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  This was the fourth time Captain Lauren Farina had taken her out, and each time the mission had gone by the numbers; but good luck carried with it a curse, the fear that she would be the one to break Almacantar’s winning streak. So far, Farina had stayed ahead of the game—and when she saw Mars for the first time on the main viewer, she had felt a momentary elation. They had beaten the odds once more. Now, Farina was cursing herself. She should have known better.

  The captain did her best to maintain an outward calm, projecting a casual confidence from the center seat. It was, like many facets of command, an illusion. Inside, she felt exactly the same thing as the crew—a slow dread, pulsing through her veins and making the subtle suggestion: I knew it couldn’t be this simple.

  Farina didn’t have the luxury of letting it show. That was the prerogative of the six mates and officers with her on the bridge, who eyed her apprehensively from their stations. Such was life aboard a commercial vessel: a constant state of emotional combat, played out in a tin can arena among fifty souls chasing after a paycheck. Fifty lives, all Farina’s responsibility, who expected fat compensation for assuming the rigors of this mission. That bottom line was one of only two things that held everything together. The other was the captain. Good ones learned to master all that conflict, to use it to their advantage. For now, though, Farina had to begin by keeping things under control.

  That meant working the bridge crew hard. She had ordered a lockdown of all stations, isolating chatter with the rest of the ship to prevent rumors from spreading. In the meantime, Almacantar’s sensor arrays operated in full diagnostic mode—checking and rechecking all the data coming from the Martian surface, looking for any indication that the core construct was flawed. With the crew busy, they had less time to ask questions she couldn’t answer.

  “Try bleeding some power from the pulse jets into the array,” Farina ordered the engineering duty officer. “Maybe we just need to punch through some interference.”

  “I’ll need to program a flow containment subroutine to make sure I don’t overload the sensors,” the officer replied. “That could take some time.”

  “We’re not going anywhere,” the captain assured him with a smile. The gesture had the intended effect, putting the engineering officer at ease—and that, in turn, reduced some of the strain on the bridge. They were still in a world of shit, but at least it now felt like part of the routine.

  Ain’t that the truth, Farina thought, relaxing a little in the command chair. Show me a salvage op where nothing goes wrong, and I’ll show you a ship that never leaves dock.

  Nathan Straka had served with her long enough to know the drill—though he appeared even more worried than she did as he spun open the hatch and stepped onto the bridge.

  “Please tell me it’s a mistake,” the captain said.

  “Wish I could,” Nathan replied, sealing the hatch behind him. The rest of the crew fell into an uneasy quiet at hearing the diagnosis. “I ran it a couple of times to be sure. Something is most definitely out of whack.”

  Farina shook her head, then sank back into the command chair. “Give me max resolution on the main viewer,” she ordered, as Nathan took his place beside her. On a large screen at the forward end of the bridge, the endless desert surface of Mars glistened. Shades of brown and red blended together across Settler’s Plain, reaching all the way to the base of Olympus Mons. From orbit, it was difficult to imagine the rivers and lakes the terraformers intended, feeding a wild ecosystem that could sustain human life—especially with the domes of their encampment scattered like cemetery stones across the frozen sands.

  Towering above all of them, the gigantic atmospheric processors rose up near the southern end of the settlement. Designed to pump out perfluorocarbons as a preliminary stage in the terraforming process, they now sat in silence—as they had for the better part of a decade, weathering the sandstorms that had buried some of the other structures. From a salvage view, however, Farina thought that the old settlement appeared to be intact—a cause for celebration, if not for the complications Nathan brought her.

  “Might as well fill me in,” she sighed.

  Nathan slipped a memory card into Farina’s chair console. The tiny screen displayed some of the raw data he’d collected during the last core sweep. “I was able to track those signals we picked up,” he said. “Could be something, could be nothing—but at least we have a place to start looking if you want to investigate.”

  “I don’t see how we have much of a choice.” Directorate regulations gave Farina wide discretion when it came to diverting mission resources for scientific reasons—but a biological signature in deep space put everything else on hold. “Where’s it coming from?”

  “Somewhere in the caldera of Olympus itself.”

  The captain frowned. Nathan’s tone was a bit ominous.

  “A random chemical surge?” she asked, ever hopeful.

  “Not even close,” he said. “It’s neural.”

  That word settled in her ears like some unspeakable secret. Farina considered it, taking into account Nathan’s apprehension. In her view, information technology walked a fine line between science and black magic, but she had seen her ICO handle even the most bizarre iterations with aplomb. If this thing had him shaken, there was a real reason to worry.

  “Explain,” the captain ordered.

  “Just what I said,” Nathan told her. “The readings indicated some kind of interconnected activity. It was pretty faint and very brief, but no doubt it was real.”

  “Human?”

  “Not a chance,” he stated firmly. “Nobody could have survived on Mars for that long. And besides—human minds don’t form networks.”

  “Then what could it be?”

  Nathan thought about it.

  “An idiosyncrasy of the crawler,” he said. “It finds something in the construct it can’t explain, so it interpolates the data the only way it knows how: by ascribing its own neural characteristics to the readings.”

  “The damn thing sees a reflection of itself on the surface?” Farina chuckled, suddenly realizing why her ICO had been so spooked. “Sounds like you’ve been spending too much time down in the core, Straka.”

  He shrugged. “Well, these systems can get a little punchy trying to orient themselves in an environment with so many variables. A little ego projection isn’t unheard of—especially when they encounter something they can’t explain. Anyway, you asked for my opinion.”

  “Indeed I did.” The captain didn’t pretend to understand Nathan’s complex relationship with the crawler, but she had every confidence that he knew what he was doing. “Helm,” she ordered, “put Olympus Mons back on the main viewer.”

  The helmsman punched up the image. As the bridge crew stared down into the massive hole atop the flattened volcano, one thing was very clear: the summit lay far beyond the reach of the plague that had consumed the terraforming settlement. What might be up there now, Farina couldn’t even begin to imagine.

  “Those readings,” she asked her ICO. “If I got you close enough, do you think you could reacquire the signal? Track it to its point of origin?”

  “Probably.”

  “Then I suggest you get a team together,” the captain announced, sinking back into her chair, “because we’re about to test your theory.”

  Two hours later, Nathan had his team. He kept the list short—a pilot to handle the landing craft, a mission specialist with detailed knowledge of the terraforming venture, and himself. They were already waiting for Nathan when he arrived on the flight deck.

  The pilot was a veteran spacer who went by the call sign Pitch. If he had another name, Nathan had never heard it. He acknowledged the ICO with a simple nod, projecting the assured demeanor of a man who could make machines fly. The specialist, meanwhile, eyed Nathan nervously as he approached. According to the roster, her name was Eve Kellean—a smart girl, about ten years older than most newbies, paying for graduate school with a few years in the Directorate res
erve. As Kellean was working on her doctorate in xenobiology, Nathan surmised—correctly—that she never thought she would actually get called up.

  “Lighten up, Kellean,” Nathan said, slinging his gear pack over his shoulder. “You’d be surprised at how many spacing careers begin in the reserve.”

  “My father tried to warn me,” Kellean replied, taking it in stride. “It’s not that I don’t appreciate your confidence in me, Commander—I really do. I just wasn’t expecting to do any field duty.”

  “Afraid of getting your hands dirty?”

  “No, sir,” came the spirited response. Nathan had to smile as he started them on a brisk walk toward the lander. “It’s just that I usually work in an advisory capacity. Mission briefings, research—that sort of thing.”

  “Sounds dull,” Nathan remarked. “No offense.”

  “None taken, sir.” By her tone, it was obvious she meant it. “At any rate, since Almacantar is my first deep-space assignment, I was wondering why you didn’t select somebody with more field experience.”

  “Nobody knows this rock better than you, Kellean.” Off her curious reaction, he added, “I checked your file. You also did a minor in military history. With everything that happened on Mars, that makes you uniquely qualified.”

  “Guess I can’t argue with that, sir.”

  Nathan laughed. “You’ll do fine,” he assured her. “Just remember to put your helmet on before you go outside. The rest is cake.”

  “What’s the drill?” Pitch asked.

  “Simple tag ’em and bag ’em.” Nathan handed the pilot a console card, programmed with the search parameters he’d downloaded off the core construct. “Good news is the search area is limited to the summit crater. Bad news is that we’re still talking about fifty-four hundred square kilometers.”

  “In the heart of Olympus Mons?” Kellean interjected. “What do you think you’re going to find down there?”

  “I’ll let you know as soon as I see it.”

  The three of them crossed the flight deck to where their transport waited. Several crewmen swarmed around the craft, releasing the docking clamps and fuel hoses, making the final preparations that would make her ready for launch. Unlike Almacantar, the lander had an aerodynamic design—her sleek lines and contours spreading out across a symmetrical delta wing, with space inside for cargo storage and a crew pod on the forward end of the fuselage. A series of miniature rocket clusters allowed the craft to maneuver in the vacuum of space; in atmosphere, the sweeping wing surface provided enough area to keep it aloft.

  Pitch was the first one inside, climbing up a ladder into the belly of the ship. He expertly squeezed through the confines of the small cockpit, strapping himself in behind the controls. Going down his preflight checklist, he disconnected the lander from external power and engaged the fuel cells. A steady, electrical thrum began to reverberate through the deck as Kellean poked her head in and took the seat next to him.

  “Ever set down in a volcano before?” she asked.

  “Nope,” Pitch replied casually. “Better keep your hand on the yoke—just to be on the safe side.”

  Nathan was the last on board, taking a detour into the avionics bay. There, he made some adjustments to the lander’s guidance system, and established a real-time link to Almacantar’s computer core. From then on, whatever they encountered would instantly be relayed back to the crawler for analysis and comparison with the readings he had taken earlier. If it found a match, the directional data would appear as a blip on the navigational display—a beacon that would take them straight to the source.

  Nathan closed up the console, then ascended into the cockpit with the others. He took the navigator’s seat in back and powered up the virtual displays. Encased in imaging mist, he tested the interface and immersed himself in the sweetness of action and reaction.

  “Skids up,” he said.

  Almacantar’s belly opened, spilling light into the black abyss. Floating free, the lander drifted past the landing bay doors and into open space, trailing ice crystals that glowed like cinders in her wake. Tiny blue plumes appeared at her wingtips as Pitch fired the maneuvering thrusters, taking the lander to a safe operational distance away from her mother ship. The pilot then ran a beauty pass, flying down Almacantar’s full length, following the long train of cargo modules she towed all the way from Earth. Against the stark backdrop of Mars, the ungainly vessel appeared almost majestic.

  “Base, this is Ghostrider,” Pitch signaled. “Request nav and comm check.”

  “Roger, Ghostrider,” came the disembodied reply. “You’re five by five, on the scope and transmitting loud and clear. How’s the view out there?”

  “It’s incredible,” Kellean said, her eyes fixed on the cockpit glass and inspecting every detail of Almacantar’s cargo hull. Heavy lifters jutted from the ventral side of each module, dormant engines waiting to be fired for their descent to the Martian surface. Then, as the ship passed out of view, there was Mars itself: a mosaic of brown and red, streaked with wisps of black and white—topography and atmosphere flattened against each other, creating a picture of stark brutality and profound beauty. Craters pocked the surface like reminders of an ancient time, a fulfillment of some grand, celestial prophecy. Up here, it was easy to believe that the planet had been waiting for them.

  “Twelve hundred meters,” Nathan said from the back, measuring the distance between the lander and Almacantar.

  “Confirm that,” said the voice in their headsets. “Ghostrider, you’re clear to navigate.”

  “Acknowledged,” Pitch radioed back. “Wish us luck.”

  Nathan reached forward and tapped Kellean on the shoulder.

  “Still wish you’d stayed behind?” he asked.

  She smiled back at him. “Not on your life, sir.”

  Pitch lit up the reverse thrusters, laying on full power and filling the cabin with a dull roar. As the ship slowed, Mars reached out and started to pull them down from orbit. Trails of vapor appeared at the lander’s wingtips when they brushed against the atmosphere, which changed from twilight blue to dull gray to rusty red. Alien light flooded the cockpit—sunshine filtered through an otherworldly prism.

  “Magnificent,” Kellean whispered.

  The ship was buffeted slightly from side to side. The wings took loose hold of the outside air, glowing from the friction of entry. Nathan felt his body gain substance as gravity pulled him down into his seat, his arms getting heavy as he worked the interface.

  “Fifty thousand meters,” he said, ticking off their altitude. The ship descended fast, the Tharsis ridge looming large on the navigation screens. “Braking pattern on my mark.”

  “Got it,” Pitch replied. He pulled back on the control yoke, bringing the nose of the craft up and leveling it with the horizon. Kellean peered toward the outer edge and saw the pancaked dome of Olympus Mons rising in the distance.

  “I see it,” she said. “Damn, that thing is huge.”

  “Forty-five thousand meters,” Nathan called out. “Braking on four…three…two…one…Mark.”

  Pitch turned the yoke hard to starboard, putting the craft into a steep bank. For the next several minutes, they spiraled down toward the planet’s surface. With each corkscrew turn, their rate of descent slowed dramatically—and so did their airspeed. The details of Settler’s Plain appeared in the distance, the old colony like a ghost town baking under the hazy sun.

  “Thirty thousand meters,” Nathan reported.

  “Leveling off,” the pilot said. He swung the ship around and lined up their course to intersect Olympus Mons. At that altitude, they were a scant three thousand meters higher than the summit. Pitch lowered the flaps a few degrees, the sluggish controls tightening a bit in his hands. “Looks like we’re hitting some convection. We might be in for a little turbulence.”

  Right on cue, the lander bounced as it hit a column of rising air. The shaking gradually subsided as the lander passed over the scarp that marked the end of Settler’s
Plain—a craggy series of cliffs that formed a boundary around Olympus Mons. From there on, the smooth, expansive surface of the mountain seemed to stretch out into forever.

  “It’s so flat,” Kellean observed, “you could walk it if you wanted to.”

  “If you had a couple of years,” Nathan added. “That thing is three times as high as Mount Everest back home—and a hundred times wider.”

  “Sounds like a nice long honeymoon.”

  “Tell that to the colonists,” Pitch muttered.

  To the spacing community, this place was synonymous with death. In spite of that, it was easy to see how those people had lost themselves here. Olympus was, if nothing else, a well of secrets. You couldn’t just walk away from that.

  Even when you should run.

  The thought was brief and disconnected, effused by some part of Nathan’s subconscious. But Nathan was distracted by their approach, which he watched in glorious detail on the construct—fed directly into his cerebral cortex via the navigation interface. It was like riding the rapture, only this was no hallucination. As the lander dissolved around him, his mind projected on waves of sensor energy, the notion of reality was a constant; it was just a hyperreality, with himself at its absolute center. He was part of Mars, and Mars was part of him.