* * *
She kept her foot down, and the nightmarish journey was made worse by her refusal to use any lights.
“You should switch them on. This place is so dense they won’t be able to follow. They can’t even see us from twenty meters away.”
She hadn’t taken her eyes off the narrow track they were following, pushing aside foliage and bumping over fallen branches, a rollercoaster of a ride. If it were a fairground, they’d have charged them money for it. “The tree canopy isn’t continuous. The drones would pick us up every time we drove underneath a bare patch.”
He didn’t push it. She was the local expert, a skilled driver, and her night vision was exceptional.
“Where’re we going?”
“To work.”
He glanced at her through the gloom, seeing her almost relaxed as she casually spun the wheel and worked the electric motors to keep the vehicle from plunging into the forest of trees and wreckage. “I thought you said you were going to work.”
“I did. Shit!”
She jammed her foot on the brake, and they skidded sideways, coming to a stop inches away from a log lying across the track. The gull-wing doors swung up, making it easy to climb out. The tall tires lifted the vehicle up higher than normal, and Noah's feet made a thumping sound as he hit the ground. They moved ahead to inspect the obstacle. She shook her head.
“We’ll have to go back and find another way through. There’s no way we’ll move that. I used to have a chain in the trunk, but someone stole it. Now I don’t even have a rope.”
She started back to the vehicle, but he didn’t join her. The log disappeared into the foliage on one side, but on the other end it stopped short.
She climbed into the driver’s seat and shouted, “Cage, we have to go!”
“Not yet. Back off a bit. Give me some space. Five meters should do it.”
“You better be quick, whatever you’re doing.”
She put the shift into reverse and went back. He estimated the weight of the timber and looked at the ground where it had fallen. So far, it hadn’t sunk below the surface, and neither had it become rooted in the undergrowth. Which meant the fall had been recent. He took the trunk at the exposed end in both arms and lifted. Nothing, but he kept the pressure on, every fiber in his body keeping up the strain. He felt the controllers in his arms and legs feeding more energy to the motivators that supplied power to the joints and artificial muscles inside.
It was an emergency override and would last no more than a few seconds before his internal systems shut down, but a few seconds was all he needed. There’d be a ten-minute wait for the systems to reset and return to the normal cycle. Until then, he’d be helpless.
He heaved again, and this time, the trunk moved. With a savage surge of his arm and leg cybernetic muscles, it came off the ground. He stepped backward, supporting the enormous weight of the log, pulling it through ninety degrees until it lay alongside the track, not across it, and lowered it. He raced back to the burner, and as he took the passenger seat, felt the start of a shutdown recycle.
She was staring at him in astonishment. “I don’t believe what I just saw. How did you…Hey, Cage, are you okay?”
“Just drive. I’ll be fine in a few minutes. It’s an internal override, so if we run into any more trees, we’re screwed.”
She nodded, stamped on the pedal, and restarted the crazy, death defying drive through the forest. He wasn’t okay, and it wasn’t just the reset cycle. He’d felt something wrong, felt the feedback from his neural pathways change; like a mental ‘stutter’ when his brain sent a command to his limbs. This had happened before, back after he'd lost his second life. The damage to his upper arm had sent strange signals to his brain, almost sending him off into a psychotic fit. Damage to the nervous system or the controllers were dangerous to him, and to everybody else.
He had to fix it before it got worse, which meant contacting the man who’d overseen his New Life program. Ask him if it could it be a long-term problem, and was there a temporary fix? He thought about Colonel Bruce Travers, the brilliant military surgeon who led the New Life division of the secret facility in Maryland. A facility that carried out the research to enable soldiers who died in battle to be reborn; with new limbs and new organs, it was a win-win. They gave a man the ultimate reward, his life back. The military got back a soldier for the front lines, Stronger, faster, and better. In some ways it was preferable to kill those on the Lifer program, because when they came back they were improved in every way.
Travers had traveled to Mars, to personally oversee the New Life techs ready to spring into action the moment a dead soldier came into their labs. He met Travers when they’d singled out Cage to come in for routine checks. After all, he was on his fourth life, a living, walking, breathing test for the various tweaks they’d made during his regenerations. Travers was a soldier’s soldier. A man whose sole preoccupation was the welfare of the Lifers he'd created.
‘Any problems you have, you call me, Lieutenant Cage. I’ll give you my personal code and will reach me anywhere, here or Earthside.’
He’d memorized the details. When he got to a phone, he’d call him. Maybe the problem was nothing. But if it were more serious, the last thing he wanted was to let down Rose Romero. She deserved more. He had to talk to Travers. He wouldn’t let him down, wouldn’t drop the dime on him. The Colonel always put the welfare of his Lifers first.
Two hours later she slowed, and they were out in the open. Ahead of them lay the vast compound that was the Green Bank National Radio Astronomy Observatory. The Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope dominated the site, and it was once the world's largest fully steerable radio telescope. It was also the world's largest movable land object, until they began building the huge terminals for the lighters, the shuttles that connected passengers and freight to the Cyclers out in space.
They skirted the edge of the site, and he noticed the group of small dishes, set some distance away from the main telescope. They looked odd and out of place. As if they were an afterthought. Surrounded by high razor wire, there was something vaguely military about them.
“What are those things, some kind of auxiliary system to back up the main radio telescope? I was wondering why they needed the wire, the main telescope doesn’t have that kind of secure perimeter.”
She grimaced. “We’ve been asking the same question. They were here when I started working at the museum, and I got the impression it was someone’s bright idea, a failed project to improve the performance of the main dish.”
“So they’re like the deuterium plant? Something else falling apart.”
She shook her head. “They appear to work okay. If you watch their positions, they track around the sky. Strange, but they’re always aligned on the one planet when it’s visible, Mars.”
“Some kind of surveillance thing? Left over from the wars?”
“Maybe, but if it was that, it could feed us with some valuable data for our research facility. We’re here, by the way. This is where I work.”
She stopped at the rear of a long, low, modern building. It resembled a shopping mall, but there were no advertising shingles displayed on the outside. She glanced across at him.
“You okay to walk across? I mean, are you, you know…”
“I’m fine now. What’re you hoping to do here?”
She was already striding toward the personnel entry door, and she replied without turning around, “Files, data going back five years and more. Records of the events and discussions that led up to the Third Martian War.”
“Why?”
“Because someone, somewhere, killed my husband. The devil is in the detail, that’s what they say. I’m confident the key to what happened will be buried deep inside that data.”
She put her eye to a retina scanner while placing her hand on the metallic panel to the right. After a short pause it buzzed and then unlocked the door. He followed her inside, and they walked through darkened corridors. She sto
pped at a door marked ‘Store’ and opened it. The walls inside the large space were line with racks of clothing.
“Some of the staff keep spare clothes here. It’s outdoor stuff. Exploring the forest is a popular hobby. There’s not much else to do around here when the telescope guys are working a two-day shift. They put on boots and thick clothes, and spend an hour or two hiking through the forest. You’ll find something in there; you can’t go much further in that bib and brace you’re wearing. It’s not the latest fashion, if you know what I mean.”
He grinned and rummaged through the racks of clothing. Found what he needed, and five minutes later stepped out into the passage wearing jeans, boots, a thick, warm shirt, and a coat. She nodded in approval and led the way to another locked door. The shingle fixed to the wall said, ‘Dr. Rose Romero – Curator – Mars Museum and Research Facility, Green Bank.’ He hadn’t known she had her doctorate.
They went inside her office, and she closed the door. “This whole thing stinks, Cage. I was never happy with the explanation of how my husband died, and now you’ve told me what you know, it stinks like a barrel of rotting fish. You know what I’m beginning to think? You’re the key to it all.”
“I am?”
“Yep. Why did the Martians keep you imprisoned for three years? The other POWs went home soon after the end of the war.” He shrugged, “Why are they so desperate to get you back, to kill you if that’s what it takes? Then there’re the soldiers who came after you.”
He nodded. “Yeah, the Mars Recon II unit flashes.”
She’d been tapping at a keyboard, but she gave him a sharp glance. “You’re serious? I didn’t notice those. The same unit as Rob and you.”
“The same.”
“I’m even more convinced there’s a link somewhere. When I find it, I’ll be able to work out their reasons. It’s too much of a coincidence. I’ll be quick as I can, and then we’ll get out of here. They won’t take long working out where we are.”
He’d come to the same conclusion. The combination of the drone swarms, and downlinking to the military and law enforcement databank, were a powerful weapon. He watched her working and admired her for the beautiful young woman she was. Some men felt threatened by super intelligent women, but he’d always admired anyone able to apply their brain to solve the most complex problems ever devised by man. Not that there were many of them left Earthside.
“I need to make a call, is the comms system working?”
She nodded. “No sweat, and because of the secure nature of this place, the lines are encrypted, so the call won’t be monitored.”
She didn’t ask whom he was calling, and he didn’t tell her. He took a seat at a console on the opposite side of the room and put in the code. The display lit up and then showed the image from the camera. Noah hadn't seen his face in days, and seeing the marks and scratches did little to improve his mood.
Come on, answer!
It was his personal contact, day or night, of the man who’d almost singlehandedly created the Lifers.
He was recalling those heady days on Mars when the call answered, and the familiar, reassuring figure of Colonel Bruce Travers, Head of the military’s New Life program, and the man responsible for its development and implementation. He was a man of around seventy or eighty years old, but still looked years younger. A cheery, fleshy face, like a sleeker Santa Claus, and the excess weight he carried suited him, even complemented his air of cheerful authority. His silver hair was carefully groomed, as ever, and he was clearly at work, wearing the uniform of the PanAm Medical Research Corps. When he recognized Cage, his face was wreathed in smiles.
“Cage, it’s good to see you.”
“You, too, Sir. You’re looking good.”
A frown. “Which is more than I can say for you, son. You been in an accident, do you need my help?”
“Kind of, Sir.”
He explained is concerns about the internal mechanism of his leg, and the burst of energy he’d used to lift the log. “I need to know how to deal with it. Is there a way I can do something myself, some procedure I can go carry out?” He grinned, “I don’t want to find myself hopping along on one leg.”
Travers wasn’t smiling. “You’ve got a problem there, young man. I’d say one of your synthetic tendons malfunctioned and tore part of the motivator subsystem. The parts will need to be replaced. You need to come in, Cage.”
“That’s not possible, Sir. Not right now.”
A sigh. “If you don’t get it fixed, it could end up permanent, and you'll lose a lot more than basic motor functions. Additional stress could permanently cut power to either of your legs. For obvious reasons, the control circuitry is linked. Either you come in, or they’ll wind up pushing you in a wheelchair.”
“I just can’t, Sir.”
“I take it you have a problem. Something that prevents you from getting here.”
He hesitated, but why not tell him? “That’s correct, Sir.”
“I see. Tell me, are you in the locality of my lab?”
“The Appalachians. West Virginia.”
“I see. That’s pretty remote."
There was a pause, and Noah wondered what was going through the man's head. A few years ago he wouldn't have doubted the trustworthiness of the man. Now, after the betrayal on Mars, and the years of time in incarceration, he had doubts.
"It's a stretch, but how about I come out and meet you? I have a rotorcraft fitted out with a small emergency repair bay available for my services."
Noah couldn't believe what he was hearing.
"Tell me where you are, and I’ll meet you there. I can’t let one of my people down after all you've been through. A Lifer contract works both ways. And I always stand by my words."
He was impressed. Just as he’d thought, Travers wouldn’t let his people down. He gave the location of the Green Bank facility, said he’d be traveling North, and would meet him at the next small town, ten klicks away.
“How long will it take, Sir? We’re in something of a hurry.”
“We?”
“A friend, she’s driving me.”
“She! Lucky you. Tell your girlfriend she won’t be kept waiting for very long. An hour at most, it’s a simple procedure. Open up the leg, switch the defective parts, and reset the programming. I’ve done that kind of thing a hundred times. When will you get there?”
“We’ll be there in…” He stopped to think, “We could have a slight delay. Would an hour be okay? We should make it by then.”
“An hour is fine. I’ll see you then, and take care.”
The screen faded, and he glanced at Rose. “You get all that?”
“I got the bit about an hour. I’ll do my best to get you there in time.
Rose nodded without looking away from the computer.
"I've got something I want to check out first. You got me thinking."
She looked back at her screen and continued to work at the keyboard. Once, he asked her why she wasn’t using speech to operate the machine, and she smiled. “You know vocal communications. It's unreliable. I find my hands can get the job done a lot quicker."
He nodded. No surprise. He'd seen her hands on the keyboard, and they were faster than he could ever have thought possible. She finally switched to a different terminal and immediately hit trouble. Her brow furrowed, as she tapped the same key sequence, again and again.
“What is it?”
She shook her head in puzzlement. “I’m not certain. The secondary databases, I can’t access them. Those dishes outside, the small ones, I understand they installed them shortly before the First Martian War. They were supposed to help give us warning of what the Martians were up to. They’re designed to augment and supplement data interpretation to the big telescope, but there’s no active connection to the system. It should work, but it doesn’t. I’ve never needed to access it before, but now I’m trying to download the most important data to this portable. It won’t let me in, even though I have access to all
areas of the facility.”
“Do you need that data?”
She shrugged. “I can’t know until I see it. But the thing is, the more data I have, the better my analysis tools can work. It's all about big data and big numbers."
Noah had no idea what she was talking about and simply nodded away in agreement.
"Cage, there’s some kind of a cover up going on here. A conspiracy is the way I'd describe it. A deliberate attempt to hide the truth.”
“About what?”
She gave him a helpless smile. “I wish I knew.”
She struggled for another ten minutes, and finally switched off and picked up the portable. “I managed to pull off part of incomplete backup in the end, but it’s heavily encrypted, looks unbreakable. Still, we have something useful. It’s time to go. It won’t take them long to work out who I am and where I work. We need to be a long way from here.”
He felt a pang of guilt. “I shouldn’t have come. You had a life before this all happened. I just had to see you...before..."
It was hard to read her expression, but her words were like shots fired from a gun. “I had no life. Every day I wondered about Rob. How it happened, how he died, and all I got from the military was lies and obfuscation, and that damned payment every month. It felt like blood money back then, and now..."
Her face tightened with anger.
"Look, I’m grateful to you, can’t you see that?”
“It won’t bring Rob back.”
A grimace. “I buried Rob a long time ago, in my mind. My husband is gone, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want justice, to know the truth. Could anyone have saved him, and if they could, why didn’t they? If somebody fell down on the job, I want him punished. When I can take the time to analyze this data, it may help point to that person. Or persons.”
“Okay, that makes sense. Where do you suggest?”
“We need to meet this Colonel Travers first, get you fixed up. Then find a motel, somewhere they won’t be looking for you. For us, I guess. I need a day at least to go over this stuff. Then we can make a decision. Lucky for us the entire state is full of rundown motels. Hell of a time for a vacation."
Last Life (Lifers Book 1) Page 10