Lakes of Mars

by Merritt Graves

  “Or at least give them the benefit of the doubt.”

  “Do you really think that, though?”

  I gripped the edges of my chair, sick about where this might lead—feeling like I was taking us closer and closer to some other unintended catastrophe.

  “I suppose not, because if the question is, ‘Does the Fleet know about it?’ well, Kerr boasted to us the first week I was here that we were an island, completely sawed off from the rest of the Confederation. He meant it as this proclamation of how above everyone else we were to get us fired up, but he meant it. And then there’s the fact that the freighters that’ve been docking here definitely aren’t Fleet.”

  “How do you know?”

  “’Cause they’re the same Trayner-class commercial shipping ones my dad’s company uses. Sometimes the Fleet contracts jobs out, but I couldn’t see them doing that for anything top secret, and the fact that they revoked all the Student Access Permits to the cargo bays means they didn’t want anyone seeing inside. There’s always Telnet for remote collab, but I’ve gotten nothing but a disdain vibe about the rest of the Fleet here, and I doubt they’re chatting back and forth on an unsecure channel, where the encryption would be tedious. It’s not proof . . .”

  “But it’s unlikely.”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “We should ask some other people with access permits to different parts of the Inner Ring. Maybe they’ve noticed things we haven’t.”

  “Right, but maybe . . .”

  “Maybe what?” asked Eve.

  “Maybe . . . ,” I started again, not exactly sure what I wanted to say. “Maybe we shouldn’t go any farther until you develop your Kamalgia cure, though. It’s already suspicious that I let the dog bite me. If we start snooping around they’re going to know something’s up.”

  “We can’t think about the cure now,” Eve whispered.

  “What are you talking about?” I shot back, louder—too loud—before matching her whisper. Eve had made a lot of progress with the drug, CS-32, cutting the amount needed to kill the disease in half, but brain hemorrhages were still occurring all the way down to the human equivalent of 250mg. “This is exactly when we should be, before we do anything we can’t take back. You’re close. You just need to get the toxicity down so you can up the dosage. . .”

  “I’ve been close for a while, but it’s not like we can pretend we didn’t learn about this. This is millions of lives on the Rim, thousands every day. “

  “But maybe this isn’t even real. I’ve been wrong about so many things . . .” I shook my head. The sounds of silverware clanking against plates and glasses being set down on tables nearby bobbed in and out of my awareness. “Who’s to say I’m not wrong about this, too?”

  “I looked at the same sample you did,” said Eve. “Which you’re sure was from that dog?”

  I nodded.

  “Well, there you go.”

  “Okay . . . other people. You’ve got your D-Block guys. That’s a start.”

  “Yeah. Simon might have come across something odd in inventory with his logistics permit.”

  “And I’ve got Pierre, Daries, Fingers, and Fin. We just ne—”

  “Fin? I thought she was the one with the cord.”

  “I did, too, but it’s clear who’s been lying now. I just can’t believe that I fucking believed Caelus. I didn’t believe him, but I let him . . . I let . . .” Eve moved closer, again clasping my arm. “Anyway, I talked to Fin and she showed me fresh marks on her hands, saying she got them training with Taryn in the Mat Room. Said that it was his idea to train with the cord.”

  “Just because Caelus was lying doesn’t mean that she’s telling the truth.”

  I took a deep breath, trying to think everything through as I spoke. “I’m not saying we tell her right this second or anything, just that she’s got a permit to the chemlab and might’ve happened upon something there, too.”

  “The real question is how we’re going to tell them. Normally I’d say just talk to people by the waterfall like it’s just some small thing you’re curious about, but the problem is if you don’t tell them why it’s important, you risk their bringing it up offhandedly later and getting flagged. And while talking by the waterfall is probably fine for today, it’ll get suspicious if we keep doing it. We just need a way to . . . look.”

  “What?”

  Eve was staring out the window. “There’s a storm coming.”

  “So . . . there are lots of storms.”

  “Yeah, and they all cause power fluctuations.”

  I squinted, realizing what she was hinting at. “But the breaks in the mic and camera feeds only last for twenty seconds or so. That wouldn’t be nearly enough time to tell everyone everything.”

  “No, but what’s the one place where there are no microphones or cameras?”

  “In our minds. When we’re in the Boxes . . . Though the data’ll start feeding out again there, too, just as soon as the power returns.”

  I was about to say something else dismissive but stopped. I had an idea.

  Chapter 48

  I began with Daries.

  “I don’t know if I feel like scrimmaging today, Aaron. I mean, I’m usually up for it, but—”

  “Of course you don’t feel like it, man,” I said, putting my arm around his neck. “I don’t feel like it. None of us do. But that’s what Caelus is counting on. That’s why he does what he does.”

  “But with Sebastian gone—”

  “The rest of us are going to have to be that much better,” I said earnestly.

  Then on to Fingers, who was harder to convince.

  “So you’re saying we should give up?” I asked.

  “I’m saying this isn’t going to change anything.”

  “Fingers, if you’re upset, prep is the most proactive thing you could possibly do, regardless of whatever else happens.”

  Fingers gave me a skeptical, sarcastic look. “Since when did you get so gung ho? Usually people are peppier before their best friends get their heads shot off, not after.”

  I wanted to grab him and throw him against the wall but held back. This was too important. And it was for Sebastian as much as for anyone else that I had to get them on my side. I held his gaze, trying to stay calm. “Tell me that again when we’re inside.”

  “Aaron, I thought we were just doing a one-versus-one,” Daries said as Pierre entered the Box Room behind him, followed by Fingers and Fin. Including Fin had been a contentious decision, but we couldn’t count on another storm serving as a pretense for a meeting like this, and her knowledge of the Inner Ring chemlab wasn’t something we could do without.

  “Yeah, a one-versus-one-versus-one-versus-one-versus-one.”

  “Then why not just say free-for-all?” asked Pierre.

  “Hey, I’m still new here,” I said, tugging on my blue uniform.

  “Whoa, we got ourselves a bona fide battle royale here,” said Daries as Eve, Simon, and Whistler walked in. “You shoulda told me D Block was comin’ and I would’ve rustled up some Zeroes.”

  “Ha-ha-ha,” said Simon, giving a mock tip of the hat. “Good to see you, too.”

  “At least everyone on my block’s alive,” Whistler said, less humorously, then veered off into a corner.

  “Hey,” I said to Eve as she came over. “Any trouble?”

  She gave an almost-smile. “No more than usual. You still good for this?”

  I looked at the field battery I’d taken from engineering class, which was sitting over by the power cords. Both of us hated the idea of asking everyone at once, but this was the only way we could think to do it without the Reds finding out. “I’m not throwing up, if that’s the question.”

  I was about to put my arm on her shoulder when Brandon strode through the door. Because his appearance was unexpected, his form had an illusory bend to it, as if I were having another dream from which I’d eventually wake up, or I was in the Box and all I needed to do was reset the mission paramete
rs. But as he took another step forward, I realized it was permanent. That each step, each breath, was imprinting on time—on our plan—and there was no way to take it back. “Brandon.”

  “Aaron. I know I wasn’t invited to your little powwow, but I thought there wouldn’t be any harm in tagging along, seeing as how I’m the ranking SO. And also seeing as how I’m the ranking SO, I would like to be informed next time we do any intra-block training exercises. The Ds are fine, though, I suppose. Harmless.”

  “I told him he could come,” Pierre muttered to me. “And play the winner of our skirmish.”

  I thought I’d communicated the subtext to Pierre while trying to avoid tipping off anyone who could be watching us, but clearly I’d been too subtle.

  “I was going to just take a long ice bath, but I’m glad I came,” said Brandon. “I would’ve felt pretty left out otherwise.”

  He hated skirmishing and he was trying to pass it off as a joke, but blood was rushing to his cheeks, and I knew he was feeling hurt and excluded. And I knew I was making everything worse by scowling, but I couldn’t help it. He couldn’t be here. He was going to fuck up everything.

  I looked at Eve and then back at Brandon. I wanted to tell him to get lost, but I couldn’t come up with anything that wouldn’t sound awkward and incriminating. I glanced up at the vents, where I imagined the cameras to be, and then down at my feet. This was already suspicious as hell and the storms were sporadic, so who knew if we’d ever get this chance again.

  Just go. You can handle him. Besides, he’s always bragging about how his student permit gives him access to the shuttle bay, just like Sebastian’s did. That might come in handy.

  I took a deep breath. “Shall we?”

  Chapter 49

  “Simon, is there any way you could find out what’s in the freighters or any of the cargo bays?” asked Eve. Everyone had injected themselves with the serum and we were all now sitting in the Box’s simulated briefing area.

  “They’ve revoked access to the cargo bays. Everyone knows that.”

  “Sure, sure, but is there some other approach you can think of? Like some type of inventory check you could do.”

  “I do mock inventory management for the station all the time—that’s the whole point of Logistics Access Permits. But they’ve got all the outside shipments blacked out. It’s always been like that,” answered Simon, slightly vexed.

  “In that case, Fingers, could you hack in and see what’s in there?” I asked.

  Fingers looked somewhere between annoyed and aghast. “I told you what they’d do if they ever caught me trying to hack into anything on the Inner Ring. Besides, they’ve tripled the security since then. It would take a shit load of social engineering to . . . why are we even talking about this? I thought we were skirmishing.”

  “That was just to get you here,” I began, taking one last deep breath. It was now or never. “I saw a Verex Shifter in a tie-in this morning and realized I’d seen those eyes before—so I let one of Marquardt’s dogs bite me and it came up Verex when Eve ran the DNA test.

  “Our first thought was that the commander had taken a sample from a dead Verex and spliced its genes into an embryo as a kind of trophy or something like that. But it just seemed uncanny that canines’ retinal photoreceptors let them see five times better in the dark and the DNA they’re being mixed with is coming from exactly the kind of subterranean planet where that’d be most useful. So Eve ran some more tests, including a telomere diagnostic that determined that the dog is nine years old, which is a problem since we’ve only been fighting the Verex for four years. We’ve only known they existed for four years . . .”

  I stopped and let the words sink in.

  Their faces were strained. Confused. Simon, who was organizing his skirmish prep papers into neat rows to put back in his bag, stopped and looked up.

  I waited a few more moments for someone to say something, but when no one did I continued. “That’s one thing. The other is that a couple weeks ago, when Eve and I were on a field trip to the asteroid, we stumbled across a distress signal.”

  Eve played it, and Fingers’ eyes flickered with recognition.

  “Unless there’s a Fleet cruiser or a ship of the line somewhere in the nebula using a non-Fleet frequency, the only transmitter strong enough to punch through the interference would have to be on the planet. But why would an uninhabited planet be sending a distress signal?”

  Pierre and Daries looked at each other, their faces slowly seeming to reflect the gravity of what I was saying .

  “For a while we couldn’t see how the signal and the DNA were connected, but then I remembered how Sebastian had said that there’d been a colony on the surface eight years ago that had been wiped out in one of those big storms Drieus is always having. But what if it wasn’t a storm? What if they stumbled on something so extraordinary that Mars wanted it for themselves?”

  “But there’s nothing special about the planet on any of the surveys,” said Simon, looking skeptical.

  “Maybe they kept it quiet,” Eve suggested. “Or maybe they’re just surveying for the wrong thing. It’s like Dr. Mitchell said: Sometimes it’s the resources you don’t know you want that you end up wanting the most.”

  She leaned forward in her chair. “And then we got to thinking about what was happening around the planet. Usually interference is thought of as an inconvenience, but the only reason we’re having this conversation now is because of it, because the storms provided the excuse to hook up the battery to the Box. Have you ever thought about why there are so many scientists here and why their research doesn’t trigger their Mylan Chips when it probably should? It’s got to be that the interference is unique somehow. That’s why this place is so valuable. And considering that Corinth Station gets a decent amount of interference itself, imagine how much the planet’s surface gets when you throw in the atmospheric storms.”

  “If they wanted to keep the colony quiet, wouldn’t they have just destroyed it? Why leave something around to pop off distress signals?” Pierre asked.

  “Maybe they can’t. Maybe the interference is preventing them.”

  “It didn’t prevent the colonists from landing in the first place,” said Simon.

  “Something changed,” I said. “Sebastian had a project for his thermodynamics class outlining a way to direct the nebula’s energy into a lightwall, but it got shot down because his professor said it was too theoretical. Well, maybe it wasn’t. Considering Sebastian was able to dream it up with partial Mylan Chip interference, maybe the colonists were actually able to build it with full.”

  “This whole thing is maybes! There are a hundred explanations for all of this,” said Simon, his usual aggrieved, this-is-all-a-tragic-comedy, sarcastic face transforming into a look of incredulousness. “That distress signal could’ve been bouncing around for years, since the storm that wiped them out.”

  “I know, Simon. That’s why we brought you guys here. To try and work through this and see if there’s any reasonable explanation for it,” I said. “Obviously we wouldn’t have involved you if we could’ve avoided it, but this is a big deal. You understand that, right?”

  Simon shrugged.

  Fingers’ and Daries’ eyes locked together.

  “Getting back to the message, the voice mentions ‘antid,’ which has to be ‘antidote,’ and freighters,” said Eve.

  “There were freighters then, too,” said Brandon.

  “But not an antidote. And synthesizing it has to be the cover for why the top scientists are here. It’s one of the only stations close enough to the Rim for them to be able to make timely reformulations as the Verex modulate.”

  “Okay, okay, sure. That just means the dog was probably infected with a venom sample that they were using for research and . . . it stabilized,” said Simon, still agitated.

  “The Verex venom doesn’t stabilize by changing your phenotypes! We’ve thought about this,” said Eve.

  “For how long? Since th
is morning? Come on, this is fucking crazy,” said Simon. “This is a school.”

  “That just happens to be orbiting a planet in an interference-generating nebula. Right, it’s just a school,” said Eve.

  “Hey, I get it. We all like to think we’re in the middle of something big. Our lifetimes are the most exciting time to ever have been alive, right? Isn’t that how it goes?”

  “Bu—”

  “And, Aaron, you blame yourself for Sebastian and Rhys because you didn’t do anything and now you’re trying to make up for it. But I can tell—I can just tell you’re going to try and drag us all into this with you. That’s why we’re all here, right?”

  Simon was wearing this exasperated expression like he knew whatever we were going to say would be ridiculous, which couldn’t help but make me feel self-conscious when I answered, “Man, we’re just trying to figure this out. It doesn’t have anything to do with that.” I wasn’t one hundred percent convinced that there was something sinister going on either. But naysaying before we could investigate would be just as bad as rushing into anything.

  “Come on, it has everything to do with that. I mean look at you—you’re a mess. Pale. Circles around your bloodshot eyes. You look worse than Whistler, and that’s saying something,” said Simon.

  “Fuck you,” said Whistler.

  “Nah, man, you’re going to have to turn tricks somewhere else for your Zero money.”

  Whistler started getting up from his chair, but Daries held him back. “Whoa, easy there, pal.”

  “I get that we’ve got to be thorough, but we can’t dismiss this,” I said. “We all knew this place was pretty fucked up, didn’t we? Maybe this isn’t so crazy. It fits.”

  “It fits because you want it to fit. You’re angry and you want to pick a fight. Of course it goddamn fits.”

  “Simon, what the hell’s gotten into you?” I asked.

  “Oh, I don’t know—maybe you bringing us into something that’s going to get us all in deep shit.”

  “He’s scared,” said Daries.