just say that HQ is concerned about the friendliness of our reception. So we go in sharp, and we go in with Class-Ones. Questions?”
There were plenty of questions—there had to be with this crowd—but no one spoke up. Hell, he had questions, and none of them could be answered yet.
The change had come through only a few hours before, coded, and marked Secret and Eyes Only. INTEL BELIEVES UNFMC TROOPS SHIFTED TO MARS PRIME REGION LAST 72 HOURS, the report had stated. The United Nations Force, Mars Contingent, numbered fifty men, almost twice the number in Lloyd’s Marine platoon. If they’d shifted south from Cydonia to the Mars Prime base at Candor Chasma, it could be because they planned to confront the Marines when they landed.
Or possibly not. Bergerac, the UNF’s new CO, was aboard the Polyakov. Maybe they were just getting ready to throw him a welcome-to-Mars party.
But Lloyd firmly believed that a little healthy paranoia was good for a man…and especially for Marines who planned to die in bed. That was why he’d ordered the platoon to assemble here in full armor, complete with weapons, HUD helmets, and full field gear. It made the storm cellar a bit crowded, and the deorbit was gonna be hell, but at least they would be ready, no matter what was waiting for them on the ground.
“Okay, people,” he said at last. “We got thirty mikes before the shuttle docks. Time for weapons drill.” He looked at his wrist-top, which had been attached to the outer sleeve of his gauntlet. “Ready…begin!”
Half an hour later, on schedule as dictated by the dead hand of Sir Isaac Newton, the first of a small fleet of approaching Mars Shuttle-Landers docked with Polyakov’s nonrotating hub. Though there were no windows in the storm cellar, there was a small television monitor with a feed from the control deck, and Lloyd was able to open a channel from one of Polyakov’s docking-bay approach cameras.
Harper’s Bizarre—painted in grit-scoured red letters on the stubby craft’s bare-metal prow—was the unofficial name of the first of the MSLs that slowly eased in to a capture and hard dock. The upper half of the forty-meter craft was a biconic hull, an off-center cone designed for atmospheric reentries, while the lower half consisted of two, stacked doughnut-clusters of spherical methane tanks and the close-folded complexity of a trio of spidery landing legs. The Bizarre, like the other MSLs on Mars, was a nuke, using a Westinghouse-Lockheed NTR, a Nuclear Thermal Rocket similar to the old Nerva designs, to heat the tanked reaction mass. The propellant of choice was methane, a liquid produced in quantity on Mars from atmospheric CO2 and permafrost-melted water; the concept was known as NIMF, an unlikely acronym standing for Nuclear rocket using Indigenous Martian Fuel.
Once the green light showed for docking lock one, pressures were equalized and the MSL opened to Polyakov’s interior. As befitted one of the burgeoning Martian colony’s workhorses, the Bizarre had a large and utilitarian cargo section, which for this trip had been fitted with a plug-in deck-chair module. Nothing fancy, but it had padding and straps enough to get human cargo from the cycler’s orbit to the Martian surface in, if not comfort, then at least relative safety.
Lloyd’s path through the docking collar and forward pressure lock brought him to a point where he passed beneath the feet of the MSL’s pilot. “Marine Mars Expeditionary Force,” he rasped out. “Request permission to come aboard.”
“Granted, Colonel,” the pilot called back. She was a slender redhead in a trim, lightweight pressure suit. “Find yourselves seats and get strapped in.”
The rest of the Marines were already clambering in after him, muttering curses or sharp imprecations as their clumsy Class-Ones scraped or bumped against equipment, bulkheads, or the armor of other Marines. Class-One armor was almost as bulky as a full-fledged space suit, and with good reason. It was self-contained, pressurized, and—with a full-charged life-support pack and rebreather assembly—could keep a man alive in hard vacuum almost indefinitely…or at least until his food ran out.
All of the MMEF’s armor had active chameleonic surfaces—coatings of a specially formulated plastic that “remembered” incident light and was able to adapt its color and texture within minutes to match the surroundings. The only parts of the suits that did not sport this constantly shifting surface were the helmet visors—normally dark to block ultraviolet radiation—and the traditionally camouflaged helmet covers. Those last were something of an old Marine tradition, a holdover from the second half of the twentieth century. Marine aviators, though they’d worn flight suits and standard helmets when they’d gone aloft in their old Harrier IIs or F/A-18s or, later, in their F/A-22s and AV-32s—always wore the US Marines’ standard tan, brown, and green fabric helmet cover…not for camouflage, but to show solidarity with their fellow Marines on the ground. It was a tradition that went back at least as far as Vietnam, and probably farther; Marines took extraordinary pride in the close relationship between Marines in the mud and the Marine aviators flying close support.
Lloyd found a convenient stanchion and hung on, floating in an out-of-the-way attitude as the rest of the Marines filed in. Overall, the evolution was an orderly one…but he noticed one bit of confusion toward the rear of the column.
Pushing off from his anchor point, he maneuvered to the scene of the problem. An unarmored civilian had infiltrated the column and had gotten tangled with the armored troops.
It was one of the archeologists, Dr. David Alexander.
“Can I help you, sir?”
“Uh…I thought I would tag along on this shuttle,” Alexander replied. “I understand you’re going straight to Cydonia, instead of to Mars Prime.”
The only thing faster than light is the damned shipboard scuttlebutt, Lloyd thought. “I’m not sure that’s such a good idea,” he replied. “This is liable to be a rough ride, with a hot reception at the end of it.”
“Well, Captain Elliott said there was room.”
“Captain Elliott?”
“Harper Elliott. Bizarre’s skipper. Turns out she used to be a Navy aviator. Served on the Reagan, same ship as my dad.”
“I see.” That put Lloyd in an uncomfortable position. He didn’t want to have civilians kicking around on his assault boat, especially if things turned nasty when they hit ground. On the other hand, it wasn’t his assault boat, not in the formal sense. Elliott was ship’s captain, and he didn’t want to end up second-guessing the Bizarre’s CO.
Alexander seemed to sense Lloyd’s dilemma and gave him a lopsided grin. “I’ll promise to be good.”
He sighed. “Very well, Dr. Alexander,” Lloyd told the man. There ought to be room enough. “Find yourself a seat. But…if things are hot when we touch down, you get the hell out of the way, understand?”
“You expect things to be, uh, ‘hot,’ as you put it?”
“I don’t expect anything, sir. But it’s best to be prepared.”
“Don’t worry,” Alexander said. “If anybody starts shooting, I’ll be sure to keep my head down.” The man spoke with a sardonic edge to his voice that told Lloyd he was being humored.
Colonel Lloyd did not like being humored, and he did not like the archaeologist’s attitude, at once bantering and condescending. He almost—almost—wished that something would happen when they landed, just to teach the arrogant civilian some manners.
Not, he realized, a professional response at all.
1556
