Authors: Jason Halstead
“Careful,” she admonished, gently pulling the cup from him. “Your stomach won’t be able to handle it all at once.” Kira remembered her first few sips of water and shuddered.
A moment later Eric was drinking again, stopping himself after a few swallows and pacing himself. He glanced at her and tried to smile again, but the obvious pain in the expression brought tears to Kira’s eyes. She hugged him close, remembering only at the last minute not to squeeze too hard.
“I didn’t realize how alone I’ve been these last couple of weeks,” she whispered to him.
He stared at her, his eyes clear from fatigue and pain for a brief moment. Kira nodded. “Yes, I’ve been awake for just over thirteen days. Tarn’s been up for three. We recovered faster because of the genetic modifications we’ve had. I’m still not sure what all is in me, and I may never know, but I’m not complaining! Without it there’s no way I could have pulled myself out of my cold sleep tube.”
Eric pulled away and stared at her, his lips open
, clearly showing the cracks in the dried-out skin. Kira wanted to kiss him, but restrained herself, knowing it would only hurt him more than it would comfort him. “Trust me and get some rest. Don’t speak; it only hurts. A few days and you’ll be back to normal, especially with nurse Kira tending to you. And don’t get me started about the sponge bath I’m looking forward to giving you after you’re feeling better!”
She saw his smile turn to a wince. Eric turned back to the drink to finish it,
and then let Kira help him up. She led him to the crew quarters and tucked him into his cot, taking special care not to rush him. He fell asleep almost instantly, giving her a few moments to stare at him. Even looking starved and pathetic, she still felt something stirring inside her chest for him. She knelt down next to him and gently kissed him on the temple.
“I think I love you,” she whispered,
and then quickly stood up and glanced around. Jeff was already asleep a few cots away and the Captain had yet to make his way in. She smiled once more at Eric’s sleeping body, and then turned and hurried back to the bridge.
“Captain!” Kira blurted out in surprise. Sharp was sitting on his chair, with Tarn standing close enough for Kira to surmise that he had just helped the stubborn man into it.
“Status?” Sharp croaked, grimacing as he did so.
“Sir, you should get some rest
. We’re a week away from our destination and—”
“What destination?”
Kira winced at the resemblance between sandpaper on rocks and the Captain’s voice. “There’s a planet, sir. Sensors are picking up readings I haven’t seen anywhere before, aside from Earth, that is.”
“Earth?”
he croaked.
“Captain, please! Get some rest!”
He glared at her, getting his message across without words. Kira shook her head and sat down. “Fine, but the longer you fight recovery, the longer Tarn’s going to try to figure out a way to run this ship.”
Her ploy worked, making Sharp’s gaze jump over to Tarn. Tarn jerked as well,
and then sent a scowl Kira’s way. “Captain! I never once—”
“Sir, there’s nothing in this system large enough to slingshot us back towards the
Core worlds,” Kira interrupted. “Our speed is too great. Given our remaining pusher’s status and our fuel level, we won’t be able to slow down nearly enough. We need a gas giant. The star is nearly identical to Earth’s, only younger. If we had more fuel, we could establish an orbit around it and head back, but with what we have we’d have to veer in too close to it and the
Mule’s
not built for that level of heat and radiation. We still might make it, but the odds are bad and a single solar flare would end it.”
Sharp grunted,
and then motioned for Tarn to help him stand. He gained his feet, sweat breaking out on his brow as he did so. Kira felt herself aching for him, knowing the agony he had to be enduring and the incredible willpower it must have taken for him to function that way. “Get some rest, Captain; I’ll figure something out for you by the time you’re ready.”
He stared at her a long moment. Kira steeled herself, knowing that she had to show him she was confident. She was confident, at least in the area of knowing that she had an idea. It was dangerous, but not as dangerous as trying to use the star’s gravity well. It was also probably a permanent solution, but one that she felt she could live with.
Kira stayed on the bridge, rerunning her calculations and rechecking her sensor readings. The planet was still eight days away, plenty of time for the rest of the crew to be back to feeling like human beings again.
Chapter 15
“You want to what!”
Kira had braced herself, but the volume and intensity coming from Sharp’s outraged question caused his voice to crack. She forced the wince off her face as she met his angry gaze. “Sir, we’ve been broadcasting for nine years now. We’ve got three days until we need to make a decision, and that would still put us at six days until we reach our destination because we’d be slowing down. Nine days to broadcast a new message, indicating where we are, what we’ve found, and…well, whatever else we’ve got left.”
“Why bother, there’ll be nothing left of us!”
“Captain, I’ve run every possible scenario I can come up with and a few suggested by others. This is the only one that has any chance of success.”
“We could bypass the system entirely and stay on the ship.”
“Aye, we could, but at our speed we’d almost certainly stay ahead of any rescuers that attempted to come after us. Sir, with all due respect, I don’t want to die marooned on the
Rented Mule
.”
Sharp’s eyes narrowed. He waited until Kira realized he was expecting her to go on. “So we rotate the ship and use the pusher to slow us down. Using the last of our reserves we can get to
.29C. That leaves us with only our thrusters, which will produce a lot more immediate thrust but will run out quicker. My simulations show those are best saved for once we enter the atmosphere to help us maneuver and slow us down. The planet has a lot of water so if we can use the atmosphere and our thrusters for breaking we can land in the water and have a reasonable chance of surviving.”
“Land? You mean crash,” Tarn muttered.
“Crash land,” Kira corrected. “The engines will be on line and the inertial suppressor as well. An impact like that will override it, but by diverting all of our power to it at the last second it shows a decent chance of not being smeared against the floor. That much power will require the overrides be thrown though, and the inertial suppressor will be destroyed by the overload.”
“What kind of chances?”
Kira felt her heart leap in her chest. By asking that question she knew he was considering it. “Better than one in three, sir. If the timing is right on everything.”
“Then what? The
Mule’s
not that kind of boat. This ship is rated at forty thousand tons, and we’re carrying another eight thousand in cargo. If we survive a splash-down then we’ll sit on the bottom and watch the water come pouring in.”
“Sir, the course I’ve plotted maximizes our thrusters to put us at an angle. We’ll definitely hit and hit hard, but we should come to a rest near a shore. Hopefully not too deep so we can get out. Maybe even try to modify one of the mining surveyors to help us get out of here and to shore.”
“You’re crazy,” Sharp growled.
“Yes,
sir,” Kira admitted with a nod. “Crazy and not ready to die, sir.”
“You got anything better?” Sharp turned, addressing the others that were gathered on the bridge. Nobody spoke, though Tarn was fidgeting. The Captain swore
and then shook his head. “I’ll think about it. Until then, come up with something better!”
Sharp left the bridge. Eric sent Jeff off to check on the engines. Tarn hunched over his station, ignoring the rest of them. Kira looked on until Eric let out a pent
-up breath and turned to her. “You really think this is going to work?”
She reached out from where she sat and took his hand in hers. “It’s this or we drift through space forever. The odds of us coming close to another system are long, and even worse that it happens before we run out of time.”
“We could go into a cold sleep again,” Eric said with a shudder.
Kira shook her head. “We could, but we’d need a few weeks of getting ourselves to full health or we probably wouldn’t survive it. Our food will only last so long.”
“The ship’s got recycling systems.”
Kira knew her sour expression conveyed her thoughts of eating anything recycled. Eric nodded in agreement. “Yeah, as if the powders aren’t bad enough some days. Okay, so what are our odds?”
“Depends on how the ship can handle the stress and how good our engineer is.” She smiled at him. “I think we’ve got the best engineer to be found outside of the Core worlds, so I’m feeling pretty good about it.”
Eric frowned. “Best engineer outside of the Rim worlds, maybe, but that’s because I may be one of the only ones dumb or unlucky enough to be out here.”
Kira squeezed his hand. “Stop that. I’m learning a lot about myself these days and it turns out I’m a lot tougher and a lot more capable than I ever thought I was. I know you are, too.”
Eric chuckled. “You’re a special case.”
She shrugged it off. “The computer gives us about a one in ten chance of survival.”
“Ten percent!” Eric hissed. They both turned to Tarn but he seemed to
o engrossed in whatever he was doing at his station to notice them. “You told the Captain—“
“One in ten is if the computer handles everything and we just enjoy the ride,” Kira said. “Autopilot on the way in and everything. With me flying and you controlling the power
, our odds are better.”
“From one in ten to one in three?” His expression showed his skepticism.
“Yes, the computer can’t override safety limits.”
Eric snorted. “For good reasons!”
“The
Mule’s
never going to fly again,” Kira said in an even lower voice. She glanced around, feeling as though she was talking about the ship behind its back. “We just need the hull to remain sealed, the thrusters to be operational until we’re out of fuel, and the inertial suppressor to work for one last kick. We can overload them when we need them to increase our odds. If it breaks them, oh well, we won’t be needing them anymore.”
Eric winced but said nothing in response. Finally he nodded,
and then glanced at Tarn again. “So we’ll be stranded on an undiscovered planet that your sensors indicate supports life. Is there any life already on it?”
Kira’s hopeful smile faded. “Some. I mean there’s oxygen, water, nitrogen, carbon, and other elements that result from living creatures. I can’t pick up any evidence of electronic emissions or man-made elements.”
“Sounds too good to be true.”
Kira nodded. “But it beats the alternative.”
Eric sighed. “Okay, guess it’s this or nothing. I’ll see about rigging up the necessary overrides so I can run them remotely, rather than being stuck in the engine control room.”
Kira shook her head. “We need the opposite.”
“The opposite?”
“Well, I assume. We need to all be in the safest place in the ship in case something happens in spite of all our plans.”
Eric snapped his fingers. “Brilliant!” he hissed. “If I reduce the coverage area of the inertial suppression field, I can increase the power of it far more effectively than covering the entire ship!”
Kira grinned and kissed his hand. “I think I can handle being stuck on a remote tropical world with you.”
“It’s tropical?”
Kira grinned. “Heat and moisture readings show tropical climates for most of it, with temperate zones near the poles. Just think of it as a vacation.”
Chapter 16
A herd of six creatures large enough to rout an elephant was startled into a stampede by a crackling thunder overhead. A flash lit the sky brighter even than the sun, beginning with red and yellow flames until a darker shape emerged from it, streaking towards the ground below. Smaller fires burst free from it, giving proof to the unstable nature of the alien object.
The largest piece slammed just off a recently abandoned shore, flash vaporizing the first water that came in direct contact with the superheated metal and sending the rest away in a surge that spread in all directions with the force of a tidal wave. Beating the tidal wave to the shore was the tremor as the
Rented Mule
slammed into the bedrock of the ocean.
Creatures throughout the nearby forest howled and screeched, unprepared for the sudden tremors that threatened their footing and trembled the trees. A moment later
, an unnatural quiet returned to the jungle. Birds had taken flight, but the animals that remained stared around in confusion. Some even dared to emerge from the edge of the jungle to the sandy beach and study the smoky trail through the sky that led to a growing wall of water. When the wave crested and broke against the beach, the uncomprehending creatures were swept away with the sand, water, and trees of the forest.