Page 103 of Bound By Stars
“You couldn’t have given us a couple of minutes to rescue you?” Skye slips through the door with Tar behind her.
Jupiter helps me off the floor. “Asha and Curran are on lookout. We thought we’d need time to pick a lock.”
Tar takes my wrist, pulls a piece of wire out of his pocket, and jams it in the lock. The restraints fall off in seconds, leaving behind rings of red and purple. “Don’t you have the bot running yet?” he asks Skye.
In the corner, she inspects ILSA with a finger pressed to her lips. “I thought I’d have more time. Who knew you were such a skilled lock picker?”
“Do I have to do everything around here?” Tar marches across the room. “Her power button is next to the battery gauge.”
Jupiter pulls me into his arms, squeezing me against his chest. “Are you hurt?”
“I’m okay.” I rub my sore wrists. Nothing feels broken. “The messages and—”
“You didn’t hurt anyone. I know you better than that, Wes.”
ILSA is still booting up when another alarm goes off, louder than the first. They take turns blaring through the room. Everyone covers their ears.
“We better get moving!” Skye yells.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Jupiter
Six days to Mars
Lights flicker at either end of the hall. Asha waves us across to the bridge. The door sits halfway open, the auto-lock disengaged or broken. Framed in the fifty-foot window in front of the amphitheater of empty workstations, orangey-red Mars is closer than the moon to the Earth.
“Dad?” Asha brushes past me, jogging around the upper level.
The expansive room is abandoned. Nothing like the last time we were here. It should be noisy and bustling with crew members responding to alarms, reading off warnings, and calling out commands.
Skye descends the stairs down the center of the room, searching panels of flashing lights. “Some of these are oxygen alarms.”
Asha leans over a different workstation. “I can’t tell what any of this means. There are so many alerts.”
Tar takes a seat, his fingers flying over a keyboard. “Backups are kicking in, but too many systems are failing.”
Weslie drops my hand and marches to the captain’s station in the middle of the top level overlooking the amphitheater. Scanning the screen, she taps the upper left corner, and the alarms go quiet. “There. Now I can think.”
ILSA trails her. “Weslie, I detect bruising and abrasions on your left and right wrists. My scans indicate the wounds require cleaning and dressing to avoid infection. Do I have your permission to attend to your injury?”
“Not now, ILSA,” Weslie answers.
“Where’s the crew?” With wide eyes, Asha hurries back to Weslie’s side.
Wes shrugs. “Maybe they’re all abandoning ship.”
“No. My dad wouldn’t. They must be somewhere else.”
The map. I run to Navigation. The holomap flickers. The miniature ship replica is centimeters away from the tiny Mars. Earth sits on the other end of the long table. I swipe my hand over it and the levels of the ship grow and stack onto the surface. From bottom to top.
Cargo levels at the bottom of the ship are intact. The second-class sublevels come next, one after the other. No damage.
Then the first-class entertainment level. In the middle of the level, the arboretum and central stairwell are undamaged. The outline of the library and a game room flash red with large letters over each:offline. The top level forms on the map. The missing escape pod bay:offline. Various other sections of the level flash with a warning:danger.
“The escape pods,” Weslie whispers. “With the first-class bay gone, there aren’t enough.”
I swipe the first-class layers away, tapping the two second-class pod bays. The remaining functioning pod count is displayed over the areas. It’s not enough by half. At least.
