On Mars Pathfinder (The Mike Lane Stories Book 1) (30 page)

Mike Lane

Two hours after my tablet first buzzed, I slowly woke up with a stretch and a yawn. I had to pee. I was also hungry. As I tried to decide which was more pressing, I noticed the unacknowledged priority message indicator flashing on my tablet, which was resting in its bracket on the wall above my head.

I didn’t even remember waking up two hours before. I never heard any of its subsequent buzzes or chirps. I plucked up the tablet, and carried it upstairs with me as I went towards the head. I sat there having a leisurely and looked at the priority messages. There were three of them. One from Karl, one from Jayden, and one from … I’ll be damned … Lieutenant General Rosewood.

I read Karl’s message first. They had gotten video and telemetry back about three hours ago. Internal habitat camera’s came back online about twenty minutes after that. They couldn’t locate me anywhere on camera, but they were getting telemetry indicating that CO2 was being processed. That told them that I was alive and breathing, well, something was alive and breathing; and they assumed it was me. It didn’t tell them what condition I was in. Karl made the correct assumption I was in my quarters, and told me to let them know when I was awake.

I hit the reply button and typed one word, “Awake”. Send.

Jayden’s message said nothing about my condition, it simply asked if I had loaded and installed the secure video software yet. I replied for him to give me an hour, and it would be. Send.

With some mounting curiosity I opened the Lieutenant General’s message. She was one person I never expected to hear from again. She simply asked if I was okay, told me to keep strong, and not give up and that “we” were pulling for me. The word “we” implied the United States Air Force Materials Command,
88
th
Air Support Wing, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. I typed back to her, “Been better. Won’t give up, and don’t have any choice. Send a CIWS :-)”. Brashly asking for a Close In Weapons System would probably make her smile. Send.

Finishing my business, I performed what was every man’s ritual morning ablutions, and then went out to the kitchen area. I sat the tablet down, and made up a protein shake. I purposefully went and looked out the portal on the east side of the habitat, looking out over the sand dunes. Nothing out there. Good. Very good. Oh wait … I watched a pair of dust devils spin by in the distance, one at a time, dissolving into nothingness. Those damn things were still a mystery to the climatologists.

I cleaned out my shake container, went to the W-Hab, and sat down at the workstation I had unpacked and already set up. I closed my eyes at that point and had a long talk with God about yesterday’s events; what I was afraid of, what troubled me, and how I needed his strength and protection.

Now, in a better frame of mind, I booted up the workstation and launched the communications app (more than just email). First, I installed the software Jayden wanted online. Next, I went through the Mission Control emails, answering Karl, Hans, Carrie and Ernst. Then I answered a few of the techs emails, sending them local readings and observations. Surprisingly, everyone except Carrie and Hans had avoided the topic of the day before. Ernst just wanted to know if I had local connection with the Jalopy-Sat; and Karl told me to turn off the friggin’ cameras if I was going to walk to the shower nude again. He said they were getting tired of seeing my junk. I have to admit, I blushed quite hotly at that one.

I checked my personal account next. I sent two less than quick emails to my son and to Mary. I shared some thoughts and fears with them, but reaffirmed my belief in the mission and my presence here. Mary had indicated she was ready to start a, “Return Mike” movement to force the U.S. Air Force to find a way to return me to Earth. I did have to pause a tick before responding that it wasn’t necessary, and that I didn’t want to return to Earth. I’d encountered these frakers twice and I was still alive. Granted, the second encounter was far worse than the first, but really, it simply
had
to be over for now, didn’t it?

I moved on to the day’s work manifest. I started taking care of mechanical checks and readings, and atmospheric observations to back up the telemetry, working my way slowly through the list that was much longer than the previous days.

I turned my attention to a pressing repair that one of the Mission Control Habitat techs had messaged me about. As I sat there going over schematics for the energy distribution system to find the L105-BR Auto Reset Circuit Breaker location, the workstation beeped beside me. I turned to look at it, and a small window was open that I had never seen or been briefed on. In the title bar it said MillChatSecure. In the window proper it showed:

User538: i see you still have your sense of humour.

The cursor blinked slowly at me in the reply box. Chat software, on Mars. With that message it could only be Lieutenant General Rosewood. Was she nuts? Computer chat would be agonizing over this distance. I typed back to her and hit the send button, my message appeared on the screen:

MARCOL1: If I didn’t laugh, I’d cry. No time to cry in outer space. Send Cookies.

It would be close to an hour before I got a response back from her, if there was going to be any. I picked up the tech manual and headed downstairs to the small room with the power distribution equipment. Turning on both overhead LED lights, I moved very slowly to make sure I didn’t inadvertently touch anything zappy. I was able to remove an access cover, swing out some circuit boards, root through some wires, and find the L105-BR Auto Reset Circuit Breaker. It had shown no connectivity in diagnostics. The techs needed a touchy-feely assessment before deciding what to do about it. I wiggled it a bit, and pressed inwards on it. With a silent snap that I felt in my fingertips rather than heard, it popped solidly into place. There was no indication that anything had changed, so I nestled the wires back in place, swung the circuit boards back into the box, and slowly reconnected the cover plate. I’d have to check the functionality back on the main system interface at the primary workstation. Doing a careful, procedurally driven safety check, I backed out of the small room, ticking off items in my head as I did so. Atmo, water, air and power were the big four of survival in this place. No mucking about carelessly with any of them. Procedures were life on Mars.

Exiting the electrical distribution room, I opened the other mechanical room to check water volume and available air supply. I ran some mechanical checks and took the time to properly inspect the CO
2
scrubbers. I then pulled some samples from the water and air tank to place in the diagnostic analyzer in the sick bay. I was supposed to do this once a week and hadn’t yet done it since arriving.

Properly hooking up the AtmoGen was on this afternoons work manifest, and I had to put the intake system in a bypass standby mode. I disconnected the trickle feed from the main tanks and connected it to the empty reserve tanks. These, once filled, would be my emergency air supply. They depended on the trickle system staying operational. The Habitat then started running off of stored air in the main tanks. I reconfirmed the available air in the hi-pressure tanks. One person could last 72 hours on the stored air if there were no more than three airlock cycles in that time frame. I had just set an important clock ticking, and needed to get on with things. Backing out of this room and ticking off items in a different procedure in my head, I finished by making sure all the hatches were secure, and went back up to the main work space, stopping to boot up the sick bay analyzer, and drop in the samples.

As I sat at the workstation, I could see that Rosewood had responded to me.

User538: good. im glad you are okay

I checked the system utility monitor, keyed in the proper commands and was told that the L105-BR Auto Reset Circuit Breaker was in place, and had passed the integrity check. I replied to the tech-head email that had alerted me to the problem, and then went back to the MilChatSecure window.

I hesitated a moment, then decided to go ahead and ask:

MARCOL1: Do you think it will get worse?

In preparation for the AtmoGen connection, system charging and full activation this afternoon, I lifted the tablet to compare the atmospheric system readings between the tablet, where I had recorded them downstairs, and the desktop primary workstation. I no sooner started this when the workstation beeped. I glanced at the workstation with the MilChatSecure window open and saw:

User538: that depends

That depends on … my head snapped up in shock. I stared at the wall for a few seconds as my mind tried to wrap itself around this. Then I looked down at the software window again. I really, really did see that there. It wasn’t a hallucination. How the frak did she respond to me in seconds? That response should have taken almost thirty-seven minutes. What the hell was going on?

User538: surprise

MARCOL1: What the HELL is going on? Is this a programmed response or is this real-time?

User538: real-time

MARCOL1: HOW?

User538: need to know

MARCOL1: Can I communicate with Mission Control in real-time?

There was a pause.

User538: no

MARCOL1: Why not???

User538: because I said so

There was a pause at my end now.

MARCOL1: So it’s like that is it?

User538: yes mike. yes it is. its like that

I was dumbfounded. I was flabbergasted. I was over 140 million kilometres from Earth. Telemetry and video between here and Mission Control was at about 18 minutes and 22 seconds each way, almost 37 minutes round trip. I could send a message, have lunch, inspect mechanics, do some clean up and then (only then), get a response to a very quick question with a very quick answer, from Mission Control.

Now, here I was, having a real-time chat with a woman who was also over 140 million kilometres away.

User538: ill be in touch.

The chat window remained open but grayed out in the text entry box. I couldn’t type anything. Eventually I hit the “X” in the corner and the application disappeared. I searched around for an icon or link to launch it again, but couldn’t find one.

I sat there feeling completely and utterly confused.

Going Down-side

Achael had time to shower, change her clothes, and then she was standing in the Base Commander’s office, again. Hlef was beside her, and they were waiting for Lieutenant Colonel KamPen to get off the phone. He was talking to Earth. He didn’t look happy.

“I’ve been ordered to put you two on the supply transport, leaving in ten minutes. You are to report directly to the Lieutenant General at the 88th. I would not advise you be late.”

“Why the two of us?” asked Hlef hotly.

“Because she wants the both of you,” he replied just as hotly.

Achael grabbed her by the arm, “C’mon Hlef, we’ve no time for this, let’s go.”

Hlef pulled her arm out of her sister’s grasp, “I didn’t do this! I tried to stop her! I never wanted her to go frak around with the human! Why do I have to go to Earth, for frak sake?”

“GO!” he yelled at her, pointing at this office door with his long hybrid arm.

Hlef pursed her lips shut, looking at him with fire in her eyes, “Fine. I’ll go.” She spun on her heels, and led Achael out the door.

“Wear your dress blues too!” he yelled after them.

“FRAK OFF!” yelled Hlef from down the corridor. He smiled. Gilda didn’t care what they wore. He knew it would just infuriate Hlef more, and she deserved it for getting prissy with him. Besides, Gilda had only asked for Achael. He kind of wished he could see the look on Hlef’s face when she found out. He snickered to himself, “I’m a bad, bad man.” He snickered some more.

For now, the two women were going to Terra. Peace would surely reign for several hours unless the Eridani attacked. At least he knew how to handle the Eridani effectively. He shut his office door with his extra-long hybrid arm, locked it, and then stretched out on the sofa for a nap. He so rarely got to nap. The True-Blood’s never napped. They should try it.

As he settled on the sofa, Achael and Hlef practically ran outright to their shared quarters. When they arrived, Achael picked up the phone and dialed the hangar bay. Her brother wasn’t on duty any more, she told his full-human relief to hold the supply shuttle as they had been ordered down-side most Riki-Tik.

They both flew out of their clothes and jumped quickly into their dress blues: nylons, skirt, button up blouse, neck tab, jacket, and hat. They both checked they had their sunglasses in their jacket pocket, and ran out of their quarters. They ran full tilt to the hangar bay, more to burn off Hlef’s mounting anger and resentment than anything else. Of course, due to the hybrid’s superior fighting physiology, they arrived without breathing hard, and not breaking a sweat.

The cargo shuttles looked like what you would expect a cargo shuttle to look like; if you were a spacefaring race that had exposure to, and experience with, cargo shuttles. This was one of the smaller shuttles. It was stubby, boxy, ugly, and uncomfortable. As it was Eben tech, the trade-off was that it was reliable, efficient, and had a top class NavCom for the top class folding engine; even more precise than the Dart’s. It had to be able to fold them from extremely high orbit, precisely into an underground service bay at Wright-Patterson; without having them fold into a wall or worse, the bedrock surrounding it. It could even cross feed the NavCom figures to a Dart for the same precision folding. In fact, the only way a Dart could land at Wright-Patterson was if a cargo shuttle was in extremely high orbit to feed them the very, very precise coordinates.

The human co-pilot helped buckle them into their military seats then joined the True-Blood Eben pilot in the cockpit. They were in atmo in a few minutes. Five minutes later they were totally clear of the Martian atmosphere. As they were jumping a much greater distance than Achael had on the surface, the ship needed to be completely outside the atmosphere and magnetic field of the planet before activating the folding engine. They made the journey to Earth in about seven minutes. The cargo ship had a powerful folding engine, but it was small in comparison to the Battle Cruiser’s folding engine. This meant they needed to make three folds to get there. The maximum distance a folding engine could move an object was exponentially proportional to the size of the folding engine core. In the case of this small size cargo vessel, the folding core was a 12 micron wide singularity encased in a self-powering magnetic bottle. The magnetic bottle was contained in several millions of layers of graphene. The Graphene container is insulated by methane gas, and it all sits nestled in a titanium-carbyne outer casing. To make the math simpler, a 10 micron wide singularity in the above described system could fold 0.83 AU, indefinitely. This small cargo ship’s folding engine’s entire assembly was about the size of a picnic cooler. The folding engine in the Battle Cruiser was the size of a Prius, the singularity being 32 microns in diameter.

Hlef gripped the seat and shut her eyes most of the way to Terra. She hated folding in the cargo ship. It made her queasy and bitchy. Well, bitchy-er. She had to keep letting go of the seat to scratch under her skirt and jacket. She despised the wool in her dress blues, they made her itch. She was now scratching herself like a flea infested pound puppy.

Achael just watched her sister as her mind wandered over everything that had happened in the last few hours. She had no idea why the Lieutenant General would be upset; she had gotten permission to proceed after all. She knew the Lieutenant General had briefed the human about the Eridani, and that the 88
th
had done a lot to get that mission and its human to Mars. She hoped that KamPen’s boss wasn’t going to dress her down the way KamPen had, at least not in front of Hlef.

Achael reflected on KamPen’s dressing down less than an hour ago. It had only been about eight hours since they had been sitting in the conference room waiting to watch the human’s supply mission land. She knew she had behaved very poorly. She and Hlef should never have gone into full battle mode on each other and destroyed so much property. Those follies of youth were supposed to be behind them. Taking the Dart without permission was also bad, but not nearly as bad as exposing herself to discovery; discovery by the human’s site video equipment and satellite cameras. Luckily KamPen had shut down all transmission and data back to the human’s base on Terra before she arrived. At least she wouldn’t have to wear that millstone around her neck. However, she had still displayed flagrant disregard for protocol and procedure because of emotion and passion. “Ohhh, this isn’t going to be fun,” she muttered to herself. She didn’t regret going to help the human but everything else about that decision started to weigh on her, heavily.

“Just wait till I’m done with you,” her sister sneered, while squinting at her from beneath one slightly opened eyelid.

“You love me,” said Achael.

“And your point is what?”

“If you stop being so fraking miserable for five minutes, I’ll take you to the commissary at Wright-Patterson and buy you some chocolate pudding … when she’s done with us.”

Hlef sat bolt upright with eyes wide open, “Chocolate pudding? For real?”

“Yes,” said Achael, “for real.”

Hlef had a very specific endocrine chemistry that was quite unique. Because of this oddity, it was discovered early in Hlef’s life that cocoa acted on her system like 150 proof rum did on a teetotaler. Chocolate had an effect on all Eben and all the hybrids, but the most it would give them was a slight buzz and an upset stomach. With Hlef, it made her worse than a debutante hooted up on moonshine after a summer cotillion. The Eben mission had learned early on that this was one Terran delicacy that Hlef was never supposed to have (no other civilization in the three galaxies had chocolate or cinnamon; they were both unique to Earth). It was also the one Earth delicacy she craved the most, like an alcoholic craving a ‘7 & 7’.

“Promise? You’re not teasing me? That wouldn’t be very nice of you,” she sounded almost plaintively childlike.

“I’m not teasing you Hlef”, smiled Achael, finally her sister was getting back to a more normal attitude, “I’ll buy you two. We can also sneak some chocolate bars back with us, if we can.”

Unfortunately for Hlef, the commissary had already been alerted by the shuttle’s Eben pilot, through the ERB communications unit, that Hlef was on the way to the base. They kitchen staff had all run over to the desert cooler, and started to scarf back the remaining eight bowls of chocolate pudding that had been made that morning. Then they tackled the half of a chocolate cake that was sitting on the table. Their attitude was that it would be criminal to throw such delicious deserts in the garbage, so, chow down. They finished up by grabbing all the chocolate bars on display and putting them in the commissary storage closet, behind the bottles of bleach and Drano, to mask their smell. They finished operation ‘Chocolate Gorge’ just as the cargo ship folded into the service bay, located deep in the bedrock beneath Wright-Patterson AFB. The cafeteria on the lower decks never stocked anything chocolate, just in case.

After the cargo door opened, the ladies unbuckled themselves, stood up and straightened their uniforms. They exited the craft into a predominantly human world, but a closed world that was alien friendly, for the right aliens. Since the women were both half human and dominantly so, hardly anyone glanced at them.

They made their way along the corridors and up the lift to the real world. The elevator doors opened on the first sublevel of the 88
th
Wing’s administrative building. Achael and Hlef put on their sunglasses, and without even thinking about it, they crossed their long arms over their chests, tucking their long-fingered hands, fists clenched, far under their elbows. Not everyone on this level was fully briefed, though they all had suspicions. Regardless, the human dominant hybrids took certain steps to prevent too many questions or ogling stares. The Eben dominant hybrids rarely ever came this far. The True Blood Eben never came this far. They did, however, have a small compound at the government community on Lake Walker, in the shadow of Mt. Grant, Nevada. It was a vacation spot for the Eben assigned to the Mars base. Highly protected and with Eben tech that made it invisible to long range cameras, like on satellites.

Achael stopped suddenly outside Lieutenant General Rosewood’s suite of offices on Sublevel 1, Corridor 3, North Wing, Door #538. She put a hand on her stomach while biting her lip, turned to Hlef and quietly moaned, “Sis, I feel sick to my stomach.”

Hlef, gave her a reassuring smile and rubbed her shoulder, “It’s okay Turkey. You know she can only stay mad so long.”

“Yes, but I did so many things wrong today, so many things.”

“You better believe it. Made me proud of you.”

“Proud of me?”

“Achael, I may ride you about that human and all your hair brained ideas, but really, you did what needed to be done, and what none of the rest of us were willing to do.”

Achael was, for the first time, completely dumbfounded by her sister. Hlef had never given any indication that she had any understanding at all of what Achael was going through when it came to her compassion and passion.

“For real?”

Hlef smiled again, wrapped her long arms around Achael, and hugged her tightly, “You’re my sister Achael. I love you without limits. One of the things I love about you is how responsible you are, and how incredibly gutsy. I may not always agree with you, but I always admire you.” She kissed her on the cheek, then stepped back, and crossed her arms again.

“Come on,” Hlef said, “let’s go get our spanking. Remember, we have a date in the commissary!”

They stepped through the door to the offices, Hlef taking the lead. Major Billy Harper, the Lieutenant General’s Adjutant, looked up from his desk in his office as the ladies entered the reception area. When they stopped to present themselves to the civilian receptionist (who’s security clearance was higher than the President’s), the tall, muscular, tanned, black-haired, black-skinned, former track and field star came out of his office.

“Welcome down-side ladies,” he said with a smile. As they were all the same rank, the rules of formality were a bit relaxed.

“Billy,” Hlef smiled, “Good to see you.” She knew how nervous Achael was, so she wanted to run as much interference as she could until Achael went into the Dragon’s den.

He nodded in acknowledgement, “The General’s expecting you, Achael.”

The two smiling women with dark wrap-around sunglasses just stood there, their arms crossed in front of them, smiling for a moment longer than comfortable. They looked at each other, and then looked back at Billy.

“Just Achael?” Hlef asked with a smile frozen on her lips.

“Yes, she was only expecting Achael. But I’m sure she is going to be absolutely thrilled to have you here for a visit Hah-Lef,” he never could say her name right. “Would you care to wait in my office while Achael gets yelled at a lot?” he said with an apologetic and commiserating smile on his face. He’d been on the wrong end of Rosewood’s ire more than once himself.

The girls smiles were frozen on their faces. Hlef looked down at the ground and chuckled a bit as she looked back up at Achael. She leaned a bit closer to her and in a very quiet voice she said through smiling lips and gritted teeth, “I’m going to fraking kill that son-of-a-bitch.”

Rosewood’s office door flew open at that moment and the compact, athletic old woman stood looming in the door frame. She wasn’t smiling.

“You two, my office, NOW!”