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

Access to any of those satellites, however, required certain comm prefixes, codes, in other words, all of which would have been changed by now precisely to stop unauthorized personnel—like Garroway—-from doing what he was about to attempt.

There might be, however, an alternative. When the first Mars Expedition had arrived in Mars orbit in 2019, a communications relay had been positioned on Phobos, the planet’s inner moon. When Colonel Johnston and Polkovnik Reztsov had set foot on the sandy regolith of Candor Chasma and unfurled their respective nations’ flags, the televised images and historic first words had been transmitted to a waiting Earth via that relay. It could only be employed when Phobos was above the horizon, but the minor worldlet made an easy visual target for a satcom dish.

That relay was still there. He knew it was and, better yet, he knew the activation codes. His original assignment on Mars, after all, had been to service and run computers and commo gear used by both the Marines and the civilians. Usually, messages to Earth were routed through one or another of the regular comsats, but during periods of heavy traffic to and from Earth it was always good to have a backup, just in case the available bandwidth was cut to unacceptable levels. The Phobos relay station provided an alternate means for reaching Spacenet.

His first step was to link his wrist-top into the Mars cat’s display and call up his Beale code routine. It worked, and that was one less worry. Swiftly, then, he began typing at the keyboard, calling up a com request routine and checking to see that the crawler’s satellite dish was still on-line after the rough handling it had received. So far, so good. He had the com routine up and running, and the tracking system indicated a lock on Phobos, now just fifteen degrees above the eastern horizon—which meant it was on the way down. With its seven-hour-plus period, Phobos was one of the handful of satellites in the solar system that rose in the west and set in the east. It also moved so quickly across the sky—a half a degree in about a minute—that you could actually see its drift with the naked eye. He had about thirty minutes before the moon set.

He touched a colored rectangle on his plastic console and pinged the relay. He had it! And now to compose the message….

A message from Heinlein Station directly to Earth was out of the question. The UN would have people on Earth listening for any unauthorized transmissions inbound from Mars…and if they picked one up, they could almost certainly block it simply by jamming that frequency. They would have people at both Cydonia and Candor, too, who would come down hard on the Marines if they picked up his broadcast.

What Garroway was trying to do was a little more underhanded than phoning home without permission. He needed to tap into Spacenet, the electronic web linking all operations in space with one another and, through the primary node at the International Space Station, with Earthnet. He couldn’t do it overtly, but he could squeeze a short message into a tiny packet of data that could be layered with routine, outgoing transmissions—the “housekeeping” talk between the computers on Mars and Earth that basically kept tabs on one another and ensured from moment to moment that all communications channels were open and functional. He couldn’t send an open message; there might be watchdog routines running at Mars Prime or Cydonia specifically watching for anything tagged for Pentagon HQCOM, Washington or any other government or military installation on or near Earth. Hell, Bergerac probably had routines running right now listening for words like “Marine,” “Lloyd,” or “UN.”

But he had one hidden ace…the Beale code link with Kaitlin. If he could slip the code—a long string of numbers—into the housekeeping traffic going back to Earth, he could address it in such a way that it would automatically be routed to Spacenet’s e-mail service. The next time Kaitlin downloaded her mail, his message would be waiting.

He hated dragging her into this, but it was the only chance he saw. She should be safe enough, after all, in Pittsburgh.

MONDAY, 28 MAY: 0030 HOURS GMT

Kinkakuji Temple garden

0930 hours Tokyo time

It had been eight days since Kaitlin had seen Yukio, since he’d left for his base way to the south on Tanega Island, and now her v-mail was being flagged as undeliverable. She’d placed a long-distance call to the base, but all she got was a recorded vidloop, saying that no calls were being accepted at this time. She wished she knew whether the Japanese military routinely closed their bases to outsiders during a drill…or if this was an indication that something serious was brewing. There’d been nothing in the papers or on netnews to help her make sense of the situation. It was very puzzling…and a little disturbing.

She’d come to the temple this morning looking for a quiet restful place in which to think. To think about herself and Yukio, about their future…if they had one. They’d had a few days to travel around Japan before Yukio had to report to his base, and as she had feared, he’d become only slightly less formal away from Kyoto than he had been in his father’s house. It wasn’t just the absence of sex—she’d experienced dry spells before, and she could live with that. It wasn’t even the lack of those public displays of intimacy that she’d become accustomed to back home, holding hands, walking arm in arm, calling each other pet names. Being in Japan and speaking Japanese constantly made her almost feel Japanese. The day after they arrived, in fact, they’d seen a young couple holding hands on the maglev to Tokyo, and she’d been shocked…as well as amused at her own reaction. No, the problem went deeper than that.

She feared that Yukio was seeing her now as hen na gaijin, as someone who would never fit in, no matter how well she spoke the language or understood the customs. She remembered times before, back in the States, when they had discussed the difficulties that a mixed couple would face. He’d been the practical one, pointing out the problems foreigners still had in Japan, and the provincialism of large parts of the United States. She’d always countered with her belief that anything was possible…if they’d loved each other enough. And that was probably it. Yukio must have realized that his love for her wasn’t strong enough.

A high bamboo fence bordered the path to the temple. She ran her fingers gently along the bamboo as she walked along, head down. Abruptly the fence came to an end as the path ran along the edge of the lake. She saw it first in its reflection and caught her breath, as she suddenly knew why it was called the Golden Pavilion. Three stories high and covered with gold leaf, the temple gleamed with a dazzling brilliance both above and below the water. She found a spot next to the water and sat down, thinking how strange everything was. Her love for Yukio was stronger than ever…just when it seemed that his love for her was fading.

She unclipped her PAD to check the netnews again. Nothing. More rumblings with Mexico. Anti-American and aldetech riots in Quebec and Paris. A new messiah in Rome who promised the aliens would soon return for the faithful. Nothing, though, to indicate why Japanese military bases might be going on alert. Well, time to check her v-mail. Something from CMU, her grades. Hey, all right! She grinned. Too bad Yukio wasn’t here. They’d always had a friendly rivalry going with their grades, even though he was taking graduate-level courses. Of course he always tried to claim that a B for a grad course was equivalent to an A for an undergrad, but she never bought that line. Not that he often got anything less than an A anyway.