by Read, John
Next, a wave of spider-like drones poured over the ridge. This time the soldiers came out from their cover and started shooting the things to pieces. The mechanical beasts jumped around, moving quickly through the barrage of bullets. Some of the spiders made it through, leaping on top of the soldiers, and their victims convulsed as if being electrocuted. Their comrades eliminated the rest of the wave. There were more stretchers, and more medevacs.
The next wave of attackers came on two legs, looking like headless kangaroos. They flanked the soldiers, traveling in a pack, and running at cheetah-like speed. The herd ran up one ridge and down another. The MDF soldiers changed positions around the boulders, running from one rock to the next, trying to flank the attackers.
I could see several soldiers activating their comms, calling in an artillery barrage. Shells dropped down on the battlefield, taking out several of the scrawny beasts, leaving large craters in their wake.
The kangaroo drones swept west, adjusting to the platoon’s new position.
“Shit!” I said. The Arachnid was at the bottom of the hill, “The Arachnid!” The drones swooped around and the herd passed over where our aircraft was parked.
We started running down the hill waving our hands. Kevin hopped into the rover and started after us.
At this point the soldiers were surrounded. They opened fire on the drones in all directions. Several of them fell but the bullets sprayed everywhere. We took cover behind the rover even though none of the projectiles made it up the hill. Instead, each bullet self-destructed in a cloud several hundred feet away. I keyed the frequency for Central Control. “Central this is PDC, we need you to call the MDF and have them halt their training until we can evac –“
Before I could finish, a stream of high-powered bullets ripped through the Arachnid, puncturing the fuel tanks and shattering the cockpit. The bullets passed through the machine, leaving little puffs of dust in the dirt on the opposite side.
The dust settled, blown away in the breeze. The drones forced the soldiers east, leaving us alone with our pokey rover and bullet-riddled Arachnid.
I opened the map-app on my tablet and zoomed in on our location, looking for a good extraction point. If we could relay the information to the colony, they’d be able to send a rescue party.
Avro tapped his wrist and spoke. “Panel team to Central Control, do you copy?”
No answer.
“Try MATC,” I said. “Frequency 1880.”
Avro switched frequencies on his wrist panel.
“MATC, this is the panel distro team. We are stranded five kilometers to the northeast. Do you copy?”
We checked all our comm units. None of us had any signal.
“That’s funny. It looks like the frequencies are jammed,” Kevin said.
“Not all the frequencies. We can still talk to each other,” I said. “But our VOX comms are super short range.”
We turned and saw an automated mining truck barreling down the road.
Avro and I looked at each other. “Well, it beats walking,” Avro said.
I stood in front of the truck and it slowed down. Avro and Kevin climbed a few rungs up a ladder leading to the truck bed. They grabbed a handrail and clung to the truck like garbage men. I jogged around the side of the truck and hopped up to join them. The truck continued on its way.
We rounded a large rock and the road sloped down into a mining bunker.
I leaned around the side of the truck, trying to get a better look at our direction of travel.
“Looks like we’re headed into a mine. They should have O2 stations and a hard line to the colony. Heck, the mines are interconnected, right? We can probably walk back to the colony without the spacesuits.”
“Wouldn’t that be nice,” Kevin said, “walking through town in our underwear.”
The light dwindled as we moved deeper underground. We turned on our spacesuit lights and were surprised that we couldn’t yet see a door or airlock.
“Okay, guys. I’m getting concerned,” Kevin said, checking his O2 levels. “We’re a quarter mile into this bunker and haven’t reached an airlock.”
Avro panned his suit lights around the walls. “The entrance can’t be much farther.”
“There it is,” I said. I illuminated a giant door with my light.
“Thank Shiva! Worst GOD ever!” Kevin said as the truck lumbered into the airlock.
The airlock’s interior was polished steel and shone as if newly installed.
The hatch behind us sucked itself shut and lights came on, filling the room with an orange glow. The three of us dismounted the truck and stood as a windy whirlpool swirled around us, cleansing everything of the Martian dust.
Once the room had ample pressure, the hatch hissed open and the truck rolled out. We should have seen the darkness of a mine. Instead, we were blinded by light.
We stood in the airlock, peeking out the door, helmets clinking together as we all tried to get a better look.
One by one, we stepped out and took off our helmets. A warm sun beat down on our heads as birds chirped. High above us, a falcon circled. I tried to get a look at the nearest wall, but it was hidden behind a large oak tree.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” Avro said. From the look of it, the space was enclosed in a giant dome, one as big or bigger than the colony’s central dome. Nestled in the trees were buildings that looked like Italian villas.
“This explains the power drain,” I said. “They must have just turned it on. Whatever this place is, I’m willing to bet this caused the Alamo’s power surge this morning.”
“I don’t see a welcoming party,” Avro observed. “We might as well check it out!”
We walked across a glade and a large fountain and amphitheater came into view.
“You know,” I began, “We’ve all heard the silly rumors of an Atlantis on Mars, but this is something else. There’s probably a pretty damn good reason this place is kept secret.”
“Yeah,” Kevin said, “they don’t want us stomping on the azaleas.”
We walked down a tree-lined path and other structures came into view.
“Agreed,” Avro said. “These residences seem really nice and I don’t think this is part of our pension plan.”
We paused as a thumping sound echoed around us. The thumping increased in volume until a black helicopter passed overhead. The chopper circled once and landed in a clearing. As it settled to the ground, four men in black fatigues jumped out, guns in hand.
We stood in our spacesuits like snowmen, each with a helmet under his arm.
“Should we run?” Kevin asked.
I pictured us wobbling like penguins in our spacesuits, trying to outrun a team of soldiers.
Resistance was futile.
“Get in,” one man said, motioning toward the chopper with his gun. We boarded the helicopter and sat along the back wall. Avro and I sat on the outside with one leg dangling out each door. Kevin sat in the middle, his gloved hands holding his helmet firmly on his lap.
The helicopter ride gave us new perspective of this underground utopia. The habitat wasn’t devoid of people, although it wasn’t overflowing either. There was a couple out for a stroll holding hands, a woman jogging, and even kids riding gyro-bikes.
I pointed them out to Avro. He was as surprised as I was. The low Martian gravity interfered with proper bone growth, so there were typically no children on Mars. But there they were.
“Maybe they spend a few hours a day in a centrifuge,” Avro said.
“Like a ride at the fair,” Kevin added.
Just then we flew over a small amusement park, complete with a variety of spinning rides.
I pointed at one of the rides. “Well, there you have it.”
“Save it!” snorted one of the men.
The helicopter landed on the front lawn of a large estate. Manicured shrubs swayed in the helicopter’s draft, fighting to hold onto their roots. Our captors herded us from the helicopter, leading us to a set of stairs
. At the top of the staircase was the front door of a multi-story mansion.
One of the men pressed a button by the door.
“Send them up,” a voice said.
We entered a great hall. The room had high ceilings, giant chandeliers and fine art on every wall. There were several expensive looking sculptures and even a few tapestries. On the far wall, a fifteen-foot-tall wax Napoleon Bonaparte stood victorious over a sea of bodies. Four glass elevators along the back wall connected balconies on each level.
The guards ushered us across the room and shoved us into an elevator. When we got to the top, they shoved us out and directed us through a set of mahogany doors into a large room. They seemed to enjoy shoving.
The room had a domed ceiling inlaid with stained glass tigers and other beasts. The room was round and surrounded by bookshelves. A ladder riding on a brass track ran all the way around.
A large mahogany desk rested near the back of the room. On this desk, a brass reading light illuminated a leather writing pad and a pen.
Behind the desk, Henry Allen the Third, better known as H3, sat in the largest wing back chair I had ever seen.
He had flawlessly styled brown hair without a hint of a receding hairline. I knew he was in his late fifties, but thanks to expensive stem-cell treatments, he didn’t look a day over forty. He wore a three-piece navy blue tailored suit with a baby blue tie and gold cufflinks. Round glasses rested on a perfectly shaped nose. His ears, however, were small, and for some reason, I found this amusing.
H3 smirked, a closed mouth smile that gave him a look of being impressed and not impressed at the same time.
“Welcome boys! Welcome! I’m sure you know who I am, so let’s skip the introductions,” he said, his face returning to a smirk. “What, may I ask, is that dreadful noise?” His head twitched as he accented the final word.
“Huh? Oh, sorry!” Kevin said as we became aware of our spacesuits.
Spacesuits are effectively small spaceships, with heating units and oxygen systems. Ours even had gyroscopic stabilizers. All of these made subtle noises in the otherwise silent room.
We went to work throwing switches, powering down the suit’s electronics, silencing the whirring songs of various pumps and gizmos.
“Better?” Kevin asked.
“Much better,” H3 replied. “So John, Kevin and Avro, how’s my power team doing? You know you are the most experienced engineers on the planet? Granted, you have little competition, but still.”
“You looked us up?” I asked.
H3 smiled and nodded, tapping a tablet he held in his palm. “Few folks find themselves outside the colony. It’s been easy to keep this place a secret.”
“Well,” Kevin said, “We found it, now you have to kill us.”
H3 laughed. “Very funny, Kevin. The truth is, I need you guys. You’re my power team! Literally my power team. You are the guys that give me the power!”
“Yeah, I did notice that your energy draw was rather heavy,” I said. “Your engineers said they were filling hydrogen tanks.”
“They were,” H3 replied. “We just activated this place today. Sorry for not letting you know about the tanks. Better to ask forgiveness than permission, as they say. I’ll be using my reactor to power this place, so you’ll not have to worry about capacity for my little pet project.”
H3 grinned, like a smile without the twinkle in the eye that makes it genuine. It was like he was waiting to see if we bought his story.
“This place must cost a fortune to operate.” I said. We all knew the cost to fuel and operate a reactor was far greater than the cost of solar.
“Fortunes I have, and the reactor is reliable. Think of it as storm insurance. And speaking of storm insurance, I need to send you back to work. Project Bakersfield must be completed before summer.”
“You mean we’re not even getting fired?” Kevin asked. “Your private security detail made it seem like we stumbled on Area 51.”
“You aren’t getting fired,” H3 said. “You think I’d send my top engineers all the way back to Earth and recruit new engineers with three weeks left before we deploy the largest atmospheric engineering project in history?”
“I guess we are quite good at our jobs,” Kevin said. “The pay’s okay, but the benefits make it worth it.”
Avro and I looked at each other and shook our heads.
H3 paced around the office, looking solemn. “Since you’re here, you might as well know why I’m here. As you may or may not know, Red Planet Mining’s stock price took quite a hit after the impact.”
“That’s an understatement,” Avro said. “It dropped, what, eighty percent?”
“That’s about right,” H3 admitted. “Fortunately, many of my friends had shorted the stock, profiting substantially from the decline.”
“Insider trading?” I said. The words slipped out before I could hold my tongue. No one could have known about the Bradbury Disaster.
“No, not insider trading, John. Production was already ramping down from project Destiny. But the street didn’t take our decline seriously and investors were slow to sell, many even doubled down, buying the stock on margin, and now they blame me, and my friends, for their losses.”
“So that’s why you’re on Mars,” I said.
“Precisely,” H3 said. “With our wealth, my associates and I purchased several space cruisers and a few shuttles, outfitting them with the luxuries required for a new life here on Mars.”
“You’re talking about over half the space infrastructure in the solar system!” I said.
“Don’t underestimate wealth,” H3 replied. “That’s the benefit of capitalism. There’s nothing to stop those with cash from buying up all the assets.”
Was he really lecturing us on economics?
“We used much of our wealth, however, to fund this,” H3 said, panning his arm around the room. “We call it The Presidio, after that old base in San Francisco, God rest its soul. The inspiration comes from Athens in ancient Greece. We even have a Parthenon!”
“How…” I said, not sure if I was asking a question.
“We converted a mine,” H3 said, matter-of-factly. “The mining operation creates giant underground caverns. We just cleaned one up.”
“Clean is an understatement. This place is heaven on Earth,” Avro said.
“Well, Heaven on Mars anyway,” I added.
“Thank you,” H3 said. “However, this heaven is only accessible to those in the Alamo.”
The Alamo, it seemed, was the tip of a very large iceberg.
H3 continued to pace around the room, delighted to be sharing his accomplishment with listening ears. “The Presidio is a large underground dome. Its ceiling is half a kilometer high and its perimeter ten kilometers around. Like a planetarium, a giant projection illuminates our sky.” He stopped for a moment staring out a window and up at the sky. “You arrived here a few hours late. It was quite the show when we turned it on. The software is simple, basic astronomy software really.”
“Impressive,” I said.
“Oh, what the hell. We’ve been testing it all day. Check this out.” H3 opened a door onto a rooftop patio and we followed him outside.
H3 typed on his tablet, darkening the sky and ceasing the warmth from the artificial sun. Then, the first stars appeared and the Milky Way cut across the sky in time lapse, right before a glorious sunrise. It was so bright I had to look away but I could feel its warmth on my face.
“The colonists think they are seeing mining equipment going down into the mines, but it’s actually wealth, rare treasures from Earth’s most priceless collections. Those statues on the grounds,” H3 was gloating now, “they’re originals, straight from Italy. We’ve even been buying up Picassos. Most estates have at least one.”
We were speechless. This was a truly amazing accomplishment.
“Here’s the deal,” H3 said with a stern look. “You are going back to work. You are going to finish Project Bakersfield, and you’re not goin
g tell anyone about this place.”
“Why the secrecy?” I asked.
“This place is a great experiment, free from the radiation and cramped quarters of the surface. But not everyone can live here and I don’t want to attract attention. That’s why.”
“Who runs this place?” Kevin said. “Like, support staff and stuff.”
“The drones, Kevin. It takes very few workers to run a society these days, and that’s really what’s so wonderful about it. But I’ll never allow freelivers here; you’ve got to earn it.”
“If all the work is done by drones, what are people like us supposed to do?”
“You seem like a smart kid, Kevin. There’s always work for the working men. And right now, you have a job and I want you to keep doing it.”
“That’s going to be difficult,” Avro said.
H3 looked confused and I could tell he was hiding a hint of anger.
“It was the MDF soldiers. They ah, sort of, shot up our Arachnid,” I said.
H3 seemed to relax at this and then chuckled. “I’ll tell you what, guys. I’ll give you a new one.”
He handed me his tablet, a confidentiality agreement displayed on the screen. I passed the tablet to Avro. He rolled his eyes and pressed his finger down on the device.
H3’s private security escorted us back into the helicopter and flew us to the far side of the Presidio. It was an engineering marvel as impressive as the colony. As we flew further from H3’s mansion, we could see at least a hundred estates poking out above the trees.
“Hey, where did these trees come from?” I asked. The trees were tall. They obviously didn't come on the Martian transports and couldn’t have been grown there from seedlings.
“3D printed,” the man said, “like everything else in this shithole.”