Wasteland of Flint

Above Ephesus III

Both rockets sputtered, blew a thin trail of black smoke and died. The Gagarin hung in emptiness, a white-hot sun reflecting in the mirrored upper surface of the wing. The sweep of the horizon was filled with stars, with the darkness of the void. The rust-red disk of the planet below seemed very small and far away.

Gretchen stared anxiously over her shoulder, searching the black vault overhead for any sign of a shuttle. The Midge's radar was scanning wildly, but nothing showed on the scope. Sweat streamed down her face, pooling in the suit, overloading the recyclers. They had passed through a region of intense heat, though now the windows were crackling with ice. Hummingbird was stiff as a board, clutching his restraints, knuckles white.

"Do you see anything?" Anderssen barked at him, craning her neck to try and see past the nauallis. Only stars and the wispy white arc of the planetary atmosphere were visible. Her medband began to chirp in alarm, but she ignored the alert. Radiation, she thought sickly. Doesn't matter.

She realized Hummingbird's eyes were closed and his lips were moving silently.

"Prayer might help," she laughed — only slightly hysterically. "But I need your eyes."

The altimeter began to fluctuate. Tumbling slowly, the Midge began to arc back toward the planet below. Low gravity or no, the mass of the world tugged at them, drawing them back into a hot, close embrace. She punched the old man in the leg as hard as she could.

Hummingbird's eyes flew open.

"Do you see anything?" Gretchen jerked her head sharply toward his side of the Gagarin.

The nauallis blinked, then turned, staring out at the ebon sky. "Nothing…there's only…wait — there's something shining!"

Gretchen rapped the radar display sharply and though the mechanism ignored her, a spark suddenly flared at the edge of the Midge's detection range. Something was approaching at tremendous speed. "Oh thank the Sister, the Mother and the Son of God! Hang on!"

"I am…" Hummingbird's cry was drowned by a roaring hiss as Gretchen blew the last of their fuel and twisted the Gagarin away from the oncoming object. Surviving the next sixty seconds required reducing their intercept differential as much as possible. She slapped a control and the Midge trembled as the skyhook ratcheted out of the roof.

"Wings away!" Gretchen threw a lever and explosive bolts banged sharply. The cockpit shuddered as both broad, shining wings spurted away from the sides of the cabin. "Brace!"

For a moment, the Gagarin rushed forward, racing across the world below. The hissing stopped and the engines went dead. A light flared on the panel, indicating they'd switched to battery power with the loss of the solar panels and fuel cells. Gretchen felt cold pour into the cabin around her feet and did not look down. Instead, she forced her head back into the headrest of the seat and braced her arms.

Something flashed overhead, glowing red-hot and the entire world jerked away in a blinding jolt of pain. A flood of white sparks roared across her vision. A massive wave of sound slammed into her, battering her eardrums. Someone's scream was lost in a dragon-throated roar. Metal squealed, stressed beyond all expectation of design and manufacture. Gretchen caught a glimpse of the planet rolling past, then Hummingbird's face slack in unconsciousness.

The windows shattered as the airframe deformed, spraying glassite into the cabin. What little air remained was wicked away into a supersonic slipstream. Waves of heat boiled in, raging against her face. Blinded, Gretchen gritted her teeth and hung on. Somewhere above and behind her, there was a shrieking whine as cable spooled in at tremendous speed.

The blazing red shape — superheated air flaring around the Komodo in a brilliant corona — swelled over her head. For a single instant, a black maw gaped before her, limned with fire.

Everything slammed to a halt, flinging her violently against the seat restraints. She choked, feeling bone and muscle tear. The world outside went black, even the stars blotted out by a roaring, twisting storm of abused atmosphere. She was still bouncing back into the seat, a shattered retaining ring spinning free to fly out through the window, when the side door tore away.

A pair of hands reached in, seizing the centerline join on her suit. Something blazed blue-white at her back and shoulder, then she was free of the restraints and being dragged from the shattered wreck of the Midge. A combat-suited figure — broad, well-muscled — wrapped her in powerful arms and leapt back as a workline reeled in. They hit the wall of the shuttle's cargo bay together and his hand wrapped around a support brace.

"Clear to eject," shouted a tense male voice on the comm. Every other sound was overwhelmed by the shriek of air whipping around the hold doors.

Gretchen squirmed around — so slowly, time stretching like taffy — and saw, in a brief, perfect image: the crumpled cabin of the Gagarin sprawled on the deck of the cargo hold. The clamshell doors stood wide, Hummingbird in the arms of another man in a combat suit on the far wall of the hold, the launching pad rushing back, slamming into the broken, twisted metal of the Midge.

No!

The ultralight punched out into the darkness, spewing glassite and metal and bits of plastic. The Gagarin hit the shuttle's slipstream and blew apart, vanishing in the blink of an eye. Nothing remained, even the debris was already dozens of k behind, falling toward the planet in an expanding, jumbled cloud. The clamshell doors swung inexorably closed, blocking out even a momentary glimpse of the white arc of the planet.

Gretchen slumped into the man's arms, feeling their strength holding her up. Poor little plane. After all you did for us, for me.

"Pressure doors secure," Fitzsimmons shouted into his comm. "Kick it."

The shuttle engines lit momentarily, pitching the Komodo up into a higher angle of exit from the gravity of Ephesus Three. Somewhere ahead, the Palenque was waiting, swinging through its own wide orbit, gathering speed from the planet's gravitational pull. Glowing wings turned, catching a glint of the distant sun, and they sped on into the sea of night.