Martin laughed and shook his head. “You work too hard. Has anyone ever told you that? Oh, wait! I’ve told you that, pretty much every week since we landed on this rock.”
Hogan offered a polite smile to let him know the time for chitchat had passed. Martin bent over his workstation again. Hogan reached for her keyboard and made a hasty list of the Dorito Village colonists.
No. Ares City. If she was going to do this properly, she had to approach the task without sentiment.
The very first name on the list stilled her breath. Azam, Trevor.
Hogan sat limp in her chair. How could she reduce this man to personal qualities and skills speculation on a spreadsheet? Even if she hadn’t been intimate with him, even if she hadn’t dreamt of his touch every night since, even if he hadn’t made that strange but delicious soup.
Her throat tightened, and she made herself drink more water. The knot in her chest sat directly beneath her breastbone, treating her to a dull ache every time she tried to take a deep breath. She reassured herself that her team doctor was right there in the room with her. She’d be fine.
But Trevor wouldn’t be. He would either die on Mars, or he’d climb aboard the return flight to Earth and live to try again, or try something different and wonderful—and he’d hate her for it.
If she forced him to go, she would wound his pride. But if she selected him to stay . . .
Hogan had never served in combat, the way her sister Dale and brother Jordan had. But she’d sent others into dangerous situations—she’d had to assess mission safety for cargo launches and for space walks. Space was not a safe place. Hogan hadn’t been unwilling to tackle the same work she might assign to someone else. But she had never had a responsibility like this.
She closed her eyes and leaned back in her chair. She had to take a break from thinking. She had to calm down and allow her body to settle and her mind to clear.
Her thoughts went immediately to Trevor. His dark eyes. The way his hands had felt on her skin, his fingers pressing into her thighs and hips, the way he’d stroked her breasts. Even the way he’d kissed her, soft and slow, unhurried and maddening. The knot in her chest started to loosen, and she smiled.
Maybe there was another way to convince Trevor to come with her?
She wouldn’t lure him under false pretenses. But he had responded to her body, just as she had most certainly responded to his. And it was more than that, wasn’t it? The way they’d bickered in the rover. The tension in the kitchen when she’d tried to lead him in dance. There was more to their connection than a sexual transaction to pass the time during a solar storm.
She wouldn’t be manipulating him if she told him what was really on her mind and in her heart.
Hogan opened her eyes. She’d go downstairs, get on the exercise bike or the treadmill, and sweat this out. She’d burn off the anxiety and stress, and then she’d make her decision. She drank down the rest of her water and stood up. She felt . . . Strange.
“Commander? Hogan!” Martin was out of his chair and moving toward her, alarm clear in his face. Hogan was puzzled by his behavior, until she realized that she was clutching the back of her chair and trying to stay on her feet. The room spun around her and a high-pitched whine filled her ears.
Martin gripped her shoulders and eased her back into her seat. He was talking to her and asking questions that she couldn’t make out. She caught individual words—pale, elevated, respiration, pulse—but she was having difficulty stringing them together in her mind.
She felt tears running down her cheeks. Why was she crying? Martin pulled out a syringe. Where had he gotten that? She felt him tugging at her jumpsuit as she slumped in her chair. Her vision swam and the pressure in her chest swelled. She was having trouble breathing. There was too much air, too fast, but not enough.
Miranda burst into the control room, chittering about some finding in her lab. But after an exclamation of shock, she was at Hogan’s side. Miranda was on her knees, gripping Hogan’s arm and saying her name.
Hogan felt a sharp prick in her arm and everything began to slow down. She found Martin’s hand and held it tight.
“Tell Grigori he has command.” Hogan swallowed hard and felt a stabbing pain behind her eyes. “And, tell Trevor . . . Trevor . . .”
Everything went dark.
12
“And you’re sure it’s edible?” Trevor stood at the kitchen table in Ares City while Yusuf and Miranda stared at the oddly green marinade he’d accidentally concocted two days prior.
“As near as we can tell, it’s safe to eat,” Yusuf replied.
“Well, that’s a relief.” Trent stood in the doorway. “Seeing as how I ate about a full pint of the stuff between yesterday and today.”
Miranda’s eyebrows shot up. “Did you really?”
Trent shrugged.
Miranda and Yusuf laughed. Trevor shot Trent a sharp look over his shoulder—because he knew Trent wasn’t joking. Trent had been rummaging around for something to snack on. Naturally, he’d hit upon the one container in the refrigerator with the words “DO NOT EAT—THAT MEANS YOU, TRENT!” scrawled on the side.
“Pretty tasty, too,” Trent said, ignoring Trever’s warning look. “It’s nice and chunky, kind of like a green salsa? It’s not bad with those little rice crackers. But you can also use it like a sauce, you know, over meatloaf and stuff. It’s spicy. Got a nice kick to it.”
Yusuf frowned. “You’re serious.”
Trent shrugged again.
“The hybrid looks to be highly nutritious,” Miranda said, turning her attention back to Trevor. “More nutritionally dense than the spiruliza we’ve been growing.”
Yusuf picked up the container of nuclear-green sauce and stared down into it. “And you made this here in your kitchen?”
Trevor gestured toward one of the Culinmates. “Right over there.”
Yusuf went to stand in front of the machine. “All that work we did cleaning out the bioreactors and the water filtration systems. And it still got through.”
“Well, this Martian-spiruliza hybrid got through, anyway. Life always finds a way,” Miranda offered brightly. “Isn’t that what they say?”
“And you’ve isolated the hybrid bacteria?” Yusuf asked. “You’ve got a mother culture secured away?”
“Daughters, too.” Miranda looked at Trevor. “Half of them here, for the colony’s use, and half at Progress Base—which we’ll add to the load we take back home, for further study. But we’ve already sent the gene sequence in the last data dump to Earth.”
Trevor couldn’t help the incredulous smile on his face. A hybrid bacteria—born of spiruliza and Areserichia aquaticus parents—had inadvertently been bred in his kitchen. It made sense when he considered how many casserole dishes and other containers had been shared between the two habitats, and how quickly A. aquaticus had spread from Progress Base to Ares City. At least this hybrid wasn’t making anyone sick.
Quite the opposite.
Trent swept into the room and picked up the container of sauce. “I hereby dub thee . . . Mars Heat!” He spooned some sauce into a bowl and started dipping snack crackers into it. “Can you imagine what this will be like on a burrito? Or french fries! Seriously, man, I’m telling you. We’ve got to patent this stuff.”
Trevor looked to Miranda and Yusuf. They exchanged a glance with each other, then both shrugged.
“Your discovery,” Miranda said.
“It’s not that simple, is it?” Trevor’s face tightened. “I think that might be up to Hogan. Or her superiors, at least.”
“Yeah, she’s not really . . .” Yusuf began, but Miranda elbowed him in the ribs.
“We’ll let her know what’s going on,” Miranda added.
Trevor didn’t like the way his stomach lurched now whenever he thought about her. He wasn’t the kind of person who would beg for attention, and he wouldn’t make up an excuse to solicit her opinion on something ultimately trivial.
But he’d seen h
er taste his soup and smile, and even go back for more. And then she remained silent.
“Yeah, doesn’t everything we do belong to the UN, or to Jack Street, or somebody?” Trent spoke with his mouth full of crackers. “There’s always someone waiting to capitalize on pretty much anything we do.”
Trevor looked at Trent so intensely that the younger man nearly dropped his bowl of green sauce.
“What?” Trent asked in mild alarm.
Trevor felt his features soften into a smile. “Trent, I want you to go get Leah and bring her in here, please. And grab your camera, too, if you don’t mind?”
Trent nodded, still looking wary. “Sure. But, uh, can I have some more Mars Heat first?”
Hogan came awake slowly. Eyes closed, she felt the heavy satisfaction of emerging from deep sleep as she stretched one leg out long and then the other. She pointed and flexed her toes beneath the fleece blanket. She took a long, deep breath, and then slowly pushed the air out through her mouth.
She blinked her eyes open.
She was still on Mars.
Well, that was hardly a surprise. She looked around the familiar compartment, taking in the small bedside table, the drawers built into the wall, the digital poster frame that displayed a dynamic photo of Niagara Falls. Hogan frowned at the moving image of water cascading downward in a violent display of gravity. She hadn’t chosen that view. Martin had probably pulled it up from the library of stock images. She listened to the faint sound of rushing water, but the only appropriate audio for an image like that was a massive roar.
Hogan reached for the tablet on her bedside table and scrolled through her poster options. Before she left Earth, she’d amassed a folder of more than two hundred nature scenes, so she could leave her poster feed on random and be pleasantly surprised each morning. Sometimes it was a rainforest in Costa Rica, or waves crashing against the rocky heights of Inis Mor. A couple of times, she’d awakened to sunrise views from the top of Mt. Fuji or an unnamed field of fresh snow.
Now she wanted something different. She dug into the habitat’s library until she found what she was looking for: a rotation of rainy day views of Portland, Oregon. Trevor’s hometown.
She cast her selection to the digital frame and then sat up to watch the succession of wet city streets, an ornate gate leading to the city’s Chinatown district, forested hills dotted by gravity-defying houses and clouds snagged in the branches of evergreens. She tried to imagine Trevor in these scenes—ducking into a bookstore to escape the rain, or sourcing ingredients for his restaurant at a farmers market.
Her smile darkened. He had deliberately left all that behind to come here, and now it was her job to decide whether or not to send him back. And if she left him on Mars, whether or not he survived, she would never see him again.
She felt a tightness threatening beneath her sternum again. She pressed her hands against the pain and took deep breaths, just like Martin had showed her. Then she reached for the small bottle of pills on the table, shook two of them out, and swallowed them down with a glass of water.
It wasn’t her problem anymore, though the squeeze in her chest argued otherwise. She’d turned everything over to Grigori while she got herself sorted out. The commander of the UNSC base on Mars couldn’t be having panic attacks, not if she intended to keep the mission on task and keep her people safe.
Whether she liked it or not, the colonists were part of that same charge. How could she abandon them?
She sank back into her pillow and closed her eyes. There was nothing she needed to do in this moment. There was nowhere she needed to be. Grigori had everything under control. And when she was ready, he would hand the reins back over to her.
If she was ready.
Her eyes startled open. There was little danger of her not resuming her command. But she imagined the mantle of responsibility lifting away from her until she felt an unfamiliar but compelling lightness. She wouldn’t have to do anything at all, if she didn’t want to. There would be repercussions back home, but she’d deal with that later. No one would be angry or disappointed or in danger due to a decision she’d made. She could step aside and let someone else be in charge.
Except she would never let that happen. So, as she felt the sedative loosen the knot in her chest, Hogan reached again for her tablet. She bypassed the duty rosters and local weather reports and went straight to her personal inbox.
There were messages from UNSC Flight which had been automatically forwarded to Grigori. There was some weird video Trent had sent to literally everyone on the planet under the title, “Mars Heat is the BOMB.” She saved that one for later. Then she saw the message that had come in the last data dump from Earth. It was from her father.
Hogan blinked at the screen. He never wrote to her. She tapped the screen and brought up his letter.
It was simple and straightforward and at least four paragraphs longer than anything he’d sent her before. It was about duty and responsibility and putting the mission first and all the rigid stuff about honor and commitment she’d grown up listening to from both of her parents. But the last paragraph stopped her cold.
Hogan, it took me a lifetime to learn that sometimes a soldier has to choose what is fundamentally right and moral and noble, and even put that ahead of duty. It’s not always easy to recognize that kind of decision point when it comes your way. Rules and regulations can’t answer every question or solve every problem. You are wiser than I ever was, and you have more heart. It sounds to me like you know exactly what to do.
She went back to the top of his letter. Yes, it was about her responsibility to her mission, but it wasn’t a lecture. It was a letter of support and sympathy, and it made reference to some “heartfelt message” she had sent to him the sol before. Only she couldn’t remember having sent anything to her father—other than birthday and holiday greetings and the standard, biweekly status reports she and her siblings filed with their parents.
Hogan opened up her Sent folder and there is was, right at the top—her message to her father, typed out while she was doped up on whatever cocktail Martin had given her to keep her from having another panic attack immediately after the first one in the control room.
She felt sick to her stomach, and it wasn’t a return of A. aquaticus.
Years ago, when she was on leave from the US Naval Academy, she and some of her Annapolis buddies had gone out drinking, and she’d awakened from a blackout to find her father standing over her and upbraiding her about personal responsibility—after she’d live-streamed a beer chugging contest on her phone. She still didn’t remember doing that, despite the damning video evidence.
Now, apparently, she’d done the same thing over text. She’d also sent that nearly hysterical, fevered report to Yan Kingsley that had resulted in her current quandary, no matter how many times she tried to take it back. Was she going to have to quarantine herself from communications tech whenever she was sick?
But instead of a reprimand, her father responded with compassion and concern. She reviewed the rambling message she’d sent to him, and her eyes welled with tears as she read through her plea for help. She’d told him everything, even the confidential information about A. aquaticus and the ill-conceived tryst between Grigori and Melissa. She’d described her admiration for and her faith in her crew, her longing for home, and the deep respect and growing affection she felt for one particular colonist—and about the terrible decision she’d been ordered to make.
But there were no options laid out, no either/or propositions she’d asked her father to weigh in on. So why did he think she had any idea about the right thing to do?
Hogan rested the tablet in her lap and gazed again at the moving images on the wall. She turned up the volume and listened to the sounds of the city beneath the steady fall of Oregon rain. She’d visited the Pacific Northwest only once, for a week-long symposium in Seattle on commercial advancements in terrestrial logistics to support long-haul space flight. But she’d never made it to Portland
.
She lost herself in the rain and felt a welcome tranquility seep into her skin. She breathed deeply and imagined she could smell the sharp scent of evergreen trees and the almost metallic wetness of the city during a rainstorm.
You know exactly what to do.
She had set aside her own wants and needs for too long, letting mission directives and reporting structures take priority. It was time for her to be selfish. It was time for her to follow her heart.
Hogan grabbed her tablet and typed out her reply to Eddie Coville.
The response Hogan received was quick and indecisive: Eddie was kicking it back up the chain of command.
This gave her some time to put things in motion, but not much. At least Eddie hadn’t tried to persuade her out of her decision—he knew her well enough to know that wouldn’t work. She’d expected her message would catch people off-guard and might even cause a few headaches. And she was prepared for the backlash that was likely coming her way.
First, she approached Grigori. He seemed visibly relieved when she emerged from her quarters and went back to her workstation. But his face darkened as she explained her plan to him. She wasn’t suggesting interplanetary mutiny, though she was going against her orders from Earth. But she was also paving the way for her crew to return home as dutiful, successful astronauts—if not as actual heroes.
Grigori wasn’t happy about any of it. Hogan had expected as much. But he trusted her, and technically Hogan was using her best judgment, just as she’d been directed. Several hours later, when Hogan informed the rest of her crew, Grigori backed her up without hesitation.
Over the following sols, Progress Base gave the outward appearance of business as usual, while Hogan privately fielded a flurry of video messages and official letters from UNSC as the matter of her disobedience was escalated from one level to the next. Preparing the habitat for the astronauts’ departure continued on schedule, but with a new sense of urgency that dampened the crew’s excited disengagement from Progress Base. The members of Hermes 5 rationed their food and personal supplies in order to leave behind more provisions—it wouldn’t make a huge difference, but Hogan appreciated the effort.
Mars Heat (Mars Adventure Romance Series (MARS) Book 3) Page 18