Colony Three Mars (Colony Mars Book 3)

by Gerald M. Kilby

  When they had finally divested themselves of their EVA suits, Nills was introduced to Chuck Goldswater and lastly to Dr. Jane Foster.

  “I suppose you want me to see the patient straight away?” she said.

  “That would be great. Follow me, this way.” Nills led her across the common room, through the connecting tunnel and into the medlab. He gestured in the direction of the bed. Lying there was Dr. Jann Malbec, her life charted out in waves and graphs on a myriad of different monitors. All about her body, a profusion of tubes and wires sprouted. Her chest rose and fell in a steady rhythm.

  After the explosion in the soil processing cave, they had found her barely alive and with severe brain damage. With the help of Dr. Foster’s advice they put her into a coma, and she had been in it ever since.

  The AsterX doctor now checked the stats on the monitors, then started on a series of seemingly simple tests: shining a light to check pupil dilation, running a pen along the sole of the foot. After a while she stepped back and looked at Nills.

  “I’ll be straight with you. It’s unlikely she’ll ever come out of it. Her brain is too badly damaged, I’m sorry, but there’s nothing anyone can do for her now.”

  23

  While You Were Asleep

  Sounds and shadows drifted in and out of Jann’s subconscious. Tendrils of reality coalescing into fragments of cognition. Bubbles of coherence percolated in her brain as it tried to reassemble its shattered matrix. At first these inputs were lost along damaged pathways, fizzling out at dead-ends, extinguished by misfiring synapses. But as time progressed fragmented connections reestablished themselves, laid down new conduit and reformed their structures. Yet, in the confused carnage that was Jann Malbec’s brain tissue, alternative undamaged areas had stepped up to the plate to provide interpretation and analysis of exterior stimuli.

  Even with all this cellular and synaptic reconstruction going on inside her cranium it took a long time before she had what most people would consider a thought. It came after her receptor infrastructure gained sufficient bandwidth to process incoming data and assign it labels: sound, light, heat. It was these inbound stimuli that she was first aware of. And, as time passed, she began to make some sense of them, voices, shadows, movements.

  So it was that three months and twenty-seven sols after the explosion in the soil processing cave, Dr. Jann Malbec opened her eyes and looked up at the world.

  Over the next few sols Jann opened her eyes more and more. Each time, her understanding of what she was experiencing deepened. Across her field of vision shapes moved, blurred and indistinct. Sounds. Were they voices? Saying what? Finally, after around a week, she recognized a shape. It was a face, it was Nills, and the face said, “Jann, can you hear me?”

  She tried to reply, but her brain had difficulty in establishing the correct procedure. So she simply blinked.

  “I think she’s come back to us,” the voice said.

  Jann’s mind swam in a sea of dissonance, sometimes ethereal and dreamlike, sometimes reconnecting with the exterior world. At its most focused she could respond, just a word or two at first, yes, no. These lucid moments became more frequent, and over time she began to reconnect with reality. It was during this latter period that she began to have questions, lots of questions about why she and Gizmo were in the soil processing cave. These thoughts grew, with ever increasing urgency in her mind until her eyes snapped open. For the first time in what felt like an eternity, she felt truly awake and hyper-aware, like all the switches in her brain flicked on—all at once.

  It was morning. She wasn’t sure how she knew this, but somehow she did. Jann instinctively tried to sit up in bed. Her body felt like clay and she was not certain of the position or location of her limbs. Her extremities seemed slow to respond to the signals her brain was sending. There was an urgency welling up inside her, forcing her body to respond. She swiveled her torso and slid her legs over the side of the bed. Then with one herculean effort, she slapped her feet on the floor.

  Dr. Foster came rushing in, followed by Nills, then Anika. How did they know she was awake and moving?

  “Holy crap, she’s moving.” Dr. Foster stopped dead in her tracks before rushing over to her again when she realized Jann was trying to stand.

  “Jann, wait up, you need to take it slow.” Dr. Foster grabbed her under one arm. “Nills, grab her other arm, will you? Help her back up on the bed.”

  Jann tried to fight them off. “I need to… stop them.”

  “Stop who. Jann?” Dr. Foster’s voice was soft and patient, like a parent putting a child back to bed after a nightmare.

  “VanHoff… Xaing Zu. I need to stop them, they can’t leave, it would be disastrous.”

  “It’s okay, Jann.” Nills rowed in with the platitudes.

  Jann stopped and looked at the doctor. “Who are you?”

  “That’s Doctor Foster. One of the AsterX crew. She’s here to help you.”

  “AsterX… but?” Jann’s question trailed off and her obvious confused state allowed Nills and Foster a window of opportunity to get her back in the bed. Finally she looked across at Nills. “What the hell is going on?”

  Nills shifted and looked down at the floor, he began to scratch his chin.

  “Tell me.”

  “Okay. What’s the last thing you remember?”

  Jann thought about this. Vague, fragmentary memories drifted up from deep within her subconscious, or were they dreams? “The soil processing cave… with Gizmo… and… and…” She shook her head slightly, trying to give shape to some deeper fragments. “VanHoff… and the others, they were leaving… I… I can’t remember anything more.” Her shoulders slumped. The strain of remembering extracting a physical toll.

  Nills looked over at the doctor and Anika for a moment and then back at Jann. “You’ve been in a coma for over four months.”

  Jann remained silent as shock began to register on her face.

  “There was an explosion in the cave. You were very badly injured, barely alive.”

  “Your recovery is remarkable. Under normal circumstances someone with your brain injury would be… well, a vegetable. It’s extraordinary that you’re sitting up talking to us.” Dr. Foster circled the bed as she spoke.

  “What happened to VanHoff… and Jing Tzu?”

  Nills looked down again and gave a deep sigh. “I’m not sure if you’re ready to hear all this.”

  “Tell me. What happened?”

  Nills sighed again. Then sat down on a chair and started.

  “What I’m going to tell you are only some of the events, as they were explained to me. When the explosion took place in the cave, I was still unconscious on that very bed that you’re in now. It was a few sols later that I finally came around. So I tell you some of this third-hand.”

  He sat forward in the seat. “It was the Chinese robot, Yutu, that detonated. It had a self-destruct mode, I believe. Gizmo. I’m afraid… was destroyed.”

  “Gizmo? No!” Jann was visibly shocked, as if she had taken a punch to the gut.

  “Yes, I’m afraid so. Fortunately the cave contained the force of the blast and retained its integrity. You were found near the airlocks. Your body was smashed to a pulp. Broken bones, damage to internal organs, and severe brain damage.” Nills shook his head a few times. “I honestly thought there was nothing left of you to put back together. But… well, here you are.” He gestured to her with open hands.

  “VanHoff and the remains of the Xaing Zu crew both took off from the planet within a few hours of each other. COM evacuated their people from Colony Two, but the rest of their respective crews were stranded here.”

  “Did they get back to Earth?”

  “Yes, I’m getting to that. Anyway, we sorted out the mess, purged the colony environment of the bacteria and brought the infected back to reality. But we almost had to abandon this place.” He waved an arm around. “Too much damage to sustain a full environment. So we moved most people over to Colony Two. The stran
ded COM crew are over there. We kept the stranded Chinese here. One was a biologist, so we thought he might help with putting you back together, Jann.”

  “Was Earth alerted to what went on, I mean, did they know what COM and Xaing Zu were bringing back with them?”

  “Oh, yes, yes. We were in constant communication with them. They knew all right.”

  “And?”

  Nills scratched his chin again and sneaked a glance at the others. They were staying silent, preferring to let Nills break the news. “Well COM were first to return. You have to understand that VanHoff and the crew were the first humans ever to have traveled to Mars and returned. There was a media shit storm. On top of that, rumors began to spread that he had returned with the secret to immortality, you know how these things get blown out of proportion.”

  “But the Janus bacteria, they did purge the spacecraft environment before they landed?”

  “Yes, but…”

  “Don’t tell me it got out?”

  Nills said nothing, just looked over at Jann. “It got out.”

  It was Jann’s turn to be silent and the realization sunk in.

  “They think it was the rover. Its internal environment was not part of the COM craft’s main systems. So they simply overlooked it. And that’s where they think it started.”

  “What’s the situation now?”

  “Not good.”

  “Not good?”

  “At first they had a strict quarantine in place, but… I don’t know, someone opened something they shouldn’t have. I don’t know all the details because they tried to hush it up at first, not cause a panic. But after a few weeks it was infecting the local population around Cape Canaveral.”

  “No.” Jann put her head in her hands and began to rock back and forth. “No, no, no.”

  “I think maybe that’s enough for the moment, Nills.” Dr. Foster was getting concerned. “Let me give you something to help you rest.”

  Jann jabbed an index finger in the doctor’s direction. “Don’t even think about it. I’ve been out of it for too long.”

  Nills stood up. “It’s okay. She needs to hear this.”

  The doctor backed down with a shrug of her shoulders.

  “What about the Chinese? Were they okay?”

  Nills sat down again, this time on the edge of the bed beside her. “No, they didn’t escape either.” He shook his head again. “I’m not sure of the full story there. They’re very secretive. But again a week or so after they landed people started to go crazy.”

  “Jesus Christ, this is a mess. What have I done, Nills, what have I done?”

  “It wasn’t you that created this thing, Jann.”

  “But it was me that released it.”

  “Well, I for one, am damn glad you did, otherwise I would still be a lab rat… at best. At worst I’d be dead. So don’t beat yourself up over it. How many times have you tried to stop them?”

  Jann rubbed her face with the back of her hand. “They just wouldn’t stop, would they? Not until they screwed everything up.” She shook her head and looked up at Nills. “So what’s the situation now? Did they get it under control?”

  “Eh… no. Not as such.”

  “What… tell me, what?”

  “They knew how to kill it, you know, saturated oxygen at low pressure. That may be easy to do up here, inside a sealed environment. But on Earth… not so easy. No sooner had they brought the infected in and cured them, they would get reinfected as soon as they went outside. It’s in the open… can’t stop it. All they can do is slow the spread. But eventually it will be everywhere.”

  “How long?”

  “The World Health Organization just sent us their latest report.” Dr. Foster finally had something to add. “The current infection sites are localized to the area around Florida in the US and Wenchang in southern China. But new outbreaks are happening in Europe, Russia and South America. These outbreaks will start to rise exponentially over time. They estimate the entire planet will be infected within six to eight months.”

  Jann looked at her and shook her head again. “Why did you leave me in this state for so long?”

  “We had no choice. We had to get the brain swelling down, and that meant induced coma.”

  “But for so long…”

  “Your physiology is… unusual. I’m not an anesthesiologist, I had to be sure you would get the best chance of healing before taking you out of it. My duty is to the patient.”

  “You should have done it sooner. Earth would not be in the dire situation that’s unfolding now.”

  “Well, I don’t see how that would have changed anything.”

  Jann looked over at her. “Using a saturated oxygen medium is one way to expunge the bacteria from the environment—but there’s another way to kill it.”

  There was silence for a moment as they digested this new information.

  “Another way?”

  “Yes, Nills. What do you think I’ve been working on, holed up in my secret lab? I’ve been studying it, testing, probing. But mostly trying to find a way to control it. Ultimately I stumbled on another way to kill it without killing the patient in the process.”

  “We need to get this information back to Earth. This is great news.” Dr. Foster was now visibly animated. “I need to tell the others.” And she ran out of the medlab.

  Nills sat on the edge of the bed and a craggy smile broke across his face. “I can’t believe you’re back—just like that. You are an extraordinary human, Jann.” He reached in and gave her a hug. “You really don’t give up, do you?”

  Jann sighed. “It’s this cursed bacteria, Nills. It’s defined me. The life that I had has been wrenched from me because of it. It mutated my biology and gave me… superpowers, I suppose. But look what it’s taken from me—from you, and all who live up here. Trapped us all in a never ending cycle of fear and conflict.”

  “It’s gone from here now. We purged the colony. It doesn’t exist anymore. Unless you have another secret stash somewhere.”

  “No, I don’t. No more experimenting. We need to make sure it’s gone from here forever. But even with that, we’re back to where we started. COM and Xaing Zu may be gone, but there will be others. Don’t you see, nothing changes?”

  Nills shoulders slumped a bit. “That’s a very pessimistic view, Jann.”

  “It’s the truth, Nills.” She reached and placed a weak hand on his arm. “You know it is.”

  Nills lowered his head a little. “They’re not all like that. AsterX aren’t interested in… genetics.”

  Jann sighed, “Oh Nills, you may be a technical genius, but you can be very naive sometimes. You trust people too much.”

  “Perhaps you’re right, but then again, you can be a bit paranoid. No offense.”

  Jann laughed. “Yeah, but it’s hard not to be when everyone is trying to kill you.”

  “Well they haven’t managed to do that just yet, and the good news is you know how to kill this thing. Looks like you get to save the world—again.”

  “Maybe.”

  “What do you mean maybe?”

  “I’m still… confused.” She shifted in the bed, trying to move. “My body feels like lead.”

  “But you’re cognizant… it’s amazing.”

  “Yes, yes, a bit disoriented, that’s all. Listen, Nills, before I do or say anything, we need a council meeting. And before that you need to tell me everything that’s happened.”

  24

  Pandemic

  Nills wasted no time in bringing Jann up to speed on all that had happened, not just in the colony but also on the spread of the bacteria back on Earth. It was during his enthusiastic explanation of the intricacies of the asteroid mining exploits of AsterX that Jann began to lose focus. She was finding it increasingly difficult to keep track of the information. Perhaps it was merely a symptom of the dry subject matter, or more likely a manifestation of her own physical frailty. She could only keep her concentration for a relatively short period of
time before losing track. She needed to rest. So Nills left her in peace, with strict instructions from Dr. Foster not to let anyone disturb her.

  Now that Jann was left to her own thoughts she slowly began to realize that, ultimately, she had failed. All her efforts to protect Earth, her home, from the ravages of the Janus bacteria had come to nothing. It was now raging across the planet, doing exactly as she had predicted. Sending the people into panic. It was not just that it would turn one third of the population into homicidal psychotics, they in turn would probably kill at least another third. Whoever survived this holocaust would be living in a world devoid of utilities as industry and institutions ground to a halt. Law and order would break down for a while before any sort of equilibrium was reached—if at all.

  But Nills was right. She didn’t create this thing. This was the product of humanity playing god, of technology without bounds. And what were the colonists but guinea pigs for their creators’ experiments? They had been used and grossly abused. Goddammit, she shouldn't even be here. If it wasn’t for McAllister getting sick, well… she would be sitting happily back on Earth instead of trying to fight for the right of a handful of humans, on a far off planet, to live in peace.

  She thought of home, of her father’s farm. How she longed to walk the hills again, in the fresh clean air, with no need for EVA suits and life support. All the things the Earthlings took for granted. They didn’t know how good they had it, always wanting to go one step beyond. How she would love to swim in a lake again, like when she was a kid. Those were happier times. How she missed them, the simple things: air, water, grass—and family. All gone now, no one left but her. Her father’s ashes sat in an urn on some dusty shelf in the Green Mountain Crematorium, the funeral directors in the local town. She knew the son, Freddy Turlock, she went to college with him. I wonder if he’s still there, in the family business, or has he moved on, like me? She laughed to herself at the thought of meeting him. So what have you been up to, Jann?