The God Mars Book One: CROATOAN

by Michael Rizzo

23 October, 2115:

  The ETE have apparently come up with an interesting and unexpected solution to their Shinkyo problems.

  First came the confirmation that they do indeed possess their own working aircraft: Five transports “converted” from the civilian model AAVs that were in use by the Stations before the bombardment, kept in storage all these decades because the ETE preferred to travel lower-profile.

  The Council’s official word (at least from Mark Stilson) is that they want to avoid putting us in any more unnecessary danger, especially given the high risks that the Shinkyo have presented, so they decided to invest in making their small air fleet viable (meaning compatible with their current level of technology).

  The final products are impressive if disturbing: The ETE transports have been refitted with less concern for armor, allowing more plexi viewports and domes for visibility, and the quad lift engines have been replaced with field generators similar to Spheres. Each ship maintains a backup hydrox engine, but the craft glide and hover almost silently without particulate thrust. The craft also lack visible weaponry, either an attempt to convince others (or perhaps themselves) that their intentions are benign, but Paul vaguely admits to the installation of “defensive systems.”

  Despite their repeatedly-voiced concern for our safety, the Council invites us to fly out with them in the Lancer to observe their “operation.” I invite Tru to join us this time, my effort to prove to her why I need her “conscience” here.

  The last time I was here in person, I was in far too deep a state of shock to appreciate the scale of the Shinkyo’s attempt at nuclear defense. The landscape is almost geometrically reshaped by an arrangement of three fresh and almost colony-sized craters, staggered and overlapping, almost entirely obliterating the original fake one. (The devices had been ejected from below ground to airburst, thereby giving the best spread of effect for their yield and reducing the subsurface shock that would have crushed the colony.)

  The ETE position three of their craft in low hover, in a spread a half-klick east of the buried colony, and—without actually touching down—they each lower something that looks like an artillery weapon out of their bays. Anton is particularly mesmerized by the design: sleek, clean, more like sculptures than guns—in fact they appear to have no actual barrels, just a stacking of geometry, the liquid-metal nanotech common to all ETE tools swimming through their core workings.

  “We have already warned the Shinkyo to stay inside,” Paul tells me. “But we will keep close scans just in case any purposely ignore us. We chose to plant our equipment at this distance to minimize any impulsive resistance attempts. And we hope to have come and gone before they realize the extent of what we are doing. Please assure Colonel Burke that my people have valued his instruction.”

  “What…?” Tru barely gets out before we see it begin. I heard no coordinating communication, no order given, but the ETE “cannons” begin to hum, and I feel a vibration through the ship, through my uniform, through my flesh. I feel warm and light. Then it looks like a storm has come outside.

  The landscape blows in a wind, and huge dust clouds billow up over the colony site. It gets more and more intense, until I realize what I’m looking at: Not a wind, but some kind of force against the blasted soil, coming from the ETE devices. It looks like someone’s using giant blowers against the hill that covers the colony, and the dirt and rock is being scooped away, pushed away, blown away (though there’s no sound of wind except the rattle and crackle of moving regolith).

  “Holy crap…” I hear Anton mutter. I feel Sakina coil in her own skin next to me. Tru is just shaking her head in dazed shock, eyes wide.

  “Am I seeing what you’re seeing?” Matthew asks over my Link.

  “No sir,” Smith discreetly answers him. “You really need to be here.”

  All we can do is watch as the colony structures begin to be revealed as the land that covered them is smoothly stripped away. A great dune of moved sand and rock grows a few hundred yards west of the colony, pushed against the very foothills that the retreating Shinobi disappeared into.

  “A calculated benefit,” Paul points out the new hillside. “If they have secret tunnels in those slopes, it will take them time to dig them out. And the way we are smoothing the landscape will make any new tunnel opening much easier to detect.”

  The clock says the entire action takes just less than twelve minutes. The colony now sits in a variation of what it looked like before it was buried, only stripped to foundation level and built downward: It had been three domes like flower petals around a central complex crowned with a spire-like tower, the “flower pot” being a cluster of rectangular fabs. The domes and tower are gone, but the basic shapes remain—it looks like the entire colony has simply been inverted into the ground like the reflection of a mountain in a lake. The only remaining indication of their decades under thousands of tons of Martian rock is the pervasive scuffing and pocking of the once-pristine white thermoplastic overcoat, stripped through in some places to reveal the anti-radiation layers of the habitat sections. The white has been unevenly dyed rusty by the iron in the soil.

  The ETE ships retrieve their “artillery” and turn and glide noiselessly away for home.

  “We should go, too,” Paul suggests.

  “Give them nothing to shoot back at,” I agree, starting to understand the wisdom behind their strategy, however shocking.

  “We have withdrawn our physical presence from the colony,” he confirms. “Now we can monitor their activity from a distance, including what comes and goes from the colony. If we detect renewed threat, we will intervene before it can be realized. On an irregular schedule, we will ‘re-sweep’ the surrounding terrain to check for tunneling, and perform scans to monitor for changes to the colony structure.”

  “And if they try to draw you in by sabotaging the colony infrastructure?” I test. Paul takes a moment to answer, but says with quiet resolve:

  “We have connected them to our Feed Lines. We will continue to provide oxygen, water and hydrogen fuel. Beyond this, their survival is their own responsibility. They have thrived well enough for five decades. If they choose to obliterate themselves, or allow themselves to be exterminated for the profit of their leadership, then that is their own affair. Our responsibility is to the future of the planet. We can only hope that they will evolve themselves to be a productive part of that future.”

  What he’s not saying is the other obvious part of their strategy: They’ve just demonstrated that they can literally move mountains. Even if the Shinkyo have bunkered in deep, the ETE can dig them out.

  “Good speech,” Tru finally says, her voice shaky. “Let’s hope for your sake that Earth will see it your way.”

  “And how do you see it, Miss Greenlove?” Paul gives her back with unexpected arrogance. He doesn’t sound anything like the man who defied his people—his own father—to help us.

  She doesn’t answer him.

  He then lets us know he’ll be returning to his Station—sounding very much like nothing unusual has happened here today—seals his mask and turns for the airlock.

  “Paul…” I catch him away from the others as he’s about to cycle the hatch. “Something I need to ask: I was concerned enough by what Earthside would make of fresh nukes going off here two weeks ago. What are they going to think when they see the Shinkyo Colony suddenly reappear on the surface in one piece?”

  He only gives me a little bow of his helmeted head, then shuts the hatch and lets himself out. On the monitors, I see him use his Rods to propel himself skyward like a man shot from a cannon in an old circus.

  “We’d been pushing them to send a message out to Earth for us,” Anton tells me quietly, letting me know he was listening to what I asked Paul. “Maybe this is their way of doing it.”

  I keep staring at the newly unburied colony on the screens as Smith begins to pull away for home.

  “How soon until you’re ready to take your transmitter out to Candor?” I ask A
nton.

  Chapter 5: The Pirate Code