"He's right, you know," Peter replied to Ashley who kissed him deeply. "Plan B must be magnificent."
"It is," she replied with unexpected enthusiasm.
Close out crewman Mark Teiner arrived at the launch pad ahead of his fellow technician and passed Cartwright and Michner walking away from the elevator.
"When is transportation arriving to pick us up?" Siggy asked.
"Mike, give 'em a ride back to BC1," Mark suggested, walking backward, directing and pointing to his fellow technician.
"Don't you want any help safing the lander and unloading the passengers?" Mike asked.
"Come on back when you're done, for heaven’s sake," Mark returned in an aggravated tone, turning and racing for the pad elevator. "I'll tell the safety console you're on your way."
As the astronauts and technician headed toward the MAT, Mark slammed the wire encased elevator door closed and sighed, "Whew!" He burst into the white room from the air shower, still fully suited, just as the first passenger slid out of the narrow hatch onto the white room floor.
"Back... get back in now!" he shouted.
"What the ...," the passenger replied, already frustrated and upset, his chance to finally get off the BURR, or Big Ugly Red Rock, as they referred to the planet, thwarted.
"Okay, go right ahead; breathe the air, go ahead," Mark warned, in his most condescending voice, looking out through his visor at the man. The passenger, his own helmet in his hand, looked terrified and pressed his way back into the lander and closed the hatch.
Mark wasted no time in sliding a portable winch in front of the cameras; then he grasped the handles on the two flight lockers Ashley had tossed out of the lander and dragged them into the can, locking the door. He then plugged himself into the communications port and calmly announced, "Okay, folks, air quality is verified. You may now open the hatch." A bead of sweat dropped down onto his nose from his saturated head band.
The passengers filed out of the lander ahead of Ashley and Peter. The first two out were the Marines who had just been relieved and were headed back to earth: Corporal Pamela Hiraldo and Staff Sergeant Irving Brinker. Sergeant Brinker, short, black and stocky, known less affectionately as "Bupkis" (no one dared call him Irving), removed his helmet, exposing the ever-present, well-chewed cigar stub. The Marines had long since banned smoking, but Brinker insisted it was just decoration. He claimed he never lit his stub, and to anyone's knowledge, he never did.
"Now ain't this just peachy?" he began, walking over and standing toe to toe with Mark. "I got nearly two years on the BURR and you're tellin’ me your rocket's broke? These civilian operations are all alike, know that?"
"Got that right, Sarge," Hiraldo agreed, her helmet tucked under her arm.
"If it weren't such a privilege serving in the Corps anywhere in the known universe, I'd probably be angry right now. Know that? You definitely do NOT want to see me angry. Now I ain't had no good booze, no good fights, no good sack time in two years, and you're tellin’ me your rocket's broke...."
"Shower's a waitin', Sarge," Hiraldo offered, stepping into the air shower.
"And now I gotta go take another shower with Hiraldo," Brinker continued to ruminate, shifting one eye closed, and the other to the air shower, cigar poised to the near vertical. He sighed and hesitated before stepping into the air shower with Hiraldo, shaking his head and slowly latching his helmet into position, cigar still in place.
The other passengers filed out of the lander, their faces ashen and annoyed at this fantastically bizarre deviation from their plans. None of them were colonists and none wanted another minute on Mars, much less a full sol. Another 24 hours back on the BURR after being so close to leaving would be all but intolerable.
Ashley held Peter back until she could see the last passenger depart out of the airlock. Then she slid out of the lander's hatch and Peter followed.
"Mark, did we accomplish the contingency?" she asked, turning her back to the cameras.
"Barely," he replied, shifting only his eyes to the can, its door now clearly locked and sealed.
Ashley just smiled and looked to Peter. "Shhh...," she whispered without moving her lips, and then winked at Mark. "Thanks for everything, you're definitely in."
Peter rocked his head twice between Mark and Ashley and said nothing. The dumbfounded expression on his face said it all. Then he latched his helmet into place and looked to the can. "Can's really broke this time, right?" he asked sincerely.
"Yes, sir," Mark replied.
"Figures," Peter replied over the circuit, feeling the twinge in his bladder.
Four MAT's raced together to the pad surface and stopped almost simultaneously. The safety console operator was incensed. Nothing was going according to procedures. The lander was venting liquid hydrogen and oxygen, its tanks brimmed full. Making the ship safe (called safing) was not proceeding with any resemblance to procedure he knew about; discipline now totally gone. So he closed the screen on his safety procedure display, leaned back in his chair, and put his hands behind his head after simultaneously keying all his radio frequencies at once. "Okay, all you cowboy jocks out there at the rocket ranch, listen up. We got a hot bird sitting there and you folks are running around the pad beneath a million liters of rocket fuel. Go right ahead and entertain yourselves, but at least give me your names so that I can notify next of kin."
The launch director was equally outraged. "Who are all these people out there? Who authorized the close out tech to bring out the flight crew? Who authorized the other vehicles to follow the reentry team?"
"Great! I see you know about as much as I do," the safety console replied, palms raised.
Gorteau and Toon appeared out of one vehicle, Lieutenant Quinton out of another. The reentry team began to unload out of a vehicle and the fourth arrived to pick up the passengers.
"I'll stall him; you go up and get the lockers," Gorteau instructed Toon, eyeing the Marine officer who had just stepped from his vehicle.
Toon ran to the elevator and up the structure as Gorteau approached the Marine.
"Excuse me, sir; may I assist you in any way?" Gorteau inquired, his mind racing.
"No, doc, you can't, except to stay out of my way," the Marine replied harshly, turning his back on him and heading toward the elevator.
Gorteau pursued him. "You realize of course that you have no authorization to be here. This facility is not safed."
"I have my orders," Quinton replied, reaching the elevator. He jabbed the button repeatedly, turning his back on Gorteau each time the physicist tried to face him.
"We won't allow you to take our people into custody," Gorteau said flatly, finally abandoning hope of preoccupying the Marine.
Quinton turned and faced Gorteau, his face hard and framed with anger. "I'll take these people into custody, as I have been ordered to do. If you insist in interfering with my official duties, I’ll take you into custody as well."
"Have you not heard of the most basic principal of law?" Gorteau asked sharply.
"Get out of my way, old man," the Marine replied, shoving Gorteau against the pad structure and heading toward the stairs. The elevator car obviously was not coming down.
"As a professional Marine officer, you should know the most basic principal of law," Gorteau called after Quinton as he had no hope of physically stopping him. It worked. Quinton stopped and turned to face him.
Gorteau continued briskly, taking advantage of the Marine’s attention. "The most basic principal of law is that, ultimately, the ability to enforce your rules enjoins the reality of law. You can not possibly hope to incarcerate a majority of the people on this planet. And that is what you are proposing."
"Stuff it, professor," Quinton replied with a smirk, and turned to bound up the stairs.
Their only hope now was that Toon would pick out the right set of options at the top. Gorteau could not possibly keep up with the Marine, and with the weight of his pressure suit, probably would not make it anyway.
; Toon reached the white room as Mark ripped the seal off the can's door and slid the lockers over to him. Toon tossed a large bag to Peter.
"Load them up and hurry," he said, breathlessly.
Peter, Toon and Ashley shoved the heavy lockers into the bag while Mark tied the white room doors closed with nylon rope.
"Hurry up,” Toon warned as Peter and Ashley fumbled over the latch to the bag.
"What's in the lockers?" Peter asked.
"Later," Ashley replied as the Marine rushed into the air lock.
"I hate to drag up a useless and ugly fact at a time like this, boys and girls, but last time I looked, there’s no other way in and out of here," Mark cried as the Marine kicked the air lock door open and attempted to burst through the lashed air shower door.
"Oh, but there is!" Peter said, eyes darting to the emergency escape hatch. "I hope our friend keeps his helmet on," Peter said as he crushed the glass plate to the escape lever with his elbow.
"Don't do it, Peter! Dump the air first!" Mark warned.
"No time. Get over here and button up!" Peter screamed.
He grabbed Ashley and Mark by the back of their collar rings, tugging them in front of the escape hatch as the Marine finally broke through the air shower door. Toon rushed up behind them, the heavy lockers draped over his shoulders. "Mark, pull it now!" Peter shouted.
Mark's hand pulled the ring and the explosive gasket disintegrated the door opening out to the escape net which sloped from the white room level to the ground. As the air in the white room exploded out into the rarified Martian atmosphere, they were sucked out, 60 meters over the pad surface. Peter intensely hoped they would actually land on the net and high enough up so that they would not be crushed when they finally hit.
They all separated in free fall, tumbling down in the agonizingly slow flight through Mars' fractional gravity. Eventually they all landed on the net, 15 meters down and rolled in a gathering pile toward the landing zone. Gorteau saw the incredible spectacle and rushed toward the MAT.
Quinton was already in a foul humor when his helmet slammed into the opposite wall as the escaping air propelled him about the white room like so much debris. His temper deteriorated even more, however, when he figured out his quarry had escaped.
Stunned, he sat against the wall as the room spun about him. Gathering his wits and shaking his head, he went through the cursory survival checks: suit pressure still good, visor not cracked, no severed arteries. With his head still whirling, he stumbled to his feet amid the trashed white room and looked out the gaping hole over the escape net. Seeing the group duck into an MAT, he simply rolled head first into the net and slid down to the pad surface.
The presentations broadcast on the various monitors scattered about BC1 had no sound, so when the white room air exploded outward in a soundless mist of cluttered vapor, it all seemed somehow surrealistic. The sheer vision of four bodies silently sucked out into the void was astonishing enough, but seeing the Marine bounce about the walls like a rag doll, then pull himself up and roll out through the hole was almost supernatural. The humans of Mars all watched what appeared to be the first planetary insurrection as it progressed in a stunning hush, all framed in incredible, soundless action.
Gorteau had the good sense to scramble out of the MAT's driver's seat and let Toon take the controls. Peter was the last in, dogging the hatch shut as Toon sped away toward the base down US1. As they headed out the gate, Peter could see the Marine's body tumble down the net.
"We're going to have company," he said loudly.
"We have actually survived our own plan," Gorteau said chillingly. "All these MAT's are designed to perform exactly the same. Unless our pursuer has some unknown capabilities, then the distance between us cannot significantly change." As usual, Gorteau was logically correct. As long as Toon could maintain the vehicle's progress at its maximum velocity, the Marine would not catch them on the road. And Toon was well known as the best MAT operator at BC1.
"What's in the lockers?" Peter asked, his voice giving way to near desperate curiosity.
"Lipton's booty; several million dollars in Mars' quartz," Ashley replied.
Mars' quartz was a common quartz with a light pink coloring. Although the supply on Mars was virtually unlimited, these stones on earth were black marketed at excessively exorbitant prices. The price recovered for these stones was usually higher than diamond. It was a silly gimmick, for after travel between the planets picked up, the stones would eventually flood the market and their price would plummet, rendering all the stones nearly worthless. Yet the scam continued and the U.S. government made their importation by federal travelers illegal. Since all travel to and from Mars was only made under federal orders, any imports from U.S. ships were considered contraband.
"How do you know that's what's in the lockers?" Peter asked.
"We had Mark ship them back to the laboratories last night after the Marine installed them in the lander. Then we scanned them with x-rays and NRI (nuclear resonance imaging) and recorded the data with certified time stamps."
"This isn't going to work," Peter said with a sinking feeling. "Lipton is going to claim you planted the stones."
"He can't. We also have the electronic logs of what time Lipton turned over his lockers to the Marine and what time they were delivered to the white room."
"But you could have opened the boxes anywhere in between."
"Not without the locker's security system recording the opening. Don't forget, these lockers are authenticated diplomatic pouches and can’t be opened without the device recording the event."
"What about illegal search and seizure? What about unauthorized tampering of classified material? Surely you realize that you must have run afoul of at least a dozen legal issues here."
"It doesn't matter," Gorteau said. "When the State Department finds out what Lipton has been up to, they will quietly remove him from our midst. Even illegally gathered information on petty crime by a government official will be an embarrassment to them and they'll want him out before it leaks. This is the White House's big chance to rid itself of a great potential liability."
"How did you find out he was doing it in the first place?" Peter asked.
"Friends in low places," was all Gorteau would admit to.
"So, now we're all set," Peter remarked. "We've got a crazed Marine two minutes behind us; who knows what waiting in front of us; we just ripped off two confidential diplomatic lockers, wasting the white room in the process, and whatever other achievements in an already long and distinguished day. So what could be next?" he asked with a wide, toothless, fake grin.
"A hazard of contingency planning," Ashley replied, "is anticipating just the right amount of details. However, you'll all be happy to know that Francis is waiting for us at the end."
"Ah yes, Francis. And how did you manage to talk him into dumping two gigabit-per-second down links from the Earth Sats?" Peter asked, truly curious.
"Sorry, not our plan A," Ashley admitted truthfully.
"You mean you had nothing to do with that?"
"Don't look at me," Toon added without prompting.
"Remember,” Gorteau recounted, "We're into Plan B. Plan A was to fly you back to earth so that you and Ashley could direct Lipton's termination party while we controlled the evidence here. We had no way of supervising the lockers upon their arrival on earth. The loss of the earth data links was not exactly on our list, though the possibility of a scrub was."
"Plan B," Peter added, understanding.
"Excellent," Gorteau replied as gratified as if he had just explained the theory of quantum electrodynamics to a freshman.
"So Francis was not in on your little plan?" Peter asked, truly surprised.
"Of course he was. But we don't know anything about dumping the earth links," Ashley replied, looking at Gorteau.
"Francis...," Peter mused aloud. He was the only one Peter knew who was actually capable of dumping the earth satellite data links. But he silently p
ondered the logic and even the wisdom of such a desperate plan. Such a serious act would be nearly impossible to explain away or justify and had almost frightening implications for the colony and lander. Just how frightening, he was about to discover.
6
oon gained 30 seconds on the Marine, opening his lead out to a relatively comfortable two and a half minutes as he slid to a stop inside the airlock. Francis operated the door controls internally and closed the air lock long before Quinton's vehicle threatened. In seconds, Peter, Ashley, Toon and Gorteau were inside, helmets off and embraced by every colonist who could make their way to them.
"Quiet; quiet, please!" Gorteau shouted at the assembled crowd. "We simply cannot allow these people to be taken into custody." The assembled colonists applauded their approval.
With his hand raised, Gorteau continued, "That will require that the colony restrict entrance into its areas. We will post guards immediately, and until further notice, accessibility will be controlled." The crowd cheered again.
"While this is necessary in the short term, it will soon become an intolerable situation, but until some aspect of control can be reestablished, it will remain in effect. We will have a community meeting of all colonists in one hour in the main dining hall."
With that, Gorteau, Peter, Ashley and Toon disappeared into the hallways of the central colony as Quniton burst through the airlock doors. Francis stepped in front of him.
"Excuse me, cowboy, but this area is off limits until further notice," he said, standing legs apart and arms folded in front of the officer who had just removed his helmet.
"Get out of my way," Quinton ordered in a slow, deliberate voice, his face bruised, a spot of blood caked over his right eye which twitched as he spoke. The colonists ringed Quinton and began to move closer. Quinton’s head moved slowly to the right. Briefly he took his eyes off Francis as he considered his position. It was not good. Then his eyes shot back to Francis.
Mars Wars - Abyss of Elysium Page 8