Blue Defender

by Sean Monaghan

  It all would have been very beautiful if not for the dragon.

  Then, something in the forest. Really, just a missing piece of forest. A huge circle. Tiny from her height, smaller than her pinky finger’s nail, at arm’s length. But the circle had to be twenty or thirty kilometers across.

  With lines radiating out from it. And linking lines. Were those roads? And did those intersections have small circles too? Settlements?

  With a city in the middle? Stuck way out in the jungle.

  Already the Blue Defender was directly above the circle. There was detail down there. Concentric circles and square patches and uneven sections. Tidy and orderly, but jumbled at the same time. In places.

  Wisps of cloud drifted across blocking parts of the jungle. The surface wasn’t flat. It undulated, with hills and and valleys. Farther ahead, the jungle looked flatter. Wending rivers carved sinuous trails through the trees, so different from the cascades closer to the mountains.

  It was very tempting to turn all the Blue Defender’s cameras and sensors on the feature. Artifact?

  But she needed to keep looking for the others. Any information she could find about the Donner and the ExR7 and the escape pods. Science could come later.

  Or not at all. This mission was over. Most of the crew were long dead. The next mission would be a rescue. And if there was ever another mission, that one could do science.

  Assuming it didn’t get attacked by the dragon.

  Soon the city was left far behind. And signal from Charlie. And the Blue Defender slipped away behind the planet. Over the night side. Into darkness.

  All was black below. Some occasional flickers of lightning, and at one point, far to the north, a powerful white-red light that could have been a volcanic eruption.

  Another bright light startled Matti-Jay awake. Somehow in the dark she’d fallen asleep. Exhausted. Coming out from behind the planet, into the full blast of Ludelle’s rays, had jerked her out of sleep.

  Matti-Jay shivered and licked her dry lips. She’d been asleep for maybe thirty or forty minutes. It wasn’t enough.

  Blinking, she stared at the displays. What she needed was food and water. Rubbing her left eye, she reached out with her free hand and waved up the food and beverage menu.

  RIGHT AWAY SHE WAVED it off again.

  Blue Defender had been busy while she’d been asleep. The vessel’s computers had been processing the data from the ground. The system had pinpointed eight of the escape pods. Lying variously in those mountains, and in the vast forest.

  The data also showed some high-probability locations for both the Donner and Charlie’s runabout.

  Matti-Jay smiled. She’d hardly had anything to smile about for a while, but this was good. Intact pods and locations to search. She just had to swing around the planet and attempt to get in contact with people. If she managed her orbit well, she could get six or seven minutes of talk time whenever she passed overhead.

  Enough to establish good information and reassure people. Maybe even co-ordinate the rescue, when it came. It might mean a couple of weeks. Rescue wouldn’t be here before she ran out of her vessel’s supplies, but there would be something to work with. She would have to set down at least ten weeks before rescue came, but at least she would have a whole lot of data.

  Maybe she would have to set down sooner to help someone who might be injured.

  Then again, her damaged ship might not survive the aerobraking. She would have to make sure to transmit all her data before she entered the atmosphere. The pods would be able to record it all and have a good base of information for the eventual rescue team.

  Something moved beyond the Blue Defender’s window.

  Something coming toward her.

  Was that the dragon again?

  Chapter Fourteen

  Matti-Jay stared through the Blue Defender’s window. Straight out into cold dark space.

  The dragon was out there. A speck, yet. But moving. Crossing her path left to right. And slowing.

  No. It wouldn’t be slowing.`That was an illusion.

  It would be changing course to meet her.

  Matti-Jay worked quickly. She waved and pinched commands at the displays. Right away the system brought up tracking data on her guest.

  Same kind of thing they’d encountered before. A dragon. Maybe the same one. And it was changing course.

  The displays drew the trajectories.

  Intersecting within two minutes.

  Matti-Jay’s mouth felt dry. She swallowed.

  The dragon was coming right for her. The first time she’d met the dragon it had just been there. Hanging in space. It had grabbed her runabout before racing off after larger prey.

  The dragon had been on the move. Racing for the Donner, and soon after, heading for the Marauder.

  Both ships destroyed.

  And now the dragon was on the move too. Heading for the Blue Defender.

  The Marauder had tried to maneuver. Unsuccessfully.

  Matti-Jay needed another strategy. If the little runabout had jump tech, maybe she could leap away. Get back to Earth and raise the alarm.

  Oh, except that the trip took six weeks and she only had two weeks of supplies. So that wouldn’t have worked anyway.

  Only one thing for it. She had to get on the ground. Last time the dragon had just bitten her. Small fry. This time, though, who knew?

  Matti-Jay brought up the runabout’s controls. Quickly she plotted a course. There would be about ten minutes while she aerobraked with no controls. She would be vulnerable then, while the dragon might come after her.

  What could it do at those speeds? Could the dragon maneuver through a deceleration burn through the atmosphere?

  Aerobraking was a standard procedure for getting a spacecraft on the ground. It had been that way since the start of the space age. Using the thickening atmosphere as free brakes to slow down from orbital velocity to flying speed.

  Those early ships–pods themselves really–had used ablative heatshields. Thick layers of heat absorbent material that had burned gradually way, growing thinner every second. The tech in modern hulls took the heat away through complex systems that meant hundreds if not thousands of landing cycles.

  One thing stayed the same, though; you couldn’t maneuver while the ship drove like a plasma bolt through aerobraking. You were a falling stone.

  At the end, closer to landing, the runabout’s control surfaces would work again. The Blue Defender would become an aircraft. Capable of circling, ascending or descending, or finding a good landing spot. Hopefully.

  The dragon was less than a minute away.

  Matti-Jay adjusted the controls. She pushed the throttle up. The Blue Defender dove into the atmosphere.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The Blue Defender’s cockpit hummed as the little ship plunged through Ludelle 8’s atmosphere. Blue plasma flames licked across the forward window. It was getting pretty hot out there. Good spot for a barbecue. If you liked your ribs charred to nothing.

  Matti-Jay watched the readouts. Parts of the hull were reaching into the thousands of degrees. Hot enough to melt some metals. The hull was doing a good job of dissipating the heat.

  There were a few warning notes popping up regarding the repaired sections. The runabout’s complement of microbots were working on things, keeping the edges of the repairs in shape.

  The ship shuddered. An odd whistling sound came from somewhere. Not good.

  The external sensors stopped giving data. The plasma burn of aerobraking shut off their capacity. The ionizing air broke down waveforms, preventing her from gathering any comprehensible information.

  Matti-Jay just had to ride it out.

  No idea if the dragon was trailing her down or not. Chasing her. Not a comfortable feeling at all.

  The Blue Defender screamed toward the surface.

  The track of her trajectory showed up on the displays. Coming down in the wrong place. Not helpful. It made her nervous.

 
That dragon. Because of it she’d had to descend earlier. Which mean coming down far from the others. At least a quarter of the way around the planet. Separated from them by mountains and plains, oceans and jungles.

  It would take some smart thinking if she was going to reach them.

  Assuming she made it to the ground.

  The whistling was getting worse. And the shaking. Some of those notes on the display were turning orange. Not good.

  Matti-Jay tried to bring up data from the microbots. Thing was, when she held out her hand, the shaking made her waved commands sloppy. The system didn’t understand.

  Matti-Jay tapped the armrest controls. She activated the main system’s manual controls. An old-style keyboard and joystick wound up from under the displays. She could use it to make contact commands.

  The keyboard clicked as she hunted and tapped at the letters. The joystick was clammy and rubbery under her hand.

  Some of the notes were turning red. And it was progressing faster.

  She was only two minutes into the worst of the aerobraking.

  Matti-Jay shifted the microbot priorities. Got them fixing the slab of hardened gels that were beginning to break down.

  Last thing she needed was superheated plasma gases getting inside the ship. The would end this little trip real fast.

  The Blue Defender continued to shudder.

  The bots worked fast. Some of the notes headed back toward green.

  Others, though, began turning red.

  With taps on the keyboard Matti-Jay danced through the menus. She flipped the microbots to new locations. New tasks.

  Red moved toward green. Other oranges slipped toward red.

  Matti-Jay began sweating. It wasn’t hot in the cockpit. But she was working hard. Concentrating. Balancing what those microbots had to do.

  Less than halfway through the burn.

  Weight had returned with a vengeance too. Decelerating meant that the planet’s gravity tugged at her. After six weeks of zero gravity, it made her muscles tingle.

  Matti-Jay had worked out on the whole trip. They all had. They needed to maintain their muscle tone.

  Still everyone knew that the transition would be tough. Getting used to having a down and an up again.

  The microbots were fighting a losing battle. For every couple of green lights they managed, two or three others would slip away to red.

  The seals were going.

  Nothing she could do about it. Well, hope, maybe.

  Unless she activated the crash gel. That might help.

  With some button presses on the keyboard she brought up the emergency systems. Crash gel was different to that repair gel. Crash gel was like a superlight, superstrong foam. It burst out on impact. Flooded any compartment. Specifically to protect the occupants. It made a kind of instant cushion.

  Maybe she could blast the damaged sections with crash gel.

  The system refused to co-operate. The overrides wouldn’t allow it.

  If she had an hour, she could come up with a workaround.

  But she only had a matter of seconds.

  She practically needed to crawl in there herself and press the gel joins back into place. Hold it together with her hands until they were down and safe.

  Which gave her an idea.

  Pressure.

  The vessel gave a loud bang. It jerked to the left. More green lights failed.

  “Come on,” she whispered.

  She just needed a couple more minutes.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The Blue Defender stopped its slew to the left. The vessel continued to shake and shudder. Thin slivers of plasma still licked at the cockpit window.

  With some rapid work Matti-Jay switched into the vessel’s environmental system. She dialed up the pressure.

  Ten percent. Her ears popped.

  Some of the lights switched to green.

  Twenty percent. Her ears hurt. What she needed was the emergency bubble back again. At a lower pressure this time. Just to protect her.

  If she dialed the pressure up much higher she would end up bursting her eardrums.

  But more lights came up green. The microbots focused their attention on the remaining orange and red sections.

  Matti-Jay could picture them in there. Scrabbling over the emergency gel in the holes. Suturing and patching.

  Keeping her alive.

  Gradually the lights all went green. The plasma glow faded away.

  Her ears still hurt. And her nose. The air even tasted thick. Full of ozone.

  A message appeared on the display, Aerobraking maneuver complete. Vessel switching to glide mode. And a moment later, Powered flight available in two minutes.

  Tension bled out of her body, tingling through her shoulders and calves. Matti-Jay tapped to reduce the cabin pressure. In moments it was back to normal. Her ears popped again.

  All of the sensor lights around the damaged sections stayed green.

  What a relief. She’d made it through the hardest part.

  Well, now she had to fly. Find somewhere to set down safely. Figure out how to get in touch with the others.

  Huge hurdles. But still, she was alive. In a relatively intact vessel. On a planet with breathable atmosphere.

  Best to think about the positive elements. Push aside thoughts of space dragons destroying ships and hunting people down.

  Plenty to manage right now. Like landing safely. Keeping the whole thing together to get on the surface. If she could do that, she might be able get underway searching for the others.

  Blue Defender could fly for long periods, but she would have to land at some point. She only carried so much fuel. The runabout did have fuel generators. The ultramagnetic engines needed deuterium to run. An isotope of hydrogen, deuterium was easy enough to generate from the atmosphere. A decent percentage of hydrogen atoms were deuterium, which had a neutron in its core as well as a proton. The reaction ripped away the neutron in the ultramagnetic system.

  The ship could process deuterium from the hydrogen in water, and it could extract water from vapor in the air.

  She didn’t need to get ahead of herself.

  Right now she needed a way to set down. The Blue Defender was still racing along at over two thousand kilometers per hour. Supersonic.

  Normally, approaching their landing point, ships might make wide S turns. Curving to the left and right along their main trajectory to shed speed while still staying about on target.

  Matti-Jay was going to stay straight. She needed to keep her trajectory aimed for the crash sites. She needed to get as close as possible.

  She checked the flight details. Everything was nominal. Still fast and high, but the vessel had a nice glide profile. She could coast for another twenty five hundred kilometers now before the path met the ground.

  Even damaged as she was, the Blue Defender was still a good flier. Matti-Jay was grateful for that.

  She began checking the data on the surface. The runabout’s computers had all the mapping information from the Donner. Accurate and up to date.

  Matti-Jay certainly didn’t want to maintain this glide path if it was going to end in the middle of one of the oceans.

  The ground sped by below her. Less than ten kilometers below. She was coming in across a wide area of marshlands. Low lying ground, with patches of open swampy water. From her height the vegetation could have been reeds or trees. To the south a wide river twisted through the landscape. Sunlight glinted from the water’s surface.

  Any other day it would have been beautiful. The Donner’s crew should have had the time to enjoy these stunning landscapes.

  Instead it had all been ripped from them.

  Matti-Jay felt very alone. She closed her eyes and swallowed. Such a long way from home.

  Not that she had much of a home any more. After her parent’s separate deaths, Matti-Jay had wandered from aunt to uncle to foster care to aunt again. Matti-Jay had learned a lot of independence.

  Something bleeped from
the console. The Blue Defender had detected something.

  Matti-Jay shivered. Was it the dragon?

  The display showed no contacts around her. But there was a signal. On the comms system.

  Very weak. No voice. Just a transponder bleeping.

  How could that be? The others had come down well beyond the horizon. She was too low to receive signals.

  And it was definitely human. The Blue Defender’s systems identified it as coming from the Donner.

  Maybe there was some atmospheric bounce going on? Something in the upper atmosphere reflecting the signal. It was very weak.

  Or maybe it was relayed by one of those research satellites. Maybe one or two of them had survived. That would be something.

  Matti-Jay swallowed again. Satellite or not, enough of the Donner had survived to make it to the ground. Well, enough that one of the transponders was still working.

  So that made things obvious.

  She had to find them. Had to find out what had happened. Had to see if there were survivors.

  Matti-Jay steeled herself. It was like she had a mission now. A goal.

  Something ahead sparkled. Matti-Jay leaned forward, the harness bands tugging but letting her ahead gently. Something bigger on the horizon.

  A structure. A tall blade-like building.

  Dead ahead.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The building had to stand at least three hundred stories, by Earth standards. It wouldn’t stand out in the skyline in many cities, where numerous building reached over five hundred stories, but here it looked distinctly out of place.

  As if someone had driven a giant spear into the ground. There were no other structures around the building. It looked tiny from Matti-Jay’s height and distance, but it was still a definite aberration on the landscape.

  It caught the sunlight in irregular ways too. Glinting and glittering. As if its surface was covered in facets. As Matti-Jay flew toward it, her angle changed slightly, letting different faces reflect the light right at her.

  Blue Defender flew herself. A nice glide path, straight and true. Matti-Jay picked up the soda bottle. She unscrewed the teat from the tip–no need for that now that she was in gravity. The bottle hissed. She took a sip. The lemony, bubbly taste was refreshing and tasty.