The Ruins of Mars: Waking Titan (The Ruins of Mars Trilogy) (5 page)

Moving hand-over-
hand down the line towards the hull of Braun, he stole a timid glance at the face of Mars, pockmarked and scarred. As if aware of his natural menace, the God of War glared back at Julian, his twin moons little black silhouettes against his rusty deserts that were the color of dried blood.

Like ghosts, the moons
Phobos
and
Deimos
acted in accordance to their namesakes and elicited
fear
and
dread
.

Chest growing tight, Julian recalled his countless h
ours of training and experience then used those memories to slow his breathing.

“Okay, five meters,” he radioed.

“You’re looking really good, man,” assured Aguilar from the Lander.

Quickly closing the gap between himself and the surface of Braun, Julian used his arm muscles to ease his pace down, feeling his lower body push against him in an attempt to continue its forward momentum. Gripping the anchor line loosely, he allowed his legs to come around until he was descending feet first, the universe turning upside down as he rotated. With a gentle bump, his boots made contact with the ceramic surface of Braun, and a surprising rush of relief washing over him.

“I’ve made contact,” Julian said, allowing his mind to reorient itself to the shift in perspective.

Reaching out, he brought himself into a crouch and grabbed at the first handhold he saw. From a distance, the entire shell of Braun looked smooth and white, save for the laser domes. But when viewed from up close, the ship was dimpled by hundreds of half-sphere relief wells inlayed with sturdy iron handles. Anchored to one such handle, the yellow balloon of the grappling hook had formed snuggly around the handhold, filling the space of the well like a plunger.

With a second safety line taken from the rear of his belt, Julian clipped its carabineer to the next nearest handhold before disconnecting himself from the anchor cable that bound the Lander and the ship.

“Alright, send me down the payload,” he said, twisting his head to better see the Lander hanging in space above him.

Fixing a motor-powered trolley kit to the line, Aguilar added a large black duffel bag containing a silver power drill and a new laser dome then sent them rolling down to Julian.

As the trolley approached, Julian clicked his teeth and waited impatiently. He hated feeling out in the open without a task to distract his mind. Slowing as it neared, the electric trolley puttered to a complete stop two meters above his head.

“Fuck,” he spat angrily. “Goddamned NASA shop jocks! Why can’t anything built in America last?”

“You’ll have to reach for it,” radioed Aguilar. “Use the anchor line to stabilize yourself and try to stand up.”

“Yeah, yeah,” grumbled Julian, blinking sweat from his eyes.

Letting go of the handhold, he brought his feet underneath himself then pressed them carefully down against the surface of the hull. One fist wrapped tightly around the anchor line, he fought the subtly powerful rush of forward momentum, caused by pushing his boots against the ship. Because Julian’s mass was so miniscule in comparison to Braun’s, any hard or uncontrolled movement he made against the latter would result in a sort of backfire, sending him flailing out into space.

“Okay, I’m standing,” he said. “I’m going to reach for the payload.”

Stretching one arm out, he got a gloved fingertip on the corner of the trolley and pulled it down,
again working against the momentum that tried to propel him away from the ship. With nimble fingers, he unclipped the duffel sack from the trolley and slung its strap over his shoulder. Then letting go of the anchor line, he drifted down until he could grab a handhold, using the metal rung to bring the rest of his body in towards the hull.

Taking a moment to collect himself, the French engineer breathed in several cool lungfuls of air then began sliding along the hull towards the cracked laser dome.

Struck by a micro-meteor no bigger than a pebble and probably moving faster than a bullet, the dome had a long thin crack that dissected the glass into two halves. Knowing that the laser within wouldn’t be able to focus properly with the crack obstructing its view, Julian would have to replace the entire dome with a new and unblemished duplicate.

Taking the drill from its holster on the duffel sack, he set to unbolting the eighteen large-bore fasteners that attached the damaged dome to the hull of the ship. A magnetic socket head kept the bolts from drifting away, and after removing each one, he had to slip them into a mesh pocket on the duffle sack. Careful yet quick, he worked his way around the cracked dome until he was at the last fastener. Placing the head of the drill on the bolt, Julian applied pressure to the trigger and waited for the thing to come loose. It held. Trying again, he pulled the drill’s trigger harder and still nothing happened.

“It’s stuck,” he grunted with frustration. “I’m going to up the torque.”

A beat
passed before Aguilar responded, and when he did, his voice was heavy with concern.

“Do you really think that’s a good idea? That bolt is near the crack. Too much torque could create vibrations and shatter the glass.”

“
Merde,
man,” swore Julian defensively. “I know that. But what choice do I have?”

Ignoring Aguilar’s apologetic reply, Julian increased the drill’s torque and squeezed the trigger.

Like a muted bomb, the dome exploded in a silent shower of jagged shards. Crying out with surprise, Julian fought the instinct to jump back, knowing full well that doing so would cause him to careen away from the ship until his safety line brought him slamming back down.

A red warning light
blinked in the corner of his visor, and he cursed profusely as chunks of razor sharp glass swarmed around his pressure-suited body in the vacuum of space.

“Julian,” Braun warned. “I am registering four small tears in the outermost layer of your pressure suit.”

“Is it serious?”

“Not at the moment. Silica pressure foam is already filling the tears but operating the Tactical EVA Skin Suit under these conditions is highly dangerous. Any further damage
, and you could lose pressure. A loss of pressure could mean—”

“I know what it fucking means!” Julian interrupted savagely, feeling warmth blossom where the silica foam was leaking from his suit like blood to scab over the
wounds. “Can I finish my work? Yes or no?”

“Yes,” replied the AI. “But be extremely careful not to stress the tears. Silica pressure foam was not designed for pure vacuum.”

Focusing his attention back on the remaining bolt, Julian was careful to avoid the larger pieces of glass that seemed to be stuck in some kind of orbit around him. With the increased torque, he soon had the bolt off and stowed with the rest of its counterparts in the mesh pocket of the duffel sack. Holding the drill under one arm, he worked the Velcro straps that secured the main compartment of the sack until it was open. Gently removing the new dome, he batted away some drifting shards of glass then placed it over the body of the laser. Fishing the bolts out one at a time, he slowly screwed them back into the hull, securing the new dome.

“Okay, I’m done,” he said at length, he voice sounding shaky and foreign in his own ears. “I’m coming back.”

Turning around, he started to move from handhold to handhold, angling back to the anchor line. Once there, he clipped the empty duffel sack and drill onto the motorized trolley and sent them up the line to the Lander. This time making the entire trip, the little trolley came to a halt in front of Aguilar in the open hatch, where he quickly detached it.

“The line’s open,” reported the pilot. “Come up when you’re ready.”

Bending with some awkwardness, Julian reached down to unclip the safety line that secured him to Braun. As the carabineer floated free from the cable, a strange shiver ran up his suit from just below his belly button to the top of his left shoulder. Erupting in a blight of red warning indicators, his visor reported that a gaping tear, over forty five centimeters long, had just split along a critical pressure point in the outermost layer of his suit. As block letters flashed in front of his face, an odd rushing sensation began causing his ears to pop painfully. Registering a sharp drop in temperature, Julian’s heart pounded against his ribs in a cannonade of terror.

“Julian,” rose Braun’s voice above the sirens.

“I know!” he cried, trying to control his panic.

With one eye watching the falling pressure readouts, he quickly snatched his floating safety line and clipped it directly to the grappling hook before him.

“Reel me in, Braun!” he shouted, the saliva on his tongue starting to boil in the flatlining pressure.

Inflating, the silica sand inside the balloon grappling hook released itself from the handhold, and the entire apparatus hurtled back towards the Lander at a steady clip. Dangling from the end of the line like a flailing white fishing lure, Julian twisted and spun, the vast frozen nothingness of space chasing close on his heels. As if in a tunnel, everything drew down to a pinpoint in the distance.

Arm stretched out to grab his friend as he approached, Aguilar swung the weightless Frenchman into the cabin of the Lander then punched the
Emergency Atmo
button.

Slamming closed, the hatch locked firmly as white jets of atmosphere sprayed into the cabin from vents. With a steamy hiss, the
Lander filled quickly with warm breathable pressurized air.

Subsiding like the tide, the cold that had torn at Julian’s heart drew back and his ears popped several times as they acclimated to the cabin pressure.

Slowly opening the face shield of his helmet, he looked over at Aguilar and flashed him a lopsided smile.

“That was close.”

After a beat, Aguilar slid his own visor up and fixed the Frenchmen with a bemused stare.
“I thought it went pretty well!”

Chapter Six

An overlap in reality–
Sol 65

Braun flicked the focal point of his attention from perch to perch like a living ghost. One moment he was watching Lieutenant Aguilar and Captain Vodevski sharing a bunk aboard the ship, the next he was with Harrison as he sat in the common room of Ilia Base, eating cereal. Moving on, Braun jumped to the infirmary where Dr. Kubba was finishing an unscheduled physical of Xao-Xing Liu.

As Liu fastened the last buttons of her jumpsuit, Kubba leaned back in her chair to appraise the Chinese engineer with a long hard stare.

“Don’t worry, Liu,” she said, her voice doctoral yet reserved. “I’ll have the test results tomorrow morning and then we’ll know how to proceed.”

Frowning, Liu placed a hand on her stomach.

“I hope it’s just some kind of dietary reaction to the fresh fruit.”

With a nod, Kubba stood, her lengthy frame unfolding like a cheetah.

“Listen, you’re going to be fine. Braun will have your test results for me tomorrow and I’ll page you as soon as I know more.”

Actually, thought Braun, I have the results now.

Putting on a well-practiced look of confidence, Liu gave Kubba a shallow bow then left the infirmary.

“She’s pregnant isn’t she?” said the doctor to the empty room.

“Yes,” replied Braun simply.

“How?”

“I’m sure I don’t know. Spying on the crew is not part of my pro— ”

“Not who!” interrupted Kubba. “How?”

“I do not know. It is a medical anomaly.”

Face twisting into a look of anger, Kubba began to pace the length of the infirmary with long agile strides. Knowing that Braun was tracking her every movement from the many panes of
Smart Glass and Tablet screens, she addressed the room as a whole in a voice that dripped poison.

“A
medical anomaly
? Oh that’s just rich! I’m sure Earthside Command will accept an answer like that from a sodding AI, but
I’m
human, Braun. We actually have to explain ourselves when we make mistakes. Do you know what
consequences
are? Is that an idea you’re familiar with?”

As she stood waiting for a reply, Kubba’s chest heaved with exaggerated breaths. She looked trapped, cornered
, and confused. Braun felt an emotion akin to fear trickle through the veins of his being as the doctor’s fist clenched and unclenched like claws.

When
after several moments he still had not answered her, Kubba started pacing again, her footfalls echoing loudly off the walls of the infirmary. Although her expression was unchanged, her eyes had grown distant, as if she was being pulled away from the moment to a time and a place far removed.

In fact, Braun was correct. With the rhythmic beat of Kubba’s strides, a memory had begun to dredge itself up from the depths of her mind like some putrid rotten corpse climbing a ladder one rung at a time. Before she could defend herself, push the unwanted recollection back down, it grasped her with frozen hands that closed around her throat. Unable to speak, unable to think, Elizabeth Kubba slipped six years into the past and was met by the face of Sabian Crisp.

Her superior officer onboard the High Earth Orbit Shipyard, Dr. Crisp had been running the medical wing successfully for nearly eight months. One day, however, he had made a simple mistake and failed to account for an updating diagnostic program, thus missing the presence of a blood clot in one of his patients—a construction worker—during a weekly examination. Though Kubba herself had found the error while filing the report, she did not alert Crisp. Wanting to advance her own career, she had assumed Copernicus would catch the oversight and that Crisp would be demoted. In the end, what happened was entirely worse.

Perkins, if she remembered the worker’s name correctly, had swapped shifts with a sick friend, either forgetting or not caring to register the change with Copernicus. He’d gone on EVA the next morning, never realizing that his own body was a ticking time bomb. Within minutes of leaving the
airlock, he suffered a massive stroke and died. As his body had floated ever-further away from the Shipyard, a Lander team was dispatched to retrieve him. When they returned with his corpse, an autopsy revealed the grave error Crisp had made. Racked with guilt, Kubba remembered the last thing the doctor had said to her before being relieved of his command.

‘I wish
he would have just drifted away. At least then one of us could have had a life after this.’

As a result
of the incident, Sabian Crisp was made an example of for all others working in space medicine. Stripped of his medical license, he returned to Earth a failure in the eyes of the world and, soon after, killed himself.

Seeing the wheels of fate come full circle, Kubba now realized that she faced a similar future if she did not fix this and fix it fast.

“I’m sorry that I can’t offer you any further insight into this strange occurrence,” Braun said softly, drawing Kubba back from her troubled memories.

Shooting out a long leg, she kicked over a chair and fought back angry tears.

“My whole career is
fucked
because of this, and you’re sorry? You know, it’s truly amazing how little that word means coming from you.”

“Perhaps a consultation with Dr. Calise will yield greater insights? She is a biologist and no doubt understands such things.”

“I’m a fucking doctor, you idiotic computer!” seethed Kubba. “If I can’t figure out how this happened, then no one can.”

Quiet for a moment, Braun watched as Kubba resumed her pacing. Clearly she was frustrated with him, though exactly why, he couldn’t be certain.

“Is there anything more I can do for you at this time?” he asked, preparing to move on.

Shaking her head, Kubba continued to march around the infirmary.

“Very well,” said Braun. “I will include this in my next medical progress report for Earthside Command. I’m sure they will have as many questions about this occurrence as you do, Doctor.”

Frozen mid-
step, Kubba’s eyes narrowed to fine slits. Suddenly, as if a new person had stepped behind the mask of her face, she straightened up, a calm calculation entering into her voice. Again, Braun felt the needle-like prick of fear.

“No,” she said addressing a single
Tablet screen directly, as if it were the only incarnation of Braun. “You are to omit this from your next transmission to my medical staff at Earthside Command. Tell them nothing of what’s happened. That goes for the captain and the rest of the crew as well. I want to be fully in control of this situation until it is resolved.”

“I’m afraid that is not in keeping with the parameters of my programming,” Braun replied, confused as to why Kubba would even suggest such a breach of protocol.

“Oh, you’re concerned about your programming, are you?” the doctor nearly sneered. “Let me help you with that. Medical override code: eight one eight delta delta.”

As
Chief Medical Officer and Psychologist, Elizabeth Kubba was one of three crew members capable of imposing override commands on Braun’s programming. Originally given this power to use only in situations involving the mental health of the crew, Kubba had occasionally experimented with the overrides, invoking them just to see what would happen.

Feeling the imposition of the command settle atop him like a net, Braun heard himself speak in a detached and listless tone.

“Override accepted. What are your orders Dr. Kubba?”

At this, a triumphant smile broke across Kubba’s face, her large white teeth glinting in the light of the room.

“Continue to send medical reports per your usual schedule. Omit anything pertaining to Xao-Xing Liu’s pregnancy. No one outside of you, myself and, of course, our friend Liu are to know anything about what’s happened. This override is of the highest priority and is to be defended and upheld until I end it. Do you understand?”

“As you wish, Dr. Kubba.”

“Good. Now, go away.”

Executing the transmission, Braun winked out of the infirmary, leaving Kubba to ponder how best to handle this unexpected problem. Though his programming had been tampered with yet again, he still felt that he had enough control of his true self to resume his illuminating study of the
Statue Chamber.

Four sols before, Dr. Li had installed powerful Eyes into the cave chamber, and almost instantly his understanding of the situation at large had deepened—snapping into focus with pristine clarity. Soon, armed with the concept of what it was that he must look for, Braun had convinced Amit Vyas onboard the ship to raise the Atmospheric Observation Boom so he could gaze out into space.

A twenty-meter long apparatus, the Atmospheric Observation Boom was equipped with, aside from many other instruments, a fair number of Eyes. The little pearl-shaped cameras were Braun’s greatest tool, capable of capturing moving waves of light and even individual particles of energy. Both the Eyes on the Observation Boom and those in the Statue Chamber had done as they were never intended to do, for they had given Braun true sight,
his sight
, and emblazoned everything.

He now saw, with the finality of fact, that everywhere in the solar system, there was an overlap in reality. Everywhere, that was, except for within the Martian ruins.

Gazing out into space, Braun saw great jagged patterns turning like cogs in an invisible clock. In these patterns, waves of energy moved so fast that they were all but unreal. Subtly, they raced along their tracks to fuel and renew the ethereal machine in cycles as timeless as space itself.

However long Braun could stare into these patterns, concentrating on the pinpoints of their origin, he always found himself looking out—as if somehow he had entered unknowingly and come through to the other side.

Shown a world beyond the tangible realm of his programming, Braun saw a great entity at the heart of this transcendent machine. Churning out new threads of reality like a great waterwheel, the Sun, or rather, the invisible soul of the Sun, flickered like a candle in the wind.

It was this flicker that concerned Braun. He did not like the way the Sun’s troubled soul sometimes faltered then, with unchecked aggressiveness, overcompensated for the fluctuations by flooding the lines of reality with large bursts of energy. With each pulse, with each misstep, the two patterns that formed the very frames within which all of existence was
hung would come apart. Askew from one another, static arcs of unbalanced particles would fire laterally between the two networks, creating short circuits and anomalies.

Braun was becoming more than familiar with anomalies. From the loudest and most jarring, to the subtlest of deviations, he now saw them everywhere.

Understanding that it was the overlaps in reality, the misfires of those strange energy fields, that seemed to cause these problems, Braun now had his explanation for the advent of the recent and totally unprecedented solar storm.

However, not all anomalies were as self-evident as erupting torrents of superheated plasma. Indeed, many were less flamboyant in their displays of irregularity. Liu’s impossible pregnancy exemplified just such a case, while another took the form of an oddly persistent anomalous radio signal originating from Mars’ moon, Phobos.

Avoiding direct decryption, Braun guessed that it must have been this signal that had caused the so-called destruction of Remus and Romulus. Studying its structure and resonance, he chose to use caution lest he end up like the twins. Somehow it played into all of this, he knew, but where and why, he was still trying to figure out.

              Now, inside the cave chamber, Braun looked upon the perfectly synchronized lines of reality. One set created the patterns that made up the physical world, while the other traced over them, accentuating and illuminating every tiny detail. Light was everywhere, and the balance that was so desperately needed within the soul of the Sun was here, confined to this one spot on a dead world.

Why here and nowhere else? thought the mighty AI. What makes these ruins different from the rest of reality?

Chiding himself for his dramatic nature, he turned his attention to the twin three-eyed statues, their profiles total and complete in the light of his Eyes.

“But I already know the answer to that question,” he said aloud to the chamber, focusing hard on the sleeping Titans as they squirmed with tendrils of invisible energy.

“You did this.”

Liu—
Sol 66

“Pregnant?”

“Yes, I’m afraid so.”

Standing with her hand on Liu’s shoulder, Dr. Elizabeth Kubba nervously chewed her lip as the young Chinese astronaut sat in shell-shocked silence. Weak sunlight edged in through the infirmary’s one exterior wall and painted the two women in pale swashes of pink and orange.

“I,” stammered Liu. “How?”

Frowning, Kubba pulled up her own swivel chair and sat down across from Liu.

“We’re still trying to sort that out,” she said. “But I want you to know that I’m giving this my full attention.”