The Lazarus Protocol: A Sci-Fi Corporate Technothriller (The SynCorp Saga Book 1)

by Pourteau, Chris

  The fir trees towered a meter over Remy’s head, their soft needles raking at the slippery surface of his body armor. Despite their unwieldy footwear, the group made good time through the undergrowth till they reached the first caribou, a female, lying still on the ground.

  The secretary kneeled next to the cow. As she examined the creature, Remy eyed the surrounding area. The encroaching trees gave him a claustrophobic feeling.

  “Huh.”

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  She had her handheld out, analyzing a tissue sample. “This animal’s perfectly healthy—except that it’s dead.”

  Remy was no expert on large mammals, but it certainly looked healthy to him, with large, well-muscled hindquarters half-hidden by a shaggy coat. The animal had curled up on its side with its head tucked down by its front legs, as if sleeping. And it had died that way.

  “How long has it been dead?” he asked. He was aware of the YourVoice reporter’s news drone capturing everything.

  Messages streamed in from the other teams on the open channel. They’d found the same thing—otherwise seemingly healthy animals lying dead on the ground. Remy’s paranoia from earlier returned in force. He scanned the surrounding trees line again

  “All teams, fall back to the ship,” he muttered into the microphone. “There’s something not right here.”

  “Agreed,” came Rico’s crisp reply. “All units fall back.”

  “Wait! What’s going on here?” It was the Chinese reporter on the open channel. “Is there something here you don’t want us to see?”

  Other reporters began to question the evac order as well. The channel became a cacophony of angry demands.

  Remy reached for Elise’s arm, but she pulled away, disappearing into the trees. The YourVoice newswoman darted after her, shouting a new question about the sudden change in itinerary.

  “Ma’am—Elise!—we need to fall back!” Remy didn’t like the sound of near-panic he detected in his own voice. The back of his head was screaming at him to run.

  A pulse message from Elise hit his private channel: “There’s one still alive . I can hear it .”

  “I don’t give a shit if a hundred are still alive,” he sent back as he struggled after her. Despite the ungainly marshshoes, her bionic legs had easily outpaced his flesh and blood limbs.

  A long, strained bellow like a pinched foghorn sounded ahead of them. Remy crashed through the trees to find a small clearing.

  In the center of the glade stood an enormous bull caribou. A huge, curving rack of antlers spread over his head like a wicked crown. He snorted at them, then reared back and bellowed a second challenge at the intruders. Remy unholstered his sidearm, but there was no way a handgun would stop an animal of that size.

  “Back up slowly,” he whispered to the women.

  “No need,” said the newswoman, pointing to the ground in front of the bull. Remy heard the clink before he saw the heavy links in the mud. The bull had been shackled in place with a heavy chain around his front hooves. Remy’s fear and all he’d seen coalesced into one word in his mind.

  Ambush .

  Someone had killed the other caribou and chained this bull up as bait.

  The wall of evergreens on the other side of the clearing wavered in his vision.

  Camouflage field , Remy realized too late. There was the pop-snap of a muffled weapon, and the YourVoice reporter collapsed to the ground, a neat, red-black hole in her forehead. The camera drone, having lost direction from its mistress, dropped to the ground beside her.

  Remy gripped the back of Elise’s suit, jerking her back into the trees, spinning her body to face the direction of the ship. The marshshoes tangled up her feet, and she went down with a grunt.

  More muffled shots. A branch from a fir tree by his shoulder dropped to the ground.

  Other shots, unsilenced, echoed across the valley. M-24s, standard military issue. The shared comm channel exploded with civilian panic.

  Elise struggled to her feet and launched into the trees. Remy fired blindly behind him as he raced after her. She’d lost a marsh shoe in the haste and her bionic legs were having trouble adjusting to the different types of footing. He cursed, then threw Elise over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry and plowed into the vegetation. Tree branches whipped his face and he screamed into the open channel.

  “It’s an ambush!” Tree branches whipped his face. “We’re under attack! I need support to protect the secretary!”

  The chaos of reporters screaming and chopped orders from Rico drowned him out.

  Expecting a bullet in the back at any moment, Remy redoubled his pace, bursting into the landing zone and safety of the Abundance .

  But something was wrong. The ship’s drive should be hot, the pilot ready to take off the second they boarded. That was evac protocol. Remy put Elise down and she backed away, her glare driving daggers into him. She swayed as her legs stabilized.

  Rico appeared at the top of the ramp.

  “Sergeant!” Remy said. “We have to get the secretary out of here.” He looked around. They were the only three in the landing zone. The Abundance , at last, was firing up its engine. “We can come back for the others once she’s—”

  Rico leveled his M-24 rifle. “Drop your weapon, sir. We have the situation under control.” His voice was tight. His finger rested on the trigger.

  “Sergeant…” Remy took a breath. “Let’s get Secretary Kisaan to safety. Then I’ll come back and help you.”

  “I told you to drop your weapon.”

  The soldier’s arm twitched and Remy froze. He pushed Elise away, out of the line of fire. “Okay.” He showed his gun to the soldier, then placed it on the ground. “Now, let’s get Ms. Kisaan out of here.”

  The soldier’s lip curled. “Bad choice.”

  He pulled the trigger.

  Chapter 5

  Anthony Taulke • Taulke Atmospheric Experiment Station, Mars

  Anthony Taulke was beginning to hate the color red. He stared through the control-room window at the hundred-meter square enclosure of Martian landscape. Red rocks, red dirt, red dust … red, red, red .

  And that red was rust. Ferric oxide. Two parts iron, three parts oxygen. He didn’t give a damn about the iron, but he wanted those oxygen molecules. No, he needed those oxygen molecules.

  He regarded his company’s logo hanging on the wall. An old-fashioned rocket superimposed on a bold capital letter T. Staring at it helped him focus.

  Two hundred and eighty billion dollars .

  The figure kept repeating in his head, like a tolling bell.

  That was how much of his personal wealth he’d invested in Mars—so far. He’d placed the biggest bet of all time that he could make an entire planet habitable, that he could make a new Earth. The magnetic shield generator in orbit between Mars and the Sun was almost operational. It would, theoretically, keep the Martian atmosphere from being stripped away by the solar winds. But first, he had to create a Martian atmosphere. If he could just get the goddamned Red Planet to cooperate. He only needed a few hundred trillion of those tiny, goddamned oxygen molecules … was that so much to ask?

  The lead engineer on the terraforming project occupied the chair at the control panel. Anthony put his large hands on either shoulder of the seated man. When the first inkling of failure had quieted the control room, Anthony had cleared the space of everyone but the two of them.

  He drew a deep breath of perfect, habitat air and tried to ignore the low hubbub of conversation in the next room—dignitaries and investors, enjoying the hospitality of Taulke Industries. Here to witness the next technological marvel from its founder. Another pulse came from his son, Tony, in charge of crowd management.

  “Do your job, son. I need more time,” he sent back, then muted the link.

  “Ronnie, explain it to me again.” His hands tightened on the young man’s shoulders. “Step by step, like I’m a five-year old.”

  The young man cleared his throat. “
Yes, sir, Mr. Taulke—”

  “Anthony , Ron,” his boss chided him. “I told you to call me Anthony. Now, forget those self-important assholes in the next room, forget all the money and the pressure. We’re just two engineers talking here, okay? Start from scratch.”

  Ronald Maher nodded. “We seeded the test area with the bacteria, but we’re only at nine percent efficiency for oxygen production. We need to be at greater than twenty to make the— ”

  “I know the numbers for the business plan, Ron. Stick to the science.”

  “There must be something wrong with the scaling algorithm, Mr.—Anthony. We seeded the area with the drones in the same dispersal pattern we used in the small-area test. But we’re not getting the same uptake on this run. Look” —he pointed out the window— “the rocks should be turning black as the rust breaks down. They’re still red.”

  “Same drones?” Anthony asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Same delivery height? Same dispersal pattern?”

  Maher nodded twice.

  Anthony caught his lower lip in his teeth. “Double the dosage.”

  “But, sir, that means the cost goes off the scale for the project—”

  “If we don’t show progress, Ron, there won’t be a project. Double the dosage and reseed the area.”

  Maher’s fingers worked the control panel. Anthony watched the indicators rise as new bacteria filled the seed drones. The young engineer’s hand hovered over the launch button. “This will use all our reserve of the bacteria, Anthony. We’ll be stopped for weeks while we brew a new batch.”

  “Understood.” In staff meetings, they nicknamed the bacteria caviar , a nod to how expensive it was, but that really didn’t do it justice cost-wise. He’d put billions into the bacteria research alone. He could practically put a dollar value on each individual bacterium for that price. “Do it.”

  Maher launched the drones.

  “Get your team back in here,” Anthony said. “We need to put on a show with a full cast. ”

  Moments later, the rest of the engineering team had scurried into their chairs, avoiding their boss’s gaze like schoolchildren late to class. Their voices created a low hum. They were seeing the numbers for themselves and the gamble Anthony Taulke was making.

  He smiled at each of them in turn, what the media called the Billion-Byte Smile, named for the fortune he’d made off his ByteCoin becoming the first globally accepted cryptocurrency. “Thanks for your patience, everyone. Ron here found the issue, a simple glitch in the dispersal pattern. Easily fixed.”

  One of the engineers, the one who’d developed the dispersal algorithm no doubt, started to speak. Anthony held up a broad palm. “No blame. We’re all one team, remember? At Taulke Industries, we succeed or fail together, and every day we try to learn something new. Right?”

  He waited until he saw nods all around, then leaned over to whisper in Maher’s ear. “Lock out the bacteria loading data.”

  “Already done, sir.”

  Anthony pulsed his son: “Make sure everyone has a full glass. Then bring them in.”

  If there was one thing the boy was good at, it was working a room. Tony had managed to acquire his father’s excellent taste for the finer things in life, but not his intelligence—or his work ethic. It pained Anthony to admit it, but his son seemed more interested in spending money than making it.

  In spite of himself, Anthony felt the unfamiliar thrill of nervousness. Odd. Ever since ByteCoin had vaulted Anthony into the realms of the uber-rich at the ripe age of twenty-five, he’d been on a mission to change the world. God or Buddha or Cassandra or any of the other deities he didn’t believe in had chosen him, Anthony Taulke, to make the world a better place. It was his destiny.

  At first, he’d contributed to environmental causes and climate science, but he’d soon grown tired of spending his money to help someone else save the world. A few decades ago, he would have been one of the investors in a room like this, waiting to write a check for someone else so they could make a difference in the future of mankind.

  So Anthony Taulke decided to change the world all on his own.

  He’d started with a space elevator. Everyone said it could not be done. So he did it—and then charged them all horrendously exorbitant fees to ferry their goods and people into space.

  And he grew richer.

  But his attention kept getting drawn back to climate science, the existential crisis facing humanity. And on that topic, Anthony Taulke had had an epiphany.

  What better way to achieve immortality than by saving mankind? It was his destiny.

  He was an engineer at heart—a rich engineer, but an engineer all the same. He solved problems with technology. Despite the obvious urgency of the ever-worsening climate, there were powerful factions who didn’t want to solve the problems: construction companies who benefited by building seawalls, developers who built new cities far from the encroaching oceans, even religious leaders who wanted their competing sects to suffer the wrath of some deity or another.

  So after years of effort, Anthony admitted defeat and went in a different direction. If he couldn’t make Earth a better place, he’d make his own planet: Mars.

  No one gave a shit about Mars. His only limitations here were money and scientific imagination. But mostly money.

  With his space elevator in place, Anthony built his own shipyard to manufacture a fleet of spacecraft to ferry his dream of a new Mars into reality. A few billion dollars cornered the market on the Frater Drive, the very latest in propulsion technology that made the Earth to Mars transit time a manageable three days.

  And here he was today, breathing life back into a dead planet.

  The doors to the control room opened, and the hubbub entered. Anthony spun on his heel to greet his guests, spreading his arms wide.

  “Welcome, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the new Mars!”

  Only a dozen people, a mixture of government reps and investors, had made the three-day trip from Earth. No news people. There would be time enough for them later.

  He caught the eye of Adriana Rabh, owner of the Rabh Conglomerate and one of the wealthiest people in the known universe, even richer than he was. She was a severe-looking woman with dark skin and braided hair. If she alone chose to fund him, she could make all his money problems—and his board of directors problem—go away. Adriana gave a terse nod, then turned toward the window.

  “Pop?” Tony’s voice. His son’s hand landed heavily on his arm. “Maybe we can get started?”

  Anthony’s smile came automatically. He pointed to the test area outside the control room where black spots stood out on the red terrain. “What you are seeing—that blackness—is where the terraforming bacteria are doing their work. The Red Planet should really be named the Rust Planet, because that’s basically what it is: oxidation on a planetary scale. Taulke Industries’ proprietary technology is freeing that oxygen for us to use, to breathe.”

  “So the bacteria eat the rust?” The man asking the question represented the African Nations caucus at the United Nations, according to Anthony’s retinal display.

  “In essence, yes. It’s based on a product I developed back on Earth to seed the atmosphere with carbon-consuming bacteria. That one never got off the ground, so to speak.” Anthony paused for the pun, and a handful of his guests offered polite, though muted laughter.

  “What about efficiency?” Adriana Rabh asked.

  Anthony looked at her sharply, searching for any sign she’d been tipped off to their recent problem. Corporate espionage tech was everywhere, and Anthony was not naïve enough to believe he was immune from corporate cyber-espionage.

  Rabh’s face was placid, open. But then again, it would be—she was that good.

  “What’s our conversion rate, Ronnie?” Anthony placed one hand on the lead engineer’s shoulder. The young man’s shirt was damp with sweat.

  “Sixteen percent and rising, Mr. Taulke. Looks like we’ll settle out in the mid-twenties, r
ight on target.”

  Anthony chucked him gently on the back of his head. “Now, Ron, I told you to call me Anthony. ”

  The crowd laughed, genuinely this time.

  “At twenty-five percent, the project is more than viable, Ms. Rabh,” Tony chimed in.

  Adriana Rabh stroked her chin with red-lacquered nails. “If you can show me at least twenty-two percent efficiency, I’m in, Anthony.” Her shrewd gaze studied him. Despite a nagging suspicion that his initial fear of corporate spying was right after all, his Billion-Byte Smile never faltered.

  “Of course, Adriana. I’ll bring you the data myself—so I can pick up the check in person.”

  She smiled thinly as the rest of the room laughed again.

  Tony stepped forward. “The actual process takes a full twenty-four hours, and I’m sure you all have better things to do than stare at red rocks turning black. If you’ll follow the gentleman by the door, he’ll get you outfitted for a rover ride on the Martian surface.”

  As the crowd began to move away, a young woman hung behind. She was short and wiry, with cropped dark hair and the pointed ears of a body-morpher. A flash of anger passed through Anthony as she sidled up next to his son like an alley cat. Had Tony actually brought a girl along on this trip? And to the investor meeting to boot?

  Tony pulled his father toward the back of the room, away from the engineers. The woman followed them, staring openly at Anthony now, an amused look on her face.

  “Dad, this is Helena Telemachus. I think you should listen to what she has to say.”

  Anthony took the woman’s hand out of courtesy. She wasn’t as young as he’d first thought. Closer to his own fifty years than his son’s early twenties. Her ears were indeed altered to look elfin, and she’d also done something to her eyes to make them glow with a greenish tint. A pair of data glasses were nested in the spiky, raven locks of her close-cropped hair.

  “You like my mods, Mr. Taulke? I know a guy, if you’re interested.” Her voice was throaty and suggestive.

  “Anthony,” he said reflexively. “Call me Anthony.”

  “My friends call me H.”