by Cara Bristol
Pia burst onto the bridge. “Can you stop it?” she panted.
“I’m working on it.”
“Detonation in fourteen minutes,” the computer said.
Ping! He’d broken through the firewall, and he directed his microcomputer unit to get the code to deactivate the destruct sequence. “Now let’s get to work on Plan B,” he muttered.
“What’s Plan B?”
“I’m going to fly the shuttle.”
“To where?”
“Don’t know yet.” The planet had to support life—and it had to be reachable—
“Detonation in thirteen minutes thirty seconds.”
In thirteen minutes, twenty-nine seconds or less. Say thirteen minutes even to give them time to get off.
He keyed a search query into the computer’s data banks and switched the system to voice so Pia could follow what was happening. His internal computer unit had been able to get access to the basic operating systems one code at a time, but the self-destruct program was still locked tight.
“Computer!” Brock addressed the shuttle. “List the nearest bodies capable of sustaining human life with estimated ETAs from our current coordinates.”
“DeltaNu9084, sixteen minutes forty-nine seconds, Cassion 9 thirty-six hours, two minutes, Xenia eighty hours three minutes.”
“There’s nothing closer?” The human in him didn’t like the answer he’d received.
“Negative. Detonation in thirteen min—”
“Change coordinates to DeltaNu9084.”
“Request denied. DeltaNu9084 is restricted.”
Partially integrated into the ship’s network, his MCU procured the pass code. If he had the master ID, he wouldn’t require an individual code for every action, but, as with the self-destruct program, he hadn’t been able to gain access yet. “Override restriction, authorization Tango Whiskey five zero three zero five.”
“Destination changed to DeltaNu9084.”
“We won’t make it,” Pia said. “We need sixteen minutes.”
“We’ll make it!” Maybe. “Computer, switch to officer-controlled navigation and piloting.”
“Request den—”
“Echo India four four nine four.”
“Officer-control activated. Detonation in twelve minutes.”
“Shift all power, except for auxiliary, to the engines. Maximum thrust.”
“Authorization denied. System failure resulting in destruction of craft may occur. Detonation in eleven minutes thirty seconds.”
“We don’t have authorization to blow up the craft, but the computer can?” Pia said.
“Repeat request: shift all power except auxiliary to the engines. Authorization Foxtrot Charlie eight two nine one one seven,” Brock barked at the computer. “Hang on, Pia!”
“Initiating maximum thrust.” Like it was shot from a catapult, the craft jolted into hyperdrive. Pia fell against the panel, but held her footing.
“Arrival on DeltaNu9084 in nine minutes, twenty-four seconds. Detonation in ten minutes.”
“Booya!” Brock shouted. “Prepare for landing!”
Pia ran from the bridge.
“Pia!” Sonofabitch! He needed her to stay put because a nanosecond after they touched ground, they had to haul ass. Now that he was piloting the shuttle, he couldn’t leave the bridge to hunt her down. “Pia! Come back here!”
“Detonation in nine minutes thirty seconds.”
“Piaaaa!”
Brock pounded his fists on the armrests. His MCU continued to work on halting the destruction, which he preferred to landing on a restricted, uninhabited planet. The information in his database and the shuttle’s synced: the mix of atmospheric gases would support human life. Temperatures were moderate. There was no notation regarding water, but the topography was described as forested, so it stood to reason there would be some. So why the prohibition?
“Detonation in nine minutes.”
If he had to choose between taking a chance on DeltaNu9084 or being blown up, he’d pick DeltaNu9084.
* * * *
Penelope raced to the lounge, grabbed her carryall, and then sprinted to the galley, turning a deaf ear to the computer’s countdown. Death was not an option. Brock wouldn’t let it be; he would get them through this. But when they landed, they would need supplies. She would like to assume their rescue wouldn’t take more than several hours, but in case it took a day or so, she intended to prepare.
Into her bag, she shoved a dozen NutriSups, including a couple of Terran candy bars for Brock. In the cabinets she found a collapsible bladder and filled it with water. A fire starter would be good to have, but she found nothing like that onboard. Fire and spacecraft—not a good combination.
Neither was shuttle and explosion.
She did find a small medkit, which she tossed into her bag, then darted across the hall to the sleeping cabin, yanked a cover off a berth, and rolled it into a tight bundle.
Food, check. Water. Warmth. Medkit. Check, check, and check. Geode. Check. Brock would insist she leave the crystal behind because it was a non-necessity, but she was determined she would meet with the Xenians. And when she did, she would present the crystal. The geode would be her good luck charm. As long as she had it, everything would work out okay.
Hands on her hips, she stood in the sleeping cabin, the uncomfortable premonition she was forgetting something important niggling at her brain. Food, water, clothing. What else might they need?
“Detonation in seven minutes.”
She had to get back to the bridge. Jogging toward the cockpit, the heavy bag thumped hard against her hip. What would they face on the planet? Would there be hostile natives? Large flesh-eating animals?
I could always throw my geode at a predator. She’d feel safer if they had a laser stun gun. Maybe the shuttle had weapons on board for emergencies like this one? Where would it be stowed? Crews quarters? Bridge?
Near the escape pod!
The captain had fled, but maybe he hadn’t thought to grab supplies or a weapon. Penelope shoved her heavy bag farther on her shoulder and veered right, through a passage.
“Detonation in six minutes thirty seconds.”
Hurry. Hurry. She’d do a quick search. She should have told Brock what she was doing.
“Warning. Engine systems yellow alert. Reduce throttle. Warning.”
Penelope forced her legs to move faster. She careened around the corner, tripped over a body in the corridor, and hit the floor.
* * * *
“Detonation in six minutes.”
Where the fuck was she? They would be landing in five minutes twenty-nine seconds. Unless his MCI broke the code in the next two minutes, they would enter the planet’s atmosphere, and regardless of whether he stopped the detonation, they would have to land. It would be too late to abort.
If they made it. The overheating engines had entered the danger zone. Brock analyzed their options: a certain fiery death by shuttle self-destruction, a probable fiery death by overheated engines, or a possible fiery death in a crash landing.
Let’s go with possible!
But Pia needed to slap her ass in the navigation seat for possible to work. Where the fuck was she? “Piaaaa!”
“I’m here!” She stumbled onto the bridge. “The man—the-the captain—” she gasped.
“Where the hell were you?”
She plunked her bag on the floor and dropped into the chair. “I w-went to get supplies. Food. Water.”
Not a bad idea. Some, but not all, of his irritation vanished. “You should have told me what you were doing.”
“Detonation in five minutes thirty seconds.”
“Urgak wasn’t the captain,” Pia said.
“What are you talking about?”
“The man who left in the escape pod? He wasn’t the captain.”
“What? How do you know?”
“I found the real captain. And a first officer, and the steward. Dead. In the starboard corridor outside the escape-po
d bay.”
“Son of a bitch! He must have killed them and hidden the bodies in the pod then dumped them before he left.”
“That’s what it looked like.”
“Detonation in four minutes, thirty seconds. Prepare for landing in four minutes.”
Out the view window DeltaNu9084 appeared as a huge, verdant orb. Green as far as his eye—and the nav instruments—could see. He zoomed the viewing scope for a place to land. A canopy of trees covered the entire planet. Their already sketchy chances of a safe landing nose-dived.
“Oh, universe! How are we going to land in that?” Pia gasped.
Fuck if he knew. Fiery death appeared to be their only option. Brock burned several precious seconds with a hard, wet kiss on her mouth.
“That wasn’t a good-bye kiss, was it?”
“Of course not,” he lied. “Landing is a piece of cake.”
Chapter Eight
The shuttle hurtled through the atmosphere of DeltaNu9084, and the thick green arboreal carpet rose up like a massive impenetrable wall.
We’re going to die. We’re going to die. Penelope swallowed the rusty taste of fear and dug her fingernails into the seat cushion.
Brock’s hands looked capable and sure on the stick as he guided the craft’s descent. If anyone could land the shuttle, he could. She believed that with all her heart. But their chances of survival were slim. She wasn’t a fool.
They were close enough now that she could single out the individual trees. They stood huge and stout, a formidable barricade.
“Detonation in one minute. Landing in thirty seconds.”
She wished the computer would shut up. She could do without the reminders of how close they were to death. Either the craft would self-destruct, or they would crash. The hull could withstand a certain amount of battering from small meteors, asteroids that had broken up, and space debris, but that didn’t mean you could ram a craft into a planet and survive.
“There!” Brock pointed.
A gouge appeared, a thin, crooked, barren brown scar slashing across the green. She was no pilot, but it didn’t look wide enough or long enough to land anything. Maybe it wasn’t even solid. What if it was quicksand?
Brock banked a hard right and aligned the shuttle with the narrow strip. The scream of the engines filled the cockpit. The craft shuddered, the vibrations traveling up the floor into her seat. She locked onto the armrests in a death grip.
Closer, closer…
“Touchdown in ten seconds, nine, eight…”
“Get ready to exit!” Brock yelled.
“Seven, six, five…”
Penelope braced her feet against the navigation dash.
“Four, three, two, one…”
The shuttle slammed onto the ground, ejecting Penelope from her seat as if she hadn’t been holding on at all. She hit the floor hard. The shuttle groaned and screeched as it tore through the forest, taking out trees, the gap too narrow to accommodate the ship’s width.
“Detonation in thirty seconds.”
“Brace yourself!” Brock shouted and activated the braking system.
Penelope crashed into the base of the nav-dash.
“Get ready to jump,” he yelled.
Penelope crawled to her bag.
“Computer, open forward starboard door. Authorization Foxtrot Charlie nine two zero nine.”
“Detonation in twenty seconds.”
“Get off! Run, Pia!”
She scrambled into the forward corridor. Aided by the trees grabbing the sides, the shuttle was slowing but, through the wide-open door, the landscape zoomed by with alarming speed. And the ground was way down. Penelope froze. Oh universe!
Brock flew out of the cockpit, grabbed her, and leaped out of the craft. She screamed as they went airborne.
He twisted. When they hit the ground, he landed first, cushioning her fall. The impact expelled the breath from her lungs, stunning her, but Brock jumped to his feet. He flung her over his shoulder and bolted into the woods, away from the fires they’d lit in the thicket of green, away from the shuttle careening down the gash.
BOOM! The craft exploded. A heated shockwave picked them up and hurled them through the air. Penelope screamed, somersaulting and twisting until she landed on a bed of large fronds. She lay gasping, staring up at a ceiling of green, the treetops on fire in places. Boom! Another explosion rained a shower of burning shrapnel.
Get up! Groaning, she launched herself to a standing position. “Brock?” She swung around.
Several meters away, Brock staggered to his feet, his back ablaze.
“Brock!” She ran, started to beat out the fire with her hands.
“NO!” He fell to his knees. “Don’t touch me!”
Penelope whipped off her tunic and slapped out the flames. His shirt had melted into his flesh, charred white and black, so deep she could see bone. The horrific site brought bile to her throat, and she feared she’d throw up. “Brock!” The sickeningly sweet odor of incinerated flesh filled her nostrils.
He required medical attention, and they had nothing! The medkit treated scrapes and bruises, headaches, broken fingers. Not third-degree burns. Tears of panic welled up, and she started to shake.
“Pia, it’s okay. It will be okay.” His attempt to comfort her made her feel worse. She ought to be consoling him, offering him hope. Tending to his suffering. Pull yourself together! He needs you now! “L-let me see your back.”
An ember hit the ground in front of them and set the leaves on fire. Despite his trauma, he stomped it out. “Later. Let’s get out of here.”
Penelope cringed as Brock ripped off his shirt and donned it backward, hiding his gruesome injury. Stiffly, but quickly, he snatched up her carryall, which had landed several meters away.
She slipped on her tunic, holes burned through in places. “The medkit will have painkillers. Let me give you something.”
Pop! Pop! A nearby tree caught fire.
“Later.” He slung her duffel over his shoulder. “Come on.” He beckoned. “We have to get out of here.” He waited until she approached and then headed deeper into the woods.
They marched side by side. Penelope wiped her wet face with her hand, ashamed of the way she’d come apart. “Let me carry my bag.”
“I’ve got it.” He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. “But I’m wondering what the hell you packed. It must weight twenty kilos.”
She choked at the mundane nature of the conversation when he was so injured. “Just some water. Food. A blanket. Clothing.” At the last moment, she’d grabbed a crewman’s uniform as a change for Brock. “The geode,” she added.
What a piss-poor good-luck charm. She’d gladly jettison the stupid crystal if it would heal Brock.
“You thought a rock would be useful how?” He shook his head. “How like a woman to pack everything but the sanitation basin,” he quipped, but she could see the tension bracketing his mouth, the pain in his narrowed eyes.
Penelope took a breath. Suck it up. Be a help, not a hindrance. “Ha. Ha.” She gave a quivering smile, and he reciprocated with such a broad, genuine one, it nearly undid her again.
Pull yourself together. Don’t make things worse for him. “Where are we going?”
The dense canopy cut out much of the sunlight and darkened the forest to dusk. She suspected it never got much lighter than that. At night, despite the two moons, it would be pitch black. And silent. On Terra, tropical forests were alive with noise, insects singing, birds screeching, animals howling and roaring. Here, she heard only their voices, their footfalls, and the pop and snap of the flames they’d left behind.
“We’re skirting the fires, and then we’ll cut across to the clear area ahead of it.”
“I hope we don’t get lost.”
“We won’t. I have a good sense of direction.”
Penelope peered up at the canopy. It was almost menacing how the woods seemed to close in. You’ve never been in a virgin forest before. Of course it s
eems thick. Dark. It’s never been cut, logged, or settled. “I wonder why they listed this planet as off-limits. It’s very pretty in an overgrown sort of way,” she said, attempting to put a positive spin on their crisis.
“I don’t know. That’s not in my database,” he said.
She frowned. “Your database?”
“The shuttle’s computer, I meant.”
“When we get to the clearing, I want to examine your burns. Give you some pain meds.” She slowed, attempted to get a peek, but he grabbed her arm.
He urged her forward. “When we get to the clearing, we’ll call for help with your PerComm.”
My PerComm. Penelope halted. Oh, no.
Brock stopped and looked at her. “We might have to spend the night, but I’m sure that by tomorrow morning a rescue team will extract us.”
“My bag! Give me my bag!” Penelope yanked it off his shoulder and flung it on the ground, ripped it open, and tore through the contents. Blanket, clothing, food, water, medkit. No. No. No. No! Everything but her PerComm! In her mind’s eye she could picture it sitting on the seat in the shuttle. The shuttle, which was now scattered pieces of burning shrapnel. “No!”
“What’s wrong?”
Penelope swallowed. “I left my PerComm in the passenger lounge.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Brock gaped at her. “You thought to bring a rock but not your PerComm?”
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” The full implication hit her—they had no way to signal for help. When she didn’t arrive on Xenia, its leader would think it odd, but would he report her as missing? And if he did, how long would it take before they were found?
How would the Interplanetary Flight Authority pinpoint where to begin the search?
Chapter Nine
Brock raked his hand through his hair and strove for calm. “I’m sorry I yelled,” he said. “It’s not your fault.” Under the circumstances, she’d done better than he would have predicted. She’d grabbed food, water, a blanket. They’d been in crisis mode, and she couldn’t be expected to think of everything.
His back hurt like a motherfucker, and he worried she would insist on trying to help him, but that was no reason to snap at her. He was irritated with himself because he hadn’t been fast enough to keep her from seeing the little that she saw. No way could he allow her to note the extent of the damage because, by morning, he would be good as new, and how would he explain that? He couldn’t reveal that his nanocytes were already debriding the injured flesh in preparation for regenerating muscle, tissue, and skin.
