Excelsior (21 page)

When he was finally done, Alexander spent another five minutes dragging himself back down the corridors by the handrails to get to the nearest elevator. He didn’t encounter anyone else along the way, which meant they were all either faster or slower than him at packing their things. Alexander selected the deck marked ‘Shuttle Bay One (SB1)’ which was one deck down from the officers’ quarters. The elevator slowly jerked into motion, and he held on tight to the handrails to avoid hitting his head on the ceiling. A few seconds later the elevator stopped, and it began spinning on its axis, pulling him against the padded sides. Alexander grimaced. Davorian had already spun up the ring decks. That was going to make getting to them slightly more complicated.

He used the handrail to drag himself around the rim of the elevator until his back was resting against the doors. A moment later, pressure sensors detected he was ready, and the doors lowered him down like a platform until he was resting against the inner rim of a spinning hub.

Alexander crawled along the rim, heading toward the nearest spoke in the wheel. That spoke was a hollow drop tube running all the way from the central column of the ship to one of the outer rings. Alexander reached the lip of the drop tube and maneuvered himself until his feet were dangling over the padded edge.

Taking a second to steel himself for the fall, he shoved off and landed on the counter-weighted elevator platform waiting inside. The impact overcame the platform’s inertia and it began to drop at a lazy pace toward the distant bottom of the tube where the shuttle bay was located. As he fell, the tug of artificially-generated gravity grew progressively stronger until sensors judged the time had come to engage braking pads.

The elevator was un-powered while descending, using his weight and the physics of circular motion to pull him down to the spinning ring deck. The ship’s ring decks provided redundant living space for the crew to enjoy the effects of gravity while cruising on long voyages through space, but they were also ideal for launching shuttles, drones, fighters, and even missiles on trajectories that would carry them away from the Lincoln’s flight path and avoid deadly collisions.

Alexander felt the elevator touch ground, and the doors opened, allowing him to walk out onto the subtly-curving deck at a comfortable point five times standard gravity. Everyone else was already there and busy loading cargo crates onto counter-weighted loading platforms. The platforms were demarcated with safety rails and glowing black and yellow-striped boxes painted on the floor with the words Caution and Loading Zone blinking around them in red.

Each of those loading platforms rested above an airlock leading to one of the shuttles docked on the outer rim of the ring deck, so that once the airlocks opened, the platforms would drop down into the shuttles’ waiting cargo bays, functioning exactly like larger versions of the drop tube that Alexander had just ridden down. As he watched, the crew summoned a pair of loading platforms back from depositing their cargo inside waiting shuttles. Both platforms rose slowly until their safety rails came into view.

Alexander looked away and crossed over to Lieutenant Vasquez. The deck curved noticeably under his feet, making it feel like he was always walking uphill. At least under half of standard gravity, that wasn’t such a chore—even with the heavy pack on his shoulders. Vasquez had her helmet off, revealing short dark hair and a dark bronze skin. She was already snapping orders at the burly Rapier pilots, telling them what supplies to fetch and load onto the shuttles. Vasquez was Williams’ replacement as the Lincoln’s quartermaster, as well as its meteorologist and sensors operator, but she didn’t have much experience yet, so Alexander felt he had to check up on her to make sure they didn’t leave anything important behind.

“Vasquez.”

“Sir?” she replied.

“Do you have the cargo manifests ready for me to review?”

“Uh… they’re up here, sir,” she said, tapping her head. “Sorry, I haven’t had time to write them down yet. I can do that now if you like.”

“I like. Dictate to your pad. I’ll listen.”

“All right—sir,” Vasquez added hastily as she unslung her pack and withdrew a holopad. She began dictating, “Two shuttles, carrying one rover each. Twenty solar panels, and two fuel cell generators. A month’s supply of fuel for the fuel cells. A month’s supply of dry rations and drinking water. Spare pressure suits. Lab equipment—each of the bridge crew is responsible for making sure all the equipment they need is loaded. Fourteen inflatable habitation modules—one for each of the bridge crew, one for Max—I mean, Mr. Carter, two more between the infirmary and sleeping quarters for the medical staff, a shared module for the Rapier pilots, one more module for a mess hall and storage, another module for quarantine, and a final one to be used as a spare. Am I forgetting anything?”

Alexander frowned. “You’re asking me?”

“Sorry, no, sir. That’s it.”

“All right. I need you to—”

A new voice interrupted them, calling out across the loading bay, “What about weapons?”

Alexander turned to see Lieutenant Stone walking up to them. “What kind of weapons?”

“All kinds, sir,” Stone said, stopping in front of them. “We don’t know what we’re going to run into down there.”

“What do you suggest?”

“Sniper rifles with thermal and night vision scopes. Automatic rifles. Handguns. Grenades. Land mines. Cheetahs.”

“Land mines? Cheetahs? What do we need assault mechs for?”

“They’re faster than rovers over uneven terrain, and unlike the rovers, they’re armed, so they’ll make good escort vehicles. Not to mention their sensors will save us a lot of trouble watching our perimeter at night.”

“The rovers are armored, and we can guard our perimeter with those sniper rifles you mentioned. Cheetahs will be overkill, not to mention heavy as hell. We’ll need to take an extra shuttle for each of them.”

“Is that a problem, sir?”

“There are only six shuttles. If we take four, there won’t even be enough left for the Lincoln’s crew if they need to abandon ship.”

“Aye, but if they need to abandon ship, then we’re all screwed anyway. Besides, sir, when we meet T-rex’s hairy cousin on the surface you’ll be glad we brought the Cheetahs.”

Alexander snorted. “All right, fine.” Turning to Vasquez, he said, “You get all that? We’re taking four shuttles, two Cheetahs, and all that other stuff Stone mentioned.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I’ll help her,” Stone replied.

“Good. While you’re at it, have your men check people’s packs, and all of the cargo before it’s loaded.”

Stone’s brow furrowed. “Check how, sir? Like a customs check?”

Alexander nodded. “Exactly like that. After the incident with Lieutenant Williams, we can’t be too careful.”

“Right. Understood, sir,” Stone saluted and about-faced. “Packs on the ground people!” he called out as he went. “Daddy wants to know if you packed your toothbrushes.”

“You think it’s going to be dangerous down there, sir?” Vasquez asked.

Alexander turned back to her. “I don’t know, but it’s probably best to be careful.”

“Aye, sir—” Vasquez nodded. “—it probably is.”

 

Chapter 18

Alexander listened to the shuttle rattle and shake. Wonderland’s atmosphere roared against the hull as they made atmospheric entry. He stared out the real, palladium glass viewport, watching as Wonderland came swirling out of a cottony white carpet of clouds. Vibrant purples and reds snapped into sharper focus.

Lieutenant Cardinal gasped. “Those are plants. They’ve got to be!” he said.

Alexander was inclined to agree. Even at this altitude those mottled streaks of color didn’t look like rock formations. “Looks like you’re going to lose that bet, Stone.”

The ground raced up fast, and Lieutenant Stone leveled out to decrease their angle of descent. “Altitude is 2500 meters and dropping,” he said.

They entered the clouds and everything turned white. Raindrops pelted the forward viewport.

“Rain…” Vasquez whispered, her voice full of wonder, as if she were seeing it for the first time.

“Captain, I’ve got something on sensors,” Stone said.

Alexander glanced left to the sensor display to see what it was. Then the comms crackled.

“Shuttle One, this is Two. Are you getting this?”

“I see it,” Stone replied. The sensors display showed multiple unidentified contacts dead ahead and about 500 meters down. “Let’s take a look.” Without warning, he dove sharply and burst out of the clouds. Leveling out again, they saw the dusty purple horizon crowded with hundreds of black dots.

Range to the unidentified blips dropped swiftly, and Alexander’s heart raced. More of them appeared out his side window, silhouetted in the rosy light of the sinking sun. Turning back to the fore, Alexander watched as those dots swelled and details began to emerge. They were spherical and black, but otherwise featureless.

“I’m going to slow down so we can get a good look,” Ryder said. “Brace for braking thrust.”

Alexander slammed into his harness. He gritted his teeth and waited for the sensation of having his eyeballs sucked from their sockets to pass. Braking forces were called eyeballs out for a reason.

The sensation eased as the unidentified black spheres began whipping by all around them. They were semi-translucent and hollow. Papery fins flanked the spheres, and long, delicate tentacles trailed from their lower halves. They looked like giant floating jellyfish. Alexander saw the sun shining through one of them, illuminating venous patterns in its… skin, he decided.

“What are they?” Cardinal asked.

The comm lit up with exclamations from the other shuttle pilots, and Alexander grinned.

“They’re alive, that’s what they are.”

*

The shuttles flew for another hour, chasing the sun so night wouldn’t fall before they had a chance to see the planet with their own eyes. Lieutenant Stone flew them low over an alien jungle of purple and crimson-leafed trees and towering black mushrooms. Maybe they weren’t mushrooms, but that was what they looked like to Alexander.

They set down on the distant shore of the continent just as the sun was setting over a bright turquoise ocean, splashing the sky and clouds with familiar reds and golds.

Now standing in the airlock, they were all in a hurry to disembark, but no one more than Lieutenant Cardinal. He’d spent an hour salivating over all the different species of alien plants, and he was just about to get his first hands-on look at some of them.

“No one takes off their helmets,” Alexander reminded them. Doctor Crespin had warned them about the dangers of breathing the air before they left the Lincoln, but Alexander didn’t want anyone to get caught up in the excitement and forget. “I don’t care what your suit says about how breathable the air is. Until Doc Crespin clears the air as safe, it’s not breathable. Understood?”

Heads bobbed.

A green light came on above the outer airlock doors, indicating that pressure had equalized. Stone waved the outer doors open and in streamed dazzling beams of sunlight. In the distance Alexander heard the ocean crashing on the shore. The crew jumped out one after another, sand skrishing as they landed. Two out of three fell on their hands and knees. Only Stone was able to jump out without falling over.

They’d all lost a lot of muscle from the past seventy days floating in the G-tanks. Alexander decided to climb down using the guide rails for support. Once he was standing on the sand, he turned to see Lieutenant Korbin and McAdams already striding over from Shuttle Two.

“Did you see that?” McAdams called out as they drew near.

“See what?”

“Those balloon creatures,” Korbin said.

Alexander nodded. “Our first major discovery.”

“They’re incredible!” McAdams said, smiling. “They were actually floating! They must be filled with some kind of gas that’s either lighter or hotter than air. I wonder if all avian life on Wonderland flies by the same mechanism? What do you think they eat? Imagine what happens to them in a storm. Either the storms here are incredibly mild, or they are tougher than they look. We’ve got to catch one of them!”

Alexander smiled. McAdams was talking a mile a minute. “That’s what you’re here for,” he said.