Atlas & Ares book 1: Men of the Red Earth

The white hold of the August Hawk felt cavernous without cargo, and the Cap stood in the middle of it, aware of the tremendous opportunity cost of not flying cargo to the Belt and instead choosing to return to Earth. Hazel circled at a distance, on his lens taking missives from George. "Wright's loaded the prisoners. He's taking them from the detention center in a transport convoy, headed north. Could be misdirection. George is confirming the intel."

Cap doubted a feint. More likely Wright was moving them to a more secure black site. He knew Cap was coming.

Cap resisted the urge to pace, the instinct to create an illusion of progress through aimless movement. He planted his feet. His body squirmed. He jammed his hands in his pockets. He concentrated his mental energies, forced his thoughts to go deep rather than wide. He squeezed his eyes shut to catalogue what he knew—of Earth, of Wright, of the Secret Servus, of Lonson Boyle, of George. It didn't take long. He went over everything again, tumbled facts in his mind to consider them from different angles, to group and regroup them in hopes of uncovering insight through juxtaposition. He tortured his powers of deduction.

When he opened his eyes, Hazel stood in front of him with an aquamarine hologram projecting from the lens. "George found out where Wright is taking the prisoners. Turtle Bay."

"U.N. headquarters."

"Not anymore. When the U.N. moved overseas, the Secret Servus took over the compound."

Rigsby, leaning on the balcony rail above as he examined the hologram, said, "Doesn't look like a turtle or a bay."

Hazel continued to Cap, "George says there are only a couple dozen guards. Mostly it's staffed by paper pushers, but with the walls around the compound it'll be a lot harder to get in."

And with so many people, harder to do unnoticed. "Where's the prison?"

"The tall building."

"We'll have to clear the guards."

"A diversion?"

"One inside the wall."

Rigsby, proceeding to ride his own separate train of thought, said, "Must've once been a hill shaped like a turtle and they leveled it. Or was it a bay and they filled it in?"

Hazel, without facing him, "Ask Marcus. And make it a long conversation."

Cap referenced the hologram. "We'll have to go by in the river. What are these other buildings?"

"Storage. Why?"

"The guards won't leave the prison without an order from Wright. He'll have to think he needs them outside."

"We could plant a bomb, make them go out to defuse it."

"You know how to build a bomb?"

"No."

Cap sighed. "Neither do I."

Rigsby's head leaned out from the cockpit. "They filled in the bay. 'Turtle' didn't mean anything, just a corruption of some Dutch word."

Cap asked Hazel, "How does Udike know this stuff?"

"He keeps a commonplace book. Writes down everything he learns."

Cap had enough puzzles to consider without wondering where Udike had encountered the etymology of Turtle Bay. After a minute's scrutiny of the hologram, Hazel asked, "What are you going to do?"

Cap's mouth drew tight. "I have no rusting idea."

"Radar contact, dead ahead."

They were inside the orbit of the Moon and Cap had spent two days staring at the blue hologram of Turtle Bay while Rigsby tossed around unserious ideas to lure the Secret Servus guards out of the prison. Smoke bombs, parades with confetti, hurricane evacuation orders. Then Udike's voice crackled from the shipwide intercom. "Small cross-section, same vector we're on and decelerating. Rendezvous course."

Rigsby grinned at Cap. "Your accusations finally worked."

Cap went to the bridge. Udike asked, "Should I evade?"

"She'd catch us if we did."

Udike looked insulted. Cap said, "Cross-section that small isn't a ship. It's a missile."

"And I shouldn't evade?"

"It's on a rendezvous course, not a collision course. That missile has a pilot."

Cap left the bridge, donned his exosuit, and went to wait in the airlock, watching through the portal as the August Hawk slid up beside the sharp point of nothingness cutting into the stars, slowly widening, like the sky tearing two. Udike switched on external spotlights. The cone of the missile-ship lightened to dark charcoal. Udike said over comms, "Painted over, no visible markings, but infrared sees the shadow of a name, 'Coriolis Mining, Uninc.', same as the warning beacon that directed us to the new gap in the Argrid."

A docking hatch slid into view. The two ships ceased their relative motion. The round hatch fixed on Cap like an eye. Then a ring encircling the hatch broke loose, feelers reached toward the August Hawk and grabbed on, and a tunnel extended. Readouts in the airlock went green. Cap opened the door.

Opposite him, fifty feet away at the other end of the tunnel, stood a bare-headed, bare-armed woman, fierce and muscular. "Hello, Gidja."

She looked up and down his exosuit. "Still don't trust me, eh?"

"You said you were moving to Colorado."

"I did move to Colorado."

"Not according to Anthony Zinser."

"Not that I got any obligation to explain myself to you, but there's a difference between where I moved half a year ago and where I moved after that."

"You went to be a farmer. Why didn't you tell me it was because Grand Plymouth would create a labor shortage, followed by a food shortage?"

"'Cause I'm no prophet. It was a guess. And you didn't need any extra to feel guilty about. Why am I here?"

He noted her biceps. "You've been to Earth."

"I'm on gravity pills same reason you are: I got a fast jumper."

"That's not the only reason."

"Why else?"

"Are you stealing food from Earth?"

"Please."

"Then why is there a hole in the Argrid directly over Australia?"

"Jump to conclusions much? Doesn't make you a real detective, though, just a little ol' Sherlock Homebody. What do I need with Australia?"

"Where are you getting the food?"

"Why should I tell?"

"You're taking it from Earth while they're starving. That's grounds for war."

"They chose grounds for war twenty years ago, just couldn't execute it."

"Convince me you're not stealing their food."

"I'm not here to convince you."

Cap paused. He had assumed she'd come to tell him to stuff his blackmail about nicknames and hating dirt and her step-brother working for Earth, but if she wasn't there to convince him of anything, she wasn't in the mood to ask favors. "You're here to threaten me."

"The boy does have a backup neuron."

"I haven't put you in any danger."

"You go down there and hob-knob with the rich and powerful and you don't see the danger? We have what they want—food, technology, space travel, freedom, and power. If we won't give it to them, they'll come and take it. You might be able to hold your own against a fork-tongued bureaucrat, but try squarin' off with the combined military forces of Planet Earth. You'll lose. And us with you. Security in obscurity, mate."

"You're afraid I'll lead the feds to your doorstep."

"Can't happen, Cincinnati. What threatens me threatens Mars. Better for us all if you keep your feet dry."

"Or what?"

"Or you'll have a problem the size of a planet."

He started to ask what she meant, but even from fifty feet he saw the white of her brown lips pressed together. She was done talking.

He inhaled slowly, accepting it. Accepting the threat, accepting the risk. But he offered a gesture. He raised his arms and twisted off his helmet, baring his head. It wasn't much trust, but it was some.

"Goodbye, Gidja. See you at the food crisis."

The towers of New York burned on the horizon, their ancient glass and steel blazing orange in the setting sun, even through the gray smoke that clung to the city from a million stove and barrel fires. At the distant airfield, Cap waited under the stern of the August Hawk, eyes lost in the faraway canyons of the city. A clatter roused him. He turned—and bumped noses with a long, alien face, brown and splashed with a white star on its forehead. He tripped on his heels. "What the iron—?"

"It's a horse, Cincy. Get on. No time to argue."

"I don't know how ride—"

George reached down from her saddle, grabbed Cap by the collar, and with ferocious strength hauled him into a saddle. Rigsby, who had been distancing himself from a third horse, changed tactics and scrambled onto it before she performed any such indignity on him. Cap said, "Neither of us knows how—"

"It's easy: don't fall off. Now let's go!" She snapped her reins and the three mounts shot forward.

Cap started a backward somersault, grabbed the saddle horn, and lay flat trying to both hold on and reach the reins. By the time he got them, they were headed for a fence. Cap wiggled the reins in the air. The horse persisted its chosen direction. Cap dropped the reins, lay flat, and clutched the animal's flanks with arms and legs as the beast slipped through a hole in the chainlink.

^started

George's horse ran up a grassy berm and raced down onto a highway swarmed with pedestrians. Cap's followed. Pedestrians threw themselves out of the way. George hauled on the reins to veer toward the city. Cap mimicked her motions, but the horse knew better than he did how to sidestep the carts, wagons, rickshaws, children, livestock. It dodged so quickly Cap marveled it didn't break an ankle.

After a mile or two Cap found himself anticipating the creature's movements and could stop holding on so tight. As the sun set, the masses flowing from the city thinned, and Cap navigated up nearer to George. She drove her mount forward with an unfamiliar intensity, not the casual, competent demeanor Cap had seen in Washington, but nervous anxiety. He pulled up next to her. "I'm sorry," he shouted over the clamor of hooves. "I'm sorry for leaving like I did—leaving you, there in the rain—"

"Apologize later," she yelled back, and jerked into a new opening in the floe.

Cap's horse swerved around a man rolling a barrel.

George rounded a wide bend, the onrush of foot traffic died, and daylight disappeared as they were swallowed in the thick, stifling darkness of a tunnel. A line of yellow torches perforated the heavy smoke. Cap's eyes smarted.

Again he trotted up next to George. Both animals had slowed, sweaty and breathing hard. Cap said, "What's the rush?"

"You landed in daylight. They'll know you're coming."

"I don't know how to get inside."

"Clear the guards out of the prison."

"I know, but we need a diversion. We aren't ready."

"Wright will have to order the guards out. They won't evacuate without his say-so."

"But how?"

"Take them by surprise."

"We can't. You just said they know we're coming. What's going on with you? Why are you in such a hurry?"

She urged her mount forward.

"Why did Wright send the prisoners to New York? Is he...planning to execute them?"

"What? No. He did it to send a message. Wright has the Beltway under control, but New York is its own little empire, more city-state than city and state. Wright wants to show the Wall Street and Broadway oligarchs that he's in charge. Sending prisoners to the old U.N. complex is symbolic. He's putting New York on a short leash."

"A short lease?"

"Leash. Like a tether, for a dog, to reel it in. You Martians need pets."

"We can survive the paucity of metaphor."

Cap glanced behind at Rigsby, keeping a respectful distance from the conversation, and, Cap hoped, thinking of a plan.

George shot upright in her saddle. The ears of her horse had swiveled forward. George strained to hear what they had. "Something's wrong." The horses pulled up.

In the black cloud a figure moved. A bank of lights came on and silhouetted a small, gray Oxford suit. "What's wrong to you, miss, is to the rest of this planet, quite right."

A grin came out of the darkness. Sampson Wright. Behind him a phalanx of Secret Servusmen and an armored truck. Wright said, "It's such a pleasure to see you here, where angels fear to tread. I had nearly concluded you wouldn't fall for my trap. So nice of you to bring your compatriots." Wright waved to the men behind him. "Take their animals and everything in their pockets."

Suits materialized out of the smoke and pulled them out of their saddles. Hands went through his pockets. The horses were led away, into the gloom. Wright advanced. "You should have known, Mr. Pierce, that I'm an eminently reasonable man. I do only what reason dictates. I offered you a fair trade, but you rejected it, too caught up in the petty squabbles of the past to recognize that I'm working for the best possible future for both our worlds." He returned to his phalanx. "It's a shame, really. As a man who lives by his wits, I genuinely hate to take what I want by force."

Vac! Cap whirled the direction he supposed the airfield to be. He reached for his lens—

It was gone.

Wright stood on the running board of the armored truck and spoke to his guards. "Let them go. They're under as much arrest as I need."

He didn't need them if had the August Hawk.

The truck's tires crunched on the gravel, and Wright called to Cap over his shoulder. "Oh, and I found your little rat hole over Australia. I've taken the liberty of having it plugged. No is coming to your rescue."

Then the truck and its phalanx dissolved into the smoke.