Free The God Mars Book Two: Lost Worlds by Michael Rizzo Page B

of our better
ASVs, loaded with four squads of H-A troops. I give the ground
mission to Third Platoon, and Lieutenant Thomas and Staff Sergeant
Jones fly out as field command, with Acaveda and Jane doing the
flying. Morales makes sure they have full belts in their turrets
and a brace of missiles.
    Tru lobbies hard to ride along on this one, but given
where we’re going hunting, I remind her of Paul’s and Abbas’
vehement warnings, and keep it guns-only, at least on this trip. I
add myself to that ban, which makes Matthew breathe somewhat easier
that I’m not making a target of myself for once. We set up in
Command Ops to watch over the mission on live feed.
    Metzger calls liftoff at 07:00. The ships rise
smoothly and glide off to the East (the first time we’ve flown in
that direction). Toward Tranquility.
     
    We get our first big payoff within the hour.
    Tranquility is about a hundred miles east-southeast
of us, with no tapsites in between, so we have our pilots take it
easy on fuel. If they get into trouble, Melas Three is closer at
seventy-five miles southwest of the colony ruin. (The only reason
we opted to launch from Melas Two was the possibility that Aziz’
Nomads might be watching Three, and a flight along their precious
forbidden food route might raise more ire, or at least give them
another excuse to stir more propaganda against us).
    The long wide sheer-walled trench that is Coprates
Chasma gets steadily deeper as it “flows” eastward away from Melas,
and with depth comes higher atmosphere density and warmth. Acaveda
sends us back readings pushing .35 atmospheres and a balmy sixty
degrees. And an impressive 15% humidity.
    “Summertime in the Alps,” Tru assesses, almost
breathless.
    There is ice frosting the cliff faces and ridge
crests to either side. Below, we start seeing the red desert valley
floor begin to dot with olive-colored scrub—patches of the fruit
and grain bearing shrubs we’ve been cultivating in our greenhouse,
clinging to the deeper ravines and washes that look like they may
have been recently flooded.
    (I wish I had Paul here to give us commentary, but
I’m sure Earthside would frown on his observing one of our missions
as much as he’d try to discourage us from going this way.)
    Then here and there we start seeing what look like
cisterns in some of the sheerer cuts, sinkholes in the rock full of standing water. The Bitter Apple and Red Olive plants that
grow only a meter or two tall in our greenhouse are fully
tree-sized down by these sheltered water sources. Honeyflower and
Rustbean cling to the rocks.
    “Holy shit…” is the best Matthew can manage.
    “You could live there,” Tru sighs.
    It only gets greener as it goes. Within another
thirty miles, our hardy Graingrass is climbing up out of the
crevices and spreading like thick-bladed prairie grass across the
valley floor. In places, it reaches up to the sky like grove
bamboo, four or five meters tall, swaying in the winds.
    The soil and rock has turned a deeper terra-cotta
color, and its textures look like water has indeed fallen recently:
there is the familiar cracking that happens to drying mud, and
signs of drainage where the dust and sand is now a swirling, veined
clay.
    “You think it actually rains here?” Acaveda
asks, dumbstruck.
    “Looks very much like where I grew up in the American
Southwest,” I tell her.
    “Or Australia,” Tru offers.
    “Doesn’t look like Mars,” Jane comments as he flies
on.
    I feel numb. This completely different world was less
than a hundred miles from us all this time, and my caution kept us
from exploring it.
    “Take your time,” I tell the pilots, trying to sound
like I’m still confident in my decision making. “Get good imaging.
This is all getting sent back to Earth.”
     
    The closer they get to Tranquility, the more it looks
like the high-plateau deserts I visited in my youth: Tundra dotted
with shrubbery and grass in the open flatlands, but with gardens
and groves