by Jael Wye
She moved restlessly on her bunk. You’ll just have to stop this mooning, and figure out how to put relations with Cesare back on a businesslike footing, she told herself sternly. She knew Cesare respected her abilities, even seemed to find her somewhat trustworthy now. That was a start for a working relationship. They had made a good team during the tower rescue, after all.
She let her mind play over yesterday’s events for a moment. The tower crash and aftermath all seemed like a panicked blur to her now. She had never been part of an emergency response like that before. On the whole, though, she believed she had handled herself well. And everyone came through all right, which was what really mattered. But it had certainly been an adventure.
Was it only a few weeks ago that she was standing safe and secure on Eris, pining for some excitement in her life? What an idiot she had been. How blind to the hard truths of life on Mars. At least this episode with Cesare had opened up her eyes. She owed him for that. And her family owed him too.
She would put RedIce back in his hands, she decided. Then the debt would be paid off. And he would never need to see her or speak to her again. Which would be best for everyone.
She shut her eyes, trying to fight off the strange, hollow feeling in her chest. She reached into her hip pouch and touched the cool smoothness of the little diamond he had given her.
All at once, the low hum of the motors died. Bianca’s eyes flew open. The lights had gone out. She got up off the bunk and moved over to the cab as the rover began to slow to a stop. Frowning, she moved her fingers over the consoles. They were completely unresponsive. There wasn’t the smallest spark of life in the panels.
What the bloody hell? She tabbed her cuffs. They were dead too. All her comps were dead! She looked down at her sleeves in shock. Even her carbon suit was slack and colorless, its comp matrix fried. She fumbled around on the console, trying to find an emergency signal, but there was nothing. Her heart began to pound in her throat. She was totally cut off.
Then, she heard a low hiss. The rover’s airminers were shutting down, expelling the oxygen mix! She knew she could withstand a higher dose of CO2 than an Earther, but even a Martian wouldn’t last long breathing the toxic atmosphere that had begun venting into her rover. A terrifying icy chill swept over her as the temperature inside the cabin began to plummet.
In the dim evening light from the viewports, she fumbled to the m-suit lockers. She wrenched one open and pulled a suit out. It was dead. She pulled out another one. Dead. She began to shake uncontrollably. The medpac! There were emergency oxygen tubes in the medpac. She started toward the locker where it was stowed, but after a few steps, the darkened rover began to whirl around her slowly. She staggered. CO2. Affecting her already. Took a few more steps. Almost...
How could this be happening? This wasn’t right. She fumbled at her cuffs again. Nothing. She was completely stranded. Alone on the deadly surface of Mars.
She heard a choked sound coming from somewhere. Was she the one making those strangled sobs? There was a sharp pain in her hands and knees. She had fallen to the floor. Her hands blurred and smeared before her eyes. She slumped over on her side.
Her mind was shredding, drifting away bit by bit. Is this what the Earthers felt? she wondered. It must have been. But they had Cesare to rescue them.
She wished Cesare would rescue her.
Cesare...
* * *
He had lost the signal from Bianca’s rover. It probably didn’t mean anything. Just an accidental blip of the satellite.
It still made him uneasy. Her signal hadn’t shown any signs of faltering before, and he had been following it for a while now.
The Earthers had all left the hab right after they finished the last of the cleanup programming, heading for the train at the Huang Tzu outpost a couple of hours to the south. Cesare had taken the hab’s backup rover and set off down the road out of Noctis. But instead of taking the route to Anderson as he had planned, he had found himself turning down the road toward Pavonis. Driving faster than he should, trying to catch up to a certain rover that the traffic waves said was only a few hours ahead of him. Chasing after her again.
He would have to com her when he came within shortrange, and then... What would he say? He hardly knew himself why he was out here, following her. Hell. He’d think of something.
First, he had to find her.
He frowned, scanning the traffic reads again, but found nothing. Bianca’s rover had simply vanished.
“Fecking fried idiot,” he muttered to himself. But he was pushing his rover faster and faster, speeding toward her last known location.
He switched to visual, and began scanning the road for Bianca’s rover.
There it was, a dark and unmoving shape in the middle of the road. Something was very wrong.
“Bianca, are you all right?” he said into the com.
Not the slightest response from the rover. He pulled up alongside it and tried to engage the lock coupling, but there was nothing.
A sense of dread began to coil around him. He had to get inside.
He forced the coupling tube against the other lock, then lunged up out of his seat to open the door. He strode through the short walktube to the other rover and peered through the door viewport at the darkened interior.
In the dim, fiery light from the setting sun, he saw her lying curled on the floor of the rover, as if asleep.
He pounded a fist on the viewport. “Bianca!”
She didn’t stir. He had to open up the fried lock. Quickly, he forced the panels that jacked into the manual override. He had to get a jolt of power into the frame in order to open the micron seals. He slammed his cuff port into the jack and funneled all the power in his suit comps into the seals, hitting the open latch at the same moment, and praying the door wasn’t locked.
The seals hissed open a crack. He grabbed the edge, yanking the door open. A draft of terribly cold, thin air rushed out at him. He turned away, took a deep breath and then plunged inside. A few strides and he was at her side, pulling her into his arms. She was cold, still. Her lips were blue.
He got her up and through the doorway, got the door pulled closed.
He was kneeling over her on the floor just inside the lock, feeling for a pulse with numb fingers. There, a fragile flutter at the side of her throat. But she wasn’t breathing—
He covered her nose and pried open her small jaw. He covered her cold lips with his and blew in a hard breath, then pushed low on her chest to force it out again. Nothing.
Please...please... He blew in another breath. Under his mouth, he felt something deep inside her shudder back to life.
She flailed against him, gasping and choking as air flooded her starved lungs. He grabbed the oxygen mask from the medpac by the door, and held it over her face as spasms shook her. Her eyes flew open and she stared up at him wildly. “Bianca! It’s all right. I’ve got you.”
Her eyes squeezed closed again as her breaths came in great racking sobs. He would not allow himself to feel the relief that threatened to swamp him. He picked her up and put her on the bunk, and secured the oxygen over her face.
He saw her lips move under the oxygen mask. “You came,” she whispered. Tears ran over her face. Almost of their own will, his fingers came up to brush them away, lingering on her soft skin. Her black lashes fanned over cheeks that were too pale by far.
“Bianca,” he said roughly, “stay with me. You have to stay awake, Spacebabe!”
She nodded slightly, her breathing still harsh and painful looking.
He had to get her to a med station immediately. The closest one was probably at the water station at the far end of the Noctis reservoir, only a few kilometers away. He reached for his cuff.
It was dead. Both his cuffs were. He looked down at his forearms in astonishment, and saw that
he had fried not only his cuffs, but his carbon suit. The fabric was slack and lifeless. He turned quickly to scan his rover’s panels in alarm. The control comps all appeared to be functioning normally. He paused, thinking fast. Whatever gremlin had attacked Bianca’s rover must have passed into his cuffs and suit when he forced the lock.
He quickly stripped off his cuffs and stowed them in a pouch. He would have to figure it out later. First, he had to get them out of here. Every instinct he had told him that they were not safe out here in the open. He didn’t believe for one second that this was an accident.
He went to the controller panel, then turned his head to look at the slight, curving shape of the woman on the bunk.
“I’m getting us someplace safe. Just, stay awake, you hear me Spacebabe?”
Her eyes slid open, bright with tears, and met his own. Pain shot through his heart, and he tore his gaze away. “Stay with me,” he said roughly. He turned the rover in a tight circle and tore up along the glaze road to the water station, away from the last shreds of the setting sun, and into the thick darkness of the Martian night.
Chapter Nine
Fire
Javier swore softly as he watched the traffic waves. What had just happened? The rover from the RedIce mine had stopped for several minutes directly on top of the location Bianca’s rover had gone dead. Now it was headed back along the glaze road at a fast speed.
He told the mookies in the other rover to stay put while he went to investigate.
When he got to Bianca’s rover, he found it gaping open and empty. There was no sign of her body inside. He scanned the ground around the outside of the big transport. Nothing.
Feck. Now he would have to shadow the RedIce rover to find out if that chic was dead or alive. Another waste of time.
On the other hand, he mused, this could prove to be an opportunity. He might, just might, be able to get up close and personal with this job after all. As long as he could keep his puta boss from interfering.
He commed the mookies in the other rover. “You blokes head back to Pavonis,” he told them. “When you get there, report to the boss, and tell her it’s done. I’m going to relocate to keep surveillance on Chan.”
He barely waited for acknowledgement before he fired his rover.
* * *
She felt the rover tremble to a stop, heard the click and hiss of the lock engaging. It seemed too soon to be back at the hab, but what would she know? Her head was mush. Throbbing mush.
“Where are we?” she said. Her voice sounded dusty. She could feel her tongue rattle in her mouth.
“Water station at the reservoir,” Cesare’s deep voice answered. “I’m getting you to the med station. Come on.”
“Ay,” Bianca mumbled, and she tried weakly to get on her feet. All at once, she was being scooped up as lightly as if she were a length of spidersilk, and carried out of the lock into the tiny, freezing hab.
With a tap, Cesare extended a cot from the wall, and gently laid her down on it. Then he moved away, hastily upping the heat, collecting the med cart. Poor bloke seemed upset.
“You saved my life,” she said to him.
“Don’t think about that right now. Just lie still.”
“I’m thirsty.”
“Here.” He was at her side, holding a tube of med solution to her lips. She swallowed it gratefully, then shut her eyes again. Her brain was beginning to grind to life. And it had a few very important things to think about.
For instance; what had just happened to her? Easy question. All her comps had died at exactly the same moment, in exactly the worst place they could have.
Why? Harder question. Since the odds of something like this happening by accident were astronomical, it must have been purposefully done.
Now for the hardest question—Who?
There were only two people who had had the chance to slip a gremlin this clever under her firewalls in the last week: Cesare, and Javier Woods. Obviously, Cesare had not done it. Therefore, Woods had done it. Woods must have poisoned her comps when she had downloaded the compac into her cuff. The compac his boss, Victoria, had sent especially for her.
She must have dozed for a while. Bianca suddenly felt the chill of a monitor on her scalp, the prickle of a sampler/sensor on her finger. She opened her eyes. Cesare was nearby, bending over the med cart console.
“It was that compac Javier Woods brought,” she said. “That’s how the gremlin got in.”
Cesare straightened up, and looked over at her. By the expression on his face, he had reached the same conclusion. “Victoria must have sent him to... She must be trying to get control of StarLine.”
Cesare just nodded.
“Woods knew. He knew what he was delivering to me. He came to kill me.”
Her vision was still a bit blurry, but she thought she saw a flash of rage cross Cesare’s face at her words.
Another tear slid down the side of her cheek, and she pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes.
“Bianca, don’t cry,” Cesare said, his voice taking on a strange, almost desperate note. She heard him quickly move over to her, kneeling down by her cot. “Don’t be afraid. I’ve got you safe. I’ll protect you.”
“Thanks... It’s just, I’m not afraid. Not right now.”
“Do you have pain? Where does it hurt?” He bent over her, his hands circling her wrists like they were the most delicate glass. “Please don’t cry!”
“I’m not crying because I’m scared or hurt,” she said deliberately. “I’m crying because I’ve never in my life been so fecking angry!”
* * *
Cesare pulled her hands away from her face, and looked down into a pair of wide dark eyes glimmering with fury.
“Angry,” he repeated.
“Ay! They tried to kill me!” She struggled to sit up, and he moved back a bit, letting her. She leaned against the wall next to her, her chest heaving with exertion, or rage, it was hard to know which.
She squeezed her head between her hands, and said, “I didn’t know I could feel this angry.” Her lips and cheeks were rapidly regaining their natural red, her eyes sparkled.
He stared at her, nonplussed. She had just survived an assassination attempt, and what she felt was “angry”? Cesare himself was feeling a good deal more than angry. Everything from panic to guilt was raging through him right now, as well an overwhelming urge to hunt down Woods and kill him.
“I was always nice and polite and did what I was told,” she said. “I put up with a lot of shite from her, but trying to kill me is just over the line and I am officially fecking angry! She thinks she can get away with this. She got away with slave trading, so why not murder? But I won’t let her! She’s going down!”
He sat back on his heels. “Spacebabe, I think you just might be all right,” he said, breaking into a grin.
Her glittering eyes focused on him, and instantly the fury in her gaze shifted into something else. She looked away, blushing slightly. She muttered something sounded like “ice princess.”
“Don’t bother to ‘ice princess’ right now,” he said, his smile fading. “Save your strength for breathing.”
She looked back at him mutely, her expression vulnerable, searching. The cool mask she usually wore was gone, as if it had never been.
The sampler on her finger buzzed with another reading, nearly making him start. Blood proteins normal, it said. On her temple, the neural monitor said e-patterns were within range. She was bouncing back from CO2 poisoning much faster than an Earther would, thanks to generations of genetic manipulation by her Martian ancestors. She slowly plucked off the sensors and dropped them on the med cart he had pulled up beside her.
“Are you feeling better?” he said, looking up into her eyes from where he half-knelt before her on the floor.
He summoned up a grin. “No problem. I do it all the time.”
“Yes, I know you do,” she said softly. “You’re good at rescuing people.” Her brows came together in a puzzled little frown. “How did you find out I was in trouble from all the way back at the hab?” she said.
“I didn’t. I was traveling along behind you and saw your signal go dark. I came to check on you, and I found you collapsed.”
She nodded slowly. “Why were you traveling behind me in the first place?”
He shrugged slightly. “Chasing after you, Spacebabe. It’s what I seem to do, these days.”
“I’m glad,” she whispered. They looked at each other in silence for a moment.
Cesare cleared his throat. “As soon as you feel ready, we should start back for the hab.” He got up and grabbed a minicutter out of one of the tool cubbies. “But before we do, I’ve got to cut you out of your suit.”
She blinked “What?”
“Your seals are frozen. We have to cut them open. If we try to jack your suit in, it might contaminate the power source with the gremlin. So...” He held the minicutter up. She looked up at him, an expression he couldn’t decipher in her eyes. Then she nodded slowly, and tilted her chin to give him access to her collar.
“Go ahead,” she said softly.
Kneeling in front of her again, he began to cut, not letting the slight tremor he suddenly felt reach his fingers. The cutter buzzed, and the supple fabric began to part. “Sorry about this. But your suit was fried anyway.”
“The suit doesn’t matter. I have others.”