‘But on Mars, with its one-third gravity,’ Stef said, ‘you can grow as tall as this. It must have been force-grown.’
‘Yes. Earthshine has been established on Mars for some years, but not that long. Force-grown and encased in some kind of enclosure to retain air and moisture. We don’t have good enough images to determine the species yet. An impressive stunt.’
Beth leaned closer to see. Beth and Mardina had been quiet since Penny’s brief visit to the bridge. Only Ari had been quieter, Stef thought; the druidh had not spoken a word.
Now Beth asked, ‘But why would Earthshine grow a tree on Mars? It doesn’t seem to fit.’
‘It’s for his allies,’ said Kerys grimly. The nauarchus had also been quiet during this voyage on a Roman ship, Stef had observed, but she had watched and listened, evidently filing everything away. Now she pointed to another shadow traced on the Martian ground, in a second compound some distance to the north of the tree. ‘That is a ship – a ship of the Brikanti Navy, called the Celyn. Earthshine has at least one ship’s company’s worth of support on the ground with him, and most of them drawn from Brikanti ranks.’ She glared at Quintus, defiant. ‘We don’t have time for blame games. This monster, this Earthshine, was after all found, fortuitously, by a Brikanti ship – my ship, all those years ago. How I wish now we had simply thrown the boxes that sustain him out into the Skull of Ymir! Even if we had preserved the rest of you.’
‘Thanks,’ Beth said drily.
‘It was natural that as he began to lay out his schemes for the exploitation of other worlds, he would gather support from the Brikanti government at first. We believed we could control the situation – control him.’
‘Well, you were wrong,’ Quintus said.
‘It began with his subversion of the crews of the ships we sent out to support him. He persuaded them to betray their nation – to follow dreams of greed and power, under him. That is what we believe happened. But they are Brikanti.’
‘Ah,’ Stef said. ‘I’ve been reading up on this during the journey home. To the druidh, in the Brikanti tradition, the tree is a sacred symbol.’
Ari spoke now. ‘Whatever other projects they are pursuing, they will have relished the chance to nurture what may still be the only tree on Mars, and certainly the greatest – greater than any on Earth. Even Christians would respond to the symbol. You Romans nailed Christ to a wooden cross, and His blood nurtured the roots of the World Tree Yggdrasil, which—’
‘Yes, yes,’ Quintus said impatiently. ‘Hardly the time for a theology lesson, druidh. So – the holy tree. And around it, as you see, a series of domed habitats that we believe are residences for Earthshine’s human supporters, or most of them, along with workshops, stores. To the north, and a reasonably safe distance away from the tree, you see the Celyn standing, and accompanying support facilities for a kernel craft. Room for others to land too, and we have seen craft shuttling between Mars and Höd in the last few years.’
‘Relief crews,’ Kerys said. ‘There are teams working up on Höd, manning the kernel banks there. They seem to be swapped every month or so.’
Quintus said, ‘And we believe that Earthshine himself, or at least the gadgets that support him, must be here.’ And he pointed to the third complex of buildings.
Stef leaned down to see better, silently cursing ageing eyes. ‘More domes. But the heart of it is that tilted rectangular slab.’
‘A reinforced bunker,’ Quintus said. ‘A familiar design. Hardened against our ground-based weapons, hardened even against any rock pushed from orbit short of anything massive enough to destroy the whole site altogether. No doubt Earthshine is down in a hole deeper still.’
Stef grunted. ‘That would be characteristic. He likes his holes in the ground, the bunkers he shared with his Core AI brothers back on Earth, his hold-out under Paris, his pit under Hellas …’
Beth said, ‘But this whole planet is going to be hammered by Ceres. I can’t believe he’s going to stay around for that. He’ll want to survive, whatever he’s trying to do here. Just as he got away from Earth before the Nail fell.’
‘Right,’ said Stef. ‘And if Ceres is going to fall within twelve hours, his only way out of here will be aboard that ship, the Celyn.’
‘Very well,’ Quintus said. ‘That is the configuration on the ground. Now I want a tactical plan. It would not be hard to be destructive. Frankly, we could go in with our kernel drive blazing, and melt all of this back into the Martian sand.’
‘But we’re not here to destroy,’ the ColU said. ‘We need to get to Earthshine. The purpose is to deflect Ceres, if it is still possible.’
‘Our foes know that too,’ said Quintus. ‘So they will be waiting for us to attempt a softer approach, perhaps a landing. They may have missiles, even kernel-driven, to shoot us down as we approach, as is standard protection for our great cities on Terra—’
‘Maybe not,’ put in Movena, Quintus’s trierarchus. ‘The scans we’ve been able to do of the surface would show us any such missiles. There are kernels here –’ She pointed. ‘Under Earthshine’s bunker. But they aren’t a configuration we recognise – they certainly aren’t being used in missiles.’
‘This conversation is inefficient.’ Ari Guthfrithson stepped forward now, cold, clinical. ‘We must focus on the goal and work backwards. We have to get to Earthshine; we have to persuade him to deflect Höd, if this is still possible. Well, then. You have brought my family here—’
Beth snarled, ‘We are not your family.’ Mardina clutched her arm.
Ari ignored her. He tapped the image of the bunker. ‘You must land us here. The three of us, mother, father, daughter – his granddaughter and great-granddaughter. And the farm machine, one mechanical mind that may be able to communicate with another.’
‘Thanks for thinking of me,’ the ColU said drily.
‘Earthshine will take us into his bunker. He has saved you before, Beth, you know that, when he brought you on the Tatania, out of the bonfire of your Earth. He will save you again today. For I am sure you are right. He will have no ambition to be extinguished. And he will be motivated to take us with him, wherever he goes.’
Quintus prompted, ‘And once you’re down there …’
‘We try to persuade him to stop. But this will rely on us getting to that bunker unhindered.’
Quintus nodded. ‘We have yachts; we can get you down there. But in the meantime we’ll have to draw off the bulk of whatever forces he has. We have a testudo that we can have some fun with on the ground …’ He pulled his lip. ‘Earthshine’s forces will be pretty well dug in.’
Movena smiled. ‘But these are my people. Brikanti. I know how they think. And I have a suggestion to divert their attention.’
‘Which is?’
‘They have to protect two of their three facilities on the ground, the launch site, the bunker. So, attack the third.’
Quintus smiled. ‘Ah. The big tree. The Brikanti will be drawn away to save that, being the superstitious barbarians they are.’
Kerys, visibly dismissing the insult, shook her head. ‘These are standard plays. We need something more. A backup plan. Even if Beth Eden Jones and the others get through to Earthshine, there’s no guarantee he will listen to them. We need to think about other ways of stopping Höd.’
‘Such as?’ Quintus asked. ‘There are troops on Höd itself; they will no doubt stay up there to defend it until the last possible minute. If we try to approach in the Malleus they will blast us out of the sky – or do their level best.’
‘True. So we don’t approach in the Malleus. Or rather, I don’t.’