Semper Mars: Book One of the Heritage Trilogy

by Ian Douglas

  He picked it up. The top had blown off, but the rest of the can was nearly intact. Dutetre’s English was poor, but he could puzzle out the words, scraping at the thin metal with his glove to rub the ice off.

  Stony.

  Brook.

  Beer.

  Mon Dieu! Bière?

  Angrily, Dutetre looked up suddenly at the cargo shuttle hovering above the base. Bastards! They’ve been dropping cans of beer!

  Reaching down, he snatched up an FA rifle dropped on the sand, took aim at the hovering lander, and squeezed the trigger. Set on full automatic, the weapon sent a long stream of high-velocity penetrators snapping toward the target.

  1716 HOURS GMT

  Cydonia Two aboard MSL

  Harper’s Bizarre

  20 meters above UN Positions

  South of Cydonia Prime

  1431 hours MMT

  Knox felt the heavy thuds of rounds striking the lobber, and twice something struck sparks from the support struts to either side of the Bizarre’s front porch. He ducked back, throwing out one arm to shove Ostrowsky back as well. Until now, only occasional rounds had come their way, either because the UN troops didn’t want the lobber to crash on top of them, or because they’d been too demoralized by the beer run to even think of shooting back.

  They were shooting back now, though. Several of the troops down there were holding their ground and blazing away. They looked mad, Knox thought, as though they’d just learned the nature of the joke played on them by the Marines.

  The lobber’s fuel tanks were heavily wrapped in foil insulation, and more padding—plastic sheeting, blankets, even mattresses—had been tied over the lower tankage assembly to provide some added protection from bullets, but judging from the hollow thunk of some of those impacts, and the way a thick white mist was starting to spill from behind the padding, at least a few rounds were drilling clean through.

  “We got problems, people!” Elliott called. “I’m losing fuel damned fast!”

  “We’re taking rounds in the storage tanks, Captain,” Knox called back. “You’d better get us clear!”

  “Hell, I’m going to be lucky if we set down in one piece!”

  The shuttle was faltering now, its plasma jet already giving out. “One more?” Knox asked Ostrowsky.

  “Hell, yeah!” Together, they picked up one of the two remaining ice chests, opened and latched the top, and tipped it off the front porch in a glorious, spinning avalanche of brews. The lobber was falling quickly now, rotating clockwise as it fell. Elliott was apparently trying to guide them past the main hab and the other pressurized base facilities, but Bizarre had suddenly developed all of the aerodynamic proficiency of a very large rock.

  “If you can, people,” Elliott told them, “try to jump clear before we hit!”

  Together, Knox and Ostrowsky started unbuckling their safety harnesses. Elliott’s warning was a good one. If they jumped, they might hit soft sand and manage a roll. Stay aboard, and they could be caught between the deck as it slammed up at their feet, and the upper part of the shuttle as it slammed down from above.

  He didn’t need to ask about Elliott. She was obviously still trying to coax a bit more thrust from the dying engine and wasn’t going to abandon her charge. “Ready?” he asked Ostrowsky, and he saw her answering nod. He made sure the ATAR was securely fastened to his armor, took Ostrowsky’s gloved hand, and waited a couple of seconds as they spun closer to the ground.

  They were still four or five meters up when they jumped.

  1716 HOURS GMT

  Garroway

  Cydonia Prime

  1431 hours MMT

  Garroway was running toward the main hab when Caswell shouted, “Hey! The bastards nailed the lobber!”

  He stopped, looking up and toward the right, where the squat shape of the shuttle was dropping rapidly toward some storage habs close to the main structure.

  “First Section!” he yelled. “With me! The rest of you, hit that main hab!” He started running toward the falling shuttle as fast as he could manage, loose sand flying with every step. Most of the UN troops, he noted, had stopped fighting. Some were standing about with hands raised. Others were simply standing. More and more of the MMEF Marines were having to stop and take charge of prisoners.

  But some were still very much in the fight, and Garroway wanted to get to the shuttle before they did.

  1717 HOURS GMT

  Knox

  Cydonia Prime

  1432 hours MMT

  They jumped. For a dizzying moment, Knox and Ostrowsky, still holding hands, fell with the fairy-tale slowness of falling bodies in one-third G. When they hit a moment later, they struck sand, hitting hard but rolling apart as their legs gave way beneath them. Knox ended up on his back, staring at the huge, spidery shape of Harper’s Bizarre, which seemed poised to come down on top of his head.

  Then it passed him by, one landing leg colliding with a nearby ET module, which knocked the vehicle askew and sent it toppling onto its side. He half expected to see the ship burst into flame, but without oxygen it simply crumpled, its lightweight framework giving way beneath the impact. He tried to rise and his left leg shrieked pain…broken or sprained, he couldn’t tell. Dropping again, he turned to look toward the south, where a number of angry-looking blue-helmets were rapidly closing on his position.

  “Oh, shit.” He grabbed his ATAR and took aim, squeezing off a short burst…and another…and another, shifting aim each time to a different target. Two of them dropped. The others wavered as he continued his one-man stand, some of them trading fire with him, until, as though by common consent, they scattered and broke for cover.

  “Ostie!” he yelled over the general comm channel. “Ostie! Can you hear me?”

  No answer. He saw her lying a few meters away, unmoving. “Captain Elliott! Do you copy?” No answer there, either.

  A round careened off the side of his helmet, a glancing ricochet. He turned his attention to the front again, returning fire with deadly precision and grim will. Another running blue-top spun wildly, collapsed, and lay still.

  1717 HOURS GMT

  Kaminski

  Cydonia Prime

  1432 hours MMT

  PFC Kaminski froze in place just outside the main hab. A UN soldier had just stepped through the airlock and was hurrying toward the fighting…but he’d not seen the Marine standing rock-still just ten meters away. Let’s hear it for chameleon armor, Kaminski thought, as he pivoted his ATAR into line with the man and squeezed the trigger.

  The UN soldier spun, collided with the slender flagpole in front of the hab, and collapsed. The battle was sputtering out now, with many of the surviving UN troops raising their hands. Kaminski looked up at the blue UN flag hanging from the pole and shook his head. That would never do….

  “Hey, Slider!” he called. “Fulbert! Gimme a hand!”

  Together, they grabbed the flagpole and hauled it up and out of the hole dug in the frozen ground to receive it. Ellen Caswell and Doc Casey trotted over to help, and in seconds, the pole came down, dragging the blue flag aflutter behind it.

  Kaminski was prepared. He’d recovered the grit-scoured US flag that had flown from the Mars cat for the past three weeks and packed it in his armor’s thigh pouch. With a couple of lengths of vacuum tape supplied by Doc, he began to fasten the flag onto the pole, while Caswell yanked off the UN banner.

  More gunshots sounded close by, and a round slapped into the sand by their feet, but they kept working….

  1719 HOURS GMT

  Knox

  Cydonia Prime

  1434 hours MMT

  Knox ducked and rolled as a stream of rounds slammed into the side of the Mars hab close by. He came to his knees, taking aim once more, when a blur of motion from his left caught the ATAR and ripped it out of his hand. He rolled to the side, looking up; an armored figure in a blue helmet loomed above him, a French rifle aimed at his head. “Do not move, American,” the man said, his accented voice sound
ing over the Marine frequency. Knox remembered the voice, as he remembered the name stenciled on the armor: Bergerac. A second man trotted up behind the first, and Knox heard a torrent of French.

  “Pas de problèm, Lieutenant Dutetre,” Bergerac said. “We will use them as hostages for—”

  A silvery something struck Bergerac in the side of his helmet, bursting in a golden spray. Knox rolled to the side, snatching at his ATAR, bringing it up just as Dutetre took aim at another figure standing in front of the crumpled wreckage of the ship. Elliott! She’d dragged herself clear of the wreckage and thrown a can of beer at Bergerac, and now Dutetre was about to shoot her down.

  He squeezed the trigger, not even aiming, but simply pointing the ATAR’s muzzle and loosing a long burst into the French lieutenant’s chest, knocking him back. Bergerac spun toward him then, firing despite the smear of ice and steaming liquid clinging to his visor, the rounds stitching through the sand toward Knox’s head.

  A clatter of thin, high-pitched gunshots slammed Bergerac forward, lifting him onto his toes and pitching him down and across Knox’s legs. Knox screamed as the weight smashed his injury.

  “Gunny! You okay?”

  It was Major Garroway, trotting toward him with his ATAR at the ready. “Shit, Major, am I glad to see you!” He turned so that he could see Elliott, limping heavily as she made her way to the scene of that last desperate fight in the sand. “You pitch a mean beer, lady,” he said admiringly. “Can’t land a spaceship worth shit….”

  “Hey, any landing you can walk away from, jar-head.”

  He tried to sit up. “Gotta check on Ostie. She’s down.”

  “M’okay,” Ostrowsky said. She sounded dazed, a bit shaken. “Had the wind knocked out of me, is all.”

  “How are you, Gunny?” Garroway asked. Stooping, he rolled the French colonel’s body clear.

  “Dinged m’leg in the landing. Major, we gotta do something about these Navy drivers!”

  Knox looked past Garroway at the plain south of the base. The fighting, it appeared, was almost over. Gunfire continued to snap across the plain or kick up geysers of sand, but most of the UN troops were dropping their weapons now and surrendering.

  “Hey, guys!” Elliott called, pointing. “Look at that!”

  They all turned to see what she was pointing at. Five of the MMEF Marines had knocked down the UN flag above the base and now were raising the five-meter length of pipe once more. Kaminski’s American flag was fastened to the top, while Alexander stood nearby with an EVA camera, taking pictures.

  Despite the obvious and deliberate parallelism to another Marine flag-raising, that one on a speck of volcanic rock in the Pacific nearly one hundred years before—Knox’s eyes filled with tears at the sight…an inconvenience in full armor, when you couldn’t wipe your face. Unwilling to let others hear his throat-rasping emotion, he dropped his voice to a growl. “So, is that it?” he said. “Did we win?”

  “We won,” Garroway said. Without ceremony, he raised his right arm, touching his glove to his helmet in salute, dropping his hand as the flagpole reached the vertical and was anchored in place at the base.

  “Ooh-rah,” Knox said. “What’d we win?”

  “That, I’m afraid, has yet to be determined.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Elliott said. Knox could hear the grin in her voice. “These two missed a case when they were chucking the beer overboard. At least we have that!”

  Garroway laughed. “It’ll do for now, people. It’ll do for now.”

  Behind him, the American flag flew from its makeshift pole in the golden light of the Martian afternoon.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  FRIDAY, 22 JUNE: 1340 HOURS GMT

  Warrenton, Virginia

  0940 hours EDT

  Kaitlin was on the floor in the den playing chess with twelve-year-old Jeff Warhurst when the call came through. “Kaitlin?” Stephanie Warhurst started speaking before she was fully in the room. She sounded concerned. “It’s a vidcall from Monty, at the Pentagon, and he says it’s on a special line. I don’t really know why he’s calling you….”

  “It’s okay, Mrs. Warhurst. Can I take it in the E-room?”

  “Of course, dear. I’ll transfer the call there.”

  “Hey, Kaitlin?” Jeff said, looking up from the board.

  “Yeah?”

  “Are you gonna be a Marine someday, like my grandpa…and my dad?”

  The question, coming out of nowhere, shook her. She’d thought about it a lot, of course…and she’d been thinking about it again ever since her return from Japan. But…

  “I don’t know, Jeff,” she said. “Why?”

  “I dunno. Just wondering, I guess. I’m gonna be a Marine, you wait! And the UNers better watch out!”

  There seemed to be no proper answer to such an assertive statement. She rose and started to follow Mrs. Warhurst.

  “Oh, and Kaitlin,” Jeff added.

  “Yes?”

  “Just thought I’d warn you. Your queen’s a goner.”

  She grinned. “Take another look, sport. If you take my queen, I’ve got mate in five.”

  “Huh?” Jeff looked incredulous.

  “Sometimes sacrificing a piece can give you a significant advantage. See if you can figure it out by the time I get back.”

  The Warhursts’ entertainment room was large and comfortably furnished, with a circular sofa in the sunken floor, and a Hitachi wallscreen that literally covered an entire, eight-meter wall from ceiling to floor. She sat down behind the low, central table and slid open the polished top, exposing the keyboard, touchscreen, and gaming controls. She touched the accept key.

  The screen came on, and Montgomery Warhurst’s craggy face looked down at her, huge and imposing. “Hello, Kaitlin,” he said.

  She touched a control that stepped the screen’s active area down a bit, so she didn’t feel like she was standing in front of the Face on Mars. “Good morning, General,” she said. “What can I do for you?”

  “Kaitlin, I’ve just had the damnedest call. Came through from an old friend of mine…who also used to be our ambassador to Japan. It seems a Japanese friend of his has been trying to get in touch with you, and, well, with the war and everything, he had to resort to some pretty sneaky back channels to carry it off.”

  Kaitlin’s heart leaped. A Japanese friend? But, no…it couldn’t be Yukio. Yukio’s father might know the American ambassador as a friend, but not Yukio.

  And in that moment, she knew who the call was from, and what it was about.

  “Anyway, we’ve set up a special comm channel for him. It’s, ah, it’s the Japanese minister of International Trade and Industry, and he wants to talk to you. In private. Will you take the call?”

  Kaitlin felt very cold…and detached. It was as though she were listening to someone else, a stranger, say, “I’ll take it.”

  “Okay.” He turned his head, looking at another screen. “I’m putting you through, sir.”

  The face that appeared on screen a moment later was not Ishiwara’s, but a younger man sitting cross-legged on a tatami behind a low table with a PAD. It was Hisho Nabuko, the man she’d spoken with the day she left Japan.

  He bowed formally. “Good morning, Miss Garroway,” he said in only slightly accented English.

  She stood, then bowed in reply. “Konichiwa, haji-memashte, o-hisho-san.”

  “I am well, thank you. The minister would like a moment of your time, if you would be so kind.”

  “Of course. I would be delighted to talk to him.”

  Her stomach was twisting, her eyes blurring through the tears. Slowly, she slumped back to the sofa, then let herself slide to the floor, kneeling next to the table. Oh, God, no! Not Yukio! Not Yukio!…

  Ishiwara appeared, wearing a silk robe and seated on the floor behind a low table and PAD identical to his secretary’s. He was seated in one of the almost bare rooms of his home, and she wondered what he must think of the lush, cluttered, and very Western decor
at her back. Well, he was used to dealing with Western gaijin. More surprising was the very fact of speaking face-to-face with a member of the Japanese government…when the United States was at war with Japan.

  What, she wondered, would her father think?

  With a small, jarring shock of recognition, she saw that a small niche in one wall was occupied now by her house present, the sleek and elegant little model of the Inaduma fighter, a black-and-white, dart-shaped minnow clinging to the back of the whalelike Ikaduti booster.

  “Konichiwa, Kaitlin-san,” Ishiwara said. “Genki des ka?”

  He was addressing her as a younger friend, asking her how she was.

  “Genki des, domo, o-Daijin-sama,” she replied, giving the traditional za-rei, or seated bow, three large fingers of each hand on the floor, thumbs touching little fingers in circles. “Konichiwa, o-genki des ka?”

  “I am…in good health, Kaitlin-san,” he said, switching to English. “I fear, however, that I have very bad news. Nine days ago, Toshiyuki-san…he failed to return from his mission.”

  Somehow, somehow, she kept her face as impassive as his. “I am very sorry to hear that, Ishiwara-sama. The loss of your son…of Yukio….” She couldn’t stop the tears streaming down her face. She reached up and brushed them away. “I am very sorry for you, for your loss.”

  Ishiwara smiled, the expression jolting Kaitlin for an instant, until she remembered that in Japan, a smile, a pleasant face, was expected to cover any emotion. When she looked into his eyes, however, she saw there the truth.

  “First, Kaitlin-chan, let me tell you that Yukio loved you very deeply. We talked often about it, about you. I know this to be true.”

  Kaitlin was still recovering from the shock of hearing Ishiwara use the honorific chan instead of san, an affectionate diminutive usually reserved for family members or intimate friends. She could say nothing…do nothing but try to match Ishiwara’s smile.

  “I must tell you frankly,” Ishiwara continued, “that I was against your relationship. Not your friendship, perhaps, but there could be no thought of the two of you marrying. I was, frankly, most relieved when I received your message that you had to return to your country. The two of you were from worlds vastly more alien than Earth is from Mars. One or the other of you would have had to deny himself, to deny his very soul in such a union.”