Martian Ark Read online

  Martian Ark

  Mars Colony Chronicles Book 2

  Brandon Ellis

  BookLily Press, LLC

  Copyright © 2019

  Brandon Ellis

  All rights reserved. Version 1.03.

  This is a work of fiction. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author. Names used in this novel do not represent the personalities, traits, or mental and physical characteristics to real persons, living or dead, with the same name.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior written permission of the publisher and copyright owner.

  Edited by Paula Lavattiata-Lopez

  Published by Knight Star Press, LLC

  Cover by Peter Herman

  Branding & enhancements by Christian Kallias at www.infinitescifi.com

  Website: www.brandonelliswrites.com

  Facebook: www.facebook.com/brandonellis1212

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  1

  moonshinka Rock Near Dawes, Mars

  A photon blast hit near Ozzy’s feet, and chunks of rock and dry soil splattered against his legs. He dove to the ground, sliding across the dead grass beneath the crumbling, lifeless willow tree where he’d been doing his field research.

  He’d just gotten here.

  Wapooh!

  Another shot whizzed past.

  A small explosion shattered the soil a meter in front of him. Smokey pieces of broken moss and charred bark pelted his side.

  He swiped them off as quickly as he could and clicked on his EVA helmet’s com line, dialing up Jonas Moon on his wrist’s holoband.

  Jonas had hired him to retrieve the Ark of the Concordant—an impossible find. Yet, here he was, trying to uncover the unobtainable.

  “Ozzy, Ozzy. What is it now? Did you find the Ark?”

  Ozzy didn’t know why he was being targeted. He rolled to his side and unstrapped his PR-19 photon rifle. He took a wild shot, not knowing the exact location of the intruder. “Did I find the Ark? Am I a miracle worker? It’s going to take time. If the thing even exists at all.”

  “Then why are you calling me?”

  “Hold on.” Ozzy saw movement and closed one eye, aiming at a throng of gray and brown dead brush. He pulled the trigger. The photon rifle recoiled against his shoulder as the capacitor’s charge violently expelled an energy burst.

  The plants fifty meters in front of him turned into an orange ball of flames. They extinguished milliseconds later in the thin Martian air.

  “I have work to do, people to see, and a black market to sell my—”

  “I’m being shot at, Jonas,” yelled Ozzy. He stood and rushed behind a boulder, eyeing a dead man he once knew as Garen—an Ancient Martian who helped him find the cure to the Martian Plague in the Ancient time capsule not too long ago.

  The time capsule acted as a large, preserved wilderness deep under Mars’s soil. The entrance was in the mouth of Moonshinka Rock—a rock carved into an ancient wild cat that used to roam Mars before the atmosphere blew away.

  That’s where Ozzy was now, underground and inside the capsule, which was now offline and broken. Upon first entering this place months ago, the plants inside had been flourishing. Now they were dead, much like Garen, whose body was a decaying pile of skin and bones covered in gold armor.

  Armor? Damn.

  It was still shiny and a nice artifact.

  A photon bolt zipped past him.

  Get your head in the game, Ozzy.

  Someone in an EVA suit popped out from behind a decaying tree and dashed behind another wide, dead trunk.

  Ozzy rested his finger on the trigger, watching the tree. If the man decided to move to another location, the prick was dead.

  “Where are you?” Jonas said.

  “I’m back at Moonshinka Rock where I found the cure to the Martian Plague.”

  “You’re still taking credit for curing the entire human race?” Jonas laughed. “Get over yourself, man.” He spoke as if Ozzy wasn’t the target of an assassination and was merely playing around.

  Ozzy shook his head. “Last time I was here, the rocks surrounding a specific tree had Ancient Coptic hieroglyphs that had a lot of interesting things to say.”

  “So?”

  “So? That’s all you have to say is so? I’m here trying to decode a map or a route to your precious Ark.”

  “What are the rocks saying?”

  Ozzy focused on the tree where the assassin was hiding. He narrowed one open eye, keeping his other eye closed, and aimed his rifle. “All I know is it’s leading me somewhere.”

  “Ozzy, I’m not paying you to find a map that leads you somewhere. I’m paying you to find the Ark.”

  “You’ve gotta start somewhere.” He wanted to add bonehead at the end of his sentence, but pissing off your employer was never the best business practice. “I’m positive it’ll lead me to your weapon.” Actually, he wasn’t sure at all. The Ark was spoken of in many Ancient Martian Coptic tablets by a race that no longer existed on Mars, having died tens of thousands of years ago and probably long before that.

  The Ark of the Concordant was a weapon of mass destruction.

  To Ozzy, it was a myth.

  Regardless, Jonas wanted it for the approaching Dunrakee armada heading from Earth to Mars.

  Ozzy continued to target the tree. If the guy moved, he’d be dead, much like the time he shot a Dunrakee soldier in this capsule.

  The Dunrakee. He winced at the word. The thought of the bubble-heads being in here at the same time made him want to puke. He hated them with a passion. They seized his people’s home over a hundred years ago, and now they were on their way to Mars to take possession of this planet.

  “Good. Stay with your hunch,” replied Jonas, taking Ozzy away from his thoughts.

  Click.

  The com line went dead, and all Ozzy could hear now was static.

  “Jonas?”

  Silence.

  Ozzy let out a gush of air and reached into his EVA pocket. He pulled out a small, round device—a HOLO-AR, Holographic Archive Recorder—and brought it to his helmet’s external speakers. “Cover two meters height, five meters radius, and capture the glyphs only.” He threw it in the air.

  It flew upward, blinked red, and let out a loud beep. It hovered for a few moments and then buzzed around like a bee searching for nectar. It located a rock with glyphs inscribed into it. The HOLO-AR spun and a red grid projected outward, detecting all the hieroglyphs in the radius that Ozzy had indicated.

  A bright flash lit the area and died off a moment later. The HOLO-AR was doing its job, taking pictures and archiving them into its central processing unit.

  Excellent.

  Ozzy crawled out from under the tree and away from the branches and dead leaves frozen on its limbs. This place used to be humid and full of oxygen, but a few months prior, the Dunrakee broke into the capsule to find Ozzy, and all the air had been sucked out and invaded by the cold Martian atmosphere.

  Every fern, apple, fig tree, and the wild herbs and flowers were frigid and stiff.

  He positioned himself between two bushes and set his sights to target the person who wanted him dead.

  The guy continued to hide behind the tree.

  A chill ran up Ozzy’s spine, and it wasn’t because of fear. He checked his temperature gauge and upped his EVA’s internal thermostat. Warm air traveled throughout his suit.

  A photon burst slammed into the tree he had just been under, si
ngeing its dangling branches. A black streak marked a photon scar on the trunk.

  That would have burned right through Ozzy.

  Wapooh! Wapooh!

  More blasts came in rapid succession. But where was the guy?

  Then he saw movement.

  Good. The guy cautiously moved out from behind a tree though this one several meters to Ozzy’s left. He must have crawled to it.

  Ozzy held him in his sights. He touched the trigger and pulled.

  Errrrrzzzzzshhhh!

  “What?” He pounded the side of his rifle. The photon charge pack was dead.

  He ejected the charge magazine and let it drop to the ground. He grabbed another magazine from his pocket and pushed it into the rifle’s receiver. A satisfying click indicated the magazine locked into place.

  He went to target the intruder again, but the man ran to a boulder, hiding behind it.

  The guy was fast.

  Ozzy held his rifle steady, readying for the perfect shot.

  The HOLO-AR flashed yellow, which meant the device had caught something special.

  Ozzy crawled backward, also moving behind a boulder. He held his hand out and said, “Back to me.”

  The device’s light blinked off, and it flew through the weeping branches. It struck Ozzy’s palm and turned off. Ozzy clasped his fingers around it.

  “What’s so important, Holo?” he asked the device, knowing it wouldn’t reply, and tapped a small button. He needed to be more careful and should be doing this when he was in a safe place, but he was a rebel archaeologist, and rebel archaeologists did risky things.

  He patted the ground. More clues to the Ark of the Concordant were probably buried around here, and finding it now before this crazy lunatic did was more important than the potential of being littered full of photon holes.

  HOLO-AR shot out a hologram, displaying a stone inscribed with Ancient Coptic writing. It showed a tube-like, etched picture, two angel wings, an explosion hieroglyph, an upside-down circumflex, an arched doorway, and many more pictographs that went on for several more lines.

  “The Ancient Martians’ destruction was their own fault,” he said under his breath, summarizing the glyphs out loud. “They used Mars’s most powerful tool: The Ark.” He paused, dropping the HOLO-AR in his lap. “And the map to the tool is beneath…” He eyed the hologram. The Ancient writing stopped there, not giving him any additional information. “Well, beneath what?”

  It couldn’t be beneath where he sat. It had to be beneath the hieroglyph-engraved stones.

  He put the HOLO-AR back in his pocket and grabbed his rifle. He turned, gasped, and fell on his butt.

  The man in an EVA suit stood over him, a photon rifle in hand and pointing it at Ozzy. Or, was that a woman’s face through the visor?

  It was.

  Ozzy pulled the trigger, shot several blasts, and scooted away, expecting return fire.

  The person didn’t move but instead disappeared.

  “Shit.”

  He stood, seeing hundreds of EVA suits standing like stones in the same pose.

  They vanished a second later.

  “Double shit.”

  The intruder had some sophisticated holo-replicating equipment and had projected her hologram all over the capsule.

  If she was able to vid-record through the holo-replicators, then she knew exactly what the HOLO-AR had just shown Ozzy.

  He dropped to the dried moss, and a photon bolt zipped over his head. He went to his hands and knees, crawling military style, heading toward the tree that was surrounded with the stones and where the HOLO-AR had taken photos.

  Another blast lifted a thick glob of soil and splattered it over Ozzy’s helmet visor.

  He quickly brushed the dirt off and dove through the branches under the tree’s canopy. He glanced around, seeing all the stones—more than a dozen. He located the rock glyph that the HOLO-AR had shown him. It was shaped like a tombstone.

  He kicked it and it jostled.

  When he glanced up, the woman was in a full out run, heading toward Ozzy, her gun’s muzzle steadying on his position.

  Ozzy kicked the rock again. It budged slightly, moving only a few centimeters.

  He kicked again and again, screaming like a mad man. “Fall. Over. You. Piece. Of. Crap.” The woman was almost to the tree, obviously waiting for a clean shot.

  Ozzy slammed the heel of his boot on the stone. It fell over like an uprooted shrub.

  “Finally, you son of a Mars.”

  He leaned over and thrust his hand inside the hole, touching a cylinder-shaped object. He pulled the item out, tucked it under his arm, and shot blast after blast in the woman’s direction.

  Branches snapped and broke, and leaves burst into flames, only to extinguish seconds later. A thin cloud of smoke fogged the air, and Ozzy moved to the side. He grabbed a rock and threw it as far in the opposite direction as he could.

  It made a loud thud when it hit a side wall. The woman took the bait and shot a photon burst toward the sound.

  Ozzy made a run for it, slipping his rifle strap over his shoulder while in stride. He held the cylinder tightly under his arm.

  Wapooh!

  A shot whizzed by him. He side-stepped and bolted through the open doorway that led outside. He jumped on a boulder, pulling himself up from rock to rock until he made it to a stairwell.

  He rushed up the stairs, through Moonshinka Rock’s mouth, and out into the morning light. Mars’s dust kicked up as he pounded across the red desert terrain, creating puffs of clouds with his every step.

  His ship, an S-4 Jumper, was up ahead. A barren, red mountain range was in the background, reminding Ozzy how dead this red rock really was—nothing grew on it, nothing slithered or trampled over it, and water didn’t rest on top of it.

  All that crested its terrain were humans and their cities. Outside the domed cities, life was nothing but a cold, crimson wasteland covered by red dust.

  “Com channel two,” he yelled, his breaths coming quick and heavy. A ding sounded in his helmet, indicating his S-4 Jumper, Relic, was ready for her orders.

  “Relic, open rear ramp.”

  The ramp hissed, and steam pushed out at the seams. The ramp moved outward and lowered at the same time, making a gravely sound when it hit the rocky sand.

  Ozzy took his first steps on the ramp and looked over his shoulder. “Holy Mars, woman!”

  She was fast and catching up to him, running with the rifle strapped to her back and two long swords in each hand.

  What was she going to do? Gut him?

  Ozzy rushed inside Relic and skidded to a halt. He twisted around, punching the “close” button as fast as he could.

  The ramp whined, its gyros and wheels having a hard time lifting the hefty door littered with the red sand.

  It wasn’t going to close fast enough.

  Ozzy dropped the cylinder he had found and unstrapped his rifle.

  A blue light flashed behind him. He couldn’t turn around to see what it was. If he did, the lunatic chasing him would be joining him on the ship.

  Not on his watch.

  He aimed and pulled the trigger. The recoil bounced against his shoulder and chest. A blue photon charge expelled at a fast clip from his gun’s muzzle, sending a small stream of smoke that wafted to the side of his rifle barrel.

  The shot missed.

  “Screw this.” He held the trigger down, the rifle slamming back and forth against his shoulder. The woman dodged out of the way and behind a large boulder.

  His last shot hit the closing ramp, planting a nice black streak across it.

  The ramp finally closed, sending a bang vibrating across the bay and shaking Relic. Oxygen filled the ship, and the gravity field slowly densified.

  But the blue light?

  He spun on his heels and leaned against the ramp. The cylinder, which looked more like a metal capsule, had opened. The top and bottom were still attached by four long metallic rods.

  A light w
as in the middle, but that’s not what he was looking at.

  In front of Ozzy was a blue map displaying Mars with a diagram of locations written in Ancient Coptic. A gold symbol with angelic wings was on the other side of the planet, and dead set in the middle was the biggest volcano in the entire solar system—Olympus Mons.

  He leaned in, reading the words above the gold symbol. He unclipped his helmet and tossed it on the floor. “It’s real. The Ark of the Concordant is holy-Mars-rat-dung real.”

  2

  MooNshinka Rock, Mars

  Ozzy kissed his fingers and pressed them against Lily’s picture that was magnetized to the flight console in Relic’s cockpit. “You’re my good luck charm, Lily-bug.”

  Several months ago, he almost lost her to the Martian Plague, but through a set of miracles, she survived. He never wanted to go through the thought of losing her again, but if he got caught on another illegal dig, he’d lose her by being tossed in prison by the High Judge, Robert Baldwin.

  But here he was on another illegal dig. He wouldn’t get caught. He was sure of it.

  Ozzy pushed the throttle forward, sending a hum through Relic. His craft’s belly’s electrohydrodynamic ionic boosters worked quickly and effortlessly, lifting him off the ground.

  He pressed a few buttons and darted forward, veering Relic away from Moonshinka Rock and toward Tagus Valles—the home of Jonas Moon.

  He pulled up the rear cams. His holographic display split, and he could see the front and back of the craft.

  The woman who wanted to rip his throat out was standing on the Martian soil, waving her swords and turning into a pea-sized idiot the farther away he flew.

  He turned off the cams and dialed Jonas’s number on the com line.

  Jonas answered. “I figured it out.”

  Ozzy grunted. “I hope you’re talking about the woman who wanted to kill me?”