Colony Mars Ultimate Edition

by Gerald M. Kilby

  Her thoughts were interrupted by Gizmo whizzing into the medlab.

  “Jann, could you possibly spare me a moment of your time?” Jann looked at the quirky robot. She understood what it was really saying to her. I have something important to reveal, in private, away from prying eyes.

  “Sure. Let’s take a walk.” She rose from her workbench and they headed out of the medlab towards the biodome. They zigzagged their way though the rows of hydroponics and finally entered one of the food processing rooms. These were small landers attached to the main biodome used for sorting and packing of harvested produce. They had chosen this place because of its isolation and also because the processing machines made quite a racket when switched on. Jann closed the door behind them and looked over at Gizmo.

  A light flickered on from Gizmo’s breastplate and a video image was projected on the wall. It was an aerial view of the surface of Mars.

  “When Nills was making his trip to Colony Two this morning he detoured over the Chinese lander. This is what he saw.”

  Jann watched as the craft came into view. The video was taken from quite high up, Nills had obviously decided to be as unobtrusive as possible. Then it zoomed in on the base of the craft. On the surface two small mobile units could be seen parked close to the foot of the craft. Mounted on these were what looked to Jann to be artillery weapons.

  “Nills reckons that these are PEP’s. Pulsed Energy Projectile weapons, with considerable range. He asked me to contact him as soon as you have seen this video. I will try and make the connection now.”

  A new picture-in-picture image was projected on the wall. It was Nills facing the camera.

  “Jann, you saw that, did you?”

  “Yeah, what do you make of it?”

  “It looks like you were right. They’re carrying a lot of very sophisticated weaponry.”

  “Jesus, they’re armed to the teeth.”

  “Yeah, so I’d say they’re here for the long haul. They’re not leaving without a fight.”

  Jann looked at the grainy image for a moment, digesting the implications of this discovery. Xaing Zu Industries had come prepared to battle it out if necessary. And it was safe to assume they had even more weapons, probably handheld.

  “Nills, you’d better get back here as soon as you can.”

  “Yeah, once I can get this heat exchanger sorted out.”

  “Okay, but don’t leave it too long. We need to formulate a plan on how best to deal with the possibility of a firefight between COM and the Chinese.”

  “I know.” Nills signed off and Gizmo stopped the projection.

  “Have you had any luck hacking into their comms, Gizmo?”

  “None. Other than I established that their systems are encrypted using quantum entanglement.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It is impossible to crack.”

  Jann considered this for a moment. “We have grossly underestimated them, Gizmo.”

  “It would seem so.”

  “It now looks like a war is about to start.”

  8

  Fire

  Lieutenant Dan Ma of the Xaing Zu Mars mission scanned the row of EVA suits that hung from makeshift hangers along one wall of the accommodation pod that the colonists had assigned them. Having located his suit, he reached into the side section and released the clip on the concealed compartment. He withdrew a small electronic unit and flicked the switch. All cameras and audio devices within this general area would now be jammed. It was a precaution, but one worth taking. Next he withdrew a bulkier unit, examined it, and placed it carefully inside the pocket of his flight suit. With COM due to land very soon, and their own mission no further along in accomplishing their primary objective, it was time to take assertive action.

  It was mid-afternoon and the colonists were busy with their various tasks. Mostly they would be in the biodome tending to food production. It seemed to be their primary job, that and the maintenance of life support. In many ways, he admired them. Particularly considering what they had already been through. To survive up here, on this godforsaken rock, took a special kind of person. One who understood the fragility of life, who tended to its needs with diligence and dedication. Nothing was ever taken for granted. You survived by the sweat of your brow. It was life on the edge, one false move and it could be extinguished in a heartbeat. But time was running out, and there was no more room for sentimentality.

  Some of the colonists eyed him with suspicion as he passed. They did not like them being here. He couldn’t blame them, if they only knew what was in store they would have never let them inside in the first place. He ignored their looks and continued deeper into the biodome. Over the last few sols he and his team had planned for this moment to have the maximum effect. They had poured over the facilities schematics, probing, testing, finding the perfect spot to install the device where it would give them the best chance of success. They had ascertained that the optimum location was at the very far end of the biodome, beside a number of the food-processing pods, where a lot of storage crates had been stacked.

  He had to circle around a few times so as to ensure the area was empty of colonists when he arrived. On the third approach he got his chance. He ducked in behind the crates and withdrew the device from his pocket. He set the timer and then carefully placed it near the center of the stack. Job done, time to leave. He absolutely did not want to be here when this thing went off.

  Nills had been away for several sols, and still not returned. So, with the imminent arrival of COM, Jann was getting anxious. She sat at the workstation in the medlab trying to concentrate on her work, something to take her mind off the uncertainty that lay ahead. She was alone in the lab, save for Gizmo, who was preparing DNA samples for her. A tediously repetitive task that the robot was ideally suited for. The Chinese had brought a DNA sequencer with them and Jann had decided to put it to good use. She had struggled with much of her analysis through lack of this type of equipment. Now that it was here she would make good use of it. The Chinese lab techs were not around, the place was hers. Xenon had observed them leaving Colony One early that morning, ostensibly to retrieve more supplies from their craft. They would need to be checked and searched on return, before anything was allowed into the facility. Xenon had been designated to this responsibility, one in which he was admirably suited due to his imposing physique. He would ensure that no weapons were brought on site.

  But, there was still no definitive answer from COM as to their expected landing time. They were already in orbit, and had been for some time now. But they were being very circumspect in their communication. The colonists had planned to meet them on the surface, a welcoming party of sorts, like they did with the Xaing Zu mission. But, COM were not interested in this, in fact they seemed openly hostile to it. This irked Jann no end. Who did they think they were? They had an arrogance that implied that the colonists were not important in the Colony One Mars consortium’s worldview. Jann reckoned that this was probably true. It angered her, and the more she thought about it the angrier she got. Who the hell did they think they were? How were they even allowed to set foot on this planet after all they had done? The destruction of the original ISA mission was due, in no small part, to the treachery of COM and its agent Annis Romanov. Not to mention the horror of the cloning tanks in Colony Two being a result of their vision for genetic research. Although, one could argue, that COM was not in direct control of the insane Dr. Vanji. Nevertheless, once they were aware of what was going on up here, they openly embraced it.

  But what angered Jann the most was the fact that the courts on Earth saw fit to hand it all back to them. It was a morally repugnant concept to Jann, which reinforced in her the feeling that Earth had abandoned them, once again.

  “Jann… Jann.”

  “Uh… Gizmo, sorry, I was just… somewhere else.”

  “Your hand, it is bleeding.”

  “What?” Jann looked down. She had been so distracted by her thoughts that she had accide
ntally cut herself with the scalpel. She opened her fingers and let the blood drop on to the workbench. She wrapped a bandage around the hand to staunch the bleeding. “Any word from Nills?”

  “None. Would you like me to open a communications channel with Colony Two?”

  “No. It’s okay. Leave him be. He’ll contact us when he’s ready. Although he’s cutting it fine. COM are due to land soon.”

  “Very well.”

  Jann was just finished tending to her hand when an ear-splitting klaxon blasted out from all corners of the colony facility.

  “What the hell is that?”

  “Fire alarm. Emanating in the biodome, far end, near the food processing pods.”

  “Shit, fire… come on, let’s go.”

  They raced out of the medlab heading for the biodome. Fire in an enclosed environment such as Colony One could be disastrous if not extinguished quickly. If left to grow, it would suck in all the oxygen, and had the potential to seriously compromise life support. Every colonist and astronaut’s worst fear was fire. You died, not from burning, but suffocation.

  Others were also racing towards the source of the fire, having been trained to drop everything and focus on putting out any fire that started as quickly as humanly possible. By the time Jann and Gizmo had reached the food processing pods, it looked like the entire population of the colony was already there. The storage crates stacked along the inner wall of the biodome were completely ablaze. Flame blossomed out from the center of the stack and the air was filled with the oddly sweet smell of burning bio-plastic. Jann could see Xenon marshaling a group of colonists with water hoses. He shouted and waved as they wrestled with the apparatus. Finally a jet of frothy H2O burst out and the colonists began to douse the flames. It didn’t take long to get it under control, and within a few minutes the drama was over. As the colonists began to gather up the firefighting equipment Jann and Xenon tentatively approached the smoldering pile.

  “How the hell did that happen?”

  “I don’t know.” Xenon picked up a lump of melted plastic. “This stuff takes a lot to burn. You would need a sustained flame to get it going like that.”

  Jann toed something on the ground, hidden in a mound of debris. She reached down, and with the help of a pen she had pulled from her pocket, she prodded the unit free from the pile, all the time covering her mouth and nose to try and lessen the effects of the smoke, and the sickly sweet smell of burnt bio-plastic. She poked the pen through a loop of charred wire that protruded from the unit and held it up. Xenon looked over at her. “What have you got there?”

  Jann shuffled through the group of colonists that were busy cleaning up the mess, holding the unit out in front of her like she had discovered a dead rat and was disposing of it. She laid it down at the edge of the path just as Xenon came over. They both knelt down and Jann started knocking the dust and ash from the unit.

  “I could be mistaken, Xenon, but this does not look like food to me.” She picked it up and examined it. It was small, about the size of a pack of cigarettes, on one side a charred circuit board was attached to a rectangular container which was split and broken.

  “You think this is an incendiary device, you think somebody started this fire deliberately?” Xenon was now inspecting the device.

  “Sure looks that way. But why would anyone want to do that?”

  Xenon just looked at her blankly.

  “We need to contact Nills, maybe he can shed some light on who might have built this.” She handed the device to Gizmo who took it gently in its metal hand. “Can you get some images off to Nills and explain to him what happened.”

  “Will do,” said Gizmo.

  By now some of the other colonists had spotted them and came over. “Is someone trying to burn the place down? Have we got some crazy pyromaniac on our hands now? Jesus, that’s all we need.”

  Xenon looked around. “It’s okay, let’s just get this place sorted.”

  He started getting the colonists busy again, issuing directions and organizing them into cleanup groups.

  “Jann, may I have a word with you?” said Gizmo

  She looked at the quirky droid. Generally when Gizmo said may I have a word with you, it was never good.

  “Sure, Gizmo. Let’s go over here a bit and we can talk.”

  They moved off away from the throng of colonists who were now busy sweeping, picking and sorting through the mess that was left after the fire. “What is it, Gizmo?”

  “I cannot seem to raise a communication channel with Colony Two.”

  “Has the fire damaged comms?”

  “No. That would be highly improbable.”

  “Then what?”

  “I am being prevented from accessing it.”

  “Prevented?”

  “Yes, blocked. I cannot access a comms channel and what’s more, I cannot access any of the Colony One systems.”

  “Are you serious?"

  “I assure you Jann, this is not one of my attempts at humor.”

  Before Jann could interrogate Gizmo any further, a colonist came rushing into the crowd. “Can someone give me a hand? The entrance door is jammed and I can’t get open, I need some help.”

  Ever since Jann had been in Colony One, and that was several years, she had never seen the tunnel door to the biodome closed, save for one time when she herself had forced it closed, to prevent the demented Decker from beating her head in. So, if the door was closed then someone had to have closed it—deliberately.

  “We’ll give you a hand. Gizmo come with us.” They dashed through the biodome to the far side and Jann could see the door shut tight. She threw her weight behind the locking wheel but it was stuck even with Gizmo and the other colonist helping her, there was no moving the wheel. What the hell is going on? she thought.

  By now others had gathered around, and a sense of entrapment was beginning to build. They took turns to try and open it, but it refused to budge no matter how much muscle power was brought to bear on the locking mechanism.

  Xenon arrived with a party of colonists. “What’s going on”?

  “The door’s jammed, we’re locked in, there’s no other way out of here,” said one of the colonists.

  “I think Xaing Zu have locked us in here deliberately,” said another.

  “What? Why would they do that?” The colonists were confused.

  “Gizmo can’t raise a comm channel or get access to any Colony One systems. The droid has been blocked.”

  “Oh shit, they’re going to kill us all, gas us while we’re all trapped in here.” A sense of panic was beginning to build, as a number of them started to bang on the steel door.

  “This is your fault.” A colonist pointed an accusatory finger at Jann. “It was you who convinced us to allow them in. We should have never listened to you. Now we’re all going to die.”

  Xenon moved in front of Jann and raised a hand. “This is not the time to lose your cool. That isn’t helping anyone.”

  The colonists were panicking, banging the door, shouting. Things were becoming ugly.

  “Attention.” A disembodied voice echoed out from the overhead speakers and reverberated around the biodome. “Please be calm. We have secured you in the biodome for your own protection. Do not be alarmed. You are safe in here while we negotiate this transition.”

  “Screw you,” a colonist shook her fist at the speaker. “Let us out of here, you bastards.”

  Xenon signaled to Jann and they took a short walk, out of earshot of the other colonists. “COM must have landed and Xaing Zu knew about it. My guess is the fire was a way to get us all in here. They knew our emergency fire protocols, knew we would all drop everything and run in to the biodome.”

  “But why?” Said Jann.

  “To get us all out of the way while they prepare to defend the facility.”

  “They’re not going to let COM have access, are they?”

  “Unlikely.”

  “This is not good, Xenon.”

  “No
. I fear we are trapped. They have tricked us, and now we are powerless to intervene.”

  9

  COM

  Of the three heat exchangers that provided power for Colony Two, only one now functioned, and that had broken down twice in the last month. Nills used the other units that were offline to scavenge parts, just so he could keep this one going. Systems were breaking down all the time. Already they had shut down significant areas within Colony Two, they simply did not have the resources to keep everything maintained. Worse, this technological disintegration was also being mirrored in the slow physical and mental degradation of the colonists.

  Nills had hoped that the arrival of Xaing Zu and COM would bring with them sufficient supplies and spare parts to enable, at least, a partial rejuvenation of the colony. But what the Chinese brought with them was merely a drop in the bucket. Nills felt that they were just paying lip service to the requirements of the colonists, as if in reality, they were not that important. Perhaps he had been naive, as Jann had often said to him. You’re too nice. Nills. You believe that humans are genuinely good. But in my experience, everybody wants something, and it's generally not your well being. He found it hard to be that cynical, even if there was a grain of truth in it. Yet, soon COM would land, if they hadn’t already. It was hard to know as the communication was as sparse as it was terse. They had offered to bring supplies and badly needed spare parts. Hopefully they would be true to their word and Nills could get his hands on these, before everything went to rat-shit.