"You must surrender," he choked out.
Sarah bit her lower lip, not wanting to say it. She swallowed. "Tell them that we surrender. I’ll hear her terms in one hour. Full retreat. Call the forces back and make sure we don’t injure any more MSA. I don’t want to give them excuse for further aggression."
Chapter 46
Gwen and Samantha stared at the battle display screen as if it were a masterpiece. The beauty of the destroyed Alliance fleet was reminiscent of the planitia horse painting of the early Martian painter Jorge, from the subtle shading of the charred ship fragments all the way to the brilliant colors of the blazing plasma fires of the engine compartment. Framing it was the circling MSA fleet.
"The Protector is heading toward the battle area, along with an unidentified Alliance ship. A battle cruiser, larger than anything we have," Samantha said, nervously.
Gwen knew better than to think Samantha was nervous, but perhaps this surprise was getting to her. "And now we know where the hidden metalor cache has gone. Just as I anticipated."
"Anticipated?"
"The Protector’s tracking system, installed by the minister’s own people, will be her undoing. I knew Chloe would try to find the metalor. Her gifts, thanks to Hans Bauer, have been revealed to us all, and knowing the metalor talks to her, it was obvious that the minister would assign Parker McCloud to help her find it. That meant the Protector would eventually be involved, so I used their own bug to track them."
"And here they are," Samantha said. "Leading the giant cruiser to destroy us."
"That is no warship," she replied.
"The chancellor is correct," a tech officer said from across the war room. "The offensive systems are minimal."
"Instruct the fleet to tow the giant cruiser back to the surface and take the Protector and its crew into custody."
"Should we destroy it?" Samantha said. "I don’t want it to give the Alliance hope if it slips to Lunara."
"We control Lunara again," she replied. "Sarah McCloud will make sure of that with her surrender, or I’ll destroy Aethpis completely."
"Understood," Samantha said. "Juncon has been informed of your wishes. He is setting the trap as we speak."
"Well done."
Sliding through two missiles, the Protector shuddered, firing its ion engines toward the battlefield.
Parker swiveled the captain’s chair toward the display screens to his right. The megacruiser rumbled directly behind them, reporting no signs of sluggishness on its maiden flight. Definitely Parker’s chief concern when they undocked the vessel from its cavernous womb. Vivian had tested the engines for ten years, and they were flawless—on paper, but the real world wasn’t lived in a schematic.
As Chloe veered the Protector to avoid the increasing debris field in front of them, Jan matched her maneuvers with the megacruiser.
Parker glanced at the radar screen. It was blank. He expected it to be clear of MSA blips, but the Alliance didn’t show up either. He scanned the area with his infrared scanners; still nothing from both parties, only the smoldering glow of the debris field.
Attempting to digest the riddle, he rubbed his chin and sat back in the captain’s chair.
"I don’t get it," Chloe said, thrusting the controls from left to right in attempt to avoid the fighters swooping in from above. The Protector dove downward and then corkscrewed over and under a set of mangled hulls floating away from the battlefield. "Where are all the Alliance ships?"
"What do you mean? They’re fighting," Parker said, leaning toward the viewscreen. Sweat beaded on his forehead.
"I don’t see any fighting," she replied. "The MSA are positioned for…oh, no." She darted her arms toward the consol and stabbed the communications button. "Jan, get out of here. This isn’t a battlefield. They are corralling you into the center of the debris field to attach tow cables."
"This is Jan," her voice crackled over the radio. "I have two cruisers coming up on my rear."
"Jinx!" Chloe shouted. "All this junk masked the trap! They must’ve depressed themselves into the upper atmosphere, glaring against our visual displays. How did they know we were coming, and where is the Alliance?"
Jarvis’s increasingly pompous voice said over the speaker, "There are two easy explanations: they tracked the Protector on its way to Ganges Chasma, and the Alliance fleet has been defeated and effectively destroyed. The debris field is mostly Alliance cruisers."
"Tracked!" Parker said, quickly, shooting his eyes toward Grove. "How could they?"
"Listen," Grove said. "I took every precaution when I took off. No way was I followed."
"They didn’t follow," Parker said, scrabbling toward the back of the bridge. He ripped the paneling off the maintenance access port and rummaged through the wiring. Fingering the wires, he wasn’t sure what the exact object looked like, but he knew what he was looking for. It was suddenly so bleeping obvious he should have rechecked the instrumentation himself. When the Alliance maintenance team had installed the new radar systems on the Protector, one of the so-called trusted men had more than likely installed a tracking beacon.
Most likely the Alliance wanted to use the beacon to track Sarah if Parker attempted to kidnap her, a misguided security measure. The trust between the Lunarans and the Aethpisians never completely materialized.
He finally found it, a small knob attaching over the radar relay wiring and the transponder beacon. Every time the Protector attempted to search out for ships on radar, a piggybacked communication would ride along it. The fact that it was untraceable unless someone looked for the pattern made it the perfect tracking device.
Parker squeezed the knob between his fingers until it snapped into two pieces.
"We were tracked. I took care of it," he said. "Grove, scan our radar pings for any further piggybacked communications."
"Already scanning," Grove said.
"Jarvis," he said into the communications terminal on his captain’s chair. "They were tracking the Protector. It was the minister’s own people, but the MSA must have been informed of its presence."
"Another defeat for the minister on this tragic day. We should’ve listened to our minds and not our hearts."
"I’ve no doubt of that now," Parker said, his voice shaking.
"No other piggybacks," Grove said. "The only Alliance traffic is from the far side of Mars. They’re regrouping."
"No, they’re retreating for their surrender," Parker said. "Jarvis, I’m sorry for bringing the megacruiser out into the open. We should have kept it secret. Let’s get out of this mess and back to Lunara. We can regroup there."
"No," Jan said. "We are going to destroy it. That was the agreement. I’m setting a course for the sun. The MSA can’t have it."
"You can’t allow yourself to die for nothing. We can still salvage this battle at Lunara. Ty will know how to regroup."
"The MSA will follow the megacruiser to the ends of the galaxy," Jan replied. "The crew and I agree we must destroy it. It is unanimous."
"I say not to, so it isn’t unanimous!" he screamed into the radio. "I order you back to Lunara. I’m the superior authority on this mission."
"No," Jan said. "Help us destroy the megacruiser. I want to remember your bravery and honor."
For what seemed like a long moment, he paused. His promise to Seth had been to keep Chloe safe from harm, but he had not directly made that same promise to Ty. It was implied. Ty would expect Parker to keep Jan from harm.
Yet, she was right. The megacruiser had to be destroyed. It had been their agreement, and it was the right thing for Mars. The technology was too important to let it fall into the wrong hands.
"I’ll always remember you, Jan. Do what you have to do. The Protector will be at your side."
"Thank you," she said. "A hole is forming at plus thirty-nine degrees, negative fourteen degrees on the Z."
"I see it," Parker said, tapping Chloe on the shoulder and pointing to the indicated coordinates. "Watch out for the cruiser coming
in fast at twenty-nine, thirty-five. He doesn’t want to slow down."
The Protector cut along the bow of the megacruiser and down the side of the hull, running along the sleek curves. A bang came from Chloe’s left. A squadron of five MSA fighters swooped down from the belly toward her location, sending a volley of missiles exploding against the megacruiser’s metalor hull. The explosion ricocheted back toward the Protector.
Chloe jerked the controls and barrel-rolled the Protector, causing a horrific screech. The MSA fighters followed, closer than she had expected. She held her course. As she looped around the other side of the megacruiser, she anticipated the tow cable would come up fast, and she would have only a matter of seconds to fire the turret gun.
The Protector arched its way back toward the aft tow cables. She swung the control stick to the left, navigating closer to the aft.
She came upon five tow cables already attached. Two of them were of the heavy variety. Those were her targets. The heavy fighters wouldn’t put up much of a fight without the cruisers’ help.
She switched her target to the heavy cables, trying to ignore the fast-approaching MSA fighters behind her. The turret aligned itself and locked on its target. She pressed the fire button.
Wham! The Protector spun completely around. By the time she reoriented the ship, she was looking straight toward the tow cables again. The jolt from the MSA fighter fire had knocked her targeting computer out of alignment.
"I can’t target the cables," she said, frantically pressing every instant diagnostic command the Protector had. Everything turned out to be negative. "The computer is fried."
"We don’t have time for this," Parker said, fiddling with the controls in front of him. "I set the turret to fire randomly in the direction of the tow cables. Get us moving again; the plasma shields are weakening."
"Going," she said, pressing the thrust forward while she eyed the targeting screen.
She strafed the turret toward the closest tow cable. The MSA fighters circled in front of her and across her targeting line. The stream of sonic bullets collided with the railroaded fighters and sent them spiraling into space. Chloe smiled slightly.
Yet the urgency of the moment weighed on her mind. If the MSA cruisers cabled the megacruiser, the MSA would capture them and she would be powerless to stop it.
The sonic bullets from the turret finally strafed in front of the first tow cable, snapping it instantly. The megacruiser bolted forward, pulling the other two MSA cruisers with it.
The second cable was fairly close. She came upon it faster than she wanted. The Protector lurched as a volley of missiles pattered against the megacruiser’s hull behind her path. She scrolled her viewscreen in the direction from which the missiles were fired. Several heavy fighters and light fighters noticed them all of a sudden. They couldn’t risk losing another tow cable.
However, she would make it to the next one before any of them would catch her. The turret gun tried to lock on to the meter-wide target, but Chloe approached faster than the computer could react.
"Chloe," Parker said. "Slow down."
"I can’t. The shock waves from the missile explosions behind us are pushing me along," she said sharply. Her face tightened as she concentrated. She had to do it.
Grove and Parker gasped simultaneously.
The Protector turned to its side and pushed the thrust to full. The ship slammed into the cable.
An undetermined time later, she roused herself from unconsciousness and felt her forehead to curb the pulsating pain. Her neck moved stiffly, and her hands ached. She flexed her arms and legs. Everything felt okay, no sharp pains.
The squawk of metal ripping apart and her chair smacking the back of her head were the last things she remembered. The viewscreen speckled with the white dots of stars.
Looking over the rest of the bridge, she saw that Parker was awake and hunched over Atalo’s motionless body.
"Is he okay?" she said, instinctively pressing the status button on her viewscreen’s control.
"He will be fine when he wakes up," Parker replied quietly.
She looked at Parker, thinking about how proud she was of him. His hair was tattered, his face was long, and his hands were shaking, but he was brave beyond any measure.
The control chirped, and the viewscreen displayed the megacruiser. Every heavy fighter and fighter in the MSA fleet was harassing it. But for the magnificent ship, the harassment made no impact. The MSA cruisers were trailing far behind, unable to match the speed of the newly reenergized megacruiser. She smiled, seeing the kilometer-long tow cable, ripped from the last remaining MSA cruiser, dragged behind as a souvenir from its tug-of-war victory.
Her last-second effort had worked. Though it cost the Protector its port-side wing, they had done it.
"I’m getting us out of here," she said. "They might notice us once they find it useless to trail the megacruiser."
"Yes, go!"
"Jan, if you can hear me," she said into the radio. "I love you, and thank you for everything."
Seconds later, Jan’s strained voice said, "Tell Ty and everyone from the crew that I love them. I’ll miss you guys."
"We’ll miss you too," she and Parker said in unison.
Chapter 47
"Minister McCloud, it is unfortunate we have to speak like this," Gwen said evenly into the screen. She had been savoring her victory for the last two hours and wanted to remain stolid and unmoved by it. After all, she was recording the surrender of the Alliance into the MSA archives. She had to stifle as much of the Arwell bravado as possible. She found it unbecoming. "I thought the cease-fire agreement had settled our differences for now. Fortunately for the MSA, I had the foresight to prepare for such treachery."
"Treachery," Sarah scoffed at her. "If that is treachery, then what you did to the Aethpisian people only a month ago could be called something far worse. We fight for a united, free Mars."
"Mars will remain fractured until you realize the error of your ways. I’ve come to offer you the terms of your surrender and not to be chastised by you." Gwen fingered the datapad in front of her. "Point one, you will also recall any spies from behind our borders. If any are caught after two days’ time, ten Aethpisians selected at random will be imprisoned in place of that one person.
"Point two, your borders will be redefined along the set of coordinates running ten miles from the center of your colony. Your military will disarm, and all forms of weaponry will be turned over to the MSA, including guns, ships, vehicles, etcetera. You’ll allow inspection teams into the colony to monitor your activity. All Alliance members will be relegated to Aethpis.
"Lastly, we’ll be taking your claim of Lunara’s metalor for ourselves. Lunara is now under our control. That is the basis for the surrendering treaty."
"That is most generous of you, Lady Arwell," Sarah replied. "Who shall we contact for any further inquiries about our surrender treaty?"
"I’ll send a liaison shortly," Gwen said. "And one final thing: once you discover the location of Chloe Smith, I want her turned over to the Zephyrian liaison."
"Yes, Lady Arwell," Sarah said. "Shall I look for Seth Smith as well?"
"That will not be necessary." Gwen already had been informed that Seth was on his way to her side. And once she had Chloe, there was nothing that could stop the MSA from fulfilling its destiny.
"I’ll send Chloe to you as soon as I find where she is located. My last reports had her on Lunara."
"Your reports reflect my reports." Gwen eyed Sarah for a reaction. She knew if Seth was on Mars, Chloe was there, too. But where? Sarah, though defeated, was withholding, either by ignorance or deception, Chloe’s location.
"You aren’t hiding her from me, are you? I can take Aethpis if I desire."
"No. I don’t know where she is. Is there anything else I can do for you?"
"Yes," Gwen said. "Don’t think about continuing your Alliance’s fight against the MSA. We have won the people’s support and praise. Don’t inter
fere with the next step in human progress. You’ll only slow down the inevitable."
Sarah bristled. "And what is this inevitability I should be looking for?"
"The total omnipotence of the human race."
Chapter 48
Parker glanced out of the window as the transport ship lowered itself to the landing pad just outside of the main hangar of Aethpis colony. Dust kicked up around the ship, and he watched as it settled on the uneven terrain.
He closed his eyes, forcing himself back to Lunara, back to the Protector, and back to over a month ago. He wanted his crew together again—Roche and Gwen to give him a hard time, Jan to comfort him, Seth to help him install the latest and greatest system upgrade, and Eamonn to hound him to get it done faster. Mostly, he wanted Chloe to worry about the trivial things and not this bloody war.
The Protector, bruised and battered from the fight, sat in a spacedock orbiting the tiny Martian moon Deimos.
No words were said between him and Chloe on the way down. Atalo was still unconscious in the medical shuttle landing several pads over out of his view.
He had spent a great deal of his return trip thinking about Jan, running through the basic calculations in his head a hundred times over. At a little over 225 million kilometers away, and the megacruiser’s speed of 2,500 kilometers a second, it would reach the sun in a day. Jan had been gone for twenty-three hours. She would be dead soon. Along with the key to the Alliance’s chances to ever rebuild itself to rival the Martian Supremacy Authority.
"Please have your breathing masks secured to your face. The cabin will be deoxygenated in twenty seconds," the transport’s crew announced over the speaker.
Parker, along with the rest of the people crowded on the transport, slipped his breathing mask over his face and waited for the ship to signal their arrival.
The swoosh of the air ducts pushed out the oxygen-rich air and replaced it with the chalky Martian atmosphere. Simultaneously, the servomotors buzzed as the plank lowered to the surface.
Lunara: The Original Trilogy Page 65