Chapter 3

“What?”

“I know, it sounds bizarre, but trust me. I took a wrong turn getting back to my apartment. We’d all had a fair amount to drink, you know. All these damn corridors look the same. I realized I was in the wrong one and sat down on the floor for a minute to get my bearings. I heard these two guys coming closer, and I didn’t really think anything of it because people keep weird schedules and there’s always someone coming and going. But they were talking as they walked, and they didn’t see me because I was around a corner and low to the ground I guess.”

“Steven. What did you hear?”

“Right. Sorry. Still sobering up. I didn’t catch everything they said because they were trying to be quiet. But I did hear something about all the pieces being in place, and having the info they need, and the only thing left being to ‘get the bitch out of the way.’”

“That’s deeply unpleasant, but what makes you think this was about me?”

“Because I got a look at the guys as they walked past, and the one who said it was Holder.”

Anita’s stomach dropped, and she began to shake. “Oh shit. I just found out Holder’s been tampering with my suit design. He got all my data from the test this morning, plus some info on nearby mining targets from sensors he programmed into the suit while it was being printed. He doesn’t know that I know yet, but I have to destroy everything, and he’ll be on his way as soon as I do that. There’s nowhere I can go on base that they won’t find me eventually.”

“Shit. Do you really think they’d do something? Yeah, I guess there’s not a lot to stop them, is there? This isn’t really something that’s come up before.” Steven paused, running a hand through his uneven hair.

“Wait… I remember something from some of the maps I studied about past scouting expeditions. There was this one…” Anita reached out to search on the computer, and pulled back. “Wait. I can’t put anything in here, they may have access even if I clear the search history. They’re probably logging my keystrokes. And...” She glanced around the room. Everything to write with was electronic, and she couldn’t trust a single piece of it. No paper. No markers. Finally, she looked directly into the screen and mouthed “bugged.” Steven’s eyes widened, and he nodded. He held up his hands and mouthed “hold on” and the screen went black.

Anita sank back into her chair. She couldn’t trust the very room she was in. She felt as if even touching the computer would give her an electric shock. A few minutes later, she heard a knock at the door; the display showed her Steven on the other side. She opened the door, and he pulled her into the hallway and down the corridor until they stood directly under one of the vents for air recycling. Steven leaned closed and whispered into her ear, “I don’t know if the sound is loud enough to drown us out, but it’s something. If we whisper, we should be ok.”

“I know of a small abandoned lab that was used on some of the earlier scouting missions. We’d need to set it up again for breathable air, water, some electricity. But it’s not on any current maps, and almost impossible to spot from the air. It was built underground for radiation shielding before we got the improved shield technology a few years ago.” She continued, barely breathing to keep the sound as low as possible. “I can’t take any of my own equipment, but I need to continue my work. I can’t get there on my own: will you help me?”

“We all will.”

Anita nodded. “How much time do you need to prepare? You can’t go out in the new suit, you’ll have to use the old model. I don’t think they’ve gotten rid of them yet.”

“They haven’t. I started keeping mine in my quarters. We’re not supposed to, but no one ever really checked on it, either. I know Alice and Frida have theirs for sure, and Capheus might. That’s four for sure, and I can check the other three. Are comms safe between the scouts?”

“I have no idea. Best to be safe. How fast can you contact them?”

“Give me an hour. And don’t worry; not a single scout on your team would sell you out to Perses. We’ll get you out of here.”

Anita nodded, numbness setting in. “I can’t wipe my systems until everything is in place. I’m going back to my quarters to pack and get ready. When it’s time, send me a message asking about the field trials next week. I’ll go to the lab and do what needs to be done. Then meet back here.” She almost explained her plan to destroy the parts of the base system that held the backups of her work, but decided against it. The less he knew about that, the better.

Steven turned and went down the corridor, trying his best to move quickly without being conspicuous. Anita gathered her thoughts for a moment before heading to her apartment. I guess the weight limits worked in my favor for once, she thought, as she tosses some clothes in a bag. I couldn’t bring much that had personal meaning so I don’t mind leaving everything here. She paused as she came to a small painting propped up against a wall. It wouldn’t have meant much to anyone else, just a simple Martian landscape. She grabbed it and stuffed it into the bag with the clothes. Losing that would have been sacrilege, and she was about to commit enough of that for one lifetime.

With her bag packed and slung over her shoulder, Anita locked the door of the small apartment and walked away without looking back. She needed all of her strength for what she was about to do. The backup system came first, since Perses was less likely to be monitoring that. Anita made her way to the large heavy doors that protected the backup servers. They were arranged by lab name, and finding the one for Dr. Sensharma was quick work. It wasn’t enough just to delete the data. It had to be irretrievable. She unplugged the device, hoping that there weren’t any alarms, or if so, that the person responsible for seeing to them wouldn’t be in a hurry, and carried the server to the nearest trash compactor. Anything that couldn’t be recycled or reused was compacted, burned, and sent back on the next supply ship. The compactors weren’t protected because no one had ever thought they would be used for any nefarious purposes in a scientific compound. After loading the server into the compactor, Anita hesitated before pressing the button. This wasn’t her property. There might be files from other scientists and engineers on here, which she had no right to destroy. But it couldn’t be helped. If she didn’t do this, the integrity of the entire base was at stake. It probably wouldn’t stop Perses, but it might at least slow them down.

She pressed the button firmly, and didn’t flinch as the compactor crushed the server into a small block, then ejected it into a pile of blocks of unrecognizable materials, all ready for the flames. It was done. Now she only had to rip out her own heart. Easy.

The lab door opened soundlessly, but she half-expected it to creak and give away her plans. Silly, she told herself. You have every right to be here at any hour you please. No one will think anything of it. Just do what you have to do as quickly and quietly as possible.

There was no time to worry about deleting individual files. She cleared all the backups on the network, and unplugged the drives from every display. She stuffed the drives into a bag brought from her room. They were heavy, but not as cumbersome as she’d feared. Titan had one good way of ensuring that no one could ever recover information from those machines.

Her tablet dinged. The message from Steven asked an innocuous question about the field work to be done in the coming weeks. It was time. Anita looked at the stripped laboratory. It looked wrong, soulless. At the last moment, she remembered one last thing: the printer. It had a memory, and the suits could be reprinted and reverse-engineered. There was no way to seperate the internal memory from the machine, and it was far too large and heavy to be disposed of with the other machines.

Anita paused, calculating. Would there still be time to run? How quickly would people converge on the lab once an alarm was raised? There was no help for it, it had to be done. Best to do it quickly and efficiently and then run like hell. She grabbed the fire extinguisher that sat in the corner of the lab. It was old school, and it had been decades since one had been used, but it was still standard practice to have one on hand. And it was made of heavy solid metal.

She covered the machine target with a cloth, both to muffle sound and to prevent sparks, and brought the extinguisher down as hard as she could. The first blow barely registered. The second made a few dents. By the fifth, the machine was looking misshapen. The tenth blow crumpled the casing on the brains of the printer, and it died with a quiet whine. Anita reached into the printer and pulled out the bits that she could. These would be light enough to dispose of properly. She dumped them into the bag with the other machines to be disposed of and sprayed the printer with the fire extinguisher just to make sure no wires would produce a rogue spark later. A fire would destroy the lab quite effectively, but it could also cause injury or death to everyone in the base, an unacceptable risk.

A sharp knock sounded at the door. She pulled Steven inside and showed him the bag of jumbled computer parts. He nodded. “Everyone else is waiting in the suiting room. Let’s go.”

The corridors were quiet as they walked toward the edge of the base. The first day of the Titan night period was usually quiet; people needed a little extra time to adjust to having darkness outside the windows for a full Martian week. There were a few people who enjoyed having big parties to celebrate the week of night, but most chose to go to bed early for a few days. The corridors were clear.

When they got to the suiting area, Anita saw a group of people gathered around the new suit. The scouts. There was Alice, small with spiky pink hair and an encyclopedic knowledge of Titan’s geology. Capheus, tall and dark, with a gift for flight and finding the right winds for his needs. Frida, brilliant engineer, able to repair her flightsuit with the most basic of tools. Nada, with a mind that could understand any computer system she encountered. Tohru, a brilliant photographer and wilderness survival expert. Sergei, who could produce a decent map from memory after a single flyover. And Steven, with his degrees in chemistry and love for the bizarre surface of Titan. She nearly cried, seeing them all standing there, ready to help.

Frida reached out first, putting a hand on Anita’s arm. “Steven told us what’s happening. We know we need to get you out, we know what it’s going to cost, and we’re ok with it. Everyone’s got their old suits, right?” The group nodded. “Let’s get ready. We’ll explain the plan as we go. Dr. Sensharma, we have a standard flight suit for you here. There aren’t any spare wing suits, so you’ll have to trust us to carry you. We have strong winds right now, and if we spread your weight out, we can carry you. We’ve got a sort of net with very strong cables, so we can suspend you in the middle of the group. It won’t be comfortable, but it’ll be secure, and since there are no engines in the suits, we’ll be very hard to detect. It may take us a few days to get to the old base, but we’ve got enough supplies to make it without a problem.”

Anita nodded. “I have one stop I need to make.” She held up the bag of computer parts. “We need to sink this.” Frida nodded. “I see what you have in mind. We’ll take care of it.”

Anita pulled the suit up around her. It was cold, but she knew it would warm up soon. The suit was thin, but it would stand up to the deep chill of the Titan night. She wouldn’t be comfortable—the suit was designed for day period activities—but she would survive. Tohru helped her secure the suit and make sure all seals were closed securely. The others arranged the netting and got into their own suits.

When everything was ready, they moved to the airlock. On her way through the hatch, Anita grabbed the new suit from its stand. “Someone else will need to take the wings,” she whispered. “We can’t leave anything behind.”

“I got it,” Sergei said, reaching out for the carbon fiber frame.

When everything was gathered in the airlock, Capheus hit the button to close the hatch into the base and vent the oxygen back inside. For a few moments, the airlock was silent, the dark Titan sky outside. Then the outside hatch creaked open, and sound flooded in.

The winds were blowing, and bits of sand and ice swirled around the base. The night was cold even through the thermal suit, and the light from the airlock streamed out across the uneven surface of the moon. To her right, Saturn’s rings loomed over the horizon, glowing in the light of the distant sun.

Anita felt a hand on her shoulder and turned. Alice smiled, barely visible through the helmet of her suit. “We’re ready. It’s time to get you out of here.” Anita nodded, and stepped into the web of netting. “We need to get some speed up,” Alice explained, pointing to the cables that were laid out in a wide circle around the net. “We’ll get up our speed, then do a synced dive to grab the cables. You need to hold on pretty tight to the net, because this could get rough.”

The scouts adjusted their wings, checking each other’s suits, and took up positions in a loose grouping. They took off in a run, wings flapping to gain altitude quickly. Like a flock of birds, Anita thought, heart soaring as she watched the take-off. It’s worth it all just to see this. One by one, the scouts lifted off the ground, the small ones like Alice first, followed shortly after by the larger scouts. They spiralled up, building energy for the dive.

“Ok, everyone, let’s get in formation,” Steven’s voice came through Anita’s helmet. “Everyone knows your positions. There we go. Grab your cable as you pass over and start flapping to maintain your momentum. Dr. Sensharma, Sergei has your items to be disposed of, so he’s going to let go of his cable shortly after takeoff to deal with that. Just hang on, don’t worry, he’ll be back. Are you ready?”

For a moment, Anita thought about calling everything off. Maybe she was in no real danger with Perses in control of the base. Maybe she could stand up for her work and insist that it not be used for mining purposes. And maybe Titan would turn into a lush garden with a wave of my hand, she thought. No. This was the only way to keep her work from destroying the moon. The only way to remain free to do that work.

“I’m ready.” Her hands gripped the netting so tightly that she was afraid of cutting off circulation.

“Dive dive dive!”

The scouts came out of the darkness in a rush, each one dipping a hand down to grab a cable. The netting jerked off the ground, and Anita felt as if every bone in her body was jolted out of its socket. She scraped along the ground as the net dipped, then felt the pit of her stomach sink as she was lifted into the sky.

The base was the only clearly visible feature at first, falling below and behind as the strange group flew into the night. Anita watched it fade into the night, the thick atmosphere blurring the light until it was only a hazy shape of brightness in the night.

But as that light faded, Saturn grew brighter. From this height, she could see an arc of the planet itself, inside the rings. Swirls of color raged inside the limb of the planet, blues, reds, whites, and the rings were perfect semi-circles of light. In the reflected glow, mountains and valleys emerged from the darkness below. Ahead, a spot of silver sprang to light, followed by another just beyond it.

“First stop,” Sergei said. “I’m letting go of the cable now, Dr. Sensharma. I’ll be back in a moment.” Anita felt a corner of the netting go slack, and tightened her grip again. As the group moved over the lake, she saw a winged shape silhouetted against the reflection, and a dark bundle fall down, down, down, until a small splash marked the final resting place of her work. Everything she had created over the past two years would now be unmade at the bottom of a lake of liquid methane.

She let herself shed a few tears. Not too many: the helmet might fog up and now was not the time to take any risks. There would be time for real grief later. Now was about survival and secrecy.

The base was long behind them when Anita felt the group begin to descend. She tried to move, but it was difficult in the center of the net. Her muscles ached and all her joints were cold and stiff. “Careful, Doctor,” Alice’s voice came through the helmet. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to remain silent if at all possible. Perses has satellites in orbit around Titan, and they can track a vocal signature on any signal. They’ve probably already got your voice on record and into their system. If you say anything, they may be able to track you, and all of this will have been for nothing. Now hang on, we’re going to try for a gentle landing, but this is the first time we’ve done this.”

The ground loomed closer, barely visible in the darkness. It was difficult to judge distances under such conditions, but Anita could see shapes getting clearer. They seemed to be headed for a spot with fewer rocks and a patch of empty sand. She felt the ground brush her legs, then everything erupted into chaos. Sand and rocks were flying through the holes in the netting, and she wasn’t sure which way was up. Finally, the world slowed and she clambered to her feet, knees screaming after having been bent for hours. She could hear the scouts in their suits swirling around her, wings flapping as they found purchase on the ground again while trying not to crash into each other.

When the dust settled, the small band began setting up the two tents they’d brought with them. “Shouldn’t we have more tents for the eight of us? This will be a really tight fit,” Sergei asked as he put the frame of one tent together.

Anita opened her mouth to answer, but remembered the Perses voice trackers, and shook her head instead, signing to the group. “We need to keep as small a profile as possible,” Tohru translated, helping Alice fold up the wings for the suits so they would be safe overnight. “And we should all sleep in our suits. I know it’s not comfortable, but it will lower our heat signature and make us harder to spot.”

Once the tents were up, they tossed sand over the tops to help them blend into the landscape, then carefully crawled inside. There was only room enough for the four people in each tent to lay side by side, and the tallest found their heads and feet scraping against the wall of the tents.

Most of the scouts dropped off to sleep quickly, the extended flight and extra weight having used most of their energy. But Anita couldn’t sleep. I can’t even toss and turn properly, she thought, as she lay on her back in the pitch darkness of the tent. She was too exhausted to feel the terror that had led up to her flight, but too aware of the danger to relax. The top of the tent was too weighted with sand to ripple in the wind, but she could hear it, whispering away outside.

She’d been on so many excursions on the surface of both Mars and Titan, but today was the first time she’d ever felt real fear about it. Usually she was able to trust in the equipment and sleep easily, but fears about the tent ripping or the suit seals failing tore through her mind. Maybe it was because the system that she had relied on for so long and which had given her so much had failed her in the span of a few days.

And when would she be able to speak openly again? Titan was under no governmental jurisdiction, it had been designated only for scientific research, and most of that was restricted to probes in orbit. What Perses was doing was almost certainly illegal in some way, but it would take so long to work out the legalities that they could keep monitoring almost indefinitely. Maybe Frida and Nada could put something together at the abandoned base, some sort of voice scrambler that might keep them at arm’s length.

If I keep thinking about this, I’m not going to be able to sleep at all, and then tomorrow’s journey will be ten times as miserable. Come on, Anita, think of something that puts you to sleep. She began outlining a paper she was thinking of writing about the final iteration of the flight suit design, and slowly drifted into an unesasy sleep.