He unconsciously slowed down to watch more of the news.
“Keep walking,” demanded a guard, who pushed Ozzy onward.
Another holovid blipped on a few paces ahead. This time a different channel, but with the same story and the same dreadful look in the reporter’s eyes.
A male reporter in a different hospital, wearing a similar mask, was speaking, “…and that’s what they’re calling it, the Martian Plague. It’s starting to spread to other cities across our vast planet. However, we are seeing it appear here in Gale Crater Ci—”
Damn. It’s already appearing in the city where he was detained. Luck wasn’t on Ozzy’s side.
Ozzy felt a heavy hand on his back, shoving him forward. He whipped his head around.
“I said, keep moving,” a guard ordered.
An inmate laughed. “He said keep moving. He said keep moving.”
The guards continued to guide Ozzy down a hallway that split off from the main cellblock.
One of the guard’s pointed to a door. “Take a left.” He elbowed Ozzy in the side and shouldered into him, practically pushing Ozzy into the doorframe.
Ozzy did his best to hold his ground, eyeing the guard the entire time. “You’re kind of an asshole. You know that?”
“An asshole, huh?” questioned the man. “Did you ask my sister what she thought of you when you held her up at gunpoint? You know, four months ago at a Ministry museum after hours? I’m pretty sure she’d point to you as the asshole.”
Ozzy cocked his head. “Which Ministry museum?” He opened his eyes wide as if he remembered. “Was she the hot chick over in Syrtis Major? Tell her I sold the Tyrrhena Iron Tablet I stole and gave all the auric credits to the poor.” He pointed to himself, indicating he was the poor man who received the money. “That might make her more interested in me because she didn’t quite care for me when I had a gun to her head. Can you imagine that?”
Both guards nudged Ozzy hard through the door and into a room. Ozzy hit a chair and lost his balance, the seat flipped over, and he fell onto his back. A loud thud echoed when he hit the floor.
He glanced up, his lips twisting into a grimace, shaking his head when he noticed the ceiling. It was unique—domed and made out of glass.
A few tall skyscrapers stood nearby, reaching toward the city’s anti-radiation graviton shield. Mars’s butterscotch sky and the high-noon sun showered through the shield, lighting up the city.
A hologram with today’s greatest fashion trends was on the sidewall of a building. Brown, tight shirts, violet magnetic button-down dresses, and sky-blue puffy wide jeans shuffled through a flashy slide show.
A single clap filled the room. Then another, and another.
Ozzy knew that three-beat clap from anywhere. He frowned, then rolled his eyes, and used the chair to help himself up to a standing position.
He bowed to the guards. “Thank you, fellas. You may leave now.” After righting the chair, he took a seat and leaned back, kicking his feet up on a table.
High Judge Robert Baldwin sat across from him, wearing his custom white robe, white top hat, and white pants. Hell, white everything. It was the Ministry’s High Judge’s colors, along with the rest of the Ministry Council Overseers, otherwise known as the governors, senators, and mayors.
The High Judge motioned to the guards. “Stand behind me and ignore Mr. Mack,” said Robert in his squirrelly sounding voice.
Ozzy sarcastically batted his eyes at Robert. “If it isn’t Mr. Dick-face.” He over-exaggeratedly stared at Robert’s long nose. Ozzy knew this wasn’t the way an ex-professor of Mars’s most astute university should behave, but he could never forgive Robert for what he did to his family. Plus, criminal life changed a man. It made Ozzy tough, and most importantly, it made him not give a damn what other people thought of him.
A guard stepped forward, his mouth straight, his eyes full of rage. “You don’t address the High Judge in that way, prisoner.”
Robert raised his arm, stopping the man from ripping Ozzy apart. “Stay.”
Nothing like treating your men like dogs.
Ozzy slouched and played with his cuffs. “So, you finally caught me. Breaking a silly archaeology code won’t keep me here but a few weeks, aye, Robert?”
Robert leaned forward, placing his palms on the table. “You will call me High Judge from this point forward, Mr. Mack. With all the laws you’ve broken throughout the years, you’ll be here a lot longer than you think. You will be old and gray by the time you are released.”
Ozzy let out a loud sigh. “Old and gray, huh? You forget how I could turn the tables on you and get you in a bit of a pickle with the law, High Judge. But, luckily for you, I’m not a rat, unlike that MMP agent you had following me around. What was her name again?” He looked to the right and frowned. “Jozi, wasn’t it?”
“Mr. Mack, you have such an imagination. No one would believe you over me, so don’t even try to get a rise out of me.”
Ozzy shook his head. He remembered being in this very room years ago with Robert. They bantered back and forth after an archaeological dig that Robert had hired Ozzy to do in the name of education when Ozzy was a professor at Gale Crater City University. He and Robert were to split the proceeds and give the majority of the auric credits to museums and the children’s education fund. Ozzy was more than happy to be funding education and his favorite place, the museums, even with the knowledge that the money had come from the black market.
Until things changed.
Robert’s intent all along was to benefit himself only and not anyone else.
He remembered the smirk on Robert’s face when Robert demanded Ozzy hand over his money.
“This wasn’t part of the deal, Robert. What do you think you’re doing? Why the hell did you even hire me, you piece of—”
“It’s the shits of the game, I’m afraid. You’re the best, Ozzy. No one can decode an ancient tablet with Coptic writings as you can.”
“This isn’t a game, Robert.”
“No, you are right, it’s not a game.” Robert looked toward the door. “And, Ozzy, you will get rid of all the documents and holovids you have on me. I know you’ve been recording…everything. Guards,” he yelled.
It was true. Ozzy had been recording everything and documenting as much as he could to save his ass if anything should happen to him. He didn’t want to lose everything—his family, his house, and his career—just in case Robert double-crossed him. But, unfortunately, it looked like he did.
Men in red uniforms with the MMP symbol emblazoned on their helmets had burst into the room. It wasn’t the Mars Ministry Police but a bunch of hired guns acting as the police.
Over the next several months, Robert had forced Ozzy to go on more digs and pressured him to keep his mouth shut.
Yet, Ozzy couldn’t stand the person he was becoming, the lies, and the crimes. He stopped working for Robert and paid the price, ultimately becoming what he hated—a criminal—and Robert’s biggest competitor.
But he had never stopped recording Robert. He had plenty of backups and copies stored in various locations around Mars and on Relic. He dreamed of one day releasing them once he had his daughter, Lily, in his arms and they were flying off this God-forsaken planet.
Ozzy let out a gush of air, pushing the memory out of his mind. He wanted nothing more than to strangle the man sitting across from him. “Robert, do you remember the digs I did for you in Aonia?” Ozzy stared intently at Robert and then winked. “That was quite the ride you had me on, and thanks for eventually ruining my life, you sick prick.”
Robert’s lips downturned. “I never had you do any archaeological work for me. As you know, that’s illegal, and on Mars, I create the law.”
Ozzy bounced his head up and down, exaggerating the movement. “Oh, okay. We’ll go with that story from now on.” He glanced at a guard. “You look like you need something to do. I’ll take a Martian Chocolate Martini, stirred, not shaken. Thank you.”
R
obert pounded his fist on the table. “Alright, that’s enough. I don’t have you here for you to make up lies or ask for a drink. This isn’t a bar.” He paused and took a deep breath as if the next thing he was about to say was more than heartbreaking for the man. “I want to make a deal.” Robert snapped his fingers and a guard bent down and grabbed a suitcase from under the table. He tossed it on the table and slid it over to Ozzy.
Ozzy put his hand out, stopping the suitcase from sliding onto his lap. “You caught me red-handed, brought me here in chains, to offer me a deal? You could have done that over the com line or through your damn agent, Jozi.”
“I know you, Ozzy. Freedom is important to you, and experiencing a prison can be a little hard for someone who’d rather be six feet under than confined in a cement box with bars. Trust me, I brought you to the detention center to help you make the right decision. Yes, the right decision is to take this deal. Now, open it,” responded Robert, leaning back and folding his arms over his stomach. “We need your help.”
Ozzy hesitated and sat straighter. “You always need something archaeological from me, Robert. But in a semi-public forum like this? It’s not like you.” He tilted his head to the side. “However, it’s been a long time, and you know what? I can forgive and forget.” Ozzy swallowed down his own lie.
Robert didn’t flinch.
Ozzy shrugged. “Not in the mood to walk down memory lane?” He unsnapped the clasps and lifted open the case. A thick gold tablet, almost the exact size and width of the briefcase, was staring back at him.
“You’ll be taking that along with you. Don’t let it get into the wrong hands,” said Robert.
“I’ll be taking it along with me to where exactly?” questioned Ozzy.
“Read it and you’ll understand.”
Ozzy looked down at the artifact and read its inscriptions. His eyes widened, but he did his best to withhold any wonderment. “It looks like an underground map written in Martian Coptic hieroglyphs from the Ancients.”
The Ancients was the name of the Old Ones who lived on Mars long before humans arrived. They had died off tens of thousands of years ago, and most likely long before that, but they left traces of themselves here and there. No one knew what really happened to them, and nothing had been found that gave reason as to why they left or if they were somehow killed off.
Perhaps Mars’s blown-out atmosphere was their biggest legacy.
He glanced again at the tablet. It had all the telltale signs of a map. A legend comprised of a twenty-pointed sun, dashes, Coptic symbols for descriptions and locations, circumflexes and angle brackets, all to help indicate the four major directions—north, south, east, and west.
“What exactly does it say, Ozzy?” inquired Robert.
Ozzy gave him an ominous stare. “You don’t know?”
“We have decoded it as best we can.”
“Then why do you need me?”
“You are the best. You can find a needle inside a Martian hill. No other person can do what you do.”
Ozzy snorted. “It’s funny how you’d know that.”
“It’s not that funny. You’re well known.”
“I’m as well known as this Coptic writing, which means I’m not known by many, other than those who have used my services. Such as yourself.”
Robert dismissed the comment. “What does it say, Ozzy?”
He glanced down at the gold tablet. “It’s a roadmap to a cure.” He let out a loud sigh. “You’re using me again.”
“It’s not using you when we’re dealing with the Martian Plague.”
Ozzy cleared his throat and closed the briefcase. He glanced at the guards then back at Robert. “There has to be a catch. What’s in it for you?” Ozzy knew from past experience that Robert was always all about himself. Nothing more. Nothing less.
“We suspect the plague that’s haunting the Mars population has been on the planet many times before. It’s like a cycle, and it’s the first time it’s hit us. We suspect the Ancients had the cure, and that this map leads to that cure. If you can find it, and if the cure works, then I’ll be the prominent High Judge who healed every human on Mars. That’s the catch.”
Ozzy let out a sharp laugh. “Yeah, not good enough.”
“You ever hear of Yersinia pestis?”
Robert’s whiney voice was beginning to hurt Ozzy’s ears.
Ozzy dipped his head. “Yersinia pestis was the bubonic plague back in the fourteenth century. It killed millions in Europe when humans lived on Earth. Why?”
“That’s exactly what we’re dealing with here but worse. Nothing we have on Mars has come close to eradicating this disease. Our medical geniuses are stumped. Our medicine does nothing. All we’ve done is quicken the disease’s progress.” He put his hands together. “It kills faster now.”
For weeks, Ozzy had heard reports on the news about newly discovered Martian fleas and ticks—a carbon-dioxide breathing variety—that had been getting into Martian cities, somehow adapting to the terraformed oxygen, but only for a short time before they died. Yet, before they would die off, they’d bite city mice and rats that carried Yersinia pestis…and then the ticks and fleas would bite humans.
A simple sneeze or a cough by a human would spread the contagion.
Yet, there was something more to the news story that they weren’t spilling the beans about. Ozzy could taste it, and it tasted like the Dunrakee alien jerks who kicked humans off of Earth nearly a hundred years ago, almost decimating themselves, their technology, humans, and human technology in the process.
Ozzy had never detected carbon-dioxide breathing fleas or ticks on the Martian soil. Why? Because he was one hundred percent certain they didn’t exist.
Ozzy rapped the table with his knuckles. “You make it official that I can go back to my life without any consequences, then I’ll find this cure and retrieve it.”
“Deal,” responded Robert. He sat straighter. “A deal that can get you your job back at the university.” He looked pleased. “You can be a professor again.”
Ozzy became serious, and his nerves shot to his stomach. He sat up, his demeanor completely changing. “And I can see my daughter again?”
Robert stared at Ozzy for several minutes then nodded. “You can see your daughter all you want.”
Ozzy glanced away with a heavy exhale, remembering the last time he saw Lily. It was three years ago. She was four years old. He had promised he’d be back in a few days after he dropped her off at her mom’s. He hated lying to her. He hated imagining her expression when he never came back. Not in a week. Not in a month. Not in a year, or three. Ozzy swallowed hard and had to fight to keep a sob from escaping his throat.
After a moment, Ozzy continued, “And I want my ship back.”
“Done.”
Ozzy sat further back in his chair thinking that this was too easy.
And it was never easy with Robert. He either actually cared about curing this disease, or he was scared he’d catch it himself. Ozzy knew the High Judge could take a ship to another city at any time, but the disease would eventually find him.
“I want this agreement documented, signed, your blood print on it, and whatever else to secure my freedom,” demanded Ozzy.
Robert wiggled his finger in the air with a smirk on his face. “Guards, bring in someone from the Ministry’s executive branch, and we’ll draw this up right now. When—”
“Hold on. I’m not finished,” interrupted Ozzy. “Plus six million auric credits.”
Robert paused, thinking. “That can be arranged.”
Again, too easy. Robert barely flinched at Ozzy’s request.
Ozzy pressed his hands together. “Ten million auric credits.”
If he could get that much money, then screw going back to his old life. Instead, it would buy him an actual vessel that would take him and Lily far from this planet to a secret colony on a Jupiter moon he caught wind of, and he could do whatever the hell he wanted to do for the rest of his life.
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If that secret colony truly existed.
“No,” responded Robert. “That’s insane. Even six million is insane.”
Ozzy knocked his knuckles on the table twice and stood. “Then you’ll have to find someone else. Thank you. I’ll head back to my cell now.”
The guards took a few paces forward and grabbed Ozzy’s forearms then led him toward the door. One of the guards reached for the doorknob. Ozzy waited for Robert’s reaction.
“Don’t take another step,” ordered Robert.
Ozzy smiled. He knew his tactic would work.
The guard pulled his hand away from the knob.
“Ten million auric credits. No more,” Robert said, his face gnarled in frustration.
Ozzy continued to grin. “Send it to my account now, and it’s a deal.”
“Not so fast,” replied Robert. “One million up front, nine million when you have successfully finished. No leader in their right mind would give that much money to a criminal before a job is done.”
Ozzy smiled wider at the truth of Robert’s statement. “But you know me, Dick-face. You know that when I’m hired, I follow through. But in this case, I’ll appease you.” He turned toward the door. “Six million up front and four million after I’ve found you the cure and sent it back to you. Once I check that the funds are in my account, I can start.”
“Under one condition,” remarked Robert. “That one of our agent’s tags along.”
The last thing he wanted was an MMP agent cramping his style, but for ten million credits, he’d have to oblige. It was his only way to a fresh new start and a way he and Lily could get off this planet. “Fine.”
Robert pushed his chair out and stood. “Guards, notify Agent Jozi Ryan that she has another assignment. And that assignment is now.”
4
Gale Crater Flyway Port—Gale Crater City, Mars
Ozzy rubbed the underbelly of his S-4 Jumper, smelling the fresh fumes of the electrohydrodynamic ionic thruster engines and rocket fuel.
Martian Plague Page 2