Defying Mars (Saving Mars Series-2) (27 page)

She pounded a fist against the side of her vehicle.

“Madam Chancellor?” asked her driver.

“Nothing, Charles,” she said. It was nothing to her, surely. A single ship. A laughable threat. She would be laughing as soon as the vessel attempted to make land. The Martians would find Earth prepared, armed, and deadly.

35

NO CLAIM

The desert sunrise was still hours away when Ethan roused Pavel, Harpreet, Kazuko, and Wallace with an unusual level of agitation in his voice.

Pavel stumbled out into their common room, rubbing sleep from his eyes. Wallace complained that he couldn’t be expected to handle any bad news without a cup of coffee inside him.

“You will wish to hear this news,” said Ethan. “I have located pulses from several wafers of Marsian origin headed for Earth.”

“What?” demanded Pavel, snapping to full alertness. “That’s impossible. How did you do that?”

“I placed a program into play two months ago, set to search daily,” explained Ethan, “Which means the ship carrying these computational systems has come into range within the past twenty-four hours.”

“Gracious,” murmured Harpreet. “And you’re certain the signal isn’t coming from something Kipper might have cobbled together?”

Ethan shook his head. “Besides the fact that she remains in a coma, I am reading several distinct instances of signals originating from a single moving location. It can only be a Marsian ship.”

“A Marsian ship?” asked Pavel. “From, like, Mars?”

Ethan nodded. “I do not foresee how it could be anything other than the
Red Galleon
.”

“They would’ve had to drop the rations and head straight out again,” said Harpreet, her voice a whisper.

“I have accessed Terran astronomical facilities to determine if there is a vessel approaching Earth from the correct direction,” said Ethan. “I have found one of size and trajectory consistent with the
Galleon
en route from Mars. Further, the duration of days required for a Mars-to-Earth flight at this time would be satisfied if the
Galleon
had remained upon Mars five days prior to her re-launch.”

“Time to scrub her fit for a return,” murmured Harpreet.

“Can we contact the ship?” asked Pavel.

“The first of the communication dishes is operational. It could be used for this purpose,” said Ethan.

“If it is the
Galleon
, we must proceed cautiously,” said Brian Wallace. “My clan has never made the attempt to communicate until a Mars ship was within Earth’s atmosphere.”

“We’ve got to try,” said Pavel. He swallowed against the tightening in his throat.

Could Jessamyn be on that ship?

~ ~ ~

With only hours remaining before her final EDL, Jessamyn made the rounds, checking that the ship’s surfaces were as clean as she could make them, that the general appearance of the
Galleon
was tidy and ship-shape. She gathered her sling-pack from where it rested in the aft quarters and carried it with her before deciding it would annoy her on the bridge. She left the pack upon the rations table where she could pick it up on her way off the ship.

A rush of adrenaline surged through her as she imagined taking those first steps once more under the pull of Earth’s heavier gravity.

“Assuming I don’t die first,” she said aloud. But she felt optimistic.

After two months with minimal opportunities for anything that could be called piloting, Jessamyn felt giddy sitting at the helm in a meaningful capacity. Having checked her calculations over and over, she made a final burn in preparation to enter Earth’s atmosphere.

Besides her lack of fuel for braking, only one thing troubled her. During takeoff and landing, she was supposed to wear her partial-pressure breathing suit. Although it came with a helmet, the suit was designed to draw the air it regulated from the ship’s cabin. Jess was going to face this landing without the protection the suit offered for intense g’s. She’d experienced sixteen Earth g’s once back home and had survived to tell the tale, but she knew she might be facing much worse on this EDL. Well, she thought, humans had survived g’s nearly triple that. And some of them didn’t even go blind.

“What do you think my chances are, huh?” she asked the ship.

When an actual voice responded over her comm the next moment, Jess’s first thought was that she had finally lost her mind.

~ ~ ~

Ethan, Pavel, and Brian Wallace were aboard the dirt-brown ship on an intercept course Ethan had plotted with the
Galleon
. Harpreet insisted upon remaining with the satellite project should
none
of them return from their intended rendezvous. Pavel had pointed out that no one aboard the
Red Galleon
would recognize Ethan’s new altered voice. With half a desperate dream of speaking to the girl with red hair, he’d volunteered to be the one to initiate contact with the Marsian crew aboard the ship.

“
Red Galleon
, this is a friendly hail. Do you receive?”

The call was met with extended silence. Pavel’s shoulders slumped forward and his eyes flickered briefly to Ethan. “Keep flying an intercept course based on their trajectory, then?” Pavel asked.

“Aye, lad,” replied Brian Wallace.

“We have no other recourse,” agreed Ethan.

And then the response came.

“Pavel? Is that … you?”

Impossibly, wondrously, it was Jessamyn’s voice.

Pavel had heard an expression regarding the leaping of hearts into throats. He had assumed it wasn’t literal. This changed his mind.

“
Jessamyn!
” He couldn’t say anything more. His throat was too full. Even when he could speak, full sentences eluded him. “How?”

There was a moment’s silence followed by the last sound Pavel expected—Jessamyn’s throaty laughter bubbling across the airwaves.

“Trust me, you don’t want to know
how
,” she said. “Is Ethan … okay?”

Pavel heard the anguish in the question, guessed at what it cost to ask.

“Yes,” he said immediately. “He’s fine. And you’re wrong—I want to know
everything
,” he said, his voice functioning properly again. “Are all of you okay?”

He heard an answering sigh.

“It’s just me,” said Jess. “And I’m okay. Well, at the moment. Please—can I talk to my brother?”

Pavel turned to Ethan, gesturing to him to speak, speak.

“Jessamyn,” said Ethan.

Again, the sound of her laughter.

“What, Eth? This doesn’t merit more than just my name?”

Not waiting for his response, she continued. “Listen, I don’t have much time. I’m hitting the atmosphere in less than an hour and it might not be pretty.”

Hastily, she told Pavel and Ethan of her circumstances and her planned EDL.

“Your plan is an excellent one considering the limitations by which you are constrained,” said Ethan, when she’d finished.

Pavel heard Jess grunt a small laugh.

“We have obtained a swift vessel,” continued Ethan. “We are flying on an intercept course to you even now.”

“I’m so glad,” she said. “You have no idea how glad I am to hear that. Listen, there’s something else. In case I don’t make it. I’m sending you a message … using the same method you employed, Eth. You can translate without your wafer, right?”

“I can,” replied Ethan.

“Okay,” said Jess. “It’s really important information. If anything should happen to me, you need to have it. Only Mei Lo knows back home, okay?”

“Very well,” replied her brother.

“Your voice sounds different, but I can tell you haven’t changed a bit, Eth,” said Jess.

“I have adapted,” replied her brother.

“I can’t tell you how good it is to hear your voice, Jessamyn,” said Pavel. Something funny was happening again between his heart and his throat.

“You, too,” she said.

“I wanted to call you, or write you, or send smoke signals,” said Pavel. “Something.”

“I wrote you letters,” said Jess.

“You did?”

“Yup. Just couldn’t send them.”

Pavel cleared his throat, blinked at a prickly feeling behind his eyes. “Would you … would you send them now?” he asked. “Just in case?”

There were several seconds of silence between the ships.

“Just in case,” she said. “I’ll send them. But you’re not allowed to read them unless … unless … If I don’t make it, you can read them.”

Pavel heard a hitch in her voice that scraped at his soul.

“You’re going to be fine,” he said. “Right, Eth? Your sister’s got this thing figured out.”

“The possibility of her successful completion of a safe landing,” replied Ethan, “If expressed in percentages, would be—”

“Don’t want to know,” said Jess, interrupting him. “Listen, Eth, I love you, okay? No matter what happens, don’t forget that.”

“I am unlikely to forget,” he said. A moment passed and he added, “I love you, too, Jessie.”

Pavel wanted to repeat Ethan’s
I love you
, but the words stuck in his mouth, burning white-hot upon his tongue, like a star in miniature. He had no claim on this girl from Mars, and saying he loved her at a time like this would be selfish.

“Listen, guys,” said Jess. “I’ve got to land this thing. I’ll leave the comm open, but you’ll probably lose me once things heat up.”

“We’ll find you, Jess,” said Pavel. “We’ll find you.”

~ ~ ~

Jessamyn sat in the pilot’s hot seat.

Pavel had Ethan; Ethan was okay.

She felt a warmth in her belly that threatened to draw tears.

No you don’t
, she warned herself. She was going to have enough trouble seeing straight without throwing tears into the mix. She practiced a couple of abdominal clenches, remembering how her peripheral vision had hazed over the last time she’d felt high g’s.
No crying
, she ordered herself again.

Earth dominated her view screen, chill and blue as she remembered it. To one side of the Pacific Ocean she identified an edge of Asia; to the other she saw her own destination—a small deserted corner of the North American continental mass. The ship approached atmospheric entry within a kilometer of Jessamyn’s chosen point. She smiled to herself, her fingers itching to work the nav-screen once more.

As she descended into the atmosphere, the
Galleon
’s speed would depend upon the combination of two forces acting upon the ship. First, there would be Earth’s massive gravity, pulling upon the craft, inviting acceleration. But just as important would be the force of atmospheric drag, slowing her down. The
Galleon
was constructed with her center of mass in a different location than the center of pressure, which would give the ship a small amount of lift as she flared Earthward. Jessamyn was grateful for this. Without the slight lift, the g’s would be even higher.

With her point of entry rapidly approaching, Jess’s hands hovered over her instrument panel. She was about to initiate the burn that would nudge the
Galleon
into a perfectly angled descent—neither too shallow nor too straight a shot—when flashing red lights lit up the comm screen at her brother’s station.

“
Hermes!
” she swore, ignoring the distraction.

“Sorry, Jess, but this is important,” said Pavel’s voice. “Ethan says my aunt has just launched an entire fleet of ships and they’re heading your way.”

In the moment it took to listen, she lost her perfectly angled entry.

“
Shizer
!” she shouted.

She had to enter upon a different trajectory now. Cursing, she hammered in a series of calculations.

“Uh, Jessamyn?” asked Pavel’s voice.

“Can’t talk,” she screamed at the communications array. “This is going to be a very rough landing.” Hastily, she determined a new angle of descent. This angle was steeper than her desired one, but it would only get worse if she hesitated.

“
Ares and Aphrodite
,” she murmured, “This is going to be one hot ride!”

“
Jess!
”

She registered his anguish, but she could spare no tender words.

“We talk if I land this thing!” she shouted. This was no time for sentiment. She settled into the cool and calm space in her head where she became one with her ship. She was tough as Mars ice. And just as cold, cold, cold. This was no time for distraction.

“
Galleon
out!” She cut the comm.

~ ~ ~

“Ethan,” said Pavel, trying to steady his voice, “Tell me you know where she’s coming in.”

Ethan’s hands flew across his holoscreen. “I have her new touchdown coordinates. I have a lock on her craft.” He frowned. “She is slowing insufficiently.”

“She has no fuel,” muttered Pavel. “No air. She’s not even wearing a g-suit, for the love of—”

“Calm yourself,” Ethan said, interrupting him. “My sister has been a remarkable pilot all her life. If the
Galleon
can be landed safely under these conditions, Jessamyn will do it.”

Pavel nodded. Look who was talking. Was Ethan freaking out in the claustrophobic confines of the ship? No. He was doing his job. Pavel would do his. But in his mind rang out, like a ceaseless prayer,
please please please please
.

~ ~ ~

Jess keyed in the order for the forward thrust burns to slow her the moment she hit seven and one half kilometers above Earth’s surface. She scheduled two to maximize efficiency: first she would slow herself to two hundred kilometers per hour, then, as she reached three kilometers above her landing target, she would do another burn, slowing her craft to just under thirty kilometers per hour.

“Then we land vertical using hover boosters,” she whispered to herself. Although that was assuming she had fuel left. The
Galleon
was rated to land at speeds of up to fifty kilometers per hour on Mars, but landing at such a speed on Earth would be dangerous—the ship weighed more here than on Mars.

“Never mind,” she muttered, her fingers dancing upon the nav-screen, inputting the command sequence.

But something very, very unwelcome showed up as she ordered the second fuel burn. The
Galleon
returned a message—a grim fact that wouldn’t go away no matter how many times Jess repeated “never mind.”