Martian Dictator
Page 20
He let the rough glove encapsulating his hand trace the outline of a doorway. It seemed as though this lander had had a balloon failure right before it came to a halt, saving the interior but ripping large chunks off the plating. Excellent news, all in all, if only they could find a safe way to enter. He leaned in to examine the doorway, but the entire lower half was twisted in on itself and impossible to budge. It was a promising entry point, but they would need the heavy equipment. He pulled out a small cube from a pouch at his belt and placed it on the ground, pressing and twisting the top as he did it. Pingers: they could be picked up and located by their radios within a radius of about two miles. Useful buggers. He continued his journey of circumnavigation.
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Roger tried his best to appear in just the right amount of pain. It wasn’t that much of a stretch, since his stomach really did not take well to a constant diet of protein bars, liquid paste, and recycled water. But he had weathered worse bowel movements than the one currently wracking his insides, and he knew he could get up and walk away at any time if he so desired. But it was best to let nature run its runny course for another minute or so before implementing the next part of his plan.
Feeling adequately rinsed, cleansed, and emptied, Roger straightened and cautiously walked to the corners of his little part of the wall. It stretched above him, measuring easily five times his own height at its high point even with the bottom part crumpled and crushed into the ground. No sign of the others. No sign that anyone besides him was out here in this godforsaken wasteland. And no one to see what he would be doing for the next half hour or so. He turned and took off in the direction of his lab.
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Gravity is a funny thing. Every single object in existence exerts a pull on its surroundings, be it the size of a planet or, say, a knife. It is not a true force in and of itself, it is merely the effect the object in question has on the curving of the local spacetime. The age-old image of a ball placed on a stretched piece of cloth serves as an adequate visualization of how gravity affects the local topography. A large ball will make a larger dent than a small one, and anything close enough will be pulled down to its surface like water swirling down the drain. And a knife thrown on Earth as well as on Mars will follow that vortex in perfect accordance with its departing speed, the angle of the throw, and the curve of the local spacetime. In short, I could throw my knife five times further on Mars than I could back home.
I watched as my knife arced through the thin air and embedded itself in its intended target, about forty yards away. I made my way over to the crate I had been aiming for and pried the bowie out. It had made an impressive impact, all things considered. Some of the crew complained that they could hardly take a piss in this gravity without literally messing things up, but as in zero g I found that I could take it in stride without missing a beat. I could almost visualize how the curving of gravity would affect my throw before I even made it. The hard part was calculating how the suit would affect the movement of my arm, but I found I cherished the challenge. I had been practicing ever since the landing, and even though my aim wasn’t quite what I wanted it to be given the increase in range, it was more than adequate for my purposes.
I smiled as I returned the bowie to the sheath at my belt and continued my search for Captain Reinholts.
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The captain frowned as he turned the corner, checking his angles carefully. A rift in his suit at a time like this would be inconvenient, if not fatal. At that thought, his hand went automatically to the easy-access pouch at his thigh containing the Rapid Insertion Pads, or RIPs as they were lovingly called. Engineering certainly loved their acronyms. If he pulled out a pad, a chemical reaction would soften the edges and make them adhesive for about five seconds before hardening, thus ensuring a rapid seal of small to medium leaks in his suit. He took in his surrounding landscape and keyed his radio to his partner in exploration.
“So, where are you? I’m way past the halfway point. We can’t afford any delays, you know that.”
For a few long seconds, there was no response. Then, the static was broken. “I had to check a few promising entry points, took me longer than I thought. No luck though, they were all dead ends. You?”
“Yeah, I have a couple of good ones, one especially, but we need the heavy gear to get it open. Heard anything besides moaning from Roger? We could use his help about now.”
“Nah, haven’t heard anything for a while. If I were to guess, I’d say his internal demons are still haunting him.”
The captain grinned, the Billionaire were mirroring his exact thoughts. “Yeah, but we’re on a schedule here. Guess it’s time to bring him in from the cold.” He switched his radio to the all-crew frequency, fully expecting to be met with violent groaning. “Roger, you there?” Nothing but static. “Roger, please respond, how are you holding up?”
For a long minute there was no reply, then a strained voice broke through the ether. “I’m here, just give me a minute. This is the worst I’ve ever had it on this bloody trip, just. . . Aaaahh. . . Just another moment and I’ll be right with you. Nnnnnnnnhh!” There it was, the expected violent groaning.
“We don’t have any more moments left for you, Roger. Up and at it! You will regret it if I have to haul ass all the way back to you instead of the other way around. We need the burners, and we need them now. Just bring it all, will you?” Annoyed, Reinholts clicked off and turned around. There was no point in checking any further for entry points, the Billionaire would be coming this way shortly. He trudged off in the direction of his little beeper left in the sand.
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From my vantage point I could see it all unfolding. The captain unconsciously raising his wrist to his mouth to speak, as if there was any connection between the controller on his arm and the actual microphone. The esteemed Mr. Wells, hurrying back across the hardpacked sand towards the wagon, making good time for a man supposedly wracked by intestinal havoc. I was standing next to a decent-sized boulder, just about twice my height, leaning casually on it. The view from up here was spectacular as the sun rapidly approached its zenith.
I hadn’t been in time to catch the start of Roger’s little excursion, but I could see him huffing and puffing his way back now. It didn’t exactly take a genius to take a stab at where he had been. The suppressed lust had practically been radiating from him as he was standing in front of his broken lab, as had the resentment when we made him walk away from it. As I figured it, there were three reasons why Roger had agreed to this excursion, and they all started with the letter C: Coffee, Cannabis, and Cravings. You can always count on an addict doing the right thing.
Idly I flicked the knife up in the thin air and watched it lazily spin its way a good five yards above my head before gravity persuaded it otherwise. I caught it without looking, frowning as I almost had to overreach to get to it. It was harder than I had anticipated. Again, the knife went spinning, higher this time, and again I had to reach out to catch it. Frowning, I watched as the captain disappeared around the curve of the globe just as Roger reached the wagon and began compiling the necessary equipment. Most of it was on the ground already, but even so it would be a hard job for a small man such as him to stack it all and carry it to the airlock the captain wanted.
Step one, identify your end game. Step two, implement the necessary actions. Step three, profit.
I slapped the knife back home and pushed off from the boulder. There was work to be done.
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The last light from the welder flicked off, and the door began to tilt forward. With a little encouragement from the Billionaire standing at its side, it dumped down to the ground in a cloud of red dust. The blackness inside loomed towards him, wanting to swallow him, wanting to choke him. Roger took an involuntary step back.
“Right, then! Looks like we’re in. No point in wasting any time. If we’re going to do this today we need to be efficient, and we need to be coordinated. Roger, how’s your stoma
ch?” The Billionaire turned to him and waited for a response as the captain finished packing the welder. “I don’t want you stumbling about in there with your thoughts focused on your ass, it would be a good way to get nicked on some jutting metal. Could be dangerous.” Again, he waited.
“Well, yeah, I don’t really feel all that well, now that you mention it.” A plan was forming in Roger’s mind.
“We need to reconnoiter before the heavy lifting commences, shouldn’t take more than an hour. You think you can hold the fort out here? When we’re ready we can hand you the crates through the door, and you can make a neat little pile of them. In the meantime, you can take the sledge back to the other side and unload the rest of the stuff. We need a base of operations, and the spot where we arrived seems as good as any. We also need the wagon as empty as we can get it.” Again, the waiting for a response.
“Yeah, you know, that sounds like a good idea. I can do that. I can organize the crates here on the ground as you bring them out. An hour, sure. Oh, hold on, my stomach, ooooohh. . .” He bent over and supported himself with a hand on the side of the lander. “Aaaah, yeah, I think it would be best if I stayed out here.”
“Alright, that’s settled, then! Let’s do this Mr. Captain Man, let’s see what we can see.” The Billionaire flicked on his shoulder lights and entered the blackness. The captain hesitated at the opening for a bit, turned to Roger as if to say something, then abruptly turned and followed the other man into the darkness. Roger was left alone.
Alone. Outside. For an hour. He straightened and began jogging back around the lander the way he had come.
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Always trust an addict to do the right thing.
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Reinholts slowly made his way farther into the smashed globe. The corridor in front of him was packed from floor to ceiling with crates. His lights swallowed the darkness, but were in turn devoured as he played them slowly from side to side. It was very nearly a miracle. He was walking on a crushed mass of broken crates, but both to his left and to his right were unbroken crates, stacked neatly and untouched. The crash must have been a very gentle affair indeed. Hard enough to tear open the bottom of the lander, though. He could see the ever-present fine-grained sand piling up in drifts in every crack, in every space not already claimed by the machinations of man. At times, he could swear he could feel the dust as a constant presence in between his teeth, in his nose, his ears, and, well, his crack. In the darkness ahead of him he could see the flickering of the Billionaire’s lights as the other man made his way deeper into the structure. “Boarder One to Boarder Two, acknowledge.” He waited for a response, and was about to call again when his radio crackled to life.
“Aaah, this is your attendant speaking, welcome to Flight Mars Two, section farmer produce, please wear your seatbelts at all times, as we might experience some turbulence on the way down. Please refrain from opening the emergency exits, as the atmosphere outside will kill you within seconds. Have a nice life!” In the darkness of the crashed lander, the flippant tone from the Billionaire was all the more inappropriate. If not literally, then very much figuratively they were walking on the corpses of their friends.
“Cut it, funny man. We need to be professional about this. These crates might look like they are stacked as neatly as in a Walmart, but they might be under severe pressure. The last thing we want is for one of us to poke at something just to have it come loose and jump at us like a released spring.”
“Come off it, old man. This is not Aliens, nothing will jump out at you. Take a look at the ceiling, will you? There’s a clearance of at least half a yard up there, the harvest is stacked, packed, and ready for the plucking.”
The captain tilted his torso backward so that his lights found the top of the stack. He was right, there didn’t seem to be anything pressuring the crates. Not in this section at least. “Even so, we need to be careful in here. The last thing we need is a damaged suit or an injury.”
The reply came a beat off and sounded thoughtful. “Yeah, the last thing we need.”
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The lights played over his beautiful crates, caressing them with the warm and tender touch of a lover long lost. Roger almost cried. They were fine, his precious seeds were safe. It was almost too easy, the short trip over to his broken lab was taken at a brisk jog, and in no time at all he had been standing in front of the gaping hole that led into his lab. He was proud—he had not hesitated. With a firm hand he had gripped the jagged edge and pushed off into the unknown. And had almost immediately impaled himself on a support beam, standing straight out just inside the opening. He had shakily made his way farther in from then on, but nothing else had jumped out at him. And here he was, his prize, his treasure, right in front of him. His lab was a frozen mess, with his test plants immobilized within their cracked and broken containers. A touch of green in an otherwise black and red world. But there, right in front of him, unharmed, as if destined to wait for him here at the end of things, were three boxes with his meticulous labelling on them. “Biohazard, do not open!”. He scooped up the small boxes and turned back.
The others wouldn’t even notice that he had been gone.
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Captain Reinholts could almost see the shadows lengthening. The sun was rapidly closing in on the horizon, and the stars, never far away, were making their presence known. Something was wrong. He could feel it in his gut. Something that wasn’t there that should be, or something that was, and shouldn’t. He stood in the opening of the lander and played his lights out onto the ground. “Roger, are you there?” No reply. “Roger, we’re about to start hauling the crates out, we need you on the ground here.” Nothing but silence from the botanist. He cursed and half-turned back to the darkness and the crates.
And hesitated. The pingers. The locators they all were carrying so they could mark out the route for the next expedition. He raised his wrist and brought up the activation screen. They could be remotely activated, but not deactivated. Once on, they would light up like a Christmas tree and stay that way until they were brought back home for a reset, or until the batteries went out. Which should be several years if the manufacturers were to be trusted. He hesitated again, then rapidly marked every entry on his screen and hit “activate”. He tuned his radio to the appropriate channel, and was met by a cacophony of noise. He unclasped the pouch containing his own pingers and dropped it at his feet, then turned back to the darkness and raised his arm.
There. A collection of pings from one of the pouches. He frowned and slowly waved his arm back and forth. It was coming from the wrong side of the lander; the Billionaire was supposed to be in the aft section, but the return from this set of pingers was coming from the opposite side. He glanced at his wrist to check the range, and his frown deepened. The range was off as well, it would put the other man way outside the lander.
Slowly, he turned in a half circle. There. A single return, coming from right outside where he was standing, the one he had placed to mark their point of entry. He lowered his arm, and in doing so he briefly caught a series of returns from his right, out in the terrain. Captain Reinholts stopped, raised his arm and turned slightly towards the source. A series of pings. A pouch such as the one he himself was wearing, off in the terrain outside the lander.
His eyes widened as he caught a glint of something flying towards him.
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The arc of the knife followed the lazy trajectory of the gravity of Mars, flying straight and true over a distance of more than forty yards. My adversary was standing in the opening of the lander, his arm slightly raised in my direction. From my vantage point I could see the moment realization struck and the arm began to lower. The knife was halfway there. The arm lowered further and the body began to turn. Too slow, too slow. The knife was almost there.
My aim was off. Not by much, but by enough. The knife struck the figure in the upper torso, high up and to the side, near the shoulder. It sliced open the suit in a shallo
w gash before embedding itself, the point buried deep in the arm. The captain spun around once, then fell down with his back to a crate. A good throw. Not an excellent one, but the result might be even better than intended. I made my way down the slope and towards the fallen figure.
Time to end the first war of Mars.
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Roger slowed his pace and came to a halting stop.
After his brief excursion to his lab, he had taken off at a brisk walk, cradling his treasure like a father holding his firstborn child. He had quickly hidden the boxes in the wagon, and with a strength he did not know he possessed he had grabbed the harness and gone off in search of his crew. He had not noticed that he had started off in the wrong direction, taking the long way around the lander they were working on. He was way past the halfway point before his fogged mind truly registered his surroundings. Cursing, he stopped for a moment before starting off again, continuing in the direction he had been walking. After all, what was the point in turning around when the shortest route now lay ahead of him?
He could’ve sworn he saw something in the air reflecting the last rays of the sun. Casually, he made his way closer to their entry point, moving slightly off course to gain height, turning on his radio as he went.
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Captain Reinholts was dying, and he knew it. He also knew the exact reason; the knife had punctured his suit, but more than that, the Billionaire had finally flagged his colors, and they were darker than anticipated and carried a skull and a cross of bones. He grabbed the handle of the knife and ripped it out. The damage to the suit was already there, and there was no time to deal with the bleeding. He would just have to hope it wasn’t serious enough to hinder him in the minutes to come.