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A.R.Yngve presents THE ARGUS PROJECT
The swarm of descending MSF shuttles formed a ring around the pit's edges. From each shuttle scattered hundreds of flying bullhorn drones, all blaring in chorus, repeating the same pre-recorded message:
THIS IS AN MSF RAID. ALL CIVILIAN PERSONNEL MUST EVACUATE THE AREA, NOW. OBSTRUCTORS WILL BE SHOT.
Hundreds of native workers in heavy clothing scrambled to fly, drive and run from the pit in their available vehicles. More dust was thrown up, and visibility dropped to almost nothing.
The Martian trucks and flying-pods were equipped for sandstorms, and used radar to navigate the pit; miraculously, the stampede caused no traffic accidents.
The MSF had raided before, but never on this scale. The fleeing Martians were equally confused and angry, and complained loudly over com-links, e-talk, and mouth to mouth.
"What the Earth are those farks thinking? The whole schedule's interrupted! We won't meet today's oxygen quota!"
"Sabotage our terraforming program, that's what they want! The Unborns won't even let us make our own air!"
"Now they jammed our radios! Not one frequency works!"
"My terminal too! The mine surveillance cameras feed nothing but static. The Terrans have some secret scrambling beam."
"People could die down in the mines right now and we won't hear it, thanks to those farking Pinks!"
"It's gone too far."
"Someone's going to pay for this."
Because of the dust thrown up by landing MSF craft and departing vehicles, the workers could not see a lone female figure emerge from the wreck of her crashed shuttle.
Venix waded through heaps of fire-extinguishing foam and ran for the nearest convoy of passing traffic. A large truck was about to drive by her in a few seconds. She raced up a narrow hillside and braced herself for a leap.
An awesome, intimidating sight: the grimy, yellow mining truck rolled up along a kilometer-long ramp, on six pairs of wheels, each wheel five meters wide. It was built to carry a load of 100 tons, and could dump the load through shutters in its undercarriage.
Now it drove empty at 90 KMPH, revving its deuterium-powered engines, each engine also burning chloro-carbon pellets to produce the dark smoke that sprayed up from the six smokestacks on the truck's sides. The truck as a whole produced a level of noise that, even in the thin Martian atmosphere, could shatter an unprotected eardrum.
Venix clenched her teeth against the vibrations, but it didn't help much. She leaped, tumbled in the low gravity, and landed on the walkway that ran alongside the truck. In the impact, her left knee hit the edge of a steel beam; pain shot through her leg and would not go away.
Her internal display flashed severe warnings as she hobbled toward the driver's compartment:
DANGER! HULL BREACH
Some blue coolant liquid spurted out of the knee wound, before the inner skin automatically contracted and shut off the leak. She barely recognized the new sensation, like wading through water: it was a long time since she last felt physical fatigue. It made her unable to jump or run - the left leg had turned into dead weight.
Leaning against the truck's hull, grasping the rails so as not to fall off, she made her way to the front of the truck - and knocked on the door with the gun.
Another internal warning distracted her:
DANGER!
The crew of two drivers, native Martians with transparent oxygen masks and goggles over their broad, hairy faces, stared back at her. She waited a second, shot off the door lock, and staggered inside.
Venix tried to yell, coughed up dust and her loud voice sounded gritty. "Take me to your leaders! Now! The MSF are after me! I seek asylum!"
The drivers gaped, while trying to steer the truck safely up the road; they were heading for a campsite not far away. On the truck's radar screen it became evident that at least four MSF shuttles were closing in.
"Not that way! Into the city!"
"We can't!" the younger driver yelled over the draft and engine noise that Venix had let inside the compartment. "Truck's too big for cities! The vibrations alone can shatter every window it goes by! And most city roads are too narrow, we need at least twenty meters elbow-space."
"I said change course," she insisted. "I am a refugee from the Terran Fleet. I carry important information for your leaders."
"What leaders?" the younger driver said. "You mean the mining cooperative?"
"She means the council!" the older driver broke in. "It hasn't been in session since last year! I know who might be interested in you, lady - councilwoman Berg! Ask to see her!"
Venix frowned suspiciously at the man so suddenly turning cooperative. In a few seconds, he programmed the truck to drive toward a certain building in the nearby capital. But her infrared vision confirmed he wasn't lying.
"There," he told her, "it'll take a detour, uh, around Voce Di Agua to get there, you'll be at the Council Hall in half an hour. I'll alert them - somehow. Good luck!"
Urging his co-rdiver to pay attention to him, the older driver strapped himself in and pulled the ejection-seat handle above his head. With a blast of compressed air, the driver and his seat shot up through a hatch that blew open in the ceiling, and was gone.
The other driver threw Venix a brief, consternated glance - then he reached above his head, and ejected himself too.
She was alone. Two small spare seats stood against the back wall; she pushed the right button, and the seats immediately slid into place at the controls.
The plate on the dashboard claimed in engraved letters:
VEHICLE DESIGN BY
"We still make the best trucks," she said to herself, got into a seat, and buckled up.
The truck slowly turned away from the convoy of traffic, reached the peak of the slope, and she was on the road to Perkele Valley. In the rearview-cam screens, she could see ten, then fifteen MSF shuttles come buzzing after her.
Ahead lay the open road through Vallis Marineris. The muddy, slushy "river" she had seen before floated (sort of) a kilometer to her right, dwarfed by the huge canyon. A gigantic cliff wall lay some three hundred meters to her left, rising a kilometer into the dark-blue Martian stratosphere.
The truck took a course away from the actual "road" - rather a wide path - perhaps to avoid knocking over smaller vehicles in its wake. She was picking up greater speed on the open plain, but to no avail - the ships easily overtook her.
Three small bullhorn-drones came flying in at the driver's compartment, stuck to the windshield plates, and blared at her to surrender. She told them to go to hell, but wasn't sure if her reply could be heard over the noise.
The truck's external cameras showed that four of the MSF ships flew on a parallel course with the speeding truck; one of them positioned istself above her, and troopers with jetpacks were hauled down on telescopic poles toward the top roof.
On the camera screens, the huge red letters on the top roof read: LOADING BAY - DO NOT WALK ACROSS.
"Doped-up morons," Venix muttered.
She waited until a platoon of nine men with jetpacks had put their lead-booted feet on the top roof - it took them just under fifteen seconds - and she pulled the lever marked BAY.
The top roof split in two and neatly folded into the sides of the truck.
Nine heavily armed men with lead-booted feet dropped like rocks into the empty loading bay... and hit the reinforced, rounded steel floor fifteen meters below. She saw and heard it all through the truck's surveillance system.
As the last one's scream suddenly ceased with a faint thump, Venix realized that she had killed nineteen people in the past few hours. With all the other things on her mind, most of all her leg injury, she didn't quite know what to feel about the dead.
They were human, though they acted like robots. She had acted of choice, like a human, but did not have a human body. But she didn't want to die, and she never wanted to be imprisoned again or treated like property.
Suddenly one of the pursuing ships fired a missile. It zipped past the truck and blasted a crater in the ground two hundred meters ahead. The heavy vehicle could not possibly stop in time - so the autopilot swerved the wheels slightly to the left, and the truck drove around the crater.
The game had changed, Venix thought; they were obviously under orders not to kill her. She still mattered enough to the Fleet alive, as a pawn to keep Argus under control. She recalled from the news that the Martian natives deeply resented the MSF presence, and often called for them to be removed.
Then she ought to give the natives a hand, she thought coldly.
The shuttle that had air-dropped the soldiers on the truck now attempted to place itself in front of it, in a futile attempt to force it to a stop - it was emptied of people, and ran on remote.
Venix set the autopilot to "sleep" mode, and stepped on the brakes. With an ear-grating rumble, the truck's retro-rockets slowed it down to 50 KMPH - then she released the brake and accelerated forward.
The remote-controlled empty shuttle wavered uncertainly, as if its robotic pilot couldn't decide upon retreat or pursuit - then the front of the truck smashed into its rear, and sent it spinning off toward a passing mesa. The ship exploded into a million fragments, shaking the ground so that Venix felt the entire truck lurch.
"Next!" she hissed. And they kept coming. The mouth of Perkele Valley was very close.
***
Across the gulf of space in the Asteroid Belt, in the vicinity of the Ceres Station, the Fleet's automated scrambler probe was targeted on Mars.
This most secret of all the Inner Planets' "info-busting" weapons could scramble almost any ongoing, unprotected recording out of recognition. It only failed to work on underground targets, such as the Jovian colonies - and on certain well-shielded vehicles, such as the Volvocson interplanetary mining trucks.
But still Venix could not transmit from her truck and be heard.
And in the Vallis Marineris region, the effect of the scrambler probe had wounded the inhabitants. Only the strongest MSF transmissions barely functioned, but with serious disturbances.
The Martians found their screens, radios, e-motes and communications received only static, or nothing. Traffic in and out of space found itself delayed in orbit, and grounded on the surface.
Distress calls from settlers stranded in storms went unheeded. Message traffic between family members was cut off by random noise. At least two people died in accidents set off by the disruptions.
Rumor spread, by fast flying-pod, roton-shuttle and driver - of a lone woman heading for the city in a mining truck, pursued by a vast Terran force - and rumor also claimed she might be a Martian, for she did not use a breathing-mask.
***
Venix had expected to enter a bustling, overpopulated city with 30,000 inhabitants.
Instead, her truck rolled into what more resembled a ghost town. Everywhere Venix looked, wide boulevards and small alleys lay deserted. It occurred to her that it must be a curfew, ordered by the MSF. The truck followed the widest route along Alpha Ralpha Boulevard; vehicles and pods stood parked at the sides of the road, not a driver in sight...
No, wait - she could spot a few people, hiding inside their cars, their infrared heat giving them away. But no MSF tanks were blocking the road, and the pursuing shuttles were still circling her, hesitating to attack with a full force that might destroy her.
The drugs the troops were on, guaranteed that not one soldier would disobey the order to take Venix alive, but she did not know this.
A billboard across the wall of a 30-meter-high building announced a benefit concert for MSF troops, playing in the airtight Voce Di Agua Dome, just two blocks away. Only Terran troops were allowed.
Suddenly, Venix hated them so intensely she could stomach the thought of killing lots of them. They were on mood-controlling drugs all the time - so they could not be reasoned with. The more Terran troops she left standing on Mars, the greater the likelihood she would never see Argus again... or live through this awful day.
Venix zoomed in the truck's map-display for a detailed view, and started inwardly. That miner had deliberately coded a route that ran dangerously close to the concert hall. If she let it drive by itself, the truck would run over the shuttles and pods left in the parking-sheds outside the entrance, possibly grinding to a halt in the process.
That damned Martian had tried to use her to provoke the MSF! She was not going to let herself be used by any party; she'd rather give the Martians an uprising they could never stop once it had begun.
Venix shut off the autopilot, pushed the gas pedal to the floor and steered straight at one of the dome's giant panorama windows. Her eyesight was not quite up to full capacity, but she could easily see that the entire audience was in combat uniform.
The MSF filled just one-tenth of the concert hall seats, and the ongoing stage act inside seemed to have them hypnotized - unable or unwilling to hear the approaching truck.
The pursuing MSF men in their shuttles suddenly realized what was about to happen, and sent desperate warnings to their comrades on the ground.
But the Fleet's scrambler probe, still active, reduced their warnings to gibberish.
***
At that moment, just before disaster struck, the former captain of the ground troops sat in a bar several blocks away.
He unlocked the helmet that fed him obedience-drugs and com-link messages. Then his secure com-link beeped in the helmet's earpiece, and the eye-display flashed an urgent warning message. The drug-feed patch in the neck of the helmet began to swell, and a drop fell from the helmet onto the floor.
Someone was trying real hard to call him back to duty.
The demoted, demoralized captain tossed away the helmet in disgust, slurring drunken curses. The helmet's earpiece kept squeaking out rapid pleas to evacuate the concert.
He pulled his gun and shot the helmet to pieces.
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