Ozzy went rigid. They could speak his language? That couldn’t be true. His ears were playing tricks on him.
He moved away from the corner and toward the dust shelter’s entrance. “Jozi, give me your location.”
Silence.
“Jozi?”
Dead quiet.
Then movement, but not Jozi’s or his. The clatter of Dunrakee feet resounded against the walls. They were coming closer, advancing in short bursts. Soon, they’d be around the corner and facing Ozzy in the darkness.
“God, Jozi, just give me a sign you’re around,” he said softly.
Another Dunrakee war scream assaulted Ozzy’s ears. They were right in front of him.
Ozzy fell on his back, shooting wildly, painting the blackness with blue stripes. He yelled his own war cry, pulling the trigger as fast as he could, forgetting he could just hold it down to rapidly fire.
Tsss! Tsss! Tsss!
His gun went empty, its energy charge depleted. He tossed the gun to the side and pushed off to run like a blind madman.
A sharp, burning bolt of hell glanced his shoulder, taking him off his feet and spinning him around. He landed on his chest with a loud thud, immediately twisting to his side.
A foot came down on his stomach, and he lurched forward, grasping the Dunrakee’s leg.
The Dunrakee kicked, lifting Ozzy into the air, but Ozzy hung on and rotated his body, flipping the Dunrakee onto its back.
Ozzy brought his arm up and back, throwing a ferocious downward punch, hitting nothing.
“Crap.”
The Dunrakee grabbed him by the jumpsuit collar and lifted him up again and ran forward. Ozzy intertwined his fingers and smashed his fists down on the Dunrakee’s arm.
The alien let go, and Ozzy came down hard, landing on his side, his temple slamming against the floor.
The Dunrakee pushed Ozzy onto his back and planted a knee on his chest, pressing its gun against Ozzy’s forehead.
“Click-clack…don’t…clack…move. Click…or…clack…you die.”
9
Lasswitz Gorge, Mars
A photon blast went off.
The gun against Ozzy’s head fell like a metal pipe to the floor, the sound of it ringing in Ozzy’s ears.
The Dunrakee dropped to his side, breathing quickly, its hot breath touching Ozzy’s cheek.
Then the breathing stopped.
The lights turned on, and Ozzy pushed off the ground, dusting his hands off.
“You’re white as a ghost,” said Jozi, walking confidently toward him, her gun at her side and steaming from the shot she just put through the Dunrakee’s head. “There was only one.”
Ozzy looked around. “Are you sure?”
“Positive. He was doing a clever job at creating the illusion that there were more.”
“How do you know?”
She held up a Dunrakee helmet. “I could see him. While you were having your fun with the bubble-head, I pulled this off one of the dead Dunrakee and used it to see. Smells like cotton candy inside.”
She went over to her backpack that was lying next to her EVA suit and unzipped it. She was nonchalant, like being attacked by a Dunrakee was an everyday thing. “We’ve got to study this technology. While watching you get your ass kicked, and I use ass kicked loosely, because there has to be some term to describe how badly he had his way with you, the technology in this helmet made it look like daytime.”
“You watched him almost kill me?” asked Ozzy.
“You two were all over the place. If I would have shot earlier, who knows if I would have hit you or him. I had to wait for the perfect moment and when it came…” she shrugged. “You know the rest.”
He touched his shoulder, feeling the hot burn from the Dunrakee’s near miss. His jumpsuit was ripped, and a small trail of blood dripped down his arm, but it was nothing severe. He’d live.
Jozi pulled a platform device out of her backpack and put it on the ground. It was flat like a mat, no more than two feet by two feet. She shoved her hands back into the backpack and pulled out two small tripods that had wires hanging off their ends.
“What the hell is that?” asked Ozzy, folding his arms over his chest and striding over to Jozi. He walked past a dead Dunrakee who was now missing his mask and helmet. He looked away quickly. The bubble-heads were some ugly-ass aliens.
“The teleporter.” She motioned at the Dunrakee helmet. “I’m sending this to the Ministry of Science. I know they are awaiting the cure, but this will keep them busy until we get to Dawes.”
Jozi hooked the tripod wires into the mat and then spaced the tripods about four feet apart from each other. “The frequency is already hooked into the Ministry of Science’s lab. If the heart of the dust storm has passed, then we should have no problem hooking up with them.”
“Can we go into that teleporter?” asked Ozzy, looking at a science project he never knew existed.
“Our tests with people didn’t go so well. It works better with small objects, like this helmet.” She pressed a button. “Step back.”
The tripods lit up with electrical charges, sending baby lightning streaks jumping back and forth from one tripod to the other. A soft wind picked up, and the lightning grew bigger, twisting and turning around each other until it spun into a sideways electrical cyclone.
“Now we wait,” she muttered.
The cyclone thinned and expanded, turning into what looked like a holographic display screen. And, strange enough, Ozzy could see a table littered with beakers and test tubes.
“Connie Willis,” said Jozi, staring into the screen. “Yo, Connie?”
A plump woman with curly brown hair came into view. She was squinting into the screen, her glasses clearly too big for her face. “Jozi, is that you? I can barely see you. Who are you with?”
Jozi threw a dismissive hand. “Don’t worry about him.” She took a step forward, showing Connie the Dunrakee helmet.
Connie bit her finger. “Yeah, boss. What’s that?”
“A Dunrakee helmet and mask. I need you to analyze it and reverse engineer it for me. The mask has a way of taking complete darkness and turning it into daytime when wearing it.” She bent forward and put the mask through the hazy hologram. Connie grabbed it as nonchalantly as if it was one person handing an item of clothing to another.
Connie’s eyes widened as she peered at the helmet in her hands. “How in Mars’s name did you get this?”
“Not important, but good luck.” Jozi turned off the teleporter and began taking it apart. “We have to let the High Judge know that the Dunrakee are scouting East Mars now.” The color drained from her face, and her brows furrowed in worry. “That may mean a planned terrorist attack like what happened at Dawes is coming.”
Ozzy didn’t share the same type of fear. Humans were goners, and he’d known it for a while now. They’d lived long and had semi-prospered in the solar system, but when death came knocking, death came knocking hard and swift.
It wasn’t good enough that the bubble-heads kicked every man, woman, and child off of Earth—those that they didn’t kill—but when they begin to reassemble the tech they lost during the attack on Earth and rebuild their military, the Dunrakee will come for Mars in full force.
That race was beyond psychotic.
He had to get off this planet, and yesterday.
She pulled a device out of her pocket and clicked it. “High Judge Robert Baldwin, this is MMP Agent Jozi Ryan, do you copy?”
Nothing.
She shook the device in her hands. “High Judge, do you copy?” She brought it to her ear, listening intently. She grunted loudly and threw it on the ground.
“Great. It’s broken.”
Ozzy shrugged. “Use the teleporter. Get the info to that Willis chick?”
She touched her pendant. “It would be a year before she’d get access to talk to the High Judge or anyone in authority.”
Ozzy walked over to his EVA and slipped his legs through the spacesuit
pants. “Alright. Well, let’s get dressed. The teleporter worked, so that means the storm has died down or moved on.”
Jozi straightened and put her hands on her hips. “We better hope your com unit works on Relic. We need to call the Ministry and get a new ship.” She picked up her EVA’s torso and dropped it over her shoulders. She threaded her fingers into her gloves. “Then we can continue this mission.”
Ozzy almost laughed. This mission was a bust. The plants etched into the Ancient Coptic tablet were dead. They had to be, but he’d continue milking the High Judge for all the auric credits the prick had, just so he could piss off Robert, but most importantly, to buy the best ship that would fly him and Lily far from Mars—a Class-14 Quadruple Engine Electrohydrodynamic Ionic Thruster 113 SX Vessel, otherwise known as the Eagle.
That was his prize.
That was his goal.
He clipped his helmet in place. Jozi was already fully EVA dressed. She walked over to the dead Dunrakee and pulled their helmets off. She stuck them inside her already crowded backpack.
“When we get to Tagus Valles, we can freshen up there, get some iodine kelp pills for our perchlorate exposure from the red sand that flew into this shelter, and then fix what’s unfixable on my ship,” said Ozzy.
“How? I doubt your ship will fly.”
“If it doesn’t fly, then we walk.”
Ozzy strode over to the wall next to the shelter’s door. He pressed a button. The shelter vibrated, and the door creaked open. Red dust blew into the shelter, but the harshest portion of the storm had moved on.
Jozi walked to his side with her backpack over her shoulder. “Let’s go.”
He huffed and took a step onto the Martian soil. Jozi jogged away from him, heading toward Relic. Ozzy shook his head and halted dead in his tracks.
He swallowed hard, and the pit of his stomach about fell to the ground. “No.” Relic’s cockpit window was smashed to shit, meaning the sand had torn the window apart and made its way to the most precious item he owned—Lily’s picture.
He glanced at his feet, thinking hard at how he could get another picture. Was there another one somewhere, anywhere on Mars?
“Jozi, we’re walking to Tagus Valles.” He didn’t want to go inside his ship. He didn’t want to see Lily’s face gnarled and torn to shreds, scratched away by the planet’s biggest threat—the dust. Always the dust.
He slapped his palms on his thighs, his shoulder’s sagging. He couldn’t remember what it was like to cry, but a small feeling arose deep in his belly, and he couldn’t but think that a cry could come at any moment.
But he wouldn’t allow it. He never did.
He gulped it down, wanting to call this red, piece-of-crap planet the many bad names it deserved.
He knew it was just a picture, but Lily was all he had. It was what kept him going every day.
“We die if we walk,” replied Jozi, heading toward Relic.
Ozzy trekked after her. “My mom always said, ‘Where there’s a will, there’s a way.’”
10
Lasswitz Gorge, Mars
Relic was trashed, actually beyond trashed. Yet, the briefcase was near the ramp, fine as could be, and now in Jozi’s hands where she obviously thought it belonged.
Ozzy brushed some sand off the storage bay ladder.
“This sand is everywhere,” moaned Jozi through the com line, moving her boot, pushing the soil through the grate. She jerked her hands up, beyond pissed. “What do we do, Ozzy? Put our thumbs out and hitch a ride?”
He ignored her, waiting for her to pound the message through his thick skull that this was all his fault. When it didn’t arrive, he climbed the ladder.
He set his foot on the upper deck grate. His foot was trembling, and when he raised his hands, he noticed they were shaking as well. His stomach was doing loops, and he felt like he was hyperventilating.
He told himself over and over again that it was only a picture. If it was gone, then oh well. He could just pull up her smiling face in his mind whenever he wanted or needed to.
That thought almost felt like it would puncture his heart. After all, it was his daughter. She was his everything. He needed to see her face, and he needed to see it now.
He attempted to push the thought of losing his only picture of her out of his mind, telling himself that it wasn’t that big of a deal. He had her in his heart, and that’s all that mattered.
But that didn’t work so well, and he choked back another sob.
“We’re stuck here, Ozzy. The oxygen reserves on our suits will be empty by nightfall. We couldn’t walk to Tagus Valles even if we wanted to. Our mission was to save lives, not garner more money. Apparently, you were slow to get the memo.”
He kept his mouth shut, thinking a reply would just egg her on. He squeezed through the hallway into the cockpit. Perspiration formed on his forehead, and he took a shaky breath. He didn’t want to look, but if the picture was gone, then closure was important.
It’s just a damn picture. Get over it, Ozzy. You’ll see her again in person one day. The picture shouldn’t matter this much.
But, again, his heart said something different—it did matter.
His eyes dropped to the flight console. He reached forward where the picture once was and brushed the sand away.
Her smiling face wasn’t there.
He blinked back a tear, clearing his throat, and smashing down a cry that wanted to escape.
Maybe he stuck it someplace else? He wiped down another section of the console. Dammit. Again, it wasn’t there.
He dusted off the entirety of the console with his gloves and stepped back. The picture was nowhere to be found.
“Are Relic’s communication links and channels working?” asked Jozi.
He didn’t look. He didn’t have to and didn’t want to. All he wanted was Lily’s picture. Plus, the red sand on Mars that penetrated and ruined all instrumentation, levers, and switches had found a new home—Relic’s cockpit. Jozi should know the answer, but Ozzy bluntly told her anyway. “No.”
She groaned. “I can’t believe you did this. You’re out of control, Ozzy. A real reckless, negligent, dim-witted, unbelievably screwed up—”
“You done yet?”
“…show off, egotistical, and plain stupid piece of work.”
He bit his tongue. Lashing out at her in his defense would only create a bigger drama. Not that she was one bit incorrect in her assessment of him for getting them stuck between a rock and a hard place.
He wiped off the seats, and pieces of glass and the red sand made tinkling sounds when they hit the floor.
No picture.
“Do you have any idea how we can survive this? Shall we just throw our suits off now and let Mars quickly take us?” said Jozi.
“Sure,” replied Ozzy. “You first.” He twisted around and caught his breath. “Don’t touch that.”
Jozi was in the cockpit, holding Lily’s picture in her hand. “You looking for this?”
He swiped it out of her hand. He put the photo against his helmet visor and blew Lily a kiss. A smile formed on his lips. He unzipped his trusty satchel and gently placed the picture in the pouch and then zipped it back up.
For a moment, he almost thanked Jozi, then remembered how she’d been the one responsible for him being caught by the High Judge in the first place.
He had to work with her and act like he tolerated her. And that’s what he’d do until this mission was over. He’d do it for his freedom. He’d do it for Lily. The problem? He didn’t think there was a possibility the plants could still be alive. If they weren’t, his freedom and Lily would be too far out of reach. The deal was to complete the mission successfully. If the plants were now deteriorated soil or petrified, which he imagined they were, the mission would be a failure.
Unless Connie Willis and her science buddies could do something with the plants if they were petrified, then he had a chance. Or, if Jozi was right about the plants growing in some sort of anc
ient Martian capsule, then luck, for a change, was on his side.
He let out an exasperated breath. He was probably screwed from the get-go.
He checked his air reserves and frowned. “Got an hour of oxygen at most. Check your oxygen level.”
“Seven hours, which usually means six and a quarter,” replied Jozi, walking out of the cockpit and down the ladder to the storage bay.
Ozzy went to the railings that overlooked the crates and forklifts. Jozi was sitting on a tire of a Mars rover, the only portion of that particular vehicle that wasn’t beat to hell. A pallet jack’s forks were sticking through the windshield.
“I guess I can transfer some of my oxygen into your tanks?” said Jozi. She rested her helmet against her palm. Giving away some of her much needed air was probably the last thing she wanted to do.
Ozzy scanned the storage bay. Another rover was on its side, its glass window bashed in, and its passenger door had a rather nasty hole in its center. There was no driving that thing.
He slid down the ladder and walked over to the third rover. The vehicle was upside down; its roof probably scraped up. It also had a clear dent in the front bumper, but other than that, this puppy may just be their ticket out of there.
He reached up and touched the tire. “Jozi, pump the ramp door all the way open.”
She dropped her mopey gaze. “Why?”
“I have an idea, and it might actually work.” He moved a crate and shoved a few torn up boxes out of the way. He positioned himself on one side of the vehicle and went to push it over.
It didn’t budge.
A gust of sand blew into Relic. He glanced up. The last thing they needed was the red storm to change direction and head back their way.
He pushed harder, placing his feet on the wall and kicking off, shoving his shoulder into it.
It rocked a few inches.
Even in the light gravity of Mars, the rover was still nearly eight hundred pounds to its two-thousand-pound equivalent on Earth. He wasn’t moving that thing unless he had Hercules by his side.
“Need a hand there, Einstein?” said Jozi, her hand on the ramp crank lever, her other hand gripping the briefcase.
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