“Rovers?” She practically spat the word at him.
“Not here,” Pip said. “This is a service way. I thought there’d be less chance of grunts …” he trailed off, his dismay at his decision plain.
Time to detonation: fifteen minutes. The calm mechanical voice spoke again.
“We gotta take our chances.” Aunt Essie pushed the bed towards the airlock. “Open–”
“Wait,” Rosie grabbed the bed and said to Pip, “How about Yuang’s ship?”
“It’s probably gone.”
“Without Yuang?”
He held her gaze for a heartbeat.
“If it’s there, I can fly it,” Aunt Essie said.
Pip opened the lock. Rosie couldn’t even have guessed what time it was, but it was dark and very cold and almost immediately her muscles tensed up against the chill. They shoved the bed out as fast as they could. Rosie kept a hand on her dad’s arm and felt the thinness of the air as she took a breath. Not enough oxygen. The alarm was spiking loudly and the bed jerked and rattled over the edge of a slab of crete. The wheels dug in as it hit a dirt path but her dad didn’t move. He was so still.
“Which way?” she asked Pip. A garden surrounded the Enclave and the looming mass of the Tharsis Mountains rose behind, cutting a shadow across the starred sky.
“This way.” Pip threw Rosie’s dad over his shoulder and led them up the path towards a light tower on a hill.
It took them nearly ten minutes to reach the landing platform. It was on the top of a hill surrounded by garden and the Cosmic Mariner sat, dark and closed up, above them. They were all suffering badly from the lack of oxygen, as well as fatigue. Pip was sweating and making an awful wheezing sound and Rosie had to support Aunt Essie up the last steep incline to the doors of the launch-pad lift. Pip punched it open and they crowded inside. There was a blessed blast of regulated air as the lift sealed and shot them up to the hatch.
The ship came to life around them as they entered the cargo hold. Lights flickered on as automatic sensors picked up their movement. The Cosmic Mariner was enormous. Seven decks, ion core, solar flare shielded, a long-distance cruiser. Strapped in web locks on either side of the hold were cases of supplies and a central runway led to a deck access lift at the far end.
The pilot and crew were nowhere to be seen. Maybe they were stuck inside. Maybe they were dead. Rosie didn’t care; she was already beginning to worry that Aunt Essie wasn’t going to be able to fly the ship. She was way too pale and Rosie had to help her onto a nearby crate. She groaned softly and slumped back against the hull, her eyelids fluttering closed.
“Aunt Essie?” She didn’t respond and Rosie looked with fear at Pip as he laid her dad down on the floor next to her. Her dad looked even worse and despair began to work its way up her throat.
“He’s breathing,” Pip said, but the expression on his face wasn’t hopeful. Rosie began to bargain with the universe. Please, just let them live, get us out of here. I’ll do anything. She kneeled down by her dad and gently touched his cheek. He was so feverish. So still.
“Rosie!” Pip’s voice was sharp enough to jolt her out of her misery. He grabbed her aunt’s shoulders as she slipped downwards. “Can you fly the ship?”
Rosie tore her gaze away from her dad’s face.
“I don’t think so. We’ve got to–”
“You’ve got to what?” a voice said. They both started as a tall black woman emerged from the launch pad lift.
“Nerita,” Pip said under his breath. “Ship’s pilot.”
“What you doing here, Feral?” she said to Pip and strode towards them. “I’m surprised you’re still alive.” She had a large gun in her hand.
“Just trying to get off this rock, same as you,” Pip answered.
“Uh-huh.” She eyed Rosie with her aunt and dad. “And who are your new friends? Haven’t I seen them before?”
“We need to get out of here,” Rosie said quickly. “The Enclave’s going to explode in about five minutes.”
Nerita seemed almost amused. “I’d say it’s more like three.” She went to a panel on the hull and swiped her hand over a bio reader. “And it’s lucky for you I’m here. You’d be going nowhere without these.” She waggled her fingers with a smile like a shark’s grin. Bio dent ignition. Rosie got a sick feeling in her gut. If she’d tried to start the ship, she would have been fried in the chair.
Nerita looked like she knew what Rosie was thinking. “Let’s get one thing straight,” she said. “The way I see it, Yuang’s gone missing and that means the ship’s mine.” She tapped the gun.
“Yuang’s dead,” Pip said in a low voice.
“Really?” She gave him a speculative look. “Didn’t think you had it in you, Pip.”
Pip tensed and moved as if to step towards her.
Rosie jumped to her feet and grabbed his arm before he did something stupid. “It doesn’t matter now,” she said quickly. “We’ve got to go.”
“Agreed,” Nerita said. “Pip, toss the weapon.”
His mouth thinned, but he pulled the gun from his waistband and threw it towards her. She caught it and looked at Rosie. “I saw you fly that pod – you’re coming to the bridge with me. Pip, close the airlock, then stay here and do what I say. Move it.” She motioned for Rosie to go ahead of her to the lift.
“You sit there.” Nerita tossed the guns down on a console and pushed Rosie towards a podium beside her pilot’s chair on the bridge.
“You know your charts?” she snapped.
“Sure.” Rosie climbed into the copilot chair and placed her palm on the bio interface on the armrest. Immediately, an opaque holo screen rose from the centre of the podium and a slim panel unpacked itself like an elegant spider stretching out two legs on either side of her. It lit up with touch-sensitive controls for navigation and ship functions. Rosie stared in apprehension. She barely knew what half of the controls did.
Nerita already had her bio link helmet on and an orb of amber-coloured holo controls sprang up around her.
“Good, we’ll–” Nerita stopped as a deep boom came from outside and the ship rocked hard. Rosie stifled a scream and gripped the armrests of her chair.
“View screen up,” Nerita said calmly. The front panel of the bridge became transparent revealing the Enclave slowly breaking apart from beneath. God, Riley. Rosie hoped desperately that he’d got out.
“Disengage the pad lift,” Nerita said.
Rosie swiped a trembling finger across the holo image of the lift on her screen, detaching it, and the ship rumbled as Nerita powered it up.
“Strap in, this could be bumpy.” She spoke through the ship-wide com so Pip would hear it. “Lift-off in ten seconds.”
A massive boom sounded again. The ship shuddered and the patch of trees they’d come through a few minutes ago suddenly disappeared as a hole opened up beneath them. But the abyss in the planet’s crust didn’t stop there. It kept caving in and the Cosmic Mariner began leaning towards it as the ground became unstable.
“Fire the ion thrusters,” Nerita said.
Panicking, Rosie stared at the panel. Where were they? Lights and control options were everywhere. The ship was oscillating with its gathering power then it suddenly pitched forward almost twenty degrees. The blackness of the massive hole rushed towards them.
“Rosie, top left!” Nerita shouted.
She found them and punched the control harder than necessary. A savage roaring came and she saw the fierce blue flare of the thrusters burn across the ground outside. The ship pulled back from the hole.
“Lift-off,” Nerita said and the Cosmic Mariner rose into the air just as the ground crumbled beneath them.
Rosie held tight to her seat as the ship clawed its way out of the atmosphere at full power, leaving a blast ring behind.
“Good job, kid.” Nerita grinned at her through the amber light.
Rosie couldn’t smile back. She activated the ground scanner so she could see Mars as they left. One by one the domes of the Enclave fell into the crater. The selfdestruct system had done its work well, destroying the complex in a thunder of dust and explosion. Streaming away from it in trails of light were the rovers filled with the test subjects the medibots had herded out. She hoped Riley was one of those tiny dots of life running to the Genesis colony.