Anderssen doubted the Marines riding shotgun with Parker would bother to scan the interior of the cargo bay, but she wasn't going to risk discovery by powering up the Gagarin. Her z-suit was already providing air, water, and waste recycling. There was absolutely nothing to do but sit and wait in the darkness. Even the shuttle itself was quiet, falling out of the Palenque's distant orbit with engines cold, only a dust-gray wedge spiraling down into the gravity well of the planet.
In the darkness, Gretchen tried to sleep. She was terribly tired, her nerves trembling with too many injections of eightgoodhours. The medband had finally stalled, passing some threshold, and refused to give her another jolt. Even requests for a sleep aid had been ignored. Anderssen picked at the lump the metal band made under the rust-colored layer of her suit. Stupid thing, she thought bitterly, I want to sleep now! Why won't you help me?
Trying to relax was impossible. Her mind raced, thoughts rushing past in a constant, dizzying stream. Every moment of the mission crowded her mind's eye, each memory sharp and preternaturally distinct. The airlock of the Palenque opening, revealing darkness. Parker spitting. The tons of white dust they'd cleaned out of the environmental filters. Shuttle one descending to the base camp in a huge brick-red cloud. Fitzsimmons laughing at her, dark eyes twinkling under a cloud of unruly hair. The cylinder lying in a pool of intense white light.
My find, she thought, and her thoughts fixed upon the slab of limestone, the jagged edges and the rough, weathered surface. Every pit and crack seemed perfectly clear in her mind's eye. My ticket.
The Company did not pay her well. She was a junior scientist without a patron in the Company hierarchy. Her postings to Mars and Ugarit had gone reasonably well, but neither dig director had decided to keep her on after the initial assignment. So there'd been no re-up bonuses. Field scientists were expected to maintain their own gear and tools, though each expedition provided food, transport and most necessities. But Ugarit and Mars had eaten up her clothes, tools, comps…she was never going to get rich bouncing from site to site this way. She needed a patron, a permanent posting, some status. Something no clanless macehualli technician scientist was going to get.
In the darkness, Gretchen bit her lower lip, wishing she had something useful to do. If it were just me, she mused, her thoughts turning into a well-worn groove, I'd be fine.
Junior-grade xenoarchaeologists were supposed to be solitary, clanless, without ties to home, hearth and district. They were not supposed to have three children of calpulli age at home. Gretchen's right hand moved automatically, blunt fingertips reaching sideways to brush the surface of a 3v card wedged into the rightside navigation panel on the Midge. A faint, greenish glow answered her motion and Gretchen snatched her hand back. She didn't need to see the three shining faces looking up out of the swimming pool. Her memory was better, sharper than a dying 3v from a cheap camera. In her memory, they were right in front of her…
Mommy! Mommy! We saw an otter! A real one, like in the old books. It was swimming!
Gretchen gasped, feeling a crushing weight press down on her chest. Heavy emotion welled up, tightening her throat. There was a little boy at home, and two little girls, who deserved better than working on a lumbering crew, or running drag lines on a fishing boat, while age stole their smiling eyes. But her salary didn't go very far — not far enough to get them into a calmecac school with the sons and daughters of the landholders, or the tutors they'd need to pass entrance exams for a pochteca academy. Her own hard-won education had cost the last of the credits her grandmother had so carefully hoarded during the war.
Now all they had was a marginal farm on the edge of cultivation, a big rambling wood and stone house hiding amid stands of realspruce and fir, a truck which ran more often than not and the flitter. And me. We have me out here, at the edge of human space, sitting in a cargo pod with nothing but some hexacarbon around me and an ultralight that's spent too many hours in the air already…uuh!
Gretchen felt the world lurch, the restraining harness biting into her shoulder. Her stomach dropped away and a thundering roar began to penetrate the heavy walls of the cargo pallet. Here we go, she gulped, feeling the Midge rock against the cargo rails. The air-landing pod groaned, the joints of the four walls squeaking in darkness. Fighting against rising nausea, she grabbed hold of the control stick and flipped a series of "dumb" switches to life. The fuel cells woke up with a whine. Power trickled through the Gagarin's main systems and faint lights began to gleam on the control panels.
Comm woke up, tumbled across a dozen channels and then locked onto the sound of Parker's voice — gone icy cold and even, as if he were reading from a script. "Rate six hundred, rate five hundred seventy, rate…"
The scream of air across metal and ceramic drowned him out and Gretchen felt sweat spring out all over her body. She tried to reach the main wing controllers and failed, gloved fingertips failing to answer her mind's command. Cursing, she clenched her hand, mastered control of her arm and then — aiming carefully — mashed down a pair of control switches. A bleat of warning — lost in the shriek of reentry — answered her, but the locked-down wings began to stiffen. She'd need every second she could cheat from time and physics once the pallet blew out of the back of the shuttle.
"Five hundred," Parker's voice cut through the steadily rising howl. "Brace!"
Gretchen ground herself back into the shockfoam, legs stiff against the fire-wall beside the foot pedals. Her eyes screwed shut, though her forebrain knew it wouldn't make any difference…
The Komodo slammed into the upper atmosphere, a sheet of flame licking at the edge of the triangular wings, bounced and then skittered across the sky, slewing from side to side. Inside her dark box, Anderssen was slammed into the shockfoam once, then twice, then she lost count. After an endless series of jarring motions, the comm channel bleated a warning and light flooded into the bay as the rear cargo door clamshelled open.
A heavy hand pressed on Gretchen's chest and her fingers cramped on the control stick. The pressure spiked, crushing breath from her lungs and then lifted as quickly as it had come. There were two sharp flashes outside the canopy and the walls of the cargo pod flew away into a suddenly bright abyss. Gretchen felt her gut clench and the curving horizon swung past.
An enormous expanse of ruddy desert filled her field of view, then the horizon swung up like a hammer and she saw the stars glittering in velvet. The roof of the pod blew away, then the remaining walls. Rushing air shrieked through the web of netting holding the Midge to the floor of the pallet. Gretchen choked, slammed by another massive jerk. The parafoil deployed above her, snapping out in a four hundred-k wind. A giant unseen claw snatched the pallet and the Midge skyward.
She grayed out, head smashed back into the shockfoam. The horizon jerked from side to side, then stabilized. The parafoil — hundred-meter wingspan barely dragging in the nearly nonexistent atmosphere — and the pod dropped precipitously toward the distant surface of the planet. Panting, Gretchen came around, groping for the stick. In about five seconds she knew…