Saving Mars (2 page)

Her mouth felt dry inside and she realized she’d left her dwelling without sipping her morning wet ration.

“MCAB, this is BT134. I’m on it,” she shouted back.

The ship pitched violently in response to an adjustment she made. “Okay, not that one,” she muttered. Her head spun, registering the nauseating effects of the failed fix. Attempting to regain her bearings, she called up a new set of readings on the navigation screen. She didn’t like what she saw. The ship didn’t like it either, and spewed forth a new series of warnings to eject forthwith.

Jessamyn did
not
need additional warnings clamoring for her attention now. Dancing her fingers along the control screen, she succeeded in disabling the ship’s internal audio and visual warnings. Now she only had to deal with a craft careening out of control and a base flunky who probably wanted her to abandon ship.

“BT134, we’re attempting to run additional tests to determine the degree of danger associated with your situation,” said the base official.

Jess knew what was wrong with her craft: her secondary port engine had blown to smithereens. Without responding to MCAB, Jess addressed the sharp yaw pulling her counter-clockwise. “Easy does it,” she murmured, engaging vertical stabilizers to counter the ship’s desire to spin like a top.

“Trainee Jaarda? We’re having difficulty communicating with your ship’s navigational controls.”

They wanted to force her off of piloting her ship.
Oh, no you don’t!
Jess thought. Aloud, she said, “Yeah, there might’ve been some damage to navigation.”

There was a pause in the MCAB chatter and then came the one order Jess knew she would not obey.

“BT134, we’ve decided it would be in your best interest to abandon your craft. We have a lock on your coordinates and will send someone to recover you within the hour. Over.”

Eject
? The thought filled Jess with a hot flush of anger, causing her skin to match her fiery hair. She’d corrected her yaw and roll and she still had one engine on her port side. She would
not
abandon her planet-hopper. They were a valuable class of ship.
Hades
, she had three out of four thrusters. Fueled by anger, she realized what she needed to do.
Forget vertical landing; there’s more than one way to bring this baby down.

“Trainee, you are ordered to eject from your damaged craft
now
. Do you copy?” said the tinny voice.

“I’m having trouble receiving you, MCAB. Please say again.” Jess hoped they’d buy that.

“Jess, this is Lobster.” A new voice registered in her helmet. “I know you can hear me. Get your skinny little hindquarters off that ship before it blows up.”

She shook her head—an answer no one at MCAB could see.

“Jess, that’s an order. I suggest you comply.”

She could imagine Lobster’s face, redder than usual as he tried to talk her out of the sky.

“It’s not going to blow. It was just the one engine,” she argued. “I can bring her in, Lobster.”

A new malfunction warning began flashing on her panel. The
primary
port thruster!

“
Holy Ares
!” she cried.

“Jess,
eject now!
”

“Kind of busy here,” she shouted, switching off power to communications.

If the primary port engine gave out, she’d be spinning in circles momentarily.

You are making it home
. It was both statement and command, to herself and the ship—they were one creature now, with one shared fate. Jess settled into a cool and quiet place in her head where her mind seemed to meld with her craft. She raced through a power-down like she’d done at the pole. While she knew they couldn’t glide all the way back to MCAB, she thought she could bring both of them down safely in the Great Sand Pit.

“You’d better appreciate the efforts I’m making here,” she said to her craft. “‘Cause we are
both
making it home!” She cut the oxygen supply to her ship’s starboard engines and breathed a sigh of relief as the engines flamed out.

Everything went silent and the cabin dimmed, lit only by the rising sun. She felt a moment’s panic: had she kept her speed high enough to land using only rudder, stabilizers, and ailerons? It wasn’t like they taught this in class. She made an adjustment to the ship’s yaw—it responded and she sighed in relief.

This is going to work!
She reached out to pat her nav-panel.

For as long as Jess could remember, she’d wanted to try an old-school horizontal landing. MCAB covered the concept in stale texts, all designed to explain how vertical take-off and landing improved efficiency, saved fuel, and cured the common cold. Jessamyn didn’t care. Today, a protracted horizontal landing would keep one more hopper operational. She was honest enough to admit she couldn’t wait to try it.

With her primary nav-panel powered down to cut off communication with MCAB, Jess would be relying on her memory of the location of the Great Sand Pit. It would have been a lot harder in the middle of the night, but dawn brought vivid color to life: the deep red of Bradbury Canyon, the pinky-browns of Mount Cha Su Bao. Jess knew right where she was and how to get to where she needed to go. She experimented with the spoilers, and her heart beat faster as she felt the ship respond, gliding up and then down in relation to the planet’s surface. Once she could see the Haddad Hills, she began her descent.

The ship responded eagerly and Jess murmured to it, “Bet you’ve always wanted to try this too, huh?” The vast lake of silica opened before them. Using the spoilers to full effect, Jess felt herself descending and slowing. It was noisy as anything, but so easy—almost too easy. She grinned broadly, imagining how she would
demand
this form of landing to be included in the pilot curriculum just as soon as someone came out to get her. As the sand rose up to meet the ship, a memory or instinct told Jess to keep her nose up as long as possible.

Impact, when it came, felt as unlike the gentle descent as possible. Jessamyn hurled forward toward the front viewing window, her harness cutting into her walk-out suit at the shoulders as it prevented her from striking the polycarb. Immediately after, she was flung to the left. She experienced a split second of weightlessness followed by a slamming sensation that made it feel like her skull was parting company from her brain. A final jolt forced her downward into her seat, and then the world tilted to one side as the ship spun clockwise, digging its way into the deep brown sand. Jess held her breath to see if she’d truly landed. Emergency lighting glowed pale blue, directing her to an exit hatch. She scrambled out, noting a sharp pain in her left shoulder where the harness had apparently been overzealous in protecting her. Quickly, she checked her suit’s integrity. It was no use setting foot outside if her walk-out suit had torn. But no, her suit remained fully functional. She blinked in the sun, stepping round and round her craft. It was in one piece. The undercarriage would be scratched to
Hades
, but she could tell the hopper would fly again.

Jess began laughing and hugging herself. Shouting to the sand and sky, she cried out, “
Worst
landing
ever
!” She bounced up and down several times. “And I
loved
it!”

Unfortunately, the landing was easy compared with the news that awaited Jess when the rescue crew arrived thirty-two minutes later.

“Pilot-in-training Jessamyn Jaarda, you are hereby suspended from all flight until further notice.”

Jess felt her temper flare at the words of the helmeted officer delivering this appalling news. “I just saved a planetary hopcraft from certain destruction. No way are they grounding me. I’ll appeal the decision to the Academy dean.”

She peered to make out the face behind the speaker’s reflective helmet. She’d been certain Lobster would come to find her or her charred remains, but the voice hadn’t sounded like Lobster’s. She felt a twinge of disappointment that her fate meant so little to him. And then, as she caught a clear glimpse of the face inside the pressurized suit, she felt sick. There would be no further appeal—she’d been sentenced by the dean of the Academy himself.

Chapter Two

FOR THE LOVE OF MARS

In the early days of Mars Colonial, surviving to another birthday had been an accomplishment worth recognizing. But Mars’s annual orbit around the sun took 686 Earth days, and waiting that long for a birthday felt wrong to early settlers. In the end, they kept to the Terran reckoning of age which resulted in almost two birthdays per annum, or single Mars orbit. Later Marsians stuck with the tradition because no one particularly wanted to give up their “extra” birthday.

Today’s celebration of Lillian Jaarda’s spring birthday had been subdued by Jessamyn’s announcement that she’d been suspended from flight. Jessamyn would not be rushing off from the birthday party to training. She would not be dashing from training to the Festival of Singing Ice. Instead, she found herself with seven long hours before she could even think about preparing for the festival—an event she no longer cared about. Even her books failed to console her. What was there left to care for if she’d been grounded?

“Make yourself useful. The solars need scrubbing,” said her mom, turning briefly from her algae pots to her morose daughter.

The solar panels always needed scrubbing. It was a job Ethan liked, as it got him out of the house. And Jess knew better than to argue with her mother after this morning’s debacle. There had been an abrupt
thank you
for Jess’s water gift and silence on the subject of the suspension from flight. Her mother’s lack of response wasn’t a good thing or a sign of indifference. Lillian Jaarda had been a promising pilot—the most promising of her generation—and Jess now felt the weight of her mother’s disappointment pressing upon her like a malfunctioning airlock.

Ethan joined his sister outside before long and the two worked in companionable silence. Ethan didn’t tell Jess that he was sorry about her suspension, although she knew he was. But it wasn’t a subject she felt like discussing. It was a gaping hole in the center of the universe and if she stared at it too long, it might suck her in like a black hole.

“I am relieved the planetary dog will be at the festival,” said Ethan, breaking a two-hour’s silence.

Jess knew that if she waited, her brother would probably add something more to give the remark context. The two continued scrubbing side by side. Their oversized home required more heat and oxygen than most houses and a correspondingly greater number of solar panels.

“I do not have any of its hair,” said Ethan.

Jess tried to untangle the path of thought that had led her brother to make these two statements. Ethan collected things. Ethan loved the planetary dog—the only animal on Mars. Ethan would be at the festival tonight because he was receiving another award for something he’d invented. This line of thought led Jess to figure out why her brother was thinking about the dog: Ethan was probably worried about the crowds and trying to find a focal point which would keep him from becoming overwhelmed by the high levels of stimulation.

“Collecting a dog hair would be a good thing for you to focus on tonight, huh, Eth?”

Ethan didn’t say anything. He’d stopped scrubbing and was staring blankly at the solars.

“Hey, Eth, come back to me,” said Jess. “You’re going to be fine tonight. I promise.” Well, she
hoped
her brother would be fine. Although the festival occurred in a large and open space—the kind of environment Ethan liked—something about crowds made Ethan respond as though he were in a tightly enclosed space. Now Jess had something to worry about
besides
how miserable an existence she would lead without flying.

“You could stay home,” suggested Jess.

“No.”

“Mom’s staying home this time.”

“No.”

“You really want that dog hair, huh?”

Ethan smiled. “Yes.”

Jess laughed. Her brother was a genius, but he had some very odd quirks, like his collecting. He’d created a series of layered-level boxes holding objects he found meaningful. Or interesting. Or something. Jess wasn’t able to divine the guiding principle behind his collections.

When she’d been small, she’d thought of his containers as miniature houses: Ethan would wall off each collected item so that when you looked at one of the levels from above, it was as if you were peering inside a house where the roof had been removed. Each level stacked atop an earlier level so that the whole thing resembled a multi-storied building.

Her brother’s soft voice interrupted her thoughts.

“You will fly again, Jessie.”

Jess was undisturbed by the abrupt change of subject—normal for Ethan—but she flushed at his use of her baby-name. Her fair skin colored at the least provocation and burned easily. Friends murmured with jealousy that Jess was sure to get her First Wrinkle before any of the rest of them.

“Who wants to be a Mars Raider, anyway,” she said, feigning indifference.

“Jessamyn does,” replied her brother.

“Yeah,” she agreed quietly. “No fooling you, huh?”

“I know that you want this badly enough to risk capture upon Earth, to risk being re-bodied, to risk starting a new war—”

“All right, already,” said Jess, cutting him off. “Yes to all the above. And tons more.
Hades
, Ethan. I need a get-out-of-jail-free-card at this point.” She bumped into her brother’s shoulder—a form of contact he tolerated—as she referenced a Terran game he loved.

But Ethan shook his head. “You need an advocate—someone who will stand up for you and alter the decision of the dean or the board of directors.”

“How about you?”

“No,” said Ethan. “My skills in the art of persuasion are negligible. Also, I believe you acted wrongly. You need someone who can persuade others that your wrong action was a right action.”

Jess laughed, causing her walk-out suit to rush additional oxygen to her helmet. “You’re a freak. You know that, right?”

“So you have told me.”

Jess shook her head. “Let’s call it a day. My afternoon wet ration says I can beat you at a game of Monopoly.”