36

THE GOOD DETECTIVE

MARS
13th January, 3083

Tesla couldn't rein in his mind as it elaborated unhelpful facts about his rapid descent.

Acceleration on Mars? Three-point-eight metres per second, he knew that. Not so bad. It made strolling around quite pleasant and falling a surreal experience. Gods but for how long? Ten seconds? No – fifteen. Eighteen. Twenty – Twenty-two... Stop bloody counting!

He was nine-hundred and fifty metres down and falling. Tesla groaned. He was going to hit the rock at eighty-four point nine seven metres per second. His impact would produce just enough power to light a globe for a while. Oh the irony. Turns out that throwing averaged sized vampires into pits on Mars was a lousy way to produce pow-

The vampire impacted the bottom of the pit with a sickening, dull thud. It wasn't rock that he hit but rather the corpses of scientists that had fallen before him. Beneath them was a forest of bone concealed by a shallow pool of white water which the limestone cave had spent several thousand years leaching into.

Half a dozen joints dislocated. Telsa felt some pop out of their sockets and several others snap clean out of his skin. The sear of pain did what the initial impact could not – knocked his conscious mind entirely out. He fell into blissful emptiness, unaware of his vampire blood creating terrible stains in the water. Beneath, a final strangled breath escaped one of the dying scientists.

Smith prodded the vampire with one of his long, slightly blue fingers. It moaned, stirring. He did it again, trying to bring the creature around slowly. Who knew what a vampire might do to recover from such terrible injuries...

It had taken Smith some time to drag the vampire from the fray of bodies and lay him on the bank. He'd put his foot on the creature's chest and pushed his joints back into place, forcing broken bones back before watching in awe as the skin immediately knit across the wounds. Still, Tesla was pale – even for a vampire.

"Tesla..." he tried again, shaking him by a newly healed shoulder. "Come on you bloody vampire. I know you're not fucking dead."

Nikola frowned with chipped fangs resting on his bottom lip. Finally his large, black eyes opened to the faint glow and Smith's alien-looking face. "Jesus, what happened to you?"

Smith sat back and laughed. "Well, good to see you're not hurt."

They were lit by bead-like strands dangling from strange plants growing out of the rock. Their long, sticky trails hung dozens, sometimes hundreds of metres from the cave wall, catching some unidentified Martian prey.

"On the contrary. Everything hurts..." Nikola complained, resting his hand on his stomach. His clothes were sticky. He was sure there'd been something protruding from them before. "Ow. Ow. Ow..." He tried to sit up, coughing like a lifetime chain smoker. His lungs were full of dried blood. "What the fuck are you doing down here, Smith?"

Smith was starting to appreciate Tesla's unique humour. "Good thing for you that I was." He helped Nikola lay against the rock. They were marooned on a very narrow gap with water lapping at their feet. "Lighten up, vamp. You finally have something to like about Mars."

"Rubbish..." Nikola snarled. He couldn't think of a single redeeming quality to this useless bloody dead rock of worthlessness.

"You only hit the ground softly. If you did that on Earth I'm not sure you'd have moaned and rolled away in one piece."

As much as it infuriated him, Nikola had to admit that the detective was probably right. "Did you see what happened?" He didn't bother asking where the man had been. A small glance at his condition showed quite clearly that Smith was well into the transformation into a cave creature. Once this happened, they started to wander off... Seeking out their kind. There was nothing you could do to stop it.

"I can guess. Someone tried to kill you and your team. I must say they're not very bright. If you want to kill an immortal creature you have to take much better care to see it through."

"It wasn't exactly planned," Nikola snarled. "It was Newton. Fucking Newton and his goddamn knives. I told you he was a little shit."

"I know." Smith held up one of the sharp throwing knives that he'd pulled from the neck of a dead scientist.

"You – what?"

"I know," Smith replied. "I worked it out while you were all fussing about up there playing apocalypse now. I went back to the ruin of the Ecological Science building and raided their shipment files. Start with what you know, right? I returned to the beginning before everything got tangled. Newton's transportation logs didn't check out. We assumed that he arrived at the space station the morning before us but he was there two days before giving him just enough time to hop down to Mars, kill Edwards, fly back to the space station and join us in orbit."

"Sneaky bastard."

"Indeed – however that is only opportunity. The most extraordinary thing happened five years earlier. Newton was cautioned for sending threatening letters to Cascade's Chief Science Officer. Nasty business. He was attempting to blackmail him but the details of the reports are all heavily redacted by NASA and the US government. Mike Newton was a long way from the glorious heir Cascade was hoping for. He fell off the rails when his father was killed. The end of a dynasty."

Nikola was holding onto his chest, afraid it might fall out. He looked up but the entrance to the pit was too far above and too narrow to make out anything but a faint light. Of all the places he'd been on Mars so far this was the most alien. There were life forms down here that he hadn't seen written up in any fancy science journal. He was starting to doubt if anyone had done any serious exploration on this planet at all. They were all so caught up with the Martian water and alien tech that they'd forgotten that there was a whole world here.

"Do we know how his father died?" Nikola asked.

Smith made a strange hissing sound that in a previous life might have passed as a laugh. "It's public record."

"Pretend I've been locked away in a lab for forty years."

He shrugged. "The late Newton died up here on Mars like so many of his family before him. There was trouble in one of the mining tunnels – they were drilling too deep you see – pushing to meet deadlines. The tunnel collapsed and half of Mars buried him forever. They tried a few times to dig him out but the whole area was unstable. An earthquake shortly after sealed the entire area off and no one has been back since."

"Is it far from here?"

"Easy walking distance but Tesla, it's just a pile of rubble."

"Well if I'm going to be killed by Newton's ghosts then I'm damn well going to get better acquainted with them." Nikola managed to stand, leaning heavily against the cave. He had never been more uncomfortable or filthy in wet shoes and bloodied clothes. "Why did you start looking into Newton in the first place?"

Smith tossed the throwing knife back into the milky water. "Simple. You didn't like him. I've known you for a while and though you may be many regrettable adjectives, you're not stupid."

Nikola caught himself smiling as Smith slipped his hood on and they stumbled into a narrow tunnel.

"They're not here?" Rutherford eyed the abandoned equipment perched on the edge of the enormous pit.

Ashley was beside him. She knelt down and brushed her fingers through a red stain on the rock. Blood. She shifted forward and peered over the edge. It was black. "We're too late..." she whispered.

"Magnus too?"

Ashley was shaking her head. "I doubt it. Mum has a habit of surviving the impossible." She pointed her torch at the gaping hole further down the wall of the pit. There was a cable dangling out of it. "Over there."

Rutherford's torchlight joined hers. "Hello?!" Rutherford shouted over the pit. "Dr Magnus?"

A few moments later, a head popped out and Dr Fields waved at them. "Oh my god!"

"Where's Magnus?" Rutherford shouted back.

Fields gestured back into the blackness behind her. "Crawling through a tunnel. She's found a way out."

"Over here..." Dr Magnus's tired voice drawled behind Rutherford and Ashley. She'd appeared from a small gap in the cave above them that you'd never spot unless you knew it was there.

It took a while but eventually Field's joined her. Ashley hugged her mum and then pointed at the discarded equipment. "Are the others...?"

Helen nodded. There was something strange about the way she refused to look at the pit. Every time she did all she could see was Nikola, flailing about in the darkness, not making a sound as he vanished. She'd never expected him to go so quietly from the world – a large part of her was completely ignoring what happened. He'd be fine – surely... He was always fine. Time and space never phased that bloody vampire – there was no way a sudden fall would be his end – even if he had been shot first.

"We've got to get these recordings back to the others," Fields held up the camera. "There's-"

"No point," Rutherford cut her off. "Newton."

"Everybody's dead," Ashley finished. "He's gone entirely mad. It's like he's been biding his time and now he's snapped. There's nothing left for us back in the settlement and the building above is gone. It's a ruin on the surface. We're trapped."

"We have to kill him," Rutherford added. "Before he finds us."

"No." Helen paced anxiously. "Not yet. Newton might be the only person with a way back to Earth. If we kill him we'll get our revenge but then we're stuck here forever. Take it from an immortal – that's a very long time."

"I told you," Smith perched on a pile of gravel. "There's nothing here."

Nikola surveyed the tunnel. An old drill bit, fifteen feet high, was still stuck in the bedrock. It was horribly rusted in the short decades that it'd been abandoned. Its serrated teeth, used to chew into the ground, had fallen everywhere. Somewhere in that mess was Newton's father. "Are there any Newtons left in charge of Cascade?"

Smith shook his head. "No. Maurice Newton, Mike's grandfather, died four years ago. Cascade is now at the mercy of the Cabal. Some thought Edwards might be elected to the board but that's out of the question now. The whole company will probably dissolve. You aren't seriously going to try and find the body?"

"Of course I am," Nikola strutted toward the rubble. "How long's it been?"

"Ten years?"

"Follow your nose then," Tesla shrugged.

Smith followed the vampire instead. They climbed up through the mess of rocks and started hunting around, picking at the carnage like seagulls.

"I found out something else that might interest you," Smith added. "Your lab back on Earth – the one that was burned to the ground a few months ago."

Nikola tensed. He didn't want to talk about that.

"Did you by any chance keep copies of your patents on the premises?"

"Why?"

"That's what I thought," Smith replied. "Now I know you know that the shield technology used to keep this city safe was stolen from your patents but when I looked for them, they were removed from public record a long time ago. You said it yourself, the only reason to burn the lab to the ground was to hide what they had stolen – paper. Whoever it was needed access to the shield technology but didn't have access already. You see what this means..."

"They weren't part of the original group that infringed on my copyright."

Smith nodded. "Exactly. It's fair to say that Mike Newton broke into your lab, tried to kill you, stole your patent and then headed for Mars. Which leaves us with a troubling question."

"What did he want with the shield generator?"

He kicked some of the rocks away. "Face it, Tesla. Your shield technology is caught up in this. You're not just collateral damage. Newton tried to kill you because he doesn't want you sniffing anywhere near that shield."

Nikola's nose curled. "Hold that thought," he held up a claw. "There's something this way."

Many hours later, the pair of them fell back onto the pile of rocks, panting and dripping in sweat.

"Well I'll be bloody damned." Smith had discarded his robes and was naked from the waist up. It was a disturbing sight. His skin was an even darker blue with pale white spots running down his back. There were tiny hairs sticking out, designed to detect vibrations in the air like an insect catching prey.

Between them, knitted through the rocks, were shreds of cloth and bone. The body had not fully decomposed and there was still skin stretched over the skull and torso. Nikola held his sleeve over his face.

"Newton senior..." he drawled. "Nasty way to go." Nikola looked death in the face as he removed a few more rocks from around the body. With great distaste, he dug into the jacket of the skeleton and pulled out the remains of a wallet. "Newton indeed." He flipped it open. There was a faded photo of Mike as an infant in one side, his registration card for Cascade and various NASA permission passes allowing him transit to Mars. "What the..." Nikola pulled out a very familiar looking pass-card. He had one himself.

It was for the Sanctuary.

"What's that?"

"Something Newton shouldn't have."