The Mars Shock by Felix R. Savage Page B

figure?”
    “They’re targeting the warblers.”
    “Oh my God …” She thought back over past KKV strikes. In every case, there’d either been warblers there, or there could’ve been, and Star Force had never found them because they had been flattened. “But wait a minute, Sophs. What if the warbling is a signal to the PLAN? ‘Hey, we found something!’ It could be both things: the warblers are the spotters, and they’re being targeted, because the PLAN doesn’t care enough to give them time to get out of the way.”
    “You really do have a twisted mind,” Gilchrist said. “I guess it could be that, but I think the warblers are the targets. Geoff said they were hiding in there. They’d barricaded themselves into the farm with air and food.”
    Colden swallowed. It was awful to contemplate the idea that the warblers might be rebelling against the PLAN. It would make them victims. It would make her … a murderer. “Well, pass that hypothesis on to Sector Command.” Her lips felt numb with horror. “There’s always a chance they haven’t thought of it on their own.”
    “You do it. I’m busy.”
    “Doing what? There’s no one left to rescue in there.”
    “Geoff is alive. I’m going in to get him.”
    “Oh, Sophs. It’s not possible.”
    “I’m on the radio with him right now. If you want to be helpful, grab one of our buggies and bring it to my location.”
     

iv.
     
    The landing shuttle skidded down into Mars’s gravity well and performed two passes around the planet, circularizing its orbit. Kristiansen rested his chin on his fist and watched the optical feed projected on his retinal implants. All it showed was clouds.
    For a couple of hours nothing changed. They crossed the terminator again and again. On the shuttle’s third aeropass, the clouds rose up and seemed to engulf the little spaceship in fire, as its thrusters sparked the dust in its path into incandescent plasma.
    “Aerobraking is fun,” yelled K’vin Murray, the ISA agent who had invited himself along with Kristiansen. The two men were strapped to the walls of the cabin, sandwiched between shrinkfoam-wrapped bales of cargo. This shuttle was actually a private spaceplane purchased from some rich owner on Earth. It might’ve been quite luxurious before the seats and furnishings were ripped out. “Pretty, pretty,” Murray crooned. “The dust won’t even begin to settle for another couple of years.”
    The shuttle bucked and seemed to nosedive.
    “Is this safe?” Kristiansen yelled.
    “Sure! The impacts fucked up the weather. But landing on Mars is really easy, as long as no one’s shooting at you.”
    The shuttle made what felt like a white-knuckle emergency landing. The thump jarred Kristiansen’s teeth in his skull, and flooded him with gratitude for their improbable survival. The optical feed showed a group of highrise buildings with dun-colored clouds whipping around their tops. In fact, the shuttle had landed with pinpoint accuracy on the 100-meter launch pad trailing behind Theta Base.
    They waited for a while.
    Murray got antsy. “C’mon, let us out. They should be unloading the cargo. What’s taking so long?”
    He pinged the pilot, who said he’d been told to remain where he was.
    “I don’t like the sound of that.” Murray unbuckled his harness. Kristiansen did the same. They were the only two passengers on board. Dr. Peguero was supposed to be coming on the next shuttle. They clambered over the cargo, squeezing through gaps. Kristiansen pinged the status monitors on each bundle he crawled over. They were his medibots, plus peripherals and spare parts. To his relief, all of them seemed to have survived the trip in good condition.
    Murray threaded his arm down past a Medimaster 5500 and pressed the action plate of the cabin airlock. Both ends of the chamber opened at once, since the cabin was unpressurized. Dull, hazy light flooded in.
    It was like the light in northern Europe before a winter storm,