Free The Mars Shock by Felix R. Savage Page A

wrecked module looming over them gave a feeling of futility to Murray’s talk of viruses and cyber-weapons. To defeat the PLAN would mean defeating Mars itself. Still, there had to be a path to victory. “In that case, rescuing them is a priority of extreme importance.”
    “Rescuing, cough, capturing them, yeah. That’s the only way we’re ever gonna find out how the virus works. How’d the Chinese manage to poke a hole in the PLAN’s information security, when we’ve tried and failed for decades? Gotta get the source code.”
    “So it’s all about our competition with the Chinese.”
    “That’s why I’m here. What about you?”
    Kristiansen laughed. He moved across the hole in the side of the module to where a long, warped rod stuck out. It was a section of maglev track. He jumped, grabbed hold of it, and did a pull-up so he could see over the debris partially blocking the hole.
    Martian dust coated a landscape of sinuous metal curves and depressions. His brain extracted patterns from the rubble. Topology.
    “Whoa. Murray, there were hills inside this module. Buildings. Looks like a river-bed.”
    “Oh, this I gotta see. They said these modules were actually pieces of Tiangong Erhao. You know, that white elephant we used to think was a space station, which was actually an unmanned arkship. It lit out for Barnard’s Star during the Big Breakup, and dropped these off on the way.” Murray copied Kristiansen’s move of grabbing onto the maglev rail segment.
    Kristiansen swung himself up so he was standing on the rail.
    He looked back the way they’d come.
    The dust clouds parted momentarily.
    “Murray!”
    “What?”
    “Our buggy!”
    He’d not known what he was looking at for a moment. The buggy had lost its defined shape, bloating into a matte black blob. The blob quivered. Zooming in, he saw that it seemed to be made up of hundreds of small, active bodies.
    His only chance of survival was vanishing before his eyes.
     

v.
     
    “Oh, Gilchrist,” Colden sobbed, mashing her blanket to her face as if the soft, nubbly fabric could give her some comfort. “Sophie, Sophie. Why’d you do it?”
    She’d got the news about Theta Base during lunch. A private heads-up, classified for officers and managers only. The situation was still developing, and the announcement had been terse to the point of obfuscation. But as soon as Colden saw that a COP operator had been the culprit, she knew what had happened.
    And she knew why.
    Sophie Gilchrist had tried to save her boyfriend, and condemned everyone in Theta Base.
    Colden couldn’t hold it together. She knew she was partly to blame. She’d reinforced Gilchrist’s belief that the nanites were nothing but a scare story. If she’d instead talked her out of it, Gilchrist might not have taken that desperate gamble. Hundreds of people wouldn’t be dead … or maybe worse.
    The other ranks weren’t allowed to know anything yet, and she didn’t want to start them asking questions she wouldn’t be able to answer. So she’d fled the mess hall to have a breakdown in the privacy of her berthing. She shared a ten-rack cabin with other Space Corps agents. But right now they were all chowing down on fresh corn on the cob and homegrown soybean porridge, oblivious to the catastrophe unfolding 300 klicks away.
    She burrowed under her blanket, and sobbed and trembled.
    At last she sat up, wiped her face with her sleeve—and yelled in shock, “Hell!”
    Danny Drudge stood in the doorway, looking as close to abashed as she’d ever seen him. “Ma’am?”
    “What the fuck are you doing here? Go eat.”
    “Ma’am, the commander wants to speak to you. I guess he pinged you, but you didn’t answer.”
    She blinked tears away from her retinal implants. Indeed, one of the many notifications that had been obscured by her grief was a personal text from Commander Jackson. “Agent Colden, report to my office ASAP.”
    This was highly unusual. And ominous. Today was turning