by L. E. Howel
“Come on!” Jane shouted. “We haven’t got long!”
Birch nodded and started up the rest of the stairs. The last part of the climb was agony for him. The stairs swayed wildly and he found it hard to keep his footing, but Jane helped and finally they were both crawling into the cockpit. The door was slammed behind them. It wasn’t more than a minute later that rough hands were pounding on the glass and attempting to open the door from outside. Birch hurried to the pilot’s seat and set the countdown for five minutes, hopefully enough time for him to look around and get some idea of the controls on this ship. It was new to him.
“Launch in T- minus 5 minutes and counting,” a monotone voice announced in the cabin, and was echoed through the speakers about the cavern. The reaction outside was instantaneous. The pounding on the cockpit window stopped as panicked soldiers fell over themselves to get down the stairs and away from the coming explosion of the lift-off. At the bottom a few men were still gathered around the computer, trying to override the launch.
“T- minus 1 minute,” the voice announced.
The roof of the cave now seemed to have peeled away as natural daylight broke through. By now most of the men had left the stairs and were throwing themselves toward the entrance. Even the men at the computer had given up and were running for their lives.
“Thirty seconds to launch.” Inside the cabin Birch was sweating again. He could see the blue skies above him but he didn’t know where they would go beyond that. All he really knew was that they had to escape. They had to get away.
“Ten seconds,” he looked around at the faces of the others. Edwards looked angry, sullen, and scared. The Ares kid still looked like a ghost of himself. Lauren was hard to read as ever, and Jane had a look that he interpreted as an, ‘I told you so.’ Their return hadn’t turned out as he had hoped. She thought all this proved her right, but he knew her way hadn’t been any better.
It was strange. So much had happened. He thought of the people he was leaving behind. The missing faces in the crew hurt, and these new ones didn’t replace them. This wasn’t any kind of crew he would have chosen, but now as he looked again at them he remembered that he could be wrong. He had been before.
“Launch sequence initiated,” the engines roared and burned the now empty chamber to cinders as the ship launched into the empty sky.
Coming
2016
Fallback
Planetfall
Book II