Then a thought came to him like a hammer blow, the genetic miracle that he had been searching for his whole life was probably already inside him, infecting him, changing his biology. He wondered if that was the reason for the headache that had been rumbling around the folds of his brain since morning. Yet, he had not gone mad like the others. He felt the skin on the back of his hand as if to find some physical evidence that the bacteria was working its magic on him. But this was ludicrous, his excitement was dulling his scientific mind, there was a better way to be certain. A few moments later, Peter VanHoff again peered into the microscope at the dark elongated shapes of the Janus bacteria. Except this time he was looking at a sample of his own blood. He sat back. A broad smile broke across aged face. He had done it. He had found it at last.
But he didn’t get time to revel in his triumph, as a wave of screaming and yelling emanated from somewhere outside the medlab. He stopped and listened as the mayhem slowly died down. He was just about to relax again when Lieutenant Benson burst through the door.
“Dr. VanHoff, Dr. Molotov. You’d better come with me. Right now!”
18
Chaos
So far her plan was having the desired effect, causing chaos and mayhem to run riot in the colony. COM was off balance, losing control of the colonists now running out of the biodome in panic. The medlab had also been evacuated. The battle had begun, but Jann had to act now if the momentum were to stay in her favor. She turned around to Gizmo. “Time to go, come on.”
They raced over to the airlock door that gave them access through the short tunnel to the medlab. Within minutes they had ascended to the ancillary medlab module. Jann peered through the small window in the door and scanned the room. It was empty save for Nills lying on one of the operating tables and one of the Chinese crew strapped down to another.
“Okay,” she whispered to Gizmo. “Once we’re inside you need to get that main door closed.”
“Will do.”
She cracked open the door and stepped inside. Gizmo whizzed, as silently as possible for a robot on tracks, over to the entrance door and closed it gently. Jann moved to where Nills lay. His face was pale, and from his body ran a profusion of wires and tubes. But his vitals looked good as they drew themselves out on the monitors. Her first reaction was to start pulling out the invasive tubes but that might not be such a bright idea. She needed to calm herself down and figure out what each one was doing. Only then could she start to bring him back to the real world.
Outside she could hear the colony descending into chaos. Yelling and screeching interspersed with the telltale whoomp of a PEP weapon being discharged. Gizmo had explained the operation of these weapons to her, so she dearly hoped that they had set them to stun. The last thing she wanted was the death of a colonist because of her high-stakes gamble. An alarm shrieked on the monitor as she withdrew a tube from Nills’ upper arm. She jumped, then tapped the screen to switch it off. The noise from outside was getting louder. After a few more anxious minutes she finally extracted the last of the IVs, the one that kept him sedated. She pulled it gently from his neck and held her finger over the insertion point to stem the blood. She looked up at the monitor, all was okay, his vital signs were holding steady.
The medlab door burst open and in rushed two colonists, dragging a third along the floor between them. They stopped in surprise when they saw her and Gizmo.
“Dr. Malbec… we thought you were dead… how did you survive the tunnel collapse?”
Jann looked down at the body of the colonist that they had deposited on the floor. “Is he dead?”
“Eh… I don’t think so… I’m not sure.”
“Gizmo, go check on him.” Jann was in the process of applying bandages to the numerous punctures on Nills’ body.
“Low but steady pulse, some pupil dilation, some scorching of the cervical epidermis.” The droid looked up at Jann. “Not dead. Injuries symptomatic of plasma energy pulse weapon set on paralyze.”
This was good news to Jann. At least the COM mercenaries had seen fit to show some restraint, having presumably established that killing them all would not be in their best interests. After all they were not the enemy—yet. They were simply running in panic from the infected. That said, non-lethal weaponry had the advantage of enabling the user to disable anyone with impunity. So they could, if they wanted to, turn the tables very quickly. Jann knew she didn’t have much time. If she hoped to regain control she would have to act fast. She eyed the PEP weapon that VanHoff had forgotten to take with him when he was unceremoniously whisked out of the medlab. She had spotted it earlier, but now Jann reached over and picked it up. It was small and stubby, but surprisingly heavy.
“What’s going on out there?” she said to the others.
They all stopped and listened. It had gone very quiet. No one spoke for a moment. Jann inched her way to the main door and opened it a crack. What she could see of the outside area seemed empty of people. She turned back to the colonists. “How many people got out of the biodome?”
“I don’t know… the door was open so we just ran. One of the COM mercenaries went totally crazy in there… shooting up the place.”
“Gizmo, can you get any location data on the COM mercenaries?”
“I’m picking up readings from multiple sectors.”
“Your best guess for where they are now?”
“There is a cohort heading for dome five. Their signature shows patterns symptomatic of multiple high energy sources.”
“PEP weapons?”
“Precisely.”
“And the operations room?”
“I estimate one, maybe two lifeforms.”
“Okay, well it looks as if Xenon is still in there, so here’s the plan. You guys stay here and keep an eye on Nills and your colleague. Myself and Gizmo will go and find Xenon.”
“What about him?” The colonist pointed over to the unconscious taikonaut.
“He isn’t going anywhere.”
The colonist wasn’t convinced. “Are you sure?”
“Trust me. He’s strapped down good and tight.” She moved back to the door, opened it a bit wider and scanned the area. It was deserted.
“Okay Gizmo, let’s go.”
Peter VanHoff followed close behind Lieutenant Benson as they navigated their way to the safe zone. Dr. Molotov took up the rear. This was an area within the facility that the commander had deemed the safest place to hole up should the situation become volatile. As a precaution, EVA suits had been stashed there along with other necessary supplies.
VanHoff had followed along in a kind of daze, not really paying attention to where they were going. His mind was still trying to fathom the enormity of his discovery. Not how it came to be that the Janus bacteria had suddenly materialized after so much time lying dormant, but more about how it was multiplying in his bloodstream and what that meant for his own flawed biology. He had sought this moment for so very long that now it had arrived, he felt like he was in a dream.
“You need to get into this EVA suit, sir.”
“What?” He was snapped back to the here and now by the mention of the words, EVA suit.
“The suit, sir. You need to put it on.” Benson motioned at it with his a nod of his head.
Under normal circumstances VanHoff would have balked at the thought of encasing himself in an EVA suit unless it was absolutely necessary, such was his fear of being enclosed in one. He had barely kept it together for the few short steps it took to get from the rover to the entrance airlock when they arrived. But now his fear was virtually nonexistent, it had evaporated. The claustrophobic environment held no threat for him. With the bacteria now working its miracle within, he felt invulnerable, invincible, even superhuman. Yet, he knew all this was purely psychological, any improvement in his physiology would take time to be evidenced. Nevertheless, it was a fundamentally different VanHoff that now inspected the EVA suit, than the VanHoff that landed on Mars, not so long ago.
“It’s j
ust a precaution, sir. In case we need to get you out of here in a hurry.”
Dr. Molotov was already suiting himself up, so VanHoff nodded. “Sure, no problem, I understand.” He moved over to where the EVA suit was hanging and started to get it ready to put on. He was opening up the front and just in the process of performing the initial checks on the suit system when he noticed that Benson had a vacant, distracted look. “Are you okay?”
Benson looked back at him with a kind of confused expression. Like he couldn’t quite remember where he was. VanHoff felt an anxious twinge ripple through him as he considered that Benson might be succumbing to the infection, and not in a good way.
Benson seemed to snap out of it. “Sorry, sir. Just kind of… zoned out for a moment.” He shook his head and touched his earpiece, listening to some message from the commander, no doubt. “Gotta go. Will you be okay here, sir?”
“Yeah, we’ll be fine. Go. You need to get this facility back under control.”
Benson nodded and headed off. VanHoff watched him go. He wondered if he should inform Kruger of his suspicions about the mental health of the mercenary. Maybe not, perhaps he was just being a bit paranoid. Best leave the commander do his job.
As Jann and Gizmo entered the common room, they startled a group of colonists that had hidden out in there. They were armed with hastily constructed weapons such as spears, clubs, and knives from the galley that were now repurposed and brought into emergency service.
“It’s me… it’s me.” She held her hands up and moved into the light so they could see her better. One by one they moved out from alcoves and the dark corners of the space. “Dr. Malbec, you’re alive!”
“Yes, it’s me, still here. Where are the others?”
They looked from one to the other. “Scattered… I think. One of the mercenaries went nuclear in the biodome, everyone ran.”
“It’s that crazy bug, isn’t it? It’s starting to happen again… oh god we’re all going to go insane.”
“No, you’re not. And yes, it is that crazy bug, but colonists are immune to it, we all are. So it’s just COM and the Chinese that have to worry.” Jann’s words had a visible calming effect on the ragtag group. It was only then that she noticed the colonists had kept quite a distance from each other, fearing that at any moment a friend might flip and drive a stake though their heart.
“How can you be so sure that’s what it is? I thought it had died out, long ago.”
“No. A small sample remained. I released it into the colony environment last night.”
“Holy crap, so it’s true?
Jann smiled. “Yes, and we now have them on the run. So we need to pull together and take back control.”
“What should we do?”
“Xenon is being held in the operations room, we need to get him out. But we need to be careful, there may be a COM mercenary in there with him.”
The colonists all gripped their makeshift weapons tighter and moved closer to Jann and Gizmo. They were ready for the fight.
The operations room was the nerve center for Colony One. All systems could be monitored and managed from there. It had one main door, with a long window along the wall facing out onto the concourse that connected several different sectors of the facility. One side led to domes four, five and accommodation. Another side had a short connecting tunnel which led to the common room and farther on to the biodome, medlab and a raft of other sectors. They were all now moving through this connecting tunnel but stopped once they reached the concourse intersection. Jann looked across at the operations room window. It was blacked out, no way to see in.
“Gizmo, any movement around here?”
“Data indicates lifeforms located in various sectors, none in close proximity, save for two in the operations room. But this is only an estimate based on ambient temperature readings and sundry data.”
Jann hefted the PEP weapon, looking it over to get a feel for how it worked. Maybe it had an on switch. She didn’t want to be in a situation, needing to pull the trigger, only for nothing to happen. A small screen on the side displayed ready. She took this to be a good sign. Below it were a series of bars, which she reckoned must be charge or perhaps shots. It displayed 9. Other than that she couldn’t figure much more about it. Whether it was set to stun or lethal she couldn’t tell. Maybe it didn’t have such a setting. The only real way she could test it would be when she fired off a shot. But if she were to enter a fight she needed to trust her weapon and this was not good enough. She thought about giving it to Gizmo, and instead using a spear one of the colonists was carrying. But it looked too bent and twisted, no good for straight flight. There was nothing else to do, she would have to chance it.
Jann nodded to the others and they followed her quietly across the concourse, lining themselves up on either side of the operations room door. Surprise was the only way this was going to work. But the mercenary inside might already be on high alert, with an itchy trigger finger, waiting for some crazed comrade to come bursting through the door and attack. But then she thought, that might help us. She whispered her instruction to the others, then counted silently down from three—and kicked the door in.
She dropped down to the floor as a blast of plasma energy screamed over her head out though the open door and dissipated in a cackling wave across the far wall of the concourse. She knew her direction now, rolled over, sighted her target, and fired.
A ball of flashing brilliance enveloped the mercenary. It burst out across his body encasing it in a fiery mesh of flashing light. He shook and jerked as his coordination broke down under the massive surge in electrical signals now overloading his nervous system. Sparks exploded from various electronic equipment he had strapped to his person. No longer able to stand upright he collapsed across a control desk. It too began to pop and spark, as monitors flickered on and off. Finally he slumped to the floor as the last of the plasma burst fizzled out. His eyes were wide, his body still and a thin filament of smoke rose from his skull.
“Holy crap.”
“Go check on him.” Jann waved to one of the colonists now coming through the door. She ran over to where Xenon was crouched down. One arm covered his head, the other was zip tied to the bar that ran around the edge of the comms desk. He poked his head out and looked up.
“Jann. I thought you were dead.” A look of surprise burst on his face.
“Yeah, I’m still alive. It’s hard to get rid of me. Gizmo, can you get these zip ties off?”
The little droid selected a suitable tool from its inventory and snapped off the nylon cuffs. Xenon stood up. “How did you survive the tunnel collapse?” He was rubbing his wrist.
“That doesn’t matter. What matters is getting control back. We have an opportunity now, so we need to grab it.”
“What’s going on? Everyone is running around, going crazy.”
“You remember the Janus bacteria?”
“Yes. It decimated the original colony. But that was destroyed a long time ago.”
“Not exactly. There was one sample remaining—and I released in to the colony environment last night.”
Xenon eyes went wide. “I see. Well that would explain a lot.”
“But don’t worry, all colonists are immune to it. It will only affect COM… and the Chinese.”
“Very clever. So they’re all going insane.”
“Not all, just some. But enough to throw a very crazy cat or two among some very scared pigeons.”
Xenon smiled. “So we have a chance to get rid of them?”
“No.” Jann grabbed his arm and looked hard at him. “We cannot let them leave the planet. That would be a disaster. We can’t let them bring this back to Earth.”
“Ah… I see. No, that would not be good.”
Gizmo’s head twitched.
“What is it?”
“Movement… multiple sectors.”
“Can we see from here?”
Gizmo tapped at the control desk. “The network is down. The electrified
COM mercenary shorted out a lot of circuits. It will take time to get them repaired.” A few sparks exploded from the desk as Gizmo tested it. “This could take a while.”
Dr. Peter VanHoff had finally encased himself in his EVA suit, but left the helmet off for the moment. It would only take a few seconds to attach it, should the need arise. And he was hoping that was not going to happen. He had briefly contacted Kruger on his comms but got no information from him other than, sit tight and wait until you get the all clear. So he and Dr. Molotov sat on an old storage container. VanHoff occupied himself with his thoughts as he waited.
The reason he had come to Mars in the first place was to find the very thing that was now inside him, working to restore his flawed genetics. He had so far escaped the negative side effect, insanity. So he felt a deep calm wash over him, something that he had not felt for as long as he could remember. It bathed him in a warm glow of peace and contentment, mixed with a dash of anticipation—the future looked good, very good for Peter VanHoff.
It struck him then that he did not need to be here anymore. Not in this safe zone, not in Colony One, not even on this planet. Now that he had found it, what need was there for him to remain? He could return to Earth. Sure, there were a few practical issues to deal with. But to all intents and purposes it was job done, time to go home.
Yet there was always a possibility that the Janus bacteria would not work to counter the effects of his genetic disease, as it did with those who were not so afflicted. So more scientific investigation might be needed to divine its function. But this could be better realized in a fully resourced genetics lab back on Earth, than in the rudimentary facilities here on Mars.
He thought about contacting Kruger again but decided it might be best not to bother him. He was probably busy trying to contain the various members of the crew that had gone psychotic. Assuming, of course, that the commander himself had not succumbed. And if he had, then how would VanHoff get out? He looked around the space that they had been sequestered in. It was subterranean, that much he knew. But was there a way out from here on to the Martian surface? And even if he could find a way there was still the long walk back to the COM ship. Could he handle that? He was more confident now in undertaking such an arduous journey. Physically he should be able to manage it. It would be controlling his debilitating claustrophobia that would be the challenge. However, he felt sure he could overcome it. With the flight officer ready and waiting, and everything prepped, he could, in theory, leave the planet and return to Earth.
Colony Mars Ultimate Edition Page 44