It was the best flying Steffi had ever seen. Out of eleven ships, only three remained. One of those was McKendrick’s. She took an unlucky shot to the tail, hindering her manoeuvrability. Steffi chewed her lower lip until she tasted blood. Another ship broke away from the chase and clipped McKendrick’s wing. Without the chaos, they seemed to have the measure of her.
“Break right!” Alex urged.
“She’s not gonna make it,” added Rex.
There didn’t appear to be much hope. Both enemy ships now formed behind her in textbook positions, one covering the other. Her starboard wing was smashed and her long tail looked ready for snapping in two. One more collision or direct shot and the ship would explode.
“Come on, come on,” Steffi whispered, bracing herself for the bitter ending.
The first ship fired, blasting the tip of McKendrick’s tail off. Her ship upended and continued spinning backward as though rudderless. The first ship fired again. Steffi held her breath. A quick snap of light from McKendrick’s engine tilted her to the horizontal, upside down. The enemy shots missed. But she was now facing the two attackers head on.
Steffi cottoned on to the ingenious gamble a split second before the crippled ship fired. Unleashing her entire arsenal, McKendrick demolished both ships in a few electrifying seconds.
Insane! Incredible!
Steffi realised she didn’t know her pilot at all. Who had this girl been before signing up for the Albatross?
“No!” Rex leapt to his feet and clasped his hands on the back of his skull.
Her wing collapsed. More debris from the exploded enemy ships hurtled into her, smashing her into a new, chaotic spin. A fiery snake struck up from her engine and coiled through space as she spun. The fuselage suddenly buckled, sucking the snake back inside. A final massive explosion lasted a fraction of a moment.
Then McKendrick joined the pitching, yawing, rolling litter of the silent battlefield.
Chapter Nine
There wasn’t time to linger. More Royals might be on their way, and the massive alien ship, uncoupled from the Albatross, was on a collision course with an unknown planet. McKendrick’s navigation, like her flying, had been first rate. Rex found the vector in the navi-computer and steered them back to their original course.
Wreckage from the smashed birds clanked against the Albatross’s hull while she banked low to port. Alex muttered a lengthy prayer, asking God to accept brave Aurora McKendrick into His eternal fold, pleading with Him to let them find Flyte and Arne and Gerty and all those myths of Earth before it was too late.
“There’s something on radar, Cap.” Rex gave the bloody wheel a tap with his fingers, suggesting Steffi take manual control of the ship.
“It’s big,” she said. “That’s gotta be it.”
But now what?
They could try to reattach the tow cables, drag the alien vessel on to a new heading. But it was rocketing through space at a dangerous clip. They could point it to whichever planet they liked but it would still end up hurtling straight through the atmosphere and slamming into the surface or core. What they needed to do was slow it down. But how? The tow hooks would not penetrate its outer shell. Rex had tried. The damaged area was different—easy to clamp on to. But not the black exterior at the rear.
They could spin the huge ship through a hundred-and-eighty degrees and then fire the Albatross’s engine, try to reduce speed that way. Kind of like hitting the brakes. That could work, but it would be a big strain on the tow cables and the engine itself. Maybe too big. She might never recover. And all would be lost if the Albatross packed in.
“Yep, that’s definitely the hulk.” Rex sounded composed as he tapped on the radar screen.
“Good. So how do we slow it down?”
“Hmm, I’ve been wondering about that too,” he admitted. “McKendrick and I talked about it quite a bit. And Alex as well.” His reassuring, over-the-shoulder smile at his wife made Steffi glad to have him onboard. “Just last night, in fact.”
“And?” Steffi asked.
“And it’s impossible any way you look at it.” Geez, don’t sugar-coat it like that. What next? Handing out the cyanide? “There’s no way to get that ship safely onto a planet’s surface using the Albatross. No way. It’s dead weight. But—”
She raised her eyebrows to egg him on. There had to be a solution.
Elbows resting on the chair arms, he sank his chin onto the bridge of his joined hands. “But…we can transfer quite a few of the lagoon folk aboard. If they want to come, that is.”
Steffi realised what a half-baked and optimistic plan she’d harboured all this time. Perhaps being surrounded by all that miraculous alien technology, those amazing myths made real, had led her to believe anything was possible. Arne could touch a phosphorescent swirl in one of his walls and the ship would gloriously land itself on any planet they chose. He’d given her that wonder, that faith to play with. But when it came down to it, Isaac Newton held all the cards. Miracles happened inside the alien ship. Outside, math kicked all their asses.
Alex sat in her husband’s lap and slung her arms around his neck. “Do you think they will…come, that is?” She didn’t sound hopeful. “Even if it’s just Gerty and Arne. Having said that, Flyte might decide to stay with them instead. He’s hardly spent any time with us since he fell in love.”
All fair points. Too fucking fair. Steffi hated that she didn’t truly know what Arne would decide. He’d said he wanted to be with her, but what about now? Would he choose to leave his kin behind for a life on the lam? That was all she could offer him. Being hunted. A phantom of dubious criminal enterprise.
Her heart sank. The memory of the little girl dying in search of fairies lodged in the damp part of her brain. “We should never have stayed,” she admitted. “This was never going to have a happy ending, was it?”
“Probably not,” replied Alex. “But God smiles on good intentions. At least we tried.”
“How much time do we have?”
Rex began a nervous hum while he checked the navi-computer. “About eight hours.”
Hmm. Plenty of time. She stroked the faint cleft of her chin with her knuckles. Yes, plenty of time for what she had in mind.
“Whatever you do, don’t erase that vector,” she demanded. “We’ll need it to find them later.”
“Cap? You got something in mind?”
“Nothing major. I just want to scout ahead before we take this to the next level. McKendrick picked the planet, right?”
“Yeah, she picked one in what she called the terrestrial band—the right distance from the sun to have a temperate climate. It was also the bluest one. Not much to go off.”
Steffi leaned over the wheel to press the button for High Injection Boost. “It’s enough,” she insisted. “Blue is what we’re after. As long as there’s a bit of something else. Plus, McKendrick never let us down.”
Slashes of midnight blue cut the turquoise-tinted cloud cover into striking ribbons. The two hours had passed quicker than a gripping chapter of her book. Repairing damaged tail panels, fixing loose lighting cables to the crew quarters, scrubbing up as much of McKendrick’s blood as possible, unceremoniously jettisoning the dead Royals—there had been much to do and far too much to think about while doing it.
The three of them scrutinised the dark slashes in the cloud for signs of anything underneath. A slow-spinning planet, eleventh nearest the huge but not terribly bright star—its brood of planets numbered around thirty—McKendrick’s world looked at least seventy percent water. The rest either consisted of frozen mountainous regions or was hidden by blanketing clouds.
But what lay under the clouds?
The ship’s environmental scans hypothesized a thin oxygen atmosphere, with rather too much nitrogen and methane to support human life. But the scanners were so old they could probably be used to play Pac-Man if a pilot got really bored. They had never been very reliable forecasters—more of a rough guide to junior school chemistry than
something on which a girl could hang her life hopes.
Steffi was sure she glimpsed brown contours inside the dark slashes. And once or twice, even grey craters. She shook her head. Even if the air was breathable, without some kind of ecosystem in place, the world could not be habitable unless an expensive, sustained colonisation was undertaken. A handful of people could be holidaymakers, nothing more.
She lowered their orbit to ninety-five miles, close enough to see dribbles of purple on the lower slopes of the ice peaks. What could that be? Some kind of strange sedimentation? Out-gassing from pores in the rock? Or vegetation?
“What do you think we should do, Cap?” Rex looked her over from head to toe. “It’s got potential. Those mountains—”
“Do you fancy living in a freezer?” Alex butted in. “I sure don’t. If it came to that, we’d be better off ditching this ship and living around Arne’s lagoon.”
The idea had its appeal. Steffi considered it for a moment. Anything to be with Arne. Had she been dumb all along and the solution was right there blushing in her face? The lagoon was bigger than her brain’s compartmentalizing of it. Far bigger. They could lounge about on the grass and swim in the water and visit the amazing mythological zoo whenever they wanted. And she could make love to him anywhere, anytime.
What could be—?
Thrum-thrum…thump-thump-thump.
The ship’s engine slowed to a floor-slapping cycle, then stuttered, spat, and finally rolled into a quick buzzing death rattle. The faded black wheel slammed right and wouldn’t budge, tilting the Albatross ever so slightly to starboard. Steffi wedged her boots against the under panel and yanked it with all her might. No use. The thing was stuck, and something had to be venting from the engine into space, acting like a rudder.
They were veering into the planet.
“Let me try.” Rex’s titanic grip bent the rim of the wheel, but he couldn’t budge the gimbal. He took his sleeveless shirt off and wrapped it around his right elbow joint. It cushioned his arm while he hugged the wheel rim between his biceps and forearm. He pulled until a roadmap of veins bulged from his brow and temples.
“Jesus!” He reeled away, panting, as the curvature of the planet began to straighten and the clouds loomed nearer and nearer. “We could rip that thing off and it wouldn’t alter our course. Whatever happened to the engine, it’s shut us down good.”
Alex held him. He suggested going to the engine, but Steffi knew he’d be no use there. Strength was his forte, not fiddling with moving parts. What she wouldn’t give to have Flyte aboard right now. He was smarter than the rest of them put together when it came to engineering.
She flew down B corridor and wrenched the hatch to the engine room open. A noxious smell of cooked grease hit her. Running along the gridiron floor to the tail section, she observed two buckled pipes leading to the wing thrusters. Serious steering-killers. Her steps grew heavy as she feared the full extent of the damage. The trusty old extractor fans worked overtime sucking the black fumes out into the exhaust vent. She stopped at the engine. A twisted ten-inch bolt had stabbed right through one of the overhead lights. The filament crackled around it, flickering in the smoky gloom. The engine itself, a super-hot tubular shell kept horizontal by an electromagnetic metal scaffold, had fallen to ground. It had seared holy hell into the reinforced floor, perhaps even melted through it. The propeller shaft at the rear had also buckled, and condensed purple Psammeticum dripped out of a small gash.
Bitter, she bowed and cursed herself. Why had she not run an engine diagnostic after the attack? Without Flyte, it would only have been a second-rate check, but it might have alerted her to this ticking time bomb.
Now they were just as helpless as the alien juggernaut.
Oh, Christ. Only one thing left to do.
Jump.
She ran back to explain the situation to the others, and they both threw her harsh stares while the bluish clouds grew whiter below and a livid halo gathered around the Albatross’s nose.
Entering the atmosphere piled thunder into the ship, knocking them off their feet and into each other. Everything blurred in a violent oscillation. Steffi tried to stand but the g-force threw them all down B corridor in a tumbling heap. The ship seemed ready to prize apart at the seams. Ferocious external heat warmed the walls and hot-ironed the floor around the cargo chute.
She screamed, “Get in your suits!”
Dressing on the rim of an erupting volcano required practised hands. A foreknowledge of every strap, buckle and magnetic clip. The ship shook so wildly, Steffi’s vibrating vision elongated everything. She snatched a quick breath then closed her eyes. Memory served her better than sight. Braced against the rear wall of the cargo bay, she struggled into her suit, then her boots, then her tricky helmet. She helped Rex and Alex into theirs, fighting against the burrowing force of the descent.
It softened all at once like a bullet train exiting a tunnel. The relief buzzed her scalp and electrified her limbs into action. She knew neither their speed nor their altitude. Only that they were still falling.
She unclipped an emergency survival bag from under the bench. Steadying herself on the metal suit hangers, she made her way to the airlock. With one hand, Rex yanked the crowbar loose from the inner door. He held his wife tight with his other arm. Steffi unpacked the emergency chute canopy with frantic, clumsy fingers. She attached the harness to Rex’s suit—he would have to hold both women close to him in freefall—then wrapped her legs around one of his. Alex did the same on his other side.
Steffi mouthed a quick countdown in tandem with emphatic hand gestures. At one, Alex pulled the lever to release the outer airlock doors.
Whoosh!
The wind filled the canopy and sucked them out into a sapphire-purple world. Her helmet chattered against Rex’s. She braced her arms around his neck, overlapping Alex’s. The squeeze soon began to ache. Rex gripped her waist, holding her firm. She peered down at the wingless, smoking shell of her ship scarring the sky far below. The white summits of monstrous waves creased the ocean into dark rolling valleys. A severe, raking wind got hold of the chute, pulling Rex horizontal. She hung on for dear life as rain pelted her from all sides. Farther and farther from their initial fall, they twisted and jolted through chaos. She only recognised the splash from the crashing Albatross by the smoky trail dissipating above it.
The roar finally receded. A soporific whir took its place. They had no way of knowing how far and for how long the storm had blown them. A few hours? Half a day? By the time Rex wriggled to alert them, Steffi’s entire body felt rigor-mortised.
She opened her eyes to a beautiful sight. Less than a thousand feet below, banks of crisp breakers pummelled a rocky purple shoreline. The rain had cleared, and the rocks farther inland were slick and inviting as amethysts.
Rex let go of her waist, then his wife’s, in order to manoeuvre the parachute by its cords. He aimed for a secluded cove and landed them in the shallows to cushion their three-man weight. The chute was only meant for one person. If they hit rock, they would break their legs. The watery impact jolted through her. The tug of the tide almost carried her out to sea. After staggering ashore, they all collapsed against the same purple sandbank—a fleeting ending—before gathering themselves for the ordeal that was yet to come.
Steffi looked out over the icy alien ocean. It was just as endless and empty as deep space, but water always seemed more alive.
Alive. If only for a little while.
Chapter Ten
For miles and miles, the purple wasteland stood just above sea level. She reckoned a rogue wave could wash most of the way across it. If life had ever existed here, it had died out long ago.
They set off toward the centre of the land mass, to see if it really was as desolate as it appeared. A few hours in, they came to a plateau of wet maroon sand. The smooth rocks scattered herein had burgundy veins of some glittering new element. Otherwise the land was empty and predictable. Endless rain pools and variations of t
he same flat amethyst rock in all directions.
Her cuff sensor determined a much higher oxygen atmosphere than the Albatross had predicted. More than enough for them to breathe. Methane and nitrogen, in the amounts present, were not poisonous. They removed their helmets but not their suits, then sat together around a small pool rippled by the wind. She didn’t feel like speaking and the others didn’t say anything either. Not much eye contact. A cold wind, made colder by the sustained sweat having opened her pores, whistled dully about them. Steffi braved the first sip of alien water, if only to break the monotony. It was the crispest, purest liquid she’d ever tasted.
“Help yourselves,” she said in a husky voice. “For what it’s worth.”
What else was there to say? There were no uncertainties, no grey areas, no dilemmas awaiting discussion.
Death. The where and when. The blank fact of it.
Funny how she’d always imagined herself going out in a blaze of glory, battling against impossible odds to the bitter end. Usually in a gunfight. Smuggling did that to her—presented imminent death and made her imagine herself coping with it. She’d never seen herself going out with a whimper. A bang. Always a bang. But here there was no fight to be had that hadn’t already been decided.
She waited for the emptiness to throw her an obstacle. None came. Only time mattered now, and that she could count in breaths and heartbeats and the languid visits of the sun. Alex asked her to join them so they could all snuggle together and say a prayer. She accepted for their sake. The next silence confirmed something she’d already suspected. God meant nothing to her, even here at the end of all things. Not one contrite cell existed anywhere inside her. She felt neither proud nor incomplete for that. It was just…Steffi.
At the close of his prayer, Rex gave an almighty sigh before he glanced skyward. The next thing Steffi knew, he’d yanked them both upright and was pointing at the clouds.
“It’s here! It’s made it! Look, they’re entering the atmosphere!”
The Mythmakers: An Impulse Power Story Page 10
