Chapter 11

Xi Pegasi
Aboard the Wells
August 5, 2057

“We’re going to be late,” Devin grumped. He corralled his duffel bag and turned to Lenna. “I’m ready now.”

“There’s no hurry, you know.” Lenna opened the door and pulled herself into the passageway. “Sijay won’t leave until we are aboard.” She grasped one of the handrails and started aft, toward the hangar deck.

“Maybe. She’d leave me in a minute if I was late.” Devin followed his wife toward the waiting shuttle. Ten minutes later, they settled into their seats and fastened their safety harnesses. The shuttle’s cargo area could be configured to carry as many as one hundred four passengers with no cargo, cargo only, or any combination in between. There were twenty passenger seats installed for this flight; the remainder of the cargo bay held supplies for the newly established third colony site.

Manuel Fuentes appeared at the main hatch. “Have a good visit. I hear the party’s going strong.”

Lenna laughed brightly. “I’m looking forward to it.” Devin’s mouth quirked; he didn’t care for parties, but it amused him to watch Lenna enjoy herself.

Manuel cocked his head as he listened to the message coming in over his headset. “Oops, time to go.” He grinned broadly and closed the hatch from the outside. The shuttle shuddered gently as the airlock disengaged. Devin watched through his window as the docking tube retracted, taking the servicing umbilical with it. The main hangar doors opened under the shuttle, and another tremor passed through the craft as the docking cradles unlatched. A last push from the cradles’ docking arms sent the shuttle downward past the open hangar doors. The planet loomed beneath them, and Sijay fired the maneuvering thrusters to take the shuttle away from the station.

In the station’s communications control center, Shanna Reston watched the oversized display on the far bulkhead. Now that the third colony site on the planet was operational, the shuttles were operating around the clock to transfer equipment and supplies. The colonies had their own aircraft and even a few boats that operated locally around each colony. Some local communications nets had been established, but the colonists depended on Shanna’s satellite network for weather forecasts, communications, and GPS information.

As a result, Shanna was something of a celebrity among the colonists. She had started to issue weather advisories to the shuttle crews and the groundside survey teams after the first colony site had been established. These advisories soon evolved into a regular broadcast, transmitted twice per day. One of her assistants had suggested that they include interesting discoveries, problems and advisories from the department heads. Shanna found, to her own surprise, that she actually enjoyed the assignment. Devin had declared her to be the colony’s first broadcaster, to her eternal embarrassment, but she loved the job too much to quit.

The evening broadcast, timed by the ship’s day, was due to start in an hour. She had sent one of her assistants down on the shuttle to broadcast Devin and Lenna’s arrival. If Devin was going to appoint Shanna as head journalist, then he could endure the scrutiny as a leading public figure. It was a fair trade in her eyes. She brought up the shuttle’s proposed flight path on her desk display. Her brows knitted into a frown. The shuttle’s flight path brought them close to a hurricane that was churning up the ocean east of Colony Site One. The colony was well protected by the landmass between it and the continent’s eastern coast, but the shuttle would pass within fifty miles of the storm’s edge.

Shanna touched a key on the comm panel.

“Weather, Maci.”

“Maci, did Sijay get the weather briefing for the VIP flight to Colony One?”

“Um, I think she did.” Maci consulted her briefing record. “Yes, she has a complete download, and her link is active. The storm is moving faster than we predicted, though. She’s got the updated data.”

“Thanks.”

“Sure, anytime, Shanna.”

Shanna released her lap belt and floated clear of her chair. It was nearly show time and she was hungry. A light meal, a quick potty trip, and she’d be ready to go.

“Holy smokes, look at that.” Matthieu Chiasson, Sijay’s first officer, pointed at the weather display.

“Um?” Sijay peered at the twisting mass of precipitation and nodded. “We’ll clear it by eighty kilometers. The continent is large enough to shield the colony from the worst of it. That’s why they’re on the western coast.”

“I think I see the river mouth, at about twelve-thirty.”

“That’s it,” Sijay confirmed. She selected the PA system. “Hello everyone. We should be on the ground in fifteen minutes, so put everything away and check your seatbelts for landing. It’s a wonderful afternoon at Colony One, and the party is in full swing.”

The shuttle’s engines were mounted under the craft’s belly in a wide bay that housed four engines. In space, the engines were pure rockets, using advanced aerospike technology to produce thrust. At Mach three and faster, inlets at the front of the engine pod were opened, and the engines converted to scramjets, able to propel the shuttle to speeds in excess of Mach fifteen at the edge of space. At lower altitudes, high efficiency fanjet sections were used to gain enormous fuel efficiency below twenty-five thousand meters. This combination of propulsion technologies allowed the shuttles to use regular runways and still reach orbit on their internal fuel tankage.

As Shuttle Five descended below twenty-five thousand meters and slowed to Mach two point seven, the engine computers fed bleed air to the engines’ compressor sections, and the heavy rotors began to spin. At twenty percent revolutions, inlet doors opened to allow the incoming air to feed the compressor. Valves opened, feeding fuel to the combustion chambers, and bright fire flared as the igniters did their job. The rapidly expanding combustion gasses flowed over the turbine blades, spinning the compressor section even faster. The gasses expanded even more rapidly as they flowed through the exhaust nozzle, pushing the shuttle through the sky. All was well, and Sijay eased the shuttle a bit more to the west to begin her approach.

Inside the Number Three engine case, things were not well. A microscopic flaw in the rearmost compressor bearing mount had gone undetected when the engine was assembled. The engine was new, and no routine checks had been required. The maintenance crew had noted a small increase in oil consumption, but their inspections had not examined the bearing mounts in detail. As the shuttle descended below eight thousand meters, the crack widened under the stress, and the shaft began to vibrate.

The vibrating shaft induced a harmonic in the compressor rotors. The whirling compressor section gyroscopically rotated the force, applying pressure to the loosened shaft ninety degrees to the original force. In seconds, the crack in the bearing mount spread to the edge of the assembly, and the shaft was loose. The compressor assembly heaved in its case, and the blades shattered, spewing white hot metal through the tough housing. Two disks disintegrated under the stress and added their much deadlier shrapnel to the carnage.

The fragments smashed into the adjacent engines, shearing oil lines and damaging compressors. The compressor rotors held together, but many of the fragile blades broke loose and ground their way back through the combustors to the turbines. The entire engine compartment was reduced to shambles in seconds. The engine computers shut down the fuel flow to the three damaged engines and flooded the compartment with fire extinguishing agent. Number One engine escaped direct damage, but its ruptured oil lines sprayed the vital fluid overboard.

On the flight deck, alarms screamed as three of the four engines lost power. Shrapnel ripped through the hull, shredding the center cargo bay and the shuttle’s roof.

“What’ve we got?” Sijay barked.

“Number One is still up, but it’s losing power fast. No oil pressure.” Matthieu peered at the engine panel. “Fire bottles fired on Two, Three, and Four. Not getting much telemetry from the right side. Two’s E-P-R is crap, and One’s is fifty percent and falling. No pressure in the cargo bay, but the passenger compartment shows normal. The airport is two hundred thirty kilometers away on a heading of two-three-five. Nearest landfall is one hundred nine kilometers at one-eight-three. We are at six thousand nine hundred meters, descending at nine hundred ten meters per minute.” He paused. “We can’t make the field, but we can make landfall. The engine management system has initiated the emergency shutdown checklist for all four engines. I confirm that fuel flow is shut down and the fire appears to be out.”

Sijay had the same flight displays her first officer had, but procedures dictated that the non-flying pilot verbalize the complete details of an emergency situation, time permitting. “We have to set her down.” Her calm voice fooled neither of them. Matthieu selected the emergency channel and keyed his mike. “Colony One, this is Shuttle Five. We have experienced complete engine failure. We will be attempting an emergency landing at the following location.” He sent the GPS data to the ground station.

In the colony’s communications, Shelly Warner, the duty technician, surged to her feet. “Copy, Shuttle Five. Help is on the way. How many souls on board?”

“Eighteen souls on board,” Matthieu’s voice had dropped into that flat monotone that all controllers dreaded. Shelly had spent ten years in the Australian ATC system, and her heart sank. “We copy. Help is on the way,” she repeated. “Good luck.” Shelly pressed a button, and comm alerts sounded all over the colony.

Sijay turned the wounded shuttle south in a bid to make landfall. “Okay, emergency descent checklist,” she called.

Matthieu reached down beside his seat and extracted the emergency checklist book. He flipped to the correct page and found the first item. “FMS Mode Select - Emergency.”

Sijay pushed the red button on the right side of her flight management system display. “On,” she responded as she followed her own checklist on the display at her right knee.

“Standby flight controls.”

“On.”

“A-C Buses One through Four”

“Off.”

“A-P-U.”

“On. Wait.” Sijay leaned forward. “It’s offline.”

Matthieu nodded. “Must have cut the wiring harness, or the fuel lines.”

The pilots completed the checklist as the shuttle descended below two thousand meters. “Two thousand meters,” Matthieu warned.

“Thanks.” Sijay peered outside, searching for a landing site. The shoreline extended across the spacecraft’s nose, a bared grimace of rock punctuated by pounding surf and towering evergreens. Inland, there were gaps in the forest. Sijay steered for the closest opening. “Okay, emergency landing checklist, please.”

“Fuel”

“Off.”

“E-L-T.”

“On.”

“Cabin, notify.”

Sijay keyed her mike. “Brace for impact. I say again brace, brace, brace.”

Her voice rang over the PA system in the cabin, and the passengers locked their shoulder harnesses. Devin wordlessly clasped Lenna’s hand, and spoke clearly and calmly. “Okay, everyone, when we stop, let’s get clear as soon as we can. If someone needs rescuing, we will make sure it’s safe first.”

“Done,” Sijay confirmed.

“Inlet.”

“Retract.” She pulled the lever at her right hip aft. The control moved, but nothing happened. “It didn’t retract.”

“We can try to close it with the emergency accumulator.”

“If we do that, we don’t have full flaps.”

“If we don’t, we dig the inlet scoop into the ground.”

Sijay bit her lip. “We try. We’ll use the electrical power to extend the flaps as much as we can.”

Matthieu nodded. Sijay’s suggestion was risky; the emergency electrical system was barely adequate to power the backup flight controls and the remaining electronics. Lowering the landing flaps using the backup motors would require most of the remaining power reserves. They needed to have power to control the shuttle, but the flaps allowed them to slow down.

Sijay reached for a red plastic cover next to the inlet control. “Here we go.” She lifted the spring-loaded cover and pressed the button under it. Both pilots held their breath as the remaining hydraulic pressure in the emergency system tried to close the large inlet scoop on the shuttle’s belly. The position indicator crawled toward “Closed”, and then stopped. “Eighty percent. It’ll have to do.”