Mars Heat (Mars Adventure Romance Series (MARS) Book 3)

by Jennifer Willis

  Trevor liked having company over, even astronaut refugees.

  After the first couple of hours of everyone peeling off their pressure suits and taking shifts in the showers—and with the colonists trying to accommodate the UNSC guests with fresh towels and jumpsuits—things had quieted down inside Dorito Village.

  As was becoming his custom, Trevor went right to work in the kitchen. He filled thermoses with spiced hot chocolate and set out hot water and supplies for making tea and coffee. He produced a dozen of the modified eclairs he’d invented with the food printer in the Mars Ho Candidate Habitat.

  His rationing plan was taking a hit, but he would find a way to tighten up the food budget later.

  Grigori even set his tins of Vienna sausages on the makeshift buffet table, sacrificing his contraband for the consolation of others. He’d also dumped out a bag of snack-size granola and fruit pouches, scavenged from Progress Base during the evacuation.

  And April helped Trevor lay out a spread of chewy pseudo-bagels, faux-lox, and other imitation foods he thought would offer comfort to the recently inconvenienced colonists and their guests.

  Things were still difficult with April, but Trevor appreciated that she was trying to build a friendship with him.

  Now it was late night on Mars, and everyone was lounging about the Ares City rec room—quite a bit larger than the UNSC’s space, and more current on entertainment technology. But there wasn’t enough seating for everyone. Guillermo, Leah, and April sat on the floor.

  Trevor noted the satisfied sounds of munching and drinking that filled the room as the group squabbled over what movie to stream. Everyone had already seen the latest blockbusters—SuperFish, Enterprise 23, The Halls of Babylon, and Eureka Jones—that had come through on the last data blast from Earth. Now the assembly was divided into three camps: those pushing another round of video games, a group pulling for a marathon of old episodes of RuPaul’s Drag Race, and a smaller contingent (just April) calling for “random play” to let the media center to choose for them.

  Trevor abstained. He sat to one side of the room and sipped a cup of hot chocolate. He was too full from tastings in the kitchen to eat anything else.

  “Why don’t we check the news,” Hogan suggested through a mouthful of fake salmon. “While we’re sorting out the entertainment.”

  She’d been avoiding making eye contact with him. How badly had Trevor botched it with the dancing?

  “Sounds like a fine idea.” Mark grabbed the remote control and navigated through a series of menus on the screen that filled nearly an entire wall of the rec room. Any breaking news was nearly a day old at this point, but it was still comforting at this early stage to keep abreast of what was going on back home.

  No, this is home now. Trevor wondered how long it would take for that reality to truly sink in. And how much longer it would be before his attachments to Earth grew cold enough that these news dumps became more a thing of passing curiosity rather than a lifeline.

  The first slew of headlines on the wide screen sucked all the air out of the room.

  MARS COLONY FUTURE IN JEOPARDY IN AFTERMATH OF MARS HO FIASCO (USA News Now)

  RED PLANET ROULETTE? (Dallas Morning Star)

  MARS COLONY PROGRAM “RECONSIDERING, RECONFIGURING” GOING FORWARD; TIMELINE AND SCOPE NOW UNCERTAIN (London Herald)

  WHAT FATE ARES CITY? WHAT HAPPENS TO MARS HOMESTEADERS NOW? (Singapore Pulse News)

  ALL ALONE AND FAR AWAY. ARES CITY AWAITS ITS FATE (Sydney Times Register)

  “Well, this isn’t exactly news.” Mark’s tone was light as he headed toward the beverage station and poured himself a cup of coffee. “This is all sensationalism. Until we receive official notification from the Mars Colony Program, we’re better off treating these stories as conjecture.”

  “Uh, yeah, about that?” Trent had taken over the remote and navigated to a video from the MCP head, Helmut Brandon. “I think we might be getting an answer now.”

  “Greetings, residents of Ares City,” Brandon began in his lightly accented English. None of the colonists had met this new Director-General of the Mars Colony Program. He’d taken over from his disgraced predecessor after Red Wing 1’s departure.

  The United Nations logo loomed on the wall behind his desk as Brandon straightened his jacket and looked directly into the camera. “I know you have all been wondering about the immediate future of the Mars Colony Program, and that you have likely been frustrated about being kept in the dark for so long.”

  “This guy is a genius. What was your first clue?” Leah grumbled from her place on the floor. Trent chuckled at her comment, but he was the only one.

  On the screen, Brandon cleared his throat. “We don’t as yet have full details to share with you, but as reports are beginning to appear in the media, speculating sometimes rather wildly about what may or may not be happening within the program, I felt it my duty to personally reach out to you to reassure you that you have not been abandoned, and that you are not being ignored. Supply runs will continue to Ares City on schedule. Those deliveries will also include additional modules for expanding your habitat.”

  Brandon paused, and Trevor sat up straight in his chair. The bad news was about to be delivered.

  “Unfortunately . . .”

  A collective groan filled the room, punctuated by a call from Hogan to “let the man finish,” even though they were watching a recording.

  “. . . There will be a necessary delay in the next colonial team to be sent to Mars,” Brandon continued. “My office has taken back control of the candidate selection process, something that, as you know all too well, got dramatically out of hand, to potentially even dangerous and disastrous result, in the hands of DayLight Syndicate. That was a mistake of the highest order . . .”

  Brandon’s mouth snapped shut and he grimaced, seeming to remember his audience of colonists who sat watching, more than 278 million kilometers removed from Brandon and his proposed program changes and safeguards. Trevor had looked up the current Mars to Earth distance while waiting for the shower.

  “I assure you that no future colony flight will leave Earth without a medical doctor aboard, or without other essential skills among the passengers. The Mars Colony Program is instituting rather rigorous criteria for the selection of new Mars colony candidates.”

  Brandon’s face brightened into a smile that was almost relaxed. “We’ll be sending you the right people with the right skills that Ares City will need to not just survive but thrive on Mars.” He clasped his hands together on the desk. “In the meantime, know that supplies are being readied and will soon be on the way while we examine available options on how best to serve and support your particular colony group.”

  The screen went dark.

  “While we examine available options to serve and support your colony group?” Trent blurted. “What’s that even supposed to mean?”

  He got up and marched over to the buffet table, where he loaded a plate with two eclairs, half a bagel, and all the lox and peanut butter he could get to fit.

  A quick glance at Hogan’s face gave Trevor the feeling she knew what the MCP Director-General’s remarks had meant, and that she was keeping it to herself.

  But Melissa wasn’t shy. “It means we’re going to die here.”

  Trevor kept his face and voice cool. “Naturally, given that we’ve committed to living out the rest of our days on this planet.”

  He’d given her an easy out, but she refused to take it.

  “That’s not what I mean!” Melissa jumped up and started pacing around the room. Anyone could see her anxiety had been building for days and weeks—months, when Trevor considered the flight to Mars.

  With a grunt of resignation, Guillermo followed her and tried to steer her back to her seat. But she kept pushing him away.

  “Give her some space,” Grigori suggested, but Melissa shot him a questioning look and then sank to the floor in a puddle of tears.

  “I’m sorry!” Melissa cover
ed her hands with her face and again shoved Guillermo away as he crouched down next to her. “I’ve made a complete mess of everything. I don’t know why you all put up with me. I’m a total screw-up. I shouldn’t even be here.”

  Trevor scanned the other faces in the room. Melissa wasn’t anyone’s favorite colonist, probably not even Guillermo’s, and Trevor felt a pang of remorse that no one immediately rose to defend her against her own accusations.

  After a long, awkward moment, Leah scooted over to sit beside Melissa.

  “Hey, now. We’re all stressed out.” Leah rubbed Melissa’s back in slow, soothing circles. “Not just about what that nitwit just said on the screen, but with all the hot action over at Progress Base. And just being on Mars. Getting used to everything.”

  Melissa sobbed for another minute or two. When she looked up, her gaze fell on Grigori. “I’m really, really sorry.”

  That got Trevor’s attention—and Hogan’s, too. She glanced his way for a second, then rose from her chair and faced her second-in-command.

  “I don’t really want to ask,” she said. “But I’m going to have to insist upon it.”

  Grigori looked at Melissa, and then faced his commander. Before he could speak, another face appeared on the large screen—a live connection with Miranda at Progress Base. Her face glistened with sweat, and her bra was soaked through.

  “We’ve found the problem,” Miranda announced without preamble. “The good news is it was the environmental controls in the bioreactor room. So, not a systems malfunction. Somehow the controls got, I don’t know, knocked out of whack? Because, it couldn’t be sabotage, right?”

  Hogan faced the screen. “You’re telling me someone bumped into the thermostat and that’s what caused the literal meltdown?”

  “Yeah.” Miranda laughed and scratched the top of her head, then wiped her damp fingers across the fabric of her bra. “Yusuf is down there now, getting the environment stabilized in the bioreactor chamber. Things are beginning to cool down throughout the habitat. But you might want to give it a couple of hours before you come back. It still feels like a Finnish sauna pretty much everywhere in here.”

  Hogan nodded. “Noted. Good work. Call over if you need anything.”

  The screen went dark and Hogan turned back to Grigori. “I think we’ve all got a good idea who ‘bumped into’ the environmental controls.”

  Grigori didn’t look the least bit embarrassed. “Melissa and I spent some time in the bioreactor chamber, while everyone was playing games.”

  Hogan shoved her hands into the pockets of the jumpsuit she’d borrowed from Lori. “I don’t want to ever have this kind of conversation with you, or anyone, again. Your personal life is just that, but when your actions impact the crew, and the entire freaking habitat . . .”

  “Understood,” Grigori replied neatly.

  Melissa was not so easily dismissed. She glared at Grigori with indignation as she climbed to her feet. “That’s it? That’s all you have to say?”

  Trevor cursed himself for not having seen it sooner. Melissa had tired of Guillermo—or maybe the other way around—and then Trevor had turned her down, so she went looking elsewhere.

  Wasn’t it April who’d wanted to be The Mars Ho? It was an unkind thought, and Trevor pushed it away. He hoped she hadn’t approached Mark or Trent before finding a willing partner in Grigori.

  “Wait. Aren’t you gay?” Trevor couldn’t stop the question before it left his lips.

  Grigori shrugged. “Bisexual. It’s not like Yusuf and I are married. It’s just a mission hookup.”

  The muscles in Trevor’s neck bunched up painfully. Despite their strange and often surreal circumstances, he couldn’t understand the casual attitude to romantic relationships from some of the other colonists and now the astronauts, too. Mere days after their arrival on Mars, infidelity had already reared its ugly head.

  He had never accepted the concept of “just sex,” or the act of sharing one’s body with near strangers. Did Hogan’s kiss mean so little?

  “Just a hookup, sure.” Melissa sniffed back tears.

  Trevor said a silent prayer of gratitude there were no cameras in the walls of Ares City and that his grandmothers wouldn’t have to watch this unfold.

  “We’re leaving in a matter of weeks.” Hogan blew out a long sigh.

  “I know that!” Melissa shot back. “I just . . . felt good to feel wanted, for once.” She glared at Guillermo and he immediately stood up, his face flushed with anger.

  “You’re blaming this on me? Your dalliance literally drove the astronauts out of their home! And that’s my fault?”

  Hogan lifted her hands and motioned for everyone to sit down. “We can’t change what’s already happened. I suggest we all calm down, and let people work out their issues privately. When we get the all-clear, my crew will head back to Progress Base. We’ll retreat to our separate corners. Okay?”

  She looked around the room, waiting for someone to raise an objection. No one did. “Okay. So why don’t we pull up some entertainment? I like April’s random-play idea.”

  “Maybe it’s time we had a discussion about real commitment.” Trevor hadn’t planned on speaking, and possibly making matters worse. But the words were out of his mouth. With all eyes on him, he got up from his chair. “It seems to me that if we had a deeper and more solemn concept of what partnership means, we wouldn’t be in this situation.”

  No one spoke for several seconds.

  Then Mark stood up. “It’s an important point for discussion. And we want everyone to have their say on the matter.”

  “I think that’s a conversation for the colonists to have among yourselves,” Hogan interjected. “We’ve just isolated and remedied a significant problem at Progress Base. For now, let’s wait out the next hour or so together, and make the best of it. All right?”

  There was some murmured side chatter as everyone went back to their seats. Guillermo strode to the far side of the room to sit on the floor near Trevor, worlds away from Melissa.

  Trevor crossed his arms and turned toward the screen. He watched the opening scenes of the media system’s random choice—an episode of Celebrity Sweatshop. As teen sensation Hayden Marciniak attempted to navigate the controls of an industrial sewing machine, Trevor pressed back in his chair and wondered if the others really would hear him out.

  9

  Hogan had never had a picnic on Mars.

  It had been a rough couple of sols since the “heat incident,” as her crew now referred to the snafu with the environmental controls. Progress Base was back to the more normal temperature of 23 Celsius, though conditions were downright chilly between Yusuf and Grigori.

  Yusuf had moved both his workstation and his personal quarters into the bioreactor chamber—“the scene of the crime,” Miranda called it. He claimed to be working on systems limiters that would prevent a repeat of their sweaty evacuation to Ares City. But Hogan suspected he wanted some time to himself.

  And Miranda and Martin were bickering, almost violently and about nothing of substance. Hogan had seen nerves start to fray toward the end of long missions, but this was more raw.

  After a few futile days spent waiting for her crew to work things out on their own, Hogan flat-out ordered them to attend to their personal issues while she took a break from all of them.

  From what Trevor described, things weren’t much better at Ares City. Most of the colonists were avoiding Melissa, who was haunting the corridors as a tear-streaked mess. Guillermo had the sympathy vote, but he had taken to exercising himself to the point of exhaustion when he wasn’t shouting back at the animated Trojan Assault characters on the rec room screen.

  And, thanks in part to Trevor, the colonists were trapped in a spiraling and emotional debate over marriage and commitment contracts with every side being argued and no conclusion being reached.

  So, the picnic. It was Trevor’s idea, and Hogan practically leapt at the invitation.

  She guessed every
meal the astronauts ate inside one of the rovers while they were out doing surveys or taking soil samples would count as a picnic. But this time there was no mission objective or other official task that needed to be completed.

  Did it count as a date if he did the asking and she did the driving? Hogan certainly hoped so. She’d even scrounged up a razor to shave her legs, and she didn’t want that effort to be wasted.

  She sat cross-legged on the floor of UNSC Rover 2 with Trevor and tried to keep track of all the foods he was introducing her to. She’d driven them west and slightly south, away from the areas they’d already toured and outside of the traffic corridor between the two habitats.

  She bit down into a meatless meatball and was treated to an explosion of earthy flavors she couldn’t name.

  “Koofteh,” Trevor said.

  Hogan hid her mouth behind a polycloth napkin as she chewed. “Koofteh?”

  “The early Martian colony equivalent, anyway. Want to know what’s in it?”

  Hogan nodded and speared another meatball with a fork—an actual fork. Because the colony had real flatware—just like they would soon have a real garden of actual vegetables. Hogan had gotten so used to sporks and pouches of salisbury steak that she’d forgotten what she was missing.

  “It’s protein paste, obviously,” Trevor said. “And some rice as a binder, since I don’t have any bulgur. Yet. Curry powder, some cumin and cayenne, salt and pepper. And then tomato paste and saffron and such for the sauce.”

  She chewed another koofteh—or was it a piece of koofteh? She didn’t know—and gazed with wonder at the dishes he’d brought along. Besides the marinated fake meatballs, there was a container of sabzi frijoles—the herbed beans and rice she’d seen him prep earlier—and another attempt at pickled vegetables. They were spicier this time, and Hogan had already downed half of them. She hoped Trevor liked a woman with a good appetite.