Losing Mars (Saving Mars Series-3) Read Online Free

preferences must be helping him. It made her heart swell with pride. Ethan had overcome so much to function in a world that ran counter to his internal wiring. She’d been dead wrong about the rebody setting him back. She shook her head, certain she would have done much worse in the body of another than her brother was doing. He had strengths she would never understand.
    “I wonder what angle the Head of Consciousness Transfer is playing with the so-called shortage of tellurium?” asked Dr. Kazuko Zaifa. Kazuko, a former employee at the Mars Containment Programs facility, spoke rarely—and usually only to Ethan. She now assisted Ethan in his efforts to access and control the deadly satellites circling Mars. “Does he believe the shortage is real?” she asked.
    “My aunt is behind the shortage,” replied Pavel. “That announcement has Lucca’s fingerprints all over it. Only my aunt would announce a shortage when she’s just taken in enough to pay a king’s ransom.”
    Jessamyn felt her face flushing bright red: that Pavel’s aunt now had access to a surplus of tellurium was her fault. She’d crashed the Galleon thanks to the weight of the tellurium sequestered in its hold by those who wanted Mars Colonial to begin trade relations with Earth again.
    “Perhaps the Chancellor wishes to tighten her ability to control her citizens,” said Harpreet. “If some were to be denied the opportunity to rebody because of a tellurium shortage, whom do you think would be the first to be denied?”
    “Dissenters and those who have lost rebody credits for undesirable behaviors,” said Pavel.
    “Me own self, certainly,” said Brian Wallace.
    “Look on the bright side, Brian: your body’s worth something at an off-grid facility, at least, now you’ve lost so much weight,” said Pavel.
    Wallace patted his shrunken belly sadly. A life on the run followed by life in a desert had not been kind to him. “Aye. I’m but two-thirds the man I used to be.”
    “So Lucca’s hoarding tellurium and trying to control people,” said Jess, yawning. “Wake me up when something interesting happens.” She rose and began to shuffle toward the sleep chamber she shared with Kazuko Zaifa and Harpreet.
    She knew her attitude was selfish. But she couldn’t help it. While she felt gratitude to the denizens of Yucca for accepting her so readily, Jessamyn could not find it in her heart to care deeply for Earth or its inhabitants. She yearned to return to Mars. To help Mei Lo ensure for once and for all that relations with the miserable Terran world were severed completely. Only, she was stuck on said miserable Terran world. And even the people she cared for most here in Yucca seemed to be urging her to think of Earth as home .
    She didn’t want to settle down and accept that Mars was lost to her. Earth would never be home. And she certainly didn’t want to be Yucca’s guardian of secret-tea-ingredients. She flopped onto the bed she’d been given and kicked at her boots, sending them sailing across the room. She knew she ought to get up and retrieve the footgear, to stow it neatly away. Both Kazuko and Harpreet were tidy. But she just couldn’t make herself care.
    The chance to fly a special supply run had been the one thing toward which Jessamyn had looked with anything like eagerness. And that had been canceled for today—the entire settlement was grounded. She missed flying as though it were a physical part of her that had been excised. Jessamyn was not finding life on Earth to be an improvement over life on Mars.

5
    ANOMALOUS PATTERNS
    Chancellor Brezhnaya was not having a good morning. Johnston, the agent she had appointed through the recommendation of the Head of Global Solvency, was a dullard. But more to the point, he was an unsuccessful dullard.
    “As I have attempted to explain, Madam Chancellor, there is no difference between tellurium processed on the long-ago Mars Colony and tellurium processed here on Earth,” said the