Part II: Drometica

Jyra returned the book to her bag as Craig climbed toward her from the cockpit.

“Why didn’t they try and shoot us down?” Jyra said. “They had guns.” Craig shrugged and pushed back his sandy hair as he sat in the seat that should have been Derek’s.

“Not sure. I’d guess their bullets weren’t big enough to harm the ship. Or they were satisfied with what they got.”

Jyra stared at the galaxy before her. It seemed terribly unfair that she was finally able to see it, but under such grave conditions she couldn’t enjoy its beauty.

“They won’t kill him, will they?” she said. Craig didn’t reply immediately and Jyra turned to see him looking at her.

“What?”

“I was trying to think of a general answer to all the questions you’re asking and likely going to ask. ‘I don’t know’ will have to do, I’m afraid.”

“Well, tell me you’re guesses.”

“I guess we should try to activate the scanner so it can tell us when we need to begin landing this thing on Drometica.”

“How do we do that?”

“I’m not sure.”

“How to set up the scanner or how to land?”

“Yes.”

“Perfect,” Jyra said as she climbed into the cockpit. “At least we’re both mechanics so we’re equally inept when it comes to actually flying the machines we work on.”

“Drometica’s the white planet to the left,” Craig said, pointing across Jyra’s shoulder.

She stared at the console, matching controls to what she remembered from the book. Jyra placed her fingertips on a joystick. For the main thrust, she thought. The two levers next to it provide auxiliary thrust for maneuvering to port or starboard.

“The gravitational pull is strong so we shouldn’t have a problem getting to the planet,” Craig said. “Keeping something this small stable while passing through the atmosphere will be the real challenge.”

“Wait,” Jyra said. She saw a red cable running in the crevice where the console met the wall of the ship. “That’s a com line. One of the ships we worked on had the same wire and it ran to a display.” She followed the cable and it led to a blank panel to the console on the right wall. Jyra pushed it and the panel flipped 180 degrees to reveal a screen that lit up with a schematic of the nearby planets and features of the galaxy.

“Perfect,” Craig said. “Now we just need to find the scanner and hope for the best when it comes time to land.”

He pushed himself off the back of the seat and opened a locker to stow their luggage. As silence settled inside the cabin, Jyra began imagining what horrors Derek might be facing in some dark interrogation cell and the torture performed by sinister TF agents. She blinked her brimming eyes, forcing herself to concentrate. The sooner we land, the sooner we can figure out how to save Derek. She thought of him clutching his bleeding leg while she hunted through the options on the screen. Then she reflected that if it hadn’t been for Derek, she would still be on Tyrorken, mourning Dario, unaware that she would be recruited for work at TF as required by a deal her parents had arranged. Jyra swore that she wouldn’t return to her home planet until she had a plan to rescue Derek.

A chime sounded and Jyra saw the screen had changed. She didn’t recognize it at first.

“Good news?” Craig asked, glancing up from the papers he’d extracted from his bag before placing it in the locker. Jyra didn’t answer immediately. “Jyra?”

“I found it. The scanner’s up,” she said. Craig came forward and nodded his approval.

“Perfect timing. I dug out the information Derek gave me. Coordinates on Drometica where we can meet some of his friends.”
“Can we trust them?”

“Do we have an alternative?” They stared at each other, possibly competing to come up with an answer. Craig broke eye contact to survey the screen.

“It’s got Drometica sighted and here’s the data field.” Craig entered the appropriate digits and a status bar appeared at the top of the screen.

“We just need to wait for that to load and we’ll get a course plotted.”

Faced with more silence Jyra indicated the papers in Craig’s hands.

“What all did he give you?”

“We’ve been working on this together,” Craig said, handing over the documents. “It’s all very preliminary and now much of it’s changed. He’s no longer in the position he held at TF and some of our plans depended on his access privileges.”

Jyra tried to read and listen at the same time.

“What kinds of things would you do?” she said.

“Crashing some key networks. Sabotage mostly.”

“Any direct attacks?”

“What?”

“Direct attacks,” Jyra repeated. “With weapons. Killing the top members of TF.”

Craig blinked and his voice sounded oddly constricted.

“We hadn’t gotten that far.”

“Why not? They got that far already,” Jyra said, rising with her voice and pointing over Craig’s shoulder. “We don’t need to kill anyone, but we do need to make a statement of some kind. I want TF to be afraid of us.” She stopped to catch her breath and noticed the furrows forming in Craig’s forehead.

“Right now, the only ‘us’ they need to be worried about is you and me,” Craig said gently.

“I know, but we’re going to get more people now, right?” Jyra glanced at the papers again. “Hold on. Do you know what networks you were crashing?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “What if it caused accidents in the field and killed people? We need some of those people to join us.”

“I meant what I said when I mentioned we didn’t get very far,” Craig said with an edge to his voice. “It hasn’t been easy. Planning should be simpler to do off Tyrorken.”

The chime of the scanner interrupted him. The ship began to orient toward Drometica. Craig leaned in and selected a tab marked “details.” He studied the screen and Jyra tried to make sense of topographic schematic that had materialized on it. She made out steep peaks of a mountain range. She realized she had envisioned other planets to at least resemble her own. The oilrig towers and TF headquarters were the closest things that bore any likeness to mountains. Craig double-tapped the screen on a pulsing purple dot. The image zoomed in on the dot and Craig leaned back, exhaling a low whistle.

“That’s impossible,” he muttered. Jyra continued to scrutinize the lines of the schematic and it gradually made sense.

“We have to put the ship down there?” she said, pointing at the purple dot, which flashed between three craggy mountains and next to a deep trench. “Are we supposed to survive the landing?”

“That’s the idea,” Craig said, rubbing his temples.

“Why do his friends live in the middle of the mountains?”

“Probably because they’re the type who incite rebellions.”

“Lots of injustice to resolve in the snow?”

“That’s enough,” Craig said with a wary smile. “This is a much trickier end to this trip than I thought.”

“We’re heading for those coordinates right now,” Jyra said, swiveling nervously in her chair. “How does this thing land?”

“Ideally we’d have a lengthy skid path,” Craig said. “Drometica’s got an angry atmosphere that will either help slow us down or it might kill us. We’ll have to fire the engine to help us through and to stabilize the ship. Once we get out of the atmosphere, then we’ll cut the engine and deploy the parachute.”

“I didn’t think parachutes were used anymore.”

“Surprise.”

“Can we maneuver after we’re hanging from a mushroom?”

“We’ve got navigation thrusters,” Craig said. “It’s just going to be difficult.”

“How did Derek get this ship?”

“He stole it from another repair shop.”

The engine fired automatically, pushing the ship further into Drometica’s orbit. Jyra watched the white and blue planet fill the view from the cockpit. Craig took the papers back to the locker and replaced them in his bag.

Jyra wasn’t sure why the thought appeared in her mind, but she had the sudden suspicion that Derek hadn’t told Craig the entire plan. It seemed far too arbitrary that they were going to meet some friends in the middle of a treacherous mountain range.

Her thoughts returned to Dario when she caught sight of the Mourning Mark upon her forehead reflected in the cockpit window. She wondered if Dario had been the one to approach Derek. Maybe the resistance had been his idea. If only he had told her about it. They could have left, he’d still be alive, and they might already be striking back against TF.

A light above the scanner monitor began flashing. Jyra sat up and took in the scene outside the cockpit. A canvas of gray clouds streaked with white had replaced the panorama of Drometica. The ship shook and Craig lurched into the cockpit.

“That happened fast,” he said with a note of panic. “Get back to your seat and get the harness on.”

Jyra struggled past him and fumbled for the straps of the harness before sitting down. The ship bounced again, like a stone skipping on water. Any second, it was going to plunge.

Jyra’s hands were shaking as badly as the ship as she slid the straps through their rings, lashing her body to the seat.

“I’m turning off the gravity drive!” Craig shouted. Jyra could see he had only secured half of his harness.

“Okay!” she said, hoping he knew what he was doing. A moment later, a wave of nausea rocked her stomach and Craig was trying to finish securing himself as he floated toward the ceiling. The ship jerked violently again.

“Still doing okay?” Craig said.

“No!”

“Good. If you said anything else I’d know you were lying.” Clouds blew across the nose of the ship. As her body protested, Jyra realized how even the clouds, things she’d always regarded as peaceful and relaxing, were now causing her great distress. She pressed her head back against the seat, closed her eyes, and hoped for a landing they could walk away from. The engine fired its stabilizing bursts and Jyra was aware of their increasing speed.

Don’t think about the strength of the parachute, she told herself and then cursed her mind.

“We’re through,” Craig reported. He didn’t sound relieved, just sick. Jyra wished he’d kept his voice down when he said, “Where the hell are the flaps?” She retreated into her dizzy brain, summoning the images, the console.

“Check the left side!” she suggested before hastily closing her mouth. The bile sloshed and burned her throat. The queasiness and sweating set in and she held her breath without realizing it.

As if shooting into water, the ship jerked and began to lose speed indicating that Craig had activated the flaps.

“Parachute!” he called by way of warning.

It was too much. The world outside the cockpit was blurred beyond recognition so Jyra couldn’t judge how fast they were going, but her body reacted as the parachute opened behind them. Water, the only foreign matter in her stomach, spewed from her mouth as she heaved against the straps, her head spinning and joints aching. She glimpsed Craig retching as well. Jyra wiped her mouth with her sleeve.

“Now what?” Craig coughed in reply. The ship jerked and a faint whining sound, accompanied by the stench of stressed electrical appliances, overwhelmed Jyra’s senses.

“The smell!” she said.

“I know!” Craig fidgeted with the controls on the console. “I need to override the engine. It’s still firing for some reason.”

Jyra tried to recall where the override system might be, but thinking made her sick. Every movement required painful effort.

“Got it!”

Drometica came into focus through the cockpit. The ship hung under the parachute and Jyra felt the pull of the planet’s gravity tugging her against the harness.

“How do I get down?” If Jyra freed herself from the straps, she would fall right onto the cockpit window.

“Carefully,” Craig said. He found a rag and was scrubbing his vomit off the screen.

Jyra reached around the back of the seat with one arm to take her weight off the harness. She started loosening a strap, when something occurred to her.

“Am I going to wish I was still secured in a few minutes?”

“At this point, we’ll be lucky if we can just jump for it.”

“I’d say you can explain to me later how that’s lucky, but it sounds like later’s never coming,” Jyra said.

“Not from a high altitude,” Craig clarified. “The scanner’s processing the final approach.”

The ship swayed from the parachute’s cables as it glided toward mountains that stood high as if they desired to be the first to greet the spacecraft. The peaks were made of dark stone, but it was only visible on steep cliffs where the snow couldn’t accumulate. As the ship descended, the wind caught the parachute in its strong breath. Jyra gasped as they flew passed the tip of a mountain, barely avoiding a collision.

“Here we go,” Craig said. “I found the nav thrusters.”

“Well use them!” Jyra said.

The sound of hissing air filled the cabin. Using the scenery seen through the cockpit as a frame of reference, Jyra could tell Craig was maneuvering the ship across the wind path.

“Is the course set?” she said.

“Yeah and we’re getting close.”

The proximity to the valleys and trenches suggested the ship had dipped below the top of the surrounding mountains. The power of the wind increased. Jyra could hear one of the thrusters fighting to counteract the force of the gusts.

“We’re on course!”

Jyra looked out the porthole and found Craig’s news less than comforting. All she could see were treacherous ledges covered in snow. She caught sight of a plateau, just as white as the rest of mountains. The ship wobbled and, as if it were an order, Craig began fumbling to free himself from his harness.

“Get the bags out of the locker!” he shouted. Jyra threw her arm over the seat again and began pulled the straps loose with her free hand. Another wobble almost shook her grip on the seat, but she held on and swung sideways toward the locker. The duffels fell into her as she opened the door.

“Got them?” Craig spoke right behind her and she nearly dropped the bags.

“Why aren’t you flying this thing?”

“I’ve got the nav thrusters locked to guide us to the landing point as best they can. We need be ready to go.”

“How exactly are we getting out of here?”

“Quickly,” Craig said. “The ship will hit the ground and we need to have the door open and jump when that happens. The wind is going to keep pulling the parachute. I have no idea if the ship will lodge firmly enough in the ice to anchor itself, but if it doesn’t it’s likely going to go off the cliff and I don’t want either of us aboard if that happens.”

“So we should open the door,” Jyra said.

“Yeah. Get the duffels on top of your seat then we work on the door.”

The exertive hiss of the navigation thrusters became louder as Craig shut off the door safety locks. Jyra could see the patch of snow they were aiming for through the porthole. It looked so small, she thought that even if she were directly over the ledge in a stable ship and jumped, she would miss it.

“Prepare to open the door,” Craig said. Jyra climbed back on top of the duffels on the back of her seat and braced herself against it and the floor. Craig clung to the side of the seat and tapped the button with his foot.

The blast of frigid air turned their skin to marble. The flexible nature of their bodies seemed to have disappeared, stolen by the chill. It continued to pound them and they had to turn away, huddling where they were as the mountain weather invaded the ship.

Craig shielded his eyes and pushed himself forward, trying to catch a glimpse of their landing location.

“Twenty seconds!” he shouted over the howling roar of air. “Toss the duffels when I tell you!”

Even the cold couldn’t still the fear and adrenaline charging through Jyra’s body. It hurt to breathe; the pure oxygen of the cabin had been flushed by the punishing wind. She grabbed one of the duffels and shoved it forward. All she could see outside was white.

“Bags now!” Craig ordered. Jyra launched them as hard as she could. She gritted her teeth from the effort and felt her muscles protesting. The ship struck the mountain and lurched. Snow billowed into the cabin.

“Jump!” Craig said, hauling himself into the doorway. Jyra swung off the seat and grabbed the doorframe. Craig jumped and vanished into the white beyond. The ship jerked again with a second impact. Jyra suspected it was scraping the ledge. She let the thought go and allowed no more enter her mind as she pushed off, leaping into the unknown.