Jeannie Holmes - The Mammoth Book of Futuristic Romance

“Ground station communications outages confirmed,” someone else called. “Comm silence on all channels used by native technology.”

My interest piqued. They had communications tech that would cut through the geomagnetic storm?

Good. It might be the only way to know what the Orseggans were doing.

“Tropopause and the North Slope!”

“Engines to minimum. Stand by braking thrusters,” Carrollus called.

I didn’t know how he did that, speaking so that everyone heard him, yet without sounding as if he’d bothered to raise his voice.

“Engines at minimum. Braking thrusters, standing by.”

To my surprise, the ride smoothed out as we descended. I shot a glance at Carrollus, who concentrated on a holographic panel readout projected in front of his seat.

“Fire braking thrusters,” he ordered.

“Firing braking thrusters.”

I fell forward into the webbing holding me.

The ship slid sideways in the sky, leaving my stomach far behind. Wind shear. Looked like my twenty-

five-mile-an-hour winds had increased over the mountains.

“Get us on the ground!” Grisham bellowed.

“Yes, sir!” several voices answered in unison.

We slowed. Vran counted down the distance to touchdown. At zero, we hit with a jarring crunch. The nose of the ship tipped down and we slid and spun ninety degrees.

Heart in my throat, I gasped. A few people screamed. The ship slid to a halt.

I think we’d all stopped breathing, as if afraid the slightest twitch on our part would send the ship plunging into a crevasse.

“Hull temperature?” Lieutenant Vran said.

Even though the answer was ostensibly in English, the number and temperature measurement were meaningless to me, and I had no idea whether or not we’d cool fast enough to hide.

“Permission to power down?” Carrollus requested.

“Granted, save for planet-side monitoring,” Grisham said. “Get me a feed from the ISS chip.”

Naturally, they had a sensor on the International Space Station.

“On your screen, sir!”

A piece at a time, with every system that powered down, the ship drifted into slumber. Stillness settled over the vessel.

For no good reason, adrenaline flooded my system. I hated waiting.

“Sir?” a young woman said into the silence. “The scouts are on approach.”

I glanced outside. The command center remained transparent in the power down. We’d set down on a slope. It appeared that we’d triggered at least a partial avalanche. In the brilliant glow of the aurora overhead, I could see where snow had cascaded past the nose of the ship. I hoped we were too big to be buried.

“The scouts are coming in fast, not masking their arrival,” Grisham said, his voice hushed. “Crossing Saturn’s orbit.”

“They’ll be seen by ground stations,” Carrollus replied. “They may afford us some distraction.”

Even the enchantment of the Northern Lights faded as I waited for the scout crafts’ arrival. If they weren’t fooled by our ruse, we were sitting ducks.

Grisham marked the scouts’ approach by each planetary orbit they passed. Jupiter. The asteroid belt.

As the Orseggans approached the orbit of Mars, my breath stumbled in my chest. The aurora had suddenly dimmed. Without the particle activity in the atmosphere, our last defense was gone. The scouts would see us.

Then it hit me. The aurora wasn’t dying out. It was the snow. The hull had cooled, and blowing snow had begun accumulating on the hull as hoped. I relaxed.

“They’re approaching Earth from behind the moon,” Grisham said. “Damned sloppy. I’m surprised they haven’t been detected by ground-based personnel.”

“Monitor the Twitter feeds of the conspiracy theorists,” I offered. “They break all the UFO reports first.”

“Here we go,” Grisham said, ignoring me, but leading me to believe he had a line on Earth-based communications, even from within the aurora field. “First query away.”

“I hope they don’t set up camp,” I muttered. “We’ll be effectively under siege.”

“They won’t,” the captain replied. “Your world isn’t desirable.”

“We like it,” I protested. “And you certainly seem to have found a use for it.”

“We like the world, Ms Selkirk, but your species is crazy.”

I bit back a laugh.

“Second query from civilian telescopes. The Orseggan sighting is being escalated to military channels.” The old man leaned back in his chair.

“Ms Selkirk,” he said, “I can scarcely believe it, but it appears your scheme has worked. The scout is reversing course to the asteroid field. I expect they intend to use it as cover to round the sun and have a sensor scan of each planet on their way out of the solar system. They clearly didn’t expect us to be in system. They aren’t looking that hard.”

I grinned at the muted cheer that went up. Something sharp lodged in my heart, making the backs of my eyes burn. Was that happiness?

“Merry Christmas,” I said. I met Trygg’s gaze and played my trump card. “Now, open a door and let me walk away?”

Carrollus scowled and tensed beside me. “No.”

I bridled.

“The cold and the terrain would kill you within minutes, Ms Selkirk. Commander,” Grisham said.

Desperation shot through me. “Teleport me home!”

“Ms Selkirk!” Grisham snapped. “Our orbital position is no impediment to returning you!”

“No time like the present,” I shot.

I didn’t realize I’d dug my fingers into the arm of the chair until Carrollus covered them with his warm hand. “Returning you is power-intensive. If we send you home now, we can’t lift off for hours.”

Recognizing that the danger to the ship now came from my own planet, I slumped. The unhappiness in Trygg’s voice convinced me he was telling the truth.

“Was this a set-up?” I blurted out.

He frowned. “A set-up?”

“To make me feel – I don’t know – like I’d contributed?”

“Humans are still arrogant,” Grisham muttered. “At least some things never change.”

I flushed.

“I wish it had been a set-up, Finlay,” Carrollus said. “Then we wouldn’t have had to risk exposing ourselves to your world. A risk we’re still taking.”

I believed him.

“Lift,” I said. Defeat by my own moral code – that insisted my concerns take a back seat to their survival – tasted sour.

“You heard the lady. The ISS sensor has lost the Orseggan scout behind the sun. Put out some rocks to simulate a meteor landing and wake us up in preparation for departure,” the captain commanded.

“Yes, sir.”

Systems woke slower than they’d gone to sleep. Grisham estimated the Orseggans had passed Neptune’s orbit by the time Carrollus issued the command to fire the engines and take us out of atmosphere.

Acceleration hit, pressing me into my chair. I gathered that some property of the ship buffered us from the worst of the g-forces. I could still breathe.

We were pointed right at the rippling river of neon light twisting like a living thing above us. The ship shook, squeaking and protesting at the mistreatment.

“We’ve been spotted,” Vran said, “doesn’t look like the fighters will overtake, though.”

Despite the assurance, I waited, nerves tingling in anticipation of a missile strike. The magic of the Northern Lights would shield us again, if we could get to the other side before the F-15s closed.

It seemed like hours before Vran yelled, “Exiting atmosphere!”

“Get us under cover!” Grisham ordered. “Keep us out of sight!”

“Yes, sir!” several voices answered.

We leveled off and the ride smoothed out.

Grisham released his restraints and rose.