In the shadow of deimos, p.16
In the Shadow of Deimos, page 16
part #1 of Terraforming Mars Series
Only a man with an ego the size of Bard’s would consider the greatest discovery in history to be a personal slight to his ambitions. “How unfortunate.”
“Exactly!” said Bard, completely missing her sarcasm. “Instead of dominating ICN and being the talk of the planet, as I’d planned, the announcement of my arrival was going to be a footnote on the news. I didn’t come all this way to be a footnote, so I slipped in quietly – in as much as it’s possible to slip in quietly when landing a spaceship. I’ve been busy over these last couple of days turning this little ‘life on Mars’ setback into an opportunity. I think you’ll agree that what I’ve managed to achieve is an exciting, unprecedented deal.”
He looked at Julie with expectation. She resisted the implication that she should ask what it was and calmly returned his gaze. Although, she had to admit, she was curious.
Bard smiled while he stood and waited. Julie got the feeling that he would stand there all day if he had to, just to make sure he got the reaction he wanted. In the end, she decided it would be childish to try to stare him out and capitulated to ask the inevitable. “What unprecedented deal?”
“I can’t tell you that!” Bard declared, walking up and down the room one more time. “No, Julie Outerbridge, to tell you that here and now would spoil my grand announcement.”
Julie stood up to go. There clearly wasn’t room enough for both her and the CrediCor CEO’s ego in the same room. “Then I should be getting on with my investigation.”
“No, wait!” said Bard, as she headed for the door. He rushed over to intercept her. “Can you drive a rover?”
Julie stopped as her path to leave was blocked by the large man who waited expectantly for her answer. “I’ve been on Mars half my life, of course I can drive a rover.”
“Excellent! Then you can drive me out to where they dug up those Martian microbes. I want to see where it all happened.”
Julie looked at him, suspiciously. “Don’t you have staff who can drive you?”
“Yes, but where’s the fun in that?”
“Anyway, you can’t go there, the site is out of bounds.”
“Don’t worry about that. I know they will let me in. I have a grand announcement to make which, I believe, will benefit the whole of Mars. If you drive me out there, you can come and watch.”
•••
Julie leant back against the parked rover near to the closed Noctis City construction site. She had stopped alongside other parked vehicles which, she presumed, belonged to the investigating science team and the ICN crew who she could see on the ridge less than one hundred meters away. In the middle of all of them was Bard. He was striding around the site, introducing himself to everyone across the general comms channel like a member of some old Earth royal family. Their reaction ranged from awestruck to bewildered, but within minutes everyone was aware that the infamous, maverick CEO of CrediCor had arrived. Not least the news crew, who followed him around like he was the Pied Piper of Hamelin.
Once Bard had secured the attention of everyone on the ridge, he found a place to stand where the sun lit him from the side and he had the expanse of Noctis Labyrinthus behind him. Just like Rufus Oladepo not long before him, he knew how to use the majestic Martian landscape to great effect.
“I am so privileged to be standing here at this momentous place and at this momentous occasion,” he said over the comms, opening his arms wide as if to embrace the whole labyrinth of canyons behind him. “I was traveling through space when I heard the news about the discovery of Martian life and, like many of you, I could barely contain my excitement.
“But it comes after a great tragedy which, as the founder of CrediCor, I feel responsible for.” His voice struck a sorrowful, even melodramatic tone. “The asteroid disaster happened on my watch and, although I was unable to do anything about it from my spaceship, I still feel responsible.”
Julie rolled her eyes. He was laying it on a bit thick. On the one hand taking responsibility, but on the other distancing himself from the whole thing.
“My reasons for coming to Mars, in the light of these two events, now seem trivial. It is why I have been working hard to move Mars into a new era of discovery and innovation. Since my arrival, mere days ago, I have been talking to some of the representatives of the corporations based here on this planet and I am pleased to announce that CrediCor is ready to embark on a unique collaboration with Ecoline. Ecoline’s expertise in biology is unsurpassed, while CrediCor has the financial resources to fund an exciting new project. We will do this, not as a business opportunity or a money-making scheme, but as a philanthropic gesture to all the people who live on Mars now and who will live on Mars in the future.
“The discovery of native life is of profound significance to humanity, but it is clear that we cannot leave Mars to the Martians. We are already here, and we are here to stay. So we must live in harmony with Martian life. This collaboration with Ecoline will be at the forefront of establishing how we do that. At the same time, we will rebuild the science research station which was so tragically destroyed by the asteroid. Except, this research station will be on a grander and more ambitious scale. I will personally oversee this new endeavor to genetically engineer Earth plants to grow in the harsh conditions of Mars as we continue to pursue our dream of terraforming the planet.”
Movement among the crowd of spectators suggested several of them had broken into applause which was strangely silent in the thin atmosphere of Mars, where sound barely carried and where they were all cocooned in their rad-suits.
“What about Noctis City?” shouted one of the crowd, presumably a member of ICN.
“It is such a shame,” said Bard. “ThorGate’s plans were so ambitious, but it is difficult to see how it can be built on this historic site. I wouldn’t want to pre-judge the science or the decision of the Committee, of course, but the study of these amazing Martian microbes should be the priority. It is my belief that CrediCor and Ecoline’s new research center will be at the heart of that, right here where the discovery was made. We can learn how these microscopic organisms were able to survive and thrive on this planet and use that knowledge to help humans do the same.”
The next question was about Bard’s yoga retreat cover story and Julie mentally tuned out the answer. She was thinking about CrediCor’s collaboration with Ecoline. Bard may have been a maverick egotist with a flair for the flamboyant, but his plan was clever.
People had criticized ThorGate for having too much power and securing Universal Tax funding for the best planetary projects, but they couldn’t criticize the collaboration of two supposedly competing corporations at no cost to the taxpayer. Especially when one of them was Ecoline, a relatively small organization. Their development of fast-growing lichen, suitable for early terraforming, made them a competitive player on the Martian stage, even though they lacked the resources and business acumen to exploit it. That could all change with CrediCor at their side.
As everyone else continued to watch Bard, Julie turned away and saw that a rover was approaching, sending a cloud of dust up behind it as it sped across Sinai Planum. Traveling at an inadvisable pace, it bounced over the uneven ground and skidded to a halt a meter before hitting the parked rovers. Its wheels scattered a rain of grit and dirt over the vehicles and over Julie. Slightly affronted, she brushed herself free of the debris.
After a few moments, the hatch opened and a rad-suited figure stepped out. None of the people watching Bard saw her arrive, but they couldn’t miss the angry voice of the woman in the suit as she shouted over the comms and strode towards them.
“What the hell is going on?” Her angry tone gave her away as Anita Andreassen. “This is ThorGate’s site!”
Bard’s impromptu press conference was abruptly halted as everyone turned to watch Anita. When she reached the crowd, she stopped and put her hands defiantly on her hips. “You can’t do this!” she yelled.
Julie wished she could see Bard’s face. He must have been annoyed that someone was usurping his big moment. However, all she could do was listen to his indignant response. “I’m sorry, who are you?”
“I’m ThorGate’s representative on this planet and you are trespassing.”
“I don’t think so,” said Bard. “This site is under the jurisdiction of the Terraforming Committee.”
“The Committee which says they have a right to be here.” Anita indicated all the others standing around her. “You do not.”
“I’m sorry, let me introduce myself.” He stepped into the crowd and they parted to let him through like he was some kind of messiah. He reached out both his gloved hands to Anita to greet her in the same way he had greeted Julie back in the CrediCor office. “My name is Bard Hunter.”
Anita pulled back from him and Bard was forced to drop his arms back down by his sides. “I know who you are,” she said. “How dare you conspire with Ecoline to take away a project that belongs to ThorGate!”
Bard remained calm, despite her angry words. “Why don’t we take this conversation onto a private channel?”
“So no one else can hear about your despicable behavior?”
“So we can discuss things in a sensible way.”
There was some more discussion before they agreed to switch to a private channel. The crowd began to drift away and left Bard and Anita to their discussion. Which, judging by their gestures, was more like an argument.
Someone said over the general comms that the wind had started to pick up the dust and it looked like a storm was on its way. The news crew headed back to their rover and the science team began to pack up their equipment. Julie looked out across Sinai Planum and saw a haze that wasn’t there before. The day also seemed to have become darker, even though the sun was approaching its highest point in the sky.
She walked over to where Bard and Anita were still talking and flicked onto their private channel. She heard the tail end of Bard saying something about offering ThorGate an exclusive deal for power generation technology before she interrupted.
“Sorry to disturb you, but it looks like a dust storm is brewing. We should go.”
Bard turned towards her and, for the first time since he had breezed into the office back at CrediCor headquarters, she saw a ruthlessness in his eyes. “In a minute.”
“We’ve got a long journey back.”
“I said I’ll be there in a minute!” Bard snapped.
“I’ll wait for you in the rover,” said Julie. “Don’t make me leave without you.”
She switched away from the private channel before Bard could say anything else and walked back the way she had come, wiping off a film of dust which had settled on her helmet. She wished she hadn’t allowed him to talk her into coming out to witness his announcement firsthand when she could have easily watched it later on ICN. But it had been little more than a year since control of Mars had been taken away from her and part of her still wanted to be at the center of things. It seemed she was about to pay for her curiosity. The storm was drawing closer while she waited for Bard and threatened to make their journey back more difficult than it might otherwise have been.
Light levels around her diminished further, like night was coming in early, and eddies of dirt swirled around her legs. She opened the hatch to let herself into the rover and kept it open for Bard to join her, while the wind blew in a sprinkling of dust and she lay in a course to Tharsis City.
By the time Bard had finished his negotiations, she could no longer see the canyons of Noctis Labyrinthus through the windshield. The storm was raging and she was preparing to drive right into it.
Chapter Twenty-Four
A red mist descended. For an Earth-dweller, that expression meant an anger so intense that it was as if they could see the blood in front of their face. For someone living on Mars, it meant the very dirt that made up the surface of the planet was coming to batter them. Mars didn’t have an atmosphere thick enough to create gale force winds like the ones which could knock someone off their feet on Earth, but it had enough strength to lift the dust into the air. Dust which was so dry and so small, having been ground down by millennia of storms, that it was easy to play with and throw at the humans. As if the planet itself was attacking the invaders from another world.
Driving through a dust storm was unpleasant, but it wasn’t dangerous. Satellite navigation would guide the rover along the well-worn Martian tracks and Julie only had to pay attention to make sure they didn’t encounter any unforeseen hazards.
Although, she would have preferred it if Bard had finished his negotiation when she had asked him to, not wait until the storm was at its height.
“I hope that conversation was worth it,” Julie said to Bard, who was sitting next to her in the passenger seat.
“Oh yes,” he said, and fell silent.
“Is that all you’re going to say?”
“Put it this way, both Anita and I got something we wanted.”
Bard peered through the windshield at the haze of dust reducing the visibility in front of them. The rover’s headlights were on, but all they did was shine light off the particles of dirt in the air which was reflected back at them. Like driving through mist on Earth.
“Can’t we sit here and wait for this to be over?” asked Bard.
“We don’t know how long the storm’s going to last. There’s always a chance it could last longer than the air and power that we have in the rover.”
“But you’re safe to drive in this?”
“This isn’t my first dust storm,” said Julie. Although, she had to admit to herself, she had never been out in one that bad. In the past, she had always done the sensible thing and driven back to the city at the first sign of the winds picking up.
She maneuvered the rover away from the canyons and onto the track which led to Tharsis City. She had hoped to be able to speed up a little once they were on their way, but the visibility was too poor and progress was slow. Bard eventually got bored of looking out at nothing and climbed into the back of the rover. After a while of listening to the sounds of him rummaging around, Julie glanced back to see what he was up to. Bard had one arm in and one arm out of his rad-suit. “What are you doing?”
“Getting out of this blasted suit,” he said, trying to extricate his second arm.
“You need to keep that on in the rover.”
“What on Earth for? The stupid thing is uncomfortable.”
“You’re not on–”
The rover jolted.
The front left side sprung up in the air like leaping off a ramp and came back down so hard that Julie was catapulted across the controls. Bard fell forward and banged his head against the back of the passenger seat.
The rover came to a complete halt and tipped over sideways by about twenty degrees so the whole cabin was at an angle. Julie pulled herself upright and turned off the drive motor.
“What was that?” said Bard.
“I don’t know,” said Julie, trying to sound calm. “I think we hit something.”
She put the vehicle into reverse and tentatively applied power to the motor. The machinery whirred and sent vibrations through her driver’s seat, but the rover didn’t move one centimeter. She changed to forward gear and tried again. Still nothing. Increasing the power did nothing either and the motor merely growled angrily as it propelled them nowhere.
“Weren’t you looking where you were going?” said Bard.
“Of course I was!”
Apart from that brief moment she had turned to look at Bard. She cursed herself for allowing him to distract her. “This is why you’re supposed to keep your suit on for the whole journey – in case we need to get out of the rover in a hurry, or something happens and the hull is punctured.”
Bard frowned. “We’re getting out?”
Julie got up out of the driver’s seat and leaned over to one side as she walked on the sloping floor to get into the main part of the cabin where she had left her helmet. It had rolled off the bench and was upside down in a pile of dust at the hatchway. “I need to see what the problem is. I’m going to have to depressurize the cabin before I open the hatch. So, if you want to breathe, I suggest you put your suit back on and secure your helmet.”
She helped Bard complete his suiting up, they secured their helmets, carried out disembarkation checks, waited for the rover to suck the air from the cabin back into its reserves and then opened the hatchway.
Julie stepped out into the storm of whipped up tiny particles which were so small they hissed rather than clattered against her helmet. The wind was blowing from the side strong enough for her to feel it, but not so much to knock her sideways. She walked around to the front of the rover where the headlights shone out into the dust. She had to shield her eyes from the glare as she looked back towards it, but it was obvious the rover was impaled on something. The front left side was suspended in the air, with the wheel dangling helplessly over the ground.
She crouched down to look underneath and, as her eyes adjusted to the relative dark, she saw the underside of the rover was resting on top of a rock. She stared at it for many moments and the horrible feeling in her stomach got worse as she realized they were well and truly stuck. She would have to go back into the rover and call for help, but no one would want to come out in the storm.
“That doesn’t look good,” came Bard’s voice over the comms.
Julie turned around and saw that Bard had followed her outside. “No.”
He crouched down beside her to see for himself. “How did you manage to hit a rock?”
“The road should have been clear,” she said. “We must have gone off track somehow. These tracks are only the width of a rover, so it’s not impossible if the satellite navigation was out by a meter or two. Either that or some idiot dumped debris in the wrong place – I wouldn’t put it past some of the corporation worker teams out here.”
