“What happened?”
“The fire-spear went off. I didn’t hit him, but—” Her face fell as she looked behind me. “What’s wrong with your mother?”
I turned around. Mom was on the ground, on her hands and knees, panting. Sweat dripped down her face.
I knelt beside her, and with Adina’s help we got her to her feet. By the time we reached the ship, she could barely walk. She staggered into the airlock and collapsed.
“Mom!” I dropped to her side. She was burning up.
“We must… get off… this planet.” She struggled to speak through clenched teeth.
“Go, Noah!”
I jumped up, ran to the cockpit, and yelled for the computer to initiate launch sequence. I couldn’t sit down in the bulky EV suit, so I found a rail and held on tight. Three minutes later we were rocketing toward the blackness of space.
The shipboard computer located a vessel fleeing Martian space that matched Haon’s. I told the computer to follow, then engaged autopilot. I climbed out of the suit into my magchair and went to find Mom.
She was lying in a bed in the rear quarters. Her body writhed in pain—her face was bright red. She moaned while tears streamed down her cheeks. Obadiah, somehow sensed now wasn’t the time for greeting us with his usual licking. He sat watching Mom, his hound eyes mirroring the fear I felt.
“I don’t know what’s happening to her.” Adina stopped peeling off her EV suit long enough to glance at me, her eyes wide with fear. I moved to Mom’s side and grabbed her hand.
“What’s wrong?”
Her eyes were squeezed shut, but she opened them long enough to find my hand and pull it toward her face. Then she placed it on her head.
“Of course!” Now I remembered what Dad had said. “The neuro pain inducer.”
I headed for the ship’s workshop. Once there, I tore open every drawer and cupboard until I found an Electronic Chip Locator—just like the one Sam had used a few days ago. I grabbed it and rushed back.
“You’ll have to hold her still, Adina.”
I knelt at Mom’s side. “Hope this works.” I flicked the switch but nothing happened. I shook it and held it near the neuro implant at the base of my skull. Wait—what if I fried my own chip? The ECL beeped and I yanked it away from my head.
“Okay, hold her still.”
Adina cradled Mom’s head in her lap and draped her arm over her chest, pressing down. I brought the silver box to her forehead and slowly moved it around. The beeping began. As I moved it around the beeps grew closer and closer together until finally it was one long tone.
“Intel neuro-transceiver chip located. Modified code structure.” The box spoke in a clear, female voice. “Please choose from the following options: Display specifications. Disable chip. Cancel.”
“Disable! Disable!” I yelled.
Mom groaned.
“Are you sure you wish to disable the Intel neuro-transceiver chip? Yes or no?”
“Yes!”
“Disabling Intel neuro-transceiver chip.”
The screen brightened. For a few seconds the tone continued, then it stopped. Mom quit shaking. Adina looked up at me, her face wet.
“I think we got it,” I said. “Thank you, Sam.”
Mom closed her eyes and drifted off—one hand still holding Obadiah who had snuggled onto her lap. Mom’s other hand opened and a bluish crystal floated free. I pulled it out of the air.
“A data crystal.”
“You don’t know how good it is to see you, Noah.”
I held Mom’s hand while she struggled to unbuckle the straps holding her in bed.
“Where are your brother and sister? Are they safe? Did Hamilton make it out of the compound okay?”
“They’re safe.” I held on to the bed frame. My body floated behind me in the zero-g of space. “And so is Dad.”
Relief flooded her face. “Oh, that’s good news.” She looked around the room. “We’re in space? Are we moving?”
“Yeah, we’re moving.” I realized there’d be no keeping her in bed.
“Where are we headed?”
“Earth.”
“I wish we were in the Morning Star, she might be able to beat him, but the DUV III…”
Her voice sounded urgent. And she looked frightened.
“What’s going on, Mom?”
She looked at me for a long moment. I had no idea what she was going to say, but I was afraid to hear it.
“Haon’s headed to Earth to unleash the nano-bomb I created. He’ll destroy everything we’ve worked to build over the last twenty-five years.” She patted her pockets. “The crystal?”
I held it up between my thumb and forefinger.
Relief flooded her face. “I managed to get a copy of the blueprints for the nano-virus.” She reached up and I handed her the crystal.
“So we can stop him?”
She sighed. “I just don’t know. We have to catch him first.”
Adina cleared her throat from the doorway. Mom looked up.
“I’m sorry, what was your name again?”
“Adina, ma’am.”
Mom wrinkled her nose. “Please, call me Hannah, or Mrs. Zarc, but definitely not ma’am.”
Adina smiled. “As you wish… Mrs. Zarc.” She floated over with a clear box of sliced fruit in her hand.
“If you don’t mind me asking, ma—Mrs. Zarc, when are we going?”
“When?”
“I mean, what time will it be on Earth?”
“I think she’s trying to ask when we’re jumping to.” I glanced over at Mom. “Adina’s from Earth, 8500 BC, where you and Dad were.”
Mom’s eyes widened. “What are you doing here?”
“It’s a little hard to say. I mean…” Adina looked at me for help.
“I brought her here. She was going to die, and I saved her.” I gave my mom a pleading look. She glanced from me to Adina and back.
“I see. Well, I can certainly tell there’s a tale there, but it’ll have to wait. We need to locate Haon’s ship.” She sat up. Only the belt around her legs was still buckled. “Have we reached orbit?”
“We’ve cleared Mars’ gravitational pull. Want me to lock in coordinates? For what time?”
“We won’t be jumping. If we jumped now, we’d risk missing him, and I have no idea if he plans to jump at all.” She looked toward the window. “Where’s your father? Is he here in orbit around Mars?”
I flushed. “As far as I know he’s back where we left him, orbiting Earth in 8500 BC.”
“What do you mean as far as you know? Where did he tell you he’d be? For that matter, why didn’t he come himself? I can’t believe he sent you and Adina alone.”
She looked at me, waiting for an answer. I stared at the ground.
“Noah.” She folded her arms. “What did you do?”
“I… I took the DUV III.” I glanced at Adina. “He was going to take Adina back to where she came from. He didn’t let us tell our side of the story. He wasn’t being fair.”
“Noah James Zarc, that doesn’t sound like the whole story.”
I knew Mom was mad now.
“So you just took off in the DUV III, jumped eleven thousand years into the future and flew to Mars where you knew Haon was and put yourself and your friend in mortal danger because you thought your father wasn’t being fair?”
When she talked without stopping for a breath, I knew she was really mad.
“But Mom, Adina would die if we took her back.”
“I’m sure your father wouldn’t let that happen.” Mom’s face was red, but she looked at Adina, then back at me, and took a deep breath. “There’s nothing we can do about it at the moment. Once this mess is over, I’ll hear the whole story, and then your father and I will decide what’s to be done with you—both of you.
She watched us for a moment. The soft hum of the ship’s engines the only sound.
“Now, let’s go see if we can confirm Haon is really headed for Earth.
”
I glanced over at Adina, who shrugged her shoulders slightly. We helped Mom unbuckle and pushed ourselves toward the cockpit.
Once we were all strapped in our seats, Mom said, “Computer, are you still tracking that ship?”
“Affirmative. It is on an intercept course for Earth.”
“Okay. Noah, let’s see what you can make this ship do.”
I smiled slightly. It wasn’t every day I was allowed to fly at full throttle.
“Computer, please route all available power to main thrusters.”
“Would you like me to bring life support systems offline in unused portions of the ship?”
I glanced at Mom, who nodded.
“Yes, please. Then bring thrusters up to full power in a three-minute burn.”
Mom called Obadiah over and lifted him up on her lap.
“Fire when ready,” I said.
“Initiating full-power burn now.”
The ship rocketed forward and smashed us back into our seats. For three long minutes, none of us could move while the DUV III accelerated to speeds beyond anything I’d ever experienced. When the ship reached one point two million kilometers per hour, I looked at the charts.
“I’m not sure it’s enough, but we might beat Haon if he doesn’t push his ship beyond its recommended parameters.”
“It’ll have to do,” Mom said. “How long until we reach Earth?”
“Should be a little over six days.”
“Let’s hope it’s enough.” Mom turned to Adina. “In the meantime, you can tell me a bit about yourself. What was life like for you growing up? How did your people live?”
I smiled. Of Mom’s many areas of expertise, anthropology was a favorite. She’d love the chance to find out about ancient civilizations directly from someone who lived there.
“Cold.” Adina giggled. “Every moment of every day, you are cold. But after a while you get used to it. Sometimes, after a big hunt, we have fires that fill the cave while the women cook the meat. Then the temperature is bearable.”
I studied the two of them. Even though I’d known Adina only a short while, almost instinctively I knew she was someone I could trust. And by now I knew not to underestimate her intelligence—and her ability to see things in ways that I couldn’t entirely understand. Nothing like the image people had of cavemen.
“Did you live in a large social environment?” Mom was already writing notes on her holopad.
Adina laughed again. “I used to think so, until I saw Mars.”
I watched Mom. What about her? Could I trust her? And after living a lie for the past thirteen years, could I forgive her?
I remembered her writhing in pain on the Martian soil and realized I already had. At that moment she was my mom—no, she was Mom. Not someone who gave birth to me but someone who just was Mom, period.
She caught me watching her and raised her eyebrows. I unbuckled myself.
“Mom, we have something we need to talk about, but it’s been a long day.”
A flicker of uncertainty flashed across her face, then she smiled.
“Get some sleep. We’ll join you after I’ve picked Adina’s brain a little while longer.
I laughed. I probably wouldn’t see them till tomorrow.
“Computer, please bring life support back online for the rest of the ship.”
I glanced at Adina and raised my eyebrows. She gave me a small smile.
“Come on, Obadiah,” I said. My dog wiggled from Mom’s lap and floated after me as I left the cockpit.
I went to the bunkroom and lay down. I hadn’t slept for almost twenty-four hours, but I still felt wide awake. I’d learned my dad wasn’t really my dad, run away with a cave girl from the Ice Age, confronted my biological father, and rescued Mom.
What would tomorrow bring?
My dad’s face flitted through my mind. The sadness when he told me who my father was—the regret. Regret for what? I pushed the image aside. Meeting Haon, in some respects, was an even greater surprise than finding out he was my father. He wasn’t who I imagined at all. He believed in his cause—and he had a point. I had no idea if what he said about Venus was true, but I had seen Earth. It was so rich in everything Mars wasn’t.
The simple act of breathing on Earth filled me with energy.
In past ages, Earth teemed with life—animal and human. Was it so impossible for us to live together now that we had to set aside one planet for animals, another for humans? Did the Poligarchy really treat the people of Venus as less than human—less than animals, extinct ones at that?
I tried to imagine what Haon felt when his wife—my biological mother—died. The pain he must have felt. Had I reminded him too much of her?
The door opened and I heard Mom and Adina come in. I kept my eyes closed.
A short time later they were both in bed. Their rhythmic breathing helped to calm my mind, and I finally fell asleep.
The next morning, all three of us ate breakfast in the small galley. Well, all four of us. Obadiah floated between Mom and me, watching every mouthful. When Mom wasn’t looking I dropped some scraps toward him. He snatched them out of the air like a dog born for zero-g.
After we finished I quietly watched the majesty of space outside the observation window. Even at almost one point three million kilometers per hour, everything seemed so still. Mars had dwindled to just a bright red dot. Earth was still indiscernible from the millions of stars that filled my vision.
“I don’t understand why it’ll take us six days to reach Earth,” Adina said. “When we came from Earth to Mars the first time, it was only a matter of hours.”
Mom held a sealed cup of tea in her hand. The liquid sloshed around while she sipped from a straw.
“When you jump, you’re not only bending time around the ship, you’re also bending space. Time moves closer together, and so does distance.”
Adina said, “That makes sense, I guess.”
Mom raised her eyebrows at me.
“It’s okay if you don’t get it, I can show you with a handkerchief the way Hamilton showed me,” I said. “I’m still a little foggy on how the whole thing works, but I can get my mind around it a little better now.”
“I think I can see how it would work,” Adina said. “Once I believe that time can be bent it’s less of a leap to believe distance could be too.” She turned to peer out the window, like it was normal to understand advanced astrophysics the first try.
Mom sat with her mouth open. I just smiled.
The room was quiet. Sometimes it seemed I could hear a symphony when I watched the stars, but today there was only silence. Something bothered me about this whole business.
“Mom, why would Haon destroy Earth?”
“Because he doesn’t want our mission to succeed.”
“I understand that,” I said. “But what good is Earth if it’s uninhabitable? Doesn’t he want it for himself—for the people of Venus?”
“That’s just it. The nano-virus won’t destroy everything—only animal life. That’s what he needed me for. He had the virus ninety-percent there. He could have released it on Earth and wiped out everything. Nothing could have survived for another thousand years.”
“But not now?” I said.
“My specialty in micro-paleontology enabled me to target the virus to the DNA of non-plant life, then tweak it slightly to leave humans alone. Earth would become the perfect habitat for humanity, but no other living creature could set foot—” she stroked Obadiah’s head— “or paw on the planet and live.”
“And there’s nothing that would reverse its effects?” I couldn’t imagine life without animals, having spent nearly my whole life with a ship full of them.
“Not with our current technology. The nano-virus will infect all organic matter on the planet. It would be impossible to eradicate.”
“Then we have to stop him,” Adina said.
“Yes we do,” I said. “Whatever it takes.”
I grew more anxious wit
h every passing day, more convinced we wouldn’t make it in time as each minute ticked by. On the fifth evening I sat in the cockpit and watched Earth grow steadily larger in the viewscreen. Already we were close enough to see the moon, a tiny white spot in orbit around the blue sphere. One more day and I’d know if we’d caught up to Haon.
“Incoming transmission.”
“Dad!” I said. “Computer, bring it up on the screen.”
The holo-display flickered to life. I frowned. The grim face filling the screen was Haon’s.
“To the Poligarchy and all who believe the lives of animals are more important than those of human beings.”
I hit my comm-link. “Mom, get up here.”
“It is with great sadness I come to this action.” He actually looked sad. “I’ve spent the greater part of the past decade trying to be reasonable. Trying to come to some peaceful solution to the insanity that has beset the leadership of our solar system.”
Mom burst into the room. “Noah, what is it?” She stopped dead when she saw the screen. Adina rushed in after her.
“The Poligarchy leaves me no choice.” Haon stepped aside. A view of the earth filled the screen. It didn’t seem much closer than the one I saw out our window.
“Earth—the birthplace of humanity. The rightful home of humanity.”
He stepped back into the picture and held aloft a small vial. A green liquid beaded up inside.
“This is a nano-virus.”
Mom sucked in air between her clenched teeth.
“A self-replicating, carbon-based nano-virus, to be exact. This small sample has enough potency that within a few days after being released into the atmosphere of Earth, it will infect all organic matter on the planet.”
He shook his head sadly.
“This infection will kill any living creature, aside from human and plant life, now living or reintroduced to the planet.
“But there is still hope. At the end of this message I will transmit a document, a roadmap if you will, to avert this crisis and bring this madness to an end. The request is simple. All habitable parts of planet earth are to be granted, without reservation, to the people of Venus. We must move beyond this fantasy that humans need the animal kingdom. Humanity no longer needs anything beyond its own ingenuity. If you want your little zoo, maybe we could find some out-of-the-way place on the planet to set one up.” Haon moved closer to the camera, his face filled the screen.
Noah Zarc: Mammoth Trouble (Noah Zarc, #1) Page 14