Conflict On Mars Read online

  Contents

  Conflict On Mars

  Copyright

  Book Club Teaser

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Exclusive Content

  About the Author

  Conflict On Mars

  By

  C.P. MacDonald

  Copyright © 2019 C.P. MacDonald

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by electronic or mechanical means,

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  Except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  P.O. Box 314

  Paris, Tn 38242

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  www.cpmacdonaldauthor.com

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  Chapter 1

  The old and patched spaceship, an antique Solar System Authority Corvette, sat in the center of the crater in the middle of nowhere on Mars. The ship’s smooth lines, marred by mismatched hull plates and scratched from years of service, showed grace despite her age. And her two large engine pods implied she still had plenty of speed and power.

  Captain Calin Aku guided the power jack by remote up the loading ramp and into the cargo hold of the ship, the Sea Rover. Bottles of moonshine clinked and rattled in their crates on top of the jack. He slipped the pallet of ‘shine into the last open spot and looked around at the full hold. This would be a good run, he thought. Nothing like a cargo hold full of illegal booze to give a smuggler a sense of job satisfaction. He stomped the red Mars dust off of his boots and removed his dust mask to take a deep breath of the clean air onboard. His fingers scratched his dark stubble where the mask had pressed, then ran over his buzz cut to wipe the dust away. It had only been a few years since the Martian terraforming had progressed to the point of breathable air in the lower altitudes. But it would be generations before enough wild vegetation spread across the surface to prevent the constant dust that blew through the air. After another deep breath of clean air he slipped the dust mask back over his face and sauntered down the ramp to rejoin his copilot Shona outside at the distillery.

  To call it a distillery was being formal. One of the more powerful Mars Cartels owned and operated the illegal still, located several hundred kilometers outside of Mars City. This Cartel had hired Calin and his ship to smuggle moonshine into Mars City, to their underground bars and distributors. The import of legal alcohol all the way from Earth got expensive as hell. But since genetically modified corn grew like a weed on Mars the first thing the colonist did, of course, was to make moonshine.

  Shona turned as he approached and held up a crypto-disk with a wink. He didn’t expect any trouble from the operator, they have been doing this run every month for the past year. And it turned out Shona had a real knack for dealing with their contacts and keeping their dealings running smoothly. Her soft voice could make even the most hardened criminal smile. And he had to admit her looks didn’t hurt the negotiations either. Especially out here on Mars her pale skin and long black hair, habitually pulled back into a ponytail, stood her out from the crowd and captivated most men's attention.

  He hitched his blaster on his hip to a more comfortable position and gave an uneasy glance up. The distillery was dug into the side of one of the many craters that pockmarked the surface of Mars, effectively undetectable by anyone on the surface unless they knew where to look. But with his ship parked out in the open in the center of the crater an orbiting satellite overhead could easily spot them. Although he knew they had a 30 minute window before a satellite passed overhead, it was part of his job to be nervous.

  “Ready to load up?” he asked Shona as she joined him next to the ship.

  “Yup, we’re done here. No surprises, as usual. And he gave us a present.” She held up a bottle of clear liquid. “The operator had an extra bottle that wouldn’t fit in the crate.”

  Calin grinned and laughed, “First time we’ve ever gotten a tip.”

  The roar from a small dart shaped ship that flew above their heads and across the crater interrupted her reply. The whine of its engines changed pitch as it slowed down and looped back around.

  “Shit!” exclaimed Calin. “That had Dothrok markings!” The Dothroks were a competing cartel in the moonshine business, and they'd taken it personally when he refused to smuggle for them. The dart ship looked like a cobbled together piece of junk, painted in the blue and white motif of the Dothrock Cartel. Anywhere else in the Solar System it would be moronic to advertise your illegal affiliation, but here on Mars the law enforcement was considerably lacking.

  He grabbed the bottle of moonshine from Shona with his right arm. Even though it looked like a regular arm, it was a cybernetic. He used its enhanced strength to throw the bottle far up in the air. When the it reached a height of a hundred meters up, directly in the dart ship's path, his contact lens targeting reticle locked onto the tumbling bottle. The lens fed the targeting solution to his cybernetic arm and in one smooth motion he snapped his blaster out of its holster and fired, the extremely flammable 'shine exploded into a large fireball that filled the sky above the crater. The incoming Dothrak ship narrowly avoided flying through the flames.

  “Time to leave!” he commanded as they both ran up the ramp into the Sea Rover.

  “Rose! Raise the ramp and start the engines!” he ordered as they ran down the central corridor to the cockpit. Rose, the ship’s Artificial Intelligence, spun up the engines before they were buckled into their pilot chairs.

  He pulled back on the control stick to raise the ship out of the crater. The engine pods, pointed downward, blasted a cloud of dust into the air which engulfed the ship as it lifted off. He threw the engine throttles forward to rotate the engines to flight mode, and they blasted out of the cloud at high speed, the dust swirled into their wake. Above them the Dothrok ship circled back around and locked on to them in pursuit.

  “Jam their transmissions.” Calin told Shona in her copilot seat beside him. “I'll see if I can lose him in that mountain range to the north.”

  She replied "Aye, Captain," and tapped commands on her console to sent out a jamming signal to prevent the enemy ship for radioing for backup or their location.

  From what he could tell from its quick flyover back at the crater, the Dothrok ship was only a surface ship. It had a limited flight ceiling of a thousand meters in the thin atmosphere of Mars. Calin could fly his ship beyond that and into orbit, but he did not want to risk showing up on planetary radar and orbital sensors while loaded with illegal moonshine. The Sea Rover had stealth tech, but it only worked in certain conditions and at a distance. So his only option at the moment was to try and outfly their friend behind them. Once they entered the mountain range he flew down into the valleys between t
he peaks at a crazy speed.

  Shona gripped her armrests tightly and muttered, “I hate it when you fly like this.”

  “Better than getting shot.” He said through clenched teeth and weaved the ship around mountain peaks and through canyons. The pilot pursuing them was decent, he would give them that. Despite flying a piece of junk, they had managed keep up with him so far.

  Rose, from a speaker above their heads, warned, “Category 5 dust storm Northwest 3 clicks and closing.”

  A big grin broke across Calin’s face and he flipped the ship over to fly straight at the incoming dust storm, “All right asshole, let’s see what you got,” and he dove the ship straight into the rolling cloud of dust. He swiped up from his console to overlay the radar data on the forward window, creating a virtual rendering of the mountain range now hidden by the dust storm. Calin darted the ship back and forth to avoid the rock pillars and mountains in the blinding dust storm. The pursing ship, without the proper radar display to see through the storm, flew into the side of a mountain. He grinned to himself and began a gentle climb up out of the storm, but almost missed an elevation warning as a cliff face appeared out of the dust directly in front of him. He jerked back on the stick and tried to raise the ship above the cliff face. And he almost made it. But with a loud screech, they both heard and felt the bottom of the ship scrap the boulders on top of the cliff. Calin ignore the raised eyebrow on Shona's face and glanced at the readout panel, then exhaled a sigh of relief. “No warning or errors, just scrapped a little paint is all. I’m sure we can get Dean to patch her up in no time.”

  Dean, his best friend and former engineer, had gone legit last year and opened an engineering consulting shop in Mars City. Mouse, the hacker that had tagged along with them from Earth, had joined Dean as a partner. Their particular talents of ad hoc engineering had a big demand in the up and growing Martian colony.

  He turned the controls over to Shona and said, “Head for the delivery point. We can hit Dean up for repairs after we drop off this shipment."

  Shona grabbed the controls and aimed the ship toward Mars City, "It’ll be good to see Dean and Mouse again, its been ages."

  He nodded in agreement from the cockpit doorway, "Yup, it sure will. We could use some R & R with friends. I’ll go make sure the ‘shine is still secure in the hold, let me know when we get to Mars City.”

  Chapter 2

  The Dive Bar, a large pub inside a converted warehouse in Mars City, was so-named due to its general clientele. It was a bar popular with the miners who worked in the Deep Mine outside the city. The Deep Mine drilled for water deep underground, so the miners were commonly called divers. Calin always thought The Dive Bar was a terrible name, but no one asked him. It was his job to deliver the moonshine and not get caught, not critique the bar’s branding. He stood on the roof of the warehouse and watched the cargo bots unload the crates of moonshine from his ship. Under Shona’s direction, the bots loaded the crates onto a freight elevator to take down to the bar below.

  He looked at his ship, watched his copilot direct the bots, then looked at the surrounding city. He couldn’t help but appreciate the improvement in his life over the past year. Before coming to Mars he smuggled weapons, people, and even food from the cesspool of Earth to the Moon. Back then he always had to be on guard from the Planetary Patrol Division and local law enforcement. But after a strange turn of events that led to him actually helping the Planetary Patrol Division take down a corrupt Governor, the PPD had set him and his crew up here on the main colony of Mars, Mars City. The PPD tried to sell it as an interplanetary Witness Protection move and a thank you, but he couldn’t help but think a small part was to get him far away.

  He took a deep breath and rubbed the marks on his face where the dust mask had pressed. Thankfully, the founders of Mars City had the foresight to develop and build the city in the Valles Marineris canyon. The canyon was deep enough to shield from the surface winds that kicked up the dust, so down inside the canyon the colonists didn't need a dust mask to breathe.

  Stumpy, the bar owner, finished counting the crates of ‘shine going into his storeroom and stomped over to Calin. He was as wide as he was short, and every inch of him heavy corded muscle. Short-tempered, short statured, and short on words, he was well known for running a tight bar and did not tolerate violence, unless he was the one committing it. Calin had heard tales of Stumpy picking up grown men with one hand and bouncing them out the door himself.

  Calin snatched the crypto-disk out of the air when Stumpy flicked it toward him and nodded his appreciation. Per their arrangements, the still operator paid Calin half on pickup, and he got paid the other half when he delivered. He should come out in the black on this run, even after he convinces Dean to repair the scrape on the belly of the ship.

  Calin gave the crypto-disk readout a casual glance before he slipped it into his pocket, then paused in confusion. He casually placed a hand on his pistol and held up the disk with the other. He called out to Stumpy, “Hey! Your short!” and did his best to suppress a grin at the not so hidden pun.

  With a growl Stumpy replied. “You got spotted by the Dothrok! And you destroyed one of their ships. Be glad I’m paying you at all!” and he turned around to head inside.

  Stumpy came to an abrupt halt when a blaster bolt hit the door 6 inches above his hand. He turned to glare at Calin and growled, “Did you shoot at me? In my own bar?”

  “I shot in your direction, if I had shot at you, you would be dead. Now, about the rest of my pay?” Calin replied and held up the crypto-disk.

  Several of Stumpy’s bouncers ran out the door from below and gathered up on each side of their boss, weapons drawn.

  Alerted by the sound of blaster fire Shona jogged over to Calin, “Trouble, Captain?” she asked.

  He held up the disk between his fingers and summarized the situation, “We got shorted, Stumpy here is blaming us for crashing the Dothrok ship.”

  Shona tilted her chin down and glared over at Stumpy and his bouncers, “Oh, is he now?”. She pulled her two pistols out of their holsters with her fingers on the triggers. Even though she didn’t have a cybernetic arm with enhanced targeting like Calin, he had worked with her over the past year until she was a deadly shot with either gun. He thought the dual pistols was overkill, but she argued as a woman she needed to portray a more intimidating image in a fight.

  He turned back to Stumpy and tried to calm the situation down, “Dude, just pay us our regular fee so we both get on with our day, all right? It’s not my fault that Dothrok ship showed up. I assure you it wasn’t me that led them there, it had to be the operator that tipped them off.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Stumpy replied. “The Cartel has already dealt with the operator. The new one will take security a lot more serious.”

  “So you are justifying shortening my pay how?” Calin asked with a frown.

  “To smooth things out with the Dothrok Cartel, to prevent a war, we have to replace the ship you caused to crash.” Stumpy nodded at the crypto-disk, “So part of that comes out of your pay.”

  “Caused? How is it my fault their pilot can’t fly worth a damn?”

  Shona, impatient with the conversation, flipped the safeties off on her pistols and snapped, “Pay up!” as she took a step forward.

  Calin moved in front of Shona and held up his hand to stop her. “Hey! Relax! Let me work this out, OK?”

  Shona was a great partner and copilot to have, but she tended to be a little too eager for a fight sometimes. Part of her value as a crewmember and a friend was her fire and grit, but sometimes she had to be restrained. And he had to admit, it was that fire that attracted him sometimes.

  While Calin was busy restraining Shona, he didn’t see a bouncer climb out of a roof hatch behind him and point a pistol at his head.

  Only when he heard a ZAP! and the body of the bouncer hit the floor with a thud did he spin around. He lined up his blaster on the figure that walked out of the dark freight elevator,
his finger on the trigger. But as the mystery guest stepped into the light, Calin lowered his gun and exclaimed, “Nilos!”

  Shona kept her guns trained on Stumpy and his guards, but turned her head and shouted with a grin, “Hey Nilos! Long time!” She and Nilos had always gotten along well, so she was happy to see their old friend.

  “It’s nice to see you old buddy, but this is not the best of times, as you can see,” said Calin. He wagged his pistol he had pointed back at Stumpy. "My friend here thought he had the right to renegotiate my fee, after I’ve done the job."

  Nilos nodded at the body of the bouncer on the floor, “By the way, you’re welcome. As for your negotiations, maybe I can expedite the process. We need to talk, and I don’t have a lot of time.” He crossed the roof to Stumpy and his entourage, reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out his Planetary Patrol Division badge. He held it up directly in front of the bar owners face, “I highly suggest you pay my friend here his full fee. I can have this place shut down in 10 minutes with one call. Understand?”

  Grumpily, Stumpy nodded in agreement. Calin handed him the crypto-disk so he could input the full, correct amount for the job.

  Stumpy handed the disk back and growled, “There will be hell to pay for this.”

  Calin shrugged and waved his hand dismissively at Stumpy's threat, “Yeah yeah. See you next month.”

  He turned to Nilos and grabbed his hand to give it a hardy shake, "What are you doing here? We haven't seen you since you shipped us out here." Calin was happy to see Nilos but hesitant at the same time. Nilos was the one who had arranged for him and his crew to be shipped out to Mars in exchange for helping the PPD back on Luna. More specifically, for helping a secret organization inside the PPD. Every day Calin wondered how the citizens of the Solar System would react to what he and his crew had found out a year ago about Nilos and his group inside the government. What would people do if they knew the descendants of the mythical lost city of Atlantis lived among them in secret? The Atlanteans helped the human race where they could but also hid the true history of Earth from everyone to protect their secrets. Calin had always imagined some would reject the Atlanteans while others would worship them.