“Most of the ones still alive got off on the bigger shuttle while I came back for you. ” He turned to grin over his shoulder at him. “We cut it close, baby. ”
“Stop calling me baby, damn it. Whatthe hells happened?”
“Hmm…good question. Right after I left you, I was attempting to launch into hyperdrive, when there was a minor glitch in the gravimetric field displacement manifold. I think I might have accelerated a bit too fast. ”
“You think? Minor glitch!” Larsson waved his hands around rather than smack Tarr upside the head. “You idiot! Youcould have blown us all up!”
“Calm down, baby, you get too excited. Must be a dog thing. I have this all under control—I got you out, didn’t I? We’re all safe and sound. ”
“Safe and sound? We’re on a fucking shuttlecraft in the middle of nowhere!”
Tarr executed a little maneuver to miss a bit of debris coming from the disintegration of his ship and turned his head to smile back at Larsson. “As I believe I’ve already mentioned, you worry too much. We’re in a planetary system—I don’t know exactly which one, but I’m working on it. We’ll find a nice little planet or moon to set down on and await rescue. I was able to send out a distress signal just before I came for you. I’m sure someone picked it up. ”
“Oh gods,” Larsson put his head in his hands and sighed. His body had a lot of nerve betraying him like it had—he’d suspected for months that Tarr Bonnet would be the death of him, but he didn’t know his suspicions would turn out to be quite so literal.
“Ah! Here we are,” Tarr said, his fingers skipping over the comp screen. “I’ve found a moon that has an atmosphere with oxygen. Admittedly, not a lot, but let me keep looking. ”
“Let me have the damn thing and you fly this fucking shuttle without blowing us up again!” Larsson pulled the compnet from his hands and started looking through the map of the system he had pulled up. The system was called the Miracean system. It contained multiple confirmed planets with several in the habitable zone. A habitable zone was the region in the planetary system where a planet or moon could maintain water on its surface and potentially therefore, life.
It had to be the right distance from its sun, of course, neither too close nor too far away. It looked like his idiot mate had been lucky again, because this system had several likely candidates. The best one looked to be a moon called M10398.
“This one,” Larsson said, pointing toward the blip on the scre
en. “Navigate here. It might be a little warm, but it doesn’t look too bad and probably has water. No reports of any habitation. ”
Tarr nodded and punched in the coordinates. “Uh…would this be a bad time to tell you we’re a lmost out of fuel?”
Larsson felt the blood drain from his face. “Damn it, Tarr!”
“Hang on, baby. I’ve got to take us down fast before we run out. ”
The next few minutes were harrowing as they entered the moon’s atmosphere way too fast. Although the air resistance was helpful in slowing down the rate at which their spacecraft was being pulled down to the surface, the friction generated by their fast entry resulted in dangerously high temperatures to the outer hull of the ship.
Tarr maneuvered the shuttle to enter the atmosphere backward so the ship could slow itself down from its high-velocity orbit, turning its blunt side down so a shock wave was formed, keeping some of the heat away from the shuttlecraft. It also helped to slow their rate of descent.
Tarr took controls away from the on-board comps to pilot the ship the rest of the way down. They were still traveling at hypersonic speed, but their shields were holding and the craft was slowing enough that the moon’s gravity was pulling them to the surface. Tarr performed a series of ‘S’ turns, slowing it even further, along with the engines backward thrust, and the shuttle finally began to decelerate. Larsson glanced out the porthole next to him and saw the surface still coming toward them dangerously fast.
Tarr yelled back over his shoulder to Larsson. “I see a likely spot to put us down by that riverdown there. Brace yourself. ”
They came in low for a couple of passes over the water, but the engines were stuttering, almost out of fuel. Tarr had to put the craft down and quickly before they simply fell from the sky. Larsson put his head between his knees and held on tight as the shuttle hit the ground with an incredible impact, bouncing along the moon’s surface like a ball before careening to a swerving, spiraling stop as Tarr pulled hard on the controls, turning the ship around and around and spinning like a top.
The shuttle lurched into something hard and massive on its left side and it was over in seconds, the craft coming to a shuddering stop. Larsson had slammed his head into the wall next to him, and he must have lost consciousness for a few minutes. When he awoke, Tarr was leaning over him, turned around in what was left of his seat and running his hands along both sides of Larsson’s head.
Larsson fought him off, pushing his hands away. He sputtered a few seconds and then lashed out at him. “What the hells kind of landing was that, Tarr? Gods, you almost killed us!”
Tarr drew back with an aggrieved look on his face. “That was an excellent landing. I got us down in one piece, didn’t I? Wewere out of fuel!”
“And whose fault was that? What kind of crew leaves the shuttlecraft almost empty? No, don’t tell me! A halfassed, irresponsible, harebrained bunch of Rogers, that’s who!” Larsson was shaking, partly from anger, partly from the close call, and he wasn’t ready to calm down yet, despite the fact he knew they needed to get out of the wreckage before the damned thing blew up.
“Get me out of here, damn it!” He was struggling with the harness holding him in, as the controls had been crushed in the crash. “What the hells did we hit anyway?”
“A mountain,” Tarr said calmly, pulling out what looked like a wickedly sharp knife to slice through the harness, freeing him. “There’s a range that runs along the side of the river here, but the shore was the only halfway clear spot I could see to put us down. Hey, at least we found water. ”
Larsson shot him a disgusted glare and began hauling himself out of his seat, not easy with the entire left side of the craft caved in. Tarr thrust open the hatch and boosted himself out, reaching back for Larsson, who ignored his outstretched hand and pulled himself up. Now that he was out of the shuttle, he could get a better view of where they landed.
The water in the river was a deep cerulean blue and ran along the side of sheer cliffs for as far as Larsson could see, before it twisted off to the east, following the curve of the mountains. They had landed on the narrow shore of this river. On the other side was a thick, verdant jungle. The heat was oppressive, but not intolerable, and big, dark clouds were boiling over the sky, promising a rain in the near future.
“We need to find a shelter and soon, from the looks of it,” Larsson said and glanced over at Tarr, getting a good look at him for the first time since they landed. He was holding himself at an odd angle and looked as if he were close to collapsing.