Version Innocent

by Pete Molina

Chapter 28

  Dawson was watching the whole thing safely on the Powel. He had a live feed through the Powel to the Marines below. He had been assured that they didn’t risk anything by using the link because it was a quantum encrypted transmission that no one would ever break and no one would probably ever detect.

  Using this link and his implants Dawson could see from the perspective of each Marine, switching between them at will. It was exhilarating. He had followed the trio back to the Gates Family dome from the safe distance of a hundred meters; they had never even known that the Marines were present. Dawson had switched back and forth between Sam’s implant and the Marines to see the pursuit from both perspectives. The Marines’ camouflage was much more advanced than the pirate technology that Jeff Hughes had acquired from his Newbie sources.

  Unfortunately, he had forgotten that they had the camouflage technology, and Lt. Madison had contacted him briefly asking what he knew about it. When he told her what he did know, she accepted it with a little grunt and then had her marines do something that made the three visible, some other wavelength or infrared, he wasn’t sure. He’d have to ask about it later.

  Dawson was still amazed at the trio’s ingenuity, though. He never would have thought to use a cargo container with some small rocket motors and airbags to make a landing on Mars although it was something that had been done a few times before with unmanned space probes before the first Manned Mars mission in 2015. He’d watched them put on the final touches, and then via his connection with Sam had monitored their landing, starting when they detached at the end of the deceleration burn and hurtled towards Mars.

  He had had several hours to observe their plans and then had the SS navigation system calculate their probable landing zone based on what intelligence he had collected. The Captain had asked him once where he was getting his information but he just said that he had an inside source that he couldn’t reveal. Still it had made him sweat just a little thinking about what her reaction to the truth would be.

  The second team of six marines, led by Lt. Madison, had then jumped out of the airlock in their exosuits, several moving into position to protect the container from any possible enemy fire or capture attempt and the rest making an orbital insertion to land at the projected landing site to wait for the container to make the ground.

  The exosuits the Marines used were nothing less than amazing. There was a large attachment that they each donned that consisted of a very small antimatter rocket, two hundred kilograms of fuel, and five grams of antimatter each. They used these packs for their landing on the planet, ditching them when they reached the surface. Eventually the launch would have to be sent to pick the Marines up, but it gave them a lot of flexibility and the ability to make a very covert landing from space. The packs wouldn’t have been sufficient to land on Earth though as the atmosphere and gravity were much thicker and deeper there.

  Once the three had made it to the dome, Dawson had switched entirely to Sam’s perspective to make sure he didn’t miss anything. He ordered the Marines to work their way around the dome and towards the nearest entrance to Olympia from the tunnel that connected the Gates family dome and the city. The moving up of the vote was something he knew would motivate Terra to move as quickly as possible. The quick adoption of the forms of the three caretakers of her dome was unexpected. He was glad he had his inside source; otherwise, he would have lost these three back on Earth.

  “Lt. Madison, Dawson here. They will be leaving the dome very shortly, and they are using their camouflage system to imitate three of the caretakers that work at the Gates family dome. I’m sending images now. Make sure no harm comes to them and nothing hinders them on their way,” Dawson ordered over his comlink.

  “Affirmative, we’re in position. The airlock door is opening. I see them,” she replied. He split his view in to two screens, one from Sam’s point of view and one from that of Lt. Madison. It was a little hard to take in, but he managed. Terra drove the small ground vehicle into the dome and then stopped, leaving it parked. The three got out of the vehicle and headed towards the nearest transit station.

  Olympia was a large city divided into fifty large domes, each capable of fully supporting over a half of a million people. It was the largest center of human civilization off Earth. The centermost dome was called Base One, and it had begun with the first habitation module from the initial landing of man on Mars. As the Mars exploration program progressed, each mission left a habitation module scattered about the surface, but after the tenth mission they had begun landing all the habitation modules at the same location as the first giving a lot more living space to astronauts who had chosen to reside on Mars permanently or at least for an extended number of years. Then over time children were born, and the people started the construction of the first dome which enclosed all of the Habs and temporary structures that had been built over the exploration period.

  As space travel had gotten cheaper, more people sold a number of years of their labor to finance their move, and the immigration to Mars began. As the first dome was completed and filled with air, larger structures were built until finally with half a million inhabitants they decided to build a second, and a third, and more and more. Each new dome went next to the original until they formed a concentric circle around Base One. Then a second circle had begun.

  Each of the domes was connected by a subway type transportation system that was constructed in much earlier days thsn gog tubes and zip tubes. The domes were spaced apart slightly, so they were all connected by series of subway tunnels.

  “We’ve got opposition, four men all armed with projectile guns, no energy weapons. They also have knives,” Lt. Madison informed him.

  Two of the other marines approached the four men without any need for orders; they were all connected together via their implants and could operate as one organism. It was amazing to see how coordinated they were. Only Lt. Madison used words to talk with him. The marines had a huge technological advantage. Their exosuit’s camouflage was much better than even the stuff Jeff Hughes had acquired, and it made them virtually invisible. They could also move more silently than a stalking cat with no sign of their presence but a slight wisp of wind.

  The two, whose position she could see through Madison’s displays, quickly used some type of dart that caused the men to become confused. They eventually all lost interest in their prey and sat down on a bench. Dawson wondered what the drug was. The Marines, having eliminated the threat of the four men pursuing the trio, quickly made their way back to meet up with the others who had been guarding the trio as they waited for the train to arrive.

  “Man, when is this train going to get here?” The larger woman, actually Terra, spoke impatiently.

  “Don’t worry. I’m sure the water dealer will wait,” the desguised Jeff said.

  “Right,” Terra replied, apparently remembering that they were using their cover for a reason.

  The train arrived, and they all climbed aboard. It was especially crowded. Two of the Marines followed and the other four leapt quietly to the roof to secure themselves. They couldn’t take up too much room inside, or people would bump into them. Two would be enough to protect them.