First Contact (Galactic Axia Adventure) (3 page)

“Report!” Leatha barked.

“Apparent malfunction in the primary green box,” Mila reported from the engineering station. “Available power falling off. Switching to secondary unit.”

“Acknowledged,” Leatha replied tersely. “Pilot, compensate. Navigation, plot our shortest route to the nearest cruiser. Comm, put out a coded messa....”

“Red-tail attack ship on our port side!” Qualat shouted from the sensor station. “Incoming fire!” he added just as a heat ray grazed the ship, rocking it.

“Return fire!” Leatha ordered.

The trooper at weapons tried to comply. “Weapons inoperative!” he cried anxiously.

“Evasive action!”

“Already on it!” Delmar snapped.

“Second Red-tail on the starboard flank!” Qualat reported.

“Torps restored. Manual only!” weapons reported.

“Give it your best shot!” Leatha ordered.

“Secondary power falling off!”

“Repulsion field and shield failing!”

“Torps away!”

“Pilot, get us out of here!” Leatha barked. Two more heat rays bracketed the ship as it twisted and turned.

Space around the patroller exploded in a brilliant flash of light. “Scratch one Red-tail!” Qualat reported. “Second one evaded and in pursuit!”

“Bag him, Ean!” Leatha ordered. The ship lurched as another torp fired.

“Power continuing to fall off. Tying both supplies together.”

“How long will it give us?” Leatha asked. Delmar dodged another volley of fire from their Red-tail attacker.

“Hard to say,” answered the disheartening trooper at engineering. “We’re coming apart back here!”

“Do your best,” Leatha encouraged.

“Got ‘em!” reported the weapons operator. The ship lurched again. Almost immediately, it yawed sickeningly.

“How goes it, pilot?” Leatha asked.

“Not good,” Delmar answered. “Controls are behaving erratically.”

Are we clear?” Leatha asked the trooper on the sensor panel.

“All clear for now, Captain, but more will be on their way soon enough.”

The captain considered their options. “Everyone suit up!” Since he was in a critical station, the pilot was already suited as a matter of course. “Maintain battle stations. Reduce everything else to minimal power.”

“No hot coffee tonight,” quipped the trooper struggling with the engineering panel which was lit up like a poorly wired winter solstice holiday tree. It showed very little news that wasn’t bad or worse.

“Pilot, it’s your ship,” Leatha stated, transferring tactical command while she slipped into her pressure suit and went to help with engineering. “Try to set us down in one piece somewhere.”

“Thanks a lot,” the pilot said through pursed lips. He had been expecting the command as soon as they were clear of the battle. It allowed the captain, now with little else to do, to help where she could make a difference. The lights flickered, dimmed, and then remained lit with minimal brightness.

Delmar scanned the surrounding space on his heads-up display. The barren planetoid where they’d been heading was within easy reach. He nursed his controls to vector them on a safe approach. Behind him he could hear the rest of the crew frantically working to keep the ship together as metal groaned, snapped, and popped under the strain of his maneuvering. The inertial dampeners were failing, causing the stress of the gravitational field of the planetoid to pull on the already-damaged mainframe of the ship. Delmar mentally balanced their safety against preserving the ship somehow. No matter how he figured it, their situation looked bleak.

This mission reminded Delmar of the training cruise he had just returned from where he’d spent a month onboard a two-man trainer with Trooper-First Ace Vmac mapping planetoids and other obscure objects out on the rim of the Axia. He remembered speaking to his friend, Ert, the Horicon computer about how boring the mission was and how it seemed like such a waste of time, and that Ert had told him that there must be a purpose in the mundane mission even if it wasn’t readily clear. How many times had Ace ordered him to land the trainer on lifeless planetoids? And how many crash landing and enemy attack drills had Ace put him through? He shivered at the thought of Ace flipping an emergency proximity klaxon simulating the presence of a Red-tail invader. He always did it at times when Delmar was relaxed or feeling cocky about being in command of his own ship.

Delmar remembered his conversation with Ian Cahill, a civilian space trader he’d met in the pilot lounge on the Axia’s home planet Shalimar, and how Ian had told him about his encounter with a Red-tail while on a simple cargo run. “Life can sneak up on you, kid,” Ian had said. “One minute you’re the king of the universe and the next you’re dinner on a Red-tail table. So you just better have a few tricks up your sleeve and be ready for anything to happen because sooner or later, it will.”

And now here he was faced with a similar situation, only this time he had the lives of a half-dozen other people riding on his ability to get them out of a serious situation.
What would Ace or Ian do?

Delmar thought about the new Optiveil cloaking device that Ian had installed on his ship, the
Cahill Express
. “It’s a miracle of engineering,” Ian told him. “You can hide a whole planet behind it. It will turn the tide in our fight with the Red-tails. You just wait and see.”

I’d give the rest of my pay from now on for that invisibility shield to hide behind,
Delmar thought
. But even if I had it, I don’t have the power to use it.

The view out the front of the damaged patroller was not a heartening sight. The surface of the airless planetoid was anything but smooth. Jagged crags jutted toward the inky blackness of space, interspersed by deep, forbidding chasms. Only occasionally was the sweating pilot able to see small spots suitable to land the damaged ship.

This hunk of rock reminds me of that Unseen One forsaken moon Ace forced me to ditch on just before we reached Shalimar
, Delmar thought.  
If I didn’t know better, I’d say this is the same place.

The trooper behind him spoke into his ear. “The second green box just failed,” he said ominously. “Readings give us only about another forty-five seconds of full power.”

“Thanks for the good news,” Delmar countered through the open faceplate of his pressure suit. He hated wearing the thing because it both itched and smelled, but the alternative was worse. He was thinking it couldn’t get much worse when a klaxon blared and the hull lost atmospheric integrity. The last of their oxygen blasted out cracks opening on the hull, and the faceplate of every suit snapped shut to protect the wearer.

Delmar cut the throttle to conserve what little power he had at his disposal. Using momentum to roll the ship hard to the left, he barely cleared a rock outcropping that appeared to be grasping for the floundering craft. Directly ahead he spied a small clear area on a narrow ledge part way down in a dark canyon. He knew he didn’t have enough power to clear the apex of the rock face.
This is gonna be bad!

“Twenty seconds of power remaining,” the trooper behind him stated anxiously. Delmar only nodded. He tried desperately to maneuver the ship toward the ledge. A sudden shudder rippled through the ship when they brushed against the canyon wall. The sound of tearing metal screamed from the rear of the ship. Delmar reached to brush beads of sweat from his eyes and found the faceplate blocking his way. Mumbling under his breath, he blinked furiously and managed to clear his vision.

The narrow ledge loomed in front of him, but it now looked even more dangerous than when he’d first seen it. “Five seconds of power left!” the trooper called. Delmar heard Leatha order the other crewmembers to brace for impact.
This is gonna be bad
, thought Delmar again while fighting to keep the ship on an even keel above the narrow shelf.        

The controls began to shake and became unresponsive. Power levels fell off sharply and he felt the throttle shiver. Delmar thought about the rest of the crew that were depending on him for their lives. “Unseen One,” he prayed under his breath, “don’t let me kill all of these people. Not now. Not when we’re ready to graduate.”

 
What would Ace or Ian do?
Delmar thought again.
Probably something unexpected or crazy. Maybe both.

Mustering all of his courage in a last desperate effort, Delmar chopped the throttle completely and let the ship freefall vertically toward the ledge. At the last possible second, he shoved the throttle again to full and felt the last surge of power cushion their fall just as the skids slammed into the rugged and uneven rock. One of the landing skids tore away from the ship and Delmar watched it hurdle over the edge of the ledge into the abyss below. As the ship settled the last half-foot, they could all hear the shriek and groan of tortured metal. With a final crunch, the mainframe of the ship twisted at the bulkheads and stopped moving and lay at a dangerous angle on the rock ledge, never to fly again. No one dared to move. The slightest motion might send the disabled ship over the edge of the rock ledge into the bottomless pit yawning up at them.

Perched as they were on the rocky cliff, the crew was in real danger of toppling into the cavernous darkness below. Although they had destroyed two enemy vessels, Delmar knew the Red-tails hunted in packs, so there would be others arriving soon. Staying put left them exposed to the marauding Red-tail ships sure to be hunting them. The chances of escape were equally dismal.

This isn’t fair
, Delmar thought.
But who ever said space is fair? Space is indifferent, even to the best that human effort can provide
. Only the Unseen One could help them now. Someone began to pray. Another began to cry. Everyone was thankful to be alive.

An eerie silence enveloped the half dozen people onboard the dead ship. A battery-powered emergency light flickered in the darkness, bathing the interior of the ship with an eerie red glow. His task completed, Delmar turned with everyone else aboard to face the captain of the ship.

More than aware of the lives dependent on her, Captain Leatha Mordon mentally reviewed their predicament. The crashed patroller rested just barely balanced on a ledge hardly larger than the ship itself. A shear wall fronted them on one side and a fatal drop awaited them outside the airlock on the other. Another means of escaping the ship would have to be found—soon.  The atmosphere of the planet would not sustain human life, and there was only a 7-day air supply in their pressure suits.  She knew the fleet would send rescue vessels soon in answer to their distress call but for the time being, they were on their own.

The young captain came to a decision. Considering all angles, she knew a distress signal had been sent and that the emergency transponder beacon was active, but they could not stay in the ship. And even though survival on the surface was risky, there was only one possible plan of action.

Just as Leatha was about to issue orders to cut a hole in the roof of the ship with a blaster, the airlock opened, flooding the interior of the patroller with white light. A trooper-first in his utility uniform stepped through the hatch.

“All right, clear out and assemble in the classroom,” he ordered, surveying his trainees. They looked momentarily stunned while they mentally changed from one reality to another. In shock, they started to file out past their instructor. He held back the young pilot for a moment.

When they were alone, he spoke to the trainee. “Nice landing, Mr. Eagleman,” Trooper-First Berlon said with a smile. “I’ve never seen that trick used before.”

 Delmar was still shaken from his harrowing experience. “I borrowed the idea from how the mail carrier flitters back home come in to land,” he stammered. “Besides, it was the craziest thing I could think of at the time.” The instructor clapped him on the shoulder and they walked out through the hatch of the simulator.

Later in the classroom, the trainees removed and serviced their pressure suits and then sat down to watch the record of their training flight. The viewscreen lit up to show the computer-generated flight of the simulator. They all cringed as heat rays from two Red-tail ships bracketed the ship.

The picture paused and T-1 Berlon spoke from his stool beside the screen. “Can anybody tell us how this situation developed in the first place?”

The student that had acted as captain raised her hand. The instructor nodded toward her. “It came about because I didn’t heed the warning we received earlier about suspected Red-tail activity.”

“Don’t be so hard on yourself,” Berlon remarked. “You had no hard evidence to base your decision on. You made your choice based on a gut instinct. That was good.”

“But it got us caught in a trap,” she answered disgustedly.

“To tell you truthfully, there was no way to avoid that trap,” the instructor replied with a grin. “I programmed the scenario that way.”

When he saw the sense of betrayal mirrored on their faces, he continued. “There is always the possibility that you’ll face a situation that you can’t get out of. It’s a chance we all take as troopers, so it’s very possible that you could die in space. For those of you that will command a ship, you may face the loss of your entire crew, but you can’t let that stand in the way of making hard decisions. With this in mind, I want you to face the unexpected while you’re still here in training. I haven’t lost a student yet to sloppy flying or bad decisions, and I don’t intend to start now.”

He watched understanding draw itself on their features. Leatha still didn’t look convinced, so the instructor continued. “Your overall performance was quite commendable, Leatha,” Berlon stated. “The way you handled your ship and available resources shows a good instinct for command decisions. In fact,” he added with a smile, “I had to activate a few new wrinkles to keep you from escaping the scenario altogether.”

 He pointed at the viewscreen and added, “Choosing to put down on the planetoid rather than being stranded in space was a good choice.”    

“I just felt like the crew would stand a better chance against the Red-tails that were sure to follow if they were on the surface,” Leatha answered. “Floating in space makes you a sitting duck.”