Lovers and Lunatics (Mars Adventure Romance Series Book 2)

by Jennifer Willis

  Even though he had no idea where they were going.

  Before he pulled his helmet on, Gary caught Dana’s eye. “You said, ‘This isn’t how it’s supposed to happen.’”

  She frowned. “What are you talking about?”

  “In the cockpit, before the accident. Or maybe in the middle of it.” Gary was having a hard time with the chronology. There had been two explosions, but he couldn’t remember how much time had elapsed between them. There had been little things, too, about the captain’s behavior even before the accident, when they were on approach to Klondike-3.

  “You said, ‘This isn’t how it’s supposed to happen,’” Gary said again. “I heard you.”

  Dana glanced at Manny and Brett, standing by the docking hatch and listening in.

  “We’ll talk about it on the way.” Dana wrapped the radio in a clear plastic bag and tucked it into an exterior pocket of her EVA suit. She had some trouble securing the closure with her thick gloves. “For now, helmets on. Visors down.”

  She glanced at Brett. “You good to walk?”

  He nodded, a gesture that was mostly lost within the confines of his suit. “I can make it,” he said over the radio in his helmet.

  On Dana’s orders, Manny sealed the bulkhead doors connecting the cargo hold to the rest of the ship, and then opened the hatch to the lunar surface beyond. He made room for Brett to exit first, followed by Gary and Dana.

  Gary took a few bouncing steps out onto the surface of the moon and tried not to fall on his face. There was just enough gravity to be dangerous, he thought, and not quite enough to be useful. The restrictive bulk of his suit wasn’t helping matters. Every movement was awkward and sluggish inside his suit, but then the one-sixth gravity exaggerated the smallest gesture.

  I’m on the freaking moon! The hopeful little astronaut inside Gary leapt for joy and for a fleeting moment, he forgot about the circumstances of his visit. He watched as dust clouded upward from his footsteps and then fell back to the surface in parabolic arcs.

  He was glad Dana had advised that he lower his visor before their egress, to keep him from being blinded by the unfiltered sun. His personal safety was now the very last thing on his mind. He took several more experimental steps away from the ship and almost giggled at his cartoonish buoyancy.

  Then he looked back toward Earth over the lunar horizon.

  The roughly three-quarter sphere stopped his breath. His home, nearly 400,000 kilometers away, shone like a blue-white jewel against the velvet blackness of space. It was nearly the same vista the Apollo astronauts had captured on film and taken home again—photos that forever changed the way human beings viewed themselves and their world. This was the magic of exploration and discovery, looking across the expanse of space toward a planet so vigorously beautiful and fragile. Gary had never felt so small and insignificant, and simultaneously so very much alive.

  If not for the mutterings of the Churly Flint crew over the comms—debating whether to seal the hatch of the marooned and now abandoned ship—the moment would have been perfect.

  “Earth rise,” Gary sighed in awe. “I never thought I’d get to see it for myself.” He smiled as he felt the sting of tears. Hannah should have gotten to see this, too. Then maybe she would appreciate what an immense privilege it was to be working on something like Mars Ho—as tawdry as the broadcast episodes could be—that might help guarantee the future of humanity as a space-faring race.

  Instead, she was stuck on some ship with an oversexed space hunk. And Gary had no way of letting her know that he was okay. Or alive, at least for the moment.

  “If you’re done sightseeing, I’d like to get a move on toward getting us off this rock.” Dana appeared at his side, and Gary nearly jumped when she patted his shoulder. Her face was obscured by the dark gold tint of her helmet’s visor, but he could hear the drive in her voice.

  They fell into step behind Brett, who limped along with a literal bounce. Manny was several meters out at the head of the expedition, holding up a handheld device that looked like a geiger counter.

  “Another radio, outfitted for location tracking,” Dana answered Gary’s unasked question. “Guiding us to the Star-Merlin plant.”

  Gary smiled, relieved. For the first time since the accident, he believed they might have a fighting chance to get back home. Star-Merlin was the parent company that owned the Churly Flint and employed Dana and her crew. If there was anyplace on this barren satellite where they might find refuge, it would be at that reprocessing plant.

  He looked back at the Earth hanging in the sky just over the horizon, and above the wreckage of the Churly Flint. He’d spent his whole life, one way or another, trying to get to exactly where he was. Now that he was finally here, he was astonished to find that mere seconds spent savoring the view really had been enough.

  Where was the lingering, all-consuming euphoria the astronauts had written about? The unshakable, almost paralyzing wonder that should have rooted him to the spot and reduced him to tears? Had the years of anticipation raised his expectation to such impossible heights that, now that he was finally here, he was so quickly ready to leave?

  “I’ll get you back to your producer if it kills me,” Dana said as she step-bounced beside him. “And I owe you a more detailed conversation, but I’m not sure I have all the answers. How about you tell me what you know, and I’ll return the favor. Deal?”

  She turned toward him at the top curve of one of her bouncing steps. Gary nodded, then remembered the gesture would be lost inside his suit. He gave a thumbs-up instead.

  “Deal,” he replied.

  They bounded along a few breaths in silence. Gary scanned the horizon, decidedly less wonderstruck. “Any idea where the October Surprise went down?”

  “Almost the other side of the moon, near as I can tell.” Dana raised her voice, as though she needed to shout to be heard over the comms. “Manny! Slow it down a bit. This isn’t a race. Keep a steady pace and we’ll get there soon enough.”

  “Without burning extra oxygen from rushing about,” Gary added. Dana ignored the comment.

  “Any survivors, they’ll head for the same plant. So we might see them there.” Dana’s tone was conversational and light, like she was trying to decide what to have for lunch.

  “If there are survivors,” Gary said. He knew that was a big if. The last transmissions from the October Surprise, and the look on Dana’s face in the cargo hold, had told that story plainly enough. “And we just keep walking?”

  A ripple of a shrug ran across Dana’s shoulders, and Gary guessed she had nodded. “It’s going to be a long trek.”

  “And no potty breaks!” Manny called from the head of the caravan. Brett chuckled over the comms, and Gary joined in. It felt good to laugh.

  “I know you’re worried about Hannah,” Dana said. “But you don’t need to be. Sid will take good care of her.”

  Gary couldn’t help the groan that escaped his lips. “That’s precisely what I’m afraid of.” He took a few more light-footed steps before he realized that Dana had stopped behind him, and that Brett and Manny stood motionless ahead.

  “What?” Gary called out with new hope. “Did you see something? Hear something?” He glanced around the jagged features of the desolate, dusty landscape, alert to any sign that an unexpected rescue party had found them. There was nothing but the stark light and shadows playing across the dull soil and craters.

  “Sturbin wouldn’t do that.” Manny had turned toward Gary, his face obscured by his reflective visor. “He’s devoted to Captain Jackson.”

  Brett chuckled. “Plus, the captain would kill him.”

  Dana pushed forward, caught Gary by the elbow, and got him walking again. “The thought has occurred to me.”

  Brett and Manny chuckled over the comms as they continued forward, but Gary was appalled. Maybe there was more to his silly space piracy idea than he’d realized. “What? You’ve actually thought of killing Sid?”

  He could hear t
he smile in Dana’s voice when she replied. “Well, it beats divorce.”

  8

  MARS HO HOST MISSING IN ACTION. (Internet News Network)

  THE FACE OF SPACE PRESUMED DEAD ON THE MOON. (Online Daily)

  HIS FINAL FRONTIER: GARY NELSON DEAD AT 38. (USA Today)

  Hannah’s hands shook as she sat in the Midden’s galley and read the headlines scrolling up her tablet screen. Sid had directed Barbie to give Hannah data-link access so she could try to find out more about what had happened to the Churly Flint, but more than ninety-percent of the news stories she was coming across were obituaries and death reels for Gary.

  THE PERILS OF DANGEROUS ADVENTURE: REMEMBERING THE FACE OF SPACE. (Chicago Dispatch)

  GARY NELSON “PROBABLY DEAD” IN FREAK SPACE ACCIDENT. (New York Times)

  LUNAR MISHAP CLAIMS MARS HO HOST, SALVAGE CREWS. (Space News Daily)

  THE LAST DAYS OF GARY NELSON. (Real News Now)

  Many of the videos—especially the feature from Real News Now—relied heavily on “the last known footage” of Gary from aboard the Churly Flint. Hannah’s eyes filled with tears again, and she brushed them away.

  The beverage machine’s timer went off. Sid retrieved two bulbs of hot tea, handing one to Hannah. She wrapped her fingers around the warm plastic and held the bulb close to her face. There was no rising fragrant steam for her to inhale, but she took some comfort in the cozy gesture.

  “Chamomile.” Sid sipped his tea and then made a face as he swallowed. “We could both do with some mellowing right now.”

  Hannah didn’t argue. She took a long drink through the bulb’s built-in straw and closed her eyes as the tea slid down her throat.

  “What are they saying?” Sid slipped his feet into the anchored stirrups on the other side of the galley table.

  He was calm and cool, the embodiment of the stereotypical unflappable hero. His own wife was in just as much danger as Gary, but here he was comforting Hannah.

  And she needed it. She’d had a veritable meltdown in the cockpit after news of the loss of the October Surprise came in. Hannah remembered feeling very cold. Had she been crying? Shouting? She couldn’t remember.

  And somehow she’d ended up here, in the galley with Sid.

  “You’re the captain.” Hannah took another sip of tea. “You shouldn’t have to babysit me.”

  He sucked down the rest of his tea and got up from the table to pop two more pods into the machine. “You’ve given me a good excuse to take a break, try to think things through. Before I had a panic attack.”

  Hannah tried to laugh, but the pain in her chest turned it into a cough. Her heart pounded against her ribs, but at least it wasn’t racing anymore. “But I am having a panic attack. Or I was. I think.”

  “But you’re feeling better?”

  “Yeah. Thanks.” She sucked down the rest of her tea just as the machine’s timer rang. Sid exchanged her empty bulb for a fresh one. She took one sip from the new bulb, and then burst into tears.

  Without missing a beat, Sid offered her a multipurpose cloth from his pocket.

  “Holy Christ.” Hannah caught as many tears as she could on the cloth before they were propelled off her eyelashes into the galley. She tried laughing again. “I’m going to make a mess of your ship.”

  Sid’s smile was thin but kind. “It’s the stress. Everyone has a breakdown at one time or another.”

  Hannah sniffed. She took another drink and settled into the emptiness she felt closing around her body like a shroud. It was numb and heavy. “Everyone?”

  “Every. One. I needed to get out of the cockpit, too. If a message comes in about wreckage or . . .” He took a long drink of tea and swallowed hard. “I can’t be there for it. Not yet. The idea of Dana in trouble, or hurt . . .”

  Dead, Hannah thought. He doesn’t want to say the word. Gary is probably dead. She felt the thick numbness start to slip away. If he’s not dead already, help probably won’t reach him in time.

  Gary knew all about the life support capacity of the Mars Ho surface suits, but Hannah had no idea what kind of suits the Churly Flint carried or even if there would be enough of them to go around.

  “It should have been me.” Hannah gulped down the remainder of her tea, but no amount of chamomile could prevent the dull pain of guilt. “He wanted this kind of adventure his whole life, to make it to space and share it with others, to be an explorer. He’d probably go to Mars, too, if anyone gave him the chance.”

  Had Gary applied to the Mars Colony Program? Based on what she’d learned about him these past days, she figured he had. He would have laid it out for Rufus in a one-on-one pitch meeting—how he’d cover the early days of the new colony with his own boots on that same red ground. Hannah almost laughed at the vision of Gary correcting the writers from more than 50 million kilometers away, where no one would be able to keep him from going off script.

  Hannah looked down at her tablet screen. “If one of us had to die up here, it should have been me.”

  “You don’t know that they’re dead.” Sid’s eyes pleaded with her not to give into the same dark fears that he was trying to fend off.

  But her refreshed news feed filled with new headlines about Gary’s presumed demise, and with official and unofficial tributes pouring in from across the globe. “The Face of Space won’t die in vain! Mars Ho forever!” read one tweet the aggregator had flagged for her, and Hannah choked on the realization that this was precisely what Rufus was counting on—an emotional outpouring and the grim determination of a global audience to keep his reality empire afloat.

  And just like that, she was weeping. And Sid was at her side.

  “I never wanted any of this. I never cared about space, before.” The words rattled against her teeth as she shivered. “If it had been me, well, no big tragedy, right? No opportunity for . . .” She gestured toward the newsfeed. “Gary deserves better than to be turned into this.”

  Fists clenched, she struck out blindly at everything and nothing and found only air. Her tea and tablet floated away into the galley, but Sid held her close and sobbed into her shoulder.

  Mourning the woman he loved.

  Would things have been any different if Hannah had worked harder at ferreting out Rufus’s lies? Or if she’d spent more time getting to know Gary instead of actively ignoring the curious spark between them?

  She had a wild, wonderful vision of standing with Gary as they mounted a full-scale media war against Rufus Day and his shady dealings. They would fight for the production staff, and they would expose the cracks and chasms in DayLite Syndicate’s share of the Mars Colony Program. They’d even ensure better working conditions for the space salvage crews.

  They would have done it side by side. If she’d only bothered sooner to learn the truth for herself, instead of swallowing the version of reality Rufus Day had crafted for her, she and Gary would be together.

  “I never told him!” Hannah cried, and she was grateful when Sid didn’t ask for context. “And now I’ll never get the chance.”

  She felt herself quieting, though her body shuddered with silent sobs. Her producer’s mind went to work and started formulating questions: What would happen to the bodies on the moon? Would they be left on the surface, like fallen climbers on Mount Everest? Surely someone at NASA or the ESA already had a plan in place. Would Rufus green-light a new reality show, Space Mortuary—no, that wasn’t even a question. Rufus has probably already done that.

  But the biggest question was one she couldn’t ask anyone else: What would she do now? Her heart was broken before she even knew that happiness was tapping her on the shoulder. And her boss was a lecherous, scheming murderer. She didn’t have the mental bandwidth to think about what his treachery might mean for the colonists already on their way to Mars. She couldn’t begin to contemplate what her next steps might be. For the time being, her entire world existed inside this salvage ship.

  Sid took several deep breaths, and the heaving had an almost calming
effect on her. She felt exposed and disoriented when he let her go and lifted away from the table.

  “We know the accident was staged.” Sid wiped his eyes and nose on his jumpsuit sleeve. “You’ve got the documentation. So what do we do to raise a stink about this?”

  Hannah plucked her tablet and tea bulb out of the air. “I don’t know. You’ve signed a contract with DayLite, and those contracts always include very strict non-disclosure—”

  “Screw the NDA!” Sid pounded on a cupboard door and then had to slam it closed when it rebounded open and nearly spilled its store of pods into the galley. “I don’t care how much they’re paying. Nothing’s worth this.”

  “Captain?” Joey’s voice came over the galley speakers. “We’ve heard back finally from Stjärna Corp. I’m afraid the big bosses say it’s a no-go on any rescue attempt. But they respect you for making the request.”

  Sid’s jaw tensed. He looked like he wanted to punch the tea and coffee cupboard again. He took a deep breath and slowly opened and closed his fists. “Fuck that.”

  “Sid?” Hannah asked.

  “You had enough sitting around? I sure have.” Not waiting for her answer, Sid pushed out into the corridor.

  Hannah held her tablet to her chest and followed close behind.

  Back in the Midden’s cockpit, everyone was yelling at once and the volume on Hannah’s comms was too loud. She kept reaching toward her headset to yank it away, but she was also desperate to know what was going on. More frantic, frightened tears were coming rapidly, and those that she didn’t manage to dab away were floating about the cabin, small orbs of salt water growing progressively larger as they collided and merged before getting sucked into the air recyclers.