

### The God Mars Book One:

## CROATOAN

### by Michael Rizzo

Copyright 2013 by Michael Rizzo

Smashwords Edition

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

### Table of Contents

Part One: "And If I Die Before I Wake..."

Chapter 1: The Morning After

Chapter 2: Cry in the Wilderness

Chapter 3: Unexpected Guests

Chapter 4: News of the World

Chapter 5: Dissenting Opinions

Part Two: Cities in Dust

Chapter 1: New World Order

Chapter 2: The Peacemaker

Chapter 3: Wake the Neighbors

Chapter 4: Lessons in Human Nature

Chapter 5: CROATOAN

Chapter 6: Escalation

Part Three: Warriors

Chapter 1: Envoys

Chapter 2: The Road to Hell

Chapter 3: Holding Down a Shadow

Chapter 4: Lessons from the Insurgency

Chapter 5: The Pirate Code

Chapter 6: Lesser Evils

Map of Central Valles Marineris

### Part One: "And If I Die Before I Wake..."

Chapter 1: The Morning After

"PLEASE STATE YOUR FULL NAME."

Groggy...

"Ram..."

Takes too much just to stay awake, much less keep upright in the chair.

"PLEASE STATE YOUR FULL NAME."

Muscle atrophy makes me feel like I'm a hundred years old. I don't remember it being this bad the last time.

"Michael Carl Ram..."

"PLEASE STATE YOUR RANK AND CURRENT ASSIGNMENT."

Vocal cords don't want to work. Throat feels like dried leather. Eyes too: I can barely see the screen, much less anything displayed on it. Rubbing makes it worse—it feels like they're full of gravel.

"Colonel. United Nations Counter-Terrorism Advisory. Attached to UNMAC—United Nations Martian Affairs Council. Joint Planetary Peacekeeping Force. Stationed at Melas Two base. Acting Commanding Officer of Martian Ground Forces since..."

Dates—especially the numbers—really don't want to come back through the residual drug fog. I don't remember it being this bad the last time.

"...May... May 2058."

The air is thick with a musty but dry staleness. I feel like I've woken up in a tomb. It's like an old movie I saw when I was a kid, where the hero gets left to die, trapped by his enemies in some ancient underground. Buried alive. I tell myself it's just my doped-to-the-gills imagination, fueled by knowing that the base must indeed be buried under at least several meters of rock and sand.

The blast shields are all still locked down over the pillbox-slit viewports on three sides of me, just like they were when we got the alarm that the nukes were incoming. But the atmosphere hasn't leaked out. The structure looks intact (at least in the few sections of the base I've seen so far). The lights are mostly on (dim, but they would have gone to power-save while we slept). It's chilly (power-save again) but not lethally sub-zero like it would be if there was anything seriously wrong with the heaters or the power. The base AI is still online. And I can feel the slight caress of recycled air coming out of every vent. Like nothing's wrong.

Buried, probably. Entombed, no.

Still, every surface I touch feels powdered with a fine dust, despite the environmental scrubbers designed to keep the pervasive Martian grit—and every other conceivable particulate—out of our sterile little home away from home. Something must be wrong with the filtration system—this thought keeps nudging at me, even in my haze.

But then I take another deep slow breath and there _is_ air. Good air. I feel winded from the effort of doing the slightest thing after Hiber-Sleep, and that's expected, but I don't feel oxygen starved. And that confirms that the base, or at least this section of it, hasn't been compromised.

We're alive. We're okay.

But I know a lot of people aren't. And my pervasive dread at not knowing what's happened to the rest of the world gets prodded by the sudden sense that something is off. Wrong. The base AI—"MAI"—doesn't respond to the answers I gave it. I still can't see much more than basic shapes and light through the resilient post-hibernation glaze over my eyes—if it answered me on the screens instead of with its droning vox, I wouldn't be able to see it. Maybe that's another part of the test...

"Is that it?" I ask it finally, getting impatient because I feel like I'm about to pass out again, and the crawl back to my assigned Sleep couch is going to feel longer and more painful than the drag up here. "Do I pass?"

Still nothing—just a blurry screen, like MAI is waiting for something else, something more.

No, MAI, I can't see. But nobody can this soon after hibernation. Can we move on?

This was just supposed to be a quick cognitive assessment, standard protocol, a few basic questions to see if my brain made it through chemical hibernation intact. (And I'm still not sure of that myself—I don't remember it being this bad the last time: seven months under for the shuttle ride from Earth). To see if I'm even remotely fit to be considered the apparent ranking officer in this tomb (since Cal wasn't there when we started waking up, and worse: I haven't seen nor heard him between Hiber-Sleep and here, and MAI certainly would have told him we were waking up).

"Status report, MAI," I try pushing it into what I figure is the next logical task: to find out what happened while we were sleeping.

Still nothing.

"Where's Colonel Copeland?"

No answer.

I think of the bad possibilities: That he fell prey to radiation exposure or decompression making sure the base was intact. Or just got hurt—broke a bone—or got sick with no one awake to help him. Heart attack. Stroke. Embolism. Or maybe he tried to dig out and got himself buried, pinned, or just stuck outside with no way to replenish his oxygen. Lonely deaths.

Or maybe there were drones waiting for him topside.

But I'm in no shape to investigate any of those possibilities right now, especially if MAI doesn't seem willing or able to help me.

"MAI, what happened to Colonel Copeland?"

No answer.

What the hell is going on?

"How long have we been under?"

"WHAT IS THE LAST THING YOU REMEMBER BEFORE ENTERING HIBERNATION?"

Apparently I haven't passed my brain check yet. But I vaguely remember it _is_ standard to ask for this—your last memory before sleep—to check for any critical damage from your time under. I'm just not sure why there was the disturbingly long delay between questions.

"Phobos Dock was hit. Bad. The Discs blew the ammo and gas stores. They knew exactly where to hit us. We lost contact with General Ryder. Ares Station was already dead and losing orbit. And there were missiles still incoming from the Shield. Ground countermeasures were holding some of them off, but we couldn't keep track of the other two bases. Or any of the colony sites. The nukes were creating havoc with EMPs when they blew. Communications were failing."

Chaos. I remember chaos. Everything going wrong in the worst way, all at once. The shock of what we were hearing, and the knowing—sealed down here in our holes—that it meant thousands of people were dying in orbit. _Thousands_. In minutes. And we couldn't do anything about it. Except try to save some of the _tens_ of thousands of people down here on the ground from a nuclear bombardment designed to guarantee that nothing would survive.

"PLEASE CLARIFY," the AI drones in the same dull tone it asked for my name and rank with.

"We..." Where to start? Too much. Too many things, all happening at once. And all we could get from the outside world came from a sudden storm of desperate transmissions. Emergency calls in voices shaking with terror. Panicked protests—terror and rage against the unthinkable. Random flashes of sanity as tactical logic tried to take over, to do something, to fight back. To try and save as many people as possible, no matter how hopeless it should have been.

"Second January. Twenty Sixty-Five." I drag the most basic facts out of the storm in my head. "Oh-Six Forty-Five UNMAC Reference Time. I got woken by the alerts, got up to Command Ops— _here_ —as fast as I could drag on my pants running. By then, the whole grid was lit up..."

The story is already getting away from me, trying to rush out with the same relentless momentum the actual events had. I need to stop and breathe. Try to put things in the right order. Cause and effect:

"First we got alarms: multiple containment breaches in the colonial research facilities. Several labs just failed, all at once, at least according to the security-ware. Readings indicated massive nanotech and biotech leaks. It was _the_ worst-case scenario, and impossibly bad to be happening in so many places at the same time. But that's what the monitors on the labs were saying. And what happened next was automatic. Our brand new orbital 'failsafe' system—Ares' Shield—did what it was supposed to do: it armed its nukes and got them target-locked to 'contain' the contamination, which meant burning the surface clean, human population and all. Meanwhile, the colony lab techs were all screaming on their uplinks that there was no observable sign of _any_ kind of breach anywhere...

"This started a storm of chatter back and forth as Orbit and Earthside tried to determine whether the colony techs were just lying to save their own asses, or there really was this incredible glitch in all the breach detection systems. Because if the alarms were right, then we really were losing the whole damn planet to nano _and_ bio contamination in nothing flat. I doubt anyone considered actually burning _every_ colony—one lab, maybe, to save the rest. But they went ahead and put enough nukes on the Shield to burn it all twice over, just in case it ever came down to needing to sterilize the whole planet to save Earth..."

Talking it through now, it makes less sense than it did then. In the madness of the moment, it was just too much, too fast. All we could do was act, to try to stop it, or at least save as many as we could. But with what happened next, it became clear (at least to us here on-planet) that we were dealing with an unthinkable act of sabotage. Purposeful, calculated, resourceful. Not a glitch. A _hack_ , no matter how impossible that was supposed to be.

But who would benefit from destroying everything we'd built here? Or who would be so terrified of what was being engineered up here that they would be willing to sacrifice _tens of thousands of people_ just to stop the research?

"Earthside eventually made the sane choice, and authorized a hold-fire on the Shield, but they cut it close because of the transmission delay," I continue, trying to shake the plague of questions that I really want answers to. But I have no way of getting those answers right now, so I keep focused on the job at hand (or at least start by convincing MAI that I'm competent to do that job). "Earthside kept the nukes from launching, but they didn't shut it down. They were scared. They wanted more information, eyes-on assurances. They kept the system hot, locked-on and hair-trigger in case the worst really was true."

Chest pains start crushing my lungs as my story-telling accelerates. The urgency comes unbidden—I am back in the moment with the retelling, sitting in this bunker—on this very Command Deck—like I was as it happened, helpless to keep any of it from happening. And despite the pain and the increasing effort the story requires to tell, the story keeps pouring out of me, as if driven by its own momentum, like the moment is happening all over again...

"Right in the middle of this, we picked up the first wave of Disc activity. Multiple contacts, multiple locations, all at once and out of nowhere. And worse, they were in _orbit_ —there'd _never_ been a confirmed sighting of a Disc drone in orbit—firing on Ares Station, making a run at Phobos. Shooting at anything above the planet. Tanks blew. Depressurizations... Everything docked or coasting up there got holed. The big interplanetary shuttles and freighters weren't designed to handle being shot up like the military drop and recon ships. They were easy prey, defenseless. We scrambled everything we had, sent all the Shuttles and ASVs and AAVs that were flight-worthy up into space on hard burn to try to take out the drones, or at least rescue survivors.

"Then the Discs hit us on the ground. Not as heavy as what was happening above us, but enough to keep us busy, to chase us to cover and keep us there, especially since we'd just sent all of our air support toward orbit. We managed to pick off a few of the Discs with our batteries, but they hit our main uplink, like their priority was to cut us off. No more direct contact with Earthside. No way to let them know what was going on."

Hard to breathe. I feel like my heart wants to quit, like I've run 'til I'm dropping. I need to stop talking now, to take a break and get my wind before I pass out. But the words keep coming:

"Ares Station—the orbital dock—was wrecked and knocked out of orbit. All we could do was watch on Radar as they fell down at us like so much junk. Then the drones turned from shredding Phobos to swarm Ares' Shield. But not to destroy it.

"The Shield had only been online a month. It was like whoever was running the Discs had been waiting for it to be put in place just so they could use it against us. Somehow the drones hacked into it, disabled the hold and set it off. They initiated sterilization. _Full_ sterilization. The nukes—all of them—started dropping on all twenty-one colonies. General Ryder tried to send abort codes before Phobos went silent. With the transmission delay, Earthside Command probably didn't know it was happening until it was done. The missiles were armed and away..."

The rage helps cut the haze, and keeps me going despite my lungs threatening to fail, but it gets me shaking. Badly. Reminding me how weak my atrophied body is, even in the low gravity. Reminding me how helpless I am. And how helpless I was then...

"So we tried to stop it from the ground. Used our land batteries as a makeshift missile shield. We'd worked out firing solutions just in case, keeping it quiet to avoid an uproar with the terrified majority back on Earth that had pushed to place the Shield up there in the first place. And we also got word that a number of the colonies—even the ones without UNMAC garrisons—were taking similar actions: The corporations were bent on protecting their multi-billion dollar investments. And the colonists were bent on keeping Earth's paranoia from killing them. They'd smuggled in portable anti-missile ordnance, rockets and big guns and jammers..."

Breathe. I make myself breathe. My skeletal ribcage threatens to collapse. The vitals monitors insist I'm not really dying, not having heart attack. Stress Tachycardia is normal after chemical hibernation, asleep so long with all of your metabolic functions—down to the cellular level—reduced to less than ten percent of norm. It takes days to get over it, to get the drugs out of your sluggish system, and then weeks to get used to moving and breathing and pumping and digesting again. And I've only been awake maybe an hour. Maybe two. (I haven't been able to see a clock.) I remember it took a full _month_ of hard rehab to get over the seven months I slept on the ride here, and maybe I've forgotten but I'm sure this time is worse...

Sitting up and talking is like running a marathon. Just walking the fifty meters or so from the hibernation cells to the Command Deck—even with handholds and less than 40% Earth gravity—almost made me black out twice. At least I got to cheat and take the Medical elevator from D up to A Deck, but I had to sit down on the floor because it felt like I was being launched into space (and the Medical elevator is slow and gentle for transporting the critically wounded). And then the worst part: the only ways up into the Command Ops "Tower" (just one more deck, really) are a flight of steep stairs or a ladder. I picked the stairs (because you can stop and sit on stairs). One flight. I felt like I was climbing a skyscraper (something I've had the pleasure of suffering more than once in my youth, and that wearing heavy body armor). I honestly felt like making camp for the night when I was halfway up.

Just getting here should be all the test MAI needs. But it waits for me to finish my story, unsatisfied. Aggravating.

(And where the hell is Cal?)

"They—we—managed to bust some of the incoming missiles on the way down, and throw some others off target. But it wasn't enough. In a few minutes, the nukes started hammering, hammering everything. The whole Marineris Valley. Melas. Candor. Coprates. Just one could erase an entire colony. A near miss could shatter and burn one. Even the 'clean' misses were devastating, kicking loose the big valley walls, causing slides the size of small countries."

I know there hasn't been food in my stomach since before I went under, which I can only assume has been at least several weeks, if not months. But I feel like I'm going to heave (and probably would if I was strong enough to). I blame it on the hibernation drugs, and the incredible effort it takes just to sit here and talk.

I know the IVs have kept me well-hydrated, but I want a drink of very cold water very, very badly.

"The Discs managed to knock out some of our surface guns. More missiles got through, and we had detonations close—critically close. One sent a shockwave of superheated Martian rubble that ripped across the topside of the base, turning everything above ground that wasn't as hard as the bunkers into scrap. That included most of what we had left that flew or wheeled overland. There was no time to get it all below ground, we were just glad we got all of our people indoors and the structures held. Then we picked up a big slide headed our way. We'd gone a long way to harden against slides since the big 2057 colony-wreckers, but this one was bigger than the one that took out Mariner Colony and Melas One. The best we could hope for was that it would roll over us and bury us mostly intact, that the bunker sections of the base would continue to hold. And it looks like they did. But it cut us off from everything, buried us. We couldn't reach another living soul, couldn't call out, couldn't even dig out and repair the Uplink because it was too hot topside, would be for months. And even if we could get outside safely, we couldn't get to any of the other bases or colonies without aircraft, and none came home from orbit.

"So Colonel Copeland ordered everyone into hibernation, figuring how long it would take for Earthside to get to us and dig us out."

Copeland... What happened to Cal?

"Colonel Cal Copeland was Base CO. Probably planetary CO if General Ryder was dead. Doc Halley tried to get him down too—worried that he wouldn't be able to get himself put under right without at least a med tech to help him—but he pulled rank on her and sent her and everyone else to bed. He was planning on staying awake, hoping to hear something... Anything... Then he could wake us up."

I keep blinking my eyes, trying to clear my vision. Hoping if I can see straight, I might see some sign of life down here, something to indicate there's been activity since Cal shut us down. But the only smears in the dust I can see are the ones I've made myself coming up here. And now I'm apparently the ranking CO with Cal god-knows-where.

"I don't remember going under. They say that's normal—I didn't on the shuttle flight, either."

I remember guilt, though: helpless guilt because I didn't want to go down and leave Cal to sit waiting for a call on a smashed uplink, waiting for rescue that could be as long as a year or more out. Alone.

" _Go_ , Colonel!" I think I remember him finally shouting at me. "I've got no use for a shooter now. Nothing you can do by staying awake but suck resources."

Because it's the end of the world, or at least of everything we built here. And over fifty thousand people—everybody but us—were very likely dead.

So I left him. Because I really couldn't do a fucking thing. Except maybe survive.

I'd hoped he'd decide to go into Sleep with the rest of us, but he wasn't in his couch. And that means he's been alone for all this time. Assuming...

"What happened to Colonel Copeland, MAI?"

No answer.

"Has there been any contact with Earthside?"

Still no answer. I take the time to work my eyes, to try to focus. The vitals monitor still says I'm okay, despite how close to passing out I feel. MAI's screens only give me text of the transcript of what I've been narrating.

But then I finally can see enough to notice there are things missing from the standard display.

The date... There's no date.

"MAI, how long have we been under?"

It's actually worse getting back down to the Hiber-Sleep chambers than it was getting up to Ops. And going down stairs in this condition isn't much nicer than climbing up them.

Then the stress from dealing with MAI— _What the hell is wrong with MAI?_ —only added to it. And still no sign of Cal.

More questions than answers, and more questions every moment as my brain starts working again.

I barely make it back, and that's with stopping to rest four times. No way I'd be remotely able to search the base further for Cal (and he would have come if he could, as soon the wake-up cycle started). I barely have the wind to shout for him—I tried anyway a dozen times, but the corridors just echo like a horror movie. With every dragging step, I hoped he'd just pop around a corner, call me a busted old man with that obnoxious grin of his, tell me everything is under control and he had better things to do than watch us drag-ass out of Sleep. But he doesn't.

I'm running on rage—rage at being helpless. Again.

At least I'm not sitting on the floor when the elevator gets me back down to D Deck (though I am hanging onto the rail for dear life).

"CO on deck!"

I recognize Lieutenant Carver's voice barking the reflexive announcement with as much wind as she can muster. The almost two hundred assorted enlisted troopers and junior officers in this chamber actually try to snap-to for me—at least the ones who can stand—and that's more than I expected from them so soon after the systems brought their metabolisms back to something resembling normal. (The two-dozen-odd techs and other non-military supports don't bother to stand, but they at least try to assume some kind of alertness.)

I wave them back down, still needing to hang onto the elevator hatch to keep myself on my feet. They all almost fall back into their couches. But they all look at me—two hundred and twenty-three just in this one chamber (capacity is one more, which should have been Cal, but his couch looks unused)—and their bleary eyes ask for news I haven't got. Their faces look drained of blood, their bodies look starved. I feel like I've walked into a death-camp. And most all of them are less than half my age.

"Where's Colonel Burke?" I ask Carver as she offers me a shoulder to lean on to get across the room. She points back to one of the bodies who didn't bother to budge off his couch when I came in.

I realize why I needed to ask: I can barely recognize the man I've known most all my life, or at least the parts that mattered. He's beyond pale, and his muscles have wasted so badly during sleep that he looks desiccated. At first I feel my stomach sink because I'm afraid I'm looking at a corpse, but then I can see the readouts quietly reassuring that he's got all his vital signs.

"Status?" Colonel Burke—Matthew—looks up and asks me as I sit down on the edge of his couch. His voice is a rasp.

"If it weren't for the readouts telling me otherwise, I'd be throwing dirt over you," I tell him. He grins. Coughs.

"Not what I was asking..." he manages like he _is_ dying.

"I know." I look around. The chamber is crowded, the couches stacked three-high (at least they rotate down to deck-level so you don't have to climb) with little enough privacy even if all the ears in the room weren't waiting to hear what I might have to say. "Can you move?" I nod toward a discreet corner where we can talk, behind the plexi partial barrier of the chamber's small monitoring station. It's only a few yards away, and has a couple of reasonably inviting chairs.

"I hate you..." he grumbles, and I can see the effort it takes him to get himself even half-sitting. I offer a hand, but he waves me off. Carver is there almost immediately, and she's smart enough not to ask if he wants help. She just puts her arm under his shoulders and lifts him. I remember Jane Carver being muscular, square-built, a fanatic for weight training. Most of that muscle is gone now, but what she's got left is a lot more than what I've got. The two of us get Matthew up and across the room and ease him into a chair. Carver gets us water, then looks to see if I need anything more, as I sink into a seat of my own. I give her a nod of thanks, and she takes the hint to give us space.

My head feels like it weighs a hundred pounds, and my body feels like I've been hit by a truck. But Matthew looks like he's going to die on the spot. He has an excuse: he's a few years older than me—75 to my 71, and that's still damn old despite the extra years and health the best military grade regenerative medical treatments bought us. _And_ he's had both knees replaced. Taking the trip to Mars and its low gravity bought him maybe another decade of being able to serve as an officer (though I doubt he did it for health reasons).

And Hiber-Sleep recovery is brutal even on the young.

"What'd you find?" he presses me.

"Doctor Staley..." I see our Chief of Technical Engineering moving around, and I wave for him to join us. Anton Staley is young, lanky. Of the crew that slept in this chamber, he manages to look the least wiped, but not by much. I offer him a stabilizing hand sitting down, but he waves it away with a weary grin.

"I can walk," his voice grates out. "But thanks anyway, Colonel."

"Something's wrong with MAI," I tell them quietly once we're settled. "And I can't find Colonel Copeland."

"I doubt you got very far to search, Mikey," Matthew tries. "I'm surprised you made it all the way up to the Command Tower and back in one day."

"Place looks like a tomb," I tell him, fighting for breath again. "Dust says no one's been moving down here for awhile." Then I ask Anton: "You checked the hibernation logs?"

"1197 all healthy and accounted for," Anton confirms. "Everybody that went to sleep with us made it through. But I double-checked: Colonel Copeland _didn't_ join us—he's not logged into any Sleep chamber. What's up with MAI?"

I take the time to try to get my brain together. It would be so easy just to go back to sleep.

"I'm not sure," I tell him. "That's why I need you to come back up with me."

"You don't look like that would be a good idea, at least not today," Matthew warns. "You know the post-sleep protocols. You shouldn't be on your feet for several hours, or walking further than the nearest head Day One. And that's assuming we've only been out for about as long as a shuttle flight."

"Those protocols also assume there will be people who _aren't_ in recovery to support you through rehab," I remind him.

"And since there aren't, I take it that means there's no sign of relief or rescue?" he asks grimly. I shake my head.

"We're still well-buried, as far as I can tell," I confirm what little I know. "But MAI won't give me anything about our situation. Nothing about Earthside contact, relief missions, status of the other bases and colonies... It won't even tell me how long we've been under."

"I noticed that," Anton reports, sounding more than a bit disturbed. "Date-stamps have been wiped on every system I've checked. The calendars are all just... missing..."

"Like I said: Something's wrong with MAI."

"If Earthside hasn't gotten here yet, it can't be more than nine months, maybe a year, year-and-a-half tops," Staley assumes hopefully, after running some calculations in his head. "Even if all the loop shuttles got knocked out."

"I'm not sure," I tell them. "First, I thought MAI was just running a basic cognitive eval on me. It started asking the usual questions—name, rank, date, my last intact memory—but then it wanted me to talk more and more about what happened before we went under. The containment breaches. The Disc attacks. The bombardment. After that, it got _strange_..."

Some of the other recent-sleepers are still watching us, trying to listen, trying not to look like they're listening. Then the room takes a spin on me, and I feel Matthew's hand on my arm like he's trying to anchor me.

"You really shouldn't have humped it up to Ops so soon," he scolds. "Emergency protocol can wait—doesn't look like much is needing your attention urgently enough to risk the concussion you'll get when you pass out and hit the deck. You need to get back in your couch, let the machines start building you back up."

"So do you," I give him back, trying to make my face grin. "But we have questions that need answering. At least a basic Sit-Rep." Then I turn to Staley: "What can we check from down here?"

"A lot of the peripheral systems are still out, probably just in power-save, but I should be able to get a basic network online from here. I can start communicating with the other Sleep chambers, get an eyes-on status report—at least enough to tell me about supplies, atmosphere recyclers, water and heat. Maybe how much of the base is still sealed. If that doesn't work, I'll hump it down the corridor to access MAI's core in Aux Ops."

"Make sure Doc Halley clears you first," I warn him. But he only grins at me (though he looks like he's falling asleep).

"It's no further than you just hiked, and _I_ won't have to climb any stairs."

I give him back a smile.

"Copeland did his job," Matthew tries to comfort. "Everybody got through the storm."

"Except Copeland."

"We don't know that," he tries badly to reassure. "Go back to sleep, Mikey. Let the rehab gear get your system spun up. We've got a roof over our heads and air and heat and water and food, at least for awhile. And if Copeland's here, we'll find him. Stubborn bastard probably got tired of watching us snooze, dug out and went for a recon."

Day 3:

"PLEASE DESCRIBE THE EVENTS OF THE LARGER CONFLICT THAT LED TO THE ATTACK ON 2ND JANUARY 2065."

"Where do I start, MAI?"

"BEGIN WITH THE FIRST INCIDENTS."

And it was hard to find a place to start, even if my mind wasn't struggling to function again after what must have been months of chemical hibernation.

"With the Discs? Or the Ecos?"

"BEGIN WITH THE FIRST INCIDENTS."

"Pause playback," I order the screen, and watch my image freeze just as I'm about to answer.

"You're right," Matthew agrees with my original impression as we review the video record of my post-sleep "evaluation" with MAI. "This is weird."

"It _isn't_ anything like the standard post-sleep evaluation," Staley concurs, uneasy. "It's more like a debriefing."

I take a breath, and settle back in the chair I've got wedged into a corner of Matthew's tight quarters.

The "Deluxe Senior Officers' Accommodations"—the best and biggest the base has to offer—are cells about two-and-a-half-meters square, mostly filled by a single bed, minimal storage cabinets, a small desk workstation, and one chair. This is 50% larger than what all but eight of the top officers and department heads get, and most of the junior officers and techs get packed in at least two to a cell. The rest—the vast majority—bunk in barracks (but there's a rack for each body, so at least no one has to share "hot bunk" style).

Only about a third of us have been medically released from the Hiber-Sleep chambers to those bunks, and that's only partially because we've only got three physicians and a half-dozen nurse practitioners to clear almost twelve hundred people. The hibernation-inducing drugs aren't clearing our systems like they should. I remember feeling significantly better by post-sleep Day Three after the shuttle ride. But this time Day Three still feels a lot like Day One, and I'm not the only one suffering. The medical staff checking us out look worse than the personnel they've released.

I've managed to move back into my own quarters—about half the distance to Command, just below the Tower on A Deck. But I haven't been further than that since Day One. I certainly haven't tried climbing up into the Tower again. No one else has, either.

Anton's managed two short trips to Aux Ops to start poking MAI's guts, but he's having trouble concentrating for any length of time, and his fine motor skills are shot.

It took three of us and a wheelchair to get Matthew to his quarters next to mine. Doctor Ryder didn't want to release him yet, but I argued it was an issue of mental health and morale—he'd more likely sit put and rest up if he wasn't worried about how sick and weak he looked in front of his officers and troopers. I promised Ryder I'd do regular checks on him, but I can barely stay out of bed myself.

So Matthew's propped up in his rack with a stack of pillows behind him, because Ryder's ordered him to another few days strict bed rest, and the only way I could keep him there (I found him laying on the deck at the bottom of the Tower stairs once already) was by suggest we use his quarters as a place to do some private conferencing. That means Anton has to perch on the foot of the bunk, because there isn't room for another chair without blocking the hatch (so it's either sit on the bed or on the retractable toilet in the small-closet-sized bathroom).

Our first piece of business: Get more eyes to review the bizarre conversation I had with MAI on Day One. But not _too_ many eyes on it, not yet. Given our condition, we've probably been under a lot longer than a shuttle ride, but we still don't know how long that was (despite Anton's drugged efforts at AI diagnostic and repair). We still don't know what happened outside our little tomb (and being too weak to do a damn thing about it only makes the long Rehab more unbearable). All we know is no one has come to dig us out yet. (Uplink is gone, but if anyone was close, they'd be heard over our short-range Links, and all we're getting is static and each other.)

The last thing I want is panic over all the things we _don't_ know. So the official word is: We're buried, we're okay, we're trying to get something working enough to call out, but it will probably be awhile yet before anyone can get to us.

"Continue playback..."

"The Discs started in '51," I listen to myself trying to answer the AI, playing along despite its refusal to answer any of _my_ questions, trying to understand what's gone wrong with it. "Or maybe in '49, depending on what you believe, when AAV-4 went down in Coprates on a recon flight during the First Sprint Mission. The official theory was it got hit with a micro-meteorite, but the angle was all wrong, too shallow. Still, nobody seriously considered there was anything else here but us. Of course, there's never been any sane reason to believe the Disc drones aren't 'us', aren't of human engineering, just someone with impressive tech resources and an agenda to hinder us."

"DECRIBE WHAT HAPPENED IN 2051."

"Second Sprint Mission. Major Mark Harker came back for another trip since he was the first boots-on-the-ground in '42, if you're testing my memory for history. In April of 2051—don't ask me the day—after they'd had a productive but incident-free month on-planet... He's out on a rover trip, just a few miles from where we built Melas One, riding with one of the team geologists when he sees something in the dust: something moving very fast, skimming just above the ground, using the landscape and the haze for cover. It's there, then it's not. In his own report, Harker says he was reluctant to call it in, even when the geologist said he saw it, too. Given what the Discs looked like when we did get a good look at them, I can understand his hesitation: They're a stereotype UFO—a bad sci-fi flying saucer. Only small: maybe two meters across and half-a-meter thick. Too small to have anyone inside, so it must be a drone, an ROV. It played Hide-and-Seek with them for several minutes, then made a run at them and opened fire with some kind of small mounted machine gun. Harker ditched the rover and dove for cover. Then it was over, just like that. The dust clears, the rover's a wreck and his geologist has a leak in his suit, but the saucer is gone like it never was. Nothing on radar, not even from orbit. The team picked over the site with a microscope, but found nothing that wasn't Mars dirt. It was much later we learned that the Discs' weapons fire projectiles that break up and degrade back into base elements, just like the whole drone does when we manage to bring one down. Some kind of advanced nano-material with a built-in failsafe. Whoever makes them doesn't want anybody to be able to examine one.

"The incident was kept quiet, and when it didn't repeat, things moved ahead on schedule. The popular theory at Intel was that somebody who had an interest in slowing down the multinational project had landed some kind of new drone. There were a lot of countries involved, a lot of corporate backers. But every investigation on both planets came up empty. So Marineris Landing Site One becomes Mariner Colony, and the colonial 'Land Rush' starts not long after, as soon as the corporations figure how much money they can make using Mars for high-risk research projects, for stuff they'd never get away with trying on Earth.

"And that's what started the Eco Movement: people got scared of what the corporations were doing here, or what they imagined they were doing. Scared enough to make the Ecos popular. Scared enough for the Ecos to get militant and try to stop the corporations on-planet. But while the Ecos are still getting organized, the first five research colonies are up and running by '55. By '56, they've already sent back cures for four major cancers and two strains of HIV, not to mention the nano-ware and 'smart' materials that make hundreds of billions worth of bleeding-edge consumer goodies.

"But the DNA re-sequencing and the nanotech—especially the hybrid biotech that promised to be the answer to everything that ails the mortal body—are scary enough that the Ecos _do_ start resorting to violence. They're terrified we'll lose control over it and it will wipe us out as a species in nothing flat.

"They start with sabotage first, relying on sympathizers already imbedded in the colony projects. Then they get enough balls and support to actually stage coordinated mutinies and take over Industry and Liberty colonies. UNMAC holds off on an armed response in hopes of avoiding bloodshed, but the corporations—who are losing billions for every day a facility is off line—push for a more aggressive solution, and UN Peacekeepers start getting sent despite mass protests on both planets.

"Shooting starts. People die. More troops get sent. And it all makes the Ecos even more popular. So UNMAC tries to make peace. And the corporations push to break it when they don't get the results they want..."

"Which is when we found ourselves on a Hohman shuttle..." Matthew interjects sourly.

"THIS IS WHEN YOU ARRIVED ON MARS?" the AI parallels him.

"Okay, see, that's odd," Staley notes, pausing the playback. "It's not asking a question like it's evaluating your memory, Colonel. It's like it's trying to confirm what it knows."

"Or _doesn't_ know," I consider again. "I'm getting the impression it was milking me to fill in gaps in its _own_ memory."

"Or trying to re-organize scrambled data files," Staley wonders out loud. He continues the replay, listening as intently as he can:

"Yes. UNMAC was hoping my reputation from the War on Terror would scare the Ecos into cooperation..."

"They didn't count on what a good diplomat you turned out to be," Matthew remembers with a weak grin.

"...managed to open talks with them. But the corporations got impatient, pressured UNMAC to hit them hard in. The '59 Offensive took back Industry, Freedom and Frontier, establishing garrisons in those colonies. The Ecos held onto Mariner. But the bloodshed turned the free world against UNMAC and the nations supporting the war, so the UN offered a major troop reduction.

"And that's when the Discs show up again, in force. Hit-and-fade attacks against colony labs. Gagarin Colony gets hit hard, and all they were doing was engineering better crops. Then they come after us when we move to defend the labs, tearing up our bases, shooting down our aircraft, strafing convoys. Now everybody is blaming everybody else for the Discs: Ecos, competitors. There's even a popular conspiracy theory that UNMAC is creating an excuse to further militarize and control the planet, a False Flag play.

"In any case, we escalate. We spend the next three years in a shooting war with the Discs, who show up in greater numbers with each attack. We never do learn where they originate, where they go to ground. We never get one intact, not even fragments to analyze, because of how completely they break down. There's a growing fringe that insists we're dealing with extra-terrestrials, but these flying bastards are actually pretty simple conventionally-armed drones. And we never see the things in orbit."

"UNTIL THE BOMBARDMENT."

"See!" Staley almost shouts. "There! It's like MAI _is_ trying to fill in or confirm what it should already know!"

"So it's got memory damage?" Matthew assumes.

"No sign of EMP corruption during the bombardment, which means the EM shielding held," Staley denies. "The loss seems to be isolated to archive files, not the operating system."

"Except it won't answer a simple question," Matthew grouses. "Like 'What day is it?' or where the hell is Cal Copeland?"

"What about some other kind of corruption?" I wonder out loud.

"Colonel?" Staley looks at me like he doesn't want me to say what I'm thinking.

"How long can a system like MAI go without maintenance and not show degradation due to age?"

The look he gives me says that he doesn't know and doesn't want to think about it.

"So our AI's gone senile?" Matthew blurts out. "In a dozen or so months?"

Staley doesn't answer him, but I see him calculating the implication uncomfortably. I continue the playback:

"Until the bombardment," I'm agreeing with MAI. Then:

"WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE BOMBARDMENT?"

I listen to myself pause at that, remember how incredulous I was at the question. There's something odd even in the wording of it: "Who _is_ responsible," not "Who _was_ responsible." As if it's not wanting history, but wanting to place blame. I'm surprised to hear my reply come as quick as it does—I was sure I deliberated for several minutes.  
"MAI, do you not serve in the capacity of Tactical AI as well as base operating system?"

"THIS IS CORRECT." First time it actually answered a question. I remember hoping, in my bleary-eyed almost-passing-out haze, that I was finally getting somewhere.

"Then shouldn't it be _you_ who analyses the available data and provides _me_ with the likely answer to that question?"

"INPUT IS INSUFFICIENT FOR ANALYSIS. PLEASE GIVE YOUR REPORT."

I remember getting another shock at this, but then, given the extreme chaos of the event, it made a kind of sense: All the chaotic, fragmented incoming data may have been too much for MAI to process, especially as our communications were being cut. MAI lost its eyes and ears in the middle of it. It likely doesn't know what happened, what the outcome was. And nobody's come since to fill in those blanks. Maybe that leaves MAI somehow "stuck" in the moment, unable to resolve the scenario, unable to plan beyond it. Or maybe something happened after, something that also explains what happened to Cal Copeland. (Maybe MAI really doesn't know what happened to Cal.)

"The most likely conclusion is that it was whoever was behind all of the Disc attacks since '49. And we still don't know who that was. But they had to have the resources to build and place the drones on planet. And they had to have a way to access the colony systems to simulate multiple site breaches. _And_ detailed intel on the Shield in order to hack it.

"The Ares' Shield platform had only been activated a month prior, reluctantly placed in orbit by UNMAC to appease the growing popular fear that an unstoppable nanotech plague might get loose and kill all life. But no one underestimated how dangerous the platform was. Security for the project was _extreme_. We were agreeing to point nuclear weapons at ourselves. We had to trust that the system was redundantly safe, that no one could use it against us, unless the worst did happen and it was absolutely necessary to protect Earth and we were already as good as dead."

"WHY DID YOU MAKE THE ASSUMPTION THAT THE WEAPONS PLATFORM COULD NOT BE TURNED AGAINST YOU?"

Now the machine almost sounds prosecutorial. I watch myself trying to fumble for an answer—a reasonable answer—especially given my feelings regarding the placing of the platform.

" _I_ would not have made that assumption, MAI," I qualified my answer, but I do sound beyond angry, quickly losing any professionalism I'm hanging onto, thinking about the thousands and thousands that must be dead because of the stupidity that comes with fear. "I'm a soldier. I expect things to go wrong. I expect vulnerabilities to be exploited by my enemies."

"YOUR ASSESSMENT IS LOGICALLY SOUND," it tells me after a fraction of a second's delay.

"But you want to know why _other_ people—the ones that pushed for placing the Shield—assumed it could not be purposefully turned against us?"

"PLEASE GIVE ME YOUR ANALYSIS."

I watch Matthew's eyebrows go halfway up his forehead. Staley is mesmerized. The AI does sound like it's desperate for some kind of understanding.

"I expect it was too big, too unimaginable. Tens of thousands of lives were under that gun. The idea that someone would intentionally burn the whole planet, kill everyone... No one considered—or wanted to consider—that _anyone_ was fanatical enough to commit planetary genocide, simply given the means.

"The Ecos were always careful with human life, even in their greatest militancy. And they were beginning to become mainstream, to move away from violence into diplomacy and democratic politics. They might still have a few hardcore holdouts, isolated fanatics, but whoever pulled this off was big and well-coordinated. And something that big and that scary _should_ have shown up on the radar. Intel should have picked up _something_. But there was no one we saw with any apparent motive for genocide.

"Even if the Discs—and whoever was behind them—could be considered a threat to the entire Martian project, genocide didn't fit with their established methods: The drones were always selective with their attacks, only targeting labs and the military. They didn't target the colony biospheres. And they never touched the ETE terra-forming stations, even when the embattled labs moved their hottest research there for protection."

"THE DISCS DID INITIATE THE BOMBARDMENT."

"Yes," I admitted, feeling the foolishness of the defense I just made, even though I'd never had much faith in it. "So either they were trying to eliminate everyone on Mars, or—if they _were_ being run by one of the national or corporate players on-planet—they were counting on their own interest's countermeasures to spare them."

Then I consider the obvious next question:

"Who else has survived, MAI?"

"UNKNOWN." At least it's an answer. If nothing else, a willingness to admit ignorance.

"Has there been _any_ contact from Earth?"

No answer. Back to where I was before. But I pushed anyway:

"Has there been any contact from any of colonies?"

No answer.

"Has there been any sign of activity on the surface?"

No answer.

"How long have we been asleep, MAI?"

No answer.

"What happened to Colonel Copeland?"

Day 4:

"Okay—Colonels, Doctor—this is what I've managed to find out so far..."

Staley seems reasonably bright despite starting his rehab PT this morning. He should be in agony like the rest of us. (He very well may be—the chipper mood may just be his pain meds.) We older folks almost needed wheelchairs just to get here: The Officer's Mess, just around the corner from our block of quarters, re-tasked for now into a Command Briefing Room. (Our actual dedicated Command Briefing Room is almost straight above us in the Command Tower, but none of us are looking forward to stairs just yet).

Allison Ryder had the longest trip since she was just at work in B-Deck Medical, doing her part to monitor the recovery of 1197 people (including herself). She must have drawn the short straw among her fellow physicians Halley and Shenkar, or maybe their patient load was heavier, because she got sent up to represent them at this quick intimate briefing. She's looking as old as I feel (possibly as old as Matthew feels) and she's only 55. But she has more than just fatigue to account for it.

"Bad news first," Staley gets right to it, bringing his figures up on the wall screens that are usually used for Link or—more routinely—entertainment feed. "Something's wrong with the nuclear batteries. They're running below 40%, which makes no sense since they were supposed to last a hundred years. That's impacting everything, including the atmosphere scrubbers.

"The scrubbers themselves are straining above normal, which makes sense with all the grunting and huffing trying to get almost twelve-hundred people up after what's likely been several months of hibernation. But I asked Lieutenant Rios to have his more mobile bodies pull a sampling of the filters, and they're unusually cruddy and breaking down, which is odd since they should have been barely working while we were asleep. It looks like they're all long past due for replacement. We've started swapping out from our stores, and cleaning the ones that can be recycled, but it will take awhile. The good news is we seem to be breathing pretty well."

I watch Matthew take an extra-deep breath, like he doesn't trust Staley's assessment of the air systems.

"Any idea what could account for all the grit in the filters?" Ryder asks. "Could we have a leak? Sand getting into the system?"

"Preliminary indicators say we're intact," he tells her. "And the crud isn't sand. It's just dust. I asked for samples to be sent to the labs, but it looks like what we'd normally shed into the air. There's just a lot of it."

"It may be the effect of running on limited power for so long," I wonder.

"Colonel Copeland would have left the air systems running for himself," Ryder considers.

"He would have shut down all sections he didn't need," Matthew assumes.

"But it's dusty in Ops," I say what's bothering me. "And in his quarters."

"And we still have no idea what happened to him?" Ryder pushes, sounding anxious.

"Records are dumped," Anton reports heavily. "It's like MAI just didn't bother to record anything while we were sleeping."

"Was MAI offline?" Ryder is starting to get a sense of the weirdness we've been dealing with. I expect she—and the other department heads—have only just recently reviewed the recording of my wake-up "interview" that I selectively released.

"MAI has a 'Sleep' protocol for emergency conservation, but it stays on stand-by," Anton explains. "It would have woken up and monitored any activity. And it wouldn't have gone to sleep to begin with if Colonel Copeland was awake and working."

"Unless he ordered it to," Matthew lets us know what he's been thinking.

"Why?" Ryder presses.

"Maybe he thought we'd be down awhile," Anton offers, though doesn't sound like he believes the possibility. "Maybe he thought he needed to conserve resources."

"Or MAI did," Matthew throws out another worrisome possibility.

"How are the post-sleep evals coming?" I ask Ryder, partially changing the subject.

"Everyone reports the same. We made it through the worst. Eleven-hundred and ninety-seven souls, all alive and breathing..." But I watch her lips purse, her eyes get moist. She's thinking about her husband. General Ryder was on Phobos.

"Despite the power issue, it looks like MAI put priority on keeping us healthy," she continues after taking a moment to compose herself. "No sign of significant tissue damage in any of the personnel I've examined. Everybody is stable. We'll need time to do more detailed workups to be sure."

"But no idea how long we've been out?" Matthew asks one of the big questions, one we've all been asking for days.

"I know it feels worse than the average shuttle sleep," she admits the obvious. "And it looks worse, too. The problem is I don't have access to the research they were doing for flights to the outer planets—that was still going on when we got cut off. We don't know what more than a year deep-under looks like."

"You think we could have been out more than a year?" I ask before anyone else can.

"It..." She looks like she isn't sure what to say, like she's reluctant to tell a patient that he's terminal. "It looks like MAI adjusted the chemical dosing somewhere along the line. But MAI also lost—or erased—the system logs along with every other record of what happened since we went under. I haven't had the energy yet to get a team into the system and take a look at the drug and nutrient tanks—that would tell us how much juice we used, which could tell us approximately how long we've been out."

"What about physical exams you've done? Can they give us any indication of time down?"

She looks tired. "The tissue scans are automatic—protocol as soon as the system brings you out. Beyond that, I've only been able to do some basic workups—I've never had to do a post-sleep exam on myself, much less on several hundred others while I'm still in Stage Two rehab. Like I said: we need time to look at everybody thoroughly. But there is unusually high demineralization in the bones I've been scanning, even though Hiber-Sleep is supposed to slow that way down."

Nobody says anything for awhile. I watch bodies move in their seats, shifting, stretching—carefully, like they're not sure if they can trust their bones not to spontaneously break. Matthew looks like he's going to make another joke about how old he feels, but keeps it to himself.

"Back to the good news," Staley tries. "Internal pressure is good. No apparent atmosphere leaks in any of the sections I've managed to scan, but we do need to start doing a room-by-room survey because some of the individual section sensors are down. It's warm, so environment controls are working. And we've got food—rations and supplements—to last us at least a year, more if we want to try using those nano-recyclers the Tranquility Group gave us. It won't be tasty, and we won't get fat, but we'll have basic nutrients to get through as long as we can stand eating the stuff. Water recycling is impacted by the power issue just like the air systems, but we should be okay if we're reasonably careful. "

"Too bad," Matthew grumbles. "Barring the appearance of a good steak, the thought of a good hot soak was the only thing I was looking forward to."

"We could go Japanese-style," Ryder encourages. "Set up a communal tub."

Matthew smiles at her, but it only shows how much he's hurting.

"How long until we can actually move around enough to do any of the hands-on work?" I push it. "I want that section-by-section survey done. I need to know just how bad we were hit. _And_ I'd like to know how deep we're buried."

"Plus we should run full maintenance on the air and water systems," Staley lists, finally sounding weary. "And get the reactors back online—that should solve the power problem—but that probably means going outside. And _I_ need to properly pick apart MAI, see if I can get to whatever's wrong with it, get us some answers."

"A few more days," Ryder allows cautiously. "We need to try to keep to the rehab protocols. I respect your priorities, Colonel, but we _are_ in rough shape. Still, I agree: We'd all feel better if we had some answers and could do more than basic rehab. The not knowing is unbearable for all of us."

"All right," I decide. "Can we coordinate with the other chambers and put together some initial work and survey teams out of whoever's recovering best?"

"I'll talk to Halley and Shenkar, have them put together lists of who's good to go soonest," Ryder seems to brighten.

"Let's give ourselves one more day," I allow, "then at least get all the seniors together—officers, NCO's, techs and supports. We need to wake this place up, make sure it's running enough to keep us alive and comfortable, then see what it will take to get up on the surface and set up a new uplink."

"You're the boss, Mikey," Matthew agrees with lazy enthusiasm. But then he stays put when Staley and Ryder drag out to get back to business. "You thinking about Lisa?"

" _Lieutenant Colonel_ Ava and I haven't had _that_ kind of relationship for a long long time, Matthew," I answer him coolly, not that he isn't well aware of our history (both the good and the not so good). "But, yes, I'd like to know she's in one piece, and not just because she's now technically third in command. I'd like to know Rick's okay too. _He's_ actually older than you are."

"But I'm more fun."

True.

Day 5:

"Reviewing what we saw and heard before we lost communications, this is what we can put together about our likely situation," Lisa begins her part of the briefing immediately after we all get settled around the biggest table in the Officer's Mess.

We're all slowly working our way farther and farther from our beds (and now _two_ -thirds of us have been released from Hiber-Sleep back to our beds). Walking any distance is still a Herculean endeavor, though today I can actually walk several steps in a row without hand holds. And our intimate little face-to-face briefings are growing: Today we've added Doctors Halley _and_ Shenkar to give us reports from their respective patient loads, and Captain Kastl from Operations, who's been working with Anton in getting into MAI. And, of course, there's Lisa—Lieutenant Colonel Ava...

She doesn't even give us time to get our wind, and I'm not sure where she's getting hers. She looks like death—like the rest of us, zombified versions of our pre-sleep selves—despite how incredible she still looks at sixty-six (and it's not just the cutting edge military-elite health care slowing down the aging process: I can still see the headstrong smart pretty young woman I fell for all those decades ago). And I catch myself looking. And make sure she doesn't catch me looking. Because we manage to be friends and work together like professionals but I hurt her way too badly to have the right to ever think about her that way again.

"We know Ares' Station was lost—we saw it fall. Hopefully the crew and any transferring travelers managed to get off and get to someplace safe. Phobos Dock wasn't fairing well, and if they did survive with adequate resources, they've probably lost all means to get anyone down here—they'd be stuck playing the same waiting game we are."

Lisa takes a long moment to let Doctor Ryder process her husband's possible fate once more. I'm glad I had her do this part of the briefing. I know I come across as stone-killer robot cold, especially when I'm angry. Matthew masks his rage with his bitter humor. Anton is just too young—despite how brilliant and dedicated he is, he can't help but sound like a green kid, especially when he's talking in front of a big group. And Rick—who would be my next best choice to deliver technical bad news—still hasn't been released from bed rest.

Ryder looks like she really wants to leave the room, wants to go back to Medical and re-bury herself in her work, stay distracted until we actually know what happened outside of our bunker home. But she stays put.

Lisa chews her lip and moves on. "We also know that the interplanetary shuttles and freighters in orbit were at least critically damaged. Hopefully, they managed to abandon ships and get picked up by the craft we sent up their way when the shooting started. With luck, they sheltered on the surface, somewhere well away from all the detonations."

"Which means well away from us," Doctor Halley considers why no one's come back here: this whole region got nuked, and probably geologically destabilized—we're in the biggest canyon on two planets, and it wasn't that stable before it got pounded with fission warheads. (As far as we know, there could be a kilometer of rock over our heads.) If our pilots gathered up survivors and brought them down to the surface, they'd land far away from here, and use their remaining fuel for power while they waited the months it would take for Earthside to send help.

(And that would partially explain the lack of contact: If everyone left is in survival-mode for the long stretch, no one has resources to do outreach.)

Lisa has to stop then and catch her breath, and I can finally hear how weak she probably feels. She only meets my eyes for a second, enough to remind me I have no right to give a shit about her anymore as long as she can do her job, and then she gets rolling again:

"Beyond that, if both Phobos and the orbital dock were out, then anything that was inbound from Earth wouldn't be able to stop and offload. Or refuel. Now I know there are contingencies worked out for emergencies like this, ways inbound shuttles can make a low-fuel slingshot and get back to Earth by the skin of their teeth. But that depends on whether or not the incoming ships were still maintaining those contingencies, or if they'd gotten complacent with the regs. Even if they were careful and hit the return maneuver right on, getting home is still far from assured."

"A lot of the corporate supply ships were pushing it," Matthew considers grimly, "trying to milk the dollar, flying loaded past safety specs. I doubt they were still thinking in terms of 'What if all the docks aren't there when we show up?'"

"So where would that put a relief mission?" I ask for the bottom line, though I've been crunching the numbers myself in my rehab haze.

"Earthside would probably have to put it together from scratch, new ships and all," Staley calculates. "I'm sure they'd make it top priority, but they'd also be expecting the worst on arrival. Telescopes—and any survivors' reports—would show them how bad we got pounded. And they'd know we wouldn't be able to support them on this end, so they'd have to put together a mission that could make it both ways and expect to carry thousands of evacuees—a lot of them badly injured—on the return trip."

"I doubt they'd be thinking about evacuating the wounded," Halley interrupts. "The return flight is too long to be an ambulance ride, even with hibernation. They'd try to drop us a hospital unit, treat the bad cases here. Or set up something in orbit if they were worried about Discs or nano-contamination on the surface."

"And they'd want to use any viable manpower left on this end to help them respond," Lisa considers. "They'd want to get power and fuel processors set up, sync a new space dock, get things ready for supporting multiple round trips."

"So they'd have to get to designing and building all that stuff," Matthew agrees. "Expecting the worst."

"Which includes both an unknown risk from nano-contamination on the surface, and a probable risk of Disc attack, likely to hit them as soon as they make orbit," Lisa assesses, her face going into her hands, her palms covering her eyes, fighting through rehab-fatigue to stay clear.

"So they'd need a bloody armada," Halley imagines, frustrated with the delays she's imagining to get relief to what she's imagining is happening on the surface and in space. Right now, our own position seems luxurious in comparison.

"They'd just lost potentially tens of thousands of lives," I rationalize. "And what killed them is still likely active and waiting for our next move. I wouldn't expect them to rush into a grinder like that. First priority in a disaster: don't get killed coming to the rescue. Can't save anybody if you're just going to show up and get slaughtered. Anything they send would have to be hardened and armed to resist the Discs."

"They'd need a bloody armada," Matthew parrots Halley's sentiment.

"Months to build it, assuming they make it a planetary priority, then most of a year to get it here," Staley adds it up.

"But wouldn't they have done something in the mean time?" Ryder asks. "Sent probes? Tried to establish communication?"

"Maybe the Discs are taking out anything they send," Lisa considers.

"But who's running the Discs?" Matthew demands, getting frustrated in his fatigue. "Something this big, you'd think they'd have shown their hand, given themselves away, let Earth know who they're dealing with so they know who to take out. Or maybe they already killed themselves along with everyone else on the surface."

"We don't know _anything_ about the colonies," Lisa tries to reassure, but that hope is tinted with accusation: any survivors are suspect. "A lot of the nukes were going wild. We didn't get any confirmation of direct hits before our eyes got knocked out."

"But we also haven't heard from our other two bases, despite MAI having been linked to their AIs," he complains. "They would have come looking for us if they made it. They _didn't_ have operational Hiber-Sleep facilities. And a handful of the colonies had garrisons of Peacekeepers, or SOF units camped onsite. Plus, we sent up over a dozen support craft. Even if they were busy with survivors, some would prioritize returning to base after the smoke and radiation cleared, if for no other reason than to scavenge for supplies. We're assuming it's been months. Even if fuel was short, we should have had _some_ kind of contact."

Lisa is looking like she's withdrawn into herself, trying to figure out how to say something.

"What are you thinking, Colonel?" I ask her officially.

"I've been up to Command Ops, up in the Tower," she begins, slowly. "You said you didn't see any sign of activity except yourself."

"But I couldn't exactly see very well," I allow her. "You found something?"

She pulls her flashcard out of the thigh pocket of her uniform and keys up an image on the screen side. MAI automatically captures the image and projects it larger on the Mess Hall screens. It's an enhanced photo of the dusty deck.

"I found boot prints. Old, but still visible. But _not_ UNMAC boots."

"Not Copeland?"

"No. They match civilian seal-suit designs, but I can't absolutely confirm the issue. But they don't match anything anybody on-base was wearing."

"We've had a visitor?" Matthew sits up.

"Any signs of tampering?" I ask.

"I'll need Anton to check all the systems, but nothing obvious." She looks preoccupied, almost spooked. "But I tracked them—not completely, we'll need to check the whole base—but they seem to wander, like someone just came in for a look around. Maybe more than one visit. It looks like they came down to the Chambers."

"Someone watching us sleep," Matthew goes dark. "That's just not okay with me."

"But nothing tampered with," I repeat.

The Links start beeping and a face comes up on the wall screens. It's Lieutenant Carver. She'd been leading one of the survey teams. She looks pale, shaken, almost terrified.

"Colonel Ram, this is Carver, Survey Two..."

"You've got something, Lieutenant?"

"Yes, sir... I..." She's having trouble with words. Her eyes dart in all directions like the world is about to fall in around her. I check the stats on the section she's in—far end of the bunker complex, Ground Operations Staging, A Deck—it looks like the corridor she's located in is intact, no breaches, but several of the connecting sections haven't been logged as checked yet.

"Is it Colonel Copeland?"

"No sir. But... I think you should get up here, sir. I think you really need to see this..." She's urgent, out of breath.

"What is it, Lieutenant?"

"I... I really don't know, sir. It doesn't make any sense... I can't... I can't explain it..."

"Do you need backup?"

"No... No sir. Just eyes... I think we're secure... but... maybe best if not a lot of boots came this way, not yet... Seal the section... Restrict access... It really doesn't make any sense, Sir..."

"We'll be right there, Lieutenant."

"Right there" takes a good ten exhausting minutes. I should have known better. But I can't remotely imagine what would have shaken her up as badly as she looked and sounded.

One hundred and twenty meters across the complex: all the way east to the aircraft bays, then south past the vehicle garages to the Air Com/Ground Ops wing—almost as far as you can get from where we started and still be on the same deck. No fewer than six sealed pressure hatches (and one catastrophic breach airlock) to haul open and then cycle shut behind us. We're beyond winded and aching by the time we get there. I feel like I've hiked uphill all day in full gear. I'm soaked in sweat. My lungs burn and my joints scream at me with every step. And with every step I hate myself because it's only a hundred and twenty fucking meters in point-four gees. I start counting every meter, making myself take the next one.

My legs are numb by meter 75. I feel like my body weighs a thousand pounds, not a relative sixty. I've been walking head-down, following the fresh footprints in the dust as I trace Carver's team's course, their path down the main corridors as they worked meticulously room-to-room, taking inventory of what's intact, locking down what isn't safe (there are warning tags on both vehicle garages—they have big doors that open outside). Every few dozen meters I can see the random blobby smears in the deck dust that tell me they had to sit down and rest.

"This _really_ better be good," Matthew is grousing behind me, sounding at least as out of breath as I am. Lisa hasn't said a word.

We find Carver's team where she said she'd be, camped and waiting at the end of the corridor to Ground Ops, all sitting in front of the sealed pressure hatch into that section like they're guarding it. They all look as shaken and numb as Carver did on her call-in, staring at the walls, the floor. Carver's got her face in her hands like she's trying not to hyperventilate.

"Colonel!" she snaps-to as soon as she sees us coming, the effort of rising to her feet making her look like she's just taken a severe beating, but also looking more than just a little relieved to see us.

"Report?"

"We... We were doing our sweeps, sir," she tries in fits and starts, sounding like her brain is having trouble finding words. She looks like she's about to fall down. "Taking it slow in these sections because we expected some of the vehicle bay doors—the ones that open outside—might have been knocked in by the slide. Breached. MAI's sensors are down in a lot of the sections on this end, but the security cameras did show us rocks and gravel pushing through some of the bay doors—we just tagged those bays and left them be as we were sure they'd be airless, no point doing a manual pressure check... Too many sections to clear... Then we moved on to the machine shops, the repair bays. The ones that looked sound, we..."

She runs out of breath, and almost does fall down. I catch her by the shoulders and immediately regret it—it feels like someone dropped five hundred pounds in my arms—but we both manage to stay standing. Then she coughs so hard it doubles her over, and I have to let her down. She folds into an almost fetal position on her knees. Her team doesn't look any better. Lisa checks her LA's—her personal telemetry is good, she's just hyperventilating. Still, she has to hang onto the bulkhead to stay even slightly upright.

She manages to get her flashcard out of her pocket, pull up a floor plan of these sections.

"This... This one here..." She jabs a shaky finger at the Staging Area just off the corridor on the other side of the hatch she's propped against. She gulps in a breath, shakes her head like she's trying to get her brain to process. "It... looked sound on the security camera... So we checked the air pressure at the hatch. It was low, sir, but within tolerable pressures. Safe enough to go in... We assumed that there must be a slow leak, something that may be bleeding our air out, but so slow that didn't trigger MAI to seal it off with the sensors out. Pinhole, maybe... Hairline crack... So we broke out our masks, sealed up this section of corridor behind us to make an airlock, and we opened it..."

Coughing again. But she looks like she's getting her wind back. Only she doesn't continue her report.

"And?" I press her after giving her more time to breathe, but she doesn't answer, doesn't even look up. I'm almost expecting her to puke. Lisa shoots me a look that's somewhere between incredulity and terror. She'd always been impressed with Carver—Carver never flinched, even in a war where a pinhole in your suit would kill you (something I dismissed as the illusion of immortality common in academy-fresh child-soldiers).

"You should go see, sir," one of the specialists—his name plate says Ryan—looks up at me. His face is pale as death. He looks like he wants to say something more, but—like Carver—can't find the words. "I think... I think it's safe..."

Carver doesn't agree with him, but does move aside to let Lisa and I open the hatch into the next section. The lights are dimmed to horror-movie creepy, but it feels warm enough, and there was no rush of unequal pressure to say the air may be leaking out. The first hatch on the right—one of two staging rooms off the Primary Ground Vehicle Staging Bay—has been marked with one of Carver's tags, though it looks like it was slapped on in a hurry, sloppy and off-kilter.

Matthew looks through the small polycarb porthole in the hatch, trying to see. Then he gives up and shakes his head. I take a look. I see racks of pressure suits, heavy armor, field packs, air tanks, tool kits, all where they should be. The room is dimly lit, with an odd pinkish glow. The air is hazy with dust, every surface and piece of gear is evenly powdered with it, but worse than anywhere else. The frost on the polycarb tells me it's cold in there, and my breath fogs it. Lisa checks the reads on the hatch plate.

"It's cold," she confirms. "Below freezing, but not surface-cold. Air pressure is point-three-two atmospheres. We'll need O2, but can go in without pressure suits. Radiation levels are acceptable."

I look to Carver again. She doesn't say anything, but her eyes—when she raises her head just long enough to make contact with mine again—look like she wants to scream. Matthew is already pulling out his breather mask.

We seal Carver's team on the other side of the corridor hatch—likely the same protocol they followed before they risked opening the hatch into the apparently leaky Staging Room. Ryder has caught up to us and gets to work checking them out.

Then we turn our attention to the hatch that got them so spooked. Matthew blows it manually, equalizing the pressure between the room and the section of corridor we're in. There's a quick and significant rushing of air, and I have to brace myself to ride it out. My ears pop, but it's nothing like full decompression. But even with the pressure equalized, it takes two of us to crank the hatch open—nothing to do with the condition of the hatch, we're just that post-sleep weak. I can feel the cold before the job is halfway done, making me feel like I've been splashed with ice water because I'm sweating so badly. The hatch creaks on its hinges like we're on an old ship.

I step in first. The dust is thick underfoot, but the surface crunches like frost—like the surface sand does, after it's settled in the cold near-vacuum.

"Oh, shit!" Matthew squeals, and I turn to look. The connecting hatch to the next (and larger) Staging Room either wasn't sealed or failed, and whatever Matthew saw on the other side of it made him jump back and try to slam it shut. But it won't seal.

I remember what Ryan said—that he thought we'd be safe enough—and figure since we haven't been sucked into near vacuum, we're good for now. So I step past him and ease the hatch open.

The larger Staging Room had a large polycarb window that looked out into the vehicle bay. It's been ruptured, blown outwards. The room is full of dirt, sand, piled feet deep.

" _Fuck_..." I hear Lisa sigh out in shock. But she's looking up, her flashlight turned toward the ceiling, to a small skylight that explains the pinkish light leaking in. When she shifts her stance, I realize I hear the unmistakable sound of her boots grinding on the high-oxide silicate of Martian sand. She's standing on several inches of it, like someone dumped a bucket of the stuff right under the skylight.

"No fucking way..." Matthew protests, staring up at it. Then he turns like a man on fire, pushes past me into the ruptured Staging Room.

I'm staring up at the broken skylight. Looking through it to open sky. My mind numbly recalls that there were no "skylights" in this section—what I'm staring up through was where an exhaust vent used to be, likely sheared off by the slide. Now it's a five-inch hole opened cleanly to the surface. The sky is a pinkish haze—like an Earthly sunset—straight above us.

We're open to the outside.

" _Help_ here...!" Matthew is protesting. He's pushing through what's left of the polycarb viewing window, climbing over the piled sand and out into the bay.

"Why aren't we dead?" is the best Lisa can come out with. Then she remembers to think, and has her sniffer out. "Point-three-two atmospheres..."

More than thirty times what it should be.

"...and fifteen percent oxygen..."

I turn and chase after Matthew on his insane mission. He's on all fours, pushing through the shattered polycarb.

"No... _No_ fucking way..."

He disappears. I can hear his boots on loose rock. The Vehicle Bay is almost filled with slide debris, rock and sand. Only the tops of the rovers that had been parked inside it are visible. And I see more light. More pink light. The bay doors have been busted inwards. Martian rubble mixed with broken vehicle scrap pours in from outside. From _outside_.

I push through after him, climb through the window into the buried bay, forgetting how much I hurt, forgetting how easy it would be to break my weakened bones.

_There shouldn't be air._ The near-vacuum should have ripped the masks off our faces as it decompressed our lungs. Our capillaries and eyes should be cold-boiling.

Matthew is climbing up and out over the rubble, out through the thin gap in the smashed and twisted blast-grade doors, sending more sand and gravel rolling into the bay. It's all I can do to keep up with him. And I can't even to that—the hill of debris starts to come out from under me, and I fall, and it knocks my mask loose. Matthew's hand reaches down and grabs my flailing arm, pulls me up. The 40% gravity is the only thing that keeps our bones from breaking, our joints from tearing. He gets my feet under me, gets me up. And out.

Outside.

I'm suddenly under open sky instead of concrete. And I realize I've taken a breath before I get my mask back on.

My lungs burn, but it isn't vacuum. More like very high altitude on Earth, like making a HALO jump. Or being up on something Everest-class. And the air tastes like rust. It gets me coughing. But there _is_ air to draw in when I gasp for it. Still, I'm going dizzy and numb fast, and Matthew has to help me get my mask resealed. He holds me steady until I've got my oxygen back.

And we look around.

Rubble has rolled over the base—and the surrounding landscape—as far as the eye can see, all rust red and yellow ochre. It's dotted with twisted scrap—whites, grays—what's left of anything even remotely fragile—or less fragile than the reinforced concrete bunkers specifically designed to survive the possibility of a Martian super-slide—that was on the surface when the slide hit. Very little is recognizable. The whole landscape has changed.

But when I look close—and know what I'm looking for—I can still almost make out the lines of the bunker sections. The slide isn't deep. Maybe a few meters. An engineering team with bulldozers could dig us out in a couple of weeks.

But I'm standing on the surface of Mars. Without a pressure suit.

I feel a hand grip mine. Lisa is standing next to me. Looking up at the pink and violet sky, at the distant sun overhead, softly haloed in a blue haze. Eyes wide like a child's. Shivering in the cold.

Outside.

Outside and not dead.

Outside and _breathing_.

"How long have we been sleeping?"

Day 6:

"Fifty years."

Halley lays it on the table without preamble.

We all sit in numb shock. The Officers' Mess goes silent as a funeral.

All I can think of is that it should be more of a surprise, but I'm still feeling the dust-burn from that lung-full of Martian air I gulped down yesterday. Air that shouldn't be there, not even with the Environmental Terraforming Enterprises' best PR spiel, not for at least _twice_ as long as Halley's answer.

"That's based on what we found when we pulled apart the Hiber-Sleep systems," she qualifies. "The chemicals and nutrients are almost fully depleted. We were down for the maximum time the system could keep us. And that was a lot longer than it should have been, except MAI apparently figured out an algorithm for adjusting our sleep feed to make it last almost two decades beyond what the original system specs projected. It did a damn good job, too, considering how well we all made it through."

"If we can find something resembling a working telescope, we could probably confirm based on planetary positions," Lisa offers, the shakiness in her tone letting us know she's not really eager to confirm Halley's estimation. But from the looks on the faces around the table, no one doubts Halley. All they'd have to do is poke their heads topside without a pressure suit if they needed convincing—and I know almost anyone who could walk far enough to get to the breached bay has at least gone up long enough to experience the unbelievable first-hand.

Anton especially doesn't look surprised at Halley's numbers. He looks tense, scared, angry.

"I'm still not sure what happened," he tells us. "It looks like MAI went into some kind of modified sleep mode for extended periods, and had to give itself several restores. There was corruption. Hardware degradation. Memory is lost. Yet it worked a miracle in keeping us alive, managing power, tweaking the Hiber-Sleep systems."

"Did it have _help_?" Lisa asks him, thinking of her mystery footprints—footprints we found more of in the breached vehicle bay.

" _Someone_ was down here," he admits. "But there's no record of it. And no record of what happened to Colonel Copeland. It could be that MAI just overwrote the security files to save more critical software along the way. Or it could be tampering."

"But who would come down here, check on us, maybe adjust our sleep meds to keep us out longer, then leave us here, erasing their passing?" Matthew doesn't buy the benevolent visitor theory. His eyes are still distant—he can't get the experience of standing on the surface without a suit out of his mind. None of us can. "What about the air?" he changes the subject. "Anybody figure that out yet?"

"The Terraforming Stations weren't targeted by the nukes," Lisa tries. "No one wanted to burn something that expensive and that would give this rock a future for mankind, not even when it went public that the corporate labs were moving their scariest projects to the Stations to protect them from the Ecos and the Discs. So they've been running all this time. Even if the crews were dead, they'd just keep cooking the planet on automatic."

"And if the crews _weren't_ dead, they would have made contact with Earthside," Matthew concludes bitterly. "Either that, or we just figured out who's been behind the Discs. Someone at ETE wanted the planet to themselves?"

"Interesting theory, Colonel," Anton agrees, an unusual darkness in his tone. "Add this into it: The nuking actually _helped_ them. That's probably why the air outside is twice as thick as it should be, even given ETE's best projections. I ran a few simulations through MAI: The nukes generated heat, _lots_ of heat. And freed up lots of water from the deep permafrost. On top of that, they threw tons upon tons of crap into the sky. On Earth, that would spell nuclear winter. On Mars, we get a greenhouse effect. Think about what the ETE generators do: they're big, hot reactors. They free water, raise the temperature, pump what would otherwise be fluorocarbon pollution into the atmosphere to make a solar radiation shield, make the air thick enough to hold the heat they put out and what the sun beats down. Over time, the sun plays a bigger and bigger role because there's more to absorb its energy. The stations all get this big bonus boost. And all this time their processing plants have been freeing oxygen, stockpiling byproducts in the form of hydrogen fuel and iron ore."

"And they conveniently got the colony labs to hand over their hottest science for 'safekeeping,'" Ryder adds in, agreeing with Matthew's suspicions, her voice edged with the persistent rage that comes from grief.

"So the ETE Corporation planned this whole thing out?" I question. And I realize I'd like to have a target for my rage as much as anyone down here, but it doesn't add for me. "How could they benefit financially from this if they effectively cut themselves off from Earth?"

"Maybe they got themselves evacuated a long time ago," Anton considers grimly. "Declared us all dead, covered their tracks, smuggled the profitable research home."

Matthew is nodding in agreement.

"I can't see it," I counter. "What about Earth? Did they just take the ETE crews at their word, evac them and not look any further? Then close the book and don't come back? For _fifty_ years?"

"If the ETE Corporation—or whoever—could pull off the Disc attacks and set off the Ares' Shield, then maybe they could sell Earthside a hopeless worst case," Lisa throws out, "make it look like everyone else was dead—and maybe everyone else _was_ dead. With us conveniently buried."

"And the planet hopelessly contaminated," Matthew plays in. "Or at least made to look that way."

"And the ETE leave their stations running in hopes of coming back some day," Anton adds on.

"Corporate raiding at its finest," Matthew finishes his nightmare.

"But I can't see Earthside just leaving it at that, no matter how bad it was," Halley protests. "They'd at least keep watch. Survey the established sites. Even if the other colonies and bases were all nuked, _we_ weren't. A close look would have shown that. They would have come for us."

"Maybe they couldn't," Lisa considers. "Maybe the Discs were waiting to fight them back, keep them away. They trashed our entire incoming shuttle network in minutes, took down the docks. If the Discs established a blockade, controlled orbit..."

"And Earth would just leave it at that?" Ryder denies.

"We've got a makeshift receiver dish up on the surface now," Anton reminds us. "It's dead quiet up there. No signals. Not from any of the colonies. Not from the other two bases. Not from orbit. Not from Earth—granted, we're sitting almost opposite from the sun if the date's right, but I'd expect to pick up noise if they were still sending." He lies back in his chair, still so very easily fatigued—youth doesn't seem to be much advantage after we've all slept the last half-century together.

"Maybe they gave up," Matthew throws out darkly. "Maybe they tried. Tried some more. Got nothing. Took the ETE or whoever survived at their word that there wasn't anyone left to save. Or maybe they lost too many more lives trying."

"I can't buy," Ryder bites back. "They'd have to be watching the planet growing an atmosphere, see the stations still humming. They'd come back. If the Discs met them, they'd come back harder. They've had _fifty years_ to fight their way back here."

"Maybe they have," Anton offers. "Maybe they came and went."

"And didn't find us?" she counters harder, her anger flushing her. "I've been up there. Yes, the base is buried, but you can still see signs of it if you know what you're looking for. And even if you couldn't see it from space, global positioning would pinpoint it for you, or you could just find it on a map..."

" _Somebody_ found us," Lisa considers, flashing her mystery footprints up on the table's holoscreen.

"And left us here," Matthew finishes the obvious thought. "Maybe kept us asleep longer."

"It would have been easier to kill us all," I make clear. "All they'd have to do is cut power to the chambers. Why didn't they?"

I get no theories, only uncomfortable squirming.

"But the footprints mean somebody's been walking around recently," I try to progress Lisa's thought in a more promising direction. "Someone was here. And that means everybody isn't dead or evacuated. And it wasn't a rescue crew, or we wouldn't still be here."

I see a look of validation in Lisa's eyes—the mystery of her footprints have been almost an obsession. And, like me, she doesn't believe they were simply made by Colonel Copeland before he met whatever fate he did.

"We don't know what the surface looks like from orbit—or from Earth," Lisa tries. "Someone else could have found a way to survive, just without a means to be seen or heard from space. Marineris is twenty-eight hundred miles long and hundreds wide—it's a lot of territory to search. We know slides came down all over. There's a good chance the whole landscape is different. Everything in the valleys could have been buried if it wasn't nuked, or maybe the survivors had to evacuate their established sites and dig in elsewhere—they could have gone unfound. And maybe the surface _does_ show signs of contamination—if those labs weren't breached before the bombs fell, odds are hot they broke open during the bombing."

"It's been fifty years," Ryder reconsiders, sounding beaten, sounding like a woman who's just coming to grips with her husband dying in an unimaginable genocidal atrocity, and simultaneously trying to grasp that it happened fifty years ago. "Who knows what could have happened..."

"And we can't risk jumping in to find out," I focus them on the present. "Not yet, anyway." Then I tell Lisa and Anton: "Just keep a passive listener on the surface for now. Don't send any signals out until further notice. Just in case. We're in no shape to respond if the Discs _are_ still waiting out there, and if they are, then they've effectively held the planet for all this time." Then I turn to Halley and Ryder. "Rehab is priority one. We need back on our feet before we can do much about anything. Next, we concentrate on getting this pit as livable as possible, figure out the long term. If we don't hear anything from the Discs by then, we go up, dust the place off, start making noise. See and be seen. I just want us to be in fighting shape if bad comes. Which means digging out and repairing the batteries, the tracks, the rovers, the ASVs that are still down in the hangars because they wouldn't fly..."

They nod in solemn agreement, but I can tell they wish I would give them something more. So I do:

"First we get on our feet. Then we get some wheels and some wings. And some guns, as many as we can get functional, just in case. Once we do that, then if nobody comes looking for us when we start making noises, we go looking for them."

### Chapter 2: Cry in the Wilderness

Day 152. 3 June, 2115:

See and be seen.

I find a big rock suitable to sit down on and watch the dozers work at scraping the remainder of the slide off the top of the roughly C-shaped bunker complex, like archeologists uncovering a buried relic. I lift my mask enough to get the straw of my canteen in for a quick drink, then put it back before I need to breathe again. I'm in no hurry to experience another breath of the thin new atmosphere like I did accidentally when Matthew, Lisa and I impulsively climbed out of our safe holes into this new world. And it's not just the near-suffocating sparseness of the outside air. (Halley assures us that most people could actually go without bottled oxygen for several minutes without serious physiological effects; though they'd be dizzy within a minute, disoriented in two, and probably face-down shortly thereafter.) It's what's perpetually in that air:

I coughed for two weeks from the one breath of micro-sand I inhaled. Halley keeps warning everybody of the risk of silicosis if we suck in too much of the stuff, but even the slightest dusting of it tears into your sensitive insides like fine broken glass. A dry rasping cough has become a pervasive music in our cramped living spaces despite precautions.

Added to that is the "rose" we've all got on our noses and cheeks from playing out in the thin air. Of course, it's nothing compared to the capillary rupturing that would happen in nothing flat if this was still one-percent of Earth's sea-level atmospheric pressure, not to mention the boiled lungs and eyeballs. The worst risk at this pressure is edema in the lungs are brain, but Halley's been keeping a close eye on all of us. Still, I think we'd all agree the price is reasonable for being able to walk so freely on the surface of Mars.

I make sure my mask has a good seal, then I adjust my shrouded cap to ensure it's keeping the distant sun's direct UV off whatever skin is exposed between my mask, goggles and scarf—even the thickened atmosphere is no adequate barrier against solar radiation, so we have to stay covered up. The added short layered cape-like shrouds stuck on the backs of our UNMAC uniform head covers make us look like old French Foreign Legionnaires, which is certainly appropriate, given the barren terrain and the isolating distance from anything resembling civilization. Or home.

My breath feels close in the mask, clammy-damp and stale, but it's infinitely preferable to being sealed in a bulky pressure suit.

It's warm today—almost fifty degrees. "A gorgeous day," as Halley would say, before "encouraging" as many of us as possible to get masks on and get their boots up out of the bunkers, to walk around in the open, under sky instead of concrete, to fight off the potential for depression that comes from living sealed in tight quarters (made worse by the total isolation of having no contact with any other human beings). And she's right—it _is_ a gorgeous day. But it won't last. It'll dip well below zero again when the sun goes down. And the temperature drops fast, because the air is so thin and so dry.

But for right now, all I need is my standard Peacekeeper LA's—UNMAC's latest generation of infantry and special operations "Light-Armor" uniform, its skin pixilated a slightly deeper shade of rust than the actual soil, webbed with darker veins that hope to blend in with the rubble field of rock and gravel that defines much of the landscape (except for the steeper slopes of the valley walls and the occasional dry "wash" of ancient riverbed—reminders that Mars had free water once upon a time in its history, long before man and the ETE Corporation came to muck up the settled, natural order of things).

I adjust my weapons as I sit—my pistol in its thigh rig and the light synthetic ICW sitting in its chest-mount. Not that we've needed our weapons. There hasn't been a sign of any activity other than us in six months.

On the positive, at least the Discs (or whatever their technology has evolved into after fifty years) haven't come swarming to shoot us to pieces.

On the negative, with all our surface activity as we begin to dig out, we should have gotten _someone's_ attention, even with Anton's replacement transmitter still incomplete. But we haven't heard anything from anyone, not even faded fuzzy chatter or fragmented code on any frequency we can pick up. And there's nothing but background noise coming in from space, from Earth.

Some of us are starting to worry that Earth may be dead, that whatever happened here in terms of a bio or nanotech disaster did spread there. The popular suspicions regarding the ETE Corporation have evolved into their own mythology, culminating an imagined Apocalypse wherein corporate greed brought an unstoppable plague back to Earth. Or the nanotech they had already started putting to "safe" commercial use Earthside eventually went wrong.

Or maybe humanity simply found another way of killing themselves.

On top of the Command Bunker, I can see Anton and his crew working on the replacement transmitter—named fittingly enough "Staley's Tower" by the lead engineer himself. It won't even be as powerful as the original orbital uplink (of course, as far as we can tell, there isn't anything left in orbit to uplink to), but it will make some noise, chatter out a signal that should be heard from Earth. (Earth is only now coming out from around the opposite side of the sun from us. We woke up at the worst possible time in the two-year cycle that brings us in and out of conjunction with home).

I get back on my feet and stretch out my old bones. They still ache deeply from the re-calcifiers injected into them—worst in the hips and lower spine—but it's one indispensable benefit we reaped from the nano-boom: an effective means to fight low-gravity skeletal demineralization. It hurts like hell all over, but it works. Even on busted old bodies like mine.

But not so well on Matthew's, thanks to his old-school knee replacements, a souvenir of the Terror War. I catch sight of Matthew now, walking the perimeter alone, like he's done every day since he could spend more than an hour on his feet. His circuit gets longer every day—he's up to needing two cylinders worth of air for his afternoon "therapy". Still, he's limping even in the low gravity, chopping the gravelly Martian soil with his makeshift walking stick, checking on the progress that Carver and Rios and their respective platoons of troopers have made on getting some of the battery guns replaced.

Refitting after what the slide did to us has been an exercise in creative engineering. Everything has been a game of scavenge and trade-out, digging deep into our stores of spare parts, making one working machine out of a few (or more than a few) busted ones. That strategy got us two working construction dozers, a handful of assorted short-range scout rovers, one almost-working armored track, and about a quarter of our pre-bombardment compliment of base guns.

But nothing flying. We had four ASVs safe in the bunker hangars when the slide hit, but the reason they didn't go up with all the rest of our ships to rescue the people we had in orbit was that they didn't fly. And they've continued to defy Sergeant Morales' attempts to cobble one good aircraft out of them. She's threatening to get creative, weld together something from scratch. It wouldn't make orbit, but it would give us eyes in the air, and get us a lot further out for recon than the battery-powered rovers.

I head in Matthew's general direction, my boots crunching the rusty gravel, doing the light shuffle-skip that walking on uneven ground becomes in .38 G's, raising puffs of fine red dust (dust that I'll need to vacuum off of me when I go back inside, to keep the abrasive and somewhat corrosive stuff from wreaking havoc with delicate gear and sensitive skin).

The pervasive dust makes me think of Lisa's mystery footprints again: if anyone else could have survived this long, they'd be able to move around on the surface like we can, needing only oxygen and protection from the elements, and they probably could have been doing so for the last several years. Unfortunately, since the length of Marineris sits in line with the equator, the shifts in temperature from one end to the other as the sun crosses the sky creates regular dust storms at least twice a day, scouring away even recent footprints. If anyone was walking around on our real estate, the evidence is long erased.

(One interesting note, though: there was no trace of outside sand in those mystery footprints. Whoever visited us was carefully clean.)

Then I remind myself of some other math: without Hiber-Sleep, the _youngest_ adult colonist at the time of the bombardment would now be almost seventy, and without the benefits of the nano-treatments that have been working to keep both time and the rigors of this harsh planet in check. (Plus, this base is one of the only sites that had G-Simulator centrifuges to maintain enough muscle tone and skeletal integrity to keep one's "Earth Legs"—a twice-daily ritual of being spun up to Earth gravity for several minutes, which Halley got us all ordered back to as soon as we'd cleared Stage Two rehab.)

"Don't we look spry?" Matthew teases through his obvious discomfort as I come jogging up.

"Five months of PT and nano-rehab," I give him, "it's either spry or dead."

"I think I'm number two." He leans on his stick—part of the barrel of one of our battery guns bent out of true—like he's bearing full Earth weight (but if he was, his "stick" would be almost too heavy to drag around).

He looks out at the horizon to the west, out into the center of the vast clamshell-shaped Melas Chasma, over three hundred miles across and over 20,000 feet below Datum (Martian "sea level") at its deepest. Its distant rims are barely visible in the pink haze of dust and frost as they rise up four miles above us, leveling off almost perfectly with the great Planums on either side of the Marineris Valley.

"I've been out here every day for three months now and it doesn't get old," he tells me. "Looking at it. Those slopes that go up and up forever, higher than Everest—not that I've ever seen Everest, of course—then flattening out like that on top, like the Grand Canyon, if the Grand Canyon was as big as the United States and five times deeper. And don't remind me I didn't look at it twice all the five-and-a-half-years we were here before everything blew up... It was different looking at it through eight inches of plexi, or through the bubble of a stuffy pressure suit." He stops for awhile, just drinking it in. And I hate to admit it, but he does sound old, despite what cutting-edge nano-medicine and a lifetime of Spec-Ops PT have done for him.

"This was going to be something our great-great grandkids were supposed to be able to enjoy: being able to take a stroll on fucking Mars with only a wimpy little oxygen mask." He sounds deeply, profoundly sad—something that's been getting steadily worse over the last five months. His pissed-off has long since mellowed, his outrage at the bombardment and the imagined criminal atrocity behind it. It no longer drives him, and he's begun the slide through the stages of grieving into the debilitating depression Halley fears will take hold of all of us.

His irony when he talks of children's children's children isn't lost either: Neither of us had the time or security for having children, not with the life we chose. We were allowed lovers, bodies to cling to, to soothe one another like real people do, but families were an unobtainable luxury. Loved ones were just another way for your enemies to hurt you, and we'd made a world full of enemies.

"This isn't supposed to be for _us_ , Mikey," I listen to him wallow in it. "We've done some shitty things. Evil things. In the name of a better world."

A world we couldn't live in.

"I know..." I try badly. And I tell myself this crisis is normal, expected. Halley can increase his serotonin levels, and he'll push through it.

"No," he sounds like he's almost crying in his mask, trying not to. "No, you don't." He won't look at me, just keeps his eyes on the horizon. "You still think I came here for you, for loyalty and still needing to keep your crazy ass out of bad trouble, like always, even after I tried to retire and walk away. And I did come here because of you. But that's not all of it."

He picks up his stick and jabs it at the dirt, poking holes, stirring up dust.

"I had this nice little dream: I'd pull one last tour... And if I didn't get myself holed by an Eco or a Disc, I'd get established, make a life here—settle into a cushy corporate security job at one of the nicer colonies like Tranquility, or maybe even Pax—the hippies would drive me crazy, but maybe I'd find myself a nice young tofu-girl to nurse me through old age. Then one day I could actually die in my sleep, fifty million miles away from the planet I participated in fucking up, so maybe here they'd make me a nice little marker that remembered me for being a sweet but slightly crazy dirty old man. But that's what it comes down to—I had it all planned out in my head before I got on the damn shuttle. One-way ticket. Last frontier. The ultimate get-away-from-it-all. Last line on the tombstone, if there's gonna be such a thing."

He looks up at the sky. You can see stars even at midday. And the irregular blobs of the two moons.

"Maybe we should do up one for them," he suggests, pointing up at the bigger blob that is Phobos, thinking of those who probably died in space, in orbit, half-a-century ago. "A tombstone. Maybe a monument. Names on a rock, at least. Even if nobody but us ever gets to see it."

"We should," I agree. I don't say anything else for awhile, just stand with him. Then I give him: "I figure I came here to die, too, you know..."

He chuckles at that, shakes his head, pushes a gloved hand up under his goggles to wipe at his eyes.

"Of course I know, you selfish fuck," he scolds me, laughter cutting through his grief. "Except _you_ had no delusions about going out sexed-up and happy in bed. You didn't come here to die; you came here to get _killed_. Maybe you told yourself you signed on to do something righteous, save this planet since you did such a fantastic job of it on the last one... But what you were really going for was the whole pointless blaze-of-glory thing, and our UN masters were happy to oblige. Why else would they have approved your transfer at _sixty-five_ -goddamn-years-old to the fucking Starship Troopers and put you on the shuttle? You'd done enough damage to their precious agendas with your bizarre un-killable popularity and that righteous rage that you pass off as some kind of code of honor and justice. And, yes, you _did_ manage to make most of it balance out right by the end and walk away with everybody shaking hands and pledging to do the right thing. But then, everybody knew it would just be a matter of time before you started in again, before you felt like somebody in power had crossed one of your personal lines and needed to be taken down, and then the shooting would start all over—nobody believed you were done. So they needed to get your happy ass as far away from their newly 'secure' little planet, and let you off yourself in a way that would cause them minimal mess, and maybe lets your memory serve them in the process..."

He turns away, looks down at the tip of his stick as it chops idly into the broken rock between his boots. "That's why Lisa came—even with all the shit you put her through, she still wouldn't miss your funeral." Then he shakes his head, his laughter getting lighter now. "Selfish fuck..." he repeats. "Just go ruin my pity party. It _is_ all about you, just like always."

I give him time, let him breathe. I don't put a hand on his shoulder—I think he'd be offended.

"So this is what getting old is," I dig instead.

"No," he sighs, shakes his head. "This is getting old for _us_."

I cycle the airlock, wait for the pressure to stabilize (which is much quicker now that it doesn't have to cycle up from near-vacuum anymore), feel it stab into my ears until I swallow a few times, pinch my nose and blow. Peel my mask off. Trade bottled air for recycled air. Then sit on one of the benches provided in the tight space between the inside and outside hatches and start the routine chore of vacuuming the dust off of me.

"Colonel Ram," I hear Anton on the Link before I'm finished. "We're about ready to try a test, sir."

"I'll be right up."

I don't hurry, though. Instead, I catch myself sitting and staring at the deck. Thinking of Matthew. It's not like him to dip so far into hopelessness, even with all he's been suffering physically. The last time he was remotely like this was when an assassin missed him (maybe on purpose) and took away what was probably the first actual love of his life. He retired for awhile after that, but couldn't stay out of the game for long.

But he's not wrong: when they offered me a choice between a pretty public "hero's" retirement (filled with carefully scripted face-tours and media-friendly endorsement opportunities until I'd aged safely off the celebrity radar) or a trip the hell off the planet (even if it was designed to get me martyred so I couldn't cause them any more trouble), I got on the shuttle without a second thought.

Yes, Matthew. We did some evil things in the name of a "better" world, more than whatever we "fixed" could ever pay off. On Earth. But on Mars, I thought—for the first time in a long time—that I could do something better. But only if I could start fresh.

And Mars itself was just getting started—a new world. There was hope, possibility. And because basic survival was still tenuous, that made cooperation a premium: working together to keep each other alive. Fighting endangered _everyone_ —it was far too easy to destroy the delicate resources that kept humans alive here. If we took the killing path—the path that was too often the rule on Earth—we would kill ourselves in the process.

That simple fact gave us leverage over what Earthside demanded we do.

We were supposed to _kill_ the Ecos, Matthew—that was what the corporations wanted, that was why they sent us—and if this were Earth, we would have, and with little hesitation, wiped them out like any other kind of "terrorist." But instead, I made peace with them, brought them back into the fold, made them part of building something here instead of tearing it down.

I made enemies into friends—that's something I could die with. And now I wonder if any of those friends managed to survive.

Anton and Lisa are waiting up in Command Ops, like they really need my presence to turn on the new beacon. At least the stair climb has become easy again.

The view from Ops is much better than my first trip up, now that we've got the Tower unburied and the blast shields over the viewports can stay open. The natural daylight even makes the place less tomb-like.

(It's one of the precious few places that filtered daylight can get inside the bunkers—the vast majority of the installation is below ground, and the one deck that's at surface level only has windows in the airlock staging areas, which have now become favorite leisure-time spaces when not being used to move large numbers of personnel in and out. Otherwise, you have to work in the Ops Tower or the Air-Com Tower to have a view.)

Matthew isn't here, of course. I look out through the panoramic pillbox slit of thick plexi, scanning the mostly uncovered base and perimeter wall until think I see him still out on the sand: old man with a stick, staring out west through the main "gate", out beyond the base perimeter. I'm not sure if he's hoping to see someone come out of that waste, or maybe thinking about disappearing into it himself.

Lisa's been watching him too. I notice her eyes keep tracking back out the windows, like she's passively keeping an eye on him. She's known him almost as long as I have. And she sat up late with him, night after night when the rehab was keeping him sleepless and in pain, trading places with me when I needed to go fall down myself. A vigil of old friends, though Lisa and I barely spoke to each other beyond what a Base CO needs to talk about with his acting Operations XO. We were civil, professional, and nothing more than that. Nothing like former lovers.

Some things do stay the same, despite the evolution of the planet around us, despite waking up to the possibility that we'll never see Earth again.

I can still remember the beginning: the passion, the hunger we had for each other. We were breaking the Uniform Code: She was a Lieutenant, I was a Major. She transferred divisions so I wouldn't be her direct CO, but it made people nervous, fed the gossip pages, the fan sites. (We were celebrities, after all. Heroes.) And we were limited in our choices for intimacy: locked lifelong into the job, unable to get close to anyone who wasn't locked in with you because everyone who wasn't was vulnerable. So our fraternizing was unofficially condoned. And many others followed our example (including Matthew).

But then my "job" started to swallow me up, drag me into the darkness more and more as the years went on, as the Terror War never ended, no matter how many we killed. More and more, I became the weapon that those that made me wanted me to be. And then I couldn't bear to be around her, to watch her suffer because she couldn't reach me anymore; because all I was, was rage. And a mission. So I just ran away—took myself away from her, lost myself in the job.

Just one more thing I owe Planet Earth. One more reason I jumped on that shuttle.

And so did she. She said she couldn't pass up the chance, that she'd always had the childhood dreams of going into space, touching other worlds. And she stuck by that story—probably would still, if I asked her right now. But there's still a deep, bittersweet pain between us, any time we're together.

We managed to work together, to maintain professionalism, but we never really healed the rift I dug. Her career soared. Mine went where the powers-that-be deemed I'd be safest for them. I had other relationships—sort of. I assume she did as well, though managed to be more discreet about it. We moved on, but not really.

Maybe Matthew got it right: Despite the distance we've kept between us, Mars was just too far away, so she had to come along, had to keep some kind of connection (or, as Matthew put it, see how the story finally ended, so she could have my funeral for closure). Or maybe there is something left between us, something we can't ever really break.

She gives me a sad little smile that says she knows I'm thinking about things I shouldn't be, about doors that need to stay shut, even now. Then she's back to business. She never holds eye contact with me for very long.

She looks good. It's more than how gracefully she came through rehab. She really doesn't look sixty-six. If I just met her and had to guess, I'd think she was fifty. Healthy fifty. Her long dark hair is barely frosted with gray (I shaved mine decades ago—no idea what color it would be now). Her skin is only barely lined, her eyes still luminously dark. But more than the surface, she's more _alive_ than I am—always has been. And stronger, at least in the ways that really matter.

"Rick wants to see you," she reminds me.

Rick— _Doctor_ Mann—the fourth member of our little geriatric family from the golden age of being Heroes of the Free World to jump on this long, strange trip. I just doubt he did it because he loves us.

Rick was SENTAR Corporation (before they got chopped up and sold off in the big scandal), head of interface small arms and armor R&D. I'm not sure if he was offered or had to call in every favor he had with his DARPA contacts, but no way he'd miss out on a prime onsite off-world consulting gig for a goddamn space army.

"Matthew thinks he's being obsessive-compulsive," I repeat the popular sentiment. "Worrying about how many weapons we have working when there's likely nothing left to shoot but each other."

"We'll find out soon enough," Anton interrupts, getting impatient in his own stress. Then he checks in with his team up on the roof for the twentieth time.

"And if there _is_ something left to shoot at?" Lisa reminds me of my own lingering dread.

"Then I doubt we have enough guns to make a difference."

It's not just the limited resources. We're fifty years behind.

Anton looks like he's about to hyperventilate.

"Go ahead, Mr. Staley," I give him my official permission. A touch on one of MAI's screens, a graphic comes alive. That's it. Nothing even to hear.

"It's working," Anton finally sighs. I smile at him, and send kudos up to his antenna-building crew.

"Now, we wait."

"Doctor Mann," I greet him officially when I find him down on B-Deck in one of the larger labs in Sciences. (I'd _expected_ to find him overseeing the heavy armor checks in Staging, or helping with the refitting the base batteries.) He's looking mostly recovered after his rough rehab (he does have the distinction of being the oldest of us, a year older than Matthew), having what looks very much like a cup of hot tea with Doctor Ryder, both of them staring with an analytical dreaminess at a sealed incubator they'd cobbled together out of a clear acrylic bio-containment glove box. The light inside the lid makes their faces glow ghostly.

Apparently, this isn't going to be a conversation about guns.

"Our 'weeds'?" I nod at the incubator.

Two months ago—when enough of us had enough legs back to go walking around—Lieutenant Carver took a team out surveying the conduits from one of the two base reactors. (Carver always seems to stumble upon the weird shit first—she says she must be cursed.) The reactors had been shut down, protocol when the bombs fell, reducing us to batteries. Each core had been buried what had been calculated to be a "safe" distance from the base. (Safe but securable: close enough to defend if attacked; though the Ecos were loathe to risk breaching a reactor, and the Discs seemed to share this sentiment in avoiding firing on them.)

The half-mile hike out across the unstable terrain to check everything and start the process of heating the reactors up again kept them out of reach for awhile (and Morales hadn't gotten any rovers back to rolling yet). So, three months after we woke up, Carver gets the second shock of her young life: after discovering Martian atmosphere, she gets to discover Martian _life_.

"They're potentially a lot more than _weeds_ , Colonel," Rick gives me back with a hint of his signature annoyance with the soldiers he's spent his life arming better. But there's also a gleam in his big expressive eyes that makes him look like the man I met almost fifty years ago (actually, almost a _hundred_ years ago).

The plant samples we carefully brought inside—initially under nano-contamination precautions—have grown visibly in the container since last I saw them, and appear healthier, at least to my uneducated eye. They remind me of the hardy crab grasses that used to annoy many a desert landscaper in the Phoenix I knew as a boy. But the leaves are broader, the stalks thicker, like a ground-crawling bamboo. Except the sample isn't ground-crawling anymore—it's starting to reach up and expand to fill the space of the tank. And it's _seeding_.

"This is what they've been doing with a little TLC," Ryder explains eagerly. "A little more water, a little less acid in the soil. Compare it to the patch that's been kept where it was found."

Found by poor, cursed Lieutenant Carver, lacing its way through the crevices in the rocks above Reactor Two, struggling for life against the cold, the dryness, the thin air. But _living_. And it may have been doing so for decades.

Urgent testing let us know it wasn't nano-contaminated, but it _was_ nano-engineered, it's DNA custom-tweaked. Otherwise, it's been speculation as to _where_ it was engineered. Several colonies had active hydroponics "farms" started. I remember Pax and Tranquility had the most impressive gardens, and some of the colony labs were working aggressively on engineering life (through DNA manipulation at the molecular level—one of the scary industries that put nukes over our heads), life that could take to the surface of Mars and thrive as terraforming progressed (and, in fact, help it along). ETE Corp had been cooperating actively with the colony labs to promote this.

"It's an amazing plant, Colonel," Ryder plays towards some kind of proposal I'm sure is coming. "It looks like it was designed with multiple uses in mind. The fibers could probably process like hemp into a variety of materials. And with processing, it could also be a good food source. It's not toxic, though the iron content is fairly high—treating the soil might reduce that. The young shoots are high in carbohydrates and a number of vitamins. And now that it's seeding, the seeds look like they could be a complete protein source. We could harvest them like beans or grain."

"You're suggesting we start a farm?" I conclude, keeping my tone objective despite how infectious her newfound enthusiasm is trying to be.

"We have the materials—we could build a greenhouse over one of the reactors, harness the heat," she suggests. "Radiation risk is minimal. Scher's team says the levels are good, and the samples we've taken aren't hot—the plants don't hold it."

"We don't have the benefit of a botanist," Rick reminds me, "but Dr. Ryder was an avid gardener, and she studied herbology..."

"You used to have a green thumb yourself." I remember all the plants in his offices at SENTAR R&D. It was like a rainforest for his techs to retreat to, to get away from building better guns for at least a little while.

As usual, he's bad at taking a compliment. He just looks at me like I've failed to answer the question.

"Get yourself some volunteers," I agree. "There might be some eager idle hands among our resident refugees. And it might improve morale around here, give us something worth doing."

And I see the change in Ryder, that she's starting to think about living beyond all the death. Rick gives me just enough of a quick smile to let me know he's seen it, too. I think the two of them have been getting close over these hard months, though I have to smile at the idea of the reclusive, antisocial Dr. Mann taking up with a widow twenty years younger. But after five months with no contact, some of us are starting to think about how to get on with living.

"Once we get more mobile, we can make it a priority to keep an eye out for other species," I encourage. "If this one survived blowing in the wind from somebody's breached lab or greenhouse, there may be more."

"I'm hoping we find some of the facilities _intact_ ," Rick considers after Ryder gets focused on making some plans on her pad.

"Or at least not contaminated," I agree.

"I was thinking in terms of finding _people_ ," he corrects me, testily. " _Alive_."

"There could be significant renewable food sources out there somewhere," Ryder backs him, though taking less offense. "More hope that there could be other survivors."

"We're still a ways from having the means to make any kind of trek to even the nearer colonies."

Oxygen bottles and rebreathers only last hours to a day. The nearest colonies—Avalon and Arcadia—are over seventy-five miles away, northwest and southwest respectively. The nearest other UNMAC base—Melas Three, a small bunkered airbase—is a hundred and twelve miles south-southeast. Melas One, which was still being rebuilt after it was smashed in the slides of '57—is a hundred and thirty miles west-northwest. The nearest ETE generator is marginally closer—a hundred miles northwest—but it's also up twelve thousand feet of treacherous Marineris slope (not to mention the air is likely much thinner up that high).

"Assuming we don't get help from home," he redirects. "The transmitter is up?"

I nod. "But even if we get a call today, it could be a year or more before Earthside gets here."

"I think I can keep busy," he considers, watching Ryder work. Then he gives me a look that lets me know he's not sure if he wants to pass this news: "Speaking of eager idle hands, Tru Greenlove has been making noise again."

"She hasn't called up to Ops," I let him know.

"Not her style, Colonel," Rick remembers sourly. "First she'll stir it up, then she'll come looking for you." I catch Ryder giving him an equally sour look, like Rick is just being a judgmental old fart.

"Maybe I should go see her."

MAI tells me she's in the obvious place:

A-Deck, Main Bunker, Northeast Quadrant.

We'd given the section to the civilian refugees after Mariner Colony got crushed by slides in '57, the year before I offloaded on this planet. The concrete casting was barely dry on the bunker shield-walls when we had to quickly take in over two thousand colonists, as well as the bulk of the Melas One UNMAC battalion when they were forced to evacuate as well. And this brand-new dug-in bunker complex—the first designed specifically to stand against Disc attack—became a kind of "castle town" surrounded by a shanty camp of temporary shelters. The majority of the refugees camped on the surface, inside the perimeter wall. But when the Discs came to hit us, everybody had to pack into the bunkers (and that was three times what they were designed to hold).

The section hadn't been developed when the first wave of refugees came. It was just being used for stores: Six decks of big open spaces—each about twice the size of one of our large barracks—wedged behind the Atmosphere and Water Recycling facilities in the "back corner" of the base. The first arrivals got to work with the same spirit that established twenty colonies on this planet in only ten years. And they used every square inch we could give them. (They even improved the efficiency of our recyclers to support the extra population.)

By the time of the bombardment seven years later, most of the refugees had either given up on the Martian dream or found a place in the other growing colonies. Those that stuck it out remained camped here while they rotated shifts trying to rebuild Mariner. About five hundred people had managed to move back into that colony when the bombs fell. The two-hundred and thirty-nine that were still living here waiting for a Mariner habitat slot went into Hiber-Sleep with the rest of us. We had more than enough couches for them, especially since we'd just sent ninety of our own personnel—pilots, gunners and rescue teams on the fifteen flyable ships we had—into orbit to try to do some good against the unthinkable.

But even after seven years of living and working together in such intimate conditions, I expect that there were still tensions felt in giving some of those refugees couches that should have been filled by UNMAC Spacers. More than a few of those refugees were former (or some would say still active) Ecos.

Truganini Greenlove certainly made few friendships with the military. Beyond the unfortunate name—a product of her rabidly activist co-parents—Tru was no idealistic hippie. While there was no evidence she participated in any of the front-line violence of the Eco War, she was one of their most vocal spokespeople, holding court with a tight circle of equally passionate activists while their "soldiers" held onto Mariner, Liberty and Industry during their little "revolution".

Since the slides drove them all out of the colony before I made landfall, I never had to face Tru or her followers behind a gun. But I remember how hard she took it when UNMAC command—under General Ryder—launched their '59 surge, taking back Industry and Liberty colonies by force, resulting in almost seven hundred fatalities. But to her credit (or some would attribute it to cunning), she stayed with the refugees here at Melas Two when many of her fellows staged a new uprising at the Mariner construction site. It was her reputation with even the most militant Ecos that helped me leverage a cease-fire agreement, while UNMAC—under intense public criticism for the casualties incurred—made good on promises to scale back their military ground presence (at least until the Discs re-escalated things).

"To what do we owe, Colonel?" she purrs, making a point not to look up from the ration packs she's been sorting for the night's meal. I do catch looks from a few of the civvies helping her figure out how to make sure everybody gets enough to eat. Most of them look either nervous or uncomfortable, like I'm bringing bad news (or that anyone in a uniform just simply is bad). They're mostly twenty-somethings, wearing assorted work gear and casuals that match their ragged but functional grooming: chopped hair, short beards on the males, lean bodies used to eating rations or basic recycle and doing without simulated Earth gravity.

The bay itself looks much like it did in the days before we slept: a hive of bunks stacked three high, each with a little more than a thin pad for a mattress, and paired with a small a storage locker. They had been scavenged from construction ships landed as temporary barracks for colony workers. The tight spaces between the stacks form "common" areas for sitting, eating, and socializing. Curtains made from survival blankets separate blocks of bunks into somewhat more private barracks, and some are arranged for families (Halley's census tells me there are forty sets of co-parents caring for sixty-two children, and at least two expectant mothers). They'd even installed their own communal kitchens, toilets and showers for each section.

Each of the four sections—stacked on top of each other from A to D Deck—now houses sixty to seventy refugees, a ghost town compared to when it was four times that many, but it still makes our enlisted trooper barracks look luxurious.

Maybe two-thirds of the adults aren't here during the day shifts. Several dozen of them have volunteered to help Thomasen's engineer group dig us out. Others have been helping restore the base, pulling shifts as medics and nurses, using their expertise to assist wherever they can, and working to keep everybody as fed and healthy as possible. Those that are "home" are sleeping for night shift work, cleaning up, cooking, or running a makeshift school/daycare for the children (who at least don't recoil as much as their parents do at the sight of a uniform).

"A rumor you've been looking for me," I greet her back. I see her grin. Her long, straight hair—black frosted with gray—falls over her pale, partially oriental features. She has faint scarring on her cheekbones from the rigors of colony life.

"You're not hard to find, boss," she denies, still not looking up from her inventory. "But then, neither am I."

"Sorry I haven't gotten over here sooner," I try.

"Restarting civilization from scratch and all," she jokes, finally showing me her green eyes, but staying aloof. "I get it. Besides: Not really your neighborhood."

"No excuses," I try again, then get to the point. "We've shut you out. I'd say it's because of the seriousness of the situation, but that's exactly why you should be involved."

"Being proactive, Colonel... Very nice. I think you'll work out better than your predecessors."

I glance up at the eyes still uncomfortably on us, then suggest: "Can we go somewhere else?"

"Well, since you hobbled your old frame all the way down here, I suppose I could suffer equally," she agrees after a moment of letting me stew. She uses her hands to push herself up out of her chair, then rebalances herself to get her prosthetic right leg—a casualty of early colony building—properly under her. She takes me arm-and-arm (not as any need for support, just to show off with a wink to her cadres) and takes the lead on a walk toward a back corner of the bay. She moves with a pronounced limp, but her step is still lively.

The section's north wall on this deck is one of few places with windows, and it's been arranged for recreation, relaxation. There isn't much actual view because there's a ridgeline that runs just to the north of the bunkers, but you can see the distant canyon rims above it. The winds are starting to kick up again as the sun gets lower in the west.

She turns, leads me through a curtain and into a narrow space which I realize is around the back of Water Recycling—I can hear the uneven thrum of the plumbing. Bunks are stacked to either side of us. She takes me back through one more curtain, to a space just big enough for a single bunk and a locker, and a small dome light. There are posters of Earth—trees and grass and water—on the walls.

"Make yourself comfy." She gestures for me to sit. "I don't entertain much anymore."

"I'm thinking we need a refugee representative sitting in on our command briefings," I tell her, getting right to business.

"And I thought you were just taking me somewhere to make out," she jibes, dropping down next to me, then running her index finger down my shoulder.

"Are you going to hold an election, or just take the job by default?" I ignore.

"Ouch," she concedes with a pout.

"Not the answer I was looking for," I press her.

"Do we get full disclosure?" she wants to know, sitting up, finally turning serious. "Rumors are flying, Colonel. It's all scary science fiction: Dead Earth. No survivors. Nanobug monsters. Engineered plagues. Discs controlling the planet. And we had friends and family out there in the colonies."

"Full disclosure is we still haven't heard anything from anyone," I give her. "The transmitter just went up, but planetary alignment isn't promising—won't be for several months. And I won't keep it a secret if we get a reply."

"Unless you're ordered to," she counters.

"I'm not sure how that works if the books say I've been dead fifty years," I allow myself to get lighter with her. "If I'm still working for them, I think they owe me enough back-pay to buy a small country."

She smiles at that, but then presses:

"You thinking of resigning your commission?"

"If we don't hear otherwise, I'm an officer in a non-existent army. Then you'll need to hold a whole other sort of election."

"You telling me you wouldn't pull any martial-law bullshit on us?" All the (probably defensive) playfulness is gone now. She's playing the leader of her people.

"I've heard of this thing called 'democracy'. Apparently it's worked okay in the past."

She smiles again, her face showing a few lines around her eyes. "I _was_ serious before. You're actually pretty tasty for an old jarhead. Screw what the kids think—let me know if you get lonely."

I give her a noncommittal nod, get up to let myself out.

"I'll be in touch."

I realize that probably just encouraged her.

Day 153. 4 June, 2115:

Staley's Tower lasted nine hours and twenty-one minutes.

"Some kind of electrostatic overload as we ramped up the signal," Anton mourns, frustrated, and he displays the ruined components his team has pulled out of his pet project, spread out on the big Command Briefing Room table. They look intact—the damage is all in the microprocessors, which are hopelessly burned.

"We might be able to replace these," Rick helps. "Cannibalize other systems. But it would be a waste if we don't deal with what caused this, whatever's blocking our signal."

We started noticing the phenomena almost immediately: our outgoing was being reflected back at us as distorted static, as if hitting some kind of barrier. Anton tried to punch through it, figuring nothing was getting out into space but noise. He was careful about it, but either he burned out equipment that wasn't made for the job, or the increase made the interfering field—something powerful and electrostatic—kick back.

I watch Matthew's face go dark. His chest heaves with a deep, strained breath.

"Which gets us back to our friends from the ETE Corporation," he growls.

"This may not have been intentional," Anton defends. He calls up the old maps on the main screens, showing us the deep gashes in the planet's equator that are the conjoined Chasmata that make up the greater Valles Marineris. "And we should have anticipated it, given the atmospheric density."

First, he highlights the positions of the ten ETE generators that were operating before the Bombardment. Six are positioned around the roughly clam-shell shape of the central Melas Chasma, three-quarters of the way up towards the Datum line in elevation. The other four dot the narrower and much longer Coprates Chasma that connects to Melas on its east side, two generating stations on the canyon's north rim and two on the ridge that separates the main canyon from the narrower Coprates Catena that runs parallel to the Chasma to the south. Both the Chasma and Catena open into Melas, but the Catena doesn't run as contiguously long as the Chasma, which eventually "empties" out into the delta-like Eos Chasma three hundred miles to the east.

"The receivers we set up topside have so far triangulated electrostatic field emissions from at least twelve points, all above fifteen-thousand feet from the Melas floor, five thousand feet below the Datum line of the Planae," he points out, lighting up new points that form a relative perimeter around Melas that includes the existing generators. "We expect there are probably more of these lining Coprates."

"And they're holding the atmosphere in?" Matthew questions like he's not willing to believe it.

"In a way, Colonel," Anton tells him. "This design was in the original ETE long term plan. They knew that they'd be facing a losing battle down the road, if they didn't figure out a way to keep the air and free water they made from simply bleeding out into space because of the lack of a planetary magnetic field. I remember there were several proposals, including going so far as trying to re-liquefy the planet's iron core."

"Which would have destabilized the planet's crust and maybe even the planet's orbit," Rick dismisses the fantasy.

"This option was the least invasive and least costly," Anton continues, "creating an ionization 'net' that would help keep the atmosphere 'held' below certain elevations, by charging the particles that hit the field, creating a perpetual down-flow and using the walls of the valleys to contain the effect. The high iron content in the airborne dust makes it very effective, and it gets easier as the upper atmosphere thickens. Once the initial 'small scale' proved effective down here in the Chasmata, which is geologically ideal for it, they planned to eventually go global, but that was potentially centuries down the road."

"It looks like the 'small scale' works pretty well," Lisa allows.

"But it conveniently blocks our transmissions, and fries our gear when we try to punch through it," Matthew accuses.

"There's an incredible amount of power involved, Colonel," Anton offers. "No idea how they're generating it, but the air up there is hot enough to fry anything that isn't EM-shielded."

"Would it jam incoming signals as well?" I ask.

"It might play havoc with weaker ones," Rick calculates. "But the bigger concern is that it's likely keeping Earthside from detecting signals from smaller transmitters on the surface, at least inside the colonized valleys. Getting through to Earth from where we are would require an uplink powerful enough to handle cutting through the interference. Even then, we'd probably need a satellite aerosynchronous above us to boost signals through."

"Which we don't have," Matthew concludes bitterly.

"Any chance Earthside would have picked up on our last attempt?" Ryder wants to know. Anton can only shrug at her.

"Odds are that we might be able to scavenge what we need to build a better tower if we can find the other bases reasonably intact," Rick considers. "Or maybe the corporate colonies might have what we need—I'd have to review inventories."

"But even if we can find them, there's still the issue of getting there and back," Lisa calculates. "The rovers we have won't manage."

"Same reason we can't just fly up out of the valley and call out," Anton kills the most obvious solution. "Not to mention the conditions outside this 'atmosphere net' are probably not much different than the Mars when we went to sleep. We'd have to work in shelters and pressure suits, and a long way from support."

"We need the ASVs back up," I conclude. "I'll have Morales put priority on just getting them flying—we don't need them to go into orbit, we just need the range. We'll need them to go looking for survivors and supplies anyway."

"We're overlooking the obvious," Matthew counters, and I feel him get angry. He turns to Anton: "What was the ETE's planned projection for being able to build this atmosphere net?"

"Two decades, on the original designs," Anton tells him. "But even that was still in the theoretical stage before it all went boom."

"The technology didn't exist before the Big Bang?"

Anton shakes his head. "Back to the power issue."

"Somebody's been busy, and _after_ the bombardment," Lisa tries not to sound worried.

"What would this ion net look like—or sound like, whatever—from Earth?" Matthew wants to know, sounding like he's playing prosecutor. "Assuming that Earthside believes this kind of tech is still non-existent?"

"Widespread electromagnetic chatter," Rick gives him after considering for a moment. "Blanketing the valleys—at least wherever the air was."

"And what would widespread _nano-contamination_ look like from Earth?" Matthew takes his next move. The look on Rick's face answers for him. Anton's eyes go wide.

"Convenient," Matthew accuses.

"You think someone at ETE conspired to take the planet, and keep Earthside away from whatever they were doing with it by convincing them the planet is badly contaminated?" Lisa tries to challenge the idea.

Matthew locks my eyes across the table. " _We've_ seen worse than this in our time—it can't be that surprising. And yes, I did meet the ETE geeks. Enough to know they're all dreamers and environmentally-sensitive hippie scientists. But that's not where the money came from. And we know what kind of money Mars meant to those that knew how to exploit it. Imagine what they could do if they could get all the restrictions and resistance from Earthside to go away, by getting Earthside to go away."

I give him a nod, chewing the inside of my lip. It's an extreme (and extremely dark) possibility, but he's right: we've personally seen humans do worse than this.

"I'll tell Morales to make sure those ASVs are armed before we take them out."

Day 154. 5 June, 2115:

"I don't see anything."

Except the red ochre of the distant cliffs at the top of the valley rim, its nearest point over twenty miles away and three miles above us. Our best imaging is enough to bring out individual boulders on a section of the steep slide-scarred slopes, but that's all I see where Rick is insisting I look.

"I doubt you will, Colonel," Rick reassures it's not because of my age. "But that's where the nearest emitter is. It's either well buried or very small, or both."

"And that's what's keeping the air in?" Matthew challenges. He shifts his weight on his "walking stick," adjusts his goggles, shuffles his boots in the thin layer of grit that remains on the roof of the Command bunker.

"I've gone over Dr. Staley's analysis," Rick defends. "Each emitter's putting out enough EMR to charge the upper atmosphere across the canyon, slowing down the air loss. That's an incredible amount of energy. And with no discernable radiation bloom—that means no reactor, or an incredibly well-shielded one. Whatever it is, the power output of _one_ of those things would run this base. We need to get up there and get a closer look."

And he's looking forward to it, I can tell by the way he talks about it. He's more than curious, he's _impressed_. He wants to see what science and technology has become in the last fifty years.

"As soon as we get wings," I assure him. "Unless you plan to walk?"

"Not out of the question," Anton chimes in, coming down from his work trying to repair his "tower." "I've been thinking: There _may_ be another way to get around on the surface. The ETE generators all run 'feed lines' down into the deeper valleys, dispersing the air they generate, as well as the dedicated lines that fed O2 and water and hydrogen fuel directly to the colony sites." He pulls his flashcard out of his working coveralls and brings up a map. Colored lines crisscross the valleys, showing the flow-lines of precious air and water. "Even if they got severed by nuke strikes or slides, they were designed to seal automatically, so they'd be at least partially intact; and if the generators are pumping, they'll be full of everything we'd need to get around on the surface except for food. They're too far out to feed the base in any practical way, but if we created some kind of portable 'tapping' system, we could use the lines like oases, to top off our tanks on a long hike."

"Or our flight range," Rick considers. "Assuming we get something flying."

I find myself staring out into the vast Melas valley—hundreds of miles of rolling, mountainous desert.

"Makes me wonder if anyone else has been doing that very thing," I find myself saying to no one in particular.

Matthew is kicking gravel off the side of the bunker, watching the slightly slower way it falls in the low gravity and settles into the bulldozed mounds below, like light powder.

"They certainly could," Rick takes my thought to heart.

"Assuming they survived long enough for the air to thicken," Matthew criticizes.

"Not necessarily, Colonel," Anton counters him. "They could have used the feed lines to refresh pressure suits, set up shelters. Even if their hard sites were hopelessly compromised, all the colonies were well-stocked with survival gear."

"The hardest trick would be to stay warm," Rick adds. Then thinks about it. "If I didn't have heaters that I could keep fed on hydrogen or solar, I'd move close to the terraforming generators. Dig in where it's warmer. Digging in would also protect you from solar radiation."

"What about food?" Anton engages him, the two beginning a merry game of hypotheses.

"Some of the colonies were developing renewable sources."

"Assuming no one is actively trying to kill you," Matthew interrupts.

"We've still had no sign of Discs, Colonel," Rick discounts. "Not in almost six months."

"What about our neat little jamming net?"

"There's still no proof that its intent is malevolent," Rick returns. "I've run the figures—the output, however impressive it is, is barely keeping up with the need: the atmosphere is still bleeding out at a ratio of about fifteen percent of what the generators produce. The jamming effect we're experiencing is probably just incidental interference. Remember, we've only got scavenged short-range gear to work with—it's pretty fragile pushed as far as we've got it. If the net was designed to cut us off from Earth, or keep Earth blind to whatever's been going on down here, then I'd think it would be more dedicated to that purpose. Or something else would be set up to do the job better. The net is just cutting us off because we don't have the equipment to push through it and not burn out in the process."

"You're assuming an innocent little tale of survival, Doctor," Matthew is getting edgier. He's grinding the tip of his stick into the bunker's casting. "But the simple fact that those things are up there tells us that someone's been busy, someone with significant resources. If it was Earthside, we wouldn't be having this conversation—we'd be sleeping through our ride home."

Rick leaves it at that. He's used to having conversations like this, though his eyes glance up and lock on mine just long enough to make the obvious point: he's used to having these kind of arguments with _me_. Anton just looks worried, and he doesn't have all the history between us.

Rick goes back inside. Anton goes back to pulling parts from his tower.

My O2 gauge is edging into yellow when I head for the airlocks. Matthew is still doing his ritual vigil, eyes on the horizon.

"Colonel Ram, this is Metzger in AirCom. _I have a contact._ "

Metzger's voice is impressively professional, holding back what sounds like edging on panic. And suddenly I'm thinking the same thing Matthew has been, as I fall naturally into expecting the worst. "Incoming?"

"Yes, sir. Fast and low." I hear Metzger gulp in a breath. "Nearly five hundred knots and only a few hundred feet off the deck. Bearing west-southwest. Fifty klicks out and closing fast—it's coming right for us..."

"Signature?" I'm already climbing back up onto the bunker roof (and remembering that Matthew is still up there).

"No signals. Small radar profile."

"A Disc?"

"It's coming in straight and steady, Colonel," I hear Lisa chime in. "No evasive maneuvers—it doesn't fly like a Disc drone would."

"Rios, Carver, I need guns on the surface," I order anyway. "Kastl: Get the batteries up. Defensive fire only."

They chime back to confirm. I can already hear the battery guns humming to life, rotating into position. I plug my HUD unit into my goggles so I can see what Metzger sees. When I get to Matthew, he's done the same, half-hunkered down below the bunker roof's three-foot "rampart" line, his ICW shouldered and linked for firing.

"Michael?" I hear Lisa on my link.

"Lock us down, Colonel Ava," I tell her. "I want a platoon of Heavy Armor on the perimeter walls, another ready in the staging areas for support. Disc protocols—that means chain guns and launchers. Everybody else inside. Shut the blast shields and seal for breach."

I hear her order everybody below. Carver's unit (just her luck) is up. They're already dropping into their Heavy Armor suits and getting booted. Three minutes later, my HUD gives me a tactical map—thirty little red HA graphics come pouring out of the staging airlocks to get to their positions. Looking back over my shoulder, I can see the Mars-red hard-shell suits doing their signature bow-legged run, dragging their heavy weapons, faceless behind fully-visored helmets.

"Shouldn't you be wearing a can, too?" Matthew scolds me.

"What's your excuse?" I dig back. We _are_ the only two bodies above concrete not wearing hard armor.

"I was enjoying the weather," he plays. "Too nice a day to wear all that bulky hardshell shit."

I link in my own ICW, get the sighting graphic up on my HUD, and point the over/under barrels of the weapon downrange. West-southwest.

"Visual contact," Metzger calls out barely a minute later. "Decelerating. Still no course change... Doesn't look like an attack pattern."

"Defensive fire only," I remind everyone. Then I'm straining to see the thing coming for myself.

First thing is the dust cloud—whatever it is, it's coming low, probably running VTOL jets. Then I get a speck of something dark. It becomes spherical. Gets bigger, closer. I realize what I'm looking at isn't a sphere, but a long cigar-shaped fuselage seen nose-on. But by then, it's on top of us.

It comes in smooth, flies right over our heads, and stops with unbelievable deceleration inside our perimeter. Then it does a lazy turn over the landing bays like it's just come home. VTOL jets kick up dust, making it hard to see, but make little actual noise.

Despite the rusty haze, I can get a decent look at it: It's art-deco sleek, like a prop in some ancient science fiction serial—a tin rocket ship on a wire. Longer than an ASV—maybe seventy-five feet from needle-sharp nose cone to V-tail—with small triangular wings. It's all smooth featureless black, with no discernable markings or even a visible cockpit. And I feel a sudden cold shock when I realize it looks very much like some kind of missile. I'm about to order everyone to deep cover (for all the good it would do if the thing really is a nuke) when the visitor does a final graceful hovering rotation, then settles down on one of the ASV pads, landing gear appearing like it had just "grown" out of the smooth hull. Its engines wind down, letting the dust begin to settle.

And that's all.

### Chapter 3: Unexpected Guests

Day 155. 6 June, 2115:

"...hull is some kind of nano-lattice composite," Rick is droning as he takes us on our latest walk around our silent visitor. Each time I find myself expecting that the mystery ship will do something, but it just sits as quiet and still as it did from the moment it landed, over twenty-four hours ago. "Radar reflective, likely meaning there was a specific intent to make her stealthy. But there's also enough ceramic quality—notice also the lack of drag-producing features, the smooth lines—to indicate she was made to enter atmosphere."

"This is an orbital shuttle?" Lisa asks him. He reaches up a hand to let his gloved fingers stroke the polished black surface.

"Not a dropship or freighter," he clarifies. "Too light. Too small, at least in terms of draft. Not enough sign of bay doors capable of loading and discharging anything or anyone in quantity. Not even a sign of a universal airlock, at least not one that's compatible with anything we have. I'm betting this is a fast recon vessel. Dropped from orbit, carried or boosted here."

"Which means it's from Earth," Matthew makes the easy conclusion.

"I doubt it was built here. Even if one of the colonies—or the ETE crews—survived, evolved this kind of tech, built ships capable of making orbit... But I'd think they'd have built more than one, sent more than one empty ship to check us out."

"Unless they all left. Or something happened to them," Matthew keeps it dark. Rick shrugs.

"Won't know until we get her open. Whoever made her—or used her—didn't make it easy by putting any identifying markings on the hull."

"Gets us back to that stealth thing," Matthew goes accusatory again. He knocks at the smooth black surface with his "stick."

" _Please_ , Colonel!" Rick almost jumps him. "Breaking the skin could compromise its heat shielding... If we ever intend to take it into orbit ourselves..."

"And go _where_ , exactly?" Matthew ridicules bitterly, barely keeping his professionalism. "I thought there was nothing up there? Does this thing have engines that can boost it back to Earth?"

"I won't know until we can get a closer look," he tries to stay even, hopeful. "But not likely. I was thinking in terms of getting above the atmosphere net, sending a signal from orbit."

All Matthew does is shake his head and look away, his way of passively conceding the point. Rick shoots me a look of pained frustration.

"Still no sign of life?" Lisa changes the subject.

"Nothing, Colonel," Anton tells her. "Not even an indication of a Hiber-Sleep system running inside. She's dead cold."

I take a big step back, to take the long sleek ship all in. It still looks more like a missile than anything intended to be manned. The HA squad that's been watching it in shifts—surrounding it with guns and eyes—reflexively takes a step back as well, like I stepped away for safety. I give them a little hand signal to stand put.

"No sign of weapons," Rick continues. "No exposed cockpit or other viewports. Still not even sure where the doors are. There are a number of seams—very fine tolerances, almost invisible to the eye—that could indicate movable panels."

"And no idea why it came here?" I press the obvious point again.

"Likely responded to our signal, Colonel," Anton tries his theory again. "Some kind of automated protocol. She may have been sitting somewhere unmanned for awhile, picked up the first blip she's had in however long, either mistakes it for a retrieval code or is specifically programmed to seek a friendly signal under certain conditions."

"Such as her crew leaving her?" Lisa considers.

"No idea why until we get in," Rick goes back to the original problem. "No sign of any violence on the outside."

"We know it's fast. Why did it take so long to get here after we started up the transmitter?" I ask.

"It might have had to spin up or something," Anton offers.

"There's no sign of violence," Rick repeats, "but there is some scoring on the upper hull and wing surfaces, with traces of common Mars dust. She may have been _buried_. Not by a slide—maybe a sand drift."

"Or hidden on purpose," I consider, beating Matthew to the more sinister explanation.

"MAI is running through our library of remote codes and hail signals, also reviewing what we sent out before the transmitter fried," Anton reports. "Hopefully, we'll hit the right code, get her to open up."

Matthew has wandered away, walking the flat of the big aircraft elevator. His walking stick makes echoing bangs on the reinforced deck as he paces, making a rhythm with the heavy clumping of his boots. The bay in this section is empty except for our visitor—I had Sergeant Morales and her teams move their "projects" into other hangars, safely away from the black ship, before we lowered the pad it settled itself on below ground, closed the big blast doors over it and pressurized the bay so we could work without masks (only surgical masks, just in case our guest brought something with it).

I thank Rick and Anton and leave them to finish their report with Lisa, then turn and follow after Matthew. I take my time to make it look like I'm not chasing him, not concerned.

"Looks like our visitor puts a few things to rest, at least," I begin idly when I'm at his side. "New tech means Earth is still kicking."

"Unmarked stealth recon ship doesn't sound like a Search-and-Rescue," he counters, keeping his voice down. "That it may have been left buried with its crew MIA makes things even more special."

"I didn't miss that, Matthew."

"I know you didn't."

"I've got to keep it to what we can deal with," I try. "Right now, if it isn't in walking distance or rover range, it's not on the priority list."

"I know," he cuts me off. Then I see him smile under his mask, give his head a little shake. "You're doing a good job stepping into Cal Copeland's boots, Mikey. We'll make a base commander out of you yet."

Day 157. 8 June, 2115:

It takes a cooperative effort between MAI, Anton and Rick to get the hatches to open, two days later.

The inside of the ship is a stark contrast to the smooth black exterior. It's all bright, sterile whites and chromate greens. Mechanical instrumentation is minimal—Anton surmises everything was run by shifting touch screens or heads-up graphics. There isn't much in the way of moving parts besides the hatches.

There are two sets of airlocks—one fore and one aft—dividing the habitable hull roughly into thirds. Each pressurized section is laid out in a single line down the tubular fuselage, like a plane or small submarine, so that personnel must pass through the inner hatches of the locks themselves to get from section to section. Rick surmises having each section so well sealed from the others was designed to keep the air in if one section got holed. Halley wonders if there were other isolation functions in mind, especially after she gets a look in the aft-most section.

Each airlock has two outer hatches, almost invisibly flush with the hull when sealed, one above and one below. The lower hatches offer retracting ladders to debark under the ship. The upper hatches may have been for linking to other craft in orbit, but Rick's alternate theory is that the ship may have been designed to be buried, that whoever sent it planned that it might need to be hidden in the sand after arrival. (But from whom?)

The most forward compartment appears to be a command bridge. Five couches are arranged in a triangle, with featureless instrument panels in easy reach. MAI manages enough of an interface with the main operating system to get a set of "ready screens" to come alive on the otherwise bare walls. Mostly these show optical views 360 degrees around the ship.

"As far as we can tell," Anton explains, "whatever memory or mission log the ship had were erased, either when the crew left her or due to some failsafe."

"Whatever they were up to, they didn't want anyone to find out," Matthew surmises, idly rotating in one of the command couches, his tone unusually calm considering his ongoing suspicions.

"It seems that way, Colonel," Anton agrees fairly readily. "The ship also lacks any apparent registry or flight plan. Nothing to say where it came from, who sent it, who built it, or even what course it took. Only a signature on the operating system: 'Lancer,' which may or may not be the name of the ship, and a copyright date of 2085, which only tells us when the OS was created."

"Is it an AI?" I ask him.

"If it was, it's all been wiped or deactivated. I've only been able to bring up basic operating and navigation."

"Can we fly it?"

"Not yet," he admits. "Too many systems are still locked down. This thing has a lot of security on it. Makes me think they anticipated someone trying to use it without authorization."

"Weapons?" Matthew wants to know. Rick steps forward and leans over him, fingers tracing on one of the panels. A graphic of the ship comes up on the main screen. Six points are highlighted: one on each side of the nosecone, the other four centerline: top and bottom, fore and aft.

"We haven't unlocked them yet, but the ship has five retractable turrets, armed with a kind of Gatling gun. Three forward and two aft, covering both above and below. Small caliber, but armor piercing. They wanted the ammo to be light, but expected to be shooting more than flesh and bone. This unit on the underside of the nose emits a directed EMP, probably designed to disable any incoming technology. We were working on something similar to use against the Discs, but the power demand and recharge times were too great."

"Lets us know they were expecting Disc-grade trouble," I concede. "I take it they solved the power problem?"

"Highly efficient fusion reactor of some type," Rick tells me. "Housed mid-aft. Well shielded. There's evidence of a system that will jettison the whole unit in an emergency, so we could pull the thing for a closer look. Personally, I'm reluctant to start disassembling her."

"And no sign of the crew?" I ask again.

"The ship is _sterile_ —no sign anyone was ever on board, but that doesn't mean she came empty."

"There are food stocks in the form of highly-compressed nutritional supplements," Halley interjects, coming in through the forward lock from where she'd been working aft. "Looks like enough for five adults for a two-year mission. Nothing fancy, but they're labeled with different flavorings. Some are recognizable—mostly fruit and vegetable flavors. Others tell me times have changed—algae and sea kelp and something made out of cultivated maggots, manufactured proteins. No meat flavors, mind you."

Matthew is wrinkling his nose.

"There are five tubes in the midsection that look like some kind of new Hiber-Sleep couches," Halley continues. "Chemical stores show use—somebody tapped a good part of the dosing, probably getting here."

"I suspect the ship may have been carried here by some sort of unmanned booster that was left waiting in orbit," Anton theorizes. "This ship looks like it was built to serve as their shuttle, lander _and_ recon craft."

"Which means nobody is waiting for them in orbit," Rick takes it, "nobody to go looking for them when they came up missing. The food packs are also dated 2085. Assuming they packed fresh stores, whatever happened to them happened almost thirty years ago."

"Maybe another ship picked them up," Lisa tries.

"Seems unlikely they'd just leave a perfectly working ship," Matthew counters.

"Unless something went wrong," I agree with the likely assumption.

"But my biggest find is back here..." Halley drags us back to topic. She jerks her head aft for us to follow. We go back through to forward lock, and past what she points out are where the crew slept through the trip from Earth, then back one more section. Everything is tight and efficient, uncluttered; small, but not too claustrophobic—it feels like being inside an executive-sized jet.

When we get through to the aft section, a touch on the smooth green walls opens a series of panels, and what look like work stations fold out. Set in the hull walls are a number of transparent tubes, sealed at both ends, but apparently empty.

"I've been playing with these," she tells us. "They look like containment units. Besides being physically sealed, they're lined with a kind of EM field."

"Designed to contain nano-technology," Rick concludes.

"They're clean," she assures us (and she hasn't made us go back to wearing masks and gloves against potential contaminants). "I doubt they've even been used."

"I guess they didn't get what they came for," Anton decides darkly.

I turn to look at Matthew, who is hanging back in the hatchway, leaning on it for support. His eyes have narrowed, and I can hear him breathing hard and slow.

"Armed stealth ship, possibly designed to be hidden on arrival, sent sometime in the last thirty years, by someone who wants to remain anonymous, and who apparently anticipated the possibility of the ship falling into someone else's hands before it got back to them," I summarize what I'm sure he's thinking. "With gear onboard to acquire potentially dangerous nano samples."

Matthew nods in tense agreement.

"Marvelous..."

Instead of climbing back up to the operations levels, I decide to take a long detour through the other underground aircraft bays—the deep bunkered hangars we built to keep our precious ships safe from hit-and-run Disc attacks. (We're still keeping the "Lancer" safely separated from the other working bays: A misstep while trying to figure out the operating systems, hitting the wrong control, setting off some as yet undiscovered booby trap—all better to happen with heavy blast walls between our visitor and anything else we wouldn't want to lose, though I think Matthew would be more comfortable if we just left her topside rather than bring her down into our belly.)

I walk the open hangar decks between our few remaining ASVs, all in various stages of salvage or repair. Compared to the Lancer, they're clunky, battered things: Big delta-wing shapes dominated by their four powerful rotating engines, abdomens bulging with their interchangeable freight modules (one that sits without a module looks gutted), down-turned angular cockpits looking like the sharp beaks and cold eyes of birds of prey. Their Mars-red camo paint is chipped and scarred. They look like rust-colored bird carcasses.

I hear Morales shouting, her curses echoing in the big bays. There's a clang of metal as something is dropped or thrown. I see at least two of her crew standing, looking helpless, as her legs come sliding out from beneath ASV-4, which is sitting low on its gear with its rear nozzles both pulled, looking no more promising after weeks of sweat and frustration.

"Officer on deck!" one of her crew snaps to, I think at least partly to derail their sergeant's latest tantrum. Morales takes her time extricating herself from the belly of the wreck, wipes her brow with the backs of both gloved hands, then roughly scratches her scalp through her chopped black hair. I smell sweat, grease, metal, fuel...

"Colonel," she acknowledges, but does not get up. "Any idea how much fun it is to try to machine new parts by hand and hope they fit?"

"Not something I'd like to try, Sergeant," I allow her. She jerks her head toward Pad Bay 3, where we've got the Lancer secured.

"Having fun with our new toy?"

"You don't seem to be," I counter.

"No time to play," she complains, but there's an edge that suggests why she hasn't been hot to poke around the works of the Lancer since she gave it a cursory once-over: she's suddenly fifty years behind the technology curve, a master at working on antiques, and can't even have the satisfaction of making those fly again.

"No, you don't," I agree with her. "Despite all the excitement, the more we look that thing over, the scarier things are getting. Keep doing what you're doing, Sergeant. Just get something airborne. We may need to get mobile sooner rather than later."

"Yes, sir," she gives me, followed by a little twist of a grin. Then she tosses a part at one of her techs, tells him it needs to be redone, that the tolerances are all wrong. Then she offers him a break first. He declines, and heads back to the shops at a jog. She sends the others off to work on another ship while they wait. They move with purpose.

"Friggin' Wright Brothers," she mumbles after them, but she's smiling again.

I give her a nod and leave her to her work.

Tru is waiting for me just outside the hatch to my quarters, leaning against the gray reinforced bulkhead. Her hard body language lets me know she hasn't come to pursue her personal proposition.

"Does this mean you're just another all-talk bureaucrat?" she begins, arms crossed in front of her chest.

"Does this mean you've held your election?" I volley back.

"Doesn't matter," she pushes back. "You've got some kind of future spaceship in your fighter bays and not a word of update down to us in two days. My people haven't even been allowed to get an eyeball on it since it landed, you've kept us back so far."

"I think you'll find I've kept everybody back except the team actively trying to crack it."

"And you keep selecting your teams from your own playmates," she gets closer to the point. "Do you just assume all refugees are only suitable for sweeping and shoveling?"

"We've pulled all your files," I try to assure her. "We know where your skill sets are. None of you would have gotten here without valuable talent. The more we get on, the more we'll be pulling from your ranks to get things done. But right now, sweeping and shoveling _are_ still the biggest jobs. But then, I hear Doc Ryder has already jumped a few dozen of you into her greenhouse project."

"And what about the communication loop?" she stays focused.

"Get me a leadership chain. Let me know who to talk to."

She shakes her head. "We're not your soldiers, Colonel. We're just people. And we live and work here, too. Or have you forgotten how to talk to people?"

I key open the hatch. "I haven't forgotten. I was just never any good at it. I think this is where I'm supposed to invite you in."

We spend an hour sitting on my bunk, sipping filtered water, while I fill her in about the transmitter failure, the atmosphere net, the Lancer, and all that those things may imply. She's s patient listener, not challenging—maybe her way of rewarding me for being forthcoming. Then we sit in silence for awhile as she digests. I can see it in her eyes: she's considering a dozen different things, trying to juggle priorities.

"I know, it's a lot," I allow her.

"Could you ration it out as it comes instead of piling it all on at once next time?"

"I'll send myself a memo."

She smiles. Her eyes are lost in her plastic cup of plastic-tasting water.

"You really do suck at the whole people-thing," she jokes gently. "When you invite a girl into your bunk, you don't open by dropping all this scary freak-world stuff on her. It sort of kills any mood."

"I'm hoping it isn't all scary," I try.

"The unknown is always scary, Colonel. That's the way it is with us humans. I can see why you haven't been eager to be forthcoming."

"I'd have thought you'd be happier. The atmosphere net says the ETE crews are still here somewhere. Odds are there may be other colony survivors. The Lancer's existence says Earth is still there, and someone has at least come looking around since we've been asleep. It's my job to worry about the scary side."

She goes silent again, eyes down, idly swirling the water left in her cup.

"Communication goes both ways, Colonel," she finally says. "I've got my own issues I'm afraid to talk about."

"The Eco War is fifty years gone," I remind her. "I'm not about to restart it here. For all we know, the children and grandchildren of your movement are running things right now. I know there's still bad blood—that's the way it is with us humans. But right now, we're all we've got."

She forces a smile, but still doesn't look up. Then the smile goes away.

"That's the least of my scaries. I've got sixty-two kids ranging from three to fourteen years old—at least that's how old they _were_ before you add fifty years in a Hiber couch. So far, it looks like the adults all made it through okay, barring any new surprises to come. But Doctor Halley blows it off every time their parents ask about what happens if you chemically stall development that long. These kids stopped _growing_. Then they started wasting during sleep like the rest of us. They've all rehabbed faster than their elders, so they've still got that child's resilience going. But it's been six months since we woke up, Colonel. _None_ of them have shown any sign of further physical development. On top of that, I've got two pregnant mothers who are afraid of what's going to happen. Halley insists the babies look and sound healthy, but one of them should have delivered almost a month ago."

I see a teardrop fall onto her hand. I take the cup from her, and then take her hands in mine. She fights the tears back down, shakes her head until they go away. Then she gives my hands a squeeze.

"Maybe you don't suck so bad at this talking to people thing..."

Day 158. 9 June, 2115:

"Worst case, what are we likely to be facing out there?"

I know the question can't really be answered with any certainty, but I need them to agree on something, or at least clarify all of their various theories so we can decide how to proceed once we do have the means. And I realize I must look melodramatic, standing at the Briefing Room slit windows, staring out across Melas Chasma as the winds blow dust and grit over the rolling terrain under a rosy sky.

"Based on what the colony labs were working on when they were hit?" Rick cuts back with more than an edge of frustration, his fingers idly scrolling on the panel on the table in front of him. I'm sure he's spent months—like the rest of us—mulling over this, spinning worst cases against more hopeful possibilities. The time since we've awoken has narrowed that list somewhat: eliminating both the worst and most encouraging by the simple fact that we've seen and heard nothing at all, at least until the Lancer showed up. But what we have learned because of its arrival brings us together again to speculate, hopefully productively instead of nihilistically.

"What we _knew_ the labs were working on," Anton counters, tensely pivoting his chair side to side. He has reason to be frustrated: still failing in his dual projects of sending out a distress call and cracking into the operating systems of the Lancer. "The corporations didn't exactly keep their required research reports up-to-date. Especially with the Shield going into orbit."

"And with the hottest work moved to the ETE stations for safety, it made accounting even harder," Rick reinforces his fears.

"Or hiding the scariest projects even easier," Tru follows.

"Can I have a best guess?" I press them, trying to stay objective, trying not to pace in the tight conference room. "Start with what scared the pro-Eco groups enough to lobby for putting missiles in orbit."

"DNA engineering goes wrong and creates a super-virus," Matthew throws out one of the more common fears.

"No," Ryder denies. "Even the scariest biological can be contained mechanically. Especially on Mars because everything and everyone is pressure-sealed, sterilized, contained."

"That's exactly why that kind of research flourished here," Rick backs her. "Easy containment. Anything that broke out wouldn't get far."

"Unless it was designed—or evolved—to eat through whatever we had containing it," Tru counters with one of the more popular Eco fears.

"Which is a much greater risk with nanotech than biologicals," Anton takes it.

"The Hunter-Killers," Halley offers, sounding confident.

"The anti-cancer bots?" Matthew asks for clarification. "I thought we liked those?"

Tru's eyes go hard, but she stays pointedly silent.

"The ones that passed FDA were the best of the lot, the most stable and reliable," Ryder gives him. I notice she chose her seat next to Rick. Now her hand is on the frame of his chair, but not touching him directly, not in front of the rest of us. "But the risks during R&D were huge: Programming nano-machines to enter through the bloodstream, to search out and destroy specific types of cancers, self-replicating off the waste components of what they kill..."

"If the target programming goes wrong, the buggers might eat _you_ instead," Anton voices the most popular and most visceral fear, "and make lots more of themselves in the process to go eat everybody else."

"Then there were the fears of weaponization," Rick recalls darkly. Tru nods. "Doing it on purpose: making a nano-culture that would target certain DNA sequences, like racial and ethnic ones. Genocide in a tube."

"Fiction," Ryder protests. Rick shrugs, having experienced similar plans for atrocity while we were UNACT, wrapped up in the endless terror war back home.

Tru looks like she's regretting her inclusion in our little circle. She glances my way for an instant, maybe trying to see if I'm not comfortable with her presence. I give her a slight smile. She tries to return it, but looks stressed, afraid.

"Anything they made for medical purposes _always_ had the opposite potential," Halley tries to reason. "Intentionally _or_ accidentally. Even the Rebuilders—the same basic design as the cultures we use to keep our bones from breaking down—a flaw in their programming and they get in you and start building God knows."

"The scariest part is their targeting algorithm," Anton focuses. "Every nano-culture must go through a 'learning' process in two parts. First is programming: when they're given a purpose, mission instructions—find this, kill that, make this, patch that. Then comes problem solving, artificial intelligence: they have to enter the body, work cooperatively, find their way around—figure out how to do what they've been instructed to do. And figure out how to get the resources to do so—including raw materials to replicate—in the process."

"Most of the medical nano-machines are carbon-molecule constructs," Rick explains. "That means a living body makes for ready building materials."

"Imagine if the programming went wrong in either stage," Anton continues. "Nothing in your body's immune system can fight a nano-bot, and they can literally use any part of you to make more of themselves—even the worst viruses can't do that."

"And they can use what's outside of your body as well, if things went really wrong," Rick takes it. "Our best armor and materials are made of nano-carbon—they could convert that wholesale. Plastics and synthetics have carbon content—raw materials everywhere. Other nano-cultures use metals, silicates. They could theoretically scavenge anything, given the right instructions."

"Or incomplete or flawed instructions," Lisa considers, regurgitating the common protest lines from the anti-nano groups. "A culture goes bad in just the worst way."

"But without any programming," Halley reasons, "you could breach their containment and set them loose in a resource-rich environment, and they'd just sit there. Inert."

"Unless it happened when their programming wasn't finished," Anton returns. "It would be a hell of a coincidence to break containment just at the right phase of imprinting. But if it happened, very little could stop what happens next."

"Which is how we get around to needing to nuke the shit out of them," Matthew concludes unhappily. "Would that actually work?"

"No idea," Rick tells him. "But exposure to strong EMR is their greatest vulnerability, which is why we use EMR in containment. Theoretically, the EMP from a nuclear detonation would fry them wholesale, wipe their programming and kill their power systems. Proximity to a blast would also likely disintegrate anything within the nuclear fireball, or at least destroy whatever the cultures were thriving in."

"But they thrive in carbon," Matthew criticizes. "Don't you tend to get a lot of that when you detonate a bomb?"

"Assuming you had cultures that could weather the blast and the pulse, and then adapt their programming to the new conditions," Rick allows. "Only one 'bot has to survive to start a new colony."

"Still, there's no reason to believe a rogue culture would just spread randomly across the planet," Halley offers hope. "With Mars being dead, there's not much carbon in the environment—another one of the reasons why Mars made a low-risk research site. And, if I'm remembering this right, the cultures that scavenge silicate and iron are Builders—they shouldn't present a threat to living organisms."

"The worst-case is that the near-miss nukes cause lab breaches, contaminating colonies with something nasty and biological," Rick warns. "We'll need to proceed with extreme caution."

"Which also doesn't bode well for anyone who might have survived," I consider. "Odds are, even if their colony was uncontaminated, they would eventually go looking for other survivors, or at least supplies. Stumbling upon an aggressive culture could start an outbreak that could spread to other sites."

"If Earth actually saw survivors succumbing to something unstoppably virulent, that could discourage anybody coming back here," Matthew concludes, "at least without heavy precautions."

"Like our 'ghost ship'?" I allow him.

"Something bad happens to the crew you send despite all your best protocols," Matthew suggests. "It tends to discourage repeat attempts."

"If they got contaminated, you'd think the ship would be compromised," Lisa counters. "It's pristine."

"Unless they all got caught outside," Matthew guesses.

"All of them?" Rick doesn't buy. "You'd think they'd leave someone with the ship at all times."

"Unless they had to go try a rescue," Lisa tries. "Or were trying to draw something or someone away from their ride home."

"No sign of a fight," Anton considers.

"Doesn't mean there wasn't one," I tell him. Then: "Upside is: If they ran into violence, they ran into humans."

"Or Discs," Matthew shoots down.

"But if it _was_ survivors, it means the possibility of nano-plague is either low or non-existent," Lisa hopes.

"It's been fifty years," Anton agrees. "A nano-plague would have eaten the planet by now."

"More important, it would mean that people managed to survive here—without rescue—for at least twenty years," Tru finally chimes in, trying to find a more positive spin.

"The Lancer isn't designed to evac survivors," Anton reminds us. "It doesn't even have significant medical facilities to treat anyone. That tends to say they didn't come looking for survivors. They more likely came looking for samples, nanotech or engineered DNA. Maybe for profit. Maybe looking for a defense, a way to come back here safely."

"So they had reason to believe nobody survived," Matthew assumes. "Or they were purposefully trying to avoid them."

"Maybe they just didn't want evacuees rushing them until they knew what they were dealing with," Halley gives. "This could have been some kind of pre-rescue recon."

"Or maybe they thought all survivors had been long since evacuated," Rick tries.

"But if they did a proper evac, why are we still here?" Matthew returns.

"Containment pods say they were looking for nanotech samples," I stick to the basics. "The weaponry... It's either expecting Discs or some other violent reception."

"Why would survivors attack a ship from home?" Ryder protests.

"Depends on what it was up to," I offer. I catch Tru's eyes on me again.

"It might not matter what it was up to," Matthew contemplates. "Twenty years is a long time. Who knows what mood any survivors were in by then. Especially if the last thing Earth did was try to kill you."

Day 160. 11 June, 2115:

Things haven't been particularly promising.

Rick and Anton still haven't figured out a way to punch a signal through the atmosphere "net", even with the significant talent pool we have in our ranks. Nor have they managed to get anything other than basic cabin power up on the Lancer. And Morales and her crew still haven't made a patchwork ASV fly.

And life on Melas Base Two is getting steadily more difficult.

Power has been adequate since we've fired up the fusion reactors, and we have enough safe functional heated space to live in relative comfort. But airing, watering, and feeding almost twelve hundred souls has put more of a strain on resources than Anton had initially estimated. Adding to that is all the activity topside, no matter how necessary or therapeutic: O2 is getting bled out into breather bottles every time anyone goes out of an airlock. Rick's team has been considering ways we might "harvest" the oxygen in the outside air—all we need to be able to do is filter out the particulates and greenhouse gases, but we don't have the materials we need for filtering the quantities we need. We barely have the materials to keep filtering and re-oxygenating the inside air, and that's with some creative recycling.

On top of that, Ryder's "greenhouse", despite its long-term potential and boon to morale, has been sucking water. Though the makeshift dome above Reactor 2 already looks like a jungle inside at the rate the "Martian" grass is growing, the "crop" is still months away from yielding anything that can feed all of us.

And while there still is food, our choices are limited to irradiated survival rations and recycled nutrient paste. Anything more palatable decayed past edible while we slept.

Lisa estimates we have enough rations to get us through another year if we continue to use them sparingly. But the five months we've already spent living off the apparently un-spoilable ration packs has been adding to the pervasive depression. Worse, the rations will likely be remembered fondly as gourmet delicacies when all we have left is the recycled paste that the Tranquility processors make out of our own waste. I've been trying to acquire a taste for the stuff, but it's somewhere between rancid tofu and unflavored gruel. It provides what you need, but it comes with a gag reflex.

Despite the fact that base hasn't been habited to capacity since the troop reductions and the exodus of the majority of the slide refugees, the surviving bunker sections provide tight, cold, echoing, gray living spaces. I've heard it compared to a prison.

The lack of windows makes the passing of the days only numbers on a clock (unless you're lucky enough to get a post in one of the towers). Otherwise, the only way to see daylight (or the clear, primordially star-rich night sky) is to get time on the surface or negotiate a piece of rec-time in one of the windowed airlock staging areas. From the logs, it looks like fewer and fewer of our people are bothering, unless they have to go outside to work, or if Halley orders them.

Several people have tried to brighten things up, starting with their own barracks and the mess and rec halls, but there's precious little to work with. Carver and several others have been working in the labs after shifts, trying to make paints, inks, charcoals—anything that could be put to hand to make graphic art. Anton has offered to tap into what's left of MAI's cultural database (a lot was lost during the long sleep) to try to make prints, but paper is a scarce commodity (something Ryder hopes to make by hand once her "garden" matures). Mostly, MAI's surviving memory has been getting tapped for music and video and gaming, and whatever media each individual managed to bring from Earth has been shared like precious treasure. But "shut-in" pastimes only seem to promote the overall inertia.

Other than the short shifts outside, the only exercise we get is the repetitive ritual of PT and "Spin Time" in the base's three centrifuges. Halley keeps close watch to make sure everyone is getting it done. She says she's worried about as-yet unknown potential long-term effects from our extremely extended sleep (especially among the refugee children, whose tests remain normal despite the scary lack of growth), but I think she's doing more physicals than she really needs to just to keep busy herself.

At least our makeshift gym facilities continue to be popular. Converted from an unused barracks section on D-Deck and essential during our rehab, the three big rooms manage to serve alternately for aerobics, tension training, martial arts, low-gravity racketball and half-court basketball, as well as the quirky "Marsball" popularized by some of the early colonists: a variation on soccer with an elevated hoop goal and lots of showy low-G acrobatics, where the walls and ceiling are used extensively for rebounding.

Thankfully, the low-G is also kind to old joints, so old men like me can still play with twenty-somethings and not look too broken. Still, I usually keep to the exercise machines rather than throw myself into a team sport, and tell myself it's a matter of decorum.

I read the eyes of the much younger bodies I sweat with, and I suspect that the only thing keeping them pushing their bodies this long is that they know they'll need to keep enough bone and muscle to go home. And then I realize I still have no such ambition, no real desire to go back to Earth, not even if rescue came tomorrow, no matter how curious I might be about much "home" may have changed in half-a-century.

But I also realize I've lost much of the hope I had for the future of this planet.

Instead, I hold onto the old pride of discipline to get me through my next workout (I tell myself it has nothing to do with the way Tru flirts with me—decorum aside, I _am_ old enough to be her father), and I rely on my curiosity to see what comes next to make it through to tomorrow. That's what it comes down to: I need to know.

I idly imagine this would be very much like being on a ship going deep interplanetary without Hiber-Sleep: Days of boredom, automatic routine, limited space, rationed food, alone in the void with no support, and an unknown destination a small eternity away.

I'm thankful I don't suffer from claustrophobia—at times, close spaces are actually comforting for me, though I do have it better than most: I have my private "Deluxe Senior Officers' Accommodations", identical to Matthew's, Lisa's, Rick's, Halley's, Kastl's and Metzger's (Cal's remains unoccupied but untouched, waiting for his return as I don't have the heart to order it cleared out). Eight-by-eight, it's almost submarine-efficient. I even have my own private bathroom: a two-by-two-foot recycling shower stall with a sink niche and a retracting toilet under it.

The junior officers, NCOs, pilots and department heads have to share a space two feet narrower than this, bunking in twos (and very few rate their own toilet facilities). The rest of the military personnel share squad-to-platoon-sized barracks, with the enlisted in separate units from the civilian contractors. Some of the more ambitious (or more driven) have simply set up "camp" at their duty stations—Morales has been sleeping in one of the downed ASVs for the past three months, this despite the round-the-clock work shifts keeping things noisy down in the bays.

It's amazing I haven't had to discipline anyone for fighting yet, but then the general mood is more a combination of the team spirit of trying to keep each other alive and a sort of vague survivor's guilt. I haven't even heard of any flare-ups between the ex-Ecos and the soldiers that spilled each other's blood in the years of stupidity before the bombs made us all bedfellows.

It helps that there's been a lot of work to do getting the base and its assets back into some kind of operational order, and Tru's been actively repaying my including her by stoking the goodwill down in the refugee bays.

Still, Doc Halley gives me regular reports on the meds she's been handing out (or rationing out). Despite the hope and the team spirit, there is still the tenacious fear that we may be far more alone than just being inadvertently left behind.

Other than a few random shocks (new atmosphere, new plant life, a ghost ship arriving out of nowhere), most of our time is spent in the scheduled grind of the daily routine: wake, PT, morning Spin, rationed shower (or a trip to Doc Ryder's "bath house"—converted out of an empty storage bay near Water Recycling—for a Japanese-style sponge-off and hot soak), choking down breakfast (at least we still have plenty of coffee, no matter the quality), then on shift until evening Spin, dinner and a few hours leisure (quite a few of us just keep working, or volunteer to assist with other projects) before it's back in the rack.

But just keeping busy isn't enough. The ones that do the best (judged by Halley's reports and the pharmacy logs) are the ones who can get through each day by finding some kind of peace or satisfaction in the Zen aesthetic of sparseness and discipline, the joy in the minimal. We have air, food (or at least something to keep our bellies full), water, heat, a place to sleep, and work to do. It's almost a monastic life, despite the stories I increasingly hear of "coupling", even in the officers' ranks, because life will find a way (and I'm not sure how much longer I'm going to bother deflecting Tru's advances).

Still, even the Noble Path leads _somewhere_ —we appear to be only waiting for something that, day by day, seems less likely to arrive.

Some of us are not fairing as well as others.

"It's not a prison," Matthew criticizes the popular metaphor over what passes for breakfast in the Officers' Mess (now a dining hall again, no longer our makeshift briefing room), "it's more like an _oubliette_. A deep dark dungeon below the dungeon, a hole you get locked up in so that the ones that put you there can simply forget you."

He's looking grizzled and sleep-deprived. (Or is that sleep-overloaded? He spends much of his days shut up in his quarters.) The pained grief has faded—the frustration of having survived an apocalypse with an aged, battered, wasted body that doesn't want to carry him anymore without significant pain—but he's sunk into the fatalism of depression.

I miss the wise-ass who existed to be a thorn in the side of his commanders, who challenged the ugly politics with relish, who reveled in never following orders without question. He insists he came to Mars because of his ongoing loyalty to me, but I think it was at least in part because he thought what was happening here was as corrupt as I did. But now that corporate-driven war is fifty years dead, however it ended. Maybe not having a "good" fight anymore has cost him his identity. The only apparent authority left on this world is me, and he knows what I am.

Anton slides up a tray of ration oatmeal and dried fruit, and today he looks almost as beaten as Matthew.

"I may need to ask you for something big, Colonel," he starts even before he's settled, and I can feel his weary frustration. "I've officially blown every component I could safely scavenge trying to punch a signal through the static shield. All we've got left are the comm systems in the ASVs."

"No luck with the Lancer?"

"Worse, I think," he sighs out, then looks like he's said the wrong thing and wants to take it back. He looks around the room, but no one else seems to be listening in—the handful of junior officers in here with us are all looking vaguely dazed over their meals. "I didn't want to say anything until I know for sure, but remember that idea about taking the Lancer above the static net and broadcasting out? Now, I can't really tell until I've gotten all the systems unlocked and online, but it looks like the transmitter may have been pulled."

"Pulled?" I jump on it before Matthew can.

"Like I said, I can't be sure, but it looks like someone very deliberately and very carefully removed the transmitter boards, and there's no sign of them anywhere."

"Somebody didn't want anyone else using the ship to call out," Matthew concludes like it doesn't matter.

"Could it have been cannibalized for some other project by the original owners?" I ask. Anton shrugs.

"Looks too neat to be an emergency MacGyver move," he offers. "I'm hoping I can tell you more when we get access."

I gel that for a moment. Matthew is looking grimmer.

"Could we boost one of the ASV transmitters enough to be heard, assuming we could fly it up above the atmosphere net?"

"It would make noise," Anton allows. "But even if we wait until conjunction, I'm not sure it would stand out enough against the background of what the net is putting out. Same if we flew out of the valley, up to Datum level: I don't think we could get far enough from the net's noise to be heard, not with what gear we have left."

"What if we shut down the net?" Matthew considers flatly. "Knock out those projectors, then seal up in here while the atmosphere starts bleeding out. No static, we might get heard. Or at least someone might take notice if the net got broken, come take a look."

"And if Doctor Halley's right, and there are survivors living out on the surface who need that air?" Anton protests, trying to suppress his shock.

"Then we shut it down, make noise, and turn it back on again," Matthew returns, not making eye contact. "Assuming you can figure out how it works."

He gets up from the table and leaves without another word. Anton gives me a pained look.

"Let's focus on getting the ASVs up," I offer. "Make priority out of getting a close look at whatever is generating the net, maybe visit one of the ETE stations—they're up higher, and might have transmitters in better condition."

"Assuming the stations aren't occupied," he semi-jokes.

"If they are, then I expect we'll be making quite a bit of noise."

I check in with Morales again—I think my daily visits only increase her stress—before I head back up to the Command Deck.

The routine grinds the worst here—or maybe a close second to Air Command, a painfully useless station as we currently have nothing that flies. Now that the systems we've got left are running as best they can, all we can do is watch, listen and wait. And so far the only brief moment of excitement was the arrival of the Lancer. Otherwise, the planet is dead quiet. At least the other crews have actual work to do, no matter how much of a struggle it is.

Kastl, Grant and Shaloub have the first duty shift in Ops today, with Metzger, Weiss and Li over in AirCom. They put on a good show of keeping their eyes on their screens, at least for my benefit. Otherwise, all there is to do is stare out the thick plexi pillbox-style ports at the slow clean-up and reconstruction going on outside, and beyond that, just dust blowing over empty rust-colored desert in all directions.

By ten, Lisa comes up, thoughtfully bringing us a hotpot of what passes for coffee.

"All quiet on the Western Front?" she tries making conversation. She manages to come and go with a gentle civility—more than duty requires of her—treating me like some casual old friend or distant relation. I can only imagine what it took for her to bury whatever pain I'd so effectively caused her. Still, I notice she avoids looking at Tru whenever she joins us for a conference or "drops by to chat".

"Just enjoying the scenery," I tell her dully.

Tired of reviewing status reports of a thousand minor operational details that barely change (and the most significant change is the steady and depressing decline of palatable foodstuffs), my eyes have been drawn outside, though now barely focused on what I'm ostensibly "supervising" through the bunker ports: Out past where Carver has her team coming off another battery drill, their red Heavy Armor suits making them look like upright ants running across the rusty terrain. Out beyond the perimeter battery line, now partially restored to surround two sides of the roughly comma-shaped bunker complex like a medieval battlement. Out into the gently rolling plain of mostly-monochrome rock and gravel. Out there, I numbly watch one of the construction units working monotonously on restoring the pressurized tubeway out to Reactor Two, where Ryder's got her greenhouse dome with her garden—or crop—of now-giant Martian "grass". A dome of green in an endless sea of red-ochre sand and rock.

But then my eyes catch just a touch of _new_ color: a fleck of sapphire blue out in the red, a hundred meters or so outside the main perimeter gate, and well away from any of the work crews. It strikes me that it wasn't there just moments before—and I've been staring out this window all morning.

"What..." I start, pointing Lisa's eyes where I'm looking. The blue fleck moves just a bit, turns, and then I realize I'm looking at a man.

"Lieutenant Carver!" I shout into the link. "One hundred meters due west, straight out through the Gate! Give me eyes..." Then I turn to Kastl, Grant and Shaloub, who've jerked to alertness like someone fired a gun: "Who's out there?"

Kastl is already zooming in on the grid, but the only icons on the screens are the codes for Carver's HA's, turning and fanning toward the gate.

"No tag," Kastl confirms, his voice edgy. "It's _not_ one of us."

The blue shape is just standing still, out on the plain, as Carver's armor moves to surround it. I key up an image from her armor feed.

"What the hell is it?" I hear Matthew's voice on the link.

"My luck," Carver grouses to no one in particular, her voice shaky. "We've got him, Colonel—it's... It's human. Not one of ours. He's... He's just standing there, sir."

"Is he armed?" I ask, looking the figure over on the feed as Shaloub gives me an enhanced zoom. It's dressed in some kind of bright blue jumpsuit, possibly a light pressure suit, with boots and gloves and something that looks like a snug-fitting helmet or facemask and hood. The mask and helmet are shining silver, like polished chrome.

"Not that I can see," Carver answers. "Well, maybe..."

Zooming in closer, there are shiny objects arranged on its belt, a series of plain short metal rods and softball-sized spheres, all looking chrome-plated like the helmet.

"Grenades?" Lisa wonders, pointing to the spheres.

As if in answer, the blue figure's gloved hands raise slowly, cautiously, but with grace and surety. Two-dozen weapons lock—laser dots dance like red fireflies all over the blue suit and silver mask. The hands show open palms, the body-language is passive.

"I'm looking at some kind of insignia," I hear Sergeant Horst on the link. I switch to his armor camera—he's off to the figure's left side, and there's a view of a round colorful patch on the shoulder.

"That's an ETE logo," I hear Matthew growl—he's watching this from his quarters. "Fucking shit... I'll be right up..."

"Orders, Colonel?" Carver demands, her voice shaky.

"Hold..."

I don't get to finish. The blue suit's hands reach down smoothly for the buckle of the belt. A weapon fires—readouts tell me it's Corporal Lewis' ICW—and I can see the AP round cut clean through the blue suit center-of-mass, right through the heart. Blood sprays out the back as the shell exits, and the figure staggers backwards, boots tripping over rock in a low gravity stagger. Pivoting. Going down onto hands and knees.

"Hold fire!" I'm shouting. " _Hold fire!_ " Carver already has her hand up to enforce the order.

But then another hand goes up—this time from the blue suit. Still kneeling in the dirt and rock, one hand goes up. Signaling for us to hold.

"What..." Lisa starts.

The figure gets up. Slowly. With difficulty. But it stands. Turns back to face Carver (and very likely Lewis, who is standing next to Carver). Gets both hands up and struggles to resume its original non-threatening posture.

"What the _fuck_...?" Matthew sounds almost breathless—he must be dressing as fast as he can while he keeps his eyes on the feeds.

I zoom in as close as I can get. The hole where the round pierced the blue suit is closing up, the fabric re-knitting itself. A view from behind shows the exit wound—though larger and more roughly torn—doing the same. Something under the fabric—barely visible—looks like boiling metal.

"Please don't do that again," a voice comes calmly onto the Link. The hands go back to the belt buckle—slower, this time, with more reassuring gestures—and unfasten it. The belt of shiny spheres and rods comes away from the blue suit. One hand holds it out to the nearest armored trooper. I can see the featureless mask turn and look straight up at the Command Tower, right at me.

"Colonel Ram," the voice comes again, soft and smooth. "My name is Paul Stilson. We should speak. I expect you have many questions, and I, for my part, have quite a lot to tell you."

### Chapter 4: News of the World

"Carver: bring him in through Airlock One," I order. "Kastl: Clear out, lock down and seal off everything in a straight path to Medical."

"And evacuate all the adjacent sections," Matthew chimes in urgently. On the base tracking grid, I see he was headed to Ops from his quarters, but then he stopped, turned back, headed to where our visitor will be coming through. He gets blocked when the hatches all shut and lock down.

"Halley?" I make the next call.

"I got the alert, Colonel," she tells me almost instantly.

"Clear out your A-Deck ward and get us an Iso-room ready."

"Then get out of there until we're sure he's sealed in," Matthew goes further.

"On it. Give me two minutes."

"We'll hold him at Staging," I let her know, then pass that to Carver.

I switch over to the heads-up in my goggles so I can watch everything on the run while I head out of Ops and down the stairs. Hovering ghostly over my vision I can see our "guest" getting led at gunpoint into Airlock One, and held there until the adjacent Staging Area can be vented. (The locks themselves are only big enough to transfer maybe four fully-suited bodies at a time for routine efficiency, but the connecting Staging rooms—usually used for suiting up—can be sealed and used as an extension of the airlock, letting the better part of a platoon move in and out together.)

The Blue Suit—who named himself Paul Stilson—gets gestured in by gun barrels, a half-dozen Heavy Armor troopers ahead of him and following him. Then he's got a dozen guns on him in the Staging Area as they put him (and themselves) through a quick dust-off and contamination check. Then the section gets re-pressurized, and they wait for Halley to give them the all-clear. But no one unseals their suits, just in case.

Still outside, Sergeant Staley is holding Blue Suit's belt of curious objects like a dead rat by the tail, keeping a heavy blast hatch between Stilson and his undetermined gadgets.

"Staley: Once they've gotten him to containment, get his belt secured in a glove-box," I order. "Then put the box in an ordnance disposal container—treat it like a bomb until we know better. Then get it to Dr. Mann in the labs."

I see the silver-masked head turn and look right into the security cameras, then give a little shake like he's trying to assure us we needn't worry.

I run past the Senior Officers Quarters toward the sealed hatch that would get me to Medical, which is where Matthew is waiting, pacing like someone is about to die on the other side of that hatch. I move to key in my override, but he grabs my arm.

"Where the hell to do think you're going?"

The only answer I give him is to raise my eyebrows at him like I think he should know better, but he's clearly thinking the same thing about me.

"You saw what happened," he makes his point clearer. "That was some kind of advanced nano-shit. Even assuming that maybe it isn't something contagious, what _else_ do you think he could do?"

I watch in my goggles as the HA suits march our visitor—Paul—down the corridors toward isolation, keeping their guns up and keeping a respectable distance. But the blue suit just follows where they lead him, offering no resistance.

"I don't like that you let him inside," Matthew grumbles at me. "We could have checked him over on the surface, set up a shelter."

"The hard hatches and bulkheads are bio-sealed and can be charged to resist nanotech," I remind him needlessly. "And they'll contain any blast that couldn't hurt us from the outside. Besides: Assuming you're right, if he meant to harm us, why hasn't he done so already? We did shoot him, after all."

"Colonel Ram, you need to see something," Lisa cuts in on the Link, still up in Command Ops, but I see she's only transmitting to Matthew and myself. She's feeding us an image of the dusty floor of the airlock our guest was just brought through, zooming in and enhancing one set out of several dozen boot prints in the fine red sand. "His boots... They match the prints of our mystery visitor. Which means he—or someone in an ETE suit like his—was the one poking around here while we slept. And he did call you by name."

I take a few breaths to digest that, realizing I'd been suspecting that just from the way he called to me, like he knew me, like an old friend. Or like a very friendly enemy. Still:

"As I was saying," I give it to Matthew more gently this time, "if he had meant us harm, he's had opportunity, especially if he's already been inside, had the run of the place while we were sleeping."

I don't think that makes him feel any better.

Halley did her job, clearing the main examination ward in A-Deck Medical, getting the Number One Isolation Chamber ready. The larger Iso units are laid out as fully-stocked exam and treatment rooms, only heavily sealed and walled with thick clear acrylic, separated from the main exam ward by a clean-room that serves as an airlock into the units. Paul Stilson has let himself be placed and closed up inside Iso One, where we can observe him from what would otherwise be a waiting room. Armed troopers—still in their sealed full HA gear—surround his clear-walled "cell", turning Medical into a high-security brig.

I watch through the thick multilayered acrylic as Stilson's gloved hands gingerly unseal and remove his mask and light helmet, lift it from his head and set it on an exam table in the small sterile chamber. He ignores the guns and looks calmly at me.

Without his helmet, he is surprisingly plain: short brown hair, soft Caucasian features, friendly smile—he looks like a businessman, or maybe a politician. But his eyes are a shockingly deep blue, the irises almost metallic, iridescent like mother-of-pearl. He smiles broader when he realizes my assessment of his appearance, and casually sits himself up on the exam table next to his helmet.

"Not much to look at, am I?" he self-deprecates with a bit of a chuckle. "I'm a xeno-geologist by trade, Colonel. Though I suppose I didn't go to any university you would know. I was only eleven Earth years old at the time of the Apocalypse—that's what the survivors have been calling the Ares' Shield disaster—living with my parents as they helped get the first terraforming stations up and running. And yes, that does make me sixty-one, by the Earth standard calendar."

His voice is soft and casual, like we're talking over drinks, new friends getting to know one another.

"It's good to see you in person finally," he continues when I don't respond. "And awake, of course. So yes, to answer Colonel Ava's suspicions, I _have_ been here before, many times. Not a popular pastime with my people, however—I expect I'll have quite a lot to answer for when I get home. Again. But we'll talk more about that later. I expect you have more pressing questions for me."

"Colonel Ram," Lisa comes over my link, "for what it's worth, his ID _does_ check: There was a Paul Mark Stilson listed with the ETE crews who brought their children, birth date 2053."

Matthew turns so that Paul can't see his face, and gives me a glare that warns me not to engage our "guest" the way he seems to want me to. Paul catches him at it anyway.

"I really do mean to help you in any way I can, Colonel Burke. But I understand if you need time to make your own decisions about me. As you suspect, time is something I have in surplus."

"You look good for sixty-one, Mr. Stilson," Halley offers, calibrating another sweep of the chamber from the Clean Room.

"I'm not in any way contagious, Doctor," he tries to reassure her. "But I request that I be allowed to wear my sealsuit. Just a habitual precaution—we never spend time unsuited in any environment outside of our Stations. Otherwise, my nanites are specific to my DNA and do not function outside of my body—in fact, they will break down almost instantly—they're programmed that way during the Generation Ceremony."

He stops himself, chuckles under his breath.

"What I must sound like to you," he considers, "the things I take for granted. I apologize. Where should I start?"

There's a hand-railing in front of the big observation window, one of several in Medical to help the injured get around. I lean on it, getting my face close to the transparency.

"Are you injured?" I ask him.

"I'm quite well, thank you." His hand reflexively rubs the spot on his chest where the bullet entered (there isn't even a mark there now—his suit look pristine). "And no blame, Colonel. I suppose I actually expected worse. I'd been thinking about all the ways I could approach you, but I could think of none that would totally avoid violence and suspicion."

Matthew shakes his head very slightly, arms crossed hard across his chest.

Paul unzips the front of his suit and then lifts an underlying mesh shirt to reveal his pale but moderately-toned chest. There is only what looks like a very old scar where the bullet entered.

"My nanites allow me to heal quickly," he explains. "They also initiate emergency protocols: stop bleeding, compensate for any damaged organs, even process carbon dioxide back into oxygen right in my blood, so I can do without air for short periods." He puts his outfit back in order and rests his gloved hands on his thighs. "I was implanted when I was eighteen. We are currently delaying subsequent generations until they are at least twenty-five. We take very good care of our children, Colonel, but our Elders feel that we must all know what it is like to live as a Natural—an un-enhanced and mortal human—for at least a short time before we become otherwise."

"You're telling us you don't die?" Matthew doubts.

"Everything that lives, dies, Colonel Burke," Paul says matter-of-factly. "It's just that death has become significantly more elusive for us. As has aging."

"You going to tell us how to kill you?" Matthew cuts back.

"I would be doing my people a disservice to speculate with you on that subject," Paul answers coolly. "And I trust we have better things to do together than have you spend your time experimenting."

"You have amazing trust for being bullet-proof," Matthew quips.

"It was not pleasant getting shot, I assure you." There is almost an edge in his voice now. "But I reiterate: We have better things to discuss."

"Then let's get on with it," I interrupt. Then to Halley: "Is it safe to go in?"

"No detectable contamination, Colonel," she confirms without sounding convinced. "But that doesn't mean it's safe."

"Any other surprises?"

"Passive scans would say he's a normal, very healthy _thirty_ year old," she assesses with an edge of irony. "And that includes an absolute lack of any gunshot trauma. Otherwise, there are no obvious implants or modifications. Whatever his particular nano-hybridization is, it keeps a low profile until it's needed." She locks eyes with Paul, who gives her his usual soft smile and adds:

"That would be an adequate assessment, Doctor Halley."

"Anything else you'd like to do with him?" I ask her.

"If I was a researcher, I'd never let him leave," she admits. "But I'm not, and given our current limited resources, I'm not eager to risk trying to extract a sample of his nanotech just out of curiosity."

"You would fail, Doctor," Paul insists calmly.

"Is it safe to let him out of there?" I go further. Matthew's eyebrows go up and his mouth opens like he's going to protest, but he keeps silent. Halley only shrugs. "Then let's move this discussion elsewhere. Mr. Stilson, can we get you anything? Water? Coffee? Something to eat?"

"Coffee would be very much appreciated, Colonel," he says with what seems to be honest warmth. "And please call me Paul."

"Command Briefing?" Matthew criticizes my choice of location when we're out of Paul's earshot. "That's nine feet from Ops."

"It's not like he hasn't been there before," I remind him of Lisa's mystery footprints, now apparently resolved. "And he doesn't appear to be armed."

"Rick," Matthew calls into his Link as we walk back toward Ops, unsealing hatches as we go. "Anything on our friend's shiny toys?"

"They look like solid pieces of steel," Rick comes on, looking simultaneously perplexed and intrigued. "Three identical rods, too small to be effective clubs. Three identical spheres. No instrumentation. Not even a seam. And we can't scan inside—they just show as solid. We tried looking closer, but when we scanned one with an electron microscope, it began emitting a low-level EM field that blocked our imaging. Very intentional. I'd say his toys have specific protocols to resist examination. I even tried cutting one: the material was not scored by anything up to tungsten and diamond, which tells me it's probably a carbon matrix of some kind. Lasers and plasma cutters didn't even get it hot. Otherwise, they appear inert. Still, given the apparent level of nanotech that made them, I seriously doubt they're intended to be decorative."

"Meet us up in Command Briefing," I tell him. "Be ready to ask questions."

Paul sips his coffee—or the radiation-preserved powder that survived fifty years in storage with us—like we've handed him the finest drink he's ever had.

"Real coffee is quite a luxury," he confirms. "Sometimes it comes down on humanitarian drops, but we leave those to the Nomads and refugees. They need the supplies more than we do—we actually manage quite sufficiently off of our molecular factories, but our best substitute isn't the same as the real thing."

"Humanitarian drops?" Lisa asks him as the last of our team of "interrogators" joins us. Matthew, Lisa and I were already waiting when the guards—two troopers still sealed in full HA's—brought him up from Medical (with all other sections still sealed off just in case). Halley came up with him, with Rick and Ryder a moment behind. Our last stragglers—Anton, Tru, Carver, Rios, and Morales—had further to come. (Carver, at least, had the decorum to change out of her Heavy Armor and into a fresh LA uniform. Morales and Anton are wearing their work jumpers.)

"I suppose it's hard for me to start _anywhere_ without leaving you behind somehow," Paul apologizes. "But then, I don't know what you know, so therefore I don't know what I don't need to tell you, if you see my conundrum." He looks specifically at Matthew now. "Obviously I do not expect you to simply tell me what you know and what you don't." He sips his coffee again. "I suppose I'd better start at the beginning—or the ending, depending on how you see it... With the Apocalypse."

"When your Discs blew the shit out of the whole planet?" Matthew prosecutes sweetly. Paul only gives him his usual grin. I realize it's probably his way of keeping his patience with us.

"I can only hope to assure you that the Discs were not ours," he responds evenly. "I cannot readily prove this, of course, though I hope one day you will be able to tour our facilities and get to know us better."

"One day?" I ask.

"That decision is not mine to make, Colonel. I am not an Elder, not on the Council. And as I believe I mentioned earlier, my very coming here was not something my leaders approve of."

"Well, that's gained _my_ trust," Matthew quips. "Anybody else feel better?"

"I cannot say anything more on the subject of the Discs, Colonel Burke, because my own people do not know their origins, not even after all these years," Paul defends himself coolly. "I could give you wild speculations, but I expect you have enough of your own already."

"Are the Discs still active?" I attempt to refocus.

"No, Colonel Ram," Paul answers with a hint of gratitude. "As far as we know, they have not been seen since the Apocalypse. Either their mission was completed with the bombardment and isolation of Mars, or they managed to destroy themselves in the process."

"The _isolation_ of Mars?" I pick out. "What happened after the bombardment, Paul?"

He loses the easy smile, sips at his coffee (but this time doesn't seem to enjoy it as much), then puts his hands on the table, lowers his head.

"Nothing went unscathed, Colonel," he begins with a heavy breath. "The ETE Stations were spared the direct brunt of the attack because the Shield platform was _programmed_ to spare us—I can understand Colonel Burke's suspicions about us, but I am asking you to trust me enough to listen—but the blasts cut us off, severed our Feed Lines, drove us inside to escape the radiation. As for everywhere else... the bombs quite literally reshaped the valleys. Colony sites that weren't direct victims of the detonations were devastated by shockwaves and landslides and crippling EMP. Yes, there were survivors, and there still are, and I will tell you what I know of them, but first you need to know what happened between the worlds.

"Everything in orbit and incoming was destroyed. That meant Mars was completely cut off, with no ready means for relief. Worse, what communications did reach Earth before the uplinks went silent were still quite convincing that Mars had suffered catastrophic contamination from the reported lab breaches. What Earth could see of the surface using telescopes was only the devastation of the bombing. Radiation and residual heat from the blasts effectively masked any sign of life, as well as any ability to confirm or deny that there had been nano-contamination.

"Still, the first instinct _was_ to send rescue. From what we could hear, the entirety of humanity was shaken by the tragedy, and every nation and corporation immediately mobilized to send help. The immediate response was one of incredible altruism, charity and unity of purpose. For a bright, shining moment, there were no wars, no enemies. Competing nations and corporations joined together. But sadly, it only took a matter of weeks for man's capacity for fear and hate to begin to overcome their better nature."

He pauses to look each one of us over, trying to read in our features how much we are following him, how open we are to believing his tale.

"We have every transmission archived," he adds with almost numb calm, specifically looking at Matthew. "Our children study them. Our Elders have never stopped debating them. Because they give us a powerful insight into the nature of the human animal, what we are and what we come from."

"What happened?" I gently refocus him, reassure him we _are_ willing to hear. He sits back in his chair for a moment and gathers himself. Under his calm façade, I can feel that this is shaking him.

"First and foremost came the fear," he restarts, not making eye contact now. "The old fear that began this whole tragedy. Fear of a plague that could not be stopped. Fear that those in power could not protect them, or would even put everyone at risk for their own profit. That fear created the Eco movement, made it rise to popularity." I see him nod in Tru's direction—obviously he knows who she is as well. "And that fear put the very instrument of our devastation over our heads. But despite the overwhelming horror of the tragedy it reaped, that same fear quickly began to undercut everything good in the nature of mankind."

I can see his hands tremor ever so slightly as he sips his coffee.

"Man is a strange and paradoxical creature. And as a social animal, one of the things he does worst is take responsibility, especially for his own demons. We could hear it clearly in the transmissions from Earth: people began to rally behind a radicalized Eco movement, driven by those that would gain power by blaming, by persecuting, by feeding on the fear that science and greed had created a monster that walked this planet waiting for any opportunity to ravage all mankind. Ultimately, it proved a convenient excuse for man to disown his own sins, to scapegoat their own agencies. They began to turn violently on the very governments and corporations that would have made rescue possible. It was a remarkably easy thing to do—for the average citizen to deny that it was his own needs and wants that had driven the governments and corporations to support the research that they, in turn, were now so terrified of. Mankind had the demanded cures, demanded the longer life, demanded the new and better toys. Without that demand, that desire, none of this could have come to pass—Mars would have remained an 'unprofitable' rock in space, no more than a curiosity for scientists and explorers.

"But now that their fears had overwhelmed those desires, it was easy for mankind to blame the greed of faceless corporations and the corruption of aloof governments for everything that had happened, including the devastation that so terribly ended it. Within weeks, governments were purged, the great corporations were embattled and bankrupted, consumerism was vilified, and economies collapsed on a global scale. But by persecuting the perceived agents of this atrocity, they also unwittingly crippled any hope of mounting a timely rescue. It was only after the damage was done, after the rage had been spent, that wiser voices were able to be heard calling for reason.

"By then, hope was already fading, and the fear had new soil in which to take root: Weeks and months went by with no further contact from the surface. Now the fear told them that everyone not killed by the bombs was now dead anyway, victims _not_ of the delayed rescue effort—again, mankind does not readily accept responsibility for its own sins—but of the still-assumed contamination. Now they openly hesitated because of the fear that returning to Mars would only contaminate the rescuers, and then Earth in turn, dooming all life. And that fear did what fear does best: it made people forget everything else. Then it turned them against anyone who would try to defy it. Hated science and greed had created a monster that could not be destroyed, you see, only _isolated_. Any survivors were believed to be beyond hope, and most people convinced themselves there could be none. The only 'sane' thing to do was ensure the imagined horror would not come home. They declared us all dead within the year, and we became their new martyrs: We died saving them, saving Earth."

"They believed we were all dead?" Ryder challenges. "And just left it at that? They didn't even try?"

Paul locks eyes with her. His jaw sets.

"It was _easier_ for them that way," he tells her icily. "And the ones that weren't satisfied to leave it be were hamstrung by the Quarantine, by lack of resources and support. Small humanitarian missions were coordinated: probes, supply drops—all unmanned and one-way to allay the fears that a human crew would be contaminated, lost on a hopeless errand."

"And there was no word from the surface, from survivors?" Lisa questions. "No calls for help?"

"A few messages did manage to filter back across space from the devastated surface," Paul tells her, somewhat more gently, "from makeshift transmitters not unlike the one you recently attempted to build. But Earth could only hear fragments from them, and what they heard were tales of mass casualties and failing resources, failing hope. From what they could hear, Earth made their own tragic calculations, that most likely no one would be left alive by the time any relief could reach them. Within two months, there was only silence, as the last transmitter stopped sending. That silence convinced them that their fears were well founded, and excused them from attempting— _risking_ , as they saw it—a proper rescue.

"We ourselves managed contact with Earth during that time, perhaps the clearest of any of the surviving factions because of our locations, but we could only give limited and unpromising assessments because of our distance from the colony sites. Then, after all the other transmitters had stopped, we also chose to fall silent."

"' _Chose_ '?" Lisa starts, almost coming out of her seat.

"Just as communication outgoing was fragmentary, so was what the few survivors who had means could hear from Earth. But we could hear the fear taking over: The UNMAC Quarantine, the fear of contamination, the steady reductions in rescue mission plans, the cold calculations that rescue wasn't worth the risk of spreading an unstoppable plague to Earth." Paul stops for a moment, raises his cup to his lips, but puts it down without drinking.

"Worse: while Earth had little actual sense of what had happened here, many of the surface survivors had even less. You yourselves are an excellent example: how much do you know of the fate of the planet, of the colonies, even with your superior resources? Your bases had the best communications with orbit until the attack severed them, and your uplinks were among the last to be destroyed. At least _you_ knew that the Discs were responsible for triggering the Shield. The colonies were cut off shortly after the Shield targeted them—the last they knew of Earth was that Earth was trying to kill them all because of an imagined fear, a false alarm. Those that survived did very much fear that Earth would try to kill them again, that since they seemed so reluctant to send rescue, they would instead send more bombs. That fear came to rule this planet."

"So they—what?—they _hid_?" Matthew questions incredulously.

"From even the initial attempts to re-establish contact, to call for help, it was already sounding like rescue wasn't going to come," Paul looks at him directly. "Or that if any rescue did come, it would be cautiously limited, that the survivors would be remanded to quarantine, even killed if Earth judged the risk too high. And if Earth even remotely believed there was still a risk of contamination, they might bomb again."

"So there wasn't a _single_ survivor that kept calling for help?" Lisa doesn't believe.

"There _were_ a few. For some, their equipment eventually failed. But many factions actually _forced_ their fellows to stop transmitting, and in some cases even killed those who would not cooperate—their fear of Earth was that great."

"And Earth left it at that?" Matthew isn't buying. "For _fifty_ years?"

"No, Colonel," Paul locks him with his eyes again. "Nothing is so simple. We've kept listening, passively. The Earth you knew has changed because of what happened, more than you can imagine. There was indeed a revolution of sorts: Once the general public—the most vocal majority, at least—finally began moving past their initial overwhelming fears of returning for a rescue, or at least found they could not live with not knowing what had happened here, they found that their bureaucracies were not so flexible. The Quarantine still stood, and there had been too much upheaval to effectively oppose it. The world economy destroyed, people could barely maintain quality of life, much less invest in rebuilding the infrastructure necessary for mounting a large interplanetary mission. And the new 'culture' wouldn't support it.

"The Ecos had 'won' in a way. Even though their old leadership had stepped down in light of the tragedy, opportunists were quick to exploit their legacy. Governments could not operate effectively, there was so little trust in anyone's motivations. Large corporations were demonized, as was the science that drove their research. It was very much like a modern witch hunt, a new Inquisition. Nano and DNA science became evil, dangerous, against nature and God. Even what good the research did in terms of cures for terminal diseases or ending hunger and pollution were vilified. Can you imagine that? Having a cure for cancer, a new food source, a way to clean the poisons out of the air and water, and being afraid to let anyone use them? Prosecuting them if they tried?

"It was like the whole world tried to turn time back before the technological age. It was almost a religious fanaticism: Mankind tried to do without toys, tried to live simpler, tried to atone for their sins. Their intent was good, but driven by fear and rage it became devastating. It's taken them decades to begin to embrace nano-science again, and they are doing so very gingerly. They still have not managed to dare turning their eyes back to space, especially not to send any human into the void again. To do so would be like digging up our graves."

We all sit in silence as Paul goes back to his coffee—Tru has refilled his cup, her hand unsteady. No one speaks again for an uncomfortably long time.

"It was not a case of no one coming, Colonel Burke," Paul eventually tries. "They sent probes, and loads upon loads of supplies, all funded by charities. Drops still happen every few months even to this day, like rituals of leaving gifts of food for dead ancestors. But by the time Earth even remotely recovered from the global backlash of the Martian tragedy, they found they had no real means to get back here even if they weren't terrified of the idea."

"You said they sent probes?" Rick wants to know.

"Yes, doctor. Even the humanitarian drops were equipped with transmitters and sensors to look for survivors. But every one of them failed without sending a single promising message back, and Earth assumed the worse: nano-contamination, or Disc attack."

"But it wasn't either one of those?" I probe.

"No, Colonel. It was plain sabotage, simple human violence. By the time the probes and drops did start arriving, the survivors had been well-established in their own fears. They hid from the probes, and when they had opportunity, they disabled them. And further: they made sure that nothing they did could be seen from space—hiding from the sky is the law of every survivor culture. They took the food and supplies from the drops, but made sure to destroy any transmitters that might reveal their activity. They were happy to take the supplies—there is a market in trading 'delicacies' from Earth—but they saw the drops as bait in a kind of trap.

"Can you imagine what it was like for them?" Paul defends when we look like we're not convinced. "To fight so hard just for the basic necessities of life? To breathe? To have water and food and heat? And all the while being afraid to call for rescue—even being seen—because you are afraid of what would come instead? Knowing you could never go home?"

"You ETE seemed to have had a fairly plush time of it," Matthew accuses.

"We did not withhold our bounty, Colonel," Paul tells him icily. "We invested ourselves completely into providing air, water, fuel. Repairing and maintaining the Feed Lines. Reaching out to any in need. But the survivors were not what they had been before the Apocalypse. The spirit of cooperative survival you had known—that same spirit Colonel Ram exploited to restore the peace between the Corporations and the Ecos on-planet—and you are still quite legendary for that throughout the valleys, Colonel Ram—they call you 'The Peacemaker' like they called Moses 'The Lawgiver'—that spirit was quickly replaced. Humans revert to violent competition when resources are limited, and fear of your own kind becomes the rule of the land. They became militant, tribal, fighting each other over what little there was in terms of food, shelter, weapons... Scavenging. Preying on weaker groups. Raiding from each other. Killing."

He trails off. Fingers his coffee cup.

"You said there was trade," Tru wants to know. Paul gives her almost a frown.

"Trade is possible only between factions of similar strength. Balance is critical. It is too tempting for a stronger group to pillage a weaker one, even after all these years."

"And Earth hasn't sent a _single_ manned mission?" Anton cuts in to confront the glaring inconsistency.

"As I said, the probes and drop transmitters either found nothing because the survivors made it a point to remain unfound, or they mysteriously stopped transmitting shortly after arrival. That only served to reinforce Earth's fears of the worst. So while select dedicated groups continued to fund the unmanned 'humanitarian' missions, all manned missions were called off, then were banned by the Quarantine."

"Then what about the Lancer?" I ask him before anyone else can accuse. "That ship that showed up empty last week? It wasn't crewed?"

"It was crewed," Paul admits after a tense pause, pain coming through his voice. "And I apologize: I should have clarified that there were no 'official' missions, and the ones that were not public knowledge were also certainly not intended as rescue. It was likely an illegal profiteering mission—we managed to track a small number of these throughout the years—struggling corporations or rogue government agencies would covertly break Quarantine to attempt to study and perhaps harvest what they hoped was viable nanotech. Apparently there is still a black market for secret military technology and nano-medicine for the very wealthy. Not that there also weren't holdouts who attempted honest rescue flights—but the craft you have in your bay is both too expensive and too heavily armed to have been funded by a radical charity."

"You were aware of its arrival?" Lisa asks him.

"We observed the Lancer approaching the wreckage of Tranquility Colony almost twenty-five years ago. Tranquility now consists of only one of its original three domes above ground, and that one is shattered. It is, however, teeming with wild growth from the original experimental gardens—the most likely source of the plant life you have been trying to cultivate."

"There's more of that?" Ryder interrupts him. He smiles at her.

"Much more, Doctor. Spread from Tranquility and Pax, taking root anywhere there is water and warmth. Seeds travel with the winds and with the traveling Nomads. The wild growth plays havoc on our feed lines. You actually sit in a fairly arid part of Melas. There are plains of scrub thriving throughout the valleys, and deep chasms to the East in Coprates that have become veritable jungles."

"And the Lancer?" Matthew reminds him.

"Tranquility's plant life likely drew them there—it _is_ visible from orbit," Paul darkens again. "But what they could not expect was the particular viciousness of the tribe that defends the ruin. Their ship likely flew off and hid itself as an emergency protocol when they did not return from their sampling foray. The ship's simple AI probably mistook your transmitter signal for a retrieval call."

"And these 'tribes' you keep mentioning?" I ask him.

"Life will out, Colonel," his smile goes somewhat sad. "They have managed. They have bred—most of their current number have never known Earth except in stories, and all those stories end with Earth as the great enemy, the world-burner. Now, the tribes all have their own cultures, their own means. We tried to keep up relations—some groups still live quite well in the heat shadows of our Stations—but many we have had to distance. We have certain advantages, you see—and I do not speak of what our researchers have wrought from the nanotech experiments we preserved. Our Stations are all inaccessible because of their altitude, and fear has prevented more aggressive attacks."

"Fear?" I ask before Matthew can.

"All groups recognize that the Stations are life itself, Colonel. As long as we provide that life, no one will risk attacking us. And there are some who have come to realize what we have become. Having lost understanding of their own ancestors' research, they fear what we are. They call us 'Eternals.' Wizards and spirits. The Muslim Nomads call us _Jinni_. We do not actively dispel this illusion. It serves. It allows us to continue to provide what we do, and to occasionally intercede in the conflicts of the tribes when the delicate balance of power between them is disturbed—though this latter activity is frowned upon more and more by our Elder Council."

"And are we just another 'tribe' to intercede with?" I want to know.

"No, Colonel Ram." He looks me dead in the eyes. "You are not a part of this new world. You are the past. And you are the future. There are many who would be afraid of you, because of what you mean."

"And what, exactly, do we 'mean'?" Matthew blurts out before I can keep control of the conversation. But Paul just resumes his patient, inscrutable smile.

"You mean that Earth will be coming back."

Chapter 5: Dissenting Opinions

Paul Stilson continued his dialogue, answering any and all questions put to him with apparent candor. He maintained his palpable urgency throughout, giving the underlying impression that time—suddenly now after the fifty years we'd been sleeping—was of the essence. This didn't help to improve Matthew's trust.

"Was it you that tampered with our Hiber-Sleep systems?" Ryder asks before Matthew can put the question to him in a more prosecutorial tone.

"I maintained your systems," he is careful in wording his confession. "I sought only to ensure your health and safety."

"By extending our sleep for _fifty_ years?" Halley takes a turn at him.

"That was not my decision," he tells her levelly. "In fact, I do not personally possess the knowledge necessary to enhance your hibernation systems."

"Your Council of Elders?" I try. He nods.

"I had been looking for your base for several years, using the excuse of geological surveying to pursue my unauthorized 'hobby', but I did not expect to find you all still in hibernation. Upon discovering you, I reported your status immediately. I had hoped my Elders would rush to revive you, but there was long deliberation, and I was ordered to keep my knowledge of you secret even from the rest of our people. Days passed. I began to doubt the wisdom of telling the Council about you, despite the fact that my own father is an Elder. Then they ordered me to leave your base and not return."

"But you did," I prod him. He gives me a bit of a sheepish grin.

"In time," he admits. "And I kept returning in secret. But after a number of years, your systems were at risk of failing."

"The system would have simply revived us," Halley tells him.

"No, doctor," he corrects her, his voice tense. "Something had been done to your systems to prevent that—I only became aware of it as I came to study your technology during my visits."

"Sabotage?" I want to know. I catch Matthew's gaze, and he gives me a look to say he isn't buying a word of this.

"I don't think so, Colonel. It appeared that someone simply wanted to ensure you did not wake on your own, so the failsafe was disabled. I do not know enough about your systems to know if this was done before or after I discovered you, so I did not know whether I should bring this information to the Council. But as your time came close to running out, I dared approach the Council again and admitted my continuing visits. I expected censure, but received only silence, as again there was cloistered deliberation. Then, instead of restricting me, they gave me detailed instructions for modifying your systems to extend your sleep safely."

"But not to wake us," Matthew grumbles.

"I was not about to risk all of your lives by attempting to revive you myself," Paul calmly insists. "As I told you: I'm a geologist, not a physician. And they only gave me instructions to accomplish one specific task."

"But we did wake up," Halley presses the conclusion. "Was that you?"

"The instructions I was provided restored your failsafe, but reset it to the newly extended parameters of your system. And when I returned home, I did find myself more closely monitored, my movements restricted. Still, I managed to find my way back here a few more times over the decades. Honestly, I did not expect to find you awake when I came this time—I must have miscalculated the dates. I've spent the last week camped in the desert, just trying to consider how to approach you."

Matthew can't help rolling his eyes, but he keeps his mouth shut.

"What about Colonel Copeland?" Halley blurts out. "Our commanding officer—he stayed awake while the rest of us went down. We've seen no sign of him."

Paul seems to brood on that, then shakes his head.

"I'm sorry. It was already more than a decade after the Apocalypse when I first found you. In my curiosity, I explored your facility thoroughly. I did not see any sign that anyone else had been active—the dust was undisturbed, the only tracks my own. But neither did I find any human remains."

The guards are changed out (the relief is still wearing HA suits) and a break is called to allow for the basic necessities of the human body. Paul is offered the nearest toilet without overly-invasive escort, but he politely declines (even though he's had several cups of coffee).

Lunch is brought up, which Paul receives with the same gracious reverence that he did our "real" coffee, though he picks at it like he isn't sure what parts—if any—are edible.

Fed, stretched, relieved and reassembled, the questions flow again as a sudden dust blow kicks up outside.

"How many survivors are we talking about?" Halley wants to know.

"Thousands, easily," he throws it out like the number should not be surprising, "though an accurate census is almost impossible. While there are still a few groups that keep close to our Stations, most have made a rule of avoiding us—if not out of superstition, then because they fear we possess the means to call Earth. The same reason they will come to fear you, only worse, because you wear the uniforms of those that bombed them."

"How many of you—your people—are there?" Ryder asks.

Paul shrugs. "All ten of our Marineris Stations remain operational. We lost several members of our teams in the early years—illness, accidents, radiation, age—a few unfortunate violent encounters with other groups—and children have been born, grown, had children of their own. None of us have died in quite a long time. We thrive, but do not exceed our resources."

"You avoided the question," Matthew criticizes.

"I realize that," Paul admits. "Partly because I am not updated on our current census. Partly because I'm not sure what I _should_ share."

"Trust will hopefully come in time," I allow.

"Are you all... like _you_?" Halley asks gingerly.

"Not the children, those younger than twenty-five, as I said before. They are no different from you. Natural. That is why we are so protective of them. The adults and elders have been implanted. Like me. We heal fast. We enjoy good health. We don't age perceptibly."

" _Can_ you contact Earth?" Anton presses. I catch Matthew's eyes narrowing.

"We have restored our technology since the Apocalypse, and advanced it—as you have seen. Though we have been primarily investing in our original mission to create and maintain a viable atmosphere, we should also be able to produce a transmitter capable of sending reasonably clear signals."

"Even through the interference of the electrostatic net?"

"The current atmosphere Ceiling is by no means intended to block transmissions," Paul defends. "It would be far better, for example, to transmit from outside of the covered areas, or directly from our Stations because of their altitude, than from deep in the Chasma as you are. Otherwise, you lack the power and the filtering technology to penetrate the interference."

"Can you provide us the needed technology?" I ask before Matthew can accuse again.

Paul falls silent for a moment, his eyes betraying some internal conversation. His lips purse.

"Was that a hard question?" Matthew blurts out sarcastically.

"No, Colonel Burke. It is just that I may not be able to answer it independently."

"Your 'Council'?" I try. He nods.

"I understand this is a point of trust between us," Paul allows. "But we do have strict rules about sharing our technology with other factions. We have had bad experiences in the past."

"Are you the only group with viable nanotechnology?" Ryder asks.

"It is a matter of defining that viability, Doctor. We are the only known group to have advanced and harnessed the technology in a directed, controlled fashion. There are stories that come from the Nomad tribes—the groups that keep mobile for scavenging and raiding, as well as for avoiding attack from rivals. They sometimes speak of encounters with individual entities with abilities that could be nano-enhancements. The stories are likely exaggerated, and have an almost fairy-tale quality—as I said, the Muslim tribes have taken to calling _us_ 'Jinni.'"

"What kind of 'abilities' are we talking about?" Carver asks seriously. Paul shakes his head.

"Camp tales, Lieutenant," he dismisses the question. "Fantasies for entertaining or frightening children. We ourselves have had no confirmed encounters with any other enhanced humans."

"And what kind of 'abilities' would _you_ have that would inspire 'genie' stories amongst the less-fortunate?" Matthew presses. "I mean, besides the whole excellent health and fast healing thing?" I see Rick nod and bring up images of Paul's mystery objects.

"Nothing malevolent, I assure you," Paul insists calmly but firmly. "We do not make weapons."

"And these deceptively simple objects?" Rick probes. "Your spheres and rods?"

Paul almost chuckles at that.

"Funny, Doctor Mann—that is exactly what we call them: Spheres and Rods. They are tools that respond directly to my bodily nanites. No one other than an adult ETE can make any use of them."

"'Tools'?" Rick insists on clarity, "not 'weapons'?"

"Almost any tool can be used as a weapon, Doctor," Paul admits bitterly. "It gets us back to our question of trust."

He slips back inside himself again, as if considering what options he might have. The dust blow outside is sand-blasting the windows, obscuring our view as it hisses and howls across our bunkers. Paul goes to sip his coffee, then stops, like the drink has inspired something.

"There may be ways that I can help you without violating my own people's rules." He looks at Anton. "I may be able to use my tools to help repair what you have, to restore it, adjust it. You could have a viable transmitter. Functional aircraft. I could even assist you in making use of the Lancer..."

"YOU WILL DO NO SUCH THING!!!" a voice fills the room, as if coming right out of the walls.

" _Simon_..." I hear Paul grumble under his breath. And then something else comes out of the walls:

Before any of us can react, a blue suit and silver mask identical to Paul's comes walking right through a section of reinforced bunker concrete exterior wall as if it were only liquid. Both armored guards lock their weapons immediately, but the figure is holding one of the "Spheres" in one hand, and a "Rod" in the other. With a gesture, the metal of the Sphere seems to swim like quicksilver, and something that looks like a sandstorm hits the guards and knocks them backwards. It takes my mind several seconds to process what is happening: the blowing "sand" is actually the substance of their armor and weapons, breaking down into dust, disintegrating. Their suits and weapons are very much like sand against a strong wind. In an instant, the entire front of their armor is gone, leaving them naked. But their bare skin appears unmarked.

Matthew is already moving. Impulsively, he draws his sidearm and begins emptying it at the newcomer before I can shout for him to stand down. I see the Sphere glow, and the bullets flare and disappear as they hit some invisible field around the blue suit. The newcomer—Simon, Paul called him—makes a gesture with the Rod in his other hand, like a magician with a wand, and I see Matthew's gun snap back out of his grip and smack him hard in the forehead, sending him sprawling. Carver and Lisa are drawing their weapons as well.

" _Stand down!_ " I shout. But Paul's voice booms over mine:

"STOP THIS THIS INSTANT, SIMON!!"

The figure becomes still. Then he lowers his hands slowly, slips his "tools" back into their belt carriers. With a slight shake of his head, his mask folds up, revealing a face similar to Paul's, only leaner, sharper.

I realize somewhat numbly that the wind has suddenly died down outside, adding to the tense silence of our disturbingly unbalanced stand-off. (I wonder if the newcomer—Simon—somehow whipped it up to cover his approach. He may have been just outside as long as the dust was blowing. I try to remember how long that was.)

"You go too far, little brother," Simon scolds. Paul ignores him and turns to me.

"Colonel Ram, let me introduce my older brother: Simon Peter Stilson." He then turns and offers a hand to Matthew, who is wiping the blood from his forehead and struggling to get up. Matthew ignores his offer.

"No weapons, Mr. Stilson?" Rick is accusing, examining the partially stripped armor. The soldiers inside appear shaken, but intact.

"Tools are what you do with them, Doctor," Paul rephrases his earlier sentiment. "Simon could have killed all of you in an instant, but it is not our way. We have no need to kill, and life is a precious thing on this world."

"This is supposed to make me feel better?" Matthew grouses as Lisa gets him back into his chair. Halley is checking his head wound.

Paul raises his right hand, palm open, then rolls it into a kind of summoning gesture. In a moment, his belt of "tools" comes up through the deck at his feet—probably in a fairly straight line from the labs below us—just as his brother came through the two-meter-thick exterior wall. The belt glides into his outstretched hand, and he puts it back on. Then he looks directly at Matthew.

"It should, Colonel," he says icily. Then to me: "I apologize for my brother."

"Apologize for yourself," Simon hisses at him, now sounding very much like a rival sibling.

" _I_ did not reveal our technology to them, Simon," Paul returns. " _You_ did that."

"The _Rules_ , Paul..."

"Are not broken," Paul corrects. "And I will be happy to take that up with the Council myself."

"You would help them contact Earth?" Simon demands.

"Earth _will_ be coming back, Simon," Paul softens, faces his brother. "One day. That is inevitable. Is it not better that they come this way: summoned by their own, who can tell them that their fears are unfounded?"

"Are their fears unfounded?" Simon returns before one of us can say it.

"They can at least know that there are survivors. And that there is no contamination."

"And what will they say about _us_?"

Paul falls silent at that, turns his eyes to the deck. Then his smile comes back. He puts his hand on his brother's shoulder.

"Then we would do better to have friends that would vouch for us than enemies who would fear us," he tells him gently. Then he faces me: "I will help you, Colonel."

### Part Two: Cities in Dust

Chapter 1: New World Order

11 July, 2115:

Sergeant Morales can't help but jump—her victory shout muffled by her mask but loud-and-clear on the Link—as ASV-5 makes a slow but relatively even turn a hundred feet above the plain beyond the main gate. Its VTOL jets kick up a haze of rusty dust, but they don't sputter this time. They burn steady, shoving out the steam exhaust that comes from burning hydrogen with oxygen. The steam rises fast and thick in the cold morning air.

I can see Paul's signature blue suit standing silently behind Morales' group of cheering techs on the pads. Morales bounces over to him and gives him another solid celebratory slap on the shoulder. Paul doesn't seem to respond, or perhaps he doesn't really know how to. If he is smiling under his silver mask, I can't see it.

("Damn thing makes him look like a chrome bug," Matthew has more than once complained about the opaque ETE faceplate. "Like that old movie where the guy winds up with a fly head.")

"One up, four to go—if you include the Flash Gordon Special," Matthew barely (reluctantly?) celebrates, leaning on his stick as he watches the ASV practice a field landing, touching its legs gently to the rocky plain, before blasting off hard and heading out for a longer spin in the valley.

"Should be two by next week," I remind him. He turns to look back toward the pads. He lets himself smile, watching Morales' team celebrate. But then his eyes lock on Paul, and he goes stoic again. "You ever planning to cut the man some slack, Matthew?"

"Is he ever planning to share his little Fountain of Youth with us?" Matthew gives back half-hearted.

"Would you take it if he offered?"

He chuckles under his mask, shakes his head. "Hell, no. Who wants to live forever?" He chips at the bunker concrete with his stick—the topsides of the bunkers are steadily getting riddled by his frustrated tic. "Still, a working interplanetary radio would be nice."

I let the comment go ignored—we've had this conversation enough times. Paul can't make the deal himself, so we need to go to the source ourselves, try to force a meeting with his mysterious Council of Elders, as soon as we have the wings to get ourselves there.

The ASV is already out of sight, its only tell the mixed cloud-trail of dust and rapidly condensing steam it has left in its wake. Kastl is keeping running commentary over the Link, letting us know that the cobbled systems are still running within parameters.

I look back again at Paul, who has moved further away from the celebrations of Morales' crew. He's looking out to the north, and I follow his masked gaze as best I can estimate. What he's looking at becomes quickly obvious: On a rise about half-a-klick out is the speck of incongruous color that betrays another blue-suited figure—likely Simon—standing out there, watching us. Watching Paul.

Paul turns and goes back inside.

I go looking for him again when he doesn't appear for lunch (but then, none of the seniors have been eating on schedule since Paul started trying to help us). MAI—keeping close tabs on him—lets me know he's in one of the B-Deck labs.

"The Sphere is a kind of blunt instrument," Paul is telling Anton and Rick as they labor over the fine hardware of the makeshift transmitter, its once neatly modular components broken open and strewn across a luminous worktable. "It projects a field that selectively affects the binding and repelling forces of matter. We designed them for defense and shelter when in the field. The Rods are more precise tools—their effect can be focused down to a few nanometers. I can use them to cut, fuse, push and pull."

"But you can't just whip us up a new set of processors," Anton allows. Paul shakes his head, his mouth almost pouting.

"First problem: I'm a geologist, not an electrical engineer," he apologizes. "I was hoping you still had enough available parts that I could help you cobble together, clean up, fit. I can do basic reshaping, cutting, welding, machining—that was enough to help Sergeant Morales make the parts she needed and put a ship together. Still, it took her almost a month to teach me what I needed to know about your aircraft to be of any use.

"Which gets me to my second barrier: my tools are limited by hand-eye coordination. My visor lets me see down to micro scale, but actually working that small is impossible with the tools I have. Even if you could teach me about nano-circuit design, I can't work as small as you need, no more than _you_ could fashion the circuits with hand tools."

"And you can't just give us new gear," Anton states in a way that it is clearly not a question. Paul answers him anyway with a bitter head shake.

"Could your people repair _our_ gear if we sent it to your Stations?" I interject as I let myself in to the lab. Paul looks up and gives me a quick smile of greeting, but then he scowls again. His eyes do that thing where it looks like he's holding an internal argument. Then he takes a deep, hard breath.

"We do have tech-manufacturing capabilities, of course, though they're not geared to work on technology this..." His voice trails off with a shrug.

"Primitive?" Rick fills in, keeping his annoyance fairly well in check.

" _Large_ ," Paul tries. "All of our technology is nano-scale, Doctor. And it's all cross-interface designed—it all works only in harmony with similar technology. So even if our Council allowed you access to one of our transmitters, you couldn't make it work."

"But _you_ could," Anton tries the obvious, hopeful. Paul looks conflicted.

"I'm not sure how Earth would respond to receiving a call after all these years that comes from gear like yours," I let him off the hook. "There will be enough hard to explain topics as it is." Rick nods heavily in agreement. Paul gives me an uncomfortable half-grin.

"Manufacturing your technology would likely require complete re-programming of our nano-builders, assuming any of our Elders is still familiar with this kind of hardware," Paul estimates, sounding wearily frustrated. Then he goes quiet for a moment, brooding. "I think that's the reason my brother left me here to do as I pleased: he knew just how far I could get. And this is it: I can help you rebuild your base, get your simple vehicles running again, guide you as best I can with what little I know of the surface tribes... I can even help build you a proper Uplink antenna. But any hope of replacing your processors _is_ going to require Council approval, and I'm afraid they will be even less receptive to the idea than Simon was."

"You made Simon a good argument," Anton praises him. "Earth will come back, and better with us telling them that you're allies, not..." He stops himself, as if not wanting to offend.

"Suspicious, contaminated freaks?" Paul concludes himself.

"I was looking for a better way to say it," Anton apologizes.

"But it's what Earthside will think," I agree.

"My people did keep you asleep for fifty years," Paul admits. "I'm sure it will be assumed that we did it to hide what we've been doing, what we've become."

I give him a reluctant nod.

"What the Colonel is too polite to say is that helping us—even this late in the game—would make you look a lot more benign and trustworthy than refusing to," Rick takes it after a few beats on uncomfortable silence. "They'll still need damn good reasons for everything else they've done, but full cooperation might be seen as a good-faith step in the right direction."

"My people have done amazing things," Paul does a poor job excusing, betraying his own feelings on the matter. "Their fatal flaw is that they did them in isolation, with no concern for the opinions or fears of Earth. In fact, I'm sure my forefathers were convinced that Earth would actually attempt to interfere with their efforts to provide the survivors necessary air and water and heat. You have to imagine what those times were like: Like the rest of the survivors, we quickly came to fear what Earth might do, so much that we chose to hide from them, to maroon ourselves, to give up any hope of returning 'home'. After that, all we had was time and ourselves, and a cache of radical research projects given into our safekeeping by the corporate labs that feared the Ecos or Discs would destroy their precious work. The directed advancement of that technology gave us purpose to fill the years—the Stations' terraforming plants are very self-sustaining; they could go on operating without us. In turn, we put the advancements we made to the only things that were important: accelerating the terraforming of the planet for the benefit of everyone trying to live here, and keeping ourselves thriving to do so."

"You have amazing compassion for someone raised in elite isolation," I compliment him.

"I am a rare exception," Paul discounts. "Which is why my own brother keeps watch over me."

"How rare?" I ask. "Are there others we could contact?"

"No one in authority," he admits sadly. "Like many cultures, our 'rebels' tend to be our youth, not our established senior leadership. And that is another reason you may find little welcome in our Stations: The Council will fear the dissent you may sow in the younger generations."

"So our waking up hasn't been made general knowledge among your people yet?" Anton asks him.

"As I told you, I was officially censored by the Council, ordered not to speak of you to anyone—I was even kept under watch, which made getting back here a creative challenge. And while I unexpectedly found you awake, I fully expect the Council knew you had woken as soon as you began moving on the surface, changing your power-consumption profile. I have no reason to believe the Council would be any more open with this knowledge than before, just as they have made no attempts to contact you. You are UNMAC, remember, and UNMAC has become synonymous with unreasoning fear, mindless destruction. You are seen as the ultimate enemy to all precious life on this planet. The surviving tribes have taken to calling you the 'Unmakers.' You are the devil of their mythologies."

"And if we show up on the doorstep?" I let him know what I'm considering. "Fly out to the nearest Station and knock on the hatch? Do your people answer? Do they disintegrate us? Or do they just keep pretending nobody's home?"

Paul looks like he's struggling for any kind of answer.

"Is it worth going?" I try.

"I suppose better that way, than by some surprise encounter that results in gunfire," Paul accepts, then he laughs under his breath.

"Like our surprise encounter with you," I tell him I get the joke. He rubs his chest like it still hurts sometimes.

"Yes, Colonel. That could have gone better."

13 July, 2115:

At just after 0600, I get the call that Paul and Anton—after an apparently sleepless night—have "unlocked" the Lancer. We can fly it.

"You really mean to take a spin in this scary thing?" Matthew tries to dissuade me as we climb up into the Lancer's forward airlock. "We do have _two_ ASVs up now."

"And if our attempted first-contact mission runs into problems?" I return.

"Mechanical problems or diplomatic problems?" he qualifies. "Ship breaking, or ship getting shot at? Or in this case: Ship getting impulsively disassembled on a molecular level by technology we can't defend against."

"At least the Lancer doesn't _look_ like it's bristling with guns," I give him one of my reasons.

"Is Blueboy going to make those weapons work for us?" he criticizes.

"I already have," Paul himself answers as we come into the cockpit. Matthew just shakes his head and shuts up.

"We have access, Colonel," Anton tells me, swiveling almost joyfully in the forward chair. A slide of his fingertips over the armrest, and the front of the cockpit seems to melt away, giving us a clear view of the bay in front of the ship. More graceful strokes bring up graphics that look like gun sights, target lock graphics.

"But this is the coolest part:"

A relief map hovers in front of the outside forward view. I immediately recognize the familiar shapes of the Chasmata that make up the Valles Marineris. But the map has changed. The bigger features—the lines of the canyons themselves—seem mostly the same, but the interior landscapes appear different, re-sculpted, smoothed. And there are many new craters. Anton rotates it in all planes, zooms in and out like an excited child with a new game.

" _Recent_ orbital mapping," Anton explains. "The images were probably taken before they made landfall. This is Marineris _after_ the Big Blow. This..." He brings up another map—the map I ingrained in my memory on the trip from Earth and studied tactically every day in the years before we went to sleep—and lays it over the top of the first. "...is 'Pre-Apocalypse.' And this..." Icons flash. Dots and lines and labels detail the parallel maps. "This shows us where everything used to be, in comparison to what it looks like now. Colony sites. ETE Stations. Feed Lines. The other two UNMAC bases."

"Are they still there?" Matthew speaks up instantly. Anton makes the ghostly old map vanish, tries to zoom in on the new one, increasing resolution.

"Melas Three looks completely buried," Anton confirms. "Worse than what happened to us—a nuke hit closer." He highlights the offending crater, the resulting slide patterns. "But then Three was all heavy bunker, most of it flush with the surface—our hardest site. It may be intact."

"But no Hiber-Sleep," Matthew remembers sourly. "They hadn't installed the couches yet."

"And the new surface over it looks undisturbed," Anton shows him. "No one's tried to dig it out."

"That doesn't mean no one is there," Paul tries. "Remember: Most of the survivors have gone to great lengths to hide themselves from anyone who might be looking down from the skies."

"Base One looks like a loss," Anton continues, zooming in on the original base site west of us. There's a spread of half-buried twisted wreckage—little is recognizable. The unfinished bunkers look shattered, collapsed, completely breached.

"Never was in the best real estate," Matthew mourns what was to be his command, probably considering what his fate might have been if he was there and not here when the bombs fell.

"Either site might be salvageable," Anton offers. "We might be able to find what we need to get the transmitter tower up. Or at least supplies. Food. Ammo. Even vehicles."

"I doubt they've gone un-looted," Paul argues. "Your site here was the farthest from our Feed Lines, and I think that's what protected it from opportunistic raiding. Not many could get here and back to a tap-site without running out of the bottled air they could practically carry with them."

"And there's been no activity from our own people, no survivors?" I ask him. His lips purse.

"What I have heard is anecdotal only, Colonel, but this is what I have been told: In the beginning, the UNMAC survivors couldn't contact Earthside, and—like many other groups—were eventually driven to evacuate, relocate," he explains. "They were either too far from our surviving Feed Lines to keep the sites viable, or there was too much pressure from competing tribes. Some probably fell in with existing groups, pooling resources and skills, working toward mutual survival. Others... Many lives were literally lost in those early days, their fates unknown."

"Still, we can use the Lancer and the maps to start doing recon," Anton changes the subject back to what's pressing. "Check the other base sites. And the colonies."

"I can show you where Nomad tap-sites have been established on our Feed Lines so you can refuel and refill," Paul offers.

"Maybe we should check the other bases first," Matthew considers. "We might find what we need there, and not have to deal with the ETE at all."

I digest that for a few moments, then turn to Paul:

"I'm assuming your people will be watching us, whatever we do. So what if we go looking for our own means and _don't_ approach you—what would your Elder Council make of that?"

"I see your point, Colonel," Paul allows. "You're assuming a no-win: If you go to the Council, they will refuse you. If you act without contacting the Council, they will assume you are suspicious, prejudicial; the UNMAC everyone is afraid of."

"Would they try to stop us?" I ask him directly.

He purses his lips again, shakes his head like he isn't sure.

"Is that why your people left us sleeping so damn long?" Matthew confronts. "So you wouldn't have to make that decision?"

"Perhaps partially, Colonel Burke," Paul agrees candidly. "I expect the Council was hoping for... Well, for some other solution to present itself. Our longevity does give anything our Elders do an appearance of protracted procrastination. The planet had already been isolated for many years—as well as having become a violent, predatory, desperate place—when I finally discovered you were sleeping here and the Council explicitly ordered that I not revive you. As I said: they deliberated about that for many days. They have never shared with me the content of that debate, but I expect there were a number of reasons behind the final decision, though I doubt you will find any of them acceptable. The foremost would be the fear that you would contact Earth and bring down another Apocalypse, intentionally or otherwise. There is also the fear that you would attempt to enforce order among the various competing survivor factions—you do possess an advantage in terms of weapons and technology over the majority of the tribes, but the tribes would likely fight you to the death, and you would replace the balance of tribal violence with actual genocide. And I am quite certain at least some on the Council—many of my Elders have become men of patience, not action—felt the situation would be best served by waiting for Earth's inevitable return, perhaps imagining that your 'discovery' at that time might have made such a return hopeful, joyous. As things stand now, any visit from Earth or representatives of its military force would likely be met with fear and violence. And Earth would find a planet of what they would consider hostile savages."

"Explains why you didn't just kill us while we slept," Matthew accuses. "You needed us around for whenever it became clear that Earth would try a second coming. Are we supposed some kind of intermediary? Or leverage—hostages?"

"No, Colonel," Paul defends, sounding honestly hurt. "Whatever my Council's motives, you must believe me when I say that killing you was never even considered. The ETE exist to bring life to this world—it is all we live for. We do not kill—taking life is our greatest taboo. And I know you have absolutely no reason to believe me."

"Perhaps we should do both," I interrupt them. "Send a delegation to meet with the ETE, while we use our ASVs to scout for supplies and other survivors."

"I still strongly urge caution on the latter objective," Paul warns again. "Most anyone you meet will see your ships and your uniforms and think of the stories they still tell of the Apocalypse and the world before the Apocalypse. They will know you as Unmakers, come to kill them."

"Then we will do what we can to avoid direct confrontation," I reassure him. "But we can't just sit here. We need to see what's out there—if for no other reason than to tell Earth what's been happening here when we do manage to call out."

"So who goes to Oz?" Matthew wants to know.

"The Peacemaker," I tell him with a grin. Paul smiles at me.

Anton gets the Lancer communicating with MAI, uploading its few remaining files. The updated maps and pictures—even though they're likely decades old—are priceless intel. Command Briefing is packed by 0800.

"According to the Lancer's orbital imaging, Melas Three may be as intact as we are, assuming it survived the blast and the slide," Anton lays it out on the screens, zooming in on the real estate in question: just beyond the prominence where the southeastern rim of Melas meets the south rim of Coprates. But even on maximum resolution, nothing is visible but rock and sand where the base should be. "The lack of ruins or debris is actually promising. I ran some quick structural models, and the probability of the main facility surviving is high. But getting to it will be more than we can manage right now. It looks buried deep, with no surface markers—we could spend days digging before we find it. Maybe weeks. And it's a long way to go to come back with nothing."

"But Melas One looks gutted, abandoned and picked clean," Rick redirects, and Anton shifts the map.

"There are colony sites closer to Melas One than Melas Three," Tru points out. "That might be the better place to start, promising or not."

Anton zooms out a bit, selects the northern Melas Chasma, and lights up the Melas One ruin and the five colony sites in that region.

"Mariner is gone," Anton tells us heavily, zooming in on the mostly-buried ruin, the patterns of wreckage swept away by rock. "It looks like it got hit hard by multiple close blasts before it got swept by a slide. It wasn't reinforced enough yet to have survived—I ran the model a hundred times. There's less left of it than Melas One."

He stops, realizing he needs to give Tru some time and silence to process. There were three hundred UNMAC personnel and a hundred-plus construction engineers at Melas One, but there were almost eight hundred civilian colonists working to rebuild Mariner, many of whom shared air with us here.

"What about the other sites?" Tru pushes us on with little pause.

Anton hops the map zoom about thirty miles east-southeast.

"Avalon," he names the colony. The site from orbit is mostly buried and broken, but show signs of what may be some intact bunker structures, or at least that someone attempted to make repairs, to dig out. "We had Special Forces there from the Eco conflict."

"Paul mentioned that some of our people survived, but they moved elsewhere when they couldn't keep their sites viable," Lisa remembers. Paul nods. "They might still be close, or they may have left sign of where they went."

"Where's Zodanga?" I ask, scanning the north-eastern rim of Melas. Zodanga had been built high up into the rim, above the less-stable slide zones where there was good strong rock, and mineral resources to supply their manufacturing efforts. Zodanga was an on-planet support industry, refining fuel and building vehicles and aircraft for the other colonies using native resources. When I find the site, I realize why it was so hard to spot: it looks picked bare, but very cleanly, like a thorough salvage job—they took everything but the concrete.

"There were close nukes, but the colony was up high and dug into rock," Rick considers. "The sim model spares them in most variations. Damaged, but survivable."

"Still, it looks like they stripped everything and relocated," Anton theorizes.

"So where'd they go?" Matthew wants to know. I look at Paul. He frowns, looks like he doesn't know what to say.

"We register draws off our lines in the rim area, too high for the valley Nomads. And we've heard stories of a raiding tribe that uses homemade aircraft, but we haven't seen them."

"Have you _looked_?" Matthew criticizes.

"We have kept our distance from the survivors, more so as the years have passed."

"And let them rape and pillage each other?"

"You would prefer we controlled them by superior force?"

"Not at all," I try to defuse. "As you've said: You're scientists, not soldiers."

Matthew doesn't seem the least bit soothed. Paul looks away, ignores him.

Anton moves south, across the open valley.

"Arcadia Colony also looks like a total loss," Rick admits, seeing only twisted scrap scattered in the rock and sand, a fresh crater more than close enough to have put the colony in the nuclear blast wave. Foundations aren't even recognizable.

Freedom, near the southeast rim, looks like Avalon: Like someone may have tried to dig out, rebuild, then stripped and abandoned it.

"Another colony we had Special Operators in," Lisa remembers.

Anton moves west, across the valley.

"This is weird," Anton points out three sites that run roughly in a vertical line through the center of Melas. "Okay: Uqba and Baraka—the UME sites—look similar to Arcadia: blasted, ripped apart and picked clean. But look here:" He zooms in on the southern-most site, sitting just east of a promontory ridge that stretches fifty miles into the valley floor from the south rim. "This is where Shinkyo—the Japanese corporate that made so much money on tech toys—was. And it's gone. Just gone."

"That's a big crater dead-zero," Matthew concludes from the image.

"But that's the weird part," Anton explains, "the other craters have residual radiation signatures—and this is an old map—but this one is _cold_. And the larger blast-pattern doesn't look right, not compared to the other craters."

"It's a _fake_?" Lisa realizes, incredulous. "Did they bury themselves?"

Anton brings up a pre-Apocalypse image: four heavy pressure domes almost the size of stadiums, connected to big blocky manufacturing fabs, two reactors and a large landing facility. There's no sign of any of it on the newer map.

"There's never been a draw off our Feeds, so we assumed there were no survivors," Paul insists, then apologizes like the error his own: "But we didn't look closely."

"Still, burying a site that size would be an amazing piece of engineering," Anton doesn't believe. "Same with relocating it."

"But it's another long way to go for potentially nothing," Rick de-prioritizes our curiosity.

"Or to look for folks that don't want finding," Tru agrees.

"Maybe not this trip," I decide. "What else is in the neighborhood—close to Melas One?"

"City of Industry, Pioneer, Frontier," Anton moves the map north, lists the northern Melas and Candor US corporate colonies out beyond Melas One. "These are weird in a different way: Wrecked and apparently not viable, but they don't show the same signs of scavenging as anything else that's left above ground—it's like they've remained untouched since the bombing."

"And all of those sites had UNMAC garrisons," Matthew recalls, his brow lowering.

"They _do_ draw off our Feeds," Paul admits, "but all of our attempts at contact have been met by gunfire. The Nomads also say getting anywhere near them means death. We decided to give them their space—they didn't seem to want or need anything more from us than air and water and fuel. We've never seen any surface activity. No idea what the population might be."

"They're still _populated_?" Lisa asks for clarification. Paul nods lightly, like we've asked about something obvious.

"Explains why they don't look scavenged," I calculate. "Maybe made to look destroyed from orbit." Law of the Land: Hide from the sky.

"How sizable is the drain?" Anton asks.

"Significant, but draw is not a good estimator. Conservation efficiency is too variable."

"They could be a few with leaky seals and bad recycling, or hundreds with good seals and recyclers," Halley agrees.

"What about Coprates?" Ryder asks. Anton shifts the map east into the long, narrow canyons.

"Too far," Morales shoots down. "We might be able to make Tranquility. The next nearest colony is over two hundred miles away."

"And gone," Anton shows us Tyr, out on the Coprates north rim: It's all slide, close strike. He moves another hundred miles further east: Nike is also gone. And fifty miles beyond there, Gagarin and Concordia have been erased.

"No Feed draw," Paul confirms the likely worst. "Not that I've ever seen."

"How many sites _aren't_ drawing off your lines?" Ryder asks. He turns from the view and considers the map.

"Shinkyo, Uqba, Baraka, Mariner, Arcadia, Tyr, Nike, Gagarin, Concordia, Alchera, and Iving..." he rattles off the names as he points out more than half of the colonies.

"That many..." Ryder shakes her head.

"Remember, Doctor: Just because a colony site is destroyed, it doesn't mean there are no survivors," Paul gives her. "The Nomads left their colony sites almost immediately after the Apocalypse, and they subsist: living in the deeper Melas floor, using a number of small taps in our Lines to feed their traveling camps. And in some of the deeper canyons in Coprates, there is enough free air and water now to live _without_ tapping our Lines."

"So they could have just relocated," Lisa extrapolates hopefully.

"But four sites _are_ likely occupied," I refocus, pointing to Industry, Liberty, Frontier and Tranquility.

"And we have promising draws from the regions near Avalon, Zodanga, Freedom, and Eureka," Paul encourages.

"You mentioned Pax in your first interviews," Halley recalls, looking at the one remaining colony that hasn't been marked as either inhabited or lost. Anton pans east, zooms in. The region—especially in the gorges and ranges closer to the Coprates south rim, are veined and dotted with green. Where the colony _was_ isn't even visible—the growth looks forest-thick, at least from orbit.

"And these maps are decades old," Ryder reminds us.

"The plant life has spread significantly since these images were captured," Paul assures her, then explains: "The Pax survivors abandoned their original colony site long ago—it was too compromised. They sheltered with us until the atmosphere began to thicken, then ventured out to make their own way. Their labors in bio-engineering and horticulture are one of the primary reasons the region is now so verdant. They now live free of our feeds, thriving here in the greenest zones where the air is thickest and there is a lot of bedrock water. We call this green region 'The Vajra' because it looks like the Hindu double-ended trident. The Pax have established a feudal system of agricultural villages. They defend their lands aggressively. We leave them be. They have everything they need."

This is simultaneously very good and very troubling news—I watch my team digest the implications.

"Are they the only group out there?" I ask for more good news, noting five "dead" colony sites in proximity to The Vajra (but also numerous nuclear craters).

"The Pax are aggressive because they _do_ have competitors," Paul admits, "but they do not describe them to us, nor have we seen them ourselves. As I said, we leave them be."

"Do your people have more current mapping?" Halley asks. Paul shakes his head.

"Nothing like this. The best we have are some observational archives, but nothing recent."

I take over the map, trace back west, following the green that dots and clings to the Coprates South Rim.

"You said Tranquility was also dangerous," I remember, moving the conversation along. I zoom in on the site, just over a hundred miles east of here on the south rim. Tranquility looks like what Paul described: The main structures consisted of three large pressure domes terraced (very aesthetically) up a V-shaped gorge in the South Rim. Now only the lowest dome and the wreckage of their spaceport are left exposed. The upper two domes and the rest of the facilities look like the Rim came down the gorge in a massive slide and buried them. The exposed dome—a massive multi-tiered greenhouse—has been broken open (likely indicating the fate of the buried sections). But scrub spreads from the ruin, heading outward and westward. The landscape looks a lot like the living deserts of the American Southwest I knew as child.

"We met violence when we tried to approach them," Paul confirms. "The Nomads also describe similar experiences: No one approaches the ruin and returns. It's likely an issue of protecting precious resources. The Tranquility gardens were impressive, and they were working on engineering renewable food sources as well as adaptive plant life. It may be that only a fraction of the colony's bounty has spread wild into the valleys."

I take a deep breath, sit back. No one says anything for awhile.

"Sounds like the rule is if we go where the people are, there will be shooting," Matthew grumbles.

"What kind of weapons are we facing?" Carver chimes in, thinking practically. Paul frowns.

"As I said before, you likely outgun most of the survivor tribes," he tells her heavily. "But that doesn't mean they will not fight you to the death if they feel threatened. And you will likely frighten them more than any raider come to—as Colonel Burke put it—rape and pillage. They expect you would exterminate them."

"Then probably best if we avoid direct approaches at first," I suggest. "Explore. Recon. Let them see us. Keep our distance—remember: some of the colonies stocked surface-to-air weapons."

"Where to first?" Tru asks.

I select northeast Melas.

"Might be a good first place to go," I offer. "Hop the Feed Lines. Swing by Avalon, Mariner, then Melas One—look over the abandoned sites up close, see if we can get a sense of survivors and where they may have gone. Depending on how the ASVs hold up and how well the feed tapping works, we could go on and get a careful look at Industry." Then I assure Paul: "From a safe distance."

"While Paul takes you home to meet the family," Matthew snipes, pointing out what Paul identified as his home Station, high up on the northeast Melas rim at the point where Melas opens into Candor. Matthew turns to Paul. "Anything else we should know before blundering out looking for our fellow humans?"

"Beware the Nomads," Paul tells him matter-of-factly. "Their locations are purposefully changing, unpredictable, but they do effectively control the Melas Valley floor. And they survive by hiding, and by fighting off stronger competitors. They do not try to engage us because they fear our 'magic'."

"Great," Matthew gives back sickly-sweet.

Paul gets up and walks out.

"I apologize, Colonel," Paul tells me when I catch up to him in the short corridor outside, between Briefing and Ops. "I find myself in a difficult position. And it's not just that I forget how much you do not know of what has happened in the past fifty years. It's that I truly do not know how much I _should_ be telling you."

"Because of your Council?"

"More than that..." He looks away. "Please understand: it is not that I do not trust you. But we have established trusts of our own with peoples who in turn trust that we would not 'betray' them to an Earth that they so greatly fear. And I _do_ expect violence when you encounter them. Lives will almost certainly be lost."

"Which is why I need your intel," I tell him. "I need to know what to expect, how to approach."

"And what would you do if I told you about a certain group of survivors, and then insisted that you absolutely do _not_ attempt to contact them?" he confronts.

I don't have an answer for him, at least not one he wants to hear.

"Imagine Mars as being like Earth during the Dark Ages," he tries. "Struggling, embattled, fearful, competitive, xenophobic peoples all vying for territory, dominance, resources. What became of that era, Colonel? What created civilization from chaos? Powers arose—nations with greater resources and technologies—conquerors. Civilization was built out of wars, order asserted by violence, even genocide. The most peaceful peoples were trampled underfoot first, the most warlike surviving to hopefully mature.

"Now you suddenly come into this world with your guns and your aircraft... And what happens when you call Earth back? How will they come? Now imagine what the various native tribes of Earth's history suffered when the technologically advanced Europeans made landfall on their shores. And remember: not all Europeans came just to conquer and profit. Some insisted they had come to better the natives' lives, to 'save' them."

I digest that for a moment.

"Then we need to open talks with your people," I tell him. "You talk about history. What went furthest to bring us out of the violence was when the superpowers struck a balance—that started people trying to understand each other, to cooperate. Communication was the key."

I leave him to think about that—staring out of one of the slit viewports across our base and Marineris beyond—and I go back in to Briefing.

"So what's the plan?" Matthew asks when I come back to the table.

"You hold the fort," I tell him. "Lisa, Tru, Anton and I go try to meet with the ETE."

"No guns?" He already knows the answer.

"No troops, not for the ETE visit. Just us." Then I look back at the map. "Plot out some tap-sites on the Feed Lines between here and the City of Industry. Lieutenant Carver, I'm giving this to you, since you seem to have The Luck: take a few squads in one ASV. Heavy Armor and weapons, but defensive ROEs. Start with a sweep of Avalon and Mariner, then hit Base One. Look for supplies and signs of survivors, get us a good close scan. Any sign of human life, avoid direct engagement for now. If you have fuel, air and daylight—and the ship is still running smooth—you make the call whether to go on to get a look over Industry or come back."

"Yes, sir," she says without hesitation.

"You still taking the Flash Gordon Special?" Matthew prods me.

"As soon as I find a pilot."

### Chapter 2: The Peacemaker

14 July, 2115:

Our pilot finds he has little actual flying to do.

First Lieutenant Wilson Smith is one of only two combat pilots with us when we went into Hiber-Sleep. He was injured in a gunfight with the Discs—a shrapnel wound in his calf muscle—and was still grounded when we sent every able pilot skyward before the bombs fell. Halley's given him clearance to fly, and he appeared more than eager to get in the air again (especially at the stick of an aircraft twenty years more advanced than anything he'd seen), but I think he started to reconsider once we got airborne.

Once the flight-plan is entered, the Lancer does much of its own flying, so Smith has little to do besides watch the reads and stare at the virtual screens as the Martian landscape whips by beneath us.

Paul told us that it did not matter which ETE Station we approached, since his Elder Council could all make themselves present through VR at any site. (The individual members apparently rarely leave their own Stations.) The closest Station just happens to be his own home "Blue" Station. (Each Station's population is identified by a different color sealsuit). So we started out on the same course northwest as Carver's team, her loaded ASV barely keeping up, even with the Lancer using only a fraction of its thrust.

It only took an hour to get to the ruins of Avalon, where we left Carver to set down and take a closer look. We circled the site a few times before moving on, but there was little to see but the remains of cracked concrete and rammed-earth foundations and shield walls. The ESA colony of Avalon had been cleanly stripped, right down to chiseling the native steel reinforcing out of the concrete. There is nothing at all left of the nanotech labs and fabs, but neither is there any sign of contamination or outbreak. All the stripping was done by blast wave, slide battering or (most encouraging) human tools.

"Processed metals are a precious commodity among all of the survivor factions," Paul explains. "They will dig the reinforcing bar out of the deepest cast foundations. Unfortunately, they use most of it to blacksmith armor and weapons."

"Sounds medieval," Lisa comments.

"Very much so," Paul tells her. "Every colony had stockpiles of guns, and those weapons have withstood the test of time and the elements, but ammunition began getting scarce within a few years because of all the fighting and raiding."

"So we're looking at—what?—swords and axes?" Tru asks.

"And bows, crossbows, all manner of basic projectile weapons," Paul explains. "But there are groups who still keep stockpiles of ammunition like treasure."

"And they might break it out for a special occasion," Anton considers.

Paul nods heavily.

Fifteen minutes later, we make our own pass over Mariner on the way to Paul's home Station on the western tip of the Melas Northeast Rim.

The site of the first United Nations' continuously maintained base, Mariner grew into a sprawling set of habitations, shuttle facilities, supply depots, and a groundbreaking biotech campus. Tragically, it had to be completely evacuated back in 2057, after the main structures were hopelessly fractured when a two-dozen-mile-wide section of the nearby rim collapsed because of careless water extraction. The slides rumbled down from the miles-high canyon walls, sending billions of tons of rock and sand flowing over twenty miles before striking the colony and the original Melas One site. Five hundred and twenty people were killed at both sites. Thousands were injured.

While UNMAC attempted to fund the reconstruction of Melas One (which was relocated another two dozen miles from the Melas rim for added safety), the Mariner survivors worked with whatever they could get to rebuild their colony in its original historic location. But both the Eco War and the Discs got in the way, and neither site was properly reinforced when the bombs did worse than the slides.

Tru had lobbied hard to come on this run, desperate for any sign of what might have happened to several hundred of her fellow Mariner colonists. I considered shutting her out based on the risk, but she's seen her share of violence, and her presence might go further with the ETE than mine.

I'm regretting my decision the instant we get a visual of the colony site. Where Mariner was once promisingly close to being reborn, there is now little more than a few traces of unrecognizable, shredded wreckage: twisted scrap and broken concrete. It looks very much like test videos I've seen of nuclear shockwaves burning, shattering and blowing away target structures like so much ash. Whatever hope that there might have been survivors—or descendents of survivors—fades in a few seconds of scans. Tru just watches the screens in silence.

"The metal that's left wasn't salvaged because it's still radioactive," Paul explains softly.

Everything exposed above the drifting dunes is dusted with an undisturbed frosting of fine red sand. It doesn't look like there's been any activity here since the bombs did their worst. Our radiation detectors confirm Paul's assessment: the site is still too hot for safety. I let Carver know to skip it.

We turn north and begin climbing.

The North Rim of Melas Chasma begins as thirty-degree slide slopes that rise over twelve-thousand feet, before terminating in almost sheer cliffs that tower another several thousand before they terminate at the plateau of the Datum-level Ophir Planum.

The ETE Station is "planted" on the top of the slopes just at the base of the great cliffs, where a "point" juts several miles into the valley where Candor Chasma once "flowed" into Melas (this may have been due to ancient water—the central chasmata may have once been seas—or due to geologic upheaval and collapse). Paul tells us the location was chosen so that the Station would sit at the ideal elevation below the cliff line, but not directly under a lot of rock wall that might tumble down on top of it. (The Station is also almost atop the origin slope for the very slide that came down on Mariner and Melas One. The Station was planted after that slide, the ETE engineers and geologists confident that the slope wouldn't break loose any further. A comparison of pre-bombardment maps against the Lancer's later versions proves them right: the Station managed to sit put even through a nuclear bombardment.)

The Station itself is larger than I'd expected—I never got the chance to tour one before the bombardment—comprised mainly of a cluster of four massive and highly reinforced conical towers that rise several hundred feet out of the rock, making the Station look like a combination of an old nuclear plant and a medieval fortress. This illusion is enhanced by the heavily bunkered multi-story Operations Complex that fronts the tower-cluster's huge foundation, which is in turn cut into the cliff rock. A refinery-like cluster of tanks sits adjacent to the big towers. Huge feed pipelines snake out of the processing plants and take root into the slopes. I consider how intimidating the Stations must appear to the low-tech surface survivors, looking up at them from literally miles below, and remember what Paul said about the ETE being called wizards and demons. A steady pillar of steam billows out of the top of the tower-cluster, flattening and spreading out like the massive anvil top of a storm cloud when it hits what must be the atmosphere net barely a few hundred feet above the towers. It forms what's probably a permanent dark shroud over the Station, adding significantly to how foreboding it looks from down in the valley. Then I realize that the valley is ringed with these stations—six of them around the broad bowl of Melas, spaced about a hundred and twenty miles apart—which must make anyone who has lived down in the valley feel hemmed in by these simultaneously essential and terrifying fortresses.

"Most of the habitation and research facilities of the Station are underground, deep in the cliff-face," Paul narrates, "bored out after the Station was 'planted.'"

I remember other facts from my original briefings: The main masses of each Station—the tower-cluster of the nuclear processors and the tank-cluster of the chemical and resource refining plant—were manufactured in Earth orbit, moved by shuttle "tugs" and then carefully dropped (with huge "parachute" balloons) into a massive hole prepared in advance by engineering teams based at neighboring colony sites. The Station's onboard mining drills then began cutting taps into the planet to draw raw materials, while the engineers built facilities for the teams of scientists and operators, often in the very caverns the Station drills started cutting out. The Stations' own terraforming process produced the raw materials for the construction, and for the Feed Lines to spread the new oxygen and to send water and hydrogen fuel to the colonies, the Lines themselves mostly assembled by automated rover-bots.

Paul takes the controls from Smith (who seems to have reluctantly come to accept his role as "figurehead" pilot) and aims the Lancer toward one of the four landing platforms that project from the base of the tower-cluster. He chooses one of the two which connect directly to the massive block of the Operations Complex.

"We haven't used these in almost fifty years," Paul muses, as the Lancer's jets blow dust and sand off the small-craft landing pad.

"You don't have aircraft?" I pry.

"A few," he easily keeps it vague, "but we have no reason to use them since we reduced our contacts with the survivor factions. As I said, my interest in exploration is not something that's encouraged by our Elders. And using aircraft to travel would unwanted attention."

"Like we are?" I hit on the obvious concern.

"I assumed you _intend_ to draw attention."

"So how _do_ you get around, when need or hobby requires?" I pry again.

"I like walking," he specifically avoids universalizing. "I find it soothing."

Touch-down ends our conversation. The ship's engines spin down smoothly, and then our dust begins to settle. But after a few long, tense minutes, there is still no response from the Station. It could be very convincingly deserted.

"No one to greet us?" Anton finally asks.

"Masks," Paul only reminds us, and we unbuckle and head for the forward lock, following his quiet lead.

"No pressure suits?" Lisa wonders. The gauges tell us the atmospheric pressure is 0.18 of Earth Sea Level, which would be like stepping out of an aircraft flying up over fifty or sixty thousand feet. An oxygen mask would help, but the pressure would be at least debilitating, even for a short exposure, and potentially lethal if it goes longer.

"I can maintain a localized pressure field," Paul tells her. "It's how we work outside the Stations and travel on the surface—our Spheres make 'shelter.'" He unhooks one of the metallic balls from his belt. "Unless you'd prefer suiting up?"

"No weapons?" Lisa confirms one last time.

"They wouldn't do any good anyway," I admit, and seal the lock behind us, leaving Wilson with the ship.

The lock pressure-balances quickly once Paul lets us know he's prepared a 'transfer field' for us with his Sphere. It's still a noticeable drop—my ears pop painfully—but it's nowhere near as bad as it should be. The lower hatch unseals, becoming a lift platform to lower us down into the open air and onto the landing deck beneath the ship. I can see some kind of energy field ripple around us as wind blows grit into it.

Despite Paul's efforts, I quickly feel light-headed despite my mask. Paul notes our apparent discomfort: he squints, seems to refocus his concentration, and the field stabilizes. My ears pop again, but I start feeling better. I understand why the Stations are out of reach of the surface people, even as the atmosphere has thickened. Hiking up here in a heated pressure suit lugging enough bottled oxygen for the trip would make climbing Everest seem like an idle pastime.

It is very cold, despite being late morning. The icy air is cutting through my LA's, and the skin of my face feels like it's freeze-burning where it's exposed around the edges of my mask and goggles. My uniform gear tells me it's thirty below, even inside the energy field. But within seconds, the air feels warmer. It's now clear why Paul describes what his Spheres can do as making shelter, even if there are no visible barriers.

I see a set of big bay doors just off the pad we've landed on: likely hangars for the aircraft the ETE may have, or receiving and cargo bays from pre-Apocalypse times. There is also a telescoping airlock tunnel at each pad to meet arriving ships, but they remain fully retracted. I hear nothing but the wind and the steady rushing sounds as the Station pumps out gasses and water. It could be running on automatic, abandoned.

We follow Paul as he steps up to a heavy airlock hatch that looks like it was designed to let work crews in and out of the Ops Complex. It unseals at his approach (by someone waiting inside, automatically or by force of will I can't tell), and he leads us in. It cycles behind us, takes a few moments to raise the pressure, and Paul puts his Sphere away. I immediately notice a sterile plastic smell, mixed with ozone. The inner hatch opens, and Paul brings us down a corridor that looks very much like we're back inside our own base. We seem to be heading past Ops and under the towers. Then another hatch opens as we approach, and we step into a _much_ larger space.

I estimate we are in some kind of buffer layer between the external shield walls and the mass of the deep-cutting processors under the towers. I'm reminded of a power plant back home: big space, big machinery, lots of noise. I smell a mixture of stale and industrial, electricity and oil and metal. And it's warm and humid—either the ETE like things tropical, or the tower processors are just radiating that much heat despite their shielding (and some of the freed water must be leaking into the air as steam).

Still, we don't see another living soul.

Paul leads us to a lift-shaft, and we take a fast drop down what seems like a few hundred feet—down into the slopes of the Melas Northeast Rim. The lift stops smoothly and opens onto another, larger chamber, this one dark and echoing like an aircraft hangar. The noise of the processors is a dull drone that sounds far away. I realize uncomfortably how far we must be from our ship. I check my Link—the signal is almost non-existent. I doubt we could get an intelligible call out.

" _Really_ no one to meet us..." I hear Anton grouse nervously, opening his jacket.

Light answers him—the white blaze of a spotlight-like beam burning in a column in the center of the chamber. By the time my eyes adjust, there are shimmering figures standing in the light. ETE sealsuits. I count nine, each a different color: red, green, yellow, orange, violet, indigo, turquoise, white, and gray. They just stand in the light, faceless in their identical chrome helmets. Then a tenth member—dressed in Paul's blue—steps through the center of the light, his passing causing the images of the other nine to ripple.

"Avatars," Anton whispers what's apparent. "Holograms."

"Very theatrical," I say to them evenly, stepping forward toward the light. I can feel Paul tense behind me. The one solid and nine holographic figures do not respond. "Though I do appreciate your willingness to meet with me."

The light shifts, spreads. The figures fan out, sliding around us in a semi-circle like ghosts.

"I am Colonel Michael Ram, Acting Commander of the UNMAC Installation Melas Two," I try again. "This is Lieutenant Colonel Lisa Ava, my Base Operations Commander; Doctor Anton Staley, my Chief of Technical Sciences; and Truganini Greenlove, representative of our civilian population."

"We know who you are," the blue suit says dully.

"And you know why I've come," I conclude, matching his lazy smugness.

Ten expressionless masks leave us stewing in silence for several long moments. My team takes my lead in waiting them out.

"Forgive us, Colonel," White Suit finally says, though his tone is just as flat as Blue's was. "It has been almost thirty years since we have seen... _age_...so close," Then he nods toward Tru. "Or disability."

Tru shifts on her prosthesis, like she's posturing for a fight.

"We had forgotten their beauty," Green quickly adds. "The fragility and impermanence of life is what makes it so precious."

I still have no sense that this is any kind of compliment.

(I'm also almost instantly struck by another implication of their statement: According to Paul, they've supposedly been keeping watch over the survivor tribes. They would certainly see age, injury, illness. So either they're lying to politely cover their discomfort with our "natural" state, or they haven't actually been doing any observing for—as White implied—thirty years.)

"What else have you forgotten?" I redirect coolly.

"Specify," Red plays in, sounding like he's talking to a child.

"Have you forgotten your mission?" I ask them, calm accusation. I feel Paul shift uncomfortably as he stands just behind me.

"Why do you say this?" Gray responds, defensiveness leaking through his calm superior façade.

"Have you come to be insolent with us, Colonel Ram?" Blue quickly interrupts, taking the lead in his home Station, all irritated arrogance.

"You know why we've come," I repeat. "And you knew we would, as soon as we had the means to get here. So why the games? Ignoring us, pretending our presence on-planet is insignificant."

"Keeping us sleeping for fifty years," Tru blurts out. I don't move to censor her.

"This audience is a courtesy," White answers coolly. "We do not _need_ to hear you out. We do not need to speak to you at all."

"No, you don't," I allow him. "But then you would be forgetting your mission."

"Why do you say this?" Gray repeats, his tone trying to maintain.

"Because you know what's going to happen," I tell them coldly. "Earth will come back to Mars, regardless of whether or not we manage to call them. And they will come afraid. Afraid of contamination. Afraid of the Discs. And—I'm sure this is no shock—afraid of you." I pause for a breath to let that sink in before I take it further, but they remain expressionless statues in the light. "Because of those fears, they'll very probably try to destroy what you've worked so hard to create here. No matter your motives or ideals, you know they will immediately seek to control your technology; take it away from you, maybe even stop your work entirely. You also know they will certainly resort to violence if you resist. And despite your superior technology—your defensive 'tools'—lives will be lost, precious resources destroyed."

"Then why should we have _anything_ to do with you?" Blue asks directly, trying to keep his temper. "You represent those that will bring death and destruction to this planet. Again."

" _I_ do not wish to bring death or destruction," I tell him. "But I won't be able to prevent it. Not without your help."

"You expect us to simply turn our technology over to you?" Red assumes incredulously.

"No, I don't," I tell him directly. "I understand your reasons for not trusting others with your technology, especially those who would likely apply it to military purposes. But Earthside Command will certainly make this demand as soon as they learn what you have. In the interim, I expect you understand my duty to do my best to acquire resources and intelligence, even from an ally."

"You are unexpectedly candid for a soldier, Colonel," Green praises cautiously.

"How long have we avoided this conversation?" I counter.

"Decades, if you are assuming we kept you in hibernation for that reason," Blue is surprisingly candid himself.

"Did you?" Tru confronts again.

Blue actually seems to soften, steps closer.

"If you do manage to get to know us better, you will find that we are scientists, not tacticians," he tries to explain. "Please do not be offended if I simplify the issue by saying we did not adequately prioritize you. But we did not know how to best address the situation, and had many more pressing issues in the interim."

"You didn't know what to do with us?" Lisa translates testily. "So you left us stuck in our couches until you could get around to making a decision?"

"It was more a matter of timing," Green tries to soothe. "Please understand: The potential for catastrophe—atrocity—if you spurred contact with Earth in those early years, was just too frightening to risk. Once we had the luxury of longevity, we hoped that we would see a time when Earth evolved to be more... _approachable_."

"We simply chose to give you a similar longevity to await that time as well," White tries.

" _You_ chose?" Tru begins to lose composure. "How could you believe you had the right?"

"The alternative was to let you awake and de-stabilize the delicate and evolving dynamics of the survivors, survivors who still wish to avoid Earth's eyes at all cost," Red is more direct. "And if you failed to contact Earth, or if Earth—at the height of their Quarantine fervor—refused to risk rescue, you would have found yourselves marooned here indefinitely. You would either have fallen into violent competition with the survivor tribes as they coveted your resources, or—as those resources began to fail—you would be absorbed into their numbers, assuming any of you survived. In any case, the risk was unacceptable. The sudden influx of your weapons alone... Many would have died."

"And that won't happen now?" Lisa doubts.

"It may well still happen, but we no longer have the option," Green admits. "Your sleep could not be extended further without endangering your lives. At least now the survivor tribes have evolved into stability, and terraforming has improved their environmental resources, reducing their vulnerability as well as the need for violent competition."

"But there will still be unnecessary violence," Paul speaks up. "The tribes will fear them. Or attempt to take what they have."

"Very likely," Blue admits like this is unimportant.

"You are part of the dynamic of this world now," Red insists. "You will have to assimilate, find your balance."

"And Earth will return eventually, even if we fail to call out," I go back to my point. "What will _they_ do to your precious dynamic? They'll bring guns, aircraft, missiles, orbital weapons. They'll try to 'save' the survivors, contain and relocate them. Examine them. Study them. If the tribes resist, they'll be 'helped' by force. So will you actively resist them? How do you expect that will go? And how do you think the survivors will fare if there's a fight between you and Earth?"

I give them a moment to process, to respond. They continue to stand still as statues. And because of their damn masks, I can't tell if they think we're stupid, insignificant or frightening.

"I'm sure you've already spent decades thinking about all of these possibilities," I prod. "So I ask: Have you forgotten your mission? To bring life to this dead world, to preserve it for all mankind?"

"It is all we live for," Paul says, stepping forward to stand at my side.

Another blue suit suddenly steps into the light. The mask folds away to reveal Simon.

"What is it you are doing, Paul?" Simon accuses.

"Honoring our mission," Paul tells him.

"Defying our laws," Simon returns.

"I have not defied our laws."

"Silence, my sons," the Blue Suit scolds sternly. And I wonder if he's speaking figuratively (as what Paul called an "Elder") or literally—Paul did say his father was on the Council. Either way, the brothers stop, but still look like they're ready continue the argument.

"I've seen a small part of what you can do," I throw out. Simon suddenly looks sheepish, guilty, but the "Council" suits appear to ignore him. "Earth will fear what you have, but I know you have the power to stop violence without killing, and I trust in your convictions to avoid bloodshed. If you use your abilities and your knowledge to help us avoid unnecessary violence in our contacts with the survivor tribes..."

"It is not our way to interfere," Red interrupts me. "We provide. We let the humans make their own way."

"' _Humans_ '?" I question his choice of words. "What else have you forgotten?"

"Naturals," Blue corrects evenly. "That is what we call anyone not altered by technology such as ours. It is no inferiority. We have chosen to change ourselves to better perform our primary task, which you have correctly stated. And we have not forgotten how people respond to outside control. How would _you_ respond if _we_ attempted to exert control over you by force, however non-violent and well-intentioned?"

I am struck numb by their blatant denial: They _did_ exert control over us—however non-violent and well-intentioned—by deciding to keep us asleep for half-a-century, and it seems they do not consider this non-consensual act significant. My jaw grinds. Anton's jaw is halfway to the floor. Tru feels like she's about to explode. Even Lisa tenses up.

"The obvious hypocrisy aside, that's not what I'm suggesting," I let my venom leak out through my diplomacy, but they don't flinch at the blow—either they have no remorse or they really don't see what they did to us as at all objectionable (back to what they've forgotten about being human). In any case, I try to keep things focused, moving forward. "What I'm proposing is that you help us keep things from escalating into violence, that you use your abilities to save lives, that you provide us intelligence so that we can best approach the tribes without stumbling into tragedy."

"And you want us to help you contact Earth," Red doesn't make it a question (still completely discounting the issue of "containing" us in Hiber-Sleep).

"If clear communication can be established, we can give Earthside Command a proper picture of what's happening here," I offer. "Allay their fears. Introduce them to you and your work in a positive light, create a dialogue so you can try to explain your intentions. And hopefully we can keep them from blundering into tragic conflicts with the survivors."

They don't respond, don't say anything. The light shrinks, then reforms a tight circle of avatars around the blue Council member. They appear to be having some silent debate—heads move, but the rest of their bodies stay still.

"You made an impressively diplomatic argument," Paul tells me quietly.

"But will it convince?" Tru asks him in whisper.

"You still have me," Paul offers.

"Even if it means defying your Council?" I ask him. He looks down, won't meet my eyes. Simon glares at him from the far side of the light. The Council continues its wordless arguments.

My Link beeps at me suddenly, but all I get is choppy noise, fragments of an urgent voice I think is Sergeant Horst.

"Ram here," I try answering it, turning away from the light, hoping for better reception. No improvement.

"I can patch you into our arrays," Paul tells me. I don't actually see him do anything, but suddenly I have a much clearer signal.

"This is Ram."

"Sergeant Horst, sir!" the voice sounds urgent, out of breath. "Explorer One just came under attack! They came out of nowhere, sir—they were buried in the sand! Carver's been hit! So has Spec-4 Linns and Private Summers. We returned fire, drove them back, then fell back to the ASV dragging our wounded. Colonel Burke is sending support..."

I feel the shock pour through me like ice water, but only for an instant. Then my old programming takes over, my conditioned rage—I feel my blood burn. I am back in the Terror War. I am ready to kill my enemies.

"Colonel Ram, this is Colonel Burke," I hear Matthew chime in with equal urgency. "The other ASV is inbound on full burn with Rios and another two squads—ten minutes. We can track these fuckers from the air—they're on foot..." I hear it in him, too: He wants so badly to hit back. It's reflex. It's what they made us.

"Sergeant Horst, is your position secure?" I need to know.

"For the moment, sir," he reports. "But these bastards are stealthy. And their goddamn arrows can find gaps in our H-As."

"Maintain defensive posture," I order. "Stabilize your wounded for evac."

"We _running_?" Matthew wants to know, his voice edged with the frustration that comes from helpless distance.

"No," I assure him. Then I stuff the rage back down, do my job. "Sergeant Horst: Hold if you can. I'm coming to you. But if they come back hard, bug out. No unnecessary kills."

I turn and approach the Council circle. They have been listening, but I make it clearer for them, let them (finally) hear my simmering anger:

"It's too late. It's already started."

Then I turn and tell Paul: "Take me back to the Lancer."

I watch it happen, replaying the armor video feed on my heads-up, as Paul guides Smith—however unnecessarily—through the takeoff sequence again.

"Lieutenant Carver's group had moved on from the Avalon ruin," Rios is talking me through it from his own inbound flight. He sounds tense, and it's more than his eagerness to get there. I'd heard rumors that he and Carver had become intimate, though they managed to keep professional when eyes were on them. "Her team had found signs that someone had made a try at rebuilding there, but there were also signs of violence—damage from small ordnance. It looks like they bugged out or got overrun a long time ago. No recent signs of life. Nothing worth salvaging."

He hesitates, his voice getting edgier. I check his progress: he's still five minutes out. We'll get there about the same time he does.

"They packed up and headed for Melas One. Touched down at one of the marked tap sites in the open desert on the way. Carver took her squad out to get a look at the tap in the Feed Line. She had plenty of guns and eyes. The site looked secure. No one saw anything but cold rock, not even on infrared."

The camera is bouncing as Carver skips over the rough, rocky terrain toward the big exposed pipes of the ETE Feed Line. There's a makeshift valve setup welded into it.

"Somebody's been here recently," I hear Carver say on the recording, looking down at a jumble of footprints in the dirt around the tap, which appears to have been packed down by repeated traffic. "Looks like a popular place."

Someone shouts and Carver's camera spins. I hear the sound of metal hitting the laminate armor of the H-A suits, but it isn't the sound of bullets. I can see the blurs of objects—projectiles—flying through the air. Then I hear the rattle of ICW fire.

"Hold...!!" Carver starts to shout, then her camera jerks back and swings skyward. I see her heavy gloves claw at her neck. I hear her choking.

Another view—from the ASV—shows Carver's squad fan around the tap, weapons ready. But then the ground erupts in dozens of places all around them, shapeless masses shoving up from under the rock and sand, and the projectiles—arrows, javelins, jagged throwing axes—start flying. The sheer density of the storm of metal flying at them takes them off balance. They begin firing back, their AI-assisted targeting cutting down the nearest half-dozen or so attackers that try to charge them—I can see now that they are human, only wearing heavy cloaks painted with camouflage patterns and laden with what looks like assorted scrap. The ICW shells clang as they cut metal (Paul had mentioned homemade armor). One of the H-A suits—the ID code is Summers—staggers and falls—I can see the red-camo hardshell of his heavy-armor suit stuck with arrows like a pincushion. Carver shouts for a hold-fire but is hit between the neck-guard and helmet by what looks like a crossbow bolt and falls back.

Lieutenant Acaveda—our only other combat-experienced pilot—spins up the ASV and lifts it over the fight, then uses the nose guns to cut a swath of chain-fire between Carver's team and the swarm of dirty cloaks. It takes a second strafing before they start running.

"Incoming!" Acaveda shouts as a rocket comes streaming at them out of the hills. The ASV's auto-turrets spin and cut it down just before impact. Acaveda fires another spray after the fleeing cloaks, then sets the ASV down almost on top of Carver. Carver is face-up, her hands grabbing at the short shaft stuck into her. The occasional arrow ricochets off the rocks. Short bursts of ICW fire answers.

The ruins of Mariner Colony flash past below us.

"Weapons?" I ask Smith. He keys up the Lancer's forward and rear gun turrets, extending them from the smooth hull.

"You planning on using those?" Tru wants to know.

"I'm hoping the display will be enough."

The second ASV is coming in for a landing next to the first by the time we arrive. Rios' H-As start piling out before the landing gear even makes firm ground. A few run to help carry the wounded inside, while a circle of red suits forms a perimeter of guns around the landing site—Rios' squads makes the circle bigger and meaner. There are perhaps a dozen cloaks scattered around the tap-site in the sand, lying unmoving where they fell in the initial exchange. It's difficult to see blood against the red landscape.

"Lancer to Explorer One, your priority is to evac the wounded," I order as the Lancer slides into a hover over the tap-site. "Explorer Two: Rios, hold the LZ to cover the evacuation. Do _not_ pursue the hostiles."

"Understood, sir," he accepts, however reluctantly. I can almost feel his teeth grinding over the Link.

The ambushers headed south as fast as they could run, likely counting on the terrain and their homemade camouflage to cover their escape. The floor of Melas Chasma is rich with shallow ravines and rises, natural cover ideal for ground warfare, setting ambushes, or to shoot a missile at an unsuspecting aircraft (tactics the Ecos made devastating use of before UNMAC sent the nimbler and more heavily armed ASVs). With thermal imaging scans, ground forces became easily visible in the cold of Mars, unless they insulated themselves and dug in deep. And digging in was exactly why Carver's team didn't read their assailants until it was too late.

But as long as the enemy is on the move, they're visible from the air.

Smith brings the Lancer southward, climbing to two hundred feet to get a better vantage. Heat and motion imaging highlights two dozen or so running shapes barely a klick away—they move with surprising speed, bounding over the rocky ground, leap-frogging each other in a well-practiced, synchronized rhythm, to let one wave move while another turns and covers their retreat. And they're careful not to cluster to avoid becoming tempting targets.

"SAM!" Smith yells as the screens pick out the flare of a small incoming missile, its size and smoke trail reading like a shoulder-fired unit. The Lancer's own auto-defenses lock the Gatling guns and shred the projectile before it gets halfway to us. Another follows after it, originating from a rise well ahead of the retreating cloaks—they apparently have support nearby.

"Saved for a special occasion?" I ask Paul about the missiles. He looks frozen, paralyzed, well out of his depth. The Lancer's guns knock out the second missile. Now bullets start pinging off the hull.

"About what you said before..." Paul finally manages to say, pulling a Sphere from his belt and heading with purpose for the forward lock, his chrome mask folding itself into place. The hatch seals behind him, and I hear the lock's lift take him up through the topside hatch.

External cameras show him standing on top of the ship, holding his Sphere out in front of him, his head down as if concentrating hard. The pinging of the bullets stops. I can see flares in the air around us, the same effect I saw when Matthew tried to shoot Simon. Another rocket flies at us, only to turn to dust before the Lancer can shoot it down.

"Does this thing have a PA?" I ask Smith. Anton swivels in his seat and keys one up for me.

"THIS IS COLONEL RAM OF UNMAC," I send my voice booming out of the ship as it circles over the mass of running bodies. "HOLD YOUR FIRE. YOU WILL NOT BE HARMED. I REPEAT: YOU WILL NOT BE HARMED. I WISH TO SPEAK WITH YOUR LEADERS. WE WILL HOLD THIS POSITION AND AWAIT YOUR REPLY. REPEAT: THIS IS COLONEL MIKE RAM OF UNMAC. HOLD YOUR FIRE. I WISH TO SPEAK WITH YOUR LEADERS."

The cloaks stop running one by one, begin to turn back and stare up at the ship as if I've said something especially shocking. I can see now that they wear a variety of masks, some looking like they've been patched together out of assorted colony and military gear. Their cloaks are in layers of different materials, probably a mix to protect them from the cold and the solar radiation, but also likely helping to mask them from our imaging systems until they started running. The outermost layer is a rust-red terrain camouflage pattern that could easily hide them from the naked eye. Under their cloaks they do look like they're laden with scrap: metal plates arranged as primitive armor, multiple packs and canisters and tools and other gear. Their weapons look like they were manufactured from salvage: bows, crossbows, javelins, short swords, axes, and even guns that look like they were made from old plumbing parts.

"You seem to have gotten their attention," Anton assesses, sounding shaken

"At least you didn't say 'Resistance is futile,'" Tru tries to joke.

"Uh, Colonel," Smith calls back. Out on the horizon, it looks like the hills themselves have come alive. A hundred or more cloaked and armored shapes have appeared on the ridgeline, maybe half a klick away. "You got _somebody's_ attention..."

Locking in on the center of them, the image shows one figure standing tall, holding a pistol up over his head. He sets the weapon down at his feet, then holds his open palm high.

"Now what?" Lisa wants to know.

"Is this even remotely wise?" Matthew presses me over the Link as the Lancer does a lazy turn overhead and leaves me standing alone in the middle of the open plain. Rusty cloaks partially circle me at roughly two hundred meters away.

"I'll let you know," I tell him.

One solitary figure is walking towards me. His gait betrays some age—he moves more heavily than the cloaks that ran from us, all nimble and quick despite what must be forty or fifty pounds of gear (and that much under Martian gravity, likely doubling their body weight). Behind me, the Lancer touches down on a rise some five hundred yards back. Paul is still standing on top of the hull, but he's put his Sphere back in its belt carrier.

The figure stops when it's thirty yards from me, repeats the gesture of raising and then setting down its pistol, holds its open hands out, then slowly opens its over-cloak. It's wearing a kind of scale armor fashioned from what's likely salvage metal, but it's well polished and cut, laced together artfully like Samurai armor with some kind of synthetic cable. I can see that the plate is dented and cut in several places, scars of old battles. He turns to show me he has no visible weapons, only a set of pressure canisters and a few canteens. Under the armor is what looks like an old colony work suit in a sandy tan. His boots are wrapped in layers of fabric, like bandages. His cloak is comprised of several different layers of material that all appear selected for different functions, different protections. He wears a thick knitted scarf around his neck, and his headgear is a cowl and headband that looks almost Bedouin, except it's heavier and has a sort of face-flap. There are metal plates in the headband. Underneath the cowl is a well-worn pair of goggles and a breather mask. Around the seams I can see he has long, graying hair and a full beard.

I turn around smoothly and show him I have brought nothing but my LA uniform and my breathing gear. My holster is empty. He comes closer.

"You invoke a powerful name, Unmaker," he says almost cheerfully, his voice gravelly but deep and harmonic, his English only slightly stilted. "But you tell me a camp-tale."

I take a deep breath, then pull off my cap, goggles and mask, letting him see my face. Then I put them back on before I need to breathe again. He seems stunned, confused. Then he pulls off his own mask between breaths to show me his own face: he's an older man, olive skinned, broad features, strong nose, deep eyes, thick brows. His skin looks like old leather. His eyes are dark gray.

"My name is Abu Abbas," he introduces himself. "Sharif and Imam of my humble tribe. I was born in the ruins of Baraka, raised by my father to live in the open desert. But I know the name of Mike Ram. I have seen his face in the old video records. _Your_ face. Are you a ghost, then, Peacemaker? Or has your Jinn made you a demon like he is?"

"Neither," I let him know. "We have slept, buried, under a slide. Our systems woke us when they could no longer keep us in hibernation. This man..." I point back to Paul, "...came to us and offered his help. He told us some of what had happened while we slept. He told us we would meet you. I'm sorry it had to be like this."

"As am I," he says with what sounds like honest regret. "But I would warn you not to trust the Jinn, or what he has told you."

"The ETE provide you air, water, fuel," I try.

"They do God's will because even demons fear God," he tells me seriously. "But they are still demons, abominations fallen from God's path."

"And I'm an Unmaker."

"You are Mike Ram," he corrects me like I've forgotten something basic. "I know the tales: You defied the Unmakers before they rained nuclear fire on us all. You tried to make peace between all God's peoples on this world, just as you tried to make peace on the warm, wet world of our ancestors. You stand for right even when your masters do not. And this is why I am standing here. That, and you did not shoot us down with your aircraft when you could, even though we attacked you—and that is more proof than your name or your face."

"Life is too precious on this planet," I tell him. "'To murder one man is to murder all men.'"

He smiles at the quote. "You know The Quran. I have heard this about Mike Ram as well: He fights in the Terror War on the side of the Crusader, but he respects Islam. He dares to stand for his enemy even against his own leaders when his leaders do evil. He is truly the Prodigal Son, lost for a time to the unbelievers and their sins, but he will certainly return to God." He steps forward and clamps a hand on my shoulder like an old friend, long parted. "And now, here you are."

"I need your help," I give him. "Even if we did not wake up, Earth—the Unmakers—will be returning soon. Paul—the ETE with us—has told me of the fear of Earth and of what they may do when they come, and I agree with him. We need to be united when they come, not fighting like animals, not afraid of each other."

"And then you will stand again to defend your enemies against your leaders," Abbas is grinning under his mask. "I would not believe such a thing out of the mouth of any other man, but you appear to live up to your tales. Unfortunately, I can only discuss the terms of a treaty with my own small tribe. There are others."

"And what terms would you ask?"

"We should discuss this in a more comfortable place, if you are willing to trust me enough to accept my hospitality."

"I trust your hospitality because I trust you are a man of faith," I let him know I expect Muslim values to be the same on this planet as on Earth. He smiles warmly, gestures for me to walk with him.

"Not remotely wise at all..." Matthew is grousing in my ear.

It takes us half-an-hour to walk overland. Abbas asks me if I need to recharge my oxygen cylinders, and offers me spares. I order the Lancer to stay back. The first ASV made it back to base, offloaded our wounded, refueled and reloaded, and is returning to the tap-site. There's no word yet on the condition of Carver and the other wounded troopers.

"A more comfortable place" is a large camp of portable shelters—inflatable squat cylinders each as big as a four-man tent—all painted and covered up by camouflage netting to make them fade into the Martian terrain. I can only see the sentries when we pass within a few meters of them.

Most of Abbas' visible soldiers carry a wide variety of improvised weapons, including ingenious multi-shot crossbows and what look like gas-fired spear guns, but a few have light assault weapons likely left over from colony security. Abbas himself is proud to show me his own pistol when he retrieves it: a heavy stainless Smith and Wesson revolver he says was acquired by his father during a skirmish with the "wild people" who hold the Tranquility ruin. The pistol, in turn, was said to be a trophy taken by the locals from a group of "hunters" apparently brave enough to prey them. The gun, though more than half-a-century old, is still in almost-pristine condition.

Abbas leads me to one of the larger shelter bubbles, his cloaked men keeping both silence and a respectful distance. Each shelter has a small antechamber airlock, all made of airtight fabric. There's barely enough room for the two of us in the lock at a time. He seals the flaps behind us, re-pressurizes the lock manually with a portable compressor, then takes off his mask, gesturing for me to do the same. The air smells like plastic and sweat and rust, but it is breathable, and the pressure is comfortable.

Inside the shelter's main space are a number of bed rolls, and a small shelf cut from Martian stone that supports a prominently displayed Quran. There are a handful of rolled prayer rugs with it—the same number as the bedrolls, giving an idea of the size of Abbas' family unit. An electric cooking stove that also serves as a space heater is in one corner, along with a small selection of cookware, cups, plates and utensils that look handmade. The shelter's air processor is also busy recharging half-a-dozen spare O2 tanks, with maybe three times that many more stacked ready for use. There are a few five gallon water cans, and a portable "bag" shower and latrine that look like they date from the first astronauts. There are spare blankets and clothing, all neatly stored. Otherwise, personal possessions are few.

His men have waited outside except for one, who comes in behind us and stands quietly by the entry flaps. There are two women already in the shelter, small and frail of build, wearing hooded cloaks with work-grays underneath. A scarf hides the lower half of their faces, but they have dark, long features. They sit quietly on the floor by the air processor, their eyes watching me like a caged predator's.

"Yes, Colonel," Abbas explains, "we have returned to the old traditional practice of covering our women from non-family eyes to make them less tempting to raiders. But they defend the camps as well as any of us, and they carry their share of the weight. Would you like some tea?"

"Yes, thank you."

The man who came in behind us has removed his cowl and goes to a kettle on the cook stove. I am admittedly surprised to see that he is pale and fair-haired, boyish—perhaps fifteen or sixteen.

"My adopted son," Abbas introduces, "who I call Ishmael who was spared by the mercy of God. His former name was Jonathan Drake, which he keeps in honor of his parents. They were driven out of Tranquility when he was a small boy. They came west and eventually settled with a group of Zodangan refugees. They were killed by the Air Pirates when he was twelve."

"'Air Pirates'?"

"The descendants of the engineers from Zodanga. They turned their talents to building crafty flyers, some quite large and well armed. They use the sky as an advantage to raid vulnerable tribes. They moved up into the cliffs and built fortresses out of everyone else's reach, leaving behind those that would not prey on other men to make do in the ruins of the old colony site. When those left behind prospered, their former brothers returned to prey on them, wiping them out. They now control the shadow of the Northeast Rim and most of the Candor Gap, but sometimes go further in search of Sky Drops or easy victims. The Air Pirates are our enemies, Colonel, so we could do nothing else but come to the aid of the Zodangan cast-offs when the pirates attacked them. Still, there was little we could do—the pirates are swift and merciless. I found my Ishmael fighting for his life, covered in his own blood and that of his parents, as well as the blood of quite a few pirates. I could not bring myself to leave him there—my own son had been killed by the pirates only the year before."

And I feel my stomach sink. When Paul mentioned the Zodanga survivors, he made them sound like an insignificant threat, a small band of raiders that his people had never seen and barely heard of. Are the ETE that oblivious? Or are they that unconcerned with the fate of "Naturals"?

The youth brings us each a steaming cup, which smells earthy. His eyes are blue, but not as cold as I would have imagined, given the history Abbas has just told.

"He has not become dead to life, like so many have," Abbas affirms. "And he reminds me why we must live, because with every passing year, with every new generation, this once-dead planet offers us more. God is great."

Jon turns away, quietly embarrassed, to get his own tea.

"The plant is from the east," Abbas explains as I sip. Its mellow, grainy flavor reminds me of barley or brown-rice teas. "Spread from Tranquility. They say the desert becomes a jungle if you go far enough eastward."

"But you prefer the desert?" I ask him.

"Easier to see your enemy coming, and less tempting for him to come looking for you," he explains. "We know this valley, and keep it for our children, God willing. My men were keeping watch on the tap-well, defending it from our enemies, keeping it safe for the stray refugee."

"And men with airships and guns are easily taken for enemies?" I allow him.

"It is more than that, Colonel," he becomes deadly serious, "just as it was not the fear of Earthmen that made them fire on you. You see, there is only _one_ tribe we know of that maintains their guns so well, and wear the same red uniforms and shell-armor that you do. But _they_ never leave their Keeps."

"Other Unmakers?" I need to know.

"Once, perhaps," he considers. "But they have been like the rest of us since the Apocalypse."

"Where are these 'Keeps'?"

"They were the American manufacturing and construction colonies: Industry and Pioneer and Frontier. No one approaches these places now and lives. The Keepers are ruthless, killing even the children of those that stray into their guns. Even the Air Pirates know to stay away."

Just as Paul said. But he didn't have a name for them. Nor did he know—or bother to mention—that they wore our uniforms and armor.

"We had garrisons in those colonies," I remember. "UNMAC _Peace_ keepers. I knew them, served with them. I can't easily believe they would become so predatory."

"Those men you knew, they are long dead. These men—these monsters—would be their children's children. Life is indeed precious in this place, Colonel, but God has been lean in His bounty, especially to those who stray from His path. When survival is in question every day, it can bring out the basest evil in man—I have seen abominations in my life, horrible things, offenses to God. I expect that your Jinn has not told you of such things."

My not answering is answer enough. I can't ignore that Abbas has told me more about this planet in five minutes than Paul had in a month, whatever his motive may be. Abbas shakes his head.

"He may not be intentionally misleading you," Abbas allows. "The Jinni, they foolishly think they have become gods. They live up high in their air-plants. Your Jinn: he always wears his suit, even his gloves, doesn't he? It is said that they think we are unclean, that they cannot bear to be touched by such animals as we mortals are."

"Paul defied his own people in helping us," I defend.

"This only supports what I say about them, friend Ram. But even this friend of yours, he is still a product of the world he grew up in, just as my heart will never leave this desert, even if my journeys take me to places only God can imagine."

I sip my tea, let the topic go idle as I try to read this man who is so generous with hospitality and intelligence. And I try to get to the root of his reasons:

"You spoke of a treaty," I offer. "What would you ask of us?"

"I am not foolish enough to ask you for your weapons," he says with an easy grin. "Nor would I ask you to fight our battles for us. But some of our equipment is aging—we keep it up as best we can. If you have gear to spare, or the means to help us repair what we have, that would be quite valuable to us. Masks. Canister valves. Filters. Goggles. Boots—boots are always a precious commodity. You see how we must wrap ours to make them last against the abrasive grit."

"Practical needs," I accept.

"I am only concerned for my people," Abbas sounds sincere. "But what do _we_ have that is worth trading?" He says this like he knows the answer.

"Mutual non-aggression is a good start," I tell him, and he nods readily, our tragic battle still the driver of this meeting. "To avoid any further incidents like today. Beyond that, we need intelligence—you know the territory, the other tribes. We were asleep while this world formed. And perhaps you could mediate introducing us to other tribes."

"I fear friends are another rare commodity in this world, Colonel Ram," Abbas deflects. "But I do value your friendship."

And the soldier in me wonders if this is sincere or simply tactical.

"And this tea..." I add to the bargaining table. "You say the plant comes from Tranquility?"

"Another Keep I would suggest you avoid if you truly do not want bloodshed," Abbas warns. (As did Paul—so far Paul's information, however vague, at least backs up what Abbas is telling me.)

"Are there other plants with food value?" I stay on subject.

"There is Graingrass, Honeyflower, Sweetroot, Hardshell Fruit, Bitter Apple, Rustbean, Bloodberry, Lifetree..." he begins to list. "Some grow wild in small quantities near the Feed-Lines, some we maintain in our own small mobile gardens. The rest we obtain from Coprates, either by trade or by daring—Coprates is a far more dangerous place than Melas, friend Ram, and that is saying something. And the journey is hundreds of miles over difficult terrain, with tap-sites few and far apart. But we all need to eat. The ruins in Melas—at least those not defended by many guns—were picked clean long ago, and the Sky-Drops come less often as the years pass."

"Could you provide us with live specimens, or at least viable seeds?" I ask him. "My scientists have constructed a facility to grow gardens, crops. It could be expanded to grow in quantity, and we would share the harvest with your people."

"You will become a farmer, Colonel Ram?" Abbas laughs out loud.

"There are worse things to be."

"Then you will come back to God yet!"

We talk for an hour, mostly about the history of his tribe (he also tells me there are two other sizeable Nomad tribes that compete for territory in Melas). Then I excuse myself, telling him I must check in with my people, but that he need not fear approaching our base or our ships in future—his raised-pistol gesture will serve as a signal of peaceful intent. We make our deep apologies to each other again for the day's bloodletting. Then Abbas refills my tanks (all valves are still universal), embraces me like a brother, and tells his "son" to show me my way out of his camp.

"It was good to meet you," I tell the boy when I'm back in sight of the Lancer. "Thank you again for the tea."

"Did you really sleep all those years?" he asks me innocently. I nod, looking at the Lancer, then back at the Nomad camp.

"Days like this, I realize how long it's really been."

I give him a polite little bow and walk away.

"You okay?" I hear Lisa come over my Link.

"Fine," I tell her. "Better than. I think we may have made ourselves another friend."

"Colonel," her voice sounds shaky. "It's Lieutenant Carver... She didn't make it."

16 July, 2115:

The funerals have always been my most difficult duty.

I can't count how many I've attended. I realize I've been burying friends, fellows, and innocents targeted by our enemies—or just unfortunately caught in our violence—for fully _twice_ as long as the young people I'm burying today were alive.

I can't really say if it's gotten harder over the years as I've moved up the chain of command and further from the fight. It certainly hasn't gotten easier. Different, maybe. It's a different kind of pain I feel today, a different flavor of rage.

At first I was burying those I had served with, those I had fought with side-by-side, but we had all jumped equally into the storm. And since _I_ was still in the fight, I took some cold comfort in the hope of avenging them, of applying some excuse for "justice". Those funerals were all about rage.

(Not that vengeance ever healed anything—I learned that early enough, that it didn't matter how many people I killed—but rage wants what it wants.)

As I was moved away from the fight, that's when I started burying those I was responsible for, those I had ordered into their deaths. Those I barely knew. Maybe names, sometimes faces. But too many times it was only numbers on my screens, neat little bloodless graphics. And then anonymous boxes that hid the bodies. I even had other people do the most painful work, to inform the families and loved ones, to make those deaths sound meaningful. All I had to do was put on clean dress armor and show up, stand there. But I was burying other people's children. And my only poultice was to send more of those children into the lethal game.

But today I realize I am in an entirely different circle of hell.

Today I must play the diplomat. I cannot rage. I cannot redirect my pain into vengeance. This was just a stupid, tragic misunderstanding, and I must _forgive_. There's no one to pay for this but me, and a man who says he wants to be my friend even though he's lost many more than I have because of _my_ guns.

And just to twist the knife in my heart further, I realize numbly that I have no way to notify families or loved ones, even if any are still alive.

First Lieutenant Jan Carver rated a small closet of her own as Commander of First Platoon: cold gray walls, a narrow bunk, a shelf-sized desk, a standing cabinet and her foot locker. But she'd adorned the walls with her artwork: sketches and watercolors, Martian landscapes she'd done on her tour (probably sitting by one of our few precious windows). Lovingly done, with a patient but passionate hand. Keepsakes to bring home.

Otherwise, she'd kept her space neat and squared-away, so there isn't much packing up to do. It looks like someone already started carefully placing her few possessions in her locker for storage (in hope that one day there will be someone to send them to).

I think I find why the packing job stopped. Some of her personal files are still live on her desk screen: Video mail home, dated since we woke, stored until they could be sent. It looks like she recorded one a week. The last one—stamped from three days ago—has been paused part-way through.

I sit on her neat bunk, click it back to zero and restart it.

"Mom, Dad, Jill... I'm still here, still fine. Big news this week: We got our hands on a decent map of what may be more survivors, and ships up enough to get us out looking. Colonel Ram's given me point on our first real recon. I guess he's counting on my luck for tripping over the hot finds. Meanwhile, we're still working hard to find a way to call out. The Colonel has a plan of his own. I can't give details yet, but if anyone can pull it off, I know the Colonel can. I still can't believe I'm serving under him—I couldn't wish for a better CO. He really is a legend. Maybe you'll get to meet him one day soon.

"And speaking of someone I wish you could meet: Things are still great with Juan. He's so sweet and gentle and smart and funny. And I think he's in it for the long haul, even though we haven't tossed around the 'L' word yet. I think I'd have gone crazy months ago without him. He's really good to me. I just wish I was better at telling him how I feel."

This is where the recording was paused.

I realize someone's standing just outside the hatch.

"Lieutenant?"

"Sorry, sir," Rios apologizes, stepping into the hatchway. "I should have had Lieutenant Carver's belongings stored by now. I was just..."

"Jan," I cut him off as he stumbles to find excuses. "You can call her Jan."

He looks at the deck.

"I'm sorry," I stand up and tell him.

"It wasn't your fault, sir." He still doesn't make eye contact. "She knew what to expect."

"We had a vague idea what to expect," I correct. "This didn't need to happen on either side."

He doesn't have anything to say in reply.

I key MAI to copy Carver's messages to my personal file. Then I step out of the hatch past Rios, turning to give him a gentle

"Carry on, Lieutenant."

We set aside a piece of ground up the ridgeline to the north, and cut into solid rock (not wanting anyone disturbed by a future slide). We seal the bodies of First Lieutenant Jan Carver and PFC Tobias Summers in neat stone vaults. Thomasen's construction team has built a small pyramid to mark them—it's our first cemetery, as any recovered bodies used to be shipped back to Earth before we were so thoroughly cut off. (The fact that this very crest was rendered in one of Carver's paintings isn't lost on me.)

As many as we can get outside in masks make the climb and stand in the gritty wind as a team of "bearers" from First Platoon—wearing Heavy Armor—gently places the body bags into the vaults and slides the cover slabs into place. Spec-3 Mathias Linns—despite the crossbow bolt he took in the right hamstring—stands with his Platoon in full armor, supported between two of his fellows.

And then I have to put together a few inadequate words to say over them before we all go back inside.

(As I head for the locks, I turn back to see a figure that MAI tags as Rios on his knees, burying something in the dirt at the foot of Carver's vault.)

Paul stood well back away from the main formation during the brief ceremony. Then he went back inside just before we broke up and buried himself again in his work. Morales says he hasn't stopped to eat or sleep in two days—since the tragic skirmish at the tap-site—and despite whatever his nanotech can do for him, he's looking drawn.

I wonder if he's ever seen death this close, raised in the bizarrely monastic world of the ETE Stations where no one gets sick or gets old, and the "Elders" just sit back and watch from a sterile distance (apparently so much distance that they don't see age or illness) as the "Natural" humans scrape and fight in the valleys below.

Probably thinking I need a modicum of hope right now, Tru brings it to me: She's waiting in the corridor just outside Staging, cradling one of the two newborns like a proud aunt. Persephone Hope Maxwell, three days old, joining the now two-week-old Cal Ochoa—named for our missing CO.

"Meet the Big Boss, Hope," Tru coos. "I know. He looks scary. But he's really a good guy. He's just not very happy right now." She gives me a sad smile, holding the infant close—it looks up into my eyes with wonder (and maybe a little fear)—and I offer my still-gloved finger for tiny hands to grab.

"We just got done with the doctor," Tru announces. "Halley says she's healthy, just like little Cal. Just a little late-term—it shows in some of the physical development. And Doc Shenkar's hormone supplements have kick-started our puberty-avoiding teens..."

"It's good news... Thank you."

"I figured you could use a little life-affirming."

Baby Hope takes hold of my finger. Her grip is strong even through the glove.

Abbas called shortly after the ceremony—against Matthew's advice I supplied him with a field Link (though restricted to select bands). He'd just buried ten of his own people the day before, and suggested we hold off on meeting again for at least a month, to allow time for grieving and tempers to subside. He also let me know that the other Nomad tribes had expressed mixed interest in our presence, and that he'd be willing to arrange meetings with their leaders on neutral ground.

"You keep surprising me, Mikey," Matthew drawls at me as we share some of what little remains of the Bourbon I smuggled with us on the shuttle. "I didn't think that was possible after all these years."

"Should I be saying the same of you?" I rib him. " _You've_ been sounding more like Richards."

"Ouch," he scowls. "Never thought I'd have to hear that name again." He grins and shakes his head. "Old bastard's probably been dead forty years now. He went on to become one of those retired-general news-net consultants, didn't he?"

"They were approaching him," I remember. "I don't think he took it, though. Too eager to get out of the spotlight, get down to being a grandpa."

"Seven years as our CO, then another twelve stuck between us—well, _you_ —and the politics on the Committee?" he remembers with a sad laugh. "I'm surprised he didn't eat his gun."

"He would have shot _us_ first. Well, me."

"Yeah, he would have. But look at you: You'd make the starched old fucker proud."

"You can have the job any time you want, Matthew," I tell him, almost seriously.

"You know I don't do speeches. Besides, I would have splattered those neo-rag dirt-surfers. Come to think about it, not long ago you would've done the same."

"Brave New World."

"Tell me about it."

"Colonel Ram," the Link interrupts us. It's Kastl.

"Go ahead, Captain."

"Ahhh... Someone here to see you, sir. I think..."

He flashes me an image of a blue ETE suit, standing outside the main gate. I check MAI's internal feed: Paul is still down in the repair bays.

"I'll be right there."

It's Simon. He folds up his mask so I can see his face, then resets it so he can breathe enough to speak:

"I bring no answers for you, Colonel Ram," he says with a formal flatness. "My Elders live in a world that does not change as quickly as yours. They will watch, and they will deliberate. But you have made an impression on them, in a way that outsiders rarely do."

"So, they won't help us?" I conclude.

" _I_ will help you." Simon offers me his gloved hand.

### Chapter 3: Wake the Neighbors

21 August, 2115:

"You think they know we're out here, Colonel?" Rios asks me over the Link, his 2nd Platoon prone across the low ridge line in Heavy Armor, ICWs and sniper rifles aimed downrange at the apparently desolate ruin of The City of Industry, 500 meters away. The only thing moving is sand in the thin shifting winds, kicking up intermittently into swirling dust devils by a combination of thermals and the landscape.

"Very likely," I tell him from where I'm sitting on the slope just down from the ridge, keeping watch over the H-A feed on my goggle HUD.

The City of Industry sits on the Melas Chasma floor near the eastern tip of the massive Candor-Melas Range, a hundred-mile-long chain of peaks—some of them three miles high—that partially divides Melas Chasma from Candor Chasma, stretching east from the Planum-level Northwest Melas Rim. More critically, it also sits in the shadow of the ancient mega-slide that pushed through the fifty mile wide gap between the Candor-Melas Range and the terraced Northeast Rim, when Candor catastrophically collapsed and flowed down into Melas, forming a slide-plain that's eight-hundred square miles and thousands of feet high. An earlier slide-plain stretches further south into Melas, just to the east of the Industry site, placing the colony in a V-shaped lowland.

Below these two overlapping county-sized slides, Industry looks like it's in an extremely high-risk location, but the corporate geologists insisted that the mega-slides had been stable for millions of years, since most of the surface water was lost to space, and the cooling of the planet's core precluded any further seismic activity. Further overruling caution, the site appealed to researchers because of its proximity to the mountains, the slide-slopes and the deeper parts of Melas. (And giving the colony a cutting edge science facility that provided the backing corporations a public-friendly face to help offset some of the fears of what they were working on in their labs.)

The corporate geologists were proven right when the new colony was spared by the slides that wrecked Mariner and Melas One in '57 (both of those colonies had been built _atop_ the ancient slides, ground that proved lethally unstable when one of the Northeast Rim terraces broke loose). The edges of the ancient slides mostly stayed put, and the sections that didn't did not reach the colony.

Now it looks like those geologists failed to take into account the effects of nuclear bombardment. Industry was spared a direct hit, but there are bomb craters in proximity: One in the valley floor to the southwest, close enough that Anton's reconstructions predict structural damage to the main domes and fabs from the blast wave; and another just up on the slide plain to the north that sent the thousand-foot wall down and at them.

(Though the radiation bloom of the slide crater made Anton suspicious: It's slightly hotter than the other blast craters, suggesting the nuke was set off some time _after_ the main bombardment, and did not airburst as the Ares' Shield warheads were designed to. Anton suspects the warhead was carefully planted and detonated to create a controlled slide that partially buried the colony to make it look more ravaged than it actually was. I'm reminded of the apparently fake crater that may be hiding Shinkyo Colony.)

In its heyday, the City of Industry was comprised of three large domes, four industrial fabs, and two shuttle facilities (one on the dome side to the south and one on the fab side to the north). Today, all three domes are broken open, ragged skeletons, partially buried. The fabs have been almost completely covered—only the one on the far west side of the complex is visible, broken open and gaping like a cavern. (Rick points out this fab was for bio-nanotech culturing—it may have been "staged" like it is to scare away the curious: the structure looks like it's been eaten through, not crushed by blast or slide.)

I check in with the ASV crew, still standing uneventful watch where we set the craft down and hid it in a depression a klick back. We flew in low, using the lower slide-ridge to hide our approach. Unfortunately, this didn't give us a good line-of-sight to the colony either, not until we approached on foot. And, I expect, our VTOL jets kicked up enough telltale dust to announce us anyway. But so far, the colony has done a convincing job of playing dead: no heat, no gas emissions, no noise even on our best parabolics.

I turn to our "guide": Abbas' adopted son Jonathan Drake, AKA Ishmael, who sits on his haunches on the loose slope next to me, looking half-boy and half-armadillo in his heavy scrap-metal scale armor and bulky rust-red cloaks. (He tells me his people wear all that mass not just for protection but also as a traditional mandate from their tribal forefathers to keep strong and stave off bone degeneration). He's engrossed by the images on his own loaner Link-gear HUD, tech he's easily admitted to coveting, thinking it would go far to aid him and his tribesmen on their raiding sorties, or to defend them from competitors. I'm tempted to let him keep the toys for his trouble. Abbas said he chose the boy as our guide because of his intelligence and curiosity for other peoples, but I suspect Abbas offered family to reinforce our budding relations. (It's also quite a gesture of trust that we'll keep his son safe going where many others have failed to return from.) Quiet and polite but inquisitive and eager to serve, Jon—Ishmael—makes a good emissary. I am reminded of the Zen adage of someone who comes with an "empty cup", open-minded to the company and ways of the demonized "Unmakers".

"What do you think, Mr. Drake?" I ask him.

"If they've optics like these, they've seen us," he confirms with only the slightest edge in his voice—he sounds like a seasoned squad leader. "I'm sure they've sentries dug in up in the rocks, away from the visible Keep—same thing we would do. They won't move until their main force has you where they want you."

"Your people have exchanged fire with these men before?" I want him to clarify—Abbas had only admitted to anecdotal contacts.

"Not in my time," he tells me. "But there's reason we walk far around this place: we keep the old stories fresh. Now, Farouk's tribe—he's a hungrier Sharif—we heard his scouts got pinned in a crossfire when they tried creeping in from the east, over the Lower Slide and down the deep gorges that run from the cut where the big floes overlap. Farouk was probably sure he was invisible, and he picked a smart path, but they still knew he was coming. He didn't go on the raid himself, of course, but he lost six good fighters out of twelve before they could get away. It would have been all of them if it wasn't for his Zauba'a."

"' _Zowbah_ '?" I try to pronounce.

"Old Muslim legend. Means 'whirlwind demon.' Farouk's personal bodyguard and killer. Very fast, very quiet, moves like she can fly."

"She?"

He nods with a little grin. "They call her Zauba'a Ghaddar. A Ghaddar is a girl demon that ambushes men in the desert, bites off their... well..." He discreetly points to his groin.

"Is she a Jinn?"

"Maybe. No energy-magic, though. Not like the Eternals. But many believe she can't be human, at least from the stories. Not many close looks at her in action—most don't live to tell."

"But the men who hold this place—you called them 'Keepers'—they wear suits like ours?" I get back to the subject more at hand.

"Farouk wears the shell of one that his Zauba'a brought back for him. I saw it at a tribal meeting. Just like your big plastic suits, only no helmet because he likes people to see who he is."

"Matthew?" I call into my Link.

"Listening," he admits, sitting back in Command Ops. "I don't know—we're still not picking up any ID tags from UNMAC gear. From Junior's description, you'd think the place would be lit with tags."

"They're easy enough to disable, especially if you don't want to be found," I consider. "Have MAI do another signal sweep. Go outside the normal Link bands this time. They may still be using interface gear to keep in touch, just not where we'd hear them."

"I've got it, Colonel," I hear Kastl come on a moment later. "Live channel, but no chatter. If they're on, they're keeping quiet."

"Patch me in," I tell him.

"You're going to do something stupid again, aren't you?" Matthew complains.

"It's either that or waste air sitting out here."

I crawl up to the ridgeline, poke my head up over the top. Dunes have shifted up onto the broken domes, obscuring the original foundations and the ground-level airlocks. The domes themselves look like convincing victims of a nuclear-grade blast-wave. I expect the jagged ruins give them lots of excellent cover. There is no sign that anyone has been active on the surface.

"This is Colonel Ram of UNMAC Base Melas Two calling the City of Industry," I call into the Link. "I repeat: this is Colonel Ram of UNMAC Melas Two calling the City of Industry." I give them a few seconds to digest my greeting before I continue. "No doubt you have seen us out here, been watching us since we arrived. We only wish to make contact with you, and I would very much like to avoid bloodshed."

Answering me, a high-vel round bursts off a rock three feet from me—I feel frag hit my armor. MAI's graphic display tracks its trajectory back all the way to a hole in one of the domes. The shooter isn't visible, not even to MAI's enhancements. He knows how to hide from us.

"I'm going to assume that you _intended_ to miss me," I return. As if confirming this, another round hits the same rock. And then a third. Only MAI says they came from _different_ locations in the ruin.

"You have remarkable resolve, Colonel Ram, even for a dead man," a voice comes over the Link: strong, older, arrogantly authoritarian.

"Long story there," I say back. "Love to share it with you. I'll even bring the bourbon."

"And if I decline your generous offer?" the voice comes back after a moment.

"I'd at least like to know who's turning me down."

More silence.

"Janeway, Samuel. Colonel. Second Generation PK."

"Which means what, Colonel Janeway?" I pry.

"As far as you know, it means I'm just an eccentric hermit with a lot of guns."

"I've heard otherwise, Colonel."

"Been talking to the wildlife, Colonel Ghost?" his voice goes even more sarcastic. "Not advised. Just saying."

"I've got a _Captain Maxwell_ Janeway listed as CO of the Industry UNMAC Peacekeeper garrison," Lisa chimes in discreetly on the main channel to tell me. I vaguely remember him as MAI flashes his dossier on my heads-up: Multigenerational military family, top of his class at the Academy and through Ranger School—the kind of eager, squared-away unquestioning patriot that Matthew and I always hated.

"Son? Grandson?" I wonder idly. He described himself as "second generation."

"Apparently they got a little generous with the field promotions," Matthew jabs.

I switch back to the locals' channel, give Janeway a few seconds of dead air, then: "Colonel Janeway, I'm only here because this is closer than Pioneer or Frontier. Maybe I should try them next?"

" _Strongly_ not advised," the voice comes back sternly.

"We came all this way," I tell him. "Hate to just turn around and go home."

Answering me, another round hits the rocks, this one several inches closer.

"Thinking you should've brought Blueboy?" I hear Matthew back on the main channel, where Janeway can't hear.

"Haven't changed my mind yet," I assure him—I'd specifically requested that Paul stay behind so that we wouldn't be seen coming with an ETE vanguard.

"Planning on shooting your way in, then?" Matthew presses the obvious point.

"Ram to Janeway," I call on the local channel. "Neutral ground. You pick it. I just want to talk."

"I'm quite comfy where I am, Colonel Ghost," he replies. "Born here, in fact. And I'm not feeling social. No offense, but I've heard stories about you lot, and the planet has the scars to prove 'em. You call yourself UNMAC—based on last contact, that means you come to kill and burn, sterilize. As far as I know, you're still under those orders. Look northwest of what's left of our domes, you'll see where the colony labs were. It all broke open in the big boom. I admit we made it look scary to keep off the idle curious—you'd figure that out on your own soon enough. But if there was actual danger cooking in there, I wouldn't be talking to you. This site is _clean_. So send your report up your chain and move along. Don't come back this way."

I don't feel like taking the time to try to convince him that UNMAC didn't pull the trigger on the Shield.

"Listen, Colonel Janeway, my team just crawled out of fifty years of Hiber," I try. "I have no orders, being that I have no way of calling for any. I'm as downed here as you are. I just came hoping to find a little support, or at least some intel. Apparently a lot happened while we were sleeping."

"You _are_ a piece of work, Colonel Ghost," I hear him laugh. "And the only reason I haven't holed you is that your voiceprint says you're actually who you say, so you may actually be telling me straight. But that doesn't mean I have any use for you and yours with or without orders, and I got precious little to be in a sharing mood. Best get back to your own hole and stay there—that's all the intel you'll get today."

"Our uplinks are scrap—if they weren't, I'm sure you'd have been listening in. So you know Earthside doesn't know we're here, not yet," I lay it out for him in a way I hope he'll be willing to hear. "Still, I expect they'll stumble back here sooner or later, whether we get a call out or not, maybe in our lifetime. My team, I expect we'd like to go home. If you don't want that kind of attention, I could omit certain things from my report, but I'm sure they'll have their own look, having come all this way. Do what you want, but I think it would be better to be standing together when they show up so we can convince them you're fine with staying put."

"Quite comfy where I am," he repeats. "And, trust me, you'd all do best not to come again. Last warning."

I hear a sharp crack, and one of the H-A troops on the ridgeline next to me snaps his helmet back. I realize it's Rios' Platoon Sergeant. There's a blast of frosty air from his faceplate, and he rolls back down the slope, hands flailing at his visor.

"Hendricks!" Rios shouts out, running over to his downed NCO as best he can in the loose gravel. I hear coughing on the Link. One of the other troopers is helping get the shattered helmet off while Rios digs out a backup mask. Once the big helmet is off I can see a pale face, bloodied but otherwise intact, gratefully gasping air out of the mask. "He's okay," Rios confirms. "Shell just broke his visor."

I hear more shouting, more shooting. MAI automatically switches me to the squad left with the ASV. One of the troopers is down, clutching his left leg. I see another suit get hit in the arm.

"Where's that fire coming from?" Rios demands.

"They're everywhere, sir!" someone is shouting. MAI traces back at least five separate trajectories, though the shooters remain well hidden in the rocks. ICWs spray at the hills.

"Hold fire!" I order.

No more rounds are incoming.

"Time to turn around and go home, Colonel Ghost," Janeway comes on. "I hope I've made that point clear, 'cause you're wasting my air."

"Pull out!" I order. But before I go, I stand up over the top of the ridgeline, let them see me from the colony, let them know they'll see me again.

1 September, 2115:

"The man is amazing—he's teaching himself our interplanetary communications engineering out of MAI's database," Anton almost breathlessly praises as we watch Simon "study" in the small sealed tech-lab.

Simon—if he hears us at all—barely registers a smirk on his half-exposed face as he intently manipulates graphics through his silver goggles, his gloved fingers working the empty air in some sort of invisible VR interface. We can see what he's reviewing on MAI's screens. He scans almost faster than we can see, much less read. I wonder how much his brain has been changed by ETE nanotechnology.

"I can't build you micro-processors, Colonel," Simon tells me the same thing Paul had. But then he takes it further by offering: "But for a higher power-cost, we could manufacture something using older technology. I'll have to go back to the schematics on some of the first probes. Viking. Mariner. Voyager. I studied their designs when I was still in the Crèche. The result won't be crisp, fast or more than a simple data stream, but it should cut through the EM ceiling."

" _Should?_ " Matthew picks apart.

"I don't even know if I can assemble a viable unit—I'm going on theory." Simon actually sounds irritated. "And there is no guarantee that the signal will be understood even if it reaches Earth. But if you want the best chance of being heard, we would do best to wait until the planetary alignments are better."

"Which is when?" Matthew pushes, suspicious of the delay.

"We'll have our best position in between three and five months," Simon tells him like the span is only a few days. "I estimate it will take a month or more just to craft the parts."

"And if we miss that window, we don't get another for two years," Anton qualifies, anxious.

"We're very grateful for your assistance, Simon," I try to shut down any further naysaying.

He raises his goggles so I can see his eyes, and he gives me a sad, lopsided grin.

"I'm not sure you'll be thanking me after you've had contact from Earth."

"You think he's shining us?" Matthew asks me as we take the stairs back up to Ops.

"Stalling?"

"None of these people seem eager to get a message out. And Simon: the first time we met him he didn't seem to like anyone except his own."

"It might not be his idea to be here," I consider.

"That's what worries me."

"And Paul?" I ask him directly.

"He's growing on me," he admits. "He takes it hard when we bleed."

"Incoming signal," Kastl announces, jarring me out of my haze.

I'd spent my morning reviewing MAI's best estimates of what the so-called "PK" colonies might have cached in weapons and ammunition (with and without what they might have taken from Melas One, which Rios' recent ASV recon proved had been completely stripped). Then I went back to staring—frustrated—at the tactical maps MAI prepared of the City of Industry site, flashing through the AI's estimations of what the real inhabitable structure might be under the façade of ruin, and comparing the firing patterns they used on us to try to understand their defenses.

"No signature, but it reads like what we've seen the ETE use when they hack into our Links," Kastl clarifies.

"Put it up," I tell him.

"Colonel Ram," I get greeted by a chrome ETE mask and blue sealsuit as the main screen comes alive.

"This is Ram," I confirm. "What do I call you?"

"Council Blue," he tells me with condescending officiousness. "My name is otherwise unimportant for the purpose of this communication." The voice matches the Blue Station Council representative who met us, the apparent father of Paul and Simon.

"Do you wish to talk to your team members?" I offer.

"I can speak with them whenever I wish, Colonel," he talks to me like I'm a child in trouble with some great authority figure. "I called to speak with _you_. About your reckless encounter with the City of Industry PK."

"I was under the impression your Council had decided to take no interest in such affairs," I give him back coolly.

"You have involved us," he accuses back. The image shifts to add a feed showing three figures, all wearing some kind of light-armored uniform in a Mars-red pixilated camo pattern similar to our own suits. They are kneeling formally, hands on their thighs, staring straight ahead with stoic discipline. All three appear to be young and oriental, two male and one female. "We apprehended these three attempting to break into our Blue Station using what appears to be UNMAC lock-breaking technology from the Eco War. A fourth individual jumped to his apparent death rather than be captured. They will not speak, but their uniforms carry a variety of dust indicating a long journey across the valley. They were armed with these..."

The screen shows a selection of light PDWs favored by some of the corporate site security, grenades, knives, and a kind of simple short sword: slightly curved, single edged, "tanto" point, non-reflective blade, square guard. Further views of their gear show masks, goggles and head-shrouds that look almost Nomad in design, down to their headbands which bear small metal plates. Zooming back in on the captives (who seem to be restrained in position by some invisible force), their uniforms are not UNMAC, but show similarities to the UNMAC contract LA suits supplied to corporate security forces during the height of the Eco conflict, only modified to include additional armor in the torso, shoulders and forearms. Their boots are wrapped in strips of material in Nomad fashion to preserve them against the abrasive terrain. Otherwise, the outfits bear no visible colony markings.

"Those are Colony Guard suits," I tell him. "The PK are supposedly using UNMAC military gear."

"This was our analysis as well," he talks down to me. "But if it was not your engagement of the PK that instigated them to attack us, then it was certainly your active presence on the surface that has motivated someone else to."

"But why attack you?"

"Paul assisted you visibly in your engagement with the Nomads," he keeps up his accusatory tone. "You have shown us to them. You have broken our passivity."

"But why attack you?" I repeat. "They had to know how futile that would be."

"A great prize might inspire a great risk, Colonel," he considers, then holds up a canister where I can see it—it looks like one of the nano-containment canisters we found aboard the Lancer. "They carried these as well."

"They sought to steal your nanotech?" I confirm, trying not to sound completely naïve. He nods with surprising tolerance.

"Failing here, they may try elsewhere, Colonel," he tells me, his tone becoming more respectful. "They know our people are with you."

"Understood," I tell him. Then offer: "They may also have learned from their initial failure, Council. Expect further visits."

"We shall."

"We'll let you know if we have any visitors here. Thank you, Council."

He drops off without saying goodbye.

2 September, 2115:

MAI registers the breach at 02:35, less than twelve hours since the call from "Council Blue."

There wouldn't have been an alarm at all if we hadn't recalibrated MAI's security net to scan for our own SOF lock breakers—something I'll have to thank Council Blue for. And we keep that alarm silent, letting our visitors proceed with their break-in, not letting them know they're being watched.

We also left one of the airlocks—Airlock One, closest to high value targets as well as the perimeter wall—conveniently unguarded, so they meet no opposition when they pop the hatches. They do this with impressive skill and technique (breaking into a pressurized facility undetected is no easy task, even with the new denser atmosphere):

They use the breakers to disable the pressure sensors, then seal themselves to the outer hatch with a portable shelter. They manually bleed out the airlock, pop the hatch, slip inside and seal the outer door behind them. They disable the pumps (which certainly would be detected), then they repeat the bleed-and-pop process on the inner hatch. This process allows them to slowly equalize pressure as they pass into larger and larger spaces, so the decompression is minimal by the time they get through Staging and into the corridors (which we've also kept cleared).

"They're good," Lisa confirms. "They're even monitoring our common Link bands to see if we're talking about them."

They move quickly but silently: checking each hatch and corner with wand-cameras before advancing, using the breakers to hack in and disable the motion-sensitive lights and sentry arrays as they go (the hack sets the internal video feed on a loop of empty corridor). Thankfully, they don't notice MAI's override, which simulates a successful hack while keeping the arrays functional.

The intruders match the ETE's visitors in appearance: four lean bodies, shrouded masks, up-armored colony gear, PDWs (fitted with suppressors I'm sure they would use on anyone they incidentally encountered) and those unique short swords. They cling to the walls as they advance smoothly, with an unnatural grace; their footfalls making almost no sound at all, even with amplification.

And they show us they know exactly where to go, where to look for our ETE guests or anything we might have "sampled" from them: Two of the four head straight for A-Deck Medical, to Isolation, while the other two drop down to the Tech labs on B-Deck. (More telling is where they _don't_ go: to VIP quarters, so they assume we're treating the Stilsons like subjects for study rather than guests.)

"I'm impressed," Matthew says over my shoulder as we watch them on the Ops monitors. "I was beginning to think this wasn't worth staying up for."

"You sure we don't want to alert the Stilsons?" Anton asks me again.

"If they're here for what I think they are," I tell him, "then we need to keep our new guests away from our old guests, and vice-versa."

The first two gain access to Medical. Further proving their foreknowledge of our facilities, they immediately split: one searching the empty Iso rooms while the other goes for the Med Labs. One deck below, the other two have broken into the nearest Tech Lab and begin sweeping everything systematically with what look like old corporate lab safety gear, designed to detect any trace nano-culture leaks.

"You were right," Matthew gives me. "They assume we 'sampled' one of the Brothers Blue."

"They don't know the nanites _do_ break down as soon as they're out of the body," Rick adds, shaking his head.

"You _checked_?" Anton confronts him, sounding almost less offended by the breach of trust than by not being told.

"Paul _let_ Doc Halley take blood. His nanites were completely degraded before they could be scanned."

"But they don't know that," Anton worries.

"Which is why we keep them away from the Stilsons," I tell him.

Our guests start looking frustrated. One of them tries to tap into MAI through a Lab terminal, tries to access the sentry system.

"He's trying to get a fix on the Stilsons," Matthew confirms.

"You'd think they'd be getting suspicious that they haven't run into anybody yet," Lisa wonders.

"Show's over," I decide, flashing a go-code into the Link. MAI slams the hatches closed around our guests, and 2nd and 3rd Platoons' H-A suits move into the corridors surrounding those sections.

The intruders hesitate for less than a second. They each slap shaped charges on the nearest exits, then duck and cover as the heavy hatches blow outward. The H-A teams barely have enough warning to duck. I realize the blasts have bought our intruders time and space to move.

MAI gets the lights back on, but the corridors are full of smoke, more than a breaching charge alone would generate. MAI cranks the ventilators to try to clear it.

Sprays of full-auto fire come through the blown hatches on both decks. The troopers track their ICW's and return fire in sparse bursts, MAI's targeting trying to minimize damage to our facilities. On the screens, the motion sensors—partially futzed by whatever's in the smoke—aren't matching the intruders up to the firing trajectories. MAI registers breakers being used to hack in and kill the sensors on the Lab exhaust vents.

"They've set up some kind of remote decoy guns," I bark into the Link. The troopers respond by launching shock grenades into the occupied lab (something they don't dare do inside Medical because of the delicate and irreplaceable life-saving equipment).

"You can't fit a man through an exhaust..." Rick is arguing, but MAI shows motion in the vents. Then the sensors fail.

"They're probably climbing up to A-Deck so they can make a run for an airlock," Matthew points to the blueprint.

"Or pop one of the old emergency access hatches to the roof," Rick adds other possibilities.

"Rios, get guns on those vents where they hit A-Deck," I order. The vents pass just behind the squads he has surrounding Medical, which puts his guns conveniently close, but it splits their attention in opposite directions. "Metzger?" I call over to Aircom.

"On, Colonel," she comes back ready.

"Can you get me turrets pointed at those vent-caps topside?"

"Already done, sir. Free to fire?"

"On my order," I hold.

"Labs are clear," I hear Spec-4 Jenovec—one of the 3rd Platoon squad leaders—declare as they move in on B-Deck. "They dropped all their gear, went light—they won't have breathers if they go topside."

"Don't touch their gear," I order caution. "Back out. Hold position."

"Booby-trap?" Matthew asks.

"I would, if I thought that far in advance," I tell him. "And these guys seem to keep their moves planned out well ahead of the game."

Proving the theory, MAI registers a small blast in the Tech Lab. Two of the troopers—Price and Scher—light up with shrapnel and concussive wounds.

"Halley! Armor down on B-Deck!" Matthew barks into the Link. "You'll have to stabilize on-site—Medical isn't cleared yet."

"When you catch 'em they're gonna regret damaging the only hospital in over forty million miles," I hear Halley, somewhere between irritated and angry.

MAI registers two more blasts, much smaller than the original breaching charges but just as smoky, blowing the access panels off the Lab vents on A-Deck. Rios has his troopers ready...

...and then nothing happens but the billowing smoke. Motions sensors start to blur out.

I watch helmet feed as a pair of troopers gets sent forward through the fog to carefully check the smoking vents. The sighting lasers of their ICWs lance brightly through the haze—I realize these lines would make them easy targets, but disabling the sights takes away MAI's targeting assist (last thing I want is us shooting each other in the confusion).

"Some kind of Grappler in the vent shafts," Sergeant Hendricks reports, aiming his helmet cams into one of the smoky shafts. "Looks like they shot cables and power-towed themselves up. Probably took a hell of a beating squeezing through."

"Nothing on radar, motion or infra-red," Rios confirms grimly, moving up. "They're not in there."

"No activity on the vent-caps topside," Metzger adds.

"They went _down_ ," Matthew hisses, then calls in reinforcements. "Lieutenant Labeau! I need your guns on C-Deck! Lieutenant Bodicker: D and E Decks!"

"Too many places to cover," Lisa complains as two more platoons race to join the game.

"Especially if they already got out of the vents while we were busy pointing guns where they were blasting," Matthew agrees, probably whipping himself for assuming the enemy would panic and try to run by the direct route. Kastl is running full-map motion scans on all decks, filtering the sudden rush of activity against our own ID tags.

"All personnel: Look for smoke," I advise. But the lower decks look clear on the sentry cams. There are blind spots in our visuals, but motion sensors and tag readers are everywhere. Without the masking smoke, it should be easy enough to nail something moving that isn't tagged, but MAI isn't reading any anomalies.

"Bodicker to Ops: We've got open access panels on D and E decks," we get confirmation with visuals of neatly popped panels. I instantly wonder if they left open panels as decoys and exited elsewhere, resealing those plates. But that would take time.

Fifteen tense seconds later, MAI flashes us an error message.

" _Duplicate tags_ ," Anton confirms. "Somehow they managed to copy our RFID signatures."

MAI flashes everyone the copied IDs: Specialists Tanaka and Caan.

"Get eyes on those duplicate tags," Matthew starts to order the obvious.

"Caan is with me," Thomas reports immediately.

"I've got Tanaka," Sergeant Henderson comes through a few seconds later. MAI locks those tags, then lights up the imposters.

"B-Deck West!" Matthew directs. "They managed to climb back up two decks while we were chasing them too high and too low."

"I've got guns on the stairwells on A-Deck," Rios assures.

"Fifth Platoon coming in from below," Labeau supports. "They're not getting off Baker-Deck."

"And they're not getting out of West," Thomas promises, her troopers on all corridor hatches.

"Seal the section, lock everything down," I order, realizing I've just locked our visitors into rich territory: Four barracks (which means uniforms, survival gear and chaos because we've just shut off-shift Fourth Platoon in with them), NCO billets, junior officer and support quarters, and an armory locker. Off-shift census puts forty-eight bodies in that section. MAI reads fifty moving tags.

"Just lost lock on the imposter tags," Kastl announces. "Now I've got doubles from Fourth Platoon."

"They're rotating signatures," Anton confirms. "Blending in with personnel in that section. Within a few meters, the readers can't tell them apart."

"Making it hard to pick them out in a populated section," Matthew appraises. "We'll need to eyeball everyone. Thomas: Coordinate with Lieutenant Lee and start clearing the section. _Carefully._ Keep the corridors locked down and start emptying the main barracks one-by-one. Check all IDs on I-Scan. Assume they'll be trying to pass, wearing our gear. And be ready for surprises."

"Yes, sir."

On the sentry cams, I see the off-shift troopers and personnel—already out of their racks and in-uniform as soon as our visitors showed up—get ordered into lines for evacuation. Their squad NCOs issue weapons, knowing their own troopers by sight. The three bigger barracks have exits that open directly out of the section. The smaller barracks and the shared quarters all open onto the sealed corridors—that leaves eight of our people—including Lee, the Platoon CO—having to sit put, locked in until the corridors can be cleared, which means a room-by-room search by Thomas' armored teams. But as soon as the first barracks' hatch opens, smoke starts filling the surrounding corridors.

"Rios, what's happening in Medical?" I see helmets advancing into a dark and hazy facility. There's small-arms damage, mostly contained to the entry and the Iso clean-room (Halley will not be pleased). I also see how our visitors mounted their PDWs to the deck to fire back at us remotely while they went... Where?

The troopers work from west-to-east: they check the corners and potential hiding places in the main ward, the nursing and physician's stations, the shift-doctor's small quarters, then start clearing the exam and Iso rooms one-by-one. At the far east end, the hatch to the Pharmacy is open, and beyond that: Medical Stores.

"Don't trust an open door," I hear Rios warn his point team. One of the troopers improvises and rolls a chair through the Pharmacy hatch. A frag grenade peppers it almost instantly. They clear the small Pharmacy and repeat the trick with the Med Stores hatch, but nothing happens. Four armored troopers leapfrog inside and clear the packed space. It looks undisturbed.

"Distraction," Matthew calls it.

"Main elevator's been hacked," Rios assesses. MAI releases the doors. The shaft is clear, but the sensors are offline.

"They went _down_?" Matthew moans.

"While we're busy chasing the other half of their team up," I agree.

"Feels like a goddamn game of Pac Man," Matthew grouses. "Anybody remember Pac Man?" He doesn't get an answer.

"Thomas: Send two of your squads to clear Medical B," I have to order her to divide her forces. Thankfully we have no patients recovering in that ward, so we cleared it for the night just like A-Deck. "They may be heading for the larger Med Labs off the main ward," I direct, though I expect this is more misdirection: that they've gone deeper to get lost before trying to make for the surface again. The sections below Medical are Hiber-Sleep. But Medical sits next to our air and water processors if they wanted to do us damage. Or they could make a run for our aircraft hangars. Or the civilian sections.

"We thought too narrow," I mutter my stupidity out loud. "We should have had guns on every section."

"They would have seen that," Matthew supports. "And too hard to maintain. We didn't know when—or if—they were coming."

"If they wanted to really hurt us, they would have gone for Atmosphere and Water, or just blown up our Medical Stores while they were there," Lisa tries.

"They may try to hurt us to get themselves a way out," I decide. Then call "Tru?"

"Watching the show, Colonel," she comes on, covering nervous with her usual cheer. "Anything we can do?"

"Our guest might try for a soft target to lever an exit," I warn her. "Have your people ready."

"Already are," she assures, panning the camera across their housing bay to show me what looks like a mob ready for a brawl: knives and tools and even rivet-drivers and cutting torches for makeshift weapons.

On B-Deck, Thomas is making slow progress with the barracks evacuation. The West corridors are full of smoke, killing our sensors.

"Thomas to Ops, possible problem: Sergeant Martinez reports Sergeant First Class Schrader tried to get to Lieutenant Lee's quarters. Took Specialist Wei with him. They haven't come back."

"They're not reading," Kastl checks. "Lost in that smoke."

"Shit..." Matthew grumbles.

"Barracks B-One is clear and locked down," Thomas focuses on progress. "Starting B-Two."

"We've got sentries out and smoke in Medical B," Sergeant Jones reports.

"Same on C-Deck," Sergeant Riker adds to it.

"We've got the Med elevators locked down on D and E," Lieutenant Bodicker assures. "Doesn't look like they made it down this far. We'll keep that gate shut."

"Still, we're chasing them in two directions on four separate decks," Matthew considers sourly. "All without any sign they're communicating with each other. Either they rehearsed the hell out of this or they've had lots of practice. Hard not to appreciate these fuckers."

"Tell that to Price and Scher," Halley comes on. "I've got them stabilized, but they'll be down healing some nasty penetration wounds for the next few weeks. The bastards load their explosives with some kind of flechettes that can cut through the soft joint-gaps in our suits."

"How's your hospital?" I ask her.

"Still not cleared, so I'm using one of the labs they didn't wreck. But I've seen the mess on feed: I'm just glad we had the warning to clear out the essential gear before we got hit."

"Barracks B-Two is clear and locked down," Thomas updates us. "Still no sign of Schrader or Wei. Had to stop Martinez from going after them."

"They have to know they can't get past us," Rios considers.

"Which means they'll need to distract us or lever us," I calculate.

"Colonel Ram, this is Tru. I'm going to move my people in to protect Atmosphere and Water. You're spread thin and this is all the home we've got."

"Labeau, Bodicker: crack the East Section arsenals and issue our volunteers small arms and Field Links," I order. Matthew raises an eyebrow at me, but doesn't seem in the mood to argue.

"Tru, tell your people to watch for any attempts to cut through from Medical," I give her. "And watch the ductwork—they can get through some impressively tight spaces."

"We're on it, Colonel. And thank you."

"You were planning on informing us of this?" I hear a familiar voice buzz through the Ops walls. The heavy floor hatch shimmers and two blue ETE suits come rising through it like ghosts out of a grave.

"We were trying to keep you both out of the line of fire," I explain evenly, ignoring the breach. "Similar individuals attempted to force entry into your Station."

"We know," Paul says it before Simon can. "The Council contacted us."

"Then you know what they appear to be after."

"They have no hope of getting away with anything of value," Simon insists.

"These guys are pretty impressive," Matthew tells him. "I wouldn't be assuming if I were you."

"This is an ETE matter, Colonel," Simon continues, ignoring Matthew's warning.

"You should let us go in," Paul softens it. "None of your people need be harmed on our account. Please."

"Barracks B-Three is clear," Thomas reports, sounding tense. "We can't access Barracks Four without moving into the sealed corridors. Schrader and Wei still haven't checked in."

There's a commotion on the Link. C-Deck Medical. Very little can be seen on-screen with all the smoke, but one of the feeds gets dragged back out into the less-hazy corridors, face-up at the ceiling.

"Medical!" It's Sergeant Riker. "I have a man down! Some kind of throwing blade stuck between the shoulder and chest plates."

We get feed of the injured trooper as his fellows try to pack and stabilize where a black metal flat spike protrudes between the laminate sections at the shoulder joint. MAI still has no targets on motion sensors.

"Colonel, _please_ ," Paul repeats.

"With us backing you," I insist. Paul nods his agreement. Simon doesn't say a word.

We watch on video as the smoke is suddenly cleared from both B and C Medical as if by some strong wind. This reveals two of our intruders: they're in C-Deck Iso, trying to make themselves an exit using ultrasonic tools to pop the welds on the bulkhead into Atmosphere (whether for mayhem or just a handy escape will remain up for debate, thanks to their timely interruption).

"Looking for me?" Simon's voice comes out of the wall they're breaking into, just before the metal shimmers and his helmeted sealsuit comes head-and-shoulders through it. Before the intruders can drop their tools and reach for their weapons, Simon grabs one of them by the left wrist and pulls, dragging him into the wall. On the monitors, I can hear the man cry out under his facemask: Simon has trapped the man's hand in the bulkhead. Then Simon slides the rest of the way through into the room, pulling one of his Rods from his belt.

Before anything else can happen, I see the trapped man do the unthinkable: Without hesitating, his free hand draws his short sword from his back, and with one merciless stroke severs his own arm just above the wrist. He falls back away from the wall, spraying it with his blood as Simon freezes. Then his red-camo uniform does something just as unexpected: some kind of cable system in his sleeve spins down tight on the amputation, and there's a bright flash across the stump that leaves the open wound charred and smoking.

"Fucker's suit is rigged to expect dismemberment," Matthew appraises in incredulous awe. "Son of a..."

I hear Simon gasp—the man he's just had a part in maiming has gone on the offensive, driving his blade into Simon's chest. Simon staggers as the weapon spears through him, then he thrusts his Rod into the solar plexus of his one-handed attacker, grunts something I can't hear, and the other man flies back like a rag doll hit by a baseball bat. His body slams the opposite bulkhead as his compatriot dives out of the way, and I can hear bones breaking.

The other man is already firing, armed with a fast-cycle pistol as Riker's HA suits blow in the hatches (something else for Halley to be upset about) and take the room. Simon—sitting on the floor clutching his chest wound with one hand—now has one of his Sphere's in hand, projecting a shield to block the worst of it. But without pausing, the second man tosses a handful small objects at them that quickly prove to be grenades. I hear at least one of Rikers' squad curse as nano-shrapnel finds gaps between the plates in their armor. The enemy uses the chaos of the blasts to try to charge straight through the armor line, discarding his apparently empty pistol and going for his own sword.

He's fast: I watch him leap and weave, hacking at HA plate, which his blade actually seems to partially penetrate, and at least one ICW gets cut almost through trying to block the powerful chopping attacks. Riker's troopers lose patience, and I watch ICW fire tear into the masked swordsman. Still, he tries to keep coming. A final ICW blast puts him down, spraying him all over the bulkheads—it's Riker herself who puts an end to it.

The other man isn't moving, a heap on the deck.

"Pull back just in case the fucker is wired to blow," Matthew orders, recalling what they set for us in the Labs. "Make sure the other one isn't going anywhere. Get your wounded to Medical."

Paul comes down through the ceiling from where he'd cleared B-Deck and immediately sets his tools to making things easier for us: He dissolves everything the two intruders are wearing. But that reveals ragged bloody gunshot trauma on the one body and clearly broken limbs (and one severed and burned) on the other. I can't see his reaction with his mask down, but he freezes for a few seconds before seeing to his brother.

Simon puts away his own tools and sits back against the wall, looking like he's having a hard time breathing. I have MAI zoom close on his chest wound and watch his nanites resealing his torn suit.

"That was unpleasant..." I finally hear him groan.

The sword that pierced his chest is on the deck at his feet. I can see his blood rapidly dry on the blade and turn to dust.

"Two down," I hear Matthew observe coolly.

"Two to go," I answer him.

"Sit-Rep?" I ask Lieutenant Thomas for an update. On my screens, I see squads of armor on each hatch into B-West.

"No change. Still quiet," she answers from behind her gun. I still have eight personnel locked down in that section, though apparently safe, and the two—Schrader and Wei—still unaccounted for. On the feed, I see Paul and Simon come up behind her troopers. Simon looks like he's still moving with some difficulty. They divide and each take one of the main access hatches, drawing their tools, then nodding their helmets to let us know they're ready.

"Open it," I order. Thomas and her Platoon SFC Masters each take a hatch and cycle the manual locks, shove them open and get ready to fire. Paul and Simon use their Spheres to clear the smoke, pushing it down the corridors, which form a large U-shape. (The three large Barracks are inside the U; the smaller Barracks, quarters, Heads and armory locker are on the outside, butted up against the solid bunker wall. There's no way out except through the corridor hatches or big Barracks—even any wall they could cut through would drop them into the midst of our guns. The plumbing trunks in the two Heads are even narrower than the lab vents, but we have guns on them above and below just in case.)

MAI locks onto Schrader's and Wei's tags just as Thomas gets eyes on a body at the far bend of the south corridor. It's Sergeant Schrader, face-down in a pool of blood.

Wei reads as inside the southwest Head. The sentry cameras are offline, and MAI reads no motion (which means they know to stand still) and no heat but Wei's (which means they're still masked from our sensors).

The remaining two may or may not have monitored the fate of their fellows, but if they were expecting another diversion, when it doesn't come they'll know they can't get through us, at least not without our allowing it, and that means they need leverage.

I patch into MAI's PA feed.

"This is Colonel Ram, commanding officer of this installation. I would like to resolve this without further violence."

There is no reply for several moments. I repeat my offer. Again, I get silence.

"Stubborn? Or just antisocial?" Matthew wonders.

"So far our new friends have been exclusively Japanese," I remind him, now that we've confirmed the ethnicity of the two down in Medical-C.

"Shinkyo?" Matthew considers. "Our invisible colony?"

"Old-School Japanese corporate. And this reminds me of an old negotiating trick—military strategy applied to business: You let the opposition put their offer out, and then just sit quietly like they didn't say anything. The other guy gets nervous and keeps talking, puts all his cards on the table while you reveal nothing. May even start sweetening the deal just to get a response."

"So what's the counter-play?"

"The one who speaks first has already given up something," I tell him. "Let them know the offer isn't a given, that it's time limited, and you've got options. Leave them something sweet, and politely withdraw."

"Draw them out?"

I nod, and go back to the PA:

"Given your demonstrated efficiency in killing, I have no reason to believe you have a live hostage. You have no exit. I can simply seal that section and sterilize it with incendiaries."

After a few seconds, the sentry cameras in the Head come back up, showing us Wei in the small shower, bound hand and foot and gagged, but still visibly breathing. Our invaders cannot be seen. The cameras go dark again almost immediately.

"Proof of life?" Matthew assesses.

There is a muffled cry of pain, and a few seconds later something very small is tossed out through the Head hatchway and into the corridor. MAI zooms in to show us a bloody, severed fingertip.

" _Listen to me!_ " I suddenly hear Paul's voice shouting over the PA. "You cannot achieve your objective! Our nanites are programmed to break down immediately upon losing contact with their living host. They _cannot_ be extracted, no matter how advanced your containment technology is!"

"Looks like the other guy got nervous," Matthew grumbles.

"You will have to take one of us with you," Paul continues. "I will exchange myself for your prisoner, and ensure you a safe exit to the surface. No one else need get hurt."

There's no reply, but at least there's no further bloodshed.

At the far end of the corridor I see Paul push his way through the H-A's covering the section hatch. He stops just inside the corridor, folds away his helmet and waits. I see him glance up at the sentry camera and give the slightest smile. Then he unbuckles his "tool belt" and passes it back to Lieutenant Thomas. He raises his hands and does a slow turn to show that he is indeed disarmed, and starts walking slowly down the corridor toward the Head.

I see him pause over Schrader's body for a few tense seconds before proceeding, then stops at the hatchway, making eye contact with someone inside. Then he looks back in Thomas' direction.

"Clear the corridor, please! I will go with them of my own accord—no one else will be harmed because of me. Your soldier is still alive, but needs medical attention. The intruders have already acquired fresh breather gear—it looks like we are ready to be going. Please do not interfere."

I give Thomas the order to withdraw, clearing the corridors all the way back to the nearest stairwell, and tell Rios to open a path on A-Deck back out to Airlock One.

"All the way out," I clarify. "I don't want them seeing anymore guns. Thomas: once they're clear, send a team in to secure Specialist Wei and Sergeant Schrader, but be alert for more booby-traps."

When Paul steps back out into the corridor again, he's got what looks like a bomb strapped to his chest. The two masked invaders take up positions close to him on either side, pulling his arms up tight behind him. They start walking him when it looks like they've got a clear path.

"This is working out well," Matthew grouses.

No longer bothering to disable cameras, I watch them walk smoothly and confidently all the way out to the airlock. They step in, set their masks (and I see Paul's helmet fold itself back down over his face), seal the hatch behind them and cycle pressure to let themselves out into the frozen night.

"Colonel," Thomas has come up to Ops, probably at a run. "You need to see this..." She hands me Paul's belt. The three Rods and three Spheres are in their holders, but then she points to one of the Spheres: the metal is oddly dull, lacking the quicksilver quality of the others.

I watch on the surface cameras as Paul is rushed out beyond the perimeter and out over the rocky terrain. But then Paul suddenly doubles over, staggering. His two captors turn on him swiftly, drawing their swords, one brandishing a small detonator switch to threaten him. But his hands grip his abdomen. I can hear him scream over the Link. The two invaders realize their danger too late. I watch the bomb around his neck crumble like so much dry sand, then their blades turn to dust before they can strike.

Paul straightens with difficulty. In his hands is a Sphere, its liquid-metal surface visibly stained with blood—he must have manufactured a fake to fill the gap on his belt, then somehow inserted the real one into his own body where it would not be detected. Before the two invaders can get to their pistols, I see a familiar wind strike them, disintegrating their guns and stripping both of them to their boots. Their masks, too, are gone. Still, they have enough wind left to run off naked into the Martian night. If they don't have shelter or transport close, they will freeze or suffocate within minutes.

Paul looks after them as they go, but it doesn't look like he's got the strength just now to try to pursue them. He falls to his knees.

"Go get him!" I order Thomas. "Get some lights out on the surface."

But Simon is already out there, the tools in his hands generating lift to skim him quickly over the surface.

"You want us to pursue?" Rios asks.

"No," I tell him. "Wait 'til daylight. If they don't come crawling back before then, send out an H-A squad. I don't want any more surprises tonight."

When the sunrise comes, we can find no sign of their bodies. Not even tracks. Or signs of a ship. The ASVs circled out twenty miles.

"They either dug in, or had a vehicle somewhere, something masked from our radar," Lisa considers as we watch the last sweeps from Ops, the Martian sky turning from violet to dusty pink above the ridge-lines.

"If they _were_ from Shinkyo, that colony had cutting-edge vehicles," Rick remembers. "And a close look at those uniforms of theirs showed multiply-redundant backups: the base sealsuit was pressure, temperature and radiation protective, and it was lined with small spare O2 canisters."

"Anybody who thinks that far ahead in terms of options would have left backup gear outside," Matthew assesses.

" _And_ hidden a vehicle somewhere," Lisa repeats. "If they have stealth aircraft, they've got an edge on us."

"I'm still impressed with the whole instant-amputation feature," Matthew muses. "That was just over-the-top."

"Michael?" Lisa catches me staring blankly out at the horizon.

"I shouldn't have let them in."

"You couldn't have anticipated..." she tries.

"The plan was to take them alive," Matthew reminds me needlessly. "The intel was worth the risk. We just got a different kind of intel."

"We got samples of their gear and weapons," Rick allows. "It's all been carefully stripped of anything that would ID them, but the tech that made it looks similar enough to the nano-materials that Shinkyo was producing."

"None of us expected them to be as hardcore as they were," Matthew keeps trying to console.

"We've had a taste of what people on this world have become," I shoot him down.

"So do we drop the outreach?" he challenges. "Treat them all as enemy combatants?"

"We need to be careful," I temper it. "We need to be ready."

"Which means we need all the intel we can get."

"I doubt we got what we paid for," I mutter to the plexi.

Schrader bled out fast from a sword cut that split his left collarbone; another funeral I have to preside over.

Six of my troopers have penetration wounds from the nano-shrapnel that found ways through their armor, and three more suffered blade cuts _through_ their armor—Rick took a close look at the swords and throwing knife they used and determined that they're nano-manufactured ceramic composite; extremely sharp, hard and resilient, capable of cleaving even nano-carbon laminate plate given enough force in the swing. The Shinkyo Corporation wasn't working on anything like that above-board before the bombardment, but the design of the blades is distinctly Japanese.

The one Simon slammed with his Rod survived his wounds, but only just: He remains in a coma with a severe skull fracture, and Halley doubts if he'll recover. She also reports he received several fractures, including broken ribs that punctured to both lungs and his liver—she spent more time trying to patch him than she did with all of our other combined wounded.

At least Paul and Simon seem no worse for what they took. Both looked recovered by late morning, though Simon has been keeping to himself, avoiding us under the excuse of helping search for the two that ran. Getting a sword run through his chest probably made him hit back harder than he'd intended.

Paul reluctantly admitted that the blade found Simon's heart (and then explained with unusual candor how their nanites will create a backup circulatory system independent of the heart until it can be repaired and restarted, just like when he got shot). Then Paul upstaged Simon's trauma by relating his own brilliant plan (impulsively decided upon between taking out the intruders in Medical and realizing the last two would probably use hostages to get out) to use a Rod as a makeshift surgical tool to cut open his own abdomen (when Simon refused to do it) and hide a Sphere in his bowels.

Their ordeals, however, seem to have brought the brothers somewhat closer together (and prompted Matthew to start displaying greater respect for the "Blues Brothers").

"Next move?" Matthew asks me.

"Harden base security, especially given what we've just seen. Get more sensors out on the surrounding terrain, and make sure MAI can detect any potential hacks—I'm betting they got more intel out of us than we did out of them. We need to rebalance that." Then I turn to Matthew and Lisa. "Since our prisoner is in no condition to talk, we need to go have a talk with the ones that are."

Chapter 4: Lessons in Human Nature

3 September, 2115:

"You should never have let them into your facility," Council Blue is quick to repeat my own self-criticism.

"The Colonel had no reason to believe these men would prove so dangerous," Paul is equally quick to defend me, as we're escorted through the Station by a handful of identical, anonymous blue sealsuits, masks in place.

Despite studying ETE Station blueprints since our last visit, I'm hard-pressed to keep my bearings. As far as I can tell, we've taken the lift down into the deep-core, then walked around the massive Generator's main heat-sinks (where the temperatures in the access corridors swelter) before traveling—if I've kept any sense of direction—deep into the Rim.

The vehicle-sized access suddenly opens up into a well-lit cavernous space, and the closed corridor is now a skyway across it. I count several terraced levels, reaching at least half-a-dozen stories up and down. It's well lit because each terrace is lined with bright rooms of chrome-framed plexi and pure white walls, and I can see more blue suits going about whatever business they're up to. This was definitely not on MAI's filed blueprints. The ETE have been busy.

"Impressive."

"Working Hive," Paul lets me know. "Sciences, offices, archives. Mostly second and third generation apprentices."

"R&D?" I wonder out loud.

"Our working labs and manufacturing facilities are well secured, Colonel," Council Blue cuts in with his usual haughtiness. "As is the Crèche."

"Third and fourth generation dormitories and educational facilities," Paul translates.

"Sheltered childhood?" I wonder, trying not to sound too critical.

"A point of controversy," Paul blurts out. I catch Council Blue's body language stiffening. "Is it better to afford one's youth the best you can provide, to raise them in an ideal world? Or is it better to expose them to whatever unpleasantness lies outside, to not shelter them so? As it is now, they serve outside the Crèches for four years as unenhanced Normals before they are implanted, but still they remain here in the Hives." He seems to brood on that for a moment, like he's feeling ashamed of something.

"I'm afraid I may have tipped the scales to the conservative," Paul admits sheepishly, "Striking out into the open world when I was barely twenty-one, defying my Elders."

"Visiting our base," I specify his offense.

"Reinforcing the argument that impulsive and inexperienced youth should be kept safe, sheltered, for as long as possible. Especially given what's come of my so-called misadventures."

"The Buddha's father went to great lengths to shelter the young prince, to raise him in an artificial world of privilege and comfort without a trace of suffering or ugliness," I muse idly. "The eventual shock—as a young adult—of finally seeing the world outside his insular utopia was devastating. It drove him to flee his palaces, and in doing so he fulfilled his father's greatest fears."

"He turned out pretty well for it, as I remember from my history and philosophy boards," Paul gives me back with a grin.

I move closer to him and whisper, "So did you."

"We have created a containment facility for our 'guests' beyond the Global Engineering Sciences Hive because there is no critical nanotechnology work there," Council Blue explains as we take another tunnel deeper into the substrata. "Additionally, we have armed all first and second generation personnel, and restricted younger generations not yet implanted to the Crèche."

"'Armed'?" I ask him to clarify.

"You have seen what our tools can do, no doubt." The Council keeps his eyes on where we're going, but his tone cuts at Paul. "They will suffice as non-lethal defensive tools to keep our 'visitors' from further mayhem. And yes: We are _still_ unwilling to direct our research toward the creation of military weaponry."

"Do you intend to maintain this level of alert indefinitely?" I ask him. This also appears to be a painful question.

"As my sons have no doubt tried to explain, time for us is not the same as it is for you."

I'm suddenly distracted by the Council's idle admission that Paul and Simon are indeed his own children. I look at Paul, who rolls his eyes and gives a subtle nod of uncomfortable confirmation.

"If need be, we could wait out their natural lifespan. But we do not desire the keeping of prisoners, Colonel. I suspect you are similarly disinclined, given your limited resources. _We_ have gone to great lengths to keep ourselves out of the affairs of the surface societies."

"But they attacked you," I remind him.

"We had never shown ourselves to them so openly," the Council says, barely masking his frustration with Paul. "And they learn more about us with every encounter—I fully expect those two that escaped your base will have relayed what they know."

"That your nanites cannot be extracted?"

He nods with gravity. "Which means they will now focus their efforts on attempting to take one of our people to study."

"The Council has been discussing recalling me and my brother, Colonel," Paul admits heavily.

"None of my people are safe beyond their Stations," the Council confirms. "And now I cannot guarantee that the Stations themselves will remain secure."

"You believe they would risk damaging a Station in order to breach your defenses?" I ask him outright.

"Don't you?"

The "containment facility" is behind a large, thick vault-like door. It has no visible locks or mechanisms—it only slides heavily aside in response to the Council's own will. Beyond the door is a spherical chamber with another sphere suspended inside it. The gap between the outer wall and the inner sphere is at least twenty meters—too far for even the best athlete to jump, even in Martian gravity. All surfaces are glass-smooth.

The Council puts his hand on one of the Spheres in his belt, and he promptly levitates off the small entry platform and begins floating across the gap. Paul tells me to put my arm over his shoulder, he puts his arm around my waist, and it feels partly like he's lifting me and partly like the floor simply dropped away. Then Paul fairly unceremoniously carries me with him across the gap, where the Council has made a round hatchway appear in the featureless surface of the inner chamber.

"Forgive the lack of modesty, Colonel," the Council says. "Their clothing proved to hold an arsenal of hidden weapons and tools."

The inside of the chamber is an open space perhaps ten meters in diameter. Suspended in the center of it are three slight pale figures, held rigid, arms pinned to their sides, all by some unseen force. All three are completely naked, and their hair has been shaved off.

"They even had implements woven into their hair," the Council continues, his voice edged with frustration. "And hidden inside their bodies. The female's fingernails were prostheses—nano-material razor claws and poison-injecting syringes—they had to be removed. And some of their teeth were implants as well."

I look at the woman's hands and see that the tips of her fingers are raw and missing the nails. Their bodies are lean and wiry—all muscle and tendon. They do not seem to be fighting their bonds, but also seem to remain tautly alert. Their black eyes glare back at me coldly.

"They are weapons, Colonel," the Council assesses. "Apparently disposable, even to themselves—they will begin to fight again if they are not completely immobilized, no matter how hopeless or what the risk to themselves. What do you suggest I do with them?"

"And they haven't said anything?"

The Council shakes his head. "We have no skill at interrogation, and certainly no taste for torture."

"I do," I admit grimly. "But I've been abstaining for quite some time now."

I lock eyes with them and they return my gaze, unblinking, jaws clenched tight.

"Shinobi," I identify them. "Ninja. Or some new variation of that basic concept."

"What?" Paul starts, incredulous. But there's a glimmer in the prisoners' eyes.

" _Shinobi_ ," I repeat. "Assassins and spies. Not soldiers. Not Samurai. Not even people, as far as the elite are concerned. Just disposable pawns with no honor. They attack with stealth, deception, cheap tricks. They don't engage a man face-to-face; they prefer an unsuspecting, distracted or defenseless target. That's what the _Kanji_ —the symbol for the word—resembles: Stabbing a prone man in the heart. Murdering."

I give that ancient insult time to process, watch for little ticks in their features.

"The aristocratic Samurai considered the Ninja honorless dogs for what they were and what they did," I continue, "but they served the ends of the Machiavellian warlord well enough, so they had their tactical value, no matter how distasteful that was with the code of Bushido. And that's what makes them so easily disposable."

I look them over, narrowing my eyes like I find them repulsive, pathetic, even pitiable.

"Who are your lords, little assassins?" I ask them finally. "The Shinkyo Techno-za? You come wearing their product like an advertisement."

They keep still, but I can smell them starting to sweat.

"Does Shinkyo even have Samurai? Do they bother? Or is theft all your corporate masters value now?"

Paul is looking at me with confusion in his eyes, and more than a little discomfort.

"I expect they raised you to be this," I continue, softening just a bit. "Programmed you from birth so that this is all you know and all you're good for: to kill and die without question for your masters' petty profit. Disposable tools to do a distasteful job. And what is that job? Do your masters even grasp what they are trying to take? Do they care that they may doom everyone? Or do they hold all life in equal contempt? Are they warriors, or are they just greedy merchants?"

I give them a lopsided, predatory grin.

" _My_ people are soldiers. Warriors. If all Shinkyo has is thieves and murderers, what will they do when my army is at their walls, when my aircraft swarm overhead? And you, in your unforgivable carelessness, have let us know that Shinkyo Colony is indeed still standing, I expect right where it was fifty years ago, buried under that poorly-crafted bomb crater. And more: you have let us know that you are a threat to us all—I will be sure to spread that intelligence to the other tribes. I know you can at least think ahead, anticipate your enemies. What do you expect we will do now?"

I give them a few more moments, but don't expect them to break their silence no matter what I say.

"Too bad your Daimyo sent thieves instead of diplomats. We could have all profited from an alliance." Then I turn to Council Blue. "My advice is to keep them restrained, fly them out into the valley in the morning, then dump them with minimal daytime survival gear fifty kilometers from their colony. I expect they can make it home by nightfall. I even expect they will avoid the Nomads who will certainly be taking offense that they are interfering with God's will by threatening your Stations, but it will make their walk more interesting. Of course, even if they survive, I expect their own masters will kill them—or order them to kill themselves—for their disgrace. But they will deliver my message first."

I look the prisoners in the eyes again—the female seems to be particularly appraising me like prey, but there's something else in her eyes. (Recognition? Respect?)

"You don't actually expect us to send them home?" the Council confronts me later, after we have sealed the prisoners back away in their concentric spheres and he and his entourage escort me back through the bright, clean "Global Engineering Sciences Hive".

"You really think they'll be executed?" Paul asks me, sounding honestly distressed.

"I'm sure they know it, given how suicidal their fellows were—I'm surprised these three haven't found a way to kill themselves despite your precautions," I tell him. "And they've had every chance to rethink it, but they'll still go back. It'll be their duty to report, even if it's their last duty. And no matter the larger consequences. I don't think they can imagine any other option."

"We could keep them," Paul considers almost desperately. "Try to re-educate them..."

"And in time—rather soon, I expect—you'll be collecting more 'students.' Assuming they don't successfully take or destroy your Station." I turn to the Council. "They _will_ keep coming, and eventually they'll break through your best precautions. That's their advantage. If I'm right, where they're weak is that they've relied on stealth for their own security all this time, and getting caught just ruined that."

"And you just told them so," the Council assesses. "They may start to fear for their own safety, shift to a defensive posture."

"Or consider negotiating," I offer. "Not that I'd trust them, at least not until we could put them at a severe disadvantage."

"'We,' Colonel?" the Council returns to his haughty tone.

"You can't win a defensive war against this kind of enemy. I know how much you've valued your isolationism, your neutrality, your invisibility. But like it or not, a line has been crossed. You won't be able to keep your low profile anymore, and now we've had at least one competently-armed group stand up and declare that your scary-magic reputation is no longer going to protect you. Who'll be next? The PK? The Air Pirates? The Nomads?"

" _You_ , Colonel?" the Council throws back at me.

"You know what I want, Council," I give back. "Earthside won't be impressed by your toys when they come back, but they _will_ be afraid. I'd very much rather they weren't afraid of you, because we both know what they do to things they're afraid of."

He seems to brood on that. Paul is looking like a nervous child.

"Do what you want," I tell him. "But I suggest you have a talk with your sons before you decide."

We got back to base before nightfall. Paul immediately went to meet with his brother.

"I'm not sure what bends me more," Matthew wryly processes as I call up maps in Ops that should show me where Shinkyo Colony is, "that the Blues Brothers are the Councilman's dysfunctional kids, or that we just got attacked by _ninjas_."

"Mark John Stilson," Lisa calls up a file biography. "Top xeno-geologist. Helped pick the Station sites, got here years before they planted the first ones to do the initial surveys. His wife and two boys came up to join him a year before the big bang."

Matthew wrinkles his nose as he sips the "tea" we'd acquired from Abbas in trade for some extra boots and goggles.

"I'm thinking I probably met him sometime between when we landed and when we went to bed," I try. "Can't put a face on him, though."

Lisa puts up an old ID photo. Mark Stilson looks like an older, harder, sharper version of his sons.

"And he never takes off his mask?" Matthew asks incredulously.

"Not around us," I tell him. "Either some kind of decorum or Abbas was telling us the truth about their being contact-phobic. In any case, I think I got more intel about the ETE than I did about our Shinkyo intruders, which is still almost nothing."

"Except that they're definitely out there and still running production facilities, developing nanotech," Lisa allows.

"And Rick found something disturbing," Matthew adds. "Their guns were old, but the ammo they used was new. So either they're manufacturing or they're getting resupplied from home."

"And that could give them the advantage over us in the long run," I grumble. "It makes me wonder what else they've been making."

"You willing to risk stirring the nest to get a better look?" Matthew presses me, sounding like he's got a plan.

"I'd rather avoid more funerals," I tell him, "but I know better than to sit back and play defense. It'll only be a matter of time before they hit us again, and probably smarter each time."

"Good. Because Rick worked up something while you were off being social."

4 September, 2115:

We now have four working ASVs. I risk two with minimal crew.

Shinkyo Colony's original location, in the opposite corner of Melas southwest from us, is almost two-hundred miles away. That means the ASV's will have just enough fuel to get there and back with what their low-altitude engines burn, plus enough to make the necessary passes. If they have to do any more than that, we'll be sending the remaining ships to meet them out in the valley.

The aircraft lift off an hour after sunrise, once the temperature gets mild enough to keep ice off the hulls and not cold-stress the patchwork airframes. This means our targets will see them coming, but I fully expect they have more ways to detect incoming visitors than just their eyes.

The flight out takes an hour. Smith and Acaveda risk enough elevation to get us a look at the site while they're still ten minutes away.

"Visual," Lisa announces.

Shinkyo was planted below the eastern slope of the sixty-mile long ridge that extends north into the valley from the South Rim, the crest miles high, it's lazy curve inspiring the name "Dragon's Tail". The apparently fake nuclear crater is clearly visible just below its foothills, salted with almost-convincing blast debris. Paul—in his role as Martian geologist—begins pointing out signs of excavation—although very careful excavation—that reshaped the landscape, piling regolith from the foothills over the top of the colony so that it would look natural, at least to the untrained eye. It's an unbelievable amount of Mars-moving, belying significant resources. Too bad it fails to hold up to a surface-level examination: the ground has been raised at least a dozen meters, and the crater is built up on top of it. (Matthew is immediately reminded of bad spy movie villains with secret bases inside volcanos.)

"If this works, we can use it to locate Melas Three," Rick reminds us while we wait.

"Would it give us a look into the PK colonies?" I ask him.

"If they've built below ground," he offers. "It won't translate well into the above-ground structures."

We'd already tried conventional imaging and scans—whatever resources the PK have, they've gone to great lengths to mask them, and to mask them against UNMAC technology.

"Get low again, Shadow One," Lisa warns Smith over the Link. "No sense tempting a pot-shot." The visual feed drops low to the rolling valley floor.

"You really think they won't just open up when they see us coming?" Matthew asks me again.

"The Ninja-thing is about hiding," I tell him. "They'll pride themselves on how well they can be invisible."

"And when we shine the light on them?"

"That's why we're hitting and running. But by then, they're screwed—it's not like they can easily re-hide a whole colony once we've revealed it. I'm hoping that will put _them_ on the defensive."

"Especially after you've given the intel to the Power Rangers," Matthew uses his most recent colorful descriptive for the ETE.

"Coming up..." Lisa announces as the ASVs split, taking opposite arcs around what should be the colony site. "Targets locked... Planting... Now!"

Hull cameras show a large projectile fired straight down into the soil from each aircraft. They impact, penetrate. Then the ASVs pivot, rise, and fall back. There's still not a sign of life from where Shinkyo should be.

"Bang the drums," Rick calls into the link. Both ASVs fire a missile into the ground—penetrating bunker-busters. They shatter the landscape, but do so hundreds of meters from where the colony should even begin to be.

"Hopefully they didn't build outwards," Lisa considers in hindsight.

"Feedback..." Rick lets us know anxiously. He's glued to the screens as the shockwaves from the blasts get read as Ground-Penetrating Radar by the probes the ASVs planted—a modification of the technology used to get deep-strata mappings when the ETE Stations were sunk, then later to pick more slide-resistant colony and base sites.

"Pretty..." Matthew purrs as the feedback gels into a ghostly floor plan under the rocky surface. MAI begins to process the images into a 3D construct.

"Incoming!" Lisa almost shouts. Missiles are flying up out of the landscape.

"They figured it out," Matthew agrees.

"Back home," I order. "Now." But the ASVs are already burning retreat before I can give the order. Their aft turrets spray back at the pursuing missiles while MAI directs countermeasures. Then things get bad.

"Fuckers have coil-guns!" Matthew curses as a spray of high-velocity projectiles comes flying after the retreating ASVs.

"Low! Get _low_!" Lisa barks. "Evasive!"

Wilson has engaged Discs before, and Acaveda is sharp enough to know the basics. They drop close to the ground to get as much terrain between them and the anti-aircraft batteries Shinkyo has apparently installed. Then they peel off sideways and weave to defeat targeting. Alarms go off and I hear Acaveda curse.

"I'm still here!" she quickly confirms, not sounding particularly relieved. "Punched a big-ass hole in my port wing. Lucky I don't need them to stay up."

"I'm heating up a ship to meet you," Lisa reassures her. "You'll risk coming back on vapors without the wings to reduce your VTOL burn."

"Sergeant Morales is gonna kill me..." she mutters.

"Smith?" I call into the Link.

"Here, Colonel."

"MAI got a lock on their batteries. Let them know we've become a little irritated with them."

"Yes, Sir!" he agrees heartily. I watch the feeds as his ASV locks and sends a pair of missiles back, skimming low to avoid being shot down. MAI registers hits that look on-target. "Message sent."

"Escort Shadow Two home, Lieutenant."

6 September, 2115:

Our prisoner is dead. 04:04 this morning. He never regained consciousness.

It initially looked like a natural result of the head-trauma that Simon accidentally inflicted on him, but autopsy proved something more disturbing: Cause of death was a massive brain hemorrhage triggered by what looks like an implanted micro-explosive, something invisible to our initial exams, and MAI detected a weak incoming signal at time-of-death. Someone executed him by remote-control.

My initial thought: Why did it take this long? Did his masters think he was already dead? (Why not just be sure when he didn't get out?) Or did it take this long for them to get a trigger within range?

I expect the timing is the answer: Maybe this is a subtle reply to our GPR foray. Or maybe the ETE's prisoners made it home with my message. (And why weren't they remotely terminated when they were captured?)

Once MAI makes us a good mapping of Shinkyo Colony (or what it's become in the last half-century), we refine our GPR methods (for increased safety and decreased intimidation) and do a similar run at the City of Industry.

The maps float on the Ops holoscreens by lunchtime. We sit around the briefing table and no one says a word.

Shinkyo is by far the more impressive of the two: dug down at least five levels and almost fifty meters under the surface, the new "colony" is almost twice the size of the original. Heat and carbon emissions that leak to the surface hint at small-scale manufacturing, which the sonar mapping confirms spaces and shapes for (about where the original above-ground fabs were, only more extensive now). It explains the gear their Shinobi had, and possibly also their structural expansion—the Shinkyo Corporate Conglomerate had been working on pure nano-manufacturing, projects designed to use nanobots to "grow" everything from raw materials to entire buildings. They were also working on production of engineered nutritive supplements to ease the devastating impact their over-crowded home nation had been putting on local fishing—these prototype labs now look like indoor farms on the GPR map. The Shinkyo are apparently both well-fed and well-supplied in cutting-edge nano-materials. And the now-visible living spaces and life support plants could comfortably support a few thousand souls.

The City of Industry isn't nearly as cheery a story. Where Shinkyo is elegantly ordered and efficient in its design, Industry looks more like an ant's nest. A vast system of tunnels spreads like a twisted root system from the foundations of the original colony domes. This likely gives Janeway's snipers their ability to surface in strategic ground all around the ruin. Janeway's "ant tunnels" would also provide many highly defensible fall-back positions should any part of the network—or even the colony itself—be taken or destroyed.

The new colony "center" consists of a number of larger chambers dug out under the ruin proper. Most use some of the original structural foundations as part of their construction, but some are purely independent. The overall design appears hap-hazard, or more likely an adaptation to the geology. Life-support equipment is spread throughout the catacombs (again, it looks like they wanted to be sure they could hold against even a severe enemy incursion, or if large sections of their installation were destroyed).

But the set-up doesn't look purely military. It reminds me of what _this_ base looked like during the years it became a makeshift refugee camp. MAI agrees: The City of Industry—once a model super-corporate biotech pharmaceutical manufacturer, a shining example of the Martian tech-boom of the 2050's—is now likely a patchwork slum, a barrio of survivors (or the grandchildren of survivors). I wonder if Janeway's PK are defenders or oppressors.

"Incoming signal, Colonel," Kastl lets me know. Rios shimmers onto the screens—he's inside an ASV cockpit, and he's grinning ear-to-ear.

"We found it, Colonel!" he announces. "GPR thump just gave us Melas Three, and she's in one piece!"

### Chapter 5: CROATOAN

11 September, 2115:

It takes Thomasen's engineering crew two days to dig down to the most accessible airlock, using the ASVs to shuttle equipment and manpower.

Melas Three is misnamed: it isn't actually in Melas Chasma. It sits just inside of the Coprates Valley, where it joins the broader Melas. The site was specifically picked to offer ready air defense for Disc attacks that had been consistently coming out of Coprates and the parallel Catena: Melas Two and Melas Three effectively coordinated to cover all entry into Melas Chasma from the east.

Melas Three sits on the valley floor at the base of the foothill slopes of the Coprates South Rim (actually the Catena South Rim at this point, as the two have merged). The Rim towers up over fifteen thousand feet to the Datum-line Thaumasia Planum, the upper mile of that rise comprised of cliffs that keep going east into the Catena, almost unbroken for another two-hundred miles.

There is an ETE Station only two-dozen miles away from the base site (but two miles above it), planted just inside of Melas Chasma, around the west side of the "point" where the two valley rims join. Paul shows us a tapsite on the valley floor barely twenty miles from the base. This provides our salvage teams with oxygen, water and fuel. Though it's within rover range, or even a brisk low-grav walk with extra canisters, we use the ASVs to make the runs, vigilant for any potential encounters with Nomads not of Abbas' tribe (or other factions we haven't met yet).

Having a tapsite so close to the base is a practical blessing, but it also portends that there may be potential "competitors" in the area. The base site is on the opposite side of Melas from the PK colonies and Zodanga, and two hundred miles from Shinkyo, but well within what Abbas says is Farouk's current territory. And Melas Three is within seventy-five miles of the Tranquility site, which Abbas and Paul both cryptically warned us about.

GPR mapping told us most of the facility is still intact, a testament to its design and construction. Almost all of the structure was sub-surface and heavily reinforced. It's only a fraction of the size of Melas Two, being designed primarily as a forward airbase. The main structure is a cross-shape of five underground aircraft bays, complete with elevator launch and landing pads, along with the shops, barracks, processors and stores to support its operations. What surface batteries it had to protect it have likely been sheered away, and the integrity of the squat two-story Operations "Tower" (the only significant structure that had been above the surface) is a concern.

It takes Thomasen and Anton the better part of another day to get the doors open. Whoever was last to leave wanted to make sure no one else got in after: once we cut our way in to take our first look, Anton reports that all the relays to the reactors had been blown with hand-set charges, killing all power and rendering the coded hatch locks unresponsive. Then they used portable arc-welders to fuse the manual locks to all the external hatchways—all but one from the inside—so that no one could get in without cutting away the two-foot-thick blast-grade outer doors, assuming they could even be reached under a slide-mass that's over twenty feet deep in places. The hatch that wasn't sealed from the inside—the one they must have used as an exit—was welded shut from the _outside_ , and then had several tons of stone piled over it. Whoever left the base this way must also have had no intention of returning.

The damage done means that every airlock hatch—once cut open—will need major retooling before the base has any atmosphere integrity in the adjacent sections. In the interim, temporary shelters have been modified and sealed to each open external hatch to serve as fragile replacements. (The most uncomfortable drawback is the lack of security that the heavy hatches would provide, especially in territory that may be hostile.)

The main bunker structure checked out as mostly intact; some minimal breakage and a few cracks, but it looks like it will hold pressure once the atmosphere recyclers can be restarted.

The Tower did show structural damage severe enough to cause depressurization, likely from the near-miss blast wave or when the subsequent slide rolled over it. Someone did a rough job of patching all the ruptures—the work is old, but it tells us that there were survivors, and that they tried to keep the base viable after the bombardment, tried to restore their operations center.

But we found much more calculated sabotage when Anton got his crew in to examine the Command Deck in the Operations Tower. The base AI—MAI's counterpart—has been surgically gutted: the processor core and all of the file hardware have been removed, and are nowhere to be found. That means no records, no logs, and also (the likely reason for the act) no intel that could be taken by enemies who might break in. The fact that the gutting also leaves no useful intel for any Earthside rescue makes me wonder if it was simply unavoidable or purposeful; that they didn't want anyone to know who'd survived, what they'd been up to, and—perhaps most critically—where they had gone.

The only thing resembling any kind of message for potential rescuers was as meaningless as it was chilling, and Anton was the first to see it after they pried open the Command Deck hatches. Someone had carved eight neat square letters, each a foot tall, deep into the concrete above the "forward" set of pillbox-slit viewports:

"CROATOAN"

"Okay, so what is this supposed to mean?" Rios asks first, his helmet light playing over the letters while we watch his feed back at Melas Two Ops.

"Somebody took some time on it," Anton observes, appraising the neatness of the carving.

I feel a chill go straight down through me. Matthew gives me a look like he either recognizes the reference too, or maybe I've just scared him by how pale I've gone.

"What is it?" Lisa asks, her concern edged with that look that says she thinks I'm keeping something from her again, but MAI manages to dig a brief snippet from what's left of its historical files.

"Late fifteen, early sixteen hundreds," I tell her before she can read it. "The English tried three times to establish a colony on Roanoke Island, Virginia. First try, the colonists begged to come home after a few months. So they left some soldiers behind in a picket fort they'd built, but when the ship got back the next year, the locals had killed them all. This time, they leave over a hundred men, women and children when the ship goes back for supplies. But when the ship gets back to England, it gets waylaid in the latest conflict with Spain, and doesn't make it back for _three_ years.

"When they do get back, the colony is deserted. No sign of attack, just empty. And carved into a post is that nonsense word: 'Croatoan'."

"One of the great spooky stories of American history," Matthew remembers.

"So what happened?" Lisa asks. "What did it mean?"

"The colony leader—who left his own wife and kids in the colony when he took the boat back for supplies—apparently told his people to leave a message if things got bad and they had to bug out," I continue. "One plan was to fall back to Croat _an_ Island, but there was no sign they made it there. There was also a tribe called the Croatan, but no evidence they'd had any contact."

"Years later, Chief Powhattan—Pocahontas' dad—bragged to John Smith he'd killed the colonists himself, but there was no way to back up his claim except a few random trinkets," Matthew adds. "But decades after, there was this one small tribe that seemed to have an unusual grasp of the English language and a predisposition for Caucasian features."

Lisa is looking at both of us like we've turned some unnatural color.

"I went to Roanoke one summer as a kid," Matthew excuses. "The story is a tourist draw."

"And I just like weird shit like that," I remind her.

"So is this a code?" Rios asks over the Link.

"Not in any of our records," Lisa confirms.

"Did we have a fall-back plan if we lost the base?" Rios throws out the next possibility.

"They were supposed to come _here_ ," Matthew tells him. "Or the nearest viable colony."

"But what about worst-case?" Anton tries. "What if all ground facilities were lost?"

"Then they would have tried to call home," I remind him. "If there wasn't a more viable site, they would have dug in and made do."

"So they either found better real estate or had to leave," Rios concludes. "Doesn't explain the cryptic bullshit."

"Somebody knew the story," Lisa considers. "And was driven enough to do some cutting."

"Might have just been going stir-crazy," Matthew tries to lighten. "Left a bad joke for whoever came looking."

" _Spooky_ ," Anton mutters. I see him tracing the cut letters with his gloved fingertips.

"Or maybe the message isn't for _us_ ," Rios offers. "Maybe they made plans with someone else, sometime after the bombing."

"Another surviving faction?" Anton plays, but the thought can go no further.

Anton managed to get the power back on within another twenty-four hours. That got us lights and heat. The recyclers were left intact, and after a good overhaul were back online at partial efficiency by the end of the day, enough to support Rios' platoon and our teams of tech and construction engineers.

While Anton kept busy bringing Melas Three back to partial life, Rios' troopers (at least the squads not on sentry duty) started taking inventory. There wasn't much left behind of ready use. Whoever survived here took (or used up) all the food stocks and small arms, as well as the survival gear, emergency shelters, and the more portable tools. They left behind what they couldn't carry and probably considered unusable: Two damaged ASVs, and one mostly-stripped AAV, as well as two of the tank-like mobile gun platforms we'd fielded against the Discs (one with wrecked suspension and another with a shredded transmission). Morales eagerly moved in with one of her mechanic teams as soon as we could get a flight out the next morning.

I made the one-hundred-and-twelve mile trip out on Day Five, prompted by a call from Anton that he had something he wanted to talk over with me in person. The base site was still mostly buried when the ASV took me over it in a slow circle, the aircraft pads and bays inaccessible under the rock and sand. Only Thomasen's excavation team camp, his digging equipment, and a wide trench dug down to Airlock One (on the "post" of the cross, closest to Ops) were visible on the surface. Anybody watching us from a distance would probably be wondering what the hell we were doing, digging a hole so earnestly in the middle of nowhere. And I'm sure such odd behavior will likely generate "aggressive" curiosity soon enough.

I'd been to Melas Three a handful of times before the Bombardment. It was a Spartan facility even in its heyday. Its biggest tragedy was its lack of a proper medical facility. The bays and corridors became makeshift field hospitals after every engagement, the wounded waiting hours until the skies were safe enough to evac them to Melas Two or to the Orbital Station. Officers' quarters sometimes became operating rooms if the delay was unacceptable. I expect to see the dark traces of old blood stains on the cast concrete walls and steel decks, but everything is a dusty gray. The place is stripped bare as if being prepared for decommission and salvage, but the staleness and dust (worse than Melas Two when we woke up) makes it feel like I've descended into an ancient archeological dig.

Up in the Tower, Anton has the guts of the Command Deck consoles pulled out and spread all over in his version of ordered chaos. The cryptic inscription—freshly dusted—presides silently over his work. Rick is with him, having arrived the evening before, and he shoots me that look that tells me (again) he can't understand how anyone can work so maniacally and sloppily and still get delicate tech working. Anton takes a moment to extract himself from the com-station he's been digging into, wipes his dirty brow with the back of his hand (only managing to re-arrange the grime), and grins at me like he's found some treasure.

"The uplink outside is scrap, of course," he begins, sounding like he's getting punchy from exhaustion. "But they left the transmitter gear—probably didn't think anyone would ever use it. It's no good here, not with the static shield overhead, but that doesn't mean we have to use it _here_. I think I can pull it out whole, fly it back home, make a new dish array out of my old 'Tower' with Simon's help, and get a portable transmitter cobbled together, maybe in a week."

"Portable?" I ask him.

"I've been thinking about this, Colonel..." He's almost breathless. "This gear won't pierce the ETE static shield any better than the gear I burned trying it before. But now that Paul's helping get us back our wings and Simon can help make us a new antenna, we could use the ASVs to shuttle the equipment out _beyond_ the range of the net—going up into Candor would be the closest option. The atmosphere would be thin and it'd be damn cold, but it still beats Datum-level conditions. We would need to work in pressure gear, set up an outpost with shelters. Work on the surface to assemble the dish, then use one of the ASV power plants to juice it. It would require keeping an ASV on the ground to act as our working outpost, at least until we could build something more permanent, but Morales says at least two of the three ships left here look no worse off than the ones we started with. If we set up a relay system—we could use other ASVs or even troop Link gear—we might be able to patch back to base. It would be snowy and there'd be delay as the signal crawls back and forth between the two planets, but you could make a call out by next alignment, clear enough to get a verbal report through, maybe even a compressed data stream, convince Earthside to send relief."

Rick shrugs in semi-agreement, but doesn't appear to be nearly as optimistic.

"January?" I estimate the next time the two planets will be coming close.

"Or sooner," Anton tries to encourage.

I don't answer him for a few moments. I'm suddenly struck by an irrational impulse to tell him no, to delay him, to give him some excuse to shoot down his plan, to put off contacting home. But I also know it will be another two years before the two planets' orbits bring them close on the same side of the sun if we don't take this opportunity. I feel nauseous, cold.

Do I really _not_ want to call home?

"I know you're worried about leaving a team and probably at least two ASVs planted hell-and-gone for the time it will take," Rick allows me, knowing me long enough to catch my ambivalence (though misunderstanding it).

"Candor isn't close to a Station or a feed line," Anton admits, pulling up a topographic map on his workpad. "And the geography sucks. It's all slide-plain. And we'd be sitting out in the open if anyone did try to attack us. The other choice would be flying west into Ius, but that's a longer stretch."

"I'm less concerned with the distance than who's likely to be sitting between us and the transmitter," Rick argues. "If we take the Candor option, we pass right by all three of the so-called PK Keeps, as well as where Zodanga supposedly raids from. The Ius route takes us past both Industry and Shinkyo and who knows what else. Most of it is Nomad territory, but your friend Abbas is only king of the closest wedge of that."

Rick is making my excuses for me. It would be easy to agree with him, delay this attempt. I'm wondering what Matthew or Lisa would say; if they would share Anton's hope or Rick's concerns or both. But what I'm feeling is neither hope nor practical concern for the safety of my people.

"Colonel?" Anton tries to bring me out of my brooding.

I realize what I feel: I _am_ afraid of the same thing the survivor factions are. I'm afraid of what will happen when Earth hears about what's really been transpiring here these last fifty years. And I'm the one who has to make the call that may result in genocide instead of rescue.

"Get on it, Anton," I tell him instead, making myself smile. "You'll get whatever you need."

I get out of there as fast as I can without looking like I'm running. Back onto the surface. Back under the dusty sky. Hide my face under a mask and goggles and cap shroud so no one can see me doubting.

"This is a great place for old farts like us," I remember what Matthew had said shortly after we'd first arrived on this world. "Low grav is easy on the joints. Air's clean even if it ain't fresh. So's the water. No crowds. Lots of space. Lots of young, lean bodies bounding around all over, all annoyingly bright-eyed and charged-up with hope for a better world. A few nut-jobs, of course, but I'd rather have these Eco hippies protesting than the endless sea of kill-babies-for-God extremists we kept slapping down back home—at least these boneheads up here don't want to kill everybody rather than give an inch. Place is fucking heaven, Mikey."

(And then we killed everybody—or almost everybody, and abandoned the rest. We might not have pulled the trigger ourselves, but we pointed the weapon.)

I try to convince myself that this is normal, expected: I jumped straight into doing my job, my duty. I paid lip-service to what everybody else was feeling—fear of never seeing home, fear of what was out there in a newly-unknown world, fear of how we would survive, fear of how Earth might treat us if and when we managed to call for help, fear of what Earth had become in the last half-century that passed for us as one long night's sleep, fear we'd lost control of this world and would never have a place in it again.

Fear we had become—and now always would be—the villains.

I didn't let myself feel anything. But now I have to. There's no more putting it off.

I want more time. I _need_ more time to make things right, to pull this world together enough that Earth won't be terrified of it.

I walk. I walk out beyond the salvage work, set my boots to the task of climbing a low ridge, sending loose gravel pouring down-slope behind me like liquid. And I get up where I can see better: I look east down the Everest-walled parallel canyons of Coprates and the Catena that disappear unending over the horizon, side-by-side gateways to what those I've met so far assure me is even more untenable than what we've encountered in Melas. I am reminded of an old story—a puzzle—about a pair of doors: one leads to treasure, the other to certain death. But here, each path leads to both.

It's greener that way—Abbas and Paul (and the outdated mapping we got from the Lancer) promise. But it's also more deadly. And that frustrates me: If there's _more_ food and resources, it would reason that there should be _less_ violent competition. Even Abbas (apparently my most candid ally) can give me little intelligence to explain why—the food-runners who make the journey are notorious for telling only tall tales and keeping the details of where they go a well-guarded secret to preserve their monopoly on the trade. It would be easy to write off the stories as a smoke-screen to discourage competition, but Abbas insists that the food caravans return with wounded and with men missing who are never seen again. And then I get vague tales about the descendents of Pax and the survivors of Tranquility and others the ETE insist they don't even know. All brutal, primitive, xenophobic. (But _enduring_.)

I turn west: look back across the open basin of Melas, almost three hundred miles across, and home to an inestimable number of human beings, all living in fear of each other, but living in greater fear of the planet they came from (and very likely with good reason).

And where did our own people go? They survived the bombardment in these bunkers, made repairs and lived here for months, perhaps years, then took significant resources with them when they left. To go where? (CROATOAN?) To assimilate into some other tribe? Or to some prepared fall-back position? I scan the foothills and cliffs like I expect to see them, or some convenient sign of them, but our ASVs have searched...

My eyes are getting lost in the endless desert-scape when I see her—and I can tell she's female, despite the bulk of her camouflaged cloaks rippling around her in the wind, just from the way she stands—just standing still, perfectly still, watching me, balanced on a fragile ridge-crest not a hundred yards away. She wears the cloaks and mask of a Nomad, but lacks the bulk of equipment they carry with them. Instead, her lean body shimmers with polished blood-red armor, making her look almost reptilian. In her right hand is some kind of large black-bladed knife. I remember what Jon Drake said about the "desert-demon" that serves Farouk.

We stand there like that, neither moving, for several moments. Then I use the greeting, the signal that I come in peace that Abbas taught me: I draw my pistol slowly, hold it by the slide and raise it over my head. Then I set it down on a rock at my feet, and hold my open hand high.

She doesn't move, doesn't acknowledge the gesture. Then all of a sudden she makes a little leap and vanishes from sight, leaving only a ghost-like wisp of dust.

I stay where I am for another fifteen minutes, until my air is getting low, but there is no further sign of life. I go back to the salvage camp to recharge, and tell Rios we've apparently drawn attention.

12 September, 2115:

For reasons I don't care to explain to anyone, I stay the night at Melas Three, camping down in the newly-pressurized aircraft bays with Morales and her team. I'm hoping that she just chalks it up to an old man's lame attempt to boost morale, the CO spending some face-time with the grunts instead of shutting up in one of the officers' quarters.

I don't get any actual sleep. Instead, I spend the night lying on my roll on the steel deck, staring at the shot-up hulls of the two ASVs that had been left for us to find. These were vehicles for exploration and construction once upon a time, a means to move men and equipment, to make the world benefit all of us. Fourteen years after Harker's team made the first landfall, we started shooting each other. Nine years of that, and we nuke the planet. Fifty years later, it looks like we've devolved hundreds of years, rewound our history, our precious progress.

When I close my eyes, I see the mystery woman, armored and deadly, appearing and disappearing in the dust, and realize: This is what a Martian looks like.

And I see the carving up in Ops:

CROATOAN.

By morning shift, all I am is bleary-eyed and still not eager to call Earth, or sure what I'll even tell them about what we've found. (Do I tell them everything, or do I withhold details that might cause them to react in fear? And if I don't tell them everything, what happens when they come and find out what I've been withholding?)

I know my duty—I know what's expected of me. But Sun-Tsu wrote that the general in the field must have the discretion to either follow or not follow the orders of his distant superiors as he sees fit to best accomplish his objectives. (Of course, that wisdom probably wouldn't stand against a court martial.)

I fly back "home" after lunch (and more planning with Anton and Rick). No more sign of "desert demons" watching us, though I ride back in the cockpit so I can look down on the landscape as we go. All I see is empty desert all the way back to Melas Two.

I get the call before my ASV even shifts engines into landing orientation.

"The Stilsons need to speak with you, Colonel," Lisa tells me. "They insist it's urgent."

"We were attacked at sunrise," Simon hisses even before I'm all the way through the hatch into Command Briefing. He's been pacing, staring out the polycarb viewports northwest, in the direction of his home Station.

Lisa and Matthew are already seated, both looking grim. Paul is coiled in his chair with his arms wrapped around his torso like he's going to crush himself—he doesn't even raise his eyes to greet me. Simon tries to say something more, but he looks like he can't even speak. Instead, he keys up a video transmission. On our screens, I see missiles slam the towers of an ETE Station, throwing chunks of concrete. More missiles come, but they vaporize before they hit.

The viewpoint we're watching is from somewhere up high on the towers. Dust begins to rise and obscure the view, but I can see orange sealsuits on the landing platforms, Spheres in hand like they're trying to hold back a storm. The view pans out to show us small aircraft, weaving madly, throwing missiles from under their delta-wings. One of the missiles manages to go low enough to avoid the Spheres' interception and takes out part of the platform support. A section buckles, and I see at least one sealsuit tumble down with the collapsing deck, vanishing down the slope.

The screen shifts and I'm seeing it again from another angle: missiles slamming the great towers. But then I realize it isn't the same Station. A jumpy close-up shows me distinctly _yellow_ suits swarming out to defend their facility.

"They hit Orange and Gold Station almost simultaneously," Lisa explains.

"The two Stations closest to Shinkyo Colony," Matthew clarifies.

"They just flew in and emptied their loads," Lisa continues, trying to keep her voice level. "No warning."

I watch something amazing then: One of the yellow suits grips a Sphere and a Rod together tight to his chest and leaps into the sky. No sooner is he off the platform than his body is thrown even more violently through the air, as if he's being catapulted. He crosses a third of the distance between the Station and the attacking craft before he begins to lose momentum. I watch him spin in mid-air, point his tools behind him, and then his body is flung forward again. It reminds me of the way a cephalopod swims, in bursts of thrust.

The attacking ships get some sense of what he's doing. I see them change course hard, turning tail. The flying man has two targets, who zig-zag each other to make his choice more difficult, but he manages to focus just enough. I see him point his Rod and one of the ships jerks as its port wing shatters—not like it was hit by a missile, but like something invisible swatted it. It struggles to keep its attitude but begins to spin—the pilot was pushing too hard to get away to have any control now. The ship tumbles out of control and slams back-first into the rocky terrain of the valley floor. Its wingman doesn't even pause, just burns for home. The flying man changes his posture and begins to drop gracefully down, his tools again clutched close to his chest.

The scene shifts back to the Orange Station. Either they've practiced this or they're communicating between Stations during the fight: Two orange suits fling themselves airborne just as the yellow had. But this time, the enemy takes a different tack: One ship burns hard for home while the other one turns and flies straight at them. It cuts between the two flying suits before they can fully respond (still, I see the ship jerk as if it struck something hard with each wing) and throws itself suicidally at the Station. It's all the ETE can do to raise their Spheres against it. The ship explodes against their resistance, but the shockwave sends them all flying. I see at least two more go tumbling off down the mountain.

"The monsters would kill _everyone!_ " Simon growls.

"It was senseless," Paul finally manages to say. "What did they hope to accomplish?"

"A test of your defenses?" Lisa suggests.

"Or a message," Matthew offers darkly.

"Your people: how bad were you hurt?" I ask.

"They will recover, Colonel," Paul gives me, but it doesn't lighten his mood. "And the towers were not damaged critically."

"It makes little difference," Simon snaps. "They are willing to destroy the only thing that keeps all of you people alive. For what? Greed? Envy?"

"What does your Council say?" I try to refocus him. "What will you do now?"

"They have recalled us," Simon tells me, still seething. Paul keeps his eyes from mine. "We are leaving."

I catch Paul out in the corridor. His brother looks back once, then keeps walking for the stairs.

"I'm sorry, Colonel," Paul offers. "But you are at risk if we stay here."

"I know," I tell him. "But that's not what I'm worried about."

"Simon will finish the parts for the portable transmitter dish for Mr. Staley—it was almost completed even before you found the new components."

I hold up a hand to stop him.

"These ninjas—or whatever they are—they're reckless in battle. They fight with no regard for life, even their own. You've seen that yourself. So has Simon. But they're always thinking ahead. Nothing they do is strictly what it appears to be."

"What are you saying?"

" _Trap_ ," Matthew is suddenly behind us. "They knew they couldn't breach your Station defenses. I just had MAI do a firing solution given an analysis of their ordnance: They didn't even try. They could have aimed to do more damage, but they shot sloppy on purpose. They were just putting on a show."

"We found two bodies in each ship they lost," Paul tries to counter, visibly struggling to believe it. "They sacrificed four lives—for a _distraction_?"

"For a tactical manipulation," I tell him. "They knew what you would do next."

He processes for a few seconds, then it looks like it hits him like a slap.

"The recall?"

"They know we've increased our defensive posture," Matthew explains. "Trying to take you from us again would be very costly."

"So they do something to draw you out," I finish the thought, then let him digest it.

"It makes no difference, Colonel," Paul heavily concludes. "Staying here endangers you even more than it endangers us. But isn't there a saying? 'Forewarned is fore-armed?'"

"There is." I give him a grin.

### Chapter 6: Escalation

14 September, 2115:

We delay the Stilson's leaving for two days, hopefully just long enough for the Shinkyo to wonder what we're doing. We assume they'd already set their trap before the attack on the Stations, just in case Paul and Simon left immediately upon receiving the news. Two days isn't enough time for us to get any sense of where they may have set up or what they're up to, but it gave us time to plan countermeasures of our own.

Testing the water, we sent an ASV out, to see if they would show their hand if a ship headed in the direction of a Station. There was no response. Simon suggested that they might have some way of detecting an actual ETE presence, possibly learned from previous encounters, so a decoy wouldn't work. I suggested sending a Sphere on an unmanned ASV, but Simon reminded me that their tools are inert when not in proximity to their owners. That meant the only thing the Shinkyo would respond to was the detection of a _live_ ETE presence, the very thing we'd rather not risk. But the brothers were more than eager to take that risk.

Minutes before sunrise on day two, we raise an ASV up out of the bays and push it through a combat liftoff. It makes a dash for the nearest ETE Station—Blue Station—and we almost immediately get word from Council Blue that an attack has commenced against that Station.

I get video feed of a pair of small jets like the ones that hit Stations Orange and Gold, throwing missiles wildly at the towers. Council Blue was prepared: everything gets deflected by ETE Spheres that had been ready and waiting for this.

"You called that one, Mikey," Matthew mutters praise as he watches the fireworks in Ops. The tactic is a sensible one: The Shinkyo could not anticipate with certainty which of the Stations the Stilsons would head for, so they had to try to draw them to one. Bombing their home Station made sense because of the emotional connection as well as the proximity, and we let them think we fall for it. The ASV goes into full burn toward Blue Station.

But then it cuts hard into a bank that flips the ship almost full around, turning south-southeast. Now they're burning across the valley for Green Station, which sits on the eastern extreme of the Melas South Rim—the Station closest to Melas Three. It's a hundred-and-twenty-five-mile run across open valley, and we're hoping it's tempting, especially because we start squeezing.

Council Blue springs his own trap. A handful of his most experienced "technicians" burst up out of the soil well down-slope from the Station. They'd used the subsurface Feed Lines to tunnel into position undetected. And now they use their tools to fly up right into the midst of the attacking jets. An instant later, both ships have been slammed out of the sky, and his men are moving in to secure any survivors. The Councilman takes a moment to call and officially thank us for both the intel and the tactical advice—it's the most joy I've heard out of that mask yet.

Out in the valley, the game is on.

"Here they come," Metzger announces from Aircom. Radar gives us a triad of blips that appear from the east-central valley floor—it looks like they'd been using the Arcadia ruin for cover. It's an ideal location to give them the best run at us, no matter which Station we headed for.

"I see 'em," I hear Smith confirm. "Let's see what this old bucket can do."

"Two more," Metzger adds to her running report as blips appear out of gutted Mariner Colony. "They really were hoping we'd go straight for Blue Station." The two new blips head south, desperate to catch up with the action.

The three from Arcadia try to intercept the ASV by getting between it and its goal. Smith does the expected thing and banks east, trying to do an end-run around them, but the ASV is no match for the speed of the light Shinkyo jets.

"Send in the cavalry," I order on cue. Two ASVs spin up and blast off our pads, a reinforcement that both sides know will get there too late.

"Come on, baby..." Smith sings to his ship as we watch the enemy bear down on it.

"They're splitting," Metzger announces. "Two targets are dropping out."

I see it on the tactical map: two of the three jets from Arcadia suddenly brake and drop into a ravine. The third flies full out at our transport. Suicidally.

"I was wondering how they planned to beat..." Matthew begins. The sudden flashover on our screens cuts him off mid-sentence.

"Holy _shit_..." I hear Metzger gasp. All I can do is watch.

The lead attack ship becomes a flare that swallows almost a square mile of valley. Our instruments flutter with static. Smith's feed goes dead.

"You've got your answer," I tell Matthew. Seconds later, we feel the rumble of the blast like a mild quake through our boots.

"Tactical mini-nuke," Rick appraises, his voice sounding distant, numb.

" _How?_ " I hear Lisa demand over the still-fuzzy Link from Melas Three.

"I was afraid of this," Rick offers, shaky. "Incoming nukes got picked off during the Big One. There had to be warheads that came down at least partially intact."

"And these fuckers found one?" Matthew wants not to believe.

"That was too small," Rick tells him. "Looks like less than half-kiloton yield. Likely they broke one down into smaller devices."

"Which means they have _more_?" Matthew sounds like he wants blood.

"Smith?" I ask. He disengages from the makeshift remote flight control Anton had installed in the Lancer's cockpit, and turns to me with a sheepish but accepting nod.

"Yeah. I'm dead," he answers me matter-of-factly, then turns back to the Lancer's own controls.

Imaging tries to cut through the billowing dust, but the surface isn't visible for miles around.

"Our friends are making their move," Metzger lets me know. The remaining two jets come back up, but their radar contacts are fuzzy with all the crap in the air.

"Are we done with these fuckers yet?" Matthew asks me on Link.

"Let's drop in and say hello, Lieutenant," I tell Smith.

"With pleasure, Colonel. Hang onto something..."

The Lancer drops us quick. I wonder if they even see us coming through all the mess they've made.

"Weapons free. Fire at will," I add, almost as an afterthought.

We'd moved the Lancer the day before, as soon as it was clear they weren't going to try to intercept anything that wasn't carrying an ETE. It went casually with the regular salvage traffic to Melas Three. Then in the dark of this morning, at the same time our "bait" transport was lifting off from the Melas Two pads, the Lancer went straight up. And she stayed up, hovering just over the electrostatic atmosphere shield, hoping that its interference, combined with the Lancer's own stealth-skin, would effectively cloak us from the Shinkyo (especially if they weren't focused on Melas Three).

The ASV's sudden southward dash wasn't a blind retreat: it brought them closer to Melas Three, which the Shinkyo likely considered of little consequence—they'd expect any significant armed response to come from Melas Two.

While we watched and waited, Smith did dual duty remote piloting the "bait" ASV (the least air-worthy of our salvaged ships—Morales wasn't even sure it would survive the hard burn), then took back manual control of the Lancer. Now that he's flying the ship he's actually in, he moves with a vengeance.

Smith locks the guns and starts shredding the two closest enemy jets before they likely even see us through the radioactive dust cloud. They never get off a shot. I watch them break up and tumble into the billowing grit.

The remaining two coming in from the north realize their situation and turn to run home.

Now all we need to do is find Paul and Simon.

The Shinkyo "ninja" always seem to have at least two purposes for everything they do—that's getting more apparent with every encounter. Their various attacks on the ETE were not just about the obvious objective of obtaining nanotech—I even doubt they had any real confidence of succeeding with that on their prior raids. It became clearer each time I reviewed the ETE video records of the attacks: What they were really doing was probing their targets' defenses, getting them to show their capabilities, and maybe even their limitations (and the ETE _do_ have limitations—I can see that myself on the playback).

Somewhere in there they figured out how to scan for whatever energy signatures ETE gear emits when it's active, or how to read a nano-enhanced body from a distance. That's why they wouldn't go for a ship that didn't have an ETE on it, but went right for the ASV when Paul and Simon got on board. And that's what forced us to put the brothers at risk (no matter how willing they were to go along with the plan).

Then they proved time-and-again that conventional weapons couldn't pierce whatever field an ETE Sphere could project. They also knew they couldn't risk trying to attack faster than one of the brothers could respond. But from the attacks on the Stations they learned three very important things: One, that the Spheres and Rods have very limited range; two, that the concussion of a big blast could send their operators reeling; and three, that it takes concentration (and in most cases a physical grip on the tools) to make them work.

From there came the extrapolation we weren't sure about: how would they hit hard enough to guarantee the Stilsons would be out of play, or at least unable to effectively defend themselves (but not obliterate them in the process). What we missed was that they thought more specifically: they chose a weapon that had punch, but would also throw out EM interference that would potentially interfere with the ETE tools.

And now I'm feeling particularly stupid to have assumed that none of the "primitive" surviving factions would have both the technology and the sheer genocidal lunacy to make themselves a nuclear arsenal.

"Matthew, make sure those jets stay on the run," I tell him over the Link, which is still suffering from all the charged air between us. "Anything incoming is suspect—we need to be ready to intercept while it's still well away from us."

"Already on it," he assures me, though I can hear the edge in his voice. "And I'm having the ASVs watch the ground, too: quietest way to deliver a bomb is to walk it right up to our doorstep."

"Rick, I'm going to need some kind of countermeasures. Some way to detect an incoming nuke from the greatest distance. Coming in by air or by ground."

"I'm sorry, Colonel," he starts apologizing. "I should have seen this coming. I should have."

"Me, too, Doctor. I'm going to assume that since they didn't just nuke us directly, they either didn't care to or assumed we would intercept them," I try to reassure. "They knew they only had this one shot and after that we'd know what they had. Lisa, get on the line to the ETE and let them know what happened. Maybe they can whip up a defense better than we can."

"Yes, sir," she replies officiously, only to soften: "Have you found them yet?"

"Too much crap in the air," Smith inserts by way of an answer. "Can't see the damn ground..." Then he yelps as an electrostatic arc cuts through the clouds just in front of us. "Jesus..."

"How hot is it out there?" I need to know. "Can we go outside?"

"The H-A Troopers can," Rick answers. "Otherwise, I wouldn't be out there without a full surface-suit. And then you'll all need a hell of a scrub before you come back inside."

We'd turned the crew section of the Lancer into a makeshift squad-bay, anticipating that we would need to engage the enemy on the surface. Rios hand-picked a dozen seasoned armor troopers to cram into a space not really made for their bulk.

"Any signal?" Matthew wants to know, even though his screens back at Ops should be showing him the same as everyone else's.

"Bastards calculated it just right," Anton tells him, monitoring the surface from his "station" in the Lancer cockpit. "Detonated so that our ship got caught hard in the EMP, but not close enough for the shockwave to blow it apart. Every circuit on that thing is likely fried, even the tracking tags."

I'm wondering if ETE healing nanotech is EMP-proof. Worry is starting to cut through the rage I focus into doing the job.

"MAI's modeled the blast," Lisa offers. "Matched with the last trajectory of the ASV. Location should be good to within..."

"Got 'em!" Smith rejoices. Then: "Fuck..."

I'm watching it myself on the Lancer's screens: The dust clears enough to show us the battered and torn hulk of the ASV. It's lying on its side, both wings gone, every surface smashed. The trench it dug as it came down tells me it did a lot of rolling. I'm hoping the Stilsons did what they were told and stayed in their crash-couches. But I'm not sure how much good the harnesses would have done, given the damage. The ship looks like it's been thrown at the ground.

"Bring her down close," I order, even though Smith is already doing so. I signal the troopers to seal up and I depressurize their section so they can just drop out of outer hatches without cycling the airlocks. I feel a crunch as the Lancer touches down on the rocks. The lower hatches pop and the armored troopers drop out fast and start moving. They fan into a defensive posture, watching all sides as well as the wreck. There's no sign of life for a few tense moments. Sergeant Jensen is the first one to the ship, and she shows me the transport module has been torn open. There's no one inside, but there is blood. I feel my stomach sink. It gets worse when Jensen finds Paul's helmet. Then Simon's.

"Got 'em!" Smith shouts. "Due east of you. One hundred meters..."

I can see a blue suit waving from the crest of a fissure—likely an ancient wash—in the valley floor. I'm guessing they got away from the ship and tried to hide, just in case. But I only see one of them. He's wearing one of _our_ masks. There's blood on his face and on his suit and he's covered in dust. It takes the troopers several seconds to bound over to him. He waves frantically, gesturing them to follow, to hurry, then hops back down out of sight into the fissure. I follow Jensen's visual feed as she skips over the rough ground to the edge of the fissure. The waving figure is now cradling another blue suit, which he'd apparently concealed beneath a small rock overhang. This suit is also wearing one of our masks, and is bloodier by far than the first. The limbs look tangled in ways that tell me they're broken. Jensen gets me a good enough shot of the face to tell me it's Paul. His eyes are closed, his body shivering in shock or pain or both. Simon pushes his face close to Jensen's faceplate.

" _I need to get my brother home!_ " he shouts like he's deaf. " _I need to get him home now!!!_ "

We turn the aft lab section into a combination ambulance and decontamination chamber, and shut hatches to seal it off from the rest of the ship. Paul gets strapped onto a trauma gurney (one of two we'd brought just in case), and the med-gear gives him a quick scan. He's snapped both legs (one at the femur), cracked his pelvis and several ribs, and his right arm is out at the shoulder joint. Both his spleen and liver are bleeding, and we had to mechanically re-inflate his right lung. He's also got head-trauma. Simon has a nasty cut on his head, a bad limp and is nursing one arm, but he won't let anyone examine him.

Because of the radiation, I can't go back to see him. I order Smith to get us in the air and burn straight for Green Station. Then I go back to watching Paul on my screen. I'm waiting for him to heal, waiting for his marvelous technology to put him back together before my eyes, but it isn't happening. And Simon's head is still bleeding.

"Why didn't he heal?"

"He tried to," Simon tells me after we've touched down and a brace of green sealsuits meet us on the pad to take Paul into the Station. He touches his own bleeding forehead, looks at the blood on his fingers, looks like he's either going to laugh or be sick.

"Big secret, Colonel Ram," Simon gets quiet but I can still feel his rage. "EMP _does_ fry our nanites like any other micro-tech. The body itself provides enough insulation to keep it all from being killed, but we're both working at severe deficits right now. Paul may need full re-implantation."

More green suits come for Simon, but he waves them to wait with his bloody hand. Then he touches his fingers to his wound again. Grimaces. Giggles.

"Never felt this... not like this..." he mumbles. "Paul... His couch broke loose. I saw him... He bounced and broke all over as we tumbled. I carried him. I dragged him out..."

I nod in understanding but don't interrupt him, don't tell him he needs to go with the green suits.

"Our masks didn't work," he continues. "Our tools didn't work. I used your masks, your masks worked, got him to breathe, carried him..." He's staring blankly at the hatch into the Station, the same hatch his brother was just taken through. The green suits move closer, ready to catch him because he's starting to fold up on his feet. They're all masked, so I can't see their expressions. I wonder how much this is unsettling them. Then Simon turns his eyes to mine. Shows me his bloody fingers like a child who's found something fascinating.

"Is this... Is this what it's like for you?"

The green suits take hold of him and lead him away. They don't say a word to me at all.

### Part Three: Warriors

Chapter 1: Envoys

18 September, 2115:

The tapsite where Carver died is chosen as neutral ground.

We land the Lancer a respectable distance away and hike in; just myself, Tru (who effectively argued that a civilian should be included in representing us), Lieutenant Rios, and a team of H-A troopers as a show of "muscle"—too small to be really threatening, but enough for appearances (in line with what Abbas recommended). Matthew has two fully-loaded ASVs hot and ready to come if we need more support, but if I need to make that call, I know I'll be ordering a massacre.

Abbas is already waiting for us, his adopted son at his side, along with a handful of his own cloaked and armored personal guard. They all carry firearms, which I discreetly question as Abbas had described meeting at a tapsite to be ideal for discouraging gunplay so as not to risk rupturing precious Feed Lines. Abbas grins and tells me that arming everyone with guns in such a place has proven best at discouraging violence, because any firefight would cost every tribe dearly. (Paul had told me that the lines are maintained by automated repair bots, but also suggested it would be better to keep the Nomads worried about destroying their resources.)

At least a hundred of Abbas' people wait and watch from a quarter-mile away, shapeless blobs under their cloaks—they could just as easily be an abstract arrangement of large rocks. Abbas makes his "peace" gesture as we come close, raising his gun over his head. I'd like to tell him it's unnecessary, but I mimic him, because there are others coming to this meeting, and I expect they're watching. We both make a show of handing our personal side arms to our nearest "second"—I to Rios and Abbas to Drake.

For his part, Rios plays his role with quiet discipline—I know how much rage he still holds about this place. I've never taken him aside to talk about Carver or how close they'd gotten or what she meant to him—I let it be private, let him find his own way to deal. But I know the last time he was here he watched her bleeding to death, choking on a Nomad crossbow bolt, coming far too late to do anything about it.

When I approach within a few paces of Abbas, he drops formality and rushes forward to embrace me like a brother, an act that causes Rios to tense for a moment behind his ICW until he reassures himself that Abbas means me no harm other than an overzealous squeezing.

"It is always good to see you, my friend," Abbas begins heartily. Drake gives me a nod and I can see a smile under his mask.

"Even considering what's being said about us now?" I have to ask him.

"I can give no credit to such slander," he assures me again, but his mood goes somber.

"I know," I give him back. "But you seem to be the exception."

"Hopefully I am not alone," he tries. Then he turns to the west and waves. Another line of cloaks materializes out of the dust haze, and a brace of figures begins walking toward the tapsite. Their apparent leader—though he's dressed no differently from his fellows, raises his pistol in greeting, then hands it off. I wait patiently while he and Abbas embrace, though this time both parties seem to be on mixed terms. Still, Abbas introduces us with his usual gusto:

"Colonel Ram, this is my brother-in-law Hassim Al Fadil, Sharif of Western Melas."

Hassim exchanges a firm forearm grasp with me, his eyes burning deep and black under his goggles, whatever feelings he has about this meeting well-buried. Hassim is leaner than Abbas, and several years younger, but his features are much harder. He has at least one visible scar on the bridge of his nose. He gives a quick look over Rios and his troopers, then locks eyes on Tru as if sizing her up: She wears her Mariner Colony work suit under an LA jacket, and leans on the forearm crutch she brought to stabilize her gait on the uneven terrain.

"This is Truganini Greenlove," I introduce her. "Elected representative of our colonial residents. She is also a director of our greenhouse project."

"I hope to do quite a lot of trading with your people," she tries. Hassim gives her only a curt little nod before returning his eyes to me. I see Abbas smile under his mask and shake his head. I make a mental note to ask him later if it's her sex, her handicap, her title or her history (her name must be almost as famous as mine) that's triggered the chilly response. Tru shifts her weight onto her crutch.

"Farouk?" Hassim asks before anything else can be said.

Abbas points southeast, repeats his wave. I turn in time to see another throng of bulky cloaks rise in a line on a ridge maybe a thousand yards out. I can almost hear Rios' gloves constrict on the stock of his ICW. Again, a half-dozen of cloaks start hiking toward us to join this little summit, with what looks very much like an H-A suit wearing a cape in their center.

"Farouk," Abbas confirms.

"Thank you in advance for brokering this meeting," I tell him.

"Even if it proves unproductive?" he considers.

"It will be productive if it prevents bloodshed."

"Not promising in any interaction with this man," he warns me. I glance at Hassim, whose eyes remain locked on the approaching group.

We wait together silently as Farouk's delegation makes the slow march in. When they're close enough, I can see that the figure walking on Farouk's right hand is the same graceful female form I saw watching us at Melas Three. Farouk's "Zauba'a" wears the same camouflaged cloaks and cowls as the rest of them, but hers she keeps open like a cape, revealing glossy red-lacquered metal. She is almost entirely sheathed in form-fitting plate and mail armor, but with enough joint exposure to allow for free movement. Her breather mask is covered with gloss-red plate as well, crafted to give the impression of some sort of fanciful monster. There are a number of stout plain knives and sharp-tipped metal rods strapped to her body. Despite all this, she moves like what she's wearing weighs nothing. Through her goggles, I see her black eyes are locked on mine. What little of her skin I see is light-olive, smooth. She's young, possibly part Asian.

They come to a stop in the packed-down "clearing" around the tapsite. Abbas is slower to greet than he was with Hassim and I, but I notice that Farouk doesn't make the first move: he waits for Abbas to step forward, then the two exchange the same forearm clasp that Hassim offered me. But this one appears far more cautious, cool.

Farouk doesn't attempt to greet me or even Hassim, he just glares at us through his goggles like we either annoy or amuse him, and I think I can read a smirk under his mask. Hassim makes no move to greet him either, and I take Hassim's lead. Standing silently just behind him, Farouk's "Zauba'a" still has her black eyes locked coolly on mine, as unblinking and still as a doll's.

Farouk is indeed wearing an old and battered H-A shell, though he's painted artistic illuminations of Arabic writing over its original markings, so I can't tell the suit's origin. Nomad scarves and a cowl sit in place of the missing helmet, and the suit has been further adorned with assorted gear and bits of ornamental handmade armor. His Zauba'a carries his sidearm for him—a plain UNMAC-issue pistol—though he still wears a gaudy knife wedged in his belt. His hair is dark, his skin smoother than Abbas' or Hassim's. I guess him to be in his early forties, given the benefit of a comparatively easy life.

Abbas turns and nods to Drake, who steps forward cautiously and sets his father's pistol down on a large, flat rock that has been placed in the center of the packed-dirt clearing. Hassim's "lieutenant" follows suit, placing Hassim's own pistol—a compact colony PDW—on the rock next to Abbas'. I nod for Rios to do the same with my gun. Farouk is last, making a show of his hesitation before signaling his Zauba'a to add his pistol to the others. Now our four guns form a square, barrels pointing in at each other, and we move around it, taking places indicated by our weapons so that the rock forms the center of our circle.

"So this is the Peacemaker," Farouk begins with little in the way of respect in his voice. In answer, I take a breath in and peel my mask and goggles off, letting him see my face. What I notice most is the slight change in the eyes of his stoic Zauba'a, her face losing some of its frozen doll-like quality. But then she hardens again, catching herself. Farouk only chuckles.

"We have much to discuss," I offer, ignoring his tone.

"We have very little to discuss," Farouk counters, but there's more calculation in his voice than actual anger. "Especially given your recent aggression against us."

"The nuclear detonation was not an attack upon you," I repeat the assurance that I'm sure Abbas must have already passed along. "Nor was it our device. You can thank Shinkyo for that, in any way you see fit."

"We do not need your consent to deal with the Shinkyo, Colonel Ram," Farouk throws back at me coolly, clearly trying to provoke. "Nor is Daimyo Hatsumi our current concern. I speak of your incursion into our lands."

Farouk, Abbas told me, once held the northwest and central areas of Melas Chasma. But his persistent defeats by the PK holding the far north-northwest drove him by necessity or pride to turn south, where he conquered and assimilated a weaker tribe, re-establishing his strength if not his reputation. This retreat allowed Hassim in turn to take back much of Western Melas, lands lost in generational wars between his tribe and Farouk's. The west holds the ruins of Baraka and Uqba—"The Blessing" and "The Edge of the World"—the two UME colonies, and therefore the "ancestral homelands" of the Melas Nomads. (I asked Abbas why they faced west when they prayed. Baraka had the first mosque on Mars.)

Farouk's loss of the West was a severe blow, and he's since made quite a lot of noise insisting that his current holdings are far superior to what he abandoned to Hassim, that his taking of the South was in fact a blessing from God. But the truth was more likely that Farouk was in no position to resist Hassim once he'd expended too much of his strength against the PK, and that Farouk ran before Hassim could prove it. In any case, now Farouk ostensibly controls the southeast quarter of Melas, where Abbas holds the northeast—both tribes in dispute over controlling the receiving end of the food trade traffic from Coprates, and those caravans supply the bulk of what keeps all the Melas Nomads eating. (Abbas apparently trades food in turn to Hassim's people, keeping the two groups closely allied.) The ETE provide air and water and fuel unconditionally—food is the currency of real power.

Abbas showed me the rough tribal divisions—the undrawn borders—on one of our maps. Farouk's territory is bordered on the west by a "no-man's land" separating him from Hassim's territory. This no-man's land is supposedly inhabited and controlled by "desert demons"—likely the Shinkyo ninja—making an effective buffer between the two blood enemies (which is probably convenient in preserving what's left of Farouk's dignity). But right on the eastern edge of Farouk's new territory lies...

"Our base, Melas Three," I say it before he can, letting him know that I not only understand his point, but that I've come prepared to debate it. Then I let him know my position on the subject. "The UNMAC installations are ours. They belong to no colony or tribe. They were placed throughout the valley to keep the peace, to provide aide in times of crisis, and to defend all of you from outside attack."

"That was in the old world, Colonel," Farouk returns. "The colonies are no longer. And we are not helpless, dependent on the Unmakers to 'defend' us from an enemy that no longer exists. History has told, Colonel: _You_ are the enemy, and a far greater foe to all of us than old tales of phantom flying dishware that none of us has seen in our lifetimes."

I can feel his men grinning beneath their masks and cowls. Only his Zauba'a remains stoic, but I see her eyes are trying to read mine.

"You want us to withdraw, to abandon the Melas Three site," I state the obvious. He simply grins at me. I only chuckle at him in return, and show him what my own grin looks like. He almost takes a step back.

"I know your kind very well, Farouk Aziz," I tell him like I'm talking to a child. "And you have mistaken me for my predecessors. You would use diplomacy as a means to intimidate, to veil your threats, assuming that you are preying on a people who believe in peace—or fear war—so much that they 'd be willing to give concessions to appease you. You forget who I am. I watched the warriors of my predecessors' put themselves in the line of fire trying to protect innocent lives that men like you would happily sacrifice if it served you in any way. I watched them throw away their lives trying to respect even their enemies by keeping their most sacred sites intact, only to watch those enemies blow them up themselves after using them as safe bases to attack from. I saw men like you prey on the mercy and charity of better men, shouting all the while that it was the will of God that you were doing.

"You forget who I am. I was one of the first of the UNACT Tacticals—the grand experiment to unite a world sick of what we called terrorists: quick to murder the helpless because the helpless are easy prey. I was created because mercy and charity failed. I was created to cleanse the planet of people like you. And you know my name because I did my job without charity or mercy."

I feel Farouk's men rustle and shift uncomfortably, their weapons ready. But I also feel both Abbas' and Hassim's guards slowly shift in behind me. I lock eyes with the Zauba'a just long enough to see her smile under her mask. Then I turn my cold glare back on Farouk, letting him know he needs to give me a good reason not to kill him.

"You think..." he tries to compose himself, re-assert his condescending sneer. "You think you are still on Earth? You think these are still your glory days as faithful dog of the infidel corporate nations?" His men chuckle with him on cue, the toadies of a bully. "Your time is done, old ghost. This is not your world. It is _ours_. You think you can stand against _us_? You are nothing."

"I have no intention of standing against you," I tell him coolly. "But I have learned my lessons. You are right: this is not Earth, nor is it the Mars made by the corporations. But humans are still humans—that has not changed—I have seen that easily in the time since I have awakened. You are no different than many who have come before you: You come to this meeting, hiding behind diplomacy and smiles, and claim _we_ have wrongly aggressed against _you_ , and then you use that claim to leverage your demands. But this isn't about unjust trespass or aggression. What you actually want is for us to retreat and give you a stronghold to increase your own power, so that you can better prey upon those weaker than you. We have uncovered a great treasure that we had lost, and you want to take it from us, arguing that it's somehow yours. Men like you, I have no patience for. I will not stand against you, Farouk Aziz. I have no taste for posturing. But if you choose to stand against my people or my friends, I will not hold fire. You know the land, you outnumber us. But our base batteries are back online, and we have aircraft, and we have plenty of ammunition. This information is the only mercy I will give you."

He tries to keep up his cool appearance, but I can see his eyes shifting. I wonder if he's remembering his defeats by the PK, who did not have aircraft and automated batteries.

"Earth will be returning, Farouk," Abbas breaks the silence, trying to take the conversation in a better direction. "You call this man a corporate dog, but he does not stand for them—you know that from history. He has indeed hunted those that his infidel masters call 'terrorists,' but he also turned on those same masters when they threatened innocent lives, putting his own life at risk. I will be standing with him when Earth comes."

"And what will happen then?" Farouk challenges. "What will your good friend do against the might of Earth if they turn on you? Make another speech?"

"Earth will do one of two things," I tell him. "They will try to reach out to those they feel they've abandoned here—I expect that will be their first instinct. But if they are met with violence—and I expect they will be, given what I've seen—then they will try to take control of the situation by force. And while I expect you could stand against them for a time—perhaps many years—it will be costly, and life here is hard enough. Would you be the one to start this cycle of murder, Farouk? Are your petty aspirations worth a war you cannot control?"

"There are easily a dozen tribes that would start such a war, even if I do not," Farouk returns. "But my people—and yours, Abbas—will be killed along with all the rest. Abbas, Hassim—do either of you actually believe Earth will embrace you? That they will not simply see you as pathetic scavengers and seek to erase our way of life in the name of 'rescuing' us? And do so with guns and bombs when we don't happily comply?"

"I will make Earth understand your way of life, to value and preserve it," I try to reassure.

"And if the corporate colonial rush comes again?" Farouk criticizes. "When the corrupt and powerful demand our lands so they can reap their precious profits? When they send men like this to kill our families if we do not bow down?"

"Then we need to be united against them," Abbas says it before I can. "We need to show them that we are a civilization to be reckoned with, not violent beasts."

"Your senile friend thinks he is Lawrence of Arabia," Farouk ridicules.

"T.E. Lawrence didn't do the British—or the West—any favors by uniting the Bedouins," I remind him, shaking off the insult. I feel Hassim shuffle his feet in the dirt next to me. He lowers his head and grins under his mask.

"We need their bases, Abbas," Farouk tries. "It is the only way we can stand against them when they come."

"A pair of tactical bunker-busters dropped from orbit would eliminate that argument," I tell him. "And you just being there would be all the excuse they would need."

"You are actually trying to convince us that you want their base for all our sakes?" Hassim takes a more direct challenge.

"If he had any hope of that, he wouldn't have opened with his petty claim of trespassing," I add. Farouk looks like he's about to boil in his looted armor.

"You said that there were two things Earth might do?" Abbas refocuses the conversation. I take a deep breath, grind my own boots into the dirt.

"If they come fearing contamination, they will be even more aggressive," I warn. "They will not tolerate _any_ resistance. Their mercy will be tempered by the fear that none of us can be saved anyway. That is why we need to be standing ready to receive them, so that they can see we are not some contagious threat."

"And be ready to run if they aren't convinced," Farouk grumbles. "This is a deadly kind of foolishness, my brothers. You are dealing with the Devil."

"Why do you say this?" Abbas takes offense for me.

"Because _we_ will not be the reason Earth tries to burn us again." His eyes lock mine and glare accusingly. "You know this too, Colonel Ram, yet you fail to address it: It will be your Jinni friends that doom us. How will your Earth embrace them, when they see what they have become?"

We stand together and watch while Farouk's delegation walks back to their line.

"I apologize for this, friend Ram," Abbas offers. "We have only wasted our cylinders."

"Do not apologize for Farouk," Hassim bites. "The Colonel spoke true. Farouk is a dog who cares for nothing but his own profit. He only seeks the means to prey on all of us."

"Apologies are unnecessary," I tell Abbas. "It was important to meet Farouk. Or important that he met me. Hopefully we've come to some kind of understanding."

"It will not deter him from attacking you," Hassim warns.

"I know. But I'm hoping what I told him will spread through his men, that they'll come to realize how easily he'll sacrifice them to increase his own power."

"That is not enough to sow dissent," Hassim counters. "His people know how ruthless he is. But that same ruthlessness—combined with his intelligence—is what wins them lands and prizes."

"Even despite his defeat by the PK?"

"He is quite the politician," Abbas appraises. "He sold his stubbornness as resolve, his stupidity as bravery, his callous sacrifices as a righteous cause of honor and God's will."

"But he is a bad general," Hassim counters, a bit of his wry grin coming back.

"He called the Shinkyo leader by name," I change the subject. "Daimyo Hatsumi. How would he know that if the Shinkyo are so secretive?"

"One story is that his Zauba'a is Shinkyo, or half Shinkyo," Abbas answers. "Perhaps an exile. If what you suspect is right—that the Shinkyo kill those that fail—there may be some that chose flight rather than falling on their swords."

"But the term 'daimyo' refers to a feudal lord," I tell him. "A daimyo controls his lands, his estate, his own army, but the title implies that he defers to a higher authority—an emperor or Shogun. If Hatsumi saw himself as the absolute ruler of his people, I'd think he would have given himself a more auspicious title. Who could the Shinkyo be serving?"

"Maybe he is simply being humble," Abbas tries, the alternative being too disturbing to consider easily.

The lines of the three Nomad tribes fade into the desert in their respective directions. We top off our oxygen canisters at the tap, then hike back to the Lancer, which Lieutenant Smith has already spun up for launch.

"Regretting making me take you along?" I question Tru when she doesn't say anything on the walk back.

"Wouldn't have missed it," she smiles under her mask. "You're sexy when you're scary, though I'm thinking I should be glad I didn't actually have to face you in a colony siege. Much nicer to be standing next to you, but I figure I've made that clear already."

Rios stays quiet all the way back to base, then marches his team of troopers to dust-off and armor-racking as soon as we've touched down. I consider going to talk to him, but decide instead to give him time, let him soothe his pain in the routine of his duties.

After my own dust-off, I change into PT gear and head straight to the centrifuges even though I'm not scheduled again until later this evening. When a slot comes open, I climb into my assigned standing cell, clip into the safety harness, and plug into MAI's vitals monitors. Each centrifuge holds three-dozen personnel at capacity, so it takes a few minutes to get everyone hooked in. Then I wait for the spinner to start moving. The sensation is initially disorienting, but then I feel my feet press into the cell floor, and my body begins to become heavier. And then everything starts to ache: not just the bones and the joints, but I can feel the pull on my muscles, my organs, my skin. I watch the counter—it hasn't even reached .75G yet, but that's still almost twice the surface gravity I walk around in the rest of the time. I feel the beginnings of dizziness as my heart works to keep the blood flowing against the artificial gravity. My fingers and feet tingle. I imagine the nanobuilders that Halley injects us with weekly—far less "intelligent" than the ETE nanites, only capable of shuttling essential calcium and other nutrients back into depleted bone tissue—gearing up as the bones themselves complain of the strain. There's a slight vibration I can feel coming through the floor of my cell, something that was found to passively encourage the bones to fight decalcification.

At .82G I begin to sweat. I start moving my feet, shifting my weight, working my muscles against the pull, running through the standard routine. When I get tired, I work my shoulders, my arms, my neck, then rotate back to legwork. By the time MAI stabilizes us at 1G, I'm marching in place, but I feel like I've been climbing a mountain. My leg muscles burn, my back aches, my lungs feel like the air's gone thin. The clock starts counting down: fifteen minutes to go at this pressure.

Though the meeting with Farouk went just about as badly as I'd expected, I can't help but feel frustrated, especially as we get closer to a real possibility of calling Earth. I feel like I've gone back in time instead of forward—Farouk's comparing me to T.E. Lawrence was truer than he realized.

Abbas explained to me why the most dominant Nomad tribes in Melas are direct descendants of the UME colonies of Baraka and Uqba: while the other colonists tried desperately to cling to their failing sites—or sought to build new ones—the UME came from the cultures that embraced the desert wastes on Earth—thriving where others could not—so doing the same on Mars seemed only appropriate.

Baraka and Uqba were founded out in the open bowl of the Melas valley, far away from their nearest "competitors" that clung closer to the ridge-lines in hopes of yielding better water and mineral resources. The UME engineers and geologists sought to go deep, to try to reap what might be buried where it was likely the last of the ancient free water drained into the planet. Down deep, there might be greater water resources, more precious metals, even sign of ancient life. When these projects reaped no greater rewards than any of the other colonies, they adapted: they raced to develop nanotech factories (though many of the established corporations claimed they'd used industrial espionage to copy existing research), driven by a belief that it was God's own will that His Faithful would come to dominate this world where they failed to on Earth.

To allay the suspicion and outright hostility of the other corporate endeavors, the UME also shifted their focus to exploiting their physical location: so centrally located in regard to the most booming colonies, they had ideal real estate for providing inter-colony trade, transportation, and for supporting deep-valley expeditions. The UME quickly became the go-to colonies for bridging the vastness of Melas, and became indispensable in the great land rush.

Only three minutes gone off the clock—my legs begin to feel numb. I ease off my pace. The cell feeds me recycled water, keeps me hydrated.

Beyond the open deserts of central Melas, Abbas tells me, are other peoples we have yet to meet. Some the UME-descended Nomads have driven back, others cling close to their original colony sites. I doubt I'll do any better with those tribes than I have with Farouk or the Shinkyo, but I hold out hope for meeting more like Abbas. But even if they are like Abbas, there will still likely be bloodshed when we meet them. And if we have yet to shed more blood fighting Farouk and the Shinkyo, we will have made our reputation as Unmakers.

Five minutes gone. Pacing gets me my wind back, but now my joints are popping. Old man. I'm an old man.

I didn't tell Abbas about our plans to call out within three months, to set up a transmitter in Candor. I had meant to—it was one of the things I'd wanted to accomplish during the "summit." I know he would have warned me about the PK and the Zodangans. Again. And I know he would have offered me whatever support he could. But calling Earth—helping us might turn his own people against him.

But _not_ telling him... I find I'm too used to keeping secrets, duty or not.

Old man. I pump my muscles harder, go outside of the established spin routine, start shadow-boxing—fighting the air, fighting my harness, fighting the artificial gravity. I push until I start seeing spots. Slow down. Breathe. Drink. Then start in again.

I miss being just another gun in the fight. Matthew was wrong. I'm no diplomat. I can barely bring myself to do what should be my first duty: call my superiors and report, even if it means relief for my own command. Because I _am_ afraid.

MAI checks in on me. I realize I've punched the steel wall of my cell, possibly more than once. One of my knuckles is bleeding. I don't feel it.

"I'm fine, MAI. Just slipped..."

Old man.

And my enemies are young men.

Seven minutes gone. I'm not even half way done.

20 September, 2115:

I don't even realize anything is amiss, not even when my eyes focus on hers.

I wonder for an instant if that saved my life: that not jumping up in a start and going for my gun—just laying here like the sight of her in my room is not at all unexpected—keeps her from showing me why she has the reputation she does.

Zauba'a Ghaddar.

"Good morning..." I tell her. No demands, no questions about how she got in here or why she did so. I move slowly, no threat, just trying to wake up like it's any other morning. I don't even pull my blanket off to let me move more freely—I just shift to sitting a little more up on my pillows. Give my eyes more time to focus, to take in my situation. Get breathing. Get my blood flowing. Warm my muscles up without looking like that's what I'm trying to do.

I wonder if I could put up a fight, no longer in my prime even without what fifty years of Hiber-sleep did to me. I consider how I would go about it: with a skilled, strong, armed and armored enemy in a tight space.

She doesn't say a word. She just sits still as a stone statue in my desk chair, which she's turned to watch me as I slept, becoming visible out of the darkness as the "environmental lighting" simulates the coming of daylight inside a windowless concrete bunker. The hatch to my quarters is closed and appears to be locked normally behind her—she sits between me and the door.

As my eyes finally get focused through their sleep-haze, I see my gun where I left it, sitting in its rig on the shelf just over my head, in easy reach. She must be tracking my gaze, because her hand comes up out of her red robes smoothly, calmly, and she shows me she has the magazine. Then she tosses it to me. I'm impressed that I catch it. It's still loaded. I set it up on the shelf next to the pistol.

"You could have killed me in my sleep," I tell her the obvious, hoping we have an understanding in stating that fact. I can see her knives under her robes—she has at least four of them strapped to the lacquered plate and underlying mail armor that girds her lean body tightly from head to foot. All of her knives are still sheathed. Her gloved hands rest passively on her steel-plated thighs. "Unless you prefer to have me see it coming."

Her hands reach up then and unseal her mask. The metal face-plate that covers the breathing gear reminds me of a combination between a European knight's visor and a Japanese Samurai mempo. She peels it away and lets me see her: She is young—maybe in her late twenties or early thirties. Her face is lean, with somewhat oriental features. Her eyes are large and black. I cannot see hair under her Nomad-style cowl, but she has black, boyish eyebrows.

Her hands settle back on her thighs, and she just continues to stare at me with what looks like idle curiosity.

"Is this a message from your master Farouk?" I try, keeping my tone calm and level. But I really don't feel any sense of hostility from her.

She pulls a small black card from her robe and holds it up so I can see. It's a UNMAC-issue lock breaker—it looks like the "covert" model issued to SOF units, which explains how she got inside despite MAI being extra-vigilant for surprise visitors.

"A prize I took from a group of five men who exchanged fire with my Sharif's bodyguards," she tells me, her voice also calm and level. She speaks clearly, somewhat slowly, with a subtle mixed accent. "They wore tribal cloaks and homemade armor, but wore your uniforms underneath."

"Where did this happen?" I keep focused on business.

"One day's walk from the Southeast Rim, near the ruins of Freedom." She puts the breaker card back where she got it, pulls out a fairly standard flashcard, shows me a floorplan of this base. "From the Shinkyo archives," she explains more than one mystery.

"Could they get in here as easily as you?" I wonder. Her mouth grins just a bit in one corner, letting me know she's at least capable of feeling a little pride in her accomplishments. She shakes her head.

"The Shinobi are slaves," she tells me with a touch of barely-veiled loathing. "They serve. They cannot adapt beyond that."

"And you?" I risk goading her a bit.

"I serve no one unless it serves me in what I seek," she tells me dully.

"And what do you seek?" I play. Her face goes dead and doll-like again.

"I seek to be perfect." She says it like a machine, like I'm talking to MAI.

"An impossible quest," I give her the obvious again.

"It is the quest that is everything," she tells me, still mechanical, reciting a rote mantra. I smile and nod. Her eyes regard me like they're trying to decide something, but I still don't sense hostility.

"And how can I help you on that quest?"

"By being Mike Ram," she answers, her eyebrows going up just enough to soften her features slightly. "By not being Farouk."

"And what is Farouk to you?" I try.

"Not my master." Her voice stays cool, but now she's not looking me in the eye. Her head rolls lazily to the side and I can hear her breathe deep. She's gone somewhere else. "No one is my master. Farouk was convenient, useful for a time. He gave me opportunities to perfect myself."

"Against the PK?" I try. She gives a slight nod, her eyes still idly elsewhere.

"Against the other tribes. Against their best." The little smile comes back for an instant, but then looks like she's been disappointed.

"Against the Shinkyo?" I press.

"Not to my satisfaction," her head snaps back and her eyes lock mine again, her voice betraying an edge of some deep frustration, perhaps even pain.

"I will not go out of my way to make war with the Shinkyo," I tell her.

"I know," she softens again, her eyes probing mine again. "But they will make war with you. And you will meet them in kind. You will meet them all in kind. You will have no other choice. They will come against you. You will not back down."

"A fair assessment," I allow, "especially given that we've only just met."

"You serve something greater," she tells me as easily as she might tell me my eye color.

"Do I?" I raise my eyebrows at her.

"It is what you are." Again, she does not make this sound like any kind of praise, just like she's stating simple, obvious fact.

I shake my head. "I'm just an old man."

"And you have been on the same path as I am now. I have studied you for many years, learned from you without meeting you." Her flashcard spins through clips of mission files, public appearances, even training videos from my UNACT days (and at least one now-embarrassing clip of my impulsive use of a sword in public).

I catch earnestness in her eyes, reaching out. She has made herself both fan and student.

"And now you've laid eyes on the legend. I assume I did not fully disappoint?"

She doesn't answer. She tries to stay inside her stoic, disciplined shell, but I can feel her discomfort: confronting the fantasy.

"I have seen you both old and young," she defends. "You are still Mike Ram. You are still what you are."

"I'm a tired old man on a bed, too rusted to notice an assassin breaking into his bedroom," I tell her levelly, even though I'm probably taking my life in my hands.

She shakes her head, smiles with what may be genuine warmth.

"You deny what you have _become_. Your body is no longer young, you feel it is failing you, but it has taken you where it has. My body will do the same in its time. But what you are now is greater than what you were when your body was at its prime. What you are now, you can master this world. You can make it what it should be."

I look in her eyes now and see age beyond her physical years, and serenity—she isn't flattering me: she _believes_ in what she's saying. (And she's managed to touch the issue at the core of my pervasive dread—that I need to somehow fix this world before I dare bring Earth back to it—despite never really meeting me before this.)

"I'm not even a part of this world," I deny.

"Farouk's words," she tosses back at me. "You know better. You are here when you are here. You are what you are. That is all that matters."

"And why are you here?" I confront her coolly.

"I am here because I believe we can serve each other's purpose. Because we each have a path. Not the same path, but they travel together, at least for a time." She measures out each word like she's rehearsed her lines.

"And how far will that be?"

She smiles. "We will both know when the time comes."

I give her a few moments of silence. She doesn't move to leave.

"What do I call you?" I ask her finally.

Her body settles back in the chair. Her eyes look far away again.

"My grandfather was an engineer, from Baraka," she begins as if she's remembering something uncomfortable. "The Shinkyo Corporation had contracted him to help them establish their colony's resource-mining operations. He was still there when the Apocalypse came, and he could not return home. So he stayed with them, helped them rebuild what had been damaged in the bombing, then helped them bury themselves and build their new fortress-city.

"He was also a soldier, a warrior, and their warriors initially embraced him. Their warriors taught him their sciences. He even married one of them, and had a child. He made a life with the Shinkyo, and he was happy. But when Hatsumi took Nawa's seat as Daimyo, the Shinkyo became intolerant, racist, trying to breed purity. My grandmother was murdered by Hatsumi's 'police' for breeding with a 'sand-dog.' My grandfather took his daughter—my mother—out into the desert, back to Baraka, but Baraka was gone. So he used his skills and they made their lives in the desert, hiding from the Shinkyo and the other human predators, and he raised my mother to survive. He taught her what he knew, and then he taught me in turn. But he also taught me I would have to teach myself, to become greater, to walk the path. He wanted me to be greater than the Shinkyo Shinobi, so that I would fear no other man, so that I would survive. But I learned that the path is more important than survival, more important than power. The path is what you _become_."

I nod, letting her know I understand.

"What happened to your family?"

"My grandfather left us," she says after a pause, like she's having trouble putting her story in words. "He said there was a great evil in the land—something old and more dangerous than even the Shinkyo, something that had been sleeping since the Apocalypse, but was waking up again. He disguised my mother and I as Uqba refugees, left us with Hassim's father's tribe. He said he would return for us, but his path did not let him. Years later, my mother was killed in the fighting against Farouk. I had no reason to remain. My path took me back into the desert, to train, to test myself. But alone, I was only scavenging, pitting myself against scouts, not champions."

"You joined Farouk's band?" I ask her as non-judgmentally as I can.

"The Nomads fight, compete for what little there is—it is not important that my mother was killed by Farouk's warriors. It is simply the way it is, and I will not be possessed by their endless blood-debt feuds. My mother died as a warrior does.

"But Farouk is foolish, impulsive. And he was eager to employ me, once I showed him how far my path had taken me. It was easy to use him, since I do not care if he succeeds or fails, lives or dies. In his service, I could train properly."

"By fighting meaningless battles?" I criticize objectively.

"Training needs experience. I have heard you speak of Musashi, who wandered his country and fought sixty duels on his own path to perfection. How many died for no other reason than to test his skills?"

"He quit that path," I remind her.

"When he was done with it," she completes my point.

"Are _you_ done with it?" I ask her, locking her eyes.

"I expect we both have more killing to do," she returns easily.

I nod solemnly.

"You still haven't told me your name," I remind her.

"Do you accept me into your service?" she gets to what she wants.

"Yes," I answer impulsively, surprising myself.

She gives me a small, brief smile, almost looking like a shy young girl, but just for an instant. Her hero has accepted her.

"What do I call you?"

"To all others I am the Zauba'a Ghaddar. I will give you my name, but it is only for you. No one else," she says with the nervous earnestness of a girl in love. I nod my agreement. She looks down for a moment, as if deciding if she can trust me with something precious. Then she smiles again, but there is pain behind her smile. "My mother named me Sakina."

"I'm glad to have met you, Sakina, even under such odd circumstances," I tell her gently. Then I smoothly shift myself until my feet are under me, give her back her grin, which I realize _is_ actually the nervous smile of a bizarre kind of courtship. "Can I get you something? Coffee?"

"I would like that very much," the lost little girl inside the desert demon tells me.

"Holy shit..."

It's about all Matthew can say as she hits us again.

On the Link, I can hear Rios' squad shouting, cursing. ICWs bark, but they only spray rock. She's gone like she was never there. And two more of Rios' men are "dead."

Three seconds later, before Rios' remaining soldiers can even get their bearings, she's on them again, and they never saw her coming. On the Link feed I can just make out the blur of her red cloak as I hear metal slam H-A laminate plating. Two armor video feeds go static. Another is tumbling. There's more ICW fire. More shouting. Optical arrays scan the rocky terrain, and MAI tries to lock them any kind of target. Fails.

" _Nobody's_ that fast..." Matthew grumbles to himself as he watches the feed, refusing to believe what he's seeing. But he knows Rios—the Lieutenant is more than competent in the field. Only she's been eating him alive like he's academy green.

Dust from their own fire is reducing visibility, more with every desperate spray they take at her. Rios shouts at them again to discipline their fire, then tries to get what's left of his team regrouped, tries to get a clear field of fire around them so she can't jump them again. MAI is trying to give him tactical solutions, trying to model how she may be using the terrain for cover, trying to anticipate her next move. But MAI can't find her on sound, motion, heat or Terahertz scans, nor can the AI extrapolate her attack pattern. She's invisible. And she's unpredictable.

Nine remaining H-A suits—Rios started with twelve this time—crunch boots on the gravel, crawl forward behind their weapons, carefully fanning out. Rios signals them into a paired staggered skirmish line, warns them again not to rush forward, to stay clear of the deeper ravines until they can be systematically swept. MAI suggests grenades to secure some of the more obvious blind spots, but Rios isn't willing to waste ordnance blasting at nothing, especially if it will only kick up more dust. I watch through his optics as he surveys his suits as they get low, trying not to make easy targets of themselves, and take the terrain yard-by-yard, rock-by-rock, ditch-by-ditch. Then I watch his gaze turn forward just in time to catch a dark blur come flying right at his face. Even without the bulk of his armor, I doubt he could duck it—the "torpedo" hits him square in the face plate with enough force to send him reeling. I'm surprised it doesn't crack. His video feed jars as he goes down on his butt.

"Stay down, Lieutenant," I tell him. "You're dead." MAI agrees and silences his feed to his remaining teammates. I expect he's spitting some choice words into his helmet.

"Hold!" Sergeant Hendricks tries to take over as the other suits spray stunner simmunitions and lob stun grenades at the most likely origin point of the thrown torpedo, raging to "avenge" their Lieutenant. They do damage to a lot of rock and sand. Waste ammo. "Line discipline!"

One of the video feeds—this one from Specialist Embry, who was on left flank—suddenly jerks straight down and I see the blur of the cloak before something slams her in the faceplate. MAI declares her another "casualty." But this time the cloaked blur doesn't simply drop out of sight, fading into the haze and terrain. It leaps high over their line like a bird of prey and lands in the midst of them, and then it whirls. Torpedoes slam two more suits down, almost simultaneously. Then she's got a hold of two more. She tosses the heavy H-A suits around like they're empty plastic, throwing one into another, turning their weapons on each other, using them as shields. I hear bodies in armor grunt and gasp for lost wind and curse in protest as MAI declares kill after kill.

Hendricks is the last to go. She's sitting on his chest with one of her "knives" wedged into the gap between his helmet and neck armor. I get a good look into her eyes through her goggled demon-mask. She looks like she's smiling. She also looks like she's barely breathing hard. Hendricks offers her his open hands in surrender, but she takes her time letting him up.

"Game over," Matthew admits wearily. "Signal end of exercise."

Sergeant Horst, playing field observer, calls it.

"How many does that make?" I ask Matthew idly. He knows I've been keeping count.

"Four different simulations, same outcome," Horst confirms as we sit around the conference table barely an hour later, the holo-screen replaying MAI's reconstructions. "She gets inside the perimeter unseen, breaches the base without making so much as a hiccup on our security sensors, does damage to a variety of critical targets, steals essential gear, neutralizes whatever resistance that can respond, gets out before we know she's out, then neutralizes her ground pursuit. All without the benefit of a firearm. All without taking one confirmed hit."

"Scary bitch," Matthew mutters sideways. Then to me specifically: "You still sure it's wise to let her shack up with you?"

MAI's feed shows her back in my quarters—now that the internal security feeds have been restored since her initial entry this morning—sitting cross-legged on my bed, perfectly still. Her mask is off, but her cloaks and body armor are still on. And she's got her real weapons back, not the blunted "practice" pieces Morales quickly machined for our little war games.

"I checked with Abbas," I try to reassure him. "He confirms it's tradition for a tribal lord's chief bodyguard to sleep near his bed."

"None of your officers are even remotely comfortable with this," he reminds me, "even if you two have got this creepy bond or whatever going," he rewords what I'd tried to explain to him to convince him not to try to arrest her or evict her by force, even though she not only broke into the base undetected, but found her way into my bedroom. "I see it now," he half-sarcastically agrees, watching her on the feed. "She reminds me of you, when you were that age."

On the feed, her face turns up and looks into the camera. She smiles her half-smile.

"She could _not_ have heard me," Matthew protests in a whisper. "Definitely reminds me of you."

I catch Lisa's eyes locked on me from across the table. She's worried—probably terrified—but she won't tell me so, not even as my Operations Commander. And there's something else... Jealousy? She seems to catch the question in my eyes and looks away.

(Bad thoughts: Sakina does resemble Lisa. And both got my attention by getting the drop on me. I shake off the implications.)

"We just gave her the parameters and let her go," Anton tries to process, his awe almost overshadowing how unsettled he sounds. "She ran her attack four times four different ways with barely ten minutes between entries to prep. How does _anybody_ do that?"

"I can't wrap my head around this either," Rick protests. "You're sure she's not nano-enhanced?"

"She willingly gave us blood and a tissue sample," Halley confirms, calling up the results. "She even seemed offended at the suggestion."

I nod. "I think she needs to prove she can be better than a nano-hybrid with what nature gave her."

"Granola Girl of Death," Matthew jokes darkly. "Might want to keep her away from the Blues Brothers." But then he goes quiet quick when he sees the look in my eyes—we haven't heard a word from the ETE about Paul or Simon since the Shinkyo tore them up with that nuke. That was six days ago.

"I'd guess her to be between twenty-five and thirty," Halley summarizes her initial exam. "Excellent health, considering the environment. No UV damage, no sign of radiation sickness. Good hydration. Development shows exceptional nutrition—if she lived on the surface, she kept fed, most likely with access to supplements. Passive scans show somewhat unusual bone and muscle development, but not low-G wasting. If anything, she's built like a young Olympic gymnast. It may reflect what the Nomads told us about their weight-bearing discipline—she's wearing what would easily be more than her body weight in armor, and she moves in it like it's nothing. She told Colonel Ram she's been 'training' obsessively since she was a small child. We'd speculated over the years as to what the human body could achieve biomechanically given this low-gravity environment. Even after two generations on-planet, she still has the genetics to build muscle and bone enough to handle Earth gravity, and it appears she's gone to extreme lengths to maximize what she's got naturally. It's like the best of both worlds. I'd guess she's probably at least twice as strong as any of us, pound-for-pound, with the speed and coordination to match."

"And she knows how to use it," Rios assesses, still visibly smarting from getting his armored ass kicked four times in a row.

"Imagine what she could do if she took off all that metal," Anton considers, watching her on his screen, then catches himself with a blush: "That probably didn't sound right."

"She can throw her big knives hard and fast enough to crack our armor," Rick repeats what we've seen. "And she's accurate enough to hit between the plates even at twenty meters. And those big metal spikes of hers—her 'torpedoes'—weigh enough to break your neck or cave your chest in even if they didn't just punch right through you like a bullet. And then there's her garrote..." He calls up a diagram of two short blades that connect pommel-to-pommel, but spin apart, with a thin wire spooled inside to connect them. "...the monofilament line is nano-manufacture, possibly a Shinkyo device. She gets this around you, it could take your head or arm or leg off in one jerk."

"Her breaking gear _is_ SOF issue," Matthew confirms. "Inventoried to a unit stationed at Freedom Colony."

"She said the men she took it from looked like Nomads but wore our uniforms," I repeat.

"PK?" Horst wonders.

"Too far from any confirmed 'Keep'," I discount.

"Either descendants of our people or raiders who scored our gear," Matthew reasons.

"It'd be nice to believe the former," Halley hopes.

"Your girl have any other intel on the subject?" Matthew asks, then realizes he probably just added to the general discomfort by calling her "my girl".

"Farouk displaced other indigenous groups when he moved into the area," I relay Abbas' version. "No sense that any of those tribes were ex-UNMAC."

"Could have been assimilated," Lisa offers.

"An explanation for CROATOAN?" Matthew reaches.

"Her base plans were from classified construction blueprints," Anton changes topics when speculation dries up, calling up the files downloaded from her flashcard. "If she says she got them from Shinkyo, it would explain how our ninja visitors knew their way around so well."

" _Is_ she Shinkyo?" Lisa confronts. "Some new ruse to get in?"

"If she was Shinkyo, I'd think she'd have taken us apart by now," I defend, despite how practical my team is being. "Or they would have before this, because they'd have more like her."

"You said yourself, the bastards always have multiple motives for anything they do," Matthew reminds me.

"She's definitely better at what she does that they were," Rios readily agrees, "despite how scary that thought is. But if the Shinkyo ninja can do a _fraction_ of what she can, we need to rethink our defenses."

"You think she's really here to help us?" Lisa asks me directly. I glance across the table at Tru, who hasn't said a word. She won't meet my eyes now. I finally answer with a shrug.

"Is she here on Farouk's orders?" Lisa tries another likely tack.

"Farouk strikes me as greedy and impatient, if not dangerously foolhardy. He would have sent her to break us open, leave us for the taking. Again: She could have done that already."

"And she wouldn't just show us how she could," Rios tries.

"Unless she's trying to intimidate," Matthew counters, "show us she lives up to her mythical reputation."

"Or playing with us is part of the plan," Lisa follows. "In which case, we need to figure out the plan."

On the security feed, I watch her sit in my room, perfectly still, her body settled, her face peaceful. Like she's at home.

"She's a valuable asset," I assess flatly. "She's worth some risk. But that doesn't mean we let our guard down."

21 September, 2115:

It doesn't take Farouk long to either make good on his veiled threats or react to the loss of his "demon" (assuming he even knows she's with us).

The remote batteries to the southeast catch a squad of Nomads sneaking up with improvised charges. Too bad for them we'd long-since tuned the sensors to sweep for the kind of stealth we'd expect from the Shinkyo—the Nomad cloaks make them invisible to infrared, and they use the terrain well to mask their movement, but they don't move with absolute silence, and they couldn't reach all of the batteries to neutralize them without being seen. It's possible they just didn't expect how swiftly our defenses would respond. Three Nomads are dead (one blown up by his own device) and the rest are running before we can even start warming up an ASV.

By the time we get airborne, we see that the group that made a run at our outer defenses was probably meant to make an opening for a much larger force. Perhaps a hundred cloaks are now fleeing south, apparently discouraged by the swift defeat of their advance party, and not willing to risk a repeat of their experiences with the PK (especially without Farouk's Zauba'a to help them). I look for the telltale shape of a helmet-less H-A suit running with the other cloaks, but it doesn't look like Farouk dared come to the fight in person.

Zauba'a (I've kept my word and not called her Sakina in front of anyone) walks with me to survey the scene. ASVs still circle above us, but there's been no further sign of surface movement for an hour. She pulls the masks from the dead Nomads and casually confirms that they were indeed members of Farouk's band.

I watch Rios watching her all the while. He's a good soldier, and he keeps his discomfort with her presence as much to himself as anyone can, but I can still see his suspicions rise when he sees how easily she takes the deaths of former comrades. I walk away from Zauba'a, ostensibly to check on the condition of the batteries, and quietly chime Rios on my Link.

"What's on your mind, Lieutenant?"

I see him turn away so that she won't see him talking to me inside his helmet.

"Is she really that cold, sir, or did she expect this?"

"Didn't _you_ expect this?" I return evenly.

"Expect it as in _planned_ it, sir," he clarifies.

"It's possible, Lieutenant," I allow him. I turn back and look after Zauba'a, but she's not there.

She's not anywhere.

Abbas calls me on his Link by noon. Farouk is already spreading word through the tribes that we attacked a "peace delegation" that we'd invited to meet with us, "murdering" dozens of his people. I send him the video feed of Farouk's men trying to take out our perimeter defenses and then running in panic, and encourage him to share it freely. He assures me that he will.

Kastl calls me in the middle of dinner—a meal that's gotten significantly more palatable with the "native" foods Abbas has been trading for survival gear, including nutty breads made from "grain-grass" and "sweet-root" and heirloom yeasts carefully cultured from colony days—to tell me that Zauba'a has come back. This time she's just walked up to our perimeter like it's home, leapt the south battery wall with her usual ease, then waited for entry approval at the nearest airlock.

I don't go down to meet her. I just tell Kastl to let her in, curious to see how she'll respond if it appears I wasn't concerned with her absence. She heads straight to "our" room. I take my time finishing my tea, then go back to my quarters.

What strikes me first when I let myself in is that her armor is laid out very neatly on my bed. She'd spent the last night with me (to the clearly communicated distress of my entire command team) sleeping on her bedroll on my narrow floor (after declining my offer of a contour-foam mattress). She kept her armor on at all times. Then I hear my shower running—a low trickle.

She hasn't bothered to close the stall. Nor does she take particular notice of my coming in. She seems completely enthralled by the water as it falls over her back and shoulders. She dips her head under now and then, blowing water away from her nose and mouth as she does. Long, straight, dark hair runs halfway down her back.

Her body is lean like a runner's, but well-toned like she's been weight-training as well—I remember what Halley said about a gymnast's body. But her proportions are unusual: her legs are long as compared to her torso, her shoulders and ribcage somewhat wider than normal. I'm imagining what growing up in thin air, breathing through a mask, would do over a lifetime. Then I find myself reminded of what and an old-style Barbie Doll looked like, but the degree of muscle definition she has quickly pushes that image back out of my head.

Now I'm looking her over for scars. I don't see anything apparent. Her skin is clear, an even light tan. Her arms and legs are lightly furred with black hair—it strikes me as obvious that she wouldn't concern herself with cosmetic grooming, even if "Martian" women had access to shaving or depilating treatments.

She has a natural beauty that makes me forget modesty and keeps me looking at her, even though I'm surprised to find that I'm not automatically thinking of her sexually. (I idly wonder if my drives have succumbed to age, or if her possible fixation on me as a replacement father figure has awoken some innate but long-suppressed parental instinct.)

She turns off the water, runs her hair back with her hands to get it out of her face, and turns to face me, letting me know that modesty doesn't seem to be a concern.

"Bathing is a spiritual necessity for both the Shinkyo and the Nomads," she tells me casually, like she hasn't just disappeared for a day without explanation. "But a shower is still a luxury. I did not mean to transgress."

I realize she'd been running the water sparingly as a habit of conservation. I give her an easy smile (trying not to look like I'm gawking at her) and get her a towel from the cabinet. I realize my hand is shaking very slightly as I do so. She smells clean, but very natural, not masked by perfumes or chemicals. I suddenly feel my drives coming back, and step away from her as gracefully as I can.

She towels off roughly, then slides past me to start putting her armor back on. (I now realize that it's been built with a light environment suit as its under-layer, which she slips on first.)

"You are welcome here, Sakina," I remind her as she dresses.

"I know that you welcome me," she tells me without looking up from re-fastening her leg plates. "But I know that the others are not so comfortable with my presence." Her head nods in the direction of the room's sentry array—she's certainly assumed that Rios has his men monitoring her closely at all times, especially so when she's in my quarters. I wonder if she left the shower stall open to unsettle them.

She gets her boots on, then shimmies into her breast-plating. After a moment, she adds like it's an unimportant afterthought:

"You will not be having any more trouble with Farouk."

I wait for her to elaborate, but she only finishes "dressing"—pulling her arm guards and gloves back on, and strapping on her knives and torpedoes. She does not move to put on her cloak or her cowl. She just stands, facing the wall, as if waiting for something.

Kastl chimes in on my personal Link.

"I've got Abbas on the line, sir."

"Put it through to my desk," I tell him.

"You may want to take this in... in private, sir," he tries to warn. I tell him to put it on my desk screen anyway. Sakina sidesteps so that she won't be seen by the desk camera.

"Strange news from the south," Abbas tells me when he comes on. "Word is spreading: Farouk was found dead in his shelter this afternoon. In the version that reached me, it is said that his genitals had been removed from his body, either before or after he had been gutted and almost decapitated."

I glance at Sakina, but she's still staring at the wall, not making eye contact.

"Not unexpected," I say levelly as a way of addressing them both. "But a mixed blessing. While I'm sure there are many that will celebrate his demise, I can only wonder who will take his place, and what that struggle will cost."

"Whoever takes power will have to prove himself," Abbas agrees. "I expect they will exceed Farouk's distain for life as much as they fall short of his intelligence."

I nod in solemn agreement. "Keep me informed. Let me know if you need anything."

"I thought we had agreed that you would not get involved in our tribal conflicts?" he questions with some surprise.

"Farouk was a mutual enemy," I tell him, knowing I may be making a very dangerous policy decision. "In this, we stand together."

"Thank you, my friend," he says with honest warmth. "I know what lines you dare cross by saying that. I will send you news as it comes."

I turn to Sakina after Abbas signs off. She's still unwilling to look at me.

"The Nomad males are obsessed with their masculinity," she tells me after a few moments, her voice quiet, small. "Some are not above mutilating enemy dead as psychological warfare. I adopted the technique for the same purpose. It is effective. It is expected."

"Ghaddar..." I say her other name softly.

"The Castrating Bitch," she hisses after another moment, visibly trying to contain herself. "It serves me."

I take a calculated risk, put my hand on her shoulder, turn her to face me. I'm surprised she allows me to do so. But she won't look at me.

"I've done worse things," I tell her heavily, "for similar reasons. But part of me has lived to regret not doing better things instead. I'm not one to advocate giving foolhardy mercy to a deadly foe, just to say I'm somehow better for it than they are. But I have also killed when a modicum of mercy may have served better, just because the killing was easy and, I admit, satisfying. That is one of the places my path has led me."

I can see her jaw clenching, hear her breathing shudder as it comes in and out of her. I take my hand off of her, but stand close facing her. She doesn't back away.

"If you know my history, you may know that I studied the old martial arts long before I became a soldier," I keep talking. "That taught me strategy, helped me train the first generation of UNACT Tacticals—the armored soldiers coordinated by the new AI. But in becoming a Tactical myself, I forgot certain lessons I had learned from my teachers.

"I was once told a story—I can't say if it's authentic, but it's true in essence: It's about the warrior monks who cultivated the fighting arts. A student asks his teacher why, if the monks revere all life, do they practice violence. The teacher answers: First you must learn to protect yourself, because if you simply throw your own life away refusing to resist violence, then you cannot revere life. Second, reverence of life will drive you to protect others from violence, and you cannot do that unless you excel at defending yourself. But third, if you can cultivate a level of skill so that you can easily defend yourself and others from attack, then you may also be able to spare the life of your attacker. If you can reach that point, then you can truly revere all life, because you will never have to take it or allow it to be taken. Taking life is easy. Perfect yourself so that you will never need to."

I put my hands on her armored shoulders again. Her body feels coiled to the point of shaking, even through her plate and mail.

"Look at me, Sakina," I gently but firmly insist. She takes several deep breaths before she can do so. I know this: Coming down from rage, from killing—especially when it's personal and up-close brutal. (When Matthew said she reminded him of me, he may have been more right than he realized.)

"I have not let any man touch me since my father left," she lets me know, but it doesn't sound like a threat.

"Stay," I tell her.

She takes my hand from her armor, presses it to the side of her face, closing her eyes. She holds the contact between us for several moments before she lets go. She gives me a silent nod.

She keeps her armor on, but she sleeps soundly that night on her roll next to my bed.

22 September, 2115:

After breakfast, we finally hear from Paul.

"Sorry to leave you all in suspense, Colonel," he tells me, the feed coming from his home Station Blue. "But as you can see, I have recovered. I just needed some time. I have never been so close to death before, never known so much pain."

He looks his normal self again, totally healed from the ravages of the crash, but he seems to be having trouble finding words. I don't press him with questions about his recovery.

"Have you had any further contacts with the Shinkyo?" I ask him, settling back into my chair in Ops.

"We have detected what may be scouting parties," he says with gravity. "Including radiation signatures that may indicate more nuclear devices. They approach, circle, and then withdraw when we respond."

"They may be probing you," I consider. "Testing your defenses, finding their best approaches."

"That was the assessment of our Council," he agrees. "Which brings me to the other reason for my call—my father suggested this news would be best if the information came from me, as we have what he calls a more reciprocal relationship. The Council has come to a difficult decision, Colonel, but I am hoping you will appreciate it. Given recent events, we have chosen to break our traditional passivity. We can no longer ignore the severity of the risks. We have chosen to act."

He seems to be purposely vague, almost like a politician spouting sound-bites to stir up enthusiasm for what's actually bad news.

"What does that entail, Paul?" I press him diplomatically.

"We..." He's having trouble choosing words again—he seems to have his own doubts, but may be unwilling to voice them in an open communication. "We are forming 'action teams' to go out and seek non-lethal resolutions to the crises with the more aggressive groups. We have chosen to intercede in your behalf as well as in our own interests, in hopes of avoiding further bloodshed."

This should be good news, but I'm immediately wary. His speech sounds very carefully scripted. It doesn't sound like Paul talking at all. And I can see his conviction wavering in his eyes.

"And what does that entail?" I press again.

"We will begin by approaching the Shinkyo directly, presenting them with the full extent of our abilities, and letting them know that further aggression will not be allowed. If they choose to ignore this warning, we will take steps to ensure that they cannot effectively do further harm."

Despite what the ETE have professed about their commitment to non-violence, I find I'm deeply disturbed by where this may be going.

"When will you act?" I ask the urgent question.

"We wanted to communicate with you first, to let you know what we are going to do. And we are still in the process of training our Guardians—those who will go out into the field. We must be sure that they are confident with their tools, that they understand what they may face in terms of resistance. The Council has asked that I invite you to observe our operations, and they would be grateful of any tactical advisement you could provide."

I glance across the chamber and lock eyes with Lisa, who's been listening passively out of camera view. She shakes her head, though I'm not sure if she doubts Paul or is worried about where this may be going. Matthew comes in then—it's obvious he's been monitoring the conversation by the look on his face: He's definitely disturbed by what he's heard, his eyes wide when they lock on mine. He also makes a point to stay out of camera so Paul doesn't see it.

"So your first priority will be the Shinkyo?" I say this knowing that the Shinkyo are likely able to monitor our transmissions, and I expect that the ETE have assumed this as well. I wonder how much of Paul's call is for _their_ benefit.

Paul nods. "I think that would be most practical, given recent events."

I look at Matthew, who's shaking his head in warning, knowing what I'm likely to say next. Lisa is just giving me a look of concern.

"Tell your Council that I would be happy to observe and advise," I finally answer, Matthew glaring at me all the while. "And I have a new friend who may be able to offer further insight."

"Thank you, Colonel." Paul seems suddenly eager to end the conversation. "I look forward to seeing you again."

Matthew is still shaking his head after Paul signs off.

"Be careful what you wish for," he reminds me I pretty much demanded the ETE do this very thing.

"They'll do it with or without us," I try. "I think that's what Paul was trying to tell me—he wants me there to try to temper what happens."

"Was that even Paul?" Matthew throws back.

"MAI confirms the transmission and image, sir," Kastl reports. "It's not a fake."

"He was hurt bad," Matthew clarifies. "Did they mess with his brain putting him back together? I know daddy's never been too happy with him."

"He looked like he was performing," I give him my read. "His eyes told me something else was up. I'll need to go to find out what."

"And you're going to bring Granola Girl?" he protests. "I thought she said she's never actually been inside Ninja-ville."

"She's made a career of studying them from a distance," I remind him. "She has some of their intel files, and whatever her grandfather told her about the place."

He jerks his head for me to follow him outside. Lisa chooses not to join us, perhaps anticipating what Matthew's got on his mind. We shut ourselves in the security airlock for privacy, overriding the sentry feeds.

"Is she really an asset, or is this a chance to give your Mini-Me a shot at avenging grandma?" he challenges when we're effectively alone. "And don't forget the theory that she's just part of some convoluted plan to get a Shinkyo agent inside ETE Disneyland."

"I need to take Zauba'a at her word, but that doesn't mean we let our guard down," I assure him. "If she's some kind of mole, she won't show until she's got her shot."

"So you're giving her her shot?"

"I'm hoping we have an asset, not a spy," I clarify. "If I'm wrong, I won't hesitate to deal with it. You know I'm a fuck that way."

"It doesn't mean you have to go yourself. Again. Or do I have to quote command protocols? You're the CO. You don't go on point." The tense earnestness in his eyes lets me know that this is the point he really wanted to make by taking me aside. "You keep sticking yourself out there, pulling all this first-contact shit, like you're Captain Kirk. First the Power Rangers, then the Sand People, then Janeway's Psychos, now the Space Ninjas—you just walk in and smile and expect everybody will love you. You've been _lucky_ so far."

"I'm only CO because I was left sitting in the seat when we woke up," I remind him. "You or Lisa would be better at running this place. I fill a chair that was never meant to be mine."

"And you've got the rep that's managed to stay fresh after three generations of campfire stories," he throws back. "And yes, it's opened a few doors. But all the worse for us if you buy it because one of these post-apocalyptic freakshows wants the rep of taking you."

I let the silence of the tight space speak for me for a few moments, then sink it in:

"You know I have to do this. Half-a-dozen reasons why. And you two need to back me up so I don't wind up in something I can't get out of."

"Glad you have such confidence in us," he gives me, "but you don't get to see the nail-biting that happens back here when you're out enjoying a field-trip. Best back-up we can give is always several minutes away—too long if things go really bad. And it's bad enough you sleep in the same cell with demon-girl—how the hell do you expect us to save your jewels if she turns on you in the field?"

"If Paul's being straight with us, hopefully I'll have the ETE to help you watch my back."

"You think they could stop her if she decided it was time to lose another 'master'? I called Abbas myself—apparently my name carries enough historic weight to qualify as your 'trusty sidekick' or some crap—glad I at least rate some half-assed respect in this twisted place. And apparently you neglected to tell him _why_ you wanted to know about the whole sleeping with your bodyguard rule. He got more than a little agitated when I told him _who_ was using tradition as an excuse to shack up with you."

I don't answer him for a moment, then shift the focus: "If she does go off, wouldn't you rather have it happen surrounded by the ETE than down here where there's a thousand people she can actually kill?"

"You think they can handle her?" he lets me know how little faith he has in them.

"That's one thing I need to find out," I tell him. "Especially before they try to go up against the Shinkyo."

"So you're okay with them going all Bushy on us?"

"I wouldn't give you the 'it's their planet' crap even if I thought you'd buy it, Matthew. My reasons are much more practical: They're a lot stronger than us—we're barely hanging on to our own little corner—and they seem to have their hearts in the right place, at least for now."

He shakes his head.

"You and I both know what kind of atrocities come out of good intentions. And what happens if your friends at the ETE decide to turn on us in the name of 'avoiding further bloodshed'?"

"Then we do know one way to stop them," I tell him grimly.

### Chapter 2: The Road to Hell

29 September, 2115:

"Your own sense of superiority will be your greatest vulnerability."

I let the warning sink in for a few moments. I'm actually surprised when it goes unchallenged. The fifty sealsuits sitting at attention in the brightly lit auditorium-sized underground hall just stare back at me with their uniform lack of any kind of expression—they might as well have their masks on. Eye-contact is the only thing that lets me know that they're probably listening—otherwise, I could be lecturing a big room full of mannequins.

"We've had a lot of hard experience with this over the last century-and-a-half," I continue my point. "Asymmetrical warfare: a high-tech force confronts a low-tech enemy—the outcome _seems_ obvious. After all, the history of warfare has been to evolve your technology to defeat your opponent's. Better weapons equal victory. But true strategy is finding the simplest, least costly means to defeat a superior threat. That doesn't necessarily require greater technology or resources, and the lesson has become that reliance on those advantages will lead to disaster."

The fifty suits—five of each of the ten representative colors of the ETE Stations—continue to be impressively immobile. If nothing else, they have the discipline of long years—Paul told me the average age of these "young" technicians is fifty-five Earth-calendar years. "Time is different for us," Paul has said more than once. Apparently it applies to sitting through long lectures on tactics.

"You've been drilling in the use of your tools for dealing with combative opponents," I allow them. "I have to say I'm impressed with what you've created—not only in how well you've been able to address various threats, but how well you coordinate in your teams. Mr. Stilson—Paul—has told me that you've been studying from a substantial library of military tactics and training. I expect you've also been studying your enemies—I know you don't like that term, but they see _you_ as enemies and will treat you as such.

"Just remember your enemies have been studying you as well. Every encounter gives them more intelligence. They have weapons that can pose a threat even to you, but they are also extremely intelligent, and—perhaps most telling—they are survivors. They've been living with death and suffering for generations. I won't tell you that they do not value life, but they certainly perceive it differently than you do. Don't forget that. That said, let's get down to business..."

I flash our best estimated graphics of what the Shinkyo Colony looks like under all that dirt and rock. It fills the air behind me, and then all of them as one put on their goggled masks (a very creepy effect), probably to get more detailed feed. (Their helmets function for tactical coordination in the field like ours do, but Paul tells me that their version of a Link actually flashes communications and data real-time into their brains. This explains why they can't be heard communicating with each other.)

On my signal, Paul suddenly shuts off the feeds, making the whole chamber go dark along with it. _Now_ I hear them squirm in their seats.

"Lesson One: This is what happens when you get too reliant on your gear and your enemy decides to see what happens when you lose it. Suddenly you're blind, deaf, mute, and have no idea what's going on. You need to be ready to function when this happens. If not, you'll lock up, get lost, get ambushed, or even wind up firing on your own people by mistake. The aptly named 'Fog of War' is a very deadly reality. Make sure you train for this. Still, expect it will throw you when it happens."

Paul turns the feed (and the lights) on again. They settle back down quickly, but have lost some of their stoicism. I go back to the map.

"Let's start with what we know versus what we can estimate about Shinkyo: We know they had one nuke, and I doubt they would have fired it in a gambit if it was their only one. We know they can detect you at range, probably from an energy signature your live tech emits, so they'll know when you're coming. We can also assume they expect you to respond to their attacks, even if they're not monitoring our communications, so they'll try to prepare for it."

I turn to my "co-advisor," and she takes her cue, stepping forward.

"From what I know of the Shinkyo, they regularly employ explosives, so they must be able to produce them in quantity," Zauba'a tells them, her own face hidden behind her demon-mask. (She has not taken off her armor since we arrived, not even to sleep in the comfortable rooms they gave us.) "They also manufacture their own ammunition, which is capable of piercing all conventional body armor. Their numbers are unknown. The Nomads estimate the Shinkyo control a no-man's land of about twenty miles around the old colony site, and seem to put priority on eliminating all trespassers. Nomad raiding parties have disappeared entirely in that region. The few that have managed to return report fleeing from storms shrapnel, from grenades or from concealed anti-personnel mines. Those that survive the traps are picked off by warriors who use the resulting dust and chaos."

A rough perimeter lights up on our map, but then she zooms it back on the actual colony.

"They know you can be at least stunned and disoriented by conventional explosives, especially if you are not expecting it. They will likely protect their perimeter with sequential mines, timed to keep you off-balance. However, if they believe their best weapon against your technology are more nuclear warheads, they will have placed such devices to protect their perimeter, shielded from detection. If they have the means, there will likely be more than one line of them. Do not assume that they will be weak enough or positioned far enough from the colony to avoid damaging it—they are willing to sacrifice, especially if they think it will give them advantage. They may also have one or more devices deep _inside_ their colony as well, to try to take you with them if they feel they are defeated. The Shinkyo always choose death over failure, and will eagerly die to kill an enemy."

She speaks with amazing presence and confidence, but the edge of controlled rage under her voice is chilling—I wonder what experiences she's had against the Shinkyo. (I also wonder if that's the way _I_ used to sound.)

"This is assuming they have several warheads," one of the Green Team suits criticizes, though her tone is coolly objective.

"Always assume your enemy has maximum potential," Zauba'a counters, her voice icy. But then I see her eyes lock mine. I give her a slight nod of approval. I think I can see those eyes smile.

"That said, assume nuclear warheads are not the only threat to you," she continues. "They also know that EMP _weakens_ you, so they will have considered other ways to generate it. Beyond that, we know that they have the means to manufacture nano-materials, so they will be trying to make weapons that can harm you significantly despite your enhanced ability to heal.

"I have reviewed the video records of the previous attacks. It is clear that you are not omniscient, that you can be taken off guard. The key to success in personal combat as well as troop engagement is the breaking of the opponent's balance, physically or mentally. If you can be thrown off balance, then your power and training will be worthless."

"Can you be more specific?" one of the Red Team asks, sounding like a student in a college lecture.

"Explanation is no substitute for experience," she tells him. "I will have to show you. You will have to feel it."

"We'll run exercises with you," I clarify, "give you a taste of what the Shinkyo may put you through."

Zauba'a seems satisfied with my solution, and done with her lecture.

"What can you tell by looking at the colony itself?" I test them.

"They appear to have facilities for growing food as well as recycling nutrients," a Yellow tries. "They also appear to have significant stores, scattered in numerous locations. They could withstand a siege."

"They don't tap our Feed Lines for resources," a Blue suit extrapolates, "so they probably don't fear what we might withhold from them."

"What _doesn't_ the map show us?" I probe.

"The map is weeks old," a Red tries after a few tense moments of silence. "Things may have changed. They may have moved things, anticipating what we've seen."

"Excellent," I give him. "What else?"

"It doesn't show us what's _off_ the map," Paul answers when his fellows don't. "If they were expecting attack, it would be likely that they would move significant fall-back resources to other locations."

"They know that we know where they are. Their main force, or their command structure, may already be elsewhere," I confirm. "What's left may be no more than bait in a trap."

"That seems like an unacceptable sacrifice," the Yellow suit that spoke before chimes in again.

"They may believe their colony is already lost," I assess.

One benefit of spending more than a brief "diplomatic" visit at an ETE Station is that they feed us, and they process or synthesize a wide variety of foods that, while not a substitute for real fresh food, is definitely an improvement over what we've been eating at Melas Two (the fresh bounty of our greenhouse is still too limited to be a mainstay of our diet, so we continue to suffer with recycle). Still, it reminds me of the highly processed convenience foods that were the bane of Earth diets—I'm not sure if that's a matter of taste or some fear of eating anything that hasn't been thoroughly processed. (And while I haven't actually broached the subject of their apparent ritual germaphobia, I still haven't seen an ETE—even at "home"—wearing less than a zipped sealsuit and gloves.)

Another benefit of staying days with the ETE is that we get to learn a lot more about how they live than they would reveal in short contacts. They have a whole world underground, but they keep it lit with a convincing simulation of daylight. Once past the industrial sections below the generators, the spaces cut out of cliff rock become like ancient temples and palaces of stone (though plain and clean). And there is life:

Despite their reliance on their impressive food synthesizers, they maintain vast underground greenhouses of plant specimens, some brought from Earth for experiments, others still in the various stages of engineering that the colonial agricultural researchers were developing. The ETE got these samples because "greening" the planet was an integral part of their terraforming schedule (only not expected to be implemented for at least a full century), so they worked intimately with the bio-engineering colony labs even before the Stations started being used to shelter projects from the Ecos and Discs.

One facility is specifically dedicated to plant life that apparently can be found growing wild on the surface. The selection of species is overwhelming—I have to pause, try to take it in. They have far more than Abbas has been able to show us. I see various fruits, pods, grains, edible leaves and stalks and roots. One of their horticulturists volunteers that they're working to develop some of the "prototype" species to be able to thrive in surface conditions, adding even more variety to the evolving biosphere.

The horticulturist—whose nameplate says "E. Adair"—let us know that Council Blue has given permission to share some of these species with our greenhouse project—this is probably why I was even allowed to see their greenhouses.

I wonder if all of the Stations have facilities like this one, but don't push my welcome with too many questions too soon.

The combination of synthesized and fresh ingredients—despite the heavy processing—does make for the heartiest and most varied eating I've had since coming to this planet (though Abbas' wives' cooking, I would have to say, is the tastiest). The ETE must have impressive metabolisms, considering how well they eat (and all look equally fit—perhaps it's just a benefit of their nanites).

Zauba'a at least takes her mask off to try the food. She seems impressed by the volume and variety of it, at least (though she is still hard to read, especially when more eyes than mine are watching her). I expect she's used to much simpler fare, though may have enjoyed the benefit of being a Sharif's champion (Farouk did look very well fed). Since she's been with us at Melas Two, she's eaten whatever she's been presented, without request or complaint, and seemed quietly grateful to have it.

"Don't worry about waste," Paul comments, perhaps sensing our astonishment at the excess of the feast. "The leftovers are easily recycled."

"I'm just thinking some of the survivor factions might appreciate having your dietary resources."

"Those resources are more limited than they may appear," Simon insists with a bit of discomfort in his tone. "We have what we have because we recycle so efficiently. We can't afford to feed all the Naturals any more than you can. But we do give gifts of food for those we find in need, if they are willing to accept it from us."

I don't press the issue, but Paul apparently feels the need to.

"Charity on this world, even from us, is often greeted with suspicion, as is anything left to be conveniently found. There have been incidents of rivals poisoning or booby-trapping food and other supplies, then giving it as 'peace offerings' or leaving it to be taken by raiding parties. We have had to cultivate discreet contacts with individual tribal members who can deliver the unused produce of our gardens to their peoples. These contacts usually have to convince their fellows that the food came from some source other than us, such as trading or raiding, because of camp-tales that we infect Naturals, turn them into a kind of zombie thrall, taking them as slaves or for experiments." He gets more pressured and irritated as he goes. I'm not sure if I'm hearing defensiveness of the ETE's perceived elitism or frustration with the survivors' pervasive xenophobia. I honestly didn't intend to start a fight over lunch, but I seem to have stepped into a tender area.

"He speaks truly," Zauba'a speaks up, perhaps hoping to win some faith with our hosts (though they've given her an even more chilly reception than I got on my first visit—perhaps they share Matthew's fear that she may be a Shinkyo agent). "I have heard many such tales, and anything of value found or given is treated as trap or poison until proven otherwise. Enemies have even gone so far as to use the radioactive material from bomb craters to sicken rivals. And the Eternals _are_ feared."

"Nice that we have something in common," I joke darkly between bites of something like a vegetarian chili slathered over a grainy cake. (The Martian equivalent of cornbread?)

Paul manages a sad chuckle. Simon shakes his head. The other ETE at the table with us—"team leaders" from each Stations' five-person "Guardian" unit—look like I've just said something nonsensical, like the sky is made of cookies.

"Something else is bothering you, Colonel?" Council Blue—Mark Stilson—makes an attempt to read my mood, or change the subject, from his seat at the opposite end of the table from me. (Until now he looked like he'd been ignoring our conversations.)

"Occupational hazard, Council," I deflect. "Something is always bothering me."

"Tell me," he presses gently. I glance at Paul and Simon. I see the same look in Paul's eyes that I saw when he called to tell us about the plan to form this Guardian force. Simon avoids my gaze, as do the other team leaders.

"The road to hell is paved with good intentions," I give him vaguely. I'm almost surprised that he simply nods instead of challenging the sentiment.

"We have considered how many ways this can go badly," he tries to assure. "We have no illusions that our actions will proceed smoothly. I expect we will make tragic mistakes. But you have managed to impress me in the very short time since we have met, Colonel. Please believe that I value you as a friend of the ETE. I hope we do nothing to change that."

"I've committed my share of atrocities in the name of a greater good, Council," I forgive in advance. "Don't expect me to be quick to mete out judgment."

"Which is why I value you as an advisor," he smiles. "We ourselves are very new at 'saving the world'. You have much experience in this area. And some measure of success, at least according to history."

"History tends to rewrite itself as it evolves," I counter. "And I've missed the last fifty years of it."

"I expect we'll be finding out how things have gone back 'home' soon enough," he says, and I can hear the weight of his words under his social lightness. His use of the word "home" especially strikes me. Then I remember: He's older than I am, but from a similar generation. He wasn't born here. He grew up, went to school, had a career, married and had his children on Earth. Then Earth stranded him here, and tried to incinerate everything he'd worked toward. At least he had his family with him, safe (though I still haven't met his wife).

"That's one of the things bothering me," I allow him. "Re-establishing contact. We're still two or three months away from getting a call out. But odds are the nuke that the Shinkyo threw at your sons was detected from Earth."

"And we may be setting off more warheads when we confront them," he gives back. "How do you think Earth will interpret that?"

"Assuming that they believe no one is alive down here, what are their options?" I turn the question back on him. He turns to look at his sons, like this is some kind of test.

"Given the existence of illegal missions like the one that brought the Lancer here, one conclusion is that a covert harvesting operation went wrong," Simon answers after a moment.

"And if they still believe that the only thing 'alive' down here is a raging nanotech infection?" I qualify. I watch Paul go pale. Simon gives a brief head-shake, like he's denying what he's thinking. The other Team Leaders show varying degrees of confusion or distress. The Council just frowns.

"There is a theoretical scenario, Colonel," the Council admits cautiously. "Even rogue nanotech might likely evolve itself, and that in manipulating matter for more efficient power sources, it might even take a course that could lead to nuclear fission. This was, of course, a barely-conceivable nightmare possibility, but it was popularized by Eco Movement propaganda."

"Their ultimate fear was that the nanotech would convert the entire planet—or part of it—into some kind of huge bomb," Simon elaborates, his tone cutting with disgust. "Ridiculous pseudo-science."

"The resulting blast would propel invasive nanotech toward other planets," Green Leader—Rhiannon Dodds, a redhead who looks like a spunky college girl even though she must be sixty—adds, sounding almost amused by the idea, "including Earth, of course."

I try to imagine an Earth fearing that the nanotech of Mars would intelligently move toward infecting the entire solar system. Making the call home has become even more urgent, effectively suppressing my previous doubts. (Should I thank the Shinkyo for restoring my resolve?)

"In any case, we'll have Earth's attention, assuming we don't already," I focus them, "and not in a way that I'd hoped." I look to Council Blue. He shakes his head, sitting back away from his meal.

"We have not changed our position, Colonel," he tells me heavily. "We will not turn our technology to contacting Earth. Ours is the sin of omission. We were complacent in the isolation of Mars. The call _must_ come from you. Any attempt we make will be suspect in the extreme. We have been confident that you would awaken, and that it would not take you long to find your own way. In that time, I hope you have been able to see enough of this world to give it a fair reporting." He stands, giving a slight bow of his head. "If you will forgive me, I am due in Council."

He turns and walks away. Paul, Simon and the other team leaders look like they've been struck dumb. Only Zauba'a has maintained her stoic façade, continuing to systematically sample her meal. (She's probably sat through much uglier inter-tribal talks.)

A disturbing realization flashes through my mind, sending a chill down my spine: The ETE kept us asleep longer than our systems could otherwise manage. Our wake-up time was likely _calculated_. Convenient that it should be precisely when the planets were _farthest_ apart—on opposite sides of the sun—and any makeshift attempt at communication would be delayed for the better part of a year. And _now_ the ETE Council appears all too comfortable that we'll finally be ready to make the call on our own—though with some assistance from their "rebellious" children—just in time for the next alignment.

And I wonder: Have I seen what they wanted me to see in the interim? Or will they do something to delay us another two years if they don't trust that I'll be giving the report they want me to?

After lunch, Zauba'a proves her earlier point by demonstrating how fast she can strike and stun the various Guardians before they can use their tools to defend themselves. In many cases, they drop their tools altogether, and prove how helpless they are in the time it takes to draw replacement tools from their belts.

Zauba'a wonders aloud what would happen if one of them were decapitated, or cleaved in half. Then I demonstrate what a Shinkyo sword can do, just with what my aging body still holds onto from my idle youth as romantic martial artist—a naïve idealist with a sword, nerd samurai. The Shinkyo blade feels good in my hands, makes me long for a time when I could retreat into the fantasy of when people used to just hack and stab each other instead of using guns and bombs and poisons and viruses.

The sword is very light—almost too light to get any real "feel" for—but it cuts into solid steel like it's soft wood. My hands are aching from the impacts by the time I'm done "playing." Zauba'a then takes up a similar length and weight of plain tubing to use as a practice weapon, and shows how fast she can be at landing devastating "cuts" with it. I give the ETE "Guardians" credit for not simply abandoning their new cause on the spot.

Driving the point further home, we review the video footage of the Shinkyo attacks on the Stations, showing them again how conventional explosives (in missiles that they'd assumed were off-target) managed to knock several of them well off their feet.

"Your tools are operated through concentration," I remind them. "If you can't concentrate, you can't fight." Then I blow off a stun grenade in the middle of them. By the time their helmets and their senses adjust, Zauba'a has hit a dozen of them with her "sword." To their credit, both Simon and Paul get their wits back fast enough to draw on her before she can tag them as well—the only reason that they manage to do so is that they responded to the blast by moving evasively while they drew their tools. I can see that Zauba'a is smiling under her devil mask as the brothers hold her back with a restraint field. I give the brothers a nod of approval.

By the time we wrap up the exercise, one thing is painfully clear: if the Shinkyo are half as good as Zauba'a, the ETE will quickly be facing their own mortality.

1 October, 2115:

The morning after Zauba'a's "demonstration", we discover that the fledgling "Guardians" have been recalled from training, with no explanation from Mark Stilson other than his coolly polite invitation to stay. Not wanting to injure our budding relations, we diplomatically accept.

To keep us busy (or further influence what we'll tell Earth) we're offered a tour of the sciences section I passed through when I came to interrogate the Shinkyo prisoners. One of the "apprentice" technicians—a thin, pale twenty-something youth with awkward body language—gives us a graphic presentation on what the ETE hope to achieve in their efforts to continue terraforming Mars. It comes off as a bad sales presentation: simulations of Marineris turning green, of ETE Feed Lines spider-webbing across the surface of the planet, of energy fields eventually holding in a planet-wide atmosphere while nuclear furnaces maintain a temperate climate.

I'm torn between an almost childlike sense of wonder and an overshadowing discomfort. It's not that I doubt the ETE's intent or ability in pursuing this dream, but Mark Stilson admitted it himself: Earth will doubt any intentions the ETE might profess because they conspired to maintain the isolation of Mars. Their reasons for doing so will be of no consequence. By the end of the presentation I'm sure of its intent: The ETE do want to win over the one who'll be shaping their future relationship with Earth, because they know Earth will stop them by any means necessary unless someone Earth trusts can sell this dream of a thriving Mars.

They want me to see. They want me to believe.

My automatic reaction is to do the opposite, to resist this propaganda absolutely. But then I look at Zauba'a and I see the child's wonder in her eyes as she sees the great dream of the ETE, the greening of the desert she grew up in.

I cannot fault them for using me to further it.

After dinner, I take Zauba'a back to the empty "training chamber." Using only my empty hands, I mimic the movements I've seen the ETE use in handling their Rods and Spheres, and I ask Zauba'a to help me consider how they can develop a system of close-quarters defense to fend off a variety of threats while using (and keeping control over) their tools.

By 02:00, we've come up with a number of tactics that seem teachable as well as effective, though Zauba'a criticizes that the ETE should at least consider reshaping their tools into actual weapons, even if only batons or staves. I assure her I'll push the idea. She hands me a length of pipe and we go at it again. This time I surprise her (and myself) with what I've retained from my youth: I know she's holding back, but I can hold my own, hold her off, even get in a few good hits. We both agree that if my baton also had the force-capabilities of a Rod, it could be devastating.

I'm well-winded (and fairly well bruised) by four in the morning. Zauba'a has worked up a sweat and I can hear her breathing heavily under her faceplate, but her eyes are bright like a young girl's—she could go all night. She smiles at me, and I have to remind myself: I'm old enough to be her father, if not her grandfather.

We eat breakfast alone again, served by anonymous apprentice-aged technicians. But this time Council Blue joins us just as we're finishing.

"I'm sorry to have kept you shut out of things, Colonel," he begins. "But we all have been deeply affected by what you have shown us—we owe you a great deal. Zauba'a as well."

I think this is the first time she's been acknowledged by name, much less thanked. Her eyes catch on the compliment, but she doesn't respond verbally.

"And what have you done with your 'Guardians?'" I ask when he stalls, fully anticipating that he'll tell me they've scrapped the whole idea in favor of maintaining their isolation. His lips purse like he's not sure how to continue (though I'm sure he's been rehearsing what to say for hours).

"We've... made some _modifications_ , Colonel... based on your threat assessments. First, we engineered upgrades to our sealsuits—they should now offer greater resistance to nano-edged weapons."

"Excellent," I allow him, then press: "But a new wardrobe doesn't explain the absence of all of my 'trainees.'"

"You have to understand the sacrifice involved, Colonel..." He sounds like he's hoping I'll take bad news as good if he words it just right. "We have never even considered advancing our research in this direction. We had no intention... We abhor violence..."

"Council," I pause him, then with a blend of reassurance and assertion: "You _can_ just tell me what you've done."

He sighs. It looks like this is more than a show—he's deeply bothered about something he doesn't trust telling me (and I immediately remember that I'm also being groomed as their intermediary with Earth).

"They all volunteered, Colonel. Even my own sons. None of them hesitated."

Before I can start feeling real apprehension, he pulls what looks like a standard flashcard out of a pocket and sets it on the table. A holoscreen forms in the air above it, and shows us a pan of bodies suspended in tubes of clear acrylic and chrome. I see Paul and Simon among them. They are still, unconscious, but I can see their chests move with the slow rhythm of sleep-breathing.

"We are modifying their nanites, Colonel," the Council explains. "Strengthening their bones and connective tissues. Making them more resilient to injury. Upgrading the trauma-response of their self-repair systems."

I see Zauba'a shake her head as if disappointed, though I was expecting far more extreme news given the trouble he had telling it. I understand the Council's discomfort: Not only do they feel they've broken a profound taboo, but they fully expect that using their technology to make their people more capable as combat weapons will garner even more distrust when Earth hears about it. And he knows it will be my duty to tell them.

I take a few moments to digests the implications, watching the fifty Guardians sleep through having their bodies "hardened" quite literally down to the bone.

"While we're talking about modifications," I take my opportunity to simultaneously reassure and lever, "we have some ideas."

3 October, 2115:

The recovery from the nanite reprogramming is slow, but Paul stubbornly talks his way out of the Crèche early by promising to continue resting in his quarters. As outsiders are not allowed inside the Crèche sections, it's the only way Paul can meet with us face-to-face.

He has a small suite of rooms. The ETE skill at simulating sunlight hundreds of feet underground gives him a small garden alcove that looks very much like an urban apartment garden on Earth. The illusion goes a long way to forgetting that we're buried so far in solid rock.

I'm also surprised by how "homey" his rooms are—most of what I've seen of life within the Stations is even more Spartan and sterile than the Melas Two bunkers (only much bigger and brighter). Paul even sleeps in what looks like a real bed with plush blankets and a frame that looks like hardwood. There are reproductions of famous masterworks on the walls, mostly impressionist landscapes. I consider that he must have been very young when his parents took him on the shuttle, but he's still hanging onto his home world. I wonder if he'd ever consider visiting (no matter how he'd likely be received).

He sits at his executive-sized desk (which also looks like it's made of wood) in a padded but utilitarian chair. The desktop is busy with graphics of Martian strata and composition analyses, but there are also photos of breathtaking landscapes, perhaps captures of places he's seen in his adventures on the surface.

He asks us to join him, using one of his Rods to drag two other chairs in from his small tidy kitchen. The effort it takes him lets me know that he's using the Rod because getting up to move the chairs himself might be asking too much of his still-stabilizing body. He looks pale, clammy, short of breath. I wonder if his recovery from the blast and the crash was as difficult.

"Thank you, Zauba'a," he begins, his voice dry. "You did a fine job of scaring my brethren into useful action. We owe you a great deal."

Zauba'a gives him a look of detached curiosity.

"You seemed to need the wake-up call," I let him know I understand.

"Lives would have been lost needlessly," he accepts, "if not by the Shinkyo taking ours, then by us going too far to keep them from doing so. Without you, we would have walked into disaster. We still may, but we will be slightly better prepared for it."

He flexes his fingers. It looks like he's fighting arthritis.

"But is this what you want?" I ask him.

He gives me a tired grin—it looks like even that effort hurts.

"I expect I feel somewhat like you," he grates out. Then chuckles, though it's more of a cough. "Sorry, Colonel—that didn't come out right. Not mortal. Not older. But I expect there was a time in your life when you realized that you were no longer just a man, that you had in some way become a weapon. _That's_ what I'm feeling. And no, I'm not sure it's what I want."

"The difference between a tool and a weapon is what you do with them," I try. He shakes his head.

"Guns make bad hammers," he counters. "Design betrays intended function."

Zauba'a gives a thoughtful nod.

"You have your doubts, Colonel," Paul continues after a moment. "More than what you shared with my father."

"I think I could say the same of you," I give him back. He nods, his eyes going far away.

"You are right," he tells me. "What we have done, what we will do... We walk a fine line. And _anything_ we do may damn us further in the eyes of Earth."

"Is it better to do nothing?" I challenge his doubts.

"Doing nothing is still making a choice."

I nod to let him know I agree. Then I ask him more difficult questions.

"Will your Council interfere with the attempt to contact Earth?"

He smiles weakly, shakes his head. "This _must_ come to pass. And my father does believe the best way is that you do it. He trusts you."

" _I_ wouldn't trust me," I warn him. He grins.

"You're not the monster you think you are."

"I'm just slowing down with age."

"I think I know how that feels," he jokes, then pulls up the sleeve of his simple blue tunic, looking at his bare left arm like he's never seen it before. He flexes the hand again. I can see him shaking. "Care to humor me with a test?"

"What do you have in mind?"

"I'm not such a great fan of the theoretical when lives are at stake." Then he looks at Zauba'a. "Do you have your Shinkyo sword?"

She rises after only a moment's hesitation, and smoothly draws the two-foot-long blade out from under her cloak. He holds out his bare forearm in mid-air.

"I'll regret this if I'm wrong," he says, his face wincing in anticipation, "but I need to know before someone loses something more precious."

Zauba'a looks to me for approval, and I reluctantly give her a nod. She takes a breath, and the cut is quick. I hear the blade thunk loudly. It stops as if stuck in Paul's radius—it _should_ have cleaved right through.

Paul's mouth and eyes gape, but he doesn't make a sound, not even to breathe. He looks at the blade stuck in him—there is very little blood—and then he grits his teeth as she pries the weapon out of the wound. He drops his arm down onto the desktop, and we all watch the wound close itself. It's done in a handful of seconds. Then Paul cries out. Collapses half over his desk. Starts to giggle.

"Not sure what was worse..." he mutters shakily. "The cut or the shock of how hard you hit me... I think I felt that in my _toes_... That wasn't pleasant... Not at all pleasant..." Tears leak out of his eyes.

"But you have your arm," Zauba'a points out, wiping the blade on her cloak and putting it away. "And your answer."

She did not hold back, did not "pull" her strike. She wanted him to be sure.

6 October, 2115:

The ETE follow their self-modification with even more liberal evolutions.

Their engineers re-program a number of Rods so that their physical structure will quickly elongate into two-foot batons. The nano-materials they're composed of proves resistant to cuts from Shinkyo blades, and by the time the "Guardians" are back on their feet, they're ready to practice blocking our attempts to hack them. A few cuts get through, but their new skeletons save them from amputation.

They prove less adept at blocking projectiles, despite how much their enhancements improve their speed, senses and reflexes. Still, they do manage impressively for a people averse to violence—I have to remind myself they've lived a half-century with their taboos ingrained. But they learn fast (for people who seem to take their immortal time at other things), and they seem single-mindedly dedicated to this. Perhaps they're realizing how far an improved defense goes in avoiding the need for an extreme offense.

(I also find myself starting to covet their technology—having their abilities would make what we're likely facing in this new world less bloody. I'm also certain that Earthside Command will order me to actively seek to obtain it for tactical reasons, no matter how the rest of the population reacts to learning of its existence.)

"You still have concerns, Colonel," Council Blue—Mark Stilson—confronts me as we watch from a respectful distance while Zauba'a drills her "students" by hurling torpedoes at them. "Are the candidates not performing as you had hoped?"

"Just the opposite: I'm very impressed with your volunteers. But I'm afraid we may still be underestimating how far the Shinkyo will be willing to go."

"You think they will take risks more extreme than booby-trapping their colony with nuclear weapons?" he counters with a hint of amused incredulity, then tries to be reassuring: "You have already considered that they may have moved key materials or personnel, and that they may sacrifice the colony site itself rather than surrender it if we attempt to occupy it. But we have no intention of occupying it. We will make that clear at the outset. We only wish to deter the Shinkyo from making further attacks on both of our peoples. Our hope is that we may simply disarm them."

"Being disarmed by force makes one feel helpless," I remind him. "Helpless people tend to be desperate."

"We would not take away their ability to defend themselves from other factions," he insists.

"Only from _you_ ," I focus. "We learned this enough times on Earth: Your professed benevolence will not be believed by those who have reason to be afraid of you."

"I get the impression we are not just talking about the Shinkyo. Or any of the other survivor factions we may need to intercede with."

I answer him with a slight nod and a bit of sad smile.

"Then I expect we will have more lessons to learn," he accepts. "I believe the term you use is 'Winning hearts and minds'?"

I realize he's just lumped me in with military minds in general. I let it slide. (I expect I've made more prejudicial generalizations about him.)

I hear him take a deep, heavy breath.

"Do you really think they may go so far as to blow up their entire colony?"

"As a last-strike option, I'm sure they would," I tell him. "But I'm more concerned that it may be their _first_ option: Let you succeed in taking the colony, then sacrifice it to disable you in large numbers. Or threaten to do so if you don't give them what they want."

I watch him process stoically. He shakes his head, purses his lips.

"The colony would need to be still convincingly occupied for such a trap to work," he tries to deny logically.

"I'm sure it will be."

"Based on the scans, we estimate over twelve hundred people, including children, could be living there," he tries reason. "How many of their own would they have to leave to bait such a trap? Hundreds? Not to mention the loss of precious facilities and resources—it is highly unlikely that they could have relocated more than a fraction of their numbers and equipment since you revealed them. The cost of such a tactic would be the devastation of their entire society. I could understand if they truly felt they had no other option, that they were sure we would slaughter or imprison them, or leave them at the mercy of predators, but to do so simply in hopes of reaping our technology? What we have can't possibly be worth _that_ much to them."

"Something I heard from the Nomads," I let him know what I've been mulling over. "The Shinkyo leader calls himself _Daimyo_. It implies he does not see himself as supreme ruler, only a local lord that owes allegiance to another—a greater power. Perhaps they still have some kind of contact with their parent corporations Earthside. Or maybe they just believe they're still serving those masters. The corporations may have given the colony officers contingency plans before the bombardment to maintain research and production; or maybe serving that higher cause—however defunct—is all that's keeping them going. And imagine what that may have gotten twisted into over the generations: they may have all been taught from birth to put this real or imagined corporate interest above their own lives. If their so-called Daimyo believes his duty is to benefit his mythical corporate masters, he'd do whatever is necessary, and his people would likely follow willingly."

"We can't know—in any case—until we get inside the colony, meet their leadership face-to-face, see what they've been doing," Stilson returns after giving it a few moments' thought. "And we can't simply go and knock on their door and expect them to tell us."

I grin at him. "It's not out of the question."

I check in with Matthew at our usual time—1500 hours. I fully expect what he'll say when I tell him what I intend to do.

"How's life in Disney World?" he begins much like he has every day for the past nine days. "You'd better be bringing me back more than just a dumb T-shirt."

"Coming along," I start vaguely. "How's my chair treating you?"

"Some of their foodstuffs would be nice," he changes the subject. "You keep teasing me with your reports on how good they feed you. You coming back soon, or are you getting too used to the spa treatment?"

"Probably going out for air soon," I say as a way to let him know the Guardians are getting eager to try real-world. "The kids are coming along with their homework."

"You were a good instructor, back in the day." His tone lets me know that he's still getting used to the idea of me being out here, but that he's coming to terms with it. Either he realizes how much of a straw-man I am as functioning CO, or he's settling into the seat he _should_ have had (if the world hadn't blown up around us).

"And you were a good CO," I give him back.

"I wasn't in charge of shit, even when I _did_ outrank you. Everybody knew who was really..."

Kastl cuts him off.

"Incoming! Bearing 245 degrees. Low and fast, sir."

"Radiation signature?" Matthew demands urgently.

"Positive," Kastl tells him after a few tense seconds.

"Lock it down!" he orders. "Everybody inside now! Blast protocol. Batteries: auto-intercept—fire at will. Did I mention how much I hate ninjas?"

"I've got Jane up on rounds," Metzger calls in from the Aircom tower, reminding us we have an ASV in the air.

"Get him out of there," Matthew orders. "No time for a local landing. Burn for Melas Three."

"Jane to Command," the ASV calls in, "I'm in easy intercept."

"Negative, Lieutenant," Matthew tells him. "I'm not risking a ship for these shitheads. Get out of there."

"MAI has a lock," Kastl announces. "Batteries firing. They're taking evasive, sir. Using the landscape for cover—target is skimming less than a dozen meters above the surface."

"Dumbass doesn't intend to live through this," Matthew grumbles. I can't help but remember the desperate resiliency of suicide vehicle bombers from an older war.

"Contingencies?" I want to know.

"Oh, yeah..." Matthew purrs.

I get a heads-up graphic showing me the course of the incoming fighter—it's reading as one of the light Shinkyo raiders, only hot with fissionable material. I fully expect it has a live pilot. But we'd anticipated such an attack (I'm actually surprised they hadn't made an aggressive move in so long, but they may have been occupied with setting up their defenses). I watch the craft dart into ravines to avoid battery fire, keeping rock in the way of our guns, weaving to run the heat-seekers we throw at it into outcroppings. The pilot is impressive.

Unfortunately for him, we'd calculated the best low-fly runs at the base.

"Zero," Kastl announces as the ship flies over one of the "mines" we planted, a shaped-charge capable of killing heavy armor. MAI blasts a load of near-molten shrapnel up out of the ground. I can see the little flyer buck and almost lose control as its hull and wings are likely perforated. "He's still up," Kastl states what we can all see.

"Coming up on the second line," Matthew anticipates. But then the ship suddenly throws itself up out of the covering ravine and makes a wild dive in the direction of the base. MAI opens up—now I can see through the battery cams as our guns chew up the little ship. Still, it keeps coming. A heat-seeker takes off the starboard wing as the pilot jerks left at the last second. The ship spins and tumbles. It hits the ground and explodes within a hundred meters of our greenhouse. I can see the shockwave of the blast crumple the walls of the structure, and pressure vents out as an icy mist.

But the blast isn't nuclear.

"Dud?" Matthew wonders as we wait for a secondary blast that doesn't come.

"Or delay," I hear Lisa chime in. "Waiting for us to come out and check?"

"Maintain lockdown," Matthew orders, taking her advice. "Batteries don't have a good line of fire on the wreck. Jane, I need you to come back around, get a shot and finish breaking that thing up. Keep far enough back—assume the thing may still go nuke."

"Understood, Colonel," Jane answers.

"Get me casualty and damage reports," Matthew tells Kastl. "Doc Ryder's gonna be pissed about her garden. Did I mention I hate ninjas?"

"Having a thought," I chime in. "Fill you in later," I let him know I expect the Shinkyo are listening.

"Convenient they hit us just when you called in," Matthew lets me know he's thinking something similar. "I'll have a damage report for you when you check in next. Give the Power Rangers my regards."

"We will, of course, help you rebuild your greenhouse," Mark Stilson assures me after we sit and review the video of the attack. I can feel something like honest regret in his voice. I'm not sure if he's more upset by the potential loss of life or the damage to a project that shared their dream of greening Mars. "We will even provide you some of our engineered crop plants. It's the least we can do."

Paul and Simon—now looking fully recovered from their "upgrading"—have joined us for a civilized cup of Martian tea in the soothing setting of one of the Station gardens. I expect Council Stilson chose the setting because he'd already heard about the attack (either from monitoring our base or our transmissions) and wanted to reassure me that one broken greenhouse was not as crushing a setback as it appeared from our viewpoint.

The garden chamber is the size of a barn, lit as bright as Earth summer, and filled with lush, green fruit-bearing plants. I think I recognize what may have once been peppers, beans and tomatoes. Council Stilson makes a point of picking a small rust-colored orange, turns it reverently in his gloved fingers, but (as usual) doesn't look like he intends to eat it. Then he gestures and invites Zauba'a and I to feel free to sample. I pick a small violet "pepper" and bite off the tip. It has a pleasant but not overwhelming bite. I remember what Matthew said about wanting me to bring back tastier food. Zauba'a just looks at the plants with her usual air of detached curiosity, but doesn't touch anything. (At least she's gotten comfortable enough to take off her demon-mask when not actively drilling the recruits.)

"You think this attack on your base was an honest attack, or an attempt to spur us to act before we are ready?" Simon refocuses us on the subject at hand.

"I doubt they would waste a viable nuke on an attack they knew we'd been preparing to intercept, and that would reap them no nanotechnology," I tell him what I think. "They're more likely to reserve their functioning weapons for meeting you. Their ship could have been loaded with waste material, enough to show the radiation signature of a nuclear warhead—something to get our attention, scare us. As you said."

"And they threw away another pilot to deliver it," Paul grumbles.

"They always make their feints look as real as possible," Simon returns, sounding like he's been taking my "lessons" to heart. Then he turns to me. "You called this strategy 'Moving the Shade?'"

"A feint to see what your opponent's response will be, yes," I confirm. "Timed for when they knew I was calling."

"What did they expect you would do?" Mark asks.

"They likely had no idea," I offer. "That's what made them nervous enough to kill to find out. They've been quiet for a few weeks, but so have we."

"Is there a counter-strategy?" Mark's tone is academic.

"I'm sure our lack of immediate response has rattled them," I try. "It shows we don't flinch easily, don't react by rushing to hit them back."

"Which they'll be prepared for," Paul criticizes.

"We could return the feint, see how they respond," Simon considers, sounding disturbingly eager to put his new skills into action.

"They'll expect that too, since it's their own strategy," I caution him. "But there _is_ a superior strategy, one harder to counter. We just have to be sure your teams are ready."

Zauba'a picks something that looks like an elongated strawberry, and tastes it cautiously.

"What the hell was she thinking?" Matthew asks the air between us again. I know better than to offer an answer.

His casualty report is more troubling than expected. Doc Ryder was badly hurt in the blast. She'd been in her greenhouse. The techs and volunteer gardeners with her report she froze when she heard the call to get sheltered—no, not exactly "froze." They say she simply turned and faced the direction of the attack, stood there watching it come.

"Tru was there," he tells me. "She saw it. She's pretty shaken up. Tried to make a grab for the Doc, but one of her hippie henchman—that skinny Jericho kid that fawns over her—grabbed her and threw her into the tube. Tru's banged up, but she got her fanboy in the nuts with that plastic leg of hers when he fell on her. Then she threw on a mask and limped back out to help drag the wounded. Probably bought herself a decent case of radiation sickness for it, but she got Ryder out of there."

Ryder took a scary but not lethal dose of radiation from whatever the Shinkyo bomb was "dirtied" with—the worst of it being what contaminated particulates she might have inhaled without a mask on—along with dozens of cuts and punctures from the translucent composite and aluminum frame blowing in, including a serious scalp wound. Tru and the other gardeners got her inside before she suffered from lack of oxygen or decompression edema. Luckily, she was the only severe injury, and Halley's tending her personally. Less fortunately, Allison Ryder is our best surgeon. We can only hope she won't suffer long-term consequences from her exposure. Matthew tells me Rick hasn't left Medical since they brought her down.

While the base is built to withstand radiation, we don't know how badly our "crop" may have been poisoned. The Mars-adapted plants are hardly the worse for wear from the blast and decompression, but—like Ryder—they got dusted with some of the bomb's radioactive load. Tru's people have begun careful clean-up and testing. The ruptures have been temporarily patched over with shelter fabric while Thomasen tries to recycle shattered acrylic into useable panels. I pass along the ETE offer of assistance.

"I was waiting for this," I let Matthew know after he gives me the formal report. "I was just hoping I didn't see it so soon."

"Are we talking about Ryder, or the latest ninja jackass stunt?" he tries to confirm the subject.

"I didn't think she'd be the first," I tell him, "even with the loss of her husband."

"We're all going a bit goofy here," he surrenders, "all bunkered down and eating paste recycled from our own shit. Getting shot at by freakshows that used to be our fellow colonists. No contact from Earth."

"Everyone's done the math," I accept. "Even if we get a call out this cycle, it could be another year or two before we see relief."

"At least you've made us some friends," he gives me. "I feel like the fucking Pilgrims, cold and starving and hoping for the locals to bring us Thanksgiving to get us through the winter."

"I'll drop some hints," I assure him. "Just don't expect turkey."

"I'd be afraid to eat if they brought one." He's got his old humor back, at least. And his rage: "We doing something about this?"

"Holding Down a Shadow," I tell him.

### Chapter 3: Holding Down a Shadow

8 October, 2115:

The Lancer kicks up a lot of dust as it turns lazily and slides off, leaving me behind. Alone.

I turn and face the slopes of the built-up crater I know covers the Shinkyo Colony, find myself a fairly level and un-rocky patch of sand in easy view of it, and sit down formally on my knees. I unclip the Shinkyo sword from my belt, scabbard and all, and set it gently at my right side, hilt forward. I hope this is still recognizable as a traditional gesture that I come with no violent intent, to meet with an enemy on peaceful terms. Then I sit at meditative attention and wait, breathing slowly and calmly to make my canisters last.

To their credit, they leave me like that for almost a full hour, testing my resolve (and my preparation, since I'm well into my second can of O2). Thankfully, sitting on one's knees is much easier in Martian gravity than I remember from hours spent doing so in martial meditation on Earth in my youth. Also thankfully, it's a mild morning, just above freezing, and the sky is clear except for the "thunderheads" created by the ETE Stations that dot the far horizons. The wind is gentle enough to make the sand dance just a bit around me. It makes enough of a low howl to help mask the grinding even the lightest footsteps make on the loose gravel.

I _do_ hear them coming, but still they appear more suddenly and in greater numbers than the sounds they made betrayed. I am surrounded by at least two dozen now-familiar Shinkyo armored sealsuits. They cover me with their colony PDWs—all very professional, no theatrical posturing with swords or other medieval weapons. I don't move as one of them collects my sword. I slowly and deliberately offer him my sidearm as well.

They don't need to speak. Their gestures are clear enough. I get up, stretch my legs, and walk in the midst of them toward the crater. Not surprisingly, my Link is no longer receiving or transmitting.

The entrance to the colony—or at least the one they've deigned to show me—is hidden in a shallow rut: a space between rocks barely big enough to wedge a body through. (I immediately consider what a good choke-point it makes, but then notice that several of my guards have already vanished from the surface—it only makes sense that they have multiple entries.) The hatch hidden in the fissure would not be visible unless you were within a few meters of it.

There is absolutely no light once they prod me inside the airlock (and as soon as it's pressurized, they're quick to take my mask and goggles, which would have given me a night-vision HUD). And then there's no light in what must be the corridor beyond. I can only hear the shuffle of soft-soled boots, the whisper of their uniform fabric as they move, and my own breathing. The walls feel like they should be close, but when I reach out my hands I only feel my guards as they gently but firmly guide me in the general direction I assume takes me under the crater. I wonder if the darkness is just to disorient me for the sake of prisoner control, or if they don't want me seeing their facilities. I count over two hundred steps before a hatch opens and nearly blinds me.

Another two-dozen Shinobi flank my path—I can't tell if any of them were the same ones who met me on the surface. No one says a word, and I assume I need to keep moving forward.

The storage-bay-sized chamber in front of me reminds me of a combination of ETE architecture and Japanese neo-corporate aesthetics: Two stories high, brightly lit, the walls a facsimile of traditional shoji panels. There is one raised platform centered on the opposite wall. In either corner are small gardens with water running over rock. The floor is all a kind of woven tatami mat (though I doubt it's made of real straw), and there's a strip of red cloth forming a pathway for me to walk on into the center of the room—I presume that they provided it so that the barbarian wouldn't have to take off his boots indoors. The air smells of sandalwood.

A handful of guards kneel in a neat row along each side wall, at stiff attention, swords sheathed at their hips. In each corner is another guard armed with a colony PDW. They all wear their masks.

The opposite wall slides open—it's apparently made of shutters—and two figures walk in onto the platform: The first is a Japanese male I guess to be in his late sixties, his white hair shaved to a stubble, heavy-set, wearing a black silken robe patterned with Shinkyo corporate crests. He has narrow eyes and a slight thin smile that looks like it's been frozen on by some kind of stroke. The second is a much younger female wearing a traditional kimono of similar black fabric, her hair done up in traditional style, large ornate hairpins (possibly weapons) protruding from the bun on the back of her head. I cannot see all of her face, because she's wearing small mirrored goggles and a breather mask. A more ornate version of the Shinobi sword is shoved into her crimson sash.

The man faces me and gives a slight bow, which I return. His smile widens at my display of manners, and he gestures for me to sit on the floor before the platform. He takes a seat in front of me on the platform, the girl kneeling just behind him at his right. Without a word being said, two more girls—these in white kimonos without masks—bring a cup of steaming tea, one for their master and one for me, which I accept with a slight bow. From the smell of it I can tell it's not Martian tea, but actual green tea (either from Earth or some on-planet garden). I lift the cup to drink, but then hold until my host drinks first. Again, he widens his smile.

"You are as unexpectedly civilized as they say, Colonel Ram," the white-haired man says with only the slightest accent.

"Thank you for the tea," I return. "It's very good, and the morning air was quite brisk."

He grins again, as if appreciating that my manners are a means of keeping my intentions masked. He sips his tea, then sets the cup aside. As if that was a signal, the panel behind him opens and one of his guards comes in, carrying a sheathed katana in his hands. The guard walks forward and presents the weapon to me. I glance at the white-haired man, who nods his permission, and I take the weapon reverently and examine it. It's a traditional design: long, black cord-wrapped hilt in the diamond pattern, with a plain round iron guard cut with the eight-spoke wheel symbol of the Noble Eightfold Path. The plain scabbard is mirror-black lacquer. I use my thumb to pop the seal between blade and scabbard-mouth. It has a brass collar, and the first inches of the blade reveal a fine "watering" that belies thousands of folded layers. It has the clouded edge of a weapon differentially tempered—diamond hard on the cutting surface, while the body maintains resilient flexibility.

"May I?" I ask before drawing the blade all the way. The guards do not even shift positions as I slide the slightly curved blade out into the air. It's light, the balance making it feel almost weightless. I nod in approval and slide the blade back into its home.

"The blade looks traditional," the white hair tells me, "but it is nano-forged: stronger and sharper than anything our best smiths could have made by hand. And now it is a gift to one who can appreciate it, Colonel."

I give him a bow of thanks, then gently set the weapon at my right. I expect he knows my taste for swords, and calculated the offering to strike a personal chord.

"I assume I am addressing the Daimyo Hatsumi?" I press us forward. He nods.

"You have learned my name from Rashid's abomination," he assumes, keeping his polite tone and grin. "I expect she will be joining us shortly?"

I don't answer. He gestures to the masked woman at his side.

"You have already met my daughter Sakura, Colonel, when she made herself a willing prisoner of the ETE..." The mirrored lenses stay locked on me as her head bows. I finally recognize the lines of her face. She must be wearing a wig, unless they have a means to grow hair back that rapidly. "The ETE took your advice: they dropped her and her confederates within a day and night's walk, stripped to only a plain worker's jumper they provided, supplied with barely two days' worth of air and water each. Unfortunately, an increase in the patrols of your sand-dog allies delayed their progress.

"They say that survival is dependent on doing things you would never consider under other circumstances. My daughter sacrificed first one and then the other of her comrades. She wore their clothing for warmth, slept under their bodies for shelter, used their air, drank their fluids, and thus she returned to us after three days and two nights, bringing your warning. Exposure damaged her eyes and her lungs, but as she did not fail in her true mission, she did not need to forfeit her life. Her fingernails have also been replaced."

The girl draws her hands out of her oversized sleeves. Her prostheses now make no attempt to mimic life: her fingertips are coned in sharp steel.

"Be assured she bodes you no ill-will, Colonel. In fact, you made quite an impression on my daughter. Her experience with the creatures who call themselves men on this world has been only of slaves, victims, cowards and animals. She tells me you live up to your legends, and I can see this now myself."

"Then perhaps we can get to the business at hand?" I shift the subject aggressively. Hatsumi nods.

"You come here because your ETE friends have decided to pretend to be warriors," he coolly derides. "I expect you have many doubts about the wisdom of this course of action. You know that toys do not make _bushi_."

"And you already know what their toys can do," I allow him.

"You have given us more than enough time to prepare contingencies," he says like I've been conspiring with him all along.

"The winner of any battle is just the one who can claim to have lost the least," I try. "The skilled general will find a way to win without fighting. Is there an alternative to what's coming?"

"What you really want to know is _why_ it must come, Colonel Ram," he corrects me. "You want to know our reasons for setting this chain of events in motion."

"Knowing what you seek, any number of men would have reason," I give him. "But I don't believe you seek the prize for your _own_ gain, Daimyo."

"You have seen clearly," he tells me. "Our mandates were made plain before the bombs fell. We continue to serve the dream of our Guild Corporations—our lives are theirs. They _will_ come back, and we will be ready with a competitive edge no other conglomerate or nation can match."

"Except the ETE," I play in. "But the ETE do not seek profit. They will not share their advances with anyone."

"Environmental Terraforming Enterprises is a _corporate_ endeavor," he corrects me, "and more insidiously so, because they set out to make _all_ industry on this world dependent on them. Then they exploited the violence of the early colony years—the Eco and Disc threats—to gain even greater advantages, by pirating the technologies entrusted to their safekeeping. And when the bombs conveniently wiped out their colonial 'partners,' none were left to challenge their claim on those technologies. I'm sure you have had your own suspicions about the origin of the Discs, Colonel."

"The ETE have voiced similar suspicions regarding you," I return, "especially given your recent activities."

He doesn't answer immediately. He sips his cooling tea.

"And what suspicions do _you_ have, Colonel Ram?" he probes.

"Anonymous drones effectively destroy all corporate interests on the planet. _Any_ productive agency that remains is suspect."

"Can you remain so objective?" he presses, still all polite semi-smiles.

"I suspect you've had no contact with Earth since the planet fell silent."

"Neither have the ETE," he counters. Then softens: "No transmission could be made that would not risk detection by the wrong people. The risk was neither acceptable nor necessary—our interests were secure and have remained so without assistance from home." I note that he doesn't address the issue of stealth craft like the Lancer.

"And how did you intend to go about revealing yourselves once Earth returns?" I address the obvious problem.

"I would tell you that we did not plan to, that we would wait patiently and then covertly contact our Guild some time after Earth shuttles begin returning in numbers that would mask our activities. Our Guild could then 'rebuild' on this site, and shortly thereafter would be able to export our work as new development."

"But you've already revealed yourselves to us as well as the ETE," I expose, giving him an edge of a grin.

"You are correctly confident that I do not intend to kill all of you in the hope of re-concealing our existence," he says almost sweetly.

"Or you know such an outcome is too far from certain," I argue. "That, and your most effective weapons against the ETE are messy enough to be seen across space. I'm sure you've considered how Earthside might interpret nuclear detonations on the surface well before you used your first weapon. You would know that fission explosions are very likely to renew their fears of some extreme nano-horror. You've already formulated another plan."

Hatsumi smiles and gives me a little bow.

"I find I enjoy speaking with you, Colonel Ram, even more than I expected I would. An alliance between us could prove mutually profitable. Your people struggle for a foothold, and I expect you will face many adversaries. And if you are willing to enter into a small deception with us, it would go a long way to smoothing re-integration with Earth."

"I had heard you had little tolerance for _Gaijin_."

"Abdullah Rashid proved what a filthy animal he was," Hatsumi explains with the slightest edge of disgust coming through. "I count myself wise in choosing to remove him from our midst before he could further contaminate us. And no, Colonel, I am not speaking of his pathetic faith or the color of his skin. Has his daughter not told you?"

I start to respond in cool defense of Zauba'a, but I hesitate when I realize his choice of word.

"She told me that Rashid was her _grand_ father," I make an attempt at correction that I already know I'm going to regret.

"He was that as well," Hatsumi takes barely-masked glee in telling me. "What did you think those trash did, living like animals in the sand?"

I am not at all surprised when I feel the air whistle next to my ear. Neither is Hatsumi, or at least his daughter: Sakura is almost as fast as Zauba'a, up on her feet and in front of her father, swatting the thrown torpedo away only inches before it hits Hatsumi square between the eyes. Her arm in her sleeve clangs when it makes contact with the heavy metal projectile—she has her own armor on under her delicate ceremonial gown. The torpedo skitters across the mats and bounces off the left wall between two of the guards (missing one by less than a foot). The guards all come up on one knee, and hands go to sword hilts, but they do not draw, nor do the ones with guns fire.

I shift and pivot on my knees but do not get up, turning to watch Zauba'a part the panels I had entered through. Instead of continuing her attack, she strides calmly into the gauntlet of guards.

"Rude," Hatsumi criticizes, absolutely calm, "but not unexpected. Your offer of violence is accepted, animal. My daughter has been as eager to test herself against you as you are eager to challenge us."

"I am eager," Zauba'a confirms, her voice almost a growl through her demon mask, "but I can delay my satisfaction."

On cue, two blue ETE sealsuits—Paul and Simon—drop through the ceiling of the chamber. Simon lands behind Zauba'a and Paul is at my side, their Spheres creating defensive fields around us as I get to my feet. Paul slides a pistol into my right hand.

Hatsumi responds less to us than he does to the earpiece he must have in his left ear, and I see him grin.

"Your friends have arrived in amusing numbers," he lets me know, then commands: " _Ichi!_ "

We can hear and feel the deep booming rumble of a nuke going off somewhere on the surface above. Hatsumi must also have an optical implant or contact lens that lets him see tactical feed without a visor or glasses, because his eyes dart as if scanning something we can't see.

" _Ni!_ " he barks after a long minute, and another boom rattles us.

I watch his eyes and his expression. He betrays his confusion and frustration only barely.

"Your friends are resilient," he tells us, his voice struggling to keep its serenity. "I didn't expect they would run to their deaths so readily. Still, we are well prepared." He watches his feed intently, then barks " _San!"_ A third blast shake us, feeling much closer. I'm surprised the ceiling doesn't come down on us all.

"You were right about multiple bombs," Paul whispers to me.

I keep watching Hatsumi process what he's being fed from the surface. His eyes narrow, his jaw clenches. I can imagine what he's been hearing and seeing:

At the same moment as the Stilsons' theatrical entrance, the perimeter of the colony was suddenly swarming with ETE. Hatsumi detonated a device in their midst, the blasts and EMP radii likely calculated for maximum defensive coverage (I expect he would have waited to catch the largest number of his enemies in the lethal range). But even before the dust storms of the first blasts settled, Hatsumi would have seen the colorful sealsuits still coming on, apparently undiminished. And so he detonated his second and third devices.

He will still be seeing ten colors of sealsuits bearing down on his hill.

" _Uke!_ " he almost screams the word I recognize as "block" or "receive." None of the cadre of guards he has in the chamber budges—he must be confident he has more than sufficient numbers of soldiers to intercept the ETE.

"Is he out of nukes?" Paul quietly wonders. Hatsumi is smiling again as he must be watching his forces engage.

"Can your gear cut through their signal jamming?" I ask Paul. His helmet nods.

"Fuzzier since the bangs," he tells me. "Hopefully it's making it even more difficult for them. The visual I'm getting from topside looks like videos I've seen of anthills: His Shinobi are going up in force to engage us face-to-face. Too bad we aren't actually there."

In a blur, Hatsumi's daughter leaps off the dais and stops just at the edge of our protective field, her mirrored lenses looking like they could bore right into us. She knows better than to try to challenge a Sphere field directly.

"One thing we do know is that your toys cannot maintain significant power output for very long," Hatsumi taunts. "That is why you all carry several. And I will warn you not to use your un-binding fields to dissolve our weapons—this facility has been laced with triggers made of the same alloy, and you would risk detonating our final defense: a device more than capable of replacing the entire colony with a real crater."

"You would sacrifice everything rather than have it taken," I return, making sure my statement doesn't sound remotely like a question.

"You have your answer," Hatsumi tells me flatly.

"You have _your_ answer," Paul agrees in whisper.

"My scanning equipment tells me that your Spheres' output is already beginning to fluctuate," Hatsumi challenges. "You can maintain your barrier at that strength for another minute at most. Can you concentrate enough to switch to a fresh Sphere without giving us an opening to cut you to pieces?"

"Won't have to," Paul returns with impressive cool. Then he whispers to me: "Cavalry's here."

To "Move the Shade" means to feint an attack to see how your enemy responds.

To "Hold Down a Shadow" means to make an aggressive move, then keep changing your attacks as your enemy tries to respond, keeping him off balance so that his prepared responses can't be effectively used.

The lazy pass that the Lancer made over the colony hill when it dropped me off did more than kick up dust. It dropped a number of "decoy projectors" the ETE had developed to give not only the visual image of a hundred attacking Guardians, but also a convincing energy signature to match. Now that the illusion has instigated Hatsumi to detonate his surface nukes, it's likely the dust and radiation has made his own defenses functionally blind.

Confirming this, I don't hear his anti-aircraft guns and missile launchers engage, but I do start hearing the more familiar sounds of our own missiles slamming his surface positions. That would be Matthew coordinating the Lancer and our ASVs in a rapid sweep and drop, their bays loaded with the actual ETE Guardians. For their part, the ETE had to do this maneuver without the benefit of a trial run (that might have been observed), but I trust that their skills with their tools will suffice in "flying" them out of our aircraft before we pull back to give them air cover.

Paul taps me on the back with the Rod in his right hand, and I take my cue, dropping to the deck. Zauba'a should be doing the same. This lets Paul and Simon have a clear "sweep" of the chamber, and they give their Spheres one last "pulse" before trading them. They heed Hatsumi's warning not to risk disintegrating anything, using only blunt pressive force to hit the Shinkyo like a wave, slamming them back off their feet, and giving us time to take the offensive.

Paul and Simon lash out with their Rods, and I can hear the energy pound the armored Shinobi like something solid. At least two of the gunmen open up with their PDWs, and I see Paul jerk as he gets hit in the left thigh and shoulder, proving the Shinkyo have developed a nano-projectile that can somehow pass through a Sphere field. I choose to ignore the ETE's feeling about bloodshed and return fire with my pistol, trying to nail what I assume are the most effective gaps in their armor: face, neck, armpit, inner thigh.

I only manage to take out two of them before a foot slams down on my weapon, knocking it out of my grip and pinning it into the mats. I can see the flash of black kimono, and roll sideways in time to mostly avoid a slash from Sakura's claws—she manages to tear into the sleeve of my LA uniform. She comes in for another swipe, but her arm gets stopped by the scabbard of the sword they gave me as I get it between us with both hands. I throw a boot at the leg she's got most of her weight on, and she has to shift to avoid it—that gives me enough room to roll out away from her and draw the blade as I get up.

A well-aimed torpedo from Zauba'a distracts her, buying me another second. But I can feel another Shinobi charging me from behind, and I have to spin into him, combining my cut with my parry. He's good enough to take most of my blade on his own, but I pivot and angle enough to make sure my tip is set just far enough through his guard to drive it into his throat as my cut turns into a thrust in the same action. While he's choking on blood, I hack his sword-arm. Then I have to keep my spin going to receive another attacker.

This one loses a few fingers to my cutting parry, opening him up enough for me to get in a nice, strong angular cut, but I don't get enough warning to pick my targets so I have to go for whatever's in my way. Hatsumi's smiths do good work: my "nano-forged" blade cleaves armor enough to put the sword through the Shinobi's clavicle and down into his torso, deep enough to open his aorta. His blood hits me in the face.

I "test" my new sword on a third Shinobi, snapping it down hard into the more vulnerable back of his blade, snapping his sword and letting the "bounce" of the impact set me up and quickly down to split his head open. But before I can strike, he flies back away from me, and I glance sideways to see Paul with his Rod on him, hoping to minimize the slaughter. Then Sakura swats Paul in the face, sending him reeling with his silver mask almost knocked off, blood flowing from his jaw line. She follows with a solid kick that sends him down, his Rod flying from his grip.

Simon and Zauba'a have been "managing" the gauntlet of guards nearest the entrance. Simon has converted two of his Rods into batons and is showing off by trying to strike in multiple directions at once. Zauba'a is at his back, spinning into any Shinobi that gets close enough with her heavy knives. (Simon, for his part, doesn't seem as bothered by the bloodshed as Paul.)

I turn on Sakura, dropping my sword down to my side, giving her full opening. She sets herself to charge me, her claws dancing. Then I hear Zauba'a bark out a challenge, and Sakura calmly ducks as a torpedo flies at her head.

"Useless..." Sakura growls at her through her mask, but I see Zauba'a's eyes grin above her own mask. Her eyes look past Sakura, and Sakura turns in time to see her father topple over limply with the torpedo sunk through his left eye and out the back of his skull.

Sakura jerks her sword out of its scabbard, and looks like she doesn't know who to go for first. Zauba'a tries to make the decision for her by advancing, a "borrowed" Shinkyo sword in each hand.

"Enough!" I hear Paul bellow, and Sakura flies sideways like she's been hit by an invisible bus. The energy wave knocks her and the handful of Shinobi still in the fight through the panel walls. Zauba'a freezes in her tracks, glaring at the now-unconscious Sakura, and then shoots Paul a look that makes me fear for his head.

I get over to Hatsumi's body, and search him for any kind of control mechanisms I can find. If he had any kind of communication system, it must all be implanted. His last breaths are sputtering out of him. I feel for his pulse.

"He knew he wasn't walking out of here," Simon assesses. I nod gravely. Under his black robes are all white ones—the color of death; the color one wears to funerals, or to one's own ritual suicide.

"His heart is stopping," I announce. "If he does have a final device, he'd want more than one way to set it off. His own death might suffice. We know he's got implants—if it's triggered by his vital signs to go with him, we've got seconds."

"He'd sacrifice his own daughter?" Paul is having trouble believing.

"She is a cripple," Zauba'a tells him coldy. "Disposable."

"Or not," Simon calls our attention to the fact that Sakura isn't where she fell. She and all of her surviving Shinobi have made an effective escape.

"We need to find his last bomb _now_ , or we need a fast exit," I remind them, but Paul is already signaling for help. I see blood starting to spot Hatsumi's white robes, and realize it isn't his. When I stand up, blood is dripping at my feet. The gashes in the sleeves of my LA uniform tell me I've probably got fairly significant cuts to both arms, and I'm starting to shake because of it. There's also a slice through my jacket just below my web belt over my right hip, and my pistol rig has been cleaved through. So much for my skill as a swordsman...

The ETE take all of three seconds to coordinate a response that I expect was a much harder decision than it appeared. Paul and Simon took hold of Zauba'a and me, and I got to experience what it's like for an ETE to move through solid matter as they took us the shortest route out of the colony. I had a fraction of a second to decide to drop my "gift" before getting dragged through concrete and rock—it flashed into my shock-addled brain that the trigger for the threatened last-strike device might be built into it, the bomb set off by me taking the blade out of the colony. Even cut up and feeling old and stupid for it, I still found it hard to let go of the weapon.

The ETE were already sending the majority of their Guardian force back out of estimated harm's way, each Station team leaving only one member who came specially equipped to detect and neutralize nuclear devices.

The surface was still masked in a confusing haze of smoke and dust when we came up out of the ground and went flying into the air. Still, I could see disorganized groups of Shinobi running west for slopes of the Dragon's Tail. Most of them had been at least partially stripped of their armor and weapons by their encounters with the Guardians, but a few of them seemed to be clutching precious prizes as they ran.

I blame the combination of blood loss, the shock of the "phasing" through dozens of meters of rock (which felt like being pelted with electric hail), and the likelihood that Paul (in his zeal to get me clear) forgot I wasn't wearing a mask for passing out.

"That's it, Colonel..." I vaguely recognize Rios' voice. I feel hands easing me down, other hands pressing a mask over my face. The first face (or mask) I make out is Zauba'a's, as she kneels over me, wrapping my mangled arms in pressure tape, not bothering to take off my uniform jacket first—it must be bad enough that it has to wait for a surgical unit.

I realize I'm in the open bay of an ASV troop module. But instead of squads of bulky HA armor, I'm surrounded by a rainbow of ETE suits. I can only assume the blue suit closest by my side is either Paul or Simon, since I'm still too bleary to read their name tags. But then I realize that some of the ETE are in worse shape than I am: Several have mangled hands, fingers gone. One is missing a leg at the knee. Two are missing arms. I remember Shinkyo running away carrying prizes.

Several have tools missing from their belts.

"We need to get back to Station!" I hear someone demand. I lift my head enough to see a stretcher coming in. The green suit on it is being tended by two ETE who look like they're trying to hold his body together at the waist.

"Go..." I order like I'm still in command of anything.

I numbly assume I'd have noticed another nuclear explosion.

9 October, 2115:

I wake up back in my own rack, and I have a lot of company wedged into my small quarters.

"We recovered this from the colony after we secured it," Paul starts. He's sitting at the foot of my bunk, and he shows me he's brought the sword Hatsumi gave me. "It's been scanned. No surprises."

I reach up to take it and see the heavy bandages on my forearms. They ache, but my hands seem to work. I lay the weapon across my lap and try to sit up a bit more. I feel burning pain deep into my right hip. My head swims from whatever they gave me while they closed my wounds.

"So how _did_ having large metal testicles get equated with bravery?" Paul asks, in way of making a joke.

"It _should_ be equated with stupidity," Matthew chimes in, standing by the hatch, arms crossed. "Not the dumbest thing you've ever done, Mikey, but it definitely makes the top five."

I expect to see Zauba'a giving him some kind of death-glare, kneeling at my bedside like one of Hatsumi's personal guard. But she keeps her eyes down, almost sheepishly.

"The ETE are indebted to you, Colonel," Simon offers as a way of rolling over Matthew's flippancy.

"I don't remember it going particularly smoothly..." I deflect.

"We were able to find Hatsumi's colony destroyer," Paul gives me happily. "We estimate a full kiloton yield—four times the tactical warheads he used on the surface. And someone _did_ try to trigger it remotely, but we had it masked in time."

"The triggering attempt coincided with the instant your ASV flew clear," Lisa lets me know, standing in the corner behind the Stilsons. "Whoever was charged with blowing the place may have watched and waited until you were safe."

"If it was Sakura, it's probably because she wanted another crack at us in person," I speculate drowsily, glancing at Zauba'a, who still does not look up.

"Or they had other reasons," Simon gives me back gravely, letting me know he's been paying attention to my lessons.

"Like giving me a sword that really _is_ just a sword," I play. "I could make myself crazy figuring out all the possible reasons for that one."

"Or Hatsumi walking into that room fully planning on not walking out," Matthew stokes the subject. I decide to change it:

"Your people didn't all walk away unscathed," I confront Paul and Simon as gently as I can. "I saw..."

"You did," Paul confirms solemnly. "They came at us in surprising numbers, and did things we did not expect..." He seems to stall on the words.

"You were shot," I remind him needlessly. "They had bullets that could get through your Sphere fields."

"It was an unexpectedly inventive two-stage system," Simon explains as objectively as he can. "They must have managed to analyze our fields during previous encounters. When the shell hit the shield field, its outer shell detonated, forcing an ionized core through the field. Each core was then frangible upon penetration to maximize trauma and slow the healing process. The effectiveness of their gunfire was both unexpected and withering. It wasn't lethal, but it gave them an opening."

"We have since recalibrated our fields to counter this advantage," Paul interjects like he's telling me about some minor mechanical problem.

"We tried to dissolve their weapons," Simon continues over him, "but they would charge us in twos, guessing that our bond-breakers would not penetrate a living body if set to attack inorganic matter only. One Shinobi would act as a shield for the other, even though it meant bare-skin exposure. And even naked, they were not hesitant in using grenades to stun us. Not all of us were quick enough to shift to acceptable offensive measures—using blunt pressive shock to batter them."

"Your reluctance to do harm," I interject, hoping it sounded more like validation than criticism.

"Your lessons were invaluable," Simon allows, "but you were right about there being no substitute for experience. We were no match for the Shinobi at close quarters. Their blades did damage that their guns could not, even given our upgrades. Nine of our people sustained cuts severe enough to cost them parts of limbs. One—Dawson Epps from Green Team—was nearly cut in half."

"All are in rebuilding," Paul tries to soothe, "what was lost can be replaced."

"I saw the Shinobi retreating," I challenge. "Can they profit from what they managed to take from you?"

"We can't be certain," Simon admits after a pause. "We also lost several tools. They _should_ be useless, but the Shinkyo have proven themselves to be impressively resourceful."

"And they've left us with other problems," Paul lets me know heavily. "Although the scattered Shinobi successfully fled into the hills while we were focused on stopping their colony self-destruct, they did leave over three hundred apparently non-military colonists behind. They have not offered resistance, but they remain under our supervision."

"Most are women, children, elderly or physically fragile—the few able-bodied adults appear to be workers or low-level technicians," Lisa catalogues. "They have no apparent weapons, but at least some are likely to be Shinobi planted to serve as insurgents, so the situation is far from secure."

"This number is only a third of the population we had originally estimated," Simon reminds. "The colony has also been stripped of manufacturing equipment, and their stores appear to be gutted. All of their files have been erased. It's clear they have relocated somewhere, leaving behind what could only be described as sacrifices."

"Including Hatsumi," I point out.

"Hatsumi had a metastasized cancer eating him alive," Lisa tells me. "The Shinkyo didn't have cancer-killer nano-cultures."

"It may be what he wanted from us," Paul tries.

"I don't think so," I disagree. "He was too much about the greater benefit of his precious corporate guild. And I doubt he'd want his Shinobi to know he was that sick. They'd have replaced him."

"Maybe they did," Matthew considers. "Maybe that was the point."

"Halley looked at the autopsy scans your teams sent us," Lisa tells the Stilsons. "He was too far gone for anything short of your regenerating technology, and he wouldn't have had the time for his people to adapt it even if they could take it from you."

"He knew he was dead," Matthew concurs, reinforcing his point. "He just wanted to go out in a scrap. Better in a fight than in a bed."

I glance again at Zauba'a, who remains still as a statue.

"We should have advanced on them sooner," Simon grumbles. "We gave them too much time to prepare."

"Time _you_ needed to prepare," I remind him. "Things could have gone much worse."

"The one signal was the only detected attempt to trigger the self-destruct," Lisa continues updating me. "Hatsumi _wasn't_ wired to do it—we checked his implanted Link gear, and there was no detonation program. Either he wasn't in charge anymore or specifically wanted someone else to pull the trigger—maybe he did figure he'd be dead before the time was right. And he lied about the facility being laced with sensors to set the bomb off if the ETE used their Spheres inside."

"Delaying tactics," I calculate grimly. "First he slows you down by making you afraid to use your tools effectively. Then he leaves us to try to find his last bomb—waiting to detonate meant more time for his Shinobi to make their escape while we were all focused on finding the bomb instead of chasing them down. Leaving a few hundred apparent innocents behind in the colony made doubly sure the bomb had our attention—he trusted that you wouldn't abandon those people to die."

"The ones left behind, they will not talk to us," Paul complains. "We cannot even know if they were abandoned to their fate or volunteered for it."

"The Shinkyo seem adept at profiting no matter which way a battle goes," I allow after a deep breath. "I did confront Hatsumi about the obvious conundrum: Telling me his people have been trying to maintain some kind of secret R&D in hopes of giving their sponsor corporations an edge when they come back—assuming they're still even in business to come back—and then blatantly revealing themselves by attacking us. He didn't even blink when I pointed out that his use of nuclear weapons would be detected from Earth. He _knew_ their efforts to stay hidden all these decades would be wasted when he decided to attack."

"Blowing up the colony could have been a convincing way to disappear again," Paul reasons. "Without the colony, there's no proof at all of what they've been up to."

"But he would have considered the outcome of us beating his last bomb and having the colony intact to show to Earthside," I counter. "That may even have been his ideal outcome."

"And how does he win from that?" Simon criticizes. "The Guild corporations—assuming they still exist—would be scandalized to be associated in any way with what the Shinkyo were doing here."

"But they took the hard evidence and vanished," Lisa reminds him. "They could argue that they were a colony of innocent refugees just trying to survive."

"Worse," I let them know what I'm thinking. "They've left you as an occupying force. How will that make you look to Earth?"

Lisa and Matthew hang back after Paul and Simon take their leave.

"Are you thinking about making the ETE an offer to take over the policing of the colony?" Lisa asks before Matthew can.

"No," I tell them flatly. "We're spread thin enough between holding our two bases and planning our little expedition north to set up Anton's transmitter. We don't have the resources to take care of an extra three hundred bodies, even if we could trust they had no hostile intent."

"Which isn't likely," Matthew agrees.

"We'd have to use lethal force to deal with even the slightest insurgency, especially given the suicidal tenacity we've already seen out of them. I think that alone would make the ETE unwilling to let us try."

"But maybe we could make an agreement with them," Lisa offers. "They stand down and let us take over as soon as we can get reinforced. In the meantime, we keep working side-by-side."

"I think Paul got bent enough when I had to use deadly force in our little joint skirmish," I let them know. "They're not going to be comfortable with us in situations like that. They'd have to put as much energy into making sure we don't kill anybody as making sure the Shinkyo don't."

"So they wouldn't want to leave Shinkyo to us even if we were operating with max support," Matthew takes it. Lisa looks uncomfortable. I can only shake my head, and so does Matthew. "You're right: Hatsumi gets to stick it to the Power Rangers—and us in turn—no matter which way it falls."

Zauba'a remains a seated statue after we're finally left alone, her eyes glued down at her crossed ankles.

"What Hatsumi said about your father," I finally try. "It doesn't matter to me."

I can hear her breathing coming heavier.

"Apparently it matters to _me_ ," she finally says, her voice barely above a whisper. "Enough that Hatsumi could manipulate me. Enough that my anger interfered with your mission."

"Hatsumi told me all he was going to," I try to reassure. "And likely everything he said was manipulative half-truth."

"He did not lie about my father. My grandfather."

"That doesn't diminish you," I insist. "And I have no right to judge him."

"Incest is a fact of survival among many tribes," she says matter-of-factly, then goes dark again. "That does not mean it is accepted practice. I understand the reasons for the taboo, and the stain upon those that break it. So did my father. We were outcast for it, untouchable. My mother and I only had value because we were weapons, but we were always less than human no matter how well we served."

"It doesn't change how _I_ value you, Sakina," I tell her. But I almost immediately realize I'm lying: I _do_ see her differently now, but only because I think I've seen more of what's shaped her, what she's lived with. Before I was a soldier I was briefly a social worker—it's what I went to school for—and I saw children who lived with incest and sexual abuse who thought it was normal—who were _taught_ it was normal—until they collided with larger society and were shocked to find they'd been victim (or sometimes willing participant, at least in their own eyes) to an abomination. The damage to their developing identities was devastating, the stigma scarring everything they were and would be.

"You told me you had done evil things," she gives me back after a few moments of silence. "I have not seen this in your history."

I realize she's reaching out, trying to connect. Warriors comparing scars.

"My 'history' was created by my handlers when I agreed to work for UNACT," I tell her. "Mike Ram is a manufactured hero, a public face on what they called their 'Ratings War.' I served as propaganda more than as a weapon. Do you understand?"

She shakes her head slowly, but it isn't an absolute denial—her breathing and posture betray that.

"It was an ugly war even as wars go," I continue. "The violence was personal and cruel, the enemy righteous in their viciousness. I did things... The only way I'm different from them is that I only preyed on those who would specifically harm the innocent, but I repaid atrocity with atrocity. I never cut an enemy's genitals off, but I've been tempted, and I've certainly gone beyond what was required of me professionally."

I sit up in bed—careful of the heavy dressing I find I have taped over my right hip—and slowly pivot my legs over the edge so I can sit up facing her. The effort winds up placing her kneeling at my feet, but I no longer feel confident (especially with how deep my hip wound appears to be) with my original plan of getting down and sitting with her on her bed roll.

"There was this one..." I give her softly. "A father had put a bomb on his young daughter and sent her to blow up a café full of innocent people. She was thirteen years old. I couldn't stop her in time, so I had to shoot her down before she could get to her target. I had to kill a child to save dozens of others. I was about your age at the time, and I was still very new at killing. Then I went to visit her father. He was watching a video of the two of them celebrating her pending martyrdom, and he was praying. I shot away both his kneecaps, then sat down and explained to him with his own scripture—the Holy Quran—why he was wrong about his God. But all he cared about was that everyone who didn't believe the way he did would burn in hell. He had made God an excuse to take out his rage on the world, and made his own child his willing weapon. He had no remorse, no regret, only sick satisfaction. I set him on fire."

We sit silently for a long time. Zauba'a doesn't look up once.

"I barely knew my father," she says very quietly. "I was young when he left, and my mother didn't speak of him after he was gone. My mother was my teacher. She became Hassim's father's personal guard, and she also sometimes shared his bed, even though she was never made his wife. I do not believe Hassim knows who I am now; he probably thinks that little girl died long ago. My mother died defending his father, and he did not seem to miss her. He told me he would keep me to perhaps be his guard one day, or his son's guard, but I left, disappeared during one of the battles with Farouk. I spent five more years training, living on my own, fighting when I had need or opportunity, before I presented myself to Farouk, defeating his best fighters. I do not really know if I chose Farouk because I bore a grudge against Abbal Hassim, but I admit feeling satisfaction in eliminating some of his best warriors, hurting him."

"What did you feel when you killed Farouk?" I ask as objectively as I can. She takes a few deep breaths, then finally meets my eyes.

"I held hope for some small redemption, for righting a wrong. But..." She looks away again.

"But you don't feel any better," I finish when she can't. "I can't tell you that anything you do will erase what guilt you might feel for your past actions, or the shame you feel has marked you. Just know that I accept you as you are, Sakina, and I'm grateful to have you with me."

She doesn't respond except to barely nod her head. Then she deflects: "Your wounds are significant. You should rest."

I don't argue. I get dizzy just trying to stand, and my arms and hip burn and ache under their dressings.

When I awake in the dark some hours later, I feel her body curled up against mine, her head on my shoulder, her hand on my heart. She's taken off her armor, her weapons, but still wears her sealsuit.

I'm careful not to wake her.

### Chapter 4: Lessons from the Insurgency

20 October, 2115:

"Conventional warfare is about engaging your enemy when both of you are in the same place at the same time," Matthew explains to his multi-colored audience. "But ideally, you don't confront your enemy directly unless you have a significant advantage: position, surprise, weaponry, numbers..."

The ETE team leaders keep attentive, sitting around our Briefing table. (I'd tried to talk Matthew into visiting the ETE Stations, but he's been reluctant to leave the base given recent events.) Helmets off, I can see their faces, but more telling: the fatigue and frustration of their recent experiences.

"Well over a hundred years ago now, we ran into opponents who changed the rules of warfare. Lacking an advantage in direct confrontation, they realized they could attack us in _place_ , without being present in _time_. That's the war-college way of saying the bastards set traps for us, ran away and hid."

"Which is what the Shinkyo are doing now," Green Team Leader—Rhiannon Dodds—confirms the point with an uncharacteristic edge in her voice.

The ETE overseeing the care-and-feeding of the Shinkyo left-behinds have so far walked into six separate explosions, some that collapsed entire sections of the colony. Three Guardians are still in "rebuilding." But _nine_ Shinkyo were killed, and fifteen wounded severely enough that the ETE are concerned that they can't provide adequate medical care to "Naturals". And more than half the colony is now without survival-sufficient air or heat.

"The key is to not be _predictable_ ," Matthew tells them. "They need to know where you're likely to be and roughly when you'll be there in order to hit you. They _also_ need to know when you're _not_ likely to be there in order to set the trap."

"That's why we had no problems for the first week," Paul assesses correctly.

" _Avoid routine_ ," Matthew warns. "Don't establish patterns. And learn to identify the obvious kill zones: places you can't watch all the time but still have to visit, routes where you have a limited choice of path. And I'll tell you this up front: you won't see them all. Best you can do is reduce your vulnerability."

One or two of the sealsuited Guardians glances back at me now and again, but I keep silent in my seat off in the corner by the entry hatch. Matthew is doing an excellent job despite his reluctance to take a turn at playing "advisor". But after the slicing I took assisting the fledging Guardians against the Shinkyo, I expect Matthew would agree to anything if it meant I would step out of that role. And the "young" Guardians seem to be respectfully attentive (Matthew says it's just because he's actually older than they are).

"If they can't take advantage of your patterns, then they'll try to get you to _come_ _to_ the trap. You've already started to see that: They do something you can't ignore—take out life support, start a fire, threaten to collapse a section on top of a bunch of kids—and they know you'll be coming. Best you can do then is not come the way they're expecting."

I watch their faces: They look so much older—at least in the eyes—than they did when they were just training. They aren't dealing well with what they've had to face since they took over the colony. The Shinkyo continue to prove willing to make almost any sacrifice for a chance at hitting the ETE, and they're blatantly exploiting their targets' respect for life.

Though so far immune to being killed in action, attrition in the teams has been high—almost a third of the original fifty have quit. Stations have had to combine forces until new recruits can be trained, and the replacements aren't keeping up with losses. Worse, the ETE leadership already seems to be losing the commitment they had when they formed their experimental commando force.

"There _have_ to be options," Red Team Leader—a wiry "kid" named Jaden Fox who reminds me a lot of Anton—blurts out his protest. Again, a few of them look back in my direction, only to get my nod toward Matthew, who takes a heavy breath and breaks out of his "instructor" posture.

"Bottom line is about what you're willing to do. I served a group of nations that claimed ideals almost as high as yours—at least in public—ideals our enemies were happy to exploit. Most choices we made ended ugly in one way or another. But—much to my personal surprise—it turned out that holding onto those ideals is what eventually started to turn the tide. In the meantime, you've got imperfect choices."

He flashes a graphic of the colony up over the table.

"You can turn your technology to try to harden your control over the site, but the fact is: Your opponents aren't much impressed with your magic toys and your death-proofing. Outcome: you invest a lot of time, resources and likely blood into securing the place, and they figure out a humiliating way to beat you within a week.

"Now don't give me that look like I'm just telling what _won't_ work," he snaps before anyone can comment. "I know you've been thinking about this, so I'm trying to save you the grief. Better options... Well, if it were me—and it isn't—I'd consider two plays..."

He waves his stylus around the floating map, creating a rough perimeter. Then he rotates the graphic so everyone can get a good 3D view.

"I'll call the first one the 'Palestinian Option.' Pull out, cut the site off. Make sure the residents have basic needs, and let them be. Just keep control of what goes in or out, and keep enough of an eye on them to make sure they aren't doing anything really nasty in there, like making nukes—leave 'em with an agreement. If they break the rules, repeat what you did Day One: Sweep in big and disarm. Bad things will still happen, but it will cost you—and them—less in the long run. Also, you don't look like the bully quite as much: you did your thing for all the right reasons and then tried to walk away."

He gives them a few breaths to digest the idea. I think I see gears turning behind the Team Leaders' eyes.

"Option Two is the UNACT play," he continues. "Use your superhero tech and take the fight to these bastards. Hunt down their leadership, smack them down before they can get a good hit rolling at you. The sweet part is you can play your advantages to best effect, and maybe feel like you're accomplishing something in the process. You _will_ look like the Big Bad for it, but the long run and good ideals will play in your favor. Now one extra thing you've got going that we didn't: the Shinkyo population is _limited_ , both in numbers and potential real estate. That means you have a better chance at management than we had dealing with the entire map and population of Planet Earth.

"Now for your part: I really, _really_ don't understand you tech. That means you need to figure out how to play with what you've got. If you think you can make an old man who never was good with the science as a young man understand what you can do with what you can do, then I'm game to put my inflated opinion into the pool.

"Was this at all helpful?"

Paul seems lost in thought. I see Simon grin just a bit, and Rhiannon and Jaden exchange glances and nod very slightly. The response from the other team leaders is mixed.

"We should break to consult with our home Stations," Rhiannon suggests. "Thank you, Colonel Burke."

"Well, that sucked," Matthew sighs after the room empties.

"I think you did better than you think you did, given the audience," I try.

"This reminds me of that time you took me to that Tibetan Monk thing, with the cool sand painting they spent a week making grain-by-grain only to blow it away at the end just to show the impermanence of shit," he grouses. "A bunch of guys in weird outfits with that bullshit serenity on their faces that screams aloof and naïve. You seem to make some kind of connection with them, but I can't defeat the urge to slap some reality into their hippie-dippy world view. They're getting their asses kicked like a bunch of green academy lieutenants, and they're looking at me like _I'm_ the idiot."

"I seem to remember you being the one with the better people skills between the two of us," I jab him.

"You've mellowed with age. I've gotten cranky. You have any of that bourbon left?"

We don't hear back from the team leaders after lunch—they've gone outside to sit in the dust under the pink sky and do their silent-conference routine.

I'm overdue for a wound-check, so I limp down to B-Deck Medical. My sword wounds are still a little tender, especially the chop I took to just above my hip joint, which goes the furthest to limit my mobility. I look like a tiger attacked me from the shoulders down.

"Colonel..."

It's Ryder who greets me when I step through the hatch. She seems a bit shaken by my arrival, but otherwise looks only a little drawn from her exposure. The multiple little cuts she got to her face from the blast have healed to deep red-brown blemishes. She smiles at me sheepishly, has trouble meeting my eyes.

"You're looking better than I am," I tell her, stripping off my jacket and showing her my arms. She automatically gloves up and goes about the exam without a word.

"I'm going to need you to drop your pants, sir," she orders flatly when she's done with my arms, though there's a tremor in her voice. "Any pain or difficulty with range of motion?"

"I've had worse," I deflect, taking my pants down to mid-thigh and turning my right hip toward her, "just not as ugly. Everything works as good as can be expected for an old fart who's been through a shredder. Doc Halley did good work."

The hip wound is the only one that's still wrapped, so she has to replace the bandage. The sutures have already dissolved, leaving a line of fresh red scar that curves almost eight inches around the side of me. A few more inches to the rear and I've have to admit that one of the bastards got me in the ass.

"Did you expect to be treating sword-wounds in the Twenty-Second Century?" I try joking again as she gets a new dressing in place. She steps back and sits down, hanging her head like a child that's done something awful.

"We've all been on the edge of losing it since we woke up to this," I try validating. "You've got more reason than most. At least _you_ didn't get yourself into a swordfight with a bunch of ninjas."

It makes her laugh a little, but she's starting to tear up.

"Colonel, please..." she finally gets out, "we only have three physicians for over a thousand personnel, and no backup facilities for the foreseeable future. What it comes down to... I had no right. You can't afford to be short your only surgeon. And this isn't honoring my husband's name. I know that."

"Jim was a good leader," I offer. "That's saying something coming from me—just ask Matthew or Rick. And bottom line: if that Shinkyo fighter was carrying a functioning nuke, running for the tube wouldn't have made any difference."

"You know, I haven't been back up there since it happened," she admits, her voice still small.

"Tru's done a good job of patching the structure back together, and the ETE coughed up seedlings for a lot of new species. Abbas even sent us a handful of strong backs—including a good welder who's been sharing tips with Morales. You should go up and get some sun and see what they've done with the place."

She nods, forcing a smile.

"So, how do I look?" I put her back on topic.

"Better if I'd been in any shape to do the sewing," she confesses, though the bitterness is starting to ease.

"Then you get to stitch me up next time."

"If there's a next time, I just may let you bleed a while," she warns, shaking her head. I get my pants back together and thank her for the new wrapping. But then I stop at the hatch and add:

"Listen. I know we've been avoiding this, especially since we don't really know... But maybe it's time we did a little memorial for everyone we can't account for since the bombardment."

She takes a shuddering breath in to let me know she's still not quite done crying, and gives me a little nod.

"I think that's a fine idea, Colonel."

By dinner, the ETE haven't broken their circle. I put together a light meal of warmed Nomad-style bread and some of the vegetables we got from the ETE, and sit with Matthew, Lisa, Anton and Rick to speculate on what the ETE might choose to do from here. Anton lets me know where his team's at with the transmitter project, and tells me that Morales thinks she can have one of the derelict AAVs flying enough to make a mobile command post for the trip into Candor.

Afterwards, I push myself back into my Spin-Time regimen, enduring the full fifteen (which I haven't managed since I left for my advising stint with the ETE). And, not satisfied with that abuse, limp back to my quarters to fetch Sakina and my "present."

I take her down to the D-Deck gym. Sakina plants herself cross-legged out of the way, and watches passively while I re-acquaint my muscles with a real katana. I try not to count how many decades it's been since I last made this a serious part of my life. I didn't even think about trying to take my own swords on the shuttle, despite anticipating never returning to Earth. I suppose it says something that I made room for three liters of small-batch bourbon instead.

I still remember select fragments of the choreographed training drills that once were reflex. Many of the moves and combinations come back readily enough, muscle memory making up for what my conscious mind has trouble dredging up.

My forearms and shoulders start to ache in short order—the low gravity makes little difference because the quick, sharp cuts are about inertia more than weight. I remember an old warning that I more readily disregarded in my youth: If you haven't been keeping up your training, your mind may still remember moves that your body can't manage anymore, and that's how you get hurt. So I slow down, try to keep to the basics, focus like a beginner, reacquaint myself with the discipline of patience.

It isn't long before I've got more audience than I'd expected.

"So that's the little toy you picked up during your misadventure at the Shinkyo Colony," I recognize Tru's voice before I turn around to see her limping in. The small selection of junior officers and enlisted personnel who'd wandered in have all settled around the edges of the gym to watch quietly (though they give Sakina a wide berth). Tru seems to be the only one brave enough to walk out onto the floor where the crazy old man is swinging a three-foot razor.

"Still don't know what it means," I tell her, stopping my drill (and feeling more than just a bit thankful for the excuse to take a break). I heft the blade as casually as I can. "Might as well get some exercise out of it."

"Or another shot at youth?" she jibes, perhaps reading me more accurately than I'd like.

"I've been meaning to catch you up on the ETE situation," I change the subject, smoothly sheathing the blade and trying not to sound as winded as I am. "They're digesting their options against the Shinkyo insurgency. I thought you might be able to give them some insight."

"You'd do better," she counters, sounding like she's bristling more than a little bit at the suggestion. "My Ecos never devalued life, contrary to what your bosses tried to feed the media. These Shinkyo seem even happier than your old-school Muslim Extremists to throw away lives on both sides. I can't even begin to wrap my head around monsters like that—never could—and I'd rather not try."

"I know," I soothe. "Not asking you to. But hope says not all the colonists are suicidal killers. The ETE don't know how to manage the colony and secure it at the same time. You were the one I thought about to give them best advice on not totally 'raqing the situation."

"What didn't 'raq the situation during the Mariner and Industry insurgencies was _you_ ," she puts it back on me, but her eyes drop to the floor and she gives me a soft but lopsided smile. "You reached out instead of busting in guns-blazing."

"That took both sides," I remind her.

"You think that's possible here?" she criticizes, getting edgy again.

"I don't really know the Shinkyo," I tell her, "but I know the ETE well enough to know they don't reach out graciously."

She grins at that, shakes her head.

"I admit I've been thinking lots of bad thoughts about this amateur occupation they've got on their hands," she allows. "You think the ETE will take diplomacy lessons from an old hippie relic?"

"I've spent weeks living with them. Believe me: They're still hippies at heart, once you strip away the insufferable smugness."

"Are you sure you don't just want me in just to give your 'Power Ranger' pals some credibility when we let Earthside know what they've been up to?"

"Credibility or a conscience," I toss back. "I don't have much to offer in that second category. You do."

She stews on it for a moment, then throws a bad joke: "As long as it doesn't require a threesome with your jailbait bed-warmer." She darts a hard glance at Sakina again, who's watching Tru like she's a bug.

"You know that's not what we're doing," I try correcting. Tru shakes her head and gives me a lopsided grin, then leans in close to tell me:

"You really are useless at figuring out when a woman wants to fuck you."

"It keeps me out of trouble," I deflect, hoping I'm not visibly blushing.

Rios shows up just then, providing a welcome excuse to end the subject. He's got a pair of Shinkyo swords and a bundle of batons made out of conduit under his arm.

"Mind if I join you, sir?"

"Please do, Lieutenant."

He turns and sets his bundles down near where Sakina is sitting.

"You know where I sleep if you ever decide to stop playing dumb," Tru tells me quietly. "Just come alone."

She turns and limps away.

Rios has some skill at Escrima, and employs the Shinkyo short swords to good effect with a blade in each hand. After he warms up (or shows off), I offer to fence with him, and we switch to the batons he brought. He's quicker and stronger, but once I get his basic style I figure out ways to get around him, and I think he's surprised. After a few rounds I let him know I'm getting a little winded (blaming it on my recent injuries), and suggest he spar with Sakina.

Sakina is reasonably ginger with him, keeping it slow and fairly passive, and they show each other a few smart combinations—Rios winds up playing "student" a lot more than Sakina does, but she seems mildly amused to find the young Lieutenant has several moves worth learning. Soon, the pace is speeding up, with Sakina keeping him just matched all the while. She makes no serious attempt to defeat him.

I watch them form a kind of bond as they go at it, and I hope it helps ease Rios' wariness of her—he's never seemed comfortable with her presence, no matter how much she seems to look after me (probably still freshly remembering those multiple trouncings she gave him and his teams).

"I should send you on a turn at drilling the Guardian teams," I tell him as they take a break. He's sweating and panting where Sakina is barely breathing heavily.

"He is a worthy fighter," Sakina admits easily. "And he was holding back when he fought against you."

"I expect a better accounting next time, Lieutenant," I let him know.

"You'll get it, sir."

23 October, 2115:

The ETE have apparently come up with an interesting and unexpected solution to their Shinkyo problems.

First came the confirmation that they do indeed possess their own working aircraft: Five transports "converted" from the civilian model AAVs that were in use by the Stations before the bombardment, kept in storage all these decades because the ETE preferred to travel lower-profile.

The Council's official word (at least from Mark Stilson) is that they want to avoid putting us in any more unnecessary danger, especially given the high risks that the Shinkyo have presented, so they decided to invest in making their small air fleet viable (meaning compatible with their current level of technology).

The final products are impressive if disturbing: The ETE transports have been refitted with less concern for armor, allowing more plexi viewports and domes for visibility, and the quad lift engines have been replaced with field generators similar to Spheres. Each ship maintains a backup hydrox engine, but the craft glide and hover almost silently without particulate thrust. The craft also lack visible weaponry, either an attempt to convince others (or perhaps themselves) that their intentions are benign, but Paul vaguely admits to the installation of "defensive systems."

Despite their repeatedly-voiced concern for our safety, the Council invites us to fly out with them in the Lancer to observe their "operation." I invite Tru to join us this time, my effort to prove to her why I need her "conscience" here.

The last time I was here in person, I was in far too deep a state of shock to appreciate the scale of the Shinkyo's attempt at nuclear defense. The landscape is almost geometrically reshaped by an arrangement of three fresh and almost colony-sized craters, staggered and overlapping, almost entirely obliterating the original fake one. (The devices had been ejected from below ground to airburst, thereby giving the best spread of effect for their yield and reducing the subsurface shock that would have crushed the colony.)

The ETE position three of their craft in low hover, in a spread a half-klick east of the buried colony, and—without actually touching down—they each lower something that looks like an artillery weapon out of their bays. Anton is particularly mesmerized by the design: sleek, clean, more like sculptures than guns—in fact they appear to have no actual barrels, just a stacking of geometry, the liquid-metal nanotech common to all ETE tools swimming through their core workings.

"We have already warned the Shinkyo to stay inside," Paul tells me. "But we will keep close scans just in case any purposely ignore us. We chose to plant our equipment at this distance to minimize any impulsive resistance attempts. And we hope to have come and gone before they realize the extent of what we are doing. Please assure Colonel Burke that my people have valued his instruction."

"What...?" Tru barely gets out before we see it begin. I heard no coordinating communication, no order given, but the ETE "cannons" begin to hum, and I feel a vibration through the ship, through my uniform, through my flesh. I feel warm and light. Then it looks like a storm has come outside.

The landscape blows in a wind, and huge dust clouds billow up over the colony site. It gets more and more intense, until I realize what I'm looking at: Not a wind, but some kind of force against the blasted soil, coming from the ETE devices. It looks like someone's using giant blowers against the hill that covers the colony, and the dirt and rock is being scooped away, pushed away, blown away (though there's no sound of wind except the rattle and crackle of moving regolith).

"Holy crap..." I hear Anton mutter. I feel Sakina coil in her own skin next to me. Tru is just shaking her head in dazed shock, eyes wide.

"Am I seeing what you're seeing?" Matthew asks over my Link.

"No sir," Smith discreetly answers him. "You _really_ need to be here."

All we can do is watch as the colony structures begin to be revealed as the land that covered them is smoothly stripped away. A great dune of moved sand and rock grows a few hundred yards west of the colony, pushed against the very foothills that the retreating Shinobi disappeared into.

"A calculated benefit," Paul points out the new hillside. "If they have secret tunnels in those slopes, it will take them time to dig them out. And the way we are smoothing the landscape will make any new tunnel opening much easier to detect."

The clock says the entire action takes just less than twelve minutes. The colony now sits in a variation of what it looked like before it was buried, only stripped to foundation level and built downward: It had been three domes like flower petals around a central complex crowned with a spire-like tower, the "flower pot" being a cluster of rectangular fabs. The domes and tower are gone, but the basic shapes remain—it looks like the entire colony has simply been inverted into the ground like the reflection of a mountain in a lake. The only remaining indication of their decades under thousands of tons of Martian rock is the pervasive scuffing and pocking of the once-pristine white thermoplastic overcoat, stripped through in some places to reveal the anti-radiation layers of the habitat sections. The white has been unevenly dyed rusty by the iron in the soil.

The ETE ships retrieve their "artillery" and turn and glide noiselessly away for home.

"We should go, too," Paul suggests.

"Give them nothing to shoot back at," I agree, starting to understand the wisdom behind their strategy, however shocking.

"We have withdrawn our physical presence from the colony," he confirms. "Now we can monitor their activity from a distance, including what comes and goes from the colony. If we detect renewed threat, we will intervene before it can be realized. On an irregular schedule, we will 're-sweep' the surrounding terrain to check for tunneling, and perform scans to monitor for changes to the colony structure."

"And if they try to draw you in by sabotaging the colony infrastructure?" I test. Paul takes a moment to answer, but says with quiet resolve:

"We have connected them to our Feed Lines. We will continue to provide oxygen, water and hydrogen fuel. Beyond this, their survival is their own responsibility. They have thrived well enough for five decades. If they choose to obliterate themselves, or allow themselves to be exterminated for the profit of their leadership, then that is their own affair. Our responsibility is to the future of the planet. We can only hope that they will evolve themselves to be a productive part of that future."

What he's not saying is the other obvious part of their strategy: They've just demonstrated that they can literally move mountains. Even if the Shinkyo have bunkered in deep, the ETE can dig them out.

"Good speech," Tru finally says, her voice shaky. "Let's hope for your sake that Earth will see it your way."

"And how do you see it, Miss Greenlove?" Paul gives her back with unexpected arrogance. He doesn't sound anything like the man who defied his people—his own father—to help us.

She doesn't answer him.

He then lets us know he'll be returning to his Station—sounding very much like nothing unusual has happened here today—seals his mask and turns for the airlock.

"Paul..." I catch him away from the others as he's about to cycle the hatch. "Something I need to ask: I was concerned enough by what Earthside would make of fresh nukes going off here two weeks ago. What are they going to think when they see the Shinkyo Colony suddenly reappear on the surface in one piece?"

He only gives me a little bow of his helmeted head, then shuts the hatch and lets himself out. On the monitors, I see him use his Rods to propel himself skyward like a man shot from a cannon in an old circus.

"We'd been pushing them to send a message out to Earth for us," Anton tells me quietly, letting me know he was listening to what I asked Paul. "Maybe this is their way of doing it."

I keep staring at the newly unburied colony on the screens as Smith begins to pull away for home.

"How soon until you're ready to take your transmitter out to Candor?" I ask Anton.

### Chapter 5: The Pirate Code

14 November, 2115:

At first light, barely minutes after we launch Anton and his transmitter-building team in a pair of our most-functional ASVs, MAI flashes us the real-time of an attack on Melas Three.

Rockets come flying out of the desert to the west, roughly aiming at the launch pad where Morales and her crew are trying to get the newly refitted AAV off the deck for a test flight. Long-range optics pick out the familiar cloaks of Nomads, flutters of red-ochre camo against the rocky landscape like the rocks themselves are moving. The outer batteries fire back, selectively tearing up rock and sand, but by then—barely a few seconds delay to confirm targets and firing orders—there's no sign of cloaks or movement of any kind on our sentry systems. Either they dug in after the volley, or they're disciplined enough not to give away their positions even when they're getting cut to pieces.

The first two rockets fall just short of the pad, banging into the rammed-earth slopes that dampen the bunker sidewalls. Morales begrudgingly runs her team for cover below decks. A third rocket is better aimed. The AAV pilot—Lieutenant Jen Samuels, a trainee before the Big Bang—does probably the best thing she can do under the circumstances: she cranks the maneuvering jets and turns the big aircraft, its landing legs lifted only inches above the pad, and takes the hit on the starboard wing. The projectile blows away about a third of the sizeable delta wing, kicking the whole ship sideways and punching scrap metal through the empty utility carrier pod beneath it. But the scream of the engines sounds clean, and there's no potentially catastrophic hydrogen leak, only Samuels spitting a few choice obscenities because a chunk of shrapnel cracked her cockpit plexi.

"Can you get air?" I hear Lisa—who's moved over to Melas Three to serve as base commander—coaching her on the Link. Samuels answers by burning up off the pad, then performs an evasive jag to avoid another rocket. Her broken wing collapses and hangs off the side of the ship, dragging on the deck. A sequence of short bangs kicks both wings off the ship as she blows the pivot assembly explosive bolts, and the ship shoots higher (but less gracefully) without the extra weight. Bullets are pinging off the hull. "Get some distance, Lieutenant," Lisa orders, but then I hear Matthew cut in before Samuels can confirm.

"You got belts in your turrets, Lieutenant?"

"Minimal load only in Nose A and B, sir," she tells him, "and I don't think MAI's got targeting tuned."

"Then fly, Lieutenant," Lisa repeats. "We'll make you enough room for a Gopher-Hole landing as soon as we can give you some cover."

"She's got a lot of wobble, Colonel," Morales puts in. "Not advised."

"I'm also not keen on opening a drop bay with the red-sheets so close," Matthew counters. "Last thing we need is something hot lobbed into our innards."

"Can you pop a few Pinballs over their heads?" I chime in to ask Lisa, feeling like I've just done what Matthew did: trod over her authority. Even though this is her first base command, she's as competent as any of us.

"Kinda mild response, given the sitrep," Matthew criticizes face-to-face as I get myself into Ops.

"Best spread without a good target," I remind him. "And it'll hurt."

Lisa's already taken my advice and launched a pair of the anti-surface warfare weapons over the heads of the Nomads' firing position. Pinballs airburst over a potential enemy entrenchment, spraying tens of thousands of flechettes capable of piercing light body armor. The idea during the Eco War was to pop pressure suits and discourage anyone on the ground from continuing the fight. But since there's no longer a risk of suffocation, I'm hoping to just wound, and to give Samuels an opening.

"Bay Two, Samuels," Lisa orders. "Gopher!"

The Gopher was developed to get a damaged ship down, assuming it was under fire by pursuing Discs, and was a signature of the Melas Three airbase. The elevator pad on Bay Two drops fast down to hangar level, making a hole in the bunker. The incoming ship flies over, brakes hard and drops as quickly as it can, then the blast doors seal up over it. But it does leave the hangar vulnerable for several seconds. Hopefully the Nomads are too busy bleeding to take advantage.

Samuels looks like she's fighting the controls as she brings the ship over the open bay. But before she can line up, MAI's blowing alarms because another rocket is heading for her.

"Drop hard!" Lisa shouts. The rockets blows the tail off the ship before Samuels can react. The ship lurches and the nose catches the edge of the bay as she tries to keep stable. I hear her curse again. Then she cuts the engines back a little too hard and the broken AAV slams down hard into the deck, crumpling the landing gear. I can see pressurized gas bleed out near the rear engine assembly.

"It's okay!" Morales confirms, sounding more than irritated. "It's just O2. No mix." MAI gets the blast doors shut and cranks up the exhaust fans. Samuels pops her emergency hatch and scrambles out, looking mostly intact on the sentry monitors.

Lisa sends another Pinball. No sense wasting our own rockets—the Nomads are smart enough to avoid giving us a target.

Sakina immediately volunteers to deal with the situation, but I insist she remain at Melas Two with me. Her review of the video feed confirms that the attack was most likely by Farouk's band. A call to Abbas confirms that they've got a new leader: Farouk's nephew Mohamed, young and eager to make his name, and by all reports smarter than his late uncle.

We keep close scans of the valley all day. I agree with Lisa's unwillingness to risk sending troops to flush out the Nomads. They haven't moved since the attack, likely unwilling to show themselves no matter how badly they're hurt.

Nightfall confirms this theory, as motion sensors and night-vision show cloaks slinking away in the dark and cold. In the morning, a flyover finds three bodies. We make a show of giving them a quick burial in the gravelly soil close to where they fell.

Morales needs two new wings, one tail assembly and some cockpit polycarb to fix the AAV, some of which she can scavenge from the other wrecks, the rest she can patch together. Spare landing gear parts are still plentiful in stores. Samuels was offered another ship, but seems content with being grounded for awhile.

But with all the excitement, we weren't paying as much attention as we should have to Anton's mission.

15 November, 2115:

Day one was mostly uneventful.

The two ships took a course close to the Melas Northeast Rim, keeping them at least fifty miles away from the PK colonies of Industry, Pioneer and Frontier. It passes them under the nose of the ETE Blue Station, but it also passes them close to the original site of the Zodanga Colony, and that remains an unknown quantity—something Matthew reminded me of when he criticized the restraint I'd shown to the Nomads who fired on Melas Three.

"I see this going one of two ways, Mikey: We fail to contact Earth this cycle and we're on our own, maybe two more years, maybe more years than we've got. Or we _do_ contact Earth, and it's at least two years until we see actual relief, _assuming_ they're not too scared of us to send it."

"Which is why I'm not risking an escalation we can't afford," I reminded him pointlessly.

"I know. But we haven't managed to secure our own sectors of this big ditch, much less gotten out into Coprates for a look around. My point is: If Earthside Command is anything at all like they were, I fully expect they'll want to know what they're coming back to, so our first orders will be to survey and secure, no matter how lean we are. And if we keep playing the besieged, we're going to run out of bullets."

We watched the trip out over the Link feed. The scenery alone has a lot of our personnel tapped into the video: Candor Chasma is rimmed in deep, long sculpted ranges that radiate like the ribs of a giant clam shell, carved either by mega-slides or the draining of ancient seas down into Melas, when the surface split as the planet went from having an Earth-like molten core to dead cold solid rock.

We get views of endless mountain ranges, damascened as the ancient layers of soil and rock lie exposed across their declines, and a valley floor of fractured crust that looks like the skin of some planet-sized reptile.

The sponsors behind Frontier Colony specifically built here to explore this geological wonderland, and Zodanga established itself on the junction between Melas and Candor—the east side of the Candor Gap—in hopes of supplying the craft and fuel to explore both environs. But since Candor isn't as deep or conveniently sheer-walled as the central rift valleys, the ETE engineers excluded it from their "Marineris Phase" despite its proximity to Melas. So Candor has no atmosphere net. The electrostatic force field ends beyond the relatively narrow Gap, just past the parallel mountain ranges to the west where Pioneer Colony sits.

And our biggest surprise that day: The net is closed.

We lost contact with Anton's flight as soon as they passed beyond the net, just at the point that the junction opened out into the vast expanse of Candor. The ETE had failed to warn us about this: the net descends close to the valley floor here to keep the air and moisture in, like staking a tarp down over precious cargo, an ionic dam across the fifty-mile-wide Gap.

Thankfully Anton had considered this possibility, and came prepared to establish a strong Link through the net's interference by planting a pair of relay transmitters right on either side of the threshold.

Surveys and tests to determine the ideal location for the Melas-side relay took most of the afternoon. Sinking and tuning it took another two hours, with an audibly nervous Sergeant Horst maintaining a vigilant perimeter since the site lay within a hundred klicks of both Pioneer and Frontier. Thankfully, there was no outward sign that either PK stronghold took any notice of us, though I have little doubt they would at least be keeping an eye on our activities.

Once the signal was stable, they packed up and flew just beyond the net to begin planting the Candor-side relay. The sun was already starting to set. The ASV transmitters came through snowy at best, so watching the mission became an exercise in frustration and sensory strain.

Anton managed to give us a running list of complaints about the working conditions beyond the net: Only a five percent atmosphere and sixty degrees colder, which meant heavy pressure suits for any work outside. (How quickly we've been spoiled...) More problematic: once settled, the ASVs would succumb to engine icing (a drawback of having steam as the exhaust product), and need long warm-up time before they could move again. With night falling, that committed them to a stay until morning, even if they got the second relay done faster than the first. And a quick job wasn't likely, between the difficulty working in heavy suits and what the extreme cold did to tools (even those supposedly designed to withstand original surface conditions).

If that wasn't enough, the cosmic radiation proved almost more of an annoyance than the thin air and the cold. It was the net (and not the density of the new atmosphere) that filtered the worst of what bombarded the surface from space. That meant even shorter working shifts on the surface, and increased interference with the Link even with the relays. Even if they planted another relay between the net boundary and the planned site for the main transmitter, the Link would still be fuzzy at best, and non-existent if anything happened to any of the relays.

Despite Anton's drive to see his project completed, they'd managed little more than surveyed a promising site for the Candor relay by nightfall. Horst's squad set up perimeter security, and they huddled inside for what promised to hit a hundred below zero. Until that point, they'd seen no sign of life anywhere along their course.

At 24:30 Melas Mean Time (just before "Martian Midnight" in a day that's twenty-four hours and thirty-seven minutes long), the Melas relay went down.

Morales discouraged me from taking out any more of her precious refits, warning me that they wouldn't manage well in the icy night. So Matthew begrudgingly stood by with an assembled relief force to wait for sunrise while I took the Lancer out to see what had happened, its bay crammed with a squad of Rios' H-A troopers, Smith at the controls and an all-too-eager Sakina along for the adventure. And I brought my sword.

The silence from the net boundary continued as we flew north, blind in the dark except for what radar told us was out there, making ghostly virtual landscapes on the Lancer's cockpit screens. But every now and then we would see the slightest shadow flash by on our periphery, barely enough to register, but definitely airborne.

"Something in the wind?" Matthew considered unconvincingly as he kept constant contact with us. "Dust storm?"

"Or stealth material," I agree with his fears. "But not fast like a Shinkyo fighter."

"Could be our legendary Air Pirates," Smith offers a little more cheerfully than I'd like. I look to Sakina.

"The Zodangans usually strike fast and in force, using small nimble flyers or dropping raiders on lines from larger airships. But I've only seen them prey on small camps or caravans without much means to strike back and no hope of outrunning them. I have heard no tales of them attacking a strong target, and they are quick to run if they meet significant resistance." The disdain in her voice is actually stronger than when she speaks of the Shinkyo.

"Should we divert and try to get a better look?" Smith asks.

"Negative," I focus. "And let's not shoot anything until we know what it is."

We found the relay—or at least where the relay had been—within an hour after it had gone silent. It had been ripped up out of its patch of ground, securing stakes and all.

"Nomads?" Matthew asks from base. "Or Pirates?"

"I don't see any footprints except ours," I tell him after we've lit up the site and taken a close scan. That says our thieves probably flew in and out. Taking advantage of an unguarded prize. I look at Sakina for some kind of confirmation, but all she does is narrow her eyes behind her mask. "Let's move on."

"Keep signaling," Lisa prompts. "We'll lose you once you cross the boundary, but the transmitter team should be close enough to pick you up."

It takes another five minutes of tense silence before we hear Sergeant Horst cut through the static, his voice urgent, almost breathless.

"This is Uplink One, Colonel... Glad you could make it to the party... Watch your sides coming in. You see a radar shadow, trust me: Shoot it."

"Sitrep?"

But we see it ourselves soon enough. One of the ASVs is on fire. The turrets of the other take the occasional burst into the darkness. Horst's squad has set up a defensive perimeter, watching all directions. The floodlights that would otherwise light the site have been pointed outwards.

"You're secure to land, Colonel," Horst reports, "but you'd make less of a target if you didn't. We'd lift our remaining ship, but we've got too much icing."

"Casualties?"

"Three wounded. Two will need Evac ASAP. Could have been worse. Might still be."

"Staley?"

Horst hesitates for a moment. "He'll live. Got cut up when we got jumped, but he's patched for transport. Tough kid, just a little slow when it comes to getting out of the way."

"What happened here?" I demand.

"Incoming!" Smith cuts me off as the Lancer's radar registers projectiles flying at the ship. I can hear the booming of something that sounds like cannon. Smith spins the turrets to return fire, but instead of an incoming rocket detonating, something solid slams the hull. External cameras show what looks like a massive wad of heavy chain bouncing off our starboard side.

"Watch that stuff," Horst warns, "It took Specialist Bailey's leg clean off, and I count him lucky."

"What is it?"

"What it looks like, sir: Scrap metal. Junk. Probably shot out of a homebrew cannon."

I look again to Sakina, but she just shakes her head, her eyes saying she's never encountered such a thing.

Smith is already taking evasive action, and launches flares. Against the darkness we can see what look like small gliders or autogiros flitting like moths. Our guns chew at them, but I'm not sure if we do any damage as they disappear as quickly as they come into view. They give almost no radar image, so it's hard to get a lock.

I see flashes in the distance from roughly back the way we came—back just inside the net—followed in seconds by more booming, and more random metal flies at us.

"Those light flyers can't have cannons like that," Smith assesses.

"They've got a mom," Horst confirms, "hiding back there in the dark. You can see it on IR when the cannons flash. It's _big_ , but I couldn't tell you what it is."

Smith takes the ship up and heads for the cannon flash, figuring the big guns to be our most pressing threat, and that, by climbing, their guns might not be able to manage the elevation to hit us without losing range. He's right for several seconds before we've closed in enough that he has to dodge another spray of scraps, but there was also no firing in the interval, which tells me it took time for them to adjust their guns, or they're just not used to shooting at anything that can move well.

"Keep dancing, Captain," I tell him. "I think they're aiming manually."

Then we're close enough for our flares to show us "mom": It looks like a dirigible, but it's got large fans flanking it, and masts of sails that hang beneath it (making it look like a capsized clipper ship) to move it with the wind. At least a hundred feet long, it gives back only a minimal radar shadow.

" _That_ I can hit," Smith offers happily.

"Hurt it, don't kill it," I order.

Our guns rip up the fabric sides of the dirigible body and rake what looks like the "gun deck" below it. I can see figures scrambling for cover. At least one body falls away into the night. By the time Smith banks and makes a return pass, the big ship seems to be slowly "sinking" and tries to turn away, heading back into Melas. Then our view gets masked as we collide with something in mid-air—one of the little flyers has either crashed into us or tried to ram us. The fragile craft comes apart on impact—it seems to consist of little more than fabric and frame and fan-like props, now shredded scrap that falls lazily away leaving us apparently none the worse for it. But then I realize the intent of the kamikaze action: I hear gunfire pinging our hull from above, and the rattle of something that sounds like a mining drill cutting into us. Smith confirms:

"The little bastards are crawling all over us!"

Another of the tiny craft collides with us as we turn, sacrificing itself to deposit more unwanted passengers on our hull.

"Prepare to repel boarders, sir?" Rios asks me, trying to keep decorum despite the insanity of the situation.

"I'm hoping that will be much funnier later, Lieutenant," I tell him.

"They will expect you to open a hatch to confront them," Sakina warns him.

"Point taken," Smith agrees. "Hold on to something." And then he sends the ship spinning, first one way, then back. The external eyes show two of the figures get shaken loose, but they appear to have secured themselves with lines attached to magnetic anchors. Two more cling fast despite Smith's best efforts.

"Head back for camp," I tell him.

The big "mother ship" is still moving away into the night, its guns silent for now. It appears to have recalled the rest of its light flyers, but our attached parasites are back at trying to crack our hull. I call into the Link: "Sergeant Horst, we have a few un-ticketed passengers on our back."

"I see 'em, Colonel." Through their feeds, I can watch their ICWs get locks on our "borders."

"Alive would be nice, Sergeant."

16 November, 2115:

"They dropped on us, literally out of the sky," Horst tells the tale, after we've made reasonably certain our attackers are still in retreat and our prisoners are secured. Horst had them forcibly stripped of their battered and weirdly painted pressure suits, searched with uncomfortable thoroughness for hidden weapons, bound wrist and ankle, then tossed in an inflatable portable shelter on the sand between our ships. If they try to escape, it will be a race to see if anoxia or embolism kills them first.

Their weapons and aging pressure suits are on display like trophies in the fire damaged bay of ASV 2. The suits are the lighter "Type 2" work models favored by colony construction engineers during the height of the Land Rush, only battered to the point I'm surprised they have any integrity at all. They've painted the suits and helmets with red and black and yellow in patterns that look more tribal than camouflage, but did not add any homemade armor as the Nomads do—it might add too much weight for their light flyers and dirigible ship to carry. Their weapons do resemble what the Nomads carry, though: a few well-used firearms, but otherwise handcrafted primitive weapons: knives, short swords, axes, throwing weapons, crossbows, and an assortment of grappling hooks on cables that look like they're designed as much for use on enemies as for climbing.

A Link monitor in the shelter lets me get a remote look at them: Our four "guests" are uniformly lean and wiry, and not particularly clean or well-groomed. Horst says their sour scent reminds him of the early colonial construction crews that had to live in their suits for weeks at a time. Their clothes under their pressure suits are mixed worn work wear, colony overalls and even bits of colony security uniforms. Their hair is either chopped short or matted into dreadlocks or artistic combinations of both. Their skin shows the telltale blotches and burns of too much chronic exposure to UV and low pressure, telling us that they do live or at least travel under the atmosphere net long enough to spend time unprotected in the open air. All four sport at least one significant wound scar, and two of them are missing parts of fingers.

They also flaunt a liberal assortment of facial piercings and tattoos (and the scars of infection when such modifications went septic). In the primitive hand-needled ink work I can see fanciful versions of several colony crests, though the most prominent on each of them is the "Screaming Eagle" crest of the Zodanga Colony on the backs of their necks.

And they do look very much like pirates.

Besides our four breathing prisoners, there are the bodies of six more, two of which Horst insists died by their own hands when they were too wounded to escape under their own power, their ruptured suits threatening a difficult death. On closer examination of their corpses, their musculature looks like it's mostly tendon, with long, skinny limbs that make their joints look swollen in comparison. They have the lack of body fat that makes the elderly look like they're paper-thin skin over bone. I'm reminded of photo records of concentration camp victims or chronically starved POWs, but this lot is strong and agile and quick—Horst and his men had a time subduing them and finally had to resort to bleeding enough air from their suits to make them pass out.

"Doctor Staley was too eager to get done, so he kept trying to work out in the cold with a few men at a time in short rotations," Horst continues. "I think this lot had been watching us for awhile, then took their opportunity when we opened the doors to change shifts. I'm surprised they didn't break their necks or crack their suits—they must have jumped from those light flyer things, and you saw how those things flit around like bats.

"Still, I don't think they were quite prepared for what they got. They counted on surprise and tried to rush us with numbers, hot to get inside the ASVs. Those that made it went straight for the cockpits, like they were trying to steal the ships out from under us while the rest of them kept us busy, tried to force us outside. They were like wild animals, Colonel—not like the ninjas. It was like being in the monkey habitat at a zoo, only the monkeys had crossbows and tomahawks. Mr. Staley got cut in the first rush, and I had to take two of my men out of the fight for cracked faceplates and another for a torn seal. The skinny little bastards jump around like bugs, leapfrogged right over our heads to get behind us, made it so it was hard to shoot without hitting our own or our ships. And they knew where they were going. They even had breakers to open the hatches with. We're just lucky they weren't smart enough to realize there was no way they could hijack an AI-driven UNMAC ship. That's when one of them set off a firebomb in Number Two—maybe they figured if they couldn't steal our wings, we shouldn't get to keep them either.

"Mission 'raqed, they tried running for it, which gave us a better field of fire. But that's when they started in with their big guns, hitting us from distance while those little flyers swooped back and scooped them up on their grappling lines. We spun up our turrets to shoot back at the big blimp thing, but by then we also had a good dozen of those flyers swarming us, trying to cripple our turrets and pop our tanks with small-arms fire."

The damage to ASV 2 is mostly in the bay, but ASV 1 has a punctured hydrogen tank on the port rear quarter, and two of its turrets are damaged. But despite a few serious dents in their wings from the "mothership's" cannon, both craft should still fly enough to limp home. Morales won't be cheerful.

The sun is coming up over the Candor mountains. The sky is clear in all directions—no sign of flying pirates or sailing dirigibles.

And I'm thinking the pirates may have broken their usual pattern—got much bolder that Sakina's description—because we left such tempting prizes sitting relatively unguarded in their hunting grounds. Hopefully we've proved ourselves adequately discouraging. But I'm not counting on it.

"Get the ice off. We need to evac the wounded," I tell Horst. "Take ASV Two. Call Colonel Burke once you get back inside the net—he's waiting to send relief. Give him the sitrep and tell him I want two more good ships, loaded for a fight."

"You going to try to hold this ground, sir?"

"We need to make the call home. That means we need this relay."

I cycle into ASV 1's bay, and talk with Anton while they start moving him and the other wounded to ASV 2. He's groggy from the pain meds they shot into him when they packed his wounds: he's got bloody pressure bandages over his chest, and his pressure suit has been sliced through just over his heart. Horsts' squad medic Jakovenko assures me he just got cut enough to rake his ribs, charged by a pirate with a short sword who kept running right over the top of him. The two techs working with Anton got him inside as soon as Horst had ASV 1 re-secured, thankfully before the depressurization did him much damage. He didn't even really start bleeding until he warmed up.

"I know how you feel," I try being comforting. He looks pale.

"...guess I was jealous, Colonel...you have all the sexy scars..." he mutters without opening his eyes. I lay a hand on his shoulder. "...want to stay...finish..."

"Give Rick a turn. He needs to get out more. You'll be back before we dial home. The part before that's pretty dull, anyway."

"...better be..." He at least does his best to give me a smile.

I watch them carry Bailey to the airlock. He's still in his H-A, tourniquet module stuck where his right leg ends at the knee to keep him from bleeding out and keeping him pressurized. I can't see whether he's awake with his helmet on, but he doesn't move as they lift him through the hatch. There's drying blood smeared all over the deck of the ASV bay.

Our other casualty—and possibly the most critical—is Lieutenant Hanson, the pilot of ASV 2, who got knifed in the gut and upper right chest when the pirates broke into his cockpit. He's sealed in a field trauma pod, his lung re-inflated and his bleeding under control, but he's going to need a lot of Doc Ryder's attention.

"Heal up fast," I tell Anton as he gets sealed in his own trauma pod for the trip. "Then remind me to schedule you some quality time with Zauba'a—she'll teach you how to dodge a blade."

He looks worried (at least he can worry about something else) but gives me another weak smile through the clear acrylic viewport.

Outside, I watch ASV 2 lift off and fly south through the pass without incident.

Smith is up on the Lancer hull, surveying the damage now that the light is coming back.

"'Raqed the sweet paint job," he complains over his suit Link. "No breaches, but I wouldn't risk taking this thing into space. Or even run it out here very much longer. Worst is that I don't think Sergeant Morales can fix it properly. It's all nano-shit. Maybe the ETE might be able to homebrew some kind of patching, assuming they care to."

I can see the denting and gouging in the once pristine black hull: big concaved and pocked patches from the cannon rounds, and smaller tears from our "boarders" attempts to cut in.

Given where I'm headed next, I have to take the time to breathe in the confines of my helmet, to remind myself that the Lancer is an unexpected asset, that we could well be doing without it entirely, and that I've been expecting it to have taken worse by now. But the damage is one more insult from this planet, added to the real injury of three more of my people.

My shadow is long on the red sand and gravel: a man in a space suit, wearing a gun and a sword.

Rios stands with me as I cycle into the shelter we're using as a brig. He keeps his helmet on, but I want them to see my face, no matter Horst's warning about the stink. It's as bad as he said, and it reminds me that all humans are still animals, still human.

Our unwilling guests glare up at me from their bonds, baring their rotting teeth, trying to look fierce. I'm struck with the overwhelming urge to kick those teeth out.

"If you are from Zodanga, I assume you still speak something like English," I tell them without introduction. "I don't expect you to tell me anything. I don't care if you say a single word. But I expect you will listen, because you and your people will benefit from what I say."

They maintain their theatrical glares and snarls, but I can see them calculating their options behind their eyes. They are paying attention.

"I assume your base is still somewhere on the Northeast Rim. If so, you can see across the Melas valley. You saw the clouds of the nuclear blasts to the south and southwest. You also recognized what we are, because you tried to use lockbreakers preset to old UNMAC codes."

I give them several seconds to digest. They maintain remarkable discipline. Or rage.

"I want one of you to volunteer to be released," I get to the point. "We will give you your suit, fill your tanks and let you go free. I only ask that you tell your leaders I must speak with them. If they refuse, tell them to expect more bombs."

I cycle out and give them privacy to think my offer over. I watch them on the Link: they keep whatever conversation between them too quiet for even the amplified microphones. But within ten minutes, they let us know they can speak something like English.

"Look east sunrise," their volunteer—a copper-dreadlocked coiled-spring with metal teeth, construction rivets in his earlobes and a variation of the Zodanga phoenix tattooed on his forehead—instructs us through his close-range helmet mike before we let him go, jabbing a gloved finger toward the cliffs of the Melas Northeast Rim. "Ya'll see deh Dutch comin'. If ya see men on deh sand, come meet in good faith. If ya don', ya bes' fly 'way home, 'Maker. Zodanga is deh sky."

We hopped him back under the atmosphere net before letting him walk, hoping to increase his chances of getting where he needs to go. It also gives us a clear Link back to base while we wait for a replacement relay.

The pirate shuffles off slowly at first, looking over his shoulder repeatedly like he fully expects us to shoot him in the back. Once he gets about fifty yards away, he turns to face us, then repeats in a defiant shout: " _Zodanga is deh sky!_ " Then he starts to run in an almost simian scurry, leaving a trail of dust to follow after him.

"And how will this _not_ be a trap?" Matthew criticizes over my Link.

I idly kick at the bare, flattened spot where our relay had been.

"One way or another," I tell him icily, "I will be sending these people a message."

17 November, 2115:

Look east sunrise...

We keep the Lancer set down at the missing relay site. Rick sent us out a replacement unit by late yesterday afternoon, but we have yet to anchor it.

Matthew's been making a show of sending ASVs back and forth to the relay site outside the net, first to change out the ships damaged in the attack, then to get me what I've asked for.

He also passed word that both Anton and Bailey will be okay, but that Hanson is still listed as "critical" after surgery while Doc Ryder tries to use the rebuilders we have to stimulate healing his lung. He'll also be short a few loops of small intestine in the deal.

Morales has ASV 1 patched and ready to fly again by nightfall, while ASV 2 really only needed a new bay module. I told her to leave the wings battered for the time being and send the ships back in the rotation—I want our attackers to see that they've done no real harm to our air power.

I sit with Smith, Rios and Sakina in the Lancer's cockpit and watch the screens as the distant sun breaks over the Melas rim, sipping the "tea" Tru has been lovingly cultivating in our rebuilt and expanded greenhouse. Breakfast was a tasty if dense bread made from our first successful crop of "Graingrass", and meaty "Red Olives". I'm beginning to feel like I live here, enjoying the sunrise and real native food. I wonder if that's a bad thing, because I won't be able to maintain my objectivity for what I expect is coming.

You'll see the Dutch coming...

"Visual," Smith tells me even though I've already seen it: the cigar-like hull of the sailed zeppelin that attacked us (or one just like it), a silhouette rising just enough above the cliff-line to be seen. I wonder how the ETE could be unaware of something that big flying around—maybe they are just too isolationist to have seen one, despite the proximity to their Blue Station. However, radar shows only what may be no more than a dust cloud—they must be using stealth materials, which suggests advanced manufacturing resources, maybe kept running since the Apocalypse. I have to estimate its range at a dozen miles.

If you see men on the sand, come meet in good faith...

Long range optics get me the best view I can hope for: I can see rappelling lines hanging down from the "Dutch," and a small group of figures taking up a position on a hilltop well out into the Gap.

"Spin her up," I tell Smith. "Time to chat."

The hilltop chosen for our meeting is like a long bar of a dune. Footing is poor at best on the loose but coarse sand. I suspect our "hosts" wanted this on purpose to give their light frames an advantage over our relative bulk.

The "Dutch" has quietly sailed off about a half-klick to watch from a reassuring but still intimidating distance, its sails furled and its fans running slow, probably just enough to maintain position in the morning winds. I wonder what the ranges of its guns are.

Sakina, Rios and I debark with our remaining three prisoners and send the Lancer gliding gracefully away. It makes a long, low circle around the floor of the pass, Smith showing off the graceful way the ship can move, before setting down about a half-klick behind us.

Our hosts are waiting: four figures standing on the crest. Two wear the same brightly painted working suits worn by those that attacked us beyond the net, only these wear masks and cowls like the Nomads instead of helmets, and their masks are adorned with strings of bone beads that very well might have once been human fingers. The other two are dressed in a mix of scavenged gear. The female of this pair sports select pieces of UNMAC H-A plate: chest and thighs and shoulders, all marked up with Zodangan graffiti. She has part of another thigh plate cut into a cover for her mask, and wears the heavy goggles favored by construction techs. Her long, dark matted hair is full of bone-beads. Her male counterpart wears a UNMAC LA jacket over colony security blacks, his hands in heavy surface gloves like gauntlets. His hair is even longer than hers, a tangle of dirty blonde dreads. He wears a plain mask and light goggles. All four wear swords that look like someone took time and pride in making them, but I don't see any firearms.

We prod our bound captives toward their fellows. Their reunion looks tense but wordless, and then the prisoners are sent jogging in the general direction of their ship—I note how their comrades don't bother to untie their hands.

In good faith, I draw my pistol and perform the Nomad truce ritual, placing it down on a rock between our groups. Rios does the same with this ICW. Then I remove my mask long enough for them to see my face. They don't show the same recognition that the Nomads did.

"Ya don' impress like yeh think, 'Maker," the blonde throws back at me with much more pride in his tone than the one we set free to summon him. "Not plus wi' threat o' nukes."

"Zodanga is the sky," I give him a calmer reading of his comrade's mantra. I see his face twist up just short of laughter under his mask.

"Ya say like yeh know, 'Maker. Ya _will_ know, if ya try us. An' yeh bombs only burn sand-bugs, while we fly free." He makes a nod in Sakina's direction when he says "sand bugs."

"The bombs you saw were not ours," I tell him. "You know of the Shinkyo?"

"Darty li'l slants," he confirms that racism is not a dead tradition. "Play scary but run n' hide from a hot fight," he insults haughtily.

"The bombs were theirs. They used them to attack the ETE—the Eternals, the Jinn, whatever you know them as—to try to steal their technology."

The blonde begins to laugh heartily and is soon joined by his fellows. I'm beginning to think they've been raised watching old pirate movies.

"I speak the truth," I assure him. "We have video records if you doubt me."

"I _do_ believe," the blonde gives me back as he catches his breath. "I know 'em good enough: Da slants'd slice off deh own heads just ta bleed in yeh eye."

"Those bombs weren't sent from Earth, from UNMAC," I reiterate. "But Earth will very likely send more—a lot more—if you interfere with us."

"Ya'd not be standin' 'ere if Apoc'lypse was comin' again," he challenges.

"You've mistaken us," I correct him. "We did not just come from Earth. We've been asleep under the sand since the Apocalypse. Earth doesn't know we're here, they think we all died in the bombing. But thanks to the Shinkyo lighting up the surface, they've likely seen things that will frighten them. And if they're frightened enough to send bombs, they'll be sure to send more this time than they did in the Apocalypse. Many times more. Unless we can contact them first."

"An' tell 'em best where ta aim?" he criticizes.

"Earth believed everyone here was dead, that a plague had taken the planet. We have to tell them they were wrong. You're interfering with that."

He chuckles, puts his fists on his thin hips theatrically.

"Ya tell a tale, 'Maker."

"If you like tales, then you will have heard some old ones about an Unmaker called Mike Ram. That would be me."

He hesitates for a moment, his eyes deciding what he should believe and what it means to him.

"I heard yeh name, in meh schoolin' stretch," he admits cautiously. "Ya be spry for an eldest—more so ta be from deh pre-burn-time, Cap'n Colonel."

"And what do I call you?"

"Cap'n Thompson Gun Bly. The Dutchmun be mine..." He gestures at the floating fortress behind him. "Flagship o' Zodanga, twenty-two big bore guns ta scour deh bugs from deh sand..." He clasps the hand of the female. "Dis is her Gunner Chief, meh lovemate Nina Harper, but she's called _Brimstone_ for the sandies."

"Your guns were impressive, Chief Harper," I try to flatter. "Your own manufacture?"

"Zodanga makes," Bly brags. "All engineers, our eldest. Crafty. Gave us deh sky, _made_ us deh sky. Set us upon deh sand bugs. Now upon _you_."

"What do you use for powder?" I ignore his idle threat, turning to his gunner.

"No powder," she eagerly tells me. "Hydrox gas, or solid rocket fuel we make."

"Very impressive," I give him. But he only laughs.

"More than... Means we need nuthin' we can't take."

"Food? Gear? Medical supplies?" I offer. "The supply drops are getting rare—how much is left to take? And stealing from us didn't go so well for you."

"An' what? Ya willin' ta _give_ if yeh get what yeh want, is dat yeh deal?" He says "give" like I've offered something offensive. "Trade fer a cease-fire?"

"We won't need to trade if I can get Earth to send relief—it'll come to you freely. But first, you need to let us complete our uplink without further interference."

"We _need_ nuthin'," he repeats defiantly. "An' _first_ be followed by _second_ , mos' times."

"Second would be your help, if you're willing to give it. Zodanga is the sky. We haven't seen much of this world yet, but you seem to have the run of it. We need to be able to tell Earth how many people live here, what they need, and maybe even what they don't. You could help us seek them out."

He laughs again.

"What _we_ seek is teh feed us an' our kidlins, Cap'n Colonel, not teh be helpin' out our enemies."

"An alliance could benefit us both, Captain. And we can compensate you," I offer. "Food, gear, tools..."

"Guns an' bullets?" he counters, knowing I'll hesitate.

"That depends on the situation," I allow. "And the strength of our alliance."

"Yah think I'm dull like a sand bug, Colonel Cap'n?" he sneers. "Bad error."

"I'd prefer to avoid killing the people I'm trying to help."

"Secon' bad error, Cap'n Colonel." He looks to his fellows. They lock eyes with him but otherwise show nothing. Then he faces me again. "So yeh'd like teh see over mah Dutchmun?"

"I would like that very much, Captain Bly."

"Makes no matter what yeh'd like," he says with a grin under his mask. "I really wa'n't askin'."

The soil erupts in a semi-circle around us, sprouting four more men in full pressure suits, carrying old colony PDWs wrapped to keep the sand out. Bly and his companions draw their swords.

"Bes' if Colonel Cap'n come as our _guest_ ," Bly declares, pointing his blade at me. " _Then_ we see what yeh _give_." He puts his foot on my pistol.

I slowly draw my sword as if to offer it to him, making the gesture broad enough not to be mistaken even from five hundred meters away. Then, instead of giving him my sword, I turn it on him.

There are four sudden pops almost simultaneously as his gunmen's visors explode. (Smith's lazy circle with the Lancer dropped two teams of our best snipers—hidden from our prisoners' view in the rear section—to nest and wait.)

Rios draws his own sword, but the pirate facing him suddenly jerks and collapses, one of Sakina's torpedoes through his skull. She's already done the same to the other pirate. Rios looks like he's about to pout. Now only Bly and Harper are left standing.

Bly settles into a guard position, grinning defiantly under his mask, his free hand gesturing me to deal with him personally. I have no intention of playing his game of honor, but I am irritated enough to express myself in my own way. While he poses, I chop down hard and fast on his extended blade, cutting the weapon mostly through and ripping it from his gloved hand. He freezes with rage burning in his eyes.

Harper suddenly steps forward and draws what looks like a short pistol from under her breastplate, bringing it up at my face. I dodge and take her hand off at the wrist a fraction of a second before Sakina sends her sprawling with a kick that I'm surprised doesn't shatter her armor (the popping I hear is likely Harper's bones breaking).

Bly leaps back off the rise in retreat, but his eyes grin at me again. I look up in time to see flashes and smoke from the gun deck of his airship.

" _We're zeroed!_ " I shout, throwing myself off the hilltop in a tackle that takes Rios with me. I fully expect Sakina will be more than fast enough to do the same, but what I see as I look up is shocking. She's jerked Harper up to her feet and leaves her teetering on the spot where we stood, then is gone just before whatever Bly's cannons launched impacts. I see Harper's legs ripped away from under her just as the hillside shatters. Then a shower of dirt and rock masks my view. I don't remember hearing the actual boom of the cannon.

"I'm assuming we're on," Matthew comes over my Link.

More cannon fire slams the hillside.

"We are," I tell him, still sprawled on my back and covered with dirt, head downhill. Then the hill—destabilized by another round of cannon fire—comes at me in a wave of gravel and sand.

I roll as the hill slides down with me, getting as much of Mars between me and the big pirate ship as I can. Rios is still with me, tumbling and flailing and bouncing. I have no idea where Sakina went.

Looking back out through the Gap, I see four of our ASVs coming in hot.

"Fire for effect," I order. "Make 'em limp home."

A pair of rockets flies from the lead ASV and burns straight for the Dutchman. I risk poking my head up enough to watch. Maybe two dozen assorted light flyers are breaking away from their anchors on the big airship like bats releasing from their perches. I see one of our rockets hit the gun deck. One of the under-hanging masts falls away, to hang by its rigging. The second rocket blows away one of the big fans.

The small flyers swarm for us very much like angry bees. I see flares as a few fire rockets back at our ASVs—apparently Bly had been saving for such a fight. Our pilots have to take evasive and spend their turrets on stopping the incoming projectiles. More of our rockets fly at the Dutchman.

"Keep your distance from the small craft," I remind our pilots. "Don't..."

I hear our latest volley of rockets detonate, but when I look to the Dutchman, it's no more worse for it—the bursts of the rockets show me they detonated dozens of meters short of target, blowing up in midair.

"What...?" Matthew begins. But then it gets even stranger. The swarm of flyers suddenly gets knocked back like they hit a powerful wind. A few recover enough to fire more rockets, but they're no longer aiming at our ships. Their rockets also burst in midair.

"We can take it from here, Colonel Ram," I hear a familiar voice in my Link. It's Paul. I look south, in the direction the pirate flyers were shooting at last, and I'm not entirely surprised to see one of the modified ETE aircraft sliding silently and gracefully to move between us and the pirates. A handful of blue sealsuits stands atop the ship, Spheres and Rods in hand.

The Dutchman turns its big guns on them, but their projectiles get bounced away long before they hit. The small flyers try to rally, but a few gestures from the ETE Rods damages their motors enough that they have to set down or crash.

The ETE ship holds position between us while the Dutchman tries a few more cannon volleys before giving up. I scramble back up the hillside for a better view. Sakina is there waiting for me, shaking the dust out of her cloak in thick clouds.

A hundred yards or so away I see Bly on the sand, retreating in the direction of his damaged ship as quickly as he can manage, frantically dragging a shapeless something I realize is what remains of his chief gunner. I feel metal under my boots and find myself standing on his broken sword.

Paul—I assume it's Paul—levitates down to me once the pirates have organized themselves into retreat.

"I'm sorry we couldn't get here sooner," he—it is Paul—tells me sincerely. "No one would have suffered, but as you know, our Council takes its time with these decisions."

"And what decisions have you come to?" I ask him diplomatically.

"You will have no further trouble establishing your contact with Earth, Colonel."

"I'm thinking you have more than that to tell me," I press him.

With his mask sealed, I can't see his expression, his eyes, only myself reflected in his lenses, dirty and bloodied.

He takes a moment to answer me, his helmet turning to watch the pirates' retreat.

"The Guardians will keep the peace, Colonel. There will be no unnecessary loss of life. Mars is _our_ responsibility to preserve. We will do this to the best of our ability."

I find I have nothing to say to him. He stays a few more moments in silence, then flies away.

### Chapter 6: Lesser Evils

14 December, 2015:

Our fifteenth day of transmitting our cry for help out into space, and there's still no reply.

Anton and Rick continue to report in shifts every few hours from the Candor transmitter site: Everything still appears to be working perfectly. And though the signal reaching Earth will not be much stronger or more sophisticated than those sent by the early lander missions, _someone_ should have heard us by now.

At least what we can pick up on our tinkered receiver array lets us know that the human race is not dead and gone: There _is_ background noise, a chaotic buzz of orbital chatter leaking from what appear to be global communications. Anton occasionally manages to filter the barest snippets of recognizable language, but not enough to make sense of. Most of it appears to be deeply encrypted, and beyond what UNMAC had used to defeat corporate or Eco eavesdropping and hacking.

But what's most discouraging is that there's absolutely no sign of any kind of signal aimed out into space. Earth seems to have turned itself entirely inward. (And we all wonder what's become of our home world, across a scale of possibilities from tragic to terrifying.)

There's nothing else to do but keep trying, so we keep beaming our call across space, varying our message every day or so, trying to tell our tale, trying to get someone to respond. I find it hard to believe, even if some totalitarian government ruling in absolute fear of contamination has put a draconian ban on interplanetary communication, that not one rogue hopeful soul has been keeping an ear out for us (and has the means to send at least a ping back in our direction).

(Anton speculated that maybe their technology has become so advanced that we would be heard as just so much meaningless interference to be filtered out. But the idle speculation game gets us nowhere—we'll either find out when we get a reply, or we'll never know.)

There has been no further interference with our relay system, just as the ETE assured. But there have been _attempts_ : We monitored the Guardians responding to "threatening approaches" by the Air Pirates three times within the first ten days after they broke up our little confrontation.

The ETE must have set up a remote monitoring system, because we haven't seen any flights that look like patrols or detected any regular Guardian presence near the transmitter sites or during our supply flights, yet they respond to anything that approaches our outposts within minutes. The outcome is always the same: Zodangan ships damaged and repulsed by force, their weapons deflected harmlessly. No apparent loss of life. The pirates limp away.

That should be comforting, but it isn't. And of course I realize the obvious irony: This is _exactly_ what I asked them to do, from the first time I faced their Council.

And it _will_ save lives, _is_ saving lives.

But that's probably not how Earth will see it. Assuming they ever respond.

In a few more months, the conjunction window will close, and we'll be out of call range for another two years, if we still have the means by then.

That might not be the worst outcome.

### ###

### Map of Central Valles Marineris

(If image does not work or is poor quality, you may view the original and more images on my Facebook page.)

The God Mars continues in Book Two: Lost Worlds

About the Author:

Michael Rizzo is an artist, martial artist, collector (and frequent user) of fine weaponry, and has had a long, varied and brutal career in the mental health and social services battlefield. (He is locally regarded as the Darth Vader of social work.)

His fiction series include _Grayman_ and _The God Mars_.

He causes trouble in person mostly in the Pacific Northwest.

For updates and original art, visit Michael on Facebook.com.

Discover other books by Michael Rizzo at smashwords.com

