Bodyguard

9

“Dissent is a luxury that Mars colonists can ill afford.”

Margaret Peko-Evans, architect of Mars Prime-the first settlement

The rest of the trip was fairly routine. Each shift was pretty much like the last. Get up, take a shower, drink three cups of coffee, pet the aniforms, and read for Sasha. Progress was slow, but I did my best and was reading at a second-or third-grade level in no time at all.

The whole thing might have been somewhat enjoyable if it hadn’t been for the way in which the aniforms were “harvested” and passed down the ship’s food chain. I had no part in the actual killing, thank god, but felt like a traitor whenever one of my charges disappeared and was replaced by a newly decanted clone, or “bud.” Then, after I had spent countless hours petting it, the cow, sheep, pig, or chicken would vanish only to reappear around the captain’s waistline.

Yes, the others were just as carnivorous as she was, but I held the captain personally responsible and saw her as the sole culprit. By doing so I could ignore the fact that Sasha seemed to have an insatiable appetite for steaks, pork chops, and Killer’s super-crispy fried chicken.

And making a bad situation even worse was the fact that each aniform was identical to all of its predecessors. It was like killing the same pet over and over again. It got to the point where I could hardly look into their adoring eyes or touch their eager heads. So, it was with a sense of tremendous relief that I saw Mars on the main view screen. It was beautiful and looked like a sphere of reddish-orange marble set spinning on a sheet of black velvet. I was thinking about the surface and what we might encounter there when the captain burst my bubble. She moved quietly for such a large woman, and I didn’t know she was present until her forklift brushed my right shoulder.

“Welcome to Mars. Ever been outside before?”

My eyebrows shot towards the top of my head. “Outside? As in outside the ship?”

“Sure,” the captain replied curiously. “What? You thought we’d dump the cargo and let it drift?”

“I assumed we would dock with a habitat. Like Staros- 3.”

The captain laughed. Tidal waves of fat rippled back and forth beneath me surface of her black pajamas. “A habitat! That’s a good one! As if the poor bastards had the resources to build a space station! Hell, they’re lucky to meet the company’s daily production quota, much less dick around with habitats. No, we unload the cargo in orbit and they take the stuff down in shuttles. So how ‘bout it? You been outside before?”

I knew there was a strong possibility that I had, but I couldn’t be sure, so I shook my head.

The captain clucked sympathetically. “Too bad. But don’t worry, you’ll catch on. And sweet buns too. When it comes time to unload, everyone turns to, and I mean everyone. Even me.”

And she meant it too, which accounted for the fact that Sasha and I found ourselves adrift within the main lock four hours later. My space suit was too small, Sasha’s was too large, and both smelled like an overripe armpit. The captain had taken the spin off the ship in order to provide unobstructed access to the cargo bay. The result was zero gee and nausea in the pit of my stomach. The others, Sasha included, showed no signs of discomfort.

The regular crew members had customized their suits, or purchased customized units, I wasn’t sure which. The captain’s was bright pink with lots of flashing red lights and a hint of chrome. Killer had co-opted Lester’s suit. It had been painted to resemble a naked Hercules complete with fake sex organ. He made a production out of cutting it off and waving it over his head. Kreshenko had gone for the high-tech look, favoring a suit fitted with articulated cutters, lasers, and other accessories too numerous to mention. It made him look like a large Swiss army knife. In fact Wilson, already positioned in the cargo bay, was the only one besides ourselves who wore an unmodified suit. The outer hatch cycled open, and the captain’s voice crackled in my ears.

“Okay people, listen up. Sweet buns will team with Kreshenko, and chrome-dome comes with me. Let’s get it over with.” So saying, the captain fired her jets and headed out into the void. She looked like a wad of pink chewing gum wrapped with Christmas tree lights.

I didn’t want to go but knew I had to. I fired my jets. The suit surged upwards, bounced off the overhead, and took off again. I cut power, aligned myself with the hatch, and gave it another try. Nausea rolled over me as I passed out into the vast emptiness of space. The captain loomed ahead, dodged out of the way, and made a grab for my suit. “Maxon! Cut your jets!”

I obeyed and felt completely humiliated as she clipped a line to the eye mounted on my chest plate and towed me towards the ship’s stern. So much for my secret hopes that past knowledge would surface to save the day.

The ship filled most of the view. The hull was cylindrical and covered with duct work, antenna farms, solar arrays, and other installations too arcane for me to understand. And beyond that, half hidden by the Trader’s hull, was Mars herself, a glowing red presence against a field of black. The sight was so awesome, so compelling, that my nausea was momentarily forgotten. No wonder the earlier me had ventured into the Big Black. There could be nothing more beautiful than the sight before me.

The cargo hatch was open, and the loading lights served to illuminate Wilson’s launcher. The launcher was the equivalent of a spacegoing forklift, except that it could “launch” cargo modules, as well as move them around.

In this case that meant propelling the containers from the ship’s hold towards the holding “pen” where the rest of the crew would retrieve and move them inside. No simple task when the modules were eight times bigger than you were. The launcher looked like a praying mantis with a man strapped to its stomach.

Correctly assessing my competence as nonexistent, the captain secured my safety line to the pen and issued strict instructions to stay where I was. I was happy to comply. As the rest of the crew arrayed themselves in front of the holding structure, and prepared to “catch” cargo, I examined the pen. It was anything but high-tech.

Bright orange plastic netting had been stretched over a metal framework to create a massive box or “pen” into which the cargo could be shoved and temporarily stored. Lights strobed off and on to warn ships of the pen’s presence, and a system of moveable partitions had been installed to divide one load of cargo from the next.

I watched in amazement as Wilson launched the first container in our direction and the captain jetted out to intercept it. The captain was surprisingly graceful as she hurtled through space, caught the incoming module, and pushed it towards me. “Time to earn your keep, Maxon. Catch the sucker and shove it into the pen.”

Mars-light winked off the top surface of the container as it tumbled in my direction. The captain had met the module with the correct amount of force, but her aim was off. To correct for that, and direct the cargo into the pen, I would have to move to the right. I gritted my teeth, fired my jets, and jerked to a halt when my safety line ran out. I felt the cable tighten under my armpit and pull me around. I was still in the process of turning back and raising my hands when the container hit. It pushed me into the net, dropped through the opening like an eight ball entering the corner pocket, and drifted towards the back wall. My jets pushed me out, the cable jerked me around, and the captain sounded cheerful. “Good going, Maxon. Keep it up.”

I had barely recovered when the next module arrived, closely followed by the next, and the one after that. I felt like the goalie in a reversed hockey game, as the team fed me pucks, and I bounced them into the net. It became fun after a while as they warmed up and I gained skill. Still, the hours took their toll, and I was glad when it was over.

The captain towed me towards the ship. A pair of shuttles arrived, jockeyed for position, and disgorged a dozen space-suited figures. They headed for the pen. Their motions were so smooth, so coordinated, that our efforts looked clumsy by comparison.

A few hours later we were packed, paid, and floating around the lock as one of Marscorp’s shuttles made contact. The captain had come to see us off. She extended a bejeweled hand. I took it and was surprised by her strength. “You’re sure you won’t stay? Kreshenko is soft on sweet buns, and your head makes a good mirror.”

I shook my head. “Thanks…but we’ll be moving on.”

The captain shrugged. “Okay, have it your way, but a word to the wise…”

The hatch opened and we pulled ourselves through. I turned around.

“Yeah? And what would that be?”

“Be sure to duck.”

The hatch closed, and I never saw her again. The stewardess had purple hair and matching day-glo nail polish. She wore a blue jumpsuit and a bored expression. She pointed towards the main passageway. “Grab any seat that’s open.”

We nodded and used the conveniently placed handholds to pull ourselves along. I considered what the captain had said. “What did she mean ‘duck’?”

“She meant ‘take care of yourself,’” Sasha replied easily. “What did you think she meant?”

I frowned. “It could have been a warning.”

“You worry too much.”

Sasha spotted some empty seats and pulled herself in that direction. I followed. A tiny maintenance bot, one of hundreds that roamed the ship, scuttled across the overhead. It had a screw clamped in its tiny jaws and appeared to be in a hurry. Whatever the problem was, I hoped it wasn’t critical.

The rest of the passengers, an eclectic group gathered from five or six different ships, stared as we strapped ourselves in. They were what I imagined to be the usual mix of freelancers, corpies, and a zombie or two. They watched with dull, self-absorbed eyes, thinking of what lay ahead, and wishing it was over. And no wonder, since it was common knowledge that even easy Mars jobs were hard, and not everyone who came lived long enough to go back. Not a particularly friendly crowd, but not especially hostile either, so I forced myself to relax and watched Sasha out of the corner of my eye.

She looked okay, which was amazing considering what she’d been through. But appearances can be deceiving. Watching her had become a hobby of mine, and I thought I saw tension around her eyes, plus a pallor that no amount of artificial tanning could hide. And why not? The poor thing had been abducted by corpies, chased by poppers, lost an eye, and been assaulted by a sexual psychopath. All in spite of my rather questionable protection.

It made me feel like children do when their parents are troubled. Scared, vulnerable, and helpless to do anything about it. Which was strange, since I was the one who was supposed to protect her rather than the other way around. I wished we could talk about it and knew she’d refuse.

The deck tilted, then leveled out as the shuttle banked and dived towards the planet below. My stomach did flip-flops. There were no view ports, so I looked for something to do. A screen had been built into the back of the seat in front of me. I pulled it down and an infomercial appeared. The actor was happy, and why not? He was on Earth. He smiled and his teeth sparkled. “Hi! My name is Tom. What’s yours?”

I ignored the question and he switched to the noninteractive mode. “Marscorp and its affiliates would like to welcome you to Mars. Regardless of whether you work the interface, or are passing through, our personnel will do everything in their power to make your stay as pleasant as possible. Now settle back and relax while we tell you about your next destination.”

Sasha looked at my screen. “What the hell is that?”

“Some stuff about Mars. Wanta watch?”

She shook her head and yawned. “My mother pays flaks to say nice things about Europa Station too. Most of them are lies.”

I shrugged and turned towards the screen. She closed her eyes and settled back for a nap. A digitally created Mars had appeared and was overlaid with text. The narration continued, but I was pleased to discover that I could read most of the words myself.

I learned that Mars has a diameter of 4,200 miles and an orbital period of 686 days, each of which is 24 hours and 37 minutes long. Mars is known as the “Red Planet” because of the pervasive orange-red color caused by the dust that blows through the atmosphere. The atmosphere is extremely thin. Ninety-five per cent is carbon dioxide, two-point-seven per cent is nitrogen, one-point-six per cent is argon, and the rest consists of miniscule amounts of oxygen, carbon monoxide, and water vapor. Not a good place to visit without a space suit. And then just to keep things interesting, there are incredible fluctuations in temperature, dust storms, and relatively light gravity. The shots of the surface faded away and the actor appeared. He smiled.

“Now, while Mars is not the wild and wooly place that the vids would have you believe, it does have an exciting history.”

Smiley disappeared and was replaced by footage from the Viking lander. I pressed “scan,” waited for the first landing and subsequent colonization stuff to run its course, and hit “play.” The picture steadied and lost resolution as amateur video came on. I had watched the footage a hundred times back on Earth and never tired of it.

A ragtag army of men and women charged a corporate strongpoint, staggered under a hail of darts, and struggled forward. And then, just when it looked as though they might have a chance, a contingent of Mishimuto Marines, the same outfit I had belonged to, stood up from behind a barricade and gunned them down. The tool heads didn’t have a chance. They danced under the impact of plastic and steel and fell in bloody heaps. Horrible though the pictures were, they provided a glimpse into the life I couldn’t remember, and in spite of the fact that I had searched the faces many times before, I did so again. Maybe, just maybe, I’d been there. The narration continued.

“The brutal and completely unnecessary war started when a small group of self-styled ‘freedom fighters’ staged an illegal strike, and sought to impose illegal demands on the corporations and their stockholders.

“Though claiming to represent workers, and pretending to have their interests in mind, the strikers began the systematic destruction of the very facilities that gave them work. And so it was that the corporations formed the Consortium, met force with force, liberated their holdings, and returned honest citizens to their jobs.”

A tidy ending to a war that had destroyed millions of lives, including mine. The rest of the program was a good deal more cheerful. It seemed that Marscorp had gambled everything on a huge city-sized vehicle dubbed Roller Three. The company was proud of the fact that while the processor traveled less than fifty feet a day, it had already consumed more than a thousand square miles of the planet’s surface and crapped enough palletized ingots to turn a small profit. And, given the size of the red planet’s mineral deposits, plus the fact that Roller Four was in the final stages of construction, there was little doubt that even more profits lay up ahead.

A robo-cam swooped over and around the machine while the narrator droned on. The first thing that struck me was the sheer scale of the thing. It was five miles long, three miles wide, and weighed millions of tons. Built like an enormous box, its skin covered by a landing strip, solar arrays, autocranes, and cooling fins, the processor would have resembled a mechanical dung beetle, except that it was generating waste instead of eating it.

Huge tracks, each a quarter of a mile wide, carried the monstrosity forward. Bus-sized boulders exploded as metal-bright treads fell on them. A cloud of fine red dust hung around the machine’s lower parts as steel jaws gouged tons of rock out of the planet’s surface and dropped it onto highway-sized conveyor belts. From there the belts fed the stuff into a nonpressurized hell where heavily armored humans supervised specially designed droids.

But that’s not the sort of thing that flaks are paid to dwell on, so the scene changed and I found myself looking at a spotless cafeteria while a man in a tall white hat bragged about the quality of his food. I lost interest, touched a button, and watched while the screen was retracted into the seat back.

There was very little atmosphere to slow the shuttle down, so it fell like a high-speed elevator. My stomach went with it. It was weird to think that we’d be landing on top of a huge machine. A machine that would continue to function even as we arrived. Powerful engines and a prodigious amount of fuel kept us aloft for the appropriate length of time, but there were no windows, so the teeth-rattling thump and neck-stretching brake job came as a complete surprise. The shuttle coasted for a while and jerked to a stop.

I expected everyone to stand, grab their luggage, and head for the hatch. The newbies looked around and wondered what to do, but the Mars hands stayed where they were. The stew sounded bored. “Please remain in your seats until a pressure tube has been connected to the shuttle’s main hatch and the seat belt light goes off…”

She had more to say, but I tuned it out. I looked at Sasha and found that she was awake. “Welcome to Mars.”

She smiled. “Thanks. Now that we’ve arrived…let’s see how quickly we can leave.”

I nodded. The quicker we reached Europa Station, the quicker people would stop shooting at me, and the quicker I’d be able to collect the fifty thousand. Which reminded me of what I was being paid to do. “They could be waiting for us.”

Her eyes narrowed. “How would they know where to look?”

I knew she was smarter than that, so I assumed it was a rhetorical question. “They would know where we are because A, there is radio communication between Earth and Mars, or B, they came on a faster ship. And what about the captain? She told us to duck. She knew something would happen.”

“Yeah,” she said reluctantly. “It makes sense.”

“Yes, it does,” I agreed. “So here’s the plan. I get off first, trip the ambush, and you slip away.”

Her eyes looked into mine. There was a softness there, mixed with determination, mixed with something else. Her voice was sarcastic.

“Great, just great. You trip the ambush, get yourself killed, and leave me all alone. What the hell kind of bodyguard is that?”

The conflicting signals made me confused. I felt defensive. “Oh, yeah? Well, what would you suggest?”

“That we wait while the others get off, leave together, and slip away.”

It went against my instincts, but I nodded and touched the weapon under my left armpit. It had been loaded aboard ship, and logic dictated that it still was. I wished I could make sure. The shuttle rocked gently as the pressure tube made contact with the hull. The hatch opened, air hissed as pressures equalized, and the seat belt light went out. A newbie forgot to compensate, jumped to his feet, and hit the overhead. The resulting thud could be heard all over the ship. The Mars hands laughed, shook their heads in disgust, and stood with exaggerated slowness.

Sasha and I stayed in our seats until most of the passengers had left, stood, and eased our way forward. The last thing we wanted to do was follow the newbie’s example. The stew with the purple hair and matching day-glo nails looked at my head, nodded politely, and let us pass. Was she more interested than she should be? Or was she attracted to my size, skull plate, and rugged good looks?

My heart beat faster as we walked down the pressure tube towards the terminal beyond. It might have been comical if it wasn’t so frightening. There were thirty or forty people in the waiting area. The moment we stepped out of the pressure tube, three or four of them pointed in our direction and shouted, “There they are!”

The only thing that saved us was the fact that neither group had expected the other to be there. Weapons appeared, darts flew, and people screamed. Innocent bystanders, of which there were damned few, slid-scurried out of the way as the rest of us took cover behind the chrome-and-black-vinyl furniture. I placed my body in front of Sasha’s, but she moved around me. A woman popped up, tried to get a bead on us, and did a slow-motion tumble as Sasha shot her in the chest. I made a note to keep my movements slow and precise.

Alarms went off as a dart whirred by my ear. It came from behind! I turned, saw the stewardess with the purple hair fire again, and felt something graze my arm. I put two darts through her throat. Blood pumped, day-glo nails clutched at her neck, and she slow-fell backwards.

The voice came over the PA system. “THROW YOUR WEAPONS ON THE FLOOR AND PLACE YOUR HANDS ON THE TOP OF YOUR HEAD!”

We never got a chance to obey, because a volley of sleep-gas canisters tumbled end over end into the waiting area and went off with a sibilant hiss. I had just started to react when the darkness rolled me under.