The God Mars Book Two: Lost Worlds (38 page)

“You got her flying again, I see,” I open
lightly.

“Hopefully more than that,” Paul confirms it is him
inside the blue suit. “But she still needs work.”

“And your Council?”

“Not enthusiastic that I agreed to bring vulnerable
bodies along, but they understand our difficult position with
Earthside.” I appreciate his using the inclusive “our”.

I signal for those vulnerable bodies to advance:

Rios has handpicked a squad of H-A troopers, with
Horst in command, to handle any ground operations once the ETE get
us to where we hope we’ll find the Zodangan airship factories. To
the ETE’s visible discomfort (no small effect since their masks
remain sealed), our soldiers are also packing a significant
quantity of demolitions along with heavy chain guns, big-bore
sniper rifles and launchers.

But then, I notice each member of Paul’s team has one
gun-modified “Rod” in their tool belt.

Horst leads his team to the open lower forward
airlock, and orders them to load in quick and smooth.

“Call it symbolic,” I try to ease the tension I feel
coming off the ETE. “If it’s simply a matter of wrecking some
select equipment, destroying facilities after they’re cleared…
Better for Earthside if we can say it was us that did the deed and
not you.” I realize Paul likely gave his father a very similar
argument. The ETE don’t resist our loading their ship with guns and
bombs, at least not physically.

“So we handle any real threat, then let you blow up a
few things to make your masters feel better about the arrangement,”
translates a voice I recognize as Jonah Carter, apparently the
representative “Red Team” Guardian. He keeps his tone remarkably
level, so I can’t tell how much is snide and how much is simple
clarification.

“Essentially,” I play diplomat before Paul can
censure him. “And maybe you can let us take point on the ground,
assuming the threat is manageable.”

“It’s foolish to risk your lives at all.” I also
recognize Rhiannon Dodds of Green Team by her voice, being far more
honest than her cohort.

“One life in particular I’m concerned with,” Paul
confronts my attendance. I catch Horst looking my way and
reflexively nodding his agreement, but then he piles into the ship
behind his team.

“I’m only coming because she is,” I tell them,
nodding past the ship toward the southern edge of the pad, barely
visible in the darkness. Paul and his “Power Rangers” turn to face
the indicated direction, and suddenly Sakina has stepped in front
of me, playing protector. I make a point of stepping forward so
that we stand side-by-side.

Four figures come walking out of the cold Martian
night, as if having simply appeared at the edge of the pad. Paul’s
people instinctively put hands to their “tools”.

“Lady Sakura,” I greet with a slight bow as she
approaches us, her black robes in contrast to the red camo suits of
the three shinobi that escort her. They walk an idly cautious
semi-circle around the rebuilt Lancer, then stop a formally
cautious distance from the line of sealsuits. She wears her sword,
and her guards are visibly armed with both blades and PDWs.

“Colonel Ram,” she greets coolly as always, returning
my bow. “Are we as welcome as you assured?”

“The reason for your presence here is understood,”
Paul answers her flatly.

“Acquiring your technology is no longer our
priority,” she reassures flatly. “We have our reasons for agreeing
to this joint venture, just as you do.”

“That doesn’t make you trustworthy,” Paul speaks for
his team.

“I do not believe you are fools,” she gives him back.
“However, I give you my word on my honor: We are not here to steal
from you, or to do battle with you.” At that last oath, I see her
look at Sakina.

“Then you are welcome on my ship,” Paul follows my
example, bowing slightly.

The airlock is now only a single outer hatch backed
up by a pressure field to hold the air in—it feels almost liquid as
we pass through it.

Inside, the ship seems brighter, sparser than it was
before. On closer inspection, it looks like a lot of the original
equipment has been gutted and replaced with plain, clean surfaces.
Occasional panels seem like quicksilver, but I don’t touch. My
people find space for themselves in the middle and aft sections,
while Paul leads me forward, along with Sakura and her shinobi.
Sakina feels like she’s ready to kill them all at the slightest
trigger, but keeps her discipline.

I admit I hesitate before stepping into the rebuilt
cockpit. It isn’t smashed and burned and holed anymore. It’ all
white and silver and new thick view-bubbles. But I still see
Matthew, unrecognizable. I still see the inside of my best friend’s
skull, his brains. I still smell his blood, feel it under my boots,
no matter how clean everything is.

White and silver and clean, with the slowly purpling
sky visible through the view-bubbles at the nose and sides.
Brightly colored sealsuits take their positions, offer us seats
that conform when we settle into them—seats I know they must have
added specifically anticipating guests, like planning a party: A
costume party with soldiers and ninjas and Power Rangers…

I hear humming and feel the ship lift smoothly. I
think Smith would like to be here. (I did offer, but he said it
wasn’t his ship anymore and he’d feel better sitting in our last
ASV, spun up and ready to burn to our rescue if we needed him.)

The base slides away beneath us, buried and dark. The
distant sun barely lighting the eastern horizon behind us.

“We have radar signals emanating from three separate
locations on this side of the point,” Dodds announces, icons
lighting up on a map table that grows out of the floor of the
cockpit. “They’re high on the rim, so they must be using shelters
or pressure suits. Our stealth systems will mask us, but they’ll
see us if they have any kind of night-vision. Or as soon as the sun
gets any higher…”

Sakura hasn’t said a word since she greeted us, but
she looks intently at the map through her ever-present goggles.

“They have been watching your base,” she tells me
what I’ve already assumed. “They likely have long-range optics as
well as radar.”

I envision movie pirates with spyglasses.

“Any signals?” I ask.

“They’ve seen us,” Carter confirms, though I don’t
see him using any visible equipment. “Reporting us as a Guardian
Patrol.”

“I don’t think they saw us come from your base,” Paul
hopes. “Our tangential course will hopefully convince them we’re
just running the Rim.”

“Morning dust storms will be coming within the hour,”
Sakura points out.

“We could exacerbate them with our lift fields,” Paul
takes her suggestion. “Slip over the rim.”

“They will notice we are gone when the dust goes,”
Sakura criticizes.

“We can jam their signals,” Carter offers. “It may
buy us time before they realize where we’ve gone.”

“Drop my shinobi here and here,” Sakura counters,
pointing to spots just downhill from two of the three observation
posts. “Make it look like you are just passing, curious.”

“Killing the sentries will be as suspicious as
jamming them,” I argue before Paul can protest. “And slower.
And
I need your people for when we find their base.”

The Lady Sakura surprisingly offers no resistance to
my decision. I immediately start trying to anticipate her
motives.

So we look like a patrol and take our time. The winds
begin to rise with the sun, filling the valleys with dust-blows.
Paul moves our ship as if it’s turning away from the Rim, leaving,
and begins to kick up more dust using whatever forces keep us
airborne. Soon there’s nothing but a ruddy cloud visible through
the view-bubbles.

“Pirate sentries are reporting a bad storm,” Carter
announces.

“Let’s go quick,” Paul tells his team. I feel the
ship turn, accelerate, climb.

Five minutes later, we break out above the dust
clouds and I’m seeing something I haven’t seen since I first
dropped on this planet: the open Ophir plains above the Marineris
valley, wind-whipped, marbled red and pale yellow-ochre, a desert
plateau as far as the eye can see, cratered like the moon,
crenellated intermittently by ancient stress faults, broken sharp
in the distance by the shadows that must be Candor. And to our port
side, it drops off into Melas Chasma like the edge of the world,
the valley full of the ruddy clouds of morning storms, all held
down like the surface of a sea or great lake by the ETE atmosphere
nets.

And I get to especially appreciate one thing the ETE
have done to this ship: My view is through new, crystal-clear
plexi, not screens. I remember being a little boy, taking his first
ride on a commercial jet, pressing my face to the thick window,
looking down on the world as I had never seen it before.

And then I remember what we have come to do.

Our initial assumptions at least appear accurate: We
detect no obvious sentries or radar as we approach the side canyon.
The Zodangans have probably considered that lining their part of
the Northeast Rim with observation posts is sufficient. Attack from
the airless Planum would be impossible for their usual enemies,
though they must know both us and the ETE could manage it. Perhaps
they simply lack the resources to maintain equipment or personnel
so far above the atmosphere net. Or perhaps, knowing our limited
resources, they’re hoping to lead us into ambush…

Sakura’s shinobi are apparently outfitted with some
kind of light pressure suit. They look like a nightmare version of
the ETE once they get their low-profile helmets sealed, their
visors covered by armored
mempo
-style masks. As agreed, we
drop low within a klick of the canyon rim and drop two of her
entourage behind the cover of an artificial dust cloud. Her third
shinobi—who I notice is significantly larger than the other
two—remains close at her side. (I have yet to hear one of them
speak. They only bow and follow her instructions without
hesitation.)

Not completely (or remotely?) trusting, I have Horst
get his armor ready to drop. They’re already intently studying the
scans of the terrain being fed through the new ETE screens in their
makeshift squad bays. Unfortunately, we don’t dare pass over the
canyon to get a better look—we have to rely on Sakura to get us
eyes down into the Zodangan stronghold.

It takes only twenty minutes for the shinobi to get
us those eyes.

“My ninja have encountered no Planum-level sentries,”
Sakura confirms through what must be a dedicated—and probably
implanted—Link. “They have located what appears to be a large
facility.”

She turns her signals over to the ETE bands, and we
see what her shinobi see on our screens, as the map table updates
with new 3D constructs. The relatively shear walls of the canyon—a
few miles wide and perhaps two miles deep—make it a dark abyss, its
depths shielded from sunlight except at highest midday. Most
interesting, the Zodangans (unless Chang has been helping them for
some years) have erected their own more literal version of an
atmosphere net: A gridiron of cables, spaced hundreds of yards
apart, stretch across the canyon, forming a sparse roof about five
hundred meters down from the Planum. The shinobi optics zoom; this
grid appears to be repeated several hundred meters beneath the
first, and then again, forming at least three layers. The ETE read
electromagnetic fields that, while only a fraction as strong as
their own—appear sufficient to keep a reasonable air pressure down
inside the huge gorge. A marvel of engineering, it also looks like
it could serve as defense, providing an annoying obstacle against
attack from above. (It may also serve as a detection system if
anything sizeable were to breach it, which might explain the lack
of sentries watching the Planum.)

“I wouldn’t want to clip one of those going in or
out,” I idly say what I’m thinking. The ETE don’t comment. I expect
they could simply dissolve a cable to avoid collision, but that
might compromise the Zodangan’s atmosphere. If they’re careful with
their new ship, they should be able to slip between, assuming we
don’t run into more surprises.

What the shinobi are more intently focusing on gets
our attention next: A veritable cliff city, cut into the rock
walls, perhaps another five hundred meters below the lowest visible
layer of net but still well above the canyon floor. (And what we
can see of the canyon floor, shrouded in shadow and a mist of dust
bled off the larger morning blows in the valley beyond, appears to
be littered with man-made debris—wreckage, salvage or manufacturing
cast-off?). Our POV is far too steep to see into the manmade cliff
caves, but there are numerous “docks” jutting out from the larger
ones.

But there’s no sign of airships moored or even
cruising the canyon.

Or any heat that would indicate human habitation.

“Where is everybody?” Dodds says what we’re all
thinking.

“I’ve got something odd up ahead, Planum level on the
other side of the canyon,” Carter announces, pointing to a long
shadow on his screens several hundred meters past the far rim of
the Zodangan stronghold.

“Crater,” Paul extrapolates. “Deep. It’s new. Take us
up. Lady Sakura, inform your men we are not going far or long.”

She nods with her usual serenity. The ship lifts
smoothly, climbs a few thousand feet, gets us a better look at the
Planum across the canyon. The hole we see looks more volcanic than
meteoric, hundreds of meters across. But there is no up-thrust, no
expulsion of material.

“Sinkhole?” I wonder.

“I have seen these before, the result of careless
mining operations undercutting the rims,” Paul tells us. “But this
one looks like it collapsed in the last few months, if not
weeks.”