Bachelor on Mars Read online

  “Okay, okay,” Jack said, holding out his hands in a placating manner again, wishing he wasn’t trapped on the sofa. “But if you did, it’s easily cured by taking antibiotics.”

  “What are the symptoms?” Margaret asked.

  “Left untreated, it causes hallucinations, brain damage and kidney failure. Weight loss,” Jack added, nodding at Haxley. “And lack of sleep.”

  “I’m sleeping fine,” Haxley said, staring at the rock in his hand. “Tell me how to get to your stash,” he ordered, bringing up the gun. “Right now.”

  Jack needed to get close to have his shot. “I’d have to show you. It’s hidden.”

  Haxley pursed his lips, then turned to Margaret. “You.” He waved the gun. “Into that chair.”

  Margaret flinched back into the couch.

  “Wait,” Jack said, standing to cover her.

  “Stay back,” Haxley shouted, his control obviously fraying. “The bimbo sits in this chair.” He pointed at the one by the console. “Then we take your rover to this stash of diamonds.”

  “He can’t drive my rover,” Margaret said, standing, gripping Jack’s arm to move him out of the way. “No one drives my rover but me.”

  “What?” Haxley asked in confusion.

  “I think you should let me drive it this time,” Jack said, annoyed that Margaret wasn’t following his lead after she just told him she would. But what did he expect from her? She wasn’t someone who would cower behind a man.

  “Not a chance,” she said. “That’s a two million dollar prototype. I’m not going to let you wreck it.”

  He leaned close to whisper, “We’re in a situation here, Goldie. This is not the time to get territorial.”

  “Forget it. You’re not going anywhere in my rover,” she said, through gritted teeth.

  “That’s ridiculous.” At least Jack didn’t have to worry she’d fall to pieces, since she was obviously too stubborn for that.

  She shook her head. “Not happening. Only I drive.”

  Jack would be amused if this wasn’t such a serious situation. “You are one stubborn woman, you know that?” Strangely, he found he liked her that way.

  “Yeah,” she said. “I do.”

  “Both of you shut up,” Haxley ordered. “She sits on that chair.” He pointed again. “Forget the rover. We’ll take my ship.” He pointed his gun and held it steady on Margaret, his patience obviously fraying.

  She walked across the room as if she had to force herself to take every step. It was better if she stayed here. If he and Haxley ended up dead, she could drive back to Station 7 alone.

  Haxley tied her to the console chair, which showed his mind wasn’t working very well. That chair rolled and meant that Margaret could go anywhere in the room. He tied her tight, then gestured with his gun for Jack to proceed with him through the door.

  Jack took one last look at the woman he hoped with every cell of his being he’d see again. Then he walked away, ready to do battle.

  It was only as he was climbing into his space suit that Jack wondered what ship Haxley was referring to.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Margaret couldn’t believe they’d left her tied to a chair. What the hell? And the old guy had done a really good job, too. He’d pulled her wrists behind her back, then zip tied them around the post that attached the backrest. The position put her arms at such an odd angle, her shoulders ached already and her hands were beginning to go numb.

  One thing she knew, she wasn’t waiting for someone to come save her.

  Not that anyone would. No one at Station 7 had a working rover, let alone the skills to drive it. Only Jack and he wasn’t going to be back any time soon. If at all. She clamped down on the thought and tossed it away. This wasn’t the time to dwell on the worst-case scenario.

  She rolled across the living room, inching forward with her feet. Then she realized she could go faster backwards, pushing off and gliding. It took her all of a minute to make it to the kitchen.

  Ha! I’ll be out of this so fast, I will catch up to Haxley before he’s too far from the station. I’m really getting the hang of this spy thing.

  Then the reality of her situation hit her and she groaned. She stared at the knife block wondering how she would get the knife into her hand, which was behind her back.

  Time pressed down on her. She had to do this quickly, so she could catch up with Jack and Haxley. She knew where they were going. It would take half a day’s drive, true, but Jack needed her. Haxley might kill him. The thought brought a feeling of both worry and panic. She couldn’t let Jack be harmed, and it wasn’t just that they’d had some sort of sex last night. Okay, so they weren’t dating. He’d fooled around with her only because he thought she was going to leave tomorrow on the shuttle. Or that the Russians were going to annihilate them.

  But while there weren’t any Russians, that didn’t mean Haxley wouldn’t kill them all. Something was obviously very wrong with the man. He’d been jumping from emotion to emotion like a hot potato. And the color of his face, the dark circles, and the weight loss all said his health was in decline.

  Which brought her back to the situation at hand. Before she could rescue Jack, she’d have to get off the chair she’d been tied to.

  She knew Jack had been lying to him when he said they were diamonds, because he’d told her in the cave it was probably a type of quartz. But Haxley believed he’d seen diamonds, and she’d thought the rainbow from the sunlight had been a nice touch.

  Step one of the plan—get free. Step two—race to the cave to save Jack. Unless Haxley’s ship was significantly faster than her rover and they were gone before she could get there. Which was a large possibility if he had some kind of spacecraft. Like the one she’d seen yesterday.

  Although, it hadn’t gone fast when it had flown near them. It had moved about the speed of her rover. Which should have been too slow for flying, but it moved along just fine. Perhaps it had some sort of anti-gravity system. For a moment, Margaret dropped into the possibilities of that before ripping herself back to her current reality.

  Studying the knife block, she tried to imagine how she could draw out the knife and concluded the only way was with her teeth. Planting her feet, she practiced standing with the chair attached to her ass. The chair made her seriously unbalanced. She wobbled and clunked backwards, the chair gliding away from the counter. She inched back into place and tried again.

  Keeping upright by using her stomach muscles for balance, she leaned over the counter and her teeth almost closed around the knife. The chair tipped her and she fell back again, gliding even further away.

  There was nothing to do but silence her screaming internal voice that begged her to hurry and repeat the process.

  She tried again, this time managing to smash her nose into the knife block to take hold of a handle. She pulled the knife out.

  Exhausted, she flopped into her chair, trying to pant while still maintaining her grip with her teeth.

  Attempting to breathe through her nose, she wondered how the hell she was going to transfer the knife into her hands, which were tied behind her back.

  For a moment, she despaired.

  Outside, Jack stared at the ship in the courtyard, incredulous. “Haxley, where the hell did you get this thing?”

  The ship was the same one he’d seen the day his rover had been destroyed. It was matte black, conical in shape, the lines so smooth, it looked like a giant egg sitting before them. There wasn’t an obvious door, or any break at all on the outside. And it weirdly reflected the land around them, almost, but not quite, blending into the background. It was so alien, so unlike any other craft Jack had ever seen, it made him instinctively recoil.

  “I found it.” Haxley caressed the smooth side. “She’s a beaut isn’t she?”

  A bad feeling rolled over Jack. “You found it where?”

  “None of your business,” Haxley said, suspicion lacing his voice as he spun to face Jack, flinging out his arms protectively.<
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  Jack had never seen any craft even remotely like this. And by the stubborn set of the old man’s mouth, he wasn’t going to tell Jack where it came from. So instead, Jack tried to get information another way. “If you’re so hard up for money, why didn’t you sell it?”

  Haxley gaped at him, horrified. “I would never sell it. It’s my friend.”

  “Your friend,” Jack repeated cautiously, wondering just how badly Haxley had lost it. Hallucinations were a bad sign, although Jack had to admit the craft was a physical reality. “How do you open it? The outside is perfectly smooth.”

  On a dime, Haxley’s mood shifted again to one of a proud parent. “It took me months to learn,” Haxley said, his voice brimming with excitement. “I touched it and hammered at it and nothing. I didn’t even scratch the outside. Then finally I did this.” Haxley put his hand right in the middle of the side of the egg and pushed inward.

  A round door cracked into existence, pushing back into the craft, then sliding into the wall as if by magic.

  “Wow,” Jack said unenthusiastically, liking this even less.

  Since childhood, Jack had known there had to be other intelligent life forms out in the universes. It made sense that humans weren’t the only ones. But he’d long ago thrown out any worries of aliens invading Earth. The likelihood was just too small, in his opinion. But now he stared at something so alien and amazing, it was conclusive proof there were others out there. And those others had made it next door to Earth.

  Plain and simple, Jack feared it.

  “And look at the equipment,” Haxley was saying, gliding an arm across the opening to encompass the inside of the ship as if he were a saleswoman at a car show.

  Fighting the urge to run, Jack leaned inside. The scientist in him that had to see warred with more basic instincts. “How did you figure out how to fly it?”

  Haxley climbed in and beckoned Jack to follow him. “It took me forever, but then I discovered this.” He picked up a strange helmet that wasn’t exactly the shape of a human skull, flaring out wide to the sides before coming back in, as if to cradle a sideways hammer instead of a normal head. Wires came from all sides, attaching it to the ship, like some sort of weird hair. “And when I put it on my head,” he did so, sliding it over like a toque, his neck wobbling a bit under the weight, “everything lit up.”

  Around them, the whole ship came to attention, small pinpoints of light running up and down the walls in columns. Jack resisted the urge to climb back off the ship. Because whatever this was, it was dangerous and Haxley had obviously crossed the line into madness if he was doing all this for the sake of the ship. The thing Jack didn’t know was if the ship had caused his mental lapses or if Haxley had gone mad on his own.

  In order to save everyone, including Ellen, who Jack hoped was still alive locked in a closet at Station 5 and not dead from starvation, he had to take Haxley’s gun from him and get this ship safely secured where a team from Earth could study it. Which wouldn’t happen if Haxley killed him, then blew up the inbound resupply shuttle. He had to protect the others.

  Haxley fiddled with a strap. “Although it took me quite some time to adjust it to fit my head size. It was far too large at first.”

  The cockpit had two seats growing out of the floor without any seams, as if the ship had been cast from one, huge mold. Surrounded by panels of lights and instruments, Haxley turned his head and everything flickered. The door slid into place, bumping into Jack, pushing him further into the craft.

  Well, he wasn’t getting off now.

  He peered closer at the panels. No knobs or buttons or anything a human could interact with lined the walls. “How does it work?” he asked, almost dreading the answer.

  “I just think at it and tell it what I want to do. Isn’t that amazing?” Haxley patted the panel before him as if it were a beloved pet.

  “It didn’t cross your mind that connecting your brain to an alien ship was a bad idea? Because this is obviously not technology from Earth.” Jack ran a hand over the seat. It had the texture of a super hard plastic, but yet was warm and a small amount of energy wafted from it.

  As if the ship was alive.

  “This ship might have started out as alien, but it’s mine now. I told it only to respond to me, and it promised to follow only my orders,” Haxley said, his eyes lighting with a fanatical gleam. “So, don’t try to steal it, Boyle. It won’t work for you.”

  “I would never dream of stealing it.” Jack wondered if that were true, but didn’t plan to test it. There was no way he would ever put that helmet on.

  The craft scared him on so many levels. It looked brand new, but Haxley had said he banged on the outside. Yet there were no dents or even scratches. Perhaps it was made out of some sort of alloy that never decayed? In which case, this ship could have been left on Mars for centuries, it’s crew long dead.

  And Haxley really believed the ship would only follow his orders because he told it to. If that wasn’t crazy Jack didn’t know what was.

  “Where do we go? And don’t think you’ll fool me, Boyle.”

  “The spot is about halfway between here and Station 7.” The cave would be an ideal place to strip Haxley of his gun and overpower him. Jack pulled up his data link and handed over the coordinates.

  “With these, I could go without you,” Haxley said, excitement building to the point he appeared to vibrate with it.

  “Then leave me here,” Jack said, hopeful that Haxley was altered enough to do so. He could go back inside and set Margaret free.

  “He’s trying to trick me, so I won’t find the diamonds,” the old man mumbled. “We’ll get there and it must be hidden, so we won’t find it and he’ll have all the diamonds for himself. But we must have money to get the supplies you need to fix yourself.”

  Fear crept up Jack’s spine. Haxley was much worse off than he’d thought. Because it appeared he was speaking to the ship.

  Haxley cocked his head as if he were listening, the wires from the helmet sprouting off in several directions, making him look utterly insane. “Take us to these coordinates and he’ll show us where they are. We’ll do what we have to so you are fixed. I promise.”

  Suddenly, the whole front of the ship turned translucent, showing the surrounding terrain. The ship rose, as if to do Haxley’s bidding, rocking Jack so he staggered back and caught himself against one warm wall. And they were off, moving slowly across the terrain, only a few feet above the surface.

  Jack lowered himself to sit on the gently glowing green floor, trying to wrap his head around what was happening.

  After a while, Jack stopped being scared and asked, “Why isn’t it going faster?” Because an alien craft this advanced should be capable of sonic speeds.

  “It’s hurt,” Haxley said sadly, patting the panel beside him. “It needs my help to fix itself.”

  “You’re talking as if it’s a sentient being.”

  Haxley grinned madly at him. “Oh, it is. It’s alive, just hurt. I’m going to save it.”

  Holy shit, Jack thought.

  After a few minutes of lolling in hopelessness and a feeling of doom, Margaret shook off her despair and figured out a plan.

  She needed to drop the knife, then flip her chair over on its side. From there, she could grab the knife with her hands behind her and saw herself free. A simple plan for a simple problem.

  Only the stupid chair wouldn’t topple over.

  She’d rolled back over to the rug, figuring that would cushion her fall a bit, and dropped the knife on the floor. Then she tried to flop over on her side, but all she seemed to be able to do was make the chair bounce back and forth on its casters. That motion scooted her away from the knife. She figured moving to the knife with the chair attached to her would be hard, so she wanted to stay close.

  Part of the problem was that she didn’t want to get hurt in the fall, so she’d been timid in her attempts. But now she knew she had to put her all into it and really commit. Time was ticking a
way. This was no moment for hesitancy.

  With all her might, she screamed, “Ahhh!” and flung the chair sideways.

  The chair smacked over on its side like a ton of bricks and Margaret landed with a smash.

  “Son of a bitch,” she moaned, her shoulders feeling as if they’d ripped from their sockets. She panted through the pain, waiting for it to subside.

  When she was able to take stock of her surroundings, she realized she’d fallen halfway along the couch, which put her much further from the knife than she’d wanted to be. “Can nothing go right?” she asked, annoyed beyond belief. Because really, this was ridiculous.

  Then she kicked her feet backwards, digging into the rug for leverage, and slowly worked her way to the knife, dragging the chair with her.

  Her right hand scrambled a bit before she had the hilt firmly in her hand. Maneuvering it was tricky, but she finally had the blade in place.

  On her first saw, it slipped and cut her pointer finger.

  “Dammit,” she moaned, dangerously close to losing her cool.

  Get it together, Margaret. No panicking.

  She tried again and this time it worked.

  Landing felt like he rode a feather. Just a puff of dust and they were down as gently as could be. The door opened and the front windshield turn opaque again.

  “We’ll be back. No, no I promise. As soon as we can,” Haxley said to the ship.

  Jack climbed out, taking a quick look at his oxygen reserves. He didn’t have enough to make it back to Station 7, or he’d just hit Haxley over the head with a rock and take off running.

  Instead, he pointed to the cave. “This way.”

  As they got nearer, Haxley grew suspicious, peering inside without entering. “You playing a trick on me?”

  Jack pulled his flashlight from his pocket.

  Faster than he thought possible, Haxley had the zoot gun out and aimed at him.

  “Whoa,” Jack said, and flicked on the flashlight. “Just a light. See?” He pointed it into the cave, lighting up the back wall into an awesome display of crystal.