Blue Sunrise, page 1
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
Chapter Thirty-five
Chapter Thirty-six
Chapter Thirty-seven
Chapter Thirty-eight
Chapter Thirty-nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-one
Chapter Forty-two
Chapter Forty-three
Chapter Forty-four
Chapter Forty-five
Chapter Forty-six
Chapter Forty-seven
Chapter Forty-eight
Chapter Forty-nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-one
Chapter Fifty-two
Blue Sunrise
Gregg R. Overman
First, I would like to thank my wife, Sheri, for her unending support.
Thanks to Cheryl Haynes and FutureWord Publishing. I can truthfully say this book would never have seen the light of day without Cheryl’s pushing me to go for it.
Special thanks for a lesson in airplane design to Charles Burks who saved me from flying the Mars I nose-down into the sands of Mars.
To Barry Lincoln who caught a serious issue that I missed completely.
To Elona Charbonnet for a very thoughtful and helpful critique.
And last but not least, to my beloved godmother, Carolyn Duty Banks, whose kind words of encouragement and sage advice I will never be able to repay.
Much appreciation as well for the many other people who read, reread, praised, critiqued, and challenged various ideas, phrases, chapters and verses. As any author can tell you, it takes a village to write a novel.
To all of my teachers. To everyone who filled my head with the bits and pieces necessary to build a book and who filled my heart with joy and a hunger for more.
And on the slopes of Cheyenne Mountain above NORAD, in parks and in backyards across half the Earth, in the streets and from windows with the curtains barely parted, people raised their eyes and trembled at the sight of Mars burning with a pale, blue flame in the sky above them.
~Gregg R. Overman, Blue Sunrise~
Chapter One
Shuttle Outbound Station
March 25, 2061
B
en Allspot stood in line with some forty-five other people—almost all of them men. Virtually everything he owned was contained in bags at his feet. With a well-muscled physique and standing six feet four inches tall, he stood out in the crowd, but it wasn’t his size that made people glance in his direction and then quickly away. There were small scars on his face, especially above the eyes, and his knuckles were large and crisscrossed with white lines. His nose had obviously been broken at some time, perhaps more than once, and hidden under his long, curly black hair, was the reminder of a knife fight he had nearly lost back in his younger days when he had been more violent—and more at peace with himself. But it was the look on his face that caused the men in line to keep a discrete distance. No one thought to engage him in conversation, and that was just the way he wanted it.
The fact was—he felt horrible. He had managed to pass a drug test earlier in the day, but that was the beauty of carbohydrate-based drugs. As carbohydrates, they were metabolized rapidly, and he had heard of people passing routine drug screens within hours of taking Carbodine. He didn’t really know if that was possible, and someone had told him they would be tested again before boarding, so he had not taken a dose since the night before. The rumor of another drug test didn’t seem to be true, since they were already filing onto the transport, but goddamn, he felt bad. Ben Allspot was going cold turkey while standing in line for a flight through space.
There was a continual, high-pitched ringing in his ears. His skin felt warm and dry with a peculiar prickly sensation that wasn’t altogether unpleasant, but he was slightly nauseous and seriously constipated. He had slept only two hours the night before, and his mind seemed to have shut down. It was as if some vital connections had been severed in his brain, and he had struggled during the last twelve hours to recall commonly used phrases and familiar ideas. Fear had welled up from nowhere on several occasions, nearly overpowering him with its grip, and for the first time in his life, he could appreciate the debilitating paralysis of an anxiety attack.
Over and above everything else, he was massively depressed, and he knew it. He was not without a good education as were most of the men shuffling forward in line. He had almost graduated from college before discovering Carbodine. He knew that Carbodine worked by changing the level of Serotonin and other chemicals in the brain. He knew that the brain was a marvelously adaptive organ and adjusted to new conditions over a period of time. He knew that his depression was a matter of his brain attempting to reestablish the old balance, and that with time he would feel better. But right now, it was knowledge without comfort or understanding—just another piece of empty and meaningless information swirling in a maelstrom of grief and pain. He stood in a world composed of differing shades of gray, preparing to leave his two daughters behind, perhaps forever, and he was far beyond any consolation or potential relief.
The thought of his daughters caused his eyes to fill with tears, and he blinked rapidly as the line moved slightly. He kicked his bags forward. Maybe it was best that they stay with their mother. At least she would keep them well fed and clothed. Of course, he could have done that, and he loved them dearly, but his wife had taken exception to his drug use during the last two years and had finally taken the children and moved up to her mother’s house in Shreveport. It hadn’t helped that he had gone to jail a couple of times for shoving her around.
He had always been a violent man, although he didn’t really think of himself that way. His father had been a hard-drinking, hard-drugging, New Orleans riverboat captain who worked three weeks on and two weeks off. Ben had come to hate the two-week period when his father was in the house. He had come to hate the uncertainty of what his father would do when he came home. Would it be kisses and presents, or rage and angry, painful fists? He had come to hate his mother for not taking them away from it.
Ben had grown up big, strong, and tough with a natural inclination for drugs, alcohol, and bar fights. His marriage and the birth of his daughters had done wonders to calm him down, and his intelligence and strength of will had gotten him almost all the way through college. Those were the good times. He had worked construction during the day and become a supervisor over the crew even while taking night courses. His children had been at home for him to love and care for, and his wife would cook the most wonderful crawfish and shrimp dinners whenever there was a little extra money. It was the time just before a good friend had turned him on to Carbodine.
At first he had done it just for fun. It was a lot of fun. Within minutes of taking the small, white pill, a feeling of calm energy would come over him. Things seemed to be clearer, and he found himself engaging in long philosophical discussions of intense interest. Nothing seemed out of reach, and the world would explode in fresh, new opportunities. Even the worst part of his job or schoolwork became a joy to perform, and for a while—a short while—his grades actually improved.
Then one day he decided he needed the Carbodine to keep up with all the work he had to do. School, his job, his family. He decided he couldn’t be expected to expend all that effort without a little boost every now and then.
Slowly and subtly the experience changed. His wonderfully adaptive brain desperately tried to find a new balance, and having been induced to produce unnatural amounts of some chemicals, it compensated by producing less and less of others. The calm energy gradually became a frantic need to get certain things done and done exactly as he saw them being done. The fresh, new opportunities became slim lines of possibility that must, at all costs, be exploited before they closed forever.
The frantic needs gave way to bursts of black, murderous rage, and he was fired for nearly killing a worker who had unfortunately misaligned a concrete form. He took a lower paying job and dropped out of school for lack of funds. For reasons that now seemed unclear to him, he had taken a short course in piloting the small fusion tugs that were used on the moon.
And he had gone to jail. Not for the first time, but for the first time in a long time, and with some regularity.
He didn’t feel like his life was exploding. It was imploding—closing in around him with alarming speed. When his wife left with his daughters, all that he had ever loved went with them. He lost his new jo
It became the focus of his life. How much did he have left? How long would that last? Where could he get more? Where could he get the money to buy more? How long had it been since his last pill? Could he safely take more right now, or should he wait?
Frantic questions. A frantic need.
From within this desperation, it slowly dawned on him that he had become a drug addict, and that he could either break free of his situation or die.
He had been thinking about dying quite a bit for the last few weeks. Fantasies of his death would float up unbidden in idle moments as if they had a life of their own. A large caliber gun in the mouth would be the best way to go. It was quick, like turning off a light, and as sure a way as he could think of.
And it wasn’t so much that he wanted to die—he just wanted to be dead. The thought of what it would do to his daughters was all that kept him from it.
He knew he hadn’t been the perfect father, but he had never laid a hand on either of them. He had done the best he could for them, and he loved them with all his heart. But they had watched as he beat their mother. They had seen the police come to pick him up. The memory of those eyes, big as saucers, haunted him still. The vision of those faces would come to him of its own accord, just as thoughts of suicide often did. He could not forget it, and he could not fix it.
No, they would probably be better off if he never saw them again, but how much pain would it cause them to know he had killed himself? He couldn’t bear to think about it. He had done them enough harm.
“I am well and truly boxed in,” he thought to himself at one point. “I can’t stand it, and I can’t leave it behind.”
The solution had come to him in a flash. The airwaves and newspapers were filled with advertisements for work on the Moon, and looking back on it, he couldn’t understand why it hadn’t crossed his mind before. Companies were screaming for experienced construction hands. The pay was good, and with the course he had taken in piloting lunar tugs, he would be a shoe-in.
He had walked out of his apartment and taken a bus to the nearest application office. After filling out several pages of forms, he was admitted to a tiny office where a small man wearing a crisp, white shirt and a red tie sat waiting behind a desk littered with paper. There was a filing cabinet behind the man and a single chair in front of the desk. The walls were completely bare.
The man took the forms and began reading through them without so much as a glance in Ben’s direction. Ben sat down in the chair.
“Well, Mr. Allspot, you have some excellent credentials. I don’t think we’ll have any problems placing you immediately. Is there anything else I need to know?”
Ben looked down at his feet. “I’ve had a little trouble with the police.”
“I see that listed here. Any felonies?”
“No.”
“Are you currently on probation or parole?”
“No.”
“Then we’ve got no problems. If you’ll sign right here.”
He reached across the desk with a piece of paper, and for the first time, looked straight at Ben.
Ben was suddenly and acutely aware that he hadn’t shaved for several days and that his shirt was filthy.
The man was speaking. “This piece of paper authorizes us to check your personal file. We’ll have that information in a few hours. The minimum tour is three months. You can get an added bonus if you stay for six.” The man hesitated for a moment, and his voice took on a slightly more serious tone. “You’ll be required to report for a drug test the morning of the day you leave.”
Ben scribbled his name and passed the paper back across the desk. “I want to leave tomorrow.”
The man raised an eyebrow but pulled another piece of paper from one of the piles in front of him, signed it, and gave it to Ben. “Report to this clinic at 10:00 tomorrow morning. The directions are on the back. There is a shuttle leaving for Lunar Base Three at 5:00 tomorrow afternoon. You’ll need to be at the entrance of the tube transit by 3:30. Pick up a packet from the secretary, and read it. There are some very strict limits on what you can bring with you. Be sure to have a current ID card.
Ben stared dully at the piece of paper for a moment and stood to leave. “Thanks.”
“You’ll be working for Lexam.”
“Okay.”
The man leaned back in his chair. “Do you want to know what it pays?”
“No,” Ben said, and walked out.
~
The line had moved forward considerably, and Ben was soon facing a clerk with dark black skin and tired eyes.
“Place your bags on the scales. Are you carrying any drugs or weapons?”
“No.”
Ben picked up his bags with one hand and put them on the scales.
Another clerk recorded the number on the scale and opened the bags to look through them before quickly slipping a plastic tag into the handles.
“Name,” the black clerk said.
“Huh.”
“Name,” the clerk repeated and looked up at Ben.
Ben felt his throat tighten, and his heart began to thud in his ears. Black spots swirled in his vision and the ringing in his ears increased in both pitch and volume. This man wanted something from him, but what was it?
“Dude, your name?”
“Uh, Ben Allspot.”
The clerk scrolled through a list of names on the screen in front of him and hit a button on the keyboard. “I need to see your ID card.”
Ben fumbled in his pocket, handed the card over, and watched as the clerk slipped it into the reader.
The clerk scanned the screen, hit a few keys, and returned Ben’s ID card along with a small tag. “You’ll need this tag to claim your things when you arrive on the moon. You’re cleared to board. Take any available seat.”
Ben turned toward the loading ramp.
“You might want to put that tag in your pocket,” the clerk said.
As Ben shuffled away, he heard the clerk speaking in a soft voice to his companion. “Man, they’ll take anybody these days.”
Ben slipped the tag in his pocket and walked on.
Chapter Two
Mars Orbit
March 26, 2061
“B
raking maneuver will commence in fifteen minutes, Commander Thon.”
Ki Thon looked over at Mike Cochran, the pilot, and wished they didn’t insist on calling him Commander. He was more used to being called Doctor Thon, although Ki would have been just fine. “Steady as she goes Mr. Cochran. Bring up the surface on visual when you get a chance.”
A small screen blazed to life in front of him almost before he finished speaking, and Ki allowed himself just a few moments to savor the view. The surface of Mars was unremarkable from this distance except for the fact that he would soon be the first man to set foot on it.
Ki considered that to be a shame. The first manned expedition to Mars could have taken place at any time during the last fifty years, but money ruled all decisions, and the mining of He3 from the Moon was so profitable that it had edged out all other concerns.
“Magnification sir?” the copilot, Adrian Melancon asked.
“No, just leave it as it is.”
The panorama moved slowly as their ship, the Mars I, went through its last orbit. Some of the deeper valleys stood out in deep contrast to the larger mountains and the rare, wispy clouds, but mostly it was indistinct shades of red. Dust and rocks and water in reasonable quantity if we’re lucky, Ki thought to himself
The pilot, copilot, and Ki were the only three people in the cramped cockpit. Ki was totally out of his element here and completely useless except for some rudimentary navigational duties that had already been performed, but mission protocol had him in this seat, and that is where he would stay until the ship touched down. It grated on his nerves to be sitting with nothing to do, and he used the slowly gliding view of the surface of Mars to help him relax.
