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

by John Triptych

The airlock door opened, revealing an inner darkness. Stilicho shifted the dashboard video feed into Matt’s suit camera, which was mounted on his helmet. The deserted interior of the airlock showed nothing out of the ordinary. Matt reached for the power switch and the outpost lights instantly activated, bathing the entire place with a bright, artificial daylight illumination. The scene shifted as Matt glanced over at Jason, who was standing behind him. Jason re-sealed the airlock door and began initiating atmospheric equalization with the habitat area at the adjoining room beyond.

  They could hear a whooshing noise as the pressure began to build, the life support systems replacing the thin, mostly carbon dioxide Martian atmosphere with breathable, pressurized air for human beings. Both men slung their carbines and pulled out pistols from their hip holsters. They activated the laser sights on the handguns, making sure to wipe away any specks of dust that interfered with the targeting pointers.

  Matt’s voice came active after a few minutes. “Atmosphere equalized, but we will keep wearing our gear until we’ve checked everything out, over.”

  The door into the outpost interior opened, and everything seemed to be in place. Both Matt and Jason began opening cabinets and bunk doors. Everyone held their breath when Matt walked up to the bathroom door and opened it, revealing an unused toilet.

  Stilicho activated his smartglass. “Maia, can you detect any possibly dangerous pathogen in the interior?”

  After a few minutes, Maia answered back. “Nothing out of the ordinary, Stil.”

  Matt’s voice came back loud and clear. “Outpost secured, over.”

  Stilicho polished off the last of the tomato and fish pasta on his plate before placing it in the sink. They had brought along fresh vegetables and fruit, but this was the first and possibly only time they could cook them and eat at a dinner table. All the salads were now gone, and they would have to subsist on prepackaged rations or liquid meal substitutes from here on. The three security consultants all declined the meal, preferring their food shakes. Therefore, everybody else got an extra-helping of the pasta, and nobody declined. Lisa Hicks jokingly told the former soldiers to do their farting at the airlock, and they more or less complied.

  The Meridiani outpost consisted of nothing more than one main room, with an attached bathroom and airlock. It was a prefabricated module that was assembled on site almost ten years ago, when ACE Corp had begun to expand their exploratory operations to find a suitable building site for Colony II. Errol Flux had a grandiose idea to build a second colony on the northern equatorial zone in order to tap in on the mining opportunities in the region. The new colony was destined to become a manufacturing hub, and it was predicted that they could start producing solar panels and even rocket engines for export back to Earth, once all the essential components were in place. This outpost was to serve as an early way station, before the proceeding up north to the new colony zone.

  Chester knelt down and slid open one of the doors leading to an embedded bunk along the sides of the room. There were twelve bunk beds, more than enough for all of them. Stilicho had decided that they would stay the night in order to recharge the spent rover batteries, since the outpost battery recharging station had unused reserves of power. Each of them would take turns swapping out the batteries every two hours, and they would have a fully charged energy supply by morning.

  Darian had added an artificial sweetener pill into her steaming cup of coffee while sitting at the opposite side at the dining table. She looked at Stilicho, and their eyes met. “I’ve got a theory,” she said.

  Stilicho shrugged. They were the only two still sitting on the table; everyone else was either doing some technical work or resting in their bunks. “I’m all ears.”

  “I know it sounds crazy, but maybe somebody else baited Karl Rossum to come here,” she said.

  Stilicho pursed his lips. “Now why would anybody want to do that?”

  “I don’t know,” Darian said. “There is a motive somewhere in all this, but I just can’t figure it out yet. Perhaps it’s somebody with a grudge against the company you work for.”

  Stilicho rolled his eyes. “So this person created a fake audio file of Karl’s son to get him over here and is using him to sabotage the new colony site? Where did you get this crazy idea from?”

  “Look, we have a set of incidents that occurred both here and on Earth,” Darian said. “This is the only motivation I could think of. Maybe it’s one of ACE Corp’s competitors.”

  Stilicho thought about it for a minute. “Well, it’s no surprise that our biggest competitors in the colonization business wants our exclusive NASA license in regards to Mars. You remember that bidding war with Urizen Group, right?”

  Darian smirked. “How could I forget? The great Errol Flux nearly coming to blows with his nemesis during that confrontation at NASA headquarters when the final bids came in. There was a live drone cam and the tabloids ate it up for weeks.”

  “You don’t seem to like my boss very much, do you?”

  “I admire his causes,” Darian said. “I just don’t like the way he operates. He’s ruined a lot of people’s lives when he took over a number of smaller firms, only to break them up and sell the pieces.”

  “Errol was just being pragmatic,” Stilicho said. “He needed the tech, and a few companies had them, so he bought them out.”

  “Let’s not even take into account the blackmailing, insider trading, and bribery cases that piled up against him,” Darian said. “And if you believe some of the conspiracy sites, there might have even been a few murders committed.”

  Stilicho wagged his finger. “Hold on now, you got no proof of all that crap. The courts found him and ACE Corp innocent every time.”

  “Sure,” Darian said. It was clear she didn’t trust him. “That’s only because he has attack dogs like yourself working for him, to cover up all his dirty dealings.”

  Stilicho leaned back on the plastic chair and took a deep breath. “Is that why you’re here? To dig up some dirt on the company I work for?”

  “I’m here to investigate a missing person,” Darian said. “Who was smuggled into Mars illegally, in violation of the franchise we have given to your company.”

  Stilicho was getting angry, but he was able to hold his temper in check. “As you’ve seen in the video during the meeting we had with your boss, Karl Rossum came here with his own free will, and he was the one who smuggled himself over. So stop projecting your prejudices into this, Ms. NASA Special Agent.”

  Darian scowled at him. “I am not prejudiced! Errol and Karl knew each other only too well, and when I do find evidence that points to it, you can bet that this report will go straight to the top echelon of NASA.”

  “Well, good luck in ever finding that,” Stilicho said. “ACE Corp has a very good relationship with NASA, and we have been their primary providers of space transportation for the past quarter century. So go ahead, keep on digging that non-existent dirt. I can promise you that anything you throw at us won’t stick. In fact, I have a feeling that once this is all over and done with, you’ll be working at NASA’s remote research outpost in Antarctica. So don’t forget to buy an extra thick parka when you get back.”

  Damian balled her fists in rage. “You son of a—”

  Brian Kano leaned loomed beside the table. He held a smartpad in his hands. “Sorry to breakup your little love fest, but I got something here.”

  Stilicho looked up at him. “What is it?”

  “We’ve recharged about half the batteries using the outpost’s power reserves, but there’s something missing,” Brian said.

  “And that is?”

  “I can’t find the sweeper bots that do maintenance on the solar panel array outside,” Brian said. “There’s supposed to be at least two automated bots that cleans the sand particles that accumulate on the paneling every day.”

  Stilicho stood up. “They’re missing? Since when?”

  Brian shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ve been pouring through the ou
tpost maintenance logs, and the inputs stopped about a month ago.”

  Chester Yoon didn’t close the panel that covered his bunk, so he heard everything. He got up and walked over. “The bots are missing?”

  Stilicho activated his smartglasses. “Maia, are you able to get a radio link with the sweeper bots assigned to this outpost?”

  “I’m sorry, Stil, but I’m not getting any pings back when I sent them a command message,” Maia said.

  Stilicho frowned. “Can you scan the logs and give me a detailed analysis?”

  “One moment,” Maia said. “It seems that the logs have been partially overwritten in order to permanently erase the records for the past thirty days.”

  “Can you recover the logs at all?”

  Maia was apologetic. “They were overwritten with random number strings multiple times. I’m sorry, Stil.”

  “Ask your AI if it could trace the source where the overwrite commands came from,” Chester said.

  Maia heard him. “It came in from one of the orbital satellites. I tried to do a tracer route, and it seems to have originated from Hypanis Vallis, in the Xanthe Terra region. The script was able to commandeer the entire command system on the outpost, but I have now purged the entire operating system and replaced it with a new one. I have also added new firewalls to prevent such intrusions in the future.”

  There was a sense of relief on Chester’s face. The Korean-American engineer had just realized that whoever took over the outpost’s command software could have easily sabotaged the life support systems to injure or kill them all if it had wanted to. Chester wanted to tell everyone about it, but he decided not to since they were all on edge now, and another shock to the system simply wasn’t needed at this time.

  Brian looked away, lost in thought. “Hypanis Vallis? Why does that region sound so familiar?”

  “Because that’s where the site of the failed Mars First Colony is,” Darian said. “That was where Karl Rossum said he was going to.”

  The drive towards Rover-14’s last recorded position took nearly a day, and it was in the early twilit hours when they came upon the vehicle lying on its side. They parked their own rovers side by side, with Matt Trevanian and his security team providing cover. Jason Barre continued to wear his skinsuit as climbed on top of the second rover while scanning the area with his gyrojet rifle. Noah Carranza continued to deploy the weapon mounted on the shoulder of his crab suit while facing to the rear. Both rovers had all their lights activated, creating a powerful, illuminated area of bright white all around them, like some magical aura to ward away the unknown threat that lurked out in the darkness.

  Stilicho wore a crab suit while making his first EVA. As he started walking towards the stricken rover, his awkward gait became unbalanced and he inadvertently tripped over a medium-sized rock, and fell face first into the ground, the visor of his helmet banging onto the rocky soil. He heard a small beeping noise and a momentary panic gripped him, his fear of damaging the suit and exposing his head to the thin atmosphere made him shudder.

  “You okay?” Chester Yoon said as he held him by the shoulders and slowly pulled him back upright.

  Stilicho was still breathing heavily. His visor was intact, and the stress of what happened was slowly bleeding away. “Yeah, thanks. This is my first time using these damned things.”

  Chester chuckled to put him more at ease. “It’s okay, these hard shell suits are pretty durable, they can take a lot of pounding.”

  Brian Kano was sitting in the driver seat of the first rover, and he was monitoring everyone’s vital signs with the HUD. “You’re good, Stilicho. Everything is a-okay from here.”

  “Let’s go,” Stilicho said as both he and Chester bounded over to the base of the hill where the Mwev was lying.

  Lisa was standing on the upper incline of the hill, close to the top while looking down at the broken windshield. She wore a skinsuit, in order to have better manual dexterity with her hands. She held a flashlight, and was using its illumination to peer into the wrecked rover’s once pressurized interior cabin, now exposed to the atmosphere. It had been over a month, and the fine Martian dust had steadily seeped inside.

  Stilicho slowly made his way up over to her, while Chester continued to check the upturned side of the rover. The crab suit was bulky, but Stilicho was able to get into a semi-crouching position as he looked into the empty front seat. “The reports said there were two men in this rover when they lost contact. Did this thing hit a boulder that broke the windshield?”

  Lisa pointed to the intact frame around the broken front window. “If it was a rock that penetrated the windshield, then pieces of it should be inside the cabin. I don’t see that at all. When the vehicle tipped over after one of its wheels hit a boulder, the windshield must have been broken into beforehand, or right after the Mwev was immobilized.”

  “Maia,” Stilicho said. “Can you access the vehicle logs?”

  “I’m sorry, Stil,” Maia said. “But the logs were wiped, just like what happened with the outpost.”

  Chester was using the smartglass link in his crab suit to scan the vehicle. “Looks like the vehicle batteries were taken out. Something strong just ripped them out of the rear casings.”

  Matt strolled over in his skinsuit, his carbine slung over his shoulder. “What could have done that?”

  Chester shook his head, but since his helmet was attached to the suit’s rigid torso, nobody saw it. “I have no idea. These rovers have reinforced body shells to withstand daily wear and tear, but whatever tore through the rear paneling broke it off like it was made of cardboard.”

  Images of monster movies flooded Stilicho’s mind before he could blink them away. He pointed at the broken seatbelts in the empty driver’s seat. “Looks like somebody punched through the windshield and pulled the driver out.”

  Lisa had made her way down near the rear area of the rover. “One of the dead is still here. When the rover fell on its side, he was instantly crushed in his crab suit. We can’t recover the body until we set the vehicle upright again.”

  Stilicho looked down at them. “You can’t pull the body out from the back of the suit and through the airlock?”

  Lisa shook her head as she scanned the interior with her smartglass visor. “Negative. It looks like his backpack wasn’t fitted properly into the airlock, so I can’t even get it open if I tried. I think the vehicle must have been moving when he tried to get back in, and it ended up wedging a part of the back of his suit into the entryway. Looks like he got jammed and couldn’t pry himself out.”

  Chester nodded, though once again no one could see him. “It happens a few times during EVAs. The frame around the backpack has got to be an exact fit, and you have to push in with the whole of your back at the same time. If you try to rock yourself back in- say push in with the top of your back first, then the bottom- or vice versa, then part of the backpack could jam into the sides of the airlock frame, and you’re gonna need help to get out. Poor guy.”

  Darian was sitting on the driver’s seat in the second rover. Like Brian, she too was monitoring what went on. “How do we bring the stalled rover to an upright position?”

  “We could just tow it back up,” Chester said. “Bring one of the rovers into position on the other side, tie a secured line and pull it up. We could cover the windshield with an emergency tarp and re-pressurize it.”

  “We can’t bother with that right now,” Stilicho said. “We need to find the others first, assuming they’re still alive.”

  “I agree,” Matt said. “The battery has been torn out of this rover so it won’t run.”

  “We have batteries in the truck carrier,” Chester said. “If you give me half a day to work this, I think we can get this Mwev going again.”

  “No,” Stilicho said. “We just don’t have the time for it. We need to get going. Once we figure out what the hell is going on, then we can come back and salvage this sucker.”

  “And where are we heading to now?” Dari
an asked.

  “We stick to the plan,” Stilicho said. “Head up to the Batos Crater Outpost and see if we can find any survivors there.”

  Chapter 12

  Camille Chamboredon frowned while looking down at the steaming cup of tea on the table in front of her. Moscow was still in the grip of winter, despite being well into the New Year. The frosted glass windows of the tea house she was sitting in was a testament to the weather of this dreary place. Camille could have easily stayed put in the south of France until Europe’s cold spell had finally ended, but her contact had insisted that this would be the scoop of the century, and Camille wasn’t just interested in the possible fame for exposing it to the world- she needed the potential monetary rewards of it as well.

  The pouting faces sitting in the other booths around her pretty much told the whole story. Russia was going through another bout of economic uncertainty, and she could see it in the faces of its citizenry. People were more reserved than usual, some even to the point of rudeness. Just yesterday she had seen a haggard looking man try to run off with a lady’s stolen handbag, only to be cut down by a security guard’s gunshot as he tried to run through the busy shopping district in Arbat Street. It was sheer luck that nobody else was hurt, but it merely reinforced her reservations about coming here, especially at a time like this.

  Just as Camille was thinking about leaving, she noticed a thirty-something woman with light brown hair enter the tea house. Her winter coat had some worn patches on it, and the thick fur cap she wore looked like it was bought from a surplus outlet. Camille had known her since they were foreign college students in America, and it was clear her friend had fallen on hard times. She raised her hand, catching the other woman’s attention.

  Oksana Sakhalov smiled slightly as she walked over and sat down at the opposite side of the booth. She held her hand out. “Hello, Camille, I am so happy you made it. Has been a long time since we last met, yes?”

  Camille shook her hand. “Yes, it has. I showed your email to my editor, and he said it was okay for me to go here, provided that what you said is real. I assured him that it would be, since we both trusted each other for years.”