Under Strange Suns (15 page)

“Like what, Carson?” Thorson asked.

“Running water. Arable land.”

“Arable land? I’m a pilot, not a farmer. How the hell would I recognize it? And how do we know this rock can grow anything we can eat?”

“Right, we don’t know. We take soil samples, mark the location of each. When we return to the
Yuschenkov
, McAvoy tests the samples for the proper mineral composition. I don’t know if the right organic constituents will exist or not. I don’t know if the sunlight–or suns’ light–is adequate. Look, Thorson, if we knew any of this we wouldn’t need to search. You want to just give up?”

“Of course not. But someone needs to be the adult in this Boy Scout troop. So, Burge, secure the hatches. Then buckle up. It’s time to fly.”

Aidan pulled himself into the cockpit, allowing Burge to exit. He strapped himself into the left-hand seat.

He began to feel jitters, the sort of nerves he hadn’t experienced since his first orbital combat drop. He’d never ridden up front before. Probably the novelty was getting to him. Usually he was in a self-contained world seated in the back of the craft, isolated from the cockpit and the pilots. One focused on the mission, on himself, or on the few others sharing that world. Here, in the cockpit, taking in the bewildering array of controls–analog and digital–and status and warning lights, Aidan felt intensely cognizant of the difficulty involved in flying the shuttle. So many things could go wrong. He was still a passenger, but now he was a direct observer. If something went wrong he’d be right here to watch.

Burge returned to the cockpit, closing the hatch behind him.

“Captain, shuttle here,” said Thorson. “Ready to depart.”

“Shuttle, you are cleared to detach. Stick to the flight plan. Carson...take care of my boys.”

It sounded to Aidan that Vance wanted to say more. There had been a catch in her voice after “Carson,” he was almost sure. He wished he’d had an opportunity for a private moment with her, but preparations occupied every moment from the minute the crew briefing ended. And he wasn’t entirely sure what either of them would have said if they’d had that private moment.

Thorson loosed a derisive snort. Aidan was unsure if it was in response to the instruction regarding the flight plan–an implied criticism of his professionalism–or the injunction that Aidan look out for the other two–an implication that Thorson required minding.

Thorson swiveled to look over each shoulder. “Buckled in? Good. If you didn’t pee before you came aboard, too bad. Here we go.”

Thorson punched a button. Hydraulic clamps released, conduits slipped free from moorings. Aidan felt the vibration propagate through the shuttle as it decoupled. He looked to his right and saw the trusses of the
Yuschenkov’s
long central structure slip by. Thorson squirted a pulse of directional thrust, pitching the shuttle down from the axis of the
Yuschenkov
. Then the starship slid up and out of sight. The moon grew to fill the window directly forward. Behind it, the blackness of space was gradually consumed by blue and white swirls. It took Aidan a moment to recognize that as the cloud-banded gas giant, Upsilon Andromedae d.

Aidan watched Thorson nudge a lever forward and felt a gentle pressure, as if a child was half-heartedly attempting to push him back in his chair. The moon began to display greater detail, continental outlines beneath clouds shaped by weather patterns. Then the orientation shifted as Thorson vectored the shuttle into an approach angle, dropping into a diminishing orbit.

A glint caught Aidan’s eye, port-side forward. It expanded until he recognized it from McAvoy’s description–one of the moon’s spindle-shaped companions, hurtling about in a tumbling orbit. The second satellite sparked and spun after the first.

The radio sputtered. Captain Vance’s voice spoke, an edge of concern in her voice. “Thorson, you’ve deviated. Please return to the pre-programmed flight path.”

“This is shorter, Captain,” Thorson said. “We need to start considering fuel conservation.”

Aidan noted that the first officer made no move to correct his course.

“You’re passing too close to the satellites,” Vance said. “Change course to–”

Her voice cut out abruptly as Thorson flipped a switch. “Back-seat drivers.”

Aidan cleared his throat. “Do you think maybe you ought to listen to her? She is the captain, after all.”

“You want to drive? No, I didn’t think so. You’re just like the Captain, think you know everything, but you don’t. Now shut up and let me...well, shit.”

The last was in response to a perceptible shift, the nose of the shuttle pitching up. Not much, but not in response to any input from Thorson.

The first of the satellites now occupied nearly the entire top half of the windows, passing directly overhead.

“What is it?” Burge asked. There was a quaver in his voice, the precursor to panic.

“It’s okay. Under control. Caught a gravitational tug from that satellite. Threw me off my entry angle.”

“That’s bad, isn’t it?” The quaver was now a tremor. “If the angle is too shallow, we’ll skip off the atmosphere.”

“Then we’d just come around and try again. But keep your shorts dry. I’ve compensated.”

Aidan’s fingers dug into the armrests. He was no pilot, but he thought the shuttle’s nose was now pointed even more steeply than it had been before Thorson’s “gravitational tug.”

The satellites were out of view. The moon filled the windows completely.

Aidan squeezed harder as the shuttle porpoised, buffeted by the outer layer of the moon’s atmosphere.

“Hold on,” Thorson said. “This could get a bit hairy.”

“Shit. You overcompensated, didn’t you?” Burge’s voice was shrill, a combination of fear and anger.

“Shut up. I’ve got this.”

The view forward grew obscured by a growing sheath of flame, licking the nose and wrapping about the shuttle. The shuttle bucked, the airframe screaming in protest. Thorson hauled back the joystick, trying to flatten out the plunging descent, but Aidan sensed Thorson was demanding more from it than it was designed to provide.

Aidan heard a shriek of metal-on-metal, then a thump as something broke free and bounced off the fuselage before whipping away into the howling winds of the upper atmosphere.

“Burge,” he said. “Let’s get strapped in to the chutes. I’ll bring one up for Thorson.”

“Keep your ass planted, Carson,” said Thorson through gritted teeth. “I’m bringing this bird down in one piece.”

The flames flickered away and Aidan saw intermittent patches of cloud and land. Then cloud, land, and star-speckled sky. They were tumbling.

He watched Thorson fighting the controls, wrestling with a craft that wasn’t particularly aerodynamic at the best of times. The shuttle was going to obliterate itself upon impact. There wouldn’t be enough pieces of him left to bury if anyone ever encountered the scattered wreckage.

He didn’t want to die this way. But the grimly fatalistic jester in the back of his head whispered,
At least you’ll set foot on another world. A foot here, a foot way over there
. He couldn’t suppress a wry grin.

Thorson stabilized the fall to the extent of turning the tumble into a flat spin.

Aidan unbuckled the restraints. He pushed himself out of the chair. He closed his eyes to combat a dizzying sense of vertigo. Then he groped his way to the hatch, slapping the release.

“Come on,” he said over his shoulder. “Get to the parachutes!”

He stumbled over the hatch, falling to his knees. The shuttle yawed, throwing him against the bulkhead opposite the parachutes.

The floor was littered with spilled supplies. Despite careful stowage, cases had broken free, the lids of several popping open upon impact. He scrambled to his feet and threaded his way through the debris to the parachutes stowed adjacent to the docking/exit hatch.

He snatched up three of the bulky backpacks and made his way back to the cockpit, a weaving, zig-zag pattern necessitated by a combination of heavy cases sliding around wildly and the shuttle tossing and lurching.

“Put these on,” he said, tossing two chutes into the cockpit.

“Don’t you dare bail, Carson,” Thorson said. “You open that hatch and we’re all dead.”

“God damnit, Thorson! This bird is going down. This is my mission, and I’m telling you we bail.”

“Fuck you, Carson. On my shuttle, I’m in command. And I’m telling you to sit the fuck down. No one is leaving. I’ve got this.”

“I-I think I’ll ride it out, Carson,” Burge said. He looked absolutely petrified. “I don’t want to jump.”

“Burge, listen,” Aidan said, forcing a calm he didn’t feel. “The shuttle is going to crash. If you don’t jump, you will die.”

“Maybe. But I’m staying. If you’re going to jump, don’t use the docking hatch. Use the bail-out port, it won’t compromise the shuttle.” Quentin Burge looked pale, like a starched tuxedo shirt. But his voice was steady now. He’d made his decision.

Nonetheless, Aidan tried one more time. At the very least he owed Burge the effort. Thorson was a lost cause; he would never admit to a mistake and would ride this down to the very end, telling himself it was all Carson’s fault. “Burge, I need your help down there. You’re no help to Thorson in the cockpit and you’re no good to anyone dead. Now strap that on and let’s bail.”

“I’m sorry, Carson. I don’t have the skills. I wish I did. At least I have a chance with Thorson.” The resignation in Burge’s face suggested he did not fully believe it.

“Okay,” Aidan said, his voice leaden. It felt as if he was abandoning Burge, but he’d done what he could. “Good luck to you.”

“Carson! Don’t you leave,” Thorson said. But Aidan was already on his way aft, stumbling, caroming off the bulkheads, dodging packing cases. There were only a few of these rogue crates, most remained securely stowed, but those that had dislodged were dangerous, unpredictable ankle-breakers.

The bail-out port occupied the aft, port corner of the shuttle. A release button glowed a calming green above it at eye level. But a loose packing case had wedged itself between the manual release wheel that topped the port and a wall-mounted fire extinguisher.

Aidan wrestled with the case for valuable seconds before finally working it free. He slammed his palm against the release button and watched the wheel spin before the port popped open. Beneath the door was a slender tube, sealed at the bottom by another door. Aidan dropped in feet first. Something at his waist caught on the lip of the tube. Momentarily he was trapped, his torso still in the shuttle bay, his legs in the bail-out port. Then he felt something tear loose and he slipped the rest of the way in. Claustrophobia overwhelmed him immediately. With the parachute on his back he felt squeezed in as if he were trapped in an elevator full of sumo wrestlers.

With a hydraulic hiss the port above him cantilevered shut, the light from the cargo hold above ebbing until he was entombed in blackness.

He had little time for deep buried fears of being interred alive to rattle him, as if he needed one more worry while falling to his death in an out-of-control landing craft. He felt a rushing breeze as air bled out of the tube to equalize pressure with the outside atmosphere. Then the exterior hatch of the bail-out port slid away and he plummeted free of the shuttle, dropping straight toward the surface of the moon.

A
IDAN TUMBLED, CATCHING A BRIEF GLIMPSE
of the shuttle passing overhead, then of the ground far below, then sky again, the shuttle no longer visible. His HALO training asserted itself and he spread his arms and legs, pulling himself free from the gyroscoping tumble.

The implant in Aidan’s jaw crackled. Thorson’s voice filled his head. “Goddamn you, Carson. You coward. After I land this thing–oh, fuck!”

“Pull up, pull up!” Aidan could hear hysteria in Burge’s voice through the implant.

“Shut up, shut up, shut up,” was the last Aidan heard.

This was all his fault. If he’d listened to Vance, let her pilot the shuttle, then Burge and Thorson would be safe. No, that was bullshit. Second-guessing himself helped nothing. He had made the right call. The captain belonged aboard ship. He couldn’t have known Thorson would pull a stunt like that, deviate from the flight plan.
But, maybe I should have known,
he couldn’t help think
, and two men are going to die because I didn’t
.
Maybe. On the other hand,
I
am going to die if I don’t get a grip.
He gritted his teeth.
Mourn, beat yourself up later. For now, survive.

Aidan was in a controlled free fall, a flying squirrel. He was cold, but his jacket was ramping up the heat in compensation.

He checked his wrist datapad. The avionics package in the parachute harness had linked to the unit as soon as he’d strapped in. He was at 40,000 feet, falling at terminal velocity, though that number was a trifle lower here. The temperature was two degrees below freezing, but inching up. He decided to wait until at least 20,000 feet before pulling the chute. A lingering surveillance from high altitude might be useful, but it wasn’t worth freezing over.