Strapped in tight, Max didn’t seem to move, but his stomach floated up, trying to exit his body through his mouth.
The nose cone above clacked into position, and the computer spoke again, in an accent Max now recognized as a perfect match to Snow’s, “Ignition in one-one-thousand… ignition.”
A deafening roar sounded beneath them and they were pressed against their angled seats. With effort, Max lifted his arm towards her. Snow too moved her arm, grabbing his hand and held on.
“You were right. This is much better than dying,” Max strained to say.
She tried to laugh, but little escaped her lips, and that was drowned out by the roar of the engines.
The rocket fired for a few minutes, thrusting them up and over. Slowly bringing them parallel to, but far, far, above the surface. The rockets stopped abruptly. The computer announced that orbit was achieved and stage three would begin in 68.47 minutes.
There was much oohing and aahing over the beauty and clarity of the stars. Snow was the first to actually unfasten her harness and float up from her seat. Max immediately joined her. Weightlessness was a bit like swimming. But without all the monsters biting you, drag slowing you, and water drowning you.
While Ravaea, who was apparently the Icarus’ chief mechanic, floated about the ship, checking systems, and confirming all was well, Max questioned Snow again on where they were going.
“Didn’t you figure out my clue?” asked Snow.
“Oh, I think I did, yes. But I would rather hear it from you directly,” answered Max. It was difficult to be too serious when they were each floating around with up and down in question.
Freenan floated nearby, silently gazing out the window and down at Grailliyn below.
“We are going to Mega,” Snow said, she pointed through the wall in the general direction of Grailliyn’s partner.
Max thought he was prepared for that answer, but he wasn’t. Going to Mega? Actually going to Mega? It was both wonderful and terrifying. “Doesn’t that seem a little… ambitious?”
“It’s way ambitious! But it is also fully within the capabilities of this ship. It was literally made to go to Mega,” she said.
“That doesn’t make any sense, how could it have been made to go to Mega. By who?” asked Max, incredulous.
“It was top of the list when the factory was brought online. I had to dig deep to figure it out. The computer doesn’t know what happened. There are no logs remaining about it. But it had a list of priorities and the Icarus was on top. There is something there on Mega. Maybe the remains of a lost civilization? Maybe we came from Mega!” Snow was getting excited, saying this out loud, possibly for the first time.
“What did you say?” asked Freenan, “You think we came from Mega?”
Max pointed at Freenan, “He didn’t know either?”
“She said it was something big. Oh, I see! Mega. Well that was quite direct now wasn’t it. I thought you were referring to the size of the revelation. Of course, if what you are saying is verifiable, then I will have been correct in my thinking. What evidence do you have that we came from Mega?” Freenan said.
“Just that the ship was made to fly there. All of the parameters match. There is something there and we are going to find it. Our names will go down in history as the ones who answered The Question.”
During the slow lift to the heavens, tethered to an enormous, shiny white balloon, the lands below had a familiar shape to them. They matched the maps Max had seen all his life. But now in orbit they saw new places, whole new continents, slipping by below them on Grailliyn. He wondered if anyone had seen those lands before. Watching their home spin beneath them Max realized, for the time being at least they had truly escaped. For some reason he’d thought that would be impossible. But now Coordinator Mortran and his minions were literally behind and beneath them.
The next phase, leaving Grailliyn’s orbit and transiting to Mega, was a much less violent affair. The ship adjusted its velocity slowly with the solar drive, which used ‘the power of the Sun’ as Snow put it, though she made no attempt to explain how. The ship’s solar panels, which deployed upon reaching orbit, collected energy and the ship channeled that energy into thrust somehow. It wasn’t as powerful as the rocket, but it could run for as long as there was energy available. So, for as long as the sun was shining. It sent them coasting through empty space on a twelve-hour journey to Mega.
Much of the time was spent watching Grailliyn from a wholly new angle. Now in transit, the change of scenery was slower than it had been when they were in orbit, but still much of the planet below them was new. New to Max in any case. He took a rest from looking out the window and played a game of cards with the others.
There was a sort of peace treaty between himself and Bob, but it was clear from the game that not all was forgiven. Any hand Max won earned him an undeserved suspicious glare from Bob. Max returned the stare as flatly as he could, but it bothered him that the security man was unable to see things from Max’s perspective. Sure, Max had helped steal one of Tawnee’s most precious national treasures, but what duty did Max have to a people that had ordered his killing? An order that had very nearly been carried out. Max imagined they referred to it as a culling, rather than a killing. It was a slight difference in phrasing to Max, but a massive conceptual difference to the Tawnee. They had the brutal tradition of culling genetic defectives in the old days of hyper-low genetic diversity. Furthermore, Bob did not seem to be at odds with either Snow or Freenan.
Whatever the reason, Max played it safe when it was time to sleep. The chamber of his rifle was already empty, but he made sure to keep the ammo charges on his person while he was asleep.
Whether Bob knew the weapon was empty, was unwilling to take the risk, or simply had realized how stupid it would be to discharge the weapon within the ship, Max didn’t know, but Bob made no moves on the weapon, or Max.
An hour after Max woke, the engines fired again to insert the ship into Mega’s Orbit. By now Mega and Grailliyn had switched places. Mega filled the window on its side of the ship and Grailliyn appeared now much smaller.
It was while comparing the sizes of the two planets that Max noticed something bright in space ahead. It came slowly out of Mega’s shadow and he recognized it immediately.
“Little Sister…” Bob said, who had apparently been looking as well.
“I was just going to say that…” Max said, failing to conceal his irritation. “Are there binoculars?” Max directed the question at Freenan in an attempt to regain control of this Little Sister discovery.
“There is a camera. And zoom.” Snow said floating up from below.
With one arm she flung herself over to the control station and brought up a screen to control the camera. Soon she had Little Sister tracked and focused on the screen.
She zoomed in the picture and the four of them gasped at the image on the screen.
“What!? What!?” came the sound of Ravaea’s voice from below. She emerged from the floor, losing her balance, and flipping end over end as she rushed to see what all the fuss was about. Bob helped steady her and drew her by arm over to the screen. She gasped. Little Sister moved across Mega, orbiting twenty degrees off of their own orbit. As they got closer it became clear, Little Sister was neither an asteroid nor an ice ball moon.
“Huh.… little Sister is a spaceship,” Snow said.
“Or the wreck of a spaceship,” said Ravaea.
“Or part of a wrecked spaceship,” Freenan said.
“Or a space snack shop, waiting for hungry customers,” Bob said.
All eyes turned to Max. “Five options would be too many options,” he said.
Snow typed some commands into the computer and told everyone to strap down for safety. At her command, the ship fired its main engines to adjust its orbit and align itself with Little Sister.
With the orbital adjustment complete, they found themselves following Little Sister. It had the shape of a curved brick and a very long fl
at rectangular object was loosely tethered to it. In time the angle of the incoming light changed, and they recognized it as a solar panel, like the ones on the side of Icarus. Except this one was truly gigantic, like something straight out of the theater.
The control panel beeped, and a new light began flashing.
“No. Way,” Snow said.
“What?” asked everyone.
“There’s a signal coming in,” she said, “A weak one. But it’s real.”
“You’re saying that Little Sister is transmitting a signal?” Freenan said.
“It’s not coming from Little Sister. It’s coming from Mega…” Snow said.
Chapter 61
The signal was weak. They located the origin, but the computer lost the signal soon after passing over the site. An hour or more later, they got a better view when the ship completed its first orbit. A long, darkened patch stained the bright, white, icy surface below.
“Oh,” Freenan said, “Look at that. Precise alignment.”
“He’s right,” Max said. He drew a line with his arm to emphasize the point. A long stretch of stained ice followed exactly the line of their orbit, which followed the orbit of Little Sister.
“Well I guess we know where we’re headed,” Snow said, “We’ll go around a few more times to get the lay of the land, then deorbit and become the firs—err… the most recent people to land on Mega.”
“Hear! hear!” Freenan said, slightly subdued.
“And with luck, the first to walk away from said landing…” Max said.
“By overcoming the… gravity…” Bob said, “of the—”
“Situation, Bob, yes we get it,” Max said, “and you wasted it.”
“No…” Bob said waving his hand, “That was a good one.”
They studied the site over the next two orbits, examining what seemed very much like a debris field. At one end of it there was a large something. A structure or vessel of some sort. It looked at least partially intact. And it occurred to Snow that it would make a great focus for a survey.
Snow entered the landing coordinates, and everyone strapped in for the descent. The computer used the solar drive to reduce their orbital velocity, saving their remaining rocket fuel for landing. The ship entered the thin atmosphere on its side, aligned such that the heat resistant panels on one side faced Mega, whose thin air was beginning to compress and heat up. She watched the flames curve around the ship and across the view screen.
That’ll clean off the swamp gunk. She imagined the ship succumbing to the heat of reentry to explode in a spectacular fireball that took all aboard to a very hot then very cold grave. Snow crossed her fingers, an automatic response. For reasons that were not totally clear, she was okay with diving in headfirst so long as it only put her and Max’s lives in danger. But the stowaways didn’t know what they had gotten themselves into and now, too late, she realized that she was responsible for their fate.
The ship shook and rattled continuously. An occasional bang slammed Snow into her seat and elicited a chorus of yelps and screams from some of the other the passengers. She clenched her jaw tight in an effort to keep from joining them in song. Minutes later the ship slowed enough to deploy the parachute. After a short warning from the bored man in the computer, the ship’s speed slowed jarringly in that rapid phase of deceleration. With that complete, the ship deployed tiny wings. The ship returned to an upright position, and they could see some of the surface below through the view screen. The ship turned slowly and deliberately, guided towards to the surface by its tiny wings, and giving them bit by bit an all-round view. The closer they came to the surface the more the scene took on the appearance of a crash site. Wreckage was strewn across a long stretch of the white ice, leading to a shape near their intended landing site. The landing site itself was difficult to see as it was directly below Icarus.
Snow felt a hand on her shoulder and looked to find Max, mouth open wide, pointing. She quickly saw what he was pointing at. There was something on the ice in the distance, pulsing and flashing with every color of the rainbow.
She returned Max’s wide-eyed stare. He’d told her the tale of finding her pod in the snow. Part of that tale was the light show put on by an array of ice columns. The ship gave another verbal warning and a moment later Snow was again driven into her seat as the main engines fired, slowing the ship as it came to a rest on the surface of Mega.
Snow marveled at the sight before them. Half buried in the ice were the remains of a starship. And though badly damaged, much of it was still in one piece.
There was some discussion as to whether it even was a starship, but Snow had one of those feelings that made her confident that starship was the right word. There was just something starshippy about it. Half-buried in the ice, it certainly looked as though it had crashed at some speed, rather than having been built as a surface structure. The rear of the ship was missing. But there was a small clue to its location. Sections of metal skeleton jutted from the rear of the ship that had familiar spinal appearance. There was more than a passing resemblance to the spine of The Core. It had exactly the same form, possibly even the same scale. Arrayed around the spine, just outside a central core, the structure was laid out in ring upon layered ring.
“We have three operational suits prepared,” Snow said. “Sorry, but I didn’t expect to have surprise guests.”
“We have nine operational suits, Captain Snow,” said Ravaea, sounding a little offended, “As Icarus’ chief of maintenance I can assure you.”
Snow thanked Ravaea for her diligence and ordered them all to suit up. Doozer would have to stay behind in his box since there was no Doozer suit and she couldn’t risk leaving him free to roam. And chew.
It required a fair amount of wiggling to get into the tight, blue trimmed suits. They were a tight fit to help combat the low pressure on Mega, to keep their insides inside. Snow had tailored one of the suits to fit herself as part of her run up preparations. Her shorter arms and legs, which was to say normal arms and legs, would not have fit otherwise, and she would have had to stay behind. The others found suits that fit closely enough, though Bob complained of a wedgie. Snow was certain camera footage of the scene would be very popular, once they returned to Grailliyn as Heroes of the ultimate survey.
The Icarus’ airlock was only large enough to fit two at a time. Snow determined that she and Max would be the first to exit. There were disappointed looks from Freenan and even Bob, but no complaints. Ravaea did not look disappointed, only nervous. The true test of their suits, the depressurizing of the airlock, was a success, all their bodily fluids were retained within the suits, if not all within their bodies.
The shock of cold outside the ship reminded Snow of her first exposure to Grailliyn’s True North. The suit’s heating kicked in after a very short delay, mitigating the worst of the frigid environment, but she could still feel the cold seeping in, between the heating elements. She exchanged a thumbs up and a triumphant smile with Max. He punched her in the shoulder.
She gave the thumbs up signal to the crew still on board. She keyed her suit’s radio, “Two thumbs up,” she said. “That means all good. So, get out here already.”
There was some discussion between Ravaea and the other two. The result of which was that Bob and Freenan entered the airlock rather than Bob and Ravaea.
Ravaea, finding the button for her radio, said, “I can’t—I can’t go out there. Not… I’m going to stay here.”
“Okay, Rav. I didn’t want to leave anyone out, but it’s best to have someone stay behind and monitor things anyway.” Even through her helmet and the portal and through Ravaea’s helmet, her relief was obvious. “Start converting fuel from the ice. Maybe finish assembling the food processor?” Snow added.
Freenan and Bob exited the airlock. The chill hit them, and they hopped up and down until their heaters kicked in.
“Chilly!” Bob said. “I definitely have some purples.”
“Barf,” Snow said.
&n
bsp; “Last one to the starship, has to ride downstairs on the way back home!” Bob said. The cold seemed to have woken him up and he started to run across the rock-hard ice. He reminded her of a small child, complete with oversized backpack and head, clumsily running down the street.
“Negative. Whoever falls down first and smashes their face plate has to ride home downstairs, in a box,” Snow said, “No running.”
Bob reluctantly obeyed and slowed to a walk. But he maintained his lead to the wreck site.
Snow too felt a lightness in her step, and she realized it might not be the cold that energized Bob, but the gravity on Mega, which was ever so slightly lower than Grailliyn.
They’d landed within the debris field and there were bits and pieces strewn about, from tiny fragments to large chunks of metal, plastic and the like. They were no more than fifty yards from the main structure when a shape caught Snow’s eye. She stopped short, absorbing the significance of the object. It was a cylinder, just over seven feet long.
“A pod,” Max said behind her.
More than one, given the flashing lights they’d seen. Snow stepped in the direction of the pod, but Max stopped her with a hand on her shoulder.
“If anyone is alive in there… If they survived this long, they’ll survive a little longer. Let’s see if we can get inside,” Max said, pointing to the remains of the wrecked ship.
Snow considered telling him to shove it, she was in charge. But she kept her cool. He had a point. She moved on and made her way toward the ship trapped in ice.
The stubby spine of the ship, stripped bare, pointed back towards the other end of the debris field’s scar. The front of the ship was presumably buried into the ice.
“It must have broken in two before crashing,” Snow said. And she could feel that she was right. Something had happened. She had been there. She could hear in her head, the sound of metal screaming as it bent against its will. A wave of sweat crossed her brow as she experienced a brief but vivid memory. She turned to say something to Max, but she saw Freenan standing there beside them, and she said nothing.
Starship Relic (Lost Colony Uprising Book 1) Page 28