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 wi
ll 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.
The God Mars Book One: CROATOAN Page 28
