The Martian Conspiracy

by Read, John

  “No time!” Avro bellowed and pulled the trigger. Dozens of holes dotted the window, weakening the structure.

  The jeep crashed through the glass. Our windshield shattered, covering us with even more broken glass. Air blasted from the terminal, following us onto the Martian surface. With the pressure equalized, the storm rushed into the spaceport, filling the terminal with dust and wind, spelling a grim end to the soldiers inside.

  The jeep was beat up, covered with bullet holes and missing the hood. But with the battery under the floor and the engine in the back, none of the vehicle’s important systems appeared to be damaged.

  Our spacesuits adapted to the environment. I could feel heat pumping though the suit, counteracting the subzero temperatures outside. The view ahead of us came into focus as my visor adjusted to the darkness.

  “Do you mind telling me what’s going on?” I asked.

  “Amelia will activate the bomb manually,” Avro replied.

  “Manually? You two geniuses couldn’t rig a timer?”

  “Nope.”

  We bounced across the Martian landscape, our visors creating a scene extending a few hundred meters in front of us. Avro found the road leading back to the colony.

  “Did you ever study the Cold War?” Avro asked.

  “Not really, why?” I answered.

  “When the Cold War began, spy satellites had just been invented, but digital cameras hadn’t. The American spy satellite cameras used film. Can you guess how they got the film back?”

  “The satellites re-entered the atmosphere,” I guessed.

  “Wrong,” Avro said. “The satellites stayed in orbit but the film canisters were ejected. The canisters had parachutes but were never intended to hit the ground. Instead, an aircraft snagged the parachute out of the air with a hook.”

  “You’re kidding,” I said.

  “That’s exactly what happened,” Avro said, cutting the wheel as we climbed the switchbacks on the canyon wall.

  “I’m not questioning your history. I know what you want me to do.”

  “What we have to do,” Avro responded. “In exactly ten minutes, Amelia is going to jump from that spacecraft. She has the drogue chute from the ascent vehicle’s emergency kit, but the parachute will only slow her down to a few hundred miles per hour.”

  “What if we fail. What if I don’t catch her?”

  “We won’t fail.”

  We crested the canyon wall and rumbled around the familiar remnants of the nine-o’clock dome. Avro cranked the wheel to the right, following a curved path around the circumferential. On our left, we passed the eight o’clock dome, then the seven o’clock dome. Moments later, our tarmac came into view. The Arachnid sat like a shadow, cloaked in dust.

  Avro pulled up to the PDC’s airlock. We jumped out of the jeep, leaving the vehicle on the tarmac. Avro raced towards the Arachnid, dusting the side door with his glove to reveal the handle.

  “I’ll meet you in the air,” he yelled, climbing into his aircraft.

  “Roger,” I said, stepping into the airlock and closing the hatch.

  I cranked the valve, drawing air in from the colony. Avro didn’t need to communicate any more. I would make the initial capture, but since the Pelican couldn’t land vertically, we’d need to make an in-air transfer.

  The inner airlock door opened and I found Jackson standing in the lounge.

  “What happened?” Jackson asked, jogging beside me as I ran down the hallway in my spacesuit. “Where are Avro and Amelia?”

  “No time to explain but I think we just saved the colony,” I yelled, not even bothering to take off my helmet. “If you can get the hangar doors open right now that would be a huge help. And head back to Central. Get ready to reactivate Project Bakersfield!”

  I climbed into the Pelican’s cockpit, gloved hands flying instinctively across the controls. The hangar door slid open and the dust flew in, peppering the aircraft.

  A message appeared on my display, “Warning. Automated Hangar Landing System Offline.” The hangar’s landing sensors were caked and there was no time to clear them. I guess I’d be landing somewhere else.

  “Here goes nothing,” I said, activating the catapult sequence. The Pelican raced out of the hangar and into the storm. The turbulence jolted me in my harness as I accelerated to five hundred kilometers per hour.

  I pulled back on the stick with my right hand, pushing the throttle with my left. The twin turbofans whined in my ears, thrashing the atmosphere with their teardrop-like blades. The aircraft’s electric motors wined like a gyroscope spinning at full tilt.

  “John, this is Avro, radio check, over.”

  “John here, I read you five by five.”

  “Set your radar to pick up Amelia’s suit transponder: squawk 7700.”

  “Squawk 7700, roger.”

  The view from my cockpit brightened as I rose higher in the sky. I looked back to my displays, searching for Amelia’s signal.

  “Got her, she’s at one hundred thousand feet. Velocity: six thousand kilometers per hour,” I said. “She’s still in the MAV!”

  “Roger that,” replied Avro, “Can you get any closer?”

  “Negative, I’m approaching the Pelican’s operational ceiling.”

  I rose above the storm. Sunlight streamed in through the canopy, almost blinding me before the visor polarized to compensate. The MAV streaked silently across the sky. Suddenly, the spacecraft’s main engine cut off. The trail of smoke from behind it ceased. For a moment, it just coasted.

  Maneuvering thrusters ignited from various orifices on the spacecraft’s exterior. Avro must have programmed the MAV to move away from Amelia once she jumped. Maybe I imagined it, but barely, just barely, I saw something, or someone, separate from the spacecraft.

  I had to shield my eyes when it exploded. The spacecraft morphed into a giant sphere of yellow and red light, brighter than the sun. My visor compensated further, leaving the rest of my view in pitch black.

  “Oh shit,” I said, more in amazement than fear. A cloud of radioactive and highly charged particles sprang from where the spacecraft had been. It worked! At least our plan to make a dirty bomb worked. Whether this would subdue the storm, we could only hope.

  I looked at my sensors. Squawk 7700 was still transmitting!

  “I have her signal!” I called out. “Moving to intercept.”

  I held steady at fifty thousand feet and looked at my display, interpreting the data from Amelia’s transponder. Her altitude ticked down from ninety thousand to seventy thousand feet.

  “Parachute deployed!” a female voice said over the radio. “Avro? John? Do you read me?”

  “I read you loud and clear!” I shouted.

  In the distance, Amelia’s bright orange parachute fluttered high above my position. Its shape resembled a giant ring, designed like a halo for deployment at hypersonic velocities.

  I continued to read the data from my display. Amelia was falling fast but not losing much speed. “It’s going to be close,” I said.

  “Tell Avro I love him,” she said.

  “You’ll be fine, Amelia. Hang in there,” said another voice from over the radio.

  “Avro!” yelled Amelia.

  “You did it, Amelia. Look at the clouds!” Avro said.

  I checked my instruments. Amelia was three miles in front of me and ten thousand feet above. I pulled back on the control stick, attempting to gain what little altitude I could. Then I pushed the stick forward, forcing the Pelican into a dive.

  “Avro, you’re right! The clouds, they’re receding!” You could hear a painful joy in Amelia’s voice. I looked toward the horizon. A tidal wave of dust receded in all directions while mountain peaks broke out of the haze.

  The sight was hypnotic, until Amelia’s parachute whooshed past me. I looked at her transponder data as she descended past forty-seven thousand feet, traveling at almost two thousand kilometers per hour.

  “On my way Amelia, put on those brakes!” I
pushed forward on the throttle, looking for extra juice.

  I descended past forty thousand feet and watched Amelia’s parachute in the distance below me. “I’m catching up,” I said.

  Amelia descended past twenty thousand feet, her parachute continuing to grow in my field of view.

  “Okay, Amelia, here I come!” I said, extending the Pelican’s landing boom below the fuselage. The boom was designed to capture a landing assist cable on short runways. We sure hoped it would capture a parachute.

  “I’m right behind you. Hope you like whiplash.”

  “Just catch me, dammit!” Amelia yelled.

  Amelia descended past ten thousand feet and the ground came up fast. The ground! We could see the ground! For a moment I almost lost focus but quickly regained it as time ran out.

  The parachute took up my entire field of view. It was huge, perhaps two hundred feet in diameter. The Pelican passed over the chute, the fabric bending as it rubbed the underside of the fuselage.

  A vibration shook the Pelican and a green light flashed up on the display.

  “Captured!” I shouted, yanking back on the stick to avoid driving my plane into a hillside. “Wahoo!” I shouted.

  “Wahoo yourself,” Amelia muttered. “That hurt!” I could hear the smile in her voice.

  “Did it hurt more than jumping out of an exploding radioactive spaceship?” Avro asked.

  “Yes, actually,” Amelia responded. “You owe me one hell of a massage!”

  I tapped the dive brakes and leveled us out. Amelia pulled along behind me like a water skier. She turned herself around to face forward, holding on to the parachute cables like a water skier’s rope.

  We banked around and headed back toward the colony.

  “Okay, Avro, form up,” I called.

  “Roger that. Decrease speed to three hundred kilometers per hour. Meet you at five thousand feet over the colony.”

  Avro transitioned from a hover to horizontal flight as I flew down over the canyon.

  Amelia and I got our first view of the colony since the storm began. The nine o’clock dome looked worse from above. The dome’s glass had shattered all the way to the zenith. The cleaning drones shot out of their bunkers, and we watched the first glints of sunlight off freshly dusted panels.

  “Forming up,” I said over the radio as we passed the Arachnid. “Slowing to three hundred.”

  Avro slipped his aircraft onto my six, flying next to Amelia.

  “Well, howdy there, gorgeous,” he said, in a fake Texas accent. “Nice of you to drop in.”

  “Hi-ya partner,” replied Amelia. “Nice of you to stop by. What can I say? I guess I done fell for you.”

  Avro inched his aircraft towards Amelia with the side door open. He kept Amelia close, careful to keep her away from the thrusters.

  Amelia reached out a gloved hand and grabbed a rail. “Contact!” she reported.

  After pulling herself into the Arachnid, she connected her suit to the aircraft with a tether and released the parachute. The chute fluttered down towards the colony, settling on top of the suspension bridge that had finally stopped wobbling.

  I watched through my port window as Amelia climbed into the cockpit with Avro.

  Avro looked over and gave me a salute. “John, I need to land ASAP. I’m running on fumes.”

  “Roger that. Safe landing you two,” I said.

  “You too. Good luck,” Avro said.

  “Why good luck?” Amelia asked, sounding confused.

  “He has to land on the spaceport’s runway,” Avro explained. “The automatic landing system in our hangar needs repairs and the spaceport’s terminals are out of commission.”

  “What happened to the spaceport?” Amelia asked.

  “We depressurized it,” Avro answered, with a smirk. “Along with the rest of the MDF.”

  “Oh, “Amelia responded. “That must have sucked.”

  I flew over the runway, looking for a clear place to land. The spaceport’s runway was covered in dunes. The flight through the storm had drained the Pelican’s batteries and I had minutes left before I became a glider.

  I took a moment and looked around the colony. The solar panels were clean! Several drones were already retreating to their bunkers. I pictured Director Jackson with a big smile on his face and wearing his sunglasses again. Hopefully, he’d reactivated Project Bakersfield. With sunlight hitting the panels and energy pouring into the coils, the planet-wide storm would be over in a matter of hours.

  I was afraid, terrified actually, of what would happen to me when I landed. Were there still any MDF soldiers left? If there were, would they shoot me on sight? If I were lucky, maybe they’d just rough me up since I would be coming in unarmed.

  I thought of Marie and Branson. Marie would be so proud of me, her husband, the hero. Who would have thought? Branson would be almost five now. If he were here, I guess he’d be proud too. I pictured their smiles, smiles I’d never see again. I smiled back.

  I thought back to that day in the simulator when I crashed into the San Francisco hillside. Looking to my right, I stared at the nearby hill. It was covered in solar panels glowing green and blue in the sunlight.

  I returned my focus to the runway, thinking of Avro, Amelia, Kevin and Leeth. They’d poured their souls into me, building friendships forged in our shared experience.

  A mile ahead, a flat stretch of runway caught my eye. It wasn’t perfect but I figured I’d be able to get the aircraft down in one piece.

  I switched my comm frequency to Martian standard. “MATC, this is Pelican Papa Delta Charley, requesting permission to land on runway one eight.” Considering the circumstances, I expected Martian Air Traffic Control frequencies to be unmonitored. I was wrong.

  “Copy that, Pelican, you are cleared to land on runway one eight. Just a warning, it looks like you have quite a welcoming committee down here.” A chill ran down my spine. We’d put everyone’s lives on the line not once, but twice, in the last few hours alone. We’d soon be faced with the consequences of our actions.

  But then I recognized the voice, “Watson, is that you?”

  “It sure is! I’ll meet you at the MDF airlock.”

  “What about the airlock in the main terminal?” I asked, my fear slowly being replaced by relief.

  “According to the folks here, you depressurized most of the spaceport with that jeep.”

  “Oh yeah,” I said. “Sorry about that.”

  “Just get back in one piece, eh?”

  I leveled the aircraft and lined up to the runway. The Pelican used a skid plate instead of landing gear, so this could be rough, but I couldn’t be sure. I’d never landed on a runway outside the simulator.

  The Martian dust softened the impact and the Pelican kicked up a spray of red fog as it cruised down the runway. I pressed the stick forward, driving the skid plate against the runway until I came to a complete stop.

  The Pelican wasn’t designed for taxiing but that didn’t matter. There wasn’t any place to park with the spaceport covered in sand dunes. I checked my suit to make sure it was operating and opened the hatch. I climbed out into the sunshine and began trudging across the tarmac. In the distance, several drones came out of their garages and began to plow.

  The airlock’s hatch slid open like the doors at a shopping mall. I stepped inside and closed my eyes, hoping I would be greeted with more appreciation than when I left.

  When the interior door hissed open, I opened my eyes. Watson walked over and gave me a hug, slapping me on the back. A crowd of Harmony Colony’s police and other people I didn’t recognize started clapping, then cheering. One of the cops held a weapon captured from the MDF and another held one of Amelia’s crossbows.

  I walked forward, popping the seal on my helmet, lifting it off my head and tucking it under my arm. I walked through the crowd with Watson, people congratulating me by slapping me on the back. Apparently, Watson had spread the word about what we had accomplished and how we did it.
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br />   “John Orville,” he said. “You just saved the planet.”

  “I had a little help.”

  I gave Watson a confused look. “How did you get here so quickly? I’m pretty sure the bridge is out of commission.”

  “I came with the reinforcements here,” he gestured to the cops and other volunteers, “in a rover. We half expected a firefight but found only a half dozen MDF soldiers. They immediately surrendered, said they were the only ones left!”

  “Thanks for coming to get me. What did I miss?” I said.

  “There was chaos in the Alamo when you got away with the reactor. People knew what you were trying to do but no one thought it would work. When the spacecraft took off with the reactor inside, they thought that was it. They believed they had only hours to live. Grown men cried and people beat the walls in grief.”

  “That bad, huh?”

  “But then we saw a light from up in the clouds. The storm parted like Moses and the red sea. People celebrated. It was like their home team just won the Super Bowl!”

  “What about H3?” I asked.

  “Look for yourself,” Watson said, pointing to the window and at the Alamo. A hatch was open on top of the dome and a cloud of smoke billowed out. I followed the cloud upward, and at its tip, an MAV rocketed toward space.

  “H3 had an escape pod?” I asked.

  “He had it prepped after he met with you. The truth’s getting out, John. You guys crumbled his empire like a house of cards.”

  Word spread to the Presidio that the storm had ended and Kevin led the people out as the barriers lifted. The colonists paused as they emerged from the deep, taking in the sunlight they never thought they’d see again.

  With H3 gone, there was confusion about who was in charge. But within a few hours, a senior Red Planet executive issued a statement across social media.

  “I, Fredrick J. Wong, will temporarily take over the leadership of Red Planet Mining, Incorporated and its assets. Henry the Third’s whereabouts are currently unknown. We will issue a formal statement in the coming sols. In the meantime, business as usual. I thank you for your resilience in these turbulent times.”