Defying Mars (Saving Mars Series-2)

by Cidney Swanson

  Somewhere upon that planet traced with green and gold, blue and white, her brother sheltered with Pavel.

  “Come on, then,” she shouted. “I’m here and I’m coming in fast!”

  34

  IT WAS IMPOSSIBLE

  Lucca Brezhnaya did not appreciate interruptions. Or being awoken in the middle of the night. Or unwelcome news.

  As Vladim, the bearer of an urgent piece of intelligence, was all too aware.

  Fortunately, the Chancellor was in Mexico City at present and could not assault him over a vid-channel. At least, he’d never heard of such an assault having occurred. Also, he knew that to withhold this information would result in something much worse than whatever would result from delivering it.

  “Madam Chancellor,” he said in greeting. He kept his voice soft in a way he imagined might be less offensive to one shaken from slumber by her butler. That had been fun, convincing the butler to wake the Chancellor.

  “Speak up,” said Lucca. “If it’s important enough to justify waking me, I’d better be able to hear it!”

  “It would appear your orders to monitor the skies for illegal traffic were well-advised,” replied Vladim.

  Lucca scowled. Of course her orders were well-advised. What sort of dolt was she speaking with? “What are you telling me? Has there been a breach of the three hundred kilometer ban? Is there a ship on its way to Mars?”

  “No, Madam Chancellor. It would appear a ship is coming our way from Mars.”

  A moment’s stunned silence.

  Then Lucca’s eyes flew wide. “From Mars?” This was impossible. Never, never, never, had she imagined anyone coming from the Martian colony. It was overwhelming news. Shocking news. It was impossible. “How many ships?”

  “A single vessel only.”

  That was something, at least. A ship on its own was less likely to wage war. But it could still do significant damage, she had no doubt. “What is its heading?”

  “Well …” Vladim hesitated. “It is headed to Earth. We will not know where on Earth until the ship makes its final descent or settles into orbit.”

  Lucca had already flown from her bed and was halfway dressed as she gave her orders. “I want excessive force flying cover over the capitol at once.” She heard the order delivered. “What is the soonest this ship could touch down based on present trajectory?”

  “We have less than an hour, Madam Chancellor.”

  She pulled on a pair of heeled boots. “What location would their current path indicate?” She was certain it would be Budapest. Perhaps it was fortunate her campaigning had called her away to Mexico City.

  “North America, the far west, probably above the 45th parallel,” replied Vladim.

  North America? That was … unexpected. That could hardly be the ship’s true destination.

  “Are special ops airborne yet?” asked Lucca.

  There was a brief pause, murmurs Lucca couldn’t make out.

  “Yes, Madam Chancellor. They will begin flying cover patterns momentarily.”

  “What do we have in the Pacific, just in case?” Lucca asked.

  “There’s a regular hoverbase in Seattle,” said Vladim. “Or for special ops, there’s Pearl Harbor.”

  Lucca frowned. “Ready the hovercraft, but I want special forces from Pearl Harbor as well. Excessive force. Do I make myself clear?”

  “Yes, Madam Chancellor. Right away, Madam Chancellor.”

  She heard the barked commands in the background this time.

  “I want the Martian ship shot down,” she continued. “I want any Martians shot on sight. Anyone who appears to be expecting them or offering assistance, I want kept alive. Is that clear?”

  “Aye-aye, Madam Chancellor.”

  “Has the Viceroy been told of this situation?” asked Lucca.

  “No, Madam Chancellor. We knew you would wish to be informed first.”

  She smiled. Technically the Viceroy was her superior, but she’d always run the show. In any case, the Viceroy’s influence had been slipping, slipping, slipping of late. Time on the campaign trail had made that evident. Perhaps it was time for her to take the reins of power in name as well as in fact. She’d waited long enough, finding it more convenient to run things behind the scenes as the second-in-command. But perhaps it was time. Perhaps.

  “This information is to be kept classified for the present,” said Lucca.

  Her all-hours chauffeur was drinking kávé and watching a vid feed.

  “Charles, the closest military base at once,” she called.

  How could it have happened like this? Lucca had been wrong. Very wrong. She’d been so certain the activity regarding Mars had been initiated by her own citizenry. To find out Martians were coming here? It was shocking. Would they tell Earth’s citizens what they knew about irregularities in the Re-body Program? That would require an enormous media-spin on her part. But, no, Lucca decided. The Martians must have kept silent on that count thus far. Rumors would be spreading like wildfire if the colonists had divulged her secret.

  She pounded a fist against the side of her vehicle.

  “Madam Chancellor?” asked her driver.

  “Nothing, Charles,” she said. It was nothing to her, surely. A single ship. A laughable threat. She would be laughing as soon as the vessel attempted to make land. The Martians would find Earth prepared, armed, and deadly.

  35

  NO CLAIM

  The desert sunrise was still hours away when Ethan roused Pavel, Harpreet, Kazuko, and Wallace with an unusual level of agitation in his voice.

  Pavel stumbled out into their common room, rubbing sleep from his eyes. Wallace complained that he couldn’t be expected to handle any bad news without a cup of coffee inside him.

  “You will wish to hear this news,” said Ethan. “I have located pulses from several wafers of Marsian origin headed for Earth.”

  “What?” demanded Pavel, snapping to full alertness. “That’s impossible. How did you do that?”

  “I placed a program into play two months ago, set to search daily,” explained Ethan, “Which means the ship carrying these computational systems has come into range within the past twenty-four hours.”

  “Gracious,” murmured Harpreet. “And you’re certain the signal isn’t coming from something Kipper might have cobbled together?”

  Ethan shook his head. “Besides the fact that she remains in a coma, I am reading several distinct instances of signals originating from a single moving location. It can only be a Marsian ship.”

  “A Marsian ship?” asked Pavel. “From, like, Mars?”

  Ethan nodded. “I do not foresee how it could be anything other than the Red Galleon.”

  “They would’ve had to drop the rations and head straight out again,” said Harpreet, her voice a whisper.

  “I have accessed Terran astronomical facilities to determine if there is a vessel approaching Earth from the correct direction,” said Ethan. “I have found one of size and trajectory consistent with the Galleon en route from Mars. Further, the duration of days required for a Mars-to-Earth flight at this time would be satisfied if the Galleon had remained upon Mars five days prior to her re-launch.”

  “Time to scrub her fit for a return,” murmured Harpreet.

  “Can we contact the ship?” asked Pavel.

  “The first of the communication dishes is operational. It could be used for this purpose,” said Ethan.

  “If it is the Galleon, we must proceed cautiously,” said Brian Wallace. “My clan has never made the attempt to communicate until a Mars ship was within Earth’s atmosphere.”

  “We’ve got to try,” said Pavel. He swallowed against the tightening in his throat.

  Could Jessamyn be on that ship?

  ~ ~ ~

  With only hours remaining before her final EDL, Jessamyn made the rounds, checking that the ship’s surfaces were as clean as she could make them, that the general appearance of the Galleon was tidy and ship-shape. She gathered her sli
ng-pack from where it rested in the aft quarters and carried it with her before deciding it would annoy her on the bridge. She left the pack upon the rations table where she could pick it up on her way off the ship.

  A rush of adrenaline surged through her as she imagined taking those first steps once more under the pull of Earth’s heavier gravity.

  “Assuming I don’t die first,” she said aloud. But she felt optimistic.

  After two months with minimal opportunities for anything that could be called piloting, Jessamyn felt giddy sitting at the helm in a meaningful capacity. Having checked her calculations over and over, she made a final burn in preparation to enter Earth’s atmosphere.

  Besides her lack of fuel for braking, only one thing troubled her. During takeoff and landing, she was supposed to wear her partial-pressure breathing suit. Although it came with a helmet, the suit was designed to draw the air it regulated from the ship’s cabin. Jess was going to face this landing without the protection the suit offered for intense g’s. She’d experienced sixteen Earth g’s once back home and had survived to tell the tale, but she knew she might be facing much worse on this EDL. Well, she thought, humans had survived g’s nearly triple that. And some of them didn’t even go blind.

  “What do you think my chances are, huh?” she asked the ship.

  When an actual voice responded over her comm the next moment, Jess’s first thought was that she had finally lost her mind.

  ~ ~ ~

  Ethan, Pavel, and Brian Wallace were aboard the dirt-brown ship on an intercept course Ethan had plotted with the Galleon. Harpreet insisted upon remaining with the satellite project should none of them return from their intended rendezvous. Pavel had pointed out that no one aboard the Red Galleon would recognize Ethan’s new altered voice. With half a desperate dream of speaking to the girl with red hair, he’d volunteered to be the one to initiate contact with the Marsian crew aboard the ship.

  “Red Galleon, this is a friendly hail. Do you receive?”

  The call was met with extended silence. Pavel’s shoulders slumped forward and his eyes flickered briefly to Ethan. “Keep flying an intercept course based on their trajectory, then?” Pavel asked.

  “Aye, lad,” replied Brian Wallace.

  “We have no other recourse,” agreed Ethan.

  And then the response came.

  “Pavel? Is that … you?”

  Impossibly, wondrously, it was Jessamyn’s voice.

  Pavel had heard an expression regarding the leaping of hearts into throats. He had assumed it wasn’t literal. This changed his mind.

  “Jessamyn!” He couldn’t say anything more. His throat was too full. Even when he could speak, full sentences eluded him. “How?”

  There was a moment’s silence followed by the last sound Pavel expected—Jessamyn’s throaty laughter bubbling across the airwaves.

  “Trust me, you don’t want to know how,” she said. “Is Ethan … okay?”

  Pavel heard the anguish in the question, guessed at what it cost to ask.

  “Yes,” he said immediately. “He’s fine. And you’re wrong—I want to know everything,” he said, his voice functioning properly again. “Are all of you okay?”

  He heard an answering sigh.

  “It’s just me,” said Jess. “And I’m okay. Well, at the moment. Please—can I talk to my brother?”

  Pavel turned to Ethan, gesturing to him to speak, speak.

  “Jessamyn,” said Ethan.

  Again, the sound of her laughter.

  “What, Eth? This doesn’t merit more than just my name?”

  Not waiting for his response, she continued. “Listen, I don’t have much time. I’m hitting the atmosphere in less than an hour and it might not be pretty.”

  Hastily, she told Pavel and Ethan of her circumstances and her planned EDL.

  “Your plan is an excellent one considering the limitations by which you are constrained,” said Ethan, when she’d finished.

  Pavel heard Jess grunt a small laugh.

  “We have obtained a swift vessel,” continued Ethan. “We are flying on an intercept course to you even now.”

  “I’m so glad,” she said. “You have no idea how glad I am to hear that. Listen, there’s something else. In case I don’t make it. I’m sending you a message … using the same method you employed, Eth. You can translate without your wafer, right?”

  “I can,” replied Ethan.

  “Okay,” said Jess. “It’s really important information. If anything should happen to me, you need to have it. Only Mei Lo knows back home, okay?”

  “Very well,” replied her brother.

  “Your voice sounds different, but I can tell you haven’t changed a bit, Eth,” said Jess.

  “I have adapted,” replied her brother.

  “I can’t tell you how good it is to hear your voice, Jessamyn,” said Pavel. Something funny was happening again between his heart and his throat.

  “You, too,” she said.

  “I wanted to call you, or write you, or send smoke signals,” said Pavel. “Something.”

  “I wrote you letters,” said Jess.

  “You did?”

  “Yup. Just couldn’t send them.”

  Pavel cleared his throat, blinked at a prickly feeling behind his eyes. “Would you … would you send them now?” he asked. “Just in case?”

  There were several seconds of silence between the ships.

  “Just in case,” she said. “I’ll send them. But you’re not allowed to read them unless … unless … If I don’t make it, you can read them.”

  Pavel heard a hitch in her voice that scraped at his soul.

  “You’re going to be fine,” he said. “Right, Eth? Your sister’s got this thing figured out.”

  “The possibility of her successful completion of a safe landing,” replied Ethan, “If expressed in percentages, would be—”

  “Don’t want to know,” said Jess, interrupting him. “Listen, Eth, I love you, okay? No matter what happens, don’t forget that.”

  “I am unlikely to forget,” he said. A moment passed and he added, “I love you, too, Jessie.”

  Pavel wanted to repeat Ethan’s I love you, but the words stuck in his mouth, burning white-hot upon his tongue, like a star in miniature. He had no claim on this girl from Mars, and saying he loved her at a time like this would be selfish.

  “Listen, guys,” said Jess. “I’ve got to land this thing. I’ll leave the comm open, but you’ll probably lose me once things heat up.”

  “We’ll find you, Jess,” said Pavel. “We’ll find you.”

  ~ ~ ~

  Jessamyn sat in the pilot’s hot seat.

  Pavel had Ethan; Ethan was okay.

  She felt a warmth in her belly that threatened to draw tears.

  No you don’t, she warned herself. She was going to have enough trouble seeing straight without throwing tears into the mix. She practiced a couple of abdominal clenches, remembering how her peripheral vision had hazed over the last time she’d felt high g’s. No crying, she ordered herself again.

  Earth dominated her view screen, chill and blue as she remembered it. To one side of the Pacific Ocean she identified an edge of Asia; to the other she saw her own destination—a small deserted corner of the North American continental mass. The ship approached atmospheric entry within a kilometer of Jessamyn’s chosen point. She smiled to herself, her fingers itching to work the nav-screen once more.

  As she descended into the atmosphere, the Galleon’s speed would depend upon the combination of two forces acting upon the ship. First, there would be Earth’s massive gravity, pulling upon the craft, inviting acceleration. But just as important would be the force of atmospheric drag, slowing her down. The Galleon was constructed with her center of mass in a different location than the center of pressure, which would give the ship a small amount of lift as she flared Earthward. Jessamyn was grateful for this. Without the slight lift, the g’s would be even higher.

  With
her point of entry rapidly approaching, Jess’s hands hovered over her instrument panel. She was about to initiate the burn that would nudge the Galleon into a perfectly angled descent—neither too shallow nor too straight a shot—when flashing red lights lit up the comm screen at her brother’s station.

  “Hermes!” she swore, ignoring the distraction.

  “Sorry, Jess, but this is important,” said Pavel’s voice. “Ethan says my aunt has just launched an entire fleet of ships and they’re heading your way.”

  In the moment it took to listen, she lost her perfectly angled entry.

  “Shizer!” she shouted.

  She had to enter upon a different trajectory now. Cursing, she hammered in a series of calculations.

  “Uh, Jessamyn?” asked Pavel’s voice.

  “Can’t talk,” she screamed at the communications array. “This is going to be a very rough landing.” Hastily, she determined a new angle of descent. This angle was steeper than her desired one, but it would only get worse if she hesitated.

  “Ares and Aphrodite,” she murmured, “This is going to be one hot ride!”

  “Jess!”

  She registered his anguish, but she could spare no tender words.

  “We talk if I land this thing!” she shouted. This was no time for sentiment. She settled into the cool and calm space in her head where she became one with her ship. She was tough as Mars ice. And just as cold, cold, cold. This was no time for distraction.

  “Galleon out!” She cut the comm.

  ~ ~ ~

  “Ethan,” said Pavel, trying to steady his voice, “Tell me you know where she’s coming in.”

  Ethan’s hands flew across his holoscreen. “I have her new touchdown coordinates. I have a lock on her craft.” He frowned. “She is slowing insufficiently.”

  “She has no fuel,” muttered Pavel. “No air. She’s not even wearing a g-suit, for the love of—”

  “Calm yourself,” Ethan said, interrupting him. “My sister has been a remarkable pilot all her life. If the Galleon can be landed safely under these conditions, Jessamyn will do it.”