Cluster Luck by H. Claire Taylor

Author:H. Claire Taylor [Taylor, H. Claire]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: FFS Media
Published: 2023-06-06T04:00:00+00:00

Vel thought it was a ship, but it could have been an asteroid or one of the many pieces of the space junk that circulated every civilized planet.

She dodged it in time, but with the speed at which they were going, the juke had taken them largely off course. She adjusted quick as she could. “Cease fire, Captain. We can’t spare the energy now.”

Reluctantly, Alice removed her fingers from the triggers. “Susy, we gonna make it?”

Vel ran the calculations over and over in her head, scanning the charts that hovered in front of her eyes beneath her helmet. “I believe we’ll make it somewhere. Are they still on our tail?”

“No, that plan of yours shook them. They’ll be after us soon if we slow down, though.”

The planet of Trauna nearly occupied their complete field of vision through the front window as the energy indicator of DeepCUT Emergence went from red to black. Vel slumped slightly in her seat as the ship continued to hurtle toward the planet on momentum alone. Without any energy left, they would land wherever they landed. A controlled orbit to the desired location was now out of the question.

Aubert whimpered as he floated near the elevator, muttering something to himself about assault and battery and suing. Though Caid was trying to talk the man down, figuratively, he was having little success.

As Alice heaved an exhausted sigh, it occurred to her that her massage chair had stopped. “You okay, man?” she asked over her shoulder.

“Fine,” came Dan’s weak reply.

She pushed herself off his lap. “Can we get the gravity back on?”

Vel slipped off her helmet. “Nope.”

“Are we going to crash-land?”

That question required a more verbose answer. “I suspect the cosmic radiation in the cluster will manage to charge us enough that I can pull back once we enter the planet’s atmosphere. But we can’t do anything else in the meantime. Keep the oxygen on and wait.”

“How long?”

“Twenty seconds. You might want to get yourself secured.”

Aubert clearly wasn’t listening, so Alice launched herself over to him, grabbed him under the armpits, and kicked off the wall in the direction of a spare seat. She buckled him in, told him to be a good boy for Mommy if he wanted a dipped cone later, and then got herself secured in her captain’s chair.

Flames blazed at the edges of the windshield as they passed through the hazy outer layer of the atmosphere through fine clouds of dust, until the world opened up below them. Not far below them, though.

Vel had her headset back on, muttering to herself, “Hold steady, Machiavelli … not yet … not yet …” Then she pulled hard on a lever, and Alice felt like her stomach might pop out of her mouth as the seat restraints pressed into her soft bits.

The ship thrust backward against its own momentum, and a sound like the whoosh of a flamethrower engulfed the bridge.

Emergence went down hard, skipping like a rock after the initial impact until a mighty jolt signaled the end of the landing.

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