Someone has to be first, Mallory thought. He switched the unit to transmit.
“This is Fitz—This is Mallory, from the Eclipse. Is anyone receiving this transmission?”
He repeated himself a half dozen times before he heard a voice return, “Hello, hello, hello?”
It was coming from beacon number five.
“Yes, I can hear you.”
“—bzzt—ron Dörner. I’m with Dr. Pak and Dr. Brody. Dr. Brody’s injured.”
“What happened?”
“—bzzt—during acceleration. His wrist is broken—bzzt—unconscious.”
“Do you have the medkit out?”
“Yes.”
Mallory talked her through treating Brody. The doctor had a compound fracture and a head wound. Fortunately he was breathing okay and his pupils were responsive. Mallory spent a half hour talking Dr. Dörner through stabilizing the fracture and getting Brody strapped into one of the acceleration couches. If they were lucky, that would be enough to get him to ground safely.
“Stow everything you can for reentry.” Mallory told her. “It isn’t going to be pleasant.”
“Yes—”
“When you land, don’t leave the vicinity of the lifeboat unless you’re in immediate danger. These things will try to cluster their landings, and if you stay by the beacon, I can probably reach you before anyone else.”
He could hear the hesitation in her voice before she said, “Yes.”
She is the one who ID’d me to Wahid and Mosasa . . .
The air went dead for a moment, then he heard another voice. “Mallory?”
He thought he recognized the voice. “Kugara?”
“Yes. Had some issues to clean up here before I hunted down the radio.”
“Everything all right with you?”
“We’re alive here.”
“Did you hear Dörner?”
“The tail end. Rendezvous at boat five?”
“Yes.”
“I’m shutting down to conserve power. See you on the ground.”
“See you on the ground.” He shut down his own transmission.
Date: 2526.6.4 (Standard) Salmagundi Orbit-HD 101534
When the PA gave him the ten-minute warning, he had already stowed everything in the cabin and strapped himself into an acceleration couch. Mallory felt the rotation of the cabin as it turned the bulkhead he was strapped to toward the direction of motion.
The planet’s atmosphere announced itself with a vibration and the beginnings of pressure in his gut as the lifeboat began to decelerate. The vibration continued, intensifying. The fist in Mallory’s gut kept pressing, joined by invisible thumbs pressing into his eyes and a choking pressure in his throat. His pulse throbbed in his ears, vying with the sound of his cabin shaking apart.
Another sound joined the vibration, a demonic wind. The sound of superheated atmosphere shredding past the shielding of the lifeboat. Mallory’s vision grayed, and the cabin plunged into darkness. He didn’t know if his eyesight failed or if the emergency lighting died.
The vibration, the roaring of the atmosphere, and the pressure all increased until it felt as if the lifeboat was about to collapse into a crumpled ball and burn up.
It didn’t, and after a short eternity the shaking stopped and the pressure eased. The boat had made it into the atmosphere, and the braking hadn’t incinerated it. He felt weightless again, but this time it was because he was in free fall.
The lights flickered back on and he felt the drag of gravity as the lifeboat hit its terminal velocity.
Mallory swallowed and waited for the jerk of the drag chute. For several long moments he imagined the chutes failing, and the lifeboat slamming into the ground at full speed. The wait was long enough for him to pray that the shock of the initial impact would kill him instantaneously, before the bulkhead above him slammed down like a boot crushing a cockroach.
He tensed, fists clenched, eyes closed, expecting the fatal impact at any moment. His implants drove adrenaline through his system enhancing his perception and reaction times to absolutely no effect except to distort his time sense to the point he had no idea how long he had been falling.
When he felt the sudden deceleration pressing into his gut, it took him a few seconds past the panicked shock to realize that he hadn’t slammed into the ground. The chute had deployed.
Thank you, Lord, Mallory thought. He stared up at the bulkhead above him with watering eyes and whispered, “If it isn’t too much to ask, after all this, please grant me a soft landing.”
Date: 2526.6.4 (Standard) Salmagundi-HD 101534
The boat slammed into something, rolling forward until something snapped, resonating through the cabin. The whole lifeboat slid forward, shaking and tumbling. The cabin flipped over completely four times before coming to a rocking, unsteady rest.
It took five seconds after the boat stopped moving for Mallory to get his bearings. The lifeboat had rolled so that the original floor was at a forty-five-degree angle sloping down from his feet toward the ground. He dangled from his acceleration couch, facing down.
He undid the straps, one by one, feeling the whole descent in every joint. That combined with the crashing fatigue that was the aftereffect of his implants hyping his metabolism. Climbing out of the couch was a complicated maneuver, disengaging himself from the acceleration couch without falling the three meters into the bulkhead below him. He had to hold onto the crash webbing while he undid the buckles. Even though he was prepared for the drop, he released the last buckle too fast and almost dislocated his shoulder rolling out.
He hung on, half standing on the sloped floor, half dangling from the harness. Standing there, it struck him full force.
I’m still alive.
If he had made it, the others had a good chance, too. And Brody was going to need some help. He let himself go, falling to lean against the bulkhead where the cot was still stowed. He pulled out all the emergency gear.
He took out the comm unit and tried raising the Eclipse, but got no response. But he didn’t expect one.
He tried to call the two occupied lifeboats, but didn’t get a response there either. While he could see the beacons for the lifeboats with Brody and Kugara, both stationary, he couldn’t raise them.
He clipped the unit to his belt. He could try periodically once he got moving. Until they were in contact again, the plan was to rendezvous at lifeboat number five.
Thankfully the range given by the beacon put all the lifeboats within a fifty-klick radius. Lifeboat five, fortunately, landed close to the center of the cluster. So while Mallory was about thirty kilometers from Kugara’s lifeboat, he was about fifteen kilometers from lifeboat five. Nickolai and Kugara had ten more klicks than he did to get to the rendezvous, but that was still closer to them than Mallory’s lifeboat.
Though it still remained to be seen where it was they had landed. All kilometers were not created equal. Despite the lifeboat’s best efforts, it was still quite possible that they had made landfall someplace impassable.
Mallory edged up to the door to the lifeboat. Like the floor, it was canted at a forty-five-degree angle. Next to the controls, a line of lights flashed green. So according to the lifeboat, not only did the mechanism work, but the environment on the other side of the door was in the acceptable range of temperature, pressure, and oxygen content.
If he believed the sensors, it was safe to open the door.