Its only advantage was that it lay on a nearly straight line with the Candor Chasma base, as straight as one of the mythical canals of pre-Viking, pre-Mariner Mars.
He shook away thoughts of the bleak, cold night surrounding the Mars cat and tried to concentrate on his daughter’s face. He’d been using the cat’s electronics to tap into Mars Prime’s Spacenet server every few Phobos orbits, looking in on the Usenet postings that were regularly mirrored from Earth.
Usenet had grown enormously since its beginnings in the old Internet of the late twentieth century. Some newsgroups were still little more than written postings on static electronic bulletin boards, but most had benefited from new communications hardware and protocols and expanded to allow vidpostings, downloaded segments where you could actually see the person who was talking, along with maps, graphics, vidclips, or whatever else might help the presentation. He and Kaitlin both were partial to rec.humanities.culture.japan, a newsgroup for Japanophiles from all over the world. That was why he’d suggested that newsgroup as a posting place for any return messages in reply to his first message to Earth.
If the Pentagon wanted to reply, he couldn’t expect them to drop an e-mail in his box in Candor’s server. If the UN forces on Mars were serious about cutting off all communication between Mars and Earth, they would certainly cut off the e-mail conduit; at the very least, they would set a watch program over the mailboxes set to retrieve and delete any message from Earth for any of the Marines.
He doubted that they would cut off the Usenet postings, though. There would be no particular reason to do so; at the same time, they wouldn’t be able to watch every one of the newsgroups posted onto the Spacenet. And, so far, he’d seen no indication that they were even aware of the unauthorized waking of the Phobos com relay.
Kaitlin’s posting was there, as he’d hoped, as he’d almost feared, her image frozen with a familiar, wrinkle-browed expression that mingled worry with excitement. The date, time, and post lines at the bottom left of the screen indicated that the message had been uploaded about twenty-six hours ago.
He touched the hotspot on the console that brought life to the vidimage.
“Ah…okay. This is to the guy that said he’d meet me in Japan,” she said. She seemed a bit nervous, as though she was being extra careful of what she was saying.
“I hope you’re keeping up with the Cu-Ja postings, ’cause it looks like this is the only way I’ll get to talk to you. There are a lot of folks here who want to get together with you, only there’s, ah, no way they can see their way clear to do it right now. The situation is pretty confused, as you can imagine. There’s talk about the Japanese joining the UN against the United States, and, well, the last I saw, it looked like that was going to happen. I know personally that some military bases there are on full alert. Like the one at Tanegashima.”
Tanegashima? That’s Japan’s main launch center, on a tiny island fifty miles south of the southern tip of Kyushu. An alert there meant the Japanese may be preparing to do something with their Space Defense Force, and that was not good, not good at all.
“I’ve got a picture for you here. Translate it the usual way. And, well, until we can get together again, in Japan or, or wherever…you take care of yourself, okay?” There were tears glistening in her eyes. She said the final words so quickly he almost missed them. “I love you.”
Kaitlin’s face vanished, replaced by columns of numbers. Anyone casually glancing at the page would assume it was an encoded picture or illustration of some kind, one using a private algorithm to keep the content private. In a sense, that was exactly what it was. Those columns of three were almost certainly a Beale code sequence. Garroway checked to make sure the memory clip containing Shogun was plugged in on his wrist-top, then touched a key, feeding a copy through the Beale encoder/decoder program, and sending it back to the screen as text. It took only a few seconds for the whole message to appear.
Date: 5 June 2040
Mark:
Your daughter got your message through. Smart thinking. She’s a sharp kid and obviously has a lot in common with her dad.
I wish to hell I had better news. The official word is, no communication with you at all, just in case the president needs some maneuvering room with the UN. Though we still have some optimists in Washington, we are almost certainly going to be at war with the UN within a very few days. UN armies are reported massing in both Quebec and Mexico. We’re tracking a number of French, German, and Manchurian arsenal ships off our coasts.
Mark, I also have to tell you that three days ago—2 June—UN forces seized the International Space Station. Just this morning, a UN spacecraft lifted from Kourou. We think that it’s a Mars Direct flight and that it’s carrying at least thirty more UN troops. Could be you’ll be getting company in another five months. Whatever you do, you’ll have to do it before those reinforcements reach Mars.
In any case, don’t worry about Kaitlin. I’ve asked her to stay at my place in VA. She’ll be safe there, if anywhere.
What you do on Mars is, I’m afraid, up to you and what you think you can get away with. At this point, anything you could do to put a wrench in the UN’s plans would be desirable. Future communications can be via the same method you used with Kaitlin. We need to know why the UN is so interested in Mars.
Consider this a personal weapons-free order. By the time you get to where you’re going, we very likely are going to be at war. Sorry to leave you on your own, but, then, anything more than one platoon of US Marines against the UN forces now on Mars simply wouldn’t be fair. Good luck! We’re all pulling for you.
Semper fi.
—Warhurst, Gen. USMC
Garroway blinked at the signature line. Warhurst? He’d sent his original message to Colonel Fox; he’d had no idea that it would get bumped clear up to the commandant of the Corps!
“Hey, Major?” Sergeant Ostrowsky called as she squeezed into the Marine-crowded lounge area of the cat. “You wanted me to let you know. Your watch outside.”
“Thank you, Sergeant,” he said. Carefully, he made sure the decoded message was saved on his wrist-top, then began shutting down the com center.
Warhurst was right. The news wasn’t good…especially the bit about UN reinforcements. It was funny, though, that just hearing from someone back on Earth helped. He found he could face going out into the bitter cold and loneliness once again.
Or was that the result of getting to hear his daughter’s voice again? He wasn’t sure. It didn’t really matter.
He reached for his gloves and helmet and began the laborious process of sealing up his armor.
FRIDAY, 8 JUNE: 2230 HOURS GMT
Net News Network
1830 hours EDT
VOICE-OVER, WITH SPECIAL LOGO: This is a Net News Special Presentation…Collision Course, the UN Crisis. And now, from the Net News Center in Washington, DC, special reporter Carlotta Braun….
CARLOTTA BRAUN: Good evening. President Markham today responded forcefully to what he called ‘a blunt ultimatum’ by the UN General Assembly, denouncing that body for its ‘unwarranted intrusion into the internal affairs of the United States’ and its ‘high-handed and hostile actions against American assets in space.’
VIDIMAGE—PRESIDENT
