The Piranha Solution: A Hard Science Fiction Technothriller (Ace of Space Book 1)

by John Triptych

  Stilicho sighed as he slumped onto the side of the passageway. “Goddamn it.”

  In less than a minute, a white-colored golf cart drove into the wide passageway. Sitting behind the wheel was Edgar Roth, the colony director. He stopped a few meters away from Stilicho and got out, extending his hand. “Stil, long time no see, ol’ buddy. How long has it been?”

  Stilicho willed himself to stand fully upright as he shook the man’s hand. “Not sure, six or seven years, maybe?”

  Edgar nodded. He wore thick glasses and had a bald spot at the top of his head. He was one of the shorter male senior officers of the company, his forehead barely reaching Stilicho’s shoulders. “Well, it’s great to see you again. Hop on board!”

  The attendant helped Stilicho over to the front seat and placed his bag at the back of the cart. “Take care, sir, your other luggage has been sent to the Barsoom Hotel.”

  Stilicho nodded. “Thanks.”

  Edgar got back behind the wheel, turned the cart around, and stepped on the accelerator. “Don’t worry about your legs, you’ll be back to normal in about a day or two. Spaceflight takes a toll on one’s body, and you’ll need some time to adjust. Martian gravity is about a third that of Earth’s so you’ll have an easier time here.”

  “That’s good to know,” Stilicho said. “I was supposed to meet you officially later this afternoon, but would you mind if we get started right away?”

  “No problem, Stil,” Edgar said. “With the situation not getting any better, I’ve decided to devote my whole day over to you. We need to fix this issue, and as soon as possible. Shall we head to my office?”

  “I was hoping we could get something to eat first,” Stilicho said. “I’m craving for some real food.”

  “You bet!” Edgar turned the wheel and the cart made a sharp turn into an adjoining corridor, completely bypassing passport control. A few staff members noticed them, but quickly waved them through an employee access corridor with hardly a protest. Stilicho was supposed to go through a mandatory physical examination right after being cleared through passport control, but being Errol Flux’s right hand man did have its privileges.

  Within a few minutes they were driving along the main concourse. Eridu Colony was shaped like a Celtic cross- the bottom length held most of the farming units, while the three other lines had a mixture of laboratories, workshops and residential habitats. The ring that encircled the other parts of the colony served as the commercial and administrative hub of the place, while the central axis point led to the nuclear power plant. Stilicho could see that it was mostly uniformed staff making their way along the nearby walkways. The tourists were still several days behind. Errol had given last minute instructions for the incoming fleet to remain in orbit even after they had arrived, just in case of a possible evacuation.

  Edgar stopped the cart as they faced the entrance to the Barsoom Hotel. “Do you want to freshen up first?”

  Stilicho shook his head. “Nah, let’s just grab a bite to eat. How’s the hotel restaurant in this one?”

  “The other one’s better, it’s just on the other side though,” Edgar said.

  “Let’s go to that one, then.”

  Edgar pushed on the accelerator again. “You got it.”

  Stilicho rubbed his legs. “I can feel my strength returning.”

  “That’s good,” Edgar said. “We normally have a fleet of these carts at the arrivals terminal, since quite a number of tourists get wobbly legs the moment they land. Tourists are pretty fickle. About ten percent of them want to go back home the moment they reach low-Earth orbit, so we drop them off at the space station and refund half their money back. By the time they get over here, there’s no turning back, so the rest try to stoically endure the rest of their trip. The reason why we get so little repeat tourism is not the colony’s fault, it’s getting to and from here. The constant stresses of takeoffs and landings takes their toll, and if we include the uncomfortable time spent in microgravity, then you just get a rolling set of circumstances that doesn’t work in our favor. Even the tourists that we bring over have to achieve a certain level of fitness just to go up into at the space in the first place and they can’t bring any kids, so it’s not the ideal market for everybody.”

  “Well if it’s important for Errol, then you know the colony’s survival is at stake,” Stilicho said.

  Edgar nodded, as he maneuvered around a maintenance crew doing minor repairs on the roadway. He pointed to an adjoining tunnel. “Over there is the corridor leading towards the farming units. We’re pretty much self-sufficient when it comes to growing veggies out here. Lettuce, cabbage, soybeans and spinach take up most of the hydroponics area when it comes to the green, leafy variety. Root veggies like potatoes, carrots and onions grow too, but we have to double the amount of time that we spend monitoring them. I’ve asked Errol if we could just leech out the perchlorates from the Martian soil and grow them with it, but he’s afraid of the local bacteria out here. We need to do more tests before proceeding on that end.”

  Stilicho turned to look at him. “I told Errol that maybe it’s some kind of Martian virus that took out the outpost and the rescue team. You’re not afraid of that?”

  Edgar shook his head. “It’s a crap theory. There’s been Martian rocks that have landed on Earth over billions of years. Pathogens that are dangerous to humans on Earth have been trying for millions of years to get into our bodies. Martian bacteria are very similar to Earth bacteria and there’s even a plausible theory that life in fact, originated on Mars and was transferred to Earth. This planet has no plant or animal life for a possible Martian pathogen to infect. It’s like a mango tree getting chicken pox- nothing evolved out here that would be dangerous to us because we haven’t been on this planet for very long.”

  “Or so you say,” Stilicho said.

  Edgar stopped in front of another hotel. Unlike the previous one they had just come from, this one had a space-age theme. “Welcome to the Rocket Hotel. Their restaurant is like a diner, but they serve a pretty damned good breakfast here.”

  Stilicho’s legs felt better as they strode through the lobby and into the adjoining coffee-shop. Padded red leather booths, along with metal tables and art deco influences greeted them. A waitress wearing a starched teal uniform with a matching cap seated them at a nearby booth with a smile.

  Stilicho scanned the menu before looking up at the eager waitress. “Can I get an American breakfast platter with real eggs?”

  The nametag on the waitress’s uniform said Marie on it. “You sure can,” she said. “We got our first batch of eggs this year, courtesy of the very ship you came in with.”

  “Make that two: eggs over easy for me,” Edgar said. “And some fresh-brewed coffee, please.”

  “I’ll take mine sunny side up. And some extra pancakes for me, please,” Stilicho said.

  “Coming right up,” Marie said, before she turned around and headed over to the kitchen.

  Stilicho placed his elbows on the table and leaned forward. “Okay, if it isn’t a pathogen, do you think the Chinese are behind it?”

  Edgar shook his head. “I doubt it. Even though we had a brief conflict in the Pacific a few years back, both sides don’t want to start anything out here. Ba-Dian Colony in Gale Crater is too busy trying to sort itself out to start something like this. I’m not buying it.”

  “But they’re the only ones who would have the capability to take out both teams, right? I mean, the Russians are long gone, as Errol told me.”

  “We have a small Russian contingent of scientists here on an exchange program, and I have no doubt that some of them are FSB agents,” Edgar said. “But I just can’t conceive of a reason why they would attempt something like this either, it’s got to be something else. Just what that something else is, I just don’t know.”

  Stilicho touched the frame of his smartglasses to activate it. “Okay, I’ll be sending to you the names on the team that I want. I also requested Errol to give me some ro
vers. I’ll be heading out there myself to find out what’s going on.”

  Edgar tapped the frame of his own smartglasses as the memo appeared in the lenses. “I’m checking the transporter’s manifest now. Looks like Errol brought enough parts to assemble two new rovers. Thank god for that.”

  “How many rovers did the advanced construction team have with them?”

  “Two for a standard six-man crew,” Edgar said. “The rescue team also had two rovers when they set out for the outpost. So that’s four rovers missing and unaccounted for. It’s a huge blow to our long-range land transportation capabilities.”

  “Did you try and get any drones into the area?”

  “Every time we try to send an aerial drone into Chryse Planitia, we lose contact with it,” Edgar said. “Our satellites encounter some sort of interference when we program them to take pictures of the area, it’s as if something doesn’t want us to know what’s going on out there.”

  “There’s another rover that’s missing,” Stilicho said as he sent over the unedited, master inventory list that he got from Errol over to Edgar’s smartglass. “This one was deliberate.”

  Edgar’s eyes opened wide. “Holy cow. I was never told of this!”

  “Neither was I until I was already in transit,” Stilicho said. “Seems Errol did a favor for a trusted friend of his, and this complicates matters a whole lot.”

  The waitress arrived with plates of food. The two men instantly became quiet and waited until she left the side of the table. Stilicho was hungry and he ate with unexpected gusto. After a few minutes, the dirty plates were taken away and all that remained on the table were two cups of brewed coffee, the aromatic steam from the beverage rising slowly between them. Sugar and spices would be coming in the next ship, so they had to make do with artificial sweeteners in the meantime.

  “I met Karl only once,” Edgar said softly. “At a party over at Errol’s house, like twenty odd years ago. Strange guy- mostly kept to himself. I hardly even knew he was there.”

  “I met him twice,” Stilicho said. “Once at a press release, and the other time at a shareholder’s conference. Shook his hand when Errol introduced us, but I never got to know him.”

  Edgar made a low whistle. “To think he was right here all this time gives me the shivers. For him to go out there with no one but Errol knowing … why didn’t he ask for help from us?”

  Stilicho shrugged. “Beats me. Errol thinks he came out here to die and be with his son.”

  “I remember those Mars First lunatics,” Edgar said. “I was just a young administrator when I first came here, and I had to do the paperwork for their evacuation. They had started with a hundred twenty members in their own colony, and in the end only slightly more than half of them survived.”

  “You ever met their leader, Silas Balsamic?”

  “They were all nuts, but he was the nuttiest one of them all,” Edgar said. “He was brought in for processing before they put him on the rocket back to Earth, and he didn’t want to go, so they had him in restraints. He was sitting at the same distance from me as you are right now. I was asking him a few questions and he just looked at me as if I was some sort of fly under a microscope. I still get nightmares about it.”

  “None of them ever mentioned anything about Karl’s son?”

  Edgar looked up, as if lost in thought. “Yeah, there was a young girl who I think was his wife or girlfriend or something. Forgot her name. She was in hysterics. They ended up having to dope her too, I think.”

  Stilicho downed the remaining drops of coffee in his cup. “Do you think there’s a chance that Karl’s son might still be alive?”

  Edgar shook his head. “No way. How long has it been? Fifteen years? Even if his son had the entire colony to himself, he would need lots of spare parts to repair the life support, much less grow his food. Things break down all the time, that’s the reason why nearly half of Eridu’s population are engineers. Our repair and maintenance crews have a full time job just to keep everything in working order here.”

  “But the reason why Karl decided to come to Mars was because he heard his son’s voice on an email sent from here,” Stilicho said. “That was two years ago. So who sent the audio file from Mars? Maybe the Chinese lured him out here to kidnap him?”

  “Well that’s a possibility I guess, even though I don’t know why the Chinese would want him,” Edgar said. “Please remember we won’t be able to do anything about it unless you make all this public.”

  “That’s going to be tricky,” Stilicho said. “I’ll send an email to Errol and ask him if we could do that.”

  “The problem with doing it that way is you’ll have to make Errol publicly admit that he smuggled someone over here, right underneath NASA’s noses,” Edgar said. “That will not sit well with the government.”

  Stilicho frowned. NASA had a tremendous hold over the company since they were the governing body that issued licenses to launch rockets and build bases on other planets. “You’re right. Goddammit, what in the hell do we do?

  “Here’s what I suggest,” Edgar said. “Let me send a private inquiry to the Chinese. I’m in regular contact with my counterpart at Ba-Dian Colony, and if I let him know that we are actively searching for Karl, perhaps they might just hand him over to us, assuming he is with them.”

  “Okay,” Stilicho said. “That sounds like a better idea. I’ll support you on that suggestion. But we got another big problem to deal with.”

  Edgar’s straightened his back. “Oh, what’s that?”

  “NASA knows about Karl being sent here,” Stilicho said softly.

  Edgar grimaced, just before he put his head down. “Crap. We’re screwed.”

  “I think I can still do some damage control over this whole mess,” Stilicho said. “Let me think of a solution.”

  “NASA could come down hard on us, just for that,” Edgar said. “And with the missing outpost crew, this whole crapstorm just got even worse.”

  “Who’s the NASA administrator here?”

  “Mary Davis,” Edgar said. “We get along fine, and she mostly stays out of our way. But who knows how she’ll react when she gets a whiff of this.”

  “Let me worry about NASA,” Stilicho said. “You just need to get those rovers assembled so I can take my team out there.”

  “Okay,” Edgar said. “I know you get things done, and Errol wouldn’t have sent you out here if he didn’t have faith in you.”

  “Thanks,” Stilicho said. “I’ve got a question for you.”

  “Shoot.”

  “Why is this place called Eridu anyway?”

  Edgar tapped his fingers on the metal table. “Since we’re located in between two valleys that were once river outflows, the original proposed landing site for this place was nicknamed Mesopotamia, which is Greek for the ‘land between two rivers.’ Mesopotamia was the area where Earth’s first cities were built- the dawn of civilization, so to speak. The people of the area were called the Sumerians, and according to them, their first city was called Eridu. So when the name was proposed, Errol approved it. I think it’s a fitting name for the first city on Mars.”

  “A more fitting name ought to be Purgatory,” Stilicho muttered.

  Chapter 9

  Back in his suite, Stilicho was finally able to take a real shower for the first time in weeks. Eridu Colony had plenty of water, since there were massive glaciers of frozen ice just sitting outside, ready to be extracted and used. After getting a full rubdown at the hotel’s massage parlor, he decided to get some exercise by strolling out on the streets for a little while before meeting Edgar again for lunch and a brief tour. The vehicle crews were working round the clock to assemble the new rovers that had been shipped over from the transporter, and Edgar had guaranteed that they would be ready to go by tomorrow morning.

  Lunch was fresh salads and stir-fried vegetables, along with stone-grilled tilapia and catfish from the aquaponics area, their crispy skin drizzled with Martian rock salt. They
finished it off with some rice pudding that seemed pedestrian compared to the entrees. By early afternoon they decided to drive over to the greenhouses in order to see just how self-sufficient the colony was.

  Edgar parked the electric cart near the entrance. “So, how did you like the taste of our local cuisine here?”

  Stilicho rubbed his tongue on the roof of his mouth. “I can still taste the rice pudding we ate.”

  Edgar chuckled and gave him a playful slap on the back. “Sorry about that, we’re still trying to get the desserts to taste right. Vat grown rice has a slightly different consistency and flavor. The lack of natural sugar and milk also plays a part since we have to synthesize our sweeteners and creamers. Perhaps in another few years we’ll come up with something better.”

  Stilicho followed him as they both strode through the entrance. “This is my first, and hopefully last time on the Red Planet.”

  Edgar snorted. “Hate it already, do you?”

  “Ever heard of landlubbers? Well I’m an earthlubber,” Stilicho said. “I’m perfectly fine being on Earth and nowhere else.”

  “You and your prejudices,” Edgar said.

  After strolling through the reception area, they were met by a tall woman wearing a white lab smock. Dr. Verna Fisher was the farming director, and she knew Stilicho well enough to stride forward and give him a big hug. “Stil! When I heard the news you were coming over I was jumping out of my socks,” she said.

  Stilicho smiled. “How you doing, Verna?”

  Edgar had an amused look on his face. “You two know each other?”

  “I’ve known Stilicho since we went to college together,” Verna said. “We both started out as interns at ACE, then he got a promotion!”

  “Trust me, if you knew the work I have to do for Errol, you wouldn’t be so jealous,” Stilicho said.