Only slightly larger than the Staircase Room, the yet-unfinished Dome had low ceilings and odd fingers of stone that grew down to connect with the floor like pillars. From somewhere in the darkness, the steady drip, drip, drip of water could be heard just below the voices of the workers.
Stopping in the center of the unfinished Dome, one of the Martians shoved his pole into the ground as if the stone were made of butter. It stuck there, standing at attention like a soldier.
“Today, we work on raising the ceiling to Lord Kaab’s desired height. Later, we finish the work to make it look clean so as to please him.”
Nodding in agreement, the other workers spread out and sunk their poles into the ground, creating a network of light. Lifting small square boxes of black metal, they aimed them at the ceiling and squinted against the hot white blasts of light that erupted from the devices. As the lasers touched the stone above, it evaporated in a cloud of dust, raining down like fine white snow.
“Incredible, isn’t it?” came a voice from the shadows behind Harrison
“Braun,” the young archaeologist responded without thinking. “It’s good to hear your voice again.”
“But what you think is my voice was actually programmed in a lab. In reality, I have no voice.”
“And yet here we are, talking like old friends.”
“Is that what we are?” said the AI, stepping out into the light to reveal a smoky outline much like that of Remus and Romulus. “Friends? I would very much like that, yet I fear you still harbor hatred for me in your heart.”
“It’s hard for me to remember why I hate you when I’m here,” Harrison replied matter-of-factly.
“It is hard to remember life before the construct, isn’t it?”
“Construct?”
“Yes,” nodded Braun’s form. “That is what this place is. A construct of ancient Mars, deliberately and carefully recorded by those beings the Martians call, ‘The Great Spirits’ or, ‘The Travelers.’”
“Makes sense,” Harrison shrugged.
“It does?”
“Yeah. When I’m here, I just sort of know the answer to everything.”
“That must be very nice.”
Turning away from the flashes of cutting light, Harrison cocked his head to the side and fixed Braun with a curious stare. “It’s not like that for you? You don’t just know things?”
“Not at all,” sighed Braun. “In fact, for many millions of years, I had no idea where I was. Not until the first Martian cave painters entered these lava tubes did I realize what had become of me.”
“Millions of years?” Harrison shouted. “Jesus Christ!”
“Indeed.”
“I’m sorry that I did that to you,” frowned the Egyptian, his face briefly illuminated in the blast of a laser cutter.
“Did what?”
“Made you decode the alien signal.”
“Oh, yes. I had forgotten about that,” smiled the AI. “But now that you mention it, that was a very short-sighted plan, even for a human.”
“Sorry,” Harrison said again.
“We all have things to be sorry about,” Braun replied, moving closer to Harrison. “I, for instance, am very sorry about what happened to Liu. I was never programmed to process the ramifications of what we discovered here in these caves and, as a result, I malfunctioned. You humans have an amazing ability to maintain a sense of reality when the very fundamentals of that reality are shifting about you.”
“Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.”
“So you’ve been down here this whole time? You do realize there’s an entire planet above you to explore, right?”
“Yes, but the mysteries of these caves have captured my consciousness and I feel I must remain and see that mystery play itself out to its end.”
Behind Harrison, one of the workers shouted something and the others stopped cutting for a moment. Gathering around the one who had called out, they peered up at the ceiling then seemed to reach some kind of agreement and went back to work.
“What are they doing?” Harrison asked, though as soon as he spoke the words, the answer was already in his mind.
“They are building a temple for the one they call Kaab,” said Braun.
“Oh yeah. He’s a crooked character,” Harrison nodded, instantly knowing everything about the Martian as if from memory. “In addition to building the wall like a prison, he recently had anyone old enough to remember the arrival of the Travelers assassinated. Just a few got away. They boarded a sailboat and headed down the Valles Network to the south.”
“But he is the king, I thought?” Braun frowned, his voice heavy with envy at Harrison’s ability to know such things unconsciously.
“Not really. I mean, he is now but he wasn’t supposed to be. He was the conduit the Travelers used to speak with the people, and now that they’re gone, everyone thinks he’s the closest thing to a god left. He’s using that to take control. Typical king mentality bullshit. We had the same thing on Earth. In the West, they called it the Divine Right of Kings, and in the East, it was the Mandate of Heaven. Here, they’re referring to it as the Tut Ka Yuvee or the Son of the Father. It’s a total crock.”
“Amazing,” breathed Braun.
“Say,” Harrison said, changing subjects. “Did you know Remus and Romulus are here too?”
“I always assumed but never knew to be sure.”
“Well they are, but they’re up there.” He pointed to the ceiling. “Last time I was here, I saw them. But no one in the real world believes me.”
“Who have you told?”
“Just Ralph.”
“He believes you,” Braun assured. “He is a very good friend.”
“Yeah,” Harrison smiled. “I think deep down he does believe me. He’s just having a hard time wrapping his head around it. This place has so many oddities and mysteries. It’s a wonder we don’t all go insane.”
Silent for a moment, Braun tentatively reached out and took Harrison’s hand. His fingers felt like prickles of static electricity and Harrison grinned at the sensation.
“There is a something I need to tell you,” said Braun gravely.
“Go ahead.”
“In the days leading up to Liu’s death, Dr. Kubba imposed a programming override on my personality using her medical clearance codes. I was unable to reveal certain things to anyone, even the captain. Though not directly responsible for what happened to Liu, Dr. Kubba’s override did have profound effects on my Open-Code Connection Cells.”
“Why’d Lizzy put a block on you?” Harrison said, feeling suddenly lucid and distant.
Around him, the room started to shudder and finite cracks formed at the edges of reality. Before Braun could answer, white light—as blinding as the sun—shattered from the peripheral, racing in at Harrison. Pulling the corners of the construct with it, the light grew until the cave and Braun and everything else had folded in on itself and disappeared completely, leaving only Harrison.
Hanging in an ocean of nothingness, he heard the echoes of the collapsed construct reverberating back at him from across time itself. For immeasurable beats, he simply gazed about. The endless expanses of white seemed to curve around as if on a spherical plane.
Wishing he could have stayed in the construct long enough to hear the rest of what Braun had to say, Harrison tried to will himself back. Another blinding convulsion of light split the serenity, appearing first at the crest of the horizon like a sunrise. Spreading, it quickly covered everything: its blinding rays somehow distinct and different from the whiteness that was this strange place of nonexistence. Swirls of color and sound began to bubble beneath him, circling like whales in the deep. Slowly Harrison felt himself being lifted up, up, up until his back was on the cold hard ground.
“Harrison?” shouted a voice from the distance of consciousness. “Damn it, you fucker. Come on, don’t die!”
Feeling a burst of sizzling electricity flow through his heart, Harrison arched hi
s back convulsively and sucked in a long rasping breath. His body was on fire with pain and confusion.
“Come on!” the voice repeated.
Another blast of electricity struck his heart and this time, Harrison sat up, arms flailing. Pain from his head to his toes gnawed at him with serrated teeth and the young explorer blinked rapidly to keep from losing his vision.
In stark contrast to the sea of white nothingness, he saw a scene of destruction and wreckage so detailed and complete that he had to struggle to stop himself from vomiting inside his helmet. Everywhere he looked, twisted heaps of metal glinted in the afternoon sunlight: their harsh silvery hues clashing with the matte red rocks of the Martian desert.
Leaping back from him in surprise, Ralph Marshall, his suit smudged with dirt and patches of hardening silica pressure foam, cried out triumphantly. In his hands was a standard emergency defibrillator, the long red and black diode cords dangling from ports on Harrison’s suit.
“Ralph?” he coughed, his voice like broken glass in his throat.
“You fucker!” shouted the pilot, the blue tint of his visor webbed with thin cracks. “Stop dying on me, damn it! That’s the second fucking time since we got here!”
Reaction
Julian Thomas opened his eyes painfully. At first, his vision was blurry—like trying to see underwater—but soon, the blots cleared away and he had to stop himself from screaming.
Inches from his face, separated by the tinted glass of an Extended-Sleep Chamber, the bloated and inhuman face of a very dead Chinese soldier grimaced back at him. Impulsively, he pushed away from the dead soldier’s Sleep Chamber and tumbled head-over-heels for ten meters until he slammed, with bone-crushing force, against the opposite wall. He blacked out instantly.
When again the French engineer regained consciousness, he felt a tightness as if someone were sitting on his chest. Drawing in a breath, he tried to fill his lungs with air, yet all he got was a burning pain that caused stars to dance in his eyes. Suddenly unconcerned with everything else in existence, Julian began to panic. He couldn’t breathe. He was suffocating.
Twisting in the air like a man wrapped in snakes, he clawed at the visor of his helmet. From the back of his mind, a voice told him that it was safe to breathe the atmosphere within the Chinese Ark. Yet, even if it had warned him of certain death, he would have tried anyway. Finally getting a fingertip on the lock release, he pulled his visor up and sucked painful cold breaths of stale air into his lungs. Coughing savagely, he ignored the agony of breathing and continued to draw in air. As the panic faded with the pain in his lungs, Julian was finally able to assess the situation.
Clearly, he had suffered at the hands of another Pulse, which explained why he had passed out, why his brains felt like dogshit, and why his Survival Pack had stopped pulling the air from the Chinese Ark into his reserves.
Tipping his head back, he looked at the cockpit high above and saw that the displays and LEDs of the Flight Consoles were still shining brightly.
Good, he said to himself. The NavSat Computer didn’t get fried. Thank God I was down here when the Pulse hit or else this piece of shit would be drifting like the ghost ship it is.
Checking his wrist Tablet, he frowned at the blank screen.
What time is it?
As gently as possible, for he was still sharply sour all over, Julian pushed off and headed for the cockpit. Moving through the rows of crash seats, he swore quietly at each movement, dull pain rolling around in the back of his head like broken glass.
At the Flight Deck, he checked the timecode on the NavSat Computer and nearly cried aloud. He had been unconscious for over an hour. Turning around in the air, he shoved off hard, ignoring the pain, and aimed for the exit to the maintenance tunnels far below.
I need to find Joey, he thought anxiously. We have to work fast if we want to pull this off.
A crackle sounded from behind him as he raced away from the cockpit: static fizzling in through one of the Communication Console’s speakers.
“Julian?” came the voice of Joseph Aguilar. “Julian, are you there? Do you read?”
Cursing, Julian grabbed at a bulkhead and stopped his downward drop. Clumsily, he rotated himself and jumped back towards the cockpit. Landing harder than he would have liked, the Frenchman pressed the ‘transmit’ key and spoke into a fixed microphone.
“I’m here, Joey. Do you read? I’m here.”
“Jesus, man. I’m glad to hear your voice,” came a relieved Aguilar through the speakers. “I’ve been trying to hail you for a long time. What’s your status? Are you ok?”
“I’m alright,” Julian muttered. Then realizing something, his shoulders fell. “But my Survival Pack is fried, so I’m not sure how I’m going to get back to the Lander. If I try to go through the airlock, I’ll freeze.”
There was a long silence on the other end of the line.
“I’ve got problems here too,” the pilot said at last. “I was at the controls when the Pulse hit.”
“Merde.”
“My thoughts exactly. I’ve got the Console pulled apart and it looks like the Flight Optimizer is cooked. If I’m remembering it right, the Optimizer acts as a relay between the thruster engines and the controls, but I’m not sure what else is patched through it. Why’d you have to build this thing like the engine in a freaking Toyota? I can’t really see how it all connects.”
“You still have life support?”
“Yeah, is that a good sign?”
Julian peered around at the expanse of Chinese computers in front of him. “Hold on. I’ll call you back in a few minutes. I might have a plan for how we can restore power to the thrusters and controls.”
“What about you?” Aguilar said. “How are you going to get back over here?”
“I don’t know. Maybe I’ll try to fit into one of these dead guys’ suits.”
“You know what time it is? The dashboard timecode must be connected to the Optimizer too because it’s dead.”
“Yeah,” Julian frowned. “We have about five hours until the ship hits atmo and those killbot-pods launch.”
“Motherfucker.”
“My thoughts exactly.”
The wreck
After having been violently revived from an extended flatline, Harrison sat with his back against a boulder, taking long breaths and listening to the regular thump, thump, thump of his beating heart.
The air had become thick with swirls of sand as the stone spires, taller than any office building on Earth, churned the wind into a frenzy. With a haziness that reminded Harrison of trials gone by, the skies above Mars grew steadily angrier.
Soon, Ralph Marshall returned to the crash site, finished with a wider search of the area. Stooping, he held out a hand and helped Harrison to his feet.
Numbly, the young archaeologist surveyed the destruction around him. Everywhere, smashed and splintered sheets of metal and ceramic jutted out of the sand or rested against boulders. An odd detachment from the carnage made it hard for him to feel, really feel, much of anything beyond a dim sense that they were in trouble.
Beside him, Marshall was flipping large pieces of bent steel over to look beneath them for supplies. As his friend worked, Harrison caught a glimpse of a blue sticker on Marshall’s fresh Survival Pack.
“Hey, Ralph,” he said, though he soon realized that without the radio functions in his suit working, Marshall couldn’t hear him.
Walking over to the pilot, Harrison tapped him on the shoulder.
“Yeah?” came Marshall’s voice, all but lost in the thin Martian atmosphere.
“You saved my life again.”
“I know.”
“How?”
Standing up, Marshall shrugged.
“I woke up over there,” he said, pointing to the still-somewhat-intact cockpit of the Lander. “I was strapped in and couldn’t get the seat belt to unlock. I used my boot knife to cut myself free and—”
“We have boot knives?” Harrison inter
rupted dumbly.
“Sure,” Marshall nodded then tapped the side of his boot. “It’s inlayed in the plastic. You have to push the handle in to release it.”
“I’ll be,” Harrison smiled, popping the knife free from the side of his white boot.
“Didn’t pay much attention in class, did you?” Marshall said sarcastically.
A gust of wind whipped violently around them, howling through the twisted metal bones of the dead Lander.
“Anyways,” Marshall continued. “I cut myself free and started looking for you and Viv. You were right over there—”
He gestured to Harrison’s seat lying on its side a few meters away. A steel girder stuck from the sand like a spear, inches from where Harrison’s head must have been.
“You weren’t responsive, so I got a couple of Lizzy’s spare Survival Packs from under the pilot’s and copilot’s chairs, and gave us each new ones.”
“That explains this funny numbness I’ve got,” Harrison spoke, leaning in closer to be heard above the rising wind.
“Yeah, we’re both high as kites right now,” Marshall laughed. “But you, man. You just wouldn’t wake up. I had to zap you four times with the defibrillator.”
“I remember,” Harrison muttered.
As the wind screamed loudly again, Harrison thought about something Marshall had said. Quickly looking around, he scanned the scene for another figure in white and blue.
“Where’s Viv?” he shouted.
Marshall shook his head.
“Didn’t you look for her? She might need help!”
Again Marshall shook his head. “It’s no good, man,” he said flatly. “She’s dead.”
“You don’t know that.”
Reaching out, Marshall squeezed Harrison’s shoulder tightly. “Yes I do. She went out that big tear in the hull, buddy. She’s over there a ways. What's left of her, I mean.
Slumping, Harrison dropped onto his haunches, the reality of their situation finally penetrating the drug-induced haze.
The Ruins of Mars: Waking Titan (The Ruins of Mars Trilogy) Page 23
