Chosen (HMCS Borealis Book 2) (36 page)

"Yeah," she said, shifting herself in the seat.
 
With the whirr of a motor, the pilot's chair turned back to face the controls.
 
As soon as it stopped, there was a jolt and a yelp from Heather as the seat harness tightened, forcing her upright, back against the seat.
 
"Whoa," she said, "I'm awake now.
 
This chair is evil."
 
He saw her scanning the console in front of her.
 
"So which planet are we going to land on?"

He knew the information by heart.
 
There had been plenty of time to study the sparse data in the ship's navigation system.
 
It called itself a 'planetary database', but that was generous in the extreme.
 
The system they approached was known as 'Survey Twelve India'.
 
He expected his own people had once given it a different, equally romantic name, millennia ago.

There was one world in the so-called 'habitable zone', where water could be found in liquid state on the surface.
 
Not too hot, not too cold.
 
According to the database, the atmosphere was safe to breathe, and thus suitable for refreshing a ship's air supply.
 
Yet it was specifically listed as 'not inhabitable', which he didn't understand.
 
If it had safe air and liquid water, why would it be uninhabitable?
 
"The second one," he said.
 
"We want to land on the second one."

"Got it," said Heather.
 
She was shaking her head and clenching her hands, probably trying to wake herself up enough to land the ship.
 

He held onto the back of the pilot's seat, reaching forward to tug at the harnesses.
 
"You strapped in tight?" he asked.

"Yeah, very much," said Heather, slowly turning her head to look at the straps.
 
"Where the seat goes, I go."
 
She craned her neck, trying to see him.
 
"What about you?"

He knew she'd ask, and he knew he didn't have a good answer.
 
It was a one-person craft, after all; it wasn't intended to take passengers.
 
Anything more than a gentle bump, and he might become a projectile inside the ship.

"Right here," he said, hoping he sounded confident.
 
Behind the pilot's seat, on the wall where he'd been leaning, were two folding shelves for small cargo containers.
 
If he curled himself in a ball, he might fit on one of them.
 
The fronts of the shelves had some fabric cargo netting, intended to keep containers from shifting.
 
"If I tangle myself in the netting," he said hopefully, "I should be fine."

"You sure?"

He couldn't keep it up.
 
"No," he admitted.
 
"But it's the best there is."

"Elan?"
 
Now he could hear the worry in her voice.
 
"Come here.
 
Let me see you."

Elan put one hand on the chair's headrest, and the other high on the cockpit window as he leaned forward around Heather's side.
 

The chair had pulled its straps tight, holding her fast against the seat.
 
"I can barely move," she said, twisting her head, looking for him.
 
Her face and hair were dirty, and she still wore the same battered jacket and clothes they'd acquired on the station.
 
"Hey," said Elan.

"Hey, yourself."
 
She managed a smile.
 
"A month ago, my life was pretty dull.
 
Now look at me.
 
I gotta land a stolen shuttle on an alien world, or else me and my alien boyfriend — and our child — are going to die."
 
She had a lopsided grin on her face.
 
"Not bad, huh?"

He wasn't sure what to make of that.
 
Her face had somehow become unreadable.
 
"Regrets?" he asked.

"Hell, yes," she said without hesitation.
 
"I should've met you sooner."
 
Her grin turned wistful.
 
"And we should've made out more."

Elan laughed in spite of himself.
 
A month ago, he would've said his life was dull, too.
 
Worse than dull.
 
Everything had been scripted, routine, and safe.
 
And now… he leaned forward, putting one hand on Heather's face, and his lips against hers.
 
She kissed him back, desperation behind the intense human heat of her lips.

With a flash of light and a winding down of the ship's engines, they emerged from FTL travel.
 
The right side of the cockpit windows was filled by a blue-white wall of furious light, its radiance flooding the small ship's interior.
 
"Ack," said Heather, pulling away from him.
 
"Star.
 
So where's the second planet?"

Elan leaned back against the wall of the cockpit, as Heather eased the stick to one side and the ship rotated away from the star.
 
"Oh my god," she breathed.

Like a giant eyeball in space, the planet stared at the star behind them.
 
A circular blue ocean was at its centre, blue rivers running toward it like veins.
 
White clouds swirled away from the ocean, stretching across barren brown ground toward the horizon.
 
A ring of ice rimmed the planet, hints of frozen storms at its edges.

"Oh," said Elan.
 
"It's tidally locked.
 
Same side always facing the star.
 
One side an eternal furnace, the other side eternally frozen."

Heather shook her head.
 
"That's the creepiest thing I've even seen.
 
So where do we land?
 
On the day side?"

"No," said Elan.
 
"I don't think so.
 
Look at those storms.
 
The ocean is constantly boiling off, the clouds headed to the dusk, where they rain down and the water flows back.
 
Somewhere at the edge, I think."
 
He turned his attention back to the display, one hand grasping a rail as the other began to poke at the screen.
 
There must be a way to coax more information out of the computer, he thought.
 
Surface temperatures, dangerous areas.
 
"I bet the winds will be crazy.
 
Probably blowing away from the ocean at higher altitude—"

"Yeah," said Heather, gently steering toward the planet.
 
"And blowing back into the eye farther down.
 
This is going to suck."

"I know," he said, as a red warning stripe appeared on the display.
 
He froze when he saw it, and his stomach turned to lead.
 
"By the Divines," he breathed, his voice barely a whisper.
 
"It's that ship.
 
The same one that—"

Another warning appeared, this one with a familiar countdown timer.
 
"They've fired a missile again, Heather."

Last time, when the other ship had fired on them, Heather had been a nervous bundle of panic.
 
But not now, he noticed.
 
She sighed, and the sound of it unsettled him.
 
"I'm sorry, Elan.
 
I'm just…"

He felt it, too: a the feeling of unexpected calm.
 
Even panic eluded him, despite the increasingly shrill bleating from the ship's computer.
 
Elan calmly folded down the cargo shelves and climbed into the middle one.
 
"Do what you can, Heather.
 
I trust you."
 
He curled himself up, feeding his arms and legs through the gaps in the cargo net.

Heather's voice was quiet against the alarms, but he heard her words clearly:
 
"I love you, Elan."

His heart jumped into his throat.
 
Elan realised he'd never told her how he felt; he'd never said the words out loud.
 
He wished there had been more chances for them, more time.
 
"I love you too, Heather."
 

The cockpit was suffused with an angry red glow.
 
Quivering licks of fire surrounded the ship as it started to enter the planet's atmosphere.
 
Elan found himself watching the beautiful flames writhing around the cockpit windows.
 
Thoughts fell away from his mind one by one, leaving him feeling at peace in a way he'd never known before.
 
When the ship suddenly lurched, he didn't feel scared.
 
The cacophony of warning sounds was muffled by a deafening roar, as the flames outside the window billowed and twisted as the craft began to tumble.
 
Beyond, he could see the brownish mass of the planet's barren continent, its rivers headed toward a boiling sea, then the star soared into view, before leaving again as they rolled toward the planet once more.

The ship rocked and shook violently, as the dark side of the planet loomed closer and closer.
 
They tumbled toward the frozen land of shadow; the only movement he could focus on was Heather's right hand, twisting the stick from side to side as her hair swept about her head.
 
He couldn't tell if she still had control, but she hadn't given in.
 
She hadn't surrendered, not even as the ship spun like a top, descending closer to the planet's permanent land of dusk.

The ramp at the rear of the ship popped open and was promptly wrenched away.
 
A pounding fist of air shoved its way into the interior.
 
Elan took a breath of frigid air, then another, and it all came into focus for him.
 
The ground rushing up towards them, the howling of the wind.
 
Panic immediately rose in his stomach.

On the first bounce, which he barely felt, the far wall of the ship caved in, its display shattering and spraying plastic debris everywhere.
 

On the second bounce, the rear of the ship was shoved in.
 
The cargo net tore and he was violently thrown from the shelf.
 
A spray of icy water splashed the cockpit from below, as a deafening blast of icy air came in from above.
 
His last thought was of home.
 
He dreamt about showing Heather the beauty of a Palani winter.

"Six and a half hours," said Dillon, chomping on his pen.
 
"They should have been here by now."

He saw the Chief nod, but she didn't look up from the supervisory console.
 
Once they'd started the trip to planet Delta, Dillon had retired to his cabin for a few hours of rest.
 
The trip would only take the
Borealis
two hours, but it would take six for a standard
Juliett
-class ship.
 
An hour before the
Juliett
was due to arrive, he'd got back up, had breakfast in the wardroom, then sent Tremblay and the XO to their bunks.

The Chief, of course, had remained on duty the entire time.
 
She claimed that running for days without sleep was a special skill taught to new ships' chiefs.
 
Maybe so, but he knew caffeine also had something to do with it.
 
She consumed more coffee than anyone else on the ship, which was saying something.
 
He thought of his friend Sap, the red-skinned Dosh who had taken such an unexpected liking to it.
 
Who would've guessed that coffee was dangerously addictive to Dosh?
 
It wasn't as bad as Jaljal brandy, that caused immediate liver failure in humans, but still, these little cultural minefields kept coming along and complicating relations between races.
 
Like a Palani prophet getting a human girl pregnant.
 
He shook his head.
 
Goddamn it, what a mess it had all become.

"Captain," said the Chief, immediately to his right.
 
He hadn't heard her approach, and it startled him.
 
He deliberately paused a moment, letting the adrenalin drain from his system, before casually turning his head toward her.

She had that damned smirk on her face again.
 
"Got you, didn't I, sir?" she said, just loud enough for him to hear.

"Stop that," he said, a grin cracking his face.
 
"What's up?"

"Still no sign.
 
Of course, if they landed on an outer planet, it would take time for us to see it."

"I know," breathed Dillon, studying the wide display that floated in front of the bridge windows.
 
Seven dots orbiting the central star, each in perfectly circular orbits save the one rebellious ellipse.
 
"We've already been to all the planets twice.
 
Listened at each of them, scanned for anything on the surface, or any energy discharges."
 
He glanced back at the Chief, tapping the pen between his molars.
 
"God
damn
it, Chief.
 
We're at the wrong planet.
 
Fifty-fifty chance, and we screwed it."
 
He shook his head.
 
"Fuck."

"Do we head to the other system now?"

Grabbing the pen from his mouth, he jabbed it toward the display at the front of the bridge.
 
"If they moved at a
Juliett
's normal speed, they arrived at Twelve-India half an hour ago.
 
If we leave now, at best we'd be there in, what?"