Mars Fire - Chapter XL - Sol 16

Previous Chapters: Chapter I , II , III , IV , V , VI , VII , VIII , IX , X , XI , XII , XIII , XIV , XV , XVI , XVII , XVIII , XIX , XX , XXI , XXII , XXIII , XXIV , XXV , XXVI , XXVII , XXVIII , XXIX , XXX , XXXI , XXXII , XXXIII , XXXIV , XXXV , XXXVI , XXXVII , XXXVIII , XXXIX

There was a knock at the debriefing room door a moment later, drawing a barked “Enter!” from Hayes. The door swung open and Captain Luddough stuck his head into the room.

“We’re all done this side, sir. Looks like everything checks out with the rest of the team.”

“Good. We’ve just about wrapped up here too.” Hayes collected his compad and stood, motioning for Burrows to do the same. Burrows grabbed his helmet as he got up, suddenly glad for the interruption. “Is the council session still on track?”

“Seven minutes, sir, then they are starting in B3. Shall I escort the Burkins’ Hope team to the waiting area?”

“Yes, please do.” Hayes turned to Burrows. “Luddough will take over from here. There is another private council session starting up now, which is going to run for a couple of hours. A lot of things need to be hashed out for the next few days, now that our public announcement is out there.”

“Take some time with your team to discuss things, and then make sure you stick around here in Stockton until the council session is done.” Hayes motioned at the door, and Burrows took the cue to step out into the corridor with the colonel on his heels. “I need to brief you and your team in person after the meeting. I’ll send a message once we are done. Don’t wander off too far, and don’t get into trouble now that you are famous.”

“I don’t exactly remember volunteering for the cameras, sir,” Burrows replied, trying to lighten the mood with a grin. “I’d much rather be out in the dust with my team than up on that stage again.”

“Good. Keep it that way. The talking heads only make trouble, and we don’t need more of that right now.” Hayes extended his hand, and gave Burrows a firm handshake. “You and your team did well out there, Jack. Make sure they know it too.”

Hayes turned and left via the B9 door they had arrived through earlier that afternoon, and Luddough beckoned for Burrows to follow him. Luddough had that nondescript vagueness about him that Burrows had come to associate with the Division Seven people over the years - average height, average build, sandy hair, typical radiation tan - and an idle part of his mind wondered if Division Seven recruited people with those parameters in mind, or if they had cosmetic work done for that.

The rest of his mind was still spinning from the consequences of the debriefing. The betrayal of Herricks and his team, which they had suspected since the CDM announcement came through the previous day, was a fresh wound in the back of his mind. How many times over the past years had they been unwitting pawns in whatever games Herricks had been playing? How many of their patrols in Southern District, whether chasing bandit rovers or monitoring the DMZ, had actually been achieving anything useful if that patrol info had been leaked to the Union in advance?

Luddough led him to one of the doors down the corridor, which opened into a bigger briefing room filled with rows of chairs and a projector screen on the one wall. Reyn, Dixon, Pope and Ian were waiting there, sprawled across various chairs and with cups in their hands. A scent of hydration sachets and strong tea filled the space, with a distinct undertone of peppermint. Burrows felt his stomach flip, and realised for the first time in several hours how hungry he was. Lunchtime had come and gone hours ago, unheeded by their participation in the announcement and subsequent debriefings.

“Okay team, your orders for the next few hours are quite simple,” Luddough began once he and Burrows were inside. “Stand down, but don’t leave Stockton. Colonel Hayes wants to brief you in person once he is done with his current meeting, and after that you’ll know what the next steps are.”

Dixon raised his cup in salute, and mouthed the word “food” to Burrows, who had to grin when he realised the rest of the team was probably feeling similar hunger pangs to his own.

Luddough turned to Burrows before withdrawing a flat, wrapped package from his one suit pocket and handing it over. Burrows felt something shift inside when he accepted it.

“These are for after your discussion with the colonel.” Luddough’s voice was low, and aimed only at Burrows. His face and eyes remained strangely calm. “Keep that out of sight until he gives you the green light later.”

Burrows unwrapped the top of the package to peek in, and saw a set of five velcro-backed patches inside. He felt a twist in his gut when he recognised the motif on the top-most patch, and when he looked up again, Luddough gave him a silent nod.

“If I don’t see you again today, I’ll have to say good luck now.” Luddough extended his hand, and Burrows shook it briefly. “I have a feeling that the next time we meet, it will be under very different circumstances.”

“Let’s hope for the best, then, and prepare for the worst.” Burrows inclined his head. “For the rest, we just have to play the cards we get.”

“You know the way out from here, I’m sure. I need to run to my next meeting as well now. The waiting area is back where your rover is parked, and the surface-level elevators are there as well. All the best, Captain Burrows.” Luddough gave a short head bow in return, oddly archaic in its formality, and left the briefing room. Burrows turned to the rest of the team to find them staring at him with naked curiosity.

“What was that all about?” Pope got up as he talked, and walked over to a side table where the drink dispensers and stacks of cups waited. Reyn, next to Dixon, had a contemplative frown across his face as he watched the package in Burrows’ hand.

“Division Seven stuff, I guess. You guys know what they’re like.” Burrows made the package disappear into one of his chest pockets, before considering the rest of the team. “I’m guessing you’re all as hungry as I am at this point. Where are we eating - the Exeter, or something in town?”

“Somewhere we can talk in private, at least.” Reyn sat forward as he spoke, cup dangling in one hand. “There is a great deal that we have to discuss.”

“Town, please. I vote we go to Galito’s, if we have the time to kill.” Dixon bounced up and headed to the side table as well, depositing his cup in the same cubicle that Pope had used moments before. “If we have to deal with more bad news, I at least want good food - and I’ve heard good things about their Tuesday seafood specials.”

“Only the food? Or something else too?” Reyn cocked an eyebrow as he rose, and Dixon blew him off with a huff.

“Okay yes, maybe the food is not the only thing. I’ve heard the view is also nice.”

“The view of what, though?” Ian drew the question out as he rose, the suspicion heavy in his voice, and Pope began to laugh. This time it was Dixon who got an elbow in the side.

“I told you - the kid’s sharp. He’s already asking all the right questions about you.”

“Let’s find a private booth, and then we can do our own debrief.” Burrows stepped back and indicated the door behind him. “Dixon, lead the way - and don’t make us regret this.”

About twenty minutes of walking - back up to the surface of Fort O’Neill, out of the CDM compound surrounding it, then across to one of the subway tunnels and down into the public space below Stockton - brought them to the entrance of a commercial and dining area, with various eateries scattered around a sunken amphitheater arrangement. Dim lighting overhead, reminiscent of stars on a cloudless night, provided tiny pinpricks of lights in an otherwise dark vault, while the various restaurant entrances were clusters of warm light scattered around the space. Outside tables were visible at most of the establishments, although the particular time of day appeared to be a quiet period for the majority of them - Burrows checked his wrist, and saw that they were in that strange time where it was too late for lunch and too early for dinner. Foot traffic in this area was slow, and Burrows had to wonder if it was also because of the time of day, or the just-issued public broadcast.

No-one in Stockton could have any illusions, at this point, about what the next few weeks would bring for them. The city was right in the path of whatever nightmare was going to come over their eastern border, and they were going to feel the full brunt of however that campaign played out.

Dixon led them to an elevator entrance at the side of the amphitheater, and a brushed metal box took them up several floors before depositing them on a new floor.

“Wow,” was the only thing Ian managed when he walked out, and Burrows silently had to agree when he turned around to consider the view around them. He had never even heard of this place, and the first impression was stunning.

The space was open, bright, and capped with a geodesic dome that rose for many metres above them. Far overhead, rolled-back metal shutters allow the distant sunlight to stream into the space, and the light had a faint yellowish hue to it from what must have been shielded glass in the geodesic frame. Tiered balconies and terraces rose in concentric circles around the outer rim of the dome, each one stacked with tables and moving figures, and pops of greenery, from a variety of potted vegetation, were scattered liberally throughout the whole space. The central space, where the elevator had deposited them, was open, and gave one an unobstructed sight of the various establishments that filled the inside of the dome. Outside the dome, the hills and covered mounds of Stockton spread out in all directions, khaki and dry, and Burrows spotted the rocky, fortified outcrop of Fort O’Neill not too far away between two of the dome arches.

Competing with the sight, the smell of cooking - oils, fats, spices, fish, and even the tang of something flame-grilled - wafted through the space in a thick haze, and they had barely left the elevator when Pope paused and clutched at his stomach with a wide-eyed look on his face.

“I think my stomach just started talking to me.” Pope had both hands pressed to his torso. “Actual words. It’s saying terrible things to me right now.”

“Drama queen.” Dixon’s eye-roll was followed by a hand pointing at one of the terraces. “That’s Galito’s, and this is the sight I promised. Happy now?”

“Yes. No!” Pope started heading in the direction of the pointed hand. “I need some of whatever they are making there!”

Pope and Dixon led the way, bickering over which smells were coming from where, while Burrows and the rest followed at a more sedate pace. There were noticeably more people here than in the star-lit cavern below, and Reyn was the first to comment on it as they walked.

“I wonder if the traffic here is because the food is that good, or because people want a last chance to eat here before the war breaks out.” Reyn stood aside and gave a polite smile to a passing couple heading the other way, before they continued. “Once the rocks start flying, a place like this probably won’t be able to stay open.”

“At this point, it’s probably a toss-up between running out of imported supplies first, or being hit by the Union.” Burrows followed Dixon and Pope up a number of stairs before they arrived at the entrance to Galito’s. “It’s not something I’d bet on.”

A smiling woman in a singlesuit and with a Spanish accent greeted Dixon as they arrived, before leading them to a secluded side area at the edge of one of the terraces. A simple table with a white-and-blue striped tablecloth waited there, along with a scattering of plastic chairs that were a swirled mixture of blues and ocean greens. A central compad, for placing orders, rested on what appeared to be a replica of a nautical anchor in the centre of the table. Burrows could see the seaside design they were going for, and was faintly reminded of the old Portuguese cafes in Maputo, but had to wonder how many of the Mars-born would make the same connection.

After explaining the ordering system to them, the waitress headed back towards the entrance of the restaurant, and Pope was the first to grab the compad and start paging through it, with Dixon crowding in from the side.

“So what did Luddough ask you about?” Burrows, at the head of the table, turned to Reyn on his right. Pope and Dixon sat to his left, distracted by the menu compad, while Ian was on Reyn’s right. Ian’s awe at the space seemed to have subsided, and Burrows was pleased to see that his attention was more on Reyn and the conversation, than on the menu discussion.

“We started with a standard top-to-bottom rundown of the mission, and then we got into details. He had a lot of questions about our encounter with that Type 24 on the way out.” Reyn sat back with his arms crossed over his chest, eyes looking off into the distance and a frown scratched across his forehead. “He also had a lot of questions about our initial deployment, on the Monday when we left Home One.”

Burrows rubbed at his eyes with one hand, then pulled his gloves off and repeated the motion. The pressure felt good against his skin - and was a distraction from what was to come.

“Did he ask about our route?”

“He did, yes.” Reyn’s eyes refocused, and locked onto Burrows. The frown deepened. “He had a lot of questions about how we plan the routes, and how we follow them with our rover. So I went through the basics with him: we upload a route plan, the rover generates waypoints that are based on MARSnet coordinates, and then we drive to each coordinate in turn. It’s the standard operating procedure for all of the CDM rovers, as far as I’m aware.”

“It is, yes. And then he probably asked you where the route plan came from?”

Reyn did not answer, and his eyes narrowed as he watched Burrows. Burrows, in turn, just sighed and shook his head.

“I had a lovely conversation with Colonel Hayes about exactly this.” Burrows spread his hands on the table, and felt his shoulders rising into an involuntary shrug. “There’s a long way to say this and there’s a short way, but the short way is just this: I fucked up.”

“You gave us the wrong route.” There was no question in Reyn’s voice. “Command was expecting one thing, and we went and did something else, didn’t we.”

“Exactly that. I only put two and two together during that damn public announcement, when we were up on stage.” Burrows propped his elbows on the table and sat forward, dropping his head into his hands. He still had no good answer for how the slip-up had happened. “I somehow mixed up our planned route with our old route, from three months ago. The new route, to the north, got sent to Herricks - and the old route, to the south, went to the Exeter. Now we have this whole damn train-wreck that is busy developing.”

“So this is why that Division Seven lieutenant was on my case.” Dixon, on Burrows’ left, sat back with a huff, the menu compad forgotten. Pope, at his side, was listening with one eyebrow raised. Burrows had not even noticed their attention shifting away from the food and to him. “He had a hundred and one questions for me about our observation point at the Magellan waypoint, and why we had chosen that exact spot.”

“Me too, as well as the driving thing. I had some strange questions on both of those.” Pope turned to Ian, who sat opposite him. “Did they ask you the same things too?”

“Actually not. I think they know I’m not senior enough to have been involved with those.” Ian gave a brief laugh, but it disappeared as quickly as it had arrived. He squirmed in his seat and looked down for a moment before continuing. “They just wanted to know how we ran our duties, who made the decisions, stuff like that. It felt a bit like they wanted to know if you guys were competent or not.”

“If you mentioned Dixon’s sense of humour, then we have clearly failed that assessment. I doubt they’ll let us back into O’Neill at this point.” Pope grinned at Dixon, but the expression also faded quickly. “This route thing was just an accident, right?”

“I think so, yes. I…” Burrows trailed off. How was he supposed to explain something that he had no recollection of messing up? The conversation with Pope, in the Machine Womb, came back to him again. “Pope, you and I were in the Machine Womb on that Friday night. Dixon went off to look at the modified sensors - “

“We still need to look at deploying those, by the way,” Dixon cut in.

“ - and then you and I talked some more. The thing about your family.” Burrows did not want to get into the details of the conversation, which he suspected had been rather personal for Pope.

“I remember, yes. It got a bit bleak there.” Pope chuckled briefly, then fell silent and screwed his face up in concentration. “I left not long after that, and you stayed in the Womb?”

“Yes, and I logged our patrol details with Taylor Base shortly after you left. I uploaded the northern route to Command, which was what ended up on Herricks’ desk. We did the southern route three months ago, so this time we were meant to do the northern one.” Burrows sat back when he realised that the others had probably not gotten the inside scoop from Colonel Hayes about Herricks and his betrayal. “Oh, and it turns out that Herricks had been a Union mole for who knows how long. That’s confirmed now. It is also how our data kept leaking to those bastards the whole time.”

“Motherfuc…” Pope caught himself mid-curse, shaking his head. “No, wait. One crisis at a time. So you submitted the northern route, just the way Command was expecting, and then what happened?”

“The next part was Sunday afternoon, after we got the update from Councillor Felmann. We split up to get the Exeter ready - Reyn and I did loading, Dixon - you were on systems - and Pope, you were helping Ian to get kitted.” Burrows tried to recall the exact sequence from memory, but the sheer repetitive nature of it made it difficult to recall. You do something a hundred times, it eventually all starts to blend together. “I pulled the files from the Womb into the Exeter via the Home One data link, sometime in that period. Except I must have pulled the wrong files, and we ended up with the old southern route info again. I was working on several versions of the file, with the old route plan as reference, and somewhere along the line…”

Burrows trailed off, and the table was silent for a moment as everyone considered the implications.

“Rookie mistake, it could have happened to any of us.” Dixon scowled at the menu compad, then tossed it back onto the table. “It probably also saved our asses, in the end. Those Union rovers were hot and thirsty all along the northern fields - if we had tried to go that way, things would have turned out really ugly.”

“That’s exactly what Colonel Hayes figured as well. I think he’s trying to see the silver lining here, even though I did a terrible job of explaining how this happened in the first place.” Burrows grimaced at the watching men. “I feel like a fucking moron right now. Sure, it turned out lucky for us in the end - so far - but it was still a stupid mistake. I have no idea how this all is going to play out now, and whatever happens is going to be squarely my fault.”

Reyn, who had been sitting back with his head tilted towards the distant dome view overhead, deep in thought, finally leaned forward again. There was a pensive look on his face as he crossed his arms over his chest.

“Okay, hypothesis time. Herricks leaks the northern route to the Union. They panic when they don’t find us in the north on the given dates, so they sweep wider and try to cover the old southern route too - and that’s why we run into that Type 24 on our way out. The Union finds the wreck a couple of hours later, puts two and two together and realises that someone was in the area. Then they realise that Herricks’ cover is pretty much blown the moment that info gets back to CDM Command. Someone operating that deeply inside their security cordon, and getting away with it, was just too big a risk for them to ignore.” Reyn had a triumphant smile on his face at this point. “Your mistake blew Herricks’ cover wide open. He was screwed at that point.”

“According to the colonel, that’s then the point where Herricks leaves Taylor Base, takes his goons with him to New Hopetown, and infiltrates the CJR facility.” Burrows continued the story, filling in the blanks which the rest of the team had probably not heard yet. “They plant bombs inside, then bail out just before everything blows. After that, they disappear - and we get that arrest list in the Exeter while we’re still travelling back.”

“Herricks was actually part of the saboteur team that hit the slow-gate?” Pope’s eyebrows were all the way up. “I guess they were pretty serious about taking it off-line then.”

“Well there was probably no point in him trying to pretend he wasn’t involved, at that stage.” Dixon had picked the menu compad up again, but fidgeted at it without looking down at the device. “Whether he was there or not, the evidence was pointing to his involvement regardless. So he probably just went along to make sure everything worked out.”

“Well…” Pope stretched the word out, and had a sudden contemplative frown drawn across his face. “Did everything work out for them, in the end?”

“They blew the gate, and they got away.” Dixon turned to scowl at Pope. “How is that not a success?”

“The CJR is still intact, though. Lots of localised damage, sure, but the structure did not rupture or go through explosive decompression - and if I was planning to wreck someone’s gate facility, that’s what I would have been aiming for. If you pop the CJR and collapse it, the repair work would take months, if not a year. Heck, just shifting all that concrete rubble from its construction would be a three or four-month project.” Pope sat forward, leaning his arms on the table. There was a sly smile starting to tug at the corner of his mouth. “I’m betting that those bastards had to rush their mission, and they didn’t have the proper explosives that were meant to do the job properly. Or not enough, and they had to split charges. How much time did they have inside the facility?”

“Two hours, according to the camera logs.”

Pope guffawed at Burrows’ reply, and Burrows began to see where the big mining engineer was heading with his argument.

“Two hours to plant bombs, and you can’t even rupture the facility? No - that’s not a success. That’s barely half a grade above a failure, as far as I’m concerned.” Pope flashed teeth as he grinned at Burrows. “I concur with Reyn: you screwed his cover, and you also screwed his plan. It sounds to me like they had to hop before they were ready, and they barely managed it.”

“Gentlemen, I appreciate the pep talk, and I appreciate all the silver linings that you are seeing here - but it doesn’t change the fact that I messed up.” Burrows put his hands up in defeat. “As far as realities go, Herricks still did his job. He took our gate offline, and now we’re stuck right in the path of whatever they are going to throw at us.”

“Herricks could have done a much better job if you had not messed up,” Pope countered.

“And the invasion fleets could have been much bigger too, if we got killed in the DMZ while trying to walk a compromised route,” Reyn added. “If Herricks had stayed in command at Taylor Base right up until the invasion, we would have been totally blind to it all. We would only have found out about it when they rolled into Cora Springs, and Alvie Ranch - and Home One.”

The reality of what could have been served to sober everyone up for a moment, if only because it was so clearly even worse than the current state of affairs. Burrows tried to imagine a worse scenario than waking up to Union forces surrounding Home One and demanding their capitulation, and realised that there was very little which could trump that.

Then he thought of what Pope had gone through, with the Seven Craters invasion, and realised that it could always get worse. Not even having the opportunity to fight and defend your family, felt infinitely worse than having them with you when the shooting started.

“Right. On that note: let’s place an order here before we also run out of time.” Burrows reached for the menu compad, but Dixon swung it out of his reach and ended up almost slapping Pope in the face with it. Pope gave a growl in return, reaching for Dixon, and got an elbow in the side instead.

“Leave off, you unscented barbarians! My restaurant, my choice!” Dixon’s voicebox managed an indignant squeal before settling into his usual tones. “If this is going to be our last supper before we accidentally march off into certain death, then at least let me choose what we all get to remember for the rest of our brief little lives.”

The table erupted in a wave of good-natured bickering, even Ian joining in from where he had been sitting and listening in silence, and Burrows sat back to let the team be distracted. He looked up at the dome above them, watching the sky darkening as night approached, and felt Dixon’s words sticking in the back of his mind.

He was right.

They had so preciously little time left now.

Next chapter: TBC