“Well, I think we both got what we wanted. You got your dream job and I got mine,” Verna said.
Stilicho pulled out a large, red-tinted plastic bottle from the bag he was carrying and gave it to her. “I got something else you wanted.”
Verna beamed as she held the bottle in her hands. “Oh my god, sriracha sauce! Stil, I love you and I’ll never forget this gift!”
Edgar couldn’t help but laugh. Spices of all kinds were worth their weight in gold here. The colony psychologists had to deal with cases of staff depression due to the fact that mundane items like peppers and chocolate were in such short supply. Rumors were rampant that someone had stashed away boxes of candy bars and hot sauces, and these stories refused to die down, despite official denials.
“I knew you’d like that,” Stilicho said. Looking around, he could see that the massive passageway was built like a subway tunnel, with separate glass greenhouse modules situated along the sides of the underground channel that extended for two kilometers. Soft classical tunes were being piped through the intercom system, for Verna believed music helped to stimulate plant growth.
Verna placed the bottle in a large pocket beneath the folds of her lab smock. “I’d better hide this. If the others find out I’ve got hot chili sauce right on the first transport, they would kill me.”
Stilicho chuckled. “So how’s life out here?”
“Can’t complain since I’m now the chief agronomist in the colony,” Verna said. “I’ve always wanted to stay on Mars, so I’m living the dream. What do you think of it so far?”
“Well, I had fresh fish for lunch, which was a surprise,” Stilicho said. “It’s not luxury, but it ain’t bad either. So tell me about this place.”
Verna pointed at the interior of a nearby greenhouse. The plant bed was situated up high, close to the heat lamps. The massive tanks containing the fish were located just below it. “The aquaponics we’ve set up is a completely closed system. We’ve combined the growing of plants, and their waste products are transferred to the bottom tank, where the fish live. The fish feed on the plant material and their poop is filtered back up to the hydroponics section, which fertilizes the plants growing there. I’ve petitioned Errol to see if we would bring some clams and even prawns over from Earth for a saltwater version, but so far they ended up dead in transit. We’ll try again in another couple of years.”
“So you’re mostly pescetarians, unless it’s tourist season,” Stilicho said.
Verna nodded. “Assuming we even find a way to safely transport one, a cow needs a lot of grazing land just to be raised properly, so it’s just not feasible. We tried transporting chickens a few times, but they all died in transit. Fertilized eggs that are ready to hatch can only be transportable for three weeks at the most, and the ones we tried to bring over didn’t seem to develop in microgravity. Fish eggs weren’t too much of a problem since it was just a matter of getting them to the right temperature to initiate hatching. If we ever build large scale fish tanks, I’d love to try and bring Atlantic salmon here.”
“I just can’t live without a good steak at least once a week,” Stilicho said. “I did have a long hot shower though, at least you got that in your favor.”
“Oh yeah,” Edgar said. “Errol chose a very good landing site. Down here we’re surrounded by glaciers of ice that we can just pick from the ground. The Chinese up in Gale Crater have to spend a lot of energy extracting their water from the hydrated soil because there aren’t any glaciers where they’re at.”
“Yup, water is life and if you have to spend a lot of energy getting it, it hampers your growth,” Verna said. “I even heard that they’re raising insects and spirulina algae for food up there because their aquaponics system is so bad.”
“If it’s that hard over there, then why did the Chinese choose Gale Crater for their colony site?” Stilicho asked.
“Gale Crater is simply the one place on Mars in which everyone was most familiar with during the early years,” Edgar said. “NASA had a rover mission there and it was a thoroughly studied area. The Chinese didn’t want any surprises when they decided to start up their colony, so that’s why they chose it. ACE was the first to explore the Hellas Basin, and Errol staked the entire company on this site, and the risk worked out in the end. We’re the oldest and largest colony on the Red Planet. The Chinese have got less than half our population and they’re always in the red.”
“Now that I think about, the tourist amenities aren’t too bad here,” Stilicho said. “Pity it sort of goes dead during the off-peak seasons.”
Edgar winked at him. “You haven’t seen our indoor swimming pools yet, have you?”
Stilicho was in shock. “You guys actually have swimming pools here?”
Verna giggled. “Oh yeah, we have two Olympic-sized pools at the lower levels. Most of the staff loves to go there after working hours for fun and exercise.”
“There’s tennis and volleyball courts too, but the games are played a little differently since we can jump a little higher here,” Edgar said.
“That’s just amazing,” Stilicho said. “What about tours?”
“Oh we got it all here,” Edgar said. “We do rover tours with small groups around the basin. We also do EVA suit excursions just outside of the colony- but heavily supervised, mind you. We have a golf course under proposal, as well as outdoor Martian polo using robotic horses, but I doubt those will come to fruition unless we get more tourists over here.”
Stilicho nodded. He remembered the history lessons at school during the early days of the Martian colonies. The original euphoria of being able to travel to the Red Planet gradually died down over the years when it all became too routine, and the tourism market eventually plateaued. “We have to make it easier for people to get here,” he said.
“Yes, most of the tourists that come over here now are the ones who think of it as a badge of honor, something to do before you die,” Verna said. “Quite a lot of our company recruits came as interns or tourists, and they enrolled in our apprenticeship programs and eventually grew to like it. We offer that to any tourist that comes here. They can get firsthand knowledge on how things work by helping us out.”
Stilicho pointed at the plants growing nearby. “So no plans of putting up a pepper farm?”
Verna laughed. “I have petitioned Errol for that very thing for many years now, but our main crops are still the priority. People here would kill for spices. I know a few guys and gals that have private pots of pepper plants in their quarters. It kind of reminds me as to why people like Magellan and Columbus set out to find the Spice Islands, because Europe was so desperate for new tastes.”
“Spice Trade part two, eh? Seems like history repeating itself,” Stilicho said.
“We’re getting close to a breakthrough with cultured meat,” Verna said. “You know, the meat that we can grow in the lab. Right now the main issue is synthesizing enough of them to grow large batches quickly, but we need to work on tissue engineering to make the muscle cells divide faster. If our colleagues back on Earth could perfect a bioreactor, it ought to solve our perpetual meat shortages out here.”
“Artificial meat? Eew,” Stilicho said. “No thanks. You can have Mars, Verna.”
Verna giggled again. “I have a feeling you won’t last long in a survival situation.”
Edgar looked away. He was reading an email he had just received on his smartglass. After a minute he glanced over at Stilicho. “Just got an email from our NASA administrator, asking for an urgent, personal meeting tomorrow.”
Stilicho straightened the collar of his shirt. “Tell her you can meet right now. I’ll be right by your side.”
Edgar sat in the meeting room alongside Stilicho. The door at the side of the room opened and Darian stepped inside, followed closely by the colony’s NASA representative, Mary Davis. Darian made a brief glance at Stilicho before going over to a nearby chair and sitting down on it. Mary sat right beside her as she adjusted the smartglasses on her c
heeks. The sliding door automatically closed behind them.
Edgar smiled to break the ice. “Okay, let’s get some introductions going. I’m Dr. Edgar Roth, colony director.” He pointed to Stilicho. “This is Stilicho Jones, consultant for ACE Corp.”
“Dr. Mary Davis, NASA administrative representative for this colony,” Mary said before gesturing at the other woman. “And this is Darian Arante, NASA special agent for space law enforcement.”
Edgar nodded. “Welcome, both of you. What can we do to help?”
“It seems we have a problem here, Dr. Roth,” Darian said. “Your corporation apparently smuggled someone into this colony without NASA approval, and covered up the records of his existence here. His name is Karl Rossum, and he is listed as missing on Earth by his relatives.”
Stilicho raised his hand. “Hold on a minute. Mr. Rossum was not reported as missing by his wife, and she continues to deny such. The person who reported him as missing is his estranged daughter.”
“If a family member- any family member- reports a missing relative, we are duty bound to investigate,” Darian said. “Your excuses seem to indicate a lack of cooperation with the authorities, Mr. Jones.”
Stilicho rolled his eyes. “It’s not an excuse, ma’am, I am simply pointing out that Karl’s own wife has not confirmed that he is missing. It’s not a crime for an adult to cut himself off from society and go his own way.”
“You seem to be missing the point here, Mr. Jones,” Darian said. “Each and every individual who goes into space must be registered into the NASA database. What your company has done is engage in fraud and deceit. Your firm created a false identity for Karl Rossum, and brought him here without our permission.”
“That is grounds for terminating the colonial franchise that the government has granted you,” Mary said.
“Look, Mary, we were not aware of this development until just recently,” Edgar said. “This minor incident occurred on Earth, not here in the colony. You cannot blame and condemn our entire operations here because of the actions of a few back on Earth.”
Stilicho suppressed a smile. Edgar called the NASA administrator by her first name. It was a good strategy for making the meeting less formal, to break down the icy, professional barriers so that they all could come to a more amenable conclusion.
“The actions of a few you say?” Darian said. “It seems to me that the main suspect in this shell game is none other than your CEO, Errol Flux. He was a close friend of Karl Rossum, and he was the only one who had the power and authority to pull off something like this. I can contact our local field office and have him arrested.”
“Whoa there, Darian,” Stilicho said. “First of all, do you have any proof that Errol was involved in this cover up? ACE Corp is an international conglomerate, and employs hundreds of thousands of people. It could have been anybody.”
“No more excuses,” Darian said. “You will cooperate with us fully in this investigation, or there will be severe consequences for your company’s entire space operations. NASA has the full authority to shut down colonies and prosecute those that break the law.”
Edgar chuckled a little to help break the tension. “But we are cooperating with you, Darian. You just need to allow us to explain.”
Mary placed a hand on top of Darian’s forearm, indicating that she ought to go for a less confrontational approach. “Okay, let’s hear it,” she said.
Stilicho pointed to a wall-mounted TV monitor at the end of the room and activated his smartglasses. “If you could take a look at this, please.”
A previously recorded video file started to play. It showed the disheveled face of Karl Rossum, his tired eyes gazing solemnly at them from his thick glasses. His salt and pepper beard was puffed up like a porcupine’s quills, and his unkempt hair hadn’t been trimmed in months. Karl’s voice was high-pitched and halting, and his inflections indicated a degree of desperation. “My name is Karl Capek Rossum,” he said, speaking into the camera. “I have made this video as a possible last will and testament. A few weeks ago, I received an audio file coming from the Martian relay network, and it had the voice of my firstborn son, Joe. He said that he needed my help and he was still alive. I have therefore used my AI programs to craft an identity that would pass undetected through NASA and ACE so that I can secretly go to Mars and find my son. I know that people will blame my good friend Errol when news of my venture finally surfaces, but I must confess that I- and I alone- am responsible for this. I have altered the maintenance logs in the colony’s transport system to take one of their rovers and go find my son. If you do not hear from me again, then I am dead, for I no longer wish to keep on living if I fail to find Joe.”
The video stopped. For a few minutes, no one in the room said anything.
“As you can see, Karl himself admitted that he is solely responsible for coming over to Mars,” Stilicho said. “We only learned of what had happened after we crosschecked the departure logs and the colony records here, and found that we were missing one man. We are in shock as much as you are.”
“I don’t believe you,” Darian said tersely. “I’m convinced that Errol Flux knew about this years ago, but he kept his mouth shut. I don’t have the evidence for this, but the truth will come out sooner or later.”
“You don’t have the evidence for this because there isn’t any,” Stilicho said. “Errol is innocent, and that video proves it.”
“Let’s move away from this line of thinking to something more productive,” Mary said. “We can assume for now that Karl Rossum is somewhere here on the Red Planet. Is it possible that the Chinese might have him?”
Edgar shook his head. “I had a brief and private communication with my Chinese counterpart in Ba-Dian Colony just before this meeting, and he assures me that Karl never came to their area, nor are they detaining him.”
Darian placed her elbows on the table and leaned forward. “Are you sure you can trust their word?”
“I see no reason for them to lie,” Edgar said. “If Karl took a rover over to them, we would have gotten an indicator from the rover’s transponder, and that would have been picked up by satellite and informed us as to where it’s located.”
Darian wasn’t convinced. “Karl Rossum is known as an electronics genius. Couldn’t he disable the transponder on the rover so as to make it untraceable?”
“Karl is a genius, but not the Chinese,” Edgar said. “If the Chinese had tried to abduct him, there would be traces of it. So far there isn’t any. An operation like that would be hard to cover up with all the satellites overhead, and the planet is mostly deserted. My counterpart was shocked when I told him that Karl smuggled himself to Mars, they didn’t even know he was out here.”
“There’s no reason for the Chinese to kidnap Karl either,” Stilicho said. “They have their own programmers and experts in that field. One thing about the Chinese is that they like to do things by themselves.”
Mary nodded in assent. “Okay, so it’s highly unlikely that the Chinese have him. So where could Karl Rossum be? Assuming he’s still alive.”
“If he wanted to find his son, then he would have driven north, over to the Mars First Colony site in Hypanis Vallis,” Darian said. “That’s where Joseph was supposed to have been buried at.”
“How far is that from us?” Mary asked.
“A little over eight thousand kilometers to the northeast,” Edgar said. “In the Xanthe Terra region, just south of … Chryse Planitia.”
Edgar’s voice trailed off and he looked at Stilicho with a surprised look in his eyes. Chryse Planitia was where ACE Corp’s new colony was supposed to be set up, and the outpost used by the missing team was located in that very region, less than a thousand kilometers away from the allegedly abandoned Mars First Colony.
Darian sensed the colony director’s consternation. She remembered reading the briefing on the new projects. “Don’t you have plans to set up a second colony in the Chryse Planitia area?”
Edgar was speechles
s. He looked nervously at Stilicho for guidance. Deception and politics wasn’t his strong suit.
“Yes,” Stilicho said calmly. “In fact, we were going to ask for your help too. This was the reason why this meeting was moved up to today.”
Mary gave him a quizzical look. “What do you mean?”
“Those net rumors about a communication breakdown with your construction crew weren’t just hearsay then,” Darian said. She put two and two together. “Are you still in contact with them at all?”
Stilicho looked down. “Not for a few weeks.”
It was Mary’s turn to be surprised. “What? Why weren’t we informed of this?”
Stilicho switched to damage control mode. It was better to tell the whole truth so he could gain some sympathy for his side. “We thought it was a routine breakdown. Then weird things began to happen.”
“The malware that infected the Mars relay,” Darian said. “Did it come from that region?”
Stilicho nodded solemnly. No sense in lying about that since the routing was confirmed and could easily be found out. “At first we thought it was just a prank made by the guys over there, but then all communications with them stopped. So we sent in a rescue team.”
Mary was intrigued. “And what did they find?”
“We’ve lost contact with them as well,” Edgar said. “Their last situation report came when they had just left the outpost at Meridiani Planum, which was around two thousand four hundred kilometers away, due southeast from the Batos Crater outpost.”
“The Batos Crater outpost is where the new colony construction site is?” Darian asked.
“Yes,” Edgar said.
“So two years after Karl Rossum takes a rover to head out to where his son is supposedly buried, you guys set up a construction site at a neighboring region, and then you lose contact with them,” Darian said. “How many people are with that construction team?”
“Six,” Edgar said. “Two geologists and four engineers. Each of them had a side specialty, like robotics, or medical. We sent in another six men for the rescue team.”
The Piranha Solution: A Hard Science Fiction Technothriller (Ace of Space Book 1) Page 12