Oh right. The explosion. She’d forgotten with the lust explosion of her own.
The rocket they’d arrived in was smashed to pieces in the courtyard, almost as if she’d jinxed it with her comment.
“Oh no,” Lynette moaned. “That had all our supplies in it.”
“You didn’t move them out?” Jack asked, incredulous.
“I hadn’t had time to organize everyone to get them. I’d just had the contestants move their camp beds and personal items.”
“But a hit that would make the rocket disintegrate like that should have caused a shock wave that knocked us all into oblivion,” Margo said, truly puzzled as she stared at the camera view. The rocket was only a hundred feet away from the building.
Boyle shook his head as he clicked through some other panels. “It should have, but it didn’t. Even the biodome took such a small hit that it’s trying to reseal itself.”
“What happened?” Russ asked from the doorway. Behind him, a bunch of women tried to peer over his shoulder, a sea of blonde, with the occasional brown, black and red dotted into the mix.
“There has been an explosion,” Lynette said, falling into her role as if she hadn’t been losing it before. “Everyone is to stay in the living room. We’re still taping, so look sharp.” She herded them out of the room, waving her arms. “Why don’t we have a Tell All Session?”
“What’s a Tell All Session?” Jack asked Margo, mimicking Lynette’s emphasis on the words.
“When they gripe about not spending enough time with Chad,” Margo said, knowing they would edit her response out, not wanting any of their secrets escaping.
“What exploded?” Russ asked, coming fully into the room.
“Your ship.” Jack pointed to the computer screen, where his camera swept through the biodome, seeing nothing but intact buildings all around what looked like a mound of dirt, but was in fact the disintegrated rocket.
Russ peered at the screen, his eyes growing bigger. “Wait,” he said, his voice full of dread. “I think there were still people in there.” When they looked at him without comprehension, he clarified. “In the rocket. I think some of the contestants were still out there.”
The handler, Lynette, lost it and had to be placed shaking in the same chair he’d just put Goldie in, so Jack organized the headcount.
“I’ve lost contestants. That’s the number one death knell of a handler. I’ll never be employed in reality TV again,” Lynette whispered over and over, rocking back and forth on the chair.
Goldie, on the other hand, was still with him, strong and willing to help in her hiking boots and jeans. “I’m going to kill Hank,” she whispered, over and over again, taking comfort, Jack supposed, in the thought she’d still be alive to do so. She seemed like a together woman, so he wondered why she was dating a clown like Carson. But he supposed that’s what women did. Date jerks. It wasn’t like he’d ever understood the female of the species.
Lynette wasn’t the only person losing it. Jack must be going off his rocker too, because he almost kissed Goldie when she fell on him. He shook his head. Yeah, she was hot, but she wasn’t his type. He didn’t date women who owned full-length gowns and looked like models. He dated other scientists or university administrators. Or he had before he’d come to Mars.
They left Lynette rocking back and forth, muttering. Jack had seen people break down like this before. It might be temporary, or it might be something she wouldn’t recover from.
“Everyone to the living room immediately,” Jack yelled at the top of his lungs. He wasn’t looking forward to figuring out who had been in the rocket when it was blown to bits. If anyone had been out there. He reminded himself they didn’t know yet.
He entered the living room, Goldie and the camera guy trailing him, and told everyone to sit. They sat on command, surprising him. He was used to big egos that wanted to lead, not people following orders. “Okay, camera guy—”
“Russ,” he said.
“What?”
“That’s my name. Russ.”
People always were so caught up in names. “Russ,” he conceded. “Do a roll call. How many of them are there, anyway?”
“Twelve,” Goldie said. “Thirteen with the bachelor.”
Russ counted, then recounted. “We’re short five.”
“Oh no!” a blonde screamed, making Jack jump. “Chad! Chad isn’t here.”
All the women started screaming, a loud, piercing sound that would put a coed in a horror movie to shame.
Jesus Christ on a stick. His nerves weren’t going to last through all this.
“Quiet,” he yelled, making even Goldie flinch beside him. “Let’s do a complete check before we hit the panic button.” Maybe Chad was off somewhere with one of the women having sex. Maybe he was with all of them, doing a fivesome. Part of Jack hoped so. He couldn’t take more screaming. “Russ, you and Goldie check the building and make sure no one else is here. I’ll run through all the outbuildings just in case they happened to end up in one.”
Jack had a bad feeling about this.
CHAPTER SIX
Margo and Russ split up the main building. She took the side hall from the lab and he started in the living room. The small, round building wouldn’t take long to search.
“Meet you in the middle,” Russ called, his urgency bringing him into an almost-jog.
They’d decided that they would open anything large enough for a person to fit into, so Margo searched the ten lockers along the hall that held space suits and other supplies. Open, look, shut, open, look, shut, her tempo increasing speed as she went.
Taking the elbow turn, she quickly opened a closet, took a fast glance and shut. And stopped.
She stood still, her mind stuttering on what she’d just seen.
Then she opened back up the closet.
“Do you mind?” Misty screeched, her creamy skin gleaming in the dim light of the closet, her breasts bouncing.
It was the position they were in that had tripped Margo’s brain. “What are you doing?” she asked without thinking.
“Reverse cowboy,” Lynette hissed behind her, then pushed into the small space.
At the sight of the handler, Misty tried to scramble off, but Chad was holding her hips, still thrusting away.
Lynette smacked her hand on the wall, causing the metal structure to clang. “Which is expressly listed as not allowed during filming.”
Misty toppled forward as Chad sat up, dislodging her.
“Lynette, I can explain,” he sputtered, grabbing for his pants, which were under Misty’s knee.
He gave another, huge tug, making Misty tumble over. “Hey!” she snarled, tossing him a furious look.
Lynette put her hands on her hips, her small stature growing with her rage. “You’ve breached your contract, buddy. Hank is going to have your head on a pike when he gets here.” Lynette turned to Misty, who was trying to get her dress back on. “And you are out!”
“I was already out, you fat cow,” Misty said, struggling to get her gown over her sweaty body.
“Cow, am I? Well mooooove the hell out of this closet and go sit on the floor in the lab next to the exit door where I can keep an eye on you. If your ass so much as shifts an inch, you’ll be on bathroom cleaning duty for the duration on this hellhole.”
Margo glanced away as Chad pulled on his pants, not bothering with underwear.
“Oh go fuck yourself, Lynette.” Misty stood half-naked in all her righteousness, her dress stuck at her waist. Then she turned her back to show them a large tattoo on her ass. Pink heart with words scrawled across it. Margo didn’t lean in to read them.
“You just lost your shot at being Paradise, bitch. Think I can’t make that happen, think again.”
Misty pushed her lower lip out in a pout while she tried to straighten her dress.
“Oh my God,” Margo whispered, taking a step further away and bumping into Russ, who seemed to be enjoying the view.
“I have a camera
set up in here,” he said to Lynette.
“You perv!” Misty blew by them all, her underwear crumpled in her hand.
“You won’t use that film, will you?” Margo asked, horrified.
“No,” Lynette said. “Because Chad can’t be compromised.” She held a finger out to him. “You do that again, Chad, and I’m docking your money.”
“You can’t do that!” he huffed.
“I can and will, because this is so clearly excluded in the contract, you would never even get a lawyer to represent you, let alone fight it.”
He opened his mouth to argue.
“It’s ironclad. You’re going to spend the next few hours sitting on the other side of the door from Misty.”
“Whatever,” he said and marched after Misty down the hall.
Margo watched him go, trying to get the image of Misty’s bouncing breasts out of her mind. “How do you do this without losing your mind?” she asked Lynette.
“I just focus on the fact that I must remain sane to kill your brother and get away with it,” the other woman said and prowled off down the hall.
Now, sitting in the lab with Jack, Misty, Chad, and Lynette, Margo had no trouble forgetting the Chad/Misty incident because three people had been on the rocket when it blew.
Her time on Mars wasn’t fun anymore and she wanted off the planet. The whole trip had turned into a disaster. She wouldn’t even get to test her rover, now that three deaths had occurred.
Lynette stared off into space looking shellshocked, sitting in the console chair and Margo wanted to join her. Out of the women who died, she had only really talked to one—Tiffany—who was an awesome person.
It’s too bad Misty couldn’t have been on the rocket instead.
Immediately after the thought, Margo felt horrible. She didn’t mean that. Really she didn’t. It was just the stress.
“All the clothing is gone, too,” Lynette sobbed into a handkerchief Russ had produced from his pocket.
“What?” Jack asked, looking up from a cabinet he searched through.
“Our dresses are gone. We didn’t move them,” Margo said, staring at the screen, which showed the outside pile of dust.
“And the makeup and the interview room. We have nowhere to interview anyone,” Lynette sniffed.
“Who cares?” Jack asked, pulling a large, rolled-up tube of paper from a stack.
Margo shook her head at him in warning. “She does. It’s her job. She’s having trouble adjusting to the show ending early.”
“It isn’t ending early,” Lynette said. “The bachelor is still alive. The show must go on!”
“Lynette,” Margo said gently, worried about the woman’s mental health. “We can’t keep filming. People died. That’s totally disrespectful.”
“We’ll make it a tribute to Tiffany, Susan, and Rose.”
Margo stared at her. “That’s a terrible idea.”
Lynette straightened. “They would want us to go on. They believed in Mars Bachelor.”
Everyone stayed silent except Chad and Misty, who giggled as they sat on the floor on opposite sides of the door where Lynette had placed them until she figured out their punishment for breaking the rules. Misty slipped closer and ran her bare toe up and down Chad’s leg. Chad blew her a kiss.
Three people just died and he voted her off. What is wrong with them? Margo turned away to see Jack unrolling a map onto a high table. “What are you doing?” she asked, looking for a distraction. Any distraction at all.
“I have a backup rover. On the off chance I can get it running again, I’m planning what I’ll do next.”
Margo drifted closer and saw it was a map of Mars.
He tapped the paper. “I bet whoever these people are, they haven’t shut down the communications at Station 3.”
“Why would they? Station 3 has been abandoned for almost a year.”
He gave her a closer inspection. “You seem to be up on current events,” he said, taking extra time to study her hiking boots.
“Margo,” Lynette said, her tone a warning. Even in the middle of calamity, Lynette was still on the job.
“Yes, yes.” Margo waved at her. She knew the rules, although it seemed dumb to follow them at this point. “I read up before I came,” she told Jack.
He frowned as if that answer didn’t satisfy him but turned back to the map. “I doubt I can fix my other rover. I have a parts problem.”
“Actually we have one,” she said, excitement bubbling up inside her. If Jack needed a rover, Lynette would have no choice but let Margo’s out of hiding.
To drive her rover, to get out there and see the planet, to sense the rock beneath her feet, to experience the real terrain under her wheels. And on top of all that, they’d save everyone from a slow death. She would leave right now if she could.
“Margo,” Lynette said again.
But Margo ignored her. “I brought a rover with me.”
Boyle propped a hip against the table. “Is this one of those hallucinations some people have under extreme stress? Or an early case of Red Meningitis? Because we really don’t have time for it.”
Margo looked at the map. Could she make it to Station 3 without him? Because the thought of being alone with him made her shake inside. With anger, not with anything fun, despite the little zip of heat she’d experienced earlier. “I haven’t been allowed to check the charge, but it should be close to full even with the slight loss during the downtime through space.” All batteries shed energy when not in use. These might leak a little more, because they were attached to multiple solar panels, which allowed them to charge as it was driven.
Boyle peered at her closely, reached out a hand to check the temperature of her forehead. “Are you being serious?”
She ducked, not wanting to feel lust bolts again.
“As a heart attack.” Estimating with her hand, she got a rough idea of how far away they were going. “130 miles is just on the edge of what my rover can do on its current battery with no downtime to recharge.”
“What are you?” he asked, wondering how a woman with a rover had magically popped into his life right when he needed them.
“Mechanical engineer.”
“Seriously?”
“Yes.”
He shut up at that, trying to reconcile the beauty in the gold dress with the one standing before him.
“I want to see it,” he said, clearly not buying that she had magically produced the answer to all his hopes.
She turned to Lynette, who shook her head. “You weren’t allowed to test it until you were voted out. Hank was very insistent on that.”
“Lynette, we might die here if we don’t do something.”
“And if we don’t die, all of this is on film. It will get an Emmy at the very least. Maybe a Nobel Prize.”
Jack snorted. “Prize for what? They don’t give out Nobel Prizes for reality TV.”
Lynette straightened, swiping at her tears. “Prize for filming the harrowing escape from Mars, at the very least.”
Margo decided to ignore her. “She said she put it in one of the outbuildings.”
“Let’s go then.” A slow smile spread across Boyle’s face, making him look like a pirate in a movie film. A really hot pirate.
Wow. No wonder Jack Boyle never smiled. That smile was dangerous.
Lynette shouted something about contracts after Margo, but she didn’t listen. This was it. This was her big moment, the thing she’d dreamed about her whole life. And she didn’t care if her brother wouldn’t pay her for being on the show. She was getting to drive at least 130 miles in her rover. On Mars.
“Space suits for this just in case the field fails,” Boyle growled.
Normally inside the biodome, they didn’t have to wear space suits, but the attack had weakened the field that held the air at tolerable standards. They would be glad they were in their suits if the field failed.
So, Boyle helped her get the fit right, giving her those same annoying shivers, t
hen they stepped outside.
Jack wondered if he was being punked. That was the only reasonable explanation he could come up with. Well, he guessed he’d see when they made it to the mechanical hut, which was the area he’d given to the film crew for their extra stuff. He’d checked it earlier, but hadn’t looked in any of the crates.
Goldie walked beside him in her suit, her face full of what could only be described as joy. Jack had been joyous, too, when he’d first come here. But now this place had become a weight around his neck, pulling him down.
Her joy would fade soon, too, because he wasn’t about to take her out with him.
He entered the mechanical hut, saw a large crate sitting in the center of the floor marked DO NOT OPEN. They unboxed it quickly and there before him was a shiny new rover. “What the hell,” Jack whispered.
The mic in his helmet picked it up and Goldie bounded forward in the low gravity to place a hand on it. “She’s a beauty, isn’t she?”
Jack could only nod, because she was. Similar in structure to his old rover, this one had eight wheels with bigger tires but a smaller wheel base, the increased height allowing it to move around the massive and plentiful boulders and large rocks that made the ground a constant obstacle course, and allowed for tighter passage between them.
After a few moments of silence, he asked, “And you built this?”
“My team and I.” She patted the rover with obvious pride.
“So, why the hell are you on this show?”
“I guess we’re out of camera range.” She peered all around, looking at the ceiling and checking an open bin. “So, I can tell you. I traded Hank filling in on the show for letting me test my rover here.” She stretched her arms out wide, as if to say “tah dah!”
All of this annoyed him on many levels. First, Hank should have cleared this rover-testing business during their negotiations. He, Jack Boyle, should have had a say in any testing going on out of his station. Second, it was super annoying that her boyfriend sent her on this show to throw herself at another man, even if it was in the name of science. Not that Jack hadn’t done a number of things he probably shouldn’t for the same cause. Still, he couldn’t shake his discomfort with the fact that this woman, this extraordinary woman, would be with an asshole like Hank Carson.
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