by E. R. Paskey
If Colin noticed the tension tautening her muscles until they could have doubled for guitar strings, he made no mention of it. And had Anna been less wrapped up in thoughts of her brother and the impending introduction she was going to have to make, she would have noticed Colin was dealing with his own inner turmoil.
Tatiana was stationed back in the engine room, but Mondego squeezed into the cockpit so he could see what was going on. He and Anna occupied the seats behind Colin and Deek.
“Dropping out of hyperspace in five, four … ” Colin began in a tight, controlled voice.
The blinding streaks of white light vanished and the Galaxy’s Way shuddered as they dropped back into realspace. Anna leaned forward, her breath catching in her throat, her eyes scanning for any signs of danger.
Any signs of Federation ships, lying in wait for them.
She knew it was crazy, knew there was no way the Federation could have possibly traced them here—and beat them to the system!—but it didn’t stop her from fearing that was the case.
Everyone in the cockpit breathed a little easier when Deek announced, “Long-range scanner is clear, Cap’n. We’re the only ship this side of the world.” He paused. “If you can call that a world.”
It’s a world, Anna wanted to tell him, but the words stuck in her throat. She hadn’t been here in years, but the world of Fillago had not changed.
“Can we land on that?” Mondego leaned forward in his seat, his dark eyes wide and uncertain.
Colin glanced over his shoulder at Anna, and raised an eyebrow. “Well, lass?”
She licked her lips. “Of course we can. I’ll give you the coordinates.” She rattled off a string of numbers and Colin dutifully angled the freighter in that direction.
Only later would Anna realize how much trust he had placed in her.
At first glance, Fillago appeared to be a gaseous planet. Swirls of cloud cover in shades of orange, pink, and yellow ranging from brilliant to dark and ugly obscured the world’s surface, promising less than breathable air. A closer inspection showed streaks of varying shades of brown and gray. Fillago’s terrain was a mountain and desert plain—with very little variation in between.
But that wasn’t what transfixed everyone in the cockpit.
Anna caught sight of it at the same time she heard Colin’s sharp intake of air and choked spluttering from Deek and Mondego.
“What is that?” Deek demanded, wild-eyed. “And don’t tell me we’re actually headin’ toward it!”
Sprawled out across what Anna knew to be Fillago’s largest desert, clearly visible from space, was a hurricane-sized sandstorm.
“That would be the Whirlwind, eh, lass?” Colin dragged his eyes away from the viewport long enough to look at Anna.
“That’s the Whirlwind,” she said softly.
His Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat as he swallowed. “Am I correct in thinking it’s been there a while?”
“Yes.” Anna circumscribed a vague arch with her flesh-and-bone hand. “It never dies out, it just sort of…moves around.”
“How is that even possible?” Mondego demanded. “Storms don’t act like that.”
Anna shrugged. “This one does. Something about the weather patterns here.” She leaned forward, resting her prosthetic hand on Colin’s shoulder. His muscles were tense beneath her fingers at first, but then they relaxed.
“Where, exactly, are we going, lass?”
Anna pointed with her other hand. “See that mountain ridge?” She’d memorized this too. The ever-shifting sands of the desert were hardly conducive to marking terrain, but the mountains took much longer to change. “Follow it around until it makes that weird little hook there.”
“Then what?”
“There’s an underground hangar bay.” She waved her hand again. “The place used to be a mining complex, but they must have tapped out all their available resources, because they took everything that could be moved easily and abandoned the rest of it.”
“You think they abandoned it,” Colin corrected her. “After all, your brother’s copilot ended up marooned here.”
Anna narrowed her eyes at him. “Trust me, nobody ever comes here.”
“What in the galaxy possessed ‘em to build here?” Deek demanded, his voice just this side of frightened.
Anna had been prepared for the magnificent—and terrifying—sight of the Whirlwind making its way across the planet’s surface, but she remembered the way she had felt the first time she set eyes on it. “Fillago was very rich in ore, apparently. They thought it was worth the risk.” She nodded to the giant storm. “We’ve got good timing—we’ll be able to get in before the Whirlwind comes back around.”
Hopefully they’d also be able to leave before it came back around, but she had no idea how long they’d be here.
“Clearly.” Colin slanted another sideways glance in her direction. “And what exactly were we to do if the Whirlwind was in our way?”
A prickle of unease raised the fine hairs on the back of Anna’s neck; that was not a scenario she wanted to contemplate. She forced herself to give an airy shrug. “Oh, we’d have found a place to land and wait it out.”
“I see.” Colin pressed his lips into a thin line, but he maneuvered the freighter into an approach vector that would take them toward the mountains.
Deek flipped a switch on the console panel. “Tatiana, it’s Deek. Brace yourself—we’re headin’ into the atmosphere.”
“We’ll be able to breathe where we’re going, I hope.” Colin shot her a wry look over his shoulder.
Anna patted his shoulder absently. “Oh, yes. The life-support system works.” Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Deek and Mondego exchange dubious glances, but she ignored them. “It’s old, but functional. You’ll see what I mean when we get there.”
The Galaxy’s Way shuddered as they cut through layers of the atmosphere…and then shook violently as they emerged into a strong headwind.
Colin fought to hold their course steady. “A little warning would have been nice.”
“Sorry.” Anna’s tone was unapologetic. “Didn’t remember that. Told you it’s been a while.”
“That’s some wind,” Mondego commented, into the sudden, almost frosty silence that descended on the cockpit.
Nobody responded.
Less than fifteen minutes later found them skimming alongside the mountain ridge. Deek kept an uneasy eye on the scanner, but they seemed to be alone on Fillago. It took Anna a moment to decide whether or not she ought to mention that several ships could be already hidden inside the mountain and not even the best scanners could tell from the outside.
Her brother’s voice inside her head reminded her that being part of a crew meant being duty-bound to share things that could keep them from getting captured. Or killed.
“We won’t know if we’re truly alone here until we land.” She curled her bionic hand into a fist in her lap. “Too much metal in the mountains. Messes with scanners. Good for hiding, but not so good for sneaking up on anybody.”
“You could have shared that earlier too,” Colin observed, without looking at her.
“Wouldn’t have made much of a difference if I had.”
He did look at her now. His blue eyes were cold and stern. “I’m still the captain, lass, and I prefer to have as much information as possible on hand before I make decisions that affect the lives of everybody aboard this ship.”
Anna gulped, but did not back down. “I honestly didn’t remember until just now.”
Colin merely frowned and turned his full attention back to flying.
Tears stung the back of Anna’s eyes; she blinked furiously to hold them at bay. You can’t cry, she told herself sternly. Not because he happens to be angry with you for no good reason.
Well, okay, a slightly good reason. It wasn’t like she’d deliberately set out to hold information back.
Mercifully, Deek changed the subject
. “There’s the hook, Cap’n. Reckon we’ll be there in two minutes.”
“Slow down when we get there,” Anna directed. “It’s easy to fly by, if you’re not careful.”
Deek shifted in the copilot’s seat. “How exactly are we gettin’ into this place?”
Anna suppressed a grimace; this was always the fun part. “Somebody has to open the hangar bay manually.”
“Manually,” Colin said flatly. He nodded to the viewport. “That atmosphere’s toxic.”
“I know. There’s a lever inside a cave. Has to be accessed with a spacesuit.” Anna glanced around the cockpit. “I’ll do it, if you have one close to my size.”
“Hold on.” Colin held up a hand, fixing her with a grim look over his shoulder. “There’d better be another lever to close those hangar bay doors once we’re inside. How else are you supposed to rejoin us?”
Anna resisted the urge to roll her eyes. “Of course there’s another lever inside. They didn’t want to risk stranding a member of the crew outside. You worry about landing the ship and I’ll worry about getting into the hangar bay and closing the doors again.”
She and Colin had a bit of a staring contest for a moment, until he jerked his chin in a sharp nod. “Be quick about it, lass. Can’t say I like the look of these atmospheric readings. Mondego, take her back to the storage pod.”
“Yes, Captain.” Mondego unbuckled his safety restraints and headed out of the cockpit. “This way, Anna.”
He led her down the corridor and down to the next deck, where he stopped in front of a flat panel inset into a bulkhead. He gave her a critical once-over before pursing his lips and opening the panel. “You’ll have to wear Tatiana’s. It’ll be a bit big on you ‘causes she’s taller, but it can’t be helped.”
It was Anna’s turn to purse her lips. If her niggling instinct proved right, there was another woman’s spacesuit in that compartment. The one that had belonged to Colin’s wife. But, if it was anything like her clothes, it wouldn’t fit.
“It’s fine, Mondego,” she said, holding out her arms for the suit. “I only need it for a few minutes.”
Mondego gallantly turned his back while she shimmied into the slightly bulky silver spacesuit—which amused Anna because she hadn’t removed so much as a stitch of clothing—and then he helped her fasten the helmet and ensure everything was sealed properly.
Mondego led Anna to the cargo bay and motioned for her to step inside. She did so, her spacesuit boots making clunky thuds on the deck with every step. She cast a quick glance around the cargo bay, which was more or less empty, save for a few boxes lining the bulkheads on every side, before focusing on Mondego.
“You know how this works, right?” he asked.
Anna nodded inside her helmet, before she realized that just wasn’t going to cut it and hit her suit’s mic instead. “Yes. I’ve done this before.” She’d only been to the Whirlwind once and had never actually operated the manual door override for the hangar bays, but she’d used a spacesuit before. He doesn’t need to know the rest.
She gave a mental shake of her head. Not that anybody on the Galaxy’s Way could do anything differently if they did know.
“Good.” Mondego looked faintly relieved. “Because when I open the cargo bay doors, it’s going to vent all the oxygen in here.”
“I know.” Anna held up a gloved hand. “And you’re not going to be able to let me back in until we’re safely in the hangar bay.”
“ … yeah.” Mondego stepped across the threshold separating the cargo bay from the corridor beyond. “Have to make sure we’ll get breathable air first, or we’re just wasting the ship’s oxygen.”
“Trust me, I understand.”
“Here, take this.” Mondego held out an oil can. “Tatiana said you may need it.”
“Thanks.” Hooking the oil can to her belt, Anna clomped over to the cargo bay doors. “This will work,” she murmured, mostly to herself.
“Hey, Anna,” Mondego called out. “Turn your comm on.”
She gave him a thumbs up without turning around and located the button in her helmet. Nudging it with her chin, she said, “Colin, can you read me?”
His voice filled her helmet. “Loud and clear, darling. Are you ready?”
“Ready.”
“Hold onto something; I’ll be setting us down in just a tick.”
It was nice of him to warn her. Three seconds after she clamped her gloved prosthetic hand around one of the handholds to one side of the cargo bay doors, the Galaxy’s Way shuddered violently. Had she not been holding on for dear life, she would have found herself thrown clear across the cargo bay.
“Mondego, open the doors now!” Colin commanded.
Anna took a deep, instinctive breath as the doors opened with a mechanical hiss and a rush of displaced air. Within seconds, the tiny display running along the bottom of her helmet’s viewport informed her that the air now filling the cargo bay was a rather toxic blend of carbon dioxide and sulfur. Even without that information, or her previous knowledge of Fillago’s atmosphere, she still would have suspected something was wrong with the atmosphere. The air had a sickly yellow haze—and not just because of the ever-present sand particles.
“I’ll try to do this as quickly as possible, Colin. You don’t want the ship to spend much time unprotected out here. The sand tears everything up.”
“That thought had occurred to me. Just be careful.”
“I will.”
Anna clomped her way down the landing ramp to discover that Colin had done a superb job of landing the freighter. “I’m impressed,” she said before she could think the better of it. “You managed to get me within three yards of the cave.”
“I aim to please.” The words were spoken lightly, but even through the comm she could hear the strain in his voice.
A small mound of sand had piled up in the cave’s entrance and sprayed across the floor, but Anna trod through it with little difficulty, switching on the headlamp embedded in the front of her helmet as she did. She had never actually done this herself, but the one and only time they’d been here, Vik had insisted on taking a few holostills of the inside of the cave. He had made her memorize them before he crushed and jettisoned the datachip on which the holostills had been saved.
In the five years since their last visit, nothing had changed. The bulky lever system that operated the hangar bay doors was still there. “I’ve found the lever,” Anna announced as she made her way over to the metal block protruding from the side of the cave wall. “Shouldn’t have any trouble with it.”
That was what the oil can was for, after all.
Chapter 17
ANNA BROUGHT THE OIL CAN up, intending to lubricate the lever mechanism before she attempted to pull it, but her fingers froze millimeters away. Her breath hitched in her throat; her eyes widened and then narrowed. Somebody’s been here recently.
All around her, a fine layer of sand and grit had settled over the cave floor. The lever box itself was covered in that same fine grit…except for a few spots around the lever handle that were bright and wet with oil. She squinted at it in the light projected from her headlamp. That’s not very old oil. It hadn’t had a chance to pick up much debris from the air.
She knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that if she pulled that lever now, it would move smoothly.
Viktor. A wave of elation and relief cascaded over Anna, so intense that it nearly buckled her knees. She managed to stay upright, but had to brace herself on the lever box. He’s here. Thank God.
Somehow, he’d beaten her here. Maybe he’d come straight here as soon as he realized Bear had betrayed them.
“How’s it coming, lass?” Colin’s voice broke her out of her reverie.
Oh, galaxies. Anna froze again, her chest hitching for a completely different reason. How do I tell him? She didn’t know if this particular comm channel was secure…and she didn’t know how to break the news to Colin over an unsecured channel witho
ut using some kind of code. Should have asked about that before I got out here! Can’t guarantee he won’t react the wrong way if I start talking crazy.
“Anna?”
Was that alarm in his tinny voice? Snapping back to herself, Anna reached for the lever. “I’m fine. Better make sure you’ve got gravcoils engaged—opening the hangar bay doors now.”
Just as she had suspected, the lever moved easily. It was heavy, requiring that she use two hands to operate it, but it slid down without any issues. In the distance, beyond the cave entrance, she heard a faint rumble.
“Good job, lass. We’re heading in now.”
“Meet you down there.” Anna gave the lever one last look before checking to ensure the oil can was securely fastened to her belt and hastening out of the cave. She made it in time to see the Galaxy’s Way settle over a giant black square that had opened up in the desert floor.
As she watched, the freighter sank into the hangar bay with all the grace of a feather on the wind. Impressed, she shook her head slightly. “That was beautiful.”
“Thank you, lass.”
“Watch it,” Deek cut in, “or you’ll give him a big head and then we’ll all be in trouble.”
Unable to suppress a grin, Anna took off toward the hangar bay opening. If memory served her correctly, there should be a ladder on one side. She was careful not to trip and tear her suit, but impatience burned her nerve endings. Viktor was down there—and she had to make sure that she met him before Colin did.
Accidental marriage or no, she had no intentions of letting her brother and erstwhile husband’s first meeting turn into a bloodbath.
~oOo~
The ladder was exactly where she remembered it. From her position on the sand kneeling on the edge of the opening, Anna brushed her gloved fingers across the top rung before she turned and settled her boots firmly onto it. She descended as quickly as she could; her boots thudding on every rung. She winced as the sound filtered through her helmet’s speakers. We’re going to have to get some better tread on these boots. Clearly, he’s never had to sneak around in these.