by Joe Vasicek
“Of course,” said Lucca, more to turn the conversation away from the tedium of politics than anything else. “Point is, there are whole worlds out there that haven’t had anything to do with the empire—settlements that are only two or three generations old. People who live the way the stars made them: free.”
“And you’d rather live out there in a tin-can station somewhere than here on our beloved mother-world?”
“What can I say? As much as I love my home, I can’t spend my whole life here. It’s the call of the stars, Ivan—I can’t possibly confine myself to just one planet. Besides, with you and the others taking most of the inheritance, there’s not much left for me here. I’ve got to get away.”
“But surely father left you something.”
“He did,” said Lucca. “How do you think I could afford this ship?”
Ivan’s eyes widened. “I thought it was just a decommissioned shuttle.”
“It is. I got it at a good price, so I could afford the reactor upgrade and jump drive. They’re over there, in the shed.”
He pointed to a small concrete shed, its metal doors propped open with pieces of discarded equipment. The space outside was filled with scrap, but inside there was a brand new jump drive and reactor, still packed away in plyfoam boxes.
Ivan whistled. “How much do those things cost?”
“A lot,” Lucca admitted, “but there are other upgrades to make as well. I want this ship to be able to take me as far as New Rigel.”
“Why?”
He grinned. “Have you ever heard of the New Rigel system? There’s a water world there that has the most beautiful girls this side of the Good Hope Nebula.”
“So that’s why you’re so eager to get this ship spaceworthy again,” said Ivan, laughing. He slapped Lucca on the back. “I suppose this ‘call of the stars’ thing means you can’t bother to be tied down by a woman?”
“Can’t say. Who knows what will happen in the future?”
“Who knows indeed. Well, I wish you luck with your starfaring exploits. Though I suppose you won’t be coming back to Tajjur once you’ve left.”
“Probably not,” Lucca admitted. “But I’m not gone yet. Now, how about that skimmer?”
* * * * *
The clouds of Zarmina IV loomed dangerously close as the fires of reentry lapped the edges of the forward window. Lucca gripped the flight stick with sweaty hands and tried to ignore all but the most important alarms going off in the cockpit.
“We’re going to die!” the girl screamed behind him. “We’re both going to die!”
“No, will not,” said Lucca. He would have said more, but Gaian was his second language and it never came readily to him in high stress situations.
The fighter drones had hit the reactor, and coolant was spilling out in a long tail behind them. He’d have to bring it down to ten percent in order to shut off the intakes, and hope there was enough coolant left circulating through the system to keep the whole thing from overheating. That left precious little energy for the engines, but fortunately, the original T-85 vertical thrusters were still installed. With luck, that would slow their altitude loss to an acceptable level, even with the reactors at only ten percent. Unfortunately, he’d taken out the scramjets to make room for the cargo bays, so this was probably going to be the Gagarin’s last flight.
Of course, if he couldn’t find a suitable place to land in the next minute or so, this might very well be his last flight too.
“What are you doing?” the girl asked, her voice still frantic. “You’re not actually going to land this thing, are you?”
“Better than crashing it, no?” he said, a wry grin spreading across his face. His brothers had always appreciated his dark sense of humor, especially in crisis situations like this. He was half tempted to glance over his shoulder at her, but the controls absorbed all of his focus.
The clouds were coming at them faster now—so fast that he could pick out the individual wisps and tendrils. They flew low over the towering anvil formations, which formed like a line of mountain ranges across the rapidly flattening horizon. The scanners said that they were a little over fifty kilometers above the planet’s surface, so that meant the cloud tops were probably at about twenty to twenty five kilometers altitude, give or take.
“What do you need me to do?” the girl asked. He risked a glance over at her and saw that she was much calmer than before. Fear still clouded her eyes, but she was fighting it, perhaps with all her strength.
“Watch here,” he said, pointing to the sensor display. “If you see any blips or dots, it means pirates are pursuing us. Understand?”
“Yes.”
She leaned forward against her restraints and fixated her gaze on the display as if it were a lifeline. Good girl, he thought to himself. Perhaps she will not be so much trouble after all.
He switched the scanners to horizontal view and started the landing sequence. The main displays showed a new series of indicators, such as altitude, pitch, thrust, and wind shear. The horizon continued to flatten, until they were almost level with the highest clouds. Then, almost without warning, they dropped through.
Behind him the girl gasped. White haze filled the window, rapidly darkening to gray as they fell. The floor rumbled as the thrusters worked hard to control their descent, but a high-pitched whine from the engines told him that the system was strained enough as it was.
Where to land? Lucca thought, glancing from the window to the scanners and back again. His heart was beating faster now, and his sweaty palms had turned cold. They were flying blind—for all he knew, they were about to crash into a mountainside. He rerouted more processing power to the scanners, but picture they gave him was no less fuzzy. Without line of sight to guide them, all he could do was try to control their fall.
What were they flying over right now? Desert? Jungle? Ocean? Until the clouds cleared, there was no way to tell. And the atmosphere—was it even breathable? Was the surface air pressure so great that it would kill them if they stepped out of their ship? And what about the pirates—did they have a base down here? The sensors showed no surface radio transmissions, so that probably meant they were dropping into an uninhabited wilderness. How would they—
One thing at a time, he told himself. If you want to elope with a mountain girl, first get some meat for her father’s dog. The old Tajji proverb made him smile in spite of their desperate circumstances.
The girl gasped. “Look!”
He glanced immediately at the sensors, but she pointed up to the windows. When he looked up, one of the most spectacular sights of his life met his eyes. They had descended beneath the cloud cover, but the overcast sky was bright enough to give them an unparalleled view. Thick vegetation stretched like a blue-green carpet all around them, punctuated by craggy limestone peaks that jutted out of the ground like the bony plates of a ridgeback. The lowest levels were shrouded in mist, while lakes and rivers were clearly visible in the higher elevations. Hundreds of light-green clouds drifted in clusters like flocks of giant birds. As they drew closer, Lucca saw that they weren’t clouds at all, but giant floating platforms of airborne algae.
It was beautiful, but he had no time to admire it. They were losing altitude at almost a hundred meters per second, with no way to slow down except by risking a reactor explosion. They needed a place to land—now.
The valleys probably weren’t any good. No doubt the jungle was thickest there, as well as the atmosphere, which might kill them if it was thick enough to support airborne flora. Besides, the mountains would cut off any sort of radio transmission or distress signal. As much as he didn’t want to attract the pirates, he didn’t want to leave any rescue option off the table. That left the peaks, but they were so steep and craggy that finding a place to land would be like trying to sew a parachute while in free fall. There were the lakes off to his right, but he didn’t know how deep they were, and—
To hell with it, he decided. He gripped the flight stick and banked to t
he right—hard.
The girl cried out in surprise and nearly fell to the floor in spite of her restraints. “Hold on,” he said as he throttled the vertical thrusters. The altitude showed about four kilometers, but the mountain basins were probably much higher than that. The engines screamed in protest, so he increased power to the reactors, knowing full well that he was risking a total meltdown. Well, maybe that was what the lakes were for. The ground was coming much faster than he wanted, even though the indicators showed that their fall was slowing fast. Forty meters per second, thirty meters per second—
They weren’t going to make it.
“Brace!” he shouted, wrapping his arms beneath his legs. The last thing he saw before ducking his head between his knees was the tree-line at the water’s edge, hundreds of light brown trunks pointing upward like green-tipped spears.
* * * * *
Why didn’t you come for me? Jeremiah asked. His disembodied voice haunted Mariya as she ran frantically through the endless corridors and hatchways. Darkness clouded her vision, and her legs and arms became unresponsive. She struggled as hard as she could against it, but to no avail. The darkness overtook her.
“Jeremiah!” she screamed. “I’m coming, Jeremiah—I’m coming!”
A light appeared in front of her, as if at a great distance. She tried to follow it, but no matter how much she tried to run, it seemed to move away from her even faster. Her breath came in sobs, and a bitter despair overtook her—the despair of knowing that her best was not enough, that no matter how hard she tried, she was doomed to fail.
It was never supposed to happen like this, she argued within herself—as if that could somehow make anything better. We were supposed to go to Zarmina and settle down there, you and me and Noemi. We were supposed to be happy and raise a strong family together.
As if in response, a figure came to her out of the darkness. It was Noemi, in her simple white dress with the light-blue sash. Her long brown hair fluttered weightless around her shoulders, and her stomach was swollen with Jeremiah’s child.
Why didn’t you take care of him? she asked, her voice echoing in Mariya’s head. Though Noemi’s words were clear, her lips didn’t move—but her sad green eyes stared out at her.
“I—I never—it wasn’t supposed to be like this!” Mariya stammered. “I—I did all I could, I—”
You told me you’d take care of him. You told me you wouldn’t let him be alone out there.
“I tried, but Salazar—the pirates—they took me away! What was I supposed to do? I don’t even know what they did with him!”
He needed you, Mariya. I needed you.
“I didn’t mean to! I wanted to go back and get him, but—”
You failed us.
Noemi’s image began to fade. Mariya tried to run after her, but her legs wouldn’t move, and her breath came in short, painful gasps. Her eyes burned with tears, and her whole body shook and trembled.
“Noemi!”
Something within her broke, like an airlock sliding open or a wall coming down. She could move freely again, but as she reached out into the darkness, hands on her shoulders held her back. She wrenched her eyes open and saw that she was lying on her back, staring at a row of bulkhead compartments like those in a ferry shuttle.
“Whoa there,” came a voice behind her. “Stay calm—you are not in danger.” It was Lucca, the star wanderer who had rescued her.
Mariya tried to sit up, but a splitting headache made her groan and fall back down to the floor. Her hair was wet, and something had encrusted her blouse just above the shoulder. She reached over with her hand to feel it.
It was blood.
“You hit your head when we landed,” Lucca explained. “Your wound needs healant. Stay still.”
Mariya closed her eyes and fought back the urge to panic. What had just happened? She remembered the escape from the station and the first part of their flight away from it. After the attack from the drones, though, her memory became fuzzy. The last image she could remember was the pure white cloud tops looming ever closer, as flames lapped the edges of the windows. We’re going to die, she had screamed—then, everything started to become fuzzy.
“The healant is fast acting,” said Lucca as he ran his hands through her hair. “You must rest for one hour, but after, it will be better.” Tingles of pain ran down her spine, but as his fingers gently massaged her scalp, they faded to a more tolerable level.
“What happened?” she asked.
“We landed. Well, to be fair, it was more like crash. But we are alive still, no?”
“Still alive.” She closed her eyes and tried to put everything out of her mind except for the sound of his voice. Her heart still pounded, and her body was as tense as an overstretched spring, making it difficult.
“We are on Zarmina. I believe this is planet you came to settle, yes? It is interesting place. Very green—much vegetation. We are in mountains, next to very clear lake. The atmosphere is not so thick here, so I think we will be fine.”
“You—you think? You don’t know?”
He laughed. “Who can know what will happen in future?”
That’s not very comforting, Mariya thought silently. She let out a long sigh and moaned a little.
“There, I have finished. Now wait for fifteen minutes, it will set if you do not move. Understand?”
“Yes,” she said. We’re stranded together on an alien world.
“Good.”
“Lucca?” she asked softly.
“Yes?”
“When are we going to get off of this planet?”
The pause before he answered said it all.
“That is not … good idea now,” he said, fishing for words. “If we go, pirates will see us and kill us—or worse. But I must be honest with you—I do not think the Gagarin can fly anymore. We must wait until someone rescues us.”
A lump rose in Mariya’s throat, the choked up emotions momentarily cutting off her air. “When will that happen?”
“I do not know. Who knows what will happen in future? But we will be fine, Mariya—we will be fine.”
What makes you say that? How can you be so sure?
“We have many supplies,” he said, as if answering her unasked question. “Food, water, filters, clothes—I even have inflatable shelter, which we can set up when your healant has set. And in wost case, I have emergency signal which we can activate. We are not lost.”
“Right.” Not lost like Jeremiah.
“Here, you must rest.” He laid a cold compress across her forehead, which gave her surprising relief. “I will make masks for us now. When you are ready, we will build shelter and set up camp.”
Why can’t we just stay here? she half-wanted to ask. But the drug-like allure of sleep was too great. She fought it at first, afraid of returning to her guilt-ridden nightmares, but her sleep was as dreamless as death.
Chapter 20
When Mariya woke up, her body felt as stiff as hardened plastifoam. She groaned and sat up, rubbing her head as her vision swam. She was on the floor of a starship, that much was clear—a small starship, much like the Ariadne. It wasn’t the Ariadne though. The doorway led to a long corridor, with narrow windows on either side. Instead of a hammock, the sleeping quarters had a bunk set into a small niche in the wall. She sat on the floor, on an off-white blanket that Lucca had laid out for her. Little spots of blood had dried near the hem, but it was otherwise clean.
As her head cleared and her headache slowly lifted, she started to notice other things about Lucca’s sleeping quarters. Instead of a dream monitor, he had a small holoscreen set up on the wall across from the bunk. It alternated between images of a wide, rolling grassland to sensuous pictures of gorgeous young women in various states of undress. She tensed a little at the pictures of the girls—who was this man who had rescued her? He’d treated her well enough so far, but that was no guarantee for the future.
She watched the wallscreen for a couple of minutes while slowly g
athering her strength. The grassland pictures were quite pretty—some of them showed great herds of horses, with an occasional rider dressed in a knitted skullcap and colorful robes. It looked so dreamy, like something from out of a fantasy. Even the pinups had that same otherworldly quality about them. And though they made her blush, she had to admit that they weren’t distasteful.
“Feeling better?” Lucca asked from the doorway. She started—she hadn’t heard him approach.
“Oh! Yeah, I guess.”
He put one hand against the wall and grinned. A gas mask dangled in front of his chest, with a clear face visor and a tube that led to a tank of oxygen strapped to his back. He wore gloves and a dirty gray jumpsuit, with a utility belt sporting more than a dozen different tools. His boots were muddy.
“Where have you been?” she asked, rising to her feet. She stumbled a bit, and he took of a glove to help steady her.
“Outside. I have made camp and built shelter. We should not stay here—if pirates send landing party, they will find our ship very easy.”
“Right. Is it safe out there?”
He shrugged. “Who can say? I think we may be among first people to set foot on this world. But it is not too dangerous—I am still alive, after all.”
How can you be so confident in the face of so much uncertainty? Mariya wondered. If it was Lucca who had been injured in the crash, she would be paralyzed with fear right now. He, on the other hand, seemed to take everything in stride—even the loss of his own starship.
“I—I’m sorry about your ship,” she said. “Do you think she’ll fly again?”
He cringed visibly at her question, but waved his hand in a gesture of nonchalance. “Perhaps. First reactor is out of coolant and second is mostly shot, but hull is still intact so no problem. When all this is over, perhaps I can rebuild her.”
“All this? You mean, when the pirates are gone?”
