The little robot twitched and tried to move, but it couldn’t seem to manage it. “Oh Gizmo, you’re all banged up.”
It slowly raised a battered arm and pointed at Yutu, and the little robot spoke just one word, “Run.”
“What?” Jann stood up and looked over at Yutu. Its back panel had retracted and a screen flashed a bright red warning. Self-destruct sequence initiated… Detonation in T-3 seconds.
“Oh shit.” She ran—not fast enough.
The shockwave rammed into Jann’s back, lifting her off her feet and she went sailing through the air for what seemed like an eternity, until she finally slammed into the cave wall. She collapsed on the ground like a wet towel. Her eyes were wide and blood oozed from her ears, pooling out across the dusty cave floor.
22
AsterX Land
Nills cocked his head up and scanned the sky northward of his position at the edge of the landing site. The atmosphere was clear and bright, there had been no storms recently to kick up dust and create a haze.
“There.” Anika’s voice echoed in his helmet. He looked to where she was pointing. A long trail streaked across the firmament, growing longer and longer with each passing second. They all watched it as it came closer and the dark smudge at its tip began to resolve. They could now see the chutes trailing out from the top of the craft, swinging and twisting as they fought back against the downward acceleration. Something then detached itself from the base of the craft and plummeted to the planet’s surface far off across the horizon.
“Is that the heat shield falling?” Xenon’s question seemed to be for no one in particular.
“Yeah, chutes will go soon,” Nills replied as he adjusted the anti-glare setting on his visor. Even before he finished his sentence they could see the craft was now in free fall, having slowed itself down as much as it could using primitive fabric. It dropped down towards them with impressive speed. If Nills could cross his fingers in thick EVA suit gloves, he would have done so. The retro-thrusters should fire soon to bring the craft down for a safe landing. Yet it was still plummeting down to the planet with extreme velocity. Just when he thought something must have gone wrong the engines fired and the craft slowed dramatically.
“They’re cutting it a bit tight, that’s a lot of G to take.”
The others didn’t reply. They were too transfixed by the unfolding drama.
The craft spun slightly as it descended. Its landing gear started to extend and finally it touched down gently around two kilometers from where Nills, Anika and Xenon were standing.
“Okay, let’s go get them.” Anika and Xenon clambered onboard the rover, while Nills walked back to the flying bed.
It had taken Nills and the others quite some time to convince AsterX that it was safe to land on Mars and enter Colony One. They had rendezvoused with the old ISA Odyssey orbiter some weeks earlier. They were already well versed in the chaotic events of the combined COM and Xaing Zu Industries attempts at takeover. Even though that was some months previous, they were still extremely paranoid about the stories of the Janus bacteria that seemed to curse any mission to Mars. So the general feeling of the AsterX team was to keep well clear, forgo any attempt at landing on the planet and instead focus their energies on the main task of the mission. That being to salvage the stranded ISA Odyssey and bring it back into Earth orbit.
However, the situation in Colony One was borderline critical. The explosion in the soil processing area had severely damaged a lot of equipment, not to mention the loss of all processing facilities in dome five. That meant limited water and oxygen production. Not enough to sustain the entire colony. So the council had all agreed that the only option was to move most of the resources and people back to Colony Two. Colony One would be stripped of anything useful, most sectors shut down completely and only a very basic life support left operational to maintain the medlab and a greatly reduced biodome. Everything else would have to be closed up and brought offline. That was about as much as the systems could maintain. Any existing reserves of oxygen would now be used to purge the remaining environment of the Janus bacteria. It took over a month to make the transition before Colony One was finally purged and made safe again.
All this activity was relayed to AsterX until Lane Zebos was finally convinced to take the risk and land. After all, Nills had communicated over many months with Zebos; on supplies needed, life on Mars, and a myriad of other topics that had fascinated the AsterX CEO. Nills knew he really wanted to land. All he had to do was convince Zebos it was safe, or at least, safe enough.
Nills hit the ignition and each of the four thrusters on the flying bed belched into life. He increased the flow of fuel and the bed began to rise slowly. He nudged the joystick and it gently moved forward, gaining speed as he passed over the slower rover. Far out into the Jezero crater the AsterX landing craft was already disgorging its occupants. He could see two on the surface and one climbing down the exterior ladder.
It was a much smaller craft than the behemoths of COM and Xaing Zu Industries. Reminiscent of the early landers the original colonists had arrived in, but somewhat bigger. It was utilitarian, nothing fancy. Built to do one job and do it well.
The crew had spotted him and were now looking up at this strange craft, this flying bed. Nills nudged the joystick again and the craft slowed to a hover. He reduced the fuel flow and the bed lowered itself back on the surface in a billowing cloud of dust. He clambered down from the open cockpit and started towards the AsterX craft on foot. One of the crew broke away from the main group and headed out to meet him. Nills waved, he waved back and Nills’ comms crackled to life.
Nills Langthorp, I presume.
“Yes.” By now the crewmember was only a few paces away, he closed the gap and extended a hand.
“Lane Zebos, it’s a pleasure to finally meet you.” They shook hands like old friends meeting after many years apart.
“So glad you could come,” said Nills.
“That’s one hell of an entrance you made.” Lane was looking over at the flying contraption.
“Yours was pretty spectacular, too. You had us all worried, waiting for those retro-thrusters to fire.”
Lane laughed. “You and me both. I was praying to every god I know. Fortunately one of them was listening.” He looked over again at the bed. “You must take me for a spin in that sometime.”
“You can have a spin in it now, if you like.”
Lane hesitated. Nills continued, “Here’s the rover.” He pointed to a cloud of dust charging across the crater towards them. “They can take your crew and supplies. We can travel on the bed.”
“The bed. Is that what you call it?”
Nills laughed. “Yeah, the flying bed.”
It took a while for the AsterX crew to organize themselves. They spent most of the time simply looking around or picking up handfuls of Martian dust and letting it fall through their hands as if this simple act could verify, in some way, the truth of their arrival on the planet. Neither Nills nor Anika hurried them, it was a simple pleasure watching the joy they exuded at being here.
But, eventually the rover was packed with initial supplies and the bed also had some equipment strapped on. Nills and Lane clambered on to the open cockpit while the two other AsterX crew got into the rover.
Nills tapped his comms. “See you at Colony One.”
“First one there buys the beers,” replied Anika.
Nills kept the machine low, not too low that it kicked up dust, yet low enough to experience the ground moving fast beneath it.
“Wow, this is an incredible machine, the only way to travel. When I get back to Earth I want one of these.”
“That would be difficult. It’s the one-third gravity that makes it possible. On Earth you would need much bigger thrusters and, as you know, a massive fuel tank.”
“Gravity’s a bitch.”
They laughed.
Nills banked the machine to circle back and increased in altitude. He came swooping over t
he rover as it trundled across the crater. Then he went higher and pointed. “There it is, Colony One.”
“Ahh, the fabled El Dorado of the solar system.”
“What was that?”
“It’s what some people on Earth call it, El Dorado. The legendary cursed city of gold.”
“Yeah, I can see how that story would get around. But it’s not cursed anymore, we’ve made sure of that, so you don’t need to worry about it. As for the gold, well, I’m afraid it’s well past its former glory. Only around twenty percent of it is online.”
“Well it still looks incredible.”
“If you think this is cool, wait until you see Colony Two.”
“Just so you know, Nills, from my perspective, I have died and gone to heaven.”
They laughed again.
By the time Nills had finished his scenic route to Colony One, and finally brought the bed in to land, the rover had caught up and was just reversing to the umbilical airlock. This was kept maintained as it was the most efficient way to get people and goods in and out of the rovers. Once connected the rover’s interior was now directly connected to the Colony One environment. Nills and Lane entered via the main airlock. The only sections that remained functioning were the common room, operations, a few accommodation pods and the medlab. The biodome was technically still online but it had been stripped of seventy percent of its biomass and was simply put into maintenance mode. All other sectors were closed up and offline.
But it wasn’t just physical resources that they had lost, it was also personnel. After all that had happened they now found themselves bereft of any general medical expertise. The COM doctor, Molotov, had died trying to follow VanHoff out of the airlock in the soil processing area. Their second geneticist in Colony Two evacuated with the others when the COM craft departed for Earth. That left one of the Chinese scientists, stranded now, but purged of the bacteria, so at least he was sane. But, he lacked general medical experience and was totally at sea in dealing with their situation. What Nills really needed was someone with knowledge to help them understand the condition of the patient and give advice on what to do. Fortunately, AsterX had a medical doctor with them, Dr. Jane Foster. And since the communication time between them and the AsterX crew in orbit, was virtually instant, they were able to establish the best treatment that could be provided, given the available resources. But that was some time ago now.
When they had finally divested themselves of their EVA suits, Nills was introduced to Chuck Goldswater and lastly to Dr. Jane Foster.
“I suppose you want me to see the patient straight away?” she said.
“That would be great. Follow me, this way.” Nills led her across the common room, through the connecting tunnel and into the medlab. He gestured in the direction of the bed. Lying there was Dr. Jann Malbec, her life charted out in waves and graphs on a myriad of different monitors. All about her body, a profusion of tubes and wires sprouted. Her chest rose and fell in a steady rhythm.
After the explosion in the soil processing cave, they had found her barely alive and with severe brain damage. With the help of Dr. Foster’s advice they put her into a coma, and she had been in it ever since.
The AsterX doctor now checked the stats on the monitors, then started on a series of seemingly simple tests: shining a light to check pupil dilation, running a pen along the sole of the foot. After a while she stepped back and looked at Nills.
“I’ll be straight with you. It’s unlikely she’ll ever come out of it. Her brain is too badly damaged, I’m sorry, but there’s nothing anyone can do for her now.”
23
While You Were Asleep
Sounds and shadows drifted in and out of Jann’s subconscious. Tendrils of reality coalescing into fragments of cognition. Bubbles of coherence percolated in her brain as it tried to reassemble its shattered matrix. At first these inputs were lost along damaged pathways, fizzling out at dead-ends, extinguished by misfiring synapses. But as time progressed fragmented connections reestablished themselves, laid down new conduit and reformed their structures. Yet, in the confused carnage that was Jann Malbec’s brain tissue, alternative undamaged areas had stepped up to the plate to provide interpretation and analysis of exterior stimuli.
Even with all this cellular and synaptic reconstruction going on inside her cranium it took a long time before she had what most people would consider a thought. It came after her receptor infrastructure gained sufficient bandwidth to process incoming data and assign it labels: sound, light, heat. It was these inbound stimuli that she was first aware of. And, as time passed, she began to make some sense of them, voices, shadows, movements.
So it was that three months and twenty-seven sols after the explosion in the soil processing cave, Dr. Jann Malbec opened her eyes and looked up at the world.
Over the next few sols Jann opened her eyes more and more. Each time, her understanding of what she was experiencing deepened. Across her field of vision shapes moved, blurred and indistinct. Sounds. Were they voices? Saying what? Finally, after around a week, she recognized a shape. It was a face, it was Nills, and the face said, “Jann, can you hear me?”
She tried to reply, but her brain had difficulty in establishing the correct procedure. So she simply blinked.
“I think she’s come back to us,” the voice said.
Jann’s mind swam in a sea of dissonance, sometimes ethereal and dreamlike, sometimes reconnecting with the exterior world. At its most focused she could respond, just a word or two at first, yes, no. These lucid moments became more frequent, and over time she began to reconnect with reality. It was during this latter period that she began to have questions, lots of questions about why she and Gizmo were in the soil processing cave. These thoughts grew, with ever increasing urgency in her mind until her eyes snapped open. For the first time in what felt like an eternity, she felt truly awake and hyper-aware, like all the switches in her brain flicked on—all at once.
It was morning. She wasn’t sure how she knew this, but somehow she did. Jann instinctively tried to sit up in bed. Her body felt like clay and she was not certain of the position or location of her limbs. Her extremities seemed slow to respond to the signals her brain was sending. There was an urgency welling up inside her, forcing her body to respond. She swiveled her torso and slid her legs over the side of the bed. Then with one herculean effort, she slapped her feet on the floor.
Dr. Foster came rushing in, followed by Nills, then Anika. How did they know she was awake and moving?
“Holy crap, she’s moving.” Dr. Foster stopped dead in her tracks before rushing over to her again when she realized Jann was trying to stand.
“Jann, wait up, you need to take it slow.” Dr. Foster grabbed her under one arm. “Nills, grab her other arm, will you? Help her back up on the bed.”
Jann tried to fight them off. “I need to… stop them.”
“Stop who. Jann?” Dr. Foster’s voice was soft and patient, like a parent putting a child back to bed after a nightmare.
“VanHoff… Xaing Zu. I need to stop them, they can’t leave, it would be disastrous.”
“It’s okay, Jann.” Nills rowed in with the platitudes.
Jann stopped and looked at the doctor. “Who are you?”
“That’s Doctor Foster. One of the AsterX crew. She’s here to help you.”
“AsterX… but?” Jann’s question trailed off and her obvious confused state allowed Nills and Foster a window of opportunity to get her back in the bed. Finally she looked across at Nills. “What the hell is going on?”
Nills shifted and looked down at the floor, he began to scratch his chin.
“Tell me.”
“Okay. What’s the last thing you remember?”
Jann thought about this. Vague, fragmentary memories drifted up from deep within her subconscious, or were they dreams? “The soil processing cave… with Gizmo… and… and…” She shook her head slightly, trying to give shape to some deeper fragments. “VanHoff… and th
e others, they were leaving… I… I can’t remember anything more.” Her shoulders slumped. The strain of remembering extracting a physical toll.
Nills looked over at the doctor and Anika for a moment and then back at Jann. “You’ve been in a coma for over four months.”
Jann remained silent as shock began to register on her face.
“There was an explosion in the cave. You were very badly injured, barely alive.”
“Your recovery is remarkable. Under normal circumstances someone with your brain injury would be… well, a vegetable. It’s extraordinary that you’re sitting up talking to us.” Dr. Foster circled the bed as she spoke.
“What happened to VanHoff… and Jing Tzu?”
Nills looked down again and gave a deep sigh. “I’m not sure if you’re ready to hear all this.”
“Tell me. What happened?”
Nills sighed again. Then sat down on a chair and started.
“What I’m going to tell you are only some of the events, as they were explained to me. When the explosion took place in the cave, I was still unconscious on that very bed that you’re in now. It was a few sols later that I finally came around. So I tell you some of this third-hand.”
He sat forward in the seat. “It was the Chinese robot, Yutu, that detonated. It had a self-destruct mode, I believe. Gizmo. I’m afraid… was destroyed.”
“Gizmo? No!” Jann was visibly shocked, as if she had taken a punch to the gut.
“Yes, I’m afraid so. Fortunately the cave contained the force of the blast and retained its integrity. You were found near the airlocks. Your body was smashed to a pulp. Broken bones, damage to internal organs, and severe brain damage.” Nills shook his head a few times. “I honestly thought there was nothing left of you to put back together. But… well, here you are.” He gestured to her with open hands.
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