The God Mars Book Two: Lost Worlds

  The God Mars Book Two:

  Lost Worlds

  by Michael Rizzo

  Copyright 2013 by Michael Rizzo

  Smashwords Edition

  Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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  Table of Contents

  Part One: Land of the Lost

  Chapter 1: Abandonment Issues

  Chapter 2: Mortal Sins

  Chapter 3: Here There Be Monsters

  Chapter 4: No Quarter

  Chapter 5: The Road to Hell

  Chapter 6: Unacceptable Losses

  Part Two: What Is and What Should Never Be

  Chapter 1: Post Traumatic

  Chapter 2: The Shadowman

  Chapter 3: “He today who sheds his blood with me…”

  Chapter 4: Conversations with Friends and Enemies

  Chapter 5: Brimstone

  Chapter 6: Stormcloud

  Chapter 7: Hero’s Death

  Chapter 8: The Devil You Were

  Epilogue: Cenotaph

  Map of Melas and Western Coprates

  Part One: Land of the Lost

  Chapter 1: Abandonment Issues

  30 January, 2116:

  The window is closing.

  This is the sixtieth day of transmission.

  My report hasn’t changed: No reply.

  And that’s become soul-crushing. Sixty days of calling for help across space and not even a ping back from Earth.

  I know it’s been fifty years since anyone back home has heard anything from this planet, that they’re sure (or convinced themselves for their own closure) that we’re all dead, that the only life on the surface of Mars is a nightmare plague of rogue viral nanotech and bio-engineered horrors.

  But we’ve been calling to tell them otherwise for sixty days straight.

  Our signal should be clear enough to be heard. Anton and Rick continue to alternate taking shifts at the Candor transmitter site, switching every time a relief flight goes out, still insisting on monitoring the equipment personally despite the cramped accommodations and the maddening silence. They keep assuring the rest of us that the salvaged and cobbled equipment is working, that our message should be getting past the ETE atmosphere net. It’s not a strong signal, and it’s likely beyond-primitive compared to whatever Earth has developed during the half-century we slept, but it’s at least as strong as what sufficed for the early rover missions. If anyone was paying any attention at all…

  In the absence of knowing, we can’t help but spin scenarios that range from ugly to tragic to explain why there’s been no answer:

  Maybe the “planetary quarantine” we’ve heard tell about has created a totalitarian ban on communications (a ban that would have to control all civilian listening posts as well). Perhaps they believe that even making remote contact with the nanotech they think has overrun this planet will somehow hack them through their signals and take control of Earth’s networks, even to the point of hijacking manufacturing facilities to re-create themselves and infect the world.

  Maybe the backlash against technology (that we’ve also heard tell about) caused by what they think happened here all those years ago has made them turn their backs on the technology that would hear us.

  Or maybe the human race is dead—or barely surviving—the planet already taken by a worst-fears nanotech or biotech plague, and the unintelligible background chatter that we’re managing to pick up isn’t actually human in origin. (We’ve been assuming the signal noise bleeding off the Earth is just too deeply encoded for our gear to decipher, either because of some totalitarian regulation on communications or just simple fears of competitor hacking. But what if it it’s really the chatter of something that’s replaced us as the dominant species?)

  Rick set up one of the better field telescopes from our minimal astronomy lab to watch the Earth edging closer to us as our orbits fall into conjunction. He’s given us some beautifully clear pictures, which mostly served to make us all homesick, but they also let us know that the planet still at least looks pretty much the same as when we’d last seen it. But that’s about all we could tell from over fifty million miles and without the benefit of a single astronomer in our number.

  (The on-planet specialists were all working projects at the colony sites or up on the orbital facilities when the bombs fell and the Discs shredded everything in orbit. There was no need to have a proper science contingent taking up space in an already-crowded military base, which means all we have in terms of scientific talent is what we needed to maintain our facilities, aircraft, systems and weapons. The ETE might have whatever their version of an astronomer is, but they’ve become even less social since they decided to take on the role of planetary police.)

  At least there’s been no further human interference on-planet, no sign of the Zodangans or the PK or the Shinkyo or even an opportunistic scavenger anywhere near our transmitter or relay sites, not since the first few weeks. The ETE have apparently made it clear to all that they will enforce their new “no conflict” policies. We still see their Guardian teams making occasional runs in their silent shining ships, both toward the PK Keeps and toward the Zodanga-controlled Northeast Rim. (Or formerly Zodanga-controlled, now that the ETE have put their technology to more aggressive use.) There have even been sightings in the southeast around Melas Three, likely due to the activities of our local Nomad competitors, who haven’t given up their designs on taking our base for themselves despite the ETE’s devastating advantages.

  Wherever the ETE were going on these flights, it’s always been too far off to get a look without burning fuel we can’t spare, but the echoes of small arms fire and explosions have been registered in the directions they’ve gone. We have no idea if these apparent skirmishes were to deter actions against us, or if the ETE have been enforcing their will over the more militant factions’ other activities. The ETE themselves have been frustratingly silent about their activities since they declared they would be maintaining the peace from now on.

  While we wait, I find I have little to do with myself but try to plan for a completely unimaginable future (no matter how that future goes). Our bases are secure enough, and there have been no further attacks, likely something I should be thanking the ETE for. I can also thank the ETE for being gracious enough to supply us with a few simple essential materials from their Station factories: panels for our growing greenhouse farm, new filters for our recycling systems, gifts of surplus food from their processors that they encourage us to share with our allied Nomads or anyone else we “might peaceably encounter” (but most of that accumulates in storage as the Nomads don’t trust ETE gifts and we haven’t met anyone else yet that hasn’t promptly tried to rob and/or kill us).

  So we’re eating better, breathing better, spending more time topside, and we’re not nearly so worried about the longevity of our resources. We’re even building something for a better future (and one we can share with the few friends we’ve made). It all makes our cramped concrete bunkers somewhat more bearable to live in, but they still feel tomb-like—more so with each day that we don’t hear a word from Earth.

  But the bottom line is we are okay for now: almost twelve hundred men, women and children, all healthy despite our unexpectedly (and still unbelievably) extended Hiber-Sleep, and now under the “protecti
on” of a functionally immortal group of scientists with the technology to manipulate matter at the molecular level.

  So as a soldier, I have nothing to do but play administrator over this base while I wait for something to change, good or ill.

  I envy some of us who have a clearer direction:

  Doc Ryder and Tru have done wonders with the greenhouse project, which is now almost twice the size it was when the Shinkyo threw their dirty bomb at it three months ago. And we finally have crops that look likely to sustain us. We’re now regularly trading with Abbas’ and Hassim’s tribes, and several of the Nomads appear to have at least temporarily given up their traditions of wandering and hiding to work our gardens with us as residents (though they still insist on dwelling in surface shelters, refusing our offers of unused bunker sections). Even the ETE seem impressed, regularly sending botany specialists to analyze our plants and provide new hybrids from their own gardens.

  Ryder seems to be mostly over the depression that made her dare that Shinkyo bomb. I think holding the ceremony for all those we lost during the so-called Apocalypse—even fifty years late—has helped her move beyond her husband’s most likely fate in orbit. And she has Rick, who still fawns over her like a man in love when he’s not out in Candor.

  Lisa has taken over as acting CO of Melas Three, which Sergeant Morales has turned into an aircraft factory, taking her team beyond simple salvage. Morales is trying to modify what little she’s got to work with to best use towards our hope of further exploring Marineris. She’s also made a “hobby” out of tinkering with the wrecked Zodangan pirate flyers we salvaged from the ETE-preempted battle of the Candor Gap, so far managing to get one back into flying shape. (The basic design is somewhere between hang-glider and ultra-light, nanocarbon for frame and fabric, with very simple hydrox or solid fuel jets for thrust and maneuvering, and electric motor fans for sustained cruising).

  The materials from the captured gliders do indicate that the Zodangans have maintained their manufacturing facilities all these years, maybe even managed to expand them. And the composition of their solid rocket fuel—a metal oxide mix—tells us they’re also mining and refining, possibly extensively, probably somewhere deep in the Northeast Rim cliffs out of sight of competitors and the ETE. (This also tells us they’re a lot more than just thugs and thieves—Zodanga Colony had some brilliant and creative engineers before the Big Bang, a legacy that’s apparently been passed down.)

  I could just as easily have assigned Matthew to Melas Three instead of Lisa, but I felt that he’d make the place more of what it was built to be: a hardened fortress against a dangerous world. Maybe that would have been the appropriate decision, given the quality of too many of our encounters with the survivor factions. But I believe putting Lisa there makes the base feel like more of an outpost for exploration, to build for the future. And I have no doubts she can handle a fight if one comes her way. Thankfully, we haven’t had any further trouble with Farouk’s band, which I assume is probably thanks to the ETE’s zeal at policing the valleys. (Melas Three is conveniently close to the ETE Green Station.)

  On a personal note, I find I do miss Lisa’s presence here. She always seemed to keep us (me—especially me) grounded and objective, always had a feel for the bigger picture.

  Conversely, I’m perfectly happy to have Matthew here in my old position as Melas Two Military Operations Commander, because despite the ETE’s rather haughty assurances that our guns will no longer be necessary, I still see the real possibility that we may need Matthew’s strength in a fight, and Melas Two (with its greater assets and civilian population) is in closer proximity to what I still consider significant threats.

  Matthew hasn’t complained about my decision, but he has been quite vocal about a number of other concerns, specifically those still-potential threats. The unresolved conflicts with the Shinkyo, the Zodanga, the PK and some of the Nomads (he freely admits he trusts none of the Nomads) remain hot-button topics for him. But his biggest concern has been about the ETE, and what their pledge to “keep the peace” for us might herald. I certainly don’t disagree with him, but I don’t believe we’re in any position to actively take control of the situation. Our self-proclaimed enemies still have weapons, resources and positions to cost us dearly if we decided to try confronting them again (at least as far as we know, depending on what the ETE have been up to on those mystery runs). And the ETE… We have no defense against their technology, no more than any of the other survivor factions do. And for my part in that, I realize I’ve helped create a potential monster, and a potentially unstoppable one.

  Those closest to me have picked up on that: my guilt, my helplessness. Is that what’s driving my shift to soft diplomacy and attempting to adapt and assimilate to this world? (Or is it my inability to see other viable options?) Matthew particularly: The impossible corner we’ve been backed into aside, I get the distinct feeling that he’s starting to think that age hasn’t agreed with me, that I’ve lost something very important. Or I’ve become something that isn’t… “practical”.

  In the realm of “impractical,” Rios continues his training sessions with Sakina, and has formed a “study group” of junior officers, NCOs and line troops to develop “alternative” weapons and fighting techniques that do not rely on firearms. I’ve actively supported this project (notwithstanding that I myself used a sword instead of a gun in my last two hostile encounters with the locals), perhaps more clearly seeing a potential future that brings us closer to what the other survivor factions have evolved into: Not just living off the land, but having to rely on something other than limited supplies of ammunition and ordnance to defend ourselves. My soldiers may well need to learn how to fight without guns, without missiles and grenades, very soon. And if not them, then whatever generation comes next, assuming the growing possibility that we’ll never be relieved, that we’ll have to make do where we are with what we have (or—like the other factions—what we can make or take).

  But there is still a lot of resistance to this “fantasy”—Matthew, Lisa and Rick especially in that company—because it’s an acceptance of the unthinkable: That Earth will not come back for us. That we will be here for the rest of our lives.

  Sixty days of silence…

  Keeping a quantum of hope myself (or for my role as appointed leader of our little corner of Mars), I find myself practicing what it is I will say—what report I will make—when Earth does respond to our call. I also imagine endless permutations of what Earth might say, might ask.

  I realize this is critically important: How I go about explaining the situation here will strongly influence Earth’s response. If I describe a chaos of warring xenophobic factions now sporadically pacified by frighteningly powerful nano-hybrids who insist on maintaining their own control of the planet, I easily can imagine the worst response. But if I try to explain things more objectively, the tale only gets more convoluted and unbelievable, and I’m sure I’ll sound like I’m not being honest about the situation.

  I remember our first interview with Paul, when he showed up out of what we then believed to be an uninhabited wilderness: He didn’t even know where to start. And despite his objectivity—even serenity—what he told us about what Mars had become while we slept scared us.

  We get our first glimmer of hope—or doom—just an hour after the sun has set. Anton has stayed out in the cold and near-vacuum of Candor to confirm his suspicions before coming back into the tight shelter of the converted ASV bay that serves as our (very) remote command post to report.

  “We just picked up faint signals,” he begins uneasily on our screens. He should be ecstatic, celebrating, but he looks sick. And pressured: he hasn’t even stripped off his surface suit. I can see the fine layer of frost that formed on it as soon as he came inside, still crystalline, only starting to sublime into a wispy fog that rises off of his shoulders in the warmth and pressure of the ASV bay. “Not directed at us, but definitely directed out into space, and on one of the common flight-p
aths that used to get unmanned probes here. And what we could hear reminded Dr. Mann of the control signals sent back and forth from the pre-colonial remote probes. It’s almost like someone dusted off the old calculations and blueprints, or pulled something out of mothballs—exactly what you’d do if you needed to send something in a hurry and didn’t have a working space program. We did what we could to get a zero on whatever’s coming our way. And something is coming our way—I just confirmed that by radio telescope. And it’s somethings. I can separate at least four blips, very small—not manned—coming in very fast. They’re already about halfway to us, and if MAI calculated speed and trajectory right, they would have been launched from Earth in late October.”

  “Right after our problems with the Shinkyo,” I agree heavily.

  “ETA within three months,” Rick gives MAI’s best guess.

  “I don’t like that they launched these things but won’t answer our calls,” Anton says what I think we’re all feeling. He sounds like he’s going to come out of his skin.

  “Probes or bombs?” Matthew has to ask.