Blood of the Scarecrow: Book 3: Solstice 31 Saga Read online

  “If they don't like the looks of us, they just never open the blast doors,” Rand added. “I think we should make the Warmarks less professional.”

  “How?” Worthington asked.

  “Do we still have that paint?” Rand smiled.

  ***

  Worthington decided that they would take Stu, only four people, and four Warmarks. The team included Worthington, Rand, Hume, and Hagan, since Barcus declined to go. There was nothing worse than puking in a suit. They all knew it.

  By the time Hagan had the Javelin missile disassembled and the warhead ready to go, they had already painted fierce-looking faces on the fronts of the Warmarks.

  One was a skull in white with no lower jaw and elongated teeth. Rand said it was from a classic graphic novel that she could not remember the title of. Hume did hers in bright red. It was just small squinting eyes and a screaming, toothy mouth. The red paint ran like blood from the lower teeth. Worthington painted a single blue eye. It was rather disturbing to look upon.

  Hagan arrived with the warhead. It took Muir, Cook, and Kuss to help him carry it. It was heavier than it looked. Safely loading it, and securing it onto the STU, took a few minutes. Hagan then took a can of yellow paint and made a simple smiley face. Everyone sobered at the memory of Peace and Olias.

  “That makes it easy,” Worthington said, as he pointed to the drop suits. “Your designated call signs are White, Red, Gold and Blue.” Jimbo pointed at each of their suits and then at each of them. He included himself by pointing, with his thumb, to his own chest. “No real names or HUD idents.”

  “Let's do this thing, before I chicken out,” Hagan said, as he went up the ladder to the bridge.

  To Cook, he said, “Radio silence. We will take the long way round. It will take at least a whole day to get there, Stu says. If the shit hits the fan, we will send a tight beam burst transmission.”

  “In and out,” Rand said.

  “Lock in,” Hume said, and all the drop suits in the bay deployed claws from their feet to secure them.

  The four moved up the ramp, casually waving as they went.

  ***

  Po settled on the sofa next to Barcus, where he sat with his eyes closed, and asked, “Why didn't you go with them?” She laid her head on his chest and probed his wounds. She didn't bother being subtle about it anymore. It didn't hurt him.

  “They don't need me. They need to know they don't need me,” Barcus replied, opening his eyes when she lifted his T-shirt to look at his abdomen. He knew she would leave it there.

  “The skin is almost normal. The color is good, but it still feels like rocks underneath.” Her hand slipped around his side to feel the back. He shifted a bit to allow her greater access. “You don't feel so feverish, either. Have you thrown up again?”

  “No. No more throwing up. I'm done with that,” he answered, as he watched the STU depart in a direction away from Mars and into the asteroid belt.

  “You are up to something.” She smiled when he looked at her. “I can tell you are.”

  “More than you can know, my love.” He smiled back, but Po saw a bit of sadness in his eyes.

  “Can you tell me anything?” she asked, plainly.

  “There will come a time when you will have to do as I say, without question. You won't like it.” He closed his eyes again and followed the STU.

  All the while, AI~Iosin listened. She so enjoyed a good lie.

  ***

  “Here is the track we will be taking for our approach to Mars.” AI~Stu detailed it on the bridge dome.

  “This will cover our entry vector as we approach, so we will not give away the location of the Iosin.”

  “We have twenty-six hours before we arrive,” Worthington stated. “Make sure you eat enough, hydrate, and read the damn operation manuals for the Warmarks. Even you, Rand and Hume. Those things are so far out of spec, I can't believe it. Weapons I have never seen before.”

  They studied the specs together for a few hours. They reviewed options, in case it all went sideways. They agreed on an evacuation plan that included a standard, two–by–two retreat. All they had to do was get outside, and they could use the suit's grav-plates to do a “cluster assent.”

  Each suit had two handles on the back, one on each side of its grav-plate. They grab each other’s handles with their left hand and fall straight up and even out of orbit. Stu can then pull a Jonah and eat them right out of the sky.

  The time went faster than they thought it would. The End Depot was how it was labeled on the maps of Mars. Plastered with a dozen warnings about various types of contamination, it was over a thousand kilometers from the nearest habitation. It was carved directly into a cliff wall. There was a huge landing apron there. Hume pointed as she spoke, “What the hell is that?”

  AI~Stu replied, conversationally, “There are a dozen crashed ships that have just been pushed off the tarmac. Most have radiation spills. It makes the whole area hot. No need to worry, the suits will protect you.”

  “OK, people. We are being scanned,” Rand said.

  “Remember, no hail. No comms at all. Just land facing the small airlock,” Worthington said, as they began to slow and descend. “Let's suit up.”

  Jimbo made sure they were all secure in their suits before he climbed into his own. As the suit closed around him, he looked at the painted faces of the other Warmarks. The skull and screaming monster were bad enough, but the smiley face was somehow worse. Both eyes looked like tears were just beginning to fall.

  Weapon systems flexed and stowed on the suits as they tested controls. It looked like beasts stretching before a fight.

  They felt the STU touch down, silently. The ramp opened slowly. No one moved until it was all the way down.

  Worthington was the first one down the ramp, and three paces behind him were Rand and Hume. Hagan brought up the rear, holding the Javelin warhead in one hand, easily, as if it was an empty lunch pail.

  They stopped, in a diamond formation, thirty meters from the smallest airlock.

  They waited.

  Jimbo said nothing, but craned his neck around inside the suit, looking in every direction.

  The wreckage had been simply pushed aside. Damage from the dozers that did the job was evident. Passive scans showed there were reactor cores in the mountains of derelicts, leaking.

  Then, he saw the bodies.

  Some were in the debris in just pressure suits. Suits unable to protect them from that level of radiation. They were not the only bodies.

  One of the ships was torn open, revealing the four people in the command crew. Their corpses were desiccated to the point that he could not tell their sexes. Worthington counted eleven more, except these were different. They were naked and in various states of decomposition.

  They looked like they were just thrown on the heap.

  Five minutes past, then ten, then fifteen.

  Without a word, Hagan moved forward and set the warhead on the pad halfway to the door and returned to his place.

  They stood there, like statues, for another five minutes.

  The airlock door slid open with the puff of atmosphere that Worthington had always related to someone in a rush to open.

  A man came through the airlock, wearing the lightest pressure suit he had ever seen. It looked like gray coveralls and a helmet with a mirrored visor. He had tools in each hand. After nodding to them, he approached the warhead. In moments, he had a panel open and some kind of test meter attached. After a few minutes, he closed it up, nodded, and returned to the door. It slid closed.

  The terraformed Mars had better pressure in the atmosphere and the temps were warmer. But man still could not live without life support here. The air was thin here. Five hundred years of man had created areas with open water, clouds, and even rain. But not here. It was desolate and made up of rocks, sand, and dust. Much like old Mars.

  They didn't have to wait long.

  The smallest hangar bay door slid open. It was too small for the
STU to enter but they walked in, maintaining formation. Hagan picked up the warhead as he walked by it. The airlock door closed behind them, and passive scans showed Jimbo that the hangar was pressurizing to Earth standard. It also showed that all connection to the STU was cut off behind them.

  The hangar was more the size of a working garage, ten meters by fifteen. Large doors were closed that could access the larger hangar next door.

  The pressurization stopped, and the man walked out a small door on the left, reached up, and took off his helmet. He was clean-shaven and had long hair, pulled back into a ponytail that went down into his suit.

  He lifted a device to his mouth and spoke, “The garage is heavily shielded and has normal rad levels and clean air, free of toxins. It would make things go quicker, if the one in charge comes out and talks.”

  Worthington’s suit began to open slowly, and at the same time, weapons deployed on the other Warmarks. He stepped out and lowered himself to the floor. The room had a sweet, acrid smell, like long ago death.

  He stepped out and stood there as the weapons on the other three Warmarks activated.

  The man remained calm.

  A bit too calm, Worthington thought.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX: Mars

  “Worthington always was a Boy Scout. He knew that Mars was full of corrupt, powerful people that would take advantage of any weakness. I had no idea that the Boy Scout had another side.”

  --Solstice 31 Incident Investigation Testimony Transcript: Chief Engineer Wes Hagan, senior surviving engineer of the Ventura's.

  <<<>>>

  “How may I help you, good sir?” the man said, approaching slowly, keeping his hands visible. “Trust me, I will keep things polite. I know that the warhead already has a remote. Plus, I cannot argue with a single Warmark, much less four of them.”

  “I am here to trade,” Worthington said, as Hagan moved forward and set the Javelin down. “Interested?”

  “Weapons trade in the Sol systems is completely forbidden,” he said.

  “Yes, and so is selling ship ident chips,” Worthington said. He sounded angry. “I need three of them. A pinnace seven class, a private Renalo yacht, and a Shuttle Transport Unit. Today.”

  “This is all you want?”

  “And a guarantee that this warhead is not sold for use in the Sol system,” he growled.

  “You must know that our policy is to only sell out of system.”

  He looked up at the Warmarks again.

  “Perhaps we could trade for one of your Warmarks. I've never seen one of these out of the hands of the Black Badgers.”

  “No.”

  “Don't be too hasty. You have not seen what I have to offer,” he said.

  The door to the hangar bay next door slid open, revealing toxic waste drums piled all the way to the ceiling.

  “Don't worry, they are not real.”

  They walked around them to reveal a ship. It was a Titus cruiser, in excellent condition. Not many of these survived the war.

  “The grav-drive is garaged at 95%; all three reactors can be fueled within the hour. Your STU will fit neatly in its cargo bay; plus, it has an exterior top-dock for that very model.”

  Worthington considered it.

  “It already has clean ident codes. It even has a clear provenance, if someone looks really close,” the man said. Deadpan.

  “Sir, the STU is gone,” Rand reported.

  ***

  The elevator opened on the bridge of the Sedna to a heated debate. Elkin and Muir were on their backs, on the floor, below both engineer’s consoles. All the panels were off; the optical fiber shields had all been removed. Cook stood over the scene with his arms crossed over his chest, looking displeased. Kuss was trying to see into the console.

  “No, dumb-ass. The strand will be dark. No matter hundreds in bundle. Just dark one.”

  “Since the spiders were in here, there are no dark strands,” Elkin said, annoyed. “Before, there were too many dark in this bundle; now, there aren’t any, and the fucking status panel still doesn't work right, even though it reports itself, green.”

  Barcus just looked at Cook and shook his head.

  “OK, people. We have fucked with this enough,” Cook said, in a louder voice than he intended. “We need to be ready when they get back. We have the secondary monitor.”

  “But no automated notifications.”

  Elkin sat up and got out of Muir's way, as he started—carefully—putting it all back together.

  “How about this,” Cook said, sitting in the pilot’s seat and bringing up the secondary status panel at the command console. “Let's get a cam mounted here.”

  He pointed to the shoulder of the beige command chair.

  “We aim it toward the status screen and Stu, or Echo, can literally watch it. They will let us know if something is happening.”

  Kuss and Elkin looked at each other to see if they could think of anything.

  “Besides, look at it. Almost everything is green now. Even the heat exchangers on the reactors. Just always double-check your navigation settings.”

  Cook leaned in, for emphasis.

  “Which you should be doing anyway!”

  Echo chimed into everyone’s HUDs.

  “Sir, there is something wrong. The STU is missing.”

  ***

  “Where is my shuttle, meat bag?”

  Worthington grabbed his host by the collar and dragged him back to the garage. His host’s face went slack and his eyes closed.

  “Oh, shit,” Worthington said, dropping him as realization dawned. His face smashed on the floor.

  “It’s a Golem!”

  Worthington ran for his suit as the room flooded with more men.

  “A Golem, sir?” Hume asked, as projectile weapons activated.

  “Men who were not quite dead, animated by an AI through the illegal use of persistent nanites to replace most of their brains.”

  Jimbo cursed.

  Three meters before he got to his suit, he was surrounded.

  “Hold your fire!” Jimbo yelled over the comms, breaking radio silence.

  He punched one in the face, threw two fast elbows, and then a powerful kick that almost took him off his feet because of the low gravity on Mars.

  They held fire but advanced, arms spread wide, creating a barrier.

  Worthington climbed back into his suit. It closed up to the silence. Then, he felt the knife wound.

  “Dammit,” he said to himself, before opening a public-address mode. “Alright, listen up.”

  “I have the Javelin,” Wes announced, as he brushed off six or eight of them.

  Hume blasted a massive hole in the garage door. They walked out with the Golems hanging on them like angry five-year-olds.

  “Last chance to do the deal before we start wrecking the place,” Worthington announced, as he flung off four more from his left arm. All at the same time, the Golems stopped struggling.

  “The ident chip deal?” a disembodied voice said in his head.

  “Except now, part of the deal is that we don't burn down this place,” Jimbo added, punctuating the idea with another blast on the door.

  It made the rest of the door—and part of the wall—cease to exist; as well, it punched a tunnel through the pile of crashed ships. The concussion knocked all the Golems off their feet.

  As the tunnel caved in with debris from above, he brought up the likely layout of this base. It was a standard colony structure. Big, though.

  On private comms, Rand said, “Sir, if they have the STU, we are all kinda fucked.”

  “Don't worry, Rand. He is not your standard STU. He has had a few upgrades. If they tried to take him, they are all dead,” Worthington said. “Let's go visit the main control room, shall we.”

  “I'll take point,” Rand said, as the path came up on the HUD.

  “Wes, you stay here with the warhead,” Jimbo ordered.

  “Will do,” he replied, with obvious relief in his voice.


  Switching channels, he spoke in a voice that sounded like he was smiling.

  “We have decided to come see you. How much of your base is left when we get there is up to you.”

  Rand activated the bay door on the left wall of the garage. It opened into another hangar, and the air began to rush out, until the door closed behind them.

  Another ship was in this bay. It was a bigger Webster-class ship that was rigged as a hospital transport. It looked to have about nine decks. It had the universal Red Cross marking and right at the bottom aft section it looked like a giant had taken a bite from it. Probably torpedo damage was most likely. Rand continued moving as she traversed the deck to the far door. The suit’s feet were far quieter than they expected. Opening the door, they turned and entered a corridor that was so narrow that only one Warmark could fit at a time.

  “Captain, if I was designing security for the base, I would place automated sentries in locations here, here and...”

  Rail gunfire filled the hallway. It drove Rand back, sliding on the smooth floor. The armor of the drop suit was amazing. The forward polycarbonate shell plating shattered the projectiles as they came in. Her suit was not penetrated, but several weapons were destroyed. The skull on the front was getting sand blasted off.

  She charged the sentry. It was about thirty yards down the hall. It was like she walked against a hurricane wind. When the sentry panned its fire downward and it impacted on her shins, she stumbled. Hume fired as soon as Rand was clear. The rail gun stopped.

  Suddenly, it was like the corridor was hundreds of meters longer. They kept moving. Parts hung from Rand’s suit. As they approached the next turn, on a private channel, Worthington said, “Rand, are you OK?”

  “Yes, sir. These suits have internal inertia dampening. Weapons are down 60%, but I am still combat effective,” Rand said.

  She leaped across the gap, past the next hallway on the right, and turned back to face them. The large skull that she painted on the Warmark looked even more horrible now. It looked like it had a jagged, screaming mouth now, eyes that were different sizes, and pocks all over.