The God Mars Book Four: Live Blades (6 page)

The logic behind these monsters is sound enough:
Since the ETE certainly won’t cooperate with ramping up fuel
production for regular and longer recon flights, we needed another
way to get around, to explore the far reaches of the valleys. A
reactor-powered vehicle doesn’t need refueling every few-hundred
klicks, and can take it slow enough (and get close enough) to catch
things flyovers and satellites would miss. And it can be built
on-planet from available salvage (it strikes me this was also
Chang’s preferred method).

But the missions are weeks, maybe months long, sealed
in a pressure hull, and hell-and-gone from support if something
goes wrong. And when something goes wrong, the satellites watching
over us are small reassurance.

So here we are: One eager newbie volunteer and the
rest of us exiles.

I should be off-shift, but I can’t miss this. And
neither can anyone else, as we all cram into the Bridge.

Nike Colony.

We come up on it just before sunset, the evening
winds blowing at our back, killing visibility as we lumber up on
the site in the foothills of the Catena Divide.

I catch myself checking the wind currents on the
animated satellite map, the sky-eyes view of the entire valley
chain still a novelty. Of course, it shows me the same flow
patterns every day, with minimal variation for the seasons and the
occasional effect of larger Datum-level storms, but between the
geology, geography and the Atmosphere Net, it’s as regular as
clockwork. It’s just cool to be able to see it big-picture, to see
the physics happening. The Marineris chain is thousands of klicks
long and mostly straight along the equator, looking very much like
a nasty whip-scar across the planet’s belly (with a slight
clockwise angle that tells me whatever celestial force applied the
whipping was left-handed). So when the sun comes up, the east heats
first, and the expanding air—held under the “roof” of the
electrostatic atmosphere net—blows west down the deep, narrow main
channel. As it sets, the east end cools first, and the west is the
last to stay warm, so the air pushes back eastward. (My teachers
called it a “solar atmospheric tide”, but they didn’t have
real-time orbital views to let us see it. My DIs and SOs were only
concerned with how to use the phenomena tactically, so they were
just content that it was predictable.)

I unglue from the novelty, and look to the practical:
Outside.

The Divide slopes reach extra-far into the valley
floor in this region: a full twenty klicks from the Datum-level
Crest ten klicks above us. And between us and the Primary Divide
Slope is a “wrinkle”, a low mountain range that runs parallel to
the Divide, its crest-line up to three klicks high, but still
almost ridiculously dwarfed by the much shearer and three times
higher Divide Rim behind it. Even in the rising dust haze, the view
is pretty spectacular, the setting sun highlighting the
crenellations of the ridged slopes.

But beyond that, there’s not much to see in terms of
what we really came for. Like Tyr a few days behind us, Nike is
blasted away, buried under slide and shifting dunes, just like the
satellites told us. Nothing but the barely-visibly lines of a few
broken foundations are even noticeable, and that’s with graphic
overlay of the original colony plans to help pick them out.

“Upside,” Rios tries, recording the moment for his
report. “There’s a lack of visible debris. No scrap. That probably
indicates scavenging. So somebody’s been busy here.”

Jane lets us know the atmospheric pressure here is up
above 0.33, and O2 is up another half-percent, making it breathable
without gear for several minutes, longer with acclimatization. It’s
been getting slowly but steadily richer as we head further east.
And the ruddy foothills are still studded and laced with green:
wild surface growth that started to be a common sight west of
Tranquility, and has been coming and going in patches along our
route, wherever the subsurface water, sun and soil best catch the
seed-scattering winds. Sometimes there’s even evidence of surface
water, at least temporarily: We’ve seen signs of flow-patterns in
the soil, most probably from freeze/thaw, but sometimes there’s so
much—patches of dried “mud” hundreds of meters across—that some of
the vet techs wonder if the ETE Station output clouds actual
produce “rain” in this region (another thing I’ve seen on video but
can’t imagine experiencing for real: a water shower coming out of
the whole sky).

This section of Coprates does have the benefit of two
ETE Stations—Gray and Indigo—opposite each other on the North Rim
and Divide respectively, which puts them only a hundred klicks
apart, about ninety klicks further east of us. ETE Stations are
usually at least twice that far away from each other, spaced around
the valley rims, but for some reason they decided to give this
region an extra share. Plus, since Coprates is only a third as wide
as Melas, the Atmosphere Net across it is probably much more
efficient. So even with the higher winds here, the air stays
richer, warmer, and wetter than Melas, or even West-End Coprates
where Tranquility sits.

It’s nothing like the far Northern Melas I knew
living and serving at Industry, the barren deserts… The only way we
knew there was plant life somewhere out there was from some of the
odd fresh-made food we’d take off would-be raiders, and even that
took us awhile to realize they weren’t growing in greenhouses like
we did, when we took the first one alive that was willing to talk
about the “Food Trade” from Coprates, as if that intel would be
worth his life.

So while everybody else is having another let-down
moment because we’ve yet again failed to find anything “worth” the
long, slow drive, I have to hide one of my “secret smiles”. Because
despite all the shit I’ve been through, and despite how
disappointed everybody else on this mission seems to be so far, I
realize: I’m lucky to be here. I’m lucky to see this new world.

I’m eager to go outside, to get my boots on rock and
have a proper look around, but Rios goes with caution. He tells
Jane to take a slow crawl around the colony site (or where the
colony had been, since most of the foundations are indeed buried),
then find a reasonably level place to park us for the night.

“We’re losing light and it’s getting cold. We’ll go
out fresh after breakfast, when the morning winds die down, take a
closer look…”

Then he goes to file his preliminary report, check in
with Command in orbit.

24 April, 2118.

We get motion alarms just after 04:00.

I’m out of my rack in a burst—I wasn’t sleeping well
anyway, and when I dozed, I dreamed of something moving outside.
Now something is. Several somethings.

Horton was Night Watch, so he’s got them locked on
sentry scans. I count six blips, staggered in a rough semi-circle
around us.

“Light ‘em up, sir?” Horton asks Rios when he comes
in behind me.

“Night vision,” Rios decides to be subtle, lowering
the blast shields over the view ports to keep the light in so
hopefully we still look asleep.

The screens glow green, giving us eerie views of the
terrain outside. At first we don’t see much, except I realize there
are boulders out there that weren’t there before, maybe forty to
fifty meters out. Then one moves, raises a little bit out of the
ground, slides closer. The shape is very squat and bulky—a man
would have to be hunched down with his knees up to his chest and
head down to move like that; and the mass is unusually wide, like
it’s under a pile of armor and cloaks. I see the shaft of a thin
spear poking out from under whatever robes it’s wearing.

Another moves. I think I see a bow and arrow.

“Nomads?” Rios wants my opinion as the others drag
in, bleary-eyed but jacked on adrenaline.

“Not like I’ve ever seen,” Horton denies. “And this
is pretty far east for them.”

“Abu Abbas was taking a group this way six months
ago,” Rios suggests. “They could have made it out this far by
now.”

“Abbas’ people wouldn’t get this close to something
high-tech, not unless they were intending to say ‘hello’,” Jane
counters, coming in to take his chair, adjusting his
prosthesis.

“This doesn’t look like ‘hello’,” Horton agrees.

We watch. Two of the forms get brave and slide our
way in short hops.

“They look like they’re stalking prey,” Rios
assesses, keeping his voice down (not that they could hear us
through the layered pressure hull). Jane hums and nods.

We keep playing dead until they get close enough to
touch the ship. First, it looks almost reverent, awe-struck. Then
they get bolder, examine the undercarriage, the drive train. We see
tools come out.

“Okay, that’s enough of that,” Rios decides.
“Lights!”

Spotlights blaze from our underhull and topside,
washing the surrounding terrain bright white. Our visitors freeze
for a second, then run, scurrying, still squat to the ground. They
scatter, zig-zag like they’re trying to confuse.

“WE MEAN YOU NO HARM. WE COME IN PEACE.” Rios is
calling to them through the PA, then our translators repeat the
message in Russian, Chinese, Arabic, French and Japanese for good
measure. In the time that takes, our visitors have run six
different directs, and one-by-one, have vanished into the terrain.
Just gone. Figuring they’re hiding in the rocks, Rios keeps trying
variations of his message of reassurance, identifying himself,
identifying us. (I’m not sure that’s very reassuring. Even if these
folks don’t know about Earthside’s new policy to relocate native
peoples “for their own safety”, UNMAC still means Unmaker, Bringer
of Nuclear Fire.)

“Pursue?” Sharp seems almost keen.

“No. We wait for proper daylight. Then take a careful
walk outside. Try to look reasonably friendly.”

But he doesn’t sound confident. I remember the woman
he was in love with died making first contact with an unknown
quantity.

He calls in another report. And we sit.

The downside of the richer atmosphere is we get ice.
Lots of ice.

The hatches are sticky with it when we pop outside at
06:00. The rocks are slick—I have no idea how our night visitors
didn’t slip all over, not even while they were running away.

Walking on ice-glazed rough terrain in an H-A can is
a balancing trick with every step. Each one of us stumbles
embarrassingly more than once just in the first dozen meters of
boots on the ground, not something you want to be showing a
potential enemy.

Horton is the first to find footprints, which look
normal enough, but show cuts from some kind of bladed cleat. What
we don’t find is any sign at all of our visitors, despite keeping
glued to the screens for the last three hours. We didn’t see them
retreat further than maybe seventy-five meters before they hunkered
down and hid from us, didn’t see any movement further out to
suggest they managed to sneak away. But they aren’t here.

I suggest we may need to be looking for tunnels, for
sally-ports hidden in the rocks, like we used to defend our Keeps,
like the Shinkyo used.

Rios—stuck in the ship because tactical priority won
out over his own desire to be out here himself—reminds us to be
careful, to stay alert.

We stagger around where we last had visual contacts.
And I’m realizing the patch of dirt I’m standing on in a
trench-like depression isn’t nearly as icy as what’s around it,
when I hear something that sounds remarkably like a rocket
launcher.

“
INCO…!!!
” I don’t manage to shout before I
see something fly fast, trailing smoke, at Horton. He spins. And I
think that saves his life. He gets hit, staggers, falls back. He’s
got some kind of a long thin rod—longer and stouter than an
arrow—stuck through his left shoulder between his plates, the
butt-end still smoking. Thankfully, that’s all it does.

But then I have to duck arrows.

“GET DOWN!” Rios shouts at us. Then he answers back,
raking the perimeter with the forward AP turret, just a few quick
but intimidating bursts. The arrows stop coming.

Wei is running for Horton, who’s half-sitting on his
back. I can hear him panting and groaning into his helmet Link.

“I’m okay… God…”

I scan the perimeter through my ICW sights, my
helmet-feed trying infrared, sound, motion detection. There’s
nothing but us.

Then I realize we’re one short.

“Sharp! Where’s Sharp?!”

I run over to where I last saw her, falling on my
face and not caring. She was poking around some exposed foundation
sections… Rios feeds me sentry-footage of her last location: She
ducks when the shit flies, but then suddenly just drops out of
sight. On her helmet cam, all we see is the blur of a sudden fall
into darkness, then just more black for a second or two until the
feed stops. Slowed down, we get a flash of armored hands. She
doesn’t even scream.

I get to the spot. At the base of a low wall of
reinforced concrete, the dirt looks freshly dug. I start digging
with my gloves.

“Straker! Get back here! Now!” Rios orders. I ignore
him.

I’m scooping armloads of regolith, but getting
nowhere. If she’s buried, she’s not just a meter or less under.
Calls to her Link continue to get nothing. Rios gets on uplink with
orbit, has them lock a satellite on us. It takes an eternal four
minutes. I’m up to my hips in shoveled dirt. Wei’s already helped
Horton back inside, and he’s cycling back out to help me.

I get fed Sharp’s tag tracking. It’s faint, but it’s
all wrong.

Her helmet is about a dozen meters from me,
stationary. Her suit tag is moving south away from it, almost
running speed, already thirty meters on a winding course before I’m
up out of my hole. Her weapon is headed in a whole other
direction.