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Weld nodded gravely and walked off, leaving Valeria alone at the workstation. She could see no other logical alternative than to go to Mars, let the impostor tip his hand… and hope they could contain it long enough for Verdant to reach safety, or for the
Makalu
to remove itself, if need be. She could only pray that Verdant would be ready to do its part.

When the seven minutes were up, Valeria made sure everyone in the bay was ready at their stations. She spared a significant glance at Weld, who nodded back. Then she opened the com to the bridge. “Okay, Captain, we are jumping in twenty. In ten…” the now-familiar high-pitched tone could be heard running up the scale, then moving beyond audible hearing range, and finally beyond human ability to even sense it. “…five… now.”

~

On the bridge of the
Makalu
, Anise stared intently at her board, looking for a sign that anything was happening, when she became aware of a high-pitched tone, coming from seemingly everywhere around her. It rose in frequency, until it was beyond her hearing, but not quite beyond her ability to sense its presence. And then that sense, too, went away.

She turned to Roy. “What was that? Was that normal?”

Roy was smiling at her. “Check your board.”

It took Anise a second to comprehend what he was telling her. Abruptly she turned back to her panels, and began checking the navigational settings. “What? No…
no
… no
yeah
.” She activated an outboard camera, and brought it around until it sighted a red planet below them.

“
Holy shit
,” she whispered. “That’s
Mars.
”

“Yes, it is,” Roy beamed for a moment, before his face went serious again. “Now, look alive and watch our backs.” He worked over his com board for a moment, then said, “Verdant, this is the
Makalu
. Verdant,
Makalu
. We have successfully jumped. What is your status?”

There was no immediate response from Verdant, prompting Roy and Anise to exchange glances. “
Makalu
to Verdant,” Roy repeated, “we have executed our jump. What is your status?” While he spoke, Anise used her panel to locate and train an outboard camera on the satellite. Verdant appeared on the screen, rotating normally, navigation lights flashing… it seemed to be situation normal from outside.

There was a click from the com, and they heard a voice neither of them recognized:
“Stand by,
Makalu.
Do not approach Verdant. Repeat, stand by.”

Before Roy and Anise could speak further, they heard a commotion out in the bays. In the next moment, the man calling himself Vasqual was shouldering and shoving members of Roy’s crew, who tumbled away in the microgravity, and continued drifting forward until he gained the threshold of the bridge.

“Captain,” the impostor stated, “I am declaring an emergency, and demanding to speak to Verdant CnC.”

“You!” Roy unstrapped himself from his chair and floated in front of the man. “Declaring emergencies is supposed to be my job! And exactly what is your emergency?”

“There’s a nuclear device on this ship,” the man said calmly. “And if I don’t speak to CnC, it’s going to go off.”

Roy eyed the man warily, taking note that he was not displaying any obvious triggering device that might be wrested from him… assuming he was telling the truth. “Who are you?” he demanded.

“My name is Kline,” the man said. “I am a special agent for the American government. And I repeat, if you do not get me in touch with CnC, I am going to kill everyone on board this ship.”

Roy did not want to seem too accepting of the situation, so he said: “We just tried to call them. They told us to stand by, and they don’t seem too prepared to talk.”

“They’ll talk to me,” Kline said at once. “Open the channel back up.”

Roy hesitated, but as he did not think it would make any difference, he leaned back and opened the channel.

Kline immediately drifted forward and said, “This is Zachary Kline, special agent of the High House. I have a nuclear device on-board. I will set it off, killing everyone aboard, if CnC does not accede to my demands. Respond immediately! Repeat, Verdant, respond to me immediately!”

There was a significant period of silence on the com, prompting Roy to shrug at Kline. Before Kline could repeat his statement, however, there was an audible click from the com, and a new voice came on.

“This is Kristine Fawkes on Verdant. Repeat, this is Kristine Fawkes. Is this the freighter?”

This time, Roy and Kline exchanged confused glances. Kline leaned forward and snapped, “What’s going on over there?”

“CnC has been attacked,”
Kris replied over the com.
“The command staff has been killed by a terrorist. Most of CnC is damaged and inoperable. We are—”
the com signal corroded into static for a few moments, and Kris’ voice was lost. When it returned, she was saying,
“—don’t know how long it will take to establish order.”

Roy turned to Anise. Her eyes were wide and furious. She literally trembled in her chair, and Roy was immediately concerned if she should try to fly the ship. “Now, Anise, take a breath, relax—”

“Relax!” With a motion so fast as to be almost invisible, she popped the harness on her chair and floated towards Roy.
“Relax!
They killed my father!”

“Sit down!” Kline barked at her, leveling an arm at her chair. “Or a lot of other people will die!” He turned back to the com and said, “Verdant, listen up! Who’s in command over there?”

After a moment, Kris’ voice returned.
“I am.”

“All right, Kristine Fawkes. You and I are going to return Verdant to Earth orbit, right now.”

“Well, of course we want to return!”
Kris replied.
“All we needed was some supplies to tide us over, until we can make the jump. But with CnC damaged, we don’t have control! We’re trying right now to—”
her voice was lost again in static.

Kline narrowed his eyes in concentration… clearly, this internal coup didn’t figure into his plans. But he stared carefully at the image of Verdant on Roy’s screen, and began shaking his head. “You don’t look so damaged to me,” he growled. Then, in a louder voice, he said, “Listen, Fawkes. You send someone on foot to the landing bay, if you have to, and clear us a slip. We are coming in. And if I see anything funny going on, I’m going to blow up this ship! Is that understood?”

“Do not hurt the—”
Kris began, before being lost in static for a moment.
“—will comply.”

Kline nodded, and turned to Anise. “Take us to Verdant, right now. No funny stuff.”

Anise glared at Kline for perhaps five seconds, before she said, “No funny stuff.” She slowly turned and settled back into her seat. She buckled her harness back up, then began moving her hands over the controls.

Abruptly, the
Makalu
dropped in place, so quickly that Kline’s head was struck on the descending bulkhead. “Ow!” Then the ship bucked to starboard, forcing Kline to float towards the waiting arms of Roy Grand.

Roy took a swing at Kline with a massive fist, but Kline had managed to duck it, and it glanced off of his shoulder. The blow did manage to spin him around, and Roy grabbed him from behind and pulled him into his body with a bear hug. He tried to get his hands into a position to pin Kline’s arms, but Kline had already managed to free one arm, and he used it to wrap a hand around Roy’s head. Holding it in place, Kline threw his head back, impacting Roy in the forehead.

Roy barked out in pain from the head-butt, and was shaken enough to lose his grip on Kline, who tried to push free. But before he got far, Anise appeared beside him and wrapped herself around him with all arms and legs. Her head happened to be close to Kline’s shoulder, where Roy had hit it… so she bit down.

Kline roared, and tried to shake Anise off. But Roy had already recovered from his head blow, and was pushing himself back into the melee. He wrapped his burly arms around Kline from the other direction and hollered,
“Spring! Find me a mallet! Someone get the doc!—”

“What the hell, Cap—!” Another set of hands, a crewman who had been nearby, entered the fray, and Kline roared again as he was borne under by his attackers. He saw more crewmen approaching, and knew he could not overcome so many. In a moment of desperation, he used his tongue to trigger the switch embedded in his molar.

~

Outside the
Makalu
, Goldie and Hunter waited anxiously for further orders. They had heard the com exchanges between Verdant and the impostor, Kline, on the freighter. Hunter kept his eye on the sensor pod, and his guns unlocked, though he was loathe to shoot at it. If it was a nuclear device, it would surely destroy the freighter, him, and his partner. But if that meant protecting Verdant, Hunter had already decided that he would be willing to do that—

Abruptly the
Makalu
dropped two meters, then bucked to starboard. The hull impacted with Hunter’s Wasp, and he careened out of position.

“Shit!”
Warning telltales went off over half of Hunter’s board. He grabbed his controls, trying to pull the Wasp back into place, but the fighter was wobbling—the gyros and one maneuvering pod had been damaged by the collision. He worked quickly to shut the gyros down, so he could maneuver on jets alone—

A sudden flash of light caught his attention. The sensor pod had opened like the wings on a giant beetle, something he knew a standard sensor pod was not supposed to be able to do. At the same moment, Hunter saw a meter-long missile light up, and streak away from the
Makalu
.

“Verdant, incoming!” Hunter bellowed into his com. “Missile incoming, possibly nuclear!” He tried to bring the Wasp around, but the jostling had left him out of position, and the fighter was still not obeying his controls. He cursed loudly as his shots went wide. He saw tracers from the other side of the freighter—Goldie, snapping
“Get it, get it!”
on her com—but they were already too far away to score anything but a lucky shot. He stared at his board helplessly, still firing wildly, hoping for a miracle. “Impact in
ten seconds or less,
Verdant! Take action or brace for—”

He didn’t finish his sentence. Before his eyes, Verdant had vanished. The missile streaked through Verdant’s last position, but encountered empty space, and continued on.

Hunter gave a rebel yell in triumph. He quickly cut it off as he saw the missile inscribe an arc through space. It was seeking a new target. “It’s coming back!” he called out. As he watched, it circled through the space Verdant had occupied once, twice… then it swung their way.

“Incoming! Homing on
us!
—” Hunter cried, as he heard the now-familiar high-pitched whine building around them. “Come on,
come on
,” he muttered, keeping his trigger down as he continued to hope for a lucky break…

The missile bore down upon its new target, the freighter and two fighters… and then they, too, were gone, and the missile flew through now-empty space again.

The missile, thwarted again by its elusive targets, circled about and searched, throwing out its sensor net as wide as possible. Finally it found a new target, and instantly angled off after it.

Twenty seconds later, the nearly two hundred year old Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter was finally decommissioned in a blaze of glory.

“Mister President, we have word.” The intern had entered the President’s office, and found Lambert at his desk, and Thompson seated nearby. “Observatories now say the flash was a sizable explosion over Mars. Explosion was apparently nuclear in origin, but further spectroscopic analyses have to be run to determine the exact nature of the explosion and debris. Since seeing the flash, there have been no further com signals coming from Verdant.” The message ended, the intern turned and left the room.

Lambert bowed his head. “God-dammit, he blew it up. He
blew it up
!” He glared at Thompson. “Kline wasn’t supposed to
blow it up
!”

Thompson glared at the floor, his eyes furious, his face contorted in a scowl that threatened to leave permanent scars. He knew that spectroscopic analysis would eventually establish the origin of the nuclear device. By the end of the week—hell, by the end of the
day
—everyone would know that America had nuked Verdant. The administration was through.
They
were through.

He
was through.

Lambert seemed to have figured out the same thing. They were going to have to get, while the getting was good. “I’m going to the residence,” he said, standing. Thompson stood with him and followed him out of the office, turning left as Lambert went right.

Thompson headed for his own nearby office and entered, closing the door behind him. He walked over to the desk, opened a bottom drawer, and removed a small silver-plated pistol. He pocketed it, and left his office. On his way out, he passed a guard, and stopped before him. “I’ll be downstairs at the shooting range. I don’t want to be disturbed.”

“Yessir,” the guard said, as Enu Thompson started down the long corridor to the rear elevators.

~

When Lambert reached the residence, he threw open the doors. “Shay, we have to…” He stopped, when he saw the suitcases in the foyer, ready to be carried away. Shay was not in sight, and Lambert felt apprehensive for a moment, when he considered Shay might have left him already. “Shay?”

Rapid footsteps from the next room alerted Lambert, and he headed in that direction. Just as he reached the door to the next room, Shay appeared heading out of the room, and they almost collided. Shay stopped and avoided him just barely, a feat made more difficult by the large bag she had slung over her shoulder. The two of them stared at each other, until Shay broke the silence.

“Well, what are you waiting for? We all heard what your idiot spy did… the whole world must know by now, and they’re probably sending the goon squads after you right now. It’ll be our asses if they catch us. Let’s get the hell out of here!” she snapped urgently, as she repositioned the heavy bag, and started past him. Abruptly, she stopped, and turned to him. “And I swear: Whatever hidey-hole you have waiting for us better be a damned
comfortable
hole… or I’ll probably kill you.”