Semper Mars: Book One of the Heritage Trilogy

by Ian Douglas

  “Well then, perhaps it’s time we started looking a little harder for compromise,” Matloff said, “for some means of surmounting the difficulties that have separated us from the member states of the United Nations for so long. We need a unified world, gentlemen, for the survival of mankind, and I, for one, will not stand still for loose-cannon opportunists who are risking everything we have built!”

  “Mr. Secretary, there’s really very little we can do about Major Garroway at the moment,” Admiral Gray pointed out. “He’s something like a hundred million miles away, right now, and we don’t even have a secure communications link with the man.”

  “I think we should concentrate our efforts on what we should be doing on this end,” Severin said. “Garroway’s actions could significantly impact the situation here.”

  Warhurst looked sharply at Severin. The SECDEF might be the next step up the ladder from the Joint Chiefs, but he was not himself a military man. He was a civilian, a politician who’d started off with one of the big defense contractors, a man whose lobbying efforts and financial contributions had been rewarded by a succession of cabinet posts. It was, Warhurst mused, the way Washington worked, but it left him uneasy to think that the lives of people, his people, depended on decisions made by men who cared more about covering their asses than they did about the lives of men and women farther down the chain of command.

  “General?” Harrel said, turning to him. “Just what are the chances of Garroway and his people getting our facilities on Mars back?”

  Warhurst spread his hands. “I wish I could answer that, sir, but I can’t. The message seems to indicate that Colonel Lloyd is wounded or otherwise incapacitated, and we can’t know how many more Marines might have been killed or wounded at this point. We don’t know Garroway’s logistical situation—food, water, ammo…though chances are they have either no weapons at all or damned few. And, more to the point, perhaps, we don’t know what he’s up against. If the UN troops are split between Cydonia and Candor, he might, might have a chance of taking down one group before the other is alerted, but it seems like a damned slender chance to me. His best shot may be to grab something the UN needs at Candor and hold it hostage.”

  “What?” Severin wanted to know.

  “I don’t know. The food stores, maybe. O’Bannon’s Marines seized their expedition’s food supplies to put down a mutiny among the Arab rebels in the party. Maybe that’s his plan.”

  “That might make sense,” Kinsley said. “Mars isn’t like Earth, where you can live off the land. They’ve got major, centralized stockpiles of the stuff they need. Food. Water. Air. That makes them vulnerable.”

  “Where are the food supplies kept?” Severin wanted to know.

  “There are stockpiles at both of the major bases, sir,” Warhurst replied. “Candor and Cydonia. But the main stores are at the big base at Candor. I gather shuttles fly supplies out to all of the active bases every week or so.”

  “So does he have a chance?” Harrel asked. “I’ll tell you, General, I’ve got to walk over and talk to the Man next door when this meeting is over. What do I tell him? Can a handful of US Marines take back our bases on Mars? Or at least get us something to bargain with?”

  “They are United States Marines, sir,” Warhurst replied evenly. “If anybody can do the job, they can.”

  “There have already been casualties,” Admiral Gray pointed out. “Certainly UN casualties. Apparently Marines as well…at least Colonel Lloyd. We may already be over the brink on this thing.”

  “You’re saying we can’t micromanage things on Mars from here,” the DCI said with a grin. “Kind of galling for us behind-the-lines types, isn’t it?”

  “I believe,” Warhurst said, “that we can trust Garroway’s assessment of the situation. He’s experienced. He’s well trained. He will take whatever action he feels is justified, given his understanding of the tactical and political situation on Mars. I don’t think we should try second-guessing him on that. And if there’s any way to support him, we should—”

  “My suggestion, my strong suggestion,” Matloff said, interrupting, “is to disavow Garroway’s people. Immediately. If necessary, explain to the UN that some of our Marines may have, ah, misunderstood their orders…ah, may have interpreted them too strongly, in fact, and that UN forces on Mars should take measures to beef up security around the Candor site….”

  Warhurst was on his feet. “You can’t do that!”

  “Sit down, General,” Admiral Gray said.

  “Sir! With respect! We can’t just—”

  “We understand your concern, General,” Harrel said. “I think, however, that it would be best if you would wait outside. Please.”

  “The Marine Corps has a tradition, gentlemen,” Warhurst said. “A very old one. We never leave our people behind. Never.”

  “That’s quite enough, General,” Harrel said.

  Gray took Warhurst by the arm. “Come on, Monty,” he said. “Wait outside until this is over.”

  “That…that bastard is about to throw away the lives of our people!”

  He turned to glare at Matloff, but the man refused to meet his eyes…probably out of an instinctive sense of self-preservation.

  Fists clenched, not trusting himself to speak further, Warhurst shook off Gray’s hand and slowly walked for the door.

  Beyond the conference-room door was an outer office and waiting area manned by a couple of Army Special Forces security guards standing at rigid and unresponsive attention. Furious, Warhurst paced the blue-and-white carpet for several moments, trying to organize his thoughts. When he’d told the tale of O’Bannon and his Marines at Derna, he’d neglected to tell them the ending. The very day that O’Bannon’s men stormed the fortress, an agent of the US State Department had signed a humiliating treaty that granted a $60,000 ransom to Tripoli in exchange for the freedom of captured American seamen and an end to hostilities, though news of the treaty didn’t reach Derna for another week. Eaton and the Marines were forced to abandon their Arab allies by slipping quietly out of the harbor on an American ship.

  There would be a fine comparison with history, Warhurst thought…to have the diplomats resolve this whole business on Earth while Garroway’s Marines were embroiled in a small war!

  He cooled his heels in the outer office for another fifteen minutes before the members of the NSC Principals Committee began filing out of the vault door. Except for Admiral Gray, none stopped to speak or even look his way, and Warhurst had a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. They couldn’t follow Matloff’s advice. They couldn’t….

  But then, he knew Washington well enough to know that that was exactly what they would do, if they felt they had to.

  Gray clapped a hand on Warhurst’s shoulder. “That’s got to be a first, Monty. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a guest at one of these meetings go for a cabinet member’s throat before.”

  “I apologize for my behavior, Admiral.” The words came woodenly, without feeling. It was impossible to really mean them.

  “I think everyone knew how you felt, Monty. And, well, they know about Ted.”

  “Sir, I—”

  “Matloff can be a thoroughgoing bastard. If a war starts after all of the negotiating he’s been doing here and in Geneva, he’s going to look very bad. It could ruin his whole career.”

  “Oh, I’m so sorry for the man!” Warhurst managed to pack the words with acid. “So they’re going to turn our people over to the enemy to save his career. Is that it?”

  Gray didn’t meet his eyes, and the sinking feeling got worse. “They’re not turning them over to the UN, no. But Harrel’s going to tell the president that we should adopt a wait-and-see attitude. Matloff, I’m afraid, is going to see the president later today and pass on his own recommendations. Which is his right, of course. He is the cabinet member tasked with maintaining peaceful relations with the rest of the world…however unreasonable they seem, sometimes.”

  “So? What do you think t
he president is going to do?”

  “If I knew that, Monty, I’d be president.” He shrugged. “Hell, Markham’s pro-military, which is a point in our favor, and I have the feeling he’d grab at just about any chance, however slim, to get us out of this bind with our honor intact as well as our territory. But I also know that Matloff is right about the odds we’re facing. Our best hope, the country’s best hope, is for a settlement with the UN that gives them most of what they want…and lets us maintain our sovereignty a little bit longer.”

  “Admiral, you can’t agree with that…man.” He stifled the urge to use a stronger word, and it nearly choked him.

  “The trouble is, Matloff is right. Sooner or later, that one-world state we’ve been hearing so much about is going to happen, just to make sure food and resources get properly distributed all over the globe, if nothing else. When it does, the United States is going to lose an awful lot of its power, its prestige, and maybe its territory as well. If it comes down to a choice between giving up on what we’ve built on Mars, and having the UN occupy the US the way they did Brazil, well, I know what I would have to choose.”

  “So…our people are on their own.” He thought of Ted, alone on the embassy rooftop as the transport lifted off without him. He felt sick.

  Gray hesitated for a brief moment, then dropped his eyes. “Yes.”

  “I’d like to work out a way of getting a message back to Garroway, sir. I know we can’t send e-mail back the same way we got it, not without risking tipping the bad guys off, but Garroway’s daughter may have a back door for us.”

  “That’s a negative.”

  “But—”

  “I said negative. Harrel was specific on that point, and he made sure to tell me to pass it on to you, loud and clear. If the president needs negotiating room on this, he can’t have us undercutting his position by sending messages to Garroway.”

  “What?”

  “If the UN intercepts our messages to Garroway, they could claim that Markham was negotiating with one hand and managing some kind of guerrilla operation on Mars with the other. We can’t take that chance, Monty. We can’t even acknowledge that we got his message in the first place. The fact that we know the UN pulled an offensive move against us up there when they don’t know that we know what they did, well, that might provide us with some leverage in Geneva. As far as you and I and everybody else on Earth is concerned, we have no idea where Garroway is or what he is up to.”

  “You’re abandoning him, then.” The words were hard and bitter.

  “Call it plausible deniability. Anyway, it’s not as though we could do anything to help. The next cycler’s due for Earth return next week, but we don’t have time to put together a reinforcement mission. Even if we did, it’d be another eight months before they could reach him.”

  “Just knowing that you’ve got people pulling for you can help sometimes, Admiral. Right now, I’d guess that Garroway and his people are about as lonely as any US military detachment has ever been in history.”

  “Well, God help them,” Gray said. “Because we can’t.” He stopped and held Warhurst with his gaze. “I mean that, Monty. That’s a direct order. No communications with Garroway until this matter is resolved.”

  “Aye, aye, sir.”

  In thirty-six years of military service, Montgomery Warhurst had never disobeyed an order…but damn, he was tempted to now.

  SIXTEEN

  TUESDAY, 29 MAY: 0230 HOURS GMT

  Tithonium Chasma, Mars

  Sol 5637: 1330 hours MMT

  It was, Garroway thought, one of the oddest-looking marches in the annals of military history…the Mars cat, a bug-faced, tracked monstrosity piled high with stores and armored Marines, grinding along at the pace of a man’s walk and dragging behind it in a swirling cloud of dust a flat sled similarly loaded down with men and supplies.

  The sled was the brainchild of Gunnery Sergeant Knox and Staff Sergeant Ostrowsky, who’d suggested the idea as a way of beating some unpleasant facts of life. The Mars cat was designed to carry six to eight people comfortably, but experiment demonstrated that sixteen could be jammed in with considerable crowding, a crowding made worse by the fact that none of the people aboard would remove their armor during the trek. Six or eight more at a time could ride on top of the crawler, clinging to plastic straps rigged from cargo-handling grips.

  That left at least four more who would have to walk…and anyone moving on foot would drastically slow the cat from its usual fifteen to thirty kilometers per hour down to the two to three kph that could be expected of a human in full armor trudging along through the sand. At one point, during the planning before they’d left Heinlein Station, Garroway had been convinced that he was going to have to leave at least four of the Marines behind, simply because they couldn’t afford to crawl all the way to Candor at the speed a man could walk.

  His two senior NCOs had suggested an alternative, however. A number of carbaluminum pipes—sections for the microwave relay mast that was to have been built at Heinlein Station in the near future—were stored outside the hab. The interior walls of the hab were made of foamboard, a lightweight composite-material used extensively in the cyclers and other MST-derived habs and spacecraft for interior fittings. By wiring sheets of foamboard cut from the hab partitions to an X-framed rectangle of carbaluminum piping, a team of Marines had managed to jury-rig a sled four meters long and three wide and attach it to the Mars cat by its rear tow cable.

  “Now, in the old Marine Corps,” Knox had wisecracked, “we could go weeks at a time without food. Just thinking about those old MREs was enough to keep us going on spit and cusswords. But a tow-sled’ll let us carry enough food and water to see us through a couple of weeks, anyway, and it means the people outside can ride instead of walk.” The sled would also carry some of their bulkier equipment—fuel-cell-powered heaters, a rolled-up plastic pressure tent, and spare tanks of liquid oxygen and nitrogen.

  The whole assembly looked bizarrely improbable once it was loaded and yoked to the cat’s winch. It was a compromise and, like all such, was not perfect. The drag sled slowed the cat considerably. Both because of the strain put on the Mars cat’s electric drive and for safety reasons, the cat would not be able to make much better than eight kilometers per hour, at the very best…and in rough terrain, the Marines outside would have to actually carry the sled like a huge canoe, portaging their way across the steepest or roughest stretches.

  Nor could they travel a full twenty-four and a half hours a day. The period of the Martian night between midnight and dawn was far too cold for Marines to remain outside for more than two or three hours at a time, nor could the cat’s engines take the sustained punishment of round-the-clock travel with that kind of load. They were going to have to stop and camp for at least six hours each night while the cat’s fuel-cells recharged, and the people riding outside would all have to be cycled through the cat’s interior every couple of hours in order to get warm and to recharge their suits’ batteries.

  They’d made only fifteen kilometers that first day, traveling southeast to pick up the opening in the encircling chasma walls that would give entrance to an extremely narrow and steep-sided canyon. According to maps found aboard the Mars cat, this was where the wider portion of Tithonium was squeezed down to a slender rille—actually a chain of deep fault-collapse craters puncturing the surface in a straight line all the way to the broad expanses of Candor Chasma, some 450 kilometers to the east.

  They’d not set off, however, until a scant two hours before sunset, and moving at a slow and painful crawl, they’d managed about ten kilometers before the sun set. The Martian night swept down the valley with astonishing swiftness, the sky fading from pink to orange to deepest, star-strewn black within the space of a couple of minutes. The outside temperature began plummeting as well, from minus five centigrade to minus forty-five in the first three hours after sunset.

  With nightfall, they kept going…but their speed was reduced even further. Garr
oway didn’t want the cat to show lights, not with the very real possibility of a UN air search by lobber, and the two tiny moons shed almost no illumination on the dark desert floor. Marines took turns walking ahead of the Mars cat, scouting out obstacles like craters or boulders and slowly guiding the vehicle through the night practically step by step.

  And they were still on the flat and sandy floor of the chasma; their progress would be slower still once they entered the rougher terrain of the canyon proper.

  At some point around local midnight, Garroway had called a halt, set the watches, and let the party hunker down for a restless night. At the very best, at this rate of travel, Garroway estimated that they could make the passage from Heinlein Station to Mars Prime in four to five days…if they could average ninety miles per day—almost 150 kilometers—across almost four hundred miles.

  He knew better than to expect that kind of average, however. Given the fact that they faced unpredictably rough terrain and the likelihood of things breaking down or simply taking longer than expected, he figured they would be lucky if they managed something on the order of ten to twelve days instead, and a much longer time was distinctly possible. Water was going to be a headache, with food and air nearly as bad. They were carrying as much extra water as could be held in a pair of large, pressurized drums, plus enough readymeal packets to last twenty-eight people for twenty days. The air re-circulators both in the cat’s cabin and in their suit PLSS backpacks would extend their breathing time, but they would need occasional recharges of liquid oxygen and nitrogen to make up for the unavoidable loss each time an airlock was opened or a helmet was removed. Garroway’s best back-of-the-envelope calculation said…twenty to twenty-five days, depending on their exertion. If they didn’t make it in that time…well, he could always call for help. That meant surrender, however, an option he was not willing to consider.