by K. T. Hunter
Silence.
The bridge crew held a collective breath and gazed down into the blackness.
Dr. Pugh moaned, and his gnarled hands cradled his ancient face. "Oh, Christophe! Maggie! Gemma! My son! Oh, no, my son!"
~~~~
Christophe
"Elias, it looks as if--"
Christophe dropped the handset as the thin Martian air in front of them shimmered. A curtain of light unfurled from the top arm of the structure, but they were so close that he could not turn in time to avoid it. He started to bank, but instead he collided with the brilliant net at an awkward angle. The light flared, bright as the sun, penetrating the small craft with all its strength. The pain of it forced him to call out. He could hear Maggie shrieking and even stoic Gemma crying out his name next to him. The light burnt its way past his eyelids.
He was blind. They were flying blind. They were still in the air, but for how long?
~~~~
Gemma
Tentacles that Gemma could not see supported her shoulders and legs as her harness fell away from her.
"I have you, love," came Maggie's voice.
Gemma blinked, awake at last, and tried to clear her vision of the lingering outlines of light -- outlines of images that could not truly exist. Her eyes still burned from the light, so she had not been unconscious for long.
"Be still," Maggie continued. "You just had the wind knocked out of you, is all."
Gemma could hear Christophe's muffled voice in the background.
"Yes," Maggie responded to him, "she is uninjured. She is awake, but groggy."
The images on her singed retina lingered. A rainbow of phantoms crawled over the cabin in front of her, but even they were starting to fade. Maggie cradled her like an infant above the floor.
"I believe I can stand now, Maggie," Gemma said with a shaky voice.
"Careful," Maggie warned as she lowered her to the deck. "We are not level. Christophe and I are fine, though. I believe the Iron Wind was our only true casualty." She retrieved one set of knitting needles from behind a broken control panel and worked them for a moment before realizing that they were empty. The yarn had slipped off them and rolled out of sight. She gnawed on the tip of one of them as she said, "Christophe is aft, checking on our supplies."
Gemma balanced as she stood on her own. There was enough of a tilt that she had to pay attention to her stance, but that was all. She turned to the viewport and saw only the wall of rock that had ended their journey so suddenly.
Gemma rubbed her collarbone, which she knew bore marks from the force of the harness keeping her from flying out of her seat.
"What is working?" she asked. "Can we still contact the Fury? Perhaps we can think of something. If we still have the extra supplies that Wallace--"
"Mark down the radio as the second casualty," Christophe said as he made his way down into the main cabin. He fidgeted with a large-barreled pistol in his hands. "Even the redundant unit is shot." He looked down at her with world-weary eyes. "I am happy to see you are uninjured. I wish I could say the same for our long-term prospects. Even if we could signal the ship, there is no way they could fetch us from the surface."
"Maggie," Gemma asked, "can you contact Pugh?"
"I have been trying, but I can get no answer. Same with Elsa and Caroline. It is as if they aren't there. I have never done it from this far away before, though, so I am not sure what that means."
"Keep trying," Gemma said. "If you can contact them, perhaps the Fury can convince the Orestes to get here and use their dropship."
Christophe flashed her a weary smile, and for a moment, he was the lad in the Gardens again. "You never give up, do you?"
"It's not over 'til it's over, Captain." She nodded at the pistol, visions of Cervantes joining the fading lights dancing on her retina. "I don't think it's yet time for that."
He gazed down at the weapon. "Oh! Flare gun. I thought I might use one of the pressure suits and have a run out. We need to see if we can at least let the ship know we're alive. It's not very powerful, and they may not see it, but so far it is all we have. Not exactly a lot of wood about for a large bonfire or any of the usual Robinson Crusoe solutions."
"We should wait for nightfall," Gemma said, trying to still the shakiness in her voice. "And for when they pass over us, to give us the best chance... perhaps we'll see their running lights overhead."
He set the flare gun aside and peered at his watch. "I'm not sure if we will see them, but we can look. I believe it will be sunset before too long, and they should be passing over this area not long after that." He took her hand and then took one of Maggie's tentacles. "I'm sorry, ladies. I should not have led us down here without a backup plan."
"It was my idea."
"And it was my call. I'm the captain." He slumped. "Was the captain. Pritchard is in charge now, and his duty is to do what's best for the Fury."
Gemma swallowed the sudden panic that threatened to shake her to pieces. Terror would serve no purpose now. Brightman had ground that into her over a lifetime.
One bright thought outshone the dread that hung over her like a thundercloud: she was as far away from Brightman as she could possibly get. At least she did not have to deal with that particular horror. Gemma would rather face an entire horde of Martian machines than take on one more mission for that monster.
The thought buoyed her. There were still Girls under the woman's control. Gemma had to get back. She would not die in a boat, like the Lady of Shalott. She would live, and she would break Brightman's curse. She had to free them, the way she had been freed, free them to see a larger world. Free them to seek their own destinies rather than continually nick secrets in the service of another. Free to seek the stars themselves, if they so desired.
"Let us suit up, then," Gemma said. "I will go with you. As ship's geologist, I have a duty to collect some samples. Surely we have time for that, Captain."
He gave her hand a squeeze and then led them all aft to the small airlock. He opened a storage locker that contained two heavy suits. Gemma's eyes widened as she examined each piece, from the massive gloves to the copper clad helmets to the strange backpacks that were to supply them with air in the thin Martian atmosphere. They were far more complex than the ones they had worn on Launch Day.
"They are based on designs we found on the Nautilus," Christophe said. "Slightly upgraded, of course. The original ones were for underwater use, for great external pressures. We have the opposite problem here. But we should be able to make short jaunts out of the ship before--"
Maggie waved his words away with one tentacle as she helped Gemma shoulder her way into the smallest of the suits.
"There isn't one for me, of course," Maggie interrupted. She pointed at her own bulk. "I don't believe I will need one. I believe whoever designed this body in the first place did so with multiple environments in mind."
"I agree," Gemma said. "Still, you do have some active Human Code in there. Your eyes, for example, are not like theirs. Not sure how they'll respond to the lower pressure."
"Yes," Christophe said as he holstered the flare gun into the suit's belt. He picked up the helmet and aimed it for his head. "Let us check things out first, and we will see if it is safe for you, mum."
He retrieved a brass-encased block of instruments from the closet. A barometer and a thermometer gleamed alongside several other sensors on its front panel. "Are you going to be all right alone?"
"Of course. I am never truly alone. And, as Emily Dickinson would say, 'I dwell in Possibility.'"
Maggie helped him settle the helmet into place and activated the magnetic locks that would hold it on through the wildest of dust storms. She did the same for Gemma.
"Be careful, you two. I love you both."
Clutching a storage bag as a makeshift sample collector, Gemma followed Christophe into the small airlock and readied herself for more of the rumpled and jagged landscape. He reached for the control panel to open the door and paused. He
turned as much as the small chamber would allow the bulky suit to move. All she could see were his eyes, where a boyish mixture of pride and curiosity danced. He touched her hand, though she could not feel it through the glove.
"You are the first Terran scientist to set foot on Mars, Gemma. Even if no one but us will ever know, you are the first. We made it. Even if we never leave here, we made it."
She touched his hand back and gave him a warm smile. "And you are the first sailor, Christophe. Let us see what we can see, my friend."
As the door hissed open, Gemma looked down at the ground, concentrating on it so she would not fall. Even minor injuries could be deadly now. Still focused on the ground as she hopped down from the boulder beneath the craft, she saw what must have been the sole patch of green on Mars.
Christophe reached the ground ahead of her. He gasped with the effort of moving in the weighted boots, meant to keep them from bouncing so much in the lighter gravity of the Red Planet. She settled beside him and finally looked up. She gasped too, but it had nothing to do with her exertion.
The Red Planet was no longer Red.
Gemma gazed up into the first blue sky that she had seen in forty days, a sky so blue that she could have dived into it for a luxurious swim. Spires of glass and metal pierced that never-ending blue in the distance, and the world about them shimmered with living light.
This world was not empty, after all...
The adventures of the crew of the Thunder Child's Fury continue in Book 2: The Mysterious Planet of Captain Moreau. Coming in 2016.
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Acknowledgements
Writing feels like a very lonely enterprise at times, but no book is written in a vacuum. There are always people along the way to give you a helping hand and a lot of hope. I had so many people assisting me and encouraging me in my years-long journey that a full list would be a mile long at this point. A big hearty thank-you to everyone and especially…
My dear husband, T. D. Raufson, for making this dream possible and for managing the process with me.
My parents, Gary & Beverly Smith - thank you for always encouraging creativity in your children. You have always cheered us on and never, ever called any of us crazy for the artistic endeavors we took on. Thank you for encouraging us to read whatever we could get our hands on, whether it was the Bible or Jane Austen or Alan Dean Foster or our favorite comic books. You helped prepare me for this journey from very early on.
My patient beta readers: David Thurmond, Eve Taggart, Jeff Smith, Jason Smith, and fellow indie author K.S. Daniels. You are all awesome! I loved working with each of you on this!
Heather & Darold Raybon, Sam & Camie.
The Bromfield family (Chris, Lisa, Courtney, & Chris Jr.) and David & Robin Lawyer, for all their love and encouragement.
Author Elise Stokes, for checking up on my progress from time to time. You really helped when I was stuck in the doldrums!
Margie Cox (the idea for this book was hatched at your annual party) for all your encouragement and writing advice, Grace Moss, Jessica Moss, JaBarr Lasley-King, Jessica Smith, John "El", Paul Charles, Frank Hui, and all my friends in the Superhero Costuming Forum. Your creative energies are matchless!
Dr. Allen Hansard, for the use of his name.
My former co-workers (and still friends) who encouraged me to follow the dream.
Author A. C. Crispin - I took your writing class at DragonCon years ago, and it meant a lot to me. Thank you for all the beautiful stories you told over the years.
Thanks to Franklin Chang-Diaz for inventing the VASIMR technology, which served as the basis for the Oberth Engine design.
I am grateful for the many men and women who spent their lives, and in some cases gave their lives, to get the human race into space. I am especially thankful for Sally Ride, Ph.D., the first American woman in space.
Many thanks to Jules Verne and H. G. Wells, for writing the works that inspired this novel and have inspired generations of readers and artists.
And to you, dear reader, for giving my little story a chance.