On Mars Pathfinder (The Mike Lane Stories Book 1) (26 page)

I watched the alien lean back in the craft, appearing to give me no further thought, and set to work. Standing on my tippy-toes to see over its shoulder, I could see the big alien wrapping the shackle around what appeared to be a support strut in an awkward location, and begin threading the shackle screw in place.

I was thinking fast and hard now. This alien hadn’t killed me, even when I snuck up behind it. It was using equipment that would have been found in any hardware store on Earth. It had a surface suit on that looked like it came out of a NASA closet. Aside from the freakishly long arms and fingers, it appeared quite human; even though it was about a head shorter than I am. I knew that according to General Rosewood there were “friendlies” visiting our planet but this, this alien before me, well, seemed to confuse me in a way that “friendlies” wouldn’t have. I was just starting to wonder what General Rosewood
hadn’t
told me when the alien stood up, tossed the wrench in the toolkit and closed it up.

The alien bent down and picked up the cable. The cable had a snap hook on the end of it. The alien then reached in and attached the snap hook to the shackle that had just been installed. The alien in the red suit then stood and turned. It just stood there for a few seconds staring at me. With its helmets faceplate completely opaque, I imagined it staring into my eyes, if it had eyes. I refused to look away, to tremble, to even blink. Finally the alien took the toolkit out of my hands and without so much as a “by-your-leave” head nod; it turned and walked back towards the triangular Dart.

I started to back up slowly from the crashed ship. I could see, standing this close, the surface wasn’t as smooth as it looked from any distance. There were faint seams of odd shapes. The surface actually looked like brushed metal rather than smoother metal. The cable tugged, and I looked up, the alien was making it taut and drawing the slack back into the bottom of the triangular craft. The alien walked back to the front of the craft, touched the nose of it, and then was (another shake of a lamb’s tail later), simply no longer standing there. The nausea returned.

A moment later, the black triangular craft started to slowly lift up so I backed even further away. Moving right over top of the crashed ship, the triangular craft silently moved upwards, moving very slowly until the crashed ship had taken tension on the cable, and had lifted off the ground. I could hear some faint straining and groaning of metal, but it quickly quieted to nothing in the thin atmosphere. The two alien ships then moved slowly upwards in tandem, and then started moving away; moving a bit more south of the direction than second craft had arrived from.

I stood there and watched them until they were over the horizon. Once it was out of sight, I stood there some more. Once I was done standing there, I decided to stand there a bit longer and then a bit longer still. It seemed that the “take action” part of my brain had gone to sleep; perhaps it had gone for lunch. I fully expected to find a significant portion of my brain huddled in the corner, strumming a finger on its lips, and making senseless gibbering noises.

As if this wasn’t enough on my plate, sexy voice spoke up again, “Unknown targets detected in area of compromise. Hostile targets designated target numbers forty-one, forty-two and forty-three, referential target numbers four, five and six. Tracking hostile targets.”

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath then out a long sigh, “I don’t fraking care”.

“Command not recognized. Please restate command.”

Sigh. Frak off.

“Command, cancel new target voice notification, and cancel referential targeting designations.”

“Command accepted, cancelling new target voice notification. Maintaining 100 kilometre exclusion zone. Cancelling referential targeting designations. Resuming sequential target designations.”

Sigh.

I decided to just stand there some more.

So I was just standing there for a while, not knowing what in the hell to do, and not having a clue what to make of everything that had just happened. From the time I got the heads-up message from Ernst, only twenty-five minutes had passed. The alien “rescue” ship had been on the ground for less than fifteen minutes. I decided that standing there was the right thing to do in these circumstances: so I just stood there some more, and then some more after that. At some point, I noticed that my HUD had not displayed any more priority message from Ernst or from anyone else for that matter.

Eventually, I looked around behind me and to the right, the Habitats were intact. I looked over the other shoulder at Big Dawg, it was sitting where I left it, but its camera mast was pointed right at me. I looked at the supply drops, the gaping wound in the nacelles, and lower side of cargo drop #3 (hydroponics equipment). I looked at the recently arrived cargo drop #7 (return pods, more on that later), and its scary and disappointing 35 degree list towards the other cargo drops.

I took a deep breath and let out a long sigh. I flapped my arms against my sides a couple times, turned to Big Dawg, gave him the hand recognition signal and then the “Follow Me” hand signal, and then walked back to the W-Hab.

Achael

She flew low and slow, not able to use the folding drive with the damaged Eridani craft swinging freely below her at the end of the rescue cable. It took her almost five hours to get to Teviot Vallis and the Eridani base.

A few minutes after leaving the crash site, her proximity scans showed three Eridani vessels in formation behind her. She braced herself to cut the cable and engage in evasive manoeuvres, but they did not attack. Two stayed in formation, while one pressed close and did a circuit first above then under her ship. Obviously they saw the crashed craft, and that she had it in tow. That lead ship moved back into formation with its counterparts, and they flew with her the whole way to her destination.

Achael had been to the Eridani base many times. Once a Martian year, the Eridani and the Hybrid base exchanged two or three personnel for a few hours. Each was treated to some entertainment, a lavish dinner and a round table discussion of any issues that needed to be discussed. She hated those trips. The Vesna creeped her out, the Voiya were insufferable, and the place smelled like rotting sweat socks and dirty crotch. However Lt. Col. KamPen had been sending her more often. She suspected it was a form of punishment for all the fighting, but it was better than the brig. There was also the biweekly deliveries of biological material that she and Hlef seemed to get more than their fair share of.

The only positive thing to come out of all these visits was that she had made some friends amongst the Trigla. The Trigla weren’t like the rest of the Eridani. Get them away from the Vesna and the Voiya; and they were friendly, solicitous, welcoming party animals. Many of them spoke small amounts of different Earth languages and were called upon by the Vesna, from time to time, to help interpret when circumstances didn’t permit telepathy to work. Achael had learned some rudimentary Trigla and could get by in a pinch, but she wasn’t fluent. Achael usually made her way from the state functions as soon as she could, and wandered down to the kitchens and maintenance areas where she would be greeted with hugs, backslapping, and the good food; not the pretentious crap they served upstairs. There was always music playing and the kitchen staff burst into unintelligible song and dancing as often as not. She had started bringing a case of human and Eben spices with her each year for the cooks, who were almost beside themselves with joy at such a bounteous, creative, and thoughtful gift.

This time, however, there would be no socializing, no gifts and no insufferable state dinner. She knew her arrival would not go over well, and there was a good chance they may just try to kill her on the spot. Key word being “try”.

Lt. Col. Gref KamPen

He stood beside Pinpin HofPin in the Defense Office. They watched the Eben version of a radar.

“Damn it”, the Base Commander said.

“I was afraid of this. There’s only one place she can be going on that heading.” mused Pinpin, while stroking his stubbly, but mostly Eben chin. The True-Blood Eben did not have facial hair, other than eyelashes. The Hybrid males tried growing facial hair, but usually wound up with patchy, odd coloured stubble only.

Lt. Col. KamPen scratched his head and looked at Pinpin, and then at Hlef and Ahshuun who had just entered.

“Straight to the Devil’s doorstep no doubt,” chimed in Ahshuun after seeing the track on the screen, “She must have a really big bug up her ass this time.”

Pinpin looked at the Base Commander, “Boss, we have to do something. If she’s alone and pisses them off, they won’t hesitate to throw her in an acid vat.”

The mood in the room changed at that moment. What everyone had been thinking was now being said, and now that it had been said, it demanded a response.

Lt. Col. KamPen held his head like he had a migraine. With squinted eyes he looked right at Hlef, “You girls are going to be the death of me, you know that, right?” Everyone smiled. He had just told them they were going to do something.

With a deep sigh, he put his hands on his hips, “You three meet me in the hangar bay. Get three Darts prepped,” and they were gone so fast, he hardly saw them go.

He looked down at the techs working the defense consoles. “Big Martha”, the True-Blood Eben tech turned her head slightly and looked at him from the corner of her eye. “What’s the current status of those ground pounders?”

Big Martha responded in her swishy-slushy Eben dialect, “Thousis ab estend atta” (30 minute alert).

“How fast can you get one up, really?”

Big Martha (a nickname she’d had for forty years) paused a moment than said, “Thousis sri” (ten minutes).

“Do it. I may need some shock and awe,” he spun on his heels, and headed for the hangar bay. He paused long enough at the Communications Office to order the tech to call the Ready-Team (10 Eben and 10 humans) to the hangar bay, with a full weapons kit for heavy combat. Shock and awe sometimes had to be upclose and personal.

The Battle Alarm started echoing in the halls when Big Martha activated the Heavy Cruiser alert. In addition to the ready team, many more pairs of feet, from all three races, started pounding towards the hangar bay.

Achael

She reduced speed a bit more as she started crossing Hesperia Planum, she didn’t want the Eridani following her to think it was an attack run. With Hellas Planitia looming broadly in the distance and quickly filling her view screen, she searched for the telltale landmark of the kidney-shaped Teviot Vallis with its dog-leg entry. Rising another 700 metres in altitude, it only took a few minutes before she saw it in the distance. She changed direction to come in slow over Gunnison crater. She wanted to approach at an oblique angle with the entrance to the Eridani base on the west side of Teviot Vallis, just west of the dog-leg. She slowed and approached obliquely, so that the assholes following her wouldn’t think she was on an attack approach.

Slowing to an almost stop, she crawled along the Vallis proper, while sending the challenge signal from her communications equipment. There was a lengthy delay. Long enough that she had to stop and hover in place with the damaged craft beneath swinging like a pendulum, ever-so-slightly. When the approach signal was received, she winched the small craft in close to the bottom of her Dart, and proceeded through the now visible entrance and through the magnetic curtain. The thick heavy doors had opened and recessed into the walls, she could see a large contingent of drones as well as a healthy ground crew of Trigla. She started running the mental exercises that would prevent the Vesna and most of the Voiya from reading her thoughts. This was something all the hybrids and humans on the Mars base learned very early on.

The ground crew halted her in mid-flight; while they ran underneath to have a look at the barely swaying damaged craft. Emerging from underneath, the one that had to be the Deck Chief guided her to a spot along one side of the landing bay, and indicated to her to set the craft there. She let out the winch slowly, and felt the change in buoyancy as the small craft rested on the deck. She waited a few minutes for the Trigla ground crew to disconnect the cable. It amazed her that Eben, Eridani, and human flight deck operations were almost identical, even though there had never been any purposeful collaboration.

The ground crew Chief gave her the all clear after only a minute. She winched in the cable, and followed another Trigla ground crew waving lighted sticks in the air. She was guided to the centre of the hangar bay where some drones and some Vesna had gathered. There was also a platoon-size force of Trigla soldiers present, all heavily armed. She smiled. There was an Eben hybrid arriving, they had to overcompensate. As her craft moved into the indicated position, she could see three Eridani scout ships alighting, and the pilots emerging on the far side of the cavernous hangar bay.

She settled the craft on its antigravity struts, and went to the back of the Dart’s cabin. The Drone was still all trussed up in duct tape and its large eyes were staring at her while its mouth worked silently, gnashing its teeth and looking like it really thought it could bite her through its helmet. Thankfully, the helmet it was wearing meant she didn’t have to listen to the damn thing. She still had her environment suit on, but not her own helmet. The Eridani base had Earth norm air pressure and breathable (though stinky) atmosphere. She took off her environment suit because she didn’t want its restrictiveness if push came to shove; and when confronting the Eridani and their minions, push could quite quickly come to shove.

She picked up the trussed Drone, tossed it over her shoulder and then closing her eyes she thought-commanded the Dart, “Outside”. Closing her eyes usually avoided the nauseating stomach lurch and slight disorientation of the TransMat, when her eyes were open.

The air around her was suddenly different. She opened her eyes and was standing on the Deck just forward of the nose of her Dart. She squinched her nose at the smell. The gathered drones were quickly moving to form a circle around Achael as the five Vesna approached her. She looked at the one in front and thought loudly,
MASTER, NOW
. Nothing happened right away so she knew the Vesna was trying to communicate with her. She refused to let her mental guards down though because, as previously stated, the Vesna just creeped the hell out of her. She refused to let them communicate with her directly. She adjusted the weight of the squirming drone slung over her shoulder. She thought again, louder if possible,
MASTER, NOW
.

Still, nothing appeared to be happening. One of the Trigla guards, the guard commander it looked like, stepped forward. She recognized him as someone she had sat at a table with during the last official visit she took part in. He smiled quickly, then went back to looking dour, “Vesna Mahal say down down quanni leave.” His pidgin English wasn’t half bad.

Having dealt with these assholes most of her life she looked right at the creepy Vesna Mahal (title, not a name) and said with her voice, “You bring the Duty Commander here right this minute.
You
bring him here. I’m not leaving until I speak with him.” She reached out and poked her finger in his chest as she said this. This, of course, caused the circle of drones to rush in tight around her. One of them foolishly grabbed her arm. Unluckily for that particular drone, her lightning Eben reflexes let her withdraw her arm, and punch it in the head hard enough to kill it on the spot. It dropped lifeless and the other drones just stepped on top of it to get closer to her, but none of them touched her. She knew that could only be, because they were under direct orders not to. The dead one just got a little too excited. As far as she was concerned though, the only good drone was a dead drone. Push was indeed, coming to shove.

At this, the five Vesna turned as one, and walked away. She looked at the Trigla guard commander. He just gave her a wry grin and hunched his shoulders, “Wait now HipHip, Voiya come.” (HipHip was what the Trigla called Achael, it meant ‘gift bringer’).

The little trussed up Drone on her shoulder was still wiggling. She could hear some faint sound coming through the helmet; it must have been in quite a state to be able to hear it. She hefted it up and flopped it not too gently onto her other shoulder. The drones circling her pressed closer to her momentarily, but then got hold of themselves and drew back. She had about 30 centimetres of space all around her, and they had to be twenty deep.

Sighing deeply, Achael did all that she could do at the moment, she waited. She amused herself by making sneering faces at the sea of drones, trying to see if she could provoke another one to go to it’s death, quickly. These drones were well-trained though. They gibbered, snarled, and sneered right back at her, but none of them touched her. She really, really hated the drones.

Only three or four minutes had passed when a hatch opened at the side of the hangar bay. Two armed Trigla stepped through, then two Vesna, then the Eridani Master (one of the Voiya), then the rest of the original Vesna contingent, and four more armed Trigla. The last two also carried a lightweight, but ever-present platform between them.

The original Trigla guard commander watched their entrance, then turned back to Achael and said sotto voce with his deep voice, “Little big-big, korumph custy guards, fast move tut-tut.” He had warned her that this was a low ranking Voiya, and that the guards with him would not be friendly to her: so don’t make any sudden moves. She smiled. She could take half a dozen armed Trigla before they knew what happened. Still, she appreciated this one making the effort to warn her. It just strengthened her appreciation of the Trigla she had become friendly with.

Without even looking, a wedge of open space formed within the ring of drones. The ring itself pulled back a bit more, leaving Achael standing in a clear circle about five feet across. Clear that is, except for the body of the dead drone that had mistakenly touched her. She looked at the circle of drones and knew that they were the only thing she really had to worry about. A dozen or so of them would be no problem but there had to be at least two hundred of them around her. She wasn’t entirely sure that she really could defeat that many of them on her own.

The two trailing Trigla guards scurried to the front of the pack and set down a wide three step platform, then retreated while bowing. The Voiya slowly climbed the three steps of the platform in front of her. He then stood there smugly, his head height above her eye line. He wasn’t saying anything out loud, he was just staring imperiously down at her. She watched his forehead rise, his eyes widen, and nostrils flare. The Eridani Master was trying to communicate with her but she had her mental blocks up.