On Galaxy's Edge: Ascendance

by Alex T. Kolter

  He tried to think back to the map he’d seen of the basement level. Realizing that was a futile effort, he brought up the image his head-mounted holodisplay had taken automatically, and quickly located the door on the map. There, two doors down, was a possible way to intersect Kess.

  That door turned out to be open, and he ran through, ran down the corridor, and then through another unlocked door on his right. He emerged into an empty office with a door on the opposite side. He went through there, and just ahead he saw Kess and the guards. Relief filled him.

  Quietly this time, he approached them from behind. When he was a couple of paces away, they must have heard him, for they spun around, shock entering their eyes. Before Nero could attack, the self-preservation regions in their brains evidently kicked into action, and they dropped Kess’s arms and ran. They ran as fast as they could.

  For a moment, Nero considered running after them, but then he realised he couldn’t leave Kess alone. So he let them go.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  “Yeah, yeah I’m fine Nero.” He could hear the relief in her voice.

  “You sure, because you did just get kidnapped?”

  She let out a forced laugh, and grimaced. “They just came out of nowhere. One minute I was walking behind Ando, the next they grabbed me and pulled me through a door.” She shook her head.

  “Come on, let’s try and find our way back out of this damn maze,” Nero said, pulling the image of the map back up on his holodisplay. Where were they now?

  ****

  “Where the hell are they?” Trix muttered, waiting by the hole in the fence. She looked at her timepiece. They’d been waiting here ten minutes now. How long would it take him? She didn’t like that it had been this long already. Surely if he was going to manage to rescue her, he’d be back by now.

  “Calm down Trix,” Reese said, standing next to her. “He’ll be here. So will Kess. Just give ‘em time.”

  They waited another minute, getting ever more impatient, before Adira spotted movement near to the building. “Hey, was that...?” she said, looking intently. Trix, Reese and Ando all looked as well, and then, sure enough, they saw two figures walking towards the hole.

  “Kess!” Trix exclaimed once they had reached the fence. She leant through and hugged the other woman, squeezing tightly before letting go. “I thought... I’m sorry, Kess. We should have--”

  “It doesn’t matter. It was no one’s fault, Trix,” Kess said, giving her a smile. “Anyway, hadn’t we better get back to the ship? Someone’s surely going to raise an alarm pretty soon.”

  She wasn’t wrong. Just after the group had turned off the street surrounding the compound, they heard a faint alarm start from the compound. “That’s not you, is it Reese?” Nero asked in mock seriousness.

  “Not this time I’m afraid,” he answered.

  “Shame,” Nero said. “We’d better get a move on then.”

  They increased their speed, not caring if anyone saw them now, and headed back to their berthed ship as soon as they could. They considered stopping at Hena’s surgery, but decided they couldn’t risk waiting around and potentially having their ship impounded. Instead, they headed directly to the small spaceport.

  The doors of the spaceport were still open when they got there, which seemed to Nero like a good sign, and they ran up the boarding ramp, dumped their cargo in the hold, and went to the bridge. Without pausing to do any preflight checks, Trix sat in her seat, spun the chair around and powered up the big ion engines. They took a few nerve-wrenching moments to finally fire up, but then there was a satisfying thrum as the ship vibrated slightly when the engines kicked in.

  She closed the boarding ramp, and increased the power of the engines to bring the ship into a low hover. Then, carefully maneuvering out of the spaceport, Trix increased the engines’ power to maximum, and the ungainly ship accelerated up and out of Sygti’s atmosphere.

  “So that was fun,” Ando said as they re-entered the blackness of space. The ship’s scanners didn’t show any signs of pursuit.

  “I’m not sure I can take too much more of that ‘fun’,” Adira said, standing in the doorway to the bridge. “Let me know if you guys are planning on having that much fun again. I may just go shopping next time.”

  “Yeah, I think I might join you there,” Kess said, a wry expression on her face.

  Nero chuckled, and watched as Adira and Kess left the bridge. Then he froze as he heard a loud bang from the cargo hold, quickly followed by the lights dimming and the ship’s console turning off. Then the ship suddenly became very quiet, and the usual vibrations disappeared altogether.

  “Nonono!” Trix yelled from the captain’s seat.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  LIGHTBOURNE

  The ship drifted in the blackness, the engines no longer glowing blue. No lights glowed on the outside, and for all intents and purposes, the ship looked like an abandoned wreck.

  But then there was a flicker of life in the engines, the faintest spark of blue. It quickly disappeared, but a moment later, the flicker returned. An observer might have wondered what was going on, for the flickering continued, the blue getting a little brighter each time. And then, after a few minutes, the faint blue glow remained on.

  An educated observer might have thought this strange in itself, since the engines were much dimmer than ion engines ever normally were, even on standby. But they appeared to be on, nonetheless, so perhaps the observer would have thought nothing more about the matter. The people inside the ship, however, were definitely thinking hard about the matter.

  “What did you do that time?” Trix asked, peering into the maintenance hatch.

  “I don’t know,” came Reese’s voice from inside. “I reconnected the array for a moment, then everything sort of fizzled a bit. But the system didn’t crash, so I don’t know. Maybe it’s working.”

  “You saying we’re back to normal then?” Trix asked, standing out of the way as Reese backed out of the hatch. He banged his head and swore loudly.

  “Nope. Not by a long way,” he said, rubbing his head. “It may just be working, but we can’t have more than five percent of our normal power levels. If we’re lucky, that may just be enough to get the ship moving. Otherwise...” he left the rest unsaid.

  “Otherwise we may as well have run into that CSG base waving flags and throwing ogdn turd at them,” Kess helpfully supplied. “In fact, we’d probably have survived longer if we’d done that.”

  “No one’s saying that, Kess. Not yet at least,” Trix said. “There’s still far too many ships I plan on pillaging before I go.” She turned around to head up the steps. “Let’s give this a go, then.”

  “Pillaging?” Nero asked as they climbed the steps out of the cargo hold.

  “I think of myself as a pillager, yes. I’m comfortable with who I am, Nero.” He smiled, and followed her back onto the bridge, where they were met by an insistent strobing orange light. The console also had a multitude of flashing lights on it, and underlying everything was a blaring klaxon, rising and falling in pitch. Nero almost had to cover his ears.

  “Well let’s get rid of that,” Trix said over the racket, sitting down in the captain’s chair and flipping a switch. The annoying strobe turned off, and thankfully so did the klaxon, but the more specific warning lights on the console were left on. Nero glanced at them, noticing the one next to engine power flashing. That didn’t look good.

  Reese eyed the warnings warily, and they all braced themselves as Trix reached over to the acceleration lever. Would it work? With only a momentary hesitation, she pushed the lever away from her, increasing the thrust to maximum, theoretically. They waited, watching the speed readout, which steadfastly stayed the same as when the engines had stopped.

  And they waited. They weren’t slowing down, in the vacuum of space, but they didn’t seem to be speeding up either. And with no power, they wouldn’t be able to turn the ship. They’d just plunge into the deepest depths of space, nev
er-- Nero’s ominous thoughts were cut short when the speedometer ticked up a digit.

  “So we’re not going to die then?” Ando asked casually, as if he’d never been bothered. He folded his arms across his chest.

  “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, Ando,” Adira said, bent over the navigation holodisplay. “We need to find some place nearby, and not far off course, to land this piece of junk. Before the engines cut out again.”

  “And hope that we can find some replacement parts,” Kess said, leaning over next to Adira. She zoomed into where their ship was, looking at the few planets that might be close enough. “Sygti’s already too far away, and besides, we’d have to do a full turn to get there. How long would that take?” she asked rhetorically, still looking over the map.

  “How about this place?” Adira asked. Nero walked over and stood behind the pair, looking at the small planet that Adira was pointing to. Based on their current speed and position, Nero thought, it wouldn’t take too long to get there. It was only a few degrees off their current heading, and in a nearby solar system as well.

  “Looks like our best shot,” he said, turning back to Trix. “Not far off course, and it looks big enough. Probably a good chance of finding a decent-sized spaceport there.”

  “If this doesn’t work I shall blame you, you know?”

  Nero shrugged. “If this doesn’t work,” he said, “I think that will be the least of my worries.” Trix smiled without looking at him, and then adjusted the flight controls to begin turning the ship to the port side. Again, nothing appeared to happen for a long time, but then ever so slowly, their bearing began to change. Nero watched and hoped that this planet, labelled ‘Lightbourne’ in the nav unit, really would be their salvation.

  ****

  It was a sparkling blue-grey and green orb, and it was a beautiful sight to the crew of the Fafnir. The system’s sun bounced rays of light off vast expanses of water on the planet, making the planet shine like nothing Nero had ever seen before, but this wasn’t why it was such a beautiful sight. The crew were just relieved to find somewhere on which they could land and repair their battered old ship.

  A new warning sound started to sound, and Nero’s attention returned to the ship’s console in front of him. It was his shift for flying the ship, and he sat in the captain’s chair, the various holodisplays in front of him all continuing to flash their own warnings. It took a moment to identify whatever had caused the new alarm to sound, but then he saw it, and his heart sank.

  Footsteps approached from behind him, and then Kess’s voice came from the entrance to the bridge. “Don’t tell me something else has gone, Nero.”

  He turned to look at her, the stress of the last few days evident on her face. Just as it must be on his, he thought. “Okay then,” he said, turning back to look at the console. Next to the status about the ship’s life support was a new warning light. The text explanation next to this read ‘power reserves down to 5%’.

  Kess rolled her eyes behind him, unseen - though with the lighting on the ship almost all off, he probably wouldn’t have seen even had he been looking. “Actually, do tell me. I’d rather know.”

  “I think you’d rather not know this, Kess,” Nero replied. “But if you insist, life support is going to fail soon.”

  She groaned. “How soon? Can we get to the planet?”

  “We’ll find out soon enough,” he replied, looking back at the planet in front of them. It was bigger now, filling more of their field of view, though it was still going to be some time before they were down on the surface.

  “There’s a comforting thought,” Kess said.

  As the ship got closer to the planet, Nero throttled back with little apparent effect. The ship continued forward at a now-worrying pace, and very soon they entered the outer layers of the planet’s atmosphere. The ship started to shake violently, the air resistance rocking them about, and the inertial compensators obviously weren’t functioning with their normal efficacy.

  Trix, Reese, Adira and Ando stumbled onto the bridge as the air immediately outside the ship started to glow orange. “Can’t you slow us down?” Trix yelled over the roaring sound that filled the ship.

  “The atmosphere is still too thin for the air brakes to work,” Nero shouted back. “And I don’t want to use the emergency booster brakes yet. We might lose all power and control.”

  The surface of the planet was now only a few miles below them, and through the orange glow outside the window, they could see they were flying over a mountainous area. Nero wasn’t paying attention to this, however, and instead pulled the lever to extend the air brakes. The external surface of the ship appeared to open up, vast metal flaps rising up almost at right angles to the surface of the ship.

  Instantly, the shaking increased exponentially, and all those not sitting down were knocked to the ground by the violence of the movement. A few loud swear words were uttered behind Nero, but he wasn’t paying attention. The ship was now writhing about in his hands, almost impossible to control. A couple of times Nero nearly lost control, almost letting the ship go into a tumbling nose dive, but he managed to maintain control, adjusting the flaps to correct their course.

  The ship was still descending far too quickly though, and when they were only a mile above the ground, Nero activated the emergency booster brakes. For a moment, nothing happened, and then a new klaxon sounded, and an orange strobe illuminated, as two massive pieces of metal slid open on the underside of the ship to reveal dormant booster engines. The remaining lights that were still on inside the ship cut out as all available power was diverted to the large booster engines underneath, and an orange glow began to be emitted from them.

  Then, quite suddenly, they glowed an intense white and the ship once again shook violently, as it slowed down even more. Trix, Reese and Ando were once again knocked to the ground, and the others were pressed violently down into their own seats, but the ship did slow. Nero glanced at the displays in front of him, and watched as their air speed reduced drastically, whilst their remaining power reserves also reduced.

  He looked up and out of the window, and saw the tops of the mountains surrounding them. He couldn’t see any cities nearby, and instead looked for a suitably flat area to try to bring the ship down in. Not seeing anywhere, he altered the angles of the air brake flaps and turned the ship slightly, finally spotting a relatively flat valley between two of the mountains.

  Glancing again at the power meter, he saw they were almost out. The booster engines surely couldn’t last much longer, but they were now only a couple of hundred metres above the ground. He angled the ship towards the valley.

  “Brace yourselves,” he shouted above the din inside the ship, noting out of the corner of his eye that everyone had found a seat at last. They were now about fifty metres above the ground, the valley coming up very fast below them, then they were at forty metres, then twenty metres, and then the booster engines finally cut out.

  The ship plummeted the last few metres, Nero’s stomach rising up into his throat with the ground rising up to meet them. When they struck, it sounded like an explosion going off. The inertial compensators were no longer working, and with no cushioning of the accelerative forces, everyone was thrown violently about in their seat harnesses. The ship continued to shake as it gouged a long track into the ground and kept moving forward, before it finally, thankfully, came to a rest in front of a stand of tall, deep blue trees.

  The sounds abruptly stopped as they came to a rest, though Nero could still feel the odd shimmy reverberating through the structure of the ship. He sat still for a moment, struggling to process things, before he finally came to his senses.

  “Everyone okay?” he asked, unstrapping and getting out of the seat. He looked around and saw dazed looks on the others, but mostly they seemed okay. Glancing at Adira, however, he saw that her eyes were closed, and her head lolled forward. He went over to her, and pushed her head upright, with no reaction. He pulled up an eyelid, and was greeted by
a vacant stare.

  “Hey, Ando,” he said, looking over to the man getting out of his seat. “Adira’s in a bad way, I think.”

  He ran over, and bent down to look into her eyes. Not seeing anything revealing there, Ando placed his fingers against her throat, searching for a pulse in her carotid artery. He waited for a moment, and the others waited too, before pulling his hand back.

  “She’s got a pulse,” Ando reported. “I think she’s probably just a bit concussed. There’s certainly no visible injuries.” He looked back over her as if to confirm that. “Let’s get her to the med unit, just to be sure though.”

  With Nero’s help, they unstrapped her and carried her to the med unit, laying her down on the small bed in the centre. Before Ando could look her over thoroughly, though, her eyelids flickered open, and she sat up sharply on the bed. “What...?” she muttered, eyes still a little glazed and darting around the room.

  “It’s okay, Adira,” Ando said. “You’re just a little concussed. Out pilot wasn’t very skilful in landing.” He grinned as he said the last bit, glancing over at Nero.

  “Concussed?” she asked, still not fully there.

  “Yeah, you’ll be fine in a little while. I imagine you’ll have a killer headache, though.”

  Satisfied that Adira seemed okay, Nero left the med unit and returned to the bridge, where the others were still gathered. They looked up as he walked in, concern writ large on their faces. “She’ll be fine,” Nero reported. “She’s conscious already, just a bit shaken.”

  Trix nodded, accepting his report, and moved on to other matters. “Alright, in the meantime we need to find out where we are. What’s around us. And Reese?” she asked.

  “Yes?”

  “You’re not going to like this, but can you stay here and see if you can fix the ship?”