Mars Fire - Chapter IX, Sol 3
Serialized science fiction
Previous Chapters: Chapter I , Chapter II , Chapter III , Chapter IV , Chapter V , Chapter VI , Chapter VII , Chapter VIII
Chapter IX - Sol 3 - Wednesday
The estimated travel time from Alvie Ranch to Culheimer was seven hours, depending on weather and breakdowns. It was a route that Burrows drove at least once a month when the supply requirements from Home One sent them out to stock up on bulk supplies, and he knew most of the route pretty well by now. The dunes, the craters, the mesas with their strange shapes as the wind curled through and carved at them - it was a rugged sight, and desolate, but filled with pockets of life if you knew where to look. Wildcatter settlements and tiny research colonies, some only three or four people large, dotted the area, most of them well-hidden from sight and the bustle of the larger settlements. The area directly west of Alvie Ranch was not as familiar to him, but once they had left the valley and proceeded into the low dunes that lay south of Home One, he soon found himself spotting familiar landmarks as the convoy trundled to the south-west.
Of course, driving in the dust thrown up by the mining haulers ahead of them - and Reyn’s utility rover - did not help the view much. Fine sand and reddish-brown powder swirled and billowed across their rover’s windscreen as they trailed the convoy, and the wind out of the south-west made sure that they stayed in the perpetual gloom of the dust cloud. Only the two foremost militia rovers, and Chief Graves in the first mining hauler, had a clear view of the terrain. Everyone else sucked dust and relied on their sensors, with only the occasional glimpse of clear terrain outside.
Burrows had the tactical headset on and chewed at his lower lip as he drove, his attention split between the windscreen and the console-mounted display screens that surrounded him in the cockpit. A digital overlay on the windscreen plotted the position of the other vehicles in a boxy wireframe mode, to compensate for the utter lack of visual clarity outside. Dixon’s satellite feed was streaming out to the militia rovers as well as Graves’ leading hauler, and through that they could get a clear view of the kilometres of dune and rocky ridges that surrounded them. One of Burrows’ screens showed this satellite navigation view as they travelled, with the convoy marked out in tiny blue dots down the middle. Dixon’s voice was a constant murmur behind him, talking to the other convoy elements and helping them through diagnostic queries while simultaneously coaxing the MARSnet navigation satellites above into cooperation. The satellite grid did not always want to cooperate, especially not the way Dixon used it.
Ian was at a sensor terminal opposite Dixon, monitoring the tactical map overlay. Dixon had given him a crash course in the terminal’s function even as they were pulling out of the Alvie Ranch loading yard, and now the young man was intently watching the screen and updating the icons that represented the convoy’s position relative to the various Bear State settlements around them. Known outposts were marked in green, while geographical points got white-grey markers.
Burrows hated this type of driving. Relying on sensors alone always left him ill at ease, and he had to remind himself, numerous times, to move his one hand away from the emergency brakes. The wireframe box of Reyn’s utility rover, some ten metres ahead, haunted him, and he kept expecting the white rover’s bulky posterior to swim out of the enveloping dust and smash into them - or more accurately, they into it. At the speeds they were travelling, the impact would shatter even the reinforced windscreen glass - and at that point, there would be nothing between them and the Martian atmosphere outside.
The trickle of sweat that ran out of his hairline and onto his right temple went unnoticed, and evaporated quickly in the rover’s tightly controlled, pressurised interior.
They were an hour out of Alvie Ranch when Ian raised his voice.
“South of us - I have two contacts I cannot identify.” The young man’s voice rose as he spoke, and Burrows felt his heart-rate kicking up a notch. The driving seat suddenly felt twice as hard as before.
“I see it. Looks like two unidentified rovers, about five… five point two klicks south of us. Heading is south-west, parallel to our direction.” Dixon’s voice came over Burrows’ other shoulder. “Adding them to the map now.”
Two yellow dots flashed up on the navigation map, marking the new information. Chief Graves’ voice grumbled into their rover moments later.
“Dwarf Lead for Exeter. Can you confirm: new contacts south of us?”
“This is Exeter. We confirm - two unidentified contacts south of us. Standby for refinement.” Burrows spoke into his headset without taking his eyes off the screens ahead. He was incredibly tempted to slip their rover to the side, to get out of the dust slipstream, but knew it would not achieve anything except soothing his own nerves - and probably give them away to anyone watching in turn.
There was motion and muttering behind him, glimpsed in reflections in the screens around him, and then Dixon spoke up even as the navigation map began to show more details around the new contacts.
“Exeter to Dwarf Lead. We have two rovers five kilometres south, matching our course and speed. Zero response on electronic identity. No clear visuals from the satellites to confirm.” A corner section of the map turned into a satellite view of two white rovers, blurry with extreme magnification, that were travelling in a column. “Looks like generic civilian models.”
Burrows chewed his lip and watched the dust swirl outside. It could always just be wildcatters, who often travelled in poorly maintained vehicles that did not have the basic identification codes required by Bear State for vehicles.
“Three more contacts, north-west of us.” Ian’s voice started high this time, and Burrows cursed under his breath.
One contact was a fluke. Two were not.
“Lovely,” Dixon muttered, and there was more movement behind Burrows before the three latest contacts appeared on the navigation map. The satellite view showed three more rovers, near-identical to the first, also travelling in a column. “Plotting an intercept point now.”
“Exeter, talk to me,” Graves growled over comms. “Do we have a problem?”
“Sharing now,” Dixon replied, and a yellow circle appeared on the map some distance ahead of them. It lay right across their route. “Dwarf Lead, that’s the intercept point at Stumpwood. The five newcomers will converge on that point in thirty minutes. We arrive in the same area in thirty-five.”
The comms blipped, cutting Graves off mid-curse. There was a terse moment of silence before Graves’ voice returned. Anger and resignation warred with each other in his tone.
“Okay Exeter, what are our options?”
Burrows mulled their options over as his limbs went into auto-pilot with the driving. The cockpit noise seemed to recede away from him, until only the situation remained, crystalised in his mind’s eye. Even his distrust of the sensor-led driving faded into the background.
Five on five was a fair fight, and the militia rovers had the advantage of terrain and weapons on their side. So why have a confrontation? There was no way of knowing what the bandit rovers were armed with, even when the satellite views suggested they were just civilian models. No way of knowing their crew counts either, when each rover could easily carry twelve or more bodies. A conservative estimate of six men per rover still meant at least thirty potential hostiles - easily double what their convoy was carrying in terms of militia members.
They could be hiding anything in those hulls.
Something clicked in Burrows’ mind, and his attention snapped back to the cockpit interior in an instant.
“Dixon, what do we look like on the satellite views?” Burrows tilted his head down at the map screen next to him. “Put that on the map too, I want to see what we look like from above.”
There was muttering from the rear of the rover, and then a third satellite view joined the map. Burrows glanced down, and grinned when he saw what the satellites were seeing.
“Exeter to Dwarf Lead. Check your maps - I think our new friends don’t realise how many of us are here.” Burrows tapped out a sequence on one of the other control screens, before stabbing the transmit button. “Send this to all of the militia units, and go for a wide dispersal.”
“Roger that, Exeter.” Graves sounded dubious, but a few seconds later there was a ping on the convoy navigator channel, and the other militia rovers acknowledged the new coordinates.
Burrows pulled their own rover to the left, sliding out of the trailing dust cloud, and was greeted with sere skies and crumbling chestnut cliffs to their side as they finally cleared the slipstream. The mid-morning sun was a pale dot overhead, and Burrows felt himself squinting at the suddenly bright environment after the gloom of the dust cloud.
On the navigation map, he could also see the other rovers repositioning, and within moments each of the militia rovers was at a different compass point around the convoy. Where they had previously appeared to be a column of haulers led by only two rovers - and trailed by a massive dust wake - all five of the militia rovers were now clearly visible and kicking up their own, separate dust plumes. Pope’s utility rover remained hidden in the slipstream of the last hauler.
Burrows watched the clock tick on the control board, and used one hand to wipe the sweat from his temple. Dunes slid past outside, the cliffs collapsing into rocky hills, which in turn became dusty vales where dust devils swirled - and then there was an exclamation from Dixon.
“The southern bandits have stopped. The north-western group has split up, they are heading north-east and directly east now.” Dixon laughed. “I think we changed their minds.”
The navigation map showed the yellow dots scattering, suddenly heading away from the convoy, and Burrows allowed himself a throaty chuckle.
“I think they were expecting smaller fish than us, today.”
Graves was on the line moments later.
“Good call, Exeter. Looks like you scared them off all right.” They could all hear the relief in the chief’s voice. “Shall we maintain this separation for now?”
“It’s probably for the best. Discretion is not going to be our best play today. We go big and bold.” Burrows looked down at the map again, where the yellow dots were scattering. Some had already flickered out as the rovers moved into areas where the navigation markers could not track them. None of them were going close to any of the green settlement markers. “We’ll put out a warning on the militia net as well, to watch for those bandits. I doubt we’ll pick them up, but someone might get lucky.”
Split up and travelling alone, the bandit rovers would be far less conspicuous - and if they went dark in some of the wilder zones, or changed their electronic tags after a few hours, no-one would find them. Burrows had chased them before, and knew by now how it went. It was a frustrating game of cat and mouse, and sometimes it was only luck that allowed you to catch the opponent wrong-footed.
Luck, and a bit of deviousness.
Fifteen minutes later, they drove through the point where the bandits would have intercepted the convoy. Stumpwood was a localised depression in the dunescape, with stubby fingers of rock crawling out of the regolith in waves and whorls around them, and Burrows immediately saw how it would have played out. Trapped in the cleared lane down the middle of the rocky field, the convoy would have had no space to scatter, and with the two leading rovers shot up, the mining haulers would have been fat sheep for the wolves.
The only way around the depression was a detour that would add hours to their journey, and no-one wanted that. It was one of the reasons why the original explorers here had bothered with clearing a lane there in the first place, once they began to settle in the area. Graves called a halt and sent one of the rovers ahead as scout, just to be safe, and only when it called the all-clear from the far side of Stumpwood did the rest of the column proceed. Burrows scanned the area for signs of how the bandits might have planned to move the stolen ore containers once their raid had concluded, but nothing stood out. There were no tracks to indicate that a vehicle might have been waiting there to help haul away loot after the attack, although the persistent wind and the hard ground made it difficult for a definitive assessment.
Was it to have been a heist - or just a simple ambush, to destroy and despoil as much of the convoy as they could?
The thought stayed with him for the rest of the trip as they made their way closer to Culheimer. Wildcatters-turned-bandits usually only stole supplies and necessities, things they needed to survive from day to day. Food and oxygen supplies were at the top of their list - ore shipments were not, unless they knew they could get refined fermium in the raid.
“Stealing fermium also only makes sense if you can fence it afterwards to a dealer,” Burrows explained, Ian once again at his side. With a view of the landscape around them instead of the perennial dust clouds from the haulers, Ian had shifted up to appreciate the stark scenery outside. “The slow-gate operators can only use the highest and most refined concentrations of the isotope for the gates, which means they have to go through certifications and checklists as long as my leg before they can plug it into the gate. You cannot sell random, undocumented fermium to any of those buyers, because it needs too much paperwork that is too difficult to obtain. Especially for fringe elements like raiders.”
“Is there fermium in this convoy?”
“Only Chief Graves can tell you that, and he won’t because it would compromise the integrity of the entire convoy,” Burrows replied to Ian’s question. “If we know which hauler is carrying what, and that info leaks, it puts a big target on that hauler. If no-one knows what is inside them, it becomes guesswork. That confusion counts to our advantage.”
“So taking on a convoy with seven haulers must be a big gamble then.” Ian mused, then frowned at the nearest hauler that was now some distance to their right. “Unless it’s not a gamble.”
“Exactly. It only makes sense if you know which vehicle has the good stuff, or…” Burrows trailed off, not sure if airing his suspicion would help in the situation. “Or if you don’t actually care about the ore.”
Ian gave him a blank look, and Burrows took a moment to collect his thoughts before he shared the theory that was nagging at the back of his mind.
“What’s the most important thing that Alvie Ranch owns?”
“Their ore, especially the fermium,” Ian promptly replied.
Burrows shook his head without taking his eyes off the sandy flats ahead.
“Their machines. The haulers and the mining rigs they have at their mines, and the smelters and refinery setup in that big pyramid of theirs - that is where their wealth is. Those haulers,” and Burrows lifted a hand to point at the convoy, “are what keeps them alive. Without the ability to mine, they have no products to sell. And even if they have products, without transport, they cannot get their products to the market.”
Ian’s eyes narrowed into the start of a frown.
“If they lose an ore shipment, they can still survive. Even two or three. It sometimes happens with the slow-gates, where packages go missing in transit. Not often, but it does happen from time to time. But there is always more ore they can dig up,” Burrows continued. “If a mining machine burns out, or one of the smelters goes offline - they can still produce products, and get them to the market. Even if it takes longer.”
“But if their haulers are not working, then it doesn’t matter how much they produce.” Ian’s frown deepened, and Burrows nodded in agreement.
“Exactly. The quickest way to cripple that settlement, is to kill their transport capabilities. Everything else - well, almost everything else - they can survive.”
“Do you think that’s what the bandits were trying to do?”
“I don’t know. I just don’t think that raiders looking for food and oxygen would have targeted a convoy of this size. Even five raiders together, which is also rare. The fermium angle also makes no sense.” Burrows nodded to himself. “Which then leaves the last option.”
“And that last option means that we were probably not dealing with raiders, but Union agitators,” Dixon continued, slipping into one of the other cockpit stations. Behind him, the satellite map chittered and beeped to itself at the sensor desk as it continued its monitoring. “The Union is the only party here that wins if our settlements are weakened.”
“How would you prove that, though?” Ian sat back in his seat with a thoughtful look on his face. “They used civilian rovers, and scattered when they saw how big our convoy was.”
“None of that is hard proof, no, and even if you catch just one of them, it will always get disavowed. It’s part of how the Liberty Zones work, after all.” Burrows shrugged. “We give people the freedom to do what they want and live how they want, and we don’t have a massive government that monitors everyone and everything they do. So the number of unlisted and unregistered vehicles out there is completely unknown. Same for the settlers - anyone can come here and make a life for themselves. We don’t keep a database of every settler here, and we sure as hell don’t track them the way people get tracked in the Euro and NorAm zones.”
Ian twitched in his seat, one hand moving to cover his left wrist, and Dixon laughed.
“Yes, we know about your implants. They won’t work here, we don’t have anything that interacts with them.”
Dixon continued.
“The Union knows that, and exploits it. They buy equipment on the free market from all of the Liberty Zones, and use that to outfit their teams here. Nothing here can be traced back to them.” Dixon mirrored Burrows’ shrug. “We made the rules here, and now they are just playing by them.”
“So… if you don’t have hard evidence, how do you know the Union is behind all of this?” Ian cocked his head to the side in puzzlement.
“Because that’s exactly how they took Seven Craters five years ago.”
Next chapter: TBC
