Mariner Valley Excerpt 2 – (Ben O’Ryan and his team assess the destruction of the Station at Ln Crater.)

“Hey, everyone,” he called into his helmet mike, “gather around here for a moment.”

The people who came out of the building with him formed a circle and the other ones who had been milling around, mostly auxiliaries, also came up and joined. As they waited for the mechanics to come up, Bruce Horowitz the reporter, spoke.

“Well, what’s in there, Officer O’Ryan? Is it the work of the gang?”

Ben didn’t look at him. “You’ll find out what’s in there in just a minute.” He looked at the mechanics that had just walked up and tried to see their faces. “Who have we got for mechanics? Brock, Britannica, and who?”

“Manzanillo, sir,” Gonzalo answered.

“Manzanillo, okay. What have you people got going?”

“We’re checking out the suspensions and undercarriage lines and stuff,” Geneva said. “They all took a hell of a beating.”

“All right, that’s good. You guys can go back to it, but I’m going to need to borrow you for awhile, Geneva.” She nodded. Ben looked around at the others and continued. “Now, for the rest of you, we’re going to break up into teams. I want us to go through the whole settlement and cover the bodies. I saw some equipment tarps in the lab we can use. It would be more proper to bury them, but we just don’t have the time it would take to break up this frozen ground. Also, we need to get an accurate count of the dead. Write down approximate age, sex, height and weight, if you can. That way we could give some kind of a list to someone.”

“Uh, Officer O’Ryan, I was hoping that I could move around freely to get some photos,” Bruce said.

Ben glanced over at him. “When you insisted on being on this team, you did so citing that you were an auxiliary. You’ll work in that capacity first.”

Bruce nodded. Ben divided them into teams and sent them on their way. They moved slowly, reluctant to go back into the settlement. Jamie took Beth and Phillip and left to pursue an idea. Brit and Manzanillo returned to their work on the rovers.

Ben turned to Geneva. “I understand you used to work out here.”

“That’s right. Thirteen months.”

“Do you know if the land lines ran through the communications module?”

“Yes, all the comms did. If any one wanted to make a call on the land lines, they had to go to the comms module. Why?”

“Because the comms module is destroyed. I guess I’m not going to be able to call Chryse from here.”

“No one from Sacra will be able to call Chryse, either. Once the equipment and lines are destroyed here, Sacra is cut off, too.”

Ben nodded. Damn. “All right, one more thing. When you were showing Busby and the others around, did you cover all of the spaces in the settlement?”

“Yes, all of the living spaces. I didn’t take them to the bunker.”

“What’s the bunker?”

“It’s the original underground settlement. They only use it for storage now.”

“Is there a chance anyone might be down there?”

“I don’t see who would. There’s nothing down there.”

“Could you take me down there? I want to know for sure.”

Geneva sighed and looked away from Ben toward the burned out buildings. Then she looked back toward the rovers and gestured at them with her thumb. “What about those? There’s a lot of work that needs to be done.”

“It’ll only take a minute. After that you can go back and finish what you’re doing with them.”

Geneva sighed again, louder this time, and looked at the ground before looking toward the rovers again. “Okay, but we need to hurry. I don’t want to leave those two goons alone with the tools for too long. They might get enthusiastic and ruin something.”

Ben nodded and followed her toward the building. Normally he would have found her attitude amusing, but he understood where it was coming from. He also hoped that she was wrong about the other two mechanics. He followed her inside.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 11

Amy

 

 

Geneva led Ben back inside the building through the lab and turned left into the long hall. They walked past equipment shops, computer monitoring stations, and various offices, all burnt beyond easy repair. In one room he saw two of his crew covering a body. He didn’t recognize them in their suits.

Geneva led Ben to a place in the hall that had obviously been constructed at an earlier period than the rest of the settlement. Solid concrete with heavy steel fittings and supports made the design reminiscent of the very first Martian bases, before the new materials made the construction lighter and simpler. The heavy door formed part of an airlock with the inner door removed. At the far end of the room was another airlock door that had been pried open. The room, filled with boxes, had apparently served as the community catch-all.

Geneva walked quickly through the room and headed directly for the door at the far end and Ben had to walk fast to keep up. He followed her through the door, turning right onto a staircase that led down to a lower level. Ben hesitated as he watched Geneva disappear into the thick blackness, her helmet lamp illuminating the steps in front of her. His own lamp formed a feeble cone of light in the cold dusty air. He gripped the handrail, took a deep breath, and descended the steps to another short hall.

At the bottom of the steps they stood for a moment and swept the beams of their helmet lights around the room. Four airlock doors lined opposite walls, each with rooms beyond. Three of the doors had been opened, but one remained completely shut. At the third one, the one on the far right, a boy lay dead across the doorway.

Geneva stood at the foot of the stairs. “Oh, damn.” She turned her helmet lamp away. “Damn. Do you see now? There couldn’t be anyone down here. Let’s go.”

Ben stepped over to examine the doors. Aside from the scratch marks where two of the doors had been forced opened, everything appeared perfectly intact with no sign of fire damage at all. The first door on the right, the only one still closed, had an indicator that showed no atmosphere inside.

“What did they store in these rooms?” he asked the mechanic.

“Food in these first two, detonation charges and geological equipment in the far left, and equipment parts in the far right.”

Ben walked to the first door on the left and peered inside. In the beam of his helmet lamp he saw food boxes that had been ripped open and cans scattered across the floor. He stepped over to the second door on the left and saw a few boxes marked EXPLOSIVES that had been torn open and emptied. A couple of geological devices still remained, but all of the explosives were gone. He turned around and looked at the boy on the floor. He seemed to be about twelve and his face, red from the blood that had come to the surface in the near vacuum, had an expression of surprise on it. Beyond the boy, the inner airlock door remained closed and the indicator next to it showed the atmosphere inside intact.

“Ben, let’s go now.”

He ignored her and leaned forward to look in the window. The light from his helmet swept over the room beyond and nothing seemed to be amiss. Pieces of portable equipment stood arranged in neat rows next to a line of boxes stacked three high. He tried to read the inscription on one of the boxes and noticed a movement just outside the beam of his helmet light. He turned his head to illuminate the area but saw nothing moving. However, there was something missing. He’d seen a blanket on the floor next to a box, but it was gone now.

“Geneva, I think there’s someone in there.”

“What?” she said, walking over to join him.

Ben rapped his gloved knuckles on the glass. “Hey! Is anyone in there? Hey!”

Geneva’s helmet pushed Ben’s aside and she looked into the window. “Are you sure you saw something?”

“I’m pretty sure. Let’s go in.”

Ben turned around and bent over to pick up the body of the boy, stiffened by the cold where it lay across the doorway. Ben moved him gently into the main room and placed him against the wall near a corner. Anguish, like pain, welled up in his chest again as he arranged the boy to make him as comfortable as possible. Finally he closed his eyes and stood up with a deep sigh, turning around to see Geneva watching him. They said nothing and stepped back into the airlock.

Novels by James Crawford –

Mariner Valley – https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0141N9UXO

Seed of Aldebaran – https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08SHXTRMP

AlCent Sagas Book One: Formation – https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CQ5C3TQT

AlCent Sagas Book Two: Revelation – https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D2FRH6Q8

AlCent Sagas Book Three: Investigation – https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D5SBFYMW

AlCent Sagas Book Four: Desperation – https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D8767LHL

AlCent Sagas Book Five: Confrontation – https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D9PPTX6G

A Noble Paradise – https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00QG6LZ10

Cover artist Wojtek Kapusta – https://www.artstation.com/kapucha76

Audible narrator Lyle Blaker – https://www.acx.com/narrator?p=AXZPXFQRN07M3