“Calling Deimos Control. This is mining vessel Nowhere Man. Do you copy?”
The sound of Bernard’s voice made me freeze with my hands motionless in the guidance field. During the two years I’d known him, he’d never gone more than a week without calling in, but this time it had been nearly three months and not a peep. He wasn’t my boyfriend, we’d never even met in person, but I liked him a lot. With three ships disappearing during that time period and an announced reward for information about pirates, I’d been worried.
Elspeth, the other dispatcher and my best friend, gave me a snarky smile. “I’ll let you take this call, Marcie.”
I examined the guidance field, then frowned. His ship wasn’t there. “This is Deimos Control. We read you Nowhere Man, but we’re not picking up an ID. Is your transponder off?”
“Umm . . . is that you, Marcie?”
What the hell was he doing? I turned active radar in the direction of his radio reply and soon found an untagged blip exiting Mar’s shadow. It was moving fast.
“You are inbound and hot, Nowhere Man. Please provide active identification, or you will be fired upon.”
Elspeth covered her mouth but couldn’t stifle her snicker. “Not the best way to get that first date, Marcie.”
“Hush!” I whispered and didn’t laugh.
There was a pause that couldn’t be distance lag since he was so close, then he finally replied. “Err . . . this is mining vessel Nowhere Man, registration KLR88749. My transponder is . . . um . . . malfunctioning. I’m requesting approach clearance and a secure groundside cargo berth.”
This was getting weird and even Elspeth’s grin faded. We both knew Bernard couldn’t afford to rent a groundside berth.
“Say again, Nowhere Man? Are you sure you wouldn’t rather tag your load and leave it in Mars orbit? Your claim is guaranteed by Martian mining law.”
“Yes. This time I need a private berth, Marcie.”
Was this really Bernard? And hell, would I even know? I’d only seen grainy video of him wearing an interface helmet, with a face made puffy by zero gravity. But this wasn’t like the man I thought I knew. I’d teased him about being a tightwad because he never even left his ship for entertainment or relaxation. He always teased back that he was saving his money to buy a ship big enough to take me along. I’d known he was joking, and that if he ever saw me in person, he would bolt anyway, but the idea of the two of us going off like that together had long been my favorite fantasy. Maybe he wasn’t the person I thought he was.
I manipulated markers and numbers in the guidance field, then called him back. “Confirmed, Nowhere Man. You have secure berth 556G. I’m sending the approach vector now. Please stay in the prescribed lane.”
“Thank you. And Marcie?”
“Yes?”
“Can you switch to a private channel?”
I glanced up at Elspeth, whose eyes nearly popped out of her head.
“Okay, Bernard. You’re on a private channel, but Elspeth can hear. What the hell is going on and where have you been?”
“I know you’re on shift right now. But can you meet me at this berth as soon as possible? I’ll explain why I’ve been quiet so long.”
“Come out there? In person?”
“Yes. And dress warm. I need to keep the berth cold.”
“I don’t know if—”
“It’s important, Marcie. I need your help. Please.”
“I . . . I’ll try, Bernard,” I said, feeling the old panic rise again. “Control out.”
Once the connection closed, I stared at the console for a second, then looked down at the ugly prosthetic device encasing my lower body and shook my head. I’d given up on many things after my accident: my engineering degree, which had crushed my father, and even real relationships after my fiancé dumped me. I much preferred the more remote connections with people enabled by my position as a traffic controller. It let my emotions stay numb, like my whole lower body.
“Marcie! You have to go,” Elspeth said in her best disapproving mom voice. “You’ve wanted to meet him for two freakin’ years! Besides, he needs you.”
“But this is just strange. And what if . . .” I glanced down again.
“Then at least you’ll know,” she said in a softer tone. “Give him a chance.”
Two hours later, my personal tractor, or PT, filled the corridor with its rapid-fire zipper sound as the metal tracks first magnetized then released to pull me along the steel floor. PTs were about the size of a kid’s scooter, but absolutely the best way to move about in the almost nonexistent gravity of Mars’ smallest moon.
The base on Deimos was a sucky place to live for most people. It had been intended as a way station for explorers and colonists bound for Mars and not designed with long-term inhabitants in mind, but it had grown and become home for over a thousand people to simply service and control ship traffic around Mars. And it worked great for me. Living in almost no gravity enabled me to use a heavier, and thereby cheaper, prosthesis.
I turned down the corridor leading to berth 556G, swaddled in blankets and feeling silly. We lived underground in a controlled environment, so since nobody here had coats heavier than a jacket for me to borrow, it was the best I could do. I wondered what kind of picture of me Bernard had built up in his mind. He’d seen my face, of course, but he soon would see the rest of me and be disappointed. I’d always thought if we met in person there would be time to prepare him, but this could be bad. The blankets even made it worse. The only part of me he would see not padded and wrapped would be my ugly composite prosthetic.
As it turned out, the man waiting beside the hatch was not who I had envisioned either. Bernard was huge in every sense of the word. Even the EVA suit he wore couldn’t account for—or hide—his obesity. He stood well over six feet tall and on Earth would have weighed at least four hundred pounds. He had no neck, just jowls that disappeared into the EVA suit’s neck ring and a massive chest that heaved, even in Deimos’s weak gravity.
Then—like every person I’d met since the accident—his eyes flicked down to my mechanically encased legs, but his smile never wavered. That was something.
“I suppose I’m not quite what you expected?” he said in that warm baritone I’d come to know so well. The smile widened and somehow perfectly matched the voice.
Many things now made sense. Weight and health issues were well known among those who spent a lot of time alone in space, like long-haul transport pilots and independent miners. Economics of spacecraft design left these people encased in tight spaces, in little or no gravity most of the time, with no room for exercise equipment and plenty of boredom. Gravity explained why he would never go down to the surface of Mars, but why had he never left his ship upon visiting Deimos?
My first impulse was to offer a handshake. Then I felt silly and stepped off of my PT, my prosthetic whining and thumping with each stride, to wrap him in a hug. His suit smelled burnt and metallic, like space.
I pushed back gently, letting myself settle to the floor, so my foot magnets kicked in, then pointed at the awkward contraption encasing my legs and pelvis. “I’m sure this isn’t what you expected either.”
He shrugged. “And neither of us expected our first meeting to be something like this.”
“Speaking of which,” I said, glad to change the subject, “what the hell is this all about?”
“You’re going to be cold,” he said. “Will you let me wrap you up a little better?”
I looked down at the blankets floating around me in no deliberate arrangement. “Okay.”
He took several minutes to wrap the blankets around my torso and arms in a loose, yet more efficient, configuration. Then he removed the gloves from his suit and put them on my bare hands. They made me look like a clown, and most of my fingers fit into just one of the finger holes, but I shrugged and followed him through the hatch.
The cold was immediate and hurt my lungs when I inhaled. It had to be twenty below zero Celsius, but I burrowed my nose and mouth into the nest of blankets and kept going. The berth was huge and eerily dark, lit by only two distant floods near the ceiling hatch and intermittent flashes of the navigation strobes from Bernard’s ship.
My shoe locks echoed every time they clicked to the steel floor, and I slowed down, suddenly creeped out. Was I a fool to follow this man into such a potentially dangerous environment? He was more than twice my mass, and I wouldn’t be able to stop him if he had nefarious intentions. But in the end, I always went with my gut feeling, and my guts insisted he meant me no harm. Besides, Elspeth knew where I was, and my already piqued curiosity would never allow me to go back until I knew what was going on.
At first, Bernard’s mining ship looked tiny floating in the center of the cavernous berth, connected to the walls by cables and umbilicals, but as we got closer, I could see it was about twice the size of my mother’s four-bedroom house in Illinois. The Nowhere Man was mostly large cylindrical tanks held together with complicated strut work, and the control pod—where Bernard spent all of his time—wasn’t much bigger than my spartan quarters there on Deimos. I felt both sorry for him and kind of in awe. How did anyone—especially someone his size—spend so many long months cooped up in such a small space?
We stopped beside it, and what I saw made me forget everything else.
Strapped to the ship’s lower utility spine and cradled in thick foam insulation, five feet above the floor, was a chunk of dirty ice about twenty feet long and ten feet wide. Two small robots clung to adjacent struts, their work lights shining on what looked like a carved stone column protruding about eight feet from the ice. The column was some thirty inches in diameter and fluted like a classical-age column, but instead of parallel to the axis, the flutes were slightly curved, appearing to twist around the diameter.
“My God, Bernard?” I whispered. “Where did you find this?”
“In the belt.”
“Okay. But it had to come from Earth, right?
“I don’t think it did come from Earth, Marcie,” he said. I could hear the nervous excitement in his voice. “At least the encasing ice didn’t. The deuterium-to-hydrogen ratio in the ice is way too high. It’s even higher than in Oort cloud comets.”
I stared at it, still trying to process the implications behind the carved stone. I could already hear the clamor in my head. Some would claim it was a hoax, others that it had to have come from Earth. There would need to be detailed study, and the experts might not ever know for sure.
“What are you going to do now?”
“I have no idea,” he said with a puff of foggy breath. “I’m freakin’ terrified. I know mining and math and spacecraft, but this is way outside of my purview. That’s why I wanted your help.”
His deep voice went up an octave. “Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi, you’re my only hope.”
“What?” It must have been another one of his obscure song or movie quotes.
“Never mind,” he said. “Let’s just say you have a level head, and you’re smart about a lot of things. And you actually know how to interact with the rest of humanity.”
I stared at him. My mouth moved a couple of times but nothing came out. How could he think I’d know how to handle something like this?
“We could potentially make a lot of money from this, and I don’t want to screw it up,” he said.
We? I felt a panicky lump rise in my throat. I had no idea what to do either, and I didn’t want Bernard’s success or failure with this thing in my hands.
“I . . . we need a professional. Do you know Cooper Billings? The mining attorney?”
“Yeah,” Bernard said with a slightly hopeful note in his voice. “He helped me with a tricky ice sale once.”
“Well, he needs to see this. He can advise you on the next steps. And I need to get out of here before I lose my damned fingers to frostbite!”
We had just started back toward the door when the hatch at the far end of the berth swung open with a loud squeak. The man was too far away and the light too dim for me to see his face, but with a population of only twelve hundred people, everyone knew everyone on Deimos. I immediately recognized the white hair and bright yellow customs inspector vest.
“Oh no,” I whispered. “It’s Grisha Budnikov.”
“That’s just great,” Bernard said.
While probably not knowing him in person like I did, every miner or cargo hauler using Deimos base had dealings with the asshole customs inspector. The man’s PT rushed toward us as he uttered a string of profanity. Evidently, he didn’t like the cold either.
Bernard stood up straight and squared his shoulders. “I haven’t done anything wrong. I don’t have contraband.”
“It doesn’t matter with Grisha. He’ll still find some violation.”
Grisha stopped in front of us, then leaped from the little scooter with a flourish, like a dismounting cowboy. “Why is it so damned cold in here?”
“I have an ice cargo,” Bernard said. “I’m waiting for a better market price and don’t want it to melt.”
“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve . . .” He stopped and squinted at me. “Well, hello, Marcie. Did your sucky dispatcher job force you to become a part-time ice miner too?”
“Something like that,” I said, trying not to clench my teeth.
He leaned in toward me, as if to say something else, but Bernard slipped his bulk between us. “This is my ship and cargo. Is there a problem, Inspector?”
I groaned inwardly. This wasn’t going to end well.
He looked up at Bernard and took a small step backward. “That’s what I’m here to find out, Mr. Haugen.”
“That’s Captain Haugen,” Bernard said.
Don’t do this, Bernard, I wanted to yell.
“Yes. Well, according to this,” Grisha said and looked down at his data pad, “you came in dark, in radio silence and with your transponder turned off, you rented a very expensive secure berth, which you’ve never done before, and your bank account says you can’t afford, and you requested a private channel with the traffic control center. Which I can only assume was to talk to sweet little Marcie here.” Grisha nodded toward me, then crossed his arms and shivered violently. “That adds up to some very suspicious behavior. I’m going to need to see your cargo, Captain Haugen.”
Bernard’s jaw tensed under his pink jowls. “Of course, Inspector.”
Grisha smiled at Bernard for a second, then pulled gloves and a face mask from his vest pocket and donned them as he approached the ice block hanging from the ship.
We both watched without talking as the inspector examined everything. He was careful not to touch the actual artifact, but did scrape some residue from the ice.
“Where’d you find this?”
“Someone must have left it floating in the belt. I thought it would make a great practical joke for my friend Marcie here,” Bernard said.
I blinked, wondering for a second if it was just some kind of joke.
“Where in the belt, Captain?”
“Miners aren’t required to tell customs the locations of their finds and claims,” Bernard said.
“I see. Well, then you’ve spent a lot of money on a practical joke, Captain,” Grisha said. “Especially since you didn’t bring back any other sellable ore to cover your costs. And the stone piece may well be from Earth or Mars, but the ice covering it is layered with sediment and appears very old.”
“What are you saying,” I blurted out.
“I’m saying that while this probably is some kind of hoax—one most likely played on our dear captain. We can’t be sure until we test it. I’m afraid I’ll have to confiscate this ‘alleged artifact’ as a safety hazard.”
“Safety!” Bernard boomed. “How is this chunk of rock a safety hazard?”
Grisha raised an eyebrow. “Because there is a very insignificant chance that it is actually an ancient alien artifact. If it is, then you’ve broken quarantine rules, Captain.” He smiled and wrapped his arms around his chest again. “Harmful alien organisms could at this very second be contaminating us all and this station.”
Within minutes, hazmat workers poured into the berth and started working.
We watched, shivering from a spot near the open corridor hatch—where at least some warm air blew in—as they detached the ice-clad artifact from Nowhere Man and sealed it into a large, environmentally controlled shipping container. Then they took it out a cargo hatch on the opposite side of the berth.
“Weird how fast those workers arrived,” I said. “That worm must’ve known before he even came in here that he’d confiscate the artifact. And did you notice that some of those workers wore nonregulation hazmat suits?”
“I shouldn’t have let them take it,” Bernard muttered. “I could have just climbed in Nowhere Man and left as soon as that asshole said he was going to take it.”
“That wouldn’t have worked,” I said. “I bet that before he even said a word to you about quarantine, he’d already directed Deimos Control to send a drive lockout to your ship. Standard procedure. I do it to ships every time there is a question of their cargo being legal.”
He grumbled to himself until Grisha rolled up to us on his PT, looking more than a little smug. “We’re done here, Captain. I’ve sent a receipt to your mail account. You’ll be notified as to the legal status of the alleged artifact when we are done with our tests, but I suspect that will take several months.”
“This is . . .” Bernard started, but Grisha ignored him and rolled away to follow the artifact out the cargo hatch. Bernard turned, slapped his hands against the wall and rattled off a string of curses. Then he looked at me and apologized.
“No need,” I said. “You have every right to be angry and frustrated. Come on. I’m freezing.”
He followed me into the corridor, where we stood awkwardly for a couple minutes until he eventually slid down the wall to sit on the corridor floor, looking very alone and lost.
“I guess I didn’t think this through very well. I just assumed finding something like that would be a financial windfall. Now I’m in big trouble.”
I sat down on the floor next to him and stared at the composite skin encasing my feet. There had to be a way to leverage his finding the artifact. Had there been media coverage, the press would be swarming all over Deimos. And of course that was the problem. Nobody knew about it but us and customs.
“So,” I said and nudged his arm. “Do you have video and pictures of the artifact? Maybe of you recovering it?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Why?”
“Did you think to get video of them confiscating it?” I said and stood up.
“Of course,” he said and stood too. “Those bots with the lights were filming the entire time. I sure as hell wanted to have proof if it came to a court fight.”
“Good.” I looped my arm through his and started through the hatch toward his ship. “We have work to do. We have to tell all of humanity about this amazing thing you found.”
My comm implant kept beeping while I tried to concentrate on work. The message count was up to eighty-three in the special account we’d set up for the “alleged artifact” and our video plea had been public for less than six hours. I itched to check the messages, but forced myself to wait.
On the days Elspeth and I weren’t on the same shift, I usually stayed to talk, but this time when she came in, I gave her a wave with a promise to call later and darted out of the control center. I stopped to check the messages at a coffee shop down the corridor. Most of them were statements of support and solidarity. Some of them were forwarded news pieces where the press was already pressuring the Martian government for access to the artifact. But six of them were from correspondents for the biggest news organizations on Mars, who were either already on Deimos wanting to interview Bernard, or on their way. Three of the messages were from universities on Earth who were begging for access to the find. And one of those actually offered a twenty-thousand-dollar retainer if Bernard would give their experts first access once it came out of Martian impound. Bingo!
I called Bernard three times, but he didn’t answer, so I jumped on my PT and raced down to berth 556G. When I arrived, the hatch panel was lit up red, showing that the berth was in vacuum. I considered sending the command to close the surface hatch and repressurize the cavernous chamber, but that much air would be expensive, and besides, Bernard had probably opened the berth for a reason.
I got an uneasy feeling. Could he have possibly overridden the lockout circuit and left? Would he have really left without saying goodbye? I tried to call him and again got no answer.
The cargo hatch on the other side of the berth—the one customs had used to remove the “alleged artifact”—had an airlock and, according to the map, was designated as an emergency egress point, so it might also have emergency EVA suits. I careened through the maze of passages until I found it.
As expected, the oversized airlock had emergency suit lockers in its antechamber, but that gave me a sick feeling in my stomach. Putting on a pressure suit was not easy for me. I tried calling Bernard one more time. When he still didn’t answer, that was all the impetus I needed. Something was wrong.
Emergency suits came in four sizes: large, medium, small and child, which was little more than a bubble with carrying handles and tethers. I pulled out a medium, which would probably be a little too large, but it would self-adjust once pressurized, and lay it on the floor next to the locker. I removed my prosthesis and set it aside, then struggled into the EVA suit, thanking the stars that I lived in low gee. It would have taken me hours to don that suit in full Martian gravity. By the time I finished I was half-panicked and half-pissed. I had called Bernard twice more with no answer. If I found out that he was asleep in his ship, I would kill him slowly using something cruel, like a spoon.
I stowed my prosthesis in the suit locker and cycled the airlock.
Holding myself up on the PT with just my arms was awkward, but worked. I entered slowly. At first, everything looked the way it had when I was there last. The Nowhere Man floated where it had been, still tethered to the walls, navigation strobes still flashing, giving the whole berth an eerie, unreal appearance. As I neared the ship, I saw the first indication that something was wrong. A metal disk, about six feet in diameter and three inches thick, lay on the floor. I looked at it closer and could see that it wasn’t solid, but made from sandwiched layers of several materials. The edges had been melted and then cooled. It had been cut with a torch or laser.
I looked up and, sure enough, directly above me I could see the ruddy surface of Mars showing through a round hole in one of the big berth access doors. My first thought was that Bernard was trying to pull off some daring escape with the Nowhere Man, but that didn’t make any sense. Why cut a hole when he would have to eventually open those doors to let the ship out anyway?
I stopped the PT under the ship’s command pod and realized that without my prosthetic, I couldn’t jump the eight feet needed to reach the bottom rung of the access ladder. I rattled off curses and looked around. A maintenance ladder mounted to one wall passed very close to one of the mooring cables. That would have to do. I scooted over to the ladder, flipped on my helmet lights and started pulling myself up hand over hand. I went higher than the cable, then, through a series of awkward and muscle-wrenching moves, I turned around with my back to the ladder and let myself fall forward toward the cable with arms outstretched. Gravity was weak on Deimos, but with no air to help slow me down, I fell faster than expected and barely caught the cable.
My glove fabric snagged when I tried to slide them across the steel cable, so I had to hand-over-hand again. It was nerve-wracking, but not difficult, and actually made me feel kind of heroic. I could’ve never done anything like that on Earth. I got to the ship, clambered along the strut work until I reached the control pod and was immediately concerned. The wide, round hatch was open.
I looked in. Relief flooded through me hard enough to make me tremble. Bernard wasn’t inside. Ever since I’d seen the hole in the overhead hatch, I’d been imagining his dead, wide-eyed corpse in his ship. I took a deep breath and entered. As I’d expected, the interior was cramped with gear and equipment strapped to every surface that didn’t have a monitor or control panel. His EVA suit locker stood empty, which was probably a good sign. A large acceleration couch dominated the cabin, surrounded by display panels, several of which flashed the same red warning.
NAVIGATION SYSTEM NOT FOUND!
The ship was landed, powered down and connected to the station. So why was navigation being offline an error? But it didn’t say it was offline. It said, “not found.”
I looked at the screens again. One of them actually had a string of errors where some system kept trying to access the navigation computer. Twelve of them, each with a time stamp. The first one was a little over two hours before. Just nine minutes before my shift had ended.
I made myself examine the cabin more slowly, shining my lights in every corner and at every equipment rack.
There! Just behind and below a row of screens, an access panel hung open with wires dangling out. Sure enough, whatever had been inside that rack was gone. I lifted the panel and saw “NAVIGATION COMPUTER - PRIMARY” stenciled on the outer surface.
The simplest explanation was that someone had cut their way in and taken the navigation computer. But why? Because they couldn’t get access to the artifact itself, so thought there could be more where this one had come from. And had they taken Bernard too? Would they kill him? Torture him?
I slapped gloves against my faceplate. Stop it! One thing at a time! If I was going to help Bernard, I couldn’t panic or break down, so I made myself stop and think.
Security needed to know about this, but I paused before calling them. Chances were they would detain me for hours with forms and questions. I had to act now. The first thing I needed to know was if they had come in a ship or rover. I left the control pod, crawled to the top of the ship and looked up at the hole. It was at least twenty feet up. Once again, if I’d had working legs or my prosthesis, I might have been able to jump high enough to grab the edge and pull myself up, but there’s no way I could do it with just my arms.
But I was on a mining ship! There had to be tools I could use. I looked around and immediately saw the little mining robots he’d used to light the artifact the day before. There were four of them, now folded into their stowed positions and docked in utility cradles. They had names painted on their carapaces. Paul, George, Ringo and John. The names probably had some significance to Bernard, but meant nothing to me. Still, these things were semi-autonomous, so they had to have a wireless link.
I activated my suit’s comm system through the heads-up display, or HUD, and had it search for local connections. It found nothing that wasn’t station-related. I’m sure if they were powered down, Bernard could still activate and undock them through a hard connection to the ship, but maybe they would have some manual controls too. I examined Ringo and eventually found a button with the universal “power” symbol. I pressed it and status lights flickered on. Yes!
This time my comm unit found a node called “Ringo.”
I connected and activated the verbal interface.
“Main menu,” I said.
“Voice recognition failure,” the little robot said with a rather thick British accent. “Unable to open menu.”
“Override voice recognition,” I said.
“Please give the admin password.”
I muttered under my breath. I had no freakin’ idea what he would use for a password. I wonder how many guesses I’d get before it locked me out?
“Nowhere?” I said.
“Password not recognized.”
“Mining.”
“Password not recognized.”
“Fuck!”
“Password not recognized.”
I took a deep breath and patted the robot’s side. This could take all day. I didn’t have time for that. And I wasn’t technically savvy enough to hack either the software or the hardware.
“Well, Marcie,” I muttered. “You’re just going to have to think of something else.”
“Please confirm the password,” the robot said.
I blinked, confused. What had I said? I replayed the comment in my head and then smiled. Bernard was a serious sap and must really like me.
“Marcie,” I said, and an interface menu flickered to life on my HUD.
Once active and unfolded, Ringo was about the size and shape of my office chair, the “back” being a comms dish and the “legs” being various grappling and tool assemblies. Bernard had once said the robots were about as smart as a four-year-old child. I hadn’t known many kids, but this thing seemed dumber than that to me. I finally managed to put Ringo in “tow mode” and had it clamp onto one of my suit’s tether rings, but trying to explain that I wanted it to carry me up to that hole proved difficult until I discovered the ability to put crosshairs on something and say “go there.”
Ringo went to the hole and stopped. It was high enough for me to peek out and make sure there wasn’t anyone nearby watching the hole. After cursing and grumbling a few minutes, I eventually got it to take me up another ten feet. From there, I could see the evidence I needed. There were anchors still in the ground, where they had tethered their ship, and three star-shaped blast patterns where thrusters had pushed them away from the surface.
I called Elspeth. “I need your help.”
“I’m kinda busy. Steven decided he was sick today. I don’t suppose you could—”
“Listen,” I said. “Someone cut into the berth and took Bernard.”
“What? Are you—”
“Yes! I’m serious! I’m floating in an EVA suit above the hole they cut! I need you to find that ship. Berth 556G. They would have arrived here, on the surface, before 4:00 and left before 5:00.”
“Holy shit,” she said, and I heard her muttering in the background. “There was no record of a ship landing there.”
“They must have turned their transponder off. Check the radar record.”
“Okay, but it might take a few minutes.”
While I waited, I checked my oxygen level. Still a little over four hours. Then I browsed Ringo’s menu until I could activate the other robots. I woke up George and slaved him to Ringo, so they would fly in formation. George joined us a couple minutes later.
“Okay,” Elspeth said. “Radar picked up a ship rising from the surface in your general area, and it turned on the transponder just a couple minutes later.”
“That sounds like the culprit. Where are they? Please tell me they haven’t left Martian space yet.”
“No. They docked at fuel depot 219 about fifty minutes ago. Which means for a ship that size, if their tanks were nearly dry, they should be fueled and leaving any minute.”
“Damn, damn, damn!”
“You want me to call security?”
“No. I want you to send a sphere-wide departure lockdown order.”
Her pause stretched out.
“Elspeth?”
“I don’t think we can do that. Not without orders.”
“Patch me into the system,” I said.
“Marcie, I don’t think that’s a good idea. If you trigger a lockdown without authorization—”
“Listen to me,” I said. “It’s just a damned job. If those people who took Bernard leave Martian space, we will never see him again. They will kill him—if he tells or not.”
“Patching you through.”
As soon as the menu appeared on my HUD, I sent the departure lockdown order using my emergency authentication code. The message went out—overriding the control systems on thirty-three ships, including seven SpaceX freighters and a passenger liner that were in the Martian/Deimos traffic sphere, rendering all of them incapable of using their main drive units. Four more ships were allowed to finish scheduled or in-progress deceleration burns, then they also entered the lockdown. The command had only been used once during the entire time I had been on Deimos and that had been to stop a suspected terrorist attack.
I was now in deep shit.
“Thanks, Elspeth. Make sure they know this was my doing. I have to go, but send me that ship’s transponder number before the crap hits the fan over there.”
“Sending. I am so going to kick your ass when—”
I received the number and broke the link. Three seconds later, my boss was calling in a panic. I didn’t answer his calls or those from security or the Martian Transit Authority. I considered telling security, but as long as they didn’t know why the order had been sent, they probably wouldn’t allow it to be lifted until they talked to me. Since I, like everyone on Deimos, had a comm implant, they knew exactly where I was at all times and were no doubt already sending someone to get me for a long questioning session. And I knew station security. They would be in far more of a hurry to get those ships back online than to find a missing miner, so they would be highly motivated to find me.
“That’s it!” I said aloud, then double-checked to make sure I wasn’t broadcasting. “They know where the hell I am at all times!”
I had a brief moment of panic when I wondered if the shutdown order would affect the robots too, but there was only one way to find out. I confirmed Ringo’s hold on my suit, checked its fuel level, and then coaxed George close enough for me to grab one of its handles. Then I sent the kidnapper’s transponder number to the robots and told them to “go there.”
Of course, I hadn’t been smart enough to tell them to build speed slowly, so when their thrusters kicked in, the sudden acceleration yanked my hand loose from George, and, if the pain in my neck was any indicator, also gave me whiplash. I cussed and groaned, but with a stretch I was able to reach George again and my ride eventually smoothed out once they attained cruising speed.
I ignored the frantic calls coming through my implant. Even though I was stressed and near panic, the unhindered view of Mars above took my breath away. Living underground, I had few opportunities to actually see the planet in real time, but it was stunning and beautiful and terrible all at once. It had been aptly named. I stared in awe for a long time before making the mistake of looking behind me. Then felt my first tremor of fear.
Deimos was getting smaller by the second. I should have asked Elspeth just exactly how far away this fuel depot was from Deimos. I checked the robots’ fuel supply and was alarmed to see it was already down by half, but the ETA ticking down on my HUD showed less than six minutes. If it was that close, I should be able to see it.
After scanning what seemed like the entire Martian sky, I finally saw the fuel depot coming up behind me. Like the orbital repair and cargo berths, it wasn’t actually in orbit around Deimos—I wasn’t sure that was even possible with the moon’s small size—but rather flying in formation, keeping a constant position above the surface base for ease of transport and communications. But it looked like I would miss the depot. I pulled up the intercept diagram on my HUD, and sure enough, the arc showed us crossing paths after it passed. I had a brief moment of confusion until I realized that the transponder tag for that ship was still our target. It must have already undocked from the depot sometime prior to my shutdown order, and the robots had compensated for the change.
With Marslight reflecting ruddy along its hull, I could see as we drew near that this ship was probably three times larger than the Nowhere Man. That worried me. It might also mean a larger crew, but it was a little late for second thoughts now. Ringo and George slowed and pulled alongside the Lazy Dog, the name painted on the hull. With the same point-and-click option I’d used earlier, I directed them to nestle into the strut work near the engines, as far from the control module as possible. I pulled the coiled tether from the suit’s emergency pouch and attached myself to one of the struts.
That had pretty much been the extent of my plan. Fly to their ship, and when security came looking for me, the villains would be caught. Except now, with my oxygen down to the three-hour mark, floating in cold vacuum a thousand feet above Deimos, dozens of new and unpleasant scenarios flashed through my mind.
They had to know I was out there. The proximity alarms would have raised hell when we got close. Would they come out and investigate? If so, would they drag me inside and torture me to make Bernard tell where he’d found the artifact? I think he would tell them too, to stop them from hurting me. I didn’t want that. Of course, they might come out and shoot me, then shove my body toward Mars to eventually burn up.
Or could they know something I didn’t? Was Deimos Control even now getting ready to remove my departure lock? I had to disable them. That thought made me smile briefly. I really wanted to blind them first, but the ship had to have dozens of cameras, so that would take time. I had to make sure they couldn’t escape first.
Like some behemoth, with its skin and muscle removed to reveal the entrails, the ship’s vital organs all lay exposed before me. This time an evil snicker accompanied my smile. George and Ringo could make very effective vultures.
I scooted over to one of the two massive engines, scanned the ID plate, and pulled up the maintenance manual on my HUD. I searched for anything with the word “fuel.” I found a pressurized fuel tube and told the program to identify it. A detailed 3D model of the engine appeared, then rotated, sectioned, and zoomed until I could see the highlighted tube. That one wouldn’t work, since it was actually inside the engine. The next one, called a “Feed Line, Pressurized, Fuel,” sounded just as good, and it was a fat one, easily accessible, running between a turbo-pump and one of the big fuel tanks.
I identified one of the pipes for Ringo and the other for George, then instructed them to cut each pipe into four pieces. While they worked I examined the electrical schematics for the engines. I wanted to also cut control and data cables, without impacting life support. A beeping interrupted my search, and George’s status screen—with several red blinking warnings—replaced the engine manual in my HUD. Just then one of the robots went tumbling past me with its positioning jets firing so fast they looked like twinkling Christmas lights.
“Ringo! Stop all action!”
Too late. Ringo’s status window appeared beside George’s, also all lit up.
I canceled all previous instructions and sent a recall order to bring the robots back to me. The only pipe I could see from my tethered position was twisted, with a ragged tear in one side. What the hell? I didn’t see a flash, and with no oxidizer, I didn’t know how the liquid hydrogen could have ignited. Unless the lasers made it hot enough to vaporize the hydrogen in a local area. Then I groaned. And I bet the pipes had already been pressurized.
George came back and was fine aside from some scratched paint and his status yellow light warnings announcing a fuel leak. Ringo didn’t return. His status screen flickered on and off, which could be a minor comm problem or something much worse. I immediately sent orders to the other robots, Paul and John, to power up and come to my location. If the crew in that ship hadn’t been inclined to come out and get me before, they sure would now, so I had to hurry.
With no time to find and try to fix George’s fuel leak, I sent him along the Lazy Dog’s length looking for cameras. Each time I saw one through his camera, I had him fry it with his cutting laser.
I was getting ready to blast my sixth camera, when something grabbed me from behind and spun me around. I assumed it would be one of the kidnappers and prepared to fight like hell, but it was a utility robot, nearly twice George’s size. The gripper on one of its arms had a hold on a wad of my suit fabric. I immediately stopped struggling. This was an emergency suit, so it couldn’t take much abuse, and I couldn’t risk a rip. A second arm extended, grabbed another wad of suit and pulled me into a weird robotic embrace. My helmet pressed right up against the robot’s case, and what I saw there, printed in very small text along one panel edge, chilled me to the bone.
PROPERTY OF: SASSY SAPPHO. MARS REGISTRATION KLG97749
Sassy Sappho was one of the missing ships. I’d known her crew.
The robot cut through my tether and started moving toward the control pod. I didn’t dare try to get loose, but I now had a serious desire to not get inside the ship. I could still use my HUD, so I instructed George to come to me. We were about to see how this stolen robot functioned after getting a mining laser punched through its guts. But the status screen popped up showing George was out of thruster fuel.
“Damn! Damn! Damn!” I yelled. Then I realized I had what I needed to get plenty of help. They might not bust their asses to save me and Bernard, or even get those ships released, but they sure would to catch the pirates.
I called base security.
Franklin, the security office’s main dispatcher, answered immediately. “Oh my God, Marcie! You are in so much trouble! We have three ships coming after you. What the hell are you—”
I cut him off and started explaining everything, but then he interrupted and connected me to the head of base security. So I started all over again. By the time I finished and was assured ships were on the way, my robot captor had stopped in front of the Lazy Dog’s main airlock, where someone in an EVA suit waited.
The figure came closer and grabbed me by the arms, just as the robot released me. He had maneuvering jets on his suit and started moving us toward the airlock. That’s when I recognized the face on the other side of the visor. It was Grisha Budnikov.
I didn’t know if anyone was listening, but my suit transmitter was still open, so I yelled, “Grisha Budnikov is here! He’s one of the pirates!”
I twisted violently and broke one arm loose. He kept his grip on the other and tried to shove me into the airlock, but I grabbed the edge of the hatch with my free hand and held on. My HUD showed Paul and John floating only yards away, patiently waiting for instructions. Without hesitation, I put crosshairs on Grisha’s suit, switched comm channels, and told John to grab him with two grippers. Grisha immediately released me and turned to fight with the robot, obviously not as concerned about tearing the fabric of his much tougher EVA suit.
I instructed John to hold tight and tow Grisha toward the surface, then ordered Paul to come get me. Before he could arrive, the stolen robot grabbed me by each leg. Using the crosshairs again, I tagged each of my captor’s robotic arms and told Paul to use his lasers at full power and cut them off. I realized my mistake only when both of my legs tumbled away from me, propelled by the atmosphere venting from my now open suit.
“Well, shit,” I muttered as my suit alarms blared. The status screen appeared on my HUD, showing that emergency-seal tourniquets had been activated in the upper legs of my suit, sealing them off from the torso. Like the bulkheads of a ship automatically sealing when there is a hole, my suit attempted to sacrifice my legs to save the rest of my body. I felt no pain as my already paralyzed flesh and muscles were exposed to vacuum, but I did feel suddenly weak. An odd chill crept up my back.
Two suited figures tumbled out of the airlock, grappling with each other, arms swinging in violent punches. One was huge and one much smaller. My vision began to fade, but not before I put crosshairs on the smaller of the two and ordered Paul to grab him. I didn’t dare try the lasers. I obviously sucked at that.
Then I passed out.
“Are you feeling up to this?” Bernard said. He kept wincing and holding his hands out on either side, ready to catch me should I fall. Like falling with almost no gravity would hurt me. “It’s only been six days.”
I shooed him away. “I’ve got this.”
My new prosthetic wasn’t very different from my old one. It now just included artificial legs instead of moving around my dead-meat real ones. The big difference was that even though the part encasing my pelvis was still packed with electronics and tiny actuators, it was now very sleek, cutting-edge tech paid for by the Martian colonial government. It was so streamlined I could wear pants over it!
“You almost died!” Bernard grumbled.
We entered a suit storage area outside of the main surface airlock and I got a bad feeling. Bernard rummaged around inside a locker and came out holding an EVA suit that looked unused.
“This should fit over your new legs,” he said.
I stared at the suit and suddenly started shaking.
“Oh shit,” Bernard whispered. “I knew it was too soon. I don’t care what you say; you still aren’t ready.”
I remembered being brave when I went to save Bernard. I didn’t even think about it then. Now the idea of going back out into the vacuum terrified me. But I knew I had done it once. I knew I could do it for people I care about. Besides, I had already insisted.
“Just get me into the suit, Bernard.”
My tone must have convinced him, so he helped me put it on, and I assisted with his. Then we meticulously checked each other’s seals and fittings before stepping into the airlock. Once on the surface, we followed a path where we could keep our tethers attached to a guide cable the entire way so that a bad bounce didn’t send us into a ballistic arc. The path led us to a repair dock berth where robots crawled over the structure of a very familiar ship. The Lazy Dog.
“This is my new home,” Bernard said.
I blinked and turned toward him. “I don’t understand.”
“Well, a lot happened while you were recovering. You were kinda dopey at the time, but do you remember when I told you that you posting the videos of the artifact made Grisha Budnikov and his pirate buddies give up the idea of actually stealing it, so they had to steal me instead?”
“I remember,” I said. “I wasn’t that out of it.”
“Well, the funny thing is that he actually had to turn it over to the Martian government, who immediately started testing it. The initial study done on the ‘alleged artifact’ confirmed that the ice casing didn’t come from Earth. At least not during the last few million years. And carbon dating estimates show the stone is over a hundred thousand years old.”
“Holy shit,” I muttered. “But we suspected that already. How does that put you in the Lazy Dog?”
“That announcement, coupled with the media storm you started by uploading the artifact videos and the mess with these pirates, forced the Martian government’s hand. They enjoy being in charge of the “alleged artifact” and must really want me out of the way and not stirring up trouble. So how best to bribe an asteroid miner?”
“Please don’t tell me you traded the artifact for the Lazy Dog!”
He laughed. “What I did might be dumb, but even I’m not that dumb. I still retain ownership of it, but they offered me a research retainer, which gives them control over nondestructive research access to the ‘alleged artifact.’ And guess what? They offered me just enough money to buy, repair and outfit the Lazy Dog, which was also made available to me for purchase at a discounted price, before it went on the public auction block. They implied, as did my attorney—Cooper Billings per your suggestion—that it would probably be years of legal fights to establish those rights if I refused.”
“Congratulations, Bernard!” I said and patted his arm. “I know you’ve wanted an upgrade for a long time.”
They had taken advantage of him, but it sounded like the best short-term deal he would get. And he did have to make a living.
He stepped around so that we could see each other’s faces through our visors. “So I want to offer you half ownership in my mining company for forty thousand Martian dollars. That’s most of your fifty thousand in reward money for catching the pirates.”
“Bernard! That isn’t even a tenth of what this ship is worth.”
“Yeah, but you saved my life. There is no way to put a price on that. I’ll never be able to pay you back. I don’t need your money, but I didn’t think you would take fifty percent as a gift.”
Ahhh . . . there it was. He felt obligated. And he was a man of his word.
“I don’t think so, Bernard. It . . . it just wouldn’t be right.”
He gently gripped my upper arms, then bent down until our visors bumped. “Look . . . I . . . I was never sure if you were serious that day you said you would love to be my mining partner, but I’ve been working toward that goal and nothing else ever since. Just in case it was true.”
My heart rate spiked, causing a warning beep in my suit’s bio-monitoring system.
“Yeah,” I said. “But Bernard, that was before you knew I was a . . . cyborg.”
“Being a cyborg is cool! Besides, your new legs are removable. That could be a bonus in null gee!” he said, then paused. “Of course, I knew then you were probably just teasing when you said that. I mean, why would you want to spend months at a time cooped up in a smelly little ship with me? And, of course, that was also before you saw . . . the real me. So I understand if you refuse. I always knew it was a long shot. But the offer is there.”
“Bernard. I . . .” A lump formed in my throat.
“I want you to say yes more than anything,” he said.
I stepped forward on my wobbly new legs and wrapped my arms around him. “I would still love to be your mining partner.”
“Really?”
I nodded inside my helmet. “Yes, but only ten percent. I promise to work hard and earn the rest.”
“Good,” he said and pointed up at the command pod. “Look at her new name!”
BLACKBIRD was painted in big white letters on the side.
“I don’t get it,” I said, but assumed it was another old movie or music reference.
“Oh, you will!” he said. “I have a lot of great classic music, but we’ll have plenty of time. And it’ll all be new to you! This is going to be fun.”
I leaned into him and let him ramble on, wondering what I’d just got myself into.