Martian Dictator

by Øyvind Harding

  Roger was leaving, and not coming back.

  Nadia wept. She wept for her brother. She wept for her past. She wept for her future. She wept for the friends that she would never see again. She wept for those who had sheltered her, those who had helped her and those who had been kind to her. But she also wept for the beatings. The rapes. The humiliations and the degradations. She wept for the murder of her family. She wept for her village and her country, both of which had fallen to greed and corruption. But mostly she wept to cleanse. For each tear she shed, she could feel her past pouring from her like the exhalation of a breath held for far too long. She had been drowning and not realizing it. She had been diving without the knowledge of a surface. She glanced over and met the dreamy gaze of the small botanic engineer in the aisle across from her. She quickly wiped her tears and turned forward, meeting instead the eyes of Captain Reinholts as he turned to check on the crew. There was something in his eyes that she had seen before. Wisdom gained by failure, courage gained by necessity. A breath of the past from her brother. She leaned back in her seat, her eyes now dry and steady.

  Nadia was leaving, and not coming back.

  Captain Andrew Reinholts tore his eyes from the greatest beauty he had ever seen in his life and focused on the screens in front of him. He was sitting at the very tip of the shuttle they would use to ferry them up to low orbit, and his boss and benefactor sat in the seat beside him. He could spare little attention to anything but the rigors of the checklists. Green across the boards. His mouth was dry, a combination of the side effects of the drugs Rebekka had given him to compensate for his withdrawal from the Rovan, and the natural nervousness before a launch. The flight was his focus point, the work his anchor. Anything else was a distraction. He had been given another chance at salvation, and he had grabbed it by the balls and was squeezing as hard as he dared. So what if the mission was a suicide trip? He had been pretty close to ending it himself a couple of times these past few years. So what if his boss was a megalomaniac with psychopathic tendencies who had bankrupted millions in his haste to build his fortune? That very fortune was the foundation of his newfound chance at redemption. He would not mess it up. Green across the boards. The countdown began.

  Captain Andrew Reinholts was leaving, and not coming back.

  The Billionaire slept.

  15. The Arrival

  “Exo One, what’s your status? You keep lagging behind the others.” Captain Reinholts clicked off the transmission almost before the last word was uttered. He was running a tight ship, more so since he dearly wished to be outside with the others. They were running continuous teams on the hull of the ship, checking each globe for damage, each balloon for tears or displacement. So far, they had had to scavenge about half of the buffer balloons from damaged globes, replacing the ones deemed to be unsafe. If this average kept up with the remaining globes, more than half of their equipment would have to be left up in space. There would be no point launching landers with insufficient buffer capacity, they would most certainly crash or be hopelessly lost and damaged. Better to leave them in a stable orbit, waiting for a day when some enterprising soul could go up there and fetch them.

  “Wayfinder Actual, I’m more thorough than the others, over.”

  Reinholts sighed, ground his teeth and rubbed his eyes with thumb and forefinger before answering. Not only had the blasted man managed to work his way on to one of the work crews, he was actually right. He was more thorough than the others. His work was impeccable, methodical, and precise. The captain had checked it himself, several times, and he had never found so much as a seam in disorder. The Billionaire was pulling his weight, but he was pulling it slowly.

  “How many times do we have to have this conversation? Get. Moving. We don’t have much time left, and I can’t have you delaying every shift because you feel the need to double- and triple-check all your work.”

  “What do you prefer? To get down in one piece, or several? You know we cannot afford even a single mishap with the shape we’re in.”

  “And neither can we afford to spend an entire shift checking five balloons. You know as well as I do that we need to average eight balloons for each man on each shift. Your dallying is costing us more than just time, it’s costing us the sweat and pain of others as they rush to do what already ought to have been done. Now move your ass to the next balloon, and do not come back inside until you’ve finished all eight on your side.”

  There was no reply from outside, and Reinholts could see on one of the floating cams that there was no increase in the speed at which the other man was checking the balloons. He sighed, and switched camera feeds to check on the other seven men and women on the team.

  ***

  The helmet on the standard suit specially produced for our mission is 16 inches in diameter. The average human (male) head is 5.2 inches, which leaves an uncomfortable 11.8 inches to fit a GFC (General Floating Cam) on the inside of the faceplate. My personal GFC was hacked, or rather, cleverly overridden, using my equally cleverly installed master codes in the ship’s mainframe. It was currently wedged between my left eyeball and the inside of my helmet. Which, although immensely uncomfortable, gave me a bird’s-eye view of the entire ship at the flick of my wrist, and basically gave me the power to do anything I wanted with the computer system. Like cloning the screens the Captain was watching so I could see all that he was looking at, and perhaps overlaying various prerecorded clips without him noticing. To the end that if said overlaying images were implemented, it would allow me to wander off to do what needed to be done without Big Brother watching my every move.

  Now, ask yourself: what is your goal? What is your end game? Establish that. Where do you want to end up? What is your desired outcome? Define the answer to those questions, and you have begun the path to realizing your dreams.

  Have you defined your goals, the treasure at the end of the rainbow? Good. Now establish where you are right now, today. As of this moment, where do you stand relative to your dreams? If you are a disease-ridden hermit living in a hole in the ground aspiring to be the president of the United States, then yeah, you’ve got some work cut out for you. But otherwise, get going already.

  Step one, define where you want to end up. This one is easy, everybody has a dream, whether it be to be top dog in the slaughterhouse of the market division or bus-fair-ticket-puncher-number-two, everybody has somewhere or something they’d rather be or be doing.

  Step two, recognize where you are today. This one is deceptively hard. Just as everybody has a dream of where they want to end up, then everybody has a fantasy of where they are today. Are you ringing up groceries at your local convenience store? You are not a senior management assistant, you are a clerk. Are you desperately trying to fish maggots out of your nose while screaming obscenities at passersby? Yeah, you’re not the VP trying to hide the latest shit stain on the carpet of the Oval Office, you’re a deranged lunatic in the back alleys of DC.

  Step three. Now here’s where it gets interesting. Having defined where you are and where you want to be, you can now recognize the intermediate steps on your path to the end of the rainbow. Example. You are the middle manager of a medium-sized company producing tires that excel in late winter/early spring conditions. Your boss does a piss-poor job of promoting the excellency of your product, and you decide that the company would be better off with you in charge of their local division.

  Starting point: middle manager.

  Rainbow: executive manager.

  Intermediate steps: Position yourself so that you are number two in line. Get rid of current executive manager.

  Step four: Define and execute the actions necessary to obtain your intermediate goals. Let’s keep the tire salesman analogy going for a bit longer. You have decided to get rid of your boss, and other than yourself, nobody seems to be aware that he’s doing a piss-poor job. So, it’s going to be a one-man operation. You are currently the obvious choice to take over the business if, god forbid, anything should happe
n to your boss. You know he skims a few dollars off of every sale when he sells to buddies, so there are just three intermediate steps necessary. One: log the sales when he sells to friends. Two: log the reported income with the actual cash in the register. Three: either report the discrepancy directly to the management, or if that’s not your style, drop a hint with one of the gossip mongers in the firm come next New Year’s Eve. Voilà, you are now executive manager. You might even get some booty out of the deal.

  For me, it was simple.

  Step one: Where do I want to end up? I want to be the sole leader of a Martian civilization.

  Step two: Where am I today? I’m on the outside of a spaceship bound for Mars. Other than that, I have two major opponents, and there are multiple uncertainty events factoring in on how and when this power may shift.

  Step three, intermediate steps: Survive trip to Mars. Survive descent to surface. Establish working base of operations. Establish sustainable system for oxygenating and feeding a stable base population. Eliminate all opposition to power.

  Step four, measures already taken to obtain intermediate steps: Reestablished environmental controls and reactors. Established working buffer-shielding to undamaged globes. Currently working under the assumption that the equipment on the ground alongside what we brought with us will be sufficient to build a functional base on the surface.

  Establishing a colony currently not possible with the number of crew in flight and the available consumables remaining on board. Number of crew currently fifty-five percent higher than the maximum sustainable population given the most optimistic yields from the crops.

  There are two major opposing forces: Dr. Anna Stokes and Captain Andrew Reinholts. Both currently needed to obtain steps one through four. No action to be taken at current time. Contingency plans in development.

  The reason I was currently checking balloons on the outside of a spaceship going over thirty thousand miles per hour was a simple calculation I did when the extent of the damage from the flare became evident. The loss of food and water was more severe than anybody but me realized, and I had quickly hidden the numbers from public view. There was nothing to be done about the situation, so the only solution would be to increase the store of consumables needed to sustain the population, which we had no way of doing. Or to reduce the population.

  I activated the recording of myself checking balloons and going about my business as usual. If the captain checked, he would see nothing out of the ordinary unless he scrutinized the pictures rigorously. And, as usual, I was lagging behind the others so that nobody could get a clear view of what I was doing. I pulled out my standard issue nail gun and carefully aimed it at the center of the balloon I was inspecting. I pulled the trigger and watched as the gas-powered nail drove itself into the innards of the flat package of the buffer balloon. Satisfied that it would never deploy as intended, I closed the cocoon and worked my way over to the next.

  And the next.

  And the next.

  ◆◆◆

  Rebekka checked the padding on the crash couch of her second-in-command, slapped him on the shoulder and gave him a reassuring smile. “You’re good to go, just hang on tight and we’ll be on the ground in no time.” She got a quick nervous smile in return as the man leaned back and closed his eyes. The nervousness in the room was palpable, and the air was thick with the smell of fear and the bass of heavy heartbeats. Some were praying. Some were cursing. Some were crying and some were sleeping, preferring a drug-induced stupor to the rigors of the moment. All were strapped into their respective crash couches, ready for the descent to the surface of Mars. They had worked nonstop for almost two months, patching, repairing, sweating, and cursing. Every single globe had been checked, and almost half had been deemed unsafe to either detach from the Wayfinder or to enter the meager atmosphere of Mars. Both of the landers for the crew were intact, and although a few of the balloons had to be replaced, everything ought to be in working order.

  She took a deep breath and moved over to her own seat.

  ◆◆◆

  Nadia closed her eyes, feeling the padded restraints pressing reassuringly against her shoulders. This was it. They had worked and toiled for almost two months getting the ship ready for arrival, and they were finally here. For the past four days they had been in a stable orbit over Mars, sending off sections of their ship to gently glide into the atmosphere and, a bit more violently, smash into the ground using the buffer balloons to survive the impact. Most had made it. But not all. They had lost a few of the globes as they either entered the atmosphere at slightly the wrong angle, or as the buffering failed on impact. And now it was their turn to tumble through nothingness. Their turn to trust their lives to computations and luck. Their turn to throw the dice. As the Billionaire had so succinctly put it: “We can afford no mishaps, so we will assume that everything will work out as planned.” She glanced over at him as he settled into his seat, but she could detect no nervousness in his movements. He might as well have been settling in for a nap for all the anxiety he was showing. She looked away before he could notice her looking at him, and scanned the room for her captain. He was already seated at the mainframe, the screens around him hopefully showing a merry green. He glanced up, caught her eye and gave her a quick smile before returning to the checklists. They had been sharing a bunk ever since the day the flare had struck, and for the first time in her life Nadia found herself loving a man. It almost hurt her to look at him, and she could feel her breath catching at the thought of something happening to him. For that matter, if anything happened to him during the next couple of hours, it would happen to her as well. She quickly extinguished that line of thought and tried to hear what Dr. Stokes was talking about to distract herself from the prospect of fiery death and dismemberment.

  ◆◆◆

  Rebekka was thinking about dying horribly, burning to death or being smashed to pieces. Not her favorite topic, but after seeing the last lander impact the surface with no balloons deployed to brake the fall, she could feel her imagination taking the upper hand and doing its thing. They were all strapped tight in their respective seats, padded in all conceivable stress points. They were expected to sustain approximately eight Gs at impact, lessening by a factor of two for each bounce afterwards. If all went according to plan, they would all end up less than a mile from each other. She closed her eyes, surprised herself by saying a quick prayer, and sent the all clear to Captain Reinholts.

  ◆◆◆

  Captain Reinholts caught the eye of Nadia, the love of his life, from across the room and gave her a quick smile before returning to the tasks at hand. He had just received the all clear from Dr. Loams in the other lander, and he was busy double-checking all the numbers she had sent him. There were fifty-two men and women in her lander, forty-two in the one he was sitting in. Although he could see no reason for the discrepancy, those were the numbers the computer had insisted on, and he had no reason to doubt them. Taking a deep breath, he engaged the intercom.

  ◆◆◆

  “This is Captain Andrew Reinholts. We are now green across the board. All the globes that can be sent down, have been so. All personnel have been accounted for and are standing by in their crash couches. I will keep this short and sweet, ladies and gentlemen. We are now where we envisaged ourselves to be when we started this little project over two years ago. Some of you have been working on it most of your lives. Although the circumstances are quite a bit different from what we expected, the result is the same. We are ready to be the first human beings on the surface of another planet. In a few short hours we will take that elusive first step on the Red Planet, and we will begin our new lives. Not all of us made the journey. Some of us paid the ultimate price, made the final sacrifice. Take heart in that our fellow friends and crewmembers lost on the way will not have died in vain. Know that they would have wanted this for you, as you would have wanted it for them had the situation been reversed. Now take care, and I’ll see you all on the surface. Wayfinder
Actual, final transmission, out.”

  The captain’s voice seemed to whisper through the cabin as Rebekka took a final look at the view outside the window. It never ceased to amaze her. From the very first time they were able to pick out the little red dot in the sky to the all-encompassing view she had at the moment, it still made her heart jump a little. It was so beautiful. A dust storm was slowly turning in the southern hemisphere, slightly obscuring the view of the icecap. It seemed so peaceful, so serene, but she knew that it was no joke to be outside when the wind hit sixty miles per hour and the world was nothing but wind and sand. She hoped she would never have to live through something like that.

  The shutters slowly slid down over the windows, blocking her view. Although the windows were supposed to easily withstand the landing, an extra layer of protection had been added. Losing the atmosphere was a small matter with all of the crew wearing their suits, but flying glass from a smashed window could easily turn a good landing into a disaster. So no view of their success, or doom, while it was happening. But she had the next best thing—a live feed from several floating cams attached to the hull at various points. The small cameras were usually free-floating, but in that mode they were useless if the ship changed trajectory. Using the extended finger controls on her wrist pad, she quickly switched through the channels, watching as the globe she was sitting in slowly detached from the Wayfinder, sliding on rails extending from the main hull. She knew the view would be the same from the other globe. They would be landing with less than five minutes separation, a timeline hotly debated during the past two months. The pros eventually outweighed the cons, as there was a very real chance one of the landers would need immediate assistance after touchdown.