them back.”
The realization struck Kaitlin like a punch to the stomach. She’d forgotten. All outbound interplanetary insertions used the fuel stored at the ISS spaceport to top off tanks drained dry by their struggle up the side of the planet’s fearsome gravity well. That must have been the reason the UN had captured the space station in the first place…so that they could be sure of launching their Faucon. For the same reason, the ISS maintained the fleet of tugs and high-delta-v transports that could rendezvous with incoming cyclers and transfer their passengers to a shuttle bound for Earth.
If the ISS was controlled by the UN, any cycler returning from Mars would depend on the UN’s good graces to rendezvous with them and effect the transfer to Earth orbit.
A cold anger blazed in Kaitlin. “So we’re just…abandoning them? Sir?”
The hint of a smile touched the corners of Warhurst’s mouth. “Allow me to rephrase that. As long as the UN forces retain control of the ISS, we won’t be able to bring our boys home from Mars.”
“Ah.” She wondered what unit would have the honor of recapturing the station. It was almost enough to make her want to be a Marine herself. She sat up a little straighter in her chair.
Warhurst appeared to be thinking something over. His brow was furrowed, and there was a hard set to his mouth. “We have a Marine unit going into training tomorrow at Vandenberg, for a possible strike against the ISS.” He gave her a sharp look. “That is classified, you know. In fact, I shouldn’t have told you.”
“Uh…sure.” She was confused. So why had he told her? She knew that Warhurst had an iron control when it came to revealing or concealing anything. His self-control in regard to his dead son was proof enough of that. She could not believe that it had just been a slip….
“In any case,” he continued, as though nothing out of the ordinary had occurred, “I’m afraid that there’s not a damned thing we can do to help your dad on Mars. Especially with the space station in UN hands. But there may be something we can do here. To make sure he can get back. And, possibly even more important, to make sure he knows the score.”
“Have you been able to establish contact with him yet?” Kaitlin asked. She’d been requested—ordered might have been the better word—not to use her backdoor communications route until the political situation was clearer. She didn’t like it; her question was a polite way of reminding Warhurst that she wanted to talk to her father…while at the same time she wanted to be careful not to get in the Pentagon’s way.
He shook his head. “No. And that brings me, going around Robin Hood’s barn, to what I really wanted to see you about. You told me that your father was assuming that regular e-mail would not be a secure method of reaching him, and I’m inclined to agree with his assumption. The bad guys would be stupid not to safeguard those channels. But you also told me that the two of you had an alternate means of communication to fall back on.”
“Yes, through a newsgroup that we both like a lot. I can post a message there, and Dad could just search for messages from me. They can’t shut down Usenet, and they wouldn’t be able to check all the postings.”
“From your study at CMU, Kaitlin, I assume you would know about these things. Is there any way they could search for your user name in the Usenet postings?”
She grinned. “Even if they knew which of something like eighty thousand newsgroups to search, they wouldn’t find me. I’d use my global-dot-net account, not my CMU one. That user ID is ‘chicako,’ not ‘garroway.’”
Warhurst didn’t look as pleased to hear that there was a secure way to communicate with the Marines on Mars as she’d expected. Instead he frowned, tapping his fingers rhythmically on a lone sheet of paper on the top of his desk. “I would like to be able to use that channel, Kaitlin. I would like to tell your father that we’re pulling for him, even if we can’t do anything substantial right now. I even have the letter written.” He stopped his drumming and laid his index finger on the paper. “Right here.”
“No problem, sir. I can—”
“I’m afraid there is a problem. I’ve been forbidden to communicate with your father.”
That statement hit Kaitlin even harder than the earlier one about the ISS, but she remained calm. By now she knew that Warhurst said nothing without a purpose…and that sometimes he intended to convey something different from the literal meaning of his words. “May I ask why, sir?”
The general sighed. “The feeling is that the president may need negotiating room. How the hell we’re supposed to negotiate with the bastards, I don’t know, but that’s the idea. And the upshot of it is I can’t use that channel of yours to communicate with your father. Even though I’ve got the message all written, ready and waiting to go.”
He stood up and started to walk around his desk. “Well, I guess that’s it then. So. How about lunch?” Without waiting for an answer, he added, “I’ll tell Major Garth to make reservations for us at the Szechuan Garden.” And with that he walked out of the office, closing the door behind him.
Kaitlin grinned. He didn’t need to talk to the major in person to tell him to comm a restaurant. He just wanted to leave the room for a minute. To leave her alone…with the letter.
As she reached over to the desk and picked up the letter, she felt a peculiar twinge, as though she were cheating on an exam back in grade school. She almost laughed out loud.
This time the teacher was ordering her to cheat…because the Marines take care of their own.
SEVENTEEN
WEDNESDAY, 6 JUNE: 2026 HOURS GMT
Tithonium Chasma
Sol 5646: 0155 hours MMT
Mark Garroway watched his daughter’s face on the Mars cat’s computer display with a sense of homesickness and longing sharper than anything he’d felt in his life. In that moment, he felt every one of the hundred million-plus miles between himself and his daughter and wondered if he would ever see her again.
He hated Mars. He hated the Marines.
No…not that. He couldn’t hate the Corps, not really, even though the Corps was what had separated him from Kaitlin.
Outside the cat was the blackness of the Martian night, with a dazzle of stars directly overhead but cut off on all sides by the sheer cliffs rising above the crawler. A thin, hard wind was blowing down the chasm; the outside temperature was down to ninety-five below and dropping. His watch outside was coming up in another hour, and he could barely stand the thought of having to go stomp around in the bitterly frigid sands again, constantly moving to avoid freezing to death.
Ten sols had passed since they’d left Heinlein Station…and it felt as though their journey had scarcely begun. The terrain they’d been following through the narrow chasm was impossibly rugged, a tortured badlands of sand pits and boulders, an endless succession of craters drilled rim to rim into the crumbling regolith. Scouting teams now walked ahead of the crawler searching for safe paths; as often as not, Marines on foot ended up carrying the sled, hauling it by brute force up and down the crater rims. More than once they’d had to use the cat’s winch and tow cable to drag the whole vehicle up a slippery, yielding slope that the sturdy machine could not otherwise have traversed.
This rift in the
