Lunara: The Original Trilogy

by Wyatt Davenport

  "Vivian," Jarvis said. "Is everything okay? We lost visual when the dust storms came."

  "Yes, Jarvis. This is Parker McCloud. He is a friend. Can you open the hangar for us to dock?"

  "We are unlocking it from the inside as we speak. I’ll see you shortly," Jarvis replied and ended his transmission.

  "That was too easy," Vivian muttered behind him.

  "You are skeptical?" Chloe said.

  "I’m glad they are willing to talk with you. Conway is stubborn and manipulative enough to us."

  Out of the viewscreen, the portion of the cliff’s face in front of them disappeared before their eyes. A heavy metal door replaced it. He could not tell whether a hologram or some form of advanced camouflage was used. Nonetheless, it effectively concealed the wall of the chasma even at this close range.

  The door opened, and the skimmer glided through.

  The rock between the massive cavern and the chasma wall was thin, an ideal layout for moving an awkward cruiser out of an underground shipyard.

  Once inside, the facility was brighter than the outside sun, displaying the cave in all its jaw-dropping splendor. Several smaller, cube-shaped buildings clustered around the main walkway along the middle height of the cavern. Descending from the ceiling and attached to the walls, every crane, lifting hydraulic, welding arm, and conveyer belt pointed toward the focal point of the room, the docking bay.

  The megacruiser made the skimmer look ancient. Dark gray with a streak of silver running along the side, the curves of the ship flowed eloquently, making it seamless from front to back. The design was a direct inversion of the common ideas about interstellar travel. Normally, on the current cruiser and freighter designs, owners coveted volume, forcing the hull to look boxed and bulky. The cruiser seemed to ignore that, the sleek appearance following more of an atmospheric design to cut the air resistance and in turn, lower the overall potential volume it could carry.

  "The exterior—" Parker said.

  Vivian cut him off. "The megacruiser is a passenger liner along with a cargo transport. It is designed to land on any oversized landing pads on Mars for the comfort and ease of its passengers. Shuttling passengers from the surface to an orbital station was ruled out in the early planning stages. Even with the curved exterior, its cargo hold is as large as sixteen freighters with the additional option of towing up to one hundred further freight cubes."

  "One hundred, that’s fantastic," he said. "The most a freighter can carry now is thirty."

  "The megacruiser has a powerful engine. With one shipment of ice from Jupiter’s Europa, the minister had planned to build Mars’s first lake."

  "Lake?" Jan said. "It would freeze within a week."

  Vivian shrugged. "The minister seemed unconcerned it would be a problem. Perhaps he had something in mind."

  "Dream or maybe even a nightmare," Parker said. His enthusiastic tone had turned to a dreadful sigh. "If the MSA ever got hold of the megacruiser, they could out-supply us two hundredfold."

  "That is why the Alliance needs it. They can gain a significant advantage."

  "And the reason why we shouldn’t let the MSA even know about it. It could be met with disastrous circumstances."

  Out of the canopy, Vivian saw Conway and Jarvis standing beside the lighted landing pad. "Why is everyone against the greatest innovation of our time?" she muttered to herself.

  Parker steered the skimmer to the indicated landing pad and fired the repulse engines.

  The canopy released, and Parker directed Vivian to exit first from the side of the ship.

  Vivian was in the lead as they walked away from the skimmer. Jarvis and Conway were waiting for them several paces away at the doors leading into the control area.

  "Amazing!" Parker yelled over the machinery. His mouth hadn’t closed since he had laid his eyes on it. He was amazed at every aspect of the hulking ship. He had never seen a spacecraft so beautiful. "How long before it is complete?"

  "Your weapons," Jarvis said, as he approached with a sonic pistol in his hand. The other man, Conway, according to his name tag, had drawn his gun as well and was pointing it toward the girls. "Please, your weapons first, and then we will talk. I’ve no intention of shooting you, but we need assurances in this facility."

  "I understand," Parker said. Slowly, allowing Jarvis to follow him with his eyes, he drew his pistol, pinched the barrel between his fingers, placed it on the ground, and slid the gun along the floor toward him.

  The girls did the same. Another technician walked over and patted all three of them down.

  "Is that all over now?" Vivian said with slight irritation in her voice.

  "No. Who else knows about this facility besides the three of you."

  "No one," Parker replied. "We stumbled on this place by accident. A feeling Chloe Jones had about the area."

  "Feeling? You can’t expect me to believe dumb luck led you here."

  "She can sense metalor. Her mind is different from ours. You’ve surely seen the rewards for her arrest and delivery to the MSA. That is the reason why."

  "I’ve seen them, but I don’t believe it."

  "You’ll believe us soon enough," Chloe said. "Everyone knows the minister hid a metalor cache on Mars. Don’t you think if the Alliance military knew where the cache was, they would just take it?"

  "We would destroy it first," Conway said, thrusting his gun toward Chloe. "Don’t try anything."

  "We aren’t. We want to talk to you…preferably without guns in our face."

  Jarvis directed them toward the hallway adjacent to the landing pad. "Come this way. We can talk in a quieter setting."

  Arriving at the briefing room, they sat around the table preparing their thoughts and reading each other. Then Vivian spoke. "We are on the same side here. The Alliance needs our help in the end. The megacruiser will solidify their power. You can’t underestimate the desire of the nonaligned colonies to side with technological innovation."

  "Possibly," Conway replied. "But if the MSA controlled it, they would gain the support they need to topple us."

  "Right now, we control it and can run it," Vivian said. "By handing it to the Alliance, they’ll rely on us. We’ll maintain control."

  "Don’t be that short-sighted," Conway said. "When we set out to build the megacruiser, it was supposed to be a luxury liner for travel to the farthest reaches of the solar system. We were naïve enough to think that war wasn’t a possibility and no evil existed, but Mars has changed, and we must be cautious who we give it to." He paced around the table as he continued to speak. "A lot of you don’t know Earth history. It has been discouraged and untaught for decades, but we still store the records. With my position, I’m afforded the opportunity to read my share of it. In the last one hundred years on Earth, a great technological advancement occurred, a tenfold increase decade over decade. One of their greatest achievements was the nuclear reactor and the nuclear bomb. The bomb could destroy entire colonies in an instant. For a number of years, only the two most powerful countries had this weapon. The other smaller countries feared them.

  "But gradually, the smaller countries developed these weapons. The caveat from Earth: it wasn’t until the technology became old and ordinary that it became a threat to everyone. You see, the larger countries never intended to go to war because they were powerful and controlled their share of the world already. But the smaller countries, tired and impotent, used the weapon.

  "Now, it is only a matter of time before the megacruiser’s technology is misused by the two colonies. The more technical our advances, the more disciplined we should be in releasing it to the world. This is no longer our ability to help the Alliance or hurt the MSA. We’ve two sides destined to hate one another for a long time, and the megacruiser shouldn’t be used to come between them or allow one to destroy the other."

  Vivian objected. "Several technologies have saved lives and provided a better life for us all. We aren’t the same people who brutalized one another on Earth."

>   "In the last twenty years, two wars were waged on Mars."

  "But none before—"

  "No wars existed because we were fighting to survive. Humans are reverting to what we have always been, savage and corrupt. It is in our nature to harm one another. If it wasn’t, we wouldn’t do it so often."

  Chloe stood. "I agree we need to be cautious with the megacruiser, but you fail to acknowledge the improvements humanity achieves, and eventually, we’ll outgrow our savage and corrupt ways. The MSA believe they can manufacture a better human, but they are wrong in their process. The MSA can’t leap our progress forward without some nurturing and weaning. Fear and contempt from the weaker links in the human chain can’t hold us back. We must use it to stop the MSA before they use their technology to send our race into self-destruction. The technology can’t be abused more than the MSA can hurt us with their eugenics program."

  Around the table, Chloe hoped someone would back her up. But she doubted they would. They had seen her betray the planet only a month before, and the hostility must still be fresh in their minds. She searched the room with her mind, but she felt nothing prominent. Only the faint remnants of her encounter with Parker and the stabbing pain from his mind traveling into hers, drilling slowly at her brain as she tried to reach out. Finally, she gave up and waited.

  Jarvis spoke. "The war is at a stalemate. The two sides signed the cease-fire agreement, and the megacruiser is hidden from the rest of Mars. Until the time is right, our secret should remain. We must stay in this facility for now. As per the usual protocol, no outside communications, and the hangar door will be resealed. Keeping it safe and secret is our main objective."

  "We can’t leave?" Parker said as his eyes widened. "I’m the minister’s husband. I demand to leave immediately."

  "I’m afraid not. You can blame Ms. Mathilde for your stay. Her actions have prompted us to keep you here against your will. The former minister has given us a clear directive to conceal the megacruiser until the time it right."

  Parker stood, started to walk toward Jarvis, and then stopped when he saw the sonic pistol jerked from Jarvis’ side and pointed directly toward him. "Hey, look, I wasn’t going to make trouble. We won’t tell anyone about this place."

  "I wish I could believe you, but Vivian left me no other choice but to keep you here."

  "But I must get back to my family—"

  Jarvis tightened his grip on the handle of the gun. "You will have to forget about them for now. If you prefer, we have a detention tunnel, but I would rather give you three rooms in the dormitories."

  Sweat saturated the palms of Parker’s hands. Suddenly, this conference room was extremely warm. "We are on the same side here. I don’t think the megacruiser’s release is a good idea, just like Conway and you expressed. But holding us here is a violation of our rights."

  "As I said, you’ve no rights in this facility. Vivian bringing you here forfeited them. I can show you the minister’s directive."

  "Your minister is dead," Parker said, sternly. He balled his fists. "The new Mars needs us during this dark time. We came here to find peace."

  "What will it be, prisoner or guest? I trust your word."

  Chloe stepped beside Parker. "Guests. This cease-fire won’t last much longer."

  Parker yielded to Chloe’s word. He trusted she knew more than Jarvis was revealing with his words. "If we must be guests, show us everything about the megacruiser. We are part of it now."

  Vivian jumped up. "Gladly!"

  Chapter 38

  Cautiously, a red glow flittering from his night-vision goggles, Seth walked along Zephyria Planitia.

  The empty, endless kilometers to the nearest havens of humanity extended between the knobbed hills of the Collis Arwenia and the algae pits of the planitia. They were deep into MSA-controlled territory.

  The dreary terrain, consisting of the hard basalt rocks that plagued the planet, signified for Seth the terrible loneliness he felt being away from Chloe. But this mission would bring them closer. That was what he told himself when the agony of her image consumed him. He cinched his tunic tight to his body to fight the ever-tormenting winds.

  The platoon walked in a single line. There turned out to be twenty soldiers in all, including Shannon and him. Not the task force he envisioned when he agreed to accompany them.

  But then, Bareson didn’t leave him much choice; it was either die or come along. He should never have needed a choice. His confusion started because he wanted to reunite with Chloe. He couldn’t remember a time they had been split up for so long. Then again, he left her angry because he needed to ensure her safety in the long term. This mission was part of the process for him. He could change what the MSA was doing directly, instead of just doing his usual complaining.

  "Down!" a voice called from the front of the group.

  He dropped immediately, pressing his torso flat to the rugged terrain. He adjusted his tunic’s hood to slide over his head, effectively blocking any glow from his goggles.

  His tunic concealed his heat signature but didn’t ease the torment of waiting. He wanted to rescue Eamonn now. No more patrol avoidance, no more cautious tiptoeing.

  The rumble of a light atmospheric cruiser shook over his head. He tensed his muscles for the missile drops or a salvo of sonic bullets. The ship streaked by them and whistled off toward the northeast horizon.

  No sound came, but that only meant the missile was still airborne. He listened intently for the percussion sound of the impact. He tried to temper his quick breaths through his breathing mask. He was terrified.

  Since the invasion of Lunara, he had never truly believed he was in danger. The MSA had always sent one clear signal to the rest of Mars. They wanted him and Chloe alive and unharmed. He had no reason to doubt the MSA. Hans had made it perfectly clear on every holotube announcement, newspad article, or wanted poster that they were to remain safe.

  But in the open, he was in danger. He was a nameless, faceless member of a rebellious platoon. The MSA soldiers guarding the northern perimeter didn’t check before they killed. They took Alliance lives.

  His arms started to shake. He grabbed one arm with his hand to steady his nerves. The Martian terrain only inches from his face tasted like metallic chalk. He was miserable.

  His mind flashed back fifteen years, to the little boy’s face down under the bench in his colony, too scared to run away; to the boy who allowed Mars to kill his family and destroy his whole life, taking what he loved most in this world.

  He could no longer remember his mother: the feeling of her soft cheek against his face, the sound of her tender voice scolding his misbehavior, or the sight of her gentle, loving smile. It was all lost in the depths of Mars. Mars killed her and put her in a nameless grave dug for the victims of the massacre.

  He flinched.

  "Are you ready?" Shannon said from above him.

  He shook the visions of his past from his mind, pushed off the ground with one foot, and stood beside Shannon. "Besides the five rocks that were digging into my hip, I’m fine. Any idea how far we are out?"

  "Not much longer, maybe another day. Although it might be longer considering the increased traffic as we head closer to the colony. You up for a long night?"

  "They aren’t a problem for me. I’m not tired," he said. "Bareson have a plan when we get to the detention center?"

  "For the most part, we do. You and I’ll go through the sewage system and release the rear doorway for the rest of the platoon."

  "Why not send us all through?"

  "It’s too much of a risk, considering we know nothing about the sewage system’s layout. It will be lucky if two of us can sneak into the place without causing a commotion."

  "So basically Bareson is sending in his mice so he can see how the snake reacts."

  She paused, just long enough to let him know something was amiss. "I volunteered for the mission. We above everyone want Eamonn out of there. I don’t want them to forget about him."


  "Don’t apologize. It was my mistake in doubting this mission. Outside factors beyond anyone’s control blinded me."

  "Factors?" she said, tilting her head quizzically.

  "I have my secrets, too. Your concern is to get us into the detention center to free Eamonn."

  "The last of our troops have moved out of Aethpis, my lady," Ground Admiral James Manson announced. "We have used those resources to further secure the perimeter around our territory."

  "I’m sure it is all in the briefing," Gwen said, thumbing the datapad on her desk. She stood and moved around the desk. "You’ve done a wonderful job, Admiral Manson. You’ll be receiving honors for valor and heroism in the near future."

  "Thank you, my lady."

  "That will be all. I’ll call you for a status report after my meetings today."

  "I am honored to work for you," Manson replied.

  "Thank you." She directed him to leave, and he proceeded toward the doorway.

  After the door clicked shut, she turned to find an awaiting Samantha, who had entered the room from the secret passages to the rear.

  "No one in the military is completely impressed with this cease-fire agreement," Samantha said. She picked her fingernails as she sat at the top of Gwen’s desk. "Privately, even Manson was upset. Do you still trust him?"

  "Yes," she replied. "He will be loyal until he is dead. We have completed repairs on our space vessels, and the new ships are ready to be deployed. We’ll now rely on patience and let the Alliance make their move."

  "What is the next move?" Samantha said. "They have peace, and you gave them a lot more than I would have given. You don’t think they are satisfied?"

  "Is your confidence waning?" Gwen said, eyeing Samantha, forcing her to look away. "I told you that Sarah would never allow Mars to be split into two factions. She also unwittingly didn’t negotiate for the release of the Aethpisian political prisoners. She agreed to the war criminal clause. Her eagerness to accept this proposal will be her undoing with the public and her military."