Mars Burning (The Saving Mars Series-)

by Cidney Swanson

  A surprise awaited them in the tunnels. Zussman, now dressed as a Madeiran fisherman, stood beside Elsa, Brian Wallace’s dog.

  “She was not to be persuaded to remain without you,” Zussman said to Brian.

  Elsa bounded with a sharp yelp toward Ethan. He lowered his hoverchair and ran his hands through her soft fur, but only for a moment. The dog loped down the tunnel, following Jamie and Cameron.

  As they jostled downhill through a series of winding tunnels, Jess heard Cameron shout a combination of praises, orders, and goodbyes to the fugitives who had caused so much trouble for her domain.

  “Mr. Zussman, please forgive me angry words about the new kilts ye ordered. Ye might have mentioned what ye had in mind at the time, instead of standing there and taking yer drubbing,” shouted Cameron.

  “Forgive me, my lady,” replied Zussman. “I have not been in the habit of contradicting my employer.”

  “Well, the disguises were, in the words of me cousin Brian, ‘bloody brilliant, ’” said Cameron.

  They arrived at what looked like a dead end. In the pause while Cameron muttered about how the false wall worked, Jess shot a glance at Zussman, who, she suspected, had saved them more than once in the last half hour.

  “Mr. Zussman, what did you do when the guards checked our scan chips? I saw you waving something in the air.”

  Cameron’s new butler shifted from one foot to the other, and Jess swore she could see the faintest of blushes upon his cheeks, where the false beard was sparse. “I regret to report I may have inadvertently retained an item I ought to have returned to the Chancellor.”

  “Oh, aye?” said Brian Wallace. “And what does this alleged item do, pray tell?”

  Zussman was definitely blushing now. “The device in question sends a virus to hand–held scanners, causing a scanner to return information of a most unexceptional nature. It is useful to persons who wish to keep their identity secret.”

  Pavel laughed. “A scan code scrambler? Lucca gave you one of those?”

  Zussman gave the briefest of nods.

  Brian Wallace, the resident expert on all things unlawful, shook his head. “I’ve been after one of those for years. Bloody illegal, aren’t they?”

  “As you say, sir,” replied Zussman. “I ought to have turned it in to the local constabulary.”

  “Ye’ll do no such thing,” murmured Cameron Wallace.

  “As you wish, madam.”

  Pavel reached out to punch Zussman’s shoulder. “Well done, old friend.”

  “Always glad to be of service, sir,” replied Zussman.

  “Right, then,” said Cameron, rubbing her large hands together as the false wall disappeared, revealing a door which Jamie opened. “Not far to go now. Mr. Zussman, ye contacted the boat, did ye not?”

  “The persons of piscine affiliation are even now awaiting our arrival,” replied her butler.

  “Piscine?” muttered Cameron, dashing toward the end of the tunnel, where light was spilling. “Oh, ye mean to say fisherfolk.” She shook her head. “I’ll miss the daily additions to me vocabulary, ye great pretentious lout.”

  “Yes, madam,” replied Zussman.

  “You’re coming with us?” asked Pavel.

  “Her ladyship has refused to allow me to remain,” said Zussman.

  “When ye put it that way—” Cameron shook her head.

  “Zuss,” said Pavel. “Honestly, I think your chances are better staying with Cameron Wallace. She’s got an army, man.”

  The calm butler replied, “It all depends upon one’s goals, sir. My goal at present is to see you safely away. I can accomplish that more readily by remaining at your side.”

  Jess spoke softly to Zussman. “What about Cameron Wallace’s safety?”

  “With respect, miss, the Chieftain of Clan Wallace is one of the most capable individuals I have ever met. She assures me she will be fine, and I believe her.”

  “Time to be off,” called Jamie, her voice shrill above the rolling waves.

  “Wait,” cried Jessamyn. “Kipper’s missing.”

  Harpreet placed a hand on Jess’s shoulder. “Cassondra has requested and been granted asylum here with Cameron. She will not be joining us.”

  “But…but…” Jessamyn’s protests died on her lips. A life on the run would be a daily torment to Kipper. “I see.” Jess turned to Cameron. “Please give her my best wishes.”

  Best wishes. It sounded so cold.

  “No,” said Jess, meeting Cameron’s eye. “Please give her my love.”

  “Aye, that I will,” said Cameron, swiping at a tear. “Well, that’s the escape boat here for ye, then.” She indicated a creaking fishing boat. “A fine vessel, that is. The lads will take ye to a cargo ship. I’ve paid for transport as far as Iceland. The threat of volcanic eruption has rather thinned the population, but there will be two ports of call prior to that—”

  “The Isles of Scilly,” said Ethan, consulting his wafer, “Followed by the Hebrides, if I am not mistaken.”

  “Aye, lad,” said Cameron, suitably impressed. “Best to avoid Scotland, though, all things considered.”

  “It would appear,” said Harpreet, “We can only choose between various levels of danger in securing our next home. There is no safe place for us upon this planet.”

  “Foxes have their holes, and birds their nests,” said Brian Wallace, leaving the statement unfinished and sighing heavily instead.

  “I have a friend in the Isles of Scilly,” said Pavel.

  “You can discuss your destination once you’re safely underway,” said Jamie, tersely. “We’ve still got Red Squadron Forces swarming the island with orders to prevent ships departing.”

  “I’d hardly call this a ship,” muttered Brian Wallace.

  Elsa bounded aboard the boat, tail thumping an invitation to Ethan to join her. Ethan ferried Harpreet over the splashing waves, using his hoverchair. Jess waded right out, bestowing a kind of farewell to the sea she’d learned to love. She soaked her new shoes and pants in the process, though, and admitted it might have been smarter to let her brother take her over.

  Once aboard, Jess hunkered down beside Pavel where a fisherman indicated the two would be out of the way. Zussman followed with Kazuko on Ethan’s hoverchair. The former butler stationed himself a discreet distance from Jess and Pavel.

  Occupying herself with whisker–removal, Jessamyn missed the actual moment where they pushed away from shore. The ship had tossed before it departed and continued to toss after it departed. Jess kept expecting her stomach to object, as it had when she’d been stuck in the escape pod, but the brisk air or the sunshine or Pavel’s presence beside her or some combination of effects kept her from feeling seasick this time.

  “I can’t believe we got away,” said Pavel, raising his head to look over the gunwales of the small craft. “Wu’s slipping. Lucca’s going to kill him if she finds out we were all at Cameron’s. I mean, those of us she doesn’t already think are dead.”

  “Maybe Wu isn’t as good at his job as you seem to think he is,” said Jess.

  “No,” Pavel said, shaking his head. “Wu is good.” He grinned. “But Zussman’s better.”

  Jessamyn frowned. “I’ve been wondering—won’t someone be, I don’t know, combing through that explosion today, looking for proof Brian was imprisoned? And what about the Atlas ship we supposedly crashed? What if your aunt finds out we weren’t aboard when it blew?”

  Pavel shrugged. “My aunt’s people know better than to go to her before they have something irrefutable. Probably some forensics lab is analyzing the ship for bits of you and me. But that’ll take time. For now, we’re safe.”

  “Ish,” insisted Jess. “Safe–ish.”

  “Good enough for me,” said Pavel, leaning in as if to kiss her. He paused. “You missed something.”

  “What?” asked Jess, looking down, touching her chin and the space where her moustache had been.

  Pavel chuckled. “Your sideburns,”
he murmured.

  Jess’s hands flew to her face. “Hades and Aphrodite!” she swore. “How did I miss those?”

  “You got most of it,” said Pavel, barely suppressing his laughter. Gently, he removed the bright bits of sideburn, cupping her chin in one hand while he finished.

  And then Jess saw the laughter in his eyes replaced by a hunger.

  “Jessamyn…” he murmured softly.

  Pavel pressed his mouth where her sideburns had been, kissing her along the line of her jaw, finding her lips with his.

  Jess turned her body into his, grabbing his muscled arms to pull him closer. Pavel smelled faintly of fish, and, even in their sheltered corner, they were probably in view of some fisherman or other, but Jess didn’t care. They had escaped and nothing mattered but bringing Pavel as close to her as possible.

  A great cheer went up on the boat, and at first Jess thought the fishermen were applauding their kiss, but she soon ascertained the excitement was due to an unexpected catch, as the fishermen raised nets overflowing with “piscine” riches.

  Pavel and Jess returned to their previous activity, in an odd sort of private bubble created by everyone else’s preoccupation with bringing fish out of the sea.

  Which meant the renewed shouting on the fishing vessel didn’t register as important to either Jess or Pavel. But when the warning bell sounded, Jess pulled away.

  “What is it?” she whispered.

  Pavel shook his head.

  “Reds! Reds!” came the shouts from the boat’s crew.

  Jessamyn released her grip on Pavel and rose in a half–crouch to view the sudden buzz of activity. She caught a few phrases on a transmitter.

  “We’re being ordered to halt for boarding,” murmured Jess, her temperature plummeting with the implications.

  19

  Budapest, Earth

  Within the Department of Global Planetary Security, Major Vladim Wu’s Division of Martian Detoxification employed three assistants whose job it was to monitor communications around the globe searching for any mention of the planet Mars. Reports were compiled for Wu twice daily, although he generally found time only once a day to glance over the intelligence.

  He would have done well to search for transmissions sent in Marsperanto, but even Terrans of the last century hadn’t been aware of the existence of the invented language. Wu had certainly never heard of it. It also never occurred to him to monitor for usages of the ancient encryptions that had once been used for communications between the governments of Earth and Mars.

  Thus, the three individuals whose job it was to present Major Wu with coded transmissions regarding Mars were not, in fact, convinced anything significant had arrived when they intercepted Cavanaugh Kipling’s message.

  The message languished in the files of an underpaid threebody named Oscar, who ought to have passed the message on to his superiors, but didn’t, certain nothing that landed on his desk would have the power to change his life, much less to alter the course of interplanetary politics. Every few hours or so, he would remember the message’s existence, and he would play with the code, trying to tease meaning out of the gibberish. It was a co–worker staring over his shoulder who first recognized the encryption.

  “That’s from over a century ago,” she remarked, tapping the screen. “At least, the code is that old. What’s the date on the message?”

  The threebody shrugged. “I intercepted it three days ago.”

  “Probably some first–body messing around,” replied his colleague. “That form of encryption dates back to the Mars Project.”

  “Seriously? No wonder I haven’t been able to make heads or tails of it. Good catch, Marie.”

  “Shoot it over to me. I’ll have a go at it.”

  Oscar hesitated, perhaps fearful of later regretting a missed opportunity. On the other hand, he dearly loved a clean desk. He ran his thumb along his index finger, considering. “Sure,” he said. “It’s all yours.”

  Less than a day passed before Marie Schuurmans sent the message, now decoded, up the line. As Wu was away investigating inciter activity on a remote island in the Atlantic, the message went instead to a high–ranking official in Global Planetary Security. It took another day for the message to reach one of Wu’s personal assistants.

  It took less than a day for an unexpected tragedy to remove Marie Schuurmans from the gene pool.

  “And we’re confident she’s the only one who had access to this…sensitive communication?” Wu’s assistant asked.

  “Yes, sir,” came the answer.

  It was Oscar’s great fortune to remain undiscovered in all the hubbub surrounding the message from Mars.

  “Destroy Schuurmans’s wafer,” said Wu’s assistant. “Decontaminate all systems of any trace of the communiqué.”

  A message marked Major Vladim Wu: For Your Eyes Only was forwarded to a remote location in the Atlantic.

  20

  The Atlantic Ocean, Earth

  “Do you have weapons?” demanded Jessamyn, shouting to the fishing vessel’s captain.

  “We have fish,” he replied tersely, turning back to converse with his crew.

  “Great,” said Jess turning to Pavel. “They expect us to fight with fish.”

  Zussman joined the pair.

  “You got anything more deadly than fish in those pockets of yours?” she asked.

  “I am armed,” he replied. “But I do not think a direct attack upon officers in red armor is our best option.”

  “More disguises?” asked Pavel.

  “Ah, no, sir,” replied Zussman. “I regret I was unable to procure any.”

  “What do we do, Zuss? We’re stuck in the ocean, man!” Pavel’s voice sounded unsteady.

  “Hey,” said Jess, grabbing Pavel’s hand. “Lucca’s not getting her hands on me. On either of us. Got it?”

  Pavel nodded. “I just can’t let her…”

  “I know,” said Jess. “I feel the same way about you. And I’ll shoot us both with Zussman’s gun before I let Red Forces take us in.”

  Zussman gave a little cough that sounded distinctly disapproving, but he kept his thoughts to himself.

  Jess looked around the small boat. Lots of fish; not a lot of places to hide. Should they jump overboard, wait for the secures to move on? But then an idea came to her. She called for the boat’s first officer and quickly explained her plan.

  The fisherman frowned. “Won’t you suffocate?”

  “Do you keep emergency breathers on board?” Jess asked.

  The fisherman grinned, nodding. “In the first–aid folder. I’ll tell the others. Get below–decks.”

  Jess, Pavel, and the rest of the group descended a steep ladder, Jess having first snatched several objects from first aid. The ceiling was too low to allow any of them to stand. It reeked of fish and salt water and something Jess thought might be alcoholic in origin.

  Jessamyn explained her plan to the group.

  “We are to crouch here,” asked Zussman, “Whilst the catch of the day is showered upon our persons?”

  “Yup,” said Jess. “We’re hiding under a pile of fish. Unless you’ve got something better.”

  “I have not, Miss Jessamyn,” said Zussman.

  “Terrific,” said Pavel, shaking his head in disbelief.

  “Ready below decks,” Jess called in a loud voice.

  And the fish began to flow. Silvery, slippery, smelly. The fugitives soon hunkered ankle–deep in their newest disguise. The stench was powerful, and Jess added “fisherman” to her list of jobs to avoid as she passed the breathers to each member of the group.

  “Emergency Oh–Two,” said Pavel, recognizing the objects.

  “Essential, for an ocean–faring vessel,” said Zussman. “Originally developed for short term use upon your own home world, if I am not mistaken.”

  “You never are,” she said, placing the device between her teeth. “You’ll want to make sure you breathe in through your mouth only. Ugh! Not that you’d w
ant to smell this…”

  “Quite so, miss.” Zussman’s face appeared pained.

  Jess assumed the “piscine” odor was to blame.

  The fish were now up to Jessamyn’s waist.

  “These breathers say they’ve got ninety minutes,” said Pavel. “So long as we aren’t engaged in strenuous activity.”

  “We’re not going to be doing much with ten cubic meters of fish trapping us in place,” said Jessamyn.

  “I won’t go into the number of ways this could end badly,” said Pavel. “But the pressure alone—”

  “Hush!” whispered Jess. “I think I hear them boarding.” She took her last breath of free air, regretting the action as the sickening odor of dead or dying fish overwhelmed her. Of course, smell hardly mattered if they were seized by Wu’s officers. Jess realized with a frustrated pang that she’d forgotten about Zussman’s weapon. It was presumably pinned in place by now like everything else.

  As the last few hundred fish trickled in, barely covering the heads of the escapees, there was no longer any doubt as to the presence of Red Squadron Forces aboard the tiny vessel. Jess listened as the board covering the hold was settled in place above them.

  “You there, freeze!”

  The ship’s crew, who moments earlier had been speaking in primary Terran as clearly as Jess herself, instantly lapsed into some sort of patois unintelligible to Jess or the officers in red.

  This caused the officers to speak more loudly, and considerably more slowly. “Your vessel will be searched and your personnel scanned,” said one.

  In response, there was a smattering of words Jess didn’t understand. Then one fisherman spoke, with a considerable accent.

  “Captain say, ‘You are wanting fish?’”

  “No. Not fish. Men. We are looking for escaped inciters.”

  “Shizer!” said a secure standing directly above the fugitives. “How do they stand the stench?”

  “Captain say, he give you good price of fish. Big catch. You like?”

  “No fish!”

  The officers conferred and, to Jessamyn’s horror, she could make out one of them saying that they ought to venture below decks.