Pools of Yarah Read online

  Captain Moore looked at his bridge crew and frowned, but replied, “Aye, a good meal would be nice. We’ll send representatives.” He closed communications again. “They’re probably stripping Earth bare of its resources and salvage and don’t want us interfering with their operation. Until we know more about them, we proceed slowly.”

  He turned to Cathi. “Lieutenant Lorst, take Anderson and two others and pay a little visit to Earth in the shuttle. See what you can find out. Be careful. We don’t know how well armed they are.” He stroked his red beard in thought before adding, “Take a portable laser with you, just in case.”

  The portable laser’s primary use was in mining, but it could be a formidable weapon in the right hands. The Baldry carried two much larger lasers and a missile launcher, but they were fixed to the hull and nearly useless on the ground. The ship would be a sitting duck. Having the small laser in the shuttle in case the Baldry needed rescuing seemed a sensible precaution.

  She was eager to see Earth, to feel its soil beneath her feet. It would be the culmination of a lifetime’s dream. “Yes sir, captain,” she answered, unable to keep the smile from her lips.

  She picked her crew carefully. Because of the inherent dangers involved, she chose no one in a monogamous relationship or with children. She eliminated anyone essential to the welfare of the ship – hydroponics, Skip Drive technicians, or navigation. If anything happened, she wanted to ensure the survival of her ship, her family. Ten minutes later, she, Kal Anderson, Tai Whitehall, and Ialin Pegari boarded the Baldry’s shuttle. Using Mars’ largest moon, Phobos, to shield their departure, she kept power at a minimum until she was certain that prying eyes on Mars could not track them. She chose a longer, elliptical orbit instead of a more direct path to allow them the opportunity to scan both Earth and some of the larger asteroid colonies in more detail.

  The colonies were small-scale affairs, often extended families, carved deep into the bodies of asteroids as they removed the ore. They refined the metals on-site and transported them to Mars. She detected a few ice-rich comets towed by powerful little tugs for delivery to Mars to replace atmosphere lost through attenuation due to its low gravity. None of the colonies appeared threatening.

  The long-range scans of Earth continued to show no signs of advanced life. Small forests and grasslands dotted the upper Temperate Zones, but vast expanses of desert covered most of North and South America, Africa, parts of Central Asia, and almost all of Australia – the entire Equatorial and Tropical Zones. Minimal ice caps dotted the Polar Regions. A two-thousand-kilometer-wide sea was now all that separated the continents of Africa and South America. No large herds of animals roamed the grasslands. No schools of fish swam the seas. No cities broadcast on the E-M bands. Earth appeared to be a dead world. She held out little hope for survivors, but continued to peer through the telescope for any signs of a remaining civilization.

  As the distance diminished, she distinguished signs of massive destruction that upon first glance she mistook for natural disasters. Closer examination revealed converging roadways that ended abruptly in deep craters. Straight, kilometers-long scars across the terrain gave testament to the power of space-based lasers. She counted the ruins of seven great domes in the hemisphere visible to them. There was not a single sign of any surviving advanced culture – no maintained roads, no radio signals, and no airborne traffic.

  “They wiped themselves out,” she relayed to Anderson, who sat in the seat beside her. He merely nodded and remained intent on his own console. She couldn’t understand why he wasn’t as dejected as she was by the lack of communication. They had come a long way to find Earth, and yet he displayed neither excitement nor gloom.

  As they approached Earth’s moon, she detected old settlements and bases on its scarred gray surface, but they, too, were silent. She was surprised to find no orbiting stations around Earth from the construction of the Migration fleet, but then remembered that a thousand years was a long time to maintain an orbit, especially with increased solar winds from the raging sun.

  Ten thousand kilometers from Earth, Anderson called out, “I’m picking up something on the scanner just ahead of us, maybe a thousand clicks distant.”

  She peered at his screen. “I don’t see anything.” “It comes and goes, but it’s there. It’s small, cold, and metallic. See. There it is.”

  She watched as an object flashed into existence, and then disappeared again. “Keep an eye on it,” she advised. “Try for a visual.”

  A few minutes later, Anderson piped up, “It’s a satellite. I’m not getting any readings from it though. It appears to be a derelict.” He paused, then added with growing puzzlement, “No, wait. I’m getting something now.”

  Through the viewport, Cathi watched the satellite slowly began to unfold two large solar panels like angel’s wings, or dragon’s wings, she thought with a sudden chill.

  “I’m getting a large energy spike. It’s powering up and scanning us,” Anderson called out. “It’s an automated defense satellite.”

  As she noted the near panic in Anderson’s normally controlled voice, she throttled the shuttle’s engines to full power and began a tight curve away from the now fully active satellite, but the compact ion engine was designed for power, not speed. The lasers from the defense satellites would be powerful enough to destroy any approaching ship unable to supply the proper recognition code, which they could not.

  “Pegari! Power up the laser and target that satellite. I’m getting us out of here. Fire if the satellite shows any sign of targeting us.”

  She fought the controls to swing the shuttle in a tight turn not recommended by the manufacturers. She fired all attitude thrusters on one side to help facilitate the turn. Pegari grunted as she slammed into a bulkhead. Over her shoulder, Cathi saw Pegari shake it off and scramble to slam her helmet over her curly brown locks. They had mounted the laser in the airlock, meaning Pegari would have to evacuate the airlock and open the outer door to fire it.

  When they reached a distance of one hundred kilometers from the satellite, it began to show definite signs of hostility by sweeping the shuttle with a powerful magnetic resonance beam. Without the proper shielding, the beam would have shorted out the shuttle’s electrical power. Still, alarms began to sound all over the ship. Now, the satellite was actively targeting them.

  “Pegari,” she yelled.

  A brilliant beam of light shot from the shuttle and disintegrated one of the large solar panels of the satellite. A cloud of debris and gas expanded away from the satellite.

  “Got it,” Pegari yelled in triumph over the intercom, her young voice shrill with excitement.

  “Don’t dance yet, Pegari,” Anderson cautioned. “It’s still active.”

  Almost as if to prove Anderson correct, the satellite fired a laser burst, missing the shuttle by mere meters. Cathi flinched as the beam shot across their bow, scorching the shuttle’s paint. In her worst nightmares, she had never imagined being under attack by a fully awakened defense satellite. If this was what had destroyed the Martian ships, perhaps they should have heeded the president’s warning after all.

  “Anderson, send a message to the Baldry. Warn them about the automated defense satellite while I try to get us out of here.” Another laser burst sliced through space just behind them. The satellite was getting closer with each shot. One more shot and the satellite would have them targeted. Luckily for them, the satellite was dormant when they arrived. If it had been at one-hundred-percent power as they approached, she doubted they could have survived this long.

  “Pegari, shoot that damn thing,” she screamed into her headset.

  “I’m trying,” Pegari snapped. “I can’t get a good lock on it. The damn shuttle’s shaking to pieces. Try to hold it steady.”

  The G-forces Cathi was putting the shuttle through in her wild maneuvers could indeed shake it to pieces, but that was the least of her worries. She glanced at the distance indicator hoping they were out of range. If she could
only get another few hundred kilometers … The shuttle shuddered and bucked as the satellite zeroed in on them. Its powerful laser sliced through the aft section of the hull, rupturing one fuel tank, an oxygen tank, and damaging the main engine. The hiss of escaping gases spewing into the vacuum of space was deafening. Their luck had run out. One more such hit and they were finished. She slammed down the faceplate of her helmet. Dense black smoke poured through the aft door and curls of flame licked the ceiling.

  “Whitehall. Put out that fire.” She tried to keep the rising panic from her voice while she barked out orders.

  Whitehall unstrapped and directed a stream of fire-retardant foam at the door, but the fuel-fed fire burned too fiercely for the extinguisher. He emptied the extinguisher and looked at her hopelessly. There was only one thing left to try.

  “Everyone drop your face shields and be sure you’re on suit oxygen. I’m purging the cabin.”

  Anderson gave her a warning glare, which she promptly ignored. He dropped his face shield. She touched the purge icon on the console panel screen. It turned red, indicating the ship was venting its atmosphere. Within seconds, the fire was out, as was their cabin air. The suits held less than six hours of life-giving oxygen, and their main oxygen supply was gone. With no main engine and their fuel tanks ruptured, they had no hope of returning to the Baldry before they were breathing vacuum. Or of outrunning the next laser blast, she mused silently.

  Then, as if by a miracle, their luck changed. The expanding cloud of frozen atmosphere she had just vented provided cover for the damaged shuttle. The satellite’s targeting laser, scattered by the expanding cloud of ice crystals, could not obtain a clear lock. The shuttle’s targeting alert went silent. Its sudden silence lifted a weight from her shoulders, allowing her to think clearly.

  “Thank the stars, we now have a chance,” she whispered.

  Acting quickly, she turned the shuttle directly into the planet’s atmosphere, hoping the thickening blanket of air rushing at them would absorb at least some of the laser’s energy once it managed to reacquire the shuttle. They plummeted toward the planet like a rock, the ceramic skin of the shuttle burning away in layers. They plunged toward the ground out of control.

  As she hoped, the next laser hit did only minor damage to the aft section. The thickening atmosphere had diffused most of the satellite’s laser energy. It normally operated in the vacuum of space as a defensive screen for the larger laser platforms that had destroyed much of Earth’s surface. In spite of its limitations, it had delivered a deathblow to the shuttle and likely doomed them. They were entering Earth’s atmosphere at an alarming speed, and the main engine was gone. The shuttle had only the small maneuvering thrusters left to slow them. She checked her navigation screen.

  Twelve percent off optimal glide path. Damn!

  A quick check on the computer told her that the thrusters would not be enough. The shuttle would either become a flaming beacon to light up the night sky, or add one more crater to the many that pockmarked the ground. Neither prospect boded well for their immediate survival. If she could level the shuttle just a little, the aerodynamics of the shuttle itself, designed to operate in an atmosphere, would work for them. A long, steep glide could slow them enough to prevent incineration. Landing was another matter. If she used all the remaining fuel to decrease their angle of descent, there would be none left for landing. In the dark, with no way to choose a landing site, it mattered very little anyway. She chose to tackle one problem at a time.

  Firing the forward maneuvering thrusters, using all her strength to pull back on the almost frozen control yoke, she managed to reduce their angle of descent a few degrees, just enough to gain limited control of the plummeting shuttle. Then, the remaining fuel tank emptied, and the thrusters sputtered and went silent. Now, the shuttle had become a very fast, very heavy glider.

  Six percent off optimal glide path. It was the best she could do. She would have to trust the shuttle’s exterior to handle the extra heat. Cabin temperature soared another ten degrees Celsius. Even with her suit’s air conditioning, she was perspiring heavily. A proper landing was out of the question. Gravity would choose their location for them. It appeared they would hit somewhere in the vast broken plains just east of what had once been Denver Dome. Perhaps that was providential. Denver Dome, unlike most of the other domes they had scanned, appeared mostly intact. It was, however, radio silent. If they survived the crash, the odds were low that they would find help there, but it was their only choice.

  At 25,000 meters, an atmospheric microburst slammed into the shuttle with a hammer blow, shaking the contents of the cabin like a cocktail shaker and rattling her teeth so hard she bit her tongue. The shuttle abruptly dropped two thousand meters as wind fell away from the underside of the airfoils. At the same time, the wind shear tried to flip the shuttle onto its side. She fought the controls to bring up the nose and keep the deadweight craft level. Gradually, the nose lifted, but it was too little too late. They would never make Denver Dome.

  They passed over a long, deep scar in the earth that had once been a mighty river. The faint light of the moon picked out the rusted hulks of ships littering the bottom, and the rubble of a collapsed bridge, which divided two short sections of cracked and pitted highway. Beyond the river, a series of wide craters whose bottoms remained deeply shadowed scarred the landscape. They skimmed over the desolation at a height of less than two thousand meters, trailing a stream of molten metal and burning ceramic tiles lighting the dark terrain beneath them.

  Finally, she could do no more. Gravity, the Big Attractor, was winning. She fired the landing thrusters, hoping for just a few seconds of power to gain altitude. The engines sputtered for a mere four seconds before shuddering to silence. Was it enough to raise the nose and level them out? Now, she was no longer the pilot. She was a passenger. She did not bother dropping the landing gear. The uneven ground beneath them would have ripped the gear away instantly.

  The shuttle struck the ground with a bone-jarring thud at a speed of over three hundred kilometers per hour and bounced back into the air like a stone skipped on a pond. The impact jerked her forward in her harness, and then slammed her head back into her seat hard enough to blur her vision. Only the adrenaline rush from the danger kept her from passing out. Her chest ached where the restraints bit into her flesh.

  The shuttle landed heavily on its starboard side six hundred meters from first impact. The starboard airfoil crumpled from the impact. A series of metal-wrenching shorter bounds slowed them to one-hundred-eighty kph. Pieces of the shuttle’s ceramosteel alloy hull peeled away, like carving flesh with a chef’s knife, leaving bonelike naked support struts. A five-meter section of the fuselage and deck sheared away, taking Whitehall’s seat with it. She watched the look of sheer terror in his eyes as he disappeared in a cloud of dust.

  The shuttle once again righted itself as the nose began plowing into the dirt. The seven-centimeter thick, triple-layered aluminum-silicate forward window shattered, spraying the cabin with slivers of glass. An arm-length, knife-edged piece penetrated the seat just above her head. A shower of dirt and rocks poured into the cabin through the shattered window intent on burying them alive. Friction with the ground, acting like sandpaper on the shuttle’s keel, gradually slowed them. Finally, the shuttle skewed to the right and flipped onto its damaged starboard side. The noise was deafening, a groaning of earth and metal. The shuttle came to rest only meters from a deep ravine.

  Inside the crashed shuttle, nothing stirred.

  For many long minutes, the only sounds coming from the demolished hulk of the shuttle were the popping of red hot metal cooling and the groaning of sagging structural supports. That ping, ping, ping sound of cooling metal was what finally brought Lieutenant Cathi back to reality. Loosening her shoulder harness, she fell hard out of her tilted command chair and landed on her hands and knees in the dirt covering the crumpled wall of the cabin, which had now become the deck. She pushed to her feet to check on the
condition of her crew. The only light came from an overhead panel wrenched from the ceiling, swinging hypnotically from its wiring. She fumbled for the flashlight at her belt and played it around the demolished cabin.

  Pegari was dead. A piece of steel torn loose by the impact had plunged through her upper torso, pinning her to the half-open inner airlock door. Her helmet faceplate was smashed. Cathi didn’t know if she had died from her injury or from lack of oxygen. Either way, she had lost a dear friend and comrade. Pegari, two years younger than her, looked up to her. She and Pegari had often taken shore leave together. She would miss her.

  The laser that had saved their lives had broken free of its securing mounts and now lay in a smashed heap inside the airlock, its power cell crushed beneath it.

  Anderson was conscious but dazed. A trickle of blood ran down his dark cheek from a small cut on his forehead. He stared at her in disbelief, shaking his head to silence the ringing in his ears. He noticed Pegari’s dead body and quickly began checking himself for injuries. He probed the cut on his head and moved his extremities experimentally, but satisfied he would live, nodded at Lorst’s order to check on communications. After unbuckling his harness, he removed his helmet and picked his way through the maze of wreckage and debris towards the main communications panel in what remained of the aft bulkhead. She watched him for a moment to make sure he was all right, and then continued her inspection of the shuttle.

  Whitehall was missing, as was a section of the starboard side of the shuttle, sheared away by the impact. She eyed the moonlit landscape in which they had crashed through the gap in the fuselage. It was an inhospitable terrain – scorched, blasted, and lifeless – offering no refuge for the survivors. In spite of the darkness, a river of searing, hot air poured in through the rent hull. Concentrating on their immediate needs, she gathered what medical supplies and foodstuffs she could salvage and carried them to the hole in the hull. To her eyes, they presented a pitifully small pile. Anderson returned looking more aware of his surroundings, but still dangerously close to shock.