Warrior Chronicles 2: Warrior's Blood (9 page)

“Listen Cort, I am not saying ‘mate with her’ or do not ‘mate with her’. That is a decision only the two of you can make. But do not let a three century old hang-up stop you. She loves you and you love her. And if what you are telling me is true, she is way past worrying about the family link. Make up your own damned minds about it. I would say it is beyond me how two people who love each other can make mating so complicated, but I was married once, so I understand.”

Dar shook his head. “I seriously cannot believe I am even having this conversation with you. What the hell, man? Okay fuck this. No wait. Bad choice of words. Holy Gods.” Dar shook his head and reached down to move something that was out of the viewscreen. “Queen’s knight to King’s third. Check.”

Cort looked down at his own chessboard.
Fuck me
.

--

“It looks like you’ve started an arms race on Earth, Cort,” Rhodes said. “I’m sending you the dispatch we just received. It’s from the Asianic Alliance. Keen wants your input after you see it.”

Cort was in his CONDOR, helping Kim Point set up the first open space. “Okay. Once I finish up here and meet with Kay, I’ll take a look at it.”

Cort lifted a temporary framework into place. Kim was on top of the modules watching as eight men in atmosphere suits locked the gridwork in place. After it was set up, Cort watched as the metallized Formvar began to coat it. When the barrier was thick enough, the frame was detached and Cort lowered it for disassembly. Then he left Kim and her people to finish the job. The strength of his powered armor saved them about forty man-hours of work.

Back inside the colony structure, Kay walked in front of Cort as he returned to his quarters. Sköll walked beside her, and Cort’s suit was too bulky for them to walk the corridor abreast of each other. He asked, “How are you, Kay?”

“Why don’t we wait until we’re alone to talk?”

A few minutes later, she plopped down in his sitting area while he changed. He emerged with two drinks in his hand. He gave one to her and sat down. “So what’s wrong?”

“I am pregnant.”

--

“Dave, I’m inclined to sell it to them. They’ll get the tech sooner or later anyway, and I don’t trust Atlantica. By selling the Asianic Alliance my weaponry, we can get a lot of needed supplies.” Cort said to Dave Keen later that afternoon. “And if I were in your shoes, I would be thinking long term, not short term.”

“I think we are on the same page, Cort, especially if Atlantica really wants to come here. We need to be able to manufacture on our own. We have a lot of raw materials, but no way to mine or process them.” Keen saw Cort nod and continued, “I would rather have the ability to make our own supplies than trade research to Earth for them.”

Dave Keen had all sorts of new headaches. Overnight, he had received three messages from Dar. The first one said that Atlantica was now going through old records so they could try to start replicating Cort’s weaponry and technology. The Cull and synthetics had rendered much of the weaponry obsolete, so it had been mothballed over a century before. Now that Cort was using that tech to assert independence for Mars, someone back home had decided that maybe those weapons weren’t so obsolete after all. The second message was that one of Dar’s cousins had informed him that Atlantica was considering sending a new colony to Mars, independent of either The Addison Trust’s launching facilities, or Ares Federation oversight. That would mean full scale war with Earth. Cort would destroy every unauthorized vessel that entered Mars’ orbit. But it could also create problems for the Trust’s assets on Earth. Dar was working on that problem, but it was an eventuality for which they had to be prepared. There was already an emergency evacuation launch ready to go at all times. If Atlantica did make a move against the Ares Federation, members of the pack who chose to do so would quickly be launched to Mars or evacuated to the Asianic and Southern Alliances. The third message was a trade request from the Asians. They wanted Cort’s technology now, and they were willing to trade for it. An arms race was always a bad thing, but it was even worse if you were on the short end of it.

“Exactly,” Cort said. “The only raw materials we really have to get from Earth are water and reserve air. Their recovery uses a lot of our energy. If we had that energy for manufacturing, we could start forging our own building materials. And we’re going to need to do that if you are serious about a monorail system between sites.”

“Okay, so we really are on the same page. I just wanted to be sure. I will get Kim and her people working on a list of what we want. In the meantime, I’ll have Dar start negotiating. What about the Southern Alliance? Do you want to let them in on it?” Keen asked.

“I would. In the twentieth century, there was a very similar ‘cold war’ arms race, between essentially the same two blocs. Countries that weren’t a part of it were beholden to those that were, economically and militarily. The Asians won’t like it, but Dar can get them to go along I think. From our standpoint, if they are all trying to keep up with each other, they won’t be as focused on us. But I want some physicists and design people working to stay ahead of anything we sell to Earth. Agreed?”

Keen nodded to Cort’s screen this time. “Agreed.”

In his own message to Dar, Cort expressed his personal feelings more completely. “Dar, you need to be prepared. The weapons they want aren’t necessary against alliances on Earth. I think they are for use against us. Prepare for that. I’m attaching the CONDOR Two specs. You might want to make a few. And I think you should up the launch rate for the foreseeable future. I’d pack every module top to bottom. I think war is on the horizon.”

Cort called his move, “Bishop to Queen’s first. And Dar, be prepared to evacuate. If you can’t get out of Atlantica, get on a module. Come here. I don’t want to lose you.”

Ares Federation Science and Military Headquarters, Argyre Site

“I think you’ve done a great job here,” Rhodes said as Cort showed him around the new training facility. “And Kim did a great job with your new open spaces.”

Zandra kept herself between the two men. She had never met Chief Rhodes, so she didn’t trust him. When he had first stepped out of the MELT, Rhodes slapped Cort on the shoulder, eliciting a low growl from the female wolf. Cort had to settle her down before he could take Rhodes on a tour of the rebuilt facility. Cort said, “Once Kim had taken everything apart, we realized that this was almost perfect for what we needed. I got a larger training area with both interior and exterior training areas, the design people got a testing area, and by moving everything that arrives through this site, we can protect the other two more easily.”

Rhodes nodded. “And if Atlantica ever does send something to the other sites, those fixed railguns the design people put together will keep them from even landing.” Rhodes paused as he remembered the day he first saw a railgun in action. To have seen something the size of a freighter module simply cease to exist was still incredible to him. “Do you really think they will come here?”

“No, I don’t. But that’s why we’re putting satellites up. I think they will try and land somewhere remote. If they establish a foothold, they may or may not interfere with us. I hope they don’t. I hope they realize that I was serious. This is our planet now. Every single hectare. So if anything enters our orbit that Dar didn’t send, I’m going to destroy it. No exceptions.”

“Just a minute,” Cort said as his comm unit chirped. “Addison here. Go ahead.” He listened for a minute then said, “Okay, Wynn. We’re headed there now.”

“What’s up?” Rhodes asked as they backtracked and headed down a different corridor.

“That was Wynn Black. Do you know him?”

“Only the name. One of your family right? He’s been here a couple of months, I think,” Rhodes replied.

“Yeah, that’s him. He’s a geologist. He heads that group. Well, he heads Planetary Sciences, but geology was his specialty on Earth. He found water.”

Rhodes stopped dead. “Water? Here? How much?”

“Let’s go find out,” Cort said.

--

Wynn Black was a small man with thinning hair. Because of his olive-brown skin and enormous eyes, he reminded Cort of
Gollum
from the old books by Tolkien. Adding to the effect was his perpetual hunch. He had been injured in a fall while exploring a cave on Earth as a young man. With three separate fractures along his spine, synthetics kept him from being paralyzed, but the trauma was so extensive that his spine didn’t heal properly. As Cort and Rhodes walked into his lab, he looked up and introduced himself to Rhodes before Cort could. Then he bent back down to his ‘natural’ posture to pet Zandra. She knew Dr. Black well, because Wynn often dined with Cort in the park.

“Cort,” he said while pointing at a map of the Tharsis region, “This is where the water is. Right between Tharsis and Amazonis. It’s about five-hundred meters down. I think it’s liquid, based on projected temperatures at that depth, but I can’t be sure. It’s much more accessible than the water at the northern polar cap. There, the environment prevents us from being able to settle. And the annular cloud storm is too harsh for colony modules to last very long.” The man looked at Addison hopefully.

“How much water do you think is there?” Cort asked.

“I don’t think there is water there. I know it is. And I know it’s a lot. There are only two things I don’t know. Number one, as I’ve mentioned, is that I don’t know if it’s frozen or solid. Number two is that I don’t know if it’s fresh or mineralized, such as salt water. Although if it is mineralized, that would be a huge boon for us. We need the salt as much as we do the water.”

“How much?” Cort asked again.

“The micro satellites indicate it could be as much as say, oh maybe the Memorial Sea back on Earth. But I could be off by as much as thirteen percent. How soon can I test drill?” Black asked.

“Patience, Wynn,” Cort said to the consternation of the bent little man. “It’s not like Earth here. If you strike a gusher, most of it will evaporate off and bleed into space. Let’s get Kim Point in on this. Once she has a way to contain it if necessary, then you can drill. But not before, okay?”

“Oh, yes. Of course. I hadn’t considered that. And it could very well be under pressure. I believe it was originally contained by an eruption of Mons Olympus. That is, I don’t think it’s groundwater. I think it’s truly an underground sea. If it was liquid at that time, but is frozen now, it may be under stress. So we do need a containment system.” Wynn looked back at his map.

Rhodes had been silent during their conversation, but he spoke now. “Cort, if this is right, it changes everything.
Everything
.”

Cort reached down and scratched Zandra’s head. “Yes it does, Chief. It changes all of our resource needs. Wynn, you probably just made the whole planet’s day. Nice work. Let’s call Kim. Then we need to have a meeting of the administrators.”

--

After the administration meeting, Kim Point and Kay Gaines joined Addison and Rhodes in the wolf park. It was named after John Wills and every afternoon, the two ladies and their wolves joined Cort and Zandra there. Larger than the first open area at Aeolis, the park was nearly one hundred meters square with a Formvar-M ceiling that, combined with Mars red sky, gave the park a feeling of perpetual dusk. It had four evenly space pillars to take part of its weight off the surrounding colony modules, and each pillar was designed to look like a tree trunk. There were also more than thirty live trees arranged in a copse at the center of the park. At one end of the copse was a small pond the animals swam and played in. the grass was sparse and unkempt in keeping with the preferred habitat of the wolves. There were several small sitting areas around the park, large and small, and there were usually a dozen or so colonists lounging or watching their wolves play.

Kim’s wolf was the youngest of the three and only half the size of most of the animals in the park. Kim had named him Coke because of his unusually dark gray fur. The two older wolves were trying to rest while Coke harassed them. Kim was mostly thinking out loud when she said, “If Wynn is right, and there is water, containing it won’t be a problem. We can consider storing it on the surface, but I recommend we pipe it directly to the colony sites. It’s more work, but will use fewer resources. I also recommend we put a small occupied station near each well site so we always have someone on hand in case of a problem. And with one well site for each colony site, we also have better redundancy if something does go wrong.”