by Toker, Dor
Natalia waited in the doctor’s room for the entry of the miners, about to be examined and webwired by the technological doctor. The instrument was ancient; a new model had long been in use, microbiological in nature and much smaller. But it was cheaper for the mining stations and the remote areas to supply the older instrument. The traditional role of the technological doctor included a checkup of the functioning of bio-nanotechnological instruments inserted into the body of each person, instruments which were in charge of his normal functioning in locations and areas not yet treated by human genetic engineering. The old instrument was never adjusted to the site or to check the functionality of the extra implants, the personal add-ons, bought for large sums from the official corporations, or cheaply on the black market, then implanted in human bodies. A different type of scanner was required for this task. But Natalia’s technological doctor had a more significant role to play.
Praporshchik Yuriev was the last to be examined. When he entered the clinic, it took Natalia exactly two seconds to identify the problem. He was too tall to fit into the examination instrument. He smiled at her, and she nodded, acknowledging his existence, but not committing to more than that. She immediately instructed him to sit inside the technological doctor, balanced his body so it would fit, as well as possible, to the cast body of the instrument, impressed with the shape of a human body, six feet and twenty inches tall, just a little above average. In spite of his attempts to settle into the instrument, his bare feet protruded from it and forced Natalia to reach a quick decision. She closed the technological doctor above the sergeant’s head and tightened the straps as well as she could. Yuriev was accustomed to the process and did his best to aid her, squeezing his elongated gangling body into the instrument as much as he could. She calibrated the instrument and activated the scanner. Yuriev fell asleep immediately, his limp body carefully trapped within the TD.
At no time during her training, did Natalia need to solve a problem such as the one she now encountered, but she had no choice and hoped the technological doctor will properly function in the extreme conditions she was about to launch him to. She stabilized it in hover and cruise mode, then took out the small laser knife from the surgical kit attached to the technological doctor. The kit was a remnant from days gone by in which surgical operations were actually conducted by human doctors. She had no idea when was the last time the knife had been operated and whether it still worked, but had no time to check. Yuriev was probably expected at the living quarters and his failure to arrive there might arouse suspicion. She activated the knife and hoped for the best. A thin beam broke from it and scorched the treatment table next to her. She hurried to adjust the beam to her purpose, held the Praporshchik’s legs and severed that part of his feet that protruded out of the instrument with one clean cut. The technological doctor immediately kicked into action and sealed the stumps, stabilizing their condition and preparing for a reconstructive operation. Someone will need new feet implants once he wakes up on Earth, thought Natalia, if she’d only be able to get him there. Her assignment was to deliver him alive, and she intended to bring it to a successful fruition but wasn’t sure her commanders or those who had ordered the goods will be pleased when they’ll receive damaged goods. Oh well, she’ll have time enough to think of the punishment that awaited her, once she’ll be on the small Space-Sailcraft that was supposed to wait for her at the coordinates she typed into the technological doctor. She wore her vacuum suit, tightened her helmet, sealed the small laboratory from the inside, and then adjusted the knife’s beam to be stronger. She injured a hole in the transparent acrylic glass window on the clinic’s ceiling. The air compressed through the tiny opening and emitted a sharp whistle that must have been heard throughout the Russian station, and Natalia knew that pretty soon, the Russian army forces would be called to protect their property. If the whistling sound was not enough to alarm them, the station’s computer would alert them to a drastic change in the laboratory’s air pressure. She hoped she would have enough time to make the necessary preparations before the sealed laboratory door will be broken. Thin cracks lined the acrylic glass and all at once, the material shattered and the window was broken. The laboratory’s air was quickly sucked into the thin atmosphere outside, carrying with it all objects that were not attached to the floor or walls, among them the technological doctor with its content and Natalia herself, curled like a ball and protecting her head as best she could.
Once outside, Natalia landed on Martial soil, rolled and immediately lunged to her feet. She hurried to the TD, balanced it in the air with the aid of the instrument’s inner stabilizers and docked it to her with a short cable. She directed the gravity stabilizers in her suit so that her relative weight will be about a quarter of what it would be on Earth, and went on her way. She moved in longs leaps, hovering from rock to rock, maintaining her balance with the aid of the TD. A few seconds had passed from the blast when two ground hovercrafts were launched into the thin skies of Mars and began to give chase with a speed that surpassed her own. Natalia approached a precipice and realized she was trapped. With a quick movement, she released herself from the TD and with the same swing balanced it away from her, knowing that the instrument will find its way to its destination much faster than her. The TD shook in the air for a moment, then stabilized and began to accelerate, hovering close to the surface and evading the hovercrafts that flew above. Indeed, they left the technological doctor and turned to Natalia. Her situation became dire. She stood on the edge of a cliff and watched the two hovercrafts decelerating in front of her. They remained motionless in the air, surrounding her and preventing her escape. She nodded at them and for the first time in more than two decades prayed to the God of her forefathers. “Allah yarhamha,” she mumbled voicelessly and jumped into the darkness of the canyon beneath her. ‘This is going to be a long fall’ she guessed in her heart and folded in an almost perfect backward somersault. Darkness engulfed her, and all she could think of was how the commander will be able to explain the mission’s failure.
Soldiers wearing military suits jumped out of the hovercrafts and hurried to the canyon’s edge, taking care not to fall. They looked into the great darkness in front of them, trying to penetrate the black wall with their gazes and see the crushed body of the impersonating doctor who’d infiltrated their station. They had no idea what she was doing or seeking, but one thing was clear to them beyond doubt: she won’t be infiltrating anywhere anytime soon. At the command of their senior officer, the soldiers turned back as one and returned to the hovercrafts. The aircraft turned around and headed back to the Korolev station base.
Chapter 26
Natalia felt helpless. Darkness engulfed her, and she lost all sense of time and space. The thin air she fell through whistled threateningly around her. She had no idea how long she had remaining to live. Even though the gravity stabilizers slowed down her fall, and may even be able to prevent her crash at the bottom of the canyon, she couldn’t see anything. While she’d prepared for the mission, she memorized the outline of Mars’ terrain, and if her memory was not deceiving her, the area she’d plunged into was lined with rows of cliffs, which seemed to her, while she’d examined the maps, like the sharp threatening teeth of a shark. It was more than likely she will bump into the rock projections or protruding cliffs, sticking out of the deep earth or from the walls of the canyon.
Suddenly, she felt someone grasping her body and lifting her sky-high with a force that emptied the air from her lungs. She quickly regained her senses and forcefully tried to remove her capturer. She struggled with him and tried to release herself from the chokehold he’d grabbed her with. He was a man, of that Natalia was certain because she had felt him between her hands as they struggled. He stabilized himself in the air with his feet planted on a horizontal pole (Soar Board ©) while still holding her between his hands and she felt that they lowered the altitude of their flight, heading toward the bottom of the deep canyon. Each time she tried to release herself, her atta
cker turned on his pole so that one time they flew with their heads turned up and another time with their heads turned down. They stabilized in the air when Natalia decided to save her strength for the next chance she’ll have to attack, and eventually landed softly on the ground. Natalia assumed they had landed at the bottom of the canyon, her eyes still blind like. The darkness at the bottom of the canyon was even darker than the one that had engulfed her as she fell. She detached herself from her attacker and quickly lunged back, as far as she could.
“You’d better stay close to me,” a voice was heard in her suit’s inner communication system. She was surprised. Only the commander had the code necessary to broadcast on this frequency, and even he didn’t have authorization to communicate with an agent on duty. She stopped in her tracks, trying to dwarf and minimize her presence as well as she could to make it more difficult for him to locate her. “You can get lost here in a second,” he continued, “and we wouldn’t want that to happen, would we?” He was speaking Russian, but his accent indicated a British or Irish origin. Natalia knew that any attempt to trace the origin of a person according to his accent was doomed to failure, as immigration of Earth denizens was commonplace, mixing accents and languages. Besides, since the translation implants (Translators©) became readily accessible and the operation needed to insert them simple and inexpensive, many people began to use them. Even so, Natalia felt more secure with that tiny bit of information about her capturer. Just like her, he was playing outside of his home turf.
A hand held hers and assisted her to rise. She clung to him, pretending to lean on him while actually turning him over; then she circled him and grasped him with a chokehold. It was almost too easy, and Natalia felt as if she’d circled an inanimate object. The man did not try to resist. He waited for her to loosen the hand that strangled him a bit and mumbled: “Had enough, fighter girl?” Something is wrong here, Natalia thought, there wasn’t any trace of fear in his voice, he was completely at ease, even amused.
“Get off the instrument,” she said and sought the footrest of the flying pole the man was standing on.
“It obeys only me,” said the man, but did not refuse and got off the small aircraft. Natalia stood on the narrow vehicle and pushed her former capturer away from her. She remained on the pole for a brief moment, then realized the futility of her actions – she had no idea how the instrument worked. She sighed and said to the darkness around her, “Come.” The man’s laughter surprised her on her right, and as she turned around toward him quickly, she found herself in his arms. She hurried to shake herself off him and muttered: “Get us out of here, and be quick about it.” The man obeyed her, and they switched places.
“Hold on tight, or you’ll fall.”
“As tight as before?” she asked and held on to him, just as she’d done when they’d fallen.
“No,” he hurried to correct himself, “not as tight as before. I need to breathe in order to fly the pole.” She loosened her hold, and they took off and ascended toward the sky. For a brief moment, she lost her balance on the thin board that served as a footrest and almost slipped from it. The small aircraft spun until the man stabilized it. She embraced him, holding onto his body. “Don’t fight it,” he said, “flow with the pole’s equilibrium.” Natalia obeyed him, and her hold on the pole became stable. She loosened her body a bit, and they continued on their way up the deep dark canyon.
Natalia waited until the stranger flew the pole out of the darkness of the canyon, then clutched his arm and signaled for him to continue with his flight. The inbiological clock (Inbiological Watch ©) in her body alerted her to the fact the technological doctor carrying the body of the Russian sergeant major will soon malfunction. Unless she would launch it in time to the hybrid space sailcraft, she will lose both the TD and her job. Even worse, there was a not insignificant chance that following her failure she would lose her life as well. She realized that she desperately needed the stranger and his aircraft. Natalia perspired beneath her suit and her head ached. With a touch to her arm, she calibrated the oxygen percentage in the air the suit provided her and turned to the man: “I need to thank you for saving me.” The man nodded. “So thanks, and sorry about the urgency, but I need you to take me fourteen miles north of here to the following waypoint: longitude twenty-five, latitude seventy-two.” She had no doubt he will locate the coordinates. And indeed, without answering, the stranger tilted the flying pole they were standing on in the direction she had pointed. “You’re not from around here,” Natalia mentioned out loud.
The man laughed. “Nobody’s from around here.”
“I mean that you’re not a Russian soldier, and I don’t think you and the Americans have anything in common.”
“And you’re saying that based on what?” asked the stranger, amused. Natalia was embarrassed. No one had ever toyed with her like that and made fun of her ignorance. On the other hand, she’d never spoken with rivals. “Act first and ask questions later,” the commander had instructed her, and she assimilated the message well. But it felt different with this strange man. She had never met anyone like him. Tranquil, relaxed, he had remained calm even when she’d trapped him between her arms, his body did not betray any muscular tension. “I’m not working with the Americans at the moment,” he said and the words ‘at the moment’ sounded emphasized to Natalia’s ears. When the man landed the hover-pole next to the coordinated Natalia had given him, she jumped and got off the small aircraft. She pressed the sleeve of her suit, and the space sailcraft emerged from behind a low hill. The TD moved next to its side wall. Natalia approached it and pressed the small spacecraft’s wall. An opening immediately opened in front of her. She directed the TD and pushed it into the spacecraft’s door. The opening closed, swallowing the TD behind it, and Natalia retreated. She tapped her spacesuit’s sleeve once more, and the spaceship took off into the thin air, stabilized itself, activated its energy filter and quickly lunged into space. Natalia watched it until it became a tiny point in the sky and finally disappeared from her embettered eyes (Bettereyes ©). Once she’d finished launching the package to its destination, she turned toward to her savior and was amazed to discover he was gone. She looked for him all around, but it seemed as though the earth had swallowed him. She sighed and allowed her muscles to ease a bit. Her mission was accomplished. The shipment was on its way to those who had ordered it, minus two feet. Now she needed to catch a ride back to Earth, and she planned to infiltrate a shipment of quarried substances. Based on the background information she’d received from the commander, a freight shuttle takes off every evening from the landing strip adjacent to the American mining facilities. The Russian landing strip launched similar freight hovercrafts, but under the circumstances, using it was out of the question. The European shuttles were too small, and therefore it was easy to track stowaways and prevent them from boarding their flights. The Indians and the Chinese shuttles could present an easy option, but their launch strips were located on a different part of the planet and were too far from her current location. That left the American shuttle as the only reasonable option. She calibrated the gravity regulators in her suit once more, and went on her way, taking long leaps.
Chapter 27
The American Adventure Station docking (AASD) base was a technological monster that had taken years to construct, patch by patch. Its original purpose to serve as a research station, had been long abandoned and it became a mining station and a transport base that served all Americans, as well as all superpowers who did not have Martian bases. Once the European leaders and the leaders of the great Arabic Nation had signed an agreement with the American President, they leased entire quarters of warehouses and offices in the business district. However, the American commitment to provide ongoing mining and Earth transportation services made the physical presence of Europeans and Arabs on Mars unnecessary, and the business district quarters had become derelict and neglected. Their location next to the docking base had turned them into a destination frequented by
smugglers and trespassers. The place harbored an entire industry of commercial smuggling, subcutaneous passport forgeries, identity change surgeries, sponsored murder services and many other barely legal and mainly completely illegal activities. For a proper fee, one would be able to infiltrate a freight shuttle with a false identity and an outer appearance that will be almost impossible for the authorities to recognize, in the rare case of an identity scan. For an additional fee, one could ensure such random scans will not take place, or won’t be especially thorough.
Natalia continued to wear her protective suit but folded her sealed head covering. She waited in an alley, semi illuminated by a white led lighting fixture, for the personal smuggler she had hired, who was supposed to board her onto the next flight to Earth. She had communicated with him through her body’s subcutaneous relay (Inmodem ©) as soon as she’d entered the station and paid an astronomical price for the full disappearance package he’d offered her. They had scheduled a meeting at the exact spot in which she was now standing, and then, so he’d promised, he will upload her new identity to the recognition chip in her arm. He was late. Natalia knew that the last shuttle for the day was about to take off in a short while. It was essential that she’ll board it. The commander had taught her that one must evacuate the scene of the operation as soon as possible, so as not to be required to answer questions that will surely arise later on. Any moment now (perhaps it had already happened) the Russian agency will send an official request to the American one, demanding a search for her. It was better for her not to be in the area. A hand was placed on her shoulder and caused her to turn around quickly in a ‘duck and assault’ movement. She gave a hard blow but hit only empty air.