The God Mars Book Two: Lost Worlds (25 page)

“We aren’t as different as you think.”

“It’s shaken up the Guardian teams,” he shifts the
subject somewhat, discounting my statement as an idle comfort
rather than a half-assed confession. “We’ve had a lot of
withdrawals. Some were pressured by their elders, their parents.
The Council itself has doubts. The ones that remain… We don’t know
what to be, Colonel. We wanted to keep the peace, to preserve life.
Now we are faced with a machine enemy that we don’t understand,
that we can’t negotiate with. We will have to destroy to survive.
Or hide again.”

He un-holsters his “gun” and lets it expand to
sub-machinegun size, hefts it like it’s very heavy in his
hands.

“We swore we would
never
make weapons,” he
mourns. “I have made myself a gun.”

“I once believed in my heart that being strong enough
to never have to take a life was the ultimate goal of any warrior,”
I try. “But then I got drawn into the violence of the world, and
have spent my time killing and destroying ever since. I do it
because I believe it must be done for a greater good, to protect
life. But each time I do, it reminds me that I’m
weak
, that
I have to kill because I can’t manage better.”

I let that settle in, let the dust blow around our
boots for awhile.

“I have thought about what it might be like to be
like you,” I admit (and in fact I’ve been thinking about it more
and more since Matthew died), “to be functionally immortal, to have
amazingly strong weapons that don’t kill. I wonder if I could have
done better in my career if I had your tools, your strengths. But I
know the world wouldn’t make it that easy, that I would still find
myself in situations where the only solution I could manage, no
matter how strong or invincible I was, was to take life to save
life. And I’ve watched you struggle with that as well, Paul. It
isn’t because you’re not a warrior, that you’ve got no talent for
it—I wouldn’t do much better than you have even with all of your
tools. If I wanted to do my best to protect life on this planet, I
would still need weapons, even if I was just this side of a
god.”

I see him smile, however darkly. Shake his head.
Chuckle like it hurts him.

“’Just this side of a god’…” he repeats into the
rising wind. “A hell of a place to be…”

21 October, 2116:

Before breakfast I take Sakina out for another
session of target practice, away from the eyes of the base because
I don’t think she likes being watched when she isn’t being perfect.
Walking back when our tanks are getting low, it strikes me how much
of the base Thomasen has re-buried, hoping to protect us from the
Discs. It looks like a quarry—only the two towers, the launch bays,
the main airlocks and the remaining battery turrets are exposed.
Melas Three is similarly covered (though there is much less of it
to cover). I expect if we had not already contacted Earth, looking
now they would not be able to see us.

The most visible part of the base from any distance
is the greenhouse, which has been “walled” with high berms of
bulldozed rock on all sides—only the plexi roof remains visible,
like the mirror surface of a liquid-filled crater. The next thing
that catches the eye is the rough stone pyramid on the hilltop to
the north, the monument for our honored dead. I never go up there
unless it’s to plant another body, and I haven’t had to do that
since I buried Matthew three months ago. I still don’t make a habit
of visiting graves.

After breakfast I send my scheduled report back to
Earthside command. I play my best diplomacy in telling them what
Paul dropped on me, and I ask them if they did indeed receive the
ETE files, and if so what have they learned. Otherwise I report on
what progress my section chiefs have made in repairing or
cannibalizing our dwindling assets, and how our Nomad allies have
responded to the training they received for the few guns we can
spare them.

I imagine this must be what war was like many
centuries ago, before our technologies made Planet Earth a small
place, easily traversed. My career before Mars had been a series of
short, violent operations; surgical strikes with minimal
time-on-target, then extraction back to the relative comfort of a
base, to eat and drink and sleep and fuck and train and wait for
the next mission brief, which was never more than a few days in the
heyday of the Global War on Terror. Long missions were few and far
between, and only in the most dire circumstances. And as the Terror
War finally turned (something the popular consciousness
unfortunately insisted was partially because of me), we evolved
from commando to cop, and I became an unwilling bureaucrat.

Now I sit and wait for months at a time, without the
benefit of global intelligence to tell me what’s coming, knowing
I’m barely able to hold the ground I’m clinging to, keeping busy
with the routine survival of a thousand-plus people, with relief an
eternity away. My operations theater is maybe a hundred miles in
any direction—a fraction of human-occupied Mars—and I can’t even
ensure that my own perimeter is secured.

I remember the Zen allusion of “the world in a bowl.”
Or the Norse Valhalla: a contained world where dead heroes all live
together in a great hall, spending their days fighting endless,
pointless battles, waiting for the day when they will go fight the
most important one.

I’m losing my mind. I idly blame Matthew for not
being here to keep that from happening. I not-so-idly still blame
Earthside’s stupidity for getting him killed.

I stare out through the replaced plexi of the Command
Tower across the desert, watching the distant sun shimmer off the
roof of the greenhouse. And I realize I only really feel this way
when I am here, doing my job, shut inside this concrete. I would
rather be in the sterile caverns of the ETE Stations, even though
everyone who lives there looks at me like I’m some child or animal.
I would rather be in a simple shelter eating simple food with Abbas
and his Nomads. I would even rather be sharing a ritual cup of tea
with Hatsumi Sakura, even though she speaks in riddles and will
very likely always be an enemy.

But I don’t think of Earth.

And I remember I have something better to do.

I find Anton where he usually “lives” in Sciences. He
spends much of his time there, even apparently sleeps there in his
chair, even though he still has most of the run of the base. (His
“chair” can even climb our stairwells, so he doesn’t have to rely
on the few elevators to get between decks.) It’s one particular
part of the base that remains an accessibility issue, I think for
both of us, and that’s why I’m here.

“I sent Earthside the question about what the ETE
sent them,” I start with business talk.

“Are you expecting a straight answer?” he fences,
apparently trusting our relationship enough to risk sounding
seditious. I allow him a shrug.

“I still think the ETE are right,” he pushes into his
most recent and understandable obsession, bringing up his
“blueprints” of what he’s painstakingly assumed are the innards of
a Disc drone, what he’s worked the last several weeks since he’s
been out of Medical (and even before he was out of Medical)
attempting to reverse engineer. I have to admit: he’s done better
than teams of military specialists did all during the original Disc
War. “The Disc tech is way too advanced for the era. Maybe not now,
but definitely then. Probably now, too, given how Luddite things
seem to have gone back home.”

I feel venom when he says the word “home”.

“I’m sure Chandry and his brain trust are having
seizures with it,” he keeps rolling when I don’t say anything.
“Probably why they haven’t been talking to us. I’m sure they’ll say
it’s security, that they’re afraid someone’s listening, but they’re
probably avoiding the more obvious conclusions.”

“Time travel or aliens?” I play, really just waiting
for a good social segue. And in my head I hear Matthew say
something appropriately sarcastic.

“It’s either that or someone from home had one hell
of a technological jump on the rest of the industrial world and
kept it to themselves, just used it to keep the competition
down.”

“Then why not market for profit?” I ask the question
he’s probably stewed for weeks himself. “At least go military with
it.”

“And why go so far to stop competition that was
obviously so far behind him?” I notice he uses the singular
pronoun, like he wants someone specific—not a corporation or agency
or government—to blame.

“Maybe we are talking about an anti-research
extremist. Somebody brilliant who bought into a version of the Eco
philosophy and didn’t think they were radical enough,” I try the
easy possibility—Occam’s Razor—but don’t fully believe. I don’t
know what to believe. “Terrorists have always been quick to toss
their revulsion for their enemy’s ways if their enemy’s tech would
aid the cause. The Muslim Rads hated everything about the West but
would gladly use Western aid and technology when it served.”

“So they hide some kind of cutting edge drone-growing
system on something headed here and let it go once it made
landing?” he considers, sounding like he also doesn’t believe. “Or
launch it separately and miraculously manage not to get
caught?”

“Fire and forget,” I dwell on my most unsatisfying
assumption. “Then maybe the programming just went rogue on them,
and they were in no position to do anything about it.”

“Or it did exactly what it was designed to,” he
damns. I’m certainly not the one to tell him no one would do such a
thing.

He digests the darkness for a few breaths, staring at
his work.

“Scary thoughts.”

Time to face my own.

“You should move into Colonel Burke’s old quarters,”
I just drop what I came here to. “You could use the extra square
footage.” I try not to make it sound like sympathy, pity; just
practicality.

I hear him breathe, hesitate.

“I don’t know… I just seems…”

“I’ll pack up his things,” I volunteer to do
something I’ve been forbidding my staff to take care of for three
months. “You need the space. And I’m sure one of the other techs
would love your little private cell. It’s just practical.”

“Or I could take Colonel Copeland’s room,” he flips
it on me, unintentionally reminding me of another mystery we’ve
totally failed to make headway solving. He turns his chair toward
me, looks me in the eyes. “Speaking of what we hang on to… I
liked
Colonel Burke. I liked him a lot. And I miss him. I
understand the practical thing, but I don’t think I can take his
space.”

“It’s not a shrine, it’s a room,” I say it almost
more to convince myself. “A shitty one at that. But it’s
two-and-a-half feet wider than yours and the shower is more
accessible. He’d want you to have it. I can’t think of a better use
for it.”

He swallows hard, looks down at his legs. Nods.

Richards’ reply is waiting for me after my first
spin-time. It’s been sent with a new encryption that only MAI
should be able to unscramble.

“Forgive our secrecy, Colonel Ram,” he begins, “but
the information you’ve asked about is highly sensitive. What I can
tell you is that we’ve learned little more than you have about our
enemy: That the technology is very advanced, and defies any attempt
to trace it back to any source manufacturer. As we will not attempt
to reverse-engineer nanotechnology of this nature, we’ve had to
make do with simulations. We agree with Doctor Staley’s and Doctor
Stilson’s assessments that the Discs likely take up to three months
to self-manufacture. That time should be pro-rated in the case of
self-repair, depending on the damage. That means you
are
likely due for another attack any day now, assuming that the
manufacturing system is on Mars and still operating. We also agree
that the Discs are likely AI-driven, so there could very well be no
local operator, nor was there any detected command signal coming
from Earth before or during the attack on your facilities. Further
encounters may reveal patterns in whatever programming is loaded
into these weapons, but your team’s theories match our own: Their
mission appears geared to completely stop nanotech and biotech
research and production on Mars, starting from their interference
in initial colony exploration, through the total destruction of
facilities and the severing of all interplanetary commerce in
2065.”

I catch on that, pause the message. The Discs started
hitting us
long
before anybody thought to use the planet for
scary R&D. How could whoever sent them predict the course we
would take? Unless they had insider access to corporate
designs—perhaps a disgruntled researcher? (
Or maybe because they
already knew what would happen
—my mind can’t help but flash on
that little fantasy, however ridiculous.)

I let Richards finish.

“That given, they will probably attempt to prevent
any foothold that might result in future use of the planet for
nanotech development. Even though that ‘s no longer an acceptable
possibility for us, they—or their AI—still may interpret our relief
efforts as colonial re-establishment. They likely attacked your
base just because they identified you as an active UNMAC
installation—that supports the theory that they’re operating under
some standing programming, and not under anyone’s control. Unless,
of course, it’s someone still on-planet running them that considers
you a threat.”

I fully expect to hear Matthew’s voice, blurting out
some frustrated sarcasm about how long it’s taken our betters to
figure out the obvious, and then how many big words they then need
to make it sound intelligent.

Then I finally realize that Richards looks different
today: No uniform, just a gray T-shirt. Behind him isn’t the usual
UNMAC banner that probably hangs in whatever briefing room they
usually use to call us, but only a plain white wall, which I
realize is padded like a shuttle bulkhead. And he’s got that
semi-hung-upside-down look that people get in microgravity.