John Karr - Detonation Event

“Try to find an open one. We’ll at least make our case to others who haven’t folded.”

She jabbed at the keyboard. Her finger skated over the sensor pad.

One of the jets flew alongside the camera at the nose of the shuttle. The face beneath the clear visor was impassive as a robot’s. The pilot repeatedly touched the side of his helmet, at the ear.

“Okay, we’re linked and live broadcasting,” Scarlet said.

Devans touched a switch. “This is ES-something-or-another to the aggressive fighter jets surrounding us. We’re fine. You birds can go home now.”

“Descend immediately, Earth Shuttle.”

“Don’t think so.”

“Pilot, the shuttle has identified you as Ry Devans, hostile to EFF.”

“So you EFF terrorists have taken the military, too? Must’ve been planning a long time for this.”

“You have stolen Earth Shuttle 219 . Descend and land at the first metro airport. Air traffic will direct if you are unable to navigate. Failure to comply will result in destruction.”

“We’re glad to leave Earth. Isn’t that enough?”

“Negative. And we show two life forms. The girl’s name is blocked. Who is she?”

“She doesn’t want to play much after you EFF murdered her family.”

“You have kidnapped a girl and stolen an Earth Shuttle, Devans.”

“I want to be here, you damn killers!” Scarlet snapped, then jabbed a middle finger at the monitor.

Another blip appeared on the radar. Another fighter jet. Intentions unknown, but coming hard from behind. Another hail came through the communications system. Devans cut communication with his enemies and opened a link with the newcomer.

“ Earth Shuttle 219 , this is Michelle Alpha Romeo Sierra. Are you linked? Push as high as you can, spaceman.”

Devans arched a brow. The woman’s flight handle shorted as “MARS.”

“Go home, MARS, you don’t need this,” Devans said.

“None of us do, yet here we are. Besides, there is no home anymore.”

“Turn it around. I got three the hard way.”

“Bank up and ninety, Devans. Now! ”

A missile launched from the newcomer.

The hull and engines whined as Devans threw the control stick to the right. The behemoth banked hard right. The nimble jet cut a path out of the way, but Devans pressed the steel to the point of breaking and clipped the wingtip of the jet before it could fully evade. The jet spiraled away. The command and rearmost jets banked and spun and sent out defensive measures, but the missile was locked on target and followed one of the jets, undeterred. The shock wave of an explosion sounded, and one of the blips vanished from radar.

“Still there, MARS?” Devans said, pressing the shuttle for all its worth. It listed right, and the computer flashed a red message that the hydraulic line for the flap had been compromised. Had they wanted to land on Earth, he’d have some real compensating to do.

“Just one left, Ry Devans. Now get that space bird out of here.”

“Trying. You need to get the hell away, fighter pilot.”

“Ships in harbor are safe, but that isn’t what a ship is for. Later, spaceman.”

A few moments passed. Then came two more explosions.

“MARS? Are you there, MARS?”

Silence as they flew, pushing and pushing to leave Earth’s atmosphere. The radar blacked out, and Devans was clicking and issuing commands to get it back online.

“Keep a steady pull on the stick!” he told Scarlet. She froze until Devans grabbed her cold hands and wrapped them around the control stick.

Banging on the console pattern around the radar actually made the display flicker.

“Uh, hey. I don’t know about this,” Scarlet said.

“Just keep our wings level with these two lines and the nose up to seventy-five degrees. See here?” He pointed to one and then another of the many readouts on the console. He tapped the field and the surrounding area around those two gauges glowing bright yellow. “Only for a few seconds. I want to tickle the motherboard of this radar.”

He searched and found a small tool kit in one of the console drawers and got to work on the panel screws.

Scarlet opened her mouth to reply when another voice came over the speakers. For a moment Devans thought she’d been possessed by a demon.

“Time to die, MEPs!”

Plasma bullets pinged off the shields around the hull as a jets shot past them. Devans leaped back into the pilot seat and grabbed the control stick. Warnings clanged as a missile locked onto the shuttle. Devans’ countermeasures went out like a meteor shower while he banked as sharply as the huge beast would allow. He banked again, spacecraft on its side and then righted, always climbing, knowing it was the only true escape from predatory fighter jets. The missile took the bait and the lock was broken. The trail on the camera feeds showed it zipping past, trailing white from its rocket engine. Sweat broke on his brow, and he realized he was holding his breath.

They repeated the maneuvers for the next missile. The shuttle was a lumbering mass of metal compared to the fighter jet, but the countermeasures were also substantial.

“Come on, come on!” Devans yelled, hauling back on the stick while the hull shuddered and the engine shrieked. He pounded the seat arm with his other hand.

Devans knew if he pushed it much harder the shuttle would go into an emergency slow-down, and he was all out of bypass techniques.

The shuttle’s operating system spoke up.

“Ninety thousand feet. Seventeen miles. Leaving Earth’s atmosphere.”

Devans looked at Scarlet, small and pressed against the copilot’s seat by the force of the climb. “Yeah! Outran that son of a bitch! We’re high enough so fighter jets—and missiles—can no longer burn their engines. Not enough oxygen.”

“Cool. What about ours?”

“Nuclear fusion doesn’t need oxygen. We’ve got a tiny sun for a main engine. No snuffing this baby. We’re headed for Lunar One.”

But then he frowned, remembering the images he’d seen there.

At Devans’ prompting, Scarlet nibbled at soup and crackers from the kitchen nook at the rear of the flight deck. When she returned, she gazed stonily ahead, then her head nodded and her eyelids rose and fell. Finally her head found her tucked arm on the armrest. She still stared out at space.

“Devans… going to rest a little,” she said in a small voice.

“Roger that.”

“I want my family back.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“But I’m still here.”

“Yes.”

“…Not sure I want to be.”

And after all this, why would she? Devans thought.

“Do you have a family?” she asked.

Devans considered. “No.”

Her chin quivered and then went still. She shrugged. “Did they kill them?”

“No.”

“Where are they?”

“I’m divorced. Do you know what that is? Yeah? And my son wasn’t interested in having me as a father anymore.”

“Sad.”

“Tell you what, I’ll keep going and you keep going.”

“Might as well.” Her eyes closed.

“Yeah, might as well.”

But despite the odds of making it this far, he wasn’t feeling it. How the hell do you square all this? A deadly epidemic killing children worldwide thanks to the Martian microbe, the EFF killing and taking over the American government and others. And on the personal side, betrayals and loss.

Bullcrap, bullcrap, bullcrap.

Spirit was on the wane.

But there was maybe something with Karen Wagner. And what remained of the PS-9 crew on MOS-1. And that fighter pilot earlier… she gave her life so he and Scarlet could escape Earth. You don’t just give up after that.