Blue Sky of Mars

by Christopher R Wills

  Jethro heard them leave the room and the voice of the corporal fading down the corridor. The noose was slowly tightening. So this was how it was going to be; a long and painful death as his air passage was slowly cut off.

  He heard another man leave and the door close behind. He tried to breathe in slow and long gasps but the noose wouldn’t allow him, so his breathing became shorter and shallower which caused his body to jerk which caused the noose to fractionally tighten each time he moved. He could hear nothing now except a pounding inside his head which he guessed was blood trying to get around as the pressure was being cut off at his neck.

  Then he felt an arm around his waist and the pressure on his neck was released. Perhaps they were going to break his neck because of the failure of the noose. He hoped it would be quick and merciful. He tried to smile so that the expression would remain on his face in death.

  But his hands and feet were being freed. As the blood could freely circulate, he gradually got his hearing back.

  “How is he, doctor?”

  “Still alive, but only just.”

  His hood was removed.

  What is going on?

  “Stand him up.”

  Jethro felt himself being lifted by someone very strong until he was in the standing position.

  “Put the robe over him.” A dark robe like the Priests wore was draped over him, with a large hood covering his head.

  “Sub-Lieutenant Tull, can you hear me?”

  He tried to speak but all that left his throat was a dry croak so he nodded.

  “We are going to take you from here. You must try to walk with the Priest. He will help support you. Do you understand?”

  He nodded again and when he was shoved forward; he was too weak to resist, so he just followed the physical prompts. They left the hanging room and walked down the corridor. It was only a short walk to a door which led to the outside, but it seemed like many miles to Jethro who could never have reached it unaided.

  He knew he must get enough strength back to make a move but he also knew it would be a few days before he was anywhere near to escaping.

  Why am I still alive? Where am I being taken? Who has done this?

  His head was bad, so he stopped questioning and tried harder to breathe normally and walk properly.

  Recover first.

  He found himself bundled into the back of a hovercar and then he collapsed.

  Bright white light. Head hurting. Darkness again. Bliss.

  chapter 3

  Ted: “Time for another story, Alice?”

  Alice: “Go on then Ted. You’ve been on about this all week. Get it out in the open and tell our listeners.”

  Ted: “Thanks Alice. This week marks the five hundredth and fiftieth anniversary since the release of the film Jaws back in 1974. That film was about a giant shark terrorizing beaches along the New England coast. A bit of history here, Alice. When that film was released it scared thousands of beach-goers into staying out of the water.”

  Alice: “I’m not surprised Ted. Go on.”

  Ted: “To commemorate this, BeijingDehliWood Films have released their latest blockbuster film, Kraken.”

  Alice: “What’s it about Ted?”

  Ted: “It’s about a giant Kraken that terrorizes beaches along the Californian coast.”

  Alice: “How original. Thanks Ted. So that was the World News for today. Remember people, unlike other news channels we deal in facts. We don’t make this up.”

  chapter 4

  “Sir? Are you sure he’s the man for the job?”

  Lytton looked out of the window and could just see a faint glow on the horizon suggesting the Sun was preparing to rise. No, he wasn’t sure and there was no point in lying to Admiral Spleen, head of Military Intelligence.

  “No, I’m not sure. But I know he’s a good man.”

  “May I speak freely sir?”

  “Of course,” replied Lytton.

  “If I may say sir, he’s a convicted traitor who should’ve hanged. What’s stopping him buggering off?”

  Lytton thought about it. If Jethro did “bugger off” Lytton’s career would be over.

  “If he gives me his word. I’ll believe it,” said Lytton, hoping his faith in Sub Lieutenant Tull was well placed.

  Admiral Spleen sat down behind an ornate desk that many years ago had belonged to a Spanish Governor in the West Indies. He lowered his voice. “Teddy, I’m speaking as a friend now. Do you realize if anyone finds out what you’ve done, you’re history?”

  Lytton didn’t need the reminder. “Agreed.” He sat in the chair opposite. “But if he’s right and we do nothing, we could all be history. I don’t see any other way. And you must admit in your job you deal with some pretty unsavory characters when you want an unsavory task done.”

  The Admiral laughed. “Harrumph. You’re not supposed to know about those kinds of things. But maybe you’re right. Let’s see your man then.”

  Lytton opened the door and said something to a Space Marine Sergeant waiting in the corridor.

  A few moments later the door swung open and two soldiers brought in an unconscious bedraggled man chained hand and foot.

  “What in God’s name is this?” Admiral Spleen was not pleased. “He’s not even fit to be hanged.”

  “He was a bit of a handful, sir.”

  “Sergeant. Dismiss your men.”

  “Yes sir.”

  The two soldiers left.

  “Put him in that chair and unlock his chains.”

  “Sir?”

  “I’m not in the habit of giving orders twice Sergeant.”

  “No sir.” The Sergeant did as he was told.

  “And Sergeant?”

  “No need Sir. I saw nothing.”

  “Thank you, Sergeant. That will be all.”

  The Space Marine Sergeant saluted and left.

  Lytton asked, “Can you trust the Sergeant?”

  “A lot more than I trust him.” Admiral Spleen indicated the prisoner who was stirring.

  Suddenly the bedraggled man leapt up and adopted a fighting stance.

  “Jethro?”

  Jethro turned slowly to face Lytton.

  “Do you remember me?”

  Jethro’s face slowly betrayed recognition then his expression changed to deadpan.

  “Sub-Lieutenant Tull.”

  Jethro turned to face Admiral Spleen.

  “Sit down. We’re not going to hurt you.”

  Jethro recognized the authority in the man’s voice and he sat.

  “I have a proposition for you.”

  Jethro said nothing and rubbed his neck.

  “Slate wiped clean. Honorable discharge on the grounds of injury if you’ll do a small job for us. It’s a dangerous job.”

  “More dangerous than being hanged?”

  Admiral Spleen tried to stifle his smile.

  “Possibly?”

  “Why me?”

  “We need someone with your experience and your talents.”

  “What talents would they be?”

  “One, you’re expendable and two we’re desperate.”

  This time, Jethro almost smiled.

  “An Honorable discharge you say?”

  “Isn’t that enough?”

  “Full reinstatement and a promotion to Lieutenant.” Jethro was kicking the arse out of it, but he had little to lose.

  “Harrumph.”

  Lytton leaned towards Admiral Spleen and whispered, “You said yourself this mission is impossible. You can promise him whatever he wants.”

  Admiral Spleen Harrumphed again. “Acting paid Lieutenant, confirmed on completion of the mission.”

  Jethro smiled properly this time. “What do you want me to do?” He paused and then for the first time since he came around added, “Sir.”

  Admiral Spleen waited until Jethro left the briefing room before he spoke to Lytton. “He’s got a bloody nerve. Promotion to Lieutenant. It took me five years to get to Lieutenant, and
he’s only been in a bloody dog-watch.”

  “We are asking him to do the impossible,” replied Lytton.

  “Maybe.”

  “So what do you think?”

  Admiral Spleen put his hands together. “I’m not completely convinced. That head cam film you got from your source is fuzzy and doesn’t clearly show aliens. It could easily be faked. And the message we got from the Mars Polar research station is also poor quality.”

  Lytton smiled at his friend. “There’s a but coming along.”

  “Correct. Individually each piece of evidence is not enough but I am sure both bits are independent of each other and so together they add up to more than the parts and add to that Tull’s statement at his Court Martial and I can’t afford to ignore it. The stakes are too great.”

  “Thanks. I owe you one.”

  “If you’re right, and we’re going to be invaded by aliens, the Earth will owe you big time, if we survive.”

  “Couldn’t you have made it easier for Lieutenant Tull to get to his team?”

  “No. It would be too suspicious. If aliens are preparing to attack Earth, they might already be among us so we don’t want to draw attention to any activity.”

  “You’re right,” admitted Lytton.

  “If this Tull is going to reach the Mars Polar Research Station during an alien invasion and find the scientists and find out what is going on and bring them back to Earth, then breaking his team out of the mines on the far side of the Moon should be a piece of cake.”

  Jethro was incredibly frustrated because he was not allowed to contact anybody he knew until after the mission was complete. That was standard practice for a mission, but in this case Mum and Dad had been told he was due to be executed and he could only guess how that would make them feel. The only consolation was that he had convinced the Admiral to get the government to finally upgrade his Dad’s cyber arm and leg to the top of the range which would relieve Mum from doing as much work on the farm.

  Still, all Jethro had to do was rescue his team from the mines on the far side of the Moon, something which had never been done before, reach the Mars Polar Research Station, whilst Mars was under attack from aliens, find the scientists if they were still alive, protect them from the aliens and return to Earth with real evidence of a Mars invasion and then he could go and see his parents to reveal that he was still alive. Simple really.

  chapter 5

  Jethro had been working in the mines for two days and had seen none of his team. When he agreed to take on the mission, he didn’t understand how big or how tough the mines were. He knew there was no such thing as the dark side of the Moon, apart from the Pink Floyd album, because he had spent time on the Moon in his Special Space Service training and learned that each side received two weeks of darkness and two weeks of light. The Russians proved this in 1959 when a Soviet spacecraft, Luna 3 sent the first images of the then-called dark side back to Earth.

  Moonbase is on the near side that permanently faces the Earth to make communications easier, but the Moon mines prison is on the far side to be closer to the minerals. This is why it is so heavily guarded and heavily controlled, because help could not be sent quickly in case of a riot. Not that the convicts could do much after rioting. If they gained control of the prison, where could they go? Jethro worked this out within the first two days.

  How the fuck am I supposed to escape from here with my team? Is this supposed to be better than being dead?

  Jethro was not sure.

  The whole prison was contained inside a large dome protecting staff and prisoners from radiation and lack of air. A short distance away from the dome by rail-track was the tunnel entrance to the mines, which went for many miles under the Moon’s surface. Jethro was told by one of the prisoners that the longest tunnel is twenty miles long, nicknamed ‘the tunnel of no return’ because it is littered with the bodies of prisoners who never made it back when they were sent on a working detail.

  Luckily the mining is done by machines but they frequently break down so every three days, the prisoners are sent to the broken down machinery with the engineering team and guards to do cleaning and lifting and shifting as part of the maintenance.

  Jethro was putting together ideas about how to escape, but then he saw a bunch of prisoners chained by the ankle being herded into rail cars next to the airlock.

  “Where are they going?” Jethro asked.

  Poor bastards.

  “Maintenance crew,” a nearby prisoner told him.

  “But they’re chained together. That’s inhuman.”

  There was tired laughter from a few fellow prisoners standing near to Jethro. “New here, aren’t you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We ain’t fucking human no more. The Governor tells us that every week in his speech.”

  This is going to be more difficult than I thought.

  The prisoners on the chain gang were required to wear the same heavy metal boots locked on their feet prisoners in the prison wore to prevent them from profiting by the Moon’s low gravity. Two chain gangs were sent out to a job with four engineers and six guards, all of whom were heavily armed and had jet packs to help rapid movement. To make matters worse, they only supplied the prisoners with enough air to do the job and get back. There was spare air on the engineering craft if the job was to take longer than expected but that was under heavy security.

  Jethro now knew the reason the prison crematorium plaque was full of the names of members of chain gangs who had died at the prison. Lack of oxygen, constant cave-ins and low safety standards meant few prisoners served their full term. The prisoners were the dregs of society; murderers, rapists, repeat offenders and bankers who committed fraud; mostly lifers and those who might have got the death sentence before it was abolished, except for treason. Jethro’s team had been given twenty years; as near to a death sentence as the law allowed.

  “Oy you lot. Stop gawking. Get in the breakfast queue or miss out.” A burly guard with three friends and fizzing prods encouraged Jethro and those around him to move on.

  Breakfast was in a large and heavily guarded mess hall, no talking. The guards patrolled with electric prods to keep order but there was still the occasional fight. Today there was a fight between two men causing a surge of prisoners to surround the combatants. Apparently, there was a lot of money on the fight so the prisoners were willing to suffer at the prods, to see the fight to a conclusion. They achieved their aim because one man broke the neck of the other man.

  A sobering spectacle.

  Then Jethro saw Brains. He pushed through the throng to get near her in the hope he might get some information from her about the team. But the guards had multiplied rapidly, and they moved Jethro away so he couldn’t get next to her and he could see no other members of his team in the mess hall at the moment.

  The guards were herding prisoners to sit down and Jethro saw his chance and pushed his way through so he could sit opposite Brains across a mess hall table. Her eyes showed that she immediately recognized him but Jethro slowly shook his head to indicate he didn’t want to be recognized.

  But Jethro had to take this chance to communicate with Brains, but how?

  He heard some tapping. Brains was tapping her finger lightly on the table. It was Morse Code. After they found Maddy on Mars Jethro had insisted the team learned Morse Code.

  H-e-l-l-o-s-i-r.

  H-i-b-r-a-i-n-s-e-v-e-r-y-o-n-e-o-k.

  Y-e-s.

  W-e-r-e-g-o-i-n-g-t-o-e-s-c-a-p-e.

  Brains shook her head. I-m-p-o-s-s-i-b-l-e.

  D-i-f-f-i-c-u-l-t-n-o-t-i-m-p-o-s-s-i-b-l-e.

  H-o-w?

  G-e-t-s-e-n-t-t-o-t-h-e-t-u-n-n-e-l-o-f-d-e-a-t-h-c-r-e-w-a-t-t-h-e-s-a-m-e-t-i-m-e.

  Jethro saw Brains’ eyes widen at that suggestion.

  W-h-e-n?

  T-h-r-e-e-d-a-y-s.

  Brains shook her head slowly but tapped O-K.

  Just in time as Jethro’s side of the table were told to stand
and were herded back to their cells. No work today because many of the prisoners were still agitated from the fight, but that meant a longer day tomorrow of sixteen hours.

  Two days later at breakfast Jethro was tired from not sleeping well and the last thing he wanted was to start a fight but he had to get on that tunnel duty or he would be letting his team down. If his plan didn’t work, the only way he was going to get out of the prison was via the crematorium.

  Jethro didn’t want to get hurt or worse so he picked on a guy about his own size who didn’t look too much of a problem. There was no point in committing suicide.

  But things went wrong from the start. Jethro pushed the man, making him tip his breakfast. But the breakfast didn’t go on the floor. It went over a large man standing beside him. This man, about a foot taller and considerably wider than Jethro, was known in the prison as Monster on account of his size. Nobody had ever seen him fight because nobody was stupid enough to pick a fight with him.

  Until now.

  “It was him. He pushed me.” The man pointed to Jethro immediately laying the blame on him.

  Jethro didn’t want to fight Monster because he knew he would be annihilated or even die. But he had started it and it wouldn’t be fair to let the other man take the blame for something he did and Jethro was a fair man. But fighting Monster. What a stupid mistake to make. Jethro resigned himself to a failed escape plan and a long time in hospital recovering, if he wasn’t crematorium fuel.

  The prison hospital was not a place prisoners visited willingly. The big Earth based pharmaceutical companies funded the building of the prison hospital in return for permission to carry out drug experimentation using the prisoners. The Earth government agreed to allow prisoners to be used for drug testing because prisoners at the Moon mines prison had no rights. Some prisoners said that going to the hospital was worse than dying, because some patients had lost their minds and were living in a permanent state of induced coma so new drugs could be tested on them.

  Jethro did his best to smile at Monster.

  Monster smiled back, revealing that he had all metal teeth and showed that there was no warmth in the smile. He swiped the man in his way out of his way with one swing of his arm and roared as he shuffled towards Jethro.