The Lake of the Sun
The vis-screen in Nichelle's Diner had been stuck on ABC3D for more than a decade, after the brawl that had erupted during half-time at Super Bowl XCV.
Randall remembered the fight, but not what had caused it. Besides, he didn't really care what channel he watched; at least the ABC3D news anchor hologram had a nice rack, he thought. Sometimes - just sometimes - he even listened to the news. He managed to perch most of his buttocks on his usual stool at the counter and tucked into his regular order of buttermilk pancakes with blueberry syrup and a strong black coffee and tried to catch up with the headlines. The pneumatic news hologram smiled a gleaming white CGI smile at her largely disinterested audience.
"Our top story this hour; the Chinese Imperial Space Program announce a successful landing on Mars as they prepare to take possession of the disused
Solis Lacus Penal Colony. It has been over twenty five years since the prison was devastated by an infamous series of explosions in its power unit leaving no survivors. President Esteban Hernandez announced the sale of the notorious facility to the Chinese in his final State of the Union address some seven years ago, but the sale of the heavily irradiated Solis Lacus installation has always been
controversial with the American public, since the bodies have never been recovered.
In the subsequent Congressional hearings, it emerged that the experimental
Einstrontium reactors had been deployed to the Red Planet before completing mandatory safety checks."
Randall gave a small involuntary shudder at the mention of the name of the prison; its destruction had become emblematic of the decline of the American space program. With a bit of effort, he could recite the names of all sixty seven prison staff - a group of all-American heroes who gave their lives in the service of their nation, the deaths viewed by an angry public as a callous betrayal by an increasingly corrupt space administration, desperate to maintain its fragile lead over the burgeoning Chinese space program at any cost. The Solis Lacus disaster hadn't only been the death knell for NASA, it remained a scar on the American psyche; a painful reminder that the national dream to reach out into the solar system wasn't the prerogative of the United States. It was a dream far more fragile than any patriotic citizen wished to believe.
Nichelle was griddling pancakes when Randall's little shiver caught her eye.
She could see that this news item had him unusually rapt.
"You OK, Hon?" she called over.
"Yeah. Just thinking 'bout what those poor Solis bastards had to go through. We learnt about it at school."
"We all did, Hon. We all did."
Randall turned his attention back to the vis-screen. Pictures of taikonauts loping across the rusty Martian surface played on the screen. He speared another piece of pancake on the end of his fork and mopped up the blueberry syrup.
"I just hope those Han motherfuckers know what they're letting themselves in for."
****
Fifty two million miles away, Major Keung Bai's booted foot scuffed up a little gravel and a thin powdery cloud of pinkish-grey regolith. He stepped down slowly, cautiously onto the surface of the fourth planet. Apart from his engineering team, the nearest human life was a little over 1000 miles away, where the crew of the remote Candor Chasma research station would've been very surprised to receive visitors. Just ahead of the landing pod, Major Bai could see the ruin of the Solis Lacus prison; the charred and shredded metal of the damaged quantum reactor vats bit a jagged silhouette into the rusty horizon, brave pioneering structures torn apart by epic explosive force nearly 26 years earlier. The walls of the base closest to the reactors had been blown clean away; steel girders and thick titanium skin atomised by the raw power and proximity of the blast. Despite
the erosive dust storms, the rock still bore the scars of the catastrophe; splatters and streams of erosive liquid spewing out of the ruptured fuel tanks. What remained of the pre-fabricated structures was coated in a thick crust of ochre dust, blasted against the remains of the facility by a quarter of a century of
Martian tornadoes. Somewhere inside were the engineers of the advance team, testing the surviving systems, finding out exactly what could be salvaged or restored to some semblance of function. A faint click in his ear reminded Bai to check the Geiger counter in the top left corner of his visor's heads-up-display; the needle flickered away nervously at the upper-end of the safety zone. He had about two hours before the exposure to the residual radiation would become dangerous. The Major flicked a small switch at his right temple to illuminate the integrated lights in his helmet and headed towards the wrecked facility. Traversing the few hundred yards across the high Solis plain afforded him the opportunity to acclimatise to the Martian gravity. It'd been four months since the eight man team had left the Lunar Base, and - even though he'd performed the requisite series of zero-gravity training exercises to the letter - he found that he still needed some time to adjust to being back on a body with it's own gravity. He adopted the half-bounding, half-shuffling lope that had proved to be the most effective form of gait in the low-gravity environment and headed out towards the prison. A little more than halfway there, his radio earpiece crackled into life - it was his chief engineer.
"Xue here, Major. We have successfully attached our battery to the outposts' power grid. Very few of the computer systems are immediately operational, and I regret that they are unlikely to be repairable. The whole base has been at minus 70 Celsius, and the dust has got everywhere, into nearly all the electronics. There are a handful of non-integrated servers that we think we'll be able to reactivate; although the data will likely be fragmented and patchy at best, I think we can retrieve something."
"Begin work, Captain Xue. I'm entering the building now."
The headlight from Major Bai's helmet spilled in limpid pools over the darkened innards of the prison complex. Xue had been quite correct - the fine pink dust had covered everything like a shroud. After the Einstrontium liquid had eaten away at the walls of the prison, the sands of Solis Lacus - the Lake of the Sun - had flooded in to wash away the almost imperceptible ripples made by the human race on the implacable face of Mars. Inside the darkened corridors, mounds of coarse sand lay strewn throughout - hundreds of them, as far as he could see. Bai's thick soled boot knocked against something hard, the sudden impact causing the dusty carapace to crack and fall away. A gleaming white human skull stared sightlessly out from its sandy grave. Bai's military training prevented him from panicking, but his pulse quickened and - steeling his nerves - he made his way through the dim and eerie corridors towards Xue in the staff quarters. The sound of his footsteps crunching through the sand particles sounded
shallow & shrill in the thin carbon dioxide atmosphere. Despite himself, Bai let out a tiny shudder; what he'd walked into was a tomb - a mass grave for the humans who had dared to try. He picked up the pace and found Xue and his crew trying to access a small remote console in what appeared to be the facilities' medical unit. Near to the computer was yet another sandy mound; the Major took care not to disturb it as he had inadvertently done to the pile in the corridor outside.
"I cannot get the drive to boot up," the engineer reported.
Bai reached for a thin packet of jeweller’s screwdrivers from a pocket on his spacesuit's right thigh. With practiced skill, he carefully unscrewed the four
Phillips screws that held in place a plate on the front of the server, shone his headlight into the exposed cavity and - using the tip of the screwdriver - depressed a small button on the motherboard. A long-since forgotten backup cell flickered into a last vestige of life and characters glowed on the screen - some text jumbled up in a mess of nonsense.
"Any power in that cell has been there for twenty five years - it won't last long, so work fast," ordered Bai. "Download everything you can."
As Xue placed a small bronzed memory disc onto the touchpad to transfer the data, Bai started to read from the screen. What spilled across the view screen from the depths of a disused hard-drive were the last shreds of the journal of the
Solis Lacus penal colony duty medical officer. Dr. Helena Cruz MD.
****
Personal Journal: Cruz, Helena M. Colony Medical Officer
Personal Journal: Day 5
Five days into the mission - already over four million miles from
Swigert - I think we're starting to find the rhythm of our daily routine aboard "The Stygian", and boy is it monotonous. I could kill Auschlander right about now.
At 7am, I take hand-over from the night shift nurse (this week it's my senior nurse - a woman called Hamilton who previously worked in the treatment centre at Louisiana State Pen.), then check the drug stock under her supervision before she goes off shift.
I set the day nurses to work on the decontamination protocols before attending the morning briefing in the mess at 9am. So far, Captain Tye has been too busy on the bridge to attend, so the meeting has been run by
Warden Monroe. He started - as has become the custom - by listing the infringements that had occurred amongst the prisoners overnight. Nothing major, but apparently the cell sensors are recording some of the prisoners' conversations. There's already some growing rivalry between the Americans
and the Russians. Strangely, this doesn't seem to worry Monroe. He's more preoccupied by a third group, who don't ally themselves with either branch.
Unafils, he calls them; unaffiliated. He's worried because these guys aren't regular Mafiosi like the others - they're the really dangerous ones, the true sociopaths, the data-rapers, the nano-fazers, the gene traffickers and the porn-tozers. No wonder Monroe is worried; if I was in charge of that lot, I'd be monitoring them 24 hours a day too.
The rest of my day is taken up treating the prisoners with chronic illnesses and conducting medicals. Every employee gets a monthly zero-grav medical. That's two or three a day for me to organise; a gruelling three hour ordeal of exercise testing, bone densiometry, visual acuity, mental agility examination and monitoring radiation exposure. Of course, the whole unit is on standby for an emergency. There hasn't been one yet, but I don't expect it'll be long.
SAVED
Personal Journal: Day 7
Unbelievable. We're barely one week out from Swigert Base, and I already have to start my day stitching up one of the prisoners - DiStefano
- who got caught a glancing blow by a food tray thrown at him by one of the
other inmates. It was a deep, nasty little wound that needed a couple of deep sutures, and afterwards I gave him some antimicrobials as well.
Once he'd left, I checked the drug stock, and Hamilton checked me checking it. Marcello came into the unit early today for his dialysis. He shuffled in coughing, but he greeted the nurses with a cheerful smile and offered Hamilton a candy from a small tin. He's obviously had it as a keepsake for a long time - the metal is dented and the paint (what's left of it) is chipped & flaking. Hamilton accepted the candy with far better grace than I've come to expect from her. He took one of the treatment couches and rolled up his sleeve, his AV fistula bulging from his forearm.
Hamilton swabbed the injection site and plugged him into the haemodialysis unit. Marcello has been in renal failure for years, and is clinging onto life through a thorough filtering of his blood, reliant on a machine removing all of the toxins three times a week. When he comes in, he has to spend nearly all day in the treatment centre, which means the nurses and I are going to get to know him real well over the remaining 83 days. He's already won over most of the nurses with his doddery gait, surprising smile and his rheumy eyes. God only knows how they allowed this sickly octogenarian into space.
He spent the day telling us telling tales about his grandchildren and great grandchildren and the German Shepherd he'd once owned and used to take for walks around the Great Lawn of Central Park. What we don't talk
about - what we never talk about to any of the prisoners - is what they did to be there. It's hard to see this frail great-grandfather in his sagging non-regulation cardigan as anything other than the old man he is today.
SAVED
Personal Journal: Day 8
Nurse Hamilton had to stitch up some more prisoners overnight. I noticed when we checked our drug stock together that she didn't waste any of the local anaesthetic on them. At the briefing, Monroe confirmed what I suspected; the overnight infractions have been getting worse. Rivalries between the American & Soviet Mafiosi have reached critical mass over some trivial matter in the prisoner's canteen and boiled over into violence.
Five of the prisoners are confined to isolation for 10 days. Guess who gets to visit them daily to check they haven't harmed themselves. That's right: the Duty Medical Officer. One of the guards - Andrew Kupperberg - looked over at me and smirked. I could've punched the dumb lunkhead, but I didn't want to spend time in isolation myself, so I did the next best thing. I volunteered him to be my escort to the isolation cells. When Monroe asked me to nominate a guard, and I called out his name, he shot me a look that could kill.
The isolation cells are down in the depths of the ship near the
Einstrontium tanks and the quantum pile that powers the ramjets. We both took iodine tablets & had our film badges renewed before heading down to the lower decks. On the elevator ride down, Kupperberg made some snide comment about having to visit these inmates. I told him it served him right for smirking at my miserable duties, and then he surprised me by catching my hand and telling me that he wasn't smirking. He was smiling at me. After that surprising little revelation, checking on the inmates was quite a change of gear. Three Americans and two Russians were locked in small, brightly lit holding cells. I don't know what I had expected. The Americans were loud and angry and Kupperberg had to step in several times with his taser-mace. Some heavily tattooed guy called Vinnie Agueci seemed worryingly resistant to the electric charge. Afterwards, Kupperberg said that he's supposed to have trained himself over the years to stand such punishment. By contrast the Russians were sitting quietly - almost as if they were meditating. They barely seemed to notice when I went into the cell and simply growled when I tried to examine them - very strange, and not a little frightening.
In the elevator afterwards, Kupperberg asked me out on a date. I told him "We'll see."
SAVED
Personal Journal: Day 9
Barclay, the Deputy Warden ran the daily briefing today - she's got the virtual reality headsets up & running and all the staff are obliged to spend a minimum of 100 hours familiarising ourselves with the layout of the
Solis Lacus facility. I tried not to be distracted by Andy Kupperberg repeatedly turning to smile at me throughout the meeting. I dawdled back to the infirmary to make sure he'd gone, and took the opportunity to log a quick overview of my new home for the next 5 years through the headset. The prison has been manufactured on the southern hemisphere by robot builders and is designed to be entirely self-sufficient. Water is recycled, and oxygen is provided by a reservoir of radiation-proof algae trapped in part our water system under a transparent membrane on the roof of the building.
As the computer simulation flew me over the facility, I could see the three large tanks full of Einstrontium for the quantum reactor. Without that power, we'll die. Removing the headset I was reminded how fragile this whole enterprise is.
Marcello was hooked up to dialysis when I got back to the treatment centre. He was telling the nurses how the American & Russian mafia are squaring off against one another. Old habits die hard, it would seem.
Carting off their colleagues to isolation hasn't calmed them down. It's
only inflamed the situation in the cell blockkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk
****
On the touchpad, the memory disc skittered and sputtered.
"What's going on?" demanded Major Bai.
"Data corruption," Xue answered bluntly. "A big chunk of the file is damaged here." He checked the power level on the backup cell. "Looks like there's still a little power left in the cell. Do you want me to try to defragment,
Major?"
"No - that'll waste what power is left. Skip to the next readable segment."
Whilst Captain Xue attempted to locate more reliable data, Bai radioed back to his Lieutenant aboard the lander. "Find me everything you can about Dr Helena
Cruz, career, background, everything. Oh - and a prisoner called Marcello."
"Datastream's back up, sir" Xue called over. Bai resumed his position at the reader as the disc started to spin again.
****
sssssssssiege continues on Deck B with the unafils in a kind of uneasy alliance with the Russians. Andy reported to the briefing that his
patrol needed to fire eight warning rounds last night - the rioting was fierce apparently - took hours for the patrol to get the men back in their cells. 'Isolation' is becoming a joke - there's thirty six prisoners down there now. Visiting them all takes up nearly my whole morning. Apparently, the press back on Earth are calling for the offenders to be jettisoned into space (and I've heard the same thing muttered in the staff canteen, too), but Monroe can't justify that - the jurisdiction out here at the very edge of colonised space is dubious at best. He's radioed back to Earth and the governments in Washington & Moscow are discussing how best to deal with the situation. Which is all fine and dandy, but they're not trapped up here in a spaceship with a thousand violent sociopaths.
SAVED
Personal Journal: Day 58
Andy stayed over in my room again last night. It's been so long since
I last had sex, the thrill of enjoying him in me, feeling his muscles moving, thrusting inside me is intoxicating. It's not just the novelty of the fucking - it's having him in bed with me afterwards - he's solid and concrete and real. I like to reach out & run my hands over his back as he slumbers - feeling the slow tidal movements of his sleeping breaths. I would never have thought that day when I singled him out to accompany me to
Isolation that we'd end up as lovers. I think it was the riots that finally drew me to invite him into my bed. The last couple of weeks have had everyone on edge, and we've all sought the solace of the company of one of our comrades. The fact that - after two months into the mission - we're all sex-starved doesn't hurt either!
In the morning, Andy & I went to the mess for breakfast. It's pretty obvious who's coupling up with whom at this time of day. Breakfast was disturbed by a deep rumble from the engines and a vibration; a real rarity
- there's no tremors on a ship travelling through the vacuum of space.
Within a minute, general quarters was sounded. Andy was summoned to the flight deck whilst I went straight to the treatment centre to prepare for casualties. It wasn't long before the phone rang. It was Tye. He wanted me to meet the Engineering team outside the engine room straight away. He was as politely spoken as ever, but I was under no illusion; this wasn't a request. It was an order.
Outside the thick lead door that led to the engine room, a rather subdued group of the engineering team huddled. I asked what they were expecting to find in the locked room. Sigars, the deputy chief engineer told me there had been a drop in coolant pressure, most likely due to a rupture in one of the pipelines. But there was something grimmer - the coolant is a highly caustic and volatile liquid. The warders had discovered that two of the inmates - two Russians - were missing from their cells.
Apparently these mafia guys from Russia are experts in sabotaging all kinds of electronic and engineering systems. Sigars told me that if they - if anyone - was in there at the time of a coolant leak, if anybody ever got any of the fluid on them, even if they breathed in any fumes… well, let's just say there may not be much left to treat.
Sigars was right. The coolant leak turned out to be easily repaired - with the correct equipment and the skill of the engineering guys. But the two missing Russians had died in the act of vandalism they had planned.
Died is perhaps an understatement - they had largely dissolved. It was perhaps the most horrific thing I've ever seen - pools of sticky liquefied meat, shards of fractured bones. Those poor bastards hadn't a chance.
Later Sigars told me that it was lucky they had ignored the
Einstrontium tanks; if they'd caused a leak of the reactor fuel, we'd all be atoms in space. I kind of wish he'd kept that to himself.
SAVED
Personal Journal: Day 60
The rioting has been much less for the last couple of nights, to everyone's relief. After today's briefing, I went to the flight deck and got Tye's permission to prescribe myself contraception. He raised an eyebrow, but asked no questions. In fact, he said nothing at all. Perhaps
he figures there are some things that even he is better off not knowing. He must've seen how the staff are starting to couple up.
Marcello was in for treatment today; the Russians are somewhat subdued by the two deaths in the engine room and the American Mafiosi - especially the Chicago branch - are making the most of it. Seems that one of the dead Russians was one of the key architects of their riot campaign.
Marcello told us he didn't think they'd stay subdued for long. Hamilton tried to make a joke about the Russians striking back, and then something very strange happened. Marcello - the doddery old man who had been dropping into the unit for the last eight weeks, entertaining us with tales of his grandkids and his corny old jokes - he fixed Hamilton with a glare of pure cold steel. "Let 'em try" was all he said, but it was the way he said it.
It was the tone of a cruel, pitiless killer - there was something about the quality of his voice that still makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up.
SAVED
Personal Journal: Day 63
The hiatus in the rioting ended last night. I was woken at 2 am by the alarms. The adrenaline of those emergency calls in the early hours of the morning that had punctuated my nights as an intern kicked right back in, and I leapt from my bunk, scrambled into my scrubs, and headed straight to the infirmary; there were going to be a large number of serious injuries. The doors of the unit opened to a scene of complete chaos.
Nurses were having to restrain most of the patients who - despite bleeding from severe injuries - were fuelled by that blind insane rage that can only really be seen in the criminal fraternity. The sick bay was filled with screaming, swearing and shouting, the staff trying to avert a full blown mini-riot breaking out, like a satellite of the main riot - here in the cubicles of the medical unit.
For the first time on this voyage to Hell, I unlocked a clear cover that protects the duty medical officers' control panel; I shouted a warning to the nurses as loud as I could over the hubbub and activated the restraining shields. Invisible force bubbles formed instantly cocooning the couches and their injured inmates in an impenetrable energy barrier.
Silence descended across the ward as the shouts & screams became trapped within the force shields along with those who were making the sound. Inside the barriers, the patients were kicking and beating their fists against the invisible wall of force, but they were never going to escape.
Bed by bed I released the injured guards from their restraints, then introduced a somnutone into the sound-proof bubbles of the remaining patients. The vibrations of the low, soothing hum are almost imperceptible, but they did their job - stimulating the basal forebrain to force the initiation of a REM sleep cycle. The resilience of these men astounds me once again - I had to intensify the tone far higher than I've needed to before. The rage that fuels these criminals is intense - they don't feel pain or respond to reason. Some of them didn't even respond to the subliminal tone until I'd had it playing for an hour.
The nurses sorted out the staff's wounds whilst Hamilton & I triaged the most serious injuries. One of the Americans - Barboza - had a lacerated liver, so I spent the next couple of hours deep in his abdomen, trying to locate the bleeder - a pretty good job, even though I do say so myself. By the time I'd got out of theatre, most of the injured had been patched and sutured and plastered back together. Barboza wasn't going anywhere in a hurry, so he had maximal monitoring on our intensive bay whilst he slept of the remaining anaesthetic. I kept the restraining shields up around him, though.
Afterwards, Andy came into the unit. He looked grim. He'd discovered the body of one of the night guards stuffed into a storage closet. He'd been stabbed. The body in a black sealed bag arrived in the unit a few minutes afterwards. It was Ed Smith - a quiet guy who had largely kept
himself to himself. It was my duty to undertake his post-mortem. There were over thirty stab wounds in what must have been a frantic attack. That wasn't the worst of it. Whoever did it, whoever killed him - they cut out his eyes.
SAVED
Personal Journal: Day 64
The briefing was especially terse this morning. Tye announced that - after discussion with Earth - he's going to bring the cryonics online tonight. During construction of the ship, all cells were equipped with freezing circuits, but public opinion was against what was seen as giving convicted prisoners a luxury interplanetary trip, so it's use was prohibited by Congress. The rioting has changed all that. Smith's death has made the politicians realise the threat to the entire crew, and that has focussed minds both here on the ship and in the governments in Washington &
Moscow. Tye was finally given the green light to activate the cryonics by the President's chief of staff last night. I thought he looked tired; taking the Russian's prisoners out of their overflowing gulags was one way to keep this mission financially viable. Once the Russians handed over their cash, the whole mission got rubber-stamped through the back door of
some Congressional appropriations subcommittee, and - before anyone really knew it - there were a dozen construction bots and a replication mill trundling around the Solis plain building a state of the art off-world penal facility. Solis Lacus was far enough away from the existing settlements and the various research stations to pose any sort of threat to the more publicly acceptable Martian pioneers, and - more important to the
American media - it was taking the planet's villains and scum far, far away from Earth. In practical terms, though, it means that Captain Tye has to run every decision past both Washington & Moscow, and the demands of constant diplomacy are clearly taking it out of him. On top of that, the eyes of the world's press are scrutinising his communiqués for the slightest hint of trouble or leniency towards the prisoners. The popular press (in the US at least) remains highly critical of treating prisoners to a cosmic vacation. The presence of the two different groups of Mafiosi and their mutual rivalry is at the heart of the violence and unrest that exists here, threatening the safety of everyone on board. After Tye told us about his orders, he then revealed the problem we face in implementing them. Even with the ships' Quantum reactor generating at full capacity, there's only going to be sufficient power to keep all the prisoners on ice for 20 days.
That leaves us about five days short: it will be five more days before we'll be landing on Mars, five days when they'll be awake and - we all assume - even more pissed than usual when they discover they've been taken
out of commission without their knowledge for the best part of three weeks.
Tye's meeting had one final sting in the tail for me; according to protocols, the Medical Officer has to go round all the cells, checking all the vital signs on every patient every single damn day.
In preparation for freezing, we brought Marcello in for an unscheduled dialysis session today. He's no fool - he knows something's up to break into the routine we've developed over the last two months. His cold eyes were darting around the sick bay, looking for any sign, any clue as to what might be going onnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn
****
Xue's memory disc skidded to a halt once again as the ancient power cell finally faded. The engineer pulled out a tiny hydrogen cell from a locked pouch on his left arm, and with fine movement stifled by thick-gloved fingers, worked to fashion a connection for it on the computer's mother board. He knew time was of the essence; every second of delay in connecting the new power cell risked further data loss.
Impatiently, Bai radioed his ship again. "Where's those biogs I ordered,
Lieutenant?"
"Files are coming up the link from Earth now, sir. I'll ping the data over to your wrist console when they arrive."
Bai indicated to the Captain that his power cell was in place. Over at the terminal, the characters from Cruz's journal began to reappear.
****
Personal Journal: Day 82
In bed this morning, after sex, Andy popped the question - the one question we've never asked each other - the one we never ask our crew- mates. Why are you here? I suppose I should've expected it - we've been sleeping together for over a month. And because the stupid lunk was all caught up in my post-coital glow, I told him. I told him about when I got caught stealing controlled drugs to fuel my habit. About how I got myself struck off by the Florida Board of Medicine. About how I was summoned to an off-the-record meeting with Lydia Auschlander where she made me a very unofficial offer to join this crazy off-world mission. I told Andy how signing up got me fast tracked to a narcotics detox program, a very generous pension and - most important - how it would clear my disciplinary record with the board. All it would cost me was 5 years of my life and a mere 200 million mile round trip in "The Stygian".
He lay in my bed, looking at me. We both may have been naked, but I felt like I was the one who had been laid completely bare. He made no judgement, just reached out and drew me into his chest, kissing me on the forehead. He said he was glad we could share the trip together. Andy
Kupperberg is a thoroughly decent human being; he knew exactly what I needed him to say. It is just possible that I'm falling for him.
The rest of the day was spent going around all 550 cells, checking on the vital signs of the inmates. I spent some extra time in Marcello's cell
- I want to be certain that cryo is holding his renal function in check.
The creatinine level is rising very slowly, but it's nothing that the dialysis can't get back under control once he's thawed. The medical unit has missed the old guy's visits - the regular rhythm of him showing up and charming the nurses had become one of the few familiar, comfortable patterns to our week.
SAVED
Personal Journal: Day 83
A tense day today. Every moment of everyone's day has been spent in preparation for the cryonic circuits being turned off tomorrow at 9am. For the part of the medical unit, once Hamilton & I checked the drug stock, the
whole staff spent the day making sure that every prisoner's revival kit is checked, coded and grouped into the cell blocks. Tye has agreed to my request to release the cryonics cell by cell, but he's insisted that each of the blocks will be thawed simultaneously. That means I have to supervise the nurses as they administer the resus protocols; blood clot filtration, cell turgor monitoring, neuronal bioelectrical initiation and all the rest of it. So we spent most of the afternoon running & re-running the simulation holograms. They should be able to cope with the most common complications, and I'll act as a floater, ready to rush between crises in different wings of the ship. I've assigned Hamilton to give one-to-one attention to Marcello; no-one knows his renal function as well as she does, and she has a soft spot for the old codger.
Neither Andy nor I can sleep tonight (which, I guess, is why I'm up at 2am writing this log entry.) I bet that - if I went outside, and wandered the corridors - I'd find that a good proportion of the crew are as on edge and sleepless as I am.
SAVED
Personal Journal: Day 86
There hasn't been time for journal entries in the last two days.
Defrosting the prisoners went pretty well, ally hints considered. There was one fatality - a unafil called Street. He'd already had a heart attack at the age of 36 after a prodigious cocaine habit in his teens and twenties.
He was up here after DEA busted up his meth ring. No-one at the agency had realised just exactly how much meth he was supplying, but on his arrest,
China, the Democratic Czech Confederation, and - most interesting - North
Korea, suddenly found themselves without a ready supply of meth. It was his global reach that bought Esteban Street a seat on "The Stygian". The anticoagulants failed to stop a clot forming in his left atrium and on defrosting, he had a massive fatal stroke. I wrote the report for Monroe and mailed it to him, just as the alarms started ringing. Unsurprisingly, our inmates were deeply unhappy about losing nearly three weeks of their lives without discussion, and as the cryo-sedation started to wear off, all hell broke loose. In every block, the prisoners started destroying their cells. Andy told me that it took all of the guards with tasers and somnu- blasters to calm the rampage. But it didn't stop; once the soporifics wore off, the rage and violence of the prisoners just boiled over again, with even more fury than before. The vandalism and rioting have only just settled down. Andy collapsed into bed sometime after 1am. He's been on duty for nearly 36 hours, just quashing one fight after another. We only have enough power to finish the remaining three days of our journey;
reinitiating the cryonic circuits is impossible now. Putting our inmates into suspended animation bought us three quiet weeks, but it's succeeded in uniting the two previously antagonistic groups of Mafiosi against a new common enemy. And the enemy is us.
SAVED
Personal Journal: Day 87
Marcello came in to the unit for his dialysis. His kidneys seem to have survived the cryonic freezing remarkably well. He might look like a frail old man, but he's made of strong stuff. It's odd to see him shambling in wearing his saggy, bobbled old cardigan whilst we can hear the thuds and crashes of rioting going on in the cell blocks below us. I have to admit that I'm completely distracted from my work, fearing for Andy's safety.
Somehow, Marcello seems to transcend all of the rioting and violence.
Somehow, his advanced age acts to cocoon him against it and he potters about impervious to it all. Just before he got plugged in to the machine, he pilled something from the pocket of his cardigan. It was a small, smooth wooden mouse that he had carved himself. Looking very pleased with his handiwork, he squeezed the carving into Hamilton's hand. "I made it in workshop." he explained. "You looked after me when we were frozen. I look
after those who look after me." It was an enormously generous gesture from a man who has almost nothing to give, and even Sheila Hamilton's usually stony heart was touched. But - not for the first time - I felt my nerves bristle as he spoke. There's something - I don't know… something slightly ominous in his tone that I can't quite place.
SAVED
Personal Journal: Day 88
The ships engines have been braking almost all day, and we are now inside the orbit of Deimos. In the briefing this morning, Tye reminded us that the Martian moons were named after the Greek gods of fear and terror.
With the rioting still going on in the cell blocks below us, the irony of this piece of information was missed by no-one. Within the hour, we'll be entering our final orbit around the red planet - my home for the next five years and the final destination for all the prisoners. Tomorrow, we start to disembark - first about half the guards will go down in a shuttle to secure the prison (Andy's in this first cohort). Then the prisoners will be sent down in the next shuttles, then the remaining staff. The shuttles are on autopilot. Once everyone is on Mars, Tye will remotely control the shuttles to fly back into orbit then crash-land them somewhere close to the
Martian South Pole - the mission planners wanted to make sure that there was no way any prisoner could make it off Mars. That goes for the prison staff too, of course. In five years time, when our relief crew arrives, we'll go back to "The Stygian" in their shuttles.
That means we have to pack everything away for transport to Solis
Lacus. Most of it was done when the prisoners were under cryo, of course, but there's always more left to do than you expect - a bit like moving house. There's all the personal effects too, although we were allowed to bring very little from Earth with us. Whatever is left behind will go into sleep mode for the next five years, so we're all making sure we have packed everything.
SAVED
Personal Journal: Day 90
I feel I should really call this Day 1, as I'm now documenting from the Solis Lacus Penitentiary on Mars. The transfer of prisoners & personnel seems to have gone mercifully smoothly. There was a little bickering as the prisoners board & disembarked the automatic shuttles - I think they knew that this was a final chance for some sort of retaliation - but generally, the whole operation went much more quietly than Warden Monroe had feared.
Andy was one of the first into the facility. He told me how creepy the place was: quiet and dark and cold. The advance guard set the facilities automatics into wake-up mode. We have some robotics here to facilitate some of the menial tasks and to help the guards in some of their security duties. They used the machines to conduct the inmates to their cells, which
- according to Andy - was a huge success.
The new medical facility is a delight compared to what we have got used to on "The Stygian"; a proper surgical unit with robotic assistance and an automated anaesthetic unit and two Intensive therapy beds. There's remote monitoring implants, so we can keep a close eye on chronic conditions like Marcello's renal function, and the whole place just has plenty of room for the staff to work in.
The staff quarters are equally spacious; I have an en suite shower room! There are no words to describe how grateful I am that I no longer have to share a bathroom with my colleagues! Of course, we've all studied the Virtual reality set-up, but nothing quite prepares you for the sense of space & newness here. Andy says that the cell blocks are quieter tonight than they have been for months on board. Perhaps arriving on Mars has been for the best for all of ussssssssssssssssssss.
****
The bronze disc ground to a halt once again as another block of corrupted data passed through the reader.
Bai radioed the ship. "I am still waiting for that information, Lieutenant.
Don't keep me waiting any longer."
"Sorry, sir." A file popped up on Bai's wrist console; a CV for Cruz and a collection of police reports about Marcello's criminal career.
"I'm also uploading a news report on the Solis Lacus disaster, Major." added the Lieutenant. "It'll be on your console imminently."
Bai scrolled through the biog of Cruz. Born in Juno Beach, Florida, she had enjoyed what could generously be described as a pedestrian medical career until she won a prestigious residents position at Jackson University Memorial
Hospital. She volunteered for the Off-World Penal Program, and left for Lunar
Base Swigert for acclimatisation training on 10th October 2096. She died in the
Solis Lacus disaster June 18th 2097. Nothing about her drug problem or detox, nothing about her being struck off nor about any other disciplinary problems.
Whoever Lydia Auschlander was, she had been true to her word about expunging anything detrimental to Cruz's reputation, even after death.
He turned to Marcello's file. He'd come to prominence as a stone-hearted capo when the Chicago Outfit reformed in the mid-2040s. He'd been arrested, but never convicted for a wide range of crimes including data-racketeering, porn-tozing, gene dubbing and burnmurder. He had risen to the head of the Outfit in the
2050's and was thought to have held a position of prominence in the Virtual
Crime Syndicate, coordinating Mafia groups around the world. He was finally caught by Cyberpol and charged with a relatively minor crime of privacy phasing. He'd been incarcerated in the Alcatraz Penal Unit for over thirty years before the order came to remove him off-world. But Bai was puzzled by what was missing from the record; large passages had been redacted.
"Lieutenant - There's a lot missing here. I want you to find out what was censored in this record, and who had all this data removed." He turned to his engineer. "Get a move on Xue. I want to get out of here."
"There's not much more, Major," Xue reported. "The data stream is coming back online now."
****
PPPPPPPPPersonal Journal: Day 95
Whatever happens, this will be my last entry. It may even be the last record of the whole Solis Lacus facility. It will undoubtedly be the hardest thing I have ever had to write. There isn't much time left, so I want to record the facts of the last few hours, so that someday the truth will be known; from what Warden Monroe has just told us, the American
public will be given a very different story to what has really happened up here today.
Yesterday, the reasons for the prisoner's relative calm became apparent. In the journey down from "The Stygian", the American mafia managed to rip out circuits from the shuttle's systems then smuggle the electronics into their cells. The few days of peace we've experienced since landing was no period of settling in. The men were simply passing their smuggled components to the Russians who in turn were squirreled away in their cells fashioning some sort of device. The person coordinating all of this, the man who acted as the go-between for the various factions was someone very familiar to us in the medical unit; it was Marcello.
Apparently he had had lots of contact with the Russian mafia before he was imprisoned, and he'd been trading on those connections since the cryonics were turned off to try to create some sort of unified mafia partnership.
When the joint mafia operation revealed the device they'd constructed that would put them in control of the Solis Lacus robotic systems, things got ugly. It seems the unafils were restless about their prospects under a combined Mafia regime, and as the chief architect of the alliance, Marcello was the focus of their anger. Seven hours ago, our much loved patient
Umberto Marcello died from a stab wound to the heart. We're told it was almost instant. His death catalysed a massive and immediate outbreak of violence right across the cell blocks.
Security were sent down to the cell blocks to stamp down on the rioting, but they had no idea they'd be battling against their own robots.
Fifty security guards went down there - quite the act of bravery against a thousand angry prisoners. Of course, they thought they'd have the help of the robotics, but the first men on the scene discovered the error of that assumption. As soon as they stepped on the cell block deck, dozens of security robots had those first guards on the scene pinned down, only to be overwhelmed by the anger of the inmates. Despite their armour and weapons and training, the security staff were not prepared for a mechanised assault. Within the first few minutes of their arrival, there were a dozen dead guards in Cell Block A. I have no idea what has happened to Andy. At this stage, I can only assume he is dead like the others.
Galvanized by their triumph over the security guards, the prisoners forced their way up into the control block, the rioting spreading into the heart of the facility. Deputy Warden Barclay is already dead. Monroe managed to isolate central control and locked down the rest of the unit, but the inmates are prowling the corridors, using brute force to gain access to each locked off area. It's only a matter of time before they murder us all. I'm locked in the medical unit with most of my nursing staff. Outside the sound is terrifying; constant shouting, interspersed by the dull thump of doors being beaten down by an enraged frenzied mob, and punctuated by occasional explosions.
A few minutes ago, Monroe broadcast over the emergency channel to every open terminal to let us know what has happened - that's how I can record so much of this story. There is a protocol for such an emergency. We face a stark choice; it's clear that the prisoners are on a killing spree - we can choose to be murdered in the riots and leave our prisoners in control of the facility, or use a self-destruct device attached to the power plant and flood the entire plain with Einstrontium. After a brief discussion with the Governments in Washington & Moscow and they have agreed with the suicide option. The American public will be fed an implausibly heroic version of this story. Our memories will be lionized - yet another valiant American
Anytime in the next few minutes, I expect to hear the fuel tanks blow, and I want to save this entry before then. The explosion will submerge the Solis basin with a firestorm of blazing liquid and this prison and everything in it will be destroyed. I've given everyone in here a large dose of sedative. No point in staying awake for your own death. I feel the darkness closing in, and my last thoughts are of my family back on Earth, and the man who made my last few months some of the best of my life. I loved you, Andy Kupperberg. I'm sorry I never told you that.
SAVED
The disc stopped. For a moment, even Bai paused. He'd been expecting tragedy of course - what happened at Solis Lacus had become a modern legend in American culture, its name a touchstone for American heroism and fortitude against overwhelming adversity. But the terrible failure revealed in Dr Cruz's journal
- a fiasco on both a human & technological scale, a deliberate act of suicide so soon after their arrival - this was not what he had expected to read and it was definitely not what the American public would want to hear.
His communicator pinged. It was the Lieutenant. "Found a video file for you, sir - played on all the American networks when the base was destroyed." A short snippet of an old news bulletin played on the wrist screen. As the anchor relayed details of the numbers of dead, NASA footage showed a fierce bright light burning white on the surface of the red planet. With the fuel tanks destroyed, the plain was flooded with an inferno of atomically unstable Einstrontium, each atom tearing itself apart schizophrenically between one quantum state and another, releasing raw energy and radioactive fire as it did so. For seven weeks after the
'accident', Solis Lacus became a genuine blazing "Lake of the Sun".
Bai smiled a thin, uncharitable smile. From his perspective, it would do the
American public no harm at all to be reminded of how their inferior their efforts to colonise Mars had been in comparison to the triumphs of the Chinese Imperial
Space Program. Any opportunity to whittle away at the American sense of superiority had been deliberate Imperial policy for many years. Rubbing salt in this
particular raw wound would only continue to undermine the increasingly insecure psyche of their populace.
"I want all of these journal entries broadcast back to Earth. Include the video file too. Send it to all media agencies."
"All agencies, sir?" queried his lieutenant.
"Yes. All nationalities. Send it immediately." Then glancing at the rust- coloured mound that was the skeletonised remains of Helena Cruz, Bai turned to his engineer. "How long to collect up all these bodies, Captain?"
Xue thought about the landscape of mounds down in the cell blocks. Each individual skeleton would have to be carefully prised out from its crusty shell, photographed, DNA tested, identified and packaged away for repatriation to Earth.
This was going to be slow and macabre work, but as it had been a crucial requirement of the Chinese purchase of the Solis Lacus facility, it was an essential task. "I'll get the crew down here within the hour. There's over a thousand of these skeletons, so pulling double shifts, I think we can be finished within 10 days, sir."
"Good. Get them started then join me on the control deck. I want to start repurposing this facility as soon as possible."
Carefully picking his way through the ruined facility to the former command centre, past groups of huddled tumuli encasing the bodies of Monroe and other prison staff, Bai gazed out of the blown out window. The dusty lifeless vista in
front of him wouldn't be sterile for much longer. Just as the Einstrontium fires had erased the human presence in the prison, Chinese terraforming would shortly wipe the scars of the American disaster off the face of Mars. Solis Lacus was to be the centre for the transformation of Mars into an Earth-like world; first the establishment of a denser, breathable atmosphere with it's own climate systems.
Then, water - some brought in vast tankers from Earth, but most of it generated by the newly stimulated atmospheric conditions. In time, the Solis Lacus plain would be a lake in more than name for the first time in billions of years. The wrist consoles ping broke the trance of his prognostication. It was Xue.
"Engineering crew is now in position, Captain. Happy for us to begin the work of removing the bodies?"
Bai looked out over the ochre horizon. "Thank you, Xue. There's plenty for us to do here. It's time to get started."