by Lara Morgan
“And you’re playing for time.” He smiled. “I’m a step ahead of you though, Simon. She has nowhere to go and you know what I’ll do when I catch her. This ship isn’t endless. Hasn’t Essie been through enough for you?”
Rosie’s heart leaped. Had Aunt Essie got free?
Riley kept talking, keeping Yuang’s attention. “You’re enjoying this game, aren’t you?” he said.
“Life is a game, brother,” Yuang replied.
“And the pieces fall according to fate, do they? How do you know I don’t have some of those lab results ready to go to a source in the Senate, or the news? You don’t know what else was in the box, do you? If something happens to me, perhaps I have left instructions for the information to flow.”
Yuang smiled, but Rosie saw the tension around his eyes. “A good bluff, Shore, but there’s still your sister. I can find her.”
“No, you can’t. She’s beyond even Helios’s reach.”
“Nothing is beyond our reach.”
Riley seemed disappointed but not surprised. “I see you’ve become the perfect Helios clone. Well, I guess there’s nothing more to say but, see you in the next life.” He flicked a switch and the hologram blinked out.
He turned to Rosie. “Ready?”
“No.” She put shaking hands on the pod’s controls and made sure her harness was secure, then dialled up the thrusters.
A dull whine started to fill the cabin and the ship leaped forward. Mars was suddenly hurtling towards them at terrifying speed. It was freezing but sweat was gathering in the headband of her helmet. Then lights began blinking on the dash and she saw the flashing of a weapons lock warning. An alarm rang through the cabin. Yuang was going to fire. She gripped hard to the pod’s steering and looked at Riley. His face was set and hard, his eyes bright.
“Now, Rosie!” He had to shout over the siren.
She let go of the right steering arm and punched it to back-burn. The force threw her back in her seat and she uttered a short shocked scream.
A massive roaring sounded and the pod shuddered so much, she could barely control the steering. Suddenly, the pod veered hard left. It was all noise and chaos and then a streak of bright light flared the cabin to white and Rosie stared as a missile shot past them. It had missed. Yuang had missed. The heat shield must have worked. Triumph filled her and she turned to Riley, grinning – then they hit Mars’s atmosphere. The pod shook and screeched as the force of the planet’s gravity took hold.
“Hang on to it!” Riley’s voice was a scratched shout. She grasped the steering arms, the vibration working through her body as though she was having a fit. The air in her helmet was thin and she began to feel light-headed. A strange whining, grinding noise was coming from somewhere. Lights were blinking all over the console and the force of entry was pressing her back hard into her seat. All she could see through the view port was a streak of grey as they plummeted towards the planet’s crust.
Their angle of entry was all wrong – they were breaking up!
Riley’s voice came through her helmet com, shaky and full of static. “The trajectory! Rosie, change angle.”
“I know!” she yelled. Did he think she was an idiot? She pulled hard on the sticks. It was like trying to shift an elephant stuck in mud. “Help me!”
Riley smacked his hand down on the button on his chair that activated the copilot controls. Nothing happened. He swore and punched the control again and again, but the sticks remained stowed. “Damn it.”
Rosie tried to quell her spiralling panic. The ship shuddered violently, and the vibrations from the steering felt like they were shaking the bones in her arms loose. She needed Riley’s help. “Use manual!” she screamed at him. “Pull them out!” She tried to point her elbow at the lever in the middle of the console. He understood and stretched towards them. But his seat harness had locked him in tight. He couldn’t reach it. The sensors must have decided that as the copilot, he was safer strapped tight against the seat. Riley didn’t hesitate. With a loud grunt, he unbuckled his harness and, hanging on to his chair with one hand, reached for the control release with the other. The intense shuddering of the pod threatened to throw him against the wall, but he held on, his face grim, and pulled on the release. A set of extra steering sticks ejected smoothly up on either side of his seat. He gripped them and pulled back hard.
He was almost too late.
Rosie heard the outer hull start to buckle and then, slowly, the pod’s nose rotated and straightened out, the shuddering eased. They’d done it. Riley turned to her with a triumphant grimace as he held on tight, helping her keep the ship in line. She grinned back, a feeling of elation flowing through her. But then she saw the view screen as they plunged out of the atmosphere.
Everything seemed to happen at once.
A loud alarm went off in the cabin, collision lights blinked rapidly and terror ran through her as she registered the sheer face of red rock in front of them.
She didn’t even have time to scream. Instinctively, she pulled the pod right, with all her might, but it was too late.
The ship slammed into the rock at a forty-five degree angle. From the corner of her eye, she saw Riley being flung from his chair. He slammed into the console and was then thrown behind her. Her seat harness held, but the force of the crash snapped her neck forward and she could barely breathe as the reinforced straps squeezed her rib cage.
The cabin filled with the sound of tearing metal. The outer hull ripped open and a massive fracture cracked the view screen.
Desperately, Rosie fought for control as they skidded through scree, rocks thumping off the sides of the ship. Then suddenly the rock ended and there was nothing but air.
For a split second the pod soared free of gravity. Then it dipped and dived straight down into a deep canyon.
Rosie saw a silver gleam of water at the bottom and smudges of green rushing up towards her. Glide in! her brain screamed at her. She punched down on the controls to deploy the emergency crash glide wings, but nothing happened. They must have been sheared off with the outer hull. Then the engines cut. For a moment there was no sound but her ragged breath and the air whistling past. She stared, frozen in fear and disbelief, as they plunged towards the river. The last thing she saw was the console as she smashed into it.
CHAPTER 26
Rosie woke to the sight of exposed wires and dangling ceiling panels. She was still strapped into her chair but it had been ripped from its footing and she was now on the floor of the bridge.
Her helmet was on her head, but the faceplate was gone and she was inhaling thin, cold Martian air. Miraculously, her helmet was still active and she saw a small blinking red light indicating her breather was empty. Moving slowly, she pulled off her gloves and unclasped her helmet. Everything ached. Her head throbbed and she tasted blood as she let the helmet thud onto the floor. It felt as though she’d been hugged by arms made of steel. The skin on her face was tight. Tiny cuts stung where the faceplate had shattered, but nothing felt broken. The chair harness had saved her life.
She lay there for a second, just breathing, until she remembered Martian air was not as oxygen-rich as Earth’s. A human could survive for forty-five minutes at most before dizziness set in and then slow death. She struggled to undo the seat straps, flung them off and staggered to her feet. Immediately, a wave of dizziness made her drop to her hands and knees, retching. She hung her head down, closing her eyes until the spots of light went away along with the urge to vomit. When she could stand it, she lifted her head.
The bridge was a mess of piping and shattered equipment and all systems were dead. There were no lights, cold air was brushing against the back of her neck and the sound of running water came from outside. The view port was gone and through the gaping hole she could see a rock face, tangled creepers and a glimpse of cloud-covered sky far, far above. The faint light coming through the gap was the only illumination.
She crawled down to the locker at the bottom of the bulkhead near th
e door. Already she was feeling the effects of the lower oxygen. It was like she’d been running a race and was trying to fill her lungs with air, but no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t quite get enough. She wondered how long she’d been unconscious. Wrenching open the door, she scrabbled around, throwing out packets of wires and repair patches until her hand closed on what she needed. Rosie ripped open the cover and pulled out the breather. She fitted the nostril cap over her nose then clipped the thin tube and recalibrating device over her ear. She took a long breath and the breather switched on, using the electrical energy of her breath and body to alter the air composition. A rush of oxygen flooded into her nasal tubes and down to her lungs. Her head cleared and she began to feel better.
She took another breather out and put it in her pocket. Then she looked around for Riley. She remembered him being flung through the air as they crashed.
“Riley?” she called. There was no reply. Dreading what she might find, she headed through the hatch into the interior of the ship.
Her path was strewn with wreckage and the ship was lying partly on its side, the floor slanting away beneath her feet towards the river. She tried not to think about how deep the water might be.
It was hard to see in the gloom of the ship’s belly but she found him at the bottom of the stairs leading to the cargo hold. He was lying facedown, one leg hooked up on the balustrade, his right arm twisted at an impossible angle. He wasn’t moving. She crashed down the stairs, her legs unsteady. Was he even alive? She stripped off her gloves and fumbled with the catch on his helmet, but it wouldn’t budge. Beginning to panic, she pulled off his gloves as well and checked for a pulse on his wrist. She felt a tiny pump against her finger – weak but there.
She searched the dark deck, looking for something to lever the helmet off. She found a jagged wedge of something metallic and jammed it as hard as she could under the catch. The sharp edges cut her fingers, but the catch opened and she carefully wiggled the helmet off his head.
He was very pale and his eyes were closed, but he was breathing. She fitted the breather then examined him to see if she could spot any blood in the dim light. His leg had been cut and had bled through onto his suit, but looked dry now. Perhaps he’d just grazed it. The arm, however, had to be broken.
She wasn’t sure what to do. Should she try and move him? What if he was bleeding inside? She bent down next to his ear. “Riley?” she spoke hesitantly. “Can you hear me?”
But he was totally out of it. She went around to his right side and, avoiding his twisted arm, tried to turn him onto his back, but he far was too heavy. She gave up and settled for shoving some foam that had come loose from his chair under his head so at least he was off the floor. Then she sat back against a buckled cargo container and put her head in her hands.
The nausea had returned. It was getting colder and it would be dark soon. She knew she should get up and find some water and check outside, but her body felt like it was made of lead. She needed to close her eyes – just for a minute – until the nausea passed.
When she woke, it was utterly dark and she was lying on the floor. She opened her eyes wider, trying to see something, anything, but the blackness pressed against her. She got to her feet, hyperventilating and disorientated. Where was she? She registered the breather on her face and almost pulled it off, but in another blink, it all came back to her: the crash, the river, Mars.
She took a step and fell on top of Riley. He moaned and she sprang up, terrified she’d hurt him more. She couldn’t see a thing. It was too dark. She needed light – light and air. Shaking, she scrambled up the stairs towards the bridge. A faint wash of moonlight was coming through the hole where the view port used to be. She lunged forward, tripping over the debris of the crash like a drunk.
She leaned against the ruined console and looked up at the sliver of night sky. The two moons of Mars, Phobos and Deimos, spread a dim glow across the black. Seeing them helped. She stood for a minute taking long, relieved breaths. The panic faded and she felt slightly foolish. She hadn’t freaked like that since she was a child. She had to pull herself together. She sat on the floor and tried to focus on her situation.
It was very quiet. Unlike Earth there were no mosquitoes buzzing, no voices, nothing but the sound of water running past the pod somewhere outside. She closed her eyes for a moment. Her head was throbbing dully and she was thirsty; she should find some drinking water.
The pod creaked: a long, croaking groan of metal moving. Her eyes snapped open and she sat very still, listening, straining to understand what it was. After a moment it came again and, slightly, ever so slightly, the ship shifted and she heard a rock fall away outside and plop into water.
She got to her feet. This was bad. The pod was cooling down, the metal contracting. They were slipping.
Fear gave her purpose. Rosie dived under the pilot’s console and rummaged around the debris. She pulled a light rod out from under a tangle of wires and twisted the ends so the chemicals merged. The rod shone with a flat white light. Holding it in one hand, she climbed awkwardly onto the console and shuffled up the sloping screens then hooked her arm around the gap in the view port and peered out.
The pod was wedged, nose first, in a crack in the canyon wall. The ship tilted slightly up towards the rock but the bulk of it appeared to be in the water.
There was no bank that she could see that they could get out onto – only striated rock and shadowy overhangs. The rock walls were channelled with long cracks, with spiky tufts of some kind of grass growing out of them.
She twisted to the left and held the rod high, trying to see the water, to judge its depth. The light illuminated black water, swirling swiftly past the ship. The canyon was about fifty metres wide. She could just make out the far side in the grey moonlight and she saw it continued in a relatively straight line before turning away to the right out of her sight.
As far as she could see, almost half of the pod was submerged. If it slipped down much more, the current would catch it, pull it right out of the crack and it would undoubtedly sink. They had to get out.
She slid back inside and rummaged in a locker behind where the pilot’s chair used to be. She found a handheld geocompass and a broken com. She tried the compass. It gave a low ping and the screen lit up. It was still working. Relieved, she began to scroll through its databank to find the settings that would allow it to operate on Mars.
As far as she could tell, it looked like they’d landed in a tributary that ran into the Marineris River, Mars’s longest and deepest waterway. The Marineris wound through a massive canyon system that was 4000 kilometres long and seven kilometres deep in some places. The Genesis colony had been built off one of its tributaries at the foot of the Tharsis Mountains. But how far were they from the mountains? The bad angle of their entry had knocked them off course; they could be anywhere from a few to hundreds of kilometres away.
She waited for the compass to fix their position. Genesis was the only habitat on Mars that had a working community. The United Earth Commission had started to build another city near the Crystal Lakes, but the last news stream she’d seen had shown it still had no water or food production. The only other human sites were the mines, but they were far to the south near the pole and she was sure they were a lot closer to Genesis than that. At least she hoped so.
The geocompass hummed quietly in her hand and she concentrated on its wavering image. A map appeared followed by coordinates and she let her breath out in a small sigh. Genesis was twenty-eight kilometres south-west. That was a long way to walk – if they could get out of this canyon, and if Riley could walk.
She put the compass in one of the pockets of her suit and went back into the belly of the ship.
CHAPTER 27
Pip followed Yuang through the vacuum-sealed doors into the Enclave’s vestibule.
Since they’d lost the pod, Yuang had been in a foul mood. He was shouting orders to the grunts to track where the pod had crashed, yelling for som
eone to get him in contact with the colony, and generally causing everyone to scurry about like rats running from pest control.
Gingerly, Pip stretched his neck. His head and jaw were aching and he felt ill. Yuang had figured he’d helped Rosie’s aunt get loose and as soon as he got to the bridge, he’d blindsided him. Pip hadn’t seen the fist coming before it connected with his head. He’d gone down but got up quickly. He had been mad enough to think about retaliating – Yuang and he were the same height and he was fitter, stronger – but the look in the man’s eye had stopped him. He hadn’t even looked angry. That was the most unnerving thing. He gaze was just cold – cold and deadly – and Pip had got the message. Loud and clear. Yuang could do anything to him and no one would stop him; no one would question it.
“Never betray me again, Pip,” was all he’d said, and Pip had backed off.
When Yuang had discovered that Essie had messed with the weapon guidance system, he’d really tried to become part of the furniture, although that hadn’t stopped one of the grunts from pounding on him just a little, for the heck of it.
He wondered briefly if he had concussion. He’d had it before and remembered it had made him throw up. He really didn’t want to throw up. He’d rather that the first place he saw on his first visit home wasn’t the mediroom. Because that was where he was, he had to keep telling himself: home.
But it didn’t feel the same.
The gardens surrounding the Enclave were thicker, the trees taller, and there were new buildings. The original Enclave, where he’d grown up, was a low hexagon of domes connected by half-submerged corridors, hunkering down in the soil and covered with a radiating substance, which hid them from prying eyes. Now, four smaller clusters of buildings had been added, built behind the original against the high ridges at the foot of the mountains.
It smelled the same – the corridors scented with antiseptic lemon – but it was almost too clean after the murky richness of Earth. He’d forgotten what it was like not to wake up to the odour of decay and sweat, the scent of frying onions embedded in his skin and clothes.
