Plains of Utopia: Colony Six Mars

by Kilby, Gerald M.

“Perhaps I could be of assistance,” Gizmo said as it approached the lobby droid.

  “I fail to see how. Unless you can regularize the account.” The lobby droid gave Gizmo a cursory scan.

  “I am certain your request can be accommodated,” Gizmo replied. “But first it would be prudent for me to satisfy Envoy Sorelli that the accounting is above board. Not that I imagine this establishment would stoop to any unsavory practices.”

  “I assure you, you will find our standards to be impeccable. Please feel free to interface with our systems so you can be satisfied with our fiduciary credentials.”

  “Thank you, I am sure it is all in order, as you say.”

  The lobby droid led Gizmo over to its dock, a sort of lobby desk, behind which the main interface for the hotel AI was located. Gizmo jacked in. Mia watched from the sidelines as Gizmo analyzed the data. A moment later it disengaged.

  “Please correct me if I am wrong, but it seems to me that the bill has been rescinded, and that Envoy Sorelli has free access to all hotel services—for life.”

  The lobby droid twitched a little, then it too jacked in. “That is very curious. But you are quite correct. I do not understand how I was not informed of this change in status.” It disengaged and turned to Mia. “My sincerest apologies for this terrible mix-up. I was not aware of the latest data update. Please, allow me to show you to our best suite, personally.”

  Mia raised a hand. “That’s okay, not a problem. These things happen. If you don’t mind, we’ll see ourselves to the suite. I know where it is.”

  “Certainly, by all means. And please do not hesitate to let me know if there is anything, and I mean anything, you require to make your stay with us more pleasurable.”

  “Okay, Gizmo, let’s go.” She jerked her head in the direction of the elevator. Once inside, Mia burst out laughing as soon as the doors closed. “Gizmo, you’re a class act. Glad to have you watching my back again.”

  “My pleasure, I am here to help.”

  The elevator rose up and opened directly into the penthouse suite. “Nice.” Mia looked around the wide expanse of the room, tastefully furnished in sleek, minimalist-designed furnishing, with accents of old-Earth rustic charm. She threw her bag down on one of the long, low sofas and made her way to a well-stocked bar.

  “I could sure use a stiff drink,” Mia said as she poured herself a bourbon on the rocks. She took a sip and expelled a satisfying sigh as she sat on one of the well-upholstered bar stools. “You know, Gizmo, I might never leave here, now that I am a VIP guest—for life.”

  “I am sorry to inform you that there are only twenty-eight sols to the next accounting period. After that, questions will be asked and the number of those inquiries will only rise exponentially thereafter.”

  “Okay, so I’ve only got twenty-eight sols. That’s still good.” Mia took another sip of bourbon and stepped down from the bar stool, intending to explore the rest of the suite.

  “Incoming call,” Gizmo announced. “From Bret Stanton.”

  Mia looked at the droid, a little confused.

  “I took the liberty of monitoring your comms channel. I thought it might be helpful.”

  “Eh, sure, no problem. Better connect me, then.”

  “I will put it on the main screen.”

  A section of one wall flickered into life, and the head and shoulders of Bret Stanton materialized. “Mia, we have a major problem.”

  “What? What problem?”

  “First, some good news. We’ve just been contacted by Dr. Jann Malbec. She’s still inside the enclave, but she’s alive and well, and so are Langthorp and Xenon.”

  “Well that’s good. Can they get them out?”

  “No, not yet. Too many armed Xenonists. But that’s not a priority now. Malbec has informed us that the Xenonists are planning to—and you’re probably not going to believe this—release a deadly airborne pathogen somewhere in Jezero.”

  Mia almost dropped her glass. “Holy shit,” she said as she gently sat down on a sofa. “That’s crazy, why would they do that?”

  “They have immunity, apparently. So do all the original colonists, the pioneers. The problem is that all the rest of us don’t. That’s thousands of citizens.”

  “Are you saying they want to exterminate us?”

  “Insane as it sounds, that seems to be the plan. So we urgently need to find the release site and stop it—and we don’t have much time. We found nothing at the clearing house, but we’re doing another search. It’s all hands on deck, so if you have any ideas, anything that cropped up in your investigation, tell me now.”

  Mia shook her head. “No, nothing. The clearing house is the only place I can think of.”

  Bret gave a sigh. “Okay, well it was worth a shot. I gotta go, everybody’s being drafted into the search.”

  The connection terminated.

  Mia sat for a moment and tried to mentally digest this revelation. An airborne pathogen. Crazy. Insane. She downed the bourbon in one gulp. Why would they do something like that? she wondered. But the why was not important. Finding it was what mattered now.

  She reached into her bag, pulled out her slate, and navigated to where she had stored the encrypted manifest files. “Gizmo?”

  “Yes, Mia.”

  “There’s something I was working on, maybe it’s not important anymore, but I was investigating the makeup of all the shipments to the Xenonists since before the Great Storm.” She handed the slate to Gizmo. “I only got so far and I ran into a problem—some of the files after the storm are encrypted. I can’t get into them, and nobody in the department has authorization to access them.”

  Gizmo took the slate and interfaced with it. “So you want me to hack them for you.”

  “Is that possible?”

  “Now that I am reconnected to the colony AI, I should be able to utilize its processing power to speed up the decryption task.” It raised a metal finger in the air. “Just give me a moment.”

  Mia went to pour herself another stiff one as Gizmo went to work.

  “Done,” it said after a few seconds, and handed the slate back to Mia.

  She took it and glanced at the screen. All the files were now accessible, but there were hundreds, possibly thousands of line items. “Thanks, Gizmo. It’s going to take me some time to work through all these—and we don’t have time.”

  “Perhaps I could rationalize the data for you?”

  “Rationalize?”

  “Yes, organize it into a more meaningful overview.”

  “You can do that?”

  Gizmo didn’t answer. Instead, it proffered a hand to take Mia’s slate. A few moments later, Gizmo handed it back. “Here you go. My apologies for the crudity of the presentation, but it is a first pass through all the files.”

  Mia studied the screen. “Wow, that’s incredible.”

  “My pleasure,” replied the droid.

  The information was presented in searchable, cross-indexed lists. Product inventory was arranged by type, quantity, port of entry, port of origin, destination, time of sol, and more. Mia scrolled down and paused over a list of final destinations.

  Most of the supplies and equipment coming in ended up going to the enclave—others to the clearing house in Jezero and to Syrtis. But there was one other destination on the list that Mia had not seen before, and it seemed to be taking in a significant quantity of inventory. She flipped the slate around to show it to Gizmo and pointed at the location address. “Any idea where this is?”

  Gizmo scanned the location data, then activated a map of Jezero City on the main wall monitor. “It is here.” A blinking icon identified the exact location.

  Mia moved over and studied the map. “That’s way over in the industrial sector, very near the atmosphere processing plant. Strange location. I wonder what they were doing all the way over there?”

  “Perhaps they wished for cleaner air? My analysis shows a slightly lower particulate count in that sector.”

  “Air, s
hit! That could be the release site. We’d better get this to Bret. Can you connect me, Gizmo?”

  A few seconds later, a very harassed-looking Bret Stanton appeared on the wall screen. He was outside a building that Mia didn’t recognize with a considerable number of MLOD agents. “What is it, Mia?”

  “I may have a lead, a location that cropped up from those shipment manifests. It’s beside the main atmosphere processor for the old industrial sector.”

  But Mia could sense from Stanton’s demeanor that he wasn’t interested. “We’ve got a lead here, Mia. One of the Xenonists talked. It wasn’t pretty, but he talked.”

  “How do you know he’s not bullshitting you, Bret? Did you beat it out of him? They’ll say anything to make it stop.”

  “It’s what we got, so we’re following up. I’ll try and get someone to check your lead as soon as I can. Sorry, but I gotta go.”

  The transmission ended.

  Mia was silent for a moment as her focus returned to the location of the atmosphere processing plant displayed on her slate. “Gizmo, I don’t think we can just wait here and hope that Bret gets his act together to send a team over there.”

  She put down the slate, reached into her bag again, and this time pulled out her pistol. She checked it for charge, stood up, and shoved it into her jacket pocket.

  “You mean we are embarking on another adventure?”

  Mia looked over at the droid. “Yup. Just like old times, eh, Gizmo?”

  “Indeed. Hopefully I will not be incinerated this time.”

  24

  Time to Get Real

  “We can’t stay here. We need to find a place to lie low, keep out of sight.” Jann turned to Xenon. “Any suggestions, since you know this facility intimately?”

  Xenon thought for a moment. “The bulk of the brethren will be guarding the perimeter airlocks, and they’re all at surface level. So the best place to hide out would be down in the subterranean levels.”

  “Okay, let’s get going,” Nills said as he checked his plasma weapon.

  “No, not for me. I am done hiding,” Xenon announced.

  “But we can’t hang around here,” Jann pleaded. “For all we know there’s a cohort of Xenonists heading our way right now.”

  “There may well be, and I don’t intend to stay here either. I’m going to find Argon and I’m going to kill him.”

  “Are you nuts, Xenon? You’ll never get to him without being taken down, it would be suicide,” Nills added to Jann’s plea for rationality.

  “Be that as it may,” Xenon replied. “But this is my intention. For too long I’ve stood by while Argon and his followers corrupted my life’s work. I chose instead the path of nonconfrontation, hoping he would change his ways. But alas, by the time I realized my mistake, it was too late, the damage had been done. Now, all I have achieved is to allow a great evil to spawn in my name. No more. I will take my vengeance this sol or I will die in the attempt.”

  Jann looked over at Nills, who stood open-mouthed and mute, his mind having trouble processing Xenon’s sudden desire for retribution.

  “That may be noble, Xenon. But you’ll just be throwing your life away,” Nills finally said, trying to dissuade his old friend from such a reckless course of action.

  “So how do you propose to ‘right this wrong?’ Just walk right on up and strangle him?” Jann tried to present the absurdity of his line of thinking.

  “I know you both think I’m being totally irrational. But it’s not as crazy as it sounds. You need to consider that he will not be expecting it. All his people are defending the perimeter airlocks, he will be unguarded. I might never get this opportunity again.”

  There was a moment’s silence as they contemplated this. Jann glanced over at Nills to judge his reaction. She could tell that he was also thinking what she was thinking. That maybe Xenon was right, this wasn’t such a crazy idea after all.

  “Let me show you,” Xenon said as he moved over to a holo-table in the control room and brought up a 3D schematic of the enclave. “Argon is probably here, in the viewing chamber just off the primary dome. That’s where he feels safe.” Xenon pointed to the sector on a wireframe schematic.

  “He will have some of the main hierarchy with him, but everyone else will be gathered around these perimeter airlocks.” The projection rotated and zoomed out to show all the subterranean levels. “We are all the way down here.” He pointed at a location on one of the lower levels. “I can move up through this central elevator here. It’s less likely to be used by the fighters defending the primary enclave access points.”

  Jann stood back and considered this. “What about cameras?”

  “Yes, that may be a problem,” Xenon conceded.

  “Not if we disguise ourselves as followers,” Jann said, jerking a thumb at the storage room.

  “Are you planning to go along with this, Jann?” Nills looked troubled.

  “If there’s a chance we can corner Argon, then there’s a chance we can find out the location of the release site—even if we have to beat it out of him.”

  Nills nodded. “Maybe.” But he returned his focus to the 3D schematic, studying it closely without saying anything. He pointed at a long, narrow tunnel that extended way beyond the main structure. “What’s that?”

  Xenon leaned in. “That’s a service tunnel. It goes all the way to an old power station.” He rotated the projection and zoomed out. “Over there, around a kilometer away. It used to house a small nuclear power plant, back in the early days when this was a research station. It was decommissioned a long time ago when they retrofitted a fusion reactor.”

  Jann pointed at where this service tunnel connected with the facility. “It looks like access to that tunnel is on the same level as us, not too far from here.”

  “Are you thinking of using it as a way out?” said Nills.

  “No, I’m thinking it may be a way for Capt. Aby’s squad to get in.” She turned to Xenon. “We could check it out on our way, see how well guarded it is.”

  Xenon considered this. “All the main airlocks are at ground level, and that’s where I assume Argon will have most of his fighters. This service tunnel is subterranean, so it’s possible there are only a few people guarding it. If we take this route through here, then we may be able to get an idea of the numbers.” Xenon stood back. “But this does not change my mind. I’m going for Argon. Nothing is going to stop me from that task.”

  “Is there another comms node in that sector, near the access tunnel?” said Nills.

  “Yes, there’s several in the vicinity.” Xenon tapped an icon on the holo-table, and a series of markers flashed up on the schematic showing the communication network arrangement.

  “We need to go, we’re running out of time,” Jann finally said.

  Before leaving the control room, Jann relieved the tied-up Xenonists of their cloaks. It wouldn’t pass close inspection, but should be enough to fool the security cameras. She checked her weapons and shoved two flash grenades she had found on one of the guards into a pocket. “Okay, let’s get moving.”

  Xenon’s intimate knowledge of the complex allowed them to minimize the possibility of being detected. But Xenon pushed this to the limit, moving at a blistering pace, so much so that both Jann and Nills had to sprint to keep up. It was a speed that Jann regarded as reckless. They could literally run into to a group of Xenonists around any corner, and that would end all chance they had of reaching Argon.

  But their luck held, and Xenon finally came to an abrupt halt at the entrance to a large cavern. He pressed his back against the side wall, signaling to Jann and Nills to do the same. He pointed ahead. “The access door for the service tunnel is around two hundred meters, on the left,” he whispered, then began to slowly inch forward.

  The cavern was well illuminated and looked like a junkyard for redundant electrical equipment. Along the side wall on the left, a great mountain of this junk had been piled up in front of the service tunnel airlock. The Xenonists
were clearly aware that this could be a potential incursion point. But aside from the physical barricade, there were only around six guards that they could see. All grouped behind the cover of some hastily assembled junk, where they had mounted a small plasma cannon. Other than that, their weapons looked basic.

  “What do you think?” Jann whispered to Nills.

  “Let’s call it in, and Capt. Aby can decide if it’s worth it.”

  Xenon jerked his head back the way they came. “This way, follow me.”

  He brought them back down the passageway around one hundred meters and stopped in front of a dilapidated steel door, recessed into the side wall. A crude sign was stenciled on it, reading, Network Node C17.

  Jann and Nills took out their pistols as Xenon slowly turned the handle and opened it. The room was small, with racks of equipment crammed along all four walls. There was no illumination save for the glow of a myriad of blinking lights from the servers. Other than that, it was empty.

  Nills took out a flashlight and scanned the racks, looking for a comms unit. “Got it,” he whispered as he cracked open the door of the unit and went to work.

  25

  Deserted

  An autonomous ground car brought Mia and Gizmo through the central city district, still busy with people going about their business, oblivious to the impending crisis that was unfolding. From there, the car headed west into the food production sector with its vast hydroponic agri-domes and distribution warehouses. This eventually gave way to a light manufacturing sector and finally onto the atmosphere processing area. Here, the car would go no farther. From this point on they would have to travel on foot.

  They disembarked at a large, almost circular airlock system that generally demarcated each sector of the city. These were internal and designed to cordon off an area in an emergency if any loss of pressure was detected.

  The car promptly moved off, back into the central city in accordance with whatever parameters were programmed into its algorithm. Mia glanced around at the tall industrial infrastructure all around them. “This place looks like it’s seen better days. I hope it’s safe.”