20

A MURDER MUCH DESERVED

A dark sweep of lava curled through the valley – blackening as it cooled in the morning air. Every now and then another surge of orange bubbled up to the surface, pushing forward a few centimetres at a time to briefly view the pink sun before settling into a hideous bulb of dead fire.

Another day would see the black carpet reach a flattened expanse of dirt that once called itself a lake. A month after that, it would boil over the delicate, sandstone rim and tumble down the volcano's flank. It joined countless bleeding scars on the planet's surface – opening up in a dying gasp. At night they shone, a fiery mimic of Earth's cities.

Mars wanted to live.

Professor Hill tensed against the sleek chair. Cold sweat stuck his red hair onto his forehead, all of its cheerful curl lost. The knife bit into the fragile layers of skin which covered his arteries. His blood swirled up frantically against the blade, pushing but never breaking the vein as though tasting its end. How close to death all living things lingered, he pondered, that life could be ripped away with the slight nick of steel...

The murderer was amused by the Professor's fear. "I am sure you wielded the same terror over your experiments. The price of knowledge is blood."

Hill simply hadn't expected it to be his own. "Is this the last thing Dr Edwards saw? Did he take it as calmly as me – or did he beg and spill his secrets over the floor. I won't beg..."

"I cannot answer those questions," the owner of the knife replied, pressing the blade closer on Hill's neck, "for I played no part in the regrettable death of Dr Edwards."

Hill scoffed then instantly winced. "You expect me to believe that when your intention is clearly my present demise?"

John Druitt let the knife slide along Hill's neck – harmlessly. He roamed around to the other side of the table and settled opposite the repulsive scientist. There was no escape. The glass office was locked with the other staff had been drawn upstairs to tend to the bus load of injured fossil hunters. Hill's two aids were unconscious at their desks, drugged.

The automated systems for the hydrogardens operated without intervention, flashing and beeping quietly around them. It was a library of computers, walls and walls of them stacked in the cool. You could control the entire Martian colony from this room and the unassuming professor had his grubby fingers on the pulse.

"Dr Edwards was a good man," Druitt insisted. "He was murdered because he was trying to save this dying world and its people – a cause that I share. I want to know who did it."

"No one knows who killed Dr Edwards," Hill insisted. "He was a secretive man. All I can assume is that those secrets eventually caught up with him. Besides, what does it matter? Nothing I say will change your mind. You have come here to kill me."

John had to admit the truth in that. "It is so but the manner of your death remains on the table."

"Yes, I am aware of your previous exploits. Your fame has endured the centuries although I dare say, I was surprised when they allowed you passage to Mars." Hill eyed the knife warily, a shiver running through his body at the thought of what could be to come. "Are you a monster of your word?" he asked, considering his options.

Druitt's focus shifted to the gold statue perched beside the lamp on Hill's desk. Its presence had been bothering him ever since he'd caught sight of it many years ago on Mars. Professor Hill inherited it from Dr Edwards, who had no doubt also received it from his predecessor. It was remarkable that such a hideous human creation could survive through the millennia. Perhaps some things were too tormented to perish.

He twisted the tip of the knife into his own finger, eyeing a swell of blood curiously. It was too long since he'd spilled someone else's. "I am. If your life depended on it, Professor Hill – who do you think killed Edwards?"

Hill thought of his son, safe up in his room. He looked to the empty walls of his office and up at the disinterested security camera that offered no assistance. Finally, he felt his neck, brushing his fingers over the scratch left by the knife. "I do not know," he whispered. "I wish to god I did."

Druitt moved to strike, lunging up to the desk. Hill pushed his chair back in fright, lifting his hands in defence. "Wait – wait..."

"Aaaaand that's it."

Nikola snapped his laptop shut and sat on the sand, eyeing his shield generator in dismay. There was nothing more that he could do. His sentient virus was refusing to talk to him and any attempts to maintain communication angered it.

"You stupid, stupid thing," he whispered. "You're going to die like the rest of us if you trash your energy stores."

He packed up, keeping one eye on the unstable dome above which had taken on a pink hue in the morning light. On the opposite side of the city, Sol was peaking between the city buildings in a flare of light. Stray dust storms swirled about, lingering beyond the mountain range toward the field of volcanoes.

"Helen – Helen come in," Nikola flicked on his radio. He shook it roughly until the static cleared.

"Go ahead."

"Negative on the shield. I'm heading back."

"Copy that. Ashley and Newton are at the second generator. They've been able to regulate the power for now. That should buy us some time."

Not much.

Nikola traipsed toward the city, flinching as another arc of lightning tore into the sands, vanishing in a tremble of thunder. His gaze wandered to the world behind the shield – more correctly – the wasteland. It struck him how foolish this entire endeavour was – how fragile and ridiculous their Martian outpost looked against the death that awaited. It was almost too late to change the end of this story. He was an immortal vampire and yet he was far from infallible. It didn't seem right for him to die on this forgotten outpost of civilisation.

Nikola picked up the pace, taking the streets at a jog with his laptop tucked under his arm. He pushed through the doors of the Ecological Sciences building and bounced off the wall-like exterior of Captain Rutherford.

"Very sorry Dr -" he needlessly began to apologise, when he suddenly recognised the scruffy scientist. "Dr Tesla! You are alive!"

Shit. "Ah – yeah. Shocking, I know," Tesla tried to duck out of the way but the Captain's considerable reach enveloped him. He was pressed tight against the man's body as he was walked down the corridor.

"Magnus will be very surprised!" the Captain continued in delight. He was genuinely thrilled.

"Maybe..." the vampire whispered evasively.

He was still moping when Rutherford shoved him through Helen's door with a beaming grin. All Tesla could do was shrug at Magnus and sink out of sight while she dealt with the Captain. After some skilful flirting she managed to convince the Captain to keep Tesla's resurrection a secret.

"Do you still think we can trust him?" Helen asked Nikola, after the Captain left. "We have no idea who's running the show up here."

"If that man is the head of a secret organisation running a massively complex, covert, thousand year old mission on Mars, then I give in. The universe can have my resignation – I'm done."

"No need to be snippy," she swatted him. "You have a fan and he means well and the largest hydrogarden has come online, recalibrated after the fire. The shield is holding steady – for a while. How long will it take to overload the generators now?" she peered over his shoulder quizzically.

"Few days. It really depends on the virus. Being a functioning shield isn't high up on its priority list right now."

"Oh Nikola... Did you really have to pass on your moody nature to your offspring?"

"Don't start," he insisted, shooing her away. "The virus is hell bent on getting to know the local wildlife, unfortunately for us it needs extra memory to store what it learns. The system was never intended for this use so it hacked into the city mainframe and has started sectioning off unused memory space. It's scanning the rest of our data. All it wants to do is learn as much as it can. It's ambivalent but reckless."

"So it's going to accidentally kill us?"

"Pretty much – hell it'll probably feel guilty about it later when it realises we were its creators."

"Very comforting..." Helen paused when she felt the building shake again. "It's been doing that all morning," she continued. "I've checked the geological data but there aren't any red flags yet. Mars is mostly dead – not entirely."

A few minutes later, Nikola reached down to save his coffee cup from shuffling off the edge of the table as the trembling continued. He lifted his blue eyes to hers.

"Okay so there's a little more activity than normal," she admitted. "Some of the lab rats down stairs theorise that the close orbit of Phobos causes the plates to destabilise. They are undecided if the planet will pull the moon crashing down into the planet or break it up in orbit, leading to a band of rings."

"Undecided..." he repeated slowly. "Helen – what the hell are we doing on this planet?"

"Solving a murder."

Nikola dropped the coffee cup. He didn't even notice is shatter on the floor because his full attention was on the spire of a limestone building several streets away, slowly tilting. At first he thought he was imagining it, tilting his own head in sympathy but soon the realisation was inescapable. "Bloody-"

"-hell..." she finished his sentence, as the building vanished.

A deep bass rumbled up from the foundations of the building. Every piece of glassware in the lab rattled as a black and orange cloud of smoke rose up behind the buildings opposite. It grew into an angry surge of violence, like an eruption as glass and rock was thrown onto the city. Debris hit the other buildings like bullets, tearing through windows before the flames started.

"I think Mars is done being explored..." Nikola whispered.

The last Hydrogaren and its generators served to be the most difficult. There was considerable damage to the operation panels from recent earthquakes and to make matters worse, a new fissure had opened up along the wall, partially flooding the place. Mike was waste-deep in the water, fighting off bits of floating hydrogarden carpet.

Ashley eyed the water. Everything was quiet and the surface was lake-like, a glass mirror with a circle of pink in the middle where the morning light reached down to the depths.

"Come on, you bastard!" Mike splashed around at the massive generator panels.

Normally Ashley would have cautioned him about making so much noise but on this occasion, she wanted him as bait – a task he seemed naturally disposed to. She stalked around, listening to every drip of water, slipping from the rough walls of the garden.

Dozens of early human scientists went missing in Mars' first days – surely most of them ended up down here, lurking in the water as half creatures? She didn't want to hurt them – just have a chat. They were the only things that had been around long enough to know what might be going on. Hunting is what she did...

"Ashley! It won't move!" Mike Newton called out, clinging to one of the rusted covers. "Give us a hand, yeah?"

"Keep trying, doc..." she replied casually, climbing out onto an outcrop of rock that elevated her out of the freezing water. The ground was still quaking. She could feel it in the bedrock.

Mike muttered something unsavoury and used his foot to kick out one of the hinges. It plopped into the water and vanished. The water was glowing blue around him, allowing him to see what the hell he was doing as he finally gained access to the control panel.

Ashley caught sight of another, gentle blue glow off to the left. It was moving, slowly migrating around the rim of the hydrogarden. There we go...

Oblivious, Mike punched the air in victory as all the systems started to hum. He closed the door and fixed it back in place with some electrical tape. "See – what did I tell you? Genius!" he declared to Ashley, turning to see her standing right next to him, her gun levelled between his eyes. "Ashley?" he whispered, swallowing hard.

"Don't move..." she whispered.

Suddenly he realised that the gun wasn't actually aimed at him but rather, directly over his shoulder. That was worse... Now he could feel something breathing at his neck, the water glowing more brightly as the withered moved.

The creature's ancient eyes were pale silver with only a faint hint of the hydrogarden's distinctive blue remaining. A guttural sound scraped from its throat, one of its clawed limbs lifting up.

"French..." Ashley lowered her weapon in surprise. "It's speaking French."

"Woah – what happened to you?" Helen frowned at the state of her daughter and Newton as they dragged their heels back into their lab.

Mike was by far the least impressed, letting his soaked jacket fall to the floor in a soggy thud. "We ran into one of your old friends."

Helen wouldn't let him sit on any of the good chairs in his present state so he had to stand. "What on Earth are you talking about?"

"It turns out that Dr Tesla isn't the only one who knew scientists that came here in the early days. There was a French volcanologist, Rousseau, sent here to study Martian plate tectonics before the settlement was established."

Helen placed her hand over her chest, startled. Being so old, you forgot many of the people in your life only to have them suddenly dragged up and thrown at you. "Bernard... but – that was hundreds of years ago..."

"By the looks of him, yeah," Mike nodded. "He's become one of those creatures, living in the network of tunnels around the hydrogardens."

"Jesus Christ..." Helen whispered.

"Well shocking as his appearance may be, it's not the most remarkable thing. Magnus, he was sent by the Cabal."

Helen and Nikola froze. "What?" Helen gasped.

"Son of a..." Nikola added. "The bloody hell are they doing all the way up here?"

"Abnormals..." Ashley whispered. "There's something beneath the ground of Mars – something powerful and it's waking up. They called it the god of fire."

Nikola pointed at the ground looking very panicked. "What, here?"

"They funded his passage up here," Ashley was towelling her hair off with a lab coat. "They've had a hand in the colonisation of Mars – maybe they still do. "

"Maybe," Mike added darkly, "they killed Dr Edwards to keep their secret."