Offworld

by Robin Parrish

  "She can still do everything her job requires-the difference is that she pays a heavier price for it than the rest of us do."

  "I can't believe I never noticed," said Owen.

  Chris looked hard at Owen. "I guess some of us are just better at hiding things."

  JULY 10, 2033 DAY SIX

  It was long after midnight when Trisha awoke on the floor. She was surprised to see Mae seated near her, slumped against the nearby wall, her eyes closed. Across the room she could see Owen and Chris, slouched in a booth. No one was making a sound, save Owen, who was lightly snoring.

  When Trisha stirred, Mae sprang into action and brought a glass of water to her lips.

  Trisha didn't know what to make of the young girl as her caretaker, and couldn't think of anything immediately to say.

  Chris roused and crossed the room, coming up behind Mae. "Thank you, Mae. I need to speak to her alone for a minute."

  Mae said nothing in reply but got to her feet and gently stepped away.

  "She hasn't left your side since you passed out," he began.

  "What did she do to me while I was asleep?"

  "I think she was taking your pulse every few minutes, though I never saw her look at a watch. She kept an eye on your breathing. Checked your temperature. Made sure you were comfortable," Chris replied, turning to look in the direction Mae had gone. "She knew what she was doing."

  "Huh," Trisha replied, noncommittal. "Why would a kid who grew up on the streets know such things?"

  "What is it?" Chris asked. "What've you got against her?"

  "I don't know... " Trisha said with a sigh, rolling her eyes. "I just ... I don't connect with her at all. I worked so hard to get to where I am, professionally. I sacrificed, I did whatever it took. She's obviously come from a hard life but she's got no goals, no desire to contribute to anything. I can't wrap my head around her, and I don't know how to respect anyone who lives that way."

  "Have you considered that you don't have to understand her in order to be friendly to her?"

  Trisha let out a quick burst of air that was almost like a laugh. If anyone else had said that, she'd have considered it condescending, but coming from Chris, she saw the humor and the truth in it.

  She looked around the room. "Where's Terry?"

  He explained everything she'd missed. He reluctantly included the part about revealing her secret to Owen, but she didn't care. What did it matter now? The mission was over, and the world they'd come home to was empty.

  "Terry's all alone, Chris. You have to go find him," she said softly.

  "No I don't."

  "Chris, we can't just leave him behind! And you're the only one he'll respond to now...

  "Terry's a big boy," said Chris, his features set. "He made his own decision. If he was going to come back, he would have by now. If he changes his mind, he knows where to find us."

  `And if you're right, and there really is someone else out there, following us?" Trisha asked, her voice still weak. "Someone dangerous?"

  "Well, if you'll recall, Terry's already proven he knows how to acquire weapons."

  Trisha sighed.

  Chris looked away, not interested in discussing the subject further.

  `And Owen's a secret agent super-spy," she mused. "Unreal"

  "It was reckless of NASA and the government to place him on the crew." Chris shook his head. "He was rushed through his training and he could have compromised the entire mission."

  `But he didn't," Trisha reminded him. "He did the job he was brought onboard to do, and I don't mean the secret one. He made countless scientific discoveries on Mars. He worked tirelessly. He was extraordinary, Chris. There were a couple times just watching him pushed me when I almost gave in to exhaustion."

  Chris didn't reply, and she knew he had no counterargument.

  "So what's the plan?" she asked. "It's night. When do we leave?"

  Chris hesitated, his face suddenly painted with concern. "I'm not comfortable with the idea of dragging you around in this condition."

  "Too bad," she replied. "We have to get to Houston; everything is pointing in that direction."

  With great care she gradually got to her feet and managed to stand upright on her own. "So let's get going."

  She spotted Owen where he was resting and moved to wake him up. But she couldn't completely hide the stilted way her legs shifted hack and forth, nor the stiffness in her neck that kept her from swiveling it with ease. When she leaned over to awaken Owen, she hit her lip and closed her eyes for just a moment.

  She knew Chris had seen it. And she also knew that despite how much time he'd spent around her over the last few years, he was still learning just how much willpower and resolve Trisha Merriday possessed.

  By three in the morning the group was breezing past the northern outskirts of Lake Charles, Louisiana, once again on Highway 10. It had been a silent trip, with not a single word spoken between Chris and Trisha in the minivan. Chris imagined that Owen and Mae in the pickup truck had very little to talk about either. He also wondered if Owen was having as much trouble keeping his eyes open as he was.

  Driving in the dead of night may have seemed like the safe thing to do, but fighting exhaustion and the complications of avoiding all the stalled vehicles was more difficult than Chris had expected.

  He was about to adjust the air-conditioning to help rouse himself when a sense of motion caught his eye. It was like a jolt of caffeine. He glanced in the rearview mirror; he could see something far back behind them on the road. Chris was doing his usual dance around the abandoned vehicles on the freeway, and although the road was dark, the moon gave enough light to silhouette something traveling far behind them.

  There it was again. He blinked and sat up straighter.

  "We're being followed," he announced to Trisha, who was asleep next to him.

  She half-opened her eyes. "Huh what?"

  "Something's behind us."

  She craned her neck around. "I don't see anything."

  "It's far back, and it's working hard to stay unnoticed. If it's a car, it's not running headlights."

  "Maybe it's Terry," she suggested.

  "With no lights on?"

  "Right, right. I'm in a fog, overlook me...

  "Wish we could ask Owen if he sees it too," Chris said.

  "But we can't risk tipping our hand over an open channel," she said, verifying his thinking. "If they're following us, they're probably listening in as well."

  Chris pressed down harder on the gas pedal. "Let's try increasing speed. See what they do."

  Owen followed Chris' lead, accelerating as he did, and Chris suspected that Owen's keen eyes had probably spotted their pursuer even before he had.

  He watched the mirror in silence, waiting for another glimpse. "There," he said. "They're keeping up. No-they're gaining. It's definitely a vehicle of some kind. Maybe a truck."

  "They have to know we spotted them," Trisha pointed out. "What if it's someone else left behind, like Mae? They could need our help."

  Chris wished he could believe Trisha's optimistic notion, but said nothing. Something was very off about this, and he wasn't about to put his people in danger. He needed a well-lit spot, where his pursuers would have no immediate advantage.

  As they drew closer to Houston, his knowledge of their positioning grew, and he remembered enough about this area to navigate it smartly. Calcasieu River would be coming up momentarily, so he turned south just before coming upon it, driving down into the city of Lake Charles proper. He followed the shoreline to his west and spotted a tall, glittering building a few blocks ahead on the left. It was an office building, covered in tinted glass across its every outer wall. It was higher than any other building Chris could see, and the building's parking lot still had functioning streetlamps.

  "Pull in ahead at the lighted area, but don't get out, and keep your engine running," he ordered Owen through his earpiece.

  "Copy that," Owen replied, asking no questions.
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br />   Once in the parking lot, Chris drove to its far end and swung the van around with screeching tires. There he waited, his driver's side window facing their oncoming visitor. Owen did likewise, whipping the pickup with a screech, its front bumper mere inches from the van's rear.

  "Well .. " whispered a stunned Trisha. "He's got a great big bag full of tricks."

  Chris kept the van's engine running and rolled down his window to get an unobstructed view. He heard the approaching vehicle before he saw it. It was not a car or a truck; it was a black military-grade jeep. It had barreled through the turn off the main road and into the parking lot without slowing down, and now it was speeding straight at them like a battering ram on wheels.

  "Beech .. " Chris called out urgently.

  "I see it," Owen replied, his voice above the roar of the oncoming vehicle.

  Please let this work....

  "Move!" Chris shouted.

  He hit the accelerator as the vehicle approached, and Owen did the same, only his truck screeched into reverse while Chris lurched forward. Their vehicles parted just as the jeep would've collided into them and it surged forward until nearly crashing into the windowcovered office building.

  In a heartbeat the driver powered it into reverse, working on a three-point turn to face them again as Chris called to Owen and both vehicles sped from the parking lot.

  "You think they're alone, whoever they are?" Trisha asked.

  "Let's hope so."

  Once they were westbound on Highway 10 again, Chris fingered his earpiece.

  "So much for the cover of night," he said, fully aware that Owen might not be the only person who was listening. The horizon behind them was already changing from black to dark blue, signaling the earliest signs of the rising sun.

  "They will expect us to return to the highway," Owen replied. "The smart move would be to seek refuge elsewhere."

  "It'll have to wait till we get off this," said Chris as the two vehicles approached the massive Calcasieu River High Bridge, a sprawling eight-hundred-foot bridge that reached across the river. Shaped like a flattened A, the bridge's peak was near its center, cresting one hundred and forty feet above the water. There was no leaving the bridge once on it, until making it to the other end.

  They were ascending the eastern side of the bridge, headed toward the peak, when a row of headlights switched on at the bridge's apex, blocking their path. There were at least four jeeps, parked shoulder to shoulder, with little to no room in between. Across the three-foot-high median another four jeeps waited in the eastbound lane.

  Chris glanced in his rearview mirror, where four more of the jeeps approached from behind.

  They'd driven straight into a trap.

  TWELVE

  Chris knew when he was out of his depth. Fighter planes and rockets were one thing, but this ...

  If anyone's listening up there ... A little help?

  Please?

  "Beech? Any ideas?"

  "Several. But this one should do," Owen replied, and Chris watched as Owen accelerated, swerving fast around Chris and Trisha in the minivan and bearing down full bore on the black jeeps several hundred feet ahead.

  Owen poured on the speed, and Chris knew what was about to happen. Owen was going to sacrifice the pickup truck to punch a hole for Trisha and Chris to pass through. Chris wasn't sure where that left Owen and Mae, but there was no time to consider it. Owen was almost there.

  Realizing this, Chris increased his pace so he could speed the van through the gap Owen was about to create.

  But at the moment Chris was certain the spectacular crash would come, Owen swerved the truck to the right. Thanks to a maneuver too fast for Chris to follow, the truck was suddenly up on its left two wheels. A high cement sidewalk, no more than three feet wide and a foot off the ground, ran the outside length of the bridge, and Owen managed to bring the truck, barreling along almost horizontally, onto that raised sidewalk. The side of the truck's cab scraped along the metal barrier on the outside edge of the bridge, spitting sparks and sending a tremendous screech into the night, but Owen never slowed.

  The pickup squeezed through a space between the jeep and the bridge without slowing, and once it had sped past, it tipped hack on all four wheels and bolted forward until the taillights vanished out of Chris' sight below the arc of the bridge.

  A stunned silence filled the interior of the van. Owens move had happened so fast that Chris and Trisha barely had time to react, and now both sat with mouths agape inside the van, which Chris had screeched to a halt a few hundred feet before the waiting barricade.

  "Whoa," whispered Chris.

  "He doesn't expect us to do that, does he?" asked Trisha, eyes wide.

  Chris couldn't think of a reply, gazing in his rearview mirror as the black vehicles coming up behind them closed the gap and stopped about fifty feet hack.

  Chris' mind scanned for any ideas that could get them out of this, though none emerged but the insane or the impossible.

  "We could jump. Out over the side, in the water," Trisha offered.

  Chris shook his head in tiny movements. "The water's over a hundred feet below us. I don't know how deep this river is, do you?"

  She glanced hack and forth between the jeeps in front of them and the ones behind.

  There was simply nothing to be done. They were captured.

  But he wasn't about to make it easy for their captors.

  "GET OUT OF THE VAN," announced a voice over some sort of loudspeaker. It was a rough, growl-like male voice.

  "Not a chance," Chris replied, though only he and Trisha could hear it.

  "Maybe they just want to talk," Trisha whispered.

  "Or maybe they have three heads," he shot back.

  A driver's door opened on one of the jeeps behind them. Before he could see who got out, Chris heard a thundering noise from somewhere out of sight.

  Something big. And it was coming toward them.

  They couldn't see it at first, but soon the bright headlights of a tractor-trailer crested the bridge's high point from behind the jeeps blocking their way, and slammed into the rear end of the one on the far left, near the central barrier.

  The jeep was crushed like a soda can, slamming forward at a dangerous speed. In seconds it would pass beside Chris and Trisha's van on their left. But before the jeep and the tractor-trailer reached the van, the rig's door opened and Owen jumped out, tucking into a controlled roll.

  "Go!" shouted Owen as he sprang to his feet.

  Chris shoved his gearshift into drive and stomped on the accelerator. He rushed toward Owen, but the man was already moving, using his momentum to charge toward the van. Chris and Trisha both understood what needed to happen next, and Trisha unbuckled herself and leaned back to slide open the van's side door.

  As the van passed Owen's line of entry, he leaped cleanly into the hack of the van and shoved the door shut.

  "Go, Chris!" he shouted again, and Chris hit the gas, heading straight for the gap Owen had opened for him. Behind them the still-charging tractor-trailer and crushed jeep slammed into the wall of vehicles that had been blocking their retreat. The sound was deafening.

  "Where's Mae?" Chris barked.

  Just ahead," Owen replied. "I left her in the pickup."

  "You're insane!" Trisha yelled, her neck craned around to see Owen in the back seat. "How did you do that back there? And where did you get the eighteen-wheeler?"

  "Saw it parked on the side of the road, just there-where Mae's waiting. Had a fifty-fifty chance it would still have juice. Driver must've been sleeping in the back on D-Day, 'cause the whole thing was powered down," he said, and Chris imagined his friend was probably bruised and scratched raw in several places from jumping clear of the truck, but he didn't even seem to be breathing hard.

  "Chris," Owen said urgently, "we have no time. Slow down, but don't stop when you reach the pickup. We'll be right behind you." He slid open the side door once more.

  Chris followed Owen's request
, and Owen jumped from the moving van and kept running at relatively the same pace as the vehicle. Mae waited in the passenger's seat of the pickup, the driver's door open and the engine already running. Owen hopped in, slammed shut the door, and mashed down the accelerator until the engine howled in disapproval.

  Burke had no idea where to go. Owen had suggested earlier that they get off Highway 10, but then what? Where could they go?

  Without question, they had to get to Houston. If for no other reason than that these people-whoever they were-were trying to keep them from it. Chris had never taken lightly to being told he couldn't do something.

  "What's that?" Trisha wondered aloud. She pointed ahead, just to the right of the highway where a handful of fires burned very high above the ground. There were no streetlights or billboards or anything else illuminated, so not much could be seen about the area surrounding the fires. It almost looked like the plumes were suspended in midair.

  "I think it's an oil refinery," he replied, squinting as they came closer. "Probably burning out of control."

  He suddenly glanced at Trisha, his brow furrowed.

  Without warning he turned from the highway and made for the structure in question. Owen followed in the truck.

  "What are we doing?" asked Trisha. He glanced at her; she still had black shadows beneath her eyes, yet the events of the last few minutes had infused her with adrenaline so that she was as alert as he was.

  "You know how big and tangled a typical oil refinery is? Pipes and beams and machinery," he explained. "There must be a thousand places to hide in there, especially in the dark."