Ian Douglas - The Complete Heritage Trilogy - Semper Mars, Luna Marine, Europa Strike

“Quiet! Quiet!” He turned and rasped something to the troops near him, and a dozen rifle muzzles raised in unison, pointed at the Marines. For a panic-ragged moment, Gardner thought that one or another of the other troops was going to fire warning shots into the overhead…not a good idea with the next best thing to hard vacuum outside.

“You UNdies don’t have any jurisdiction here!” Donatelli shouted above the commotion, using the popular Corps slang for UN troops or bureaucrats.

“I beg to differ. Now, all of you, sit down, and I will explain your position!”

“I’ll show you some positions,” Sergeant Jacob growled nearby, but, slowly, order was restored in the room.

“Now then,” Bergerac continued, speaking as though nothing had happened, and despite the UN troops who still held their rifles aimed at the Marines like a firing squad. “As I said, we are assuming military control of this facility. The politics of this decision do not really concern any of you…except insofar as this obviously changes the nature of your mission here. We do not have enough personnel to watch over you all the time, and so we are taking you to another…place, where—”

He had to stop again as shouts, curses, and questions broke once more from the Americans before him.

“We will take you to a place where it will be easier to guard you. You will be our guests at this place for another three months, when the cycler Champlain arrives to take you all back to Earth.”

Gardner let out the breath he’d been holding then. For a moment, he’d thought the Americans were all to be killed. Then he decided that it was premature to relax. The SS guards had told their prisoners in the death camps that they were being taken to the showers.

“We sincerely regret the necessity of this action, but be assured that we will carry out our program here, and you will not be allowed to stand in our way.

“You will be led in groups of three back to the common room,” Bergerac continued, “where you will find your EVA armor already laid out. I assure you, all suits will have been carefully checked for weapons or other contraband. You will find your suits and you will put them on. There will be no talking. Any attempt at escape will be dealt with severely. Am I understood?”

This time, there were no protests, and Bergerac seemed to accept this as assent. “Very good,” he said. He pointed. “You three! Let’s go!”

Soldiers led Donatelli, Marchewka, and Hauser from the room, and at that moment, Gardner wondered if he would ever see any of them again.

1828 HOURS GMT

Mars Transport Shuttle

Cydonia Base, Mars

0605 hours MMT

The flight out of Cydonia was brutal, but mercifully short. The transport was so crowded with Marines—all of them encumbered in their Class-One armor—that there was no room to move or even shift to get into a more comfortable position. “Y’know,” somebody said over the general comm channel, “if they wanted to get rid of all of us in a convenient accident—”

“Ruhe!” another voice barked. “Be quiet, all of you! No talking!”

The pilot—Garroway didn’t know if it was one of the UN troops or a NASA pilot working at gunpoint—piled on the Gs for the liftoff from Cydonia…and the acceleration continued for a long time, long enough to convince Garroway that they were making a high-speed run to someplace rather than the usual slower, fuel-conserving suborbital hop.

He was sitting close enough to one of the shuttle’s small observation ports that he could see a blur of ocher landscape below as they hurtled past. It had taken most of the rest of the night to secure the American prisoners, get them suited up, and to lead them three at a time out to the shuttle on its launchpad. The sun was just coming up, the light casting long fingers of black shadow from each rock or boulder or irregular fold of the chaotic terrain, but they were moving too quickly, and at too low an altitude, for him to tell where they were. At a guess, judging from the direction the shadows were pointing, they were heading more or less southwest, which made a certain amount of sense. There were only two major bases on Mars, Cydonia and Candor Chasma at the equator; they must be heading back for Candor Station.

The question, of course, was what was going to happen to them when they arrived.

He felt a growing discomfort in the small of his back, where the wrist-top he’d hidden there was trapped, pinched between him and the inside of his armor. They’d searched him again before he’d suited up, but he’d palmed the microcomputer when they frisked him, hiding it under hands clasped behind his head as they patted him down. By pretending to adjust his trousers before climbing into his armor, he’d managed to hide it again in his waistband. He wondered just how much stress the device could take, though, as several Gs slammed him back into the thinly padded seat.

Acceleration cut off, and for a long time after that they were in free fall, save for occasional violent thumps and kicks when the pilot fired steering jets to maintain attitude or to adjust their course. Their captors had made certain that all of the Marines were strapped down, and two of them sat now at the forward end of the compartment, as uncomfortable as any of the Americans as they kept an eye on their prisoners.

Garroway was wedged in between two Marines, with a third sitting half on top of him and half on the Marine to his right. In their armor, they were anonymous…but he could still recognize voices occasionally over the comm channel…mingled occasionally with the harsh, retching sounds of people being sick in their helmets.

The shuttle’s cargo hold was designed to hold thirty passengers in something like relative comfort, and it could manage another ten, perhaps, with some crowding. That, however, assumed that the passengers weren’t wearing bulky Class-Ones…or EVA suits. Most of the scientists, Garroway noticed, had been kept at Cydonia, but five had been packed into Mars surface suits and loaded aboard the shuttle with the Marines…the ones who’d discovered those Homo erectus corpses two days before. They’d nearly had to drag Alexander physically from the hab and chuck him into the lobber.

There were twenty-five Marines on board—Colonel Lloyd and Private Groller, both wounded, had been left at Cydonia under the care of Dr. Penkov, the Russian doctor at the base. That put a total of thirty prisoners aboard the shuttle, and the crowding was nightmarish with them all wearing armor or surface EVA suits.

After a small eternity of free fall, they were jarred by a sharp, dizzying swoop as the shuttle flipped end for end, and then acceleration hammered at them again when the main drive fired. The world tilted sickeningly, and then was obscured by swirling ocher dust as the craft settled in for a cushioned landing on its four hydraulic jacks.

They were down.

“Gentlemen, and ladies, we have arrived at your new home,” Bergerac told them, climbing down the narrow ladder from the pilot’s compartment. Had he flown the ship himself, Garroway wondered? No, he could see a NASA pilot behind him, seated at the console. The UN colonel must have been riding strapped to the bridge jumpseat.

With two UN guards urging them to move, the Marines and scientists clambered awkwardly down the center passageway ladder and into the shuttle’s airlock bay. Since everyone had been suited up for the flight, the shuttle was already open to the Martian atmosphere. The loading ramp was down; in moments, Garroway stood with the others on the cold, still, and nearly airless desert.

This was not Candor Chasma.

That fact was beginning to register with the others as well. He heard several low-murmured comments, and several Marines exchanged words by touching their helmets together for a quick, sound-inducted comment or two.