The God Mars Book Two: Lost Worlds (20 page)

He chuckles absently.

“Because of the fear of the Discs and the Ecos,
we
were entrusted with the most cutting edge research
on-planet at the end. And because of that I know:
Seed-manufacturing was still in early experiments, nowhere near
functioning production. And the doomsayers were almost as afraid of
it as they were of the bio-nanites and engineered DNA. A seed gone
wrong could overgrow a planet. Why would someone so fearful of an
unknown untested technology employ it to stop itself? It would be
like using bio-weapons to stop a potential biological war. Unless
it was an established technology, trusted.”

“And much less frightening that whatever it was you
were trying to stop,” I let myself follow him.

We fly in silence for awhile. We’re still thirty
minutes out.

“If your intent was to save the future, maybe the
entire human race,” I bounce off Paul after a few minutes, “would
you be willing to kill tens of thousands of people to do it?”

“Humans have done worse for poorer reasons,” he gives
me my answer. But then takes it further: “But what if you knew for
certain? Because you’d seen that future?”

“Then you’d be killing those tens of thousands, plus
all of their potential descendants,” I run the fantasy math. “And
yourself in the bargain, assuming you’re erasing your own timeline,
your own existence. And you’d never know if you succeeded.”

He thinks about the hypothetical moral (and
existential) dilemma a lot harder and longer than I’d intended.
Then he finally looks me in the eye and gives me the only sensible
answer:

“It depends on how bad it was.”

We’re still fifteen minutes out when the ASV carrying
the Disc touches down on Pad 6, the furthest from our command
structures in the southeast corner of the base. Pad 6 is also the
closest to the main vehicle repair facility, which Thomasen is
scrambling to turn into some kind of secure examination
facility.

He needn’t have bothered.

“We’re down soft,” Jane is reporting over the Link as
he’s about to spin the engines down. I hear the muffled rattle of
gunfire, sharp pinging off metal. Then shouts and screams. The
cockpit video feed shows chaos. Rounds are punching their way
through the bulkhead between the cargo bay and the command module.
Jane hunkers down low in his seat and slams the throttle, but not
before I see Anton go limp in his own seat, his blood spraying the
camera.

“
Drop the cargo!
” Lisa is shouting over the
Link. “Drop it!
Drop!!
”

Jane is trying that very thing. MAI tells me he’s
already blown the releases on the cargo module and has slammed the
ASV into hard vertical takeoff, but I see a shell take a chunk out
of his right shoulder. He manages to keep it together and finish
his burn with one hand, but he’s going into shock.

The externals show me the ASV lurching upwards,
leaving the module to drop out of its belly onto the pad.

“Batteries!” Lisa keeps yelling orders. “Take it out!
Take it out now!”

The ASV tips nose-down and wobbles crazily. Inside, I
can see Jane starting to fade fast from his wound. Anton isn’t
moving. The nose of the ASV scrapes deck—it’s heading toward the
vehicle bays, and it’s in the way of the big guns. Metzger is
trying to get MAI to remote pilot, but the cockpit controls have
been shot up.

Out on the pad, I can see the cargo module start to
come apart as the Disc starts pumping out explosive rounds from its
upper turret. The hatches blow, and the aft wall is bowing outward.
I can only hope the Disc will destroy itself or expend its limited
ammo in its desperation to get air.

The wounded ASV’s nose digs into the dirt in the
small courtyard space between the pads and the vehicle bay. Jane
manages to kill the engines, and the ship drops into the courtyard,
one wing twisting. I can see hydrogen and oxygen vent from the rear
tanks. The engine section blows apart a second or two later,
throwing the rest of the broken ship forward to slam into the
vehicle bunker. The cockpit feed is lost.

The big guns open up immediately, pounding the
abandoned cargo module with explosive rounds. Acaveda adds to the
mayhem by firing a brace of rockets from her ASV. I think I can see
the saucer of the Disc try to slam its way out of the shredded and
now burning module, but the combined bombardment reduces the module
and its contents to flaming scrap in a matter of seconds.

Fire control systems start spraying suppressant over
the wrecked ASV, but they’re frustratingly inadequate—they were
designed to work on fuel fires when there was almost no atmosphere.
Thomasen concentrates on saving the cockpit section, his crew
daring to come out on the surface with no sure confirmation that
the Disc is dead, adding whatever portable fire gear they can to
the job. Thankfully, the hydrox mix burns out before igniting the
forward tanks. They’re already breaking the hatch into the
cockpit.

Acaveda circles, giving me a distant view of the
damage. The cargo module is little more than scattered,
unrecognizable metal. Somehow I doubt there will be more than dust
left of the Disc. The ASV lays twisted and broken, tail section
torched, starboard wing pointing up at the sky. I can see two
bloody bodies get packed into trauma pods and rushed inside.

The ETE ship can be seen hovering a half-klick off,
watching it all. The whole thing happened in less than a
minute.

There is very little left to do by the time the
Lancer gets me back. Rios makes it a point to meet me at the pad.
He has nothing to say to me, but he doesn’t arrest me or even ask
for my sidearm. His H-A troops are more intent on keeping close
watch on the shredded ruin of the cargo module, no matter how
pointless. There’s no sign of the Disc.

Rios does shadow me over to the edge of the pads,
where I watch Thomasen’s crew breaking down the wrecked ASV,
getting whatever fuel and ammunition that can be salvaged away from
any more potential fires. Morales is inbound from Melas Three to do
whatever she can to repair or more likely scavenge it.

“Colonel Ram!” I hear a familiar voice behind me, and
turn to see Tru limping toward me in the best run she can manage. I
can’t think of anything to say.

“They’re alive,” she announces, so breathlessly she
must have run all the way from Medical. “Jane’s shoulder is messed
up bad, but Ryder thinks she can save his arm. He’s lost blood, but
he’s awake.” She takes a breath in her mask before continuing, but
at least she doesn’t make me ask. “Anton is critical but stable. He
also lost a lot of blood—almost bled out in fact. He took three
rounds—they punched right through his chair. He took one through
the right lung, one hit him in the left buttock and came out
through his shin just below his knee, shattering it. Number three
went pretty much straight through the base of his spine.
Thankfully, he’s still got his kidneys. Ryder’s working on him
now.”

“His spine?” I have to ask. She takes three more deep
breaths before giving me the answer.

“Severed at Lumbar Three. He’s paralyzed. We don’t
have anything on base to fix this kind of damage. And if UNCORT
stopped all research on nano-rebuilders, I doubt Earth has anything
either.”

I look past her. Paul is standing back by the Lancer.
Just watching.

I feel my rage pounding inside me, demanding outlet,
target, satisfaction. Driving me to do something—
anything
—to
fix this or repay this. But all I’ve got is an automated drone
that’s gone to dust and lethally stupid bureaucrats tens of
millions of miles out of my reach…

I turn for the nearest hatch. That’s when Rios gets
the nerve to speak up, however unwillingly.

“Colonel Ram. I have orders to escort you directly to
your quarters.”

Sakina is there waiting for me, sitting in meditation
on her mat, wearing her armor. The first thing I do when the hatch
closes behind me—with the two guards Rios had to leave to make sure
I stayed put on the other side—is check my terminal. I’ve been
locked out. Blind and deaf.

I look at Sakina. She nods her head up toward the
sentry cams that watch over the suite. I turn and look and find
she’s neatly disabled them. MAI will be able to tell we’re still in
here by heat and by O2 consumption, but they’ll otherwise be as
blind to us as we are to them. I manage to grin at the minor act of
defiance, even given the circumstances.

I appreciate that Rios gave me the time to get
updated, especially about Anton.

I wonder what Paul’s doing.

Then I settle back on my rack and stare at the
ceiling and wait this out, and try not to think that I’m just as
helpless now as I really always have been.

Four hours later, I hear the alert sirens go off in
the corridor outside.

My terminal screens go live three seconds after that.
MAI is flashing me a radar imaging map of a half-dozen small, fast
blips incoming from the east, from Coprates. They keep flashing on
and off our radar because they’re flying so low—less than fifty
meters off the ground. They’ll be on us within four minutes.

The base batteries are already tracking for
intercept, whatever good they’ll do in their salvaged condition.
MAI also lets me know all aircraft (now down to two ASVs and the
Lancer) are secured in their bays. The ETE ship is still out there,
sitting on a low hill about a half-klick away. Melas Three signals
that it’s sending its two ASVs to provide support, but they’re
twenty minutes out.

Lisa comes up—behind her head I can see the bunker
wall with the “CROATOAN” carved into it, so I know she’s still at
Melas Three.

“I think I’ve played good soldier long enough,” she
starts, sounding weary and frustrated. “I’d catch you up but you
can see what we’ve got incoming. Now if you’ve had a nice break, I
need you.”

The hatch to my quarters pops open then, and Matthew
pokes his head in.

“You coming?”

“Give me H-A teams at each airlock, ready to go out
with heavy packs if the batteries don’t manage,” I order. “Keep the
incoming ASVs back—those pilots don’t have enough training for this
yet. Get Smith back in the Lancer. I’m headed to him.”

“No, you’re
not
,” Matthew steps in my way
before I can make it out of Ops.

“The Lancer has an EMP weapon,” I remind him. “It
looks like it was designed for this very thing.”

“But
you
don’t have to be in the ship,” he
won’t budge.

“Smith’s faced Discs before, but I need someone up in
the sky for immediate active command and to help him run the guns.
You know how fast those things adapt.”

“
I’ll
go up in the Lancer,” he insists. “I’ve
done three hard dances with these fuckers.
And
I’m one of
the five people—yes, including you—that are checked out on the Star
Trekky weapons systems. I can handle it. You need to be
here
, running the big picture. Even if it is less fun.
You’re Base Commander. I’m Force Commander. Let me do my job.
Unless you don’t think I’m fit?”

Shit. Stubborn bastard’s playing his Secret Cancer
Card (or maybe he just wants to see if I know). And worse: he’s
right on all counts, even if he is just trying to squeeze in one
last good fight before he’s benched by Halley (and probably for
good).

I feel like hitting something. I don’t want the chair
that keeps me out of the fight, hiding in a bunker. Especially not
now. But I know that makes me a selfish fuck and a bad leader and
Matthew can handle it, probably better than I can. So I stuff my
reflexive rage, choke it down, nod my head. Do my job and let him
do his.

“Matthew,” I catch him before he’s out the hatch. I’m
thinking about telling him what I’ve got in my pocket, what Paul
gave me. But it’s not a good time. (And it won’t change what we
have to do right now.) “Don’t wreck my pretty ship.”

“I love you, too,” he purrs at me, then takes off at
a jog. Like he’s a young man.

I look at the screens. There are six blips—there have
never
been that many at a time, except when they hit us in
space. When they destroyed everything.

Two minutes out.

Just before they come into battery range, they break
formation. They still know the reach of our guns.

Their movements go impossibly random. They dart and
zig and spin like a swarm of mosquitoes. I still don’t have a clear
visual, but I know how they move. Nothing else moves like that.

The Lancer is just getting up on deck when the ETE
ship suddenly lifts and moves to try to get in the Discs’ way. The
sun is setting, so the eastern sky is going violet. That makes the
gunflashes from the drones’ turrets blaze bright. And I can see the
ETE shields spark and glow as they stop the rounds that try to
shoot them down.

“Lieutenant Smith, I hope you know how to make the
nose gun work,” I hear Matthew crack over the Link as the Lancer
spins up engines.

“Never had the opportunity, sir,” Smith returns, not
really joking. “Not wise to pop an EMP close to any other systems
you need.”

“I’m going to assume whoever built this thing was
smart enough to make sure its EM weapon doesn’t take the ship down
with it,” Matthew cuts back.

Out in the eastern sky, two of the Discs stay and
keep trying to take down the ETE ship—I see the bursts of their
grenades on the shields—while the other four spread out to hit us
from all sides.

“Get us in the air, Captain,” Matthew orders, his
voice urgent. “Fly like you mean it. Best to be a moving
target.”

The Lancer gets up just as the base batteries start
spitting rounds at the sky. The turrets are fast, but not fast
enough. The Discs begin to zig-zag. Their small guns pop a few
rounds at us—not at the batteries, but at the plexi ports of the
bunkers. Two rounds blossom the plexi of the Command Tower right in
front of me.