“You really think war or unconditional surrender are your only options?”
“How is what you’re asking us to buy into not surrender?” he challenges.
“And that makes fighting your only choice?”
“Do you honestly think any of the other factions on this planet are going to disagree with me when Earthside troops start landing?”
I look past him at his colony. There’s still no sign of life visible above ground.
“How much blood is it worth?” I ask him.
“How much blood is anybody’s home worth?” he counters. “Or their family? Or freedom? That’s what we’re talking about, isn’t it?”
“Colonel Janeway, frankly I have no fucking idea what we’re talking about. Neither of us knows what’s going to happen. You’re just all quick to assume the worst case. You don’t know.”
“I know enough, at least about this planet,” he gets somewhat softer. “Turn your Links off and speak free: Can you honestly tell me you believe it isn’t going to come down to a choice between one kind of death or another?”
“So who makes that choice here?” I ask heavily. "You? Your soldiers? Your Civvies? What happens if some of you would rather take their chances with Earthside than go down?”
He brings back his hard little grin, shakes his head like I’m being stupid.
“You assume it’s just going to be our little homestead and our guns against all the power Earthside can throw at us,” he tells me, “but there are other powers on this planet besides Earthside and your Nano-Freaks. We have our own options—you can count on that. And no, I’m not going to ruin the surprise. For now, Colonel, you’ve done your part, played your little on-camera performance for the benefit of the folks back home—those so-called ‘people’ you’ve never met. Now run along. We won’t be serving lunch.”
I let him have his moment, though I can’t say I’m convinced that he’s either bluffing or deluded. I shake my head, give him a sad frown.
“Okay, Colonel,” I allow him. “Just don’t draw unnecessary fire. That’s all I ask.”
“I’ll pick my battles myself, thanks—it’s one luxury I have that you don’t. Don’t draw unnecessary fire yourself.”
They salute, turn and walk away across the dust.
Chapter 4: No Quarter
5 April, 2116:
“I don’t envy you your position, Colonel Ram,” General Richards is offering in his latest video message. “But consider your recon and contact missions on hold for the time being. We’re having quite the debate here on how to proceed. While we would very much like more intel on this ETE ‘green zone’ in Coprates, the cost would likely be unacceptable.”
“Losing two men didn’t sit well with the media back home,” Matthew translates bitterly. “Glad Regev and Wasserman didn’t die completely for nothing.”
“Or our latest reports scared them shitless,” I give him back.
“Our latest reports scared me shitless,” he returns. “Let me just go on record as saying this is not what I expected when I signed on for this tour.” I catch him stifling a cough. Smile at his dry joke.
“We’ve moved up priority in launching a new satellite network,” Richards continues when we un-pause him. “Hopefully, we can get some of the intel we need from orbit. Our contractors have also made progress with a new generation of AAV. I’ve forwarded the simulations—it’s lighter, faster, more nimble and more fuel efficient. Apparently the new atmosphere will allow us to make the new craft more airplane-like, so they won’t have to rely on engines for the majority of the lift. Long recon should be much easier. We’ll also be sending upgraded armor and weapons, including some less-lethal options, assuming more trouble ahead with the locals…”
“Tru’s gonna seize when she hears that,” Matthew jokes. “Nobody cared much about ‘less lethal options’ when they were shooting at her Ecos.”
“Maybe Earth has changed,” I allow, but don’t really buy.
“… We can’t be killing the people we’re trying to save,” Richards addends as if he could hear my comment. His tone is probably meant to sound humanitarian, but with what we’ve gleaned about the renewed and pervasive influence of religion on all things Earthside, the term “save” comes across as a bit chilling. Matthew’s raised eyebrows let me know he took the term similarly.
“I also want to let you know that we have been coming to uncomfortable terms with the ETE situation,” Richards’ tone goes heavy. “It’s not just their unregulated and unmonitored advancement and use of potentially catastrophic technology…”
“Here it comes,” Matthew sighs. “The UNCORT Inquisition speaks.”
“…but perhaps more distressing is how their scientists did not even consider the situation of the other human survivors. While they claim their intent is to provide necessary survival resources on a large scale, it’s clear that their concern was only for their grand terraforming experiment, that human survival was incidental. Otherwise, they would not have stood back and let these violent and barbaric societies develop as they have, especially given the ability to intervene that they’ve demonstrated to you. I personally cannot imagine a more irresponsible abuse of science for science’s sake, and I’m being generous here. There is a more popular assessment across the UNMAC membership that the ETE are conducting a calculated experiment on these people, and are only now attempting to correct this atrocity because they are under our scrutiny. The fact that they apparently kept you all asleep for fifty years while they did what they did makes them look more than guilty, and well aware of it.”
Matthew pauses the playback again, sinks deep into his chair. His eyes track into the distance out through the plexi portals of the Command Tower. The wind has kicked up so much dust we can barely see the greenhouse, but he’s looking far beyond that. He shakes his head heavily.
“I can’t say I disagree with him,” he admits, his hand rubbing his face.
The mid-morning dust blows always remind me of the old Mars: the forbidding, endless desert. The empty howl of the sharp, fast winds over thousands of miles of bare rock that recall old horror movies set in lonely, isolated places. I remember finding that amusing, even challenging in those days.
Then I remember that the ETE—and likely the Shinkyo and the PK—are listening to this accusation themselves. I can’t help but imagine what they’ll think of it, of us.
“Doesn’t mean I’m going to find Jesus or anything…” Matthew reverses, doing his usual to keep the mood from smothering. I give him back a smile.
“We should let him finish,” I gesture to Richards’ face, a scowl frozen on our screens that does look very much like his grandfather when we’d done something to seriously annoy him. Matthew lets the feed flow.
“However, the Security Council has to reluctantly accept that the ETE are our best tactical asset on the planet at this point, at least for the foreseeable future,” Richards says after a pained breath, now looking even more like his grandfather did in those times when he had to relay orders he would rather protest. “As such, you are authorized to cultivate a strategic relationship with them. What that means is go ahead and help them fix this mess if they’re willing, setting our opinions aside for the present. Do not put your people at unnecessary risk. Priority is to avoid further casualties on all sides. Work with them as long as you feel you can trust them to do the right thing, Colonel. But do your best to discourage further militarization of the ETE unless absolutely necessary to ensure your mission objectives. And I should not have to remind you to report on this situation fully and regularly.
“Attached is a report for Doctor Halley from our medical research team. Our thoughts and prayers are with you. God bless you all. Message ends.”
I spent the rest of the afternoon effectively avoiding my “mission.”
I did not contact the ETE, nor did they attempt to contact me. Perhaps their thinking is the same as mine: that this new news needs digesting, and that we shouldn’t talk about it until
it settles. Bad enough to make the accusation over what Earthside knows is a monitored transmission (perhaps a calculated decision—some kind of diplomatic crowbar?), but then to follow up with a barely-masked intent to manipulate. “We think you are monsters and cannot condone or forgive anything you have done, but we will happily use you to further our own ends…”
Instead, I called Abbas on the Link and spent an hour updating him, trading opinions, considering any of a number of mostly bad places this could go. I realized as I was doing it that I was serving my own agenda: Put the Nomads in the loop, hoping the word would spread among their tribes: This is going to get ugly, but I mean to keep it from being a massacre. And I fully intend to let the “natives” know what to expect.
Abbas reflects my concerns, as well as at least a fraction of Earthside’s distrust of the ETE. However, it’s clear that given a choice between the ETE and UNMAC, there will be no surprises among the survivor descendants: the ETE may be some combination of gods and monsters, but Earthside is the devil.
I follow that call with an open-ended message on the PK frequencies, knowing Janeway is at least listening even if he’s too stubborn to respond. I let him know I know he’s been hearing all this, and try to reassure him again that I want to avoid a fight. And that’s where I leave it: no demands, no requests, no pleas. As expected, I get no reply.
After lunch, Matthew and I replay Richards’ latest with the junior officers, chief techs, medical staff, and Tru. The mood is tense, ambivalent. It’s getting clearer with each transmission that we’re not only far from the relief we’d hoped for in calling home, but that time has taken away any semblance of that “home.”
I get the most tension this time from Thomas, and ask her to stay behind after everyone else has gone.
“Say what you’re feeling, Lieutenant.”
She chews her lip, stares at the table top. She doesn’t answer.
“I should never have sent your team in there,” I tell her. “The outcome was a given. The only victory was that we didn’t lose all of you.”
“We understood the risks, sir,” she gives me.
“Not fully,” I correct her. “But we’re beginning to. I won’t send any of you into a meat grinder when the ROE’s dictate against effectively defending yourselves.”
She takes a deep breath. I see her teeth grind. “Is that your call to make, sir?”
“Not much they can do about it if they don’t like it, Lieutenant. But I need to know how you feel about that.”
Her eyes finally come up to meet mine. Her jaw muscles are hard-clenched. Her fists ball on the table top.
“I didn’t come here to hide from a fight, sir.”
“You didn’t come here to get marooned for half-a-century, either. Fifty years ago, we were the front line in trying to protect something.” I walk over to the plexi, look out across the valley. “Now, we’re it. Eleven-hundred-odd bodies, four barely-airworthy ships, two bunkers and a cache of guns—that’s all that’s left of the UNMAC you signed with. Are we still here to protect something?”
She manages to shake her head, shrugs.
“I’m not sure either, Lieutenant,” I give her. “And that’s dangerous. We all need to make a decision. Mine is to not get us all killed before we even know where we stand. All around us is a world we don’t know. Behind us and over forty million miles away is a world we don’t know anymore.” I sit down across the table from her, lock her eyes. “So: Are we still here to protect something?”
“I’d like to think so, sir.” But she looks away when she answers.
I give her a few moments. Then reach out.
“I served with your father, Lieutenant. Good man, good soldier, good leader.”
“He spoke highly of you, too, sir.”
“I don’t know what happened to him,” I tell her quietly. “I know he’s dead—I read the reports they sent us on our families and friends. I know most of them are dead, but I only know it from reports, the cold details of obituaries. I wasn’t there. I was asleep.”
I watch her chew her lip, reset her jaw.
“I still haven’t come to grips with that; going to sleep and waking up and the world you knew and everyone you knew are gone. I don’t think any of us have. So I’m not sure how we define ourselves now. But we each have to decide what we are when everything else is gone.”
She shakes her head, closes her eyes.
“You’re a good soldier and a good leader, Lieutenant,” I give her. “I could use you. I don’t exactly know what I’m doing yet, but I could use you.”
I get up and start to head for the hatch.
“Sir?” she calls after me.
“Yes, Lieutenant?”
“I do think we’re still here to protect something.”
“Thank you, Lieutenant. So do I.”
Halley is waiting for me outside. I realize I’d forgotten what Richards’ had said about a report for her.
“We need to talk, Colonel.”
I follow her back to her office in Medical. She doesn’t say another word until we’re sitting across her desk from each other.
“I’d sent Earthside everything I could on our extended Hiber-Sleep,” she begins evenly. “I’m no expert on these things, and given whatever the ETE did to extend our sleep, it’s all well beyond my understanding. So they put a team on it, and finally had something worth giving back to me.”
“I’m assuming the news isn’t good,” I reflect.
“It’s not all bad, Colonel. I want that to be clear up front. But let’s just say you aren’t physically seventy-one. You’re more like seventy-six, after being in a five year coma. Hiber-Sleep is a chemical process to slow cellular metabolism down to a fraction of normal. It was based on what certain amphibians or insects can do to survive long periods dormant.”
“I read the research,” I let her know she doesn’t have to pad things.
“The metabolic slowdown appears to have been held steady at ten percent throughout our sleep. That also explains our long rehab: to our bodies, we’d been unconscious and immobile for five years. That’s a rough experience, even at low-G, but our younger crew seems to have made a mostly full recovery.”
“Mostly?”
“The brain ages worse in these equations. Neurons suffer more than other cells from slowed metabolism. While there are no cases of significant brain damage, there is what I would call brain aging. What that means is that a lot of us will likely see the early signs of dementia come on a decade or more before it naturally would have. The good news is that even Earthside’s current nano-free medicine can go a long way to offset those effects.”
“Assuming Earthside is willing to send said supplies,” I counter without thinking.
“Do you think they’d withhold necessary medications to ensure our cooperation?” she runs with it before I can defuse my comment. Still, I find the most convincing I can manage is to shrug it off.
I automatically begin to run down the list of dementia symptoms I remember from my pre-UNACT college days: Problems with attention, functional memory, disorientation, labile mood, depression, psychosis. I realize how most of the above could just as well be due to our situation, what we’ve been through and continue to go through in terms of all the stress and depravation we’re enduring. But now I have the nagging question: have we missed something degenerative and irreversible?
“What about the children?” I shift the subject to ask about Tru’s concerns.
“Earthside insists they should start developing normally again,” she tells me, though not sounding convinced. “And we’re already seeing that. But they’ve bought themselves a longer childhood, which means they’re more resilient than the adults and will probably live longer. I’ll keep sending the Earthside team regular updates.”
“What’s the bad news?” I press when she hesitates.
“Us older farts didn’t fare as well,” she admits after a long breath. “The natural aging process was exacerbated to different degrees
in each of us. It’s manifested as organ damage, neurological degradation, musculoskeletal degeneration, vascular decline…”
“Brain damage?” I want to know, back around to the subject of dementia.
“Nothing serious,” she tries to assure. “Micro-scarring. Might account for minor memory loss, reduced attention span, irritability, mood changes, some confusion. All normal, given our adjusted brain age.”
I feel numb all of a sudden, shaky.
“Doctor, in your opinion, could this affect my ability to make command decisions?” I have to ask, hit by a flood of doubt about my behavior for the last fifteen months. She gives me a slight smile.
“No, Colonel. And take that from the Earthside medical team. Scans and tests say you’ve managed to come through in remarkably good shape for your adjusted age.”
I’m not feeling any better. “Who hasn’t fared so well?”
She doesn’t answer immediately.
“Doctor Mann is showing signs of peripheral neuropathy, which is likely to get worse. That means tremors, pain, numbness, decreased coordination. Doctor Ryder shows signs of mood instability. Colonel Ava is showing early signs of cardiovascular disease, and her cancer risk factors are high—but that’s all common for her age. You and I both show signs of degenerative arthritis and arteriosclerosis.”
The God Mars Book Two: Lost Worlds Page 10