Never In Vain (Lincoln's War Book 2) Read online

   The shuttle buffeted from side to side, and she replied, “Got it. Wrangel Island. About ten kilometers across, and about a hundred and fifty off your current approach track.”

   “I’m not going to be able to VTOL,” he said, as the shuttle slewed to the side, fighting his increasingly desperate attempts to bring the recalcitrant vehicle back under control. “I’m not even sure I could bring her down safely on a runway.”

   “It’s an agricultural research station. Just coming out of a heavy spell of rain, so the ground will be nice and soft. I’ve got some good maps of the terrain, and there’s a pretty good approach to a long, straight path.” Looking around the cabin, she added, “It’ll probably take a week to dig this bird out of the mud afterwards, but I think you should be able to get her down in something at least approximating one piece.”

   As the shuttle slammed into the lower reaches of the atmosphere, the ride slowly began to smooth out, the vast expanse of the ocean ranging out beneath them as Flynn steadied the ship. He looked across at the navigational plot, then at the glide path, and made the only decision he could.

   “Fine. We’ll try it. See if you can raise the station. If they’re specialists in agriculture, that hopefully means some meteorological data. I can use anything they have.” He grimaced at the sensor controls, suffering from the same malaise as the rest of the systems, and added, “Pity we can’t just handshake their computer, but I guess we’re going to be doing this the old-fashioned way.”

   “That’s a hell of a lot more fun, anyway,” she replied with a smile. “This one, right?” At his confirming nod, she said, “Lincoln Shuttle One to Wrangel Island. We’re declaring an emergency, and preparing for a crash landing close to your installation. Reply at once.”

   “Wrangel here,” a man with a guttural accent replied. “If this is some sort of a joke...”

   “No joke, Wrangel. We’re coming in hot and heavy, and should be buried in the middle of your latest harvest in a few minutes. We need any data you can give us on surface conditions, any emergency equipment you have on standby, and you need to contact someone at the capital right away to arrange a communications patch through to Lincoln. Understood?”

   “Understood. Wait one.”

   Frowning, Flynn glanced at the rear hatch. By now, the passengers must have realized that something was wrong, and he reached for the status panel. He cursed under his breath as he saw the red lights on the life support system, then snatched a pair of respirators from the emergency locker, tossing one to Benedetti.

   “Someone’s turned the pressure down, way down, in the passenger compartment. They’re all fast asleep, and if we don’t get some oxygen in them soon, they’ll stay that way forever.” He looked around the cabin, then gestured at one of the panels next to Benedetti, saying, “Third from the left, second row, from the top. Tap it a few times. It’s the override to the sample airlock. We’re deep enough into the atmosphere now that the pressure’s close to cabin, and it’ll flush some more oxygen into the ship.”

   “Got it,” she replied, reaching for the indicated control. At the first push, a red light flashed on, and she glanced at Flynn, who managed a quick curse in the half-remembered French of his youth.

   “Must have sheered off. We’re still moving too fast.” Shaking his head, he added, “Keep opening the inner door, though. It’ll do some good.”

   “I could go back there, try and get some oxygen masks on them, maybe...”

   “There’s no time,” he replied, gesturing at a gray-brown spot on the viewscreen. “I hope that’s where we’re going, because we’re getting awfully close to the water. Try that guy on the surface again. He’s had his minute and more.”

   “On it,” she replied. “Shuttle One to Wrangel Station. What’s going on down there?”

   “We’re working on your linkup,” the man replied. “You’re cleared for landing, and our emergency equipment is ready to go, our clinic ready to accept casualties. I recommend you come around Sabretooth Mountain and make your descent into the fields beyond. It’s smooth and soft, no obstructions on the surface, and you’ll be landing close to us.”

   “Understood, and thanks,” Benedetti replied. Turning to Flynn, she asked, “You get that?”

   “Loud and clear,” he said, peering at the screen. “Jagged little hellhole.”

   “Any port in a storm,” she said.

   “There’s truth to that, as well. Better hang on. This is going to be touch and go.” He reached for the thruster controls, knowing that he might only be able to coax a few seconds out of the landing jets, just enough to cushion their landing and turn a sudden impact into something they might actually be able to survive. He carefully banked, using the single peak at the south of the island as a marker, lining up on the path recommended by the ground crew, then reached for the landing gear. He didn’t dare release it until the last moment, and was struggling to maintain speed as it was. Winds buffeted the shuttle from side to side, and he eased into them, trying to use every ounce of lift to keep them in the sky.

   “Three thousand,” Benedetti said. “Two hundred and ten.”

   He nodded, his attention totally focused on the controls, and on the ground ahead of them. The water was choppy, waves smashing against the rocky coast, and he sighed with relief as he finally passed over the shore, land underneath him. The prospect of trying to ditch the shuttle into the sea had filled him with dread, though the rock-strewn wilderness over which they were soaring was, if anything, worse.

   “Fifteen hundred. A hundred and fifty. What’s the stall speed?”

   “You’ll find out in about ten seconds at this rate,” Flynn said, sweat building up on his forehead as he guided the shuttle around the peak, a long row of fields opening up beneath them at the final moment, bringing a sigh of relief to his lips. He could see the base at the far end of the island, a collection of prefabricated huts surrounding a helipad, figures rushing about to prepare for their arrival, and reached for the landing gear, dropping it down, their speed instantly slowing from the drag.

   “Five hundred. Ninety,” Benedetti said. “You’ve got it made, Commander.”

   The ground rushed towards them, rows of grasses waving in the breeze, and the shuttle slammed into the muddy surface, Flynn firing the landing jets at the final instant to kill their forward velocity. The nose dug into the ground, an anguished crack from the hull as the ship’s skin buckled, a momentary hiss as the outer atmosphere leaked in. Flynn sat back in his couch, turning to Benedetti with a smile.

   “First lesson on this type of shuttle, Lieutenant,” he said. “All that stuff I just did? Don’t do that.” He reached up to the controls, the sound of motors outside as the rescue party raced towards them. “Let’s go and find out how the passengers did. I have a sneaky suspicion that they’re going to want a refund.”

  Chapter 3

   Lieutenant Frank Romano stepped out of the landing craft, shivering in the cold air, and looked up at the sonic boom from overhead, a slender shape racing out of the atmosphere with the passengers from the wrecked shuttle, on their second attempt to make it up to Lincoln. He tugged his jacket tight, then walked over to the waiting figure, buried in a heavy coat, standing by the landing beacon.

   “You the investigator?” the man asked.

   “Lieutenant Romano,” he replied. Gesturing behind him at the second person walking onto the tarmac, he added, “Chief Fire Controlman McBride. We’re here to take a preliminary look at the wreck, before the salvage crew arrives.”

   “Any idea how long they’ll be?”

   “Three days, I was told.”

   Shaking his head, the man replied, “Your Commander Flynn went straight into a cluster of crops we’ve been working on for a year. Experimental hybrids that would help us tame a continent, and they’re doused in rocket fuel.” Taking a deep breath, he said, “None of which is your problem, of course. My name is Doctor Pet
rov. I’m the director of this facility.”

   “Thank you, Doctor,” he replied. “And in case nobody else has said this, thank you for what you did for our people. We’ll do everything we can to help with the cleanup, and I know that the Defense Ministry is arranging a compensation package for you now.”

   Petrov spat on the ground, and said, “This isn’t about the money. Take a look around you. Take a good, long look. We carved this territory out of the mud, with toil, tears and sweat, and damn little else. Terra managed to get the terraforming project started, but we’re the ones who had to finish it, and we’re not done yet.” Gesturing over the horizon, he added, “We’ve got a million square miles of territory over there, all of it uninhabited, unused. It took us more than a century to fill up our first continent, and we’re hoping to build our new world a little sooner.”

   “With grass?” McBride asked.

   “It’s the first step in the process. This world was uninhabitable four hundred years ago. Most of the planet still has the same basic gene-mods that were used to crack the oxygen from the soil. That grass is a critical part of it. We’ve got to turn the soil into something we can use, and one day, the whole landmass will be green, thriving, swarming with life. I won’t live to see it, but my granddaughter might. All of this is her legacy, our gift to future generations, and some crazy bastard is not going to bring it to an end by slamming his shuttle into it!”

   Frowning, Romano said, “Our medical team has some advanced genetic sequencing equipment on board. Probably considerably ahead of anything you have down here on the surface. Maybe I could talk to them for you, see if you could borrow some of it, even get some blueprints to create your own copies.”

   “In exchange for what?”

   Cracking a smile, he replied, “Romanograd has a nice ring to it, don’t you think?”

   “This isn’t a bribe?”

   Shaking his head, Romano said, “You’re doing a great thing down here, Doctor. And we’ve got a stake in the future of Zemlya as well, now. It’s the nearest thing most of us have to a home. Are you surprised that we should show an interest in it?”

   Stepping to the side of the landing pad, Petrov said, “You’d be surprised how few Zemlyans think about it. It’ll be centuries before we fill the territories that we’ve already claimed, and they’re happy just to let nature take its course. There’s been some seed drift, a few attempts by, well, Gaia to work its magic. Sooner or later, it will, but that could take ten thousand years, and we have the means to complete it in eighty, if we can help the process along. And more than that. Terraforming was the greatest art Old Earth ever produced. Maybe one day we’ll be creating more new worlds out among the stars. Or even restoring Earth herself, perhaps.”

   “I thought it was permanently uninhabitable,” McBride said.

   “They said that about Zemlya, and today we can drink the water, breathe the air, and eat the crops we grow in the ground. I can say the same about dozens of other worlds, all across space. We are the ones who destroyed the world that gave us birth, Chief, and I believe that we have a responsibility to repair that damage. One day. One day we will.” He paused, smiled, and said, “I’m sorry, this is turning into a speech. We don’t get many visitors out here. Too far off the usual tourist routes.” Gesturing to a battered truck, he said, “It’s a bit of a ride out to the crash site.”

   Romano and McBride climbed into the back, slipping on their seatbelts as Petrov through the engine into gear, moving into the mud with a series of jerks. The wind was picking up, the few straggly trees tossed back and forth, the sky slowly darkening as the clouds crept in. As they bounced over the landscape, spatters of rain started to hammer onto the roof, and Romano shivered, the cold sneaking through the windows.

   The grime-smeared windscreen barely yielded a view of the landscape, Petrov picking his way in a practiced path around the worst of the potholes, mud splattering on all sides as the rain grew worse, splattering into the ground, the surface quickly turning to mush as the wheels struggled to gain traction. Then the driver pointed into the distance, and Romano shook his head at the sight on display.

   He’d known Flynn was a good pilot. Until he saw the crash site, he hadn’t known just how good. The shuttle rested at the end of a long trail, pointing nose down, and he could easily pick out where it had come down, even without the telemetry records on the datapad in his hands. If he’d been at the controls, the ending would have been catastrophic. That he’d brought a ship down at high speed into this environment without the death of everyone on board seemed an undeserved miracle.

   Glancing at the young officer, Petrov said, “You should have seen it come down. I sent some recordings up to your ship. I guess they’ll be in the official files. This happen often?”

   “A total systems failure?” McBride said, shaking his head. “Never. Especially not after a major refit. Which means that something’s very, very wrong, and we’ve got to find out what.”

   A crack of thunder roared overhead, and Petrov said, “Can it wait? This storm’s worse than forecast. If you come back tomorrow...”

   “We don’t have the time,” Romano said.

   Nodding, Petrov reached under his seat, pulling out a trio of plastic ponchos, passing them to McBride and Romano, and said, “Make it as fast as you can.”

   Cracking open the door, Romano replied, “I think the hull is mostly intact. Grab the generator, and I’ll set up the interface.”

   “Can I help?” Petrov asked.

   “Sure,” McBride said, gesturing to the holdall next to him. “Give me a hand with this. That generator weighs fifty pounds on its own.”

   Romano stepped out of the car, his boot gurgling into the mud, and grimaced as he waded his way across to the shuttle, each step an effort as he trudged through the cold and the wet, rain washing over him in shivering waves. He stumbled through the airlock, the hatch blown open upon the shuttle’s landing, and gratefully entered the shuttle. The icy wind still raced through the cabin, the rhythmic pounding of water spilling through the cracks in the hull rattling the deck, but at least he wasn’t going to get any wetter than he already was. Walking over to the emergency power access, he pulled open the cover, tapping a series of controls to bring up the last of the stored charge in the reserve batteries.

   “Relax,” McBride said, placing a heater on the ground. “I figured we might run into problems.” Pulling the lanyard, he stepped back as the elements glowed, sending a burst of heat through the cabin. “Not much I can do about the hull, though.”

   “God, this weighs a ton!” Petrov said, dropping the holdall onto the deck. McBride pulled open the flap, tugging out a cable and tossing it to Romano, who slid it into place with one smooth motion.

   “Hit it, Chief,” he said. “Let’s see what systems fire up.”

   “What exactly are you doing?” Petrov asked, as McBride knelt over the generator’s controls.

   “The communications system was knocked out,” Romano said, “so we don’t have much in the way of telemetry. If this doesn’t work, we can pull the black box, but if the backup systems are still working, we’ll get more data this way. Then we can recreate every detail of the crash on Lincoln’s simulators.”

   McBride pulled an antenna out of the bag, dragging it over to the airlock and pointing it at the sky, grimacing as a wave of rain sloshed down on him. He looked ruefully over at Romano, then flicked the antenna controls to on, a series of green lights running around the base as the aerial swung around, trying to find their base ship, up in orbit.

   “Don’t link up yet,” Romano said. “Keep the two systems separate.”

   “The firewalls are firm, Lieutenant. Nothing can get through.”

   “I’m sure they said that about the walls of Jericho, Chief, but I don’t want to take any chances.” He glanced at his watch, then said, “I know we’re under time pressure, but I think I’d rather be an hour lat
e than risk the ship.” A green light winked into life on the status panel, and he said, “We’re getting somewhere.”

   McBride walked to the cockpit, sitting at the co-pilot’s seat and leaning over the controls, saying, “There’s a lot of power drain. System leaks, probably. Looks like they ruptured the primary conduit on landing. We’re going to have to move quickly.” He frowned, then added, “I don’t see anything obviously wrong, though. Systems diagnostic shows nothing but the crash damage.”

   “There’s got to be something else.” Romano pulled out a datapad, and said, “Try dumping some of the telemetry onto this. Let’s see what happens.”

   Turning to him, McBride said, “Tell me you aren’t thinking what I think you are thinking.”

   “What we’re both thinking, Chief, unless I miss my guess.”

   Tapping a series of controls, McBride replied, “Doing it.”

   Romano looked at the datapad, running a series of diagnostics, when the screen abruptly flickered out. He frowned, reached for the reset button, and watched as the device attempted to restart, attempted and failed, red lights dancing across the display before the struggling systems collapsed completely.

   “Wow,” he said, placing the useless box on a chair. “Total failure in less than a second.”

   “That’s impossible,” McBride replied, poking at the controls. “These systems are working.”

   “That pad was new,” Romano said. “Fabricated yesterday, right out of stores. Certified and checked by the engineering team before we left. Which means that there’s something on this ship causing a problem. Could the data stream have been corrupted?”

   “At this range? I don’t see how.”

   Frowning, Romano walked over to the pilot’s seat, reaching over to the panel, and replied, “Let’s take a look at the flight log. I want to see if there were any system changes, anything at all that might explain what happened.”