Champion of Mars (28 page)

“This gets worse all the time. What the goddamned holy shit did you guys
find
down there?”

Orson was a pompous ass, of that Holland was convinced, but he was good in a crisis. Once he’d mastered his own shock, he organised them with firm efficiency, and gathered them around a holographic map projected over the meeting table.

“Stulynow’s got a ten-minute lead on us. Me and Miyazaki will take the west entrance, take a look at the outside of the base. Kick and Maguire, you’ll go wider.” Segments of terrain blinked, describing a search path. “It’s probable that Stulynow disabled his implant and suit beacon himself. But in case the pulse did it, or if it’s the storm out there masking the signals and the same happens to us, I want the teams to be roped together. If you lose your orientation, stay put, you hear? Your environment suits will keep you safe. Last thing I need is one of us blundering off a cliff edge or vanishing into the storm.”

The assembled scientists nodded.

Jensen put the gas cylinder from the fire on the table. “I have no idea what Stulynow is doing, but I do not think he means us harm. This cylinder is empty.” It rolled to a stop in front of Maguire, distorting the hologram. “Pick it up and check the seal.”

“The seal’s loose,” said Maguire. He rattled the fitting in the neck of the bottle.

“No explosive force in that at all. He never intended it to go off. This whole thing was a diversion.”

“From what?” asked Kick.

“It doesn’t really matter, does it now? We have to make sure he isn’t going to blow a hole in the base,” said Maguire.

“He knows that,” said Jensen. “He’s buying himself more time, maybe.”

“And how will he do that with the explosives?” said Miyazaki.

Orson tapped his lips with a forefinger. “Okay. Maguire and Kick, get down to the buggy park, check on the rover and the drones, then broaden your search. Suzanne, you and Holland stay here, keep your attention on the base entrances and lava tube. Neither of you are in a fit state to fight this weather. And I have no clear understanding of the effect this damn artefact has had on you, Holly.” Holland opened his mouth, and Orson raised a hand to silence him. “Sorry, John, that’s just the way it is. You know I’m talking sense here. Man the Mission Control desks, talk us through, play your part that way.”

Holland nodded.

“You’re okay. I know you’re one of the good guys,” said Orson reassuringly.

“You think he might go after the artefact?” said Maguire.

“It’s a possibility, but then everything is. We’re flying blind, and we will be until Jensen gets Cybele back up and running again.”

“Commander,” said Jensen. “I have some useful data here. May I?”

“Be my guest, Frode.”

A graph took the place of the map.

“You see this here? There’s a preliminary burst before the main event.” He moved his hand, and another graph overlaid the first. The lines were a close match. “It’s when the main one comes that Cybele fails. Keep watching for it. If you see that initial spike, call it in.”

Orson nodded. “I see. If it does, we better stop and hang fire until the main wave passes. In case it interferes with the suits. Good work, Jensen, this way we get a warning. Right. Everyone clear? I want that Russian found before he harms himself.” He avoided saying “or us,” but they all thought it. Danger choked the space between them. “Let’s go.”

S
UZANNE
V
AN
H
OUDT
and Holland sat listening to the distorted chatter of the two search teams as they sounded off their locations. “Van Houdt, Maguire,” “Orson, Miyazaki,” every four minutes. Their voices were mangled by the screech of the Martian storm’s interference, electromagnetic clatter built up by the rush of dust particles in the air.

“If Mars were a balloon, you could stick it to the wall when there’s a storm like this on,” Maguire had said as he suited up. The electronics of the base were shielded. Mars did not have a magnetic field to divert energetic solar particles away, and they were used to a constant, low level background noise in their communications. The frequencies they used for data transfer were modulated to screen much of this out, but this racket was deafening. And that was just the hard snow of static; the physical voice of the planet hooted and growled over the suits’ mikes and through the base’s walls. Mars’ call was eerie; a desolate banshee cry, a voice fitting to a dead world.

After forty minutes, at 02.10, Ito Miyazaki and Jimmy Orson had completed a circuit of the base and reported no sign of either Stulynow or the explosives. Visual feeds from their suits showed air thick with red dust, images freezing and jumping with digital artefacts.

“No sign of him out here either.” Maguire had to shout over the noise of the storm. “He could be standing five feet away, I can’t see a fecking thing out here. We’ve a way to go to the drone park; we can barely move in this shit.”

Suzanne and Holland listened as Orson redirected their efforts, the voices of the four outside crackling on the speakers. It was a harsh, ugly noise, and Holland longed to turn it off.

Suzanne spoke, the clarity of her voice strange against the click and roar of second-hand storm noise. “What do you think it is, John? What’s down there?”

“I have no idea,” said Holland. A blue face flickered in his mind’s eye. He shivered. “I wish I did.”

Jensen spoke over the radio. Even within the base the chaos of the storm was evident in their comms. “The commander was right,” he said. “There’s a few dents in the base unit’s casing, but Stulynow didn’t do much damage. The pulse must have disabled her again. I am going to take her on a slow boot-up, just in case.”

“We’re nearly at the buggy park,” said Maguire. The comms tower loomed into view, a skeletal giant braced against the yellow storm, the low humps of the rover, open-top shed and equipment bunkers huddling at its feet for shelter. “See it?” Maguire was breathless. The view juddered as Maguire stumbled. “Shit, it’s hard negotiating these rocks in this wind.”

“Take it steady, Dave.”

“Easy for you to say, Holly. Wait, there’s... Holly, did you see that?”

Holland leaned into the screen. The view bobbed as Maguire followed something moving in the storm.

“There!” shouted Kick. Holland’s eyes flicked to the left, where Kick’s view and vital signs were displayed. He squinted. The image froze, then picked up again. A shadow, suit-bulky and moving fast, clambered upwards onto one of the humps. “It’s him!” shouted Kick, “Stulynow! He’s stealing an open top.”

Suzanne nodded. “Someone’s overridden its near-I, switched to manual. He’s locked me out.”

“We’ll never catch him n –”

There was a dull crump, a flash of white light around the base of the comms tower. Both Kick and Maguire’s visuals wheeled as they were knocked back by the blast. Explosions in life are nothing like those in entertainments: less noise and show, more destruction. Maguire regained his feet quickly enough for Holland to see the comms tower twisting, the giant turning away. With a squealing wrench of metal, it fell ponderously, breaking its limbs on the drones and bunkers.

They were cut off from the outside world.

“Kick!” shouted Suzanne.

Maguire’s feed jogged sickeningly over rocks and tongues of blowing dust, as he lurched to the prone Van Houdt. Kick was on his back, arms out.

“Is that a crack in his faceplate?” Her voice rose with alarm. “Is he okay?”

Holland checked Kick’s vitals. “I think he’s fine, Suzanne, look, his suit pressure is level, his heart rate and respiration are okay. Look, Suzanne, hey!”

She dragged her eyes from the image of her fallen husband to the readouts around the screen’s edge. She nodded, chewing her lip. “Okay, he’s okay.”

“Maguire?” said Holland.

“I’m fine. How is he?” Maguire’s feed wavered all over Kick, his gloved hands patting the other man’s suit.

“Unconscious. Get him back in,” said Holland.

“I’ve got a trace off the drone!” said Suzanne. She keyed something and pointed to a flashing dot on the holo-map.

“Where’s he going?” said Holland.

“North-north-east.”

“What’s up there?”

“A secondary entrance into the tube network. From there, he can get into the cavern system.” Orson’s voice crackled. “He’s going for Wonderland, or the artefact. He lets off an explosion down there...”

“Can you intercept, commander?” said Holland.

“Negative on that, we’ll never catch him on foot.” Half the commander’s next sentence was wiped away by a blast of wind. “...to get him is to take the main tube and cut him off. He’ll have to leave his vehicle on the surface.”

“I’ll go,” said Holland.

“The hell you will,” shouted Orson. The storm was intensifying. It was getting harder to hear him.

“Suzanne’s got a twisted knee and Jensen’s elbow-deep in the AI. You want to lose it? Send Jensen instead and I’ll sit here and nursemaid you,” said Holland.

Static chittered. There was a sound that might have been an angry sigh.

“Okay, okay. Suit up, Holland. Get down to Deep Two. You are to go no further. Stop if you can, but the first moment you start to feel wiggy, you bail out, understood?”

“Sir,” said Holland.

Suzanne nodded to him and he ran for the suiting room, grabbing his environment suit from his locker and carrying it in a loose armful to the airlock at the head of the tube network. He swore as he dropped his left gauntlet, spinning on his heel to scoop it up. He donned the suit quickly outside the airlock, mind ticking off the stages: jumpsuit first, step in the back, geckro fastener. Boots lock onto suit, more geckro, back and front pack and neck over head, all geckro to suit neck, helmet, finally, gauntlets twist on, flaps geckro down. He pushed a clumsy finger into his wrist console and the suit did the rest, sealing itself, the pressure building all over his body, holding his tissues in against decompression.

He felt a wave of nausea: tiredness, and the after-effects of the incident in the cave.

Orson’s voice echoed in his memory:
You feel wiggy..
.

He shook it off. His mem-mail chimed, the release form for the implant’s soulcap function sat in his inbox still, unsigned. It would bug him every time he ventured into a space suit or engaged in anything else regarded as hazardous. He ignored it and stepped into the airlock. It took what felt like an hour to depressurise. He ducked under the outer door before it had finished sliding upwards and practically threw himself into the open top waiting on the other side. He drove it as fast as he could to Deep Two.

Stulynow was waiting for him, standing just inside the mouth of the Deep Two cave.

H
OLLAND SWORE AND
slammed the brakes on. The wheels clicked as their anti-locking mechanisms engaged, but the dust on the tube floor was slippery, and the open top slewed to a halt, close to tipping.

“My new friend, Dr Holland,” said Stulynow. He stood, legs apart, a detonator in his hand. “I suppose you have come here to tell me not to do this?”

Holland blinked. What was he going to say? He thought frantically. The wrong thing could kill them both. He forced himself to consider his words, before speaking slowly and calmly. “Maybe,” he said. “It depends what you are doing, Leonid.”

“Ah,” said the Russian. “That is simple. I am going to destroy Deep Two and the entry way to the caves.”

“Why?” said Holland. He stood and very slowly stepped out of the open top, his hands out. He moved carefully; last thing he wanted was to fall flat on his face. He jumped down, surprised still at how light he felt on this world.

“Don’t try to buy time with me, Dr Holland.” Stulynow’s voice came clearly over his helmet speakers. Down here, they were far from the EM rage of the surface. The sounds of the two men’s breathing mingled, the rhythms drifting closer together until they breathed as one. They were locked in a private world, the two of them. They could have been the last men in the universe. Holland had never felt so isolated. “I would have gone down to the cave, but it won’t let me.”

“What won’t let you, Leonid?” Holland circled the other man, wondering if he could grab the detonator off him. His chances were slim to non-existent.

“Stay there, please,” said Stulynow.

Holland froze, raised his hands placatingly. “Okay,” he said.

“You know why. Do not be playing the fool with me. You have had the dreams. I looked into it, Holland. I saw what it is.”

“What is it, Leonid? Please tell me, because I’m as confused and afraid as you are.”

Holland saw Stulynow shake his head behind his visor. He was haggard. “Look into it, and it looks back into you, and it makes you see, too. I saw...” He paused, his throat clicked. “I saw them.”

“Who, Stulynow, who? Talk to me.”

“My brother, my nieces. Shot in their home and burned away, like they were nothing. The Chinese say they are bringing redevelopment to Siberia, but I know they want it. There will be a war soon. Siberia will be theirs and the Russians and Buryats and everyone else will be swept aside by a tide of Han, just like Tibet, just like Taiwan, aliens in our own country. They...” Stulynow spoke through his teeth, fury clamped behind them. He swallowed, his voice cracked. “I was in between jobs when it happened, at home for once. We were
so sure
it was the Han. A lot of them are adventurers, pioneers, like here, and like here some criminal people among them. Me and the men from my village, we went to the nearby mining station. We did some bad things, terrible things.”

“Everyone makes mistakes,” said Holland.

“This was not mistakes. We were wicked men, Holland. I said to you, that we all have two reasons for coming here, a stated reason, and a secret reason. This is my secret reason.

“The thing, the machine in the rock. It showed me. It showed me what I did, and then it showed me that those men had nothing to do with it, it was not them who killed my brother. It showed me, it showed me what things might have been...” He laughed, a dangerous, dry chuckle low in his throat. “Last night, I dreamed of another Mars, a world of red sands and green forest, and a hot, golden sun in a blue sky.” His hand moved upward, thumb poised over the detonator button. “What did you dream of, Dr Holland?”