The God Mars Book Two: Lost Worlds (13 page)

“You really think war or unconditional surrender are
your only options?”

“How is what you’re asking us to buy into
not
surrender?” he challenges.

“And that makes fighting your only choice?”

“Do you honestly think
any
of the other
factions on this planet are going to disagree with me when
Earthside troops start landing?”

I look past him at his colony. There’s still no sign
of life visible above ground.

“How much blood is it worth?” I ask him.

“How much blood is anybody’s home worth?” he
counters. “Or their family? Or freedom? That’s what we’re talking
about, isn’t it?”

“Colonel Janeway, frankly I have no fucking idea what
we’re talking about. Neither of us knows what’s going to happen.
You’re just all quick to assume the worst case. You don’t
know.”

“I know enough, at least about this planet,” he gets
somewhat softer. “Turn your Links off and speak free: Can you
honestly tell me you believe it isn’t going to come down to a
choice between one kind of death or another?”

“So who makes that choice here?” I ask heavily. "You?
Your soldiers? Your Civvies? What happens if some of you would
rather take their chances with Earthside than go down?”

He brings back his hard little grin, shakes his head
like I’m being stupid.

“You assume it’s just going to be our little
homestead and our guns against all the power Earthside can throw at
us,” he tells me, “but there are
other
powers on this planet
besides Earthside and your Nano-Freaks. We have our own options—you
can count on that. And no, I’m not going to ruin the surprise. For
now, Colonel, you’ve done your part, played your little on-camera
performance for the benefit of the folks back home—those so-called
‘people’ you’ve never met. Now run along.
We
won’t be
serving lunch.”

I let him have his moment, though I can’t say I’m
convinced that he’s either bluffing or deluded. I shake my head,
give him a sad frown.

“Okay, Colonel,” I allow him. “Just don’t draw
unnecessary fire. That’s all I ask.”

“I’ll pick my battles myself, thanks—it’s one luxury
I have that you don’t. Don’t draw unnecessary fire yourself.”

They salute, turn and walk away across the dust.

5 April, 2116:

“I don’t envy you your position, Colonel Ram,”
General Richards is offering in his latest video message. “But
consider your recon and contact missions on hold for the time
being. We’re having quite the debate here on how to proceed. While
we would very much like more intel on this ETE ‘green zone’ in
Coprates, the cost would likely be unacceptable.”

“Losing two men didn’t sit well with the media back
home,” Matthew translates bitterly. “Glad Regev and Wasserman
didn’t die completely for nothing.”

“Or our latest reports scared them shitless,” I give
him back.

“Our latest reports scared
me
shitless,” he
returns. “Let me just go on record as saying this is not what I
expected when I signed on for this tour.” I catch him stifling a
cough. Smile at his dry joke.

“We’ve moved up priority in launching a new satellite
network,” Richards continues when we un-pause him. “Hopefully, we
can get some of the intel we need from orbit. Our contractors have
also made progress with a new generation of AAV. I’ve forwarded the
simulations—it’s lighter, faster, more nimble and more fuel
efficient. Apparently the new atmosphere will allow us to make the
new craft more airplane-like, so they won’t have to rely on engines
for the majority of the lift. Long recon should be much easier.
We’ll also be sending upgraded armor and weapons, including some
less-lethal options, assuming more trouble ahead with the
locals…”

“Tru’s gonna seize when she hears that,” Matthew
jokes. “Nobody cared much about ‘less lethal options’ when they
were shooting at her Ecos.”

“Maybe Earth
has
changed,” I allow, but don’t
really buy.

“… We can’t be killing the people we’re trying to
save,” Richards addends as if he could hear my comment. His tone is
probably meant to sound humanitarian, but with what we’ve gleaned
about the renewed and pervasive influence of religion on all things
Earthside, the term “save” comes across as a bit chilling.
Matthew’s raised eyebrows let me know he took the term
similarly.

“I also want to let you know that we have been coming
to uncomfortable terms with the ETE situation,” Richards’ tone goes
heavy. “It’s not just their unregulated and unmonitored advancement
and use of potentially catastrophic technology…”

“Here it comes,” Matthew sighs. “The UNCORT
Inquisition speaks.”

“…but perhaps more distressing is how their
scientists did not even
consider
the situation of the other
human survivors. While they claim their intent is to provide
necessary survival resources on a large scale, it’s clear that
their concern was only for their grand terraforming experiment,
that human survival was incidental. Otherwise, they would not have
stood back and let these violent and barbaric societies develop as
they have, especially given the ability to intervene that they’ve
demonstrated to you. I personally cannot imagine a more
irresponsible abuse of science for science’s sake, and I’m being
generous here. There is a more popular assessment across the UNMAC
membership that the ETE are conducting a calculated
experiment
on these people, and are only now attempting to
correct this atrocity because they are under our scrutiny. The fact
that they apparently kept you all asleep for fifty years while they
did what they did makes them look more than guilty, and well aware
of it.”

Matthew pauses the playback again, sinks deep into
his chair. His eyes track into the distance out through the plexi
portals of the Command Tower. The wind has kicked up so much dust
we can barely see the greenhouse, but he’s looking far beyond that.
He shakes his head heavily.

“I can’t say I disagree with him,” he admits, his
hand rubbing his face.

The mid-morning dust blows always remind me of the
old Mars: the forbidding, endless desert. The empty howl of the
sharp, fast winds over thousands of miles of bare rock that recall
old horror movies set in lonely, isolated places. I remember
finding that amusing, even challenging in those days.

Then I remember that the ETE—and likely the Shinkyo
and the PK—are listening to this accusation themselves. I can’t
help but imagine what they’ll think of it, of us.

“Doesn’t mean I’m going to find Jesus or anything…”
Matthew reverses, doing his usual to keep the mood from smothering.
I give him back a smile.

“We should let him finish,” I gesture to Richards’
face, a scowl frozen on our screens that does look very much like
his grandfather when we’d done something to seriously annoy him.
Matthew lets the feed flow.

“However, the Security Council has to reluctantly
accept that the ETE are our best tactical asset on the planet at
this point, at least for the foreseeable future,” Richards says
after a pained breath, now looking even more like his grandfather
did in those times when he had to relay orders he would rather
protest. “As such, you are authorized to cultivate a strategic
relationship with them. What that means is go ahead and help them
fix this mess if they’re willing, setting our opinions aside for
the present. Do
not
put your people at unnecessary risk.
Priority is to avoid further casualties on all sides. Work with
them as long as you feel you can trust them to do the right thing,
Colonel. But do your best to discourage further militarization of
the ETE unless absolutely necessary to ensure your mission
objectives. And I should not have to remind you to report on this
situation fully and regularly.

“Attached is a report for Doctor Halley from our
medical research team. Our thoughts and prayers are with you. God
bless you all. Message ends.”

I spent the rest of the afternoon effectively
avoiding my “mission.”

I did not contact the ETE, nor did they attempt to
contact me. Perhaps their thinking is the same as mine: that this
new news needs digesting, and that we shouldn’t talk about it until
it settles. Bad enough to make the accusation over what Earthside
knows is a monitored transmission (perhaps a calculated
decision—some kind of diplomatic crowbar?), but then to follow up
with a barely-masked intent to manipulate. “We think you are
monsters and cannot condone or forgive anything you have done, but
we will happily use you to further our own ends…”

Instead, I called Abbas on the Link and spent an hour
updating him, trading opinions, considering any of a number of
mostly bad places this could go. I realized as I was doing it that
I was serving my own agenda: Put the Nomads in the loop, hoping the
word would spread among their tribes: This is going to get ugly,
but I mean to keep it from being a massacre. And I fully intend to
let the “natives” know what to expect.

Abbas reflects my concerns, as well as at least a
fraction of Earthside’s distrust of the ETE. However, it’s clear
that given a choice between the ETE and UNMAC, there will be no
surprises among the survivor descendants: the ETE may be some
combination of gods and monsters, but Earthside is the
devil
.

I follow that call with an open-ended message on the
PK frequencies, knowing Janeway is at least listening even if he’s
too stubborn to respond. I let him know I know he’s been hearing
all this, and try to reassure him again that I want to avoid a
fight. And that’s where I leave it: no demands, no requests, no
pleas. As expected, I get no reply.

After lunch, Matthew and I replay Richards’ latest
with the junior officers, chief techs, medical staff, and Tru. The
mood is tense, ambivalent. It’s getting clearer with each
transmission that we’re not only far from the relief we’d hoped for
in calling home, but that time has taken away any semblance of that
“home.”

I get the most tension this time from Thomas, and ask
her to stay behind after everyone else has gone.

“Say what you’re feeling, Lieutenant.”

She chews her lip, stares at the table top. She
doesn’t answer.

“I should never have sent your team in there,” I tell
her. “The outcome was a given. The only victory was that we didn’t
lose all of you.”

“We understood the risks, sir,” she gives me.

“Not fully,” I correct her. “But we’re beginning to.
I won’t send any of you into a meat grinder when the ROE’s dictate
against effectively defending yourselves.”

She takes a deep breath. I see her teeth grind. “Is
that your call to make, sir?”

“Not much they can do about it if they don’t like it,
Lieutenant. But I need to know how you feel about that.”

Her eyes finally come up to meet mine. Her jaw
muscles are hard-clenched. Her fists ball on the table top.

“I didn’t come here to hide from a fight, sir.”

“You didn’t come here to get marooned for
half-a-century, either. Fifty years ago, we were the front line in
trying to protect something.” I walk over to the plexi, look out
across the valley. “Now, we’re
it
. Eleven-hundred-odd
bodies, four barely-airworthy ships, two bunkers and a cache of
guns—that’s all that’s left of the UNMAC you signed with.
Are
we still here to protect something?”

She manages to shake her head, shrugs.

“I’m not sure either, Lieutenant,” I give her. “And
that’s dangerous. We all need to make a decision. Mine is to not
get us all killed before we even know where we stand. All around us
is a world we don’t know. Behind us and over forty million miles
away is a world we don’t know
anymore
.” I sit down across
the table from her, lock her eyes. “So: Are we still here to
protect something?”

“I’d like to think so, sir.” But she looks away when
she answers.

I give her a few moments. Then reach out.

“I served with your father, Lieutenant. Good man,
good soldier, good leader.”

“He spoke highly of you, too, sir.”

“I don’t know what happened to him,” I tell her
quietly. “I know he’s dead—I read the reports they sent us on our
families and friends. I know most of them are dead, but I only know
it from reports, the cold details of obituaries. I wasn’t there. I
was asleep.”

I watch her chew her lip, reset her jaw.

“I still haven’t come to grips with that; going to
sleep and waking up and the world you knew and everyone you knew
are gone. I don’t think any of us have. So I’m not sure how we
define ourselves now. But we each have to decide what we are when
everything else is gone.”

She shakes her head, closes her eyes.

“You’re a good soldier and a good leader,
Lieutenant,” I give her. “I could use you. I don’t exactly know
what I’m doing yet, but I could use you.”

I get up and start to head for the hatch.

“Sir?” she calls after me.

“Yes, Lieutenant?”

“I
do
think we’re still here to protect
something.”

“Thank you, Lieutenant. So do I.”

Halley is waiting for me outside. I realize I’d
forgotten what Richards’ had said about a report for her.

“We need to talk, Colonel.”

I follow her back to her office in Medical. She
doesn’t say another word until we’re sitting across her desk from
each other.

“I’d sent Earthside everything I could on our
extended Hiber-Sleep,” she begins evenly. “I’m no expert on these
things, and given whatever the ETE did to extend our sleep, it’s
all well beyond my understanding. So they put a team on it, and
finally had something worth giving back to me.”

“I’m assuming the news isn’t good,” I reflect.

“It’s not all bad, Colonel. I want that to be clear
up front. But let’s just say you aren’t physically seventy-one.
You’re more like seventy-six, after being in a five year coma.
Hiber-Sleep is a chemical process to slow cellular metabolism down
to a fraction of normal. It was based on what certain amphibians or
insects can do to survive long periods dormant.”