He moved with stealth, keeping his back to the rover. When Mia judged that he was directly beneath her she leaped off the roof, aiming to plunge the screwdriver into his jugular. She missed and drove it into his shoulder instead. He yelled in pain as Mia tumbled to the floor. She was flat on her back looking up at him when he raised his weapon and fired. Mia rolled as a bright blue ball of electrical death hit the floor beside her. She avoided a direct hit, but it was enough to send a high-voltage charge rippling through her lower body. She screamed as every fiber of her being was convulsed in a raging storm of energy. The pain was excruciating, as if every muscle in her body had gone into cramp all at once.
As the pain receded Mia was left a trembling mess, totally numb from the waist down. She finally raised herself up on one elbow. Her attacker was glaring down at her while he pulled the screwdriver out of his bloodied shoulder.
“You know,” he said as he threw it on the ground beside her, “up until this point, I’ve been enjoying our little chase around Mars. It’s been a while since a target has been as sporting as you have.” He raised a hand to his forehead in a mock salute. “I tip my hat to you for that.”
“Screw you,” said Mia
“Ah… a fighter to the end. I admire that. But, I’m afraid it’s time to go.” He raised the gun and pointed it at Mia’s head.
“Tell me why.”
He regarded her intensely, then lowered his gun. “Why?” He seemed to have to think about this for a second or two. “Well, since you’ve been such good hunting, I’ll tell you. It’s because it’s my job to kill you.”
“Well, it’s not going to make a difference. You’re too late now. They already know about the plan to destroy Jezero City with a nuke. The event will be canceled, so you lose.”
“Nukes?” He threw his head back and laughed until he started to cough and clutched his chest, which was saturated with blood from the wound Mia had inflicted on him. “Is that your plan? To kill me by making me laugh?”
He raised the gun again. “You really haven’t a clue, do you? It’s not a nuke, it’s a bioweapon, and believe me it is far from canceled. Now, if you don’t mind, Miss Sorelli, it is time to die.”
Mia watched helplessly as he raised his weapon. This was it and there was not a damn thing she could do about it.
But before he could fire, another plasma ball hurtled in from nowhere and hit him smack in the side. His body shook in a violent shimmering incandescence as every nerve of his being was ripped to shreds. He slumped to his knees, his eyes lifeless, and collapsed face down on the ground in front of Mia. As the last of the plasma charge fizzled out a thin filament of smoke drifted slowly up from his skull.
It took Mia a few seconds to drag her eyes away from the corpse to locate the source of the shot.
“Gizmo?” The little robot stood some distance away. From its breastplate Mia could see the muzzle of a PEP weapon. “I thought you were dead.”
The robot whizzed over to where Mia lay on the ground. “Technically I was never alive to begin with.”
Mia slumped back on the floor, looking straight up at the droid. “Well, I’m really happy you’re still functioning. How the hell did you survive those blasts?”
“I am hardened against such electromagnetic attacks. I did sustain some temporary trauma to my systems, but since a significant percentage of my mind resides in the Jezero City mainframe I was able to reboot myself and am approximately 89.73% functional.”
Mia groaned as she tried to move. “I’m all beat up, Gizmo. I don’t suppose you can reboot me.”
“You will find the effects of the plasma blast to be temporary. Assuming you have not sustained physical damage you should be able to perambulate as normal in a few minutes.”
Mia realized that she did have some feeling in her lower body. She had assumed she was paralyzed, but now that fear was receding as she tested her extremities for movement. She sat up with effort, and smiled at Gizmo.
“I thought they got rid of all your weapons.”
Gizmo glanced down at its breastplate. Mia considered it an odd gesture for a robot.
“I could not bring myself to get rid of them all. So I kept this one secret. Its head moved up to focus on Mia. “Was this incorrect of me?”
“Not from where I’m sitting, Gizmo. But how come you didn’t tell me about it?”
“Well, it wouldn’t be secret then, would it?”
Mia laughed. “No, I don’t suppose it would.” She could move her legs a little now and decided she might try and stand. She held her hand out to Gizmo. “Help me up, will you?”
It took Mia a while to regain enough feeling in her battered body to walk unaided. But when she could, they made their way to a control center located at the back of the maintenance area. This was a large space filled with terminals and holo-tables used to manage the myriad of machines and processes that went on in the sector. It also had direct comms to Jezero City.
“Did you hear all that before you shot him, Gizmo?”
“I did.”
“It’s not a nuke, it’s a bioweapon. We need to alert them. They have to ensure this terraforming event is canceled because it seems to be the trigger.”
“I concur. Mia. This matches my own analysis of the situation.” Gizmo switched on the holo-table and activated a comms link.
19
Decentenial Celebrations
Kane Butros, Second Director of the Mars Alliance Scientific Survey sat in the space station control room, which occupied one segment of the giant rotating torus. He was taking in the view of Mars afforded him by the wide observation window. The surface of the red planet slowly rotated counterclockwise, mirroring the speed and rotation of the observer’s point of view. It also reflected the trajectory of the orbiting station as it circumnavigated the Martian poles. All this movement could be very disconcerting to the uninitiated, but after a while, most crewmembers got used to it and ceased to regard themselves as the object that was moving.
The station had just moved across Jezero Crater and was now tracking slowly over the vast Utopia Planitia as it headed for yet another pass over the North Pole. This would be the final pass before the thermonuclear detonation for the terraforming experiment finally occurred. But the event had been canceled and Kane Butros was not happy. Not because of any loss of scientific data but because the carefully laid plans of those that had put their faith in him to deliver, were now falling apart. It didn’t help that Blake Derringer had gone offline, and could not be raised on comms for an update on his mission.
But Kane did not need a mystic to know that he was probably dead, since the powers that be in Jezero City now knew that a bioweapon had been hidden in their citadel, timed to detonate in tandem with the terraforming event. Worse, Evon Dent, the highest-ranking MASS director, was currently down on the planet starting up a thorough investigation.
All this was a major concern for Kane Butros. Nevertheless, he was not the type of person to lie down at the first hurdle. The situation, as he saw it, was compromised—this much was true. But he did have a plan B, and now was the time to set it in motion. He fished out his slate from a pocket, entered an eight digit alphanumeric code, and hit the INIATE icon. The he sat back and waited, it wouldn’t take long.
And it didn’t. Less than four minutes later three armed associates entered the control room of the MASS space station, to the astonishment of the assembled technicians.
“What the hell?” One foolhardy tech jumped up and objected to the carrying of weapons inside the control room. He was blasted. Fortunately non-lethal, merely stunned. But it did serve to underscore their intent. The rest of the techs turned to Kane, who rose from his seat.
“My apologies, but we are taking over this space station. You will now be escorted to a safe place, while we continue with our… eh, operation.”
“Have you gone mad?” Another of the techs was beginning to sound like he might also be trouble, he too was blasted. Kane turned to his armed crew. “Try
not to damage any of the control systems with those PEP weapons.”
A crewmember nodded in reply. Several others entered and took up the positions vacated by the techs, and proceeded to reinitiate the terraforming event. After a moment or two the countdown on the main screen reset itself.
“The experiment has been reinstated, sir,” a tech announced. The timer counted down—one hour and forty-six minutes to detonation.
“Excellent, replied Kane. He sat back down in the command chair and afforded himself a brief smile. It’s always good to have a plan B, he thought.
Dr. Jann Malbec paced up and down the operations room in Jezero City. On the main screen a feed was being relayed from a viewpoint overlooking the Avenue. The area was thronged with citizens as well as many of the contractors working for both the colony and the asteroid mining company, AsterX.
“Dr. Malbec, stop worrying.” Evon Dent, the MASS chief operations officer tried to soothe Jann’s growing unease. “The event has been canceled. And we will find this… device, wherever they’ve managed to hide it. It will be found.”
Jann stopped pacing and looked down the Avenue to the stage and the screen behind it. It displayed an orbital view of Mars, a direct feed from the MASS space station. The countdown timer had been frozen. Initially there had been a general groan of disappointment from the crowd when the news broke that the terraforming event would not be taking place for the grand finale due to technical difficulties. But as more of the citizens’ spirits were lubricated by the enormous quantities of beer and cider being dispatched from the Red Rock, the mood had grown steadily merrier.
On stage, Xenon Hybrid was recounting tales of his travels, and the rotating backdrop of the planet’s surface married well with his dialogue. He had the full attention of the crowd by virtue of his oration and because this was the first time that many of the assembled had laid eyes on their enigmatic president.
But none of the throng knew the true situation, bar those with Jann in the operations room, and the crew that Nills had put together to sweep the facility to try and find the device. Evon Dent and his assistant had chosen to remain in Jezero City for the duration of the celebrations, rather than return to the space station as previously planned. But while this was a genuine gesture of solidarity it did little to allay fears over the plot to detonate a nuclear device in the city.
Jann’s slate vibrated in her pocket, she fished it out. It was Mia. She tapped an icon to bring it up on the main screen so the others could see and hear. Mia looked bruised and battered. “It’s not a nuke, it’s a bioweapon. I don’t know where, but its detonation is synched with the terraforming event.”
“We’ve canceled the event,” Evon said, as if he was letting Mia in on a big secret. Jann wasn’t sure if Mia even heard him as she was rubbing her forehead and pushing back her hair.
“Where are you?” said Jann.
Mia looked around. “In the maintenance yard. The place is deserted, no one here. Just me and Gizmo. We’re checking if any of the rovers here are working and then try to make it to Jezero City.”
“What about that guy chasing you?” said Jann.
“Dead. That’s all the information I could get out of him before Gizmo barbecued him.”
“Okay, stay safe.” Jann signed off.
“That robot is a danger to the colony, I cannot believe you let it loose armed with a plasma weapon.” Yuto Yamashita was beginning to really piss Jann off.
“So you would prefer that Jezero City was annihilated?” Jann was pacing again.
“That’s not the point. The threat, if there ever was one, is now under control. But a weaponized robot is still at large. I would say that’s a problem,” Yuto said with outrage.
“This is a totally irrelevant and pointless argument, Yuto. You’re not helping. In fact, you’re becoming a hindrance. So, can you please either shut up or get out,” Nills snapped back.
But Yuto was not backing down, he was ready to fight when Evon raised a hand to get everyone’s attention. He was looking at his slate, with a very concerned look on his face. “I think you all need to see this.” He tapped the slate to bring the message up on the main monitor.
It was clearly a view from inside the orbiting space station. A MASS crewmember was taking a clandestine video from the control room. The image was blurred and shaky, but they could clearly see technicians being herded out by armed men. One was being dragged along the floor by the scruff of the neck, unconscious, maybe even dead. The camera swung around to show Kane Butros sitting in the command chair. Then the image shook wildly and the camera went dead.
Silence gripped the operations room in Jezero City for a moment as the implications of what they had just witnessed started to sink in. But before anyone spoke, they heard a loud cheer from the crowd down along the Avenue. Nobody was sure what it was for until Jann realized the countdown clock for the terraforming event had been reset, and was running again.
“The timer, look.” Jann pointed.
“Oh God,” was the best that Evon could manage.
“Could someone please tell me what the hell is going on?” Yuto was clearly slower than the rest of them to fully realize what had just happened.
“Kane Butros has taken over the station, and restarted the event. We’ve got a little over an hour before….” Evon’s sentence trailed off.
“Before what?” said Yuto.
“Before we’re all dead,” said Jann.
Nills was up on his feet. “We have to find it, whatever the hell it is. We have to find it and destroy it.” He started contacting his search team. He had set up three separate teams equipped with Geiger counters, which were useless, now that the threat was no longer a nuclear weapon.
“The problem is we don’t know what the hell we’re looking for, what size it is, is it more that one device—this is impossible.”
Jann knew things were serious when Nills started to use words like impossible.
“We have to evacuate.” Yuto was also up on his feet. “Get everybody out now, before it’s too late.”
It was Jann’s turn to use the ‘I’ word. “That’s impossible, we don’t have enough transport or EVA suits. It would be bedlam, people could start to panic, it would be chaos.”
“This is all your fault.” Yuto was jabbing an accusatory finger at Jann.
Jann was resisting a very strong urge to eject the councilor from the nearest airlock when the operations room was plunged into darkness for a fraction of a second before the power came back on. There was another enormous cheer from down along the Avenue.
“What the hell was that?” said councilor Hoburg.
“Main power’s gone down, we’re on standby. “ Nills spun around and started checking the control desks in the operations room. “Well that rules out evacuation. Now that we’re on standby, all airlocks are sealed.” He turned back to the group. “We’ll have to cut our way out.”
“Oh God, we’re all gonna die,” said Yuto.
Throughout all of this Evon had stared at the main screen and the hundreds of colonists gathered for the celebrations.
“Evon.” Jann nudged him back to the here and now. “How are they doing this?”
He slowly turned to face her, shaking his head. “I don’t know.”
“Can you contact the station, talk to Kane Butros, find out what he wants?”
“I’ve tried, but comms are either dead or they’re not responding.”
“Goddammit, there must be a way to stop this,” said Jann.
“There isn’t. It’s all automatically controlled from the station. The only way to stop it now would be to go up there and literally take back the station, it’s just not possible. Unless…” he stopped and scratched his chin thoughtfully.
“What? Unless what?” shouted Jann.
“The antennae array. The devices are detonated by a transmission from the station. That needs the antennae to send the signal to surface. If that antennae were to be disabled then…”
&nbs
p; “Well that’s just crazy,” said Robb. “And how the hell are we supposed to do that? Teleport up there?”
Evon was silent.
“Wait a minute, there might be a way.” Jann turned back to Evon. “Your transport ship, the one you were going to use to return to the station before the event, it’s still there, isn’t it?”
Evon’s eyes widened. “Yes, fully prepped, ready to launch.”
“Then we can take it, get up there and knock out that antennae.”
“Theoretically.”
“We don’t have time, Jann.” Nills was shaking his head. “It will take a good twenty minutes to cut our way out, the same to get to the craft and then another forty between prepping and journey time. It’s just not possible.”
“And it can only hold four people, not enough to launch an armed takeover,” Evon added.
“I’ll go,” said Yuto.
“Yeah, sure. Just so you can save your own ass,” said Hoburg.
“There is a way,” said Jann.
“How? Tell us,” said Nills.
“Mia.”
20
You Want Me To Do What?
“You want me to do what?” Mia sat in the AsterX maintenance yard, listening with increasing incredulity, as Dr. Jann Malbec and Nills Langthorp explained to her, via a scratchy comms link, what they wanted her to do. Gizmo had gone off to survey the vehicles parked there to try and find one that worked, at least well enough to get them back to Jezero City. But now it looked like the plan was about to change.
“You have got to be kidding me!”
“You’re the only one that can do it. Believe me, Mia, if there was any other way, we would try it, but we just don’t have the time. The detonation is in less than an hour. We would barely get to the launch pad in that time.” Jann’s voice was pleading.
Mia shook her head. “But I have absolutely no idea how to pilot a transport ship. I mean… seriously, this is crazy.”
“You don’t have to actually fly it.” Nills added his voice to the conversation. “It flies itself autonomously. It will also rendezvous and dock on autopilot. You don’t have to do anything.”
Jezero City: Colony Four Mars (Colony Mars Book 4) Page 14