“Working with The Machinists?” she thought, looking out the ship’s
window as they broke through the thin atmosphere.
How could that happen? No one in the Alexander family would
consider that, if only out of respect for Io. No matter how dangerous they
imagined the Nekuia to be. The fact remained that they killed Io’s parents,
accident or not.
Kate could only imagine one way the Alexanders would work
with The Machinists, if Io gave her blessing. It didn’t matter if they
kidnapped Lucas, and somehow managed to convince him to trust them. It was
really Io that mattered. And she was on her way to Jupiter Station.
They flew over several large cities coming in to the surface
of Mars. Most looked run down, even from her vantage point.
It has been a long time since Kate had set foot on Mars, and
she had never been to the Prosperity Ghetto. But she could swear that they were
flying over it from the images she’d seen on Earth. The ship didn’t land in the
Ghetto, but flew past it and crested a small crater ridge just beyond. That’s
where the ship landed, in a small port out of sight, but not far away.
The captain came back into the passenger area, told them all
about the gravity changes, the effects it would have on them, and, of course,
about the dirty air.
“How long will it take us to acclimate?” Kate asked.
“Probably weeks,” he said. “But, you may never feel right.”
When Kate stepped out of the ship and into the small port,
she could instantly feel the difference. She coughed several times and had to
pause for a minute to recover. He was right, the air was dirty. She could
almost taste the grit in her teeth.
This was nothing like the Mars station she visited when she
was a child. And she couldn’t quite get the sense of her legs yet either. It
was like being at sea, but worse. There was no horizon she could concentrate
on.
Kate took her time walking through the small docking bay,
and towards another gate. She followed Eric through and into the communication
center of the station.
It was small, even smaller than she thought when they landed.
But for some reason, she didn’t feel cramped by it.
A long wall of windows to her left was covered with a thin
veil of red dust. To her right, several monitoring stations sat on tiered
platforms. Screens, buttons, switches and lights covered every surface.
Everything in the room had a purpose, not one inch was wasted space.
The group continued to move through the room and exited on
the far side. She stepped through the next doorway, and had to squeeze out
behind everyone. She wondered if the room was really that small.
But it wasn’t.
She looked past everyone to see someone on the other side of
the room. She did not recognize him. Eric and James turned around to look at
her, and they all stepped back to allow her to move forward.
“Hello, Kate.” The man didn’t speak, and she looked around
to see where the voice came from. Standing in the corner of the room was Lucas.
She instinctively ran over to him.
“Lucas,” she said. “Are you alright?”
“I’m fine,” he told her.
That’s when she took a step back and looked around. She
started to wonder if anyone in that room was on her side.
“What’s going on here?” she asked.
“We’ve come to talk with you,” Lucas told her. “Trent didn’t think we
should wait for you to come to us.”
“Whose Trent ?”
“I am,” the strange man answered, reaching out his hand.
She ignored him, and looked back at Lucas. “What’s going on?”
“We’re afraid,” Lucas told her.
“Afraid of what?”
“We picked up transmission from deep space,” Trent said, stepping
forward.
“What transmission?”
“They’re coming, Kate,” he told her. “And, they know you
have the box.”
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