The God Mars Book Two: Lost Worlds (21 page)

“Blast shields!” I order, but MAI is already slamming
the shutters. Now I can’t see, except through camera feed. It
shouldn’t make a difference—MAI’s eyes are better than mine—but I
feel that much more removed from the fight.

Perimeter cams give me the best shot of the ETE ship.
The two Discs buzz it, trying to find a weakness to exploit. The
shields hold. But if the ETE are trying to hit back, they’re having
equally poor luck.

“Paul, where are you?” I call out on the ETE
Link.

“On my ship, Colonel,” he calls back, sounding like
he’s trying to keep his calm. “Good to have you back.”

“Having fun yet?”

“These buggers are hard to hit. Any advice?”

“I’d suggest going out and hitting by hand, but I
think they’ll figure how to stay out of reach quick enough.”

“Maybe not quick enough to cost them,” Paul
decides.

“They’re smart buggers,” I warn him.

“So are we.”

I hear Matthew shout as Smith jerks the Lancer to
avoid a spray of Disc fire. He tries getting the turrets on, but
misses three attempts. The Discs don’t: rounds ping the hull,
aiming for the engines and cockpit. The Lancer is by far our
fastest and most maneuverable ship, but it lacks the armor of a
combat ASV.

Smith says they’re still okay, hits the engines hard
to get some space. When one of the Discs flies hard after him, he
pulls and old trick: suddenly breaking and then burning and fanning
his tail, catching the Disc in his exhaust. The Disc loses control,
flipping off into the air like it’s been flung, and Matthew tags it
with one of the aft turrets. I see it getting ripped into on the
targeting cameras, then it blows itself apart.

“One down,” Matthew announces without much
celebration. Smith banks and burns to keep the second Disc on them
from getting a decent lock—this one is too smart to get right
behind them, and it keeps darting side-to-side to keep from giving
them a shot. Bullets chew at the Lancer’s wings.

“Use the anti-personnel guns,” I order. “Get them
breathing room.”

Kastl spins up the small batteries on the eastern
perimeter, pushes them for enough elevation to barely get a shot. I
know he’s done this by hand before, and sometimes a human operator
can do better with instinct than MAI can do with tracking and
algorithms. (I’m thinking again about the ETE theories: if the
Discs
are
more advanced than any other tech we have, it
makes sense whatever AI runs them is faster than MAI.)

Kastl starts spraying the sky, leading the Disc, then
putting rounds in the air in the opposite direction, hoping to
catch it if it reverses. It does, but he misses. He tries it again.
This time the Disc goes up instead of back. He tries it a third
time, and
this
time clips the thing when the Disc darts
downward.

“Got you, you bastard…” I hear him hiss. But the Disc
is still flying. At least he got it off the Lancer. Then his
connection with the battery goes dead. Another Disc came in and hit
it with grenades. “Shit!”

“I’ve got the nose gun charged,” Smith reports.
“Displays say I’ve got some spread options. I could hit them
wide…”

“You could burn out the base batteries,” Matthew
warns. “And the sentry eyes.”

Grenades pelt Main Battery Two, attaching and then
bursting their shaped-charges into the works of the turrets.
Metzger’s taken control of a set of the smaller AP guns herself,
and manages to tag one of the Discs during its grenade pass—the one
time a Disc isn’t flying wild is when it’s locked for accurate
fire. I watch the Disc burst and flip like a coin and go down hard
into a hillside a few hundred meters outside the perimeter. An
explosion follows seconds later, letting me know the Disc is
finished. But so is Main Battery Two.

Another Disc slips in and plants charges right on the
blast shields covering the west ports of the AirCom tower. I see
Metzger and her tech crew get rattled a bit when they go off, but
the shields hold. Then a chunk of plexi blows in at me as the Disc
tries to breach the Command Tower ports. They apparently remember
the layout of this base.

“I’ve got an idea,” Smith is saying. The Lancer’s
engines flare and it burns hard for the base, charging the Disc
that’s picking at our defenses. He’s still got the one Disc on his
tail, but when Matthew opens up on the second Disc, it turns and
joins the attack on the Lancer—the Discs will usually address the
biggest threat first.

Smith flees into the desert, then brakes and turns on
them, Matthew still spraying with the small turrets. The Discs burn
hard and fly past him, getting behind him again, which puts them
further out into the desert. Smith spins the hovering Lancer in
place and then hits the EMP when he’s pointed away from the
base.

There isn’t much to see—the pulse itself isn’t
visible. But one of the Discs starts to wobble and then tumble,
flies past the Lancer without firing, and hits the perimeter wall
hard. The other one is wobbly, but manages to keep airborne, and
makes a run from the Lancer back toward the base. It isn’t
shooting—the weapons may be knocked out or empty. MAI estimates a
vector right at our Command Tower—Disc drones often kamikaze when
they’re too damaged to keep shooting. The Lancer spins in hot
pursuit, but the Disc is faster.

“Get out of there!” Matthew is shouting. “Clear the
Com Tower!”

But then the Disc suddenly reverses direction and
takes a direct run at the Lancer, guns blazing. It was just playing
lame. Rounds cut up the hull, but Smith shouts out that he’s good,
and Matthew keeps blasting away with whatever’s left in the
turrets. The Disc finally seems to run out of ammo and hesitates
just for a fraction, just enough for Matthew to tag it, and it
blows in midair, not a dozen yards from colliding with the
aircraft. But less than a second later, two charges blow on the
Lancer’s hull, on the port side of the cockpit.

Alarms go off, and I can’t raise Smith or Matthew.
The smoking ship is spinning down drunkenly on VTOL jets, trying to
land, so someone is still in control of it. I watch the sleek
aircraft go scraping into the rusty desert without landing gear,
its jets kicking up a storm of dust. Repeated hails don’t get any
answer. The violence of the billowing dust cloud ebbs enough to let
me know the engines have spun down.

I’ve forgotten about the ETE.

They moved their ship closer to the base to try to
back us up, still dealing with the two remaining Discs. I zoom in
enough to see two sealsuits standing on top of the ship’s hull,
trying to tag the Discs with their Rods. They’re not having much
luck. I realize a Disc attack is something we never addressed in
their training.

The Discs are conserving ammo, though—recognizing the
threat but realizing they can’t do much about the ETE shields. They
pop a few rounds or a grenade at the ship every few seconds just to
make sure the shields are still strong. I expect they’re
calculating a strategy even while they buzz the thing. Then I see
one of the suits flinch and almost lose his balance when a grenade
burst manages to send enough of a shockwave through the ship’s
shield, and that’s what the Discs were looking for.

I don’t even have time to send a warning. One Disc
flies straight at them and detonates itself just as it hits the
shield. I see the ship jerk and tip and the sealsuits tumble off of
it, falling a good hundred feet to the sand, just beyond our
landing pads. The last Disc takes a run at them before they can
recover, and sprays them with its guns. I see them both go down,
their blue suits torn and bloodied. The ETE ship tries to move over
them to give them cover—the Disc pops at it one more time just to
confirm it can’t break the aircraft’s defenses—and the Disc
switches targets. It flies straight at the Command Tower.

I see it jerk and destabilize. It looks like a large
bite has been taken out of it. I look back and see one of the
sealsuits on the ground getting up on his elbows and firing at it
prone with his Rod. He collapses just as he scores the hit. But the
Disc isn’t done yet.

“Clear the Tower!” I order. “Everybody out!
Move!!”

I’ve got Kastl and two techs and me. Kastl is
reluctant to give up his guns, and I have to grab him and drag him,
shove him for the exit. More grenades are slamming the port
shields. They’re on the verge of failure, deforming badly. Kastl
has made it to the hatch when the explosions stop, and on the
screen I can see the Disc spin out on a long, wobbly arc. Out of
bullets. It burns hard and comes in for its last run, a dying
missile aimed at the failing blast shields right in front of me. I
shove Kastl through the lock, throw myself on top of him. I know I
can’t get the hatch shut behind us in time.

But the Disc doesn’t hit.

I look back at the screens. MAI is tracking it. It’s
burning straight up into the sky, falling apart in pieces, with
something else clinging to it.

A blue sealsuit. It’s folded over the rim of the Disc
like the Disc hit it head on. I can see a hand with a Rod working,
chopping the Disc apart as it flies.

And then the Disc explodes in midair.

I stay put just long enough for MAI to replay the
last several seconds of feed before the last Disc went boom. I see
a blue sealsuit throw itself right in the path of the Disc just
before it hit the Command Tower. The Disc slams the ETE hard, maybe
hard enough to break every bone in even an enhanced body—I’m
surprised whoever it was wasn’t just cut in half—but the Disc gets
knocked violently skyward, missing its intended target. But finding
another one. It sacrifices itself to take the ETE with it.

“
Paul!
” I’m shouting as I head for the nearest
lock—an emergency hatch that exits the Command Tower right out onto
the topside of the bunkers—barely remembering to grab a mask as I
cycle out. I don’t get an answer on the ETE channel.

Rios has H-A suits piling out of the main locks,
moving to secure and assess. Battery Two is a smoking mess. Battery
One looks like it took glancing damage. The Com and AirCom towers
have been pounded close to breaching, as has the main vehicle bay
hatch.

Looking west, I can see the dust cloud of the
Lancer’s hard landing starting to dissipate, but I can’t see the
ship.

“Metzger! Anything on radar?” I demand.

“Nothing else incoming,” she answers me, sounding
winded, but answers my next question: “No answer from the
Lancer.”

I can’t help but scan the base perimeter, the bunker
roofs, looking for whatever may be left of the suit that grabbed
the last Disc. I’d be grateful that I don’t find what I’m looking
for, but I have to know. The ETE ship has landed, and they’re
seeing to their
one
wounded man on the ground—the other one
that fell from the ship must have been the one that threw himself
at the Disc.

“Colonel Ram…” I finally hear Paul’s voice. He
coughs, sounds like he’s drowning in his own fluids. I see the
shredded suit on the ground manage to wave at me, confirming.

“Simon?” I ask before he can tell me. I don’t get an
answer immediately.

“I don’t know…” he answers like he does.

Thomasen is getting a rover up, but I don’t wait for
him.

Running on Mars becomes skipping in the low gravity
and loose rubble. It isn’t at all dignified or easy. And I can feel
how my joints have aged with every jolt.

The Lancer sits in a ditch almost a klick away from
the west perimeter “gate.” It’s buried itself half in sand with
what its engines blew up. Its smooth hull—at least what I can see
of it—is pocked and dented and big holes are blown through it where
the cockpit should be.

Rios and his troopers are coming up behind me as fast
as their heavy armor will allow. I get to the port forward hatch,
but it’s damaged and half buried and won’t open. The starboard
hatch is almost completely buried. I’m considering how I’m going to
climb up a smooth round hull when the top hatch goes bang and pops
off into the air, its emergency release explosive bolts blown. I
scramble onto the wing to get myself up there as best I can. Fail.
I have to run back to the tail and get up that way. By the time I
do, the H-A suits are using their rappeller gear to grab the
hatchway and haul themselves up.

Smoke is coming out of the open hatch, but not enough
to say the ship is burning. I see a pilot suit try to climb out.
Armored hands reach to help him. It’s Smith. He sits atop the hull
and pries his helmet off, tosses it away like it’s hurting him,
defaults to a soft mask. He’s bleeding from the nose and ears,
seems to be having trouble seeing. His suit looks intact, but then
the nearest H-A is checking his left arm and thigh. Smith winces
when his side gets prodded. Then he doubles over and throws up. At
least it isn’t blood, but he’s having a lot of trouble breathing
and looks beyond-disoriented. The troopers hold him, tell him to
take it easy, not to talk. But then he looks up and sees me and his
eyes tell me he doesn’t want me here and he shakes his head, goes
far away.

“Check Colonel Burke!” Rios orders, and two H-A suits
drop through the hatch. I see their lights dance inside the dark
ship. I go to join them. “Sir, don’t…”

But I jump down inside the lock anyway.

The smooth, perfect panels that line the cockpit are
all dark, but sunlight is leaking in through a handful of holes,
lancing thin and no-so-thin rods of light through the smoke. The
panels on the left side are shattered, burned. One of the control
chairs is bent sideways on its mount. One of the H-A suits gets in
my way, puts up a gloved hand to stop me.

“Sir…”

I push past him.

Matthew wasn’t wearing a helmet. Not that it would
have made much difference.

I feel like I’m not here. Like I’m watching this from
somewhere far away. I feel like an empty shell. Empty. Hollow
statue. If I fell over I’d shatter.