Self Propagation by M. K. Dreysen

It won't go the way they'd hope.

After the first blush. When the work begins; that's when humans being human will start to matter again. After the starry-eyed have envisioned, and their followers have hit dirt.

Someone will need to be ready. For this week's free story, I give you a tale of...

Self Propagation by M. K. Dreysen

She sat beneath a tent. Waiting. The walled town she and the tent guarded went about its business. Mostly heedless of the meeting she anticipated. Mostly.

She'd set watchers. "Discretely," she had told her new friends. "Make no movement. Allow yourselves no emotion. This is important."

Her new friends, young, inexperienced, nervous as all hell and half the devils, had acknowledged. She just hoped they'd remember, when the time came.

She'd brought books, two of them. One written, the other an old-fashioned leather bound journal. The journal, in area, was not much bigger than her hand, but it was thick as two decks of cards. Someone back home had gone through the trouble of binding old parchment paper, the leather, and brass. This amused her.

So she carried it, for doodles and random thoughts. She had neither at the moment. And the novel, an old friend threatening to come apart at last, didn't interest her today.

So she settled for listening to the leaves rustle. Smelling the blossoms whenever the wind shifted.

Oranges, some hybrid. The wind didn't play as much as it might have, here beneath the semi-dome that made the habitat comfortable. But there was enough of it so that she enjoyed both the relief it offered and the scents it carried.

Enough so she didn't need to stare at the tent's canvas. She'd rolled up the sides, leaving only the overhead covering. For the smells and the sounds.

And most of all for the sightlines. Chances were, her visitor would come alone. But she'd prepared for otherwise.

When her anticipated visitor finally made his appearance, the ear bud whispered the message. "He just came under the dome."

"Got it," she replied. "Now, keep quiet for the rest of this. Listen, record, and be prepared."

"Roger." And then, silence. Except for the breeze and its green playthings.

And, after about ten minutes, the crunch of the visitor's steps. She didn't rise to meet him. Not yet.

"The trees greet us," the man said from just outside the tent. "Perhaps they anticipate your agreement."

Now she stood. "Please," and she indicated the chair on the other side of the camp table, that, among other things, held her books, glasses, and an insulated container.

The man took the seat.

She poured out two glasses of tea, still warm enough to steam slightly as the carafe released its brew. She waited until he chose one of the glasses before she took her seat. "Your team?" she asked.

"They're around," he replied.

She knew where they were. He held the medium ground; his drone had, until yesterday, patrolled the sky over the dome.

Her nanosatellites showed his team's array. Most of them had stayed behind, in the hills a hundred kilometers west.

He'd brought ten of his team with him. These folks, she hoped, had stayed where he'd left them. With the trucks. But, unless something went wrong, she'd have to wait on that information until the meeting was done. Either way, she didn't envy his team their evening.

She'd be back in the town, under dome and behind warm walls when the sun went down. They'd have a long cold drive home if their commander chose to linger. Now, even outside of the dome the noonday weather was warm and pleasant.

By sundown, the temperatures would pass freezing and be headed for worse.

"You've brought them an awful long way to leave their blood in the sand," she said.

He smiled behind the tea cup. "My team are warriors. They've fought too many battles to be frightened away by words."

She shrugged. "What is your offer, then? If you're so confident of your position, why come?"

He looked beyond her, to the town. "It's because they are warriors, and not farmers, that I've come. Every life wasted here takes away from the wealth possible. If you and the town would simply surrender, we might save so many."

And enslave so many more, she didn't add. "I'm afraid we'll have to part without agreement, then. Go, and return when you're ready."

He put the tea back on the table. Slowly. As though he was using the time to weigh his options. In the end, he nodded, stood, and left without a word.

Maria Omar wondered if he'd been convinced by the look on her face that he would get no further.

Or the pistol sitting between the books.

****

The man walked straight to the trucks. No pauses to enjoy the orange blossoms. That had been for show. He had as little interest in plants as he had in how his team would divide the spoils coming tomorrow. He would have his share, the lion's share. They could fight over the rest.

So long as they didn't damage the dome, or too many of its occupants, he didn't care. "Load up," he told them.

He was glad they'd come at the height of the day. Morning and evening were so uncomfortably cold, enough so that the cold weather gear in the trucks would have been necessary. At least at lunch time he needed only standard clothes.

Trini Smith took the passenger seat in the lead truck. The driver, Robbi Xem, already had the truck running. She'd known Trini long enough to have started it as soon as she saw the pace at which he'd walked back from the meeting.

Which is why she didn't ask the obvious question. Trini hadn't told her to drive into the town, either. So, they were attacking tomorrow.

Trini wouldn't wait. There was no point.

****

Maria had landed six months ago. At the town's request, sort of. They'd asked for help when Trini's team turned rogue, two years back.

It takes a while to get from Earth to Mars. Especially when the Agency has to put together a package.

Maria had known, generally, what she could expect. She'd worked Trini's backtrail. Which was the only reason the Agency had been prepared to put help together. Four years ago, Trini's team had up and disappeared, after they'd left a few nasty messes in South America, Africa, and Indonesia.

Maria had caught up to Trini, at least the point where he and his crew had left Earth, just a month before the Agency got the first call. "The Mars research farms," she'd told her boss, after twenty-three slow, quiet months. "Trini got himself hired as chief of security."

Third generation research farms, after proof of concept and pilot-scale. These were the town sized projects, an even dozen spread around the equator of the red planet. Under climate control half-domes, far enough apart to give each farm the chance to develop as much territory, sustainable territory, as possible.

"Mars Research and Resource Council knew they'd need a security team. Apparently, there'd been enough trouble at the pilot scale that they had to be ready from day one." These weren't Antarctic systems. Once each of the pilot projects grew to a hundred people, there were tensions, even among the egghead set.

"How'd they screw the pooch so bad and hire the Roughnecks?" Trini's name for his organization, a mercenary group of ex-mil types he'd saved from the bottle, the needle, and worse, and then put to work guarding. Or stealing, as the case might be.

"Their HR department for this gig was brand new, and a lot naive. Someone didn't know the difference between a general discharge and an honorable. Not until it was way, way too late."

Trini's team hadn't waited long. Three months in, long enough to make sure there would be no surprises, and then they disappeared into the Martian desert. They began with raids on the towns. Nothing major, nothing destructive. Steal, rape, tear up a little of this and that. Warning shots.

Demands for tribute. The science types at MRRC hadn't quite believed Trini's threats. Hadn't wanted to admit that the trouble they'd believed themselves above had followed them to Mars.

No more so than that they'd wanted to implement a security team on moving to the third gen farms in the first place. They'd had to be dragged kicking and screaming into that. There were more than a few "I told you so's".

Mumbled, though. Because the whole thing had been kicked off with a murder suicide ring in the second gen farms. A man and two women had gone from agreeable lovers to two dead on the floor and the third swinging by the neck from the rafters in just over twenty hours. None of the original teams forgot.

And the other incidents. Break up and head to the bar, to tear some shit up when the bottle ran out. Get loaded on homemade X and burn that asshole's house to the ground. Tear that bitch's garden up by the roots and salt the dirt beneath.

There'd been enough proof that humanity was always human for MRRC to hire Trini's team. MRRC just hadn't realized that the recruiting reps back home were still just as naive as they'd all been, in the beginning. And now it was too late.

Trini had been patient. Let the MRRC farms settle back into dreams. Hit them again. A dozen farms and this was easy enough, he rotated between, gave his team a month or two off, and then sent them out to nibble their bites. The methods were classic, they worked.

Because these sheep had no shepherd. Trini's antecedents in history knew their place in the world and how to take it. He'd studied their methods, used them to keep the Roughnecks in cash and guns.

And now he was ready to take territory. It was time to rule.

****

Maria had sent the call for a meetup the old fashioned way. Via surface to air missile. The Roughneck drone wasn't yet much of a threat. Trini wanted the towns alive and paying tribute. So the drone had been surveillance only, so far.

She hoisted the rocket launcher and walked out of the back gate of the town. Let the seeker do its thing. Hit the button and watched the smoke plume.

Maria almost missed the smell. Early Martian morning meant mask and hood, so there was no bite of burning chemical whiff. Just the hunter drifting up, lazy ark a thousand meters above the drone, then hard fast fall and the slow expansion of charred burning metal.

She waited fifteen minutes. Long enough for the drone's operators to get the word out. Then she punched the button on the open radio. "I'll be ready to meet, one on one, tomorrow noon." And then the location.

****

The Roughnecks left their encampment well before dawn. Not their home base, that was a few hundred feet underground and a few hundred kilometers east. This place was a wide spot in the road the Roughnecks had taken as a forward base. No place to be except because they were going somewhere else.

"I count one hundred," the satellite team reported.

Team, Maria snorted. Randy, as many computers as he could stash in a container case, and strict rationing to no more than one Mountain Dew a day. "That's the whole crew," Maria answered.

The whole of the Roughneck team, one hundred to cover the twelve farm towns. Maria was impressed on one level. Two years and Trini hadn't lost any of them. "Why isn't he holding any of them back?" Randy wanted to know.

"Statement time," Maria answered. "He only wants to do this once." Move in, break the town, but only enough so that when the other eleven folded, this one could be rebuilt. "Gurlag Station is about to be an example to the rest."

****

Trace Young was a doorbreaker. She loved it when the plastic flashed, that was her moment. Inside doors, they took just one small charge, right there at the handle, or two at the hinges. Set, check, walk back and push the button. Flash.

Hard doors took more plastic. Always, even when Trace had the time to go after the frames or the walls instead. Four, she liked four charges for the hard steel doors, cross or x depending. Steel meant loud, too.

Big gates, fun, big gates meant shape charges. So, less of a flash, sound first here sometimes sparks from the steel as it vaporized.

Smoke, then, after flash or crump, sparks, sometimes even burning wood flying overhead. Shrapnel, even Trace couldn't guarantee no backblast and pieces flying around. But when the charges fired, and the smoke cloud formed, when her team hit their toes and pumped for the gap between the walls, Trace guaranteed them they'd be through.

Trace was a gate breaker. She knelt in front of this one. Gurlag Station, just before dawn, and Trace was ready to break the place open. Two years, she'd waited for this moment. "Not much here," she muttered to herself.

"Just bring it down clean," Trini had told her.

She'd bring it down, no worries. The gates were thin carbon steel, local manufacture, barely more than ornamental. Trace studied the flat plate; not pressure plates, airlocks, what were they for?

Before, Trace reminded herself. Now, the plate was for blowing up. Yesterday, the gates were for closing out what, precisely? The MRRCs are scientists, engineers, developers of tomorrow. Not exactly the type that wanted to close gates against people. Open borders and everything, so why this wall, and gate? Didn't matter, it was a gate in a wall and Trace loved it for existing.

Trace set three charges. Two on the north hinges, one on the bottom south hinge. So the steel would twist, just so, when she flashed the plastic. Out of the way, where her teammates wouldn't trip on their way through the door Trace readied to open.

Doorbreak teams are invulnerable after the plastic explodes. When Trace hits the button the doorbreakers are motion, muzzle discipline, crossfire hurricane coming through. The spear point jamming and running and getting the party rolling.

But that's after the charges go. Before, the doorbreakers can't quite help themselves. They crowd in where Trace will be when she walks back from the gate, kneels down, calls out "Fire in the hole" and hits the button. Her breakers wait there in a semi-circle, ready to pounce.

And paying no attention at all to what hides in the orange grove.

****

Maria had put what she could in the package. Three humans, her, Randy, and Grace to run the command center.

The rest, ammunition, drones, and the heavy stuff. Six miniguns, three twenty millimeter cannons, and two fourty mill grenade launchers. All of these designed to do two things.

Be controlled remotely by a bunch of geeks raised on video games.

And hide away safely in dugouts until they were called up. Gurlag Station had four gates in their walls. One at the orange grove, the main entrance. The other three at the other cardinal points. Maria had carefully orchestrated which of the farms she would draw the Roughnecks to.

The farm where she'd placed two miniguns at the front gate. One more at each of the other three gates. A grenade launcher at the back gate, two of the cannons at the side gates.

Ready to go, now. "Fire when ready," Maria told Grace.

Grace, from her server room three houses over, sent out a group message. "Weapons free, fire at will."

At each of the gates, where the Roughneck breakers were walking back from their charges and preparing to hear their own version of this command, two carefully placed guns rose from camouflaged holes. And began firing.

Short bursts; Maria had placed cameras and sensors liberally. So that Grace's fire team needed only approve each of the targets in turn.

Twenty Roughnecks had gone to each of the gates. Two squads; one forward, eager and ready to bust through the door, the second hanging back just a few meters, ready to follow. Every one of the Roughnecks knew what the hum of the miniguns meant.

They just didn't have the time to respond.

****

Trini had held back at the orange grove's entrance, with Robbi Xem and two reserve squads.

He sat in the truck, windows closed and the heater running. It was too damned cold, the electronics were good, and the MRRCs might have been smart but they were, after it was all said and done with, just farmers. So he enjoyed the hot coffee and waited for the breakers to report "Ready".

"Give them all the time they need," Trini said. "Fifteen minutes until dawn, we're good."

"Wish we still had the drone," Robbi replied.

Trini grunted his agreement. The climate control dome interfered with the drone's video, but the thermal imaging had worked well enough. He'd have been able to watch the teams settle into place. Only, MRRC had found help from somewhere.

Not a big help. Not enough to matter. Maria's headcount, one hundred Roughnecks, had been just about the right number. Except for the two informants Trini had left in place in the MRRC's central operating station. "They sent three people and a standard cargo lander, no more than eight, almost nine cubic meters."

"No heavy armor?" Trini had asked. That would have been trouble. If the Earth end of the MRRC had swallowed their pride enough to call in military, Trini needed to know.

Still not enough cargo to matter. It was a long throw from Earth to Mars, Trini had planned his strike to make sure there would be no real help. Eight cubic meters and a tank would be too big, far too heavy. Small arms.

A SAM, sure, but the drone had been a nice to have. They'd have MRRC's satellites soon enough. "No armor," the informant had relayed.

The miniguns opened up with an all mighty rip.

The orange groves, and the closed window glass, diffused the sound. "Huh," Trini said. "Ask them if they're..."

The thud from the cannons and the grenade launchers took a little longer to travel. The waves shook the truck. "Damnit, send them in."

"All teams, go, go, go," Robbi called over the radio.

No one answered.

A group of half a dozen small drones made their way out from Gurlag Station, in two parallel lines, well away from the crossfire ambush at the front gates. They fanned out, staying just below the tree canopy.

When all six had made their way to the edge of the grove, they rose in tandem, a hundred feet, then fanned out behind the trucks.

Inside the command truck, Trini made Robbi call the gate breakers again.

"Nothing, boss."

Trini had made it this far through one main trick.

Knowing when to listen to his instincts. And right now, his loudest instinct was the one screaming, "She's trapped you."

"Leave, now," Trini said.

Ten years working for Trini, and Robbi Xem had always made sure, whenever they went into action, that she was part of Trini's command team. She'd done that for one reason, and one reason only.

Survival. She didn't argue with Trini, she put the truck in gear and gassed it.

Maria waited until she saw which of the trucks reacted first. That was the one turning around. "Ok, the moving truck is the lead, highest priority target, but get them all."

"Go," Grace relayed to her teams.

The drones sent the video, the computers built the targets, the newly-minted fire team operators approved the order of fire.

And the last three weapons popped up from their hides. The trucks, and their passengers, didn't make it far.

****

Maria walked the ambush sites herself. She'd have brought Randy along, too, but he was on the other side of the planet.

She was stuck with Doctor Prabhu, Gurlag Station's head honcho. Maria did give him credit for coming. "This isn't the way your work is supposed to go, Doctor. You don't need to."

"I do, though," Prabhu answered. "The world has changed. Somehow. And I need to see where it happened."

Maria left the lead team, Trini's escape trucks, until last.

"You studied the man, you knew how he'd react," Prabhu said.

The pair had backed well away from the burning trucks after confirming the identities. Still close enough for the wash of heat on their faces and burning gasoline in their noses.

Maria shrugged; Prabhu didn't notice. He was chasing morbid thoughts. "It's what I do, Doctor. What will you tell the others?"

"That we need to find his informants. Before they find some way to continue this."

Maria didn't answer. She was grateful Prabhu had moved past the "How did this happen?" stage. She had never been very good at answering that question. It was enough that jackals existed, always ready to hunt for easy prey.

She settled for telling Prabhu that, sure, he'd probably be able to hunt down the Roughneck spies. But then she followed with the question that mattered most of all.

Would he, they, be ready? For the next round, and the round after that.

Approximately fifteen thousand souls called the Martian surface their home, on the day Maria Omar and Srini Prabhu counted dead Roughnecks.

Fifty thousand new immigrants were planned to arrive in the next five years.

"Some things are inevitable," Maria said, at last.

Prabhu shook his head, half disbelieving, half in worry of what would come, and followed Maria into the orange grove.