Infinity's End: Books 4-6, page 54
“It’s the Honduras,” Evie said. “I checked all the others and it’s the only one missing. Have you talked to the pilots yet?”
Cas shook his head. He’d barely had time to crawl out of the command shuttle and help the injured—including himself—over to Xax after everyone had landed. “How could I have talked to the pilots? I’ve been over here getting tortured.”
“Is he okay?” Evie leaned around Cas to look at Xax.
“He’ll be sore, but fine,” she replied.
Evie stared at him. “Go check in while I finish doing an inventory. We need to know what happened and how bad the damage is. And we need to figure out how we’re going to take off again. I’ve already set Zaal to working on diagnosing the power problem.”
“Captain, do you need any treatment?” Xax asked.
She considered it for a moment. “I don’t think so. I feel fine.”
“Oh, come on,” Cas replied. “I got thrown around as much as you did. You’re only what, two years younger than me?”
“Three,” she replied. “And from what Box tells me you skip your gym time. Maybe if you were a little sturdier you wouldn’t break so easily.” There was a smile in her voice that wasn’t present on her face.
Cas forced his own grin. “How about I just go check on the pilots?”
“Great idea,” she replied, not masking the sarcasm in her voice. Cas grumbled under his breath and held his shoulder as he made his way through the thick brush to the plains where the pilots were helping each other out of their ships. The trees on this planet were tall for temperate trees, taller than he’d seen on other planets, though there didn’t seem to be much about them he hadn’t seen before. And the jungle wasn’t dense, which was helpful. He wasn’t sure how well they’d be able to get around if they had to chop trees out of their way to get to the next shuttle. He’d have to compliment the pilots for landing them in such a good spot.
As soon as he broke into the clearing his eye caught the ghostly outline of the planet’s rings in the eastern sky, like they were some magnificent castle floating in the dimming atmosphere. If this planet did have an indigenous and intelligent species, what had they thought of those rings when they’d first looked to the sky? He hadn’t spent much time on ringed worlds and found them gorgeous. From down here he barely saw a cloud or trace of atmospheric disturbance. So, what had they come through? Had the storm moved on that fast?
“Cas!” He glanced over to see Jann running toward him, her flight helmet still on. “Is everyone okay over there? We—we lost one.”
“I know,” he said, “It’s okay, don’t worry, we’ll get it. You guys did great. If it hadn’t been for your quick thinking, we’d all be dead right now.”
“When we lost power I thought it was a fluke,” she said. “But then we saw the shuttles plummet. Thankfully the grapplers are on hydraulics and they have emergency releases. It was just a matter of aiming them.”
“All of you lost power at the same time we did?” She nodded. “Have you had a chance to check your ships? Is there anything that could have caused the outage?”
She shook her head. “We’re still trying to get See out of her ship, the hatch is sealed. We’re going to have to break it open.” He glanced over to where the other two pilots were yanking on the primary spacewing hatch. When he returned his gaze to her he noticed she was staring at his shoulder. “What happened?”
“Popped it out of the socket on the way down,” he replied. “I guess you didn’t see us open the back hatch.”
“Nope. But that probably wasn’t the smartest move with as fast as we were coming in. We tried to slow as best we could. And we picked the best location given the circumstances.”
“How did you communicate without comms?”
She stuck two fingers in his face and wagged them back and forth. “Hand signals. A Vrij classic.”
“Makes sense. Can I help with Captain See?”
She arched an eyebrow. “I don’t know. How’s the shoulder?”
He thought back to Evie’s apparent sturdiness. “Well enough to work.”
Chapter Twelve
Evie squinted at the small, but detailed drawing Ensign River had done in the dirt with her fingers. She had to admit, for being nothing but lines in clay it was surprisingly accurate, though hard to make out in the low light.
“This is where I think we came in,” River said. “And this is where we saw the tower. But, based on our heading when we lost power and the speed of our descent I think we’re somewhere over here.” She pointed to a small area she’d marked on the ground with a circle. “And if we do a little trigonometry I’m going to estimate that puts us about thirty kilometers from where wave one went down. And at least fifteen from where we lost the Honduras. That’s assuming it fell in a straight path. The margin of error is about three kilometers in any direction.”
Evie took a deep breath. How long would it take to cross thirty kilometers in this jungle? “Are you sure about your measurements?”
“Pretty sure. I have a knack for distances. And measuring.” River kept her eyes on the ground, refining her drawing to make it more accurate and Evie realized she still had her ocular implant.
“Wait a second. All your implants are still working?”
River glanced up. “Yep. No anomalies detected.”
“That has to mean something,” Evie replied. “Whatever affected the ships didn’t affect you.”
“Oh, I guess you’re right.” She looked at her hands, wiggling her fingers. “Though my systems are powered by my internal processes. They don’t have external power sources.”
“Captain,” Lieutenant Uuma said, trudging through the brush to get to them. “Xax wants to know if she can open her medical containers—for the injured. Some of them have moderate injuries.”
Evie gritted her teeth. Without power they wouldn’t be able to keep all the medical equipment as cool as it needed to be. Which meant some of it would become unusable in this moist heat. But it wasn’t like they had much of a choice. They had to focus on the injured they had right now, instead of what might happen in the future. “Tell her to go ahead and break the seals, but only for what’s absolutely necessary. What’s the status on comms?”
Uuma shook her head. “Zaal says without power there is no chance of reactivating any comms, and re-establishing power should be our first priority.”
“We’re not going to be able to set up a homing beacon without anything to power it,” River added. “My guess is that’s why the other wave built that tower. They lost power like we did.”
Evie grimaced. “I don’t understand how they could have constructed it so fast.”
River shrugged. “They do have Box with them. Maybe he had something to do with it.”
They would have to find out later, when they could organize an expedition toward wave one. For now, they had more important problems. “As soon as everyone’s medical needs are attended to, we need to establish a perimeter around the shuttles,” Evie said, turning back to Uuma. “There’s no telling what kind of wildlife might be out there, and it appears we’re going to be here for a while. I want three groups. One will be focused on repair, the second will be in setting up and establishing camp and the third will gather supplies. Do the weapons still work?” Uuma nodded. “Good. At least we don’t have to do this with sticks and stones.” In all honesty it wasn’t the wildlife she was worried about, though there was always the possibility of large, carnivorous creatures prowling around in the dark. Those they could handle. What she couldn’t handle were the aliens she’d seen in her dreams; the ones she was sure were on this planet somewhere and who were behind all of this, including the attacks on the Bulaq and the armada headed for the Coalition. They were on their turf now, and they needed to always be ready for anything.
“I can have everything ready in an hour,” Uuma replied.
Evie tilted her head skyward. Even though the tops of the trees obscured the sky, she could already tell it was just past sunset. “We need to do this now; it will be night soon. I’ll head up the group to gather supplies. No one is to leave the shuttles by themselves, is that understood?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Uuma replied.
“Ensign, fall in for your assignment,” Evie said to River, who was still perfecting her drawing in the dirt. She stood and dusted her hands off. They both followed Uuma back to the command shuttle, which was still on its side as it had fallen. “Is there any chance of righting this one?” Half of the supplies on the shuttle were still strapped down, but instead of being on the floor where they were easily accessible, they were twenty meters up the side shuttle’s “wall”.
“I wish I could say,” Uuma replied. “It’s going to take a lot of work.”
“We’ll just operate out of the others,” Evie replied. “You have your assignments, let’s get moving.”
It had taken half an hour to pry the hatch off Captain See’s spacewing. Cas was pretty sure the damage they’d inflicted to the ship getting it off meant they wouldn’t be able to use the ship beyond the atmosphere anymore as they’d broken the hermetic seals to get inside. He was glad the other three ships hadn’t had the same malfunction. Though he’d put too much oomph into helping because now his shoulder hurt like hell.
“So now what do we do?” Jann asked as the five of them made their way back across the grassy area to the shade of the trees.
“I’m going to start working on finding out why we all lost power. It must be something in the atmosphere. And hopefully it’s something we can either block, reset or turn off before wave three comes down.” Cas checked his chronometer on the one scanning device he’d brought with him from the ship, which somehow, hadn’t been damaged in the crash. They had less than two hours before wave three was scheduled to come down.
“What’s that?” Jann asked, looking over his shoulder.
“Nothing important,” he said, replacing it in his belt. “Just a scanner.”
“Wait a second,” she replied, a smile creeping into her voice. “I’ve never seen a scanner with those settings before. What is that attuned to find?”
Cas’s face went red. “Just…dangerous animals. It’s not often I’m on a planet; I don’t see local fauna often.”
“Whatever you say,” she replied. “It’s none of my business.”
He huffed. “Fine. It scans for arachnids, okay? Ever since I ran into them on Vrij’s ship I’ve been on edge. And we’re in the middle of a jungle. There’s probably millions of them in there.”
“Spiders, huh?” she asked. “Have you ever been to Parasatia?”
“Not that I recall.”
“They’ve got this species of spider that will burrow into your ear, and then it goes through some kind of molting process, before exploding in size and all of a sudden one day you have these eight long, hairy legs sticking out from your head and a massive headache. I saw them remove one from a guy once. It wasn’t pretty. The spider will try and do anything to get out.”
Cas shuddered. “Are you trying to torture me?”
Jann produced a sly smile. “Just making conversation.” Jann wasn’t normally talkative. At least he’d never known her to be. What was going on? “For me it’s Ursidae. Though you don’t need a scanner for those.”
“You’re afraid of bears? Even the small ones?”
“Okay, spend a week on Norcon then tell me I’m being unreasonable. Claws the length of your hand and a jaw that can swallow your head whole. I’ve seen the animals they leave behind and trust me; it isn’t pretty.”
“I guess I never took you for someone who was afraid of anything,” Cas replied.
“Everyone’s afraid of something. Even if they don’t know it.”
Cas rubbed his shoulder again. His thoughts drifted back to waking up on that table with a whole host of new organs in his body. It was almost like there was a different person inside him, someone foreign. And just thinking of that other person made him cringe. It was all nonsense, of course. There was no other person and the organs were just as much his as his old ones had been, but he couldn’t get the feeling something wasn’t right about them. That they weren’t as sturdy or durable as his originals. And that they might fail again.
They reached the area where the shuttles had been dropped. Most were in a rough circle, though the largest, the command shuttle, was farther away than the others and still on its side. Some of the crew were in the cargo hold already, unstrapping the supplies. A line had formed at Xax’s shuttle where Cas assumed the injured were getting the necessary medical treatment they needed. He turned to Jann. “Any cuts or scrapes? On any of you?”
She turned to Blackfield, Coley, and See then back to Cas. “Nothing we can’t live with. If Ryant were here he could help. He’s got some medical training.”
Cas hadn’t known that. Though the man had also just recovered from being stabbed through the back. Maybe that’s why he’d been able to survive for so long before Laura and the others got to him in the bay. But he was slated to come down with wave three. Cas could only hope they’d find a solution to their power problem before they arrived.
“Looks like the captain already has things moving.” He caught sight of Evie, holstering a pulse pistol with some of the other security personnel, including Ensign Tileah. The Sargan tattoo made it hard to ignore her, even at a distance. Evie waved Cas over.
They had to step over fallen branches and brush from where the shuttles had crashed through the tops of the trees, but for the most part the jungle floor was free of detritus. It would be an easy place to make camp. “Going somewhere?” Cas asked as he approached.
“Perimeter survey,” she replied, double-checking the strap on her sword. “I need you to get with Zaal and find a way to get the power back online or at least reignite the engines. We need to warn wave three.”
Cas nodded and turned to the pilots. “The spacewings experienced a similar problem at the same time. Had it not been for their quick thinking and the wings allowing them to glide us down I don’t think any of us would be standing here right now.”
Evie regarded Jann and the others. “You saved us all, I’m not sure I can adequately express my appreciation,” she said. “But thank you anyway. Captain Coley, I want you on perimeter duty with me. Jann, See and Blackfield, work with Ensign River on accessing the supplies and setting up camp. Are your spacewings secured?”
“As well as they can be,” Jann replied.
“Good.” She pointed to the sky. “It will be full dark soon and from what we could tell on Tempest the nights last about fourteen hours here. And I’m not too keen to be caught off guard by whatever might be out there.”
“Whatever you need,” Jann replied.
Cas took one last look at them then headed for the command shuttle. It had the largest engines of any of the other ships and should be their first priority, but he was going to have a hell of a time working on everything sideways. His shoulder still throbbing, he crawled inside the open hatch and worked his way around what supplies the team had already unstrapped. He’d made a similar journey out of the shuttle, but he’d been less cautious then, more in a hurry to make sure the others were okay. But for some reason it seemed like a lot longer going back inside than when he had come out. On the way he grabbed a light from one of the supply boxes, as it was dark deep inside the ship. After what had to be ten minutes of climbing over and around sections of the shuttle, he finally reached the cockpit where Zaal sat on the floor, a maintenance panel open before him.
“Any luck so far?”
Zaal turned, his metal exoskeleton visible beneath his cerulean robes. Cas wasn’t sure if it had happened during the crash or not, but his hood was torn and no longer over his “head”, while there were other rips and gashes in the material. The exoskeleton’s red eyes gleamed from their artificial sockets so he looked like a harbinger of death stripped bare. “Hello, Commander. I haven’t found the problem yet.”
“The captain sent me to help.”
“Then I suggest we begin with the backup power systems and why they did not come online when the primaries died.” He gestured to the control panel ten feet up the “wall”.
“Sounds good to me,” Cas replied, searching for the nearest access panel. With everything on its side, it was a little disorienting.
“Here.” Zaal opened an access hatch beside the control panel he was working on. It slid open with a screech, which meant Zaal had probably broken the mechanism pushing it open. But it was large enough for Cas to crawl inside, probably even large enough for him to crouch inside if the ship was right-side-up.
Cas took a deep breath. “See you in a few. I hope.” He climbed inside, unnerved by the fact Zaal no longer had a holographic face to project. Now it was nothing but those blank, red eyes staring back at him.
Chapter Thirteen
Zaal lingered long after Cas climbed inside the access tunnel. He was glad his holographic visage wasn’t working anymore, as it would show nothing but anxiety and fear, two of the faces Zaal had rarely used onboard Tempest. An hour after Caspian had entered the hatch he continued to sit on the floor, staring at the control panel. He’d never been so terrified in his life and if he moved—correction, if he moved the apparatus keeping him alive—he feared it might not work anymore.
He hadn’t told the captain or Xax or anyone else, but his exoskeleton had suffered damage in the crash; one of the atmospheric regulators had ruptured. Normally this wouldn’t have been a problem as the atmosphere on starships was constant, stable and predictable. Not to mention it would have been an easy fix for one of the science labs. But down here, where the atmosphere wasn’t an exact match to that on Untu it meant he had a problem. The excess ozone would eventually seep into his system and corrode his natural body. He’d already calculated it would take no more than a few days, if that long. This was often the reason he avoided taking part in journeys down to different planets. He didn’t like the risk. But he also didn’t want to be seen as an unreliable officer, otherwise he would have voiced his concerns to the captain before leaving Tempest.
