Doom 3™: Worlds on Fire

7

MARS CITY

JACK CAMPBELL SHUT THE DOOR TO THE MAINconference room as Ian Kelliher sat down at the head of the polished mahogany table. As for Swann—for a moment the lawyer looked like he didn’t know which of the ten empty chairs to take.

“Damn it, just sitanywhere , Swann. You’re making me jumpy,” Kelliher remarked.

Swann took a seat on the side.

“Mr. Kelliher,” Campbell said, “would you like the blinds closed?”

Kelliher looked out the windows, watching people walking back and forth, glancing into the big room.

“Not yet. Wait till Hayden gets back. Let these people see who the hell they’re working for.” After a few moments, he turned to Swann. “Okay, before Hayden gets here, let’s review the way things will go in the next year.”

Swann slipped out his PDA, and immediately Kelliher rolled his eyes.

“No, Christ, I don’t want any record of this conversation. Just your ears, Swann, got it? Campbell can remind you of anything you forget.”

“Mr. Kelliher,” Swann said, “are you sure you don’t want to wait until we get back to Earth? I mean—” he looked around at the conference room—“who knows what kind of devices they have in here?”

Campbell took a step away from the door. “I do. My guys went over this room. It is, as Hayden assured us, secure.” He nodded at Kelliher. “You can speak freely.”

“Okay. Here’s what worries me. I don’t think Betruger is showing or telling us everything.”

“But why would he hide—?” Swann began.

Kelliher laughed. “Swann, for a great lawyer, you tend to be pretty gullible. Iknow Betruger. Even when he was working on the ion engine, I believed only half his promises.”

“But that turned out to be exactly as he said.”

“Not exactly. The upper limits kept coming down; his claim that it might be modified for short-range use—all that went out the window. But—and it’s a big ‘but’—he still did something that transformed interplanetary space travel.”

Kelliher glanced out the window at the two marines standing outside.

The door opened and General Hayden walked in. “Sorry—wanted to make sure we had everything ready for you.”

“Good. Okay, Campbell—now you can shut the blinds and let’s get this going.”

The security chief tapped a button on a nearby console, and the clear windows immediately turned opaque.

“There they go…” Private Maria Moraetes watched the glass of the conference room window turn from clear to a silky white, showing nothing of what was on the other side.

“Some secret stuff going down now,” the other marine, Rodriguez, remarked.

“Yeah,” said Moraetes. “I guess so.”

Rodriguez was just another empty-headed grunt, with a tendency to laugh at absolutely nothing.Just great, thought Moraetes.My first week up here, and because I’m Cuban, they team me up with this idiot. Just because our last names have a lot of vowels. Some things never change.

“So we just stand out here,” she said. “Guarding?”

“Guess so. Guarding what…from what? I don’t know. Beats EVA patrol, though. Wait till you do that. Gets so damn creepy, especially at night. You almost start thinking you see things out there.”

“I bet.”

Workers hurried past them at top speed, every department probably ordered by the general to make this place look like one bustling hive of activity.

And she had to wonder: was this a good decision? She could have stayed a marine on Earth, doing administrative work, data management, or any of the desk-related jobs offered. Not much there that seemed like the duties of a space marine, though. This, at least, was a completely different environment than anything she’d ever experienced—even if all she was doing was standing around, a plasma rifle slung over her shoulder, guarding a conference room.

Rodriguez leaned closer. “Hey, Maria, when our shift is done, we could hang in the rec room. You know, just—”

She glared at him. “No. Idon’t know. And I have a lot of reading up to do. I’m supposed to have the completed Mars City layout memorized within two weeks.”

Rodriguez laughed. “Look, they won’t have this place done for another twelve months, if that. Don’t worry about it. But suit yourself. I’m just being friendly.”

“Thanks.” As in,No thanks. She turned to the conference room. “Wish I could be a fly on the wall in there.”

His weird smile returned. “Oh yeah, there’s lots of things about this place they don’t want us knowing about. Things happening.” His grin widened. “Maybe we could talk about it sometime. But you didn’t seem interested.”

She nodded. Maybe that wasn’t such a bad idea after all, even if the information came from this idiot. Something told her that the more she knew about Mars City, the better.

“MacDonald—come here.”

The scientist looked up from his keyboard, well used to Betruger snapping orders at him, treating him like some kind of lab assistant.

Back on Earth, in a still calm and quiet part of California, close to the Sierra mountains, his family went on with their lives, speaking to him daily, his wife sharing the little moments in their two children’s lives. His son Patrick, nearly five, already playing soccer…his daughter Samantha’s birthday party coming soon, complete with giant cake, balloons, and, and—

Why the hell am I missing that?

He thought he knew the answer to that question. The opportunity to work with the great Dr. Malcolm Betruger and his handpicked team on this…technology…that could change everything. At the time, it didn’t seem like the word no was even a possibility.

At the time…

Even his wife had insisted that he had to do it. All MacDonald’s work, in the major research facilities of Cal Tech, MIT, RPI—it all led to this. From those first breakthroughs of the previous century, where electrons were beamed through space, to the actual reconstruction of atoms, moved from one location to another.

Instantly.

It bordered on the incredible, the implications nothing short of amazing.

And Betruger, the creator of the ion engine, was soon getting any and all funding to pursue this dream. There were rumors of amazing breakthroughs. And finally MacDonald knew that any personal work he might undertake in this area was meaningless, if he wasn’t part of Betruger’s team.

But what did that mean? It meant signing on as a good soldier working under the great one himself. Taking orders. Following commands. Not at all what MacDonald imagined it would be.

He had tried to convince his wife Ann to come to Mars City. But she wanted a normal life for herself and the kids. Grass instead of reddish dirt. Clean cool mountain breezes instead of a helmet with compressed air. A summer’s night when the setting sun turned the sky a deep, lush orange before sinking and the pale blue deepened into an indescribable indigo.

“No,” she had said in a way that made it clear that there was no debate. “You, on the other hand,have to go. It’s everything you’ve always dreamed about. Do this amazing work, and come back when you can. We can see you and talk every day.” He knew that she would miss him terribly. But it said something about her love that she insisted that he do this.

Now, though working here, he wondered if it was all worth it. To say that his relationship with Betruger had grown frosty was an understatement.

Betruger now stood close to one of the new full-sized chambers. They had just gotten them out on the floor simply for display. The show for the visiting brass.

“Yes, Malcolm?”I should call him Betruger, MacDonald thought.Show him the same lack of respect he shows me.

“I think we should move these new pods into operational mode as quickly as possible.”

Betruger touched the smooth surface of the pod, an inch and a half of advanced clear polymer. One could explode a bomb inside the chamber, and the shell would still hold.

“You think that’s a good idea?”

Betruger turned to him. “I am asking you whatyou think. You have been overseeing their preparation. I mean, these have been built to specifications you have been working on for months, no?”

MacDonald tried hard not to answer in kind. “Right. That’s true. And my schedule has them remaining offline for at least two, maybe three months. We need to do additional work with the small chambers. We still don’t have any hypotheses to explain—”

Betruger shook his head. “Explain? That’s what you want? Explanations? Answers? Here we are, pushing into a new technology where answers, any explanation, might be difficult if not impossible to find. And you would hold up everything—just for that?”

MacDonald waited a few seconds. A technique he had picked up since arriving on Mars. Don’t snap at the bait. He’d seen other scientists get into arguments with Betruger, then watched them get chewed to bits. Some associates had quit, and more than a few had been openly dismissed.

And new ones showed up in their place—all loyal and unquestioning, all forming a protective ring around Betruger.

And here—

And here…MacDonald came to the real reason he stayed, the real reason he would continue this work. Someone had to see, to watch, to monitor. Not just to send images and reports to Kelliher.

When MacDonald had enough evidence, he could go to—

Well, to whom, anyway? That could be determined later. Not just Kelliher, though. It was important that MacDonald stay here. And not necessarily for the future of the teleportation project, but for the bigger picture as well.

“Let me just say, Malcolm…we aren’t ready to make these operational. So, I wouldn’t advise using them.”

Betruger nodded. “So then, whatwould you advise?”

MacDonald instinctively glanced at the massive locked storage room, essentially a minilab within Delta, in the rear. The tour hadn’t wandered over there. Good thing, too.

“I think we need more experiments with inanimate and animate objects, using the smaller chambers. Give us some time to analyze the changes, the aberrations—”

Betruger shook his head like a scolding parent who didn’t buy into the excuse. MacDonald knew he had to give the project director something more. “And then, we can start major experiments with these full-sized chambers, knowing what to look for, and analyze the source of any discrepancies…. It would just be a matter of months.”

Betruger’s bullet-shaped head nodded. His lips tightly pursed. He was about to say something, quite possibly even telling MacDonald to catch the next shuttle back to Earth.

But then the head scientist took a breath and sighed. “Very well. We will stick to the planned itinerary. For now. But I want some tests this evening.After our guests have left. Alert the full team. Normal security for the area. Make sure Hayden knows.”

Another of MacDonald’s tasks—passing on Betruger’s will to the full team of scientists.

Not for the first time, MacDonald thought,This is more of a military operation than a scientific research project. Orders, chain of command, and a crazed race to the finish line driven by fear or who knows what.

“Okay, no problem.”

“Good. And MacDonald—tonight we will attempt a repeat of last Thursday’s experiment. Understand?”

Last Thursday. A night to remember, MacDonald thought. Rather, a night to haunt the dark hours of sleep.

“Yes. I’ll make sure everything—and everyone—is ready.”