The Aetherverse by J. D'Urso & E. Bryan

Author:J. D'Urso & E. Bryan [D'Urso, J.]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Aether Press, LLC
Published: 2016-03-18T18:30:00+00:00

18

“Until and unless you discover that money is the root of all good, you ask for your own destruction. When money ceases to be the tool by which men deal with one another, then men become the tools of men. Blood, whips and guns—or dollars. Take your choice—there is no other—and your time is running out.”

—Old Earth philosopher, Ayn Rand.

With the sleek helmet secured over his head, Natharis couldn’t hear anything but the sound of blood pumping in his ears. The airlock had closed and sealed behind him, and with stage one of the jettison procedure complete, red alert lights flashed brightly along the walls of the chamber. He, Erixen and Ninotchka climbed into a curved, metal sled that rested upon thin tracks on the floor, pulling themselves in with hands clenched firmly on overhead handlebars. Ninotchka initiated stage two; sensors relayed the depletion of the chamber’s atmosphere, ejected out into space like cloudy geysers, and the air around them became a vacuum. Natharis began the countdown, spoke through the com-link in his helmet as Ninotchka reached for the final switch.

“Here goes nothing,” he said. “Hit it.”

“Thought you’d never ask.”

Vibrations shook through Natharis’s body as the sled shot forward on the tracks and down the opened exit tube like a bullet from a gun. And as the end of the tunnel rushed closer and closer from up ahead, Natharis whispered an old Mithneshi prayer to himself. He didn’t care if Erixen or Ninotchka heard him. He saw the light ahead of him like an ascension to heaven, and right at its threshold, the sled stopped; their momentum jettisoned the three jumpers out into the emptiness of space. They streaked toward the planet like arrows shot from a mighty bow, plummeting to earth in formation. Ninotchka glided with the natural grace of an angel descending from celestial heights. There was no air resistance, no rush of wind past their faces. Their fall was silent, their speed, unfathomable.

It wasn’t until his heat shield deployed that Natharis felt the rough whip of the atmosphere. An orange and red glow rippled across the front of his body, a hazy aura blazing just inches from his skin; he still felt the heat, but his body wasn’t set ablaze. They fell farther into the upper atmosphere, through the vague boundary between a jaundiced sky and the silent, black void. Ninotchka bathed in the fiery light of her shield alongside Natharis, laughing through the com-link, and Natharis admitted it was a spectacular rush. He looked upward toward Erixen’s position in their triangular formation—he was nowhere in sight. Ninotchka ordered him to relay his position, barking through the com-link in harshly hissed Muscovian military jargon. He didn’t answer.

His suit could have been pierced, choking the life from him in the endless vacuum, turning his skin to ice. His heat shield could have failed, with the burning air engulfing him in flames, turning him to a living, breathing meteor in the sky. He could have deployed his chute too

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.