The Camp Site

All four astronauts confirmed dead.

The red ticker across the bottom of the news channel stared at her judgingly.

It was supposed to be an easy job. In and out. No one was supposed to get hurt; no one was supposed to die.

Reg hugged her knees into her chest. It had been almost fifteen hours since security had flung her into the windowless cell. The screen in the top right corner of the room was her only connection to the outside world. It had been playing the same thing since she had been in there – the explosion of the SupreTerra shuttle.

Everything had gone according to plan. Right up until that bastard, Fabien had fucked it all up. Her conscience replayed everything over again in her head like a terrible song stuck on repeat.

The ignition coils had been easy to replace. She had switched them out with new springs that would overload the voltage in the engines, causing the entire shuttle to explode.

No one was supposed to be on board.

The shuttle launch that day was supposed to be an unmanned mission. When her client approached her about sabotaging the project, she had made it absolutely clear that she was not in the business of murder. Only building materials and construction machinery as cargo, the staunch gray-haired man had assured her. Reg’s own research confirmed this information. And she had been meticulous. The shuttle would orbit Calisto until the second stage when the fleet carrying the development crew arrived. Once they built enough high-rise luxury condos, SupreTerra investors would arrive, completing stage three.

When Earth had been dying, companies like SupreTerra had colonized Mars. It was done with the promise that humanity would learn from its mistakes. And for a while, they did. The Red Planet had been terraformed into a lush paradise. But humans had relapsed into old habits and history had repeated itself.

Now, Girard Fabien, Mars’ most acclaimed real estate developer, had purchased an aerospace company and was offering luxury living off world on Calisto. Affluent investors were already lined up to buy a slice of the newest real estate, where the air would be cleaner, water would be abundant, and best of all, where they didn’t have to look at people dying from lack of either every day.

At the last minute, Fabien had announced that four astronauts would be aboard the shuttle. They would be conducting additional surveying, putting the project ahead of schedule. Investors had been ecstatic for about fifteen minutes. Then the explosion happened.

Reg was pulled from her thoughts as the metal door to the cell clicked open.

Through puffy eyes, she looked up at Girard Fabien. The door slammed shut behind him.

Hands casually in the pockets of his all-black suit, he wordlessly strolled around the room. He looked up at the video screen, watching the news about the explosion and dead astronauts.

“You know,” he finally said in his soft melodic voice, “this will set us back decades.”

Reg snorted. “Good. Maybe now you can do something useful, like healing Mars.”

Fabien turned and quirked an eyebrow at her in question. “You object to finding a better place for humanity to live?”

“You mean a better place to exploit? Yes.” After a moment she added, “Why didn’t you stop the launch?”

He looked at her quizzically again.

Reg wiped snot and blood onto her sleeve. “Your security team caught me coming out of the shuttle almost an hour before launch time. Why didn’t you stop it to investigate the security breach?”

“Now why would I have done that?” A cool smile came over his thin face. It would have been charming if it hadn’t been so sinister.

Slowly, understanding dawned on her. “You knew it was going to explode.” She was horrified. “You put astronauts on that ship, knowing it would be a firebomb.”

“Indeed.”

“Why?” Reg asked through clenched teeth. She was shaking now.

“Well, that’s a rather complicated answer. But you seem to be rather intelligent,” he paused as if to consider his options. Reg knew he wanted to talk. He wanted her to know how clever he was.

“We’ve known for quite some time that the shuttle wasn’t going to make it off the ground,” he began. “Unfortunately, we were too far along in the project to back out. Failing to launch on schedule would have bankrupted me. But now, with the sabotage and the payouts from astronauts’ life insurance policies, the company can fix its mistakes essentially for free.”

Reg was speechless. The security team had done a number on her when they caught her, but she was sure she heard him correctly.

“You’re a monster.”

“Ah, but that isn’t even the best part,” he said with a malicious smile.

A knock came from the door and a man entered. Her client. The same gray-haired who had assured her that the shuttle would be empty. He whispered something in Fabien’s ear and turned to leave, giving her a wink as he closed the door once again.

Rage filled her. She had been a pawn in their plan the entire time.

“My apologies, my investors are waiting for me to announce that the saboteur has been caught. A member of one of the many radical groups opposing SupreTerra’s mission.”

Two very large men entered the cell. Reg leapt to her feet, fists curled. She looked between the men and Fabien.

“Sadly,” he continued, “We were unable to extract further information as she died during interrogation.”

Wordlessly, the men descended on Reg.

Fabien exited the cell as she began to scream. He didn’t have time to see the work finished. He had an empire to build.