John saw his daughter and Uly racing each other to the door, and shook his head. How they had the energy for that after climbing up from the beach, he'd never know.
Alonzo looked at them and laughed. "At least someone's excited about this."
"Hey, I'm excited," John said as they ambled along. "I'm just not like some people who think everything's going to be hunky-dory easy."
After two years, Alonzo didn't have to ask who some people was. "You really think something’s going to happen with this landing?"
"I figure we should be prepared. The Council busted its ass to keep us from landing. Doesn’t make any sense they’d just wave and smile at the colony ship."
Alonzo shrugged, a yeah-I-guess sort of shrug. John knew that Alonzo thought he was being his usual pessimistic self. So did Devon, but she at least knew that it was better to prepare for the worst and get the best than the other way around.
He pushed open the door and found most of the Eden Advance team milling around the gathering space. As usual, the tiny group looked lost and sparse in the big room, with its rows of tables and benches. Julia and Yale were huddled in a corner, hammering out details. Morgan hunched over the communications console, hitting buttons like a classical pianist playing the Minute Waltz in thirty seconds. Devon asked him something, and he nodded, rattling off a string of numbers.
The guy was useful. Who knew?
True waved at him. "Dad! Dad! Where were you? The colony ship’s here!"
"I heard a rumor." He ruffled her sweaty hair. "Got those blueprints for me, True-girl?"
She brandished her data pad. "Right here."
"Great. Be ready, I’m up first. Where’s Uly?"
True pointed. "Over there."
The junior Adair perched on his chair, rocking back and forth slightly, his eyes shining. John grinned at him, then turned to his daughter again. "How you doing? Excited?"
She shrugged, but jittered from foot to foot like she had on that long-ago first day of kindergarten.
He tapped Devon on the shoulder. "Hey, lady."
She spun. "What took you so long?"
"I had to stop and do my hair," he drawled. "What’s the status topside?"
"They’re holding. They don’t exactly understand what’s going on, but they’re holding." She said it all a little too fast. "I’ve given them a quick briefing, and they’re getting the proper people up into the bridge to talk to us."
"That’d be Braxton on the other end for me," he said, before she could give him information he’d given her in the first place. "Got a gear channel?"
"Right, yes--" She checked her datapad. "Twenty-four-six-eleven. Don’t forget to--"
"--key through the main comm system first," he finished for her. "Got it, Adair." He tapped in a series of commands, and mechanical gibberish sounded in his ear as the gear started routing through Morgan’s carefully constructed improvisation. He winced and dragged the headset down around his neck.
Devon kept scrolling through pages on her datapad, up and down, scanning the same pages over and over as if she might be missing something vitally important. He reached out and cupped her face in one hand. "Hey."
She looked up.
"Breathe," he ordered.
She frowned at him. "What?"
"Just do it. Breathe." The gear beeped in his ear, fully routed, but he had to get Devon settled first. She was jumpy, gearing up into totalitarianism, and needed to relax. She was the center of this operation--always had been. He rubbed his thumb over her cheekbone. "In through the nose and hold it." When she obeyed, he counted to ten and said, "’Kay, out."
She let the air go, tension visibly dissipating.
"Better?" he asked.
She did it again. "Yes," she said, and smiled at him.
They stood close, an island of calm in a sea of chaos. He leaned down and kissed her. "Let’s do this thing."
She kissed him back, then stepped away and pivoted on her heel. "Okay, everybody!" she called out, catching the attention of the whole room. Even Morgan paused in his mad button-pushing. "It’s a little earlier than we were expecting but we have planned this and we are ready, right?"
A cheer greeted this.
"I need Alonzo, True, and Uly in here with John, Morgan, and me."
"Everyone else out to the vehicles," John said. "You know what to do."
About half the group made for the door, and John motioned True closer to him. "Cargo level first, kiddo." While she scrolled through blueprints, tongue caught between her teeth, he put his gear back on, dialed the number, and flipped the eyepiece around. "John Danziger, head of Ops for New Pacifica. Hey, boss, you read me?"
Adam Braxton stared in disbelief at the face in his gear display. "What are you doing down there, Jack? You're supposed to be asleep on the advance ship, two years back toward home."
Danziger's voice and image crackled slightly, as if they were being jury-rig routed. "Long, long story. I'll tell you when you get planetside. Meantime, we got some housekeeping to take care of. There's one hell of a good chance some of your cargo pods have been tampered with, enough to bring the whole ship down."
Braxton frowned. "That's a pretty wild story."
"Yeah, and I hope I'm wrong. But just in case--"
"All right, I'll run a diagnostic." He swung around, reaching out for a panel.
"Computer diagnostic's a good start, but it might not cut it," Danziger said. "I'd say a good old-fashioned eyeball check. Make that a double check--two different sets of eyeballs. Cargo pods, and escape pods too, just to be on the safe side."
"You--"
"I'm sure."
It sounded batshit crazy, but he'd trained John Danziger, back in Chicago block. The man didn't fly off the handle for anything. "That could take awhile," he noted, setting the maintenance computer to running its diagnostic, "and we've got a ship full of people who want to get planetside."
"Their problem, not mine."
"Ain’t that the truth."
"Keep me posted?"
"Will do." Braxton set him on standby and called out his crew.
Across the cabin, the head doctor stood quietly speaking on his gear. "Four of them. Yes. No. Camelli, Taganaki, McNab, and Johnson. No, I really wouldn't recommend it. I understand we may have no other choice but to go to the escape pods, but until that time--" He broke off, listened some more, and sighed deeply. "Devon, I don't want to scare them."
Braxton curled his lip at nothing. Let the top-level crybabies get scared. Better than dying because they couldn't get themselves to the escape pods in time.
The computer diagnostic came up clean. Reports started coming in, and he bounced them to Danziger on automatic. Clean, clean, clean . . .
"Hey, boss, we got one fine mess here."
Braxton's attention snapped to the transmission. "What's that?"
"Have a look," his guy said, and the view in Braxton's eyepiece shifted from the other man's face to an open panel. "Melted all to shit."
"Damn me," Braxton breathed, staring at the mess of electronics like a man gazing at a slaughter. "Why didn't the computer catch it?"
"Don't know, but it'll never release."
"Right." Braxton took in a breath and let it out. "Right. Go on, check the next one down." He brought Danziger off standby. "We found one. Listen to this--"
"Melted, am I right? Like someone took a torch to it. You try to release it and it'll drag the ship out of orbit."
"Yeah," Braxton said slowly. "How'd you know?"
The other man smiled grimly. "Part of that long story. You're what, halfway through?"
"Yeah, and--" His gear beeped, signaling someone else trying to get ahold of him. "Wait."
"Three?" Devon asked in disbelief.
"They weren’t taking any chances," John said, holding his datapad out so she could see. Three sections of the cargo level blinked bright red. Three cargo pods that would never release, that would in fact pull the whole colony ship to screaming death if they tried. "That’s not even the really fun part. Diagnostic shows that all power’s been cut to the escape pods. Collectively, they couldn’t run a night light, much less the life-support systems."
She pictured the possible outcome of using the untrustworthy, unpowered escape pods and broke out in a cold sweat. "Is there another option?"
"One," he said.
"You want us to land her over mass," Braxton said slowly, hoping it would sound more sensible in his own voice. It didn’t.
"I said it was a rock and a hard place." A sudden splatter of static obliterated part of Danziger’s next words. "--risk those pods, you’ll never get home. There’s your rock."
"Yeah, but the hard place could smear us a millimeter thin if we get it wrong. We've got close to seven extra kilotons riding here."
Danziger crossed his arms. "I guess you’d better get it right."
Willis waved at him from the console. "Braxton, over here."
"Hang on," he said, and went to see what the pilot wanted.
She leaned back in her seat to look up into his face. "What’s the max power you can give me to the underside thrusters in the troposphere?"
"You’re not going to do this."
"You got a better idea? As long as we don’t release those three sabotaged cargos and we keep on our toes, we should be able to land her." She jerked her thumb toward the blue-green planet out the front window. "I don’t want to spend my life on that dirtball, do you?"
Braxton stared at it for a second, then looked at the ceiling and swore. Then he turned to his gauges and looked over them. "I can safely give you about twenty-five percent extra on the right side," he said over his shoulder.
"Twenty-five? Seven kilotons is thirty-four percent over mass."
"Any more than twenty-five, the blowback’s gonna take us all out."
Willis let out her breath, doing her piloty calculations. "Fine. Twenty-five it is." She flexed her fingers over the controls.
Braxton switched his gear off hold. "All right. We're in."
Danziger nodded, as if he’d expected nothing less. "See you on the ground," he said, and blinked out.
John took his gear off and nodded at her, indicating that the ops crew was in, and Devon nodded back. She turned back to her side of the bargain. "It’s just a precaution, Miguel."
Miguel Vasquez snapped, "I don’t like it! Pushing them all into escape pods--you know the delicacy of these children."
"Uly came through perfectly fine."
"There are four children still in cold sleep. I doubt Uly was. Braxton!"
"Yeah, what," said a voice off Miguel’s screen.
"How much fuel do we have?"
"Not enough to orbit until we can repair the releases or power up those pods," the other voice said. "We’re going down, Doc, whether it’s under our own power or not."
Devon judged the moment right. "Miguel, even without power, those escape pods are specifically designed for an uncontrolled landing. They have shielding, they have padding, they have supplies . . . It’s the best place anybody could be under these circumstances. Certainly better than wandering the corridors, asking what the shank’s going on."
The doctor breathed for a moment, then pressed his lips together. "Fine. Fine." The screen erupted into static. He'd cut her off.
At least he'd agreed first.
The doctor's voice boomed over the ship's PA. "All medical personnel--"
Braxton flipped his own gear on to the ops announcement channel. "Guys, this is just a precaution, but get to your escape pods. Repeat, this is just a precaution. Strap yourself in but don’t release them or close the doors. Keep your gear on. We’re going to land over mass." He closed the channel and sat down, strapping himself in.
Willis looked at him sharply. "You’re staying?"
"I trust you normally," he said dryly, hitting buttons, "but it seems to me you could use backup."
"Thanks."
"No charge."
They didn’t say what they both knew--the closer they got to the ground, the smaller the chances anybody in the cockpit would live long enough to get to an escape pod if it all went to hell.
Braxton barely noticed when Vasquez scurried out to his safe escape pod. Willis snapped orders over her shoulder as she attempted to compensate for the extra weight. "Vector’s too steep. I need back thrusters, forty percent."
He shoved a lever and felt the slight shift as the back thrusters kicked in, changing the angle of their descent. They dropped like a stone through the upper atmosphere, the temperature inside the cockpit rising with the increasing air friction outside. He kept an eye on the fuel level, calculating desperately the amount the twenty-five percent extra would require. "Cutting back thrusters now."
"Roger that. Crossing the mesopause--altitude is ninety."
Devon squinted at the image on the big screen. "It’s tilting. Why is it tilting?"
"Heavier side," John said. "Unless they compensate soon, it’ll flip them over and start 'em spinning." His voice was low, but her son had sharp ears.
Uly grabbed her hand. "Mom! Are they gonna crash and blow up?"
Her blood chilled. "Not if I can help it," she said as calmly as possible.
"We need to tell the Terrians," Uly said. "Where’s it going to land?"
The landing would more than likely send shock waves through the ground, and while the Terrians wouldn't thank them for the impact itself, they might appreciate the warning. "You’re right," she said. "It’ll be in . . ." she caught up a map. ". . . about this area. Can you do that, sweetie?"
Uly nodded, his face pinched and serious, and squatted down, pressing his hands flat to the earth.
The horizon leveled out as Willis lit the right underside thrusters. "Altitude fifty-four. We’re in the stratosphere. Punch up underside thrusters now please."
Using the side of his hand, Braxton shoved a row of levers up, then carefully nudged three of them up even further. He stared at the distance between twenty-five and thirty-four, wondering if he had the fuel . . . if he dared risk the blowback . . . if nine percent was enough to just crack the Virginia like an egg.
The fuel gauge dipped lower, lower, lower--if they sucked it dry, all the thrusters would cut out together, and the rest of their lives would be contained in a very short, nasty freefall.
The vehicles stood waiting. All fifteen advancers stood in the square, ready to go. Julia had her diaglove strapped on and Alonzo held her bag, stuffed to the bursting point. Right now, though, they could only watch.
Like a shooting star, the ship screamed through the sky. They could see it with naked eyes now. The whole group pressed close together as if physical contact could avert disaster.
Bess turned away, hunched protectively over her swollen belly as if the child within could somehow see. She began to whisper a prayer, her voice muffled against Morgan's shoulder. "--full of grace the Lord is with thee blessed art--"
Devon held Uly against her, ready to turn him away from an explosion. She thought, What were we thinking? Even more nightmare pilgrimages would have been better than this. Ripples of terror washed through her mind, that this was it, this was where it would end, all her promises going up in flames. All those people she’d convinced to come here--
Her free hand groped for John’s. His fingers wove through hers. "Getting close," he said quietly, half to True, pressed against his side, and half to Devon. "She’s slowing--"
Devon thought, Enough?
Willis’s voice was icy cool. "We are at twenty-five--fifteen--"
Too fast, Braxton thought. Too damn fast--they were going to crack like an egg.
Unless--
Without letting himself overthink, he slid the three levers up to thirty-four. He counted seconds off under his breath and flicked them back down, half a second before the disastrous blowback reaction would have started.
"Ten--five--three--two--"
With twin lurches that wrenched Braxton’s restraints to their limit, the colony ship slammed into the ground.
Even from kilometers away, the thud reverberated, sending some of them staggering.
"Did they hit?"
"Did they make it?"
"Dad?" True asked uncertainly.
Alonzo said into his gear, "Virginia, this is New Pacifica. Sheila, do you copy? Sheila? C’mon!"
Braxton sagged in his seat, the acrid smell of stressed electronics in his nose. His shoulders and chest throbbed under the straps. He undid them and massaged the spots where he was going to have amazing bruises. Damn, he hoped nothing vital had cracked. "Nice one, Willis."
Her straps already undone, she rolled one shoulder gingerly, then the other. "Light as a feather." She keyed the comm.
"Virginia to New Pacifica. Come in, New Pacifica."
"Virginia! You guys okay?"
"We are on the ground, and oh so glad to be here."
He let out a whoop, one echoed by the rest of the advance crew. "Nice of you to drop by," he said, once they’d settled. "Coordinates?"
"On their way."
Devon peered over his shoulder. "That’s only two and a half klicks from here."
"Well," Alonzo said, "she is the second-best pilot for the money."
Devon rolled her eyes. "All right, people, to the vehicles. We have some colonists to pick up!"
They rushed for the vehicles, but Devon stayed where she was. She felt as if, when she looked down, she would be able to see every individual joint in her body trembling and not to be trusted.
John paused and turned. "Well?" he said. "You’re going to be late, y’know."
With that, she felt the strength rush back into her again, and she grinned at him. "You wouldn’t leave without me," she said, and went to take her place in the cockpit of one of the transrovers.
Author's Chapter Notes:
I apologize for any and all gross inaccuracies in this chapter. One thing I’m not is a rocket scientist.