Killing Time On Mars Page 4

  Tony was the exception to the general mood in the colony, which was depressed and paranoid. At breakfast the following morning, I bumped into some of the other new arrivals and realised that the melancholy was already affecting them—the honeymoon high was quickly fading. The colony was worn down by the oppressive atmosphere, the bland food, doing the same things every day, and the monotony of seeing the same people again and again. I had hoped that the new arrivals would be a welcome distraction, but I felt like an imposter. Most colonists were wary of newbies and only tolerated people from their own investor nations.

  I had barely slept and started work early. That first day was filled with risk reports, administering management sign-offs, and monitoring weather forecasts. Late in the morning, I picked up a call from one of the operational managers out in the field.

  “I need you to come collect one of my guys and take them to the infirmary,” said the manager, Phillis.

  “Uh, okay,” I replied, thinking it would be more efficient if she brought them in or perhaps sent them with someone on her team. “Do they need urgent medical assistance? You don’t want to bring them in yourself?”

  I looked up at Glen, who was looking at me with his lips pursed and shaking his head slightly.

  “No, I can’t leave the rest here, not after this,” said Phillis.

  “Okay, we’ll come right now,” I said and noted her location.

  5. MURDER

  “The managers are like sheriffs out there,” said Glen after I had hung up.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “Law and order,” he continued, as Pete looked up and frowned. “The sheriff can’t leave town; they have to stay to keep the peace.”

  “That’s enough, Glen,” said Pete. “I’ll go, Mike. You can meet me outside the hangar when I get back and help me take the vic to the infirmary. I’ll call you on the way back.”

  Forty minutes later, I watched Pete land a hovee in the dust outside the main hangar. A colonist was strapped into the passenger seat beside him.

  “Probable concussion,” said Pete.

  “I’m okay,” said the man, pushing my hands away from his seatbelt buckle.

  We walked him through the hangar and into the airlock. When he pushed his helmet and hood back, we could see a big bruise on the side of his head and a little trickle of blood coming out of his ear.

  “What’s your name?” I asked.

  “What? Oh, Hans.”

  “What happened to your head, Hans?” I asked loudly, realising his hearing was probably affected.

  “Not here,” said Pete as he opened the second airlock door.

  We walked through the outer colony and down to the infirmary. Hans was a little unsteady, and Pete grabbed his shoulder a few times to stop him from falling over.

  “Hang on,” said Hans as we passed the bathrooms.

  We followed him in and could hear him throwing up. A minute later he came out, washed his hands and face, and splashed water over his head.

  “Okay,” he said and we walked him to the infirmary.

  Like all other workspaces in the colony, there was no lock on the door of the infirmary. Three operating tables were squeezed into the room and there was a mobile medical tower at one end. Across the back wall was a high workbench with a wide medicine cabinet above it. A tall woman with a thin angular face turned and came over to greet us as we walked in.

  “Chris,” said Pete, “we’re delivering a probable concussion to you. Hans, from Refining Team Three. And this is Mike, he’s just joined Security.”

  “Hi, Mike,” said Chris absently as she inspected Hans’s head. “Sit down over here, Hans.”

  She sat Hans on one of the beds, pulled over the medical tower, and started cleaning the blood away while prodding the side of his head.

  “Okay,” said Pete, “we can head back.”

  “Hold on, we need to question the victim,” I said and turned to Hans. “What happened to your head, Hans? Was it an accident?”

  “Oh, don’t ask that,” said Pete, rolling his eyes.

  “Only if you call being punched from behind an accident,” said Hans, and Chris’s fingers made him wince.

  “Do you know who punched you?” I asked.

  “One of three American fuckers,” spat Hans.

  I was silent for a moment.

  “I don’t think we’ll do a scan,” said Chris.

  “Did anyone witness the attack?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” replied Hans. “Maybe the other two fuckers.”

  “So,” said Pete, holding out his hands with palms up, “no witnesses. It’s a dead end. We can go back now and update the security log.”

  This time Chris and I exchanged a quick glance. She seemed to be saying Get used to it.

  I wanted to continue questioning Hans—had he been attacked before? What was the situation with the three Americans? But it was clear that my boss did not want to ask any more questions, so I kept my mouth shut.

  “Well, Hans,” I said. “Call us if anything else happens. Nice to meet you, Chris.”

  “Sure,” said Chris as she started wrapping a bandage around Hans’s head.

  As we walked back to the security office, I asked Pete, “Should we head out to his team to see if anyone witnessed the attack?”

  “Listen,” said Pete. He grabbed my shoulder and stopped us in the middle of the passageway. “We’re not resourced for that. And that’s just small-town stuff anyway. You have to get used to some friction between the nationalities.”

  “But that was assault.”

  “Was it? All we have is Hans’s word. How do you know Hans didn’t start it? All we know is the other guy ended it.”

  “Or guys,” I said.

  “A lot of people think everyone is out to get them, but usually it’s just folks letting off some steam.”

  I stopped arguing.

  That first full day in the office, I realised that things in the colony were worse, far worse, than anyone realised back on Earth. Incidents were categorised by severity and they weren’t even recorded unless someone was hospitalised or security was called in to intervene. That meant that countless minor events, including fights and altercations, were never recorded in the security log.

  I settled into a pattern of work in the first few days—attending incidents and doing admin during the downtime. Nationality was always a contributing factor and often at the centre of the conflict. Everyone was tired and stressed and they were taking it out on each other.

  Security had an informal roster for Saturday nights, where one of us would be on duty in the lounge room to settle any conflict. That first Saturday, there was a brawl between several colonists, which only stopped when a couple of particularly aggressive people were physically subdued. We had to call Chris and her team to tranquilise one of them—obviously, the rumoured narcotic was real. The two most violent colonists were banned from the lounge for a month and several others also received restricted privileges, including limited network connectivity.

  Despite the continual violence, the worst injuries were an occasional minor fracture—until Imani’s body was found.

  Almost two weeks after I joined the colony, on an otherwise normal Monday, I arrived at the security office early. It was empty and I didn’t expect Pete and Glen to arrive for some time. At 08:17 a call was placed to Security, which I answered on my screen. It was a woman named Vivian. I remembered from our contingency plans that she had been nominated as a successor to the head of Organic Manufacturing—she was effectively ‘Deputy’.

  “Hi, I’m sorry,” said Vivian. “It’s probably nothing, but my manager, Imani, hasn’t come to work, and she’s not answering my calls.”

  “Okay, I’ll look her up,” I said and quickly pinged Imani’s location.

  Colonists and vehicles had occasionally been reported missing over the years. Security would look up their location and usually they were immediately found—it was often a work scheduling mix-up or ma
lfunctioning comms. Initially I wondered why all locations weren’t simply available to everyone, until I appreciated the complex web of relationships in the colony. It was a hotbed of healthy young people, working hard and living in an oppressive atmosphere. Allowing jilted lovers to locate their ex-partners and their replacement lovers would have caused problems.

  Very rarely, Security was not able to locate the transmitter. That was the case with Imani.

  “It’s just really unusual for Imani to be late and not let us know,” said Vivian as I looked for Imani on the system.

  “Well, I’m sure she’s okay, but unfortunately I can’t find her transmitter. I’m going to have to initiate a search. She might be a little embarrassed.”

  “Oh, okay,” said Vivian, her voice trembling.

  “Call back if she turns up,” I said.

  “Okay,” said Vivian, and I hung up.

  I immediately sent a text message to Pete and initiated standard procedure. I started with a broadcast message to all colonists, requesting a check-in from the missing person.

  I wasn’t worried at that point. Although it was my first missing person, I knew it had happened before and everybody had eventually been found unharmed. Sometimes they were trying not to be found or were simply in the wrong place. One person had been caught out in a small storm, another became stranded in one of the outposts, but we had never had anyone disappear for very long.

  After calling Imani’s suit myself and getting no answer, I went down to her room. She was sharing with a woman named Hu, who worked in Vehicle Maintenance. Hu wasn’t there, so I called her as I walked back to the office.

  “Wei?” she answered abruptly.

  “Hu?” I said. “This is Mike from Security.”

  “What?”

  “We’re looking for your roommate, Imani. Do you know where she is?”

  “I got the message. No.”

  She was confrontational to the point of being impolite. On Earth, I would have found it suspicious, but I was already getting used to it in the colony.

  “Can you tell me when you last saw her?” I asked.

  “Last night.”

  “Where are you? I’d like you to come to Security,” I said, thinking she might be more forthcoming if I could interview her face to face.

  “No,” said Hu. “I’m flying out to the fields.”

  I didn’t like being told no and was a little surprised by it. There didn’t seem to be much respect for Security.

  “Around what time did you see her last night?” I asked.

  “When I went to sleep. Around ten. I have to go now.”

  “Hang on,” I said firmly. “Did she seem upset? Did it seem like something was wrong?”

  “We don’t really talk. Ask her friend June,” said Hu, almost with disdain, and then she hung up.

  June and I had said hello a few times over the previous two weeks. I was deliberately maintaining some distance. I couldn’t afford to have any romantic relationships. It could compromise my objectivity in such a small community. Also, everything seemed so fragile and transitory on Mars—I instinctively didn’t want to get too attached to anyone or anything.

  “June,” I said as she answered my call. “It’s Mike from Security.”

  “Oh,” she said. “Hi.”

  “We’re looking for Imani. She hasn’t turned up for work yet. Do you know where she is?”

  “I haven’t seen her this morning. She was at dinner last night.”

  “Around what time did you last see her?” I asked.

  “I suppose around nine, nine-thirty,” she said. “You know, she does sometimes stay the night with a friend, though I don’t think she’s done that for a while.”

  “No, I believe she was in her own room last night,” I said, remembering Hu had seen her when she went to sleep. “Do you have any idea where she might be now?”

  “No, I’m sorry, I just can’t imagine. Maybe she’s sick, in the bathroom?”

  “Yeah, we’ll initiate a room-to-room search next,” I said as I walked back in to Security. Pete and Glen were both there, and they looked up as I entered.

  “Oh, right. I see. Okay,” said June. She was clearly considering the implications of that kind of search.

  “I’m sure she’ll turn up,” I said. “Please call me if you see her or think of anything else that might help.”

  “Of course.”

  “Thanks, June,” I said and hung up.

  I gave Pete and Glen a quick update and then we initiated the second search, issuing a request to all colonists on non-critical work tasks to perform a systematic search of their immediate vicinities. Nearly an hour later, Vivian called Security again.

  “Has she turned up?” I asked.

  She was sobbing and couldn’t speak. A chill came over me.

  “Vivian, what’s wrong? Are you okay?” I said, quickly scanning her details to find her location.

  “I’m…” She sobbed again. “I’ve…found Imani. She’s dead.”

  I paused and took a deep breath.

  “Okay, Vivian, it looks like you’re in greenhouse three, is that right?”

  “Ye…yes,” she said.

  “Are you safe?” I asked.

  “Yes,” she sobbed.

  “Okay, stay there. We’ll get there as fast as we can.”

  I told Glen and Pete, and we immediately headed to the greenhouse. On the way, I called Chris in the infirmary and asked her to meet us there.

  When we got there, all I could see was a wall of corn. I called out “Vivian?” and she yelled, “Over here!”

  We rushed to one of the rows on the left and saw Vivian standing beside Imani’s body, staring down at her. I instantly registered Imani’s position in my mind: she was lying on her back along the pathway between the mounds of dirt; her forearms were bent up at 90 degrees as if she was surrendering; her legs were together, slightly bent and angled to the right. At first I thought her position had been staged, but then I realised she could have fallen that way.

  Suddenly Chris appeared beside me. I quickly stepped over to Imani, knelt, and pressed my fingers onto her jugular artery. She was icy cold, and there was absolutely no sign of a pulse. Her eyes were cloudy, and it was obvious that she had been dead a while. Although I knew it was possible that she had died from natural causes, or even committed suicide somehow, everything about the situation heightened my senses and made me suspicious.

  “Glen,” I said, “could you please take Vivian to wait near the door?”

  “What?” asked Glen without looking up from Imani and then said, “Oh, yeah, okay.”

  Glen walked around Imani, along the edge of the row of corn and took hold of Vivian’s arm.

  “Come on,” he said and led her away.

  “God,” said Chris, and then added, “How odd.”

  I suspected that Chris had never attended a homicide before. It was already a crime scene in my mind.

  “What do we do now?” asked Chris.

  “We document the scene,” I said and looked up at Pete.

  “Go ahead,” said Pete.

  “Okay, I’m recording already,” I said mechanically. “There are many footprints in the dust all around, a few of them heavy. Those are Glen’s over there and some of them will be Vivian’s from earlier. We might be able to piece together movements later from the initial footage of the scene, but I doubt it; the dust is too dry. It’s a mess all over.”

  “Did someone place her like that?” asked Chris.

  “Possibly,” I replied, “but my instinct is no. See that flat patch beneath her and below her legs? It looks like she landed on her back and skidded across the dust. Are they knee prints beside her hips?”

  “Yeah, they could be,” said Chris.

  “I can’t see any blood, can you?” I asked.

  “No.”

  “Her helmet and visor are pushed back. Come closer,” I said to Chris and pointed to Imani’s neck. “These look like signs of strangulation. See t
hat discolouration? Even a little bruising, though not a lot. She probably died quickly. I can’t see any signs of a struggle, nothing on her suit. Actually, her suit should have automatically called Medical if it detected a problem with her heart…Did your office receive any messages?”

  “No, nothing,” said Chris. I looked up at her and wondered if she was in shock.

  “Well,” I said, “her suit isn’t transmitting, so I guess it was turned off or disconnected before the warnings were triggered. Let’s have a look at the transmitter pouch. It looks like it’s been roughly ripped open and the battery wires have been disconnected. If the killer did that after they strangled her and before the warnings were triggered, they must have really known what they were doing.”

  “The suits assume something is faulty first,” said Chris, “and wait for a few biometrics to confirm a problem before sending a warning to Medical.”

  I picked up Imani’s hands and looked at the gloved fingers of her outersuit.

  “Nothing here, though we should swab for DNA anyway,” I said. “She was strangled, without putting up much of a fight.”

  “Could it have been…consensual?” asked Chris.

  I looked up at her, confused for a second. Then I looked back down at Imani and realised what she was implying.

  “Auto-erotic asphyxiation usually accompanies a sex act,” I said. “There’s no evidence of that, and it doesn’t seem likely to me, at this stage. Not out here. Stranger things have happened, though. Might explain why her suit didn’t automatically call Medical. Let’s turn her over.”

  We lifted her up gently and saw that the hollow in the dirt beneath her was smooth. Her body was already stiff with rigor mortis. She had landed there, exactly where she was. I leaned down and looked up at her back.

  “Her back is covered with a long smudge of dirt,” I said, “as if her whole body was wiped along the ground. Someone either dragged or tackled her—I think tackled, from the length and depth of the hollow beneath her. We can simulate it later, but I think the attack was right here. This is where she died.”

  As we lay Imani back down, I caught a dark movement out of the corner of my eye, down the far end of the row.