Martian Ark

by Brandon Ellis

  “What the hell?” yelled Jonas. He eyed Ozzy. “Get this ship off the ground. I’ll hold off whoever that is until you get out of the city.”

  Ozzy threw Jonas his sidearm. He caught it and turned to head down the ramp.

  Ozzy glanced at Jozi. “What are you doing?” He pointed out of the ramp. People in black—the telltale sign of Mort Wildly’s crime syndicate—were racing up a small hill and toward Relic, firing their photon rifles. “Help them.”

  “No, stay Jozi. Help Ozzy. And let more of your agents know what’s going on with the Dunrakee invasion. Those bubble-headed aliens are arriving sooner than you guys thought.” Jonas rushed out of the ship, shooting this and that way and downing a few of Wildly’s soldiers before running toward his house.

  More of Jonas’s guards rushed into view.

  An explosion outside rocked Relic again. Several of Jonas’s men went flying. Ozzy looked away, not wanting to see body parts splattering all over the yard.

  “Slap the ramp’s “close” button,” Ozzy hollered, rushing to his cockpit.

  Jozi did, but nothing happened.

  Ozzy rushed up the ramp and stopped halfway, glancing over his shoulder. “Slap it harder.”

  She kicked it.

  Again, nothing.

  Wildly’s troops were getting closer.

  She grabbed onto a pendant hanging from her necklace. A family—a mother, a father, and a daughter—was carved into it. “Can you override it from your cockpit?”

  Ozzy jumped down from the ladder and ran to his weapon’s rack.

  “What are you doing?” she yelled.

  A blast knocked her on her side and threw Ozzy into the rack. Rifles and other weapons dropped like heavy rain, smacking him upside the head and shoulders.

  Loud bootsteps echoed inside the storage bay. Ozzy glanced at the ramp. One of Wildly’s men was dashing inside Relic, guns in both of his hands, readying to send Ozzy to his grave.

  5

  Tagus Valles, Mars

  Ozzy grabbed for whatever weapon was closest to him and raised the gun, pointing it at Wildly’s soldier.

  He pressed the trigger.

  Click. Click.

  He flipped the gun upside down. The photon magazine slot in the grip was empty, meaning no photon energy pack.

  Shit.

  The man glanced at Ozzy, smiling when their eyes met. He had dirty, broken teeth and a crooked nose and had been in his fair share of fights, to say the least. He lifted his rifle. “Bye, bye, butterfly. I’m going to put you in a cocoon.”

  The guy jerked forward, dropped the photon pistols, and fell to the floor. Jozi released her foot from his crotch and stood, bringing her elbow down hard and cracking him across his neck, knocking him unconscious. She pushed him off the ramp and outside.

  She spun, pointing to the ladder. “Go and get us out of here.”

  Screw the ramp. It wasn’t closing, so he’d fly with it down. He pushed the weapons off of himself and rushed to the ladder, moving two rungs at a time, and dashed into his cockpit.

  He panted as he sat in his chair. “Crap.” He pushed the ionic fuel cell lever forward, feeding the engines, and switched them on.

  Relic purred like a kitten.

  He lifted his ship into the air while simultaneously speaking into his mic. “Get the capsule, Jozi, and bring it up here.” He had no idea if Jozi got the message, or if she were fighting some other bastard who had found his way into the ship, but he crossed his fingers—the best he could do at the moment.

  His craft vibrated as he rotated his ionic boosters horizontally. “Hurry, hurry,” he chided Relic, punching the cockpit roof. Relic revved up and blasted forward, pinning him into his seat.

  He hoped Jonas had locked the mole digger in place as he had asked. If not, it was most likely rolling backward and falling out of his ship right now.

  The light g-force from the thrust eased up, and metal against metal pinged in the cockpit. He unstrapped and jumped out of his seat, his fists up, ready to defend himself and the ship.

  He lowered his hands when he saw Jozi on her backside, blowing her hair out of her face. The metal capsule rolled on the grated floor, stopping at his foot.

  “Sorry,” she said. “I had nothing to hold on to.”

  Ozzy picked up the capsule and hurried to the railing that overlooked the lower deck of the storage bay. The mole digger was locked in place. “How did you close the ramp?”

  “It closed the moment you turned the ship on.” She stood, rubbing her bum. “Note next time—turn on the ship when you want to shut the ramp.”

  He shot her a look, wanting to flip her off, but from his past experiences with her, she had a knee-like reaction toward groins. “Can you use weapons arrays on S-4 Jumper Class IV’s?”

  “I am trained for most ships, but yours isn’t military grade, so why would it matter?”

  It wasn’t military grade when he bought it years ago, but that didn’t stop him from making it so. “Get in the weapons room. We’re turning around, heading back to Jonas’s compound.”

  “How did you get past the authorities to make this—” She waved a dismissive hand and nodded, probably understanding that Ozzy wasn’t one for following rules, especially rules created by the Ministry.

  She didn’t wait for his reply and raced down the hall toward the room.

  Ozzy picked up the capsule and hopped onto his cockpit seat. He turned the ship around. Smoke from Jonas’s mansion clouded his view. The last time Ozzy had met with him in person, poor Jonas had lost his office building. Now his house was next in line.

  Ozzy upped the throttle, wondering why the hell the Mars Ministry Police weren’t on the scene by now. A small-scale battle was taking place below, and the entire Ministry should have been notified.

  But he knew why.

  He bit his lip and squeezed his hand into a tight fist, anger rushing through him. High Judge Robert Baldwin was somehow in cahoots with Mort Wildly. Otherwise, a parade of S-9 MMP ships would be on top of Jonas’s compound at this very moment. Hell, the Tagus Valles MMP station wasn’t more than a few blocks away.

  “I’m all set, Ozzy. Ready to blast some Wildly black-shirts to dust,” said Jozi through the intercom.

  “Excellent.” Ozzy brought Relic around and faced the onslaught. “Do you see the battle on your holoarray screen?”

  “Yes. I have my eyes on it.”

  Ozzy flew Relic closer. It looked like a standoff around the mansion. Jonas’s guards were positioned around the perimeter of the house and on the roof, shooting at Wildly’s men who were hiding behind trees, shrubbery, and random cars parked on the street.

  The massive yard was chock-full of pockmarks, and the fountains were an exploded mess, twisted and torn apart with water gushing everywhere. Dead men and women littered the ground next to it.

  There was no excuse for the MMP not to be here, which had to mean that Robert had hired Wildly and his crew. This was why the crime lords were taking the law into their own hands: the law was being trounced on even by the lawmakers—the High Judge and the Ministry.

  These crime syndicates, other than Wildly, were indeed the only valuable asset that Mars had against the coming Dunrakee. They were like a rich man’s mafia slash militia.

  “Target the trees first,” ordered Ozzy.

  He lowered Relic, heading straight for a throng of cedars.

  A volley of lasers and AGSR-14 Arrows, air-to-ground, short-range missiles, littered the trees, blowing a cloud of debris into the air along with tree bark, soil, and most likely, torn up bodies.

  He couldn’t bear to watch and veered away, going in for another pass. Sometimes this was part of the job, and he hated it.

  He shook his head. Who was he kidding? This was never part of the job, which was another reason he stayed in the shadows, so he didn’t have to deal with blood-filled drama.

  His lone artifact hunting business was usually easy.

  He pulled up and bucked right, doing h
is best to avoid return fire. A few pangs against Relic’s belly told him he wasn’t successful in that endeavor.

  He zipped around, flying over the mansion, and made a U-turn, flying in for a second pass.

  “Ready the guns,” Ozzy said.

  “On it.”

  Photon fire from Relic’s cannons vibrated the ship. Ozzy zoomed in on the tree-filled yard and winced. Blue photon bolts connected with the grass and shrubbery, tearing it up and splattering rock and soil against the trees.

  Many of Wildly’s black-shirts were thrown, sent spiraling in the air and against trees, or worse, against other dead bodies.

  Several survivors retreated into the streets.

  “I’m chasing them,” said Ozzy, pushing the throttle forward.

  “You don’t have to. Look at your rear cams.”

  Ozzy slid his finger over his holographic display and tapped reverse cams. He lurched back in surprise. “Jonas has that many security guards?”

  It was nuts. A horde of security, maybe topping four hundred or so, were rushing Wildly’s men, who were now in full-on let’s-get-our-asses-out-of-here mode.

  Good, because Ozzy didn’t want to be here any longer. He pulled back on his control stick, nodding. “Yep, they got this mess handled.”

  He turned his craft around and headed for the Tagus Valles exit. It was time to get to Olympus Mons and collect the rest of his money and get off this joke of a planet.

  “Where are you going, Ozzy?”

  “To Olympus Mons.”

  “That isn’t part of my assignment.”

  Finding Ozzy, cuffing him, and sending him to prison was her mission. A mission Ozzy wasn’t too keen about.

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “Drop me off.”

  “Nope.”

  Here, Ozzy could keep tabs on Jozi. Down there, he couldn’t.

  “I’m calling MMP headquarters right now and telling them where you’re going.”

  Ozzy almost laughed. She was MMP through and through. Hell, she grew up an orphan, and Ozzy learned from the last time he was with her that she looked to the Ministry as her family. “Well, tell them good luck in finding me.” He had Indigo on board. With that glowing rock he found on an artifact excursion years ago, not one single tracking technology, including advanced radar, could find him.

  Plus, he wasn’t planning on being above the surface to look for the Ark of the Concordant. He’d be below, in the mole digger, with Indigo hooked up to it.

  He’d be a ghost. By that time, he’d make sure Jozi’s com devices would be offline or not working.

  Yes, not working. That would be best.

  He pulled out his gun and switched it from kill to stun.

  Jozi came walking around the corner and into the cockpit. She sat next to him in the copilot seat, her arms crossed. Her com device was on her wrist.

  He pointed his gun at her and pulled the trigger.

  6

  Over Dawes, Mars

  Ozzy hovered over Dawes. Jozi was in the seat next to him, knocked out and unconscious. Her com device was on the floor, smashed to pieces.

  The scene below was grim. Where there was once a thriving city, which had been ransacked and taken over by a small Dunrakee terrorist force in the recent past, was now a charred, blackened, and crumbled pile of death and debris.

  No Dunrakee lived there now.

  A vast and empty riverbed, full of rock and red soot, sat on the outermost edge of the destroyed city—one of many extinct rivers that crisscrossed Mars.

  He touched the capsule in his lap, hugging it close to his belly, almost as if keeping it away from any Dunrakee slime that may have somehow lived through Dawes’s end.

  He relaxed his hands around the capsule when he realized no one could have survived the destruction below. Gragas, his Galactic Knight buddy, and Gragas’s team had lit the place ablaze when Ozzy found the cure to the Martian Plague.

  It did two things: ruined a city and rid Mars of the Dunrakee—for now.

  Jozi shifted in her seat and opened her eyes. She smacked her lips together, rubbing her temples. “Why do I have such a headache?” Her eyes widened when she remembered. “You stunned me.”

  “I had to.”

  She looked around. “We’re over Dawes.” She brought her wrist to her mouth. Her lips curled when she saw it was missing. “Where’s my com link?”

  Ozzy shrugged. “Don’t know.”

  Jozi straightened and glanced down. “You killed it.” She twisted and punched him. “Asshole.”

  He rubbed his shoulder. “Sorry, but I’m not going back to jail. You try to turn me in again and I’ll have no choice but to drop you off outside. And we all know how well you do in the Martian desert.”

  The last two times he and Jozi had been walking across the desert in their EVA suits, she nearly froze to death. If it weren’t for Ozzy, she would have.

  She let out a long exhale, rubbing her forehead. “I’ve got a migraine, you bastard.”

  “I’m sure you do.”

  “I’m going to be in trouble when I get back. There ain’t no doubt about it.” She glanced at the wreckage of Dawes. “Why are we here?”

  Ozzy shrugged. “For memory’s sake.” He touched the picture on the flight console. “For Lily.”

  “You visit here much?”

  Ozzy shook his head. “No, but it’s on the way to Olympus Mons.”

  Jozi wiggled in her seat. “I have to tell you something. I don’t want to, but it’s eating at me, and I think you’re the only one who would understand.” She blinked her eyes several times and continued to rub her head.

  Ozzy pressed the throttle forward, moving Relic away from the city. “What is it?”

  “Remember I told you about when my parents died?”

  It was the crash of flight 2779. An S-45 Prancer. An experimental Mars transport craft that her parents were piloting. They killed more than three hundred people on that flight from Gale Crater City to Knobel.

  “I remember.”

  “Well, there is something else,” Jozi said. “I was digging in the Ministry files after we found the cure, and it turns out that there was a faulty ionic engine valve that caused the fire in the engine during their flight and the resulting crash.”

  “Yeah, that happens.” He grimaced, thinking if he wasn’t a good mechanic or didn’t pay attention to his safety checks and engine diagnostics, he may also have issues like that.

  “That’s right. It does happen, but the Ministry blamed the pilots—my parents. Yet, the Ministry gave the Prancer an all clear even though the Ministry found out about the faulty component on the previous test flight and simply forgot to fix it.”

  Ozzy shrugged. “As I said, human error can happen.”

  “Yes, human error can happen, but the Ministry covered it up by orders of Robert Baldwin, the High Judge. It was his first year as the High Judge, and he didn’t want anything or anyone in his administration to look bad, plus he’d have a hefty bill to pay out to the families who lost their loved ones. It would be a big black mark on his first term in office. Instead, he shrugged it off and covered it up.”

  “So?” It was probably one of the million terrible things that the prick, Robert Baldwin, did in his long-tenured High Judge career where he somehow continued to win election after election even though no one liked him.

  “Well, there is more. I found your father’s file too. While he was the mayor of Gale Crater City, he sent a complaint to the Ministry. A complaint that was all but ignored. He stated that he had a suspicion and evidence that Robert Baldwin manipulated the vote count and stole the election.”

  Ozzy paused. Did he hear that right? He tilted his head. “No.” That was silly. “My dad would have turned him in, not just written a note.”

  Jozi nodded, most likely understanding his disbelief. “I wanted to continue my investigation on it, but then I received the assignment to locate you, to see if you’d bite with another illegal dig and if so,
to arrest you.”

  “Why in Mars’s plumber’s crack would my dad hold off on that kind of information?”

  Jozi shrugged. “My thought was that he was trying to keep you and your family safe. Maybe he made some attempt but was threatened, much like you were?” Jozi relaxed and sat straighter, her tone changing. “The High Judge may have done some bad things, but keep in mind, he’s keeping Mars together. He’s not as bad as some make him out, especially you.”

  She had too much faith in her High Judge. Heck, he was somewhat like a father to her, being in the Ministry and semi-hands-on with her from childhood to adulthood, so she was more than biased in her opinions on the bastard.

  Ozzy leaned away from Jozi like he wanted to lean away from a thought that came to mind. “Or, this could be why Robert has a thing for me and my family. My dad probably pissed him off beyond repair, much like my dad did with me. My father had a way with words, and a way to make you feel like an insignificant piece of Mars dung.” Ozzy could speculate all he wanted, but he would never know what went on between his father and Robert. If anything, he imagined his dad was threatened and constantly gave the High Judge nothing but problems in the form of words and his voting record against Robert.

  Jozi let out a sigh. “He wouldn’t do that to your dad. Don’t be ridiculous. The Ministry may have put a scare in him, but Robert wouldn’t stoop to that level.”

  Does she really think that? “He did with me.”

  Jozi seethed, her eyes narrowing. “You know why he set you up, Ozzy? Because he probably realized who you truly were when you were a professor. He saw that deep down you were a criminal. Robert can see past the eyes and into the soul. Trust me. You’re lucky he didn’t turn you in during those years.”

  Ozzy moaned. “You truly are brainwashed. We’ll just chalk up those artifacts I sold on the black market for him as a way to satisfy his ego that I am the one who was the criminal.” Ozzy rolled his eyes. “Did you see all the holovids, holodocs, and holoimages I had you retrieve and use to turn in the High Judge after we found the cure for the Martian Plague? The guy has done so much illegal activity that he needs to be in prison.”