And it’s gotten into my damn helmet! He cursed at some point during their third hour of continuous jogging, now slowed to a loping walk. He had no idea how that had happened, since any hole that would let the Martian sand in surely would have led to a catastrophic loss of pressure in the rest of his stupid emergency encounter suit, right?
But there it was, Solomon was certain that his eyes felt dry, and that his face itched from the sand’s constant abrasion—even though he had no idea how that was possible.
“Commander!” It was Wen, her voice sounding small and electronic in his ear. “We got company, coming up fast on our two o’clock.”
“Fela?” he wondered out loud, turning to his right to see that his combat specialist had sharp eyes. Sharper than his.
It’s this damned suit! It didn’t have any self-cleaning mechanism like the more sophisticated Marine Corps visor-helmets. He wiped the layer of dust and sand from the outside of the helmet, to see that yes, there were two dark shapes racing over the ground towards them and throwing up plumes of dust behind them.
“They’re riding…hover-bikes?” Solomon winced at the glare as the figures wavered and broke apart in the heat waves.
“Some kind of hover-bike.” Kol, their technical specialist, stepped up to peer at them. “Not Earth-normal, must be Martian-produced…”
In fact, the two riders looked to both be on contraptions that were more like boats than bikes, but the way they were sitting forward on the high seat, leaning forward over the prow, made it look like a bike—apart from the rubber skirt that extended forward and back under the seat, and the round turbine behind the rider.
“One-person hover-craft,” Kol said as they grew larger and larger in their field of vision. “Clever…”
“No time to ogle alien technology, Kol! Anyone see insignia? The Chosen banner? Martian colors?”
“Everything is Martian colors down here, sir…” Wen said grumpily, and although she was being facetious, she was right. The approaching riders wore the same collection of drab browns and oranges that Solomon and his ‘mercenaries’ did, although they had added a bright red sash, as red as blood—the color of Mars.
“What’s the Chosen insignia again? Anyone?” Solomon once again wished that he’d had time to get properly debriefed on the situation.
“Hammer on top of the Red Planet,” Kol said, squinting behind his mask. “And uh… It’s not something I can see…”
So they could either just be proud patriots, Solomon thought, in which case they could be in trouble, or they could be undercover seditionists, in which case they were certainly in trouble.
Either way, and whatever faction of Mars that these riders represented, there was no mistaking the fact that they were making a beeline straight for Gold Squad, in the featureless expanse of rippled sand.
“I guess they want to say hello,” Solomon said carefully, one hand moving to the bulk of the pistol under his poncho robe.
“Halt! In the name of Mars!” The first rider was broadcasting over their suit’s speaker systems as the sand billowed around them as the hover-bikes settled.
“No resistance!” Solomon said, holding up a hand to them. The other he kept half-folded next to his hip, just in case… He was lying, of course. He was fully prepared to offer every bit of resistance that he had to at the first sign of trouble. And we outnumber them, two to one, he considered.
But one of the riders already had their long rifle unslung and covering them, as the speaker slowly powered down their bike and dismounted.
“Who are you? What are you doing out here!?” the Martian demanded, his strangely faceted, almost insectile helmet making him appear alien. A true creature of Mars.
“We’re, ah…” Solomon thought quickly. The cover story that Lieutenant Vikram had given them was a joke. They were supposed to be out-of-work mercenaries, wandering around the dunes of Mars? Where is our transport? How did we get here? How come we’ve only got pistols? Solomon knew that none of that would fly. And he had much more experience in lying to the authorities than he thought dear old Vikram did.
“Water surveying…” Solomon said with a shrug.
He heard Wen cough behind him.
“Water surveying,” the speaker said, his helmet turning to look them up and down. “Where’s your equipment? Seismic sounders? Drills?”
“Ah…” Solomon shrugged. “Well, we ran into a little problem with our, uh, our boss, Fela?” he said awkwardly.
“Fela…” the speaker said flatly, already reaching for a communicator on his belt.
“Yeah. We had a difference of opinion as to where to look…” Solomon said.
“Because you’re an idiot,” Wen muttered, loud enough for the speaker to hear, who looked between the woman and Solomon for a moment, before making a call.
“Survey vessel 15? This is Outrider Jacques, on the Lunae Planitia patrol… I got a team of people here saying that they belong to you…” he stated.
“If you’d only thought a bit more, then maybe she wouldn’t have abandoned us out here!” Wen said hotly, accusing Solomon. “You’re always doing this, boss! How many times do we have to run around after your harebrained schemes? When are you going to stop thinking that you know better than everyone else!?”
Ouch, Solomon thought. No need to cut quite so close to the bone…
“Easy there, lady…” The speaker waited for confirmation at the other end of the line as he looked at the irate Jezzy Wen. “No need for arguments out here. You know the saying…”
“The Red never forgives…” Kol supplied, earning a momentary look of confusion from Solomon.
“Yeah, that’s right. The Red never forgives. If you annoyed your overseer so much that she decided to teach you a lesson by dumping you out here, then maybe you should pick another job for yourselves, aye?” The speaker sounded annoyed.
Believe me, pal, if I could pick any other job right about now than I really would… Solomon thought, just as the radio crackled.
“What? What are those eejits doing all the way out on the Planitia!? I’m two klicks out of Tharsis!” The Outcasts could clearly hear the glitchy sound of a very irate woman on the other end.
“Well… Unless you want to get your license revoked, Fela, then I suggest you turn your caravan around and come pick them up. I don’t care how much they annoyed you. You can’t just dump people out in the middle of a desert in the middle of a fracking war!” The speaking Martian sighed, clicking off as the woman on the other end grumbled.
“You lot were lucky. You probably could have made it back to Tharsis in one piece, but then you’d probably only block up the clinics as they pumped you full of liquids and treated your heatstroke!” the man said indignantly. “Try to take some pride in yourselves, for heaven’s sake!” the man berated them as the other lowered his rifle.
The crisis was over. Solomon and Wen had managed to convince them that they were idiots.
“We haven’t got time to search the desert for disgruntled employees. At any moment, the damn Confederacy could start orbital bombardment, and then we’ll all be in the frack. Got it? Now get your heads screwed on right!” the Outrider—what Solomon presumed was some kind of highway patrolman—snarled angrily at them as he got back onto his hover-bike, and together, the two of them roared off back over the sands.
“Well, that went easier than I expected!” Solomon eased his hand away from where it had been hovering over his pistol.
“Only because we didn’t have to lie too much,” Wen said grumpily.
As it turned out, Fela was even grumpier than Jezebel Wen, especially as she didn’t hesitate to start berating them using her caravan’s loud speakers as soon as they could make it out trundling over the hot sands towards them.
“You stars-damned idiots! What are you doing, walking around out here!? Do you think my job is worth this hassle that you’re putting me through!?”
The woman rode at the top and front of a large structure that looked a lit
tle like a tank. Wide tracks that looped up the sides of rhomboid red-iron structure crunched slowly over the plains, with the shrouded woman sitting in a small driving booth at the very front. Solomon saw that the ‘caravan’ was actually a mobile living module as well as a workshop, with a bulkhead airlock on the side, solar panels on the roof, and rafts of metal pipes and equipment strapped all over its side, probably designed so that each water surveyor could live for months at a time out in the deserts as they searched for the easiest subsurface aquifers that the Martian populous needed.
“Goddamn idiots…” The woman was still grumbling as she pulled the caravan to a halt and swung herself over the small ladder, climbing down to greet them in person.
Fela was an older woman from the sound of her, with the same insect-style helmet over her head, and a number of light shawls and robes hanging over her encounter suit. She paused to pull one of the poles from the side of the vessel and plunge it into the ground, fiddling with the top to extend a small, rotating contraption like a wind measurement device.
“Might as well make it look as though I’m doing work, for all the good this will do me…” she muttered, clicking a few buttons on the small control panel of the pole, before heaving it back out of the ground and stowing it on the side of the vehicle.
“Ah, Fela…?” Solomon approached her a little cautiously. He wasn’t entirely sure of how to introduce himself—as a Confederate Marine or an errant water surveyor.
“I know who you are. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t,” Fela said, ignoring him as she stalked around the large caravan, pulling valves and checking readings before turning to look up at Solomon. “Well? You lot going to get in or what? I haven’t got all day!” She banged on the airlock release button, which did nothing. “Blooming thing…” She hit it again, harder this time, and the airlock started to cycle open, revealing a small airlock on the other side—more like a booth.
“I’ll ride with you,” Solomon said immediately. I don’t like the idea of us being inside this thing without any way of knowing if Fela is going to take us to Tharsis or sell us out, he thought.
“Will you now?” the old woman said somewhat caustically as Karamov, Kol, and Wen clambered into the small airlock and Fela banged the door shut behind them. There was the hiss of escaping gases, and then the hum of the emergency booth on the inside re-pressurizing, before presumably opening out into the main hold of the vehicle on the other side.
“Alright?” Solomon mouthed the words, knowing that the earbud would pick up the vibrations of his jaw and transmit it as speech to the members of his squad inside.
“Yep, we got a fairly standard cargo hold. Lots of equipment, a sleeping cot, microwave…” Karamov’s voice said into his ear. “She’s legit.”
Good, Solomon thought, following Fela up the ladder to the open-air booth and sitting beside her on the bench.
“Make yourself useful, hotshot.” She thumped a pair of binoculars against his chest. “Keep an eye out for any more Outriders. The little devils are getting uptight what with all this…” He saw her helmet nod up at the sky, which looked yellow and blotchy white, revealing the threat of the super-massive dreadnaughts stationed far above.
So this is what it is like to be in an occupied warzone, Solomon found himself thinking. He was surprised that both the Outriders and Fela weren’t more worried than they were. He knew that he would be if he thought that his home was in danger of getting blasted from the planet at any possible moment.
They’re a tough people, Solomon considered. Because they had to be. The Martians were insanely proud of the fact that they had taken an uninhabitable world and made a living out of it. Had even thrived, by some standards. At least Proxima has breathable oxygen and Earth-normal gravity, Solomon thought. The Martians had to spend their entire life wondering if a pressure leak would kill them all, or a solar flare, or a desert storm, or any other equipment malfunction.
No wonder Fela is grouchy.
“It would take us the better part of an hour to get to Armstrong, but it’s going to take me three. And no arguing!” Fela stated defiantly, as if Solomon had accused her of something when he hadn’t even opened his mouth.
“The Outriders and the Red Senate are on high alert, so any change in my routine might raise suspicion. So, you are going to help me conduct my near-Tharsis survey, and then we’re going to trundle back to the docking port just like normal, you okay with that?”
“Do I have a choice?” Solomon said. Will the Marine Corps wait for three hours before they begin their attack, he was thinking.
“Nope. You’re on Martian time now,” Fela said, her voice sounding smug. She settled into her seat as she looked out over the gold-red horizon and started the engines.
They crunched forward at an excruciatingly slow pace as the skies above them swirled lighter and darker with high sand-winds. Occasionally, Solomon saw small blips of buildings on the horizon, and through the automatic telescope, he could range-find and zoom in to see tiny way stations with antennas that flickered with beacon lights.
“The Red is a deathtrap. Still an entire sixty percent of the planet not seen a human boot on it,” Fela murmured to him when she saw him looking.
Occasionally a light on the front of her driving booth would flash, and she would power down the caravan’s engines, climb down the metal ladder, pull out one of the seismic rods, and once again plunge it into the Martian soil to take a reading, before pulling it back out again, loading the pole into the outboard cradle, and moving them off to their next position.
“There’s enough water down there to flood about a fifth of the surface, if you could get the water cycle right,” Fela explained after the third such survey. “But it’s trapped in a labyrinth of porous rocks and water tunnels. It moves around under there, and these surveys help to determine where the hidden water is flowing—which formation of rock will be saturated this week, next month, this season…”
“Mars has seasons?” Solomon was surprised out of his worry to ask.
“Does Mars have seasons? Pfagh!” Fela cackled derisively. “Do you lot not read up on the places you’re going to invade? Yes, Mars has seasons. We have Stupid Hot season, and then the Dust Storms from Hell season, and then the Stupid Freezing season, before another batch of Even Worse Dust Storms from Hell.”
Solomon didn’t know if she was being serious or not, but he decided that it was probably best if he just said nothing. After all, he wasn’t here to talk about Martian climate, but something else entirely…
It seems my attempts to get on the good side of Fela have failed, Solomon thought around hour two. So I might as well just…
“Who’s our contact, Fela?” he came right out and asked it.
“Hsss!” The woman jumped in her seat, the insect helmet looking at him for a moment, before she revved the engines a little louder and they moved a little faster.
“Fela?” Solomon prompted. “I know this might be awkward for you, but this is something that we need to know…”
“I know,” Fela sighed. “Just so long as your lot keep your end of the deal.”
“What deal?” Solomon said stupidly.
Fela stamped her foot on the brakes and the caravan lurched to a halt.
“Hey!” There were thumps and sounds of people falling over each other from Solomon’s earbud communicator.
“Do you mean to tell me that you don’t know?” Fela was looking up at him again, and then didn’t give him any time to answer. “Why am I surprised. Always the Confederacy. Keep everyone in their little boxes… Only tell them what they need to know to keep doing their jobs…” she grumbled.
Sounds about right, Solomon thought, if the Ganymede Training Facility was anything to go by.
“A hundred thousand Confederate credits, in a Confederate off-world account. Luna, maybe. And…” Fela started the engine again. “I want you to promise me that you’ll put an end to all this Chosen ‘First of Mars’ nonsense.”
“You d
on’t agree with them?” Solomon said. “I thought they were, like, the mainstream religion here on Mars.”
“They’re not a religion!” Fela said hotly, throwing the caravan into a fast swerve over a dune. “They’re a bunch of fanatics under that Father Ultor character. Thugs is what they are. Mars don’t need anyone to tell us we’re special, and that we can have everything we want… That Father Ultor is a liar and a cheat, and he’s stirring up trouble for all of us…”
“Well, he’s sitting in a Confederate max security cell right about now, him and your imprimatur…” Solomon said, hoping to find some way to appease the woman. Maybe she would give him the name of the contact they were supposed to meet.
“And that’s where you lot messed up. The people here will fight for Father Ultor—the fanatics will, in any case—but they will die for Imprimatur Valance. That’s your real problem. You give her back, and then maybe she can bang some sense into everyone’s heads….” Fela considered for a moment. “You can keep Father Ultor, though. Throw him out an airlock at the first opportunity.”
“Something that I have considered before,” Solomon murmured, remembering the awkward and bombastic priest during the terrible negotiations on Titan. He had been spoiling for a fight with the Confederacy even then.
“Ha. Good. At least we can agree on that, then…” Fela stated. “Marshal. That’s the name of your contact. He runs an electronics store in Manhattan Square. He’ll be able to take you to the Chosen’s hideout.”
7
I Hate to Burst your Bubble…
Tharsis Tholus rose ahead of them as Fela’s caravan made its slow way up the ramp to the opening in the cliff walls, where low hangar bays stretched across the gap.
Outcast Marines series Boxed Set 2 Page 5
