Colony Mars Ultimate Edition

by Gerald M. Kilby

They swept past the foot of the great ship as they made their way to one of the ancillary pads. There were several of these dotted around the central apron. These facilitated the smaller ships, the ore freighters coming in from the asteroid belt, the Earth bound cargo vessels and transport ships that plied the route between the MASS and AsterX space stations. It was at one of these pads that Gizmo finally brought the rover to a shuddering, dusty halt.

  Mia was already suited up and standing by the rear airlock when Gizmo hit the brakes to stop a few meters from the base of the craft. Mia exited the rover and made her way to a flimsy looking ladder running up one of the landing struts. From a distance the craft had looked small and fragile, particularly since she was comparing it to the behemoth that transported colonists from Earth. But now that she was up close and personal, it was considerably bigger than she had imagined. This gave her a little bit more confidence in the craft’s ability to actually do the job of getting them to the space station. She started climbing.

  The cockpit was not designed to accommodate a G2 unit, so Gizmo wedged itself in awkwardly between two seats just behind Mia, who was strapping herself down. Gizmo started talking her through the ignition sequence, which mostly involved bypassing all pre-launch safety checks. Flight controls were mercifully simple, consisting of a large main screen and a small tablet type pad on the armrest of each of the pilot seats. Mia punched in the codes Gizmo gave her and was furiously bypassing and muting all the alerts. Then there was a pause as the craft made contact with systems control on the space station orbiting above. The two systems would communicate autonomously, bypassing any requirement for human intervention. Delta V would be calculated along with a myriad of vectors to establish the correct launch trajectory for intercept with the space station and dock. But even though this was theoretically a computer-to-computer communication, its initiation would flash up on some technician’s monitor onboard the space station. How would they react? Would it be allowed to lift off? And if so, would they be allowed to dock?

  Nills, who seemed to know the most about these things, assured her that this interaction would happen so fast that there would be no time for the techs on the station to stop the launch. He neglected to mention what would happen in the intervening twelve minutes it took the craft to reach it. By then they might have guessed something was up and simply allow the craft to sail by, out into deep space. If that was the case, then Mia could be embarking on a very long journey indeed—that is, until her oxygen ran out.

  After a few tense moments the armrest screen prompted Mia to enter the final launch code, then she hit the big blinking INITIATE button. Nothing happened, at least not that Mia could tell. But then she began to feel a slight vibration in her seat. It began to build in intensity to a point where Mia was gripping the armrests in a vain attempt to steady herself. When the full engine ignition finally came, it did so with such force that Mia felt she had been trapped in the jaws of a car crusher. Her cracked ribs had hurt before, now the pain was so intense she was at risk of passing out. And the noise was deafening, a violent cacophonous rage boiled all around her as the craft was propelled skyward.

  Thankfully, it was short lived. When the noise and vibration finally stopped Mia found herself on the verge of unconsciousness. She tried hard to focus and bring her body back from the brink. All around her field of vision items were floating in the cockpit. They had broken free of Mars’s feeble gravity and were weightless. Mia thought she heard a voice, or was it voices? Her hearing was shot.

  “Mia… MIA…” Gizmo’s bleatings finally made contact with her aural cavity.

  “What...?”

  “It is time for you to leave the capsule, if you dare.”

  The craft had no windows, but the main monitor acted as a virtual window out into space. In the frame Mia could see the enormous MASS space station dominating the view. They were coming in directly underneath it, heading for a docking port on the near end of the long central truss. The massive torus was too big to fit in the frame, but Mia could see a section of each of its four spokes gently rotate.

  “Can we wait until we get closer?”

  “A little. They have seen us coming and taken control of the craft. They are remotely decelerating us, preventing us from getting too close.”

  “Can’t you hack it or something?’

  “No, this capsule has no interface for a G2 unit so I can not interact directly with the systems. At best I could maneuver it using the orientation thrusters, but alas, we have no flight control. So I am powerless to do anything.”

  Mia sighed. The station looked a long way away meaning there was a high probability that she would sail right past it and out into deep space. But this was what she had come here to do, so she unstrapped herself and pulled herself to the airlock at the nose of the craft. It took a few moments for it to depressurize before the outer door finally opened and she glided out—into open space.

  Mia’s heart skipped a beat as she beheld the infinite expanse before her. Nothing she had ever seen or done at any time in her life had prepared her for the sheer exhilaration she experienced at that moment. It was like being born again, pushed out from the limitations and confines of the physical world and into the awe-inspiring vastness of the heavens.

  “Mia, get ready.” Gizmo’s voice crackled in her headset and snapped her back to the reality of the situation. The plan was for her to take up a position on the outer shell of the craft as it slowed. Gizmo would signal her when to use her EVA suit thrusters to separate herself from the craft. She had absolutely no training in this other than a quick explanation from Gizmo on the short journey here. It was all theory, and the only thing she really picked up was that it was incredibly difficult to judge, as every action would propel her in the opposite direction—forever, until she compensated with an opposite action. So, from where she was standing right now, she was going to be learning on the job.

  The space station was getting a little closer. It must be nearly time, she thought.

  “Now,” Gizmo signaled. Mia touched the controls, and found herself moving away from the transport craft. She resisted the temptation to fire her thrusters again. A little went a long way out here. For a while both Mia and the transport craft seemed to move in tandem, but as its momentum began to slow Mia found herself inching ahead.

  Her initial fear of missing the station completely began to abate as she could see that she was on a good trajectory. She breathed a sigh of relief when she sailed over the docking dome in the nose of the station. So far so good. Then she realized she was also moving upward relative to the station, away from the central truss. That was okay for the moment, as she needed to get past the slowly rotating spokes of the giant torus. If one of those were to hit her on the way through, she would be knocked off course, out into deep space. Her thruster pack did not have the power to compensate for the additional momentum. But the higher she got the more of a gap there would be, so she maintained her focus. Beyond the spokes, the long central truss thrust out into the distance. She could see the antennae array now, its large dish pointing straight at her, and down towards the planet’s surface.

  A spoke swept in front of her. From a distance they had seemed spindly and insubstantial. But up close they were as wide as a bus and probably carried as much momentum. She focused on the next spoke as it rotated towards her. Now that she was heading into its path it seemed to have picked up speed and was racing around faster than she liked. Again Mia resisted the temptation to fire her thrusters. Perhaps if she knew what she was doing she wouldn’t be so panicked. But as she moved further into the track of the spoke she realized she was heading for impact. Mia hit the thrusters and accelerated forward just in time to sense the spoke pass safely behind her. But now she was moving way too fast. Her last thrust had also introduced a new rotational vector; she was spinning head over heels. Goddammit. She was losing her sense of position in space. Where is up, where is down? She had done the one thing she really didn’t want to do—she had lost cont
rol. The universe outside her visor spun without reason. Mia calmed herself down and tried to make sense of her chaotic momentum. She focused on what she could see flying past her field of vision. After a few seconds she had determined one axis of rotation and fired her thruster pack to compensate; her spinning slowed. She did the same for another axis and finally managed to stop her rotation. But she was still moving away from the space station, not towards it, and she was fast running out of time. Mia fired her thrusters again and aimed for the antennae array. Now she came in too fast, missed the array, and bounced off the central truss. She scrambled furiously to grab on to something, anything. Dammit. She hit the thruster controls again and this time managed to wedge herself between two of the structural members of the truss. It wasn’t very elegant but it was effective.

  Mia stopped moving and tried to slow her breathing. It didn’t help that her ribs had taken a battering bouncing off the station and responded with searing pain all around her upper chest. She groaned in agony. Move. She forced her body to respond and extracted herself from the superstructure and onto the outside of the truss. She found that some thoughtful engineer had seen fit to populate one of the structural elements with handholds. She inched her way forward. The antennae assembly was much bigger and a lot more complex than it looked in the images she had studied on the journey up. But after a few moments, Mia could see where all the cables entered the structure. She took one of the explosive charges out of a pouch on the front of her EVA suit, activated it and wedged it in behind a bend in the cabling. She did the same with a second one. Now all she had to do was get far enough away that she could safely detonate it. She started to make her way back along the backbone of the space station, as fast as she could without losing her grip on it. After a few meters she began to wonder how far was far enough? Nobody had told her, or if they had, she had forgotten. She checked the time and found that she still had at least twenty-one minutes before the detonation of the terraforming event, and the bioweapon that had been hidden in Jezero City. So she decided to keep going further along the truss, that way she could leave plenty of room for error.

  After a few moments of clambering along she arrived at the point where the massive torus connected with the backbone of the station. It rotated around a central axle about fifteen meters in diameter. This section, like the truss, did not rotate, it was fixed. Mia also noticed it had an airlock, presumably for maintenance crew to exit the station and conduct checks or repairs.

  Mia moved around the truss to the underside, away from the antennae. She reasoned it might afford her better protection from any flying debris when she blew the array. She made sure she had a good grip on the truss before reaching into the front pouch on her EVA suit and withdrawing the detonator. This was a small black box with a short whip antennae. She opened the red cover and flicked the switch to charge the unit. A few tense seconds passed before a red LED lit up, indicating it was ready. Okay, she said to herself, this is it.

  She turned the device over, slid open the cover on the detonate button, and realized to her horror that her gloved finger would not fit into the opening. I don’t believe it, she said out loud.

  “What?” came a reply in her headset, it was Gizmo on comm.

  “Gizmo?”

  “It is I.”

  “I can’t activate the charges, my goddamn glove won’t fit through the hole in the detonator.”

  “Oh dear, this is a problem we had not foreseen. Standard EVA suits used on the surface have much smaller gloves than these bulky spacesuits.”

  “You don’t say,” said Mia as she pressed harder, with no luck. Then she looked around on her EVA suit for some suitably sized prong that she could use instead. There was nothing. Presumably the designers had rightly figured that having things that stick out on an EVA suit could only get its occupant into trouble.

  “Shit, shit. shit. I don’t bloody believe this.”

  “Perhaps you could try and locate some suitable protuberance on the structure itself,” offered Gizmo.

  Mia was just about to do this when she noticed a light emanating from the other side of the structure. She pulled herself around to investigate. It was the airlock. The outer door was open and a figure floated out. It was checking, looking around. Mia ducked back down. It moved off down along the central truss.

  “Gizmo,” she whispered, not that she really needed to, as there was no way she could be heard in the vacuum of space, even if she screamed her head off.

  “Yes?”

  “The airlock just opened, I’m going inside.” With that she cautiously moved out from her concealed position. The suited figure was further down the central truss, so Mia clambered into the airlock, and hit the close button. The figure had noticed the movement and was zooming back down to try and get to her before the door closed. Too late. The door shut and the airlock began to pressurize. Mia waited until the green alert flashed then she flipped open her visor, powered down her suit and unclipped the glove from her right hand.

  She removed the detonator from the pouch again, and was about to hit the button when the inner door of the airlock slid open with a sudden swoosh. Mia looked up in shock, as she recognized the person floating there aiming a PEP weapon directly at her.

  “Christian?”

  “Mia?” He fired.

  Brilliant blue light burned into her retinas like a swarm of stinging insects. Her entire body was racked with pain as every muscle spasmed uncontrollably. Mia endured it for a few seconds before passing out.

  21

  Space Station

  Mia awoke from a slap across her face. She groaned, shook her head and blinked her eyes open. A blurred figure hovered over her and slowly came into focus. Mia recognized him. It was Christian. She spat out a gob of blood on the floor beside him.

  As her senses returned Mia began to take stock of her surroundings. Across from her a tall person stood silhouetted against a panoramic window which framed a slowly rotating view of the planet Mars. His hands were clasped behind his back as he gazed out at the splendor of the vista. He turned around.

  “Ah, Miss Sorelli, you are awake I see. I am Kane Butros.” He paused to gesture at Christian. “And I believe you two have met before. You must have made quite an impression as your ex-boyfriend wanted to shove you out the nearest airlock until I intervened.

  Mia didn’t answer. Instead she leaned over and spat another gob of blood on the floor.

  “Charming,” came the reply as Kane approached her.

  She realized then that she must be somewhere along the outer rim of the rotating torus, and the reason she found it difficult to move was because she was experiencing an extremely debilitating one gravity. Her body had gotten used to the one-third gravity on Mars and now struggled to deal with three times that. What made matters worse was that she was still encased in a very heavy EVA suit. Mia tried to move again but the best she could manage was a very inelegant rocking from side to side.

  Kane came closer, pushing Christian aside, and held up the detonator that Mia had so desperately tried to activate in front of her face. “We can do this the easy way or the hard way. Where is it?”

  Mia wasn’t sure what the hell he was talking about but then realized that they had not found the explosives she had planted. That surprised her, as she really didn’t try to hide them in any way. But maybe they thought she was trying to disable the station, or even destroy it, in which case they would not be looking anywhere near the antennae array. Perhaps they were searching the nuclear reactor or the main fuel tanks.

  “I’ll tell you what, I’ll do a deal with you. You tell me where the bioweapon is hidden first.”

  Kane sighed. “Perhaps Christian is right. We should just shove you out an airlock without that suit and be done with you. Let’s face it, it’s not like you can do anything. Not without this, is there?” He waved the detonator at her again.

  Mia managed to move her arm up to wipe some blood from her mouth, then let her head drop. “Go screw yourself.�
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  Kane stepped back and looked down at her for a moment before redirecting his gaze to the surface of Mars. He gestured at the panorama. “Soon all this will end, and the debt will be paid.”

  Mia had no idea what the hell he was rambling on about, but she did realize that the terraforming event had not yet happened, so she still had time—at least, theoretically. But how much, she didn’t know.

  As her mind began to focus she could see a small group gathered around a holo-table, projecting a large 3D rendering of the planet. As it rotated, a myriad of data was displayed alongside, the most prominent of which was a countdown timer. It read four minutes and fifty-three seconds.

  “Why?” Mia raised her voice as best she could to get Kane’s attention.

  He turned around and studied her.

  “Why kill all those people, what do you hope to gain from this… genocide?” she continued.

  “It seems you know very little of the history of this planet, Miss Sorelli.” He paused for a moment before continuing.

  “What you probably do know is, a decade ago a highly virulent and destructive genetically engineered bacteria made its way back to Earth from Mars. It caused the deaths of millions, and spread panic around the world. This is common knowledge. But what most people don’t realize is that the only person who knew how to kill it was your friend, Dr. Jann Malbec. However, she refused to reveal this knowledge to Earth unless Mars was granted independence. In doing so she caused more unnecessary deaths and suffering for a great many people. So you see Miss Sorelli, your sponsor has much blood on her hands.”

  “So that’s it, that’s what all this is about?” Mia waved a heavy arm around the control room. “An eye for an eye?”

  “That, and the return of control of Mars to Earth.”

  “Ah… so there it is. Power and control, the favorite pastimes of the despot.”

  Kane spun around. “There are a great many on Earth who see things differently. Mars was stolen from us by Malbec and her cohort of clones. A great prize lost, the gateway to the riches of the asteroid belt. How much of human history is peppered with the rise and fall of the great city states, those whose power and wealth was gained by virtue of their geographical position on some lucrative trading route? Mars is no different, and Earth will soon regain control. When the terraforming event is triggered in a few minutes time, a deadly bio-toxin will be released into the environment of Jezero City, and everyone there will die. No more citizens. And with no citizens there can be no state, so control returns to the UN.”