The Martian Conspiracy

by Read, John

  In the pavilion, a dozen officers ran towards the Presidio’s tram station, stopping occasionally to fire at the MDF soldiers.

  Kevin stood inside the tram station, pointing people toward to the tracks. The tram had already left, but Kevin was sure it was a clear shot all the way to the underground dome.

  Outside the barrier, MDF soldiers approached the tram station with guns raised. Kevin ripped down the shield and the barrier shut with a bang.

  Meanwhile, Avro, Amelia and I made it deep inside the Alamo. “What now?” I yelled.

  “We’ve got to find engineering. Look for a service door,” Avro said, rushing along one of the walls. Amelia followed us, holding a rifle in each hand.

  We turned a corner into an alley where two MDF soldiers kept watch over a set of doors. Before they could raise their guns, Amelia took them out in quick succession. The guards dropped to the floor in pain.

  “It’s locked!” Avro said, trying the doors.

  The two soldiers lay moaning on the ground. “What’s in there?” I demanded of the soldiers.

  “I have no idea,” said the one of the men. “We’re just doing our job.”

  “Did you feel that?” I said, holding my ear and sensing a lack of pressure.

  “Not good,” Avro said. He ran back towards the main section and peered around the corner. Several MDF soldiers battled with the few colonists and police officers that were still standing. In the distance, the Alamo’s barrier had closed, the crushed squad cars having been pulled inside.

  Amelia looked around, considering our options. “We need to get into a pressure vessel before the air gets too thin.”

  We ran down the hallways checking doors but found every one locked. My ears popped again and I tried to breath. Nausea set in and my heart rate elevated until I could feel my pulse in my neck. We were back facing the main atrium, but this time, all the MDF soldiers had their helmets on. We watched as several colonists slouched to the ground.

  “Well,” Avro hissed, his breathing strained. “You can’t say we didn’t—” He passed out.

  I looked over at Amelia, her eyes and mouth wide open. Then it got very, very quiet.

  I awoke to a young woman pulling a needle from my arm. “Adrenaline,” she said. “Just enough to wake you.”

  Avro and Amelia slouched in comfortable looking chairs, their eyes half open. The woman moved on to Avro and Amelia, waking them in turn.

  I looked around the room, my eyes barely coming into focus. We appeared to be inside a glass dome no bigger than a large dining room. We were still in the Alamo. I soon realized that we were up high. I sat near the room’s glass wall and looked down. Below us were the various elevated walkways that wreathed the Alamo’s interior.

  A desk sat in the middle of the room, identical to the one in H3’s office in the Presidio.

  “H fucking 3,” Avro muttered as he tried to stand up. A guard pushed him back into his seat.

  Henry Allen the Third came out from behind the desk and paced back and forth. He glowered at us from behind his thick-rimmed glasses.

  “So, kids,” he said, “we meet again.” He walked towards the window and stared. He watched the soldiers dragging bodies from the battle that had raged below. “I see you’ve made a friend. Welcome, Amelia. You’ve been quite the prick in my little finger.”

  “You can end this,” I said.

  “Oh, can I? And why would I do that?” said H3, looking at his own reflection in the glass and straightening the cuffs on his navy blue blazer.

  “John, he can’t exactly run outside yelling ‘Stop.’ He doesn’t seem to be wearing a spacesuit,” Avro said.

  “Your friend is right, John,” H3 said, turning toward us. “I can’t stop this. This is bigger than me. Do you see the soldiers out there? They’re just trying to keep the peace, tapering the civil unrest you caused.”

  “That we caused?” Amelia said, considering getting up, but instead eyed the large guards standing beside her. “This shit is your doing. The storm. The dome. All of it!”

  “Yes, well, if all had gone to plan, it would have been nothing but a tragic accident.”

  “You mean murder,” I said without thinking.

  “Oh, I think that’s a bit harsh,” H3 replied. “You see, we’re in the very middle of a revolution, a revolution where these ‘tragic accidents’ work for the betterment of society.”

  “That makes no fucking sense,” Amelia said.

  “Oh, it makes total fucking sense!” H3 replied. “You see, in the beginning there was the agricultural revolution, when humanity began its journey toward a modern society. Then, there was the industrial revolution, and humanity finally began to see its full potential. All of the sudden, multitudes of people went from peasants to productive members of the first advanced society and they were happy!

  “Then we entered the digital age and 3D printers catered to all our material needs and unhappiness increased. The first middle class freelivers began sucking on society’s teat, living out their lives, contributing nothing and being absolutely miserable. Now, we’re firmly in the drone age, an age where miserable freelivers become even more useless.”

  H3’s perspective wasn’t unique. We’d all heard it many times before. On Earth, freeliving was easy. Drones grew and delivered food to everyone at almost no cost. If you needed it, the municipality would even print you a house. We all knew this freeliving didn’t bring happiness but at least it prevented some unhappiness.

  “That doesn’t mean you kill them,” I said

  “What happens after a natural disaster? Don’t answer. I’ll tell you: The freeliving people die and we rebuild. We rebuild without those miserable people sucking away the rest of our happiness. You see, if you delete the unhappy freelivers, overall happiness increases.”

  “But you caused the storm!” I yelled, throwing my hands in the air. The conversation was ridiculous, listening to someone justify murder.

  “A technicality,” H3 paused. He walked back to his desk and sat on it, his posture relaxed. “You think this is only happening on Mars? You think I’m the only revolutionary?”

  There was silence. Oh my god, I thought of the impact of the CTS-Bradbury.

  “You are not getting away with this!” Amelia said.

  “Let me continue!” H3 said, looking angrily at Amelia, but letting his demeanor return to his usual calm state. “Please. I hope you are enjoying yourselves as much as I am. It is hard to keep secrets all bundled up. I’m a rare breed. The one guy in power who actually has secrets.”

  “Ha!” Amelia said. “You used us. You used the MDF soldiers to do your dirty work!”

  “Dirty work? Call it constructive adversity.”

  Amelia gave H3 a skeptical look. “Constructive adversity?”

  “Of course! That’s what this is all about!” H3 said.

  H3 began to preach, as if his words were going down in history. “I dream of a Mars that is the envy of every human in the solar system. That’s not going to happen with half the population sitting on their asses. It can only happen if we clean up. Get rid of the potential freelivers, and bring in the artists, the scholars, the cultured, and the elite.”

  “That sounds like a pretty swell vision,” Avro said. “But how about the musicians, the fashion designers, and the Olympians. Mount Olympus would make a great ski hill.” Avro was egging him on. I wondered if he was trying to use this to our advantage. In the movies, the villain kills the gofers first, leaving the hero for last. Deep down the villain admires and even empathizes with the heroes and gives them a chance to die with honor.

  “A ski lift you say?” H3 said, “We should install a chair lift.”

  “So what do you want from us?” I said, hoping to end this conversation so we could get onto, well, whatever was next. If H3 wanted us dead, he would have done it already. If he wanted us silenced, he would have held us captive. It was obvious he wanted something.

  “I want a few things,” H3 began. “But first, as
a consolation, I’ve decided not to give young Amelia here back to her friends in the MDF. That is, as long as you agree to play nice.”

  Amelia was speechless.

  “Second, I see you’ve made friends with the media. I want you to come up with a story that clears my name, and calms the people until this storm is over.”

  Amelia scrunched up her face, “Why the hell would we do that?”

  “The ninth dome’s sabotage was a conspiracy. Let’s keep it a secret, shall we? I think that’s to both our advantages.”

  Did he know we blew up the dome? He was right though. It was to our advantage not to let people find out what actually happened, at least until we’d taken back control of the colony. Avro, Amelia and I looked at each other. “We’ll think about it,” Avro said.

  H3 stood up, his tone and posture conveying trustworthiness. “And finally,” he said, pausing, “and most importantly,” he hesitated again, almost humbling himself. For some reason, he wasn’t coming out with it. He strode around the room, not talking.

  “What do you want H3?” Avro said, breaking the silence.

  “I need you to stop the storm.”

  “What the hell?” I shouted, “You can’t stop this thing?”

  H3 shrugged. “We drained most of Harmony Colony’s hydrogen reserves creating the storm and figured the comparatively low wattage of the nuclear reactor could sustain it until we’d accomplished our mission.”

  “Killing the colonists,” I said.

  “Increasing net happiness,” H3 responded. “Five hours ago, our engineers disconnected the reactor. And yet, the storm still rages. Call it a slight miscalculation.”

  We sat, staring at H3, dumbfounded. If the storm wasn’t being sustained by human intervention, the storm was sustaining itself. We had created a monster, a storm that could rage for months or even years.

  “Can’t you just reverse the polarity?” My voice was frantic. “Or use the coils the way they were designed?” I felt like a failure on multiple accounts. Not only was our plan to disconnect the reactor in vain but people got killed along the way. “You need to fix this. Try something! Try anything!”

  “At least plug the nuclear reactor back in!” Avro added. “With the correct polarity.”

  “I thought you were engineers,” H3 replied. “That little reactor isn’t powerful enough to kill a global storm! Now the fuel cells, and the colony’s remaining energy reserve, that’s where you come in.”

  There was silence as we considered what he had just said. The colony’s reserve was its lifeline. Without hydrogen and oxygen flowing through the fuel cells to generate electricity, there was no way scrub CO2. That same fuel was used in the furnaces. Without these, the colony’s internal temperature would drop to subzero in a matter of hours.

  Avro said it out loud, just to be sure we were hearing him correctly, “You’re suggesting we power the anti-storm coils with our remaining reserve, knowing that if it fails, everyone in the colony dies.”

  “You diabolical son of a bitch!” Amelia said. “You’ll still have a nuclear reactor.”

  “You’re right. I’ll be fine,” H3 said. “But think of it this way. You can do nothing, and let everyone die, or you can try this, and they might have a chance.”

  He turned to the nearest guard. “Take them away.”

  We struggled as the guards dragged us out of H3’s office. The guards manhandled us without trouble. We were still weak from being unconscious. They wrestled our arms behind our backs and led us down a cylindrical hallway.

  We all thought the same thing. Was H3’s idea to kill the storm just another part of the conspiracy? Was he trying to get us to kill the colonists?

  The guard who held me whispered in my ear. “There’s someone you need to meet,” he said.

  “What?” I said. The guard didn’t say another word, but I relaxed and gave Avro and Amelia a look that said: Just go with it.

  The guards shoved us into an elevator, freeing our arms once the doors closed. The elevator descended deep into the Alamo. Transparent walls allowed us to see the dome’s internal structure. The design was brilliant, with pressure vessels within pressure vessels.

  The steel doors opened into the Alamo’s version of Central Control. The room teemed with activity. There were engineers at stations using gestures to control large colorful displays.

  In the center of the room, a familiar face directed everything.

  “Watson,” Avro yelled. “You bastard. You orchestrated this chaos!”

  Watson stopped what he was doing and walked over. “Follow me,” he said to us. “We’re all in this together, trust me.” Watson looked grim. We didn’t trust him but his demeanor breached the tension and we relaxed. “Corporals, you can leave us now,” he said to the guards.

  We followed Watson across the busy room and into a hallway of bleached cinderblocks.

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  “You’ll see,” he said.

  “We have questions,” I said.

  “Ask me anything. I’ll be honest,” Watson responded.

  “Is H3 telling the truth? Have you lost control of the storm?” I said.

  “H3 is telling the truth,” Watson said. “We disconnected the reactor from the coils hours ago. We expected to see a measured decrease in the storm’s energy but we didn’t.”

  Avro grabbed Watson’s arm, spinning him around. “You helped create the storm! How can we trust you?”

  “I unknowingly helped create the storm,” Watson explained. Avro let go of his arm. “As you know, Central Control transferred control of Project Bakersfield to the Alamo because of the nuclear reactor. But the coils were hardwired into the grid with the wrong polarity. There was nothing I could do.”

  “So who hardwired it?” Avro asked, as we continued down the hallway.

  “We think it was an engineering officer from the MDF force. We’ve only recently been allowed back into the reactor room now that things aren’t going to plan.”

  The hallway was dimly lit but there was a light at the end. The light illuminated a silver door, large enough to drive a truck through. Watson pressed a key card on a panel located on the wall and the large door swung open. The nuclear reactor rested on the other side.

  The reactor looked like an electrical transformer. At three and a half feet high, it barely rose above my navel. A crane ran along the ceiling for loading the nuclear fuel and several cables connected the reactor to transformers on the walls.

  I studied the device. The thick cables extruded from ports like snakes. The ports were labeled in handwritten sharpie. One said “Presidio Main.” Another said “Alamo Backup,” and another “Backup CO2 scrub.”

  The device had one empty port. It read: “Storm.” I found the simplicity amusing.

  Watson pointed to the empty outlet. A coil of thick wire lay on the floor beside it. “As you can see, we’ve disconnected the reactor from the Anti-Storm system.”

  “You mean storm generator!” Amelia corrected.

  “Yes, well, the storm isn’t getting any more energy from us,” Watson said.

  I continued to study the reactor. “That thing is mobile!” I observed, noticing a dolly beneath the reactor.

  “It is,” Watson concurred. “This is the only one. If we need power elsewhere, we move the reactor. It saves us the trouble of running transmission lines.”

  “So why bring us here?” I said. “What’s the point of all this?”

  “After the hydrogen for the fuel cells runs out, this is all we've got. This reactor could sustain the population of the Alamo. But with hundreds of colonists in the Presidio, this power source won’t last that long.”

  “You mean the colonists in the Presidio are okay?” I asked.

  “They’re fine. There are too many of them for the MDF soldiers to relocate by force. Apparently, they’ve put up a substantial resistance.”

  “Well, that’s a relief,” I said, thinking of Kevin.

  “The point i
s,” Watson continued, “if this storm continues, people will die, including the people in the Alamo. It’s in everyone’s best interests to stop this storm at any cost.”

  “By ‘any cost’ you mean using the colony’s fuel cells in a last ditch attempt to use Project Bakersfield the way it was designed? Those fuel cells are the only thing keeping us from suffocating, freezing, and starving.”

  “I realize that,” Watson said. “But we’ve got to work with the cards we’re dealt.”

  “And if that doesn’t work?” Avro asked.

  Watson leaned in and whispered, “If that doesn’t work, meet me back here. I have a plan that nobody, I mean nobody, but you and I will understand.”

  “And what’s that?” Amelia asked, annoyed that she wasn’t included in Watson’s list of people who would understand.

  “If you drain the fuel cells and the storm still rages, a lot of folks are going to want to kill you,” Watson said.

  “What’s your point?” Amelia inquired.

  “With what I have in mind, they’ll want to kill me, too.” Watson handed me a plastic key fob.

  “What’s this?” I said, looking at the card. It was white, and the only thing written on it was a serial number, RPM-A-0000012-78.

  “That,” he paused, “is the key to the Alamo. It opens all service entrances, even the ones on the outside of the dome.”

  Watson led us out of the Alamo. The guards opened a small hatch in the barrier to let us pass. As we walked down the street in the twelve o’clock dome, we noticed Leeth’s medical tent standing in a parking lot. I looked inside but no one was there. I turned on my phone’s flashlight, panning it around the room. The place was a mess. Gauze and bandages littered the floor. There were eight cots set up, all of them stained with blood.

  I sent Leeth a text message: Everything all right buddy?

  Ten seconds later, Leeth texted back: Screw you. Followed by: you’re lucky no one was killed.

  “Leeth’s fine,” I said.

  It was quiet in the colony as we walked back to the PDC.