Copyright © 2017 PD McClafferty
All rights reserved
ISBN 978-0-9864245-9-5
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Cover design by Gary Tenuta GVTGRAPHIX
Interior artwork from Shutterstock
Ebook formatting by www.ebooklaunch.com
For other works by PD McClafferty, please visit my web page at http://pdmcclafferty.com
Contents
PART 1
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
PART 2
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
PART 1
ANIMAL INSTINCTS
Chapter 1
THE RED PLANET circa 2171
“GET BACK HERE, MALACHAI!” the security guard, and sometimes babysitter, shouted at the running boy. “Wait for us.” His call was muffled by his respirator that all the Earthborn still had to wear. Mars born, eleven-year-old Malachai Fontaine suffered no such hindrance and, thanks to a massive terraforming effort on the part of many Earth corporations, breathed the thin Martian air just fine, thank you very much.
“What?” the chestnut-haired boy shouted back over his shoulder as he jumped onto his sand crawler, a dual-tracked vehicle painted bright green to stand out against the red Martian sand. “I can’t hear what you’re saying!” he called, although he had heard perfectly well.
“Goddamned little spoiled brat…” the first guard muttered to the second, puffing as he ran.
Malachai opened his mouth to say that he’d heard the guard, then thought better of it; he was feigning deafness, after all. He thumbed the crawler’s On switch as he tossed his canteen and flashlight on the seat beside him. The vehicle hummed as he steered it away from the Fontaine Estate, along the meandering dirt road that ran back to Lowell, the biggest city and capital of Mars, and finally out into the open red desert. Malachai loved the unfettered deserts of the Red Planet, despite their bleak and sometimes hostile countenance. He shivered as he opened the throttle on the crawler to the vehicle’s maximum speed of fifty-five kilometers per hour. At fifteen degrees Celsius, the air held a sharp chill, and he wished he’d brought a heavier jacket. Glancing over his shoulder, he noted the other crawler carrying the two babysitters a half kilometer behind him. It was too late to turn back for the jacket, Malachai thought with some resignation, bending a little lower behind the windscreen. The crawler was designed to convey two occupants across the sandy plains of Mars for twelve hours on a single charge of electricity, and it was only an hour to the cave. Grinning to himself, Malachai knew the other sled would never catch him. The red cliffs in the distance grew larger, and he steered the crawler expertly around jagged columns of red wind-sculpted rock. The thin air smelled of sagebrush, creosote bush, and old memories. The families Asteraceae and Larrea Tridentata, with only slight genetic modification, did well on Mars, and patches of the prickly weeds dotted the landscape, adding their oxygen to the air. In another hundred years, or so the scientists claimed, even Earthborn visitors would be able to breath the Martian atmosphere. Malachai breathed deeply and grinned. Until then, he had it all for himself.
The kilometers flowed by, and Malachai’s mind wandered. He’d been this way many times before, since discovering the cave the previous year.
“The year is 2171,” his tutor had droned at him that very morning, “and Mars has been colonized for the past seventy years, with the biggest city, Lowell, named for the crater in which it sits, recently breaking twenty thousand residents, with fifty thousand people total worldwide. An hour’s journey from the northern edge of the city, the residence of Giuseppe Fontaine, the richest man on Mars and reputedly the richest man in the solar system, sits in its own small crater. It was due to his efforts and financial backing that the colonization of Mars was possible at all, to say nothing at all about the many Fontaine terraforming plants. The Fontaine residence is a massive structure built along the lines of the Maranjab Caravanserai in Iran and is composed of one main three-story building, with an airtight domed top, and five smaller outbuildings, garages, and workshops. The air on Mars is breathable, barely, to people born on Mars, but visitors from Earth will have to wear respirators for many more years. Thanks to terraforming efforts, rainstorms are consistent, although infrequent, and plant life is slowly spreading across the world, gradually encroaching into the vast Martian deserts.”
Malachai recalled that the rest of the lecture had turned boring when it devolved into a discussion of the political chaos that was the government of Mars. He never could figure out which of the four parties—the Greens, the Reds, the Blues, or the Browns—stood for what, except that the Reds stood for a free Mars while the Greens, and the current military governor, supported Earth control.
“You will recall,” the tutor droned on, “that the Fontaine household consists of Giuseppe and his second wife, Lucinda. His first wife, Julia, died giving birth to Giuseppe’s sixth child, Corban. You are Giuseppe’s first child by Julia and the heir apparent. Lucinda is pregnant with Giuseppe’s first child with her, and it is rumored that the Fontaine couple plan to name the child Novalie. In addition to the nuclear family are several brothers and sisters of Giuseppe, Julia, and Lucinda, together with their families. There are fifty security, maintenance, and administrative personnel living in a smaller building set a short way from the main structure. Total people residing on the estate are approximately one hundred.”
Malachai wondered sometimes how Giuseppe managed to have the time to sire so many children. To the boy’s untutored eye, his father was always working—either in his plush office on the estate or flitting about the planet to solve one crisis or another. Malachai blinked, backing off on the throttle until the crawler was traveling at a slow walk down a long boulder-strewn red canyon where impossibly tall wind-tortured cliffs of the ruddy stone rose on both sides. He pulled the crawler up in front of a narrow rectangular opening and switched off the power. A shadow flickered in the corner of his eye, and he turned quickly to see… rocks. Nothing moved. Shadows seemed to have a life of their own near the cave entrance, and farther in, too. He swallowed his unfounded fear and took a long drink of water before slinging the canteen around his neck and picking up his flashlight. The pockets of his tan cargo pants bulged with an assortment of small tools and food bars. The crawler’s locator chip would tell the babysitters where he was at the moment, and he figured that he had perhaps an hour alone before they arrived. Flipping on the light, he wiggled into the dark opening.
Cold musty air suddenly assaulted his nose as he entered, making Malachai sneeze violently as he reached out to touch the stony walls for support. The constricted entrance sloped down sharply, and if it hadn’t been for the worn formations that looked surprisingly like steps, the boy would have had to crawl on his hands and knees. Fifty meters farther in, the entry widened into a large rubble-strewn chamber with a floor constructed of rectangular paving blocks. A small chamber off the main room drew Malachai, and his breath was tense and rapid with excitement. He pulled out his small but expensive camera then snapped a quick series of holographic shots, the flash making his eyes water. The strobing after-images revealed shadows skittering across the floor. In his flashlight beam he studied the even redbrick wall before him. He’d tried to decipher the faded glyphs that ran from floor to ceiling but to no avail. Malachai supposed he would have to show t
he pictures of his small secret treasure room to his father and his tutor. The radiant fantasy of the glory and honor he would receive from his discovery faded in the harsh light of reality. Once he showed the room to someone else, he would never be allowed back. Up to then, he’d managed to convince his babysitters to remain outside, but he supposed that little freedom was too good to last.
Using a fine brush, he cleaned the ruddy dust from between an odd square of bricks set into and low on the wall. His imagination told him that the square looked like a false front on a cabinet drawer. What might have been a stone drawer pull lay in the dust at the base of the wall. With his fingertip, he traced the place where the pull might have been attached thousands of years in the past.
Malachai set the flashlight to wide dispersal and placed it in the middle of the room so that he could use both of his hands. He worked the thin blade of his small utility knife around the edges of the drawer, clearing away the grit of millennia. Then he began to pry gently, first on one side, then on the other. With a tiny crunch, the drawer moved out a single centimeter, and the boy could feel his heart pounding with excitement. Holding his breath, Malachai wiggled the knife and pried again. The knife blade bent, then the drawer slid out a few scant millimeters.
“Malachai!” a voice shouted, nearly in his ear. The babysitters had arrived.
He flinched, and the blade of his knife snapped with a soft ting. Malachai let out a startled “Eep!” as the razor-sharp shard of blade sliced his face on its way to the other side of the room. The boy gasped in pain, reaching for his injured cheek.
“Look what you did!” the boy shrieked in anger, holding up his ruined knife. “You…”
A single drop of his blood fell to the dusty floor, and hundreds of slithering shadows burst out from beneath every stone, out of the partially opened drawer, and from between the very bricks in the wall and floor… to converge on the fallen drop—then to the wound on the boy’s face. Stunned, Malachai screamed, holding up his hands to protect his injured cheek. He could almost feel the shadows squeeze between his fingers.
Burning pain exploded in Malachai’s cheek, a hundred times worse than the original injury, and quickly spread to his head, neck, and body. He let out one bubbling shriek as his limbs spasmed uncontrollably.
“What the fuck?” one of the guards shouted as Malachai felt their hands grab at him to pull him to safety. His own senses began to turn off, one by one, while at the same time his body was moving, fighting, and lashing out in the darkness—but he was not in control. He tried to scream again, and failed.
Chapter 2
EARTH circa 2199
Through the wide kitchen window, Solomon Draxx could see the distant, mist-shrouded Boston Harbor, and he sighed at the persistently ugly weather. “Coffee!” He grumbled to the auto-chef as he padded barefoot into the kitchen of his small apartment, scratching at his short brown hair. He picked up the steaming cup on his way to the kitchen table.
“Good morning, Mr. Draxx,” the soft contralto of the household AI murmured from the air as he sat. “It is 6:47, November 18, 2199. You have eleven messages waiting: three are urgent, five are social, and three are spam. The weather for the Boston metropolitan area is for showers this morning, followed by freezing rain and sleet this afternoon. The current temperature is 3.5 degrees Celsius.”
He rubbed his bristled chin, thinking that it was time for his weekly depilatory cream. “Play the urgent messages and delete the spam. I’ll take the social calls later. What is on the agenda for today?”
“At 22:30, you have an engagement with the local police. I have no other information on that operation.”
“Thank you.” He sipped his coffee. “Play the urgent messages now.”
There was a click in the air. “Mr. Draxx.” Solomon recognized the voice as belonging to Zufar Koroma, a man of Arabic extraction who ran a worldwide placement agency out of his office in Cairo. His heavily accented voice reminded Solomon of the lisping voice of the ancient actor Peter Lorre. “I have a bodyguard job for you to consider, Solomon,” the voice on the message lisped. “Length of contract is six months, with an option to renew. I realize that our last business arrangement was… suboptimal, and you told me you would accept only exceptionally good paying jobs—or, as you said, I could risk my own fucking neck. For the amount that is being offered, north of a million dollars US, you will be able to retire after this venture.”
There was a long pause.
“The job is on Mars, Solomon, and they asked for you by name. Give me a call.”
Solomon stared at the ceiling in surprise as there was another click. “Solomon, this is Addy.” He knew the voice of his significant other, as well as his own. “Don’t you forget about tonight, Sol… and come prepared.” She always liked to remind him to wear his monofilament body armor. “See ya.”
The last click came. “Mr. Draxx.” A clear mezzo-soprano. “My name is Petja Švajger, and I recently contacted Zufar Koroma regarding a position we need filled. I just wanted to reassure you that the job is legitimate and requires your services as a bodyguard only. You were recommended to us as the best in the business and a man of high moral standards.” She blurted out a long complex number. “You can reach me at this number, or you can make arrangements through Zufar Koroma if you choose. Although we didn’t mention specifics to Zufar, the pay for this job is eight digits.” The call terminated.
Solomon smiled. If something seemed to be too good to be true, it usually was, but this one job could solve all his problems with Addy. After years of putting it off, they could get married and think about having a child. Hell, with an eight-digit paycheck, they might consider paying the penalty tax to have more than one child. All he had to do was to survive the job.
~~~
The darkness in the long dingy hallway was oppressive, and it seemed to press against Solomon’s eyeballs with a physical presence. Somewhere in the distance, water dripped, and the air smelled of mold and decay. Tiny feet made thin scratching sounds as a rat crawled within the walls. Wearing old dark clothes, Solomon stood motionless at the end of the unlit hallway as the two members of the Boston Police Department moved silently up the stairs at the other end of the corridor.
“Ya think he’s here yet?” a brusque male voice rasped. Solomon guessed it was Edward Kerry, Addy’s partner.
“If I know Solomon,” the lighter voice of Addilyn Simms replied in a tense whisper, “he’s been here for half an hour and is probably watching us right now.” She paused. “Right, Solomon?”
From the other end of the hallway Solomon let out a dry laugh. “You two make so much noise, a deaf man could have heard you coming.”
Two dark shapes moved down the passage toward him.
“How come I didn’t pick you up on infrared?” Kerry’s gruff voice sounded aggrieved.
“I have an IR blocking blanket I draped over myself,” Solomon said. “You’d have to trip over me to know I’m there.”
“Then how do you see us?” the detective growled.
“Oh, I can see you.” Solomon chuckled his reply.
“You and the rats. Is your witness tucked away safe?” Kerry grumbled.
Solomon could see the detective squinting into the dark, still trying to see him. It was too bad he was looking on the wrong side of the hallway. “I moved him to the other side of the hall, right behind my back.” Solomon had taken the job of guarding an important witness to the grand jury meeting the next day. Since he’d worked with the police many times before, the details were left up to him. The idea of bagging possible hit men had been a bonus.
“You don’t even trust us, do you?” Kerry asked.
“Not if I can help it. Now find a patch of shadow, behind me and out of my field of fire, and pipe down. Our company should be along shortly. Don’t be offended if I put you in the same room as the witness for a short time. Our visitors might have night-vision gear.”
Addy gave his arm a squeeze as she passed, but said nothing.
Fifteen minutes passed. Then thirty. Just after midnight, Solomon heard the stairs creak faintly under the weight of a step while the sleet tapped insistently against the window. He pushed the two police officers gently but firmly into the room with the witness and shut the door behind them. There was no sense in risking the operation so soon.
Three man-sized shapes appeared at the head of the stairs, weapons drawn. In the dark, their night-vision glasses gave them a bug-eyed alien look. Their gaze swept by Solomon and moved on, no doubt seeing only darkness filled with cold, lumpy, unmoving shapes. The leader flicked on a light for a moment, checked door numbers, and pointed to the door of the room the witness should have been in. The weapons the three held were high-power military-grade energy guns. As they were activated, their small power lights gave each of the men an evil green cast. Despite the door to the witness’s room being locked, it swung open with a low groan of rusty hinges, indicating the assassins were well informed and had access to the passkey. Solomon shed his IR blanket as soon as the killers were within the other room, then he reached behind himself and silently opened the door to the police officers, gesturing to the room across the hall.
So lifelike that it had fooled the assassins, the mannequin, built for EMT training, actually appeared to breathe under the bedcovers, and if the assailants checked, they would find it had warm skin and produced a pulse. The styled wig was the same color as the witness’s. Moving on silent feet until he stood behind them, Solomon watched as the three assassins stood over the bed for a moment, observing the steady rise and fall of the breathing. At a nod from one, the men raised their weapons and fired as one. The crash of the weapons discharge was deafening in the room.
Ears ringing, Solomon didn’t tell the men to drop their guns or give them a chance to surrender nicely. Lawyers would have had them out on bail in six hours, and they would have been safely out of the country in seven. His pistol cracked as he shot the first man in the back, spraying the still-smoking bed with his blood and organs. The second assassin staggered as the police rounds struck him, but then seemed to shake off the effects of the heavy lead slugs as he raised his energy weapon to point it at Addy. His head disappeared as the bolt from Solomon’s own military-grade weapon struck him at the same instant that the last assassin shot Solomon in the chest. Addy screamed as he was blasted through the thin wall and into the next room in a cloud of smoke and plaster dust. In the haze-filled room, the assassin turned slowly to face the two police officers and raised his weapon, confident that nothing the police had could penetrate his body armor. The gun crashed to the floor, and the cauterized stump of the man’s right arm, severed cleanly just above the elbow, hit the floor with a sodden thud. Solomon stepped back into the room through the hole his passage had just made, his gun leveled at the assassin. His heavy leather jacket, shirt, and undershirt hung in tatters on his shoulders, threads of smoke rising into the air. The blast of the energy weapon had scrubbed his monofilament body armor to a burnished shine, and for a second in the light of the police flashlights, it looked as though he were wearing a mail shirt. The assassin looked down at his smoking arm, and his eyes rolled back into his head as he slowly crumbled to the floor.
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