“I wasn’t even born back then so this is all new to me,” Stilicho said. “What was so suspicious about it?”
“Leonard Drummond wasn’t in the house since he was out campaigning,” Maia said. “The only other people inside the home were Leonard’s first wife Joy-and Silas, who was ten at that time. Joy Drummond died of cancer a few years later while the family was in the White House. Leonard married a Ukrainian woman half his age while president, and Anastasia became the second First Lady.”
“Jesus, that is one hell of a saga,” Stilicho said. “Could Silas have been a killer when he was a child?”
“Lots of rumors around the internet, but nothing was ever proven,” Maia said. “There was a television show that purported Silas as the killer of both his step-mother and younger sister, and he sued for libel, winning millions of dollars and received a public apology from the network that produced it.”
“I read a bit of the case files,” Darian said. “Silas wasn’t a suspect in his sister’s death, but he was the prime suspect in the death of his stepmother. The prosecutor declined to file charges and the media never got the full story. The case was sealed.”
“Once Silas became head of his father’s multi-billion dollar businesses, he started experiencing a mental breakdown,” Maia said. “He became a vegan and was obsessed with Mars after watching the first manned expedition’s landing on the Red Planet. Silas legally changed his surname to Balsamic and started Mars First, putting all of his assets into the organization. He tried reorientating his numerous business holdings but they all soon failed. Nevertheless, he was able to gather enough resources to start a colony on Mars. Public records show that he stayed on the Red Planet for almost twenty years before being forcibly evacuated back to Earth. A number of former members of his organization got together with the relatives of those that died in his colony and filed numerous cases against him. Nothing really came out of it, and he soon dropped out of the public eye.”
“How did he die?” Stilicho asked.
“He was last seen boarding a Moscow flight headed for Siberia, and there was an airplane crash in the Urals,” Maia said. “Only pieces of the dead were ever recovered. Since Silas was seen boarding the plane and was listed in the flight manifest, he was declared legally dead. A number of former Mars First members and blood relatives fought over his assets, but there wasn’t much. There were rumors that he had access to millions of dollars hidden in secret bank accounts in Eastern Europe, but nothing was ever traced.”
“Now that is one hell of a bad guy,” Stilicho said. “He’s a killer and he’s nuts. Why else would he change his surname into a type of salad dressing?”
“Attention,” Maia said. “The robotruck has just sent me a proximity alert.”
Darian drew her pistol. “What? Where?”
“Multiple contacts, coming from the ridge to the west and from behind us,” Maia said.
“Let’s get back to the flatbed,” Stilicho said as he started bounding back to the robotruck.
“I’m afraid we are out of spare batteries,” Maia said. “The current battery only has a two percent charge left. You will need to recharge the other batteries we have if you wish to go any further.”
“Then we’re trapped,” Darian said.
They came over the ridge, their hulking forms partially obscured by the setting sun behind them. Stilicho and Darian could see that they were centaurs, probably the same ones that they had encountered back in the Mars First Colony. As they got ever closer and their full details could be seen, Darian gasped. They were the exact same ones they fought against in the greenhouse, only this time they had been partially repaired. Another pair of centaurs soon emerged from the pockmarked plains in the north, their galloping hooves kicking up small clouds of dust as the robots proceeded unerringly towards them.
Stilicho stood on top of the flatbed, as he started opening up a plastic crate. “How much time before they get here, Maia?”
“Approximately seven minutes,” Maia said.
“Darian, if you want to live, you better get over here,” Stilicho said. He had managed to get the first rocketpack out of the container. He quickly ran through a quick diagnostic. The propellant canisters were intact, and he began to strap on the oversized carbon fiber corset over his life support backpack. The only problem was that the oxygen tank he wore for his suit was pushing against the harness of the rocketpack. Stilicho cursed as he unstrapped his life support pack from his back and brought it over to his chest before putting it back on. His chin was now wedged at the top part of his oxygen tank, and he could barely move his head. With a groan, he stepped backwards until his back was once more wedged into the harness of the rocketpack.
“They will be here in three minutes,” Maia said.
Darian just stood there with her mouth open. “What in the hell are you doing?”
“What do you think I’m doing? I’m getting outta here,” Stilicho said while he placed his right hand on the control joystick that jutted out from the side of the harness. “There’s another rocketpack, so you need to strap it on now, goddamn it.”
“I am afraid the other rocketpack has a problem with its propellant canister feed,” Maia said. “You would need about fifteen minutes to adjust it.”
Stilicho cursed. “But there’s no time!”
“Yes, they will be here in two minutes,” Maia said calmly.
Darian held her breath. The centaurs were now charging towards the stationary robotruck, their metallic tentacles out in front of them. Her life started to flash before her eyes.
“For god’s sake, hold onto me!” Stilicho said. With Mars’s lower gravity, there was a chance that he could still lift off with her added weight.
Darian started to panic as she re-holstered her pistol and wrapped her arms around Stilicho’s shoulders. “Are y-you sure about this?”
“One minute,” Maia said.
“Now or never,” Stilicho said as he activated the throttle. The rocketpack started to vibrate as its engines ignited. The lead centaur whipped out its two tentacles, just as Stilicho and Darian lifted up ten meters off the ground. The robot’s left tentacle missed Stilicho’s feet by half a meter, landing instead on an empty plastic crate, making a jagged tear along its sides.
Stilicho grimaced as Darian held onto him. He could barely see ahead, due to her helmet and his own life support pack in front of him. Both his hands were on the two opposite joysticks and the controls were quite simple: his right stick controlled the left and right direction of the rocketpack, while his left stick controlled the throttle, allowing him to go higher or lower in the atmosphere by regulating the propellant feed to the small engine behind his back. The rear thrusters could yaw, and push the user in different directions. With his altitude now over fifteen meters off the ground, Stilicho guided them both over the canyon walls and across the largest chasm in the Solar System.
Darian was trembling as she forced herself not to panic. She was hanging onto Stilicho’s life support pack and it was clear that the bottom of the rift was a long way down. If her grip was to somehow loosen and slip away, it would be a very lengthy fall. The NASA special agent gritted her teeth and closed her eyes, for there was not much else she could do except hang on.
Stilicho scowled as he struggled with the controls. They were moving very sluggishly in the air. Back on Earth, he would just lean from side to side if he wanted to change direction while using a jetpack, but Darian’s added mass and his lack of being able to see clearly ahead was making everything doubly harder. Using the readout on his visor, he calculated their airspeed at almost 300-kph.
They were halfway across the chasm, the much thicker atmosphere below them was slightly buffeting the rocketpack, and Darian held on even tighter. “Maia, where is that damned Russian colony?” he said. “Guide me through using your map.”
“The upper entrance of Gagarin Colony is approximately eighty-seven kilometers away from you,” Maia said. “Please adjust your heading to an
additional thirty degrees southwest.”
Stilicho frowned. Darian was clutching at his chest so tightly that he couldn’t lean to his right. “Darian, I need you to move your weight to my right.”
Darian opened her eyes. The front part of his helmet was almost touching hers. “What?”
“I said shift your weight,” Stilicho said. “Lean to my right.”
“Okay,” Darian said while tilting her shoulders to the left. But she overcompensated and the rocketpack began to nosedive.
Stilicho was livid as he struggled to right the rocketpack. “No! Too much!”
“Sorry,” Darian whispered as she adjusted her balance.
The rocketpack soon righted itself and Stilicho spent a few more minutes adjusting their direction as he stared at the virtual map being displayed on his faceplate. Gagarin Colony had several levels, and they were aiming for the central cavern, situated five kilometers above the bottom of the chasm. They had spent almost half the rocketpack’s fuel, and the lighter weight only increased their speed.
Within fifteen minutes, Maia chimed in again. “You are approaching the colony entrance to the upper caverns. The mouth of the lava tube contains an elevator pad that was used to move supplies up the edge of the canyon wall on the south side of Coprates Chasma.”
“How big is the hole?” Stilicho asked.
“It is a large lava tube, almost one hundred meters in circumference from top to bottom,” Maia said.
Even with his vision partially blocked, Stilicho could see a vast cavern situated along the sides of the canyon wall up ahead. It seemed as if a giant had bored a hole by the side of the gorge. A rusting metal platform jutted out from the bottom lip of the cavernous maw. Stilicho adjusted the throttle of the rocketpack so they would fly into the opening in a matter of minutes. He wished Maia could have deployed one of the aerial drones with them, but their batteries were drained and all the remaining equipment had been left behind in the flatbed, there to be scavenged over by the renegade army of machines that seemed destined to rule this side of the planet.
A warning beep indicated that the rocketpack was now running out of fuel. Stilicho maintained maximum thrust, hoping that they would be able to reach the edge of the platform at least. Darian’s added mass was both a blessing and a curse, for it made the thrusters eat more propellant. Stilicho went on maximum throttle as he gained altitude, hoping to glide into the cavern mouth in case the fuel was gone.
The beep now changed into a shrill tone as the rocketpack finally ran out of propellant. Stilicho angled himself downwards, but it would be a steep drop since the platform was thirty meters below, and he had no fuel for a soft landing. “Darian, I have some good and bad news,” he said.
Darian looked up at him again. “What?”
“We made it, but we’re out of fuel,” he said. “I can’t land us down gently.”
“Oh god!”
“It’s going to be a hard landing,” Stilicho said.
“Wait,” Darian said. “I’m holding onto your life support pack, and there is a refueling nozzle just underneath here.”
“What are you planning to do?”
Darian took out a collapsed popup tent from her pouch. “I took one of the used tents and deflated it. It doesn’t have any more air left but I can vent your air supply into it.”
“What’s that gonna do?”
“We could inflate it again,” Darian said. “And use it like a balloon landing. We just hang onto it and make sure it lands the other way. Use it as a shock absorber, like a bouncing beach ball.”
“This is nuts!”
Darian looked at him squarely in the eye. “It’s our only chance!”
“But I’m going to run out of air!”
“I’ll hook up my life support pack with yours, and we can buddy breathe,” Darian said calmly.
Stilicho wanted to pound his fists, but he knew he couldn’t. “Goddamn it!”
“It’s our only chance,” Darian said. “Don’t worry.”
“Fine,” Stilicho muttered. “Do it.”
They had made it over the edge of the platform, but they were falling so fast that both of them would be severely injured upon impact with the ground, due to their velocity. Darian reached underneath the life support pack she was holding onto, felt the refueling spout at the bottom of it and unscrewed the plug. Then she placed the tent’s air seal over it and fastened them together. Using the manual control pad located on top of the backpack, she activated the countdown for emergency venting of the unit.
Stilicho unfastened the safety hardness and let the now empty rocketpack slip away from his shoulders. With less weight, it would hopefully lower their velocity as they started falling towards the top of the platform. His backpack’s emergency venting initiated just as they both were a scant fifteen meters from the bottom of the cavern. The tent suddenly inflated, catching them both off-guard. Darian struggled to keep the now hexagonal shelter underneath their bodies, just as the ground came up to meet them.
The tent burst upon impact with the dusty floor of the lava tube, throwing them in wildly different directions. Darian landed on the back of her head, cracking her helmet and pushing her life support pack hard into her shoulders. Stilicho landed on his chest and his backpack knocked the wind out of his lungs.
A suit alarm reverberated in Darian’s ears as her helmet detected a slight breach near the top of her visor. Shaking off the pain from her back and shoulders, she looked up and saw a hairline crack at the right edge of the smartglass. Darian quickly sat up and took out a repair patch from the outer lining of her thigh, peeled off the cover from the adhesive side and placed it over the crack. The atmosphere in her helmet instantly adjusted, and she could breathe normally again.
Stilicho got on his knees. His pained breaths could only occur with short gasps as the internal alarm sounded, indicating that his backpack had no oxygen. The impact had also damaged the life support pack’s ISRU capabilities, and it could no longer draw in carbon dioxide from the surrounding air and filter it into pure oxygen. His vision swam, and he started to black out.
“Stilicho? Can you hear me?”
He opened his eyes once more, and he could see that Darian was kneeling over him. There was a small emergency air tube jutting out from her backpack and attached to the side of his helmet. Stilicho could breathe again. He inhaled a lungful of oxygen and sighed with relief.
“Come on, get up,” Darian said. “I can’t just sit here beside you for the rest of the evening.”
The pair of them got to their feet, just as the sun fell over the horizon, and the gargantuan valley that stretched before them was shrouded in darkness once more.
Chapter 19
Once the pride of the Russian space program, Gagarin Colony was rapidly abandoned eight years before, due to a lack of funding. When the Russians first landed in the Valles Marineris region, they found that the immense valley system had multiple lava tubes that protruded along the canyon walls, like a block of Swiss cheese. The mission planners of Roscosmos decided to pick out the largest cavern complex at the side of Coprates Chasma, and built a multi-level colony with the aim of eventual expansion to over a hundred thousand inhabitants. The lowest part of the complex was level with the valley basin and contained a landing pad. A propellant production plant for refueling the rockets was to be added, but they had run out of funds before construction was about to begin. At the heart of the caverns was a complex elevator system that could transport heavy loads up and down an underground chasm that stretched five kilometers from top to bottom. The massive elevators were the country’s pride and joy, but the scale of its construction meant that needed funds for the other parts of the colony had to be diverted in order to alleviate the cost overruns for such a huge transport system. In the end, the Russian economy buckled, and the entire colony had to be abandoned.
Stilicho frowned as he activated the lights on the shoulders of his skinsuit. The emergency air hose jutting out from Darian’s life suppor
t pack was only a meter long, and that meant that they would have to move very closely together, almost like conjoined twins. He felt like a toddler on a leash, and the last thing he wanted was to be tethered with her. “Where do we go now?”
Darian pointed to the side of the platform they were standing in. “Let’s take a look at the elevators.”
Stilicho shook his head. “We need to get to some oxygen tanks so I could refill my backpack.”
“Then going to the elevators would be the logical choice,” Darian said. “From there we could find out if there are workshops and access things there.”
“Fine, fine,” Stilicho said as he started moving alongside of her.
It took them a few minutes to make it to the side of the platform. There were three free standing elevators that resembled part of the flooring, with knee-high dividers indicating which part of the stage would be moving up or down. A control console jutted out from the dusty floor. Stilicho and Darian stood over it and pulled a few switches, but the lack of any response meant that no power was available.
Stilicho bit his lip. “Maia, could you bring up any maps that you have on this colony?”
“One moment,” Maia said. “It seems that the internal maps of Gagarin Colony are mostly incomplete, because the Russian government never published the complete plans for it. I am currently sorting through a number of blogs, most of which are speculative, as to the internal layout of the complex.”
Darian sighed. “We at NASA tried the best we could, but the Russians never gave us full access to this place, so we never knew what the full extent of the colony was.”
“Let’s think this out logically then,” Stilicho said. “We’re in the upper part of the colony, near the edge of a humongous cave, and the valley floor below must be at least four kilometers down.”
“More like five or six,” Darian said. “Down in the valley floor was the landing pad. Once they unloaded cargo from the rockets, they’d place them on the elevators and brought them up here where we are. There should be a dozen of these elevator platforms, but right now only three are up here with us. The rest are probably down there.”
The Piranha Solution: A Hard Science Fiction Technothriller (Ace of Space Book 1) Page 24
