Champion of Mars (40 page)

“Fucking AI,” said Holland. He rose to his feet beside the body of the other mercenary, the dead man’s gun in his hand. The robot spun round.

Holland held the gun up in front of him, the way he had learned after the Five Crisis. He pointed it at the sheath’s head, and emptied the magazine into its face.

It came at him, weaker now, but deadly yet. It slapped the gun from Holland’s hand, and punched him in the chest, and his ribs cracked. Glass cut into his back as he skidded across the floor. The AI walked toward him, lifting a chair, holding it high above its head.

Holland prepared to die.

Gunfire filled the room, assault rifles on full automatic. The robot danced under the impact. It managed a half-turn before its chest plating gave way and its innards were shredded to scrap.

The sheath fell to the floor with a clatter.

Jensen, Cybele and the third mercenary stood in the door, all carrying guns. Holland recoiled.

“Steady! Steady!” Jensen shouldered the rifle. He stepped over the corpse of Lasalle and the shattered sheath. He knelt down and grabbed Holland. “She came and got me. Cybele is on our side, got that? On our side!”

Holland shook with adrenaline, feeling sick. “Yeah. Yeah, got it.”

“How many more sheaths has this AI got?” Jensen asked the mercenary.

“He had three, including that one,” he said. His accent was South African.

“What happened in here?”

Holland stared at him blankly. “Something... it’s hard to describe. There was light, and... something was trying to get in. We shut it down, the AI went insane...”

“And if it’s got two more sheaths, we’re still in danger. Cybele.”

“Yes, Dr Jensen.”

“Make sure it can’t get into your other body.”

“I have taken steps already, Dr Jensen.”

“Good.” He looked around at the carnage in the room. Kick, Lasalle, Patel and Orson lay dead in the smoking wreckage of the laboratory. “Because this isn’t over yet. Let’s get out of here; we have to shut Delaware’s base unit down. If something suborned his sheath, it would have had a direct link back to his brain.”

“Wait!” said Holland. “We have to take the artefact with us.”

“Are you out of your mind?”

“Jensen, we have to take it back.”

T
HEY STUMBLED ON
Miyazaki’s corpse on the way to Cybele’s base unit. He lay face down in a wide pool of blood. Jensen checked him, started to roll him over and stopped. “Jesus,” he said. “His face is gone.”

Holland had the block on a trolley. He gripped the handle hard as he stared at Miyazaki’s right hand. It was flung out behind his sprawled body, fingers half-curled, spots of blood on it.

“Where are the others here?” said the South African soldier.

“Suzanne and Maguire?” Jensen said.

“I do not know,” said Cybele.

“Are they dead?” said Jensen.

“I do not know. The base’s central systems are malfunctioning.”

“What is going
on
here?” said Jensen.

“Hey, take it easy, bru,” said the South African. “I have been in worse spots than this.”

“You have been in spots with alien artefacts?” hissed Jensen. “I think not.”

“The artefact is not of alien origin,” said Cybele.

“What?” said Jensen. “What the hell is it then, Chinese? I don’t think so. Are you going to tell me they’ve been dosing us with thought manipulation and LSD? What the fuck is it?”

“Please. Consider item one. My base unit is adversely affected when the artefact is active. The quanta my hardware uses are affected. Quantum computing depends upon the unmeasured status of the electrons making up my mind. They can be either yes or no in a non-determinate state. Something about this machine affects that.”

“Machine?” said Holland. “In what sense?”

“I believe that this artefact is a human or AI construct from either a different time period, or a parallel universe. Possibly both. This is what upsets my operation. The artefact is atomically unstable, in the sense that it is not entirely of the here, or the now.”

“Are you telling me this thing is from the future?” said Jensen. His hair was unkempt, and he spoke with such force that he spat. Only the South African mercenary seemed unaffected.

“Consider item two,” said Cybele. “The insect that Dr Holland saw, and that was then captured by you, Dr Jensen. This proved to be a constructed lifeform that had undergone a period of independent evolution. If this artefact can bring things with it, then yes, I would say the most likely answer is that it is an artefact from the future.”

“Where else would it come from?” said Holland. “Buried in the depths of this volcano, no other sign of intelligent life. It makes a certain kind of sense.”

“And it is telling you to take it back?”

“It sounds crazy, but I think it wants to keep us from harm.”

Jensen looked at Miyazaki. “Not so crazy. You have to wonder why it was down there, hidden out of the way like that.”

“What option do we have?” said Holland.

“None.
Herregud
! None!”

T
HE MERCENARY,
M
ORESBY,
stood outside the storeroom while Jensen and Holland squatted inside on the floor. The artefact sat in its block of stone on the trolley in one corner. Jensen and Holland cast nervous glances at it as they spoke. Holland told Jensen everything: the blue-skinned girl, his odd visions, the sense of dislocation, the alternative realities.

Jensen listened. There was a discussion.

The Norwegian used a pencil to outline his plan.

“You are going to have to go down into Wonderland alone, Holland. If what you say is true, this thing has made some kind of personal connection to you.” He rested his head on his arms and bit his sleeve. “And why not? But look at Vance, and Stulynow; how can we know that these visions of yours aren’t all some kind of trap?”

“Maybe if we do as it says, then all this will end. We’ll be dead anyway if we don’t try.”

“Take Cybele with you. I’m going to weld her door shut. There’s a good chance that Delaware will try to take her out if it gets another sheath up into the base. I’ll stick with Moresby. If there’s trouble, then maybe we can take down another sheath, maybe not, but chances are the Six will come here again. If it does, we can at least delay it.”

“Maguire and Suzanne?” said Holland.

“Who knows? If either of us see them, we tell them to get out of here, in Delaware’s rover if possible. If not, get them to take one of the open tops, and make for the Chinese seismology camp. It’s seventy kilometres from here, but the co-ordinates are in the near-I drivers. If you do get out, let it do the driving; the mountain is dangerous.”

Holland nodded.

“Good luck, Holland. I am sorry I did not get the chance to know you better. I may be a pedant as Maguire says, but I am not such a bad guy once you get to know me.”

“I know you’re not, Jensen.”

They stood, and shook hands.

“Now, stand back.”

Jensen took a sledgehammer from a rack, raised it above his head, and swung it at the stone.

H
OLLAND CREPT THROUGH
the base. There was no power for the alarms now; only bio-lights lit the way. It was eerily silent.

“How am I doing, Cybele?” he whispered.

Cybele spoke into his tablet via earbuds. She’d deactivated all their locational softwares on their implants, their tablets and all the other hardware they carried, so he was as safe as one could be with a homicidal AI stalking the base. This was old school hide and seek, with no advantage to either side.

“There is no sign of movement. You are clear, as far as I can ascertain, to proceed to the lava tube airlock.”

Holland swallowed. His throat was dry. The cylinder was heavy in his hand, and colder than it should have been. “Okay,” he said. “Okay. How’s your door?”

“Jensen has sealed me into my base unit room. I have sufficient battery power to operate for three more hours. He is attempting to disable the Class Six’s base unit.” The unit was up in the atrium. Wide open, too many doors. Holland didn’t envy Jensen that task.

“Will they be able to do it? They make those things tough,” he whispered. He ducked quickly past the wide door of the rec room and kitchen.

“A standard base unit is constructed of the highest grade woven carbons. They are harder than synthetic diamond, and the systems within these portable units, such as I and Delaware inhabit, are possessed of multiple redundant back-ups. Moreover, the Class Six is a prototype, and its capabilities are unknown to me. There will be a manual shut-off, but the codes for that will have died with Lasalle.”

“So Delaware could be hiding round the corner?”

Cybele was quiet for a moment. “Delware could be hiding round the corner.”

Holland was lucky. His own environment suit was at the lava tube end of the base. If it had been in the other locker room by the atrium, he would have had to take someone else’s, which could have been a problem. He dressed quickly. Cybele reassured him that nothing was coming.

As he was putting on his boots, he heard the distant sound of gunfire.

He donned the rest of the gear more swiftly.

There was more gunfire, then it stopped. His hands shook as he put the helmet on. He kept glancing toward the artefact, making sure that it hadn’t been taken. “Cybele? Jensen, what has happened to him?”

“I am sorry, Dr Holland.” She paused. “Hurry.”

He went into the corridor, began to make his way down toward the lava tube airlock.

Metallic footsteps, unhurried, sounded behind him. “Shit, what’s that?”

“Get into the restroom, quickly!” said Cybele.

He ducked into the room. A row of stalls ran down one side, two shower heads in a communal shower. The door slammed and locked fast, sealed around its perimeter with multiple dead bolts. Sealant foam hissed from the edge, gluing it shut.

“I have initiated hull breach procedure,” said Cybele.

“What? Delaware’ll know where I am for sure.”

“It already does. It is outside.” There was a rush of static. “It is trying to force itself into my communications with you. I have switched to a randomly modulated frequency. That will be safe for a while.”

The door rang under heavy blows.

Holland stood in the toilet in an environment suit, an artefact of unimaginable power in one hand. “What the fuck do I do now?” He continued to whisper even though he was caught.

“The wall,” said Cybele. “Use your rock knife.”

This room was right up against the base’s inflatable cellular wall. Double-skinned hexagonal pockets, inflated to slightly above Mars’ air pressure, were held in place on a lightweight carbon frame.

Holland fished out a rock knife from his tool belt. A vibrating, monomolecular blade, designed to take slivers of stone for study.

It should go through the wall like the proverbial knife through butter.

The wall was tougher to cut than he figured, but he’d already cut out the inner skin by the time the heat lance started to burn its way in through the toilet wall. He watched it for a moment, a bright point of blue-white, moving slowly around the panels.

He turned back to the task in hand.

With the air gone from the wall cell, the fabric on the outside sagged in and bowed in the wind, which made it harder to cut. He pierced it, and the depressurisation of the room made it even more difficult. He was close to crying by the time he’d carved it away. Alarms should have been going crazy by this point, but sand poured into the bathroom unremarked. There was a rush of air, inwards this time, as the pressure equalised and wind pushed its way into the station.

He pulled himself out of the hole, banging his suit on the way out and causing it to bleep angrily. He glanced behind him; Delaware was halfway down a second side of his impromptu entryway.

Holland fled into the storm.

The wind battered him, spinning him this way and that as he staggered from the base. Its locational lights, running from integrated batteries now the fusion plant was offline, blurred from distinct points to vague blotches. The next time he turned back, they had gone altogether. Sand and grit rattled off his visor, and if the noise of the wind had been unsettling from inside the base, out here it was terrifying.

“What do I do? Where do I go?” shouted Holland.

“The second entrance to the caves. The one that Stulynow took. I will guide you there.”

A compass flared into life along the bottom of his helmet display – as if he were the needle in the centre, and he looked at the ring round the edge. He had no idea how it was oriented with the comms down; Mars had no magnetic field.

“Turn northeast. Slowly.”

Holland did so, and the wheel rotated about his head. A green arrow appeared at around 35 degrees.

“Follow the green arrow. I advise you to pay close attention to the area immediately around your feet.”

“Okay, okay, we can do this.” He gripped the artefact tightly, and set off toward the second lava tube.

He lost count of how many times he nearly fell. The wind came from the northwest, buffeting him as he walked. The lower gravity and uneven terrain made his footing treacherous. When he reached the lava tube, he nearly killed himself.

The tube had been blasted open, to allow the methane blocked by Deep Two’s airlock to vent into the atmosphere, so rather than a round cave entrance, the ground yawned into an open pit. He tottered on the edge, windmilling his arms, but it was no use. He tumbled in, bouncing from stone to stone, trying to protect his faceplate as he fell.

He landed on the tube floor, bruised and winded.

His clock told him he’d taken forty-three minutes to get there. It felt like half a lifetime.

He pushed himself up, and switched his suit lights on. Three lamps set around his helmet sent beams of light through the dust-laden air. They lit upon movement, white in the dark, and Holland jumped.

“Hey, Holly.”

“Maguire? Maguire!” Holland’s fright turned to relief. “You’re alive!”

“Yeah, me and Suzanne, figured this was as safe a place as any once it kicked off down there. We were both off duty, but then the gunfire...”