Stellar fusion, p.19
Stellar Fusion, page 19
part #1 of Infinite Spark Series
“So…modifications?” Tanner asked again.
“Oh, right. Added an extra fuel tank, fifteen litrons, four more control wings to help manage the additional gravity and effective air pressure, and a secondary direction-adjustable ion thruster below the primary pulse-detonation thruster so we can hover. The extra fuel tank is for the chemical thrusters, two under each main wing. I did a lot of this based on estimations and the small bits of data I was able to steal from the Suanoa database.”
It was mostly the truth. He glanced at the shepherd beside him, drawing in the adjustments to his schematics. He wouldn’t understand. Only Atana was capable of that, if she remembered.
Tanner surveyed the dash display, pointing at the readout on the side of the central illuminated screen. “Are these the updated mass and power outputs of her?”
“Yes,” Azure replied quietly. He was overwhelmed: concerned about Atana’s health, the M45’s capabilities of landing on a planet, what the beings of Earth would think of him, hoping Saema and the workers would be safe without him there to protect them, and wondering what the future would bring now that they were on this new, unpredictable path.
Tanner added the adjusted values, compensating for the personnel payload. He muttered to himself, “Relative force output of thrusters, net drag of additional wings.” He ran a simulation. “Well, seems you have overcompensated. Nice work. We’re a little nose heavy. Go light on the rear thrusters so we don’t pitch, and we should be fine.”
Azure smiled, relieved. “Can you give me the acceleration of gravity value for your planet, for the landing program algorithms?”
“Standard is 9.8 meters per second, squared, or Newtons per kilogram for force.”
Breaking the crest of the Earth’s atmosphere, the dash controls beeped and flashed, alarms stating contact with the ground was imminent. Azure entered the value into the system’s computer, grumbling.
The team members shifted uncomfortably, second guessing their trust in the stranger. They exchanged glances, wondering if someone should do something and what exactly that something should be.
He sensed their apprehension. “Relax. It will stop when we get within 300 meters of the ground. It’s still calibrated for space walks. It was next on my list of things, just didn’t get it finished before you got here. It’s a notification sensor. It doesn’t affect anything.”
He reached up, pulling four levers down from the roof. Flipping them back, he prepped the additional control wings, opening their slots on the hull.
“Anything else you didn’t finish we should know about?” Bennett asked. The team exchanged apprehensive glances.
Azure offered no verbal response to accompany the twitch of his cheeks.
Tanner selected a 3-D map of the globe on his laptop, showing Azure the best path for travel to the drop site. “They are going to have a transport waiting for us at this location. It’s in the Sahara Desert, Zone Three. We’re landing in the sand.”
Azure acknowledged Tanner’s request, flipping and locking four switches above him. Long-bladed wings sprung out of their slots, spreading into their descent positions.
The Sahara Desert? he repeated to himself. He wanted so badly to look at her again but controlled his desires, remembering his duty to the Agutra innocents and team of Earth’s guards, their lives in his hands.
Hesitant but curious, he dulled the leery edge in his voice. “Are we going to have to destroy her when we get to the ground? And what about me? I’m not like any of you.”
Tanner glanced over at him. “I’m sorry, Azure. I can’t answer that. It’s up to Command.” He double-checked the device in his hands. “We are called Universal Protectors for a reason. I’d hope they’d be accepting of you after all your help.”
Plummeting through the thermosphere, a real horizon appeared in front of them. The dark sands and deep, ocean blues of the sky made his heart jitter. Breaking through the burn phase below the mesosphere, the M45’s vibrations smoothed out.
“Azure,” Bennett yelled, “we’re running low on time! We need to get there a little faster.” Atana was bleeding through the bandage he had wrapped around her earlier.
“Hold on!” Azure kicked the wings into drop form again. The crew levitated in their seats with grimaces, their stomachs greeting their throats. Reaching five kilometers from the surface, he reinitiated the landing program. The wings sprung back out, directing their descent along the continent’s crust.
Tanner instructed him through Sand Zone Three. Dropping within 300 meters of the dunes, the noise subsided.
“Over there.” Tanner pointed to the UP Transport.
“Where?” Azure squinted across the shadowed desert sands.
“Looks like a mirage, a sort of extra hazy area? They have the chameleon skins up.” A matte gray ship unskinned ahead of them on the surface of the sand, white lights blinking along its perimeter.
Azure rotated the wings, creating drag. Setting the secondary propulsion units to Hover, they pivoted, holding the ship above real, endless land. His heart thumped heavy, sending heat flaring through his body in nervous anticipation.
The main rear propulsion faded to his commands. Coming to a standstill almost three meters off the ground, Azure tried to drop the power gradually but cut it out a half meter too soon, dropping the ship to the surface of the sand with a hard clunk.
Steadfast
Chapter 43
THE WIND-RIPPLED DUNES glittered like the night sky above, the moon casting light across the crests around the M45. A rush of air from the dropping ramp wove a long-forgotten warmth through Azure’s shabby clothes, so unexpected that it sent a hot shiver of awareness through him.
I’m on Earth. I’m on a planet! We made it!
Unbuckling and reading the flashing updates on their wristbands, the team greeted and directed the medical evacuation members of UP from the critical relief transport. They swiftly rushed on board and were out seconds later, carrying the immobilized Sergeant Atana on a litter. Bennett and Cutter hustled with them, their hands firmly wrapped around the frame at her head.
Tanner returned to his seat. Catching Azure’s disarmed appearance, he smiled. “I’m staying with you. Don’t worry.”
One of UP’s pilots hopped up and onto the M45. “You understand English?”
Azure nodded.
“Great, we are going to hide your ship.” The pilot motioned with a hand toward the dead, dried-up ball of twigs rooted into the ground not fifty meters from their current location. “Take her over there and hover above.”
Azure closed the gate, reignited the thrusters, and lifted the M45 up and over the vegetation. The sand gave way underneath the ship, and they found themselves dropping below the dunes, into an underground passageway. Their ears boomed with echoing pulses. A little more experienced this time around, Azure set them down without so much as a bump.
“Nice job, man!” Tanner gave Azure’s shoulder a congratulatory slap.
The ramp dropped, and sand poured onto the floor of the tunnel from the gaping opening overhead.
“Over here,” the pilot called.
The ends of three knotted ropes dropped from the sky. A loud rumbling of engines thundered down on them. They each grabbed a hold and were yanked up and out of the darkness. Stepping onto the loading platform inside the hovering transport, Azure saw the pilot grin at him before heading to the cockpit.
Hearing the sounds of scraping metal and the pounding of support locks opening behind him, Azure spun around. A large chunk of a wrecked vessel, similar in size to his M45, fell to the surface from the open floor. It split into pieces upon impact with the dunes.
Panton had clipped his harness in a crisscross pattern to the D-rings in the ceiling and the floor. Running his short shock-absorber line to the hook between Josie’s shoulders, he held her steady by the handle on the back of her vest and an arm around her waist. The transport lifted higher off the surface, nearly 150 meters. With one flaming shot from Josie’s e-rifle, the wreckage burst into flames.
Panton pulled her up to him with a grin, his arms synched tightly around her, the floor whistling shut. Two crew members picked up and threw the safety latches, locking the horizontal doors at their feet, having to move around the hooked-in sergeants.
The ship hummed, powering up.
Tanner tapped Azure and motioned toward the handles overhead. “Hang on.”
They dove and took off, spraying a strip of sand leading to the wreckage, recovering the hatch, and concealing Azure’s ship. He was caught off guard by the jolt, despite his firm grip on the straps above.
“You okay?” Tanner noted the surprise on his face.
“Your gravity is stronger on the surface than in the cage.” Azure released a shallow, grinning breath. “I’m thirty-some long-cycles and feel like I’m three.”
Tanner smiled, dropping and shaking his head. “I think you’ll fit in well with our crew.”
Azure gazed out the window of the door behind, taking in the endless, sparkling pinpricks in the inky veil over the land. No walls surrounded him, no ceiling, no Warruks or Linoans—just freedom. But his imprudent mirth and trepidation of the hours ahead clashed like fire and water, a smoldering, soggy pit in his gut, unable to alight, unable to drown.
Chapter 44
FRAYED.
Cutter hustled up to them, glancing at Azure’s worried face.
“Stable for the moment. Let’s hope she stays that way.” He sighed and muttered to Tanner, “Bennett’s another story.”
Through the hangar and into the elevator next to Atana and her medical staff, the team was silent, gazing solemnly over to where Bennett stood, escorting their leader. The bustle of nurses and EMTs around her made them uneasy.
The computer system beeped a warning. “One passenger not cleared for descent.”
Tanner scanned his retina and waved Azure over.
An automated voice responded, “Cannot distinguish pattern. Please rescan.”
Tanner squinted at the screen, selecting a few things and making some adjustments. “Try it now. I think the light is making it hard for the computer to register your iris pattern.”
Azure rescanned his iris. “Sorry. They do this when we’re emotional.” Or drunk.
“New passenger accepted.” The elevator finally began their decent. Down a thick, transparent shaft, they submerged below the ocean. Azure stumbled to the sudden movement.
“You hide the typical symptoms well, so don’t worry about it.” Tanner pointed behind Azure. “I’m guessing you haven’t seen this before.”
Azure caught sight of the massive underwater station glowing in the distance. Several schools of tiny silver and green fish swam by the elevator, their iridescent scales reflecting the pale lights. He moved cautiously toward the glass walls until he could see Atana’s car, which had left mere seconds before theirs. It was all a dream he’d never had, only attempted to envision.
Or a nightmare. He wasn’t sure.
The brakes slowed them gradually to a stop. The team emptied the elevator while other shepherds filed in behind them.
Medical attendants held up the crew at the entrance to the Infirmary. “I’m sorry we can’t let any of you go in. She needs surgery. Some of her cuts are pretty deep, and she’s bleeding internally. How bad, we aren’t sure.”
“How long is it going to take?” Bennett demanded, his hand tensed around the wadded up, bloodied jacket returned to him by one of the nurses.
“I don’t have an answer. Maybe two or three hours.”
“I will stay. You should go talk to your people,” Azure offered, scanning the buzzing humans around him, most of which were staring back.
“I’m staying,” Bennett responded defiantly. Even if there were medical staff on hand, Bennett didn’t like the idea of leaving Azure alone near Atana. He hadn’t left her side since they’d been captured. He sure as hell wasn’t going to now.
“They need to talk to you. I am going to be the most useful here.”
It was the truth, but Bennett didn’t care.
Sergeant Cutter broke in. “We will go and report what we have, and you can both stay. We have plenty to talk about for a few hours, until you’re ready to join.”
Bennett and Azure agreed.
Tanner, who had left for a moment, came jogging down the hall. “Hey, B, I called Rio so he could get you set up with a new wristband and serum. He should be down in a bit.”
“Thanks.” Bennett walked over to the observation window, raking a hand through his hair.
Turning to the man standing next to him, Tanner handed Azure a wristband. “Put this on. It has maps and directories for Home Station. It will also get you into all of the guest accessible facilities. I knew we were going to have to take off and figured you might want to stay down here.”
“Does it inject me with that stuff?” Azure asked warily.
Tanner chuckled. “No. Shepherds only.”
Rolling up his sleeve, Azure clipped the four straps around his arm. “Thanks.”
“Thanks for getting us home.” Tanner showed him how to navigate the systems before walking over to Bennett.
“Sir.” There was a moment of silence. Tanner stumbled through what to say to comfort his leader. “It’s not your fault.”
Bennett grumbled under his breath.
“It’s not. You are not responsible for her actions. Besides, she wouldn’t have made it back here without you.”
Bennett stood with arms crossed, frozen except for his eyes, tracking the movement of the room before him. “She was my main responsibility, given by Command and Rio.”
“Oh,” Tanner hummed, straightening his back. “That explains why Rio was so quiet.”
“Mad?” Bennett half-listened for the answer.
“I don’t know, didn’t get a lot of words out of him.” He scanned his leader’s busted face, the dried blood visible on his shirt. “You look like hell. You okay?”
Twisting his shoulders, his bruised knuckles tucked beneath his elbows, Bennett traced the dark orchid and orange splatters peppering Tanner’s armor. “You?”
“Cutter’s ten times what Cara ever was.” Adjusting the case on his front, he glanced down the hall after his team. Following Bennett’s focus into the surgery room, he added, “Don’t blame yourself. There’s a reason you’re an R3.”
With a consoling pat to Bennett’s shoulder, he left.
Chapter 45
THE FRANTIC WORDS of a nurse through the open doors of the surgery room to Azure’s right synched the breath from his lungs.
“No, Doctor. We aren’t ready for surgery. She’s lost too much blood. We’re low on type…” Her words trailed off, muffled by the swinging doors.
Desperate to help her, Azure impulsively pushed in to the surgery room.
“Take mine,” he offered.
Bennett, having caught a glimpse of Azure in the doorway, pounded on the large picture window between them. His voice was barely audible, suppressed by the thick panes between the two men. “You are not authorized to be in there!” His brows were knitted with fury. “Get out!”
Azure ignored him. There were more important matters on his mind.
“You can’t be in here,” a nurse yelled. “This is a sterile environment!”
“Can you at least check if I’m the right type?” Azure eagerly outstretched an arm and rolled up his tattered sleeve. I know I am.
“Won’t hurt at this point. I’ll run him. It’s not like we have any other options.” The doctor ushered him through the double doors and into an office around the corner.
“Please, sit.” He waved a hand at the open seat beside his desk. “I have to run a test.”
The doctor easily found his vein. Azure thought it strange, given how deeply embedded Xahu’ré circulatory systems were. The elastic strap around his upper arm encouraged his vessels to surface. His eyes saw, his brain calculated, and the nerves inside his elbow slept, callous and numb.
Drawing one vial of translucent, indigo fluid with swirling silver-metallic flecks, the doctor muttered, “Lisano…amazing.”
Azure studied the man before him, the one who handled his blood. Lisano? Beautiful?
The doctor spun around, slipping the tube into a slot in the machine on the counter. Slamming the top shut, he punched in a button with a green symbol on it. The device hummed to life. In twenty seconds the results displayed on the screens lining the walls of the corner office. The doctor’s fingers flew over the smooth glass, opening Atana’s serological spectrum analysis and cross-match breakdown.
“I don’t believe it.” He swiftly scrolled through the output data. “That’s impossible.”
“What?” Azure asked, suddenly concerned his leap of faith with this new environment, for the one true motivation in his life, had been a mistake. He had spent so much of his life caged, poked, and prodded; he feared it was his destined life occupation.
“It’s our lucky day.” Grinning, he sprang out the door to the surgery room and shouted for a draw bag. A few muffled words came from the closed doors. “No mix. He’s it.”
He popped back in, requesting Azure lie on the table against the wall while he hooked him up to the pliable container that would hold his blood and carry it to his beloved.
“Why do you want to help this Sergeant?” He snapped the transfusion adapter into the draw-assist casing in Azure’s arm.
“She is important to many, in ways I don’t know how to explain.” Azure’s mind rewound to the blood trails. Tilting his head toward the quickly filling bag, he said, “I know she’s lost more. I can give more.”
How does he know how much she’s lost? The doctor wondered. Did he know he would be a compatible match? Does he know the truth? No, he couldn’t possibly… He trailed off, catching Azure’s eyes burning into him. “You’re right. Are you sure you want to give more?” The doctor promptly unhooked the bag.
