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“It doesn’t look like it,” Bastian explains. “And even so, maybe switching off its power supply might set it off.” Suddenly, he slams his right fist on the table, making us all jump.
“I’ve never felt so helpless,” he admits quietly. “I’m used to being able to fix everything, but now it seems we have a problem I can’t fix.”
He looks so distraught that I can’t help but get up and give him a hug, wrapping my arms around him while standing at the back of his chair. It’s an awkward position, but I stay bent over, putting all the warmth and love I have for him into the embrace.
“You’ll find a way,” I whisper in his ear. “We’re all together in this, and we will find a solution. Right, guys?” I lift my voice and look around the table.
“Of course. We should make a plan,” Han says, already pulling up a virtual notepad on the table.
With a final squeeze of Bastian’s broad chest, I stand up straight and return to my seat, before addressing the guys. When we make plans, it’s always me who leads the discussion, and this won’t change just because there’s a bomb involved.
“Han, you’ve got deft fingers“- he chuckles at that and I feel myself blush – “take a look at the bomb with Bastian and see if you can help him. Toby, I need you to check our resources, food and water especially. See if we can bring them all to the part of the station that will be safe, and how long they’ll last us. Will, if we lose the greenhouse, we need to salvage as much as possible from it. Harvest everything we possibly can in the next two days. Jordan, Jim and I will look through all the books and files we have. Maybe we can find something about bombs, explosions, more detailed plans of the station, that kind of thing. And Bastian, if you need any of us, give us a buzz. Same goes for Toby and Will. The three of us will be on call for whatever you need.”
I take a deep breath. “Everyone okay with that?”
Jordan leans over and presses a surprise kiss on my cheek. “Clear and precise as always, darling.”
I give him a tense smile. I wish I could hug them all, give them and myself the reassurance that everything will be alright. That we’ll survive, just like we always do. But the cold fear wrapped around my heart prevents that from happening. This is bad, really bad.
***
49:14
Three hours later, I slam the book I’ve been skimming back on the table. “This is useless,” I declare, all the confidence and hope I showed in our earlier meeting forgotten. “We have several copies of 1984 and Harry Potter, but not a single book on explosives, bombs, survival, or anything else that would be useful.”
Jim chuckles darkly. “Nobody expected there to be terrorists on Mars.” He also lowers the book he’s been reading. “You’ve been here from the beginning, Louise. Do you have any suspicions who of the settlers may have put the bomb there?”
I shrug. “I got on well with all of them. I guess it has to be someone with mechanical knowledge, but if a terrorist managed to make their way to Mars, they were probably able to hide those skills from everybody else. It could have been anyone.”
“I’ve been thinking,” Jordan says quietly from the corner he’s sitting in, buried behind stacks of books. Our library is small, but we’ve managed to unearth a surprising number of books. “Maybe the virus wasn’t random. Maybe it wasn’t a Martian virus at all. Maybe someone brought it to Mars to do the same job the bomb is going to do. Destroy the station. Kill all the settlers.”
My stomach churns at the implications of that. “I always thought it was an accident. A terrible unlucky catastrophe. But if someone planned it... that’s murder.”
Jordan nods grimly. “It would also mean that someone orchestrated it from the ground. It wouldn’t have been one of the settlers; nobody would have volunteered to die in a horrific way like you described.”
“Unless they were really, really fanatic and deluded,” I add quietly. “So the bomb would be their back up option to make sure everybody is killed? But the timing doesn’t make any sense. The virus was almost a year ago. Why wait that long to detonate a bomb?”
“Maybe the virus was released prematurely,” Jim suggests. “It doesn’t make sense to not wait for us new settlers to arrive before setting it free. Maybe it was all supposed to happen at the same time. Weaken the settlers, sabotage the life support systems. A double fail safe to make sure everyone dies.”
I’m trying to get it all straight in my head, but my mind is spinning. Someone killed my friends. They didn’t die because of a random, terrible, mindless virus. No, they were murdered, a planned killing, cold and strategic. This may have been years in the planning.
“All this to stop progress?” I ask. “Just to make a point? The station had finally reached a level where we were making real progress, getting our first research results. Why would anyone destroy that?”
Jim shrugs. “If they planned it before the first mission launched, maybe they didn’t expect it to be so successful. Maybe they even thought of it as a mercy killing.”
I shudder. “All that death... And now we’re the ones alive and people on Earth are dying? How ironic is that?”
My voice quivers. It’s all a bit too much. I can deal with me being in danger, I’m getting used to that. What I can’t deal with is knowing that someone tried to kill me, and that the same monsters are now trying to kill my men as well.
“You’re not going to die,” I tell them determinedly. “I won’t let you die.”
Again, my traitorous voice trembles.
“Hug?” Jordan asks, already getting up and crossing the room.
“Hug,” I confirm, reaching up, but instead of pulling me to my feet, he sits down next to me and puts an arm around my shoulders. It’s nice, but it’s not enough. I turn and lift one leg over his, straddling him. He chuckles and wraps his arms around my waists, pulling me close until our bodies touch.
“Kiss?” he asks, his dark eyes capturing mine.
