by Ryk Brown
“I doubt they will have the means to send much back to us in the way of supplies,” Nathan said, “at least, not for a while. When we left, the Corinairans had two cargo shuttles equipped with mini-jump drives that they were using to ferry food from Ancot to Corinair. The Takarans were also in the process of retrofitting a cargo ship with a jump drive in order to support the more devastated worlds in the cluster, but again, that ship will probably not be available.” Nathan set down his fork and pushed his plate aside. “People, I think it’s best that we operate under the assumption that no significant assistance will be coming from our allies in the Pentaurus cluster. For the foreseeable future, we are on our own.”
* * *
“Are you looking for a place to set down?” Luis asked as the last few seconds of their hard burn ticked away.
“I’m looking,” Ensign Schenker said. “We’re still at a bad angle, though. You’re going to need to get closer and get between the tip of Metis and Jupiter.”
“I thought we were landing on the long side,” Luis said.
“We have to land on the tip pointing toward the planet if we want to maximize our concealment,” the ensign answered from the sensor station.
“How wide is the tip?” Luis asked.
“About thirty-four kilometers.”
“That’s only half as much as the length,” Luis complained. “Are you sure we have to land there?”
“Jesus, Delaveaga,” Schenker said, “how much room do you need?”
“The more the better,” he mumbled.
“It’s not like you’re landing an airplane, Ensign,” the lieutenant commander reminded him. “You should have zero forward velocity relative to Metis when we set down, right?”
“That’s the idea, sir,” Luis answered. He glanced at the burn timer, struggling to read the numbers as the ship continued to shake violently from the main engines. “Forty seconds to shutdown.”
“We’re still closing on Metis at two hundred forty meters per second,” Ensign Schenker reported. “We’re going to overshoot.”
“By how much?” Luis asked.
“A few kilometers at least.”
“That’s okay. I can move us back closer with maneuvering thrusters.”
“Before we become visible again?” Lieutenant Kovacic said.
“Hopefully.” Luis glanced up at the view screen. Jupiter filled the entire screen, except for a small vertical strip to their starboard side. The long, irregularly-shaped moon was coming up on them quickly, slightly to starboard of them. Luis tried to ignore the images on the screen, concentrating only on the displays on his console. He punched in a command, and the ship shifted slightly to port.
“You’re moving closer to Jupiter?” Lieutenant Commander Kovacic said, staring at the view screen.
“Just a touch, sir,” Luis answered. “I don’t want to skip off the surface of Metis as we pass by her.” Luis glanced at his burn timer again. “Twenty seconds.” He glanced up once again. This time, he could make out details of the surface of Metis as they passed by them at a much greater speed than he would have thought.
“We’re blowing past her,” Ensign Schenker announced.
“I know! I know!” Luis answered, frustration in his voice.
“I found a spot to set down!” the ensign said. “I’ll mark the coordinates and send it to your console!”
“How big is it?”
“Big enough!”
“How big?” Luis asked again.
“At least two kilometers long by maybe one point seven wide.”
“You’re kidding, right? Is that all you could find?” Luis asked, trying to hide his sense of panic at the idea of setting a fifteen-hundred-meter long ship down on a patch of Metis only two thousand meters long.
“That’s all there is,” Ensign Schenker said. “Longest and flattest spot on the facing tip. There are a couple other spots that are bigger, but they’ve got ridges and such jutting up at least ten meters in places. No idea what that might do to our hull.”
“Probably poke some ugly holes in us,” the lieutenant commander surmised.
“I thought you said the gravity on Metis was too low to do any damage to us when we set down,” Luis said.
“You really want to risk it?”
“Five minutes to line-of-sight horizon with Earth,” Ensign Schenker said.
“Ten seconds to shutdown,” Luis announced, some relief evident in his voice. At least their long, bone-rattling deceleration burn would be over with. Luis glanced at the alternate display on his console as the tracking image of the landing site appeared on the screen. “Okay, I’ve got the LZ on my screen,” Luis announced. The scraggly, blue line representing the small clearing on the tip of Metis was getting smaller by the second as the Celestia passed the tiny moon.
“Distance to Metis is five hundred meters and rising,” Ensign Schenker reported.
“Three seconds,” Luis said, counting down the final seconds.
“Separation rate of twenty…” Ensign Schenker reported as the distance between the Celestia and Metis increased.
“Two.”
“Ten.”
“One.”
“Five……two.”
Lieutenant Commander Kovacic looked at Luis, expecting him to shut down the main engines.
“Zero separation rate!” Ensign Schenker reported.
“Ensign?” the lieutenant commander said.
“Just a sec…”
“Closure rate of four meters per second,” Ensign Schenker reported as the Celestia’s main engines continued to burn. “Six……ten!”
The ship’s two operational main engines suddenly cut out completely. Luis looked down at his console. “That’s it! The mains are out of propellant! All we’ve got left is what’s in the maneuvering systems.”
“Four minutes to line of sight,” Ensign Schenker reported. “It’s going to be close.”
“How close?” Lieutenant Commander Kovacic asked.
“We’re just under two kilometers ahead of Metis,” Ensign Schenker explained. “At our current rate of closure, we’ll have forty seconds to land before we break the line-of-sight horizon.”
“Can we increase our closure rate?”
“I’d rather not, sir,” Luis said. “We’d just have to slow down again, anyway.”
“Can you put us down in forty seconds?” the lieutenant commander asked, his own doubts obvious on his face.
“Can I put us down? Sure, no problem,” Luis answered with a shrug.
“In one piece?” the lieutenant commander clarified.
“You’re not helping, sir,” Luis said.
“Sorry.” Lieutenant Commander Kovacic turned around to face Ensign Souza at the communications console at the aft end of the bridge. “Tell everyone to prepare for landing.”
* * *
Loki remained frozen in the night, his weapon pointed out over the pile of his jump-rig gear. It was so dark he could hardly see the end of his weapon, let alone anything beyond it. Despite the overwhelming fear, he managed to keep his finger off the trigger, just as Marcus had taught him.
“Don’t shoot me,” Waddell whispered from the darkness directly in front of Loki.
Loki’s eyes widened at the closeness of the major’s voice. “Major?” he whispered.
“Who else?” The major’s head rose up from behind Loki’s pile of gear as his hand pushed Loki’s sidearm to the side. “At least you didn’t have your finger on the trigger.”
“How the hell did you get so close without…”
“Practice,” the major whispered. “Is this all your jump gear?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good. Sprinkle this over it,” he instructed as he handed him a sma
ll container.
“What is it?”
“Gear eraser,” the major said with a grin as he looked about for any signs of movement in the area.
Loki followed his instructions, opening the container and sprinkling the contents all over his jump gear. “Now what?”
“Strike the lid against the bottom of the case. That’ll make the case start to burn. Then just toss it on the pile.”
“Won’t someone see it?” Loki wondered.
“Did you see mine?” the major asked.
Again, Loki did as he was told, striking the lid against the bottom of the container and lighting it on fire. He tossed the burning container onto the pile. The powder instantly began releasing an acrid gray smoke with a glowing pale-blue ball in the middle of the pile.
“Won’t they be able to see this on infrared?” Loki asked.
“It’s not really a burn,” the major told him. “It’s more like a chemical breakdown. At least, that’s what they tell me. We just call it a cold burn.” He looked at Loki. “Go ahead; touch it.”
Loki looked at the major, then at the smoking pile. He held his breath, then moved his hand slowly down toward the glowing, smoking pile. There was no heat. It was almost too cold to even touch. “That is so freaky.”
Major Waddell looked at him. “Earth expression?”
“Yeah.”
“Let’s head out,” the major told him. “We’ve only got a few hours before sunrise, and we need to get down off this plateau before then.”
“What about this? Will it burn out?”
“In ten minutes, you’ll never even know it was there,” Major Waddell said as he headed off into the darkness.
* * *
“They didn’t give you any trouble at all,” Synda said under her breath.
“Money talks,” Jessica told her as they made their way down the streets of outer Winnipeg, “or in this case, Jung credits.”
“Yeah, well, you might want to buy something so you can get a few less valuable chips. By the look of that gate keeper’s face, your bribe was considerably more than he expected. You keep flashing hundred-credit chips and someone’s going to try to take them from you.”
Jessica smiled at the thought. “Duly noted. Why is it this place is so infested with unsavory characters, anyway?” She wondered as she examined the type of people roaming the streets.
“Prison was hit by a stray bomb,” Synda said.
“Stray bomb?” Jessica snickered. “No such thing.”
“What do you mean?”
“You don’t drop bombs from orbit and hope they hit something important. That type of ordnance has its own precision targeting systems. Every one of those weapons had an assigned target before they left their rails.”
Synda looked at Jessica. “How would you know?”
“I heard a few things.”
“Like what?”
“Like there is some kind of underground resistance in this city.” Jessica looked at Synda. “Is that true?”
“Yeah, they hit the downtown shopping district last week. Seems like they hit it every week.”
“How do they hit it?” Jessica asked.
“From what I hear, about a dozen of them charge in and just start shooting anything and anyone in sight.”
“Where did you hear that?”
“From the news broadcasts on the net.”
“Yeah? Well, don’t believe everything you hear,” Jessica told her as she turned onto one of the main streets that led deeper into the heart of the city.
“Where are you going?”
“To the downtown shopping district.”
“Why? We can get everything we need in one of the closer districts,” Synda said, “preferably one that doesn’t get attacked on a weekly basis.”
“I like to go where the action is,” Jessica told her as her pace quickened.
“Well if you want to go downtown, you’d better get off the main roads.”
“Why?”
“Too many checkpoints,” Synda said. “They try to control the flow of people in and out of downtown, but it doesn’t work as well as they’d like, from what I hear. Best to travel back streets. It’ll take longer, but you can usually avoid the checkpoints and even the wandering patrols if you’re careful.”
Jessica slowed her pace a bit more, letting Synda catch up. “Lead the way, then.”
“Me?”
“I’m paying you, remember?” Jessica looked at Synda, who didn’t look very confident in her role as a guide. “You do know your way around, right?”
“Yes, it’s just that I’ve never actually been all the way downtown—at least, not since the invasion.”
“How far do you usually get?”
“We already passed it,” Synda answered sheepishly.
Jessica stopped in her tracks, turning to look at Synda, who also stopped. “Exactly how many times have you come into the city since the invasion?”
“Including today?” Synda looked at Jessica’s face. Her employer did not seem amused. “Three times.”
“And how far did you get each time?”
“The first time, that little market back there,” she said pointing over her shoulder.
“And the second?” Jessica asked.
“I didn’t get past the gatekeeper. I didn’t have any money, and I wasn’t willing to give him the alternate form of payment he’d suggested.”
“Great.” Jessica looked around, wishing she could have brought a personal navigation unit along with her. “But you do know how to get there, right? Downtown?”
“Sure, I used to work down there. I know it like the back of my hand.”
Jessica sighed. “Well, I guess that’s better than nothing.” She held out her left hand, pointing with her open palm down the street ahead of them. “Lead the way.”
Synda swallowed hard and started down the street. “Sorry,” she mumbled as she passed Jessica.
* * *
Luis wiped the perspiration from his brow as he initiated small bursts of the Celestia’s reverse thrusters to slightly increase the ship’s orbital speed and thereby decrease their closure rate on Metis.
“Two minutes to line-of-sight horizon,” Ensign Schenker reported.
Lieutenant Commander Kovacic stood to Luis’s right, watching over his shoulder. “Are you sweating, Delaveaga?”
“Hell, yes.”
“Well, don’t, Ensign. You’ve got this. Trust me.”
“I wish I could, sir,” Luis answered. “I just wish this thing had a landing guidance system like the training shuttles. I don’t even have a reference point to tell when I’m lined up over the center of the landing area.”
“I think I can help you with that one,” the lieutenant commander said as he moved over to Ensign Schenker on the port side of the bridge. “Schenker… our external cameras. Can you take some of the lateral cameras and point them straight down?”
“Sure. Which ones would you like?”
“The bow, one on either side of the widest point of our forward section, another two on either side of our drive section, one just aft of the deceleration thrusters, and one on our stern.” The lieutenant commander watched as Ensign Schenker opened separate windows on his main console display, each showing a separate camera view. “Great. Now adjust the angles so you can see straight down beneath us and at least as far outboard as the edges of the landing area.”
“I see what you’re doing,” Ensign Schenker said.
“Great. Once you’ve got them dialed in, throw them up on the main view screen, and spread them out in roughly the same shape as the cameras are positioned.”
“I’m going to need at least one forward facing camera, sir,” Luis said. “Maybe at a
forty-five degree angle.”
“That’s no problem,” Ensign Schenker told him.
“Put that one dead center above the others,” the lieutenant commander instructed.
A few moments later, all eight windows were up on the main view screen.
“What the… How the hell is that supposed to help me?” Luis asked.
“Don’t you see?” the lieutenant commander said. “The centermost edges of each of those windows represent points along the outline of our hull. All you have to do is try to get the spacing between the inside edges and the outer edges of the landing area all equal.” The lieutenant commander looked at Luis, seeing the confused look on his face. “It will make more sense once we get over the landing site,” he assured him.
“Can’t we just use the docking sensors?” Luis asked.
“Won’t work,” Ensign Schenker said. “They’re designed to range against a hard target, not water ice and dust. Best I can do is call out your estimated range as you descend.”
“Estimated?” the lieutenant commander asked.
“Based on our known speed and velocity changes since our last accurate range reading to Metis. Even our short-range sensors weren’t meant for such close-range readings, sir.”
“That’s better than nothing, I guess,” Luis said. “I just wish I had a visual range reference of some sort.”
“You can’t tell how far we are from the surface by the camera views?”
“Not really, sir,” Luis told him. “Not without a visual reference on the ground of a known size.”
“Remind me to talk to Fleet about this little oversight when we get back,” Lieutenant Commander Kovacic said.
“With pleasure, sir.”
“I have an idea,” Ensign Schenker said.
“What?”
“Give me a minute.”
“We don’t have a minute, Gus,” Luis said.