World War Mars Read online

  WORLD WAR MARS

  By Isaac Stone

  Copyright 2017 Isaac Stone

  Prelude

  Harlo climbed over the pile of burnt bodies in his haste to reach the wall below the fortress. They were piled low, so it wasn’t much trouble to get over them. He couldn’t tell how many men were inside that heap, it was too difficult to tell were one part began and another ended. He felt his boots slip as they moved over the remains of fractured body armor and the cooked remains of what was inside. Best to keep on with the plan and don’t think about what your boots steeped into a few minutes ago.

  He glanced down before he jumped off the pile and hit the ground. It had to be what was left after a plasma cannon had scored a direct hit. Even the body armor and helmet wouldn’t keep you alive if you were in the midst of one of those miniature suns. The best place to be was in the dead center where you stood a good chance of immediate vaporization. These poor fools weren’t so lucky; at least he wasn’t one of them.

  The armor kept you intact, but there were some gaps in it.

  He felt the protective grip of the armor as he continued to march with his comrades while they slowly made their way to the base of the fortress. It was only forty yards away, but might as well be a hundred miles in this inferno. Didn’t someone tell him before the drop that the previous Force Volunteers took three months to advance ten yards in some locations? The regular Force was supposed to be trained to handle these kinds of situations, what chance did it give a volunteer like him?

  The ground erupted forward of his group. He saw a mountain of dirt rise high into the air and cascade down on everyone in front of him. Somehow, they survived and continued to march. He could see the flashes from the wall parapets, the Z-boys unleashed everything they had today and he was in the thick of it. His lungs pounded and his heart fought to keep up with them. Every surface on his skin tingled with the surge of adrenalin he felt in his system.

  “Stay in line, kids!” he heard the voice of Tulpa in his earpiece. “They don’t have much up there to track us with. As long as you continue to move, you’ll survive. Don’t pause to shoot until we have clean targets!”

  Four more explosions rocked the cracked ground and the remains of an earlier wave of attackers were thrown into the air. Harlo still marched forward up the hill, his body a mass of pain from the lack of food and sleep. He continued onward as body parts reigned down around him. At least his helmet was self-contained and he didn’t have to smell the barbecue in the air.

  “Eyes on!” Tulpa screamed. “Cannon at our twelve! Let ‘em have it!”

  Harlo shouldered the rail gun and began to fire away at the small object directly over them. He wasn’t sure if he got it or not before the ground beneath his feet heaved and took him up in the air with it.

  Chapter 1

  “Are you sure this will work?” the director asked as his assistant fooled with the strange machine in front of them. He was anxious since the probe from Earth Prime arrived last month and contained only two objects.

  “Shouldn’t give me a problem,” his assistant comforted him. “It isn’t the first time we’ve been sent one of these packages. The last one, which held that rectangle full of symbols, worked out just fine once we understood how it was supposed to be used.” He fussed over the strange metallic device that sat on the table between them.

  The room was full of people who knew about the latest package from Earth Prime. Contact with the mother world was sporadic, so they were thrilled when any delivery arrived. This one was supposed to display real images of the past. The director could feel the excitement in the room.

  “Got it!” the assistant announced to his boss. “We can show what they sent us.” He dimmed the lights and started up the ancient movie projector, after he’d finished threading the film sent along with it.

  There was a murmur of interest as the images flashed across the wall on which they were projected. None of them seemed to make sense.

  “Just wait a second,” the director announced. “My assistant tells me we’re looking at the leader on the film, it’s not meant to convey any information, which we should see in a few minutes….”

  The screen in front of them filled with a display of mystic symbols, which the giddy director translated as “Time of the March”. As the audience marveled over what was shown to them, he continued his spontaneous translation to the assembled notables.

  Now the screen was filled with the face of a man in elaborate clothes from Old Earth. He smiled and looked at the audience as he began to speak. Once again, the director provided the translation to the crowd.

  “If you are watching this,” the face told them, “you probably wonder why we choose to send it to you in such a primitive device. We found out a long time ago that the best way to transmit physical data to our interstellar colonies was to send them this way. This is why you get to listen to us on an old movie projector. We have sent another seven reels along will fill you in on the history of Earth from the very beginning.”

  The director shot his assistant a look of confusion. “The only one that made it through,” the assistant explained. “The others were damaged beyond repair.”

  The image pulled back to show the man in the fine clothes as he held a globe of some kind. “This is a scale model of the solar system, which your ancestors left,” he explained. “As I will explain to you in the next reel, three hundred standard years after humanity spread across the near planets, Earth was broken up into three great powers. The old nations had coalesced into three super nations that held sway over human civilization. The first was Olympia, the second the Zhong Republic and the final one was known as The United Sultanates of Arabia.”

  The man walked over to a wall that was decorated with twin maps. Each of them showed the surface of the same planet. The map on the left displayed a barren red planet which appeared to have little atmosphere and no life. The map of it on the right showed a green planet which teamed with life and water. He stepped to the left side of the pair.

  “You are seeing the results of the first terraforming of a world. Mars, a planet close to Earth, was once desolate and cold. It held very little atmosphere and no life we could locate. After hundreds of years, the planet was transformed so that it became the equal of Earth in vegetation and atmosphere. I won’t go into how it was done; you may have it in your own histories.”

  The assistant shook his head at the director.

  “As on Earth,” the man continued, “Mars too was broken into various zones of interest among the major powers. Colonies were traded back and forth. Each nation tried to gain the edge in prominence. There were subtle differences in the governments of these nations and those differences came to a boil on Mars. After hundreds of years, the uneasy peace broke down over a trivial incident.”

  “The president of the Olympia section on Mars was assassinated by a colonist from the Sultanates. It happened because the United Sultanates had sold a small section of a Mars settlement to the Olympians to pay an old debt. The announcement was not taken well in the settlement. A young man killed the Olympia director the day he took office. Events began to escalate afterwards.”

  “Olympia made demands that the Sultanates found dishonorable. The Sultanates began to prepare for war on Mars, as did the Olympians. The Zhong Republic was the nominal ally of the US and found itself drawn into the conflict. At least nuclear bombs were out of the question as all sides had relinquished those generations ago. However, weapons of great potential did exist and no one feared to use them. The countless years of peace had made all the future belligerents forget what a real planetary war was like.”

  “The troops of Olympia marched across the fields of Mars toward the colony where the assassination had taken place. They claime
d it was an action needed in stop any ideas of rebellion. The Sultanates marched east, soon to be joined by the forces of the Zhong Republic.”

  The man reached down and picked up a scale model of a huge mountain.

  “They were all about to collide at a fortress near the base of a mountain called Pavonis Mons,” he explained. “It was to be the start of the bloodiest conflict in human history.”

  Chapter 2

  Harlo Tarkis was a deep-water diver who never wanted to work in the algae collection detail. At eighteen years old, he’d finished his apprenticeship with the Neptune Syndicate and looked forward to several years as a pearl harvester in the seas south of Java. As a loyal citizen of Olympia, he’d been taught early to be proud of his station in life. He was born into a syndicate with a long and treasured place on the corporate boards that ran the government. Even his grandfather had served his tenure as the regional deputy for their syndicate fifty years ago.

  “You ready to go down?” his dive master asked him while Harlo checked over his gear. The tanks and equipment where handed down to him by various members of his family when he passed his apprentice test.

  “I don’t see any problem with them,” he said while in his final checks. His close cropped hair and lean face reflected back to him in the cover of his faceplate.

  “Don’t forget,” the master, his supervisor, informed him. “It can be very dangerous down there. I know you wanted something of a challenge for your first post, but this has its own set of difficulties. There are creatures down there that can kill you.” The dive master was the color of burnt umber and had a shaved head. He’d been in charge of plenty of journeymen aquaculture workers over the years and knew the intricacies of the deep sea in this location.

  Harlo shrugged and began to put his gear on. This would only be a seven hundred footer and shouldn’t require too much in the way of special diving equipment. Safely inside his deep dive suit, he’d be safe from any of the sea beasts that might lurk around the lower depths. True, he’d rather be pearling or involved with tuna collection, but this would be fine. Once he passed his final exams, he would certify as a master diver and could get the better jobs. So, for now, this one would do.

  He glanced over at his diving mate, Nea Kaplan. Nea was his age and hailed from an aquaculture syndicate further to the south. He’d told him the name several times, but Harlo couldn’t remember it. Nea had black hair with eyes to match and was tanned from constant exposure to the sun. He wanted to work on the family coral farm when he finished his tour, provided the syndicate boards would approve.

  “You about ready, Nea?” Harlo asked his friend. “We need to get moving before the storm rolls in today. I don’t want to be stuck down there if beats us back.” There was a small undersea habitat anchored to the bottom, but it had limited facilities.

  Everyone in Olympia belonged to a syndicate.

  You were born into one and died in the same one. True, there were exceptions, but to movement between one syndicate and another was rare. From the day you were conceived, your future was predetermined. The syndicate you grew up in was the one where you received your primary education and studied to master your trade. There were syndicates for medical professions and law enforcement. Syndicates for street sweepers and the people who worked in restaurants. Most companies were run by the syndicate managers, although there were syndicates for them too.

  Each syndicate determined the code of contact for its members and expected them to follow along. The elders of the syndicates would convene each year and decided who was to be promoted into which sub-profession. It was one way to regulate the society and economy. People didn’t mind their station in life if they understood there would always be a place for them.

  If you didn’t like your syndicate, too bad. You could quit, but only the worst people in Olympia lacked syndicates. They found themselves at the mercy of the government largesse. The government was composed of a confederation of syndicates and didn’t look favorably on anyone who tried to function outside them. Beggars were forcibly organized into their own syndicate and forced to pan handle with a badge that showed their status.

  It was a felony to profit from work outside your syndicate. You might have a talent for art; just never sell your paintings if you were born into the mechanic syndicate. There was a delicate balance inside the societies of humanity, and it was functional if also somewhat monolithic.

  The syndicates arose in Olympia as a response to the vast inequalities after years of an economic rollercoaster. One set of politicians would promise bread, the next work. Massive unemployment was followed by employees who wanted too much. The rich lived in luxury one year and found their skills no longer of use the next. Several countries merged into Olympia and hoped a new super state would cure all their financial problems. However, it simply made them worse. Civil war broke out and the faction won with the best resources and guile, as they always do. This time it was the skilled trades and they were determined to stabilize society. The result was a united syndicate government and it persisted. Hundreds of years passed and it proved to be stable, if not the most innovative, method of governance.

  The other nation states merged into super states and pursued their own destinies. The United Sultanates of Arabia continued as a constitutional monarchy. The Zhong Republic found that state socialism could work nicely if not taken to extremes. Such was the status of the world. It soon spread to the interplanetary settlements. Mars was terraformed as a rare joint cooperation between the three major powers.

  Little of that was a concern for Harlo, some distant history lesson from school. Today’s task was to scrape the bioluminescent algae that grew on the bait pylons that were anchored into the ocean floor. This part of the ocean was close enough to the continental shelf and wasn’t extraordinary deep. The pylons were attached topside to the platform where they stood. It was an enormous structure built to withstand hurricanes and any kind of disturbance the ocean might toss at it. They had stood for a hundred years and were several hundred yards across. Built by the oceanic construction syndicates, it was a triumph of the engineering syndicate and all the other ones that worked to bring the project about.

  Once suited up, Nea and he would descend into the warm pacific water and take sample containers with them to the depths they need to reach. At this level, they would take specimens so the aquaculture technicians on the surface could see how the algae grew in the currents. They had plenty of lights attached to the deep dive suits they wore, as it was very dark at that level.

  An elevator would take them down and allow the two a station to work from at the deep levels. It was standard procedure and Harlo didn’t expect any trouble, in spite of the supervisor’s warnings. True, all manner of sea creatures were attracted to the algae, which trailed off into the warm streams of the ocean currents, but most were harmless. It was the predators they need to watch out for during the dive. These came by to stalk the fish and whatever else they could eat.

  “So what do you plan on doing when we get some shore leave?” Harlo asked Nea as they stepped into the elevator. He turned and gave the dive supervisor the OK sign. The elevator began to descend through the waves.

  “I dunno,” Nea responded. “Might go to the bayside and check out the action. I hear some of the ballerinas are in town.” He secured his suit to the platform with a tow cable.

  “Always fun to play,” Harlo agreed. You could flirt all you wanted with other syndicates, but marriage was an arranged affair between families.

  “So you have any long-term plans after this posting is over?” Nea asked him. “I think this place is dull. Not even any good reefs to explore. Everything around here is algae growth. It’s green muck once you get close to those pylons.”

  “I’m still thinking about them,” Harlo responded. “There is the matrilottery, but my parents think they can find me a girl from a good family. Granddad used to have connections. And you know how the old heads want us to have kids.” The elders of the aquacultur
e syndicate had determined there weren’t enough heirs to the profession and leaned on the latest generation to do their duty.

  The Neptune Syndicate was founded early in the days of the revolution that gave the syndicalists control of the government of Olympia. The syndicalists went to great lengths to make sure the new government was stable and that the trade associations were first in line to the gravy table. They’d been able to bring the security companies, and what remained of the police unions, on board by the time they seized control of the new capital.

  The new capital was placed in the town of Calgary. It was far enough away from the lawyers and money that ruled the old ones.

  Neptune had been a company involved in the salvage of old shipwrecks. They had a difficult time finding anything other than barnacles and scrap metal, but the company had swam on over the years in search of the big score. The revolution had paid Neptune’s owner, a former demolitions operative, to take out the last stand of the old government flagship of the Pacific Fleet. In the aftermath of the sea battle, which gave the syndicalists control of the nation, they showered Harlo’s ancestor with glory and privilege. He used it to set up the maritime division of the new government.

  The Neptune Corporation became the Neptune Aquaculture Syndicate. Harlo’s great-great scaled his operations down from digging for buried treasure at the bottom of the ocean to growing things people could eat from the sea. There were plenty of boats left after the wars and he managed to get the government allocations for them. A man with vision, he went around and turned former coast guard sailors into maritime security syndicates.

  Each syndicate he helped to found was named after some kind of sea animal. He’d always used Neptune and kept it for himself. The Great White Shark Syndicate For Coastal Protection consisted of minor syndicates with the names Barracuda, Stingray, and Tiger Shark.