by Allen Ivers
He was a top flight researcher in radiogeology, which Leo assumed meant he was a sandstone DJ. Lot of sitting and staring at knobs either way. Kooky Rook was also a man with a bad knee whose expertise got him greenlit for space travel in spite of the risks; he took a ladder drop just the right way and his patella would pop right out of alignment.
Or so he liked to claim anyway.
Sure enough, Rook gestured at his knee, feigning pain, “I stepped off my ladder this morning and…”
Gamble grabbed the ball of the joint, giving the slightest twist. Rook’s eyebrows shot up just a half second too late. Either his nervous system and reaction time were garbage or he was faking it and just didn’t want to do any work for a few days.
Granted, the old man was probably in a fairly generic amount of pain just from being old -- arthritis and all that -- but that didn’t excuse him from the eagle eye of Olivia Gamble.
Or he wanted to see Olivia. That was also possible.
Gamble inspected Rook, snorting roughly like an angry bull. No more words.
Rook nodded and shrugged himself out of the cot. Gamble grunted something under her breath, before trudging over to Leo, “How are we feeling now?”
“Cloud Nine, Doctor,” Leo slurred out.
“Yeah.” Gamble’s trademark drawl hung in the air. “Maybe a little too much happy juice.” She reached over and with practiced smoothness — and uncharacteristic grace — she pulled the IV from his arm and wrapped a small bandage across the needle site.
Turns out fifteen years of practice helps with performing some basic actions even with a partially comatose patient fighting the diagnosis.
“See, what I think is.” Leo paused, forgetting words and the noises that coincided. “What I think is--”
“Yeah, they don’t pay you for your thoughts, Leo.” Gamble snapped back.
Leo smiled. “And here I thought you’d gone soft on us.”
Gamble smirked, but more with her eyes than anything else, the wrinkles at the corners curling ever so slightly up, as her brown eyes flared in the flood lights. That had to be a smile.
Especially since her thin lips were forced down into a such decisive frown. “Nobody thinks you’re funny.”
“A few people do.”
Gamble shook her head. “Yeah, they’re just being nice.”
“And you’re not?” Puppy dog eyes, activate.
Gamble scowled at him, not having it. “Piotr called down. Shuttle landed, and he’ll need you up there soon.”
Leo dropped his head back into his pillow. If he had a surface to slam it against, he would have, but it was almost like someone designed this bed with the express intent of preventing the patient from harming himself. “Maybe you could just tell him I’m dead?”
“Maybe I could smother you, make it really convincing?” Gamble threw over her shoulder, as she stalked over to her next subject.
Leo swung his feet off the cot, planting them on the cold steel floor. He flexed his toes, feeling the rivets of the particular panel, his thick socks unable to mask the broad lumps. Wonder if people tripped on these, broke their necks, and then couldn’t leave the infirmary. Would Piotr buy that?
No. Time to go to work, mildly buzzed, and avert a potentially world-shattering crisis at Mankind’s first solar colony.
Okay, maybe a few cool breaths first, to stop his skin from crawling right off his skeleton.
Leo managed to shake the chills that were inching around his body long enough to get up to the command deck. He pulled himself into an oversized seat next to Piotr. It felt like sitting in dad’s chair: hard disdain, and disapproving of your new friends.
Leo lifted the headset, fitting the cans over his ears and tilting the crane-arm to hold the mic over his mouth, “Nomad-3, this is Murcielago, sitrep?”
The radio crackled for a long moment. Arguably, just a few seconds, but Leo was plenty tense right now. It took him that long to see Piotr staring at him, forced intensity, the whites of his eyes striated with veins from his insane lack of sleep. Leo matched the stare, narrowing his own eyes until they were nearly closed. God, sleep sounded excellent right now.
Leo started to drift, the weightlessness of the cockpit helping to rock him off to--
“Copy, Murci!” A chipper voice shattered the momentary comfort, “Nomad-3 reporting in. We are touchdown at Manifest. Over.”
Piotr swung his own microphone around, “Hey, Garner, it’s Piotr. Can you do me un favor, por favor?”
Crackling back over the line, “Whatcha got, Cabby?”
Piotr threw a glare at Leo, pairing it with a hateful toothy grin. The nickname was catching on, and there was nothing he could do to stop it.
Piotr pinched the mic in his fingers, forcing the words out past gritted teeth, and aiming them through the mic and towards Leo’s chair. “Could you maybe lighten up just a touch? Both of you?”
“That’s a negatory, Murci-Actual. Must maintain operational discipline up in this hootenanny.”
Hootenanny.
Leo allowed himself to snicker at the silly sounding word. Garner’s energetic presence in his ears wicked away a good portion of Leo’s anxiety. The kid just laughed in the face of God, and wasn’t the least bit thrown -- or if he was, he wasn’t letting on. There was something absurdly comforting about someone else’s psychotic bravado.
Piotr swung his mic up over his head, gesturing with one hand at the planet hanging outside the five inch glass port-hole he called a window, “See? Even he’s having fun with this.”
“Isn’t he like twelve?” Leo joked. Even he had to admit, that Garner’s attitude was infectious.
“Aw, youth. Wasted on the young.” Piotr rested back in his chair, reaching for his magazine.
“You know I can hear you two, right?”
Leo craned his own microphone up and away, leaning towards Piotr, as though he could make the exchange private. “And you know Manifest is in a real crisis right now?”
Piotr flipped open to a particularly saucy page. “Yeah, but that’s not really my problem. I’m just the get-away driver.”
Chapter 5
Manifest
He hated that quiet. Late night postings had made for many a silent night, but Locklear never could stand the supreme quiet an environment suit offered. Nothing but labored breathing beating a soft metronome through the front of his skull.
He could feel the crunch of alien dirt under his feet, but there was something very unnerving about being able to see and feel something happen, and have one of your other senses fail to corroborate that input. He could see his feet dent the Martian surface like hundreds before him, a soft squish as he sank half an inch into the soft ground, but the ground gave him nothing in response.
It was like he was stepping out onto a cloud, directly into the Halls of Valhalla.
How was anyone ever okay with that? Did it take years of practice, exposure, that the uncanny valley nature of it becomes accepted? Or were they all losing their minds, and just refusing to commiserate, lest someone think they were weak and unworthy of the grand adventure?
They had gone further than any had before, explorers daring the universe to slap them back into the primordial ooze from whence they came. If he couldn’t handle taking his first steps, how would he ever learn to run?
The team had hooked up the shuttle with the automated tower near the tarmac -- self-serve hydrogen gas pump. Automation prevented human error, humans prevented automated error. Symbiosis. Was that the word? Or were we serving them now?
Shut up, Lock. It’s a gas pump.
Locklear glanced back at the shuttle, a hundred yards or so back behind him, safely away from the colony proper. Normally, a rover would ferry his team over, but they weren’t expecting roadside assistance with the situation at hand. The airstrip couldn’t be placed too close to the structures, as that would put the whole colony at risk if any one landing went sideways.
So now they had the long walk to think about their life
choices that brought them to Earth’s rustic baby brother. Some might be excited at the prospect, to see the colony grow taller with each footfall. Others stared at their feet and waited for their senses to finally engage with their surroundings.
It’s not that there wasn’t ambient noise. The small atmosphere did translate some whistling winds through the nylon suit. Maybe it was the thickness of his rubber soles then, that maddeningly kept him from hearing the drumbeat of his own steps.
Locklear shook off that lingering feeling of dread, but it was like pulling fish hooks out of his skin. He looked back at the tarmac, at the vaulted wings of the shuttle. It was just sitting there, as though he might be able to get back on and skip out on this ordeal, go spend another three months in that modest tin can a hundred miles somewhere overhead.
Instead, he was far from home, having the chance of a lifetime to face new and exhilarating challenges. Not two weeks ago, the idea excited him. Now, he was painfully aware of the lack of routine his life was about to have.
Mars Cop. One of nine. Not enough for his liking.
The dust storm had laid several short dunes, maybe two feet high, across their path. Nobody had been out to clean them up. No tire treads or footfalls to betray any kind of presence.
And while the simulated gravity on the Murci was able to mimic the Martian gravity, it only prepared them so much. The inner ear’s quiet mayhem elevated these small rolling hills into precipitous ski slopes.
Romanov tumbled for the second time, dropping to his knees before slumping over onto his side, as though the act of holding himself upright was too much for his heavy little head.
Jericho grabbed him by his pack, lifting him right back onto his feet as though he were a toddler. He stared right through the little man, his dark brown eyes almost black looking past the flesh into Romanov’s soul, into some place where the man should keep his backbone.
It was a look that could shrink a grown man into a little boy. Romanov shook his head, in some mixture of thanks and alarm, pawing at the dust that smeared across his helmet, the clunky heavy fingers of the suit reducing his attempts to a vanity exercise. Jericho gave the little man two good shoulder shakes, to knock the rest of the loose Mars off him.
Just a cat playing with his dinner.
Garner propped himself up on a dune, Washington on the proverbial Delaware. With a smarmy grin, he tabbed his radio, “Come on, Rom. You ain’t in Kansas anymore.”
“I know this.” Romanov’s contradictory French accent leeched through the static, soft and beaten. Embarrassed.
Awkward little guy had been all but thrown at this mission. And here he was, nowhere near ready –
For the blood to spray across his helmet.
Copper soil blended with hot crimson spackeled across his visor. Locklear looked for the source of the sudden geyser.
Garner leaned backward – no, only part of him was. His suit popped open like a soup can, bits of white smoke flashing into the air as the meager supply of oxygen vacated the prison and condensed in the sudden cold.
Garner fell onto his face, split from shoulder to sternum.
“Down!”
Locklear dropped onto his chest, slipping behind one of the small sand dunes. He expected the ground to punch him back, but it was more of a playful shove, like a good friend at a shitty little bar. The sand coughed up around him, little playful whirls in front of his face.
It was as though the planet itself found his distress amusing.
Garner had dropped like a falling tree, his knees locked and arms frozen stiff. His helmet had cracked on the ground, as his split torso bent like a spring, absorbing the worst of the landing.
His trademark smirk frozen in place, that of a childhood friend catching a glance from across a busy room. His eyes were the only thing that had a chance to show the pain that had wracked his body, before the cold imprisoned his muscles.
The wound cauterized black, suit and metal and plastic fused together with flesh and bone into a demented blend. It had happened so fast, his severed arteries had time to give only one good cough of blood into the air before they were plugged with slag.
The fine red mist was still settling, the slightest of contrast against the ground.
Romanov flailed behind his dune, cursing and screaming, but the suit radio was kindly off. Nobody needed that right now.
“What the hell was that?! Was that one of the colonists?” Somebody shouted.
“Where did it come from? Anybody see it?” The smallest hint of adrenaline eked out in Amelia’s taciturn voice. That was more jarring than the corpse. This had scared even her.
Locklear pictured it: Garner atop the dune, looking back. The wound across his shoulder, down his front. Means it had to be… “One o’clock, low!” He called out.
Isen poked his head up, a big bulbous plexiglass sphere flagging over the ridge, “I think I see it!”
An invisible hand opened his helmet like a tin of preserved meats. The top, glass and all, simply sheared off.
The air evacuated his suit, launching the pop-top up into the sky. His hands reached up, clutching at the opening in his helmet, as though he might hold the gaping breach shut. He flopped backwards, writhing on the ground. It was only after he hit the deck that Locklear noticed a chunk of Isen’s head had gone with it.
Locklear tried to not look until the thrashing stopped. What little blood leaked from the suit was soon slurry with the dirt.
Strauss backed away from the dunes. His head whipping to and fro, before he turned back toward the shuttle.
Every instinct in Locklear’s body froze up, a nightmare robbing his voice. He could scream and scream but nothing would come out.
Strauss, idiot, get down.
Cally wasn’t so paralyzed, “No! No! Come back!”
She got up to grab him. Goddamn Hero.
It all happened so fast. Before anybody could stop her, Strauss and Cally were pulled apart, that invisible hand cleaving them at the waist.
No. Not invisible. Enough dirt and dust had been kicked up, he could see the faint red beam draw the line across their screaming bodies, tracing the murder for God’s own will.
A laser? More powerful than any found in any lab. He had seen prototypes, mounted onto bunkers, and even a hand held unit with a battery pack. Cauterizing, cutting, but over this distance?
What the Hell could do that?
He blinked a few times, seeing Amelia holding Jazmin down by her pack. Jazmin’s hands clawing and scraping, trying to reach out to Cally’s body mere feet away. Romanov curled against the dune, shaking in his suit, all tears and snot.
Jericho’s cold eyes bore into Locklear, an abyss waiting for some kind of command to bring order to the chaos. That look, an order in itself.
Get it together, Lock.
He pictured it again. The trajectory, the line, the pink mist of Isen’s head –
No. Focus. Where did it come from, exactly? Can’t look. Just know. Trace the impact.
Locklear glances at the wounded, picking out where they’d been hit, where they were facing. It had to be…
“One o’clock, six feet left of the gate, just off the ground. Hundred feet,” Locklear whispered, but his radio mic broadcast it loud and clear to the rest of the team. “Heads down, move from cover to cover.”
“It’s got us pinned, sir!” Amelia growled the obvious. She planted Jazmin into the dune-side, finally able to wrestle the deranged griever back to safety.
Locklear slid over to Romanov, grabbing him by the handle on his pack. Copying Amelia’s behavior, Locklear pulled the newborn soldier back to cover.
Romanov didn’t do much of anything to resist or help, a kitten being hauled away by the scruff. Just baggage on his way to a destination not of his choosing.
“Thank you, sir!” He blubbered out through the tears and the gurgling of vomit in his throat.
“On your feet, Officer. We ain’t done yet.” Amelia snapped off the order before Locklear could e
ven form the thought. And she wasn’t finished, turning to him next, “Sir, we can’t rush that nest.”
“Well, we take that nest or die of thirst, Dane. Those are the options.” Locklear pulled his sidearm off the magnetic holster on his hip, “Weapons out!”
Wary and shaky, the troops pull the various arms they brought. Amelia slipped her shotgun from his back harness, “We stand up, it’ll end us...”
Locklear eyes Garner’s prostrate form, the unnatural folding of his limbs over each other. The seam cut along his torso allowed his head to fold down toward his legs, the blood and soil packing together to form a copper muck, icy and patchy.
“I’ll draw attention.”
Amelia nods, leaning back against her hill. “Sergeant’s going to draw fire. When he does, light it up!”
Garner laid on the edge of the dune, only partially occluded by the dirt mound. If Garner were still pulling oxygen, he might have something quippy to say, some sardonic aside about how real pain was dinner with your in-laws, not this pithy little scratch.
He was never a tough guy, just all talk. Infantry boy to the last. Without him, they had all been cowed into silence.
Locklear inched over, scuttling his butt along the dirt towards Garner. The dust hung in the air, like it was also holding its breath.
The average human body weighs 62 kilograms. Garner came in at about 58, being a shorter guy, even with his pack.
Locklear never really appreciated how heavy that small number really was until that moment, as he tried to move Garner’s lifeless form like an assembly of sand bags. It was almost like Garner was fighting him, insisting to remain at his final resting place.
Disturbing him seemed plenty awful, but to have Garner fight to stay made it all seem that much more sacrilegious.
He could feel the eyes on his back, even through the suit. Everyone had pieced together what Locklear was planning, and if they weren’t so scared, they’d be horrified. Their opinion of him was about to be cemented with a proper demonstration of something criminally vicious.