“Acts of sabotage. When you leave him alone on bridge, I don’t want him manning anything besides the comms. Zero access to everything else. Make sure you shut down all of the ship’s stations and keep them locked whenever you’re not there. If there’s some kind of emergency while he has the deck, all he needs to do is wake you up, and you can deal with it. Worst case, you give him your lock codes, and he can react while he’s waiting for you to get there, but that’s only in case of a dire emergency.”
“That’s… somewhat unconventional. What excuse am I going to give Hayes for locking him out?”
“We have one act of sabotage that’s still unaccounted for—the bad engine code. Until we know for sure who’s responsible, you’re the only one I can trust. Tell him that. It’s true anyway.”
“What makes you so sure you can trust me?”
“Because you were the one who stopped that bad code from leaving us derelict in space. If you were the one responsible, you could have just let it execute and then covered your tracks after the fact.”
“Good point.”
“Keep an eye on things up here, and keep me posted.”
“Aye, Captain. Any chance I’m going to get to see Wonderland?”
“No promises, but I may be able to trade places with you at some point.”
Davorian sighed. “I guess that will have to do.”
“It will.”
“Captain, are you coming?” Korbin asked.
Alexander saw her floating free of her acceleration couch and angling her feet to push off from the seat so she could float toward the elevators without the need to fire the maneuvering jets in the soles of her boots.
Switching from comms to external speakers, Alexander said, “I’ll be right there. Hold the elevator for me.”
“Aye-aye,” she said, and pushed off from her couch.
Alexander commed the rest of the crew on an open channel to let them know who would be joining the landing party, and who would not. Besides the bridge crew, he ordered Max Carter, Doctor Crespin, two of his nurses, and five of the ship’s seven surviving Rapier pilots to meet them in the shuttle bay. That done, he unbuckled his own seat restraints and maneuvered himself to push off from his seat.
Once he made it to the elevator, navigating the rest of the ship was easier. The bridge deck was one of the few places where the ceiling was high enough and the walls far enough apart that he could end up stranded, floating in mid-air too far from the nearest handrail to physically guide himself through the ship.
Even with handrails in easy reach, navigating the ship in zero-G was a slow, awkward business. Getting to his quarters took five minutes, which was five minutes longer than it should have taken, and packing his things took forever. Pulling things out of his locker resulted in them flying all around the room, and he spent a long time just catching up with his underwear.
When he was finally done, Alexander spent another five minutes dragging himself back down the corridors by the handrails to get to the nearest elevator. He didn’t encounter anyone else along the way, which meant they were all either faster or slower than him at packing their things. Inside the elevator Alexander selected the deck marked Shuttle Bay One (SB1), which was one deck down from the officers’ quarters.
The elevator jerked into motion, and he held on tight to the handrails to avoid hitting his head on the ceiling. A few seconds later, the elevator stopped, and it began spinning on its axis, pulling him against the padded sides. Alexander grimaced. Davorian had already spun up the ring decks. That was going to make getting to them slightly more complicated.
He used the handrail to drag himself around the rim of the elevator until his back was pressing against the doors. A moment later, pressure sensors detected he was ready, and the elevator opened. Alexander flew out of the spinning elevator and landed against the padded inner rim of a spinning hub. Thud.
After taking a moment to recover, he crawled along the curvature of the hub until he reached an open hatch. It was a drop tube that ran perpendicular to the elevator, going all the way from the central column of the ship to one of the outer rings, like the spoke of a wheel. Alexander maneuvered himself until his feet were dangling over the padded edge of the tube.
Taking a second to steel himself for the fall, he shoved off and landed on the counter-weighted elevator platform waiting inside. The impact overcame the platform’s inertia and it began to drop at a lazy pace toward the distant bottom of the tube where the shuttle bay was located. As he fell, the tug of artificially-generated gravity grew progressively stronger until sensors judged the time had come to engage braking pads.
The elevator was un-powered while descending, using his weight and the physics of circular motion to pull him down to the spinning ring deck. The ship’s ring decks provided redundant living space for the crew to enjoy the effects of gravity while cruising on long voyages through space, but they were also ideal for launching shuttles, drones, fighters, and even missiles on trajectories that would carry them away from the Lincoln’s flight path and avoid deadly collisions.
Alexander felt the elevator stop, and the doors opened, allowing him to walk out onto the subtly-curving deck at a comfortable one-half of standard gravity. Everyone else was already there and busy loading cargo crates onto loading platforms. The platforms were demarcated with safety rails and glowing black and yellow-striped boxes painted on the floor with the words Caution and Loading Zone blinking around them in red.
Each of those loading platforms rested above an airlock leading to one of the shuttles docked on the outer rim of the ring deck. As he watched, the crew summoned a pair of loading platforms back from depositing their cargo inside waiting shuttles. Both platforms rose slowly until their safety rails came into view.
Alexander looked away and crossed over to Lieutenant Vasquez. The curvature of the deck made it feel like he was always walking uphill. At least under half of standard gravity, that wasn’t such a chore—even with the heavy pack on his shoulders. Vasquez had her helmet off, revealing short dark hair and a dark bronze skin. She was already snapping orders at the burly Rapier pilots, telling them what supplies to fetch and load onto the shuttles. Vasquez was Williams’ replacement as the Lincoln’s quartermaster, as well as its meteorologist and sensors operator, but she didn’t have much experience yet, so Alexander felt he had to check up on her to make sure they didn’t leave anything important behind.
“Vasquez.”
“Sir?” she replied.
“Do you have the cargo manifests ready for me to review?”
“Uh… they’re up here, sir,” she said, tapping her head. “Sorry, I haven’t had time to write them down yet. I can do that now if you like.”
“I like. Dictate to your pad. I’ll listen.”
“All right—sir,” Vasquez added hastily as she unslung her pack and withdrew a holopad. She began dictating, “Two shuttles, carrying one rover each. Twenty solar panels, and two fuel cell generators. A month’s supply of fuel for the fuel cells. A month’s supply of dry rations and drinking water. Spare pressure suits. Lab equipment—each of the bridge crew is responsible for making sure all the equipment they need is loaded. Fourteen inflatable habitation modules—one for each of the bridge crew, one for Max—I mean, Mr. Carter, two more between the infirmary and sleeping quarters for the medical staff, a shared module for the Rapier pilots, one more module for a mess hall and storage, another module for quarantine, and a final one to be used as a spare. Am I forgetting anything?”
Alexander frowned. “You’re asking me?”
“Sorry, no, sir. That’s it.”
“All right. I need you to—”
A new voice interrupted them, calling out across the loading bay, “What about weapons?”
Alexander turned to see Lieutenant Stone walking up to them. “What kind of weapons?”
“All kinds, sir,” Stone said, stopping in front of them. “We don’t know what we’re going to run into down there.”
“W
hat do you suggest?”
“Sniper rifles with thermal and night vision scopes. Automatic rifles. Handguns. Grenades. Land mines. Cheetahs.”
“Land mines? Cheetahs? What do we need assault mechs for?”
“They’re faster than rovers over uneven terrain, and unlike the rovers, they’re armed, so they’ll make good escort vehicles. Not to mention their sensors will save us a lot of trouble watching our perimeter at night.”
“The rovers are armored, and we can guard our perimeter with those sniper rifles you mentioned. Cheetahs will be overkill, not to mention heavy as hell. We’ll need to take an extra shuttle for each of them.”
“Is that a problem, sir?”
“There are only six shuttles. If we take four, there won’t be enough left for the Lincoln’s crew if they need to abandon ship.”
“Aye, but if they need to abandon ship, then we’re all screwed anyway. Besides, sir, when we meet T-rex’s hairy cousin on the surface, you’ll be glad we brought the Cheetahs.”
Alexander snorted. “All right, fine.” Turning to Vasquez, he said, “You get all that? We’re taking four shuttles, two Cheetahs, and all that other stuff Stone mentioned.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’ll help her,” Stone replied.
“Good. While you’re at it, have your men check people’s packs, and all of the cargo before it’s loaded.”
Stone’s brow furrowed. “Check how, sir? Like a customs check?”
Alexander nodded. “Exactly like that. After the bomb scare with Lieutenant Williams, we can’t be too careful.”
“Right. Understood, sir,” Stone saluted and about-faced. “Packs on the ground people!” he called out as he went. “Daddy wants to know if you packed your toothbrushes.”
“You think it’s going to be dangerous down there, sir?” Vasquez asked.
Alexander shrugged. “I don’t know, but it’s probably best to be careful.”
“Aye, sir—” Vasquez nodded. “—it probably is.”
CHAPTER 18
Alexander listened to the shuttle rattle and shake. Wonderland’s atmosphere roared against the hull as they made atmospheric entry. He stared out the cockpit canopy, watching as Wonderland came swirling out of a cottony white carpet of clouds. Vibrant purples and reds snapped into sharper focus.
Lieutenant Cardinal gasped. “Those are plants. They’ve got to be!” he said.
Alexander was inclined to agree. Even at this altitude those mottled streaks of color didn’t look like rock formations. “Looks like you’re going to lose that bet, Stone.”
The ground raced up fast, and Lieutenant Stone leveled out to decrease their angle of descent. “Altitude is 2500 meters and dropping,” he said.
They entered the clouds and everything went white. Raindrops pelted the cockpit canopy.
“Rain…” Vasquez whispered, her voice full of wonder, as if she were seeing it for the first time.
“Captain, I’ve got something on sensors,” Stone said.
Alexander glanced left to the sensor display to see what it was. Then the comms crackled.
“Shuttle One, this is Two. Are you getting this?”
“I see it,” Stone replied. The sensors display showed multiple unidentified contacts dead ahead and about 500 meters down. “Let’s take a look.” Without warning, he dove sharply and burst out of the clouds. Leveling out again, they saw the dusty purple horizon crowded with hundreds of black dots.
Range to the unidentified blips dropped swiftly, and Alexander’s heart raced. He saw more of them out his side window, silhouetted in the rosy light of the sinking sun. Turning back to the fore, Alexander watched as those dots swelled and details began to emerge. They were spherical and black, but otherwise featureless.
“I’m going to slow down so we can get a good look,” Ryder said. “Brace for braking thrust.”
Alexander slammed into his harness. He gritted his teeth and waited for the sensation of having his eyeballs sucked from their sockets to pass. Braking forces were called eyeballs out for a reason.
The sensation eased, and the unidentified black spheres began whipping by all around them. They were semi-translucent and hollow. Papery fins flanked the spheres, and long, delicate tentacles trailed from their lower halves. They looked like giant floating jellyfish. Alexander saw the sun shining through one of them, illuminating venous patterns in its… skin, he decided.
“What are they?” Cardinal asked.
The comms lit up with exclamations from the other shuttle pilots, and Alexander grinned.
“They’re alive, that’s what they are.”
* * *
The shuttles flew on for another hour, chasing the sun so night wouldn’t fall before they had a chance to see the planet with their own eyes. Lieutenant Stone flew them low over an alien jungle of purple and crimson-leafed trees and towering black mushrooms. Maybe they weren’t mushrooms, but that was what they looked like to Alexander.
They landed on the distant shore of the continent just as the sun was setting over a bright turquoise ocean, splashing the sky and clouds with familiar reds and golds.
Now standing in the airlock, they were all in a hurry to disembark, but no one more than Lieutenant Cardinal. He’d spent an hour salivating over all the different species of alien plants, and he was just about to get his first hands-on look at some of them.
“No one takes off their helmets,” Alexander reminded them. Doctor Crespin had warned them about the dangers of breathing the air before they left the Lincoln, but Alexander didn’t want anyone to get caught up in the excitement and forget. “I don’t care what your suit says about how breathable the air is. Until Doc Crespin clears the air as safe, it’s not breathable. Understood?”
Heads bobbed.
A green light came on above the outer airlock doors, indicating that pressure had equalized. Stone waved the outer doors open and in streamed dazzling beams of sunlight. In the distance Alexander could hear the ocean crashing on the shore. The crew jumped out one after another, sand skrishing as they landed. Two out of three fell on their hands and knees. Only Stone was able to jump out without falling over.
They’d all lost a lot of muscle from the past seventy days floating in the G-tanks. Alexander decided to climb down using the guide rails for support. Once he was standing on the sand, he saw Lieutenant Korbin and McAdams come striding over from Shuttle Two.
“Did you see that?” McAdams called out as they drew near.
“See what?”
“Those balloon creatures,” Korbin said.
Alexander nodded. “Our first major discovery.”
“They’re incredible!” McAdams said, smiling. “They were actually floating! They must be filled with some kind of gas that’s either lighter or hotter than air. I wonder if all avian life on Wonderland flies by the same mechanism? What do you think they eat? Imagine what happens to them in a storm. Either the storms here are incredibly mild, or they are tougher than they look. We’ve got to catch one of them!”
Alexander smiled. McAdams was talking a mile a minute. “That’s what you’re here for,” he said.
“How long are we staying?”
“As long as it takes to determine whether or not the planet is habitable. A week or two I’d guess.”
“That’s it?” McAdams asked, her smile collapsing.
“It’s obvious that Wonderland is habitable,” Korbin said. “The atmosphere is a breathable mix of oxygen and nitrogen, just like Earth’s. We shouldn’t need more time than that.”
Alexander looked around. To one side, a shadowy jungle of red and purple trees soared. A few gargantuan black mushrooms towered over them. There was already a group of people headed toward the jungle, spear-headed by Lieutenant Cardinal. Alexander frowned and mentally activated his comms to send a message to the whole landing party at once.
“Listen up, everyone. This is a strange planet. We don’t know what’s dangerous and what isn’t. For now, no one goes more than 50 mete
rs from the landing site.”
Acknowledgments streamed in, and Alexander nodded to McAdams and Korbin. “I’m going to go dip my feet in the water,” he said, and started off toward the ocean. The clearing where they’d landed was full of scraggly bone-white shrubs pricking up through the sand. Opposite the jungle, the ocean sparkled invitingly beneath the fiery sunset. Waves thundered and crashed on the shore below the clearing.
Alexander reached the top of a sand dune and all but fell down the other side. The beach dropped steeply into the ocean. That meant there’d be a strong current. Maybe he wouldn’t dip his feet in the water after all. On his way down, Alexander watched the sand, looking for sea creatures. On Earth he would expect to find holes and the scuttling crabs that had dug them, or maybe even jelly fish and seaweed that had washed up on the shore, but he didn’t see anything here.
Alexander stopped a few feet from the smooth, wet sand and looked out across the turquoise ocean. Waves curled and crashed right in front of him. He imagined the salty spray coming off the water.
The sun was dimmer now, lying just above the horizon. The sky glowed a pale red, and the clouds looked like they’d been soaked in blood.
As the sun sank below the watery line of the horizon and that crimson stain seeped away, Alexander shook his head and swallowed past a painful lump in his throat. This wasn’t just the end of another day on Wonderland—it was the end of an entire species.
Humanity.
He hadn’t spent much time dwelling on the worst-case scenario. He’d tried to stay optimistic, and he wanted to believe President Baker had been telling the truth when he’d said, Your loved ones are all safe and well, but Alexander knew a lie when he heard one. The question wasn’t whether or not anyone had died back on Earth—but who, and how many.
“Goodbye, Caty,” Alexander whispered.
Commander Korbin walked up beside him, her feet skrishing through the sparkling lavender sand. She laid a hand on his shoulder.
“They’re not gone, Captain,” she said, her voice trembling with stubborn conviction.
New Frontiers- The Complete Series Page 15
