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

by John Triptych

  “Spasiba. I would never lie to you, Camille,” Oksana said. “Remember the time when I told you about the cover up for the crashed airline flight in Siberia? That was a good scoop for your paper, yes?”

  Camille nodded as she poured her friend some tea. “It was indeed, merci beaucoup. But are you sure that this information you are telling me can be confirmed independently?”

  “I am sure you can,” Oksana said. “The matter is too important to be kept a secret for long.”

  Camille looked out at the tall windows of the tea house. “But I must tell you, Oksana, I do fashion and business articles now. You could have brought this up to the investigative reporters, the ones who specialize in these kinds of stories. Why me?”

  “Because I trust you, and this secret is so big that people are willing to kill in order to keep it a secret,” Oksana said.

  Camille leaned back into the cushioned seats of the booth, stunned. “What?”

  “You know what is happening to my country,” Oksana said. “There is talk of war in the west once again, and people are worried. I must make sure that my family is secured.”

  Camille’s lips began to tremble. This wasn’t the type of story she wanted. She valued her life more than fame or money. She quickly pulled out some cash and placed it on the table before getting up. “L-look, Oksana, I think you have me confused with those reporters who want stories like this. I-I don’t think this is for me. I will refer this to someone else. Thank you for your time.”

  Oksana grabbed the other woman’s wrist. She looked up at her with pleading eyes. “Camille, please. I beg you. You are the only one I trust with this. All I ask is that if you could please hear him out, then decide on what you want to do.”

  A part of her just wanted nothing to do with it. But seeing her best friend in such a desperate state like this moved her, and Camille felt duty bound to help. She sat back down. “Alright, I shall hear him out. But I only do this because we are such good friends, and you must promise me that no one else knows about this.”

  Oksana nodded eagerly. “Da. Oh yes, no one but myself knows this. Everyone thinks my uncle is still back in Baikonur, but he is here, in hiding. Only I know where he is.”

  Camille was scared, but she figured that if she could just get a video testimony, then it would be enough. “Okay, what exactly did your uncle do in Roscosmos?”

  Roscosmos was the Russian counterpart of NASA, tasked with overseeing the space program of the country. Unlike the Americans, the Russian government continued to maintain full control over their spaceflight programs. Past economic turmoil had turned the organization into a shadow of its former self, and Russia had been forced to close its colony on Mars due to lack of funding. The resulting evacuation happened eight years ago, and it was a chaotic affair. In the end, the country had to swallow its pride and asked for help in evacuating its personnel from Mars. Although there had been recent pronouncements from the government that they would restart their abandoned colony in Valles Marineris, everyone knew they just didn’t have the money to do it. Rumors continued to swirl however that a foreign corporation had made a deal with them in exchange for being granted a colony license on Mars.

  “He was a mission commander in Gagarin Colony,” Oksana said. “When my government evacuated the site he was the last one to leave.”

  Camille let out a deep breath. “But what you told me over the email is just unbelievable. Are you sure that this story is true?”

  Oksana stood up. “Come with me, Camille. Talk to him yourself for just a few minutes, and you will see that what he says will be so fantastic that it will be true.”

  They both took the Moscow Metro to the southwest district of the city, a place of old decrepit apartment blocks and abandoned factories. Unlike Moscow’s bustling city center, this neighborhood was characterized by deserted streets, with an eerie quietness that was occasionally interrupted by barking dogs and gangs of youths screaming at each other as they made their way towards the livelier areas of the city. Since it was a poor area, no surveillance drones were visible overhead, due to the meager budget of the Moscow Police.

  Camille had been pretty nervous the moment they walked out of the underground train station, and Oksana had to take her by the elbow just to keep the pace going. If she could just confirm that the story was true, then it would be a feather in her cap, and might even get her a promotion within the media company that she worked for. As they made it to the front of an old, nine-story apartment building, Camille’s courage began to improve. A heavily bundled babushka sat on a wooden stool near the entrance of the place, and the old woman eyed them suspiciously as they passed her to go up the stairs.

  When they finally reached the seventh floor, Oksana turned left and stood in front of a thick brown door. Taking out a small set of keys, she unlocked the deadbolt first before placing a second key into the knob and twisting it. The door opened with a slight creak, revealing a dim interior. Silently gesturing at Camille to go on in, she looked around and noticed two men wearing heavy coats standing at the far end of the corridor, clutching clear bottles of vodka in their hands. Oksana quickly retreated behind the door and closed it tightly before putting the locks back into place.

  Camille could see a faint illumination coming from the room in front of her. Oksana flipped on the light switch, and a single blub cast a pale yellow aura into the place. Bits of wallpaper along the sides of the place was peeling off, and there were stacks of books and old magazines lined up alongside the rotting furniture. The whole apartment had a damp, musty odor that reminded her of dust and mold.

  “This way,” Oksana whispered, as he led the other woman into the second room. The adjoining chamber was evidently a bedroom, with a rug placed along the side of the wall which faced a wooden bed. Sitting at the far side of the room was an old man wearing a heavily worn sweater that had some holes in it. He had a sharp beak for a nose, and the wrinkled skin on his drooping chin was unshaved. His right leg was but a stump, and it was propped up on an old wooden chair. The old man stared at them with glassy eyes while saying nothing.

  Oksana made her way over to his side and said something in Russian. The old man mumbled something back before she turned to look at Camille. “I’ve told him you are a reporter in a big media conglomerate,” Oksana said. “My Uncle Dmitri asked me how much money could you give to him.”

  Camille smiled faintly as she sat down at the side of the bed. “Please tell your uncle that the magazine I work for would pay him very well for an exclusive story and interview, but this is just the preliminary meeting. I first need to find out if his story can be confirmed.”

  Oksana and her uncle had another small conversation before the Russian woman turned to look at her again. “He says that everything he will tell you is true, he swears it,” Oksana said. “My uncle was supposed to be confined to the hospital at the Cosmodrome, and they were giving him drugs to shut him up, but he escaped. He says he wants to go to someplace like America. He needs money to do that.”

  Camille nodded. “My editor says he knows someone in the French embassy who could help, but we need some sort of confirmation. In his email he said that a famous American who is supposed to be dead was brought over by the Russian government to Mars in secret. Is that right?”

  Oksana and her uncle had another conversation before she started translating for him. “My uncle says yes, the Russian authorities were paid a large amount of money to transport him secretly into the Cosmodrome,” Oksana said.

  “But everyone knows about him,” Camille said. “How come the other people who worked for Roscosmos never reported this? Why is it only him?”

  Oksana translated again. “My uncle says only a select few people in the program knew about it. By the time that man came into the spaceport, he had his face altered.”

  Camille frowned. “Altered? As in plastic surgery?”

  The uncle said a few more sentences while Oksana nodded. “Yes, after he faked his death in America, this man we
nt underground, after he changed his looks. Our government knew about it, and turned a blind eye when he gave them a lot of money.”

  “How long ago was this?” Camille asked.

  “About eleven years ago.”

  Camille took out her smartglasses and put them on. “Okay, if this man came to Mars, then where is he now?”

  Oksana gave a surprised look as her uncle said a few more words to her. “He says that he never left. When Gagarin Colony was evacuated, he stayed behind.”

  Camille was stunned. She pulled out her smartpad and brought up the man’s picture. She held it in front of her so that Oksana’s uncle could see it. “You mean, they left him behind in that colony? All by himself? This man?”

  Oksana nodded as she heard the words of her uncle. “Yes, because his name was never included in the registry. He had his own private module in the colony. No one else ever saw him.”

  Camille turned away. She could hardly believe it. The son of a former president, and who later created a cult could do this? “Do you have any proof? My paper is not a tabloid and I need evidence in order to bring this to my editor.”

  Oksana’s uncle pulled out a small printed picture from the folds of his tattered sweater and held it out in front of him. Camille took it from his bony hands and examined the photograph. The man in the picture had a different nose and chin, but his wild eyes clearly resembled his old visage. Camille’s facial recognition application on her smartglasses gave it a ninety percent probability that he was one and the same. Oh my god, she thought. This is one hell of a story. Camille placed the detachable earpiece from the frame of her glasses and put it into her ear before dialing her editor’s number. But the moment she visually inputted the numbers, the virtual indicator revealed that there was no cell signal in the area. What was going on?

  All three of them were startled when the outside door gave way and four very large men entered the room. Oksana shouted at them in Russian, but one of the men slapped her across the cheek so hard that she was sent sprawling to the side of the small room. Camille screamed as one of the men took her smartglasses and put them underneath his coat. Uncle Dmitri shrieked as two men grabbed him by the arms and began to move him over by the open window.

  Despite begging for her life, two men dragged Camille out of the room before physically carrying her up the stairs leading to the rooftop. They had forced her to keep her hands inside her coat pockets, and she realized that an old cell phone she had inadvertently left in that particular coat many years before was still there. She was able to activate it silently by touch alone, and she sent a hurried text message into the old telecom networks, just as they threw her off the roof. It was a nine-story drop and she landed headfirst onto the side of the street.

  Camille had made thousands of text messages in her younger days, and she knew how to work the keypad on the phone by sheer memory. She had remembered that the A, B, and C keys weren’t working, and she had been planning to throw away the phone, but ultimately forgot to do so. It only took her a few seconds, but she was able to send out a one line text to the first number that was saved in her contact list just before she died. Since her phone stored the entries by alphabetical order, it was by sheer luck that the message was carried over to the old ACE Corp customer server log, there to be autonomously disseminated by quantum analysis before being forwarded to whoever could respond most appropriately.

  The single line of text was all capitalized. It read simply: SDRMMNDLIVENMRS.

  Chapter 13

  Instead of moving within the Ares Vallis gully, the small convoy elected to drive along the eastern side, on a parallel course. Matt Trevanian had insisted it would be safer to travel along the ridgeline instead of at the bottom of the trench where they could have been easily cut off and surrounded in the event of an ambush. Everyone was nervous and there was hardly any protest when the suggested route was taken instead. During the time they had examined the wreckage of Rover-14, all their batteries were switched over with fresh ones, so they drove non-stop until they reached their next destination. With the Martian surface on a smooth gradual descent, they increased their vehicle’s overall speeds to 80-kmh.

  The journey to Batos Crater Outpost took another eighteen hours, and they reached the outskirts of the small group of buildings by midday. The first thing they noticed was that the solar arrays were missing and there were no other rovers in sight. The satellite dish mounted on the roof of the outpost was gone, with just a metal stump sticking out from the top of the building. As the lead rover drove in closer, they also saw that the main airlock had been breached. The outer door was lying on the ground a few meters away. Matt and his security team exited the vehicles and searched the interior of the modules, but there was no one inside. Both compartments had been depressurized due to the airlock breach, and there were signs of a struggle. Much of the interior electronics had been gutted, and all the server logs and battery cells were missing. Thankfully, the life support systems were largely untouched, though the lack of power made them inoperable.

  Stilicho immediately ordered the crew to patch up the airlock breach, using emergency tarps to cover the holes and seal them. By the time the outpost was re-pressurized it was already dusk. Radar analysis on the rovers had indicated a dust storm heading their way, which only made things even more disturbing. There was only minimal power in the outpost since they had to use one of the spare rover batteries to make the life support systems functional.

  By the time it was dusk, six of them were within the interior of the outpost. Chester Yoon was still outside, doing some last-minute work replacing the rover batteries while being closely guarded by Jason Barre. Almost everyone had their life support backpacks on, and their helmets were within easy reach. Noah Carranza was the only one who didn’t have his skinsuit helmet, but he stayed near the second, still functioning airlock, ready to leap into his crab suit the moment he sensed any trouble brewing.

  Darian and Brian Kano had forensics experience, and they were going through the two modules of the outpost with their smartglasses in UV mode. The breach in the main airlock had exposed the interior to the Martian atmosphere, and the resulting layers of dust had made the room analysis that much harder. Batos outpost was composed of two attached modules; the first habitat was the living area while the second served as both a workshop and control room. More prefabricated modules were planned to be sent over and assembled as the new colony would grow in stages.

  Stilicho sat by the dining table as he looked at his watch. The distance to the abandoned Mars First Colony site was a little over one thousand kilometers away. So far they had only pinpointed one rover’s location, and there were three others missing. With the Mars relay on the blink, they were unable to communicate with Eridu Colony. If he was to order the team to make the return journey back to Hellas Planitia, then nothing would have been solved. Deep in his heart, he knew that they needed to probe deeper, even if it meant he would be risking their lives. Stilicho had no sense of responsibility for leading the team, for the people with him were nothing more than tools to get the task done. The company’s survival was all that mattered to him.

  Chester’s voice came over the intercom. “I have completed the replacement of batteries on both rovers and the robotruck. We’re on our way back to the airlock.”

  Stilicho activated his communications system that was embedded on the collar of the skinsuit he wore. “Hold on a minute, have you found the comms dish for the outpost at all?”

  “Negative,” Chester said. “It must have been blown away by the dust storm.”

  Lisa Hicks activated her throat microphone. “From what I know, while dust storms are frequent out here, the atmospheric density is too thin for creating gale force winds to rip off our satellite dishes, right?”

  “You’re right,” Chester said. “It might be buried somewhere close by, but visibility is steadily dropping out here.”

  “I need you and Jason to get into one of the rovers and use their comm systems
to try and contact Eridu,” Stilicho said.

  “Rover two is closest so we’re on our way,” Jason said over the com-link.

  Maia’s voice came over the intercom. “I am sorry to interrupt, but the radar on the rovers is detecting something approaching us.”

  Noah Carranza had been listening in from the open airlock door, and he poked his head into the workshop area. “Is it one of the missing rovers?”

  “No,” Maia said. “The radar signature makes it look like one-third of a rover’s size.”

  Matt, who had been sitting beside Stilicho, stood up. “Is it one of the construction robots?”

  “It does not seem to be moving like one of our bots,” Maia said. “It is quite fast, averaging close to one hundred kilometers an hour, and it can shift from side to side fairly quickly.”

  Stilicho scowled. “What?”

  “One moment,” Maia said. “I have lost radar contact.”

  Matt began to tense up. He knew that the rovers typically had long-ranged radars that could detect objects up to sixty kilometers in distance. “How far away was the last contact?”

  “Approximately forty kilometers from our position,” Maia said.

  Noah sensed trouble. He turned to look at Matt. “Can you help me get into the suit?”

  Matt silently walked over to the second airlock and started helping Noah into his crab suit. Brian and Darian walked into the commons area, and the NASA special agent held something in the palm of her left hand.

  Stilicho stood up and walked over to them. “What is that?”

  “It’s a memory chip,” Darian said. “We found it embedded along the upper frame of one of the storage lockers. I did a cursory examination of it and it seems to contain a number of videos.”

  “Looking at the screenshots, it seems to be a video log made by the outpost team leader, Ron Simms,” Brian said.