by Graham Brown
As the assistant left, Hannah shut the door. She came over to James and placed a pair of long hypodermic needles on a tray beside him.
“Ares,” she said, taking one of the hypodermics and drawing fifty ccs of some amber liquid from a large vial. “Is that your name?”
James didn’t know if she was trying to make small talk to take his mind off the needle or if she had recognized him.
“It is.”
“Look at me, please.”
The words were clinical. As if she needed to examine his eyes. But when James looked up he could see more on her pretty face. Expectation and confirmation. He looked nothing like the man he’d been when they were together. But no one could change his eyes.
“James,” she whispered.
He kept up the charade. “Excuse me?”
“You don’t have to pretend,” she said. “I know it’s you. You can talk to me. I’ve scanned these rooms. There are no bugs. No one’s listening to us.”
He kept silent. The situation was so odd he didn’t know how to respond. Her face was so kind. Her eyes red as if she’d been crying or not sleeping. Her lips trembling as she waited for an answer. All he wanted to do was reach out and embrace her.
“What are you doing here?” he asked finally.
Her eyes welled up at this. She reached forward and grabbed his hand, gripping it tightly. “I might ask you the same thing,” she said. “The whole world thinks you’re dead. “
“I almost was,” he said. “I ended up in the sublevels. Apparently that’s the hunting ground for slaves these days.”
She nodded.
“I don’t remember you having an interest in Mars?” he said.
“Your father sent me,” she admitted.
“My father?”
She nodded. “I don’t know how to explain this,” she said. “But I’m not who you think I am. I was never part of the opposition. I was never a critic of your father’s. Not really. I’m with Section 7.”
James stared through the grime and pain trying to understand. Section 7 was a deep cover intelligence group under his father’s personal control. Some considered them the president’s secret police. “You were spying on me?”
“I was doing my job,” she explained. “He asked me to spend time with you, because he was concerned with your views. But over time my feelings for you became very real, if that even matters.”
For a moment the petty anger of having his father distrust him flared, but James quickly tossed it aside. None of it mattered. Not now.
In a bizarre way, hearing that she was part of Section 7 spurred a pang of hope in him. It meant she was sworn to uphold the Constitution, to defend the government that had just been attacked. She might have access to weapons, communications. She might be able to help.
“How bad is it?” he asked.
“Pretty damned awful,” she said. She explained what she knew of the situation on Earth with the military hunting the Black Death, and the orders his father was supposedly giving.
“It’s a lie,” he said. “My father’s dead. Inyo betrayed him. Sold him out to the Cartel.”
“I assumed as much.”
“We have to get in touch with the high command,” he said. “They have to know the truth. If I talk to them. If they see my face, hear my words. They can rally the troops and we stand a chance of bringing this whole thing back under control.”
She shook her head. “I have no access to off world communications. Everything is locked down and heavily guarded. Even if I could break in, the Cartel is in control of the relay satellites. Our message would never get through.”
James looked up at the ceiling in frustration. “There has to be a way,” he said.
“We can’t reach Earth,” she replied. “But maybe we can do something here. There are people who want to fight.”
“Who?” James asked. “How many?”
“Most of the governing council,” she said.
“Politicians won’t do you much good,” he said. “You’re going to need an army. What about the workers?”
“They’re afraid,” she said. “They know the situation is bad but they won’t act if they don’t have any hope. They need a leader, someone to believe in. If they knew you were alive, they might be willing to—”
“No.”
“But James—”
“I said no! The Cartel will kill me the second they find out I’m alive. They’ll kill you just for knowing me.”
“But if we kept it quiet...”
“It won’t stay that way,” he said. “Besides we can’t beat these guys with small arms and Molotov cocktails. We need heavy weapons. Armor.”
“We don’t have access to any of that,” she said. “The Cartel has confiscated everything.”
“What about the military units my father sent here?”
“The men from the 26th and the 132nd were rounded up and…”
James could guess at the rest. They were probably all dead by now. “What about the 41st?”
“They were sent out into the desert when everything went down. They never came back. No one’s seen or heard from them since,” she said. “Rumor has it they were given poisoned rations.”
James felt as if he’d been stabbed in the heart. His men. His unit.
Before he could muster a reply, the door swung open. A tall man in an ornate uniform stood there along with another man in military-like duds and a pair of guards.
“Governor,” Hannah said, standing.
James glanced at Cassini and the man who stood beside him. In that instant he recognized him. The same son of a bitch who’d fired the missile into his wrecked car.
He quickly turned his eyes to the floor, like a good slave was supposed to.
“I’d like to introduce the new head of military operations,” Cassini said. “Commander Magnus Gault.”
Hannah shook hands with him and James seethed quietly.
“Gault will be taking over the military units while I will concentrate fully on running the city and speeding up the construction process,” Cassini added. He stepped up and put a hand on her arm. “I hope you’ll continue to help me.”
Hannah smiled as if she was excited to see him. It made James sick but he understood. She was a soldier in a different kind of war. A dirtier war in some ways.
“Of course I will,” she said.
“Good,” Cassini said. “Now what’s going on here? Some kind of epidemic?
“No,” Hannah said. “We had to rescan a few of the new arrivals. They received faulty boosters. It was limiting their ability to work.”
“Is this one ready to go?”
“Yes,” Hannah said. “He’s all set.”
“Good,” Cassini replied. “He looks like a strong worker. He’ll easily make it a year.”
With that, Cassini turned to Gault. “Take him outside. He can wait there until the others have been inoculated, then deliver them back to the worksite.”
Gault nodded at Cassini and then motioned toward the door. “Let’s go.”
James stepped through the door. The last thing he saw was the full hypodermic sitting on the tray. The booster he’d supposedly been given. But Cassini didn’t notice; he was busy caressing the soft skin of Hannah’s arm.
CHAPTER 25
By the time James and the other prisoners were dumped back at the work site, the next shift had begun. Despite their lack of rest, they were loaded down with machine parts and sent into the fray.
James took what he was given and hiked up the sprawling anthill that had been built around the base of the Core Unit. He was directed inside, where he climbed a dozen flights of stairs and made his way out onto a platform where the control room was being constructed.
He couldn’t help but marvel at the immense size of the structure. It was like standing in the middle of an empty coliseum. The fusion grid down below was almost complete. The walls of titanium were nearly finished, plate after plate being welded into place. He couldn’t vouch
for the construction standards but if they were up to the job, the unit would be active in a month or so.
Then what, he wondered. Would the slaves be moved to a new task? Would they be needed at all? Surely they’d be worked to death, or simply shot when they weren’t needed anymore.
“Put the parts down over here,” a technician said. “Be careful.”
James recognized the man’s orange uniform as belonging to one of the original Terra-formers. The man looked worn out. James wondered what would happen to these men and women when their work was done. The Cartel would need some of them for maintenance, but not all of them.
James placed the parts next to a stack of modular electronic equipment.
“Thanks,” the man said.
James nodded and turned around, heading back toward the stairway. Going down was far easier than climbing up and he soon reached the exit point. From there, he hiked back down the hill toward the staging area.
As he went, Bethel caught up to him. “What happened?”
James kept walking. He wasn’t ready to discuss it. The meeting with Hannah had released a torrent of feelings. Some of which were reverberating like an echo. Tens of thousands would die here when the Cartel was finished with them. Billions on the Earth, lives James had scorned and now felt for. The guilt crashed over him in waves.
Hannah wanted him to do something about it. Bethel did too. But what the hell could he do? He was a slave. He was powerless and he knew it.
“What happened?” Bethel asked again.
“Nothing,” James said. “Nothing happened.”
“What did they want with you?”
James turned to Bethel, anger flashed across his face. “They gave me another inoculation,” he said.
“That’s it?” Bethel said. “They could have done that here.”
James realized that. He wondered how long it would take the thugs who ran the place to realize that. He began walking again.
“We need to talk,” Bethel said, catching up to him again.
“Leave me alone.”
Bethel grabbed James by the shoulder. James stopped in his track, whirled around and glared at Bethel.
Before he could say anything, a scuffle broke out nearby. Over by the line at the water table. A young boy, maybe twelve or thirteen, was trying to push his way into the line. The guards were pushing him back.
“Get out of here boy,” one of them said. “You’ve had your water.”
“I get a drink,” the kid said. “I did what I was told.”
He stepped forward but was shoved to the ground by another guard standing near the water dispenser.
“Three more runs,” the guard said. “Then you get a drink. Understand?”
The kid showed no signs of backing down or crying. “I’m thirsty,” he shouted.
The guards laughed. “Then you’d better get your ass moving.”
The kid stood slowly and turned back toward the staging area, looking dejected. But when the guards turned their attention away for a second, he darted back to the table and grabbed a bottle of water.
One guard lunged for him, but the kid was small and quick. He ducked and ran. Two other thugs chased him. “You’re gonna regret this, punk!”
The kid raced into the crowd, but they parted as the guards came after him. He kept running and changing direction. Looking over his shoulder as he ran, the kid slammed into the slave-master.
He might as well have run into a wall.
Knocked to the ground, the kid looked up just in time to see that damned cattle prod headed for his chest.
The kid screamed in agony as it hit him.
The crowd froze, watching in horror.
After ten seconds of wailing, the slave-master pulled his weapon back.
The kid rolled over, curling up in the fetal position.
“You think that was funny?” the slave-master said.
The kid shook his head.
“I’ll give you something to laugh at.”
With that, the slave-master jammed the cattle prod into the kid again, just as he’d done to James, but this time he held it on until the child passed out from the pain.
The silence was deafening.
“Take him to north point,” the slave-master grunted to a pair of his thugs. “Chain him to the dead machines.”
Hours later, after the shift ended, arguments began breaking out in the shantytown of the slaves. James found it hard to tell what was going on, but it sounded like the kid’s mother and father were arguing with each other, and a few big shots from the camp had joined in.
James had seen them before; they had pulled the tarp down in front of his face. One of them, the leader, seemed to go by the name Kek. With only a few days in the camp, James wasn’t certain of much, but he was fairly sure Kek and his friend were collaborators of some kind. Probably trading information and promises for a little extra consideration; more food, better assignments, a shorter sentence in this hellhole.
As the argument went on, the shouting grew and the tiny old man began to make his rounds, pulling the tarps down tight, warning everyone about the sun. It was madness.
“Where did they take him?” the woman begged.
“Out into the desert,” replied the father.
“To north point and the dead machines,” Kek added.
“Why?” the woman screamed. “He’s only a boy.”
“You’re lucky they only punished him,” Kek growled. “And not the rest of us.”
Others looked on, watching impassively. Their faces were blank. This wasn’t the first heart-wrenching scene they’d witnessed, and it wouldn’t be the last.
The boy’s mother was inconsolable now, tears streaming down her face, shaking her head in disbelief. Her husband put his hand on her to comfort her but she slapped it away.
James couldn’t take it anymore. He stood suddenly.
His movement startled everyone. They watched as he jammed the scalpel he’d palmed into the edge of the tarp and cut a large section out of it.
“What are you doing?” Bethel asked.
“What I can,” James said.
He finished his cut, gathered up the fallen material and stuffed three bottles of water into the pockets of his pants and made his way for the exit. Before he could get there, Kek blocked his path.
“Where the hell do you think you’re going?”
“I’m going to get the kid,” James said.
“Like hell you are.”
James took a step around Kek only to have the man grab him.
With a quick move, James knocked Kek’s arm loose and shoved him out of the way. As Kek stumbled backward, James ducked through the hole he’d cut and walked out onto the barren plain. No one followed or tried any further to stop him.
“It’s five miles to north point,” Kek shouted from beneath the safety of the tarp. “You’ll never make it.”
James ignored him, turned north and wrapped the tarp around him like a shroud. He pulled it over his face just as the blazing orange sun set fire to the horizon.
Bethel watched him with pride. “Go, my friend,” he whispered. “Go.”
CHAPTER 26
With the sun rising fast, James used the tarp to cover his head, neck and back. He continued north, sticking to the higher ground, doing his best to avoid the soft red sand, but still the journey took its toll. The thin Martian atmosphere made breathing difficult and, despite the hemoglobin booster, it soon felt as if his lungs were failing. He ignored the pain and pushed forward, eyes burning and sweat pouring down his face.
As he pressed on James could hardly believe the difference between the frigid nights and blazing heat of the day.
Two hours into the hike he crested a small ridge and caught sight of a reflection, the sunlight glinting off something metallic in the distance. He pressed on, moving faster. Getting closer.
Through shimmering waves of heat, details began to appear. He saw the machines now, several dozen of them scattered in a random
pattern.
North Point was apparently something of a boneyard. Cranes, earthmovers, backhoes and bulldozers sat scattered about. There were even a few armored transports and a pair of older model MRVs.
Feeling as if his skin was burning through the tarp and thinking of the young boy exposed in the blazing sun, James began to run, jogging at first and then sprinting down the hill.
It was a stumbling, awkward run made worse by the soft sand beneath his feet and the awkwardness of holding the tarp around him. He fell once, got up and then fell again. Finally he reached the flat ground and raced into the area. He passed a few trucks buried up to their axles in the sand and then felt as if he’d stepped into a maze.
“Hey!” he shouted, his voice hoarse from the dry air. “Where are you, kid?”
He held still, but the only sound he heard was the pounding of his heart and the blood rushing thorough his veins. It was quiet on Mars; the open plains were more silent than any place he’d ever been in his life.
“I came to help you!” he shouted. “But I need to know where you are!”
Hearing no response, James began to search, checking one vehicle after another. He looked under and around them. He looked inside those with open cabs or hatches. It dawned on him that the mercenaries might not have bothered to bring the kid here, that the story of North Point might be nothing more than a cruel lie. Maybe they’d simply dragged the kid out into the desert and shot him, which meant James might have just thrown away his life for no reason at all.
“Come on kid? Don’t tell me I just ran here for nothing.”
Without any reply to help him, James continued the search. He skirted around the armored personnel carriers and past a crane that had toppled over onto its side. He came upon a dozen bodies, desiccated and drying in the air. They were adults, chained up and lying together. They looked like mummies.
The sight filled him with a mix of sadness and hope.
He stopped in his tracks and looked around. A dull, barely audible banging noise came from the other side of the crane.
Leaving the dead men, James rushed around the back of the fallen machine. All he found was a metal chain dangling from rigging and banging softly against the side of the crane in the slight gusts of the midday wind.