“What are we going to do now?” he said, more to himself than to Marshall.
With a grunt, the pilot bent down beside him and pointed to the west.
“The base is back that way. I figure we’ve got maybe four or five hours until the sun goes down, at which point we’re screwed. These are just spare Survival Packs, not meant for nighttime use. If we get stuck out here, we’ll freeze. We have to walk back before it gets dark and we can’t see.”
Remembering his dream, and how he had been blind in the darkness until the Martian workers had come along with their strange light poles, Harrison gazed up at the pink sun above. Even though millions of years had passed, it was the same sun that shone down on the dream world of ancient Mars, existing somewhere in a construct of seamless digitally resurrected reality.
“I was there again, Ralph,” he said absently, his mind slurred with fatigue and drugs. “Back in ancient Mars. In the caves.”
Marshall’s cracked blue visor stared back.
“I saw Braun. He’s alive just like the twins.”
“Come on,” the pilot said, standing up. “Help me look for anything useful. We’re leaving in ten minutes.”
“Didn’t you hear me?” Harrison protested. “I said I saw Braun, man. He’s there too.”
“I heard you, buddy,” sighed Marshall. “But right now, I don’t give two shits if Braun is here, in ancient Mars or in Cabo San Lucas. We need to stay alive long enough to prove all of that. You get me?”
Reluctantly, Harrison got to his feet, the stupor of depression barely held at bay by the thinning walls of his will to live. Wishing for an instant that he didn’t have to go through whatever trials lay ahead, he envied the dead. He was tired: both physically and mentally. Mars was wearing him down, beating him into dust like it had with the ancient Martians. However, just when his foul mood seemed most amplified by the bleakness of their situation, he saw the defibrillator Marshall had used to save his life lying in the sand. Before he could stop himself, he wrapped his friend in a tight embrace and held onto him for several moments.
“Thanks for saving my life again,” he said.
“You kidding me?” Marshall laughed. “This fucking planet has it out for us. We have to stick together, you and me.”
Chapter Twenty-One
The new plan
Joseph Aguilar rubbed his gloved hands together. Numbness, brought on by switching out his broken Survival Pack for one of the drug-laced backups, had begun to spread from his fingertips to his palms. Though he was concerned in a detached sort of way, he knew that if Julian’s plan worked, numb or not he could fly the Lander.
“Okay, I’m almost to the airlock,” crackled Julian’s voice in his new earpiece.
Swiveling his head around, Aguilar searched for his helmet in a sea of floating debris. Objects as small as screws and as big as access panels cluttered the air of the cockpit, betraying the hasty and feverish way in which he had attacked the Flight Console, looking for the source of its malfunction.
Realizing with a dull sense of frustration that he was already wearing his helmet, Aguilar slipped out of the cockpit. Careful not to bring any of the screws or other disassembled parts with him, he closed a partition that separated the cockpit from the rest of the cabin and went to the hatch. Victims of the fried Optimizer, many of the lights within the cabin were out, casting the space into dim shadows that softened around the edges.
“Alright, Julian,” Aguilar said into his mic. “I’m opening the hatch.”
Lifting up on the lock, he pushed the door out and squinted as the distant-yet-undiluted sun struck his eyes like a laser pointer. Though his senses were dulled to the agony of the Pulse, an aversion to bright light still managed to work its way through the protective blanket of painkillers. Across the gap of some nine meters, the airlock on the Chinese Ark opened and a yellow pressure-suited figure emerged from within.
“Cool threads,” Aguilar chuckled.
“Thanks,” radioed Julian flatly.
Reaching from the safety of the airlock, Julian’s yellow-gloved hand clipped the black bag he’d worn over, to the cable that connected the two ships.
“Okay,” he said in a tired voice. “Here’s the new plan: you repair the Lander, I rig the ship.”
“You sure?” frowned Aguilar. “That’s a lot of work for just one person. I could come help you then we could get the Lander up and running together.”
“There isn’t enough time for that.”
Nodding inside his helmet, Aguilar searched his hazy mind for the fear he knew he should be experiencing.
“Ready?” Julian asked. “You better catch this. There’s only one Flight Console here and I don’t have the time to go tearing into their Landers for more parts. No second chances, okay?”
“I read you,” Aguilar said, focusing on the black bag as it dangled from the cable.
Placing his hand behind the thing, Julian gave the bag a strong push and sent it sailing across the abyss.
Arms outreached, Aguilar caught the sack and felt himself pressed backwards from its minor mass and velocity. Unclipping it from the cable, he opened it and gazed at the pilfered parts inside.
“By my watch,” Julian radioed. “We have just a little less than four hours until we reach Mars atmo.”
“That’s not much time,” Aguilar replied, an edge of something like concern working its way slowly through his mind.
“You’re telling me. Just have the Lander up and running when I’m done so we can get the hell out of here.”
“You got it.”
Turning, Julian threw one last wave in Aguilar’s direction before closing the Ark’s airlock and disappearing again into its bowels.
Bag in hand, Aguilar swung the Lander’s hatch shut then locked it firmly. Pulling the partition open, he drew in a slow breath and frowned at all of the floating wires and parts. With a conscious effort, he tried to hold on to the sense of urgency he had felt a moment ago, knowing that its presence would only help him work faster.
Onboard the Chinese Ark, Julian chafed inside his new pressure suit. Not only was its color the most unflattering shade of mustard yellow, but the thing was too tight in all the wrong places.
Drifting quickly through the maintenance tunnels back up towards the Crew Deck, he envied the unconcerned—almost loopy—quality of Aguilar’s tone. His own body was still in a state of utter rebellion: aches and pains alien to his normal gripes assaulting him at every movement. As if all the lubrication in his joints had been sucked out through a straw, the mere action of reaching for something felt like bone grinding on bone.
At the hatch that bypassed the radiation wall, Julian pulled himself up to the next level then headed for a storage room he had passed on his way down. On the opposite side of the ship from the life-support stations, this room contained the weapons and explosives. Cast in an ominous red light, rows of newly minted assault rifles lined the walls and large bins full of ammo comprised most of the floor.
Entering into the room, Julian frowned at the guns and made a mental note to stop pitying the dead soldiers above him in the Crew Deck. With his memory of the ship’s blueprints as a guide, he soon located the box that contained the explosives. Loading up a mesh duffle sack with as much as he figured he would need, Julian then found the blasting caps and a wireless remote detonator.
Cargo in tow behind him, he navigated up two more levels until he reached the first place Donovan’s instructions had said to place explosives. Though never formally trained in munitions, Julian knew his way around dangerous combustible materials. After all, he had been the one to design a ship whose primary source of launch speed came from detonating a nuclear bomb within its engine.
Figuring that each set of explosives would take him between ten and fifteen minutes to prime, Julian felt relatively good about their chances of survival. However, carefully stored away in the back of his mind, as he secured the first explosive charge to the wall, was the reality that rigging the Ar
k was supposed to be a two-man job. Without Aguilar there to do his share of the work, Julian's timeline was a little less fixed than he would like.
Each explosive charge had to be carefully arranged along weak points in the structure of the hull, yet some of those points were obstructed by bulkheads, rooms, or even divided between two levels. Far from being a matter of just slapping the plastic explosive to the hull and jamming a blasting cap into it, each little bomb needed to be linked via a Wireless Time-Delay Ignition Switch so that they exploded in a precise order. If it were to look like an accident, the Chinese Ark would need to break apart in a kind of controlled chaos, the weak points of the hull buckling and separating in just the right fashion.
Finally finished with the first charge, Julian floated back a bit and admired his work. The soft grey mass of C4 stuck to the wall of the ship like gum on the bottom of a shoe. From the center, two sections of red-and-black wire connected a blasting cap to the small digital face of a Time-Delay Ignition Switch.
Checking his watch, Julian’s thin smile fell and he let out a woeful sigh. The charge had taken him eighteen minutes to rig. He would need to work faster.
Desert
As swirling tendrils of sand wound upwards into a darkening Martian sky, two pressure-suited figures trudged across the top of a tall plane. Far ahead of them, the flat expanse of semi-exposed rock dead-ended at the horizon. It gave the impression that when one reached the edge of the plateau, he would have reached the end of the world. However ominous the sight was, both Harrison and Marshall knew that in reality it was just an optical illusion brought on by Mars’s diminished size.
Leaning his head in closely to be heard through the thin air, Marshall touched Harrison’s arm to get his attention.
“If we keep moving along this plateau, we should eventually see a canyon about eight-to-ten kilometers long. By following that, we’ll be able to spot the Base before nightfall.”
“I remember it,” Harrison nodded. “I always thought it looked like a lightning bolt from above.”
“Yeah, it does.”
Falling silent, Harrison let his eyes scan over the hazy panorama of the landscape.
Below in the valley, diffused late afternoon light washed over the stones and ancient riverbeds, filling the empty spaces with shades of grey and brown.
Surprised by how high up they were, Harrison couldn’t help but wonder if this fact had played a hand in their survival. Not realizing before that the Lander hadn’t actually fallen all the way to the desert floor, but rather skidded to a stop atop a high plateau, he doubted if they would have lived had the little craft missed the plane and fallen the rest of the way to the ground.
Turning his attention to Marshall, Harrison dimly fretted about the state of the pilot’s pressure suit. Long cuts and gouges had been filled in with pressure foam, creating scabs over the wounds, but still the sight of so many abrasions concerned him.
Either unaware or uncaring, Marshall appeared more fixated on getting back to the Dome before nightfall than on the condition of his suit.
They walked on quietly, neither speaking as their boots squished into the powdery sand. Finally, after what seemed like a very long time, they reached the edge of the plateau and stared out across the curving expanse of desert before them.
Off in the distance, just before the purple horizon swallowed the land, the tip of a deep canyon cracked the otherwise-smooth facade of the desert.
Careful to pick the least treacherous path down the sloping side of the plane, Marshall went first, pointing out loose rocks and other death traps as they made their way.
Stopping to catch his breath halfway down, Harrison leaned his back against an oblong chunk of rock that stuck up from the steep side of the plateau’s hill like a tooth.
As if following them, a cruel wind lashed up cyclones of sand and grit, which peppered their suits and helmets.
In the growing static, Marshall stopped as well and rested his boot on the hard surface of a car-sized boulder. Suddenly, without warning, the rock slipped. Scrambling to regain his teetering balance, Marshall cursed and threw out his hands, grabbing at another huge stone nearby. With the cruelty of fate and bad luck, it came free as well.
Before Harrison could even blink, Marshall was tumbling down the steep hill, the two enormous dislodged boulders rolling after him like charging rhinos.
Ignoring every warning in his brain, he raced off after his friend, thick clouds of dust jetting into the flurried air in the wake of the rolling stones. Heart skipping a beat, he felt his boot catch on something and within seconds he too was clattering, end over end, down the side of the plateau.
With a hard thud, Marshall sprawled on the flat ground of the desert floor and rolled to the side instinctively. Passing by him within a few centimeters, the first of the tumbling stones thundered off into the soft sand and came to a halt. On his feet in seconds, Marshall turned, saw the second rock bearing down on him and dove out of its path, feeling the gravity of the thing as it crashed by.
Pulling himself up again, he caught a glimpse of white and blue as it somersaulted over him in a tangle of arms and legs.
Dust thick in the air, Marshall found Harrison on his back a meter from where he himself had landed. To his relief, the young man’s chest was rising and falling in steady rhythm.
Twice is two times too many, thought the pilot warily. I won’t be able to take it if he dies again.
Pulling Harrison to his feet, Marshall felt a strange pop in his side.
“You okay?” he said loudly, ignoring the growing cramp in his ribs.
Quickly patting himself all over, Harrison seemed satisfied and shrugged.
“Yeah, I think I’m alright.”
Doing the same, Marshall ran his hands over his arms, legs, stomach, and chest feeling for any sharp pains. There were many—mostly on the left side of his chest.
“Me too,” he lied.
Face hidden behind the cracked blue shield of his visor, the Lander pilot spat and saw red droplets of blood freckle the glass.
Great, he frowned. Busted ribs and maybe more. This day just gets better and better.
Lock and Key
Julian Thomas blinked sweat out of his eyes as he finished rigging his third-to-last explosive charge. Fingers shaking ever so slightly, he fed the exposed wire of a blasting cap into the plastic explosive, holding his breath as he did so.
Per Donovan’s instructions, most of the charges had been placed in a two-story-tall section of the ship, between the radiation shield and the Crew Deck. The feeling Julian was getting was that the Chinese Ark had been built in pieces then later assembled, thus leaving weak points mostly all clustered in one area. Unlike Braun, who had been built from the frame out, the Chinese had not possessed the time or money needed for such an undertaking and instead opted for an effective-yet-dangerous construction style.
Satisfied with his work, Julian shoved off from the wall and began tracing his path along the outer passageway. Glancing at the timecode on his wrist Tablet, he felt a small smile turn the corners of his mouth up. With the last two explosives needing to be placed only five meters away from each other and in the same section of the hull, he realized that he might actually make his deadline.
Rounding the curve of the tunnel and beginning an upward slope, he counted bulkheads until he was in the area where the last charges were to be placed. To his utter frustration, Julian saw that the final leg of his tiresome task was not going to be as easy as he had previously thought.
Instead of the bare and exposed wall he had been hoping for, there was a large room with a shuttered metal door. This was not totally abnormal, as several of the explosives he’d already set were rigged to the walls within certain storage or relay rooms. As was the case now, those charges had required Julian to gain access to the rooms before he could correctly attach them to the hull. However, those doors had all been alike. This door was different. This door was locked.
Lowering himself to t
he level of the handle, Julian tried to turn it. With a pinched expression on his face, he looked around for whatever was keeping the thing from opening. Noticing a small port a few centimeters above the frozen handle, his heart sank despite the zero gravity.
Cylindrical and complicated looking, the door had a mechanical lock, something not common in this day and age. Closing his eyes, he tried to recall if he had seen a key hanging weightlessly around the necks of any of the dead soldiers above. He couldn’t remember.
Why is this door locked? he screamed silently.
Pushing back from it a bit, he looked up at the lettering that stitched itself across the face of the entrance. Though his Chinese was beyond rusty, he was still very able to make out the Mandarin words for Mission Intelligence Launch Bay.
The launch pods, he realized. They locked the MI Launch Bay to keep it safe! They knew this might happen so they locked them in with a key!
Calculating the time it would take him to search every Extended-Sleep Chamber in the Crew Deck, Julian swore loudly.
“You alright?” came Aguilar’s voice in his ear.
“Yeah, I’m fine. How is the Lander coming along?”
“Good. I’ve put in most of the spare parts you sent over. Half of our dashboard is lit up like a Christmas tree. It’s fucking beautiful, man!”
“That’s good,” Julian said absently, already making up his mind about what he must do. “Just keep me updated on your progress.”
“Same to you, how many charges do you have left?”
“Two.”
“Well alright, man. It looks like we might just survive this ordeal after all!”
Slipping along the curved wall, Julian made for an access hatch and dropped down through it into a lower level.
“Live or die, today was a wild ride,” the Frenchman said as he headed for the airlock.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Drowning in blood
As the sun dipped impartially behind the jagged hills that cut the Martian horizon, Ralph Marshall labored to breathe. Thankful that Harrison could not hear his sucking wet gasps, the Lander pilot gulped at the air inside his helmet.
The Ruins of Mars: Waking Titan (The Ruins of Mars Trilogy) Page 24
