by Lara Morgan
“Yes.”
“Come on.” Pip pushed the bed towards the opening in the plastic.
“No, you lead,” Aunt Essie said and grabbed one side of it, motioning for Rosie to take the other. Pip didn’t argue. He jogged ahead and Rosie and her aunt followed, rolling the bed past Yuang’s corpse and out into the corridor.
The alarm was louder in the empty hall and they pushed the bed as fast as they could towards the airlocks. Long, frightening creaking sounds were coming up through the structure of the Enclave, like a great metal beast seeking to rise – or fall apart – and every so often a dull crash could be heard and the floor would shake beneath them. Riley’s bombs must have caused more damage than he’d thought.
The pain in Rosie’s ankle returned with a vengeance. She gritted her teeth against the pain and leaned as much as she could on the bed without slowing it down. She worried about Riley. Was he still alive?
Pip had pulled the gun out again and a few metres ahead she saw an outer airlock.
She tried the com again.
Her aunt was watching her. “Riley?” she said. Her voice sounded weaker than normal.
“He was in the lower levels.” Rosie didn’t need to see Aunt Essie’s face to know what she thought about his chances of getting out.
The com spat loud static.
“Riley, come in,” Rosie spoke into the com, leaving the view screen off for maximum power. “Riley.”
Hope surged as a faint voice answered. “Rosie?”
“Riley!” she shouted, catching her aunt’s eye. “Where are you?”
“M … n … lev …” The signal was breaking up, but Rosie tried anyway.
“Riley. We’re getting out – all of us. We have the files.”
She could only pray he’d heard as the com erupted with loud static and then the sound of sharp cracks.
“Gunshots,” her aunt said, her voice strained with the effort of pushing the bed.
“Riley!” Rosie yelled into the com.
“Greenhouse. Go.” His voice suddenly came through clear then the com went dark.
“Where’s the greenhouse?” Rosie called to Pip.
“The other side. Too far. It’s above ground though.”
Rosie looked at Aunt Essie. There were shadows under her eyes and her skin had a yellow tinge to it. She was fading already, the adrenaline being eaten up by the virus.
“He’s on his own, kid,” her aunt said.
Pip was at the airlock. He checked a cabinet on the wall beside it.
“No breathers.” His expression was bleak and Rosie wanted to scream at the injustice of it. Where the hell would they go?
CHAPTER 41
“Rovers?” She practically spat the word at him.
“Not here,” Pip said. “This is a service way. I thought there’d be less chance of grunts …” he trailed off, his dismay at his decision plain.
Time to detonation: fifteen minutes. The calm mechanical voice spoke again.
“We gotta take our chances.” Aunt Essie pushed the bed towards the airlock. “Open–”
“Wait,” Rosie grabbed the bed and said to Pip, “How about Yuang’s ship?”
“It’s probably gone.”
“Without Yuang?”
He held her gaze for a heartbeat.
“If it’s there, I can fly it,” Aunt Essie said.
Pip opened the lock. Rosie couldn’t even have guessed what time it was, but it was dark and very cold and almost immediately her muscles tensed up against the chill. They shoved the bed out as fast as they could. Rosie kept a hand on her dad’s arm and felt the thinness of the air as she took a breath. Not enough oxygen. The alarm was spiking loudly and the bed jerked and rattled over the edge of a slab of crete. The wheels dug in as it hit a dirt path but her dad didn’t move. He was so still.
“Which way?” she asked Pip. A garden surrounded the Enclave and the looming mass of the Tharsis Mountains rose behind, cutting a shadow across the starred sky.
“This way.” Pip threw Rosie’s dad over his shoulder and led them up the path towards a light tower on a hill.
It took them nearly ten minutes to reach the landing platform. It was on the top of a hill surrounded by garden and the Cosmic Mariner sat, dark and closed up, above them. They were all suffering badly from the lack of oxygen, as well as fatigue. Pip was sweating and making an awful wheezing sound and Rosie had to support Aunt Essie up the last steep incline to the doors of the launch-pad lift. Pip punched it open and they crowded inside. There was a blessed blast of regulated air as the lift sealed and shot them up to the hatch.
The ship came to life around them as they entered the cargo hold. Lights flickered on as automatic sensors picked up their movement. The Cosmic Mariner was enormous. Seven decks, ion core, solar flare shielded, a long-distance cruiser. Strapped in web locks on either side of the hold were cases of supplies and a central runway led to a deck access lift at the far end.
The pilot and crew were nowhere to be seen. Maybe they were stuck inside. Maybe they were dead. Rosie didn’t care; she was already beginning to worry that Aunt Essie wasn’t going to be able to fly the ship. She was way too pale and Rosie had to help her onto a nearby crate. She groaned softly and slumped back against the hull, her eyelids fluttering closed.
“Aunt Essie?” She didn’t respond and Rosie looked with fear at Pip as he laid her dad down on the floor next to her. Her dad looked even worse and despair began to work its way up her throat.
“He’s breathing,” Pip said, but the expression on his face wasn’t hopeful. Rosie began to bargain with the universe. Please, just let them live, get us out of here. I’ll do anything. She kneeled down by her dad and gently touched his cheek. He was so feverish. So still.
“Rosie!” Pip’s voice was sharp enough to jolt her out of her misery. He grabbed her aunt’s shoulders as she slipped downwards. “Can you fly the ship?”
Rosie tore her gaze away from her dad’s face.
“I don’t think so. We’ve got to–”
“You’ve got to what?” a voice said. They both started as a tall black woman emerged from the launch pad lift.
“Nerita,” Pip said under his breath. “Ship’s pilot.”
“What you doing here, Feral?” she said to Pip and strode towards them. “I’m surprised you’re still alive.” She had a large gun in her hand.
“Just trying to get off this rock, same as you,” Pip answered.
“Uh-huh.” She eyed Rosie with her aunt and dad. “And who are your new friends? Haven’t I seen them before?”
“We need to get out of here,” Rosie said quickly. “The Enclave’s going to explode in about five minutes.”
Nerita seemed almost amused. “I’d say it’s more like three.” She went to a panel on the hull and swiped her hand over a bio reader. “And it’s lucky for you I’m here. You’d be going nowhere without these.” She waggled her fingers with a smile like a shark’s grin. Bio dent ignition. Rosie got a sick feeling in her gut. If she’d tried to start the ship, she would have been fried in the chair.
Nerita looked like she knew what Rosie was thinking. “Let’s get one thing straight,” she said. “The way I see it, Yuang’s gone missing and that means the ship’s mine.” She tapped the gun.
“Yuang’s dead,” Pip said in a low voice.
“Really?” She gave him a speculative look. “Didn’t think you had it in you, Pip.”
Pip tensed and moved as if to step towards her.
Rosie jumped to her feet and grabbed his arm before he did something stupid. “It doesn’t matter now,” she said quickly. “We’ve got to go.”
“Agreed,” Nerita said. “Pip, toss the weapon.”
His mouth thinned, but he pulled the gun from his waistband and threw it towards her. She caught it and looked at Rosie. “I saw you fly that pod – you’re coming to the bridge with me. Pip, close the airlock, then stay here and do what I say. Move it.” She motioned for Rosie to go ahead of her to the li
ft.
“You sit there.” Nerita tossed the guns down on a console and pushed Rosie towards a podium beside her pilot’s chair on the bridge.
“You know your charts?” she snapped.
“Sure.” Rosie climbed into the copilot chair and placed her palm on the bio interface on the armrest. Immediately, an opaque holo screen rose from the centre of the podium and a slim panel unpacked itself like an elegant spider stretching out two legs on either side of her. It lit up with touch-sensitive controls for navigation and ship functions. Rosie stared in apprehension. She barely knew what half of the controls did.
Nerita already had her bio link helmet on and an orb of amber-coloured holo controls sprang up around her.
“Good, we’ll–” Nerita stopped as a deep boom came from outside and the ship rocked hard. Rosie stifled a scream and gripped the armrests of her chair.
“View screen up,” Nerita said calmly. The front panel of the bridge became transparent revealing the Enclave slowly breaking apart from beneath. God, Riley. Rosie hoped desperately that he’d got out.
“Disengage the pad lift,” Nerita said.
Rosie swiped a trembling finger across the holo image of the lift on her screen, detaching it, and the ship rumbled as Nerita powered it up.
“Strap in, this could be bumpy.” She spoke through the ship-wide com so Pip would hear it. “Lift-off in ten seconds.”
A massive boom sounded again. The ship shuddered and the patch of trees they’d come through a few minutes ago suddenly disappeared as a hole opened up beneath them. But the abyss in the planet’s crust didn’t stop there. It kept caving in and the Cosmic Mariner began leaning towards it as the ground became unstable.
“Fire the ion thrusters,” Nerita said.
Panicking, Rosie stared at the panel. Where were they? Lights and control options were everywhere. The ship was oscillating with its gathering power then it suddenly pitched forward almost twenty degrees. The blackness of the massive hole rushed towards them.
“Rosie, top left!” Nerita shouted.
She found them and punched the control harder than necessary. A savage roaring came and she saw the fierce blue flare of the thrusters burn across the ground outside. The ship pulled back from the hole.
“Lift-off,” Nerita said and the Cosmic Mariner rose into the air just as the ground crumbled beneath them.
Rosie held tight to her seat as the ship clawed its way out of the atmosphere at full power, leaving a blast ring behind.
“Good job, kid.” Nerita grinned at her through the amber light.
Rosie couldn’t smile back. She activated the ground scanner so she could see Mars as they left. One by one the domes of the Enclave fell into the crater. The selfdestruct system had done its work well, destroying the complex in a thunder of dust and explosion. Streaming away from it in trails of light were the rovers filled with the test subjects the medibots had herded out. She hoped Riley was one of those tiny dots of life running to the Genesis colony.
CHAPTER 42
“Still not awake?” Aunt Essie looked over Rosie’s shoulder.
She stared at her dad’s pale sleeping face. Pip had injected Aunt Essie with his blood not long after they’d left Mars and then her dad as well. Twelve hours later, her aunt had been recovering quickly, her rash almost gone, and her dad … the rash was receding but he still lay so still, as if he’d never open his eyes again.
“Don’t worry,” Aunt Essie said. “He’ll come round. Look at me. Good as new.”
Rosie studied her aunt’s pale skin and the dark circles under her eyes. “You walk like an old lady.”
“I am an old lady. Not everything can be fixed as fast as your ankle.” Aunt Essie gently prodded Rosie’s recently nano-repaired foot. “I’m hungry. Let’s find some food.”
Aunt Essie drew her towards the door of the medilab and Rosie put an arm around her waist, feeling how frail she was. Her aunt had always been small but she had never thought of her as weak. But at least she was alive. Almost losing everyone she cared for had made Rosie more than grateful for having them in any kind of shape. She just wished she knew if Riley had made it too.
They entered the galley and she felt a flutter of nerves as she saw Pip leaning against the food lockers eating fruit out of a plaspak. Since coming on the ship he’d barely spoken to anyone and spent most his time holed up in one of the cabins. He wasn’t the same boy she’d met. There was no swagger, no jokes. Instead, there was silence and a look on his face that warned her not to even try to ask him if he was okay.
“Pipsqueak,” her aunt said, “think you can spare some food for us?”
“There’s plenty there.” He brushed past them, heading for the door.
“Pip, wait,” Rosie said.
He paused at the doorway, half turning to her.
“We have to figure out how we’re going to get these files onto the news waves.” She pulled the pendant out of her shirt.
“I don’t know any news wavers.” He leaned against the doorframe.
“We don’t need a waver; we just need a comnet that Helios can’t track,” Aunt Essie said. “Did Riley have any or know of one?”
Pip poked the fork into his fruit. “The Game Pit.”
“What’s that?” Rosie frowned.
He shrugged. “A place I used to go. They’re under the radar, zero surveillance zone.”
“Is that possible?” Rosie looked at her aunt.
“With blocking tech – I guess.”
Pip pushed off the doorway and started walking away. “I’ll take you there when we land,” he said over his shoulder.
Rosie tried to follow but Aunt Essie stopped her. “Leave him.” She drew her to one of the tables. Rosie wanted to ignore her aunt’s advice but nothing in Pip’s expression had invited her to follow. She sat down feeling depressed.
“Let it go, kid.” Aunt Essie hobbled to the lockers and opened the cold store. “If he wants to talk, he’ll talk.”
“Guess I don’t have a choice.”
Her aunt sighed. “He killed someone, hon. That’s not an easy thing to deal with – especially not the first time.”
Rosie stared at her hands remembering the dreadful look of pain and anger on Pip’s face when he’d pulled the trigger. “I’m just–” She let out a short breath. “He did it because of me, to stop Yuang. I feel like he’s blaming me or something.”
“He might be, or maybe he’s numb, or scared. Killing does strange things to people.” Her aunt sat next to her with a bowl of soy protein chilli.
“You want some?”
Rosie shook her head. “How did it affect you?” she said.
Aunt Essie paused and didn’t answer right away. “I was a soldier, Rosie. It was my job. And mostly it was from a distance.”
“But when it wasn’t?”
She dipped the spoon in her bowl, watching it. “It’s terrible and you never forget it, just like you’ll always carry seeing Yuang die with you. But that’s how it should be. It shouldn’t be easy.”
“Perhaps you should talk to him,” Rosie said.
Aunt Essie shook her head. “I don’t think so. I’m not good at that sort of thing. And I doubt he’d want to hear anything from me. He might have helped me out before but we’re not exactly buddies.”
“What do you mean, helped you out?” Rosie said.
“Here on the ship. He convinced Yuang not to kill me, then helped me get loose so I could stop the weapons from locking onto the pod when you were getting away.” She half smiled. “The dumb ass took on one of those guards he calls grunts and almost got buzzed as well when I shot the guy with his own pulse gun.”
Rosie slowly said, “That’s why we weren’t hit.”
“Yeah, well. Yuang wasn’t too impressed with him for that.”
So that was where the bruises on Pip’s face had come from. Had he helped out of guilt or something else? And did it really matter now? She wanted to talk to him but he was avoiding her. Since they’d lef
t the Enclave he’d been acting like there was nothing between them, like he hadn’t kissed her. She’d gone to the bridge last night to help Nerita and he’d been there asking, for what must have been the hundredth time by Nerita’s expression, if the sensors had picked up anyone following them. He’d left the bridge as soon as he saw Rosie. That had hurt. Clearly, he didn’t want to talk to her.
Her aunt sighed and said softly, “Don’t hold out your hopes for that one, Rosie. He’s messed up. A boy like that … he’ll break your heart.”
Rosie didn’t reply. She wasn’t sure how she felt about Pip but there were bigger things to worry about. Nerita had picked up a news wave an hour ago. It had called the explosion of the Enclave an accident. Helios must still be pulling strings. Rosie didn’t know if Helios knew she had the Shore files, but she had to assume that someone would be sent to ensure they wouldn’t be talking about anything that happened. The sooner they got the files out in the open, the safer it was going to be for all of them.
A few minutes later the galley com buzzed and Pip’s voice came over the speaker. “Rosie, your dad’s awake,” he said, and the com switched off.
Her aunt looked at her. “Well, at least he told you that,” she said.
Pip left the medilab as soon as they arrived, with barely a glance in her direction. Rosie tried to shrug off his coldness and went to her dad’s side.
“Rosie.” He smiled weakly at her.
“How are you feeling, Dad?” She took the shaking hand he lifted and tried not to show how his frailty scared her.
“I’m okay.” He blinked and looked behind her at her aunt. “Ess?”
“Yeah, it’s me,” said Aunt Essie and took a step closer. “We’re on our way back.”
“Back?” He frowned.
“Yeah, but don’t worry about it. You look like crap. Do you want some water? Or maybe you should get some more sleep.”
He looked confused and Rosie felt her chest tightening up. Didn’t he remember anything? She suddenly felt like she had to leave.
“I’ll get the water,” she said quickly and, avoiding her aunt’s gaze, headed out the door again.
