An anger that Luka had thought he had hidden away inside began to wake. Like boiling water in his stomach, it bubbled and scalded him as he watched the ICN report.
Bard Hunter was on Mars.
Bard Hunter was delivering a self-satisfied speech about his plans for Noctis Labyrinthus. Bard Hunter’s brazen attempt to snatch ThorGate’s grand plans out from under their noses was despicable enough, but it was nothing compared to the crimes against humanity he had committed on Earth. All in the name of corporate greed.
Luka would have turned off the window to hide the man’s evil face from his eyes, but he was standing in the communal space of the construction habitat watching the news with about twenty other migrant workers and Erik, who stood next to him. Before the storm hit, the two of them had been at one of ThorGate’s more distant solar arrays to implement Luka’s new program for the dust cleaning robots. When it was clear the storm was going to be bad, they decided it wasn’t worth trying to make the long drive back to Thor Town and stopped off at the much nearer construction habitat to wait for the winds to die down.
It was a much more tense atmosphere inside than Luka had remembered. The migrants had had nothing to do since the discovery of life on Mars and their frustration was so palpable that it filled the air and vibrated through the walls. For them to sit there and listen to Bard gush about plans for the Noctis site – plans which didn’t involve them – added insult to injury.
“He can’t do that! The Terraforming Committee won’t let him do it,” said one of them.
“I think he’s already done it,” said another.
“It’s fine for rich tyrants like him. They don’t care about the ordinary people on the ground.”
Luka knew all the voices who spoke, all their names and all their personalities. But they all blurred into one as he stared at Bard’s smug face on the ICN footage. Even with his helmet on, the man still wore the famous white cap that he used to cover up his bald head. Luka would like to take that white cap and shove it down his throat until he choked. Then he would hold it there and watch him suffer as he struggled to breathe. Like Luka’s wife and two children had struggled to breathe when the chemical leaked from the factory and poisoned the air in the town where they lived.
“Are you all right?” asked Erik. He peered his head round to look Luka in the eye. “You’ve gone a funny color.”
“Bard Hunter,” said Luka, with distain.
“Apparently so,” said Erik.
“I didn’t know he was on Mars.”
“No one did. It was supposed to be a surprise, apparently.”
“Yeah,” said Luka. “A big, fat surprise. I thought if I came to Mars, then at least my feet wouldn’t be sharing the same planet with that man. But it seems there’s no escape.”
“What’s your problem with Bard Hunter?”
Luka let out an ironic chuckle. How soon people forgot the horrors of the past. “The Rhine Valley Disaster,” he said simply.
By Erik’s shocked expression, Luka could see he remembered their conversation about his deceased family. “But that wasn’t CrediCor,” said Erik. “That was… some other corporation. I can’t even remember who it was now.”
“But who financed the corporation who ran the chemical factory in the valley?” said Luka. “CrediCor. Who called in their loan so the factory was forced to make cut backs? CrediCor. Who ignored the warnings that lack of finances would put safety at risk? CrediCor. Bard Hunter has blood on his hands, and now he’s brought his immoral practices to Mars.”
Erik was halfway through bumbling a sympathetic sentence when Morten came rushing in from the corridor. “The rescue team is back from helping that stranded rover,” he declared to the room. “You’ll never guess who was out there – Julie Outerbridge and Bard Hunter!”
The ears of the workforce pricked up at the names of the two corporation leaders, while Luka acted on instinct. He rushed out of the communal area to the entrance to the airlock where those arriving had to disembark. Before he saw anyone, he heard the cries of a man screaming, “My leg! My leg!”
From around the corner came Julie Outerbridge. Looking world-weary and still in a dusty rad-suit with her helmet off, she leant on another woman as she was led down the corridor. Following were two other members of the rescue team carrying a stretcher between them. Lying on it, with his face contorted in pain, was Bard Hunter.
“Is he going to die?” asked Luka.
But no one answered. A medic from the habitat came up behind him and pushed Luka out of the way as he rushed up to the stretcher and leaned over to speak to Bard. “Don’t worry, sir,” he said. “We’ll get some good pain relief into you and take a look at that leg.”
The medic waved on the stretcher bearers and they turned off the corridor into one of the rooms that sometimes doubled as a medical bay. Luka continued to stare at Bard as he was carried past him, and felt the scalding heat of his anger burn a little more brightly.
•••
Erik joined some of the other migrants in a board game being played on a screen set into a table in the communal area, but Luka declined the opportunity to join them. He was not in the mood for games. He plugged a headset into his WristTab and listened to music as he tried to push away the emotions that he had traveled across space to escape. As he sat there, Julie Outerbridge was brought in by one of the medics who placed a cup of something beside her before saying a few words which Luka couldn’t hear and then leaving her to sit on her own.
He thought back to the first time he and Julie had met, albeit briefly, at the site of the crashed asteroid. It allowed his thoughts to drift away from Bard Hunter and the crimes he had committed on Earth, to the subject that had obsessed him since he had arrived on Mars: Gianni.
This was his chance to talk to the woman who was investigating the crash that killed him. If he didn’t take up that chance, he might never have another. So, even though she appeared to be having some private time, he decided to approach. If she declined to talk to him, then he would respect her wishes.
She was staring down into the cup of tea the medic had given her and shaking a little. As he approached the table, he saw her face was ashen. Although she appeared physically uninjured, it was obvious that whatever had happened to her out in the dust storm had been traumatic.
“Excuse me,” he said, tentatively.
She looked up from her tea, a blank expression in her eyes. “Yes?”
“I don’t know if you remember me. I’m Luka Schäfer, we met when you needed help to get a sample of the asteroid at the crash site at Noctis Labyrinthus.”
“Oh yes,” she said. Her words suggested she remembered who he was, but her expression remained blank.
“If you don’t mind, I would like to ask you about the investigation,” ventured Luka. “Of course, if you prefer to be left alone…”
“You can sit, it’s all right. The company would be nice.”
Luka pulled a spare chair up to the table. But she didn’t look at him. She just kept staring into the liquid in her cup.
“Are you sure you’re OK? I mean, do you want me to get you something?”
“I have something.” She picked up the mug and sipped. Her face wrinkled at the taste. “It’s so sweet.”
“I can get you another one that isn’t sweet if you like.”
“No, I need the sugar.” She sipped it again, grimaced again and replaced the mug on the table. “So, what is it you wanted to ask me?”
“Have you found out how the asteroid disaster happened?”
“I have found a few things,” said Julie. “But I can’t really talk about it until my report is complete.”
“It’s just that I’m the one who has taken over from Gianni Lupo here at ThorGate. I’m doing his job, I’m living in the same room he used to live in, and I feel like the two of us have some kind of connection. I just want to know a bit more about how he died.”
“The investigation is ongoing and it would be wrong of me to speculate. But, as I understand it, there’s no question that he was killed in the asteroid crash.”
“I’m sure that’s where he died, but I have a feeling it wasn’t a coincidence that Gianni was the only person in the research station when the asteroid struck.”
For the first time in their conversation, there seemed to be something going on behind Julie’s eyes. “What sort of feeling?”
“I found some diary entries which Gianni left behind. I think he was scared for his life.”
“Interesting,” said Julie. But that was all she said.
“What I don’t understand is, what made him so scared? No one could have known that the asteroid was going to break up in the atmosphere and, if they did, they couldn’t have possibly known where it was going to land. I’ve been thinking it over a lot, and it doesn’t make sense to me.”
“Unless they did know,” said Julie.
A chill passed through Luka as she presented a devastating possibility he hadn’t even thought of. “Unless they did know what?”
Julie stared out into space. Almost like she was talking to herself rather than Luka. “I haven’t looked into why Gianni was there. Perhaps I should have done. I’m sorry about that.”
“But you’ve looked into the accident. I mean, it was an accident?”
“All I can say is, for an asteroid to split in two and for only one part to go off course is highly unlikely.”
“Are you saying you think someone brought it down on the research station deliberately?”
“I’m not saying anything.”
“They got the scientists out but allowed Gianni to go there?”
“My information is he wasn’t supposed to be there.”
“Do you think…” The idea was just forming in Luka’s own mind. “Do you think he was sent there on purpose?”
Luka watched for some sort of recognition on Julie’s face. To get a sense if this was one of the things she couldn’t talk about until her report was complete. But her face remained impassive. “That would be a lot of effort to go to, to murder someone,” was all she said.
Luka was going to ask her more questions, but the medic returned. Julie stood as he approached the table and Luka’s chance to find out more slipped away.
“Is Bard OK?” asked Julie
“He’s stabilized,” said the medic.
“You were able to save his leg?”
“That’s for the specialists back at Tharsis City,” he said. “But the blood supply is getting all the way down to his toes, so I’m hopeful.”
Julie went up to the man and shook his hand enthusiastically. “Thank you. Thank you so much.”
“The dust storm is receding now,” he said. “You should be able to head back without a problem. I’ll get one of my medics to make the journey with you to be on the safe side.”
Julie walked out with the medic, without acknowledging that Luka was even there.
She forgot her sweet tea too, which sat half drunk on the table in front of him. He picked it up and took a sip. It was lukewarm and incredibly sweet. As he swallowed and waited for the sugar high to kick in, he thought about what she had said. If someone in Julie Outerbridge’s position could believe the asteroid might have been deliberately targeted, then Gianni’s suspicions were not a product of Martian Madness.
Yet, he had no proof of what had happened, only suspicions. He wasn’t even sure he believed it himself. As Julie had said, dropping an asteroid from space was a lot of effort to go to to murder someone.