The Mars Shock

by Felix R. Savage

  On top of the MOFB’s wide flat roof, the refugee center stood just like she’d pictured it. A bull’s-eye on a big fat target.

  It resembled a cargo container. An outer shell of mesh stood away from the walls. She had to go through a gate in this fence to reach the airlock. But after that there was nothing to stop her from getting in.

  Bright light drenched her. In the middle of the basketball court marked out by the grunts months ago, small brown figures sat on a carpet of sleeping-bags stenciled with the Star Force logo, practising their warbling. The chorus of small voices trailed off at Colden’s approach. She stopped at the edge of the sleeping-bag carpet, feeling embarrassed and panicky at the same time. She turned up her suit’s external speaker to maximum volume. “You have to go,” she said. “You have to leave. Now.”

  They just sat there staring at her. She blundered through the mess of stuff on the floor—toiletries, food, clothes, everything Squiffy Jackson could think of to make them comfortable. Just like muppets in a silo, they’d scattered their shit everywhere. She stood over their adult guardian. He looked up, frowning at the interruption. He was reclining on an ergoform, ankles crossed, a screen on his lap. It showed a news feed from Earth, curated by one of those comics who narrated current events as if they were jokes with punchlines. Her external mic picked up the word Martian, and laughter. Oh God, they’d been searching for news about themselves on the internet.

  “You have to go,” she repeated.

  The adult put the screen down and stood up. He seemed to have grown since she saw him last outside Archive 394. Then she realized no, she’d shrunk—she wasn’t a phavatar anymore. He seemed to look her right in the eye through her faceplate. “Who decided this?” he said in German.

  Being clever, Colden had loaded a German translation program into her BCI. She said, “I did.” Her suit’s MI voice said, “Ich.” She gestured with her carbine. The children flinched. “Out. Now! You have to leave!”

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re a risk to all of us. As long as you’re here, we’re all in terrible danger. The PLAN has a vendetta against you—the ones that got away. They might be targeting us right now!” Her voice rose to a desperate pitch as she spoke. The MI voice emerging from her suit stayed monotonous. “No one understands! No one believes me! I guess they’ll believe me when a KKV squashes us flat.” She got hold of herself. “But that’s not going to happen, because you are going to leave this base.”

  She prodded the Martian man in the chest with her carbine. He flinched. Emboldened, she prodded him backwards. The children clung to his legs.

  “There are some caves in this area,” she said. “In the sides of the tablelands. It’s a bit of a climb, but you wouldn’t be KKV’d in there.”

  “Yes, I think I know the caves you’re talking about.”

  “You can take this stuff if you want. I might even be able to get a buggy for you.” A lie. She’d never be able to steal a buggy. She’d have said anything to get them out of here. She kept remembering Conurbation 243. The temple of the NASA hate cult. Hawker on the roof: Do the right thing. She was doing this for all of them. “You just have to go!”

  He reached down and squeezed the children’s shoulders, calming them. She thought she saw sadness on his alien face. “You’re right, of course,” he said. “The god will target us. Defective components must be excluded from the network. I’ve hated sitting here, waiting to be blown up. I asked the fat man, the one who welcomed us, to take us to this place here. It looks nice.” He pointed at another screen unrolled on the floor, showing pages from a book: The Rough Guide to Earth. Who’d given them that? “He said he didn’t want to hear about it.”

  “That’s what he says to everyone.”

  “It’s beyond belief. We must be extremely valuable to your people, and yet you’ve taken almost no steps to protect us.”

  “Welcome to the UN,” Colden said, and bit her lip. “But you do understand, don’t you? You have to go?”

  “Oh yes, I understand.”

  He packed, sorting out the useful items from the keepsakes and random junk, stuffing them into a sleeping bag. Colden was reminded of a guy she’d known on her first posting. His room had been a total dump, but he could always lay hands on whatever he was looking for. Maybe Martian clutter wasn’t inefficient, just a different way of doing things.

  He took the screens, she noticed.

  “Put your coats on,” he said to the children. “It’s cold outside.” The coats were newly printed, child-size puffy jackets, decorated with Space Corps logos. The children had had their picture taken in them for a press release. Colden felt a twinge of satisfaction at the thought of the inconvenience that would ensue in Geneva when the Martians were discovered to be missing.

  Still holding her carbine, she gestured them towards the airlock.

  “It’s for the best,” the man said philosophically. “We’ll find a nice cave and hole up there until the war is over.”

  “It’ll be over some day,” she said, trying to believe it.

  “You can tell them where we are. You could also send us supplies from time to time.” Now he was telling her what to do. It was almost funny. “Food. The stuff you call gorp is good. The other things are indigestible in various degrees. We’ll need oxygen, of course, although I know of several depots in this region that don’t appear to have been touched. I saw them as we were coming along. And it would be helpful to have some guns, in case the untermenschen track us down.”

  “Yes, oh yes, we’ll get all that stuff to you. I’ll make sure it happens.”

  He paused in front of the airlock. He unrolled the screen he’d been carrying in his hand. “I’d really like to know. Where is this place?”

  It was the news feed from Earth. “Well, that’s Curacao,” Colden said. “This guy’s gimmick is he’s always on the beach.”

  She thought he was going to ask her what a beach was. But he asked a different question. “Where is Curacao?”

  “Well, it’s on Earth …”

  “But where is Earth? At the south pole? On the other side of the Amazonis Planitia?” He shook the Rough Guide to Earth in her face. “I’m trying to understand why you didn’t take us to Curacao, or London, or Hanoi, or any of these other wonderful bunkers.”

  Colden’s jaw dropped. Specialized components, she thought. These guys were archivists, not fighter pilots. They have no idea where Earth is. They think we’re rebels from some other part of Mars, who have better bunkers.

  She was tempted to ask him if he even knew what a planet was, or that he lived on one. But she hadn’t come here to do anthropology.

  “It’s just outrageous,” he said huffily. Practically quivering with indignation, he shooed the children towards the airlock. “We might agree to join you—might—if Curacao was on offer. Tell them that.”

  Colden hid a smile. “I’ll tell them you complained about the room service, too.”

  “Thank you.” He stopped in front of the airlock. “But how are we to get out?”

  “Oh,” Colden said. “That part’s easy.”

  She gently moved the children aside. Standing in front of the airlock, she raised her carbine and shot the control panel. The recoil kicked her shoulder. She’d forgotten how violent this felt in the flesh. The noise echoed through the basketball court. She lined up the crosshairs again and fired another burst. The smart darts weren’t made to destroy hardware, they were strictly for wet work, and she’d had to disable the auto-targeting to use them for this purpose at all. But they did the job. The control panel vaporized. Electronic slurry dripped from a hole in the wall.

  Colden took hold of the airlock’s flanges and heaved them open, straining against the inert hydraulics. “That’s how,” she said.

  A klaxon went off. The children cringed and covered their ears. Colden heard it via her cochlear implants. She’d heard it once before, in training, before she was deployed to Alpha Base. In the event of a containment breach, ever
yone would awake to this klaxon. Red text flashed in the corner of her faceplate: WARNING DECOMPRESSION EVENT WARNING—

  They wouldn’t have long now to make their getaway. But she’d planned for this. She strode into the chamber, knelt, and took aim at the hinges of the outer door.

  It took all the smart darts she had left in her magazine to chew through one hinge. After that, the force of the escaping air helped her twist the heavy hatch upwards and outwards. They squeezed out, one by one, onto the rooftop. Colden waited until last, her nerves sizzling with impatience. She threw the Martians’ sleeping-bags full of stuff out to them, and then slithered through the gap, mindful of the risk of tearing her suit’s outer garment.

  “Go! Go! Go!”

  The usual gale whipped across the roof of the MFOB, carrying horizontal streamers of dust. It felt like a gentle breeze. The Martians stood in a confused huddle, not knowing which way to go. Colden waved her carbine towards the catwalk. They had to get down to the staging area, and all the way across the launch pad to the ramp, and then she had to lower the ramp for them, and they had to hurry.

  Skeletal fingers of light stabbed up past the edge of the roof.

  Into her eyes.

  Dim, hulking shapes bounded through the dazzle, onto the roof. The lights behind them silhouetted a dog’s-head helmet and a gun the same as the one she was carrying.

  Hawker’s voice ripped into her ears. “Colden! What the fuck are you doing?”

  “Well, I started off trying to throw them out,” she said. Her laugh sounded strange, not like her. “But now I think I might be helping them to escape. They aren’t at all keen on this place, you know. Didn’t care for our freshly grown corn and beans. And the entertainment confused them. But mostly they think they’re not safe here, and Hawker, they’re bloody well right.”

  “We’ve taken every fucking precaution!”

  “You haven’t taken any precautions at all!”

  “Well, we did not plan for this eventuality. Nope, I admit that. It did not occur to anybody that one of our own would sign for a carbine and come up here and shred the fucking refugee center.”

  “I haven’t shredded it. You can take the airlock out of my back pay, although that would be a bit unfair considering I’m saving our lives, and theirs!” Colden pushed some Martian children forward. The helmet lamps that were shining in their eyes clumped and regrouped. The grunts were blocking the way to the catwalk. “Hawker, please!”

  “I am ordering you to stop.”

  “Just let them go!”

  She got in among the grunts and began to shove them apart. When they wouldn’t move, she kicked them in the balls. These suits had no crotch protectors. Howls of agony ensued … but for once, no one laughed.

  A few Martian children darted through gaps in the cordon and fled down the catwalk, like rabbits let out of a cage.

  “Colden, I am pleading with you. Look, I’m from Brixton. Did you know that? I bet you’re from not too far over. You’re posh and I’m not, but we’re in the same fucking boat out here. Colden, don’t give up. This is a huge breakthrough, and you will get credit, Squiffy told me so himself …”

  The suggestion that she was pissed off because she hadn’t received her fair share of credit did it. She swung to face him. In a furious gesture, she pointed her carbine at him, as she would have if she were a phavatar, if the carbine were attached to her arm.

  “First of all, I’m not posh. And second of all, have you forgotten what I told you? I’m not from the bloody FUK at all. I’m from Rwanda.”

  Pain whited out the right side of her body. Threw her writhing to the deck. Pain dragged a raw, inhuman scream from her throat.

  She understood that Hawker had shot her.

  She even understood why.

  The last thought that whispered through her fading consciousness was: Suit breach. Suit breach. Suit breach.

  xv.

  Infantry captain Roland Hawker sat on the edge of his bunk, his elbows on his knees. His fingers worked at the thin places in the knees of his jeans.

  “I thought she was going to shoot me.”

  “I know.”

  “So I shot her first.”

  “Of course, it’s natural.”

  “It’s what I’ve become.”

  “You couldn’t have known …”

  “I didn’t know she was out of ammo!”

  “I don’t blame you,” Kristiansen said. “Nobody blames you.”

  “No, that’s why I’ve been taken off active duty.” Hawker looked up at him with red-rimmed eyes. “What makes it your fucking business, anyway? This whole clusterfuck is your fault, you NGO asshole. If it hadn’t been for you, twatting around with your fancy medibots and your patronizing attitude, none of this would have happened.”

  “That’s precisely why it’s my business,” Kristiansen said levelly, “and I’m going to ignore your extreme rudeness because I know you’ve been a friend to Colden.” He paused. “I was a friend of hers, too.”

  “Fucking hell, she’s not dead yet!”

  Hawker’s words hung in the stale air of the cabin, at once a warding-off and an omen.

  “I mean,” Kristiansen stumbled, “I was a friend of hers in the past, but I don’t know if I am anymore. We haven’t been in touch in years.”

  “Oh.” A spark of interest gleamed in Hawker’s eyes. “You were shagging her.”

  “We were engaged to be married.” This actually wasn’t true, but Kristiansen felt the need to shield Colden’s reputation from Hawker’s vulgarity.

  “Wow. Strike me blind.” Hawker shook his head. His animation ebbed. He resumed picking at the knees of his jeans. “I actually thought you’d come down here in your professional capacity.”

  “Are you having symptoms?” Kristiansen asked automatically. Hawker clearly was having symptoms—of shock and depression. Kristiansen didn’t need the medical dictionaries that had been on his BCI to make that diagnosis. It was quite obvious. He also suspected chronic morale juice abuse. That could have played a role in the shooting.

  “No, not me,” Hawker said. “I thought you were coming to ask about her. I’m not thinking straight.”

  “Is there something I should know?”

  “Her condition’s not changed, has it?”

  ★

  No, it hadn’t.

  Down on 00 deck, in the scrubbing area, Colden lay on a narrow bunk in a hastily constructed quarantine cell. It wasn’t the same one Kristiansen had occupied for 48 hours, but it was identical to it. For a few hours they had unknowingly lain next to each other, separated only by thin sheets of plastic.

  Hastily constructed didn’t mean flimsy. The cells had been printed in one piece, and were non-porous to sound and smell, as well as, of course, nano-particles. Lying in there—it was possible to stand, but only just, in the crack alongside the bunk—Kristiansen had felt like he was in a coffin waiting to be buried.

  They’d let him out this morning with a clean bill of health. It had felt like a second chance at life. It was also a gratifying vindication of Medecins Sans Frontieres’ technology. He’d told them he was OK, because the only time he’d taken off his suit was inside the Evac-U-Tent. Their skepticism had had him doubting it himself for a while, but he’d been right. His survival was the best possible testimonial for the excellence of the Medimaster 5500. He’d been elated.

  Until they told him what had happened to Colden.

  She’d been shot.

  But that was nothing next to the consequences of getting shot, outside.

  Nanites.

  He stood outside her quarantine cell, looking through the plexiglass observation window. He was looking at the top of her head, the same stubbly braids that he used to see on the pillow next to him in the morning. She had a centimeter of fuzz at her roots. He remembered how she used to complain about getting her braids done, how long it took and how hard it was to find anyone who knew the technique—apparently, braiding African hair was one of those thi
ngs bots just couldn’t manage. He used to one-up her with humorous complaints about how hard it was to find anyone who could put up with … well, a certain attribute of his masculinity! And how lucky he was, he would say, to have found her. Then she would punch him, quite hard.

  God, what a dickshit he’d been.

  Now she lay on her back, immobile. A blue Star Force blanket covered her from neck to toes. It was tucked in so tight he could see the outlines of the bandages encasing her torso. Her chest rose and fell. They’d sedated her while her wounds were dressed, and she was still out cold. He felt selfishly glad of that.

  Her awakening would be terrible.

  Unless he could save her.

  He left the scrubbing area and went back out to the garage. Grunts and mechanics edged away from him as if Colden’s ill luck might cling to him. He walked to the entrance of the garage and pretended to look out at the weather. As usual, the sky was overcast with a high chance of dust storms.

  He hadn’t been able to help Murray.

  He was going to help Colden, or die trying.

  ★

  Danny Drudge saved his game of PlanetKillr X and logged out. He’d won a bottom rack off Watty in their latest gin rummy tournament; it gave him extra space to store his stuff. He reached under his bunk and pulled out his gecko boots. Then he pulled out a large, knobbly bundle of shrinkfoam, with a horsetail of twang cords sticking out of the top.

  Carrying this nonchalantly over one shoulder, he crossed the forest to the EVA staging area.

  He already wore a spacesuit liner. It was chic to lounge around in your liner. You looked rude! The girls could see your package, uh huh! He pulled on one of the heavy spacesuits hanging in the supply closet. Botched it first try—he’d forgotten you had to take your gecko boots off, then put them on again over the suit—but that was OK. No one had been watching. Well, except for the security cameras, of course. Fuck you, Security. He showed a middle finger to the cameras as he dropped into the airlock.

  Fuck you, Squiffy Jackson.

  YOU let her get a suit breach.

  Down in the garage, the Engineering hombres and chicas nodded hello. Hawker, waiting by his refurbished Death Buggy, gave him a fist-bump