by John Read
Marie stood and walked to the dome’s door. “Good bye, Sam.”
“Good bye, Marie.”
Sam waved to the empty room as this instance of her program turned off forever.
Marie scurried to the nearest stairwell. Footsteps echoed from several floors below, but none from above. She climbed three floors, arriving at the hangar. The door opened with a click and Marie peeked inside. The lights were still on. A marshal exited the far side, but the hangar appeared to be empty. She looked at her watch; it was exactly nine fifty-nine p.m. The main lights clicked off.
Not sure where within the hangar to find Malcom, she stepped out into the humungous room and looked around. She reached for her watch, turning the flashlight on and off in quick bursts. Something caught her eye: movement inside a silver jumbo jet about 200 meters away. The aircraft’s cabin lights flickered twice.
Marie ran over and climbed the stairs, turned right as she entered the cabin, and waded through first class. She came to the staircase connecting the plane’s two main levels. The steps curved around a central elevator. On the other side of the staircase was a bar, where two people sat having a drink: Malcolm and a woman with black hair.
At first, Marie thought the stranger must be one of Malcom’s friends, someone he’d recruited to open the hangar door. Then the woman turned, placing a clear glass on the bar.
“Hello, Marie.”
“Hoshi?” Marie said.
Hoshi remained perched on the barstool. “You’re brave, Marie, and honorable. I admire your tenacity; we expected others would attempt to leave the Hive, but you are the only one to do so.”
Marie wasn’t looking at Hoshi. “Malcom, what the hell?” She felt tears spring into her eyes, and anger building inside her. “You lied,” she said.
Malcom sighed. “We were trained to deal with situations like this, with folks whose actions might jeopardize the mission. The idea was to lead them on until the last possible moment.”
“But there must be survivors. We have to try!” Marie pleaded with open arms.
“There are no survivors, Marie,” Hoshi said. “Earth is too far gone. Hope runs deep in all of us, but a search would be foolhardy.”
“Foolhardy is part of being human, and being human includes the freedom to make our own decisions. You can wait one more day!” Marie said, trying to regain her composure. “Send one plane, for heaven’s sake, and search the nearest city!”
“It’s not going to happen,” Hoshi said.
Marie pounded her hand on a bulkhead, and Hoshi flinched. “Just give us five hours …” Marie yelled. “Or I won’t willingly board your dammed spaceship.”
Hoshi slid off the stool and stood to face Marie. At full height, she was half a head shorter than Marie, but she tilted her chin upward so that her eyes peered down at a woman she clearly deemed inferior. “Malcom, make sure Branson gets safely on board.”
“What?” Marie said, suddenly terrified for her son. Hoshi’s words stung like a hit to the gut. Marie almost lost her balance, steadying herself by placing her hands on two nearby chairs.
“Everything will be okay,” Malcom said.
Hysteric, she lunged for Hoshi, intent on landing at least one, if not two, good punches.
But before she reached the bar, Hoshi drew a gun from beneath her scarf, pointed it at Marie, and fired.
“Oh my God,” Marie said, stumbling sideways, a dart protruding from her side. She grabbed the dart, and pulled it out. “You’re insa ...” she said, and then dropped unconscious into Malcom’s waiting arms.
6
A botanical sphere rested on the northeastern ridge, high above the Martian colony’s twelve flexi-glass domes. Autumn had arrived in this tiny sanctuary, where blue birds chirped and squirrels danced on fallen leaves. The breeze carried a hint of petrichor, the scent of cold rain on dry soil, nourishing late-summer flowers.
Scattered along the side of the path were patches of daisies and black-eyed Susan. I knelt down, picking several stalks, and mixed them with wild grasses to form a modest bouquet, tying it together with a ribbon.
A few minutes later, I stood alone at a cenotaph made from red monolithic rock. The monument was engraved with the names of all those who’d lost their lives on this barren planet. We’d added thirty-seven names last month, men and women who died during the battle to save the colony from eccentric-trillionaire-turned-murderer Henry Allen the Third, better known as H3. Henry Allen’s hatred for freelivers was reminiscent of the paranoia of history’s most horrible dictators. The very thought of H3 made me flush with hatred for the man who had tried to exterminate Martian colonists who had ceased to be “useful.”
Ironically, over one hundred of the names were those of Multinational Defense Force soldiers who fought for H3 against the colonists. But in war it was our belief that all of the deceased should be remembered.
My eyes traced the lines of a poem carved into a brass plaque embedded into the western side of the monument,
Free from gravity’s earthly hold,
And chased by inner stellar imaginings,
We danced through the cosmos on Wernher’s fiery train,
A desolate abyss on the shores of a vast eternity,
To greet the magnificent God of War,
A strange red ocean, a rising tide of angry dust.
We are the soon forgotten history,
Sons and daughters of a magnificent adventure.
Though we perished, our story endures of
Boundless frontiers reached not by rocket or booster,
But by childlike imagination, and a reminder that someday,
We’ll go home.
~ Abigail Huang, first human to set foot on Mars - 2035
What brought me to this place, this hilltop sphere on a red planet? Four years had passed since the cargo ship CTS Bradbury crashed and devastated California, when I lost my wife and son. The disaster shook the world, causing earthquakes, tsunamis, and civil unrest. China even detonated several thermal-nuclear weapons in the Tibetan Neutral Zone, as a warning to the Communist Alliance, a group known to use any excuse to increase its influence. Over half a million people died in the aftermath, but the world soon returned to normal. At the time, I was convinced I’d spend my life a drunken freeliver in a Las Vegas hotel.
Instead, I boarded a shuttle, blasting spaceward to the Martian Transport, Mayflower. As we sailed toward Mars, some part of me returned; I felt a sense of adventure, wonder, and fear, emotions I never thought I’d experience again.
Now, I reached to my left breast pocket where my sunglasses hung by an arm. In a fluid movement I’d practiced 10,000 times, I flicked open the aviator’s golden frame and set the relic upon my face.
My watch buzzed as I walked back to my SUV. “Where’re ya, skippa?” came Leeth’s Australian accent from my wrist.
“Lost track of time. I’ll meet you at the dock.”
Exiting the bio-dome through a vine covered door, I entered a translucent flexi-glass tube. The road turned west, passing between the colony’s twelve dome-circumferential, and the Alamo, a private dome for the colony’s elite.
The vehicle stopped at a pressurized service cylinder just off the main road. Several luxurious auto-cars sat in designated parking spaces, including one finely detailed Electro-Davidson.
The service elevator was almost as old as the colony, and led to the pressurized ice caverns below. At the bottom, the door rattled open and my face was hit with blue light from an artificial sky. A dozen printed J-24s bobbed in the blue water, bow lines secured to the fiber-plastic dock.
I stepped into a sea of socialites, adorned with the latest in sailing fashion, and was welcomed with several pats on the back. Mars’s wealthiest residents believed they owed us, crediting us with saving their lives. To repay their perceived debt, we’d been invited to participate in their favorite sporting event, Martian Tube Sailing, or MTS. Avro, Amelia and I had spent hours practicing in VR. Now, we’d get to test our skills for re
al.
A tall man, with curly hair tied back in a bun, elbowed his way through the crowd of mingling socialites. It was Leeth, the globetrotting (and solar system trotting) Australian nurse. “Hey, Mate!” he said.
“Leeth,” I said, clapping my friend on his shoulder. “Is everyone here?”
He nodded towards a boat docked half way down the pier. Avro Garcia and Amelia Shephard checked the rigging while Kevin Patel carried a red cooler into the cabin.
Amelia and Avro had been on Mars for less than six months, but knew the planet better than most. Only a few people complained when the couple borrowed the Arachnid, the colony’s most expensive VTOL aircraft, to spend a weekend at an abandoned research station.
Avro reached out a hand and hoisted me down onto the deck. He wore the green jersey of the Mexican National Football team and his permanent half-smile. I gave Amelia a hug, and took a cold beer from Kevin, setting the drink in a cup holder embedded into the hull. Kevin wore a T-shirt from his Alma Mater, Bangalore University. The animation shirt showed an Indian man wearing a Sherwani, high-fiving an Atlas robot wearing a similar Indian frock.
“Ready to race?” I said.
“I was born ready,” Amelia said.
The other sailors climbed into their boats and raised their mains. A horn belched and we released the jib, rocketing our slender J24 into the tubes.
At 700 feet underground, the musty air stung our nostrils. It carried with it an earthy scent that reminded us of home. Dense atmosphere pressed against Martian depths as we wrestled the vessel against a backflow of nitrogen-rich air. Moisture dripped from the ceiling as the pressure squeezed liquid water from porous sedimentary rock.
Waves pelted the gunwales and I hauled the tiller to port. The J24 slid around a baffle and crossed into the irons; churning eddies in our wake. Avro released the jib as we tacked. Amelia ducked and let the boom swing over her head. She hauled in the line, winding it clockwise around a winch.
The young Australian sat at the bow, looping his legs through the bow pulpit and sipping Bundaberg rum from a kangaroo skin flask. He closed his eyes and let artificial sunlight warm his face.
We crested a wave and H2O spewed onto the deck. I shivered as the liquid evaporated from my skin.
Kevin stumbled up from the cabin holding two protein-dogs slathered with ketchup and mustard. My stomach groaned, distracting me from the helm. “If only you could sail as well as you fly,” Kevin said, trying to keep his balance as the boat banked around another bend in the tube. Kevin’s jet black hair was disheveled in the wind, in contrast to his usual style: fiber-gelled and parted on the left.
“Hike out, Kevin,” I ordered. “You’re supposed to be our counterweight.”
Kevin rolled his eyes and I guessed he figured he didn’t spend three years studying robotics to crew a dingy. I cranked the tiller to the right and Kevin stumbled against the rigging, but still managed to keep from going in the drink. Kevin was the lead programmers for the colony’s constructor drones; nothing made him happier than new hardware flown in from Earth. He was also the only person on Mars with a bumper sticker: Blueprints to Bootprints since 2035. He inched his way across the deck to Leeth, handing him one of the dogs.
“Our ballast needs to lay off the hotdogs,” Amelia quipped to Kevin, shouting over the whistling sheets. With sockless feet in deck shoes, Amelia looked as if she belonged on the water. She wore Ray Ban sunglasses and a blue ball cap to shield her eyes from the holographic sun, while Daisy Dukes and a windbreaker completed her nautical look. Only her pale white skin hinted of a life tens of millions of miles from the nearest ocean.
“Cheers mate,” Leeth said as he accepted the hotdog. He’d left the clinic still wearing his blue hospital scrubs, tying them in knots below the knee.
Kevin nodded, giving a comic salute with his food hand, then tucked his feet under the hiking strap and leaned back.
Forced air erupted from a vent in the ceiling and a gust struck from starboard as we curved around the next bend. I adjusted our course to avoid careening into the nearest baffle. Amelia grabbed the winch, cranking it clockwise. The jib clung tightly along the gunwale as the boat accelerated to seven knots.
Moments later, it was time to tack again. “Ready about!” I called. “Hard alee!” Amelia removed the lever from the winch and tossed it to Avro, releasing the jib in the process. The boom passed over our heads and Avro cranked in the line to complete the tack.
A rival J24 crossed behind us on the opposite tack, an unwise move considering the tight quarters.
“Hey, circ-dweller,” came an accented voice from the other boat. “You’re stealing our wind!” I recognized Michael Curry, the man who owned ninety percent of SpaceNet’s advertising.
Money was no advantage in MTS; all the J24’s had been printed to spec.
“Tactics,” I yelled back. Their mainsail luffed, perturbed by the lack of free wind. They lost speed and fell back.
A third boat tacked up-tube at three o’clock; its rainbow jib fluttered as the crew reeled it in. They were in the lead, but not by much. All of their sailors were sober. Our sailors were … well, let’s just say we didn’t all have that advantage.
Our boat ripped around the final turn like something tearing cloth, and toward an exit arching over chopping water. With one boat ahead and another trailing off our stern, we sailed under the arch, bursting into the Presidio’s reservoir. Spectators cheered from a rocky red shoreline. Opposite them, a holographic San Francisco floated on the horizon, with Alcatraz Island shimmering in the foreground.
The three J24’s curved in formation as we approached the narrow inlet that served as the finish line. Our boat slid into the lead, but we made toward land and would soon be cut off by the outside boat. I yanked the tiller to the left, swinging around a red buoy, forcing the other boat to turn to port in our wake. If I timed it right, our boat would hide the buoy from view.
The boat banked to starboard, drenching a hiked-out Kevin in a heaving Martian wave. Our boat crossed the irons and Avro secured his jib line, completing the final tack in line to the finish.
Kevin hauled on the hiking cable and slung his soaking body mid-ship. Leeth laughed as Kevin flicked bits of wet bun in his direction. He turned to me, and hucked what was left of the protein-dog at me, and I ducked. The dog flew over my head and landed in the water with a splash.
The other boat cut along to our left, on a port tack, having lost little momentum, unlike us who’d sacrificed precious knots in our last tack.
Jeff Watson, from environmental engineering, kneeled at the tiller. “Sorry boys, looks like we’ve got you,” he said across the gap between our boats. But they were inside the red buoy and didn’t know it.
“Watson, tack!” I yelled.
Watson cupped his ear as if he didn’t hear me.
I formed a megaphone with my hands and took a deep breath, “You’re supposed to keep outside the red buoy,” I yelled.
Watson turned to look for the missing buoy. Realizing his mistake; he cranked the tiller to the right, but it was too late. The keel connected with a submerged rock and his J24 lurched to port, the mast dipping almost all the way to the water. Watson and two of his crewmates were thrown from the boat.
Out J24 shot through the inlet. There was a horn blast and the race was over.
Avro reeled in the jib, transferring control to the mainsail in preparation for docking at the marina. He smiled and clapped me on the back. “Johnny, someday our winning streak is going to end.”
“Not today,” I said, giving him and Amelia high fives.
I eased the boat toward the dock and Amelia jumped off. Avro tossed her a bow line which she tied to the cleat with a hitch. Kevin reached out a hand to hoist Leeth from the gunwale.
“So, Mr. President,” Amelia joked as we trudged up a flight of stairs to the yacht club. “What’s next on the agenda?” She wasn’t actually asking a question, but instead imitating Robert Bowden, the anchor from NewsFlash.
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br /> I laughed. “Please don’t call me that. It’s not that I’m not flattered, it just sounds stupid.” I chuckled again.
“You are the president of Mars,” Kevin joked as the animated man on his shirt wrung his wet Sherwani blazer.
“Just because I was asked to join the Martian council …”
“You’re the president of Mars. Just admit it.” Amelia elbowed me in the ribs.
The council’s previous leader, Edward Lu, stepped down after the last month’s battle. When it came time to vote for a replacement, I was nominated. The habitats needed repair and the council wanted an engineer at the helm. The vote was unanimous, and I was elected to lead the council.
We sat at the bar, our backs to a row of pleasure craft rocking in a gentle breeze. A replay of my interview with Bowden ran on a holovision above the taps. “Not again,” I said, but Kevin turned up the volume.
“So, Mr. President,” Bowden said to a holovised John Orville. I put a hand to my face to hide my embarrassment. “How do you plan to deal with the freeliving population?” It was a good question; one that Red Planet Mining Corp’s CEO, H3, had addressed in his own unique way. He’d attempted the extermination of all Mars’s non-working middle class, people who on Earth would be called freelivers.
I stared at the screen, counting the grey hairs on my hologram’s head. “Don’t forget, Bowden,” my recording said, “a lot has been accomplished since H3’s, ah ...” My hologram paused, trying to find the right words for, ‘escape as a fugitive.’ Bowden settled on ‘departure.’ “The Panel Distribution Center, of which I am still the director, is installing five hundred megawatts of solar, putting many unemployed miners back to work.”
Bowden rejoined, “But when that work is complete, what will these people do? They can’t go back to Earth. It’s a year until the next launch window.”
“They came to Mars to work in the mines, many of them second and third generation miners.” My hologram took a sip of water. “We’re looking at several options. The R&D team has asked for volunteers to join exploration missions. Most of this planet remains unexplored. We’re also going to open a new VR training facility for everyone who wants to learn new …”