Archaea 3: Red (25 page)

“We did, Mars as well. New Turiana is the other choice, and would probably be fine, but we’re going a completely different direction, and are on the clock. I was hoping I might be able to find something out in Talus, but if I can’t it’s not the end of the world.
Since we’re both headed to Mars at this point, I’ll just form up and escort you in.”

“
Sounds good, I’d really appreciate it if you could. This place is pretty rough.”

“Yeah,
I definitely wouldn’t want to leave you defenseless on Mars approach. It’s a pretty dark alley out there. We had a few bandits try to burn us as we hauled past in a transfer orbit.”

“
Are you serious? What’d MOC do?”

“They scrambled interceptors. We ended up squeaking by, their approach wasn’t tight enough.”

“Well, I’m having a hard time understanding how rough it is out here in Mars, considering what Luna is like.”

“Well, it’s not like they’re pros, they’re no
thing much more than rock rats.”

He laughed. “Copy that. Well, if you don’t mind the delay, I’d really appreciate it if we could tag along with you out to Talus.”

I smiled. “That’s completely doable for us, Captain. I am sure my crew would love a few more hours of dirt between their toes before we head out.” I wasn’t kidding either. We hadn’t felt real gravity in weeks now.

“Well,
I’d be about a week or more delayed if I have to get repaired first. With your help, I’ll only have an eight hour load-out down in Merriot. I honestly couldn’t imagine a better wingman to have on the run out to Talus.”

“Sounds good –
we’re sending over a rendezvous orbit, meet you there in ten hours?” I said, tickling the air with my eyebrow.

“Sounds like a plan, Captain.”

I was a little apprehensive about dropping into a well that might be full of angry pirates, criminal gangs, and possibly glom mercs all looking for the Archaea… but just a little.

Chapter 7

As we made our way down the ramp into the gusty winds, the stars shining down through the fading pink sky was about enough to take a girl’s breath away. There wasn’t enough atmo to make them sparkle, they scintillated, like poetry.

The orange glow of the setting sun shone upward into the
swirling dusts of Mars behind us. I haven’t been on this rock for a while, but I remember it as a pretty rough-and-tumble sort of place, with a boom-town sort of feel. If it wasn’t for the howling cold, you’d almost expect to see some grizzled old coot dragging a donkey, ambling off for the far horizon.

It was d
efinitely too cold for a donkey, especially with Sol setting. The rime on the edges of my visor reminded me that was cold enough to flash-freeze any unprotected skin. The thought had me re-checking my seals, and praying to the unnamed gods of suit maintenance.

Bright blue lights marked
the tethers that led us away from the blast pans towards the domes of Merriot, built into the side of a low bluff. It was a few kilometers off, and the interior lights through the dusted glass glowed like some sort of strange fungus in the Martian dusk.

We all dutifully clipped to the tether and set off. It might have been a pretty nice night, but that doesn’t mean it will stay that way.
There are no guarantees in this life except that it will end someday, and the careful person makes wise choices to try and cheat the game in their favor. Using tethers when they are available, carrying extra water, a few knives and a gun (or three) – the little things you do almost without thinking are the things you need to think the most about.

Mars was pretty rough back in the day, when it was a barely struggling colony run roughshod by a number of competing gloms. It was a little more civilized now that it was self-supporting, but not much. The distances between habitats made it feel more like a colony and less like a community, though there were some pretty populated areas.

Not Merriot, however. It was small enough that it still had the undeniable charm and excitement of the outpost, the remote station filled with people at the dead end.

We were starting to make our way through the cabins, mostly dusted over microdomes festooned with tiedowns and cabling, entrance tunnels marked with blue lights. Some were lit, but enough of them were dark to make me wonder if we were her
e at a low season.

Above the dome, further u
p the bluff, some Ligo towers loomed, silhouettes against the fading pink sky. Ligo was a research and development pioneer on Mars, and their strange externally cabled towers were a common fixture in almost every colony.

“What are those towers up there, Captain?” asked Paulie.

“Those are atmosphere… pumps, I guess. One of the earliest investors, a glom named Ligo, set up a network of these towers throughout most of the equatorial zones. These towers are automated for the most part, and use bacterial processes to separate rare earth elements from oxides. Those gantry looking structures to the side contain the conveyors that are moving refined oxides into holding silos.”

“So what do you mean by atmosphere pumps? They sound more like mining facilities or refineries to me.”

“Well, ostensibly, their original mandate to get mineral rights was to provide a steady, renewable source of oxygen to help terraform Mars, to try and make it habitable enough for terrestrial anaerobic bacteria or algae.”

“Ostensibly
…?”

The captain chuckled. “Their stated motives were pure enough to land permits – but their ultimate goal was rare-earth elements, and money. Those may be semi-efficient oxygen generators, but they are incredibly efficient money generators.
That’s why there are so many of them around here.”

We were starting to climb slightly now, the scattered outbuildings and structures around the main dome were becoming more and more compressed, as we approached the main lock. This close, the dust-etched panels of the dome cast a pallid
amber glow across the colony.

“Have you been to Merriot
Base, Jane?” Yak asked on comms.

“No, I sure haven’t.” I answered, adding “but it looks pretty similar to the other places I’ve been. These pre-fab domes were propped up all ov
er this rock.” As I answered, I took a look back at our line, straggled a bit along the tether. I was on point, as usual, and Yak was bringing up the rear. Captain Smith was behind me, presumably to throw me to the ground and defend me heroically if needed.

“What’s that
Shorty?” Gene asked on comms.

“Nothing Gene, I just thought of something f
unny.”

“It sounded like you were choking”, he said wryly.

“I guess I was, a little bit… mentally choking someone, anyway.”

“Everything alright there, Shorty?” the captain asked, as if he knew exactly what I was thinking. Before I could answer, sudden movement ahead caught my attention and I drew up short, holding up my hand. I didn’t see anything
directly; it was more like a movement out of the corner of my eye. I cranked up image amps and did a slow scan.

“Jane?” Yak asked quietly on comms.

I took another slow look. “Thought I saw something folks, but I guess it’s nothing. Maybe the wind…” I trailed off, doubting myself.

“Shorty, stay frosty. We’re almost there”, the captain said, clapping me on the shoulder. I nodded, rested a hand on the well-worn grip of my railer slung across my chest, and moved out. We didn’t have
too far to go, just up another small slope. I kept my eyes on a swivel, and my image amps cranked up high enough to wash out near details.

We were walking now on what looked like sections cut from a plasteel shipping container, half sunk into the slope in steps, partly drifted over with dust. Wires strung from structures on either side tangled across the sky above us, as we approached the main lock.

*****

As we moved out, Jane’s uneas
e had me wound up pretty tight, and I instinctively checked the charge on my railer. Pulling rear-guard, I had to trust Jane to scope out our approaches, and I focused on ranged threats. We were walking into a pretty close section of the tether, the perfect place for an ambush.

From a distance, Merriot Base looked like a dome surrounded by a collection of smaller structures, but as we got closer to the main dome, the clo
seness of the environment became more maze-like. Plasteel containers, microdomes, tunnels and walkways layered and stacked. The perfect place for a sniper was pretty much everywhere I looked.

Pretty soon, I was seeing snipers perched in every shadow, every overhang.
I’ve spent too many hours of my adult life at the receiving end of bad intentions, but I wasn’t going to let that stop me from being paranoid.

“Everything good, Shorty?” the captain asked quietly across comms.

“Sure thing, Captain”, she replied lightly. Jane wasn’t going to let something as insignificant as a pending ambush rattle her cage. Not for the first time did I feel more than a little in awe of Jane Short. The Marines may have turned me into a weapon, but that didn’t mean I had to like it.

“Very well…
let’s just step lively here folks”, he replied, as we walked up to the lock. A flashing strobe indicated it was in purge cycle, so we all had a few moments to relax.

“Captain, have you been to Merr
iot before?” asked Pauli. “I’ve been at Olympus of course, but I’ve never been way out here.”

“Son, there are
n’t many places in this little galaxy I haven’t visited at this point. Gene and I have dropped here many times, though never really for fun. We were mostly here picking up merchies for escort duty.”

“You gave us some shore leave a few times, Dak” Gene added, as the lock cycled open. A slight
puff of warmed, moisture laden air hissed out and immediately crystallized in the bitter cold, like a cascade of sparks lit from the arc lights around the lock. 

“I did? I must have missed the party. Was it fun?”

Gene laughed in response, adding “Well, there was beer.”

“Heck”, I chimed in, “Nothing is bad, if there’s beer.”  Everyone laughed. The lock was filthy dirty, grimed with dust into every crevice. We crowded in and waited through the cycle. The moisture in the thickening air around us froze into
traced arabesques across the hard surfaces of our suits.

The inner door opened, and even with the defroggers running full tilt, I had to pop my helmet before I walked into something – and immediately regretted it.

“That’s pretty fresh air.” Captain Smith said through eyebrows that appeared to be empirically frowning. “Now I remember why I didn’t give myself shore leave.”

I laughed, despite the smell of… cheese and rust? I couldn’t really put my finger on it, but it smelled pretty nasty. The concourse ahead of us opened up into multiple floors as the dome opened up. What daylight that filtered through the dust-etched polycarb of the dome faded away in the haze of the inner space. Everything was covered in dust, every bit as grimy as the lock. To be fair, the further we walked in the better it looked, but it was completely different from the sterile locks on Luna Freeside.

“So we just stay in our suits then?” Pauli asked.

“Well, there’s racks for rent ahead here on the left if I remember”, replied Gene, “but I don’t think we’re going to be here long enough to get comfortable.”

“How long are we going to be here?” I asked. Even with beer, a man has his limits.

“As long as you folks want, just as long as you want to be
heading back in orbit in an hour”, the captain replied. He flashed us a look. “We’re only in-system for about 6 hours, but I’d rather have some room between us and the creepy-crawlies that live down here.”

Well, at least I wasn’t the only one being paranoid.

*****

My handset jolted alive in my pocket, as the
fourth round of ‘protoquila’ was being set out.

“What is it son?” Captain Smith asked, as I dove into my pocket.

“Janis, sir, one moment”, I replied, and loaded the screen. What I saw didn’t give me a warm fuzzy feeling. “Sir, we may not want to be here much longer. Janis just popped a message about us on the local Unet.”

“Is that so?” he replied thoughtfully, shot glass paused dramatically. “What does it say?”

I gave it another look. “Sir, it doesn’t refer to us specifically: ‘Delivery ready for Merriot carrier. Standard contract, with bonus for swift completion’”, I took another small gulp of the rancid diesel fuel that passed as tequila around here and felt my innards start to liquefy.

“How is that about us?” he asked, and added with a shocked look, “and careful with that son, that’s supposed to be the chaser.”

“Tequila as the chaser?” I cringed. “What are we chasing?”

“
MORE TEQUILA!” cheered Yak and Shorty in unison, slapping the table with tears rolling down their faces.

Gene had one of his inscrutable frowns
set, and glowered at his pint of beer while something repetitive that sounded like a trip hammer making cymbals blasted across the PA, accompanied by some angry twerk screamed incoherently about ‘…the morning light’. I was starting to get more than a little bit blurry.

“What sort of timeframe do we have?” the captain called across the table. Someone behind me started screaming something in a language I couldn’t recognize. I stared at the
defocused jumble at the bottom of the screen and tried to make sense of it.

“Um”, I replied,
trying desperately to focus.

“Better take just another sip of that rocket fuel son, and steady those nerves.” He smirked across his coffee cup at me with a wink.

“Sorry sir”, I blathered. The blur at the bottom of the screen shifted, and the font size increased automatically as Janis tried desperately to help, but my eyes were closing.

*****

“Pauli?” I called across the table, as his eyes defocused and his head started to slip. Gene looked up, a concerned look on his face.

“Is he okay Dak?” Gene called over, pointing at Pauli. I shrugged, and kicked
at Yak under the table. Catching his eye, I motioned at Pauli. He took a look, and raised an eyebrow at me.

“Give Pauli a shove, would you? I think he’s had enough.”
I yelled across the empties scattered across our table, while digging for my handset in a thigh pocket.

Yak leaned over and
slowly, with surgical precision, poked a finger deep into the meat under his collarbone. Pauli yelped, suddenly sitting upright. Shorty laughed her good natured laugh, and went on trying to explain something to Gene. It started to sound like a bar fight was breaking out behind me, but Yak didn’t seem concerned. I wasn’t going to worry about it until someone knocked over my coffee.

I flipped open my screens and Janis’ report was instantly on deck. I scanned it, snorted, and gave Gene a look. “Get some coffee into him would you Gene? I need to make a call.”