Warden 4

by Isaac Hooke

  “I just hope I can continue to live up to the high expectations you all have of me,” she continued.

  “You will,” Horatio said. “We’re worried that we ourselves won’t live up to your high expectations.”

  “Oh, you don’t have to worry about that,” she said. “Because I don’t have any. I plan to face Khrusos alone.”

  “You know we won’t let you,” Horatio said.

  “This is something I have to do myself,” she said. “You’re welcome to accompany me to the palace. But I’m afraid that I’ll be going in on my own.”

  “We shall see,” the robot said. “When this is over, you plan to return to Earth, I assume?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Probably. Why?”

  “I think it might be interesting to stay on Mars for a while,” Horatio told her.

  “You’re welcome to,” she said. “Assuming the government lets you.”

  “Well, considering the Martian government seems to be inexorably tied to Khrusos at the moment, something tells me it will be a mess by the time you’re done.”

  “Really, what makes you say that?” she asked, letting innocence fill her voice.

  “Oh, just a hunch,” the robot replied sarcastically.

  Miles watched as the eyes of his companions defocused and they all entered Robot Wars. He smiled and got up. Let them play their stupid game. He was done playing.

  He unstrapped himself from the deck and shoved off toward the exit. He reached the hatch, and opened it, cringing at the loud moan of metal. He glanced over his shoulder, but no one had noticed, immersed as they were in that game. His eyes fell on the woman.

  She was no longer the Warden to him, though he might still call her that openly. No, to him she was simply the Ganymedean, now. The traitor.

  She had participated in the Great Calming and might have even been directly responsible. She had admitted as much in the cave after defeating Veil, when she had stated the black container in the tunnels beyond had been part of her vessel: an invasion ship from Ganymede that the people of Earth had shot down.

  He felt no remorse over what he was about to do. None at all.

  He exited the cargo hold and left the door open, not wanting to risk closing it and causing that metallic groan again.

  He shoved off and headed down the corridor in the opposite direction of the cockpit, toward the aft hatch. He wanted to make sure there was as little hull between him and outer space as possible, and that hatch was his best bet.

  He landed on the bulkhead next to it and retrieved his portable transmitter. He tuned it to an open channel and placed it next to the hatch. Then he hit the “transmit” button.

  “My name is Miles Falasthorn, ID 548245,” he said. “I’m sending this transmission from the Molly Dook, a merchant class vessel from Earth, bound for Mars station Hongton. Though the passenger manifest is empty, you might be interested in knowing that in addition to myself and several other passengers, there is also a woman known on Earth as the Warden. ID 845146.”

  With that, he ended the broadcast. He hid the transmitter once more, feeling like a great burden had lifted from his chest.

  Now he could enjoy the rest of the voyage in complete relaxation.

  Now he was free.

  Your days are numbered, Ganymedean.

  Rhea accessed the external cameras as they approached Mars. With Targon’s permission, of course.

  To the starboard side, she could see the small grey dot of the massive satellite the Chinese had placed at the L1 Lagrange Point—a location of gravitational equilibrium that allowed the satellite to remain between Mars and the sun at all times, with zero fuel expenditure.

  The satellite generated a powerful magnetic dipole that kept the solar radiation away from the planet, preventing the solar wind from stripping away the atmosphere the Chinese were slowly restoring. The device essentially functioned as an artificial magnetosphere, playing a similar role to the ring network that once protected Ganymede. When the Martian atmosphere built up further, it would also contribute to the planet’s protection, blocking galactic cosmic radiation courtesy of the water molecules in the air—there was a reason hydrogen was chosen as the major constituent of BNNTS fabrics, after all, interspersed as it was throughout the nanotubes.

  Until then, the populace would remain inside the many geodesic domes scattered across the planet. The biggest such dome was Hongton, the Molly Dook’s destination. It also happened to serve as the capital and was the seat of the Chinese government.

  The red planet loomed in the distance ahead, and it became bigger by the hour, until it dominated the view in front of them. Soon, all she could see was that red, pock-marked surface, as the Molly Dook made its final approach. The red coloration was due to the iron-rich minerals predominant in the crust.

  Before the Chinese began their terraforming operation, the thin carbon dioxide atmosphere came in at one percent the thickness of Earth’s. These days it was closer to three percent—it would take another five hundred years before the Chinese brought it to levels on par with her homeworld.

  And while three percent might still seem insubstantial compared to Earth, reentry friction still posed a significant problem. Rhea remembered asking Targon about it.

  “Is a shuttle going to pick us up and bring us to the surface?” she inquired.

  “Nope, me girl,” Targon said. “I’ve had the underside of me Molly Dook sprayed with PICA just for this trip.”

  She frowned. “PICA?”

  “Phenolic-Impregnated Carbon Ablator,” he replied. “It’s a heat shield. Had it done in Earth orbit.”

  “And how thick is this spray-on coating?” she asked.

  “Oh, a few millimeters,” he replied.

  “That doesn’t sound very reassuring,” she told him.

  He shrugged inside his suit. “It’s all we’ll be needing. Now if we were landing on Earth, of course, that’s a different story. No coating would save me ship from a descent into her hellishly thick atmosphere.”

  Rhea still wasn’t entirely convinced. “Well, if you’re sure…”

  “Trust me, I wouldn’t take me ship into the Martian atmosphere if I didn’t think it was safe,” he said. “I’ve used the coating a thousand times. Saves me the trouble of finding a shuttle. PICA in combination with a little strategic deceleration is all we’ll need to survive reentry. The shield will be burned away, of course, thanks to ablation… I’ll have to acquire a new coating when I return to pick you up. I consider it the cost of doing business with the red planet.”

  Targon angled the nose of the vessel upward, and the Molly Dook began reentry. The camera feed became tinted orange, courtesy of the super-heated plasma that formed around the vessel.

  She felt the slightest shift in G forces and knew Targon was activating reverse thrust to slow down. The inertial dampers would prevent her from feeling anything worse. In fact, while the dampers were operational, she rarely felt any forces at all.

  On the camera feed, she saw bright sparks appearing in the orange plasma. They traveled upward, quickly vanishing from view.

  “What are those sparks?” she asked over the comm.

  “Sparks?” Targon asked.

  “In the plasma,” she clarified.

  “Oh, those… pieces of the heat shield burning away,” he explained cheerily.

  She and the others all wore their suit rentals, mostly out of a concern for safety rather than to satisfy any protocol: she was scared to death of a hull breach during reentry. Her recent flashback of a doomed Ganymedean vessel plunging into the Earth’s atmosphere didn’t help matters…

  And then the orange tint receded and the Molly Dook was through. She was relieved that the transport hadn’t burned up along with its heat shield.

  Soon the geodesic dome of Hongton became visible on the surface ahead, and she adjusted the zoom level of the camera to get a better view. The panes were translucent, like the old Ganymede domes, because the magnetic dipole filter
ed most of the harmful radiation. The specialized glass, a patented composite of polycarbonate and BNNTS, deflected the remaining radiation, including cosmic rays. The Chinese had supposedly invented that glass, but she suspected they had stolen it from the Ganymedeans.

  She could see skyscrapers inside and was reminded of a typical Earth city. Drones roved to and fro like a cloud of insects in the air above them.

  But then the camera feed shut off.

  “All right, it’s time for ye to get into your hidey-holes,” Targon transmitted.

  According to the merchant, from time to time ships were chosen for a random search. If that happened to their vessel, they didn’t want to be caught lounging about the cargo hold.

  Rhea and the others left the cargo bay and once more hid inside the deck alcoves in the hallway beyond. They remained inside their suits.

  Targon replaced the floor panels, plunging each of them into darkness. “Comm nodes off.”

  Rhea disabled her comm node. She had folded her knees against her chest, and now she hugged her arms around them as she waited for the landing. Gravity had returned a while ago, and she was firmly glued to the bottom of the alcove. The suit didn’t feel too heavy.

  Before securing the gloves, she’d retrieved the Ban’Shar from the storage compartments in her thighs; they sat firmly around her knuckles, ready to be deployed if the situation warranted. The feel of the metal bands pressing against her palms was comforting.

  In a few minutes she felt a deep vibration: the ship had touched down in a hangar bay inside the dome. That hangar would be pressurizing at this very moment.

  She waited, and after several minutes she heard the clangs as Targon walked past overhead—clangs that were retransmitted by the internal speakers in her helmet. Another vibration came—no doubt the hatch opening, and the ramp deploying. More muted clangs reached her ears but receded as Targon evidently left the ship.

  She felt a final vibration. That could only be the cargo bay doors opening. The freight would be removed by large, robotic arms. She heard muted thuds for the next ten minutes as that cargo was unloaded, and then nothing.

  The team members had agreed to reactivate their comm nodes five minutes after it sounded like the cargo had been completely unloaded.

  She waited the prerequisite five minutes, and then turned on her comm node. “Targon, is the coast clear?”

  The merchant didn’t answer.

  “He’s long gone,” Will said.

  “He left without saying goodbye?” Rhea asked. “That’s odd. I expected he’d want to give us a proper send-off, you know, gloating about how good he is at Robot Wars and all.”

  “I suspect he had good reason to leave,” Horatio said. “Likely lingering in the hangar bay would have aroused suspicion.”

  “You’re probably right. But who’s going to get us out of these—” She shoved against the panel above her and was shocked when it lifted. “Targon forgot to secure the floor panels.”

  Since the panels weren’t secured, the party members readily left their hiding places, and replaced the floor pieces beneath them. As she pulled herself out, Rhea noticed how light she felt: Mars was roughly half the size of Earth, and much less dense, putting the gravity at 0.38 G, or roughly a third that of her home planet.

  “The atmosphere is pressurized,” Horatio transmitted. “We can remove our suits.”

  “Is that really a good idea?” Renaldo asked. “If security catches us, who’s to say they won’t open the hangar bay doors and space us?”

  “That’s quite illegal,” Horatio replied.

  “Sure, but you never know with the Martians…” Renaldo said.

  “It’ll look kind of odd if we walk the streets clad in spacesuits,” Rhea said.

  “We’ll certainly attract attention…” Will said. “From the police.”

  She took a moment to survey the interior of the Molly Dook. The exit hatch on the aft quarter was still open, and a ramp led down: she could see the gray wall of the hangar outside. To her right, the door to the cargo bay was also ajar. She took a few steps toward it. While gravity was one-third that of Earth, she didn’t quite bound-walk like on Ganymede, though her constituent parts did feel significantly lighter, as did the spacesuit. She’d certainly be able to jump a lot farther and higher than on Earth in this environment.

  She reached the hold and tentatively peered past. She was ready to duck from view if the robot arms were still at work, but the mechanical limbs were nowhere in sight, and no crates remained in the hold. On the far side the doors were still open, and another gray wall awaited beyond.

  “It’s clear,” she said.

  The Wardenites spread out in the hall and cargo hold to remove their suits. When Rhea had doffed the bulky thing, she donned the gray uniform she’d picked out, which covered up her metallic body. She slid her brown cloak overtop and raised the hood, pulling the fringe low about her face.

  Beneath the cloak she strapped on a utility belt, which had holsters for both the CommNixer pistols and ordinary blasters. Then she went back into the hall and removed the deck panel near the cockpit, revealing the special crate Targon had set aside. Inside were blasters, CommNixer pistols, and ammo bags containing spare disks for the latter weapons. She took one of each, sliding the pistols into her holsters, and securing a small bag to her belt. The others likewise geared up.

  She returned to the hold, went to the opening, and unsheathed the CommNixer pistol. She overlaid the locations of the city’s security cameras onto her overhead map, using the data DragonHunter had provided, and sent those positions to the pistol to prime its aim. Then she leaned out from the cargo hold and aimed in the general direction of the closest cameras. She squeezed the trigger, and the smart pistol micro-adjusted the aim of three of the five muzzles, rotating them into place before releasing one disk for each of the three cameras in that direction.

  The disks shot across the room and attached within one meter of each camera. That was good enough to block their signals.

  She repeated the action on the left side of the hold, and this time four disks released. She leaped up, grabbing onto the upper rim of the opening, and slid the pistol past the dorsal portion of the craft. She squeezed the trigger without looking, and two disks released.

  She let go of the rim and leaped down, landing softly on the hangar floor. She couldn’t help but smile at how light she felt.

  This is the perfect planet to engage in a fight.

  She held the pistol out past the starboard side of the Molly Dook and fired without looking. One more CommNixer launched.

  She glanced at her overhead map, which indicated the cameras she’d tagged.

  “That’s the last of them,” she said. “Let’s go before security gets here.” According to DragonHunter, that would be in another forty seconds, courtesy of airborne drones.

  The others began to leap down behind her.

  “That’s too high,” Renaldo said from the upper edge of the cargo hold.

  “Dude,” Will said. “You weight three times less.” He shoved Renaldo forward.

  Renaldo waved his arms for balance, then plunged. He fell at a bad angle, so Rhea caught him out of the air and set him down.

  “Thank you, Warden,” he said breathlessly.

  She nodded and leading the way, hurried between the other merchant vessels parked in the hangar bay. She kept the CommNixer pistol in hand for the cameras that awaited in the maintenance tunnel.

  “Let Horatio go first,” Will said, coming up behind her.

  “No,” she said. “I have the Ban’Shar.”

  For once Will didn’t argue with her.

  She reached the maintenance door with ten seconds to spare. The tunnel beyond would allow her and the others to bypass customs entirely.

  The door was locked, so she stepped aside while Will fired at the handle with his plasma pistol. The handle, and part of the door melted away, leaving a gaping hole surrounded by orange hot edges.

  She immed
iately stepped in front of Will and kicked open the door.

  She found herself standing face-to-face with eight robot shock troops. Their forearm-mounted rifles were all aimed at her.

  The clanging of feet behind her alerted her to the approach of more soldiers. Glancing over her shoulder, she spotted several combat robots emerging from one of the parked merchant vessels, where they had been lying in wait.

  Security drones swooped into the hangar bay from the main exit and took up positions in the air around the surrounded party.

  9

  Rhea turned her attention back to the fore, and the eight shock troops waiting there.

  “Get down!” she shouted.

  She dropped the CommNixer pistol and deployed both Ban’Shar.

  The robots on both sides opened fire. She crouched, and redirected one Ban’Shar toward the troops behind her, and kept the other in front. Plasma bolts bounced off the blue disks that were her shields. She deflected some of the bolts into the robots in front of her, and meanwhile kept the rear disk angled slightly upward, to avoid a random deflection hitting her companions while she wasn’t watching.

  From their positions on the floor behind her, the Wardenites opened fire, firing at the rearmost troops.

  Rhea leaped forward, toward her enemies, and bashed her shield into any that stood in her path. The energy tore through them, dissolving the metal, and leaving behind dismembered body parts whose edges glowed a bright orange.

  She transformed the weapon into a sword, and sliced across, defeating the remaining foes. A quick glance farther down the tunnel told her that more robots were coming.

  She returned the Ban’Shar to a shield and deflected their attacks.

  “Concentrate on the tunnel!” she told her companions as she retreated from the opening, and back into the hangar.

  She swerved out of the line of fire of the tunnel, and raced into the hangar, toward the remaining robots from the transport. They had taken cover behind the same vessel.