12 September, 2115:
For reasons I don’t care to explain to anyone, I stay the night at Melas Three, camping down in the newly-pressurized aircraft bays with Morales and her team. I’m hoping that she just chalks it up to an old man’s lame attempt to boost morale, the CO spending some face-time with the grunts instead of shutting up in one of the officers’ quarters.
I don’t get any actual sleep. Instead, I spend the night lying on my roll on the steel deck, staring at the shot-up hulls of the two ASVs that had been left for us to find. These were vehicles for exploration and construction once upon a time, a means to move men and equipment, to make the world benefit all of us. Fourteen years after Harker’s team made the first landfall, we started shooting each other. Nine years of that, and we nuke the planet. Fifty years later, it looks like we’ve devolved hundreds of years, rewound our history, our precious progress.
When I close my eyes, I see the mystery woman, armored and deadly, appearing and disappearing in the dust, and realize: This is what a Martian looks like.
And I see the carving up in Ops:
CROATOAN.
By morning shift, all I am is bleary-eyed and still not eager to call Earth, or sure what I’ll even tell them about what we’ve found. (Do I tell them everything, or do I withhold details that might cause them to react in fear? And if I don’t tell them everything, what happens when they come and find out what I’ve been withholding?)
I know my duty—I know what’s expected of me. But Sun-Tsu wrote that the general in the field must have the discretion to either follow or not follow the orders of his distant superiors as he sees fit to best accomplish his objectives. (Of course, that wisdom probably wouldn’t stand against a court martial.)
I fly back “home” after lunch (and more planning with Anton and Rick). No more sign of “desert demons” watching us, though I ride back in the cockpit so I can look down on the landscape as we go. All I see is empty desert all the way back to Melas Two.
I get the call before my ASV even shifts engines into landing orientation.
“The Stilsons need to speak with you, Colonel,” Lisa tells me. “They insist it’s urgent.”
“We were attacked at sunrise,” Simon hisses even before I’m all the way through the hatch into Command Briefing. He’s been pacing, staring out the polycarb viewports northwest, in the direction of his home Station.
Lisa and Matthew are already seated, both looking grim. Paul is coiled in his chair with his arms wrapped around his torso like he’s going to crush himself—he doesn’t even raise his eyes to greet me. Simon tries to say something more, but he looks like he can’t even speak. Instead, he keys up a video transmission. On our screens, I see missiles slam the towers of an ETE Station, throwing chunks of concrete. More missiles come, but they vaporize before they hit.
The viewpoint we’re watching is from somewhere up high on the towers. Dust begins to rise and obscure the view, but I can see orange sealsuits on the landing platforms, Spheres in hand like they’re trying to hold back a storm. The view pans out to show us small aircraft, weaving madly, throwing missiles from under their delta-wings. One of the missiles manages to go low enough to avoid the Spheres’ interception and takes out part of the platform support. A section buckles, and I see at least one sealsuit tumble down with the collapsing deck, vanishing down the slope.
The screen shifts and I’m seeing it again from another angle: missiles slamming the great towers. But then I realize it isn’t the same Station. A jumpy close-up shows me distinctly yellow suits swarming out to defend their facility.
“They hit Orange and Gold Station almost simultaneously,” Lisa explains.
“The two Stations closest to Shinkyo Colony,” Matthew clarifies.
“They just flew in and emptied their loads,” Lisa continues, trying to keep her voice level. “No warning.”
I watch something amazing then: One of the yellow suits grips a Sphere and a Rod together tight to his chest and leaps into the sky. No sooner is he off the platform than his body is thrown even more violently through the air, as if he’s being catapulted. He crosses a third of the distance between the Station and the attacking craft before he begins to lose momentum. I watch him spin in mid-air, point his tools behind him, and then his body is flung forward again. It reminds me of the way a cephalopod swims, in bursts of thrust.
The attacking ships get some sense of what he’s doing. I see them change course hard, turning tail. The flying man has two targets, who zig-zag each other to make his choice more difficult, but he manages to focus just enough. I see him point his Rod and one of the ships jerks as its port wing shatters—not like it was hit by a missile, but like something invisible swatted it. It struggles to keep its attitude but begins to spin—the pilot was pushing too hard to get away to have any control now. The ship tumbles out of control and slams back-first into the rocky terrain of the valley floor. Its wingman doesn’t even pause, just burns for home. The flying man changes his posture and begins to drop gracefully down, his tools again clutched close to his chest.
The scene shifts back to the Orange Station. Either they’ve practiced this or they’re communicating between Stations during the fight: Two orange suits fling themselves airborne just as the yellow had. But this time, the enemy takes a different tack: One ship burns hard for home while the other one turns and flies straight at them. It cuts between the two flying suits before they can fully respond (still, I see the ship jerk as if it struck something hard with each wing) and throws itself suicidally at the Station. It’s all the ETE can do to raise their Spheres against it. The ship explodes against their resistance, but the shockwave sends them all flying. I see at least two more go tumbling off down the mountain.
“The monsters would kill everyone!” Simon growls.
“It was senseless,” Paul finally manages to say. “What did they hope to accomplish?”
“A test of your defenses?” Lisa suggests.
“Or a message,” Matthew offers darkly.
“Your people: how bad were you hurt?” I ask.
“They will recover, Colonel,” Paul gives me, but it doesn’t lighten his mood. “And the towers were not damaged critically.”
“It makes little difference,” Simon snaps. “They are willing to destroy the only thing that keeps all of you people alive. For what? Greed? Envy?”
“What does your Council say?” I try to refocus him. “What will you do now?”
“They have recalled us,” Simon tells me, still seething. Paul keeps his eyes from mine. “We are leaving.”
I catch Paul out in the corridor. His brother looks back once, then keeps walking for the stairs.
“I’m sorry, Colonel,” Paul offers. “But you are at risk if we stay here.”
“I know,” I tell him. “But that’s not what I’m worried about.”
“Simon will finish the parts for the portable transmitter dish for Mr. Staley—it was almost completed even before you found the new components.”
I hold up a hand to stop him.
“These ninjas—or whatever they are—they’re reckless in battle. They fight with no regard for life, even their own. You’ve seen that yourself. So has Simon. But they’re always thinking ahead. Nothing they do is strictly what it appears to be.”
“What are you saying?”
“Trap,” Matthew is suddenly behind us. “They knew they couldn’t breach your Station defenses. I just had MAI do a firing solution given an analysis of their ordnance: They didn’t even try. They could have aimed to do more damage, but they shot sloppy on purpose. They were just putting on a show.”
“We found two bodies in each ship they lost,” Paul tries to counter, visibly struggling to believe it. “They sacrificed four lives—for a distraction?”
“For a tactical manipulation,” I tell him. “They knew what you would do next.”
He processes for a few seconds, then it looks like it hits him like a slap.
“The recall?”<
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“They know we’ve increased our defensive posture,” Matthew explains. “Trying to take you from us again would be very costly.”
“So they do something to draw you out,” I finish the thought, then let him digest it.
“It makes no difference, Colonel,” Paul heavily concludes. “Staying here endangers you even more than it endangers us. But isn’t there a saying? ‘Forewarned is fore-armed?’”
“There is.” I give him a grin.
Chapter 6: Escalation
The God Mars Book One: CROATOAN Page 26