Battlefield Mars Read online

  Those same psychologists, and behavioral scientists, also had a large hand in the layout of the buildings and streets. Everything was Earth-like, specifically so the colonists would feel more comfortable.

  Ever since an early expedition in which half a dozen astronauts lived on Mars for a year to see how it affected the human organism, and one of them cracked up and killed two others, the ‘comfort zone,’ as the big brains called it, was considered crucial.

  With a sigh, Winslow turned to the Maintenance Center. In his opinion, it was the ugliest building in New Meridian. Slate grey, and fashioned to look metallic, it brought to mind one of those old-time garages. A blight, if you asked him, on the colony’s beauty.

  The front door hissed and out hustled Ferguson. A reed of a man, he wore a pink suit that matched his spiked pink hair. He also wore a pink nose ring, which irritated Winslow no end. A nose should be a nose, not a decoration, especially on a government official.

  “Thank goodness you’re here, sir. I don’t know how much more of this I can take. I don’t know what to think. I truly don’t.”

  Winslow held up a hand to stem the deluge. “Compose yourself, man. Take deep breaths. It can’t be as bad as all that.”

  “You haven’t seen, sir,” Ferguson said, and shuddered.

  Another figured ambled out, a woman in a brown maintenance uniform, her hair cut short, her eyes hazel. She was wiping her hands on a dirty rag. Rachel Adams was her name, and she was Head of Maintenance. “Chief Administrator Winslow. How’s it hanging?”

  “Must you always be so crude?” Winslow responded.

  “Bugs you, does it?” Rachel said. “Well, brace yourself for worse. I think we have a murder on our hands.”

  20

  On the ground floor of the Maintenance Center, to one side of the vehicle repair bay, was a sizeable office filled with monitoring stations. Dozens of small screens linked to cameras throughout New Meridian lined the walls. Some showed street scenes. Others, the dome, from various points. Still others had been set up in maintenance tunnels and conduits.

  Rachel Adams led Winslow to a central work station and motioned for the person manning it to move aside. Sinking into the chair, Rachel flicked a switch and a screen that showed a street scene went black. “There you go.”

  Winslow didn’t understand. “It’s too late in the day, and I’m too tired for games. Why am I looking at a blank screen?”

  “You’re not supposed to be. The camera for section three of sublevel corridor B stopped working earlier today,” Rachel explained. “We didn’t think much of it at the time. Now and then that happens. A breaker trips, a component overheats, what have you. We scheduled an inspection for tomorrow. It hardly seemed urgent.”

  “Yes, so?”

  “So a couple of hours later, a camera for another section of sublevel corridor B went dark, too. That was a bit strange. But what really got my attention was when a third camera went out. That’s when I called your office. I was concerned there might be some sort of system-wide problem developing. ”

  “Back up.” Winslow was picturing the sublevels in his mind’s eye. He’d only been down there once, on his initial tour of the dome. All he could recall was a bewildering network of passageways, pipes, conduits, and junction boxes. The literal underbelly of New Meridian. “Was the third camera on sublevel corridor B, as well?

  “It was, in fact,” Rachel confirmed. “I sent Fortier and Zuka down. My best electricians. They reported hearing sounds—”

  “Sounds?” Winslow interrupted. “What kind of sounds?”

  “They weren’t sure.”

  “This gets stranger and stranger,” Winslow said.

  “Doesn’t it, though.”

  “Go on.”

  “Well, we had them in sight until they entered the stretch where the last camera went out. Zuka radioed in that they could see the camera, that it had fallen from its mounting and was lying in pieces. Which didn’t make sense. The mounts are metal brackets, and the cameras are bolted in place.”

  “And then?”

  Rachel swiveled toward him and scowled. “Total silence. We waited for them to report in, but nothing. I tried to contact them. Still nothing. So I sent a tunnel rat down.”

  Winslow knew about those. Tunnel rats were miniature rovers used to ferry tools and whatnot, and for tunnel inspections.

  “It’s still down there. This is what its camera shows.” Rachel tapped a button and the dark screen lit with the night-vision image of a broken camera and part of a casing about a meter away. It also showed a wide smear.

  “Is that…?” Winslow said.

  “The blood I told you about, sir,” Ferguson said, swallowing.

  The smear formed a trail that went around a corner. Lying here and there were small objects Winslow’ couldn’t quite make out. “What are those?”

  “I’ll give you a close-up,” Rachel said. She tweaked a dial and the tunnel rat zoomed in.

  For all of half a minute, Winslow was at a loss. Some of the objects were pulpy and pink. The largest was dark red. A pale stub, finger-length, caught his eye. He bent toward the screen, and gasped. It was a finger, severed off. “Is that…?”

  “Lots of little body bits,” Rachel said. “Murder. It has to be. Someone has gone off the deep end and is hiding down there. We have to find them before they kill anyone else.” She smirked at Winslow. “And since Ferguson tells me that Captain Rahn and his boys left the dome early today, and you’re our Chief Administrator, you’ll have to lead the search team, yourself.”

  21

  Winslow hated to be put on the spot, hated it more than anything. But the Head of Maintenance was right. As C. A., it was his job to oversee any crisis that cropped up. Normally, he would assign this to the security unit, but with the troopers gone, circumstances had boxed him in a corner. “Damn them anyhow,” he muttered.

  “Sir?” Ferguson said. “I didn’t catch that.”

  Rachel spared Winslow from having to respond by saying, “Why did Rahn take his people out, if you don’t mind my asking?”

  “A missing child,” was all Winslow was willing to reveal. It wouldn’t be wise to let the cat out of the bag about the creatures Rahn claimed to have seen, especially since he hadn’t had a chance to place his call to the governor yet. “I’ve tried to raise him on the radio but can’t. Not that we need him to deal with a lone lunatic.”

  “You hope,” Rachel said.

  “I want everyone in maintenance, including those brawny fellows I saw working on a rover, to report to the sublevel access hatch in ten minutes.”

  Rachel sat back and folded her arms. “Hold on there, Chief. Everyone? That’ll disrupt my whole schedule. Set me back hours.”

  “As you pointed out,” Winslow said reminded her, “the evidence suggests a murder has been committed. I should say that catching the culprit is vastly more important.” He indulged in a smirk. “What is your labor compliment at the moment, by the way?

  “Nine in the building,” Rachel said. “Four more are out on jobs.”

  “Nine is plenty,” Winslow said confidently. “Have them bring tools and whatnot to defend themselves, should the need arise.”

  “Rope, too, sir,” Ferguson said. “Or something else to restrain the individual responsible.”

  “Excellent suggestion,” Winslow said, and his assistant beamed with pride. “Hop to it, Ms. Adams.” And he beamed, too. Of his many duties, giving orders was the aspect he liked best. Telling people what to do gave him such a sense of power. It was even better that they had no choice but to do it.

  Rachel switched on the Maintenance Center’s public address system and told everyone to do as Winslow had instructed her.

  The access hatch was the only way into the sublevels from maintenance. Other hatches were located in other buildings throughout New Meridian, but only maintenance personnel were allowed to use them.

  Once her people had gathered, Rachel explained what they were about to do.
/>   At an appropriate point, Winslow stepped forward. “Listen to me, all of you. As your administrator, my first priority is your safety. Exercise caution. Whether it was Mr. Zuka or Mr. Fortier who went off the deep end is irrelevant. We must place him in restraints so he can’t harm anyone else. Working together, that shouldn’t pose a problem. Not with as many of us as there are. Understood?”

  All of them nodded or responded in the affirmative.

  “Good.” Winslow indicated the hatch. “Then down we go.”

  Winslow had forgotten how uneasy the sublevels made him. The tunnels were narrow, and cold. The air was thinner because there were fewer ventilation shafts, and the lighting left a lot to be desired, too. He imagined the murderer lurking in every shadow, waiting for a chance to strike.

  Like a commander in the military, Winslow barked orders. He had the five biggest workers go ahead of everyone else. The rest brought up the rear. Which left him safely in the middle.

  “Go slow,” Rachel cautioned her people. “We don’t know what we’re dealing with here.”

  “A lunatic, obviously,” Ferguson said. “He’s gone Mars Happy.”

  Winslow was inclined to agree. “Mars Happy” was a less than technical term for those rare instances in which a colonist snapped. Despite the extensive screening of Mars applicants, it had happened twice. In the first instance, at Bradbury, a male nurse left a note saying that he missed Earth so much, he couldn’t take it anymore, and slit his wrists. The second time, at Wellsville, a chemist left a video in which he said he was going to ‘become one’ with Mars. Then he walked out a dome airlock—without an EVA suit.

  Winslow grimaced in revulsion. He never could get used to the crazy things people did. “What about Zuka and Fortier? Did they dislike one another?”

  “Quite the opposite,” Rachel said. “They were the best of friends.”

  “Yet one of them killed the other,” Ferguson said.

  “Or someone else snuck down here and murdered both,” Rachel said.

  Winslow almost broke stride. He hadn’t considered that possibility. He put it from his mind and paid attention to the tunnels. Not that he had the slightest idea where they were in relation to the hatch. The many turns they’d made were too confusing.

  Suddenly, the men in front stopped, bringing everyone to a standstill.

  “What’s the holdup?” Rachel hollered.

  “The lights up ahead are out,” the lead man said. “The tunnel is completely dark.”

  By rising onto his toes, Winslow confirmed that they were. “Doesn’t anyone have a flashlight?” He certainly didn’t go around with one in his pocket. To his consternation, none of the maintenance workers did, either.

  “We’ll have to send someone back,” Rachel said.

  The big man in the lead called out, “Do you hear that, Chief Administrator?”

  In the silence that fell, Winslow swore he could hear his own breathing. He also heard, from out of the darkness, peculiar noises. Tapping, it sounded like. And scraping.

  “What on earth?” Rachel Adams said, and raised her voice. “Fortier? Zuka? Is that you up there? Come out where we can see you.”

  Ferguson put a hand to his throat and took a step back. “Please don’t let there be violence. I can’t stand violence. It’s ugly. It makes me physically ill.”

  The big man in the lead yelled to Rachel, “Misha and Renaldo and me will go find out who it is, if you want us to.”

  “Are you sure, Sam?” Rachel said.

  “I have this,” Sam said, and hefted a wrench as long as his arm.

  “Be careful.”

  Sam nodded, and he and the others edged forward. One by one the darkness swallowed them.

  Winslow admired their courage. He wouldn’t do that for anything.

  “Sam’s a good man,” Rachel said. “He can bench press four hundred. If anyone can handle…” She stopped short.

  A sharp cry came out of the darkness. Then another. And the sounds of a scuffle.

  “Sam?” Rachel cried. “What’s going on?”

  Something exploded out of the dark. Winslow had a fleeting impression of long legs and an impossible shape, and then the thing was on the first man in line. The man screamed as an alien limb was thrust clear through his chest and out his back.

  Winslow felt his bladder go. He went, too, turning and shoving past Ferguson, who was riveted in shock. Shouldering a shocked Rachel Adams aside, Winslow barreled through the rest. More screams rose, and he glanced back to see that the hideous monstrosity wasn’t alone. Half a dozen of the things were slaughtering the Maintenance people, literally ripping them apart. Rachel Adams was down, fighting for her life. Poor Ferguson had backed against a wall, blubbering hysterically. He just stood there as a creature seized him by the head, and tore his head off.

  Winslow fled pell-mell. He was crying, and blinked away tears. Not for the others. For himself. He didn’t want to die. “Please, please, please, no, no, no, no!” he sobbed, and ran as he had never run before.

  Only now did he remember Rahn saying that the security unit had gone after some kind of ‘creatures.’ These must be the same things, he realized. He hadn’t thought it remotely possible they could get into New Meridian, not with the dome.

  Winslow took turn after turn, not knowing where he was going. He was running to put distance between himself and the abominations that attacked the others. His heart pounded. He sweated buckets. His legs became welters of pain.

  God or Fate or sheer dumb luck were kind to him. Winslow rounded a turn and there was the open hatch. He went up the ladder two rungs at a time. Gasping and sobbing, he slammed the hatch shut and worked the wheel to secure it.

  Tottering back, Winslow wiped his brow, and laughed. He’d done it! He’d escaped! But now what? Should he spread an alarm? Or wait for Captain Rahn to return and have the soldiers take over.

  Steadying his wobbly legs, Winslow hurried away. He couldn’t stand the wet feeling of his pants, and the smell. He needed to shower and change. He had plenty of time. The things were contained in the sublevel; they couldn’t get through the hatch. The colony was safe for the time being.

  Before he showered, though, he had that special call to make to the governor.

  RED PLANET RISING

  22

  No one spoke on the ride back to New Meridian. Even Private Pasco, for once, shut up.

  Archard left the driving to Everett while he tried to raise the colony. A systems check showed that their communications equipment was in working order. The calls should go through, yet didn’t.

  An atmospheric fluke of some kind, Archard figured. He decided to raise Wellsville and have Captain Howard get in touch with Chief Administrator Winslow. But Wellsville didn’t respond, either.

  Troubled by the seeming coincidence, Archard attempted to get through to Bradbury. After a dozen tries, he sat back in his seat and broke the long silence with, “Son of a bitch.”

  “Sir?” Everett said.

  Archard didn’t see any reason to keep it from them. “I can’t get through to any of the colonies.”

  “All three?” Everett said in disbelief. “How is that possible?”

  From the bay, Pasco said, “A sandstorm would have to cover half of Mars for that to happen. Do the weather updates mention one?”

  Private Everett gestured at the windshield. “Do you see a storm?”

  “No sandstorms,” Archard said to forestall an argument. “And everything is in working order.”

  “Something’s not right, sir,” Everett said.

  Archard agreed. “But what?” he wondered aloud.

  “If you don’t know, sir, I sure don’t,” Pasco said. “You’re a lot smarter than me.”

  Archard consulted the holo map. “We’re less than ten minutes out of New Meridian. We’ll put through calls to the other colonies when we get there.” He twisted in his seat to check on Piotr.

  The Zabinski boy had woken up shortly after the firefight, and ever
since had sat huddled in a corner. He continued to clutch his mother’s head as if it were a security blanket.

  Archard had been gentle before because of the circumstances, but it couldn’t go on. Rising, he walked back and squatted. “Piotr?”

  The boy stared off into space. He didn’t blink, didn’t twitch a muscle.

  “Piotr?” Archard was afraid he’d gone into shock, a delayed reaction to the living nightmare he’d endured.

  “Piotr, can you hear me?”

  The boy’s chin dipped.

  “Good,” Archard said. “We’re almost to New Meridian. You’ll be fed and cleaned up and taken care of. You have friends there, don’t you? People your parents knew? Other kids you visited?”

  Piotr’s throat bobbed.

  “I’m sorry for your loss,” Archard said. “I truly am. But you can’t go on holding you mother’s head.” He held out his hand. “Give it to me, if you would.”

  “No.”

  “Please. I will see that nothing happens to it. I promise.”

  Piotr blinked, and tears formed at the corners of his eyes. “It’s my mom.”

  “It’s just her head.”

  The boy hugged it tighter. “It’s all I have. Those things wanted her but I wouldn’t let them take her.”

  “Look at her, Piotr.”

  Piotr shook his head.

  “Look at what you are holding.”

  “I don’t want to.”

  “You have to,” Archard insisted. If the boy didn’t, he would take it by force.

  Piotr looked down.

  In life, Ania Zabinski had been pretty. In death, her face was hideous. Her glazed eyes had rolled up, showing the whites. Dry blood caked her chin and dotted her sunken cheeks. Her mouth was set wide, her teeth bared. As if that weren’t enough, the strips of flesh that dangled from her neck had gone stiff and were discolored.

  Uttering a low whine, Piotr dropped the head as if it were about to bite him. He covered his faceplate with his arms and burst into tears.