Colony One Mars: A SciFi Thriller (Colony Mars Book 1) Read online

  “What’s that?”

  “It was the name of an old sailing ship found abandoned off the Azores, back in the late eighteen hundreds.”

  “Never heard of it,” replied Lu.

  “The thing is, when they boarded the vessel it was completely deserted. But, there were food plates on the galley table, like someone had just eaten. Yet, they searched it top to bottom and found no one. It’s still a mystery to this day.”

  “I see what you mean.”

  “Anyway, I thought you were supposed to be searching the galley?”

  “Eh… just didn’t want to be on my own.”

  “I know how you feel.”

  “Funny, isn’t it? We spent all those months cooped up on the Odyssey, getting in each other’s space and now… well I get freaked out if I’m alone,” she moved closer to Paolio.

  “It’s perfectly natural to get a bit freaked out in this place.” He waved an arm around. Lu came closer still and started to shake. Paolio embraced her. “Hey, it’s okay.” She held him tight and he could feel her heart beat against his chest. She tipped her head back, gave him a long look and then kissed him.

  “Paolio.” The voice of First Officer Annis Romanov squawked in his headset. “I just got a message from the commander, he’s awake. But we have a problem.”

  “Shit.” Paolio pulled his head away.

  “What is it?” said Lu.

  “It’s Annis.” He tapped his ear-piece. “Decker is awake.”

  “Can’t you just ignore it?”

  “No, I can’t. There’s a problem.” He pressed his ear-piece again. “Annis, yes. How is he?”

  “He’s fine, a slight headache, that’s all. But it seems Malbec has gone AWOL.”

  “Jann? What happened?”

  “He says when he woke up the HAB was deserted, didn’t know what was going on. I explained to him we left Malbec there to keep an eye on things, but she’s gone and her EVA suit’s gone too. You better go talk to him — and meet us in the common room right away.”

  “Okay.”

  “What is it?” Lu looked anxious.

  “Jann’s gone missing. Come, Annis wants us in the common room.” Paolio tapped his ear-piece again, but this time to contact Decker.

  “Commander, this is Dr. Corelli.”

  “Doctor, go ahead.”

  “How are you feeling.”

  “Fine, feel great actually. But got a bit of a scare when there was no one here.”

  “Where’s Dr. Malbec?”

  “No idea, the HAB was empty when I awoke. Look, I’m heading over to the colony. I’ll talk to you there.”

  “Are you sure you’re physically up to it.”

  “Yes, fine. We need to find Malbec, though.”

  “Okay, we’ll see you here.” Paolio was concerned for Jann. She didn’t strike him from their conversation the previous night as someone ready to abdicate responsibility. Then again, he wasn’t sure he knew what the hell was going on anymore.

  The others had assembled in the common room by the time Paolio and Lu arrived.

  “I knew she wasn’t ready for this mission. I don’t know why they picked her in the first place, she's a liability.” Annis was waving her hands in the air, pacing up and down.”

  “Have you tried to contact her, if she’s gone EVA she should have her comm on.”

  “Tried that, no joy, nothing.”

  “The commander is on his way,” said Paolio. “Let’s just stay calm and try to find her.”

  They all turned as they heard a sound from the airlock, it was depressurising. “Decker?” said Kevin.

  “No, he was just leaving the HAB, it’s too soon,” said Paolio.

  “Maybe it a colonist?” said Lu.

  They looked from one to the other and waited. The outer door opened and someone got in, the door closed and the airlock began to pressurise again. The green alert flashed, the door swung open and out stepped Jann Malbec. She collapsed to her knees on the floor. Paolio rushed over and helped her remove her helmet. She was sweating and breathing hard. “Jann, what the hell is going on?” She struggled to get breathing under control as she spoke.

  “The commander, he’s gone crazy, attacked me with a hammer or something, tried to bash my head in, I had to escape, run, talking crazy shit, contamination.” She put her head in her hands and shook. They looked at her and then from one to the other. Annis knelt down beside her putting her hand on Jann’s shoulder. “We’ve just been talking to Decker and he’s perfectly okay, nothing crazy about him.”

  Jann’s eyes flashed wide and she backed off from Annis. “No, seriously, he's crazy, dangerous.”

  “He didn’t sound that way to me, Jann,” said Paolio. “What the hell happened in the HAB?”

  “I told you.”

  “Tell us again, from the top.”

  By now Jann had regained some composure. “He woke up — suddenly, grabbed my wrist and said something about ‘contamination’, then conked out again. I went over to the comms desk to call you and he was standing behind me, looking crazy. Then he attacked me, with a metal bar I think. I barricaded myself in the airlock. He was trying to bash the door down so I got into my EVA suit and ran here. That’s it.”

  Annis stood up. “Hmmm, well he sounded totally rational to me. He’s on his way over now.”

  “What? No, you can’t let him in, no way.”

  “Calm down, don’t get hysterical, get a grip,” said Annis.

  Jann stood up with the help of Paolio and Lu. She looked at him pleading. “I'm not going crazy, it happened like I said.”

  “It’s okay, Jann, no one's saying you’re crazy.”

  The airlock light flashed red, it was depressurising again. Decker had arrived. Jann moved away from the entrance and in behind a workbench. “Paolio, stay with her, keep her calm, don’t let her go crazy.”

  “I’m not fucking crazy.”

  He moved over to where Jann was standing and watched her closely. “Just stay cool, Jann.”

  The door opened and the commander walked in. He took off his helmet and looked over at Jann. “So you showed up finally. Where did you get to?”

  Jann said nothing. She just stood wide eyed.

  “How are you feeling Robert?” said Paolio.

  “Fine, although I would be better if I knew what the hell was going on.”

  “What do you remember?”

  “I remember waking up and no one around.” He walked towards Jann. “Where did you get to, you were supposed to be keeping an eye on me.”

  Jann backed off. “Don’t come near me… stay away.” She grabbed a knife off the workbench.

  “Woah… easy now Malbec, put that down, we don’t want anybody getting hurt.”

  “Just stay away.”

  Paolio moved over to where he left his doctor's bag beside the airlock entrance. From it he took a syringe with 5cc of cyclophromazine. It was small enough to conceal in his hand. He moved back towards Jann, and while she was distracted fending off the commander, he slipped in behind her and jabbed her in the neck. Paolio grabbed her around the waist as she collapsed down unconscious.

  “Jesus Christ, she’s gone nuts, this is all we need,” said Annis.

  “Can someone please tell me what the hell is going on?”

  “Lu, help me get her into the Medlab.” Between them they carried her in and laid her on the bed. Paolio checked her vitals. “She’ll be out for a few hours.”

  “What happened to her?” said Lu as she brushed the hair from Jann’s face.

  “I don’t know, I really don’t,” he shook his head a few times.

  Once he was satisfied that she was okay, they returned to the common room. Annis was in the process of explaining to Decker what had happened.

  “It makes no sense,” said Decker. He looked over at Paolio. “What do you think?” Paolio didn’t know what to think. He was glad that the commander seemed well again but now this breakdown by Jann was a major concern. “She’ll be out f
or a few hours. I can try and make an assessment on her mental health once she wakes up. But, even if she seems fine we’ll have to keep a very close eye on her.”

  “I’ll not have her mess up this mission, it’s too important. Christ, this is all we need.” He was rubbing his head. “Speaking of which, have you found anything?”

  “Nothing, at least no colonists. We’ve searched everywhere we could. We found lots of evidence of recent activity, by at least one person. But where they are is still a mystery,” said Annis.

  “There are still quite a number of areas in the colony that are intact but shutdown. So maybe that’s the next place to look,” offered Kevin.

  “Show me where we’ve searched so far and what’s left.”

  “Sure.” Kevin produced a tablet and laid it flat on the common room table. He activated it and a 3D schematic of the Colony One site ballooned out across the table surface. “All these areas here in green we’ve searched. The ones in red I’ve identified as derelict. Probably structurally dangerous. We’d need to be careful entering any of those areas. However, all these areas here are off-line but still intact, as far as I can tell. They’re shutdown, no power or life support.”

  “What’s this area here, looks pretty big.” Decker was pointing to a small dome with a number of modules attached at the other end of the main bio-dome.

  “Research lab.”

  “Might be worth getting in there and having a look around.”

  “Tricky.”

  “Why is that?”

  “There’s no airlock into it from inside so we can’t just EVA in there. We’d have to power it up and pressurise it first.”

  “I see.” The commander rubbed his head again. “Annis, what does mission control know?”

  “That the place is not dead and that you are feeling ill.”

  “You need to send them an update on what we’ve found so far. And let them know I’m fine now. We’ll keep quiet about Malbec for the moment, okay? I don’t want them getting too concerned.”

  “Will do.”

  He breathed a sigh and rubbed his head again.

  “Are you alright?” said Paolio.

  “Yeah, just a bit of a headache.”

  “I’ll get you something for it.”

  “That would be great, thanks.”

  “So what’s our next move here,” said Kevin.

  The commander thought about this for a moment. “We assess the infrastructure, find out what’s working, how it works and what resources are available. We’ll do a complete inventory on all Colony One systems.”

  “That’s probably going to take weeks to do.”

  “Well you guys better get to it. Me, I’m actually going to lie down for a little while, I feel a bit woozy.”

  “You are still not a hundred percent, Robert. Come I’ll show you where there’s an accommodation pod, you can rest there," said Annis.

  “I’m just going to check on Jann,” said Paolio. “Lu, do you want to join me?”

  “Eh… I need to get back to checking the galley again.” She gave a little shrug of her shoulders.

  “Okay.” Paolio headed back into the Medlab and looked down at the unconscious figure of Dr. Jann Malbec. “Well Jann, you sure as hell know how to ruin a person’s day.”

  CHAPTER 9: COM

  Peter VanHoff scanned the report from First Officer Annis Romanov. It was brief, yet interesting in that it was from her and not Commander Decker. Nonetheless, it seemed that he had recovered from his mystery illness, which was a major relief. Still, Peter could not help feeling a certain unease that the commander was not fully operational, so to speak. His uneasiness stemmed from memories of the mayhem that preceded the demise of Colony One. The final communications from the stricken outpost spoke of a deep psychosis affecting a number of colonists. Ever since, the question in many people’s minds had been, was it this that caused the destruction of Colony One and not the sandstorm. The question, of course, was still unanswered.

  He put the report aside and pulled up the site schematic that the first officer had sent. A good deal of Colony One was still intact, including the Research lab. This was a section of the facility that he was acutely interested in. Nevertheless, if the lab were to be brought back on-line, how much of the scientific data would realistically still be viable? It was a question that greatly occupied VanHoff.

  Shortly before Colony One went dark, the scientists working there hinted at a major genetic breakthrough. However, the data was never transmitted as the colony started to come apart at the seams. So he had all but given up on acquiring this information. Now though, it seemed he had been given a second chance. But it was a double edged sword, he needed to be careful. What went on in that research lab was for COM eyes only. It would be very damaging for them should it become public knowledge.

  VanHoff looked at his watch, time for the board to convene. Who could he trust? Initially he had considered that Rick Mannersman might be a problem. But the media frenzy surrounding the discovery was keeping him very busy — at the centre of attention. The fact that Mannersman was motivated simply by greed and self-aggrandisement meant he was relatively easy to manipulate, as long as he was distracted. Most of the others however, were inconsequential and easy to handle. But, could they be relied on if tough decisions were required?

  Leon Maximus, on the other hand, Peter admired. He was motivated by a seemingly sincere desire to advance human civilisation. To make it an inter-planetary species. To establish a Planet B, as he liked to call it. He was a rare breed indeed. None of this would have been possible if were not for him and his genius. His company had developed the rocket technology to get the first colonists to Mars. Yet, it was a slow tedious process. It was an eight month trip and, with the way the planets orbited each other, a tight two year launch window.

  In the end, it was Leon’s near maniacal insistence on the research and development of an exotic device known as an EM Drive that changed the numbers. A bizarre contraption that defied normal engineering convention. As far as Peter understood, it was essentially a microwave in a cone shaped box. How it worked nobody could really explain to him without delving in to the realms of quantum physics. Ultimately it was an extraordinary breakthrough. Here was a simple engine, with no moving parts, not subjected to enormous forces, and that worked simply by electricity. With enough solar panels strapped to your spaceship you could have thrust on tap any time you want. Swap the solar panels with a small nuclear reactor and all of a sudden space became a much smaller place.

  This radically changed the nature of a mission to Mars and ultimately the economics of Colony One. The journey time went from over eight months to just under seventy days. Now more missions could be sent; more supplies, more equipment, more colonists. And, coupled with Leon’s inspired reusable main stage design, it came in at a fraction of the initial cost.

  Nonetheless, after a few short years and twenty odd colonists later, the excitement was beginning to fade and COM was finding it hard to generate revenue from the media rights alone. This is when Peter VanHoff entered the scene. But, he was not interested in some grand vision for humanity. That, he left to the dreamers. No, it was his passion for genetic research and his quest to crack the complex process of ageing, that involved him in the COM consortium. He realised early on that there were things one could do on Mars that were simply not ethically possible on Earth. Particularly in the area of xeno-combinant genetic research and genome manipulation. And, as a bonus, there were a great many corporations willing to pay good money for the ability to do this, far from the prying eyes of legal scrutiny. So he convinced Leon Maximus and the others in COM of the opportunity for building such a bio-tech research facility. With failing media revenues, due to faltering public interest, they had really no other option. They bought into it and Peter VanHoff took effective control of COM.

  He put the report away, stood and looked out across the snow capped mountains in the distance. His mind considered the implications of this repo
rt from Romanov. It was full with possibility, uncertainty and not a little danger. They would need to tread carefully. He shook his head and walked back into his study and touched the controls on the holo-tablet. A small illuminated screen materialised in mid-air, less than an arm’s reach in front of him. It moved as he moved. He reached out and touched a virtual icon on the screen. Several avatar symbols appeared and floated in the space before him, one for each member of the board. They arrayed themselves around Peter VanHoff’s field of vision like dead relatives in a Victorian séance. The meeting was about to begin.

  "Good evening gentlemen." There was a collective murmuring of greetings and acknowledgements as the ghostly figures moved and shifted in the space before him. Peter VanHoff continued. "You all know by now that the crew of the ISA Mars mission have successfully landed on the planet surface — and that the colony is not as dead as we thought." This was met with various nods and grunts from the avatars representing the board members of the Colony One Mars consortium.

  “To recap, the ISA crew entered the colony facility to discover that it is still functioning and there is possibly of at least one survivor. To facilitate a more comprehensive search they removed their helmets and operated wholly within the colony environment. A short while later Commander Decker became ill.”

  “What? Why did nobody warn them?” it was Rick Mannersman who voiced this concern.

  Peter ignored it and continued. “According to First Officer Annis Romanov’s latest report the commander has made a full recovery.”

  “But what if it’s happening again?”

  “We don’t know that yet, so let’s just stick to the facts,” insisted Peter.

  “What about the Research Lab?”

  “Ah, the lab, yes. Well it’s still intact, although not on-line.” With that, there was a general air of excitement within the group.

  “I’m sure you’ll appreciate that there is eh… sensitive information in that laboratory that is not for public consumption.”

  “I knew we shouldn’t have got into bed with ISA. If they were to get an inkling of the research that went on up there then there would be all hell to pay,” said Mannersman, his avatar bobbed and bristled as he spoke.