"You should be able to fit!" he yelled.
She studied the hole and realized that although she might fit into it, he would not. What was he thinking?
With surprising force, Roche pushed her to her knees. "Go, I said—get the information into the right hands. There is no time for me."
The guards’ footsteps echoed from the main room as they made their way toward the laboratory. She looked at him with an expression of pride and gratitude; she knew she could never repay him for what he was about to do.
"Please, go now, Gwen," he said forcefully, and he turned away and fired toward the staircase. She squeezed her way through the damaged grate, knowing that Roche would die.
Blood oozing from her elbows and shins, Gwen crawled at a frantic pace down the air ducts, trying to find an exit point. She had gone upward a number of times, always taking the duct that led her to higher ground. She figured the higher she went, the more likely she would be to find a way out.
"Roche is dead," she kept repeating to herself. "Get to Eamonn."
Cool air rushed down the ducts, strengthening her with each choice she made to move upward. In this case, cold meant she was closer to the surface and an exit point. She slid her hand down her side, retrieved her breathing mask, and slipped it on over her face. She pulled her cloak tight against her face. The increasing air current guided her toward the outlet for the building.
When she found she could stand up, she increased her pace.
Halfway up an ascending duct, out of the shadows, two Zephyrian guards crept like wraiths across the tunnel in front of her. But they didn’t turn toward her. Their preoccupation with the large paths she had already been down hid her for now. She hugged the wall to her right. With one glance, the guards would spot her, and with one scuffle of her feet, they would hear her. Her only way out was to double back.
The guards passed from her view.
She crept backward and wondered how many guards were scouring the area for her. If too many were slinking about, she would never be able to avoid them all. She had to hope that because of the gala, only a few remained. Anyway, she had to hurry.
After circling back and moving down quite a ways, she entered a larger chamber where a dozen ducts joined at a single exhaust.
The roar of the air pulling through the filter deafened her.
She held her hands to her ears and swore viciously. The main exhaust, equipped with a massive air filter and a grilled framework, separated her from the surface. She heaved her shoulder against it, but the rigid metal wouldn’t give. She growled, frustrated that she was barricaded in, less than a meter separating her from freedom.
As she walked round the exhaust hub looking for a way to get out, she grabbed at her breast pocket to make sure the datapads hadn’t slipped out. All six remained nestled neatly together. She had to get them to Eamonn. She owed it to Roche now. In addition, Seth and Chloe needed a warning, Lunara was under siege, and Jan and Parker counted on her.
Yet her father’s inevitable discovery of her betrayal weighed on her the most. She would have to betray him. Something she never imagined possible. She chewed on her lip, hoping to wake herself from the nightmare.
She looked back and forth along the grate for an exit portal or any possible way out. The grate’s iron grilles, spaced about a quarter of a meter apart, prevented her from squeezing through. No way out. She kicked the grate, accomplishing nothing other than hurting her foot.
She kicked again, but this time in between the grilles, aiming at the filter. The filter crumbled like polystyrene foam. She clawed at the hard foamy substance and managed to break off a waist-sized hole. Wind burst through, ripping and pushing the filter inwards and sending her back in retreat. The funneling gust blew her hair across her face, and she tightened her cloak.
Sensing no further danger, she edged toward the hole. Through it, the surface of Mars stretched several hundred meters below.
She had punched through the foam filter easily enough, but how could she get around the grate? Her hips and her butt were wide enough to squelch any ideas of worming her way past, especially with a cliff on the other side.
She spun around, searching for answers. The rush of air through the filter deafened any sounds coming down the tunnels around her. The pursuers hadn’t caught up with her, or at least they hadn’t shown themselves. She had a little time to think about her escape.
She scanned overhead for a ladder or any crawl spaces. Following a larger pipe toward the grate, she found her way out. A hole the size of a packing box was located in the grate at the top.
Without hesitation, she climbed to the top and discovered the reason for the hole. The large pipe had a cap just before it hit the grate. The pipe should have extended out of the building and up the ridge, but instead, the engineers had cut the unfinished end short of the intended destination. Even Zephyria had its budget shortfalls and still had unfinished infrastructure.
The square section cut out of the grate was about her size, and she didn’t doubt she would fit through. Using her elbow, she bashed at the filter and made a big enough hole. The cold wind surged, fighting her efforts. She squeezed her legs through the opening, wiggling her waist through the hole and kicking her legs, trying to feel for the grate on the other side. Her foot hit the grate. Once she established her balance on the other side, the rest of her body followed. She tucked her arms in, tilted her head to the side, and made it through.
Now out on the ridge and out of the security center, she realized her options were still limited. Her escape route was devastatingly difficult. From the impossible angle up to the over two-hundred-meter drop below her, the ridge provided no tactile advantage for her. First, the climb up would be difficult on her weakening arms, and the climb down would most likely end with a tragic fall. Even if she managed to reach the bottom, the Martian night would come and turn her into a popsicle.
She chose to go up, tired or not. She had committed to this plan.
To her left, a drainage pipe ran to the side of the grate. She slid over to it and inspected its condition. The Martian weather had rusted the bolts to almost dust, and she waned in her desire to continue, skeptical as to whether it would hold her weight.
The wind howled hard against her cloak, pushing and pulling her in every direction. Soon enough, a large gust would pull her away like a kite. She slipped her arms out of the cloak and let it tumble to the bottom. Her hair, pinned against her head, came undone and whipped across her face as the wind caught it. She had never felt so exposed.
Pfsst! Pfsst! Pfsst! Tiny perforations began to form in the foam. She could not hear the gunshots over the roaring gusts, but she knew they were shooting at her from inside.
She ignored the danger of dangling hundreds of meters from certain death on a rusted and corroded pipe. With a burst of energy, she slung her hands onto the pipe and moved up. Her arms ached from the effort as she pulled herself upward. A pipe she would not have trusted to hold a bag of fruit was the only thing separating her from death.
As she ascended, hand over hand, she struck a balance between the need to maintain a good pace and the necessity of stopping rusted junk from shaking the support bolts. With each pull of her arms, the bolts churned rock particles, destroying the last remaining hand grips to the ridge’s face.
Ping! Pang! Ping! She stopped and looked down. A bolt tumbled down the side of the ridge and abruptly stopped at the bottom. Perhaps futilely, she adjusted her footing to lessen the weight on her hands. So far the pipe has supported me, she reminded herself. If she kept a constant but controlled pace, she would be up in a matter of a dozen arm heaves.
She pressed on, and with ten arm slings upward, she reached the top.
She rolled onto the surface. After a few moments, she regained her bearings. The breeze, running toward the ridge, kicked dust into her face. She squeezed her eyes shut for a moment.
"Get the data to Eamonn," she muttered.
Despite the mounting numbness in her arm m
uscles from the climb, she managed to push herself to one knee. She scanned along Dome 3 in front of her. To her right, she immediately recognized the rock formation with the four jagged spears cutting into the sky, the landmark to the hovercar.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw movement and quickly spotted a guard in the distance. At the same moment, he spotted her. A surge of adrenaline coursed through her veins, and she took off running as bullets kicked up a trail behind her.
Long blue streaks whizzed in front of her face. This time, unlike when they escaped from Lunara, the attackers were shooting to kill. The stones crunched under her feet. Her hovercar came more into view, and she would beat the guard to it. But she cursed, realizing the safety check needed to run before she could take off. She reached into her pocket for the remote control for the canopy, fumbling it between her fingers to the ground.
She needed that remote. Skating along the loose gravel, she slid to a stop, took a step backward, and scooped it up. She pivoted back, her leg muscle burning from the sudden contraction, and continued toward the hovercar. Bullets flew past her again.
Several long strides later, she arrived at the hovercar. Glancing over her shoulder, she could not see the guard and guessed that he was hiding behind the rock formation to her left, several meters away. The streaking bullets had stopped.
She stooped behind the hovercar. She couldn’t escape without the security guard seeing her, and her fame made her identity recognizable to everyone. Her father would find out. She realized that getting to the hovercar was no longer an option.
She shivered as the cold began to overtake her adrenaline. Roche is dead. She had to stop thinking about him. It was time for action, not grief, she told herself. The guard was closing in on her hovercar. The information in her breast pocket was the key to making Eamonn and Aethpis realize this had all been a charade. The evidence implicated her father in something she didn’t entirely understand. She couldn’t believe he would be behind the attack on Lunara, yet the evidence seemed conclusive. Was he being set up? Eamonn might show the Aethpisians, and if her father was indeed the leader of the conspiracy, she would be outcast from the Arwell legacy forever.
Beside her, the guard popped out of the rocks and stood before her. She drew her gun in a fit of panic. He mustn’t be allowed to implicate her.
Bang! He dropped to the ground dead.
Her hands began to shake uncontrollably, and the gun slipped from her grasp and fell to the ground. She had murdered the guard to protect herself from her father’s wrath. She wanted it all to go away.
She ran toward the Zephyrian domes, which were close, and entered. She had to get back to her room and pretend none of this had ever happened.
Chapter 24
Seth awoke with his head resting in Chloe’s lap. She sat upright with her right hand on his chest and her left hand cradling him. He scanned the small enclosure and found it empty. He moved slowly, pulling his head away from her lap to avoid waking her.
"The storm passed over us," she said. She hadn’t been sleeping.
"How did it catch up so fast?" he replied. "It should have traveled away."
"We are a lot farther south than I anticipated," she said. "We have a full day’s walk—if you can." She reached for his forehead. "How is that bump?"
"Fine. What happened after we crashed? I don’t remember."
"Nothing, really. I just saved your life," she said, smirking. But she had to coerce the smile from under her breathing mask. "I’m not sure what the last thing you remember was, but when the hovercar smashed into the surface, we hit a large boulder."
"Yes, I remember flying through the air."
"Well, we sailed about fifty meters past the boulder and into a large algae pit. I landed in the center, where the algae pool was deeper and cushioned. My head spun for a few moments, but I managed to stand and look for you. You landed a few meters from me but much harder on a shallower portion of the pit. You hit your head on either the way out of the hovercar or when you landed. I’m not sure.
"I tried to make my way over to you but the mechnodroids activated themselves. They were awful, and they were everywhere. Tiny little robots, they rest on the bottom of the algae. They thought we were nutrients and pulled you under before I could make my way over. They aren’t strong by themselves, but at least fifty ran around, grabbing at you and pulling at me. I swatted them off my back. But by that time, you had vanished. I dredged the bottom of the pit for what seemed like forever. I was so scared. I was ready to die if I didn’t find you.
"I noticed your boot kick up out of the algae. The mechnodroids repositioned you for whatever they were planning. They don’t even think. They just do what they are programmed to do. Monsters. I plowed my way over, grabbed you by the waist, and heaved you up out from under the surface. But those little monsters kept pulling at you, not letting go. I slipped a couple of times and lost my hold several times. They pulled you under again, but I snagged under your arms this time. I was kicking and swatting until I got you to the surface, where they finally gave up." She sighed. "And then things got worse."
"Worse!"
"The storm chased overhead. The wind threw rocks and algae all over us. I pulled you with the last of my energy to the utility box, threw everything out, and heaved us in. The storm pushed to full strength by this time and raged for a few hours until it settled enough for me to sleep."
"Thanks," he said.
She nodded, then tightened her face. "We should get moving."
"What is the time?" he muttered as he glanced at his own watch: seven in the morning. "How far did you say we were out from Trivium Port?"
"About thirty kilometers, but the map says we are only fifteen from a Zephyrian hazardous cargo platform."
"Zephyrian, good," he said. "We have to inform them. Please tell me the data card is intact."
"Right here." She patted her breast pocket and grinned.
"You are the best." He smirked. "Let’s get out of here and check the damage to the hovercar. I wonder if the communications panel is working. It should be fine if the fire barrier worked. We won’t survive long without our coats. I’m surprised we survived the night without them."
"The utility box has heating panels built into the sides," she said, feeling the side with her hand. "I guess so the equipment doesn’t go below freezing. Some of it was sensitive."
He nodded and moved toward the doorway.
He poked his head out of the small door to the utility box, and the storm damage surprised him. The damage wasn’t how he would have imagined it to be. For kilometers around them, the storm had painted the surface like a story shown to him from old Earth books. A musty odor saturated the air. The wind had blown the algae all around and covered the rocks an earthly green shade.
He stood and groaned as he stretched out his muscles.
Chloe did the same.
He put his arm around her, and without saying a word they both knew this was as close to Earth as they would ever be. In a few days, the untended algae along the sides would be dead, and the area would lapse back into the alien red of Mars.
The storm littered the discarded equipment around his feet. The winds and the rocks had shredded it. They stepped, cautiously, around the utility box, watching each step, sometimes kicking over rocks looking for anything helpful buried under the cluttered surface. They couldn’t salvage anything.
Mechnodroids scurried around each algae pit, removing debris and placing them in a neat pile to the north side. Chloe stayed within arm’s length of Seth, yelping a warning cry each time one of the mechnodroids got close. However, they were more concerned with their programmed duty.
When Seth moved within two strides of the hovercar, the toxins watered his eyes, and the smell of burnt synthel-oil forced his hand to his nose. Inspecting it, he found the damage was more than he expected. The engine compartment had suffered the worst.
The destruction of the front display panel discouraged him. The impact had crushed th
e navigational positioning, the weather service screen, and worst of all, the communications unit. As he continued to survey the comm, he pressed his tongue against the roof of his mouth, thinking of a way to salvage the parts into a workable unit. Parker might be able to fix it. Seth’s own knowledge was limited to intact systems, so he had absolutely no way to call back for help.
Digging into the back compartment, and thanking the engineer who decided to separate the compartments with a fire barrier, he found undamaged ration packets and their thermo coats. He pulled them out from under the seat. He wished he would have listened to Jan and kept the thermal tent in the hovercar, because the plasma fire had gutted all the sensor equipment brought in to replace the tent. Yet then, the tent would have been in the same condition. Mars damned him either way.
"I found the most important thing we will need," he said, and he showed her the coats, much to her delight. He grabbed the shoulders of her coat, and she put her arms into the sleeves. Then he stuffed the ration packets into her pockets.
"Hey, I don’t want to carry this," she said. "You take some."
"They are for you. I’ll be fine."
"That is nonsense," she protested. "We will share them, or I won’t eat at all."
His eyes narrowed. "Don’t be like that."
"Stop protecting me." She crossed her arms. The glower in her eyes returned. "Just when I think I have escaped your grip, you go and squeeze me tight. I can’t wait until this is all over, and I can begin my hunt for my apartment on Mars."
That was petty of her, he thought, wanting to tell her, but he bit his tongue. Unless she was serious, in which case, she was a jerk. Even with what they had been through, she still wasn’t going to let him forget how she felt like a hostage. His quest for her safety was noble, not stifling. He was chagrined to think she could think otherwise. He had been right about Mars, and once he proved that to the rest of the crew, she would have to ask for his forgiveness and realize his paranoia was warranted.
Lunara: The Original Trilogy Page 23