And that gets me thinking about something Lyra was rambling to herself, thinking out loud: All the lush green here—almost healthier than the Tranquility-grown examples—didn’t get that way just by having more available water and thicker air and milder temperatures. Plants need soil nutrients, food, which apparently comes down to a cycle of death, decay and digestion. (And she desperately wants to go out and take fresh soil samples, but Rios is still being smartly cautious.)
What I’m waiting for are direct orders from on-high to go diving into the green and capture one of these incredible creatures, or at least provide UNCORT a reasonably intact corpse for study. But they don’t come out and say that. General Richards just gives us the prod to keep moving, to keep our eyes open, and to report anything (he repeated “anything” with emphasis) immediately.
We start weaving through the “forest” again, still aiming for the Vajra.
Within the hour, we get the potential answer to one question. When we try to push through a particularly thick growth of Honeyflower woven into “trees” of Bitter Apple and the pervasive Graingrass, the air erupts around us with dozens of new flapping things:
The bodies are half the length of the dragonfly’s, and the eyes are smaller. The wings, while shorter, are much broader, and colored in patterns of greens and rusts that probably blend perfectly into the foliage when they’re sitting still. And I can see these wings without freeze-frame because they flap much slower than the dragonfly’s, their gentler rhythm almost mesmerizing to watch. They flutter as if weightless, then dance away on the air.
Lyra quickly identifies them as some kind of “Lepidopterae” or “Butterfly”, though unlike any of the myriad variations on Earth, and—like the Dragonfly—many times larger. On Earth, she tells me, these creatures have two active forms: The one we’ve seen is the flying adult. The immature version is strikingly different: a tube of undulating flesh with many short legs and a devouring mouth. It comes from an egg (laid in large quantities), eats plant life voraciously (there appears to be plenty to spare here), and then enters a kind of Hiber-Sleep in a self-made sheath. It’s during this phase that it changes into the winged adult. The adults may still eat plants, but many prefer the nectar and pollen of plant blossoms, thereby augmenting the wind in pollinating the various species.
Lyra assumes the butterflies are here for their pollinating services, though suspects the fibers they excrete to create their sleep sheaths (apparently this is where the word “cocoon” comes from) may be useful to humans, as they were in the case of certain Earth variants. In turn, the dragonflies may serve to control their population, so they don’t over-breed and decimate the greenery. After another report back to Command, she gets some validation. The best-guess of the Upworld brain trust is that someone may be carefully controlling the ratios of predator to prey, which means the entire region is a massive, managed garden. But us finding another engineered “higher” life form only increases Upworld concerns.
Unable to readily snag a living or dead sample, we move on.
We decide to divert toward the southern foothills, risking the higher ground (and who might be waiting there) for a look at the ruins of Pax Colony. It sits just this side of a protruding branch of the Divide Rim’s secondary foothill mountains. On the other side of this ridgeline lies the Vajra’s western “blades”. And following the ridge up into the Rim itself, at the point where the valley widens southward again (creating the central and southern “blades” of the western “trident”), is the ETE White Station: their furthest outpost, but also their newest and most powerful terraforming plant. Its lines likely feed the Vajra, as well as this west-lying part of the valley. Its location explains why the Vajra, which lies along the southern side of the valley where it widens, is greener than its northern side, even though the northern side is slightly deeper.
When we finally see the ruin, it’s strikingly more intact than expected, with the spines of structures and partial walls still visible above ground, though all of it is overgrown like the terraces of the Tranquility garden, woven with green.
We can see more butterflies dancing in the wreckage, and Rios considers risking a walk outside. But then Jane detects heat: Warm blips. Dozens of them. Over a hundred meters away, invisible in the green. Not moving.
“More insects?” Sergeant Carson—our replacement for Horton—asks.
“Insects are ectothermic,” Lyra tells her. “At least the ones on Earth are.”
“Maybe just people,” Jane offers.
“Earthside would find that reassuring,” Rios quips darkly.
“Hold or move?” Jane wants to know.
“Hold,” Rios tells him. “Let’s see what they do if we do nothing.”
So we wait. Rios flashes an update to Richards while Lyra takes some video and scans of the butterflies, the ruins. There’s no sign of heat in the wrecked colony, which makes me wonder why not.
“The ETE told us that the Pax survivors had to move after the bombing,” Rios tells me when he figures what I’m looking for. “First into the heat tunnels under the Station, probably right up that ridgeline—luckily it’s not far. Then supposedly they found good real estate in the Vajra. Likely just over that ridge and down.”
“So is this them, watching over the old site?”
“Seems like a lot for a patrol,” Carson chimes in.
“It isn’t Silvermen,” I decide. “They’d be up in the high ground. And they’d never let us see their heat.”
“They’re patient, whoever they are,” Jane says after several tense minutes. None of the blips have moved.
“An animal would have moved by now,” Lyra offers. “Especially since we aren’t.”
“Unless they’re asleep,” Wei tries.
“They weren’t there when we rolled up,” Jane counters. “They came to check us out.”
“They’re also confident we can’t actually see them,” Rios adds, “not without approaching.”
The canopy is too thick for a satellite or a flyover to give us a better look. And they could outrun this beast if we moved toward them, especially with all the green slowing us. We’d have to go outside and meet them on foot. I’m not liking the numbers or the terrain disadvantage. If they’re anything like the Silvermen, anyone who goes out there will be dead or taken before we know what hit us. I’d want superior numbers before I’d even try.
Rios relays my recommendations up to Command, but gets no reply either way. So he orders us to keep sitting.
We wait another hour. Nothing changes, nothing moves but the insects and the wind swaying the plants. What I can’t help but think is what a high-risk waste this has become: We can’t see what we came to see, and we don’t dare go outside because we’ve only got four shooters to do so (five if I count Lyra), since Rios and Jane have to stay inside.
If the Vajra is worse than this…
“Let’s move off,” Rios decides after another two hours, tired of waiting for Command to make a decision. “Slowly. Head for the point at the end of the ridge.”
Toward the passage into the Vajra.
Our unmoving visitors stay put until we’re out of scan range (as if they know how far our infrared can see through the green).
27 May, 2118.
I’m up for my “shift” by 06:00 Marineris Mean Time, not that shifts mean anything stuck in a space this size with a crew this small. It’s just routine. Discipline. The reality is: You go to work when you’re needed. You eat and sleep when you can. And that’s been my life for as long as I can remember, born Legacy into the City of Industry Peace Keepers.
It’s been a major surprise to me that the other career warfighters didn’t grow up that way, the Old Earth Vets as well as the Upworld Cherry New Earth Relief. They all tell me that they didn’t enter Service until they were over eighteen, or a few years younger if they started in what they call a “Reserve Officers” school program (but that isn’t really Service from what I’ve researched). I see it in the little things: Wei talkin
g about having a “life” somewhere someday, maybe going back to Earth after the Quarantine lifts, “Just to see what they’ve done to the place.” Jenovec grumbling about night watch shifts. And Carson—my newest bunk-mate—wondering how I can sleep when we’re surrounded by danger.
Of course, I try to explain that it’s an ingrained necessity: A warfighter needs to sleep and eat when they can, to keep healthy and stay sharp, ready. Just like cleaning your weapon or repairing your gear—you do the maintenance, you take care of the tools. As a discipline. But that explanation seems to go over about as well as these Upworlders trying to explain oceans and insects and animals and cheeseburgers to me.
I also seem to sleep lighter than they do, with the exception of Rios and Jane. They’d make good Peace Keepers, only they question orders. (But then, so did I. Eventually and too late.)
The first thing I do is run through my morning PT—the aft lab also has our meager exercise equipment crammed into it. Again, I realize one of the more insidious forms of our punishment as Leviathan exiles: With no access to a base G-sim centrifuge, we’re steadily losing bone mass and density. When (if) we get back, we’ll be weak, fragile, and we’ll get to look forward to months of hard rehab and painful re-calcifier therapy. (To try to reduce this, Rios insists we wear at least our L-A gear inside, taking a lesson from some of the low-tech surface dwellers who laden themselves with armor and gear to keep their skeletons from wasting.)
Sweaty and with a good burn going, I take the opportunity for a two-minute shower, get my LA’s on without waking Carson, then hit the Galley for one of the rituals I’ve adopted: Making the First Shift coffee.
Jane tells me I’m good at it, even though it’s pretty foolproof. Maybe I take some kind of extra care because coffee was such a luxury at Industry, reserved for officers. (It was even getting sparse at UNMAC Melas Two before the relief flights started dropping it by the case, like it was actual food.) Or maybe it’s because my father taught me to pour it high and slow to aerate it, to bring out the flavor.
One thing we all seem to have in common: We appreciate the simple things.
Jane can smell his coffee coming before I’m through the hatch. I can tell he’s spent the night here, in his driver’s seat, staring out into the darkness after the sun set and the ports started frosting over, lights down to readouts so he could keep the blast shields open. Now the morning sun is pouring purple light in on his darkly-circled eyes, making his graying stubble almost sparkle.
Jenovec is asleep in the link-operator’s seat, looking like a sack of grain flour. I’m tempted to spill coffee on him, but I value it too…
“Whoa!!”
Jane bolts upright in his seat, almost coming out of it. His coffee sloshes on the deck. He’s seen something. Straight in front of us.
I look, expecting to see another insect or other bizarre creature. But what I see is a man. And I see him easily because he wants to be seen.
He’s just standing there—we parked facing the trailing edge of the ridge that marks the unofficial border of the Vajra, and he’s on the high ground, barely twenty-five meters away. Out of the green, out in the open. Wearing a Nomad’s cloaks and scarves.
Jenovec is awake now, startled and still post-sleep disoriented, joining us at the ports.
“Where did he come from?” he asks dumbly.
“Why didn’t we see him coming?” I ask the smarter question. And I’m looking at the scans as Jane says it out loud:
“He’s not on the screens…”
“No heat?” I don’t believe what I’m seeing. “No motion?”
“No visual,” Jane points urgently to our camera views. They show the patch of ground he’s standing on, the rocks and the plants, the morning winds starting to kick the dust up at us, but he’s not there. I check the time stamps to be sure, run a system check. Pan. Zoom. The sentry systems still all insist there’s no one there, despite what we can see with our actual eyes.
And he can probably see us, having our little panic, through the forward ports.
I hit the intercom to wake everybody, get them up and up here. Rios is behind me in seconds, smelling like he had his own shower right after mine, still pulling his jacket on.
“What have we…What the hell?”
“He’s not showing up on any of our scans,” I report quick. “Even visual says he isn’t there.”
Rios checks, does the same back-and-forth between screens and port view, then orders:
“Guns. Lock him.”
Jane activates the forward antipersonnel turret, but
“No response… Nothing… None of our batteries work.”
The panic of sudden defenselessness—betrayed by UNMAC tech—washes over us. I consider running to the armory and dealing with this the low-tech way. But as we all watch, the figure slowly raises his hands, then clasps them behind his head, dropping to his knees in the universal position of surrender. Under his robes I can see knives, a short sword, armor. Slung over his shoulders are a bow and a quiver of arrows.
“I mean you no harm,” a soft, smooth voice comes over our link channel. “One of you possesses something I would very much like to make use of, only briefly. I’m willing to trade information of what lies ahead of you.”
His tone is casual, friendly, almost if he knows us. And there is something familiar about his voice, I just can’t imagine where I’ve heard him before.
“Who are you and how are you hacking our equipment?” Rios demands.
“Long story, Captain. I will restore your systems.”
True to his word, the cameras reveal him as if he just materialized in a blink. We get heat. But T-Wave scans won’t penetrate what he’s wearing.
“Are you hybrid? Nanotech?” Rios needs to know.
“Not in any sense that concerns your commanders. I am perfectly safe in terms of what scares them so. I will leave my weapons outside.”
He stands slowly, un-slings and sets his bow and arrows down, unclasps and drops his cloak, starts dropping his blades. Then he does a slow spin, arms out, hands open. We see armor, a breather canister, a portable heater and a canteen, but nothing obviously threatening. Then he just stands there facing us, self-crucified, the wind battering him with dust and dead leaves.
Rios keys the uplink to report this to Melas Command, but his reply is a garbled blast of static.
“What are you doing to our communications?” he confronts the stranger.
“That’s not me, I assure you.” His voice is still calm, disturbingly so. “It’s another reason we need to talk. Immediately would be best.”
Jenovec checks the systems, tries to ping the satellites.
“It’s not a hack, sir,” he reports after more noise blurts out of our speakers. “Interference. EMR.”
“It’s not blocking our close-range links,” I point out.
“No, sir. It’s environmental. Maybe the Atmosphere Net.”
Rios checks. Our last clear report was sent two hours ago, before sunrise. There was nothing like this yesterday.
“If nothing else, you should go out topside and thicken the homemade camouflage on your hull,” the stranger advises gently but urgently.
“Orders?” I ask Rios. He’s watching what Jenovec is getting from the Atmosphere Net.
“This is not good…” he mutters like he’s seen this before. I’m afraid I have, too.
Outside, the dust storm is increasing, killing visibility. Wind speed is in the usual range, but the particulate count is higher than it should be, especially if the wind is coming at us from such a green zone.
“This can’t be what I think it is…” Jane tries to deny.
Our visitor seems to be ignoring the sandblasting he’s taking, still patiently waiting for us to decide what to do.
“We need to back out of here,” Rios tells Jane, watching the air thicken around us. “Now!”
“Don’t move, Captain,” the stranger warns, finally losing the lazy tone, now sounding like an officer. “If
you move you’ll be seen. You need to shut down your uplink, go quiet. And you need more cover on the roof.”
He turns, picks up his short sword and dashes to the nearest clusters of Graingrass and Rustbean. He starts hacking with the stout, single-edged blade, shearing the thick stalks with impressive speed and strength. When he’s got a bundle of long growth gathered, he grabs hold of it, drags it toward us. Then he stops right in front of us, plants his feet, squats low, and jumps.
A blur of rustling green passes upwards across our ports. We hear his boots up on the
roof. He just jumped ten meters straight up, lugging a load bigger than he is.
Topside cams show him dragging his bundle across the upper deck, pulling it apart, spreading it, trying to secure it so the wind doesn’t take it, weaving it in with what’s left from Lyra’s last fix.
“Help him!” Rios decides, picking me and Jenovec.
I make a quick run to my quarters as I’m sealing up my L-A—no time to put on a shell—and grab my knife. Then I meet Jenovec at the armory locker, grab an ICW and a sidearm, ammo; pull on a mask and goggles. Then we seal ourselves in the axial airlock, pop the pressure, and climb for the upper hatch.
We get hit by the cold abrasive winds as soon as we poke our heads up. The grit cuts skin where it’s exposed around our masks and goggles. Our “friend” ignores us, busily weaving a net from what he cut, trying to get it over our turret, conceal the guns. We start helping, and he abandons us, jumps over the side. But half-a-minute later, he’s back, jumping up on the hull with another big bundle of green like he’s just hopped a small boulder. We spread the foliage out as best we can.
“Is this what I think it is?” I get his attention, gesture into the storm.
“It may be just a brief test,” he says over the wind. But then he stops working on the camo, looks up at me, locks my eyes with his pale blue ones. “You’re the one I need to speak with.”
He doesn’t explain further, goes to get another bundle.
The God Mars Book Four: Live Blades Page 11
