by Patty Jansen
What? “Oh, come on, that conspiracy theory was put to bed long ago.”
“It’s true. I did the calculations.”
“But—”
“I’m a fucking engineer. I did the calculations.”
“But a simple malfunction could have—”
Paul shook his head. “No. I’ve seen the commands that were sent to ignite the rockets. There was no malfunction.”
“I never heard about that.”
“You wouldn’t have, because the officer who found these commands was reprimanded and sent on several useless secret missions and may be dead.”
“Who is this officer?”
“She is my wife.”
“Kat? She left. She wanted nothing more to do with us.”
“Did she ever tell you?”
“Why would she—”
He said, louder, “Did she ever tell you?”
“No, but—”
“There you go. She never told you, so you made up stories that fit with all the bullshit narrative you’re being sold about this whole fucking place. That it’s a secret base, and that’s OK because they’re military. And that it’s a punitive settlement, for prisoners. It’s not about the fucking prisoners. It’s about what the prisoners knew that caused them to be prisoners.”
“Whoa, man, keep your hair on,” Sol said. “A prisoner is a prisoner.”
“No, man, there is a real distinction. Prisoners are criminals. These people here, at least those who are smarter than your average dumbass walking around the corridors, they’re fucking political prisoners who know something that the bosses, you know, upper-fucking-command, vice-fucking-admiral Preston, doesn’t like. That’s what. And if Kat is alive, this is where she will be. Because she saw the meteorite’s trajectory, she knew who’d given the order, she raised objections, she found herself on the wrong side of Preston, she contacted Sanchez, because he wants to get rid of this rot, and then she got promoted. So she’s here, filling a commanding officer role.”
That was actually a pretty impressive piece of knowledge. “How did you find that out?”
“I took years to piece it together. I spent all my free time scouring the news, and delving into boring reports and corners of reports where no one goes. Because I refuse to believe that Kat would just abandon me.”
Thalia would have believed it in a heartbeat. She could never see what her childhood friend saw in a piece of grump like Paul.
“I’ve seen what is publicly available of the reports she sent from the asteroid belt. I have files of cases with precedents of what Preston does with dissenters. The only thing I have not been able to find is a personnel list of Calico Base. Probably it doesn’t exist, so they don’t have to justify if people disappear.”
“Well . . .” He managed to make her feel guilty about disliking him, about breaking the friendship between the three of them. She didn’t like being made to feel guilty. She believed she did good work and there was nothing she should feel guilty about. And if he would prefer that people liked him, he could just stop being such an arsehole.
But she did feel guilty, and jealous. Let’s face it, no man had ever cared for her in this way. Her parents hadn’t even cared in that way.
Of course she shouldn’t feel jealous, but should was different from reality. Damn, she wanted a knight in shining armour who would spend years combing files in obscure depositories in order to find and rescue her. Even if he was also an arsehole.
“Well,” she said again. “We can make it about rescuing Kat.”
Chapter 7
* * *
BACK IN HIS ROOM, Fabio turned on his communication hub, detached the screen and put it in the bracket on the wall. Then he stretched out on his bed, his feet up against the opposite wall.
He wanted to sleep. He wanted to forget whatever was left of his memories. He’d start as a fresh officer without prior history. He’d obey all orders without question. He’d be a good little soldier, and he’d never again—
Free people from rooms where they had been locked in by some “mistake”.
Or save people’s lives, even if they were supposed to be enemies.
Or, for that matter, his own life.
Fabio flicked through the channels, of which there were many. He cared not for sport, or drama, or reruns of old shows.
The ISF military news channel made him feel uneasy. It was too obviously cheery and staged. A female, pale-skinned newsreader churned through items of news of all ISF worlds. Head office in Sarajevo had employed some new high-ranking staff and the channel went through all their awards and achievements.
There was increased surveillance of the surface of Mars where, according to the news reader, things had been calm recently. But the red planet looked nothing like Fabio remembered. It had become a white-and-pink planet.
The newscast didn’t say what had happened there, so people must consider that common knowledge.
Fabio remembered driving through snow. He sat at the wheel of a large terrain vehicle and had to divide his attention between looking where he was going and looking at the air gauge on the cabin environment. The truck contained many more people than it was designed to carry and the air was depleting fast. It was fifty kilometres to Jackson, and the plain should be easy to traverse if it weren’t for the raging blizzard. The truck’s windscreen wipers were designed to shift dust, not snow.
The memory made him shiver. He flicked to the next channel.
The information channel was well-stocked, but base-controlled, and there was no search function for past news to fill him in on the vast chunks of time that had been wiped from his brain. He didn’t even know what he was looking for.
He typed Mars and came up with a lot of information about military activity there. About the bases, their command structure and who filled what position. Also cheerful touristy stuff.
Boring.
While flicking through the other channels, he came across a security login screen. Well, that was careless of them to leave it there. Rather old-fashioned.
He put his finger to the screen—where they really should have installed a more secure entry method, even if it was just a fingerprint or iris scan—and the nano pad under the tip of his middle finger took less than five seconds to find a valid password.
Not that the stuff he found on the other side was terribly interesting. Oh, ouch the black and grey design was so old-fashioned it hurt his eyes.
What was Vantage?
He selected that option, which took him to a screen with many thumbnail images.
Hmmm, live camera feeds from outside the base.
One offered a view of the landscape from a camera at the top of the concrete bunker. The horizon was jagged and curved noticeably. The golden dome of Calico Base sat in the valley on the other side of the lava lake. The sky was grey, the massive disk of Jupiter now almost full and giving off a wan glare. It meant it was almost midnight, but the only time it became really dark on Io was during the daily eclipse when Io went through Jupiter’s shadow for two hours at local noon. Natural daylength at Io was forty-two hours and forty-five minutes, but like most other bases, Calico kept Sarajevo time.
While the view was pretty and very unusual, it was also rather boring, so he flicked to a few other live cameras. One was a close-up of the seething lava lake at the bottom of the cliff. He found that he could manipulate this camera and spent some time scanning the perimeter of the lake and the patterns of cracks in the lava and the bubbling rock. But then he got bored with that and switched to a camera further up the mountain. It showed him details of the surrounding areas, including the track that led from the base to the cliff top. And by chance there was a truck halfway down the slope, winding its way down to the main base. Fabio wasn’t entirely sure, but he thought it was the same truck that had taken him to the base. Maybe there only was one truck.
He moved the camera around a bit more and focused on the copper dome of the base which glinted in the sunlight.
; He had to zoom the camera in as much as it would go to make out details. Another shuttle must have arrived, because there were lights and a lot of activity on the landing field.
Fabio peered at the screen. At this magnification, the camera’s resolution reduced all objects to blurs. Mostly white, like passenger vehicles and shuttles, some grey, like trucks carrying cargo.
The white vehicles lined up to connect to the access tubes to the arrivals hall.
Cranes unloaded crates and other objects from another vehicle.
One truck carried two very large tubes. Rocket launchers?
Lights flashed at the top and sides of the vehicle and a couple of smaller trucks accompanied it at a very slow speed. Instead of going to the base, the convoy disappeared into the craggy terrain on the other side of the field. The last Fabio saw of it was a piece of the machinery on the back of the truck sinking over the ridge of the hill.
Hmmm. Interesting.
He flicked back to the main menu.
Safety Instructions.
He didn’t want to read those, because his mind reeled from bad memories of stuff that happened when things went wrong. He saw exploding glass, people collapsed on the ground, and snow everywhere.
But he had to look anyway, just to make sure that the base had proper safety instructions. Imagine just how much could go wrong in a place like this. It was highly likely that all personnel coming to the base voluntarily signed an agreement that they understood the danger and that they would not hold ISF responsible for dangers that were known.
Like exploding volcanoes.
Like earthquakes which might rupture the dome.
Apparently every room was meant to have an air tank and a set of four masks. There were supposed to be hazard stations that held a store of pressure suits and nozzles to refill the tanks. The medicine box was meant to contain various types of anti-radiation medication, and also items to help with major trauma.
From experience, though, he knew that people trying to save their own lives were too busy to attend to someone else. When something happened, it was bad, and there were two options: get out and leave or stay and die.
He’d been on a trip, and he happened to be near an air tank and a pressure suit. He remembered shouts and people pointing at the sky. He remembered peering through the haze of the dust scratches on the outside of the dome’s clear cover. A streak of light went through the sky and hit the ground over the hill. It looked like the next valley, although he knew it had to be further away. He remembered the ground shaking. He remembered feeling the shockwave. He remembered the foomp of emergency locks closing. He remembered that despite being locked from the main base, debris flew. He remembered the crack appearing in the dome and the sound of air sucking out. The dome just flew open like a flower, and snow fell in the soundless pink dusk.
He remembered the mad scramble of people through a hallway that was still pressurised. Someone was screaming at the front and no one listened. It was everyone for himself.
In order to save themselves, people had to clamber over the bodies of those who had died. In a single moment, the civilised base had turned into a bear pit.
He remembered all those things and knew that none of these silly safety precautions meant anything, especially not on Io where you couldn’t even stick any part of you outside without shielding or die of radiation poisoning within an hour.
This was space. If something went wrong, you died.
In case of damage to the dome structure, retreat to your rooms. The base command will be working to restore services as soon as possible.
No, they would be dead.
In case of an earthquake, make your way to the nearest shelter. If that is not possible, sit on your bottom bunk with your feet off the ground.
Just in case lava came into the room. Great, everyone would be dead if a volcano decided to erupt underneath the base.
Seriously what a load of rubbish. Who wrote this?
All you needed to know in a dome breach was: how to get out. Find a vehicle, any kind of vehicle and get out.
Hey what was that? A map of the layout of the buildings in this location.
There was the spaceport, and the main base. It consisted of a large dome and several smaller ones, all interlinked. A winding road led from the base up the hillside to the research station. But what was that dotted grey line from the base to the station and through to the spaceport? He enlarged that area until he could read the small letters. Goods train.
Well, that was interesting, Doric had mentioned this briefly, but the other map had definitely not said anything about a train. There was an access point right next to the main lift, too. He knew where that was. That was a handy thing to know. He would have to investigate how big the entrance hatch was, and whether the tunnel would be pressurised. He guessed it would, but that the air quality wouldn’t be good.
Fabio tried to sleep, but he was alternately hot or cold. The ceiling vent made odd sounds and the walls in the base groaned and creaked each time there was an earth tremble. There were many small quakes, and each time the ground rumbled, Fabio eyed the door panel to see if any warnings came through. Once, the system mentioned the strength of a quake as 5.2. He thought that was quite a lot, but he listened out for people in the corridors and no one seemed to share his concern.
Either there was no one in this part of the corridor or they would leave him here to be buried under tonnes of volcanic crap.
Don’t be ridiculous.
Then he would start all over again: notice the silence, notice the air hissing from the vents, almost falling asleep—another earthquake. Staring at the door panel—nothing. Listening for footsteps—nothing.
Eventually, he grew too tired to worry about the quakes and he must have dozed off, because next thing, someone banged on his door loud enough to make the walls shake.
What the fuck. . . ?
Fabio dragged himself out of bed. The crisp air was cold on his bare feet. It was dusty, too, as if the floor had seen a vacuum a long time ago.
When he opened the door, there was a young private in kitchen garb outside.
“Breakfast, sir.” His voice was much too cheery.
Fabio took the tray from him with some sort of mumbled thanks.
Back in the room he put the tray on the desk and let himself drop in the sheet, dragging his hand over his face.
Waking up suddenly was never kind on him. That hadn’t changed when they messed with his head.
The tray contained a bowl, a closed cup with a lid and a sealed bag containing a spoon and a fork, all made from extruder plastic of the type made by recyclers.
When he removed the cover from the bowl, a sickly sweet smell met him. What was that white stuff? Some sad excuse for porridge?
There was also a small plate that contained two sausages and two pieces of puffed corn toast.
He put the tray on the floor, detached the deskscreen, flipped the plastic protective surface back, reinstated the tray and started eating while flipping through the latest news.
The COF delegation to Io had not reported in, said the Ganymedean news services. There had been some talk about this in the council, where some councillors asked if this was a matter of concern, to which councillor Anise-Leontine Law had said that she would be contacting ISF to see if there was a problem with communication. Calico Base often goes into radio silence, she said.
That was an excuse for a human-enforced silence, because if Jupiter was between Io and Ganymede, they could just use a different satellite relay path. It was slower and less reliable maybe, but got there in the end.
But he’d made the resolution that he was not going to get involved in politics, so he stopped reading and speculating, because he seemed to be a magnet for controversial stuff, and could do very well without controversy right now.
He flicked to the next page and found that it—damn it—continued about the visit.
Base Commander Banparra, the news service said, had not commented on the
situation and had also not made a joint statement with the delegation after their arrival at Calico Base. This caused several minor councillors to raise suspicions about Calico’s and the ISF’s intentions.
He wondered why the military-controlled news service let this through.
While he ate, the comm unit chimed and Major Doric’s voice told him that his call for the tray to be picked up would double as notification that he was ready, and that someone would come to take him to her. With the map he had obtained, he could easily find his own way, but that was probably best left unsaid.
His excursion to the mess last night was probably also best not mentioned.
So he got dressed when he had eaten as much of the white goo as he could stomach. He rummaged through the medicines in his bag, but had no idea what they were. He didn’t think he’d taken any yesterday and he was still alive. He was going to take a chance and not take them today either.
There was no time for another go at the shower, so he combed the last residue of dried shampoo out of his hair in a shower of white powder. It felt disgusting.
He still hadn’t been given a base uniform, so he wore the unmarked, unranked Sarajevo fatigues given to him on the transport. Their greyness would blend in with the bland corridors of the base perfectly well.
A female private came when he pressed the button. She made no move to take the tray, and when he asked her about it, she said to leave the door open and kitchen staff would come to take it later. He didn’t like that. They would go through his things. There were probably clues in his luggage about who he was and what he was doing here. Maybe they worried about him breaking into the COF delegates’ rooms. Maybe they wanted to know what all his medicines were for.