Walt couldn’t escape the thought that there had been an encrypted warning in the lines that he hadn’t understood in time. This hypothesis was no worse than any other.
The lines had been found one hundred and twelve meters to the north-east of the Object, on the second day of their searches. A plate with the lines on it was lying at an angle, and on the left side it was buried under the sand. First rover resource to the moment was almost completely consumed, the rover was severely damaged after slipped off a cliff and now moved slowly, passing smudged image with the sole survivor camera.
The technical team had conducted a small miracle, using the images from the dying robot. Overcoming the huge time delay - Mars at the time was coming to aphelion - they produced films and photographs of the Objects, before the link to the rover was finally lost. A day later, Walt received his customer's offer to join the project, not knowing then that it would become the main focus of his life.
Building a new rover took more than a year, and happened under his direct supervision. Previously, Walt hadn’t done work for the space industry, so this secret mission dominated him entirely, requiring new, unexpected perspectives and objectives. Feeling the lack of knowledge in this area, Walt continued to educate himself, passing accelerated courses on the creation of spacecraft, as well as space flight theory.
They built a unique machine, Walt and his men managing to create the smallest nuclear engine in the world specifically for the rover; it would provide enough energy to work all the time, without depending on solar panels, which were inefficient on Mars.
The long flight of Prometheus was a success, Walt leading the flight from his own mission control center, where former NASA specialists worked. As a result, they were able to bring the Prometheus to the target and successfully land at the desired point, although one of the two accompanying reconnaissance satellite crashed. Because of a programming error the braking engines worked too early, causing the satellite to fail to exit Martian orbit. Walt found its loss acceptable; he knew how many spacecraft were destroyed, having never reached the fourth planet from the sun.
Once Prometheus had successfully landed, the second satellite went into orbit and every fifty minutes passed over the Object, providing quality pictures and finally confirming the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence to Walt.
18. Lines-5
It took two days for the rover to reach the Object, gently rising from the crater on a small plateau, the top of an extinct volcano. Walt’s team had spent those days producing detailed maps and three-dimensional models of the Object made on the basis of images from orbit. Wide-angle lenses filmed day and night, supercomputers worked on the analysis of the satellite data, but they hadn’t found anything else that even remotely resembled an artificial object. There were only stony plains, craters, red sand dunes and the flat tops of mountains.
The Object at the center of the plateau was a square stone plate with a size of ten meters, by five meters climbing over sand and pebbles. On the eastern side of the plate was a gently sloping ramp which the original rover was able to climb up, a few minutes before the connection was completely lost. Anyway, they knew that they could get to the top, and had a few photos. In the center of the stone foundation was a massive metal octagon obelisk, two meters in height.
The second rover found the first one in the same place that it had remained for two years, and proceeded to the obelisk. It provided an accurate measurement of size, and detailed photographs from all possible angles.
There was nothing extraordinary, nothing that couldn’t be analyzed. The obelisk was made of steel, with a significant amount of molybdenum, nickel and vanadium. The steel top was sealed with a thin layer of light volcanic glass. The purpose of a glass cover was unclear, but it certainly didn’t protect the steel under it against corrosion - on Mars there was no corrosion.
Semenov, chief of materials in their group, had insisted on sending samples of glass and steel back to Earth in the Prometheus lander, at least a few tens of grams. He didn’t want to miss the opportunity to explore how the steel changed under the influence of the seven hundred and fifty million years on the Mars surface.
Having carefully studied the obelisk, Walt took the decision to stop working there and go back down the ramp to explore the plate with lines. He couldn’t come up with an explanation why the plate had been placed separately, but was sure that it was deposited there as the answer to the question that hides the obelisk.
The rover returned to the plate and slowly cleaned off the sand with its manipulator. Thirty-seven hours later they finally managed to see the lines with all the details.
The plate wasn’t oriented to the cardinal, it was at an angle to the obelisk and understanding where the top or bottom was wasn’t possible. The lines weren’t painted, but bulged out of the surface; this wasn’t done by a cutting tool, but with a laser. There was the same steel, with a significant amount of molybdenum, nickel and vanadium, and the same volcanic glass, although here it hadn’t survived as well.
A chip, that's what it is, Walt thought, looking at the plate model, made by photographs and three-dimensional images. It's part of some chip or mechanism, abandoned near the obelisk for an unknown reason. Understanding the meaning of those lines wasn’t possible, and he said as much to his customers immediately, on the first day when he saw a few pictures of very poor quality, made by the first rover.
It was possible that the lines were meant to convey some meaningful message, but he couldn’t decrypt it. No one could. They needed a key, or at least a few well-known words, without which any attempts to understand what the lines meant, would end in failure. He remembered unsuccessful attempts to translate the language of the Minoan civilization on Crete – and that was a language created by people and for people. These lines had been burned on the plate when life on Earth had not moved beyond the warm shallow seas.
The customers didn’t believe Walt and made a number of attempts to decipher the lines using the most advanced military supercomputers. As Walt expected, it was ineffectual.
He also tried to understand the lines periodically and also repeatedly failed. Sometimes Walt tried to convince himself that the lines didn’t mean anything at all, that the plate was just a piece of some machine or debris thrown away by the creators of the obelisk as unnecessary. And yet he couldn’t stop thinking about the lines, suspecting that he was doomed to see them in a dream for the rest of his life.
19. Violation
Colonel Richardson winced when he saw the plane coming in to land. Apparently the troubles that had befallen him since dawn were still not enough. First, there were those damn mercenaries who had landed without explanation, and then seized power, reinforcing their words with a pile of papers with large seals and security classifications. Richardson wasn’t going to give up power and contacted the regional headquarters. But he didn’t get any support from headquarters, and instead received advice to follow the orders of this dude Bronson, the commander of the mercenaries. And not to ask any questions.
His troubles were just beginning. First the Colonel, on his own base, became Bronson’s deputy, and then in the city, where they sent the car for an unknown reason, a battle had begun. And not just in the city, but in the port, the main place of patronage of the Cartel, where Bronson had sent messengers, who were now missing. To hell with those messengers, the Colonel had lost two of his men, the driver and an officer.
The problems escalated, and now Bronson had organized a raid in the city to pull out of the fire something extremely valuable for those who had sent him here. Bronson raised into the air all the available drones and helicopters, and revealed an emergency supply of fire extinguishers. He required the marines to support the operation from the ground.
It was Richardson who found, in all this chaos, one of the Cartel bosses, who provided them free passage through the city. But in the port his authority ended and there a fight occurred with the worst results – the Colonel lost three Marines, killed in a pa
dded Hammer.
Bronson led the fight, but he would have to solve this problem and bring the bodies home. Richardson had never experienced combat losses among his men here – one who died in a car accident a year ago doesn’t count – and now three had been killed. His vindictive consolation was the fact that Bronson had not been left unscathed. Pulling out the precious cargo, two had been killed and two others badly burned, with his medics now trying to pull them from the dead. And Bronson himself had been badly hit by shrapnel, although still stood thanks to his fucking body armor. And all of this for a strange thing that they pulled out of the fire almost bare hands.
“Did you see what it was?”
“I only saw it for a few seconds, sir. It was a metal ball about five feet in diameter, and appeared to be very heavy.”
“On the ball, did you see any signs, numbers, or flags?”
“No, sir, it was burned.”
Well, that bastard Bronson had finally got his precious egg and now he could go to hell with it. But he didn’t think to get out, and Richardson then received a new personal order. He must render all possible assistance to the team of specialists that would be working in his territory for an unspecified duration of time.
“This is still not enough.”
An IL-76 MD, painted in matte black and gray, came in to land, and Richardson stared through his binoculars at the familiar emblem. It wasn’t surprising that they used Russian aircraft, since it wasn’t military – this aircraft officially belonged to a private transport company. He knew who was behind this private enterprise, and the knowledge of this didn’t fill him with joy.
“Sir, we brought the wounded.”
“What wounded?”
“The driver, who was with the messengers. He managed to escape from the port; he was shot in the shoulder, but will live. We sent him to the hospital.”
“At least there is some good news this morning. When he is able to talk, call me.”
20. Boris
“There is a load of smoke!”
“Where is it, in the city?”
“Yes, I think it’s at the port.”
“There are two more helicopters flying.”
Boris listened to the engineers and workers, idly looking at the tall column of black smoke rising above the city. Let it burn, you never know what can happen, especially in the harbor. It didn’t interest him. But helicopters proceeding from the US military base to the city, port and fire - that was much more interesting. Why did they fly there, did they think they could extinguish the fire using machine guns and rockets? He didn’t think so. He listened, trying to distinguish gunshots or explosions, but it was too far away, and he could hear nothing. Well, to hell with it, let them fly. Soon he wasn’t thinking about the fire, and then completely forgot it had happened.
Boris thought about heading back home – this prolonged business trip was coming to an end, and soon he would leave this obscure town, sit on an airplane and start the long journey to his homeland, as soon as Natasha had finished her business here.
Boris wasn’t particularly surprised about being sent here; long ago he understood that each job put him farther and farther from home. It all started back in the Army, where he served in the Airborne - first South Ossetia, then Crimea, on peacekeeping operations and other matters. After the completion of his Army contract he had a lot of overseas travel - Boris had got a job in a private military company and now regularly traveled abroad when the work required.
He hunted pirates on the Africa east coast, guarded builders of nuclear power plants in Asia, and now followed the gas companies in their relentless search for new gas fields around the world. He had already visited five continents, and would not be surprised if the next time it was Antarctica.
But that would be after a two month vacation, which he will take in his home on the banks of the Lena. It was now his own home; Boris had recently completed paying back his mortgage. The house was on a hill overlooking the great river – a boat, fishing, what else could he want? Marry maybe? But what woman would agree to a husband who wasn’t at home for nine months out of every twelve? Natasha wouldn’t agree, he was sure of it.
This time it had been an unusual trip. Firstly, he worked alone and not with a team as before. Secondly, he had to guard just one person. Natasha was sent here to settle some business after a contract stalled. Her company wanted to get gas here, but under pressure from the United States the deal had been cancelled and now Natasha needed to close up shop. Nobody wanted this job, and they sent her with one guard, who already had experience in the region and knew the language well.
They had come to this town, next to the gas field, and spent five days aimlessly wandering from office to office. Now they would take a plane that would bring them back to civilization. Natasha was simply sick of this hole, although in Boris’ opinion it was a good place for work. In this town there lived about two thousand people, engineers and workers from the United States who came here with their families for six months or a year. Life could be good, near to the ocean and magnificent deserted beaches; and, if people wanted special entertainment, there was small city where they could find almost anything they wanted.
Natasha spent her free time sunbathing on the beach and showing her little tits to the bright Pacific sun, while he looked after her. They didn’t go to the city. And tonight the passenger plane would take them away.
21. Natasha
The flight was delayed. She had hoped to leave this hole as quickly as possible, but her troubles weren’t coming to an end quickly. First of all, about a hundred and fifty passengers were held for a couple of hours in the tiny waiting room. The air conditioning didn’t works, the water in the vending machines was gone, and children were yelling so loudly that even the music in her headphones didn’t help. Finally the plane was declared fit. This provincial airport didn’t have comfortable buses for passengers, so they had to walk more than a mile to the far end of a very long runway, sizzling like a frying pan in the sun.
The plane was an old Boeing built before she was born. There was no business class at all; it was just one giant tourist cabin, where they huddled like sardines. Finally, the passengers took their seats and waited for takeoff, which still didn’t happen. The plane quickly heated up while it stood in the sun, the damn kids yelled even louder than before, and the flight attendants didn’t even think to distribute water to the passengers.
“No signal.”
“Are you kidding?!”
The latest model tablet stubbornly refused to go online, despite the hype about it working anywhere. Clearly anywhere but here, in this hole, where she had been brought as a result of extremely bad luck.
It all started with that bitch – the chief’s wife, who found out about their little affair, resulting in Natasha’s career moving in the most unexpected way. Now, instead of in a cozy Moscow office, she traveled around the world, obeying the will of the almighty business, performing various tasks, the work that nobody wanted to do. The pay was still quite good, and the social package was excellent, but in her opinion, these bonuses didn’t cover the inconvenience.
To start with she had spent more than a month in northern Mexico, where Chinese business partners were building a refinery. She couldn’t get to the famous resorts; in the area she lived there were intense battles between drug traffickers, police and the army, so she spent the whole month in the tiny room of the cheap hotel at the plant. Then, finally, someone at head office remembered her, and Natalya got a ticket to another plant in another country, the existence of which she’d had no idea.
It had been a week of futile effort and now she was finally leaving this hole for a vacation. All she needed was to sit on the plane, and, after a few transfers, she would arrive in Moscow a day or so later. But the plane didn’t want to begin her journey; the flight was delayed again, and now the Internet wasn’t working. Strangely, it had been working in the morning.
The stuffiness and the children crying became unbearable, she
can’t breathe. Boris, sitting in a nearby chair, has managed to sleep in an old army habit. How did he do it, like a big lazy cat? Pretending to guard her while he slept most of the time. Or ate. If evil Mexican bandits kidnapped her, would he be able to save her? No fucking chance.
“Were you in the city today in the morning?”
“No, it was forbidden to go there. We heard shooting and then the helicopters passed over us. There was some trouble in the port…”
She listened to the other passengers; they were all talking about the fire in the city. She didn’t know what the city was like; Boris had strictly forbidden her to go there, even accompanied. And now there was something burning – she could see smoke through the window. She wondered if they’d been held so long on the runway because of this fire.
“Passengers, for technical reasons the flight has been delayed indefinitely. We ask you to…”
“Are you kidding me?”
22. Medical examination
There was a sudden bright light, and someone brought a flashlight toward his head, shining a thin white beam in his eye. He made an awkward attempt to remove the blinding flashlight, but his hands somehow couldn’t move. Why would that be so?
The flashlight turned off, and instead he could see a hand that snapped its fingers loudly a couple of times. The hand was blurry to his vision, as if he was looking through the thickness of muddy water.
“Mike, Mike, can you hear me?”
“Yes. Who are you? And where am I?”
“You're in a hospital on the base, and I'm your doctor.”
He knew that voice, and he knew this woman – she was a doctor in their small hospital. But he still can’t see her properly, not able to distinguish her face.
Vampire's Day (Book 2): Zero Model Page 4