Mars Rising (Saving Mars Series 6)

by Cidney Swanson

  The Chancellor drew her brows together, thoughtful. “I wasn’t planning to share this, but it seems like the right time.” She paused for several seconds. “Two years earlier, private investors launched a similar mission. Martian tellurium was located, mined, and sent back to Earth. Unfortunately, the vessel did not manage a successful re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere and the tellurium was lost to us.”

  “Lost? Did it … burn up?”

  “No, no,” said the Chancellor. “It lies at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean at a depth which, sadly, precludes recovery. This current mission will, I trust, fare better. We’ve learned from our mistakes; they won’t be duplicated.”

  “I’m sorry, Madam Chancellor, but it appears a report has just reached us of explosions at orbital launch facilities in northern Europe and northern Africa. An organization calling itself ‘Earth First’ is taking credit for the destruction of several space-capable vehicles.”

  “Not again,” murmured the Chancellor. Closing her eyes, she pinched the bridge of her nose between her thumb and forefinger.

  “Madam Chancellor? Is this organization familiar to you?”

  The Chancellor drew a deep breath as if she was making the effort to compose herself.

  “Earth First believes we ought to contain on Earth our efforts to better life on Earth. They disapprove of efforts to reach out beyond our planet.” She turned to the cameras. “My government will not tolerate such acts of terrorism. And I, for one, will not be cowed by these attempts to keep Terrans from reaching into the solar system if that is what it takes to maintain life on Earth.”

  She returned her gaze to the man interviewing her. “I regret that I must depart immediately, in light of the current terrorist strike.”

  “Madam Chancellor, it has been a privilege to have you here with us today. It sounds like your day will be a full one. Thanks again for joining us.”

  “I’m honored to serve my people in any way possible,” said the Chancellor, dipping her neck, swan-like.

  Let the girl respond to that.

  The Martian had no idea who she was dealing with.

  ~ ~ ~

  “I think I’m going to be sick,” murmured Jess as the group watched the Chancellor’s broadcast.

  Pavel paced, too angry to speak.

  Jessamyn sighed. “So, that’s what, three major lies in one four-minute interview?”

  “At a minimum,” said Zussman.

  “I believe we must assume the Chancellor was behind the bombings,” said Ethan. “The characteristics of the attack match those of her other supposed ‘inciter’ attacks.”

  “So now she’s blowing up ships?” asked Jess. “Why? Is she worried I’ll steal one? I’m not that stupid.”

  “The Chancellor,” said her brother, “is well-aware you would not attempt to make a Mars crossing in any of the vessels she destroyed. To do so would be the act of a pilot who knew nothing of interplanetary travel.”

  Mr. Zussman cleared his throat. “It is more likely she wishes to place herself in the public eye as a proponent of space exploration. By creating a group opposed to space travel, she can draw the approval of those afflicted with, ah, Mars-fever.”

  “So we’re back to where we were before I announced her plans to attack Mars,” said Jessamyn.

  “We are in a worse position, properly speaking,” said Ethan.

  “I’ll do an interview,” said Jess. “I’ll go to that broadcast feed—World whatsit—and do the interview they’ve been asking for.”

  “That is inadvisable,” said her brother. “Your appearance in a location known to the Chancellor would surely result in an unfortunate accident.”

  “I’m not an idiot,” said Jess. “We set it up remotely. What’s the planetary feed that’s been asking for interviews?”

  “Worldwide Coverage Network, miss,” replied Zussman.

  “Right. Tell them I’m ready. No questions off limits. No compensation.” Crossing her arms, she turned to her brother. “And no ordering me not to.”

  ~ ~ ~

  By the time Ethan had established safely encrypted contact with the Worldwide Coverage Network, two other major feeds indicated an interest in remotely interviewing the Martian Jessamyn Jaarda.

  “Marsians,” fumed Jessamyn. “It’s not like it’s hard to pronounce, for the love of mittens.”

  “Easy to pronounce, hard to remember,” said Mr. Zussman. “Another cup of tea for miss’s nerves, perhaps?”

  Jessamyn swallowed the growl in her throat. Zussman’s tisanes were remarkably calming. Not as tasty as the straight black stuff, but she didn’t need a stimulant at the moment. Her interview with WCN was scheduled to begin in twenty minutes. She glanced at her chronometer.

  Make that eighteen minutes.

  “What if I can’t convince people?” she said, her voice lowered so only Pavel would hear.

  He reached across the table and took her hand. His grip was firm and warm. At least one of them was adjusting well to Earth-g.

  “You’ll do fine,” said Pavel.

  “It’s live,” said Jessamyn. “I could totally blow it. I’m not exactly known for keeping my feelings inside. What if they call me Martian the whole time?”

  “Then you ask them how they’d like it if you called them Earthlings.”

  “’Earthlings’ sounds like a toy for toddlers.”

  “Exactly. Call the interviewer Earthling a few times and I guarantee she’ll start getting Marsian right.”

  Half a smile tugged at one side of Jessamyn’s face.

  “Come on,” said Pavel. “Let’s review the main points we want to get across.”

  Jessamyn nodded. She’d memorized them until she could mutter them in her sleep, but it would give her something to do, at least.

  Once it began, the interview rushed along without any awkwardness or questions Jess didn’t know how to answer. The woman conducting the interview seemed remarkably sympathetic to Jessamyn’s claims, and Jess found herself relaxing and bringing up embarrassing moments from her days at the Academy.

  The interviewer was especially interested in Mars’s planetary dog.

  “I love the name without even knowing what it stands for,” said the WCN spokeswoman. “What, exactly, is a ‘planetary dog’?”

  “Well,” said Jess, “we don’t have a ton of extra resources on Mars, so after the war ended, the Mars Mandate was passed and it specified, among other things, that species of animals should be allowed to die off without reproducing.”

  The woman gasped. “Whole species? Extinct?”

  “We have the cryos—the cryogenically preserved embryos—of several species. One day, MCC hopes to reintroduce them. But for now, we have just one animal: the planetary dog.”

  The interviewer turned to the camera. “One dog. One. Amazing.”

  “You can visit the planetary dog on your birthday. I mean, kids do. Not adults.”

  “Fascinating. You’ve brought us right to another topic of interest. What, exactly, is the difference between a child and an adult on Mars? We understand you don’t have a Rebody Program, and even your years are different than ours here on Earth. How do you know when a child passes into adulthood?”

  Jess grinned. “Technically, you’d hit your tenth annum—Mars’s tenth pass around Sol since your birth. But practically speaking, no one treats you like a real adult until you get your First Wrinkle.”

  “Did you just say, first … wrinkle?”

  Jess nodded and touched her forehead. “Mine’s gotten harder to see, living in the humidity here on Earth. But on Mars, this little wrinkle gets me all kinds of respect.” She grinned proudly.

  The broadcast spokeswoman shook her head. “Talk about living on different planets. I pay a fortune to keep my creases and crows feet at bay! Well, we just have time for one final question. Tell us, Jessamyn: if the Mars colony is real, why hasn’t anyone contacted us from Mars since your little ‘coming out’?”

  Jess thought quickly and decided
to answer truthfully. “MCC doesn’t know I’ve made the announcement. We only get the chance to talk to them once a month, so I’ll be telling them soon, but as of right now, they’re still functioning under the policy of the No Contact Accords.”

  The interviewer turned to the camera once more. “And there you have it, the girl who broke the No Contact Accords and gave a planet its voice.” She smiled soberly. “Until next time, I’m Beryl Montoya-Papadopoulos with WCN. Good night, everyone.”

  “Whew!” said Jessamyn, letting out an enormous sigh. “That wasn’t so bad after all.” But when she looked to Pavel for confirmation she’d done okay, she saw a deep frown on his face.

  “What?” she demanded. “What’s wrong?”

  “You mentioned the Moon,” said Pavel.

  “I did not,” snapped Jess. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “You inferred a lunar cycle when you said we were only able to contact MCC once per month,” said Ethan. “Someone will figure out very soon, if they have not already, that we run our comms off the lunar deep space relay.”

  Jessamyn sucked in a rapid breath and covered her mouth. “Oh, no!” she whispered. “Yevgeny!”

  24

  THE MARSIAN WAY

  “Sabotage,” said Mei Lo to the gathered quorum of MCC. “By someone whose hatred and spite I regrettably underestimated.” She raised a pocket wafer. “This twenty-eight page manifesto of the late Archibald Kipling is available for those of you who wish to peruse it. I don’t recommend spending any time on it, however. The writing, I am told by psychiatrists of New Houston General Hospital, indicates a mind diseased with psychoses.”

  She stared out across the pale visages facing her. “Where do we go from here?”

  The room was as silent as a ten millibar atmosphere.

  The Secretary took a deep breath. “I will now outline a proposal for our next actions. Actions which I believe offer the best possible hope for the preservation of the greatest number of lives on Mars. As you know, eighty-five percent of our flight-capable military vessels were destroyed in the multiple blasts that leveled MCAB. The remaining vessels were in flight or grounded elsewhere on the planet. The M-class ship upon which many of you placed high hopes was utterly destroyed.”

  A quiet sigh passed through the room, heavy, melancholic.

  “We have received offers of assistance from private individuals possessing space-capable vessels, but it is the decided opinion of our brightest military minds that these few ships, however bravely captained, cannot adequately protect our world.

  “We have underground shelters which can house upwards of two thousand seven hundred souls, but such a measure would provide them with protection for half an annum at best. At the end of such time, our people would be at the mercy of Terrans, who, it seems, are bent upon domination of our planet.

  “This is grave news, indeed.” The Secretary reached for Rover, seated at her side, and gave him a quick pat on the head. “Go,” she murmured. “Comfort.” It was a command she’d taught him, usually reserved for hospital visits, to move from person to person among the grief-stricken. Rover ambled among the assembly. Mei Lo heard a few sniffles, but she made a point of not gazing at those who wasted water today.

  “I have a proposal which I brought before this august body one other time. However, this time, I will argue for it more strongly than I did before.

  “Captain Cassondra Kipling, before her death, recommended that the citizens of Earth be informed as to our existence. As you know, most believe that our colony died out. The Terran government has not sought to correct this view.

  “However, Kipper’s months of experience upon Earth led her to believe that, while an appeal to the Terran government would prove futile, an appeal to the ordinary citizens of Earth would create sympathy for our plight. She believed that Terrans would call for the overthrow of the Chancellor responsible for sending weapons of mass destruction to end life on Mars. She believed this was our only true hope of surviving: to bring down from power the woman who has sought our destruction.”

  Mei Lo let her words sink in for half a minute.

  “I believe the time has come to act according to Kipper’s recommendations. She died in order to ensure others would survive and act upon these recommendations. However, the silence from our Raiders on Earth leads me to believe they may have perished, unable to carry out her final orders.

  “It falls to us to decide: do we trust Cassondra Kipling, one of MCAB’s brightest and best minds? I, for one, would trust her with my life. And not mine alone, but I would trust her with all our lives. If Kipper believed this was the way forward in these dark days, then I am willing to follow her lead.

  “In fact, that is exactly what I will be doing first thing tomorrow morning. You have until then to call for a vote of no confidence in my leadership, in which case I will step down uncontested, or you can choose to stand with me. In my opinion, we have no alternatives remaining. We speak out or we perish.”

  The Secretary stepped down from the podium and off the raised dais. She’d had her say. Let the people of Mars decide now. It was the Marsian way.

  25

  GET ON THAT SHIP

  Arturo Yilmaz signed on to the Mars mission for his daughter’s sake. Up until her tenth year, there had been no sign of anything abnormal. When she turned twelve, she began to complain of headaches and blurred vision. Her complaints disappeared after a few months. Sabiha loved spending time with her friends, a privilege which was curtailed if she mentioned the headaches. It wasn’t until her fifteenth year that her parents became aware of how truly ill their daughter was.

  “Inoperable,” said the surgeons.

  “Incurable,” said the oncologists.

  “She just needs to make it to her eighteenth birthday,” said family friends, consoling.

  She needed to make it to her re-body, in other words. Allowances were in place for circumstances like Sabiha’s where a first-body could not be entered into the general distribution pool, and the Yilmaz family applied for all of them.

  The family relocated to Budapest, where they could better monitor their daughter’s applications and her health. Arturo found work in a government office. His ability to untangle communications problems allowed him to advance swiftly, and in less than a year, he was promoted to join Benjamin Wu’s team, attempting to wrest control of the Mars Containment Satellites prior to their obliteration. When several members of the team were likewise obliterated, Arturo was not one of them.

  The Chancellor approached him personally after the unfortunate incident with the satellites. Told him she had a special job for him. Told him allowances might be made for his daughter’s condition if he agreed to take the assignment.

  Convincing his wife that he should take the job had been simple.

  “The Chancellor promises Sabiha will receive a new body as soon as hers….” He was unable to complete the sentence. He tried again. “Sabiha will receive the best possible medical care. Should she not make it to her eighteenth birthday, a transfer will be arranged early, and she will not be docked re-body credits for the state of her current body.”

  Arturo’s wife nodded. “Get it in writing. Get it notarized. And get on that ship to Mars.”

  Although Arturo Yilmaz had not been authorized to reveal to anyone that his next assignment would take him as far away as Mars, he and his wife had no secrets between them. When he said farewell, he knew it was entirely possible he would never return. Arturo accepted this. It gave Sabiha the best chance possible.

  The mission assignment given Arturo by the Chancellor was a straightforward one: prevent any messages or comms other than those originating from the Chancellor herself from reaching the Mars-Class vessels during the voyage to the red planet.

  Arturo assented. After all, preventing the reception of unwanted messages was a simple task. And if the propriety of such orders troubled his conscience, he had only to consider Sabiha, laboring for each breath. Arturo had not mentioned to his
wife that Lucca Brezhnaya had made it clear additional consequences would befall Sabiha should Arturo disobey. He kept silent on that point because he had no intention of disobeying the Chancellor’s orders. The stakes were too high.

  26

  HONORABLE INDIVIDUAL

  Yevgeny read the comm from his sister a third time. To his great disappointment, it didn’t sound any different from his two prior perusals. Sister wanted to know if he could detect any transmissions from the deep space dish on Tranquility Base on certain dates.

  The Ghost sighed heavily. The dates in question, were, of course, dates on which he knew transmissions were sent to Mars. He felt a bit offended that Sister hadn’t asked him outright whether any messages had been sent to the red planet, but lies and subterfuge had always been her preference. After nearly three centuries, it was probably too late for her to change.

  Lies.

  Hmm. He had not considered lying to Sister. So far he had found himself vacillating between telling Sister the truth or not answering Sister’s comm at all. On the whole, he was not in favor of utter silence. Such a silence might lead Sister to send troops up to Tranquility Base.

  But what if he were to lie to her? To tell her he could detect no transmissions?

  Unlike Sister, the Ghost had not been in the habit of lying. The very thought made something shift uncomfortably in his stomach. Yevgeny had turned over a new leaf when he’d decided to act against Sister. It seemed a bit of a step backward to lie in order to do what was right.

  Yevgeny turned from her comm to a feed he’d discovered recently. Ethics in Tough Times, it was called. A quick search combining “lying” and “when is it okay?” brought several returns and Yevgeny read eagerly.

  Let us suppose an honorable man or woman has been approached, in the early twenty-second century, by Unified World Taskforce of Soldiers International. The UWTSI’s ask the honorable person, “Do you have any re-body sympathizers in your household?”

  Now, let us suppose the answer, properly, is, “Yes, I do have re-body sympathizers in my home. In fact, I’m hiding three in my attic and a fourth in my basement.”