Desert Stars (35 page)

“‘
Chelle?
‘Chelle!”

“
It’s no use,” yelled
Mark. “We’re in the middle of the battle—switch off the comm dish
before it fries!”

Silent explosions flared all around
them, some distant, some disturbingly close. The lights on the
bridge dimmed and flickered, while the roar of the static was so
loud that Jalil could barely think.

Lars shut it off and turned to face
them. “At least they know we’re here,” he said. “If they’re already
in the air, we still have a chance.”

“
But they don’t have our
trajectory,” said Mark. “Without the data, they could be hundreds
of kilometers off course.”

“
That’s just the risk
we’ll have to take.”

Jalil cowered in his chair, his whole
body shaking as he broke out in a cold sweat. The battle, the
explosions—he’d seen this terrible scene before. This was how his
parents had died—how he had nearly died. How they might die right
now—

Pull yourself out of
it!
he told himself. With some effort, he
took a deep breath and recomposed himself.

“
We’ll be coming around in
ten minutes,” said Lars. “We should have line of sight by then. If
‘Chelle and Nash are wise, they’ll stay in the upper atmosphere
until we connect. It will make it easier for them to change their
course.”

“
Assuming they’re flying
roughly parallel to us,” said Mark. “Even then, it’s a shot in the
dark. To match our speed and position, and do it
before—”

“
They’ll do it,” said
Lars. “I know they will.”

Seconds turned to minutes, and the
explosions slowly diminished behind them. The time passed in a
tense, almost apocalyptic silence. Jalil didn’t know what was
happening, but he could feel the danger like the threat of a coming
sandstorm.

Slowly, an arc of reddish orange light
ringed the arc of the planet. In less than a minute, the brilliant
orb of the sun rose above the horizon, tinting the window glass
until nothing else was visible. It traced a line up to the ceiling,
passing overhead as the window cleared. The reddish-orange circle
turned into a rapidly expanding crescent of blue and green as they
passed from night into day.

“
Nearing line of sight,”
said Lars. “Acquiring signal…”

Instead of static, a low beeping noise
sounded from Lars’s computer. Several previously blank monitors
switched on.

“
Got it!”

“
Hello? Hello?” came
Michelle’s voice, loud and clear.

“‘
Chelle!” said Lars. “Are
you in the air?”

“
We are. What’s going on?
The last we heard—”

“
There’s no time—we’re
transmitting our orbital data right now. Can you get to
us?”

Silence. Jalil glanced over at Mark,
who was frowning and checking a monitor on the side of his
station.

“
I think so,” said
Michelle.

“
We’ve got to move,” said
Mark. “Hameji warships are jumping into our sector.”

For a few moments, no one said
anything. Jalil glanced back and forth, trying to read the
situation.

“
We’ll have to shut down,”
said Lars. “Make us look like a derelict. No transmissions, no
orbital corrections—nothing.”

“
But how are we going to
make the rendezvous?” asked Michelle. The fear in her voice was
evident, even through the static.

“
Sight,” said Lars. “And
really,
really
good calculations.”

“
But—”

“
He’s right,” said Mark,
forestalling any further discussion. “Lars, power down everything
but the jump drive.”

“
Everything?”

“
Everything. With luck,
they’ll think we’re just a chunk of space debris from the
battle.”

Lars nodded grimly and began hitting a
series of buttons on his panel. The computers switched off,
followed by the ventilators and lights. Jalil felt his stomach flip
and realized that the gravity was off as well.

“
Everything’s off,” said
Lars. “All computers except piloting are on standby mode. All
controls are manual.”

Jalil looked out the window at the
deceptively peaceful planet below. Angelic white clouds drifted
over vast swaths of green land, the small black domes interspersed
naturally among the various landforms. If it weren’t for the events
of the last twenty minutes, he would have guessed that everything
was normal.

As the world passed peacefully beneath
them, Jalil became aware of the all encompassing silence on board
the ship. Even in the empty desert, there had always been the
whistling of the wind or the quiet shifting of the sand. With all
of the ship’s systems shut down, he felt as if they were locked in
a tomb, about to fall to their deaths and burn up in the
atmosphere.

In the name of Allah, the
Merciful, the Compassionate,
he
prayed.
Please, Lord, have mercy on
us.

The nerve-wracking seconds ticked
away, gradually turning into minutes. Jalil kept his eyes on the
horizon, watching out the viewport as if his life depended on it.
Far in the distance, he occasionally saw small flashes—little blips
of light. Those, he knew by now, were Hameji starships jumping into
orbit. Any second, one could arrive at their position—and then
what? Jalil didn’t know, but he knew it would be bad, very
bad.

As they watched, an enormous ship
jumped into position off to port. It was shaped like a long red
tube—or perhaps a giant cannon—with three massive engines clustered
around the stern. With its nose pointed straight down, the ship
looked as if it were about to dive into the planet.

“
What is that?” Lars
asked, speaking to no one in particular as they drifted past. “Is
it—oh no. Stars, no!”

“
What?” asked Jalil. He
leaned forward to get a better look.

As he watched, the ship’s
engines flared, and it began to accelerate towards the cloudy skies
below. Before it could fall through the atmosphere, however,
something pushed it back—hard. A spinning piece of gray space rock
shot out of the end like a slow-moving bullet, heading straight for
the planet. In a matter of seconds, the rock became a fiery comet
and slammed into the surface. The soundless collision sent a shock
wave rippling through the atmosphere, followed by an enormous plume
of black and gray. Cracks of fire spread out
like
living tendrils across the
surface, but were soon obscured by a fast growing wall of ash and
debris.

“
What’s going on?” asked
Jalil.

Lars coughed and collapsed on the
floor, clutching his stomach. Mark got up from his seat and knelt
down beside his son.

“
The—the Hameji—just like
Tajjur—”

“
What’s going on?” Jalil
asked again. A growing sense of nausea clawed at him.

“
Those are mass
accelerators,” Mark said, his face grim. “The Hameji use them to
slag the worlds they conquer. Before the end of the day, everyone
on that planet—”

“
Will be dead,” Lars
moaned. He rose to his feet and leaned heavily on his father,
coughing.

“
Dead?” said Jalil, chills
running down his back. “You mean, the whole planet—”

“
Will be smashed into
oblivion.”

“
Hang in there,” said his
father. “Easy does it, easy does it. ‘Chelle and Nash made it out
in time. We can do this, son—hang in there!”

“
I’ll be fine,” said Lars.
“Just… just give me a second.”

Jalil stared at the monstrous Hameji
ship as they slowly orbited by. As he watched, it lurched and fired
again, sending another rock hurtling to the surface. The plume of
gray-black debris from the impact mingled with that of the first,
tapering into a teardrop shape as it hit the upper
atmosphere.

This is sickening,
Jalil thought to himself.
What kind of monsters would murder an entire
world?

A few moments later, he saw something
just beneath the horizon. A slight glimmer, like a fragment of
metal glistening in the sunlight. It was a spaceship, climbing up
from the lower reaches of the atmosphere.

“
There’s something down
there,” he said. “It looks like a shuttle.”

“
What?” said Mark.
“Where?”

“
There,” said Jalil,
pointing.

Mark and Lars both peered forward to
get a better look. It took them a second, but when they saw it,
they both let out a cheer.

“
Yes!” said Lars. “I knew
that they could do it!”

“
Pull up the shortwave,”
said Mark, hurrying to his seat. Soon, the bridge was filled with
static.

“‘
Chelle? Nash? Is that
you?”

“
It’s us,” came Michelle’s
voice over the crackle of the radio. “Let’s dock and get the hell
out of here.”

At that moment, Jalil noticed a brief
flash off to their starboard side. It was a ship jumping in, but
much closer than any of the others. As he squinted to get a better
look, something glimmered in the sunlight—

His stomach instantly fell out from
under him. “The Hameji,” he said. “I think they’re
here.”

“
What?” cried Lars. “Not
now; they can’t be—”

“
Power up all systems and
strap yourselves in,” said Mark.

For a moment, Lars looked as if he
would say something, but instead he turned to his control board and
began hitting buttons. The screens and instruments instantly came
to life, while the lights blinked on and the gravity slowly
returned.

“
Give me a direct angle
on
Bridgette One,
” said Mark. “Collision course.”

“
Collision?
But—”

“
The jump drive creates a
field that extends for one meter from anything touching the ship.
If we time our impact right, we can jump out with ‘Chelle and Nash
before the Hameji get to us.”

Lars bit his lip and turned to his
computer. A moment later, the view out the window spun, and a
muffled roar came from the back of the ship. Jalil gripped the
bottom of his seat with both hands and hung on for dear
life.

“
Did you hear that,
‘Chelle?” Mark spoke into the shortwave. “We’re coming in to make
physical contact. Try to match our velocity as close as you can so
we don’t just smash into you.”

“
Copy, Dad,” said
Michelle. “It’s just—oh shit, they’re launching fighter
drones!”

“
Hang in there, ‘Chelle.
Lars, how are we looking?”

“
Fifteen hundred meters
and closing fast. At this rate, collision in… twenty-three
seconds.”

As if in answer, the lights turned red
and an alarm began to blare. Jalil reached up to cover his ears,
grabbing his chair again as a jolt threw him against his seat
restraints.

“
Get ready to activate the
jump drives manually,” said Mark. “Ready?”

Lars flipped open a compartment and
put his index finger on a switch inside. “Ready,” he
said.

Jalil closed his eyes and tried to
ignore the blaring alarms. He was sweating again, as the flashbacks
returned in full force. His father, shouting orders as the crew
dashed everywhere. His mother, grabbing him in the midst of the
chaos and slipping the pendant around his neck. The scream of the
wind as the air was sucked out into space, the darkness of the
chute, falling, falling—

He reached for the pendant
with his sweaty hands and fingered it through his shirt.
Lord of Earth,
he prayed
silently.
Please, save us.

“
Ten seconds,” said Lars.
“They’re accelerating—matching velocity. Hang on!”

An explosion rocked the ship,
reverberating through the walls. The taste of vomit filled Jalil’s
mouth, and he suppressed the urge to scream. In a few moments, the
awful sucking noise would come, but this time, his mother wouldn’t
be here to save him.

“
Hold!” shouted
Mark.

Something on the bridge shorted,
giving off the acrid smell of an electrical fire. Jalil glanced
over and saw smoke rising from one of the panels.

“
Four seconds,” said Lars.
“Come on, ‘Chelle, easy does it, easy—”

Out the forward window, the shuttle
came careening towards them. The ship lurched backward, throwing
Jalil against his seat restraints.

“
NOW!”

As he opened his mouth to scream, the
floor dropped out from beneath him. His voice became muted, as if
he were screaming into a pillow. He became acutely aware of the
pounding of his heart, the pulse of his blood as it raced through
his arteries, the adrenaline giving it an extra push. Time slowed,
and everything became incredibly bright—so bright that he closed
his eyes and covered them with his hands.

And then they were through.

Jalil opened his eyes and stared out
the window. The planet was gone, replaced by a glowing starfield.
No more flashes—no more explosions. His muscles turned to water and
he sank into his seat, while beside him Mark and Lars began to
cheer.