Mars Prime (10 page)

Damn Havlik anyway. The notebook might contain nothing more than some poetry, personal observations about the trip, or a list of addresses. But it
might
contain notes about patients, and that was a possibility that Otis couldn't tolerate.

Otis slipped the side cutters into a pocket, zipped it closed, and let go of the access panel. It snapped into place.

Otis repositioned the body, pushed off the bulkhead, and headed up-ship. The com center was on B-deck. The body was on D-deck. It would take only minutes to get there.

 

Rosemary ran a hand over the stubble that covered the top of her head and grinned. The face in the mirror grinned back. It had brown eyes, a nose that was a tiny bit too large, and an unadorned temple stud. The stud, plus the implant that went with it, had been given to Rosemary as a present on her sixteenth birthday.

Her father had packed his lunch every day, gone without vacations, and practiced a hundred other small economies to save the necessary money.

On top of that they had lived in one room of what had once been an upscale three-bedroom apartment, then shared by three different families. Their single luxury had been the private bathroom that cost two. hundred dollars per month. It was an overcrowded, squalid, seemingly hopeless environment.

But her father had shown her the stars through a homemade telescope, had convinced her that better worlds waited somewhere in space, and kindled the fire that still burned within her: the desire to try, to reach, to take chances.

She remembered the huge billboards, paid for by the Exodus Society, showing a man, woman and child standing on a hill, looking yearningly at the stars. Oh, how she had wanted to be that child, with Mommy on one side and Daddy on the other.

But valuable though her implant was, the wealthier kids had theirs by the age of ten and were light years ahead of her by the time they entered high school. Not only that, but they had the connections necessary to get into college, and the money to pay for it.

So Rosemary had been denied the opportunity to attend college and was relegated to a technical school. It was there that she had mastered electronics, learned the ins and outs of life support systems, and become a certified technician. A technician who had sealed more than a thousand of the colonists into their chambers. So given Rosemary's expertise, and her position on the crew, it had been relatively easy to rig her own chamber for an early release.

The security cams would record her movements, and there would be hell to pay at the other end of the journey, but that was then and this was now. She'd have the
Outward Bound
to herself for the next nine months. She could roam the ship, read dozens of the books contained in the ship's computerized library, and best of all, be deliciously alone.

No screaming neighbors. No teeming streets. No crowded dorms. Just her. It would be the one and only vacation Rosemary had ever taken and she was determined to enjoy it.

Rosemary grinned again, pushed herself away from the mirror, and pulled herself out into the corridor. It was wonderfully, marvelously, beautifully empty of human beings and the noise they made. There were no announcements over the PA system, no sounds of conversation, and thanks to the geologist that everyone called Dr. B, there was no booming sound. In fact the ship was so silent that it made her nervous. The life support tech yelled at the top of her lungs.

"THIS TUB IS SPOOKY!"

Her voice echoed down the corridor. "SPOOKY! Spooky! Spooky." The sound of it made her feel better.

Rosemary headed for the nearest access shaft, humming as she went, wondering if she could rig the ship's PA system to play some of her favorite music. Some Beethoven, classic Madonna, or China Rock. That would be cool.

Rosemary rounded a corner, did a somersault into the access shaft, and pushed her way upward. B-deck. That's where the controls for the PA system and all the other command and control stuff were located.

Rosemary turned end-over-end the moment she saw C-deck flash by and allowed her toes to skid along the surface of the walls. It slowed her down and worked better than the handholds provided for the same purpose. A thousand black skid marks showed where other people had done likewise.

Rosemary saw rectangles of light appear below, grabbed a handhold, and kicked her feet through the B-deck hatch. She hit the deck, bounced off, and headed down-ship. She hadn't gone more than twenty feet before a gloved hand reached out of a darkened doorway, grabbed her by the throat, and jerked her inside.

 

"Somebody's up and around all right! I just saw them!" The thought-voice belonged to MOMS.

Martin pulled part of himself out of a side conversation with LES. "Saw them? How?"

"Yeah, how?" SIS echoed.

"Through a maintenance bot," MOMS replied matter-of-factly. "I was jumping from robot to robot, when I landed in one of C-deck's Class IV Garbage Suckers and saw somebody go up through the access shaft."

Of course! MOMS controlled all of the ship's robots. That meant she could selectively hear what they heard, see what they saw, and sense what they sensed. Martin felt his spirits soar. "Could you see what they looked like?"

"Nope. Class IV's don't pack a video lens. Just radar, sonar, and heat detectors. All they see are various kinds of blobs."

Martin thought fast. "Good work, MOMS. The human was headed for B-deck?"

"That's the way it looked."

"Right. How many robots do you control anyway?"

"I have three hundred and fifty-seven effectives, plus seven that are in for maintenance, and two that are slated for scrap. That's because—"

Martin cut the maintenance computer off in mid-sentence. "Excellent. Send fifty or sixty of them to B-deck right away. Order them to gather right near the access shaft and wait for further instructions.

"Hey SIS, are you with me?"

"Yes . . . but I'm not sure what I can accomplish without my surveillance cameras."

"Can you control the PA system?"

There was a millisecond pause as if SIS was checking to see if that particular function lay within the realm of her capabilities.

"That's a roger. Big Dan handles the command and control stuff, but I provide backup and take primary control where matters of shipboard security are concerned."

"Well, matters of shipboard security
are
concerned," Martin answered, "so take control."

"Control is mine," SIS said formally. "What should I do with it?"

"Scare the fecal matter out of him," Martin replied grimly, "and I'll take it from there."

 

Rosemary struggled at first but quickly discovered that the other person was stronger than she was. Not only that, but the more she struggled, the more violent her assailant seemed to become. Blows landed on Rosemary's face, ineffectual at first, but more so as the attacker maneuvered her into a corner and kept her there.

Rosemary ducked, pushed with her feet, and tried to get away. The other person caught and pushed her back. The voice was cold and harsh.

"So, trying to escape are we? You are a bad, bad, bad girl. Otis has something for bad girls."

The blows came hard and fast. Rosemary used both hands and arms to protect her face. A horrible realization flooded the young woman's mind. This was worse than the muggings that she'd survived during her childhood. Otis planned to kill her! Then she remembered Dr. Havlik and felt something heavy hit the pit of her stomach. Rosemary went limp and pretended to be unconscious.

Lights came on as a tiny part of Big Dan sensed activity in the conference room and responded accordingly. This triggered a response that manifested as a nagging thought in the back of the command and control computer's main processor. But there were two or three such minor irritations at any given time, so the Big Guy ignored it. Better that than to miss what Hydro would do if alien bacteria attacked the next cycle's fungus crop.

Rosemary opened her eyes far enough to see the hooded figure that bent over her.

Reassured by his victim's lack of motion, Otis stopped beating her long enough to remove a roll of utility tape from a pocket and tear a piece off. It made a sound like ripping cloth.

Rosemary debated what to do. Remain limp? Hope Otis would leave her alone? Or renew the struggle, knowing her efforts might fail, and incur his wrath?

Rosemary remembered the news coverage, remembered that Havlik had been wrapped with tape, and made the logical decision. She waited for Otis to move in a little closer, stiffened two of her fingers, and drove them through the hood's eye holes. They encountered something soft.

Otis screeched with pain, brought up hands to cover his eyes, and started to babble. The assailant's voice had taken on a strange childlike sound.

"You hurt us! I hate you! Kill her, Uncle Otis! Kill her now!"

Rosemary tried to absorb and understand the strange words while she looked for a way out. Otis floated between her and the hatch, and while temporarily out of action, wouldn't stay that way for very long.

Rosemary put her feet against the wall and pushed. She headed down towards what would have been the deck if the concepts of up and down had meant something.

But Otis saw the move and made a grab for her. Rosemary felt a hand catch the back of her collar and pull her upwards. She grabbed for the console that occupied the center of the room and missed. An arm wrapped itself around her throat. And then, just as the grip began to tighten, the public address system came to life.

"This is the Shipboard Information System. I know where you are and what you are doing. You will stop, place your hands on top of your head, and await further instructions."

Rosemary felt the arm loosen slightly as her assailant took the latest development in. Inertia was carrying them upwards. The overhead, if she could place her feet on the overhead ...

Otis tried to understand. How could SIS know where he was and what he was doing? It couldn't, not without surveillance cameras, so what the hell was going on? A bluff? But computers don't bluff, do they? Or do they? Some played poker, he knew that, so maybe they could bluff too. The babble of many voices filled his mind. Muscles twitched as neural impulses were sent to various parts of the body and subsequently cancelled. Frank could be heard above all the rest.

"They know where we are! Run, Uncle Otis, run!"

"Shut up," Norma said testily. "Otis knows what he's doing."

"Who died and left you in charge?" Morey asked. "What a jerk."

"Now Morey," Susy started, "that's no way to talk to-"

"Stop it." The words came from Kathy and were instantly obeyed. "Otis, finish what you were doing, then head for the chamber. Something has gone wrong."

Otis remembered something Kathy had learned a long time ago and started to break Rosemary's neck. He was in the process of twisting her head around when the robo cam hit him between the shoulder blades. The blow was hard enough to knock the air out of the body's lungs and push him forward. He hit a bulkhead and bounced off.

Martin gave the electronic equivalent of a rebel yell. The fact that he had access to a video camera, and could bring it into play, had been an afterthought.

The computer entity repositioned Corvan's robo cam for a medium shot. It was something less than satisfying. The killer, and there was little doubt in Martin's processor that this was the same individual that had killed Havlik, wore a hood and an over-sized ship-suit.

Rosemary was free-floating now, trying to suck oxygen in through a badly bruised throat and kicking with her feet.

SIS picked that moment to come over the public address system again. "Hold it right there. Place your hands on top of your head. Wait for further instructions."

The body could breath again. Otis turned his back to the wall. The woman drifted free. Some sort of video camera hovered in front of her. Thank God for the hood. The odds had shifted. His eyes went to the hatch. It was filled top to bottom and side to side with robots. They came in all shapes and sizes and blocked the compartment's only exit. Frank began to cry and Otis didn't know what to do.

"Tackle them straight on," Kathy advised. "Push them out of the way."

The words made sense. The robots could slow him down but that was all. Otis felt a renewed sense of self-confidence. He placed both feet against the bulkhead and pushed. He hit the wall of robots with both hands extended. Two of the robots gave slightly then stopped. Norma swore.

Otis couldn't believe his eyes. The first wall of robots had been reinforced with a second, and beyond that, a third! All of them had their propulsion systems on and were resisting his attack. The body was trapped!

Otis grabbed hold of a robot and pulled. It gave a little, fired reverse thrusters, and held.

Martin felt a sense of grim satisfaction. His quarry was trapped. Now to close in.

"HOW DARE YOU INTERFERE WITH A HUMAN?"

The thought-voice seemed to reverberate through Martin's circuits. Big Dan was powerful, much more powerful than he'd realized, and the force of his presence-personality was almost numbing. Martin tried to say something, tried to respond, but found that he had been isolated from the rest of the ship. He no longer had the ability to control the robo cam, interact with the other computers, or even speak.

SIS, LES, and MOMS were similarly affected. The robots seemed to lose interest in guarding the hatch, created a momentary traffic jam as they tried to leave, and returned to their normal assignments.

Otis saw the confusion, pulled a dart gun from an inside breast pocket, and shot Rosemary twice through the throat. Blood sprayed into the air, made millions of droplets, and formed a curtain of red. It was not the way that he
wanted
to kill her, not the way that he
needed
to kill her, but there was very little choice.

After that it was a simple matter to flee the compartment, make his way through the now blinded corridors, and dump everything into an ejection chute.

The worst part was the journey from the ejection chute to the suspension chamber. Frank cried, Norma bitched, Morey laughed, Kathy was silent, and Susy told everyone that things were fine.