by Ryk Brown
The little ship fired its thrusters, quickly climbing away from the Aurora and slightly to her starboard. The sound of her landing gear as it retracted up into the ship was unusually loud, as was the clunk that was heard when the gear locked into place. As they accelerated away, Nathan could see the numerous chunks that had been carved out of the Aurora’s outer hull by the many hits she had sustained during her recent battles with both the Jung and the Takarans. The sight of the damage to her exterior made Nathan ill, and he found himself thankful that they hadn’t flown over the port side of the ship where there was a huge hull breach in her bow.
Chunks of rock and ice of varying sizes and shapes drifted past them as they made their way down and out of the rings. Within only a few minutes of leaving the Aurora, the small ship had cleared the rings and was headed for the large moon called Haven. As they followed along the underside of the immense field of debris, Nathan and the others could see different ships conducting their own harvesting operations. They were of different shapes and sizes, ranging from ships not much bigger than the one they were on to some larger than their own Defender-class warships back in Sol.
Nathan could feel his pulse quicken, his heart beating in his throat as he gazed out the windows of the small ship. He had left the familiarity of his own ship to hitch a ride in this tiny, alien spacecraft. He was a thousand light years from home, seeing things that the people of his world could only dream about. Nathan looked over at Vladimir. He too was staring out the window in disbelief, along with everyone else in the cabin.
“This is unbelievable,” Nathan mumbled.
“There are so many different ships!” Vladimir exclaimed.
“Yeah, and all of them better armed,” Jessica added. “You two might want to keep it under control a bit,” she mumbled, looking toward the cockpit to see if Tobin had overheard them. “No point lettin’ on what ‘newbs’ we are out here.” Jessica shot a look at Nathan and Vladimir, reinforcing her warning. For a moment, Nathan felt incredibly naive. Vladimir simply shrugged it off and continued gazing out the window.
“Hey, you notice that none of the big ships come anywhere near Haven?” Sergeant Weatherly observed as they approached the large brown and blue moon. “Only the little ones.”
“Most of the big ones are cargo ships,” Nathan explained. “They probably don’t have the power to change orbits frequently. Especially when they’re fully loaded. It makes piloting them a bit trickier. You have to be very efficient, conserve every bit of momentum and fuel. Look at their main engines. They’re mostly just small engines with considerable fuel storage behind them, designed to do long, low-level burns.”
“Is that why the Aurora’s got such a big ass?” Enrique joked.
“Yeah, actually. And her ass is all engine, too. She can really get up and move in a hurry.”
“Enrique likes big asses that can move,” Jessica smiled, nudging her spec-op partner.
“Is that right?” Nathan said.
“Yeah, that’s why I never hit on you,” Enrique jabbed back. “You don’t have an ass!”
“Not a big one, that’s for sure,” she corrected.
Nathan smiled, thinking of that night a few weeks ago, back on Earth. The memory of her reflection in the mirrored wall tile as she had pulled her dress back on brought a slight smile to his face.
“We will begin our descent momentarily,” Tobin called back from the cockpit. “It will get a little rough as we hit the atmosphere. The inertial dampeners on this little ship are not terribly effective, I’m afraid.”
“Thanks for the warning,” Nathan called back. “I’m sure we’ll be fine.”
Most of the shuttle rides that Nathan had taken to and from the orbit of Earth during his academy days had been in the older shuttles that had no inertial dampeners. The first few rides had been frightening. He had never quite gotten used to them, but he had learned to tolerate them. The worst part had always been the plasma wakes. The white-orange fire streaking past the windows as the shuttles plowed through the thickening atmosphere was the scary part. It always seemed as if the fire would burst through the cabin at any moment and consume them all.
The ship rolled slightly, giving them a better view as they made their way around the moon. Haven was about half the size of Earth, and from orbit, it appeared different in many respects. Most notable was its color. It was mostly brown with some patches of gray and green. The surface was mostly dry land, broken up occasionally by a few large bodies of water that paled in comparison to the oceans on Earth. There appeared to be a few mountain ranges, some small oddly colored forests, and a lot of open plains. There were even snow-covered poles. But most of the surface appeared to be barren of life. And what plant life there was appeared odd from orbit, paler somehow. Many of the plains appeared to be covered with a tan-colored substance. The color reminded him of sandy beaches back on Earth. But there were no large bodies of water near the big tan splotches that Nathan could see.
He could see a few active volcanoes, complete with large lava flows. On first impression, it seemed an odd mixture of both the hospitable and the hellish.
The moon grew considerably larger in the windows, until it was alarmingly close. “Shouldn’t we have rolled back over by now?” Nathan commented. He was the only pilot among them. Therefore, he was answered with blank stares.
A moment later, something began humming loudly from the compartment behind them. A few seconds after that, a strange bluish glow seemed to envelope the ship.
“Some kind of shielding?” Vladimir guessed.
The ship began to vibrate and bounce slightly as the bluish-white field surrounding the ship began to change color, taking on a more amber hue. Within a minute, the bouncing had become more violent and the field surrounding them was glowing a bright yellow-orange that had become so intense that it all but blocked their view of the world below.
“I think it’s a heat shield,” Nathan told them.
“Is that even possible?” Vladimir asked.
“I guess so. That would explain why we didn’t need to pitch over.”
It seemed impossible to Nathan. Every space-faring vessel he had ever seen had a heat protective layer along its underside. Even the Aurora’s underside was reinforced and heat-shielded in order to allow for limited atmospheric flight as well as for aero-braking maneuvers. But such materials usually added to the mass of a ship as well as to the complexity and expense of her production. If these people did have an energy-based shield to protect them against the extreme friction of atmospheric entry, it would be a highly useful technology to bring back to Earth. The applications would be endless.
His contemplations of how such a technology could be used were interrupted by the increasingly violent shaking of the little ship. Despite the shield that prevented the heat of entry from reaching them, it apparently did little to reduce the turbulence. It seemed even worse than he remembered from his last re-entry to Earth. One of the things he had always liked about space was that there was no turbulence. Nathan hated turbulence, which was surprising considering that a large part of his training at the academy had been spent learning to fly every type of aircraft known to the people of his world. That turbulence, however, had not bothered him since he had been the pilot. Right now, as a passenger, he was feeling it in the pit of his stomach.
He scanned the faces of his team. Moments ago they had been joking with one another. Now, they all had rather serious looks on their faces as they too wondered if the ship was going to hold together.
A few minutes later, it ended nearly as quickly as it had begun. The energy shield faded back to amber, and then to bluish-white, until it finally faded away completely, with the hum of what must have been the shield generators going silent immediately thereafter.
Sometime during the entry, Tobin had rolled the ship back over, and now they were properly oriented in relation to the world below. They were a few thousand meters above what appeared to be a small inland sea, heading toward a distant s
hore stretched out before them. The ship continued to gradually descend as it approached the shoreline. Minutes later they were over land, down to only a few hundred meters and still descending. They could see various farms and ranches below, broken up by the occasional cluster of buildings. They were headed towards a large city of some sort.
The tan splotches that had resembled beaches from orbit now appeared to be some large flat plant that in some cases covered hundreds of square-meters of land. Nathan couldn’t tell if it was all one plant or many plants grown together. He also noticed people cutting the flat plant up into smaller pieces and tossing them onto the back of large, flat vehicles.
The farms quickly disappeared, giving way to more urban concerns. They continued their descent until they were only a hundred meters off the ground, on their final approach to the spaceport. Nathan could hear Tobin talking in an official tone to someone over his headset, and he assumed it was some type of air-traffic controller. After all, the sky over the spaceport was full of ships coming and going, and someone had to be telling them all what to do.
From above, the space port appeared to be a hodge-podge of parking stalls, hangars, and service buildings, all connected by various runways, taxiways, landing pads, and service roadways. There was a complex at roughly the center of the airfield, with numerous auxiliary buildings clustered around what appeared to be the main terminal building. Similar in overall design and function to the numerous spaceports of Earth, this one appeared to have started small and expanded over time. Dissimilar to the ones on Earth, this facility was right in the center of the city, as if the city had grown up around it. Nathan could see homes and businesses with their backs right up against the spaceport, and he wondered how anyone could function so near all the commotion and noise that the facility must have generated.
Finally, the ship slowed, pivoted right, and began its final descent to their assigned landing point, her engines screaming as they strained to keep the small ship aloft. Nathan could hear the sound of the landing gear as it extended from the ship. A moment later the ship bounced gently onto a landing pad made of a large, extremely robust grate that was elevated a couple meters above the ground to allow for the thrust wash of their engines. The moment they touched down, the ship’s engines immediately spun down to a low whine.
The ship rolled off the landing pad onto the tarmac, winding its way between rows of parking stalls. Most were open stalls, with nothing more than service buildings separating them on either side, while others had roofs over them. On approach, he had seen rows of hangars, but the area they were in did not appear to have any such buildings.
Nathan peered out the window as they rolled past dozens of spacecraft, many of which didn’t look like they could make it to orbit. Some of the spacecraft were being made ready for departure, others were being serviced, while a few appeared to have been out of commission for some time. There were even a few that had temporary fences locked around them, presumably to prevent access to them for whatever reason. In light of what Tobin had said about the family that controlled Haven, Nathan wondered if the owners of the locked-down spacecraft had failed to pay tribute and lost access to their vessels as a result.
Several minutes later, the ship turned sharply and rolled in between two long service buildings. Nathan could see a couple of men in dirty coveralls peering out the window of one of the buildings, watching them as they rolled to a stop and shut down their engines. Moments later, Tobin removed his headset and began to climb out of his seat. “Welcome to Haven,” he announced as he left the cockpit.
Tobin pushed past them as he made his way to the rear of the cabin. He punched in a code on the keypad next to the door on the back bulkhead, and it slid open to reveal a small corridor that led to another hatch farther back, with storage racks on either side. Nathan and the others watched as Tobin reached for a group of light-brown cloaks hung on the wall.
“Whoa!” Jessica yelled, as she jumped from her seat, drawing her sidearm and taking aim at Tobin. “Hands where I can see them!” she added, her weapon now fully trained on Tobin. Enrique was only a step behind her, his weapon also drawn, with Sergeant Weatherly right behind him.
“What the hell?” Nathan exclaimed. It appeared that every member of his team, including Vladimir, had their weapons drawn. Nathan seemed to be the only one of them that did not. “Something I should know, guys?”
“Step back!” Jessica ordered. “Hands high!” Tobin, with his hands held in plain sight, stepped back from the cloaks, turning to face Jessica as he slowly raised his open hands.
“I was only reaching for the cloaks,” Tobin insisted in his most charming and innocent tone. “I assure you.”
Jessica peeked over her shoulder to verify that the rest of her team were prepared to back her up. She stepped forward, grabbing Tobin by the collar and spinning him around before shoving him up against the wall. Enrique shifted to his left, getting a better angle from which to keep his weapon trained on Tobin without Jessica being in his line of fire.
“What is it?” Nathan inquired, standing to try and get a better view.
Jessica turned around, pushing the cloaks to one side to reveal a gun rack containing dozens of hand guns, assault rifles, grenades, and what looked like shoulder-fired rocket launchers. “I thought you said you weren’t armed?” Jessica challenged Tobin.
“I said I wasn’t armed, when we first met in your hangar bay,” Tobin defended. “I did not claim that I owned no weapons.”
“Uh huh,” Jessica mumbled as she inspected his hidden arsenal. “Do a lot of hunting, I suppose?”
“Nathan,” Jalea protested. “If your security personnel are going to react so violently at the slightest possible threat, we are all in for a very difficult time here on Haven. I assure you, most of Haven’s residents are far less tolerant of such behavior.”
“I apologize,” Nathan responded. “But in the interests of all our safety, you might want to tell us now if there are any other weapons you might have hidden on board?”
Jessica gestured to the others to stand down, as she too holstered her weapon. Tobin turned to face Nathan, his hand slowly coming back down to his sides as he spoke. “This is my entire stock,” he promised. “They are only for defensive purposes.”
“Defensive purposes?” Jessica questioned. “Against what? A battalion?” Jessica handed him the pile of cloaks he had originally been after, gesturing for him to exit the compartment before her.
“You would be surprised at how much defensive armament can be required on Haven,” Jalea said.
Tobin began handing out cloaks to each of them. “I would suggest that you wear these cloaks at all times during your visit. They are common here, and will serve to protect you from the environment. They will also help you to hide your weapons from view, as well as to help you to blend in amongst the crowds.”
Nathan accepted the last cloak as Tobin stepped past him. The cloak was made of a thick yet light-weight fabric that had obviously not been washed in sometime and smelled rather unpleasant.
Tobin cracked open the hatch, which swung downward toward the tarmac. Small steps extruded from the hatch itself as it neared the deck, stopping about fifty centimeters from the dull gray surface outside.
The cabin quickly filled with the heavy, humid air of Haven. An unusual smell, a mixture of mechanical fluids and a pungent, musky odor immediately hit Nathan. The aroma was almost overpowering at first but soon subsided. After nearly a month living in the scrubbed, temperature-controlled air of their ship, the natural atmosphere, no matter how aromatic, was a welcome change.
Tobin was the first one out, moving gingerly down the boarding ramp and dropping the last step down. Being nearest the hatch, Nathan was next to exit the ship. He stepped out onto the ramp, standing tall in the open air. The sky was a pale, unnatural-looking amber. He realized why their entry into the atmosphere had been so turbulent, as he could feel the increased air pressure of this moon. It was somewhat warm, and quite humid, as
if it would begin to rain at any moment.
Nathan looked around briefly. They were parked between two long metal-clad service buildings. The buildings themselves were obviously cheap and easy to construct, with a few doors and windows, and a single roll-up cargo door. Looking forward and aft, he could see they were at least several rows back from either side of the berthing yard. He could see plenty of activity, with people moving about their various ships, and service vehicles cruising between the rows of stalls.
He looked up at the sky. Its subdued amber was almost like the sky on Earth just after the sun had dropped below the horizon. But this world’s sun was still sitting low in her sky. It was small and pale compared to their sun back on Earth, and provided considerably less light than he had expected. Nathan could even look directly at it for several seconds without hurting his eyes. In the opposite direction of the sun, the gas giant around which the moon of Haven orbited filled the bottom half of the sky from the ground upwards. The light reflecting off the gas giant provided a secondary light source, casting fainter shadows in the opposite direction of the ones cast by Haven’s sun. The effect was wholly unnatural, and it gave the entire scene an eerie cast.
Nathan made his way down the ramp, dropping the last step onto the tarmac. His landing felt light, as if he had jumped down only a fraction of the actual distance. The gravity here was only half that of his home world, and a quarter less than the Aurora’s standard gravity. He jumped up and down a few times, finding himself coming considerably farther off the ground than he would have expected under normal circumstances. It was an unusual sensation-both frightening and exhilarating at the same time-which brought a boyish grin to his face.
“You know, Nathan, you are probably the first person from Earth to set foot on another world in over a millennia,” Vladimir told him as he dropped to the tarmac next to him.
“Guess I should’ve said something profound, huh?”
“What the hell is that smell?” Jessica asked as she stepped off the ramp.
