“Yes, I suppose it is,” he replied soberly. He sat forward, indicating that Eric should be seated where he was. “Here’s what we’re up against, then: That door has been sealed, and it appears that everyone in the aft station is either dead or immobilized, so we can’t count on their help. My integrator is effectively gone for the time being, so we can’t count on getting help that way. For that matter, if someone’s gone to the trouble of jamming my implants, it’s a fair bet they’ve already neutralized House communications as well.”
Eric crossed his legs as he sat, and leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. And if no one outside the House knows we’ve left Luna, he realized, then we won’t be missed any time soon. “I’ve got a feeling that we can’t rely on any physical help from inside the grounds, either, if that second shield is still in place.”
“And it probably is,” his father agreed. “This has all been too well organized for us to assume that the shield has been dissolved. One thing is clear, however. Whoever is responsible for this won’t simply assume that we’ve died in the crash. I imagine they’re on their way to us now.” He paused, then added, “If they’re not already sitting outside, waiting for us, that is.” Grasping the back of one of the seats, Javas pulled himself to his feet. He wiped his face and forehead on the back of a shirt sleeve and let out a long, slow breath as he looked around the cabin.
Eric watched as his father grew increasingly uncomfortable in the heat, and noted that his own breath was coming with just as much difficulty. He inhaled deeply, noticing a distinct hot-plastic smell to the air. “It’s just as clear that we can’t stay in here. With the shuttle systems all down we’ll bake sitting here in the sun. Or suffocate.”
The craft moved again suddenly, with the floor angling slightly more to the front of the shuttle. The fatigued metal complained loudly, but when the shifting stopped, they both heard a noise that sounded like it was coming from somewhere other than the weakened internal structure itself.
Eric tilted his head, trying to determine the sound’s direction. “Up front!” The sudden exclamation caused an odd burning sensation in his throat, making him cough, and he realized that the plastic smell he’d noticed earlier was much heavier than before. His eyes stung and had begun watering freely.
They again stepped carefully down the sloping aisle to the front of the shuttle. Glenney’s body had rolled farther, his face turned and now partially hidden beneath some light debris, but several streamers of black blood ran from his body toward the front bulkhead, pooling again where wall met floor. He tried to ignore the sight and concentrated instead on the sounds coming from behind the door leading to the front corridor and flight deck.
There it was, an irregular thunk-clunk coming from somewhere forward, perhaps from the cockpit itself. Closer inspection of the door revealed that despite the warped bulkhead that had prevented Glenney from opening it earlier, it was now a few millimeters ajar. Whatever the sound was, Eric reasoned, it may have been there all along and they were only now able to hear it.
“That last movement,” the Emperor suggested. He was coughing now, and in the pale red light Eric could see him rubbing his eyes frequently. “It must have stressed the door frame enough to partially free it.” Several items had rolled forward, and he quickly grabbed something and banged at the door. “Hello?” He hammered again, but when they listened the irregular sound continued, unchanged.
“Eric, help me pull. If we can—” He coughed violently, gasping for breath. “If we can get this open, we can take the lower corridor from the flight deck to the aft station.” His father strained hard on the door handle while Eric curled his fingers under the lip of the door. Pulling together, they managed to open the door another full centimeter. They caught their breath for a moment and pulled again, both of them tumbling backward when the door finally freed itself, letting in a sudden burst of natural sunlight and fresh air. Eric was first on his feet, and hastily opened the door fully, allowing it to rest against the bulkhead where the shuttle’s downward angle kept it in place.
He helped his father up, and as soon as they had made their way to the flight deck it became obvious that taking the lower corridor to the exit would not be necessary, as most of the front of the shuttle—nearly the entire cockpit, for that matter—had been torn away in the crash and resultant cartwheeling down the hillside. What was left of the pilot, his body horribly mangled by the jagged metal that had crumpled around him on the way down the hill, was still strapped into his seat. The copilot’s chair was missing entirely.
Anxious to be clear of the foul air in the cabin, they moved hurriedly, but carefully, onto the flight deck. There was a brisk breeze, and they inhaled deeply of the untainted air. Although the nose of the Azalea Dream was angled downward, the forward end was pointed toward the uphill side, giving them a clear view of the path they had taken down the hill. The ship must have tumbled at least six hundred meters or more down the hillside, and a path of debris and flattened, splintered trees and saplings zigzagged up toward the estate, now hidden among the trees and limestone outcroppings near the top of their fall.
The branches of a downed maple extended into the cockpit, the occasional breeze causing it to hammer thunk-clunk against an exposed section of the hull. “Be careful,” he said when Eric inched toward the jagged edge of the opening. He nodded back to his father and removed the dead pilot’s gloves, surprised at how easily he dealt with death after seeing so much of it in so short a time. He pulled them on and gingerly clambered to a position where he could carefully peer outside.
Debris was everywhere, and there was a faint hissing sound coming from somewhere underneath the wreck, but no sign of movement as far as he could tell anywhere nearby. “I think you were right,” he said when he climbed back up to his father in the doorway to the flight deck. “I think we are on the south side of the grounds, but I can’t see the House or tell for sure just how far up the side it is. We’ve got a bit of a climb at best.”
“Then we’d better put some distance between us and the shuttle,” Javas replied, turning back to the cabin. “But I doubt if we can get into the aft station from the outside. Better see what we can find in here.” The air in the cabin had grown even more noxious, and they found that they had to return frequently to the flight deck for air. They scavenged what they could, gathering some food and filling a small flask with what water they were able to coax from the galley dispenser, then retrieved their jackets and stuffed the pockets with anything useful they could find. As a last measure his father hastily examined Glenney’s body, turning up two weapons—a concealed knife in a boot sheath, and a pin laser clipped to an inside pocket. Eric knew that neither was particularly deadly, but was grateful that the macabre task of searching Glenney’s body had occurred to his father: Both weapons could prove useful if they were forced to spend any amount of time in the backwoods. Back on the flight deck, Javas kept the knife for himself, slipping it into his boot, and handed the laser to him.
The wreck shifted again, and they wasted no further time getting off. Eric still had the pilot’s gloves and climbed easily to the ground, then tossed them back up to his father while he surveyed the damaged ship.
The shuttle had come solidly to rest on an exposed outcropping overlooking the entire valley that spread below the royal family’s estate. Closer examination showed that despite the unnerving way the wreck had shifted while they were still inside, there had been little danger of it sliding farther. The angle steepened sharply a hundred meters below the outcropping and they couldn’t see the river itself, but they could see it reflecting in the sunlight as it meandered through the mountainous Kentucky countryside far to the northwest.