Robin Parrish - Offworld

Books by Robin Parrish

THE DOMINION TRILOGY

Relentless

Fearless

Merciless

R O B I N P A R R I S H

Offttvrkl Copyright 2009 Robin Parrish Cover design by Lookout Design, Inc. Art direction by Paul Higdon.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may he reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means-electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise-without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews. Published by Bethany House Publishers 11400 Hampshire Avenue South Bloomington, Minnesota 55438

Bethany House Publishers is a division of Baker Publishing Group, Grand Rapids, Michigan. Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Parrish, Robin. Offworld / Robin Parrish. p. cm. ISBN 978-0-7642-0606-1 (phk.) 1. Astronauts-Fiction. I. Title. PS3616.A7684036 2009 813'.6-dc22 2009007609

For Evan

May your dreams carry you beyond the stars. I adore you, and I always will.

Right , foot.

Left _ foot.

Right foot.

Left foot.

Stumble.

Red dirt f lied Burke's field of view. Not that it was much of'a change. Red dirt had been all he could see for hours. Even the bright pinkish tan of the planet's sky was washed away by the windstorm.

"Beech! " he called out, hoisting himself back to his feet as the wind spun him about. He carried a small black pack with a few meager supplies and some mission equipment inside. "I've got Zero visibility! No orientation! I can't see anything!"

He stopped.

Burke's training fought against the fear creeping into his mind, against the rising panic as the wind fed more soil and dust into the crevices of his space suit.

Got to find my way ... dirt's building up ... soon I won't be able to move....

"Habitat, this is Burke!" he yelled over the storm. "I can't see anything, and I've lost contact with Beechum.!"

No answer. A brutal gust surged around him like the gale force of a hurricane, threatening to pick him up off his feet. He crouched to center .his weight, slung the pack over his back, and took a steadying breath.

"Houston? "he tried haeartedly. There was little chance the relay satellite orbiting above would pick him up f the rest of his own team couldn't bear him from less than a hundred miles away. "Is anyone reading me?"

No reply, not even static. The earpiece inside his helmet was dead.

Okay, Chris. Think. You're in the middle of a dried-up riverbed that we've been studying for weeks. You know your way around this place. Think about landmarks. What's nearby?

The wind cleared just enough for him to catch a glimpse of fa red boulder, directly ahead of his position. Burke crawled forward, on hands and knees, and stooped there in the shadow of the larese rock to rest and think. Fighting the dust storm had required all of his strength, every muscle ready to crumple fiom the effort. He brushed aside the deep red dust on his right arm and uncovered an electronic readout on the underside.

It read 5: 08 P~v.

Which meant he had about four hours of oxygen remaining in his suit.

And worse, nightfall would come in less than an hour. Martian days were just thirty-nine minutes longer than days on Earth, so sunrise and sunset were virtually the same on the red planet as on the blue one.

So ... he thought. Lost on the surface of Mars, unable to reach the Habitat, unable to see, barely able to move, only four hours of air left, and it's about to get dark and lethally cold.

If Dad could see me now ...

The wind raged on, pressing Chris full frame against the boulder, wave after wave of red dirt pounding into him so hard he couldfeel it through the thickness of the suit. He could even sense the temperature dropping around him, in spite of his suit's automatic climate control, as daylight began to slide ever so slowly into dusk.

Survival drills ran through his head ...

The horrible roar of the wind made it terribly hard to concentrate.

Water reserves running low, better save it.

Sweat ran down into his eyes, but he couldn't stop it, couldn't reach his face through the tinted visor....

His head rested against the large red rock behind him....

He passed out.

All five hundred square feet of the Ares turned on a central axis as the ship raced for home at 75,000 miles per hour. It was little more than a long, sophisticated metal tube that could separate into segmented compartments. The compartment farthest from the main engine served as the command module and resembled a tiny space shuttle, with small wings on each side and a tail fin that looked proportionately too small. The Ares tumbled through space sideways to give the crew a semblance of gravity, spiraling her way back to Earth.

Christopher Burke awoke to the sound of his first officer pedaling a stationary bicycle at a steady clip, a baseball cap keeping her hair out of her face, and wires channeling music into her ears.

Trisha Merriday looked tired. She concealed it well, but he'd spent two and a half years with her and the other two crewmembers, and he knew them almost as well as they knew themselves.

"You doing okay today?" he tentatively asked. It was always a tightrope, asking how she was feeling, because he knew things about her that the others didn't. Things that she'd chosen to confide in him alone. Everyone has certain secrets that are best kept hidden, he reasoned, and he'd returned the favor by confessing to her his ongoing dreams that began after a near-disastrous incident on Mars.

NASA would have preferred that they maintained a disciplined, formal tone in everything they did, of course. But it was impossible to spend two and a half years of your life with only three other people for company, and maintain formalities.

Trisha made no verbal reply; she merely eyed him knowingly and nodded with an affirmative. He could see that she was putting on her usual stoic facade.

She studied him as she pedaled and pedaled, her legs and feet churning the stirrups.

"Here," she said, pulling a bottle of water from a holder attached to the bike. She tossed it to him, and it took a second longer to reach him than it would have on Earth, the artificial gravity from the ship's spin only providing eighty percent of Earth's pull. "You look like you've already had your workout."

Chris nodded once, a quick thanks, and then took several long draughts from the bottle.

Trisha waited until he was done, trying not to be obvious about the fact that she was watching him, considering his appearance. But he could feel her eyes.