The Mars Shock

by Felix R. Savage

  He turned to Kristiansen, “No guarantees. The children aren’t very good yet.”

  “Just do it. Please,” Kristiansen said.

  More people moved into her field of vision. They were small and ridiculously cute. Like the man, they seemed to see her soul, not her skin. They began to sing.

  The first wavering harmonies felt like red-hot pokers in her ears.

  She struggled off the floor, screaming in anger and pain, and hurled herself at the children.

  Kristiansen caught her.

  Kill.

  She had no weapons except her bare hands. She scratched his face. He caught her wrists, and she managed to get in one solid kick to his balls.

  That was the pathetic sum total of her deeds before the song overwhelmed her, and she crumpled, sobbing.

  It was like waking up from one of the nightmares she used to have about those deserted villages back home, all mixed up with the loss of her parents, and her fear of dying.

  Just like when she would wake up in a Space Corps berthing somewhere on Earth or UNLOESS, crying with remembered terror, the first thing she saw was Kristiansen’s face.

  And she knew everything was going to be all right.

  xvi.

  Kristiansen helped Colden down the steps of the FlyingSaucer. She was still crippled, bandaged up and hobbling. She should have been back on Eureka Station by now, but she’d insisted on coming along for this.

  The FlyingSaucer the ISA promised had finally arrived. The name of this spaceship class said it all: it was saucer-shaped, and flew. A single ballistic hop had taken them from Alpha Base’s location at the edge of Sulci Gordii, to Archive 394.

  In the ten days since the flood, the bunker had been totally transformed. The fission reactor had been immured in a regocrete sarcophagus. It was still busily melting down in there, but not hurting anyone. Uphill from the reactor site, the opened bunker resembled an archaeological dig. Little triangular flags and ropes divided the former bamboo plantation and the now-dry lake bed into squares. Bright red earthmovers labored at the entrance to the feeder tunnel at the head of the reservoir. This had been a waterway connected to the PLAN’s network of underground aqueducts beneath Olympus Mons. The Chinese had already sent drones up the tunnel, only to encounter a rockfall sealed with regocrete. They were now chipping away at the barrier remotely, while enlarging the tunnel mouth.

  An agreement had been reached: the Chinese could have Archive 394, since the UN had the cute kids.

  Kristiansen had figured the UN got the best of that deal. But there was something else he hadn’t known. Something the ISA was very upset about, to the point of barging into the CTDF’s dig in a FlyingSaucer.

  Military guards surrounded the little spacecraft. The ISA agents who manned it—Kristiansen still didn’t know their names, and had a feeling he never would—ignored the armed men. They held a conversation, via line-of-sight, with some Chinese suits standing at the end of the street where they’d landed. Permission was obtained for them to proceed. The ISA agents walked through the cordon. Kristiansen and Colden followed.

  She leaned on his arm. “I never thought I’d come back here.”

  “Neither did I.”

  He wrapped his arm around her, pretending he just wanted to give her better support. She was so much shorter, he couldn’t easily put his arm around her waist. They used to joke about how they were physical opposites. They weren’t back in that place yet, but they were getting close.

  “Remember,” she said, “when I was taller than you?”

  “Yes, when you were an eight-foot robot.”

  “I’m not going back to that again.”

  “I know.”

  “Drudge has taken over the platoon.”

  “He’ll do a good job. He’s a good kid at heart.”

  “I’m not so sure about that. But he’ll have plenty of chances to prove himself, one way or the other.”

  Stephen One’s revelations about the PLAN’s watershed under Olympus Mons, and the sheer extent of the infrastructure down there, had prompted a reassessment—once again—of how much fighting lay ahead. The new guesstimate was: a lot.

  But the biggest fear factor had been removed from the fight. Thanks to the St. Stephen virus, humanity no longer viewed the nanites with paralyzing dread. Star Force scientists were studying them. Commercial R&D outfits were sniffing eagerly around.

  Following the ISA agents and their Chinese escorts, they climbed down into the bunker and walked across the bed of the lake. Chalky sediment crusted the rock, crisscrossed with bootprints.

  A ladder led up the steep side of what had been the Server’s island, and was now a rocky tableland. Colden had to take the ladder very slowly. Kristiansen climbed behind her, anxious that she might fall. By the time they reached the top, the ISA agents had already vanished inside the silo.

  Kristiansen pushed open the door. His memories of his previous visit were so vivid he almost expected to see the Server in her chair, giving him her wry smile. Instead, he saw spacesuited Chinese technicians sitting crosslegged on tarps, taking the Server’s computers apart in the light of free-standing LED floodlights.

  The last ISA agent was just vanishing through the newly repaired airlock of the refuge.

  Colden hesitated. “Call me a wimp, but I’m suddenly not sure I want to do this.”

  “It’s up to you.”

  “OK. I’m doing it. I’m scared. But I’m going to do it.” She limped forward. He followed, wondering if he could follow through with his own plan.

  The interior of the refuge had changed dramatically. The scaffolds were gone. In their place stood a free-standing Faraday cage—a cell furnished with a cot, table, and chairs.

  The ISA agents sat in two of the chairs, talking and gesticulating at the occupant of the third chair: K’vin Murray.

  Murray, too, had changed.

  His neatly trimmed mustache had spread into a stubbly beard. He wore a Chinese-red coverall and a bored expression. Most notably—and this sent a cold crawling sensation of fear down Kristiansen’s spine—his skin had developed a matte, pebbly texture.

  He glanced over at Colden and Kristiansen, and waved.

  The ISA agents exited the Faraday cage. One of them said to Kristiansen, via their suit-to-suit comms link, “The amazing thing is he hasn’t changed at all. He’s still as goddamn annoying as ever.”

  “Has he agreed to talk?”

  “Nope. He says we’re filthy spooks dedicated to serving the soft totalitarianism of the United Nations.” The ISA agent poked a gloved finger into Kristiansen’s chest. “If we were the monsters he thinks we are, we’d arrest you right now for thought crime.” She chuckled. “Fortunately, we’re not.”

  “I don’t get it,” Colden said.

  Kristiansen said, “I gave him my BCI. So he’s adopted … I guess … some of my opinions. Former opinions.”

  “Glad to hear that,” the ISA agent said. “When you go home, you might tell your boss that we’re really, really not as bad as the NGO community perceives us to be.”

  “Has he talked to the Chinese?” Kristiansen asked.

  “If he had, we’d never have been allowed near him. Nope, he calls them ‘pawns of the world’s secondary totalitarian power.’”

  “Eeesh,” Kristiansen said. “Sorry.”

  “Eh, that one’s on us. He’s still himself, to a much greater extent than we would have expected. But apparently you and he saw eye to eye on the subject of the Imperial Republic.” The ISA agent shrugged. “Anyway, he’s flatly refused to talk to them. And we just struck out. So, now it’s your turn. Good luck.”

  Colden said, “What’s the air like in here at the moment?”

  The ISA agent pointed at the atmospheric monitor clamped to the wall of the refuge. “They’ve been reducing the pressure, temperature, and oxygen content of the air periodically, to see how he handles it. That would be classified as torture in the UN, if you’re listening in, you Chinkie slimeballs.”
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  Kristiansen heard laughter. Of course the Chinese were listening in. It made sense that the intelligence communities of Earth’s premier totalitarian bureaucracies would get along rather well …

  Whoops. He really was going to work on being less judgmental.

  “He can apparently handle temperatures down to minus 15 without discomfort, and oxygen content of as low as 1% for limited, but increasing, periods of time. But right now we’ve got Earth-alike figures for temperature, pressure, and oxygen content.” The ISA agent addressed Colden. “So you should be fine.”

  “Right. OK.” Colden took a deep breath. Then she walked into the Faraday cage.

  Kristiansen followed on her heels. He slid the door of the cage shut. The Chinese and ISA agents watched them from beyond the floodlights.

  “Hey,” Murray said. He nodded at Kristiansen’s nametag. “My favorite pureblood. We meet again.”

  A Chinese-accented voice boomed from a speaker. “Make one hostile move and you will be shot. There are—”

  “Flechette guns in the table legs, trained on my head,” Murray completed. “You’ve told me enough times.” He gave the table a casual slap. “Don’t worry, I’m not gonna jump him, much as he may deserve it, and I’m in a unique position to say he does deserve it.”

  “I’m not like that anymore,” Kristiansen said. “A lot of my more extreme opinions were founded in ignorance about the realities of combat on the front lines. Anyway, it’s hard to keep hating people who have saved your life. I’m going to recommend that Medecins Sans Frontieres work more closely with Star Force in the future.”

  “Wonders never cease.”

  “What about you, K’vin? Do you feel differently now about the things we discussed?”

  “You’re talking about the pureblood thing. Oh hell yeah, Magnus. When you get new information, you have to change your opinions. And I have a hell of a lot of new information. I had plenty of time to talk to the god before they put me in here. Boy, was that an eye-opener. The god knows everything, and more importantly, the god knows what it all means.”

  Colden twitched. Kristiansen put a hand on her arm. “So tell us. What does it all mean?”

  “Wouldn’t you like to know,” Murray said, grinning. “What’s up, Magnus? Who’s your friend?”

  Colden lifted her hands and undid her collar seal. As she began to take her helmet off, panicky shouts came from beyond the floodlights. Kristiansen glimpsed a scuffle. The ISA agents had apparently not troubled to tell the Chinese ahead of time exactly what they planned.

  A figure burst out from behind the floodlights— “Stop! Don’t take your helmet off! The air is full of nanites!”

  “I know,” Colden said. “It’s OK. I’ve been nanitized already, to borrow a term from one of the corporations that’s hoping to patent the process.”

  She lifted her helmet off and put it down on the table.

  Murray rocked back.

  Colden smiled sadly at him. Her face was the same as always, and yet it wasn’t. Just like Murray, her skin had changed, going matte and somehow thick, while staying the same rich ebony shade.

  “You think you know everything now, don’t you?” she said to Murray. “Yep. I was there. I didn’t talk to the god for that long, didn’t get to download any new information, but I remember what it felt like. It’s like finding out the meaning of life. The only trouble is, it’s wrong.”

  She turned and walked through the twin-door vestibule, out of the Faraday cage. She spread her arms and did a little pirouette. Her braids spun. She’d had them done, at Kristiansen’s urging. Got extensions. Just because she now had a matte complexion, didn’t mean she had to stop being beautiful.

  “Whoa,” Murray said. On his face was a look of utter shock. “You’re outside the Faraday cage, but … you’re not trying to kill the Chinks. Why not? They’re purebloods. They have to die.”

  “I’ve got the St. Stephen virus. The god can’t talk to me anymore,” Colden said with a shrug. “I should say, it can’t lie to me anymore.” She strolled back into the Faraday cage, closing one door behind her, and then the next one. “The PLAN is all wrong about … well, basically everything.”

  “No, it’s not. It’s NOT.”

  “Oh yes, it is. You want the meaning of life? Here you go.”

  She started to sing.

  Colden always had had a good singing voice. Now, she sounded like an angel. “Stephanus, vir sanctus…” Harmonies came from her suit speaker—the voices of Stephen One and his children.

  They had agreed to be recorded, in high-fidelity lossless audio, when Kristiansen told them what he planned.

  “We figured out how it works,” one of the ISA agents murmured to the astonished Chinese. “The nanites automatically detect the frequency of each note. They digitize it and render it in binary. And that’s the source code. It’s very elegant. In software format, it’s just a dropper file … but the actual content of the dropper file also contains the virus. Whoever wrote it, ahem, may have considered it just an aesthetic flourish.”

  “Fine, fine. It’s not ours. You already guessed that. Can we have the recording?”

  As Colden sang, a strange succession of emotions chased across Murray’s face. It reminded Kristiansen of the way Colden had reacted when she first heard the song, back in the refugee center at Alpha Base. Fear and horror gave way to curiosity. Murray stood up and took a hesitant step towards her.

  Then he collapsed, kneeling on the floor with his head and arms on the table. Wrenching sobs tore from his throat.

  Colden knelt beside him. Still singing, she put her arm around his back and rubbed her head against his scurfy cheek.

  Kristiansen licked his lips. Could he do this? Yes, he could.

  Before he had time to change his mind, he quickly undid his collar seal and pulled off his helmet.

  The cold air seared his nostrils and throat. He breathed deeply, knowing that he was breathing in millions of nanites. They were entering his lungs, his bloodstream.

  Outside the Faraday cage, someone knocked one of the floodlights over. They were probably freaking out, but with his helmet off, he could no longer hear their voices.

  Colden stumbled to her feet and screamed, “Magnus! Are you out of your mind?”

  “No.” The music was still pouring from her suit. He hugged her tightly. “I said I was going to stay with you all the way … and I meant it.”

  “You are nuts. I love you.”

  “I love you, too.”

  Murray wiped his nose on the back of his hand and shook his head. “I hope you thought this through. You’ll never be allowed to go back to Earth. Personally, I foresee a new posting to a secret ISA research center in the Belt. But I’m pretty sure you won’t be invited.”

  The St. Stephen virus was clearly starting to work on him.

  “This may surprise you, but I have thought it through,” Kristiansen said. “Medecins Sans Frontieres has won the contract to build a new home for the Martians on Ceres. I’ve got the job of project manager. I’ll be living and working at the site.”

  “And I’ve quit the Space Corps,” Colden said. “So I’ll be joining him. After all, that’s what I always wanted to do: helping and protecting people in space … even if they’re Martians.”

  “Here’s to our new home,” Kristiansen said, and kissed her.

  ★

  A week later, Kristiansen, Colden, and Murray left Mars. Their shuttle’s launch painted a glowing line through the haze.

  The Miller Flats lay silent and dead beneath the clouds.

  A few more days passed. Then, without warning, a crude rocket screamed out of the sky. Fired from the peak of Olympus Mons, it descended at a nearly vertical angle and smashed into the region of the Miller Flats that had briefly been inundated by the flood.

  Although the rocket was just a solid projectile with a engine attached, lacking an explosive warhead, the sheer velocity of its attack gave it kinetic energy equal to 100,000 tons of TNT. L
ike every other PLAN KKV, it completely obliterated its target.

  In this case, its target had been the heads of six born-again Martians, still lying in the ravine where Danny Drudge had tossed them away.

  Their thin coat of splart had not stopped the nanites inside them from broadcasting their location. The vengeful entity in Olympus Mons, which believed itself a god, had duly pasted them.

  “Bollocks,” said Captain Hawker, watching from high on the Mahfouz Gradient. Dust and ejecta welled into the atmosphere, mingled with the atoms of Drudge’s trophies. “I was going to go back and get those.”

  “Wash your mouth out. They were people,” Danny Drudge said, virtuously. His phavatar stood at Hawker’s side, now decorated with the shoulder stripe that had once been Colden’s, in addition to its ornamental skull. “Anyway, there’ll be better stuff higher up.”

  They proceeded.

  The story continues in The Callisto Gambit.

  SNEAK PEEK AT THE CALLISTO GAMBIT

  THE SOLARIAN WAR SAGA, BOOK 7

  “I hate this,” John Mendoza said. Kiyoshi stood beside him on the quarterdeck of the dilapidated Startractor, watching the ship’s former occupants tumble into space.

  Two men, two women, and two preteen boys. They were all wearing EVA suits. Kiyoshi wasn’t a murderer. He just needed their ship.

  “They stole it in the first place, so, no need to feel guilty about taking it off them,” he told Mendoza. “C’mon, let’s get off this truck.”

  They exited the airlock and flew back towards Kiyoshi’s own ship, the Monster. Behind them, the Startractor’s twin hab modules rotated slowly around its spine, like weights on the ends of a skinny propeller. Kiyoshi’s boarding party milled at the drive end of the ship, checking every rivet.

  The sun was a bright pin stuck into the blackness of the asteroid belt. A cloud of rock fragments drifted in front of it, from time to time blocking its glare, and allowing the stars to shine out. These were pieces of the asteroid that Kiyoshi and his people had called home for the last four years, 99984 Ravilious.