The steady orange LED on Gizmo’s breast panel flicked green as he detached himself from the docking station. He spun around and whirred off at full speed to wake Nills. He found him lying in his hammock in the center of the biodome. One arm hung over the side, his hand hovering above a half smoked joint that was poised on the edge of an ashtray fashioned from a small rover dish antenna. Gizmo stroked Nills’ arm gently with his metal hand. “Nills, wake up.” His eyes snapped open. “Gizmo, what is it?”
“An Earthling has just operated the airlock.”
Nills sat up in the hammock and jumped down. “Who?”
“Temperature coefficient of the accommodation modules indicates that First Officer Annis Romanov is not at home.”
Nills was now checking the camera feeds on his holo-tab. He flicked through each of the modules. Annis’ bed was empty. “What the hell is she up to?”
“I’m afraid I have no logical answer. Perhaps she couldn’t sleep and decided to go for a walk.”
“Come, let’s find out where she is.” They moved off together to the operations room.
Dust swirled around Dr. Jann Malbec and engulfed her. It billowed and blew with a frenzy and blocked all sight. It formed into bacteria and they moved and shifted across her field of vision. She thought she saw a light flash from inside her EVA suit helmet. Where was she? She heard a voice calling her name. ‘Jann… wake up Jann.’ She opened her eyes and Gizmo was beside her bed. She jumped up and clutched the blanket to her neck.
“So sorry to wake you, Jann, but Nills needs you in the operations room. It appears your colleague Annis has gone walkies.”
She arrived to find Nills bent over a 3D map of the Colony One site.
“What’s going on?
Nills pointed to a marker on the map. “Annis went EVA half an hour ago and she’s spent the last few minutes inside the MAV.”
Jann looked down at the green marker that was First Officer Annis Romanov. How much did she really know about her? Not much, it seemed. Then it started to move out from the MAV, but not back to Colony One. It was heading to the fuel processing plant.
Jann stared at the dot in disbelief.
“How long does it take to prep the MAV?” Nills had a concerned look.
“Around twenty minutes.” Then it suddenly dawned on Jann. Annis was getting ready to leave. “Jesus, I don’t believe this. She’s planning to lift off. Why would she do that?”
“You’ve got to stop her. We can’t let her get back to Earth carrying that bacterium.”
Jann looked wide eyed at Nills. “Shit,” was all she could manage.
“It would be chaos, if that infection gets loose. Armageddon, the end of human civilization as we know it.”
“Shit, shit.” The magnitude of the possible devastation that would befall humankind if Annis were to successfully return to Earth was beginning to dawn on her.
“How?”
“Any way you can, you stop her. She must not take off, you’ve got to stop her.”
A nerve shattering scream emanated from just outside the operations room entrance, as the bloodied and broken body of Dr. Paolio Corelli sailed through the doorway and landed with a crash on top of the 3D display. The map flickered off and sparks flew as Paolio’s lifeless body buried itself in the remains of the table. Jann turned away from the destruction just in time to see Decker swing a long bar and connect with Nills’ extended forearm. He let out a scream and went flying across the operations room floor. Before she could react, Decker pounced on her and swung the bar down hard on her head. She dodged, but it connected with a searing crack on her collarbone. She dropped to the floor as the pain engulfed her. She tumbled backwards and cracked her head on something, blinding her momentarily. When she opened her eyes, Decker was standing over her with the bar held ready to plunge into her chest. But then his whole body started shaking violently. He dropped the bar and it clanged to the floor. Jann grabbed it with her good arm and jumped up. Two long coils of wire ran from prongs embedded in Decker’s back to Gizmo’s breast panel. A taser. Nills had fitted him with a weapon.
Decker shook. Smoke rose from his body, the skin on his skull blackened and his eyes boiled and hissed in their sockets.
“Gizmo, switch it off.” With that Decker stopped shaking and dropped to the floor—dead. Jann turned and staggered over to the forlorn figure of the doctor. “Paolio, I’m so sorry, it’s my fault.” She touched his bloodied and battered cheek with her hand; tears welled up in her eyes.
“Jann, JANN! You’ve got to stop her, time is running out.” Nills was tugging at her shoulder. “Oh God, Nills, your arm, it’s broken.”
“It’s all right, Gizmo will take care of it… go, go, you’ve got to go now.”
“Okay.” She wiped the tears from her eyes, took one last look at Paolio and headed for the airlock. She felt the pain in her shoulder as she donned the EVA suit. It was bad, probably broken. Jann was just about to flip closed the visor when Nills came over. He was holding his arm tight against his body as Gizmo raced behind him with what looked like a syringe. “Nills, be still. I need to give you this for the pain.”
“Listen, Jann. You understand what’s at stake here. Our lives don’t matter. You need to do whatever it is to stop her taking off.”
“I know Nills. I know what I have to do now.” She reached out and touched his face. “Hey… if… if I don’t see you again, it was nice meeting you.”
He smiled. “Likewise, it was a pleasure.”
The research lab exploded.
Smoke and flames burst out from the lab and the force of the blast threw them both across the common room floor. It engulfed them and Jann began to cough and splutter as she tried to orient herself. She looked over at the lab door as a new force hit her. The smoke was being whisked back out into the lab. When it cleared she could see why. There was a black hole where the lab used to be—it was open to the Martian night. Air was being sucked out of the colony at an alarming rate and they were being dragged along with it. Jann slid along the floor with the force of the escaping atmosphere. She grabbed at a table leg and hung on. She could see Gizmo spinning wildly on his back with no apparent control. “Nills, where’s Nills?” She saw him sliding past her as he made frantic efforts to grab on to something before he got ejected into the void. She reached out and grabbed him, pulled him in.
Then Jann’s EVA suit detected the drop in pressure and automatically closed her visor. ”No, no, Nills, no.” She looked into his eyes as he struggled to breathe. He clawed at his throat as the oxygen was sucked out of the colony. “No, Nills, goddammit.” The force was too strong, she couldn’t hold him. He slipped from her grip—and he was gone. Sucked across the floor, through the doorway and out into the Martian night. Jann screamed. She tried to look out through the hole at the far end of the research lab where Nills had been ejected. But the force of the escaping colony atmosphere was such that she was being lifted horizontally off the floor. She clung to the table leg with all her strength to keep from being sucked out.
Nills was gone, Paolio was dead… Decker, Kevin… Lu—all gone. She tried again to look back out through the gap as the facility was being vacuumed clean. She saw Gizmo wedged in an alcove, he didn’t seem to be moving. “Even Gizmo is gone,” she thought. It was just her now. And Annis, who was now trying to return to Earth, carrying with her the potential destruction of humanity.
Her hand slipped off the table upright, she scrambled to catch it again but the force was too much, she was torn away. Jann rolled and banged her way across the floor, her arms flailing about trying to grab onto anything still screwed down. She bounced off something hard, cartwheeled through the air and slammed into the wall beside the open door to the Research Lab. The air was still rushing through, bringing with it the contents of Colony One. Objects hit off the walls and banged around her head. Jann felt for something to grab onto and found she was pinned against the door of the Research Lab. It was fully open and flat against the wall, held there
by the force of the evacuating atmosphere. She inched her way to the outer edge of it, grabbed the inner handle and planted her feet against the wall. She pulled on the handle with all her strength to try and get the door moving. She had it off the wall about two feet when it was hit hard on the side by some heavy flying debris. This added to its momentum, enough for the rush of the air to catch in behind it. She had no time to react. The door swung over with a sudden violence and crashed closed. The shockwave reverberated through the colony superstructure and Jann lost her grip as she was flung across the research lab floor. She spun and slid, then stopped.
She lay there stunned for some time, looking out through the gaping hole in the lab wall, straight at the night sky. All was still and eerily quiet. Slowly Jann sat up and looked around. The lab door was closed and held shut by the inside atmosphere, or what remained of it. She was now effectively outside in the near vacuum of space. She did a quick check of her EVA suit for damage. All looked okay. No warnings, no alerts. She stood up and flipped on her heads up display. Was she too late? Had Annis lifted off? A 3D map illuminated in her field of vision. The markers for the HAB, MAV and the fuel plant hovered over their respective locations. She rotated in their direction. Annis was still on the surface, moving towards the MAV.
She headed for the hole in the Research Lab wall and picked her way through the detritus of the cryo-rack module. It was little more than a shell, split open on all sides. She moved through it, careful not to damage her EVA suit on any of the sharp metal of the walls. At the edge she jumped down onto the surface and swiveled in the direction of the green marker that was First Officer Annis Romanov. She had made her choice, for better or worse she was going to try and save the human race. She ran.
24
Mav
Jann crested the dune and looked out across the Jezero crater. Overhead the nighttime sky sparkled with the light from a universe of suns. Far off in the distant blackness she could just make out lights moving across the planet’s surface. It was either one of the rovers or possibly the lights from Annis’s EVA helmet. Her first thought when dropping down onto the surface from the wreckage of the research lab, was to switch her own lights on. But she thought better of it as she would rather not announce her arrival. Progress was difficult in the darkness. She wasn’t sure of the terrain and had to take it slow so as to not lose her footing. She could tell from the heads-up display that Annis was refueling the MAV. The rover lights correlated with the display markers. She didn’t have much time. She moved faster.
Jann hadn’t given much thought to how she was going to stop Annis. Perhaps she would just talk to her, try and reason with her. But then again, the first officer had just tried to kill them all and destroy Colony One. And she had achieved pretty much all of that. Only Jann was left. The others were all dead. As for the colony, the damage had to be extensive, possibly even beyond saving.
By now Jann could see the silhouetted figure of the first officer, walking along beside one of the rovers, two large fuel canisters up on top. How many more did she have to go? thought Jann. Maybe these were the last. The MAV needed all six to take off. But with only Annis onboard there was a huge weight saving so maybe just four would do. Jann cursed herself for not paying more heed to all the engineering training she had been given. As an astrobiologist she hadn’t deemed it necessary. Then again, she never thought she would be in this position. She thought about disabling the MAV in some way, removing some vital part or sticking a proverbial spanner in the works. But again, her lack of engineering knowledge meant she couldn’t be sure if what she did would work. Also, it was now becoming clear that Annis would get to the MAV first. In the end the choice was made for her as her EVA suit comms burst into life.
“Jann, I know you’re out there. Sorry, but you can’t come with me. There’s only room for one on this trip.”
“Annis, what are you doing?”
“What do you think I’m doing, I’m getting off this contaminated planet.”
“Are you crazy? You can’t go back, not carrying that infection, it’s too dangerous.”
“Bullshit.”
“No Annis, you have to stop. Annis, for God’s sake, listen to me.”
“Go screw yourself. You should never have been on this mission in the first place. You never had the smarts for it.”
Jann felt a slight tremor underfoot and looked around. Too late. The seismic rover plowed into her at full speed and sent her flying through the air. She landed heavily on the ground and tumbled. That bitch Annis was setting her up all along. Maybe Annis was right; she didn’t have the smarts for this. She rolled on the dirt just as the rover drove into her again and rolled over her already damaged left arm. She heard a crack and her body was convulsed by excruciating pain riffling up and across her chest. She screamed.
“Annis, Annis, for God’s sake stop.” There was no reply. Jann tried to move but the weight was too much. She banged at the rover’s paneling with her good arm, but it was pointless. She twisted and squirmed to try and get some movement, but the pain in her side made it impossible.
Suddenly, the robotic arms of the rover sprang to life. Jann tried to fend the grabber away with her right arm but it moved for her throat and pinned her down even more. She banged and pushed. The drill arm started up. “Oh shit.” She could see the short drill bit spin furiously as it pointed and moved closer and closer to her helmet visor. She tried to move her head, but it just shifted inside her helmet, which was now firmly held down. The drill tip corkscrewed across her visor as it tried to gain some purchase. It skipped and skated as she frantically banged at it with her free arm. It was now stabbing down, bashing against her faceplate. It didn’t need to drill a hole, just a crack would do.
Then Jann saw it, the emergency shutoff panel right above her on the front base of the rover. She raised herself up to flip the cover but struggled to reach. If she could get to it then maybe she’d have a chance. The drill banged down hard and she heard a crack. “Oh shit.” Alert lights flashed inside her helmet, to warn her of deteriorating suit integrity. Jann forgot about the pain of her broken bones and frantically pushed with all her strength to flip open the shutoff panel. The rover shifted and slid a little to the left, like one of its wheels had been resting high on some rock, and with her frantic efforts it had slipped off. Her hand reached the panel; she flipped open the cover and punched down on the emergency shutoff. The rover stopped, its drill spun down, its arms lost power.
Jann stopped squirming and she could feel herself breathing hard. She checked the alerts. “Shit.” Her faceplate was cracked and she was losing air. The suit tried hard to compensate for the loss in pressure and was using up excessive supplies of nitrogen to rebalance. “Thirty minutes.” She had thirty minutes of air left. Thirty minutes before she died. Thirty minutes to save the world. She laughed. It was an odd feeling. It was not that she was scoffing in the face of death. She was laughing at the absurdity of the situation. The awkward, geeky farm girl. The girl who shouldn’t even be here, look at her now. She rolled over and sat up. A stabbing pain shot up her side. “Dammit.” She couldn’t walk, she would just have to crawl. Jann knew that as soon as Annis realized she had lost remote control of the seismic rover she would be over to finish her off. So she scanned the ground around her, looking for something she could use as a weapon, a sharp rock maybe. But there was nothing obvious to hand. She looked back at the MAV, half expecting to see Annis approaching, but she didn’t. Instead she was heading back to the fuel plant with the other rover to get the last of the tanks, presumably having decided that Jann was no longer a threat. And from where Jann was sitting, that would be an accurate assessment of the situation.
She slumped back onto the ground and looked up at the heavens. Above her the vast expanse of the universe was spread out in all its celestial glory, as if to mock the insignificance of her very existence. What could she do? Maybe it was better to let Annis go. Maybe the decimation of the human race would be the best thing for the p
lanet. A cull of a species that was destroying their own home. Too many, too greedy, too stupid… or just simply too successful.
She could hop or maybe crawl back to the HAB in the time left to her. “Twenty-three minutes.” She could save herself… maybe, if she went now. It would be cutting it fine, even with that. She sat up again and tried to stand. The pain in her leg was excruciating now that the initial rush of adrenaline had worn off. She reached over and pulled herself up using the deactivated seismic rover for help. She stood there for a minute, gathering the remains of her strength, trying not to breathe too much. She rested her head in her arms on the top of the rover and looked down along its side. The bright ISA logo seemed to fluoresce in the Martian night. She stopped, and looked again. Beside the logo, on the door of a storage compartment on the side of the rover, were marked the words caution, seismic charges. Jann looked at it for a minute as an idea began to formulate in her mind. “Twenty-one minutes.” Up ahead, Annis was still en route to the fuel dump.
Jann sat back down again so she could get better access to the rover’s storage compartment. She flipped open the door, reached in and took out a charge. They could be detonated remotely; she just needed to tag the charge to her control. She held it in her hand for a moment and contemplated the consequences of what she was planning. Being able to detonate it meant nothing unless she could get the rover to the MAV, or the fuel dump. Or should she just kill Annis? “Twenty minutes.” It also meant she would not be able to reach the HAB before the oxygen in her suit dropped to a point where she would lose consciousness and die. She looked over again at Annis. In the darkness she could see the beams of light from her helmet bob along the Martian surface towards the fuel dump. If she was going to do this she needed to do it now. It would mean her own death but, as Nills had said, what did that matter against the enormity of the devastation that would be wrought if this bacterium made it to Earth?
Colony Mars Ultimate Edition Page 16