Rendezvous With Rogue 719 by Kaitlyn O'Connor

Author:Kaitlyn O'Connor [O'Connor, Kaitlyn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Amazon: B06XXH6HX3
Goodreads: 34733246
Publisher: New Concepts Publishing
Published: 2017-03-29T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eleven

They could hear cheering in the background when Houston responded. “Expedition One! Happy to hear from you! We thought we’d lost you!”

Wilkes glanced at Reyes and Claudia, but they would be thoroughly debriefed when and if they got back. They didn’t have time to waste on extended, superfluous—for the moment anyway—conversation. “We lost the ship,” he said grimly. “We have Lander One. Can you crunch some numbers for us and tell me if we have a snowball’s chance in hell of getting out of here with the Lander? This place is waking up and becoming more unstable by the hour.”

The director’s voice was no longer jubilant when he responded. It was as grim as Wilkes’. “Suffice it to say conditions down here have been getting a little … unsettled, too. That Rogue has created a lot more havoc than anybody expected. It changed course. It sped up. It has slowed down. It reached the asteroid belt sooner than we’d expected and picked up a train. One meteor the size of Texas narrowly missed us. One almost as big as a cruise ship didn’t miss. We’re in the middle of evacuating as many people as we can—to the Mars colonies and to higher ground when that’s all we can do.

“We can launch an interception, though, from Mars base as originally promised, but it’s going to take longer to reach you if you aren’t able to come to us. What have you got in the way of supplies?”

Wilkes looked sick. “Most of our supplies were on the ship we lost.”

“We have a week’s supply with us for two people,” Claudia volunteered, struggling to feel heartened by that when she knew it wasn’t going to be nearly enough.

“And there are some emergency supplies on the Lander,” Reyes added then shrugged. “Maybe a weeks’ worth for the three of us.”

Wilkes signed off with NASA to devote his entire attention to prepping for lift-off.

“If we have time, we can scavenge whatever’s left in the supply hab,” Claudia suggested. “We need something for the radiation we were exposed to anyway.”

“Get on it,” Wilkes said quickly, “while we’re waiting for a response from Houston—all the air tanks and water you can find. We can fast if we have to. We can use the splitter to break the water down into oxygen if we have enough to spare.”

Nodding a little jerkily, Claudia headed out to get the supplies strapped to the snowmobile. Reyes followed her to help load them into the Lander.

“Don’t leave us,” Reyes said pointedly.

Wilkes met his gaze for a long moment. Anger flickered in his eyes, but he dismissed it. “I wouldn’t consider it even if I thought I had enough on board to make it by myself.”

Reyes nodded and he and Claudia climbed on the skimobile and headed for the supply hab. It was dismaying to see how much Wilkes and Johnson had cleaned out, but Reyes and Claudia scoured the supply hab from the top to the bottom and managed to round

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