“Problems?”
“The wings were stressed a long way beyond design tolerance. They won’t take a glider landing.” He shrugged, and said, “That won’t matter as long as we make it to the moon.”
“So we’ve got one shot at this?” She reached towards the communication controls, and continued, “Want some more good news? The primary antenna complex is gone. Must have melted in the acceleration through the lower atmosphere. We can’t contact Shuttle Two.”
Looking at the sensors, Salazar said, “They’re lagging behind, but there’s nothing we can do for them at the moment.” He tapped the thruster controls again, and said, “Moon coming up, closest approach in a hundred and nine seconds. We’ll be about two miles above them.”
“Can you correct course?”
“Don’t think so,” he replied.
“This just gets better and better,” she said, shaking her head. “What now? We get out and jump?” She looked at the expression on his face, and said, “Pavel...”
“Why not? We’re at one-tenth gravity and falling. By the time we get there, the effect will be as if we’ve jumped a hundred meters. We can do it. Especially if we use the emergency oxygen canisters to arrest our landing.” Looking around the cabin, he said, “Prepare to abandon ship.”
Throwing off her restraints, Harper said, “Even for you, Pavel, this is crazy.”
Salazar locked the autopilot into position, firing the thrusters one last time to check its course, then looked at the trajectory plot. The first pulse of acceleration had done its job just as they’d expected. There was no danger that the shuttle would ever crash back down onto the surface. At some point within the next few weeks, it would almost certainly end up in the local star, burned away in an instant.
He walked over to the airlock, waiting for the green light to display. They’d just about matched speed with the moon, but this was still going to require split second timing. He wouldn’t be able to do it manually; they’d have to take the leap, parachutes in position, as soon as the door cracked open, letting the slipstream toss them clear.
“Anyone ever tried this before?” Harper asked.
“Of course not!” he replied.
“Beautiful,” she said, strapping on her chute. Salazar counted down the seconds, his hands low by his side, oxygen canister firmly attached to his chest. A green light winked on, and the hatch burst open, hurling the two of them out into the void. Even out of the gravity field, the pressure lower than on the surface, the force of the impact almost knocked him cold. He could see the moon below him, cold and dark, and tugged open his parachute, first a small canopy to stabilize him, then a larger one to give him some control.
It still wasn’t going to be enough. He soared through the void, fumbling with the oxygen tank, directing the exhaust beneath him. There’d be no fine control, but he didn’t need it. All he had to do was kill some of his velocity, and that would be enough. As the pitted surface rolled out beneath him, he fired a short pulse, then a longer one, and slammed into the ground, his parachute releasing automatically at the instant of impact, blowing away to flutter through the sky forever.
He was down. Against all the odds, it had worked. He looked around, trying to find Harper, trying and failing. He’d made it to the moon. Alone, and without equipment. Now what? And what about the others?
Chapter 6
“Dammit, John, it’d be a lot faster for me to tell you what is working on this thing!” Mortimer yelled. “We’ve lost all four forward thrusters, primary life support is gone, communications are out, everything but the short-range sensors are gone. I’m pretty sure we’ve got a couple of hull breaches as well. We took that heat impact exactly where we couldn’t handle it.”
“Want some more good news?” Clarke said, looking at the trajectory plot. “The primary burn ended thirty-one seconds early. I think we lost a fuel line. Which means that we didn’t get anything like enough of a push, and we’re well off-trajectory. We’re going to miss the moon by a thousand miles or more.” Reaching across to the status monitor, he added, “The wings. What about the wings?”
“They’re intact, at least,” Mortimer replied. “As is the heat shield. You’re going to try a glide landing? Without any power at all?”
“Now who said I don’t have any power?” he said with a crooked smile. “I’ve got enough left in the tanks for one good burn. I’ll save it for the landing, try to turn it from a crash into something we might recover from.” Gesturing at the navigation computer, he continued, “Throw up our landing options, onto the heads-up display. If we can’t use the sensors, we can at least look at the landscape we’re heading for.”
“Doing it,” she replied, and a red cylinder appeared on the screen, narrowing at one end, the computers calculating their ever-diminishing options for something that at least resembled a safe landing. Base Camp was five thousand miles behind them, receding fast. “That’s a lot of pretty damn barren terrain down there.”
Clarke’s eyes danced to a beacon light, a single green dot in the middle of endless scrubland. He tapped the controls, bringing it into sharp relief, the image magnifying to the best extent of the struggling sensor systems. There was a landing strip, miles long, with ruined buildings running along it, and no sign of life that he could see.
“There?” she said.
“I can guarantee a safe landing,” he replied, “and Base Camp will be tracking us from the ground. That railway network must be designed to go to important sites, and that looks like it was pretty damn major at one point. Hell, the runway must be five miles long. I’ve never seen a landing strip that big.” Glancing down at the controls, he added, “It’s only a quarter-degree off our optimum path, and lots of flat land all around in case I miss.”
“And if we land, what then? Hope for rescue? The Captain ordered that nobody come after us.” She paused, then continued, “Though to be fair, I doubt anyone will actually follow those orders. It’d be the first damned time if they do.” She peered into the distance, and said, “There’s some serious wasteland beyond, maybe five hundred, a thousand miles away, and I’m picking up some residual radiation on what’s left of our sensors. I’d say we’re looking at the aftermath of a pretty serious conflict.”
“I’ll just have to make sure not to land long, then,” he replied. “Coming around. Any chance you can feed more power to the aft thrusters, try and make up for the loss of the forward jets?”
“Not unless you want me to rupture half a dozen fuel lines. We’re running on hope and prayer now. I’d say the chances of you maintaining your usual streak of hot landings are excellent at this point.” Turning to him with a smirk, she continued, “Next time, I fly.”
“Hey, any landing you can walk away from,” he replied, easing the controls around, gently guiding the shuttle onto the desired trajectory, making the host of careful adjustments required. “Locking systems onto our landing site. Autopilot’s struggling, though.”
“The ship only has half the sensor feeds, and it’s flying an unfamiliar course. I’ve never seen an abort option that looks like this. Except in history books.” Shaking her head, she reached for the controls, and said, “I’ve got one last pulse from the primary thruster feed, triggered on landing. Should cushion our descent. Or our crash.”
“Oh ye of little faith,” Clarke said, pulling up the nose as the heat built up again, more ferocious than before, but this time catching onto the thick heat shield underneath the ship, designed to take the stresses they were placing on it. He kept one eye on the attitude control, keeping the course corrections quick and easy, making maximum use of the wings to guide his ship down the preselected corridor.
“Hit the distress beacon,” he said, turning to Mortimer.
“Why?” she asked. “Nobody’s going to hear a damned thing with all that interference?”
“There’s a chance, even if it’s a thousand to on
e, and it might make us look a little safer to anyone down on the deck.” He smiled, and added, “Though you might have a point at that. Right now we’re heaving a hundred-mile trail of fire in the sky. Everyone for ten thousand miles should have a great view of us.”
“Just what we need. More publicity.” Glancing at a readout, she read, “Three hundred thousand feet, descending. Gravity coming up, one-half Earth standard and rising. Outer hull temperature three thousand degrees, holding steady.”
“Textbook,” he replied.
“What books are you reading?” she asked. “On trajectory, within a hundredth of degree. Holding steady so far. Sensors out from the plasma sheath, no way to tell what’s going on down there. Just out of interest, do we have any sort of a plan in the event someone throws a missile our way?”
“Hope for divine intervention?” Clarke replied. “They ripped out the physical countermeasures, and I don’t think the electronic systems are working. All the feeds were on the upper hull. If we’ve lost the forward thrusters, those are almost certainly gone as well.”
“Confirmed,” Mortimer said. There was a loud report, and she continued, “There goes thruster number five. She’s going to dance like crazy on final descent.”
“I shouldn’t need the thrusters in a minute. We’re really biting atmosphere now. Run a check on the landing legs.”
“All looks good, but we won’t know for sure until we deploy the damned things,” she replied. “Hull temperature beginning to drop. Two thousand, five hundred, falling. Speed is now two thousand miles an hour and falling fast. We’re right on the curve, ascent trajectory perfect.”
The shuttle lurched to the side, as though some outside force was determined to make her words a lie, and Clarke struggled with the controls to bring them back on course, fighting supersonic winds that buffeted them around, back and forth, at last bringing the shuttle back on course as they ripped through a series of clouds at the hundred thousand feet mark. The on-board computers were spitting garbage at him, unwilling to believe the remnants of sensor data that were seeping through. Clarke couldn’t blame them. He hardly believed them himself. The Sphere was like that, a nest of impossibilities.
Sweeping through the clouds, he saw the endless expanse of landscape opened up before him, and his eyes widened at the spectacular view, drinking in every detail of the terrain. They were at sufficient altitude to see for thousands of miles all around, and he made out vast deserts, endless forests, the beginnings of an immense, gleaming sea that must have been twenty thousand miles away from distant Base Camp, an unimaginable journey on foot. Ahead, he saw the blackened wasteland Mortimer had warned him off, the terrain surrounded by desolate desert and brushland, as though some sort of contaminant had leeched into the very soil, ruining all around it.
“Lovely scenery,” Mortimer said. “Next time I go on leave, I’ll ask you for some advice.” Reaching for the sensor controls, she continued, “Pickups coming back, and I confirm radiation all through that dead zone. Bad stuff, too. Lots of point sources that are still highly contaminated. No sign of anything too toxic close to our landing site, but a hundred miles further on, and we’d be in trouble. I can’t pick up any train lines, either, but I have mapped out a good route back to Base Camp.”
“What sort of range are we looking at?”
“Fifteen thousand, nine hundred miles and change,” she replied. “A nice little stroll.”
“We won’t have fuel for anything like that when we touch down. Even assuming I can bring us down in one piece. Try the landing gear.”
“The drag...”
“We need to lose speed faster than we are, and I’ve got to save the last of the fuel for touchdown. The gear should slow us down nicely. I hope.” He grimaced as he worked the controls, and said, “Another damned jet stream. This atmosphere is weird.”
“Five degrees port. Six. Seven. Come on, John, we could still be hundreds of miles off course at this rate!”
“Correcting,” he replied, firing a quick pulse of thrust, wincing as the fuel warning light winked on. “That did it. Back on the correct trajectory. Read me some numbers.”
“Altitude is thirty thousand feet, falling. Speed now seven hundred and ten, falling. Hull temperature nominal.” A loud thud echoed from the floor, and she added, “Landing gear locked.”
“That helped,” he said. “Slowing nicely now. Just got to keep it together.” The shuttle rocked again, and he added, “Another damned crosswind. Must be a storm building up out there.” The cockpit briefly darkened as they raced through a black cloud, cutting through to the far side in an instant. “Getting more control now. We’re back to normal pressure. Wing surfaces seem fine.”
“Landing strip is just ahead,” Mortimer said. “Fifteen thousand feet, five hundred miles an hour, descending fast. You’re doing fine.” Another red light winked on, and she added, “I wish I could say the same about the ship. We just lost another sensor input. At this rate we’ll be blind as soon as we hit the deck.” She turned to him, and said, “We could bail out.”
“Like hell,” he replied. “I’m going to bring this shuttle down if it kills me.”
“That’s what I was worrying about.” She frowned, and said, “Though we could drift for miles if we go too far, and you’ve managed to pick somewhere miles away from any civilization. I’m not reading any signs of life down there. No towns, villages, and the only roads are long-ago ruined. Just the base ahead.” Squinting at the display, she added, “That’s strange. The runway is clear. No sign of debris, nothing. Someone must be maintaining it.”
“Let’s hope they don’t mind having some unexpected guests,” Clarke said. “Nice and smooth. Winds easing off. Looks good here.”
“And here,” she replied. “Passing through ten thousand feet, all on the curve.”
Clarke’s eyes locked on the far end of the runway, knowing that he had plenty of room to bring down his shuttle but not wanting to make a single mistake. Among the other equipment that had been left behind were the medical kits. Any injury sustained during a crash might be the end of them, especially if they faced a long march to safety.
“Three thousand. Straight run,” Mortimer said. “Want to use that last burst of fuel?”
“Not if I don’t have to,” he replied, lowering one hand to the throttle. A last, lone gust of wind threatened to throw him off trajectory, but he easily compensated for it, dragging his shuttle back onto the center line. The last few meters dropped away, the shuttle growing dangerously close to stall speed, but finally, the forward wheel fell to the tarmac, the others quickly following suit. Clarke breathed a sigh of relief as the shuttle slowly rolled to a stop, just beside a cluster of ruined buildings that must once have been hangars.
“Engines off, primary systems off,” Mortimer said, throwing controls. “We’re low on power, and I want to save anything I can. I’ll leave the beacon, for whatever good it might do.”
“Wing solar cells will keep that running anyway,” Clarke said, removing his restraints.
“Where are you going?” she asked. “Look around. There’s nothing there. We found a landmark, and Base Camp must have at least some idea where we landed. Our best chance is to stay here and wait for them.”
“That could take hours. Or days. Aren’t you curious about what might be out there?”
“Not in the slightest.”
“Well, I am, and I’m going out,” he said, moving to the door.
With a deep sigh, she rose from her seat, and said, “Fine, I’m coming. Someone’s got to keep an eye on you, I guess.” Shaking her head, she added, “You’re still crazy.”
“Then you must be crazy to come with me,” he replied with a smile.
“More resigned to my fate,” she said. “Let’s get this over with.”
Chapter 7
Salazar kept low, crawling around the exterior of the moon, using
the jagged craters and peaks to maximum advantage. He had expected to be captured within the first few minutes, but there was still no sign of pursuit. No sign of anyone, in fact, no guards on the perimeter, no sensor towers he could see, no defenses at all. He was beginning to wonder whether all of this had been for nothing, that perhaps they had found the wrong target, when he found a shaft leading down, and looked into the heart of the asteroid.
It was a sight he had never seen before. The interior had been hollowed out, a gleaming sphere at the heart of it, with thousands of the winged humanoids lying around, all of them connected by tubes to mechanisms on the wall, slumbering through the day. Racks of equipment were scattered everywhere, the rifles that had been used to destroy the outpost on the surface, the jet-packs. that provided them with the means to fly in a high-gravity field, other devices whose function he couldn’t discern. And at the heart of it all, the pulsing light, strange patterns and images appearing, one after another, shapes and shadows dancing in his eyes as he watched.
Despite himself, despite all logic and reason, he started to find himself climbing down the shaft, desperate to reach the sphere, somehow transfixed by the images dancing through his mind. Before he could fall too far, a hand grabbed his shoulder, pulling him back, and he looked up to see Harper dragging him away, pulling him back to the surface of the moon, back to safety.
“What the hell was that?” he asked, shaking his head in a desperate bid to clear his mind.
“Subliminal images,” she replied. “Something we’ve been playing with back home for a while, but we’ve never gone anywhere near this far.” As she moved into the cover of some rocks, she added, “It’s theoretically possible, God help us, to reprogram the human mind. We’ve never actually managed it on humans, but United Nations Intelligence did it with mice a few years back.”
Battlecruiser Alamo_Cries in the Dark Page 5
