Defying Mars (The Saving Mars Series) - By Cidney Swanson Page 0,1
message that Mars would not starve. That while the ship’s captain, negotiator, and communications expert had been lost, the ration bars were on their way, safe in the Galleon’s hold.
Ethan would have been able to transmit the message visually or at least via audio. But Crusty and Jess knew only how to key in written messages. Personally, Jess was relieved that she wouldn’t have to smile or look solemn or whatever would have been appropriate. Crusty had insisted she compose the communication, as she was now the ship’s commanding officer. So she’d written and rewritten the message, never completely satisfied with the lifeless words; so cold upon the screen, so incapable of communicating the enormity of joy and despair she felt as she returned home.
Crusty seated himself at the communications station. He seemed to be feeling something as well. Jess watched as his large hands hovered over the panel, closing and opening several times as if he were contemplating performing a difficult surgery instead of merely transmitting a message.
When at last he sent the communication, Jess felt a hollowing in her stomach as though a part of her had accompanied the message of hope and loss. How would her parents respond? She’d promised to take care of her brother, but she’d left him behind. Her throat tightened. She needed to think about something else.
“Well, that oughta shake things up some,” said Crusty, gesturing to the comm panel.
Jess nodded. Tried to count backwards from ninety-eight by sevens to calm herself. I just want things to be like they used to.
“Bells of Hades,” muttered the mechanic.
Jess’s glance flickered to her brother’s station, where Crusty’s wrinkled face had folded itself into deeper lines of concentration.
“What is it?” she asked.
“If I didn’t know better, I’d say your brother sent us some kind of message. Looks like it’s been sittin’ here waiting for us to notice.”
Jess’s heart began beating rapidly. “A message? From Ethan?”
“Durned if I can make it out. Must be code.”
Her heart hammered within her chest. A message. From her brother. In code. He would have chosen an encryption within her ability to translate, wouldn’t he?
Clipping an audio-comm to one ear, Crusty swore and mumbled to himself while typing a series of what, to Jess, resembled end-marks and dashes.
“Morse code,” she murmured after recognizing the ancient form of communication.
“Yup. But it ain’t in no language I recognize,” replied Crusty. He diligently recorded the dots and dashes but shook his head in frustration as he tried to make sense of the odd words. “Something math-based, maybe?”
“No,” murmured Jess. Ethan would know Jess didn’t stand a chance with something like that.
Think, she told herself. Ethan was on a hostile planet. He’d only send a message if it mattered. But he wouldn’t have risked making it impossible to decode.
She remembered something—how her brother had admired the Navajo soldiers of twentieth-century Earth. Aloud, she said, “Ethan used to tell me about code-talkers. They communicated using a rarely-spoken language so that the enemy couldn’t understand their transmissions. I’ll bet you anything he’s using Marsperanto.”
“Nobody speaks that,” said Crusty.
Marsians, independent-minded, had tried using a language of their own invention during the years of war with Earth, but abandoned the tongue after a series of communication disasters. Better to be understood and alive than independent and dead, was the widely held sentiment.
“It’s just repeating now,” said Crusty. “Okay, I reckon I got it all down here. You speak Marsperanto?”
Jess shook her head. “Wait here,” she said. Running down the ship’s central hall, Jess punched open her quarters and retrieved her brother’s wafer-computer from its place of honor upon Harpreet’s bunk. She flew back to the helm and handed the device to Crusty.
“This is Ethan’s computer.” She paused as a wash of sorrow rolled past, pulling her under like breakers upon a Terran ocean shore. “Was Ethan’s computer,” she murmured.
“Your brother’s alive,” Crusty said with quiet assurance. “This is his wafer.”
She gave a brief nod and held back her tears.
“Well, alright-y, then,” said Crusty, grinning broadly as he found what he was looking for. “Guess who has a translation program for Marsperanto on his computer?”
Working together, they pieced together the encoded message.
When you walk through the fire, you will not be scorched, Nor will the flame burn you. So says Ethan.
Jessamyn looked at Crusty, her brows drawn closely together. The words conjured for Jessamyn images of consuming flames. Her hand flew to cover her mouth. “They’re making him walk through fire?”
Glancing at Jess and seeing how all color had drained from