by Ginger Booth
Husna crossed her arms. “Captain Collier, you clearly haven’t mastered even the rudiments of supervision. We are to land on the planet tomorrow. Whatever this AI is, all applicable expertise dwells on that planet. Hire someone who knows. Someone not me.”
“Very well,” Sass attempted. “Then join the repair crew.”
“No. That is a matter for simple mechanical ability. Which you can hire. On the planet. Tomorrow.”
“You have a lot of damned gall to speak to me like that!”
“You’ve watched too many old movies,” sniff. “If you’ll excuse me, captain, I will return to my stateroom and see what mineral survey I can complete with your wholly inadequate optics,” sniff. “Your hack of a chief engineer should have invested his time into better lenses. And you should have planned for at least twenty passes for an orbital survey before we set down. But I shall do my best.” With that, Dr. Husna Zales stalked off.
Sass truly, deeply, fervently hated the science faculty of Mahina Actual. This prima donna act was exactly what it took to succeed in that publish-or-perish pressure cooker. And yes, better optics would have been smart. And a multi-pass orbital survey, if anyone had thought of it, or been awake to ask for it.
Then again, Sanctuary wasn’t their planet. Sass assumed the locals had studied the problem. Asking them to share data was a lot simpler than local hiring, or allowing strangers to work on the ship. Sass hired some security. They were among the seven dead.
No matter how short-handed, maybe she should have kept Husna on ice.
She waited, leaning on the catwalk railing, as Clay and Joey finished setting their p-suits to recharge below. When they headed up to crew berthing, she crooked a finger to summon Clay. He gave Joey an encouraging clasp across the shoulders as they parted, and sent him ahead into the deconstruction zone.
He joined her at the railing. “What did you need?”
“You’re better at urb attitude than I am.”
“True.”
“Figure out how get some work out of Husna.”
“I discussed that with her before the funeral,” Clay explained. “She’s doing an orbital survey of the planet’s geology. After landing, we’ll compare our remote sensing techniques to theirs.”
“While the grad students play deck crew?” Sass demanded. “She’s not entitled to a free ride, Clay. Everyone has to pitch in, or it’s bad for morale.”
Clay’s eyes narrowed. “Whose morale, exactly?” He smirked when she hissed at him. “Sass, no one else wants to work with her. As your first mate, I recommend you keep her locked in her room. Have her interact as little as possible. Bet you Porter would rather sleep in med-bay than share her cabin again tonight.”
“And who could blame him?”
Clay drew close to whisper, tickling her ear. “Watch your own morale, Sass-ss. Let me handle the crew.”
“Fine!” Sass headed aft to bleed off some frustration by yanking dead pipes.
Sass carried a crate of ruptured pipes to Darren’s latest workstation in the hold. The load must have weighed 300 kilos. She didn’t quite trust the space legs of Joey and the grad students to control that kind of mass without hurting themselves.
She simply set it down and detached the grav hand grapples. For a breather, she paused to watch Darren’s lesson to Zelda and Porter. The pair faced him across a table-mounted laser saw.
“These rent pipes aren’t worth straightening. Instead, we’ll cut them into chunks and use the recycler to reform them into plastic stock. Then we extrude new pipes.”
He picked up a length of their spruce stock. Mahina farmers grew modest woods of spruce and aspen trees, irrigated by the same subsurface web of pipes that fed their fields. Aspen wasn’t good for much except the oxygen cycle and decoration. But Thrive packed along a quarter container of spruce planks and plywood.
Darren lay the board beneath the saw and squared it neatly. “Imagine this is your arm.” He added a line of grape tomatoes down its centerline. He pressed the two grad students back to stand clear.
The engineer flicked a switch. The saw lasers lit, and the upper arm of the saw slammed down to the table, then retracted. The plank was now 10-cm chunks of wood, splattered with tomato guts, wafting with the scent of grilled veggies and woodsmoke.
Darren hammered home his point. “This machine can slice steel. Keep your hair, fingers, clothing, and everything else out of the way, yes?”
Poor Zelda looked like she was about to vomit. The whole crew looked about 25. But her age was 24 in truth. Porter beside her was only 27. Sass read him as fighting not to laugh out loud.
Sass cleared her throat. “They could use the remote switch.” She pointed to the power strip supplying the saw, complete with power switch.
“Ah! Good idea,” Darren encouraged. He swiped the ‘arm’ debris into his refuse bin. “Zelda. You try first.”
Zelda looked petrified to go within a meter of that saw press. Sass took pity and clapped her shoulder. “Maybe you’d prefer to work with Corky?”
“She’s so nice!” Zelda gushed, Corky’s new temporary bunk-mate. “You wouldn’t mind, would you, Darren?”
Sass drew her away, sighing. “Careful now, Zelda. You’ll break your spine bending over backward like that. I appreciate how you’re willing to help.”
“Oh, anything I can do! Except –” She caught herself. Sass nudged her to continue up the stairs.
“Husna is surveying the planet,” Sass noted.
Zelda Maier’s specialty was atmospheric terraforming, though she was in the early days of her doctoral program and might yet switch. Sass found the terraforming disciplines more tolerable than some of MA’s other scientists. A centuries-long project involving tens of specialties fostered a more collegial than cutthroat outlook.
Zelda nodded. “Yes, I spoke to her about that. Um.” She swallowed.
“Husna is a rego bitch from hell,” Sass suggested.
Zelda blew out explosively, and half-laughed in relief. “She told me she studied my record. And when we get home, she’ll recommend me for a high school teacher. In Schuyler City, not Mahina Actual. She says I’m not smart enough to teach urbs.” She caught her lip with her teeth, cute in a childish sort of way.
Sass joined the army at 14, was a single mother by 18. She never was Zelda’s kind of young. “Husna will record the orbital survey, Zelda. You’ll be free to analyze it later. In the meantime, I appreciate a team player. I also know Dr. Eli Rasmussen in the faculty of terraforming botany. Let’s not worry about Husna’s opinion just yet. It’s a long road back to Mahina.”
If ever. Today was hectic enough. And Husna was truly abusive when first revived and weak as a kitten. Sass hadn’t mentioned the dead warp drive to the science types yet. She probably ought to before someone let it slip. “Corky! Got you an eager volunteer!”
“Oh, goody! We’ll get this wiped down in a jiffy, and then make some lunches together! Won’t that be fun!”
Joey, standing too close to her, clapped a hand over his ear in aural self-defense. He performed a comfort job for the moment. Bearing ruler and steel-bender, he stood around and moved the warping device around the wall under Remi’s direction. Between her two engineers, there was no question who was the better choice to straighten a pressure bulkhead. Remi was better at plumbing, too, but Darren could handle tear-down and manufacturing replacement parts for him.
Sass touched Joey’s shoulder kindly in passing, and reminded Remi they had another set of burns to perform soon. “Think Darren could make new doors?”
“Not caring,” Remi replied, absorbed in aiming a laser sight. Then he stood straight and shrugged. “No one sleeps in here tonight. Tomorrow maybe we sleep in the colony.”
“Let’s make friends first,” Sass hedged.
Then she had nothing more urgent to do than hide in her cabin for a few minutes. She cried hard but silently, perched on the bed, pillow curled to her gut.
I killed seven crew. No, the AI killed them
, Shiva. But I was responsible for their safety.
I’ll do better, she vowed, then pulled herself together. She washed her face because it made her feel better. As for puffy red eyes, Sass’s nanites never let her tears show.
16
“All hands, secure for landing. Do not, repeat not, release your seat belts until we are on the surface. Mr. Rocha, please perform roll call and verify we are ready.”
Sass clicked off her public address channel on the bridge. She stood during the announcement, getting a few last stretches before showtime. Now she slipped into her pilot’s seat on the bridge and buckled in. Remi sat beside her at the gunner’s station.
The vast splotchy yellow bulk of Sanctuary filled the bottom two thirds of their view screen. They orbited into position before heading down. Not that the planet was actually in front of their seats. When braking, Thrive flew backwards. But they showed the planet-facing camera feeds on the display.
“Are we eager to meet new friends today?” Sass quipped.
“Hm. I feel shy,” Remi played along. “New faces. Strange customs. Maybe a lovely g– woman, seeking an exotic thrill from afar.” He waggled his eyebrows. “Is it smarmy if I don’t look at you when I say?”
“Yes. But I forgive you.” Sass took a deep calming breath and tried to relax. “Observation of the planet suggests low turbulence. You’ve never landed on a planet before. You’ve never even flown into atmosphere, have you?”
“No. I’m very excited,” Remi deadpanned. “Air pressure one eighth of Mahina, yes? With clouds. Does that feel woolly, when we fly through a cloud?”
“On Denali it’s a real thrill ride. Here, probably not.” Sass quit speaking as Clay reported everyone accounted for. “With luck, Mr. Roy, your job today is very boring. You are co-pilot.”
“If you are unable, I fly the ship.”
“Yes, so watch carefully now.” Sass extended her index finger in slow motion, in an attempt to bring drama to the fateful act.
“Time,” Remi noted.
Sass pressed the button. In response, a deeper throbbing note added to the ship’s subliminal vibration. The star drive gradually ramped up to power level 4.5 out of a theoretical 10. A few attitude thrusters fired to fine-adjust their angle of approach, the planet taking up more of their screen. Sass already laid in the programming for the landing. Her job now was to override if anything went wrong. Remi’s job, even worse, was to step in if the program and Sass both failed.
Or hand her a cup of tea.
“Captain, this is – Hello!”
Sass suspected he was about to say ‘boring,’ but slight ribbons of a brighter, burning yellow and white began to appear before them. A new and different higher-pitched keening joined the vibration of the ship. Remi placed a bare hand wonderingly on the hull beside him to feel it better. The ship’s inertial dampeners canceled out all their g-forces. Aside from the hull vibration, they still felt that the floor was ‘down’ at an Earth-normal 1-g. The banking motions of turns didn’t touch them.
“Boring is good, Mr. Roy,” she assured him. “On an ideal approach, we just kick back and watch the pretty –”
Scenery, she was about to say. But suddenly the view blurred and caromed in a most disconcerting fashion. Sass punched a button to blank the screen before it made her nauseous. She leaned forward to frantically page through displays hunting for an error explanation.
Remi found it first. “Right nozzle firing weak. Same power draw. Turbulence in the plasma again.”
Darren Markley was on their comms channel. “Chief, we are eager to hear from you regarding the right engine nozzle.” The captain didn’t like to jog an engineer’s elbow, so she left it at that.
Besides, she had bigger problems. She clicked off the autopilot and took manual control. If the right nozzle was weak, then… “How weak?” she asked Remi.
“Thrust 40% low.”
Sass tried a 45-degree veer, to see if that straightened them out any. At this point they were spinning out of control. The veer made them spin faster. Wrong direction. She jerked the lever the other way, and held it a few seconds.
“Roy!” Markley barked. “Take over containers!”
“Aye, chief!” Remi switched his dashboard from co-pilot to cargo-master presets. Sass barely spared a glance as he engaged the grav grapples on their cargo containers. As on the long Denali voyage, Thrive clutched 8 full-size containers below, the size a truck or train car used to carry, arrayed 2x2x2.
“Captain, I may eject second level,” Remi warned her.
“If you must,” Sass agreed. The helm was finally responding a little better. Thrive was still spinning, but slower. More of her braking thrust went in roughly the right direction. Now she tried to get finer control to halt the spin altogether, still aiming in the wrong direction to compensate for the nozzles not firing the way she ordered them to.
“Captain,” Markley reported, “I have an experiment. Higher power might blow out the obstruction, or smooth the turbulence.”
“What about lower power?” Sass countered. “Chief, we don’t have enough helm control to burn harder.”
“I don’t want to hit the planet, Sass!”
“We are braking, not falling, chief,” Sass told him calmly. “Would you feel better swapping jobs with Mr. Roy?” There. She got the spin down to barely one revolution per second. But by now they’d dropped enough that the atmosphere’s turbulence had teeth. Try as she might to find a false direction to point toward to lose that last rotation, she wasn’t finding one.
“Could we blow out for just a second, cap?” Markley pleaded.
Remi shook his head beside her. “I think not.”
Two against one. “Reducing power to level 4.” But instantly, her spin sped up with a vengeance. She still had no better ideas for how to correct it. She brought the power back to 4.5, and walked the spin back to 1.5 rps. “Alright, let’s try it your way, chief. Now trying power level…what?”
“Try 7.0, please,” Markley asked.
Sass ran a rapid calculation. “I can’t give you a full second of that without popping back out of the atmosphere.”
Remi, struggling with the cargo grapplers, suggested, “Not a bad idea.”
“Hold for one, Darren,” Sass said. “What do you mean, Remi?”
“Skip out of atmosphere and fix the engine. Return for landing with helm control.”
Sass thought this through instantly. She only used the main engines to brake out of orbital velocity, and to fight gravity. But at 0.4g, this planet wasn’t much of a challenge. All of her current vast power was braking. Once they shed enough speed, she could simply fly the ship. The thrusters should steer fine, and were capable of countering this gravitational pull.
“High power, 7.0 for 0.5 seconds. Try that first,” Sass decided, and instantly matched action to words. She lost spin control again, of course, but was able to compensate by turning closer to straight. “Repeat.” The second time she managed to drop a net 0.2 rps in the spin department.
“Hold at 4.5, Sass,” Markley instructed. “Has helm control improved?”
“I can’t tell,” Sass decided. “But we dropped speed, and not too much altitude. Going again.” She tried the same trick three more times, each time gaining just a little more helm control. She had no idea if the engine outflow was improving, or if slowing down and greater atmospheric resistance did the trick. But at last she coaxed the ship to stop spinning altogether.
She flicked the display view back on, the planet and its clouds now much closer. She didn’t have hands or time to spend on calculation. She just flew by gut feel. She tipped the ship downward another tiny bit, to bite deeper into the atmospheric braking. And she goosed the engines just a bit more, by eye, never letting the spin resume.
Once she was down to 10,000 meters, she’d bled off as much velocity as she needed. She cut the main engine braking, and ever so slowly, brought the nose of the ship around to fly face-first.
“You did it!” Ma
rkley crowed. “Well done, cap!”
“Cargo secure,” Remi reported. “I am impressed. Would you like to know where we are?”
Sass took a deep breath, then began to laugh. Once she got that our of her system, she said, “I think I can handle the flight plan, Mr. Roy. We’re about to enter a cloud. Enjoy.”
They were about 1,200 km off course, and Sass didn’t mind a bit. At a sedate 450 kph, she’d have a nice few hours to calm down before she had to meet anyone. She and Remi could even take turns taking a shower. She sure needed one. She was sweating pure adrenaline from that entry.
“Sanctuary Ground,” she hailed. That’s what they were calling their channel to the human beings now. “Thrive Actual. We’re running behind schedule. See you soon.”
17
“It’s so good to meet you at last!” Sass assured the welcoming committee at the colony entrance vestibule from the Sanctuary spaceport. They offered to extend an umbilical to Thrive, but she made vague excuses to postpone that. She opted instead for a brief stroll across the hard-top in a pressure suit, and a small group for first greetings.
The home team entourage included the Loonie Major Petunia Ling, Martian Colonel Zeb Tharsis, but no Scholar Hugo Silva. Instead a middle-aged nut-brown bald woman called Commander Inge Lumpkin represented Ganymede Too. Sass introduced them to Clay, Darren Markley, and against her better judgment, Husna Zales and the two grad students. If she’d known Hugo wouldn’t be here, she would have left Husna muzzled on the ship for this first foray in tact.
“This is remarkable!” Sass assured them, casting an admiring gaze around their glassed entry hall. “Your entire facilities aren’t above ground, surely?”
“Oh, no! These are our playgrounds,” Tharsis assured her. “All three communities share the dome space on the surface. Yesterday Mars beat Ganymede at football! Ah, maybe you call it soccer.”
Sass peered over their shoulders. Indeed, the giant domed space beyond the entry was carpeted in something like summer-dead grass, with painted white lines for assorted games. The sports fields were huge.