The Daedalus Incident Revised

by Michael Martinez

  “JSC has imposed top-level safety precautions. You know what that even means?” He didn’t bother waiting for Shaila to respond as he fell in beside her. “It means I can barely extract a tenth of what we’re used to doing at the sites we already have because of all the safety checks, and Diaz isn’t letting anybody within twenty kilometers of that cave. We have to drive way out of our way just to get to the damn sites now. How long are we going to have to do this?”

  “Beats me,” Shaila said, a true statement that nonetheless brought on a little sense of satisfaction. “Like I said, I just got out of medical. And it’s not my problem anymore. Diaz took me off the investigation.”

  Harry fixed her with a truly withering gaze. “I thought we had an understanding.”

  Shaila stopped and turned to him, more than happy to find an outlet for all her anger and frustration. “You had an understanding. I didn’t say ‘boo’ about it. Besides, I understood you wanted me off this investigation anyway.”

  “That’s before I realized you’re basically all I’ve got, Jain, and that ain’t saying much,” Harry growled, his finger pointing at her chest while he stared, red-faced, into her eyes. “If we can’t get out from under these stupid safety regs and get back in that cave, everything goes to shit here. And my report to HQ isn’t going to be kind to anyone, especially you.”

  Shaila frowned right back at him. “Threats instead of bribes, Harry?”

  “Both. You want the money? Then do something productive to get us back up to speed again. Otherwise, I will fucking torch your career. My guys are pissed. The foremen can barely keep them in line. You want them taking over? It’s four weeks before we get backup, and they’re ready to cut some corners to get back on schedule. I hear Alvarez is—”

  Harry’s rant was cut off by the shrill cry of klaxon alarms piercing the normal din of activity in the Hub. “Christ! What now?” Shaila said.

  It didn’t take her long to find out.

  McAuliffe Base had four twenty-person emergency transports available—enough to get everyone off planet— located in the back of the Hub. All you had to do to get off Mars was to hop in, press a few buttons, and the computers would automatically start a launch sequence and plot a course for insertion into Earth orbit.

  And a group of eight miners was busy shoving past anyone in their way as they clambered into one.

  “Shit.” Shaila immediately tried to dash over, and nearly fell onto her side. She lurched back to vertical and began one-hopping over, her comm already in hand. “Ops, this is Jain. Override emergency launch sequence!”

  The miners quickly got aboard, one of them punching Lt. Adams squarely in the face in their effort to get out. Shaila couldn’t immediately recognize anybody in the mass of dirt-and-stubble faces, except for Alvarez, already at the controls. Idiot.

  “Roger,” Finelli responded. “Attempting override now.”

  Shaila made it to the transport hatch just as it began to close, and immediately felt a meaty fist hit her squarely in the chest, sending her sprawling three meters backward, right into Harry. They both fell backward onto the deck, a tangle of limbs and obscenities.

  Suddenly, Stephane appeared in her field of vision, making for the door as quickly as he could, one of the company’s laser drills in hand. He propped it between the closing hatch and the doorway, likely hoping that the obstruction would circumvent the launch cycle and freeze the transport in place.

  Shaila knew it wouldn’t work. “Steve! No!”

  An eruption of airflow burst around her head. The transport hatch itself was closed, but the drill succeeded only in keeping the airlock open. And now McAuliffe’s atmosphere was rushing out into the freezing Martian surface.

  Stephane managed to press his back against the wall, holding on to one of the equipment lockers to keep him from getting sucked outside. He looked to Shaila with terror. “What do I do now?” he yelled.

  With a grimace, Shaila leapt upward on her good leg and allowed the flow of air to whoosh her toward the hatch in seconds. She aimed herself right at the laser drill, which was already starting to crumple under the pressure. Grabbing the tool in both hands, she swung her lower half toward the door and, using both legs, pulled for all she was worth. Stephane joined her and they heaved together.

  A moment later, Shaila was on her ass, at least five meters from the hatch, a destroyed laser drill in her hands. The hatch was closed, the atmosphere saved. And her knee was killing her.

  “Shay!” Stephane scrambled off the floor a few meters away and ran toward her. “Are you all right?”

  She tossed the drill aside and lay back on the decking. “I’ve been better. What the hell were you thinking?”

  The Frenchman’s face grew red. “I was trying to stop them,” he said, indignant.

  “Leave it to the pros next time, will you?” She clambered ungainly to her feet, brushing aside Stephane’s outstretched hand. “We could’ve been killed.” She plucked Stephane’s comm out of his breast pocket. “Jain to ops. Status.”

  “Override failed,” Finelli reported, frustration evident even over the comm. “Transport launched.”

  Her shoulders slumped. “Roger. Jain out.” She shoved the comm into Stephane’s hands. “Well, we’re screwed now.” She saw Harry walking over, fury on his face, and met his stare with one of her own. “Don’t,” she said sharply, stopping him in his tracks. “Do not say a word.”

  With that, she hopped, one-legged, toward the stairs leading to the command center. For the next hour, she coordinated damage control teams, grilled her subordinates on what happened and issued a report to Diaz, who was grim but surprisingly subdued. The colonel dismissed Shaila without comment, leaving her even more frustrated.

  Having little else to do, and with her knee protesting vehemently, she slowly made her way back to her day room, resisting the urge to stop by Levin’s office for some painkillers. She was in a foul enough mood to appreciate the lingering pain, and her record was in enough tatters without it seeming like she was looking for some chemical R&R after the shit hit the fan.

  Shaila’s day room was just as she left it—a total mess. Coveralls and exercise clothes were strewn about. The couch/cot contraption—which did neither function particularly well—was considerably mussed. Atop the cheap armoire-dresser against the wall was a small statue of a ten-armed Indian woman—Durga, a favorite of Shaila’s mother—between two candles, all of which were half-covered by a Birmingham City Football Club scarf. Shaila’s desk had a holopicture of her parents upon it, but little else besides data chips and a couple of datapads scattered across the surface. The holopic of her one-time artist boyfriend was firmly buried in a desk drawer, along with four years of memories and a good year’s worth of disdain.

  Given that she had little in the way of personal effects, the note on her desk stood out: “Il ya un cadeau pour vous dans le laboratoire de confinement.—Stephane.”

  Naturally, she had no idea what it said, though she figured it had something to do with the base containment lab. Why couldn’t he have just sent an e-mail? Regardless, her datapad helped her with a quick translate query.

  “There is a gift for you in the containment lab.—Stephane.”

  She eased herself down onto her daybed and frowned. If this was some convoluted, Gallic attempt at seeking forgiveness—or worse, more ill-fated flirtation—Shaila would shove him out an airlock, sans suit.

  Nevertheless, it only took five minutes’ worth of staring at Durga’s serene smile and wavy arms before she was up again, hopping awkwardly to the containment lab. Unlike the main lab, it was rarely used; there was little on Mars these days that required the kind of quarantine the lab afforded. She entered to find the lights on, which wasn’t too surprising, as Stephane had likely been in there a short time ago.

  Her eyes were drawn to one of the lab’s two containment units. Inside, lit from overhead, was the book she had found, sitting closed and looking for all the world like a refugee from an ancient lib
rary. The computers were already running a diagnostic on it, and Shaila ambled over to take a look at the readout, grateful that Stephane had secured it for her.

  The book was, in essence, exactly what you’d expect from an old book. Mostly organic—the leather cover and paper would certainly be the culprits. Some trace iron and other organics—likely the ink. A light emanation of Cherenkov radiation . . .

  . . . was sure as hell not what you’d expect. Neither were the trace electromagnetic field readings.

  Shaila turned, excitedly, and in doing so jammed her knee into the lab’s small worktable. Swearing viciously under her breath, she grabbed at the small metal box that had started falling due to the impact. Hopping on one foot, she caught it before it hit the floor and started to place it back on the table, until she noticed the rust-red dirt clinging to it.

  The box was roughly a half-meter long, half again as wide. On either end was a pair of protuberances that immediately caught her eye. One looked like an emitter nozzle that Shaila had seen on any number of lasers, including the drill she had wrenched from the airlock door not too long ago. The second was a tube of some kind that uncomfortably reminded her of the barrel of a very small gun.

  She set the box back on the table. Someone had already taken the screws out of the sides of the box and, most likely, had opened it. Shaila did the same, half expecting to be electrified or irradiated at this point in the very long, tedious day.

  Instead, she found what appeared to be someone’s engineering experiment. She immediately recognized the guts of a high-end laser drill, attached to the two emitters on either end of the box. The tritium batteries were a given, too, and they looked like they’d been wired together in a very ad hoc kind of way. But then she spotted a small containment field generator, attached to a simple glass vial. And she had no idea why the length of the lower half of the box was surrounded by a series of well-polished mirrors which seemed to focus light toward the tubes at either end.

  The door swished open behind her and she started, almost whacking her knee again. Frowning, she turned and saw Evan Greene enter the lab.

  “Got turned around?” Shaila asked, trying to keep the suspicion out of her voice as she casually reached over to dim the containment unit’s light over the book. Greene didn’t need to know about that one right now.

  “Actually, I was hoping you’d be here,” he said with his customary grin. He keyed the door shut behind him. “I see you found our little contraption.”

  “From our jaunt this morning?”

  “Yeah.” Greene’s face turned serious. “I think you have a problem here, Lieutenant.” “What kind of problem?”

  Greene walked over and picked up the device. “I assume you got the drill figured out. You know what the other thing is?”

  “No, but I bet you do.”

  “It’s a directional electromagnetic field generator,” he said, sounding a touch too dramatic for Shaila’s taste.

  “That makes sense,” Shaila shrugged. “That explains the fields, right?”

  Greene sighed. “No, it doesn’t make sense. In order for this particular device to work, you need more generators out there to create a link. It’ll only work in tandem with others.”

  “So there’s more of them out there?”

  Greene put the device down and used the workstation to call up a map of the outside terrain. There were several markings on it. “We found the device here, right? And it angled off 36 degrees in this direction. If you figure there are emitters on either side of this thing, you can get a 36-degree angle from one to the other.” He traced his finger off into the distance, the computer creating a red line in its wake. “That means that there are at least two more devices on either end of this angle, right?”

  “At least,” Shaila said, starting to follow along. “And the other points on the map?”

  “A decagon. A ten-sided geometric shape. It doesn’t make sense to create an angled linear EM field, because most practical uses would generally be point A to point B. But what if it were a ring, and these lines were long enough . . . ?”

  The computer filled in a series of red lines, forming a ring across the Martian terrain. The lava tube was inside the ring.

  “How certain are you about the placement of these boxes?” Shaila asked.

  “Certain? No way. But we know that the line you and I followed was at least three kilometers long. Even if all the lines were just three kilometers, the cave would be just outside the ring. And I’m betting it’s inside.”

  Shaila looked hard at the little box on the table. “Where’d this come from?”

  Greene picked it up again. “That’s the other thing. This is totally homebrew. Tritium batteries scavenged from pressure suits and datapads. Magnetized iron alloy coating on the directional focus mirrors—probably came from older laser drills. The box looks like an old sample case. And all the serial numbers have been removed.”

  That last bit sealed it in Shaila’s mind. “So somebody built those out of spare parts, specifically so they couldn’t be traced, and built a ring of directional EM fields out in the middle of nowhere.”

  “Exactly,” Greene said. “Now, there’s a million perfectly good scientific uses for a ring of EM energy. But inside this particular ring, it seems like all hell’s breaking loose.”

  CHAPTER 12

  April 17, 1779

  Father,

  We are past the path of Mars and have successfully navigated the treacherous Rocky Main. Thankfully, our Captain led one of the most recent expeditions to map the boulder-islands of the Main, which stretch between the paths of Mars and Jupiter. So while transit may be burdensome to others, it did not require much in the way of effort on our part.

  I fear my purpose for this journal has been well diverted from the original, having become far more of an adventure story than a narrative of life in the service of King and Country. However, these are most unusual days, and I am compelled to continue now in this new vein, in the hopes that my writing may not only entertain and illuminate you, Father, but also may serve as a record of these quite singular events.

  Of course, during the long transit between worlds, the mundane comes to the fore. But even now, our guests aboard ship have made even these days eventful . . . .

  Midshipman O’Brian gripped his sword with white knuckles, his face pale as he parried one swift blow after another. He retreated along the main deck, his form faltering under the steady rain of thrusts and swipes from his opponent. His position was untenable—he would soon be backed up against the stairway to the quarterdeck, where he would be forced to ascend the stairs backward whilst under the barrage of canny moves by his surprisingly adept opponent, who showed little inclination to give ground.

  But he would gain ground regardless. He made a daring gambit, parrying his opponent’s blade widely, hoping his strength would be the greater despite his young age, and thrust forward. As he hoped, his opponent retreated just a hair’s breadth, giving the young man enough time to resume the offense.

  With renewed vigor, the midshipman furthered his attack, thrusting, parrying and riposting back across the main deck toward the bowsprit. Yet, he noted, his opponent did not panic or lose form. Instead, O’Brian watched a brilliant parry-riposte combination that came under his blade, forcing his arm wide. The young man had to practically fall backward, scrambling to maintain his footing, as his assailant once again began to press forward.

  “Mister O’Brian!” boomed a voice from behind him. “What in God’s name are you doing?”

  The midshipman turned round and stood at attention, forgetting his battle and opponent entirely. There stood Lt. Weatherby, and with him Dr. Finch. The former looked most aggrieved and angry, whilst the alchemist bore a look of supreme amusement.

  “I, um, well, sir, I mean to say that—” O’Brian stuttered. “It weren’t my idea, sir.”

  O’Brian’s opponent walked in front of him, placing herself between him and his lieutenant’s wrath. “Come now,
Mr. Weatherby. Just a bit of sparring, is all.” Miss Baker smiled sweetly, and O’Brian saw Weatherby’s anger give way to a small smile and awkward frustration.

  “Miss Baker, you could have done yourself a grave injury,” Weatherby said gently, as if parenting an errant child. “O’Brian here has been training for some time now.”

  “She’s better than me, sir,” O’Brian said brightly, but quieted quickly as his superior’s withering look returned.

  Miss Baker turned and handed over her blade to the midshipman. “Thank you, Mr. O’Brian. That was most refreshing.” She turned back to Weatherby, smiling primly. “I trust dinner was as well, Mr. Weatherby?”

  Weatherby’s mouth moved, but no words came out; the only sound came from Finch, who could not stifle his laughter for long. “Miss Baker,” Finch said, “I must thank you for the entertainment.”

  The young woman frowned. “Did you find my form so amusing, Doctor?”

  “Oh, not at all. I’ve no doubt you could skewer half the men aboard,” he replied, his insouciant grin unabated. “The amusement comes from once again rendering my lieutenant speechless.” Weatherby wheeled on Finch, who suddenly became quite keen to depart. “Come, O’Brian. Best to let me have a look at you after such a ferocious onslaught.”

  The midshipman looked up at the doctor as the latter approached. “She didn’t lay a scratch on me, sir, I—” The young man’s protests were cut off as Finch grabbed his collar and dragged him below, leaving Weatherby alone with Miss Baker.

  “Ah, well, then, Miss Baker,” Weatherby said, looking for something, anything to say. “I trust you’re unharmed.”

  “Quite so, Mr. Weatherby,” she said with a smile. “Thank you for your concern.”

  He waved his hand to allow Miss Baker to go first, and they began their now customary stroll down the main deck. “Not at all. How is it that you learned to fence so well? ’Tis an uncommon skill for a woman, to be sure.”

  “Elizabeth Mercuris is a difficult place,” she replied, frowning slightly. “One must learn everything one can in order to survive, lest your very future be cut all too short.”