The soldier pointed out across the thousands of cars coming through the pass. “That’s what I would recommend for most of them. There’s life there, and maybe some kind of future.”
“And the other option?” Nikitin asked.
“Join our struggle and give the infidels hell. I know that most of you oranges are hard set against violence, but perhaps the situation is different now? I can see that you are survivors, and I’m sure your skills would find use.”
“What struggle?” Jack asked. “You said everything’s gone.”
The soldier laughed yet again. Jack was starting to think that he and the soldier had very different senses of humor. “You are so fast to lay down your arms, American. Your people have never been invaded, have they? You see, in my world, invasion is all we’ve ever known. It is our entire history. First the Greeks, then the Indians, the English, Soviets, Americans, and Indians once again. This land has been invaded a thousand times already, and it will be invaded a thousand more. When the smoke clears and these invaders are gone, who do you think will remain?”
The soldier’s rhetorical question was met with silence, and he smiled.
“They have taken Africa as their own, and we will force them out however we can. The Mashriq is our front- line, and soldiers of every flag are united in the struggle. Mashriq Coalition, your Blade and Carbon corporations, and more Mujahidin than can be counted. UEO and separatists standing together… isn’t that something? Soon, the oil will begin to flow, and the war will truly begin. Of course, we could always use more help.”
More help. That phrase made it sound so innocuous, like they needed an extra hand raising a barn or passing out fliers. Still, Jack knew the soldier was right. This wasn’t a petty political disagreement. It wasn’t a conflict of ideologies. The enemy was here to exterminate the human race, and resistance was the only option.
“Should you decide to join us, there is an airfield south of Jalalabad that we use. Transports leave everyday. They will take you to our forward base.”
Jack closed his eyes again, but before he could see the ghosts of his past, his decision was already made.
Chapter 19:
The Distant Shore
Midday on Mars. The sun shone brightly, but a sandstorm was brewing on the horizon, hazing the line where dusty ground met rusty sky. Somewhere over that horizon lurked the biggest mountain anyone had ever seen, rising thirty kilometers into the emaciated sky, but no one would ever believe it was a mountain while standing on it. Its body stretched over an area the size of France, with a grade nearly as steep as a wheelchair ramp.
Amira Saladin was a teenager the first time she made the trip with her parents. They pointed at the ground and told her she was on the peak of the tallest mountain in the solar system. At the time, she didn’t believe a word of it. Fifteen years and more than a dozen return trips later, she still found it difficult to believe. It was a let down, actually.
She eyed the approaching storm with a touch of annoyance. “Just another beautiful day on the Arcadian Plain.”
Kazuo Nagai’s voice came in over her headset. “Cry me a river, Sal. You love it out here. I know it, and you know it. Now stop working your jaw and gimme a hand with this.”
She estimated an hour or more before the storm would hit, time enough to get their work done with ease. She was also pretty sure she outranked Kazuo, so she kept moving at her own leisurely pace. At least, she thought she outranked him. As she watched the coming storm, she wondered if anyone really understood the GAF chain of command.
Sal turned back toward the wall of the Ares Colony, where Kazuo was impatiently holding up a half-tonne composite steel panel. His powered environment suit, called a MASPEC, made him look like the bastard offspring of a man and a forklift, and the forklift had more dominant genes. Sal made a mental note to do something about the suits’ aesthetics once she got all the bugs worked out.
She marched over and grabbed the other end of the panel, and together they carried it to the side, revealing the bare innards of the atmosphere processor beneath. The compartment was full of ducting and jumbled wires. She hated electronic spaghetti. “Remind me to chew out whoever left this mess. It’s like they never heard of cable ties.”
“Probably your father’s work.”
“Shut up.”
Kazuo flicked on his shoulder lamp and hunkered down in front of the compartment. “Which board is it?”
“Jay five. The rack with the bright red error light.”
“I’m color blind, Sal. I’ve told you at least a hundred times.”
“And it’s funny every single time,” she said without malice.
Kazuo selected the screwdriver attachment on his wrist tool, and went to work on the screws which held the circuit board in place. “Tell me something interesting about Mars,” he said while he worked.
Sal pulled the replacement board out of her pack. “Alright. Did you know that in ancient times, Mars was inhabited by a race of intelligent tiger-lizard men?”
“Is that so?”
“Absolute fact. Although their civilization collapsed, a few of them survived into modern times, and around the turn of the century, they assisted human efforts to explore the red planet by wiping off the rovers’ solar panels at night while the machines were powered down.”
“Amazing,” Kazuo said. He handed her the burnt out board, and she gave him the replacement. “Now, what exactly is a tiger-lizard man?”
“They’re basically like normal lizard men, but with jaunty stripes and cheerier attitudes.”
Kazuo gave the replacement board a healthy nudge to make sure it was properly seated, then went about screwing it in. “That makes some crazy sort of sense, I guess. Wait… Last week, didn’t you tell me Mars was originally colonized by little green men with fat heads? There are shenanigans afoot.”
Sal gave the faulty board a quick once over, looking for any obvious signs of failure like a burnt capacitor, but there weren’t any. She’d have to take a closer look in the lab once they got back. “No shenanigans. The little green men, the Quazlpacti as they were called, were the first to colonize Mars, and they brought the tiger-lizards with them as pets. Unfortunately, they didn’t foresee the mutagenic plague which, in a fit of poetic justice, turned them into docile pets and the tiger-lizards into their cruel masters.”
“Fascinating,” Kazuo said. “We’re ready to seal up here.”
Sal packed the faulty circuit board away and then lifted the steel panel up. “It was the Quazlpacti who left the Nazca Lines on Earth, you know.”
“To warn us against the dreaded gas monkeys of Jupiter, right?”
“Nope. Just graffiti. The Quazlpacti were jerks.”
Kazuo stood and turned to give her a hand with the panel, but stopped and put his hands on his hips instead. His posture positively radiated frustration, and Sal was once again amazed at how much subtle body language made it through the bulk of the powered suits.
“You’re holding that panel up by yourself? You weren’t going to experiment on production units anymore, damn it.”
She laughed. “I wasn’t experimenting. It’s just a little performance tweak.”
“Tweak my ass,” Kazuo said. “The suit’s only rated to lift half that weight.”
She walked past him and lowered the panel over the exposed compartment, then punched the pressure seals into place. “I wrote the spec, thanks. No need to quote it to me.”
“That’s not the point. It’s not safe, Sal. What if your ‘tweaks’ fail and five hundred kilos of steel come tumbling down on you? What then?”
“Then my stalwart yet officious partner digs me out and carries me back to the airlock.” She gave Kazuo a nudge in the ribs, which he certainly didn’t feel. “Those are the dangers of frontier engineering, soldier boy. Better get used to it.”
