We’ve been decelerating at 2 G for the past six hours, and I feel my brain pounding against the back of my eyes. Generally, I lie down whenever we ramp up the g-force, but not today. No siree, they expect me to work and lead my friends to imminent death.

I hope I’m simply overreacting. I hope I’m being pessimistic.

While the Admiral, Marshals, and us Technicals are up in heavyweight Spaceship Plato, monitoring from above, the Starships assigned to this mission are in three dropships. A little after seventeen-hundred hours, they end their ninety minute 4 G deceleration burn to enter Mars’ atmosphere at a reasonable speed.

I hear a collective sigh through my headphones, evidence of the blood rushing back into the Starships’ heads.

“This is Starship Commander Renner,” says Duarte, his voice clear and strong. While I am unable to see him, the monitor shows me what his dropship is currently viewing—the rocky dunes of the Red Planet. “We are approaching the Holding Safe at two-oh-eight meters per second. Permission to override autopilot and navigation?”

“Permission granted,” my father responds.

“Turning off autopilot and navigation,” Duarte announces. A few buttons click in low tones. “Manual navigation and transmission on.”

“Welcome back, Commander Renner,” the unisex voice of their dropship’s virtual assistant comes through our speakers. “How can I help?”

“Remi, what does a Starship and a Technical have in common?” Duarte asks in a teasing tone. The adrenaline must be putting him in a better mood.

“They’re both abstinent,” Remi replies with sass, “but only one of them is happy about it.”

Some Keepers chuckle, and I fight to contain my widening smile. Timour meets my gaze from across the room, where he is seated with the other “backup” Starships for this mission. He instantly blushes and lowers his eyes. A couple Keepers elbow him, and he pushes them away. Aw.

“Commander Renner, now is not the time,” Marshal Renner scolds.

“Fine, fine.” Duarte instructs, “Remi, we won’t be needing assistance today.”

“Okay. Call if you need anything.” Remi logs off.

“The Holding Safe is coming up in two-point-five kilometers,” Marshal Khan states, all business. “Your speed is now eighty-three meters per second. Can you confirm?”

“Confirmed.” Duarte replies.

“You need to lower your altitude,” Marshal Khan advises. “The West Vent typically goes unused, which makes it safer to infiltrate, but also harder to see. You won’t want to risk flying over it and taking valuable time to backtrack.”

“No worries, ma’am. Our IPS”—Interplanetary Positioning System—“has just locked on to the Vent. But to appease you: Lowering height above ground to two hundred meters.”

I don’t understand how Duarte can be so blasé about this mission. My foot continues to repetitively shake as I cross and uncross my legs. I fidget with my fingers and clip and unclip my hair accessory. Staring intently at the main monitor as the dropships glide closer to the ground, I look on in wonder as dunes withdraw and rocks increase in size. The planet no longer appears red but more faded rust-brown with patches of gray dust.

The Martians’ advanced capital, Solarity, is about ten kilometers away from our dropships. I’ve seen satellite pictures of it before but never from our live cameras. While I’m disappointed I won’t get a glimpse of its magnificence today—the only opportunity I may ever get—I should consider it a blessing. Make no mistake, Martians aren’t aliens; they’re ambitious humans who were tired of Earth and founded an independent colony. Made up of rich donors, intelligent engineers, revolutionary botanists, and experienced fighters, they’re Earth’s biggest threat in the entire Solar System.

“West Vent coming up in ten, nine, eight . . .” my father warns.

“I see it!” Duarte exclaims.

I squint my eyes, attempting to find any sort of structure in the sand. I’m about to ask where the Vent is when I spot a silver, circular hatch embedded into the top of a plateau.

“Blow up the skeleton,” my father orders.

“Yes, sir.” Marshal Renner holds up a fist then extends his fingers to increase the size of a holographic image. It’s a blueprint exhibiting the structure of the underground Holding Safe. The middle of the Safe is circular, and the four Vents—North, South, East, West—stretch out from the center, about one and a half kilometers long each. The East connects directly to Solarity. “Sending skeleton to Keepers.”

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“Prepare for landing.” The three dropships hover for a few seconds before landing lightly on Mars’ surface. The twelve Keepers exit the dropships, carrying coilguns—weapons using electromagnets to accelerate bullets—and elecs—weapons that can either disable or electrocute to death a threat, depending on their setting. Our holographic monitors flicker as the dropships’ cameras turn off, and the Keepers’ helmet cameras turn on, allowing us on Plato to see through their eyes.

“The electric force field on the hatch has been deactivated. It should be safe to open,” my father says.

“Only one way to find out,” Duarte quips. He straps his coilgun to the front of his body then bends to grab the cylindrical handle. He heaves, but the hatch doesn’t budge. “A little help?”

Two other Keepers strap their weapons and move to flank him.

“One, two, three.”

They grunt and pull. The hatch opens with a scrape and a hiss. Duarte starts down the ladder, the hole barely big enough for him to comfortably fit.

“The Vent is narrow, and we don’t want the passage to be clogged on the way back,” my father explains. “Commander Renner will retrieve the item alone.”

“Copy that,” one ground Keeper acknowledges.

Once Duarte nears the bottom of the ladder, he jumps down, pulls out his coilgun, and examines the area. The West Vent is a narrow, metal, one-way tunnel with dim lights dotting the ceiling every few meters. Two transparent walls with electric padlocks separate him from the rest of the Vent.

“I thought our mole deactivated the Holding Safe,” Duarte says, perplexed.

“The airlock and lights run on backup generators when cut off from their main electric source,” my father clarifies. “They wouldn’t want to risk Mars’ atmosphere contaminating breathable air. I have the twelve digit code. You ready?”

“Yes, sir.” Duarte punches the code into the padlock as my father rattles it off.

After about a minute in the airlock, Duarte is released on the other side. He starts jogging, shoulders brushing the sides of the tunnel every so often.

Seven minutes later, he stops dead in his tracks.

“What the hell?” his furious voice rings through my headphones.

The light is so faint in the Vent that, at first, I can’t make out anything abnormal. Duarte edges forward slowly, and that’s when I see it.

The room collectively gasps.

“Contact the mole,” my father tightly orders. “We need him to explain this immediately.”

“Yes, sir.” Marshal Renner taps his portal hastily, the reflected light painting his sweaty face a shade of blue.

“What’s going on?” one of the ground Keepers asks, unable to see what Duarte is viewing without our holographic monitors.

“I’m at the edge of the Holding Safe, but there’s no way to get in. It’s practically a deadend,” Duarte responds. “There’s a hole—no, a slit—in the wall on the left, which I’m guessing leads to the center.”

Marshal Renner’s portal blinks thrice, then the color disappears. He shakes his head, eyes wide. “I can’t establish a connection. They’re not answering.”

My father breathes heavily for a few moments, deep in thought. Finally, he inquires, “Marshal Khan, the auto-vacuums. They can pick things up. What if we send a couple down there?”

“Those robots are trained to pick up dirt and dust, nothing that weighs more,” she answers. “The vacuums cannot pick up items with a diameter larger than a centimeter.”

“Damn it.”

“And even if they could,” I interject, “the robots are highly specialized. They’re trained for this ship, and this ship alone. We don’t know what kind of barriers they’ll encounter there, especially considering our mole has made themself . . . unavailable.”

“Sergeant Chambers,” my father formally addresses me. “If we can certify that the robots won’t run into any obstacles in the Safe, and we increase the suction—”

“This is all theoretical—”

“Just listen to me, for once!” he snaps, and my head rears back a bit, startled by his tone. “If we do that, how long would it take to train a robot to pick up a coin?”

A coin? Is that what we’re after? Some ancient form of barter?

“If it’s a coin,” I begin, “why don’t we use a magnet?”

“It’s not an alloy, nor is it exactly a coin.”

I ponder for a few moments. “No, no, I’m sorry.” I shake my head. “It’ll take hours to build and train something like that from scratch . . . potentially days . . . another hour to get it to the surface. We don’t have the time.”

He looks as if I’ve disappointed him. He slams his hand against the table, and the whole room flinches. My dad’s never like this. So crazed, so emotional. I unconsciously run my fingers over my collarbones in an attempt to comfort myself.

My father is leaning over his recliner, digging his fingers into the back of it, when he unnaturally stills. His eyes flicker up to meet mine, and I witness a lightbulb go off in his brain. “Commander Renner,” he starts slowly, “How wide is the gap?”

“At the narrowest point?” asks Duarte.

“Yes.”

“Maybe nine—ten inches?” Duarte guesstimates. “I can’t be sure.”

Oh no.

No, I don’t like the look on my father’s face right now. I’m not a fan of the way he’s staring at me.

“Marshal Khan,” my father addresses her, “can you confirm?”

She uses her fingers to blow up the scale bar on the holographic monitor depicting the scene through Duarte’s eyes. The bar uses edge detection to automatically fit the width of the slit in the wall.

“Approximately nine-point-seven inches—twenty-four-point-six centimeters,” she announces. “Confirmed.”

“Then we send in our smallest Keeper,” my father declares.

And like a badly written sitcom, twenty heads in the command center jerk in my direction. Twenty pairs of eyes acknowledging: We’re doomed.