Confluence 2: Remanence

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Confluence 2: Remanence Page 5

by Jennifer Foehner Wells


  “Alan, sit down and buckle in!” Jane shouted. “It’s not safe!”

  Ei’Brai sent her a new flight plan that changed their course. Their present heading would take them into a hailstorm that had just formed. The shortest route to leave the hail behind required a turn. She eased into it.

  The controls were sluggish to respond.

  They hit a patch of turbulence in the beginning of the turn. There was a short shout that was cut off by a heavy thud behind Jane’s head. There was no time to check on her passengers.

  A flashing red light and loud beeping recaptured her attention. It was the portside engine’s heat sensor. The object they’d hit earlier must have damaged the thermal shielding just under the port engine. It was getting too hot. The temperature already exceeded safe levels and was rising rapidly. “Engaging fire-suppressant mechanism on the port engine!” Jane yelled.

  Instantly they were engulfed in gray clouds.

  The cabin was filled with the sounds of air buffeting the craft. An updraft rocked them to starboard. Jane scrambled to make adjustments and keep control. Her heart pounded as her body shifted, the harness biting into her shoulders, hips, and pubic bone.

  Hail began to pelt the craft. Visibility quickly became poor. She tried to get another look at the underside of the shuttle, but the camera was already covered in ice.

  Time slowed down.

  “Shit!” Ron yelled.

  Jane hovered over the dashboard, watching the temperature spike in the portside engine, despite the fire suppressant. The mechanism must have been damaged by the hit they’d taken. Then the engine went critical.

  “The portside engine is on fire!” she yelled to Ron.

  A glance at Ron revealed him frantically checking readouts and adjusting controls, his eyes wide. He turned to her. “It’s gonna blow!”

  She hesitated for a moment, and in that moment Ei’Brai urged her, “You must.”

  Another gust rocked the craft. The shuttle vibrated so hard it knocked her teeth together painfully.

  She flipped open a panel and turned the knob inside until it clicked into place. That released the latch on a second, recessed panel. She flipped that open. Multiple alerts from various systems screamed in competition for her attention. Inside this deeper compartment were two handles, separated by a handsbreadth. She hooked her thumb around one and her middle finger around the other and squeezed.

  It barely budged. She wasn’t strong enough.

  Good God, they were about to blow up.

  Her hands weren’t as large as a sectilian’s or atellan’s. She released the restraining straps of her harness and lunged at the dashboard in a single flowing movement, wrapped both hands around the release mechanism for the engine. She squeezed, bringing the two handles together with a click she felt rather than heard over the chaos. She pulled on the joined handles with everything she had. The craft bucked under her. She fell to the floor.

  The shuttle went into a wild roll. Without the safety harness, she tumbled from one surface to the next along with the vehicle. She curled into a ball as her elbows and knees whomped painfully into the ceiling.

  She reached out for Ron as she fell past him. His strong arms grabbed onto her and stopped her ungainly summersaults. With his help she was able to grab a strap of her harness and pull herself into the seat as the ship continued to careen out of control.

  There was a roaring in her ears. As soon as she stabilized herself, she reached for the starboard engine release. The shuttle thundered around her. The starboard engine wasn’t functional, and the weight imbalance would make it impossible to glide to the surface. They were going to crash if she didn’t release it.

  Thankfully this release was just a few inches closer than the other one had been. She grasped the handles together and pulled. They came out of the tailspin, though they were upside-down and diving at a seventy-degree angle toward the ground.

  Pea-sized hail pelted the windscreen.

  The control wheel was stiff under her hands. “Come on!” she screamed, pulling back with all her strength. “Ron—fire reverse thrust in one-second bursts. We have to change our attitude.”

  “Firing!” Ron answered. The ship bucked with each burst. The small boosters in the bow weren’t meant to be used at this altitude, but they were able to reorient the ship.

  Jane regained control and returned them to a glide. She immediately put them into an S-pattern to control the speed of their descent.

  Her heart thudded and she gulped air like a drowning man. They were safe for the moment, but she couldn’t let go of the panic. “Scan for atmospheric debris.” She tried to sound calm, but there was a sharpness in her voice. Her hands started to shake. She ignored that.

  “I’m not picking anything up, but I think the hail is probably interfering with the scan,” Ron replied.

  Alan’s voice came echoing from the rear compartment, harsh and ragged. “That’s the least of our worries. There’s ice forming on the port wing. It’s rapidly turning into a brick. Bricks don’t fly.” She sensed him move, slowly, like he was hurt, to the other side of the small cabin. “Same to starboard.”

  Jane heard Ajaya speaking to Alan in hushed tones. Hopefully she was administering any first aid that was needed.

  Ei’Brai was plotting a new course.

  “We’re losing altitude fast,” Ron called out.

  Jane pulled back on the control wheel. It had little effect. She concentrated all of her efforts on changing course by minute increments in order to move out of the hail. “I see that. Why aren’t the wing deicers working?” she yelled. The windscreen was rapidly losing visibility.

  She heard a click from the rear. Berg was buckling himself back in. “Because they cycled the deicing fluid through the engines to gain heat. For all we know, it’s watering the atmosphere.”

  Jane knew that was wrong. There was a valve in the line to keep the deicing fluid contained in an emergency engine-ejection situation, but she had momentarily forgotten about the heat gain from the engines.

  Ron called out, “I’m trying something now. Might help. Marginally.” His fingers danced over the controls. He turned to her. “We’re going to have to come in a little bit faster than you’ll want to, QD.”

  Instinct told her that he was right. She nodded. Her fingers clenched the control wheel so tightly her fingertips blanched.

  They broke through the clouds. It was raining and well above freezing at this altitude. The first rays of light were creeping up on a gray horizon framed by steaming calderas, smoking peaks and rugged, rock-strewn valleys. She stared at the unfamiliar terrain laid out before her with a gnawing sense of disquiet growing in her stomach.

  Suddenly it hit her, and she cried out, “We are so far off course I don’t know where I’m going to land! We’ll never make it to that airstrip!”

  “Just stay out of mountains, trees, and populated areas!” Bergen yelled.

  “What a great idea! I never would have thought of that without your help!” she yelled back, swallowing a hysterical laugh at the insane predicament they were in.

  She was flying on sensors alone. She stared at the screen that showed a three-dimensional representation of the landscape rapidly surging up to meet them.

  Jane clamped her jaw tight. The entire shuttle was shaking violently.

  She glanced up. The windscreen was awash with rain. The ice had nearly melted, but visibility hadn’t improved much because the rain was torrential.

  A thermal lifted them a few thousand feet, which gave her a few extra moments of breathing room, the first stroke of luck they’d had yet. She allowed herself to breathe again.

  “Okay, QD,” Ron said gently inside her head, “I’m here to help you any way I can. You’re doing great. Let’s put this thing down.”

  Ei’Brai reached out and extended his own calming presence, as well as access to all of his knowledge of Atielle’s terrain from the ship’s computers.

  She didn’t have time to worry anymore
. She had to do it. The ship was more responsive now, and for the moment, the rain had let up. Only a few small drops beaded up and streaked over the windscreen from the force of the airflow.

  She felt Alan and Ajaya join her to lend their support and focus, eyes and ears. It was not distracting or discordant. It helped. It steadied her. Instinctively they formed a silent pact to do what they could to assist in their own survival. All of their attention as a group was centered on that same goal, and not a single stray thought encroached on that primal focus.

  The landscape looked remarkably Earthlike from this altitude. It was mountainous and rocky but there were patches that were lush and green.

  There were hundreds of miles of terrain to choose from in every direction. Out of all of the possible places to land the craft, the best site came quickly and easily to her. Jane selected a long, wide, marshy valley to cushion their fall. She did not ask for anyone’s approval, yet it seemed as though everyone agreed it was the best spot.

  She took a turn around the valley to assess it from every angle, then went in for the final descent.

  Ron triggered the sledlike landing gear to deploy under the craft.

  The ship vibrated as she pushed the nose down to lose altitude and at the last second pulled it up again to allow the rear of the craft to touch down first.

  Silently Ajaya admonished them all to stay relaxed, to not tense up.

  Jane did her best to comply. She held her breath.

  Jane rocked in her seat, teeth knocking together hard, brain ricocheting inside her skull, spine ramming into the seat cushion, as they slid violently across the valley floor. Mud and vegetation flew up over the windscreen. The craft spun a quarter turn. They jerked hard against their harnesses and the shuttle nearly tipped over on its side as it came to sudden stop.

  They were still.

  7

  Jane sat there panting with her eyes closed. Her fingertips tingled. Her body was heavy despite the low gravity on this moon. She didn’t want to move. She felt nauseated and cold. Her hands were trembling so she laid her palms over her knees and just breathed.

  Ajaya was the first to speak. Her voice seemed distant to Jane. She said, “Is anyone hurt?”

  Ron rubbed his hands over his face and replied, “I’m cool.” He unlatched himself and stood up, bouncing on the balls of his feet, probably testing the feeling of the gravity. “Hoo-wee! That was some ride!”

  Jane stared at him blankly and swallowed hard. Her stomach was churning. She was afraid to move for fear it would erupt.

  “You okay, QD?” he asked. “You look a little pale.”

  Her tongue was dry in her mouth. She was afraid to open it. She nodded once and that little bit of jiggling cost her. Bile rose in her throat.

  He patted her knee and moved toward the rear compartment in long, hopping strides. Jane closed her eyes.

  “Can you give me a hand, Ronald?” Ajaya asked.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he answered. “Oh, shit.”

  Jane heard a sharp intake of breath. That was Alan. It was enough to rouse her from her stupor. She numbly unlatched herself and rose, swallowing convulsively. She was dizzy. Her eyes were rolling around. With effort, she focused on her three companions.

  Alan was arching his back, grimacing in pain. Ajaya and Ron were helping him. His leg…

  Jane bounded to the hatch and slammed her hand on the open symbol. It responded instantly. She felt like she was dreaming. The gravity was light, barely pulling on her, and everything around her was a swirling blur. Momentum kept her moving forward and she started to fall through. She scrabbled at the hatch for something to hold onto, breaking nails, scraping the skin of her hand raw, and finally caught herself as she fell to her knees, half in, half outside on the gangway.

  She couldn’t hold it back any longer. She heaved up the contents of her stomach. When she was finally able to stop, she stayed there with her face against the cold metal of the gangway, gulping air and struggling not to sob.

  “Oh, God,” she groaned and pushed herself back up on her knees. She brushed tendrils of hair from her face, worked up some saliva and spit, then wiped her mouth on her shoulder.

  Her heart was beating out a slow heavy thud in her chest. Alan.

  She staggered to her feet.

  Inside, Ajaya had efficiently turned one of the crash seats into a makeshift examination table by activating its sleep mode and jacking the whole thing up as high as it would go. She had found a place to hang a high-powered lamp which was focused now on the messy juncture between what was left of Alan’s leg and his cybernetic implant. Ron stood nearby, handing her things.

  Alan twitched and grit out, “Jesus! Holy mother of…” He trailed off into incoherency and bit his lip. His skin was pale. His shoulders trembled.

  “One more moment and I’ll have the bleeding under control. Bear with me, please,” Ajaya said soothingly to him as she bent over him with a sectilian triage kit. She’d been studying sectilian medical technology and had become quite proficient with it.

  Instinct pulled Jane forward. It had been foolish to indulge in a moment of weakness when Alan needed her.

  “Do not come any closer.” Ajaya spoke softly, but authority rang clear in her voice. “I have a very small sterile field here. We cannot risk contamination of the wound.”

  Jane swayed, and a stab of guilt hit her like a gut punch.

  Alan’s hands were balled into pale fists. His voice ground like glass. “Son of a—” He inhaled with a hiss and slammed one of his fists into the seat beneath him. “Damn it, Ajaya, hook up the filaments and let them do their fucking job!”

  “Nearly there. I’m packing the wound with gel now.” Ajaya straightened and turned. Her eyes swept over Jane but landed on Ron. “Ronald, if you’d be so kind?”

  Ron moved to Ajaya’s side, and together they eased the synthetic limb back into position. Immediately she could hear it hissing and whirring. It made a sound that might have been a vacuum pump engaging. Jane remained by the open hatch, feeling foolish.

  Alan relaxed before her eyes. His shoulders sank back to the chair. His hands unclenched. His head rocked back and forth. “Aw, yeah. That’s the good stuff.”

  Ajaya laid her hand on his brow. “Stay put. Let’s let this machinery do its work.”

  His voice was full of relief. “Yes, ma’am.” His head flopped to the side to look over at Jane. “Sorry about the horror show. Didn’t know you were squeamish.”

  She shook her head. Her mouth tasted foul. “I’m not. I guess…just…”

  “A word, Commander?” Ajaya said from her side.

  “Of course,” Jane answered. She followed Ajaya and tried not to drag her feet. Her head was clearing but she felt a little weak. She really wanted to sit down and let her blood pressure equalize.

  When they got to the rear of the shuttle, Ajaya turned, worry pulling on her delicate features. “Are you ill? What just happened?”

  Jane hung her head. “No. I don’t know. It was just…a lot. I’m just a linguist.”

  Ajaya continued to scan Jane’s face until she seemed satisfied that it was nothing serious, then nodded and turned to grab a fresh flight suit and a packet of wipes out of a protruding compartment. “You should get cleaned up.”

  Jane took the things from Ajaya gratefully. The wipes felt cool and soothing as she swabbed her face and hands with them. The blood was rushing back to her head—in particular to her face, which now felt hot and was probably red. She was acutely embarrassed at her reaction.

  Everyone probably thought it was because of Alan’s leg, but it wasn’t. It was because she felt like she’d narrowly avoided killing them all. Sure, she’d trained extensively for all of this and she knew how to handle herself in a crisis, but that had been the closest she’d ever come to death, and the thought that she might have taken all of them with her while she crashed and burned was overwhelming.

  Vomiting was particularly humiliating and wasn’t something she’d done often
. As she eased out of the flight suit and drew on the fresh one, she saw that Ron and Ajaya were carefully cleaning up Alan’s blood, which had splattered all over the inside of the craft. A memory surfaced of the time, at the age of ten, that she’d first gone to live with her grandparents in Minnesota, the day when they had driven her mother to the airport to see her off on a journey. The drive was hours long. Jane had been gutted over her mother’s departure and coped by losing herself in a book. She had dived so deeply into the story, she hadn’t noticed the discomfort of car sickness rising until it was too late. She had begged her grandfather to stop the car, but he couldn’t or wouldn’t in time. The mess she’d made that day resulted in her first taste of her grandfather’s rage. It hadn’t been the last.

  She tried to mentally shrug away the image of a sad, lonely little girl who’d lost everything and everyone she’d ever loved sitting on an icy sidewalk at a rest stop in rural Minnesota, hugging herself and crying while the grandmother she barely knew used piles of brown paper towels from the restrooms to wipe out the car, followed by scoops of snow to try to scrub it clean. Her grandfather’s face had been beet red and shining in the bright sunlight bouncing off the snow. The remainder of that drive had been long, wet, and cold—and not all of that coldness had been temperature related.

  But she was warm and dry now and no one was angry with her.

  The trauma of landing the craft had led her to lose her lunch. That was mortifying, but not too strange considering the circumstances. She hoped to never repeat anything like that landing ever again.

  Jane glanced at Ajaya and Ron as she pulled on her boots, catching a long, lingering look pass between them. Jane’s eyes widened for a half second before she forced herself to look away. Ron and Ajaya had been spending a lot of time together and clearly were getting more friendly. Shared extreme experiences had a way of bringing people closer together. It was natural. It was also none of her business. They were keeping whatever was going on private and she didn’t blame them.

  Ei’Brai caught the thread of her thoughts and was instantly alert and probing. She sensed him skimming Ajaya’s and Ron’s minds and pushed him back a bit so she wouldn’t breach their privacy. Ei’Brai was intensely curious about human interaction, which was natural, given the circumstances. However, she was, at times, uncomfortable with the voyeuristic nature of his personality. She understood it—he was confined and forced into involuntary solitude. They were still working out how to navigate that.

 

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