Labyrinth of Night (21 page)

The photo and the diagram were replaced by the Skycorp logo: a static image.
‘Pentagon officials have denied accusations of such military interference from the space industrial partners sponsoring the Cydonia investigation. Despite the circumstantial evidence, there is insufficient proof on which to base a claim of malfeasance by the US military. None of the appropriate governments is willing to risk repeating the events of August, 2030, until more hard evidence has been gathered…
‘

The last item in the attaché case was the most important, perhaps, considering that the quarry was armed. The SIG/Sauer P230 was a deceptively small semi-automatic handgun; little more than six inches long, it could almost be dismissed as a gun for a lady’s handbag. Normally, Nash went unarmed on most assignments; on the rare occasions when he did pack a gun, such as bodyguard jobs, it was usually a Glock 19. But the Glock, despite its greater firepower, was much too large to be effectively concealed in a jumpsuit, while the little P230 could easily be carried in a trouser pocket without being seen. And the very last thing he wanted L’Enfant to know was that Andy Donaldson was armed.

‘Your assignment is four-fold. First, to discover whether Commander Terrance L’Enfant has taken control of Cydonia Base. Second, to discover what his future plans are. Third, to determine whether he intends to use military force to accomplish those goals. Fourth, and finally, to provide an assessment of whether his operations endanger Skycorp’s present activities on Mars…
’

Nash locked the safety pin, then thumbed the magazine release beneath its blue steel barrel and reached for the box of .38 caliber ammo. As the SA armorer had promised, he had been issued fragile-nosed safety rounds similar to those used by FAA air marshals. The bullets would shatter on contact with anything more resilient than a human body and therefore not punch through a pressurized hull. One by one, he slid the seven rounds into the cartridge.

‘Your primary objective will be to gather tangible evidence that will either support or refute the claims, whether they be photos or taped conversation, through whatever covert means are at your disposal. Once you have returned to the
Lowell,
you will immediately transmit said information to Security Associates at the earliest possible opportunity, when the orbits of Earth and Mars allow the resumption of direct radio contact. Again, your primary objective will be to gather information…
’

He slotted the loaded cartridge back into the gun’s handle, then reached for the spare cartridge and began to load it as well.
‘However, since you will be facing armed and possibly dangerous adversaries, and because you will be operating beyond range of feasible radio contact, you are also cleared to use lethal force, with extreme prejudice, to assure your own survival
…’

Startled, Nash glanced up at the screen; this had not been part of the initial mission briefing late last year in Washington.

‘Be advised that, if this option becomes necessary within the parameters of your assignment, the company’s legal consul states that you are authorized to act upon it, according to his interpretation of the seventh protocol of the United Nations Protocols for the Sending of Communications to Extraterrestrial Intelligence…
’

‘Seventh protocol?’ he whispered.’ What the hell are you…?’

The narrative continued, unheeding of his bewilderment.
‘Your contact on Mars is Samuel Leahy, the Skycorp general manager of Arsia Station. Leahy will make any necessary introductions to Arsia Station staff members and give you further updates on your assignment, if any need to be provided. We anticipate your first report no earlier than twelve-hundred hours and no later than twenty-four hundred hours, Greenwich time, on November 11, 2032. Good luck, Mr Donaldson.’

With no closing other than that, the message was concluded. The screen went blank; already a self-contained virus program was destroying everything on the diskette. Nash ejected the diskette, grasped it between his fists and snapped it in half before shoving the remains down the disposal vent.

Extreme prejudice…

He knew what that meant. He could snuff somebody if they were trying to snuff him first. No problem with that.

The seventh protocol…

No goddamned idea.

L’Enfant…

He knew all about Terrible Terry L’Enfant.

Nash picked up the gun and studied it. Control had sent him up here on what had seemed to be a clearly defined mission; now that he was here, out of radio contact and completely on his own, the rules of the game had been changed on him. He had been given a gun, all right, but no one had bothered to ask him whether he cared to kill L’Enfant.

Or, if he did, whether he had the nerve to pull the trigger.

‘Halprin,’ he whispered, ‘you old fucking bastard…’

‘L
AUNCH MINUS NINE…
eight…seven…’

‘Final engine check nominal. We’re hot. Separation at mark zero.’

‘Copy. Launch minus five…four…three…’

‘Umbilical detached.’

‘Copy that…one…’

‘Mark zero and separation.’ Lew Belotti’s right hand, resting on the bar above his head, yanked it down. There was an abrupt jar as the
Sagan
was released from its cradle beneath the
Lowell’s
second arm. Green lights flashed across the wraparound console of the cockpit. ‘We’ve got separation,’ he said as he returned both hands to the control yoke. ‘Firing RCRs in five seconds on my mark. Five…four…three…two…one…mark for RCR ignition.’

There was a slight sensation of motion as the flight computer automatically ignited the RCRs along the lander’s biconic fuselage, pushing it away from the cycleship. From his couch in the midsection of the lander’s crew compartment, Nash watched as the long trusswork of Arm Two briefly swam past the cockpit windows: the gold Mylar-wrapped habitation cylinders, the OMS engines, the oxygen/nitrogen tanks and the wide hexagon of the communications antenna and, finally, the long, black ripple of the heat radiator. Then, suddenly, the
Lowell
was gone, spinning away on its own lonesome orbit as the massive red orb of Mars drifted into view through the windows.

‘Nice show, Lew.’ Massey was leisurely watching his first officer from the right-hand co-pilot seat. He glanced at the readout on one of his computer screens. ‘Four minutes to initiating primary descent sequence, on your mark.’

‘PDS in four minutes, Cap’n.’ Lew bent forward against his straps and began tapping the next set of instructions into the computer’s keyboard. Nash could hear the absent-minded snap of his chewing gum between his jaws as he worked. His checklist, loosened from its magnetic clip by the separation and unfettered by the loss of gravity, floated upward from the dashboard; without missing a beat, Lew snagged it out of midair and shoved it back onto the console below the window. He glanced over his shoulder at the six passengers seated behind him. ‘Everybody okay back there?’

Nash nodded and gave him a quick thumbs-up; in the couch next to him, Miho Sasaki appeared to be completely unruffled. The medical officer, Jodi Ferrigno, seemed to be taking a nap. The same couldn’t be said about the other passengers in the rear, the three scientists bound for Arsia Station for their two-year research tours. Nash heard a couple of uncomfortable burps; the sudden transition to zero-gee was unsettling, and Nash had little doubt that at least one of them would throw up during aerobraking.

Belotti’s interest, though, was polite at best. He had already turned his attention back to his controls. ‘Arsia Control, this is
Sagan
MEM-L012,’ he murmured into his headset mike. ‘Do you copy?’ A pause. ‘Roger that, Arsia, we are on standby for de-orbit burn. All systems are copacetic. Awaiting weather nowcast and instructions for primary descent, over.’

Nash looked over at Sasaki again. The young woman was perfectly relaxed, her hands folded together in her lap as she gazed at the starscape through the windows. He long black hair was braided and caught in a tight bun behind her neck, but a few loose strands floated around the side of her face. ‘This must be familiar to you by now,’ he said.

Sasaki shrugged indifferently. ‘I thought it might be more exciting,’ she admitted, ‘but I suppose when it’s the second time…three times if you count aerobraking in Earth’s atmosphere…’ She smiled a little and looked forward again. ‘It just feels like another trip.’

‘Hmm.’ For some reason, Nash felt much the same way, despite the fact that this was
his
first trip. For him, leaving the security of the
Lowell
and beginning the descent to Mars was only the first phase of his assignment. It wasn’t so much a climax as it was a preface. Cydonia Base was his real objective, and getting there was only part of the job.

‘Looking forward to getting back to Cydonia?’ he asked.

The question appeared to startle her—she blinked and her hands moved nervously—but only a little. ‘Sure,’ she said without looking at him. ‘There’s much down there that I want to see. The new excavation, what has been discovered about the aliens…’

‘And your mentor, Dr. Kawakami…’

‘Yes.’ She nodded ever so slightly. ‘And him, too.’

Nash opened his mouth to speak again, but she closed her eyes once more and tilted her head slightly away. She was clearly uninterested in keeping up her end of the conversation.

Through the windows, Mars slowly hove into view, sharply canted on its side. Nash glimpsed the long, meandering scar of the Valles Marineris and, to its left, the pockmark which was Arsia Mons. Down there, somewhere between the Noctis Labyrinthis and the beginning of the volcanic highlands, was Arsia Station. He looked over at Sasaki again, but her eyes were peacefully closed, her hands still clasped together. He watched her for a moment, waiting for her eyes to open again, but Sasaki didn’t budge.

Nash cast his attention once again on the windows. He was almost certain that Sasaki was hiding something, but she wasn’t going to talk about it…at least, not right now.

Fine. That was okay by him. Nash settled back in his couch for the long ride down. He could wait until they had landed.

Then he would make it his business to pick her brain.

‘Okay, okay,’ Jeri Beauchamp said, steadily watching the blip on the XYZ axes of her computer screen. ‘Now swing it twelve degrees south, two degrees east…’ The blip obediently moved closer to the center of the three-dimensional axis. ‘There you go, Lew, you’re on the dime. Looking good there…’

‘Roger that, TRAFCO,’
Lew Belotti’s fuzzy voice said in her headset.
‘Main chute jettison in five seconds. Mark five…four…three…two…’

Jeri glanced up from her screen, seeking the
Sagan
through the wraparound windows of the traffic-control cupola. Past the tilted black-glass rows of the solar farm to the south, the lander was rapidly descending on its three main parachutes toward Landing Pad Three. A second later the candy-striped chutes snapped free and floated away on the cool summer wind. At the same moment, its descent engines flared and the landing gear spread outward from the oblate heatshield as the
Sagan
gradually dropped its last few hundred feet toward the pad. She could already see the scorchmarks on the fiat side of its hull, caused by atmospheric friction during aerobraking.

‘Gonna do it right on the dime and give you nine cents change, honey,’
Lew said. The ground crew were already unreeling the hoses to drain the last of the fuel into the depot tanks.

Jeri smiled to herself: the same old brag. ‘Give it to me in the Mars Hotel after you land, handsome,’ she replied. And he undoubtedly would. Lew liked to bring down nine shiny, newly minted pennies, which he would fish out of his pocket and drop, one by one, into the palm of the traffic controller who guided him through atmospheric entry and landing. A dumb ritual, but considering the unique difficulties of landing on this world, one to which he was entitled. Now, as long as he didn’t get drunk in the bar and try to get into her pants again…

She heard footsteps on the cupola ladder behind her, but she didn’t turn to look until she felt a presence looming over her shoulder. ‘The lander from the
Lowell?’
a wheezy voice asked.

Jeri winced.
No, Sam,
she thought,
it’s a scoutship from the Cootie invasion fleet. Better run back downstairs and protect the booze supply…
‘That’s it,’ she said evenly. She glanced over her shoulder. ‘Any messages you want to send?’

Sam Leahy paused to massage his unshaven double chin. There was a slight reek of beer on his breath; the station’s general manager, as usual, had been spending his afternoon in the Mars Hotel. ‘Nuuh…’ he started to say, then quickly changed his mind. ‘Yeah. There’s a passenger…uh, Andrew Donaldson. Tell him I want to see him in the bar.’

That figured. Sam rarely did business in his office; he should simply make it official by having his desk lugged down from his office and setting up shop in a corner of the Mars Hotel. ‘Before or after he gets cleaned up?’ she asked.

Another pause. The irony had missed him completely; Sam was obviously thinking over the choice. ‘Yeah…uh, after he takes a shower. But it’s important that he sees me.’ He stepped back, relieving her from his obnoxious breath. ‘Remember to tell him,’ he added. ‘It’s important. I gotta talk to him. Right?’

Jeri nodded. The lander’s rockets were already stirring up red dust from the distant landing pad. ‘Sure thing, Sam. I’ll get the message across to him.’
And if you’re still conscious by the time the guy finds you, I’ll give Lew back his change. If you can even speak coherently, I might consider letting Lew into my pants…

‘Good. Great.’ Leahy gave her a rough slap on the shoulder and turned back around. ‘Okay…uhh, carry on. I’m sure you know what you’re doing.’ He staggered to the ladder. As the
Sagan
descended the last few feet and settled on the pads of its landing gear, she heard the general manager bang his head on the open hatch, curse, and miss a couple of rungs on the ladder.

Jeri grinned and tapped instructions into her keyboard, signaling the ground crew to begin the engine-safe operations. No, she thought, I’m probably going to bed alone tonight.