Defying Mars (The Saving Mars Series) - By Cidney Swanson Page 0,53

and determine which doors to open or lock next.

All the while he led Brian Wallace, Harpreet, and Kazuko Zaifa closer and closer to an exit.

Pavel, he felt less certain he could help.

But then an idea came to him. Perhaps he could play the door game upon multiple fronts? He rubbed his aged hands together, cracked his knuckles once, and set to it.

~ ~ ~

From inside the corridor where he was trapped with the officer in red, Pavel despaired. For himself, at least. He believed Ethan would be able to set the others free. But his little stint as an adventurer was about to draw to an end.

He was not happy at the prospect. But he was content that, among the five of them hoping today for freedom, he should be the one left behind. It would never have done to leave Kazuko or Harpreet behind. Jessamyn would approve his action. He smiled at the thought of the girl with red hair. And then he felt a deep ache as he realized he would never enjoy her approval. His aunt might not kill or imprison him (he really didn’t know), but she would certainly never allow him any measure of freedom again.

He sighed heavily.

The officer beside him stood suddenly to attention, apparently in response to something over his private comm. “Yes, Madam Chancellor,” he said. “At once, Madam Chancellor.” Turning to Pavel, the officer withdrew a pocket wafer, scanned his wrist across it, and handed it to Pavel. “Your aunt wishes to speak with you.”

Pavel lifted his cuffed wrists, indicating with an added eyeroll the impossibility of taking the proffered wafer.

The officer hesitated for only a moment before releasing Pavel’s hands.

“My dear Pavel,” said Lucca, staring at him in miniature from the wafer.

Her lips were an unnatural red and pulled back in what was meant, he knew, to be a smile.

“Aunt Lucca,” he said, voice flat.

“I am so looking forward to an extended … conversation with you,” she said.

“About what?” he asked.

“Oh, this and that,” she said, tapping her forefinger to her chin. “I will be eagerly questioning you as to your whereabouts, of course. And the identities and aims of your companions. One of them I believe I’ve met before. In Scotland, I think it was.”

He watched as his aunt moved during this speech, seating herself before what might have been a surgeon’s tray. That certainly answered for him the question of whether his aunt was kindly disposed toward him after his extended absence. Upon the tray, as she clearly intended, Pavel glimpsed a hypo-spray of Equidima.

Shizer! he thought. His aunt would make certain to use all means available to get the truth out of him. And he was useless under Equidima.

His pulse quickened, but he was determined his aunt should not see his fear. “I look forward to our discussion, Aunt,” he said, his voice calculatedly casual.

“Oh, I highly doubt that, darling boy,” said Lucca. She grinned once more, feral, and the image disappeared.

23

DEFYING MARS

Mars shrank in the view screen as Jessamyn hurtled through the planet’s shallow atmosphere.

What have I done?

“Crusty?’ she called out. “I’m not cutting this comm.”

Silence.

She checked her heading.

“I’m on a straight course to intersect Earth’s path in sixty-four and one-half days.” It was more of a curved line, really, given the constant tug of the sun’s gravity, pulling her relentlessly toward the center of the solar system.

Ahead loomed the Terran satellites. In moments she would leave them behind with her home world. “After Ethan and I get things fixed up, we’ll have to stop calling them Terran satellites, you know,” she said.

But Crusty made no response. She felt a wispy fluttering in her stomach.

“I’m really alone, huh?”

Silence.

Think about what you are doing, she ordered herself. A shiver ran through her as she rushed toward one of the satellites.

“Hello,” she whispered.

The words of Ethan’s cryptic message played in her mind: You shall pass through the fire and not be burned.

Then, from inside her helmet, sounds assaulted her ears. Jessamyn heard the cries of emergency services personnel: “Two down, I repeat, two persons down!” Her heart shrank.

But she had no time to agonize over Crusty’s fate. Abruptly, she had her own emergency. The Galleon’s monitors shrilled with the pips indicating detection by the satellite’s lasers.

She cut her comm to Mars and initiated a port thrust burn, steering her away from the closest threat. Another set of pips shrilled. She’d been detected by a second satellite. It was too late to go dark—could she make it past? She