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  Burke's teeth chattered and his body shook as he flexed his hands, blew into them and put them over his ears. “This is it then? Eight y-years and j-just like that…”

  “Just like that lad, I get mine and you get gone,” Frost grinned so widely that he wished the other man could see through the blacked out faceplate of his vacsuit.

  “Chief Frost, we can see what's going on through the security feed, let us in!” said a voice over the emergency band of his communicator. “This is lieutenant Garrison, let us in sir!”

  “Lucky, might only lose a couple toes,” Frost said to Burke, who looked back at him hopefully. His lips were turning blue, white crystals formed around the corners of his mouth and his nostrils. “I'm havin' trouble with the door, can't remember my code in the excitement, you'll have to override,” Frost replied back at the security team before re-muting his end of the transmission.

  “We're already on it. Can you adjust the climate controls from your end?” asked the Lieutenant.

  “They're locked behind my code too. Sorry, looks like I can run a gun deck, but when it comes to these damned ship systems I'm just daft.”

  “We'll be inside in a minute! Can you materialize a vacsuit for your prisoner?”

  “Oi, dinna think of that,” Frost replied before muting his end again and bursting into laughter.

  “G-god, p-please F-Frost!” Burke's skin was turning bleach pale in large patches, his nose and outer extremities were turning red.

  “P-Please w-what B-Burke?” Shamus mocked, some of the old venom creeping back into his voice. “Don't leave you to freeze to death with no one to mourn your fackin' passing? One good turn ye daft bugger! They get in, you'll live, they don't, you get what you got comin'! Either way, it's been a hellofa show!”

  “You b-bastard! I've s-seen you go, go over the edge b-before b-but come on! This isn't you!”

  “You fackin wrecked me! I was at a God damned end after I walked offa the Samson, an' if Captain didn't come back for me I was done! Prison then death, or livestock for Nan's cannibals! This is real payback, an' if you get out alive, you're on borrowed time, I'll still be gunnin' for ye for as long as you're breathin'.”

  Burke let his head fall down and vainly struggled to keep warm as Frost just turned the safety back on his sidearm, set it back to stun and dropped it into his holster. As the freezing man fell forward onto his face the door beside him opened. Security and medical personnel rushed inside.

  Shamus Frost left the room and headed straight for the express tube. After just a few minutes he was on the main Gunnery deck getting ready to run the morning briefing.

  Oz and Jason Go To Pandem Part I

  Blue oceans, green-brown islands and white, gossamer clouds covered Pandem. Its gravity was only marginally heavier than standard and there weren't any visible dominant continents, but large and small mountainous islands interrupting a vast ocean of blue. If that were all there was to see as the Silkworm IV emerged from hyperspace, it would have been a relief.

  Unfortunately, there was a great deal more to consider and Jason started to sweat as soon as the small Navnet hologram came up. “Now this is a busy port. I thought we were in fringe territory.”

  “Looks like they're having a boom time,” Oz said as he took the pilot's seat. “What's on the comm?”

  Jason checked the communications traffic and shrugged. “A few standard advertisements and a basic acknowledgement from Port Control. They keep the waves pretty clean from what I'm seeing.”

  A flash caught Oz's eye and he looked at a container ship several kilometres long. Something in its cargo hold had exploded, there were fragments scattering from the listing wreck into their trajectory, but nothing large enough to cause concern. Some of the debris cleared long enough for him to see that they had been struck by a much smaller ship. “Anything about that on Navnet? Any advisories?”

  Jason scanned and shook his head; “My filter should put that kind of thing at the top of the list, I've got nothing. Do you have the trajectory the station recommended on screen?”

  Oz double checked the trajectory assignment on Navnet and nodded. “I'm in the pipe. Pretty easy considering how busy this space is.”

  “I'm going to keep scanning for extra wireless traffic. I don't even see the usual spam on my scanners, it's just strange.”

  “Maybe check in with port control?” Oz guided the ship at a modest pace along side a long passenger liner, its smoothly curved, white and blue painted hull was much larger than their small prototype ship. “They put a lot of trust in the pilots, we're being directed within two hundred meters of that transport.”

  Jason looked up for a moment then back to his communicator. “Need my help navigating?”

  “Don't think so, Navnet says there's someone from port control watching our approach.” Oz looked to the starboard side and saw that the damaged cargo train's back end was starting to slowly drift out of line from its forward hauler module. “Don't like that though,” he nodded in its direction.

  Jason looked up, his eyes went wide. “That's going to hit us.”

  “It shows green on Navnet.”

  “That's going to hit us!” Jason repeated, unconsciously cringing away from the four hundred meter high, nine kilometre long cargo train swinging towards them. “Oz!”

  Oz looked back towards it and then glanced at the holographic Navnet display. “Yup, it's going to hit us and Navnet's lying to me,” he redirected the main thrusters to fire downwards and throttled up to full power. If he was nervous, Jason couldn't tell.

  The Silkstream IV narrowly avoided the collision and to their port side they could see the cargo train's rear half was tearing into the hull of the passenger liner. “Trying to contact Port Control, we're being jammed from the ground.”

  “What?”

  “Yup, we're getting communications from Port Control, but we can't send out. One way comms.”

  Oz looked nervous. His gaze darted in all directions as he directed the ship towards the planet. “Might be time to land.”

  “I'm going to try and search for any non-automated signals,” Jason said. “Time for a new search filter.”

  “I'll try not to have a heart attack,” Oz said as he tried to keep from colliding from the hundreds of ships all around them. The Navnet system had directed everything into a small area, and he hadn't seen a clear route out of it other than the planet itself.

  “Have you ever flown without Navnet?”

  “Now's not a good time to bring that up,” Oz replied.

  Jason sealed his vacsuit, the small hood came up from the neck and closed around a semitransparent face plate that extended from his collar.

  “Smartass,” Oz shot through his teeth as he guided the Silkstream IV down the length of a mobile repair station. The gargantuan repair and merchant vessel was decompressing from several fissures and collision points in its hull, and those were easier to avoid than the ships trying to make their way by the Navnet or otherwise. When they cleared it Oz sighed as he saw nothing but the planet below.

  “Found something!” Jason exclaimed as he turned on the speaker system.

  “ All ships, do not use Navnet. A virus has corrupted our systems and is guiding vessels into collisions and close quarters. Get clear of Pandem and contact your governments. We need your help. If you must land, navigate to Damshir, we have regained control here, ” said an urgent announcer. “ I say again… ”

  Jason turned the broadcast down and brought Damshir's coordinates up from the ships own navigational database. “Says no one from Freeground has been there in ages. It's about time someone paid them a visi-” he was interrupted as the Silkstream IV jostled and spun.

  “Something hit us from behind,” Oz said as he struggled to regain control of the ship.

  “Checking,” Jason said as he navigated through the hardware systems screen. “Oh crap, we might make it down but we'll never get up again.”

  “What did we lose?”

  “Second
ary energy storage and our main power feeds are going to burn out on entry. Aim for water, we'll have to use the emergency chutes.”

  “Aiming for water,” Oz said as he brought the ship in line with a safe atmospheric entry course. “Now what's this about chutes?”

  “Didn't read up on the emergency systems, huh?”

  “Nope.”

  “When Ayan and Laura's team finished this ship they added emergency entry chutes and inflatable buffers, so when we fall like a stone they'll deploy and we can float down.”

  “You're kidding.”

  “Nope, they didn't have room for big emergency thrusters and the inflatable buffers probably won't even deploy because they're made for bouncing on lower gravity worlds.”

  “Well, we're starting entry. If those chutes don't work I'm going to be pissed.”

  Jason laughed and braced himself by bringing his feet up and pressing them against the edge of the control console, strapping himself in at the same time. “If I'm wrong we'll be paste. The inertial dampeners will burn up right along with our main power distribution systems.”

  Oz strapped himself in as the fire of entry prompted the view port to darken. He watched the autopilot work closely, holding the manual control with one hand at all times. “Some pit stop.”

  “Hey, you picked this rock.”

  “I know, I know. I hate to say it, but I don't think it matters where we go, from the looks this virus is hitting everywhere.”

  “I'm never buying another AI,” Jason pledged.

  The Silkstream began to shake violently, the lights and control systems went out. Backup pilot systems kicked in but when Oz checked the thruster status he shook his head. “We're falling free, so we're past the possibility of burning up. Now we just have to worry about getting tossed like a meat salad when we hit.”

  Jason's teeth clacked together as they hit turbulence and he cringed. “You have a real way with words. The chutes should deploy in a sec.”

  The craft shook and began to turn. The blue sky came into view and as they watched the altimeter count down from 22,467 meters both of them started to get nervous.

  “Can the chutes deploy if we're going backwards?” Oz asked.

  “I don't know! It didn't say! Is there any chance of survival if we just hit? I mean, I went through officer training, but I didn't do too well on emergency measures in the pilot's seat.”

  “Basic physics here, we hit the ground going two hundred fifty kilometres an hour and they'll find nothing but chewy center. At that speed we'll redefine the term; 'splat.'”

  “Aren't you just mister bright side.”

  “Is there an emergency release for these chutes or something?”

  “I don't know, the detailed specs were on my command and control unit and in the computer, ones fried, the other one only has emergency power. But there's a gyro, it's blinking green, that's got to be good,” Jason pointed to a backlit indicator on the control console.

  Oz pointed to the altimeter, which read 12,209, and said; “at least it'll be quick if that's a bum reading. Terminal velocity has to be a little faster on this world than what we're used to.”

  An ear piercing triple pop filled the small cabin and the heavy weave parachutes launched from the front of the ship, filling their view with the welcome sight of billowing cloth. They were pressed violently into the backs of their seats.

  Both of them were quiet for a long moment, staring up at the deployed parachutes, the thin, strong lines extending out to them.

  “I wonder what the weather's like?” Oz asked calmly.

  “Looks sunny.”

  The ship drifted down through the air slowly for what seemed to be several minutes in silence. Both jumped as several sharp, high pitched impacts sounded against the hull. They ceased as suddenly as they began.

  “We're in trouble.” Jason concluded. “Do you think those lines could take a few hits?”

  “Sounds like small arms fire, the hull should take it and even if those rounds put holes in the parachutes we'll be fine.”

  “What about the lines holding the parachutes?”

  “Did you happen to see what they're made of?”

  “Nope.”

  “Your guess is as good as mine. Their chances of hitting them are pretty slim though. What we really have to worry about is what's waiting for us on the ground.”

  “You're a real barrel of laughs, you know that?”

  Oz released the straps on his seat and dropped backwards out of it carefully.

  “Where are you going?” Jason asked.

  “Making sure our gear is ready.”

  “Mine's the dark green bag.”

  “I know, is that all you've got for this trip?”

  “I didn't exactly take time to pack. You wouldn't happen to have an extra rifle?”

  “I didn't exactly get a chance to pack.” Oz replied. “We'll have to use the standard issue automatic rifles from the ship stores. Good thing Ayan and your wife took the time to pack things properly.”

  “What about our sidearms? They have as much or more punch than those Freeground A7's.”

  “Sure they do, but we don't have a clip bag for each. Besides, the rifles have four times the range.”

  “Good point.”

  “Just remember to-”

  “-squeeze the trigger, don't pull it. I know, I know.”

  The whole ship jostled suddenly and Jason's eyes went wide at what he saw. “Oz! You'd better strap in!”

  “Why what-” he stopped mid sentence as he turned to look up and saw that their parachutes were gone. “Holy hell! What happened?”

  “Looked like a small single wing plane just ran right through our parachutes!”

  Oz could barely hear the last bit of Jason's sentence as several pops sounded all around the ship. “That's not gunfire! What is it?”

  “It's the inflation systems for the balloons. We're going bouncing.”

  Oz hurriedly strapped himself into the rear most seat in the Silkworm IV and looked back up to the cockpit in time to see it covered by the dark brown material of the emergency landing balloons. “How high up are we?”

  “About nine hundred meters and counting. Hang on!” Jason shouted as he sealed his vacsuit and activated the impact systems.

  Oz did the same reflexively. “You know, they have a whole unit on crash landings in marine training. They scared the hell out of us to make the real thing more manageable.”

  “Did it work?”

  “Do you really want to know?”

  “Nope!”

  The impact came before he was ready, but the emergency impact systems in his vacsuit compensated just enough. The sudden jostling and uncontrolled rolling and bouncing of the craft gave him an instant headache, made him feel like his stomach was in his throat, he could taste what remained of the ration he'd had that afternoon all over again and he tried as hard as he could to hold his arms tightly crossed over his chest so they wouldn't flail wildly.

  When they came to a stop both of them just sat there for a moment, amazed that they were still in one piece. “I think I swallowed my lunch four times.” Jason groaned as he undid the straps to his seat and abruptly fell to the ceiling. “We're upside down!” he called out. “Just so you know.”

  “I know. I don't think I'll have the Fettuccine ration pack for a while, doesn't taste so good on the rerun.” Oz said as he carefully lowered himself down and made his way to Jason.

  The small ship had managed to keep her hatches, cupboards and compartments closed despite the barely controlled crash landing.

  “Everything still where it's supposed to be? Anything broken?” Oz asked.

  “Yup, you?”

  “Ready for whatever's waiting out there. Here's hoping there's someone friendly.”

  A Sunny Morning

  Liam couldn't help but admit that he was beginning to enjoy his time aboard the Triton. Over the past nine days the ship had spent on its slow movement along the outer edge of the bright neb
ula most of the crew had started making themselves at home. The few civilians that were left after most of them found jobs as crewmembers were opening up shop, starting to mix with the more military minded people aboard and that was partly thanks to him.

  He had taken it upon himself to make suggestions to department heads about several activities the crew members could engage in to not only mix with the few dozen civilians aboard but to make the Triton a real home. The botanical section of the ship was a great help, many enjoyed strolling down the larger hallways beside the broad planters, vertical gardens on the walls and on through the large center, where full trees were planted and there were even patches of soft green grass for people to lounge on.

  His favourite part of the day was the morning; he lead a stretching session that was a combination of different yoga and martial arts disciplines for the crew and civilians right in the middle of the massive garden. Many of them came dressed in uniform, the Freeground style vacsuits the crew wore didn't impede movement like regular clothing. His robes were made for free movement as well and he preferred to wear them instead of a vacsuit during morning exercises. A few of the civilians had taken his example and used materializer rations to create white robes of the lowest Axionic level. The fact that some of them had taken the time to research the order and made an effort to follow his example flattered him, a sentiment he accepted then gently dismissed during meditation.

  To his surprise Ashley had joined them that morning. She was dressed in full uniform with the exception of her flight jacket, which had been hung over a large birch tree branch nearby.

  Ashley followed the group through their exercises from the side and a few minutes after the class begun he moved to stand right in front of her. Her dark eyes looked into his nervously. “I'm screwing up, aren't I?” she whispered with that soft lisp that always made Liam smile.

  He shook his head and fixed her with a reassuring expression; “You're only doing what comes naturally. Close your eyes, try forgetting where you are. Now take a slow deep breath,” he called out to everyone. The majority of the two dozen participants were patient people and they wouldn't mind slowing the class down to a more relaxing stretch. As she took a breath, everyone else followed along. “Exhale slowly, all your nervousness and negative thoughts are leaving you, passing out of your body.” He waited until she had finished and continued; “good, now bring air in through your nose just as slowly, fill your body with clean air, relax your stomach so you can take it all in and when you're full begin releasing slowly through your mouth. All negative thoughts and energies are leaving you.” He did this with the class, watching Ashley as she began to forget that she was the center of attention, at least momentarily.