King of Mars Page 4

carved into the north face of the sand dunes. A good place to hide an airship Eve realized, but a difficult spot for her to pilot out of even with Gol-nasrin's help. The airship would have to be floated straight up out of the canyon before it could be turned into the wind. A strong gust could blow the airship into the canyon wall before they cleared it. It wasn't going to be easy.

  Eve ran across the rocks and shallow sand to the airship. When she got to the airship she ran up the ramp into the cargo bay that Tadeusz must have left open. The airship was powered down, and the airlocks left open, exposing the interior to the frozen Martian air. Eve quickly made her way to the cockpit to check the fuel-cell status: 100% charged. Good.

  "You can take us away now?" Gol-nasrin asked.

  Eve could see that Gol-nasrin was more terrified now that they had reached their destination. Terrified because, unlike the stretches of sand and rock, this was a place where Tadeusz would definitely look for them. She thought of the difficult job of floating up out of the canyon, of how the airship could get pushed sideways into the canyon walls by even a strong breeze. She realized how impossible it would be to get it fixed out here. The sun was already above the horizon, they didn't have time to waste.

  "I can try," Eve decided. The thought of the canyon walls frightened her. She had spent many years flying this airship all over the southern hemisphere, but never without her husband. She took a deep breath and reached out for the switch to start pumping hydrogen into the air-chambers above. Nothing happened. She tried again.

  The moment she touched the console, she heard it. Off in the distance, but not distant enough, was the low rumble of airship engines. It had to be Tadeusz's airship. She turned, and saw it through the cockpit window drifting into view above the canyon wall.

  "Quick, we must hide!" she said to Gol-nasrin, but the Persian woman was already headed for the ramp. She hit the sand and ran for the rocks. Eve, desperate to know why the airship pumps didn't start up, opened the console and glanced into the circuitry inside. The neural processor had been pulled out, and without it, the airship was dead. Tadeusz had made sure that no one was taking the airship out of the crater, at least not without his approval. She closed the console and ran.

  Outside the window, she saw Gol-nasrin moving frantically across the rocks. She was leaping across a sandy stretch when the laser beam cut her in two. Tadeusz's airship was drifting down towards them, and standing on the lowered ramp was Suleiman, holding a laser rifle!

  "Gol-nasrin!" Eve screamed instinctively, but it was too late, she had already seen Gol-nasrin fly into two parts. She thought quickly about the situation. Tadeusz's airship was landing behind hers, and Suleiman would cut her down if she ran for it. She had to hide. They couldn't know for sure she was there. She ran to the bedroom. Tadeusz and Suleiman hadn't found the stash yet, the door was still closed. She reached for the hidden button, and popped the door open. Fortunately it was entirely mechanical, as Ozzy had been paranoid about DNA sensors. She stepped into the closet sized stash Ozzy and her had built to protect their assets from over-zealous colonial inspectors, everything was still there so Tadeusz and Suleiman definitely hadn't found it.

  She heard the sound of foot steps running up the ramp as she slid the stash door closed, inside she turned on a small lamp that they kept for emergencies. Around her were the drugs her and Ozzy had been using as currency, some ore samples they'd collected, and their rail-gun. She quietly picked up the rail-gun and turned it on. The electromagnetic field caused her skin to itch inside the still-suit. It was fortunate that Ozzy insisted they always kept it loaded, because loading the mag made a loud clicking sound, and Suleiman's voice was suddenly in the bedroom right outside the stash.

  "She's not in here either!" Suleiman shouted.

  "She has to be," Tadeusz's voice called back from what Eve assumed was the cockpit. A few seconds later his voice sounded from the bedroom, "Why would Gol-nasrin come here by herself. She could not know how to fly an airship."

  "Maybe she was just looking for things to steal," Suleiman suggested. "Probably drugs, I think they gave her some a few days ago, she has not been coming around at night."

  "If she did not come out here with Gol-nasrin, then where is she?" Tadeusz demanded.

  "Maybe she sank in the sand," Suleiman suggested.

  "She could be hiding here somewhere," Tadeusz stated.

  "Where? This airship is tiny, there isn't even a full cargo hold," Suleiman argued.

  "Yes," Tadeusz seemed to agree hesitantly, "We will come back here with a plasma torch, and cut up this ship. If she is hiding here we will find her."

  "You do not want to sell the airship?" Suleiman asked.

  "No, too many questions," Warszawski answered. "And we can not have two airships here in the crater, the workers will escape."

  "Yes, we should get back and make sure they are working," Suleiman stated. "And make sure she is not back their trying to organize an escape."

  "Yes, if she is here, there is no way that highlander bitch can find her way back around the dunes. I think will kill..." Tadeusz's voice trailed off, and a few minutes later Eve heard the dull roar of Tadeusz's airship engines come to life, and then drift away. Eve stepped out of the stash into the bedroom, and then crept to the window. Tadeusz's airship was floating over the canyon wall and was soon out of sight.

  "Highlander bitch?" Eve repeated to her self. "We'll see about that."

  Eve started to laugh. She was standing in her home of the past decade, an airship that might as well be dead. The only way she could get it functional again was to make it back to the colony, across sand-pits that could swallow her whole, and then get the neural processor back from Tadeusz before the thing starved to death, and before the algae in the in the airship's oxygen recyclers and fuel-cells starved.

  From somewhere inside her there came a deep swell of emotion, and she screamed. Some of it was from the loss of her husband. Some of it was fear of these terrible people. Some of it was just anger. Most of it was a nameless emotion, something primal, the feeling that an animal might have, when after being chased into a corner, it turns to attack its predator. That emotion when not only does it need to fight, but a switch in its mind has been thrown and now it wants to fight.

  After she screamed, she sat down, and thought about the situation. If she stayed at the airship, she'd either freeze or starve. She decided to begin back to the colony at once, and travel as far as she could before the sunset. She slung the rail-gun over her shoulder and headed for the door.

  Morning found Tadeusz waking up in pain. He had clumsily fallen off one of the rock outcroppings that Gol-nasrin and Eve had negotiated in their escape the previous day. Tadeusz had twisted his knee, and now the swelling had become serious and excruciating. He took a swallow from a bottle of aguardiente he'd half finished the night before and limped to the station airlock. He stepped out into the brilliant dawn that caused him to close his eyes, waiting for them to adjust to the light.

  Today he and Suleiman would have to finish what that damn woman had started. Regardless of the pain that shot through him every time he took a step, regardless of the hangover pounding in his temples, he'd find Eve Johns, and if he couldn't make her come back with him, he'd kill her. He'd eventually kill her anyway, but it would be more fun if he brought her back alive.

  He surveyed the massive dunes to the north. Time to get moving. He shook his head, trying to clear it, but that movement made his vision blur.

  Suddenly Tadeusz's legs fell out from under him, and he went face first into the sand. He lurched around, trying to get up even as the sonic booms of the rail-gun rounds echoed back from the sand dunes. Looking down, he saw blood streaming from holes where his knees had been. His still-suit was ripped open, and his legs below the knee were missing. He pulled his laser pistol from his hip.

  Eve stepped out from behind one of the red concrete houses, the sights of her rail-gun trained on Tadeusz. Suleiman charged out of the station airlock, sonic blaster i
n hand, and Eve shot a burst of holes through his torso. Then she started towards them both.

  Tadeusz started to raised his laser pistol, but Eve spoke before he could aim it, "Don't do it! I won't kill you if you toss it."

  Tadeusz was clearly trying to raise the pistol, but lost consciousness, and the pistol fell into the sand.

  Eve picked the up pistol, and then walked over to Suleiman's body and picked up the sonic blaster. She eventually found the neural processor in Tadeusz's airship. It wasn't until she turned on the engines for Tadeusz's airship that some of the miners came out to see what had happened. She went to the cargo bay and lowered the ramp.

  "I'll leave this airship in the canyon on the far side of the dunes," she shouted to them as they approached Tadeusz. They looked up at her as she turned and disappeared back into the airship. The last time she looked back, they had walked over to where Tadeusz and Suleiman lay in the sand. They had picked up rocks, and as Eve turned her attention back to the airship controls they fell onto the the King of Mars and his business partner.