The God Mars Book One: CROATOAN

by Michael Rizzo

Day 154. 5 June, 2115:

  “I don’t see anything.”

  Except the red ochre of the distant cliffs at the top of the valley rim, its nearest point over twenty miles away and three miles above us. Our best imaging is enough to bring out individual boulders on a section of the steep slide-scarred slopes, but that’s all I see where Rick is insisting I look.

  “I doubt you will, Colonel,” Rick reassures it’s not because of my age. “But that’s where the nearest emitter is. It’s either well buried or very small, or both.”

  “And that’s what’s keeping the air in?” Matthew challenges. He shifts his weight on his “walking stick,” adjusts his goggles, shuffles his boots in the thin layer of grit that remains on the roof of the Command bunker.

  “I’ve gone over Dr. Staley’s analysis,” Rick defends. “Each emitter’s putting out enough EMR to charge the upper atmosphere across the canyon, slowing down the air loss. That’s an incredible amount of energy. And with no discernable radiation bloom—that means no reactor, or an incredibly well-shielded one. Whatever it is, the power output of one of those things would run this base. We need to get up there and get a closer look.”

  And he’s looking forward to it, I can tell by the way he talks about it. He’s more than curious, he’s impressed. He wants to see what science and technology has become in the last fifty years.

  “As soon as we get wings,” I assure him. “Unless you plan to walk?”

  “Not out of the question,” Anton chimes in, coming down from his work trying to repair his “tower.” “I’ve been thinking: There may be another way to get around on the surface. The ETE generators all run ‘feed lines’ down into the deeper valleys, dispersing the air they generate, as well as the dedicated lines that fed O2 and water and hydrogen fuel directly to the colony sites.” He pulls his flashcard out of his working coveralls and brings up a map. Colored lines crisscross the valleys, showing the flow-lines of precious air and water. “Even if they got severed by nuke strikes or slides, they were designed to seal automatically, so they’d be at least partially intact; and if the generators are pumping, they’ll be full of everything we’d need to get around on the surface except for food. They’re too far out to feed the base in any practical way, but if we created some kind of portable ‘tapping’ system, we could use the lines like oases, to top off our tanks on a long hike.”

  “Or our flight range,” Rick considers. “Assuming we get something flying.”

  I find myself staring out into the vast Melas valley—hundreds of miles of rolling, mountainous desert.

  “Makes me wonder if anyone else has been doing that very thing,” I find myself saying to no one in particular.

  Matthew is kicking gravel off the side of the bunker, watching the slightly slower way it falls in the low gravity and settles into the bulldozed mounds below, like light powder.

  “They certainly could,” Rick takes my thought to heart.

  “Assuming they survived long enough for the air to thicken,” Matthew criticizes.

  “Not necessarily, Colonel,” Anton counters him. “They could have used the feed lines to refresh pressure suits, set up shelters. Even if their hard sites were hopelessly compromised, all the colonies were well-stocked with survival gear.”

  “The hardest trick would be to stay warm,” Rick adds. Then thinks about it. “If I didn’t have heaters that I could keep fed on hydrogen or solar, I’d move close to the terraforming generators. Dig in where it’s warmer. Digging in would also protect you from solar radiation.”

  “What about food?” Anton engages him, the two beginning a merry game of hypotheses.

  “Some of the colonies were developing renewable sources.”

  “Assuming no one is actively trying to kill you,” Matthew interrupts.

  “We’ve still had no sign of Discs, Colonel,” Rick discounts. “Not in almost six months.”

  “What about our neat little jamming net?”

  “There’s still no proof that its intent is malevolent,” Rick returns. “I’ve run the figures—the output, however impressive it is, is barely keeping up with the need: the atmosphere is still bleeding out at a ratio of about fifteen percent of what the generators produce. The jamming effect we’re experiencing is probably just incidental interference. Remember, we’ve only got scavenged short-range gear to work with—it’s pretty fragile pushed as far as we’ve got it. If the net was designed to cut us off from Earth, or keep Earth blind to whatever’s been going on down here, then I’d think it would be more dedicated to that purpose. Or something else would be set up to do the job better. The net is just cutting us off because we don’t have the equipment to push through it and not burn out in the process.”

  “You’re assuming an innocent little tale of survival, Doctor,” Matthew is getting edgier. He’s grinding the tip of his stick into the bunker’s casting. “But the simple fact that those things are up there tells us that someone’s been busy, someone with significant resources. If it was Earthside, we wouldn’t be having this conversation—we’d be sleeping through our ride home.”

  Rick leaves it at that. He’s used to having conversations like this, though his eyes glance up and lock on mine just long enough to make the obvious point: he’s used to having these kind of arguments with me. Anton just looks worried, and he doesn’t have all the history between us.

  Rick goes back inside. Anton goes back to pulling parts from his tower.

  My O2 gauge is edging into yellow when I head for the airlocks. Matthew is still doing his ritual vigil, eyes on the horizon.

  “Colonel Ram, this is Metzger in AirCom. I have a contact.”

  Metzger’s voice is impressively professional, holding back what sounds like edging on panic. And suddenly I’m thinking the same thing Matthew has been, as I fall naturally into expecting the worst. “Incoming?”

  “Yes, sir. Fast and low.” I hear Metzger gulp in a breath. “Nearly five hundred knots and only a few hundred feet off the deck. Bearing west-southwest. Fifty klicks out and closing fast—it’s coming right for us…”

  “Signature?” I’m already climbing back up onto the bunker roof (and remembering that Matthew is still up there).

  “No signals. Small radar profile.”

  “A Disc?”

  “It’s coming in straight and steady, Colonel,” I hear Lisa chime in. “No evasive maneuvers—it doesn’t fly like a Disc drone would.”

  “Rios, Carver, I need guns on the surface,” I order anyway. “Kastl: Get the batteries up. Defensive fire only.”

  They chime back to confirm. I can already hear the battery guns humming to life, rotating into position. I plug my HUD unit into my goggles so I can see what Metzger sees. When I get to Matthew, he’s done the same, half-hunkered down below the bunker roof’s three-foot “rampart” line, his ICW shouldered and linked for firing.

  “Michael?” I hear Lisa on my link.

  “Lock us down, Colonel Ava,” I tell her. “I want a platoon of Heavy Armor on the perimeter walls, another ready in the staging areas for support. Disc protocols—that means chain guns and launchers. Everybody else inside. Shut the blast shields and seal for breach.”

  I hear her order everybody below. Carver’s unit (just her luck) is up. They’re already dropping into their Heavy Armor suits and getting booted. Three minutes later, my HUD gives me a tactical map—thirty little red HA graphics come pouring out of the staging airlocks to get to their positions. Looking back over my shoulder, I can see the Mars-red hard-shell suits doing their signature bow-legged run, dragging their heavy weapons, faceless behind fully-visored helmets.

  “Shouldn’t you be wearing a can, too?” Matthew scolds me.

  “What’s your excuse?” I dig back. We are the only two bodies above concrete not wearing hard armor.

  “I was enjoying the weather,” he plays. “Too nice a day to wear all that bulky hardshell shit.”

  I link in my own ICW, get the sighting graphic up on my HUD, and point
the over/under barrels of the weapon downrange. West-southwest.

  “Visual contact,” Metzger calls out barely a minute later. “Decelerating. Still no course change… Doesn’t look like an attack pattern.”

  “Defensive fire only,” I remind everyone. Then I’m straining to see the thing coming for myself.

  First thing is the dust cloud—whatever it is, it’s coming low, probably running VTOL jets. Then I get a speck of something dark. It becomes spherical. Gets bigger, closer. I realize what I’m looking at isn’t a sphere, but a long cigar-shaped fuselage seen nose-on. But by then, it’s on top of us.

  It comes in smooth, flies right over our heads, and stops with unbelievable deceleration inside our perimeter. Then it does a lazy turn over the landing bays like it’s just come home. VTOL jets kick up dust, making it hard to see, but make little actual noise.

  Despite the rusty haze, I can get a decent look at it: It’s art-deco sleek, like a prop in some ancient science fiction serial—a tin rocket ship on a wire. Longer than an ASV—maybe seventy-five feet from needle-sharp nose cone to V-tail—with small triangular wings. It’s all smooth featureless black, with no discernable markings or even a visible cockpit. And I feel a sudden cold shock when I realize it looks very much like some kind of missile. I’m about to order everyone to deep cover (for all the good it would do if the thing really is a nuke) when the visitor does a final graceful hovering rotation, then settles down on one of the ASV pads, landing gear appearing like it had just “grown” out of the smooth hull. Its engines wind down, letting the dust begin to settle.

  And that’s all.

  Chapter 3: Unexpected Guests