Nills called over to the betas that were now coming into the lab. They had been drawn in by the unfolding drama, but were keeping their distance all the same.
“Hey, over here. Get him to sickbay.” A few ran forward, gathered him up and carried him back out of the lab. Jann stood up and surveyed the devastation. The bodies of two geneticists lay dead along with one of Alban’s cohort. “Two dead. That means there’s only one still alive. We need to find him.”
“Over here, have a look at this.” Anika pointed to drops of blood on the ground. “Looks like one of them is injured. We just need to follow.”
The trail led off towards the back of the cavern. “What’s back there?” Jann whispered.
“The main research lab, where they did all the experimental work.”
“Any way out?”
“There are metal stairs leading back up to the main colony area. It comes out near Vanji’s living quarters.”
They passed along by the experimentation rooms. Long tubular tanks filled with strange aquatic species. Flat rows of experimental flora, new strains of genetically modified plants for the colony gardens.
“Shhhh.” Nills held a finger to his lips.
Jann listened to the silence, then she heard a clang of metal on metal.
“He’s making for the stairs. Come, let’s finish this.”
But before they could move, the forlorn figure of the last geneticist moved out from behind a tall equipment rack. Behind him, Alban gripped his neck with one hand. In the other he held a grenade high in the air. The pin was removed. The only thing stopping it from detonating was his grip on the lever.
“Lower your weapons or I let go of this and take us all down.”
“Alban, this is crazy. There’s no way out.”
“Oh yes there is. So just do it and step aside.”
Nills was first to drop his weapon, then Jann, followed by Anika. Alban pushed the geneticist forward as he moved, and they let him pass, back into the research lab, turning around as he went.
“Back, move right back, as far as the wall.”
They stepped back slowly until they were against the cave wall.
When Alban reached the center of the research lab he kicked the back of his captive’s legs, and the geneticist collapsed to his knees on the floor. They could see him now taking off a shoulder bag and laying it down on a workbench.
“Oh shit,” said Nills. “That’s the bag with all the grenades Gizmo made.”
“You know, Nills, I never really liked what happened to us up here. It’s not what I had imagined when I signed up.”
“You mean, when your alpha signed up.”
“You see, that’s what I’m talking about. Where does my alpha stop and me begin?” Ever think about that, Nills?”
“All the time, Alban. But we are what we are, we just need to get past it.”
“Well I’m sorry, Nills. But I finally realized that I can’t.” Alban let go of the spring and dropped the live grenade into the bag. “I told you there was a way out.”
“Oh shit,” was the last thing Jann heard before she was slammed against the cave wall and lost consciousness.
28
A New Sol
Nills moved through the Colony Two entrance cavern to the waiting rover. The mechanics working in the area waved to him as he passed. He nodded his acknowledgment. The colony was beginning to settle down in the weeks after the revolt. The seeds of a fragile peace were beginning to grow. Life would go on.
He stepped inside the machine and sat down in the cockpit. Xenon was already there, waiting.
“Ready to go, Nills?”
“Yeah, let’s take it out, I hear it’s a nice day outside.”
Xenon took the controls and moved the rover through the main airlock and out onto the Martian surface. Nills was right, it was a nice day. A pale orb hung high in the sky, the air was clear, no wind to whip up the dust. Xenon looked up through the windscreen at the clear sky. “You think they’re up there, watching us?”
Nills took a glance up, as if it was actually possible for him to spot a satellite flying past. “You better believe it. After all the coming and going, not to mention explosions on the planet’s surface, they will have everything they can called into service. All trained on this very spot. NASA’s deep space communications network is probably working overtime.”
Xenon looked up again and gave the sky the one fingered salute. Nills laughed.
The hybrid leader had changed since his experience in the tank. All the hybrids had. Their uncanny ability to communicate by thought, far from being an evolutionary advantage, was in reality their Achilles heel. It had traumatized them to the point of despair. After the events of the recycling it took some time to get them out of their collective shell. Xenon was the one to do it. He was a different person now, with a different perspective. It was like some door had opened in his mind and he realized that the hybrids were a very fragile species. Their survival relied on the support and social cooperation of the betas. It took time for him to bring everybody around to this new reality. Some of the hybrids were still scarred, they would take longer. For a few, it would be never at all. But they would all help them as best they could.
“Do you have many memories of Earth?” Xenon asked.
“Yeah, sure. Although, technically I’ve never been there.”
“It must be strange to walk out in the open, feel rain on your face, swim in an ocean of water.”
“We all have memories of times on Earth, even you, Xenon. Anyway, our home is here. We need to make it our very own paradise.”
They traveled in silence for a while and Nills reflected on the events that had brought them to this point.
The geneticists were all dead and the explosion in the labs had destroyed much of what they had created. It was certain that a considerable amount of their knowledge died with them, or was lost in the chaos. Still, they weren’t without hope that what they needed could be salvaged, and at least the cave wall held the blast. A breach would have meant catastrophe, the end of human life on Mars.
Xenon broke his ruminations. “So what do think they’re up to?
“Who?”
Xenon pointed skyward.
“We’ll know soon enough, once we get to Colony One.” They could already see its outline, and the massive biodome sparkled in the mid-sol sun. They rolled up to the facility and Xenon deftly reversed the rover up to the umbilical airlock. There was a satisfying clunk as the connection was made secure. Using this airlock meant that they had no need for bulky EVA suits, and made the trip a little easier.
When they stepped out, Becky and Gizmo were there to greet them. Gizmo’s arm had been repaired and the little robot was back to being 97.65% operational, as it put it. Quite what the remaining 2.35% was, nobody could fully understand. They walked through the connecting tunnel and into the main common room.
“Rachel’s in the operations room, reviewing the facility schematics, if you’re ready to have a look?”
The plan was to survey the derelict areas of Colony One to assess what would be required to repair those sections and bring them back online. Rachel and Becky had taken charge of the project and were eager to get started.
“Xenon, you go ahead. I’m just going to visit the biodome for a while.”
“Sure.” He nodded.
Nills walked through the short connecting tunnel, past the hydroponics, under the hanging vines and eventually found his way out onto the central dais. Sitting in a wicker recliner was Dr. Jann Malbec. She jumped up when she saw him come.
“Nills, you finally got here. Come, sit down.” She walked over to the pond and pulled out a bottle of colony cider. “I’ve been saving this.” She sat down and poured some glasses. “Here you go.” They clinked. “To…” Jann thought for a second. “To Mars.”
Nills raised his glass. “To Mars.”
Jann had escaped the carnage in the labs with a gash on her head and a very sore body. Other than that
she was okay. By the time order had been restored, and the population in Colony Two had come to terms with the new normal, she had decided to make the trip back. Nills stayed behind, promising to follow later when he was sure things had settled down. That was three weeks ago.
He sipped his drink. “So, any news from the ISA… from Earth?”
“We’re front page news, have been for the last month. It’s all out in the open.”
“What do they know?”
“That’s not really the problem, it’s what people are speculating that’s the problem.”
“Is always is.”
“What about Xenon, did you get any more of the story out of him?”
“A bit. From what he’s told me, Vanji grot frustrated with being consistently blocked by the council over his ambitions. So when he realized that you held the key to getting back to Earth, he did a deal with COM.”
“VanHoff?”
“Yes. He had been communicating with them for a while, hatching a deal. They were going to give him anything he wanted, if he would come back. Xenon didn’t know the details, just that they would take control of Colony Two and start a breeding program.”
“Well, Earth thinks we hold the key to immortality, that we possess the elixir of life and they all want it now. The ISA are being sued to open up communications control with us. They’re freaking out, they can’t handle it.”
“Well, that’s their problem. We don’t have to talk to anybody if we don’t want to.”
“Yes and no. Sure, we can switch off comms but that’s not going to stop them coming here. I imagine that right now there are corporate boards meeting back on Earth, talking about how to raise money for a Mars mission. They are going to come, not just COM, but every space company and reckless adventurer.”
“I don’t suppose it would do any good to tell them we don’t know anything.”
“I already did. They don’t believe me. They just think we’re keeping it for ourselves.” Jann sighed and sipped her drink.
“Nills, this could get very messy. The people that come will be non-state, well funded and probably well armed. Any so-called Outer Space Treaty laws that exist will be torn up and burned. They will fight each other for this knowledge, they will fight us for it and if we don’t, or can’t, give it to them they will simply experiment on us until they find it—or we’re all dead. Make no mistake, Nills, a battle is coming. A battle for control of Mars.”
They sat in silence for some time. Eventually Jann stood up. “But hey, it’s not going to happen anytime soon, so let’s enjoy the peace while we’ve got it.” She stripped out of her jumpsuit, ran naked to the pond and dove in. Her head broke back up through the surface and she shook the water from her hair.
“So what are you waiting for?”
Nills gave a broad grin, stripped out of his own clothes and dove in beside her.
TO BE CONTINUED…
You can find the next book in the series, Colony Three Mars, here.
Colony Three Mars
1
Secret
Dr. Jann Malbec delicately removed the cover on the petri dish inside the biolab’s hermetically sealed isolation chamber. She could now see the profusion of bacterial blooms that radiated out across the surface of the agar gel. This was the last living sample of the bacteria that had caused so much death and destruction to the original colony and the later ISA mission.
Yet, for those lucky enough to be immune to its devastating psychotic dementia, it bestowed a biological reinvigoration and rejuvenation. It was a two-faced Janus. It could be both a beginning or an end. On the one hand, it was the very elixir of life. On the other, it was insanity and death.
Fortunately, it posed no threat to the current colony population, as they had all evolved, one way or another, to be immune to its darker attributes. But there were those, currently en route to Mars, that would not be so lucky should they be exposed to it—even though this was the very thing that they sought. One of these missions was already imminent, with others not far behind—all of them hell bent on acquiring this duplicitous mutation.
Jann removed her hand from the joystick controlling the mechanical manipulator within the sealed chamber. She flexed her fingers for a moment, then reached up to the control panel above the unit and flicked open the protective cover on a switch marked IRRADIATE. Her finger hovered over the exposed red button—pressing this would send a stream of accelerated electrons directly through the sample, killing all bacteria within and eradicating it forever. She hesitated.
In the aftermath of the upheavals that had traumatized Colony Two, Jann realized, that if they were to survive, she would need to have a better understanding of the complex, genetically engineered, biology of the colony’s ecosystem. This technology was, after all, the very reason that a human outpost on Mars could ever hope to function. But much of this knowhow was lost in the mayhem wrought by the events of the revolt, specifically the destruction of the Colony Two labs. So, Jann set about building a new research facility in the hope of regaining this lost knowledge. To this end, the medlab in Colony One had been repurposed and extended. New modules were added, and much of the lab equipment that was salvageable had been moved here from Colony Two. It was during this period of rebuilding that she realized the cave where Nills and Gizmo had hid out, during the first wave of infection by the bacteria, was still there, and that only she and the eccentric droid knew of its existence. So she decided to keep it that way, and had sworn the robot to secrecy. Although, quite what that meant for a droid was hard to know. That said, it did seem to be very attached to her and followed her around everywhere. Nills tried to explain its behavior to her many times.
It learns. That’s how it’s programmed. And like most intelligent beings it learns from experience, by doing things. The more data it has to work with the more it will change and modify its behavior. It has spent a long time with you, Jann. And Gizmo has also saved your ass more than once. So, it has moved you up its hierarchy of priorities. You have become important to it. Basically, it likes you, you are its friend.
Jann also realized, that when they had purged the Colony One environment of the malignant bacteria, they had neglected to consider this hidden space. It was sealed off and environmentally isolated from the main facility. But, if the bacteria still existed down there then it would pose a fundamental threat to any new arrivals. So, shortly after the medlab’s reconstruction as a research facility, she and the droid secretly entered the cave and went on the hunt—and it didn’t take her long to find it. But rather than eradicate it she took a sample for investigation, isolated in this sealed enclosure and then purged the cave environment. This was now the only living sample in existence.
Since then, she had spent long hours down here, testing, probing, exploring the bacteria. All the time hoping to gain some better understanding of its extraordinary properties. But time was running out. Missions were already on their way to Mars. New people coming—all seeking this very biology.
She could give it to them. Let them have it. It could spare the colony from the pressure to reveal its secrets. If the bacteria were here, then why not just hand it over? But could they be trusted with it? Not be tempted to return it to Earth where it had the potential to cause havoc on a truly global scale? No, it was simply too dangerous. It must be eradicated for good. Do it! She commanded herself to press the button—but still she hesitated.
A light blinked on her comms earpiece lying on the workbench beside her. Jann sighed, removed her finger from the button and picked up the comms unit.
“Yes?”
“Jann, where are you? I’ve been trying to find you for, like, half an hour.”
“I’m… eh… doing something. What is it?”
“Operations just picked up a craft entering Mars orbit.”
“So soon?”
“Yes, they’re here. Nills has called for an emergency council meeting over at Colony Two. He’s on his way here to pick you up.”
“
OK. Tell him I’ll meet him in the common room in twenty.”
“Will do.”
Jann pulled the comms unit out of her ear and put it in her pocket. She looked in at the sample again for a moment as her hand reached for the button on the control panel. She hesitated again, then finally flicked the protective cover closed. She grabbed the joystick and manipulated the cover back on the petri dish, and returned it to its compartment. It would live for another while longer. Maybe after the council meeting she could bring herself to eradicate it—once and for all.
2
Clone
The clone known as Nills Langthorp exited the main airlock of Colony Two into a bright Martian morning and looked out across the vast expanse of the Jezero Crater. A flat, unbroken landscape stretched before him all the way to the horizon, around three and a half kilometers distant. Out there, far beyond his field of vision, lay Colony One, where Dr. Jann Malbec had chosen to set up home. He had hoped she would stay with him, here in Colony Two, but she had been adamant in her desire to establish a new research facility. Since most of the labs had been destroyed in Colony Two, they had moved all that was salvageable to a new home in the now extended medlab of Colony One.
Gizmo had also gone with her. Nills missed the company of the little droid, missed its eccentric ways and quirky turn of phrase. But it had formed a strong attachment to Dr. Malbec, and seemed to want to be in her orbit all the time. He didn’t mind, really. In fact he was glad that the robot was with her, keeping an eye on her, keeping her safe.
Nevertheless, Nills had started building a second Gizmo some time back. But he simply could not spare the components needed for its construction. Things were becoming scarce, some would even argue critical. Yes, they had food a plenty, and air and water. But it was the electronics that kept all the control systems functioning, and those they could not fabricate. So as components failed, less critical systems would be scavenged for parts.
Colony Mars Ultimate Edition Page 33
