Chapter One
Caine Riordan felt as much as heard the rough crackle that came through his damaged EVA tether: the only signal still reaching him from the ship. Throat dry, he swallowed and muttered the mantra he revised every half minute: “One hundred twenty seconds. Then fifteen more.”
Words to live by. Literally. Because if he wasn’t back inside the air lock before then, he’d be dead.
Or as good as dead, anyway. In two minutes, the inbound solar storm’s bow wave would spike. The fifteen additional seconds were an estimate on how long it would take for the soaring REM rate to impart a lethal whole-body dose. So every remaining moment had to be spent surveying the blue-and-tan planet beneath him.
The river he needed to study one last time began to emerge from the ink-black crescent that divided night from day. To the south of that meandering line he saw the start of vast flatlands: the only feasible landing zone. He was only partially aware of the other planetary details rotating into view: multiple hurricanes upon the blue seas; masses of churning charcoal clouds creeping across wastes; curtains of ochre haze marking where sandstorms spun away from the equator. Of the many words with which he and his crew had described the world, “hospitable” had never been used.
But strangely, the most frequent label had been “fortunate,” since the presence of the planet defied all logic. After multiple mis-shifts, the ship should have re-expressed as a diffuse spray of high-energy particles in deep space. Instead, it had not only emerged intact and near a star, but above a world with broad oceans and quite possibly a breathable atmosphere. Pandora Veriden, who was typically more rough-mannered than religious, had proclaimed it a miracle. Riordan suspected their deliverance was not due to a deity, but rather some forgotten rescue system left by the ancient and inscrutable intelligences that had preceded the Dornaani themselves.
Finally, the landing zone edged beyond the terminator. Riordan folded his left pinky against his palm and blinked twice, hoping the Dornaani vacc suit was still responding to that command sequence. He sighed in relief as the middle of the helmet’s HUD zoomed in and showed the flatlands at ten-times magnification. But the precise area he needed—the point where the river he’d been tracking met an even larger one—was not quite centered. Focusing his eyes on that confluence, he used the same finger-and-blink combination. The view became murky as it swam inward, then resharpened. Now at an adjusted altitude of thirty kilometers, the image was more grainy but much more useful.
The new, larger river entered from the upper left edge of the magnified view—the northwest—and ran almost straight down to where it exited at the southeast. The tributary he’d seen first ran eastward to meet it. There he saw what he’d first presumed to be a circle of faintly bleached terrain. But thanks to the magnification, this time Caine confirmed it was not a circle after all, but a thick ring around a small, greenish dot. And at that dot’s center was an irregularly striated grey speck.
Time as a defense analyst had taught Riordan what those colors and patterns signified. The bleached terrain was typically flattened and compacted land, whereas the light green band was almost certainly vegetation. But only one known feature produced the striated pattern of the small grey speck: buildings and streets. In this case, a city just over a kilometer wide, most of it snugged up against the southern bank of the tributary.
Riordan expelled his breath in a long, ragged sigh. Since arriving thirty-eight hours ago, everyone had been fixated upon one question: was the world habitable? With only two days of life support, the answer would decide their future: making planetfall or asphyxiating in space.
However, survival was still far from a surety. Just because there was a city—
The tether squawked.
Riordan gritted his teeth—“Ninety seconds, then fifteen more”—and resumed tempering his hopes. There were plenty of reasons why a city might be present on a completely lethal planet. It had probably been built by locals who either evolved on the world or spent eons adapting to its possibly deadly atmosphere. Also, since Caine and his self-styled “Crewe” hadn’t detected any activity or signals, a long-past global cataclysm could have not only withered its surface, but left it uninhabitable. He was tempted to spend a few more seconds seeking further clues, but with just over a minute remaining, he kept his eyes on the landing zone.
Three hundred kilometers long and half as wide, the flatland south of the tributary gave them lots of room for error. Which they were likely to need. Badly. Without power to run a planetary survey, there was only one way to gather data for the automated descent software: suit sensors. The tether had piped the measurements to the ship’s only functioning computer: a personal unit powered by the emergency batteries. Crunching numbers nonstop, it raced to define and refine two crucial datapoints: the hull’s angle of incidence to the equator and the atmosphere’s density.
It was still interpolating atmospheric friction, braking values, and descent vectors when the tether failed. Riordan had rerouted the sensor feed to his suit’s computer, but within seconds, the data crystal warned of impending overload. The one remaining option—to use the processor’s memory to capture the overflow—required shutting down almost every other system. As he complied, a sharp stab of trepidation cut deeper because of uncertainty: the data might still be insufficient or fried like the tether. And there was no way to tell until the suit was back aboard.
The one positive side effect of the tether failure was that, with nothing else to do, Riordan was free to devote all his attention to the one task that only a human could complete: a nuanced assessment of the terrain. A recently resurrected saying—“there’s no substitute for the Mark One Eyeball”—was particularly pertinent when it came to detecting subtle clues associated with unpromising landing conditions.
However, it was also the kind of task that required sustained, myopic focus. And that allowed one’s thoughts to wander—in Caine’s case, toward Elena and their son Connor. The irony was especially dark: that the monotony of the task was why his thoughts strayed . . . and with them, his attention. Just when he needed it most.
Ever since the mis-shift, it was tempting to imagine that the universe was taking sardonic delight in reminding them that one of the universal realities of human existence was haplessness. And of all the examples, the tether’s failure had been the most ironic. As was so often the case with disasters, the first sign of trouble was not a bright warning light, but an apparently unrelated and harmless anomaly.
It began when Eku, the Dornaani-educated human running the computer, paged him via the tether. “Commodore Riordan,” he’d begun with customary formality, “Ms. Veriden and Ms. Tagawa are standing by with me. I didn’t want to distract you, but—”
“Hey, Boss,” Dora Veriden broke in, “this ship is going loco.”
“Say again?”
Ayana Tagawa explained calmly. “The ship’s alarm sounded. Eku tells us that this klaxon warns against engaging the shift-drive.”
“See?” Dora exclaimed. “The ship is crazy! We don’t have power, the drive is burned out, and it still thinks we are going to shift?”
Eku’s voice was as mild as Dora’s was excited. “The alarm does not indicate that the ship is unable to shift. Only that it is unsafe to do so.”
Caine frowned. “So, what’s the hazard?”
“Without diagnostics, there is no way to tell, Commodore.”
Ayana’s tone was introspective. “I doubt the ship itself is the cause. Its systems are inert, and Colonel Rulaine and Chief O’Garran found no damage during their hull survey.”
Caine felt his frown lines stiffening. “As we near the atmospheric insertion point, we go deeper into the planet’s gravity well. Could that be the cause?”
Riordan could almost hear Eku’s slow headshake. “No, sir. That would not compromise the shift navigation of a Dornaani ship.”
“However,” Ayana murmured as if discovering her insight as she spoke, “shift activation involves delicate management of matter and energy states. And solar emissions are increasing.”
Riordan checked his then-functioning dosimeter. “Nothing consistent with flare activity, though.”
Eku’s correction was as sharp as a starter’s pistol. “Not yet.”
Ayana’s voice was less calm than usual. “Please explain.”
“Certain stellar emission patterns are highly predictive of increased activity. That said, a flare does not constitute a shift hazard.”
Veriden sounded exasperated. “But then why are you worried about—?”
“Dora,” Ayana interrupted, a marked break from her normal manners. “Eku only excluded a flare.”
Riordan understood and swallowed. “But an incoming coronal mass ejection might set off the alarm.”
“Most assuredly, Commodore,” Eku agreed.
“Madre de Dios,” Dora whispered.
Caine took a deep breath. “What’s my revised mission duration?”
Ayana’s answer was crisp. “Twenty minutes remaining, sir. No more.”
Riordan bit his lip; they’d counted on having more time to take sensor measurements. “Eku, Ayana, do we need to reprioritize the sensor tasks?” When no answer came, Caine repeated the query, then noticed the absence of a carrier wave, looked up, and saw that the tether’s comm icon was no longer green but flashing yellow. Still connected but not even reliable enough for Morse code. Riordan cut all redundant functions to free more memory . . . and saw the REM detector and dosimeter freeze: both serious losses.
He was still reprioritizing the suit’s few active systems when the tether’s comm line emitted a grumble of static. Random noise from the fried audio links, Caine guessed. But when it happened a third time, he realized the incidents were occurring with unusual regularity.
A signal? Maybe . . . a time hack?
But with every clock function shut down, he couldn’t measure the interval.
Unless . . .
When the next growl of static arrived, Riordan shut off life support. The HUD painted a yellow symbol just above his eyes: first warning. He waited and, sure enough, just as the icon began flashing its thirty-second emergency warning, another burst of tether static arrived. Caine ran the math: there’d been five signals since the tether had failed, meaning just over two and a half minutes had passed since Ayana told him he had twenty left.
He reactivated life support and recited his first countdown mantra: “Seventeen minutes and thirty seconds.” And because Ayana’s estimates always erred to the side of caution, Riordan added, “And fifteen seconds more.”
As if summoned by the end of that memory, the next crackle announced that he was almost out of time. Which Riordan reminded himself by reciting, “Sixty seconds. Then fifteen more.”
He scanned the landing zone again, zoomed in on the only suspicious pattern he’d noticed. A systems expert would have identified it as ridge shadows cast from just outside the footprint. But his human eye saw another possibility: a combination of low rills and dry wadis just inside the zone.
He finger-blinked to get a maximum-magnification snapshot then waved his right arm through a slow, careful swimming stroke. Now slowly rotating to face the ship, he allowed himself to rotate into alignment with the distant air lock until tapping a control on his belt.
One of the thrusters in his EVA pack emitted a counter-puff. His rotation stopped and, after confirming that the tether was relatively straight, he used the same finger to activate its return reel.
A gentle tug on his belt started him moving slowly toward the elongated arrowhead shape of the ship. Because the retraction rate was preset to bring him to the air lock at a safe velocity, there was nothing to control or adjust.
But when the gentle tug of the tether stopped abruptly, a foreboding chill raced out along his limbs. If the tether’s motor has failed—
The retraction reel started again, but with a jerk: not something it was supposed to do. Frowning, Riordan killed his automated helmet recorder to free up power for its laser range finder—
Just as the pull from the reel cut out again.
It tried to restart: a stuttering sequence of sharp jerks and then—
Nothing.