Weatherby looked at one man, then the other, then finally took Finch by the arm. “Governor, again I must apologize, but Dr. Finch here has just been transferred to the Daedalus, and we are already late reporting.”
“Transferred? Like hell he has!” Worthington sputtered. “Do you even know what Mercurium is?”
Weatherby merely frowned at the governor, prompting Finch to elucidate. “It is nothing less than the alchemical essence of the planet itself, a material that could hold the key to many occult mysteries, and with numerous practical uses besides. It is cousin to the Philosopher’s Stone itself in terms of power!”
“And who has it now?” Worthington cried, his belly shaking with his indignation. “The Spanish? The damnable French?”
“And what of our navy?” Finch added, eying the young officer most critically.
That struck a chord in Weatherby, prompting him to release Finch’s arm as he contemplated the potential enormity of what may have transpired. Captain Morrow had standing orders that the officer of the watch beat to quarters when sighting any ship, even an apparently friendly vessel—better to be ready for naught than unready at the wrong time. The same calculus applied here, he felt.
“I think,” Weatherby said finally, “we should adjourn to the Daedalus. Captain Morrow should hear of this matter, and quickly.”
July 25, 2132
Shaila finished reading Stephane’s preliminary report and put the datapad down on the mess hall table between them. “Nice job,” she said, reaching for her third cup of coffee this morning. “I mean, it doesn’t actually say anything, but it’s well written. Lots of nice, big words.”
Stephane leaned back in his chair and ran a hand through his dirty blond hair. “I know, Shay, I know. We have nothing.”
The two of them had spent six hours in the lab the previous evening poring over sensor data from across McAuliffe’s area of operations (AOO). There were more than five hundred AOO sensors spaced out across three hundred square kilometers of territory, each sensor set atop a ten-meter high pole that also carried communications gear. The sensors picked up fluctuations in radiation, temperature—anything that could impact mining ops. That also included seismic activity; Mars wasn’t prone to earthquakes, but the ops could trigger a rockslide or collapse that could literally have repercussions elsewhere.
And within that comprehensive sensor blanket, exactly three sensors picked up the barest hint of seismic activity. Stephane believed the quake could have reached a 6.5 on the Richter scale within the cavern, but the three nearest AOO sensors, each roughly a kilometer away, barely registered a minute tremor.
Aside from that, the only other thing they managed to wheedle out of the data was a half-second communications outage which occurred two seconds before the sensors detected any seismic activity. The outage covered all incoming and outgoing transmissions in the area, including the signals every sensor sent back to the base computers, on-planet audio and video signals, and even the narrow-beam laser array that kept McAuliffe in constant contact with Earth via the six MarsSat satellites in orbit around the red planet.
Coincidence? Possibly, but Stephane chose to include it in the report. After that, there wasn’t much more he could do, mostly due to lack of in-depth geologic data. So that’s where Stephane and Shaila left things before heading to the sleeping centrifuges for the night. Living on Mars took a toll on the body, but sleeping in capsules hooked up to giant centrifuges allowed McAuliffe personnel to at least sleep in Earth gravity. That, along with twice-daily exercise and a regimen of pharmaceuticals, helped stem the effects of low-G living.
Stephane had offered to continue their “research” in Shaila’s sleep pod—one of his typically outrageous flirtations. She, of course, declined, though with a bit less annoyance than usual; he had turned out to be a pretty smart guy after all, now that he had something to do. Besides, sharing a pod was out of the question anyway—the last couple that tried it unbalanced the entire centrifuge, prompting a week’s worth of repair work.
“So I guess we’re heading back there,” Shaila said between bites of tofu scramble. The McAuliffe mess was decent enough for most meals, but seemed to have issues with breakfast. “I’m still not thrilled about going back in that cave, you know.”
Stephane shrugged. “There is no sign this will happen again. Of course, there was no sign before, but we must chance it. Otherwise, we will never know what happened, or if it will happen again.”
“All right. What do you need to bring?”
He called up a new file on his datapad and slid it back to her. “It is all here.”
Shaila scanned the list, which took up two pages. “Jesus, Steve. That’s a hell of a lot of equipment. Audio/video? Radiation sensors? Seismic units? We don’t even have a portable GPR imager.”
“Billiton does,” he replied. Ground-penetrating radar imaging was standard fare for geologic study. “I’ve already talked to Yuna Hiyashi this morning. She’s willing to lend us the imager, but she wants to come out to the site with us.”
Shaila groaned into her coffee. Dr. Yuna Hiyashi was a pioneering astronaut from the glory days of JSC. First woman on Venus, first person on Europa. She spent the better part of 40 years in space—so much so that her body could no longer handle Earth’s gravity. When she retired eight years ago, Billiton hired her as a consultant at McAuliffe, a great public relations move given that she once commanded the base earlier in her storied career.
Retirement didn’t seem to suit Yuna well, however. She puttered about the base, engaging in scattershot experiments ranging from terraforming to geologic history—with little to show for it. And her intense curiosity meant she stuck her nose into just about anything going on. She was your typical old-lady neighbor with too much time and not enough to do—albeit an old lady who retired as the civilian equivalent of a two-star general and lived on Mars.
“Steve, you can’t just invite random people to go on an EVA like that,” Shaila said, trying to summon up patience. “Especially Yuna. Harry’s bad enough, but now Billiton is going to be really all up in your business because she’s going to be reporting to them. Not to mention the fact that she’ll have you chasing random ideas all over the place.”
“I know, I know,” Stephane said. “But we could use the extra set of hands, and eyes. She has seen a lot of things in her time. And I need that imager. I need to see what is under that rock, and this is the safest way to do it. Besides, I think she could use the distraction. She does not have a normal life any more.”
“Yeah, well, trust me. Astronauts don’t get to have normal lives,” Shaila said. “Stay out here long enough, you’ll see.”
“No, thank you. After Mars, I plan to get a nice little university job somewhere. Somewhere with nice trees and grass outside and big wooden desks I can sit behind and talk all day.” Stephane looked up and waved to someone behind Shaila. “And there she is now.”
Shaila turned and saw Yuna walking over to them, breakfast tray in hand. She was a thin reed of a woman, her white hair kept back in a simple ponytail, her smooth features giving away nothing about her age.
Shaila gave Stephane a hard glare. “You still should have cleared this with me.”
“I am sorry, ma cherie. I am not used to all of these JSC rules yet.” His smile, however, told her otherwise.
Before Shaila could rip him a new one, Yuna had taken a seat next to them. “Good morning!” she chirped. “I have your GPR imager loaded into Rover Two. And Shaila Jain! Why haven’t I seen you in my yoga classes lately?”
“Sorry, Yuna, just been busy is all,” Shaila replied crossly. “I know Steve brought you into this, but I’d appreciate it if you’d let JSC make an official report to Billiton before you fill them in on things.”
Yuna smiled. “Don’t you worry. I was JSC since before you were born. Billiton doesn’t even give me anything to do around here. Besides, who doesn’t like a bit of mystery?” Her grin was contagious, and Shaila even felt her frown tw
itch upward a few millimeters. “The Billiton wing was buzzing this morning. They’re pretty up in arms about this. We’ll probably see them already out there.”
“Super,” Shaila said. “I just hope they stay the hell out of the way.”
As Yuna and Stephane exchanged pleasantries and nattered on about fault lines and strata and such, Shaila reviewed his shopping list one more time. She’d have to clear out every last bit of equipment in storage, and the junior officers would probably see their own little pet projects delayed for a while. But Diaz told her to solve this, so solve it she would.
An hour later, they were suited up, outside and readying Rover Two for their return to the cave. “I couldn’t lay hands on anything else besides the GPR imager,” Yuna reported. “I imagine Harry had them pull all the sensor gear for the other mining sites.”
Shaila looked over to Billiton’s depot, about 150 meters from McAuliffe proper. The ore haulers were out, as usual, ferrying deuterium and ores between the mining sites and the smelting and loading bays here. But Billiton’s own personnel carriers—super-sized pickup trucks with bench seating in the back—were gone as well.
“I just hope it’s manageable out there,” Shaila muttered, climbing in and revving the rover’s engine. “Hard enough as is without Harry getting antsy about things.”
Twenty minutes of rolling Martian terrain later, they arrived at the cave, located atop a gently sloping ridge that leveled off onto a wide plateau. Yesterday, before going down into the lava tube, Shaila had thought how desolate and bleak it looked.
Now, however, it was frenetic.
As she pulled the rover to a standstill, she could see at least a dozen people milling about the skylight leading down to the cave, and three of them were busy erecting a scaffold around the skylight itself, probably to support some kind of lift system. The surface was blanketed with sensor modules, creating an array at least 250 meters wide, while a few technicians were taking soil samples and other readings.
Jumping off the rover, Shaila headed toward the Billiton personnel, leaving a trail of red dust clouds in her wake. “Who’s in charge here?” she demanded over the Billiton comm channel.
“You are, Lieutenant,” Harry responded. She looked around and saw him hop-shuffle over. Naturally, he wore the very latest in pressure suit tech. His gear was more form-fitting and far less cumbersome, and had all the bells and whistles; she could even see the lights of his heads-up display dancing across his helmet visor. “We’re just chipping in.”
“You call this chipping in?” she said. “You’re running your own damn investigation here!”
“We’re providing you with data you wouldn’t otherwise have,” Harry said, holding out his palm. A small holoimage sprouted from his hand, showing a local map of sensor arrays. Shaila pulled out her datapad and saw that Harry already sent her links to every sensor around her—including a sensor they managed to suspend from the skylight inside the cave. “And nobody went in there yet,” Harry added. “We waited for you.”
Shaila frowned at the datapad. “So why the burst of generosity, Harry?”
“It’s not generous,” he said simply, dismissing the holoimage simply by closing his hand. “It’s common sense. I don’t want quakes on Mars. We’ve been steadily profitable for ten straight quarters now. It’s not ending on my watch. So you get our help.”
“And you breathing down my neck,” she shot back.
“Goes without saying,” Harry said. “We need this dig.” With that, the executive shuffled off toward his crew, leaving Shaila staring mutely at all the useful data scrolling across the datapad, wishing she had access to the shit-hot tech Billiton gave its executives. After a minute, she began barking orders.
Normally, it was hard enough for Shaila to get the Billiton people to follow base rules when it came to loitering in the Hub or cleaning up after their late-night mess hall parties. But here, the techs jumped at her every command. They quickly unloaded the GPR imager, checked out all the equipment—and even peppered her with unaccustomed “yes, ma’ams.”
There had to be something in the cave that Kaczynski didn’t mention for Harry to be this forthcoming and generous, Shaila figured as she prepared to re-enter the cavern. Otherwise, he wouldn’t play nice with JSC to get back in there. On the flip side, the unprecedented cooperation implied that Harry would be quite ready to blame JSC, and Shaila in particular, if the investigation didn’t go well.
Finally, after sending Yuna and Stephane into the cave to set up equipment, Shaila hooked her suit to the rope-and-pulley contraption the mining company rigged up and began to lower herself in. Thirty seconds and five meters of bedrock later, she got her first glimpse of the cavern, lit by the pale pink sunlight streaming in from above and the lamp lights below. To her surprise, it looked…different.
She was reminded of visits to her parents’ house in Birmingham, England, between off-world assignments. There would always be little changes—a new piece of furniture here, some rearrangement there—that usually added up to a larger sense of difference. That’s kind of what she was getting here.
Yes, her first visit to the cave was frenetic, to say the least. But still, some of the rubble seemed oddly out of place. Shaila could’ve sworn the pile of rock that buried Kaczynski was bigger than it appeared now. And wasn’t there a smaller pile off to the right? Shaila looked around carefully, trying to recreate the harried, blurry scene of the previous day in her head. It wasn’t working very well.
Her observations were cut off abruptly as the rope started to vibrate. She looked up reflexively, only to see small rocks and dust starting to fall from the ceiling.
Out of the corner of her eye, it seemed there was a quick flash of…blue.
“Oh, shit.”
A second later, Shaila started swinging wildly, thirty-five meters from the ground, as large rocks started to fall in earnest all around her. She struggled to grab the rope with both hands as the cavern whirled around her.
Suddenly her vision blurred, and she let go of the rope a moment. Vertigo, she thought. But then an image flashed before her eyes—some kind of structure, standing impossibly tall in the Martian sunlight, a rust-red plain stretching before it, mountains tall behind it.
It was gone a moment later.
Then she felt the rope go slack. And the floor of the cave suddenly rushed up to greet her head.
CHAPTER 4
February 20, 1779
Placing a number of men, all convinced of their place and importance, inside a small room is perhaps not the best way to find accord, Weatherby thought as he watched Governor Worthington argue his case, as it were, before Captain Morrow. It hadn’t helped that the governor had essentially tried to order Daedalus to investigate the murder; while he had the power in theory, its use was fraught with political concerns. So he was reduced to arguing before the captain in order to obtain his cooperation. And, as it turned out, Mr. Plumb made for a fine counterpoint.
“With all respect, gov’nor, there’s no way a ship of His Majesty’s Navy can go haring off to find a single murderer when there’s a bloody war going on ’round Jupiter!” Plumb said firmly while Morrow, his eyes half-lidded, observed with detachment. Next to him was seated Worthington, and next to the governor was the distraught housemaid, who was introduced as Miss Anne Baker, the deceased’s only domestic servant and companion.
“This is no mere murder, sir!” Worthington roared in response, slapping Morrow’s table with his hand and sending waves through his corpulent body as he shook with indignation. “You’ve no idea what the implications of this action may be!”
“And you do?” Plumb thundered back.
“I do, sir,” Finch said from where he stood wedged between Weatherby and Foster. “And it is my opinion as this ship’s alchemist—for that is what I am now, is it not?—that the loss of the Mercurium in this murder is a loss of far greater proportions than you realize!”
Weatherby took Finch’s measure once more, and as he talke
d, found him possessing more backbone than he had first considered. While still pale and sweating, the look in the young alchemist’s eye was steely, his jaw was set, and his focus was clear. His sense of decorum, however…
“You keep it quiet, Finch,” Plumb growled. “You’ll give your opinion when your superior officers ask for it. And besides,” he added, turning to Morrow, “’tis not the first time some bloody alchemist has sent honest sailors off on some wild goose chase.”
At first blush, Weatherby could not agree more, as he had often believed alchemists to be inscrutable at best, and either charlatans or fell arcanists at worst. And yet, the governor had mentioned something about the Navy whilst still in Dr. McDonnell’s rooms. “Excuse me, Mr. Plumb, gentlemen?” Weatherby ventured. “Perhaps Governor Worthington would be so kind as to relate this tale from the very beginning, so that we might better weigh our options.”
This prompted a small smile from Morrow. “A fine idea, Mr. Weatherby. Governor, if you would?”
Frowning, Worthington nonetheless sat down and began relating the particulars of what occurred, as he had come to understand them. Last evening, Dr. McDonnell was at home in his study, reading, when there was a knock at his door. The housemaid, Miss Baker, answered to find three men there—a gentleman of some sort, with fine dress, and two others attired most poorly. The gentleman asked for an audience with McDonnell, who agreed to see them despite the hour. As one of the very few reputable alchemists at the outpost, his modest home—once a small merchantman—often received visitors at all hours. Miss Baker showed the men into McDonnell’s study and then retired to her chamber.
At this point, Worthington asked the girl to continue the story. She nodded quickly, gathering herself, and plunged ahead in a quiet but steady voice. “I could not hear all that was said, but I could tell after a short while that Dr. McDonnell was getting quite angry, and that one of the other men—the gentleman, I presume—was likewise becoming upset. I heard shouting. Something about Mercurium, about not giving it away. The gentleman seemed to be desperate, said something of a ‘great working.’
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