Prodigal (15 page)

“Sorry for the intrusion, gentlemen,” the captain said, walking up to the window that looked down on the landing bay. Below her, flight crews locked down the deck and sealed the hatches, moving with precision and purpose. “I just like to get off the bridge and hide once in a while. Hope you don’t mind.”

“Not at all, Skipper,” the flight boss said. “We’re almost ready to bring
Ghostrider
home. Shouldn’t be more than a couple of minutes.”

“By all means,” Farina said casually, taking a seat next to the ops console and getting out of the way. “Carry on.”

The flight boss acknowledged her with a nod and went straight back to work. Farina considered it a measure of trust that the flight officers didn’t put on a show for her. They just rolled through their checklists, smooth and by the numbers, and prepared
Almacantar
for the technological ballet of bringing a landing craft on board.

“All crews,” the flight boss spoke into the intercom, “acknowledge status.”

A dozen voices responded in a steady chatter, all signaling go. From there, the flight boss passed control over to the LSO, who opened up a channel to the approaching craft on his monitor.

“
Ghostrider,
base,” he said. “Assume parallel course, two-one-seven. Maintain distance of three-zero meters, Z–minus five.”

“Base,
Ghostrider,
” the console speaker crackled back. Even at close range, Pitch seemed a hundred light-years away. “Roger that at two-two-seven. Assuming formation.”

Farina leaned into the microphone. “Nice to have you back,
Ghostrider.
”

“Likewise, Skipper. Thanks for the welcome.”

With the rest of the ship secured, the LSO reached under his shirt and took out an old manual key that hung from a chain around his neck. He inserted it into a secure console, unlocking the control for the landing bay door. A lever rose on a hydraulic motor as the overheads on the flight deck dimmed, the encroaching darkness supplanted by a swirl of red siren lights. Loudspeakers piped in automated warnings to clear the area, punctuated by the repeating drone of an alarm Klaxon.

“We’re go for decompression,” the LSO announced, ticking off his panel indicators one last time before turning to Farina. “Awaiting your command, Captain.”

“She’s your baby,” she told him. “Whenever you’re ready.”

“Aye, sir,” the LSO replied cheerfully. Coordinating with the flight boss, he opened all the exterior vents, slowly purging atmosphere from the landing bay. Alarms faded to a tinny nothingness outside the glass as ambient pressure reached zero. The LSO then eased the console lever forward, engaging the mammoth gears that opened
Almacantar
’s belly to the hostile vacuum of space.

A deep groan pounded against the bulkhead walls, making the tiny space of the booth seem even more confined. Farina knew every sound her ship made, but her grip was still tight on the sides of her chair. A lot could go wrong during flights ops, even with an experienced crew. In spite of that, the whole process was a wonder to behold.

Doors parted on a blanket of twilight that tapered into a rusty shore. The disc of Mars dominated the horizon, cutting a swath across the hazy stars that glistened in the great beyond. Farina could just make out the sleek lines of the lander approaching from below. It moved gracefully, matching
Almacantar
’s bearing and speed as it nudged itself closer. Gas plumes popped off the leading edge of its delta wings, control jets firing off a cascade of a hundred tiny course corrections.

“
Ghostrider,
we have you on visual.”

The LSO’s steady voice seemed to steer the landing craft all by itself. The small ship responded to his cue, leveling off just aft of the landing bay. The LSO then hit the landing lights, illuminating a green strip that ran down the center axis of the flight deck. At the same time, a series of circular projections appeared on the forward bulkhead, showing
Ghostrider
its optimal path of insertion.

“Call the ball,” the LSO said.

“I have the ball,” Pitch radioed back. “Initiating final approach.”

A blue glow momentarily erupted behind the landing craft, its main engines giving the ship one last push to close the remaining distance. From there
Ghostrider
coasted, firing retro jets to slow down as it slipped into the landing bay.

“Looking good,
Ghostrider.
”

An optic scoop descended from the tail of the landing craft, catching a stream of pulse light that crossed the edge of the deck. Once ensnared, the ship lurched to a gradual stop. Pitch then throttled back and allowed
Almacantar
’s gravitational field to take hold. The LSO modulated g-force levels to bring
Ghostrider
in gently, the ship’s mass and weight converging in delicate phase. Its gear touched down on the deck without so much as a quiver.

“And that,” Pitch said, “is how we do that.”

Entry to the landing bay was secured by a vaulted hatch. An analog barometer showed pressure on the other side, which quickly rose as Farina watched. When it reached one atmosphere, a light above the hatch clicked from red to green, followed by an escaping hiss as a magnetic seal disengaged. “CLEAR FOR ENTRY,” the voice of the flight boss boomed from above, echoing through
Almacantar
’s narrow corridors.

Farina spun the wheel and pushed the hatch open, stepping into a frenzy of activity. Already the flight crews swarmed around
Ghostrider,
refilling the fuel tanks and scrubbing away accumulations of Martian dust, as per Farina’s orders. She wanted all ships ready to go at a moment’s notice—especially in light of the discovery her landing party had made.

Farina walked toward the landing craft. Pitch was still in the cockpit, going through his roster of postflight checks and downloading telemetry for later analysis. He spotted the captain through the canopy glass, acknowledging her with a casual salute before getting back to business. Farina returned the gesture, then stood back as another member of the flight crew opened the belly hatch and pulled down an access ladder.

Eve Kellean emerged first. She appeared exhausted—
spent
was the word that came to Farina’s mind—though there remained a kinetic latency to the way Kellean moved, as if she still rode some unseen high. Farina knew the look. It was the reason she had placed the landing party under strict orders to maintain silence about Olympus Mons. She didn’t need loose talk among the crew about what had happened down there. They would find out about that soon enough.

Nathan Straka, on the other hand, was inscrutable as ever. He climbed down and handed his gear off to the flight crew, even stopping to chat with one of them. If Farina hadn’t known him so well, she could have sworn that this was just another mission for him.

“First boots on Mars in ten years,” she said, nodding at them in admiration. “If I weren’t captain of this tub, I would’ve fought you for the chance to be on that landing party. How are you two doing?”

“I’ll be fine, as soon as I can get a drink,” Nathan deadpanned. He was damp with sweat, his face glistening. Kellean was in the same shape, long strands of hair sticking to her forehead and cheeks. “We can send a ship across the solar system, but we still can’t make an envirosuit that doesn’t wear like a damned heat sink.”

“I thought you might say that,” the captain said with a smile. “All of you have a Hollywood shower with your name on it—my compliments.”

Kellean’s eyes lit up. On deep-space missions, a Hollywood shower was a rare treat—the chance to rinse off with actual
water
instead of the sonic scrubs the crew normally used.

“Thanks, Skipper,” Nathan said.

“You’ve earned it. Sounds like you had some good hunting.” Farina was deliberately vague, aware that every person within earshot would be hanging on Nathan’s report. “Any first impressions?”

Nathan followed her tone, and responded in kind. “Seen better, seen worse,” he said with professional detachment. “We’ll need to do some analysis before we know for sure.”

“What’s your gut tell you?”

“It could be an extraordinary find, Captain,” Kellean said, her hands even more animated than her voice. “The chance to set the record straight on the Mons disaster once and for all.”

“And the salvage?”

“Weapons, supplies,” Nathan answered, “possibly some excavating equipment. They buried quite a bit of hardware up there, Skipper. The stuff we saw was in good condition.”

“
Working
condition,” Kellean added. “Amazingly well preserved. It’s a real jackpot from a historical perspective.”

Nathan squeezed her arm, a signal for her to slow down. Kellean suddenly became self-conscious about her outburst when she saw how the crewmen reacted. Even now, the buzz was spreading—a gallery of soft laughter, slapping hands, hushed voices repeating the words
functional
and
weapons
over and over again. Guns and ordnance were better than gold, mostly because the Collective paid top dollar to keep the stuff off the black market back on Earth. The Zone did a booming business in illegal arms, supplying free sector start-ups and
Inru
terrorists. That kind of scuttlebutt would reach the bridge long before the captain returned there.

“Pitch should have the mission logs downloaded to your personal node shortly,” Nathan interjected, moving away from the subject. “Respectfully, Skipper—you should take some time to evaluate the prelims before deciding on a course of action. This op could get a little tricky if we don’t handle it the right way.”

Farina got the sense that Nathan had already made up his mind about what to do—and now he was pushing her to draw the same conclusion. It was a subtle maneuver on his part, nothing anyone else would notice; but she bristled at it nonetheless.

“I’ll take that under advisement,” she replied, more curtly than she would have liked. She quickly shifted her tone, telling them, “That’s enough for now. You two go get yourselves cleaned up. Mission debriefing is in the wardroom in one hour. In the meantime, enjoy your shower—that’s an order.”

Farina watched them cross the deck together, the two of them leaning in close to exchange whispers.
Two opposite ends of the same extreme,
she decided, more convinced than ever that she had made the right decision to keep things under wraps. Secrecy on board a ship like this was damned next to impossible, and could only be contained for so long; but so was the kind of fear mongering that Nathan could spread.

Farina couldn’t blame him for being superstitious about Mars, not with everything that had happened there. As captain, however, her job was to maintain order. The Directorate had dropped a lot of money on this mission, and they were looking for a return on that investment—not ghost stories and wild speculation. They had already made clear what failure would mean to Farina’s reputation.

Not to mention the crew. You screw this up, the service will brand every last one of them as a jinx. They’ll be lucky to find jobs junking old satellites back home.

Farina sighed. She hated herself for worrying about politics, but she knew the way things worked. Nathan, for all his purity, didn’t. A part of her wished she could make him comprehend that—but there were certain burdens the captain had to carry alone.

“Skipper?”

The officer of the watch addressed her nervously. Farina suddenly realized she had been standing in the middle of the flight deck for some time, lost in thought. Hearing his voice snapped her out of it, and she noticed the crew waiting for her to step aside so they could move
Ghostrider
off the flight line.

“Permission to secure the landing craft, sir?”

Farina gave him a reassuring nod.

“Carry on,” she said. “I’ll be in my quarters.”

Cocooned in steam and isolation, Nathan enjoyed the one thing spacers almost never had: privacy. For ten blessed minutes he stood almost perfectly still, allowing the near-scalding water to blast his body clean, steam purging all thoughts except for the here and now. For a man attuned to every sound and sensation on board, the escape was pure nirvana.

Then the water valve shut off without warning, a rude jolt that sounded like a hammer pounding metal. He emerged from the shower into a harsh reality of steel bulkheads and chipped paint, even the gentle caress of humidity sucked up into the air vents for reprocessing.
Almacantar
might have been an old ship, but she was remarkably efficient, never wasting anything that could be used again.

Nice while it lasted…

Toweling off, Nathan allowed himself to regain the ship’s equilibrium. During the normal course of any day, he took all that input for granted: the electric thrum of the engines, the photic tingle of the power conduits, the variations of atmospheric pressure from deck to deck—a thousand other variables that told Nathan how
Almacantar
performed at any given moment. Lately, however, it seemed that reading her had become more difficult, as if the old ship was playing a game of hide and seek with him. With the crawler running so many vital systems, that didn’t surprise Nathan at all. A matrix built on chaos logic was bound to be temperamental.

Idiosyncratic is more like it,
he thought, putting on a fresh uniform.
Working the module is like trying to get a woman into bed. The same approach never works twice.