The Rings of Haven (6 page)

Nathan took his seat by the cargo hatch on the opposite side of the cabin, next to Jalea. The seats themselves were rather firm, and not very comfortable, obviously not designed for a long journey. They also had some type of restraint system built into them, the belts appearing to have seen better days. Looking forward into the cockpit, Nathan could see that Tobin was not bothering to put on his restraints, so Nathan assumed that none of them would need theirs either. The fact that Jalea also did not feel the need to restrain herself only served to support his decision.

The sound of the idling engines became louder as the exterior hatch swung up and closed, sealing with a hiss of compressed air. Once closed, the whine of the engines was greatly reduced, however, the vibrations inside the ship told of the increasing strain on her engines as the small ship began rolling, making a u-turn to port and heading into the transfer airlock.

Nathan could see out the window built into the hatch on the opposite wall, watching as the frame of the airlock moved past them. Through the front windows of the cockpit, he could see the outer airlock door. It would take only a few minutes for the airlock to purge itself of pressure, and then the outer door would open and the transfer airlock would become one with the vacuum of space.

Again the small ship began to roll. Nathan watched out the side window as the ship moved out of the transfer airlock and out into the outer bay, eventually coming completely out into the open only a few meters from the aft edge of the flight deck. As they came out from under the canopy and into the open, the light reflecting off the reddish-brown and orange gas giant outside washed into the cabin, bathing them all in its eerie glow.

The little ship fired its thrusters, quickly climbing away from the Aurora and slightly to her starboard. The sound of her landing gear as it retracted up into the ship was unusually loud, as was the
clunk
that was heard when the gear locked into place. As they accelerated away, Nathan could see the numerous chunks that had been carved out of the Aurora’s outer hull by the many hits she had sustained during her recent battles with both the Jung and the Takarans. The sight of the damage to her exterior made Nathan ill, and he found himself thankful that they hadn’t flown over the port side of the ship where there was a huge hull breach in her bow.

Chunks of rock and ice of varying sizes and shapes drifted past them as they made their way down and out of the rings. Within only a few minutes of leaving the Aurora, the small ship had cleared the rings and was headed for the large moon called Haven. As they followed along the underside of the immense field of debris, Nathan and the others could see different ships conducting their own harvesting operations. They were of different shapes and sizes, ranging from ships not much bigger than the one they were on to some larger than their own Defender-class warships back in Sol.

Nathan could feel his pulse quicken, his heart beating in his throat as he gazed out the windows of the small ship. He had left the familiarity of his own ship to hitch a ride in this tiny, alien spacecraft. He was a thousand light years from home, seeing things that the people of his world could only dream about. Nathan looked over at Vladimir. He too was staring out the window in disbelief, along with everyone else in the cabin.

“This is unbelievable,” Nathan mumbled.

“There are so many different ships!” Vladimir exclaimed.

“Yeah, and all of them better armed,” Jessica added. “You two might want to keep it under control a bit,” she mumbled, looking toward the cockpit to see if Tobin had overheard them. “No point lettin’ on what ‘newbs’ we are out here.” Jessica shot a look at Nathan and Vladimir, reinforcing her warning. For a moment, Nathan felt incredibly naive. Vladimir simply shrugged it off and continued gazing out the window.

“Hey, you notice that none of the big ships come anywhere near Haven?” Sergeant Weatherly observed as they approached the large brown and blue moon. “Only the little ones.”

“Most of the big ones are cargo ships,” Nathan explained. “They probably don’t have the power to change orbits frequently. Especially when they’re fully loaded. It makes piloting them a bit trickier. You have to be very efficient, conserve every bit of momentum and fuel. Look at their main engines. They’re mostly just small engines with considerable fuel storage behind them, designed to do long, low-level burns.”

“Is that why the Aurora’s got such a big ass?” Enrique joked.

“Yeah, actually. And her ass is all engine, too. She can really get up and move in a hurry.”

“Enrique likes big asses that can move,” Jessica smiled, nudging her spec-op partner.

“Is that right?” Nathan said.

“Yeah, that’s why I never hit on you,” Enrique jabbed back. “You don’t have an ass!”

“Not a big one, that’s for sure,” she corrected.

Nathan smiled, thinking of that night a few weeks ago, back on Earth. The memory of her reflection in the mirrored wall tile as she had pulled her dress back on brought a slight smile to his face.

“We will begin our descent momentarily,” Tobin called back from the cockpit. “It will get a little rough as we hit the atmosphere. The inertial dampeners on this little ship are not terribly effective, I’m afraid.”

“Thanks for the warning,” Nathan called back. “I’m sure we’ll be fine.”

Most of the shuttle rides that Nathan had taken to and from the orbit of Earth during his academy days had been in the older shuttles that had no inertial dampeners. The first few rides had been frightening. He had never quite gotten used to them, but he had learned to tolerate them. The worst part had always been the plasma wakes. The white-orange fire streaking past the windows as the shuttles plowed through the thickening atmosphere was the scary part. It always seemed as if the fire would burst through the cabin at any moment and consume them all.

The ship rolled slightly, giving them a better view as they made their way around the moon. Haven was about half the size of Earth, and from orbit, it appeared different in many respects. Most notable was its color. It was mostly brown with some patches of gray and green. The surface was mostly dry land, broken up occasionally by a few large bodies of water that paled in comparison to the oceans on Earth. There appeared to be a few mountain ranges, some small oddly colored forests, and a lot of open plains. There were even snow-covered poles. But most of the surface appeared to be barren of life. And what plant life there was appeared odd from orbit, paler somehow. Many of the plains appeared to be covered with a tan-colored substance. The color reminded him of sandy beaches back on Earth. But there were no large bodies of water near the big tan splotches that Nathan could see.

He could see a few active volcanoes, complete with large lava flows. On first impression, it seemed an odd mixture of both the hospitable and the hellish.

The moon grew considerably larger in the windows, until it was alarmingly close. “Shouldn’t we have rolled back over by now?” Nathan commented. He was the only pilot among them. Therefore, he was answered with blank stares.

A moment later, something began humming loudly from the compartment behind them. A few seconds after that, a strange bluish glow seemed to envelope the ship.

“Some kind of shielding?” Vladimir guessed.

The ship began to vibrate and bounce slightly as the bluish-white field surrounding the ship began to change color, taking on a more amber hue. Within a minute, the bouncing had become more violent and the field surrounding them was glowing a bright yellow-orange that had become so intense that it all but blocked their view of the world below.

“I think it’s a heat shield,” Nathan told them.

“Is that even possible?” Vladimir asked.

“I guess so. That would explain why we didn’t need to pitch over.”

It seemed impossible to Nathan. Every space-faring vessel he had ever seen had a heat protective layer along its underside. Even the Aurora’s underside was reinforced and heat-shielded in order to allow for limited atmospheric flight as well as for aero-braking maneuvers. But such materials usually added to the mass of a ship as well as to the complexity and expense of her production. If these people did have an energy-based shield to protect them against the extreme friction of atmospheric entry, it would be a highly useful technology to bring back to Earth. The applications would be endless.

His contemplations of how such a technology could be used were interrupted by the increasingly violent shaking of the little ship. Despite the shield that prevented the heat of entry from reaching them, it apparently did little to reduce the turbulence. It seemed even worse than he remembered from his last re-entry to Earth. One of the things he had always liked about space was that there was no turbulence. Nathan hated turbulence, which was surprising considering that a large part of his training at the academy had been spent learning to fly every type of aircraft known to the people of his world. That turbulence, however, had not bothered him since he had been the pilot. Right now, as a passenger, he was feeling it in the pit of his stomach.

He scanned the faces of his team. Moments ago they had been joking with one another. Now, they all had rather serious looks on their faces as they too wondered if the ship was going to hold together.

A few minutes later, it ended nearly as quickly as it had begun. The energy shield faded back to amber, and then to bluish-white, until it finally faded away completely, with the hum of what must have been the shield generators going silent immediately thereafter.

Sometime during the entry, Tobin had rolled the ship back over, and now they were properly oriented in relation to the world below. They were a few thousand meters above what appeared to be a small inland sea, heading toward a distant shore stretched out before them. The ship continued to gradually descend as it approached the shoreline. Minutes later they were over land, down to only a few hundred meters and still descending. They could see various farms and ranches below, broken up by the occasional cluster of buildings. They were headed towards a large city of some sort.

The tan splotches that had resembled beaches from orbit now appeared to be some large flat plant that in some cases covered hundreds of square-meters of land. Nathan couldn’t tell if it was all one plant or many plants grown together. He also noticed people cutting the flat plant up into smaller pieces and tossing them onto the back of large, flat vehicles.

The farms quickly disappeared, giving way to more urban concerns. They continued their descent until they were only a hundred meters off the ground, on their final approach to the spaceport. Nathan could hear Tobin talking in an official tone to someone over his headset, and he assumed it was some type of air-traffic controller. After all, the sky over the spaceport was full of ships coming and going, and someone had to be telling them all what to do.

From above, the space port appeared to be a hodge-podge of parking stalls, hangars, and service buildings, all connected by various runways, taxiways, landing pads, and service roadways. There was a complex at roughly the center of the airfield, with numerous auxiliary buildings clustered around what appeared to be the main terminal building. Similar in overall design and function to the numerous spaceports of Earth, this one appeared to have started small and expanded over time. Dissimilar to the ones on Earth, this facility was right in the center of the city, as if the city had grown up around it. Nathan could see homes and businesses with their backs right up against the spaceport, and he wondered how anyone could function so near all the commotion and noise that the facility must have generated.

Finally, the ship slowed, pivoted right, and began its final descent to their assigned landing point, her engines screaming as they strained to keep the small ship aloft. Nathan could hear the sound of the landing gear as it extended from the ship. A moment later the ship bounced gently onto a landing pad made of a large, extremely robust grate that was elevated a couple meters above the ground to allow for the thrust wash of their engines. The moment they touched down, the ship’s engines immediately spun down to a low whine.

The ship rolled off the landing pad onto the tarmac, winding its way between rows of parking stalls. Most were open stalls, with nothing more than service buildings separating them on either side, while others had roofs over them. On approach, he had seen rows of hangars, but the area they were in did not appear to have any such buildings.

Nathan peered out the window as they rolled past dozens of spacecraft, many of which didn’t look like they could make it to orbit. Some of the spacecraft were being made ready for departure, others were being serviced, while a few appeared to have been out of commission for some time. There were even a few that had temporary fences locked around them, presumably to prevent access to them for whatever reason. In light of what Tobin had said about the family that controlled Haven, Nathan wondered if the owners of the locked-down spacecraft had failed to pay tribute and lost access to their vessels as a result.

Several minutes later, the ship turned sharply and rolled in between two long service buildings. Nathan could see a couple of men in dirty coveralls peering out the window of one of the buildings, watching them as they rolled to a stop and shut down their engines. Moments later, Tobin removed his headset and began to climb out of his seat. “Welcome to Haven,” he announced as he left the cockpit.

Tobin pushed past them as he made his way to the rear of the cabin. He punched in a code on the keypad next to the door on the back bulkhead, and it slid open to reveal a small corridor that led to another hatch farther back, with storage racks on either side. Nathan and the others watched as Tobin reached for a group of light-brown cloaks hung on the wall.

“Whoa!” Jessica yelled, as she jumped from her seat, drawing her sidearm and taking aim at Tobin. “Hands where I can see them!” she added, her weapon now fully trained on Tobin. Enrique was only a step behind her, his weapon also drawn, with Sergeant Weatherly right behind him.