Kit watched his mother as she studied the results of a surface scan. He saw the sense of excitement spread across her face.
‘There’s definitely something down there,’ she mused. ‘I’d really like to take a closer look, Landon.’
She looked hopefully across to her husband in the pilot seat of their Orca.
Landon shook his head. ‘You know I want to, Auda, but the readings show it’s 7g at the surface, and I’m pretty sure our thrusters aren’t rated to handle that safely.’
Kit had listened to his parents often enough to know how this would go. His mother, a slim, energetic woman in her early forties was an eminent field xenographer. Her hazel eyes shone with intelligence and, although she was a serious academic, her winning smile came easily. It was a smile that Landon, even after twenty years of marriage, found hard to resist.
‘This could be something important, I mean really big; if there’s a wreck down there, it could be the data I need to prove my theory that there was an ancient alien trading route through here; and who knows what artefacts we might find in a wrecked alien trader.’
Kit looked from his mother to his father. Landon was an affable, accommodating man, a considerate husband and a good, though not always attentive, father. His specialism was astrophysics and that faraway look in his eye, very familiar to Kit, meant he was in his private inner world contemplating the equations of thermonuclear fusion and nucleosynthesis.
Kit knew that his father would often submit to his mother’s requests as that would offer the quickest way to get back to his own thoughts.
‘I want to do it, but it simply isn’t safe to attempt a landing in this ship. We should come back in something more robust, like a Cobra or a Python.’
This was token resistance, and Kit recognised the tone of his father’s voice, part pleading, part accepting.
‘I don’t want someone else to investigate it before me,’ Auda insisted, ‘and I think we’re being followed – probably by another archaeologist. Anyway, wouldn’t you like to feel that gravity? It’s been so long since we felt the pull of a planet, and they say that sleeping in 7g is deep and intensely relaxing.’
At this point Kit saw his chance. He had a long-cherished ambition and this was an opportunity for fulfilment. ‘I want to drive the SRV in high gravity – you promised me I could do that the next time we found a planet like this. I want to see what it feels like to be pinned to the ground.’
Landon sighed in resignation, his large frame rising then collapsing in one long exhalation.
‘All right, but we have to do this very carefully.’
Auda’s beaming smile convinced him he had made the right decision, and he ordered the ships systems to display the planetary landing checklist.
‘Do you have coordinates for what you found on the scanner?’
‘I’m setting them in the navigation systems now; you should see the location in the overlay.’
‘Got it,’ Landon said when he saw the target appear in the HUD before him.
Kit was delighted. He had seen videos of SRV races on high-g worlds and soon he would be trying it for himself. He knew exactly what he wanted to do; he would search for a fresh and smooth impact crater, not too big but large enough that he could get the SRV up to full throttle. Using the inner slope of the crater wall as banking, he intended to race around this circuit until he was dizzy.
‘Come help me with the preliminary checks,’ Landon said to Kit. ‘You should be learning to fly these bigger ships, never mind buggy-racing.’
Kit always felt that his father was lecturing him. Fair enough, his father was a lecturer, but sometimes it would be nice to have a normal conversation.
Saud Kruger, the manufacturers of the Orca, were big on customisation. The previous owner had installed a set of dual flight controls in the co-pilot’s position and there was a sumptuous owner’s chair in the middle of the large bridge. Wealthy owners didn’t usually fly their own Orcas; instead they paid an experienced pilot to take the helm.
Kit moved to the co-pilot’s seat and together they prepared the ship for landing.
Landon read the checklist and Kit reported status.
‘Hull integrity?’
Kit glanced at the display. ‘Ninety-two percent.’
‘Not brilliant but should be enough,’ Landon said. ‘Shield generator?’
‘Eighty percent.’
‘Hull reinforcement?’
‘Also eighty percent.’
‘Power distributor?’
‘Eighty-nine percent.’
Landon grimaced. ‘We really shouldn’t have scooped so close to that type O. However, I think we are in good enough shape to make the landing.’
It was true; pilots with low-powered fuel scoops were often tempted to dive too deeply into a solar corona in the hope of shortening the ordeal.
They had bought their second-hand Orca on a budget, with mainly D and E-rated equipment - either for jump range or on grounds of affordability. They used it as a research ship, having converted the luxurious passenger quarters into laboratories and offices; their only hardpoints were mining lasers.
‘Buckle up, everyone,’ Landon announced. ‘We’re ready for the descent.’
Kit was still in the co-pilot’s seat, so Auda sat in the owner’s chair.
Shortly afterwards the Orca was dipping towards the planet, with the selected point of interest close to the horizon. They entered orbital cruise and Landon throttled back.
‘I want to make a long, gentle glide to the target,’ he said. ‘I’m taking no chances with this gravity field. We should be okay if we take it slowly.’
Auda smiled. ‘I know that’s to comfort you as much as me.’
Landon pushed the stick gently forwards and their approach steepened. They dropped out of orbital cruise and began the glide phase of their approach. At first all was quiet; the planet had an atmosphere – non-breathable - which was held close by the planet’s high gravity. As they entered this atmosphere, the hull temperature increased and the ship started to creak and rattle as the stresses started to build.
Kit watched his father at the controls. There was an expression on his face that Kit hadn’t seen before. It was anxiety, or perhaps discomfort.
‘Are you okay, Dad?’
‘I’m fine, Kit, but let me concentrate on the landing,’ Landon said with uncharacteristic sharpness, making Kit shrink back slightly.
It was clear to Kit that the controls were spongy and unresponsive; his father had to make large, compensating stick movements as the ship was thrown violently around. He was struggling to maintain control and wasn’t really up to the task; he had a fine intellect, but his reaction time was too slow. More than once Kit reached for the co-pilot’s stick, knowing that he could handle the ship better than his father, but each time he hesitated and withdrew his hand.
‘Power to engines,’ Landon ordered the ship’s system management software.
‘We need more power to the thrusters to control the ship,’ he explained. ‘I’ll put the pips back into the shields before we land.’
‘You’re doing well,’ Auda said, unable to hide the nervousness in her voice.
The glide continued for another minute, then it was over. At an altitude of five kilometres the glide ended and the buffeting stopped, replaced by the creaking and groaning of cooling metal.
‘Well done!’ Auda said. ‘We made it.’
‘We’re not down yet,’ Landon replied. ‘The tricky part is still to come.’
He was sweating and breathing heavily. The stress of the approach had taken a lot out of him…too much in fact. Without warning Landon collapsed, slumping on to the controls, which simultaneously pushed the throttle to maximum and put the ship into a vertical dive.
‘Landon!’ Auda screamed. She unbuckled her restraints and promptly fell so that she crashed into the canopy.
‘Kit, do something!’
Kit grabbed the dual controls as the ship accelerated towards the planet with sickening speed. He pulled hard on the stick, but his father’s weight had jammed it. Likewise, he could not operate the thrusters.
‘Thrusters zero percent!’ Kit ordered.
‘Command not recognised,’ was the calm response from the ship’s voice control system.
‘All Stop!’
‘Command not recognised.’
The ship was in a fixed forward roll now and the planet was doing all the work of pulling the ship downwards. Kit could see no way of avoiding a crash landing. The power distributor controls had not been duplicated at the co-pilot’s position, so he tried the only thing he could think of.
‘Power to shields!’
‘Command not recognised.’
The ship hadn’t yet been trained to respond to either Auda’s or Kit’s voice – an oversight they had discovered too late.
The crash was loud and devastating. The ship crumpled as though it were made of cardboard. Then it fell apart. Huge chunks of the hull scattered first, then a fountain of ship’s contents – everything in the cargo hold, the materials store, the labs, and accommodation units, sprayed high above the ground before rapidly settling.
There was no oxygen in the atmosphere so there were no spontaneous fires.
Kit and his father were held in their seats, but Auda was thrown out of the ship through the shattered canopy. As she lay, pinned to the ground, one of the main engines followed a shallow, parabolic trajectory and crushed her. Kit, holding his breath, wanted to scream but didn’t dare as he watched his mother die.
Oxygen masks burst into view from various bulkhead positions around the bridge. Kit grabbed one and put it over his face. He took several deep breaths then unbuckled his restraints. He fell out of his seat and crawled towards his father; he could see from the angle of his head that he was still unconscious.
It was worse.
Blood gushed and bubbled from a gash in Landon’s abdomen. The blunt force trauma to the chest had split his aorta, a rib had punctured his skin, and he was rapidly bleeding to death.
Kit – young, inexperienced, carefree – was in shock. Action was needed, but Kit felt numb, speechless, detached; he couldn’t believe what he had seen and was trying hard to deny it had happened, wanting to imagine that it was a dream. He lay down and closed his eyes, attempting to reinforce this notion. It was the best thing he could have done; without further visual stimulus he was able to start processing what had happened.
He wasn’t sure how long he had lain there, but when he next opened his eyes he knew what he must do; the only thing he could do. There was enough atmospheric pressure for him not to need a suit, so that wasn’t his priority. He found the portable breathing apparatus under the co-pilot’s seat and put it on.
He tried to stand but found he didn’t have the strength. He was bruised and cut slightly but otherwise was in good shape. It was the pull of the planet that prevented him from getting up.
Well then, if he must crawl he would crawl. Without the advantage that height would have given, it took him a long time to squirm through the wreckage. The first escape pod he found was smashed and useless, but the second seemed to be in working order. He clambered inside and took a deep breath before tossing away the breathing apparatus. He sealed the pod using the internal control panel and breathed freely again.
It was cramped and claustrophobic; pods were designed with stasis in mind not wakefulness. Kit punched some buttons on the control panel and saw that the oxygen would last for another ten hours; after that he would need to enter suspended animation.
So, why wait?
Fearful of the dreams that might come to him and reluctant to surrender to sleep, Kit entered the commands that would slow his metabolism to a virtual standstill.
Would anyone ever find him?
There were stories of escape pods being found in space – the most famous being Jasmina Halsey’s among the wreckage of Starship One – and they were also found at wreck sites on planetary surfaces. But the stories were greatly outnumbered by the countless thousands of missing pilots. Many were presumed dead – killed by pirates or by collision with an astronomical object – but many more were doomed to spend eternity lost in a cryopod.
Kit slipped into unconsciousness. His senses shut down shortly before the powerful throb of engines shook the ground, announcing the arrival of the wing of ships that had been tailing them for half-a-dozen systems.
Chapter 2: Grief
‘There’s definitely something down there,’ she mused. ‘I’d really like to take a closer look, Landon.’
She looked hopefully across to her husband in the pilot seat of their Orca.
Landon shook his head. ‘You know I want to, Auda, but the readings show it’s 7g at the surface, and I’m pretty sure our thrusters aren’t rated to handle that safely.’
Kit had listened to his parents often enough to know how this would go. His mother, a slim, energetic woman in her early forties was an eminent field xenographer. Her hazel eyes shone with intelligence and, although she was a serious academic, her winning smile came easily. It was a smile that Landon, even after twenty years of marriage, found hard to resist.
‘This could be something important, I mean really big; if there’s a wreck down there, it could be the data I need to prove my theory that there was an ancient alien trading route through here; and who knows what artefacts we might find in a wrecked alien trader.’
Kit looked from his mother to his father. Landon was an affable, accommodating man, a considerate husband and a good, though not always attentive, father. His specialism was astrophysics and that faraway look in his eye, very familiar to Kit, meant he was in his private inner world contemplating the equations of thermonuclear fusion and nucleosynthesis.
Kit knew that his father would often submit to his mother’s requests as that would offer the quickest way to get back to his own thoughts.
‘I want to do it, but it simply isn’t safe to attempt a landing in this ship. We should come back in something more robust, like a Cobra or a Python.’
This was token resistance, and Kit recognised the tone of his father’s voice, part pleading, part accepting.
‘I don’t want someone else to investigate it before me,’ Auda insisted, ‘and I think we’re being followed – probably by another archaeologist. Anyway, wouldn’t you like to feel that gravity? It’s been so long since we felt the pull of a planet, and they say that sleeping in 7g is deep and intensely relaxing.’
At this point Kit saw his chance. He had a long-cherished ambition and this was an opportunity for fulfilment. ‘I want to drive the SRV in high gravity – you promised me I could do that the next time we found a planet like this. I want to see what it feels like to be pinned to the ground.’
Landon sighed in resignation, his large frame rising then collapsing in one long exhalation.
‘All right, but we have to do this very carefully.’
Auda’s beaming smile convinced him he had made the right decision, and he ordered the ships systems to display the planetary landing checklist.
‘Do you have coordinates for what you found on the scanner?’
‘I’m setting them in the navigation systems now; you should see the location in the overlay.’
‘Got it,’ Landon said when he saw the target appear in the HUD before him.
Kit was delighted. He had seen videos of SRV races on high-g worlds and soon he would be trying it for himself. He knew exactly what he wanted to do; he would search for a fresh and smooth impact crater, not too big but large enough that he could get the SRV up to full throttle. Using the inner slope of the crater wall as banking, he intended to race around this circuit until he was dizzy.
‘Come help me with the preliminary checks,’ Landon said to Kit. ‘You should be learning to fly these bigger ships, never mind buggy-racing.’
Kit always felt that his father was lecturing him. Fair enough, his father was a lecturer, but sometimes it would be nice to have a normal conversation.
Saud Kruger, the manufacturers of the Orca, were big on customisation. The previous owner had installed a set of dual flight controls in the co-pilot’s position and there was a sumptuous owner’s chair in the middle of the large bridge. Wealthy owners didn’t usually fly their own Orcas; instead they paid an experienced pilot to take the helm.
Kit moved to the co-pilot’s seat and together they prepared the ship for landing.
Landon read the checklist and Kit reported status.
‘Hull integrity?’
Kit glanced at the display. ‘Ninety-two percent.’
‘Not brilliant but should be enough,’ Landon said. ‘Shield generator?’
‘Eighty percent.’
‘Hull reinforcement?’
‘Also eighty percent.’
‘Power distributor?’
‘Eighty-nine percent.’
Landon grimaced. ‘We really shouldn’t have scooped so close to that type O. However, I think we are in good enough shape to make the landing.’
It was true; pilots with low-powered fuel scoops were often tempted to dive too deeply into a solar corona in the hope of shortening the ordeal.
They had bought their second-hand Orca on a budget, with mainly D and E-rated equipment - either for jump range or on grounds of affordability. They used it as a research ship, having converted the luxurious passenger quarters into laboratories and offices; their only hardpoints were mining lasers.
‘Buckle up, everyone,’ Landon announced. ‘We’re ready for the descent.’
Kit was still in the co-pilot’s seat, so Auda sat in the owner’s chair.
Shortly afterwards the Orca was dipping towards the planet, with the selected point of interest close to the horizon. They entered orbital cruise and Landon throttled back.
‘I want to make a long, gentle glide to the target,’ he said. ‘I’m taking no chances with this gravity field. We should be okay if we take it slowly.’
Auda smiled. ‘I know that’s to comfort you as much as me.’
Landon pushed the stick gently forwards and their approach steepened. They dropped out of orbital cruise and began the glide phase of their approach. At first all was quiet; the planet had an atmosphere – non-breathable - which was held close by the planet’s high gravity. As they entered this atmosphere, the hull temperature increased and the ship started to creak and rattle as the stresses started to build.
Kit watched his father at the controls. There was an expression on his face that Kit hadn’t seen before. It was anxiety, or perhaps discomfort.
‘Are you okay, Dad?’
‘I’m fine, Kit, but let me concentrate on the landing,’ Landon said with uncharacteristic sharpness, making Kit shrink back slightly.
It was clear to Kit that the controls were spongy and unresponsive; his father had to make large, compensating stick movements as the ship was thrown violently around. He was struggling to maintain control and wasn’t really up to the task; he had a fine intellect, but his reaction time was too slow. More than once Kit reached for the co-pilot’s stick, knowing that he could handle the ship better than his father, but each time he hesitated and withdrew his hand.
‘Power to engines,’ Landon ordered the ship’s system management software.
‘We need more power to the thrusters to control the ship,’ he explained. ‘I’ll put the pips back into the shields before we land.’
‘You’re doing well,’ Auda said, unable to hide the nervousness in her voice.
The glide continued for another minute, then it was over. At an altitude of five kilometres the glide ended and the buffeting stopped, replaced by the creaking and groaning of cooling metal.
‘Well done!’ Auda said. ‘We made it.’
‘We’re not down yet,’ Landon replied. ‘The tricky part is still to come.’
He was sweating and breathing heavily. The stress of the approach had taken a lot out of him…too much in fact. Without warning Landon collapsed, slumping on to the controls, which simultaneously pushed the throttle to maximum and put the ship into a vertical dive.
‘Landon!’ Auda screamed. She unbuckled her restraints and promptly fell so that she crashed into the canopy.
‘Kit, do something!’
Kit grabbed the dual controls as the ship accelerated towards the planet with sickening speed. He pulled hard on the stick, but his father’s weight had jammed it. Likewise, he could not operate the thrusters.
‘Thrusters zero percent!’ Kit ordered.
‘Command not recognised,’ was the calm response from the ship’s voice control system.
‘All Stop!’
‘Command not recognised.’
The ship was in a fixed forward roll now and the planet was doing all the work of pulling the ship downwards. Kit could see no way of avoiding a crash landing. The power distributor controls had not been duplicated at the co-pilot’s position, so he tried the only thing he could think of.
‘Power to shields!’
‘Command not recognised.’
The ship hadn’t yet been trained to respond to either Auda’s or Kit’s voice – an oversight they had discovered too late.
The crash was loud and devastating. The ship crumpled as though it were made of cardboard. Then it fell apart. Huge chunks of the hull scattered first, then a fountain of ship’s contents – everything in the cargo hold, the materials store, the labs, and accommodation units, sprayed high above the ground before rapidly settling.
There was no oxygen in the atmosphere so there were no spontaneous fires.
Kit and his father were held in their seats, but Auda was thrown out of the ship through the shattered canopy. As she lay, pinned to the ground, one of the main engines followed a shallow, parabolic trajectory and crushed her. Kit, holding his breath, wanted to scream but didn’t dare as he watched his mother die.
Oxygen masks burst into view from various bulkhead positions around the bridge. Kit grabbed one and put it over his face. He took several deep breaths then unbuckled his restraints. He fell out of his seat and crawled towards his father; he could see from the angle of his head that he was still unconscious.
It was worse.
Blood gushed and bubbled from a gash in Landon’s abdomen. The blunt force trauma to the chest had split his aorta, a rib had punctured his skin, and he was rapidly bleeding to death.
Kit – young, inexperienced, carefree – was in shock. Action was needed, but Kit felt numb, speechless, detached; he couldn’t believe what he had seen and was trying hard to deny it had happened, wanting to imagine that it was a dream. He lay down and closed his eyes, attempting to reinforce this notion. It was the best thing he could have done; without further visual stimulus he was able to start processing what had happened.
He wasn’t sure how long he had lain there, but when he next opened his eyes he knew what he must do; the only thing he could do. There was enough atmospheric pressure for him not to need a suit, so that wasn’t his priority. He found the portable breathing apparatus under the co-pilot’s seat and put it on.
He tried to stand but found he didn’t have the strength. He was bruised and cut slightly but otherwise was in good shape. It was the pull of the planet that prevented him from getting up.
Well then, if he must crawl he would crawl. Without the advantage that height would have given, it took him a long time to squirm through the wreckage. The first escape pod he found was smashed and useless, but the second seemed to be in working order. He clambered inside and took a deep breath before tossing away the breathing apparatus. He sealed the pod using the internal control panel and breathed freely again.
It was cramped and claustrophobic; pods were designed with stasis in mind not wakefulness. Kit punched some buttons on the control panel and saw that the oxygen would last for another ten hours; after that he would need to enter suspended animation.
So, why wait?
Fearful of the dreams that might come to him and reluctant to surrender to sleep, Kit entered the commands that would slow his metabolism to a virtual standstill.
Would anyone ever find him?
There were stories of escape pods being found in space – the most famous being Jasmina Halsey’s among the wreckage of Starship One – and they were also found at wreck sites on planetary surfaces. But the stories were greatly outnumbered by the countless thousands of missing pilots. Many were presumed dead – killed by pirates or by collision with an astronomical object – but many more were doomed to spend eternity lost in a cryopod.
Kit slipped into unconsciousness. His senses shut down shortly before the powerful throb of engines shook the ground, announcing the arrival of the wing of ships that had been tailing them for half-a-dozen systems.
Chapter 2: Grief
Last edited:
