Been There, Done That (April Book 10)

by Mackey Chandler

  When they got up even with the Woodleighs they could see why they stopped. There was something on the shoulder ahead. It looked like the salt sellers wagon, but it was tilted crooked away from them and there were neither horses nor people there. The road was starting a long straight section here and the road beyond the wagon was empty for as far as they could see.

  Arnold came across to them and his family stayed put. “What do you want to do?” he asked Vic. “All of us go around the other side of the hill and come back to the road further on?”

  Vic thought on it before he said, “No, I want to know what happened there. I’ll go up the hill until I’ll lose sight of the wagon if I go any further, then work around and come back down beyond the wagon and come back to it. If you see me make it back to the wagon without any trouble then come on and join me. I also want to leave Eileen here with you if that’s OK.”

  “All right, I’m going to move them off the road a little further and stay where I can see both the wagon and them,” Arnold said. “Stop and look around every now and then and don’t get winded,” he advised Vic.

  Vic nodded agreement and looked back at Eileen. “I’m leaving this with you. You’ll only have to bring it forward to the wagon.” He undid the belt and left the fanny pack behind.

  Eileen found a rocky area and sat on the fanny pack. They stayed in sight of Arnold, but not the wagon. The Woodleigh women pulled a blanket out of their gear and sat on it doubled over to avoid ticks. It was a long time before Arnold gave a short whistle and motioned them to come.

  Vic was visible until they were all on the road and then he walked over by the wagon and must have squatted down out of sight. When they covered about half the distance to the wagon Eileen could see something odd sticking in the air beside it. She knew it was no local plant but wasn’t sure what it was. When they got within about fifty meters it suddenly resolved and she felt sick. It was three slender trees with their branches trimmed, stuck in the ground in a row and a head impaled on each.

  “Well isn’t that artistic?” Arnold said when they were close to Vic.

  “I think they were trying to leave a message for other would be bandits,” Vic suggested. “I wouldn’t do it myself, but neither am I disposed to undo it and clean up after them.”

  That made Eileen really look, which she’d been avoiding since she recognized what they were from afar. None of the heads were the salt sellers. That only made her feel a little better. At least she didn’t know these people.

  “Where are the bodies?” Arnold asked.

  “One is dragged into the brush on the other side of the wagon,” Vic said. The other two the same, but down the road about a hundred meters. They were all stripped of weapons and anything of value.”

  “Shouldn’t we at least bury them?” Mrs. Woodleigh asked.

  “My dear, even if we had a pick and a couple shovels it would be an all day job in this ground. I do not want us to have to camp here tonight and walk home on some jerky and not enough water tomorrow,” Arnold said.

  “I imagine that’s how the salt sellers felt too,” Vic said.

  “I’m not understanding what I’m seeing here,” Eileen admitted, waving her hand at the wrecked wagon.

  The wagon was missing the entire rear, at least a third of it, maybe a full half gone, not busted off like a wreck but sawed off neatly, a fresh cut obvious. There was one wheel with a flat tire still on the front. The other side of the front axle was bare of any wheel and on the ground. The tongue of the wagon was just gone. There was another wheel with a flat tire on the ground behind the wagon.

  “I thought about it, waiting for you to catch up,” Vic said. “I think I can picture what happened. They got ambushed with a shooter on the uphill side. The bandit up there shot out both tires on their side. That was stupid as the people in the wagon could shoot. They should have shot them first and not tried to disable the wagon. I suspect the guy in the middle was the uphill shooter and firing from cover, except he was sticking his head up enough to aim.”

  Eileen looked, and the middle head on a pole had a single small black hole drilled in the forehead.

  “The other two were on each side up ahead to engage them in case they managed to keep moving even if the shooter only got one tire. They had concealment but not cover, and I’d bet anything they came charging down the road aggressively as soon as they heard the first shot. I could see where they were shot on the pavement down there,” Vic said, gesturing with his thumb. “The front of the wagon has some thirty caliber holes like they did a spray and pray with a full auto weapon, something like an AK. The idiots probably thought that gave them an overwhelming advantage. If they hit any of the salt sellers there’s no blood on the wagon seat or what’s left of the bed.”

  “But why is the wagon cut in half?” Eileen insisted, seeking more.

  “I’m thinking even if they had a spare tire they didn’t have two, and neither of those two shot flat was repairable. I’d say they took the good wheel and tire off the front, put it on the back axle and made a two wheel cart out of it. They obviously had a good saw, so they must have had tools and stuff to attach the tongue to the bed of the wagon. Whatever tools and goods they had, they managed to take it all with them. I’m a little surprised they didn’t manage to take the whole forecarriage with them. It would be valuable to build a new wagon. You’d have to load a two wheel cart carefully to balance slightly forward, and they probably just had the driver on the cart and the others will have to walk now.”

  “Sitting in his lawn chair,” Eileen said, remembering seeing it.

  “Yes, very likely,” Arnold agreed.

  “Let’s not waste any more time here,” Vic said, taking his fanny pack back from Eileen and buckling it on. They resumed their long walk.

  “I hope they can fulfill their contract with us for future delivery now that their transportation is wrecked,” Eileen said.

  “I’m not too worried about it,” Vic said. “These folks seem very versatile and I think they will be back if they have to build a wagon from scratch.”

  “Maybe armored up with solid wheels. I believe they call that a war wagon.” Arnold frowned. “Where do I remember that from?”

  * * *

  Markus, head of CoPO was known for his icy demeanor. Paul had never seen such a naked flare of emotion across the man’s face. It didn’t fade away either, he was clearly enraged.

  “There’s no way the Martians boot-strapped themselves out of this. They don’t have the equipment, they couldn’t have the feedstock, and they had neither the data nor the skill set in any of their personnel. Somebody saved them and it had to come from Earth,” Markus insisted.

  “There wasn’t time to get help from Earth,” Paul insisted.

  Markus looked like he wanted to say something, but clutched his jaw shut before the words could escape.

  “For a spy you are a terrible liar,” Paul said, surprising himself at his audacity to speak that way to his boss given his mood.

  Far from stroking his anger it dismayed him. “I never said anything!”

  Paul couldn’t hide a genuine grin. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anybody say nothing so loudly. Obviously, you know time is not the problem. If I don’t have need to know fine, but take me off the case and run it yourself, or find somebody you trust to run it for you.”

  “This isn’t the sort of thing you want to keep bringing people in. It’s far too sensitive and every player you read into it increases the chance it will be blown wide open.”

  Paul just looked at him. He hadn’t really said anything with which to argue.

  “OK, so it’s relative to the operation, at least it’s likely to be relative,” Markus admitted. “There have been some reports of at least one person being on Mars and then on the Moon in impossible time frames. Also, there are radio intercepts of traffic clearance and returns with no destination declared and a vessel heading off on one vector and returning from a different direction and velocity that are ju
st impossible. Some of the controllers are even harassing the pilots when they give them clearance because it’s obvious something fishy is going on.”

  “That’s all fine and good,” Paul agreed, “but you said they had to have gotten help from Earth, not the Moon. Now, I realize there are a fair number of nations that might be holding this agent and the counter measures. In fact it’s probably so common none of the larger states would consider using it aggressively, because it is so well known it could be countered quickly, on Earth.

  “But it was developed and spread about and relegated to a near obsolete novelty status all well before Home or Central were ever established. I’ve never heard of either maintaining any kind of biological warfare programs. In fact they have no remote areas to isolate such a lab, unless they had a separate facility on which workers would stay in long term isolation. Anything else would be incredibly dangerous and stupid in my opinion.

  “So even if they do have some sort of transportation to overcome the time factor, why would they have stock of the agent or its counter? It strains credulity to think they remotely ascertained the nature of the infection, found a source for the counter among the few Earth nations that might even be willing to talk to them about it, obtain enough doses for approximately two hundred people and successfully transport it all within the time frame we saw?”

  “I know,” Markus agreed, spreading his hands in dismay. “I have nobody to accuse who might have both the agent and any way to transport it. I don’t know why they would want to help them. Sure they are all spacers, but that’s as simplistic as calling us and Argentines all Earthies. Surely it’s obvious to even other spacers that the Martians are flaming nutbars?”

  Paul nodded, as thoroughly mystified by it as Markus. “I don’t see any way to counter their recovery, no matter who engineered its defeat. It makes it that much more dangerous to try a similar action again. People will be watching. The best thing right now would be to keep our mouths shut and let it blow over. The longer it goes without being in the news the less chance somebody will demand a big investigation. I suspect in a few months or years their motives for helping the Martians will appear.”

  It was only the next day.

  * * *

  The sovereign of Central wishes to announce that on the basis of a purchase agreement, the Martian government at Pavonis Mons has ceded the south polar region of Mars to the sixtieth parallel in perpetuity to the Kingdom of Central for one Solar and other valuable considerations. The documents are available in facsimile to parties having a direct interest. Although a matter between sovereign governments, no other relationship, obligation or assumption of duty or treaty is implied. Central announces this as a public notification it intends to use and occupy this region and exclude others. To this end we will be putting a satellite in Mars polar orbit well outside the orbits of its natural moons.

  * * *

  “Well, now we have a motive,” Markus said, and sent the release to Paul.

  * * *

  “I know I said satellite, but I want a rock not a structure,” Heather explained. “It should be a little bigger than Phobos. If we aren’t an inferior state I don’t think we should have an inferior moon. I can tell from your face you think that’s silly, but I know how people think, and it matters.”

  “Have you given any thought how we can move a rock that big into Mars orbit?” Jeff asked.

  “No, but I figure if we don’t keep asking you to do harder stuff you will slack off and rest on your laurels,” Heather told him. “If you can’t think of anything off hand, get Happy and Barak to visit with you, supply the beer and we’ll probably have a matter transmitter and all element synthesizer from the three of you the next morning. I’ve seen how either of them interacts with you. I can’t imagine both at once.”

  “I think I felt a tremor in the firmament,” April said, grasping her chair arms. “Oh, no it was just gas,” she corrected, feeling her tummy.

  “If you can stick that jump engine on a ship why can’t you bolt it on a rock and jump the thing wherever you want to go?” Heather demanded.

  “Because the probability it will jump goes down with mass. In particular if I’m sitting on that rock I have no desire to explore the failure modes. I suspect James Weir was pushing the edge of the probability envelope and I have no idea if he even ended up back in this universe or if he exists at all.”

  April screwed her eyebrows together in intense thought. “The mass has to be in relationship to something,” she insisted.

  “It does?” Jeff asked, amused. “Tell me why.”

  “I don’t have the technical terms, but you’re just messing with me, because you have some reason to think the ship wasn’t too much mass and a decent sized asteroid is. Seriously, if you tried to do a short jump like we’ve done inside the Solar System and it was too much mass, what would happen? I find it hard to believe it would just disappear like it got sucked down a black hole. I don’t think you know, because I remember you didn’t expect it to jump to Centauri with the power you had available. You said if we didn’t have a lot more velocity nothing would happen, and then shazam! We were four light years away.”

  “I was wrong, and I’m still not sure why it jumps easier with the gravitation drive than the electromagnetic version. All I really see in the math is it jumps or it doesn’t,” Jeff admitted. “I can’t make a case for a continuing indeterminate state that doesn’t resolve. So I honestly have no idea what happened to Weir, and that scares me a lot. It tells me there is some other choice than A or B and I have no idea what or why. If you think our first jump was a big oops be aware we could be surprised again.”

  “I have an intuitive answer, but I can’t express it mathematically so you may not like it,” April said.

  “Truth, or the mathematical expression of it, doesn’t have to be likeable or popular,” Jeff said. “It often isn’t. Look at how they are not only denying Weir built a ship and jumped out, but a lot of voices are saying he couldn’t have because the theory behind it was false. Usually the difficulty is explaining the math in words, but if you want to do it the other direction we can try. If a true equivalence is possible it should be doable.”

  “You are jumping, aiming at other stars, because they have mass. You said that when you were explaining it to me. And when we short jump in the Solar System if we aim too much towards say, Jupiter, our path curves towards it,” April said drawing a sweeping arch with her hand. “I propose that for a set level of power in your jump drive – how much mass it can make jump has some sort of relationship to how much mass is in the entire universe. If there wasn’t any other mass out there influencing your jump you’d either go nowhere or never reappear.”

  “That has certain elegance to it,” Jeff admitted. “Expand that statement to say for a set power level and for the amount of my mom’s quantum fluid. If I had a bigger disk of it or could safely spin it faster that would change the limit too. It may be awhile before I can reduce that to math, but it does have promise.”

  “I suppose you could load up the ship with mass, say rocks or ice, and keep doing test jumps and adding mass until you see some numbers start to change, or it plain refuses to go,” Heather speculated.

  Jeff looked horrified. “Testing to failure, when you aren’t sure of the failure mode, is a very bad idea, especially for a manned vessel. Also, neither of our jump capable ships is designed to move freight. They don’t have large hatches much less large air locks. It’s not like we know of a place with low enough gravity to land, but enough to make loading operations easy. Somewhere with nicely sized pea gravel we could shovel in plastic drums and keep adding one each visit by your plan.”

  “You could add that to the Remora,” Heather suggested. “It might be handy if we find a large artifact or valuables worth retrieving. It wouldn’t have to be fancy, even a bolt down plate for a hatch like most private zero G cubic has on Home. You could set it up to operate remotely from another ship beside it.”

  “Do
es it even have to be inside?” April asked.

  “Probably not,” Jeff said. “We weren’t planning on the Remora needing to be in a hold. We have antennas and landing jacks that stick out. They all came along with us just fine. If we stuck a pole straight off the side how long would it need to be before it didn’t get brought along on the jump, or before it kept the ship from jumping at all?”

  “You think an extension might sort of anchor it?” April asked.

  “I don’t know, but I’m agreeable to finding out, if it doesn’t bankrupt us, and if it doesn’t kill anybody, especially me but preferably not you either.”

  “I have a suggestion,” Heather said. “Take a sample mass, nothing too big just yet. Say an ingot of whatever metal you have handy. Strap it to the hull and jump, just to establish it will come along. Then jump with it floating out of contact with the hull, about a half meter away. If it comes along with the ship keep moving it away until it doesn’t. Then repeat with a significantly larger mass. If you repeat it will give you enough data points to see how big a mass will be dragged along and how close it needs to be.”

  “Or you could back up against a rock so it’s right in line behind you instead off to one side,” April suggested.

  “That’s going to require a lot of repetitions, and it should be done at several power levels. I wish I had disks of different sizes in two drives. Both of ours are the same,” Jeff said. He never said yes, but he seemed to have bought the idea.

  “Can you still make the drive in the Remora different?” April asked.

  “Yes, and it’s a much smaller ship of lower mass. Everything else being equal, it may be able to drag along a larger mass if the sum of the masses in the field of influence matters.”

  “Then have your crew do these tests until the Remora is ready to be released to their service,” Heather said, “I’ll feel much better about their safety and they won’t be restless and resentful waiting to go back out exploring.”

  Heather said I’ll, but Jeff was pretty sure it was delivered in her We voice.