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?”
“Secondary 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.”
