“Snipers!” Matthew barks.
“Still no target,” Sergeant Masters replies, his voice shaking with frustration, from their position on the ridgeline, their rifle optics confirming only a shot of the shattered dome, a wisp of the red smoke now beginning to bleed out of it.
Jenovic has point on retreat, his sidearm taking the random pop at anything he can see move. I watch him stop dead as his exit gets blocked by a swarm of wild humans. His pistol manages to find flesh, and two of the wild humans fall in his path, but there are dozens more. He has to tuck in to close his armor as much as he can against the storm of sharp metal they’re throwing at him. His view jerks and Chen shows me he’s taken a knife in the back of the left knee. It flew from about the same direction as the blades that so accurately spiked Regev and Wasserman. Someone is as good with a knife as their gunslinger is with his revolvers.
“Jane! Acaveda! Flash bang!” I order. “Light ‘em up…”
Each ASV launches a rocket in a lazy arc at the dome.
“Hunker!” Thomas shouts, an ax bouncing off her shoulder plate as she covers their retreat. Those of our team that can get into a fetal crouch as the two rockets airburst just inside the open dome. The warheads were designed for stunning pressure-suited Ecos during ground fighting. Anyone not suited would wind up deafened and concussed.
“Go!” Thomas doesn’t wait for the effect to pass. The blasts have shattered and dislodged some of the remaining dome panels, and debris is raining down on them. As she gets up, her view shows Regev and Wasserman, both down and not moving. Another two of her team—Park and Jenovic—are too badly hurt to get out under their own power. MAI coldly tells her that Regev and Wasserman have lost vital signs.
Bullets smack the dome overhead, punching holes in the multilayer plexi shielding at random as the snipers make an effort to distract.
“Lieutenant!” Masters shouts over the Link. “You need to get back through that hatch before we can cover you!”
“Get out of there, Lieutenant!” I confirm, making her decision only somewhat easier.
“I’ve got men down!!” she protests, breathless. The wild people are beginning to advance again, to close in around them. Thomas empties her ICW in one final sweep, then turns and runs. She catches Jenovic under the arm and half-carries him for the exit, Jenovic still popping with his pistol. Chen already has Park through the hatch, the spear still stuck in his back.
As soon as they’re clear, Thomas lobs a pair of frag grenades back through the hatch. The blasts throw dirt and mulch at them. No one follows them out.
“Watch the dome, Lieutenant,” I prompt her, expecting some kind of fire to follow them. “Get distance.”
Park has collapsed from shock. Chen can’t pull the spear out of him without risking even worse hemorrhaging. The shaft is metal—it won’t simply break off. She has to carry him as is. Thomas has Jenovic limping on her arm as they back away from the dome. Still, nothing follows them, nothing flies at them. Except for the remaining red smoke rising up out of it, the dome looks just as silent and deserted as it did as they approached it.
“Regev and Wasserman?” Thomas asks despite what MAI has told her, her voice cut with rage.
“They’re gone, Lieutenant,” Ryder confirms heavily, watching the flatlines on their feeds.
“Nothing you could do, Lieutenant,” I excuse her.
“Never leave a man behind,” she grumbles. And I’m tempted to order the ASVs to blow the crap out of that place just to recover our dead. Instead I watch Regev’s and Wasserman’s Link feeds, and chew my lip as I see a brace of those wild things descend on their bodies and start stripping them.
But then I hear a howl of warning, and the wild things all scatter from sight. All except one: a male who looks all of ten years old, big eyed, rotten teeth, filthy. He stays to try to pry Wasserman’s magazines out of his belt.
I hear a single shot, and the boy’s head explodes in close-up all over Wasserman’s Link camera.
“Who…?” Matthew starts. When MAI clarifies the image in a few seconds, I can see another set of figures come into view:
Three men. They walk upright, with cool grace. They wear the black and gray light armor uniforms of corporate security, clean and in pristine condition. They are well groomed and fit. Their hair is cut military neat. They all wear enhanced goggles, likely with heads-up imaging like our Link gear. They all carry custom sport revolvers like Abbas, like the gunslinger.
Two of the men keep watch to each flank while the third comes close to examine Wasserman’s body. I see his thin-lipped mouth curl into an amused grin. He takes aim at the camera array with his big pistol, and the feed goes dead. Regev’s feed goes equally blank ten seconds later.
No one in Ops with me says anything. We just stare at the dead feeds.
“Send the mission file to Earth as is,” I finally order Kastl.
7 March, 2116:
“What was that call to Abbas all about?” Matthew breaks the silence as he picks at the meal I brought him in his rack. “Asking him what he was trading for food?”
“We fucked up,” I tell him numbly. “We thought about the tactical. We didn’t consider the economic.”
He’s not feeling well today. Again. Halley gave him orders to rest, keeping further details confidential. I could pry using command privilege, needing to know for practical reasons about the fitness of my second-in-command, but I don’t. I don’t want to know, not yet—I don’t want a clinical label complete with a terminal prognosis. But he looks drawn, pale. He hasn’t been keeping up his spin-time—I’ve been checking the logs. And he’s been spending more and more time in his quarters.
“You planning to clarify that?” he grumbles at me, sipping at a glass of cold water, propped up by pillows while I sit in his desk chair.
“The trade routes,” I try to make sense of my belated revelation. “So dangerous only a small group dares it—no one else who tries makes it back. I’d assumed what the Nomads bartered was to re-supply the runners and make it worth their while. But, economically speaking, what’s worth the risk, especially to do it regularly? The runners obviously have all the food they could possibly need for themselves; it struck me that trading Coprates crops for the pickings of humanitarian drops just for the sake of variety in your diet wasn’t worth that kind of effort or risk.”
“Unless you’re so sick of fresh produce that you’d rather eat non-perishable rations,” he plays. His smile is heavy, weary.
“So what’s worth them doing it?” I prod. “Weapons and gear just supports the trips. It’s not a reason to keep going year after year. I’d see it if you were willing to do it for the good of your own tribe, but Abbas says the food runners are free agents. I could also see it if they just supplied themselves and then brought back a little extra to trade for whatever else they needed. But I checked with Abbas: they carry back enough to feed his band, Hassim’s and probably Farouk’s as well. And they get paid in weapons more than anything else—more weapons than they could possibly use. How do they profit?”
“Running the weapons to Tranquility,” Matthew makes my conclusion. “Supplying those cavemen against the better-armed security suits that seem to be hunting them.”
“That would take a lot of the risk out of the game: The traders don’t take the food under fire; they buy it.”
“And probably have a deal to eliminate any potential competitors,” Matthew takes it further. “Did you clue Abbas?”
“I figured I owed him some kind of explanation,” I admit. “He said he’d been suspecting something similar since the ‘market’ shifted from food and gear to weapons and armor about a decade ago. I doubt he’ll challenge things, though. The system works for everyone. The Nomads trade salvage and scrap and the sweat of their craftsmen for enough to eat for a whole tribe until the next load...”
“And it feeds a war in a terrarium…” He tries not to cough in front of me. Then changes the subject like he’s trying to keep me distracted fro
m his condition.
“At least trade implies the Tranquility faction can be negotiated with.”
“Assuming you have something they want and approach the deal carefully,” Matthew takes it. “Still no new marching orders from Earthside?”
“Nothing since Richards confirmed receipt of the mission file and expressed his professional regrets over Regev and Wasserman. Satrapi called in a similar condolence, but at least she sounded like she was upset. Richards just sounded frustrated in a way that reminded me of his grandpa, stuck passing down orders he isn’t fully behind.”
“That’s not a good sign,” Matthew tries to make light of it, but looks like he’s in pain.
“No, it’s not,” I agree, but still trying to keep the mood from pitch-dark.
“I just saw Park down in Medical. He’s looking better,” he offers something brighter. “Lost a kidney, but his vitals are strong. Ryder’s a good cutter. Couldn’t do much for his missing fingers, though.”
“Did you see Jenovic?” I ask him, avoiding the question about why he was in medical himself.
“Pissed and hurting. Choice between a permanent limp or finding a new knee, which we don’t happen to have in stock. How’s Lieutenant Thomas taking it?”
“Pissed and hurting,” I give him back. “I think worse because she didn’t get a scratch.”
He shakes his head. Coughs. Sips more water. Clenches his teeth like he’s in pain.
“We can’t keep walking into shit like that if the ROE is to avoid killing what has no such rule about us,” he complains, more weary than his usual rage. “We’re either going to lose more good soldiers or up our defensive fire. If Earthside chooses option one, they can have my commission.”
“Or we sit tight and make them do it themselves when they get here, hopefully with a lot more support.”
“Assuming this little clusterfuck doesn’t put them off coming,” he bites. “They sure seem easily discouraged for being so excited to find out we’re still alive.”
I meet Rios down in the launch bay as soon as his ASV engines spin down. He clumps down the ramp heavier than his armor would account for, and promptly hands me the busted PA speaker.
“One round, near dead center,” he points out what I can clearly see tore through the projection cone. “The bullet is still in there. Scan says it’s a regular nine, and I’ll bet my Shinkyo sword that the rifling marks tell us it came from a revolver…”
I’d given Rios the questionable duty of leading what I didn’t officially call an “appeasement mission” back to Tranquility: One ASV, landing behind a ridge overlooking the colony dome, then setting up a PA speaker to boom out a repeating message of peace and forgiveness; offering supplies and asking for our dead to be returned. The message repeated for almost fifteen minutes before someone shot out the speaker horn. One shot, which MAI calculated came from over a hundred and fifty meters away.
“Sweet shot,” Rios fills the silence when I don’t say anything. “But who made it? Men in Black, or Planet of the Apes?”
I replay the video in my head: A dirty gunslinger that drew two pistols almost faster than the camera could see, fired in two different directions and hit two targets simultaneously, each less than an inch wide. And a brace of pristine black security suits—like the last fifty years had never happened—with UNMAC-grade optics.
“I’m not sending anybody else in to find out,” I assure him.
And I hope our little follow-up effort, combined with the souvenir Rios brought me, is enough to convince Earthside to agree with that decision.
1 April, 2116:
“We are sorry for your losses,” Mark Stilson offers in a way that makes General Richards sound like a warm human being. “But we did warn you what to expect at Tranquility.”
He doesn’t even slow his pace as he and his faceless blue suits walk us down through the tomblike darkness of the Station toward the relative warmth and serenity of their underground garden complex.
“You’ve been monitoring our transmissions,” I remind him, trying to keep the accusation in my tone to a polite minimum. “And you knew your vague intelligence wouldn’t satisfy Earthside. I understand your lack of candor because of the likelihood anything you tell us will go off-world, but details could have prevented this.”
“No disrespect to you, Colonel Ram,” he says like he mostly means it. “You have been a good friend to us, despite your duty to the new Earthside Command. But even if we had given you extensive data on the situation in Tranquility, would your leaders have just taken us at our word?”
My lack of an answer agrees with him. We don’t say anything else until the elevators take us down to where the artificial sun shines in the green.
With me this trip—our first since the ETE declared their intention to “keep the peace”—are Rios, Tru and Sakina. Matthew—on his feet again and without a “relapse” in a few weeks—I left in command.
Stilson leads us down to their “model” of the valleys. Perhaps counting on the odds that our Link video will be piped back to Earth, he wanted to show something that might inspire hope instead of fear. (I slowly realize this may also be why he’s kept his mask on: Earthside would surely recognize his face from their files, and probably react badly to the absolute lack of visible aging.)
The first actual face we see is Paul’s, and he greets us with his usual civil warmth. But I notice the telltale pink streaks under his right eye that I’ve come to recognize as the after-blemish of a serious nano-healed wound, and he seems to be favoring his left arm. And his eyes look older than the last time I saw him.
“In all candor,” Mark Stilson begins as if he’s making a speech, “there really wasn’t a lot of intelligence we could have given you regarding the Tranquility site. While it does tap our feed lines for water and fuel, it is far away from the nearest Station, and hostile welcomes in the past have discouraged us from approaching.”
“’Hostile welcome’ means we get consistently shot at,” Paul clarifies, “and with impressive accuracy.”
“We do estimate from the resource use that the colony does maintain significant environmental systems,” his father continues, ignoring the interruption like it’s insignificant information. “Given that the one visible dome is clearly breached, this implies extensive intact facilities remain sub-surface.”
“Reviewing your mission video,” Paul takes over, as his father steps back as if to defer to some possibly rehearsed presentation. “there is indication of parallel societies: one surviving adequately within the open dome, and another likely managing a separate existence within a sealed environment.”
“Like the Nomads and the Shinkyo,” Tru offers.
“Only more dichotomous,” Paul theorizes, “possibly because of their proximity juxtaposed with their apparent enmity. Two cultures. Two extremes. Two sides of the same coin. Occupying adjacent and relatively confined spaces.”
“And what can we do about this?” Tru pushes the point.
“We will likely do nothing,” Mark tells her coolly and clearly. “It has been our policy to provide for the survival of the surface peoples in terms of primary resources, and nothing more.” I realize he is making this statement for the benefit of Earthside. “We have only chosen to act to prevent conflicts that might jeopardize the security of life on this planet.”
“Despite the apparent violence, both societies appear to be thriving,” Paul defends. “And they serve to provide significant foodstuffs to many other societal groups.”
“Who trade them weapons to keep fighting each other,” I say it before Tru can.
“Actually, Colonel,” Mark corrects almost haughtily, “our indicators suggest that the conflict has actually come to what may be a mutually beneficial balance since the increased influx of weapons.”
“The dome people were likely at a disadvantage to their better-armed predators,” Paul clarifies. “But in the last few years, both systems seem to be thriving in a kind of enforced homeostasis, and crop product
ion has increased dramatically. The dome people are evolving into farmers, even though their economy is still driven by conflict.”
“And how do their hunters benefit from this arrangement?” Tru wants to know.
“Perhaps they used to take food from the dome by raiding only,” Paul speculates. “Now they may be forced to trade.”
“Both cultures evolve,” Tru digests, but doesn’t sound completely reassured.
“What we saw on our video didn’t look like the hunters were on any kind of defensive,” I criticize.
“You may have destabilized the situation inadvertently,” Mark says clinically, “by introducing a critical threat to both cultures. Both sides may have reacted out of their fear of you—consider how many times humans have violated other nation’s borders when such a threat presents itself. But a mutual enemy usually supports increased cooperation.”
“Unless they start competing to make that enemy an ally against the other,” I counter.
“I doubt that will happen in this situation, Colonel,” Mark argues in such a way that I think he must be smiling under his mask. “Earthside is the devil of these cultures, the ultimate mythical threat, the ender of worlds.”
“Satan come to consume their souls, offering treasures to tempt them,” Tru realizes.
“A fair analogy,” Mark agrees. “And so given, it is incredibly impressive that you, Colonel Ram, have managed what good faith you have.”
The God Mars Book Two: Lost Worlds Page 8