On Mars Pathfinder (The Mike Lane Stories Book 1) (29 page)

Mission Control: 18 Minutes, 24 Seconds Ago

The telemetry techs at the front of the room all jumped up, raised their hands in the air, and yelled at the same time, turning in unison like a perfectly choreographed ballet, “Telemetry is up again!”

Numbers were pouring into all the idle consoles, and techs raced to get back to their stations. It had been hours since a signal had been received from Mars, and everyone had been milling around sipping coffee and impatiently whispering about what was really going on, on Mars. The large screen at the front of the room started scrolling biosciences and atmospheric numbers at the bottom edge. The static jumped on the left side of the screen (Mar-Sat), and with a few stills in between the bursts of static, finally resolved into a steady Hi-Def picture.

Many people gasped at the sight, Hans among them. Hans had promptly come in a few hours ago after being called in the middle of a sound sleep by his brother, Karl. Jayden, it seemed, never left the place. They stood with Karl at the back of the room, watching with everyone else. It was still Karl’s shift.

The video feed showed the Habitat structures and the site of the supply drops. The gasp was the site of the most recently arrived supply drop. There were faint wisps of smoke coming from underneath it. It stood canted over to one side, obviously missing a nacelle. There were two broken landing struts hanging uselessly at odd angles. The aeronautical engineers in the room, on loan from the manufacturer, surmised that the undercarriage support legs, to be used after landing to support and level the supply shipment, had stopped the supply drop from tipping completely over. A later examination by Mike would reveal that the explosion of the engine nacelle had damaged the controller for the landing struts, and the two on that side had started extending on their own. Had they not, the one hundred million Euro cargo of sample return vehicles, the real money makers, would have been completely lost. For now though, it appeared they may be salvageable, but that wouldn’t be confirmed until Mike could do a proper inspection.

“Carrie,” Hans spoke loudly across the room, “Any sign of him?”

She and Arno were huddled over their screens, panning and zooming on the available feed. They both shook their heads and kept on with what they were doing. Karl was about to ask her a question when she turned around and said, “It looks like the COM unit is re-initializing, we should have internals in a few minutes.”

One of the Habitat support techs turned in his chair with his arm in the air, “We’re getting gas exchange telemetry from the L-Hab. He has to be inside.”

Nodding at this piece of good news, Karl stepped away from his brother and Jayden, and slowly walked over to the other side of the room. He was staring at the floor as he walked, chewing on an unlit cigar, and rubbing his small pot belly under his cardigan. With a furrowed brow, and obvious mental machinations in overdrive behind his unfocused eyes, he stopped behind Ernst and Freddie. They both sat there, unable to do anything. They had no image and no telemetry.

Finally Karl looked up and saw Ernst, chair turned sideways, starring back at him through his black rim, 1950’s style glasses. Karl spoke in French, as he knew none of the telemetry techs nearby spoke that language.
“
Étrange, non?”

Ernst nodded his head but never took his eyes off Karl,
“Oui, c’est étrange.”
Ernst had already reached the conclusion that he suspected Karl was now reaching. He and Freddie had already had a whispered discussion on it.

“Il est étrange que votre vidéo n’a pas été rétabli.”

“Oui.”

“Le vidéo principal est de retour, mais pas le vôtre,”
then after a brief pause, “Pourquoi exactement?”

Ernst just stared at him. The Platform’s video should indeed have returned when the Mar-Sat video returned. When the interference for the first one cleared up, the other one should have cleared up at the same time. That left only two possibilities. Either The Platform had been destroyed, or, Karl muttered,
“Quelqu’un d’autre avait le contrôle du satellite.”

There was someone else besides Ernst and Mike that had control of The Platform.

Freddie gravely looked over his shoulder at both of them, then turned back to watch the big screen
, “Tu ma volé les mots de la bouche.”

Karl nodded sagely, turned around and went back up the raised levels of floor in Mission Control, towards the back of the room. He quietly discussed his concerns with Hans and Jayden. Jayden looked pissed. Hans looked pissed. They looked at each other. They were all pissed.

“Phone her,” said Hans. Jayden nodded, and headed to his office.

After closing the door he sat down at his desk and opened the top drawer, reached way in the back and pulled out a card taped to the back of the drawer. It contained a phone number for the one he had secretly started to refer to as the Puppet Master, because she had pulled so many strings in getting this mission on its way. He picked up the telephone handset from its cradle, and dialed the number. He waited for only one ring after the international connection was made.

“88
th
Air Support Wing, Commandant’s office,” came the friendly voice.

“Lef-tenant General Rosewood, please.”

“I’m sorry, the General isn’t here at the moment, may I take a message?”

Jayden suppressed a sigh of exasperation and gritted his teeth, “It’s about Aquarius.”

“Wait one.”

There was a pause, then a beeping and gurgling sound. The same voice, a little less pleasant, came back on the line, “Is this line secure?”

“Ummm …”

“The General will call you back. Stay by your phone,” then the line went dead. Jayden stared at the receiver in surprise, and then slowly hung it up. He sat there tapping a pen on the desk and wondered how long it would take for her to call. He pondered forwarding his phone to Mission Control and heading back down there. After three minutes of waiting, his office door opened with no announcement.

Two men in black suits and black fedoras, perfectly trimmed crew cut hair, very square jaws, wearing Ray-Ban sunglasses walked into his office. They stopped in front of his desk. Wordlessly, one of them reached inside his suit jacket, pulled out a digitally encrypted satellite phone, and handed it to Jayden. They then stood there, hands folded in front of them, staring at him. The phone rang.

Jayden, usually nonplussed, almost dropped the damn thing. He swiveled up the antenna and pressed the talk button.

“What do you want?” came Lieutenant General Rosewood’s voice, Gilda, Gabby to her friends.

“Have you been following events on Mars?”

“Of course we have.”

“We have the Mar-Sat signal back but not,” he paused, looking up at the two men, “the other one.”

“I’m aware of that. Do you know why yet?”

“That’s what I was calling to ask you.”

Gilda sounded genuinely confused, “What do you mean?”

“Well, it’s kind of odd we got one signal back, and not the other. When the interference on the first one cleared up, the second one should have cleared up as well. Those two signals are so far away that they are almost the same signal by the time they get back here.”

“And why would I know why we aren’t getting the second signal? If you are implying that we are blocking it; we aren’t, we are relying on that signal as much as you are.”

“Yes but if the …”

“If the second signal hasn’t returned it means that either the satellite has been destroyed, or someone turned off the signal. Someone at
that
end.”

“Yes”, Jayden said.

“Jayden,” she sighed, “We want this mission to succeed as much as you do. We have invested billions in it, and we made a lot of political enemies getting your man off the ground and across the solar system. If we had been able to put someone there who could turn the signal off and on, why would we need your guy?” Jayden couldn’t see her smiling at her own Oscar worthy performance.

“Okay, okay. I see your point. But it doesn’t change the fact this is damn peculiar. Is there any way we can find out if the satellite has been destroyed?”

“
Humph
, I doubt it has. It’s well defended.”

They had never discussed that, “What do you mean, well defended?”

He could almost hear the contempt in her voice, “You didn’t think we’d send it to orbit Mars, carrying what it carries, without defense did you?” Jayden felt kind of numb at those words. He started to get a queasy feeling in the pit of his stomach. He was getting the first inkling of the thought that he was more of a pawn, than puppet. There was a sound of an excited voice in the background as she muffled the phone. Then she said quickly, “The signal’s back,” and she hung up.

He looked at the phone and pressed the End button. He looked up and one of the two men in black suits and black fedoras, perfectly trimmed crew cut hair, very square jaws, wearing Ray-Ban sunglasses was already reaching across the desk. The silent man took the phone out of his hand, swivelled the antenna closed, and stuck it back in his suit jacket. Without a nod or a smile, they both pivoted on their heels and walked out of his office, leaving the door open behind them.

Jayden got up right behind them and walked to the door. He stepped into the hall and stopped in his tracks. They were gone. The hallway was thirty feet long and the exit was at the far end. His desk was only ten feet from the door. They couldn’t have gotten to the far end so fast without him hearing them running. He swallowed nervously, and looked behind him in his office, then down the hallway again.

“What the hell have we gotten into,” he muttered as he headed back to Mission Control.

Teviot Vallis

When the Eridani reinforcements began pouring into the hangar bay, everyone on both sides held their position. The pilot in the lead Dart communicated with the Eben Battle Cruiser, and the behemoth edged frighteningly close to the entrance of the hangar bay, so close that two of its forward rail guns actually passed through the magnetic curtain. This had the desired effect of slowing down the rushing reinforcements, and convincing all present to keep their heads. If the Eben ground pounder opened up this close, nothing in the Eridani base would survive.

“It’s time to leave,” Lieutenant Colonel KamPen tossed over his shoulder. As his troops started to slowly TransMat back aboard the ships, he spoke to the Eridani Master again.

“As for today’s events, Master Voiya, this matter is closed. The terms of the détente have been satisfied to my liking. As of this moment, that human is now under
my
protection. If you attack him, you attack us - and you will suffer swift consequences,” he let that sink in. It hadn’t actually been part of his orders to say that. He just threw it in to piss off the Eridani even more. It was counterproductive to the grand plan of his betters, but he didn’t know about the grand plan, yet.

KamPen continued, “We’ll leave you in peace and thank you for allowing our operative to wait here for us. If you choose to press this matter any further,” KamPen smiled and looked over his shoulder at the now almost completely blocked entrance to the cave, “well, then we’ll just have to begin some aggressive negotiations.”

The Eridani Master was then looking at empty air where KamPen had been standing. The ground pounder started to withdraw from the entrance and the three Darts, turning in unison, accelerated out of the hangar bay between the nose of the battle cruiser and the rock wall of the entrance.

Master Blitowyn of Chernasai looked around him. He looked down at six pairs of bloody calves sticking out of combat boots and the gooey, bloody sludge around him and on him that had so few minutes ago been his loyal personal guard. He looked at the corpses of the drones, and he looked around at the hundreds of mostly armed reinforcements that had crowded into the hangar bay. He looked behind him and saw the other two surviving Voiya, the other two Eridani Masters pushing their way through the crowded space to emerge right by the steps of this platform. They looked as pissed as he was, but then again, the Voiya always looked pissed. This, for Blitowyn, was a special kind of pissed. This was beyond the garden variety pissed, and had moved into the realm of apoplectically pissed. That scurrilous half-breed had called him, “fathead”. The hybrids were going to pay. Oh, they were going to pay deeply for that.

Aboard the Eben Battle Cruiser “Shin Fa”

The TransMat materialized Lieutenant Colonel KamPen on the bridge, directly behind the ship’s True-Blood Eben Commander, who also happened to be KamPen’s uncle. The bridge was one of only three places on the Battle Cruiser with enough room for a hybrid, or a human to be TransMat aboard.

“Prill Foosh”, he nodded. His Uncle Foosh, dressed in the traditional Eben black turtleneck and slacks, turned and acknowledged him.

“Looks like Master Eridani not a happy camper,” said Foosh, using his well-practiced English, and one of the many loved idioms he studied carefully. He smiled.

“I don’t think this is over, not by a long shot.”

Commander Foosh ObooPen (Oboo was Kam and Foosh’s father; Kam ObooPen was Lt. Col. KamPen’s father) made a sound that was the Eben equivalent of “hmm”. As the Battle Cruiser was now clearing the Vallis and arcing around to pass over Hellas Planitia, he turned to his nephew, “Wasn’t that Rillixiwen’s little shumshah?”

“Yes, it was,” KamPen looked thoughtful.

He looked at his uncle, and his uncle, equally thoughtful nodded, “Yes, strange.”

“Why was I dealing with someone so minor? I would have expected Tsweflon or Ufektin of even Rillixiwen himself. Why did they send someone so low down the totem pole?”

“Others busy maybe,” his grammar wasn’t as perfect as he thought it was.

“Perhaps, uncle, but they wouldn’t have left Blitowyn in charge, he’s too young, too new. He’s only been here three years.”

“Your think is correctly,” Uncle Foosh paused and looked down at the deck, “something very strange is going on in Eridani base.”

“Pol”, yes, was KamPen’s reply in Eben, “Pol rem” (for sure).

Uncle Foosh looked up at his nephew, looked him squarely in his now unguarded, dreamy blue eyes, “I think something odd is going on elsewhere as well.”

KamPen met his uncle’s gaze but didn’t say anything. After staring at him a bit longer than was comfortable, Commander Foosh turned back to the bridge crew, “Achael is in my quarters.”

Just like that, the uncle had dismissed the nephew.

KamPen turned around without saying anything else. He exited the bridge and ducked down to pass through the Eben sized corridor. Down one flight of stairs, whose walls seemed too close together, and then along that deck’s back bending low ceiling corridor a few feet to the Commander’s cabin. He didn’t knock. He opened the hatch, ducked even lower, and stepped into the oddly spacious room. Achael stood up, but not all the way up. They stood there looking at each other’s feet, shoulders hunched and heads bent forward, chins pressed into their necks, back of their heads grazing the low ceiling.

“Commander,” she said in acknowledgement.

“Achael,” he said, then added, “dumb ass”.

Awkwardly, she managed to hunch her already hunched shoulders, flapped her arms against her side and tried to smile, “Everyone’s a critic!”

KamPen tried really, really hard not to laugh, but it was pointless. He loved Achael in a fatherly way and could never stay mad at her. Besides, her actions had finally been sanctioned by the old woman, so technically, he didn’t really have anything to be mad about. He wasn’t, however, going to let that stop him from dressing her down.

“Can we please sit down?” she said.

He tried to nod, but only bumped his head on the ceiling. They both sat down. Notwithstanding the official sanction, he knew he couldn’t let her actions this day go unaddressed. He proceeded to give her a military style dressing down that lasted ten full minutes. From the fight and the destruction of so much of that section of the base; putting the SF sergeant in the infirmary; her taking the Dart without clearance; interfering with the human colonist; risking exposure to the human’s … oh shit. He thumbed his communicator and ordered the base Communications officer to terminate the interference generator aimed at Mar-Sat. He then continued Achael’s dressing down without missing a beat. She risked her own neck by towing that piece of junk a quarter of the way around the planet, arriving unannounced at the enemy base, and then stirring the pot up to the point they were ready to execute her.

By the time KamPen had finished, he could see that Achael was visibly upset. She was upset alright, she was upset she had to sit there and listen to this for so long. She had no regrets and no reservations about what she had done. She knew she had done the right thing, and the fact that she wasn’t, at this moment, sitting in the Battle Cruisers brig confirmed that for her. She didn’t say any of this to him. Even though she seemed to so frequently break his rules and disappoint him, she truly did respect and care for her Commander. She did try to please him in so many ways, and always defended him when the others questioned him behind his back. Right now she kept silent, looked at the floor for a moment, then looked up at him, “I’m not sorry for what I did, I
am
sorry that I disappointed you, and that I put you in the position that I did.”

He sighed and shook his head.

“And thank you for coming to get me.”

Fifteen minutes later the Battle Cruiser
Shin Fa
glided effortlessly through the magnetic curtain of the cavernous hangar bay in the hybrid base, a hanger bay five times larger than the Eridani’s. The outer doors of the hangar bay slid almost silently shut after two of the Darts followed the ground pounder through the magnetic curtain. The third Dart, Khlam and a True-Blood Eben at the controls, maintained a Combat Air Patrol around their base just in case the Eridani showed some balls and were coming for vengeance. A chime sounded in the Commander’s cabin and both Achael and KamPen stood up, hunched over. Then they were standing on the hangar deck, appearing right in front of Hlef and Ahshuun; who were having a heated argument, having materialized mid argue.

They both paused and looked at Achael and the Lieutenant Colonel. Hlef was too pissed with Ahshuun to do anything but glare. Seeing them materialize, heads bent and hunched over like they were talking to their feet, Ahshuun couldn’t help but snort and guffaw loudly. The Commander straightened up, smacked him in the back of the head and muttered, “asshole” as he strode towards his office. He had to turn The Platform communications back on with Earth, pronto. No telling what those Eridani bastards might do.