Martian Plague Read online

  Ozzy rushed to her. The sand blurred her in the red-out, but he was able to see her outline, and he bent down and pulled her to her feet. “Come on. We’ll be fine.” He could barely hide the lie in his voice.

  He pushed onward, stepping over rocks, flinging the dust off of his visor, and nearly falling into newly created pock marks courtesy of the red storm.

  Another slice carved into his dust visor and then another. He was losing what little vision he had. Soon, his visor would be nothing but white cuts, hiding the outside world from view.

  He twisted the knob on his helmet and flipped up his dust visor, exposing his anti-radiation screen.

  It wouldn’t last long.

  “Do you have visibility?” inquired Ozzy.

  “A little,” replied Jozi, keeping up with Ozzy’s pace. “Are we coming up on the storm shelter yet?”

  Ozzy didn’t know how to answer. One, he couldn’t see for anything in this storm, and two, his sense of direction was nil. Every footstep was a complete guess, and every ongoing stride was heading him to Mars-knows-where.

  “Just a little farther,” he groaned. He could be walking in circles for all he knew.

  “I can’t see anything now. Switching to anti-radiation visor,” Jozi informed.

  Ozzy wiped a thin film of sand off his visor, seeing something that resembled a rock wall. He reached forward, slapping his hand on the pillar. “I found it.”

  “The shelter?”

  Not exactly, but he expected if he went left or right, he’d find the opening they were looking for.

  He hoped.

  He took a step and tripped, slamming into a jutting rock. He rolled and banged his oxygen tank.

  Crap.

  He stood, and his helmet beeped. He glanced down at his forearm to look at the gauges on his suit. Again, he couldn’t see a damn thing. That beep could be from a lack of oxygen, a rip in his suit, a suit temperature malfunction…anything.

  Another beep. “Son of a Mars toad.”

  “What is it?” Jozi asked, clomping along close behind.

  “Nothing.” He put his hand on the rock and walked easterly. He’d let the rock guide him. He just had to go the right way. That was all. If they were traveling in the wrong direction to the storm shelter, then no telling how long it would take to trek back the way they had come.

  “Nothing is a crap answer. What’s the matter, Ozzy? Tell me.” Jozi’s tone was stern and direct, like an officer to a subordinate.

  “My helmet is beeping. Something is wrong with my suit.” He continued to move against the face of the rock.

  “If it’s the coolant system, you could drown in the droplets. They’d be like tiny blobs of jelly filling your lungs.”

  “Thanks for the image.” He moved slower, his breath coming heavier. “Yeah, something is wrong. It’s getting hard to breath.”

  If there were a tear or even a small split in the EVA’s fibers, his oxygen would flow out of his suit and Mars’s thin air would creep in, boiling his saliva and lungs.

  He took a deep breath, forcing in oxygen, his mind racing faster than the sand sticking to his helmet. Did an oxygen tube somehow get pinched off? Was his suit mixing too much nitrogen into the oxygen?

  He was becoming light-headed, and his vision was spinning. He stopped and bent over. “I think I’m going to crawl.”

  He dropped to his knees, his palms now gripping the red soil.

  Ozzy felt Jozi’s hands pull on his hips. “Get up. This is the last thing you want to do.”

  Ozzy blinked several times. “I’m fine. Let me crawl.” His hands shook, and his fingers started going numb. He slowly moved his head back and forth. He scrunched his eyes shut. “This isn’t good.”

  He dropped to the ground with his hands out by his sides. The oxygen was now painful, and his limbs weren’t cooperating. What had he done? His dad would call him an idiot like he always did when Ozzy did something stupid like he just did by flying through the storm.

  His nerves rushed through him. He was not only an idiot, but he was about to die, and he had he just killed any shot of reuniting with his daughter.

  He took a wheezing breath.

  Consciousness was fading in and out.

  This was not part of his plan.

  7

  Lasswitz Gorge, Mars

  Jozi grabbed his arm. “We have to—” She paused. “Wait. What’s this?” She stepped forward. “I think the shelter opening is right here.”

  She tugged on Ozzy’s arm, pulling him up.

  Red filled Ozzy’s vision, his body too weak to wipe the sand off his scratched visor. He wheezed, his consciousness continuing to waver.

  He went to talk, but nothing but a raspy whisper came out that even he couldn’t comprehend.

  “We’re in,” she said, dropping him to the floor and rushing away. He could vaguely hear her footsteps as she dashed off. Ozzy did hear her say, “Where is the damn button to shut the door?”

  He knew and attempted to point, but a burning sensation stabbed his lungs, and he dropped his arm. He winced, forcing as much air down his throat as he could muster.

  He was having a hard time keeping his eyelids open, and his entire body wanted to sleep.

  The red in his vision darkened, turning from crimson, to mahogany, to black. His body grew heavier, his breathing more difficult.

  A hand touched his leg and then his chest. Jozi’s mumblings echoed in his ears. A click and his helmet unclasped. Jozi pulled it off of his head, and a coldness touched his lips and nose.

  The sound of fans vibrated off the walls. His breathing became easier, and his lungs began to fill with oxygen, yet darkness still pervaded everything. He wiggled his toes and fingers. The numbness and tingling were gone. He inhaled a big, gulping breath and then exhaled, grimacing as he did so. “I can breathe. I can’t see, but I can breathe,” he said, his voice cracking.

  “That’s because the shelter’s oxygen reserves turned on when I shut the hulking door, but I can’t find the lights.”

  Ozzy cringed and took another deep breath, doing his best to ease more of the pain out of his chest.

  He blinked and shook his limbs. Everything seemed to be functioning.

  “Lights, Ozzy. Where are they?”

  “You’ve never been in a dust storm shelter before?”

  “Who the hell has? Storms are usually avoided, not flown into.” There was piercing anger in her tone.

  Ozzy nodded. He went into a seated position, pushing against the weakness he was feeling. “I’ve been in plenty.” Which is another reason his dad would be rolling in his grave. “What happens is the oxygen comes on, then if you haven’t turned the lights on after a few minutes, they will come on by themselves.”

  As he was finishing his sentence, the lights began to flicker.

  “See, there it is.” Ozzy yawned and massaged his arms. He shook his head and stood, rubbing his gloves together as fast as he could and pressing them against his cheeks, giving him much needed warmth. “I can’t wait for the heat lamps to come online.”

  “This place is huge,” said Jozi, pulling off her helmet and setting it on the ground. She walked behind Ozzy, playing with his EVA’s oxygen tubes. “They somehow got twisted.” She fumbled with something. “There you go. Fixed.” She let go and took a few steps away from him, her eyes darting around the room. “Why is this place so big? It curls around in the back, too, and goes a little further.”

  “It was designed to hold rovers and small ships, just in case something like this happened. These were built when we first landed on Mars and tried to make above-ground cities. Engineering mistakes usually sent entire population centers into one of these.” He snorted. “I mean, you don’t see people trying to fly through storms anymore, so these things aren’t needed much.”

  Jozi dropped her gaze and clenched her fists. He shouldn’t have said that. The joke more than pissed her off.

  Ozzy backpedaled weakly, his legs barely keeping him upright. Jozi
jumped in the air and spun, sending a roundhouse kick to the back of Ozzy’s skull. He dropped to the ground and rolled to his back.

  He massaged his lower skull where her heel made contact. He didn’t need a damn kick to the head. “Are you insane, woman?”

  “You almost killed us, you lunatic. You do something like that again, and it will be my photon pistol shooting a few rounds in you. Do you understand?”

  Ozzy put his hands up and got to his feet. “Look. It’s business, and sometimes business isn’t pretty.” He shrugged and cocked his head forward. “Well, in my line of work, it’s rarely pretty. It just comes with the territory. You either go with it, or you go home.”

  She lurched toward him and sent a quick jab to his stomach. He lost all breath and crashed to the floor in a fetal position, hugging his stomach.

  “Where I come from, you don’t haphazardly throw someone into the snake pit with you. You do that, and then you have a hundred orphaned kids never trusting you again.”

  Ozzy rolled onto his other side, his teeth clenching tightly. “You…stop…punching and…kicking me.” Instead of the woman being a trigger finger, she was a trigger hitter.

  The sound of metal on metal echoed in the shelter. They both froze. Someone was here, but how? The shelter door was open when they arrived, so how could anyone survive in here without oxygen and heat?

  “Something must have fallen,” Ozzy mumbled. He patted himself down, then leaned back with his hands up, waiting for another round of blows. He dropped his arms, remembering something. “Wait.” His mouth gaped open. “I forgot the damn briefcase.”

  “You’re kidding me. I ca—” Jozi quickly put her fingers to her lips. “Did you hear that? Footsteps,” she whispered, backing away in a defensive stance.

  Ozzy quieted, listening. He nodded. He heard movement. It was more than one individual. In fact, it seemed like a pack. He slowly took off his EVA, and Jozi did the same, leaving them in only their jumpsuits.

  Ozzy’s adrenaline pumped. He touched his sidearm.

  “Keep your communication cap on. We’ll talk to each other over the mic,” she said. “But whisper when you do.”

  Ozzy pulled the photon gun from his holster and pointed it ahead. He walked toward the bend that led deeper into the shelter.

  Jozi unclipped the snap holding her photon pistol, quickly pulling it out of the holster and aiming it at the bend as well.

  Ozzy put his hand up, asking Jozi to stay put. He saw something colored blue on the wall. He quietly strode toward it, his mind racing a thousand miles per minute. It simply couldn’t be.

  He examined the blue mark and straightened his lips. Could this day get any worse? It was a Dunrakee scouting tag. The small terrorist group was marking their territory.

  He touched it and looked at his finger. Blue stained his skin. It was fresh.

  Dunrakee were in the shelter.

  8

  Lasswitz Gorge, Mars

  Woopah! Woopah!

  Ozzy jumped back in surprise.

  Jozi was on one knee, one eye closed, the other eye scanning for more targets. Smoke trailed from her gun’s muzzle.

  “What the hell?” yelled Ozzy.

  He went into a defensive crouch, his gun ready, his finger on the trigger. A wall blocked his view, but he could smell a Dunrakee’s burning flesh coming from the other side. The stench reminded him of sour eggs mixed with ammonia. But worse.

  “Don’t move,” Jozi blurted out, her eyes now glancing at the ceiling, her gun deadpanned on someone Ozzy couldn’t see.

  Ozzy went to move.

  “I said, don’t move,” she repeated.

  A thin beam of light flashed out of the corner of his eye. Ozzy took in a quick breath, startled. He looked at his chest and saw a laser sight stamped on his sternum, highlighting his jumpsuit with an orange-colored laser target. A Dunrakee had him dead to rights.

  He followed the beam, seeing two eyes illuminated in the corner of the high ceiling and a shadowed rifle accompanying a figure. How did the Dunrakee get up there and so quickly? He had heard stories about their ability to climb like spiders via their spacesuits, but he had never seen a Dunrakee in person.

  “He knows if he shoots, I shoot,” whispered Jozi, keeping the target in her sights. “But don’t move. It’s a game of chicken.”

  “What the hell do you want me to do then? Crouch here for the rest of my days?”

  “I’ll think of something, but right now, do as I say because I doubt they are too thrilled I killed their friend. The only thing keeping you alive is my gun pointed at that Dunrakee’s head.”

  Ozzy slowly tilted his sidearm in the Dunrakee’s direction, making sure his movement was at the pace of an Earth’s snail. “Just shoot him.”

  “Not yet. There is another Dunrakee around the corner.”

  “Then lower your weapon when I tell you and aim it in the direction of the third Dunrakee. Shoot when I shoot.”

  “The third Dunrakee isn’t in view. He’s hiding around the corner.”

  “Do as I say,” Ozzy said.

  Jozi shook her head, her gun aimed at the Dunrakee near the ceiling.

  “I’m going to shoot the bastard,” warned Ozzy. “On the count of three, quickly lower your weapon and shoot at the third.”

  “That’s a negative. That’ll get one of us killed, if not both.”

  Jozi wasn’t budging.

  “One…”

  Jozi bared her teeth. “No.”

  “Two…”

  “Don’t do this, Ozzy.”

  “Three…”

  Ozzy pulled the trigger, keeping his finger clamped down. Blast after blast of bright-blue photon bolts expelled through the barrel and out the muzzle, his gun recoiling after every shot. His target bucked back and fell to the solid metallic floor, bouncing once, and laying listless with its face down, its clear blood oozing into a puddle.

  Jozi lowered her gun and sent several rounds toward the third Dunrakee, then rolled to the side and popped up into a run, taking her legs as fast as she could go.

  She jumped and slid behind the partitioned wall that hid Ozzy. She leaped into a standing position, her body sideways and pointed her gun at anyone or anything that decided to jump around that corner.

  “You’re a danger to society, Ozzy. It’s a wonder how you survived this long.”

  Ozzy quietly made his way to the corner of the wall, speaking softly into his mic. “Yeah, yeah. Story of my life.”

  He peaked around the corner. Two dead Dunrakee wearing spacesuits with headgear that made them look more like bees than anything else—large, almond-shaped eyes with a yellow tinge to the helmet’s mask. The masks hid their rough, mottled skin and their harsh angled brows, cheeks, and jaws.

  Most importantly, it covered several rounded protrusions that ran the length of their scalps like bubble-Mohawks.

  Those Mohawks just looked weird.

  “I don’t see the other Dunrakee,” said Ozzy. “Are you sure you saw another one?”

  “I’m an MMP agent, Ozzy. I see everything.”

  “I’ll hold you to that,” Ozzy replied, stepping around the corner, heading toward a bend in the bunker.

  “Stand fast, Ozzy.”

  Not a chance. He took another step forward, walking over one dead body and then the other, and leaned against the wall.

  If Jozi was correct, there should be another Dunrakee in the next portion over.

  The click-clack of a Dunrakee speaking rushed to Ozzy’s ears. He pushed his mic closer to his mouth. “There is another one, most likely talking to his headquarters in Dawes.” If that was the case, Ozzy doubted the Dunrakee would send reinforcements, and if they did, it’d take them about twelve hours or a day, depending on which types of ships they brought.

  The problem? They’d have to fly through human defenses or take the long route and walk like these Dunrakee scouts most likely did in order to duck under human radar.

  But not that the Ministry and the
High Judge would care. They seemed to let the Dunrakee take over Dawes without much of a fight.

  Maybe the Martian Marines weren’t as many as Ozzy had thought?

  “I hear him as well,” said Jozi, nearly knocking Ozzy over in fright.

  Ozzy stiffened. “How the hell do you do that? You’re like a damn ghost.” This was the second time she stealthily approached Ozzy unawares.

  A blast zipped by, singeing the wall diagonally across from Ozzy. It was a warning shot and far from him.

  “This one is scared,” said Ozzy. “He knows he doesn’t stand a chance.”

  More click-clack chatter and Ozzy held his breath, listening intently, then let out a gush of air. Maybe this Dunrakee had a chance after all. “Shit. There’s more than one. Hell, they’re probably all over the walls and ceiling in there.” Ozzy glanced up, searching the area. None were in his vicinity. “What do we do?”

  “We—”

  The lights blipped a few times then malfunctioned and turned off.

  Really?

  Ozzy slid down the wall. A loud Dunrakee war scream pierced the shelter, sounding like someone running their fingernails down a chalkboard. Several feet padded on the room next to him.

  They were coming.

  “Jozi?” whispered Ozzy, his photon gun shaking in his hands. He couldn’t see a damned thing but knew that the Dunrakee could probably see just fine in their suits.

  “Shh,” Jozi responded.

  “Shh, what?” He reached to his left to touch her, to make sure she was still nearby. His fingers met air. “Where are you?”

  “Click-clack…we…kill…you.”

  Ozzy went rigid. They could speak his language? That couldn’t be true. His ears were playing tricks on him.

  He moved away from the corner and toward the dust shelter’s entrance. “Jozi, give me your location.”

  Silence.

  “Jozi?”

  Dead quiet.

  Then movement, but not Jozi’s or his. The clatter of Dunrakee feet resounded against the walls. They were coming closer, advancing in short bursts. Soon, they’d be around the corner and facing Ozzy in the darkness.