The God Mars Book One: CROATOAN (55 page)

The small flyers swarm for us very much like angry
bees. I see flares as a few fire rockets back at our
ASVs—apparently Bly had been saving for such a fight. Our pilots
have to take evasive and spend their turrets on stopping the
incoming projectiles. More of our rockets fly at the Dutchman.

“Keep your distance from the small craft,” I remind
our pilots. “Don’t…”

I hear our latest volley of rockets detonate, but
when I look to the Dutchman, it’s no more worse for it—the bursts
of the rockets show me they detonated dozens of meters short of
target, blowing up in midair.

“What…?” Matthew begins. But then it gets even
stranger. The swarm of flyers suddenly gets knocked back like they
hit a powerful wind. A few recover enough to fire more rockets, but
they’re no longer aiming at our ships. Their rockets also burst in
midair.

“We can take it from here, Colonel Ram,” I hear a
familiar voice in my Link. It’s Paul. I look south, in the
direction the pirate flyers were shooting at last, and I’m not
entirely surprised to see one of the modified ETE aircraft sliding
silently and gracefully to move between us and the pirates. A
handful of blue sealsuits stands atop the ship, Spheres and Rods in
hand.

The Dutchman turns its big guns on them, but their
projectiles get bounced away long before they hit. The small flyers
try to rally, but a few gestures from the ETE Rods damages their
motors enough that they have to set down or crash.

The ETE ship holds position between us while the
Dutchman tries a few more cannon volleys before giving up. I
scramble back up the hillside for a better view. Sakina is there
waiting for me, shaking the dust out of her cloak in thick
clouds.

A hundred yards or so away I see Bly on the sand,
retreating in the direction of his damaged ship as quickly as he
can manage, frantically dragging a shapeless something I realize is
what remains of his chief gunner. I feel metal under my boots and
find myself standing on his broken sword.

Paul—I assume it’s Paul—levitates down to me once the
pirates have organized themselves into retreat.

“I’m sorry we couldn’t get here sooner,” he—it is
Paul—tells me sincerely. “No one would have suffered, but as you
know, our Council takes its time with these decisions.”

“And what decisions have you come to?” I ask him
diplomatically.

“You will have no further trouble establishing your
contact with Earth, Colonel.”

“I’m thinking you have more than that to tell me,” I
press him.

With his mask sealed, I can’t see his expression, his
eyes, only myself reflected in his lenses, dirty and bloodied.

He takes a moment to answer me, his helmet turning to
watch the pirates’ retreat.

“The Guardians will keep the peace, Colonel. There
will be no unnecessary loss of life. Mars is
our
responsibility to preserve. We will do this to the best of our
ability.”

I find I have nothing to say to him. He stays a few
more moments in silence, then flies away.

14 December, 2015:

Our fifteenth day of transmitting our cry for help
out into space, and there’s still no reply.

Anton and Rick continue to report in shifts every few
hours from the Candor transmitter site: Everything still appears to
be working perfectly. And though the signal reaching Earth will not
be much stronger or more sophisticated than those sent by the early
lander missions,
someone
should have heard us by now.

At least what we can pick up on our tinkered receiver
array lets us know that the human race is not dead and gone: There
is
background noise, a chaotic buzz of orbital chatter
leaking from what appear to be global communications. Anton
occasionally manages to filter the barest snippets of recognizable
language, but not enough to make sense of. Most of it appears to be
deeply encrypted, and beyond what UNMAC had used to defeat
corporate or Eco eavesdropping and hacking.

But what’s most discouraging is that there’s
absolutely no sign of any kind of signal aimed out into space.
Earth seems to have turned itself entirely inward. (And we all
wonder what’s become of our home world, across a scale of
possibilities from tragic to terrifying.)

There’s nothing else to do but keep trying, so we
keep beaming our call across space, varying our message every day
or so, trying to tell our tale, trying to get someone to respond. I
find it hard to believe, even if some totalitarian government
ruling in absolute fear of contamination has put a draconian ban on
interplanetary communication, that not one rogue hopeful soul has
been keeping an ear out for us (and has the means to send at least
a ping back in our direction).

(Anton speculated that maybe their technology has
become so advanced that we would be heard as just so much
meaningless interference to be filtered out. But the idle
speculation game gets us nowhere—we’ll either find out when we get
a reply, or we’ll never know.)

There has been no further interference with our relay
system, just as the ETE assured. But there have been
attempts
: We monitored the Guardians responding to
“threatening approaches” by the Air Pirates three times within the
first ten days after they broke up our little confrontation.

The ETE must have set up a remote monitoring system,
because we haven’t seen any flights that look like patrols or
detected any regular Guardian presence near the transmitter sites
or during our supply flights, yet they respond to anything that
approaches our outposts within minutes. The outcome is always the
same: Zodangan ships damaged and repulsed by force, their weapons
deflected harmlessly. No apparent loss of life. The pirates limp
away.

That should be comforting, but it isn’t. And of
course I realize the obvious irony: This is
exactly
what I
asked them to do, from the first time I faced their Council.

And it
will
save lives,
is
saving
lives.

But that’s probably not how Earth will see it.
Assuming they ever respond.

In a few more months, the conjunction window will
close, and we’ll be out of call range for another two years, if we
still have the means by then.

That might not be the worst outcome.

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The God Mars continues in Book Two: Lost Worlds
About the Author:

Michael Rizzo is an artist, martial artist, collector
(and frequent user) of fine weaponry, and has had a long, varied
and brutal career in the mental health and social services
battlefield. (He is locally regarded as the Darth Vader of social
work.)

His fiction series include
Grayman
and
The
God Mars
.

He causes trouble in person mostly in the Pacific
Northwest.

For updates and original art, visit Michael on
Facebook.com
.