by Allen Steele
“Landing?” Cayce stared at him. “We’re not landing anywhere. We’re returning to the ship. That’s an order.”
Sandy brayed laughter.
“With all due respect, sir, I think not.” Mark nodded toward the cockpit windows. He’d managed to stop the lander’s spin, and the biopod had reappeared through the forward portholes. Its transparent roof was upside down, but closer than it had been before. Much closer. “That stunt you pulled has yanked us out of the beam, all right . . . but the damage we’ve sustained gives me only partial control. With the starboard RCRs out of commission, there’s no way I can turn us around, let alone maneuver through the cables again. Not safely, at least.”
“Then . . . then we sit tight. Wait for the Montero to rescue us.”
“We’ve lost most of our cabin pressure.” Mark nodded toward the cabin environment readout; Sean couldn’t see it clearly, but its top bar was flashing red. “The suits won’t keep us alive and breathing longer than six hours. That, and the fact that we’ve lost contact with the ship, makes rescue unlikely.”
“You don’t know that!”
“Listen to me, Lieutenant.” Mark squeezed the left handle of his yoke; the port RCRs silently fired, and the lander slowly rolled over until the biopod was right side up again. “That’s about as much lateral control as I still have. If I try to get us back to the Montero, we’re screwed, and if we try to wait for rescue, we’re screwed, too. Like I said, we’re out of options. We’re going down, whether we like it or not.”
“But . . .” Cayce began, then stopped himself. Sean caught a glimpse of his face, reflected in the glass of the cockpit windows. Although his expression was distorted by his helmet faceplate, the lieutenant was obviously frightened by the prospect of a crash landing. “How do you think you’re going to make it through the roof?”
“He’s got a point, Mark,” Sean said. “You don’t know how thick it is, or even what it’s made of. For all we know, it might be some kind of transparent metal.”
“I know that.” Again, Mark let out his breath. “All we can do is hope for the best.”
Sean traded a look with Kyra, then the two of them cinched their seat harnesses as tight as they could. Behind them, Sandy had become uncommonly quiet, but when Sean glanced back at her, he saw her lips silently moving behind her helmet faceplate; she’d wisely muted her comlink before giving voice to the thoughts in her mind, and Sean had little doubt that they included nothing nice about Lt. Amerigo Cayce.
For the next fifteen minutes, the Reese descended upon the biopod in a steep, perpendicular dive. As the massive cylinder grew ever larger beyond the cockpit windows, the snow-covered landscape beneath its roof gradually gained detail. Sean began to make out what appeared to be forests surrounding what were either meadows or, more likely, frozen lakes. At least there was plenty of uninhabited area for Mark to land . . . if he could get them through the roof in one piece.
The pilot kept an eye on his instruments all the way down, even as he fought to keep the lander on a smooth and consistent approach pattern. The biopod roof had become a vast, concave expanse only a few miles away when he spoke again. “Good news. According to the lidar, the ceiling is just a few inches thick, and the spectrometer’s not showing any metallic traces. Looks like it’s some sort of polymer . . . not glass, but not quite plastic either.”
“So what?” Cayce’s voice was hollow. He hadn’t said anything since losing his argument with the pilot but had only stared straight ahead with blank, hopeless eyes.
“It means I might be able to punch through that thing if I give it enough juice.” Mark hesitated, then he glanced back at Sean. “What do you say? Roll the dice?”
“Roll ’em.” Sean shrugged. What else did they have to lose?
“All right, then.” The pilot nodded, then he reached for the thrust bar. “Hold on tight. We’re going in.”
He pushed the bar all the way forward, and the lander trembled as they were all pushed back in their seats again. As Sean gripped his armrests, he was startled to find Kyra’s hand upon his own. One look at her expression through her helmet faceplate, and he knew that she was scared out of her wits. Wishing he could do more for her, he took her hand within his and prayed that it wouldn’t be the last human contact he ever made.
He wasn’t alone. As the lander hurtled toward the biopod, he heard Mark murmuring something just under his breath. Sean couldn’t hear what he was saying, but nonetheless he knew what it was: a prayer-poem from the Sa’Tong-tas. Sean had never thought very much of Sa’Tong, but for the first time he found himself envying his friend for his beliefs, if only because they seemed to help keep him calm.
If we get out of this alive, Sean thought, I’m going to ask him to lend me his copy. It can’t be that—
And then the Reese hit the biopod roof.
The impact wasn’t what he’d expected. Not a crash, but instead a loud and violent riiiiiip, as if the lander was tearing through some fibrous membrane. A moment of resistance, then the small craft went through . . . only to have some giant foot kick the lander in the side.
“Hang on!” Mark yelled. “We’re . . . !”
Another sudden jolt, then the lander went into a flat spin. Screaming, Kyra clutched Sean’s hand so hard that his knuckles hurt. Through the cockpit windows, he could see the ground spiraling toward them as if the lander were caught in a kaleidoscope. Fighting an urge to vomit, he clenched his teeth as he shut his eyes. That only made the vertigo worse; he opened them again, to see Mark fighting the controls.
“C’mon, you bitch!” he snarled. “Straighten out . . . straighten out . . .”
A muffled shriek of wind on the other side of the fuselage, then it slowly diminished as the lander’s wings grabbed at the atmosphere. Another abrupt slam, a little less violent that time, then the spinning ceased.
“We’re out of it!” Cayce shouted.
“Not yet.” Mark didn’t relax. As if to confirm what he’d said, the lander quivered as it encountered more turbulence. “I can try to glide in, but with the starboard flaps out of commission, I’m not going to have much say over where we’re going to land. Or how fast.”
Sean glanced through his porthole. The ruined glass made it difficult for him to see the ground clearly, but the white landscape was closer than he liked. “How far up are we . . . ?”
“Can’t tell you. Forward array got knocked out when we went through.” Mark reached for the middle console and snapped a row of toggles. Below their feet, there was the thud of the landing gear coming down. “That’ll slow us down a little,” the pilot added. “As soon as we’re close enough, I’ll kick in the . . . Ah, damn.”
“What’s going on?” Cayce demanded.
“I was afraid of this. The starboard VTOL is shot, too.” Another shudder, and Mark returned both hands to the yoke. “Sorry, folks, but we’re in for a rough landing.”
“Just keeps getting worse and worse.” Sandy sighed. “Man, I knew I shoulda gone to med school.”
Kyra laughed out loud, but there were tears spotting the inside of her faceplate, and Sean heard an edge of hysteria in her voice. The lander was through the clouds, and the ground was getting closer by the second. Their descent had become more horizontal than vertical, but there was no comfort in the sight of snow-covered terrain rushing toward them. Forests, hills, frozen ponds, the central river . . .
“There. That open area straight ahead.” Cayce pointed to the left through the middle cockpit window. “Think you can make it?”
Mark didn’t reply, but instead twisted the yoke to port. The lander veered slightly to the left. “I might,” he said at last, “but we’re still going to come down hard.” He raised his voice to be heard over the roar of the wind. “Sean, Kyra, Sandy . . . bend over, put your heads between your knees and hands over your heads.”
“And kiss your—” Sandy began.
“Shut up!” Sean snarled. Kyra was frightened enough as it was, and Sandy’s fatalism was only
making it worse. He reached across the aisle to push Kyra’s head down, then he did the same himself. The harness dug into his chest and stomach, and he suddenly became conscious of the pull of gravity. Just then, gravity was something of which he could use a little less . . .
Long, long minutes went by during which he couldn’t see anything except the toes of his boots and heard nothing but the rush of the wind and an occasional mechanical noise. Sean was almost ready to think that it might be a smooth and uneventful landing when Mark suddenly shouted, “Brace yourselves!” And then . . .
The harsh and ugly screech of the landing gear coming into contact with snow and ice. The craft shook violently, tossing him back and forth within his seat. He was just beginning to hope that the Reese might simply drag itself to a stop when there was the loud snap of the port-side landing strut breaking free.
When the lander fell over on its left side, the port wing was the only thing that prevented the craft from going completely upside down and crushing the cabin. But although the wing remained connected to the fuselage, its leading edge dug deep into the ground, causing the aft end to fishtail around. The bow caught the worst of it; Sean heard glass shatter, then something that sounded like hail rained down upon his shoulders and the top of his helmet.
Kyra and Sandy screamed. He did, too, although later he couldn’t remember having done so.
The lander spun across the ground, its broken landing gear and wing dragging through snow, mud, and rock until it gradually came to a halt. For several long seconds, Sean heard only the slow, awkward tick of relaxing metal, the tinkle of a loosened piece of glass falling from its frame.
Then silence.
Sean let out his breath, took another one. He was alive . . . and, at least so far as he could tell, unharmed. Carefully sitting up, he looked over at Kyra. She’d been thrown back in her seat, and for a moment he thought she wasn’t moving. But then her helmet turned toward him, and he could see her eyes through the faceplate, wide and terrified.
“You okay?” he asked, and she slowly nodded. The lander was listing to its port side. With the deck slanted toward the left, it would be difficult for her to move from her seat.
First things first. The lander’s prow appeared to be half-buried in the snow; the cockpit windows were shattered, and pieces of ice and rock were scattered across the consoles. Mark lay back in his seat, hands in his lap, head cocked to one side. It looked as if he were resting from his exertions.
Sean thought Cayce had been knocked out, but then the team leader stirred in his seat. “Everyone all right?” the lieutenant asked, his voice weak and dazed. “Sound off.”
“I’m good,” Sandy muttered. “Nice landing, Mark. I mean it.”
“Yeah . . . good job, man,” Sean said.
No response. Sean hastily released himself from his harness, then leaned forward between the front seats. “Hey, Mark,” he said, prodding his friend’s shoulder. “Are you . . . ?”
No, he wasn’t. At Sean’s touch, Mark Dupree’s head swung toward him upon a broken neck. Through his helmet faceplate, his eyes gazed sightlessly at the world to which he’d given his life to bring his friends.
PART THREE
THE TESSELLATED SKY
CHAPTER ELEVEN
WHEN ANDROMEDA CARSON WAS A CADET AT THE ACADEMIA del Espacio of the Union Astronautica, she’d learned to fly in the academy’s flight simulator, an exact replica of a spacecraft cockpit. With an instructor sitting beside her and the voices of the control room piped in through her headset, Ensign Carson flew missions ranging from simple launch-and-landing exercises to more complex orbital sorties.
At first, the simulator was a lot of fun, at least for a girl from New Mexico who aspired to command her own deep-space vessel. But her instructor and the controllers were aware of her ambitions, and after it became apparent that Andromeda was a quick study, they stopped taking it easy and began throwing in-flight emergencies at her: main-engine failures, cabin decompressions, computer glitches, docking aborts, power brownouts, telemetry blackouts, onboard fires, space-junk collisions, even bizarre scenarios like alien attacks or crew mutinies. Sometimes the controllers would come up with two or three things at once while her instructor sat calmly in the copilot’s seat, eating a sandwich as he quietly watched Andromeda cope with looming catastrophe.
Andromeda did the best she could. Not only was she at the top of her class, but it was obvious from the beginning that she had an instinctive talent for flying, displaying reflexes and intuition beyond the minimum requirements for flight certification. Yet the simulator staff seemed to take an almost sadistic pleasure in making life tough for her, and since they held all the cards, it was only inevitable that, every so often, they’d deal her a lousy hand. And when she found herself in a situation she simply couldn’t handle, they would punish her in a singularly cruel manner: they would shut down her controls and put the simulator on full autopilot. So Andromeda would have to sit in her seat, quietly fuming as she watched the simulator solve her problems for her in the wink of an eye before completing the mission without her input. But while her instructor was aware that she was humiliated, he didn’t know that what she hated even more was the sense of helplessness that went with the loss of control.
Simply put, Ensign Carson always wanted to be able to choose her own destiny. Which was why, many years later, Captain Carson tortured the armrests of her chair as the Montero was guided by forces unknown to a destination uncertain.
No one in the command center was happy about what was happening. Melpomene Fisk fidgeted at the helm, unable to do anything that mattered, while Rolf Kurtz appeared to be grinding his teeth as he scowled at the wallscreen. Anne Smith continued trying to regain contact with the Reese even though the hexagon where the lander had gone down was a long way behind them. Thomas D’Anguilo closely monitored the remote survey console, searching for any clues as to where the ship was going or why it was being taken there. On captain’s orders, Zeus Brandt had gone below to the small-arms locker on Deck Two, where he opened the cache of fléchette pistols just in case . . . well, just in case.
Yet Andromeda was more tense than anyone else aboard, and only Jason Ressler knew why. From his seat beside her, Montero’s first officer quietly observed his captain from the corner of his eye. He was particularly intrigued by her fingers; they alternately dug and drummed at the armrests, occasionally curling into fists whiteknuckled with suppressed anger.
Catching Jason watching her, Andromeda glared at him. “What?” she demanded.
“Nothing.” He forced a smile. “Except we’re going to need to reupholster your chair if you keep up like that.”
“Take it out of my salary,” she muttered, then returned her attention to the wallscreen. Without telemetry from the lander, the only image it displayed was Hex’s outer surface, a seemingly endless plain of hexagons slowly rolling beneath them. Melpomene had put their flight track up on the nav table. It appeared as a tiny red line running across the holographic sphere; although it was only a couple of inches long, Andromeda was aware that the line represented the forty thousand miles the Montero had traveled since its guidance system had been taken over by the danui . . .
With every passing mile taking her farther away from Sean.
“I’ll make a note of it in my log.” Jason paused, then added, “I’ve got some friends at the shipyard back home. Maybe I can get them to cut us a discount.”
“Knock it off,” Andromeda growled.
“Sure. You first.” Jason sighed. “Look, there’s nothing you can do, so you might as well take a break.” He cocked a thumb toward the hatch. “Go below. Grab some lunch, or take a nap. Something other than sit there and fret.”
An angry retort hovered on Andromeda’s lip; she restrained the urge to say it out loud. Jason meant well, but there was no way she could leave the bridge. Not until she knew where they were going, or what had happened to her son and his team. Until then, lunch and a nap were out of the question.
“Forward thrusters firing, skipper.” Melpomene stared at the comp screens of her console, hands on either side of the frozen controls. “We’re braking, and”—another motion, this time in a lateral direction—“turning about, ninety degrees to port.”
Forgetting what she was about to ask D’Anguilo, Andromeda turned toward the wallscreen. Hex no longer appeared to be a flat plain but instead a wall of hexagons slowly moving by. As she watched, the wall seemed to grow larger.
“Are we heading toward it?” she asked.
“Appears so, ma’am.” Melpomene didn’t look at her. “Lateral velocity decreasing, forward velocity increasing.”
“It’s drawing us in,” Jason said quietly.
Andromeda glanced at Anne. “Anything new?” she asked. The com officer silently shook her head, and the captain turned to Rolf. “What about those engines or RCRs? Can you . . . ?” Rolf shook his head as well, and Andromeda took a deep breath. “Damn. Damn, damn . . .”
“Captain?” Jason was still seated in his chair, calmly gazing at the wallscreen. “There’s nothing we can do about it. Might as well wait and see what happens next.”
“I have to agree,” D’Anguilo said. “Whatever the danui have in store for us, I don’t think it’s necessarily hostile.”
“And what leads you to that conclusion?” Andromeda asked. “Your fine grasp of alien psychology?”
D’Anguilo let the sarcasm pass. “If they meant us harm, don’t you think they would have acted by now?” He nodded at the screen. “The danui could destroy us in seconds . . . Of that, I have little doubt. Yet their actions so far have been nonviolent, if rather mysterious. In any case, we’re entirely in their hands.”