going to hold an election, or just take the
job by default?” I ignore.
“Ouch,” she concedes with a pout.
“Not the answer I was looking for,” I press her.
“Do we get full disclosure?” she wants to know,
sitting up, finally turning serious. “Rumors are flying, Colonel.
It’s all scary science fiction: Dead Earth. No survivors. Nanobug
monsters. Engineered plagues. Discs controlling the planet. And we
had friends and family out there in the colonies.”
“Full disclosure is we still haven’t heard anything
from anyone,” I give her. “The transmitter just went up, but
planetary alignment isn’t promising—won’t be for several months.
And I won’t keep it a secret if we get a reply.”
“Unless you’re ordered to,” she counters.
“I’m not sure how that works if the books say I’ve
been dead fifty years,” I allow myself to get lighter with her. “If
I’m still working for them, I think they owe me enough back-pay to
buy a small country.”
She smiles at that, but then presses:
“You thinking of resigning your commission?”
“If we don’t hear otherwise, I’m an officer in a
non-existent army. Then you’ll need to hold a whole other sort of
election.”
“You telling me you wouldn’t pull any martial-law
bullshit on us?” All the (probably defensive) playfulness is gone
now. She’s playing the leader of her people.
“I’ve heard of this thing called ‘democracy’.
Apparently it’s worked okay in the past.”
She smiles again, her face showing a few lines around
her eyes. “I was serious before. You’re actually pretty
tasty for an old jarhead. Screw what the kids think—let me know if
you get lonely.”
I give her a noncommittal nod, get up to let myself
out.
“I’ll be in touch.”
I realize that probably just encouraged her.
Day 153. 4 June, 2115:
Staley’s Tower lasted nine hours and twenty-one
minutes.
“Some kind of electrostatic overload as we ramped up
the signal,” Anton mourns, frustrated, and he displays the ruined
components his team has pulled out of his pet project, spread out
on the big Command Briefing Room table. They look intact—the damage
is all in the microprocessors, which are hopelessly burned.
“We might be able to replace these,” Rick helps.
“Cannibalize other systems. But it would be a waste if we don’t
deal with what caused this, whatever’s blocking our signal.”
We started noticing the phenomena almost immediately:
our outgoing was being reflected back at us as distorted static, as
if hitting some kind of barrier. Anton tried to punch through it,
figuring nothing was getting out into space but noise. He was
careful about it, but either he burned out equipment that wasn’t
made for the job, or the increase made the interfering
field—something powerful and electrostatic—kick back.
I watch Matthew’s face go dark. His chest heaves with
a deep, strained breath.
“Which gets us back to our friends from the ETE
Corporation,” he growls.
“This may not have been intentional,” Anton defends.
He calls up the old maps on the main screens, showing us the deep
gashes in the planet’s equator that are the conjoined Chasmata that
make up the greater Valles Marineris. “And we should have
anticipated it, given the atmospheric density.”
First, he highlights the positions of the ten ETE
generators that were operating before the Bombardment. Six are
positioned around the roughly clam-shell shape of the central Melas
Chasma, three-quarters of the way up towards the Datum line in
elevation. The other four dot the narrower and much longer Coprates
Chasma that connects to Melas on its east side, two generating
stations on the canyon’s north rim and two on the ridge that
separates the main canyon from the narrower Coprates Catena that
runs parallel to the Chasma to the south. Both the Chasma and
Catena open into Melas, but the Catena doesn’t run as contiguously
long as the Chasma, which eventually
job by default?” I ignore.
“Ouch,” she concedes with a pout.
“Not the answer I was looking for,” I press her.
“Do we get full disclosure?” she wants to know,
sitting up, finally turning serious. “Rumors are flying, Colonel.
It’s all scary science fiction: Dead Earth. No survivors. Nanobug
monsters. Engineered plagues. Discs controlling the planet. And we
had friends and family out there in the colonies.”
“Full disclosure is we still haven’t heard anything
from anyone,” I give her. “The transmitter just went up, but
planetary alignment isn’t promising—won’t be for several months.
And I won’t keep it a secret if we get a reply.”
“Unless you’re ordered to,” she counters.
“I’m not sure how that works if the books say I’ve
been dead fifty years,” I allow myself to get lighter with her. “If
I’m still working for them, I think they owe me enough back-pay to
buy a small country.”
She smiles at that, but then presses:
“You thinking of resigning your commission?”
“If we don’t hear otherwise, I’m an officer in a
non-existent army. Then you’ll need to hold a whole other sort of
election.”
“You telling me you wouldn’t pull any martial-law
bullshit on us?” All the (probably defensive) playfulness is gone
now. She’s playing the leader of her people.
“I’ve heard of this thing called ‘democracy’.
Apparently it’s worked okay in the past.”
She smiles again, her face showing a few lines around
her eyes. “I was serious before. You’re actually pretty
tasty for an old jarhead. Screw what the kids think—let me know if
you get lonely.”
I give her a noncommittal nod, get up to let myself
out.
“I’ll be in touch.”
I realize that probably just encouraged her.
Day 153. 4 June, 2115:
Staley’s Tower lasted nine hours and twenty-one
minutes.
“Some kind of electrostatic overload as we ramped up
the signal,” Anton mourns, frustrated, and he displays the ruined
components his team has pulled out of his pet project, spread out
on the big Command Briefing Room table. They look intact—the damage
is all in the microprocessors, which are hopelessly burned.
“We might be able to replace these,” Rick helps.
“Cannibalize other systems. But it would be a waste if we don’t
deal with what caused this, whatever’s blocking our signal.”
We started noticing the phenomena almost immediately:
our outgoing was being reflected back at us as distorted static, as
if hitting some kind of barrier. Anton tried to punch through it,
figuring nothing was getting out into space but noise. He was
careful about it, but either he burned out equipment that wasn’t
made for the job, or the increase made the interfering
field—something powerful and electrostatic—kick back.
I watch Matthew’s face go dark. His chest heaves with
a deep, strained breath.
“Which gets us back to our friends from the ETE
Corporation,” he growls.
“This may not have been intentional,” Anton defends.
He calls up the old maps on the main screens, showing us the deep
gashes in the planet’s equator that are the conjoined Chasmata that
make up the greater Valles Marineris. “And we should have
anticipated it, given the atmospheric density.”
First, he highlights the positions of the ten ETE
generators that were operating before the Bombardment. Six are
positioned around the roughly clam-shell shape of the central Melas
Chasma, three-quarters of the way up towards the Datum line in
elevation. The other four dot the narrower and much longer Coprates
Chasma that connects to Melas on its east side, two generating
stations on the canyon’s north rim and two on the ridge that
separates the main canyon from the narrower Coprates Catena that
runs parallel to the Chasma to the south. Both the Chasma and
Catena open into Melas, but the Catena doesn’t run as contiguously
long as the Chasma, which eventually
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