Striking Mars (The Saving Mars Series-5)

by Cidney Swanson

  Kipper sighed and closed her eyes.

  “I can see all of that right now. I can hear the kids from New Houston Primary School singing holiday songs. I can see your brother getting another award for something he invented to make life easier back home. I can see Mei Lo glowing with pride as she presents the award.”

  Kipper paused to wipe a tear from her face. Out of habit, she popped the drop of moisture into her mouth.

  “I know you think we need to keep Mars hidden. I know you think that’s the best way to keep us safe. But things are different now that the Chancellor has armed missiles on their way to our home, Jess. We can’t afford silence anymore. And we can’t afford to have one of our brightest and best refuse to speak to the people of Earth.

  “That’s right, I’m talking about you. If anyone can argue a desert dweller out of their last walk-out suit, it’s you, Jaarda. You get yourself on the big newsfeeds and you tell them what Lucca’s done. And you convince them it is the wrong solution to our differences.”

  Here, Kipper paused and shook her head, smiling softly.

  “You’re one of a kind. You’re smart and you’re stubborn and you’re persuasive. You can tell our story the way it needs to be told. It’s in your blood, Jess. If anyone can stop those missiles, it is you. And Pavel and Zussman can help. Pavel’s a rock star down on Earth. And I’m willing to bet Zussman knows way more of the Chancellor’s dirty little secrets than he’s let on about. The three of you can change the fate of Mars Colonial.

  “But it’s you that has to be the face of the movement to preserve Mars from destruction. You must be the one to take this extraordinary measure. Thanks for being the best first officer a captain never knew she wanted. And thanks for being my friend. Cassondra Kipling over and out.”

  Jessamyn stared at the screen, now dark.

  What Kipper suggested was preposterous. Jess was no public speaker. She was no Harpreet. She wasn’t even a Pavel, smiling and confident, comfortable in front of the camera. She wasn’t knowledgeable like Zussman. Hades, she wasn’t even an upstanding citizen of Mars. She had no business acting as a representative of Mars Colonial.

  Not to mention, they had no assurance MCC would approve such a wild plan. Of course, thanks to the “extraordinary measures” clause, it could be argued they didn’t need to ask MCC for permission. That was how Kip was seeing it. Saw it, Jess reminded herself. Kip probably thought of her message as her final orders.

  Jessamyn swore.

  Pavel rapped softly at her door. His knock was distinctive: different from her brother’s single, heavy thump; different from Mr. Zussman’s tentative rap-rap.

  “Come in,” she said, swiping at a few tears that had gathered in the corners of her eyes.

  “You in the mood for an apology?” asked Pavel. “’Cause I think I owe you one big time.”

  Jess watched him as his eyes adjusted to the darkened room. He must have seen she’d been crying. Tentatively, he sat beside her. The bed creaked with his weight.

  Jessamyn felt so heavy. But it was more than just Earth’s gravity weighing her down.

  “I’m sorry,” said Pavel. “About Kip. About being such a jerk back on the Moon. About everything.”

  Jess stretched her hand toward his. “I was a jerk too,” Jess murmured. “I’m an idiot sometimes. Lots of times.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” mumbled Pavel. “I think I’ve got idiot covered pretty well all by myself.”

  Jessamyn rested her head on Pavel’s shoulder. “There’s plenty of idiot to go around between the two of us, I guess.”

  “So, what have you been doing up here?” asked Pavel.

  Jess indicated her wafer. “Listening to Kip’s message.”

  “Oh,” said Pavel. “Was it … good?”

  Jessamyn snorted. “Kipper’s another candidate for the idiot club. Or she was.” Tears rushed to her eyes and she couldn’t stop the flow this time. What did it matter, though? She was stuck on a water planet. She could cry all she wanted. And so she did.

  Later, when her eyes had run dry, Pavel asked if he could see Kip’s last message.

  “I guess,” said Jessamyn.

  They watched the video together. Kip was being so unfair. How dare she make such a proposal at a time like this? Kip was holding their emotions hostage. Ethan would agree. He would disapprove, not just of the idea, but of the method, too.

  “Wow,” said Pavel, when the vid ended. “Your brother should see this.”

  “I know, right?”

  Sensible, logical Ethan would see right through what Kipper was doing.

  Downstairs, they played it a third time for Mr. Zussman and Ethan. The more Jessamyn heard Kipper’s ideas, the less she liked them. Cultural cross-contamination from Terrans was not the way forward for Mars Colonial. Jessamyn rose and paced during the final minute of the vid. She couldn’t take this sitting still.

  “She suggests an intriguing course of action,” said Ethan, once the message had been played.

  “Intriguing course of action, my grannie’s elastic knickers,” muttered Jessamyn. “It’s not an acceptable course of action.”

  “Unless you have been recently elected to the position of Secretary General,” replied her brother, “it is a course of action over which you have no jurisdiction.”

  Jessamyn made a growling noise. Ethan was trying to make a joke, and she knew she should acknowledge his effort, but she couldn’t. “It flies in the face of everything Mars Colonial has stood for, for hundreds of years,” she said instead.

  She heard herself using the Terran term “years” instead of the Marsian term “annums.” Now she wanted to growl at herself. She was becoming Terranized, for the love of mittens. “Hades and Aphrodite!” she swore, kicking her foot against the door frame. That hurt. A lot.

  “Do you need to take some exercise to calm yourself?” asked her brother.

  “No,” she snapped. “Ugh!” She trudged back and forth through the living room. “Maybe.” Her arms crossed, she stared at the door, daring it to open and shove her out.

  “Walk it off,” said Pavel. “You’ll feel better.”

  She hesitated for a moment, but Pavel was right. She stormed to the door, threw it open, and strode into the dark.

  “Wait up,” called Pavel.

  “Who says I want company?” she shouted into the wind.

  “No one,” said Pavel. But he ran to join her anyway.

  Overhead, the stars hung like ornaments strung across the sky, brighter because the moon wasn’t up yet. For a moment, Jess wished with all her might that she could just be back on the Moon, with no worry greater than when they were going to get the recycling-mech to work again.

  “It just makes me want to chew bolts,” Jessamyn said. “Doesn’t Kipper, of all people, understand anything about Terrans?”

  “Hey, present company objects.”

  Jess kicked at a stone in her path, sending it only a few meters ahead. Back home it would have gone three times farther.

  “Even the rocks here are stubborn,” she said.

  “I’m the first to admit there are some terrible things Earth has to answer for, Jessamyn. You know that.”

  She grunted.

  “But you also know not everyone on Earth is as bloodthirsty for Marsian lives as my aunt. If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a thousand times, the people of Earth would be thrilled to know Mars is inhabited. They would throw parties in the streets, Jess. You have no concept of what it would mean to Terrans.”

  “I don’t care what it would mean to Terrans. I care what it would mean to Marsians. Terrans finding out is the same as Terrans interfering. Life on Mars would never be the same.”

  “No,” said Pavel. “It wouldn’t be the same. But that doesn’t mean it would be worse. Have you ever considered that it might be better?” His tone was colored with irritation.

  Jessamyn’s foot slipped on a bit of scree and she stumbled forward, unable to catch herself. The ground hit her hard and
she lay there, groaning.

  “Let me have a look,” said Pavel, shining a tiny penlight on her hands, her knees.

  She’d scraped one of her hands pretty badly.

  Pavel reached into a pocket and pulled out a piece of skin seal.

  “No way do you just carry skin seal around in your pockets,” grumbled Jessamyn as he carefully applied the strip over the worst of her scrape.

  “Guess that’s just one more thing you’re wrong about tonight,” said Pavel.

  Jess deflated, breathing out heavily. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to imply all Terrans are evil.”

  “Glad to hear it,” said Pavel. “There. Your hand’s as good as new.”

  She flexed her hand. It felt much better. Unlike her insides.

  “Ugh!” she grunted. “I hate this. I hate that Kipper would even suggest it as her dying wish, for the love of mittens!”

  “And you hate it that she might be right.”

  Jessamyn rose and strode forward, kicking another rock in her path.

  “It’s not like she ordered me, you know,” said Jessamyn. “There’s no way anyone sees it as an order. And even if they do, there’s no way I obey orders like that.”

  Pavel grinned. “Like that would be so novel for you?”

  She glared at him for about two seconds straight and then let out a very abbreviated laugh. “Yeah, right?” She felt tears returning as she thought about her first hour under Kipper’s command. And then more tears as she thought about her last hour under Kipper’s command. She hadn’t even known it was her last hour, for the love of mittens. Her vision blurred and she stopped trying to walk in the dark.

  Pavel squatted down and leaned back into the heather. “Come on,” he said. “No prickly stuff here. Sit.”

  Sniffling heavily, Jessamyn sat down beside Pavel.

  “Lean back,” said Pavel, creating a cradle with one of his arms. “This might be the last clear night for a week, if your brother read that meteorological report right.”

  “He always does,” said Jess, her voice flat. But she lay back, settling into Pavel’s arms, snuggling her chin into a soft spot below his shoulder blade. “Mars will be visible again soon.”

  “Mmm-hmm,” intoned Pavel.

  “I miss home.” She whispered the words.

  “Of course you do.”

  “And I keep thinking that as long as I know everything will go back to the way it was, I can handle being stuck here.”

  “I know.”

  “And you want me to accept that things are going to change.”

  Pavel was silent.

  Jess pointed at a shooting star. It blazed across the night sky, fierce and brief.

  “Mmm,” Pavel murmured. “Beautiful.”

  “I wish they lasted longer.”

  “People always wish the things they loved would last longer.”

  Jessamyn was silent.

  “Jess?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Let’s imagine what Kip suggests is the best chance Mars has.”

  Another shooting star whizzed across the sky.

  Pavel continued. “What did she suggest that was so terrible, really?”

  In her mind, Jessamyn could hear Kip’s voice. Tell them about sunrise at Mount Cha Su Bao.

  Pavel took one of her hands in his.

  Tell them about desert camp for elementary school kids.

  “I know she meant well,” said Jessamyn.

  Tell them how beautiful the night sky is with Phobos and Demos racing one another overhead.

  “I want an independent Mars,” Jess said quietly. “But I guess the real question is, am I willing to risk destruction rather than risk cultural contamination?”

  “I didn’t know Kipper as well as you, but I think I can guess how she’d answer that question—”

  Jess interrupted. “‘That’s just stupid, Jaarda,’ is what she’d say.”

  But surely Kipper would understand how this made Jessamyn feel. Surely Kip would have wanted to preserve all that was good and beautiful and right about Mars. How could she want it to be spoiled by the ugliness and selfishness of the Terran culture, with its worship of youth and its disregard for things as basic as the ownership of one’s body? Surely, thought Jessamyn, Kipper would accept a hundred annums of hardship with people of goodwill rather than accept even one annum of the pollution of Marsian culture by Terrans.

  But Jessamyn’s own words brought her up short. How could she best guarantee that next annum of life for those living on Mars? Mars Colonial didn’t even have an annum right now; they had only a handful of months.

  The best way to guarantee Mars a future was by using every weapon at her disposal to bring Lucca Brezhnaya down from power. Jess hated it, but her gut was telling her Kip was right about one thing: the people of Earth needed to know about the survival of the people of Mars.

  Pavel could tell them, whispered a small voice in her head.

  Handsome, popular Pavel. He was a born politician, no matter what he said about wanting to work in medicine. She’d seen him court and woo the camera. Seen the response of his appeals to the people of Earth. He was Terran, for the love of fuzzy slippers. The people of Earth would listen to him.

  Jessamyn knew that if she asked Pavel to speak up on Mars’s behalf, he would do so without a moment’s hesitation. Hades and Aphrodite, it’s what he’d been begging to do all along.

  But Kipper’s dying request was for Jessamyn to be the one doing the telling.

  “Shizer,” murmured Jessamyn. “I’ll have to do it, won’t I?”

  “I’ll never understand how you guys stayed hidden for so long,” said Pavel. “Up ‘til now, it’s been a good thing.”

  “It was a good thing,” said Jess. “Hmm. I just used the past tense, didn’t I?”

  “I was wondering if you’d notice.”

  “Eth would call this a battle I can’t win.”

  “The thing is, everything you’ve told me about Marsians, about their indomitable spirit, that attitude that anything’s possible, and that hard work is good work,” said Pavel. “Those aren’t things Mars is likely to lose, no matter how much contact Mars has with Earth.”

  “What makes you think so?”

  “Well, take a look at what created it.” Pavel held up a hand and started ticking things off with fingers. “The harsh environment, the small population, the need to make everything — rations aside — for yourselves. Those components of what it means to live on Mars aren’t going away just because Earth hears about MCC.”

  “I guess not.”

  “Trust me, Jess, people will be excited about life on Mars, but it will be a very, very small percentage who’ll actually want to live there.”

  The two were silent for several minutes. A tiny dot of light traced a steady path overhead. Maybe it was the New Terra Space Station; maybe it was 92-AE. Jess sighed, realizing there was no other place she wanted to be right now.

  If her world needed her to risk everything, to tell everything, then she was lucky to be at the right place at the right time.

  “What was that thing Zussman said when you lost your parents?”

  “He said I couldn’t bring them back; I could only choose how to go forward without them.”

  That’s how it was with losing Kipper. Or with Mars changing. She could only choose how to go forward.

  “You were listening back then, huh?” asked Pavel.

  “I was listening. I just wasn’t ready to hear it the last time you said it.”

  “And now?”

  “I think it might be time for me to make my own vid.”

  “Not just yet,” said Pavel, turning to face her.

  “Not yet?” Jess looked at him, puzzled.

  “Maybe tomorrow. ’Cause I’ve got other plans for you right now.” He grinned lazily, and placed one hand on the side of Jessamyn’s face.

  “Plans, huh?” Jess smiled.

  “Plans that will prevent you from being able to use your mouth for
speech—”

  Whatever else Pavel had been intending to say, Jess put a stop to it, her mouth meeting his, hungry, eager, so alive to the moment under the incandescent Terran sky.

  54

  Tresco, Isles of Scilly, Earth

  The room was plain. There were no furnishings, no windows, nothing to suggest where the vid was being recorded. Jessamyn looked down at her wafer, at the notes she had prepared. It might as well have been written in Marsperanto. She couldn’t read any of it. Her heart was beating about twice as fast as it should be. If she had Pavel take her pulse, he would surely agree she was in no fit state to do this.

  “We’re ready whenever you are, miss,” said Mr. Zussman, smiling politely. He held his hand out for her wafer.

  She passed it to him. Her hands were so cold she could hardly feel them. Her tongue felt heavy in her mouth. There was no way she could be understood even if she managed to form words.

  She thought about Kipper, snapping at her on the Red Galleon for some evasion of protocol at the helm. A grin formed on her face. She thought of Kipper’s smile when the two had gone up in one of Cameron Wallace’s ships to help Kip get back in the game. She thought of Kipper’s final words. They were fitting. They were perfect.

  Jessamyn took a deep breath. She could do this. She nodded to her brother, holding the recording device.

  “My name is Jessamyn Jaarda. I’m a pilot, and I’m from Mars.”

  End of Book Five

  The sixth and final book in The Saving Mars Series is coming Spring 2014. Sign up now to be notified by email when it releases!

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  Acknowledgements

  I love that there is a place at the end of each book where I get to take a moment to thank everyone who makes my writing life possible. I have to start by thanking my amazing readers, especially those of you who take valuable time from your day to let me know you liked one of my books. Your encouraging notes and reviews get me through the times when I’m sure I’m not really supposed to be a writer.