“Lieutenant Straker,” I remember her. She doesn’t reply, doesn’t look up. “I understand your loyalty to your commander and your cadres. Know that I have no plans to harm you. You can ask your Zodangan allies about what to expect from us: we’ll probably keep you for a few weeks, observe and examine you like you’re some kind of interesting wildlife, ask you all the obvious questions, tolerate your silence with patience, and then release you back into your home territories because we can no longer spare the resources. This, of course, is assuming that your involvement with this Chang character hasn’t hardened my Earthside commanders against trying to ‘save’ all of you. The Disc issue is still a painful one.”
I turn to Rios. “Do we have an accurate count of the enemy dead?”
He hesitates, but quickly realizes I want to give our guests certain intelligence to digest. “We’re still pulling remains out of the wrecks, and bodies and parts fell all over. So far, we’ve put together at least a hundred and twenty corpses.”
“Any sign of Colonel Janeway?” I watch Straker as I ask—she doesn’t flinch.
“Nothing recognizable, sir.”
“What about Captain Bly?” This time I watch the three apparent pirates in the room.
“Negative. He’s either burned meat, among the few who managed to limp away for the long walk home, or he didn’t show up for the party.”
The pirates give me what I need. They look like they’re trying not to panic, straining against their bonds because they want blood. I smile.
“So Bly was present,” I conclude. “Janeway was not.” Straker still doesn’t react. “It at least confirms that Janeway’s smart. Maybe Bly was at least lucky enough to avoid being one of Chang’s cheap sacrifices. Hopefully he’s smart enough not to get back in line when Chang throws another few hundred people into our guns.”
I turn to leave, to continue my “inspection” of our prisoners.
“It’s good to see you again, Lieutenant,” I give Straker. “Perhaps we’ll get to meet sometime under better circumstances.” Then I address the pirates. “When we send you home, you might want to give Chang some engineering advice: He designed his new ship to survive our fire. He didn’t design it for your crews to survive our fire. You might want to bring that to his attention for next time.”
I leave the seeds I’ve planted to germinate.
31 October, 2116:
We bury our honored dead in a mass ceremony just after sunrise. It took Thomasen’s people three days to level the ground up on the ridge and dig sixty-seven relatively neat graves. UNMAC and Eco are laid side-by-side, former enmities now long forgotten.
(Our enemies got a much-less-neat pit just out of sight of the base to the west. The New Knights took their own dead home with them, wherever home is, in heavy body-bags that they brought with them to the fight.)
Tru and I both took turns speaking insufficient words. I didn’t bother the play the recorded messages of condolence and pride sent from the UN, Earthside Command and several of the member nations. I left them available should anyone want to view them on their own. I figured this moment was for us.
We all have a late and wordless breakfast after we come in and dust off. Tru and Ryder make an impressive and appreciated effort to lay out a spread of local-grown foods.
Kendricks (I still can’t bring myself to call him Obiwan) went with his people to bury their own, but left his apparent adjutant John Wayne Sutter and a pair of warriors (James Bond Howe and Boudica Yanos) to serve as our “liaisons”, something they do without much speaking and a level of personal discipline that rivals Sakina’s.
The Knights have not shared the locations of their “holds” or even the “outpost” they’ve been using to keep watch over us. Kendricks insists that this isn’t a reflection of their opinion of me (and they keep up this glow about them any time they’re in my presence like I’m Jesus—or at least Michael Jackson—come back from the dead). The issue of Earthside’s agendas—and they have been monitoring our transmissions—remains sensitive for them, and Kendricks has made it clear that the Knights (like the PK) no longer see themselves as under the command of UNMAC. I don’t have them followed home as a sign of trust, despite how desperate Earthside will be to have that information.
Time proves the Knights themselves are not all discipline-robots. Rios has gotten them “loosened up” talking tactics, battles, and doing a little fencing in our makeshift gym. Boudica (a muscular square-jawed brunette) even made a decent showing against Sakina in a mock knife fight (she still “lost” three times in a row, but seemed to enjoy herself immensely).
Stripped at least of some of their armor (like Sakina, they always seem to wear most of it any time they’re potentially in the presence of other humans), the Knights are lean, toned and well-groomed (military-short hair seems to be a rule).
They also seem to eschew technology (except for their cobbled breather gear) in favor of older tools: swords, non-AI guns, and writing on paper—Kendricks gave me a visibly-aged hand-written roster of his order’s “noble ancestors”, so I could confirm through Earthside records that the names were indeed UNMAC SOF personnel. He passed the document—sealed in a clear map-cover—like he was giving me an archeological treasure. The script is simple and clear, unadorned, but written with obvious care and respect.
And they do drink: Sutter offered us a sample of what they home-brew from the local grain-grass, which makes a passable unfiltered wheat-style beer (“chilled just right in the brisk Martian evening”), and offered constructive tips to Tru’s people regarding their own efforts (which have been resulting in sweet, strong syrupy concoctions).
Unfortunately, Rios had to mention (more than mention—he spun quite the theatrical tales) that I got myself into swordfights with not only the Shinkyo ninjas but also with Captain Bly himself. And I go from rockstar to messiah in the eyes of the New Knights of Avalon.
After the meal, I signal a meeting of the command team and department heads. I’ve taken to recording these meetings and sending them to Earthside unedited, so they can digest our concerns and plans relatively unfiltered.
Morales opens with her report, since Earthside will probably want to know about our most pressing deficits: We still have only one flying ASV. She’s reasonably confident she can restore a second by scavenging and patching. But that’s it. The others are either burnt scrap or too badly shredded. And the Lancer is far beyond her abilities and resources—it still sits where Smith ditched it.
On the unexpected plus, her team has managed to salvage enough parts to begin rebuilding four of the new Zodangan light flyers. Smith and Acaveda have both volunteered to serve as test pilots, but I hesitate to risk them further. Morales assures me that she will proceed slowly and with care, and I agree.
She also managed to salvage eight heavy SRF cannons from the wrecks of the frigates, which she turned over to Thomasen. He’s put them up on our perimeter, with Rios’ troopers taking turns learning ancient gunnery. It makes the base look like an eighteenth-century fort, but Rios is confident his men could hit something as big and slow as a Zodangan frigate if nothing else.
Kastl’s report gets grimmer after that. We’ve lost all of our main batteries, and only have one long gun salvageable for manual aiming. We’re down to only six missiles, and less than two thousand rounds of 20mm. Ammo for our AP guns isn’t much better, and only half of those turrets are still online. He estimates we could hold off a few ground assaults, but wouldn’t be able to repel even one Disc before running dry.
Thomasen considers that digging in and waiting for resupply would probably fail. The strategy might resist Disc attack, but if they’re supported by ground troops to dig down to us, or have any kind of big gun or bunker-buster, we would be breached.
Rios concurs: We can’t hold off another combined attack. Discs or other air support would chew up our troopers (our only resource that’s still relatively well supplied) if they tried to defend against a ground attack, and his best positions woul
d be hard-pressed to hold against getting hit simultaneously from air and ground.
Rick considers mining the perimeter, setting traps, but that would only hold off one wave, and not even that if the enemy could be dropped inside our perimeter from the air.
What’s uncomfortably clear (and I’m hoping that Earthside understands this) is that the disparity of force has shifted after only one battle: We are no longer the most powerful or technologically superior army on this planet.
“Then we have to fight like it,” Rios is the first to say.
I nod my agreement.
“We can’t maintain a defensive posture,” I decide. “If Chang can, he’ll hit us again before we get re-supplied in January. Or he’ll hit us to take the drops from us for himself.”
“We could try asking for an ETE presence,” Tru considers, then shoots down her own idea: “But they would have to basically garrison us, and Earthside would never accept giving control of this real estate to someone they’re just as afraid of as Chang.”
“We could move the civvies and supports out of the base,” Anton tries. “See if the ETE will take them in until we can get relief.”
“You think anybody would go?” Tru challenges.
“Earthside wouldn’t like the ETE in charge of our people any more than they would tolerate them in charge of our bases,” Lisa goes further.
“I won’t take the option off the table,” I surprise my team. “But I won’t go there unless I feel we can’t hold here any longer.”
“This is home,” Tru insists, darkening, looking now very much like the hardened Eco warrior (a side of her I’ve seen more and more since the battle). “We’ve invested too much to just run away. We need to hit these bastards back, make them think twice about coming this way again.”
“Chang will likely need time to rebuild,” I give her. “It sounded like he put the majority of his resources into his little show of force. But we also know he’s got some way to manufacture quickly and in quantity.”
“Assuming he doesn’t run out of manpower, since he treats them like cannon fodder,” Tru stays dark.
“He’s got drone tech,” Rios thinks ahead. “No reason he couldn’t decide he doesn’t need his so-called allies.”
“I don’t know if he needs them now, except for labor and a show that he’s all about saving the planet for the locals,” Rick calculates. “If he can manufacture without them, or force them into slave labor… He already blew the illusion that he gives a shit about whether they live or die.”
I nod, still hoping I can use that to lever his pawns away from him. I expect he’ll blame the slaughter all on us, on me, claiming that he underestimated our (my) bloodlust. My hope is that his soldiers figure out he stood them all in our gun sights without providing them any more protection than some clean new light-armored uniforms, barely sufficient stop a small-caliber PDW.
“Analyses of his aircraft show relatively simple designs, all mass-produced,” Morales shifts to the technical. “The only real surprise was the lift system of his new ship. It was lost beyond reverse-engineering, but those fans and jets were backed up by some kind of magnetic repulsion system—its output was part of what jammed us.”
“That’s why it was so hard to bring down,” Rick gives his own analysis. “We kept trying to hit secondary systems, break the spine of the thing.”
“The Knights somehow knew where to hit it,” Kastl remembers.
“Scan, guess or intel?” Lisa wants to know.
“I’ll be sure to ask,” I take on.
“What we know about the Discs… or think we know about the Discs… estimates a few months to ‘grow’ a new batch,” Anton calculates. “How long until Chang—assuming he put himself back together—finishes more of those big ships?”
“Or something even worse,” Metzger worries. “All he really needs to do is make one ship tougher than the last one.”
“Even if Paul put Chang out of the game for awhile, he probably gave his cronies what they need to make their own toys,” Tru considers. “You know they’ll run with it even in his absence, try to take us and everyone else.”
“We need to hit his factories,” Lisa concludes for me.
“First we need to find them, Colonel,” Rick points out the obvious. “And it’s not like we’re in a good state for doing that kind of recon.”
“Then we need help,” I decide.
John Wayne Sutter is both forthcoming and good at drawing maps by hand. Given a stylus and a graphic table, he gives us a pretty detailed representation of the Northeast Melas Rim. Zodanga—or at least where the Knights have seen Air Pirate activity—sits high up on the shear upper rim, about center of a gentle thirty mile long concave curve. The position gives the Zodangans excellent command of a wide range of territory that includes the ruins of Avalon, Mariner and Melas One, bordered on the west side by The City of Industry.
Melas Two, however, is out of their direct sightlines, around a point on the eastern edge of their cliffs, though they probably have set up some kind of observation post to keep an eye on us.
“Our Noble Ancestors attempted a number sorties into the Zodangan Holds for justice,” Sutter makes it worse. “That was many years ago, and I expect the pirates now have greater offensive and defensive resources. Back then, the cliff wall was well-defended by hidden cannon and cave-bays from which they could launch their light flyers. Also, their big frigate would patrol the rim when not out raiding. It was easy for them to pin us down and drive us back without exposing themselves significantly. It’s one of the reasons we’ve had to keep our own Holds so well-hidden.”
“But it does give you an idea of where they are,” I point out. He marks positions on his map, including drawing a deep cut perpendicular into the cliff-face about a third of the length from the eastern point.
“This channel is a narrow steep-walled canyon, about five miles long into Ophir Planum. It’s on the old pre-bombardment maps, and seems to have survived the Apocalypse mostly intact. It would be an ideal manufacturing and docking port for their big ships, out of sight from the main valley and easy to defend at its mouth.”
“You could hide a small fleet of those sailing zeppelins in there,” Metzger calculates, bringing the canyon up on the post-Bang satellite maps we got from the Lancer.
“And the mining operations to pull the raw materials,” Morales agrees.
“The advantage of their position could be turned against them,” Sutter offers, pointing to the narrow channel where the long thin gorge joints the Melas rim. “The narrowness of the canyon mouth is a choke-point going both ways. If you could hold them inside, hold that part of the Rim, they couldn’t get out. Their airships won’t fly in above-Planum atmospheric pressure. Unfortunately, that entire stretch of rim is Zodanga-controlled. You’d have to drive them from their cliff caves first.”
“That would take an orbital bombardment,” I tell him what he’s probably already considered, “a message I hope we never have to send.”
“Or a long, ugly ground fight,” Lisa remembers similar scenarios played out on Earth.
“They’re blind here,” Rios indicates the eastern point, on our side of which another box canyon—much wider—cuts into the rim. “Unless they do have lookouts.”
“Which we could take out,” I go blood-thirsty.
“Then what?” Kastl discounts. “you’ve still got ten miles in the open, and through whatever rim defenses they have, then down a five mile ideal ambush corridor, into an unknown base.”
“I’m liking the orbital bombardment option,” Metzger concurs.
I draw a straight line from the box canyon cut on our side of the point, up and over the Planum to the Zodangan canyon.
“That’s less than ten miles,” Anton sees where I’m going.
“You planning to do it on foot?” Rick criticizes. “That’s a four mile climb before your ten mile hike across an open plain in near-vacuum.”
“We’d need aircraft,” I insist. Morales l
ooks like she’s in pain. I let her off the hook. “Back to the part where we need help.”
1 November, 2116:
It’s as bad as the ETE showed me on video.
Shinkyo Colony—or at least that part of the colony left in the open after the ETE took it and unburied it—is a smoking ruin of craters, pounded by merciless artillery or bombs. It looks like every exposed section has been holed, shattered, burned.
The only sign of resistance are the wrecks of at least half-a-dozen of their light fighters, scattered across the plain, shot apart, crashed. And bits of a somewhat greater number of those “kite” fighters that Chang apparently made for his pirate friends.
I regret that I have to use an ETE airship to get myself here in person, but I have nothing left to spare (or, more accurately, risk for a trip as long and potentially treacherous as this). I expect the Shinkyo will blame the ETE for the attack as much as Chang. So I have Paul’s team drop me off, with Sakina, Thomas and Sutter (brought along as a representative of the New Knights, but “disguised” in a fresh UNMAC LA uniform with lieutenant’s bars), and fly back out of sight in the dust.
Hatsumi Sakura doesn’t keep me waiting long this time. She appears out of the dust with a retainer of six shinobi like she’d been waiting for me.
There’s no kneeling this time. No tea. Only respectful bows, standing facing each other across the sand in view of their damaged colony.
“I’m sorry,” I have to tell her, despite what weakness it might imply.
“You have nothing to apologize for, Colonel,” she tells me through her ever-present mask, her eyes still covered by opaque lenses, rendering her expressionless. “I have heard that you and your warriors fought well, and cost our mutual enemies dearly.”
“Not dearly enough,” I counter with an edge in my voice I hope she appreciates. “They still had ships and drones enough to do this to you.”
The God Mars Book Two: Lost Worlds Page 27