Martian Dictator

by Øyvind Harding

  “Nice to know you’re appreciated.” Robbie stared after the departing woman.

  “No worries, my friend, she’ll come around. Now do as she said and unload this shit.” The Billionaire, her captain, her substitute, finally came forward, carrying a pitchfork.

  22. The Death

  “Do you really have to go?” Nadia trailed her fingers along the scar that traversed captain Reinholts’s chest. It was ragged at the edges, bearing the unmistakable mark of poor stitching. She kind of liked the rough edges and the smooth, stretched skin at the bottom. Like a ravine, it stretched from the bottom left rib and tapered to a point close to his right armpit. She had asked him about it once while still on the Wayfinder, but all he had said about it was that it was a remnant of days gone by and wasted opportunities. She had not pushed the issue, and after seeing the fight between him and the Billionaire, she had little doubt about the origins of such a scar.

  The rise of knife fighting as an outlet for frustration, and in some cases for sport, was incomprehensible to her. Her upbringing had had its share of violence and hardship, but true hardship carried no fashion. You used whatever weapon was at your disposal, be it your fists, a knife, or a cleaver. What counted were results.

  He sighed and rose halfway to sit on the edge of the bed. This was the fourth time she had asked him that question since last morning, and his answer had been the same every time. “Yeah, babe, I have to go. I don’t trust anybody else out there, and I especially don’t trust that sneaky moneychanger.”

  “Is that really an argument for going? I would think that it would caution you to stay here, where you know what you are facing.” She tried to make light of it, but the truth was that she was scared for him. There had been several confrontations between Reinholts and the Billionaire already, and although there had been no serious blows exchanged just yet, it was only the necessity of survival that had kept the confrontations from turning deadly. They were two men strong of will, and there was not room enough on this planet for the both of them.

  “I can handle the man, don’t you worry about that. What I can’t handle is what he finds at the crash site and what he chooses to tell us he found there. I need to be there, I need to see it for myself and I need to know that that bastard doesn’t try to manipulate things to suit his own agenda. I’m pretty sure he means for us to stay down here indefinitely, and I wouldn’t put it past him to squirrel away any supplies he might find to further his position. Besides, we need those supplies desperately, and I intend to get them here personally.”

  Now it was her turn to sigh as she sat up beside him. “All right, but don’t you do anything stupid out there. Keep an eye on him at all times and don’t let him blindside you.”

  “Don’t worry, I won’t. It takes more than a mere broker to cancel my ticket. And besides, he only has himself to survive for. I’ve got something more.” He glanced over at her, and she caught the quick smile that flittered across his weathered features.

  She felt herself smile back at him, and she let her worries sink down in her unconsciousness again. “Go on, then, the others are probably waiting for you already. Go, and come back to me.”

  He smiled at her in earnest, pulling her closer to him. “You know what, they can wait a little while longer.”

  His kiss swept the last of her worries away, and they sank down on the mattress again.

  ◆◆◆

  We stood outside, the three of us. Captain Reinholts, Roger Wells and myself. One bulky backpack each, one improvised wagon on four large rubber wheels loaded with supplies, and our lucky mascot: Anna Stokes’s little stone man perched on top, held in place by a rubber tie. It didn’t serve any function, but she had insisted. It hardly weighed anything, so I figured why not? When she got an idea into her head, I would be hard pressed to persuade her otherwise. The cut in her meds was starting to get to her, and I did not think she realized it yet herself.

  “So, where to?” Roger was jumping from foot to foot, hardly able to stand still. The prospect of going after the second module, and possibly the remnants of his research station, had him on edge, eager to get on with the expedition.

  Reinholts’s frown was audible even over the radio. “Calm down, Plant Man, we’ve got a long way to go. No need to waste any energy before we even start.”

  “Should’ve followed that advice yourself, or do you think we wouldn’t know why you were half an hour late?” The petulant whine present in his voice was always there when he talked about the relationship between Nadia and the captain. A crush not reciprocated was a hard thing for a man like Wells. But easily exploited.

  “Enough. We have five hard days of pulling this thing before we reach the crash site. As the captain said, no use wasting energy. Let’s get this show on the road.” I bent over awkwardly, picked up one of the two ropes attached to the wagon and clipped it on to Reinholts’s back. A few seconds later I could feel the second rope being clipped onto my own.

  We were off.

  ◆◆◆

  Roger watched as the two men clipped on the harness and began trudging over the sand, the wagon lurching into motion behind them. He shook his head and followed. Ten days, probably more, in the company of the self-proclaimed leaders of this expedition. No, wait, the leaders of this planet. Dictators in the making if he ever saw one.

  Their target was due north, about five days’ travel on foot. Most of the globes that had crashed had landed there, all within a couple of hours walk from each other. Ice globes, food, machinery, things that could not be manufactured nor replicated. And most importantly, for himself at the very least, his lab. His lab, several tons of seeds, and his special project. If the lab hadn’t been breached, there was no reason why his small batch of plants couldn’t have survived. The water cyclers in the small grow pods were automated and pretty robust, and if the atmosphere in the lander was intact he might actually be able to save the seedlings. Even if they hadn’t survived, he was confident that he could salvage enough seeds so that he could start over again. The thought elevated him almost as much as the finished product would. He had been burning through both his coffee and his secret cannabis stash at an alarming rate lately, and he would very soon have to do something about it.

  When the call came for volunteers to go check out the crash sites, Roger had immediately stepped up. He knew exactly what he was after, and he had no idea what he was getting into. Although he had been denied at first because of his unique expertise and the dangers of an unknown crash site, he had argued that he would be best qualified to survey what could be salvaged from the globes and what could not. Who knew, it might even be true.

  The most shocking news was that they would not be taking the sole functioning digger out to the site. There was no way to maneuver it manually, and it had been decided that it was just too risky to take it so far away from the safety of their partially dug home. It kept breaking down at the most inconvenient of times, sand clogging the tracks or the software restarting every time the radio link lagged more than a few seconds. Johanson was pretty sure he could nail the software problem, and even rig it to travel along a predetermined course if the radio or the camera stopped sending. He even had plans on how to stop the sand from building up in the joints, but he could not give a time frame for the operation. However, they could not afford to wait any longer. Their daily rations were barely enough to avoid starvation, and Anna was planning on reducing them even further by the end of the week. They needed the greenery up and running, and they needed it immediately. So by foot it was.

  The wagon pulled ahead, even though he felt as though he was half-jogging just to keep up. He absolutely dreaded when it would be his turn on the ropes.

  ◆◆◆

  Reinholts loved his turn on the ropes. The pull from the weight of the wagon, the sweating, the cursing each time one of the wheels snagged, whenever his foot sunk farther into the sand than anticipated, or the slow rush of wind that turned visibility into a joke; he loved it all. After all, he
had not expected to make it here alive. Not when they took off from Earth, not en route to the Red Planet, and certainly not while they were hurtling down through the thin atmosphere. He was alive and loving it! What he hated was the inaction, the wasting of precious time and resources. Now, finally, he was doing something. And even though he had to do it in cooperation with his polar opposite, this time their goals coincided. He could work with the man if it meant they stood a better chance at returning to Earth. His foot sunk down in a small dune, and he cursed as he struggled to pull it out. Well, maybe he didn’t love the dunes as much as the rest of it.

  ◆◆◆

  That night we pitched our tent next to a couple of weather-worn boulders the size of small houses. The process was a simple affair: the tent rested on the bottom of the wagon, two small railroad tracks running on each side of it. As needed, the supplies on top were rolled down to the ground at the back of the wagon, and the tent was free to be pulled up by pre-attached spokes before it was pressurized and pumped full of heat and air. The generator was always attached to the tent, and in an emergency the entire process could be completed in less than a minute. That first time it took us three hours. None of the equipment came out the way it was supposed to, lines kept snagging on the rails and the generator refused to cooperate, almost dying several times before Reinholts finally figured out how to work the filters properly.

  It was cramped in the small tent. Three grown men, rations for a two-week trip and every conceivable thing we thought we might need in an emergency with time as a limiting factor. The first couple of hours each night it was freezing while the generator struggled to bring up the heat, and the remainder of the night it was stiflingly hot, with the stench of unwashed bodies more and more pronounced as the journey progressed.

  A rhythm was quickly established: walk, pull, switch, rest. Eat, drink, piss, sleep. Repeat. Tubes of food paste and water stuck out at uncomfortable angles within our helmets, and we were catheterized so we wouldn’t have to remove our suits for the duration of the trip. I could trust the captain to ration his potables, but Roger was another matter entirely. After the second time he emptied his entire supply for the day after just five hours of trudging, we had to resort to docking his bags and only connecting them during each rest period. He was not happy, and argued his case as often and as loudly as possible. Luckily, I had master access to the radios, and I discreetly shut him out whenever his capacity for whining surpassed my capacity for ignoring him. Captain Reinholts, on the other hand, was not so lucky, and had to endure hours of uninterrupted bitching about the climate, the lack of good food, the lack of sleep, the lack of good women, and the presence of sore gums, sore feet, and blisters, both on his privates and just about everywhere else.

  I let him get away with it without too much fighting, but in one area he was cut no slack whatsoever. Every time we donned our helmets inside the pressure tent and prepared for another stint on the road, we checked each other for wear and tear. From the bottom of our soles to the top of our helmets, every square inch was inspected and checked for rifts, abrasions, or discoloration. The moment I had been waiting for arrived the third night. It was my turn to check Captain Reinholts’s equipment while he inspected Roger’s suit.

  Food intake, ok. Water also. Waste bags in place. Belt secure. Multi-tools on the belt strapped firm and tight. Finally, the pouch on his thigh containing the emergency pads for sealing the suit. It came off easily in my probing hand, and it took me slightly less than a second to replace it with the one I had ready in my other hand. Satisfied, I slapped him on the shoulder, signaling the all clear, and we were off for our fourth day on the road.

  The fix was in place. Now for the finale.

  ◆◆◆

  Roger stood at the gaping hole, the serrated edges beckoning him inside. A soft scent of coffee seemed to be wafting from the dark interior, permeating his entire being. He could almost see the kettle on the burner, water slowly coming to a boil, the fine grain of the crushed coffee carefully treasured on a plate to the side. At his elbow, the dried leaves of his special greenery, dried, laid out in full, beautiful in color with the scent of heaven itself. His babies, the beans and the plants, ready to be respectively drunk and rolled into a big fat joint. His fingers twitched at his side as he stared without seeing, building his courage to enter the broken ship.

  “Wells! Get your ass over here! I’ve told you a hundred times already, we’re not doing your lab this trip.” Roger started, and turned to see the captain glaring at him from the edge of the jangle of broken glass, plastic, and metal that had been his personal lab on the long flight to Mars.

  Roger shuffled his feet and made his way over to the other man. “I was only checking it out to see if it would be possible to salvage something later.” The mumbling was barely audible over the radio. The captain did not respond, merely turned his back and made his way over to the wagon, confident that Roger would follow. Irritation flashed across Roger’s haggard features, but he did follow. Now was not the time to make a stand. If he feigned acquiescence now, he might get a chance later, either due to their mission being completed early or because he had managed to sneak off on a little expedition of his own. Both options had a higher chance of success if he kept his head down and did as he was told. Rocking the boat only ever had two outcomes, making everybody seasick or getting soaked.

  “A sobering sight, is it not?” The Billionaire stood on top of the wagon, taking in the surrounding area.

  The landscape was littered with modules from the Wayfinder, all in different states of destruction. While in orbit they had chosen a relatively flat stretch of terrain for their landing zone, with few or no obstructions to rip or damage the globes and their precious cargo. Even so, it seemed as though every single one of the modules had suffered some form of damage, ranging from total destruction to a very few that seemed to have only suffered minor structural damage. It was worse than anticipated, much worse. The recovery of useful equipment would take months, if not years, and would be hazardous in the extreme.

  Reinholts and Roger grabbed the side of the wagon and hauled themselves up to stand by the Billionaire. Roger carefully checked the surrounding wreckage before zeroing in on one of the closest globes. “That’s the one we want, that’s one of the seed storages.” Maybe.

  “Doesn’t look too badly smashed up, let’s take a look.” With a clap on the shoulder that almost threw Roger off the wagon, the Billionaire jumped down and started off in the direction of their salvation. Or the knowledge that they were utterly fucked, all depending on the state of the goods.

  Roger threw a fitful glance over his shoulder at his former lab and carefully made his way down to the ground. He would get lucky and be able to check it out, he was sure of it. And if not, well, he would have to make his own luck.

  ◆◆◆

  The time had come. The setting was perfect. I held up my hands with my thumbs stretched as far apart from the rest of the fingers as I possibly could and captured the tableau: the brave explorers, finally having reached their destination, stopping so Roger could take a dump. “And here we have a Roger bird, native to this area. A tidy yet reclusive species, it prefers to do its scavenging among the remains of other animals. As is usually the case among scavengers, this bird can eat and process just about anything. But once in a while, it will ingest something that takes a rather steep toll, and it will have to spend a fortnight processing the produce. It is highly recommended not to approach the Roger bird in this period, both as a courtesy to the bird, as it does not appreciate being interrupted in its voiding, and for the sake of your own nasal health. The odor can be quite. . . pungent.”

  The Captain grinned and shook his head as he made his way around the ailing scientist and disappeared behind a jutting piece of broken metal and plastic.

  “Piss off, you crazy bastard, this is hard enough without you making fun of me.” The pain in Roger’s voice was evident, and it cracked as he doubled over again. “Aaaah, bloody pro
tein bars, they’ll be the death of me, I swear!”

  “Sure it’s not the tube up your arse that’s doing it?” I did nothing to conceal the mirth in my voice.

  “Nnnnnnnnnnh, funny, man, very funny, man. You ought to go pro.” It seemed as though he had found a favorable position; his hands pressed flat against the wall of the lander, his knees bent as far as the suit allowed and his ass pointing at the horizon.

  “Nah, I’ll leave that to Robbie, he’s the true comedian of the crew. Doesn’t mean I can’t take a stab at a mean shit once in a while, though. You’d better hope that it’s just a mean shit by the way, if it’s just about anything else you’re a dead man. We don’t currently have the facilities to fix anything more serious than an angry rash, and even that would be stretching it.” I conjured up a little concern, just for him. The little things, that’s what builds bridges. That, and a whole lot of cutting, tearing, and heavy lifting.

  Roger glanced at me and shook his head. “I’m good, I just need a minute. My stomach just can’t take this diet for an extended period of time. I need something lighter.”

  “Yeah, you’re a delicate flower, Roger. Now hold that position until the flow of lava subsides, and let me and the captain do our thing.” I walked off in the other direction from where the captain had headed, Roger’s moaning coming in low over the radio.

  ◆◆◆

  The captain slowly and carefully made his way around the broken edges of the lander. The damage was certainly there, but he did not think it was as bad inside as it would seem just by judging the exterior. The truly damaged globes were torn apart, nothing but rubbish and hard pieces of metal left strewn about the landscape. They were not designed with hardship in mind, just like certain members of this expedition. He chuckled as he imagined what the interior of Roger’s suit must be like at the moment.