Atlas & Ares book 1: Men of the Red Earth

George had changed outfits, out of the khaki safari dress into a long dark coat that in the unlit streets made her nearly imperceptible. She whispered. "How was your conversation?"

"Oh he's a snake alright. He's experienced starvation first-hand—on other people's faces. He'll feed Mars—but he can't fit his own people. Martian technology is of inestimable value—a hundred times what it was once worth, he estimates. I've never heard a tongue so forked. I hope he hasn't offered you any fruit."

"He was testing you. You should have winked to show him you noticed but wouldn't hold it against him. Would've proved you can operate."

"I operated fine. And without pandering."

"And if Wright did slip something by you, how would you know?"

"He wanted to slip more by me than he managed. Tried to drug me. Served me alcohol, said it was illegal."

"It is, officially, which means it's illegal for everyone but the officials. Now hush. We're out after curfew."

They crept through the darkness for a while. The sky rumbled. The wind picked up as they neared the river, a blast from the north. Cap's jacket snapped. He tucked Wright's flag into the back of his belt and clutched the jacket tight around himself.

The street lost its walls and Cap discovered he was on a bridge, high over inky water, in an onslaught of thick air that he feared could blow him into the river. He fought it to hurry after George. At the end of the bridge she veered right to skirt the riverbank. Opaque rectangles towered above him, visible only as a blacker shade against an already black sky, possibly an illusion as his brain conjured figments in the absence of light, and as he gawked up at them, trying to discern reality, he collided with George.

He bounced off her and backward toward the river. She grabbed him, then before he could protest that she shouldn't be standing where people were walking, she clamped a hand over his mouth and dropped a bead into his ear. He squirmed to fish it out. She boxed him on the side of head, lodged the bead tighter, then spoke without moving her jaw. [Subvocal comms. Talk with your tongue, not your throat or lips. The mic picks up nerve signals.]

The bead tickled. Her voice spoke directly into his ear canal. [You couldn't have given me this before? You had to shush me?]

[Yes. You were being full of yourself.]

[I handled Wright.]

[Let's see you handle this.] She gestured high at the black tower. He hadn't imagined it. [We've got to get onto the fourteenth floor.]

[You're sure she's in there? They could have relayed the radio signal.]

[Your pilot has infrared of six men surrounding a woman tied to a chair.]

[Udike didn't send it to me.]

[I told him not to.]

Cap shivered. Not from the wind, which wasn't that cold to his Martian blood, but because he detected in George's subvocal tone a note of big-sisterly protectiveness. He knew why, but he ignored it. [We go through a window.]

[They're fake windows.]

[Sky-crane from the Hawk.]

[They'll hear the engines.]

[Precision para-jump.]

[You've got a kirigami chute?]

[Okay, how would you do it?]

[Easy. You think secret police walk their own trash to the dumpster? Everyone needs janitors, but no one wants them carrying toilet paper in the front door. We go in the service entrance.] She escorted him from the riverbank past a row of prickly hedges and into a gardener's shack.

Inside a figure jumped. The out of the darkness flashed a Cheshire grin. Cap hissed. "Rigsby?"

[Your sister's more thoughtful than you. Invited me to come along.] He handed a backpack to George. [Found your cache, right where you said.]

George shouldered the backpack, took a pouch from her breast pocket, and edged past them to a metal shelf where she began picking a hidden lock. Rigsby nudged Cap. He turned his back to George, picked out the ear-mic, and said, "You're sister's a cat burglar?"

Cap shrugged and pulled an uncertain grimace. He asked George, [How many guards in there?]

[Maybe a dozen. It's third shift.]

[We can't fight off a dozen Secret Servus agents.]

[They'll never hear us.]

[We're outnumbered.]

[We're quieter.]

[Because we're outnumbered.]

[I'll do it myself if you won't.]

[Do what?]

[Loose the chains of injustice and set the captives free.]

[Don't get poetic. They already shot at me once today.]

The lock released and George eased back the shelf to reveal a void, into which she disappeared. Rigsby followed. Cap gritted his teeth, had no choice, and felt his way to the edge of the door. He slid the pegboard back into place behind him.

He crept forward by inches, unable to see or hear Rigsby ahead of him, and without knowing where the corridor branched Cap worried he might have missed a turn. He fumbled with his lens. Any light would surrender perfect invisibility, but he dimmed it as low as he could and raised it to his face as an oversized monocle. A trail of deep red footsteps glowed on the floor. Rigsby's big feet. He must be following George, but George's feet hadn't left a trail.

Cap groped his way forward until the red marks lifted off the floor and his toe hit a stair. Cap climbed, bracing on the wall with hands balled into fists, lest he leave fingerprints that could later be compared to the fingerprints on the lens he had given Wright. He ascended, and a flat spot caught him by surprise. By the fifth landing he panted. By the eighth he sagged, counting stairs as well as landings as he held out for the fourteenth floor. By the fifteenth landing he wondered where he had lost count, and by the nineteenth he decided there were two landings per floor. On the twenty-fourth landing he found the blobby heat-shapes of Rigsby and George, waiting for him. [Only two more.]

[This is the fourteenth floor.]

[It's the thirteenth.]

[They skip the thirteenth floor. It's an unlucky number.]

[Oh for air's sake—] He collapsed against the wall. [I take it back. Wright's not a snake. He's a dragon. Puts his damsels in distress at the top of a tower.]

George had her lens on a door, showing not infrared but some kind of sonar.

[Two guards in the hall. One in the interrogation room. Others three floors down playing cards. Cover your ears.] She rotated a doorknob without noise and rolled her lens through the gap. She put her hands over her ears. Cap and Rigsby mimicked.

A moment later Cap was jolted by a concussive WHOMP. He uncovered to hear two bodied thud to the floor. [Cover.] He did, and a second WHOMP struck. The man who'd come from the interrogation room to see what had happened.

As soon as the third guard fell George leapt into the hall. Cap went after her, but Rigsby caught his arm. "Can your lens do that?"

"Never had a reason to try." But he was pretty sure it couldn't.

"I get the impression when Thomas Kaufman raided dumps, he found better than the consumer-grade comm lenses he sent to the Moon."

Something to be curious about later. Cap pried free and hurried after George.

^started

Beyond the door the hall was lit in dim yellows, and George dragged an unconscious suit into a supply closet where his partner was already slumped with his hands tied behind his back by an extension cord. Cap went to where the third guard lay.

"Cincy."

She said it out loud, but gently, and put herself between him and the door. "Are you sure you want to go in?" Her eyes went to the man at his feet, pistol drawn, the gloves holding them blue rubber stained red.

"I'm not running this time."

He pushed her aside and pulled the door.

The interrogation room was a cavern, walls and ceiling hidden in the darkness beyond a harsh cone of light at the center. Plastic sheeting covered the floor. Under the light was a chair, and in the chair a slumped body. Her sleeves had been ripped to tatters and the skin beneath them flayed in bloody spirals. Cap froze. This is what happened after I left.

George blew past. She slung the backpack from her shoulder and felt under the woman's orange hair for a pulse. "She's alive."

"What'd they do to her?"

"She's sedated. Some interrogators like to mutilate prisoners while they're asleep, then wake them in excruciating pain. Makes the prisoner afraid to sleep. Then, when sleep deprivation sets in, they blame themselves, and if they do ever sleep, they have nightmares of self-harm." George rifled in the backpack, pulled out a bottle, and brushed what remained of the sleeves off the woman's wounds. She sprayed a mist her arm.

Cap remembered Judith's joke. Wright had asked her to confirm she was unharmed, but instead she'd told Cap she was tied to a chair. "Unarmed," as she put it. Slicing up her arms was Wright's idea of poetic revenge.

George reached into the backpack swapped the numbing spray for a flask. She removed the stopper and waved it beneath the woman's nose. Ammonia. The woman's head snapped back, away from the smelling salts. George caught her. "You're okay. You're okay."

"Is it her?"

"You don't know?"

"I never met her, never even saw a picture." He needed another shibboleth. "Ask when she left Mars."

The woman's eyelids fluttered. "May..."

"She's asking for something."

The orange hair quivered side to side. "May...six."

"It's her."

"May six? It's October. You told me she left a few weeks ago."

"She's using the Martian calendar. Our days are longer so we lag behind Earth. Can she get up?"

George undid the restraints. Judith's eyes opened and looked close to where Cap stood, but not exactly, focused somewhere beyond him, if they focused at all. Cap said, "She can't see."

"Standard procedure. Blind prisoners can't escape."

"Will it wear off?"

"Maybe, in time." George lifted Judith's arm. "C'mon, girl, you've got help."

"Who...?"

"Martian Special Forces." Cap shot George a look. George corrected, "Maybe more special than force."

"Did...Lonson send you?"

"Anthony Zinser."

But before Cap could ask about Lonson, Rigsby flew in. "Time to leave. Multiple vehicles leaving the White House, hot and fast, coming this way. Udike says they're tanks."

"That'll be Wright," George said. "He likes a military motorcade."

"We must have set off an alarm."

"No, that motorcade takes at least an hour to get ready. Wright must have called for it shortly after you left his office."

"Could he be going somewhere else?"

"I wouldn't plan on it. I'll call a ride." George produced her lens.

"Wait."

The voice wasn't Cap's but Judith's. She stood, one hand braced on the torture chair, her uncertain in her balance but not her voice. "Gimme a crack at him."

"Say again?"

"I've been interrogating these guys for days. Lemme question Wright."

Cap stooped to peer into her unfocused eyes, check that she was actually conscious and not delusional.

"Let her." George pocketed the lens. "Our ride can't be here for fifteen minutes. She'll have to stall him."

Cap ground his teeth. "Fine. Rigsby, strip the suits off the guards. You and George will have to pose as them, hope Wright doesn't know them personally."

George snorted. "Those suits won't fit either of us. And even if they did, Wright would never believe we're Secret Servus. Better if the guards are missing. Wright won't notice. As far as he's concerned, this is an unbreachable black site. He'll figure they went for coffee and cards."

Like the other guards. Cap still didn't like it, but as George chloroformed and gagged the guards in the closet, Cap eased Judith back into the interrogation chair, wincing as he placed the restraints back around her wrists.

Then he retreated outside of the cone of light.

The walls were draped in plastic, and Cap edged behind a sheet to check the infrared relayed from the Hawk. The tanks rolled to the front of the building, pivoted, and faced turrets out. Cap subvocalized to George. [Evacuation parking.]

[Standard procedure. If they knew we were here, they'd come in force. But see? Two men. Just Wright and a bodyguard. Wait 'em out.]

The infrared blurred as the two figures entered the building and the elevator. Cap hid his lens and listened. Footsteps in the hall. The door of the interrogation room opened with a wan glow. Wright strode into the halo surrounding Judith.

He lifted her chin and peeled an eyelid open with his thumb. "Good. You're awake. Do you recognize my voice?"

"Sampson...something."

"Wright."

"Thank you."

Wright puckered, irritated, but ignored the misunderstanding. "I came to thank you for the interview. Very informative. So you're a reporter?"

"Dis...appointed?"

"Naturally. While you served as adequate bait, I had hoped for more than a fruit fly sniffing for juice."

"We Martians...can't all be princesses."

Wright didn't understand the remark and again pulled her chin where he could see her eyes. He snapped to his bodyguard behind him. "I want her lucid. Find the druggist."

The guard left. Behind the plastic sheet Cap smiled. Clever girl.

Wright crouched in front of his prisoner. "I must apologize for the deception. The President was becoming impatient."

"Im...patient?"

"Yes, your obdurate refusal to answer our questions forced us to resort to a ruse. We, very regrettably, had to make you to believe a fellow Martian had arrived to negotiate your freedom. Perfect rot, of course, but that is what you flies are drawn to. The stinking meat of the press—sensation over substance."

Wright walked around Judith, stroking a finger along her flayed arm. She didn't flinch. Even with George's spray it must have hurt, but Judith had come to Earth for an interview with the most powerful man in the country, and she wasn't about to let on that she was getting it.

Wright said, "But I suppose even a fly has value to something. An insect-eater. Who would come for you? Who are you important to?"

Cap held his breath. Wright was groping for information about him.

"Im...portant?"

"I suppose even a redhead can have an employer. More likely you owe someone money."

"Money?"

"Surely you Martians have money. Money is how one determines who has worth and who is worthless. That is a fundamental human need, one we've always taken with us wherever we've gone, and always will. Is it possible you're one of the worthless ones, banned from using money? Could you have value to no one?"

"No...one?"

"That hurts you, doesn't it? You believe there is someone you matter to, and their absence troubles you. I apologize for my species. Men can be so callous. Especially the acolytes of Thomas Kaufman."

"Kauf...man?"

"Yes, in much the manner I used you as bait, I once tried to bait Thomas Kaufman into returning from his hideout on the Moon. Cruelly, the man who claimed to care so much for the human race cared nothing at all for the individual. Not even one of his own lieutenants. Isn't that right, Mr. Pierce?"

Cap stepped from behind the plastic but not into the light. He remained on the gray edge, and hadn't yet decided whether to demand Wright explain himself or demand he keep his mouth shut. Cap's fists were balled.

Wright spoke first. "I felt a twinge when I met you this evening, an uncommon sensation that I have learned to pay attention to, a subconscious deduction. Not until I stood here did it enter the conscious. It was a twinge of recognition. I've seen you before. You were there that day, weren't you? But just a boy, eight years old."

"What did you do to her?"

"Me? Nothing." Wright again stroked Judith's wounds. "I would have performed the operation differently. While peeling back layers of epidermis one by one does provide a certain satisfaction to the interrogator—the pain of the exposed nerve endings is excruciating—as an intimidation method it's short-sighted and amateurish, done purely for the love of torture. The visible scars mean the subject can never leave the building. Better to leave only psychological scars, with no visible effects other than fear of authority. A fear that can infect others."

"What did you do to her."

Wright circled to the opposite side of the torturer's chair. "You've come to break her out with what, a platoon of Martian marines? And I've caught you red-handed, so to speak. So be it. I can use this. The United States need an enemy. An enemy unites. Call it the Red Peril. With the loss of globalization we have no enemies overseas, and domestic enemies are so blasé. But you, a Martian, a man from another planet—with an enemy like that, why, we'll be one nation under God again."

Wright was stalling, waiting for his bodyguard to return, but George would have dealt with the bodyguard and Cap didn't rush. He circled the chair after Wright. "What. Did. You. Do."

"To who? Some mercenary in Africa? Kaufman employed so many of them, and they were such fanatics of anonymity. How should I know who you mean?"

Cap tightened his orbit around the chair.

Wright shuffled away. "What did I do? To a bunch of criminals? What the law allowed—what the law demanded. Redmond Clarke was a thief and a hacker who broke into the National Secrets Agency and stole the Argus Network's source code. Gabriel Levy was a third-world tyrant. That Slav girl was a—"

"Don't say it."

"So I'm not the first to tell you. She was the worst of them all. Searching Africa for men to work in Kaufman's mines—"

"She wasn't—"

"She was! You've denied it your whole life, but you can't deny it to me! I followed her trail. I saw the homes and families left broken, tracked the money Kaufman paid her, exposed her illegal human trafficking. And I caught her. She admitted it to me herself when I was done with her. Your mother was a slave trader!"

Cap launched himself over the chair—

Wright was small and fast and had expected the attack, but Cap's arms were long. He caught Wright by the front of the vest and dragged him to the ground. Wright twisted away. Cap spidered after him, but Wright scrambled his feet. As Cap rose, Wright kicked him in the throat.

Cap fell wheezing.

Wright bent over him. "Your drugs may give you the strength to stand on my planet, but they haven't taught you how to fight on it. I was wrong, wasn't I? You don't have any Martian marines. You're alone. You have been since you were eight years old."

Wright circled the other direction. "I wondered who from Mars would care about the girl. When I learned she was no more than a hackette, I wracked my brain asking who would be fool enough to risk himself for her. Now I have my answer: nobody. That's who you are, aren't you? A nobody. As it ever was for the followers of Thomas Kaufman. As it ever was—for slaves."

Cap regained his feet. He labored for air but faced Wright and bared his teeth. Wright didn't bother to keep the interrogation chair between them, not even to brace for the lunge.

But as Cap sprung at Wright's chest, a round spark of light rolled across the floor.

Cap's head was smashed, not by Wright, but by a single, concussive WHOMP.

Cap woke to static. White noise rose and fell in gentle pulses, and he lingered in semi-consciousness, unsure whether he had heard the noise before but feeling that it signaled departure.

Then spray hit his face. He sat up. He was on the water.

He stood to run, but his head throbbed and he had to sit back down. A faint, snowy V stretched out behind him, the wake of a boat. It pushed upriver, its motor silent. A rumble rolled through the sky.

"Oh, Cincy, you never learned how to fight, did you?"

Cap lay down again. His chest hurt. "How'd we escape?"

"Broke a window, threw you out."

"Of the fourteenth floor?"

"Thirteenth. But don't worry, I harnessed you up. I had rappelling gear in the backpack."

"You said the windows were fake."

"Not on the top floor. Even Secret Servusmen enjoy a view."

"You've got an answer for everything."

"I've been dodging these people my entire life."

"You're doing more than dodge. You're playing Tom and Jerry."

"I have to keep ahead of them." She paused. "Why'd you let Wright bait you?"

"You said to stall him."

"That wasn't stalling."

Uneven shapes passed on the shoreline. They blurred. "Wright interrogated Mom."

"I know."

"He tortured her."

"I know. I was there."

Cap snapped around. He sat up despite the pain. "And you let me go to his office, sit and talk with him, pretend to negotiate—"

"You had to, and you'd never have been able to do it if you knew."

"You should have told me anyway."

"Rescuing Judith was more important."

"More important for who?"

"For her. For you."

"I didn't come for Judith to redeem myself for having run from Mom."

"No? Then why did you come? Wright couldn't figure it out."

"Wright couldn't figure it out because he can't fathom the value of a human life, only the value of the status they give him."

"Well, now he knows you have a hero complex. You have to save the girl. He'll use that against you next time."

"There won't be a next time. I got what I came for."

Judith lay resting but not asleep on the other side of the boat. George said, "You can take more than the girl."

"I plan to."

"Good. I already made the call. Two dozen refugees are en route to your ship."

"That's not what I meant."

"Cincy—"

"I left you behind once. Not again."

"That wasn't your fault. You ran because Mom told you to."

"I was scared."

"Yes, but she trained you. She had a plan. She always did. She told you the time would come when you would have to run to the launch site. She practiced the route with you. She ran you for miles so you had the stamina. Don't you remember?"

He didn't. But he had forgotten so much about those few days, the launch, the terror leading up to it as the U.N. approached. He said, "You didn't run."

"Mom had a different plan for me."

"I should've stayed."

George, somber. "No, you shouldn't have."

After seeing Judith's arms tonight, he understood why. "I could have helped."

"The only one who could have helped Mom was Mom, and she refused to betray Thomas Kaufman. She chose her fate."

"She'd have chosen to die an old woman."

George didn't rebut.

Cold moisture condensed on Cap's forehead and he wiped his brow. George lifted something from her lap. "Why did you take this?" Wright's flag.

"He gave it to me. As a bribe."

"Wright doesn't bribe people with souvenir flags. You asked for it. Why? What's it mean to you?"

"Nothing. He had me in a corner and I liked the colors."

A hum resonated in her pocket. She placed the flag back in her lap and a muted glow lit her face. "Bad news. Bruno Farelli's been taken from my safe house."

"Just as well. Taking him to Mars would have complicated things. And not for the better. Ambrose wants scientists so he can sell them to the highest bidder. I won't do it."

"Why not?"

"Why not—" He sat up. The pain in his ribcage almost overcame him and he clutched his chest. But he remained upright. "If I do what Ambrose wants, it won't just be Sampson Wright and the Secret Servus, it'll be my own people who call me the son of a slaver."

"No one Mom recruited for Veridrome will call you that."

"Lauren Halliday will."

"She's one person."

"She's enough. I can't operate Grand Plymouth without her."

Rigsby interrupted. "We're here." At the top of an embankment flashed the red and green running lights of the August Hawk. The boatman sidled the craft into a narrow quay, one hand working the helm while the other looped a mooring line around a post to hold them in the current. Rigsby roused Judith.

Cap scrambled onto the dock and extended a hand to pull George out. "Wait five minutes," she said.

"For what?"

"The refugees."

He turned toward the steep stairs up the embankment. The mist in the atmosphere turned into a fine rain and the dock's metal decking became slick under his feet. "I just told you. I can't take anyone."

"You can take refugees."

"And do what with them?"

"Everyone needs more manpower."

Cap refused to mention Solange's labor shortage. "More bodies means more fuel consumption. I can't pay the transportation costs."

"We'll find a way."

"Ambrose already has, and it's slavery. I won't do it."

"Why not? Because of what a few busybodies will say?"

"Because on a world where food doesn't grow on trees and somebody has to manufacture the air you breathe, what other people say about you is the difference between life and death."

"They're good men and women, Cincy. Hard-working and honest, the kind Thomas Kaufman always told Mom to find. They don't have a life here. Their I.Q.s are too low to qualify for an education, E.Q.s too low to qualify for commerce permits, P.Q.s too low for union membership. They're trapped outside the system here. But they can help on Mars. They need you, Cincy."

"I told you not to call me that."

The Hawk loomed in the pouring darkness, the scorched asphalt under her engines turning raindrops to steam with the acrid odor of hot tar. The cargo doors parted. The white light of the hold cut a rectangle on the empty lot. Cap ordered, "Prep for takeoff."

"Five minutes, Cincy. Please."

"No." He took her by the wrist and dragged her with him.

She wrenched free. The sky crackled with lightning and the rain unleashed in a torrent. George remained in the onslaught.

He reached again for her wrist. "Ice it, George, quit playing—"

"I'm not playing. Is that what you're doing? Playing the hero so long as you only have to rescue one damsel? But too many people need your help and what, they become a statistic? Is that what you've been reduced to by twenty years of hiding on Mars? Maybe I was wrong before. Maybe you should have stayed when they captured Mom. You'd have disobeyed, but you'd have seen what Mom was willing to suffer to stay and help people no one else would, that she was willing to die rather than let the likes of Sampson Wright grind them to dust beneath his boot. Maybe if you hadn't run from a squad of U.N. Peacewarriors then, you might have a little spine now."

Rain collected into rivulets in her hair and fell in huge drops onto her face. He said, pathetically, "I can't take them, George."

Her face bunched in fury, but argument had failed and she would no longer waste words on him. She hurled a shape at him. A hard triangle hit him in the sternum. "Fine, go. Don't forget your souvenir."

She dissolved, faceless, into the white rain.

Cap splashed water on his face. He stared at his warped reflection in the metal sink, and though he knew the Hawk was lifting off, he felt Plymouth sinking.

Her hull was melting the ice.

The CO₂ that sublimated around her recondensed above into dry snow that fell on her cold belly, inch by inch burying them deep in the ice cap. The Thirteen dismantled the landing struts and propped them under the ship to get the hull out of contact with the ice and give its heat room to dissipate, but it didn't help. The heat was trapped.

Some things couldn't be fixed. Not the drill, not Plymouth, not the saturated water recyclers. Mars couldn't be fixed. Civilization couldn't be fixed. But at Michael Benning's command, the Thirteen dug, scraping burrows down and praying to hit water ice.

Except thirteen didn't dig. Twelve dug. Ourson refused. He insisted on fixing the drill. In the hold he squatted over an array of parts laid out in a grid. "Sent you to fetch me, eh, Cap?"

The boy stammered for the words to correct him. "Oh, uh, it's me, Cincinnati. I can get Captain Wollam, if you want."

"I did not say 'Captain', I said 'Cap'. C.A.P. Less difficult than 'Cincinnati A. Pierce', yes?"

"I prefer Cincinnati."

Ourson twisted a nut onto a bolt, trying to straighten bent threads.

"The others are all...we're all digging."

"I have seen your digging. Scrapings, piled into sacks and warmed in the airlock. Have you gotten more than vapor yet?"

"No. But Hafidh says we can't fix the drill, and you're not a mechanic."

"Correct, on both statements." Ourson removed the nut, placed it back in the grid.

"If we don't find water soon, we'll die."

"We will die whether we find water or not."

Another correction. "If we don't find water soon, we'll die soon. Then everyone on the Boulder will die."

"That is a possibility."

"So you'll dig?"

"What will happen if I do not?"

"The others will come. They'll try to persuade you."

"They will make speeches, yes? And what will they do when their speeches fail?"

The boy didn't know.

Ourson said, "I expect we will soon find out." He gave a sad smile—

A woman's voice interrupted, "If it isn't the epitome of male privilege that I spend five days trying to get an interview with Sampson Wright and end up arrested, while the first evening you stumble into town you get wined and dined at the White House."

Cap turned from the sink. Judith stood in the hatch, leaning against its rim, eyes sightless and guessing where he was in the room. Around her arms wrapped white bandages. She tipped her head forward with an apologetic bow. "I phrased that poorly. What I should have said is, well, 'Thank you.'"

"No, you shouldn't."

"You flew millions of miles to rescue me, risked a hostage negotiation inside an enemy stronghold, and when they refused to deal you went in by force. Why shouldn't I say thank you?"

"Because I'm the one who got you arrested."

"Sounds like an interesting story."

"Not half as interesting as it would be in La Gazetina."

"Off the record, then?"

Rigsby had deduced Cap's role in the misadventure just by knowing the name Bruno Farelli, and given what Judith must have learned wandering the streets of Washington and reverse interrogating the Secret Servus, Judith could probably figure it out too. So he spared her the effort. "Scientists are disappearing on Earth. Jonathan Ambrose asked me to grab some for Mars before they were gone, but I didn't want to, so to show him the trouble it would cause, I called in a favor to a friend on Earth and had them stash away one of the names on Ambrose's list. I told her to credit the kidnapping to Martians. You were caught in the blowback. Rescuing you was..."

"The right thing to do? Don't worry, I won't tell anyone you're a sap."

"A sap?"

"I can't imagine there was any profit in rescuing me."

"Tony Zinser offered to pay." But no, Cap thought, it had been not only a debacle but an expensive one. And to more than his bank account. "How's the pain?"

"The mind can take it."

"Is your eyesight coming back?"

"Not yet."

"I supposed Wright was a sociopath to go after the kind of power he has, but I didn't realize he was an out-and-out sadist."

"He gets things done."

"Like any dictator."

She snorted and bit her tongue.

"Oh that's right. Tony Zinser said you were a statist. I hadn't really believed him."

"Take Tony with a pinch of salt."

"So you're not?"

"Not as Tony supposes, young and idealistic, all heart and no brain. I can do the math."

"And your math says Mars is squandering resources and permacrats will save us?"

"No, that's Tony's math. My math says—"

"Earth is feeding Colorado."

"So you did listen to my headlines."

"Colorado is overconsuming, Thompson Post isn't making up the difference and neither is Ceres. Investigating Ceres is how you connected with Lonson Boyle, isn't it?"

"I interviewed him, and he slipped, claimed he was testing some new seeds, but I'd already interviewed our one geneticist, Thompson Post, and he hasn't engineered any new seeds. On a hunch I told Lonson that I wanted to ride along on his next trip to Earth. He swung by a week later. Then I spent four days in his pocket jet failing to separate him from his computer long enough to answer why his hold was big enough to carry not just seeds but a whole harvest. I got the notion he had a trade deal and was keeping it secret. So I went looking for Wright."

"What's Lonson trading?"

"Martian tech, I assume."

"Wright accepted I was Martian when I showed him a comm lens."

"Circumstantial, but I can use it."

"Where's Lonson now?"

"Great question. Also, how did he find a gap in the Argrid? I doubt it was accidental. From everything I've seen of Lonson, he thinks three steps ahead. You foresaw Bennington's wall and Rimstaff's bridge would create a metal shortage, but you didn't anticipate how mining the Belt would shrink Mars's labor supply. Yeah, I've talked to Solange Babineaux, and she's right. You turned a metal crisis into a labor crisis. I gather Jonathan Ambrose anticipated it, though, asking for scientists, and soon he or somebody else will solve the labor shortage. But have you plotted what crisis comes after a labor crisis?"

"A food crisis."

"We're lucky Lonson Boyle identified that and negotiated a trade deal with Earth before Mars woke up in the middle of a famine."

"We've been through a food shortage before. We'll figure out something."

Judith squinted, a question crossing her mind, but instead of asking it she gave a wry smile. "Die on your feet, huh?"

"That's right."

"Trouble is, you can't outrun death."

Cap was still thinking of Ourson, but now where Ourson was today, laying in Bennington to receive radiation treatments. "Not outrun, but maybe force death to chase you until it can't chase anyone else."

"Even if we manage that and Lonson beats the food crisis, think about the crisis that comes after it, what happens when Martians learn they're being fed by Earth, and when people starving on Earth learn their food is going to a bunch of outlaws. When that happens, Wright will finally have what he's been after this whole time."

"What's that?"

"An excuse to turn a twenty-year-old U.N. police action into an interplanetary war."