Stars Rain Down (20 page)

They pulled away after a few seconds, and Charlie gave him a friendly punch to the shoulder. "How the fuck did you survive, Jack?"

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you. We crashed in China..."

"Don't be modest," Nikitin said. "Your big brother saved our cans back there. Landed a half-destroyed leviathan smack dab in the middle of the invasion."

"China? No joke," Charlie said. "Man, I haven't heard anything good coming out of the East."

"Nothing good to say," Jack said. "It's literal Hell over there. How about you?"

"Long story," Charlie said. His hands became animated as he spoke. "We were hip deep in the shit fifty klicks outside of Cairo when it started. We had some insurgents pinned down, and then the damnedest thing happened. Four hundred guys in a firefight stopped shooting and just looked up at the sky, like someone hit pause.

"Next thing you know, the fight didn't seem so important anymore. We called a cease fire, and ended up trading war stories with 'em all night."

"And you came back here?"

"Yeah. Aliens are thick as locusts down south, so... eh, we advanced to the rear and didn't stop until we hit the Dead Sea. Probably just dumb luck, but soldiers from all over hell were already here, and Al Saif just sorta happened."

Charlie looked the group up and down. "Anyway, we've got plenty of time to catch up, but you guys look like crap. Let's get you a warm meal and some bunks, eh?"

Charlie was right. They looked like crap, and they felt twice as nice. Together, they went to the mess hall laughing, and Jack's team ate the first warm meal they'd seen in months.

"They said
aboard new vessel
? Whaddya think that means?"

Sal had tapped into the orbital traffic system, and she was watching her monitor for any kind of strange activity. She didn't bother to look away as she answered him. "I'll tell you what I've been telling my father for the past three weeks, Kaz. I don't fucking know."

The lab was quiet and dim, just the way she liked it. Other than her monitor, the only light in the room came from a series of faint blue neons hanging over the large worktable. That surface was covered in tools and small bits of mechanical flotsam and jetsam, pieces of experiments in various states of completion, while larger projects in various states of assembly were arrayed along the walls.

Kazuo was sitting on the edge of Sal's desk, idly toying with the gears of a broken servo which occasionally let out a whir. "I mean, where could they even get a new vessel? I bet the expedition was just a cover for a secret military project."

Sal reached out and snatched the servo from his hands, then set it down next to her keyboard. "Maybe, but the Foundation wouldn't have any part of that. They take non-proliferation seriously."

"Sure, but what if they were conned. The way they changed the Shackleton's mission all of a sudden smelled mighty fishy to me. Maybe Donovan works for Blade Aerospace."

Sal considered what she knew about Donovan and his Gypsies. He'd become one of Sal's heroes over the past few years for his ability to get jobs done despite bureaucracy's best efforts. He was a divisive figure in the Foundation for precisely the same reason, and there were always rumors flying around about him. But this was the first time she'd heard anyone accuse him of working for a military contractor. It was damn near heresy.

Kazuo had been a Carbon Corp soldier before he came to Mars though, and nobody slung conspiracy theories like military men. Every single one she'd met saw hints of secret dealings wherever he looked, and that fact disturbed her to no end.

"Let me see if I've got this right," she said, never turning from the monitor. "You think that Marcus Donovan, a well known and respected astronomer, was hired by Blade to construct an experimental, not to mention illegal, warship in Earth orbit?"

"Plus or minus. Just tossin' ideas at the wall, seeing what sticks."

Sal was badly in need of several aspirin. "I guess that makes as much sense as anything else these days."

The one thing she knew for certain was that this new vessel had to be fast, whatever it was. Fast enough to cross two-hundred and thirty million kilometers in three weeks.

She was familiar with the Shackleton's engines, and the ship just wasn't up to snuff. It would need to accelerate for more than three straight hours to achieve that kind of velocity, and there was no way it could carry enough reaction mass. The math just didn't add up.

Not that it was any easier to believe Kazuo's theory. An advance in propulsion technology that revolutionary would be impossible to hide. The cost, the complexity, the testing. There would be too many people involved and it was just too big to cover up.

That was the thought running through Sal's head when the alerts started to sound. Red lights and klaxons went off across the colony, and Kazuo jumped out of his skin. "What the hell's going on?"

"God damn it!" Sal shouted over the noise, and she punched the keyboard. "Incoming asteroid. Big and hot."

"What do we do?"

She shook her head. "Pray," was all she said.

The blip streaked across the display and she watched it with wide eyes. It had to be ten kilometers long or more, and was coming at them like a bullet. It was a planet killer, and they should have seen it years ago. Her breath caught in her throat and her thoughts were eerily silent. Wasn't she supposed to see her life flash before her eyes in a situation like this?

Then, as suddenly as it appeared, the object slowed to around two kilometers per second and dropped into orbit around Mars.

Sal started to breathe again. Kazuo was standing behind her with his fingers digging into her shoulders. "What just happened?" he asked.

"I'm not sure," she said, "but really,
really
I hope that's Donovan's new vessel."

It took ten minutes for someone to finally shut the alarms off, much to Sal's chagrin. She still hadn't found any aspirin, and her head was thumping something fierce. Another five minutes later, the colony received its first message from the object in orbit, confirmation that the massive thing was in fact Marcus Donovan's new vessel. Somehow.

Donovan requested permission to land a small craft at Ares, and after a heated debate among the senior staff, permission was granted. The situation was too strange not to proceed with caution, though, and even if they were short on weaponry, the colonists decided that a show of strength was in order. Sal and Kazuo were chosen for the task.

Thirty minutes after first contact, Sal found herself in the southern mission readiness bay giving her MASPEC a quick inspection, with Kazuo on the opposite side of the room doing the same. Five other maintenance workers were pulling on pressure suits, a collection of aged and dusty rifles waiting beside them. It was a decidedly half-assed combat squad.

The bulky armor stood in front of her, the hinged panels of its back splayed apart like the petals of a mechanical lily, revealing the padded cavity within. It bridged the gap between suit and vehicle, giving its pilot the strength and durability of a machine, but Sal had never considered using them as weapons. They were an answer to a problem and nothing more — the efficient combination of worker and construction equipment in one remarkably tidy package.

She keyed in the power-up code then grabbed the rails above the docking clamp, lifted her legs up and lowered them inside. Once in up to her waist, she put her arms out in front of her and levered herself into the cavity, allowing her hands to slide all the way through to the ends of the mechanical arms. The MASPEC detected that she was safely inside, and it adjusted its own padding and braces to fit snugly, then closed and sealed the rear hatch.

Kazuo was ahead of her for once. Her docking clamp had just released while he was already taking a few warm-up steps, the heavily booted feet of his suit making hollow clanks that echoed throughout the bay.

She stepped away from the clamp and turned, and the rest of her impromptu squad stood at attention. "Everyone sealed up and ready to go?"

"All green, chief. Just waiting on you."

"Good. Let's cycle the lock, and get ready to roll out the red carpet."

With that, they entered the airlock and proceeded to stand around doing nothing while the chamber depressurized. It took even longer than usual, and the wait was excruciating while Sal's imagination ran away with her, inventing all kinds of alien menaces lurking on the other side of the door. She just wanted to get it over with.

Then Sal started to have second thoughts. She turned to Kazuo and asked, "If this goes wrong, you have any idea how to fight in one of these?"

She could see Kazuo's face clearly in the multicolored glow of his heads up display, and he had a wide and evil smile. He punched his left palm with his right fist, producing a heavy thud, and said, "The old fashioned way, Sal. Honestly, I've been waiting for a chance to knock some skulls since the first time I climbed into one."

"Great," she said, and she wasn't sure if she'd been sarcastic or not. Then the outer door opened and they marched into the light of day.

The launch facility was a hundred meters from the southern airlock, little more than an airstrip and a decaying multi-stage rocket on a gantry. A few steel cargo containers were piled up to one side, but there was nothing else of interest.

Sal and Kazuo stopped at the edge of the pad with the rest of the team flanking them, and they waited. For what, none of them knew, but they hoped for the best.

They didn't have to wait long.

Sal's radio crackled to life. "Heads up, welcome wagon. Subject inbound from the West."

She scanned the skies and caught sight of a star plummeting out of the western sky. She keyed commands into a phantom keyboard, and the MASPEC's display enhanced the image. "Confirmed, base. We have visual contact."

The bright spot of light became an oblong vessel, and it came down at an astonishing speed only to suddenly halt over the pad, just as the mothership had done in space. Then, as it hung there in mid-air, it came about and gently lowered itself to the tarmac.

The greenish vehicle looked like nothing Sal had ever seen before, and if she hadn't just watched it land, she might never have guessed it was a ship. It was sixty meters from one end to the other, and only marginally aerodynamic, shaped something like the severed head of a squid. The segmented surface was covered with overlapping scales in some places, while other parts were smooth as pearl, and it stood on five insectoid feet. Mist rose from its every crevice and cavity.

"Blade did not build that. What on Earth is it?" Kazuo asked. That last phrase wasn't common among long-time colonists.

Sal had no idea. "If I had to guess, I'd say it's probably never been on Earth at all," she said.

"And I'd believe you," Kazuo replied.

Sal waved her people forward with a dreamy gesture and they marched toward the strange ship with their rifles at the ready. They moved slowly, apprehensively, at any moment expecting some savage race of monsters to explode from within and eat their brains. Much to everyone's surprise, the attack never came.

When they were about six meters from the ship, a rounded structure on the side melted away like a hot tar bubble popping in slow motion. Sharp light came from inside, and when it subsided, Sal could see four people wearing standard white GAF pressure suits. The person at the front of the group gave a friendly wave.

Sal waved back tentatively.

The ship produced a ramp, and the four occupants walked down it, moving with surprising comfort in Mars' low gravity. Newcomers were always uneasy on Mars for at least the first week, but these people were all surefooted. Sal didn't know what to make of that.

Their leader walked up to her and looked her up and down in amazement. He seemed small, but everyone did from inside a MASPEC.

He was a black man in his late thirties with a strong chin and a good spattering of grey in his hair. An orange device was barely visible inside his helmet, attached to the side of his head and similar in style to his strange ship. It looked like a mechanical spider. The man was smiling.

"That suit is really something," he said, his warm voice coming in over her headset. "What do you call it?"

Sal blushed. "MASPEC.
Mechanically Augmented Support Platform, Environment Controlled.
It's my own design."

"You're very talented," he said. "Techs back home've been trying to build something like this for ages, but they never got this far. Never anything this elegant. They killed plenty of test pilots in the process, too."

"I know," she said. "I was planning to patent the design once I got all the bugs worked out, but... well, I guess that's not going to happen now." She pointed to him and furrowed her brow. "You're Marcus Donovan, aren't you?"

"As I live and breathe," he said. "Now, if you'll pardon me, I've been waiting all my life to say this... I come in peace, Martian. Take me to your leader."

One of his people buckled over in laughter, while the other two shook their heads. Right then and there, Sal realized she was in for a strange day, and she'd need to find that aspirin sooner rather than later.

When Marcus Donovan was a child, he spent countless nights staring through his uncle's rusty old telescope at the tiny reddish speck that was Mars, all the while imagining a fantastic world over-run with jungles and weird, ancient ruins. It was a world of adventure and unending surprises where dozens of savage species warred for supremacy.

Somehow, despite Mars' best efforts to the contrary, the fantasy never really left him.

As he grew older, he collected images from all the unmanned probes which had been sent to scout the red planet. The old guard of space exploration—venerable names such as NASA, Roskosmos, JAXA and ISRO—had produced thousands of images from orbit and later from the ground. They uniformly described a desolate landscape interrupted only by rocks, but Marcus' dreams plodded on regardless.

When he was thirteen, his parents let him stay up late to watch the first Mars landing live on TV. Six years later during his first year at university, he stayed up for two straight days watching the Ares Colony's daring drop from space. He failed two finals because of it. Even then, with the reality revealed on a constant video feed, he continued to believe that Mars was the most interesting place in the universe.