Raising Caine by Charles E. Gannon

Author:Charles E. Gannon [Gannon, Charles E.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction, Science Fiction, Space Opera, Alien Contact, General
ISBN: 9781476780931
Google: 6EsJrgEACAAJ
Amazon: 1476780935
Publisher: Baen
Published: 2015-10-06T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirty-Two

Southern extents of the Third Silver Tower; BD +02 4076 Two (“Disparity”)

The battered TOCIO shuttle started down through the bank of clouds that threatened to obscure the coastal river valley toward which they had been descending. The cottony whiteness that swallowed them quickly became an ugly grey. “Heavy weather,” Raskolnikov muttered.

Caine gripped the edge of his seat as a cross current buffeted them, caught a glimpse of the instrument board. Three new orange lights had appeared among the ones monitoring the port side fuselage. “Have we lost airframe integrity?”

“Not yet,” Qin Lijuan said calmly. “However, stress alerts are increasing. No matter how high I keep the nose, those port-side holes are catching air, increasing drag. It does not help that some of the largest debris went in the variable-thruster intake.”

“Hard to keep her flying straight?”

“Yes, but the larger problem is that we are no longer capable of making a vertical landing. Also, the heat shielding there is no longer uniform. Even though the damage is on the dorsal surface, and even though we leveled out into a slow reentry slalom once we descended through the thirty kilometer mark, there is no way to stop the drag from widening the breaches.”

“My esteemed colleague is saying that our shuttle wants to shake apart and she is not letting it do so.” Raskolnikov punctuated his sardonic synopsis with a wide grin.

Caine mustered a smile. “Thanks: I got that. Any idea how far down this cloud cover goes?”

Raskolnikov, all business again, shook his head. “No. It may go right down—what is your expression?—to the deck. Variable wave sensing suggests it begins to thin out at eight-hundred meters, but beyond that, who knows? It might be fog, mist, mixed, raining, or clear.”

“Eight hundred meters?” Caine’s stomach tightened and descended. “That doesn’t give you a lot of time to find a good landing zone.”

“You are right, Captain: it does not. But the river beneath us had many straight stretches.”

“So: a water landing.”

Raskolnikov grinned that crazy grin again. “If we are lucky. Now, Captain, you must return to seat.” He paused. “One at midsection, please.”

Caine nodded. “I’ll make sure the others get out. I’ve memorized the emergency exits, in case the hatches are jammed.”

“Horosho,” Raskolnikov smiled. He glanced over at Qin Lijuan. “Perhaps I shall take it from here, yes?”

Egoless, Lijuan ceded him the controls. Nodding to the two of them, Caine cycled through the iris valve and moved quickly to the midsection of the craft.

He passed Ben Hwang, who opened his mouth to speak—

Caine shook his head, got into a couch across the aisle from Gaspard, who seemed to be concentrating on a deep-breathing exercise, his eyes closed.

As the three jammed windows in the passenger section darkened even more and rain began hammering down on the shuttle, Caine finished belting in—and started when Gaspard’s voice announced, so calm as to be eerie: “For the record, Captain Riordan, I consider this crisis to be the province of security management. I shall not gainsay your orders.”

Caine glanced over at Gaspard.

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