Defying Mars (Saving Mars Series-2) (18 page)

“I can’t,” said Jessamyn. “Not by myself!”

“You listen to me, Captain Jaarda,” said Crusty. “You are perfectly capable of making this trip solo. If you still think this mission’s worthwhile, then you
go
. You fly with me or without me,
by Hermes
.”

Jessamyn placed her helmet back onto her suit, latching it securely, and something inside her clicked into place. “This mission is a go,” she said.

Over her comm, Jess heard Smith’s voice as she approached Crusty through the airlock that separated him from the hangar’s exposed interior. Then she heard Smith relaying the fake message about stabilizers to the mechanic.
So far, so good
, she thought.

“You’re launching early,” said Smith’s voice in her helmet. There was certainty in her accusation. Jessamyn’s heart pounded.

“I’m runnin’ a sim with the captain,” replied Crusty. “Put that gun down. You trying to get New Houston’s emergency services over here? ‘Cause they ain’t gonna like what they find.”

“Stop what you’re doing,” said Smith. “Step away from that wafer right
now!
”

“Keep doin’ what you do best, kid,” said Crusty, apparently ignoring the woman with the gun.

A message flashed upon Jessamyn’s screen.

Hangar doors retracting
.

In her helmet she could hear Crusty arguing with Smith. And then she heard a shot and the sound of something large and metal toppling to the ground.

“Crusty?” she called out, unable to stop herself. There was no response. The chronometer ticked down to one minute, thirty seconds until launch. She heard a low groan—a woman’s groan, she thought. It faded and did not resume.

“Crusty?” she screamed. Her stomach seized with cold fear. She opened her public channel.

“Smith? What’s going on down there?” she cried.

No response. One minute to go. She stood and then sat again, mad with not knowing what was happening. Was Crusty racing on foot to the ship? Was he dead? Forty-five seconds to go.

“Crusty?” she called again. “Crusty!”

She heard nothing.

What should she do?

What is it that makes you a good pilot, Jess?

Harpreet’s question echoed in her memory. As did her answer.

I fly with my gut.

What was her gut telling her now?

Crusty!

It was time to listen to her reason. The answer was there, like she’d known it would be.

You are a pilot. Fly.

This was no time for regrets or fears or thoughts of anything beyond this bridge. Jess approved the
Galleon
’s final launch sequence.

From inside her helmet-insulated world, Jess couldn’t hear the scream of the hover-boosters as the ship flared from the hangar. She approved rocket launch and—not a moment too soon—remembered to harness in for the blast. How many other important details would she forget without a ground crew to assist her?

She pushed the thought aside. She was a pilot. If there was one place in the universe where she belonged, one place where she knew what to do, and how and when to do it, that place was right here—in the cockpit of a space-faring vessel. The
Galleon
gave a shuddering jolt and Jessamyn was slammed into her seat as the ship lifted through Mars’s shallow atmosphere. In the violence of the launch, she found a moment to wonder if her brother had truly disabled the lasers.

22

IDEALLY SUITED

The guard shook his head at the stubborn door, still locked. “I’ll have to re-code it from the security desk.”

“Get on it,” said the officer in red. “Now!”

The guard scrambled along the corridor, leaving Pavel standing with the Red Squadron secure.

“What will you do with me?” asked Pavel.

“That’s up to the Chancellor,” replied the officer. “But I can tell you she’s not happy with you.”

“I’m ready to speak to her now,” said Pavel. Harpreet’s safety depended upon his ability to force the officer to leave with him alone. “You will inform her at once.” Pavel’s voice, imperious, made the officer frown in indecision.

Pavel sensed a way to play his hand.

“My aunt will not be pleased if I tell her you delayed me from speaking with her,” said Pavel. This was probable and the officer recognized it.

“Very well,” replied the secure. He contacted his team, apprising them of Pavel’s demand. Then he spoke to Pavel once more. “You are to proceed with me to the prison’s holocomm.”

It was perfect. Pavel had gambled on his aunt’s vanity—her need to appear before him large as life as opposed to upon the screen of whatever device the officer might have with him.

However, they did not get as far as the holocomm center. They did not get very far at all. After one set of doors retracted to let them pass, the next refused to open. The doors at either end of the short hall remained sealed despite the secure’s best efforts at opening them. When he requested assistance, he was told he would have to wait, due to an emergency which had arisen within the prison.

~ ~ ~

Brian Wallace had awaited Ethan’s signal and was now making his slow way along corridors filling with ever-increasing numbers of prisoners who had suddenly found themselves staring at open doors. Their cell-doors normally opened to release them for work or food, so most ambled out into the corridor, looking back and forth for the guards who would accompany them at this unexpected hour.

But no one seemed to expect anything from the prisoners at the moment.

“Doors must’ve malfunctioned,” they murmured to one another.

So when Brian Wallace came strolling along the corridor murmuring, “This way if ye please,” and accompanied by Kazuko Zaifa, many fell in step behind him. Ethan’s voice, in Brian’s earpiece, gave the Scot precise directions leading him toward an exit from the prison. Brian trusted Ethan would lead him
away
from any guards and danger that lay ahead; the group amassing behind them was a sort of insurance policy against attack from behind.

But then, unexpectedly, Brian received a change of marching orders.

“Brian Wallace?” called Ethan’s voice from the earpiece.

“Aye, lad,” replied the fugitive Scot.

“It would appear Pavel has been unsuccessful in his effort to retrieve Harpreet,” said Ethan’s voice.

“She’s not refused again, surely?” asked Brian.

“No,” said Ethan. “Unfortunately Pavel has been apprehended by Red Squadron. They have recognized him. It is doubtful he will escape and he has instructed us to depart without him.”

“I see,” murmured Brian, continuing along a narrow corridor.

“I am unwilling to depart without Harpreet,” said Ethan.

“I see,” Brian replied.

“I propose giving you directions to her chamber,” Ethan said.

“Aye, well, hurry it up then, lad!”

Ethan directed Brian and his growing entourage through halls and doors and in less than a minute, Brian was met by a blinking Harpreet, newly emerged from her cell, which had unlocked seemingly of its own accord.

Unfortunately, at that moment, several guards managed to cut through a locked door leading to the corridor where the fugitives gathered.

“It’s Harpreet,” said some.

“Guards!” cried others.

“Are we supposed to be following the man ahead?” asked others.

The answer came blaring over a loudspeaker system. “Prisoners are to return to their cells at once or face punitive action.”

From within the crowd, which shrank back from the approaching guards, someone took Harpreet by the arm and tugged her toward the center of the huddle. She reached for Brian’s hand, Brian reached for Kazuko, and soon all three were at the center of a moving mass of prisoners retracing their previous steps.

From behind, Brian heard cries of, “The detainee is not here. Her cell’s empty.”

“They’re after ye,” he murmured to Harpreet.

“Perhaps I am not meant to escape after all,” she said softly.

Beside her, one of the prisoners heard what she said and a soft murmur began trickling through the crowded mass.

Harpreet is escaping today.

This man and Kazuko Zaifa are helping Harpreet to escape.

Few were indifferent to the rumor. Either they were disposed to assist or afraid that the attempt would bring “punitive action” upon them as well as upon the attempted escapee.

The mayhem increased.

~ ~ ~

Ethan had never been more grateful for the care with which Pavel had treated his once-gnarled hands. While not as easy to use as the hands of his
own
body, these were responsive and rarely pained him anymore. Ethan felt a great deal of satisfaction as his fingers flew along several panels. It was a sort of game ideally suited to his abilities.

Open doors.

Lock doors.

Look on surveillance feeds and determine which doors to open or lock next.

All the while he led Brian Wallace, Harpreet, and Kazuko Zaifa closer and closer to an exit.

Pavel, he felt less certain he could help.

But then an idea came to him. Perhaps he could play the door game upon multiple fronts? He rubbed his aged hands together, cracked his knuckles once, and set to it.

~ ~ ~

From inside the corridor where he was trapped with the officer in red, Pavel despaired. For himself, at least. He believed Ethan would be able to set the others free. But his little stint as an adventurer was about to draw to an end.

He was not happy at the prospect. But he was content that, among the five of them hoping today for freedom, he should be the one left behind. It would never have done to leave Kazuko or Harpreet behind. Jessamyn would approve his action. He smiled at the thought of the girl with red hair. And then he felt a deep ache as he realized he would never enjoy her approval. His aunt might not kill or imprison him (he really didn’t know), but she would certainly never allow him any measure of freedom again.

He sighed heavily.

The officer beside him stood suddenly to attention, apparently in response to something over his private comm. “Yes, Madam Chancellor,” he said. “At once, Madam Chancellor.” Turning to Pavel, the officer withdrew a pocket wafer, scanned his wrist across it, and handed it to Pavel. “Your aunt wishes to speak with you.”

Pavel lifted his cuffed wrists, indicating with an added eyeroll the impossibility of taking the proffered wafer.

The officer hesitated for only a moment before releasing Pavel’s hands.

“My dear Pavel,” said Lucca, staring at him in miniature from the wafer.

Her lips were an unnatural red and pulled back in what was meant, he knew, to be a smile.

“Aunt Lucca,” he said, voice flat.

“I am so looking forward to an extended …
conversation
with you,” she said.

“About what?” he asked.

“Oh, this and that,” she said, tapping her forefinger to her chin. “I will be eagerly questioning you as to your whereabouts, of course. And the identities and aims of your companions. One of them I believe I’ve met before. In Scotland, I think it was.”

He watched as his aunt moved during this speech, seating herself before what might have been a surgeon’s tray. That certainly answered for him the question of whether his aunt was kindly disposed toward him after his extended absence. Upon the tray, as she clearly intended, Pavel glimpsed a hypo-spray of
Equidima
.

Shizer!
he thought. His aunt would make certain to use all means available to get the truth out of him. And he was useless under
Equidima
.

His pulse quickened, but he was determined his aunt should not see his fear. “I look forward to our discussion, Aunt,” he said, his voice calculatedly casual.

“Oh, I highly doubt that, darling boy,” said Lucca. She grinned once more, feral, and the image disappeared.

23

DEFYING MARS

Mars shrank in the view screen as Jessamyn hurtled through the planet’s shallow atmosphere.

What have I done?

“Crusty?’ she called out. “I’m not cutting this comm.”

Silence.

She checked her heading.

“I’m on a straight course to intersect Earth’s path in sixty-four and one-half days.” It was more of a curved line, really, given the constant tug of the sun’s gravity, pulling her relentlessly toward the center of the solar system.

Ahead loomed the Terran satellites. In moments she would leave them behind with her home world. “After Ethan and I get things fixed up, we’ll have to stop calling them
Terran
satellites, you know,” she said.

But Crusty made no response. She felt a wispy fluttering in her stomach.

“I’m really alone, huh?”

Silence.

Think about what you are doing
, she ordered herself. A shiver ran through her as she rushed toward one of the satellites.

“Hello,” she whispered.

The words of Ethan’s cryptic message played in her mind:
You shall pass through the fire and not be burned.

Then, from inside her helmet, sounds assaulted her ears. Jessamyn heard the cries of emergency services personnel: “
Two down, I repeat, two persons down!
” Her heart shrank.

But she had no time to agonize over Crusty’s fate. Abruptly, she had her own emergency. The
Galleon
’s monitors shrilled with the pips indicating detection by the satellite’s lasers.

She cut her comm to Mars and initiated a port thrust burn, steering her away from the closest threat. Another set of pips shrilled. She’d been detected by a second satellite. It was too late to go dark—could she make it past? She ordered another burn to starboard, screaming past the satellites.

Her g-suit’s partial-pressure breathing forced her to inhale. Dark spots danced in her periphery as she moved her head to check for laser-fire.

But there was nothing. The monitors continued to shriek, which meant the laser’s tracking systems had a lock on her ship. And then the explanation struck her. The tracking system was still in operation—it was the
lasers
that weren’t functioning. And she’d just burned how many kilos of fuel?