The Piranha Solution: A Hard Science Fiction Technothriller (Ace of Space Book 1)

by John Triptych

As the truck rumbled into the night, Darian helped Stilicho up. She held out the gun so he could take it back. “Here,” she said softly, the pain of Matt’s sacrifice still fresh in her mind.

  Stilicho shook his head. “You keep it. You’re better at shooting that thing than me.”

  Darian stammered. “Matt … he…”

  “Yeah, I know,” he said softly.

  Maia’s voice went through their com-links. “I’m sorry to interrupt, but where do you want me to go?”

  Stilicho breathed slowly to calm himself down. “How far is the abandoned Russian colony from here?”

  “Gagarin Colony is approximately one thousand, four hundred forty-seven kilometers south of our position,” Maia said. “But a direct route is not possible because the colony is located on the southern face of the valley network.”

  “Let’s go that way,” Stilicho said. “We’ll figure out how to access the colony later.”

  “Noted. Travel time is approximately eighteen to twenty hours,” Maia said. “The truck will require one battery change before we reach our destination. There are still three emergency popup tents for your use. The crate to your left contains food and water.”

  Darian grimaced. The Russian base was the closest man-made structure that they could get to, so there wasn’t much choice. If they attempted to double back, then they would certainly run into those killer machines once again. She turned to look at Stilicho. “Did you read the reports on the evacuation of the Russian colony?”

  “I skimmed through them. Why?”

  “Karl Rossum said that someone else may have been behind it all,” Darian said. “The only other known colony in this whole planet is the Russian one and it was abandoned over eight years ago.”

  Stilicho looked at her quizzically. “Yeah, so?”

  “What if it wasn’t abandoned after all? What if someone is still in there? It would make a perfect hideout,” Darian said. Thinking about what lay ahead was better than torturing one’s self over what happened with Matt and the others, so she kept at it.

  “Who could possibly be in there? Wouldn’t any sort of activity be seen by orbital satellites?”

  Darian shook her head. “The Russian colony was built along the sides of the valley when they found lava tubes along the valley walls. They built a network of underground caves since their radiation shielding wasn’t as good as Eridu’s. It also meant that any activity wouldn’t be seen from orbit.”

  Stilicho was intrigued. “Did you government types have any intel on Russian space launches heading for Mars recently?”

  “As far as I know the only Mars rockets the Russians had sent was during the evacuation all those years ago,” Darian said. “Any new rocket landing at their colony site would have been instantly spotted by the orbiting satellites and from Earth, so that line of thought could be just pure speculation.”

  “But you seem convinced that someone’s there,” Stilicho said. “The Chinese, maybe?”

  “Like I said, if they landed a rocket on the Russian pad everybody would have seen it,” Darian said. “They could have taken a long range rover to get over there, but that would have been seen by the satellites as well. The breakdown with the Mars relay is recent, but it had to have coincided with the time that Karl Rossum made his way to the Mars First Colony site.”

  “Maia,” Stilicho said. “Can you search through your pic database for orbital pictures of the Mars First Colony area two years ago when Karl Rossum drove over there from Eridu? Was there anyone before him that might have gone over there?”

  “Sorting. One moment,” Maia said. “I’m sorry Stil, but I’ve found a discrepancy on all catalogued pictures that had been taken by the Mars relay network during that time.”

  “What? I told you to save all relevant data into your memory before the network was hacked,” Stilicho said.

  “I did as you requested,” Maia said. “What I am saying was that the Mars relay had apparently been compromised years ago, long before this recent chain of events.”

  Darian’s eyebrows shot up. “What? How did you figure that out?”

  “There was a massive planet-wide sandstorm that covered the entire surface of Mars, which occurred four years ago,” Maia said. “Some of the pictures that had been cataloged by the satellites over the Mars First Colony had been substituted by earlier, outdated pictures of the terrain as it was, before the sandstorm slightly altered the surface area. Meanwhile, the rest of the planet’s surface has been updated as normal.”

  Stilicho placed his hands over his hips. “Are you sure about this? How come nobody discovered this until now?”

  “I believe it was because no one was really looking,” Maia said. “The general public has mostly forgotten as to what happened so many years ago, and at the same time very few if any hobbyists maintain a continuous record of the Martian terrain over time. The public database uploads new pictures into the net only at a bi-annual basis, and it is quite easy to substitute old, outdated photographs on some parts of the surface and catalog it as a recent file.”

  Stilicho let out a deep breath. “So someone has been hacking the Mars network for years and covered up his tracks.”

  “Whoever it was covered up for Karl Rossum during his journey to the Mars First Colony as well,” Maia said. “Even after Karl’s estimated time of death, the satellite pictures of the area do not show his rover as having been parked in front of the building. The relay continued to cycle through old photographs and labeled them as updated files.”

  “Freaking hell,” Stilicho said. “Based on your estimate, how long has this been going on?”

  “Sorting through the entire catalog took me awhile, but it seems to have started not long after the Russian evacuation of Gagarin Colony, over eight years ago,” Maia said. “An analysis of the areas affected seems to indicate several trips by land from Gagarin Colony to the Mars First Colony, and vice versa, over a period of six years. There’s a definite pattern as to which of the pictures were substituted for the updated files.”

  “Oh my god, that validates my theory,” Darian said. “Someone must have stayed behind when the Russians evacuated their colony. But who?”

  Chapter 17

  Florian Lefevre closed the folder and placed it on a table beside the covered corpse. He hated going to morgues, but it was his duty as an attaché to the French Embassy in Moscow to sort through these things. A French national had been found dead on the street due to an apparent suicide, but things were not as cut and dried as they seemed. It was apparent that Camille Chamboredon had flown into Russia just a few days before and had met with one of her childhood friends. The next thing anyone knew was that she had leapt off from the top floor of a dingy apartment complex and now her family needed to be notified. As with all things, the Russians weren’t very forthcoming with what actually happened, and the embassy would officially report that the case was being investigated, even though it was pretty much over and done with.

  A slight beeping noise made him take out his smartglasses and put it on. There was an incoming message from ACE Corp, and he went ahead and read it. Florian had worked in private industry, most notably as a corporate lawyer for Flux Motors a few years before joining with the French diplomatic corps, and ACE had decided to retain his contacts if ever there was need of his services. Errol Flux had done a few favors for him in the past, and he was in their debt. He had just about finished reading the message when the coroner entered the room.

  Dr. Arkday Petrov was an overworked and underpaid government servant. His lab smock was filthy, due to the excessively high numbers of cases that had been occurring in the city, and he had gotten very little sleep in the past few days. He sat on the edge of the desk and adjusted his thick glasses with a sigh. “Is the report to your satisfaction, sir?”

  Florian spoke fluent Russian, and it was one of the reasons why he got the embassy job. “Just one little matter, Dr. Petrov. I have read the inventory list of the subject’s possessions and there seems to be
one thing missing.”

  Petrov gave him an irritated look. “Oy, oy, oy. What could be the problem now? Do you think we took money from her purse while she was being wheeled into this building? If that happened then I’m not responsible.”

  “Not at all,” Florian said. “There seems to be a missing mobile phone that wasn’t listed on the inventory report you gave me.”

  Petrov frowned as he took the folder from the table and leafed through the report. “I have here her purse, broken smartglasses, tube of lipstick, folding mirror, credit and debit cards, a few coins and all that. Nowhere does it say mobile phone. Anyway, if she has smartglass then there is no reason for her to have an old, outdated thing as a mobile phone, yes?”

  “That’s just the issue you see,” Florian said. “She had sent a text message on a telephony server the moment she died, it was traced back to an old mobile phone network service that had been registered to her years ago, so it only means that she did in fact carry an old mobile phone, but that isn’t listed here in the inventory, as I said.”

  Petrov shrugged. “Perhaps the phone was broken when she fell to her death. It is no doubt in the same street where her body was found, in a million little pieces. The police most probably didn’t think of it as anything important.”

  “But why would she send a strange message if she contemplated suicide? Wouldn’t she be asking for help, or saying goodbye to her loved ones?”

  Petrov scratched his grizzled chin. He was getting annoyed by all this. “What was in the message?”

  “I cannot say,” Florian said. “But our staff doesn’t think that this was a suicide.”

  Petrov sighed. “There were no signs of foul play. No drugs in her system, no bruises, no defensive wounds. She jumped and landed on her head. As to what her reasons for doing it, I don’t know.”

  “Her last log on her server indicated that she was here to see a friend,” Florian said. “Her editor said that she was onto some sort of story, and it might have been dangerous.”

  “If you are suspicious of anything then you should talk to the police or the MVD,” Petrov said. “I only do autopsies and make my reports, that is all I do.”

  “I did try to talk to the police, but they won’t tell me anything,” Florian said. “They just keep saying she killed herself.”

  Petrov snorted. “Well, what do you want me to do then?”

  “I know that three people died at the same time and they all jumped from the same building,” Florian said. “You have poor Mrs. Chamboredon here, and you also have her childhood friend Oksana Sakhalov and an old man, who happened to jump out to their deaths within minutes of each other. Doesn’t that strike you as odd?”

  “Perhaps they became suicidal one after the other,” Petrov said. “One jumped off, the others saw it and decided they couldn’t live either and so copied the first one.”

  Florian grimaced as he took out a wad of cash from his coat pocket and held it out to the other man. “Is this better?”

  Petrov stared into the other man’s eyes for a few minutes before he took the money and pocketed it within the folds of his lab coat. “What do you want?”

  “Do you know if the police recovered the mobile phone?”

  Petrov walked over to a nearby desk, took out a key from his the inside of his coat and opened the locked drawer. Inside was a tray that contained bits of the old phone. He placed it on the desk. “The police took out the memory chip in it. I was going to give it to my daughter since she runs an old phone repair shop.”

  Florian picked up the phone and looked at it. Even though the cover was shattered, it still looked intact. But with the sim chip gone, it was pretty much useless. He placed it back on the tray. “I have another question. I tried to do a general search on the old man who died along with the two women, but there is no file on him at all. No employment records, no school reports, nothing. It is as if he never existed. The police wouldn’t give me a name, or even show me a picture of what he looks like. Is he still here?”

  Petrov looked around nervously. After what seemed to be a long time, he stared up at the camera in the ceiling. “People think it works but it doesn’t.”

  Florian looked up as well. “What doesn’t work? That camera?”

  “Da,” Petrov said. “Everybody thinks it works, but I know it doesn’t. The last time I was in the MVD headquarters, my superior talked to me in the security room. At the corner of my eye I could see that they didn’t have the money to buy a new camera because the old one was broken, but they never told anyone. If I let you see his body, I will not be responsible for whatever happens next.”

  “Do not worry,” Florian said. “I just need to see his face. I already think I know who he is anyway.”

  Petrov started walking towards a door at the opposite end of the room. “This way.”

  Florian followed him into the next room. It was a much smaller morgue than the previous room, and there weren’t any cameras on the ceiling looking down at them. A pair of double doors lay at the far end, but they had been bolted shut. As soon as Florian stepped inside, Petrov closed the door behind him and shuffled over to the side wall containing the freezer units. The coroner stood in front of one of the upper shelves and slid it open, revealing a body covered in plastic sheeting.

  Petrov pulled the metal slab out and stood behind it. “You are in luck. They were supposed to pick this up today for immediate disposal, but they were probably stuck on the road and will return tomorrow instead. This winter has been very tough, even on cars.”

  “Can I see it?”

  “Of course,” Petrov said. He unzipped the plastic cover, revealing the pale face of a grizzled old man on the slab.

  Florian activated the camera application on his smartglasses and took a dozen pictures, saving it into the memory card that was built into the frame of the glasses.

  Petrov zipped it back up again and slid the body back into the cold recess. “Now you must get going for I need to—”

  There was a sound coming from the double doors. They both could hear the bolts to the outside being unlocked. A sudden fear gripped Florian.

  Petrov cursed as he opened up another freezer cabinet and pulled the empty metal slab out. “They have arrived. Climb onto this, quickly!”

  Florian just stood there, his mouth agape. “What?”

  The sound of footsteps was heard from the adjoining room. A husky voice called out from beyond the opposite door. “Petrov? Where are you?”

  Petrov glared at him. The coroner’s voice was a desperate whisper. “Climb in now or we’re both dead men.”

  Florian got onto the metal slab, his legs straight, lying on his stomach. It was as cold as ice and burned his fingers. “W-what do I do?”

  “Just shut up,” Petrov hissed. “Keep your arms to your sides.” With those words, he shoved the slab back into the darkened interior and shut the opening, encasing the French embassy attaché in a cold, suffocating darkness.

  Florian fought off the urge to panic. His smartglasses went into UV mode, but all he could see was a small metal door in front of him. A chill started to seep into his body, despite the thermal underwear beneath the heavy coat he wore. He tried to rest his chin on the slab, but the icy metal was so cold it ripped off a part of the skin just below his lips.

  The husky voice had made it into the room. “Petrov, you drunk! Why did you lock these doors? Are you having sex with the corpses again?”

  “Oh shut up,” Petrov said. “I thought this whole affair was supposed to be private.”

  “Of course it is! That is why I entered from the front office, just to see that there was nobody else around,” the husky voice said. “Now, let us get this over with.”

  Florian heard the sound of the double doors being pulled back. Less than a minute later, the door that was adjacent to the slab he was lying in slid open with a loud clang and he could hear the squeaking ball bearings beneath the other slab as it was pushed out.

  It was Petrov’s voice ag
ain. “Do you need any help?”

  “No need,” the husky voiced man said. “As you can see, the two men who came with the ambulance are quite strong, yes?”

  “Of course,” Petrov said. “I am just glad that this whole business is over with and we can get back to normal again.”

  Florian’s legs had finally gone numb from the cold. His neck was starting to hurt as he strained to keep his chin from touching the slab. His arms were tucked tightly along his sides, palms up, and he grimaced as he kept them from touching the sides of the refrigerated alcove. He couldn’t take much more of this. Just as he was about to place his chin on the slab he jerked his head up, and the back of his head bumped against the steel lining at the top of the slot. A hollow, reverberating noise sounded, in addition to putting a bruise at the top of his head.

  The husky man’s voice sounded distant, as if he was at the far end of the room. “What was that?”

  Petrov’s voice answered. “I didn’t hear anything.”

  “Bah,” the husky voice said. “We’re leaving. Don’t forget to lock up. And that body was never in here, do you understand?”

  “Of course. Dosvedanya.”

  Florian still grimaced from the pain as he heard the double doors closing. The frozen numbness was either painful or making him lose control of his extremities. The next thing he knew the door in front of his face was flung wide open and the slab he was lying in rolled out back into the light.

  Petrov helped him back on his feet. “You are a fool! You nearly gave us away. Why did you bang on the inside like that?”

  Florian was still wobbly as he rubbed at the raw skin on his cheek. “I-I nearly froze to death in there.”

  Petrov took him by the elbow and started to lead him back out into the other room. “You are terribly lucky. If I hadn’t drunk half a bottle of vodka before we met, I would not have been able to lie like that. Now get out of here, I never want to see you again.”

  As soon as Florian was back out on the street, he encrypted the pictures before emailing them directly to a private server that was owned by ACE Corp. Within a matter of minutes, the quantum processing suite had decrypted it and analyzed the face of the corpse using advanced biometric analysis. In less than an hour they got their confirmation. The dead man was indeed Dmitri Sakhalov, former mission commander of Gagarin Colony, Mars.