Antares Base
A control room was no longer a necessity when even the most complicated of systems could be operated from a simple console, even just a portable one. That Ricard had insisted on a full control room and the executives to staff it demonstrated the usual Inspectorate mindset: that being in charge required inferior ranks to obey you, a precise territory to piss-mark and dominate. And the more important you were, the bigger the office and the larger the staff you had to have, even if neither was strictly necessary.
Finding a wall console rarely used, in a room turned into a store, Var accessed a wide range of the base’s systems. Plenty of the information she could not review, since only Ricard knew the codes, but she still found enough for her purposes. Lopomac and Carol had knocked out the internal cam system throughout the base, but they hadn’t disrupted the external ones, or even the feed originating from the satellites orbiting Mars. After checking those external cams first, she keyed into the satellite feed. Ricard had locked down all communications to and from Earth, and she didn’t have the time to break his codes, but she was still able to pick up image data from satellites orbiting Earth which was being relayed to those immediately above. This she did to confirm that the Mars Travellers really had been decommissioned, and soon discovered that they had. The only evidence she could find of their existence was the nose section of Traveller VIII out in the orbital complex in which the Travellers had been built, but where it was being dismantled. Frustratingly, the shielding around Messina’s private building project prevented her obtaining image data of the Alexander, but while looking she found something else – something odd.
‘We’re done,’ said Lopomac.
Var glanced up to see him and Carol enter the room, and beckoned them over. She pointed at the image on her screen. ‘What do you make of this?’
‘You’re getting feed from Earth?’ said Carol.
‘Satellite cams – that’s all.’
‘What do we make of what?’ asked Lopomac, clearly puzzled.
The screen revealed one hemisphere of Earth, with satellites glinting above it. Using her ball control, Var moved the pointer up alongside one of the satellites, pausing it on a lengthy vapour trail.
‘I see,’ said Lopomac. ‘Maybe they’ve been repositioning them?’
‘Maybe, but there are plenty more vapour trails, and what looks like wreckage of some kind.’ Var paused, called up a menu and selected a long list of cam numbers, then scrolled down through it and selected again. ‘Then there’s this.’
Argus Station was distantly visible, and rising towards it were more space planes than Var had known existed.
‘Something big, I guess,’ said Lopomac. ‘Maybe we’ll be able to find out about it later, if we’re still alive.’
Var frowned, clicked back to exterior cam views of the base itself and was abruptly returned to reality when at random she selected one focused on the area just outside the main garage doors. Though this was night-time the cams possessed light amplification so that everything remained clearly visible. Spotting Gisender’s pathetic dried-out corpse, Var swallowed drily and rapidly checked other views. Still no sign of further action from Ricard, and there was work to be done. She reached out and slid over a laptop she had found earlier, checked its Bluetooth link with the console, and ensured she could call up all the cam views that could help her.
‘Have you fixed the garage doors?’ she asked tightly.
‘I’ve rigged up the supercaps there for full discharge through the garage airlock,’ he replied.
‘How are you delivering it?’
‘If they bring a crawler in, they have to open the outer garage doors and close them behind, then pressurize the airlock before opening the inner doors. I’ve just linked up a power line through the gate valve to the door mechanism and to the inner doors themselves.’ Lopomac stepped over to the console and linked into the internal cam system. ‘As you asked, I put the inside of Hex Three back on camera too. I cut the optics running into Hex One and triple-encoded radio, so Ricard can’t access it, and, as you said, he probably won’t even realize the cams are working.’ He clicked through a list, calling up a view inside the crawler airlock. ‘When that gate valve opens, it feeds power straight into the electronic control of the doors’ hydraulics, burning them out and seizing up the doors. Their only option then is to open them manually. The moment one of them touches a door, he’ll get a full discharge straight down through his body and into the floor.’
‘Rubber soles,’ said Var. ‘Insulated suits.’
‘About as much defence against this as against a lightning strike. Even less in fact. The doors and frames are bubblemetal but contained in bonded regolith, therefore insulated from the metal floor. This means I can run the full discharge of five in-series crawler supercapacitors to them. What’s left of whoever touches them we’ll have to scrub off the walls.’
Five in-series supercapacitors: enough to power five crawlers over distances amounting to nearly a thousand kilometres each.
‘How many discharges?’
‘One at full power, the next one at half – exponentially downwards. I don’t suppose any of them will volunteer to touch a door to check if it’s still live, after the first of them has done so. The only way they might get by this is if they use something, some lump of metal, to make a connection between the doors and the floor to discharge the capacitors. Even then, it’s likely the locking mechanisms will have become fused.’
‘You also located that mountaineering equipment I mentioned?’
‘I did, though I’ve yet to see what use it will be to us.’
‘You will.’ Var turned away from him. ‘Carol?’
‘Nothing so dramatic,’ she said. ‘If they blow out all the windows, as you suggest, it’ll equalize pressure so that all bulkhead doors linking the outer sections of Hex Three can be opened, whilst anyone still in the internal compartments and corridors will be trapped.’
‘It’s what I would do,’ agreed Var. ‘If they blow out all the windows they can hunt us down in the outer sections, but if we’re in one of the inner sections after that, we’d be trapped and no longer a problem.’
Carol nodded, then reached into her hip pouch for a long, pressurized bottle. It took Var a moment to recognize it but, when she did, she felt a stirring of macabre amusement. ‘Contact adhesive,’ she said.
Carol nodded. ‘A Martian mix based on Terran hyperglues. Whilst exposed to Martian air, it remains in gel form, but the moment it is sealed against atmosphere, for example when sandwiched between metal and a gloved hand, it takes only about two seconds to set. I’ve smeared some on the exterior frames of any unbroken windows, also on the window frames and bulkhead door handles of the sections you’ve already opened to atmosphere.’
‘What about the door handles inside the pressurized sections, like here or in the garage?’ Lopomac asked.
‘In Earth atmosphere the glue oxidizes in about three minutes,’ Carol replied. ‘I could maybe fix that once we see them coming, but only then.’
Var considered that. Once Ricard and the rest made a move, assuming they used a crawler, they could get themselves here within ten minutes. Only ten minutes for Carol to spray glue on every bulkhead door handle within reach, then get safely back to the reactor room.