The God Mars Book Two: Lost Worlds (17 page)

“I’d like the UN to consider authorizing their
release. The prisoners do represent an extra burden on our
resources, and I feel that releasing them would pose no significant
additional threat. Also, they may deliver news about how quickly we
recovered from their actions, which may help discourage future
attacks.

“On that note, our greenhouse is also back to where
it was before they shot it up. The naturalized plants are
resilient, and with our extra care are incredibly productive. Ms.
Greenlove estimates if we had the resources to expand the current
facilities by a factor of twenty, we could feed the estimated
population of the planet. Unfortunately, even with the materials,
we’ve pretty well proven we couldn’t adequately defend such an
enterprise.

“We continue our regular recons into Coprates, though
we are still greatly range-limited. I am sending you all of our
latest survey data. Sadly, the colony sites of Tyr, Nike, Gagarin
and Concordia appear completely stripped and abandoned. The only
condolence is the stripping indicates some group or groups have
been active there, though we’ve seen no more sign of human life in
Coprates since we encountered the people at Tranquility.”

I have to pause then, taking a breath to re-compose
myself. We’ve been sending flights out every few days as our
battered and patchwork aircraft can manage, flying past the site
where we lost Regev and Wasserman, and we’ve found no sign of human
life other than the stripped ruins of once-thriving colonies. The
spreading greenery we continue to survey is little consolation.

“As a final note, our flights have detected a small
electromagnetic anomaly approximately one hundred and fifty miles
east of here, in the valley floor between Tranquility and the Tyr
ruin. Imaging shows a small impact crater. It doesn’t match the
inventory of known supply drops you’d sent us. If you could analyze
the data and get back to us, we could give the site a closer look
if it warrants—there appear to be no local threats.

“Signing off from Mars. Message ends.”

I get a message back before lunch, which is sooner
than usually expected given how many agencies must mull over every
word sent and received. Most of it is positive: Richards confirms
the dozen supply rockets launched over the last week appear to be
successfully on course, and should be arriving as calculated in
mid-January. The manifests he’d sent indicate impressive caches of
foodstuffs, medical supplies, weapons and ammo. Two late additions
include parts to replace a number of our battery guns, but perhaps
even more welcome will be the parcels containing new food and water
recycling tech. The people of Earth have been generous—there will
be food and gear to spread around—but they’re also being cautious
considering how much payload is being devoted to re-arming us.

He also reports that the first larger manned missions
have been cleared for launch within six weeks. These flights will
include a brace of new aircraft for field testing and almost a
hundred skilled volunteers—scientists, physicians, pilots,
engineers—willing to risk the possibility that the quarantine may
not be lifted any time soon. I find this encouraging until I see
that Colonel Burns is on the list as mission commander, which makes
me consider the likelihood his true mission is to replace me as
planetary CO. I find I am still ambivalent about this possibility;
while I’m certainly not planning to serve in my current post
indefinitely, I was hoping to turn the command over to Matthew or
Lisa, not someone sent to fulfill a UNMAC (or more accurately
UNCORT) agenda. But then, that was exactly why I was sent here in
’58. And Matthew will not likely be fit to command for very much
longer.

That leaves Lisa, and while I have full confidence in
her ability to not only command but to take the planet toward
something resembling a mutually beneficial peace, I find I still do
care for her enough not to wish the politics on her. And I realize
that she might never be offered the promotion simply because of her
history with me.

Richards then blindsides me by changing the subject
entirely:

Apparently someone back Earthside has taken keen
interest in the EM ghost we picked up east of Tranquility. Richards
does his best to play it down as routine, but he passes along an
order to get boots on the ground, secure the site and find out
what’s there that’s hot enough to trigger our instruments.

He makes no attempt to give more of a rationale for
the mission.

17 June, 2116:

Two ASVs lift as soon as the frost melts off in the
morning. I send two full H-A squads for security, even though the
site in question is almost fifty miles from any of the old
colonies, and relatively out in the open in a crater on the
Coprates floor. The rest of the crew includes Thomasen and a
digging crew, complete with a light tractor, and Anton, who
insisted one science chief be present despite the potential risks
of working in unknown territory. I agree because there has been no
sign of life on the last two flyovers, and the radiation levels are
far from dangerous. I also want to get the best idea why UNMAC
Earthside is so interested in what’s buried in a crater in the
middle of nowhere.

“You sure you don’t want more guns and less geeks on
this first look?” Matthew asks pointlessly as we watch the aircraft
raise dust as they jet east. I’ve noticed he’s been trying to keep
from coughing in my presence, and he forces his posture strong when
he sees me coming. If he’s looking pale, he blames it on the lack
of real coffee or the gastrointestinal effects of the Eco
gardeners’ latest “local grown” recipe. He still hasn’t admitted to
me that he’s got terminal cancer. And I still haven’t told him
about Paul’s offer.

“If it’s going to be bad, I’d expect backup is
already coming,” I tell him.

“Colonel,” Kastl lets me know way too soon, pointing
out the radar blip MAI is tracking, incoming from the direction of
the ETE Blue Station. MAI gives a projection that Metzger confirms:
the ETE ship isn’t heading here, they’re shadowing our flight into
Coprates.

“I don’t think we’re looking for some lost probe,”
Matthew shoots down one of the speculated causes for the EM
signature we’re going to dig up.

“It’s not hot enough to be a dud warhead,” I
remind.

“So what aren’t they telling us?”

“Earthside or our local friends?” I clarify. He gives
me a shrug.

“Let’s ask,” I decide. But my Link call on the ETE
channel gets picked up by Paul, not by his father. The background
behind him is the bulkhead of their refitted AAV. I can hear the
signature thrumming of their “engines” in the background.

“Good morning, Colonel Ram,” he greets formally, his
tone unusually flat.

“What are we flying into, Paul?” I ask directly.

“Unknown, Colonel,” he tells me mechanically. “My
orders are to provide protection for your mission.”

“Protection from what?”

“That is not specified in our assignment.”

“No personal curiosity as to what we’ll find?” I know
his people have monitored every communication about this anomaly,
but I also expect they already know more about whatever’s causing
it than they’re saying. But if it was their own tech, or something
they knew was dangerous, I expect they’d try to stop us, or at
least warn us away. Something doesn’t make sense.

“I am always curious, Colonel. But I have my orders:
Protect and observe.” His voice keeps flat, telling me that
something has been kept from him as well, something he can’t
discuss over an open channel. I do notice he used the word
“observe” in addition to providing us protection.

“Hopefully we won’t be needing protection,” I allow
him, then sign off.

“That was creepy,” Matthew comments.

“Captain Metzger,” I order, “have Lieutenant Smith
prepare the Lancer and stand by.”

It takes an hour-and-a-half to get to the site, a
small crater roughly centered in the valley floor. The ASVs take
one wide circle to look for any sign of movement or heat that could
indicate human presence, but there’s nothing, not even footprints
in the sand. The terrain is open for at least a thousand yards in
any direction, dotted with scrubby grain-grass and nut-bearing
shrubs. Despite the edible bounty, the nearest tapsite is almost
fifty miles away, and there’s no sign of significant groundwater
for dozens of miles.

The ASVs set down on either side of the crater, which
is about seventy-five meters across and less than twenty deep. It
looks old, likely a meteor impact rather than anything manmade, and
the bowl is full of sand and gravel.

We get our first useful report after Thomasen gets
his crew poking around in that sand and rock.

“There is sign of recent disturbance here,” he
narrates. “Recent in terms of decades, likely from the bombardment
fifty years ago. The material in the crater looks like it was blown
in from a blast shockwave. It hasn’t been disturbed by anything
other than wind and what seems to pass for rain out here since. If
anything’s buried in here, it’s been buried since the
Apocalypse.”

“How deep are we talking?” I ask. It takes a few more
minutes to get an answer.

“Reads like about a meter and a half, maybe more,”
Anton scans, standing roughly dead center on the depression. “I’d
do a seismic, but I’m afraid I might damage whatever it is.”

“My crew is ready to dig,” Thomasen tells me,
sounding eager.

“No sign of company,” Horst tell me from his position
on the crater rim. “Except for the Power Rangers, of course.”

On his feed, I watch the ETE ship ease down on the
valley floor, a few hundred yards from the crater.

“Dig,” I tell them. “But carefully. I don’t want
whatever this is exploding in your faces.”

I send a nothing update out to Earthside while they
work.

It takes them an hour the get the bulk of the
sediment scooped away. They create a new crater within the crater,
over four meters wide.

“It’s not big, and it’s not dense,” Anton manages
while there’s still a foot or so of Mars between them and whatever
they’re digging toward. “Maybe two meters in diameter. I read
metal, but no dense alloys. And whatever power it’s putting out is
barely making noise.”

“Just enough to attract us?” I consider the
suspicious.

“It’s not a beacon,” Anton counters, not picking up
on my concern. “More likely a power source that hasn’t discharged
in all this time.”

“Does MAI recognize it?” I ask Kastl.

“Negative,” he answers. “But there has been a lot of
file corruption.”

“Earthside would recognize it,” Matthew suggests
offline, “assuming it’s something we’ve encountered before, or
something they sent.”

“If it is, then they’re not ready to advertise it
yet,” I consider, hoping it’s just the lack of security in our
interplanetary communications that’s preventing their candor.

“Paul?” I call up the Link to the ETE ship. “You’ve
been observing. Any new orders come your way?”

“None, Colonel.” But I hear the slightest nervous
edge under his monotone. “But if you’d like, we could observe
closer.”

“Please do,” I tell him after considering it for a
few seconds.

I watch two blue sealsuits leave their ship and walk
over to the crater, then gingerly skip down into it. Horst gives
them space. They stop at the edge of our dig.

“Colonel,” Paul comes back on after a few moments of
looking down into the hole, “our tools might be able to clear the
rest of the dirt away more gently than your shovels.”

“Any sense we might have an explosion if we don’t do
this right?” I ask.

“No telling,” he admits. “You might want to pull your
own people back.”

“Earthside isn’t going to appreciate it if we let the
ETE touch this thing first, whatever it is,” Matthew cautions. “I
doubt they’ll like them being this close.”

“They also told me to make strategic use of them if
it didn’t compromise us in any critical way,” I remind him. “And
since no one is telling us whether this is important or just
interesting junk, I’d rather not get anyone hurt for Earthside’s
pride.”

I tell Anton and Thomasen to get back to the crater
rim, then give Paul my blessing to do his thing. The two sealsuits
draw their Rods and wield them like artist brushes, and dust blows
up out of the hole. They aren’t sending me video, so all I can see
is what my own men see.

The blowing stops after perhaps a minute, and then I
get only silence.

“Paul?” I ask for some kind of report.

“Get your people back, Colonel,” he tells me gravely.
“Get them in their ships. Get some distance from this place. Right
now.”

“What is it, Paul?” I insist. He doesn’t answer
me.

“Horst, get us a look,” Matthew orders against Paul’s
advice, not willing to just give up the find to the ETE. At least
the ETE don’t make any attempt to stop us.

The dust is still clearing when I get a video shot
down into the hole. The first thing I see is through the haze is
the chrome helmets of the two Guardians, standing on either side of
something roughly round and gray. Their blue suits have been dusted
with the rust of what they’ve blown up, and there’s still a lot of
sand and gravel, but Horst finally gets me a good shot of what
they’ve dug up.

“Oh holy shit…” Horst mutters into his Link.

It’s the familiar geometric facetted saucer of a Disc
drone. An
intact
Disc drone.

“Holy shit it would be…” Matthew breathes.

I take Paul’s advice and order my men and ships back
to what may or may not be a safe distance, though Anton
successfully convinces me he should stay with Paul and Simon (the
other ETE who was in the hole), close enough to keep monitoring
while keeping out of easy shot of the thing’s now-exposed upper hub
turret. Horst stays with him for whatever good it will do. Paul
keeps a Sphere in hand to provide a quick shield if need be.