Offworld

by Robin Parrish

  "Okay," Terry replied. "We'll make this work. You just tell us when to go."

  "Copy that," said Chris. "Stand by."

  "Terry," Trisha said, finding her voice, "get in position to lay down some cover-"

  "Chris, look out!" Owen screamed loud enough to be painful in Trisha's ear. She heard a screeching of tires, but had no time to think about it, because a small blast went off just a few meters away.

  The door to the roof had been blown open, and soldiers were on the roof.

  SIXTEEN

  Chris floundered. He was standing inside a lava tube beneath the surface of Mars, staring into an enormous, blue-black, spiraling mass suspended in midair. The void became translucent as he gazed into it, and he stepped closer. On the other side of the void, a scene came into view. It was hazy and indistinct, yet he could clearly see two men standing in the middle of a gargantuan room. He couldn't make out too many details of the room, except a tangle of wire and walls of machinery.

  As he stared at the emerging scene, he realized for the first time that he could hear, though their voices were mi fled. Hearing anything on Mars was nearly impossible; the atmosphere didn't transmit sound waves. It,fust couldn't happen without the proper equipment.

  Yet when Chris heard these men speaking, it wasn't sound piping through the internal headset in his helmet. It was more like he was standing over their shoulders, eavesdropping.

  The two men weref issing over a computer readout attached to one wall, when one of them-a tall man with a braided ponytail-spun in place. His eyes nearly leaped from his head, even though remarkably they seemed to have settled on Chris.

  Chris could see them. Could they see him?

  "Uh ... "said the ponytail man. "Please tell me I'm not the only one seeing this."

  The second man, a short, egg-shapedguy with prematurely white, mussed-up hair and a bushy mustache that was the same shade of white, turned. "What in ... ?Is-is that Burke?!"

  "Can he see us?" the ponytail man said. I think he can see us."

  "Should we terminate?" replied mustache man, an always-serious guy inhis.ffties.

  The pair stepped closer to Burke, looking at him as Y 'seeing him from the other side of an aquarium window. Chris wondered if'they were staring at him through a void very much like the one he was watching them through.

  Maybe even the same one.

  They looked closely at him, and the ponytail man was wide-eyed behind a pair of specs, while the mustache man had his hands on his considerable hips with his eyebrows bunched up in something between confusion and irritation.

  "This is impossible, " said ponytail, pulling backward at his tieddown hair as if it weren't already contained. He seemed to be on the verge of a meltdown, his level of hysteria rising by the second. "Its just impossible.... "

  "Yes, he's on Mars," replied mustache. `But he's right in,front of us."

  "Should we do something?" asked ponytail. "Cut the power? "

  "You know we can't, " said mustache. His voice was devoid of any trace of warmth, yet he spoke with intelligence and clarity. As he spoke, he examined Chris closely through beady eyes. "We've tried that before, and it doesn't work. And even i 'it did ... it could kill him. Or worse. So let's keep our wits about us."

  "Then what do we do?"ponytail replied. "We can't just leave him like this."

  `Run the math again," said mustache.

  "Yes!" enthused ponytail, switching abruptly from frantic dread to eagerness. "We change the variables and formulate a new equation!"

  As one, they turned back to their respective workstations and began fidgeting over equipment that Chris couldn't really make out.

  "This is incredible, "ponytail man said. Absolutely unbelievable. Unprecedented."

  "We'll need to completely reconfigure all of the parameters.... " muttered mustache. He swiveled his head and glanced back at Chris one more time. 'And his memory will need to be addressed."

  The void flashed out of existence, just as Chris had seen it do so many times on Earth, and he blacked out.

  Many hours later, Chris opened his eyes to find that he was lying facedown on red dirt, only a few hundred yards from the Habitat. The lava tube was gone, and the sun was out. It was midday.

  And Owen was running toward him as fast as Martian gravity would allow.

  The blackout had only lasted a moment. Chris opened his eyes to find himself careening like a maniac down Main Street at high speed, and trying to avoid gunfire behind the jeep's bulletproof glass windows. Soldiers on either side of the road knew who they were now, and were firing all sorts of weapons at them.

  "You can aim for the people trying to kill us, you know!" shouted Owen from the front passenger's seat.

  "I'd prefer to avoid killing anyone," Chris said, almost under his breath.

  "Hitting them might not kill them!" Owen replied. "They could just be ... you know, maimed. Slow down, we're almost there!"

  Chris looked ahead. They were coming up on the white building.

  He slammed on the brakes as Owen rolled down his window and positioned himself so the top half of his body was sticking out of it. Over his shoulder, he hefted the weapon with its spearlike projectile that he'd already tethered to the winch at the front of the jeep. He squinted through the reticle with a single eye, lining up his shot.

  Owen pulled the trigger and Chris shouted, "Trisha, go!"

  "Terry, now!"

  Terry sprang up from behind the air-conditioning unit and sprayed fire in every direction.

  Trisha grabbed Mae by the hand and they ran together, sprinting for the far edge of the building and barely avoiding bullets from Griffin and his men. They made it to the south corner and climbed over the edge; a small ledge held them just below the roofline.

  Trisha heard a sharp thunk nine feet beneath them and saw a long, metal rod had pierced the wall and held fast. The rod was secured to a thin steel cable that hung from it loosely; she followed the cable to a jeep far below, which had just screeched to a halt and was now backing up, pulling the cable taut. She saw Owen, small as a clot, leap from the passenger's seat and quickly take out three armed soldiers and steal a second jeep.

  Shots were still being fired from the rooftop, and she could only hope that Terry was making his way toward them now.

  "Nothin'," Mae commented.

  "Huh?" replied Trisha. She followed Mae's gaze down and saw that there was nothing between them and the cable-no more ledges, no windowsills, not even brickwork. There was nothing to use to climb clown.

  Thinking fast, Trisha ripped off the sleeves of her shirt and handed one to Mae. She started letting herself down to the ledge and grabbed the lip of the ledge they were standing on, allowing the rest of her body to swing free. "Climb down me!" she said.

  Mae looked skeptical, but before she could question it, Trisha added, "I can handle it, just go! Now!"

  Mae swallowed hard and began to lower herself clown to the cable, using Trisha as a rope. She grasped folds of Trisha's clothes one hand after the other until she was suspended right next to the cable.

  "Grab it!" Trisha cried. "Cover your hands with the shirtsleeves and go! Hurry!"

  "How will you get down?" asked Mae.

  "Don't worry about me, just do it!"

  Mae clutched the shirtsleeve in one hand and extended that same hand to grab the cable. With one last look back up at Trisha, she let go and grabbed the cable with the other hand. The angle was sharp enough that she plunged down it immediately, zip-lining to the ground and the waiting jeep.

  Terry crept around the corner of the ledge she hung from, crouching low to keep his head beneath the roofline. His eyes went wide when he saw her.

  "Trish!"

  `Climb down me now, Terry!" she shouted. "No time for discussion! Just go!"

  Terry ignored her, lowering himself to the ledge and then dropping to the wire, which tugged viciously at its hold, but stayed fast. In a moment he too was down at the jeep. Trisha didn't know whether to he furious he
'd disobeyed her or grateful. Her muscles ached and trembled even now, and she knew she had only seconds left.

  With one last look down at her target, she let go of the ledge and dropped. She fell some nine feet and tried to straddle the cable as she came to it, to increase her chances of getting a solid handhold. But her momentum and exhaustion were too much to balance and she quickly toppled to one side. Her hands couldn't seem to find purchase on the cable, but the crook of one arm caught the cable and she began to slide.

  Her arm on fire from the friction, she struggled to get a hand up on the cable, the shirtsleeve held tight in that hand. She was a third of the way down when she managed to get the padded hand to safely grab the steel cord, and she interlaced her fingers with those on her other hand.

  It was a long way down, but it took only seconds. Owen and Chris stood at the bottom, ready to catch her; Terry was already piling into the second jeep Owen had secured only moments ago. Mae got in the other. She could hear the voices of dozens of people shouting, but couldn't see where they were coming from. She chanced a look back up at the top of the line as she neared the bottom and saw a few of Griffin's men trying to climb down to the cable.

  By the time she reached the bottom, her hands were painfully hot, even wrapped in the protective cloth, but still not as searing as her arm. Chris and Owen grabbed her fast when she approached and helped her down.

  Owen, always prepared for every contingency, pulled out a pair of laser shears and sliced into the bottom end of the cable. It ricocheted away from the jeep instantly, and the men trying to slide down from above were suddenly in a vertical drop.

  Chris spoke up, eyeing her with concern. "Trish, are you-?"

  "Later!" she shouted, feeling a sudden surge of adrenaline. "Let's get out of here!"

  She made for the second vehicle. Terry was already in the driver's seat, but she half-motioned, half-shoved him over, and this time he didn't dare disobey.

  The jeep's engine snarled like some sort of hungry predator as Chris made a right turn at full speed, jetting through town. Owen sat next to him, Mae in the back seat. Trisha and Terry were right behind them, keeping pace dangerously near Chris' bumper. Four jeeps were in close pursuit, with many more behind. Per Chris' instructions, everyone had donned their earpieces once more, though Mae still did without one. As Chris had told her, he wasn't keen on trying to make her more like them; he thought she was pretty neat just the way she was.

  "There's something else," Chris announced.

  Owen was white-knuckling the arm rails in the jeep as Chris sped at ungodly velocities toward downtown Houston. No one in either vehicle said a word, waiting for Chris to explain.

  "I saw my missing time on Mars. All of it. When I blacked out a while ago, I saw the rest of it."

  He hesitated, and Owen looked at him. He hated it, but there was an anxiety-filled expression on his face that he couldn't seem to wipe away.

  "What happened?" Trisha asked over her earpiece.

  Chris spurred the jeep around another corner, and they barely missed crashing into a tree.

  "The void ... It's not what we thought," he said. "I think it's a window."

  A window?" asked Owen.

  "There were ... men. I could see them, through the void. They weren't on Mars-I don't know where they were. But I could see them, and they could see me. And I could hear what they were saying. They were talking about me."

  "What did they say?" asked Trisha.

  "I don't know exactly, some kind of technical jargon. But they seemed as surprised to see me as I was to see them."

  It was crazy and he knew it. Would they believe him?

  "Who were they?" Terry asked. "What does it mean?"

  Chris could only shake his head in confusion, unable to reply.

  As they neared downtown, Chris more than once drove in circles through some of Houston's streets. Within twenty minutes they found themselves dodging the nonmoving traffic amid skyscrapers not far from Houston's giant sports coliseum, which had been refurbished since Chris had last seen it.

  "Where are we going?" asked Terry.

  "Nowhere in particular," replied a harried Chris. `Just trying to evade those guys behind us."

  "This isn't a fighter jet, Commander," Owen advised. "You're driving like you're dogfighting. Roston has superior numbers; they'll outflank us soon at this rate. We need to improvise."

  "Improvise, huh?" said Chris under his breath. "Okey-dokey."

  With a sharp jerk of both of his arms, he steered the jeep hard to the right, straight into the coliseum, smashing through a massive plate-glass window in a rain of broken shards. The jeep's tires squealed against the low traction of the building's tile floors, and Chris spun into a quick turn to the right, tearing through the stadium's enormous lobby.

  "Better?" he asked, glancing in the rearview mirror to see Trisha still following close, and their hunters not far behind.

  "I'll let you know if we live," replied Owen.

  Ahead, there was a set of escalators with stationary steps beside them. The steps looked just wide enough....

  "Chris!" shouted Trisha in his ear, "you're not going to-?"

  "Gun it, Trish!" Chris replied, pounding on the accelerator. `And hold on!"

  They hit the base of the stairs, the jeep's tires grabbing for purchase as they nosed upward. They barely had enough space and crashed against the handrails with the noise of a jackhammer until they were free.

  The stairs opened into a narrow second level, and Chris pressed the jeep to its limits, racing by the concessions of the oval-shaped building.

  "There's improvising and there's pure insanity," Trisha said. "I don't see how this is helping us."

  "They are keeping up," added Owen, looking behind at the pursuing jeeps that were climbing the stairs after them.

  `Any grenades in this thing?" asked Chris.

  Owen spun and retrieved a pair of palm-sized weapons from a lockbox in the back seat. They were stainless steel and smaller than any grenades Chris had seen in the war.

  "One of these is enough to level a small building," replied Owen.

  "Perfect!" commented Chris.

  When they'd made almost a full circle around the interior of the building, Chris suddenly jerked the car to the right and they burst through another set of glass doors.

  "Pull 'em, Beech!" shouted Chris.

  They were inside a tiny sky bridge, connecting the coliseum to its parking garage. There was barely room for the vehicle within the bridge, but Owen pulled out the pins on both grenades and lobbed them out his open window, well over their heads and Trisha's jeep.

  They tore through a set of metal double doors and were inside the parking garage, with Trisha's jeep inches behind. Chris made another violent turn to spiral down to the exit.

  The bridge burst into an enormous orange cloud behind them, turning to debris and dust, and taking out ten feet or so of the parking garage with it. Parts of the garage near the blast collapsed in on itself, but there was just enough room for both vehicles to squeeze through, around and around and finally back out onto the street.

  "Not bad, Commander," said Owen.

  Smiling, Chris turned northeast along Convention Center Boulevard until he came to the old baseball stadium, where he turned west on Texas Street. Roston must've had a lookout at the park, Chris decided, because moments later, a parade of jeeps appeared in his rearview, and they were gaining fast.

  Chris made another sudden right turn, hoping to shake them, but they were too close.

  "Look out!" screamed Trisha.

  One block ahead, the street was obstructed by two rows of endto-end jeeps.

  Roston's men had had enough of chasing and were starting to anticipate their moves, pinning them in.

  Nowhere else to go, Chris made a jarring turn into an incredibly tall parking garage. He charged through the yellow arm and raced toward the ramp leading up.

  "Another garage, really?" asked Terry.

  "What's the pla
n?" said Trisha, who was still keeping pace right behind.

  "I don't have one!" replied Chris. `Just trying to evade!"

  There was a screech of tires from behind, and just as Chris turned the first corner of the up ramp, he turned to glance behind and saw a trio of Roston's jeeps speeding into the garage behind them.

  A little help, please?

  Anything

  I'm willing to beg.

  He drove, the echo of screeching tires reverberating through the parking garage. Spiral after spiral they climbed upward, ten decks ... twelve ... higher ...

  As they approached the top deck, Chris heard Trisha shout, "Terry! What are you doing?!"

  Just keep going!" Terry replied.

  Wondering what was up, Chris had just cleared the final cement overhang leading out into the bright light of the beacon when his jeep was lifted a foot off the ground by an explosion from behind. Chris was startled so badly that he sent the jeep into a tailspin, slamming into and through the low parking garage wall.

  Trisha jammed clown the accelerator when she saw what Terry had clone, speeding past Chris' jeep to the right, and bracing herself for the coming impact.

  Her vehicle barely made it clear of the blast, which brought clown a section of the top deck onto the jeeps behind them.

  She looked to her left and saw Chris' jeep spin wildly and break through the low wall at the edge of the structure. They finally came to a stop facing her, their jeep's back two tires hanging off the side of the building.

  The jeep itself was already starting to teeter, slowly tilting backward....

  She heard Owen and Chris shouting inside the vehicle, trying to shift their weight forward, but each time they moved, the jeep inched back a little farther. Trisha wouldn't have much time.

  Instinct taking over, she popped her gearshift into reverse and spun to the right until her jeep was facing Chris' head-on from ten feet away. Terry jumped out, running to put his weight on the hood of Chris' jeep, but he was too small to make much of a difference. The tilting motion continued, although a bit slower.