Soon, the hapless MASS employee had been trussed up and parked against a wall. Mia and Gizmo were in the control room where the little droid was interfacing the black box with one of the room’s terminals. Mia watched on the main screen as Gizmo set to work interrogating its database. Lines of code scrolled down the monitor, interspersed with a multitude of windows opening and closing in rapid succession.
“Access granted,” said Gizmo as the screen displayed an itemized list of Jay Eriksen’s itinerary during his short employ with MASS. And it was short. Mia counted no more than seven lines. Starting four sols before his fatal journey up to Nili Fossae.
His first sol started from the AsterX maintenance yards, where he picked up a recently serviced rover. From there he made his way to a MASS research station at the very edge of Jezero. Mia tapped an icon to get more information on this. It was marked simply as Biotech. He stopped for less than an hour before heading out of Jezero and north to another MASS facility. This was labeled ‘TNCP.’
“Gizmo, have you any idea what that is? Mia pointed to the cryptic acronym.
“Thermo-nuclear central processing.”
Mia raised an eyebrow at the droid. She went back to following the trail.
Jay Eriksen spent a night in this facility before making the return journey all the way back to Jezero City, where he spent two sols parked at one of the rover docks on the outskirts. What was he doing there for that long? After that, he journeyed to MASS HQ for a one hour stop before embarking on his final, fatal trip up to Nili Fossae. The itinerary ended there. Mia sat back and scratched her head; she really needed a shower.
“Does this have an audio recording? I mean does it record the conversations in the cockpit?”
“Yes, it records as much data as possible.”
“Can you go back to when he arrived at the TNCP, and then to when he was leaving it?”
Mia listened as scratchy audio of the dead man’s conversations echoed around the control room. Mostly it was just mundane data, but one phrase caught her attention. It was the same time as he was undocking from the TNCP. Some controller was speaking to him. …and remember, Jay, this needs to be in position, and all set up before the terraforming event, otherwise it will all be for nothing.
Mia sat in silence for a moment as the wheels of her own brain began to work. Finally she turned to Gizmo. “What goes on in TNCP?”
“It coordinates all nuclear activity on the planet. Including monitoring, storage and reprocessing.”
“Would that include the terraforming event?”
“Not the event itself. But they would have oversight of all the nuclear devices.”
Mia began to think the unthinkable. “How big are these devices, Gizmo? I mean, could one fit in a rover?”
“Quite easily, they are not very big. Easily managed by one person or a G2 unit.”
“Oh shit.” Mia stood up. “I don’t believe it.”
“What?”
Mia shook her head. “Tell me if you think this is rational, Gizmo. I think Jay Eriksen has hidden a nuclear device somewhere in Jezero City, and it’s linked to the terraforming event later this sol.”
“That is indeed consistent with the data.”
“Oh my god. Quick, you need to get this information to Dr. Malbec now. And tell her… she has got to stop that detonation from taking place… somehow.”
Gizmo was silent for a moment. “Done.”
“Okay, let’s get the hell out of here.”
They made their way back to the rover without incident. Mia considered it was probably time to head back to Jezero City, even though the council were actively looking for them. But with the new evidence that Mia had uncovered, that would change and more resources would be brought to bear. But time was running out. The terraforming event was going to take place in less than seven hours. Mia wasted no time in getting herself strapped in to the cockpit as Gizmo took the controls. But when Mia glanced out the window she could see another vehicle had docked while they were inside the HQ.
“Gizmo, looks like we’ve got company.” She pointed. “Let’s get going.” But the rover didn’t move. “What’s wrong?”
“Manual control has been overridden by the central systems.”
“Can you hack it?”
“Working on it.”
Mia waited getting an uneasy feeling. Then a horrendous grinding noise emanated from the outside of the rear airlock.
“Gizmo, hurry… I think someone is trying to get the airlock door open.”
The rover burst into life and lurched forward, disconnecting from the dock.
“Come on, let’s get out of here.” Mia flipped on the rear view monitor, and watched the MASS HQ building recede into the background. “Who the hell was that?”
“I think the individual we left at way station 29 might have found a way to communicate with MASS HQ, or even found a way back here.”
“Goddammit.” Mia hung on to her seat as the rover sped across the open terrain. They were heading past the AsterX maintenance yards at the very edge of the Industrial Sector, around half a kilometer away. The ground suddenly got a lot rougher as Gizmo had taken them off-road.
She was beginning to breathe a little easier when something big hit the rover and Mia saw the world spinning through the front window. The rover tumbled over and over before coming to a rocky halt, right way up.
“What the…” She found herself lying flat on her back in the center aisle. Alerts were flashing all across the dash.
“Decompression!” Gizmo blared. “Get your helmet on.”
She looked around. Where the hell is it? Both her helmet and gloves had been flung around the interior of the vehicle when it cartwheeled. She spotted it lying against the rear airlock and crawled back to grab it. She could feel the skin on her face stinging and her breathing was labored. She took a deep breath and held it, then she wondered if that was the right procedure during decompression. Would her lungs explode? Screw it. She grabbed the helmet and snapped it on, along with the one glove that was still inside it. Where’s the other one? Her EVA suit wouldn’t boot up without it.
The rover jolted forward and stopped again. Gizmo must be trying to restart it. Shit, shit, where’s that glove? She found it wedged behind a storage container, grabbed it and clipped it on. Her suit came to life and immediately registered the decompression and flipped her visor closed. Mia exhaled and took a tentative breath as she looked up to where Gizmo was still trying to get the rover moving again. The little droid’s head flipped around as the emergency hatch blew out. Mia was thrown forward as the last of the cabin’s air evacuated.
Through the gap she could see a suited figure raise a handheld weapon and fire at Gizmo. The little droid was encased in a bright flashing cage of electrical craziness. It sparked and shook as its circuits were battered by the plasma blast.
Gizmo, no! Mia shouted inside her suit. She went back down the center of the cabin, away from the source of the blast. Going forward was not an option, her only chance now was to get out and on open ground. She didn’t want to be trapped inside. She opened the rear airlock and Gizmo was hit by another blast from the plasma gun.
A few seconds later Mia fell out onto the dusty Martian surface and scrambled to get to her feet. On her left she could see the rover that crashed into them, it was only a few meters away and looked to have suffered only minor damage. She made a dash for it, and had just set one foot inside its airlock when she felt a thump on her left shoulder. Her suit screamed alerts and its systems went into shutdown. Goddammit. She closed the outer door and hit the compression button, just as her suit died. She must have taken a direct hit, but the energy from the plasma burst dissipated through the suit rather than through her. Mia charged into the cockpit and began to reverse the rover as fast as possible. She could still see the figure out on the surface running after her. He raised his weapon and fired again. A bright flashing energy ball burst across the windshield, but it held. Mia spun the rover around and gav
e it maximum throttle as she sped off towards the AsterX maintenance yards.
By the time Mia drove up to the main entrance doors her left shoulder had gone numb and all down her side she had a tingling sensation. She must have taken more damage than she realized from the plasma weapon. She was not that familiar with how they worked, all her training had been in ballistic weapons. But they were extremely dangerous in the pressurized confines of space. You were more likely to kill yourself rupturing whatever containment was keeping you alive, than inflicting any damage on your target. Pulsed energy plasma (PEP) was a lot more useful. It used a high-energy blast, and had the advantage of being non-lethal if necessary. Mia doubted that her assailant had set his to stun. The only reason she was still standing was because of the rugged EVA suit.
Another advantage of PEP weapons was that they could fry any electronics that happened to be in the way of the blast. So Mia reckoned that Gizmo was probably a goner. There was just no way it could have survived several direct hits. She felt its loss. Poor Gizmo, she thought. She had grown used to its quirky ways, even grown to like it. But now it was gone, she was on her own, and being hunted down—it would only be a matter of time before the attacker caught up with her. She had only a few minutes head start.
As the entrance doors to the maintenance yard came into view, Mia considered that there was nothing stopping her from driving somewhere else, back to Jezero City maybe. Why was she coming here?
The rover died. What? No, not now. Mia thumped the dashboard in frustration. It flicked on and off a few times then came back online. Her decision was made. She pushed the throttle and headed for the yard entrance. Her EVA suit was shot and this rover was on the way out so she really had no other option. The massive entrance doors opened automatically as she approached. The volume of space inside the airlock could accommodate at least a half dozen rovers and then some. Mia drove in and the outer door began to close. It took a few more minutes before it could be pressurized, then the inner door opened to reveal a huge area full of machines of every conceivable shape and size, most in various states of disassembly. Mia got out and started threading her way through the maze.
“Hello?” she shouted, her voice echoing off the high domed ceiling. “Anyone there?” There was no answer. As she expected, all workers had decamped to Jezero City for the celebrations. Mia was on her own. She froze. She thought she had heard something, movement maybe. She listened intently—there it was, a hum. The sound of the airlock doors opening again. She ran.
Mia was finding it hard to move fast as her left side was dull and numb, as if she had been sitting on her leg for a while and it was having trouble getting blood recirculating. She hopped more than ran. This is no good. She could not outrun the threat. The only other options were to hide, or to make a stand. There were plenty of places to hide, but Mia knew that it would just be a matter of time before he found her. She was a wounded animal being hunted down. The only option was to fight back.
Mia looked around, trying to find something to use as a weapon. There were lots of heavy tools, good for bludgeoning. But in her weakened state how much force could she bring to the battle? Something sharp would be better. A spear, maybe. That was Malbec’s weapon of choice; she had developed a lot of skill with it. Legend had it she could skewer a victim through the eye at fifty paces. But Mia did not have much time to think about the merits of various weapons. Whatever she could find quickly would have to do.
In the end it came down to a long thin flat-headed screwdriver. It had a stem at least twenty centimeters long, presumably for getting to screws in very inaccessible locations. Mia was going to press it into service as a stiletto. She also grabbed a handful of bolts and shoved them into a pocket. Her next move was to find a good place to launch an attack. She was looking for height, a place where she would have the upper hand, where she could land on top of him and use her momentum to drive home her weapon. She clambered up the side of a parked rover, lay down flat on the roof, and waited.
In the distance she could hear the hum of the airlock doors operating again. Was he leaving? That didn’t make any sense to her. Then she heard a shuffling sound. It was close, only a few meters away. She took some of the bolts out of her pocket and threw them on the workbench beside the rover. It had the desired effect. The shuffling stopped and she could just make out his shadow coming closer to investigate the source of the sound.
He moved with stealth, keeping his back to the rover. When Mia judged that he was directly beneath her she leaped off the roof, aiming to plunge the screwdriver into his jugular. She missed and drove it into his shoulder instead. He yelled in pain as Mia tumbled to the floor. She was flat on her back looking up at him when he raised his weapon and fired. Mia rolled as a bright blue ball of electrical death hit the floor beside her. She avoided a direct hit, but it was enough to send a high-voltage charge rippling through her lower body. She screamed as every fiber of her being was convulsed in a raging storm of energy. The pain was excruciating, as if every muscle in her body had gone into cramp all at once.
As the pain receded Mia was left a trembling mess, totally numb from the waist down. She finally raised herself up on one elbow. Her attacker was glaring down at her while he pulled the screwdriver out of his bloodied shoulder.
“You know,” he said as he threw it on the ground beside her, “up until this point, I’ve been enjoying our little chase around Mars. It’s been a while since a target has been as sporting as you have.” He raised a hand to his forehead in a mock salute. “I tip my hat to you for that.”
“Screw you,” said Mia
“Ah… a fighter to the end. I admire that. But, I’m afraid it’s time to go.” He raised the gun and pointed it at Mia’s head.
“Tell me why.”
He regarded her intensely, then lowered his gun. “Why?” He seemed to have to think about this for a second or two. “Well, since you’ve been such good hunting, I’ll tell you. It’s because it’s my job to kill you.”
“Well, it’s not going to make a difference. You’re too late now. They already know about the plan to destroy Jezero City with a nuke. The event will be canceled, so you lose.”
“Nukes?” He threw his head back and laughed until he started to cough and clutched his chest, which was saturated with blood from the wound Mia had inflicted on him. “Is that your plan? To kill me by making me laugh?”
He raised the gun again. “You really haven’t a clue, do you? It’s not a nuke, it’s a bioweapon, and believe me it is far from canceled. Now, if you don’t mind, Miss Sorelli, it is time to die.”
Mia watched helplessly as he raised his weapon. This was it and there was not a damn thing she could do about it.
But before he could fire, another plasma ball hurtled in from nowhere and hit him smack in the side. His body shook in a violent shimmering incandescence as every nerve of his being was ripped to shreds. He slumped to his knees, his eyes lifeless, and collapsed face down on the ground in front of Mia. As the last of the plasma charge fizzled out a thin filament of smoke drifted slowly up from his skull.
It took Mia a few seconds to drag her eyes away from the corpse to locate the source of the shot.
“Gizmo?” The little robot stood some distance away. From its breastplate Mia could see the muzzle of a PEP weapon. “I thought you were dead.”
The robot whizzed over to where Mia lay on the ground. “Technically I was never alive to begin with.”
Mia slumped back on the floor, looking straight up at the droid. “Well, I’m really happy you’re still functioning. How the hell did you survive those blasts?”
“I am hardened against such electromagnetic attacks. I did sustain some temporary trauma to my systems, but since a significant percentage of my mind resides in the Jezero City mainframe I was able to reboot myself and am approximately 89.73% functional.”
Mia groaned as she tried to move. “I’m all beat up, Gizmo. I don’t suppose you can reboot me.”
“You will find
the effects of the plasma blast to be temporary. Assuming you have not sustained physical damage you should be able to perambulate as normal in a few minutes.”
Mia realized that she did have some feeling in her lower body. She had assumed she was paralyzed, but now that fear was receding as she tested her extremities for movement. She sat up with effort, and smiled at Gizmo.
“I thought they got rid of all your weapons.”
Gizmo glanced down at its breastplate. Mia considered it an odd gesture for a robot.
“I could not bring myself to get rid of them all. So I kept this one secret. Its head moved up to focus on Mia. “Was this incorrect of me?”
“Not from where I’m sitting, Gizmo. But how come you didn’t tell me about it?”
“Well, it wouldn’t be secret then, would it?”
Mia laughed. “No, I don’t suppose it would.” She could move her legs a little now and decided she might try and stand. She held her hand out to Gizmo. “Help me up, will you?”
It took Mia a while to regain enough feeling in her battered body to walk unaided. But when she could, they made their way to a control center located at the back of the maintenance area. This was a large space filled with terminals and holo-tables used to manage the myriad of machines and processes that went on in the sector. It also had direct comms to Jezero City.
“Did you hear all that before you shot him, Gizmo?”
“I did.”
“It’s not a nuke, it’s a bioweapon. We need to alert them. They have to ensure this terraforming event is canceled because it seems to be the trigger.”
“I concur. Mia. This matches my own analysis of the situation.” Gizmo switched on the holo-table and activated a comms link.
19
Decennial Celebrations
Kane Butros, Second Director of the Mars Alliance Scientific Survey sat in the space station control room, which occupied one segment of the giant rotating torus. He was taking in the view of Mars afforded him by the wide observation window. The surface of the red planet slowly rotated counterclockwise, mirroring the speed and rotation of the observer’s point of view. It also reflected the trajectory of the orbiting station as it circumnavigated the Martian poles. All this movement could be very disconcerting to the uninitiated, but after a while, most crewmembers got used to it and ceased to regard themselves as the object that was moving.
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