When the rover finally lumbered into the main entrance airlock in Colony Two, quite a few Betas had assembled there to greet them, word of their return had spread. As Jann stepped out and removed her helmet she could sense the feeling of adulation that emanated from the group. It was something that didn’t sit easy with her, too much responsibility, perhaps. It was a dangerous thing, one false word, or some casual action on her part could have unintended repercussions.
“What’s the situation now?” Nills directed his question at Anika who had been trying to hold the line in his absence.
“They have them down in the birthing room, the doors are all locked and barricaded from the inside, there’s no way in.”
“Well, they’re not going anywhere soon. It takes a long time to die in the tank, so we’ve got some time.” Jann had removed the EVA suit by now.
Nills walked over to a workbench and stood up on it so he could see over the assembled Betas. “Listen up. We are going to break our way in to the birthing room and we are going to rescue those people.”
“Let them die.” Someone shouted.
“Okay. And when they are finished with them, they will come for the rest of the Hybrids. After that, they will come for the last of the Alphas. And after that, they come for you.” Nills jabbed a finger at the crowed, “So tell me, who will be left to save you when that happens?”
There was muted chorus of mumbling and shuffling from the crowd.
“That’s right — no one. Because you will have stood by and let them all be killed. This is not what we fought for, this is not who we are. So let’s get these people out of there.” He jumped down from the workbench. It had done the trick. The mood had shifted, their confidence was returning. Jann had to hand it to him. The old Nills would have been proud.
The plan was simple. Break open the main door into the labs with a laser cutter, then start removing the barricade. After that it was talk. If that failed, then they would figure something out. Anika had organised a cutting crew, Nills was busy recruiting and arming some of the more level headed Betas. Jann chose instead to visit the remaining Hybrids, to assure them they were safe and that attempts were being made to rescue their leader, unharmed.
She made her way to the operation room next to the council chamber, on the upper level of the main cavern. Unlike the chamber itself this had not sustained any damage from the earlier fight to overthrow Vanji. It was from this room the council had an eye on all activity within the colony. Around the walls were mounted dozens of monitors, all made with the same organic material as the celling illumination. They had a strange eerie look to them as they had no discernible edge, just patches of video here and there. She studied the feeds from the holding rooms for a few minutes.
“What are they doing?”
“I don’t know, said one of the technicians. “They were fine up until thirty minutes ago… you know, walking, talking, that sort of thing. Now this.” He waved a hand at the screen.
The Hybrids were all huddled on the floor in groups, groaning and moaning. Holding their heads, eyes with a look of sheer terror.
“Christ.” Jann stepped back in horror. “It’s their hive-mind. What one feels they all feel.”
The technician looked intently at the screen. “I still don’t get what’s wrong with them.”
“Alban has just tanked Xenon. They are feeling what he’s feeling. What it’s like to slowly dissolve to death.”
The technician stood speechless, his mouth wide open.
“Do you have a feed from the labs?”
“No, all cameras are cut. But that one there is from the corridor.” He pointed to a feed of the crew that were trying to cut open the main lab door.
“Shit,” thought Jann, “they’re going too slow.” She raced out of the operation room and headed to the labs. She found Nills, resting against the wall of the corridor, just down from where the crew were working. He was armed to the teeth, along with Anika and two others. He wasn’t taking any chances. The crew had finish opening the door and were now removing the equipment used to block the entrance.
“Nills.” Jann shouted. He smiled when he saw her coming. “Xenon has already been tanked.”
“How do you know?”
She explained what she had seen. “So we have to get him out of the tank quick before he has passed the point of no return. The point where his body can not sustain life outside the tank. If we don’t hurry then we will doom the remaining Hybrids to weeks of writhing agony — it may even kill them all.”
“Fuck,” was the best reply Nills could manage.
“Nills,” one of the crew shouted up to him. “We’re nearly through.”
“Okay.” Nills signalled to his team and they moved up to the lab entrance, they took up positions either side of the doorway. It had been fully cleared. Nills stuck his head around the door jamb.
“Alban, this is Nills here. Killing those captives will do us no good. We need them to survive. Nobody else has the knowledge.”
There was a moment of silence. Nills moved in through the door, the others followed, keeping low. Once inside they spread out wide across the space of the vast lab cavern. They could see Alban and a few others at the far end, standing beside one of the birthing tanks.
“Alban.” Nills held his hand up in the air. “Give it up. This is pointless.”
Alban swung around, reached for a rail-gun and pointed it at him. Nills kept his hands high and moved forward, slowly.
“That’s far enough. Come any closer and I will shoot you.” He looked like he meant it.
“Where are the geneticists?” Nills stopped. Jann had slipped off to the side and was moving closer, using the tanks as cover.
“They’re getting what they deserve. Except now that you have showed up we’ll need to speed up the process.” He shouted back to the others who were now all pointing weapons. “Bring them out, we’ll do it here.”
Two geneticists where dragged out from behind one of the tanks. Their hands were tied behind their backs and they all had a defeated look on their faces. They were forced down on their knees in front of Alban.
“This is for our friends.” He pointed the rail-gun at one of the forlorn figures and fired. A spray of blood exploded from the back of his skull, he collapsed backwards, and everyone lost it — fire erupted from both sides.
Nills dived for cover, metal barbs bouncing off the floor as he ran. One of Alban’s crew went down. There was a scream from one of the Betas. Jann hit the deck just as the tank behind her got hit and exploded into a thousand glass shards. The contents spilt out in a deluge, and with it came a body with tubes and wires still connected — it was Xenon, the Hybrid leader.
The ooze spread out across the floor in all directions and sloshed around Jann’s feet, as she peered around the edge of a tank she was using as cover. The Hybrid kicked and squirmed, several other bodies lay on the floor, dead. But there was no sign of Alban. So Jann crawled out from behind the tank toward the writhing body of the Hybrid. Nills appeared on the other side.
“Nills,” she called. “We need to get those tubes out of him quick.”
Nills nodded and looked behind him to see Anika and a few others moving forward. He signalled for them to take up covering positions.
Jann rushed over to Xenon. “Nills, hold him down, stop him moving.”
Nills grappled with the squirming body. “Dammit, he’s really slippery.”
Jann cut away the wires that had entangled him and pulled out the long tube running down his throat. He coughed, and spluttered, and spat. Then he started to shiver violently, Nills released his grip. “Shit, he’s going into shock.”
“He’ll be okay, remember I’ve been here, I survived. But we do need to get him to sickbay.”
Nills called over to some of the Betas that were now coming into the lab. They had been drawn in by the unfolding drama, but were keeping their distance all the same.
“Hey, over here. Get him to sickbay.” A few ran forwa
rd, gathered him up and carried him back out of the lab. Jann stood up and surveyed the devastation. The bodies of two geneticists lay dead along with one of Alban’s cohort. “Two dead. That means there’s only one still alive. We need to find him.”
“Over here, have a look at this.” Anika pointed to drops of blood on the ground. “Looks one of them is injured. We just need to follow.”
The trail led off towards the back of the cavern. “What’s back there?” Jann whispered.
“The main research lab, where they did all the experimental work.”
“Any way out?”
“There’s a metal stairs leading back up to the main colony area. It comes out near Vanji’s living quarters.”
They passed along by the experimentation rooms. Long tubular tanks filled with strange aquatic species. Flat rows of experimental flora, new strains of genetically modified plants for the colony gardens.
“Shhhh.” Nills held a finger to his lips.
Jann listened to the silence, then she heard a clang of metal on metal.
“He’s making for the stairs. Come, let’s finish this.”
But before they could move the forlorn figure of the last geneticist moved out from behind a tall equipment rack. Behind him, Alban gripped his neck with one hand. In the other he held a grenade high in the air. The pin was removed. The only thing stopping it from detonating was his grip on the spring.
“Lower your weapons or I let go of this and take us all down.”
“Alban, this is crazy, there’s no way out.”
“Oh yes there is. So just do it and step aside.”
Nills was first to drop his weapon, then Jann, followed by Anika. Alban pushed the geneticist forward as he moved, and they let him pass, back into the research lab, turning around as he went.
“Back, move right back, as far as the wall.”
They stepped back slowly until they were against the cave wall.
When Alban reached the centre of the research lab he kicked the back of his captive’s legs, and the geneticist collapsed to his knees on the floor. They could see him now taking off a shoulder bag and laying it down on a work bench.
“Fuck,” said Nills. “That’s the bag with all the grenades Gizmo made.
“You know, Nills. I never really liked what happened to us up here. It’s not what I had imagined when I signed up.”
“You mean, when your Alpha signed up.”
“You see, that’s what I’m talking about. Where does my Alpha stop and I begin?” Ever think about that, Nills?”
“All the time, Alban. But we are what we are, we just need to get past it.”
“Well I’m sorry, Nills. But I finally realised that I can’t.” Alban let go of the spring and dropped the live grenade into the bag. “I told you there was a way out.”
“Oh shit,” was the last thing Jann heard before she was slammed against the cave wall and lost consciousness.
CHAPTER 28: A New Sol
Nills moved through the Colony Two entrance cavern over to the waiting rover. The mechanics working in the area waved to him as he passed. He nodded back his acknowledgement. The colony was beginning to settle down in the weeks after the revolt. The seeds of a fragile peace were beginning to grow. Life would go on.
He stepped inside the machine and sat down in the cockpit. Xenon was already there, waiting.
“Ready to go, Nills?”
“Yeah, let’s take it out, I hear it’s a nice day outside.”
Xenon took the controls and moved the rover through the main airlock and out on to the Martian surface. Nills was right it was a nice day. A pale orb hung high in the sky, the air was clear, no wind to whip up the dust. Xenon looked up through the windscreen at the clear sky. “You think they’re up there, watching us?”
Nills took a glance up, as if it was actually possible for him to spot a satellite flying past. “You better believe it. After all the coming and going, not to mention explosions on the planet surface, they will have everything they can called into service. All trained on this very spot. NASA’s deep space communications network is probably working overtime.”
Xenon looked up again and gave the sky the one fingered salute. Nills laughed.
The Hybrid leader had changed since his experiences in the tank. All the Hybrids had. Their uncanny ability to communicate by thought, far from being an evolutionary advantage, was in reality their Achilles heel. It had traumatised them to the point of despair. After the events of the recycling it took some time to get them out of their collective shell. Xenon was the one to do it. He was a different person now, with a different perspective. It was like some new door had opened in his mind and he realised that the Hybrids were a very fragile species. Their survival relied on the support and social cooperation of the Betas. It took time for him to bring everybody around to this new reality. Yet, some of the Hybrids were still scarred, they would take longer. For a few, it would be never at all. But they would all help them as best they could.
“Do you have many memories of Earth?” Xenon asked.
“Yeah, sure. Although, technically we’ve never been there.”
“It must be strange to walk out in the open, feel rain on your face, swim in an ocean of water.”
“We all have memories of times on Earth, even you, Xenon. Anyway, our home is here, we need to make it our very own paradise.”
They travelled in silence for a while and Nills reflected on the events that had brought them to this point.
The geneticists were all dead and the explosion in the labs had destroyed much of what they had created. It was certain that a considerable amount of their knowledge died with them, or was lost in the chaos. Still they weren’t without hope that what they needed could be salvaged, and at least the cave wall held the blast. A breach would have meant catastrophe, the end of human life on Mars.
Xenon broke his ruminations. “So what do think they are up to?
“Who?”
Xenon pointed skyward.
“We’ll know soon enough, once we get to Colony One.” They could already see its outline, and the massive bio-dome sparkle in the mid-sol sun. They rolled up to the facility and Xenon deftly reversed the rover up to the umbilical airlock. There was a satisfying clunk as the connection was made secure. Using this airlock meant that they had no need for bulky EVA suits, and made the trip a little easier.
When they stepped out, Becky and Gizmo were there to greet them. Gizmo’s arm had been repaired and the little robot was back to being 97.65% operational, as it put it. Quite what the remaining 2.35% was, nobody could fully understand. They walked through the connecting tunnel and into the main common room area.
“Rachel’s in the operation room, reviewing the facility schematics, if you’re ready to have a look?”
The plan was to survey the derelict areas of Colony One to assess what would be required to repair those sections and bring them back on-line. Rachel and Becky had taken charge of the project and were keen to get started.
“Xenon, you go ahead. I’m just going to visit the bio-dome for a while.”
“Sure.” He nodded.
Nills walked through the short connecting tunnel, passed the hydroponics, under the hanging vines and eventually found his way out onto the central dais. Sitting in a wicker recliner was Dr. Jann Malbec. She jumped up when she saw him come.
“Nills, you finally got here. Come, sit down.” She walked over to the pond and pulled out a bottle of colony cider. “I’ve been saving this.” She sat down and poured some glasses. “Here you go.” They clinked. “To…” Jann thought for a second. “To Mars.”
Nills raised his glass. “To Mars.”
Jann had escaped the carnage in the labs with a gash on her head and a very sore body. Other than that she was okay. By the time order had been restored, and the population in Colony Two had come to terms with the new normal, she had decided to make the trip back. Nills stayed behind, promising to follow later when he was sure things had settled down.
That was three weeks ago.
He sipped his drink. “So, any news from the ISA… from Earth?”
“We’re front page news, have been for the last month. It’s all out in the open.”
“What do they know?”
“That’s not really the problem, it’s what people are speculating that’s the problem.”
“Is always is.”
“What about Xenon, did you get any more of the story out of him?”
“A bit. From what he’s told me, Vanji grew frustrated with being consistently blocked by the council over his ambitions. So when he realised that you held the key to getting back to Earth, he did a deal with COM.”
“VanHoff?”
“Yes. He had been communicating with them for a while, hatching a deal. They were going to give him anything he wanted, if he would come back. Xenon didn’t know the details, just that they would take control of Colony Two and start a breeding programme.”
“Well, Earth thinks we hold the key to immortality, that we possess the elixir of life and they all want it now. The ISA are being sued to open up communications control with us. They’re freaking out, they can’t handle it.”
“Well, that’s their problem. We don’t have to talk to anybody if we don’t want to.”
“Yes and no. Sure, we can switch off comms but that’s not going to stop them coming here. I imagine that right now there are corporate boards meeting back on Earth, talking about how to raise money for a Mars mission. They are going to come, not just COM, but every space company, and reckless adventurer.”
“I don’t suppose it would do any good to tell them we don’t know anything.”
“I already did. They don’t believe me. They just think we are keeping it for ourselves.” Jann sighed and sipped her drink.
Colony Two Mars: A SciFi Thriller (Colony Mars Book 2) Page 16