“Temps, are good. Capacitors are at ninety-percent. I’m afraid if I push the batteries any harder they won’t have enough punch left for the powerplant roll…” Rikit adjusted his helmet, pulled down his goggles and looked back over his shoulder, “Initiating powerplant roll…” he announced, punching the starter switch, a low whine rolling through the frame of the Tempest Halo. It grew steadily louder as its pitch increased. “So why does she call you Steele?”
“I knew you were going to ask me that…” replied Jaxon, adjusting his helmet’s strap under his chin. “If we get out of here I’ll t…” Shattering glass cut him off mid-sentence, an object the size of a baseball landing on the floor, rolling out of sight in the muted light, spewing acrid smoke. Jaxon glanced up at the broken slit window to his left, another window breaking on the right side of the building, an object flashing past him, the fuse burning brightly, a cloud of smoke trailing behind it. He dove after the bouncing smoke grenade as it rolled toward the puddle of highly flammable liquid at the side door, batting it toward the rear of the barn, watching it skitter across the floor under the racks and shelves into the darkness. He came to rest on his back, looking up at the ceiling, seeing shadows near two of the four skylights. “Shit - they’re making entry!”
“When?”
“NOW! How the hell did they get on the roof?” Still on his back, Jaxon drew the slug-thrower, peppering the roof around the two skylights he could see, the throaty sound of the gun reverberating off the floor behind his head. Instantly rewarded with screams, shouts and the sound of boots running across the roof, there was a thud as someone fell wounded, and rolled off the pitched roof. It was the last he could see of the roof, the choking, black clouds from the smoke grenades obscuring his view. In fact, much of everything around him had begun to disappear. “Son of a bitch…!” he snarled, getting to his feet, grabbing the rifle off the tractor to his left.
“I’m firing capacitors - batteries are empty!”
On the other side of the tractor from Jaxon, the barn’s side door blew inward with a slam, a hazy rectangle of light framing the silhouette of a man - momentarily frozen, doused with a can of fuel oil that had been perched on a shelf and tethered to the door. Ignited by the lit torch standing on the floor, the man, the door and the doorway burst into flames with a soft woomph at the flash of ignition. Screaming, he disappeared from view.
“Time to go...!” Sprinting from the protection of the tractor, Jaxon headed toward the Tempest Halo, the fire around the side door spreading quickly, licking up the wall toward the ceiling. The thwunk on the wooden support post he passed caught his attention, but with visibility approaching zero, breathing labored and the smell of fuel oil thickening, he had no time to ponder. Climbing atop the wagon, he had the rifle on the wing root at the back of the Tempest Halo and one foot in the step-up, feeling for the hand-hold to pull himself up when he collapsed, falling to the floor in agony, his back on fire. “I’m hit,” he wheezed, the sound of the growling turbine drowning him out.
■ ■ ■
Sixty feet from the front of the barn, standing behind her mud-covered car, Director Garlea Marleet was beside herself. This debacle was costing her a fortune - and at least five men already; shot through a door, shot off the roof, set on fire… All for one man. “You just can’t buy a decent mercenary anymore,” she complained under her breath.
“What’s that?” asked the gruff man with the radio standing near her, relaying her commands.
“Nothing, nothing…” she countered, turning away. That’s all she needed - piss off the hired guns. If they could get one of the trucks out of the damned field, they’d be able to ram the main doors open - nobody wanted to get close enough to try to open them by hand. Maybe they were smarter than they looked. She flinched when the man grabbed her atop the shoulder, but he gave no indication that he recognized his touch was so repulsive to her. Or maybe he just didn’t care…
“He’s down. They’re closing in.”
“You didn’t kill hi…”
“No,” he interrupted. “They’re all using sand rounds.” He wiped the sweat off his forehead with his sleeve, “What about the other one?”
“I don’t care,” she responded flatly. “Do… whatever,” she waved indifferently.
He keyed his mic, “Confirmed, move in and recover. Cleared for termination on second target.” He waved at several men near the front of the barn, “Open it up - let’s ventilate that smoke out!”
It took four men to get the barn doors to budge; the old, rusted hinges, protesting loudly as they began to give, swinging open, clouds of black smoke pouring out of the opening and rising above the roofline into the blue sky. With the feed of fresh air, a fireball belched out of the side door, the sound audible, even from where Garlea Marleet stood behind her car with the mercenary commander. “Uh, oh…”
A glint of light, something shiny, caught her eyes and attention, the doors of the barn blown open from the inside, the wood screaming in agony, crunching, splintering, flung wide, the men working to get them open tossed aside like ragdolls - a wagon crashing through like a battering ram into the sunlight, a flat, silver disk riding atop it. A flicker of flame under the wagon raced across the mouth of the opening, the silver disk propelling the wagon across the gravel before lifting off, a turbine whistling, the drone of downforce turboprops and the hum of an antigravity halo propelling it upward and outward over their heads. A few random shots chased it across the sky as it banked in an arc, first one way then the other.
Open-mouthed, Garlea Marleet and the mercenary commander stood side by side, dumbfounded, as their men, in gas masks, ran from the building with total abandonment. He keyed his mic, “What the hellion is going…”
■ ■ ■
Rikit Lobat slid the actuator lever for the antigravity halo to zero, the Tempest flying by its downward thrust turboprops alone, the turbine providing forward thrust. He banked to the left over the field, then to the right over the trees as his altitude grew. Watching the mercenaries run from the barn, he had an impulse to wave at Director Marleet…
The massive wall of angry orange flame that rolled out of the barn doors, pushed a super-heated shockwave across the gravel apron, the roof separating from the building, lifting up as the outer walls buckled outward, a thunderous boom rolling outward in all directions, bouncing and rocking the Tempest even as it distanced itself. The roof fell back to the structure, collapsing it, crushing itself, exploding; wood, aluminum sheeting, parts, pieces, and assorted bits flying out like shrapnel, shredding everything in its path. Debris reached all the way to the barn up near the house.
“WHOA…” blurted Rikit, stunned. It made him a little sad to see the farm go that way, the dream of coming back someday to restore it to its former glory, disappearing in a massive ball of fire. But the realization that he had enough to start over somewhere, anywhere, several times over, was comforting. He looked back at the destruction before it retreated from view behind the tree line, only marked by a rising column of black smoke smudging a blue sky.
“Goodbye Jaxon,” he said quietly, turning back to his controls, “thank you for everything…”
“You’re welcome,” groaned Jack Steele, gingerly adjusting his position. “Got any aspirin? My back is killing me…”
“Yeah, I might need some of that aspirin too,” winced Rikit, shifting uncomfortably, “I think I’m sitting in a puddle of my own blood…”
CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR
NEW PLYMOUTH COLONY, MARS, TERRAN SYSTEM : PARALLELS
Dr. Michelle Fabry opened one eye lazily, her other eyelid failing to cooperate. “Mmph?” she snorted, the face above her drastically out of focus.
“Mitch, Mitch, wake up!”
Michelle frowned, “Annnnie?” she drawled, her other eye popping open, rolling around. “What the hell, woman… What time is it?”
“Four-ish I guess,” she said excitedly, animated, “get up. Get up!”
Fighting to recover from dee
p REM sleep, Michelle rolled her head, wiping loose golden hair from her face with an uncoordinated hand like she was fighting a spiderweb. “Pbbfff,” she blew, clearing it from her lips, rolling on her side and pushing herself upright, her feet dropping to the floor.
“C’mon, c’mon, put your suit on, we gotta’ go!” urged Annie.
“Suit?” An image of her blue business suit popped into her head, “Wait, what suit? Where are we going?” Her mind, climbing the steep incline out of REM, Michelle Fabry suddenly realized where she was; MARS. Her eyes shot open, a spike of fear jolting her awake, “What’s going on Annie? Do we have a leak?” She attempted to rise on unsteady legs and Annie, energized on her umpteenth cup of coffee, caught her, holding her up. “Leak? Nooo, no leak.”
Michelle pushed herself away, steadier, more awake, “Then what the hell Annie, it’s four in the damn morning. What couldn’t wait? You scared the heck out of me.”
Mary-Anne’s smile hadn’t dimmed, “Water, Mitch. They’ve found water. Lots of water! A freshwater ocean… It’s frozen over, of course…”
“Oh my God… that’s amazing!” chimed Michelle sarcastically. She raised an eyebrow, “And it could have waited till morning,” she added dryly. “Aaand, if you think I’m putting on a suit and going back out there again,” she thumbed over her shoulder, “after what happened last time, you’re crazy.”
“This is the part that couldn’t wait…” Mary-Anne called up a holo-screen on her TESS, grabbing the corner of the hologram and pitching it at the darkened screen on the wall of Michelle’s quarters, the display energizing instantly.
Michelle tilted her head, “What am I supposed to be looking at?”
Mary-Anne’s mouth skewed sideways, “Hmm, zoomed…” with a few motions it panned out some.
Michelle straightened her head, her brow knitting, “It’s a straight line...? The image continued to zoom out, plot coordinates and a grid superimposed over the image. “Annie, nature doesn’t create perfectly straight lines…”
“Nope,” smirked Mary-Anne, continuing to zoom out. “And it doesn’t create equally long, intersecting straight lines…”
Michelle Fabry’s mouth dropped open, “That looks like an airfield.”
Mary-Anne nodded, “Yep… that’s what it looks like to me too, but it’s longest leg is only about two-thousand feet long.”
“That seems short for a commercial runway, doesn’t it?”
Mary-Anne shrugged, waving her hands wide, “I think the bigger issue is, we’re talking about a runway – on Mars!”
Michelle could feel her pulse quicken and she ran her fingers through unruly bed hair trying to maintain her composure, “Where did this image come from?”
“The survey drone they gave us to test. Where did you send it before you went to bed?”
Michelle had to search her mind for a moment, “The Elysium Plains,” she said slowly. “Northwest of the Elysium Basin seemed to be a good flat place to test fly a survey pattern… I didn’t expect it to find anything…”
Mary-Anne’s face tightened, “That’s not the only thing it found - look at this one…” Waving her hands, she moved the image on the screen, the straight lines sliding away, another line image appearing.
Michelle could actually feel the color drain from her face, “That’s a bird! It… almost looks Aztec…”
“That’s not just any bird,” corrected Mary-Anne, “That’s The Condor.”
“Geoglyphs,” muttered Michelle.
“Nazca geoglyphs…” clarified Mary-Anne. “On Mars.”
Michelle sat numbly down on her bed, “I did a thesis on the Nazca Lines in college…”
Mary-Anne smirked, “And now you get to write history…”
“You mean, we…” Michelle flopped back on the bed, staring at the ceiling, gently tugging on her hair, the images of the Nazca figures, playing in her mind. “Dear God, this changes everything…” She suddenly sat back up, “Where’s the drone now?”
“That was toward the end of the pattern you assigned it. It came back - it’s sitting on its landing pad next to the maintenance building.”
Michelle popped off the bed like she’s been launched and started stripping off her pajamas as she moved about her quarters gathering clothes, “Wake the control room staff, I want everyone up for a briefing. Do we have any archeologists, anthropologists or geologists on New Plymouth?’
Mary-Anne tried not to stare at the tight nude body bouncing about the room, diverting her eyes, “Um, no, but we’re lousy with astro-physicists, astronomers, celestial cartographers and…”
“What about that guy – Dr. Whatshisname on the drilling team? The one looking for water?”
Mary-Anne shook her head, “Nope, not a doctor, a Hydro Engineer.”
“Dammit,” breathed Michelle, wiggling as she pulled up the skintight long john undersuit that covered her body under her atmosphere suit. “Do we know anybody good? Someone who isn’t a chicken shit, and willing to leave their comfy office back home?”
“I might know a couple of people…” conceded Mary-Anne, “not sure if any of them are crazy enough to come out here - but it’s worth a shot.” She glanced back over her shoulder, “Hey, you’re suiting up!”
“Damn right, I want to go take a look. I want to see if it’s visible to the naked eye or buried under red dust.”
Mary-Anne paused at the door, “When I ask these people about coming out here, what should I tell them?”
“Not yet, let’s wait until after we take a first-hand peek, OK?”
“Got it. I’ll go wake everybody up…”
“Hey,” called Michelle, “did you know that each and every Nazca figure, has puzzle like clues and corresponds to a constellation?”
“That, I did not know…”
Michelle plopped back down on her bed to pull her boots on, “Somebody is leaving us a roadmap…”
■ ■ ■
Looking out the window of the crew skimmer at the swirl of red dust that went airborne as the craft lifted off the New Plymouth landing pad, Michelle was studying the fresh buildings that had appeared since her last venture outside. “It’s growing so fast…” she breathed, unaware she had spoken it out loud.
“Like a wild-west boom town,” offered Mary-Anne. “Without the gold.”
Michelle smirked, not looking away from the base as it dropped below them and fell away as the pilot accelerated. “Depends on how you look at it, I guess. We may have discovered something worth more than gold…” She sat back as the craft continued to accelerate.
“True. This may change our entire outlook on human history…” Across the aisle from Michelle, Mary-Anne adjusted her belts, turning her head to look in Michelle’s direction, “What if we’re all Martian descendants?”
Michelle arched her eyebrows, “I’ve been thinking about that too. But that poses more questions than answers. And until we could reconcile the differences in timing, travel, technology…”
“Like, how did we get from Mars to Earth, then end up using stones and spears without leaving any technology lying about…”
“Exactly,” nodded Michelle.
“Maybe there was some kind of Space Uber,” smirked Mary-Anne.
Michelle giggled out loud. “But it starts me thinking about legends and fables – you know, how there’s always a measure of truth to them?”
“OK…”
Michelle played with a golden lock of hair, contemplating her thoughts, “Something tells me, if there is a connection between Mars and Earth, it has something to do with Atlantis.”
“Which has never been found,” cautioned Mary-Anne.
“Well, maybe it has, maybe it hasn’t. That doesn’t mean it never existed. There are records of it on sailing charts and maps. It was even referred to in Plato’s writings. Mount Vesuvius wiped out Pompeii, why couldn’t something similar have happened to Atlantis? Volcanic activity has created islands in the ocean, and islands have disappeared… As advanced as Atl
antis was supposed to be, that wouldn’t protect it from a natural disaster of that scope.”
“So, you’re thinking maybe Atlantis was the first colony…”
Michelle turned to look at Mary-Anne across the aisle, “Something like that. It would make a good movie at least,” she grinned.
“And maybe some of the native Mars technology would have perished when Atlantis was wiped out?”
Michelle pursed her lips, “It makes a lot of sense. And it rings true - matching the stories and legends…”
Mary-Anne was digesting the thoughts and the ramifications, “Can you imagine the historical chaos that would cause?”
Michelle grinned, “Sheer insanity,” she giggled.
■ ■ ■
The flight controller at McCarran International Airport waved the supervisor over to his console, tapping on the screen, indicating a flight passing over Las Vegas, “I’m getting nothing from this guy, his I.D. isn’t readable and he gives no response when I call. I think he’s in trouble, he keeps changing heading and he’s way too low…” he tapped harder, “look, look, look, now he’s descending!”
“Yeah, he’s landing.”
“What? Where?” asked the flight controller.
The supervisor slapped him casually on the shoulder, “Wherever he wants. Forget you saw it. Just keep his airspace clear,” he turned to walk away.
“Wait, wait… said the controller grabbing his sleeve, “I don’t…”
The supervisor spun back and dropped to a crouch so he could speak closely and quietly, “Look kid, you’re new here, I get it… where’d you transfer in from, again?”
“Seattle, Tacoma International…”
“OK, look here, Seattle, some things are best not questioned in this area. This is Nevada, you’re going to see things that might not make sense, but that’s OK. He’s ignoring you because he can. When there’ a disabled I.D., just let him go where he wants, alert him of nearby traffic and keep other birds clear of his airspace, understand?”
Resurrection Page 32