Colony Mars Ultimate Edition

by Gerald M. Kilby

  “The Mars Alliance Scientific Survey, MASS, is a UN agency set up about seven years ago to do research on the planet. Their primary objective is to look for life. But over the years that has expanded to encompass a whole range of experiments and research.”

  “They’re the ones doing the nuke experiment up north?” Mia pointed at the ceiling.

  “Yes. Among other things.”

  “And?” Mia prompted.

  “And, well, they operate semi-autonomously. They answer to the UN back on Earth. We don’t have a lot of control over them.”

  “Ahh… I’m beginning to see the picture. So let me take a guess at the scene here. There’s a bunch of guys, that you have no control over, running around on the planet doing whatever they like. I can imagine that a lot of the old guard here don’t like that.”

  Dr. Malbec nodded.

  “So it’s a bit strange that one of the Pioneers decided to work for them,” Mia continued.

  “Very strange.”

  “Okay, assuming your hunch is correct and he was murdered, that would mean every one of the other Pioneers would be a suspect, including you, Dr. Malbec.”

  Mia could see she was taken aback by that. “Eh… I see your reasoning, but I don’t think so.”

  “Look, Jann. I know this is probably not what you want to hear, but most murders are done by someone known to the victim. Someone who held a grudge, a jilted lover—it’s all very predictable. So, first we look at all the ex girlfriends or boyfriends, all the people who may have been pissed off with him for whatever reason. In other words, the usual suspects.”

  Malbec said nothing, just pursed her lips.

  “Do we have any forensics?” she continued.

  “Eh…”

  Mia rolled her eyes. “I thought you guys were at the pinnacle of human technology. You must have something!”

  “Well that’s the thing. We don’t have access to the rover, it belongs to MASS. They have what’s left of it over at their sector.”

  “So, what about the body?”

  “They haven’t released it yet.”

  “Can they do that?”

  “For a while. They have the right under the UN/Mars agreement to conduct their own investigation first.”

  “And you think they’re hiding something?”

  “That is my fear.” Dr. Malbec switched off the holo-table and walked to the window. She stared out for a moment before turning back to Mia. “I want you to find out what it is.”

  Mia moved next to her and looked out at the domed skyline of Jezero City. “So what you really want is for me to spy for you.”

  “Something’s going on, Mia. Something that they don’t want us to know about. Something that could jeopardize our future here. So, yes. I want you to do some snooping around and find out what you can. We can set you up as a courier. That means you’ll have access to anywhere you want to go. No one around here bats an eye at couriers, they keep the whole place operating. So you won’t be noticed. Nobody knows you, you’re just a regular colonist, fresh off the ship.”

  Mia let out a big long sigh. This was getting serious. Doing routine police work, following up leads was one thing, but now Malbec wanted her to go dig up something to put flesh on the bones of her paranoid imaginings. She sighed again. Still, being able to go wherever she wanted meant she could track down Chris and kick his balls. She could do a bit of snooping for Malbec, keep her happy. “Okay. But there’s a problem. I can’t drive a rover.”

  Malbec’s face was serious, but she nodded. “Thank you, Mia. And the rover is no problem. Gizmo can operate it for you.”

  “What. Me?” The outburst from the little robot jolted Mia into remembering it was still there.

  “Yes, Gizmo.” Jann turned back to Mia. “All couriers travel with a G2 unit. We can make Gizmo here look more like one of them. He can be my eyes and ears and you’ll also find him incredibly useful.”

  “A G2 unit? I won’t do it. I will not allow myself to be humiliated like this.” Gizmo twitched and shuddered.

  Mia’s jaw dropped. Was she really hearing this? What the hell was inside that machine?”

  “I’m sorry, Gizmo. But you know this is extremely important to me, and the whole colony. I wouldn’t ask you if there were any other way.”

  Why was Malbec reasoning with this robot, like it was some child that needed to be humored? Mia felt like giving it a kick and telling it to get on with it.

  “Well, if you insist. But I’m not going to enjoy it,” said Gizmo.

  Screw this, thought Mia. “Look, if it’s all the same to you, Dr. Malbec, a standard G2 unit is fine by me.”

  “No. As you can probably tell, Gizmo’s capabilities go way beyond a standard unit.”

  “By several order of magnitude,” the droid added.

  “He’ll keep you safe. God knows, he’s saved my ass more than once.”

  “Do I have to give up my plasma weapons?” Gizmo raised an arm and from its shoulder a serious looking gun muzzle telescoped out.

  “We can talk about that later,” said Jann.

  Mia looked at the droid. It seemed to be appraising her at the same time. What the hell am I getting myself into here?

  8

  NIli Fossae

  As soon as Mia had agreed to undertake the investigation, Dr. Malbec and her associates wasted no time in preparing the necessary identity she would require. As this was being set in motion, Mia also didn’t waste time bringing Dr. Jann Malbec up to speed on the necessity of simple investigative procedure.

  “Police work,” she explained, “is ninety percent procedure: doing the forensics, interviewing people and asking a lot of questions. There’s very little glamour involved, it’s mainly a long slow slog. Some people liken it to flying an airplane. Hours of boredom sandwiched between a few minutes of sheer terror.”

  It was with this line of reasoning that Mia suggested the best place to start was by paying a visit to the scene of the alleged crime. The item on her agenda after that, would be to seek out the location of what remained of the rover, and the body of Jay Eriksen. How she would, or even could, do this was still to be established. So later that day, under the guise of a courier delivering supplies to the way station at Nili Fossae, Mia and her G2 unit set out from Jezero City in a newly commandeered rover.

  It bounced and rocked its way along the central valley as the road twisted and turned, following the topography that had been laid down millennia ago by the course of the ancient river. This route had been reshaped even further by the constant movement of human activity, as machines made their way from Jezero City up to the mining outpost and research stations. Mia glanced out the windscreen at a distinctly homemade road sign that had been hammered into the hard ground at the side of the road. It was a crudely shaped arrow tied to a post, on which someone had hand painted Nili Fossae.

  Gizmo was currently at the wheel, although there was no wheel, as such. As far as Mia could ascertain, the rover was controlled by a joystick. Not that Gizmo was even using it. The robot seemed to be plugged in somehow, a direct interface, so to speak. It had also been stripped of various appendages that had been deemed incompatible with its new role as a disguised G2 unit. What function the missing pieces performed for the droid, Mia had no idea. But it was clear to her that Gizmo was very unhappy about their loss. The concept of being in such close proximity to a malcontented sentient droid was one that Mia was still struggling to get her head around.

  “So, how come you’re so smart, Gizmo?”

  “Relative to what?”

  Mia already regretted asking the question, but since it would take hours to reach the site of the rover explosion she was looking for a way to break the monotony of the journey.

  “Other G2 units. I mean they’re all pretty dumb service droids.”

  “Their cognitive abilities are self contained and limited to the processing power that is engineered into the unit itself. My mind, if you wish to call it that, resides primarily in the
Jezero City mainframe.”

  “So why don’t they build the other units like you?”

  “It would require too much processing power to sustain a larger number and it is unnecessary, as they have a very rudimentary instruction set that can easily be accommodated within the unit.”

  “I still don’t see why more of you weren’t built since you seem, well, quite extraordinary.”

  Gizmo’s head swiveled to focus directly on Mia, who was sitting in the passenger seat beside it. She was taken aback at the sudden movement from the droid.

  “Shouldn’t you be, like, looking at the road while you’re driving?” She waved a hand in the general direction they were traveling.

  “I am looking at the road, as you put it. I’m also correlating several simultaneous input streams giving me data on position, velocity, and topography, as well as anticipating course corrections and adjustments based on upcoming terrain anomalies. On top of that I am also monitoring a multitude of other extraneous processes that have no direct influence on our current exercise. I shall not bore you with explaining any of these, as most would be beyond your comprehension.”

  “Sorry I mentioned it,” was the best she could manage to reply. After that, she decided to keep quiet, as the conversation, if you could call it that, was proving more frustrating than entertaining.

  After a while Mia noticed the landscape was beginning to change. They were higher up now, moving out of the narrow channel near Jezero. The sides of the gorge flattened out and they were entering a high, wide plateau. The road here was less defined and recognizable only because of the innumerable tire tracks in the dry dusty regolith. Boredom was getting the better of Mia, so she decided to continue her interrogation of the droid.

  “So who built you?”

  “I was designed and built by Nills Langthorp.”

  “The clone?”

  Gizmo swiveled its head to look at her again.

  “What? What did I say now?” Mia sighed.

  “They do not like being called that. Pioneer is the preferred nomenclature.”

  “Right, fine, okay, Pioneer then.”

  Gizmo reoriented its head. “I was initially designed as a service and maintenance droid, but my fundamental cognitive reasoning was based on advanced neural network structures. This was so I could evolve to manage all the life support systems in the colony. At that time my creator, Nills Langthorp, was the only human living in the colony and he wanted a backup system, in case he became incapacitated in some way.”

  “So you can control all the life support systems?”

  “Not anymore. My access to those higher level systems was curtailed as the colony grew. And there were also those that were fearful of allowing a semi-sentient droid to have that much control.”

  “In case you decided you didn’t like humans and turned off all the air?”

  “Precisely.”

  Mia was beginning to understand why the powers that be in the colony were not inclined to build any more robots with the level of sophistication that Gizmo possessed. Too resource hungry and just plain too dangerous to have around. She wondered if this droid’s sols were numbered.

  Over the next few hours Mia gleaned as much information as she could from the little robot. It seemed to know everything about the colony, all the way back to well before independence from Earth. She found it fascinating partly because of the subject matter and partly because Gizmo seemed very responsive to all her questions. Even if, at times, she got more than a hint of intellectual arrogance. It was deep into an explanation of the various zones housed within the Industrial Sector of the colony when it stopped talking and brought the rover to a halt. It looked over at Mia.

  “What? What’s wrong?’

  “We are here. This is where the courier Jay Eriksen died.”

  “Okay then, let’s saddle up and take a look.”

  Mia was glad of the distraction. The journey had been long and arduous and she had a new admiration for the colonists who worked as couriers. It had seemed to her, and those working in the agri-domes, like such a glamorous occupation. But after several hours inside a rover traversing the surface of Mars she realized it took a special type of person to do it.

  She booted up her EVA suit and snapped on the helmet. She had only gone EVA three times before, for very short periods. This would be her first time going solo. She instinctively took a deep breath before closing her visor. Then she let it out and took another deep breath. So far so good. She headed for the airlock.

  When the door opened, and Mia stepped out onto the surface, a wave of exhilaration rippled through her. She had not expected this. So wrapped up had she been with the politics and intrigue of the mission that she had forgotten to consider the realities. It was the same feeling she had had stepping off the transit craft that very first sol after she had arrived on Mars. But back then they were all ferried into transportation. Now she felt more like a genuine colonist.

  She was snapped out of her thoughts by Gizmo’s voice in her headset. “This way, follow me.” The droid moved past her, its sleek tracks making easy work of the terrain. It had parked the rover a little off the roadway to make room for any of the gigantic ore-carriers that might be coming down from the mines. Mia began to take in her surroundings as they moved. They were on a vast and relatively flat plateau. Ahead of her to the north, mountains rose up and she could see the wide gap in the line that signified the entrance to the Nili Fossae trench, a six hundred kilometer long gouge in the Martian surface. Mia could make out the silhouette of the way station to the north, its large solar array glinting in the late evening sunlight as the panels tracked around to follow it.

  “This is the place.” Gizmo’s voice in Mia’s headset.

  She stopped and looked around. There was not much to see. All signs of the explosion had been ground out of existence by the pummeling of ore-carriers crossing back and forth along this road. She moved off to widen her search. The little robot tagged along. In reality Mia was not expecting to find anything. But that, in of itself, said something. It said that MASS had done a very good job of cleaning up all traces of the accident.

  “If you tell me what you are looking for, perhaps I can assist in the search,” the droid offered.

  Mia looked down at Gizmo. “I’m not sure. Can you detect metal?”

  “Absolutely. Would you like me to scan the area for debris from the explosion?”

  “You can do that?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Okay, that would be great. I’m going to take a walk along this road. Up to where the body was found.”

  Gizmo spun around and Mia assumed it had begun its search, so she started walking. Jay Eriksen’s body had been found approximately five hundred meters from the site of the explosion. Mia paced this out and looked around. He was still alive when the rover exploded so he must have gotten out before it went boom. Why did he do that? she wondered. She looked up and could just make out the vague shape of the way station. How far away it must have seemed to Eriksen as he fought his way towards it, his air running out. I wonder when he knew he wouldn’t make it?

  After a short while Mia returned to find Gizmo still moving around the site. “Anything?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing at all, not even a washer?”

  “Nothing.”

  “How is that possible?”

  “I would suggest that MASS were using the same, or better, technology than I am to do a thorough clean up.”

  “Why would they do that?”

  “Because they could?” offered Gizmo.

  “Or because they didn’t want anything to be found.”

  “Not even a washer,” confirmed the droid.

  “Why would that be?”

  “I am reluctant to admit it, but I have no reasonable answer.”

  Mia took one last look around. “Well, I think we’re done here. Let’s get back to the rover and move on to the way station.”

  Her plan had been
to spend the night in the way station. She had checked the schedules of other couriers and reckoned there was a good chance that somebody else might be holed up there tonight. Somebody she could possibly pump for information, maybe get a better understanding on what went on up here. As luck would have it, when they arrived, Mia could see one of the massive ore-carriers already attached to the umbilical carousel. This enabled people and goods to be moved in and out of the way station completely in an atmosphere. It reminded Mia of the passenger walkways in large airports that bring you directly onto the aircraft without having to walk out on the apron. On the side of the massive truck was emblazoned the AsterX logo. “We’re in luck, Gizmo. Looks like there’s at least one other person here.”

  “Forgive my ignorance, but how can that be construed as luck?”

  She looked at the little robot. “Gizmo, keep in mind that they’ll probably have their own G2 unit with them. So you need to drop the fancypants talk and keep up the pretense that you are an ordinary dumb droid, okay?”

  “Okay, if you insist. But I’m not going to enjoy it.”

  “If it makes you feel any better, this is not about enjoyment. We’re here to work, and that means pumping this guy, assuming it is a guy, for information.”

  “Very well, but I can’t imagine that a humble ore hauler will have anything useful between his ears.”

  “Because if you want to know what’s happening on the street, you start talking to a local. Get it?”

  “No. There are no streets here.”

  Mia contemplated the little droid for a moment. “Has anyone told you you can be a serious pain in the ass?”

  “On many occasions.”

  Mia sighed and pointed out the windscreen. “Come on, just take us in.”

  The dominant structure of the way station was a large dome, perhaps thirty meters across, constructed from the same cement material used for every other structure on Mars. It was that same rough-hewn rust color that made it seem almost part of the landscape. It reminded Mia of some ancient adobe building from some long forgotten civilization. Radiating out of the central building were several smaller domes designed for storage, power and a methane reactor. Behind that was a large solar array mounted on stilts, tracking the sun. Snaking out from the main dome was a long tunnel with airlocks dotted along its side. Gizmo reversed the rover up to one of these and they connected to the umbilical with a satisfying clunk.