by Mel Odom
Conspiracy theorists that flitted across the boards on the Net promised that Earth would never allow that to happen because then Mars would slip from beneath the parent planet’s thumb. Even if Mars did “escape” Earth’s influence, though, Mars’s population wasn’t dense enough to stand up against Earth corps and Earth military. Given the controlled population growth—which barely exceeded replacement numbers and only occurred as jobs opened up and terraforming provided food and water to support the increased numbers—that would happen even more slowly. Immigration was strictly controlled for that reason, and people like Hayim who flouted the law by staying illegally on Mars were considered criminals by Earth.
Violence continued to break out throughout the colonies like a disease. I watched six media stations on the monitor provided in front of me and tracked more stories on other channels.
“—and in my opinion, these attacks aren’t random events spurred on by similar riots in other parts of the colonies.” The speaker was identified as Reza Theofanis, a political commentator. She wore her black hair pulled back and looked aggressive and self-assured. “This is a full-fledged, concentrated, and organized effort to strike back at the Earth corporations. Look at the coordination that’s immediately observable.”
A Mercator map of Mars unfolded like an orange peel and revealed the colonies. Brightly colored pushpins appeared rapidly, popping into place as Theofanis spoke. Every colony on the planet had experienced some kind of uprising against Earth-controlled corps.
A hacked crawler rolled across the screen: YOU’RE RIGHT THAT THIS IS AN ORGANIZED EFFORT! THIS IS THE BEGINNING OF A REVOLUTION! MARS FOR MARTIANS! EARTHMEN GO HOME!
The view panned back, pulling the other guest in the studio into the frame, and at the same time scrolling off adjacent projections of fighting that had broken out in the street between Earth corps secmen and rioters.
I focused on one encounter when I discovered live ammunition was being used, then pulled down the archived feed from the Net and blew it up.
An armored sec team stumbled back from the sheer number of protestors wielding makeshift weapons. A few of the protestors brandished stunsticks and Synap pistols, weapons that had clearly been taken from sec people or local police.
“Or maybe those protestors are police members,” Shelly suggested. “Martian patriotism has spread deeply over subsequent generations.”
That was possible. I continued watching, feeling useless as the sec commander gave the order to open fire. A dozen pistols and subguns chugged to life. The lack of recoil and the spitting noise of the cartridges cycling through the weapons identified them as flechette rounds designed to rip and tear flesh without endangering the dome or other mechanical equipment.
Facing grievous injury or certain death, the rioters pulled back immediately, dragging those who were wounded or possibly dead. Still, the sec team didn’t go unscathed. Without warning, the heads of two men erupted in sudden explosions of blood and bone and they dropped in place. The high-pitched cracks of the sniper rifle that had taken them out rolled over the rest of the group, causing them to break off their attack and retreat to cover.
The vid angle changed as the cam operator dodged for protection as well. The sniper was good at his task. He or she managed to get two more secmen and then disappeared without a trace. Several anti-Earth movements claimed the sniper’s actions, but I knew that the shooter had been militarily trained and had doubtless not acted alone. Exfiltration under such circumstance would have been hard. Getting away without leaving a trail was even more difficult.
“Do you think the sniper was part of the protestors?” Shelly asked.
“Perhaps. But the sniper could also have been someone hired by the corps to raise the body count. Everyone involved in Mars has an agenda.”
The protective screen over the windows slid down over the transplas. Warning lights suddenly flashed red.
“Passengers, please take your seats and belt in.” The female voice was tight and clipped in her address.
Male and female conductors walked through the car urging passengers to comply.
I’d already hacked the onboard vid array so I accessed them and took a look around the train. The mag-lev track was laid through a stark, rocky outcropping that towered over the cars as the train rushed forward.
The pulling engine shifted shape as defensive metal sheets raised and gun ports opened. Train-jacking was rare on Mars, but it was occasionally done.
I changed magnification on the vid uplink and scanned the countryside ahead. A group of armed men and women in envirosuits rode minihoppers and six-legged ATV crawlers, moving restively along the upper rim of the closest outcropping.
“They’re not moving on an intercept path,” Shelly said.
“The train’s going too fast.” I knew from the satlink that our current ground speed was 143 KPH.
“They could match our speed.”
“The minihoppers might.” I accessed the rear-facing vid and saw that another group of riders and fliers had locked onto our back trail. These also piloted large eighteen-legged crawlers and a half-dozen walkers—saucer-shaped attack craft that carried an eight-man crew, heavy plasma cannons, and large-bore guns capable of taking out a passenger car with a single direct hit.
“The clean-up crew,” Shelly said.
The train’s commanding officer knew the trouble he was in immediately. The comm officer started relaying information on the train’s position and as much detail as he could on the attackers.
“Podkayne Transit Authority, this is Manta Bill 3047, en route from Bradbury Train Station. We’re being attacked by a jacker crew 4.2 kilometers north of Pohl’s Peak.”
An instant later, three emergency beacons flew from the train into the sky. One of them was shot down immediately at the same time the comm array on the train was taken out by a plasma blast that left the plasteel plates of the pulling engine cherry-red.
I accessed the pulling engine’s environmental controls and discovered that the heat inside the vehicle wasn’t powerful enough to become lethal at present. The comm systems went down and a second beacon exploded half a kilometer up, chased down by a seek-and-destroy missile that had locked onto the beacon’s comm signature.
The third beacon continued skyward, disappearing almost immediately. I knew it would continue to resend the comm officer’s message and the train’s location until a rescue crew took control of it.
“Unless the jackers have a high-altitude pursuit drone,” Shelly said.
Before I could respond, the mag-lev rail 2.3 kilometers ahead of the train blew up. The destruction was clearly visible and there was no doubt the rail was gone.
The loss of the mag-lev connection caused the train to go on emergency lockdown mode. Foam-filled bags deployed from the seats in front of passengers and braced them for collision, ready to cushion the impact when it came.
Even so, nothing could have prevented the shock and trauma that jerked the passengers as the cars tumbled from the rails because there was no way to completely stop the mass in motion. Many of the people with me screamed in fear and pain as the car rolled over onto its side and skidded along the dust-covered bones of Mars. When the seams split, the car lost air integrity and I knew people were going to be in danger of asphyxiation.
I stayed loose, letting the foam bag in front of me do its job, then I tore through the bag, spilling foam in all directions, and unbelted from the seat. I organized a list of people that would need my help first: older passengers who hadn’t gotten their envirosuits pulled up, children who would panic and forget their training, and people that appeared to be the most injured.
I held onto the seat and lowered myself to the right side of the passenger car, which—now re-oriented—had become the floor. I moved through the passengers quickly, helping those who needed it to tear free of the foam bags that now threatened to hold them immobile while they suffocated on Mars’s thin air.
Part of my attention stayed riveted on the
approaching jacker crew that flew and stalked quickly toward the train. Through the exterior vid array, which had remained mostly active, I surveyed the train and saw that the cars lay scattered and broken like a child’s toys.
A jacker on a minihopper swooped by the car I was in, pausing long enough to peer through a rent in the plasteel to view the interior. Still watching him on an exterior vid, I saw him take out a can of spray paint and squirt a red X over the car’s left side, which was now above me. Then he flitted on. I wasn’t sure what the mark indicated, though I had an idea.
Satisfied that everyone inside the passenger car was well and breathing on their own, I grabbed hold of the 1.1 meter rent in the car’s side, braced myself against a seat, and heaved, peeling the skin back enough for me to slip through. I climbed atop the car and peered out at the sky—tinted red by all the dust swirling around from the crash—and watched the minihoppers speeding by.
The eighteen-legged crawlers pulled into position beside the cargo cars and human crew deployed. I knew only a human could be callous enough to concentrate on retrieving materials before taking care of lives at risk.
The minihopper continued scouting and painting cars.
“This is an inside job,” Shelly said. “They know what they’re looking for.”
I agreed. Around me, railroad secmen climbed from the cars and unlimbered weapons. My programming caught for just a moment as I tried to process who was in more danger: the passengers still in the cars, or the secmen squaring off against the jackers.
“The passengers are still inside the cars,” Shelly said. “Conductors and train bioroids will help take care of them. These secmen are kindred spirits to us. They’re defending the cargo, and maybe the passengers if this thing turns bad.”
Chapter Twenty
I took out the Gortaub 15mm slug-thrower with difficulty. My programming made the job almost impossible, but I reminded myself I wasn’t going to kill anyone with it, just take out material assets. Even with that knowledge, mastering the weapon was still difficult.
With a half-dozen clicks, I fitted the skeletal rifle butt, the scope, and the extended barrel onto the pistol, changing it over to a mini-rifle. Then I took out one of the extended 25-round magazines and slid it into place.
One of the secmen nearest me took in my weapon with surprise and started to turn toward me. I looked at him and accessed his envirosuit’s comm frequency. “I am going to help you.”
He nodded.
I dropped over the side of the car and landed in the powdery dust, feeling it slip beneath me for an instant before I got my balance. Solid core bullets hammered the passenger car and plasma blasts cooked the thin air where I’d been standing.
I took aim on one of the minihoppers as it heeled around to begin an approach path toward a cluster of railroad guards. The tail stabilizer was one of the most vulnerable points on the craft. When the reticule settled over the point where the stabilizer hooked into the minihopper’s body, I slid my finger over the trigger and squeezed. The Gortaub jumped in my hands but I managed the recoil easily. What was more difficult was the actual act of firing. I knew there was a possibility the pilot would get harmed, but I also knew the minihopper would have safety measures built in.
And I also knew that shooting these targets would save lives. I used that leverage to free myself from the constraints of my programming.
The 15mm round sped true, not hampered by Mars’s lesser gravity or by air resistance in the thinner atmosphere. When the bullet struck the stabilizer, it tore away from the minihopper’s body. Immediately, the aircraft spun out of control, whirling like a top.
With a crash imminent, the minihopper’s safety systems ejected the pilot into the air and a foam-filled crash bag deployed around her. Before the pilot hit the ground, the crash bag covered her, then it smacked into the hard planes of the stony landscape, bounced twice, and opened up to disgorge the pilot. She moved feebly, then lay back. Her envirosuit was intact and I was not concerned about her safety or her further involvement in the battle at the moment.
Another minihopper rose above the other side of the passenger car with both 20mm chain guns blazing. The two secmen above me spilled over the side, driven by the impacts. As they fell, blood already streaming from one of them, I fired into the ammo drum of one of the mini-guns.
The ammo drum cooked off rounds in a mad light show and triggered the minihopper’s evasive safety feature. The exploding rounds wouldn’t penetrate the minihopper’s hard cockpit shell, but they registered as heavy and direct fire. Attempting to save itself and its pilot, the minihopper shot straight up into the sky.
I turned to the fallen secmen beside me. One of them was already dead, his face punched in by a direct hit. The other secman writhed in agony from a round that had nearly amputated his left leg. The envirosuit had already attempted to tourniquet the leg to stop the blood flow from the pulmonary artery.
Still in shock, the man tried to get to his feet. I held him down, then punched in the suit’s automatic med routines. On the other side of the face shield, the man’s eyes glazed as slappatches of narcotics took him into twilight and started flooding his system with antibiotics and coagulants. Still breathing, but more relaxed, the secman laid back and stared up at the sky with uncaring eyes.
I went through both secmen’s kits and discovered they had thermite lace, which was probably intended to burn open cargo containers if the need should arise. I intended to burn through something else.
With the thermite lace looped over my left shoulder, I turned and ran toward the nearest cargo crawler feeding on the wrecked train. The crawler lay next to the container car with its hatches open while the interior crew deployed massive mechanical jaws and the exterior crew ripped open the container car’s walls.
The railroad secmen fought a solid battle, never giving quarter, but they were facing a losing battle. The jackers outnumbered them, and those men and women had come prepared to kill whoever they had to in order to get the shipments they were after. I knew they weren’t after every shipment because the spotters flying the minihoppers had marked some of the container cars.
As Shelly had said, the jackers had come well-informed.
I bounded across the Martian landscape, using my strength and the lesser gravity to hurl me twenty and thirty meters forward with each step. Three jackers aboard the crawler attempted to shoot me. Bullets ripped into the ground only centimeters behind me, and plasma blasts turned the red sand into glass ellipses in meter-wide spots.
I returned fire as I neared the crawler. I shot a heavy machine gun off the gimbals it was mounted on, managed to crease the helmet of another man hard enough to knock the second shooter aside, and shot the heel off the armored boot of another to send him toppling to the ground.
By then I was running beneath the poised crawler’s legs. I slapped lengths of the thermite lace around five of the multi-jointed legs, then touched the ten-second delays.
At the count of “four,” I dodged down and rolled away. The rapid-fire sequence of explosions followed me. I put out a hand and pushed myself up just in time to see the crawler’s legs burn off. The craft shifted awkwardly, then started coming down toward me in an avalanche of tumbling plasteel as the other four legs flailed wildly and dug into the ground, gouging long ditches.
I avoided getting tangled up in the writhing crawler by only a few meters. Shifting hands with the Gortaub, I drew the Synap and blasted three of the jackers that ended up sprawled across the landscape. They fell and didn’t do more than twitch a few seconds before succumbing to unconsciousness.
Caught in the sights of a minihopper pilot, I ran along the downed crawler. One of the crawler’s legs swung up out of control and smashed into the minihopper hard enough to activate the eject sequence. The pilot shot up into the sky and the 20mm cannon he’d been chasing me with stopped firing.
The minihopper impacted 140 meters away against a stand of broken rock, then tumbled back down to the ground mostly intact
. I changed course at once, knowing that the third emergency beacon might not have escaped destruction.
At the minihopper, I smashed through the transplas pilot bubble with my fists and climbed inside. I seized the comm and switched it to the emergency frequency I knew Podkayne Transit Authority would be monitoring.
I spoke clearly and briefly, tracking the activity around me. I knew I had been spotted. One of the walkers’ turrets was already turning in my direction.
“Podkayne Transit Authority, this is a passenger aboard Manta Bill 3047 en route from Bradbury Train Station. We have been attacked by a jacker crew.” I added the global positioning coordinates as I tapped into the broadcast frequency and headed back out of the minihopper.
The walker’s turret locked onto the downed aircraft.
“Manta Bill 3047, be advised that Podkayne Transit Authority has a lock on your position. A tach team has been dispatched. ETA is twenty-three minutes twen—”
The walker’s main gun belched and a 200mm round struck the wrecked minihopper. The comm frequency died as the vehicle turned into a flaming slag heap.
Even though the thin air of Mars lessened the concussive shockwave from the blast, the explosion was still enough to knock me to the ground in a headlong dive. I twisted and rolled as I hit, back on my feet instantly as the walker gunnery crew tried to target me again.
I dodged behind a stand of rock just as the main gun fired again. This time the shot struck the rock, splintering it and bringing it down on top of me. If I had been human, I would have died there. Instead, I was buried, taken out of the fight for the moment as I struggled to find purchase and extricate myself.
Then I wasn’t there anymore. My vision blurred.
* * *
A man in mercenary fatigues stood over me, his face calm and somber. “Simon? Are you awake?”
