Battleground Mars (8 page)

“Rahm’s crew calling Mars Base, come in.”

They had to wait a minute for someone to answer, as the connection was not continuously manned. When a call came in to the base, an alarm sounded and a communications technician went to answer it.

“This is Mars Base. What the hell are you doing in the scrubbing facility? Are you all ok, we were getting worried?”

“Long story, we’ll spill it out when we get back. No injuries or fatalities, we’re good.”

“I’m pleased to hear it. Take care, y’all, see you later. Mars Base out.”

She switched off the equipment. The team was disconnecting the air hoses, and Rahm assembled them near the airlock. He poked his head out, the storm still raged but it appeared to have lessened.

“Let’s go, Kaz, make sure everything is boxed up tight behind you, we don’t want to leave anything for our ugly friends to find.”

The Arab nodded. “I’ve got it.”

They walked towards their temporary home on the planet. They all hated it, cursed it, and despised it. They called it a hellhole, a prison cell, pit of hell. But it was home, on all of Mars, it was one place they could relax, at least a little. They could feel safe, warm, in the company of their friends and colleagues and protected at least here by batteries of automated defenses and their own small militia force. Every one of them quickened their pace. They were going home.

It took them half an hour to get back. They were all waiting for them, Damian Hacker, who was the commander of the Mars Militia had suited up with three of his men and were keeping a watch for them. The troopers greeted them warmly and helped them through the airlock. The rest of the crews were all gathered together, a small ground to welcome them home. Jacques Fechter stepped forward, Tobin Ryle shadowed him.

“We were worried, Rahm. Tobin thought you’d all become dinner for the Taurons.”

“Sorry to disappoint you, Ryle,” Saul Packer muttered. “Maybe next time.”

“Fuck you, Packer,” the deputy blurted out. He stormed away.

“So you lost my buggy?”

“No, we can recover it tomorrow, just an electrical failure. Kacy said it’s probably the control board.”

“I’ll detail a team to recover it. What about the recording?”

Saul held up the small data drive. “Here. I’m going to watch it before we turn in. We want to know why we risk out asses to recover this.”

“I’d prefer to look at it in private first, in case…”

Fechter was left on his own as the crowed swept out towards the canteen, where there was a huge screen set up for entertainment and training films, as well as broadcasts from Earth. The stood in a wide semi-circle around the screen as Saul put the drive into the player. They watched the team set up the drilling rig, then the panic as they sighted the Taurons. Eddy Moss exclaimed, “Where are the fucking guns? They’re all over us.” Then an alien, a huge, monstrous distortion of a Tauron appeared in shot, tossed Eddy’s body over and started to rip off his limbs. The monsters worked in silence, the drilling crew screamed and screamed as they were pursued and ripped to pieces. The image of the huge Tauron ripping apart Eddy’s body would haunt many of their dreams for a long time to come. Just before the recording ended, the colossus seemed to sense the camera. He turned towards it and stood staring at it, drawing himself up to his full, terrible height. Then he shouted. It was a noise that shrilled around the canteen and chilled their blood. The terrible, eerie, tremolo echoed across the barren Martian landscape.

The following day the air scrubbers started to act up. The only warning was in the base control center, none of the drillers were aware that Jacques Fechter had blanched white and run around screaming for an engineering crew to go out and fix the problem. When they got back, they reported Tauron activity. A party of aliens had been spotted no more than ten miles away. The aliens had decided to operate nearer to Mars Base. And the cave. Every man pictured the nightmare scenario, an attack on the scrubbers. But this time there was no problem with enemy action, there were no reports of them coming closer. They breathed a sigh of relief when the scrubbers were back up to full capacity, there would be no need to initiate the emergency lockdown. Every man in the base dreaded it. They’d all gone through the drills, everything had to stop, all drilling operations, all unnecessary activity, and they were confined to their bunks to conserve air. It was boring, irritating and every hour meant a big chunk of money lost. No one wanted trouble with the air scrubbers. Rahm took his team out as usual to drill for trevanium. His crew took a spare buggy and went out with the other teams. When they got a mile away from Mars Base they started to fan out, dispersing over their target area to find the most productive sites. This time they kept a careful watch, he made Kaz stay on the buggy, perched high on the framework to keep a lookout for Taurons. But there were no attacks that day, they worked late and drove back with the cargo hold stuffed with mineral. It made up for part of what they’d lost lately, they caught up with the other returning teams on the way back, by the sound of the jubilant radio transmissions they’d all had a good day. Maybe their luck was about to turn.

Rahm dove straight in the shower when he got back and then went to the canteen to unwind. He sat down at a table with a mug of coffee and poured in an oversized slug of Bourbon, then relaxed back to enjoy it.

“You mind if I join you?”

He looked up. It was Gabi Aaronsen, Grant Merkel’s sister. She was a looker, which was enough to make him glance at her for longer than he would normally bother with a girl. Especially since Christine’s death. He looked away quickly, for he didn’t want her to think he was ogling her. He’d seen her around a few times since they’d met in the library on the ship, yet hadn’t had any real need to talk to her.

“Sure, go ahead. You want a slug in your coffee?”

She nodded. “That’d be nice; life here has been pretty crap lately.”

“You’re telling me.” He poured a good measure into her coffee mug. “I’m sorry about the poor devils on Grant’s crew, it should never have happened. It’s sad about your brother.”

“What do you mean, it should never have happened?”

“I mean that these so-called managers should think a little more about their men and a little less about the trevanium. Men are dying, and they don’t seem to give much of a damn.”

“You think they should send security guards out with the drilling crews?”

“I know for certain that they should. Think about it, we have a hard enough task as it is. We have to concentrate on the drilling, trying to stop the machinery from going crazy while we extract the mineral, it’s a tricky job. We take our eyes off to watch for alien monsters and the equipment goes to pieces. We concentrate on the equipment and the Taurons jump us. We can’t do it all, if they don’t start giving us security teams there won’t be any drillers left by the time the next relief ship arrives.”

I’m Gabi, Gabi Aaronsen. I guess you should know that Grant was my brother.”

“Yes, I haven’t forgotten that we met on the ship.”

She smiled when he said he remembered their meeting. She was taller than many women, not far off his height of six feet one inch. Maybe she was five nine, pretty impressive for a woman. Dark brown hair, eyes that shone interest and intelligence, she was slim but also had an attractive shape, with curves in all the right places. He pulled himself together, as he realized he’d been looking at her breasts. Damn, he hadn’t meant to be rude, not with this girl.

“Thirty six C,” she interjected. “You were looking at my tits, I guessed you were wondering. Lots of men do, I don’t mind.”

“No, of course not,” he stammered, but he felt his face glowing red. “I mean, of course not, I wasn’t, you know…”

“Sure.”

Her smile lit up her face. She understood. She was the kind of girl who knew what she had and wasn’t self-conscious or vain about it. His kind of girl. He noticed her eyes were shadowed with grief.

“I’m real sorry about your brother.”

“Thank you, it looked like a horrible way to die.”

You didn’t watch…”

“The video? Yes, thanks for getting it back. It was horrible, but at least we know what happened to him, there are no doubts, no waiting and worrying.”

“Right. Another one?”

She nodded and he poured it in.

“Would you do something for me, Rahm?”

“Sure, of course.”

There’s a service of commemoration later tonight. Would you say a few words, as it was you that led the crew out to recover the recording?”

“Yes, I’ll do that.”

Her faced brightened a little. “It would mean a lot to me.”

The eulogy was like those occasions always are. Miserable and sad. Depressing. It was difficult to see what good it did for Gabi when they gathered in the canteen. The manager, Jacques Fechter, spoke a few words. Then Rahm spoke for a couple of minutes and then Gabi gave the eulogy. She was weeping at the end, and Rahm went across to her and led her away back to the living quarters. He wished her a good night, went back to his own quarters and dug out a fresh bottle of Bourbon that he gave to Kacy and asked her to take to Gabi. He didn’t want her to think he was hitting on her. Not now, not today.

That night, he had the nightmare again. He was back on Earth, his first major responsibility, chief engineer on the research station in Afghanistan. Vast quantities of opium poppies were harvested and converted for the computing industry on a daily basis. It was winter, and they spent the day outside of the station, on the frozen Afghan plain, supervising the test harvest of a new strain of the poppy. Christine Blake was with him, she too was a scientist, attached to one of his research teams. She was also his fiancée. At the end of the working day they settled inside the relative warmth of their comfortable, prefabricated station. It was a huge building, delivered to the remote area by teams of helicopters. Many advances had come to Afghanistan over the decades, but good roads were not amongst them. The raid took them all by surprise. His bosses had provided them with guards equipped with AK74 Russian-made assault rifles. In this country they were cheap and easily available and the locals were used to their simple, rugged design. They viewed the newer laser weapons, with their complicated electronics and plastics, as little more than toys. Like many Afghans, they had their own way of keeping out the cold, they smoked incessantly. But not tobacco. Opium was their drug of choice, for after all, tobacco couldn’t be picked from the fields during a relaxing walk in the countryside. The terrorists were after loot, food, weapons, anything they could find. They smashed open the main doors and rushed inside the station, shooting wildly. Rahm had previously gone to his office to retrieve his satphone when he heard them. He rushed out in time to see one of his opium befuddled guards go down at his feet in a hail of bullets. The man’s assault rifle dropped next to him, and he stood looking down at it, frozen into inaction. He did nothing, and the bandits swept through the complex, shooting, smashing and ripping out equipment and murdering anyone who stood in their way. The theft became and orgy of violence and destruction, probably drug induced. When they left, he was the sole survivor, unwounded, and left wracked with guilt over his failure to act. He couldn’t explain it afterwards, and he never discovered what had gone wrong. The doctors insisted that he’d had some kind of a seizure at the crucial moment, almost like a stroke. It wasn’t his fault, they said, it could have happened to anyone. The inaction probably saved his life. But it didn’t help Christine Blake. When the bandits left, she was bleeding the last drops of her lifeblood onto the floor. Afterwards he resigned his position and started a new life as a humble driller, working in the worst hellholes on Earth, places that required extraordinary toughness just to survive. He had nothing left to live for, and everything to die for. He’d worked his way up to crew boss, after spells as a mercenary guard in some of the most violent places, and finally cam to join the operation on Mars. It was as far from his ghosts as he could possibly go.

The mood the next morning was somber, but the business of ripping trevanium out of the Martian surface had to go on. They went out again the next day. They’d made the area around the Nepenthe Valley off limits, as well as those sites that were greater than half way to the Tauron base at Elysium. They rolled out of Mars Base on their repaired buggy and he drove towards the Schiaparelli Crater, remembering the pass they’d driven along in full flight from the Taurons. The crew was nervous about returning to the area. Even Nathan Wenders, who was normally a man who showed no fear, protested.

“It’s too close to Elysium. The last thing you need is to get your crew annihilated in a bandit attack.”

He looked at Wenders sharply. Was he referring to what has happened on Earth, in Afghanistan? But that was not well known, the company had buried it deep. After all, the loss had cost the company billions of dollars, and it was not something they wanted to advertise to the shareholders. He decided it was no more than an innocent remark. Rahm went on to explain that the area was within the region assumed to be safe by the manager. He nodded and accepted it, but he clearly wasn’t happy.

“Think about it, men, we could get as much in one day from the rim of the Schiaparelli Crater as we do from three days elsewhere on the surface.”