Mars Prime (2 page)

"Call up your files. All of them."

Havlik swallowed. Afraid to obey and afraid not to. "No."

Otis clenched and unclenched his fists. "Do it or die."

Havlik paused, thinking it over, gauging his chances.

"You won't hurt me?"

"No," Otis lied. "I won't hurt you."

Morey giggled.

Havlik sent a thought toward the ship's central computer. It heard and used a tiny fraction of its total capacity to handle the request. A menu of Havlik's files flooded into their combined minds.

"Are these all of your files?"

Havlik nodded mutely.

"There are no backups? No floppies? No handwritten notes?

Havlik shook his head. "Destroy them."

Havlik paused, reluctant to give up countless hours worth of work, but forced himself to give the order.

The computer heard and sent a message back. "Destroy all Havlik files. Authority code AH 6-15-21. Please confirm."

Havlik swallowed. "Order confirmed."

The pause lasted two seconds.

"Files destroyed."

Otis pulled the jack from the side of his head, removed Havlik's as well, and allowed the reels to pull them in.

The connection was broken now, but Havlik had glimpsed something before it snapped and sought to confirm it. "You plan to kill me, don't you?"

Otis pulled at the gloves, enjoying the feel of leather against his skin, glorying in the sensation of power. "Yes, I plan to kill you."

Havlik believed him. The little beads of sweat on his forehead testified to that. Otis saw one swell slightly, break free from the doctor's skin, and float away.

"Don't do it. Let me help you, or if not me, then someone else."

Otis shook his head. "No. You would send us dirt-side, lock us up, and kill us one by one. And there's something else . . ."

Havlik's voice cracked. "What?"

"This." The gloved lashed forward, hit Havlik's face with a satisfying thud, and left a bloody smear. The first blow was followed by many more. The beating went on, and on, until blood misted the air and Kathy intervened.

"Stop."

Otis knew better than to defy Kathy. He stopped. Havlik's head hung limply forward. A rope of bloody saliva drifted sideways from his mouth. "Check his pulse."

Otis pushed his hand through a curtain of blood. His fingers found the doctor's neck. He felt nothing.
 

"Take the gloves off."

Otis removed a glove, felt for a pulse, and found none.

"Put the glove back on."

Otis did as he was told.

"Leave the cubicle. Close the hatch."

Otis obeyed.

''Now, remove the jump suit.''

Otis unzipped the front closure, worked his arms out of the sleeves, and pulled the suit off. He wore an exact duplicate underneath. The body did a complete sommersault in the process.

Kathy's voice was dispassionate. "Place the suit and gloves in an ejection chute."

Otis looked around, spied a chute at the far end of the corner, and shoved off. He sailed the length of the corridor, turned end for end in midair, and used a handhold to slow down. He felt his feet touch steel.

After that it was a simple matter to stuff the clothes into the chute, close the door, and press the button. Otis heard a thump as air, jump suit, and gloves were sucked into space. Two pieces of garbage had just been added to the hundreds of thousands that circled the planet already.

"Find a mirror. Check for blood. Hurry it up."

There was a unisex head just down the corridor. Otis pulled himself inside, rotated in front of the mirror, and there was blood on his face and in his hair. He used pre-moistened towelettes to wash it off, gathered them into a wad, and turned toward the door.

“Check your shoes.”

Otis did and found that they were clean.

"Put the towelettes in the ejection chute and leave the area."

Otis did as he was told. And once the body was in the corridor, and safely headed up-ship, he allowed himself to be displaced by the others. He felt drained and temporarily at peace. A few weeks from now, a month at most, it would be necessary to kill again. Necessary to protect the body, to feel the freedom, to exercise the power. But that was then, and this was now. Otis fell asleep. Kathy took over and the body continued on its way.

 

 

 

 

Chapter Two

 

 

Air Force One
made gentle contact with the
Outward Bound's
number one lock, shuddered slightly as the maglocks cut in, and settled into place. The President of the United States heard voices as Secret Service agents gave orders and the crew pressurized the lock.

She looked around. Three members of her staff were present and all of them had found reasons to look elsewhere. They knew how nervous she was and were doing their best to make it easier.

The President gritted her teeth, hit the release button on her harness, and floated free of her chair.

She had spent twenty hours jacked into a zero-G simulation program, had foregone the last two meals, and still felt like throwing up. Not too surprising since the gravity-induced cues that normally told her vestibular system which way was up had all but disappeared. The President grabbed a convenient handhold and did her best to stay perfectly still.

Charlie Skuba was her chief of staff. Eternally handsome, neat, and unperturbed, his sky blue jump suit looked as though it had been spray-painted onto his body. He'd spent eighty hours in zero-G simulation and appeared completely at ease. His expression contained just the right amount of concern. Nothing superior, nothing patronizing, just a genuine interest in her well-being.

"Are you all right Madam President?"

"Hell, no," the President replied sourly, "but I'll make it. Keep it short that's all. In, out, and gone."

"Of course," Skuba replied sympathetically. "Both Fornos and Jopp have been warned."

"Good. Is everything ready?"

Skuba looked at a silver-haired Lt. Colonel, received a nod of assent, and smiled. "Yes, Madam President. Everything is ready."

The President nodded, pulled a mirror out of her pocket, and checked her makeup. Something less than perfect, but what the hell. She still looked better than a lot of women who were years younger. The President summoned up the smile that had won the hearts and minds of so many Americans. "All right then. Let's go."

 

C-deck occupied the middlemost slice of the sphere-shaped ship, and in spite of its vast size, was packed bulkhead to bulkhead with free-floating humanity. They were everywhere, drifting into each other and throwing up with almost monotonous regularity.

All of them had plastic bags, and most were able to make use of them, but some missed and left globules of vomit to drift through the air. And due to the crowded conditions, the normal "You barf, you clean it up," rule had been temporarily suspended. The smell was sickening.

Huge metal ribs arched down along the bulkheads. Nylon ropes connected them together and gave the colonists something to hook onto. Rows and rows of them were already in place. But the latecomers, along with those who couldn't seem to control their bodies, were still drifting around.

Blue-suited crew members yelled, cajoled, and pushed the colonists into place. They wore light-weight backpack propulsion systems that allowed them to maneuver without having to push off from bulkheads or other solid surfaces.

Rex Corvan watched a burly power tech push a woman into place and gesture toward the yellow rope.

"Grab the rope! Hook on! Don't move!"

The woman nodded gratefully, hooked her utility belt to the rope, and proceeded to upchuck into her bag.

Corvan had taken up a position near the "B" Corridor Lock, or "BCL" in the parlance of the ship's crew, all of whom considered themselves a cut above the more than two thousand colonists. And, while some of the superiority was imagined, some of it was quite real. Many of them had been preparing for such a mission most of their lives.

Though technically part of the crew himself, Corvan's sympathies lay more with the colonists and their troubled stomachs. Though well past the upchucking stage himself, he remembered what it felt like and knew what they were going through.

"Audio check please.''

Kim's voice was cool and professional inside his head, available because of his implants and some state-of-the-art electronics. It was nothing like the softer voice that had whispered things in his ear only hours before. Corvan grinned. Zero-G sex was anything but routine.

Kim entered his mind once more. Her thoughts were prim, proper, and tinged with pleasure.

"Keep your mind on business. I need an audio check."

"Yes, ma'am. One audio check coming up."

Corvan cleared his throat and spoke out loud. "This is an audio check. One . . . two . . . three . . . four . . . five . . ."

Corvan was something of a celebrity on Earth, and might have attracted some attention under normal circumstances, but most of the colonists were too ill to care who he was.

Kim was back. "Thanks. Security informs me that the President has entered the main lock and is headed our way. Let's take a look at the wide shot."

Corvan sent a thought to the robo cam and it took off. The device was cylindrical in shape with a set of skids under its belly and a high resolution zoom lens located in its nose. Although this robo cam looked similar to the units that Corvan had used on Earth, it was actually quite different.

It had a more powerful propulsion system for one thing, a modification made necessary by the red planet's thin atmosphere, and larger fuel tanks. The wings that had provided lift within Earth's thicker atmosphere were gone.

Not only that, but the new robo cam was equipped to function in a total vacuum if necessary, and had been equipped with a pair of small manipulator arms. The manipulator arms made it possible for the robo cam to lift and transport objects weighing up to ten pounds. A capability that Corvan hadn't asked for but the tech types had given him anyway.

The robo cam dodged a crew member and turned. The wide shot showed Corvan in the foreground, colonists to either side, and the BCL in the middle. Within a minute, two at the most, the President of the United States would step through the lock and into the picture.

In the meantime a small group of VIP's had gathered around the lock. Kim caught a glimpse of Dr. George Fornos, the World Peace Organization's point man and the mission's head cheese. He was a small man, whose Buddha-like composure hid a mind like a steel trap and a passionate desire to succeed.

And there, floating just beyond him, was the tall graceful figure of Air Force Colonel Mary Ann Jopp. If Fornos was fire, then she was ice, as cold as a winter day and just as friendly. She was the mission's executive officer and a lifelong member of the Exodus Society.

The World Peace Organization, aka the business establishment, had long opposed colonization and only recently come around. The Exodus Society, aka the people who wanted to turn, everything upside down, favored colonization but didn't control enough resources to make it happen.

The result was an uneasy truce. A truce that kept Fornos and Jopp from going for each other's throats. Gossip had it that the two of them disagreed on everything, but Kim had seen nothing to support that.

Kim wished for a cigarette, remembered that smoking wasn't allowed, and popped a breath mint instead. She forced herself to the task at hand.

A three-dimensional representation of the robo cam's shot floated in Kim's mind. She checked it carefully. Definition was close to perfect. Much better than the video produced by Corvan's previous robo cam. It had been grainy compared to the high resolution eye cam that had been surgically implanted into his skull.

There were numerous computers and computer-driven devices at her command, but the Grass Valley Ultima sat at the very top of the electronic hierarchy. This was a newer model than the one that Dietrich had destroyed during the Matrix Man fiasco, but she liked it less. "Val," as her previous computer had been known, had been a personality, a co-worker, and a friend.

This computer, unnamed as yet, was too new to have an identity of its own. Still ... it was cooperative enough, and when Kim asked for a video analysis, the displays appeared a fraction of a second later.

The displays were rectangular in shape and consisted of a light green grid, with a series of darker green lines zig-zagging across their surfaces. A single thought was sufficient to superimpose the two displays. They were almost identical. The audience would be unable to see a difference in quality as she cut back and forth between them.

She gave her husband a once-over, searching for the messy hair, unzipped pocket, or other flaw that might detract from his appearance.

Corvan was a big man, with brown hair, and a camera where his right eye should be. A camera that was wired directly to his brain and controlled by thought.

Kim knew that superconducting wires acted as transducers between the chemical and electronic actions of Corvan's brain, sending signals to the tiny bio-chip video recorder implanted at the base of his skull, where they were stored or transmitted live to her receiver.

His left eye was blue and, more than that, filled with intelligence. The kind of intelligence that likes to look under rocks, find the wriggly things that live there, and drag them kicking and screaming into the light. A characteristic that made her proud at times and angry at others. Kim felt there were enough problems in the world without uncovering more. Besides, there were other reporters out there. They could and should do their share.

A metal guard rested on Corvan's left shoulder. It mounted a six-inch antenna, a flat place for the robo cam to land, and battery packs front and back to hold the guard in place and balance each other out.

He wore a blue ship-suit with his name imprinted over the right-hand breast pocket, a utility belt, and a pair of the black high-top sneakers issued for shipboard use. He looked handsome in a rakish sort of way, and she liked that.