“Yes, yes,” Quintus said impatiently. “Hardly the time for a theology lesson, druidh. So—the holy tree. And around it, as you see, a series of domed habitats that we believe are residences for Earthshine’s human supporters, or most of them, along with workshops, stores. To the north, and a reasonably safe distance away from the tree, you see the Celyn standing, and accompanying support facilities for a kernel craft. Room for others to land too, and we have seen craft shuttling between Mars and Höd in the last few years.”
“Relief crews,” Kerys said. “There are teams working up on Höd, manning the kernel banks there. They seem to be swapped every month or so.”
Quintus said, “And we believe that Earthshine himself, or at least the gadgets that support him, must be here.” And he pointed to the third complex of buildings.
Stef leaned down to see better, silently cursing aging eyes. “More domes. But the heart of it is that tilted rectangular slab.”
“A reinforced bunker,” Quintus said. “A familiar design. Hardened against our ground-based weapons, hardened even against any rock pushed from orbit short of anything massive enough to destroy the whole site altogether. No doubt Earthshine is down in a hole deeper still.”
Stef grunted. “That would be characteristic. He likes his holes in the ground, the bunkers he shared with his Core AI brothers back on Earth, his hold-out under Paris, his pit under Hellas . . .”
Beth said, “But this whole planet is going to be hammered by Ceres. I can’t believe he’s going to stay around for that. He’ll want to survive, whatever he’s trying to do here. Just as he got away from Earth before the Nail fell.”
“Right,” said Stef. “And if Ceres is going to fall within twelve hours, his only way out of here will be aboard that ship, the Celyn.”
“Very well,” Quintus said. “That is the configuration on the ground. Now I want a tactical plan. It would not be hard to be destructive. Frankly, we could go in with our kernel drive blazing, and melt all of this back into the Martian sand.”
“But we’re not here to destroy,” the ColU said. “We need to get to Earthshine. The purpose is to deflect Ceres, if it is still possible.”
“Our foes know that too,” said Quintus. “So they will be waiting for us to attempt a softer approach, perhaps a landing. They may have missiles, even kernel-driven, to shoot us down as we approach, as is standard protection for our great cities on Terra—”
“Maybe not,” put in Movena, Quintus’s trierarchus. “The scans we’ve been able to do of the surface would show us any such missiles. There are kernels here”—she pointed—“under Earthshine’s bunker. But they aren’t a configuration we recognize—they certainly aren’t being used in missiles.”
“This conversation is inefficient.” Ari Guthfrithson stepped forward now, cold, clinical. “We must focus on the goal and work backward. We have to get to Earthshine; we have to persuade him to deflect Höd, if this is still possible. Well, then. You have brought my family here—”
Beth snarled, “We are not your family.” Mardina clutched her arm.
Ari ignored her. He tapped the image of the bunker. “You must land us here. The three of us, mother, father, daughter—his granddaughter and great granddaughter. And the farm machine, one mechanical mind that may be able to communicate with another.”
“Thanks for thinking of me,” the ColU said drily.
“Earthshine will take us into his bunker. He has saved you before, Beth, you know that, when he brought you on the Tatania, out of the bonfire of your Earth. He will save you again today. For I am sure you are right. He will have no ambition to be extinguished. And he will be motivated to take us with him, wherever he goes.”
Quintus prompted, “And once you’re down there . . .”
“We try to persuade him to stop. But this will rely on us getting to that bunker unhindered.”
Quintus nodded. “We have yachts; we can get you down there. But in the meantime we’ll have to draw off the bulk of whatever forces he has. We have a testudo that we can have some fun with on the ground . . .” He pulled his lip. “Earthshine’s forces will be pretty well dug in.”
Movena smiled. “But these are my people. Brikanti. I know how they think. And I have a suggestion to divert their attention.”
“Which is?”
“They have to protect two of their three facilities on the ground: the launch site, the bunker. So, attack the third.”
Quintus smiled. “Ah. The big tree. The Brikanti will be drawn away to save that, being the superstitious barbarians they are.”
Kerys, visibly dismissing the insult, shook her head. “These are standard plays. We need something more. A backup plan. Even if Beth Eden Jones and the others get through to Earthshine, there’s no guarantee he will listen to them. We need to think about other ways of stopping Höd.”
“Such as?” Quintus asked. “There are troops on Höd itself; they will no doubt stay up there to defend it until the last possible minute. If we try to approach in the Malleus, they will blast us out of the sky—or do their level best.”
“True. So we don’t approach in the Malleus. Or rather, I don’t.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that I will take a small crew, Brikanti-trained—just a couple of us would do—and take that ship, from the ground. The Celyn. It’s the same class as my own last command, the Ukelwydd. I could fly it blindfold. We will eliminate it as a threat to the Malleus, if nothing else. And perhaps we can be a backup to this strategy of persuasion. I could simply blast up to Höd, which is conveniently hurtling in toward us, and use the ship’s communication codes, and maybe my own rank, as cover to approach. And then—”
Quintus frowned. “Yes, and then?”
“I don’t know. I’ll have to improvise. The crew on Höd must have some kind of abort facility.”
“Not necessarily,” the ColU murmured.
“Well, if there isn’t, we’ll think of something else.”
Movena nodded enthusiastically. “It may be a slim chance, but better than none at all.”
Kerys said, “If you drop me below the base’s horizon, perhaps on the same pass when you drop Beth and her party for the bunker—”
“Beth, and her party, and me.” The voice wavered, but was forceful.
Stef turned, and to her dismay saw Penny in the doorway, clinging to a rail with one clawlike hand, her gray hair a cloud around her head. “Penny—go back to your couch.”
“I will not, and I don’t answer to you now, Stef, if I ever did. Listen to me. I know Earthshine better than any of you. I was even a colleague of sorts, once, and have been here again, on this side of the jonbar hinge. Drop me onto Mars in a wheelchair—in a pressurized sack, whatever—I can help you.” She smiled thinly. “At the minimum it might distract him. Another diversion of forces.” She glared at her sister. “I trust you’re not going to put up any more objections?”
Stef felt anger surge. “You never belonged in my life anyway. To see you leave it now will be no loss to me.”
Quintus held up his hands. “We don’t have time for this. We have a plan, and it’s the best we’re going to find. Prepare for your drops in—” He glanced at his trierarchus.
“One hour,” Movena said.
“One hour.” He glanced around at the group. “We will probably never meet again like this, those of us assembled here. And many of us may not survive the day at all. If you believe in Jesu, may He be at your side now.” He clapped his hands, breaking the moment. “Go, go!”
28
With six hours left before the arrival of Ceres, the Malleus Jesu tore into the atmosphere of Mars. It was, Titus Valerius cried triumphantly, like a Roman gladio ripping through a barbarian’s guts.
Gnaeus Junius, along with a contubernium of eight men under the command of Titus, was already tucked inside the heavily armored hide
of a testudo. He clung to his couch harness, dug himself deeper into the padding, and told himself he was as safe as he could reasonably be, at such a moment, in his armored pressure suit, buried in his couch, inside an armored vehicle that in turn was swaddled in the hold of the Malleus, a kernel-powered fist of a ship. Thus Gnaeus was wrapped up in layers of cushioning and armor and hull plate, like a precious gift ready for transport to the favored son of an emperor.
But right now this gift was being delivered by falling headlong into the thin Martian air. The ship fell backside first, with its kernel bank burning bright to slow it down from its interplanetary speeds. Gnaeus just prayed that the thick hull, which right now was peeling away in layers to carry away excess heat, would last long enough to keep the ship intact through these painfully long heartbeats of the entry.
Ahead of him Gnaeus saw the men of the contubernium in their couches, all of them with their backs to him, soaking up the deceleration. A contubernium was formally a “tent group,” a unit within the legion—a band who trained, lived and fought together. They seemed relaxed. One of them was even asleep, as far as Gnaeus could see, a man called Marcus Vinius. They’d been through far worse than this in training, Titus had assured him.
Well, not Gnaeus. He was from a senatorial family; his time in the army, his jaunts into space, were only intended as stepping stones to better things, a few years of toughening up before he returned to a career in high politics, hopefully in the capital itself. His unwelcome assignment to the Romulus-Remus interstellar mission, while it kept him from coming up against warlike barbarians in Valhalla, had also kept him away from Rome for twenty-five years, in which time a new generation of pushy upstarts had come along to compete for such positions—a whole cadre just as bright and ambitious as Gnaeus, and not decades out of touch with the current intrigues and infighting at the top of the Empire, as he was.
And now, this. Invading a planet occupied by some kind of mad machine, and just as the sky was about to fall. Such adventures had certainly not been in Gnaeus’s career plan.
The deceleration built to a brutal peak. He closed his eyes, gritted his teeth, and wondered if it might not be better if the ship just disintegrated in the air and put an end to it all. But he didn’t really mean that, not even in the worst moments. He had his duty to perform, after all.
And then, like a switch being closed, the deceleration dropped to nearly zero. Gnaeus was thrust forward against his harness, and his stomach rebelled at last, his breakfast of dried fish and bread splashing up out of his mouth.
Titus laughed and clapped him on the back. “Never mind, optio. Happens to us all. And none of us saw the optio spew up his guts like a little girl, did we, lads?”
“Not me, Titus Valerius.”
“Hang on, I’ll wake up Marcus Vinius to make sure he didn’t see you either—”
“All right, all right,” Gnaeus said, scrambling to regain his dignity. “Just make sure you’re ready for the drop, Titus—oof.”
Now the ship lurched suddenly to the right, and there was a burst of acceleration.
“That’s what you get when you’re piloting in an atmosphere,” Titus said. “Coping with turbulence, the thickening air—a lot of dust around on Mars. And trying not to let the barbarians on the surface get a shot in at you. Don’t worry, optio. You have to hand it to the trierarchus and her crew. These Brikanti know how to handle a ship.”
Gnaeus grunted. “Unfortunately there’s another bunch of Brikanti on the ground who are trying to kill us.”
“Well, I wouldn’t worry about that either, sir. If they get us, we’ll never know about it.”
“Legionary, I wish you’d stop telling me not to worry. It’s scaring me to death—”
“Oh, relax, sir. Why, I remember once on campaign—”
“All hands,” came a voice from crackly speakers. “This is Quintus Fabius. We’re in the air over the Earthshine base, and ready to make the drops. Timings as we planned. Be ready—we’re only going to take one run at this, before the Malleus takes me back into the safety of orbit where I belong. Call in. Yacht?”
“Eilidh here, Centurion. Ready to go, with Collius and the rest.”
“Good luck, and stand by. Jumpers?”
“Kerys here. All set, Centurion; suits and wings checked over.”
“Glad to hear it. Testudo?”
He was answered with a roar from the men of the contubernium, a clatter of weapons on breastplates; the din was enormous in the enclosed space of the vehicle. Titus yelled, “Let us at them, Centurion!”
“Try not to get overexcited, Titus Valerius—it’s bad for a man of your age. Very well, everybody. Make sure you all keep in contact throughout the operation. That ball of ice in the sky is less than six hours away. But if you live, you won’t be left behind, and that’s a promise. Understood?”
The men of the contubernium yelled their assent.
“Then let’s do this. Yacht—go!”
A door slammed open in the belly of the ship, and the whole fabric of the Malleus shuddered. Gnaeus imagined the Martian air snatching at the breach in the ship’s hull as the small landing craft fell away.
“Jumpers!”
A lurch of deceleration as the ship slowed enough to allow the jumpers to hurl their fragile bodies out into the slipstream.
“And testudo!”
Gnaeus clutched his harness, bracing himself once again. Another door opened in the belly of the craft, this time directly below him. In the golden-brown Martian light, seen through the testudo’s slit windows, Gnaeus could see the fleeing landscape, not far below.
The men in their rows of couches roared. Titus yelled and gunned the engine of the vehicle.
And with a clatter of released latches, the testudo was dropped from the belly of the spacecraft. For an instant Gnaeus was in free fall, and he imagined he was back in the timeless vacuum of space. Even the legionaries were silent as they fell, just for a moment.
Then the vehicle slammed into the dirt. Weight returned with a rush—and immediately, as the big mesh tires bit into the Martian dirt, the testudo surged forward. Once again Gnaeus was thrust back into his couch.
And, over the shoulder of Titus at his controls, through a slit window and a massive protective grill beyond, Gnaeus glimpsed the receding fire of the Malleus, and a tree, impossibly tall, that scraped the orange Martian sky.
• • •
Kerys tumbled out of the open hatch in the flank of the Malleus.
Slam!
Thin it might be even at this low altitude, but hitting the air of this small planet in nothing but a pressure suit felt like running into a wall. And it was full of gritty dust that hissed against her goggles.
Her speed in the air slowed quickly. She was still curled up in a ball, the posture she’d adopted as she’d jumped, better to survive the close passage of the Malleus. But she could hear the roar of the ship’s drive recede, see its glare diminish from the corner of her eye. Now she spread out her arms and legs, letting the air snatch at her and stabilize her. Her speed reduced further and her fall became more orderly, with the buttery sky above her, a scarred rusty landscape below, a pale, diminished sun not far above the horizon. There below her she saw Earthshine’s facilities, the three compounds linked by dusty tracks, just as in Quintus’s images: the bunker, the kernel-drive ship that was her own destination, and that impossibly tall tree in its narrow air tent. On target, then.
And there was a brilliant point of light directly overhead, like a single star that seemed brighter than the sun. Höd, coming for its lethal rendezvous. She looked away, blinking away the dazzle from her eyes.
At the appropriate time she tore at a patch of leather on her chest. Cables ripped free, and she felt bales of fabric unfold at her back. Again she braced herself, folding her arms over her chest. When her wings snatched at the air she was slowed dramatica
lly, a hard tug that wrenched at her lower gut and made her gasp. But it was over in a moment, and when she looked up her wings were spread wide across the sky. Scraped leather stiffened with ribs of wood, the wings had been modeled on the wings of hovering seabirds, such as albatrosses, but this particular set was, of course, adapted for the thin Martian air, and much larger than she would have needed over Terra.
And they were safely open. She felt a surge of satisfaction. Safe for now—at least until she and her sole companion, Freydis, a midranking remex, went flying up into Höd itself, if they ever got that far . . .
Just as she thought of Freydis, a sprawling shape banked across her vision and the small speakers in her enclosed helmet crackled. “Whee!”
“Stop showing off, Freydis.”
“Sorry, nauarchus. But isn’t this grand? Flying over Mars!”
Kerys didn’t want to discourage her, but she couldn’t suppress a sigh. “If you’re thirty years old, as you are, and strong enough that you didn’t get your guts pulled out of your backside when your wings opened, and if you’re an inexperienced idiot—yes, Freydis. ‘Grand’ is the word I would have used.”
“Sorry, nauarchus.” Freydis quickly calmed down.
Kerys peered down at the ground, tweaking her wings to make sure she was heading for the stubby cylinder that was the Celyn, with its support facilities around it—and she spotted small dark specks that must be crew and guards, waiting for her as she fell from the sky. She called Freydis again. “You know the plan. We’re both wearing identity beacons that mark us out as messengers from the Navy headquarters at Dumnona. Here we are with revised orders for the crew of that ship below. Yes? They’ll reject any such orders, but with any luck the bluff will confuse them long enough at least for us to land before they start shooting. Don’t do or say anything to give us away; just follow my lead.”
“I understand, nauarchus.”
Kerys looked across at her. “So, you’re ready for this? I picked you because you are the best qualified of the crew, in my view. Your aptitude for piloting and independent thinking is exceptional. I also know you trained at Kalinski’s Academy of Saint Jonbar. So you know all about these people, their strange origin, the peculiar nature of this entity Earthshine.”
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