“Well, that was involved,” said JEFF, buckling back into the pilot’s chair as Liam returned to the seat behind him. “Everything normal up here?”
“Looks good,” said Liam. “I would have told you if not. I still remember how to fly this thing, you know.”
“Of course. I will now put us on a landing vector.”
Liam and Phoebe shared a look. “Everything all right, JEFF?” Liam asked.
JEFF’s eyes flickered. “Hopefully we will have that answer very shortly, upon our safe arrival.”
“Okay.” Liam tapped on the beacon:
i see delphi
Still no reply, but that didn’t matter. They were only moments away now.
“We will be entering the atmosphere a few thousand kilometers from the station,” said JEFF. “I would advise that you remain in your seats. The descent through the ice fog is reportedly quite turbulent.”
A countdown on the navigation screen gave them thirty minutes to arrival. Liam slowly spelled out another message to Mina:
only a half hour until we are there
He eyed the beacon, waiting for a response, but it remained dark. Liam noticed Phoebe watching him. “She’s probably with Arlo,” he said. “Maybe they have a show or something.” Mina was the singer and guitarist in a band called the Gravity Minus. They were supposed to have played the launch party on the Scorpius, but Mina had said in her video message that the show had been postponed after the attack at Saturn.
And yet, was there some other reason why she wasn’t answering back? Why she wanted him to hurry? A tremor of worry rumbled in his belly. He tried to force it down, because there was no reason for it; well, except for ten years of accumulated uncertainty. Or maybe it just bothered him that Mina wasn’t monitoring the beacon more closely. Wasn’t she as anxious to see them as he was to see her?
“Yeah,” said Phoebe, turning away.
Liam was about to tap her shoulder, except he wondered if he could just tap her shoulder anymore after he’d kissed her or if now everything meant something. Still, he managed to say, “You okay?”
She nodded but didn’t turn around.
“The station should have us on their scopes by now,” said JEFF. “They will try to hail us shortly over long-range com, but even though that won’t work, they will still be able to identify the ship.”
“How soon until we can reach them over link?” Liam asked.
“A few minutes. Because of the atmospheric interference, we’ll need to get closer than we did at Saturn,” said JEFF.
Liam’s stomach growled, and he floated to the galley and grabbed nutri-bars for himself and Phoebe. When he returned, Delphi had grown to fill most of their view. Its swirling gray-blue ice clouds spread out beneath them, a wide semicircle, its lower hemisphere out of view. Soon, instead of flying at it, they were flying above it.
“I wonder if this is what it looked like to fly over Earth,” said Liam. “You know, before it was burned out. Like when our parents were kids.”
“Sparkling oceans,” said Phoebe quietly. “Glittering cities.”
“It must have been really pretty,” Liam agreed.
Phoebe sniffled. Liam wondered why she didn’t seem more excited. He wanted to ask, but he also felt weird about talking to her too much, because: Had she liked that he’d kissed her? Was she crying about that? Was there any chance that this sadness was due to that same thing that he’d been thinking before stasis, about how their time together was going to be over? Or was it not about that at all, and she was actually feeling awkward around him because she’d thought about it more and decided the kiss was gross and now was counting down the seconds until she could get away from him? Maybe she was planning to spend the next century on the starliner avoiding him. Stupid, he thought, you never should have done that.
They slowed, their angle of descent growing steeper, and the curved rim of Delphi began to flatten.
“Entering atmosphere,” JEFF announced.
There was a flash of fire and a series of bumps, and they were thrust down against their seats. Liam felt aching throughout his body, like his bones were being jammed together. All at once, sound returned from outside: the screaming whoosh of air, the buffeting of wind gusts, the creaking and rocking of their boxy craft. It was all so loud after their time in space, an assault on Liam’s ears.
“Taking the fusion engine offline,” said JEFF. He tapped a series of buttons. “Bringing up the thrusters. They will take a moment to cycle up, but our entry angle is confirmed.”
They skimmed the tops of the clouds. Ice crystals hissed against the hull. The cruiser began to shudder.
“Brace yourselves,” said JEFF.
The cruiser’s forward lights reflected off the crystalline tips of the clouds. They seemed close enough that you could reach down and run your fingers through their whipped, frosting-like edges.
With a wicked bump they submerged into the inky fog. The stars disappeared, and millions of tiny crystals flashed through the lights and sheeted against the cockpit.
Liam gripped his seat as the cruiser rocked back and forth. Outside the cockpit was a void; a graphical overlay on the windshield mapped their descent through the nothingness. An alarm chirped on the console.
“Rear thruster has shorted out again,” said JEFF, quickly tapping a holoscreen and swiping through the hardware controls.
“Is that a problem?” Liam asked.
“It would be if we needed to take off again, but hopefully this is the last trip this vehicle has to make.”
“What’s that flashing?” Phoebe pointed to a yellow light in front of her.
“Checking diagnostics,” said JEFF. “A segment of the thermal shielding has failed, but we’ve already reentered the atmosphere, so that should also be fine.”
“We’re trashing this poor ship, aren’t we?” said Liam.
“HA HA HA,” said JEFF.
“That’s only funny if it’s not going to trash us, too.”
“Acknowledged,” said JEFF. “So far, none of these problems are fatal.”
“Good to know.” Liam rolled his eyes, trying to catch Phoebe’s attention, but she just stared out into the dark, her arms crossed tight.
Yet another sensor began to blare, this time on the windshield display.
“We are nearing cruising altitude,” said JEFF. “Hang on as we level off.”
All at once, the cruiser dropped beneath the frosted clouds and into a dim, nighttime world. JEFF fired the remaining thrusters at full power and Liam was shoved back against his seat. Gusts of wind rattled the cruiser, rocking it back and forth.
Below, a buckled and folded vista of gray-and-purple ice stretched in all directions, punctuated here and there by the spines of black mountains. There were moments of inky smooth ice, and other places where the ice had cracked and heaved to such extremes that it jutted up like enormous, curving crystal fangs, with black edges and aqua-blue crevices that glimmered in their lights. Here and there, these fangs resembled great jaws, waiting to snatch the cruiser. In the distance, massive plumes of steam billowed from the ice, welding the ground to the dusky cloud layer. They swayed like snakes in the whipping wind. According to the virtual tour, there were primitive, fishlike creatures living in the hidden ocean, with something like antifreeze for blood and bioluminescent features. There was a spot for viewing them at the Delphi station.
Liam checked his silent beacon again. “Are we in range yet?”
“Almost,” said JEFF, tapping the link connection screen. “Lots of interference, but we should be picking up the station’s signal any moment now.”
Liam peered across the forbidding twilight landscape. Was that a light? No, just his eyes playing tricks on him. “How far to the station?”
“Two hundred and thirty-six kilometers,” said JEFF.
He tapped a message on the beacon:
really close
“Shouldn’t we be able to see the starliner by now?”
“It is
likely to be at least somewhat hidden by the cloud layer.”
Liam winced at a flash of light-headedness. Maybe it was just leftover nausea. He eyed the beacon. Why wasn’t she writing back?
“What’s that?” Phoebe pointed ahead.
A spire of black rock thrust out of the ice like a claw. On its tip was a geometric structure, gray and metallic, glinting in their lights.
JEFF’s eyes flickered. “According to my Delphi schematics, that is a mining relay station, one of the locations where they drill into the ice for water. It should also be functioning as a guidance beacon, but it is not appearing on our link.”
“Why not?” Liam asked.
“I do not know. It is possible that my files are outdated and it has been decommissioned, as we are the last fleet to need fuel, or it has malfunctioned.”
As they raced closer, their lights revealed the irregular shape of the walls. Liam leaned forward and squinted. There were jagged metal edges, black streaks . . .
“It appears to be damaged,” said JEFF.
“What kind of damage?” Liam asked.
They passed overhead and saw that the roof had been torn open in a gaping, perfectly circular hole. Inside was only blackened wreckage. There was debris scattered on the ice far below.
“Or completely blown up,” said Phoebe quietly, still hugging herself tightly.
“Why would you say that?” JEFF asked, his head swiveling toward her.
“I don’t know.” She glanced nervously at Liam. “Look at it.”
Liam watched out the side window as the tower retreated behind them. His heart raced. “You mean like, attacked?”
Phoebe just stared ahead.
“Blown up by what?” JEFF asked. Liam noticed that JEFF was still looking at Phoebe.
“How should I know, JEFF?” Phoebe snapped.
JEFF’s eyes flickered, and he turned back to the windshield.
Crosswinds buffeted the craft. On the link screen, the same words kept blinking:
Searching for signal.
“We should have made contact by now,” said Liam.
“There must be a problem with station communications,” said JEFF.
“What about comms on the Scorpius?” said Liam. “Or other private ships trailing behind? Mining stations? Why isn’t anyone on?”
“I do not know. I agree that it does seem improbable. Perhaps there is an issue with our link transmitter.” JEFF brought up a new screen. “I will run a diagnostic.”
They sped over the ice, the hull of the cruiser shuddering in the crosswinds. Liam swallowed, tight, metallic. His fingers had started to shake. He kept looking for the great shape of the starliner through the clouds, the glow of its giant egg-shaped engines, its six core cylinders arranged like the chambers of an old Earth revolver, the X-shaped array at its front that held the solar sails.
“Our link is functioning normally,” JEFF reported.
Geometric designs began to light up on the windshield screen, a schematic showing the outlines of structures that were still too far away to see in the fog and twilight. No one spoke.
“We have visual on the station.”
The buildings began to take shape on the horizon but remained silhouettes. No lights.
“We should definitely be able to see the Scorpius,” said Liam. Unless it’s gone. He didn’t want to say it, but they were getting so close, they should have been nearly under it by now, but there was nothing.
Searching for signal.
Liam looked back at the beacon. Mina had said hurry. . . . “Something’s wrong.”
“I calculate that you are right,” said JEFF.
“We should go,” said Phoebe. “Back into space. We should get out of here.”
“We can’t,” said Liam. “Not yet.”
They could see the station plainly now. It was a large complex of buildings perched on a craggy island of rock and spreading down its one gradual side. Metal and rectangular structures surrounded a wide white dome in the center. All the buildings were dark, veiled in Delphi’s eternal gloaming. . . .
“Oh no,” said Liam as he spied the first wide blast hole in one of the walls.
“Sensors report no signs of life-forms,” said JEFF. “And I am picking up strong radiation signals.”
They passed over the outskirts of the station, watching silently, in shock. Liam felt stuck to his chair, frozen with disbelief. All the buildings were burned out or collapsed, the walls charred with black streaks. The dome, and other main buildings, had been punctured with more giant, perfectly circular holes, almost like they had been drilled, except that the edges were warped and melted. Tatters of fabric and paper stuck to twisted metal teeth, swirling and blowing and strewn across the ice in all directions—
And there, on the icy plain below the station, something golden, in long jagged shards scattered over the ice floes.
“A solar sail,” said Phoebe.
But Liam’s eye had already traveled beyond that, far out across the vast ice sea, nearly to the horizon, ten or more kilometers away. Something enormous and dark, rounded and geometric, like a great, exhausted serpent, kinked and bent and blackened, with one central section thrusting high into the sky, nearly to the clouds.
“Is that . . . ?” But Liam couldn’t finish. He knew what it was.
A starliner core. A home for millions of people, crashed, destroyed.
Part of the Scorpius.
Liam fumbled for the beacon and started typing:
are
“We should go, right now,” said Phoebe.
“That is unadvisable,” said JEFF. “I’m afraid we do not have enough fuel to depart and make the journey to another suitable refueling station.”
you
“It doesn’t matter,” said Phoebe.
ok
“We must also consider the damage we sustained while entering—”
“We have to go, JEFF!” Phoebe shouted.
“And why exactly are you so certain of this course of action—”
“No!” said Liam, his throat tight. He stared at the crash. “We have to know which core that is, and where the rest of the starliner went. . . .”
“Core numbers are printed on the docking bay doors at each segment,” said JEFF.
They flew past the station, out over the ice wastes, the great wreckage looming ever larger. Liam barely breathed. There was a light now, far off on the horizon beyond the crashed core. JEFF highlighted it on the windshield screen and zoomed in. It looked like an enormous torch had been stuck into the ice: a starliner engine, spewing blue-and-white firelight up into the sky. The radiation warning beeped faster.
“We cannot stay out here long,” said JEFF.
They closed in on the great core wreckage, reaching its near end, which was lying flat on the ice. The upthrust section was still over a kilometer in the distance, but it towered so high that it seemed like it might topple onto them at any moment.
Even just this end was impossibly large: nearly a half kilometer in diameter, dwarfing their ship.
Liam saw that the long side stretching away from them was peppered with precise holes, like it had been strafed with gunfire. Sections of it looked completely intact, but others were collapsed and charred. As they neared, Liam spied another of those wide circular holes, and through it he could see the vague, shadowy outlines of balconies, as well as one of the social centers, everything smashed and covered with frost that glittered in the cruiser’s lights.
“Do you think it was . . . attacked?” said Liam.
“I cannot be one hundred percent sure,” said JEFF, “but that seems most likely.”
“It was,” said Pheobe.
“How do you know?” asked Liam.
Phoebe motioned with her chin. “What else could have happened?”
“There is a hangar airlock,” said JEFF. They neared the side of the core, and the cruiser’s forward lights illuminated the giant doors.
Liam didn’t want to look. He had
to look. Please don’t be . . .
“It is Core Three,” JEFF announced quietly.
Liam froze. He remembered Devon, the virtual assistant in his Scorpius tour, the one he’d taken so many times he’d memorized it.
You have been assigned to Community Twenty-Two, in Segment Eight of—
Core Three.
His heart tripped over itself. He couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. He could only keep looking at the giant number.
Mina. Shawn. No.
Tears welled in his eyes.
The beacon remained dark.
5
TIME TO DELPHI ARRIVAL: 0H:00M
DISTANCE TO STARLINER SCORPIUS: UNKNOWN
Liam sobbed, head in his hands but still checking the beacon in his palm, and yet it didn’t blink, didn’t blink, didn’t blink. His amazing, annoying, perfect sister. His funny, brave, scared friend. And all the others. So many millions of people on board.
Phoebe pushed onto his seat beside him and put her arm around him. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “It hurts so much.”
“You don’t know,” said Liam, but then hated that he’d said that—Phoebe had people on that ship, too: their classmates, teachers, neighbors, so many different faces from their apartment buildings and all their classrooms over the years—and yet he couldn’t help it. He would never see his sister or his friend again, would have to tell his parents that their daughter was gone, and how had she died? What had those final moments been like? Had she been terrified, screaming for help? Hurry, Mina had said. . . .
But they were too late.
Phoebe breathed deep, like she was going to say something, but didn’t. That was when Liam remembered that she’d lost her brother, years ago, and her grandparents, and he felt awful for being so selfish on top of how awful he already felt. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be.”
JEFF raised the cruiser away from the doors, up and up, to the top of the fallen core. He flew along its side, bringing up a schematic overlay of the structure and tapping it at various points. Liam didn’t know what he was doing and didn’t care.
The Oceans between Stars Page 7