… continued from All is Lost
🚀
A distant flash shook Anna from her reverie. She pulled her gaze from the receding destruction of the station with all its awful fascination and focused on the tiny yet intense flare of light near the horizon’s arc, beyond the terminator and approaching night, almost lost in the dreamlike sapphire veil of the upper atmosphere. Before she could bring any of the limited instruments available from the lander’s console to bear, the flare ended as abruptly as it had begun.
“Did you see that?”
“See what, Anna?”
Laxmi climbed up the ladder and into the copilot seat to gaze beside her into the inky black.
“That was a fusion engine. It didn’t last long, so I think it was an attitude correction and not an acceleration burn, but they’re out there.”
“Will they come for us?”
“We burned for a solid twenty minutes with our engine exhaust pointed pretty much in their direction, so they definitely know we’re here. Even now, flipped and decelerating, we’ll still be pretty visible, especially to instruments, since they know where to look. And they seemed pretty anxious to find us on the surface. I think they’ll be coming.”
“How long do we have?”
“That flare was in a much lower orbit, so by conventional means, it should take at least several hours, or a day, to lift up to our altitude. But, if they don’t mind burning through their fuel in a hurry, or if their engine technology is much more advanced than ours?”
Anna shrugged, turning her attention back to the instrument panel. She gestured at a video monitor to zoom in on a hazy image of Aniara, the starship nearly washed out in the glow of the lander’s rocket exhaust decelerating their approach, yet sharp enough to pick out major details on the main hull, nestled between the twin rings of the Alcubierre drive. Laxmi followed Anna’s gaze and sucked in a deep breath through her teeth.
“Do you think they’re already on board?”
Anna didn’t answer right away, instead just staring at the slowly approaching ship, her home of the past three years, backlit by the westering sun, the near side illuminated by the planet’s reflected light. She could make out the docking clamps waiting to receive the lander, and offset toward the other side, another pair of empty clamps, ones that would never again hold the orbiter that once nestled in their firm grip. From this side of the ship, there was no sign of damage, yet also little sign of life beyond the approach beacon centered in the lander clamps. Aside from that welcoming pulse, no other lights appeared, nothing moved, the ship appearing inert like the station had when first approached.
“It’s been, what, two weeks since the Orta arrived? They’ve had enough time, and I very much doubt they missed noticing our ship there. What would we have done in their place? I’d like to think we’d have respected the sovereignty of another civilization’s ship, but it would have depended upon how derelict the vessel appeared to us. And how curious we were about alien technology. We did try to cut into the station when we first got here, after all.”
“But it was obviously derelict.”
“No one on Aniara was responding to radio calls. It took knowing the right frequency and digital call, plus the encryption key, to get the ship to respond to us and launch the lander. Without that, she would appear very quiet. However, you’re right, so who knows? Not that it matters, as we don’t have a choice. There’s nowhere else to go. Anyway, we’ll know in… yeah, about five minutes to MECO, so let’s make sure everything’s secure for null-g and… oh.”
“What?”
Anna gestured out the main window. Overhead the ring station’s arc neared as their course brought them back into proximity, oddly serene this far from the destruction left far behind them. Yet back the way they had come, beyond the ruined ring and missing tether, another arc appeared, an arc of fusion light streaming behind a dark pinprick, muscling its way up from low orbit.
“I guess they decided we’re worth the fuel expenditure. That’s a sustained main burn.”
Anna looked over her shoulder and down to where Ca-Tren sat, strapped into what had to be an uncomfortable seat for her. Anna flashed her a thumbs-up, and Ca-Tren responded with a wingtip, which was enough to lighten Anna’s heart, if only for a moment. She turned back to the console.
“Ok, everyone’s strapped in, I’m taking manual control. Engine cutoff in thirty seconds.”
“What are we doing?”
“We’re gonna come in a little hot and do a flyby, a look-see to make sure no one’s waiting for us. Ok, ready for null-g in… yeah, now.”
Anna pulled back on the thrust levers and the low, deep roar of the engine stopped. Once again she felt that moment of disorientation, but even before her inner balance adjusted she tugged the RCS joystick sideways to roll the lander around its longitudinal axis. The stars and planet wheeled around them, the ring station slid away, and Aniara hove into view, the double Alcubierre rings sliding gracefully past the viewport, each stretching across two-hundred meters of space, tethered to the long, sleek hull bristling with instruments and sensors, centered within and between them by four slender arms.
“Oh, we’re already here.” Laxmi gazed up at the beautiful, almost fragile-seeming ship looming overhead as it slid past. “We’re so close.”
“No signs of damage on this side. Or… visitors. Docking clamps are clear.” Anna ran her eyes over the hull, finding nothing untoward, and kept her tone business-like, even as her heart sang to see her ship again. “Let’s swing around the other side.”
The lander drifted past Aniara, and the bigger ship’s three massive ion engine exhaust nozzles appeared before them. Anna inspected the nozzles carefully, and once the lander was fully clear of the aft ring and all other obstructions, she twisted the RCS joystick and gently nudged the thrust levers forward. Acceleration pushed her back into her seat, the lander’s rearward drift stopped, and they began moving forward once more, angling toward the starship’s farther side. Anna nudged the joystick to adjust their trajectory, bringing them inside the ring’s perimeter and close alongside, allowing momentum to carry the lander forward. She looked carefully for any sign of damage, anything out of place, or any sign of tampering. Finding none, she shook her head.
“So what happened to you?”
Everything appeared normal. Having spent most of the voyage here inside a warp bubble, the ship hardly showed any wear and tear at all.
“Ok, we’re going around the bow to complete the circuit.”
They passed through the forward ring, and Anna began to nudge the RCS to slow their forward momentum and yaw the lander around. The gently tapered bow of Aniara came into view, with the observatory blister below the rounded nose and the command bridge’s windows above and set back.
The windows were shattered, with large gaps exposing the bridge to space. Polycarbonate fragments drifted near the edges, sparkling like deadly jewels, but most of the missing segments were nowhere to be seen, forced out and away from the ship by explosive decompression when the damage occurred. The bridge beyond the windows lay dark and still.
Laxmi gasped, her hand to her mouth in shock. Anna remained silent, her heart breaking as her worst scenario appeared to be true.
“Oh, David…”
He was truly dead, then. He would have been in the bridge to monitor her away team when they took the orbiter to investigate the station, and when something hit the orbiter and damaged its engine. He would have been in the bridge when they lost contact, and now Anna knew why he never responded to her desperate calls.
Silently, she guided the lander slowly along Aniara’s hull until they were abreast of the docking clamps. Silently she stopped the lander’s momentum and nudged it into its berth, only the dull metallic clang of the clamps locking on to interrupt the stillness within the cabin. Silently she donned a pressure suit and helmet while waiting for the access tunnel to match up with the lander’s airlock, and seeing this, Laxmi helped Ca-Tren back into a suit before donning her own, not interrupting to ask why. When the access indicator turned green, Anna silently opened the airlock hatch and floated the five meters to the matching hatch at the far end of the tunnel. Silently, she opened that hatch, too, and pushed her way into the cold, dark interior of the ship that had been her home.
🚀
… continued with Shattered Hopes
header image credit: Matt Fraser
© Matt Fraser and mattfraserbooks.com, 2023. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Matt Fraser and mattfraserbooks.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
Matt Fraser 