The Ruins of Mars: Waking Titan (The Ruins of Mars Trilogy) (13 page)

“Okay,” she replied at last. “I
will
override Braun’s lockout and grant you your EVA, but you must promise me one thing in return.”

             
“Anything, Captain.”

             
“Make her death worth the terrible price we paid.”

             
“I’ll try,” said Harrison.

Chapter Fourteen

Seeing in the dark—
Sol 90

              Elizabeth Kubba stepped from the lift into the Martian caves for the first time. She had made the trip down in the carriage with William, who was now busying himself by taking pictures of the vista outside the open mouth of the cave. Afraid to go any deeper into the massive chamber alone, Kubba walked over to stand next to the German.

Before her, the steep cliffs of the Valles canyon network jutted up like castle walls, albeit on a scale never attempted by man. Faint tendrils of mist clung to the needle-shaped red rocks, which poked up from the canyon floor like islands in the sky.
             

             
Leaning forward, Kubba looked over the lip of the cave, mere centimeters from the tip of her boot. As it fell away into obscurity, the canyon floor below was an elusive blur. She trembled despite herself.

             
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” said William.             

             
“Yes, quite.”

             
Perhaps sensing her uneasiness, the German moved back from the edge and motioned for Kubba to follow him.

             
“Here, come take a look at this.” Leading her to a fallen boulder, William pointed.              “Do you see it?” he asked. “There, just follow my fingertip.”

             
As her eyes scanned the rock, she caught and traced the faintly etched line.

“Liu found this
, didn’t she?”

             
William nodded and his shoulders hunched a bit as he sighed.

“Poor girl,” was all he said.

              Kubba ground her teeth.

             
Poor girl,
echoed the ghost of Sabian Crisp sarcastically.

             
A few minutes later, Harrison and Marshall came into view, the lift cart clattering along its cable lines until it was flush with the cave floor.              

             
“Everybody ready?” radioed Marshall.

             
“All good here,” William replied.             

             
Silently, Harrison walked off the lift and made his way towards the rear of the cave where the tunnel began. Watching him pass by, Kubba felt a mixture of relief and injured pride: relief that the young man was out of his lab and back to work, and injured pride because she had not been the one to achieve this goal.              

Already having reviewed the tapes of Harrison and Marshall’s conversation, Kubba had a new respect for the grizzled Lander pilot. His story about killer AI had been a stroke of genius. Thinking all along that Harrison was aching for someone to blame Liu’s death on, Kubba had been trying to find a suitable target for his anger. Braun was the obvious choice, but as Marshall had explained, blaming an AI for following its programming was like blaming the ocean for sinking a ship. Besides, due to her programming override,
Braun seemed to avoid Harrison—as if talking to the young man was physically painful in some way.

In any event, she saw that she had been wrong. What Harrison needed wasn’t someone to focus his anger at. She had misjudged h
is character. He was a peaceful kind person, and all he really craved in the end was a friend to help him back onto his feet.              

Falling in line behind Harrison, the others walked into the darkness of the tunnel and Kubba had to jog to catch up. A shiver played itself under her skin and a touch of panic rose in her mind as the shadows fell over her like a fog.

“Lizzy,” said Marshall, dropping back to walk beside her. “Do you know how to turn on your A-Vision?”

“Of course,” she shot, secretly thankful for the reminder.

With a quick command, Kubba engaged her Augmented Vision and the shadows of the tunnel were dashed away by the invisible shimmering blue light. Having never actually used the function, she was momentarily awestruck by the haunting detail projected on her visor’s glass. The dimensions of the tunnel around her were as clear as if they were bathed in the midday sun, yet the depth and contrast that color brings with its presence was lacking. Still though, as the X-Rays played across the faces of the smooth walls around her, she was moved by its electric beauty.              

Slipping further into the blackness of the Martian earth, the group soon had to adjust their pace, encountering the rise in the floor’s pitch that signified the nearing of the famed
Statue Chamber.

As knots of excitement and fear coiled in the pit of her stomach, Kubba watched the glowing outline of Harrison
march towards the effervescent light of the X-Ray Beacons left behind from previous trips. Enthralled, she marveled at the way the walls of the tunnel seemed to funnel out as if the team were approaching the rim of a cornucopia.

Entering into the grandiose chamber ahead of them, Braun activated tripoded light stands placed there to illu
minate the statues. Unprepared, Kubba stopped in the archway as her eyes struggled to adjust to the burst of color and shadow. The hot glare of the lights clashed with the blue glow of her Augmented Vision and caused a washout of discolored images until she turned the function off. Her normal eyesight now returned, she allowed herself to see that which was actually in front of her.

Gawking in spite of herself, she took several shaking steps into the vaulted room, stopping at the foot of one of the tall standing statues.
             

Smooth and utterly without blemish, the figure seemed to have been poured into a giant mold rather than carved. Its three eye
s, deeply recessed into the flat oval facade of its face, stared down at her with impassive judgment. Quivering, she wanted to reach out and touch its leg but was afraid that the thing might come alive and punish her for her sins.              

Distractedly, Braun’s voice piped in through their helmet speakers.
“I suggest exchanging your current Survival Packs for the larger, fully self-contained models. As we have already established, there are too few usable gasses this deep within the earth to make breathable oxygen.”

Moving to a stack of crates in the corner of the chamber, William opened a large metal box. Inside were six, fully charged and loaded, self-contained
Survival Packs like miniaturized turtle shells made of white plastic. The Survival Packs were passed out, and the four explorers quickly helped one another to swap them for the ones they were already wearing. Also taking this opportunity to adorn shoulder bags and other equipment, the team soon appeared ready to brave whatever may come.

With the task of outfitting themselves for the exploration done, the group stood waiting for Harrison to make a move.

Walking with his head bent to the spot where Liu’s dead body had struck the floor, the young Egyptian dropped to one knee and scooped up a handful of powdery sand.

The others watched as it spilled from between his gloved fingers, silent in their respect for the moment.

Even the ever-persistent sound of Kubba’s own breathing, like waves lapping at the shore, seemed to draw down to a whisper.

Feeling guilty?
taunted Crisp, intruding on the moment.

Refusing to acknowledge the voice
, she said nothing.

At lea
st one of you still has a life,
he persisted.
That’s more than I can say for myself.

You killed yourself! Kubba shouted silently, forgetting her decision to ignore the imagined voice.

Yeah,
he chuckled.
I did. But you helped.

“Okay, let’s go,” said Harrison, cutting through Kubba’s helmet speakers and making her jump with surprise.

Crisp settled back into the blackness of her subconscious with a rustle like metal shavings in a bowl.

Standing, Harrison led the way to the statue of the praying woman in the rear of th
e chamber. Now pulled back half-a-meter from the wall, the statue seemed to loom—as if being separated from the cave had allowed it to grow. There, in the space between its back and the cave wall, was an opening much smaller than the tunnel they had entered through. Ducking his head, Harrison stepped into the new passageway.

By the light of a dying sun—
Sol 90

             
As the bow draws itself across the strings of a violin, eliciting the birth of musical notes, so too was Harrison moved forward as he entered the mysterious new tunnel. A feeling of swelling, like some new emotion, tugged at a place in his stomach close to where the pain of Liu’s death had taken up residence.

With the others at his back, Harrison walked a little way into the smaller tunnel before stopping to allow his mind the moments it needed to maintain balance and calm. With the grit of the
Statue Chamber sand still fresh on his gloved fingers, his mind wandered—for the instant of a thought—to the face of his beloved Liu. Slamming the door on this hall of memories, he forced himself to step back into the moment. His heart thudded in time with the pulsing pings of his Augmented Vision.

A few meters ahead of him stood an archway of cut stone, each piece of squared and smooth rock fitting together like organic geometry. Again, he felt the rise of some silent symphony reaching out to him from beyond the range of his digital vision. Were it possible that Harrison could see through Braun’s Eyes at that very moment, he would have glimpsed the shimmering shadows of the energy fields hanging, as if in waiting, just beyond the archway.

Coming up to stand beside him, Ralph Marshall put a hand on Harrison’s shoulder. “Everything alright?”

Disturbed by his feelings of ancient déjà vu, Harrison began to nod then grasped his friend’s elbow.

“Do you hear that, Ralph?” he asked, his features masked and hidden behind the glow of his visor.

“Hear what?”

Met again with a rush of subtle longing, Harrison turned his head to the side in a fruitless attempted to
hear
that which was music only to the soul.

“Nothing I guess,” was all he could manage before walking off towards the archway.

Shrugging, Marshall took up stride next to Harrison as the group followed the determined archaeologist under the stone arch and deeper into the tunnel.

Though Harrison did not know, for he had not bothered to ask, Braun too could sense the presence
that danced beyond the young man's realm of understanding. Though he was now without his Eyes, as they were still on their spindly stands in the Statue Chamber, Braun knew well enough the
feeling
of the energy fields.

Sizzling hotly
across the fractal of his ever-folding soul, the churning patterns illuminated the AI until he was all but blind to everything save for the paths of predestined possibility that unraveled around his human crew.

Unaware of the tempest raging through Braun’s mind, Harrison pushed forward, soon stepping into a wide hall. Totally different in design and decoration from anything he had yet seen, this new space held pillars of twisted and carved stone that lined the walls like a forest of handmade trees. Upon the faces of each stone were carvings of alien animals and birds, Earthlike in every way possible yet different in only the fashion that nature can accomplish.

Eyes wide, every pillar, every line of carved rock, served to soothe the raw pain in Harrison’s freshly broken heart by burying it under layers of mystery. In the bliss of exploration, his loss became less tangible if only for a few moments.

“Am I fucking dreaming?” Marshall shouted, gaping at the pillars. “This is the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen!”

“Braun,” spoke William, his usually impassive tenor brimming over with energy. “Are you recording all of this?”

“
Forgive me, but I did not hear your question.” replied the AI, sounding distant as if only partially paying attention to the crew.

“I said are you recording this?”

“Yes, William. I am recording everything,” Braun murmured passively.

“Try to pay attention, will you?” Harrison cut in, addressing the air as if it were Braun himself.

“Of course, Harrison. I’m
sorry
.”

Biting back on the impulse to berate the AI for using that word again, Harrison took a deep breath and focused on more important things.

Ahead, a wedge in their path split the hall into two new passages. To one side, the tunnel forked left at nearly ninety degrees, while to the other, it continued with a gentle curve.

Bringing up the previously scanned map of the cave network on his wrist
Tablet, Harrison relayed the image to his teammates so that they could see as he traced his gloved finger along the line of their progress.

“Okay, this is us,” he pointed. “The map shows the passage to the left with a lot of branches and offshoots. I say we stick right because that way leads us directly to the biggest of the buried domes.”