Still, anytime a piece of equipment unexpectedly broke down or messages were inexplicably garbled, wary eyes turned toward her as if she were some sort of hidden saboteur. Tasia couldn’t understand why Roamers would be suspect, since they had lost more than anyone else to the new enemy. But the other Eddies did not look at their suspicions rationally.

What do you expect from kleebs?

By now her father and Jess must know where she had gone. Sometimes she allowed herself a wry smile, imagining how Bram Tamblyn would have railed and ranted at what his daughter had done. He would have shouted at the frozen ice ceiling and bewilderedly asked what he had done wrong as a parent. Jess could have given him a long litany of his parental shortcomings … but he wouldn’t. Instead, Bram would end up riding Jess harder than ever, adding responsibilities and pressures, criticizing his every task, and unwittingly losing his only remaining child.

She lifted her chin with determination. One day, after she’d become a vital key to defeating the sinister aliens, her father might actually be proud of her. Tasia would not hold her breath, though.

She was on duty in the base communications center, a domed room atop the cracked canyons of Labyrinthus Noctis, during an off-hours shift that had nothing to do with the day/night cycle of Mars. All Eddies ran on standard Earth military time, regardless of what planet or ship they served on.

A Roamer supply vessel had stopped at the EDF base on Earth’s moon to drop off much-needed tanks of ekti for military use. Upon departure from the Moon, the cargo ship had sent a loud scrambled signal at a very low frequency, far below the range of normal communication bands. When moonbase EDF personnel demanded an explanation, the Roamer captain answered with chagrin that he’d experienced a malfunction of his pulse transmitter, that he’d merely sent a test signal in a low-frequency band that would not interfere with normal EDF communications. Tasia hid her smile, not believing the excuse for a second. Even the Eddies didn’t seem to be convinced.

Then the Roamer vessel had streaked away from the Moon. But rather than heading up and out of Sol system, the cargo ship looped in a broad parabola that intersected the orbit of Mars. The red planet was a third of the way clockwise around the Sun.

In the communications center, Tasia spotted the oncoming craft and hesitated. The Roamer ship displayed extraordinary speed as it approached the military compound on Mars. The vessel almost certainly had doctored serial numbers and a false identification beacon. Even without knowing the captain’s clan, she still didn’t want to get him in trouble… but if Tasia didn’t sound the alarm fast enough, then more suspicion would be cast upon her. She punched the alert signal.