The God Mars Book One: CROATOAN by Michael Rizzo Page B

ETE’s
planned projection for being able to build this atmosphere
net?”
    “Two decades, on the original designs,” Anton tells
him. “But even that was still in the theoretical stage before it
all went boom.”
    “The technology didn’t exist before the Big
Bang?”
    Anton shakes his head. “Back to the power issue.”
    “Somebody’s been busy, and after the
bombardment,” Lisa tries not to sound worried.
    “What would this ion net look like—or sound like,
whatever—from Earth?” Matthew wants to know, sounding like he’s
playing prosecutor. “Assuming that Earthside believes this kind of
tech is still non-existent?”
    “Widespread electromagnetic chatter,” Rick gives him
after considering for a moment. “Blanketing the valleys—at least
wherever the air was.”
    “And what would widespread nano-contamination look like from Earth?” Matthew takes his next move. The look on
Rick’s face answers for him. Anton’s eyes go wide.
    “Convenient,” Matthew accuses.
    “You think someone at ETE conspired to take the
planet, and keep Earthside away from whatever they were doing with
it by convincing them the planet is badly contaminated?” Lisa tries
to challenge the idea.
    Matthew locks my eyes across the table. “ We’ve seen worse than this in our time—it can’t be that surprising. And
yes, I did meet the ETE geeks. Enough to know they’re all dreamers
and environmentally-sensitive hippie scientists. But that’s not
where the money came from. And we know what kind of money Mars
meant to those that knew how to exploit it. Imagine what they could
do if they could get all the restrictions and resistance from
Earthside to go away, by getting Earthside to go away.”
    I give him a nod, chewing the inside of my lip. It’s
an extreme (and extremely dark) possibility, but he’s right: we’ve
personally seen humans do worse than this.
    “I’ll tell Morales to make sure those ASVs are armed
before we take them out.”
     

 
    Day 154. 5 June, 2115:
     
    “I don’t see anything.”
    Except the red ochre of the distant cliffs at the top
of the valley rim, its nearest point over twenty miles away and
three miles above us. Our best imaging is enough to bring out
individual boulders on a section of the steep slide-scarred slopes,
but that’s all I see where Rick is insisting I look.
    “I doubt you will, Colonel,” Rick reassures it’s not
because of my age. “But that’s where the nearest emitter is. It’s
either well buried or very small, or both.”
    “And that’s what’s keeping the air in?” Matthew
challenges. He shifts his weight on his “walking stick,” adjusts
his goggles, shuffles his boots in the thin layer of grit that
remains on the roof of the Command bunker.
    “I’ve gone over Dr. Staley’s analysis,” Rick defends.
“Each emitter’s putting out enough EMR to charge the upper
atmosphere across the canyon, slowing down the air loss. That’s an
incredible amount of energy. And with no discernable radiation
bloom—that means no reactor, or an incredibly well-shielded one.
Whatever it is, the power output of one of those things
would run this base. We need to get up there and get a closer
look.”
    And he’s looking forward to it, I can tell by the way
he talks about it. He’s more than curious, he’s impressed .
He wants to see what science and technology has become in the last
fifty years.
    “As soon as we get wings,” I assure him. “Unless you
plan to walk?”
    “Not out of the question,” Anton chimes in, coming
down from his work trying to repair his “tower.” “I’ve been
thinking: There may be another way to get around on the
surface. The ETE generators all run ‘feed lines’ down into the
deeper valleys, dispersing the air they generate, as well as the
dedicated lines that fed O2 and water and hydrogen fuel directly to
the colony sites.” He pulls his flashcard out of his working
coveralls and brings up a map. Colored lines crisscross