37

CASCADING DYNASTY

MARS
5th May, 2430

"It's disgusting..." Bernard sneered at the pulsing lump of gelatin at his feet. Outside in the sun and fresh air it had been innocuous but up close without the protection of a helmet, all Bernard could smell was the metallic edge of Magnesium Sulphate and Epsom salts concentrated inside the organism and exhaled out through its dome-shaped body.

"Geologists!" Janet muttered irritably, fussing about with her instruments. "Can't you just – hold that steady and stop complaining for five minutes? Honestly, all I want to do these days is toss you into a giant pit but seeing as we're already in one..." She nodded sharply at the probe he was holding. He signed and eventually did as he was told.

"I still do not understand what's so interesting about this thing," Bernard continued, pushing the probe through the creature's first layers of flesh. It made a gruesome sound and released another puff of noxious gas. If possible, Bernard turned a deeper shade of blue. "As far as alien lifeforms go, I don't think this thing is going to be spilling the universe's secrets any time soon. I reckon it just sits up there in the sand, feeding off trace elements in the dirt." The creature wobbled and released another wave of filthy smelling air causing Bernard to spew off in French.

"There is something to learn from every form of life. If I'm going to be stuck on this bloody planet for a decade then I might as well do my job properly." She turned awkwardly and tapped away on her laptop. "Do you want to know the good news?"

"If I really have to have it."

"You bloody do. This bundle of gelatin is producing a residue and," she carefully shifted the transparent body of the creature so that Bernard could see the glowing stain on the rocks, "it glows. Just like you."

"It's infected by the Martian water?" Bernard looked horrified.

"No. I think it's the one infecting the water. You see, no one's ever allowed for the possibility that maybe Mars used to have perfectly normal water. We've both seen the drills break into clean, underground reservoirs trapped in the layers between volcanic rock and porous sandstone. The contamination had to be coming from somewhere on the surface. There must be hundreds of these creatures littered over the sand."

Bernard set down his equipment and roamed back over to the edge of the water, letting it lap around his feet. It was cool and covered in the familiar mist. Less now. The sun was still high and there was a sharp circle of light in the middle of the pool. There was another dust storm raging above. He watched tiny cascades of sand funnelling down into the water, coating everything in dust. "Do you think the wind exposed it?"

"Probably. When it passes I'm going back up there to see if I can find more."

"Are you sure that's a good idea?"

"I'll be fine. You and I both know that the only dangerous things up there are other humans."

The wind had laid waste to the fossil plane.

As Janet strolled along the freshly exposed rock where hundreds of bone fragments were waiting to be plucked from the surface. The archaeologists were coming. She could see their cumbersome buggies bouncing along sending spirals of dust up behind them like giant signs. You couldn't miss them. Janet wasn't interested in any of the bones from huge sea creatures long passed after all, they'd died out...

Janet turned right, heading onto the rise of soft sand that formed dunes around the old river bed. They were small and she was able to crawl up their soft bellies and sit at the crest, casting her gaze down onto and endless sea of them rolling toward the horizon where a faint rise of volcanoes loomed ominously.

"Blimey..." she whispered. Honestly she hadn't been sure if she'd be able to find any more of the jelly-like creatures but out here where the sand was soft and deep red, they were everywhere. As it turned out, the one they'd smuggled home was only a baby. Some were size of shuttles, pulsing and rippling under the sun. There weren't hundreds of them – there were thousands.

"Strange, aren't they?" A voice drawled behind her.

Janet startled and stumbled, falling into the dune. It tossed her around, rolling her down the shifting face until a hand reached out and grabbed her firmly by the arm, bringing her to a sharp halt. It was him, she knew it without needing to ask. No other man could exude menace like the Jackal just by standing.

"Let go of me," Janet wrestled her arm away. She dug her heels into the sand and crawled back up, determined to hold her ground.

"You ought to be more careful," he pointed out calmly, not taking the slightest bit of offence as he was pushed away. "Mind if I ask what you are doing out of your hole?"

"Following a lead that is none of your business," she replied steadily. His space suit was different to hers – slimmer and black so that there was no chance he could be mistaken. The only visible insignia was his service number.

"Everything that happens on this planet is my business," John corrected her. "You're the famous micro-biologist," he added, tilting his head curiously. "I think we shall be good friends seeing as you and I are stuck here together."

"I'd rather die in the sand with these retched creatures," she hissed back. "I know what you are and what you do. Stay away from me." She'd not forgotten the body falling into the water – the look of terror in their frozen eyes. Janet knew that it was his blade that had cut into the neck. The only reason that she wasn't dead was because she still had information of value to his boss.

John lifted both his hands innocently and took a measured step back. "Have it your way." He nodded at the sea of strange, semi-transparent creatures in the sand. "If you want to see these creatures perform, come back in three months when all the moons are out together. When night falls you'll know what I mean. Come and find me then."

MARS
7th August, 2430

It was dark. Phobos and Deimos were already up, casting fresh white light over the world. She admired their mangled forms. They were nothing more than lucky asteroids plucked from the abyss and held in orbit until they either broke free or crashed into the planet. It had taken her a while to work it out. There was a third moon of Mars, the unassuming 5261 Eureka which, if her calculations were correct, was about to poke its head up above the horizon. There were dozens of other captured fragments of rock but this was the only one that came close enough, rising with the other two to hold its place in the sky as a third moon as it veered unnervingly close to its parent.

She looked over the dunes again. All was quiet with the jelly creatures on the sand. This was bullshit. The Jackal had probably told her this to trick her into coming alone and she'd been foolish enough to fall for it. Gods if Nikola was here he'd be giving her a right talking to about trusting hired assassins.

"Or not?" she breathed. The tiny moon clawed its way up over the crest of Olympus Mons and that was all the creatures needed. They rustled. She could feel it through the sand. Every body of jelly started to shiver and rise out of the dunes. In the most incredible sight she'd ever seen, they floated up, puffing away as if swimming and let the gentle winds take hold of them. They glowed a soft blue, filling the skies like fairy lights. "What are you doing?" Janet asked them.

They were spawning. When all the moons were safely high, the creatures pulsed again and released billions of tiny copies of themselves into the air. Like dust – they scattered, taken off and flung at random into Mars to obey the whim of fate. It was beautiful.

Inside the hydrogarden, Bernard had backed away from the creature that was now floating above the research tent like an alien spaceship. He was swearing at it in French to no avail. A moment later it spilled all of its precious cargo. With no wind to take them, the babies fell onto the tent and over Bernard who screeched, horrified at being covered in squirming, tiny creatures.

It lasted for an hour and then all the creatures returned to the dunes to slumber. Janet was sitting with her knees pulled up to her chest and the bubble around her head resting against them. The only thing she could compare it to was a festival of light with paper lanterns set free on the wind. For several minutes, all of the sand in front as far as she could see was glowing blue just like the waters of Mars. For the briefest of moments, it was bluer than its sibling, Earth.

John didn't bother to ask how the young biologist had found him. Dr Horvath was sitting in his chair inside the small quarters assigned to him, high up in the main tower. It was dark outside but some scant moonlight picked through the large windows. There were no lights on – just her staring at him with her hands clutching the arms of his chair.

He closed the door calmly and slid off his filthy cloak, ruined from walking the new mining tunnels. John walked past the walls lined with maps of Mars. Most were of the emerging system of strange tunnels – he'd scribbled over some of the blank areas, filling in what he could as he spent his days underground.

I was a very odd room that he inhabited – tall and narrow with only a wall of windows at the end behind his desk and a sitting area off to the side where his uninvited guest was considering his bookshelf. It had probably been a while since she'd seen one comprised of real books...

John was trying very hard not to laugh. It was clear the scientist was furious with his existence and yet now it was her that needed him – or needed something from him. "Drink?" he offered, plucking a bottle of port from its hiding place. When she didn't object, he walked a glass over to her and held it aloft until she begrudgingly relieved him of it. "Quite a view, isn't it?"

The scientist's eyes were so black she could have passed for a vampire. "How did you know that they'd do that?"

"As I said, I have been on Mars a long time," John replied. There was only one chair so he leaned against the bookshelf, sipping his drink. He's created a small slice of Victorian paradise for himself up here. The dark fireplace beside them was sadly a projection but the rug beneath their feet was real, as was the thick layer of dust coating everything. "It's strange," he continued, "no one has every shown the slightest bit of interest in them. What caught your eye?"

The liquor burned the sand out of her throat. "I suspect you know," she started. "The water and the creatures – it is a symbiosis, part of the same cycle."

He nodded. "Dr Horvath, I have no intention of wasting your time, so allow me to be direct. Working for Cascade is all well and good and I do look forward to your tenure here however, there is someone that I'd like you to meet. Someone who will put your research to better use."

"How so?"

"My benefactor would have you protect this incredible species. You know what will happen if Cascade or worse, the Cabal find out about its link to the water. It'll be hunted to extinction in a few short centuries. From now on your research will be separated. By all means, unlock the secrets of the Martian water but anything you learn of the creature, pass to me instead. I will help you, in this. Believe me, on this planet, I am the best friend you could possibly have."

He was the devil, she was certain of it. Whomever his benefactor really was, Janet was sure that she had no choice but to trust them.

"Fine. I have a condition..."

"I'm sure I could bring myself to consider it."

"A passage back to Earth, when my work is done."

John agreed in principle. "Of course, I can never be seen to work outside of my official job, you understand. That doesn't mean I can't keep my promises."

When Janet returned to the hydrogarden, she found Bernard hunched over, sitting on the edge of the water, glowing. He looked disturbed, muttering to himself as he clutched his knees. He was thinner but his muscles were hard and thickening around his bones.

"Bernard?" she ventured softly, setting her suit down in the tent before moving to sit beside him. "Hey – are you all right?"

"That – thing..." he pointed to the creature floating in the shallow water in front of him. "It – it..."

Janet found herself smiling. "Oh yeah – I know." She placed her hand on his back and rubbed it softly. "Cheer up. I made us a new friend."

MARS
14th January, 3083

"What has you so amused?" Nikola looked up through the scattered light seeping into their tent. There was sleep caught in his eyelashes and sand – gods – so much sand. Why did she insist upon the barren corners of the world?

Janet rolled over and caught him in a sleepy kiss, smiling against his lips. "You," she replied. "The lies you tell..." But she wasn't mad, she was deeply amused. "You claimed to be a man of inconsequential wealth and few means though you found me, out here on a secret dig."

"Not so secret," he insisted. The heat was already building against the canvas walls that kept them safe.

"You best leave, before they find you in my bed..."

His yawn finished in a strange purr. Vampires... Was it any wonder the Egyptians liked their cats, she was sure there was some distant relation.

"Go on..." she nudged him again. "The Cabal still have a small reward for your capture though you're not worth as much as you used to be."

"Well that's depressing..."

Nikola woke to rock. The wall of the cave was an inch from his nose. Water dripped onto his body as he slept, staining the remains of his shirt. His bones ached from their recent fractures but they paled in comparison to the ghosts of his past. He'd lost lovers before – friends he couldn't count but Janet was different. She was a mystery he couldn't solve and that bothered the darkest corners of his mind. Now that he was here, with a piece of her next to his heart, he had to know what happened. He needed to go back to Bernard and question the bastard.

"What's wrong?" Smith prodded Nikola, turning him over so that the vampire was looking up at the poorly lit cave. There were more of those creatures trying to catch prey above, glowing ominously.

"This place," Nikola breathed, hand resting delicately on his chest.

"You mean her," Smith replied.

"Maybe."

"She has you so tightly wrapped that you can't see clearly any more," Smith added. "I'm only going to ask you this once – do you trust her?"

Nikola sat up, wildly offended. "She'd never hurt me, intentionally," he growled.

"That, I believe." Smith nodded. "There's something though," the detective straightened up and clutched his hands behind his back, pacing the tunnel, "she strikes me as a woman hiding things – from you, more than us."

"I – beg your pardon?" Nikola was puzzled. "You never met her! You are in no position to judge-"

"Helen Magnus?" Smith interrupted. "Who did you think I was referring to?"

Nikola rubbed the sleep from his eyes. It was mixed with his own blood and grit from Mars. "...Dr Horvath..."

Smith looked sadly at his friend. Sometimes he really did look like nothing more than a skinny scientist from a lost time. He was fragile and Smith felt that for whatever reason, fate had set him the task of keeping him safe. "She's long dead, Nikola."

"I know."

Smith sighed. He almost felt sorry enough for him to offer him a snack but he doubted a contaminated snack would be good for the immortal. "If you still want to find this cave creature of yours we should start out. They've all sunk deeper into the ground. We'll need to catch up before they vanish entirely into the maze of natural rock."

"This is the last of it," Smith pointed to the unusual structure above their heads, many hours later. They'd descended through near vertical shafts, navigating a mixture of Cascade tunnels, natural fissures and this – strange alien wreckage embedded in what had once been a shallow sea.

Nikola looked up. It was so close that he could reach up and let his hand run along the smooth surface as they walked. Unlike everything else, nothing would stick to the material. Not even dust. It was perfectly reflective and eerily slippery.

"They don't go any deeper. Whatever it was, it isn't entrenched in the entire planet as the legends claim. It is a finite thing – probably a research outpost just like ours."

"Impossible to date," Nikola brought his hand back down. The material it was made of didn't decay. When the death called for the universe, it would be there, waiting in the freezing abyss.

"Not quite true," Smith was a little way in front, picking he way over the uneven floor as the passage gave way to a very rough descent. "While the structure keeps its secrets well enough, its situation on the planet is less secretive. We know from the depth of its reach that it was embedded here when there was still a warm sea coving this part of the planet. Some of those hideous worm things have burrowed straight through its tunnels and we know that they only migrated as the seas died."

"What if it was here much earlier?"

"No... Brush away the soft sands and Cascade found that it was built to sit partially above the water while feeding off the geothermal energy of the fractured rock. I ah... had a bit of a poke around Cascade's files while I was looking into Mike. I almost feel sorry for whomever they were. What a dreadful waste of a planet to come and study."

"More fool us for following in their footsteps," Nikola shrugged.

"Listen, Tesla – I may not know anything about alien life – I have enough trouble dealing with humans to be honest."

That earned a chuckle out of the vampire as they both sat on the ground and shuffled forward down a dangerously steep part of rock.

"I know a lot about intelligence though," he continued. "If they flew all the way over her, skipping our much nicer, flourishing planet, they must have had a good reason."

"You think someone up here knows what that reason was?"

Smith nodded. "Oh yes. I think someone up here knows all about our alien friends and why they showed such an otherwise unwarranted interest in Mars. The map on those tablets, have you worked out what they mean yet?"

Nikola shook his head. "They don't make any sense. I can read the language but I don't understand it. It's just – nonsense... Can you hear that?" Nikola's voice dropped to a whisper.

Something was moving about in the passages below them. Much deeper, there was a splash of water.

"There are many creatures down here. Try not to provoke them. They are peaceful but very afraid."

EARTH
The Newton Family Manor, 3079

"They're coming for me Helen. I'm an old man now." He was. At ninety-two, Maurice Newton was starting to fade. His body shook with cold even though his chair perched close to the flames of the fire. He could barely stand let alone wander to the window to take in the view of the unruly mountains that charmed his ancestors into buying the property. "I have summoned my grandson. You need to go. Very soon, Mars will need you when I am gone."

Helen had seen this play out before. Humans had a look about them before they died and her dear friend had it now. "I'll be ready."

"Wait – before you go – how are my little shields holding up?" There was a twinkle in his eye.

Helen smiled warmly. She knew another individual whose love for their work eclipsed any form human affection. "Your shield is alive and well," she promised.

He seemed relieved. They were his parting gift to science. "Tesla won't be happy when he finds his fingerprints are all over the code." It was like having a child to a lover you don't know about.

"He'll live," Helen shrugged. "He's always complaining that no one ever gives him enough credit. If this works out, he'll have so much credit that his oversized ego will explode out of his chest like something from Alien."

Maurice shook his head at the immortal creature. It used to vex him that she always the same except for those sad eyes of hers. Every year they darkened and even now, when he looked at her he saw something not quite human staring back at him. He'd been meaning to ask if there wasn't a touch of vampire in her blood. "You are and always were a terribly liar," he whispered. "Better that you say nothing at all, my dear."

His shields were dying.

"I'm an optimist," she corrected.

A shaking hand held up an envelope. "From Edwards," Maurice whispered. "There are no more Newtons left for you to rely on," he warned Helen. "We've all but died out. Thirty-two generations. You've seen us through."

That thought seemed to trouble her too much. Helen vanished, sinking into the shadows of his room.

Maurice had chosen to die in his study, surrounded by the flickering holograms of a thousand books he'd meant to read over the years. It was a strange thought that one only had to flick a switch and everything he'd built here would vanish into darkness. Empty shelves. A warm crackle from a pretend fire projected onto the table in front of his chair. He could understand Magnus's distaste for the current world. It was fragile.

"Mike..." Maurice lifted his head at the sound of his grandson approaching.

"Who has upset you?" Mike frowned instantly at the tears sliding between the creases on Maurice's face. "Was it her again?"

"The young have too much spirit and not enough sense," Maurice sighed, lifting his hand gently to his grandson. "Your father knew when to cool his heels."

"My father is dead."

"Of that I am aware..." Maurice replied sternly. "He died protecting the one thing he truly believed in – he died well."

Mike pulled back, something sinister creeping into his eyes. "I know. I've heard the story a million times. Cascade wasn't worth dying for. Between the Cabal and the government, what's left for us? We're the kid at the party who just won't go home. It's embarrassing."

Maurice reached forward and grabbed Mike by his shirt, pulling him close with a dying surge of strength. "Cascade is your legacy," he gasped, already the words expiring on his lips.

"Then why do you keep me at arm's length? Ever since Magnus came back into your life you've pushed me aside. I'm your only family – so why does that woman have our secrets?"

"You misunderstand entirely, my boy," Maurice ached for the fire beside him to burn a fraction more. His limbs were growing cold and stiff. "Our family are the caretakers of her secrets."