High Plains Cyborg

by Honey Phillips

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  Other Titles

  High Plains Cyborg

  Cyborgs on Mars

  Honey Phillips

  Copyright © 2019 by Honey Phillips

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author.

  Disclaimer

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or people, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Cover Design by Pro Book Covers Studio

  Edited by Nikki Groom @ Indie Hub Editing Services

  Chapter One

  C-487 stared at the ceiling of his bunk—the same bunk that had been his residence since Earth Government had sent him and his fellow cyborgs to terraform Mars, more than ten years ago. He didn’t need the sleep, but now that he was amongst humans again, he tried to follow the established customs of human behavior. First there had been the scientists, moving into the labs that he and his brethren had built. Then, as soon as they had enclosed the first set of buildings that would form a town, the power plant workers came. Most of them were only in New Arcadia briefly before shipping out to one of the huge edifices that were steadily converting the polar ice into carbon dioxide, water and oxygen. He had worked on building those as well.

  The miners had been next, accompanied by entrepreneurs determined to cash in on the rapidly expanding growth of the new Martian colony. And now, the first shipload of settlers, who had arrived a week ago. Today the Claims Office would allow them to start filing for their plots—the ones they would have to live on and work for the next five years in order to claim ownership of their land. If he had been in charge, he would simply have assigned each settler to a plot of land, but Earth Government had decided that each settler could choose for themselves. For the past week, the rovers had been darting around the landscape as the settlers explored the surroundings. He’d had to rescue no less than five different idiots who had overestimated either their skills or the ability of the small vehicles.

  With the amount of land available for settlement, today should go smoothly, but somehow, he suspected that it would not. There had been two fights last night in one of the bars that populated the main commerce strip over which piece of rocky desert was better than another piece.

  If he had still been fully human, he would have sighed. Instead, he simply gave up the attempt to mimic human behavior and rose to his feet. He pulled on the faded black pants and shirt that he had been given as part of his job and, after a moment's thought, buckled on his gun. He didn’t need it—he was more than capable of taking down a few humans—but he found they respected the sight of the weapon. He fastened the gold star, a ridiculous affectation marking his position, to his chest. His hand lingered over the dark glasses but in the end, he put them on. They didn’t entirely conceal his cybernetic eyes, but they did soften the effect. With his hat pulled low over his forehead, he could almost have passed for human—a very large, muscular human.

  Shrugging off the notion, he exited his room and walked down a corridor lined with identical doors to the window overlooking New Arcadia. He had been a teenager when the government first began building the Green Magnetic Dipole Shield—the one that would protect Mars from solar winds and radiation and allow the planet to be terraformed. But even working two jobs, trying to make enough to support himself and his sister, he still remembered the propaganda pictures that had been everywhere. He would catch a glimpse of them walking home from the factory, his legs so tired they trembled, and would long to travel to Mars, to escape his bleak present and his hopeless future. In the pictures, everything had been white and shiny and new with gleaming metal walls and huge windows.

  Now, he looked out on the reality of a frontier town. Beneath the domes enclosing New Arcadia, cheap prefab panels and recycled parts from earlier missions made up the ever-expanding business district, along with a number of structures built from regolith, the Martian dirt compressed into building material. Everything was covered with the pervasive orange dust. Not the future he had envisioned and one for which he had paid far too high a cost.

  “Could be trouble.” A low voice interrupted his thoughts as M-231 joined him at the window. The older model cyborg was even less visibly human than C-487, a deliberate choice by the military to make sure that no one ever forgot that they were no longer simply men.

  “Trouble?”

  M-231 nodded at the long line of settlers extending from the door of the Claims Office down the long central thoroughfare. Most of them were huddled against the buildings but he saw several of them already arguing, their faces flushed with cold and alcohol. The ones closest to the door were quieter, sure of their place in line, but even there he saw some restless movement. Except for one person.

  Near the very front of the line, a small male pressed against the wall. Even with C-487’s enhanced vision, all he could see between an oversized coat and a bright red knitted hat was a pair of big, dark eyes but something about the figure caught his attention. Surely the male was both too small and too young to apply for a claim. Still, that was the Claim Officer’s concern, not his.

  “I will go and remind them that law enforcement exists on Mars, just as it does on Earth.” It was, after all, his job. The only one he would ever have. As the original terraforming project reached the point where it would support human life with only minor adjustments, the cyborgs were given two alternatives—return to Earth and its constant minor wars or stay on Mars and provide law enforcement for the newly arriving settlers. He had no reason to return and even less desire to fight.

  “Do you want me to accompany you?” M-231 asked.

  “To handle a small crowd of humans?” In his former life, he would have been insulted.

  The other male dipped his head in acknowledgement and C-487 left without any additional conversation.

  The sun had not yet risen and as he emerged onto the main street, he noted that the temperature inside the enclosed town was barely above freezing. GenCon, the corporation responsible for managing Martian resources, saw no reason to spend energy on heating the town beyond the absolute minimum and he tended to agree with them. Of course, the air temperature was of no concern to him. His nanites automatically adjusted to ensure that his body would neither freeze nor burn and he had long ago stopped noticing physical sensations.

  As he started to head down the line to where the sound of arguing had escalated, the first ray of sunlight hit the edge of the dome, followed by the chime of the opening bell from the Claims Office. An explosion of yells erupted from the front of the line and he saw a group of men racing from where they had been concealed in a nearby alley, heading for the door to the Claims Office. The line started to dissolve into chaos as the rest of the waiting men rushed forward. His enhanced hearing picked up a soft cry and he saw a bright red hat shoved against the wall as the small male was pushed aside.

  An unexpected surge of protectiveness surprised him, and he pushed his way into the fray, shoving aside struggling bodies with little thought other than to reach the figure in the red hat before he disappeared beneath the crowd.

&
nbsp; As the Martian sky began to lighten, Jo moved away from where she had been huddled protectively against the wall. The line behind her was growing increasingly restless and she didn't trust anyone not to try and steal her place. She was fifth in line, hopefully a position which would allow her to claim the plot she had set her heart on.

  It had been a long cold night, but it would be worth it to get plot 1080-3B. After a quick look at the line behind her, she moved further into the street, trying to make herself look as bulky as possible. The inexpensive thermal coat helped. Unlike the sleeker, more expensive coats, hers was stuffed with artificial fibers and added a good twenty pounds to her small frame. Unfortunately, there was nothing she could do about her lack of inches. All of the men in front of her were at least a head taller, as were most of the men behind her. She hadn’t seen another woman.

  Although Earth Government had done everything in their power to encourage women to apply for the Homestead program, very few had taken them up on the opportunity. She had only seen two other females on the ship—a tall, thin woman who was always at her husband’s side, and an attractive curvy blonde who had half the men on the ship chasing after her. The limited number of women had not seemed to matter as much when her partner—her former partner—Nicky had been by her side.

  Her mouth twisted as the familiar combination of rage and sorrow swept over her. She had known Nicky since they were both children in the orphanage and even though she had seen how often over the years he had used his charm and quick wit to duck out of his responsibilities, she hadn’t expected that he would betray her so quickly. Of course, as usual he had tried to sweet talk her into thinking that his plan was a better option.

  “Don't you see, Jo?” He had beamed at her from the other side of their tiny room in the transit hotel, his blue eyes sparkling. It was only their second day on Mars, and she was still trying to adjust to land that did not move. “This will be so much better. I can spend a year or two working in the power plants making a real salary, right now, instead of hoping that the claim will turn a profit in what? Three years? Four?”

  “And what am I going to do, Nicky?” The power plants did not accept female employees yet.

  “You can get a job here in town,” he urged. “That way both of us are working and bringing in money.”

  She could only stare at him in dismay. So far, the few females in town who were not part of the Homestead program were either working in the whorehouse or serving drinks at one of the many bars. And she suspected that the servers were only slightly more discreet about their true source of income. Even assuming that she could evade a fate that she had been running from her entire life, a small room above a bar and evenings spent dealing with drunken men were not what she had envisioned when she had agreed to the whole idea.

  “I don’t want a job in town. I want to file for a claim. I want to own some land, to have a place that is actually mine. You know that, Nicky. You been listening to me talk about it since we were children.”

  He frowned petulantly, his eyes shifting away from her.

  “We could still have that. But with the kind of money that I’ll be making at the power plant, we could just out-and-out buy a place in a year or two. We could even hire people to do the work. And we could leave it whenever we wanted.”

  “Leave it to go where? This is the only town in the northern district, and you know they told us that it could be years before they invest in any other towns.”

  He waved his hand dismissively. “I’m sure it won’t be that long. And this town is expanding all the time. Wouldn’t it be fun to be here watching it grow?”

  The gap between them only seemed to increase in size. She didn't want to watch the town grow. She had spent her whole life trying to cling to things, even as they slipped through her fingers. The one thing she wanted more than anything else was a permanent home and she was willing to work her fingers to the bone to get that, to know that she was the one who decided if things would change and how they would change.

  “That’s not what we talked about, Nicky. It’s not even what we agreed to when we signed the papers. Are you even sure that you can change your mind now?”

  “Sure,” he said quickly, but he still didn’t look at her directly.

  Her heart sank. She had seen that expression one too many times in the past. What a fool she had been to think that he would ever really change. When he had come to her with the wild proposition that they apply to the Homestead program, she had been too excited by the prospect to remember the number of times he had let her down in the past. Thank God she had insisted that their partnership be purely platonic. He had broken her heart at sixteen when he took her virginity and then disappeared a week later. He’d done it again at eighteen when he’d left her to be picked up by the police while he left town. At least at twenty-two she was older, and she had thought wiser. But she suspected that this betrayal would be infinitely harder to recover from than the previous two.

  “I’m going to go ahead with it,” she said slowly.

  “Applying for a claim?”

  “Yes. There was nothing in the regulations that said a single person could not apply.” She shrugged, trying to appear nonchalant, even though her heart was pounding with a combination of dread and excitement. “It will be a smaller plot but that’s probably just as well. It will be easier for me to manage.”

  His eyes turned speculative before he nodded approvingly.

  “That might even be better. And no need to apply by yourself. You can just register in both our names. That way there will be no question about why I came.”

  “Both our names? You mean you’ve reconsidered?”

  “No, no.” He waved his hand again. “You can apply for double claim and start the homestead while I go to the power plants.”

  For a moment, she was actually tempted. It would allow her to get more land and perhaps once the homestead was up and running, Nicky might choose to come and live with her. But her good sense won out.

  She shook her head. “No, Nicky, I won’t do that. You know one of the requirements is that you have to live there full-time and you won’t be there.”

  “I doubt that anyone is really going to check. And if they do, you can just tell them that I went into town for a few days. Right, Josie bear?”

  He gave her his charming grin, blue eyes sparkling.

  “I won’t lie for you again, Nicky.” The last time she had almost ended up in jail and the memory of the inquisition at the police station still gave her nightmares.

  “Fine, then. You figure out how you going to put up a shelter and get the power working and spread all those stupid plants.”

  As part of the claim agreement, she had to cover fifty percent of her land with the specially bred lichen that were designed to absorb heat from the sun and to release oxygen into the air. But she had spent most of the ninety-day voyage going over the instruction manuals provided by the government. It wouldn’t be quick or easy, but it was nothing that she couldn’t handle. All it would take was hard work and she’d had a lifetime of that.

  “That’s what I have to do, then that’s what I’ll do.”

  “Just don't come crying to me in six months when one of the dust storms destroys your shelter and rips up all your plants.”

  He didn’t even seem to realize that in such a catastrophe she would most probably be dead. Instead, he slammed out of the room and she hadn’t seen him since.

  The next morning, after lingering a few extra hours just in case he had changed his mind, she set out on her search. Most of the other settlers were scoping out the plots close to town, choosing convenience as their primary goal. A few of them seemed to be banding together to stakeout a large flat area further out on the plains. She had no real interest in being close to town or in close proximity to her neighbors and each day she went further out.

  On the fourth day, just as she had given up hope, she found the perfect plot. The northern side backed onto a low ridge which would provide
shelter behind her while allowing a wide southern expanse to gather solar energy. The rest of it consisted of small rocky hills which could be used for both lichen and one day, the goats that were being bred especially for Mars.

  Now she was determined to get that plot. She snuck a glance at the four men in front of her. She thought she recognized the first two from the ship and she knew they intended to farm. They would not be interested in her claim.

  The two men directly in front of her did not look like any of the settlers. They were big beefy men wearing the coveralls of power plant workers. She hadn’t realized that they too could apply for a claim.

  The opening chime sounded, and the world exploded into confusion. The two men in front of her spread out their arms, blocking the sidewalk as they yelled across the street. A group of men, all big and rough-looking, poured out of an alley heading for her position. The people in line behind her, seeing the confusion at the front of the line, started to rush forward. She tried her best to hold her position, but she was no match for the onslaught of men pushing and shoving. An elbow caught her in the side, slamming her back against the wall and knocking her head hard enough that she saw stars. She swayed as her head spun and clutched the side of the building desperately. It was no longer just a question of her claim. If she went down amongst all these men, she wasn’t sure she would ever make it back to her feet.

  Chapter Two

  Another elbow caught Jo in the ribs, knocking her off balance, and to her horror she began to slip. Just as her knee crumpled, a strong hand gripped her elbow and hauled her upright.

  Nicky? Had he come back after all? But even as the thought raced through her mind, she knew he had not been the one to catch her. His hands had never been that strong, his grip that firm. She turned to thank her rescuer but all she could see was broad shoulders and a massive back clad in a worn black shirt. He wasn’t even wearing a coat and she shivered at the thought, even though the hand still grasping her elbow seemed to be radiating heat through her worn garment.