Saving Mars

by Cidney Swanson

  But as she watched three of them flying rings around one another, she felt a surge of hope. They appeared confused as well. Maybe she could lose them while they played a game of Who’s Who.

  Her hope proved short-lived. The four ships quickly regrouped and once more gained in their pursuit. Her ship had to be emitting a signature of some kind. Jessamyn wished she’d paid more attention to what her brother had tried to teach her about vessel tracking.

  A new message crackled over the ship’s audio. “Alpha-zero-niner, you are under detainment protocol. You will be fired upon if you continue to resist contact and communication.”

  A quick glance at her dashboard told Jess she had no weapons of her own to return fire. She felt her skin flush warm with indignation.

  “I did not,” she growled, “Come all this way—” here she broke off to dive into a narrow valley—“Just to get shot out of the sky!”

  She attempted a move she used all the time back on Mars, weaving back and forth within the confines of the channel. Only here, nothing about flying felt quite like what she expected. “Holy Ares!” she shouted, pulling left from a too-near canyon wall. Earth-air was so thick, and her craft didn’t respond as she expected.

  The ship tailing her was far less fortunate than she.

  A fluttering on the nav-screen caught Jessamyn’s eye: one of the blue blips disappeared, and from a rear view screen, she saw the disintegrating craft paving a trail like a comet. She gasped. Now you’re in trouble, she thought. She scrutinized the valley walls—could she use them as weapons to destroy the other three ships? A missile exploding against a wall just to starboard cut short her analysis.

  Jess threw hurried glances across screens and windows. Her ship appeared unharmed but there was a red blip now tailing her ship. Another missile, observed a cool part of her mind. Automatically, she banked left and up, then dove down again, narrowly missing a sudden rise in the floor of the valley.

  “Hermes!” she shouted, correcting for the rising ground as the missile exploded on impact beside her. Jessamyn felt a flapping kind of panic building inside her belly: she didn’t know how to fly on Earth. The strange atmosphere, so much thicker than that of Mars, made it impossible for her to pilot with precision.

  The narrow valley spilled into a vast plain and Jessamyn felt exposed. Chill fingers played through her abdomen and up her spine. How am I supposed to fly on this planet? she asked herself. And then she found her ship climbing, climbing, climbing, as a part of her that didn’t rely on thought took over.

  “Of course,” she whispered, “Of course.”

  She needed less air. If she stopped hugging the planet’s surface, she could find that part of the sky where she could manage her craft with ease. She soared into the thinner air of the upper atmosphere.

  “Just like back home,” she said softly. “Now we’ll see who knows how to fly.” A smile crept across her face. It had been no accident she’d chosen a craft with orbiting capability. Running a hand over her gut, she murmured, “You knew.”

  Her unexpected climb had bought her a few precious moments and she used these to scan her dashboard, looking for a way to render inoperative the signal her ship transmitted to the pursuing vessels. Finding something called an emergency beacon locator, she attempted to disable it, holding her breath to see if they’d lost her signal. But three trailing blips on her screen told her they still knew exactly where she was.

  She fired a forward thruster, squinting as the g-force slammed her against her restraint harness. A missile flared past her, curving in a slow arc as it adjusted for her sudden change in direction. Using a combination of her jet engines and rocket thrust, she rolled into an elongated corkscrew. Hades, but it felt good to be free of those extra millibars of atmospheric pressure.

  One of her pursuers snuck in close and tight, nearly matching her maneuvers. She fired a port thruster and dove in time to see a flash of bright light—the craft that had followed her exploded as the missile struck it instead of her.

  “Wings and rudders don’t work quite the same in thin atmo, do they?” Jess murmured. She’d yet to see anyone fly in a way that suggested they knew how to use rocket-thrust to advantage up here. Did their ships even have it? She needed to find out. Using bursts from her forward thrusters to slow herself, she allowed the nearest ship to close on her. Then she looped back in a tight circle to position herself behind the other ship.

  “Harder to fire on me if I’m hunter instead of prey, huh?” She examined her enemy’s ship. And then she grinned: it was clear their vessels ran on jet engines only. She had an incalculable advantage.

  “And I know how to use it!” she shouted firing both rear thrusters.

  Just then the second pursuer passed across the back of her ship. She sucked in a quick breath—his mistake was more than she could have hoped for. The pursuer was caught unawares in her jet wash, spinning flat, in a jerking motion that smoothed out until it reminded Jessamyn of a child’s toy, spinning across the floor. She felt a moment’s pity—it wasn’t a spin she’d want to try to recover from. The pilot would likely pass out long before impact. A sudden rush of hope replaced pity: only one pursuer remained. She liked those odds.

  The real question now was whether or not she could lure her pursuer to follow her into a higher orbit. She suspected the answer would be yes as she aimed her craft toward the heavens. A bright necklace of satellites glinted and sparked above her. She fired her rear thrust rocket and watched as the satellites seemed to pull her forward.

  Onscreen, she saw the remaining ship veer drunkenly toward her. “Jet engines don’t like it up here, do they?” she muttered. An alarm flashed across her nav-screen. Warning: insufficient oxygen. Jet-engine failure in twelve-point-five seconds on these coordinates. Warning: correct course immediately. Warning—Jess slapped the cautionary screen to black and smiled as she hurtled into the deep.

  The other ship fired at her again and Jess had to use her rockets to veer off her intended course. The missile sailed past her, unable to correct itself effectively in the thinning air. She waited for her jets to notice they had no oxygen.

  “Come on, come on, come on,” she said, urging her engines to cut. But what if Terrans had different technology? What if jet engines didn’t die here, even without oxygen? The enemy ship was gaining on her once more. Would it fire? Would it break off pursuit?

  The ship sent another missile hurtling toward her vessel and she burned her starboard rocket, hating how it aimed her ship back toward Earth and oxygen. But it happened anyway: her first engine flamed out and then her second followed suit. Jess held her breath watching the pursuing ship. And there it was: she saw a last gasping flare as her enemy’s engines darkened. The pursuing ship glided out and away from Earth on a trajectory into the stars. Her gamble had worked. That ship was not changing course.

  Unless the pilot started firing missiles, thought Jess, looking at his problem as if it were her own to solve. She felt a part of her brain whispering: Fire them, idiot! Fire them! She didn’t actually want the drifting ship back on her trail, but she hated knowing the vessel would’ve made it back to Earth if she’d been piloting it. She murmured a prayer for the doomed pilot, and then, sighing, Jessamyn fired her thrusters in a series of burns that directed her Earthward. Maybe seeing what she’d done with her thrust rockets would give the other pilot the idea to try the missiles. But she wasn’t sticking around to find out.

  “I’ve got my own planet to save,” she said aloud.

  Slowing her re-entry into the lower atmo with repeated rocket burns, Jessamyn was nonetheless relieved when her engines restarted. Landing without them, with Earth’s heavy gravity, wasn’t something she wanted to experience. As she crossed the Terran north pole and aimed for the Isle of Skye, she realized she had a small decision to make. Should she bring her craft to a landing beside Wallace’s cottage or beside the Galleon?

  Cursing her inability to figure out how to contact either Wallace or Crusty, she decided to try th
e cottage first. Crusty might well have decided to hunker down and await her at the Red Galleon, but she had to speak with Brian Wallace. It was possible someone would trace the Marsian crew or their vehicle back to the Isle of Skye. She owed Brian Wallace a warning; it was what Harpreet would have done.

  Her landing disturbed more ash than she’d expected, reminding her why Wallace had located his dwelling those few kilometers away from the storage barn. Holding her shirt over her mouth and nose, she approached the front door, an apology for the ash—now floating like snow—on her lips. As she knocked, she remembered Wallace’s preference for shoes-off and was attempting to slip out of her footgear when the door flew open.

  “Ye’re back, then!” said Brian Wallace. He frowned, looking past Jessamyn for the others.

  “It’s only me,” she said. She explained the events of the last two days with detachment—things that might have happened to someone else. Concluding, she asked where Crusty was.

  “Aboard the Red Galleon,” replied Wallace, “Fretting that he’ll have to fly back alone. I told him ye’d make it back. But ye say that ye fought off a detainment squadron to get here?”

  Jess nodded.

  “Ye’ll have disabled the beacon for the craft before landing her here, then?” said Wallace, looking nervously to the sky.

  Jessamyn inhaled in alarm. She’d forgotten about the tracking device!

  Wallace groaned. “Damned good thing I transferred the tellurium off-island yesterday,” he muttered, shaking his head. Then, placing his hands on his hips, he took a deep breath. “We’ll be having company shortly, lass. There’s not a moment to waste. Quick now, get aboard that Mars vessel and get yerself off-planet!”

  Jess nodded and turned for the stolen ship she’d abandoned moments ago.

  “No,” called Wallace. “Leave that beaconed ship for me, if ye please. Here.” He grabbed a hovercart from beside the cottage. “These are swift.” Wallace hollered after her, “Ye’ve given me a right fast escape ship, for which I thank ye!”

  Jess hopped aboard the hovercart, swerving alongside her Terran friend. “But, what about the beacon?”

  Wallace grinned. “I know how to disable a beacon, lass. Now get out of here! I’ll contact Crusty to begin pre-launch!”

  Jess pointed the hovercart in the direction of the Red Galleon. Only the topmost section was visible, but the sight made her sit a little taller, throw her shoulders back. The Galleon was a beautiful ship and it would be a honor to fly her again.

  She pushed Wallace’s tiny cart as fast as it would go. The ride was exhilarating, if jolting, and it made her think of piggy-back rides on her father’s back. She let slip a brief giggle as the cart jounced along the curve of a low hill. But what she saw over the rise extinguished all laughter.

  A small puff of ash drifted in the air from a recently landed craft. Three figures dressed in vivid red armor jumped from the vessel and aimed weapons at her. She swerved, nearly flinging herself to the ground. Grasping the sides of her small carrier, she hurtled forward. She could see the Galleon, gleaming, beckoning. She heard the slightest of rumbling shudders—Crusty had gotten Wallace’s message and was commencing the pre-launch sequence. She would make it—she had to!

  And then suddenly she heard a loud shot ringing out beside her. The Galleon disappeared from view and Jess found herself staring up at a whirling sky as she was violently dislodged from the hovercart. She tried to focus on a single cloud, tried to stop the world from spinning, tried to stand and flee. Strong arms restrained her.

  She heard herself screaming, told herself, You must break free—you must! But her torso was held fast in a manacled grip. She wasn’t strong enough. Things were too heavy here. She felt her legs collapse as someone tugged her, dragging her backwards. She stared in wonder at a bright bloom spreading along her left arm, a match to the crimson-clad guards who pulled her in the wrong direction, away from the Galleon. There was a sharp ache in the arm, but she had no time for pain.

  “No!” she shouted. “No!” A third no trailed out into an anguished cry as she struggled to free herself, to race back to the Galleon and hope and the salvation of her world.

  She heard shouted commands, but the world’s edges seemed to be growing fuzzy. A part of her recognized she’d been shot, which explained how she’d become dislodged from the cart. As spots danced across her vision, she stopped struggling physically and instead struggled to maintain consciousness. She focused on her feet as the secures dragged her backward along a path to the front door of Wallace’s cottage. Her feet bounced along the uneven surface and one shoe slipped free.

  “Throw the prisoner over your shoulder,” said a deep voice. “She’s in no condition to fight.”

  Jess watched the world tip so that grass and ash became up, sky down. She shook her head. You will not pass out, she ordered herself. The ash and grass dimmed and then darkened.

  And then the world up-ended itself again as Jess felt herself being hurled onto something hard. A chair. Her vision spun, steadied, and righted itself. Her hands had been bound and a bandage slapped over her arm wound. It disturbed her that she couldn’t remember either of these things happening. In fact, she’d missed re-entering Wallace’s cottage altogether. But she felt awake now, and the pain in her left arm helped keep her alert.

  Across from her, Wallace sat at his computer, gagged and handcuffed, rather sloppily, to the desk. He was shouting at the Red Forces officials, who looked puzzled to see him. One stepped closer and removed Wallace’s gag.

  Brian Wallace twisted wild eyes at Jessamyn, shouting meanwhile at the secures. “That’s her, I tell you! She’s parked a nuclear weapon in my sheep pasture!”

  A secure addressed Wallace. “She tied you up?”

  “Aye,” said Wallace, wagging his head up and down, “Only minutes ago, when she found me, hiding here. I’ve been sending messages to the constabulary on the mainland for two days now about her missile, but no one would listen. You’ve seen it, haven’t you? That great bloody inciter missile?”

  The two officers conferred. While their heads were turned away from Wallace, he aimed a long slow wink at Jessamyn. Her eyebrows flew up. He nodded briefly and in that gesture she saw reassurance. Whatever he was up to, it didn’t involve giving away her planet’s secrets.

  Jess could play along, she decided; she bowed her own head slightly, mouthing an “okay” to him as well.

  “Inform the prisoner of the charges against her,” barked the superior officer to the one who had carried her before turning himself to interrogate Brian Wallace.

  “Citizen,” droned the guard beside Jessamyn, “You stand convicted of attempting to launch a nuclear weapon of mass destruction to destinations unascertainable which is an act of terrorism against the people of Earth and treason against her government.”

  Jessamyn’s mind spun. She knew what came next—the part where they shot her and she collapsed unconscious.

  “You are required to perform acts of manual labor to benefit the citizens you have attempted to harm. You will receive reorientation training during the balance of your years of life. Your current body will be entered into general reclamation and you will be assigned a geriatric body in which to carry out your sentence.”

  Jessamyn’s breath caught, stretching the moment to an infinity, but no one raised a weapon at her.

  “You’re not going to shoot me?” she asked. Hope rushed in. She was bound and she was under armed-guard, but she was conscious. The Galleon lay just outside. And Wallace was now unbound. They believed him.

  Emboldened, she spoke. “You have to take me to the … to my weapon. I’m the only one who can disarm it.” The guard watched over her, expressionless.

  She clawed through the back rooms of her brain, looking for anything that would end with her aboard the Galleon. “You must release me. The fate of the planet is in your hands!”

  “The Chancellor is en route,” reported the commanding officer, ignoring Jessamyn.

 
“Release me or everyone dies,” she cried. “Desolation! Destruction.”

  “Seal the prisoner’s mouth,” barked the officer in charge.

  As a piece of skin-heal was slapped roughly over her mouth, Jess sank farther back into the unyielding chair. She considered screaming continuously, but if the officers hadn’t been convinced by her words, stifled groans probably wouldn’t go far. In fact, based on how annoyed the secure looked at the moment, he might decide to render her unconscious. She held silent.

  Through one of the windows, Jess could see the top of the Red Galleon. Everything in her strained toward the ship. Could Crusty make it alone? Her gut whispered, No. She had to escape. What resources did she have? She was no Harpreet with negotiation skills, obviously. What do you have, Jess? Think!

  She was conscious. Miraculously, she retained the use of her legs, unsecured—she could run if the opportunity presented itself. Jess glanced at the weapon trained on her. Outside, she heard an animal noise. A dog’s woof-woof-woof. She remembered their hope-filled arrival: Wallace’s dog bounding beside them, barking. And something in that memory undid her. Despair settled upon Jessamyn like a mantle ice cold and brittle. But even as she bowed under the imagined weight, she commanded herself, You will not give up!

  Another noise shook the windows: the rattle of a large hover-transport as it descended. The dog barked at an even more excited pitch. The security officers stood at attention and one opened the front door.

  “Welcome, Madam Chancellor,” said the commanding officer, in tones of deep respect.

  Half a dozen angry drops of rain blew in through the open door.

  Craning her head, Jessamyn saw a woman who was tall by Terran standards. A middle-aged threebody. Thin enough to pass for Marsian. Her wide-set eyes looked cold—exactly as they had when Jessamyn had seen them first, in this very room, upon Brian Wallace’s video screen.