The Cronian Incident (The Formist Book 1)

by Matthew Williams

  He couldn’t be sure which was which, but he was quite sure none of them were Mercury. He was glad for that, though the thought also made him sad in a way. As much as he was thankful to not be there, his thoughts drifted to Guernsey and the others.

  Ward wondered what they were up to. Was the Iron Widow making their lives harder because Ward was currently beyond her reach? He was positive Banks would be in a pissy mood about it, and his crew would be sure to rub it in whenever possible. They could always be counted on to be a pain, and to have his back.

  Opening an overlay, Ward tried to access the local network and see if there were any services he might use. Though nowhere near up to the standards of the Survey, it didn’t seem unlikely they had added features in the past decade.

  Establishing a connection, Ward was greeted by a picture of four concentric rings with small circles in a line, orbiting a central ball: the symbol of the Jovian Network. He was forced to wait what seemed like an interminably long time for it to finish connecting him, the icon rotating about, and flipping over and around several times.

  Finally, a menu of options opened.

  General Information.

  Communications.

  Navigation.

  Directory.

  A quick gander at the submenus swiftly revealed it didn’t have what he was looking for. No augmentation or virtual applications to speak of. Only the bare bones, basic information and assistance. A very Spartan network by any civilized standard, leaving their users with plain old reality. Breathing a slight sigh of disappointment, he called up Navigation and plotted out the route of the train.

  A two-dimensional representation of Callisto appeared, before unfolding to take on the appearance of a topographical map. At the upper right corner, the dome of Valhalla was indicated – a small grey and azure dot against the dirty landscape. Extending from this in a northwesterly direction was a red line indicating his route.

  He zoomed in on his destination, the settlement of Asgard – the second largest settlement on Callisto. Like Valhalla, Asgard consisted of a domed structure embracing its ringed structure. Ward didn’t need the map to tell him that much. Nor did he need it to plot the rest of his journey.

  Closing the map, he called up his personal files, which included the itinerary Emile and his associates had prepared.

  0900 train to Asgard

  1130 Private shuttle to Burr facility

  1230 Meet with Doctor Amaru on site

  A very simple and straightforward schedule, and one affording him hardly enough time to grab some food in between. While few places on Callisto were renowned for their haute cuisine, anything and everything tasted better than the re-sequenced protein he had become accustomed to back on the Rock. And a personal ride out to the ice fields would certainly be nicer and more scenic than a crawl along the dark-side surface of Mercury.

  Shutting down the Network’s display menu, he did a quick check on his messages. Nothing from Houte yet, unsurprisingly. He imagined it would be some time before he heard from him. Constance was a talented sprightly thing when unleashed in the realms of digital and quantum information. She was also a temperamental one, doing things in her own time and at her own pace. You didn’t demand she do things, you asked politely and pointed her in the right direction.

  In the meantime, he had to trust once he was face to face with Doctor Amaru, some things might become clearer.

  #

  The man Ward was expecting to meet was standing at the docks, looking rather impatient. He was a squat thing by Jovian standards, barely six feet tall and lumpy around the midriff. His face was grizzled and unkempt and his clothing looked like something he had been wearing for years without a break. Definitely a man who knew his way around an ice-crawler.

  Tucking the takeaway plate of cubed tofu and sprouts into the small of his arm, Ward approached him and raised his other hand in greeting. The man saw him reaching into his pocket and producing a small handheld.

  “Jeremiah Ward?” he asked, reading from the screen.

  “Yeah,” said Ward, swallowing the mouthful he was still chewing. “You’re my ride, huh?”

  “Looks like,” the man said. Ward extended his hand to him to prompt introductions.

  “Carson,” the squat man said simply, ignoring the outstretched hand. He eyed Ward’s satchel and his breakfast plate and looked pleased. “This all you’re packing?”

  Ward dropped the proffered hand back to his side. “This is it. Where’s your crawler?”

  “Bay nineteen, this way.” Carson jabbed a thick thumb over his shoulder. “You need coffee or anything before we go?”

  “No need,” Ward said, raising a placating hand. As pleasant as the thought of some hot, non-Hermian coffee might have been right now, they had a schedule to keep. Besides, his bioimplants were doing an excellent job of regulating his adrenal production, to the point artificial stimulus wasn’t necessary for a change.

  The crawler was precisely where Carson said it would be. Parked at the edge of the platform, sitting within one of the settlement’s many pressure locks. Ward was immediately struck by the appearance of the vehicle. It reminded him of the crawlers used at Prokofiev back on the Rock. Four treads, a wide chassis, a transparent bubble dome at the front. He had seen enough of them hauling maintenance crews to and from the facility, usually from other settlements.

  “Right here,” said Carson, indicating the door on the rear passenger side. There was a loud popping sound as he pulled the door open, the pressure seal disengaging to let the inside atmosphere out. Ward’s nose was hit by a waft of cigarette smoke and engine grease as he stuck his head inside. The repugnant odor almost made him turn back, but he forced himself to push in. The cabin was tight in the rear, expanding out as soon as he reached the bubble dome.

  Four seats were arranged inside. Ward placed his satchel down on the rear passenger one and looked back to Carson, who was crawling in behind him.

  “Where are the pressure suits?” Ward asked. Carson looked at him with momentary surprise.

  “You been in a crawler before?”

  Ward nodded. The man pointed to a locker beside him near the rear door. Opening it, he produced a standard EVA suit, passing it to Ward before fetching another for himself. The suit was bulky and had a fair bit of heft. Once again, Ward was getting flashbacks to the Rock. He was beginning to get a bad feeling about this job. It was his first day, and already there were far too many things about it which were painfully familiar.

  The suit was of standard design, open at the front, allowing him to pull the entire piece on before it began to fasten itself up. As soon as the folds were all secure, Ward placed the helmet on, the fastenings closing tight and sealing in a bubble of air around him. The visor’s HUD became active and the climate control began to pump in more air and heat, equalizing with the crawler’s pressure and adjusting to an ideal temperature.

  The readouts on the visor changed to a steady green the moment they hit the proper values.

  1000 millibars

  295 Kelvin

  The readings became difficult to discern as his own overlay began feeding him another set of readings. The sudden change in pressure had resulted in a status report from his biometrics, letting him know his BP and heart rate had undergone a slight change.

  Ward turned to look at Carson, who appeared less impressed than before. His visor was open, and he mouthed words Ward could not hear. Ward slipped the visor open and asked him to repeat himself.

  “I said, you scared or something?”

  “About breathing vacuum? Admittedly, yes.”

  Carson sneered and pushed his way past Ward, getting into the driver’s seat. Sitting down, he began punching keys on the front console, pausing only long enough to issue a scolding challenge at Ward.

  “Thought you said you’d done this before.”

  Ward cleared his throat. “It might have been a bit bigger.”

  His stammered reply one served to get him another sneer. Ca
rson began to sound like an old hand, lecturing the newcomer about something painfully obvious. “Cabin’s got pressure and heat enough, and it’s sealed tighter than a nun’s ass. No need to seal your helmet unless we get a breach.” An evil grin split the man’s craggy face. “And that hardly ever happens.”

  Ward looked around uneasily at the bubble dome. The statement hardly inspired confidence, though he was sure the man was being facetious.

  “If you’re done standing, you might want to take a seat. We got a bit of a drive.”

  Ward did as he was told. The normal matter making up the seats barely registered through the thick folds of the pressure suit. And he became suddenly aware of the fresh smell of burning tobacco. Carson had lit up as soon as the engine began to purr. There was a slight lurch, and as the crawler pulled away from the platform.

  “Hardly ever, huh?” Ward said over the sound of the whirring engine.

  Carson shrugged, pulling the cigarette from his mouth and letting out a thick exhalation. “Shit happens. Especially when you’re out on the surface.”

  #

  Much like the majority of Callisto’s settlements, Burr was encased in a dome stretching from one crater wall to the other. Within its pressurized walls, there was little infrastructure to speak of. Around the outer ring of the crater wall, several prefabricated shelters had been put up to house temporary workers. But for the most part, the interior space was taken up by the plentiful ice fields.

  Carson brought the crawler in by means of one of the side bay doors, one of many ringing the dome. Except for a single transit line ferrying miners to and from the icefields during rotations – which took place every standard ninety days – all traffic crawled in over the surface. Aside from the miners, the shipments of ice, and the supply trains needed to keep them fed and provided for, there wasn’t much to speak of.

  Parking alongside the platform, Carson shut the crawler’s engine down and placed the vehicle in standby. He looked over his shoulder in the direction of the door, nodding to Ward.

  “This is your stop, pal.”

  “Thanks for the lift. Same time tomorrow?”

  “Same time tomorrow,” Carson confirmed. “Then back to Asgard with you both.”

  “All right. See you then. Be safe out there.” Ward extended his hand. Carson looked oddly at it, before taking it.

  “You too,” Carson said gruffly.

  Ward half turned to grab his satchel, but was interrupted by a last-minute question.

  “What are you doing out here, anyway?”

  Ward looked at him blithely. “I’m sorry?”

  Carson nodded at him, as if the nod explained his sentiments. “Well, you ain’t no miner, and you ain’t no surveyor, that’s for sure. The Martians contract me to bring you out here. And you don’t look like no Formist I ever seen. So why are you here?”

  Ward was unsure how to answer, and he was under no obligation to explain his presence to Carson. But even a cover story seemed like a needless chore right now. Luckily, a thought occurred, one which provided him with a chance to redirect things.

  “You’ve met Doctor Amaru before, right?”

  Carson was surprised by the question, but nodded. “Yeah, drove her out here more than a few times. Brought her here a few weeks ago.”

  Ward raised his head thoughtfully. So, he’s their resident chauffeur? he thought. That was certainly good news.

  “What about a Doctor Lee? Did the two of them travel together?”

  Carson nodded again. “Yeah, the two docs. Them Martians paid their way a couple of times a few years back. They came to this place to survey it and test some samples, they said.”

  Ward took a breath before asking the next part. Questions of this nature always needed to be posed delicately. “How did they seem to you? They seem particularly friendly with each other?”

  This time, Carson frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean.” Ward put on his most tactful tone. “Did you sense there was anything more than a professional relationship between them? Maybe they gave each other long looks? Maybe you mistook them for a couple when you first saw them?”

  Carson’s frown deepened, though it looked as though it was the result of him contemplating the question, and not of finding the question inappropriate or odd.

  “I don’t know, I guess I figured them for friends when I first saw them. They seemed nice to each other. Friendly.”

  “But you wouldn’t have mistaken them for lovers or anything like that?”

  Carson laughed. “Them two? Hell no!” He shook his head and fetched a fresh cigarette, lighting it up as he explained why the thought was so funny. “You never saw a stiffer guy and a cooler woman working together. If they was a couple, it’d be the worse one I ever saw!”

  Ward hummed thoughtfully. So outwardly, the two of them appeared very much as their dossiers suggested.

  So much for that idea, he thought.

  “I’ll say this though,” Carson continued. “That is one fine woman in there. Smart, nice, and pretty fucking beautiful. If I didn’t know better, I’d say half the reason that Lee guy was so stiff was because he had the hots for her.”

  Hold the line!

  “You’re saying maybe he was interested in her, but it wasn’t exactly both ways?”

  “Well, sure? Why not? Who wouldn’t be sniffing around a woman like her?”

  “Doctor Lee was married, you know.”

  Carson let out a billow of smoke. “Yeah, but not dead. I tell ya, I’d have been sniffing up that skirt if she weren’t so out of my league.”

  It was vague, and more than a bit thin. In the old days, Ward would have dismissed Carson’s story as misplaced fantasy. But something, perhaps the lack of anything else to go on, made it seem interesting somehow. If nothing else, it was something to file away as he went to make his rendezvous with Amaru.

  “Thanks for your help,” he said, patting Carson amicably on the shoulder. Grabbing his satchel from the back seat, he made his way to the rear of the crawler, pausing only to return the pressure suit to its locker. Carson managed to repeat his initial question before Ward left.

  “You never told me who you are, you know.”

  Ward paused at the airlock, his hand on the lever. There didn’t seem to be any point in not telling him. “Convict laborer,” he said. “Professional grade.”

  #

  Reaching the ice fields was a matter of passing through one pressure door after another. At every door, there was a security check, an armed and armored man demanding to see Ward’s identification and a work order. The process was rather tedious, necessitating Ward produce physical documents over and over. And every opening door was the same, producing an onrush of colder and colder air.

  “You bundled up enough?” asked the guard at the last pressure door.

  Ward looked at his jacket, comparing it to those standing about him. He was sure it looked modest compared to what the others were wearing. Everyone else appeared to be shift workers, similar in appearance to Carson, in truth. Their clothing was certainly appropriate for mining personnel. All were dressed in densely packed parkas and articles ensuring every extremity was sheathed and covered.

  Comparatively, he had only a single layer on. Still, he was certain he would be more comfortable than any of the people he was standing with.

  “It’ll suffice,” Ward said. The guard nodded before running Ward’s documents over the tablet he was holding, and looked approvingly at the result.

  “You’re clear to move on. Next!”

  Ward stepped forward, letting the next person in the queue step up. When they were all checked, the doors parted, letting a particularly wintry blast of wind strike them. An overlay appeared automatically in Ward’s field of view, registering the sudden drop in temperature. His bioimplants responded, increasing his metabolism and stimulating blood flow. His clothing responded too, increasing the levels of insulation applied directly to his skin and becoming less porous.

>   Ward barely noticed the biting cold as he stepped into the inner recess of the Burr dome. Were it not for the bitter air entering his lungs, or the numbers projected into his field of view, he would have had no indication of how cold he ought to be feeling.

  The far wall was invisible, located some sixty kilometers away across a sea of ice. The roof was visible, but looked rather hazy with several hundred meters of icy frost between it and the ground. Ward knew he had stood in places of greater immensity – twice in the past day, in fact. But without an obstructing skyline, no dividing walls, or anything else to clutter the view, the interior of the Burr dome felt much grander.

  Looking at the ground only deepened the impression. Across the surface, crawlers moved about like ants. The deposits of ice in their carriers were like grains of salt, all of which had been extracted from the center. And there, at the heart of the ice field, was the main mining pit, the facility’s imposing main drill standing several stories higher than the pit’s edges.

  Ward looked to the right of the drill, spotting the small string of low structures that were the monitoring stations. In this quaint little settlement, dwarfed by its proximity to the drill, various technicians, engineers and observers toiled away, dealing with various matters pertaining to the ice shafts, and addressing any numbers of problems as they popped up.

  According to his instructions, this was where he would find Doctor Amaru. Still hard at work while she waited for the man she was to assist.

  Eighteen

  Space, like time, is relative to the observer. Ward had learned this lesson many times while venturing from one location to the next in the Solar System. But whereas his earliest memories were all positive but instructive, those lessons that had fallen in more recent years had been much more brutal, and unwanted.

  Growing up on Mars, like most civilized worlds in the System, was known to give people an appreciation for space. Whether one lived in the domed cities of Pavonopolis, Ilia, Huǒxīng, Varāhamihira, or on the self-contained world of Ares, Martians believed they had a pretty good idea of what spaciousness felt like. Compared to the kinds of habitats one expected in the Belt or in the Hab ring around Earth, such environments felt very expansive.