"Seth isn’t part of this conversation," Chloe said sharply. "He made the wrong choice. Don’t you follow suit with a bad choice of your own."
"The Sheriff is in position to rescue you," Parker said. "We have enough time to wait for Chloe to get you."
"Actually, you don’t," Eamonn replied. "There is an approaching MSA fleet coming in around Phobos. Didn’t you think I would notice that?"
He heard Parker’s disappointment.
"I was hoping you didn’t," Parker said.
Eamonn felt terrible for Parker. He knew the torment he was going through, but he had to complete this mission knowing he had helped Mars. "Listen Parker. You need to save the rest of the crew. It is something I failed to do."
"You didn’t fail me," Parker replied. "You were the best captain in the solar system."
"No," Eamonn said. "You’re the only person to stick by the crew. Your loyalty to them can bring Gwen and Seth back to our side and save Mars from destroying itself."
By this time, Eamonn had entered the drone ship and stood before the metalor explosives. He saw the detonator resting on the floor, detached from its mount. He inserted it back into position and set the timer for one minute.
Parker and Chloe kept speaking, but Eamonn had ignored them. He didn’t want to hear any more pleading to save his life. This was the moment of his death, and he thought about Shannon. Odd as it was, she consumed his thoughts.
Thirty seconds.
"Take the Sheriff to a safe distance," he said. "There isn’t much time."
"I’m begging you to leave, Eamonn," Chloe said. "Parker, tell him to stop."
His radio returned silence. Eamonn smiled. Parker understood finally what was to be done.
Ten seconds.
"You were the best crewman I have ever had, Parker. Don’t ever lose hope in the Alliance. Because the Alliance is you."
The last thing Eamonn saw was a brilliant flash of white light. And then…
Parker gazed in disbelief—the wide sweep of explosions across the freighter’s hull, the blaze of vivid color, the sea of debris kicking away from the freighter, the glittering metalor bloom, and the memories of his friend passing before his eyes. It was in front of him, and he was helpless.
Then something no one anticipated happened. The bridge crew gasped in surprise. The metalor rushed toward the atmosphere as if it was searching it. The cloud of metalor entered the atmosphere rapidly, igniting on contact. Everything within the immediate area was lit with a brightness akin to the sun. An orange-white flare leaped and danced around, licking the ships in lower orbit, but the ships didn’t burst apart or melt away. Instead, they rocked gently as if they were lapping against the shoreline of a great sea, and all the while, the metalor continued to pour out of the great fissure in the freighter, fueling the fires within the upper atmosphere over the great colonies of Aethpis and Zephyria. The sight was awesome.
Parker felt a tug against his arm. He turned.
"Come on. We have to leave," Sarah said. "The hidden MSA fleet has arrived and has already destroyed much of the remaining Alliance ships. The MSA forces are seeking revenge for our victory."
Parker looked over at Hannah. Already she signaled her bridge crew to find an escape pod. He rushed across the bridge to the escape pods, and then noticed Hannah wasn’t following.
"Hannah, you should come with us."
"I can’t leave the ship. It isn’t right for a captain to leave a ship."
Parker nodded for Sarah to enter the escape pod. He stepped up to Hannah. "This isn’t your ship, remember."
"Semantics. Come now, Mr. McCloud." She smiled at him wryly.
"Sarah was right in one part of her speech earlier. The Alliance needs you as a leader. We have struck victory today. Eamonn has already martyred himself. Don’t be as foolish as he was. You can escape with us. The MSA forces are coming."
Wham! The bridge shook again. A spark ignited a plasma fire at the back of the bridge.
Parker moved over to Hannah. "Come now. You don’t want that fire to consume you. The nobility you feel is simply vanity. Eamonn gave up on the fight for freedom. Don’t end up like him. You still have the fire within you."
"Our fleet has been destroyed. The Alliance is dead."
Parker looked at her with a confident gaze in his eyes. He realized the Alliance’s failure up until this victory. "We can’t win this war with starships and megaweapons. We have to win it in the minds of the people. Your broadcast, our victory, Eamonn’s sacrifice…it will add to our cause. The Alliance has been reborn from a war machine into an idea. I can feel it."
"You’ll help me," she said. "I can’t do this alone. You’re a hero."
"I have always been helping you, Hannah Rohen."
"Come on!" Sarah screamed from the entrance of the escape pod.
Parker looked once again toward the freighter and Mars. The fountain of fire had stopped. The metalor supply was gone. All destroyed. Their mission had been successful indeed. Yet he felt no joy. Instead, he frowned, thinking of Eamonn and his sacrifice. He had been a great captain and a greater friend. The war had taken another loved one.
He saluted the viewscreen, hoping Eamonn had been scattered across Mars with the metalor. Though he wouldn’t have thought it possible, he smiled. That would be a fitting tribute.
He followed Hannah into the escape pod, set a course for Castor and Pollux, and jettisoned away.
Chapter 27
Standing with his feet a shoulder width apart, Seth looked as the fireworks high in the upper atmosphere over Zephyria trickled down toward the surface. He was sullen as he watched through his binoculars the MSA turning into dust. The Alliance had pulled out a victory in the face of defeat. Even if the holotube showed the destruction of the final Alliance ships, he knew the loss of the metalor was a huge blow to the MSA’s hold on the planet, and the Alliance knew it as well. The riots had started in Aethpis already. Trivium Port and Zephyria wouldn’t take long to follow suit. This unexpected defeat had energized the Alliance sympathizers into another rebellion.
Seth clenched his teeth as he thought about the MSA’s sloppiness with the Alliance. For months, the Alliance’s existence had created a simmering turmoil and paralysis within the colonies’ leaders. Gwen and Samantha never fully capitalized on the control they had over the people, a control that had begun to slip away, because he had left Eamonn and Parker alive.
On Orcus, he had wanted to destroy the entire Alliance with one grand swoop of his fist. Instead, he tried to save Chloe, causing the Alliance to slip through his fingers. Now, the MSA had lost its metalor shipment to the Alliance, short-circuiting any hope of the MSA finally gaining enough control over Mars to make their reign permanent. His compassion was his weakness; never again, though.
He lowered the binoculars, unable to watch any longer. He turned away from the window and deactivated the holotube. He welcomed the silence. He had to think of the next step for himself. Gwen was no longer a path to cure Chloe’s disease.
Somehow, he needed to find control again, and that meant only one person: Samantha Burns.
Outside Zephyria colony, an updraft of planitia air surged over the top of the cliff and across the small hills, sending a chill through Chloe Jones as she stepped from her starwing. I should have landed closer to Zephyria colony, she thought, fighting to cover herself with the light coat she had found in the emergency compartment of her starwing.
The patrols thickened through the air, so she played it safe and landed on the southern edge, some three kilometers from the colony.
Zephyria colony was dark, only seen when the glittering lights of the patrol ships swung too close. With an effort, she leaned against the wind and continued toward it, trying to avoid the thoughts of what was to come.
Secretly, leaving Parker and the rest of the Alliance to finish their fight, she flew her starwing through the brilliant blaze of the metalor explosion, directly toward Zephyria. Seeing Eamonn die, she didn’t want to exist
another minute without Seth. She needed the emotional anchor he provided for her. Parker, Eamonn, and the rest of them weren’t strong enough. It didn’t matter how she lived anymore, as long as she was near him.
The brilliant flash of metalor swirling through the upper atmosphere was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. She felt something joyous from it. Even still, as she walked across the barren land with the jagged stones crunching beneath her feet, the tingling of pure joy trickled into her lungs with each unfiltered breath. Her breathing mask that was attached to her hip hadn’t moved. The Martian atmosphere had been transformed for her, and she hoped it wasn’t just localized. Even with such hope, she doubted everyone else felt what she was feeling. The constant headache she had endured for the past month had subsided. The ecstasy of the metalor rain numbed it. Only joy remained.
The whine of a ship’s engine shrilled from behind her. Chloe spun, drew her sonic pistol, and stopped a quarter of the way around. An MSA patrol fighter swooped toward her.
She ran with urgency.
The MSA patrol fighter jetted past her, only a hundred meters above. As its spotlight reflected from the surface back toward the fighter, she saw its silvery bottom, before the glare from the backwash enveloped it. She couldn’t be sure, but she thought she had avoided it. It was more interested in the shiny reflection of her starwing.
After a good-paced jog for five minutes, she came to a rock formation, reaching up like fingers into the air, obstructing much of the way in front of her. It presented a way to stop to avoid the patrols circling over her head. She ran inside.
After a short wander around the massive boulders, she stooped to one knee by a series of large boulders to consider her next move. Her breathing turned quick and short. The cold breeze from the planitia subsided, and the draining cold of the rocks replaced it.
She didn’t dare sit for long.
She continued on, lulled away from the instinct to hide. The MSA patrols swooped back and forth over the rocks. She muttered a curse, hoping they didn’t see her. But looking at the pattern of their maneuvers, she found it unlikely they were patrolling this spot for the fun of it. They must think she was around.
She crouched and then ran with her knees bent and her back almost parallel to the ground. The zip and swoosh of the MSA patrol fighter screamed over her head. Her heart pounded faster and faster. She was the hunted. It didn’t scare her, though, because she had been in a horrendous battle only an hour before. Until the end of time, nothing could be as bad as that. Besides, why fear what she knew would come? She would succeed because she would find Seth again, to be with him for the rest of her life, no matter what the consequences were. Destiny guided her now.
The rock formation caused her to fight her inattentive state. Jutting mounds clipped her hip, jagged daggers carved her shoulder, and after three or four good thumps to the head, she slowed to a safer pace, betting on the fact that the MSA patrols hadn’t spotted her yet. They slid farther and farther back toward the starwing. She was wrong about them locating her within this area. Her vulnerability made her feel bare.
A light breeze brushed her face, and she took her eyes off the sky above her. Halting in front of a dark patch along the ground, she reached her hand out toward the ground and found there was nothing to touch. She reached along the side of her belt, retrieved the flashlight she had taken from the starwing’s emergency pack, and lit the ground in front of her. She discovered a straight drop off the Zephyrian cliffs in front of her. She took several steps back, realizing she had nearly ended it with a simple misstep. She dimmed the flashlight, turned around, and headed back deeper into the rock formation.
After a few minutes of walking, she came to the other side of the rock formations. The MSA patrols had moved away from her location and were aimed toward the discarded starwing. She jogged farther away, and the rock formation fell behind her. She moved faster now, swallowing her concerns as she stared into the darkness lying before her.
The ground sloped upward slightly and was covered with sand, pebbles, and countless fist-sized rocks. Past that, the fence around Zephyria colony stood. It was a two-meter-high stone wall with another three meters of vertical metal bars running around it. Each vertical bar was in pairs, jutting upward and coming to a point at the top.
She sprinted up the incline toward the fence and dove to the ground along the base of the stone. She swiveled her head, looking for any sign of danger. Nothing obvious showed.
From the base of the wall over the rock formations, she saw the darkness of the Martian night laid out from the colony into the horizon. The only disturbance to the darkness was the line of hovercars speeding toward her starwing several kilometers to the south. The patrol ships hovered above the starwing, pointing the way. Chloe hastened away from where the hovercars had come and sped along the perimeter. There wasn’t a sound aside from the stones crunching beneath her feet, the heavy breaths heaving from her lungs, and the low whine of the engines of the ships in the distance. None of it concerned her at this moment.
By the time she rounded the other side of the perimeter, she barely saw the MSA patrols around her starwing anymore. They had spread out in a search pattern. She knew she had to act quickly.
In front of her, the light from the Zephyrian domes slashed a faint blue light over the red surface. There has to be a way in, she thought. She knew the back of the colony contained the entrances for the maintenance facilities: sewage, trash, and construction services. Every colony had them. But they weren’t active tonight. As she peeked at the space above her, she got the impression they wouldn’t be for the remainder of the night either. Still, the faint twinkles of the battle flickered. The Battle of Phobos had caused the colony to lock down.
Reaching out with her mind, she tried to sense whether anyone else’s mind was present. There wasn’t a guard or a patrol ship in the area. The faint turmoil of the colony roiled with a constant din in the back of her mind, but it offered no help in getting in.
Compelled to move by unease, she dashed a hundred meters along the wall, distancing herself from the starwing. It was completely out of her view at this point. She stopped again to scan the area around her.
Something caught her eye. In the darkness, perhaps a half kilometer from the wall, the shine of a metal grate reflected back toward her. She hurried toward it, taking long, quick strides.
The grate was small and circular, perhaps a half meter around. She thought it might be an exhaust. She looked around the area for something more. It wasn’t logical to have this grate so far from the colony. Something seemed wrong.
She moved around a small hill, and to her surprise, a door was pressed into the steep drop of the far side. The door looked different from a usual one, though. It was square and about the size of a packing box. She knelt, using her hands to scoop away the sand and rocks that had built up beside it. A padlock looped around the hasp. She drew her gun and slammed the lock several times with the butt until the lock finally broke apart.
She cleared the hasp, yanked open the doorway, and slipped into the darkness of the tunnel. She hoped this led into Zephyria because there was no doubt she had tripped the activation alerts. As the surface of Mars couldn’t sustain her, and the MSA patrols thickened around her, there was no turning back.
"What do you mean, she is dead?" Parker’s eyes welled with tears as Sarah held her hand against his chest to soften the disastrous news.
"The metalor explosion consumed her starwing," Sarah said, looking away from him for a moment. Then her brown eyes came back softly to quell the wistfulness within his heart. "There was nothing she or anyone in her position could do. We lost many pilots in the backwash of the metalor explosion. She was one of them, and she could do nothing to prevent it. She died protecting Mars. There is no greater act."
He probed her with his eyes. "Maybe she landed elsewhere," he replied. "She wouldn’t communicate on an open channel, so she might still be out there."
"The MSA chatter indica
tes they found the wreckage of a starwing, and since you landed the other starwing, it can only be her."
"Why are you trying so adamantly to convince me about her death?"
"To comfort your worries."
"Comfort? Losing Eamonn and Chloe in the same day is anything but comforting."
"They were the heroes of the battle. The Alliance has to move forward to defeat the MSA. It needs your help."
"She is right," Hannah Rohen said from the other side of the room.
Parker raised his eyes and turned to her. They were in the same room as he had been in when he first visited Castor and Pollux. The dim room buzzed with movement. Half the occupants scanned the MSA radio frequencies, while the other half was glued to the holotubes.
From the chatter in the room, discord infected the colonies on Mars. As Parker had predicted, the Alliance jump-started the revolution. The MSA fist had clenched too firmly, and the silent rebellion began to squeeze out of it. The governmental complex in Aethpis had been overrun, and if the MSA reports were correct, the incensed mob had killed the MSA officials with a savagery born out of two years of oppression. The news reported it as savagery, but Parker saw the release of two years of pent-up frustration from the Alliance mobs. The MSA forces had sugar-coated their entire rule with bribes of credits and food stores. The Battle of Phobos showed everyone that fighting the enemy mattered, and fear was not an excuse to follow the MSA. The Principles of Man and their freedom were in jeopardy.
At least, the Alliance was alive in Aethpis. Trivium Port and Zephyria were a different story. The MSA controlled the riots and the mobs there. It would take more pushing from their group to overthrow the government in those colonies.
The only survivors of the Battle for the Alliance were scattered in a few fighters and escape pods. Parker, along with Hannah and Sarah, landed only a few hours ago, and more survivors were continually making their way back to Castor and Pollux. Parker estimated that perhaps half of the people within the Alliance remained alive. Those survivors had spread across the extensive tunnels under Castor and Pollux, avoiding the MSA patrols in the area. They were on the run, but Parker assured Hannah they were executing phase two of her plan, even if it wasn’t the same plan.
Lunara: The Original Trilogy Page 92