But the rebuilt ship’s maiden voyage had gone terribly wrong. One of the crew disagreed with John’s intentions. Paul, one of their chief engineers, betrayed them all. He brought a weapon aboard the ship and attempted to force the rest of the crew to turn it over to the United States government. Dan had time to jump the Satori clear of his trap, but the emergency jump placed the ship dangerously close to Jupiter. That was when Paul revealed his backup plan, detonating small explosives he’d placed on the ship. One of them had blasted Dan’s console to bits. The others had almost wrecked the ship.
He’d gotten them out only by figuring out how to use the wormhole another time. This trip landed them in an entirely different solar system. It was the last place the alien ship had visited before arriving at Earth’s star. They’d found a planet with breathable air. The surface was desolate, a hot wasteland. He’d brought the ship in low, looking for someplace to set down.
All of this flashed through Dan’s head as he soared by over the coastline. The oceans on this world were pitch black. No waves flowed, nor were there any currents. Dan wasn’t sure what the liquid was, but it didn’t look like water from the air. Nothing about this planet felt like home. It was eerie how still and dead the world seemed to be. He had the sense that perhaps once it had been different, that something terrible had happened here long ago. Here and there Dan saw the scattered remains of what looked like dried out rivers and lake beds, indications that water had once flowed across the dead land. But no longer.
Dan had never felt so exhausted, and the view wasn’t doing anything to lift his spirits.. His body ached from tension and injury. It had been a painful day for more than one reason, and Dan was more than ready to head for home. They needed to make repairs to the ship first, though. He needed to make sure Beth was all right, too. Charline had radioed up to him that Beth was alive, but he didn’t have much more information to go on, and he wanted to see her himself. Before he could do that, he had to find a place to set the ship down. Everything he saw was rocky and covered with debris and dust. The planet was pocked with impact craters, like it had been heavily shelled from orbit or smashed by a hundred thousand meteors.
Then the Satori shot over a particularly high crater wall, and everything changed. Dan had thought that the place was empty of all signs of life. He’d been wrong. He slowed the ship, spotting an open area near the coast that he could potentially land the ship. John was going to want to see this. Hell, all the rest of the crew were going to want to see this. Otherwise none of them were going to believe it.
Two
The Satori’s engine room had taken the brunt of the damage from Paul’s explosives. Two of the small bombs had detonated, tearing up the deck, shattering plates and sending debris showering around the room. The main conduit running power from the alien engine to the rest of the ship was still shredded. A patch cable allowed some power and control, but they had a lot of repair work to do before the ship was going to be back to full power.
Charline was kneeling in the middle of the floor, holding Beth’s still form and crying when John and Andy pushed the door into the engine room the rest of the way loose. Both women had their spacesuit helmets off. The holes torn in the hull had allowed enough breathable air to pass through that they could survive without the suit air. Andy’s efforts with the laser cutter had finally worked, burning away the twisted metal that pinned the steel safety door shut. With a final, concerted heave, they were through. John froze in the doorway a moment, taking in the tableau. Then he made to step forward to help.
But Charline was on her feet before John took a single step into the room. She flung her suit helmet at him. It hit his chest, rebounded against the floor and spun there. Before it stopped spinning she was already moving toward him. Charline took a hard swing with a right hook, her fist slamming into the left side of his face. John toppled sideways, falling back against the door frame.
“You bastard!” she hissed. “Don’t you ever tell me to do something like that again!” She stepped in and hammered blows against John’s chest with each word. Andy slipped in at her side, as if to comfort her, but John put up a hand and forestalled him.
“I understand that I asked you to do a terrible thing, Charline. But we all would have died if you hadn’t been able to connect Majel to the wormhole records. You kept all of us from burning up in Jupiter’s atmosphere.” John looked Charline straight in the eyes, and even through her anguish she could hear the compassion in his voice. “It was the right call. Hard, but right.”
Charline knew that he was right, but that didn’t make it easier to have cut off a friend’s air. Beth’s suit had been damaged in an explosion. The woman had continued working right up until she passed out. Charline had kept her alive by hooking Beth up to her own tank, using her air for both of them. But her suit couldn’t put out enough air to keep them both breathing and compensate for the leak in Beth’s suit. Charline was heading toward passing out herself when John ordered her to cut off Beth’s air.
And she’d gone along with it. She’d done as she was told. The guilt Charline felt over that decision was unbearable. She felt Andy’s arm behind her back, lending her support, and her hands went still on John’s chest. She could understand, but she couldn’t forgive.
“And if she’d died?” Charline asked.
John looked over Charline then, to Andy, then back into her eyes. “Then at least we would have been alive to mourn her.”
She felt Andy’s strong hands begin to lead her away. She turned, ready to start in on him, but then she saw the look on his face. She knew in an instant that at some point, he’d been in her shoes. He’d faced a moment where he had sacrificed someone he cared about for the good of others. Where he’d placed the need of the many over the needs of one person right there in front of him. He knew how much she was hurting. Charline could see it in his eyes. Somehow that shared pain made her own agony a little less.
Her need to be understood overwhelmed her anger in an instant, and Charline collapsed against Andy, crying.
Beth’s too-still form lay on the engine room deck, helmet off to one side where Charline had set it down. Charline’s medical scanner lay on her chest, a green light pulsing softly.
“So she’s...?” John couldn’t finish the question.
Charline sobbed again, trying to pull herself together. “She’s alive.”
She turned from Andy to glare at John. “No thanks to you. I hooked the buddy breathing up after I finished the program. Didn’t care what you’d say.”
Charline was still furious, but felt it wash away from her as she looked over at Beth. “I don’t know how much it helped. By the time Dan said I could take her helmet off, she wasn’t breathing. I don’t know for how long. Her heart was still beating. I did rescue breathing until she started breathing on her own again.”
Andy offered her a hand again, and she took it. “Let’s get her to the infirmary,” Andy said.
“Yes. She’s stable now, but she’ll be more comfortable there,” Charline said.
Andy carefully knelt beside the unconscious women and lifted her gently into his arms. Charline felt a little bit of the weight she’d been carrying leave her shoulders as Andy took on the load. She’d done all she could. Now there were others who would help. Over and over, trapped inside the engine room Charline had wondered if she had done the right thing, detaching her air supply from Beth’s suit. Surely she could have finished the coding without doing that! Then Beth would have been fine. There’d be no questions about how quickly she would recover from the ordeal. Also no crushing sense of guilt for what she had done.
Charline couldn’t help but stare at Beth’s still form. There was nothing she could do but hope the other woman would be all right. Then Andy turned and met her gaze. The understanding she saw in his eyes warmed her heart and for a moment dispelled some of her remorse.
“Come on, let’s get her cleaned up and resting. Then we need to make sure the ship is spaceworthy again,” Andy said.
“The sooner we get the Satori fixed, the sooner we can all go home.”
Charline flashed him a weak smile and followed Andy out of the engine room. Far as she was concerned, she’d follow him anywhere.
Three
John looked at Beth as they picked her up. It had been a very near thing. Dan was going to let him have it later, for ordering Charline to disconnect her buddy breathing. If Dan hadn’t managed to get air back in here, Beth would likely be gone. Which brought up another interesting question.
“Dan? We got the engine room door open. Where are we?” he asked over the radio. He wasn’t sure he was ready for the answer to that question. But he needed to know. There was no way Dan could have jumped them to Earth, and there wasn’t anyplace else that had a breathable atmosphere…in their solar system.
“How’s Beth?” Dan replied. “And Charline?”
“They’re both fine. Charline hooked Beth up to her air tank again as soon as she was done with the program. Then she got both of their helmets off as soon as you gave the all clear. Beth lost consciousness, but she’s breathing. I think she’ll be OK.” John took a deep breath. He’d leave out the bit about Beth’s respiratory arrest for now. He needed Dan to focus, and that wasn’t going to help. “Now don’t avoid the question.”
“We jumped. New star system, close orbit around a new planet. Majel said the atmosphere was good, and we burned out the charge for the wormhole drive with the jump so I took the ship down. Some satellites orbiting the planet tried to shoot at us on our way in, but I cloaked the ship, and they seem to have lost us. And John – you’ve got to see this.”
“Something fired on us?” John lost track of most of the rest of what Dan was saying. His thoughts were racing. The implications of that simple statement were almost beyond belief.
“Yes, but I think they were just automated systems. Seriously, you need to get up here.”
“Safe to set the ship down?” John asked.
“Yeah. I think so, anyway.”
“OK, land her. I’ll be right up.”
John stalked his way back down the corridor from the engine room to the bridge. He understood; he’d been the one to toss Dan and Beth together on this project. Had even hoped they might make up, even after years apart. John knew full well from both of their reactions that there was still a lot of emotional turmoil left over from their marriage. He knew Dan would be protective of Beth. But the risk he had taken! A blind jump, getting the ship shot at - by whose missiles? And then basically invading an alien planet’s airspace. The Satori might have a cloaking device, but she wasn’t invulnerable. The door to the bridge was open, and John tossed his helmet into his seat as he stepped in, ready to give Dan a piece of his mind.
“What was it you wanted to show...” John started to say. Then he was unable to say anything else for a few moments, staring out through the front window of the ship.
Dan had landed the Satori on a flat space just outside a city.
Or the ruin of a city, anyway. What remained forced John to wonder what New York would look like, were it left abandoned for a thousand years. Torn spires still reached for the sky, their broken forms mute testimony to what had obviously once been a thriving metropolis. Dust and wind had done their work, wearing away at tall structures which must have once housed hundreds of living beings. Tumbled rubble filled some of the space between the towers, leaving tortured paths between. The wind swirled a dust devil down the empty street, stirring the long stems of a few hardy plants which had dared to take root in cracks and corners.
“That was more or less my reaction, too,” Dan said quietly. “I can’t decide if the place looks more like an old monument, or a tomb.”
John looked away with an effort and took a seat at an empty console. With a few keystrokes, he called up sensor data on the planet. The air was breathable, but they’d already proven that. Radiation in background traces only. Very hot, though. The temperature outside was 38.2 degrees Celsius, and as John watched, the readout rose another tenth of a degree. Already hot, and warming up.
He had the computer render video taken by the ship’s cameras as they approached the planet and landed. It looked like the entire globe had been beaten with a ball peen hammer. The pock marks of craters and a shattered landscape were signs of some massive calamity. The craters were not random, either. They were especially focused near coastal areas, he saw. The video even showed some places where the coastline had been so obliterated that the oceans had flooded in, black sludge with little circular ridges where bits of crater wall peeked above the fluid. On Earth, at least, most large cities were built near coastline. To John it looked like the damage was intentional, the result of some massive assault.
“Kinetic strikes, maybe?” he mused. In theory, a ship could throw big rocks down from space at high velocity, doing enormous damage to a planet.
“Could be,” Dan replied. “Not nukes though. The whole planet would still be radioactive, if that many craters were all from nuclear weapons.”
“I don’t like the looks of the oceans,” John said, checking the data Majel had on the murky black gunk. It was apparently as bad as it looked, some sort of carbon based fluid. The sensors were having a hard time figuring out precisely what its composition was. The molecules were very complex. Some sort of life form, perhaps?
“Me either. But I think the city is worth checking out. If there’s anything else on the planet intact at all, I missed it on the flyby.” John shared the mixed emotions he heard in Dan’s voice.
“One way to find out,” John said. “Majel? Scan the video please. Look for any other intact construction on the surface of the planet.”
“Acknowledged. Processing request.” the computer said.
“We’d better check on Beth,” Dan said, pushing his wheelchair back from his console.
John rubbed his forehead. This was all so much, so fast. The first mission was supposed to be a quick, easy flight. Now he had a traitor – he glared daggers at Paul, who was still bound. A damaged ship, full of holes Paul had blown with his explosives. And they were on a planet that looked like someone had blasted it from orbit a long, long time ago. He hoped the war which had destroyed this planet was long over.
But if that was so, why were there still satellites orbiting above the planet? And why did one of those satellites fire on the Satori? The ramifications of that were obvious, and twisted in his guts. The sooner they could all get home, the better. But at the same time, how could they pass up a chance to explore something like this? His Satori, whom he had named the ship for, would have urged caution, but her eyes would have been bright with curiosity at the same time. As much as John wanted to get home, as much as he thought they should go home as quickly as possible, if safety were always the highest concern then no one would ever leave home. He had shown Satori Jupiter, and now he would show her this new solar system, at least for a little while.
Four
Beth was pissed. Intellectually, she knew that she was deflecting her emotions through anger. If she was mad, it gave her an avenue to vent her feelings without having to think about how close she had come to dying. She’d been in some tight spots in the past, but never so close to death’s door. Every time she thought about how near a thing it had been she started shaking. Better not to think about it, at least for now. She could deal with the experience later, when they were all out of danger. For now, the entire team was counting on her. Beth was tired, worn out on a level she couldn’t remember ever feeling before. She didn’t have the strength to lift a wrench yet, let alone do serious repairs to the ship, but she could still lend her expertise.
It took about an hour to get everyone together, settled into seats on the bridge. Oh, and for the gawking out the front window to slow down enough that they could discuss their situation. Beth had to admit that Charline carefully checking her out in the infirmary was the biggest cause for the delay. She still had a roaring headache, but otherwise felt better than she had any right to expect, under the ci
rcumstances.
Andy was bustling about getting some food for everyone. He slipped a mug of hot coffee into her hand, and she smiled up at him gratefully.
She was lucky to be alive to sip coffee. Her hand shook a little at the thought, and she put her other hand on the mug to keep from spilling. Right now, she wanted nothing so much as to sit tight, fix the ship, and then head for home. But she could tell that wasn’t happening. She was watching faces as John finished bringing everyone up to date. Everyone else was excited at the prospect of exploring this ruined city. Beth shook her head. They were who-knew how far from home, cut off from help or backup of any kind, and her friends wanted to go outside to walk around.
“So bottom line is, we’re pretty sure the ship was in this system just before heading to Luna. We know it probably jumped from this planet, based on the jump log in the database,” John said. “Majel says that sensors picked up a few other solitary structures intact, but nothing else like this city on our fly by. This could be a chance to learn something about the people who built this ship, or someone they knew.”
It was easy enough for Beth to tell what John wanted to do.
“I’m concerned about those satellites. A security system implies someone wants to keep people away from here. I’m game to take a look around, but we need to do this carefully,” Andy said. “If we go at all.”
“That depends on Beth,” John said, drawing her gaze. “Our primary task is to get the ship fixed up enough to fly her home.” He looked at her expectantly.
She cleared her throat. It was still sore, although the coffee was soothing. “Most of the repairs need to be done after we get back to Luna. I don’t have the tools or equipment here for a lot of this work.”
Adventures of the Starship Satori: Book 1-6 Complete Library Page 13