Defying Mars (Saving Mars Series-2)

by Cidney Swanson

  “Good, good,” said Pavel.

  Closing the door behind him, Pavel addressed the others. “Now all we have to do is figure out how to convince this Kazuko Zaifa to tell us everything she knows.”

  “I have an idea,” said Brian Wallace, a tiny smile playing at the corners of his mouth as he removed a handheld wafer from his pocket.

  A sharp rap sounded once more upon the door and Pavel answered it.

  The guard presented a pale woman to Pavel.

  “Kazuko Zaifa?” asked Pavel, smiling benevolently.

  “The same,” replied the guard. “Red Squadron Forces are sending officers to remove this prisoner from New Timbuktu. So whatever you’re doing, better make it snappy.”

  The door closed and Kazuko Zaifa’s face turned pale.

  Pavel’s face blanched as well. “Oh, no,” he said. “If Red Squadron are coming here to pick up the scientist from the satellite facility … Ethan, can you hack into the prison’s detainee roster and see if my aunt has authorized them to remove any additional persons?”

  Ethan hunched over his holoscreen, frowned, and then looked up at Pavel. “Harpreet Mombasu is scheduled for removal as well.”

  “Shizer!” said Pavel.

  18

  SAND IN A RAW WOUND

  Jessamyn awoke to a soft pinging in her room. It took her several seconds to remember what the sound meant. Someone was trying to call her. She opened one eye and pushed up on an elbow to see the caller’s identity. Crusty. At 3:00 in the morning.

  “Hello?” Her throat felt furry, her mind thick with sleep.

  “Jess?”

  Who else would she be?

  “No. This is Ethan.” She sat up, rubbing her eyes. “Of course it’s me. What’s going on?”

  “I’m workin’ over on the Galleon. There’s someone here you should see.”

  “Now?”

  “Yeah. Now.”

  Jess combed fingers through her tangled hair. “I’m on my way.”

  Quietly, she suited up, exited her home, and drove to the hangar, leaving an apology for her parents about taking the get-about. In the middle of the night, Mars seemed colder. The stars burned with greater intensity and the satellites put Jess in mind of comets, although the trailing tails were probably the product of her eyes not being able to focus correctly because this was an hour her eyelids preferred to stay closed.

  She pulled up to the hangar and parked her parents’ vehicle. The large building was well-lit at all hours, but Jess’s eyes resented the brightness and she muttered complaints as she stumbled up the ladder-like stairs of the ship’s interior. She supposed Crusty would be found in here, somewhere, and she felt a bit grumpy that he hadn’t specified where she was to meet him.

  The ship had a different feel to her, in the middle of the night, as if it was at its most alive somehow. Jessamyn considered the idea, but rejected it as not quite right. What she felt, humming through her bones, was more like the alive-ness of every person she’d spent time with aboard the Galleon. This ladder buzzed with the memory of talking Ethan down it when the ship had landed upon the Isle of Skye. While she awaited the airlock cycle, she recalled Harpreet’s patience waiting here beside her. And in the shallow hall that ran forward to aft, Jess remembered Kipper sending her to her quarters after the ship’s launch.

  The memories pressed upon her like small bruises to the soul. She shuddered as she called aloud for Crusty.

  “Hey, kid,” said Crusty, emerging from the rations room as though her pre-dawn appearance were the most natural thing in the world.

  She half expected, as she rounded the threshold with Crusty, to see Kipper, Harpreet, and Ethan awaiting her for morning rations. Instead of her crew, she saw a man. Brushing nostalgia aside, Jess tried to decide if the stranger looked familiar.

  “This better be good,” she muttered to Crusty, collapsing into her regular chair at the rations table.

  “Jessamyn, meet Cavanaugh. We was friends at the Academy,” said Crusty.

  Jess nodded but didn’t lean forward to shake hands. Cavanaugh looked about her father’s age. His skin had the slightly shiny appearance Jess associated with the use of heat-healers. Why was he trying to look younger than his age? Was he a broadcaster?

  Cavanaugh cleared his throat. “I wonder if you have a moment to discuss your immediate future?”

  She shot a look to Crusty that said something like, You’re kidding, right? Then she returned her gaze to Cavanaugh. “Normally at this hour, my immediate future would involve snoring or drooling.”

  “I’m Cassondra Kipling’s brother,” he said.

  “Oh,” she said, her brows raising in surprise. “I’m pleased to meet you. Or, well, I’d be more pleased if it were day. Sorry. I’m not at my best this early.” She glared at Crusty once again.

  Crusty laughed softly.

  “Wait a minute,” said Jess, examining Cavanaugh’s smooth face. He was familiar. “Did Mei Lo send you?”

  “The Secretary?” asked the man, one eyebrow raised. “No. Why do you ask?”

  Jessamyn couldn’t determine the precise nature of the emotion he’d held back when she asked if Mars’s CEO had sent him for her. She decided not to hold it against him. It might have been merely surprise.

  “I recognize you,” she said.

  Now she knew the emotion upon his face. Alarm.

  “From the fire,” she continued. “You’re the man from MCC who interviewed me after the Rations Storage disaster.” She smiled to set him at ease. Why was everyone so edgy and apologetic around her?

  “I did, indeed, have the honor of meeting you that day for the first time,” said Cavanaugh.

  “Kipper was your sister?” asked Jess, her voice softer now.

  His brows drew slightly together. “I prefer to say that she is my sister. Her wellbeing is what brought me here today. I hope—that is—her family hopes that you might assist us in bringing her home now while there’s still time.”

  “Me?” asked Jessamyn. The hope in his voice grated upon her like sand in a raw wound.

  Cavanaugh’s eyes darted from hers to Crusty’s. “We want to take a ship to Earth. But we need someone to pilot and maintain the ship.”

  “Who’s we?” asked Jessamyn, chills running up and down her arms.

  “I’d prefer not to identify anyone beyond myself at present,” Cavanaugh replied.

  Jessamyn’s eyes narrowed. “Why aren’t you talking to the Secretary General about this?”

  “The Secretary has made it clear no rescue operation can be sent at the moment. She’s denied the possibility. But anyone can see the Galleon’s in fine shape—”

  “No,” said Jessamyn, shaking her head slightly. “Not just anyone can see that. Crusty, what have you been telling Cavanaugh here?”

  Crusty shrugged, looking off to one side.

  Cavanaugh jumped in. “It’s clear the Secretary is using the ship’s condition as an excuse when the real reason for her hesitation is a reluctance to engage in trade with Earth.”

  A tangle of emotions skittered through Jessamyn: eagerness to recover her own brother, pity for Cavanaugh’s plight, exhaustion at the thought of convincing him it was impossible, and finally a tingle of suspicion to do with the odd hour he’d chosen to make his request.

  “Are you part of the faction that wants Terran trade to recommence?” asked Jessamyn, her face carefully neutral.

  Something behind his eyes flickered. “I just want my sister back. She doesn’t deserve to live out her days on that miserable world. And if she is gone,” Cavanaugh said, “Then surely she deserves to have her bones returned to Mars.”

  Jessamyn’s hands clenched at her side, Cavanaugh’s words piercing her like barbed accusations. She had to force herself not to flee, to weep, to howl in anger that none of what he suggested was possible. But then she saw the pain etched in his face—the mirror of her own.

  “I’m sorry. I can’t help you,” she said softly. She repeated the words she�
�d spoken a dozen times on camera: “The Galleon won’t be fit to fly for another half-annum or more.” Her eyes fixed upon the table, noticing a nick upon its edge where she’d once slammed her chair in anger. Probably at this man’s sister.

  “Now, now, kid,” began Crusty. “Hear the man out, why don’t you.”

  As she looked up, she saw Cavanaugh’s eyes darting between the two raiders.

  Jessamyn crossed her arms over her chest, as if to protect her heart. “What are you proposing, exactly?” she asked.

  “You loved your brother. Surely you want to bring him back.” Cavanaugh’s appeal cut Jess to the quick, and the air in the room felt too thick, like she was breathing dust.

  “If it were possible to return,” asked Kipper’s brother, his voice a mere whisper, “Would you be willing? That’s all I’m asking. Would you consider piloting us to Earth so we can bring Cassondra home?”

  Jessamyn wanted to say yes. She wanted it. Wanted her brother. Pavel’s face, laughing, passed across her thoughts. Yes. She wanted him, too.

  But she couldn’t have either of them.

  “I appreciate the enormity of your loss and your grief,” she heard herself say, parroting the words others had offered, words that fell as flat and empty in this room as they had each time upon her ears. “I’m sorry I can’t help you.”

  Her soul seemed to curl in upon itself as she made the pronouncement, and she drew her arms more tightly about her chest.

  “I can’t,” she said.

  She was saying no to Ethan, no to Pavel, and it felt like the cold fingers of death rending her heart.

  “I can’t,” she repeated, a whisper now.

  Cavanaugh rose and withdrew without a word, Crusty following on his heels.

  The room lay in a silence dark and absolute as space. Jessamyn fought for each breath, pushed back against the black hole that was her loss. She should never have answered Crusty’s call.

  The gruff mechanic returned to the rations room and sat without speaking.

  “How could you?” she asked Crusty.

  “Thought he deserved to be heard,” replied Crusty. “Kipper’s ma’s worrying herself to death over the whole thing. Cavanaugh took me out to see her. Woman’s a shadow of her former self.”

  “We all knew the risks,” Jess said.

  But that was just another phrase useful for interviews and sound bites. It meant nothing. It was a lie. Her heart had been whole and unmarked the day she stepped aboard the Galleon bound for Earth. She’d known nothing of what she risked.

  Crusty kept silent.

  “Is it true what Cavanaugh said about the Galleon? Is she ready to fly?” asked Jessamyn.

  “She could be,” replied the mechanic. “In less than two days.”

  You are not asking these questions, Jess told herself.

  “What does she still need?” she asked.

  “Not much,” said Crusty. “Overhaul the air filter—that’s the biggest thing I got left. Saved it ‘til last. Planetary Agriculture interns’re having a field day with what’s growin’ inside.”

  After a minute’s silence passed, Crusty asked, “You thinkin’ about it?”

  Jess shook her head no. Nodded her head yes. Began to cry. Blinked the tears back.

  Crusty sighed. “Aw, kid. I know. I know.”

  Jessamyn choked out her next words. “Nothing’s right. Home’s not home. I want them back, Crusty. I miss … I miss …”

  She couldn’t say more and was content to let Crusty think she meant the three Mars Raiders. But in her mind, she saw her mother’s crumpled form, the emptiness of Ethan’s room, she saw Pavel’s farewell smile. All lost to her.

  And then a darker fear struck her.

  “What if Lucca finds her nephew and kills them all?”

  “Hold up a minute, kid,” said Crusty. “You’re just wasting fuel flappin’ around at that altitude.” He rubbed his gnarled hands back and forth along his work coveralls. “Now, the way I see it, that feller Wallace has enough connections to keep a whole army of Ethans and Pavels safe, even on Earth. I reckon I got to know him better than the rest of you, on account of staying with him when you were off in Budapest. He’s a smart man. And loyal. Plus he’s in real good with that family of his. Clan Wallace.”

  Jess looked up. “You think they’re okay, then?”

  “I do. If I was a betting man, I’d place water creds on it,” said Crusty. “You head back for Earth—now or in an annum—and get Clan Wallace on the comm and you’ll find out I was right.”

  Jess nodded. Her body felt tired. So tired. But at the same time, there was a certain clarity afforded by the lateness or earliness of the hour. Her mind felt crisp, like the air in the house when the heater malfunctioned. It wasn’t something you wanted to live with all the time, but the briskness rendered everything in sharp delineation.

  “Now, Harpreet,” continued Crusty, “She’s made of tough stone. Take more’n a few sandstorms to wear her down. Way I see it, Kipper’s the only wild card. She might not have an annum in her.”

  “She might be dead already,” said Jess.

  Crusty frowned and scratched the beard growing apologetically on his chin. “Cavanaugh don’t think so. Funny thing they do out in Squyres Station. They beacon all the kids—soon as they can walk. Now these beacons emit a certain signature so long as you’re alive. Once you’re dead, it changes to a different signature.”

  Jessamyn nodded. She’d heard of the practice, common in smaller communities, especially those where dust storms raged for months on end.

  “And here’s the funny bit,” said Crusty. “Back when we was still friendly with Earth, a couple folks from Mars got themselves new bodies and the beacons just up and quit inside the old body. Not the dead-person signal, not the live-person signal—nothin’.”

  “That’s weird,” said Jess.

  “Separatin’ a mind from a body’s weird, period,” said Crusty. “But the beacons don’t like it, apparently. I let Cavanaugh have a look at the ship’s records on account of he said the Galleon could recognize Kip’s beacon.”

  “And?” asked Jess. “Is she … alive?”

  Crusty shrugged. “According to the ship, she was still alive and in her own body the day we left Earth.”

  “Wow,” said Jess.

  “So you can see where her brother’s feelin’ a bit anxious. And of the three raiders, I got to admit, she’s the one I’m feelin’ most fretful about. Don’t know if she’s got what it takes … I don’t know, kid. So I said Cavanaugh could talk to you.”

  It was everything Jessamyn wanted—a compelling reason to flee Mars in defiance of MCC. To sit behind the controls of the Galleon once more, to take destiny into her own hands. She could do it. She could feel how right it would be, going back for her brother, seeing Pavel again, rescuing the other raiders. She could seize the opportunity.

  But at what cost?

  She’d be in trouble once she returned, but that was irrelevant—a little nothing in the face of such stakes. Jess was more afraid of causing harm to Mei Lo’s government, which she feared would in turn spell a slow death for Mars Colonial. Or what if her rescue attempt caught Lucca’s notice, somehow provoking an attack on Mars?

  The second fear—that Mars would be annihilated—would remain even if they waited an annum to attempt a rescue. That was a risk so long as Mars Colonial had no means of defending herself. But going now might speed up the process of getting those defenses in place. Then, even if some trade-crazed fool on Mars attracted Lucca’s attention, Mars would be safe.

  “Do you think that stealing the Galleon—” Jess broke off. It was a horrible act to contemplate, when she heard herself saying it aloud, but she pushed on. “Do you think it would hurt Mei Lo’s standing?”

  Crusty investigated his growing beard once again, sighing. At last he said, “I ain’t no politician, but I reckon it’d make her look weak to folks.”

  Jess collapsed her face into her hands, elbows supporting her
against the table. “That’s what I was afraid of.”

  “Don’t mean it’s more’n she can handle,” added Crusty. “I reckon folks as calls her weak are gonna have their words force-fed back to ‘em with a golden spoon.”

  Jessamyn wasn’t sure she could picture that clearly, but she understood. Mei Lo was strong enough to punch back if she had to.

  “Listen, kid. I know you’n’ the captain didn’t see eye-to-eye all the time, but I sure hate to think of her so bad injured she ain’t fit to re-body,” said Crusty, shaking his head.

  Jessamyn frowned. Could that have been why Kipper hadn’t been re-bodied? The doctors at New Kelen had said Harpreet wouldn’t be re-bodied because of her arthritis.

  “I figure that’s the only explanation makes sense of her not gettin’ re-bodied right off,” said Crusty. “Wallace told me they don’t wait around with young-bodies.”

  Jessamyn felt a rush of pity for her captain, for Kipper’s brother and family. On its heels followed her longing to see Ethan safe again. And then, quietly, the yearning for Pavel that never quite went away.

  Perhaps there were some decisions that could only be made in the heightened lucidity of that time tucked in between too late and too early.

  She knew what she would do.

  “Would you please get Cavanaugh Kipling back here?” she asked Crusty, her voice ringing clear and solid.

  “I left him waiting down in the hangar,” said Crusty, winking at Jess as he stood. From down the hall, he called back. “Oh, and I’ll have him bring up the two other fellers from Squyres Station so’s you can check ‘em over for your crew, Captain.”

  Jessamyn closed her eyes and inhaled slowly while Crusty disappeared.

  Cavanaugh, when he arrived a moment later, looked triumphant. He introduced two companions, “Mr. Jones,” and “Ms. Smith.”

  “I need to clarify something before I agree to work with you,” Jessamyn said. “In addition to being your pilot, I will also be your superior officer—”

  “The two of us are civilians,” complained Mr. Jones.