Red Water

Kali could’ve spotted Red Shui’s tower from miles away a few years ago. Its skyscraper height grooved on both sides like a vertical waves flowed into the Martian dirt – it seemed to be growing out of the ground. But with the dust storm now in its third year, Kali couldn’t make out anything but the haze of a sun hanging somewhere in the sky. It felt like living inside a shrinking prison. She hated it.

Through infrared binoculars she saw tankers backing into slender garages, waiting to be filled with water the tower mined. All she saw were red and orange blobs devouring each other, but those heat signatures were enough. Kali saw time and time again how those tankers would sell that water to colonies at devastating prices.

“They’re filling.” She said over her shoulder to her son, Frank. “Start the scrambler.” The small transmitters in their suits rendered directional speaking unnecessary, but Kali wanted to see Frank’s eyes. Or try to. She had to make sure he was ready for his first water run.

The roots of the tower, and the company had towers scattered around the planet, spread underneath every colony. Red Shui managed to steal away the water rights to each colony – stealing it literally right under their feet. It was one of the first planetary moves after the 1962 Outer Space Treaty fell apart.

Kali wanted to spit on the ground – except it’d make for a mess with her faceplate in the way. Red Shui’s monopoly on water! Incredible. Each time waste water was purified, Red Shui’s filter would collect the data and levy the price to the colony. The company freely sued anyone using anything that purified water, said it infringed on the integrity of their filters. Kali was glad to volunteer for water runs when they first began – steal the water they’re being sold and use it off-grid? It was sweet justice to her ears.

Kali looked out to their tower. Red sand and a hue of light in the sky.

With Frank nodding, he began the GPS scrambler mounted atop their terrain vehicle – a Martian-hardened truck, really. “When the scrambler hits zero,” she told Frank when he first started training, “all the satellites in the world can’t find the tankers. With the storm between us and visuals, we’re invisible.” The storm was a necessary evil for water runs like this.

Kali watched Frank closely as he grew up hearing stories of people like her – thieves, really. Once their throats burned with some home-made brandy, it was easy to tell who took from Red Shui. Their feet would rest on the table and with a smile talk with anyone, wildly testing the truth while the colony pampered itself with the newly taken water – free water. She liked to think she wasn’t like the others, boasting away their damn secrets to everyone in town – at least, she grinned – not as bad.

Those stories painted the broad strokes of the job for Frank. And he’d be a good compliment. The kid lived practically inside computers – and that was part of the job Kali lacked the natural knack. She was more likely to return with broken bones or blood soaked shirts than anything else. Frank would make a good tech, and sixteen was just the right age. Indeed, Kali was pleased with how easily her son kept up when she would lay out the routine.

Behind the hill, Kali and Frank quickly checked their equipment and returned to the truck for the run. Kali ran her gloves over the wheel – then made sure her son’s wheel was connected on his side.

Frank booted the computer sitting on the center consol. The moment the tankers realize satellite connection’s lost, they locked down to a dead stop, unusable to anyone until a Red Shui contractor came out to hard reboot the thing. One failed run saw the tanker backing-up all the way to the tower, but no one ever figured out what caused that outcome. Frank’s job was to jump in their system and prevent that from happening. But first, Kali had to make that possible.

And Kali had it down to an art. Through infrared she watched from the truck as the tanker slowly left the tower and accelerated to its cruising speed at 60mph. On these well-traveled roads – for Mars standards — there wasn’t a need for methodical travel. The days of 10 meter per hour scientific rovers were well past. But veer just off the road and you’re liable to hit the jagged rocks laid out like landmines. Soon both her and Frank were in the truck driving down the smooth road, accelerating a little slower, allowing the tanker to catch up. By the time it was behind them, Kali had the speed matched perfectly. They were cruising side-by-side with it. She looked over to Frank who already had his computer open, “You ready?”

“Good luck.”

The flat empty road allowed Kali to maneuver inches from the tanker – just like every other time, she thought, and then relinquished control of the truck to her son. “I’ll be right back.” Even though the road was smooth, anything’s bumpy with wheels going this fast, she had to be delicate. Kali brought down a center window to shield the computer from dust, then retracted her door. As the door disappeared into the rear frame, coarse winds gently massaged her suit. For a brief moment the sudden gasp of wind was just like Earth’s all those years ago. She remembered the kick those had – Martian wind wasn’t anything like that.

Kali set-up the gecko creeper with the fluidity that came with hundreds of repetitions, both practiced and real. Nicknamed the stretcher, it was typically used for maintenance purposes, being able to hang and maneuver off any surface. It proved ideal even in these hectic conditions.

She transferred herself from the truck to tanker, careful not to have a deadly miscalculation on any of her movements with the road rushing under her, and set herself in the stretcher. The tool smoothly rolled its wheels on the tanker. Kali watched the truck disappear from view as the stretcher took her under the tanker.

After a few moments – long moments with the road flashing by – she was in position.

She plucked an egg-shaped ball from the front of her suit. With the road screaming by inches from her head, she pressured the device onto a square casing in the undercarriage. Almost immediately the egg shot a thin bit into the tanker and attached itself. After a tap, the egg softly glowed. It only took a few moments for penetration, and almost immediately the glow turned red.

The drill bit amplified the tanker’s internal wireless system. “Your turn, Frank.” Kali began the slow journey out from under the vehicle.

Frank was quick to connect when the egg granted access. A childhood of bouncing between Red Shui interfaces, learning how systems interact at different levels – as restricted as they were – made changing the tanker’s route easy work. A few key strokes found the latitude and longitude of the original destination. More strokes removed that line of code and instituted a new method. Drive west for 2 hours, pause for ten minutes, then lock down. Those ten minutes would be enough for the rest of the crew to quickly siphon off the water in the tank.

As Frank punched in the new data, a new entrance appeared. New, at least, because it was something he had never seen before. He decided to quickly explore and was amazed. It was a route to Red Shui’s main interface. With Kali still coming up from the tanker, he had a moment. Frank bounced around from file to file seeing as much as he could. The Red Shui devices back home didn’t have these connections. Frank became lost in the inspection, finding the source code for the water filters.

But – something felt off. The code, he thought, it’s not in the typical Red Shui format. It was something completely different. He scrolled down to see more. Large swaths were in that vaguely familiar format. Definitely not Red Shui, Frank was sure of it. He had studied enough of the company’s structure to know.

Frank searched through other scripts. Almost each one had sections all in that format. Why have I never seen this before? He went deeper into the system, looking into the communications with satellites, then quickly over to the automated thermal protection. Buried in mountains of code was one little line he happened to spot. An author signature that someone apparently failed to scrub out.

Vitro, reserved.

Frank cocked his head. Vitro’s the water company for Earth’s moon. Red Shui couldn’t exist on the same planet as them – how could they be working together? He saved the screen recording onto his personal hard-drive to study later and opened one last file. The computer went black.

“Frank!” His mother’s frantic yell slapped him back.

In the rear-view mirror, the tanker was slipping back. Through the thick atmosphere it had disappeared altogether.

“The geckos aren’t resp – Frank!” A thud killed the radio.

He turned from the computer and gripped the wheel, turning it hard to flip around into the wall of dust. Blowing passed cruising speed, Frank desperately searched for the truck, for any tire tracks leading off the road. Through the dust storm the tanker finally came into view, it was nearly at a standstill likely about to lockdown. Frank didn’t pay attention and drove right by it. After a few moments, he found Kali’s body lying on the cold ground. Slamming on the brakes, Frank jumped out of the truck and slid by his mother’s side.

“Kali!” He cautiously turned her crumpled body onto her back. “Mom!”

The faceplate caught a red glare from the tanker – the large vehicle was backing up and picking up speed. The vitals on her suit’s chest were blinking yellow. The same as it would be for a light sleep. There wasn’t enough time to lift her and get to the side so Frank thought fast. He straightened Kali down and then sprawled on the ground next to her. The tires bowled by and the undercarriage of the tanker roared overhead. Frank pressed his head down hard into the red dirt, trying to get as far away as possible.

Just as the tanker was about to pass over completely, a momentous crash jolted through the undercarriage. Through the suit it was still deafening loud. The truck. He left their truck in the middle of the road. And like a train the tanker barreled into it sending the truck rolling off the side of the path. In a flash the tanker swiveled from the impact, slamming into the road bank and tipping on its side.

Water gushed out like geysers from puncture points, splattering across the road and on their suits. Before the truck slid to a full stop, the water froze and clogged the punctures. Frank moved fast to wipe off the freezing water that landed on Kali, but soaked as he was his own suit froze like a cocoon.

Cold winds howled.

Frank looked down at his arms as he sat. Frozen water draped the suit – if he moved too quickly, he thought, the ice could rip the suit. With the ice already solid, he gingerly tried straightening out his limbs. It was like someone was holding his arms together. Trying to free himself from the ice was no use. He paused to collect himself. There was a solution somewhere. The other’s know we’re on a run and should have seen the tracker on their truck disappear. They’ll be here soon. But soon enough? Frank thought. The cold Martian ground started seeping through his suit.

Kali’s vitals blinked to green.

“Mom,” Frank immediately said. “Mom, you can’t move. The tanker blew a leak. We’re covered in ice.”

“The tanker?” She tried sitting up, but either an injury or ice prevented it. “You didn’t cut the distress.”

“I –“ The distress signal! Frank remembered cutting it right away. He raced through his steps on the computer while Kali continued her understandable anger. Where was the trip? What did I find?

The Vitro signature.

“Mom.”

“You were ready to finally run and I trusted you, Frank! This is our lives and –“

“Mom! Listen!” He would’ve loved to grab her if he wasn’t frozen. “Red Shui’s been stealing – from Vitro. They’ve been taking Vitro’s language – who knows what else they’re taking!” He waited for any kind of reaction, but Kali was still lost in anger. “It means.. It means they’re operating illegally.” His arms still didn’t come free. “That means –“

“They don’t have rights to the water.” She said in sudden clarity.

Floodlights flashed around them, perhaps a dozen pairs – their back-up was only a single truck. Red Shui. How did they arrive so quickly?

The trucks surrounded the two frozen culprits. Their tires groundedany pebbles they rolled over into fine dust, pulverizing the road. Frank had never seen these type of security vehicles before.

“Listen to me.” Kali got her son’s attention. “They’re going to deport me back to Earth.”

Frank started to protest but Kali shook her head, unable to fully move the helmet.

“No. Listen. I’m gone. But you, you’re a native. You have to stay. That means you have to tell the others.”

Frank looked back at the wrecked truck on the side of the road. Somewhere in that mess was the hard drive with video of his discovery.

Maroon suits stepped out of the truck, weapons drawn on Kali and Frank.

“Find a way. Tell them.”