It wasn't long after I was debriefed, I was being loaded onto a shuttle bound for earth. Breaking through the atmosphere, I saw the crater that was once the British islands, and all along the coast line was spotted with similar craters. The shuttle dipped toward the English channel where a large platform began to rise from below the water. Channel City awaited us below the waves. Originally, a transportation tunnel designed to carry passengers and cargo between England and France, the tunnel became one of the many self powered safe cities. Expansion began, a year or so into the war, as more and more refugees escaped the surface. Now the hidden city houses seven million citizens, many of them decedents of the British Isle. The small view port provided only small glimpses of the shuttle station as we descended. The landing pad was a large circular hole with a lifting floor and elevators on either side. Once we landed I was quickly pulled off the shuttle and shown to the elevator. The decent was quick yet jarring, It felt as if the floor was dropping under you, as the elevator dropped into the tunnels below, once inside the tunnel I was brought to a customs depo. The structure had no natural light but was quite secure, my new rank which I had yet to even check cleared me for entrance. Heading into the next tunnel, I was led into an open roofed tram, this led us through a long descending tunnel, the upper most part had large viewing ports to see the city below. It displayed luminously bright even in the slightly murky water. An odd sight, the original tunnel under the sea floor was not visible, however a large composite dome like structure of panels stretched across the sea floor. Dotting the surface were different sized holes that water rushed through powering the city. I later learned that even the color of the dome was important for thermal control. It took about fifteen minutes for the team to hit the bottom, where Everton shuffled off to collect their luggage and personal items. Not needing to do this, I rolled my self down the path to where the exit sign brightly guided the way, and the door slid open.
On the other side stood a shorter thin man in a lab coat. "George Jurgen?" He asked calmly. "Yes what can I do for you?" "Ah good, glad you made it sir. It has been quite a busy day. First we need to get you checked in to the hospital and they will want to do a full work up. I'm also sure you would like to rest when possible so accommodations have been made." "Who set all this up?" I was honestly still on edge after the attacks and not keen on trusting anyone. "General Larson made the arrangements sir. I will be acting as your assistant in any way I can." "Okay! What's your name then?" I jested as he maneuvered my wheel chair out onto the rotunda. "Francis Clark sir." Clark wheeled me out to one of the rail transports and we loaded in. Most of the city utilizes the old railway at the bottom level of the city for transportation between the city blocks, with smaller lifts taking anyone between levels. The hospital where I was to receive treatment was in the fourth block, second tier, we arrived at block one, tier four. So the trip wasn't a quick one, Clark stayed silent most of the way, only pointing out the occasional point of interest, that was easy to ignore when not prevalent.
The city interior was unique in that each layer or tier reflected a different type of building. The lowest of sections, quick welded and patched together during the early days of the war. The upper sections are in far contrast, with grand scale architecture and city like amenities. Like any city there was a economic sections of the city, including a factory level that produced everything from O2 filters to Ioinic engines. The night life in the channel was quite varied as well, from calm cultural affairs, to intense drug filled raves. The culture of the people themselves was not quite as unique but still worthy of note. After years of living as the largest last human refuge in a burning world, Chanel City developed a work or die life style. Not that you were out casted or shunned if you didn't work, more like every single citizen would work themselves to death trying to keep the city alive. To this day work restrictions have had to be placed to ensure worker safety, at the same time the lowest family in Chanel City would be considered moderately wealthy on Mars. Every morning I awoke to Clark pushing me out of bed. Thirty three sit-ups and thirty three pushups, to start then on to balance and walking. Of course, being an adult male forced to relearn to walk multiple times, experience did not make it easier. By the evening I was sore in places I wasn't sure actually existed. Within a week I was limping along unassisted. In a month I could walk. I did not stay idle of course, as soon as my T.A.L.I.S unit rebooted I was accessing private files, attempting to find a digital trail left by Barstow. I managed to use my new rank to push through some basic access points and found what I needed. PTS ship log records. I didn't go through each tedious hour of data mining, but after the first three days I had located the shuttles trajectory. Barstow's shuttle made a hot jump past the asteroid belt towards the outer planets. A PTS patrol was sent out with a cruiser on standby. I waited two more days before I finally intercepted the report. The patrol found the shuttles rupture point, the Trinity Interceptors deployed attempting to catch him inside the ice rings of Saturn Not all the details were made clear, somewhere after entry the Trinity Interceptors lost contact with the main cruiser. The main cruiser attempted to send out fighters, however each unit returned nothing on the Interceptors When one unit engaged a pirate team they were forced to reroute resources Horrible if you ask me, my guys would have handled that quick and had time to finish the sweep. So somewhere in the rings of Saturn I began my digital search. Having only been a few days, I was just beginning to walking after rebuilding my core muscles, the bullet wound wasn't as damaging as the sealant used, which caused muscular damage. Still better than bleeding out.
I continued my prodding the area with satellites. I managed to gain control over with a few good guesses on the security codes. Clark also got me access to a more powerful console, to run them from, as trying with just the T.A.L.I.S may have caused a surge, do to overuse of the C.P.U. Still for days I couldn't find even a bounced transmission. Of course, I was not allowed to hover over the console. From day one Clark was taking me around Chanel City. There was more than enough entertainment provided in the city. As large shopping and food districts tied closely with holographic games and movies. Having grown up on Mars, these excessive amenities were foreign to me. On Mars we had nice things, but privilege's like even sugar are expensive and rare. So I painstakingly tried every flavor I could. The expensive ice cream was one of my favorites, the variety of flavors, the rich texture. Clark introduced me to many sweet, and savory meats. I had some meats before, however large animals and wild game both do not exist on Mars. Each night after workout, research and physical therapy, we dined at a new establishment. As Chanel City was built in the English chanel, many European cuisines could be found here.
For awhile life became relaxing almost, still no alerts from my ever growing satellite network. It had now been about a week and a half with no word. Luckily in Chanel City many things can be found. I found what I needed in Jacque Lamont, a private captain. I went to his garage on behest of one of our normal bartenders. Heading outside, we were greeted with the blinding light from the sun. The concrete hangers with both seating hot in the heat and constantly damp from the channel's spray. This created a haze almost like steam in places.
Lamont's garage was well kept, no ship pieces hanging around or messes setting aside. A few large crates staked near the back of the hanger. "Bonjour, what can I do for you?" The Tall man asked as we approached. "I'm looking for someone. They went missing in Saturn's rings, I heard you could help?" "OH! You heard well, mind I'm not cheap you know." "I expect no less." "Qui chassez-vous? Whom do you hunt?"
"He goes by Barstow last anyone had seen of him he was running off in a political envoy's shuttle. We believe he may be headed for the station orbiting Titan." " Oui oui. Transfer the credits to this account, je trouverai ton homme." The tall Frenchman passed me a torn piece of paper with the number one hundred and ninety seven thousand written onto it. A small series of routing numbers were listed below. I passed the paper to Clark who acknowledged what he needed to do. Lamont's vessel lived up to its name, kept in orbit it was a light runner class, nimble but a large cruiser designed to handle distant jumps between solar systems. Even the best light runners take a few months to reach the closest stars. After securing a captain to hunt Barstow, and any of his co horts, I set my mind on recovering.
My time on the surface was always brief, however we did visit a few places I had wanted to visit as a civilian, but never had clearance. First of these was the London Craters, eerie as it was, to visit the sight was quite humbling. The craters measured miles wide and covered most of the old city. Small sections of the old city were preserved, under a layer of rubble, that had fallen onto an ion shield set up by the government of that day. This one shield had been buried when the ground collapsed under the city. These shields were hurriedly made in hope that the Cirin would fire once and move on. They were wrong, the bombardment of earths' cites lasted three days before the ground assaults began. New York, London, Paris, Tokyo, Hongkong, Soul, and Moscow were struck all with similar efficiency. Historians contributed the brutality of this assault to the defense of Mars.
For me, what made the significance of the craters was in their exceedingly high concentration of Q and J types of radiation. These are unique to each area, and are caused by the reactions of the weapons used. Very small amounts are actually known about these Cirin weapons, even after the war the Cirin have managed to hold their designs from us. From fractions of information gathered, they seemed to expload with a field of energy, which then imploded on itself, causing an intense ejection of the mass in the center of the area of effect. The result, of which is an explosion, three thousand times what was dropped on Hiroshima, in a contained area basically vaporizing anything in its vicinity. These bombardments fell mostly on empty cities except for the few who attempted to hide under the unperfected shields, and of course they were vaporized only leaving outlines of where they hid. In fact, do to the horrible performance of the shield technology used here, most types of shield research groups of the day, where replaced with orbital blast armor. O.B.A structures are built over sections of a city and utilize large composite alloy slabs that are pulled into place along the structures of a reinforced skeleton. However, at the time these only existed in small uses, mostly on outpost off of Earth. Me and Clark had to stay in hazard suits the entire time we traveled the craters, I gathered a few plants and animals for DNA samples. While we were trekking into one of the outer London craters, to which I protested, but Clark insisted intense walking would further muscle growth. We worked our way into an old military structure that had recently been unearthed by a powerful storm. Once inside we found a slew of old world relics. After finding a hatch to the roof, Clark pulled himself through and located the true gem. A still intact shield generator, having been position on the outer edge of the city the unit must have suffered less damage or maybe just slipped under some debree. Having tagged the area for excavation we made our way out of the area. The Unit itself was completely fried internally, however still an amazing find. It used A slightly altered version of a Jump net. Instead of deploying and falling on the vessel as I've described before, this unit made the same function but into a solid structure. Which also explains why is didn't work, an invention of desperation perhaps. I'm not sure how they got the net to exert positive mass forward or upward, as it was deployed, but the net itself was designed to burn up when used with ships. It seems this was not taken into account and at some point the shield completely collapsed. Luckily, I was able to donate all the artifacts to the local museums in Chanel City and the surviving areas.
My research into the samples I took was invigorating, to finally be back in a lab and able to work in my own field felt amazing. Each of the samples held different oddities, the first of the plants I tested seemed to be sprouting new roots in their containment bags. I quickly found the culprit, a slice of the plants D.N.A., had been altered like that of a cell. In short the plant was going through a process similar to mitosis, the difference instead of splitting, to make a new plant it was growing a brand new version, eating the husk of itself to survive the extension of it's species I Dubbed it An.15 and tucked it away to be sent to Lab H, this proved quite difficult but I digress. The second plant life I brought back was in short amazing and startling. Similar to moss, it seems fluffy almost, I found it near a pooling section of water. The strange thing was everything around the plant was brown and dead, in suite the container I brought back in showed signs of high chemical burns. After observing a section of the plant I discovered it was producing a caustic pulp, that it pushed out of itself when exposed to darkness. I looked through the cellular structure but found no oddities in any sample I took. Then I watched it react when I sat my pen on the desk near the container. In a dramatic lurch of growth it rapidly moved over the glass near the pen. At first I did not understand why my pen, than I ran through the last few days of T.A.L.I.S logs and there it was. I had used this pen to gather puncture samples in the crater. The moss ate radiation, this meaning the pulp was a bi product of the plant eating the radiation. I named this plant An.88 as a small joke. This made moving these to Lab H that much more difficult. I mentioned this earlier but Lab H is a military facility meaning only those with a high clearance or expressed permission can fly there. So when it came to this I had almost no options, so I decided to use my earlier clearance, as it had the necessary permission. Lamont had already left the planet to begin his search of the outer planets, for Barstow, and had yet to turn anything up besides the tiniest beeps. Under enthused by his progress, I sent him a comm requesting his return, for aid in an addition manner. To say he arrived less than happy would be an understatement, yet a payday is just that, so he took all of my research towards Lab H. I had a good feeling what was to come, an angry Lamont screaming his clearance numbers in a heavy French accent, and the shuttle bay manager looking completely confused. I was not wrong, the Comm I received was just that. I clicked on the COMM to hear Laments echoing yells and a confused calm voice asking "Director Jurgen, this is shuttle command, we have an Aquelis shuttle attempting to dock screaming what sounds like your pass code?" "Good he is there, best let him land and get his cargo tucked away, Is that all?" "Yes sir." I laughed a bit knowing how flustered he must be delivering a couple of plants.
By this point my recovery was almost complete and I had a few new projects to explore at the lab. Yet, Barstow had managed to avoid me, he was not the only one. I long believed Larson was making moves to position himself as High General, in the last few weeks it seemed he was doing just that. Sadly I had found almost no connection, I needed Barstow.
Scanning through every signal receiver I had built, I had slowly been isolating a single oscillating signal. The location of which was obviously in the asteroid belt not the outer planets. I had almost given up when finally I located the right bandwidth and location to record the signal. Being only a few second window I had to work fast. Locating it meant positioning the satellites in a circle around it to bounce the signal off of. This gave me a general outline of where the source could be. Excited I sent Lamont the coordinates, he responded quickly assuring me he could reach the destination with ease
Lamont gave me the advantage of having a direct video link to his ship, as well as his suit veiw. Making it easy for me to narrate the investigation.
Lamont entered the asteroid belt as close to the signal as possible, setting his light runner to drift just outside the normal field. Entering in his Aquelis, he maneuvered around the complicated medium and small asteroids. After about thirty minutes of flight a large asteroid and came into view. The asteroid seemed mostly intact, large man made structures seem to be wrapped around the large rock, like supports. Lamont noted a small docking port cut into the large rock and made his way toward it slowly. No signals where being sent out from the docking port, so Lamont moved in slowly and begun docking procedures. Shortly after landing his scanners picked up a few heat signatures deeper in the structure. Cautiously he and his team moved into the unpressurized docking bay. Floating debree banged off the shuttle and docking bay floor. Heading into the pressurized docking doors, the camera was readjusted as Lamont had removed his helmet. Moving into the next hallway the passage was dark illuminated by floor and ceiling lights that only glowed a slight blue, moving around was easy as the halls were clear of clutter. The five of them moved forward lead by Lamont. They turned into the first room and was met by a gruesome sight. A group of miners had been lined against the far wall and shot with an automatic weapon by the spray of holes in the wall. Their bodies lay rotting where they died, one on his back shot in the front. They quickly cleared the room moving on to the next door in the hall. Many of these rooms held similar victims left to rot. The main atrium was lit similarly as the entrance, large tables and benches had been set up as a defensive wall. Lamont ordered two men to flank both his sides while he and the others progressed to the barrier. The barrier seems blown apart some sections almost melted together, Lamont was turning so rapidly it was difficult to get a solid count, but easily fifty miners seemed just left were they died. There was a large launcher set just to the side a few bodies laying around it. Lamont approached and inspected the payload of the rockets. Motioning to one of his men they started disarming the launcher. Lamont checked the heat signatures, it seemed to be two levels down. I won't recount each room they checked or the amount or details of all the dead. Just know they grew worse with each level, to explain this they didn't find a single female miner, till the second level, and I will let you fill in the rest. Lamont's team moved through all this with only minor delays, when they finally came to the ore processing bay, each seemed heavily on edge. Lamont breached first, his door charge blowing in the door and hitting the inside with a flash bomb as well. What happened next was over in a instant. Lamont charged forward in a crouched position, allowing the others to provide covering fire. Quickly he moved across the open walkway towards a series of computers, counting each position that lit up as he ran. Once under cover from the large consoles Lamont tossed an ion grenade over his shoulder onto the second railing. A few inches above the ground the Ion grenade discharged. With a whirl the energy spooled inside releasing a brilliant blue light. Lamont moved in quickly reaching the stairs, he pressed a button releasing the constant discharge on the grenade. Now safe to proceed, he and two others moved up his side. The two others went the opposite way only to meet in the middle. The three that had held them back now lay there twitching. One of them was bleeding from their weapon discharging in their hand, another was dead from the same weapon. The Third was Barstow having positioned the other two as fodder. It seemed he planned to blow his way off through with a mining charge. Lamont wasted no time disarming the charge and returning the prisoners to the shuttle. Having watched the mission there was no need for them to report back immediately. I breathed for a moment, he was caught now maybe justice could be had for squad A. The next Comm I was sent was when the light runner was approaching Earth. By now I was almost completely healed with only slight pains. I met Lamont at the dock. The Frenchmen said almost nothing, just collected his payment, and pushed Barstow off his ship. Clark hesitantly assisted me in dragging the angry kicking Barstow into my shuttle. Clark went to ask me what I was going to do. I just told him, "If you know your guilty too, just go Clark." Clark hurried off and left me with the violently mad Barstow.
"Did you think I'd let you go?" I asked Barstow as he glared at me from his sitting position. He looked away and than back to glaring. "Okay Barstow, I know you hate me. You know I hate you. You can leave here two ways. Out that cargo door behind me at one hundred and twenty thousand feet, or at a PT.S station." His stare never broke, he did not speak just stared. "Just tell me who set this up? Why did you bomb us?" He looked down and muttered something. "Speak up!" I yelled my rage building. "They are working with them." "What? Who's they?" "The high command they sent the several after us. The bastards are still working with the Cirin!" "My God man your mad!" "No I have proof!" Barstow tried to stand only being yanked down by his chains. Rustling with his pocket he produced a small chip. "It's all on there watch and then tell me you want to turn me in." He tossed the chip to my feet and continued to glare at the wall.
I took the chip and slid it into a console on my shuttle. It was a video file, It showed the attack General Namenda explained. Instead of one alien a group of them left a vessel and began systematically slaughtering the inhabitants of the outpost. The video lasted three hours and was extremely difficult to watch. After watching it I still saw no evidence of Larson or the High Generals hand at play. It was however odd a Millitary unit that was suppose to be destroyed was loose and killing again.