"What would make you forgive Mars?"
Seth’s eyes narrowed and his face tightened. "Dying without ever returning to that wretched place. It represents everything wrong with humanity."
"And the Earth represents everything right?" Parker ran his fingers through his unruly hair in frustration. "The Earth is unlivable now. Mars is our home. You should continue to challenge the government to make things right. It is the only way for society to progress. Ignoring Mars or acquiescing will continue the corruption you are so sure exists. You went through horrible things on Mars and it wasn’t right, but you have to fight them now to make it right."
"I don’t want to draw Mars closer to me."
"You can’t just let them run the physical and then hope they leave you alone. Fight for equality. Because if you give them an inch, they’ll take a foot."
"They have run physicals in the past, and nothing has come of it."
Parker shook his head violently. "Lunara doctors ran those tests, and they didn’t include a fraction of what you said Mars Medical is about to test you guys against."
Seth’s bright green eyes flared, but he refused to look at Parker. "If I fight them, I might have to go back to Mars. They can run their tests and leave. Any more intrusion, and I’ll take more drastic steps."
"Letting them have an inch—"
They heard the sound of approaching footsteps.
"Quiet," Seth snapped. "You’ll frighten Chloe."
Parker clenched his lips together to keep his anger in check. He wanted to get Chloe involved in the discussion, but he knew this would only lead to further anger and solitude on the part of Seth. He would have to go to Gwen directly and see what his next options were, because Seth was pushing him further away.
Chloe passed into the Protector's engine room with Gwen leading the way. Chloe was wondering if she had managed to calm herself enough to paint an unfazed expression across her face. She did not want to act as if she were offended or make excuses, but she was determined not to admit once again the shame and the humiliation of her voyage to Lunara.
She stood behind Gwen and shuddered.
"Come here, Gwen," Seth said. "Parker bought a new camera."
"No," Gwen said. "I don’t like pictures. I get enough of those on Mars."
"We aren’t the paparazzi," he replied. "You are a big-shot politician. You won’t be on Lunara forever so we need something to remember you by."
"I’m not leaving anytime soon."
Seth tugged on her arm and pulled her into view.
Snap! The camera flashed. Parker pointed it toward the display screen to his left and pushed the picture to the screen.
"Fabulous," Parker said, looking carefully at the various buttons on his gadget.
Chloe jumped as the holotube switched to the Martian feed, breaking the quiet and replacing it with the thumping opening music for the Martian News Channel. "Parker, damn your gadgets." Perhaps Mars Medical had rattled her nerves more than she realized.
"The camera is changing itself," Parker said as he turned it over.
"Hey, Gwen, your father, along with Minister Cortez," Seth said.
"So?" Gwen went over to the terminal and began to work on the diagnostics she had started on the bridge.
Chloe winced. She understood the pang of anger that had exploded from Gwen when Seth mentioned her father. Like her, Gwen had come to Lunara on a rocky road. Her father had sent her by force, and she had never revealed why. Chloe knew that for Gwen, banishment from Mars was punishment, but to Chloe, a position on the Protector and a diplomatic title didn’t seem like punishment at all.
The reporter announced, "The Mars Two-Hundred-Year Gala, scheduled for next week, looks to be as grand an event as it is advertised—celebrating the two-hundredth year of humanity’s colonization of Mars and the ten-year anniversary of the new governments, Aethpis and Zephyria. Thousands of people have showed up today for the formal invitation. Here are some words from Zephyrian Chancellor Arwell about the gala."
The reporter turned to face the stage as the view switched to a close-up of Chancellor Arwell.
The chancellor raised his arms. "We invite Mars to the Zephyrian exposition. Zephyria is making every effort for the enjoyment of the people during the two-hundred- year anniversary gala, including fireworks, dinner, dancing, and much, much more. Come witness our excellence."
The crowd exploded in cheers as they hooted and hollered in anticipation of the upcoming events. The chancellor waved his hand in recognition.
"Your dad is a natural for the stage," Parker said.
"Pompousness isn’t a good natural," Gwen muttered from the terminal.
Chloe smirked.
The reporter reappeared on the screen. "Not to be outdone, Minister Cortez of Aethpis Colony tries to upstage the chancellor."
"The chancellor’s fireworks display will be nothing compared to the Aethpisian delegation’s spectacular unveiling. The gala will be a day long remembered by the Aethpisian people," the minister said.
Minister Cortez raised his hands and waved to the crowd. They cheered even more boisterously.
"We are in for a treat at the gala," the reporter said. "This concludes our broadcast from Trivium Port. For a full display of each of the speeches, tune into the late evening news. Now back to the studio."
Parker waved his hand in front of the holotube, which faded and went blank.
"Why aren’t you going, Gwen?" Chloe asked. "Surely the daughter of the chancellor is invited?"
Gwen stiffened at the terminal. Her curly, flowing brown hair stood against her neck.
From the day Gwen was born, she had lived like royalty within Zephyria, protected from the ravages of Mars. The chancellor’s power was well established: thirty years in the political circles of the Martian bureaucracy had made him the most popular person on the planet—next to Gwen Arwell.
Gwen had been groomed to be a future chancellor of Zephyria. The "Princess of Mars" was her moniker, and she hated it because the reputation and expectations of Mars shadowed her. There was plenty of pressure on Gwen to succeed; from outside Zephyria, the news channels and gossipmongers salivated for any detail of her life and were the reason she loathed photographers; within Zephyria, her father expected her to take his place when his career ended. Gwen loved and respected him more than anyone, yet the pressure he put her under caused rifts in their relationship.
All her close friends on Lunara knew she had left her Martian life on Mars. So many on Lunara came to escape Mars, and Gwen was no different. Gwen had embraced Lunara and its hard, simple life, and this had surprised Chloe.
"Enough about my father," Gwen said. "Why don’t you tell us the real reason those Mars Medical people showed up today?"
"What do you mean?" Chloe replied. "I told you everything."
Gwen’s eyes flashed. "Are you sick? I think Parker and I have a right to know. We are your best friends."
"No, we aren’t sick." Chloe stepped toward her. "Are you implying we are holding something back from you?"
"Yes!" Gwen dropped her diplomatically trained composure for just a second and showed her annoyance—a rare sight, to say the least. "Mars Medical doesn’t come to Lunara for routine examinations. I did a background check on Hans Bauer, and he is highly regarded on Mars. His research papers are works of a super genius."
"I am not ignorant of Hans Bauer and his reputation," Chloe replied sharply. "We don’t know anything about what he wants, and frankly, I am insulted you think we would lie to you."
"You expect us to believe this is a routine examination? Something larger is happening here."
Chloe stepped closer to Gwen. "Who is ‘us’? You had a little talk behind our backs."
Gwen held her stance. Her lean body appeared to grow with the confrontation. "Since Bauer said he was coming, all we have been talking about is you and Seth."
"I am fascinated to hear what you think is happening." Chloe stood more erect, trying to match Gwen’s stance.
>
"If I knew, I wouldn’t be worried. Parker thinks you know already," Gwen said, then looked toward Parker. "Tell them."
Chloe snapped her head at Parker as he stepped back. For the first time, Chloe noticed Seth and Parker were remaining eerily quiet.
"Out with it, Parker," Chloe said, thoroughly annoyed now. She felt no reason to hold it back anymore. They had devised a full-blown conspiracy.
"We care about you," Parker said. "If anything is wrong with you or if Mars has harassed you in any way, you can tell us. Gwen’s father and Ty can investigate any strong-arming from Mars Central."
"To be clear. We don’t know why they came or what they want. Honest."
"We need assurance that Mars isn’t trying to bully you," Parker said.
Chloe relaxed her stance a bit. She reminded herself that these were her friends. "I know you care about us."
"I still think something is going on," Gwen said. "If you both say nothing is happening, then I trust you. But I won’t let my guard down until Bauer leaves."
"It will all work out," Chloe said.
Her friends nodded, but she sensed their unease, and she didn’t believe her own words. Bauer’s interest in them disconcerted her, and when she had feelings like that she was never wrong. Since Bauer arrived, several pangs of worry from Seth concerned her enough to stay close to him. She wasn’t sure how he would react with Mars on his doorstep.
Chapter 5
For a long moment, as he sat in the Lunara radar tower, Eamonn Dalton stared over Jan Falloom’s shoulder, watching the blinking indicator light at the control terminal of the Black Widow Detection Grid. The Black Widow consisted of one million satellite links ringing around the space between Mars and the Earth. Each link completed a string in a web detection grid that alerted Lunara to all incoming meteors. The Black Widow tagged the meteors and tracked their path to determine if the dense balls intersected with Earth.
The light on Jan’s terminal flashed green, giving the all-clear signal. The clear skies pleased Eamonn tonight. Hans Bauer and his medical team had done enough today to cloud the air within the colony. A meteor coming into the system would only create more havoc.
Ty, holding two cups of coffee, walked up and handed Jan a cup. He cradled his own cup in his jittery hands.
"Anything showing up on the screen tonight?" Ty asked.
"Pretty light again," Jan replied. "Maybe the meteor cluster is no more. It has to end sometime."
Discomfort crept into Ty when anyone mentioned the cluster. The cluster was a chain of meteors aligned on the path to Earth. Even with the rotation around the sun and the solar system’s drift away from the center of the Milky Way, for the last two hundred years, the chain had directed itself constantly toward the Earth. No one had adequately explained the unrelenting tendency of the meteor clusters to strike the Earth while leaving the rest of the solar system unharmed.
Jan explained the phenomenon as a test of integrity for humanity. One could easily submit to the fear and chaos the cluster instilled in one’s heart. Especially when it first emerged over two hundred years ago, the easy answer would have been for humanity to die, giving in to the power and the hardship. But instead, humanity had persevered and colonized Mars.
For scientists, looking for real answers, the cluster was a dubious anomaly in which the pull from Earth’s gravity and the gravitational bodies around it created a funnel for the meteors to travel down. Figuring all the change in the solar system and the systems in range, Ty found that explanation to be far too variable to be right. He needed a grander explanation; perhaps some unknown power controlling humankind’s destiny sent them the cluster. Those explanations comforted him more than the sterile physical reasoning of scientists or astronomers.
In any event, the meteors were constant, and stopping the meteors was his job.
"The skies have been quiet lately," Eamonn said. "If Mars Medical hadn’t shown up, Lunara would be its same boring self."
"I would take that." Ty took a sip from his coffee. "I’m willing to gamble a few stragglers are left to be found, but the meteors are lowering in frequency. I’m concerned Mars Central will become too complacent with this vigil and lower our detection resources."
"Mars isn’t dumb enough to let Earth be impacted again," Jan said. "They will continue to fund the Meteor Protection Unit. We have sacrificed too much for our survival to repeat history again. Regardless of the sentiment on Mars, Earth will play an important part in our future. Mars can’t sustain us forever."
"Mars forgets about Earth with more important matters taking precedence," Eamonn said. "Plus, would Mars stop the funds for the meteor stones?"
"Not likely," Ty said. "It’s a tragedy—that’s how we get recognition."
Jan alternated to the next relay in the system to run a diagnostic routine, standard protocol during downtime. After it completed the cycle, the terminal relayed status information, power levels, collusion reports, and other data.
The gray Earth crept over the horizon.
"A tragedy. We all had tragedies on Mars. Why else would we be here of all places?" said Eamonn.
"Starship captain isn’t good enough for you, Eamonn?" Ty said.
"Command is my dream, Chief. It’s the personal stuff we leave behind."
"Or the stuff we ran away from," Jan added.
"Sometimes I wonder if my career hampered other aspects of my life," Eamonn muttered. The dull ache against his chest began to tighten. All of his crew had something they had left on Mars. The regret of leaving Madelyn Green behind marred his own departure. As a soldier in the Revolutionary War, he had plenty of experience with other women, but Madelyn had always been special to him. Her face never quite escaped his mind.
He released a long sigh.
Warning alarms beeped, and alerts lit on Jan’s screen. She switched to the alert control and scanned the data. "We might not have a slow night after all. The incoming meteor’s vector is within the range of Earth."
"Check for an echo effect," Ty said as he leaned in to get a look at the data.
The immense size of the area covered and the close proximity of the asteroid belt caused a shadow on the radar, or the echo effect. Echoes fooled the radar, so Ty ordered Jan to check with the other grid points for confirmation.
"Running it against the database now." She waited for the computer to display the information query. "This is definitely no echo. The ping is solid, too. The meteor is real."
"Triangulate the vector and check the meteor’s course against Earth," he said.
"I can’t tell yet." Jan twirled her seat around to face the communications terminal and grabbed the receiver. "I’ll call Parker and have him prep the Protector."
"Hold on," he said. "How close?"
"A million kilometers."
"That close." He turned to her display screen again to verify. Jan grunted, and he nodded toward her. "Why wasn’t this picked up on long-range scanners?"
"I don’t know. Let me call up the information from the scanners." Jan logged into the long-range scanner terminal. The screen returned only one word.
It repeated the word until finally it read:
She groaned.
"Where is the info?" Ty said.
She slammed her fist against the keypad. "I can’t connect to the database. Damn Martian junk. I knew we should have taken control of those systems on our end."
"Keep trying, I’ll get the ship up and running. Parker was supposed to be overhauling some of the engine tonight."
"Is the Protector operational?" Ty asked Eamonn.
"I hope so," Eamonn said with a bit of worry. He wasn’t sure, but at least the rest of the crew would be at the Protector helping Parker. To delay Bauer, he ordered them to the hangar. He looked over Jan’s shoulder as she worked on the triangulation. "Any calculations coming in?"
"Hasn’t been long enough . . ."
Eamonn bit his lowe
r lip. "Double-check the crew. Make sure they are at the hangar or on their way. I’m going down to stop Parker."
"Captain," she replied, "the meteor is two hours away from impact. If it hits . . . " She shook her head. "We might be heading back to Mars with discharge papers."
"Don’t be so dramatic." Eamonn smirked, wrinkling the scar on his forehead. "We haven’t let one by yet."
Ty gave Jan a curious stern gaze. "We haven’t faced this much pressure from Mars Central concerning the meteor stones. A newly placed importance has them watching us like the eye of Mordor."
"I understand," Eamonn said, not doubting that Mars had been giving Ty more pressure lately. He saw it in his reports.
Eamonn wanted to reassure Ty that Mars was more concerned with protecting the Earth, but he wasn’t sure if he believed it. Metalor was aglitter in Mars’s eye these days. Unfortunately, the spotlight was on Lunara and his crew’s success. A blunder in missing a meteor would sink the crew.
He rushed out of the control room and ran toward the Protector.
Chapter 6
The din of the Protector's ion drive echoed throughout the hangar. Seth smelled the familiar musk of the drives burning off excess gases in preparation for takeoff.
The crew was almost ready. Technicians scuttled around, performing preliminary launch preparations, reeling the fuel lines into position above the ship to service the starwings, checking over each rivet along the hull, and, to Seth’s interest, clearing the gangway that gave access to the starwings on the top of the Protector so the two pilots could enter. Warning lights blanketed the starship in a yellowish-orange glow.
Toward the rear of the ship, Gordon Roche loaded the last of the netting nodes into the meteor storing hold. He was in charge of the Protector's netting assembly. "Get to your starwings," Roche yelled.
Seth rushed to his locker. He grabbed his gloves, boots, earpiece, and helmet, and jogged over to the elevator leading to the starwings.
Chloe hustled close behind until they reached the top. She paused at the access gangway. She always paused at that spot. According to her description of her fear of heights, the gangway would topple over when her weight, and only her weight, stepped on the metal surface.
Lunara: The Original Trilogy Page 4