At the height of the WorldWeb civilization, the Hegemony’s military wing, FORCE, had brought Farcasters to the red world and honeycombed habitats into much of the huge volcano, Mons Olympus, for their Olympic Command School. Mars’s isolation from Web trade and culture served FORCE well and the planet had remained a military base until the Fall of the Farcasters. In the century after the Fall, remnants of FORCE had formed a vicious military dictatorship—the so-called Martian War Machine—which extended its rule as far as the Centauri and Tau Ceti systems and might well have become the seed crystal for a second interstellar empire if the Pax had not arrived, quickly subduing the Martian fleets, driving the War Machine back to Old Earth System, sending the dispossessed warlords into hiding among the ruins of FORCE orbital bases and in the old tunnels under Mons Olympus, replacing the War Machine’s presence in Old Earth System with Pax Fleet bases in the asteroid belt and among the Jovian moons, and finally sending missionaries and Pax governors to pacified Mars.

There was little left on the rust world for the missionaries to convert or the Pax administrators to govern. The air had grown thin and cold; the large cities had been plundered and abandoned; the great simoom pole-to-pole dust storms had reappeared; plague and pestilence stalked the icy deserts, decimating—or worse—the last bands of nomads descended from the once noble race of Martians; and little more than spindly brandy cactus now grew where the great apple orchards and fields of bradberries had long ago flourished.

Oddly, it was the downtrodden and much-abused Palestinians on the frozen Tharsis Plateau whose society had survived and thrived. The orphans of the ancient Nuclear Diaspora of A.D. 2038 had adapted to Mars’s rough ways and extended their Islamic culture to many of the planet’s surviving nomad tribes and free city-states by the time the Pax missionaries arrived. Refusing to submit to the ruthless Martian War Machine for more than a century, the New Palestinians showed no interest now in surrendering autonomy to the Church.

It was precisely in the Palestinian capital of Arafat-kaffiyeh that the Shrike had appeared and slaughtered hundreds… perhaps thousands… of people. The Grand Inquisitor conferred with his aides, met with Pax Fleet commanders in orbit, and landed in force. The main spaceport in the capital of St. Malachy was shut down to all but military traffic—no great loss, since no merchant or passenger dropships were scheduled in for a Martian week. Six assault boats preceded the Grand Inquisitor’s dropship, and by the time Cardinal Mustafa set foot to Martian soil—or Pax tarmac, to be precise—a hundred Swiss Guard and Holy Office commandos had ringed the spaceport. The official Martian welcoming delegation, including Archbishop Robeson and Governor Clare Palo, were searched and sonic-probed before being allowed clearance.

From the spaceport, the Holy Office group was whisked via groundcar shuttles through decaying streets to the new Pax-built Governor’s Palace on the outskirts of St. Malachy.

Security was heavy. Besides the Grand Inquisitor’s personal security force, the Pax Fleet Marines, the Governor’s troopers, and the Archbishop’s contingent of Swiss Guards, there was a battle regiment of Home Guard armored infantry encamped around the palace. There the Grand Inquisitor was shown evidence of the Shrike’s presence two standard weeks earlier on the Tharsis Plateau.

“This is absurd,” said the Grand Inquisitor on the night before flying to the scene of the Shrike attack. “All these holos and vid images are two standard weeks old or taken from high altitude. I see these few holos of what must be the Shrike and some blurred scenes of carnage. I see photos of the Pax bodies the militia men found when first entering the town. But where are the local people? Where are the eyewitnesses? Where are the twenty-seven hundred citizens of Arafat-kaffiyeh?”

“We don’t know,” said Governor Cre Palo.

“We reported to the Vatican via archangel drone and when the drone returned, we were told not to tamper with the evidence,” said Archbishop Robeson. “We were told to await your arrival.”

The Grand Inquisitor shook his head and held up a flat photo image. “And what is this?” he said. “A Pax Fleet base on the outskirts of Arafat-kaffiyeh? This spaceport is newer than St. Malachy’s.”

“It is not Pax Fleet,” said Captain Wolmak, captain of the Jibril and new commander of the Old Earth System task force. “Although we estimate that thirty to fifty dropships a day were using this facility during the week previous to the Shrike’s appearance.”

“Thirty to fifty dropships a day,” repeated the Grand Inquisitor. “And not Pax Fleet. Who then?” He scowled at Archbishop Robeson and the Governor.

“Mercantilus?” pressed the Grand Inquisitor when no one spoke.

“No,” said the Archbishop after another moment.

“Not Mercantilus.”

The Grand Inquisitor folded his arms and waited.

“The dropships were chartered by Opus Dei,” said Governor Palo in a tiny voice.

“For what purpose?” demanded the Grand Inquisitor. Only Holy Office guards were allowed in this suite of the palace, and they stood at six-meter intervals along the stone wall.

The Governor opened her hands. “We do not know, Your Excellency.”

“Domenico,” said the Archbishop, his voice quavering slightly, “we were told not to inquire.” The Grand Inquisitor took an angry step forward.

“Told not to… by whom? Who has the authority to order the presiding Archbishop and the Pax Governor of a world ‘not to interfere’?” His anger boiled through. “In the name of Christ! Who has such power?”

The Archbishop raised pained but defiant eyes toward Cardinal Mustafa. “In the name of Christ… precisely, Your Excellency. Those representing Opus Dei held official diskeys from the Pontifical Commission for Justice and Peace,” he said. “We were told that it was a security matter in Arafat-kaffiyeh. We were told that it was not our business. We were told not to interfere.”

The Grand Inquisitor felt his face flushing with barely subdued rage. “Security matters on Mars or anywhere else in the Pax are the responsibility of the Holy Office!” he said flatly. “The Pontifical Commission for Justice and Peace has no charter here! Where are the representatives of the Commission? Why aren’t they here for this meeting?”

Governor Clare Palo raised a thin hand and pointed at the flat photo in the Grand Inquisitor’s hand. “There, Your Excellency. There are the Commission authorities.”

Cardinal Mustafa looked down at the glossy photograph. Forms of white-clad bodies could be seen in the dusty red streets of Arafat-kaffiyeh. Even through the grain of the images, it was obvious that the bodies were mauled into grotesque forms and swollen from decomposition. The Grand Inquisitor spoke softly, fighting the urge to scream and then order these imbeciles tortured and shot. “Why,” he asked softly, “haven’t these people been resurrected and questioned?”

Archbishop Robeson actually attempted a smile. “You will see that tomorrow, Your Excellency. It will be abundantly clear tomorrow.”

EMV’s were useless on Mars. They used armored Pax Security skimmers for their flight to Tharsis Plateau. Torchships and the Jibril monitored their progress. Scorpion fighters flew spacestair combat patrol. Two hundred klicks from the plateau, five squads of Marines dropped from the skimmers and flew ahead at low altitude, raking the area with acoustic probes and setting up firing positions. Nothing but the shifting sand moved in Arafat-kaffiyeh.

The Holy Office security skimmers set down first, their landing legs settling into sand where grass had once grown on the oval city commons, the outer ships establishing and linking a class-six containment field that made the buildings around the plaza seem to shimmer in heat haze. The Marines had dropped into a defensive circle with the commons as their locus. Now the Governor’s Pax and Home Guard troops moved out to establish a second perimeter in the streets and alleys around the plaza. The Archbishop’s eight Swiss Guardsmen secured the circle just outside the containment field. Finally the Grand Inquisitor’s Holy Office security force exploded down the skimmer ramps and established the inner perimeter of kneeling figures in black combat armor.