“Yeah,” Noemi says absently. Her pilot’s training has kicked in, and she’s estimating gravity, imagining vectors.
The thing about a planet with multiple satellites, particularly when they’re this large and orbiting this tightly, is that a pilot can’t land without accounting for gravity wells. It’s doable, but it’s tricky, and the larger the ship, the more difficult it gets. Noemi would have to work to land her starfighter on this planet. Something the size of the Osiris—
“Shearer!” Noemi calls across the room. “Who was going to land this ship?” Please let it be the original crew. Remedy’s probably left them alive; they can handle it—
Over her shoulder, Gillian replies, “They’d specially programmed an Item for the task. What difference does it make?” Apparently piloting isn’t one of Gillian Shearer’s many concerns.
The Osiris shudders, and Noemi sucks in a breath. “It’s about to make a big difference.”
“What’s happening?” Delphine looks from Noemi to the viewscreen and back again. Haven’s white surface grows ever larger until it completely blots out the stars.
People cry out as the ship lurches beneath them. Noemi yells, “Do we have access to any stabilizers? Any force fields?”
The shaking finally gets Mansfield’s attention. “The tanks are braced with emergency force fields, of course—”
“How do we use them to brace ourselves?”
Gillian has caught on. She dashes to her father, pulling his hoverchair back toward the walls. “Just get to the tanks. Everyone brace themselves on one of the tank platforms!”
Noemi obeys this woman for what she hopes is the last time ever. On her heels, Delphine says, “It’s going to be a rough landing?”
“You could say that.”
It would be more accurate to say they’re almost certainly going to crash.
People are already clustered near the bottom of this column of tanks, so Noemi quickly climbs the frame. An antigrav force field flickers on in response to the turbulence, trapping them all in a red bubble. That’s okay; the force field makes her distance from the floor irrelevant. Delphine follows on the climb, even though her caftan nearly trips her up. Once they’re close to the top, Noemi settles herself in the framework like a kid balancing on the monkey bars. All around her, the force field tickles with the faintest hum against her skin. When they hit a jolt, the field’s going to get a lot stronger, but she’ll deal with that later.
Not much later. From here she can still see the console Delphine was working at lying on the floor. There’s nothing on the viewscreen now but whiteness.
The Osiris lurches violently. Noemi grabs the framework harder, by instinct, but she can feel the force field tightening around her in an almost painful grip. They’ve gotten close enough to the surface for artificial gravity to shut off. That’s a standard ship function, normally an energy saver, but here it’s going to be deadly. Without internal gravity, everyone on board could be battered to death by the ship’s ragged descent.
“Are we spinning?” Delphine cries. “It feels like we’re spinning!”
It’s hard to tell from the way it feels—the dizziness could just be panic, but the force field’s hold mutes that. The evidence is all visual: boxes of chocolate and silk negligees, stylish shoes and monogrammed suitcases, tumbling around like bits of glass in a kaleidoscope.
We’re going down, Noemi thinks. We’re going down hard—
The first impact is the worst. Noemi’s flung forward so violently her neck pops, her forearms slam into the framework, and the force field around her feels like it might snap her in two. Debris smashes tanks, strikes passengers, thuds against metal and bone. As screams fill the air, Gillian yells, too late, “Brace yourselves!”
A second impact slams into them, knocking out main lights and leaving only the orange emergency glow. Then there’s a third impact. A fourth. They’re skipping across the surface like a stone against water, Noemi realizes. Even the best skipping stone sinks in the end.
The Osiris strikes something—a rock, a ridge, no telling—and slides sideways until it begins to roll. Noemi closes her eyes and hangs on as they tumble over and over, debris flying in every direction. Something heavy within her force field strikes a glancing blow to the side of her head, and she feels the heat and wetness of blood at her temple. There’s no up or down any longer, just a terrible dizzying rush that seems as if it will never end.
Finally, though, the ship makes one last flip and skids to a halt—upside down.
Noemi gasps as she looks down at what had been the ceiling of the tank room but is now the floor. She’s clinging to the framework, only partly held up by the force field, which is no longer working at full strength; some of the fields appear to have shorted out completely. The console Gillian had been working at hangs uselessly from above. Below is a bloody, smoldering pile of dazed humans, broken machinery, and wrecked luggage. Main power flickers on again, then goes off, probably for good. In the dim orange emergency lights, the huddle below looks even more surreal and monstrous.
This ship will never fly again, Noemi thinks. We’re stranded here.
Forever.
16
ABEL HAD ANTICIPATED THAT EARTH FORCES WOULD soon investigate what had happened near Proteus. However, he’d failed to anticipate the scale of the investigation.
“Did they send every ship on Earth ever?” Virginia grumbles from her place at the helm. She keeps the Persephone close to Halimede, one of Neptune’s outermost moons. Her bright orange jumpsuit is the one flare of color in the otherwise darkened bridge.
“You’re exaggerating for humorous intent,” Abel says, “but this is a far larger search party than I would’ve anticipated, even considering the scale of the Remedy attack.”
To his surprise, Virginia laughs. “You still don’t get it, Abel. If Remedy had hit a Vagabond convoy, we’d see about one and a half scout ships out here taking readings. A luxury ship with Burton Mansfield aboard? Earth won’t stop
