15 November, 2115:
Day one was mostly uneventful.
The two ships took a course close to the Melas Northeast Rim, keeping them at least fifty miles away from the PK colonies of Industry, Pioneer and Frontier. It passes them under the nose of the ETE Blue Station, but it also passes them close to the original site of the Zodanga Colony, and that remains an unknown quantity—something Matthew reminded me of when he criticized the restraint I’d shown to the Nomads who fired on Melas Three.
“I see this going one of two ways, Mikey: We fail to contact Earth this cycle and we’re on our own, maybe two more years, maybe more years than we’ve got. Or we do contact Earth, and it’s at least two years until we see actual relief, assuming they’re not too scared of us to send it.”
“Which is why I’m not risking an escalation we can’t afford,” I reminded him pointlessly.
“I know. But we haven’t managed to secure our own sectors of this big ditch, much less gotten out into Coprates for a look around. My point is: If Earthside Command is anything at all like they were, I fully expect they’ll want to know what they’re coming back to, so our first orders will be to survey and secure, no matter how lean we are. And if we keep playing the besieged, we’re going to run out of bullets.”
We watched the trip out over the Link feed. The scenery alone has a lot of our personnel tapped into the video: Candor Chasma is rimmed in deep, long sculpted ranges that radiate like the ribs of a giant clam shell, carved either by mega-slides or the draining of ancient seas down into Melas, when the surface split as the planet went from having an Earth-like molten core to dead cold solid rock.
We get views of endless mountain ranges, damascened as the ancient layers of soil and rock lie exposed across their declines, and a valley floor of fractured crust that looks like the skin of some planet-sized reptile.
The sponsors behind Frontier Colony specifically built here to explore this geological wonderland, and Zodanga established itself on the junction between Melas and Candor—the east side of the Candor Gap—in hopes of supplying the craft and fuel to explore both environs. But since Candor isn’t as deep or conveniently sheer-walled as the central rift valleys, the ETE engineers excluded it from their “Marineris Phase” despite its proximity to Melas. So Candor has no atmosphere net. The electrostatic force field ends beyond the relatively narrow Gap, just past the parallel mountain ranges to the west where Pioneer Colony sits.
And our biggest surprise that day: The net is closed.
We lost contact with Anton’s flight as soon as they passed beyond the net, just at the point that the junction opened out into the vast expanse of Candor. The ETE had failed to warn us about this: the net descends close to the valley floor here to keep the air and moisture in, like staking a tarp down over precious cargo, an ionic dam across the fifty-mile-wide Gap.
Thankfully Anton had considered this possibility, and came prepared to establish a strong Link through the net’s interference by planting a pair of relay transmitters right on either side of the threshold.
Surveys and tests to determine the ideal location for the Melas-side relay took most of the afternoon. Sinking and tuning it took another two hours, with an audibly nervous Sergeant Horst maintaining a vigilant perimeter since the site lay within a hundred klicks of both Pioneer and Frontier. Thankfully, there was no outward sign that either PK stronghold took any notice of us, though I have little doubt they would at least be keeping an eye on our activities.
Once the signal was stable, they packed up and flew just beyond the net to begin planting the Candor-side relay. The sun was already starting to set. The ASV transmitters came through snowy at best, so watching the mission became an exercise in frustration and sensory strain.
Anton managed to give us a running list of complaints about the working conditions beyond the net: Only a five percent atmosphere and sixty degrees colder, which meant heavy pressure suits for any work outside. (How quickly we’ve been spoiled…) More problematic: once settled, the ASVs would succumb to engine icing (a drawback of having steam as the exhaust product), and need long warm-up time before they could move again. With night falling, that committed them to a stay until morning, even if they got the second relay done faster than the first. And a quick job wasn’t likely, between the difficulty working in heavy suits and what the extreme cold did to tools (even those supposedly designed to withstand original surface conditions).
If that wasn’t enough, the cosmic radiation proved almost more of an annoyance than the thin air and the cold. It was the net (and not the density of the new atmosphere) that filtered the worst of what bombarded the surface from space. That meant even shorter working shifts on the surface, and increased interference with the Link even with the relays. Even if they planted another relay between the net boundary and the planned site for the main transmitter, the Link would still be fuzzy at best, and non-existent if anything happened to any of the relays.
Despite Anton’s drive to see his project completed, they’d managed little more than surveyed a promising site for the Candor relay by nightfall. Horst’s squad set up perimeter security, and they huddled inside for what promised to hit a hundred below zero. Until that point, they’d seen no sign of life anywhere along their course.
At 24:30 Melas Mean Time (just before “Martian Midnight” in a day that’s twenty-four hours and thirty-seven minutes long), the Melas relay went down.
Morales discouraged me from taking out any more of her precious refits, warning me that they wouldn’t manage well in the icy night. So Matthew begrudgingly stood by with an assembled relief force to wait for sunrise while I took the Lancer out to see what had happened, its bay crammed with a squad of Rios’ H-A troopers, Smith at the controls and an all-too-eager Sakina along for the adventure. And I brought my sword.
The silence from the net boundary continued as we flew north, blind in the dark except for what radar told us was out there, making ghostly virtual landscapes on the Lancer’s cockpit screens. But every now and then we would see the slightest shadow flash by on our periphery, barely enough to register, but definitely airborne.
“Something in the wind?” Matthew considered unconvincingly as he kept constant contact with us. “Dust storm?”
“Or stealth material,” I agree with his fears. “But not fast like a Shinkyo fighter.”
“Could be our legendary Air Pirates,” Smith offers a little more cheerfully than I’d like. I look to Sakina.
“The Zodangans usually strike fast and in force, using small nimble flyers or dropping raiders on lines from larger airships. But I’ve only seen them prey on small camps or caravans without much means to strike back and no hope of outrunning them. I have heard no tales of them attacking a strong target, and they are quick to run if they meet significant resistance.” The disdain in her voice is actually stronger than when she speaks of the Shinkyo.
“Should we divert and try to get a better look?” Smith asks.
“Negative,” I focus. “And let’s not shoot anything until we know what it is.”
We found the relay—or at least where the relay had been—within an hour after it had gone silent. It had been ripped up out of its patch of ground, securing stakes and all.
“Nomads?” Matthew asks from base. “Or Pirates?”
“I don’t see any footprints except ours,” I tell him after we’ve lit up the site and taken a close scan. That says our thieves probably flew in and out. Taking advantage of an unguarded prize. I look at Sakina for some kind of confirmation, but all she does is narrow her eyes behind her mask. “Let’s move on.”
“Keep signaling,” Lisa prompts. “We’ll lose you once you cross the boundary, but the transmitter team should be close enough to pick you up.”
It takes another five minutes of tense silence before we hear Sergeant Horst cut through the static, his voice urgent, almost breathless.
“This is Uplink One, Colonel… Glad you could make it to the party… Watch your sides coming in. You
see a radar shadow, trust me: Shoot it.”
“Sitrep?”
But we see it ourselves soon enough. One of the ASVs is on fire. The turrets of the other take the occasional burst into the darkness. Horst’s squad has set up a defensive perimeter, watching all directions. The floodlights that would otherwise light the site have been pointed outwards.
“You’re secure to land, Colonel,” Horst reports, “but you’d make less of a target if you didn’t. We’d lift our remaining ship, but we’ve got too much icing.”
“Casualties?”
“Three wounded. Two will need Evac ASAP. Could have been worse. Might still be.”
“Staley?”
Horst hesitates for a moment. “He’ll live. Got cut up when we got jumped, but he’s patched for transport. Tough kid, just a little slow when it comes to getting out of the way.”
“What happened here?” I demand.
“Incoming!” Smith cuts me off as the Lancer’s radar registers projectiles flying at the ship. I can hear the booming of something that sounds like cannon. Smith spins the turrets to return fire, but instead of an incoming rocket detonating, something solid slams the hull. External cameras show what looks like a massive wad of heavy chain bouncing off our starboard side.
“Watch that stuff,” Horst warns, “It took Specialist Bailey’s leg clean off, and I count him lucky.”
“What is it?”
“What it looks like, sir: Scrap metal. Junk. Probably shot out of a homebrew cannon.”
I look again to Sakina, but she just shakes her head, her eyes saying she’s never encountered such a thing.
Smith is already taking evasive action, and launches flares. Against the darkness we can see what look like small gliders or autogiros flitting like moths. Our guns chew at them, but I’m not sure if we do any damage as they disappear as quickly as they come into view. They give almost no radar image, so it’s hard to get a lock.
I see flashes in the distance from roughly back the way we came—back just inside the net—followed in seconds by more booming, and more random metal flies at us.
“Those light flyers can’t have cannons like that,” Smith assesses.
“They’ve got a mom,” Horst confirms, “hiding back there in the dark. You can see it on IR when the cannons flash. It’s big, but I couldn’t tell you what it is.”
Smith takes the ship up and heads for the cannon flash, figuring the big guns to be our most pressing threat, and that, by climbing, their guns might not be able to manage the elevation to hit us without losing range. He’s right for several seconds before we’ve closed in enough that he has to dodge another spray of scraps, but there was also no firing in the interval, which tells me it took time for them to adjust their guns, or they’re just not used to shooting at anything that can move well.
“Keep dancing, Captain,” I tell him. “I think they’re aiming manually.”
Then we’re close enough for our flares to show us “mom”: It looks like a dirigible, but it’s got large fans flanking it, and masts of sails that hang beneath it (making it look like a capsized clipper ship) to move it with the wind. At least a hundred feet long, it gives back only a minimal radar shadow.
“That I can hit,” Smith offers happily.
“Hurt it, don’t kill it,” I order.
Our guns rip up the fabric sides of the dirigible body and rake what looks like the “gun deck” below it. I can see figures scrambling for cover. At least one body falls away into the night. By the time Smith banks and makes a return pass, the big ship seems to be slowly “sinking” and tries to turn away, heading back into Melas. Then our view gets masked as we collide with something in mid-air—one of the little flyers has either crashed into us or tried to ram us. The fragile craft comes apart on impact—it seems to consist of little more than fabric and frame and fan-like props, now shredded scrap that falls lazily away leaving us apparently none the worse for it. But then I realize the intent of the kamikaze action: I hear gunfire pinging our hull from above, and the rattle of something that sounds like a mining drill cutting into us. Smith confirms:
“The little bastards are crawling all over us!”
Another of the tiny craft collides with us as we turn, sacrificing itself to deposit more unwanted passengers on our hull.
“Prepare to repel boarders, sir?” Rios asks me, trying to keep decorum despite the insanity of the situation.
“I’m hoping that will be much funnier later, Lieutenant,” I tell him.
“They will expect you to open a hatch to confront them,” Sakina warns him.
“Point taken,” Smith agrees. “Hold on to something.” And then he sends the ship spinning, first one way, then back. The external eyes show two of the figures get shaken loose, but they appear to have secured themselves with lines attached to magnetic anchors. Two more cling fast despite Smith’s best efforts.
“Head back for camp,” I tell him.
The big “mother ship” is still moving away into the night, its guns silent for now. It appears to have recalled the rest of its light flyers, but our attached parasites are back at trying to crack our hull. I call into the Link: “Sergeant Horst, we have a few un-ticketed passengers on our back.”
“I see ‘em, Colonel.” Through their feeds, I can watch their ICWs get locks on our “borders.”
“Alive would be nice, Sergeant.”