The Rhine

by R L Dean

  "Go try if you want," Klaus yelled back. "Not only will Apex cancel your contract, they ain't going anywhere either. Their haulers won't leave without the patrol."

  "Let me talk to the haulers!"

  Mat turned and started walking away, pulling out his handcomm. Yelling at Klaus or getting worked up and threatening the haulers wasn't going to change things. He called Haydon and when he answered the big man was frowning.

  "Yeah, boss?" That was his customary greeting, but it came out flat.

  "What's wrong?"

  Haydon pulled the handcomm back and Yuri came in to view. His arm was slung over Haydon's shoulder, the mechanic was carrying him. SOP when Yuri was on a station, but annoying for Haydon. "He's been particularly obnoxious today."

  Mat nodded in understanding and said, "Alright. Plans have changed. Get him back to the ship and sobered up. I'll be there as soon as I can."

  "Anything you want to tell me now?"

  "The haulers aren't moving because of the pirate attacks," Mat told him. "A lot of angry miners yelling at Klaus. UN office was crammed with people filing reports."

  "Yeah, heard that. Angry people making their way to the bars too. This place is a disaster waiting to happen, boss."

  "Copy that, get to the ship."

  Haydon's image disappeared and Mat looked around the thoroughfare as he walked. He spotted a transit board and a growing crowd of people standing in front of it. Misaki wasn't among them but he went to the board, just to check. Did she find a way off? There wasn't any outbound traffic listed. Some of the mining crews would eventually leave, because there wasn't any other option if they wanted to get paid for their ore. Which is what he would have to do, also. He looked at his handcomm, took a deep breath, and hoping that she hadn't found a crew willing to leave with yet, he called the handcomm he had given her.

  No answer.

  He tried again. And again there was no answer, but this time he left a message. He rubbed his face and stared at the handcomm. Maybe she had found a ride and was out of range. Or maybe she was near the electrical plant and there was interference with the signal. She wasn't getting his call.

  Mat turned to leave and Misaki was standing a few paces behind him. One hand was holding the strap of the duffel on her shoulder, the other hand was holding the handcomm, and she was looking at him with that stoic expression that hid everything.

  "Looks like I'm going your way," he said. "Need a ride?"

  PART 2

  22 - Shultz

  Shultz reflected on the fact that one of the most difficult parts of running a terrorist organization and being a head of state was the issue of privacy. As Governor of Mars whenever he left the office a security detail escorted him. The same was true for Jung. On Earth and the Moon those escorts would be UNSEC soldiers, but here on Mars it was local police because Lieutenant Colonel Compton didn't have the manpower. It was a stroke of luck. Capital Burrow's police department was firmly in Jung's grip, the chief and a dozen other officers were solid patriots. This all meant that Shultz and Jung— with a lot of care and looking over their shoulders— could visit places like the illegal ore processing plant and fuel refinery they stood in now.

  The plant was a burrow dug out of the side of Candor Chasma. It was small, the tunnels and rooms were crude with unfinished permafab plastics sprayed on to form the walls, and the air smelled of metal, epoxy, and Mars' own pungent soil. Shultz wasn't sure of its exact position, but it had taken the pilot of the shuttle Jung used for such trips the better part of an hour to navigate the canyon and labes until they set down on a flat area and walked dozens of meters in vac-suits to an airlock hatch hidden in a natural cave.

  There are too few of these plants, Shultz thought as the plant manager, a slender man in his forties with a ruddy face, named Marshman, handed them hardhats and breathing filters that fit over their nose and mouth.

  "It's a real honor to have you here, sir," Marshman was saying, his voice muffled by the filter. "The boys will be happy you stopped by."

  Shultz took his hand and shook it. "What you do here will make Mars a nation. I had to come."

  To some it might seem like cheap platitudes, he was a politician after all, but Shultz meant what he said, and he hoped the plant manager realized that. Marshman shook Jung's hand next and said almost the same thing as he did to Shultz, then he held his arm out toward the access tube leading deeper into the plant.

  As they walked the narrow tunnel and stopped in equipment and instrumentation rooms Marshman explained what they were processing. The plant had a small manufacturing unit tucked away in a dome shaped cavern that could cut and mold metal components for mechanical equipment, such as rover engines and some spacecraft parts. Shultz stayed for a few minutes and talked to the three men that ran it. They were the rough sort, young and blustery, but good at what they did ... they were the sort of people that Mars needed right now.

  "We stockpile most of what we produce," Marshman said. "But we manage to sneak some parts onto distributor inventory lists. Those parts end up in Martian owned shops and sold legally as though they were manufactured and supplied by an Earth company."

  It was a smart way to hide numbers from Compton. The lieutenant colonel suspected that there were illegal plants and factories hidden away in the Martian desolation that were producing goods, but there was no evidence of an increase of goods on the market. People were buying what Earth companies supplied, or so it seemed.

  "Shop owners split the retail sales down the middle with us," Marshman continued. "We have to buy equipment to keep the plant running, what we can't manufacture ourselves. And it puts a little extra in their pockets."

  Shultz nodded. Giving back to Mars.

  There were not as many factories as Compton might believe, and far fewer than Shultz would like, but in this case it was important to keep a low profile. The more factories and plants the more the risk of exposure, and if Martian citizens suddenly had access to 'too many' things then Compton might up his investigation.

  Next Shultz and Jung were taken to a room with a dozen terminals. A monitoring station for the plant, but there were screens showing the landscape around the canyon. One of the men in the room was a former UNSEC second lieutenant that was sympathetic to Mars. He had spent a brief tour under Compton's command about two years ago, and at the end of his service he remained on the planet and took a job teaching computer electronics at the college in Capital Burrow. When he wasn't doing that he taught the same thing to FMN members or stood a watch at the plant monitoring for drones and keeping track of the regional satellites. Shultz knew that there were a number of ex-soldiers and government specialists in the movement, and it had not set well with him at first because of the risk of a spy. But Jung vouched for every one of them, and most of them had ties to Mars in some way, either by family or having witnessed the life of the colonists first hand. As skeptical as he had been, they had proven extremely useful to the cause by providing expert training that otherwise would have been difficult to come by. Cell members were now being fleshed out as bonafide fireteams with combat training and necessary skills like hacking computers.

  They had lunch in a small room with eight other plant workers, almost everyone that was there. It was cramped, but obvious effort had been put in to the setup— the tables and chairs were the cleanest thing in the plant Shultz had seen. The food was MREs served on stainless steel plates, but it was eaten with people that shared the same vision as he and Jung.

  As they were finishing up, Marshman checked his handcomm and said, "A hauler is scheduled to bring in some containers, I thought we could observe from the Control Room."

  Jung was keeping track of their time away from the office. There was a window of a few hours that no one would get too suspicious of their whereabouts. As far as his office knew he and Jung were in a meeting across town, that ruse wouldn't hold if someone started asking questions. Jung checked his own handcomm then nodded to him.

  Marshman took them through severa
l tunnels, it was maze-like to Shultz but he thought of the direction they were going as the 'rear' of the plant. When they arrived at the Control Room several workers turned from their consoles and screens and smiled at them. There was another round of handshaking and introductions, and where most politicians might have thought of the process as a tedious hazard of the job Shultz took the act of greeting seriously. These people were giving their all for the cause. He guessed it was about a year ago that he started visiting the people out at the illegal plants. Jung had protested his visits or interacting with FMN members. It was a risk, he said. Jung trusted every member, but if UNSEC ever discovered the plants then anyone Shultz came in contact with could identify him. No one could keep secrets from the drugs that Compton had the authority to use in interrogations. Jung's own exposure was necessary, he organized the intel, recruited new members that possessed skills they needed, laundered the money ... if the FMN had an actual leader then Jung was it. But Shultz could have remained in the background, and if Jung was ever implicated as a terrorist then he could deny his involvement and no one would be able to link him to what his own lieutenant governor was doing. And that meant that there was a chance that Shultz's political career would survive and the movement would live to fight another day. He didn't agree with Jung's reasoning. Secretary-General Modi would see to it that he was removed from office even if there was no direct evidence linking him to Jung's activities. And besides, if everyone was giving their all and risking their lives for Mars, then he couldn't do less. They had to know that the man was behind them. So he visited the plants.

  Remote cameras and scopes hidden throughout the canyon watched the skies and the landing area for the hauler. This was when the plant was most exposed. There was no automated loader or machinery to do the job of getting the container's contents into the plant. That was all handled by a crew in vac-suits. In this case, Marshman explained, they were expecting containers of noble gasses that would be refined and mixed to create fuel for their small fleet ships in out-system that were illegally mining in the Belt or procuring raw ore and gases from other sources.

  A satellite feed was tracking a blip on one screen, their ship, as it descended from orbit. While Shultz waited for the hauler to come into view he studied the other screens that showed various angles of the rusty and tan desert canyon. It was the deep places like this in the Marineris that his team of specialists had determined would be the best sites for the first terraforming plants. If the dream came to pass then he and Jung might see results within their lifetime. Or at least hear about them, if everything went to crap and they were tried as terrorists and tossed in a UNSEC prison to rot, or shoved in iffy vac-suits and put to work on a chain-gang in a mine somewhere out in the Belt. Shultz— and he knew Jung also— had no illusions about what they were doing. Creating a Mars of substance, making it in to something more ... a world ... was a long game. They were just planting the seeds now.

  A flash of light on one screen caught Shultz's eye. The terminal operator brought the twinkling dot into focus, expanding it. It was the hauler. A bulky spacecraft with a square central axis and three oversized containers strapped to it. The scope followed it until it disappeared into the canyon and then it reappeared on another screen, and Shultz watched as the pilot made his way through the twisting landscape with obvious practice.

  The hauler set down on a flat area of rock, not unlike the place that Jung's policeman pilot parked the shuttled, and a gang of men in vac-suits appeared, running from a rocky outcropping at one edge of the screen toward it, pulling three long siphon hoses with them.

  Shultz asked obvious questions, and when Jung said it was time to leave Marshman led them back through the maze of half-finished tunnels to the airlock. It was a good visit. Places like this were vital to the cause.

  It takes a village, Shultz thought as the shuttle lifted from the canyon surface and turned sharply, the landscape racing by through the window he looked out of. Privateers to bring in the needed ores, hidden plants to process that ore and produce needed items, cells of militant patriots to put pressure on the UN by sabotaging Earth businesses. Hackers and technicians to cover their digital tracks. And, he and Jung using their government access to provide intel and money. The movement to free Mars had grown from a small group of campus protestors into something larger ... a conviction.

  23 - Eric

  Emilia beamed up at Eric from across the kiosk's counter. The blond haired nine year old could barely reach her hands high enough to take the cardboard box of soy burgers and fries. Eric held on to the box until he was sure she had it, then let go as she pulled away.

  "Hey," he yelled at her, as she put the box in the basket of her part rusty, part pink bicycle. When she turned to look at him he said, "Go straight home, no fooling around in the park. Don't make your mom worry."

  She was the neighbor's kid, and this was her way of showing her parents that she was growing up. She could ride her bike all the way to their favorite food kiosk and then back— all by herself. It was only two blocks, but still an accomplishment. Emilia rolled her eyes at him, an expression that made her look like an exasperated angel. In a few short years it would become annoying.

  Eric put his elbows on the counter and leaned forward a little, watching as she rode away. Emilia's father was an off and on construction worker— mostly off. He only wanted to work for Martian companies, who paid steep tariffs for building materials from UN chartered Earth businesses. Projects were slow in coming and often dragged out with weeks going by with no work being done because of shortages or finances. But it was a point of pride for the man.

  Her father resists in his own way. He smiled at the thought and watched as Emilia turned onto the bike lane then rounded the corner, disappearing behind the ramshackle and discolored permafab of Momma's Authentic Mexican Restaurant. The 'Authentic' in the title was subjective.

  Eric looked up toward the burrow's 'sky'. False sunlight glowed back down at him. Those multitudes of lights would dim to early evening soon, in keeping with the time on the surface of the planet. He had put in a full day at his uncle's kiosk. Like everyone else— terrorist cell leader, or not— he had to have a job to pay the rent and utilities, and working at a large company as a manager or in some administrative capacity that fit his degree would mean responsibilities and time he couldn't afford. So, here he was, serving prepackaged food from a heater and doing a little accounting work for his uncle. It was enough to eke by, and the upside was he got to take food home at the end of the day.

  Besides, most of the businesses that would hire him to do what he went to school for were either Earth owned or had connections to Earth based corporations. And like Emilia's father, he had his pride. There would have been a certain inconsistency in character to work for someone you were attempting to tear down. Eric turned his attention back to the street, it was dead. He began cleaning up, but left the counter open. There might be a last minute customer.

  While he wiped down the cooler and swept the back of the kiosk he found himself thinking about the decisions he made as a younger man. His father had been an electrical engineer back when Capital Burrow was still growing and there were jobs to be found. Eric thought to follow in his footsteps and started his freshman year in college in that direction. Ten months later the jobs began to run out, growth was slowing and his father was at home more days than out working. It was becoming a common enough story in all the domes. The economy was taking a dive.

  Eric didn't really understand what was happening, people were blaming the UN Council but he wasn't clear on the details. As the economy continued to spiral down the poverty rate climbed ... along with the suicide rate. After Eric was forced to drop out of college, because of finances, his father became part of that statistic.

  For two years he and his mother scraped by. They were forced to move out of their two bedroom apartment into something smaller, in South Tunnel. It wasn't the best neighborhood, but between the basic welfare stipend and odd jobs he could
catch here and there, and his mother's job at a local bar he still didn't like to think about, they had food and a roof. Power and water most days.

  And then Gerhard Shultz became the first governor in Martian history— albeit short history— to be elected by the citizens, and not chosen by their UN masters. The right to elect state officials was not something guaranteed in the colonial charter and lease. But, Mars had become a hot topic and public opinion swayed the UN Council in to taking a more progressive approach toward the colony. With Shultz's election came economic stimulus, as part of the UN's new strategy in handling Mars. Some raw ore was allowed to be sold to Mars directly, and two refineries opened. Merchandise they were forced to buy from Earth companies became cheaper as tariffs were reduced. Mars began to climb out of recession, jobs were on the rise, and skilled people were needed to fill them. Eric qualified for a government grant. He went back to school, this time as a business major. After all, things were looking up, maybe he could start his own company ... have his own crew of electrical engineers. His mom even got a job at a salon. It didn't pay much more than waitressing at the bar, but they were slowly able to climb out of the slums of South Tunnel.

  Eric took one last look out the counter window for any potential customer, when he saw none he closed it. He set the alarm— it might dissuade some less persistent and less desperate folks to go scrounge food elsewhere— then he walked out the door and stepped onto the sidewalk.

  Life is strange, he thought, looking up at the evening glow of the lights overhead. He and his mother had managed to leave this place just a few short years ago, only to end up back here. The dilapidated South Tunnel with its smell of overused air filters and dust as a reminder to him of what the UN Council really intended for the colonists. They wanted a people completely dependent upon them for food, water, and air— keeping them alive only to bleed them a little more.