As Nills sat in sickbay, surrounded by the dead and the dying from the battle, he realized that the situation could get out of control very quickly. There was a distinct possibility that a cohort of the betas could turn into a rage-fueled mob, and start to agitate for retribution for the loss of their friends and loved ones. The geneticists would be first, then the hybrids, then… where would it go? Anyone who stood in their way?
It was at that very moment Nills realized that they were indeed, truly human. They might be clones, they might have been subservient, but scratch the surface and, underneath it all, they still possessed the same violent instincts. All it needed was the spark, and the ugly side of humanity would ignite.
It didn’t help that Jann had gone. If she were here she could have exerted a level of control. None of them would go against her wishes, seeing her as almost divine. But she had left, and as the hours passed, Nills wondered if she would ever return.
“I say recycle them, they deserve it.” Alban was agitating.
“Yeah, a quick death’s too good for them.” Others were shouting out now.
“Let’s take them down to the tanks and throw them in.”
“No. We will do nothing until Dr. Malbec returns.” Nills raised his voice so that all the betas that had assembled around him in sickbay could hear. They mumbled and grumbled. He might be injured but he was still their leader and the mere mention of Jann’s name still held some authority. “They’re no threat to us at the moment, so keep them locked up, and keep a close eye on them.”
They grumbled some more but it seemed to have quelled the dissent—for the moment. Nills knew he had very little time to try and keep a lid on things. He surveyed the group around him; he knew them all by name. They looked at him intently waiting for leadership. A great weight of responsibility had been thrust upon him, made even greater by the fact that Vanji had killed most of the natural leaders in the colony. There was really only him now, and Jann, but she might well be dead. All he had was the authority to use her name. Would that be enough?
He was no politician either, he was an engineer, he thought in straight lines, in cause and effect, action and reaction, working the problem. So, the first thing he needed to do was to get them busy and get them distracted.
“Before we do anything, we need a full assessment of the damage. I want each of you responsible for your sectors to give me a full report on the state of our resources. You all know the importance of life support. We don’t need some system going off the rails now or we all die, and that will be the end of everything. So get to it and I want shift supervisors to report back to me in… three hours. Got it?”
They grumbled a little more but when you spend your entire life depending on the maintenance of artificial life support you learn to respect it. It becomes top priority. Nills knew this would focus their minds. Any thought of a systems failure would kick them into action. So they dispersed, one by one, to their appointed sectors.
Anika and Alban remained.
“Why don’t you just let them have their way with the goddamn geneticists?” Alban kept his voice low so the others in sickbay would not hear.
“Do you know what would happen to us if they were to die?”
“We would be rid of them, that’s what.”
“Yes, we would. And we would all die because of it.”
Alban didn’t reply, he just gave a quizzical look. He didn’t understand.
Nills stood up from the edge of the bed and tested his arm. It hurt like hell but he felt a little better. The shock had worn off and his body was coming to terms with the new normal. He moved it around to test the extent of the pain; it was manageable.
“Genetic engineering is the reason that this colony can exist. If it wasn’t for all the synthetic microbes in here there would be no clean air, no soil to grow food, no way to recycle waste, no resource processing… do you want me to go on?”
Alban sighed. “Yeah, I know. Just saying, that’s all.”
“Much as I hate the bastards, we really need them. Without them we will all die. Maybe not right away, it would take time, but as soon as some problem occurred we would not have the knowledge to solve it. It would be like a spaceship without a pilot, a reactor without an engineer.”
“We need to keep them safe,” said Anika. “Not let them be recycled.”
“What about throwing them a hybrid or two?”
“Alban, no one is getting recycled, okay?”
“Just a thought.”
“Look I really need you guys with me on this. Justice will be done, but only when things settle down and we have some control of the situation. If we start now then where does it end? Will they then want to recycle Rachel and Becky?”
“Wait a minute. Has anybody seen them?” said Anika.
They looked at each other. Nobody had. They were now the last two original colonists, excluding the geneticists. They were like Noome and Samir, always kept a low profile, avoided the attentions of the council. They wanted no part of Vanji’s world. They just wanted a quiet life. But they were alphas, and as such could be a potential target for mob.
“Shit, no. You don’t think they’re in trouble?”
“Alban, pull some of your people off guard duty and go find them. They have no part in this, I don’t want to see them hurt.”
“Okay.” But he didn’t seem too enthusiastic.
“And don’t forget they were an endangered species, too. Vanji had it in for any alpha that didn’t see things his way. He rid himself of most of them over the years, so don’t let anything happen to them on our watch. Find them.”
“I’ll try.” Alban headed out of the sickbay.
“Anika, how are you with EVA?” It seemed like a simple question but betas did not go outside and had no experience in an EVA suit. It was a dangerous business without training, as you never knew how someone would react. They could quite easily freak out. Putting someone in an EVA suit with no training, and shoving them out an airlock could be disastrous. Even Nills had a tough time when they were all entering Colony Two from the rover. And he knew Lars was barely keeping it together. But, Anika… she seemed like a natural, very composed. It was her nature.
“What have you got in mind?”
He looked around, held her gently by the elbow and led her out of sickbay into the empty corridor beyond. “I may have made a mistake.”
“Mistake? What do you mean?”
“Because I said we do nothing until Jann returns. I’ve just bought us some time, nothing more. The longer she stays away, the harder it will be to keep control. Then things might come to a head.”
“You mean if she doesn’t return?”
“Exactly. And, let’s face it, that doesn’t look likely to happen. She should be back by now, there was only around three hours life support in her suit.”
Anika didn’t reply; the reality of the situation was only just dawning on her.
“We need to find her, even if it’s just bringing back the body,” whispered Nills.
“Shit, you really think she is dead?”
“I really don’t know.”
“So, what do you want me to do?”
“Go and get the rover back into the colony. Have them check it over and refuel it. Then we go searching for her.”
“Okay.”
“Come on, I’ll walk with you down to the main entrance cavern. I need the betas to see me up and moving, I need to look like I know what I’m doing.”
Over the next hour Nills set up command in the entrance cavern. Anika had retrieved the rover and it was now being given the once over by the mechanics, by betas that Nills knew well, engineers like himself. Alban had also managed to find the last of the alphas, Rachel and Becky. They had been hiding out where they always hid out. They were not the brightest pair in the colony, but to be fair, they were smart enough to be two of the few original colonists left alive, Nills gave them that. They sat now in the cavern, under Nills’ protection. They looked shit scared.
Part of him felt sorry for them.
“Do either of you guys remember how to use an EVA suit?”
Neither of them answered, they just looked even more scared. They really didn’t know what was happening. Maybe they thought Nills was about to do a lockout on them. It was a phrase used to describe when someone was shoved into an airlock with no suit, and the outer door opened.
“Look,” Nills stood up and came over to them. “We need some help. Betas don’t EVA, at least not very well, and most of them have never seen the planet’s surface up close. But you guys have.”
Becky nodded. “It’s been a while, you know… a few years.”
“That’s better than never. We need to find Dr. Malbec. That means taking the rover and looking. We may need to EVA and search around. You think you could help me?”
Rachel’s eyes were like saucers. “You mean actually go outside?”
“Yes, out there.” Nills pointed at the airlock.
They looked at one another, then Becky said, “I would do anything to get back out onto the surface, see the sky again, anything.”
“I’ll take that as a yes then?”
“I’m with her, make that two.”
“Good.” Nills turned around to one of the maintenance crew. “Check through those suits and get me two more fully resourced.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
“How much longer before the rover is ready?”
“Half an hour, give or take.”
“Okay.” Nills shouted across the cavern to Anika. She was helping with the rover servicing so had her head buried in its engine bay. “Anika.” She popped her head out. He signaled to her to follow him and walked over to a quiet spot out of earshot of the others. She followed him over, wiping her hands on an oily rag as she went.
“Anika, I want you to stay here, help Alban keep things under control.”
“What? No, you can’t do this on your own, Nills.”
“I’m taking the two alphas, they can EVA, they’ve been outside, they have the experience.”
“Those two,” she nodded over to where the two alphas were sitting. “You can’t be serious.”
“Listen, they may look like a pair of dopes but they have way more experience out on the surface than anyone else here. And if I leave them here, god knows what will happen to them. End up in a tank, maybe.”
Anika screwed her mouth up. “Hmmm, I suppose.”
“Anyway, I need you here to help keep the betas from doing something stupid.”
“You stay, Nills. They respect you more. Let me go and find Dr. Malbec.”
“No, this is something I’ve got to do. I need to know for sure.”
“Okay, but be careful. If we lose you as well…” she placed a gentle hand on his elbow. “We’ll really be up shit creek.”
The sound of the rover engine starting up reverberated in the cavern and they looked over. The mechanic gave them the thumbs up. Nills nodded back, then looked over to where Rachel and Becky were getting ready. One was holding an EVA suit, looking it up and down like she was trying to work out how to get in to it. This is not filling me with a lot of confidence, thought Nills.
So it was that when the rover finally rumbled out of the airlock, Nills felt a deep uneasiness about what he was doing. How much was he putting the stability of Colony Two and all that they had fought for in jeopardy by leaving? The situation was still volatile. Now that blood had been tasted, there was a faction within the betas that wanted more.
He didn’t have to do this. Anika could have done the search. What’s more, Jann knew the risks when she charged off to stop Vanji, it was reckless of her. What did she have to gain? If it had been up to Nills, he would have let him go. Good riddance to him—and to Earth. But with Jann he suspected it was personal, perhaps she had a deeper connection to the planet they had all left. In truth, none of the betas had ever seen Earth and they were more a part of this planet, this was their home. What did they care for a long forgotten world?
It didn’t take long before they could see a tall plume of dust rising high into the atmosphere. Rachel checked the map on the rover main navigation screen. “Looks like that’s coming up from the ISA MAV location.”
“You think they launched, is that a vapor trail?”
“I’m not sure, we never got to see a takeoff. Remember we came here to stay. There was no going back for any of us.”
It seemed to Nills to take forever to close the distance to the location. But as the rover drew closer, they began to make out the charred remains of the MAV revealing itself from within the cloud of dust that shrouded the site. All around lay a thick carpet of crumpled metal and debris.
“It must have been some explosion. What a mess,” said Rachel as she brought the rover to stop, several meters away from the charred hulk.
“I think it’s safe to say they didn’t take off.”
“No one could have survived that.” Becky looked at Nills.
He surveyed the devastation. “If Jann was caught up in that explosion then I think we’re looking for a body. Okay, let’s get out and take a look.”
Rachel and Becky flipped down their visors and checked each other’s EVA suits with a practiced, confident efficiency. Perhaps Nills had figured them wrong. In Colony Two they had come across as a pair of slackers, avoiding anything that looked like work. But now he was beginning to realize that this might have been just an act. The best way for them to stay alive was to not be noticed by Vanji. Maybe they were a lot smarter than he had initially given them credit for.
They cleared the airlock and started scouring the site for bodies, and it wasn’t long before Nills found one. His heart skipped a beat when he spotted a pair of legs sticking out from under a mound of wreckage. He tapped his helmet comms. “Over here, give me a hand.”
They lifted off a blackened wedge of fuel tank casing to reveal two bodies. “Samir.” Nills said as he knelt down to inspect the broken visor. “And Noome,” said Becky. “Looks like they were killed. See the wounds on their foreheads? They were never going to leave, were they?”
“No. They were just pawns, a means to an end, nothing more.” Nills stood up, saddened at all the carnage that had taken place, but relieved it wasn’t Jann that they had found. They widened their search.
“Nills, over here. What do you make of this?” Rachel’s voice broke in to Nills’ helmet, he looked up so see her bending down examining a patch of ground, far away from the epicenter of the explosion.
There was a lot of disturbance. The sand had been trampled and shifted from its natural state. A set of parallel caterpillar tracks led into the spot where the three of them now stood.
“What sort of machine would make tracks like that?” Rachel pointed off along the lines. “Looks like they came from the direction of the colony.” She bent down to examine them more closely.
“It’s not a rover or a quad-bike.”
“I know of only one thing on this planet that could make tracks like that,” said Nills.
“What’s that?”
“Gizmo.”
25
Dust Devil
When the initial shock wave from the detonation hit Gizmo’s sensors, it did exactly the same thing that any human would have done—it ran like hell. The difference, of course, was the little droid’s ability to analyze and compute at speeds a human could not even comprehend. In a fraction of a nanosecond it had calculated speed, force and acceleration of the impending shockwave. It then extrapolated, from the multitude of possible options it had, the best direction to run. Or, in this case, the least worst direction to take. So as the first rocks were being torn from the gallery roof Gizmo had decided to move back down the entrance tunnel—at full speed. This was still not enough for it to escape the impact completely. The explosion hit the little robot with sufficient force to knock it over and send it tumbling down the tunnel for at least twenty-five meters. Gizmo’s systems went into the robotic equivalent of a nervous breakdown. Energy spik
ed, sensors overloaded, circuits fused and data corrupted.
It finally came to rest halfway down the tunnel, flat on its back. Even for Gizmo’s speed of thought it took quite a while to reassemble its brain function and figure out the extent of the damage. The first thing it did was assess the state of its systems. Several sensor inputs were gone: infrared, ultra-violet, radiation. It still had ultrasonics so it could still determine range and proximity. Its radio antennas were history so no comms, and no way to connect with the broader data environment of Colony Two, or anywhere else for that matter. But its tracks were intact so it could move. Its power source was also intact. However, one of its arms had suffered severe damage and was not responding to any signals, it was still attached, but totally dead. After it made a full inventory of its remaining capabilities Gizmo turned its attention to—what to do?
The little droid analyzed the situation. Jann, Nills and the betas were on the other side of several tons of rock, assuming they were still alive. Gizmo put that at an approximate 56.4% probability. It could try and dig its way out. But it did not have enough power to complete the task. So it eliminated that as an option. Another option was to simply put itself into sleep mode and wait it out. Someone would find it eventually. It seemed like a reasonable choice but it was the least productive.
However, it could still get back out on to the surface, through the entrance airlock at the far end of the tunnel. And then what? Try and get back into Colony Two by some other route? Or, it could simply return to Colony One. It was a long journey for the little robot, and it would take a few hours, but it would have just enough power to complete it. There was much to do back in the colony, and it was being left unattended and maintenance tasks would only increase the longer it was left idle. Gizmo made its decision. Of the three options open to it, returning to Colony One was the most productive. It powered up its tracks and sped off down the tunnel.
Colony Mars Ultimate Edition Page 31
