by Ian Douglas
Acceleration cut off, and for a long time after that they were in free fall, save for occasional violent thumps and kicks when the pilot fired steering jets to maintain attitude or to adjust their course. Their captors had made certain that all of the Marines were strapped down, and two of them sat now at the forward end of the compartment, as uncomfortable as any of the Americans as they kept an eye on their prisoners.
Garroway was wedged in between two Marines, with a third sitting half on top of him and half on the Marine to his right. In their armor, they were anonymous…but he could still recognize voices occasionally over the comm channel…mingled occasionally with the harsh, retching sounds of people being sick in their helmets.
The shuttle’s cargo hold was designed to hold thirty passengers in something like relative comfort, and it could manage another ten, perhaps, with some crowding. That, however, assumed that the passengers weren’t wearing bulky Class-Ones…or EVA suits. Most of the scientists, Garroway noticed, had been kept at Cydonia, but five had been packed into Mars surface suits and loaded aboard the shuttle with the Marines…the ones who’d discovered those Homo erectus corpses two days before. They’d nearly had to drag Alexander physically from the hab and chuck him into the lobber.
There were twenty-five Marines on board—Colonel Lloyd and Private Groller, both wounded, had been left at Cydonia under the care of Dr. Penkov, the Russian doctor at the base. That put a total of thirty prisoners aboard the shuttle, and the crowding was nightmarish with them all wearing armor or surface EVA suits.
After a small eternity of free fall, they were jarred by a sharp, dizzying swoop as the shuttle flipped end for end, and then acceleration hammered at them again when the main drive fired. The world tilted sickeningly, and then was obscured by swirling ocher dust as the craft settled in for a cushioned landing on its four hydraulic jacks.
They were down.
“Gentlemen, and ladies, we have arrived at your new home,” Bergerac told them, climbing down the narrow ladder from the pilot’s compartment. Had he flown the ship himself, Garroway wondered? No, he could see a NASA pilot behind him, seated at the console. The UN colonel must have been riding strapped to the bridge jumpseat.
With two UN guards urging them to move, the Marines and scientists clambered awkwardly down the center passageway ladder and into the shuttle’s airlock bay. Since everyone had been suited up for the flight, the shuttle was already open to the Martian atmosphere. The loading ramp was down; in moments, Garroway stood with the others on the cold, still, and nearly airless desert.
This was not Candor Chasma.
That fact was beginning to register with the others as well. He heard several low-murmured comments, and several Marines exchanged words by touching their helmets together for a quick, sound-inducted comment or two.
Garroway had not been to Mars Prime, of course, but he’d read about the place often enough during the cycler flight out, and he’d seen plenty of video transmissions downloaded off the Spacenet. Mars Prime, the first permanent settlement on the red planet, lay close to the site of the first manned landing on the floor of Candor Chasma, one of the larger canyons in the vast and labyrinthine complex of canyons known as Valles Marineris, the Valley of the Mariner Spacecraft. It consisted of some fifteen hab modules, a large, permanent landing strip, and water-drilling, fuel-production, and storage facilities even larger and more extensive than those at Cydonia. Compared to Mars Prime, the base at Cydonia was a small and somewhat primitive frontier outpost.
This base was smaller still. Located on a valley floor—Garroway could see the distant red cliffs, mostly still lost in shadow but capped by gleaming gold, the reflected light of the rising sun—it was a small outstation of some kind, consisting of a single hab partly covered over by sand and piles of bulldozed regolith. A Mars cat was parked nearby, but Garroway could see no drilling or fuel-production facilities, no storage structures, nothing, in fact, other than the hab, the cat, and the grounded shuttle.
Lieutenant Russel King, standing nearby, turned to him. “So what do we do now, Major?”
Garroway blinked at the platoon leader, unable for a moment to reply. Until that moment, he’d not thought about the command structure at all. But with Colonel Lloyd wounded and left at Cydonia, he was the senior officer of a section of twenty-four US Marines, plus five scientists.
It was not a responsibility that Garroway had ever imagined having to assume.
The other Marines were talking among themselves, and with growing agitation. “What the fuck?” one man said over the talk channel. “The bastards are just leaving us here?”
Bergerac stood at the top of the ramp. “We are not monsters,” he told them, “or barbarians. We must have full control of the Cydonian base, however, and for that we need all of you out of the way. I’m sure you all realize that we could have killed you…but instead we are leaving you here, with plenty of food, water, and a portable drilling unit for more water.”
“I think we need some things clarified, Bergerac,” Garroway said. “Are we prisoners of war?”
“Technically, of course, no state of war exists between your country and the United Nations, at least for the moment. Let us simply say that we are temporarily reassigning you to this outpost.”
“Yeah, but for how long?” a woman’s voice—Garroway thought it was Ostrowsky—called out. “You can’t just abandon us here!”
“Silence in the ranks, Marine,” Garroway rasped out. If he was in command, he would have to maintain order, starting now.
“How long,” Bergerac said, “depends entirely on how long it takes to, eh, assess Dr. Alexander’s finds at Cydonia.”
“To hide them, you mean,” Alexander called out, “or destroy them.”
“Please, Dr. Alexander,” Garroway said. He could see Alexander about twenty feet away, out of place among the armored Marines in his blue EVA suit. “Let’s hear what he has to say.”
“We are not vandals, Doctor,” Bergerac added. “But we do intend to secure what technological assets we can from the Cydonia site. For the benefit of all Mankind.”
“What the hell are you babbling about, Bergerac?” Alexander snapped back. “We haven’t been holding out on anybody!”
“Yes, we could tell,” Bergerac replied dryly. “So many papers published on the alien Ship. On the surveys. On the Builders’ technology you’ve uncovered so far. What have we learned from you since you began studying these ruins? Nothing! Some of us believe that you are deceiving the rest of the world.”
“The rest of the world, Colonel,” Garroway said quietly, hoping to forestall another riposte from Alexander, “is deceiving itself. We’ve gone out of our way to accommodate you people here.”
“Damn straight,” Alexander added. “And if you wanted better access, you could build your own Mars cyclers.”
“That is coming, Dr. Alexander, believe me. It is dangerous to leave you Americans, and your Russian friends, in sole possession of such a find, such a treasure trove as Cydonia. We will administer these treasures for the good of all, in accordance with the provisions of the RMT.”
The Revised Moon Treaty had been voted on and ratified by the UN in 2025, the same year that the Geneva UN Charter had been published, and five years after the United States had formally withdrawn from the UN. Like its predecessor, the Moon Treaty of 1979, the RMT discouraged private enterprise in space by forbidding private ownership or exploitation of any world or other body in space. Individual governments were forbidden to stake out claims—even of the fast-dwindling available satellite slots in geosynchronous orbit. The issue was one of many that had led to the American withdrawal from the UN, and the organization’s relocation to Geneva.
The United States had never been signatory to the RMT, but it looked as though the UN was determined to enforce the treaty anyway.
“As for how long you will be kept here,” Bergerac went on, “that depends on several factors outside my control. At worst, we will be forced to leave yo
u until the next cycler flyby, which is scheduled for three months from now. With luck, however, we will have the situation…clarified sooner than that. At that time, we will arrange for your transport to Mars Prime, where you will remain until the cycler arrives.”
“He can’t do that!” someone said over the open channel.
“My God, what are we gonna do?…” That sounded like one of the scientists.
“Shoot the fuckers….” That sounded like Ostrowsky.
Garroway was painfully aware that the discipline holding the men and women of his section was dangerously close to cracking; if they lost it, they would be at the mercy of their captors…and of the utter inhospitality of the Martian desert.
“You should find the outpost hab adequate,” Bergerac continued, “if not exactly comfortable. The still is inside, and you have fuel cells enough to provide you with what power you’ll need.” He pointed. “That Mars cat has several of my men on board, never mind how many. It arrived here several hours ago to prepare the station for you, and to make certain there were no communications equipment or computers here. We cannot permit you to communicate at all with Earth, or even with other bases on the planet.
“They’re here to keep an eye on you, at least for the time being. They will stay long enough to be certain that you are settled in and need nothing. If you do find you are lacking in anything, you may ask them, and they will communicate with me. I warn you, however, to approach the Mars cat one at a time only, and with a white cloth in your hand. You will not be permitted to approach the cat closer than about twenty meters…for reasons that should be obvious to you.
“And now, I must say adieu. We will see one another again, quite soon. Be assured of that.”
Bergerac turned then and strode back into the shuttle, followed by the two guards, who backed up the ramp, their rifles still trained on the Marines.
“We can take ’em…” one voice said.
“Belay that, Marine,” Garroway growled. If those UN troops started shooting now, half of his people would be dead or swiftly dying in the cold Martian air in the space of a second or two.
Then the moment was past, the hatch slowly closing. “Come on, people,” Garroway said. “There’ll be another time. Move back before they light that torch!”
The Marines and civilians turned and jogged toward the hab, putting as much distance between themselves and the shuttle as they could. A moment later, the landscape turned brighter, and Garroway’s external mikes picked up a high-pitched, metallic shriek as the shuttle’s main drive kicked in. He turned in time to see the shuttle climbing into the black, early-morning sky on a wavering pillar of superheated methane.
And the Marines were left alone in the desert.
TWELVE
SUNDAY, 27 MAY: 2038 HOURS GMT
Heinlein Station, Mars
Sol 5636: 0815 hours MMT
“I talked to Doc Casey,” Garroway told the others at the table. “He didn’t have all that much time to check them over, but he said he thought both the colonel and Groller were going to make it. The colonel probably has a concussion. Groller’s worse. Depressurization injuries and third-degree burns in his side, but he should be okay, too.”
“Thank God,” Lieutenant King said. “What we have to do now is decide what we’re going to do. Any ideas?”
“Don’t know about you boys,” Ostrowsky said with lazy indifference, “but I’m kinda partial to skinning the fuckers alive.”
It was chilly inside the hab, cold enough that moisture was condensing on the inside walls and partitions. Most of the Marines had elected to keep their armor on for the time being, removing only their helmets, gloves, and backpacks, while his team still wore their EVA suits. Their breath showed as puffs of white when they spoke. The fuel cells were charged, however, and the heater units had been switched on. Sergeant Jacob, who’d checked the circuitry, had announced that the place should approach something like room temperature by midday.
It was also noisy. Most of the Marines in the room were on their feet, scuffing back and forth, talking loudly, even shouting, making as much of a racket as they could. It was possible that there were microphones hidden, and Garroway needed to discuss some things with his senior people that he didn’t want to share with their UN guards.
Despite the cold, it hadn’t taken the Marines long to get settled in. Like the habs at Cydonia, this one was little more than a large shell from a Shuttle II fuel tank, fitted out with an airlock, a floor, a few lightweight partitions, and a minimum of creature comforts. Perhaps half of the hab’s volume was taken up with supplies—mostly packaged readymeals, enough for thirty people for 150 days.
If ever there was a splendid reason to escape a prison, Garroway thought wryly, that was it. Five months of readymeals, together with their edible packaging, was going to be a gastronomic nightmare.
Garroway looked at each of the people sitting about the small, plastic table in turn, feeling mingled fear and…pride. This was not exactly the sort of situation the Corps had taught him how to handle, but these were good people. Good Marines. The best….
“So where are we, anyway?” King asked the others at the table. “Not Candor Chasma.”
“No,” Garroway agreed. “Not Candor Chasma. It has to be one of the outposts.”
“Yeah,” Lieutenant King said. “But which one?”
Garroway glanced up, his gaze sweeping across the large and mostly empty compartment—empty, of course, save for the Marines shuffling around and talking as loudly as they could. They couldn’t possibly have found all of the listening devices hidden in the hab.
It had been a foregone conclusion that, since UN troops had stocked the place for them, they’d also left a remote mike or two and were listening in from the warm comfort of their Mars cat outside. Hell, what else could they do out there, except maybe play endless hands of cards?
And if hidden microphones were a possibility, of course, so, too, were hidden cameras. The AVT-400 series used in Marine recon UAVs, for instance, were smaller than the tip of a man’s little finger, were powered by ambient light, and could transmit images on IR or UHF frequencies for a distance of half a kilometer. Without special electronic bug-hunting gear, the Marines might never find them all.
And so, as soon as they’d filed in through the airlock and started pulling off their helmets, Garroway had organized the Marines into bug-hunt teams, sending them throughout the hab in search of anything that might conceivably be a listening device or camera. Within twenty minutes, they’d turned up three cylinders the size of a wrist-top’s power-up key, each less than half a centimeter long, one in each of the two living areas, and a third in the tiny ’fresher and shower cubicle.
As he’d sat at the table and mashed each cylinder in turn beneath his thumb, Ostrowsky had commented wryly that maybe the UN guys had just wanted to do some private peeping at the girls in the shower. Garroway had agreed with a laugh, but the spycams had him worried. There weren’t many places in the empty hab to hide even cameras as small as these, but there could well be listening devices scattered all over the place; there were remote mikes as small as the head of a pin that would be impossible to discover without going over every square centimeter of all three rooms, walls, ceilings, and floors, with a magnifying glass.
After the bug sweep, Garroway had ordered an inventory taken of everything that might be of use in the hab…including anything that the Marines had managed to sneak in with them from Cydonia. He’d used hand signs, though, to indicate that only routine items like food or clothing were to be announced out loud. Everyone in the hab was aware that there were probably uninvited listeners.
Then he’d called the meeting of his senior staff, gathering them close around the plastic table where the secret inventory could be laid out and discussed. He was pretty sure there were no hidden cameras close enough to the center of the big room that hidden watchers would be able to see anything significant; there could be microphones in the deck under their feet, of co
urse, but if they spoke indirectly, and in low-voiced whispers, where necessary, they could avoid giving too much away. Just to be on the safe side, he’d ordered the other Marines to walk around the inside of the hab, circling the seven at the table set up in the middle, talking loudly, swearing, laughing, or just plain scuffing their feet, making noise enough to drown out the whispers completely over a range of more than a meter or two.
Eighteen Marines could make one hell of a sonic scrambler when they put their minds to it.
The staff meeting included Dr. Alexander, the senior civilian scientist present. Besides Lieutenant King, the only other officer in the little band, he’d brought in his senior NCOs, Gunnery Sergeant Harold Knox and Sergeant Ellen Caswell, from First Section, and Staff Sergeant Kathryn Ostrowsky and Sergeant Ken Jacob from Second Section. He’d learned a long, long time ago that the real strength of the Corps was its noncoms…the experienced men and women who knew what needed to be done and how best to do it.
“Hell,” Garroway said, his voice low. The others leaned close to catch his words against the noisy background. “I don’t even know how many stations there are. Narrowing the choice down could be a bitch.”
“There are twelve,” Alexander told him. “Bradbury. Bova. Burroughs. Bear. Lots of ‘Bs.’ Clarke. Heinlein. Asimov. I don’t remember the others. They’re unmanned most of the time.”
“How do you know all of that?” Ostrowsky wanted to know.
Alexander shrugged. “We had to familiarize ourselves with the remote hab facilities. They were originally set up to allow small teams of geologists, paleontologists, and archeologists to work in the field for extended periods of time.”
“I’m beginning to think the MMEF should have had a similar briefing,” Garroway said. “The question, then, is which one we’re at now.”
