“You love me, Briggs,” Rex said to her.
“You love me too, Rex,” she replied.
Then there was the hug, which was not near long enough. Flashing her wide smile, Rex turned for the door, her curly, platinum hair bouncing as she went. There was a final wave, the door closed, and that was her last memory of her sister. She recalled every detail as though it just happened, even the smell of the perfume on Rex’s pink blouse.
Briggs was twenty-eight when her father died, and her mother decided to give up two-year-old Rex. Unwilling to let the spirited child be raised by some cold-logic organization, Briggs had stepped up to adopt her sister. By Earth standards, she was too young to have a child of her own. Now at seventy-nine, she was too young to lose one. There were fifty-two years of memories that Briggs replayed during the year since she heard of her sister’s death, but that last one she went back to more than any other. With the same reluctance, she let it go.
Briggs opened her eyes.
Through the view screen in front of her, the Red Planet was emblazoned in gold letters on a glittering, scarlet sign one thousand miles long hovering in orbit over Mars. It was the largest of a multitude of advertising pieces floating along on automated systems to welcome visitors in the year 2353. Past the colorful displays sold to the highest bidder, the planet was an immense sphere of brown shades, dull even without the comparison. The shining symbols in orbit lined the way to the spaceport at New Moscow near the Olympus Mons, and the four domes of the planet’s largest city were clustered at the base of the volcano.
A pair of space cruisers blazing with light moved smoothly in that direction, with pointed bows and wide sterns reminiscent of ancient sea faring vessels. Observation towers jutted from the hull providing a three-hundred-sixty-degree view, and they were retractable for times when gravitational forces would apply too much stress. The vessels were brightly colored, one blue and one red, striped with lighter shades. Large glowing letters on the sides of both ships read, ‘Space Comfort Cruise Lines’.
Out of the shadow of the colossal blue ship Briggs changed course before entering the meager atmosphere. The gold light of the ‘red planet’ sign washed over the rough ship illuminating the words ‘Chandley’s Space Towing’ in outlined letters on the side. Below that was the name of the ship, Seven-C. Her oval, dingy white tow ship had missing side panels and exposed internal parts. The sole occupant, she reclined on her floating pilot’s chair and watched the welcoming sign past her bare, brown feet propped up on her control panel.
The inside of Seven-C resembled the outside, with mismatched parts showing corrosion, dents, and a scratched floor from long, hard use. There was no refuse about though, and all equipment was safely stored in compartments along the wall. Any loose items would become projectiles in a collision.
Deciding she had enough of the Mars view, Briggs used her brain-computer to play a silent movie on her screen. Characters clad in wispy white garments moved through a fictional city scape of porcelain towers floating in clouds. Soft music played to set the tone of the scenes, but there was no dialogue, nor did the actors move their lips in mock speech.
Below the curved glass screen were switches and buttons, flashing lights and dials, many of which showed an array of faded corporate logos, as though bragging about the diversity of the repair parts. All of console was fake; only pulling enough power to keep the lie lit up and had no effect on working the ship. Beneath the carefully fashioned crusty exterior of Seven-C, a well-maintained engine operated with barely a hum. Through her brain-computer, she knew all sensor information from arrays more advanced than on the wealthy cruise ships.
Briggs looked as though she belonged on the seemingly neglected vessel. She was tall and stocky, with thick limbs and torso filling out a long sleeved, faded blue coverall. Her dark skin was smooth, and her brown eyes had a piercing gaze. She kept her black hair bound on the top of her head in a neat bun, and her eyebrows were thin lines. The appearance of age was something humanity had conquered over a century ago. She was six months from her eightieth birthday, but she told people she was half that. It helped of course to have the proper documents to transmit, but that was all part of her cover, the lie in which she lived.
The words on the outside of her seemingly decrepit ship were the only thing about her that was not a complete deception. She traveled Earth’s solar system towing away derelict ships and pieces of space debris with her small, powerful vessel. The official jobs gave her an excuse to be in a specific area, but her true occupation was disposing of human refuse. Among the billions of people scattered throughout the solar system, some thought they could break and maim and never have the wrong person come tap them on the shoulder. For many violent characters in her three decades as an agent, she had been that person enforcing laws no one else could. She considered it no different from hauling junk out of transport lanes. Someone had to keep the way clear for people that knew how to get along.
She appeared relaxed, reclining in her floating seat with her feet up and hands folded behind the small tight bun of black hair. Yet her mind was in turmoil as she neared her destination on planet Mars.
A year ago, Rex died down there.
Briggs sniffed and let out a long sigh. She silently commanded her ship to begin the descent. She shifted to set her feet on the warm floor so she could watch the surface draw closer as though it were a hated enemy. The movie continued to play on the screen, but she had no need to transfer to a picture of Mars. The data she received from Seven-C’s sensors painted a much more vivid picture of the planet surface than an ocular view. Far below her ship, a pair of ground vehicles sped across the surface, throwing up plumes of dirt, and Seven-C told her everything about them, including the drivers. They were just thrill seekers having a ride, and she dismissed them as irrelevant.
The space cruisers and vessels like them ferried millions of visitors every year to meticulously crafted amusement centers on Mars, but she was not going to one of those. Her destination was a former gambling city named Powlett that was now on the restricted access registry, but she did not pay any mind to proper access. Out of necessity for her work, she carried in her brain-computer the key to landing on any world in any port. She was not working this time. This trip was personal.
“It’s not really red,” she mumbled in her husky voice as the dusty surface drew near. “More like a dirty orange.”
Around the dry, scarred surface the darker ridges of mountains and crevasses came into sharper focus. She headed for the curved line that marked the end of the sun’s rays. Powlett was on the night side, and that suited her mood.
She passed from day to night within seconds as the miles slipped by. Ahead the dome that protected Powlett from the harsh Martian elements came into view. Barely lit, the dome glowed softly on a wide, flat area with a sharp ridge in the distance behind it.
Her ship pulled around the curved edge of the city to a large silver ring in the side of the dome. She had not visited Powlett before, but these commercial docking bays were standard for these constructs. It would allow her to park her ship in seclusion. She transmitted her universal access code, and the round metal door slid open with enough space for Seven-C to pass through. Fully open, the thick metal door could accommodate a ship ten times the size of her towing rig.
Inside the expansive interior of the bay was a variety of ships from personal work vessels to immense troop personnel carriers that delivered a literal army of scientists, bureaucrats, engineers, and other necessary professionals essential for a successful invasion. The ships were neatly parked against the interior surface, including the ceiling, held in place with magnetic restraints that cradled the vessels. Logos and symbols were splashed appropriately across the various hulls of the docked ships, seventy-three of them she determined from a quick scan.
Last year Briggs called in personal favors to access the file for her sister’s final mission. Rex’s partner brought it back to Earth, then retired. Briggs had locked-out his name from her copy of the report. She did not want to know him.
Rex was sent to Mars to apprehend a man wanted in connection with a bombing on Earth that decimated a neighborhood in Southeast Asia and killed thousands. In seeking their prey, Rex and partner uncovered a nest far larger than they had feared. Left unchecked, the population of former miners and their families had multiplied into an underground community of millions outside the Big Sis. If that was not enough, the ruling caste also convinced most of the population of Down Town that Earth was a wasted world and human life only thrived on Mars. The mission data included copies of messages Rex sent to her partner detailing her criticism of the Martian civilization.
The reaction from Earth was quick and predictable, one Briggs was familiar with. Ships like the ones currently docked here were sent out immediately to locate, catalogue, and define every aspect of the unknown Martians. Being sealed in caves made Down Town vulnerable in a different way than surface cities, and specialists pumped gas into the air supply. One night the Martians went to sleep in power over their own lives and woke up conquered. Then began a long cycle of research and analysis of every aspect of the city by an army that was already settled in. Small pockets of resistance were quickly stamped out. Though coming from many professions, the Earthlings sent to occupy Down Town fought like soldiers and had access to technology more advanced than the Martians. Once Down Town fell the other underground cities quickly followed, with the total so far of over twenty-three million people discovered living undocumented under the Mars surface.
Briggs chose a spot between two larger vessels and directed her ship to attach to the docking wall. She stood and traipsed over on the bare floor to her boots next to the door, sliding them onto her feet with little effort. She triggered the door with her brain-computer, and it slid open. She saw the side of a dark blue shuttle three times the size of Seven-C, and a drop sixty yards to the hard metal floor. She stepped out of the vehicle, and the anti-gravity beam from Seven-C lowered her smoothly. Once she passed the bulk of the neighboring ship, the beam pushed her along to the bay exit, a door on the far wall. The beam from Seven-C gripped her entire body at once without leaving any parts dangling or flailing, and took her the shortest, clear way.
When Briggs’ feet were still over a dozen yards from the ground, her brain-comp identified a noise that could signal impending disaster. She looked up, and a hundred yards above her a ship was falling from the ceiling. With less than a second before being crushed, she ordered the towing beam to throw her sideways. She landed hard and rolled across the floor. The sound of the fallen ship smashing its nose flat was amplified in the enclosed space as she continued to roll away from the wreck. After the crumpled ship settled, she regained her feet, and put a hand to her hair to make sure the bun was still in place. With a huff, she knew she would have to re-tuck it. Pausing to fix her bun, she felt a few bruises from her fall but no other injuries. She was not surprised since she had not suffered a serious wound in three decades.
Common free citizens of the solar system were prohibited by law from having combat augmentations. Missing or damaged parts for health quality could be regrown in medical beds, and cybernetic body parts had caused wars in centuries past. However, Briggs did not have a typical job, and did not live by ordinary rules. Underneath her skin was a layer of micro-circuitry improving her strength, speed, and durability beyond normal limitations, and her brain-comp had advanced software. These enhancements were implanted when she took her job as an agent, the only one of her kind.
She calculated the rate at which the ship fell, and determined it was not a free-falling accident. Someone had triggered a reversal of the magnetic field holding the ship, pushing it at her with intent to kill. Staring at the crushed front of the fallen ship, she knew even she would not have survived that. Enraged, she bolted for the exit at a faster speed on her feet than the anti-gravity beam, unlocking and commanding it to open in time for her to dart through.
Briggs turned an angry glare up and down an olive-green hallway, with darker green doors spaced along the inside wall. The entire ceiling produced a gentle glow for illumination. Once inside the compound, she was able to access the power and information grid of the building, blocked from the outside. She identified two hundred seventeen people in occupancy, with most of those sleeping or engaged in intimate moments. She made a quick scan through the files, jogged down the hallway to the first door and stepped through as it opened.
The room was dark, but her brain-computer scanned the interior immediately and identified all objects and threats. The most interesting thing was a tiny woman, standing a little over five feet tall, with white hair pointing out from her scalp in sharp points. Her skin was not as white as her hair, but it was close. She wore thin rimmed glasses, which must be what allowed her to see in the dark, and over her terrified eyes she had thick white eyebrows. Shrinking back as Briggs advanced, the smaller woman wore a mottled red and orange, long sleeved coat that hung to her knees over matching baggy pants and a white undershirt.
Briggs knew what she was looking at and sneered down at her. “A Martian agent. What are you doing in here?”
The door slid closed behind her, throwing the room back into darkness, and she could not detect any weapons on the woman. The coat, however, was lined with blocking material and could hide anything. Briggs’ dark vision worked in colors, showing outlines and details of mundane objects in blue, and painted the woman red to represent a threat. The Martian held her hands out wide to show no hostility, but Briggs watched her, trusting her reflexes to deal with whatever her opponent could use.
Without warning a smaller arm darted from inside the right of the coat holding a small blaster. Before the tiny, pale arm could bring the weapon to bear, Briggs leapt forward and snatched it in her big fist. Still angry, she twisted and crushed the miniscule bones with the one hand. The Martian screamed but the soundproof walls would hold it in, and with her link to the building grid Briggs cancelled a general distress caused by the yell. The Martian used both her other hands to try and pry her grip open, but her one fist held against the tugging. The crumpled white arm dropped the small blaster and with a glance Briggs identified it as an unknown factory-made piece. It had a small handle sized for the tiny extra arm and a black cylinder on top. With a swipe of her foot, she kicked the blaster against the wall.
“Nice augment,” Briggs told her as she released some of the pressure without letting go. “I bet the fellas love it when you’re in the sack.”
The Martian punched her jaw, but the complex mesh under Briggs’ skin could harden in an instant for defense. The fist bounced off without effect, and the smaller woman let out another gasp of pain. Briggs reapplied her previous pressure. The Martian bared her teeth, but she kept her other hands at her side, apparently done with fighting.
Briggs told her, “I can pull this thing off anytime I want, and this beauty must have cost a bundle.” If people were careful enough, they could get away with small internal implants, but something so obvious as a third arm would be reported as soon as it was noticed, as required by genetic law.
“I was born with it, Earth-pig!” the Martian replied through her gnashing teeth.
Briggs glowered at her. “Then you must be real attached. Now why did you try to squash me?”
After another gasp of pain, she answered, “I detected your ship as you flew into the docking bay, but you did not log in the proper channels. If you triggered an alarm I could be discovered.”
With her free hand Briggs pulled down a sleeve of the red-orange coat, revealing a wrist unit granting the Martian a link to the central grid. Four inches long, the computer band was thinner than one of the agent’s small, white fingers.
Briggs shook her head and pursed her lips before saying, “I flew in quiet to avoid confrontations, and I catch a Martian spy doing what? Copying data?” The walls of the small room they were in were covered in long drawers. This was a room where hard copies of data were stored on thin metal slivers with microscopic writing. “This is the kind of story that when I tell people about it, they don’t believe me.”
Now starting to sweat, the Martian turned her eyes on the shelves. “But these records are shipping out tomorrow,” she explained. “Computer files can be erased or altered. These strips are real information, hard to change, resistant to everything. It is our history, Martian history, and it is going to Earth, like everything else.”
Briggs’ brow narrowed in suspicion. “For that you tried to drop a ship on me? Most of me would have ended up in a maintenance bucket. Do you know how that makes me feel?”
The Martian glanced over her larger frame. “You are just another Earthling to me. I need hours more here before I am finished, and I could not have you triggering the alarm. Why are you here? Did you come for the records too?”
Briggs released the woman, and took a step back before telling her, “I came here on a personal matter. If you had not tried to squish me like a bug, I would have walked right by without a single thought your way.”
The pale woman swallowed and said, “I am sorry. Go your way, and I will go mine.”
Briggs lashed out with her left hand. The punch threw the smaller woman back against the shelves, sending her glasses flying, and dark red blood pouring from her ruptured nostrils. The Martian was unconscious before she slumped down the wall.
Briggs said with a sneer, “You don’t try to kill someone and then say ‘sorry’.”
She turned on her heel, mentally ordered the door to open, and marched through, leaving the Martian in the dark. Back in the green hall, she turned right and proceeded to take the shortest route from the building. Down another hall with only one door at the end, she reached the exit without encountering anyone else. Putting the Martian agent out of her mind, she stepped out into the carefully maintained dome atmosphere of Powlett.
Briggs looked around, impressed with how unimpressive the Martian city appeared. The dusty streets were straight, intersecting at regular distances. Other than the long, wide building behind her, the other Powlett dwellings were one-story squares of precisely cut dirty-orange stone. Far overhead, the dome had a faint blue sheen, and this night the city was dark, without a single source of illumination she could detect. The investigation into Down Town revealed connections between the underground city and the permanent Powlett residents. Many of the casinos funded Down Town, and their agents kept necessary supplies and information flowing to the Martian overlords. Now Powlett was as subjugated as Down Town, with both communities effectively shut off until Earth Management decided it was safe to turn them back on.
Briggs spared less than a second of thought on the plight of the Martians and reached out for the city grid to locate a means of transportation. She found a taxi warehouse two blocks away and started a modest run in that direction. The taxi office looked the same as the other Powlett buildings, with a twenty-foot square segmented metal panel on the ground next to it, the service elevator. Her code granted her access to the office, and down a flight of stairs she found a clean tile hallway lined with doors and two adjoining halls. She declined to turn on the lights since that might draw attention, and she did not need them to see anyway. Her brain-computer mapped the interior, and after a left turn she found the main cargo hold stacked with taxis to the ceiling. In the center was the space for the unloading elevator that opened in the ceiling where she had seen the metal plate before. The taxis were flat discs of polished metal with two rows of seats and a rear area for luggage. When activated, a protective field would form around the occupants, and each taxi was linked to the Powlett grid to avoid collisions.
Briggs activated the first taxi she came to, and it zipped from its place on the wall with barely a sound, floating low enough for her to get on. She took the rear seat and stretched out her legs as the energy field formed an egg shape. The vehicle floated to the elevator and began to rise for the ceiling as the dull metal doors separated and retreated far enough to leave room for her to float though. Once at ground level she darted away, heading for the fastest route to Down Town in her borrowed transport.
Speeding through the dark streets, she saw an occasional island of light among the shadows, but no one pursued or interfered. She followed the directions from Rex’s mission to the end of one of the long lines of buildings at the edge of the dome. She parked the transport and unlocked the door, passing through to set her eyes on the Dragon Gate, illuminated with floating spotlights. The carving of the winged lizard was deemed a historic human artifact by the assigned archeologists, and under the protection of the Earth System Preservation League, a part of the Science Division. She barely gave the sculpture a glance.
Briggs searched for an identification scanner that the ESPL would have undoubtedly installed to guard the tunnel entrance. Attempting to disable it with her brain-computer, she found she could not turn it off. Anything that passed through the Dragon Gate would alert security, although she did not know what response that would earn. She had hoped to keep this visit off-record but did not even think of turning back. Continuing under the elaborate carving, her brain-computer registered that the scanner had reported her presence. Without a pause, she proceeded to a large circular elevator. The original Martian device was mechanical but was recently updated with a motor connected to the Big Sis. With a thought directed it to descend and it obeyed, speeding into the Martian rock at a smooth pace.
She passed lights from other levels as she descended, but she knew which one to stop at, level one hundred sixty-three. The lift stopped at the appropriate tunnel, with circular, smooth sides lit by blue conduits lining the walls. There was no transport that she could see, and no grid to summon one. With the map assembled from Rex’s mission, Briggs made her way on foort through the maze of tunnels to a manual metal door with a round handle. She spun it without hesitation. Once the door swung open, a small ledge accommodated her enough space to step out, and below that a field of rocks and debris led to the city’s edge. She watched the files, saw what Rex’s partner saw, but was still awed by her first look at Down Town.
Illuminated by massive glowing stalactites, the immense cave that housed the city reached to the edge of her vision. The architecture was curved and uneven, darker than the surface stone, rising and falling from single story structures to multi-level towers. The dark windows were polygonal black shapes, and the city seemed deserted with no motion or any interior lights. The buildings were all intact and covered in carvings from small personal representations to long depictions of historic moments. The techniques and skill of the multitude of contributors added to the randomness of the symbols and figures as unique as the sculptors.
Each piece of the city-wide puzzle was in the process of being scanned, catalogued, and deciphered by the ESPL. To make the job of the preservation league easier, the population of Down Town was processed and evacuated, some to Earth to stand trial for sedition. The rest of the millions could either adapt to life somewhere else in the system, or petition to return to their home under the Mars surface. Briggs knew formal begging took time, and most of the former Martians would find somewhere else to live. More than likely, Management would lose track of them again in the massive gulf of space around the core worlds, but the record would remain long after all reasonable lifespans were spent. For now, Down Town was empty except for the specialists still studying and analyzing the secret civilization.
There was no grid in Down Town, no electronic connection of services or information. All was segmented and separate, and communication was made by wires hidden under the stone. Briggs could not summon transportation as she would in normal, polite society. She looked down at the ten-yard drop to the rough stone and hopped off, landing nimbly despite her size. She walked into the outer reaches of the city, finding deep shadows among the buildings where the thick walls blocked the overhead lights. The air was stagnant, and she guessed whichever machines kept the air circulating would be on minimal function with most of the population gone.
Down Town had an eerie feel to it with jumbled, uneven buildings that seemed to grow from the ground. The walls had peculiar faces scattered around the carvings that peeked at her with inert eyes. Briggs could feel the weight of the absence of the rightful masters of this place, subjugated and displaced in an orderly fashion, but felt no sympathy for them. People can hide, but cities get found. There were billions more in the solar system just like them, thinking they had a place where the power of Earth’s orders could no longer hold their lives. These Martians learned that no matter where humanity goes, humanity will follow with rules and penalties. There was no escaping your own species.
Briggs heard the hum of a small transport coming closer, and a flying platform with a waist high railing came into view from the rim of buildings. The single occupant was a tan woman with shoulder length, wavy brown hair, and black goggles with a reflective pink shield covered her eyes. Her respectable suit clothed her from wrist to ankles in dark lavender with thin white stripes, and was fashioned to give her a broad, straight profile. Her nails were white to match the pinstripes, and she rapped them lightly on the dark railing as the platform stopped twenty feet overhead. Their brain-computers transmitted personal information, and she knew her name was Cintap Jones.
“Why are you here, Briggs?” Cintap asked.
Standard policy would have at least two more back up agents taking position nearby in case of a conflict. Briggs tried to scan for possible ambushers, but masking suits would make them almost undetectable.
Briggs stared back, unperturbed, and replied, “Take me to the Ministry of Defense Pyramid.”
Cintap shook her head and smiled. “Whatever you are looking for, I can help you find, but there is nothing in the Ministry Pyramid. It was cleared out and closed off. An agent died there.”
“I know,” Briggs responded. “That’s why I want to go there.”
There was a slight pause as she checked deeper into her file. “Oh. A relation. Tricky thing, death, it follows us no matter what we do to ourselves. I’ve changed this body four times.” She held her own hand up in front of her face for inspection. The pink visor hid her eyes, making it difficult to read her expression as she said, “Once you came through the Dragon Gate, you entered a restricted area. Return the way you came.”
Briggs sent her data. “Scan this. I’m on vacation, and the file says I can go anywhere in the known system. Restricting my access is punishable by law. I want to go to the pyramid.”
Cintap paused again, verified the information, and then smiled with a bit more hesitance. “If you are here for the body, the Martians destroyed it. Nothing left.”
Briggs tensed her legs and jumped, sprang towards the platform, grabbed the railing, and swung over before the other woman could react.
Her mouth gaped beneath the pink visor before turning into an awed grin. “I heard a rumor one of the Chandley’s was augmented for special operations, but there was nothing anywhere in the Big Sis about it. What did they do to you?”
In response Briggs tapped on the pink visor and said, “You can stay and ride if you want, but this rig is going to the pyramid.”
The woman reached up and pulled the visor off her face, and her eyes had pink irises. “Do you need me to operate the transport for you? It has restricted access.”
“I can do it,” Briggs replied as she gripped the railing, allowing her brain-comp to link with the flying vessel. It sped away at her direction, flying over the expansive stone city towards a darkened area at the center of Down Town. She could make out the outline of the massive pyramid in the shadows.
“Why is it dark?” Briggs asked.
“The pyramid had its own generator and lighting system. We turned it off since we do not use that building.” Cintap leaned back casually against the railing, watching Briggs closely with her arms crossed.
A ring of the glowing stalactite’s provided the area close to the Ministry Pyramid with light. As Briggs flew overhead, she saw other people moving among the buildings performing what seemed to be mundane tasks of cataloguing items, scanning them into data bases and giving them labels. In another part of the city, she could detect others scanning the wall carvings with handheld devices. They reached a wall with a stone courtyard beyond, and she flew over it to the door of the pyramid, opened the railing and stepped out without even a look at Cintap. Her code opened the door to the former Ministry of Defense, and she crept into the silent hallway. Ten yards away was a burn mark six yards across, in front of a scorched, twisted doorjamb, under a charred, cracked ceiling.
When she died Rex had been wearing a Pinnacle Battle Suit with advanced shielding. It must have taken quite a blast to pierce that defense. Briggs walked forward with small steps, pinpointing the center of the blast, and stood where her sister fell, feeling as though a great weight was trying to drag her down. There was a thin layer of dust over the damaged floor, a year’s worth of forgetting.
Cintap had followed her in, watching with compassionless eyes. From the end of the hall, she said, “The Martians here attempted to deny any altercation, but the information from Agent Craster was irrefutable. The bomber died in the blast. What did you seek to learn here?”
Briggs thought she might be out of tears but felt some collecting in her eyes as she turned to the stranger. “You ever care for a life other than your own? You ever take it when it’s small and watch it grow big? Feed it, and clean up after it? You ever love something more than you? I did. A little girl named Rex. Papa died when she was young, and Mama wanted to give her up, but I said I’d take her. I protected her and took care of her and when she was ready, I let her go have her own life. She did good too, was made an agent. She wasn’t afraid of anything. Then last year I got a message that she’s gone to a place called Down Town on Mars and she’s never coming back.” Briggs paused as she considered the blast marks on the floor. “I wanted to see it for myself. I wanted to see where she went, what she saw. Where she died.” The tears did not fall, not in front of this callous bureaucrat.
Cintap nodded and glanced around the empty hallway. “So, this is it. There is the burn mark. What now?”
Briggs shook her head, wishing she had kept this moment private. “Now I do what she didn’t. I leave.” She turned, walked up the hallway past the pink eyed woman, and boarded the transport. Cintap leapt on before she took off.
Leaning against the railing, Cintap crossed her arms and asked, “I am curious. Did you find emotional release from being in the spot your sister died in?”
Briggs looked out at the dark stone sprawling below her. “I don’t feel any different. I just wanted to come here. Where did you send all the people that lived in this place?”
Cintap turned a sneer over Down Town. “We killed most of them. The rest we sent to the atmosphere mines on Jupiter. They’re always looking for more people.”
Briggs looked at her in shock. “Killed them? I thought they all got sent to other worlds.”
Cintap chuckled, malicious. “These people were an aberration. Under pacification procedures, we gassed their air supply, and set the computer to screen for a bare minimum of genetic standards, as is the law. Only a few thousand made the cut. The rest never woke up.”
Briggs looked out over the carved city, only one part of the tunnels and communities in these caves. “Millions? Just like that?”
Cintap replied with a sly grin, “Because of these rock-cutters, sixty-four thousand people are gone from Earth, and I would trade this whole city to get just one of the home-worlders back. These sub-humans were already developing major defects. We must maintain genetic purity. It is what is best for the species.”
For the first time in her seventy-nine years, Briggs wondered who decided what genetic purity was and why some did not have it. From Rex’s file she knew her orders were given by the Earth System Law Enforcement to go in with battle suits and no other identification to apprehend or eliminate the bomber. The forms and requisitions attached to the orders were all correct, making it a legal action. Little was known about the city bomber, Milnip, but the evidence brought back by Rex’s partner was that she killed him before they attempted their exit. With a suit her little sister was a hell-maker, and a Pinnacle like she was wearing should have had the Martians fleeing for their lives. Who expects someone to step around a corner with a bomb in this day and age?
“I believe this is your stop,” Cintap said.
While Briggs was lost in thought, the transport had brought her back to the doorway she entered through.
With ease Briggs hopped over the railing and landed facing the city. She turned her gaze over the empty, silent buildings. Merely a curiosity before, now they filled her with dread as she suddenly realized she came here to find out why a Martian would give his own life to kill Rex. Now she knew. The Martians knew who they were up against. The bomber was trying to prevent their discovery, which would lead to the extermination of his people.
Briggs thought of the Martian agent she encountered on the surface with her extra arm. She was collecting records of the purification, and now she felt regret about leaving her unconscious.
With a little push off the rail, she turned and left through the door, leaving it open.
“Close that! Dammit!” Cintap called out, but she ignored her.
Briggs ran at her fastest speed back to the elevator, reaching it in minutes, and it took her to the surface without any interruptions. Her mind was set to find the Martian agent, and free her if possible. It had been four and a half hours since she left the woman in the records room and thought it likely she would be discovered with the wrecked ship in the bay.
Briggs exited through the Dragon Gate without even a glance at the stone lizard. Her taxi was still where she left it, and she sat in front on the trip back to the docking bay. She checked the grid with her brain-comp for information about an intruder but found nothing on file. That was not necessarily a good thing. Her own life was proof that not everything made it onto record.
Her code opened the door to the dock, and she sped into the building without hesitation, nimbly turning the first corner at a near run. This time the olive-green hallway was not empty, and a tall, thin man in a long black coat raised an eyebrow at her abrupt entrance. His blue hair was flattened down on his skull, and his mouth turned up in a sly grin as his eyes raked over her simple appearance.
Without a pause, Briggs walked down the hall like she belonged. The door she had left the Martian behind was past the man. He watched her closely, but did not object as she opened it to look inside. She saw the imprint the Martian’s head had made when it hit the wall of drawers, but no sign of the woman.
“Looking for your accomplice?” the man asked while leaning his back against the wall.
Briggs replied, “No, but I am looking for a woman I last saw in this office. Do you know anything about that?”
He faced her with a scowl and pushed the edges of his coat behind his hips. She detected three different weapons on his belt: a knife and two pistols, one obvious on his hip and one behind his back. His coat was shielded so she could not detect the weapons before he opened it, and under the coat he wore a black vest shield generator. The expression on his face told her he thought he was dangerous, and she thought about dominating him immediately. Instead, she waited, giving him a modest chance to simply answer her question.
With a flash of motion, he went for the pistols on his belt, one hand reaching down, and the other behind his back. He was well trained, but Briggs still leapt across the hall, grabbing both of his arms before the weapons were free of their holsters. He struggled with wide eyes, but she applied pressure to keep his weapons in place.
Briggs felt his body tense and she screamed in his face, “Don’t head-butt me! It won’t work, and I want you conscious. Where’s the Martian?”
“Are you one of those freaks?” he asked and spit on her face.
In response Briggs pushed her hands together, squeezing his arms and torso, drawing a slight squeal from him. “I can break you so that they can’t fix you. Where is the Martian?”
He grunted. “There are holding cells at the end of the hall.”
She suspected a ruse, but let up pressure to encourage positive thoughts, though she still held him tightly. “Is she in one of them?” she asked with a broad smile.
He swallowed and shook his head. “They’ve got her next door in interrogation.”
She lifted him from the floor and wiped her wet face on his coat. He kicked her leg and sliced open the flesh with a knife on his shoe, though it did not scratch the metal underneath. Cursing her own restraint, Briggs roughly shook him until he lost consciousness and tossed him in the records room.
She headed down the hall with the under sheath already repairing the slash in her skin, not knowing what she would find in the interrogation room. She suspected it would not be an orderly questioning. This Martian agent had no community, no allies. No one was coming for her or would argue her case. When the door opened, and Briggs walked into the room, she grimaced, shaking her head in disgust.
The Martian was bent over a table, pants around her ankles with restraints holding her limbs firmly to the flat surface. There was one naked man with dark skin and small curly waves of red hair bumping away at her rear. With one hand in her white hair, he would slam her face into the table in time with his thrusts. Also, in the room were two others, one nude man with tan skin and a long braid of black hair. Next to him was a dark-skinned woman with short blonde hair, wearing a tight, sleeveless blue shirt and naked from the waist down. Clothes and equipment were piled neatly against the wall. This was no interrogation; it was torture and execution.
With a first punch for the man and another for the woman, Briggs knocked out the first two rapists before they could react to her entrance. The third backed away from the Martian with his hands up. Briggs leapt across the space and kicked him between his legs. With the mesh under her skin, it was not like striking with a booted foot, but more like a solid steel beam. She felt his flesh pulping and bones shattering from the blow. The force knocked him off his feet, sprawling into the back wall with a high-pitched scream. Barely conscious, he curled into a fetal position, whimpering as he put his hands over his bloody crotch.
Briggs used her brain-computer to unlock the restraints and helped the Martian up. Her face was a gory mess. Both eyes were swollen shut and leaking blood. Her nose was squashed flat, and both lips were split. Blood was spattered over her white shirt. In a daze, she pulled up her stained orange pants with her still broken third arm held tightly to her side. She started to lie down on the wet floor, but Briggs took her arm and held her up. The Martian let all her weight go and Briggs scooped her up and carried her, using her brain-computer to ignore the putrid smells of her abuse.
Without knowing which ship belonged to the Martian, Briggs brought her to Seven-C, using the anti-gravity beam to bring them to the vehicle. Once inside, part of the back wall opened at her command, and her medical bed slid out. Briggs set the Martian onto the plastic mattress, and it slid back into the wall with its occupant. The ship would diagnose her condition and treat her wounds.
While the Martian healed, Briggs left Seven-C again and travelled back to the records room, stepping over the still unconscious jerk in the black coat. After a quick search, she retrieved the metal strips recording the extermination of the underground people, how much gas was used, corpse disposal, and what parameters were set for genetic cleansing. She did not know specifics for what the woman wanted the records for, but she guessed these selections would be appropriate. No one emerged from the interrogation room, and she saw no one else on her way back. At her ship, Briggs set the strips on her console and sat at her chair. At her command, Seven-C sped away from the ceiling and out through the open bay door.
Briggs decided she would take the woman to Jupiter, since that was where Cintap said the genetically qualified Martians were sent. She might know someone that would help her, but the three-armed woman could not stay on Mars.
Briggs put on the silent movie with the people in the wispy clothes in the cloud city. Her list of movies was categorized by numbers, not names, and this one, 7895-5758, was over six hours long and less than halfway over. On the screen the main character, a woman with dark grey wafting around her every movement, showing her sorrow, dropped the body of her child from a balcony. Its white tendrils were slack and unmoving; a disease shortened its life. Having consigned her dead to the clouds, she sat and wept, lifted her arms, and waved them in mourning. The rest of the movie continued its morbid tale. The woman married again, but war broke out between another rival cloud city. Her new mate was killed in battle. The show ended with her sitting grey-haired in a courtyard in the city, alone and forgotten while fresh, wispy white characters moved around her.
Briggs noticed her filthy coverall, opened the panel to the cleansing closet, and stepped in. Showers of energy flowed over her body, cleaning, and sanitizing until she felt fresh again. She returned to her seat and did not think about anything specific.
After hours in the medical bed, the Martian slid out and stood, shifting her body slightly as she adjusted. Her face was clean, and the abrasions had slightly discolored skin grafts over them. Her white hair was no longer spiked and lay damp against her head, making her look younger. Her small third arm was still tucked against her side, but the bones were straight again. Her clothes were also cleaned and repaired.
Briggs watched as her guest went to the wall. She hit a button, and one chair slid out for her to use. She sat, moving comfortably in a way that hinted that her more sensitive areas were also mended. Briggs remained silent. The physical wounds were easier to heal than the psychological, and she decided she would let the other woman speak first.
“Where are we going?” the Martian finally asked.
“Jupiter mines. That’s where I was told survivors from Down Town were sent.”
The woman shook her head. “I don’t know anybody on Jupiter.”
Briggs shrugged. “Well, I got three days before my vacation is up. If you want me to take you somewhere . . . “
“Why are you taking me anywhere?” she blurted out as she stared hard at Briggs. “I didn’t dream it, did I? They really were going to rape me to death.”
Briggs nodded. “You’re not in the Big Sis. You don’t exist unless they report you.” A long pause followed before she said, “Some people still get thrills off of stuff like that.” She had witnessed bloodier scenes in her missions but knew the other woman would not want to hear that.
“Why did you pull me out of there? It was your fault I was in there in the first place,” the Martian said with a hint of accusation.
Briggs pointed a finger at her. “If you hadn’t tried to kill me, I would have walked right past your door without even a word. Your mission would have gone on just fine without me.”
There was another pause and the Martian asked, “Did you get any of the records?”
“Yes, here are all the ones you want,” she answered and gestured to the stack of metal strips.
The Martian nodded slowly and asked, “What about my ship?”
Briggs waved a dismissive hand. “They found it and marked it. You wouldn’t be safe in that thing. Better to move on without it.”
The woman rubbed her palms over her eyes and let out a short laugh. “You should have just let them kill me. I was already out of it by the time you showed up. It wouldn’t have been much longer.”
Briggs held up her hands in a pacified gesture. “If you want to kill yourself, I can’t stop you. You were in that room because of me, and I felt bad about that.” Another pause and she added, “Besides when I saw it . . . I couldn’t leave you like that. I’ve killed people, and I’ve had some rough interrogations, but nothing like that.”
“They were going to take everything from me, that’s what the one with the red hair said.” She paused and licked her lips, “They were going to make me into a broken shell, and then throw away the shell. Did you kill them?”
“No, I was determined not to kill anyone on this trip,” Briggs answered. “I was tempted, but I thought first about getting you to the med-bed.”
“Why were you there on Mars?”
Briggs leaned back in the chair. “My sister died in Down Town. I wanted to see where it happened.”
The Martian nodded, seeming on the verge of tears. “Your sister was one of the agents that exposed us.”
Briggs nodded. “For what it’s worth, I wish she had never gone to that place. If not her, it would have been someone else. They were already on to your people. Nothing would have stopped it.”
The Martian shook her head and looked away. “Nothing, huh? So, you were looking for closure. Did you get it?”
Briggs paused before answering, the image of Rex’s face flashing in her memory. “No, not really. I just looked at the spot she died and left. There was this bureaucrat there that was spoiling the whole thing anyway.”
“Why didn’t you break her arm to get rid of her?” the Martian asked. Her smaller arm raised and waved.
“It wouldn’t have helped. The way she was acting; she made the whole thing feel silly.”
“I’m sorry about your sister,” the Martian said.
Briggs looked at her and nodded in appreciation. “Thank you. I miss her.”
“What was she like?”
Briggs felt tears coming again, and this time she let them fall. Without thinking she began to speak, “She was a pretty girl, way prettier than me, but I was glad about it. She was so funny; she could make me laugh about anything, just ordinary stuff. It was the way she said things, like no one else I knew. Rex was near the top of her class at the academy, but she was such a flirt. No one could drive it out of her, not even me. She wanted to see what was in everyone’s head. If not for her skills, she would have led a much different life. In the end it didn’t save her. You have any siblings?”
She nodded. “I had seven sisters and three brothers. I was the only one with an extra appendage, but they never treated me differently. We had a family reunion two years ago; there were a hundred and nine of us. Now there’s just me.”
Briggs looked down. “I’m sorry about that, about what happened. It wasn’t right, what they did. That was one of the reasons I came back to get you. I couldn’t help anyone else, but I could help you.”
The Martian did not answer, but tears slid down her pale cheeks.
“What’s your name?” Briggs asked.
She sighed. “Hickle Pothma. I’ve never been to Jupiter.”
Briggs tried to brighten the mood with a smile. “The atmosphere mines there are like floating palaces. All they do is suck in the chemicals and sell them. It’s dangerous, so they play a lot.”
Hickle laughed and wiped at her eyes. “Does not sound like a place that will take in a three-armed woman. Not turning me in is a crime. Does that bother you?”
Briggs answered her question with one of her own. “What were you going to do with those records?”
Hickle hesitated before answering, “I don’t have to tell you that.”
Briggs chuckled and replied, “Secrets, and after I told you about my sister.” She waved off the request. She kicked off her boots and leaned back in her chair, turning her eyes on the silent movie. If the Martian moved, she would know about it, and she propped her feet on the control panel. “By the way, after I drop you off at Jupiter, don’t tell me where you’re going or if you’re staying. I don’t want to know.”
“Why not?” Hickle blurted out. For being born on Mars, she was human in her morbid curiosity. “I have nothing. I was about to ask to come with you.”
Briggs shook her head and said something she had not expected to tell. “I’m different too. Not like you, I wasn’t born with it. I raised Rex after my mother wanted to get rid of her. I needed Mother’s permission, though, and she made a deal with me. I got Rex, and when she was two decades old, I would volunteer for a procedure. I got cybernetic implants that make me the most powerful agent in the system, and that came with a price. I got new programs for my brain-comp that let me go anywhere, but I don’t get to decide. This trip was special. I requested a week off, but I’m only on vacation for five more days. After that I start taking orders again.” She stopped there, watching the screen.
Briggs had over a hundred silent movies stored on her database that she had not watched, and she had selected one of those at random so that the Martian could not utilize a psychological edge from her choice. On the screen a pair of small crabs flew through the rings of Saturn, making jokes about the inhabitants with thought bubbles. Briggs made it a point to laugh at a few to keep a friendly demeanor, but her brain-computer always monitored her passenger.
Hickle finished her explanation out loud, “And if they order you to bring me in, you will.”
Briggs watched on the screen as a thought bubble made a joke about Saturnian cockroaches, and she chuckled although there was no such thing. She decided to remove the movie from her list as soon as Hickle disembarked.
Finally, she answered, “Yes, although I was hesitant to say it out loud.”
With the ship’s sensors she saw Hickle’s shoulders sag in defeat. She moaned and said, “Should I just turn myself in? Would that be less painful?”
Briggs turned and looked at the woman. “No, don’t turn yourself in. I’ll give you enough money to buy a new ship. Plot a course and then change it before you take off. It’s a big solar system. There’s plenty of places to go where no one will ever even hear about this or know to look for you. You can disappear. People do it all the time.”
Hickle stared at her and asked, “Why are you doing this?”
Briggs watched the crabs again as they expelled gas on Saturn’s rings, making them wobble. She silently decided that she hated this movie. Without looking at Hickle, she answered, “To keep a balance. To save a life that was about to be extinguished and take it someplace where it has another chance. To know that I’m not just capable of breaking things; I can help people too.” She turned and shrugged, holding her palms up as she gave Hickle a sardonic grin. “Tell yourself whatever you want, just be glad you met me on vacation. You don’t want to meet me again.”
Hickle turned away to look at the floor. “That’s fair, I guess. I was travelling in between cities when it happened. That’s why they missed me. I decided to lay low with some friends from the surface until the heat died down, but then I heard that millions of Martians didn’t even wake up after the invasion. Then I ran, hid out on one of the moons. There are smuggler dens out there. I kept up with the message traffic, waiting for an opportunity, and then I heard the records were being moved to Earth. I decided to go in alone. The security level was nothing. They didn’t think anyone cared.” She looked back at Briggs again. “Earth won’t rule the system forever. One day the core worlds will each rule themselves.”
Briggs shook her head. “Won’t make much difference. The new governments will do the same things.”
Hickle stared at her. “You don’t even know who makes the rules on Earth, do you? When was the last time you were even there?”
Briggs did know who controlled the Big Sis, but that was not a secret she would share.
Instead, she answered, “Three years back to see my mother. I suppose I’ll go visit her again after I drop you off. I should have enough time. My mother, Astazia, loved Rex, but more as sisters than mother and daughter. Astazia never told Rex what to do, always leaving it to me to discipline and teach her. That was the opposite of my own childhood. When I was a child, Mama ruled my world, but that was with Daddy too.” Triggered by an impulse of memory, her brain-computer pulled up an image from one of their family trips to an Australian beach when she was ten. She filed the memory away, not wanting to be distracted in front of the other agent.
“I grew up in Down Town,” Hickle said. “When I was a child, our teachers told us about the solar system outside our caves, and that Earth was a dead world, used up by the ancients that colonized Mars. After the invasion, I found out about the real Earth, and it made me sick to know I had been lied to all my life. What did they hope to gain from that? Did they really think the truth would never be discovered?”
Briggs remained silent, considering the questions rhetorical.
Hickle continued, “They killed everyone I knew, my family, friends, people I bought things from, people I passed on the street. They killed millions more that I never met, will never meet now.” The Martian put her face in her hands before dragging them down and grimacing at Briggs. “Sometimes it hits me again, like the first time I heard it. I get to realize all over again that even if I made it back into Down Town there’s no one there.”
Briggs recalled the carved buildings and empty streets. “There isn’t.”
“It was full the last time I saw it a little over a year ago,” Hickle replied softly. “I owned a house in the DGZ district, halfway up the cave wall. There was a little bakery around the corner where I would buy breakfast. I was a courier, training to be a computer technician. I would travel all over the city and to other cities. We had crime, but the defense corps could handle it. We had trade between communities, and everyone helped support society. And I remember a lot of children everywhere. Why do the Earthlings get to say that’s not good enough?”
Still Briggs remained silent, watching the other woman with a neutral expression.
Hickle’s expression turned aggressive. “How much of you is still human?”
Briggs smiled at that question. “Quite a lot, actually. If you really want to know why the underground Martians were purged, it was because of a genetic law. At least that’s what the lady that didn’t care about me or anything I said told me.”
“That’s dung!” Hickle said. “Our children were reproductively viable. They had no right to judge us like that.”
“I agree, but it’s done now. What are you going to do? Are you going to get Earth’s attention again, have them send someone like me after you, or are you going to recover whatever life you have left and keep going?”
Hickle stared back at her for a moment before replying, “I can’t just forget it happened. The other worlds have to know. They have to know what Earth did.”
Briggs turned back to her screen and scanned through her menu to find another silent movie. “Okay, I won’t try to talk you out of it anymore, but you can drop the righteous anger. It will take us two days to reach Jupiter.”
For her movie she selected a silent production about two children with glowing circuitry laced throughout their bodies. They moved through an adventure in a giant tree with enormous robotic animals. The characters faced real dangers, with many supporting characters dying in horrible ways. Throughout the story the children stayed upbeat and invulnerable, leaping out of harm’s way while others were torn apart.
For the rest of the trip to Jupiter, Briggs and Hickle spoke little. She did not take the Martian directly to one of the Jupiter mines, but to one of the moon bases orbiting the gas giant. The base Yellow-Brago was a series of buildings molded from the battered rock surface of Callisto, and one of the largest spaceship dealers. As promised, she gave Hickle enough credits to buy a new ship and the record strips. It was not an emotional parting between them, and before long Briggs was back on Seven-C alone again.
She thought about what she would do for the time she had left in her vacation. She had lied to Hickle; there was no way she was going to visit Astazia. Her mind suddenly turned to the nearby atmosphere mines that she had called ‘palaces’. She pulled up information on the mines with her brain-computer and perused a list of activities. One caught her interest, called ‘cloud surfing’ where she could ride through Jupiter’s upper atmosphere on a small force field generator. It was incredibly dangerous, and according to the testimonials, well worth the risk.
Briggs smiled as she set a course for the nearest mine, Enigma Jupiter. She had mourned Rex for over a year, and it was time to have some fun again.
By Aaron Ward
Published by Aaron Ward
Copyright 2015 Aaron Ward
Edition, License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Original Literature 