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Jonas Walker entered the surveillance office. His short spiked, silvery hair resembled the blunt quills of a hedgehog. His gray eyes studied Boony. She fumbled to remove her headset and set it onto her desk, wrecking her short black hairstyle in the process. When his eyes greeted hers, she replied with a nervous smile.
“Boony?” he said with a firm stare. “Is everything okay?”
“Fine, sir. I’m heading out for the evening.”
Humor teased at the edges of his narrowed eyes. The deep wrinkles around them revealed his wisdom. “Big night planned?”
She pursed her lips and nodded. “Oh, of course. Going to cruise the midway in my car for a while. Maybe stop at the mall. Eh, you know, those type of girly things.”
Jonas chuckled softly. “So all was quiet from in here?”
Boony nodded. “Nothing stirring.”
A light flashed on one of the consoles across the room. He headed over to check it out. “Did you see anyone enter the vault in Corridor 10?”
She shook her head.
He sighed. “I guess I’ll have to replay the film footage.”
“That door occasionally sends out a false alarm.”
Jonas frowned. “I know. It did, but I updated the alarm program for it last week.”
“Most electronics don’t work too well on Mars.”
“We still experience some minor glitches, but they are improving since we have some of the best techs available.”
Boony gathered her pack and some of her other belongings together. “Yes, we do. How’s Derek? Is he still out on the Martian terrain?”
Worry furrowed Jonas’ brow. He nodded. “He should almost be finished with the radio receivers at the Phobos Crash Site. I have to say that he’s a daringly brave young man.”
“Your grandson is braver than any of the others here.”
“Sometimes being too brave gets you killed well before your time,” he said.
“Not Derek. He’s the only one we have that can successfully do this mission alone and succeed.”
“That’s what I keep telling myself, but I’ve not heard from him in three days.”
Boony stood at the door with a sad expression on her face. She tried to be reassuring with her eyes and voice. “Probably another sandstorm. That produces too much static and blocks our communications via transmitters.”
“I know. That’s always another possibility,” he replied.
“I’m sure he’s okay.”
“Thanks for your optimism. Enjoy the rest of your evening.”
She forced a smile and left the computer control room.
After the door closed, Jonas sighed. Being the head security supervisor over the computer techs, he had wanted to protest his grandson’s voluntary request to set up the radio receivers at the Phobos Crash Site. But he couldn’t show favoritism, and in spite of his own selfish qualms, he okayed Derek’s request.
Derek had left the safety of Olympus Mons alone. Well, perhaps not totally alone. But no humans journeyed with him. Instead, Derek brought along a team of his robotic humanoids that he had built, which troubled Jonas. Derek’s argument was that the robots could withstand the rugged terrain and frigid temperatures without them having to worry about any human casualty. Except his own, Jonas thought.
It was a grandfather’s painful duty to stress about his grandson’s welfare, especially on such a dangerous mission so far from their only base. This worrisome situation was also another reason why Grayson hadn’t allowed family members to come to Mars together yet. Should tragedy arise, it weighed heavily on people and made them less productive in their tasks. However, Grayson had allowed Jonas to bring Derek to Mars for several reasons.
Jonas had worked for the CIA more than thirty years earlier, during his late thirties. His duty to the government didn’t go unnoticed and his actions soon placed his life and his family’s lives into jeopardy. He had unraveled an inner threat within Congress to secretly overthrown the sovereignty of the U.S. Constitution, so many radical political opponents vowed to destroy him as well as some of his colleagues inside the CIA.
Jonas was taken into the identity protection service, but his son Samuel, refused to comply. Stubbornly, Samuel continued his political bid for the senate seat, believing that if he were elected, he could stop the radical uprising within Congress, but that opportunity never came. Samuel was shot and killed during a campaign speech. Jonas didn’t doubt that the corrupt antigovernment officials he had exposed in Congress had carried out the assassination, but since he had secured a new identity, there wasn’t anything he could do to prove it. Perhaps their motive had been an attempt to draw him out of hiding. He didn’t know, but his opponents didn’t stop there.
Almost a year later, Samuel’s wife was killed in a car bombing in D.C. but due to what could only be described as a miracle, Derek had survived. He was an infant, but investigators could find no feasible explanation for why Derek wasn’t killed in the blast.
Jonas emerged to get his grandson, and in doing so, the men that wanted him dead attempted to kill him again. Only instead of their setup to bring Jonas to them, Jonas turned the tables and crippled their faction by permanently removing their strongest leaders. It was the first time that Jonas had actually approved of government drone assassinations on US soil.
Grayson learned about Jonas’ bold determination to fight against political opposition in order to protect his family. He was so impressed that he hired Jonas to oversee his security firm at Grayson Enterprises. Jonas took the offer without hesitation and was no longer seen in the public eye. He and Derek were safe. Grayson’s buildings were more fortified than any other organization that Jonas had previously supervised.
During the time Jonas worked at Grayson Enterprises, Derek’s keen interest in computer programming and robotics flourished, and Grayson paid for the entire robotic engineering training Derek needed. By the time Derek was twenty, he had patented several types of humanoid robots, which fascinated Grayson enough that he offered Derek the chief engineering job on Mars.
Derek readily accepted, and Jonas insisted that he journey to Mars as well. Grayson allowed it, but only if Jonas became the head of security inside Olympus Mons.
In retrospect Jonas never regretted moving to Mars with his grandson because it was a new frontier where few individuals would ever reside, at least during what was left of his life. It was also less likely that any of his remaining enemies could threaten them.
Jonas looked at the Martian weather map. He wondered if the sandstorms were the true reason for why he’d lost contact with Derek, or had something worse occurred?
The Phobos Crash Site was thirty-five miles northwest of the Olympus Mons Aureole, slightly southeast of Lycus Sulci. The site was still in its earliest stages of development. Grayson Enterprises mandated that the new incoming mining prisoners would be stationed to work there once power and living quarters were properly established. Jonas was dead set against the idea from the beginning, but Grayson believed that Phobos might have different gemstones than Olympus Mons, or perhaps valuable ores. Jonas worried more that Phobos might have high levels of radiation, which might be causing the interference of the radio waves.
Frustrated and not wishing to continue stressing over a situation he had no control over, Jonas fidgeted with the control panel for the vault door. He commanded the computer to playback the video feed, but he found it odd that the camera angles weren’t where they were supposed to be. Instead they were angled toward the ceiling and the footage showed a blurred image of the smooth rock. This image remained for almost ten minutes.
What had happened during those ten minutes and what role, if any, had Boony partaken? Had she shifted the cameras away from the vault door? He hated to assume that she had anything to do with this because she was one of the most loyal, dedicated techs he had. He would have to ask her later if Curt or Phillip had been in the office while she was on duty. They were two people he didn’t trust. He definitely wouldn’t put it past them to steal from the vaults.
Jonas sat at the desk and put on his headset. He tuned the adjustment on the computer, and increased the volume. “Derek, if you can hear me, please respond.”
He waited fifteen seconds and repeated the message.
No reply.
Not even static.
Jonas typed in commands for the orbiting satellite and zoomed in for a ground scan at the Phobos Crash Site, but there was too many boulders, craters, and intricate holes for him to hope the camera might accidentally pick Derek out on the terrain.
He sighed and tried to contact his grandson via transmitter again.
Nothing.
It looked to be another long agonizing night. He never imagined having a grandson would stress him to age even faster. But, the love for a family member was never easy, and the absence of his grandson made him wish he were young enough to travel out to the Phobos ruins to search for Derek himself.
***
High atop a narrow ridge that overlooked the Phobos Crash Site, Derek Walker sat hunched against the base of the short radio tower, shielding himself from the abrasive wind-pelleting grains of red grit and pebbles. His form fitted smart-suit was the newest technology that he and his engineer team had invented, but he was the first to test it during one of the harsh Martian sandstorms.
The light suit allowed more agility and flexibility, but he worried that the cruel blowing grit might damage the suit. The sand pelleted off his domed space helmet, severely reducing his visibility. It was useless to stand and work on the radio tower when he couldn’t even see what he was doing.
“Dammit,” he whispered. “This storm’s in for a long haul.”
Even without the storm’s interference, he didn’t have any means to communicate with his grandfather at Olympus Mons. His transmitter had malfunctioned nearly twenty miles into his trek. He had stepped down from his Mack flatbed truck to brush off the excess sand on the solar panels. After clearing the panels of the debris, he inspected his robots and other mechanical supplies for the turrets. Then he had noticed that the unrelenting winds had bent and disabled the vehicle’s antenna for its radio. Without realizing it, the blowing grit jammed into his suit’s radio transmitter and shorted it out, leaving him without any way to contact the base at all.
After he had discovered the damage, he was still approximately ten miles from the Phobos Crash Site, but the drive itself wasn’t that difficult. Rather than turning back, he decided it was best to drive to the site and finish connecting the communication radio towers along the ridge left by the previous technicians. Although they never constructed any roads, the natural fault lines along former lava flows provided decent, almost smooth grooves that they used for roads. Every now and then, abrupt shallow drop-offs or protruding large rocks interrupted large sections of the roads. Such obstructions prevented them from driving at fast speeds.
Due to the rugged terrain and the truck’s draining batteries, Derek had to leave his transport truck about a hundred yards away and continue on foot through the swirling dust storm. He figured if he got the towers fully activated, he’d be able to contact his grandfather and let him know that he was safe. But until the winds died down, he remained at the mercy of the unforgiving weather. There wasn’t anything else he could do except wait.
Waves of reddish sand and silt formed a small dune on the other side of the radio tower. Derek had brought his five robots along with him. They stood lined together, forming a small wall to block and protect him from the whipping windblown sand. It helped but wasn’t one hundred percent efficient. Time would tell if he survived this maddening ordeal, and whether or not his robots were sturdy enough to function on the Martian terrain. A part of him held more hope for the robots than he did himself. In only two years, he had suffered more depression than he ever had on Earth. Dying alone where no human could hear him scream seemed a fitting end to an otherwise bland life. Strangely, though, his five robots stood by, doing everything they could to protect him from death. Even though he had never programmed them to exhibit loyalty or behave in such a protective manner, they stood at attention, watching over him as though he was family. And that troubled him most of all.