Arrival (8 page)

Mac grabbed the latch and pushed it over with ease, moving the hatch up into the LRV’s airlock. He shoved Tony in ahead of him, following him up and closing the hatch behind them.

Watching through the window in the inner hatch, Maria saw that they were inside the airlock with the outer hatch closed once again. She quickly pushed the pressurize button. Once more, they heard the hiss of pressurized air as the airlock below her re-pressurized. “They’re inside the airlock!” Maria announced.

“
Is the outer hatch secure?
” Frank asked, knowing they couldn’t separate unless the outer hatch was secure as well.

“
It’s secure! It’s secure!
” Mac yelled over the comms.

“
Hang on everyone!
” Frank replied. “
Separation in five seconds!
”

“Wait!” Maria yelled through the comm-system. “They’re still in the airlock!”

“
Ten seconds of fuel left!
” Lynn announced over the comm-set.

“Jesus!” Maria begged, “hurry up!” It took just as long to pressurize the airlock as it did to depressurize it. Finally, the yellow light turned green. She bent over and unlatched the inner hatch, swinging it open.

Mac pushed Tony up through the airlock. Tony’s hands had thermal burns and he was afraid to touch anything because of the pain.

Maria caught Tony as he floated up into the compartment, propelled by Mac from below. “Are you alright?”

“My hands, they’re burnt,” Tony reported, his voice calm despite his obvious pain.

“We’ll take care of it later,” she promised him. “Let’s get you strapped in.”

“That’s it! We’re out of fuel!” Lynn announced.

“Switching flight controls from Icarus to LRV,” Frank announced. “Disengaging mooring clamps!”

The ship lurched as the release clamps blew open under the LRV. Lynn fired the separation thrusters, giving them a gentle push away from the top of the Icarus. She peered out her forward window as the nose of the Icarus, now without any attitude control thrust, rapidly pitched down and away from them, and pulled into Tau Ceti Five’s atmosphere by the drag of her balloots. “Her nose is going down fast now!”

Maria buckled Tony’s restraints as the separation thrusters fired, causing her to shift backward and into Adia. Regaining control, she turned around and opened the first-aid box on the forward bulkhead next to the hatch and pulled out some burn pads.

“Get your gloves off,” she told Tony as she tore open the first packet. She placed the first burn pad over the palm of Tony’s left hand, wrapping it around his hand and securing it with plastic tape.

“What do I do if we have to decompress?” Tony asked as Maria applied the second dressing on his right hand.

“Rip these off and put your gloves back on,” Maria answered with a smile, “quickly.” She pulled his harness over his shoulders and buckled him in, tucking his gloves between his legs.

Without warning, Mac pushed Maria firmly down into her flight seat. “Get secure, Doc!” he ordered as he turned to check on his friend. “Hang tough, pal,” he winked at Tony.

Jack arrived at the satellite bay at the aft end of the corridor. Repeating the same process as before, he attached the battery from the comm-unit to power the satellite’s manual launch control pad. But instead of the control panel lighting up, it shorted out, sending small sparks shooting out of the panel.

“The Icarus’s tail is pitching up fast, Lynn!” Frank reported. He pressed his console to feed the image of the Icarus’s flight orientation into Lynn’s console display.

Lynn gasped in horror at the line drawings of the Icarus as her tail pitched up toward them. They were falling back, up and away from the Icarus, in a standard separation trajectory. But now, with the Icarus’s tail pitching up so rapidly, they would back right into her.

Frank activated the collision alarm. “Brace for collision!” he called through the comm-system.

Lynn moved the control stick to the left, rolling the LRV quickly to port as the tail of the Icarus passed under them with less than a meter between them. It felt good to finally have something reacting properly to her control stick inputs. “Hold on!” she cried out, as she pitched the LRV’s nose up and rolled back to starboard to get their shielded belly in front of them before they passed through the Icarus’s red-hot plasma wake.

Frank watched the sensor images of the Icarus as it began to break in half midship, the friction from the planet’s atmosphere proving to be too much for her without the protection of properly positioned balloots. “She’s breaking in half!” he screamed. “Get the hell out of there, Jack!”

Jack’s desire to come up with another way to release the multi-purpose satellite was interrupted when the ship lurched violently upward. His chest slammed into the overhead, and life-support status indicators on the inside of his helmet visor turned red, then disappeared. He fumbled at his chest pack, tapping the systems display button to repaint the indicators across the inside of his helmet visor, but nothing happened. Everything electrical in his suit was dead.

The ship continued to tumble violently. Jack could hear the screeching of twisted metal and the moaning of structural beams being torn apart.

Jack spun around clumsily and placed his feet firmly against the aft bulkhead behind him. He then pushed off with all his might, sending himself forward up the corridor, grabbing the handrail and pulling himself along, hand over hand, as everything around him threatened to come apart at any moment.

Will also felt the straining metal from inside the escape pod. Becoming impatient, he moved out of his seat and back to the hatch, poking his head out enough to see down the corridor. It was full of smoke, and dark as night. He looked for any sign of Jack’s head lamp but saw nothing.
Where are you, Jack?

Jack could feel his pulse racing, and his breathing picked up its pace inside. He couldn’t see a thing ahead of him through the smoke. The ship shook even more than before, and the corridor became slightly misshapen as the compartment was suddenly flooded with red light.
Decompression!

Will panicked, ducking back down inside the capsule, closing the hatch behind him. He was getting out of here, with or without Jack! He climbed back into his seat behind the control console. He knew the capsule could fly itself if necessary.
All I have to do is punch the biggest button on the center console
, he thought.

The slow, gentle suction of the decompression helped Jack along as he did his best to control his thoughts. If the compartment suffered explosive decompression, the strobe lights would flash. If that happened, Jack would have to keep from being sucked forward and out into space. Jack closed his visor and locked it in place.

The sounds of his ship’s destruction disappeared as his faceplate closed, and now, Jack was enveloped by the sounds within his own helmet. Without the comforting whirring of the oxygen circulation fans, the sound of his breathing was nearly deafening. He had never felt more alone in his life. If the ship would only hold together for another minute, he could reach the escape pod and abandon ship. Jack prayed that the pod would still be there, with Will waiting inside it.

I can’t do it
, Will thought to himself desperately. As much as he wanted to live, he couldn’t leave Jack behind to die. In an instant, he thought about his children. He thought about the new life they would start a year from now on the new world, the world that his ancestors had given up so much to reach. He thought about his wife, and their last moments together the morning he had departed. He remembered the promises he had made to her.
Stay safe, my love, promise me you’ll stay safe and we’ll be together again
. It was as if she were standing next to him, speaking those same words at that very moment.

“Forgive me, Abby.” Will unbuckled his harness and maneuvered himself back to the hatch on the side of the capsule. He opened the hatch and poked his head out again.

The compartment was red. Suddenly the strobe lights began to flash. Will quickly attached his carabiner to the hook on the inside of the hatch, securing himself against the forces of sudden decompression. He peered out into the corridor, straining to see through the smoke, hoping to see some glimpse of Jack.
Is he still alive? Should I close up and go?

Then it happened. A terrible moan, a screech, and then the sound of tearing metal to his right. And a sudden
whoosh
of air as the midship section pulled away from the aft section of the Icarus, leaving a huge open wound at the end of the bay, just across from the escape pod. Everything came flying toward him, sucked forward along with the last of the massive compartment’s atmosphere. Bits of debris, railing, cables, billowing clouds of smoke…
And Jack!

“Jack!” Will cried out. But without his comm-set, his voice never left the confines of his helmet. Will instinctively reached out for Jack as he came tumbling down the corridor toward him, surrounded by the debris of the collapsing Icarus.

Jack saw Will out of the corner of his eye as he tumbled down the corridor toward him. As he flailed, Jack managed to push off the ceiling with his left foot, just enough to change his course slightly, causing him to collide with the side of the escape pod and bounce off toward the gaping hole to his left.

Will reached out and grabbed Jack’s hand as he passed by him. Jack felt heavy. Will reached out and grabbed him with his other hand and pulled with every ounce of strength he had left. But as hard as he tried, he just wasn’t strong enough to pull him inside the pod against the suction of sudden decompression.
Where the hell is that super human strength that people are supposed to get in a crisis?
Will thought angrily. He continued to pull as Jack dangled at arm’s length.
Christ, don’t let it end like this!

Frank watched the Icarus’s telemetry feed as they approached her plasma wake. She was breaking apart. Her bow, dipping down deep into the plasma wake, had snapped off completely, instantly burning up in the atmosphere. The midship section followed, tearing away from the aft section as she twisted up and over. Secondary explosions could be seen in the aft section as various systems failed, fuel cells exploded and oxygen tanks burst.
Jesus, Jack, get out of there, please!
He watched the telemetry, paying close attention to the emergency escape pod, hoping that at any moment, he would see it jettison away from the doomed Icarus to safety.

The LRV lurched violently as they entered the Icarus’s plasma wake. Frank held on tight as he watched the Icarus break apart. He watched for the escape pod to jettison after losing contact with the Icarus. But it never did. No escape pod, no Will, and no Jack.

CHAPTER THREE

The LRV broke through the plasma wake just as secondary explosions ripped the Icarus to pieces, all of them destined to burn up in the atmosphere of Tau Ceti Five. Lynn’s hands were full now that the LRV was no longer hidden in the wake of the Icarus. Now they were hitting the atmosphere themselves, and much faster than in the simulations. It was all she could do to keep their nose up and their heat-shielded belly between them and the atmosphere. Still, she couldn’t help but ask. “Frank?”

“No,” Frank answered solemnly, “no sign of them.”

Those in the passenger corridor could see the breakup of the Icarus as well.

“Oh my God,” Maria exclaimed, as the LRV shook violently.

“Shit, you don’t think…” Mac couldn’t bring himself to finish his sentence.

“Frank, is it too late to abort and take another lap around?” Lynn queried.

“I’m not sure.” As brilliant as Frank was, he really wasn’t sure. Jack was the expert on orbital mechanics. “Doesn’t matter anyway,” he continued. “I don’t think we’d hold together that long. I’m losing systems right and left back here.”

“Why?”

“I’m not sure, but I don’t think the control umbilical released correctly. I think it was ripped out of us when we separated. Probably yanked some wires out and short-circuited a few systems in the process. I just don’t know…”

“How bad is it?” she interrupted. She needed to know if they could land.

“We’ve still got flight controls and propulsion, but we’ve lost a lot of status sensors on things like landing gear, hull temp…” Frank paused as his eyes danced across his display panel, trying to assess the damage. “It’s like every sensor along our bottom side has been shorted out.”

“Will we have landing gear?”

“We should. Those power systems are all good, but I won’t be able to tell you if the gear is down and locked. I won’t even be able to tell you if the gear doors have opened.”

“Great,” Lynn muttered dryly.

“But that’s not the worst of it,” Frank added. “I’ve lost all sensors for the life-support systems as well. I can’t even tell you how much longer we’ll have cabin pressure.”

“Do you have any good news?”

“Yeah, we’re still here to worry about it.”

Lynn didn’t laugh. This was going to be her second command decision, and it was just as difficult as the first one. They were coming in fast, too fast for their heat shields to protect them. Lynn wanted desperately to abort planet-fall and take at least one more lap around Tau Ceti Five, and maybe use their main engines to slow them down before they tried again. But if she used their fuel to decelerate and de-orbit naturally, they might run out of fuel before touchdown. The last thing she wanted to try was a dead-stick landing on an alien planet. And as Frank had pointed out, they probably did not have enough life-support to survive another lap around the planet.

Since they were already making planet-fall, there really weren’t any options. It was now or never. “I guess we’re going in,” Lynn decided.

Frank was already preparing for descent. He began transferring his displays and controls to Jack’s station to Lynn’s left. When he finished, he unfastened his harness and struggled to shift forward, as the LRV bounced violently through the turbulent upper atmosphere.

“What the hell are you doing?” Lynn asked, as Frank nearly fell into Jack’s seat beside her.

“You’re gonna need some help up here if you want to land this busted-up ship,” he explained as he struggled to fasten his shoulder harness.

“And I need you back there, too!” Lynn exclaimed.

“Don’t worry. I slaved most of my stuff up here.”

“Most?”

“Most everything that’s still working.”

Lynn chose not to argue with him. He wasn’t a pilot, but he could help keep an eye on the flight data for her, and it was comforting to have someone in the seat next to her. Even if it wasn’t Jack.

“Hang on tight, everyone,” Frank announced over the comm-set. “It’s going to be a rough ride down.”

“Frank?” Tony asked through his comm-set, “Did they…”

“
It doesn’t look that way,
” Frank’s voice responded. There was a long pause. “
Hook up your butt-packs in case we have to bail out,
” Frank continued. Then, after another moment of silence, he added, “
Hang on back there, we’re not outta the woods yet.
”

Tony fastened his harness to the parachute pack underneath him. One yank of the mode handle on his left strap would release the harness from its attachments to his flight seat and instantly convert it into a parachute harness.

He looked up at the flight status display, but couldn’t make sense of anything. The majority of the symbols were flashing, indicating that they were expecting to receive updated data sets that never came. Many of the symbols had three dotted lines where numbers were supposed to be. All the flight data seemed to be there, but Tony wondered if they were malfunctioning as well. They couldn’t possibly be coming in that fast. He wasn’t a pilot, but he could tell they weren’t on a proper entry trajectory. They were on a collision course.

They continued to plunge through the steadily thickening atmosphere of Tau Ceti Five. They had no clue whether their heat shields would hold out or not. Lynn tried to balance between trajectory and temperature, keeping their angle of attack steep enough so they wouldn’t bounce off the atmosphere and out into deep space, yet shallow enough that their heat shields didn’t melt. Of course, she could only guess heat shield temperatures, since those sensors weren’t working either. Luckily, the temperature sensors on the top side of the hull were working, and she knew the projected temperature differences between them and the heat shields along the LRV’s underside. She just hoped that Jack had been right when he said that designers were always conservative when setting maximum performance specifications.

Finally, having slowed down to a respectable fifteen times the speed of sound, the orange-red plasma wake subsided and the outer hull temperature began to fall.

“Atmospheric entry complete,” Frank announced with a sigh of relief. “Standby for transition to atmospheric flight mode.”

The LRV was now a falling rock, with a little pitch, yaw, and roll control to make it interesting. The RCS and OMS engines they had used in space could do little to provide lift in an atmospheric environment.

Frank activated the atmospheric engines. Located on either side of the LRV at the fore and aft ends of the ship, these powerful jet turbines would provide enormous amounts of jet thrust through their four, variable-vector exhaust ports. This gave the LRV vertical takeoff and landing capabilities, which was important since they were unlikely to find a runway waiting for them.

“Deploying turbines,” Frank announced. The two aft turbines deployed first. Since they were both larger and more powerful than the two forward turbines, they took a little longer to spin up to full power. As soon as Frank received two green lights indicating that the aft turbines were fully deployed and locked into place, he deployed the two forward turbines. Although he could not hear the aft turbines due to their position at the rear of the ship, Frank could see from his display that they were spinning up.

Another green indicator light popped on, but only one. The port forward turbine light stayed red.

“Shit! Front port turbine is stuck!” Frank exclaimed as he strained to look back and left out his side window.

“Can you see it? Is it deployed?” Lynn asked, hoping it was only a sensor malfunction.

“It looks like it’s stuck about one third of the way open,” Frank detailed as he turned back to his console and tried to recycle the deployment motors on the stuck turbine. “Damn! I can’t get it to recycle and retry! Son of a bitch is stuck good!”

“That, or the motor’s burnt out,” Lynn suggested.

“Why not?” Frank cried in desperation. “Nothing else around here is working!”

“Tell everyone to hang on back there,” Lynn warned, “I’ve got an idea.”

“
Hang on tight, people.
” Frank’s voice called over their helmet comms.
“
It’s gonna get hairy for a moment.
”

Everyone in the passenger corridor began to cinch down their harnesses, even though there wasn’t much room left to tighten them. It was noisy inside their compartment, not at all what they were accustomed to in the vacuum of space. They could hear the air rushing past the hull outside, whistling as it rushed over various irregularities on the surface of their hull. They could hear the whine of the turbines as the air slammed into their intakes and forced them to spin.

But something was wrong. Tony reached out with his right hand and placed his burnt palm against the curved bulkhead that wrapped around the starboard forward turbine. It was vibrating. Despite the pain in his hand, he tapped it with his knuckles. The sound was resonant, empty now that its cargo had been deployed into the slipstream. He reached out with his left hand in the same way, but the sensation was different. The vibration was minute in comparison, and it made a dull thud when he tapped it. For a moment, he was confused.

The LRV rolled sharply to the left without warning… One full rotation, stopping level again with a decisive snap. It startled Tony, not to mention the others, several screaming in surprise. Now he understood what was wrong. But before he could explain it to his stunned crewmates, the ship rolled again.

“It’s still stuck!” Frank exclaimed. “Just keep rolling until it pops out!”

“Or until I pass out,” Lynn said to herself. She jerked the stick hard to the left again, this time holding it there. The LRV rolled rapidly in succession, over and over again. The flight deck was well above the LRV’s aerodynamic longitudinal centerline, but the turbines were not. Lynn felt the blood rushing to her head, forced by the same centrifugal force that she was hoping would push the stuck turbine to fully deploy.

Frank tried to watch the turbine through his window for as long as he could, but it was too uncomfortable with the ship rolling so quickly. He turned his head forward and fixed his gaze on that last red indicator light, waiting for it to turn green. His head felt like it was about to explode.

Lynn began to get light-headed, and her vision blurred. In a few more seconds she would lose her ability to concentrate, become disoriented, and eventually suffer ruptured blood vessels in her eyes and face due to increased arterial pressure in her head.

“Green light!” Frank finally announced.

Lynn yanked the stick back to the right, completing the violent roll. They ended on their starboard side, and Lynn let the LRV settle back into an upright position before she pushed the nose down slightly.

Frank knew the next step and didn’t wait for her to tell him what to do. Opening the fuel flow valves and activating the turbine control systems, he gave all four engines the little sparks they needed to come to life. In only a few seconds, the thunderous roar of jet thrust replaced the whine of the spinning turbines.

Lynn brought the throttles up slowly after Frank announced that all four turbines were at normal operating speeds. And at that moment, the LRV changed from a falling rock into a powerful aircraft.

“
How’s everyone doing back there?
” Frank asked over the comms.

“A few bloodshot eyes, but other than that, we’re okay, I guess,” Tony answered weakly. “But let’s not make a habit of that, alright?”

Maria was shaking Adia by the shoulders to revive her. “Adia? Adia? Can you hear me?”

“Damn, that was something else!” Mac cheered. “I thought my head was gonna explode!”

Suddenly, Sara lurched forward. Laura unbuckled her harness and turned around just in time to witness Sara vomiting in her own helmet, covering her face shield with emesis.

“Oh my God,” Laura exclaimed as she reached over to help Sara.

“What?” Mac queried.

“Help me get her helmet off, she’s puking!”

Mac unfastened his harness and reached forward over the back of Sara’s seat. Unplugging the comm-line from her helmet, he lifted it up and off after Laura unlocked the retaining ring at the front of the collar. Chunks of vomit spilled out of her helmet across her head, face and chest, filling the cramped compartment with a foul stench.

“Oh, man. That’s
got
to suck.”

“Shut up and get me a towel or something!” Laura scolded as she wiped Sara’s face.

“She’s handling pretty well…considering,” Lynn reported, pleased with the way the LRV felt in her hands now that it was flying under its own power.

“All flight systems seem to be holding together so far,” Frank confirmed, scanning his displays carefully. “But I’ll have to run a few diagnostics to be sure.”

“First things first. Call up our landing site on the nav-com. I’m gonna need a heading.”

A few moments later, Frank’s face turned sour. “Well, I’ve got good news and bad news.”

“Frank!”

“Sorry. We’re already past the tertiary site. We can make the secondary if we come hard to port, but it’ll be a stretch.”

“What about the primary site?”

“No way in hell,” Frank refused.

“How far past the tertiary site are we?”

Frank glanced down at his screen, then made a quick calculation in his head. “We can make it if you come about in the next thirty seconds. But that’ll be a stretch as well.”

Lynn weighed her options quickly. “Load the coordinates into the auto-nav system, we’re coming about.”

“Are you sure?” Frank asked. “The second site is an easier approach.”

“Maybe, but the cargo pods are on their way to the tertiary site, and we need those pods.”

“We could pick them up later with the ship.”

“Assuming we get down in one piece.”

“Good point,” Frank admitted as Lynn brought the LRV around one hundred and eighty degrees. “Coordinates entered, trajectories and flight paths coming up now.”

“How much fuel will we have left on approach?”

“How are you at dead-stick landings?” Frank replied without missing a beat.

Lynn looked at him in horror. “You’re kidding, right?”

“Okay, maybe a little fuel. After all, we
will
have a pretty good tailwind.”

“Wind? What wind?”

“Oh, did I forget to mention that there’s a cold front over the tertiary site?”

“Jeez, Adia, you scared the hell out of us,” Tony exclaimed. He was out of his seat, kneeling in front of her, his bandaged hand holding hers to offer comfort. He struggled to keep his balance as the LRV bounced about.

Maria had taken Adia’s helmet off, as well as her own. “Well, you’ve got a few ruptured capillaries in your sclera, but that should clear up in a few days,” Maria explained as she checked Adia’s eyes. “I’ll take a closer look after we land.”

“Jesus, what did you have for lunch, Sara?” Mac asked as Laura handed him the vomit-soaked towel to dispose.