CHAPTER III

Kira watched on her overlays as the Wallfish and the Darmstadt receded into the distance: two bright points of light that quickly dwindled to near nothing. The ships moved as a locked pair, on course for the asteroid they’d chosen to mine. Behind them, Bughunt was a dull, ruddy orb—a dying coal set within a field of black.

Kira sat buckled into a jump seat along the wall, next to Falconi. The rest of the expedition was likewise secured, except for those—like Trig and Nielsen—who were wearing power armor. They stood locked into hard points near the back of the shuttle.

Their group numbered twenty-one. Fourteen of them, including Hawes and the three other Marines from the Wallfish, were in exos. Two of the UMC exos looked to be heavy armor variants: walking tanks with portable turrets attached to the fronts of their breastplates.

Most of the Marines were enlisted men, although Akawe had also sent along his second-in-command, Koyich, to oversee the operation.

The yellow-eyed man was in the middle of saying to Falconi, “—we say you jump, you jump. Clear? ”

“Perfectly, ” said Falconi. He didn’t look happy, though.

Koyich’s upper lip curled. “I don’t know why the captain agreed to let rim runners like you along, but orders are orders. If shit goes down, stay the hell out of our way, you hear? You cross our line of fire, we’re going to shoot through you, not around. Get it? ”

If anything, Falconi’s expression became even more glacial. “Oh I got it. ” In her mind, Kira checked the box labeled asshole next to Koyich’s name.

Overhead, the lightstrips switched from the clean white shine of full-spectrum illumination to the purple glow of irradiating UV, and from jets mounted along the walls, gusts of decon gasses buffeted her and the other passengers.

The Ilmorra was laid out differently than the Valkyrie, but it was similar enough that Kira felt a strong sense of dé jà vu. She tried to put aside the emotion and focus on the present; whatever happened on the planet, they weren’t going to get stuck in the shuttle. Not with the Darmstadt and the Wallfish nearby. Even so, it was unsettling to be in such a small ship, so far from any human-settled system. They were truly explorers of the deep unknown.

They had enough food to stay on the planet for a week. If more was needed, the Darmstadt could drop it from orbit once the ship got back from the asteroid belt. Barring unforeseen complications, they would stay on the planet until they found the Staff of Blue or were able to determine it wasn’t there. Returning to the ships was going to be a huge hassle, not only because of the propellant needed to lift the shuttle into orbit, but also because of the decontamination they would need to go through before being allowed back on board.

Like everyone not clad in an exo, Kira had donned a skinsuit and helmet, which she’d be living in until they left the planet. Everyone but the Entropists, who had somehow transformed the smart fabric of their gradient robes into fitted suits complete with helmets and visors. As always, their technology impressed.

The suits would have been necessary regardless of concerns over biocontainment. Spectrographic analysis had shown that the surface atmosphere on the ground would kill them without protection (not immediately, but fast enough).

The Wallfish and the Darmstadt had decelerated a considerable amount as they neared the planet, but neither ship had come to a complete, relative stop, which left the Ilmorra with several hours of thrusting before it could enter orbit.

Kira closed her eyes and waited.

The shriek of alarms yanked Kira back to full alertness. Red lights flashed overhead, and the Marines shouted at each other, barking incomprehensible jargon.

“What’s going on? ” she said. No one replied, but Kira saw the answer for herself as she pulled up her overlays.

Ships.

Lots of ships popping out of FTL. Jellies.

A jolt of adrenaline caused Kira’s heart to race, and the Soft Blade roiled underneath her skinsuit. She scanned the details. Four, five, six ships had appeared so far. They’d entered normal space somewhat offset from the heart of the system—an error in their navigation systems, perhaps, but knowing the speed of the Jellies’ drives, they couldn’t be more than a few hours away at max thrust.

Seven ships.

Next to her, Falconi was speaking frantically into the microphone of his helmet. Across the middle of the shuttle, Koyich was doing the same.

“Sheiiit, ” said Sanchez. “Guess the Jellies were already out here, searching for the Staff of Blue. ”

A clank as Tatupoa slapped the side of Sanchez’s armored head. “No, dumbass. They went and flash traced us is what they did. Timing’s all wrong elsewise. ”

Corporal Nishu chimed in, “First time we’ve seen them do it too. Fuckers. ”

Then Lt. Hawes: “Somehow they figured out how to track us even with all the course adjustments. ” He shook his head. “Not good. ”

“What course adjustments? ” Kira asked.

Nishu was the one to answer: “Whenever we drop out of FTL to bleed off heat, we make a slight course change. No more than a degree or a fraction of a degree, but it’s enough to throw off anyone who is trying to plot your final destination based off your trajectory. Isn’t always helpful in the League, with the stars so close together, but makes a difference if you’re going from, say, Cygni to Eidolon. ”

Koyich and Falconi were still talking into their microphones.

“And the Wallfish made these corrections too? ” Kira said.

Hawes nodded. “Horzcha coordinated it with your ship mind. Should have kept the Jellies from flash tracing us, but … guess not. ”

Flash trace. Kira remembered the term from Seven Minutes to Saturn, the war movie Alan had loved so much. The concept was pretty simple. If you wanted to see what had happened at a location prior to the time of your arrival, all you had to do was go FTL and fly away from that location until you’d traveled a distance greater than the light from the event. Then you just parked your ship in open space, turned on your telescope, and waited.

The detail of the images received would be limited by the size of your on-board equipment, but even at interstellar distances, it would be relatively easy to spot something like, say, the Wallfish and the Darmstadt jumping to FTL. Ship drives were hot torches against the cold backdrop of space, and they were dead easy to find and track.

Kira berated herself for not considering the possibility sooner. Of course the Jellies would do their best to figure out where the Soft Blade had gone after 61 Cygni. Why wouldn’t they? She knew how important the xeno was to them. Somehow, with the appearance of the nightmares, she’d assumed the Jellies would have bigger things to worry about.

Apparently not.

Falconi shouted something in his helmet that Kira only heard a muted version of because his speaker was turned off. Then he let his head fall back against the wall, a grim expression on his face.

She knocked on his visor, and he looked at her.

“What is it? ” she said.

He scowled. “We’re too far away for the Wallfish to reach us before the Jellies. Even if she could, her tanks are over half empty, and there’s no way we can…” He stopped, lips pursed, and glanced toward Trig. “The odds aren’t good. Put it that way. ”

“We keep going, ” said Koyich, loud enough to be heard throughout the shuttle. “Our only chance now is to find this staff before the Jellies do. ” He turned his slitted cat-eyes onto Kira. “If we do, you’d better be able to use it, Navá rez. ”

Kira gave a sharp jerk of her chin, and even though she was far from certain, she said, “Get the staff into my hands, we’ll have a real surprise for the Jellies. ”

Koyich seemed satisfied by her statement, but a message popped up in her overlays:

< You sure about that? – Falconi>

< The xeno seems to know how to use it, so … let’s hope. – Kira>

Then the thrust alert rang out, and a lead blanket settled over Kira as the Ilmorra kicked up its burn to a full 2 g’s.

“ETA to Nidus, fourteen minutes, ” said the shuttle’s pseudo-intelligence.

“Nidus? ” Nielsen asked before Kira could.

Lt. Hawes answered: “That’s our unofficial designation for the planet. Easier to remember than some random letter. ”

Kira thought it was fitting. Closing her eyes, she switched her overlays to the shuttle’s outside cameras. The curve of the planet rose up before them, one half in shadow, the other in light, and the terminator a dusky, twilight realm dividing the two from pole to pole. Bands of swirling clouds enveloped the middle of the orb—massive storms driven by the transferred heat from the sun-locked side. Nidus.

Vertigo made Kira grab the arms of the jump seat as, for a moment, she felt as if they were hanging over an enormous precipice, about to fall.

It wasn’t needed, but the pseudo-intelligence provided continual updates, perhaps because it was calming, perhaps because of UMC protocol:

“Resumption of weightlessness in five … four … three … two…” The lead blanket vanished, and Kira swallowed as her stomach attempted to escape through her mouth. “Z-axis swap commencing. ” She felt a shove against the right side of her body, and Nidus swung out of view, replaced by the spangled depths of space as the Ilmorra turned end for end, and then another shove as the spin stopped. She turned off the overlays and concentrated on controlling her rebellious stomach. “Retracting radiators. … T-minus one minute, fifteen seconds until atmospheric entry. ” The time crawled by with agonizing slowness. Then: “Contact in ten … nine … eight—”

As the pseudo-intelligence continued its countdown, Kira checked on the Jellies. Four of the ships had changed course in pursuit of the shuttle. The other three were heading toward the asteroid belt, presumably to refill their tanks, same as the Darmstadt and the Wallfish. So far, none of the aliens seemed to show any interest in attacking either of the two ships, but Kira knew that would change.

“Contact. ”

A tremor ran through the Ilmorra, and Kira drifted back against her seat as the tremors increased into a shuddering roar. She took a quick look outside via the rear-facing cameras. A wall of flame greeted her. She shivered and switched off the feed.

“Initiating braking, ” said the pseudo-intelligence.

A full-body hammer blow slammed Kira into the seat. She gritted her teeth, grateful for the support of the Soft Blade. The shaking worsened, and the Ilmorra bucked hard enough to make Kira’s head snap back and her teeth clatter together.

Several of the Marines whooped. “Oh, Momma! Riding the dragon! ” “Kick it, man! ” “Just like orbital skydiving back home! ” “Now that’s what a hot drop is supposed to feel like! ”

Part of Kira couldn’t help but think that Sparrow would have enjoyed the turbulence.

The sound of the engines changed, growing deeper, more muted, and the vibrations quickened in frequency. “Switching fusion drive to closed-cycle operation, ” said the pseudo-intelligence.

That meant they were about ninety klicks above the ground. Below that height, the density of the atmosphere would cause enough thermal backscattering from an open-cycle reactor to melt the back of the shuttle. Not only that, an unshielded exhaust would irradiate everything near the landing zone.

The problem with closed-cycle operation, however, was that the reactor devoured hydrogen at close to ten times the normal rate. And right then, Kira worried that they would need every ounce of propellent to escape the Jellies.

Unless, that was, she could get her hands on the Staff of Blue.

The bulkheads around them groaned and squealed, and somewhere a piece of equipment clattered onto the floor.

Kira checked the cameras: a layer of clouds obscured the view, and then they cleared and she spotted the small fold of weathered mountains they were heading for. The Vanished complex was just barely visible as a gleam of white lines hidden deep within the shadowed valley.

The Ilmorra bucked again, even harder than before. Pain shot through Kira’s tongue, and blood flooded her mouth as she realized she’d bitten herself. She coughed as the blood went down the wrong way. “What was that? ” she shouted.

“Drag chutes, ” replied Koyich in an infuriatingly calm voice. She would have sworn he was enjoying this.

“Helps save fuel! ” Sanchez added.

Kira nearly laughed at the absurdity of it.

The roar of the wind outside softened, and the pressure on her chest lessened. She took a breath. Not much longer now. …

RCS thrusters sounded: short bursts above and below them along the hull. The ship wobbled and seemed to turn slightly around Kira. Stability adjustments, repositioning the Ilmorra for landing.

She counted seconds to herself. Almost half a minute passed, and then a sudden burn jammed her deep into the chair, making it difficult to breathe. The Ilmorra juddered and swayed, Kira’s weight normalized, and from the back of the ship came a pair of booming thuds. Then the engines cut out and a shocking stillness followed.

Planetfall.

CHAPTER III

SHARDS

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