“Don’t worry about him,” said Kostovich. “He’ll never last more than an hour out there. It’s dusk - the temperature will be through the floor in a couple of hours. I’m launching a drone. I’ll track him and you can recover the body in the morning.”
The repressurisation finished and Bobby pulled his helmet off.
“He got away,” he said to Foveaux.
“He must know what’s waiting for him out there. His choice, I guess. Is that all part of the commander code? Avoiding the dishonour of surrender?”
“Not that I know,” said Bobby. “He was going to have a shower. That’s what I’d have gone for.”
The personnel from Ephialtes had been watching from the transports.
“I think that was Steiner,” said Lund. “Why would he go and do a thing like that?”
“Steiner? You think he made it?”
“It was him. I know it. That was the emergency. He must have made it through and tried to attack. Why has he run off now, though? He’s going to die out there.”
“I don’t know,” said Lucero. “He’s one tough son of a bitch. If he made it down here then who knows what he has planned? He’s a pretty resourceful guy.”
Lund looked at the place Steiner had escaped from. It was like a warehouse in style, but it was warm and light with a breathable atmosphere. The outside had none of those things.
On the drive to the garrison Kostovich’s voice came over the com. “Foveaux?” he said.
“Go ahead,” said Foveaux.
“I got a drone overhead and I picked up the heat signature of your guy.”
“Go on.”
“Well, I followed him for a couple of klicks and then he went dead.”
“He died? From the cold?”
“Probably that too,” said Kostovich, “but the signature just disappeared. Boom, it was gone.”
“Fell down a hole, maybe?”
“Who knows? Anyway, I’ll give you the coordinates and you can get out there and have a look tomorrow.”
“Okay.”
“You did a great job today, by the way.”
“Thank you. But it wasn’t just me. It was all of us. You too.”
Kostovich nodded. “Maybe. Maybe we all did a great job, you’re right. Congratulations us.”
“Congratulations us,” said Foveaux.
At the garrison the transports were unloaded under guard.
“There’s really no need for all this,” said Lucero, “it’s not like we’re going to go anywhere.”
“It’s standard procedure,” said Foveaux.
“You have a procedure for this?” said Lucero, incredulously.
“We do now,” said Foveaux, “I just made it up. In the stockade and secure quarters for now, and we’ll sort something out for the long term in a few days.”
Lucero rolled her eyes.
Bobby pushed his way through to Askel.
“Askel?” he said.
“Bobby,” Askel replied.
“I wanted to catch up on Europa. I was kinda busy, though.”
“I saw. So you’re on the other side now?”
“Well,” said Bobby, “I’m just a simple Martian boy, sticking up for my planet.”
Askel laughed. “I guess you thought you could get away from me here. Well, look right where I am.”
“I’m looking,” said Bobby.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Looks pretty good to me.”
“Oh, that is slick. You haven’t changed, Bobby Karjalainen.”
Bobby smiled at Askel. “What are you doing tonight?”
“Are you asking me out?”
“I might be.”
“I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to turn you down.”
Bobby was taken aback. “Why?” he said.
“Well,” explained Askel, “tonight I have to be a prisoner of war. So I can’t make it. But some other time, okay?”
“Hey,” said Bobby conspiratorially, nodding toward Foveaux, “I think it’ll be okay. I know the commissioner.”
A small voice startled Bobby. “Commander Karjalainen, could I have a few words?”
Bobby turned and saw Elspeth standing, camera in hand, beaming at him.
“How did you get in here?” he said.
“I’m accredited now,” said Elspeth, pointing to badge attached to her lapel. “Just a few words, for my stream? Could you tell us about the rescue? I understand there was big firefight out at the spaceport? Were you there?”
“I’d love to talk to you, Elspeth, but it’s been kind of a long day. Can we do this tomorrow?”
Elspeth looked disappointed. “Okay,” she said. “How about something for tonight’s stream? Just a picture or something? Who’s your friend?”
“This is Askel Lund. She’s a spacecraft designer of some repute.”
“Could you kiss her?”
“What!?” said Bobby.
“It would be a great picture. You rescued her, right? Give her a kiss, I’ll make it the number one aggregated image before the end of the day.”
“What do you think?” Bobby asked Askel. “Feel like making news?”
Askel looked at him. “C’mere,” she said.
Epilogue
Another dust storm was gathering in the dusk as Steiner walked towards the horizon. He felt strange. It was cold, but he didn’t feel it. He felt removed from his body, like he was looking down on himself. He felt an urge to rip his helmet off, like the urge he had felt to run towards the hangar doors, only this one he was able to control, to start with anyway.
It had seemed like he was watching a film as he had run to the doors. It seemed like he was going too fast, and he knew he had no chance of clearing the doors with his jump. But somehow he had. He had leapt like a gazelle and somehow landed outside, and had kept on running far further than he would have thought possible.
He wondered if he had some sort of altitude sickness. Maybe there was a leak in his suit and he was losing air. Maybe the lack of oxygen was addling his mind. He felt all wrong and once again came the powerful urge to take the helmet off.
He looked at the HUD. He was now more than fifteen kilometres from the spaceport, in open terrain where they would never find him. Without even considering the consequences, he pulled the helmet off and laid down.
In some weird dreamstate he knew he didn’t need the helmet to survive. He dropped it by his side and forgot that he had ever resisted removing it. He noticed for the first time that he was no longer breathing and that the HUD remained, even though the helmet was gone.
Staring up into the deep black sky, and with the dust already blowing up around him, the dream part of his mind, the other self, calculated the length of time it would take the USAN to build and send new ships. Allowing for setbacks and errors, five years seemed reasonable.
The dust was starting to cover him.
His other self was now dominant. It set himself to reactivate in five years, sent himself the deep sleep command, and closed his eyes. Within a few minutes he was covered by the sand. A passing person, or even a survey satellite, would never even know he was there.
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Ephialtes (Ephialtes Trilogy Book 1) Page 51