“Oh…”
“Yeah,” Karla continued. “He associates with royalty and movie stars. He’s kind of an uber-socialite. He’s legit. He started a spaceline a few years back for the very rich only. Anyway, if you don’t mind, I’ve got to go for now. Call if you need anything urgent.”
“Okay, will do. Bye. Buzz, end call.” Zara refocused on her surroundings, looked over at Kato, shrugged, and relayed the information. Then, her eyes began to tear up. “Earth, Dad. I want to go. This… place… isn’t home.”
Kato walked over and hugged her. “I know, sweetie. It’ll probably be a few days until they’ll let us.”
“But, it’s urgent! All these people have no idea what it’s like not to have seen your home in two hundred something… what year is it again?”
“2352.”
“What was that park we were in the other day?” Kato said, as they took the walkway, twenty meters above the ground, which connected the Mars Science Foundation to the hospital.
“You mean the one where I had a meltdown?” Zara said.
Kato smiled. “I wasn’t going to say that, but yes.”
“Pentland Park,” Zara said. “This city is enormous, by the way. I was browsing it on Buzz.”
“I want to go back there,” Kato said.
“Why?”
“You know those contraptions that were flying around?”
“I wasn’t really paying attention,” Zara said.
“I want to go and fly in one of those. Put my new-found strength to the test.”
Near a hotdog stand at the edge of the large park, Kato used his payment chip, mounted in a ring on his finger, for the first time. He rented a Da Vinci machine. It looked dangerous and unwieldy, consisting of a go kart-like tubular metal frame on wheels, which supported a single bucket seat. In front of the seat were pedals, to be turned by the pilot’s feet. These were connected by a vertical shaft through the machine’s center to an unlikely-looking rotor. It was a disc, roughly three meters across. It was radially split in two places, and warped to form a crude airscrew. Kato, Zara, and Karla grinned.
“Do you dare me?” Kato said.
“I think they’re safe enough to fly,” Karla said, “and these guys are watching your back.” She looked around at the bodyguards.
“Listen to her!” the vendor in charge of the machines said, in good humor. He was an older, balding, Italian man, and spoke with a corresponding accent. “You’ll be fine. Go on, take it for a spin. No pun intended.” Kato climbed uncertainly into the seat, and buckled himself in with what looked like a standard car seatbelt. “My name is Luigi, by the way,” the vendor said. “Okay, just pedal hard, and tilt your body in the direction you want to go. The stick in front of you will turn the craft left or right. It shouldn’t be too hard for a young man such as yourself. If I can do it, with my extra poundage”—he patted his stomach—“I’m sure you can!”
“Okay…” Kato said, uncertainly. He gripped the stick, and began to pedal. The rotor turned easily and gathered speed. The gears automatically shifted up, and Kato pedaled harder. The weak Martian gravity could contain him no longer, and the ungainly machine lifted off, slowly, from the grass. The blades bowed under waves of downwash from the rotor. “Woohoo!” Kato yelled.
Kato worked harder and ascended twenty, then thirty meters, above the park. The machine began to tilt lazily to the rear, which would take him toward the buildings, so he leaned forward to correct it before he drifted too far in that direction. Having stabilized the primitive helicopter, Kato leaned forward while still pedaling furiously, in order to start moving away from the skyscrapers that bordered the park.
Kato looked left and right. He could now see outlying parts of Marineris between the buildings, and the Martian surface beyond. The afternoon sun filtered through the dome that enclosed the city. Kato continued to pedal hard. He was now the highest flying Da Vinci machine. He didn’t let up. He was now nearly as high as the park was wide. Kato grinned widely, and looked back down at the others, now mere pinpricks on the ground. “What if I left the park altogether?” he muttered mischievously.
“Dad?” Zara’s voice sounded in his ear. He jumped. “Dad, I know you can hear me. Luigi says you’ve got to come down!” Kato grinned like a naughty schoolboy.
A small crowd had gathered far below, muttering and pointing up at him. “I guess the guy always loved to fly,” one of them said.
“He’s nuts!” another said. “He’ll be arrested!”
Now drawing level with the tops of some of the smaller skyscrapers, Kato started to breathe more heavily now, as the effort of hauling himself eight hundred meters into the sky began to catch up with him. Spherical news drones, about the size of soccer balls, began to appear in the middle distance, level with Kato. Their lenses were focused on him. His exploits were now being broadcast all over Mars. “Having returned from his slumber in deep space barely three weeks ago, Kato Sasake-Robbins is once again making headlines…” the news anchors said.
“DAD! You HAVE to come down!” Zara yelled in his ear.
“Ugh,” Kato said, reluctantly. He began to descend, making a slow left turn to try to home in on the landing site. CRACK! The Da Vinci machine rolled quickly to the left, and kept going, over and over, losing height. Kato saw ground, then buildings, then sky, then ground, then buildings. Some chunks of black material passed close by. “HELP! I’M GOING DOWN!” he yelled. Another piece of the rotor broke off, and Kato was in freefall. The weakness of the Martian gravity was of no use now. The Da Vinci machine tumbled over and over. Every time the ground passed by, it was a little closer. Oh my God, this is it, Kato thought. I survived two hundred years in deep freeze and the trip back here only to die like this! Vision blurring… ears popping…
“DAD!” Zara yelled.
“Hang on!” Luigi yelled. He ran back to the rental stand, next to the sidewalk that bordered the park. It looked much like a lectern. He flipped its lid open, to reveal a bank of perhaps sixty numbered red buttons. He stopped dead, his eyes scanning the buttons over and over, a look of utter panic on his face. He grabbed a clipboard, flipped over one page, and ran his finger hurriedly down the next one. Kato accelerated toward oblivion. Luigi found Kato’s name and, written beside it, was a number: fifty-two. He quickly found the corresponding button and pushed it hard. Small explosive charges went off in tubes attached to the body of what was left of Kato’s flying machine. The expanding gases pushed two parachutes out. They instantly began to inflate, slowing his descent. All was well—for a few seconds. The shroud lines began to entangle, constricting the parachutes’ canopies. The machine picked up speed again, as it succumbed to gravity. Zara, Luigi, the crowd of people below, and the rest of Mars watched in horror as the events unfolded, seemingly in slow motion. Every eyeball traced Kato’s path as he plummeted. The ground came up to meet him. The machine slammed into the grass upside down, bounced once, and then came to rest on its side. The parachutes settled down over him, as though trying to cover up their poor job of saving him.
Zara and the rest of the crowd sprinted towards Kato. The news drones descended, zooming in as fast as they could. Most of the planet now stared, rapt, at the nearest screen. Accidents and crime were rare on Mars, so anything of that nature was utterly fascinating. This was doubly so, given who was involved. Zara’s young, strong legs propelled her across the grass at speed. She was nearly acclimated to Mars’ gravity. She skidded to a halt and dived underneath the parachute’s fabric. “DAD!” she yelled. “DAD! Are you okay?”
“Aaargh… ugh…”
“You’ve alive! Oh, thank God!” Three flight-suited paramedics reached the scene a few seconds later. “Don’t unbuckle him, ma’am,” they said. Zara obeyed, withdrawing her hand from the machine’s bent, crushed frame. The professionals extricated him, slowly, from the wreck. A lozenge-shaped vee-tol—vertical takeoff and landing—craft had conveyed the paramedics there. It was a capsule around five meters long. Its lower half was a silv
er metal skin, while the upper half was transparent. Kato was put on a stretcher and whisked away. “Let me on!” Zara implored.
“Of course,” the chief paramedic said. She quickly climbed in and sat on one of the bench seats inside. The door closed. A few seconds later, with a rushing of air, the craft lifted off and ascended vertically, and then started heading towards one corner of the park. High above the watching crowds, it found a gap in the wall of skyscrapers and threaded its way through. Thousands of people in the buildings watched it pass. Zara’s head spun, even as she struggled to catch her breath from running. A kilometer later, the vee-tol descended, and touched down on the roof of Itoku Medical Center. Kato was whisked away by more waiting paramedics, this time wearing white coats, into a room that protruded from the roof. Zara ran to keep up. The door slid shut behind them.
Eerie quiet descended. All was still. Zara looked imploringly at the faces around her. They all seemed to be frozen and spaced out. “I’m Doctor Mullur,” an Indian voice said, as he emerged from the seeming trance. There were murmurs of assent from the others. “You were very lucky, Kato. No permanent damage. The worst injury you seem to have sustained is a broken collar bone. Your right one. This was caused by the seatbelt, which is also what saved you.”
“How do you know?” Zara asked.
“This room is a scanner. We’re getting the results with our neural implants.”
The door burst open and three breathless bodyguards entered. The doctors jumped. “Is he okay?” one demanded.
“Yes,” Dr. Mullur said.
“You’re not safe here, Kato,” the guard said. “A bullet brought your aircraft down. It was doubtless meant for you.” He turned to the doctor. “I’m Commander Vasilev, by the way. We have to leave here now.”
“But… we haven’t treated him!”
“Make it quick.”
“Uhh… right… give me the gun…”
“Gun?” Zara said, wide-eyed. A colleague handed Dr. Mullur a device resembling a caulk application gun. He pressed it to Kato’s right collarbone, and pulled the trigger. It emitted a short hiss.
“You’ll be better in a day or two,” the doctor said.
“Phew,” Zara said.
“Can you walk?” Commander Vasilev asked.
“Uhh… I’m in a lot of pain. My ribs, legs, head…” Dr. Mullur twisted the gun barrel, and pressed some buttons on its wraparound touchscreen. “Let me see your arm.” He pressed the device against Kato’s left bicep and pulled the trigger again. All eyes were on Kato, as his agonized expression and gritted teeth gradually relaxed.
“Whoa!” he said. “No pain… at all!”
“Are you drowsy?” Zara said.
“No!”
“There are no side effects, unlike the medications of your day,” the doctor said.
“Wow… thank you!”
Zara was furious. They had arrived back at the hospital, via the raised walkway, after their second day working with the academics at the Mars Science Foundation. They walked down the clinical, white corridor towards their apartment. “They told me I’m some sort of effing master criminal, Dad!”
“Oh…”
“And that the reason I was able to meet you in space was because I pulled off the so-called greatest theft of all time: hijacking a huge spaceship belonging to some guy named Seung Yi.”
“Ah…”
“That’s what you weren’t supposed to tell me yet, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” Kato admitted, sheepishly.
“If it was so long ago, why are we in danger now because of it?”
Kato sighed. “I may as well tell you. Some of his descendants are still alive. He ran a huge corporation, second in size only to mine, and it still exists. You know that building near the park with the blue MX9 logo on it?”
“Umm… there are a lot of buildings…”
“Yes. Well, that was his company. The bullet that nearly hit me probably came from there.”
A long silence. Zara’s jaw clenched. “I now wish even more that they’d never brought us back. I really want to get out of here and go to Earth. Mars is a goddamn deathtrap.”
Kato nodded. “I hear you.”
“I need to go back Dad. If I’m going to be killed over something I did hundreds of years ago, I want to at least see home again first.” Zara’s eyes narrowed, and she looked up at Kato. “What if we’d be out of harm’s way there? As in, these nut job assassins are only here, and wouldn’t follow us to Earth. As in, screw the MSF because they’re endangering us just by keeping us here.”
“We’re supposed to stay and work with them, though.”
“Like I said, I’d rather have passed away naturally, trillions of kilometers away, when the power gave out, than deal with all this,” Zara said. “We could just leave. Not even ask them, or tell them. Just go.”
Kato ran his fingers through his hair. “But, how are we going to get anywhere? I don’t know how anything works yet.”
“The all-knowing Buzz?” Zara said, irritably. “I don’t know… We’re goddamn interstellar travelers; we ought to be able to figure this out.”
Kato sighed and folded his arms. “Okay. Call that guy…”
“Gansevoort?”
“Yes, him. Call him back and see when he can take us. Plus all the mundane stuff like how we even get to his ship. Does it land on Mars, or do we go to it?”
Zara looked at Kato wide-eyed as she sat on his left on the busy train. It accelerated west from Central Station in Marineris, on tracks elevated twenty meters above one of the main roads. They happened to be traveling past Pentland Park. Kato looked up at the needle-like buildings 200 meters away, one of which bore the blue MX9 logo. The left stem of the M sprouted a line to the left, which wrapped up and over, down the right side, and joined with the bottom of the 9. Zara followed his upward gaze. She discreetly held up a middle finger towards it. Kato grinned. The train kept gaining speed. Soon the main business district was behind them. Lower-rise buildings and neighborhoods flashed past. More stations, but the train didn’t stop, as it was an express. Soon, outside was a blur. Then, they were speeding across the planet’s surface, outside of the city of Marineris. There was no longer a dome covering the tracks. Other passengers were oblivious, many having zoned out as they watched entertainment in their heads. Zara turned and looked at Kato, with fear in her eyes. “God, Dad, should we be doing this? I mean, no-one’s guiding or protecting us. What if we just signed our own death warrants?”
“Zara, if I was that afraid of dying, I wouldn’t have did what I did all those years ago. Same goes for you.”
Zara nodded and smiled. “Good point. This whole thing’s unbelievable. All of it. The fact that we’re even here. We’re adventurers in the truest sense.”
“Bio or plastic?” asked the smiling lady at the boarding gate.
“Umm… plastic.” Kato produced two chips, about the size of fingernails, and handed them to the lady. She waved them over a pad.
“Welcome aboard, Mr. Sasake…” She looked up and paused, her mouth wide open. “You’re… the Sleepers!”
“Shh!” Kato hissed in annoyance, his forefinger over his lips. “Yes, we are. Please keep quiet about it.”
“Enjoy the flight.” Kato and Zara were soon strapped into their flight couches in the first class section of the outbound shuttle craft. Its interior was of white leather and chrome. The stubby lifting body craft would convey them the one million kilometers from Mars to Commerce City, the planet’s capital and space transportation interchange.
“You know, we’re right next to the Valles Marineris,” Kato said. “Presumably where the city got its name. It’s a fissure so vast it makes the Grand Canyon look like a ditch. Your grandma Kinuko saw it lots of times from orbit. It’s also where the first settlement was. We’ll fly right over it.”
“Please tell me we’re doing the right thing, Dad. We opted out of being protected by the Goon Squad. What if the assassins are following us right no
w?”
Kato turned and looked carefully around the cabin. Few people were paying any attention. He turned to Zara and whispered: “I guess we can thank people’s techno-absorption and the fact that we’re decades younger than when we were recovered for having not been recognized yet. Besides by the woman at the gate, anyway.”
“Yeah.”
The countdown clock at the front of the cabin reached zero. The craft shook with pent-up, restrained power. The roar gradually grew. The walls dissolved to show the view outside, as the shuttle rose vertically on a white-hot exhaust plume. Their engines shone a bright glare onto the scrubby red landscape. The main terminal tower cast a shadow several kilometers long, which shortened rapidly as they rose. Kato craned his head to see the Valles Marineris. Then, the aft power kicked in, at full thrust and volume. The desert floor shot by, and melted into the atmospheric haze as they left Mars behind.
Commerce City looked like a spinning top, suspended in pitch blackness. Its main section was a giant cylinder, which dwarfed the many spacecraft that were docked to it. Towards the top, a donut-shaped section spun around it. “We made it this far, Dad.”
“Yeah, we did. Even if the food wasn’t up to much.”
“Now what?” Zara said.
“Philip said he’d set up prompts in Buzz for us to follow, once we get in there. Let’s just hope it works as expected. I really don’t want to have to ask for directions or draw attention to ourselves.”
“Will our expense accounts work on Earth?”
“I have no idea,” Kato said.
“But what I do know is, we’re going home, Dad. Home.” Zara squeezed Kato’s hand. He squeezed back. “Whatever’s happened in the intervening time, whatever challenges we have to face, it’s home.”
Kato and Zara gawked through the glass sides of the elevator, as it moved along the cylindrical section of Commerce City. It gave a view out into space. All manner of craft were docked outside. Most looked fairly plain and utilitarian. However, as the elevator slowed, an extraordinary ship came into view. Gansevoort was 250 meters long, with a rectangular cross section of around fifteen meters by twenty-five. Three quarters of the way along, the ship’s top and bottom surfaces began to curve very gently inward, toward each other. They met at the ship’s nose, forming a wedge, whose edge extended across her entire twenty five-meter width. The vessel’s geometrically perfect exterior surfaces were of a very dark blue, almost black. However, when the sun reflected directly from her surface, a mini, fiery, circular rainbow could be seen. Gansevoort was docked nose-in to the station.
Kato's War: Book Two of the Kato's War series Page 2