It was a rather disconcerting experience breathing unassisted on the Martian surface. Truth be told, my lungs were a cut above baseline, so I could have squeaked by on even thinner air, but it still felt weird to walk around on the red sands with an almost unfiltered sun above.

I trudged along the path to the hotel I'd booked, taking in the sights.

New Washington hugged the edges of the Hellas impact crater, a city still showing clear signs of its origin in the initial Mars-rush. Several of the older structures were still the gutted remains of Starships disassembled in place, their vast volumes easily converted into living spaces. The majority of the buildings were compactified regolith, stacked up in a manner reminiscent of the old Earth ecodomes that had had an abortive existence in the hippier parts of the US.

Still, you could see how wealth and investment had increased local ambitions, barring the prevalence of strongly tinted glass, some neighborhoods were indistinguishable from their counterparts back home.

There were plenty of inflatable habs that seemed straight out of old concepts I'd seen for Mars bases, back when SpaceX had yet to revolutionize the economics of space travel. Small, squat white structures that screamed utilitarianism and budgets of a trillion Old Dollars to keep half a dozen people alive on the surface for a mere year or two. These were mostly occupied by more would-be settlers, awaiting the completion of their homesteads or apartments.

The Firmament stretched overhead, shimmering and iridescent, a gossamer-thin layer of nanites just sufficient to maintain a significant pressure differential and absorb the worst of the solar UV. You could tell many citizens didn't have complete faith in its stability, with independent airlocks and emergency air stocks attached to most buildings.

New Washington was quiet, too quiet. I eventually realized that the thin atmosphere was attenuating sound, otherwise the sheer mass of heavy machinery passing through the streets should have been much more audible.

Only a fraction of its denizens went about barefaced, the majority had small rebreathers hooked up, largely for their comfort rather than strict necessity. A meteorological station nearby had its billboard broadcast the fact that air pressure was at levels almost equivalent to that on Mount Everest back home. You could breathe unassisted, but only after a period of painful acclimatization or RBC supplementation. I raised an eyebrow at the reported air quality index, there were levels of dust in the air that would have been considered mildly concerning. The billboard's AR tags apologized for the inconvenience, apparently there used to be a regular artificial rain shower to keep the dust down, but that had been on hold for a week or two due to severe water shortages.

Far more abundant than rainwater was the sheer amount of military presence in the city. Military drones buzzed overhead, and every street corner had an impromptu checkpoint thrown up, where bored Army soldiers waved annoyed citizens through. There was a clear tension about the place, USMA had always had a rebellious streak, and the locals weren't overly happy about the imposition of thousands of Terran Americans taking over their streets.

I spied several combat mechs trudging along the city limits, distant cousins to the ones operated by the Marines back in Cuba. They were complemented by Mars-adapted combat vehicles, ruggedized and with tracks largely replaced with large wheels for the uneven terrain.

I saw members of the Martian National Guard lurking in their barracks, looking ill at ease with the presence of their counterparts. I can't imagine that with the memories of the Secessions still fresh, that they were happy to be drafted up again.

Troop carriers were arriving by the hour, disgorging platoons right at the edge of the Firmament. Normally, USMA strongly preferred deploying autonomous combat units, but with a rogue Technomancer at bay, that was strongly inadvisable.

I arrived at the hotel, set next to a dry swimming pool. It seemed that austerity cuts had progressed that far. I hadn't brought much in the way of luggage with me, so I settled into my room and ordered some new clothes from an autoloom, and waited for my liaison to arrive.

I was surprised to see how heavily censored the local net was, I'd have expected word of the breakaway IM team to have spread by now, but barring pointed questions about the situation in the Intel fab (one of the largest employers in the region) and concerns about the new "military exercise", the average person hadn't cottoned on yet.

I settled in, and managed to watch a good chunk of a Martian soap opera that Anjana had always wanted me to see before I got a ping informing me that my contact had arrived.

I walked out to the hotel lobby just in time to see a weather beaten rover pull up, disgorging a small squad of Marines, escorting a woman in an exo.

She spotted me right away, and walked over. An AR tag informed me that she was indeed Captain Michelle Sanders, and if the particular pattern of redactions in her bio held up, likely CIA.

"Dr. Sen. I hope you've had an opportunity to take in the sights?" She asked me after a brisk handshake. Her hair was tied back in a bun, with the usual severe no-nonsense expression stamped on her face as was typical for women still struggling to stand out in a male-dominated field. The whole thing just made me nostalgic.

"Not as much as I'd like, but I'm sure there'll be time afterwards. Is this a good place to talk?"

She shook her head and beckoned me to the vehicle. "I was headed to FOB Achilles anyway, that's where we're staging before the hunt." She informed me as I clambered in.

"You guys didn't begin yet? That's surprising." I said, trying to get comfy in the cramped confines.

"The sims and precogs strongly suggested that we build up force before a confrontation. We've been doing drone sweeps and orbital recon, but the sandstorms have been interfering with that as I'm sure you can imagine." I nodded assent, and sat back in silence as the vehicle throttled up once we cleared the city limits.

We passed through a series of gates set in the Firmament, each level presaging a drop in air pressure and terraforming progress. By the third gate, we were down to the level pretty much expected for Hellas, set in a depression in the Martian surface as it was.

This far out from New Washington, there was little to see barring a few farmsteads embedded in the dirt, or supply depots that were currently servicing drone ships.

A few settlers in their environment suits watched us with suspicion as we drove by, but other than that, it was a quiet journey right until the forward operating base was in sight.

Achilles had been constructed adjacent to the Intel fab, and was currently swarming with troops. I spotted half a dozen dropships still loitering, and there hadn't been time to erect a larger biodome, leaving anyone venturing outside forced to resort to their suits.

We were buzzed through the gate, and I was practically overcome by nostalgia from my own short stint in the Army. I checked, but none of the new jarheads had settled into the place enough to acquire their dependas or a 2039 Mustang X at 30% rates.

It was a mixed deployment, even the originally blurry line between Army and Marines back in the day had largely faded, and last time I checked there weren't any oceans on Mars. It seemed that USMA had been handed anyone they could grab, regardless of whether they were long-term garrison or troops meant to be sent to the far reaches of the system or even AC.

We disembarked after another set of vehicle airlocks, and Sanders had me check in first.

She'd called ahead, because the CO of the base, a Colonel Wallace, was there to greet me as I shook off the worst of the Martian dust.

"Dr. Sen. Says here you were ex-Army?" He asked, presumably referring to personal AR tags I couldn't view.

"I left at the onset of the Secession. Wasn't there very long." I replied.

His lips curled up in disapproval even as the rest of his face was covered by a mirrored visor. "A conscientious objector then? And here you are, working for the UN, committing acts of violence on the regular."

I shrugged. "You misunderstand the reasons I left, it's not that I'm ideologically opposed to violence, I just didn't find the reasons compelling anymore."

"And yet you surrendered your citizenship. Why didn't you join Cali or the Texans?" He asked.

"Let's just say that the moral high ground was lacking in that conflict. I'm happy enough being a UN citizen." I told him, tired of this line of questioning.

It was this point that an observer lumbered over, a cyborg almost as tall as the Director, but built far more sturdy. He more resembled a walking piece of industrial equipment than a human, and all that was missing was hazard lights and industrial stripes.

"You're both new here, so I'll let it pass for once Colonel, but I strongly advice that you don't bring up the Secession anywhere the locals can hear you. On Mars, we all throw together or die alone, and nobody wants to dig up old squabbles when they buy their water from a Texan and their food from a Californian." He spoke, voice surprisingly normal despite his bulky form. To his credit, the Colonel seemed to take his advice to heart.

The man turned towards me, and offered me an industrial gauntlet to shake. "I'm Administrator Shen, at your service. Here to represent the interests of USMA."

"One would hope that the interests of the continental US and those of its colonies would be aligned, or is that too much to ask Administrator?" Michelle asked, hinting at an ongoing squabble.

"You've yet to convince me of that Captain Sanders." Shen demurred. I was willing to bet he didn't need an environment suit to go gallivanting about on the surface.

"Let's have this argument another time. I think recent events take precedence." The Colonel stated, cutting off the argument. I joined them in a short walk into a newly appointed command center. The banks of projections and displays flickered off when they detected me, prompting an exasperated Sanders to wave her hands and override them.

I settled into one of the chairs, as did all the others except Shen, who simply locked his joints in place.

"Dr. Sen, have you been fully briefed?" Colonel Wallace asked. In response, Sanders shook her head. "No sir, he's only had the initial dossier, I was too busy to make the initial pickup at the Spire, and when he made it to New Washington, I decided it was best to minimize the odds of a leak and just brought him over directly."

This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

"Very well then. DeGrassi, send him the raw specs. I'll grant the clearances necessary." He said to a hovering officer. In response, I was bombarded with more files, something I set my lace to compressing while I followed the conversation.

"Right. While I don't expect that you'll see any action, Doctor, you can't fulfill your advisory role without being in the know. You brought Ouranos and that Aerokinetic in didn't you? Little Jupiter, if memory serves."

I nodded. "I'm a generalist, but I do have experience when it comes to wrangling supes. I was under the impression that we plan to apprehend BULWARK alive?"

Wallace grimaced, "You know that's easier said than done, no matter what SecDef says. If it was just a bunch of runaways, that's one thing, but all evidence suggests that both they and the local insurgents have Centaur backing. That makes this a capital-E Emergency."

"How did they break free anyway? I was under the impression that they had the standard leashes." I asked.

Sanders was the one to chime in. "BULWARK had an unusually high proportion of metahumans who were resistant to the standard shackles or reconditioning. Florette wasn't actually indentured, strictly speaking, she was initially assigned with them out of convenience. As for the sordid details, you have the ability to overclock and view them don't you Doctor? I'd rather not bog down the planning."

I agreed, and began running hot. Perceptual time slowed, and while I couldn't run this fast for very long in real time, it was enough to check the gory details.

Mars employed some of the highest concentration of supes in Sol, almost every nation made significant use of their labor to expedite terraforming or expand their infrastructure. I still held a dim view of this whole terraforming business, but that's a rant for another time.

There were plenty of civilian metahumans living normal lives as colonists, or contractually employed by one corporation or another, but most of the Class 3s and above were here at the behest of a government of some kind. USMA, like the Chinese, still made heavy use of indentured labor, finding it considerably cheaper than paying free-market wages, especially when the alternative for most supes was a one-way ticket to AC. I knew this was a hot button topic, most of the locals still held firm to the old libertarian dreams back from when corporations still ran Mars, and indentured servitude (let's just call it slavery, I won't tell if you don't) enraged no small fraction of the population.

USMA had grappled with dissident activity for years now, with several organizations of varying degrees of metahuman involvement decrying the practise, and a few even taking up arms. Efforts to completely stamp out this sentiment was stymied by Texan and Cali agitators, who offered safe haven and even tacit support, and the US had yet to credibly pin them when it came to outright illegalities like arms-dealing.

The UN General Assembly still held heated debates over the rights of colonists to willingly secede or join other polities, but nobody had been able to crack down on the US banning metahumans from renouncing citizenship or emigrating. We'd tried that, back when Anjana still lived with me, but the Draft had come for her all the same. For once, China saw eye to eye, they had their own issues with people trying to flee repression.

I looked at the specs for the fab, I wasn't previously aware how critical even outdated tech like angstrom level semiconductor chips were, apparently they could be ruggedized far better than even the most stable quantum systems. Ever since the Winters Admin, efforts had been made to get as much chip production off world as possible. Microgravity certainly benefited the production of the extremely pure and defect-free crystals needed for optoelectronics and some forms of quantum computing, but the sheer bulk and need for raw resources such as ultrapure water made fabs on the ground indispensable.

I examined the actions of BULWARK in more detail. As was standard for IMs, attempts had been made to prevent them from breaking their bonds. There were the usual reconditioning techniques (of dubious utility if you ask me), and far more effective, regular application of latent basilisks and even explosive chipping for the more dangerous supes.

Unfortunately for their jailors, Chimera and Machina had both shown immunity to the latter, leaving only the use of parrots to ensure compliance. As far as I could tell, Florette had been a volunteer, and didn't have any serious shackles in the first place.

As was customary, they'd been assigned a Phosphorus-class AGI as their minder, a design that was nominally hardened against both metahuman powers and potential Centauri malware. The implementation details were beyond me, though at the most basic level, the AI ran on multiple independent delocalized cores that performed regular audits of each other and had their own checksums to prevent tampering.

Members of BULWARK had either been working on expanding the fab or the Firmament itself, at least until the attacks on the two Navy hydrokinetics. They'd been recalled, and put under surveillance with slap drones, only allowed to work under strict supervision.

At least that was the plan, about 24 hours before I was initially called up, there had been sporadic outages in the USMA Panopticon. Several of the Watchers had thrown unexpected exceptions, and since USMA was bound by the Turing Accords, they had to wait a short while before certified Auditors could arrive and debug their systems.

When the audit was about to conclude, multiple faults and sensory hallucinations were found in the Phosphorus, revealing an incredibly intricate adversarial attack on its senses, with a level of sophistication that screamed Centauri. Several hours if not days of surveillance footage was found to be falsified, and when human investigators trekked out to the distant autonomous base where BULWARK had been domiciled, they found them long gone. At which point buried explosives killed the lot of them.

USMA went into a tizzy, drawing up their field assets to track down the escapees, only to discover that Machina had taken the majority of the bots and drones in Hellas with him. Sandstorms had hindered orbital surveillance, and seismographs had picked up unnatural tremors indicative of large-scale underground excavation, courtesy of Silt. They'd gone to ground, quite literally in this case, beneath hundreds of meters of Martian dunes, likely keying in to hidden tunnel networks and subsurface caverns.

Review of surveillance footage showed individuals provisionally identified as Machina and Backhand interacting with unknown civilians, likely part of insurgent groups. We didn't know what kind of assets or backing they had, but the fact that the supes had managed to unshackle themselves was a clear hint of collusion.

I was still running hot, the others moving as if they were wading through tar, when the electro-opaque windows blacked out, hardly milliseconds after a flash of blinding light.

The building shook like we were held in the fist of an angry god, a shockwave frosting over the diamondoid glass as everyone present was thrown from their seats, barring the Administrator who was barely dislodged.

My sense of time began to speed up ever so quickly, leaving me with scant time to feel myself tumble through the air as emergency systems began to shockproof my vulnerable flesh-brain. I was running at 1x by the time I slammed into the wall, the impact rattling my skull in its metal cage. Fire suppression systems and sealant foam sprayed from the ceiling, striving to close the thousands of fractures in the windows and walls that let precious amounts of oxygen leak out into the wastes.

It was eerily quiet, we'd partially decompressed already, so the thin sound of the klaxons blaring sounded distant. There was a soft pattering, that I almost mistook for rainfall before realizing it was dirt and debris raining down on the ruined building.

You could tell how extensively augmented the others were from their response time. The Administrator and Wallace were already up, the former pulling open a malfunctioning airlock door so we could make our way out, the latter screaming orders and wading through smoking monitor banks to check on those more exposed to the blast. Sanders had barely regained her bearing, eyes still glazed in the tell-tale sign of a concussion.

I limped over to help Shen with the door. The man grunted assent as I positioned myself to pull on the other side, and together we managed to peel it back against the grinding of stuck motors. It was pure chaos outside, the part of the base closer to the epicenter of the detonation was a smoldering ruin. We'd been lucky that the command center was nestled inside a cluster of prefabs that had taken the brunt of the explosion. Roofs had been peeled off, less reinforced windows blown out, dozens of vehicles lay overturned, and fires gamely fought against the lack of oxygen before dying down.

A mushroom cloud rose up into the leaden sky, originating from the fab I hadn't had the opportunity to get acquainted with. Environmental sensors screamed about toxic contaminants, stocks of who-knows-what liberated from the destroyed complex.

Shell shocked soldiers stumbled around, and NCOs struggled to bring their stentorian voices to bear as comms malfunctioned. A battered dropship struggled to remain airborne before its engines gave up, and then slammed into a rocky outcropping, adding another smaller mushroom cloud to complement its bigger brother.

I was lucky that my systems had been EMP-hardened, but I still saw an uncomfortable amount of artifacting in my field of vision, and the novel sensation of my nanite dispensary sending out swarms of tumor suppressors to augment my immune system.

I was surprised that there was any EMP to speak of, Mars's core had solidified billions of years ago, but then I recalled the artificial magnetosphere they'd erected, likely exacerbating the problem. I'd seen enough nuclear detonations by this point that I could eyeball the blast, it had been a shallow subsurface bomb, likely less than a megaton in total yield. Even then, I had the thin Martian atmosphere to thank for me being alive, on Earth the shockwave would have wiped me off the map from this distance.

I flexed my gummed up joints, and then clambered back in to help the grunts digging their trapped comrades out from underneath the rubble. Looks like I'd be briefed another day.