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  The outer wheels turned faster, and the particle engines fired, creating a steady stream of electrons and gravitons that refracted the light—and therefore space—just in front of the jump-ship. The Barr-Hawking created a dip in the fabric of the space-time continuum. It was a common misconception that they ‘tore a hole’ or ‘created a wormhole,’ which was impossible.

  No, what the Barr-Hawking did instead was utilize the intrinsic properties of space-time itself, which is malleable and ‘globby.’ Time runs differently near high sources of mass and gravity than it does in the spaces between the stars.

  Riding on a bow-wave of folded space-time, the particle generators fold distance itself in front of the jump-ships as they pulled their precious cargo behind them, and the ripple effect elongated space itself behind them. In short, it was like taking a normal step, but that one step was hundreds of thousands of miles long. The Barr-Hawking field didn’t travel underneath or go through space-time, but instead, they allowed vessels to skip along on top of it like stones skimming and hopping over the surface of the sea.

  This natural wonder was lost on the occupants of the Bluebird’s cargo hold, however, as they experienced the one thing that was always a constant: space sickness. It was a result of the primate mammalian mind realizing that it really shouldn’t be doing this at all.

  Solomon and the others felt vertigo, nausea, dizziness, and eyestrain for the brief period that they were inside the Barr-Hawking field, and then they were out the other side, the particle generators on the jump-ships shutting down as the rings started to slow. The magnetic clamps decoupled, allowing Vikram inside the cockpit to angle his vessel underneath the sweeping-away jump-ship towards an entirely different scene.

  The Marine Corps blockade of the Red Planet.

  5

  Planet of War

  JUMP COMPLETED!

  The Bluebird’s internal speakers announced this in the electronic voice of the ship’s automated system, and the strap locks on Solomon and the rest of the team flicked from orange to green. They could remove them now if they wished, and Solomon was the first to do so, holding onto the overhead webbing as he moved to the nearest porthole to get a look at what lay ahead of them.

  Which was an entire flotilla, from the looks of it.

  The Red Planet hung in space like a vengeful god, its surface ruddy and crimson near the bottom, but bleaching a yellow-white near the top, which made Solomon think of bones left out in the desert, stained and desiccated for all eternity.

  But even that wasn’t the most foreboding image in front of them. The Red Planet was smeared with black smoke from the fires at the depots that had ripped apart the domes and were furious enough to be seen even from space.

  And outside the planet circled the Marine Corps fleets.

  There are at least two fleets here, Solomon saw quickly. Two of the massive Dreadnaught-class battleships, looking like vast triangles and flickering with lights and heavy with weapons pods, slowly revolving on their axes. From various hangar ‘levels’ of the metal pyramids, there moved a constant stream of smaller craft—mostly transporters and courier vessels heading out to the cigar and wedge-shaped battleships of the line that hung over Mars, pointing downward.

  One pyramid was directly underneath them, further back from a cloud of battleships, while Solomon saw in the distance another such pyramid hanging over Mars’s far sun-ward side, surrounded by its own miasma of battleships.

  “There’s enough here to level a planet,” Solomon mumbled in awe. How on earth did the Martians ever think they could win against this much firepower?

  But it wasn’t done yet. As the light sparkled and the stars did strange, elongating things further out around them, Solomon saw still more ships—logistical torpedo-shaped ships as well as wedge and boat-shaped battle cruisers, being pulled by their own much smaller Barr-Hawking ships as they jumped into Martian space.

  “They’re not messing about, are they?” Solomon heard Karamov whisper as he joined his commander at the porthole.

  “No, they’re not…” Solomon said.

  BROADCAST FREQUENCY: Marine Channel XCon-gb3H

  ANNOUNCE: Bluebird, Lt. Vikram (PILOT)

  DEPLOYMENT: Rapid Response Fleet, Outcast Gold Squad

  ORDERS RECEIVED:

  Proceed to Kasei Valles, Lunae Planum. Cross Planum to Mount Tharsis Tholus and Armstrong Habitat.

  SIGNED: Colonel Asquew, Rapid Response Fleet High Command

  The Bluebird started to move, angling away from the pyramid ships of the Marine Corps and instead scribing an arc that would take them towards the northern hemisphere, towards a place on the Red Planet already clustered with lights.

  “They’re going to see us coming!” Solomon hissed in annoyance, but if Vikram could hear them through microphones of the earbud communicators, he made no acknowledgement.

  Mars was a large planet. Not as large as others in Earth’s solar system, but sizeable nonetheless, and it was mostly rock, desert, and canyon. Just under the start of the northern hemisphere, cutting across its middle like a waistband that didn’t quite fit, was the Wallis Marineris—a giant canyon system deeper than Earth’s Grand Canyon, and stretching for far longer. The highlands around it were a labyrinth of smaller gorges and rock formations, standing over the sweeping plane of the Lunae Planum.

  Standing high over the ‘Sea’ of the Moon, on the other side of the Wallis canyons, sat a series of peaks like crouching gods. The largest, and furthest in the distance, looked like Mount Doom to the naked eye—the giant extinct volcano of Olympus Mons, whose peak kissed the near orbit of space.

  In front of the great king of Mars were scattered a range of smaller such mountain siblings, like islands rising out of a desert sea—the Arsia, Pavonis, and Ascraeus Mons mountains. And in front of them stood a much smaller but no less impressive shield volcano, the smallest one on the edge of the Lunae Planum plains—Tharsis Tholus.

  But the ancient volcano was now topped with a cap of off-white and grey: Armstrong Habitat, built inside the crater to use its natural geology and rich volcanic minerals to create the perfect habitat. Shafts had been drilled in decades ago to tap into the thermal vents of the old volcano, pumping water available from the Mars aquifers to create abundant energy and even life inside the pressurized dome.

  Armstrong was one of the first of the Martian habitats to be built, and at the time was deemed one of the most expensive, and the most audacious. Geo-engineering was a relatively young science then, but as Armstrong grew from strength to strength as the unofficial ‘capital’ of Mars, it expanded to fill the Tharsis crater entirely, running off the heat generated by the old volcano to create a world within a world, filled with trees, gardens, and buildings.

  Lines of buildings, depots, and smaller dome habitats were scattered out from the entrance to the Tharsis shield in a plume of civilization. Down on the surface of the red planet, there was a constant hive of activity as the giant tracked ‘Mars Trains’ moved back and forth across the surface on their constant industrial or human business. Lights flickered in the dark of the Lunae Planum from the directional beacons and depot stations that had been built over the last hundred years of successful Mars occupation.

  “This is crazy…” Solomon murmured as the occupants of the Bluebird started to shake with the burn and glare of re-entry. Their view of the heavily-civilized Tharsis was occluded as their porthole became awash with burning gases as well as Mars’s thin, ionized atmosphere.

  Karamov went back to buckle into his seat, but the commander stayed where he was, peering out at the myriad colors of fire and plasma that flared over the windows. He ignored the shuddering in his jaw as he held on and waited for the flames to clear.

  Just like when they were leaving Ganymede’s gravity well, but this time in reverse. The shuddering and bouncing and everything. The roar and the flames ceased as suddenly as they had arrived when the merchant vessel broke through the lower levels of Mars’s atmosphere and was now scudding
over the Wallis Marineris, towards the long orange desert plains of the Lunae Planum.

  Vikram was angling their vessel lower and lower over the red dirt, hitting the positional thrusters as he did so to stabilize and slow their flight as they came closer and closer to the last of the rocky outcrops.

  “We’re good. Landing in three…two…” Vikram’s voice doubled over their in-ear communicators and the ship speakers. Their pilot and supervisor had picked one of the last lines of rocks behind which to conceal the Bluebird, and it now swung around the blackened spires of basalt and granite, carefully moving until it could descend straight down on its directional thrusters into a nest of sand.

  The roar and the whining continued for several long moments after they had reached touchdown, and Solomon could see the red localized sand devils and storms that they had themselves created by daring to disturb the sand with their rockets.

  “Landing complete.” They touched down with a slight wobble before settling lower in the dirt and finally stopping altogether. Solomon and the others held their breath as they waited for the engines to wind down, but eventually they did, leaving them looking out of the portholes at an alien planet. The surface of Mars itself.

  “So, the plan is…stroll over to Armstrong and ask if anyone knows where the secret Chosen of Mars hideout is, if you please?” Solomon Cready was not impressed with what he was hearing. Possibly because he hadn’t given Lt. Vikram the opportunity to explain it fully. It’s the space sickness, he thought. It always makes me cranky…

  “No. If you’d listened, you’d have heard this. The Marine Corps wants you to trek west by northwest until you find one of our contacts—a water surveyor caravan under a lady called Fela, and she will take you into Armstrong.” Vikram sighed distractedly.

  “And everyone wonders why Solomon’s got the reputation he has…” Wen muttered under breath.

  She must just still be annoyed that I dared to come up with a plan to save her father, Solomon thought. Which he hadn’t, technically, but he’d dared to burst her bubble of self-misery and give her some hope and sometimes that was enough to make people hate you in the twenty-second century.

  “And then what, walk around hollering?” Solomon ignored his combat specialist, but inadvertently proved her point. He could be difficult—cantankerous, even—but he wore it well.

  “No. Fela has the name of a contact on the inside who knows the entrance to the database that the seditionists are using to coordinate their attacks,” Vikram explained, again.

  “But I don’t understand why you can’t just tell me the name of this contact in the habitat,” Solomon pointed out. He had at first been proud that Colonel Asquew had recognized his squad’s achievements and had even selected them for this very special mission…

  Until it started to look like we were just being led along like puppets on a string, Solomon thought. It offended his professional—well, criminal—sensibilities to be so far in the dark on the specifics of this heist.

  Solomon had liked to know every detail of a job, back in his former life. He would take painstaking hours recreating the floorplan of the proposed, soon-to-be burgled site. He would take weeks surveying the joint if he had the time, getting to know all the work habits of the workers or the people who lived there—when they were about to go out for a cigarette, or what days they always took off to go to the local betting shop….

  Details are where the money is, he repeated to himself another aphorism that he had picked up along the way. He had learned by hand the internal mechanisms of over thirty of the most common mechanical and automated locking systems, practicing them over and over again in whatever dive of an apartment in New Kowloon he was using as his hideout at the time, until he could unlock each one in the dark and with his eyes closed.

  People thought stealing—or sneaking into places—was a crime of passion, or exuberance, but Solomon thought of his previous life more like an extreme sport. His body and mind were that of an athlete, and it took multiple run-throughs and studying and training to make sure that he could perform every move precisely when and as he needed to.

  But the Marine Corps was asking him to do this—the very thing he was an expert in—without even allowing him to know half the information he needed!

  “I can’t,” Vikram said nonchalantly. “I can’t tell you the name of Fela’s source because Fela herself won’t tell me. It was a requisite of her deal with the Marine Corps—that she gets to keep her contacts in the Chosen of Mars, and we don’t ask. That means that when they get burned, or she does, the damage is always localized.”

  “Sounds like a silly way to do it,” Solomon had to say, although on reflection, he could understand why. “Fine. West by northwest trek across the Martian desert. Try not to die of heatstroke. Please tell me that we’ve at least got encounter suits?”

  “Don’t worry, you’ll be equipped with civvie encounter suits,” Vikram said, motioning to one of the crates to pull out thin, voluminous baggie overalls, with rubberized pressure seals on the edges.

  “And here…” He kicked open a ship’s locker to reveal a rack of very old, and very out-of-date, bubble-helmets.

  “You’re kidding me. They fog up in no time! If we run into trouble…” Solomon was saying.

  “Then don’t get into trouble,” Vikram said with a slight hint of iron to his voice. There was clearly no arguing with the man, and there was no way that Solomon would be able to convince him to let them wear their light tacticals under their robes.

  “Fine,” Solomon grumbled, removing his poncho robe and dragging on the overalls, before chucking the robe over the top again. Instantly, he felt as though he were overheating, and he realized that these cheap, basic emergency civvie suits had no internal air conditioning. If he got too hot in there, he would just faint and die.

  Outstanding.

  “If anyone stops you, your story is that you’re mercenaries looking for work. You came to Mars because there’s about to be a lot of need for mercenaries. That will explain your attitude, at least…” Vikram said, before clapping hands in a ridiculously patronizing gesture. “Come on then, the war isn’t waiting on you!”

  He’s charming, too… Solomon growled, before turning to the rest of his squad. “Malady?”

  “When I’m sure that we haven’t been spotted, I’ll move the full tactical and your encounter suits to a suitable location nearer Tharsis and radio you the details… But you shouldn’t need them…” Vikram said.

  “That full tactical has a name.” Solomon had had enough of Vikram’s attitude, never mind people complaining about his own. “Specialist Malady.”

  “Okay, whatever you say, Outcast…” Vikram threw a mock salute and headed up the steps, back to the cockpit.

  “Malady… The guy’s a fracking idiot, but, y’know, you have my permission to push him out of an airlock while we’re away,” Solomon offered.

  “That would be against regulations, Commander…” the metal golem stated, true to character.

  “I’m sure it would,” Solomon sighed. “Just do me a favor and stay alert on our communicator. If we run into trouble that we can’t handle, I know that I for one will feel a hell of a lot better knowing that I can call on you.”

  “Same,” Wen echoed.

  “Aye, sir,” the metal man said, and Solomon wondered if he could detect a note of humility in his voice.

  “As for the rest of you, we’re but lowly mercenaries, wandering aimlessly across the Martian deserts looking for something to shoot at. Everyone got that? Feel free to ad lib as required…” Solomon rolled his eyes inside the over-large, ridiculous bubble-helmet that had gone out of fashion almost seventy years ago.

  The inner airlock hissed open, and Solomon led his squad inside. Malady resealed the door, and they waited for the depressurization cycle to complete before cranking open the outer doors of the Bluebird.

  Ahead of them, the gold and red sands of Earth’s sister stretched beyond the last of the black basalt spi
res. Even though Solomon had been here before, he had never had time to appreciate the sheer, austere grandeur of such a place. The sands seemed endless, broken by ridges of higher land from which plumes of the iron-laden stuff spewed in tufts and sprays. The mound of Tharsis gleamed, topped with the gray and white silver of the Armstrong dome, and the skies above were a light haze of cream. Out in the distance, far to the extreme west, there was a rising shadow on the horizon—a dark umber god with its head in the clouds: Olympus Mons.

  Maybe I would have liked to come here one day, Solomon thought briefly. Maybe he could take the small tourist monorails that climbed up the side of that planet-dominating mountain. Look down from the heights, get his picture taken at the top with one of those stupid digital stickers on it ‘I Climbed Olympus!’

  But none of that is going to happen now, is it? Solomon thought. Not in this lifetime, anyway.

  “Come on then, Squad. Let’s go stop a war…” he called out on the earbud communicators.

  “Or start one,” Wen, ever the optimist, said darkly.

  6

  The Red Never Forgives

  Martian gravity was lighter than Earth-normal, but it wasn’t that light. In the literature, Solomon had heard it referred to as ‘butterfly gravity’ on more than one occasion, thanks to the belief that if humanity were ever able to successfully terraform it, the slightly lighter gravity would make the Red Planet (perversely) a perfect habitat for butterflies, dragonflies, and any other flying insect.

  In short, it was annoying. While Solomon could keep up a good bounding jog, taking advantage that his body felt about 25% lighter than normal, it wasn’t enough of an advantage to actually stop him getting tired, for his side to not ache after the first hour, or for their human bipedal bodies to cross as much ground as he would have liked.

  It might be lighter gravity and on an alien planet, but Mars is still a fracking desert! Every footstep shlucked into the sand if he wasn’t careful, and he didn’t know enough about survival training to be able to pick which areas of the plains were actually on firmer rock aggregates and which were just stilled seas of the finest sand you’d ever had the misfortune to see.