Heritage of Flight (6 page)

"You're worn out. How long do you expect to stand on watch without steering us inside a planet? Move it!"

He grinned at the retreating helmsman. “And watch the elevators too. Apparently they're as dangerous as Secess’ these days."

A guilty spatter of laughter lightened the air on the bridge. Even Becker's thin lips relaxed. Then he bent over his boards, double-checking as helm laid in a course that would bring them to preliminary orbit, then enable them to leave it and land.

Pauli took a hand-wave as invitation, and went over to take the helm. Coordinates for approach had already been laid in. She called up survey information on the world they neared. It was surprisingly scant.

"How many orbits before touchdown?” she asked. If this had been her ship, she would have wanted to delay landing as long as possible in order to collect as much data as possible on the planet—for a start, had this godforsaken world a name?—its landmasses, resources, weather patterns ... inhabitants? She had to assume that it would have no inhabitants. The Alliance never settled citizens on worlds with intelligent cultures. Then, and only then, would she choose a landing site.

"Eos system,” computer reported. Somewhere she had read, or perhaps heard from Borodin, that
Eos
meant dawn. “Planet Eos IV..."

"Survey called it Cynthia."

Pauli turned toward the captain, who studied the glowing screens as intently as she. “A by-name for the ancient goddess of the hunt on Earth,” he explained. “Hunting should be good on that world. It's damp; look at the cloud cover. Air pressure's a little higher than we're used to; gravity is about .8 standard."

"Inert gases?"

"We can breathe the air,” Borodin's voice was sharp. “Or we wouldn't have put in for this world."

He gestured. “Recommendations?"

The northernmost continent, though much occluded by heavy clouds, looked green and promising. Even this far away, Pauli saw threadlike veins of blue-green, and stepped up magnification: a river with an alluvial plain. The southern continents seemed sere, and seismographic scans revealed major land instabilities and traces of vulcanism. Cynthia the huntress was a young, turbulent world.

"North continent, sir,” she spoke at last. “On that plain, near the mountains."

Settlers would have hydroponics, but such a location guaranteed them fertile land and ample rain, just in case. The planet had two moons (as yet unnamed) and therefore freak tides. An interesting, violent world.

"We're going to set down there now?” she asked Borodin. Despite her best efforts, her eyes slid over to Becker.

"That's right, Lieutenant,” said the marshal. “Prepare to initiate landing procedures."

Pauli locked in a course, then bent to the scanners. In the few moments that they remained in orbit, it was a matter of survival to gain as much information on this new world as possible.

That was when stealth systems abruptly ceased.

"We're visible again!"

"Go to backups,” ordered Borodin. Pauli's boards flashed toward amber, then—too many of them—into red. Moving quickly, she began to shift navigation over to backup computers. The ship lurched, went briefly A-grav, as even the incredibly durable processors, coated with diamondlike adamant from an alchemist's dream, fissured and failed.

"Abort survey!” ordered Borodin. They were exposed here, vulnerable to a ship or ship's sensors.

Pauli fought the ship into a braking orbit, and from there into a steep, pitching descent. She could imagine the terror of the children in the docking bay, terror that could turn to fury, could turn on the adults who tried to protect them, if the children could reach them.

Lights flickered and failed. Shadows lanced across the bridge as red distress lights strobed, glancing off the sweat on Borodin's jaw. Air circulation faltered, then started up again.

"Diverting power from weapons to engines, sir,” came a voice which trembled slightly.

"Retain backup lifesupport and navigation,” ordered Borodin. His taut fist punched lightly on the arm of his chair, then clutched until the bones showed yellow beneath the weathering of his skin. He leaned forward and took over helm control.

"Hull temperature at 4800 ... 3500 ... 3000 ... firing retros...” the ship yawed as it turned upright, preparing to land. They lost altitude rapidly, a plunge barely controlled by the helm. Atmosphere thickened about them, threatened to buffet them worse than had
Leonidas'
s death. The shaking intensified as the ship lost speed. Sensors, those not blinded by processor failure or burnt out by the heat of the ship's passage, reported stratospheric gales which gave way, as
Amherst
decelerated yet further and gravity clutched them all in a leaden fist, to less predictable and more treacherous gusts. Briefly Pauli wondered how the civs would manage to cross this planet's seas if the storms were always this severe.

They were falling out of the sky! she thought. Either the Secess’ would attack or, the instant they tried to refit and test engines on this godforsaken world, the ship would blow crew and civilians to the fate they had managed, so far to elude.

Borodin's eyes were very bright. Behind him, Marshal Becker clung to a safety rail.

"Get us down now!” someone whispered.

A sane man or woman might have despaired in those last, nightmarish seconds, but Borodin, by that time, was maddened by some compulsion to beat fate, beat the odds one last time. Still the ship wavered, and he fought for stability, lost it ...
damn, it was no bad way to die, admiring the man's skill!
but in the next moment, Pauli saw the opportunity his slower fingers were letting slip. She lunged forward toward helm, and gradually the ship came upright, steadied, slowed yet further. Gravity pressed down, and she panted as she fought
Amherst
toward safety. It was madness, worse than combat against a Secess’ fivefold formation, but even as her limbs grew heavier and heavier, it seemed as if she were flying, her arms outstretched for balance and for lift, to bear the ship, to ease it down to safety.

Amherst
touched ground, not a feather's touch, nor yet the three-point landing of pilot's training; but they were down (albeit somewhat on a slant), and they had a ship that they could walk away from. Pauli glanced down, amazed, then began shutting down systems. Long after she was finished, she let her hands linger on the boards, almost caressing them.

"We're down,” Borodin reached up and rubbed his temples with shaking hands. Gray shone between his fingers. Becker leaned over him, speaking rapidly. The captain shook his head, then gestured, one palm up.

"Damages?” Borodin demanded. From all areas of the ship came reports that might have spelled disaster in deep space: many systems failed, and even backups faltering. They would have to dump all computers, install new processors, then test them. It was a time-consuming, aggravating job, even given planetary facilities: it would be a demon here in the No Man's World of Cynthia. But
Amherst
had been built to survive.

Pauli unstrapped herself. As always after a pitched battle and acceleration, she felt sweaty, stupid with fatigue. She swallowed hard after so many hours in freefall, unwilling to retch as her first act in this new world. Now that
Amherst
was safely down, she realized the enormity of her offense: senior pilot or not, she had taken over ship's controls. She could be court-martialed—
I saved the ship!
reason insisted, but regulations were something else.

She ventured to look at her captain. “Sir?” she began. “I beg the captain's pardon. I acted without thought."

"Thank God you did,” whispered Banez. Like the rest of the bridge crew, even Becker, she had gone white to the lips, but now her color flashed back, rose into a flush as she realized she had been overheard.

"I do indeed,” Borodin said, and Pauli remembered. Unusual as it was for a citizen of Novaya Moskva to attain command rank, Borodin had not shed his homeworld's religious faith as he rose through the ranks. It had always been oddly, enviably reassuring. Now it seemed only old. Like Borodin himself. Even as damage control reports came in, and the civilian refugees demanded immediate information, escape, or whatever it was that shrilled in Pauli's ears, for that one moment she shivered. Borodin was old. Like the ship. Like the war.

Like she felt at that moment. She allowed herself one more luxury, and lay back for a last instant in her chair as the sweat dried on brow and body.

Borodin rose. Reluctantly Pauli lifted her head. Becker came around to face him.

He raised an eyebrow, clearly waiting for some command or explanation. Captain Borodin drew himself up. He had not forgotten, and probably would never forgive himself for the moment in which he had proved too worn, too slow. But he still had his dignity.

"My orders,” began Borodin, “indicate that here on Cynthia, you are in command. Your orders, sir?"

3

Cynthia's sky was gray and cool, darkening toward violet at the horizon, with delicate cirrus clouds etched high above. The air was cool, pungent, and moist from the presence of a brownish river, the confluence of several streams frothing down from the foothills of the range that
Amherst
had seen from space. That was the only way Pauli would probably ever see those mountains, she thought.

Wearily she tramped away from the great charred patch in which the
Jeffrey Amherst
rested while the crew—
the active crew,
her thoughts kept cycling back to the new, unbearable pain as if it were a rotten tooth—replaced and tested, sweated and swore, and probably thanked God that they weren't on the short list that Becker had decided to detach from the
Amherst
and assign for duty here on Cynthia with the civs.

Bodyguards. Babysitters. And damned tired of it. It had been three watches since she had slept, then four—and then Becker had read his damned list. She walked farther out, seeing the domes rise in the field beyond the ship. The ground cover, an unlikely combination of grass, thorns, and leaves, crackled underfoot and sprang back up after she moved on.

She snorted. Some of the civs had thrown a fit about the charring
and
the domes. Hadn't wanted to “damage the ground cover,” they'd bleated. She kicked at a particularly thick stand of it, which looked like it could take a lot of damaging. Becker, rot his soul, had been diplomatic, reminding the civs that the children would need housing until they adjusted to their new world, or, for that matter, any world that didn't look like the aftermath of a battle. And the children's adaptation, their sanity itself, had to be the settlers’ main concern. For many of them, Cynthia was the first planet they might know as a home, or, if the war dragged on, the only one. When they first landed here, Pryor and the gentlest of the civs tending them—and Rafe was among them—had compelled the children out into the open air. They had huddled by the domes as if they were spun from skeletal supports; only gradually had they ventured into the open and began to run.

She supposed Cynthia wasn't a bad planet. Counting New Patuxent, the base where Pauli had longed for reassignment, it was the fifth she had seen. Her fifth, and probably the last, she had realized only after the domes were up, the civs’ supplies were offloaded, and she had turned back, with the other officers, to begin the long task of testing and preparing for liftoff.

But Becker had held up a hand, and Borodin—hell, even her own captain—had halted, at the orders, again, of that blasted marshal and his people. Well, she thought at the time, that was one consolation. He'd be staying here. He had pulled out a sealed report—printed orders. In all her years in the service, Pauli had seen such a thing only once: when she was commissioned. Becker had read out the contents—orders which assigned Borodin and the officers who had worked most closely with the refugees on board the
Amherst
to detached duty on Cynthia and the formation of a military government until such time when a duly elected civilian government might replace it—which, in wartime, might be never. She had had a moment's pang—
never see Rafe again
—and then she heard her own name mentioned. She too was grounded. Then Becker stepped back, with the air of a prudent man putting himself out of range, but otherwise refusing to change his mind.

"You're taking me off my ship?” Borodin asked. “My ship's orders were cut for Novaya Moskva by way of New Pax,” he added with the mildness that generally heralded one of his more memorable rages.

"Your ship's orders,” said the marshal. “They said nothing about its complement."

"And myself?” Still that mildness, but the anger was gathering, reddening in the darkness of Borodin's eyes. In an instant more, it would reach critical mass—

Becker reached into his tunic's inner pocket and pulled out something. Then there had been a snap, as if the marshal unsealed something. He handed the wafer to the captain.

"A sector governorship?” asked Borodin. “But I thought that you would be remaining here."

"Thumbprint here, Captain. Do you deny my authority to reassign you now? Here are your new orders: to take charge of this part of Project Seedcorn. You had best read it now, and fast: air contact will destroy the message soon."

Borodin lowered his head and read these new orders, then reread them until the message deteriorated. He threw the fragments down, and rubbed his fingers against his thigh as if he sought to wipe them clean. Project Seedcorn, Pauli had thought at the time, numbed by the shock of reassignment, must be quite something if it forestalled Borodin's explosion. When that finally came, it would be a supernova, she thought. Perhaps the heat of his fury would warm her.