Yngve, AR - The Argus Project

by The Argus Project (lit)

  "Not that way! Into the city!"

  "We can't!" the younger driver yelled over the draft and engine noise that Venix had let inside the compartment. "Truck's too big for cities! The vibrations alone can shatter every window it goes by! And most city roads are too narrow, we need at least twenty meters elbow-space."

  "I said change course," she insisted. "I am a refugee from the Terran Fleet. I carry important information for your leaders."

  " What leaders?" the younger driver said. "You mean the mining cooperative?"

  "She means the council!" the older driver broke in. "It hasn't been in session since last year! I know who might be interested in you, lady - councilwoman Berg! Ask to see her!"

  Venix frowned suspiciously at the man so suddenly turning cooperative. In a few seconds, he programmed the truck to drive toward a certain building in the nearby capital. But her infrared vision confirmed he wasn't lying.

  "There," he told her, "it'll take a detour, uh, around Voce Di Agua to get there, you'll be at the Council Hall in half an hour. I'll alert them - somehow. Good luck!"

  Urging his co-rdiver to pay attention to him, the older driver strapped himself in and pulled the ejection-seat handle above his head. With a blast of compressed air, the driver and his seat shot up through a hatch that blew open in the ceiling, and was gone.

  The other driver threw Venix a brief, consternated glance - then he reached above his head, and ejected himself too.

  She was alone. Two small spare seats stood against the back wall; she pushed the right button, and the seats immediately slid into place at the controls.

  The plate on the dashboard claimed in engraved letters:

  VEHICLE DESIGN BY

  VOLVOCSON CONCEPTS OF NEW STOCKHOLM, VENUS.

  GUARANTEED 100% SAFETY FROM COLLISION, RADIATION, AND ELECTRONIC INTERFERENCE.

  "We still make the best trucks," she said to herself, got into a seat, and buckled up.

  The truck slowly turned away from the convoy of traffic, reached the peak of the slope, and she was on the road to Perkele Valley. In the rearview-cam screens, she could see ten, then fifteen MSF shuttles come buzzing after her.

  Ahead lay the open road through Vallis Marineris. The muddy, slushy "river" she had seen before floated (sort of) a kilometer to her right, dwarfed by the huge canyon. A gigantic cliff wall lay some three hundred meters to her left, rising a kilometer into the dark-blue Martian stratosphere.

  The truck took a course away from the actual "road" - rather a wide path - perhaps to avoid knocking over smaller vehicles in its wake. She was picking up greater speed on the open plain, but to no avail - the ships easily overtook her.

  Three small bullhorn-drones came flying in at the driver's compartment, stuck to the windshield plates, and blared at her to surrender. She told them to go to hell, but wasn't sure if her reply could be heard over the noise.

  The truck's external cameras showed that four of the MSF ships flew on a parallel course with the speeding truck; one of them positioned istself above her, and troopers with jetpacks were hauled down on telescopic poles toward the top roof.

  On the camera screens, the huge red letters on the top roof read: LOADING BAY - DO NOT WALK ACROSS.

  "Doped-up morons," Venix muttered.

  She waited until a platoon of nine men with jetpacks had put their lead-booted feet on the top roof - it took them just under fifteen seconds - and she pulled the lever marked BAY.

  The top roof split in two and neatly folded into the sides of the truck.

  Nine heavily armed men with lead-booted feet dropped like rocks into the empty loading bay... and hit the reinforced, rounded steel floor fifteen meters below. She saw and heard it all through the truck's surveillance system.

  As the last one's scream suddenly ceased with a faint thump, Venix realized that she had killed nineteen people in the past few hours. With all the other things on her mind, most of all her leg injury, she didn't quite know what to feel about the dead.

  They were human, though they acted like robots. She had acted of choice, like a human, but did not have a human body. But she didn't want to die, and she never wanted to be imprisoned again or treated like property.

  Suddenly one of the pursuing ships fired a missile. It zipped past the truck and blasted a crater in the ground two hundred meters ahead. The heavy vehicle could not possibly stop in time - so the autopilot swerved the wheels slightly to the left, and the truck drove around the crater.

  The game had changed, Venix thought; they were obviously under orders not to kill her. She still mattered enough to the Fleet alive, as a pawn to keep Argus under control. She recalled from the news that the Martian natives deeply resented the MSF presence, and often called for them to be removed.

  Then she ought to give the natives a hand, she thought coldly.

  The shuttle that had air-dropped the soldiers on the truck now attempted to place itself in front of it, in a futile attempt to force it to a stop - it was emptied of people, and ran on remote.

  Venix set the autopilot to "sleep" mode, and stepped on the brakes. With an ear-grating rumble, the truck's retro-rockets slowed it down to 50 KMPH - then she released the brake and accelerated forward.

  The remote-controlled empty shuttle wavered uncertainly, as if its robotic pilot couldn't decide upon retreat or pursuit - then the front of the truck smashed into its rear, and sent it spinning off toward a passing mesa. The ship exploded into a million fragments, shaking the ground so that Venix felt the entire truck lurch.

  "Next!" she hissed. And they kept coming. The mouth of Perkele Valley was very close.

  ***

  Across the gulf of space in the Asteroid Belt, in the vicinity of the Ceres Station, the Fleet's automated scrambler probe was targeted on Mars.

  This most secret of all the Inner Planets' "info-busting" weapons could scramble almost any ongoing, unprotected recording out of recognition. It only failed to work on underground targets, such as the Jovian colonies - and on certain well-shielded vehicles, such as the Volvocson interplanetary mining trucks.

  But still Venix could not transmit from her truck and be heard.

  And in the Vallis Marineris region, the effect of the scrambler probe had wounded the inhabitants. Only the strongest MSF transmissions barely functioned, but with serious disturbances.

  The Martians found their screens, radios, e-motes and communications received only static, or nothing. Traffic in and out of space found itself delayed in orbit, and grounded on the surface.

  Distress calls from settlers stranded in storms went unheeded. Message traffic between family members was cut off by random noise. At least two people died in accidents set off by the disruptions.

  Rumor spread, by fast flying-pod, roton-shuttle and driver - of a lone woman heading for the city in a mining truck, pursued by a vast Terran force - and rumor also claimed she might be a Martian, for she did not use a breathing-mask.

  ***

  Venix had expected to enter a bustling, overpopulated city with 30,000 inhabitants.

  Instead, her truck rolled into what more resembled a ghost town. Everywhere Venix looked, wide boulevards and small alleys lay deserted. It occurred to her that it must be a curfew, ordered by the MSF. The truck followed the widest route along Alpha Ralpha Boulevard; vehicles and pods stood parked at the sides of the road, not a driver in sight...

  No, wait - she could spot a few people, hiding inside their cars, their infrared heat giving them away. But no MSF tanks were blocking the road, and the pursuing shuttles were still circling her, hesitating to attack with a full force that might destroy her.

  The drugs the troops were on, guaranteed that not one soldier would disobey the order to take Venix alive, but she did not know this.

  A billboard across the wall of a 30-meter-high building announced a benefit concert for MSF troops, playing in the airtight Voce Di Agua Dome, just two blocks away. Only Terran troops were allowed.

  Suddenly, Venix hated them so intensely
she could stomach the thought of killing lots of them. They were on mood-controlling drugs all the time - so they could not be reasoned with. The more Terran troops she left standing on Mars, the greater the likelihood she would never see Argus again... or live through this awful day.

  Venix zoomed in the truck's map-display for a detailed view, and started inwardly. That miner had deliberately coded a route that ran dangerously close to the concert hall. If she let it drive by itself, the truck would run over the shuttles and pods left in the parking-sheds outside the entrance, possibly grinding to a halt in the process.

  That damned Martian had tried to use her to provoke the MSF! She was not going to let herself be used by any party; she'd rather give the Martians an uprising they could never stop once it had begun.

  Venix shut off the autopilot, pushed the gas pedal to the floor and steered straight at one of the dome's giant panorama windows. Her eyesight was not quite up to full capacity, but she could easily see that the entire audience was in combat uniform.

  The MSF filled just one-tenth of the concert hall seats, and the ongoing stage act inside seemed to have them hypnotized - unable or unwilling to hear the approaching truck.

  The pursuing MSF men in their shuttles suddenly realized what was about to happen, and sent desperate warnings to their comrades on the ground.

  But the Fleet's scrambler probe, still active, reduced their warnings to gibberish.

  ***

  At that moment, just before disaster struck, the former captain of the ground troops sat in a bar several blocks away.

  He unlocked the helmet that fed him obedience-drugs and com-link messages. Then his secure com-link beeped in the helmet's earpiece, and the eye-display flashed an urgent warning message. The drug-feed patch in the neck of the helmet began to swell, and a drop fell from the helmet onto the floor.

  Someone was trying real hard to call him back to duty.

  The demoted, demoralized captain tossed away the helmet in disgust, slurring drunken curses. The helmet's earpiece kept squeaking out rapid pleas to evacuate the concert.

  He pulled his gun and shot the helmet to pieces.

  33: Arrival

  Inside the Voce Di Agua concert hall, the previous artist Merry Care had left the stage only minutes earlier.

  The Venusian singer had moved the audience to tears with a sing-a-long rendition of "One Earth" - and then the main event kicked in with a loud boom-bass beat, as Slimy Shake charged onto the stage, his howl enhanced by loudspeakers to resemble a 20th-century air-raid siren.

  Slimy Shake a.k.a. "His Eminence" , one of the biggest Terran pop acts, was now working the crowd into a state of ecstatic bloodlust. The audience of 200 off-duty MSF troopers, stoked on pep-drugs and moonshine, shouted along with Slimy's rap.

  Bo-bo dancers shook their various grafted appendages and extra breasts at the crowd, as Slimy shouted the refrain of his recent hit "Die, Martian" :

  "Kill'em! Fark'em!

  Fark'em! Kill'em!

  Don't let them breed!

  Just let them bleed!

  Kill! Fark! Kill! Fark!"

  Listen to "Die, Martian" audio clip

  A large hologram, projected on the twenty-meter-high wall behind Slimy Shake, pictured him in MSF helmet and insignia. In the simulated fantasy sequence played on the wall, he killed and molested Martian civilians.

  The "real" Slimy Shake who hopped about on the stage, beefed up with muscle implants, his eyeballs dyed red to make him seem vicious, had never used a weapon in his entire life.

  At this peak of his fourteen-year career of reciting odes to rape and destruction, Slimy had enthusiastically volunteered to support the fighting men of the MSF. The audience repeated his call, rhythmically raising their fists and guns into the air.

  "Kill! Fark! Kill! Fark!"

  Slimy Shake was 43 years old. Regular rejuvenation treatments preserved him as the eternal acne-ridden teenager. He spat and screamed his spoken lyrics, threatened, preened, and sulked with impeccable pitch and rhythm. He stopped rapping for a minute, and started to rant about being misunderstood and alone against the world, "like you my brothers in the MSF."

  Slimy was just preparing to pretend-assault a bo-bo girl onstage, when -

  "Kill! Fark! Kill! Fa..."

  He thought the sudden metallic, ringing crash was a chord from the band. Then he looked up and saw the truck enter.

  It was not by accident that half the audience was suddenly run over. Venix rammed the 100-Martian-ton mining truck right through one giant window, taking a section of the concrete wall with it. The hall was showered with cascades of glass fragments. Rows 3 to 10 were completely flattened.

  The truck's aluminum smokestacks folded as they hit the hall ceiling, and shot black smoke down over the audience. The awesome roar of the truck's engines mixed with the miniature storm of the dome's pressurized air being sucked out into the cold, thin Martian atmosphere. Everyone Terran inside came in danger of suffocating.

  The audience chant immediately turned into a more high-pitched chorus of screams and coughs. The truck momentarily ground to a halt at the edge of the stage, its engines rumbling so forcefully not even Slimy Shake's advanced loudspeaker systems could match it. Screaming bo-bo girls escaped backstage.

  The star of the show, staring open-mouthed at the carnage before him, soiled his pants. Slimy Shake gasped, then coughed out the icy, unbreathable draft that mixed with dark polluting smoke.

  Without a moment's pause, Venix started to put the truck in reverse - and accidentally hit the elevated stage with the truck's wide rear. The armored-concrete stage floor reacted by flying up against the truck like the page of a giant pop-up book. Slimy was tossed up in the air, screaming.

  Thanks to the low gravity, he barely managed to grab hold of a rail on the truck's side, and narrowly escaped a fall between its huge tires. He screamed for help, dangling by both arms from the rail. Venix hardly noticed him as she revved the engines and backed out the way she came.

  The fifty-plus unharmed MSF troopers in the hall put their breathing-masks back on, and started firing at the truck with lasers and shoulder-fired minirocket launchers. Their fire merely bounced off the truck's steel plating.

  Suddenly, Slimy Shake found himself outdoors, in the much colder Martian air; powdery reddish dust was blowing into his nose and mouth. Choking, he fell twelve feet to the ground - but landed, tumbling down sand heap, with only a few bruises and sprained joints.

  The Martian Security Forces troopers ran out through the gash in the building, and came to his aid. One trooper pressed a spare mask over Slimy's face, and he could breathe again. He coughed and gasped.

  "A great show, sir! I shot all of it!" shouted the trooper urgently, and left the shivering artist on the street with a mask and oxygen-pack. "Oh crap, recording's ruined. But don't worry, we'll get the bastard who crashed your concert!" he added, as he ran off into the dust left by the passing truck.

  "Mommyyyyy!" cried Slimy Shake through the breathing-mask, soiling himself again, longing for the safe bosom of Mother Earth.

  ***

  Twenty of the MSF troopers from the concert carried jetpacks; with astonishing speed and computer-guided control, they took off flying after the speeding truck.

  The troopers buzzed around it within half a minute, trying to board it from all directions. Laser pulses and small missile fire rattled against the truck, but failed to stop it or wreck its hollow wire-mesh tires.

  Venix saw one of the jetpack soldiers on the surveillance monitor, coming down toward the inside of the open cargo bay. She stepped on the brakes. The grunt and hiss of the brakes and retro-rockets struggling with the engines rang like thunder across Alpha Ralpha Boulevard - hundreds of windows facing the street popped and shattered.

  The flying MSF trooper was caught by surprise, and slammed into the upper edge of the cargo bay - caught like a fly on a windowpane. Venix heard a faint thump and charged the truck forward, along the evacuated main street, follow
ing the pre-programmed route.

  Council Hall lay at the end of the boulevard, four hundred meters off. She was going to make it. The jetpack soldiers were retreating.

  But her vision was beginning to drift in and out of focus, and her injured leg felt numb...

  ***

  Zodong-Petain arrived at a desperate decision. The MSF base on Phobos had a large proton-beam cannon for space defense and for shooting down meteorites, occasionally used to stabilize the asteroid's path. He had never used it against the Martians.

  Fear drove him now, and he took direct control of the proton cannon.

  Several automatic safeguards warned him not to aim the emitter-disk at a populated area; his commander codes overrode them all. Zodong-Petain directed the spy-camera at Veinemoynen Valley , and zoomed in directly on the large speeding truck.

  He wiped sweat from his eyebrows and set the crosshairs to target the wire-mesh tires. He squeezed the firing-switch ball in his palm - the mechanism identified his fingerprints - and the command was acknowledged.

  From the cyclotron in the deep caverns of the asteroid, a beam of high-energy protons was directed through a magnetic shaft at near light-speed.

  The beam spread out in a circle of smaller shafts, emerged outside the asteroid's surface, and shot out from the edges of the wide emission-disk.

  One split-second later, the beam converged on its target. Venix glimpsed a faint blue shaft of energy flickering to the truck's right, and felt an intense heat in the air; the truck's hull crackled with electricity and a sharp smell of ozone suffused the air.

  Instantly, the wheels on her right melted and crumpled into glowing bundles. The entire truck swung heavily to the right and the front plunged into the ground, plowing into the tarmac, which billowed up into the air.

  The vehicle slid across the boulevard and crashed into a line of lampposts where the boulevard intersected with Paavo Road. A bronze statue of the first humans on Mars was crushed under the truck, and the hulking mass of metal ground to a squealing halt. Dust enveloped the wreckage. In the distance, the sound of approaching jetpacks and shuttles grew in strength.