Extinct Doesn't Mean Forever (19 page)

So what was she playing at here?

If the computer wouldn’t tell him where the site was, there was one thing guaranteed to lead him to it.

“Lauer!
Is the dig site on cable or beam?”

“We’re cabling over the lip of the crater,
then
we’re beaming to a site northeast of that.” He stared at West, waiting for an explanation.

“Cut all comms. Just do it.
My order.”

Laurer reached behind him, still staring at the Commander, and pressed a single function key.

“Any other melodramatic orders you want to give, Commander?”

But West was already out of Console. He raced back to his room and put on his underwear, boots, and gloves. Then he headed to the airlock and stood in a template in the antechamber waiting for it to suit him. He stepped to the second template to get a pack, then pulled his helmet out of his locker and fastened it on. And, for the first time, he took with him the one prerogative of Command, the one thing that set him apart from all other crew members: a gun.

He followed the cable and climbed into the Secchi Crater. As predicted, they were beaming energy, but not northeast. They were sending microwaves to a receiver in the northwest, up one of the fjords of the crater. He entered the fjord and saw a number of caves.

The receiving unit, which turned microwaves back into electricity, was easy to find. But the cables, well-buried, would take too long to follow. From here, he was on his own. He began checking the nearby caves. The first couple drew blanks, but even
West
could see the stripes of sedimentation in the walls and what looked very much like the fossils of some kind of polyp.

In the ancient past, Mars had had life. As the atmosphere leaked into space, atmospheric pressure dropped and water evaporated to fill the gap. As the seas dried up, life retreated to areas like this crater, the last places where Mars would have had ample liquid water. This is where the last complex life lived and where their remains would be found.

Polyps — if that’s what they were — had been cut away and were left on the floor. This was the worksite until they found something more compelling.

When West entered the next cave, chatter died. Radios echoed only breathing. West looked from mask to mask as if plastic, metal, and twin lenses could show regret or remorse. But there was none; they were just masks. Computer links identified who was in what armor.

On the floor of the cave were a host of complex animals — or at least their remains. They were clearly not from Earth. Apparently, they had retreated here to nest. Small holes dug into the cave floor housed families of creatures that seemed to have had no nostrils or fur. West was no biologist, but it looked like they respired through the mouth and skin. He peered into one of the small pits. It took him a while, but no one hurried him.

These things made nests and nurtured young that were — tadpoles.

“They were amphibians.”

No one disagreed. But the adult form wasn’t a frog. It was nothing like that. Their strong front legs ended in heavy claws for climbing. Their equally strong but shorter back legs had much smaller claws set in webbed feet.

It dawned on West that these creatures swam to get food and climbed to escape predators. The Secchi Crater was once a sea. Somewhere further down might be the fossils of those predators, but the odds were likely there would be relatively few of them and the sea would have preserved them less well than this cave.

West looked at all the small pits dug for breeding. Clearly, the soil was soft when there was water here. What surprised him was how close the pits were. Then he saw the teethmarks and the tadpoles bitten in half. The wall had breached between two pits, and the two adults had torn each other apart, seemingly stepping on their own young in the process.

“This was an environment under pressure. We’re looking at their last sols.”

He’d used the Martian word by habit, but it felt right.
Their last sols, the first sols of human habitation.

They were kind of like a barrel-chested bulldog but with a completely different face. They seemed to have brought fresh water to their young in a throat pouch. They brought food in, too, in the form of — head, clawed hands, tail — only a rough parallel, but the headline would stick.
Mermaids.
Small, like a sea-born Rhesus monkey.

Gradually, an even greater truth swept over West.

“These aren’t fossils.” The color was right but much else wasn’t. He should have realized sooner. “They’re mummies, aren’t they?”

“They were probably freeze dried, Commander.”

“Earth Command has to know. But when they do, they’ll invoke Protocol I: We’re here for good.” No one said anything. “We can mine the gold we found and sell it for supplies and immigrants. With a bit of luck we can mine, melt, cool, and send a shipment at the next launch window.”

“Will they let us do that?” asked Casey.

“If Earth Command doesn’t like it, we’ll declare ourselves the Indigenous Republic of Mars.” He looked at the mummies in the pits surrounding him. “Their extinction has given us a forever.”

~~~

JASON COOPER was born in Fort Erie, Ontario, but grew up in Buffalo, New York. While in Buffalo, he attended a school for gifted youngsters when he was still a youngster, and gifted, and before the school closed. He went to Australia and got a Bachelor of Arts degree. He now lives in Perth with his daughter, Shadra, and his son, Darius. He has authored seven books, including the novel
Slums of Paradise
(Twilight Times
http://www.twilighttimesbooks.com/SlumsParadise_ch1.html
). He has wrestled professionally twice, but in an unrelated accident injured his knee, and the reconstruction didn’t work too well.

Endless Power,
Inc,
had prepared Angel Perez for the physical dangers of harnessing the newest source of unlimited energy. But no one thought to prepare him for how to cope once his tour was up.

Hunting The Mantis

by
Adam Knight

The needle jabs into Stomper’s arm and he grits his teeth. Amphetamine solution squirts into his artery and his heart thuds in his throat. Sweat bursts onto his face and his legs twitch. His brown pupils dilate. Light and shadow tangle among the arches and spires of rock. Starlight streaks across the blackness.

Stomper stands on asteroid C13398, which hurtles end over end and shudders with the impact of debris. Yet Stomper remains securely attached to the rock in his magnetized boots and bulky, pressurized suit. A six-pack of neutralizing spray cans dangles from his belt. The amphetamine boost — standard operating procedure — leaves him wide-eyed and twitching, drenched in sweat as the drugs filter through his lanky frame. Within a minute he feels like pure electricity. So do the four other men on the scouring crew, as well as clusters of men on hundreds of similar asteroids in the Belt, all employed by Endless Power, Inc.

“Clear it out!” shouts Splash, the squad leader. All five men scream in their helmets, charging headlong into the caverns of C13398. Zappy and Clown shine beams of light from the phosphorescent lamps mounted under their EP-19 blasters, scanning the surface of the porous rock. The rifle-style blasters fire non-lethal pulses of energy, the only projectiles of any use in the constantly spinning, shifting Asteroid Belt. Stomper and Custer prowl behind them in combat stances, wielding their J-4s. Those long, light, titanium-graphite blades do the killing. The five men move like fleas across the asteroid surface, turning their magnetized boots on and off, propelling into space and crashing to the surface. Space dust and distant stars whip across their vision.

“Report,” commands Queen Bee in the headset. He is in a distant, orbiting command station.

“Negative for Wasps and Spitters,” Splash replies.

“Nucleite?”

“Negative.”

“Damn,” says Queen Bee. “Keep looking. Activate scanners.”

Splash aims a beam of blue light at a distant patch of rock, which glitters.

“Bingo,” he says.

“Wasps ahead!” shouts Clown. The swarming Wasps are as big as
labradors
and camouflaged to the rock, with stingers like steak knives. Clown and Zappy lift their EP-19s. Two electric blue orbs smash into the Wasps, knocking them back. Stomper’s heart and brain buzz like live wires. He and Custer hold their J-4s in attack position and activate their boots. From a dozen meters up they crash toward the surface. Stomper’s empty stomach climbs into his throat. Like lightning bolts, they slam onto the Wasps, and the J-4s puncture the alien exoskeletons. Iridescent fluid sprays out and the bodies thrash. All around, dozens of hidden Wasps flutter. More EP blasts smash into the pests, and Custer and Stomper charge from one to the next, jabbing the blades into the armor, cracking the shells apart. Minutes later, inert Wasp bodies hover above the surface.

“Good work,” Queen Bee says. “If there are Wasps, there’s nucleite.”

Nucleite.
The word has been so embedded into the men’s minds that hearing it spoken is like hearing one’s heart beat, or hearing one’s own
breath
. With their every sensor scanning and every eye probing the twisted lattices of rock, the scouring team careens over the asteroid’s surface, moving and thinking as one.

~~~

Angel Perez stands shirtless on the volleyball court, laughing,
a
can of beer in one hand. He and his friends, all young men in their early twenties, play without strain, letting the ball drop often. In two weeks they will report to the Endless Power training facility before deploying to the Asteroid Belt. In seven months, Angel, who will then be called Stomper, will stand on C13398. Now, charcoal heats on nearby grills. Local kids run and yell through the city park, drawing the scorn of many, but not the six men. The heat and beer make them sloppy and cheerful.

“C’mon, serve,” says Darren, flipping the ball to Angel, his best friend. As Queen Bee, Darren will coordinate attacks from the distant command station because a heart murmur exempts him from scouring duty. The ball bounces off Angel’s thin chest. He curses, but he’s laughing. Not letting go of the beer can, he stoops and picks up the ball with his free hand, tosses it in the air, and smacks it into play.

The park and surrounding cityscape have changed a lot in a decade. Because of the Energy Wars, the men did not play there as boys. Strict energy quotas meant most civilians spent very little time indoors and milled about the city from dawn until dusk. Mobs with short tempers collected in open areas, such as parks. While civilians wandered the cities, soldiers and mercenaries fought over the remaining drops of oil and gas in remote corners of the world. Angel’s father had died defending a derrick in Alaska. Chinese mercenaries overran his platoon and claimed the oil, which ran dry in a week. Angel had been too young to know him, but imagined his father as a valiant crusader in a hopeless crusade.

Escalating violence had not ended the Energy Wars; the discovery of nucleite had.

“Scared?” Darren throws the question out to no one in particular. Scoffs and macho denials pepper the air.

The man who will later be called Splash swigs his beer and taps the ball over the net. “No more scared than I get weeding the garden or setting mousetraps.”

“It’s gonna be dangerous.” Some of the men feel a tweak of resentment when Darren says this.

“I’m not scared. You scared, babe?” Angel calls to Lisa, who sits in the shade, reading. She lays her book in the grass and strolls to the court. Her long black legs move smoothly in denim shorts, and Angel is proud when his buddies sneak glances at her.

“Hmm?” she purrs, putting her arms around Angel’s waist.

“You scared for me?”

Her four-second pause is answer enough. “Well … I’ve heard about the Belt.
Accidents.
Debris.
Oxygen.
Wasps, Spitters and who knows what else. I mean, one pinhole in those suits and—”

Darren chuckles. “Chicks,” he says. Lisa glares over the rims of her sunglasses.

The ball rolls to Angel’s feet. Lisa elbows him and he scoops up the ball and hurls it at Darren, beer can still firmly in hand.

“What about the amph solutions?” Lisa asks. “I hear it’s hard to stop. I hear you hallucinate and your heart can burst.”

“Don’t worry, babe,” Angel says. “Endless Power sets it all up. After active duty, they terrace down our dosage until we’re clean.
All safe.
It’s all there in the manual.”

The 388-page manual from Endless Power is titled
A Guide for Tomorrow’s Pioneers.
The cover shows a firm-jawed young man and woman, superimposed over stars and nebulae, staring into the distance. Angel has only read the first three paragraphs: