The Ruins of Mars: Waking Titan (The Ruins of Mars Trilogy) (28 page)

Finished with the charge, Julian quickly scanned his eyes over the scars on the hull, looking for a spot somew
here near the cluster of launch-pod cylinders.

Noticing an area just over five meters from where he crouched, he sighed and wished his arms were longer. Centered in the middle of the gun-barrel-like fixtures, the target was well out of reach.

“Julian,” came Aguilar’s voice, subdued and defeated. “What should I tell everyone?”

Exhausting the last of his Chinese comprehension, Julian found the electromagnetic function for his boots and engaged it by swiping his finger across the wrist Tablet.

Carefully getting into a standing position, he shuffled away from the safety of the ladder towards the launch pods and the stippled scars that marked the location of his final charge.

“Tell them whatever you like, but just remember what I said about you and the captain. Life is too short. Believe me.”

Placing the charge on the hull, he pressed down until he was satisfied that the plastic explosive had stuck. T
hen straightening up, he gazed out at Mars, now grown to fill almost his entire field of vision.

Distantly at first, the ship began to rumble.

“Time to go, Joey,” he said. “Remember to play my daughter’s music for me.”

“Goodbye, Julian,” sniffed Aguilar, and then the line went dead.

The haunting and serine notes of Julian’s daughter’s first sonata filled his helmet. She had been twelve when she’d written it and he had been there. It was one of the few times in her life that he had.

Feeling a violent shudder, Julian struggled to keep his upright position as the nose of the Ark dipped beneath the surface of the Martian upper atmosphere. Green lights flicked on at the base of each MI launch pod.

With a trembling finger, Julian Thomas glared at the metal tubes then pressed the master detonation command for all of the explosive charges.

One by one
, they blew: fire erupting into space with blossoms of blinding light that evaporated in the beat of a heart. Moving in a succession of planned randomness, the blasts tore the hull of the Chinese Ark apart, huge chunks of steel flung out into the atmosphere like giant bats fleeing the fires of hell.

From where he stood, Julian was in the front row of a spectacle like no other, yet he hardly noticed. As the charge at his feet finally detonated, he was already very far away. In the span of nanoseconds, the music of his beloved daughter bore him on a sea of tranquility that protec
ted his soul from the shredding burning chaos which consumed his body.

Tears streaming down his face, Joseph Aguilar watched from a safe distance as the Chinese Ark spiraled in a hurricane of fire and wreckage. Through the cockpit window of the Lander, he saw the massive ship as it cut a wide swath of flaming destruction across the curve of Mars’s skyline. With one final explosion, the mangled Ark burst into thousands of pieces like some demented firework, streaking across the heavens in a celebration of carnage. The God of War was satiated at last.

In the darkness of the frozen desert, Harrison Raheem Assad looked up at the night sky as small streaks of light rained down behind the wall of mountains, casting an unnatural glow. Like a second sunset, the odd illumination seemed to come from well-past the horizon. Yet, in the contrast of its presence, he saw the glint of metal ahead of him in the desert.

“Ralph,” he spoke, looking down at his friend in his arms. “Ralph, look. It’s the
Dome.”

Through the heavy ice of delirium, Ralph Marshall raised his head enough to catch the reflection of that mysterious and quickly dying light as it shimmered off the Alon plating of Ilia Base a kilometer away.

“Home,” he managed to say.

“Yeah,” Harrison nodded. “Home.”

As Captain Tatyana Vodevski held tightly to the handrail that spanned the
Bridge Deck window, she felt a huge wash of relief envelop her like diving into a tropical sea.

Though only a tiny prick of light compared to the massive fireball that was the Chine
se Ark, she spotted the Lander—Joey’s Lander—speeding towards them.

By her side, Amit Vyes let out a low whistle as the Ark continued to break apart into smaller and smaller pieces, the glow of its fiery demise casting shadows on the back wall of the
Bridge Deck.

In the confusion of debris, neither noticed the hard-shelled pod that fell among the other wreckage, its afterburners cutting on like a comet tail as it sped for the gnarled peeks of the mountains far below.

Though lights had been restored to some portions of Braun after the Pulse, the Bridge Deck was still mostly cloaked in darkness. Only the digital glow of random Tablet screens shone in the large room, reporting on the various functions and systems of the mighty interplanetary starship as they came back online. However, at the Pilot's Console in the center of the Bridge Deck, one screen flashed a series of words having nothing to do with the slowly rebooting spaceship.

Anomalous radio signal netted
, it said in bright green letters.
Location determined: Phobos, Stickney Crater, Limtoc Basin.

End of Book Two

Epilogue

In a smoldering crater past the horizon to the east of
Ilia Base, the blast door of a fire-scorched MI pod shuddered under the force of an unseen blow.

Striking with measured, rapid concussions, the thing inside began to warp the door critically until it finally came free from its hinges. Jettisoned into the night sky, the mangled metal disk landed five meters away with a dull thud and stood erect in the sand.

From inside the shadows of the lone surviving MI pod, something unfolded: six metal legs bracing themselves on all sides of the opening where the blast door had been.

As the wind twisted and howled through the worn peaks of an ancient mountain range, 04 crawled silently from the womb of its MI launch pod, turned west, and disappeared into the blackness of the Martian night.

Special Thanks

Well now, here we are again!

So much goes into writing a book—time, energy, and pizza. However, none of that matters unless your stories find an audience. If you're reading this, then you have not only validated the time, energy, and pizza I consumed writing this book, but you have also made it one of the best experiences in my life. For that I thank you. All of you.

Conversely, there are people in my own life—friends, family, and acquaintances—who have helped me in the first steps of getting my stories out there. If I were to list them all, many would wonder why in God’s name they were even mentioned. This stems from the simple fact that whether or not you realize it, if you're talking to me, I'm thinking about my books and how what you're saying can be worked into the narrative in some small way. There are those, however, dear friends that stand out and thus deserve and honorable mention. Below, I list them for your consideration.

Thank you, Mia Mann. You're the best compass a stormy mind like my own could ever ask for. I know I can be...odd, but you've always made me feel as though this is not a bad thing. Thank you for that. Cougar George, you're my best and oldest friend. When we talk, I feel like you know me better than I know myself. Thank you for your work on the covers, the concepts, and the characterization. Mom and Dad, here I am again. I know you're proud and that makes me feel very thankful to have such supportive people in my life. Garrett Jenkins, your notes on my manuscripts have directly shaped the course my books have taken. You are a dear and old friend and someday I hope to help you in the ways you've helped me. Jacob Lesser, another childhood friend sucked into the vacuum that is this trilogy, thank you for your help during the drafting process. A manuscript is a messy thing but you tackled it anyway. Andrew Olmsted, thank you for the great work you've done with editing this book! As always, you were professional and personal. You prove once again that college drinking buddies can someday evolve into something more!

Though I've already said it, I would like to go ahead and thank ALL of you out there again. Your continued support and enthusiasm is the source of my inspiration and the reason I do what I do.