There was no way she could make it back to the MAV, never mind try to prevent it from taking off. So she hobbled across the dusty Martian surface, as fast as the pain in her leg would allow, towards the abandoned rover. All the time the heads-up display flashed warnings with ever more urgency until she finally crawled into the rover airlock and pressurised it. She popped opened her helmet visor and collapsed onto the cockpit seat.
Through the window she could see the Mars ascent vehicle, ticking down the seconds until lift off — and there was nothing she could do. Rage welled up inside her. They had played her for a fool, strung her along, and she had fallen for it. She willingly handed over the launch codes and doomed humanity to a future of genetic tyranny. As she sat and waited for the inevitable, a new sense of loss began to compound her anger. Now that the time had come for the MAV to perform its function, and return its occupants to the orbiter, and ultimately to Earth, she realised that her last hope of going home would be leaving with it. She thought she had reconciled herself to this fate, when she agreed to return to Colony Two with Nills, but now that she was face-to-face with it, the feeling of abandonment cut her deep.
Over the years, she had clung to the fragile hope, that someday, she would be able to return to Earth. But that dream would soon be gone, perhaps forever. She was being robbed of her hope, her dream, it was being taken away from her and there wasn’t a damn thing she could do about it, only watch. The MAV started venting gas, prepping the engines for ignition — her anger intensified.
“Well, if I can’t have it, then nether will you, Vanji.” She stood up and hobbled to the EVA suit storage area at the back of the rover. From an overhead locker she frantically pulled out a container of suit repair patches and applied several to her leg, as she sat back in the cockpit seat. She flipped her visor closed. The heads-up display showed the patches were holding, she had around twenty minutes of air remaining. “Should be enough,” she thought.
Jann started the engine, it rumbled into life. Then she hit the comms and spoke. “Vanji?” There was a hiss of static before a response broke into to the helmet.
“Dr. Malbec, your powers of staying alive are impressive.”
“There’s just one last thing before you go.”
“What’s that?”
“Go fuck yourself.” With that, Jann pointed the rover at the MAV and rammed the throttle fully forward. She stuck a few patches over it to lock it into position and ran to the rear airlock. With just seconds to spare she jumped out the back of the speeding rover on to the surface. She hit the ground hard and fast, and rolled several times before finally coming to rest. She had just enough time to look around and see the rover speed toward the MAV.
At first she thought it was going to miss, but it caught the edge of one of the landing struts. Then everything happened all at once. The MAV began to topple just as the engines finally ignited, and there was split second when she thought it might actually lift off. But it didn’t. Instead it exploded in a gigantic fire ball.
Even in the thin Martian atmosphere, the force felt like a kick to her chest. Dust billowed out from the epicentre and debris rained down, peppering the ground all around her. She rolled face down and covered her head with her hands. It was a reflex action and would do nothing to protect her if she was hit by any fragment of the MAV. Something struck the ground inches from her head, then another. She had to move, get out of the zone fast. She picked herself up and hobbled as best she could. She wasn’t sure of the direction as the atmosphere was immersed in sand and dust. New alerts flashed on her heads-up, the suit was losing pressure. “Shit.” Either the patches weren’t holding or she had torn it again. She kept going.
After a few minutes the air began to clear and she sat down for a moment to gather her strength. The pain in her leg came back with a vengeance, she was breathing hard, using up valuable air she didn’t have to spare. “Calm down, focus,” she said to herself. “You can still do this.”
Her plan had been to patch the suit enough to make the walk back to Colony One, it wasn’t that far. But now she wasn’t so sure. It was losing pressure and worked hard to backfill with nitrogen reserves. Ordinarily this would be fine but she was low on resources. Her display calculated she had around ten minutes left. She had better get going. Jann stood up again and glanced back at where the MAV had been. All she could see was an enormous cloud of dust. Probably nothing remained of it but a charred hulk of metal. It was gone, along with Vanji and Kayden, and any chance she ever had of leaving Mars. “Move.” She forced herself to start walking.
The faster she moved the more oxygen she would use up, the slower she went the less chance she would have to make it to Colony One in time. “Don’t think about it, just keep moving.” She could see its massive dome off in the distance. “Home,” she thought. It really did feel like that to her. She had spent so many years there it was part of her, it was what defined her. It kept her moving forward beckoning to her, calling out her name like a loving parent standing in the doorway with open arms, welcoming you back after a long journey away. She kept going.
Her suit was running dangerously low on oxygen, she could feel it, her steps were getting shorter, more laboured as her body grew progressively weaker from hypoxia. Her mind was getting fuzzy, her thoughts muddled.
Why had she done it? Kill Vanji. She could have let him go and take the rover back to Colony One. She would not be in this position now. Was it out of some grand moral outrage she felt for what this technology would do to the socio-economics of Earth? What did she care what happened to Earth. Or was it simply her rage. Rage for what Vanji did to her, rage for her time in the horror of the recycling tank? But did it go deeper than that? Rage for being abandoned by the ISA, by Earth, by all that she had known and loved. Rage for the loss of Paolio and Nills and all her friends, all gone, all dead. She stopped, and slumped down on to ground on her knees. She looked up at the dome of Colony One, so near, so far.
Yes, she had been abandoned by them all, and now it seemed even Mars was letting her go. It had no more left to give her. Jann sat back on her heels, she too had no more left to give. She had five minutes remaining and for most of that she would probably be unconscious. She may as well make the best of it.
Jann looked up at the sky, it was a beautiful evening. Over the crater rim to the west the sun was sinking below the horizon, bathing the sky in a pale blue and purple light. Out across the crater plateau she could see a dust devil swirl and twist its way towards her. She watched it for a time, mesmerised by its dance. Mars hadn’t abandoned her after all. It was showing her its best, giving her a final send off.
She collapsed down on her back and stared up at the heavens. It was growing darker as her life was ebbing away. A dust cloud blew up around her as she took a deep breath, exhaled very slowly, and finally closed her eyes.
CHAPTER 24: Search
The Hybrids had been disarmed and were now corralled in a number of secure areas throughout Colony Two. They had split them up into several smaller groups, the eighteen that were left. But was this secure enough? The species possessed a strange telepathic ability, so even dividing them up was probably pointless in preventing them from communicating. Nills knew they would ultimately have to find some way for them to regain the trust of the Betas, and vice-versa. They were still a problem, but for the moment, at least they were not a threat. As for the remaining geneticists, their future looked increasingly tenuous. Now that the Betas were in control, some were getting drunk on the power and were stoking up the mob to seek revenge. Like all great upheavals, the aftermath can be as chaotic, if not more so, than the event itself.
As Nills sat in sick bay, surrounded by the dead and the dying from the battle, he realised that the situation could get out of control very quickly. There was a distinct possibility that a cohort of the Betas could turn into a raged-fuelled mob, and start to agitate for retribution for the loss of their friends and loved ones. The geneticists would be first, then the Hybrids, then… w
here would it go? Anyone who stood in their way?
It was at that very moment Nills realised that they were indeed, truly human. They may be clones, they may have been subservient, but scratch the surface and, underneath it all, they still possessed the same violent instincts. All it needed was the spark, and the ugly side of humanity would ignite.
It didn’t help that Jann had gone. If she were here she could have exerted a level of control. None of them would go against her wishes, seeing her as almost divine. But she had left, and as the hours passed, Nills wondered if she would ever return.
“I say recycle them, they deserve it.” Alban was agitating.
“Yeah, a quick death’s too good for them.” Other’s were shouting out now.
“Let’s take them down to the tanks and throw them in.”
“No. We will do nothing until Dr. Malbec returns.” Nills raised his voice so that all the Betas that had assembled around him in sickbay could hear. They mumbled and grumbled. He may be injured but he was still their leader and the mere mention of Jann’s name still held some authority. “They’re no threat to us at the moment, so keep them locked up, and keep a close eye on them.”
They grumbled some more but it seemed to have quelled the dissent — for the moment. Yet, Nills knew he had very little time to try and keep a lid on things. He surveyed the group around him, he knew them all by name. They looked at him intently waiting for leadership. A great weight of responsibility had been thrust upon him; made even greater by the fact that Vanji had seen to it to kill most of the natural leaders within the colony. There was really only him now, and Jann, but she may well be dead. All he had was the authority to use her name. Would that be enough?
He was no politician either, he was an engineer, he thought in straight lines, in cause and effect, action and reaction, in working the problem. So, the first thing he needed to do was to get them busy and get them distracted.
“Before we do anything, we need a full assessment of the damage. I want each of you responsible for your sectors to give me a full report on the state of our resources. You all know the importance of life-support. We don’t need some system going off the rails now or we all die, and that will be the end of everything. So get to it and I want shift supervisors to report back to me in… three hours. Got it?”
They grumbled a little more but when you spend your entire life depending on the maintenance of artificial lift-support you learn to respect it. It becomes top priority. Nills knew this would focus their minds. Any thought of a systems failure would kick them into action. So they dispersed, one-by-one, to their appointed sectors.
Anika and Alban remained.
“Why don’t you just let them have their way with the fucking geneticists?” Alban kept his voice low so the others in sickbay would not hear.
“Do you know what would happen to us if they were to die?”
“We would be rid of them, that’s what.”
“Yes, we would. And we would all die because of it.”
Alban didn’t reply, he just gave a quizzical look. He didn’t understand.
Nills stood up from the edge of the bed and tested his arm. It hurt like hell but he felt a little better. The shock had worn off and his body was coming to terms with the new normal. He moved it around to test the extent of the pain, it was manageable.
“Genetic engineering is the reason that this colony can exist. If it wasn’t for all the synthetic microbes in here there would be no clean air, no soil to grow food, no way to recycle waste, no resource processing… do you want me to go on?”
Alban gave a sigh. “Yeah, I know, just saying, that’s all.”
“Much as I hate the bastards, we really need them. Without them we will all die. Maybe not straight away, it would take time, but as soon as some problem occurred we would not have the knowledge to solve it. It would be like a spaceship without a pilot, a reactor without an engineer.”
“We need to keep them safe,” said Anika. “Not let them be recycled.”
“What about throwing them a Hybrid or two?”
“Alban, no one is getting recycled, okay?”
“Just a thought.”
“Look I really need you guys with me on this. Justice will be done, but only when things settle down and we have some control of the situation. If we start now then where does it end? Will they then want to recycle Rachel and Becky?”
“Wait a minute. Has anybody seen them? said Anika.
They looked at each other. Nobody had. They were now the last two original colonists excluding the geneticists. They were like Noome a Samir, always kept a low profile, avoided the attentions of the council. They wanted no part of Vanji’s world. They just wanted a quiet life. But they were Alphas, and as such could be a potential target for mob.
“Shit no. You don’t think they’re in trouble?”
“Alban, pull some of your people off guard duty and go find them. They have no part in this, I don’t want to see them hurt.”
“Okay.” But he didn’t seem too enthusiastic.
“And don’t forget they were an endangered species too. Vanji had it in for any Alpha who didn’t see things his way. He rid himself of most of them over the years, so don’t let anything happen to them on our watch. Find them.”
“I’ll try.” Alban headed out of the sickbay.
“Anika, how are you with EVA?” It seemed like a simple question but Betas, did not go outside and had no experience in an EVA suit. It was a dangerous business without training, as you never know how someone would react, they could quite easily freak out. Putting someone in an EVA suit, with no training, and shoving them out an airlock could be disastrous. Even Nills had a tough time when they were all entering Colony Two from the rover. And he knew Lars was barely keeping it together. But, Anika… she seemed a natural, very composed, it was her nature.
“What have you got in mind?”
He looked around, held her gently by the elbow and led her out of sickbay, into the empty corridor beyond. “I may have made a mistake.”
“Mistake? What do you mean?”
“Because I said we do nothing until Jann returns, I’ve just bought us some time, nothing more. The longer she stays away, the harder it will be to keep control. Then things might come to a head.”
“You mean, if she doesn’t return?”
“Exactly. And, let’s face it, that doesn’t look likely to happen. She should be back by now, there was only around three hours life-support in her suit.”
Anika didn’t reply; the reality of the situation was only just dawning on her.
“We need to find her, even if it’s just bringing back the body,” whispered Nills.
“Shit, you really think she is dead?”
“I really don’t know.”
“So, what do you want me to do?”
“Go and get the rover back into the colony. Have them check it over and refuel it. Then we go searching for her.”
“Okay.”
“Come, I’ll walk with you down to the main entrance cavern. I need the Betas to see me up and moving, I need to look like I know what I’m doing.”
Over the next hour Nills set up command in the entrance cavern. Anika had retrieved the rover and it was now being given the once over by the mechanics, by Betas that Nills knew well, engineers like himself. Alban had also managed to find the last of the Alphas, Rachel and Becky. They had been hiding out where they always hid out. They were not the brightest pair in the colony, but to be fair, they were smart enough to be two of the few original colonists left alive, Nills gave them that. They sat now, in the cavern, under Nills’s protection. They looked shit scared. Part of him felt sorry for them.
“Do any of you guys remember how to use an EVA suit?”
Neither of them answered, they just looked even more scared, they really didn’t know what was happening. Maybe they thought Nills was about to do a lockout on them. It was a phrase used to describe when someone was shoved into an airlock, with no suit, and
the outer door opened.
“Look,” Nills stood up and came over to them. “We need some help. Betas don’t EVA, at least not very well, and most of them have never seen the planet surface up close. But you guys have.”
Becky, nodded, “it’s been a while, you know… a few years.”
“That’s better than never. We need to find Dr. Malbec. That means taking the rover and looking. We may need to EVA and search around. You think you could help me?”
Rachel’s eyes where like saucers, “You mean actually go outside?”
“Yes, out there.” Nills pointed at the airlock.
They looked at one another, then Becky slowly said. “I would do anything to get back out on to the planet surface, see the sky again, anything.”
“I’ll take that as a yes then?”
“I’m with her, make that two.”
“Good.” Nills turned around to one of the maintenance crew. “Check through those suits and get me two more fully resourced.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
“How much longer before the rover is ready?”
“Half an hour, give or take.”
“Okay.” Nills then shouted across the cavern to Anika. She was helping with the rover servicing so had her head buried in its engine bay. “Anika.” She popped her head out. He signalled to her to follow him and walked over to a quiet spot out of ear-shot of the others. She followed him over, wiping her hands on an oily rag as she went.
“Anika, I want you to stay here, help Alban keep things under control.”
“What, no, you can’t do this on your own, Nills.”
“I’m taking the two Alphas, they can EVA, they’ve been outside, they have the experience.”
Colony Two Mars: A SciFi Thriller (Colony Mars Book 2) Page 14
