Blue Mars

A

She followed a narrow street just inside the southern wall of the tent. Harsh sunlight, sharp-edged black shadows. Some buildings had held, their windows in place, their lights on inside. No one to be seen in them, of course. Ahead the cable was just visible, a black vertical stroke rising into the sky out of east Sheffield, like a geometric line become visible in their reality.

The Red emergency band was a signal transmitted in a rapidly varying wavelength, synchronized for everyone who had the current encryption. This system cut through some kinds of radio jamming very well; nevertheless A

He was actually in sight, waving at her from a doorway into a building’s little emergency lock. He and a group of some twenty people were working with a trio of mobile rocket launchers out in the street. A

Dao looked surprised. “We’ve almost got the Socket.”

“But what then?”

“Talk to Kasei about that. He’s up ahead, going for Arsiaview.”

One of their rockets whooshed away, its noise faint in the thin air. Dao was back at it. A

She struggled to keep ru

While she was at it, a call came in to her. It was Sax.

“It isn’t logical to co

It was the usual Sax, the all-too-Sax: but then he must have noticed she was on, because he stared owlishly into his wrist’s little camera and said, “Listen A

Her old Sax would never have said that. Nor chattered on at her, clearly distraught, pleading, visibly nerve-racked; one of the most frightening sights she had ever seen, actually: “They love you, A

So strange to hear such stuff from Saxifrage Russell. But then he shifted again, he seemed to pull himself together. “… logical procedure is to establish some kind of equation for conflicting interests.” Just like his old self.

Then there was a beep from her wrist and she cut Sax off, and answered the incoming call. It was Peter, there on the Red coded frequency, a black expression on his face that she had never seen before.

“A

“Don’t you Mother me,” she snapped. “I’m trying. Can you tell me where they are?”

“I sure as hell can. They’ve just broken into the Arsiaview tent. Moving through — it looks like they’re trying to come up on the Socket from the south.” Grimly he took a message from someone off-camera. “Right.” He looked back at her. “A

“I’ll talk to him.”

And there he was, a face from the deep past, a time lost to A

“I’m A

Her stomach clamped as she said this, and she tasted chyme at the back of her throat. But she went on: “It’s the work of a splinter group, called the Kakaze. They’re the ones who broke the Burroughs dike. We’re trying to shut them down, and expect to succeed by the end of the day.”

It was the most awful string of lies she had ever said. She felt like Frank Chalmers had come down and taken over her mouth, she couldn’t stand the sensation of such words on her tongue. She cut the co

“Peter!” she said without thinking.

The picture on the little screen swung around, came onto his face.

“You deal with Hastings,” she choked out, barely able to look at him, traitor that he was. “I’m going for Kasei.”

Arsiaview was the southernmost tent, filled now with smoke, which snaked overhead in long amorphous lines that revealed the tent’s ventilation patterns. Alarms were ringing everywhere, loud in the still-thick air, and shards of clear framework plastic were scattered on the green grass of the street. A

There might be a plan revealed here; the cable’s defenses seemed to be capable of handling the Reds’ lightweight missiles, but if the attackers thoroughly destroyed Sheffield and the Socket, then there would be nothing for UNTA to come down to, and so it would not matter if the cable remained swinging overhead. It was a plan that mirrored the one used to deal with Burroughs.

But it was a bad plan. Burroughs was down in the lowlands, where there was an atmosphere, where people could live outside, at least for a while. Sheffield was high, and so they were back in the past, back in ‘61 when a broken tent meant the end for everyone in it exposed to thfe elements. At the same time most of Sheffield was underground, in many stacked floors against the wall of the caldera. Undoubtedly most of the population had retreated down there, and if the fighting tried to follow them it would be impossible, a nightmare. But up on the surface where fighting was possible, people were exposed to fire from the cable above. No, it wouldn’t work. It wasn’t even possible to see what was happening. There were more explosions near the Socket, static over the intercom, isolated words as the receiver caught bits of other coded frequencies cycling through: “ — taken Arsiaviewpkkkkkk — ” “We need the AI back but I’d say x-axis three two two, y-axis eightpkkkkk — ”