"An emergen— Got you. Attention all personnel, this is the captain speaking.
John Carter
is having trouble. We need the entire satellite network cleared for the shuttle's use."
The remote communications started to synchronize. "Okay,"
A.J. said, "we're losing altitude faster, at least some. Best calculations . . . Bruce, you're going to have to make it a full powered landing. No way around it. We won't be able to make orbit again without refueling, but we can burn that bridge when we get to it."
"How much control will I have by then? Something's making this bird progressively harder to fly. Maybe a leak, or a slow fire, or something."
A.J. ran a couple of simulations as the numbers from the embedded sensors poured through the systems. "About half, I'd say. You'll have to land us with really sluggish controls. Think ahead of time. I'll give you a running calculation that'll cue you as to when to act to get things done."
"Right."
John Carter
was now screaming down the center of Valles Marineris. The pink-orange sky set off the towering, darker cliffs to either side as the ground below swept past. The terrain was red, black-splotched, streaked with white—every color, really, now that they were close enough—all of it rough and smooth and mysteriously textured. It was an alien landscape that A.J. had modeled a thousand times. But this time it was real, flowing past a window instead of across a screen. Vibrating, blurry at times, but real, real, real. They were about to land on Mars!
No, he corrected himself, they were about to
crash-land
on Mars.
"Okay, Bruce, see the display?"
"Yes, I see her. When I reach the first border, there is my burn?"
"You got it. Bring some of our speed down and make sure you get a feel for the controls before we really have to do it."
"Roger that." Bruce turned his head for a moment, and the transparent, wide-view sections of the helmet allowed them to see that his expression was calm. "Hold on, everyone. I'm afraid I can't quite keep my promise. We probably will go over three gees on this one, when I do the final burn. And it might get very shaky."
The rockets responded sluggishly, lagging their control directives by noticeable fractions of a second. "Blast. This is going to be a bloody lot of fun, trying to land her like I'm doing remote control from the blasted moon!"
"Remote . . . Hey, hold on!"
A.J. searched the archives . . . assembly . . . slave . . . predictive . . . tie in . . .
Got it!
"Bruce, go opaque in your helmet."
"What? Mate, I need to see to guess some of this!"
"Trust me! I'm going to adjust the displays and your feedback through the suit just like we did for the ground engineers assembling
Nike.
Combining the predictions on the landing and the degradation of the controls. . . Well, it might not be absolutely perfect, but . . . "
"But a fair dinkum sight better than my trying to learn to play the game with my timing off. Right!"
Bruce's helmet went silvery. Immediately, A.J. knew, it would appear to him to go transparent again, showing him the controls,
John Carter
, even the others in the cabin. But this was a projection that was going to be off by just the right amount into the future to make things seem to react correctly.
"Mate, I hope you're leaving the computers enough power for me."
"I'm using the ones in the rover, brought them up by remote."
"Right. Okay, this is it."
John Carter
was constantly trying to heel over to one side, like a car with a flat tire. That wasn't the real problem, though. Bruce could handle that. But they couldn't land flat like an aircraft. They were coming down considerably to the west of their original site, to make things worse. They were well over a hundred kilometers, maybe two or three, from Target 37. A flat landing would almost certainly run them into something they hadn't modeled well in the last couple of days.
A quick glance at the terrain below confirmed it. Bruce would have to blast back along their current vector; then, as their speed dropped, bring the
John Carter
vertical and land it on its tail. That was the way it was supposed to launch, of course—but that position was one they'd normally achieve after the regular landing was safely over. But with the controls degrading, his simulation had to keep updating how it did the model . . .
Bruce swore, as he saw his vision glitch. "Listen, mate, if it does that at the wrong time—!"
"I know, I know! But I can't help it, the model has to update if things change."
"Right. Okay, hold on.
Nike
, this is
John Carter
, we are about to make a landing. Please stand by. And if we don't make it. . . Goodbye, all, and it's been a hell of a ride. Give my love to Tammy back home."
They were all gripping the arms of their seats now, all except Bruce who wrestled with controls that were sluggish and less responsive than they'd been a few minutes before. The rockets thundered in the Martian atmosphere as they fought to slow
John Carter
's headlong rush towards destruction.
A.J.'s eyes flicked around, taking in the instrument readings he could see.
Airspeed 350, altitude 1500 and dropping—holy SHIT that's a big rock, good thing we're past it—300kph, altitude 1000 meters
. . .
Dropping
. . .
oh, man, Bruce is good
. . .
altitude now 200 meters, speed dropping below 200kph
. . .
100 meters
. . .
he's starting to bring us up
. . .
lateral speed 70, 60, 50—
One of the rockets stopped responding entirely.
John Carter
, still inclined at a slight angle and moving over the ground sideways at a speed of about forty kilometers per hour, dipped downward. A.J.'s simulation had almost predicted the loss, but was off by a critical bit as there was no real data yet on just how the failures were progressing. Bruce fought for control, but A.J., living in the real world, watched helplessly as the momentary, uncontrolled drop brought the lander's tail assembly into contact with a boulder jutting from the soil of Mars.
The world spun as
John Carter
cartwheeled, bouncing impossibly in one-third gravity. Bruce tried to shut her down, but one rocket thrust for another critical half-second, spinning the ship along another axis.
The
John Carter
shrieked, groaned, and bellowed at its occupants as it tumbled. And then a tremendous impact brought silence and darkness to all within.
Jackie Secord sat at the communications station of
Nike
. Once more she played the final few seconds, the last voices recorded from
John Carter.
"Give my love to Tammy back home." An Australian accent, heavier than usual.
"—holy SHIT that's a big rock—" A. J., muttering under his breath, like he always does, not even aware sometimes he's doing it.
". . . please, please, please, hold together . . ."
Tears stung her eyes at the voice she'd known since she was a teenager, the voice that had taught her the difference between Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous.
Can't make out the words, but that sharp murmur is Dr. Sakai. Praying, by the sound of it.
"Speed dropping below two hundred. Almost there, Bruce. You're doing great." Madeline Fathom, calm and unruffled, trying to keep anyone from panicking.
Nothing from Rich. I think he must've been holding his breath.
"Please, let her live, even if I don't make it." Joe, worrying about someone else to the end.
The tears came again, as the final moment arrived. A shrieking, shattering, crashing, banging noise, ending with a terrible silence.
"Come now, Jackie. There is nothing more to hear, nothing more except pain." The deep voice was startlingly gentle, as was the hand laid tentatively on her shoulder.
She shrugged Dr. Gupta's hand away.
"He's right, Jackie. It's been almost two hours."
"I'm not leaving!" she shouted, shooting to her feet and turning on Hathaway furiously. "I'm not!" The movement sent her drifting slowly towards the ceiling, as
Nike
was still turning and her spinning motion had detached her from the floor's grip surface. As the control room was near the center of
Nike
, it had less than a twentieth of a gravity—and that was focused in the wrong direction, towards the apparent ceiling.
The captain backed up a step when she spun. "Okay, okay. Stay there if you want to. But
please
stop playing the damn thing over, and over, and over. It's driving me insane."
Clumsily she bounced herself back to the seat. "I haven't played it that—"
"Yes, you have. You've been repeating it the entire time, ever since you sat down."
Jackie stared, eyes still blurred, at the digital readout.
He's right. I've been sitting in this chair for over an hour, playing it again and again.
She looked around, drawing a shuddering, tearful breath.
Three other people looked back at her with concern and their own shock and sorrow written clearly in their features. Dr. Gupta, dark eyes shadowed with pain over her loss and the loss of the others on
John Carter
. Jane Mayhew, looking decades older. Ken Hathaway, anger, frustration and resignation all warring for dominance.
"Sorry," she said quietly. "I know you all knew them too. But . . . we started this. Me, Helen, Joe, A.J." A fresh sting of pain threatened to bring tears back.
On the screen shimmered a horrid image of the twisted wreckage of
John Carter
, as it had been an hour ago before the last imaging satellite fell below the horizon. Her hand tugged at the chain around her neck, the one that held the smooth, shoehorn-shaped replica given to her by Helen just before the presentation.
Suddenly, the radio started talking. With an Australian accent.
"
Nike, Nike
, this is
John Carter
, repeat,
John Carter
calling
Nike
, come in please."
Why do I hurt so much?
Helen wondered, her mind still dazed. As she shook her head, she became aware that she was in a spacesuit.
Spacesuit? Where
. . .
Realization struck, and she sat up suddenly. That was a mistake. Not only did she bang the suit's helmet on something, but her head, already aching, reacted to the jolt by throbbing its protest.
"
Ow.
A.J.? Joe? Hello, is anyone there?"
Slowly her eyes adjusted. Pinkish light filtered in through a hole in the mostly dust-covered front window. Before moving again, she checked the telltales. Her suit was undamaged, and apparently so was she. The reactive nature of the suit had possibly saved her life, and almost certainly prevented severe injuries. She hoped that the others had been so lucky.
It took considerable force to get her harness to unsnap. Cautiously, she got up.
"Oh, crikey. This wasn't worth the hangover I'm feeling."
"Bruce! You did it!"
"Did I?"
"Well, I'm walking away."
"Well, so you are. Maybe I am too."
"I'd rather have someone else do my walking, but I guess I will be too." A.J.'s voice brought inexpressible relief to her. She'd been afraid that the first lack of response meant there would be none at all.
Irwin finished unsnapping and leaned over to his copilot, checking her vitals. "Hey, Madeline, rise and shine!"
Poking at an unconscious martial artist might not be the brightest idea, Helen thought. She was about to voice that thought when Madeline demonstrated it by striking out and trying to roll away from the fuzzily seen figure looming over her. The roll was rather ineffective, as she was still locked in.
But she recuperated almost instantly. "Huh? Oh. Sorry, Bruce. Didn't mean to hit you."
"No problem, the suit kept you from hurting anything except my dignity."
"We're still alive. Everyone?"
"Not everyone." A.J.'s voice was suddenly utterly devoid of his usual humor. "Shit. I will
not
be sick in my suit."
Helen turned, and was instantly sorry she had. Dr. Ryu Sakai was pinned against the rear of the compartment by something—a support structure of
John Carter
, probably—that must have torn free in the last terrible impact, impaling or crushing his entire rib cage. The tough suit might have maintained some integrity, but there were limits to its protective capabilities. The astrogeological specialist was clearly dead.
"Jesus . . ." Rich Skibow spoke for the first time since the crash, tearing his way out of his restraining harness. "Oh, this is horrible."
It was then that Helen remembered that Joe had been sitting in front of Ryu Sakai. For a moment her heart seemed to stop. But . . . there was only one suit pinned to the wall with that hideous dark smear around it.
"Joe! Where's Joe?"
A.J. answered, obviously glad of something to distract him from the gruesome scene in the rear. "Ummm . . . Look, that beam ripped upward through the cabin. With that angle, it would've taken out the support column under Joe's chair. If we were still moving, he . . ."
A.J. trailed off. Helen followed his gaze.
Straight to the hole in the forward window. "Oh, no—"
She leaped toward the window and tripped. The wreck of the SSTO was leaning on something, inclined at an angle of about forty-five degrees both vertically and laterally. Scrambling in the light gravity, she made it to the hole and looked out.
John Carter
rested atop a massive boulder five times its size. From her vantage point thirty meters above the rest of the terrain, she could make out a small, dark object more than a fifty meters off: Joe's seat, with a spacesuit still strapped into it.
"Joe! Joe!"
The figure moved. Joe raised an arm slowly and waved. Then said, shakily but firmly:
"By the authority vested in me as a representative of the Ares Project and the first human being to set foot on Mars, I claim all the rights and privileges pertaining thereunto for the Project."