The Ruins of Mars (The Ruins of Mars Trilogy Book 1) (14 page)

     
Looking sideways at the handsome young man so close to her in age, YiJay whispered gently, “I don’t envy you. In going to the ground before the permanent base is done, I mean. Some of the ship-bound crew do, but not me. I don’t care about bootprints. I just want to be safe when I’m there.”

      “
Yeah,” he grinned. “Well, I don’t envy you either. Spending all day with Braun seems like it would get complicated after a while. AIs in general just confuse me. I mean, I like them and all. They’re just confusing.”

     
Turning from the window, YiJay faced Harrison and smiled softly.

      “
They’re only complicated beings if you make them so, Harrison. I could explain it to you if you like.”

     
Also turning his back to the window, Harrison made to shove off for the exit.

      “
Maybe some other time. Right now, I’m off to look over those ruins again: something I find less intimidating than Braun.”

     
Reaching up, he gave her shoulder a gentle squeeze, then pushed off across the room towards the open hatch.

      “
See you later, YiJay. Thanks for the view.”

      “
Bye,” she chirped, attempting to conceal her disappointment.

     
He’s probably going to see
her
, she thought sadly, touching the spot on her shoulder where his hand had been. Why can’t I be as beautiful as she is? Why must I be the lonely one?

     
Letting go of the handrail, YiJay floated slowly to her workstation on the left side of the large room. Wrestling with complex feelings of longing and regret, she reached her station and logged on to her flatscreen computer tablet. Deciding to immerse herself in work, she tried to ignore the emptiness left in the room by the absence of Harrison.

     
That ship has already set sail, she sighed to herself. Set sail for China.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Weathering a storm—April
2048

     
With little more than fourteen days until the completion of their journey across the void, Ship’s Pilot Amit Vyas celebrated his thirty-ninth birthday. Spirits ran high on board Braun as the crew sat gathered around the great center table in the galley. Conversations bubbled and flowed easily, and everyone seemed to have forgotten, at least for the moment, that they were farther from their families and friends than any humans had ever strayed before. Raising her drinking cup, Tatyana Vodevski tapped a painted red fingernail against the hard plastic side.

      “
Everyone please,” she said above the din of voices. “Please.”

     
Falling silent, the crew looked to their captain expectantly.

      “
Amit,” she started, in her thin Russian accent. “As they say in India, janmadina mubāraka.”

      Bursting into laughter at her obviously butchered pronunciation of the celebratory phrase, the rest of the members at the table attempted to follow suit in wishing Amit a happy birthday in Hindi.

      “Thank you, Captain,” grinned Amit as he tried to keep from laughing. “Thank you everyone.”

      Enjoying the festivities, Harrison sat with a wide grin on his face. Running a hand over his buzzed head he soaked up the jubilant mood as though it were sunlight. Next to him sat Liu, who was speaking in rapid German to Udo. Across the table sat Joseph Aguilar and Ralph Marshall, the first lieutenant and Lander pilot for the ground team. Marshall’s slightly sunken eyes and flat gladiator’s nose made him look almost unapproachable, but, in reality, he was a gentle and pleasant man. Now, as Harrison looked on, Marshall talked excitedly to the Italian biologist Viviana Calise. Making a show of whatever story he was telling, Marshall’s hands darted about mimicking the movements of fighter jets. Viviana smiled and nodded, but Harrison could tell, even from where he sat, that she had lost interest in the story.

      Poor Ralph, he thought. You’re barking up the wrong tree on that one.

      At first, like all of the men on the crew, Harrison had been instantly impressed with the beautiful and intelligent Dr. Viviana Calise. Her subtly flirtatious nature, coupled with her stunning looks and soft Italian accent were a deadly combination, which drew men in like a Siren’s call. During their last week at Bessel Base, Harrison had inadvertently cracked the mystery of why Viviana showed no interest in the advances made towards her by any of the male members of the crew.

      Unable to sleep, he had been up early taking a walk around the frigid dome, admiring its lofty darkness. Almost completed with his second round of the base, he had been approaching the crew quarters when, much to his surprise, he spotted Viviana coming out of the black British doctor, Elizabeth Kubba’s, room. Something about her nature, the way she lingered outside the closed door and leaned against the wall, had struck Harrison as oddly familiar. He had done that same exact thing before. Granted, it had been a while, but he had once stood like that: poised and needing to leave but not wanting too. At that moment, a myriad of subtle sidelong looks and offhand comments made perfect sense. Watching as Viviana reluctantly turned and left, Harrison had felt foolish and egotistical for missing such an obvious fact about the woman. Viviana and Elizabeth were lovers.

      Feeling a warm hand on his inner thigh, Harrison returned to the moment.

      “You’re staring,” said Liu in his right ear.

      Blushing, he quickly replied, “I wasn’t. I’m sorry. I was just watching poor Marshall.”

      Liu smiled knowingly, and touched the fingertips of one hand to her mouth.

      “Ah, yes.”

      The two watched as Ralph Marshall finished his story, then burst into whooping laughter. Viviana allowed herself a thin smile, then, with a gentle touch to Marshall’s arm, excused herself and turned back to Elizabeth. Fixing Marshall with an icy glare, Kubba narrowed her brown eyes until Marshall produced a nervous grin, then quickly faced away in Aguilar’s direction.

      “That could have been worse,” whispered Liu. “You should have been there when Julian made a go for her. Elizabeth almost bit his nose off.”

      “I heard,” chuckled Harrison. “But the way Julian tells it, it sounds more like a
ménage à trois
than a near-miss maiming.”

      The two laughed together, then locked eyes. Liu’s hand still rested on his thigh and the laughter died quickly. Feeling the tugs of desire fueled by the excitement of secrecy, Harrison flicked his eyes to the exit hatch with exaggerated rapidity.

      “You go first, and I’ll follow in a few minutes,” said Liu in a low husky voice.

      Making to excuse himself as inconspicuously as possible, Harrison disengaged the magnets holding him to his seat and started to slide out. Tatyana caught his eye and arched her brow, looking slyly from Harrison to Liu. His cheeks began to burn and he froze half-on his seat, half-off. With the faintest hint of a grin, Tatyana tipped her head towards the hatch and turned back to her conversation with Amit. Pushing lightly off the floor, Harrison glided towards the exit with choreographed ease. At the opening, he grasped the top lip of the hatch and swung, feet first, into the crew-quarters hallway. Drifting a ways, he reached for a handrail and stopped himself in front of the closed hatch to his small room.

      With the concussion of a bomb, a shrill siren erupted throughout the ship, making Harrison’s heart skip several beats. The soft yellow track lights of the hallway turned crimson red and strobed in time with the oscillations of the alarm. In sudden and stark contrast to the confusion and clamor of the sirens, Braun’s calm voice echoed above it all.

      “There are incoming projectiles on a collision course,” stated the AI as if recanting the weather. “Please don your pressure suits and convene on the ship’s bridge. You have five minutes.”

      From the galley, Harrison heard Captain Vodevski shout above the whining alarms.

      “Let’s stay orderly, people. One at a time through the exit! Remember your training!”

      With a series of metallic clanks, the twelve hatches of the individual crew’s quarters swung open with synchronized order. Ducking quickly, Harrison moved into his room, the booming of the alarms reverberating off the narrow walls, causing his head to ache. In the cramped entryway, a two-by-one-meter section of paneling slid up and into the wall, revealing a limp, white pressure suit hanging within the niche.

      As the rest of the crew began to stream into the hallway through the galley exit hatch, Harrison pulled the suit free from its magnetic hanger and began putting it on. Slipping his feet in through the open backside, he wriggled, with some trouble, into the tight garment like a pair of coveralls. As he fed his arms into each sleeve, the pressure suit sensed that he was fully inside and quickly sealed the open seam along his back. Long hoses connecting Harrison to the wall of the closet began to suck the excess air from within the suit until it was as tight as he could bear. Servo-powered gaskets tightened with audible hisses at his neck, armpits, elbows, wrists, waist, hips, knees and ankles.

      Reaching back inside the closet, he snatched out a white oval-shaped helmet with a blue visor, then pushed it down snugly over his head. Instantly, the shrieking sirens dropped to a dim hum, and Harrison could suddenly hear his rapid breathing within the cramped helmet. Pulling a ribbed sleeve up from the gasket at his neck like an accordion, he fastened it to the base of his helmet with a soft click. Twisting his head from side to side, he checked the seal, then reached again into the closet. Retrieving a small blue pack shaped like an eggshell cut in half, he brought it around awkwardly to the area between his shoulder blades. With the force of electromagnets, the pack shot from his grasp and engaged with its ports on the back of his suit. The hiss of flowing air added itself to the mixture of sounds in his helmet, and the condensation that had accumulated on his face shield quickly evaporated. Green writing flashed across the glass of his helmet visor, telling him that his suit was fully sealed and online. The ever-passive voice of Braun sounded in his ears.

      “Your suit is pressurized and fully functioning, Harrison. Please proceed to your seat on the bridge deck.”

      The hoses that connected his suit to the wall burst free and flailed, slapping against the backs of his legs as he pushed out of the room. Entering the hallway again, he saw more blue-and-white-suited figures emerging from their hatches like hornets from the combs of a hive. Unable to make out any faces behind the blue tinted glass of their helmets, Harrison could easily tell the women from the men by the swells of their breasts in the skin tight suits.

      Unlike the bulky pressure suits commonly worn by astronauts, the crew of Braun was outfitted with Tactical EVA Skin Suits. A newly developed design, the Tactical EVA Skin Suits, or Tac Suits, were created specifically for the mission to Mars, and thus outfitted with top-of-the-line technology. Instead of using continuous internal air pressure to push against the sucking vacuum of space, these new suits applied external pressure directly to the body. The powerful downward force exerted by the tightened suit ensured that the fluids within the human body stayed in a liquid state, yet allowed the user to move with more flexibility during extravehicular activities. This new method was jokingly dubbed, “astronaut shrink wrapping,” by the technicians at NASA, who gained much delight in watching the crew prance around like dancers in white leotards. When all of the air within the torso and limbs of the suit was forcefully sucked out, the neoprene-coated fabric clung to every curve and peak of the body, leaving no room for imagination. Networks of vein-like hoses crisscrossed the entire garment from the neck down, pumping temperature-regulating chemicals throughout the suit like blood.

      “Two minutes, Harrison,” warned Braun in his ears as he drifted towards the others.

      Swarmed at the hatch to the bridge deck, the crew were ducking inside one at a time. Harrison slipped into the bridge behind a rather buxom figure whom he guessed must be Viviana. Swimming to his seat, he grasped the side of the high-backed chair and freed the harness straps from their clips at the base. Moving into position, he slipped his arms into the limp harness and fastened the lock across his chest. Instantly, he felt the chair’s winch suck him down into the plush seat until he was anchored firmly. His station was located on the right-hand side of the room, second seat from the window. This vantage point allowed him the ability to see clearly what was going on outside the long oval-shaped glass. Also seated along his side of the room were Liu, Viviana, Elizabeth, Udo and William—the last of whom was nearest the big window. On the left-hand side of the bridge sat the command crew with Captain Vodevski in the lead, followed by Ship’s Engineer Julian Thomas, then the two Lander pilots and, finally, YiJay. Ship’s Pilot Amit Vyas had his own station dead center of the large room with a clear view to the giant window and an almost 360-degree bank of computer monitors.

      As the last of the crew fell into their seats and were held tight by the straps, the voice of Captain Vodevski echoed in their helmets.

      “Braun is telling me that we are all here and accounted for,” she relayed in a clipped tone. “Good work, everyone.

      Turning her head to fix Amit in a blue tinted gaze, she went on, “Lieutenant Vyas, are you going to take evasive maneuvers or allow the laser defense system to break up the projectiles?”

      Answering quickly, yet in a voice even enough to soothe a crying child, Amit said, “I’ll let the lasers have this one, Captain. Any evasive maneuvers I take will only alter our course and slow us down. Braun, do you agree?”

      “Yes, Amit.”

      “Very good,” barked Captain Vodevski. Then, “Braun, how many meteoroids are we facing and how large?”

      There was a short pause, then Braun replied, “At this range I am only able to detect those larger than two meters in diameter. Of that variety, I am detecting eighteen. There is a high probability that there are numerous smaller projectiles, but at this time I cannot verify that statement.”

      “That’s fine,” said the captain. “Everyone, we’ve all been trained for this, so just keep calm and we’ll be fine. Our systems have been designed—”

      Braun’s voice interrupted Tatyana’s in their helmets. “Excuse me, Captain, but the laser defense system will begin intercepting the first of the projectiles in three, two, one—”

      With a burst of eerie light, the inside of the bridge deck illuminated with dancing flashes. Even through the tinting of his visor, Harrison squinted against the thin hot lines of electric blue, which forked outside the ship’s window. With a pattering sound like that of hail on rooftops, broken shards of dissected meteoroid ricocheted off the hull. Swiveling around to meet one another, two sizzling beams intersected on a jagged chunk of rock some fifteen meters from the front of the ship. A small explosion of steam and debris blossomed in the haunting neon light as the meteoroid disintegrated around the lasers. Swiping like spotlights, more beams cut hot gashes through the meteoroid belt, which peppered the exterior of the hull with shrapnel that panged and rebounded off the gleaming white ceramic.

      Grinding his teeth, Harrison told himself over and over that the hardened exterior of the ship could withstand the merciless barrage of bullet-sized space junk that slipped past the lasers.