Chapter 3

Xi Pegasi March 8, 2057

Devin tugged at his harness, moving the left shoulder belt out just a bit more. He’d meant to adjust it, but their unexpected side trip into the wormhole had distracted him. He grinned at his own banality as he checked his display yet again.

Sijay completed the final checklist and racked the plastic chart in its pocket by her seat. “Checklists complete, ready for thrust burn,” she announced on her comm.

“Thank you, Sijay.” Devin selected the engineering icon on his comm panel. “Keith, are we ready?”

“As ready as we can get.” Keith rasped. He and his engineering crew had used the last eight hours well, and they were exhausted.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” Devin chuckled. “Here we go.” He switched to the all-hands channel. “Stand by for thrust burn in one minute.” He nodded to Sijay. “Initiate thrust burn.”

“Thrust in one minute ... mark.” Sijay called up the auto start sequence and set the countdown timer. “Rolling ship,” she called as she brought Wells around to the correct attitude. She peered at her flight director as the timer reached zero.

Raw energy blasted from the exhaust nozzles, and Davies’ engineers closely monitored the massive drives as they ran up to full power. Some of the automated engine controls had failed during the wormhole transition, and there had been precious little time for anything but makeshift repairs. A crew was assigned to each of the twelve drives, and they packed themselves and their jury-rigged emergency controls into the engineering compartment.

Keith sat at his monitoring station in the center of the compartment, wishing that he could reach his fingernails for something to chew. He activated his mike with the chin switch in his helmet. “Watch the hydrogen feeds, boys and girls. We have to balance the thrust output, or we go off course.” He’d only said it a hundred times, but once more wouldn’t hurt.

Raimella Davies Hanson, one of Keith’s assistant engineers, shook her head at her brother and smiled. “We’re watching it Keith.” She looked back at the instrumentation from the damaged reactor, trying to keep her worry about it under control. The coolant feed pumps were, as far as she could tell, working properly. They had done what repairs they could and had withdrawn the control rods, allowing the reactor to begin generating power again.

The controls were another matter. If they were damaged further, that would call for ... drastic measures. They all hoped such measures would work, but with all the damage they had sustained just couldn’t be counted on. Thank god for manual methods. She shuddered and hoped it would never come to that.

“Acceleration is within limits,” Sijay reported, “but I have to steer this thing like an old bus. Can they balance the power better?”

“I’m trying, Sijay,” Keith quickly responded. “Pull back Eight another two percent, and watch Five!”

“Better,” Sijay said a minute later. “Still having to correct, but not like before.”

“We’re looking good, Keith.” Devin turned to Shanna. “Are the shuttles staying with us?”

“They’re still there. Four is having problems with station keeping, but she’s catching up.”

Forty minutes later, Shanna jerked upright in her seat. “Contact! Object inbound! Multiple objects inbound!” She downloaded her plot to Devin, Sijay and the shuttles.

Devin peered at his display as vector lines extended from the fourteen inbounds. “What are they?”

“Rocks.” Shanna snapped. “Not very big, like basketballs, but they don’t have to be big at that velocity.”

“Are they going to hit us?”

Sijay examined her flight display. “I can dodge most of them, but we are going to get hit.”

“Do it.” Devin punched the all hands channel. “Collision alert. Stand by for impact and decompression!” He glanced at Shanna. “Time?”

“Forty seconds.”

“Forty seconds to impact,” he finished the announcement. He turned back to his plot and watched them come.

Sijay took a breath and let out the tension as she settled into her battle with the incoming meteoroids. The ship’s radar had picked up the swarm too late to avoid it completely, and Wells was far too clumsy and large a target. Sijay could predict their flight path though, and could move the ship to avoid most of the meteoroids. The ship twisted on all three axes in a deadly dance with the objects that sought her destruction.

The attitude thrusters flared as Sijay threw the Wells into the evasion maneuver. The leading three rocks missed the nose completely, and a fourth glanced off the upper spine with a shuddering bang that was felt on the command deck.

The largest meteoroid tore though the vertical stabilizer of Shuttle Three, docked on Wells upper spine, and rocketed onward, its journey scarcely disturbed by the craft’s light alloy construction. Shuttle Four had lost the linked plot information from the Wells as her radical maneuvers masked the transmitter. Their onboard radar detected the incoming threat, and the pilot skidded the craft sideways into a desperate bid to avoid the impact.

“Oh, my god!” Shanna cried. She watched in horror as the rock smashed through Shuttle Four’s wing center section and exited through the cabin. The shuttle buckled around the impact point; the meteoroid’s energy crushed and tore at her hull. Vaporized fuel erupted from shattered tanks and torn fuel lines, finding the still-burning maneuvering thrusters in the shuttle’s tail. A ball of blue fire enveloped the shuttle as the explosion tore her to splinters.

The other shuttle fared better; it was a much smaller target and more nimble than its carrier. Four meteoroids passed close by, but the shuttle pilot easily avoided them.

Sijay watched her plot clear, and she released the breath she’d been holding with an explosive “whoosh!” “That...”

“Incoming!” Shanna shouted again. “More rocks!”

Sijay stared at her plot as her mind raced. These particles were much smaller, and there were many more of them. She watched as the vectors resolved themselves, and then she heard her own voice. “We’re going to get hit, Devin. A lot.”

The swarm of gravel-sized meteorites hurled themselves at the wildly evading ship. Sijay had resisted the urge to turn the engines toward the projectiles, even though the exhaust may have deflected many of them. If they lost power, they were doomed. She didn’t have time to clear her decision with Devin, and she prayed she was right.

Moving at a kilometer per second, the tiny particles raked the colony ship. The ship’s structural members were made of the best composites and alloys man had devised, and any particle that struck them shattered like ice. Shuttle One tore loose under a deluge of rock and tumbled away, shredded beyond all hope of repair. More particles peppered the cargo containers, immolating themselves against the tough alloy boxes and their contents.