Matti-Jay kept working. She found it.
The track led straight toward the Marauder At least, toward the position where the Marauder would be when the two paths intersected.
“Marauder,” Matti-Jay said, voice cracking momentarily. “You need to maneuver quickly.”
“Debris?” Nicole said.
On Matti-Jay’s display, the dragon continued to close. How maneuverable was the thing at that velocity? Probably far better than the Marauder Especially if the ship already had damage.
How were they going to get their damaged vessels through the atmosphere onto the ground anyway? Matti-Jay’s had holes in the hull. Were they safe for aerobraking?
One thing at a time. She needed to focus.
Less than a minute until those lines intersected.
“Not debris,” Matti-Jay said. “That dragon. It’s coming back for another pass. Its trajectory is on an intersect course. With the Marauder”
Nicole swore, the words lost in the crackling of the poor connection.
“I see it!” Charlie yelped. “That thing’s coming fast.”
“And right at us,” Nicole said. Now she sounded calm. Almost accepting.
The dragon had left a hole in the Donner. But the Marauder was far smaller.
It would be obliterated.
“Get to the planet’s surface,” Nicole said. “We know the air’s breathable. We know you can survive with the supplies aboard your vessels. Hold out until rescue arrives.”
“We don’t know if a buoy got away,” Charlie said. He sounded small, almost plaintive.
“Maneuver,” Matti-Jay said. “You need to at least try to get out of its way.”
“Copy that,” Nicole said.
Matti-Jay waved again at her consoles. Right away it showed an image of the Marauder with her main nacelle firing. That odd shimmering distortion created by the ultramagnetic engines.
With some more waves and pinches, she zoomed in on the dragon. How could a vessel look so lifelike? If a dragon was a real thing.
Whatever, it was changing course. Adjusting to meet the Marauder
“Ah, well,” Nicole said.
“The Marauder has its own escape pods,” Matti-Jay said. “You can escape.”
“And what then?”
Matti-Jay swallowed. “You land. The pods will put you on the surface. You’ll survive.”
“You have to go now!” Charlie said. “That thing’s about to hit you.”
“Copy that,” Nicole said.
According to Matti-Jay’s display, there was less than twenty-five seconds until impact.
And pods began popping off from the Marauder’s hull. Two. Three. More. Drifting off on erratic trajectories.
Twenty seconds.
More pods came. The first ones began adjusting their flight. Turning and heading toward the planet.
The pods were designed to either be picked up quickly by a nearby ship, or to make landfall. With only damaged vessels in the area, it was clear they just needed to get to safety on the ground.
Ten seconds. Seven pods were away. No more came.
Then, another and another.
So nine.
Five seconds left.
“We did our best,” Nicole said through the comms. Her voice had the slightest tremor.
Another pod broke away.
And then the dragon hit.
Chapter Twelve
Matti-Jay sat in the Blue Defender’s cozy cockpit. The engines hummed. The air still had a faint strawberry odor. She was comfortably warm.
While all around her people were dying.
She sniffed. This was not what they’d signed up for. They’d come to investigate. Come to test out the jump tech.
They’d known they might encounter difficulties. A straight out attack had been considered. But it was very far down the list. Dismissed by many as ridiculous.
And yet her she was. Watching a dragon tear ships apart.
“Matti-Jay?” Charlie said. His voice was shaky.
“We need to move,” Matti-Jay said. “Get tracking on all of those pods.”
The Marauder was gone. Nothing more than an expanding debris field. Completely fractured from stem to stern.
No time for mourning now. There were people to protect.
The Donner was falling behind as atmospheric drag slowed her. It wouldn’t be long before she was on the planet too. She would be just a twisted burned out mess.
Why weren’t more people getting off?
“Charlie?” she said. “Get your vessel’s tracking systems watching all those pods. And the Donner. And any other vessels that have managed to get away.”
A beat. “Copy that,” Charlie said. Another beat. “I don’t know if she’s got the capacity to–”
“Do what you can,” Matti-Jay said. “Please. Just get all the information you can. And get yourselves on the ground. Quick as you can.”
“But there–”
“Charlie. Have you heard the expression sitting ducks? You know, a hunter wants a nice duck dinner. Goes to the lake and picks them off.”
“I know the expression.”
“Get off the lake. That dragon’s come around once already. It’ll do it again.”
“Understood. What are you going to do?”
“Sweep for other survivors. I’ll follow you down. We should make sure we’re close.”
Charlie sighed. “This sure has gone all sideways.”
“Let’s salvage what we can, Charlie.”
“Copy that.”
Matti-Jay waved again at her displays. Her sodar showed hundreds of contacts. There was so much debris around them now. It was like being in a winter hailstorm.
The pods began descending into the atmosphere.
Matti-Jay flicked her systems over to analyzing the planet’s surface. All the data that the Donner had gathered during their brief stay had automatically been loaded into the Blue Defender’s systems. It didn’t hurt a bit, though, to get everything she could.
They were all going to be down there. Without any support. And not knowing if rescue was coming. The more information the better.
And maybe there might be some hint as to where this dragon had come from.
Quickly, she activated the scanners to look at two things. Firstly the planet, and secondly at the Donner. If more people got off Matti-Jay needed to be able to keep track of them.
The rescue pods came with supplies and homing beacons. But they would be spread out on the surface. It was going to take some rescue effort to find everyone.
Matti-Jay glanced at the departing pods now. All out of view, actually. Just showing up as tracking dots on the display. The first of them were beginning to scorch their way into the atmosphere.
Matti-Jay directed the Blue Defender back toward the wreck of the Donner. The ship’s tumble had slowed significantly. An effect of both the work of the attitude jets and the atmosphere. Parts of the ship beginning to drag.
Matti-Jay swam her runabout around the Donner. The debris field was just about gone. The tinier pieces dropping back and down into the atmosphere. The larger pieces still spreading from their original burst. Moving away.
There were no more runabouts. No escape pods. No one in the observation dome either.
“Come in, Donner,” Matti-Jay said, her channels open wide. She didn’t expect a response, so it was a surprise when a vague voice crackled through.
“This is Donner.” Almost unintelligible through the static. The ship’s comms systems damaged too. Or perhaps someone in a part of the ship not usually used for communications.
“This is Matti-Jay Menthony,” Matti-Jay said. “You need to get off the vessel. Now.”
No response. Her comms just had that background crackling hiss. Maybe someone was trying to speak through it.
Matti-Jay kept moving around. There was a bank of escape pod tubes. The little two and a half meter long pods still in place, glinting like a row of peas.
“Donner com
e in.” Matti-Jay waved at her display, trying to pinpoint the source of the signal. “This is the Blue Defender.”
Nothing.
“Charlie? You still out there?” She waved around the scans and tried to pinpoint the other runabout. There. Far behind now. Descending through the atmosphere. In moments they would be leaving a screaming trail of fire as the hardened ceramic hull burned through the atmosphere. Hopefully along with those rescue pods.
Ten pods. Three in the runabout. Thirteen people. From three hundred aboard the Donner.
“Come in,” she said.
“This is Donner,” the crackly voice said again. “Gabe here. I’m not leaving.”
Gabe Newcombe. One of the few crew members who didn’t treat her like a kid. Always asked for her opinion when they had to work together. On the flight out they’d been tasked with maintenance on one of the runabout’s ultramagnetic drives.
They’d disassembled the thing and put it back together over several days, with a lot of laughs along the way. She liked him. Twenty-nine years old, with a girlfriend back home, Tris. They’d been talking about having a child. Gabe had been frank, saying that the idea terrified him, but he couldn’t wait to become a dad.
“Gabe,” Matti-Jay said. “The ship’s crashing. You need to abandon now. Take anyone you can. You’re already grazing Ludelle’s atmosphere.”
“I give us...” his voice broke up. “... fifty-fifty... of making... safe... ground. The atmos...” And then Gabe’s voice vanished into a cloud of harsh static.
“Get clear,” Matti-Jay said. “The Donner won’t survive aerobraking. You need to get off the vessel.”
Matti-Jay had seen enough footage of space wrecks to know how that would go. A blazing meteor, with chunks falling off. Wreckage scattered over hundreds of kilometers. Most of it charred and unrecognizable.
The attitude jets fired again. Gabe, adjusting the trajectory. Bringing the vessel deeper into the atmosphere.
“Gabe. Think about everyone else. Please.”
Just static, then, “It’s... no choice. We... urvive if...”
“If you can control the ship, push it to a higher orbit.” Matti-Jay worried that she was screaming. Frantic. “Give us more time to get everyone off!” What if he could only hear her as badly as she could hear him? Every second word.
She said it again. “Burn for a higher orbit! Gabe, please. Just try. Try to get yourself–”
“Matti-Jay. I always liked you. Now... got to... my best to...”
“Gabe.”
“No power... higher... best if... controlled.”
“If you can head down in a controlled landing, at least... at least try for breaking to a higher orbit.”
“Matti-Jay, listen.” For a moment Gabe’s voice was clearer.
“I’m here,” she said. Did that come out as a whimper?
“Matti-Jay, you have to stay... around and... raver we came down.”
“Did not copy.”
“Matti-Jay. Find us. Go around again. Find us. Get help.”
“I just... go around again?”
She got it. Despite the damage, Blue Defender could maintain orbit. It would take about and hour and a half. She would be over this location again. The ship would come down farther along the track, but she could scan for it.
And then go around another time and set down so she could come help.
She took a breath. Would anyone actually survive the wreck? It seemed impossible.
But she had to do what she could.
“Copy that,” she said. “I’ll see you after twice more around.
Chapter Thirteen
Space could be lonely. Real lonely.
Ninety minutes had passed since Matti-Jay had spoken with anyone. The Blue Defender sped around the planet, just on two hundred kilometers above the surface. Right at the thin edges of the atmosphere
The ship had reminded her to eat. It had given her a pre-packaged instant sandwich with protein constitute and vegetable analogues. Not especially appetizing, but it did occupy fifteen minutes. It was the kind of thing she was going to have to get used to eating for the next little while.
There was no response from any of the research satellites the Donner had released. More than twenty of them. She should have come within range of one during her passage. They had higher orbits. They needed to so they could get good line of sight between each other.
Matti-Jay had kept scanning for them and not one had responded.
Had they met the same fate as the Donner and the Marauder and Charlie’s runabout?
As she’d tracked around the planet, into darkness in the shadow of night, she’d kept up her sensors looking for things of interest on the surface. Particularly looking for signs of a civilization.
That was part of their brief. Of course. Come out to Ludelle and find whatever was there. Find the aliens. Or the ruins of the aliens’ civilization.
Find whatever had built that dragon.
She was glad not to have seen that dragon again.
There were a few things down there, in the darkness, that might have been towns or buildings, but with the limited capacity of the damaged runabout’s systems, it was impossible to make a definitive call.
This exploration wasn’t supposed to take place over a couple of orbits. More like a few months. With the whole of the Donner’s sensors gathering data.
Now the Donner wouldn’t be gathering anything.
Matti-Jay was coming up on the location where the ship had dipped into the atmosphere. When she’d lost contact with Gabe. The last person she’d spoken to.
What if she was the last person left alive from the mission? What would she do?
Matti-Jay smiled grimly at the displays. She would think of something. Even if it mean building her own jump tech buoy to send home.
She puffed out her cheeks. It seemed far-fetched. The runabout had all the information for such a thing, but did it have the tools? Or the materials?
Perhaps she would find out soon enough.
She kept watching the displays. The feeds showed the ground below. She had one set of cameras focused on the technical path that the Donner should have followed. Another set open wider, looking for any evidence of the wreck on the ground.
It had to show up soon. With the angle they’d gone in at–just below orbital–it would be a long, long burn through the atmosphere before they hit the ground. Perhaps a few thousand kilometers from where they really began aerobraking to where they came down.
There would be debris along the path and maybe damage on the ground.
Down there were forests too, and grassy prairies. Some huge lakes, and icy mountains. Rolling green hills. The place was so like Earth it was extraordinary.
Perhaps that’s just what planets looked like if they developed a biosphere. Lots of greenery.
Matti-Jay keep up her scans and she didn’t see any debris. Because she’d already gone around the planet’s limb before the Donner hit the ground, she didn’t have any telemetry. She had to look for it.
Her comms system crackled at her. Matti-Jay just about jumped out of her seat. The harness held her firm.
“Someone there?” she said. Had rescue come already?
Impossible.
It would take days for the buoy to get home. And more weeks for any rescue effort to return. It had been less than two hours.
And then, a voice. Staccato and broken. “Mayday, mayday. This... leg... yo... usion... ost in th... ayday, mayd...”
“Hello!” Matti-Jay said. “Someone there? Who’s there?”
“... is... fron... callus... st in... day, may...” Was that Charlie? It sounded a bit like him.
“Hello?” Matti-Jay said. “Hello?”
“Matti-Jay? Is... chew?” Is that you?
“Charlie? You’re alive?”
“Came... in the... ood to ha... oice.” Good to hear your voice?
“I’ll... just a second.” Matti-Jay waved quickly at the displays, bringing up contr
ols. She activated the little vessel’s sensors. She needed to triangulate to find the signal’s origin.
If it was Charlie, then there was a chance she might be able to join them.
“Bl...” he said, even more crackly and staccato. On the ground he was at least two hundred kilometers from her. Amazing that she could pick up anything.
The damaged vessel’s sensors worked hard examining the surface, looking for the signal’s origin. She only had her own orbital trajectory to work with. Two points on that would give her something to work with. A vague line across the orbital track.
If she adjusted her orbit next time around, she could get better precision. Come in from the south.
Matti-Jay sighed. Here she was fooling around with orbits in her damaged ship. Technically she should get on the ground.
And with the debris field, coming around at a different angle put her at risk too. It was a slim chance, but having an intersecting orbit with a piece of debris could be catastrophic.
“Keep transmitting, Charlie,” Matti-Jay said. “I’ll track you down.”
She just got static back.
But the Blue Defender was getting some kind of signal. It worked all the details into its database. Building something up.
Well, that was positive.
Matti-Jay let it keep working on that. Meanwhile she continued watching the displays for any signs of the Donner’s wreck. Unlikely that there would be any survivors, but she needed to see it. Needed to know how badly it had come down.
Or maybe it would be better to not see that. It would only break her heart.
She closed her eyes. The runabout’s systems would record all the data anyway. The investigators later could examine it at their leisure. Maybe even figure out what went wrong.
A dragon was what went wrong.
But Matti-Jay couldn’t keep herself from watching. The images on the display showed rugged mountains. Crisp white glaciers hugging deep black rock. Some glittering lakes at the feet of glaciers.
Matti-Jay sped along above, gradually leaving the mountains behind. Now, forest, green and lush. Rivers sped along, white and bubbling, bursting out in waterfalls, and slowing to fill depressions in lowland lakes.
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