boundary continued as we
flew north, blind in the dark except for what radar told us was out
there, making ghostly virtual landscapes on the Lancer’s cockpit
screens. But every now and then we would see the slightest shadow
flash by on our periphery, barely enough to register, but
definitely airborne.

“Something in the wind?” Matthew considered
unconvincingly as he kept constant contact with us. “Dust
storm?”

“Or stealth material,” I agree with his fears. “But
not fast like a Shinkyo fighter.”

“Could be our legendary Air Pirates,” Smith offers a
little more cheerfully than I’d like. I look to Sakina.

“The Zodangans usually strike fast and in force,
using small nimble flyers or dropping raiders on lines from larger
airships. But I’ve only seen them prey on small camps or caravans
without much means to strike back and no hope of outrunning them. I
have heard no tales of them attacking a strong target, and they are
quick to run if they meet significant resistance.” The disdain in
her voice is actually stronger than when she speaks of the
Shinkyo.

“Should we divert and try to get a better look?”
Smith asks.

“Negative,” I focus. “And let’s not shoot anything
until we know what it is.”

We found the relay—or at least where the relay had
been—within an hour after it had gone silent. It had been ripped up
out of its patch of ground, securing stakes and all.

“Nomads?” Matthew asks from base. “Or Pirates?”

“I don’t see any footprints except ours,” I tell him
after we’ve lit up the site and taken a close scan. That says our
thieves probably flew in and out. Taking advantage of an unguarded
prize. I look at Sakina for some kind of confirmation, but all she
does is narrow her eyes behind her mask. “Let’s move on.”

“Keep signaling,” Lisa prompts. “We’ll lose you once
you cross the boundary, but the transmitter team should be close
enough to pick you up.”

It takes another five minutes of tense silence before
we hear Sergeant Horst cut through the static, his voice urgent,
almost breathless.

“This is Uplink One, Colonel… Glad you could make it
to the party… Watch your sides coming in. You see a radar shadow,
trust me: Shoot it.”

“Sitrep?”

But we see it ourselves soon enough. One of the ASVs
is on fire. The turrets of the other take the occasional burst into
the darkness. Horst’s squad has set up a defensive perimeter,
watching all directions. The floodlights that would otherwise light
the site have been pointed outwards.

“You’re secure to land, Colonel,” Horst reports, “but
you’d make less of a target if you didn’t. We’d lift our remaining
ship, but we’ve got too much icing.”

“Casualties?”

“Three wounded. Two will need Evac ASAP. Could have
been worse. Might still be.”

“Staley?”

Horst hesitates for a moment. “He’ll live. Got cut up
when we got jumped, but he’s patched for transport. Tough kid, just
a little slow when it comes to getting out of the way.”

“What happened here?” I demand.

“Incoming!” Smith cuts me off as the Lancer’s radar
registers projectiles flying at the ship. I can hear the booming of
something that sounds like cannon. Smith spins the turrets to
return fire, but instead of an incoming rocket detonating,
something solid slams the hull. External cameras show what looks
like a massive wad of heavy chain bouncing off our starboard
side.

“Watch that stuff,” Horst warns, “It took Specialist
Bailey’s leg clean off, and I count him lucky.”

“What is it?”

“What it looks like, sir: Scrap metal. Junk. Probably
shot out of a homebrew cannon.”

I look again to Sakina, but she just shakes her head,
her eyes saying she’s never encountered such a thing.

Smith is already taking evasive action, and launches
flares. Against the darkness we can see what look like small
gliders or autogiros flitting like moths. Our guns chew at them,
but I’m not sure if we do any damage as they disappear as quickly
as they come into view. They give almost no radar image, so it’s
hard to get a lock.

I see flashes in the distance from roughly back the
way we came—back just inside the net—followed in seconds by more
booming, and more random metal flies at us.

“Those light flyers can’t have cannons like that,”
Smith assesses.

“They’ve got a mom,” Horst confirms, “hiding back
there in the dark. You can see it on IR when the cannons flash.
It’s
big
, but I couldn’t tell you what it is.”

Smith takes the ship up and heads for the cannon
flash, figuring the big guns to be our most pressing threat, and
that, by climbing, their guns might not be able to manage the
elevation to hit us without losing range. He’s right for several
seconds before we’ve closed in enough that he has to dodge another
spray of scraps, but there was also no firing in the interval,
which tells me it took time for them to adjust their guns, or
they’re just not used to shooting at anything that can move
well.

“Keep dancing, Captain,” I tell him. “I think they’re
aiming manually.”

Then we’re close enough for our flares to show us
“mom”: It looks like a dirigible, but it’s got large fans flanking
it, and masts of sails that hang beneath it (making it look like a
capsized clipper ship) to move it with the wind. At least a hundred
feet long, it gives back only a minimal radar shadow.

“
That
I can hit,” Smith offers happily.

“Hurt it, don’t kill it,” I order.

Our guns rip up the fabric sides of the dirigible
body and rake what looks like the “gun deck” below it. I can see
figures scrambling for cover. At least one body falls away into the
night. By the time Smith banks and makes a return pass, the big
ship seems to be slowly “sinking” and tries to turn away, heading
back into Melas. Then our view gets masked as we collide with
something in mid-air—one of the little flyers has either crashed
into us or tried to ram us. The fragile craft comes apart on
impact—it seems to consist of little more than fabric and frame and
fan-like props, now shredded scrap that falls lazily away leaving
us apparently none the worse for it. But then I realize the intent
of the kamikaze action: I hear gunfire pinging our hull from above,
and the rattle of something that sounds like a mining drill cutting
into us. Smith confirms: