Battleground Mars (18 page)

“Why?” Saul asked. “We’ve put it all beyond use. They can’t get this lot working again.”

“I want to hide the fact that we’ve taken their breathing masks. If they know that, they’ll know we’ve got problems with our life support and they’ll try and hit us again where we’re vulnerable.”

He nodded his understanding and left Rahm to place the charges with a timed detonator. Damian’s men piled the bodies around the drillhead so that there was one, large pile that could be destroyed beyond recognition.

“Gabi, you and I had better go with him, I’ll bring the rifles and you can check out the technical side in case we have any problems.”

She nodded and climbed aboard. The unfamiliar vehicle was strange, and the first oddity they noticed was that there were no seats. Apparently every Tauron traveled standing, even the driver. Saul started working out how to operate the controls. At one point they were nearly thrown out onto the surface when the transport lurched forward, but Saul hastily reversed the control to where it had been and they stabilized. He nodded at Damian and the buggy went gently ahead. Saul jerked and stalled several times but got the hang of it and after the first two miles was able to follow without problems. They increased speed and raced across the surface, and arrived back inside Mars Base without mishap.

Gabi worked through the night on the breathing sets. Rahm and Damian waited in the canteen, if she was able to adapt a set for their use, it would change the whole equation. There would be air on Mars, all they had to do was go out and take it. The level of the bourbon bottle went lower, but they couldn’t do anything other than wait. Finally Gabi came into the canteen. She was wearing a Tauron breathing mask, with the face plate modified and bent into a shape that followed her facial contours.

“Are you really breathing through that thing?” Saul asked in wonderment.

She nodded. “Yep, just this, and nothing else. It works!”

Her eyes were shining in triumph. She deserved her moment too, Rahm reflected. She’d performed a wonder.

“So all we need to do is take enough sets from the Taurons and we can keep our air supply running,” he said to her.

“It’s more than that, Rahm. They use small quantities of grafilek. If we can get to their main source, the scrubber that processes all of their air, we can use it for our own system.”

“If we had enough power to make it work.”

He cursed himself as he said it. A shadow came over her face and he saw the tiredness in her eyes. “Yes, if we had the power,” she muttered. “I’d forgotten about that.”

She took off the mask and wiped her eyes.

“Rahm?”

He looked at her. “Yes?”

I’ve had enough for one day. Take me to bed.”

So she’d forgiven him for his remark about the power. “Sure thing, Ma’am.”

They made love in a much slower and tenderer way than the first time. It was as if they’d both decided that this relationship was going to last. They’d passed the one night stand phenomenon and had each decided to trust the other. Rahm reflected on the sheer, stunning excitement of their first time. But this was something more, they gloried in each other’s bodies, caressing each other, stroking and exploring, finally surging to a mutual climax that sent them into the dizzying heights of the most exquisite passion. Yet afterwards, neither of them was tired anymore. They lay together, quietly, until she spoke.

“You’re like a different man when you fight, you know. Like tiger. I can almost see your back arch, your chin goes up, your eyes kind of slit and you take up a stance that looks as if you’re ready to take on the world.”

“Mm, I guess it’s the adrenaline, I believe it can do that.”

“Maybe. Or maybe it’s who you are, what you are. Tell me, what happened on Earth?”

He was instantly alert. “What do you mean?”

“In Afghanistan. You were attacked and they murdered most of your people. I gather that you froze. Why did you freeze?”

He was silent for so long that she thought he wasn’t going to answer. But finally, he did.

“I never knew what happened, Gabi. Did I freeze? I guess, yeah, I did. Ok, yeah, I froze. Is that what you wanted to know?”

“I already knew that, Rahm. It’s in the files, besides, it’s in the news reports from the time. But that wasn’t what I was asking you, was it? I asked you why? Do you know the reason?”

“No, I do not,” he replied shortly.

Again, there was a long silence.

“Don’t you want to find out?”

“Not really, no.”

He felt the room growing colder. It wasn’t just the lack of power for the main heating systems, as they still hadn’t cooled too much. He wanted her to stop, to shut up. He wanted her to go. To leave him alone.

“I want to help you, Rahm. This is a ghost that won’t go away, so you need to deal with it.”

“I deal with it fine,” he snapped.

She was quiet for a moment. “Share with me, please,” she whispered eventually. “Why won’t you have a simple scan when we get back on Earth? You’ll know then what the problem is when you get the result. It’ll take a few minutes, that’s all.”

He struggled to control his anger. Didn’t she understand why not? Damn her, why couldn’t she drop it. Finally, he burst out, “and if the scan came up negative? I’ll be branded a coward, which is crazy. I’m not afraid of anything, when the time comes to fight, I’ll fight. I’ll always defend my people, always. Period!”

“But you’re afraid of taking a brain scan.”

He was silent again, thinking. Yes, it was true. He was afraid. Not of the scan, but of it coming up negative and by association branding him a coward. He thought back to that raid, the raiders smashing into the complex, looting, raping and murdering. Afterwards, there was blood. So much blood.

“It’s ok, Rahm. I think I understand, but one more thing, I know you want me to drop this. Before I do, you should know that there are hundred of reasons why someone can suddenly freeze up. Most won’t show up on a scan, but they don’t mean you’re less of a man, less of a person.”

“Look, forget the damned scan. It happened, and I have to live with it. That’s it!”

“Ok, sure, you’re right, I shouldn’t have said anything,” she replied quickly. “It’s finished, ok?”

But he knew it wasn’t finished. The stain was still there for weasels like Tobin Ryles to hurl in his face. It was his cross to bear. At least he’d lived, when the others had died.

When he woke up, she was gone. He washed in cold water, for there wasn’t enough power for the shower, either to heat the water or to pump it through the shower head. He decided not to bother with a shave and dressed in yesterday’s underclothes. There would be nothing cleaned until the power was restored, and that didn’t look to be anything they could look forward to soon. There was no sign of Gabi in the canteen so he went looking for her. He found her in the workshop. Her eyes were red with lack of sleep.

“I’ve been working on the alien power source,” she said in answer to his question.

“What, all night?”

“Yes, I couldn’t sleep. We’re close to getting over our life support problems, but you’re correct, until we can fix the power, we’re not going anywhere.”

“Can’t Dan do anything about the main system, surely it can be repaired?”

She shook her head. “The monsters did too good a job on it. All that’s left is twisted, broken alloy, plastics and polymers.”

“Doesn’t electricity come from dynamos driven by motors?”

She giggled. “Now I know you’re a dinosaur. Yes, it used to. These days it’s a more complicated process, part of it is a chemical reaction between some of the elements we mine here on Mars with and rare metals that we brought with us from Earth. It’s very complicated and rather fragile, I’m afraid. That’s why it was so utterly destroyed.”

“But surely, we could make some power by using the old system, a motor that drives a dynamo.”

She smiled again. “Sure, it could, in theory. The trouble is that all of our motors here on Mars are electrical. We’ve no energy to charge them.”

“What about the Tauron motors?”

She looked puzzled as she tried to remove a component from a piece of alien equipment. “What about them?”

“They run fine, after all, we drove back in that transport. I mean, their motors drive the wheels, just like ours do. Why can’t we use their own transport motors to power up dynamos to give us some power?”

She shook her head to clear it. “Hang on, let me work this out.”

She jotted down a few notes, muttering to herself. Finally she looked up, this time she looked triumphant. “It could work! My God, we’ve got power, it's a step forward. I think there must be enough in that transport to keep us going for some time. Rahm, you’re brilliant.”

“Not brain damaged then?”

She aimed a playful punch at him. “That too. Let’s go and talk to Dan and see if he can make it work.”

Dan Weathers was old but he was not blind. He grasped what she meant even before she finished speaking. “Gabi, you’re a genius,” he exclaimed. He kissed her on the cheek, and then called for attention. “Men, I want that alien transport stripped down to the bare machinery so that we can install a dynamo.”

“It wasn’t me that thought of it, Dan. It was Rahm.”

“Really? Well, that was well done. But I couldn’t kiss Rahm, so it’s best that I thought it came from you. We need more transports, it we can make this work we can station one in the air scrubber cave and get the equipment working again. It’ll be even more limited than before, but still, we’ll have air circulating around Mars Base.”

Jacques Fechter, attracted by the noise, joined them. There wasn’t much cheering around Mars Base at the moment, he was puzzled as to the reason. Tobin Ryles trailed behind him.

“What can we do, Dan? How can we help make this work?” he asked his chief engineer.

“Get me more equipment to play with. I need a transport to power a dynamo for the scrubbers and several more to give us more power sources inside Mars Base. We still don’t know what makes them tick, but we don’t need to. As long as the motor turns, we’ll use it to power our dynamos and generate electricity. Oh, and we need as many breathing sets as you can gather, now that Gabi has managed to convert them.”

The manager nodded. “That’s what we’ll do, then. Tobin, run and fetch Damian, we need to send out another team to hit their drilling teams.”

“I’ll go out with them again,” Rahm said.

“I appreciate that,” Jacques said. “Tobin, hurry, you need to find Damian and get him here, pronto.”

The man walked quickly away and they fell into a discussion about where to mount the next mission.

“It needs to be a long way from the last one,” Rahm said. “They may think we have a team in that area and are prowling around looking for targets.”

“Lyot Crater.”

They looked up, Damian Hacker had appeared with a chart tucked under is arm. There was no sign of Ryles.

“I’ve been checking the most recent overflights. That information is all we have to go on now that the systems are down. It’s not so far as the last raid, we can drive up through the Sea of Acidallia.”

“It’s damned cold up in those latitudes,” Jacques observed. “Those monsters don’t seem to feel it.”

“With skin like leather it’s no surprise,” Damian replied. “We’ll have to manage with what we have. We can wear plenty of thermal clothes inside our pressure suits and turn up the internal heating to full. We have to have that equipment.”

They went to prepare the two buggies to drive up to Arctica, a part of the Martian surface they had avoided so far because of its environmental problems. Each man wore three sets of thermal underclothes and checked out the heating system of their suits. They climbed aboard the buggies and prepared to drive out through the airlock. Gabi stayed in her workshop.

“I’m needed here, there’s a lot of work to do on rigging up the new power and air systems. Besides, Kacy is much more knowledgeable than me,” she murmured as he leaned over to kiss her before putting on his helmet.

“But not half so pretty,” he grinned.

“She’d better not be, buster. Good luck. Come back safe.”

He nodded, put on his helmet and boarded the buggy. The rest of the men were aboard, Saul was driving their vehicle. He drove forward and into the airlock, muttering, “time to kick some alien ass.”

They were still grinning as they drove out across the Martian landscape. Saul was looking forward to the coming battle. Rahm examined his own thoughts; for some reason he felt that something was wrong. That wasn’t unusual, since so much had gone wrong on this contract that the only surprise would be if something wasn’t wrong. But this time, he couldn’t be sure. It was something that was almost internal, not a threat from the outside, the harsh environment, the constant threat of the monsters. He experienced a twinge of fear. Oh Christ, no, let it not be that. Not again, not now.

Even through their thick clothing and the heated pressure suits they could feel the Martian chill descending on them as they drove across the vast plain of the Accidalian Sea, nearer the Arctic region. Lyot Crater lay on the edge of plain, about five miles distant on the cusp of the planet’s surface that lay between the less cold center and the freezing Arctica. The pressed on as fast as the surface allowed until in the distance they saw the eruption on the surface that marked the Lyot Crater. At a sign from Damian Hacker, they came to a stop and climbed out.