Déjà Doomed Read online

  * * *

  “What really happened?” Tyler asked. Demanded.

  “Sharp rocks. Suit tears. Just as I reported it.” It did nothing for Marcus’s mental state that for security purposes he was doing this debrief in the igloo where Brad had so recently died. All Brad’s gear, even the fabric and rubber scraps from Donna cutting him out of his pressure suit, remained scattered about. “Maybe the medical obsessives at Base Putin are onto something.”

  Tyler asked, “Did Donna detect anything untoward? A troponin spike? Any anomalies at all in Brad’s blood chemistry?”

  “No.” And what a hell of a thing it was that Marcus almost wanted to believe in an ancient alien contagion that rendered a person fatally careless. Because the alternative …. “No. It was an accident.”

  “Honestly, you don’t find this all a little too sudden? The circumstances a little too … coincidental?”

  “Nikolay’s death?”

  “Nikolay’s death,” Tyler agreed. “Nikolay has an accident involving multiple tears in the legs of his pressure suit. Ditto, Brad. No useful helmet vids for either incident. Comms for both men externally disabled. Brad is the one to find Nikolay. Days later, Brad dies in just the same way.” Pregnant pause. “It looks like a revenge killing. Tit-for-tat.”

  Brad’s antenna had been severed. In Nikolay’s case, it had been the cable leading to the antenna. Nikolay had had tears through a glove. Brad had not. Nikolay’s helmet cam had been switched off, Brad’s splashed with regolith when he fell. All distinctions without a difference? Marcus shivered.

  “I understand, Tyler. It does look coincidental. But no one was there to attack Brad! When the three of us, Yevgeny, Brad, and I, exited the base, the rest of the team was inside. Till after Brad was in trouble, I was never more than a few feet from the mouth of the lava tube. Most often, I was in the tube. No one could have come topside without me knowing it.

  “So what do we tell Brad’s son and daughter? Tell Susan, his ex? No, make that what do I tell them?”

  “A tragic accident. Torn suit. What else is there to say? Oh, and nothing about the return of his body for burial. At some point, there will have to be an autopsy.” Tyler rubbed his eyes. Frowned. Brushed his mustache with the side of a finger. Looked anxious. Looked old. “Yevgeny was outside at the same time. Out of your sight.”

  Never mind the why, could Yevgeny have killed Brad? “I spoke with Brad about him wanting to detour on foot to the igloo. I saw him get out of the tractor cab. Immediately after that, Yevgeny drove the tractor straight to me.”

  “What if ….” Tyler trailed off. “Hear me out. Suppose Yevgeny killed Brad in the tractor cab. Took an—”

  “Killed how? Donna says Brad died of decompression, pure and simple. No wounds, apart from scratches and nicks beneath some of the suit tears. No bruises. No anything.”

  “With all due respect, Donna wouldn’t find anything. Nor would any mere paramedic. For what I have in mind, it’d take a proper autopsy and a lot of esoteric lab gear.”

  “What do you suspect?”

  “A hypodermic of something nasty, quick-acting, untraceable. FSB are well known for such things. From the vids you sent, there’s no lack of holes in Brad’s pressure suit.

  “Anyway, once you could no longer see the tractor, Yevgeny took an indirect route to the igloo. He dumped Brad’s body outside. Met up with someone new, while remaining out of your sight. That someone got in the cab, dressed in a p-suit the same dark blue as Brad’s. Later, Mr. X hopped out for you to see, leaving the scene once he’s exited your line of sight.”

  “Someone new. You mean trucked or flown in?”

  “Flown in. Even from the nearest settlement, no one could drive to Humboldt quickly enough to evade some satellite’s notice, or without leaving visible tracks. But a drop-off by shuttle during one of the gaps in satellite surveillance? Landing on rocky terrain to avoid leaving behind any trace? The accomplice himself sticking to rocky terrain for a short distance to avoid leaving boot prints? Yeah, that’s possible.” Tyler muttered, as if to himself, “I see I’m going to need another go at eliminating those damned surveillance gaps. If getting that done means going all the way up the chain to the president, so be it. I don’t give a damn that putting up a bunch of new surveillance birds could, in theory, make the Chinese more suspicious. We’ve got bigger fish to fry.”

  This was crazy! But was coincidence piled upon coincidence any more credible? “Wait,” Marcus said. “Yevgeny couldn’t have known Brad would want to visit the igloo. And I heard Brad bring up the matter.”

  Tyler shook his head. “I believe you heard a synthesized voice.”

  “Ethan didn’t report anything odd, did he? The tractor taking anything other than the direct path to or from the supply drop?”

  “No,” Tyler admitted. “But there’s a stretch where neither you nor Ethan could see the tractor.” His forehead wrinkled in concentration. “But you’re right. That is a problem. The tractor wasn’t out of Ethan’s sight long enough to drive to the igloo and back.

  “Okay, try this. Yevgeny stops the tractor in that unobservable spot. Kills Brad. Meets up with the accomplice. The accomplice, avoiding anyplace that would show distinct boot prints, carries Brad to where you found him. Accomplice and Yevgeny meet up in the unobserved spot on his return to the base. Yevgeny then plays the synthesized voice, and you get to see the accomplice’s staged detour to the igloo. Of course he fades from the area once you can no longer observe.”

  “And coincidentally all the critical events happen out of Ethan’s view.”

  “Not coincidentally. It’d only mean Yevgeny doesn’t buy—and maybe he never did—that Ethan’s bot is kaput. Or maybe he became suspicious of the bot because of Nikolay’s death.”

  “As in: Nikolay had his accident, but Yevgeny didn’t buy it as an accident? That he supposes we, probably Brad, killed Nikolay for messing with our bot?”

  Tyler shrugged. “It all fits, doesn’t it?”

  Scarily, it did. And if Yevgeny had killed Brad … why not Donna and himself?

  Marcus’s mind reeled. His heart pounded. His eyes darted about, looking for …?

  “Hold on!” Marcus shouted. Brad’s gear all remained where he and Donna had tossed or dropped it. He found the tool belt, began snapping open its pockets.

  “What are you doing?” Tyler asked.

  Marcus kept checking belt pockets. He saw nothing out of the ordinary. But in a zippered outer pocket of the backpack …. “Tyler, Brad was carrying the diagnostic gear he’d come to the igloo for. So it was him, not a mysterious someone, who came here.”

  “Unless … okay, I’m grasping at straws here. If the Russians synthed Brad’s voice, wouldn’t they have known the type of gear to bring and then plant on him?”

  “Maybe.” With a flathead screwdriver from his tool belt, Marcus pried open the locked storage cubby Brad had claimed for his own. He found nothing but personal stuff; pawing through it felt like a violation. “But if so, Brad’s specialty instruments would still be in the inflatable, and I’m not finding anything like what he had in his backpack. Unless you also believe the Russians compromised the locks to the igloo and compromised the motion-sensitive interior camera you had me install when we moved underground, what I saw is what I saw. Not some elaborate, deadly charade.”

  “Well, shit,” Tyler said.

  “Yevgeny didn’t do it. Right?”

  “It seems not.” Tyler frowned. “But that doesn’t mean I buy the amazing-coincidental-deaths storyline. Or, that Yevgeny does.

  “Be careful, Marcus. Something screwy as all get out is going on up there.”

  * * *

  Another solemn gathering. Today it was Brad in the baggie beneath the tarp.

  Marcus was numb. At the memorial for Nikolay, Yevgeny had seemed terse and indifferent. Now it was Marcus’s turn, and
the rush of emotions and memories had left him tongue-tied. Brad was his friend. A gentle giant. The man most likely to find the silver lining in every cloud. He had needed no more encouragement to accompany Marcus on this cursed expedition than “Road trip.” And now, for no more reason than having accepted that invitation, Brad was dead.

  Marcus mumbled a few remarks, then brought the ceremony to an end. Donna stood at his side. At his invitation for her to offer a few words, looking stricken, she had shaken her head. Apart from helmets, they both had come dressed for vacuum. The Russians had not.

  The memorial less concluded than it petered out. In front of Marcus, the base’s rear airlock … loomed? Foreboded? What was the opposite of beckoned?

  Ilya and Ekatrina retreated a short distance up the corridor, whispering. Yevgeny took Marcus’s elbow, drew him aside. “Perhaps we should join you?”

  Like you allowed us to pay our final respects while laying Nikolay to rest? Logic and conviction notwithstanding, Marcus could not forget Tyler’s initial suspicions. “We’ve got this.”

  “Do you? Perhaps so. But not Donna. She has lost two patients in short order. Worse, two friends.”

  Marcus turned to look. Donna’s eyes were vacant and unblinking. Her cheeks trembled. Apart from answering direct questions, and then tersely, had she said much of anything since Brad’s death? Not that Marcus remembered. “Yeah, you’re right. It’s best someone else help me carry Brad through.”

  “I will be right back.” Yevgeny said.

  Within minutes, he returned in his vacuum gear. He and Marcus, each supporting an end of another platform-box bier, shoehorned themselves into the base’s rear airlock. Donna followed as soon as the airlock had recycled.

  “My mistake.” Yevgeny backed into the dark corridor as the rearmost hatch opened. “I misremembered we had left behind a lamp and fuel cell. Sorry.”

  “That’s all right,” Marcus said. He no longer expected anything to go well.

  By helmet-lamp light they laid Brad to rest alongside Nikolay. That left the storeroom—the morgue!—with little space to spare, and they backed into the doorway. Yevgeny stepped away to give Marcus and Donna privacy. The Russian waited, head bowed, hands clasped in front of him, at the side corridor’s junction with the main passage.

  I should say something more, Marcus thought. Something personal. Something meaningful. Just Donna and me and a fiber-optic cable link to share the moment in private. But once again words failed him.

  After some respectful silence, feeling empty, Marcus led the way back to the airlock and the rest of their friends.

  Later, he thanked Yevgeny for his help.

  “Do not mention it,” the Russian said.

  Chapter 27

  Ilya and Yevgeny each carried a stack of empty ore boxes from the lava tube to a nearby open expanse. Still aboveground, they dug a short test trench with a backhoe and collected samples. As usual, both activities were for the benefit of the Chinese, or anyone else, who might be surveilling the “mining” encampment. They visited the water harvester. It checked out fine, and they relocated it to an unharvested stretch of regolith.

  “None of us should venture outside alone,” Marcus had insisted, cornering Yevgeny right after the ceremony for Brad. “Not anymore. Not after … everything that’s gone on.”

  “I know what you mean,” Yevgeny had answered. That was not quite agreement, even if it sounded like it. Certainly he was fine with neither of the surviving Americans going out unsupervised. And playing along meant he could sometimes put two people outside the base while still retaining an asset inside to watch the Americans.

  “And maybe we can scale back our outside work,” Marcus had continued. “At this point, it’s all for show. I mean, the only alien artifacts on the surface are those we moved outside.”

  “I hear you,” Yevgeny had answered.

  He and Ilya made their last scheduled stop, a visit to the shuttle. It was deep within late afternoon shadow. The access panel beside the airlock showed no signs of tampering. The boot prints Yevgeny noted all around showed only Russian tread patterns—not that boots with an alternate tread would have overtaxed American printers. Most reassuring was the latest FSB satellite surveillance, downloaded a mere hour before they had set out. It revealed no changes to the much trodden ground since he and Ekatrina had been there to scavenge a radar.

  “Suit, camera off,” he ordered. Once Ilya did the same, Yevgeny keyed in the access code. The two men went aboard, took seats on the compact bridge, and removed their helmets. Their breaths emerged in wispy white puffs.

  “A bit on the nippy side,” Ilya offered.

  Not much above freezing, in fact. Letting the cabin get any colder would have posed a risk to the environmental systems. But what Yevgeny noticed, and appreciated, was atmosphere not recycled for weeks, not smelling like a locker room. “In Moscow, we would call this a balmy spring day.”

  “We aren’t in Moscow, are we? Nor do I expect to get home anytime soon.”

  “There is that.” Yevgeny swept the cabin for bugs as they spoke. He did not expect or find any, but too much was at stake to cut corners. “We will not stay long. Just time for a chat.”

  “Now why did I suppose you had an agenda?” Ilya smirked. “ ‘Inspect the shuttle before sunset, get it ready for night cold. Just in case we should need to evacuate.’ As if spaceships were not designed for the deep cold. As if anything were likely to have happened since you and Katya were last aboard.”

  “Ilya.” Yevgeny swiveled in his seat, waited for his crewmate to do likewise. The mouth lied more easily than the eyes. Perhaps even with a former paratrooper and combat veteran of the Crimean operation. “Did you avenge Nikolay?”

  Ilya did not as much as blink. “Did I kill Brad, you mean. Should I have?”

  “Not an answer.”

  “How could I have? I mean, when would I have had the chance?”

  “Also not an answer.”

  “No. I did not.” Silence unnerves some people, and Yevgeny waited. Eventually, Ilya continued, “And did you ask this of our colleague?”

  “Would you?”

  “She is not the type. Never mind how absurd is the notion tiny little Katya could overpower a big man like Brad.” Pause. “Do not imagine I didn’t notice you ignoring my question.”

  “No, Ilya, you should not have killed anyone.”

  But if not an American, who had killed both men? Because it beggared the imagination that two so very similar incidents, scant days apart, were accidents. Had some third party—his suspicion falling, as always, upon the Chinese—swooped in during a surveillance gap? And were hostile agents lurking nearby even as he and Ilya spoke?

  Ilya shrugged. “And all the spy satellites shed no light on things?”

  That was the damnable thing. They did not! “The Americans had nothing overhead at the time. One of our birds, just over the horizon and so from an awkward, quite oblique angle, saw Nikolay under the tarp. When he fell, he dragged the tarp with him. Between the tarp and the dust he stirred up, what glimpses we did get before he stopped moving told me nothing.”

  “No American satellite. If they were involved, would not they have been observing?” Ilya drummed on an armrest with gloved fingers. “Unless they chose a time without eyes in the sky to deflect suspicion.”

  None of which would explain the FSB satellite not spotting anyone near Nikolay until Brad had dashed onto the scene. Or seeing nothing but boulders and shadows near Brad when he died. And no one admitting to knowledge why either victim had taken a seemingly spur-of-the-moment detour to where he would die.

  “I wish I had an answer for you,” Yevgeny said. “I truly do.”

  “So much for the utility of spysats.” Ilya yawned, stood, and went to root through the shuttle’s tiny pantry. He returned with two sealed bags of trail mix, tossing one in Yevgeny’s lap
. “So, do you care to explain why we are here?”

  “This heart-to-heart is not reason enough?”

  Ilya chuckled. “If that were all you wanted, you could have found a quiet spot inside the base. For more certain security, we could have made another late visit behind the base. Or we could have cabled together our helmets as we walked.”

  “Fair enough. We’re here so that I can say ship’s diagnostics turned up transient failures, and that they demand my attention before sunset. As it will turn out, we will need several visits to track down the underlying problems, and fix them, and till I’m satisfied.”

  “Is that a good idea? Of late, statistically, venturing outside has been bad for one’s health.”

  “Too true, and yet another reason we came.” Yevgeny retrieved the items long cached beneath the pilot’s seat.

  “I do not suppose you brought an extra,” was Ilya’s mild reaction to the Uzi and its spare magazines. “But what is the point? Of those repeated trips, I mean.”

  Yevgeny stowed gun and ammo in his backpack. “So that any outing that later happens to fall during a surveillance gap won’t draw attention.”

  “And then? As long as Marcus knows we are outside, he will expect to review our helmet vids. I do not think we can sell that we both ‘accidentally’ neglected to start recording.”

  Yevgeny provided the less dramatic answer first: FSB software for faking helmet vids would cover their tracks. And he offered how, in a more literal sense, they would avoid leaving tracks: hiking away from the base along meandering, rocky byways Nikolay had mapped out. “And the orbital surveillance you so disparage? It identified a lava-tube opening a good kilometer from here. Chances are that’s a second entrance into our lava tube.”

  “And if so, then far beyond our unadmitted, well-crushed, rear exit.”

  Yevgeny nodded. “While no one has eyes overhead, you and I will go for a look at the alien ship.”

  * * *