Her eyes moved from the prostrate form of Nills to the man standing over him. She knew that face. It was not one that you could easily forget. Old and haggard, limp fragile skin hung on brittle bones. It was Peter VanHoff. She could feel the cruelty radiate out from his being, even down here, under all this rock. His head moved, and for a brief second he looked straight at the camera. Jann recoiled and drew in a sharp breath.
“Holy crap, can he see us?”
“No, this is not possible,” replied Gizmo.
She stood up, walked away from the monitors and sat down again on a low seat against the cave wall. Jann put her head in her hands.
“I hate this place. I hate the dust, and the sand. I hate the constant fight for survival. I hate the naiveté of these clones. I hate the need to run and hide all the time. I just want to go home. Back to Earth. Away from this madness.”
“The probability of you returning to Earth is slim to none.”
“I know, I know. I am destined to be trapped here… in this cave. Watching Nills die slowly on the monitor—and there’s not a damn thing I can do about it. This is what it has come to… this is my fate.”
“These events you speak of are yet to happen. And they are just one path of many possible outcomes. For it to come to pass a great many possibilities must line up in the correct sequence. Any disruption to that path, any deviation, no matter how small, will bring a different outcome.”
Jann took her head out of her hands and looked over at Gizmo. “What the hell… does any of that mean?”
“It means there are a great many ways that this can play out. Your premonition of Nills’ demise is just one possibility.”
“I think you have finally lost it, Gizmo. I’m pretty sure something hard must have fallen on your head. You’re not making any sense to me”
“What I am saying is, one rock can change the course of a river, if that rock is carefully placed. It will gather to it silt and sand and over time the river is moved.”
“Where are you getting all this… philosophy from? What happened to probabilities and analysis?”
“I have been researching the writings of Confucius, to gain a better understanding of our Chinese guests.”
Jann stood up. “I think I prefer Gizmo the analyst to Gizmo the philosopher. Finding a rock is not going to help us much.” She looked over at the video feed from the medlab, and the unconscious figure of Nills. “What are they doing to him?”
“It is the Janus bacteria that they ultimately seek. Nills must be important in that search.”
“We need to do something, we can’t leave him there, at the mercy of these bastards.”
“What do you suggest?”
“We can access the medlab from here so we wait until it’s vacated, then sneak in and take him down here.”
“Deja vu.” said Gizmo. “I have been here before, with Nills, at this same operations desk as he discussed rescuing you from the psychotic Commander Decker.”
Jann sat down and sighed. “But what would be the point of moving him? As soon as he was discovered missing they would rip the place apart and find us. We would only be buying time at best, giving ourselves away at worst.” She sighed again, stood up and walked back across the cave.
“This is hopeless. There’s no way out. They have us completely under their control and it’s only a matter of time before they find us down here.” She sat down and put her head in her hands again. “I’ve failed everyone, Nills, the colonists—there’s no escaping it.” She sat there in silence for quite some time, considering the hopelessness of her situation.
“Jann, you might want to see this.”
She looked over at the robot, “What is it?”
“Activity in the biodome.”
On the feed Jann could see Peter VanHoff holding a weapon to the head of one of the colonists. She was shaking uncontrollably, all the time pleading with them.
“Can we hear what’s going on?”
“No, we have no audio feed.”
“Damn, what’s she saying?”
“She is telling them… that you are hiding out.”
“Are you sure? How do you know that?”
“I can lip read, obviously.”
Jann spun around, her hand over her mouth. “Shit, shit, shit. They’ll find us.”
“Wait… she is saying… you are in Colony Two.” Gizmo looked over at Jann.
Jann stood silent for a while. “Are they buying it?”
They watched as VanHoff lowered the weapon, and handed it back to one of the mercenaries.
“Yes, he is not shooting the colonist Maria in the head.”
“Well, we’ve bought some time, nothing more. They’ll soon find out I’m not there and VanHoff won’t give up trying to find me. I’m a loose end, and he doesn’t strike me as a person who likes loose ends.”
The mercenaries started to move out of the biodome, but before the door shut, the four remaining Chinese taikonauts were unceremoniously shoved inside. They stood with their backs to the door, hands bound behind them. The colonists gathered around, closing in on them.
“This could get nasty,” said Jann, leaning her hand on the table as she peered closer at the monitor. “What are they saying, Gizmo?”
“Bastards… scumbags… let’s tear them a new asshole…” Gizmo looked over at Jann.
She pointed back at the monitor. “Xenon, what’s he saying?” He had stepped between and was appealing to the angry mob.
“Not enemy now… COM are the fight… don’t waste energy on these scum…” His appeals seemed to be having the desired effect. Their body language changed, the moment passed, but not before the taikonauts were pelted with rotten fruit. Xenon raised a hand, the rain of fruit stopped. After some time the colonists dispersed. The Chinese simply sat down on the floor and nursed their bruised and battered egos.
Jann sat and watched until it was clear the mood in the biodome had settled down. She sighed and looked around at the cave as if it might prompt some solution to her dilemma. She had time, but not much else, and even that was limited. Nills was incarcerated in the medlab, soon to be under the scalpel, no doubt. She could do nothing for him, just watch as he was slowly dissected by the COM geneticists, probing his biology in their quest to unlock the secrets of the Janus bacteria.
Jann looked across the cave and her eyes came to rest on the incubator where the last remaining sample of that bacteria still existed. She walked over to it and peered in through the observation window as she placed a hand on its glass. She stood there motionless, just looking at it for some time.
“Gizmo,” she finally said.
“Yes, Jann.”
She looked back at the robot. “I think we may have found our rock.”
“What do you mean?”
Jann looked back through the window at the petri dish. “This is what they came here for.”
“Are you going to destroy it? You still have some time.”
“No, Gizmo. I’m going to give it to them.”
The droid moved over to where Jann stood and looked in through the window. “Is that wise?”
“It depends on the manner in which it is given.”
“Now it is you that sounds like an ancient philosopher. I hate to admit it but I am confused.”
Jann stood back from the incubator and turned to Gizmo. “I’m not going to hand it to them, Gizmo. I’m going to release it to the environment.”
The robot was silent for a moment as it analyzed the ramifications of this strategy. “That would be more that just throwing a rock in the river. That would be a very large boulder.”
Jann turned back to the incubator. “The colonists are all immune to it, but the others…” Her sentence trailed off.
“It may give us an edge.”
“The repercussions of its release into the general environment are difficult to predict, Jann. Too much random chaos in the equation to enable any reliable analysis.”
“Chaos is our ally. If pas
t performance is anything to go by, then by morning, they should all be fighting each other. My only concern is the taikonauts in the biodome. They could put the colonists at risk.”
“Their hands are bound, that would reduce the risk somewhat.”
Jann’s hand moved to the console on the incubator, her finger hovered over the button marked open.
She hesitated.
“Why have you stopped?”
“Before I do this, there is a greater concern that needs to be considered.”
“What is that?”
“None of them can ever be allowed to return to Earth.” She looked at Gizmo for a moment, then hit the button.
There was a faint hiss as the front of the incubator cracked open and slowly rose up. Jann reached in and took the petri dish in her hand. “Well, here goes.” She opened the lid, exposing the bacteria to the environment.
For a moment, she stood still, looking at the splattered agar gel. Perhaps she expected more to happen, a more dramatic moment to herald the enormity of what she had just done. But there was none. Just silence.
“What would be the most efficient way to have the bacteria permeate the facility, Gizmo?”
“I would suggest waiting until the colony is asleep. Then access the medlab and place the dish in there, into an air recycling vent.”
“Then let’s do that.” Jann checked the time. “Another hour or so and we should be ready to go.”
Darkness falls quickly on Mars. The transition from day to night is abrupt. As the sun sinks below the horizon so too does the light. Mars possesses insufficient atmosphere to soften the blow with a dusky prelude. So, Jann and Gizmo had not long to wait for the inhabitants of Colony One to settle into the nighttime ritual of preparing for sleep. She had worried that some of the COM mercenaries, and maybe even VanHoff, would go back to their ship for the night. But that was not the case. Jann watched as VanHoff made preparation to retire to one of the bigger accommodation pods. She gave it a few more hours before she and Gizmo took the short tunnel to the medlab access point. It was the same tunnel that Gizmo had carried the stricken ISA medical doctor Paolio, when Nills had rescued her. Now, it seemed it was almost time to return the favor.
Gizmo slipped out of the airlock and up the ramp, its tracked wheels making barely a sound. Jann followed and entered the code into the keypad to open the door into the medlab proper. It was dim, with just spots of localized light around some of the workbenches. She walked over the where Nills lay and checked the monitor. His vitals were good, if somewhat elevated. She could just make out his face in the dull reflected green light from the screens. He looked pained. While Jann checked Nills, Gizmo unscrewed a grill from an air vent on the back wall of the medlab. It then placed the petri dish with the exposed bacteria inside and replaced the panel. It would be sucked through the recyclers and then redistributed to all areas of Colony One. Gizmo had estimated approximately 1.34 hours for full environmental contamination.
Jann breathed a sigh of relief as they moved back down through the connecting tunnel, although it pained her terribly to leave Nills behind. But by morning, the bacteria would be starting to work on the physiology of those who had no immunity to it. Some would go the way of Commander Decker, turning into deranged killers. Others would end up being the victims. Jann was counting on it.
16
Taikonaut Down
Xenon shifted his position, for possibly the hundredth time, on the bed of leaves he had fashioned in the hope that he might find a more comfortable arrangement. It was a futile exercise, made bearable only by the onset of extreme fatigue. But now that the Martian dawn was starting to filter through the semi-transparent biodome membrane, his body clock was no longer cooperating with his need for sleep. He was contemplating returning to his back as he began to feel the hard floor of the biodome dig into his pelvis, when a sharp, loud shriek reverberated around the cavernous space. He sat up and listened. Others had also heard it. Heads and bodies popped up through the vegetation all around him, like prairie dogs on alert.
“Did you hear that?” Rachel asked in a whisper from her position wedged between the bases of two banana trees.
Before Xenon had a chance to utter a response another shriek pierced the dawn silence. It was louder this time and was followed by the sound of running—getting closer and louder, until finally a frenzied Xaing Zu taikonaut burst through the vegetation heading straight for Xenon. Fortunately, his hands were still tied behind his back so his gait was ragged and unbalanced. Xenon dived for his legs as he passed and took him down swiftly. The other colonists, observing this spectacle, emerged from the surrounding foliage and pounced on the hapless runner.
Even though he was pinned down beneath several colonists he still put up a frenzied fight, kicking and screaming in Mandarin, a language none of them understood. Not that they needed to. It was clearly evident that he was totally demented. Two other Chinese crew came panting onto the scene, both had their hands still bound. They stopped and bent over as they tried to catch a breath, now that their crazy runaway friend had been halted and contained.
“What the hell is up with him?” Xenon looked over at the Chinese as they slowly regained the ability to breathe enough to speak.
“Crazy bastard… started bashing his head on the floor, then ran off.”
Xenon stood up, once he was sure that the others had a good grip on the distraught captive. He still kicked and bucked with demonic strength. “Rachel, go find something to tie him up with. He’ll just injure himself more if we don’t.”
Xenon reached down to where he had been lying earlier, picked up his knife and unsheathed it. He turned to the Chinese commander, Jing Tzu, who backed off as Xenon approached.
“You came here thinking we are all just lab rats, to be experimented on, to be disposed of, as a means to an end.”
“Some did, yes, this is true, I will not lie.”
“It was your mission.”
“Not mine. You have my word on that, not mine.”
“Then what was your mission?”
“As commander… to keep everybody safe… as best I can.”
Xenon looked down at the still struggling crewmember, then back at the commander. “Well, you failed, didn’t you?”
The commander lowered his head.
“Yes, I failed.”
Xenon hefted the knife in his hand, grabbed the commander by the arm—and cut his bonds.
“We are not animals.”
Jing Tzu nodded his thanks as Xenon freed the others. They rubbed their wrists and arms as they tried to get some feeling back. Jing Tzu knelt down beside his stricken colleague and snapped at him in Mandarin. But the response was muted as the deranged crewmember had finally run out of steam. His eyes rolled in his head and he stopped fighting.
“I don’t understand what happened to him. Dan Ma is one of our most competent taikonauts. That’s why he was chosen for this mission.”
“He needs medical help,” said Xenon.
“Do you have any idea what caused him to go crazy like that?” Jing Tzu gestured down at his comrade.
“It’s just Mars. It can send some people demented. Too much for them, I suppose.” Xenon looked at him and shook his head. “Pick him up and follow me.”
They took him into one of the food processing pods, off the main biodome, and laid him out on a bench. “You all stay locked up in here and keep an eye on him. That’s the deal. Otherwise we tie you up again.”
Jing Tzu gave a reluctant nod. What choice did he have?
Xenon retreated with Rachel and the other colonists to the central dais of the biodome. They were all clearly agitated by the morning’s events.
“Could it be happening again, you know, like the stories about how the first colony went crazy?”
Xenon scratched his chin. “That was a long time ago, Rachel. All in the past.”
“He needs medical help,” she said. “And we need to get out of here. What are these COM guys playing at, they can
’t keep us in here forever.”
“No, they can’t. Soon things will start needing maintenance. The colony can’t run unless they let us out.” Xenon lifted his head up. “I have an idea. Maybe this is an opportunity to get COM in here.”
“How?”
“I’m going to write them a message.”
“I can’t see how that’s going to work.”
“It all depends on what you say. So let’s find something to make a sign with.”
Ten minutes later Xenon was standing in front of one of the working cameras monitoring the biodome. He held a sign aloft, cobbled together from the side of a food storage crate.
Kruger sipped on a coffee and surveyed his surroundings. He was sitting in an old battered armchair in an area the colonists referred to as the common room. What struck him most was the shabbiness of it all. The walls were scuffed and yellowing. The furniture, if you could call it that, was made from materials scavenged from a scrapheap, albeit a space age one. It was in deep contrast to the elegant gleam of their own spacecraft. He had seen this sort of place before. It reminded him of asteroid mines where there seemed to be this visceral need for the miners to deconstruct anything resembling a clean modern environment into a post apocalyptic interior. He hated those places. To him they stank of discord and disorder. As if the natural order of the universe towards entropy had been allowed free reign. The descent into chaos aided by humanity rather than met head on and overcome. His job was to see order maintained at all times. Now that the primary mission objectives of securing control of both colony facilities had been achieved, he needed to get control of the colonists. The hardware was secure, time to deal with the wetware.
VanHoff and his team of geneticists were now free to pursue their mission. That left him to manage the transition to COM control as he saw fit. That was his job, and he was damn good at it. He was helped, of course, by the fact that he enjoyed it. He relished the thought of returning this place to the gleaming white modern citadel that it ought to be. In fact, he couldn’t wait to get started. But first it was time to take stock. He refilled his coffee cup and started on a mental inventory.
Colony Three Mars (Colony Mars Book 3) Page 9