Jazz left the captain’s cabin early. She knew he wasn’t expected on the bridge for at least another six hours, which ensured plenty of time for the metamorphosis to complete. She checked the corridor was clear, closed the door quietly and made her way back to the passenger areas.
She was pleased with the way things had gone since boarding. Two passengers, an engineering officer and now the captain.
Not bad for the first eleven hours, she thought. Let’s see if there’s anyone else around at this hour.
She was about to leave her cabin when a call tone from the ship’s computer came through on her wall screen. Incoming transmission for Vaileenbough Jazz, press 1 to store, 2 to play, 3 at any time to reply and 4 to delete. She pressed 2 and watched as a face she didn’t recognise appeared and spoke to her for almost a minute. Once the transmission was completed, she pressed 4 and carried on as normal.
It was later that morning when the first sign of trouble presented. The captain, now fully regenerated, called her.
‘The ship is to be quarantined on arrival at Redler,’ he said. ‘A possible virus, they’re saying.’
‘No, they’ve discovered I boarded the ship,’ she replied. ‘We need to disappear.’
‘The officers won’t allow me to do anything drastic. There are safety protocols if I try to do something out of the ordinary.’
‘Leave it with me,’ she said. ‘Just give me five minutes’ warning before we achieve orbit around Redler.’
When his call came a few hours later, she immediately began tapping away on her room’s computer terminal. She smiled as the penetrating shriek of alarms echoed around the vessel, followed by a spoken message.
This is a reactor overload emergency, passengers make your way to the nearest lifeboat immediately and follow the crew’s instructions. This is not a drill.
The sound of running feet, shouting and screaming children from the corridor drowned out the alarms for a short time.
She left her cabin a few minutes later, once everything had quietened down, and made her way quickly to the bridge, where only the engineering officer and the captain remained.
‘Are the lifeboats all away?’ she asked, looking up at the screens and watching the igniting engine flares streaking away from the ship down towards Redler.
‘Almost,’ he said, nodding. ‘A reactor overload was a good idea. There was a real one a few years ago where everyone on that ship died. So it was bound to put the fear of the ancients into everyone.’
‘Is the reactor back into the green?’ she asked, glancing at the engineering officer.
‘It will be shortly,’ he replied, looking up from one of the bridge consoles.
‘Good, is there a lifeboat for us remaining?’
‘Right in there,’ said the captain, pointing at his bridge office. ‘All ready to go.’
She nodded and looked up as another passenger lifeboat ejected, the flash of its engine igniting making them squint.
‘Last one,’ said the captain, watching as it turned and headed straight for the upper atmosphere.
‘Right,’ she said. ‘Plot a series of embedded jumps to Eritain, but don’t take the standard route.’
‘Eritain?’ the captain questioned, giving Jazz a sideways look. ‘Are you sure?’
‘We’ve been invited,’ said Jazz.
This time the captain turned and faced her. ‘Invited?’ he said, the doubt obvious in his tone.
‘It seems we’re not alone in our quest, Captain,’ she replied. ‘You may jump when ready.’
Thirty-two hours later, the Redler Rapide winked back into existence eight thousand kilometres above Eritain, causing a bulk hauler and two private yachts to take evasive action. The engineering officer, who was piloting, took the ship to a designated area above the surface and pointed the vessel straight down.
‘Are we set?’ Jazz asked.
He nodded.
‘It’ll start re-entry in about ten minutes,’ said the captain.
‘Let’s go,’ said Jazz, heading for the captain’s study.
The captain took one last look around the bridge as he followed the other two.
‘Such a waste,’ he said. ‘She was a good ship.’
‘Basic shielding and no armaments,’ said Jazz, as she climbed into the lifeboat. ‘Pointless biological ostentation.’
The captain, as is tradition, was last into the lifeboat. He sealed the small inner airlock door and nodded at Jazz. She turned to face the control screen, her hand hovering above the manual launch handle.
‘That’s the manual release,’ said the engineer, noticing what she was about to do. ‘It won’t get us clear of the ship.’
‘We need to look like wreckage,’ she said.
Jazz could see the glow of the planet through one of the tiny porthole windows and she pulled the handle as soon as they felt the ship begin to shake. The clunk of the lifeboat separating away from the ship was loud and it immediately turned as the automated systems came online and began to compute its insertion. A few minutes later it deployed its heat shield as they dropped into the upper atmosphere at over thirty times the speed of sound.
They all peered around nervously as a loud clang from outside was followed by a juddering that lasted a few seconds.
‘Did we just hit something?’ said Jazz, retightening her belts and straining her neck to see out of the porthole.
‘Must have been a piece of the disintegrating ship clouting us,’ said the captain. ‘There’ll be a lot of that flying in all directions.’
Jazz eyed the small control panel to her right. It still showed green lights across the board, not that there was much she could do if it didn’t. Moments later, the crack as the heat shield ejected did nothing to calm their apprehension. Their eyes met as the reassuring whine of the antigrav motor spun into life and began addressing the huge velocity of their plummeting cylinder.
They sank deep into the seat cushioning as the tiny vessel braked aggressively and began side-slipping, searching for a suitable dry landing area.
‘They’d better be here,’ said Jazz, as the clunk and whirr of the landing struts extending informed them of their proximity to the surface.
A flashing red light on the control panel caught Jazz’s attention, followed by the return of the juddering and a distinct rattle from the antigrav drive. ‘Brace for a hard landing,’ she called. ‘The struts haven’t deployed fully.’
She hardly had time to get the words out of her mouth before being crushed into her seat as the lifeboat hit the ground, immediately crashing down onto one side. Wall panels, seat cushions and anything not bolted down flew around the cramped cabin. The pungent smell of burning plastic invaded the interior, along with the wail of an alarm, desperately trying to inform them of what they already knew.
The tiny vessel continued to roll as it became abundantly clear the automated systems had failed to find a flat surface to land on. Jazz pulled her arms tightly into her chest and waited for the rolling to cease. It was shockingly abrupt when it came and the impact with whatever it was punched through the wall of the craft behind the engineer and crushed him against the seat opposite.
‘Out, now,’ shouted Jazz, as she released her belts and tugged at the manual hatch release. Smoke began to invade the cabin quickly with the distinct aroma of burning oil. The antigrav hadn’t shut down properly and was continuing to try and fly the thing. It screamed and shook and rattled, threatening to lift the lifeboat off the ground again.
The captain pulled up the control panel that now hung from above by its wires, dragged the safety cover off and hit the emergency shutdown button. Nothing happened as a flame licked around the panel, singeing his hand and forcing him to drop it again.
‘Shit, fire,’ he said, turning and aiding Jazz with heaving on the door release.
It gave suddenly, causing them to jerk backwards and Jazz to crash heavily into the captain. Mumbling an apology, she launched herself forward as she felt the craft move beneath her. She snatched at a tree branch almost blocking her exit and hung onto it as the lifeboat fell away beneath her.
The reason for the ship coming to the abrupt stop earlier immediately became apparent. She found herself hanging in a huge tree growing out of a cliff face some two hundred feet above the floor of a narrow rocky gorge.
The ship dropped away from her and impacted the ground below. A small explosion came from the motor as it died, leading to a massive thunderclap as her two colleagues detonated. The huge blast contained within the narrow gorge punched upwards, and she had to grit her teeth and hang on tight as the tree she was in shook violently. It dropped alarmingly as the mini earthquake loosened its roots’ grip on the cliff face.
‘Oh, for fuck’s sake,’ she shouted, as bits of the lifeboat rattled and pinged off the rocks and tree around her.
Then, as everything went quiet, she looked up as the unmistakeable sound of a flyer disturbed the sudden silence.
‘That had better be you,’ she said out loud, scanning the sky above the gorge.
She found herself suddenly in shadow as a privately owned flyer swooped in low above her. Unable to drop into the narrow gorge, the pilot hovered about fifty feet above the tree. She felt herself being scanned and soon after a carbonate ladder dropped from an open side door. She grabbed it and began climbing.
Once level with the bottom of the flyer’s door, she peered inside.
‘Hello, Jazz,’ said a stranger holding out a hand. ‘Don’t worry, you’re quite safe now.’