Finally, sometime after entering the ship, Julian came to a hatch whose logo suggested that it was an entrance into the Main Crew Deck.
“Alright, I’m at an entrance hatch. I’m going in.”
“Be careful.”
With slightly trembling hands, Julian unlocked the hatch and swung it up. Maintaining the orientation that the cockpit was above him, he brought his head to the lip of the opening and scanned the darkened space for signs of movement. A faint green light emanated from somewhere far above his head, and Julian figured it must be the lights of the flight computers in the cockpit. Little more than a giant hollow tube, the Crew Deck of the Chinese Ark was one big open space, the crudely exposed metal of its bulkheads looking like the ribs of a giant beast.
Lining the walls on all sides of the Deck were narrow chambers with dark tinted glass that obscured their contents. Above each chamber, a red light flashed dimly.
Silently pulling himself through the open hatch, Julian floated up to the first row of chambers and peered inside. Like some hideous vision from a child's nightmare, a bloated purple and black face stared back—spheres of dried blood drifting around it like bubbles in a bottle of cherry soda. Swollen so badly that the skin around the eyes had split, the mutilated face was locked in a grimace of pain and desperation.
“Mon Dieu!” shouted Julian in horror.
“What is it?” Aguilar responded, his voice laced with concern.
Pushing off, Julian drifted across the ten meters of open space to the opposite wall and looked into a chamber there. Met again with the disfigured face of some dead Chinese soldier, he moved to another chamber and another after that.
“They’re all dead,” he said into his mic. “The Pulse must have knocked out the life-support to their Extended-Sleep Chambers.”
“Really?”
“No, you’re right. I’m lying. They’re actually whipping up some dim sum right now. Of course, really! Think about it. The Pulse attacks electrical systems in use by humans. That’s why only certain things went dead afterwards and not others.”
“Well shit, Julian. Looks like it’s your lucky day.”
“Yeah,” he mumbled. Then, “Say, do you think we can abort the mission now? I mean, they’re already dead.”
“Hold on. I’ll see if our operation outline has any kind of contingency plan for this.”
Aguilar was silent for a few beats as he pulled up the mission file.
“Damn,” he responded gravely. “It says here, in the event of a total loss of hostile life, we’re to proceed with the original plan.”
“Why?”
“I’m not sure. That section of the report is classified. I can’t read it.”
Julian was perplexed. Then he thought back to the strange cylindrical pods they’d seen on their approach to the airlock and his face fell.
“This ship has killbots on board,” he breathed quietly.
“Say again?”
“Killbots. Automated war machines. We have to blow the ship because the Chinese planned for this. They installed killbots to carry out the mission if the crew died in transit.”
“You mean those launch pods we saw on the way in,” cried Aguilar. “That’s why they weren’t on the blueprints!”
“Exactly,” Julian sighed wearily. “I guess the Chinese had one final surprise for us after all.”
“How do you know that they’re for killbots? Couldn’t they just be escape pods or something?”
Shifting uncomfortably, Julian closed his eyes.
“I designed this ship, Joey. An early model of it at least. I recognize the configuration from a draft I drew up a few years ago.”
“I guess you’re the expert then.”
“I guess so.”
Turning away from the horrendously deformed figure before him, Julian tipped his head back and calculated the amount of energy he should use to propel himself the rest of the way up the twenty five meters to the cockpit.
“But why didn’t Tatyana tell us about this?” Aguilar asked, his voice laden with dismay. “She must have known.”
Julian shook his head inside his helmet. “I don’t know, my friend. We’ll have to ask her that when we get back.”
Aguilar did not reply, and the line hissed and popped with radio feedback.
“In any event,” said Julian, turning the focus of the conversation back to the issue at hand. “We’d better make sure this thing is too wrecked to launch those pods, no? And the first step in that plan is to change the Flight Path.”
Knees bent, he pushed off the raised lip of a bulkhead and shot like an arrow towards the faint green light of the distant dashboard computers.
“What about the AI?” said Aguilar, a note of hope in his tone. “The Pulse wiped out all the AI. Won’t the killbots be dead too?”
“Killbots aren’t run by AI anymore. Not after Najin.”
“What happened in Najin?”
“Ask Ralph Marshall,” Julian replied, nearing the cockpit. “But the fact still remains, killbots don’t use AI. They use a kind of programming called MI, or Mission Intelligence. It’s like AI but you remove the programmer from the mix: no human contact, just mission objectives and problem-solving software.”
“Why? What’s the point of doing it that way?”
As the distance between himself and the cockpit quickly closed, Julian used the pilot’s flight chair to stop his forward ascent. Feeling his organs shift with inertia, he shuddered and looked around the narrow cockpit.
“They do it like that so the killbots won’t have any personality: no cultural perspective, no historical reference, nothing. They want them as inhuman as possible.”
“But why?” Aguilar stressed. “Why do they want them inhuman?”
“Because humans tend to use violence when it isn’t appropriate. For example, if a Chinese programmer happens to feel a certain way about, oh, say, Americans, then any AI he fosters will also likely carry that certain opinion. This is dangerous, as it breeds racism and hatred in a machine that can kill with extreme efficiency.”
“So what? Mission Intelligence is different?”
“Oui. With MI, it’s all business. Nothing is personal.”
“Okay, but how is any of this going to keep the, um, MI safe from a Pulse?”
Spotting the NavSat Computer, Julian used an exposed coolant hose to pull himself over to it.
“Because killbots aren’t AI. Because they aren’t living personalities like an AI. They stay turned off until deployed. Imagine newborns with machine guns and the instincts of a cougar, and you’ll have a pretty good idea of what an MI is all about.”
“So, what? You think they survived the Pulse because they aren’t online yet?”
“Probably.”
Aguilar did not respond.
Opening the front-pack secured to his chest, Julian reached inside and felt around until he found the pocket containing Amit’s Tablet. With one hand on the corner of the NavSat Computer terminal to keep himself from drifting, he turned on the Tablet and brought up the doctored Checkpoint Flight Path. Finding the connection port on the NavSat Computer, he slid the Tablet in and initiated the program.
“It’s done,” he said into his helmet mic. “I’ve got Amit’s program running. Start the countdown then get your ass over here to help me rig this shithole with explosives.”
The line sizzled then Aguilar spoke. “Let’s wreck it until there’s nothing left.”
“I like the way you think,” the Frenchman smiled.
Crash
Lander 1 took off in a flurry of dust and noise. Lifting vertically to an altitude of one-hundred-fifty meters, the thruster engines whined like grinding metal yet everyone onboard save for Dr. Viviana Calise seemed unconcerned.
“Is it supposed to sound like that?” she called over the roar of hydrogen rocket boosters.
“What?” Harrison shouted from across the aisle, though his voice was muted by his helmet.
“I said,” Viviana r
epeated. “Is it supposed to sound like that?”
From the cockpit, Ralph Marshall turned his head and slid his helmet visor up.
“Channel four, Viv,” he yelled.
“What?”
Leaning across the aisle, Harrison tapped the side of his helmet and then motioned towards Viviana’s wrist Tablet and held up four fingers. With an embarrassed laugh, she understood and quickly switched radio channels.
“Better?” said Marshall’s voice in her helmet speakers.
“Yes, much,” she smiled.
Cutting the launch boosters, Marshall engaged the forward thrusters and blasted off towards the ruin grid. Pressed back into their seats, the three explorers felt the hand of G-force exhibit its invisible power.
“This is fun!” Viviana laughed. “I should have requested to come along ages ago!”
“Why didn’t you?” Harrison said.
With a shrug, Viviana tried to seem nonchalant.
“Oh, who knows? Perhaps I was a little afraid.”
“Of what?” Marshall interjected, tweaking the controls as the Lander hit a patch of turbulence.
Bucking violently, the little craft dropped a few meters then stabilized. Face suddenly set in a sober expression, Viviana cleared her throat.
“I don’t really like flying, to be honest,” she said evenly. “It reminds me of roller coasters. I hate roller coasters.”
“What? That?” Marshall said, gesturing to the sky outside the cockpit window. “It’s just frozen air and odd up or down drafts. No big deal. She’ll even out soon enough. You’ll see.”
Silently Viviana envied Marshall’s steel nerves and cursed her own for being so easily frazzled.
“Can I come sit up front with you?” she asked, wanting to master her discomfort.
“Sure,” nodded the pilot. “I’ll take the scenic route. You’ll love it!”
Unclipping her safety belt, Viviana got shakily to her feet. The Lander trembled again as it passed through a pocket of frigid air, the cockpit window momentarily icing over until the heaters thawed the obstruction. Using the seatbacks for support, she walked up the aisle to the cockpit then slid into the copilot's chair. Conscious not to accidentally bump any of the controls or dials, she leaned forward and looked out the window.
“Oh, belle!” she cried happily. “It’s so gorgeous.”
Ahead of them, Mars stretched out in the pink rays of the morning sun like a diamond in the rough. Tall shadows webbed the desert, cast against the ground at the feet of rock formations and boulders, adding a mysterious depth to the landscape. Showing itself in a calming hue of orange, the sky was as clear and cloudless as a lake of fire. In the distance, the top of Olympus Mons jutted up past the curve of the horizon: its immense peak reaching into the heavens like no other mountain in the solar system.
For thirty minutes, Viviana did not speak. She simply sat in the copilot’s seat and watched the landscape below slip past. Having always found Mars somewhat ugly, she now saw the secret beauty it had to offer. More shades of red than she ever knew existed melted together as the Lander streamed along, its shadow a dark blur on the desert floor far below.
Being so high up above the elements gave Viviana the feeling that the tension of the last eighteen days was thawing away like frost in the springtime sun. Unable to deny that there was something very wrong with her lover, she wished there was an easy means to access Kubba’s troubled mind. However, as was the case with many of those working in fields such as medicine and psychology, Kubba kept a tight lid on anything that might be bothering her. Try as she might, Viviana just wasn’t emotionally equipped to crack open the iron safe that was Kubba’s subconscious. Moreover, she wasn’t even sure if she really wanted to try. Theirs was a relationship of convenience, born out of lust and animal attraction. Most of what drew her to Kubba was her fierce alpha mentality. Now nervous and withdrawn, the doctor was a husk of her former self, and Viviana contemplated her options for exiting the relationship gracefully.
“Check it out,” said Marshall, his voice drawing Viviana back to the moment.
Growing before them, a forest of high mesa spires jutted up into the sky. Like the needle formations of Canyonlands National Park in the American Southwest, the stones seemed like timeless relics of a forgotten era. Taller than skyscrapers, the eroded monoliths were striped with ribbons of color that faded from tan at the top to a deep red at the bottom.
“Wow,” Viviana smiled, instantly forgetting her troubles.
“Cool, huh?” Marshall said, banking for the cluster of spires.
Navigating the slipstreams of wind that flowed from between the rocks, he aimed the craft towards a blinking green light on the glass of the window.
“We’ll be getting there soon,” he sighed apologetically. “You should probably go take your seat and buckle in. Safety protocol doesn’t want anyone up here but us pilots”
Reluctantly, Viviana stood up, careful to stoop her head so as not to bang it on the ceiling. Taking her first step towards the closest row of seats, she heard Marshall make a strange noise.
“What is it?” she asked.
“I just saw something in the sky,” he replied slowly. “I think it was the auro—”
Like clockwork, the searing hot pain of a Pulse exploded in Viviana’s head.
Hit by the same force, Marshall jerked involuntarily at the controls, causing the Lander to dive sharply.
Viviana, trapped in the open space between the cockpit and the crash seats, was thrown against the ceiling as the Lander’s engines fired sporadically then cut out.
Skipping through the air like a stone across the surface of a lake, the little craft narrowly missed slamming into the top of a mesa spire, its underbelly scraping the stone with a loud scream.
Hot arcs of electric purple lightning forked from Marshall’s helmet and extremities, its destructive daggers of pure energy frying the flight controls in his hands.
Jerking wildly, the Lander rolled then entered into a perilous dive.
Aware that she was floating now, Viviana remained awake. This Pulse seemed to have a different color to it than the last. A different taste. Although she could not fully grasp everything that was happening around her, she did know that the Lander was falling like a stone and that every fiber in her body was on fire.
Pulling back on the controls despite the closing darkness, Marshall tried in vain to right the diving craft, aiming for a high plateau ahead. Though the engines were dead, he hoped with his last seconds of consciousness to lessen the impact as the ground raced up to meet them in the window.
Sharply clipping a tall stone needle, the Lander spun, leaving a trail of smoke and debris in the sky like cursive. Splitting the hull, light poured through a widening gash as the shrieks of the buckling frame came like wrenching laughter. The nearest row of seats was suddenly pulled loose from the floor and flung towards the opening, bashing through it to disappear into the morning sky. Like the blast of a bomb in slow motion, the pressurized air within the cabin overcame the damaged hull and blew the Lander open in a shower of ceramic and steel.
Lifted on the backs of winged demons, Viviana felt a scream rip from her chest as she was sucked helplessly through the jagged mouth of the wound and cast out into the thin Martian air. As the pinpoints of her vision dialed down, she saw, through the fog of pain and terror, Lander 1 hit the table of a plateau below and break apart.
Though only one-third of her weight on Earth, Viviana plunged towards the ground like a fallen angel. Arms pinwheeling, she grasped at empty atmosphere in a fruitless attempt to stay alive. Striking the unforgiving surface of a rock formation, she abruptly disintegrated—her body reduced to yet another shade of red among the rocks and sands of Mars.
Chapter Twenty
Braun.
Harrison Raheem Assad sat up with a start. It was dark. Very dark. Somewhere in the shadows, the scent of sweet wet flowers quickly faded, replaced with the odor of damp rock. In the distance, he heard th
e echoing sound of voices, but how many—and how close—he couldn’t be sure. Reaching up, he felt for his helmet and found that he wasn’t wearing it. Surprised that his body wasn’t in pain from the Pulse, he got to his feet and searched around blindly for a moment.
Fingers touching cold stone, he ran his hand along the length of a wall until it met another. It was square and there were no discernible tool marks.
“Hey,” he said aloud. “I know where I am.”
Realization cascaded over him in that strange way it did when he dreamed himself in the world of ancient Mars. What little apprehension he had awoken to disappeared despite the fathomless shadows around him.
“Hello?” he called, “Remus? Romulus? Are you guys here?”
There was no reply from the darkness, but the sound of the voices began to grow louder. From across the void of blackness, a faint yellow light worked its way into view. As it drew nearer, the outline of a wall could be seen and, soon, an archway as well.
“Kaab has demanded ceilings high and domed like the Temples above,” said one of the voices.
Spilling into the space around Harrison, muted yellow light flowed from the archway across the room. A small group of those strangely obscured purple Martian men entered the box-shaped chamber, each one carrying a thin pole that threw light like a torch yet clearly contained no fire.
Shielding his eyes unnecessarily, Harrison watched as the small band made its way across the room to the staircase on the far wall. In pairs, they mounted the steps and continued their discussion about design, oblivious to the white-suited figure of Harrison.
“The Stair Room!” he cried, knowing that he could not be heard. “I know this place!”
Quickly following after the Martians, Harrison crested the top of the stairs and walked down the long hallway that followed. Devoid of the statues it would someday contain, the walls were rough and clearly not yet finished. Long gashes—made by lasers, Harrison assumed—marred the wall as if a decision on design had yet to be reached. Entering into the space that would eventually become the Martian Dome, he was surprised to see how different it looked now.
The Ruins of Mars: Waking Titan (The Ruins of Mars Trilogy) Page 22