Mars Fire - Chapter X, Sol 3
Serialized science fiction
Previous Chapters: Chapter I , Chapter II , Chapter III , Chapter IV , Chapter V , Chapter VI , Chapter VII , Chapter VIII , Chapter IX
Chapter X - Sol 3 - Wednesday
Culheimer appeared on the south-western horizon near the end of the mid afternoon, with the sun sinking on their right and the towers of the old Mannerfield launch site stretching into the skies on their left. Dixon had taken over the driving after the midday halt, and Burrows sat at the drone station behind him where Ian had originally settled that morning. The young man himself was on the other side of the cockpit, going through the shopping list from Home One.
“What is the rating system that you use for the prioritisation of this list?” Ian was frowning at the terminal in front of him. “I see a lot of my aquaponics items on here, but I cannot make sense of the rest.”
“There should be four tiers, from Mandatory to Luxury,” Burrows replied, leaning back in the chair and flexing his shoulders. The rover bucket seats were hell on the spine, even through the pressure suit padding. “Tier One is mandatory. It’s our food and oxygen, everything we need to keep people alive. A great many things fall under that tier, more than most people realise. Including health and medical. Tier Two is to support the Home One economy. That means everything we need to keep up our exports, and to keep our trade lines going. Without trade, our supplies go into the net negative, and spending on Tier One will then slowly bleed us dry over time.”
“Tier Three is for community benefits. Things that the head doctors call ‘soft touches’.” Burrows continued, ticking the tiers off on his gloved fingers. “It keeps the brain happy, basically. Entertainment dumps with recreational content, new seeds and flavours for the kitchens, toiletries, things like that. Things we can live without, technically, if we were prepared to button down the hatches and go full-on into Survival Mode. Life would just be a lot more grey and bleak if we did.”
“If you cut off my supply of cologne, I will riot,” Dixon interjected. His voice-box modulation made it sound like a pleasant promise. “A man needs his soft touches, damnit!”
“If they cut off your cologne, the rest of us will also riot.” Burrows’ grin turned into a chuckle when Dixon gave him a one-finger salute without even turning around.
“All these big men, and they are so intimidated by the smell of a real man.” Dixon shook his head and tutted, his long hair swaying. Ian, beside him, had an embarrassed grin plastered over his face.
“And finally, Tier Four is basically everything else. That’s for your personal account, which means the Home One account won’t cover it,” Burrows continued. “Drugs, alcohol, VR content, adult entertainment - you name it. There’s always some weird stuff in there, and a lot of it is listed for anonymous pickup at the Home One depot when we bring it in.”
Ian’s puzzled look prompted a further explanation from Burrows.
“It means we drop it in the depot, and then once that item has been paid for by whoever ordered it, that buyer can come collect it and take it home without anyone knowing who they are. So no-one knows how much cologne Dixon has bought over the years, for example.”
“Never enough. A man cannot live on showers and soap alone.” Dixon gave a decisive nod. “That’s all I’m saying on the matter.”
Mannerfield slid by on their left, the gantry towers dark except for the navigation hazard lights that blinked along their tops. Low crete-casted bunkers marched in dusty rows off to the south, while the old landing strip - now partially covered in drifting orange dunes - arrowed off to the south-west, into the prevailing wind.
“Mannerfield was what happened when the original colonists still used shuttles to move between orbit and the surface,” Burrows replied to Ian’s questioning look. “The first slow-gates took a while to take over the travel monopoly, and nowadays most of the orbital traffic lands at only a handful of bigger sites out west.”
“Why did they not recycle the site? There must be tons of equipment in there.”
“Call it a backup plan, for now. Parliament decided to keep it on ice, just in case we needed it again in future.” Burrows pointed one of the hull cameras at the closest of the Mannerfield towers, where a scattering of lights were visible on the dark side of the structure as it slid to their rear. A dusty grey-and-green rover stood at the base of the tower. “They have a handful of maintenance staff on site, and that’s about it. It would take a couple of weeks to crank back up to full power again if they were ever needed.”
The rest of Culheimer slowly drew closer, and Ian leaned forward to take in the sight. Burrows himself also never grew tired of watching the settlement - a city, technically, in Mars terms - as they entered it. The convoy had reformed back into a single column about thirty minutes prior to reaching Mannerfield, and the road here was a gravel bed that had been epoxied together into metre-long slabs of varying hues. Their dust slipstream was finally down to a minimum here, although the ever-present Martian powder never truly left. Navigation lights in reds and greens marked several avenues sprouting off the main road, and the first geodesic domes that they passed were small designs, barely as high as the mining haulers. A solar farm stretched off to the north, tracking the distant sun as it slid westward, and there was a massive mining dump to the south of the road - a misshapen pyramid of blasted rock and regolith - just beside Mannerfield, which blocked off most of the horizon in that direction.
The centre of Culheimer was formed by a collection of flattened concrete pyramids, in much the same style as the ore bay at Alvie Ranch, except magnitudes larger in scale. As one of the oldest mining sites in Bear State, dating back to its De Beers days, Culheimer was responsible for millions of tons of processed ore every year. Open-cast mines had turned some of the nearby craters into scooped-out bowls where shadows and ice reigned in the perpetual darkness of their depths, while long drag-mines out to the south-west showed endless acres of scraped regolith where rovers had combed through the soil to find the sulphur-coated nodules of fermium that ended up being refined and processed to produce the isotopes needed for the slow-gate technology.
“Alvie Ranch does a lot of the same work, just on a smaller scale,” Burrows pointed out one of the drag-mines to Ian, where a line of rovers were pulling what looked like ploughs through the soil. Billowing dust clouds boiled off them as they inched along. “Those deposits are difficult to find, but if you get a good one, you can mine it for years.”
There was a navigation update from Chief Graves as they neared the centre of the city, and the coordinates of their unloading point flashed up on the screens. Burrows studied the figures with one eye while keeping the other on the road outside. Wide avenues, large enough for one of the mining haulers to turn in a full circle, turned the city into a grid pattern here, with pyramids and the newer poly-plastic modular habitat designs flanking them on every side now. Crete berms and stacked stone walls kept the dunes at bay, mostly, although there was a constant clean-up process ongoing to shift the environment back and away from the travel lanes. Tiny figures in pressure suits danced past outside, caught up in their own worlds and errands, while Burrows knew that the subterranean pedestrian tunnels, which criss-crossed the city’s basement level like an ant nest, would have even more people in it.
“Looks like we are unloading close to the rail station. Avenbury District, on the western side.” Burrows cycled through the local map. “Seems Chief Graves is happy enough to send the shipment by rail from here.”
“If we are going along, he’s probably fine with signing off here.” Dixon grunted as someone tried to walk in front of the rover, causing him to swerve. Lacking a horn, he could only flash the rover’s spotlight array at the offending suit. “There’s no sense in them sending the haulers all the way too.”
“Did that guy just try to walk in front of us?” Ian’s voice was incredulous, and Dixon just shook his head.
“The morons don’t look. Must be a newcomer. The atmosphere is so thin here that they cannot hear us, and then they walk into traffic without realising it.” Dixon pointed at the utility rover in front of them. “We once hit a chem-head out in Stockton, with that rover. When the rover crushed his suit, it popped so hard that it blew the wheel right off.”
“I have never heard Pope swear as much as he did that day.” Burrows grinned at the memory. “Bad luck for the chem-head, of course, but if he had survived then I think Pope would have ripped his head off anyway.”
“Did you get in trouble for that?”
“For running over someone who should never have been outside in the first place?” Burrows shook his head. “Nah. There were cameras that caught the guy in the last airlock he used, and when they did his bloodworks during the autopsy it was pretty clear he was smashed out of his skull long before Pope hit him.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever heard of something like that in the Euro colonies,” Ian mused. “They have so many precautions in place for everything.”
“Yeah you guys try to legislate stupidity and put guard rails around it, and then you wonder why stupid things keep happening.” Dixon snorted. The voice-box made it a cross between a cough and moan. “Out here is different. Stupid takes care of itself.”
Avenbury District rolled into sight a few moments later, easily identified by the looming lifting cranes and the wide expanse of trainyard that made up the northern and western parts of the city. A disused nearby mining pit had been converted into a storage warehouse years ago by the addition of a segmented concrete dome to cap it off, and a constant stream of flatbed loading haulers were moving cargo containers into and from the gaping maw that was its entrance. Dixon followed Reyn’s utility rover as it peeled off to the side, along with the other CDM rovers from the convoy, while the Alvie Ranch mining haulers pulled into a queue behind one of the cranes. Chief Graves’ voice grumbled over the convoy link moments later.
“Alright everyone, thanks for the assistance. Exeter, thanks for the eye-in-the-sky feed - we might have had a very different lunch experience if not for you guys.” Graves paused before continuing. “Estimated completion time for us is around seventeen-hundred, and then we are heading straight back to Alvie. I know some of our escorts are heading back the same way, and we’d appreciate your company at that time.”
“For the rest of you heading on to New Hopetown - please keep an eye on our babies,” Graves continued. “I’ll transfer the militia paperwork when we get back home, and then your CDM contacts can arrange reimbursements.”
“You get paid for this?” Ian asked once Graves ended, and Dixon shrugged.
“CDM Command has a resource pool for escort missions like this,” Burrows elaborated. “All of Bear State has a vested interest in making sure our convoys get to where they need to be, which is why the militia will assist with runs like this. Everyone who helps, gets reimbursed for travel costs, and then a bit extra as ‘danger pay’ for risking their lives.”
“Not a lot though, this is definitely not a primary career for anyone,” Dixon added. “We do this because it is a necessity, and the rest of the time we do the things that actually matter.”
“However, for you, this is an important day here,” Burrows grinned at Ian, and pointed at the haulers outside. “You just earned your first pay in Bear State.”
Ian’s face flushed, and he broke out into a matching grin.
“How much do I get?”
“Not enough for cologne, I can promise you that!” Dixon cut in, and the rover filled with the sound of laughter.
After that, as the haulers began unloading their cargo, Burrows coordinated with Reyn to get both of their rovers loaded on the flatbeds heading in the same direction as the Alvie Ranch ore containers. The cargo line to New Hopetown ran from a simple, open platform that was geared towards containers and rovers, not passengers, and Burrows pointed out the distant passenger terminal’s domed shape as Dixon manoeuvred the Exeter up the ramp behind the utility rover.
“Remember the map I drew yesterday?” Burrows waited for Ian to nod before continuing. “We’re at the southern end of that triangle now. There are two lines running north to Stockton, and two north-west to the capital. One line carries cargo, the other carries passengers. We’re taking the cargo line, which means we park with the containers and stay in our rover the entire trip.”
The train engines were bullet-headed affairs, with sharp prows to breach the sand drifts that inevitably covered segments of the rail lines. The locomotive that stood on a parallel track to theirs, being serviced in preparation for their trip, was a scarred beast with silver streaks up its nose and well past its tiny cockpit window. The bare metal glistened, turning the remnants of its original green paint scheme into a tattered shirt that failed to hide the sleek muscles underneath. Hulking engine modules clustered around its neck and rear, hinting at the torque it could produce to get the thousands of tonnes of cargo moving.
“The passenger line is separate from this one. They have proper Earth-style coaches, with pressurisation, and they travel a lot slower than the cargo lines.” Burrows shifted his aim to point at the streaked locomotive next to them. “That is one of the cargo engines. The cargo line runs at around two hundred kilometres an hour, which is fine if you are a pile of rocks.”
“Or rock-headed enough to do the trip in a rover, like us,” Dixon quipped as he settled the rover down. There was a seesawing motion as the articulated wheel legs contracted, bringing the Exeter’s hull down until it was resting directly on the flatbed beneath them. Ahead of them, the utility rover was going through the same motion. “It’s not a pleasant trip outside, and if we hit something along the way, everything goes flying. Quick and nasty way to get into orbit, if you ask me.”
Ian’s face blanched, but Burrows was quick to reassure him.
“There hasn’t been a major accident in years. This system is part of the backbone of Bear State, so there are a lot of smart people involved with keeping it running.” Burrows indicated the airlock behind them. “For now, let’s get strapped in and make sure we’re ready for the trip.”
They cycled out of the airlock again, this time without weapons, and joined Reyn and Pope on the flatbed outside. They were at the rear of the train, on the very last car, and only a handful of other rovers had joined them for the trip. Several of their crews were already busy strapping the vehicles down as well.
The process was quite simple: travelling at a speed of around two hundred kilometres per hour, even the thin atmosphere of Mars could lift up a multi-tonne rover and toss it off the train without effort. Burrows had seen people go flying too, when they had been foolish enough to step out of their rovers while the train was under way. Each of the rovers had cargo panniers filled with webbing straps for exactly this purpose, and for the next forty minutes the men from Home One worked to secure their rovers to the flatbed’s surface. Tie-points and cleats had been cut into the decking to facilitate the process, and the men laboured with the heavy kevlar straps to secure first the wheels, and then the belly anchors on each rover to matching points on the decking. Ian followed orders and learned quickly, and Burrows found himself quietly impressed by the young man’s willingness to jump in and get involved.
He was sweating by the time they secured the last of the straps on the utility rover, though, and their comm channels had a fair bit of heavy breathing and grunting on it as they finished. The utility rover was a bulkier design than the CDM model, and would resist the airflow a lot more than the slicked-down shape behind it. It always needed extra ties. In front of the utility rover was another CDM rover that would at least act as a windbreak of sorts, and it was from this rover that a familiar face approached once they were done. Burrows raised four fingers to signal their suit channel to the newcomer.
“Will, it’s always good to see you.” Burrows extended his hand to Will Nicholson, and the two men shook. Burrows introduced him to Ian as well. “Will, this is Ian Drees. He’s a new import we got from the Euro colony. Ian, this is Will Nicholson - he’s the CDM lead in charge of Cora Springs, one of our northern neighbours.”
The two men shook, and Nicholson cast a critical eye over the younger man in his white-and-blue suit. Nicholson was of a similar middle age to most of them, and had a perpetual downturned mouth that, combined with his tanned skin and stropped cheeks, always reminded Burrows of a disproving drill sergeant looking for an excuse to ruin your day.
“Welcome. You look young. Are you here for work or adventure?”
“Mostly work, officially.” Ian nodded at the other Home One members with a slight smile. “I’m not sure about the adventure part yet.”
“Hmm. If you hang out with this lot, you’ll get more adventure than you bargained for.” Nicholson squinted at them one by one before turning to Burrows. “Are you also going to H-town for supplies?”
“We thought we’d jump on the supply train before people started panic-buying. It won’t take long before they realise what the latest Jade-fall means.” Burrows nodded. “We’re going to stock up on essentials before the prices go through the roof.”
“So you’re one of the first panic-buyers, eh?” Nicholson scowled, then snorted. “Guess we both are. Some people are going to wake up one day and not understand why they are Union slaves.”
“Any sightings out on your side?”
“One is one too many, if you ask me. We had unmarked rovers on our eastern fields two weeks ago. Again at the end of last week.” Nicholson’s scowl was back. “They keep sniffing around our dig sites there. When we chase them off the one, they pop up at the next. Fucking dogs. I’m going to put landmines down if this continues.”
Burrows noticed Ian’s eyes go large at the mention of the weapons.
“I’m surprised they even reached you. Cora Springs is - what, four hundred klicks from the border?” Burrows pictured the map in his mind, and the distances between the various bigger settlements that they often frequented. “You’re actually further from the border than we are.”
“I talked to the places east of us. Henderson, Plackville, the hippies out at Yuaghaca. They all see these rovers, but they don’t challenge them.” Nicholson’s scowl deepened. “The Fuldas are the only ones who have monitors up, and that’s because Warwick is worried about their health issues. He logs everything that could be a visitor to them only because he’s so bloody paranoid.”
“And no clear identities on any of them?”
“None.” Nicholson shook his head. “Generic models, no markings, no response on the comms. That chief idiot from Yuaghaca swears that he recognised one of the rovers from the old Marsden fleet, but you know how they are out there.” Nicholson made a waggling gesture at the side of his head, in the universally understood sign of someone who was out of their mind. “I’m still surprised they haven’t asked for emergency relief yet after all these years.”
On the tracks beside them, the cargo locomotive twitched into life, and began to inch forward. Billows of dust rose from the rails as its internal turbines sucked outside air into compressors before blasting it out on the rails again, to help clear the track ahead.
“We can talk more at H-town. You have my frequency.” Nicholson nodded and strode off without another word, back towards his rover. The remaining men shared a look.
“Was this in the last CDM update we got?” Reyn was the first to ask the question that also burned in Burrows’ mind. “None of this sounds familiar to me.”
“I’m going to pull it up when we are under way now. I don’t recall any of this from the Southern District updates.” Burrows nodded back towards their own CDM rover. “Let’s mount up and continue this from inside.”
Pope was the only one to grin. Something sparkled in his eyes that Burrows could not place.
“I think we need to go visit Cora Springs again. It sounds to me like things are going to get pretty interesting there soon.”
Next chapter: Chapter XI
