The Last Campaign (The Near-Earth Mysteries)

by Martin L Shoemaker

  The voice still worked. Instead of ignoring my nonexistent authority, the man started to explain. “We’re ballistic. We have to land now. Unless we boost back up again.”

  “Then boost,” I said.

  He scanned his instruments, and he seemed to realize he was answering to someone who was not in his chain of command. “We have enough fuel for it, but it’s highly irregular.”

  I softened my voice, going from command to reasonable person. “This is important for the investigation, Lieutenant. I need you to boost back up long enough for me to make one more call; and then I need you to land at the new coordinates I am pushing to you.”

  The pilot read my new flight plan, and he scratched his head. “I can’t do that, ma’am. We’ll be landing nearly empty. And nowhere near port service. It’ll take a pile of paperwork, time, and a lot of expense to get this hopper fueled for another launch. Plus it’s against regulations to land that close to the tubes.”

  “Do not worry,” I said with what I hoped was a reassuring smile. “I am the police chief of Maxwell City. I can fix a parking ticket.”

  I did not tell him that no matter how this worked out, I might not be police chief for much longer.

  We landed near a little-used maintenance lock on the western edge of town. Adam was not the only one who knew the nooks and crannies of Maxwell City!

  Adam. “Lieutenant, I need one more favor. Keep an eye on this body. Do not let anyone near it except me, Dr. Costello, or Chief Hogan. Refer all questions to the chief, and tell him I will explain soon.”

  The pilot glanced back at Adam’s body bag, and then he looked out the port at the Martian surface. “Neither one of us is going anywhere until you get me refueled, Ms. Morais. I’ll watch the body.”

  “Good man,” I said, clapping the lieutenant on the shoulder. Then I sealed my helmet, worked my way to the airlock, and cycled through.

  Had we landed at the port, there would have been a gantry to help me down. Instead I looked at the dusty plain down below. It was about a nine-meter drop. I would be moving about five meters per second when I landed. Not the worst fall I had ever taken, but extra difficult in a suit.

  I really had no choice, no time. I let go of the hatch, and I dropped.

  It was a long, slow fall, over one and one-third seconds. Plenty of time to get my legs curled under me in a crouch. I bent over as well, forearms bent to take the impact if my legs were not enough. Just like in survival school.

  The forearms made the difference. My left knee gave out, a sharp, painful jolt running through it, and I tumbled forward onto my readied arms. If I had not followed the drill, I might have landed face-first. Helmets are pretty strong compared to the early days of space travel, but you still take care of them if you want to live to be an old spacer.

  And I was an old spacer. I was too tired, my knee hurt too much to lie to myself. I was not the young lieutenant anymore, I was not even the admiral in the prime of her career. Healthy lifespan had extended greatly in the last century, but I was still too old to be jumping out of spaceships anymore.

  But I had had no choice, and I still had no choice. There were only a few people I could still trust, and the most important one was in the hospital. But he always told me I was the best spacer on Mars. I always laughed when he said it; but it was time to stop laughing and believe Nick. Believe in myself, and do this.

  Gently I pushed myself back to my feet, taking care not to topple backward from the weight of my environment pack. I tested my knee and found I could stand on it without screaming. Just wincing. A stiff, cautious step produced a whimper, but I could do it. I could walk. Give it a day and my knee might swell up like a soccer ball, but I could walk.

  So I started for the lock. My police chief code granted me access, and I cycled it open. It was a vertical lock, a smaller version of the one at Boomtown. Those were less convenient to use, but less work to construct and maintain. I climbed down the ladder, using two hands and one foot, and I cycled it closed.

  Then I opened the inner hatch and climbed down into a side tunnel on the west side of Maxwell City. No doubt by now Port Shannon Traffic Control was asking the lieutenant why he had landed in a restricted zone; but it was too soon for anyone to look for me belowground—I hoped.

  I took off my helmet and set it against the wall. Then with a few painful gasps, I managed to shrug off my environment pack and set it beside the helmet.

  But when I tried to take off my suit, then I finally screamed. The suit was too snug, like a well-fitted suit should be, nearly a second skin but with a layer of air space. I could not even free one arm without tugging painfully on my left knee. If I wanted to remove the leggings, I would have to bend that knee, and that just was not going to happen.

  So I kept the suit on. Pressure suits are more restrictive than tunnel attire, but my knee was the bigger restriction. I gave up on the seal, but I took my gloves off so I could work unencumbered. Then I headed northwest through the ring tube. It was nearly a hundred meters before I reached a small access shaft. Again my police chief code opened it, and I started climbing down.

  I had chosen that airlock because of its proximity to that shaft; and I had chosen that shaft because it is one of the few that descend all the way to the Services level of Maxwell City.

  All the way. Every jarring rung. In the low gravity I could easily descend the ladder using only three limbs; but every time my foot swung against a rung or the wall, a little jolt of pain ran through my knee. And the more it hurt, the harder it became to control the swinging.

  By the time I reached level 3, I had to step off the ladder for a rest. I was breathing so heavily, I was sure someone would hear me; and I was sweating so badly, I was afraid I would lose my grip. I doubted I could take another fall, even with just one level left.

  I wanted to sit, but I knew that could not work. I would never be able to stand again. Instead I just leaned against the wall, propped on my right leg with no weight on my left. I wished for a towel, but all I could do was wipe my hands on my sealed, moisture-resistant pressure suit. That was useless. My hair? No, that was sweat-drenched as well. All I could do was smear my palms back and forth on the plastic wall panels. Those did not absorb sweat, either, but there was a lot of surface to smear. Eventually my palms were dry. At least dry enough to manage one more level. I finished the last level faster than the first. In fact, my knee hurt less.

  It took me several seconds to realize that that was not a good sign. Field-medic training told me that endorphins were kicking in. The good side of that was the lack of pain; the bad side was I might do more damage without even realizing it. And I might even experience euphoria, dulling my reactions when I needed them to be sharp.

  I hurried back south through the ring as best I could, past the hydroponics tunnels, trying not to think what I was doing to my knee. The trip seemed to take too long, and the side tunnels seemed all the same. I could have checked my map, but I was in a hurry. Besides, I knew the way.

  I hoped that was not the endorphins talking.

  Then I passed a familiar elevator, and I knew I had reached Lima Tube. Beyond that elevator, the plastic wall panels and floor tiles ended. I stepped onto raw Martian rock, carved into a tunnel and polished smooth. The lights were softer in this corridor; and only red emergency lighting showed through the open door to the funeral chapel. But beyond that I saw the bright, indirect, false sunlight of the Tomb. I drew my sidearm, and I stepped into the darkness.

  I moved slowly. My leg did not hurt, but it moved . . . oddly. I did not want to stumble and alert whoever was in the light beyond.

  The stone pews, red shadows in the red light, were so tempting. I could sit. Rest. Catch my breath. Give my knee some relief. Maybe even pray for guidance. It was a chapel, right?

  But that was fatigue and stress talking. Every second increased the risk that the evidence would be destroyed. And if I sat, I might not get up in time.

  Instead I made my way toward the rear of the
chapel, away from the light, before crossing between the pews. I thought the words of a prayer, half-remembered from mamãe’s knee, but I kept moving. I made my way forward again, moving cautiously to the edge of the doorway.

  All that quiet, all for naught. As I crouched low (the knee suddenly reminding me it was there) and leaned my head halfway around the edge, Nick’s voice sounded from my comm. “Rosie!”

  Immediately I ducked back, right before a shot echoed from the rock walls and a bullet ricocheted off a pew. The shot had been way high. The shooter had fired at the sound, he had not seen me.

  But I had seen a familiar profile “Nick!” I risked another glimpse, not the entire chamber, just the nearest area by the big recycler.

  Nick was there, crouched behind a hospital gurney with a shape on it. There was a rotting smell in the air, making me want to gag. The Tomb was open, and the shape dripped decaying organics. “What took you so long?” Nick asked, leaning forward as if to be sure it was me. I saw blood oozing from his left shoulder. His own sidearm was in his right hand.

  “Nick! You are bleeding! Again!”

  Another shot sounded. This time, the bullet sank into the mulch-encrusted body of Philippe Trudeau. Nick again took cover behind the Tomb.

  “Of course I’m bleeding,” Nick replied. “Alonzo shot me!”

  I tightened my grip on my pistol. “That is because Alonzo is an idiot.” I was ready to kill him. So many deaths he had caused. And now he threatened Nick.

  But I controlled my temper, and I shouted louder, “Alonzo! It is over!”

  “No!” Alonzo’s voice came from the far side of the Tomb. “It can’t be over. Mars must be free!”

  I tried to imagine how he felt. Sure, I believed in a Free Mars. Nick believed, as much as he believed anything. But neither of us would kill for the cause. Did that mean we did not believe enough?

  “It’s too late,” Nick answered. He gestured with his pistol, pointing over the big bulk of the Tomb. Then he moved to climb up on the gurney.

  I took over the conversation, shouting to cover any noise Nick might make. “No, Alonzo, it is too early. It might have been the right time, but the League ruined it. For years, maybe tens of years, the Libertist cause is tainted.”

  “No!” Alonzo was pleading now. “We can still win this election. My projections don’t lie. It’s close; but with the League locked up, I run the Libertists now. I have the winning strategy.”

  As Nick clambered to the top of the Tomb, I saw more of Alonzo’s scheme. “You knew. You knew about Boomtown. You wanted me to find out.”

  Alonzo chuckled drily. “With a little help from Flagg. A real Mars patriot, willing to accept punishment and exile on Earth for the sake of Free Mars. Someday we’ll have a statue to him.”

  I saw Nick creeping closer, so I wanted to keep Alonzo talking. “You set him up,” I said. “And he let you, just so we would find the evidence against the League.”

  “It should’ve been Vile or Monè,” Alonzo said. “Neither one is a true Libertist. Not like Flagg. But when you saw through the case against them, Flagg didn’t try to flee. He saw it through, for the sake of the cause.”

  I leaned out a little farther, drawing Alonzo’s attention—and a shot, but I ducked in time. “But if your campaign plan is that good . . . ,” I said. “If you have the people on the Libertist side, then you do not have to do this. Turn yourself in, we can handle things quietly, and the campaign will be run according to your plan.”

  Alonzo paused before answering. “I can’t take that chance,” he said. “The evidence . . . the subcutaneous comp . . . It must be destroyed. We can’t risk what it might contain. We’ll lose the Saganists for sure.”

  “I do not understand,” I said, though I was beginning to. I just wanted to keep Alonzo’s attention on me. “What could be so dangerous that it would break the coalition? What don’t you want the Saganists to know?”

  “I—” Alonzo started; but he stopped when he heard the sound of Nick leaning over the edge of the Tomb, pistol aimed and ready. Alonzo slowly raised his hands.

  Nick said, “Martian life, of course.”

  I heard Alonzo’s gun clatter to the stone floor, and I limped forward, my own gun raised in his direction. “No,” I said. “It is probably fossil microorganisms, not life itself. We would have detected the outgassing of living cells.” I did not take my eyes off Alonzo, but I said to Nick, “What brought you down here?”

  “Same thing as you,” Nick said. “Once my head cleared and I was able to think again, I wondered why the Tomb needed to be cleared. We don’t have that many deaths around here, one every few days. There shouldn’t have been a body in the early stage of decomposition, so the Tomb should’ve been available for . . .”

  I shook my head slightly. “So you checked out against medical orders, and you went to the morgue to check on Trudeau’s body.”

  Nick shrugged with his free hand, but his gun never wavered. “I’m not the police chief. I couldn’t just call and get that kind of answer, like you did.”

  “But they assured you that Marcus had finished the autopsy, written the cause of death, and released the body for delivery down here.”

  “For an anonymous atheist interment,” Nick said.

  I hobbled closer to Alonzo. “You hoped the body would be down here long enough for early decomposition to get to the subcomp. Or maybe you would even sneak down here yourself and cut it out, so you would know what the report really said.”

  “It was encrypted, of course,” Nick said, “but a software artiste like yourself could break that eventually.”

  “Those software skills are not in your personnel file, I am sure,” I said. “But whatever Trudeau had, it could not have been conclusive proof. If it had been, he would have already made the announcement. It was only enough to convince him to keep looking. So you and Adam stopped him.”

  Alonzo turned toward me. “I’m sure it’s nothing, ma’am. It might still be something we could . . . lose. We can find it again once Mars is free. We’re scientists, many of us. We want to know the facts about Mars as much as the Saganists do. But we want to do that research under our rule.”

  “It was never going to work once we were on to you, Alonzo,” I said. “You were going to have to kill us. And what would that do to the campaign? If Anthony’s chosen police chief and the founder ended up dead? Or missing, hauled off to some hidden place, never to be seen again? Either way, it would be one more scandal—one too many for the Libertist campaign to survive.”

  I saw Alonzo’s lips tremble, as if he was about to sob. “Ma’am, it’s not too late. The Libertists can still prevail, if you just turn your head. Bury this business. For another six weeks.”

  I looked at Nick, and there was only one answer I could give. “I could not do that, Alonzo. That would be a lie. Mars will be free someday, but not this way. Not all this death, and not these lies. The Libertists do not deserve to win this election. Not yet. Everything the League has done, everything you have done proves that. The cause is right, but the Libertist structure is all lies. I stand with the truth.”

  Nick nodded. “I believe in Free Mars, Gutierrez. It has to happen someday. For the sake of humanity. But not yet.”

  I took another painful step forward. My endorphins were crashing, and I might follow pretty soon. I did not want to get in the way of Nick’s shot, so I said, “On the ground, Alonzo. Facedown.” He complied, like a broken man. He lay down, put his hands behind his back as ordered, and waited for me to pull out my cuffs and put them on him.

  Then, with a final spark of defiance, he looked up into my face and said, “My name is Alonzo Gutierrez, and I am a citizen of Maxwell City. Mars. I demand to have my case heard by a representative of my government.”

  EPILOGUE

  I was finally out of rehab. My knee was almost as good as new, with just four small scars to show from the surgery. I had done all the proper therapy, and I had behaved myself. I had not pushed, and I had no
t tried to get off my crutches too soon. I had not tried to walk a patrol too soon either. Nick had made sure of all that. There he was with a shoulder wound and a concussion, and he was the one playing nursemaid.

  But that day, I was alone. It was a professional responsibility; and I would be spaced before I would take anybody’s help or use any crutch to stand while I got fired by the new mayor elect. I had my pride.

  Francis Merced, once Grace’s campaign manager and now her chief of staff, let me into the office. It was still technically Anthony’s office. The inauguration was not until the weekend. But Anthony had not seen the sense in making Grace’s transition difficult. After the Saganists declared themselves the leaders of a new coalition with the Realists, the election was a mere formality. Carla Grace would be the next mayor of Maxwell City.

  But the Saganists were the leaders now. They had been empowered by Trudeau’s finding: the report showed nearly conclusive proof of fossil microorganisms in certain parts of the quadrangle, and it was only a matter of time before the final piece of evidence was found now that so many researchers were out looking for it. Life on Mars was about to change, as more researchers arrived, and as the planetologists brought their focus back to the Red Planet. There was nothing we could do about that. Maybe once I was free, Nick and I could sign up as researchers ourselves. It would not get us São Paulo, but it would be nice to be out in the field again.

  I stood at attention before Grace, and I waited for her to look up from her comp. Finally, she did. “Ms. Morais,” she said.

  “Madame Mayor,” I said. No sense waiting for the title to be official.

  She consulted notes. “I hope you don’t expect me to thank you,” she said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “For your help in getting me elected. I ran a great campaign. I think I would’ve won even if you’d never solved Trudeau’s murder.”

  “I was not helping,” I answered. “I was doing my job, letting the chips fall where they may. Or at least that was my job.”

  At that, Grace looked up. “Yes, about that.” She tapped her comp. “After everything we’ve seen, I’ve changed my mind. Mayor Holmes was right, we do need a police force. And a police chief. And you’ve demonstrated that the department can work well with Initiative Security, which is very important to my administration.”