Lakes of Mars

by Merritt Graves

  I recalled Bluerine from sparring in the Mat Room and Castor from Military History. They were both in C4 now.

  How many people has he told?

  I don’t think that many.

  He shouldn’t have told anyone. We shouldn’t have told anyone.

  What exactly should we have done then?

  I . . . I don’t know.

  Your inquest is in a week, Aaron. It would take him and Daries longer than that without us.

  Is that why you want to do this now? To try and save me? Well, you can’t save everyone!

  We can’t just sit on this either.

  I’m not talking about that, just getting more information. And I could buy more time to do it by shoo— I started, but stopped. I couldn’t say the words. Shooting Fingers. What kind of person had I turned into that I would even consider that? The same kind of person who shot Sebastian, I guess. Maybe not now, maybe not next year. But that was the direction I was going, and this was the place that was taking me there. This place was turning us all into monsters.

  By what?

  I still couldn’t say it, think it. Just by . . . just that we should check the sample again. We don’t really know if the—

  I checked it four times.

  But—

  I appreciate you wanting to be cautious but we’re out of time. You’re not going to be any help to anyone—me, the colonists, Pierre—after you disappear.

  That’s—

  Besides, the array’s almost done. If we waited and didn’t do anything—if we didn’t at least tell the Fleet what we found out—I’d hate myself and you’d hate yourself, and guess who we’d blame deep down for being the reason?

  Each other, I managed to think before I could stop myself. But that’s not . . . It felt like all the color was draining from my skin. I hadn’t walked through the implications of what I saw before talking to people, and now it was all coming out at once, the logic gathering momentum, making me feel like I was careening out of control. Of course she was going to want to do something; this was the same person who’d given herself her brother’s disease so she could try to cure it.

  So you’re just going to give up on the cure then? I thought, picking up the conversation again.

  I’m going to keep working on it right up until we go.

  How close are you?

  Close.

  And what would you say are your chances of having it? Twenty percent? Thirty per—

  Fifty. The drug kills the virus; we’ve just got to figure out a way to lower the toxicity so it doesn’t kill the mice, too. It’s doable, though balancing dosage and composition is tricky on a virus this complex.

  But just because the drug kills the mice doesn’t mean it’s going to kill a person, right?

  Right, but all of the human simulation models say that 250mg should be fatal, which is the lowest amount that neutralizes the Kamalgia. We’re talking internal hemorrhaging. Kidney failure. Heart failure. Nasty stuff. But even if we don’t make it, we can return to the nebula afterward and I can finish in the Pulsar’s med bay. You can fly that ship, right?

  I was blanketed by nausea, remembering how Sebastian had asked me the same question three days ago. Yeah, but it’s not going to come to that, I started, but stopped, sensing I was slipping off the edge of something, unsure of what to say. How to articulate what I was feeling? I’d kept thinking that I was going to calm down, that the adrenaline and everything white-hot that been pumping through me since I’d talked with Fingers would run its course. But it kept coming. You’re always underestim—

  Aaron, she thought, softening her tone. We just have to promise ourselves that we’ll do what we need to, even if we haven’t finished here.

  But the Pulsar’s med bay is tiny—I can’t imagine it would have all the equ—

  It’s mostly dosing at this point, like I said, so as long as Fingers can load the bioCAD program onto the ship’s computer and we take along the active ingredients, we’ll be fine. Considering how many people on this station are on drugs, stealing them from the locker in Medical won’t be that hard. You wouldn’t happen to know anyone with a key card, would you? You said Brandon and—

  I have a key card, I thought, everything else grinding to a halt. This was the last thing I wanted to admit to but there wasn’t any time to prevaricate.

  What? How come?

  I hesitated a moment, embarrassed, before stammering out a thought. I took stims . . . a couple times . . . and then Zeroes once.

  She sounded beleaguered. But why?

  So I could stay awake, so I could help you. With all the classes and Challenges and late-night training . . . and then Sebastian . . . it was stupid, I know. I just didn’t know what to do.

  I could feel her astonishment. What had I been thinking? It didn’t seem at the time like it had been a conscious choice—it felt like it was just a response to what was being thrown at me—but of course it was a choice. Everything was a choice. Even standing by and doing nothing was.

  And I guess that was the point she was trying to make. I didn’t love her because she was simply trying to hold on and so I couldn’t just hold on either. The more I thought about it, the more I knew she was right: If we did the wrong thing together because we were scared, and let something horrible happen, our love wouldn’t matter. It existed because we each knew the other one was willing to risk everything if it was needed. Saving it out of fear would destroy it.

  The realization made me feel naked. Usually I was calm knowing I didn’t have a choice, but now I could feel the blood running through me—the inner working of everything that was keeping me alive—reminding me of how fragile I was. How fragile Eve was. And that made me dizzier still—like I was tied-in to a hundred terrified people at once.

  At the same time, I felt like I could do anything because I was with her. That because it was necessary, it was possible; and if it was possible, there wasn’t going to be anything that could stop us.

  There was a long silence before she thought, I guess we’ll be sure to get the supplies, then.

  Chapter 54

  I think I’d always been aware something awful was happening at the station, realized it on the first day when I’d fought Taryn in the cafeteria. Known it for certain when Sebastian died and I saw those eyes glowing in the darkness during the tie-in. I had just suspended my disbelief and covered it in layers of fear and numbness.

  As a result, deep down I knew Fingers was right, that we had to knock out the array and warn the Fleet. But knowing about a problem and taking action have so much space in between, especially if there’s uncertainty. Especially if you don’t trust yourself anymore.

  So for a while I didn’t consider myself a part of what was happening. Even when I’d run errands and cover for people, I still felt like I was outside of it, on the fence, and could decide to ultimately put my feet down wherever I chose. It was like one of those truly traumatic things that doesn’t actually jar you that much because it’s too big to get your head around. Fragments of it break off into your vision, but because you can’t put them together, you can’t take in that it is actually real.

  I’m not sure of the exact moment I crossed over. Maybe it was when Fingers compiled all the evidence against Mars into a single list during a tie-in, or when Eve and I finally convinced Simon not to go to the Reds. It was hard to say. But one day I awoke knowing I had made the leap, and it terrified me more than anything had ever terrified me before.

  It was so strange going to classes with the knowledge of what we were trying to do. That we knew something they didn’t, that no one else in the universe did, and no matter how much better it would be if we could scream it out—unfurl the truth across the Outer Ring—we couldn’t because of the cameras dotting the hallways. Because transparency was killing the truth in an odd, chilling way. I wanted so badly to talk more about what it all meant, but we only had so much tie-in fluid and had to ration it out solely for critical communication.

  I also worried th
at the more I thought about it, the more I’d give myself away. That instead of mine just being another face in the corridors, consumed by the lights and the white floors, funneled up into the hurried flow of traffic, that everyone somehow knew I was up to something. I imagined I saw stares from behind when I swiveled my head around and people whispering to each other once I’d passed. It seemed like when I’d ask a question through a tie-in, someone else would be bizarrely answering it in the conversation they were having nearby. It felt like a game that everyone else was in on. Some really elaborate experiment that was nearing its conclusion. At first I’d thought the looks could be residual attention from the Sebastian accident, but that had died down in the preceding days and more and more it seemed inevitable that something fateful would happen.

  This sent doubts weaving and connecting with each other in an increasingly intricate network. I was trying so hard to be brave, but it felt like every inch of me was under scrutiny. That there were microphones in my clothes and everything we’d said by the waterfall had been heard by the Reds, and they were just seeing what I’d do and who else I’d implicate before arresting me. I wanted to try to feel some of them out to see how much they knew—talk to Mr. Katz or Professor Richter in an oblique way—but I worried if I did that I might inadvertently draw attention to myself even more. No, if they knew, they knew, and we were already finished.

  I arrived back in C3 after Space Math, filled a syringe with the fake Zeroes tie-in fluid, and plunged it into my arm as soon as I was in my hammock.

  “Goddamn it, you scared the shit out of me.”

  Think it, Fin, you can’t say it, remember? I thought.

  Trying to—it’s kind of hard getting used to someone eavesdropping on your thoughts, you know, she thought as she packed up her stuff after her Field Chemistry class.

  I can only hear what you send me.

  Sure. But to answer what you’re going to ask, it’s almost ready.

  What’s almost ready?

  The bomb, dummy, she thought. It’s in my bag—it just needs fertilizer and a transmitter. The project’s due in class next week so it’s not suspicious that I’m so close. I just don’t want it to be ‘too’ close, you know what I mean?

  I nodded. So now Eve and Simon just need to get us the catalysts and the fuse. The thoughts seemed to topple out more from inertia than anything else. I was in on it, but I was still so unsure that we were doing the right thing that part of me was hoping that something would go wrong. That some delay would arise that would buy us more time.

  How is that Simon guy doing, anyway?

  He’s avoiding me, I replied, the uneasiness I usually felt around Fin beginning to surface. I could sense an acceleration—a kind of vague relish—as she formed the next thought.

  Because you stole his girlfriend.

  He never had her, I managed to think back amidst a flurry of new doubts. They’d known each other for eighteen months before I got there. I had no idea what had passed between them.

  Is that what you told him? Sounds like exactly the person to invite into our little gunpowder plot.

  I didn’t know then that that’s what it was. Besides, Fin, we need him. I could sense she was about to send something snide, so I preempted, And you’re probably thinking how naïve I am, but he had his chance to come clean and now he’s in neck-deep just like the rest of us and he knows it. If you get drilled into a stupor for falling asleep in class, just imagine what they’d do for this.

  You don’t have to imagine anything, thought Fin. You’d be shot. It’s treason.

  Silence.

  You did know that, didn’t you?

  I did, but somehow it took hearing the truth aloud for it to really sink in. Yeah, which is all the more reason why we don’t have to worry about him.

  Okay, sure. I’ll pretend you have everything under control personnel-wise for a moment, but what I’m having trouble with is how Fingers plans on getting an ‘active’ device to the target. We all know they’re lying about the cameras, Fin thought. They’ll stop us before we even connect the fuse.

  Well, how did you and Fingers get that vat of tie-in fluid to the C3 fridge without them noticing?

  I’m sure they noticed. But it was on a dare and Brandon promoted me to student ensign for it. I guess the Reds didn’t mind the reason.

  And they can’t mind ours, either. We just need a good enough pretense for blowing something up. I stopped. The other part of my mind was racing just as fast as the part that was thinking to Fin, and it only took a few moments for it to catch up. But I think we’ve already got it.

  Caelus.

  Caelus, I repeated. We can make out like we’re going to use the points to buy access to a sealed vent above C1—barricade them inside at night—and threaten that we’ll detonate it if they don’t hand over all their points and vote Pierre as captain. That’s plausible, isn’t it?

  I could feel her agreement. But don’t you think the Reds would intervene?

  That’s the beauty. That’s the stuff they want us to do. I mean, think about it; there was that wing in A that sealed the other wing’s door, and Caelus himself sabotaged a space suit and smuggled in live ammo. My thoughts were raw and fast-flowing. They want us to act like animals. It’s what they reward. So I kinda doubt they’d stop us—at least not until the last second.

  But how are we going to change targets?

  Simple sleight of hand. We stage a switcheroo with an identical bag and Eve marches the real one down to the biolab.

  And then what? asked Fin.

  I paused, not quite believing that it was me thinking all this. That I was playing a role now, too, just like I’d thought she was on the first day in the cafeteria. And then we light it up.

  And then what?

  We get the hell out of here. Brandon’s rank as SL gives him a Student Access Permit to all the main shuttle bays.

  Sounds like something Sebastian would’ve come up with.

  No . . . his plan would’ve been even better, I thought, realizing now that he’d probably been doing double-talk, too, considering he knew about the cameras, and was still speaking about leaving in the open. Maybe he’d already known about the Verex and that had all been misdirection for some other scheme.

  You were quite the team.

  I wasn’t sure how she meant that and tried to dig down farther, but Fingers had been right about the various demarcations.

  But there’s still one problem. How do I know you and Fingers aren’t actually planning on using the device on Caelus and this isn’t all just a setup to get me to build it for you?

  I went cold.

  I mean, you’re furious about Sebastian and Rhys. Rightly so. They were your best friends.

  You’ve got to be joking, I replied.

  Just how naïve do you think ‘I’ am? Everyone’s got you pegged for this kind of sullen Boy Scout, but I think you might’ve snapped. That happens. I’ve seen it happen.

  You . . . you’re serious, aren’t you?

  Of course I’m serious.

  Honest to God, Fin. The thought never occurred to me.

  Funny, because when you attacked him in the Great Room I could’ve sworn you said, “I’m going to kill you.”

  Sure I said that, and I’m sure a part of me meant it, but that was . . . that was before I recognized Commander Marquardt’s dogs. That changed everything.

  I hope so.

  Shit, Fin, I’m not sure what you want me to say. I never considered anything like what you’re talking about.

  You’re not a very good liar. You should at least say you considered it. That would make you sound more credible.

  But I’m not trying to sound credible. I’m trying to tell you the truth.

  She seemed to fold inward at this, laying bare her pain and insecurity. For a second I could feel all her conflict at once—a hostile expanse of electric light—but a second later I was out again.

  I’m no fan of Caelus, but I didn’t sign up for putting a bomb in
his barracks. You better fucking know that. You try anything funny and the next bomb will be for you.

  Chapter 55

  The sky swayed. The clouds looked pregnant and threatening, organizing themselves into strange shapes that blotted out the sun. It was only when I was almost in the middle of them, though, that they finally went on the warpath and dispatched their first beads of rain onto my cockpit window.

  “This is Mother Two, they’re dive-bombing! Port and starboard lightwalls are down and we’re losing hull integrity. Please assist.”

  I felt my lips move. “Acknowledged, Mother Two. We’ll be there as soon as we can.”

  “Sir, should we break off the attack?”

  “Negative. Maintain formation, autonomy level three.”

  “But, they only have a couple minutes—”

  “Just do . . . just do what I say,” I said, my voice sounding like I’d been screaming into a pillow. I felt bellicose. A kite covering the face of a monster had almost twisted free.

  Light pulsed through the cumulus clouds below, thin fingers dragging fighters down from our formation, making heliotropic explosions flower in the gloom. I flipped a switch to toggle between algorithms and my fighter—along with the four behind me—began weaving and twirling, allowing us to slip through the growing number of streaks slanting skyward.

  “I see you’re controlling entire wings now,” a familiar voice said over the commline. “That’s a lot of responsibility.”

  “Of course it is,” I said reflexively, feeling like my mind was beginning to separate from my body.

  “A lot of lives are in your hands.”

  The voice wasn’t real; I was making it up. That was the only possible explanation.

  “It’s not always easy getting back on the horse. Most people don’t. Most people are liberated by the excuses others give them. It feels so good to have a box for the blame to go that they start putting everything else inside, too. Guilt. Agency. Anything that feels like it might be a burden. All abdicated.”