"What are you going to do?" his father asked, looking up from his breakfast of synth-eggs and synth-bacon.
"I don't know."
"What do you think you should do?"
"I know what I should do," Sanji said, staring out at the red sand. "I just don't know if I can."
"Why?"
"It would take too long to explain."
"Try me," his dad said with a smile.
"Dad, trust me, I'll do the right thing, even if it kills me." As soon as he said it, he regretted it. He suddenly thought of Jarvin, Rog, and Bienna. He could see their faces as clear as if they were standing in front of him. They'd all gone to Tharsis and died. Now it was his turn.
Rebellions had been popping up all over Mars for the last eighteen Martian years. The one at Tharsis had been the first. Government troops were yet to quash it. The guerilla tactics of the rebels made fighting them difficult. They hid in pressurized tunnels the government didn't know about, only emerging to make political statements-breaking habitat seals, destroying archaeological sites, and attacking troops on the surface.
Sanji looked at his father who was still staring intently at him. "How did this all start?"
His dad shrugged. "People are never happy with the government they have."
Sanji shook his head. "There's got to be more to it."
"Probably," his dad said. "But I barely remember. I guess it had something to do with the trade agreement with Earth back in 48."
"The one that screwed us over?"
His dad laughed. "You sound like one of the rebels. But yeah, it was the one that screwed us over."
The trade agreement with Earth of 48 had basically sold all of Mars' resources to Earth in exchange for the delivery of parts to keep Mars operating. The planet was still more than fifty years away from autonomy, at least that's what the politicians told people. Of course, the politicians were all Earthlings.
"I ship out in three days," Sanji said, although he said it so quietly, he wasn't sure his father heard him. "I guess I better start getting things in order."
Basic training wasn't as bad as Sanji had expected. The physical aspects were easy. He's tried to keep himself in shape and it showed. The mental stress was a bit harder to deal with, but Sanji got along fine until the final week of training.
"Recruits," a captain said from the front of the lecture hall. "You graduate in one week. After that, you will be helping us to retake Tharsis, as well as defend the rest of Mars if the need arises."
Sanji admired the man. He was a tall and tanned white man. Tans were rare on Mars, or any other place where people were domed in. He was also very muscular, which immediately told Sanji he wasn't a native. He kept his head bald, and his skull seemed designed to be in that state. He had perfect bone structure.
"We want to show you some vid shot three days ago," the captain said. "I have to warn you that this is gruesome. I've been in the military for a long time, and I've never seen anything like this before, and I wish I'd never seen it this time."
The lights dimmed and the wall-length computer screen behind the captain came to life. "The rebels have a new weapon," he said. "What you're looking at is a group of our soldiers on the lower reaches of Ascraeus Mons." The video showed half a dozen people searching through holes in the Martian surface. Most would be natural; a few would lead to airlocks that dropped into the rebel strongholds.
"We thought we'd finally found a way to get into their warrens and eradicate them until this happened." What Sanji saw was a small hole open where before there had only been rocks and red sand. There was rapid weapons fire as a man, obviously a rebel, in a red surface suit threw several objects onto the sand. They looked like grenades. The troops seemed to agree and took what cover they could.
The grenades didn't explode, however. More than a minute passed as Sanji watched, holding his breath. Finally, the troops cautiously began to advance on the grenades. One of them bent down and activated his suit's camera. The new image showed a grenade lying on the red sand. There was a sudden babble of voices, most expressing relief that the objects hadn't exploded. Without a sound, the grenade the soldier was looking at popped open. The camera jerked back, but nothing happened.
Within seconds, there was nothing but screaming as the man flailed around on the ground. His com picked up the screams of the other troops. "Nanoprobes," the captain said. "The rebels used nanoprobes to break through the soldiers' suits. Unfortunately, this wasn't what killed them. Once the probes passed through the skin of the suits, the suits sealed themselves, as they're designed to do with small punctures. Once inside the suits, the probes invaded the soldiers' bodies. Once there, they broke the soldiers' cellular structure down. All we recovered were small pools of flesh, blood, and a little bone.like this."
An image of a dark red liquid with white streaks running through it appeared on the computer screen. "The rebels have taken this battle to a new level. The use of nanotechnology in this fashion is outlawed by every governmental organization in the solar system. We've tried to be gentle with the rebels, but no longer. Your missions will be to seek out and capture every rebel on Tharsis. This is the mission of our entire military from now on. Any rebel that will not cooperate is to be killed."
Sanji took all of this in even though his head was spinning and his vision going blurry. Looking at the other recruits, he knew they were feeling the same way. Nanoprobes. Sanji felt his body quiver. The idea of being destroyed from the interior of the cells out was horrifying, and in one week, he'd be out in the field fighting against these rebels without conscience, and it still didn't feel right.
The red of the Martian sand at the base of Arsia Mons seemed darker to Sanji than the sand in Hellas Planitia. Sanji wasn't sure if this was true or if his mind was playing tricks on him. Perhaps he was still seeing the blood of those soldiers. Sanji hadn't been able to get that image out of his mind, and now here he was on the surface, getting ready to fight against rebels who used guerilla tactics better than anyone ever had on Earth, and he'd barely slept in the last week.
"Look alive," the commander was shouting. Stay alive, was the silent response from Sanji's mind. "We've scoured this area pretty well in the past, but there's no telling where the rebels might dig next."
Sanji nodded his understanding. Of course, the commander wasn't going to be able to see his response; he was several feet in front of the troops. Sanji noticed that the other troopers were silently nodding their understanding. Sanji's external pick-ups registered the sound of distant ice cracking. One of the small rivers that had formed since the terraforming began was thawing under the mid-day sun and the slightly above freezing temperatures. Sanji's faceplate told him it was 3 degrees Celsius out. Balmy.
"Green Group, head west half a click and then meet us three clicks up the mountain."
"Yes, sir," Sgt. Rodrcik Kincaid responded. Kincaid was Sanji's unit leader, and Green Group was Sanji's unit. He looked at the rugged terrain to the west. Boulders the size of ancient landing crafts loomed everywhere. Rebel troops would have any number of hiding spots. He suppressed a sigh. He had no choice.
The path turned out to be more difficult than Sanji had expected. Sgt. Kincaid was Earth trained, and thus was much stronger than the grunts under his command. The path was treacherous, shifting sand and rocks that crumbled under his boots. To Sanji, it felt like walking in very old snow, crunching and giving way only reluctantly. There was even a little bit of ice on the rocks causing him to slip several times, and making him happy to have the self-sealing suits, especially when he poked a small hole in his suit leg when he fell near the rendezvous point.
"Never learned to walk?" a feminine voice asked. There was a hand being held down to him. One of his fellow grunts had stopped to help him. A noble gesture.
"Guess not," Sanji said, taking the hand and pulling himself up. He smiled at the young woman, Illiev was her last name, at least that's what he thought. He was about to make sure when an object rolling past his feet suddenly diverted his attention. He looked down and saw it was the helmet of one of his companions, head still inside.
He spun around and saw the rebels emerging from their burrows. He yelled. He had no idea why he yelled. He just yelled. There was rapid weapons fire and Sanji felt an object tear through the skin of his suit and then his side. He collapsed to the ground, feeling blood flowing into his suit, and hearing the hissing sound of air escaping into the thin Martian atmosphere. He reached into a pocket of his suit, fumbling with fingers that seemed to be getting colder, fumbling for a suit patch. There were only a few seconds before he'd black out.
He pulled a patch from his pocket and slapped it onto his suit, hoping he'd covered the hole. Then there was only blackness.
Sanji awoke with a heavy weight on his chest. It felt like he'd suddenly been thrown into Earth gravity and somebody had dropped a hundred pounds on him. "You can't move," a voice said.
Sanji opened his eyes at the absurd statement. Just at the edge of his vision, he could see the Martian stone above him. He was obviously underground. "Where am I?"
A face suddenly came into view. It was an older man, at least forty Martian years. He had the smooth features of someone who'd lived domed most of his life, and he had grey eyes that seemed locked in a perpetual look of sadness. "You, my friend, are a prisoner of war."
"I guessed that much," Sanji said in a much more bitter tone than he'd intended. "Where am I?"
"Don't be any trouble, warrior boy. You should be glad you haven't been sent to the research scientists. They'd love to get their hands on another lab rat to test their latest nanoprobes on."
Sanji felt his face grow pale, as the sweat began to ooze from all of his pores. He didn't want to think about nanoprobes. "If you're not going to experiment on me, what are you going to do with me?" Sanji was surprised by how calm his voice sounded. It didn't quiver at all, even though Sanji felt every muscle in his body quivering beneath the oppressive containment field.
There was a short laugh. "You're trying to be so brave, aren't you? But inside, you're trembling." There was a pause. Sanji wasn't sure if he was supposed to say something. He decided not to. The man didn't seem to care. "You're going to tell me everything we want to know."
Sanji laughed. He couldn't help himself. "I think you've got the wrong person. I'm on my first mission. This is my first day on assignment out of basic training."
There was a pause. After a moment, the silence was interrupted by a grunt. This was quickly followed by a door closing. Sanji didn't care. He just wanted to know where the bathroom was.
The light in his room, or cell as he thought of it, was left on all the time. His worries about the bathroom had been relieved by a catheter, but Sanji's relief was short-lived as he learned how his captors could use that for torture. For the most part, they left him alone, only coming occasionally to ask questions, and only torturing him when he was being stubborn, which he was learning to do less often. Sanji's perception of time had disappeared hours, maybe days ago. He had no idea how long he'd been in the cell and no idea what time it was when his captors came to see him. It seemed like they came in at all hours, but he wasn't sure. Shortly after the catheter had been inserted, his captors stuck an IV into his arm. "Have to keep you healthy," a voice had said. Sanji hadn't answered.
After what he imagined was a week, he heard the door open with the removal of the exterior bar that Sanji knew had to be holding him in, as if the restraining field hadn't been sufficient.
"Good morning, Sanji," a voice said. He recognized it as the old man who had spoken to him the first day. He didn't answer.
"You have a visitor today." Sanji felt the field collapse around him. He readied to spring from the table, taking on all of the rebels if he had to. His body refused to cooperate. Instead, his urgent calls to his neurons were answered only by a trembling of his extremities. "You won't regain complete control of your body for a few hours, so you might as well lie still."
Sanji sighed and relaxed. His body slowly stopped twitching. With an effort, Sanji turned his head to face his captor. Standing beside the old man was Bienna, tall and beautiful like she'd been the day she was drafted; only now she was wearing a rebel uniform. "I thought you were dead," he said, feeling a wave of conflicting emotions.
She shook her head. "I joined up with the rebels. The military doesn't like it when their troops leave, so they report them as dead. They couldn't have anyone thinking there might be a better way of living."
"What about Rog and Jarvin?" Sanji asked. He'd always associated the three together, so he asked the dumb question. He already knew what had happened to Jarvin.
"Jarvin's dead. I heard it was horrible, and I've heard Rog's dead too, but his body was never found. It's possible he joined up with a rebel cell I haven't met, or he might be dead. Who knows? Maybe the nanoprobes got him."
Sanji felt his body grow cold again. "You make it sound like a lot of people join the rebellion."
There was a quick laugh. It was the same laugh he remembered from school, the carefree laugh that now wore a rebel uniform. "About a quarter of the casualties the government reports are actually desertions."
Sanji laughed. There was no way that many people could be joining up with the rebellion. At that rate, the rebels... "The rebels will soon have more troops than the government," Bienna said as if reading his thoughts. "I can see the wheels turning in your head, Sanji, and you know what? You're right. We've almost drawn even with them." She walked over and put her hand on his, it felt like a massive static charge. It made him think about that one night. "It's okay to think about that night, Sanji, but we both know it was a mistake and it'll never happen again."
Sanji was becoming annoyed with her ability to read him so well. He had no idea what she was thinking. Hell, he was still having trouble believing she was alive.
"They wanted me to try to seduce you to our side, but I won't do that, Sanji. You're my friend. I want you to look at what we've got here, and I want you to do it without me lying to you."
Sanji nodded. He had no idea why. He just did.
"You see, we don't live like barbarians, no matter what the government might say," Bienna was saying. Sanji was too busy looking at his surroundings to respond. She was right, of course, as much as he hated to admit it. The rebels were well fed, and lived comfortably, more comfortably than the miners around Hesperia Planum, or the recent arrivals at Argyre Planitia. The rebels seemed to have everything they could possibly want, but it was all stolen.
"How can you people live like this?"
"Like what?" Bienna said with genuine surprise. "No one goes hungry. There's no accumulation of wealth. Everyone lives in a community. What could be wrong with it?"
"But you haven't earned any of it?"
"Our lives aren't worth anything? What about the fact that we can't even walk on the surface without risking being arrested or killed?"
"That's your own fault," he muttered, staring at a young couple working a small plot of land. The rebels must be using some type of light that aids in photosynthesis, he thought.
She laughed. "Oh, Sanji, you can be so blind. Don't you want Mars to be run by Martians?"
"It is."
She put her hand on his shoulder and shook her head, obviously holding back another laugh. "The people at the top of the government are Martians, but they're puppets run from Earth."
Sanji tried to argue, but he couldn't think of anything to say, instead he watched the people filing by, laughing like they didn't have any cares. Didn't they realize they were at war? Sanji shook his head. He had to admit, these people were happier than most of the people he saw every day on the surface.
"You see, even you agree, you just don't know it." She waited for him to say something. When he didn't, she shook her head again. "Sanji, we want to put a real Martian government in power. We want to govern ourselves."
"What about Earth?"
"If you're asking whether or not we want them involved in our government, the answer's no, but if you're asking whether or not we want them involved in our lives, the answer's yes."
"What's the difference?"
"Mars can't survive without Earth, but that doesn't mean we have to have them lording that fact over our heads."
Sanji nodded his understanding, even though he was uncomfortable with her tone. She sounded like she was reading propaganda pamphlets. She certainly didn't sound like the free- living woman he remembered.
"It's getting late. Maybe we should get you back to your room." Sanji couldn't help but notice that she paused just before she said room.
"Did you enjoy your day among us, Sanji?" the older man asked. Sanji was yet to learn the man's name, and he was surprised that he wasn't restrained as he talked to the man.
"It was enlightening," Sanji said.
The man laughed at the obvious sarcasm. "You don't agree with us?"
"I didn't say that," Sanji was surprised to hear himself say. "I agree with what you want. I just don't agree with your methods."
"Can you think of a better method we might try?"
Sanji was silent for several minutes. Finally, he shook his head. "I can think of things you might try, but I know with the government the way it is, you'd fail."
"So you see our dilemma. We could wait. I'm certain that sometime in the next thirty or forty years we'll begin to govern ourselves, but that doesn't leave much for us today."
Sanji nodded in agreement before he frowned. "You're killing people with nanoprobes. You can't tell me that's right."
The old man shook his head, his eyes looked even more sad than normal. "No, I didn't agree, but I was outvoted. You have to understand, we're only using them as a way to scare people."
Sanji shook his head and stared at the dark red walls. The old man looked at him as if he knew what Sanji was going to say next. "How many people have to die? Don't you think that the more of them you kill, the less sympathetic they're going to be?"
The old man nodded. "You're right, but for now, it's what our government wants to do. You don't understand.our ways of living can work. The idea of communal property and communal living, communal government."
Sanji laughed. "It's been tried many times, and it's never worked."
"It's working here."
"You're a people in exile. You don't have a choice. Once you're back on the surface, these people around you will begin to act like the people up there, and everything you've worked for will be gone."
The old man shook his head again and began to smile. His sad grey eyes brightening in a way that made Sanji very uncomfortable. "Not if we have people on the surface helping to pave the way."
"Who would do that?"
The old man was still smiling. "We already have people working on the surface, and we'd like for you to help us."
Sanji laughed. "You're joking. I'm a military man."
The old man shook his head. "You're a conscript. Besides, you agree with us."
"I'm a loyal citizen of the Martian government.the lawful Martian government."
"There's the door," the old man said. "I know you'll do the right thing, just like Jarvin."
Sanji's eyes widened. "Jarvin?"
"He's working near the northern polar drilling outposts."
"He's dead."
The old man shook his head. "No, Sanji. We sent another corpse back home. We do that occasionally. We are fortunate to have the power to manipulate people when we need to."
Sanji shook his head angrily. "No. I saw him. He's dead."
"That corpse was so badly burned, no one would be able to tell."
"What about the DNA test? They must have done them."
The man paused for a second and smiled. "Easy to fake. We have people in the military."
Sanji nodded. As organized as the rebels were, it wouldn't surprise him if they did have people in the military, and in the government. "Bienna thinks he's dead."
"Not everyone can know everything that goes on. It wouldn't be safe, for any of us."
"So, only the privileged few know everything?"
"It's an unfortunate necessity."
"I guess it would be."
The man shook his head, his eyes pointing towards the door. "You can help us, Sanji, and we can help you. Think about the possibility of a Mars governed by Mars for Mars!" Sanji nodded and smiled. The idea was intriguing. With a quick nod to the old man, he prepared to leave.
It was almost two days before Sanji found a passing rover on the surface. In that time, he'd fallen more times than he could count, almost run out of oxygen, and his heating system had been acting up, threatening to shut down and freeze him to death. Once safely back at Tharsis Central Command, the debriefing began. It lasted for two hours. Sanji did his best to answer questions without really answering them. The rebels might be on to something, he kept telling himself. Finally, the question came he'd been waiting for.
"Do you know where the rebels' warren is?"
Sanji stared at the colonel for a long time, really noticing the man for the first time. He had deep lined features, and a number of scars. The most striking features, however, were the man's sad grey eyes, and well-structured Roman nose. It was then that Sanji remembered the day Jarvin's body had been brought home. He'd stared at it for several minutes. Badly burned, and exposed to the Martian atmosphere, it was difficult to tell if it really was Jarvin or not, but Sanji recognized the nose of the corpse. It was one of the few features spared from the fire. Sanji knew it was Jarvin's nose, could only be Jarvin's nose.
He took a deep breath and pointed to the map behind the colonel. He then gave him every piece of information he could think of. There was another man with sad grey eyes, a man who had lied to him.
Maybe the rebels had already moved on. Maybe not. Sanji really wasn't sure which he was hoping for. He just wanted to see the man who had tried to seem so sincere suffer. Nothing else mattered.
Bio:J Alan Erwine is the author of Union In Death (September 2000) and Opium of the People (July 2000).
E-mail: jerwine@worldnet.att.net
URL: http://www.geocities.com/j_erwine
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