Mars Prime

by William C. Dietz

  "Thank you, Administrator Fornos. I wouldn't call our agreement perfect. . . but it's something I can live with."

  Fornos chuckled. "That is the way politics are, my friend. Less than perfect—and something we have to live with. My compliments to your beautiful wife. And tell her that she Was right. Her husband is worth the trouble that he causes."

  Corvan knew a goodbye when he heard one, returned the other man's wave, and headed for the hatch. He was almost there when the administrator spoke.

  "And Corvan ..."

  The reop grabbed a handhold and turned around. "Yes?"

  "Do provide the crew with some accurate information on the murder. The rumors could get out of hand. The colonists will go beddy-bye pretty soon and the murderer could make them nervous."

  Corvan imagined what it would be like to enter one of the vertical suspension chambers, feel the needles slip under the surface of his skin, wondering if he'd be killed in his sleep. Not a pleasant thought, and not very good for morale. "Yes, sir. I'll get on it right away."

  "Good." Fornos lifted his hand in acknowledgment and turned back to his monitors.

  Corvan pushed himself through the door, waved at Julu, and headed out into the main corridor. It was just as busy as before. He waited for a cylindrical messenger bot to pass by, pulled himself out into the flow, and headed down-ship.

  It took some time to reach the com center since it was located on the other side of the vessel. He spent most of the trip wondering what sort of reception he'd get. Part of him wanted to delay the encounter and part wanted to get it over with.

  Corvan arrived at the proper corridor, turned into it, and pulled himself down toward the complex that Kim and he shared with the ship's communications techs. One of them, a tall skinny kid called "Zipper," bumped into him and grinned. His jump suit was a size too large and ballooned around him.

  "Just out of the slammer, huh? Welcome back. Jopp's a piece of work ain't she?"

  Corvan forced a smile. "Ain't she just."

  "Ah well," Zipper said philosophically, "that's life for you. If it ain't one thing it's another."

  Corvan nodded at this piece of wisdom, allowed the tech to pass, and pulled himself into the com center. Some other techs waved to him, he waved back and headed for the small television complex.

  The hatch hissed open at his touch. It was dark inside, with only the glow of green, amber and red buttons to light the space, and it was cool, like the inside of a cave. He heard the door close behind him and felt long slim arms wrap themselves around his chest.

  Corvan turned, floating in semi-darkness to feel lips touch his, and legs wrap themselves around his waist. A hand touched the side of his head, slid the jack into place, and established a two-way connection that no one else could share.

  Kim flooded in and around him, her joy and sorrow melding with his, sharing, giving and taking as their bodies became one. And there, deep inside the interface, apologies were made, vows were renewed, and fears were put to rest.

  Chapter Four

  The sign on the hatch read, "J.D. Paxton, Mission Security Officer." It slid aside at Corvan's touch. The reop pulled himself into the office and looked around. Two walls, and most of what he considered to be the ceiling, were taken up with surveillance monitors. They had labels like C-3, A-14, and G-10. He figured that the letters corresponded to decks and the numbers represented locations on a grid. He saw shots of people walking, shots of people talking, and shots of people doing things they wouldn't normally do on camera. He also saw shots that moved, as tiny camera-toting microbots crawled from one place to another, documenting whatever they saw.

  A shocking invasion of privacy, but made less so by a society in which people lived elbow to elbow, and chip heads roamed the streets recording everything and everyone they saw. Images that were supposedly sacrosanct but weren't.

  Corvan remembered making love to Kim in the com center and searched for a shot of her. He didn't find any, but another thought crossed his mind. What about the medical center? Surely there was at least one camera located there? Had it captured a shot of Havlik's killer?

  "I'll be right out."

  The voice came from b connecting cubicle, a sleeping chamber probably, similar to the one that Kim and he shared just off the com center. Not much, but better than what the colonists had down in the dorms.

  A body followed the voice. It drifted sideways into the open door, bumped into the frame, and bounced off. Paxton was a lanky man with short black hair and even features. He adjusted his gun belt and smiled.

  "Well, if it isn't Rex Corvan, reop extraordinaire, and part-time crime buster. I liked your work on the computer coup story. You were lucky to survive."

  Corvan shrugged. "I was lucky, period."

  The other man shook his head. "Not so. Not entirely anyway." His eyes took on a faraway look. "Let's see . . . Rex Corvan, thirty-eight years old, six feet one inch tall, and one-ninety, no, make that one ninety-five."

  Paxton patted a flat stomach. "You've been packing it on, my friend—time to slim down. Now where was I? Oh, yeah. Born and raised in Seattle. The only child of Tom Corvan, now deceased, and Dr. Lisa Kelly-Corvan, controversial journalism professor. A recipient of a masters in communications from the University of Washington, a commission from the Army, and journalistic awards too numerous to mention. You're quite a guy. And that's my point. People like you make their own luck."

  Corvan raised an eyebrow. "Do you memorize all of your files? Or just certain ones?

  Paxton grinned. "Just the ones associated with potential troublemakers."

  "And I qualify?"

  Paxton's grin grew even wider. "You were the first person to spend time in my brig."

  Corvan laughed. "Touche."

  "So," Paxton said, pushing himself out into the office, "you're working the murder."

  Corvan nodded. "Trying anyway. Not that I've made much progress."

  Corvan gestured towards the monitors. "Which reminds me. What about all these security cams? Surely you have one or two tucked away in the medical section. Did they capture anything?"

  The security man shook his head ruefully and pointed toward two screens. They were labeled C-14 and C-15. Both were blank. "We checked right away. As luck would have it both of them were down."

  Corvan looked from the screens to Paxton. "As luck would have it? Or as the killer wanted it to be?"

  Paxton shrugged. "It's a reasonable question. But the cameras that cover C-16, C-17, and C-18 were down as well. Some sort of localized power failure. The tech heads are checking to make sure. The truth is that about ten percent of our cameras are on the fritz at any one time."

  Corvan took another look at the monitors and saw Paxton was correct. There was a scattering of darkened screens on every deck. Just another manifestation of the ship's maintenance problems.

  A deep booming sound echoed through the ship's air conditioning ducts. The same one that had plagued the ship for weeks now. The two men looked at each other and laughed.

  Paxton opened a storage unit, removed a radio, and jacked the lead into the side of his head. He paused for a moment as if listening to something, nodded, and attached the device to his belt. He looked at Corvan.

  "This could be your lucky day. Word came in about ten minutes ago. An F-dormie went bonkers. Beat some poor slob half to death. The M.O. fits. Want to come?"

  Corvan smiled, "Does Jopp eat nails for breakfast?"

  Paxton nodded soberly. "Damned right she does. Hang on a sec."

  The security officer rapped on the front of a large storage unit. The door popped open and Corvan saw a strange-looking device. It consisted of a cylindrical tank with nozzles mounted at both ends, a set of handle bars, and the word "SECURITY" stenciled along its side. There was no gravity to hold it down so the contraption bobbed up and down in the air-conditioned breeze. Paxton grinned.

  "What's a cop without a police car? Slide underneath, grab the rails, and hang on."

  Corvan
did as he was told and discovered that the rails came equipped with O-rings that would make it rather easy for the security chief to handcuff someone to his vehicle. A vehicle that was large enough to double as a rather unwieldy anchor.

  Paxton twisted the motorcycle-style throttle, released a stream of oxygen, and nosed his way out into the corridor. A siren started to bleat, a strobe came on, and blue light pulsed the length of the corridor. People looked, looked again, and hustled to get out of the way.

  Corvan looked upward past Paxton's left side toward the overhead. The reop felt a sense of exhilaration as light grids flashed by, the bulkheads blurred, and air slid across his face. This was what it was all about: a good lead and a story worth chasing.

  There were other reasons of course, intellectual considerations of the sort found in books, and in the minds of people like his mother. But important as those ideas might be, they were dry as old shoe leather, and just as flavorless.

  The truth was that Corvan liked the excitement of the hunt, the rush of adrenaline that came with it, and the catharsis of the journalistic kill. He wanted to bag the story that no one else had, he wanted to tell it like no one else could, and he wanted to leave some sort of mark on the surface of the world.

  The problem was that most of his kills were already dead. Victims like Havlik. He felt like an electronic vulture sometimes, feeding off of society's carrion, while sharing the experience with others.

  It was something he knew about himself, but had never shared with others, not even Kim. She might know of course, in the mysterious way that she knew so many other things about him, but there was no way to be sure.

  Corvan's legs were thrown sideways as Paxton turned a corner. His foot hit a bulkhead and bounced off. He was still working to pull his legs back when Paxton applied some reverse thrust, shoved the nose down, and dived into the mouth of an access shaft.

  Surprised faces whipped by to the right and left, side corridors came and went, and a crab-like maintenance bot passed only inches from Corvan's head. Then they were there, slowing as F-deck approached, and turning into the main corridor. Paxton brought the scooter to a surprisingly gentle stop.

  Corvan slid out from under the cylinder's belly as Paxton slapped a magnet-equipped tether against the metal bulkhead.

  "So, how did you like the ride?"

  Corvan grabbed a handhold. "It was stimulating, to say the least. I kept asking myself, 'If this guy's the heat, then what are the criminals like?' "

  Paxton grinned. "Scary, isn't it?"

  A security officer appeared. Corvan recognized her as the same woman who escorted him from the brig to Fornos' office. She ignored him. "You'd better come quick, J.D. This guy is huge . . . and has himself all strapped in."

  "Then why come quick?" Paxton asked, but the woman didn't get it. She pointed down corridor.

  "Here comes the victim."

  The medics didn't need a stretcher, just a metal framework to protect the patient from further injury, and to hang the pump-driven I.V. from. The cage had a propulsion system much like the one on Paxton's scooter, except that the controls were located at the rear. One medic cleared the way and guided the conveyance around corners, while the other steered and monitored the victim's vital signs.

  Corvan activated his eye cam and pushed himself upward. His shoulders bumped the overhead and he stayed perfectly still. The medics guided the patient right under him. It made for an interesting shot. The reop held it for a moment then zoomed in. He couldn't see the patient's face, but the bloody bandages told their own story. The man had taken quite a beating. Corvan remembered Havlik's face. Coincidence? Or something more?

  Corvan allowed the stretcher to glide out of his shot and pulled himself toward Paxton. He was just in time to follow the security man into F-dorm.

  F-dorm was huge. It had to be in order to house approximately one thousand people. Later, after the vast majority of them had been sealed into their suspension chambers, the place would be quiet as a tomb. But now, with everyone awake, and the feel of violence still thick in the air, F-dorm resembled a dirtside ghetto.

  A maze of temporary hand-lines ran this way and that. The air was thick with garbage. Corvan saw pieces of clothing, empty meal paks, used Kleenex, coffee bulbs, pens, and other stuff too numerous to mention drifting in all directions. All of it against regs and all of it potentially dangerous. It was a far cry from the tidy, almost sterile computer-generated renderings that the public had seen for the last couple of years.

  The corridor ran straight to the center of the deck. The suspension chambers formed concentric rings to the left and right. Each unit stood on end, like coffins waiting to be filled, and many of them were.

  The colonists had nowhere else to sleep, to be alone for a moment, or to seal themselves off from the all-pervasive noise.

  Corvan noticed it immediately. It sounded like the high-pitched humming of bees—loud and inherently threatening.

  The smell was just as bad; a rich amalgam of human sweat, cheap incense, and exotic food. The food was contraband, of course, as were the small gas-fueled torches used to cook it, but many of the colonists hated the ship's meal paks and were trying to avoid them for as long as they could.

  Temporary hand-lines ran along both sides of the corridor. They led straight toward a three-dimensional ball of tangled humanity. It seemed to pulsate with a life of its own and grew larger and smaller as bodies were added and taken away.

  Paxton pulled himself along and shouted as he went. "Come on . . . break it up . . . security here . . . out of the way ... the show's over . . . break it up . . ."

  Most of the colonists headed back to their tiny fief-doms, but a few took exception to the orders and were dealt with by members of Paxton's security team.

  Though few in number, the officers were experts at zero-G combat and worked in pairs. One would grab a colonist from behind, hook their legs around a rope, and hang on. Within seconds a second officer would anchor him or herself to the same rope, deliver some well-aimed blows with a nightstick, and the colonist would give in.

  The moves were extremely well-coordinated, and Corvan's respect for Paxton went up a notch. The security chief knew what he was doing.

  The crowd was thinner now, thin enough to see what lay at its center, and Corvan was amazed.

  A harness had been devised, a contraption made of rope and bungee cords, that was secured to both deck and ceiling. The reop noticed that the arrangement left the occupant free to use both his arms and legs. Other ropes drifted free around him, along with drops of blood, sweat, and what might have been urine.

  The man was enormous, at least three hundred pounds, and naked except for a grungy-looking jock strap. His skin was shiny with sweat and rippled with reflected light as a thick layer of fat rolled back and forth underneath it. His mouth made a huge hole in his dough-like face.

  "Come on you chicken shit bastards! Just try me! I'll give you the same the last guy got!"

  Corvan grabbed the nearest body. "Rex Corvan, Mission Information Officer—how did this start?"

  The woman was Asian—Vietnamese or maybe Thai. She said something Corvan couldn't understand and pulled away. He grabbed another body, a man this time, and got lucky.

  "Rex Corvan, Mission Information Officer— what's going on here?"

  The man was thin, with a big nose, and slightly bulging eyes. Corvan maintained a medium shot. "It started as a bet. The fat guy paid some people to rig the harness, offered to fight all comers, and got a taker. The stupid son-of-a-gun had himself roped in;" The man shrugged. "The monster beat the shit out of him. It was simple as that."

  Corvan nodded. The shot went up and down. "Thank you." The situation was nothing like Paxton had been led to believe. A pre-arranged fight, complete with bets, was a far cry from attempted murder.

  The reop pulled himself up to the point where Paxton had stopped. The security chief looked the monster over.

  The mountain of flesh saw him, made swinging motion
s with his ham-sized fists, and yelled obscenities.

  "Come on you scum-sucking pig! Take your best shot!"

  "You could cut the ropes, truss him up, and tow him to the brig," Corvan suggested.

  Paxton looked around. A second crowd had gathered, further back this time, but a crowd nonetheless. They wanted some free entertainment.

  "Yeah," the security chief agreed thoughtfully, "but that would be too easy. What these people need is a lesson, something they'll remember the day after tomorrow."

  The reop was just about to ask what that would be when Paxton did a deep knee bend, soared upwards, performed a full somersault, bounced off* the overhead, turned end-over-end, and placed both feet right in the center of the monster's forehead.

  It was then that Corvan noticed the cleat-equipped combat boots that Paxton wore and saw additional blood mist the air.

  The monster gave a surprised grunt, shook his head as if momentarily dazed, and made a futile grab for Paxton's legs.

  But the security man was gone and already coming back. His boots hit with a meaty thud, the monster swore, and missed again.

  The next five minutes were like an aerial ballet during which Paxton carefully and methodically beat the other man senseless. The punishment was both horrible and fascinating to watch. Corvan found himself pulled both ways, admiring Paxton for what he could do but sorry that he'd done it. The beating was an example, yes, and a highly visible one at that, but was it right? And would it work? It was Corvan's observation that respect for the law is more effective than fear of the law. But they were a long way from Earth, and order had to be maintained, so Paxton might be correct.

  Finally it was over. The monster hung unconscious, the security team moved in to cut him down, and the crowd drifted away. Corvan approached Paxton. He seemed no different than he had before.

  "So what do you think? Did he kill Havlik?"

  The security chief's eyes narrowed. "On the record or off?"

  Corvan focused the eye cam. "Both. On the record first."