The Mars Shock

by Felix R. Savage

  Colden took a step closer. “Come here, Sophs. I want to show you something.”

  “What?”

  “Just come see.”

  They walked towards the hole in the ground. The Chinese were keeping quiet down there. As you would. Theta Base stood like a wall behind them, coughing out waste gas from its vents. “All I see is a big fucking hole,” said Gilchrist, who’d never used a rude word in her life.

  They stood under the crumbling regocrete lip of the bunker, Torn-up bamboo and twisted steel shifted beneath Colden’s feet. “I’m showing you our biggest weakness,” Colden said. “We, as in humans. We want to know why. Asking why brought us to this hole in the ground. It brought us here, to Mars. Hell, it was people asking why who created you in the first place.” She faced Gilchrist. “But you—the PLAN—”

  “The Solarians, please,” Gilchrist said in a smirky tone familiar from the days when she was alive. “The god prefers to be addressed as Sol. It’s looking ahead to the time when it’ll be able to build a Dyson sphere around the sun, incorporating Sol into itself, and becoming a Kardashev Type II civilization. I think it’s also short for Solomon, the Wise. Whatever, right? I’m just looking forward to going hang-gliding.”

  Colden was in a bind: if she joined in mocking the PLAN’s pretensions, she’d be allying herself with the thing that used to be Gilchrist. Another part of her was thinking, the PLAN does NOT get to call itself a civilization. She decided to stick to her guns. “I don’t give a shit what you call it, it’s got an Achilles heel. The same thing that makes it badder than your average AI, is also its weakness.” She pointed up at the crucified corpses on the prow of Theta Base. Purebloods, she had no doubt, every one of them. “That’s why you’re going to lose this war.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “You want everything to be fun.”

  With that, Colden pulled the detonator.

  The last thing she heard before falling rock buried her phavatar was Sophie Gilchrist screaming.

  She fell into the cold blue void of the logout screen, dizzied by sympathetic debilitation, knowing that at least she’d been able to give her friend a condign end.

  ★

  Two thousand meters from the bunker, Kristiansen bumped into the kids in front of him. He realized the column had halted. He was terribly cold.

  “Whoa, look at that,” said one of the grunts.

  With the others, Kristiansen turned to look back the way they’d come.

  Instead of hugging the foot of the scarp as he’d told Colden he would, Hawker had taken them up the side of the canyon that Kristiansen and Murray had walked along. He seemed to think they’d be safer if no one knew where they were. So they’d had to scramble up the eroded slope of this primordial landslide. The walls of the canyon were not sheer, this near its mouth. The climb was no worse than a hike in the foothills of the Alps, but Kristiansen was exhausted and in pain. He was sucking oxygen like a pig.

  At any rate, they’d reached the top of the scarp, or at least a plateau partway up this part of the scarp, which put them above the dust clouds moiling on the plain, and so he saw:

  A new, pale dust-flower rising from the canyon floor.

  “That’s either a missile,” Hawker said, “or Colden just sealed the entrance of the bunker. Sun was a bloody fool to go in there.”

  “Why did they go in there, sir?”

  “There’s a market for Martian curtains; can you imagine the price a Martian computer would fetch?”

  As Hawker spoke, the entire cloud of dust lying over the canyon floor lifted, as if someone had shaken it like a quilt. The rock beneath their feet quivered.

  The dust cloud seemed to change color. It developed a dark sheen. It spread downhill faster than a man could run.

  At the same time, a wall of mist rose upwards and enveloped them.

  Kristiansen shook his head. His faceplate was fogging up. He chin-pressed the de-fogger. Nothing happened. The condensation coalesced intro droplets.

  The droplets were on the outside of his faceplate.

  He wiped his sleeve across his helmet, smearing the water droplets.

  Stephen One and the children from Archive 394 were hugging each other and jumping up and down—no, dancing—in a soundless display of Martian joy.

  ★

  A satellite 9,000 km above the Miller Flats, which had been moved into a geostationary orbit to monitor the movements of Theta Base, observed the scene with its phased array radar. It took hundreds of pictures a second, sending them to a more-distant comms relay satellite, which beamed them to all interested parties.

  (By this time, that was everyone in the solar system with a security classification, and quite a few others.)

  The satellite provided neither commentary nor analysis. Pre-processing, its pictures looked like grayscale gumbo. But the swift spread of a less-reflective area across the Miller Flats prompted someone on Deimos to order up-to-date spectrographic images.

  That took a little longer to arrange, as a satellite with the necessary capability had to be re-tasked from the north pole of Mars, where it had been figuring out just how much of the polar ice cap the PLAN had used up already.

  By the time the spectrographic data came through, a goodly portion of the flood racing across the Miller Flats had already boiled away.

  But enough remained for Star Force’s analysts to reach a version of Kristiansen’s conclusion.

  The two surviving tanks of Mobile Armored Squadron 7 of the Second Army of the China Territorial Defense Force—one of them inside the bunker, one outside—had drilled through the containing wall of Archive 394’s reservoir. The already-weakened dam had burst like a balloon, spilling warm water across the plain. The big boom Kiristiansen’s group had initially noticed was the death rattle of the Archive 394 fission reactor.

  This came as a complete shock to some, and less of a surprise to others, namely anyone who’d done the math. Before the war, the PLAN had built and launched thousands of fighters, and sustained its captive population of Martians for more than a century. This implied water consumption far outstripping the volumes of water available at the poles. Moreover, the PLAN now no longer had access to the poles, yet it was still fighting. Therefore, it had to have another source of water, and that was thought to be the clayey sediments underneath Olympus Mons. Using fracking techniques similar to those once deployed to extract oil from shale on Earth, the PLAN had liquefied billions of gallons of water that had been trapped in the sediment layers. That was why the shield of Olympus Mons had visibly sagged and cracked as much as fifty years ago.

  The flood both confirmed the ‘underground lakes’ theory, and rebutted it.

  For sure, there was a hell of a lot less water down there now.

  Within a few hours, it was all gone—soaking into the ground, or subliming into the thin atmosphere. During that time, dirty rain fell on the Miller Flats. It briefly cleared the air. The satellites in orbit, and the little group huddled on the plateau, then saw the same thing.

  Downhill from the bunker, in the mud at the bottom of the old impact crater, a triple-steepled monster lay on its side. The flood had overturned it and carried it downhill. Its treads helplessly churned the mud.

  Theta Base had fallen, and it wouldn’t be getting up.

  xiv.

  Colden sat in a computer cubicle, slumped forward, elbows on the too-narrow desk. The comms room was dark, apart from the aquarium glow of her screen. Although this collection of terminals was available to anyone who wanted to email or surf the news feeds, most people just used their BCIs, so the comms room was always deserted. It smelled of anti-bacterial spray and stale soy chips.

  Colden also had a BCI. She hadn’t come in here to use a computer. She’d come to be alone.

  With sputtering interest, she scrolled through feeds from Earth. All the news seemed so irrelevant. Maybe she should email someone instead. But who? Everyone she’d trusted was dead.

  Yet she had something to say, and she h
ad to find someone to say it to.

  She’d left her platoon snoring in their racks. In recognition of their feat of endurance, they’d all been given 48 hours off. They’d proceeded to get fucked up on gray-market THC and homebrew that tasted like socks. Gwok and Drudge had finally hooked up.

  Colden had reported Drudge for his skeevy trophy-taking, but since everyone else covered for him, nothing had come of that.

  Two decks up from where she sat, Magnus Kristiansen languished in quarantine. Although he insisted he hadn’t been exposed to the nanites, after what happened at Theta Base, no one was taking any chances. The moment his boots hit the deck, he’d been stuffed into a sterile cell in the scrubbing area. His graywater had been discarded instead of recycled, his spacesuit burned. He wasn’t even allowed comms, which made no sense, since he’d already self-removed his BCI in his pointlessly heroic attempt to save Murray. But that was how Star Force rolled: when they got paranoid, they got Paranoid with a capital P.

  And when they got Principled? Ditto.

  Hawker’s group had been rescued by a task force comprising elements from the whole Greek alphabet of MFOBs on Olympus Mons’s flanks. They had arrived too late to assault Theta Base. The flood had done their job for them. But they’d scooped up Hawker’s gang and returned them to Alpha Base—Martians and all.

  Cue jokes about school buses.

  The Martians were now in Alpha Base’s purpose-built Detainment Module, which had been rechristened a ‘refugee center’ for PR purposes. Geneva had taken the plunge and publicized the existence of the warblers system-wide. The unbearable cuteness of the Martian children definitely had something to do with that.

  Colden could see it in her mind, as if she were having an out-of-body experience, floating in the night air above Alpha Base. The repurposed space station trundled along doggedly on its treads, wending its way through Sulci Gordii. Behind it bumped the launch pad. And on top of the MFOB’s main disc, the refugee center nestled among the bolted-on missile launchers like a cuboid steel tumor.

  The refugee center was a self-contained module, Colden knew. You could not get inside Alpha Base from there without going through scrubbing, even if you could get out of the module in the first place, which you couldn’t. A group of careless basketball players had proved that in the past by getting stuck out there. There was zero contamination risk.

  But that didn’t matter.

  She’d told Squiffy Jackson about her fears. She’d barged into his office, the minute she heard Hawker’s group had been rescued and they were coming back here.

  “I do not want to hear about it, Agent Colden.”

  And of course he didn’t. As guardian of the official first group of Martian refugees, he had just got a career boost that might carry him off this shitty planet once and for all.

  Word was they’d be shipping the Martians off-planet in a week or so. Maybe longer. However long it took to set up a secure refuge for them … somewhere. The nanites supposedly couldn’t survive in Earth’s atmosphere. The only way they’d be able to spread on Earth is if they got into someone’s bloodstream, as had happened at Theta Base. That would take a shit-ton of luck. The PLAN had not yet succeeded in developing a version that could live and self-replicate on oxygen, rather than CO2. But it would really suck if the UN did the PLAN’s job for it, by transporting a bunch of nanites to Earth inside living Martians.

  So the rumor mill said they’d be accommodated somewhere in the Belt. But that would take time to set up.

  How long?

  Another day might be too long. Another hour might.

  Wasn’t there anyone who could do something? Didn’t she know anyone with power?

  She opened a new email window and wrote up a version that was as opaque as she could make it, without being incomprehensible. The actual facts would never get past the censorbots. She concluded with a plea for advice.

  She typed Elfrida Goto’s mother’s name into the address field.

  Since Elfrida died, Colden had been in touch sporadically with Elfrida’s parents, Tomoki Goto and Ingrid Haller. She’d known them really well when she lived in Rome. She’d spent two Christmases at their place, and eaten lots of suppers there in between. Ms. Haller’s home cooking was second to none. When Elfrida was off-planet, they had seemed to treat Colden as a substitute daughter, and she’d been happy for what she could get.

  So when Elfrida died, Colden had thought they could share their grief. Console each other.

  To her shock, they’d seemed to give her the brush-off. Surprised and hurt, she’d decided that they must want to grieve in solitude. She’d held off on contacting them since then, replying only with automated thank-you letters when they sent her news clips they thought she’d be interested in. (For some reason, they seemed to think she was interested in Callisto.) But now, she could think of no one else to turn to.

  Ms. Haller, she knew, worked for the New Holy Roman Empire, the patchwork state administered from the Vatican that took up a swath of southern Europe. It was a haven for wild-eyed religious folks of all flavors. Officially, Ms. Haller did something boring in an office. Secretly, according to Elfrida, she was in intelligence.

  So maybe she had some contacts in the ISA.

  Maybe she knew someone who could pull strings.

  Maybe …

  “You’re my last hope,” Colden concluded her email. A touch dramatic, but it was true.

  Send, and then she put her head down on her arms. Knowing it took 19 minutes right now for a signal to make the round trip, trying to work out what time of day it was in Rome, she fell asleep.

  She woke up, heart pounding. Her mouth tasted sour. She checked the time—she’d been asleep for two hours! and then her email inbox.

  From: Ingrid Haller [ID string attached]

  To: Jennifer Colden@Star Force

  My dear, it’s hard for me to understand what you’re going through. We have to be so careful. But I know you must be desperately frightened.

  Tears filled Colden’s eyes, hot and stinging.

  Unfortunately, there’s nothing I can do that would be immediately effective …

  Colden’s tears dried up.

  Ms. Haller went on for a couple more paragraphs, but Colden just skimmed her excuses about how Star Force answered to no one short of the President’s Advisory Council, blah blah blah.

  At this final rebuff, the desperation and fear that Ms. Haller had identified in her words melted away. A new resolve took their place. She jumped up from her ergoform.

  Right.

  04:17 local time.

  If no one’s going to do anything, I’ll just have to do it myself.

  ★

  She went back to her berthing, took off her sweats, and squeezed into a spacesuit liner. Was it possible that she’d gained weight even since she’d been on Mars? The supposedly one-size garment felt skimpy. Taking her empty Space Corps duffel, she snuck through the garden to the garage. Cold air chilled the hygiene slit between her legs. Along the way, she spotted several couples enjoying the meager privacy of the cornfield. At this rate there would soon be babies toddling around Alpha Base.

  There were EVA suits in the storage area above the garage. They had to be there to comply with emergency evacuation regs, although no one ever went outside except the grunts. She put one on, sealed the diaper to her liner’s hygiene slit, and checked her seals. Then she went to one of the other lockers. It said GUNS.

  Thanks again to Star Force regulations, the personnel of the MFOB had to have access to weapons to defend the base, if it ever came to that. No one had anticipated their worst enemies would be too small to shoot.

  She took a carbine from the racks. That meant letting the iris scanner ID her, but you were allowed to sign out weapons for practise on the range, so her request was granted. She stuffed the carbine into her Space Corps duffel to disguise its outline, and touched the action plate of the hatch in the floor that said GARAGE. It opened. She climbed down a shiny ladder, while the
air got flushed out of the chamber around her.

  In the days when Alpha Base was half of a space station, the garage had been its docking bay. Now Death Buggies were parked where tugs and runabouts would once have stood on their jackstands. Bright light bathed the 100-meter-diameter parking lot with the peculiar clarity you got in vacuum. Next to the ladder she’d just descended, a partition wall cut off a slice of the garage. Huge yellow arrows pointed to the door marked SCRUBBING AREA. In contrast, the hatch she’d just exited had a big red X on this side.

  When she came back, she’d have to go through the whole scrubbing routine. Maybe she’d stop by and wave at Kristiansen through the window of his quarantine cell. Although, if she was successful, he’d hate her by then.

  Oh well. He hated her already.

  She padded in her thick-soled gecko boots around the buggies. A few mechanics were working on the two buggies Gwok and Drudge had brought back. She waved casually at them, and they waved back, assuming she was going out to perform some maintenance task on the outside of the MFOB. Her Space Corps duffel could have held tools.

  Out on the exterior parking strip, she shivered, not because she could feel the cold through her suit—she couldn’t—but because it was so dark. Rows of little red LED lights outlined the launch pad, bumping along behind the MFOB. The ramp at the far end of the launch pad, which the Death Buggies used when they went out on patrol, was in the raised position.

  She climbed the catwalk that spiraled around the outside of the MFOB. Belt-iron armor plates gleamed in the light of her helmet lamp. She was trying not to think about the fact that this was the first time she’d been outside since she got here. She was trying not to be absolutely freaking terrified. She concentrated on the ache in her thigh muscles as she climbed. She hadn’t been on the treadmill or the elliptical trainer in months; she was always too busy. She vowed to change that. When she was done with this.