Back | Next
Contents

Chapter Four

Survival pack slung around his neck to keep his mass centered, Riordan drifted out of his stateroom and angled forward toward the assembly room. Bannor was already approaching it from the opposite side with the longer, easier glide-and-touch movements that came from extensive experience in weightless environments.

Caine finger-dragged himself to a halt. Rulaine closed the distance, slipping silently past the assembly room. A distracted buzz of conversation was already coming out of its open hatchway.

Riordan made sure he was the first to speak. “Before we throw ourselves out of a perfectly good spacecraft, I want you to know that I’m glad it was you who told me about Elena.”

Rulaine shook his head as he slowed his approach. “Yeah—even though I was trying not to. Great job on my part.”

Caine shrugged. “Damn, I’m not sure there’s any way to do a ‘great job’ under these circumstances. I’d probably have been following the same strategy: no additional distractions for a CO who’s already got too much on his plate. And had no way to know that I’d already come to the same conclusions on my own.”

“That’s kind of you, but still, crappy timing or not, you learned about it. Not my objective.”

Caine shrugged. “Not like there will be any time to think about it, or anything else, until we’re on the ground. And even then—”

“Yeah: ‘and even then.’” Bannor shook his head. “Because dirtside is where the fun might really start.” He glanced at his wrist comp. “We are officially late for our own brief.” An almost genuine smile pushed one side of his mouth upward. “Of course, rank hath its privileges.”

“Pretty lousy compensation for the headaches.”

Bannor sighed. “No argument, there”—and then he straightened, face suddenly expressionless. “Ready for final review, Commodore.” He said it as if he was presenting a formation on a parade ground.

Caine almost started at the abrupt formality, but a second look at his friend’s rigid posture made its purpose clear. The mission didn’t start when they went into the assembly area; it started before that. They had to enter the compartment not as Caine and Bannor but as CO and XO. The sharp return of custom and rank announced that the operation was already underway and the countdown clock was ticking. And those formalities would remain in place until such time as the mission was over—or at least, until they were out of immediate danger.

Wondering just how long that might be, Riordan nodded at his granite-faced friend and pushed himself briskly through the hatchway.

***

All the gear was laid out and all the time hacks had been reviewed three times. Caine leaned out from the bulkhead, making sure his hand remained wrapped around the nearest handhold. “Section heads will report by operational sequence. Ms. Tagawa?”

Ayana pushed herself forward, trailed a toe to stop herself. “We will soon perform a manual attitude correction for optimal insertion. All subsequent maneuver operations will occur after we have left the ship and so, are necessarily automated.” Liebman’s hand shot up, lifting him slightly from the deck. She nodded.

But instead of addressing his query to her, Liebman turned to look around the ring of faces. “Am I the only one who feels uncomfortable being downrange when the computer lights up the five ship-killer missiles mounted at the back of the ship?”

When Craig Girten raised his hand, Caine kept his face expressionless. He’d had similar misgivings, at first; igniting missiles pointed straight into the hull wasn’t just a leap of faith, but a wild pole vault of desperation.

But Girten was not alone: the large, hulking shape in the far corner of the compartment raised its distinctly alien hand: four quadrilateral fingers arranged as opposed pairs.

Liebman stared at the big Hkh’Rkh, apparently trying to meet the black-marble eyes that poked out from beneath the bony ridge of its seamless head-neck structure. “Damn, Yaargraukh, I thought your kind isn’t scared of anything.”

“You are mistaken,” the Hkh’Rkh replied, the consonants made sharp and crisp by its leathery palate. “Fear is not merely known to us, but a carefully cultivated companion. Its presence encourages prudence, just as mastering it allows one to distinguish courage from recklessness.”

“Uh, yeah, sure . . . but you still fear the missiles?”

Yaargraukh’s neck circled lazily; his species’ equivalent of a slight shrug. “I took your words literally, Sergeant Liebman. You did not ask about ‘fear.’ You asked if anyone else felt ‘uncomfortable.’ I am, but no more than with any other dangerous device being used in an unforeseen and unintended manner. However, I am also fully satisfied that the benefits of doing so far outweigh the risks.”

“Besides,” Bannor added, bringing Liebman’s gaze back to the front of the compartment, “Chief O’Garran and I started by removing the warheads. All that’s left are the engines, and the centerline engineering air lock is holding them like a vise, with their front ends buffered by high-impact packing all the way to the bulkhead.”

Girten looked from Bannor to Miles; fixing the missiles in place had required significant REM exposure. “Why take all the risk for just a little extra kick?”

“To increase the odds that this ship will survive.”

Girten sighed. “Permission to speak freely, ma’am?” She nodded. “Why does the ship even matter, once we’re down on the planet?”

Ayana glanced at Caine; the discussion had shifted from technical to strategic.

Riordan drifted forward. “Sergeant Girten, one of the few facts we possess about our current situation is that this craft’s shift drives are our only reasonable hope for ever leaving the system. Given the complexity of supraluminal travel, any civilization on the world below—past or present—is far more likely to have achieved local spaceflight. So however low the odds are of getting back up here, they’re a whole lot better than the chance of finding another starship.”

Liebman’s voice was careful. “But it’s not like we have any reasonable hopes for getting back up here to use them, sir.”

“At present, no. But we’re going to remain alert for any opportunities that might make it possible.”

Ayana drifted forward to float alongside Riordan. “To return to your initial question about the missiles, Sergeant: there is another reason we converted them into boosters. If the fusion thrusters fail within the first fifteen seconds of operation, the ship will not merely reenter and break up in the atmosphere; it will fall through our descent vector. The speed and spread of the debris would give us only seconds to react, and the descent frames’ thrust packages are too weak for quick evasive maneuvers.”

Liebman’s gulp was a bone-grating sound. “Oh. Well. When ya put it that way . . . ”

Dora folded her arms. “Coño,” she muttered. “Liebman: grano en el culo.” [1]

“Huh?” asked Liebman.

Ayana smiled. “She said you always ask good questions.” She raised her chin and looked around the circle. “Our last discretionary maneuver—brief thrust from the ACS—will optimize our position for insertion and ensure that the ship maintains positive pitch, even as it dips down into the upper reaches of the atmosphere.”

“Wait: into the atmosphere?” interrupted Girten. “But everyone keeps saying we have to keep the ship out of the atmosphere!”

Ayana nodded. “And, except for the time it takes for us to insert, it shall be.” Girten’s increasingly bewildered look drew further explanation from her. “As the ship reaches the end of our insertion vector, it will also be at the perigee of our current orbital track. After we have commenced EVA, but before the bow can dip too far, the ACS will automatically discharge to maximize positive pitch. Shortly afterward, all five missiles will ignite. This will cause the ship to rise. Once clear of the upper atmosphere, its fusion thrusters will fire until their fuel is expended. That will put the ship into a higher, less elliptical orbit with a longer period.”

Liebman was shaking his head as if a gnat were stuck in his ear. “Okay, no insult intended, Miss Tagawa, but I’m not Buck Rogers. You’re going to have to explain that in words I understand. Or pictures, if you’ve got ’em.”

Ayana frowned, glanced toward Bannor: he’d had a lot of experience explaining things to the frequently bewildered Lost Soldiers.

The colonel pushed himself away from the bulkhead. “Okay, Liebman: here’s a picture for you.” He put his hand in a palm-down flying position. “The ship will be grazing the atmosphere, but with its nose up.” He moved his hand forward, fingertips raised, then started lowering it. “At the point where the atmosphere starts to drag on it, we exit the ship in the descent frames. As soon as we’re out, it lifts its nose higher”—his fingertips tilted upward—“and lights the missiles jammed up its butt.” Even Liebman chortled as Bannor’s hand suddenly angled upward.

Bannor put his hand through the same motions, but in one smooth pass. “So if you put it all together, it’s a lot like skipping a flat rock across a pond. First it goes down, but because it hits the water at an acute angle, it bounces back up. And finally, when that’s over, the fusion thrusters kick in and—” He sent his wedged hand shooting toward the overhead.

“Wait a minute,” Girten exclaimed, “the commodore just said we will try to get back to the ship. But now you’re sending it out into space?”

Ayana nodded her thanks to Bannor. “There is not enough fusion fuel to break the ship out of orbit. So we are attempting to put it in a rounder, higher orbit that will decay more gradually. But we cannot predict how long it will remain there.”

Riordan nodded toward her, shifted his gaze to the person sitting just to her right. “Give us the final planetary data, Mr. Eku.”

The factotum nodded and slowly straightened at the waist. “The planet has a diameter of approximately 12,550 kilometers. Gravity is 0.916 gees. Magnetic fields are slightly weaker than Earth’s. It completes a full rotation in just under thirty hours. That is unusually slow given its other characteristics; it is likely to be a consequence of its large satellite. We lack detailed data on it but, although it is more distant than your moon, its gravity is far greater. Indeed, it was a significant factor in Ms. Tagawa’s navigational computations.”

Newton frowned. “Then how does the planet remain stable?”

Eku nodded. “It isn’t, not entirely. There is intense volcanic activity all along the equator, consistent with sustained pressure on the planetary crust. There are also many archipelagos clustered near what appear to be ocean trenches: a common feature on worlds with highly energetic tectonic plates.”

“Speaking of islands,” Girten said, glancing at Dora, “didn’t Ms. Veriden see one with some green on it?” She nodded. “Then why aren’t we landing there?”

Chief O’Garran leaned forward. “That island has a maximum width—or for our purposes, longitudinal landing footprint—of one hundred and eighty kilometers.”

“So?”

So, we’re coming down from the edge of outer space with only fifty percent trained jumpers. Of those, only two have genuine LOHO experience. More amusing still, none of us has any experience with the descent frames—which, by the way, were designed for dropping supplies, not people. So, even assuming the gods of wind and weather smile on our sorry selves, just how close do you think we’re gonna be landing to each other?” Girten’s eyes widened as O’Garran’s words sunk in. “That’s why our intended landing zone is five hundred klicks long and two hundred wide. And we’ve got twice that amount of open area around it if we overshoot.”

Newton’s voice was respectful. “And what if we undershoot?”

O’Garran shook his head. “Don’t. Or you’ll come down on the other side of that big north-south river we’ve shown you. So if you have to make an error, land long, not short.” He glanced at Eku. “Back to you, wizard.”

The factotum started. “‘Wizard’?”

“Well, do you see anyone else here who can work miracles with a personal computer and coarse data?”

When Eku still looked uncertain how to reply, Peter leaned in his direction, “Despite the gruff tone, it is a compliment.”

Eku’s nod was appreciative but still puzzled. “The planet’s present axial tilt is approximately fifteen percent. But we have only two days’ worth of measurement, so its maximum could be much greater.”

Girten’s tone was now one of desperation. “And that matters how?”

“Axial tilt determines the season. If the present tilt is the planet’s maximum, then the southern hemisphere is just entering winter. If it is not, then any season between early autumn and late spring is possible. So we must be prepared for extreme temperature variations, made even greater by the longer days and nights.”

Girten was glancing around the group, eyes a little too wide. “Hey, but at least we know we can breathe down there, right?” When no one reassured him, he put out his hands in dismay. “C’mon! What about the green places you’ve seen?”

Eku’s expression was as neutral as his tone. “Green does suggest that there is exoflora which utilizes the same light wavelengths as chlorophyll. That in turn implies the production of oxygen. But very little green has been detected and it is quite faint. Consequently, the amount of oxygen could be very limited.”

“You mean the air could be thin, like in the Himalayas?”

“No, the sensor data suggests the atmospheric pressure is very similar to Earth’s, which is the best news of all; the descent frames’ parachutes should deploy and function as expected. As long as there is any significant amount of oxygen present, our suits’ compressors will allow us to breathe.”

Dora shook her head. “But even then, we won’t really know until we pop our helmets.”

Girten blinked. “Huh? Why?”

Newton’s voice had a gallows tone to it. “Most air contains microorganisms.”

“You mean like—like pollen?” Craig sputtered. “What? You’re expecting killer hay fever?”

Dora shrugged, cocked her head toward Riordan. “Something like that almost killed him a few years ago.”

Girten turned a horrified stare upon Caine, who shrugged, checked his wrist comp, and glanced into the far corner of the compartment. “Yaargraukh, a quick review of our loadout, please. Before we suit up.”


_______

1) “[you] pain in the ass.”


Back | Next
Framed