“I thought you might say that,” the captain said with a smile. “All of you have a Hollywood shower with your name on it—my compliments.”
Kellean’s eyes lit up. On deep-space missions, a Hollywood shower was a rare treat—the chance to rinse off with actual water instead of the sonic scrubs the crew normally used.
“Thanks, Skipper,” Nathan said.
“You’ve earned it. Sounds like you had some good hunting.” Farina was deliberately vague, aware that every person within earshot would be hanging on Nathan’s report. “Any first impressions?”
Nathan followed her tone, and responded in kind. “Seen better, seen worse,” he said with professional detachment. “We’ll need to do some analysis before we know for sure.”
“What’s your gut tell you?”
“It could be an extraordinary find, Captain,” Kellean said, her hands even more animated than her voice. “The chance to set the record straight on the Mons disaster once and for all.”
“And the salvage?”
“Weapons, supplies,” Nathan answered, “possibly some excavating equipment. They buried quite a bit of hardware up there, Skipper. The stuff we saw was in good condition.”
“Working condition,” Kellean added. “Amazingly well preserved. It’s a real jackpot from a historical perspective.”
Nathan squeezed her arm, a signal for her to slow down. Kellean suddenly became self-conscious about her outburst when she saw how the crewmen reacted. Even now, the buzz was spreading—a gallery of soft laughter, slapping hands, hushed voices repeating the words functional and weapons over and over again. Guns and ordnance were better than gold, mostly because the Collective paid top dollar to keep the stuff off the black market back on Earth. The Zone did a booming business in illegal arms, supplying free sector start-ups and Inru terrorists. That kind of scuttlebutt would reach the bridge long before the captain returned there.
“Pitch should have the mission logs downloaded to your personal node shortly,” Nathan interjected, moving away from the subject. “Respectfully, Skipper—you should take some time to evaluate the prelims before deciding on a course of action. This op could get a little tricky if we don’t handle it the right way.”
Farina got the sense that Nathan had already made up his mind about what to do—and now he was pushing her to draw the same conclusion. It was a subtle maneuver on his part, nothing anyone else would notice; but she bristled at it nonetheless.
“I’ll take that under advisement,” she replied, more curtly than she would have liked. She quickly shifted her tone, telling them, “That’s enough for now. You two go get yourselves cleaned up. Mission debriefing is in the wardroom in one hour. In the meantime, enjoy your shower—that’s an order.”
Farina watched them cross the deck together, the two of them leaning in close to exchange whispers. Two opposite ends of the same extreme, she decided, more convinced than ever that she had made the right decision to keep things under wraps. Secrecy on board a ship like this was damned next to impossible, and could only be contained for so long; but so was the kind of fear mongering that Nathan could spread.
Farina couldn’t blame him for being superstitious about Mars, not with everything that had happened there. As captain, however, her job was to maintain order. The Directorate had dropped a lot of money on this mission, and they were looking for a return on that investment—not ghost stories and wild speculation. They had already made clear what failure would mean to Farina’s reputation.
Not to mention the crew. You screw this up, the service will brand every last one of them as a jinx. They’ll be lucky to find jobs junking old satellites back home.
Farina sighed. She hated herself for worrying about politics, but she knew the way things worked. Nathan, for all his purity, didn’t. A part of her wished she could make him comprehend that—but there were certain burdens the captain had to carry alone.
“Skipper?”
The officer of the watch addressed her nervously. Farina suddenly realized she had been standing in the middle of the flight deck for some time, lost in thought. Hearing his voice snapped her out of it, and she noticed the crew waiting for her to step aside so they could move Ghostrider off the flight line.
“Permission to secure the landing craft, sir?”
Farina gave him a reassuring nod.
“Carry on,” she said. “I’ll be in my quarters.”
Cocooned in steam and isolation, Nathan enjoyed the one thing spacers almost never had: privacy. For ten blessed minutes he stood almost perfectly still, allowing the near-scalding water to blast his body clean, steam purging all thoughts except for the here and now. For a man attuned to every sound and sensation on board, the escape was pure nirvana.
Then the water valve shut off without warning, a rude jolt that sounded like a hammer pounding metal. He emerged from the shower into a harsh reality of steel bulkheads and chipped paint, even the gentle caress of humidity sucked up into the air vents for reprocessing. Almacantar might have been an old ship, but she was remarkably efficient, never wasting anything that could be used again.
Nice while it lasted…
Toweling off, Nathan allowed himself to regain the ship’s equilibrium. During the normal course of any day, he took all that input for granted: the electric thrum of the engines, the photic tingle of the power conduits, the variations of atmospheric pressure from deck to deck—a thousand other variables that told Nathan how Almacantar performed at any given moment. Lately, however, it seemed that reading her had become more difficult, as if the old ship was playing a game of hide and seek with him. With the crawler running so many vital systems, that didn’t surprise Nathan at all. A matrix built on chaos logic was bound to be temperamental.
Idiosyncratic is more like it, he thought, putting on a fresh uniform. Working the module is like trying to get a woman into bed. The same approach never works twice.
Just the same, Nathan headed down to the computer core and performed his scheduled maintenance. He found the usual litany of problems—fragged crossover routines, corrupted interface protocols, all strategically scattered to make Nathan expend the maximum amount of effort fixing them. He could have sworn that the crawler missed him while he was gone and wanted to make up for lost time.
Nathan worked the bugs as long as he could, then proceeded to the wardroom. He arrived a few minutes early by his watch, but dead last—an awkward entrance for Almacantar’s executive officer. Pitch and Kellean sat together at one of the dining tables, engaged in hushed conversation with each other. Gregory Masir, the chief medical officer, was also there, sipping coffee while he stared out a small window at the passing surface of Mars. Masir raised his cup in greeting when Nathan walked in, then joined the others. They had all obviously been waiting on him.
Farina, seated at the head of the table, looked up from her handheld integrator and motioned for Nathan to seal the hatch behind him. Then he took his place opposite the captain and waited for her to start the briefing.
“As you know,” Farina announced, “the last twenty-four hours have seen some important developments. Various rumors are already making the rounds throughout the ship, so it’s important that command staff keep everything in the correct perspective for the crew. That said, our discussions here must be treated as confidential by everyone involved. I don’t need to remind anyone how quickly bad information can lead to a dangerous crisis on a deep-space mission. We’re all alone out here, gentlemen. Keep that in mind.
“For now,” she continued, leveling a stare down the line at Pitch, Kellean, and Nathan, “knowledge of these events will be restricted to those of you on the landing party. I’ve also invited Dr. Masir to participate because of the medical aspects related to your discoveries on the surface of Mars. I’m counting on your expertise and opinions—regardless of rank. Whether this mission succeeds or fails depends on the decisions I make based on your input. Is everybody clear?”
Murmurs of assent rose from the table, a gal
lery of nodding heads. Nathan abstained, but that was his job. The captain’s first responsibility was to the ship, but his was to the crew—and in that regard, he already saw his role as the devil’s advocate.
“Good,” Farina said, and that was the end of it. “First things first. Lieutenant Commander Straka, what’s the overview of our current status?”
“I’ve been running detailed analysis of surface scans through the computer core since we arrived,” Nathan reported. “Using that data, I’ve managed to further refine the detailed model of the terraforming camps in Settler’s Plain. So far, everything looks pretty decent. There’s some wear and tear on the structures, but nothing any greater than we expected.”
“Sounds like we’re off to a good start,” Masir observed, a robust punch beneath his light Israeli accent. Like everyone else on board, Almacantar’s doctor depended on his bonus—but for far different reasons. Nathan knew from his Directorate profile that Masir had spent some time fighting alongside his countrymen in the waning days of the Pan-Arab conflict, only to see them wiped out when the Zone Authority bought into the war on the enemy’s side. Rumor had it that he still maintained contacts within the Zion resistance, and used his own resources to help fund their efforts. “How soon can we commence operations?”
“There might be a problem with that,” Pitch interjected.
“We got a little bit more than we bargained for,” Farina explained, reading from the report. “From Commander Straka’s description, it’s quite a supplies cache—at least a hundred metric tonnes from the extrapolation data. Small arms…ammunition…seismic charges…not to mention a sizeable quantity of enriched Pollex explosive. Add to that some v-wave excavators and tactical computer hardware, and you’ve got yourself some decent salvage—all in the middle of a dead volcano, right where it’s not supposed to be.”
“So there is a mystery,” the doctor scoffed. “What of it?”
“The discovery presents us with a few complications.”
“What complications?”
“We found bodies in the cavern,” Nathan said. “At least a dozen, maybe more—plus evidence of a firefight.”
“That is tragic,” the doctor pointed out, “but how can dead men pose a problem?”
“Not all of them are dead.”
Masir’s jaw dropped.
“Some are alive?”
“Six,” Farina answered. “In cryostasis, perfectly preserved.”
“Harah,” Masir muttered, shaking his head. He looked at Kellean, then Pitch, finally settling on Nathan. “Who are they?”
“All of the dead wore SEF uniforms,” Nathan said. “Since this has the earmarks of a military operation, we have to assume the ones in stasis are SEF as well. As to their individual identities—we have no way to know that.”
“And since records from that time are incomplete,” Farina added, “we’re depending on our mission specialist here for guidance. Kellean, exactly how many military personnel were unaccounted for after the Mons outbreak?”
“Sixteen in all,” Kellean said, jumping in without hesitation. “Including the entire officer corps. The rest were either strung up by the colonists, killed by the virus, or shipped back home to face trial.”
“That fits with the number of remains we found,” Nathan said. “A single squad to dig out the bunker and defend it, plus the command structure.”
“What about the forensics?” Farina asked, frowning skeptically. “How do those tie in with your observations?”
“That’s a little more problematic,” Kellean said, treading cautiously. As a scientist, she traded in facts—speculation was not her forte. “Based on the evidence, most of the squad were killed after they completed the bunker—and it appears as if their own lieutenant was responsible.”
“He killed his own men?”
“Then himself. It could have been a murder-suicide pact, Captain.” Kellean exchanged a brief glance with Nathan, then hastily added, “Or he could have been under orders. There’s no way to know.”
The discussion abruptly lapsed. As much as shipmates bickered with one another, loyalty was still a precious commodity—as vital as water and oxygen. Nathan couldn’t imagine killing one of his own, even if the captain ordered it. There was no greater sin than that.
Masir broke the silence. “How could any man do such a thing?”
“To protect something,” Nathan said, his tone growing forceful. “There’s no doubt the SEF built that bunker for one, specific reason, Skipper—to hide those bodies in stasis. Everything else was stockpiled for their use for when they woke up. As for the squad lieutenant,” he finished, drawing an ominous breath, “he did what he did to make sure nobody else found out.”
Farina leveled a gaze at Kellean for confirmation.
“SEF fidelity was always to the unit,” she said. “As I understand it, only one thing was drilled harder—fidelity to command. It’s what got them in trouble on Mars, Captain. They never questioned orders, no matter how unlawful they were.”
Farina shook her head in disgust. “Only following orders,” she muttered. “That solves the mystery about who’s on ice down there. Command staff would be the only ones ‘important’ enough to warrant that kind of treatment—and the only ones who could order a junior officer to take out his own squad. The big-money question is why.”
“Strategic retreat,” Kellean suggested. “Things fell apart pretty fast at the settlement. Command had to know it was only a matter of time before they lost control—especially after the colonists found out what the military was doing.”
“Who was the ranking officer?”
“Colonel Martin Thanis—a real living legend in the Forces. Got famous for putting down a rebellion in Old Mexico, paving the way for that territory to go corporate. Built up enough cred to spin SEF off from the regular military when the Collective got into the spacing business.”
“I remember the story,” Masir said. “A real tyrant this one was.”
“A tyrant and a survivor. The Assembly tried to purge him a couple of times, mostly to placate board officers who thought he ran SEF like his own private army. One of the Big Seven even tried to have him bumped off. The assassination attempt failed—but the resulting scandal put him in a position to cut some serious deals. Thanis consolidated his military with Yakuza ties, which put him on an even par with Special Services to run the Collective’s entire security apparatus. He was one breath away from running the whole show when the Mars venture came along.”
“Enough of an ego to think he could do anything,” Farina observed. “The Assembly must have been happy to get him off-planet.”
“It made good political sense at the time,” Kellean said. “There’s no way they could have known they were creating a disaster.”
“How bad was it? Really?”
Kellean steeled herself. “Bad—a lot worse than most people know. Some of the events came out at the Vienna Judgment, but the Collective sealed the most graphic testimony. The only reason I ever got to see the records was because I had an academic security clearance.”
“More secrets,” Masir grumbled.
“Thanis clashed with the Directorate over how to run Mars even before the outbreak,” the mission specialist continued. “Once the Mons virus got loose, he had his excuse to declare martial law. With the civilian leadership out of the way, he segregated the population based on his assessment of who posed the greatest risk of spreading the disease. Most people thought they were getting quarantined. In fact, Thanis had ordered summary executions of anybody who appeared symptomatic.”
Nathan already knew this part of the story. The Collective had staged the trials of former SEF soldiers in the heart of its capital, Vienna, putting on a façade of transparency so that the entire world could visit its wrath upon the accused. But Kellean’s expression suggested something far darker, far more unspeakable.
“Extreme as these measures were,” Kellean said, “they did little to slow the progression of the virus. It
spread throughout the colony in a matter of weeks, jumping from person to person via a series of unknown vectors. To this day, nobody knows exactly how it spread, or even where it originated—but Thanis had his own ideas. When the disease started showing up in his own soldiers, he became convinced that the food supply was contaminated. That’s when he ordered the immediate destruction of all provisions—including SEF’s own stocks. Faced with starvation, he turned to the one source of food still left on Mars.”
Masir lowered his eyes. “You mean the people.”
Kellean nodded.
“Thanis rounded up as many healthy civilians as he could find,” she said. “He promised them all a chance at survival—and by that time they were desperate enough to believe anything he said. Instead, he butchered every last one of them.”
Farina’s expression was stony, cold and contemplative.
“They bought themselves time,” she said, “by becoming cannibals.”
“You see why the Collective kept that part secret,” Kellean added. “As it was, the Mars disaster ruined the SEF and ended deep-space colonization. If the public had known the full truth, it could have crippled the entire government.”
“No wonder they executed those soldiers as fast as they did,” Pitch remarked. “They weren’t serving justice. They were just covering up.”
“They were trying to contain a bad investment,” Kellean corrected him. “At least that was how the Assembly termed it. At any rate, most of the soldiers were sentenced to death. Rumor has it that a few got their sentences commuted and were assigned new identities so they could be retasked as free agents—though the Assembly denies it. Talking about Mars can get you into a lot of trouble.”
Farina leaned forward curiously.
“These free agents,” she said, “they must have cut a deal to avoid the death penalty. Did any of them give up information on what happened to their officers?”
“Not a one,” Kellean said. “If they knew anything, they kept it to themselves.”
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