The Hellas Find, page 3
part #9 of Fox Meridian Series
‘Belle,’ Naomi said, speaking to the house’s AI, ‘would you arrange for two glasses of wine to be taken to the lounge?’
Belle did not appear, but her voice came from the room’s speakers. ‘Of course, Sister Naomi.’
‘Thank you.’ Naomi’s gaze shifted to meet Fox’s eyes. ‘I have something to discuss with my pet.’ That was intriguing, but Fox remained silent. Naomi would get to whatever it was when she did. Now, Naomi moved her hand again – the butterflies kept up their insistent beat anyway – and pressed the buttons which unlocked the frame and set Fox free. ‘Wait for me in the lounge. I need to get something.’
‘Yes, Mistress,’ Fox said, trying to keep the curiosity out of her voice and not entirely managing it.
One of Belle’s arachnoform service units had just delivered the drinks when Naomi walked into the lounge carrying a flat case maybe eight inches across and an inch deep. Fox allowed her accelerated perceptions to take in the sheer beauty of the woman. Naomi was just a shade taller than Fox, but both claimed they were five-foot-eleven. Naomi was long-legged and curvaceous. Her D-cup breasts were hiked up in a corset tonight, becoming something out of male fantasy. Fox’s fantasy too, if she were being honest. She was a hard-featured woman, severe. Her eyebrows were sharp lines over blue eyes. Her hair was cut short and was a blonde which was almost white. She had high cheekbones, a strong jaw, and full lips painted dark red. She did not always dress the part of mistress with Fox, but tonight she was in a black leather corset, a tiny G-string, and thigh-high boots with five-inch spikes for heels.
She picked up a glass and took a sip of wine. Her tongue flicked over her lips. ‘Perfect,’ she said and looked at Fox. ‘Sit down, pet. Have a drink. You’ve earned it.’
Fox had been waiting, standing up, beside one of the sofas. She picked up a glass and settled onto the seat. The wine was white, and very crisp. Delicious, even if the alcohol was not going to do a thing. Naomi settled down beside Fox and relaxed, tucking one leg under the other. She placed the case in Fox’s lap. Fox glanced at Naomi for permission, got a nod, and opened it up. Inside was a collar made of something which looked like leather. Studs of purple-anodised metal ran all the way around it. There was no obvious way to open it, but Fox assumed it did open, and its purpose was obvious. Her eyes widened.
‘If you accept it,’ Naomi said, ‘we’ll be taking this to the next level. You’ll be mine. It’s a sort of friendship bracelet with menaces.’
Fox permitted herself a small smile at the analogy. ‘Can I speak freely, Mistress?’
‘Always.’
‘Practically, you know if you lock this on one of my frames, I still have a bunch of other ones. I have two on Mars and I don’t see us shipping copies of this up there.’
‘I understand the physical limitations, Fox. This is symbolic. And it should not look entirely out of place on you, considering your public persona. You should be able to wear it for business occasions without anyone commenting. Frankly, the people who will know what it means are just going to be envious of whoever your owner is.’
‘Sam will know. Marie too, probably. That’s not a problem, just a comment. Naomi… People who get into long-term relationships with me… I haven’t had a good experience with it.’
Naomi nodded. ‘I think you’re worth the risk. I won’t make you accept this if you still harbour doubts.’
Fox bit her lip, looking down at the leather band. ‘Could I think about it? Just for a couple of days? Friday. Friday evening at Sheela Na Gig. If I haven’t chickened out, you can put it on me with witnesses.’
Naomi laughed. She had a gorgeous, throaty laugh full of dirty humour. ‘I believe I find that acceptable. Friday it is. Keep that with you. It’ll remind you of what you need to decide.’
‘I’m not likely to forget.’ Fox gave her prospective, proper, really-we’re-doing-this mistress a mock-timid look. ‘Do I still get to come some more?’
‘Oh, my dearest pet, we’re both going to come until I can’t take it any more.’
16th February.
The door of Jackson’s office closed and locked behind Fox as she walked in. External network connections were severed with the lockdown of the EM shield. Whatever the meeting was about, it was serious.
The seriousness was further reinforced by the fact that Mariel Hoarsen was there. A slim, sophisticated woman with straight, shoulder-length, black hair and hazel eyes. She was both the CEO of MarTech Group and Jackson’s girlfriend. Her full lips were set into a serious line. She did not look the type to go for a man like Jackson – seven years her senior with untidy black hair and frequently to be found wearing a T-shirt underneath his suit jacket – but their relationship had grown from a long friendship.
‘Good,’ Jackson said. ‘If Kit would join us? Then we’ll have everyone we need.’ Kit appeared in her serious outfit, with pencil skirt, pumps instead of boots, and pointless glasses perched on her nose. ‘Kit, you’ll need to put on your corporate head. Palladium’s CIO needs to be briefed on this as well as Fox and Helen.’
Helen Dillan had got there before Fox; she lived in tower three and had a much shorter journey to get there. She was an oriental woman, small with a mop of blonde hair and very dark eyes. She was in a relationship with Terri Martins which had come as something of a surprise to Helen. She was also Fox’s boss on standard operational matters; the roles reversed when it came to terrorist cases or ‘sensitive’ ones. In practice, with Kit they formed a triumvirate which ran the investigations side of Palladium Security Solutions.
‘Serious security, Jackson,’ Fox said. She was used to her various network connections now. She had largely left them to Kit to operate, and frequently still did, but she had been learning to operate her frames better and now she felt rather claustrophobic cut off from the outside world.
‘Because this case has some rather sensitive aspects,’ Mariel said. ‘The government is taking an interest. They’re pushing us to get to the bottom of this one.’
‘Not NIX?’
Mariel shook her head. ‘There’s no intelligence angle to this. It’s just… Perhaps we should show you what we have and then you’ll likely begin to understand the peculiar circumstances.’
‘Indeed,’ Jackson said. ‘On with the show.’ He turned to one of his keyboards – the room had several, along with a number of other input methods, monitors, and an entire wall which could display video – and tapped his way through various security screens. ‘Just watch. We’ll answer questions as best we can when it’s done.’ The wall screen lit up, the video taking up the entire thing. The image was dark, and only slight shifts in the texture of the light indicated that they were seeing anything at all. Then the voice began.
‘The entrance is hidden well. It appears to be just a crack in the rock. It’s a tough squeeze to get through into the tunnel beyond, but it opens out after about ten metres and then…’
The dark image was illuminated by what had to be a flashlight. A big flashlight, but still just a flashlight. It revealed reddish rocks, sandstone presumably, and then something which seemed to be carved into those rocks. The view shifted, revealing a cavern of some sort. There were other flashlight beams moving but the dim illumination gave little in the way of detail. Little that most people could see anyway.
‘There appear to be structures,’ Kit said. ‘I would say ruined buildings or chambers.’ Kit had the advantage of not only seeing things at the same rate as Fox but being able to process the imagery faster too.
Now that she had said it, it became clearer. As the view shifted to just one of the ‘cells’ cut into the cavern wall, it became much more obvious. Like the kind of cave dwellings found in China and parts of North America, someone had cut a room into the rock, but these were not simple underground homes. There were shapes in the room which looked like technology of some kind. Old, badly corroded, and almost impossible to identify, but the shapes were too regular, too obviously manufactured, for anything you would expect to find in a cave.
‘And this is what I really want recorded,’ the voice said as the view moved in on one of the shapes. There was a thick layer of red-brown dust over most of it, but some of that had been brushed away to show a metal surface. On the metal, someone had printed… symbols. They were like no writing Fox had ever seen, but they had to be writing. ‘Processed metal,’ the voice went on, ‘and a developed form of writing. We’ll need a palaeolinguist to try to decipher what it says. I’m not even sure we could ever understand it, but we have to try. This could be the most important find in the history of the planet. In the history of any planet!’
The view shifted, scanning around to look out on the greater cavern. It looked big. ‘There are over a hundred cells in this cavern, and the cavern goes deeper. I intend to press on, look further into the settlement. We could be looking at a major city dating back billions of years. I’m going to remove the geotags from this before sending it. I don’t want anyone disturbing this place until we’re quite sure about what we have.’ The video stopped on an image of the cavern, illuminated only by flashlight beams, and the room was silent for several seconds while people collected their thoughts.
‘Billions of years?’ Fox asked.
‘Probably three to four billion,’ Jackson replied.
‘Humans didn’t exist three or four billion years ago.’
‘Quite.’
‘Where was this taken, Jackson?’
‘Mars. Almost certainly somewhere in the Hellas Planitia region. That’s where Mister Carter is supposed to be working.’
‘You’re being more obtuse than usual, Jackson.’
‘Jonathan Carter is a geologist working under MarTech contract,’ Mariel said. ‘He sent a message through to Isis City on the ninth of January at four p.m., Mars time, indicating that he had made an important discovery. He said that he wished to check on it further before revealing more details. That was followed on the thirteenth by this video, but no one really bothered to look at it for several days. When they finally did, they sent it on to us with a note stating that the contents were to be considered sensitive. We passed it on to the administration, and they sat on it for a while, presumably trying to decide what to do.’
‘Or whether it’s real,’ Helen said. ‘It’s not really much to go on.’
‘It isn’t,’ Jackson agreed. ‘In case you’re wondering, the glyphs visible in the video correspond to no known language, but people have been making up languages for a long time. The video is taken from Mister Carter’s implant, and so only has the resolution of the human eye. That’s not high. It’s impossible to tell whether the video is faked in some way because there simply isn’t enough detail.’
‘Hold on,’ Fox said, frowning. ‘Jonathan Carter?’
Mariel grimaced. ‘Yes.’
‘Jon Carter of Mars has found evidence of Martians?’
‘Mister Carter is a little eccentric,’ Jackson said, ‘but an excellent geologist as well as a competent amateur archaeologist. He does believe that Mars once hosted intelligent life. It’s not an uncommon meme, even among people who live there. However, it seems unlikely that he would be party to a hoax. His belief is that real evidence will be found and so he would not wish to muddy the waters. Or that’s my reading of his psychological profile.’
‘Right… Okay, so we get this video and the men in black see it and don’t like it? Mariel said we were being pressured to sort this out.’
‘Oh, it gets more complicated than that,’ Mariel said. ‘When Carter sent the video to Isis City, a dust storm had blown up in Hellas Planitia. It’s summer in the southern hemisphere and storms aren’t terribly uncommon there. This one turned out to be a big one. It went planetwide the following day and it’s still going. On the twenty-seventh of January, someone at Palladium noticed that there had been no communications with the science station for several days, but there was the storm and people were staying inside. There can be some communication disruption. They waited until the sixth of February to send a team out to the station.’
‘And they found it empty,’ Jackson said. ‘The entire survey team is missing.’
Helen looked up and around the room. ‘Shouldn’t there have been a swell of dramatic music when you said that?’
‘I forgot to program the sound effects. The team recovered every bit of data they could get their hands on and went back to Isis City. When they’d reviewed it, they sent it to us. We’ll make all of it available to you, but it’s to be treated in a secure manner.’
‘And you may want to go through it in a well-lit room,’ Mariel added. Fox frowned at her.
‘There is a certain element of “spookiness” about the data recovered,’ Jackson agreed. ‘Someone did a very effective job of trashing the primary computer system. What we have is sense impressions recorded to a personal backup device and a few fragments the forensics people on Mars were able to recover.’ He turned and tapped at his keyboard again. Once more, the video wall lurched into life.
‘It seems impossible.’ Carter’s voice doing the narration again. The video showed more darkened caves illuminated by flashlights, but this time there was something else. Instead of small metal objects of various sorts, here there was an entire wall blocking the path of the cave. ‘Frankly, even though I’ve been looking for this my entire life, I did not believe I would ever find anything like this.’ Something which looked like a door became visible in flashes. More of the weird writing above and around it, but the view panned to the area beside the door and closed in. There was what might have been a window mounted in the metal, badly pitted from long years in the dusty atmosphere of Mars. Someone had cleaned away the dust from a section of it, but the view beyond was still unclear. It looked like there were coffins in the room beyond, coffins with glass tops and shapes inside them.
‘I count twenty,’ Carter said. ‘Twenty bodies preserved since… Well, who knows when? The door is sealed and we’re going to need a lot of equipment brought down here before we can go in. If what we’re seeing is real, this could be the final proof that Mars once had intelligent life.’
The video cut abruptly, back into one of the corridors in the rock. Flashlight beams moved urgently. If this was still Carter’s view, he was in a hurry. His voice cut in a second later. ‘What do you mean, “It’s open?” How can it be open? This place has been dead for four billion years.’ The reply came in the form of the metal wall appearing ahead in the flashlight beam once more. What had looked like a door was now open, slid sideways to give access to the room beyond. Or to give access to the cave for something inside.
The view moved to the door, pausing there to look over the coffin-like pods within. Several of the glass tops were levered open and all of them now looked empty.
‘Pause it,’ Fox said. ‘Go back… fifteen seconds.’ She moved closer to the screen while Jackson did as she asked. ‘Yeah, that’s about right. Can you zoom in on the floor in front of the door?’
‘I can, but there will be little more detail.’
Fox gave a shrug as the image re-rendered itself and narrowed in on the section of floor. There was not really enough detail to be sure, but it looked as though there was something pressed into the ever-present dust on the cave floor. ‘Footprint?’ Fox asked.
‘It took me four times through the video to notice that,’ Jackson said in something of a grumbling tone. ‘I suppose you spotted it too, Kit?’
‘Yes,’ Kit admitted. ‘If it is a footprint, it did not come from a human foot.’
‘Nope,’ Fox agreed. ‘Three toes.’
‘So,’ Helen began slowly, ‘this is suggesting that twenty dead Martians rose from the grave and came out of their hiding place at the bottom of some sort of ancient city?’
‘One assumes,’ Jackson replied, ‘that the “coffins” in the video are some form of suspended animation pod. Something far more advanced than anything we currently have. However, this gets better.’ He tapped a key and the view on the wall shifted to the interior of some form of habitat, a conference room with a meeting in progress.
‘Who last saw him?’ someone asked. A small man, not quite into middle age, but with flashes of grey at his temples. He was entirely ordinary as far as his looks went, a bit on the skinny side, and he just looked as though his behind was normally glued to a desk chair. Carter’s implant usefully supplied a tag beside him giving his name and role: Roscoe Thacker, project administrator.
‘Probably me.’ This was Ruben Adrian Bulle, mechanic. He was not the most handsome of men, but he was built like a brick outhouse. He was also bald with a thick beard which made him look like an aging biker. ‘He said there was a problem with the main antenna. Said he was going to fix it. That was… two hours ago.’
‘He went out alone? In this?’ Martie Cande Monday, meteorologist. Another short man, though he was obviously younger than Thacker and had him beaten on the looks. That said, he would have looked more attractive if he had not also looked scared enough to crap his pants. Fox figured that he was referring to the dust storm Mariel had mentioned. The big question was, who were all of them referring to?
‘He knows what he’s doing,’ Bulle replied.
‘Yes, but visibility is down to a couple of metres and there’s–’ Monday cut off, his gaze flashing around the room and then fixing on Carter. ‘We don’t know what’s out there.’
‘There’s absolutely no reason to think they’re hostile.’ Carter’s voice.
‘There’s no reason to think they aren’t,’ Thacker said. ‘We need to find Philips and no one’s going out alone. In all probability, he got turned around in the storm and can’t find his way back here.’
‘Fuck that!’ Katherine Rao, instrument technician. A tall, strong, attractive woman. Her hair was black and straight, falling past her shoulders. Black eyes, strong jawline, expansive chest and hips. She looked scared and angry. ‘I say we seal the station, keep a watch on the external cameras, and call for help.’
