“Down. We’re going down. To pick them up.”
Upworth indicated the nearest holo of the upper atmospheric tempest. “I don’t see any lessening of storm intensity.” She quickly checked a readout. “Same wind speeds, same probabilities of turbulence. Severe turbulence,” she added for emphasis. “If anything, the weather system has increased in extent. It’s now covering a good part of this portion of the northern hemisphere.”
“Then we fly through it.”
She was openly aghast. “We can’t! The Covenant isn’t a landing craft. You know that it’s not supposed to enter atmosphere, except for final unloading prior to official decommissioning. She wasn’t designed for handling heavy turbulence.”
“But she’s capable of it.”
Upworth didn’t hesitate. “Technically, and from an engineering standpoint, yes. She has to be, if the world chosen for colonization proves unsuitable and another has to be found. A deep atmospheric drop and subsequent orbital re-entry has never been done with an actual colony ship. Only in simulations.”
“But it works in the official simulations.”
She had to concede the point. “Yes. In the simulations.” She indicated the holo once again. “I don’t recall any simulations that involved a drop into weather like this. We can’t do this. Tennessee, you’re a pilot. Forget simulations and design specs for a minute. You know what the tolerances are.”
He was silent for a moment.
“Fuck the tolerances.”
That was enough for Upworth. Tennessee was the acting captain, but she knew him much better as a colleague, and that was how she replied to him.
“Fuck your personal concerns!” she spat back. “I’m just as worried about the team as you are, Tee, but it’s a goddamn hurricane down there! Have you looked at the sustained wind speeds in the upper atmosphere lately? Not to mention the frequency of potentially damaging electrical discharges.” She stabbed a finger at the holo of the storm. “We try to descend through that weather and, fucking simulations aside, I’m telling you we would break up. That would do a fat lot of good for the team, plus everyone on board, wouldn’t it?” She paused for breath. “There’s nothing we can do. We have to wait it out.”
He turned away. She was right. He knew she was right. A part of him hated her for being right, but the dread he was feeling—for the members of the expedition—was outweighed by his knowledge of the ship’s tolerances. A crash landing would be worse than no landing. Even if they could put the Covenant down safely, there was a very good chance she would never be able to lift off.
It was just that waiting, when he knew that his wife and friends might be in danger, was… so hard. It was one reason, he told himself, why he had never wanted to be a captain.
He turned toward a pickup.
“Mother, how long until the storm clears enough to reestablish communication with the surface?”
The ship replied immediately. “Given prevailing atmospheric conditions and based on preliminary predictions for continued development or cessation over the next half-day cycle, secure surface communications might be possible in anywhere from twelve to forty-eight hours.”
He was silent. Even twelve hours was… too long. Forty-eight hours was an eternity. For Mother, the prediction was unusually non-specific. He could hardly blame the AI, though. Weather prediction always had been and still was an imprecise science—let alone on a newly discovered world.
Seeing his distress, Upworth offered the only words she could. “I’m sorry, Tee. You know it’s the right decision. It’s the only decision. A Covenant descent, even in perfect conditions, would be tricky. In that storm…” Her words trailed away.
Moving to the port, he gazed down at the new planet and its raging atmosphere. There was no one to blame for the weather. From Earth, they couldn’t predict the climate conditions on Origae-6, either. Only read the atmosphere and guess that the seasons might be amenable. For that matter, conditions here might prove ideal, too, save for the occasional berserking in the ionosphere.
“She was scared,” he muttered, more to himself than anyone else. Only Upworth was close enough to hear him. “I’ve never heard my wife scared.”
Oram sat hunched in front of the still blazing lander, his eyes glazed, utterly shell-shocked. Had anyone brought up the subject, he would never have imagined that the ruined vessel contained so much flammable material. Worst of all—worse even than the losses the team had suffered—was the inescapable realization that at its heart, he was at fault.
They would not even be here, on this malign planetary surface, if not for his insistence. It was knowledge he would have to live with for the rest of his life.
At that moment, he didn’t care if there was going to be a rest of his life. All he could hear in his mind was Karine’s voice. All he could see was her face. Gone now.
Looking nothing like the confident, authoritative head of ship security, Lopé sat on the ground beside the corrupted body of his dead partner, holding one of Hallet’s limp hands. Trying to do everything he could to save his lifemate, in the end he had been able to do nothing.
Daniels knew the sergeant was being too hard on himself. He was as human as the rest of them, and therefore just as subject to shock. But he was taking it hard.
She saw that Walter was recording it all, his gaze traveling from human to human, and she wondered what he was thinking. Or calculating. The line between the two was a thin one that no human could parse.
If the security chief was emotionally devastated and temporarily unable to function at full efficiency, at least the members of his team responded professionally. While sparing the occasional glance for their bereft leader, Cole, Ankor, and Rosenthal were on full alert. Their eyes scanned the smothering darkness and they held their weapons at the ready. They might want for leadership, but in its absence their training took hold. They didn’t know what had killed Hallet, and they didn’t know what was now out there, but they were as ready for it as they could be.
It struck her that those on the Covenant had no idea what had just happened on the ground. With Lopé grieving and Oram barely functioning, someone had to try and make contact. Moving away from the group, but not so far as to attract the attention of the edgy security detail, she tried to organize her thoughts without spending every other second imagining horrific white shapes slipping silently through the nearby grass.
Crouching down with her back to the still flaming lander, she checked to make sure that her suit link to the colony ship was open.
“Come in, Covenant. Come in, Covenant. Are you reading us? Please come in, Covenant. This is Daniels. Do you read, Covenant?”
She broke off. While trying not to imagine things, she couldn’t help but notice that there actually was something moving out there. It was fast, pale white, and just at the edge of her vision. Zeroing in on it, she caught her breath as it paused, studying the group with eyeless curiosity. Like the rest of it, the creature’s means of visual perception was utterly foreign.
It vanished anew, swallowed up by the night and the tall grass. She had begun to resume the attempt to make contact with the ship when a shape came charging straight toward her.
Walter.
“Daniels! Behind you!”
XIII
She whirled. Though she wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference between the two neomorphs, the fully grown ogre that now rose up on two legs behind her wasn’t the same one she had seen burst from the broken body of Sergeant Hallet. It parted pale, bony jaws to reveal a full array of even, sharp teeth as it launched itself toward her.