The God Mars Book One: CROATOAN

by Michael Rizzo

4 September, 2115:

  We now have four working ASVs. I risk two with minimal crew.

  Shinkyo Colony’s original location, in the opposite corner of Melas southwest from us, is almost two-hundred miles away. That means the ASV’s will have just enough fuel to get there and back with what their low-altitude engines burn, plus enough to make the necessary passes. If they have to do any more than that, we’ll be sending the remaining ships to meet them out in the valley.

  The aircraft lift off an hour after sunrise, once the temperature gets mild enough to keep ice off the hulls and not cold-stress the patchwork airframes. This means our targets will see them coming, but I fully expect they have more ways to detect incoming visitors than just their eyes.

  The flight out takes an hour. Smith and Acaveda risk enough elevation to get us a look at the site while they’re still ten minutes away.

  “Visual,” Lisa announces.

  Shinkyo was planted below the eastern slope of the sixty-mile long ridge that extends north into the valley from the South Rim, the crest miles high, it’s lazy curve inspiring the name “Dragon’s Tail”. The apparently fake nuclear crater is clearly visible just below its foothills, salted with almost-convincing blast debris. Paul—in his role as Martian geologist—begins pointing out signs of excavation—although very careful excavation—that reshaped the landscape, piling regolith from the foothills over the top of the colony so that it would look natural, at least to the untrained eye. It’s an unbelievable amount of Mars-moving, belying significant resources. Too bad it fails to hold up to a surface-level examination: the ground has been raised at least a dozen meters, and the crater is built up on top of it. (Matthew is immediately reminded of bad spy movie villains with secret bases inside volcanos.)

  “If this works, we can use it to locate Melas Three,” Rick reminds us while we wait.

  “Would it give us a look into the PK colonies?” I ask him.

  “If they’ve built below ground,” he offers. “It won’t translate well into the above-ground structures.”

  We’d already tried conventional imaging and scans—whatever resources the PK have, they’ve gone to great lengths to mask them, and to mask them against UNMAC technology.

  “Get low again, Shadow One,” Lisa warns Smith over the Link. “No sense tempting a pot-shot.” The visual feed drops low to the rolling valley floor.

  “You really think they won’t just open up when they see us coming?” Matthew asks me again.

  “The Ninja-thing is about hiding,” I tell him. “They’ll pride themselves on how well they can be invisible.”

  “And when we shine the light on them?”

  “That’s why we’re hitting and running. But by then, they’re screwed—it’s not like they can easily re-hide a whole colony once we’ve revealed it. I’m hoping that will put them on the defensive.”

  “Especially after you’ve given the intel to the Power Rangers,” Matthew uses his most recent colorful descriptive for the ETE.

  “Coming up…” Lisa announces as the ASVs split, taking opposite arcs around what should be the colony site. “Targets locked… Planting… Now!”

  Hull cameras show a large projectile fired straight down into the soil from each aircraft. They impact, penetrate. Then the ASVs pivot, rise, and fall back. There’s still not a sign of life from where Shinkyo should be.

  “Bang the drums,” Rick calls into the link. Both ASVs fire a missile into the ground—penetrating bunker-busters. They shatter the landscape, but do so hundreds of meters from where the colony should even begin to be.

  “Hopefully they didn’t build outwards,” Lisa considers in hindsight.

  “Feedback…” Rick lets us know anxiously. He’s glued to the screens as the shockwaves from the blasts get read as Ground-Penetrating Radar by the probes the ASVs planted—a modification of the technology used to get deep-strata mappings when the ETE Stations were sunk, then later to pick more slide-resistant colony and base sites.

  “Pretty…” Matthew purrs as the feedback gels into a ghostly floor plan under the rocky surface. MAI begins to process the images into a 3D construct.

  “Incoming!” Lisa almost shouts. Missiles are flying up out of the landscape.

  “They figured it out,” Matthew agrees.

  “Back home,” I order. “Now.” But the ASVs are already burning retreat before I can give the order. Their aft turrets spray back at the pursuing missiles while MAI directs countermeasures. Then things get bad.

  “Fuckers have coil-guns!” Matthew curses as a spray of high-velocity projectiles comes flying after the retreating ASVs.

  “Low! Get low!” Lisa barks. “Evasive!”

  Wilson has engaged Discs before, and Acaveda is sharp enough to know the basics. They drop close to the ground to get as much terrain between them and the anti-aircraft batteries Shinkyo has apparently installed. Then they peel off sideways and weave to defeat targeting. Alarms go off and I hear Acaveda curse.

  “I’m still here!” she quickly confirms, not sounding particularly relieved. “Punched a big-ass hole in my port wing. Lucky I don’t need them to stay up.”

  “I’m heating up a ship to meet you,” Lisa reassures her. “You’ll risk coming back on vapors without the wings to reduce your VTOL burn.”

  “Sergeant Morales is gonna kill me…” she mutters.

  “Smith?” I call into the Link.

  “Here, Colonel.”

  “MAI got a lock on their batteries. Let them know we’ve become a little irritated with them.”

  “Yes, Sir!” he agrees heartily. I watch the feeds as his ASV locks and sends a pair of missiles back, skimming low to avoid being shot down. MAI registers hits that look on-target. “Message sent.”

  “Escort Shadow Two home, Lieutenant.”