Mars Ho! (Mars Adventure Romance Series Book 1)

by Jennifer Willis

  “Well, well, well.”

  “Did you find something?” April’s reply startled Mark and he nearly jumped out of his boots. He’d forgotten anyone was listening. He was being watched, too.

  Mark pushed away from the habitat and headed toward the sand dune. It was at least a kilometer away—it was hard to judge distance across the desert in the shortening shadows of pre-dawn. But he made good progress, even in his heavy suit.

  “I think I may have something, yeah.” Mark stopped himself from saying too much. The producers would know soon enough that he was headed their way. “Remember that private conversation you wanted to have earlier?”

  “Gotcha.” Mark heard a couple of clicks and then April’s voice again. “We’re good now.”

  “No one outside the dome can hear us?”

  “Nobody, period. I’ve got a loop of Lori and Guillermo’s Greatest Hits playing over the main channel. And I’m getting some pretty strange looks here in the control room, especially from Lori. But everyone seems to know something’s up.”

  Mark wondered if listening to her own on-air inanity might have Lori thinking twice about her behavior.

  “So, what exactly is up?” April asked.

  Mark explained his theory. It was quick and dirty—but so, by his estimation, had been the habitat’s manufactured power outage. “They had to know we’d figure this out, and that the root cause isn’t even remotely something we’d encounter on Mars.”

  “Unless the Mars Colony Program sets up a second base to bleed our power.”

  Mark kept his focus on the ground as he progressed toward the manmade sand dune. He was a solid hundred meters out from the base of the dune when he nearly stumbled over an abrupt ridge in the dry soil, rising about thirty centimeters from the flat ground. He slowed his gait, his smirk growing hard as he followed the peaked channel of dirt running straight as a rail toward a large, lonely shrub not fifty meters from the dune.

  “Oh, you wasteyute doggers,” he growled.

  “I’m sorry, what was that?” Lori asked.

  Mark felt a surge of panicked adrenaline, thinking April’s private channel had just gone public again. But April cut in soon after.

  “Yeah, so Lori’s on now, too.”

  “Cozy,” Mark deadpanned. If this was April’s idea of therapy, to get him and Lori talking to each other, her timing could have been much better. “Anyway, that was something of a Canadian curse.”

  “She wants to know you’re okay, Mark,” April said.

  The sun was coming up over the horizon, and Mark’s eyes watered at the glaring brightness before his visor automatically shaded.

  “Why don’t I suit up? You shouldn’t be out there by yourself,” Lori said.

  Her concern sounded genuine, but Mark’s skin was still itching from listening to her talk Guillermo down from whatever ledge of panic he’d been scaling—and from the flirtation she’d continued well after Guillermo was calm and focused again. So now she was feeling on edge? Mark would let her dangle there awhile.

  “I’m fairly certain I’ve found where that mystery cable goes,” he said.

  He advanced on the tangle of thick shrubbery and plunged his gloved hands into the brambles. Any spacesuit should be able to withstand a few terrestrial thorns. Several grunting minutes spent tearing at branches revealed that five separate canotia plants had been woven together to disguise a metal junction box at the center.

  Mark plunged head-first into the native greenery. The junction box was about the size of a milk crate, with the thick cable from the biodome connecting into it. Another cable stretched away toward the sand dune before dipping underground again.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  “What’ve you got” April asked.

  “April, I wish you had enough power to pick up my camera feed, because I have a hard time believing this is as stupidly simple as it’s looking to me right now.”

  There weren’t any locks on the junction box, and Mark just hoped he wouldn’t find a mess of wires inside. The hinged door opened easily, and he froze for a full breath as he stared at the box’s contents.

  “I was wrong,” he laughed. “It’s even more stupidly simple. Hold onto your hockey pucks.”

  He reached for the single lever inside the box, and flipped it. A second later, he was nearly deafened by whooping cheers over his comms.

  “I don’t know what you just did, Mark!” Lori exclaimed as he dragged his body out of the tangle of canotia. “But everything’s coming back online. April’s dropped off to do a systems check.”

  Mark stood and watched the day’s new sun rise above the horizon.

  “And I’m supposed to go check the grow unit again, as ordered.” Lori chuckled lightly, and Mark felt himself smile. “Thank you, Mark. You’re pretty much everybody’s hero right now.”

  Lori dropped off the line. Mark was alone again inside the near silence of his suit as the desert came to life for another day. He surveyed the scrub and rocks and wondered how different the Martian terrain would look. How different Mars might feel underfoot. He imagined the absence of plant life and mentally overlaid a heavy tint of rust.

  He started back toward the MHCH, then stopped. He blinked away the mental image of Mars and looked again at the surrounding desert. These might be his last days on Earth. Why would he wish the moment away?

  His suit’s wrist gauge started blinking red. He was running out of air. At least he’d learned how to turn off the alarms. He started walking again, keeping his breath even and his stride steady as the biodome loomed before him.

  He wanted the game to be over. He wanted to be out of the dome and on his way to something real. Even if that meant life-and-death crises every other day. Even if his every move had to be recorded for broadcast across the planet he’d left behind. And he wanted the right team. Calm, reliable, amiable, professional, all committed to a common goal.

  More than that, he wanted Lori. Mark smacked his gloved fist against his thigh. Lori. He wanted—

  “Mark!” April shouted over the comms, accompanied by raucous laughter in her vicinity. “Hey, you’ll want to get back here pronto. I don’t know how he’s doing it, but Trevor’s got some pretty convincing fake eclairs rolling out of the food printer. If you want one, it’s kind of an all-hands-on-deck situation.”

  He heard Lori’s voice in the din, followed by April’s chuckle. “Okay. Lori says she’ll hide one in her pocket for you. But, uh, the way Guillermo’s checking her out, I wouldn’t count on it lasting long.”

  Mark’s grin tightened as he broke into a jog.

  12

  After the initial rush of success, things quieted down inside the habitat. Lori sat at the kitchen’s metal table, mechanically sipping her third cup of black coffee while other candidates sauntered in and out. The coffee machine had been running non-stop since Mark got the power back up, and they’d run through a week’s worth of roasted grounds in just a few hours.

  Exhausted, nervous laughter filtered in from the corridor as Govind and Dina made their fourth or fifth lap around the dome’s interior. Yoshiko had taken to the fitness room to decompress. Guillermo, Seema, Lindsay, and Melissa had started up World of Warcraft, even though the multiplayer game was limited to players inside the biodome.

  No one went back to bed. They were all sleep-deprived and punchy, but nobody wanted to be caught snoozing by whatever might come next.

  Except for April—the one candidate who could afford to rest easily. She’d gone straight to Women’s Bunk 1 and was probably fast asleep.

  Lori was alone in the kitchen when an explosion of mating sounds erupted from the habitat’s ductwork. The groaning exertions were brief, over almost as soon as they’d begun. Lori just sat and drank her coffee, her brain too sluggish to work out who the partners might be.

  She gulped down the rest of her coffee and used her tablet to browse the entertainment options. There were NASA documentaries, blockbuster movies, whole seasons of sit-com
s from the early 2000s, and an endless supply of reality programming. The most recent material included the Oregon Otters versus the Dallas Cowboys in the most recent Super Bowl, a selection of week-old programs from The Weather Channel, episodes of How I Survived and The Merry Widower, and time-delayed C-SPAN.

  Lori queued up the Super Bowl Halftime Show—a tribute to Madonna by Binkie Blue—and set it to stream on the kitchen’s wall-mounted screen. She got up to refill her mug. Trevor ambled in and slumped into a chair as performers in Day-Glo leotards launched into a retro-electronica version of “Material Girl.”

  “Can you imagine a cowboy trying to wrangle an otter?”

  Lori shrugged and added an unhealthy dose of sugar to her coffee this time. She was too tired to laugh.

  Their tablets buzzed simultaneously. While the dancers undulated across the stage, Trevor glanced at his tablet screen and groaned. “Another elimination.”

  It was inevitable. They were sixteen inside the dome, with only eight seats on the ship to Mars. Lori headed toward the corridor, her steps heavy as she thought about packing up her bag again for another tense, televised reveal at the airlock.

  “No,” Trevor stopped her. “It’s here in the kitchen. Now.”

  She stepped out of the way as Yoshiko, Govind, and Dina—all wearing grim faces—came in from the corridor. Lindsay was flanked by Oskar and Cecilia, murmuring together, as the threesome crossed the room to stand in the back corner.

  “Did you hear?” Trent burst through the doorway, his face flushed. “I mean, are we ever going to get a break?”

  Lori sat back down and used her tablet to lower the volume on the neon-green, feather-clad singer as scores of glittering dancers and aerial acrobats swooped in and out of view on the kitchen’s screen. If she’d had the energy, she might have reminded Trent that they’d all had a dull streak of little more than chores and systems checks before last night’s blackout excitement. Instead, she lifted her mug and blew on her coffee, and pretended not to watch the door for Mark.

  Leah slipped into the kitchen, her skin glistening with sweat. Guillermo was next, offering Lori a wink and a wide smile. He looked downright jovial compared to the others. He gave Trevor a robust clap on the back and poured himself some coffee, all while keeping an eye on Lori.

  Assuming they both survived the coming elimination, she was going to have to have a talk with him. She’d kept him from a panic attack and might have improved her candidate profile with that vigorous flirting over the comms, but anything beyond that would be insincere and downright dishonest. It wasn’t something she thought she could do, not unless she meant it.

  Still, Guillermo was one of the better looking men inside the dome. Maybe the handsomest, next to Mark. Lori sipped mindlessly at her coffee, her thoughts drifting in time with the catchy music of the Super Bowl entertainment spectacular as her gaze traveled slowly up Guillermo’s body—over the orange fabric that clung to the contours of his powerful legs, slim waist, and broad chest. But she was just so freaking tired. She blinked heavily. She could do worse than Guillermo, she reminded herself, when she heard the Blocks tittering in the corner.

  Should she let fate—or the Mars Ho experts and voting audience—choose a mate for her? She could stop playing the game. Stop the flirting, stop the wondering, and simply be herself. But these strangers could vote her into a situation where her only partner options were Oskar and Trent.

  Guillermo laughed, and Lori’s gaze went automatically to his face. By the look of his smile, he thought he’d caught her checking him out. She supposed she had been. She was too tired to be embarrassed, even when Guillermo waggled his eyebrows at her. Lori shifted in her chair so she could watch the doorway again. There was still no sign of Mark.

  The Halftime Show cut off abruptly and the kitchen screen filled with Gary Nelson’s face just as Jacki and Seema came in from the corridor.

  “Here we go.” Leah sank into an empty chair beside Lori and hid behind her own mug of coffee.

  “Good morning.” Gary sounded like a priest welcoming mourners to a funeral.

  “Does anyone know if it really is morning?” Trent asked from the back of the room. “On Mars, I mean. When the systems came back up there were some problems with the clocks.”

  “You have all endured a challenging and anxious night. You’ve been pushed to your limits,” Gary continued. “But ultimately, by working together, you prevailed. The Mars Ho team is impressed and exceptionally proud. I’m sure the People of Earth are, too.”

  Lori wasn’t so sure about that. Before she’d entered isolation, the media channels had been full of grumblings from all corners of the globe about the lack of real diversity in the first colonial candidate pool. She imagined the complaints had only grown since Mars Ho went to air.

  “You have once again shown the world what you’re made of,” Gary blathered on, with another arrangement of experts lined up behind him. “And though each of you has proved yourself worthy, there are only eight seats on the spaceship to Mars.”

  Leah slumped in her chair and clasped her mug to her chest. “I wish they would just get to it.”

  “I should have started a pool,” Trent groused. “Make some money off our collective misery.”

  “I did start a pool,” Seema replied. “See me after class. You know, assuming you’re still around.”

  “The time has come, once more, for the candidate group to be thinned.” Gary’s demeanor was grave and measured, and Lori found herself wondering how much time he spent practicing in front of a mirror.

  Mark finally walked in, and Lori felt a wave of relief at the sight of him. She sat up straighter as he found a place to stand behind her. She thought about the eclair she’d saved for him, still in her pocket. She tried to feel his eyes on her, tried to imagine that he was distracted by her presence. But she came up empty.

  Gary droned on about sacrifice and duty and whatever other pablum had been written for him, all while Lori struggled to stay awake. He was the handsome, rugged face Mars Ho presented to the world—the Face of Space, she’d heard him called—though he wouldn’t be on that ship to the Red Planet. If something was going awry behind the scenes, Lori couldn’t see any sign of it in Mr. Nelson.

  A collective gasp filled the room, followed by moans of distress and murmured words of comfort. Had her name been called? Mark’s? Lori gulped down her coffee to hide her discombobulation while she tried to figure out who’d gotten the boot.

  “Rest well, prospective colonists!” Gary beamed with sudden optimism and cheer. “You’ve earned your R&R, and we’re adding two hundred new movies to the habitat library. You’ll also find a wide selection of workout videos at your fingertips, from the aerobics craze of the 1980s to yoga, parkour, and more. All thanks to our friends at Whimsy Media Group. That’s Whimsy Media Group, where your entertainment is our business.”

  The screen faded to black. Lindsay stood crying in the corner, with Oskar and Cecilia trying to comfort her and reassure each other. So Lindsay was out. She and Govind had been caught sleeping on their control room shift at the start of the power outage, and Lori wasn’t surprised to find Govind standing ashen-faced in the middle of the kitchen while the other men lined up to offer handshakes and pats on the back.

  Elimination seemed a stiff price for a single infraction, but Mars wouldn’t forgive a mistake. Lori breathed a sigh of relief. She was still in, and so was Mark.

  Lori got up and headed to the machine for more coffee. But Seema was dry heaving over the sink as Jacki and Leah held her and tried to calm her down.

  “You did the best you could, and they know that.” Leah pulled Seema’s hair away from her face in case her dry heaves turned more productive. “You can hang out at The Ranch for a while, maybe come back in with the next group. You know? Relax. Eat some real food!”

  Leah tried to laugh, but Seema wasn’t interested. She gulped down some air and turned her back to the sink. “I can’t do this again. If they want me out, maybe I sh
ould just go home.”

  Lori backed away. A triple elimination? Thirteen candidates left. She carried her empty mug out of the kitchen, Mark’s eclair still squished in her pocket.

  The bunk assignments were shuffled again. One of the women’s bunks was closed, with Dina moving to Women’s Bunk 3 with Jacki and Melissa.

  Mark got moved, too, out of Men’s Bunk 2 and into Men’s Bunk 3. He wasn’t sorry to be spared Oskar’s disquieting company, but he genuinely liked his other bunkmates, Trevor and Trent.

  Now, as Mark unpacked his few personal items, he felt Guillermo’s eyes boring into his back. His muscles itched with awareness. He hoped he wasn’t in for another Ric Vargas-style showdown. Mark stowed the last of his underwear, grabbed his toothbrush, and stood up tall. He turned toward the bathroom, prepared to face Guillermo. But Mark was startled when he saw Guillermo’s pallid complexion.

  “How did you know what to do?” Guillermo asked.

  “Pardon?”

  “When the power went out.” Guillermo leaned back against one of the posts of his bunk and rubbed his hands together like he was trying to massage away leftover anxiety. “How did you know what to do?”

  Mark watched him for a few beats and saw what Lori had heard over the comms. For all of his compact brawn and good looks, Guillermo was adrift in the wake of the latest challenge and elimination.

  Mark himself was feeling shaken by the ordeal and had hoped for a hot shower and a long nap to set himself right again—Yoshiko was already snoozing away in his bed next to the door—but the man standing before him and openly fidgeting didn’t appear to have any plan for self-care or stress abatement.

  Mark put down his toothbrush, sat on his new bed, and tried to figure out what to say. That he was just following protocol? That sounded stiff and patronizing. If he said he’d simply trusted his instincts, he doubted that would put Guillermo at ease, either.