The Saga of Seven Suns: Veiled Alliances by Kevin J. Anderson

Author:Kevin J. Anderson [Anderson, Kevin J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Science Fiction, General
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Published: 2011-12-01T05:00:00+00:00

22

COREY KELLUM

Another explosion on the sinking cloud trawler cracked open an ekti storage canister, belching out flames that were quickly smothered by the superdense gases deep within Daym’s atmosphere.

Sealed inside the control chamber at the top of the dying facility, Corey could not guess how many crewmembers had been killed. According to the boards, all of the evacuation pods had been launched. He sent a silent thanks to Sara Becker, hoping the majority of his crew had successfully evacuated.

He had brought every one of those people over here, convinced them that he could fix the third cloud trawler . . . and he had let them down. Now their hopes were crashing and burning all around him.

The Redheaded Stepchild was out of time. The facility had sunk even deeper, and the thick gases were dark around them, although the fires of the burning decks lit up the nearby cloud layers. Static lightning rippled around them. The outer hull plates and the bulkheads groaned and began to buckle as the pressure increased outside.

Strange shadows flickered across the wide viewing windows, and Corey stared with a mix of wonder and terror at a cluster of bloated gas-filled sacks, eerie tentacled things—living creatures!—that floated around the doomed cloud trawler. A flash of nearby lightning illuminated sluggish jellyfish beasts filled with fluorescent internal organs: protoplasmic bags that drifted along, consuming chemicals or alien plankton in the cloud layers. Their tentacles streamed out like lightning rods, drawing in electrical energy from bursts of static discharge.

No one had ever gone this deep into a gas giant; there could be no telling what sort of amazing miracles, or nightmares, the Redheaded Stepchild might encounter down there. He didn’t intend to find out.

Corey’s head pounded, from guilt and desperation as well as from the crushing atmosphere. His eyes felt as if they were about to burst. “We’re reaching critical depth,” he gasped into the intercom. Thank the Guiding Star the intercom still worked!

The comm was a chatter of panicked voices.

From down in the smoke-filled engineering deck, Oliver replied, his voice muffled through a breathing mask. “Still no luck on the levitation engines, Corey! There’s no power to them. They’re just adding extra weight.”

The remaining people aboard were stranded and doomed, unless they could find a way to shove the cloud trawler higher up into the sky, lifting it to an altitude where they could be rescued.

He yelled into the intercom, “I want any options you can think of—innovative, even crackpot, ideas. Now’s not the time to be shy.”

A staccato patter of gunshot sounds erupted as the continuing pressure popped rivets out of their connecting holes, and the metal projectiles ricocheted against walls. Several of the people yelped or dove out of the way. The images on the communication screens blurred into static; a few winked back on.

Down in engineering, Oliver looked up at the imager, sweat streaming down his face. “All right, Corey, I’ve got an idea . . . but I’m not crazy about it.”

“Crazy’s all we’ve got left, Oliver.

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