Dremiks (36 page)

“You know it’s possible her relay panel was damaged, and she is unable to repair it. She might very well be trying to communicate with the tools she has.” Turner frowned down as the systems display. “Given enough time she’ll be figuring a way to talk to us.”

Cassie cleared her throat. “Time is not on our side here, Captain. Mangoda’s pulse is thready, and his blood pressure is dangerously low. He has to come out of there.”

The captain focused his attention on the doctor. He’d never seen her so grimly centered on a problem. “How long?”

“Hours. No more than five, I’d say.”

He turned to the view screen and stared at the swirling blue clouds that obstructed the view of the surface. Mangoda had hours to live, his best pilot was in an unknown condition with no ability to communicate, and he had to send another lander and crew down into that swirling mess.

“Right then. Wake Lieutenants Price and Guttmann and have them report to the landing bay.”

***

O’Connell screeched in frustration and smacked the offending radio with her palm. The thing was totally shot; she’d been working on it for over an hour, but it continued its stubborn silence. The radar worked, the environmental sensors seemed to function, as did Mangoda’s life support systems, and yet she still had no way of knowing if the
Hudson
was listening.

The radar picture scrambled and then corrected itself. O’Connell glared at it and cursed again. She could do nothing else inside the lander. The storm winds had completely abated. The light from the moons refracted off the clouds at enough of an angle to bathe the surrounding landscape in an eerie glow. Bending down to check on Mangoda’s pulse as she passed, the commander gathered a few soil sample vials and an oxygen pack. With more effort than was normally necessary, she pried open the port side hatch and hopped to the surface of Dremiks.

And promptly collapsed on her twisted ankle.

“Great. One small fall for mankind,”

Belatedly remembering not to use her left arm, she pulled herself up and swung the hatch closed. The air was gritty and, according to the wand she waved about, composed of 30% oxygen, 65% nitrogen, 1% carbon dioxide and 4% of an unknown element.

“Lots of CO2 and O2, so why are there no plants?” She wondered aloud, while sealing a couple of air sample jars. Kneeling carefully, she scooped up some of the blue soil. It had a faint metallic gleam and was flaky in consistency. The tiny glimmering flakes reminded her of the iron pyrite that had rubbed off on her fingers when she was a child playing in the creeks of Colorado.

Memories of the bubbling creeks of her home made O’Connell realize what was missing. There was no water to be found. The soil was dry, and there was no water vapor in the air. The dry air promoted the static electricity that kept causing her to shock herself every time she touched metal. The fine hair on the back of her arm stood on end.

“Well, that’s going to present an issue.” She made a mental note of the water situation. They would have a hard time establishing a colony without available water.

A strange shadow moved across the ground in front of her. O’Connell turned to look up at the outcropping behind her. The clouds were breaking up and scuttling across the sky. She thought she detected movement on the cliff edge, but then decided it was a trick of the shifting light. All of her movements, the strange atmosphere, and her injuries were making her head ache. The commander gathered up her samples and pulled herself back into the lander. She shut and locked the hatch, laid down on the floor, and closed her eyes.

On the far side of the rock cliff, out of the line of sight of the lander’s radar arc, the dirt shifted and the shadows moved more swiftly—and in the opposite direction—than the clouds.

***

“I’ll bring everything back in one piece, sir.” Lieutenant Price stood at stiff attention, but his head turned as he watched the captain run a hand over the wing of Lander 2.

“I believe O’Connell promised me the same thing, Lieutenant.”

“I’m sure you’ll have a suitable punishment in mind for her dishonesty, sir.”

Captain Hill stopped his circuit of the lander and went to stand in front of the young pilot. He fixed his coldest frown on his face and glared. “This is no time for quips, Mr. Price. I want this lander, the commander, Specialist Mangoda, med-tech Peterson, and yourself, back on this ship in no more than four hours time. You will take no unnecessary risks, and you will absolutely, without fail, complete this mission with the up-most care for equipment and personnel. Is that understood?” His last words were enunciated in a precise staccato rhythm.

Stiff with dismay and shock at the captain’s sudden flash of anger, Price responded with a crisp “Aye, aye, sir.”

Satisfied that he had instilled the proper measure of fear in the lieutenant, Hill nodded. “On your way then.”

By the time the captain reached the bridge, Lander 2 had departed the landing bay and swung towards the surface.

“How much more equipment do you intend to lose down there, Captain?” Chancellor Trell had his large fists jammed into his fleshy hips. His double chins quivered with indignation. “We should be returning to Rhyse station and demanding answers, not dawdling here.”

Hill sat down in his chair. “Chancellor,” he said, “kindly remove yourself from my bridge.”

Trell gasped in shock. “Your bridge? This… this ship is a transport vessel for—”

The captain coolly interrupted. “Trell, you will remove yourself from the bridge of
my
ship or you will
be
removed. Choose.” He paused for effect. “Quickly.” Pausing again, he counted to five in his head before continuing. “Lieutenant Guttmann, be prepared to forcibly clear this bridge of civilian personnel.”

“Yes sir!”

Trell assessed his situation and beat a hasty retreat.

“Bridge clear, sir.”

“Thank you, Lieutenant.” Hill leaned back in his chair and watched the silver streak that was Lander 2 race to the surface of Dremiks.

Price had studied all the data from O’Connell’s entry into the atmosphere. Mindful of the lessons she learned, he twisted the landing craft in a tight downward spiral. He used the swirling vortex of a small thunder cloud to pull the ship closer to the surface without straining the engines. Once they leveled off beneath the clouds, the constant sweeping arc of Lander 1’s radar acted like a homing beacon, guiding them to the wreckage.

Tony buzzed low over the cliff and banked to come around the face of the overhang. He winced when he saw the crippled twin of his ship lying wedged against the rock face. What he saw next brought a grin to his face.

O’Connell was pulling a large crate of seismic gear onto a flat area near the ship when she heard a loud roar. The sky was beginning to lighten, but the bright glare that suddenly flared in front of her was definitely man-made. She shaded her eyes and sighed in relief as Lander 2 touched down on the nearby plateau. She leaned against the crate and watched as Price and a medical tech—she vaguely recalled his named being Peterson—ran up the hill toward her.

“About time you showed up,” she said as she grinned up at Price.

“Fancy meeting you here, ma’am.” He looked over her shoulder. “Nice landing.”

“Any shelter in a storm, Lieutenant. Come on, let’s get off this rock. Mangoda’s in a bad way.” She let the medical technician precede her into the damaged lander and watched as he examined her co-pilot. “I used the last bag of fluids about half an hour ago. He’s bleeding internally, isn’t he?”

Peterson nodded. “It would appear so, ma’am. Let’s get him on the stretcher.” He motioned her out of the way as he and Price gingerly positioned Mangoda on the fold out stretcher and scooted him out the open hatch. Price was walking backwards down the hill, so he saw the commander’s halting and ungainly exit from the lander. He opened his mouth to say something but was interrupted by Peterson.

“She’s banged up bad, but mentioning it doesn’t help now, sir. Let’s get them back on the
Hudson
.” The medic made eye contact as he spoke. Tony nodded in agreement and continued shuffling down the hill. When they reached Lander 2 they loaded the injured man into the shuttle as carefully as possible.

O’Connell paused in the hatchway of the lander. “I could stay here and work on repairs, it will speed things up.”

Price shook his head and pushed her toward the cockpit. “No can do, ma’am. The captain wants a word with you. And I’ll need your help getting back out of this mess of an atmosphere. What’s that you’re carrying?”

Maggie grimaced as she sat down in the co-pilot’s chair. “Present for Fortunas. I’m not sure how helpful I’ll be getting us out of here, considering that I have no experience actually leaving orbit. And considering,” she said with a frown, “that my landing experience was less than successful.”

Price was busy making sure all the seals were intact on the hatches and preparing everything for their launch. Peterson strapped Mangoda and himself in. O’Connell glanced up as Price handed her a bio-scan collar.

“Yours seems to be broken.”

She looked down at her torn suit. “A mild understatement.” She put the collar on and started working on the pre-flight checklist. “Everything good to go here.”

“Alright then, I’m going to aim for these coordinates. We should be able to slip through the magnetic fields here.” He indicated a display on the navigational panel.

“Looks good.” Maggie discreetly flexed her left hand and felt pain shoot all the way from her fingers to her back. “I’ll control main system and sensors, the flying will be up to you.”

“Yes ma’am.” Price keyed to another channel. “
Hudson
this is Lander 2. We are preparing to leave Dremiks surface.” The channel crackled with the return message from the
Hudson
. Price flicked the engines on. The lander rose in a hover a few feet above the surface. As he applied more power to the thrusters, the ship increased speed and shot out across the plain. They were a few hundred meters in the air when they passed over the designated zone for the colony.

O’Connell flipped on the ground penetrating radar.

“Huh,” she exclaimed. The read-out indicated a natural spring head buried a few meters beneath the colony. She continued to examine the readings as they banked low over a shattered environmental dome. The Dremikians had mentioned that a previous colony had existed on the site, but that it had been abandoned centuries before. The rampant disrepair that the two
Hudson
pilots saw beneath them verified that no one had lived on this section of Dremiks for many hundreds of years.

“Hospitable spot,” Price quipped.

“Yeah, for scorpions and dust devils.” O’Connell turned away from the window. “Let’s get out of here.”

Tony nodded and banked the lander to port before pointing the nose upward. “Here we go then.”

The ride out of the atmosphere was considerably smoother than the ride down. There was one terrifying moment when a fierce downdraft seemed to be sucking them back to the surface, but they easily broke free of the spiraling vortex. Seeing indications of a magnetic disturbance in their path, O’Connell shut down all but the basic life support and steerage systems. Price shifted in his seat and tightened his hold on the controls. He fractionally increased the angle of their ascent.

Two minutes later they shot out of the atmosphere and into space. While Price adjusted the power levels and turned the lander toward the
Hudson
, O’Connell switched on the radios and directional equipment.

“How’s Mangoda?”

“No added worries, ma’am. We’ll want Dr. Ruger to be ready when we land. I’ve got some updated data for her, back here.”

“Plug it into the port. All coms are working now.” She keyed the mic. “
Hudson
this is Lander 2, do you copy?”

“Roger, Lander 2,” was the immediate response. “We copy you five by five, and we’re reading all data streams. Come to port seven five degrees for docking.”

Price adjusted their heading while O’Connell spoke again. “Advise Dr. Ruger latest medical data uploading now.”

“So advised, Lander 2. Dr. Ruger and the captain will meet you at docking.”

With a few deft movements of the controls, Price lined-up the lander’s nose with the
Hudson’s
bay doors. After what he’d done that day, he would never again consider the mere act of a space docking to be difficult. As he gently guided the craft into the hanger and cut the engines, he happened to glance at the commander. Her head rested against the back of the seat, eyes closed. That scared him more than anything else he had seen in the previous few hours. Normally, she would have been watching and critiquing every aspect of the landing.

“Nice landing, Lieutenant,” she said without opening her eyes. “Best one I’ve had in days.” She turned her head fractionally and opened her eyes to grin at him. The klaxons sounded the all clear and immediately a medical team sprinted to the lander. “You help them get Mangoda out, I’ll follow.”

“No disrespect ma’am, but I think I’ll help you out. Those guys don’t need my help.” He glanced to the back of the craft were Mangoda was already being gently lifted down. He leaned closer to O’Connell and lowered his voice. “You should know, ma’am, the captain is pretty pissed. I don’t think you have much chance of salvaging anything out of that sortie.”

Maggie’s head hurt too badly to contemplate beating the man to a pulp. She couldn’t even summon the energy to be mad at the captain.

“Shut the hell up, Lieutenant, and help me out of this damned ship.”

When her boots touched the deck of the landing bay, she gasped. The room spun slightly and suddenly all the effects of the past day caught up with her.

Captain Hill, crossing the bay to the lander, frowned as he saw O’Connell sit down hard in the lander’s doorway.

“Commander?” His frown deepened to a scowl when he saw the grimace of pain that contorted her face. Her hair was knotted and matted; there was a great deal of dirt all over her. Her flight suit was a tattered wreck. A long bruise ran down her left cheekbone and across her neck.