Mission Mars (28 page)

The woman, who introduced herself as Marie, was in charge of the agricultural portion of Atlantis. I'd be working under her as brute labor, basically. I didn't know anything about genetic engineering, or the finer points of agricultural science, but all she really needed was someone to replace one of the dead guys. And that meant that all I did was plant seeds and carry heavy bags to processing. Definitely easier than my last job, even if I had been forced into service, practically at gunpoint.

Months passed and the dirty looks I'd received at first, faded. I'd originally planned to break out, but found I actually liked it here. Besides that, there was still the small issue of the raging dust storm outside, which showed no signs of abating. And neither of my two subordinates, nor I, had bio-suits to survive outside, nor a rover to get home, since they'd confiscated it after kidnapping us.

I still had no idea why this place was here, or who'd funded it. The people were perfectly normal for a Martian colony: an eclectic mix of Americans, Brits, and Russians, with a few other nationalities thrown in. They still clammed up whenever I tried to ask about how they got here, whom they worked for, or what was behind the restricted doors. Even so, I managed to form a few friendships, the closest by far, with Marie. Sometimes, I felt our discussions were a bit of a game to her, especially when she flirted with me.

The day everything changed started out like any other. I left my room, collected the black sludge that passed for coffee from the cafeteria, and sat on a bench under the simulated morning sunlight as a small family of birds nested above me. I nodded at everyone that passed me on their way to their own work, but some people didn't respond like they usually did. In fact, about half of them seemed nervous, constantly looking over their shoulders and holding hushed conversations. While that behavior was unusual, I didn't think that much of it. Just like on Earth, gossip was rampant in a place with this small of a population.

After finishing my drink, I threw the cup into the recycling chute and went into the agricultural area, politely greeting my few coworkers. They returned the courtesy, but something still felt off. Even after several hours of repetitive work, I'd still catch them staring at me. I just shrugged it off and continued planting some of the modified squash in the greenhouse. Marie wasn't there, but that wasn't abnormal. She was usually in the genetics labs, designing the stuff that I planted.

I finished earlier than planned, so I had one of those rare gaps in my schedule where I could just lounge about on the
promenade. Until, that is, I got roped into helping with some duty or another. Usually I'd find someone to play chess or some other board game. But today, nobody else was in sight.

So, I decided I'd try to take a nap. For such a beautiful and high-tech place, there really wasn't much to do here, aside from sleep and work. With the warmth from the quasi-sunlight soaking into my skin and the songbirds chirping, it wasn't hard to imagine I was back on Earth, in one of the vineyards in Italy I'd stayed at when I visited my relatives in Europe a few years back.

Just as I started to nod off, however, a shadow fell across my face. A bit irritated, I halfway opened one eye, intending to chew out whoever had disturbed me. When I saw that it was Marie, however, that intention died. She wouldn't interrupt me without a good reason. When she reached me, she dropped a half full cup of coffee onto the floor. I moved to get up, but she subtly pushed me back down as she bent to collect it. In one motion, she pressed a piece of paper into my hand and mouthed, “Later. The walls have eyes.” Then, after picking up her cup, she was gone. My palm tingled where her gloved fingers had dragged across my hand. I found myself unwillingly slipping back into sleep. Marie, it seems, had drugged me.

I slept for a few hours, according to my watch, and had a crick in my neck when someone woke me up for dinner. A cold feeling settled into the pit of my stomach when I found that there really was a piece of paper clutched in my hand. I thought it had been a dream. Something either really wrong was happening here. Or something really cliché. I tucked the paper into my pocket and went to find
someplace to read it. Preferably somewhere without cameras.

I went into the bathroom, the one place where cameras were not found. I dug the slightly crumpled paper from my pocket and stared at it in confusion. As far as I could tell, it was blank. In Marie's neat handwriting, the note read: My rooms. Ten o'clock. Be discreet.

“Well, I'll be.” I couldn't help but chuckle. If this was an invitation like I thought it might be, she was much more shy than I'd thought. Or, when tacked onto everything else I'd seen, which seemed so much more likely, something big was happening and she was finally going to tell me.

It was torture as I waited for time to head to Marie's. All I could do was run scenarios in my head. I didn't consider myself an imaginative person; rather I used deductive reasoning to figure something out. But at the moment, I simply didn't have enough information to make sure the note meant what I thought it might. I still imagined at least a dozen different scenarios. I threw out all of them.

Finally, it was a few minutes until ten. Deciding that was close enough, I started towards Marie's suite. As a department head, she warranted her own suite, as opposed to the single, although spacious room I had.

As I walked through the deserted hallways, I was careful not to let any of my inner anxiety show. After twenty years of being the one scanning for criminals, I knew that trying to look inconspicuous was one of the worst things a criminal could do. The best thing in a crowded area, or even one like this, was to be confident. To look and act as if you belong and knew what you were doing. Few people would challenge you, and the odds were good that anyone watching the cameras
would think you had every right to be there.

I was pretty sure that nobody would question why I was walking to Marie's room. Until, that is, she opened the door and pulled me in by my shirt before I could even knock. She gestured for me to sit down and then pressed a button on some palm-sized metal device in her hand.

“What were you thinking, walking here like that?” she ranted. “Anyone could have seen you!”

I brushed my shirt back to normal as I replied, “Yes, and this way they don't notice anything wrong with it. I wasn't skulking around suspiciously. I looked for all the world like a man on a mission. Like I had every right to be doing what I was doing. I wouldn't have even registered as unusual. Unless someone watched you pull me in like that. Now, what is it that you wanted?”

She sighed and sat down across from me. It was then I saw how disheveled she appeared. Her hair was a rat's nest, dark circles ringed her eyes, and her hands trembled. On the table next to her was another surprising sight: a half empty bottle of alcohol. I couldn't tell what it was, but anyone drinking alone was always a bad sign. Something must be seriously wrong.

“I'm not cut out for this,” she mumbled. “I came here just to make sure the colony would be self-sustainable with the engineered food I created. I knew there'd be risks and pitfalls—there always are here on Mars—but still. I didn't expect or want to be involved in espionage, kidnapping, and now….” She trailed off with a harsh, uncharacteristic laugh.

“And now what?” I prodded.

“You know Edgar, right?” she asked, not even acknowledging my question.

“Yeah. The bald guy with the beady eyes who'd never talk about his work and almost always seemed to want to bolt past the restricted doors. Why?”

“He's dead. Someone murdered him last night while he was in the labs. His latest project is missing. And we've been put on lockdown until it's found and the murderer is caught.”

That actually matched up with one of the possible scenarios I'd come up with. “You came to me because I used to be a detective, then? You want me to find whoever did it?” I surmised. She nodded in response. “For starters, then, I'm going to need access to the cameras, and you'll need to tell me what the missing project is.”

She shook her head. “That's the thing, I don't know what he was working on, Plus, someone tampered with the cameras. Every single one in the restricted labs just shows a loop of the same footage, over and over again. Edgar didn't even show up on camera when he signed in at the airlock, so, whoever killed him had director-level access codes.”

“And that's important, why?”

“Because no one can access the lab unless they have director-level codes, and nobody here has them. All of the directors are on Earth, and we haven't been in contact with them for three months now, not since they gave out our last batch of assignments.”

I took a moment to think. “Let me guess … the other department heads are panicking now since evidently someone here does have the codes. I take it you're talking to me without clearance, breaking both of our contracts in the process, because you are scared?” She nodded. I sighed and rubbed my forehead. I thought it strange that as the head of the agriculture
department, Marie didn't know what Edgar was working on, but I didn't say this. “So, you don't know what Edgar's project was. And you can't get me access to the body or the scene of the crime.” It wasn't so much a question as a statement.

“No, I can't. He's already been cremated, and his workstation cleaned to prevent panic. As you probably have seen, it didn't work. Everyone is on edge.” She leaned over and put her head in her hands, seeming defeated and desperate.

“Well, this isn't quite the paradise it was made out to be, is it?” The sarcasm dripped from my voice. “I accepted my job at Areo Corp to try to get away from murders, and now they've caught up with me here.” I settled back in my chair and got comfortable, settling in for a long night of questioning.

Hours later, after questioning Marie until she could no longer think, I returned to my room, knowing I wouldn't be getting a wink of sleep with everything churning in my head. Marie apparently didn't know much more than I did about who sponsored and built this place, even though she'd been here from the start. She'd just been offered, like everyone else had been, a position in a Mars colony. And she'd taken it. Edgar, who had been in charge of the restricted labs, had been the only official representative from the sponsoring company, although people assumed there were others who were keeping their association secret for some reason.

So, even though everyone put on a polite face in their interactions with each other, it was clear that not everyone got along. We all had our cliques, and even I was guilty of it, not having many friends outside the agricultural department. If we didn't start working together, this was only going to get worse.

Another month passed and the dust storm finally abated. The storm inside Atlantis, however, turned from a minor thunderstorm to a full-blown Nor'easter. Three more people were murdered, each of whom was involved in the work behind the restricted door. I now knew they were mostly secure biochemical labs. Considering that Marie shared that Edgar was heavily involved in bioengineering and pathology, the facts pointed increasingly that the missing project was possibly a bioweapon of some sort. That disturbed me, especially when Marie didn't say I was wrong.

Each murder occurred the same way: the victim would sign into the restricted labs when nobody else was present, the camera feeds would switch to a continuous loop of the lab prior to the murder, and just like with Edgar's murder, the lab door would open with its registry overridden by the director codes. Each corpse was apparently killed with the same knife, in the same way. Each victim's throat was slit from ear to ear, so the murderer must have surprised them and come from behind. Not too unusual, as far as murders go, until you factor in that we were on Mars, and the killer had passed all the psych screenings prior to being cleared to come.

Part of the difficulty in discovering the breakthrough clues was because I wasn't allowed onto the scenes, nor was I allowed to see the corpses. Even as all of the remaining department heads—except Marie—assured us everything was fine, the entire arcology was falling apart. Marie and I were reduced to skulking around with our ears to the ground, separate
from each of the cliques, and filching camera footage to study however possible. Nothing suspicious came up though, and we could never be sure which parts from late night feeds were looped, if any. The only thing all of the victims had in was that they all had been on Edgar's research team.