Lakes of Mars

by Merritt Graves

  “Okay. Then tell me where I’m going wrong!” said Fingers. “You two are the ones that just dropped bombshell evidence, laying out this incredibly compelling case about how Mars engineered the Verex, here at this station. How they’re planning to punch through a lightwall and destroy that colony.” He pointed out the simulated window. “And now you’re saying we shouldn’t do anything about it? Now who’s being fucking unreasonable?”

  “He’s not saying we shouldn’t do anything,” said Eve. “Just that . . .”

  “Just that what? What else could we do?”

  “We could just use Brandon’s access permit to take the Pulsar and warn the Fleet,” said Eve.

  “What about the colonists?” asked Fingers.

  “What about the colonists?” asked Simon. “That message you heard is probably just an old echo.”

  “And if even if it wasn’t, we don’t know them. We don’t know anything about them. They’re not our problem,” said Brandon.

  “They are if Mars breaks through the lightwall and then turns it back on once they’re under it. It would take months for the Fleet to build another array, and who knows what weapon Mars could’ve researched by then.”

  “He’s right,” Daries said.

  “And the thing is, guys, we only really get one play at this,” said Fingers in his best attempt to channel Rhys’s speech of a few days ago. “We already know way, way more than the Reds want us to, so as soon as we flash our hand the clock starts. Even you can see that, can’t you, Simon?”

  Simon looked away.

  “Can’t you, Daries?”

  “Yeah,” said Daries. “I’m in.”

  “So am I,” said Whistler.

  “Brandon?” asked Fingers.

  There was a pause while Brandon looked around at everyone, and then at me for what had to be at least fifteen or twenty seconds in an intense, disquieting lock of the eyes. It was less that he was trying to read me, though, and more that he was trying to read himself, as his expression turned increasingly distraught. “I don’t know . . . we just gotta make sure this all checks out first.”

  “This is so, so fucked. I can’t believe you guys,” said Simon as everyone’s gaze shifted to him. He sat there looking at us, then down at the table, then back at us, before lunging out of his chair and bolting for the door. Seconds later I was through it, too, and waking in my Box. I saw Simon struggling to unstrap himself from his shoulder harness and I tore at mine, unbuckling it only a second after he did and tackling him just before he reached the door. As I scrambled to secure him in a headlock, I saw one boot, and then another, and looked up to see Master Sergeant Paters leaning against the wall.

  “Simulations tend to have a way of spilling into reality,” Paters remarked, taking a drag off a cigarette. “It’s heartening to see you’re taking things so seriously.”

  All at once I smelled the smoke. Glare from the ceiling lights filled my vision. I felt like I was back in the Box, or having another nightmare, and unconsciously my fingers flexed and I let Simon go.

  “You see somethin’ in there that gave you the spooks?” the master sergeant asked, taking a step forward.

  Simon was breathing heavily, sucking in smoke-plumed air. My eyes fastened on him, but he stared straight ahead.

  “I asked if you saw anything in there that gave you the spooks.” Paters took another long drag. “Perhaps it’s followed you out here.”

  Simon looked back at me, but only for a second before turning around, noticing the staggered forms of Pierre, Daries, and the others as they emerged behind me. I became even more disoriented as my eyes followed his, the stakes rising stratospherically by the second.

  “I suppose I’m a little spooked,” Simon said to Paters, his voice barely crackling through to a whisper.

  “And why would that be?” asked the master sergeant.

  Simon looked at me for longer this time, our eyes meeting for a few seconds before he turned away again. “I . . . I—”

  “We had a pretty rough practice,” I interrupted. I wasn’t going along with Fingers, but I couldn’t just let Simon rat us all out to the Reds. Eve, Pierre, Fin, Daries, Whistler. We’d all be fucked. “Psychologically, that is. Simon’s been through a lot lately and I think he just wanted to . . .”

  “Wanted to what?” asked Paters.

  “Wanted to . . . ,” I started again. There were so many different lies racing through my head, but they were tangled up with each other, and I was worried that whichever one I chose, I’d inadvertently end up pulling out more than I meant to. But I had to give him an answer. “He wanted to—”

  “I wanted to get the hell out of there. I just needed a break and they weren’t letting me take one,” Simon cut in.

  “Sounds like a doozy. But you know, the oddest thing happened,” Paters replied as he walked between Fingers and Brandon and then rested his hand in a groove on the side of one of the Boxes. “The cables were disconnected, so I didn’t see the feed. None of you would happen to know anything about that, would you?”

  “We hooked the Boxes up to a field battery so we wouldn’t be affected by the storms,” explained Eve, walking up beside me.

  “You do know the station has auxiliary power, don’t you?” asked Paters.

  “Of course, but it takes a few seconds to kick in,” Eve replied, “and in the meantime it turns off the Box and takes us out of the action, which is the last thing we want with the most important Challenge of the year coming up.”

  “I see.” The master sergeant let the words hang for a while, turning the subsequent silence in their wake into an accusation. “And you brought some of D Block along to—”

  “Intra-block tactics exchange—sharing best practices. We learned in Professor Richter’s class that allies do that all the time and so we thought we’d implement our own—”

  “Usually the best block doesn’t choose the worst block to do a tactics exchange with,” said Paters.

  “You never know who’s going to have the next good idea,” Pierre said, appearing beside me.

  “We’re just prospecting somewhere no one would expect,” I added. “I don’t need to remind you, Master Sergeant, how important the element of surprise is.”

  I could tell he was affronted, but I knew I had to come out swinging. He could hate me—that was fine—he just couldn’t suspect me. We had to use the same playbook. Be peers in aggression. “Those bastards aren’t going to know what hit them in the Challenge.” I shook my head, trying to show myself getting worked up. “Caelus’ ego will hang him just like it did in the first match, and this time we’re not going to let him get back up. We’ll drive his nose straight into the fucking ground.”

  “Aren’t you a little . . . shorthanded to be making such proclamations?” Paters scoffed, as a thin, self-satisfied smile began tracing itself across his lips.

  “I’m sure that’s exactly what he’s thinking,” I shot back.

  Chapter 50

  No one said a word the whole time we were walking back to C3. All I could think was that I’d done it again. I was about to get more people killed. Eve. The colonists. Citizens all over the solar system and the GZ that I’d never meet. We should’ve thought this through more. We shouldn’t have told Fingers and Simon. That seemed so obvious now, but before it had felt like those were the people we had to tell because, given their permits, they’d have the most answers.

  I wished to God Sebastian were there; he would’ve handled things so much better, always being so cautious and deliberate. I might’ve been convincing enough to keep Paters from taking us on the spot, but it was just a matter of time before Simon told the Reds and they came and arrested us.

  I sat on my hammock watching the door. One hour. Two hours. The guilt eating through me. Missing the Tread Room, Space Math. The lights blurring. The walls seeming close up, then far away, the expansion of unreality my body’s way of trying to protect me. Trying to cocoon me in a dream. But it was too late for that. I’d been throu
gh this too many times; I knew you couldn’t keep the guilt out for long. Guilt wasn’t a chemical that could be managed or a receptor that could be powered down. It was alive, with its own will and intelligence, and it would keep screaming and raging and smashing into you until you listened to it.

  But when I finally did, no tears came. It wasn’t that I felt bled dry, just that there were other feelings inside me screaming back, pressing the opposite way just as hard, just as furious, begging me not to give in. Saying that this wasn’t the time, that it wasn’t just me anymore but everyone that I cared about who was still out there. I had to be better. I had to be something more than I’d been.

  My eyes stayed fastened on the door as I waited for the Reds to come, but something inside me had started to harden. Blues got back from their classes, took naps, worked at the table, went in and out of the washroom. Two and a half hours. Three hours. Maybe Simon hadn’t said anything after all. I got up from my hammock and splashed water on my face. It was okay to be afraid and there would always be something to be afraid of, but you couldn’t let it paralyze you. The Reds still might analyze the footage and come arrest us, but the longer I stayed here acting guilty, the more likely that became. I needed to get up. Get dressed for the Mat Room. Go on like everything was okay, because that was the only way it would be.

  I badly wanted to talk to Simon and see if I could get him to hold off for a while until we could figure things out, but I couldn’t. Not with the cameras and everyone around. I didn’t even discuss what had happened with Daries, Fingers, or the others for the next couple of hours, hoping that our close call had been enough to get them to table their idea. I tried making small talk with Eve and Pierre, but mostly it was glances or nods or subtle brushes of the arm.

  Everything had hinged upon making a good enough plan in the Box, and now with that upended and no prospect of doing it again—even if we had another storm—we were stuck. None of us knew what the others were thinking. We couldn’t pass notes on electronic paper because we had to assume their camera zooms were powerful enough to capture whatever we wrote. We couldn’t speak by the waterfall because that would be too obvious after already drawing Paters’ attention in the Box. I thought about having Fingers encrypt messages on our U-devs, and then use a speech algo to reverse-dictate through headphones, but that would probably be flagged. I even remembered that Woodrow had told me he knew this obscure language that neo-indigenous people near his colony spoke and wondered about getting him to teach it to us. But that would take months.

  There were the same awkward pauses and small talk the next morning at breakfast. Pierre was the best at it because he was a natural at calming people down, but our inability to communicate thickened an already expanding dread, making it pile into the space around us, pushing back when I tried to move. I was locked in, yet somehow I simultaneously felt like I was hollowed out, crippled in a spine-breaking kind of way, unable to do what I’d been able to do every other day of my life.

  Ideas were frozen. Thoughts stayed embryonic. Even my best ones couldn’t develop the way I wanted since I was so busy pouring my energy into the fake ones I needed to express in order to sound normal. To make the fiction appear a little bit more like the real things I wished I were saying.

  Right as I was about to give another fake answer to another fake question of Pierre’s, Daries and Fingers appeared at the mess hall entrance. They were usually the first ones there and I was about to make a remark to that effect, but they passed our table, walking over to a small one in the corner instead.

  Seeing this, our conversation halted and then picked up again even more absently. At first I was just puzzled, taking for granted that things weren’t going to make sense, but after a few moments the concern on Pierre’s face registered on my own. They shouldn’t have been sitting together. Talking together. They knew the Reds could hear us. They knew that we were probably under more scrutiny.

  Fin and Brandon covertly glanced in their direction.

  I thought of how to ask what we should do, but there really wasn’t any way of talking around this without compromising ourselves. There was a good chance we already had. If they studied the video from different angles, they’d see me getting bit by the dog and showing the sample to Eve. They’d see Simon’s almost-mutiny running from the Box. They’d hear this awkward conversation now. And that was before they’d interrogate us or do whatever it was they’d do to get us to talk.

  Brandon glanced over again and I did the same a few moments later. Fingers’ and Daries’ trays of crusted paste, rolls, and protein cocktail were untouched. Their faces were solemn, seemingly absorbed in whatever they were discussing. I hoped to God they were smart enough not to talk about anything that would give us away in the open, but given how angry and unhinged Fingers had sounded in the Box, I wasn’t so sure.

  Fin and Pierre looked unsure, too, but were trying not to. Better to just play this off as natural. Not be suspicious. Or would it be suspicious to not comment on something that was out of the ordinary? Brandon must’ve thought so, because after some forced digression about rapid room-entry tactics, he said, “Kind of an odd couple there, don’t you think?”

  “They usually . . . get along.”

  “Sure,” said Brandon. “But to split off at a time like this? We need them here with us.”

  “They’ll come around,” Pierre said. His words, like everyone else’s, were stilted; we all had to say things in our heads first to make sure they weren’t incriminating.

  Brandon nodded, and suddenly it clicked that his bringing up Fingers meant we didn’t have to talk around “it” at all, if we changed what “it” was. Instead of referring to their destroying the array, we could . . . we could . . . what was something big that was coming up? There was the inquest in a couple weeks, but that was just me. There was a final in Space Science that most of us would have to take next week, but we’d never talked much about that class before. No, it had to be something significant. Something that we could . . . the Challenge. The same excuse I’d given Paters.

  But just as I was about to say something to that effect, Brandon beat me to it. “Guys, I’m not sure Daries and Fingers have the best plan for Saturday,” he said, seemingly trying to keep it on point enough for Pierre, Fin, and me to know what he was talking about but vague enough to also cover whatever conversation Fingers and Daries were having over there. They weren’t stupid after all. They might be talking in code about something similar.

  Fin’s expression clouded as she listened, but Pierre seemed to pick up on it. “It’s really . . . it’s really hard to say anymore. I don’t know the answer.”

  I was about to shoot something back, but in truth I didn’t know the answer either. I still thought we needed to do something, but not before we had more to go on—and not before Eve could finish her research. This was too extreme. Putting too many lives in jeopardy before we were sure what we were doing.

  “There’s no simple way,” continued Pierre. “Caelus deserves to lose, but it’s just about how he loses. And what happens to everyone else.”

  Fin’s eyes lit up as she caught on, too. “It could . . . it could backfire and we’ll be out a ton of points . . . but then again . . .”

  But then again what? God. They really had no idea, did they? They were even more confused than I was. If only Verna were here with us—she always saw the big picture. Thankfully Eve did, too, but the science class we had together had been canceled yesterday and we hadn’t been able to discuss anything important working together in the lab. “I just don’t think what they’re doing’s going to work. Especially if there’s interference like we’ve seen on a lot of the maps,” I said. “We don’t have enough points to cut through. We’ll be flying blind.”

  Brandon shook his head. “Especially since D Block probably won’t come through. It was stupid to think they had something worth using.”

  “Either way,” Pierre said, his hand on his chin, his arms crossed at an angle. “We’re just ou
t of time.”

  Out of the corner of my eye I saw Fingers and Daries getting up. We’d already been too conspicuous, and confronting them was terribly risky. But then again it was risky not to given how few chances there’d be if they’d decided to move forward with something.

  “I should go,” I said, collecting my bag and U-dev.

  “Aaron, don’t,” said Pierre.

  Brandon gazed down at my tray. “You hardly ate. And you don’t get to save your NUs.”

  “Thanks, Mom,” I mumbled, pushing in my chair.

  Chapter 51

  I stayed about fifteen meters back in the corridor. On the one hand I wanted to tell them right away what idiots they were being and how they were gambling with all of our lives, but I didn’t think they’d seen me yet and I wanted to get an idea of what they were up to.

  But they were just going to class. First Fingers to Military Psychology, and then Daries to the Mat Room, the same thing that I had next. It was risky and I wasn’t sure he’d understand the double-talk, but this would be my best chance to get him alone before they did anything they couldn’t walk back. And given our still somewhat-decent relationship, I probably had as good a chance as anyone at tilting him.

  “Hey, Daries, Daries,” I said, catching up to him just outside the locker room. “I don’t . . . I don’t have a good feeling about this Challenge.”

  He looked up, surprised for a split-second, but it was like he’d expected this from me at some point, because his expression just as quickly hardened into a glare. “Neither do I. And that’s the whole problem.”

  What the hell did that mean? Was it doubt? Or was he saying that was the reason we needed to blow up the array? For a second I thought it was the former, until he shook his head and glared the way he had at Brandon after he’d tried to kill C4.

  “But, there’s got to be another option.”