March of War

Mars loomed large in the cockpit screens as Katja strolled forward from the main cabin. The pilot was engaged in routine chatter with orbital control, identifying them as a courier ship from one of the major Jovian delivery companies. She stood behind his seat and cast her mind out, getting used to the style and flow of the Martian infosphere.

People spoke faster on Mars than they did on Earth, using words much more efficiently and wasting little on pleasantries. They weren’t abrasive or rude, like the majority of Mercurians, but they spoke and wrote as if they were constantly in a rush. Life moved fast on Mars, and the society prized efficiency. Born of the first colonists to survive on this once-hostile world, their dedication to precision and conservation had built the undisputed industrial powerhouse of Terra.

Off to both sides of the shuttle, thousands of lights moved within and through the orbital control zone. The distant bulk of Astral Base Two was visible near the edge of Mars’ ruddy horizon, the security zone around it noticeably clear of traffic. Military sensors reached out from the base, linking into a ghostly web that included the discreet satellites orbiting around the entire planet.

No less than seven Fleet warships were active in planetary protection, and even at this altitude she could hear the routine transmissions from atmospheric sentries guarding against surface incursions.

Only once had the rebels attempted a surface attack on Mars. They had breached several points in the outer walls of the city of New Longreach, and the resulting depressurization had done more damage than any weapon. Those Centauri war machines which survived the blasts had run loose for weeks before they were all hunted down. The civilian death toll had been tremendous—so much so that Special Forces concluded that another rebel attack on Mars would be unlikely.

The Centauris, more so than any other colony, abhorred civilian deaths. No, Katja thought as she returned to the main cabin and took her seat for landing, the military aspects of war had moved back into space—the surface was now the battleground for spies.

Chang glanced up at her. He wore nondescript, slightly shabby civilian clothes, looking the part of a laborer who couldn’t afford to care about his appearance. She’d colored her hair brown and cut it back to an efficient length that didn’t quite reach her shoulders. She wore an inexpensive pant suit typical of any mid-level shopping concourse, with high heels and a large bag. Her role was to be a middle manager who dreamed of one day being a senior manager.

The descent through the thin Martian atmosphere was always smoother than on an Earth-like world. A few subtle bumps gave encouraging hints to the slowly increasing air density that centuries of terraforming had achieved, but no human could survive outside the pressure domes for long.

The shuttle passed through one of the airlocks and settled down within a large commercial hangar. As the cargo door opened and a Special Forces team carried on their charade of delivering courier packages, Katja grabbed her bag and headed for the passenger door on the side of the vessel.

“See you at the RV,” she said quietly to Chang. He nodded, staying in his seat as planned to allow for a clear separation of their departures from the ship.

Katja stepped down to the hard floor of the vast hangar, breathing in the faint chalkiness of the air unique to Mars. All of the oxygen in the human settlements was produced artificially, but enough of the actual planetary atmosphere got mixed in to give Martian air its distinctiveness.

Listening with her ears to the bustle of a civilian port, she discreetly searched for any surveillance devices. There were the obvious ones installed by the port authority, of course, but a passive EM sweep looked for anything else that might be actively investigating her brisk stroll toward the security gates. Nothing was focused on her, but she did notice an unusual scanner on one of the freighters to her left. Glancing casually toward it, she noted that its corporate markings suggested an origin on Triton, and captured an image. Turning her eyes forward again, she packaged the image with her sensor data and stored it for later.

The security lines to enter the city of Ares were as long as usual, and she passed the time first by scanning all the personal IDs of the people around her, then by hacking into the Martian border security system to look for any signs of unusual activity lately. Centauri spies were very good at covering their tracks, but Katja had learned to search for a specific structure in data packets.

The Centauri Cloud technology was much more sophisticated than standard Terran, and very occasionally she would find something which had an architecture far too complex to be legitimate. The enemy was incapable, it seemed, of dumbing down its own technology entirely.

There.

Three days ago, a woman had entered Mars through the main passenger terminal at Olympus Mons on a seven-day tourist itinerary. Katja traced the name, Paula McGee, back to her home on Ganymede and searched her record. It was clean, unremarkable, and entirely believable. That she had no spouse, children, or siblings gave the first indication of a false ID, and when Katja looked underneath the data itself, she saw the tell-tale sophistication of Centauri insertion.

She’d found an enemy spy. No telling yet if it was the person she was after, but further analysis should determine that. She glanced up with her eyes, noting that she’d almost reached the security counter, and retracted her links. She’d need to play the innocent State functionary for the next few minutes.

Then it would be a long ride on public transit to her reserved quarters. She was confident she’d have found her target by the time she met Chang at the RV.

* * *

The pink sun shone through the translucent upper walls and ceilings of most of the city, augmented by artificial white light that faded to orange as the orb dropped toward the dusty horizon. Centuries of human existence on Mars had created an interior environment which produced a tremendous likeness to nature, but it was still just a likeness.

Chang’s utility bag rustled behind her as he shouldered it and followed her across the plaza. The tram had carried them through one of the close-in connecting tunnels, but the dome enclosing this cluster of buildings soared above them now. It was far from the largest dome in Ares, only stretching far enough to contain the frontages of the buildings. Each of those extended out into the Martian landscape. There were small commuter shops clustered near the tram stop, but otherwise the artificial floor was interrupted only by the carefully spaced trees in their individual pots. Katja spotted the modest entrance to the Ministry of Industry building and motioned for Chang to follow.

The guards outside the building watched them with vague interest as they approached. Only the time of day made their arrival unusual—few civil servants actually worked at this hour. So Katja pursed her features into a frown and offered a State-issue tablet with a message displayed brightly on the screen.

“Data Manager Watkins,” she snapped in a typical Martian accent. “There’s a series of faults causing intermittent link breakage within the unclass system. We need to watch it when the network’s quiet, so”—she jerked a thumb back at Chang— ”we’re going to start this evening.”

Choosing the unclassified system meant no additional security checks would be required, and data management maintenance was generally considered just about the unsexiest thing in the world, unlikely even to be remembered the next day.

One of the guards looked at her tablet, then checked his own forearm display. His eyes lit up when the corresponding confirmation appeared.

“How long will you be?” he asked.

She shot a look back at Chang.

“Hopefully less than two hours,” Suleiman replied.

“Hopefully much less,” she growled, taking back her tablet.

The guard indicated for them to enter. “You know the way, I assume?”

“Yes,” Katja replied, already past him and through the doors.

As they had anticipated, the building was quiet. The only sounds were their soft footfalls and the jangle of Chang’s tool bag. Katja scanned the network around them, and Chang did likewise. She quickly isolated a pair of terminals active on the third floor.

<Our prize is working late,> she commented through the Cloud.

<As expected.> Chang’s ghostly voice whispered in her mind. <I love it when intel gets things right.>

The “prize” was Sarah Goldberg, the State official they were here to protect. She was busily reading messages, responding to some and forwarding others to a person who occupied the office beside hers. An executive assistant, most likely.

Katja suddenly felt a momentary sting in her ribcage. She glanced back at Chang and returned a signal of her own. He nodded. Both of their entanglement implants were functioning normally.

Someone had tried to explain the physics to her once, and she thought she understood it. Both she and Chang had been implanted with tiny devices, each of which held a group of individual elementary particles. Each set of particles had been entangled, and then separated in such a way that they were held in isolation from the rest of the surrounding environments.

Because the particles were entangled, what happened to one set would affect the other, and vice versa—instantly and no matter how far apart in the universe they were. Albert Einstein had first called it “spooky action at a distance,” more than five hundred years ago.

It gave the two operatives the ability to keep tabs on each other’s bodily status, to the point that each would know instantly if the other was alive or dead. Every time a signal was sent, however, that entangled pair of particles “collapsed” and could not be used again.

They boarded an elevator and, after a swift rise, the door opened and they stepped out onto the third floor. The corridor was at half-light, a broad, square window at the far end shining pale pink in the last flames of the sunset beyond. She reached out to sense for any surveillance equipment, while Chang found the network maintenance closet and stepped inside. She heard the soft clink of “tools” as he began assembling them into a pair of energy weapons. She would have preferred something more traditional, but State buildings employed scanners that could detect the unique inner mechanisms necessary for modern projectile weapons.

At least their opponents would be equally disadvantaged.

As Chang expertly constructed the weapons, he tapped directly into the network to begin a rapid sweep of the building. Katja activated her quantum-flux and walked slowly along the corridor, scanning a pair of offices. She saw the forms of the two people, each at a desk, and the quantum glow of their terminals. A single, thin wall separated them, but it was likely that there was a door open between the two rooms.

<There’s movement of the elevator,> Chang reported.

Katja turned and slowly retraced her steps, switching to infrared. The hot elevator shaft blazed, as did the air ducts which pushed new air to these outer offices in an eternal war against the Martian winter. It swirled in a maelstrom of eddies, some funneled upward into the office of Goldberg’s assistant, while the rest fluctuated along the duct and toward the corner room. There seemed to be more turbulence than was necessary, and she turned, walking slowly back toward the window as she studied the flow of heat in the ducts beneath the floor.

Something wasn’t right.

<Katja, the elevator.>

Her ears picked up the whoosh of the door sliding open and the rattle of a hovercart being pushed out and turned sharply in the corridor. It was guided by a middle-aged man, thinning gray hair, strong frame clothed in a cleaning staff uniform. In no way a fit to the description of the Centauri target, but her instincts still pushed her into fight mode.

She winked off infra-red and strode toward the cleaner.

“Who are you?” she demanded. <Male, south Asian,> she reported to Chang, still in the closet. <Mid-age, strong.>

The man stopped between the elevator and Goldberg’s suite. He looked up in surprise, but quickly brought a smile to his face.

“Good evening, ma’am,” he said amiably, glancing at the insignia on her work uniform. “Working late tonight?”

She didn’t slow, trying to close the distance. Chang still had both of the energy weapons. Five paces to go.

“Are you authorized to be here?” she barked, watching his expression carefully. His eyes widened, but not with the sort of fear she’d expect from a low-pay civilian.

<Poss high target,> she reported.

<Roger,> Chang replied, <tracking.>

Just as she reached the hovercart, the cleaner reached down.

“Hands up!” she shouted.

His right arm began to rise.

She dropped to a crouch and slammed her shoulder into the hovercart. It surged forward into the cleaner. She heard his feet stumble backward, and then the thump as he fell to the floor. She pushed the cart toward him, spotting an energy pistol in his hand. Launching her weight off the cart, she hurled against the door to the suite, grunting as it snapped open and she sprawled across the floor.

Scrambling forward, she stumbled as a burst of fiery pain exploded in her leg. Falling to her knees she rolled to clear the doorway, coming up against the desk and spotting the wide-eyed face of a very young man in a suit, half-risen from his chair behind the desk.

Energy blasts hissed in the corridor behind her. With her good leg she vaulted across the desk and tackled the man, taking them both down as his chair crashed away.

“Police emergency,” she hissed as she lay on top of him. “Stay down.”

He nodded weakly.

She pulled herself up, peeking once over the desk before ducking down again. The firing had stopped.

<Suleiman!>

<Target contained,> Chang replied.

She hauled herself up and limped to the open door into Goldberg’s office. Her left leg was unable to take any weight. She looked down and saw the blackened flesh of her calf mixed with the charred tatters of her suit leg. Her body had shut down all pain receptors to allow her to focus, but she wouldn’t be in the action for much longer.

Sarah Goldberg had abandoned her chair for the floor, and her eyes were barely visible over the solid wooden desk top.

“Senior Advisor,” Katja called out, “this is a police emergency. Please stay down.”

“Who are you?” Goldberg answered in a frightened but still commanding voice. Katja propped herself against the doorframe, rapidly scanning the room. The walls were secure, no surveillance kit, no hacks detected on Goldberg’s network. Two large windows formed the corner, and through them the last pink glow of sunset was fading beyond a dark landscape.

She switched to quantum-flux. All clear. She switched to infra-red. The river of heat sweeping along the air duct below the floor was moving smoothly. In fact, she noted suddenly, there was hardly a ripple. The hot air was plumed unhindered into the room, and from within the plume, a figure emerged.

<Strike on prize!> she roared into the Cloud.

“Goldberg,” she shouted, “behind you!”

The woman turned and raised her arms in defense at a figure leaping in her direction. Katja broke into a run, stumbling as her left leg collapsed beneath her. She caught her own fall and rolled up into a fighting stance, just as a blade struck down and Goldberg screamed.

An energy blast sizzled into the dark form, enough to stop another stab. Chang came charging in behind her, but even as a second blast hissed forth, the assassin hefted Goldberg’s slumped figure as a shield. The energy scorched through the prize’s clothes and burned into her back.

Katja charged forward, only to collapse again. Her skin was slick with sweat, her breath coming in quick gasps. She couldn’t feel the pain, but her body was suffering.

Chang’s massive form leapt into the air, taking both Goldberg and her attacker in a flying tackle. The floor shook as all three slammed down. Katja scrambled to the desk and pulled herself up in time to see Chang on his feet, grappling with a much smaller form in what was clearly a black pressure suit. The helmet was clear on three sides, and Katja caught a glimpse of the woman’s snarl as she took a step back and braced against Chang’s push.

Through blurring vision Katja realized what she was seeing. This woman, not much bigger than her, was fighting Suleiman Chang in a test of strength, and winning.

A sudden surge by the enemy knocked Chang back on his heels. She wrenched her hands free, recoiled into a perfect side kick to his midsection. Chang was knocked clear off his feet, crashing against the far wall.

The assassin turned to Katja, eyes burning with murderous intent. She pulled the blade free of Goldberg’s limp body and stepped forward.

<You’re next, Emmes.>

Katja heard the malice in the voice even through the Cloud. She struggled to hold her defensive fighting stance, favoring her uninjured leg. Alarms began sounding in every room, indicating a security alert on the third floor. Chang pulled himself to his feet.

The Centauri’s eyes flickered between Katja and Chang, then toward the doorway. With a snarl she stepped back, rearing to deliver a kick to one of the picture windows. The glass cracked on the first impact.

Katja dove to the floor and clutched the solid leg of the desk. The sound of another crack was followed by an ominous shattering. A breeze began to blow, transforming in seconds to a torrent of air as the pressurized room bled out into the Martian atmosphere. Katja hung onto the wooden leg and shut her eyes, pulling her suit jacket over her face in a desperate attempt to trap a last gasp of air.

A metallic slam brought the windstorm to a sudden, silent halt. Katja glanced up and saw that the safety barrier had activated and sealed over the breach. Her lungs burned as they gulped in as much oxygen as they could, but she forced herself to let go of the desk and roll across the floor.

Sarah Goldberg was dead. Of that there was no question. The body lay almost within arm’s reach, but Katja made no move to examine it. Instead she struggled to her hands and knees to regard Chang, slumped against the wall, hands clutching the handles of an emergency fire equipment station.

<Suleiman?>

He moved a hand, although his eyes didn’t open.

<Here.>

<Probably.>

His eyes snapped open. She shifted her leg to reveal the burn. He looked off toward the outer office and frowned.

She hadn’t heard anything, and suddenly realized that her entire world was silent. She lay back down and touched fingers to her ears. There was blood on both sides. As Chang loomed over her and scooped her up in his arms, she saw that his ears were bleeding, as well.

A group of guards appeared and poured into the room.

<Remember,> he said, <you’re the damsel in distress—look weak and injured.>

<Easy,> she said, letting her body go limp.

* * *

In the chaos around the death of Goldberg and the unconscious Centauri “janitor,” the young assistant made it clear that Katja and Chang weren’t the assassins, so most of the police ignored them as they slipped out into the corridor. One armored officer did a quick medical check, and escorted them down to one of the ambulances in the central dome.

Chang placed Katja onto a stretcher and heaved himself up next to her in the back of the ambulance, firmly dismissing any attempts by the medic to assess him.

“Take care of her leg first,” he growled, pointing at the mangled calf.

<She knew my name,> Katja said, staring up at Chang. <My real name.>

<Not good,> he responded, eyes on the medic who was expertly applying anti-burn dressings. <Once we’re clear of this scene, we’ll take control of the ambulance and disappear. Until then, just relax.>

The mission had gone to shit. Their prize was dead and the enemy had escaped. Katja wanted to get angry, wanted to give chase to that Centauri bitch, but her injured leg was completely unresponsive and she doubted she could even walk. Chang slumped in the seat as the ambulance swayed along the roadway, and was probably much more badly injured than he was letting on.

But he’d been doing this for years. He’d get her clear, she knew.

He always did.