Operator B

by Edward Lee

  Escaped? Wentz wondered. The job must’ve turned him into a prisoner. “Why, though? Why did he escape?”

  “To see his daughter. She’d been adopted after his wife killed herself. A TACLET squad caught him and brought him back.”

  Yes, Wentz thought. A prisoner. Now I’m the prisoner. Did the same await Wentz once this mission was over? To be locked up in some luxury suite, surrounded by guards, beckoned by suicide?

  Wentz didn’t want to think about it. He didn’t want to think about what might happen to his mind five or ten years from now.

  “Tell me this, and be honest,” he asked, unable to resist. “Was Farrington… Was he better than me?” Wentz looked at her. “Be honest.”

  “That’s really not the point, sir—”

  “Tell me!” he barked at her. “That’s an order! Was Farrington a better pilot than me?”

  Ashton smirked, sighing. “Yes, sir, in my opinion, he was.”

  Well, I asked for it, and I got it. But why should such insecurities arise now? Wentz knew that Farrington was better, better than anyone in the world. “I guess I should stop acting like a kid and just be happy that I’m second best.”

  “Be real, sir. You’re the second-best pilot in the world. That’s pretty good.”

  Wentz nodded. She’s right. I don’t see any Navy punks from Miramar flying this thing. I see ME.

  The OEV cruised on, the strange hum in the cabin somehow comforting. Ashton unstrapped and got out of her seat. “I’ll be right back. I need to check the APU’s and the range-reply readouts.”

  Wentz shrugged from the pilot’s seat. “Why? My brain tells the guidance system where we’re going.”

  “Not if you day-dream. Not if you happened to be thinking about Miss July when you were adjusting your trim.”

  “Aw, Miss July was a dog—”

  “Our double-R computer is the only way we can know for sure that we’re on course.”

  Ashton stooped to the rear of the craft where brace-frames mounted the only hardware aboard that was manufactured by human beings. Here we go again, Wentz thought. He could see her in the wind-screen’s reflection. She knew they were on the proper trajectory; she didn’t even look at the range-reply coordinates.

  Instead, she reached into a pocket, withdrew a pill, and popped it into her mouth. Over the past month, Wentz had seen her do this several times.

  She returned to her commo seat. “I apologize, General. It’s clear you weren’t thinking about Miss July. Your mental integrity is straight-on.”

  Wentz wondered what he should do, then he just said it. “Look, Colonel, just because I’m a knucklehead plane driver doesn’t mean I’m not observant. What’s with the pills you’ve been popping behind my back?”

  Ashton had just strapped back in. Then she looked crestfallen. “Fuck,” she whispered.

  “Remember what I told you about profanity? Doesn’t mix right with all your spit and polish. And what are the pills? Don’t tell me Dexatrim ’cos I won’t buy it.”

  “Low-dose Duramorph and MS-Contin,” she uttered. “I hate sympathy—I didn’t want to tell you.”

  “Tell me what?”

  “I’ve got bone cancer. Metastatic and inoperable…”

  Wentz glanced at her with a trapped expression. “I— Jesus. I’m sorry…”

  “Don’t be. I just said, I hate sympathy, sir.”

  Shit, she’s so young… “Right, I gotcha. Damn. And quit with the ‘sir’ and ‘general’ bit, huh? My name’s Jack. You gotta first name besides Colonel?”

  “Jill,” she said.

  Wentz laughed. “No kidding? I love it! Jack and Jill went up the hill…to fly to fuckin’ Mars!”

  Ashton spared a smile herself. “And speaking of Mars, sir—er Jack… There it is.”

  Wentz’s eyes glued to the port-side window. The red sphere grew exponentially, from pea-size in space until it took up Wentz’s entire scope of vision.

  He pressed his hands back into the detents, then the OEV automatically began to maneuver into a perihelion-descent orbit.

  ««—»»

  Mars was only red in a telescope, due to refractive occulation from the small planet’s diminutive atmosphere and wind systems blowing dust and sublimated vapors of frozen carbon dioxide. This close, the surface of the slightly lopsided planet appeared more like the hue of dull brass. Like streaks of fat through steak, ribbons of more frozen carbon dioxide looked like canals filled with water. Wentz had his hands back in the detents as he cruised the OEV smoothly over peaks, ridges, and crater edges. Wentz rode the planet’s jagged surface like a surfer over waves.

  It was a good time.

  The OEV’s system responses amazed him. He could do anything. He could alter trim by two degrees or one hundred and eighty just by a thought. He could turn to fly between crater peaks simply by looking out the window. And it happened.

  Fuck, he thought. I could’ve ended the Gulf War in one day with this thing.

  From the Air Force gear behind them, something began to beep. “Slow to a crawl,” Ashton instructed. “It’s our SHF interception of the QSR4’s gamma beacon. You know what line-of-sight means. Start looking.”

  All Wentz saw was the same brass-colored surface. The beeping behind them began to increase.

  “Can you imagine if you hadn’t found out about the virus?” he posed.

  “Thank God we did.”

  “It’s incredible that you could identify it all just through intercepted radio waves.”

  “Not really. It’s just digitalized data based on photochemical analysis, spectrography, chromatography.”

  Wentz figured he should stick with what he knew: flying. “How long till we find this thing and give it the eighty-six?”

  “Right about…” Ashton leaned forward in her seat. “This should be it. We’re sitting right in the middle of the Tharsus grid-plat.”

  They both squinted through the prismoid windows.

  “There it is!” Ashton exclaimed. “See the treadmarks? Just right of center, one o’clock.”

  “Uhhhh…yeah! Got it!”

  Wentz slowed the OEV, then hovered. Treadmarks in the Martian dust ended at the QRS4 sample-collector. The mechanical probe was about the size of a golf cart on tractor treads. High-gain antennae spired from its top as a small radio dish spun lazily from the front end.

  “What’s the safe-distance for the RDX charge?” Wentz asked. “A hundred feet?”

  “A hundred meters. “This is micro-gravity, remember?”

  Wentz slowly backed up the OEV while Ashton held a portable rangefinder to her eye, focusing on the probe.

  “You’re good,” she said.

  Wentz took his hands out of the detents. He paused a moment, gazing out the window onto this otherworldly landscape.

  “No time like the present, right?”

  “Go for it,” Ashton said.

  ««—»»

  Fifteen minutes later, Wentz hauled himself out of the OEV’s airlock, cumbersome as a tortoise in the bulky white EVA suit. What a rip-off, he thought. I’m the first human being to walk on Mars…and no one will ever know. He skipped forward away from the craft, each step lifting him inches off the surface. In a gravitational field thirty-eight percent less than earth, clouds of dust looked like bizarre smoke trailing behind his footfalls. He bounced more than walked toward the tractored probe.

  Once he got there, he almost felt disappointed. The probe didn’t look like much: a reflective box on treads.

  “I’m here,” he radioed back to Ashton. “This thing doesn’t look like much of a big deal.”

  “It cost the Russians and Japanese the equivalent of a hundred million dollars, and it cost fourteen billion to get it here. They’ve spent an additional twenty billion to retrieve it.”

  “Ouch!” Wentz replied. “And now I’m gonna blow it up with a demo charge that probably cost the Army ten bucks. This has to be the most outrageous act of vandalism in the history of humankind.”

/>   “That’s right,” Ashton agreed in his earpiece. “And you’re the perpetrator!”

  “Thanks.” Wentz lowered to his knees, fumbling for his carry-satchel. “The ground here is sort of shiny.”

  “Frozen noble gasses, sublimated argon, probably some good old-fashioned ice,” Ashton responded through crackles of mild static.

  “Ice, huh? Too bad we didn’t bring some Johnny Black and a couple of glasses.”

  His heavily gloved hands began to remove his demo gear. First came the cone-shaped, olive-drab bomb itself, the size of a coffee thermos. Stenciled letters read: CHARGE, DEMOLITION, SHAPED (ONE) 2.2 POUNDS, PROPERTY OF U.S. ARMY MUNITIONS COMMAND. Then he removed a short coil of wire connected to a standard Herco-Tube blasting cap, and a small box-shaped timer with a knob. He placed the charge on the probe, connected the proper wires.

  “I think we’re ready for the show,” he said.

  “Set the timer for thirty minutes, then come back.”

  His bulky hand reached for the broad timer knob but stopped just short of touching it. He was looking up toward the nearest ridge.

  Something glinted. “Wait a sec, I see something…near the—”

  “It’s probably just carbonaceous deposits,” Ashton returned. “Forget about it. Come on back.”

  Wentz squinted through the gold-flaked NASA face-shield. “No, no, it’s… I’m gonna check it out.”

  “Negative, Jack!” Ashton objected. “It could be a plate crack! It could be an ice shelf! You could fall in!”

  “I’ll take my chances.”

  Ashton’s voice shrilled through the static. “Jack—damn it! No! You’re violating your orders!”

  Fuck orders, Wentz thought.

  He bounced away from the probe, moving sluggishly toward the ridge. Once at the edge, he stopped completely, staring down.

  “God,” he muttered when he realized what he’d seen glinting between the crags.

  It was another OEV.

  CHAPTER 12

  Ashton watched Wentz’s progress through the range-finder. She clenched a moment, grit her teeth, then shuddered as she reached for another time-released Duramorph. Until recently, she’d been able to control the pain fairly well but now it was just getting worse. Though the doctors recommended higher doses, Ashton wouldn’t hear of it. I’m not going to turn myself into a junkie, she vowed to herself.

  The drug kicked in, lifting her. By now, Wentz was out of radio range, and by the time she’d composed herself and refocused the range-finder…

  “Damn it.”

  Wentz had already climbed over the edge of the ridge.

  ««—»»

  Wentz’s mind was strangely blank as he climbed onto the second OEV, opened the top-hatch, and lowered himself into the air-lock. The hatch sealed shut above his head and then the chamber decompressed with a familiar swoosh.

  Only when he stepped through the egress was he able to think, Somebody’s got some explaining to do…

  He stepped into the cabin, then hit the slidelocks and removed his helmet. The flight seats were empty, but before he could turn around—

  “It’s…Wentz, isn’t it? 41st Test Wing out at Andrews?” a voice queried behind him. “I saw you fly the upgraded 16s at the Paris Air Show in 88—damn good flying.”

  Stifled, Wentz turned around.

  “Welcome to the Tharsus Bulge, Wentz,” the voice continued. “My name is—”

  Wentz could only stare. He already knew. “You’re Willard Farrington, U.S. Marine Corp,” he croaked. A pause stretched through the cabin. “Operator ‘A.’”

  The man looked haggard in his S-4 white jumpsuit as he lay on a fold-down strap bunk. An unkempt beard, trace specks of hair cropping up around the sides of a bald head. Opened packages of MRE’s lay like litter about the bunk.

  “They told me you were dead,” Wentz said flatly. “They told me there was only one of these things.”

  “They told you a lot of stuff—most of it was a lie.” Farrington leaned up in the bunk. He seemed exhausted, or in pain. “What do you expect from the military? You know the game. But— congratulations, Wentz. You earned the ultimate prize, fair and square.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You truly are the best pilot in the world.”

  “No I’m not, sir. You are.”

  Farrington chuckled. “The best pilot in the world doesn’t crash his kite, especially when it’s an operational alien spacecraft.”

  “You crashed? Here?” Wentz was incredulous.

  “I sure as shit did,” Farrington admitted. “Don’t that beat all, with all the nape-of-the-earth training we get? I came in too low over the first rise, smacked my six right into the ridge and belly-landed here. Still got air and climate-control but—” Farrington pointed toward the detent panels. “No power. All prop systems are deadlined.”

  He wrecked, Wentz realized. “When?”

  Farrington shrugged. “About eight weeks ago. That’s how long I’ve been sitting here.” Another chuckle. “Can you imagine how pissed off Rainier was when he got the news that I trashed his UFO? Fuck. I feel like the biggest asshole in the history of aviation. I make that meat-head who cracked up his B-2 bomber look like Chuck Yeager.”

  “You can come back with us,” Wentz blurted at the news. “There’s enough room.”

  “You still don’t get it, do you? Let me guess. They probably gave you some line about how they identified the virus from intercepted data transmissions or something.”

  “Yeah… We knew but the Russians and the Japanese didn’t because their analysis technology isn’t as good as ours.”

  “Um-hmm. Typical military bullshit. The only thing they knew from the jacked data was that there was live bacteria on the ridge. So they sent me up here to get samples. I’m the one who found out it was a virus, and I found out the hard way…”

  Farrington pulled up his sleeves: splotches showed on his arms like a glittery, wet rash.

  “You’re…infected?” Wentz asked.

  “That’s right. And so are you—the second you debarked. Look at your boots.”

  Wentz looked down at his EVA boots; they were covered with similar glittery splotches.

  “A molecular osmotic is what they call it,” Farrington continued. “It goes through anything, it goes right through your suit on contact by squeezing through the space between the molecules but won’t cause your suit to lose its pressure. It invades living cells and inorganic molecules as well. Hell, it even goes through the hull—”

  Then Farrington pointed to the floor, where thin, crisscrossing lines of the wet glitter shined.

  Wentz was appalled. “They sent me up here knowing I’d get infected!”

  “Yeah. But this stuff could kill everyone on earth. What choice did they have?”

  “No, what right did they have to send me to my death?” Wentz shouted.

  Farrington frowned. “Put a lid on it, will you? Every time we climb into a cockpit we know we could die. It’s part of the job. Hell, I’d have destroyed the probe myself but the EVA suits only have a hundred and twenty minutes of life-support. By the time their analysis determined that the shit up here was a deadly virus, my EVA gear was out of air. I couldn’t make any more debarkations. I was trapped inside this tin can.”

  Wentz struggled to let the information sift in between his outrage.

  “The QSR4 collector had to be destroyed. I no longer had the ability to unass this fuckin’ crate and do it myself, so they determined that you were the best bet to get the second OEV up here successfully.”

  “Those lying sons of bitches!” Wentz railed.

  “Give it a rest, man. We’ve flown in wars, we’ve flown in planes that no one else in world has the rocks to fly. Risk is part of our duty. You knew that the minute you made your first test flight. So quit bellyaching. Quit acting like a little kid and start acting like what you are.”

  Wentz scowled. “What’s that? A chump? What else am I but an Air Force sucker?�
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  “You’re the best in the business,” Farrington said. “You’re the best to ever fly—you’re even better than me.”

  Wentz just looked at him. Was there a tear in Farrington’s eye?

  “You are Operator ‘A’ now,” Farrington said.

  Wentz stood forlorn, eyes in a daze. Eventually the reality cracked him in the face. “How long…have I got?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve been here close to two months and I’m fading. Heartbeat’s fucking up, dizzy spells, fever. Give yourself three months max.”

  Wentz gulped, nodded.