Ravana's Shadow (34)

The acceleration hit Kit far sharper than any blow she'd ever felt. She could still move—but every subtle twitch of her limbs felt like lifting a planet. Been on Mara too long. Got used to the low gravity.

But they had drilled for this, spent their hours in the simulator. More importantly, she had a steady flow of drugs into her air supply, keeping her strong and alert. No member of her crew would be blacking out.

Kit stared forward—it wasn't like she could do much else. Through the false window, Mara fell slowly away beneath her. First, they were swallowed in a cloud of billowing vapor—then they were through. Silver-blue ice filled the horizon, stretching as far as she could see.

"We cleared the tower," Sadie said. Her voice came clear yet strained. She felt the same incredible pressure on her that Kit did. "Beginning pitch and roll."

"Looks good for gravity turn!" Maddie said. Her tail stretched vertically behind her in the rush of acceleration, yet she held herself up in the seat without much difficulty. Maybe her slightly smaller template was an advantage? 

In front of Kit, the yoke rotated and angled on its own, reflecting the turn maneuver already programmed into the computer. 

"Seeing... minor pressure fluctuation in primary fuel," Abel said. "Adjusting mix to compensate!"

Just like the first test. But this time, the other two stages weren't dummy loads—they had fuel of their own. If the first stage detonated...

"Keep an eye on it," Kit said "If you see a hint of trouble, I want emergency separation. Don't ask for permission, just do it."

"Understood, captain," Abel yelled back. They all had to yell now, even wearing helmets. Those engines hadn't exactly been built with sound pollution in mind.

Mara's surface was lost to the windows now, only a faint suggestion marked on Kit's artificial horizon. With the roll complete, she would not see the surface again until they reached orbit. Now she saw stars, extending forever in a sunless sky.

They already had emergency procedures in place for that separation, of course. But if they used it, the mission was doomed, and Garrick was dead.

"Trouble," Emma said. "I'm getting negative on coolant pressure. And cabin temperature is already climbing."

The lights turned yellow as she said it, flashing steadily. 

Kit brought up the readings on her console with a few quick gestures. Forerunner already had them extrapolated into a useful graph, with warning lines in the right places. "Disregard," Kit yelled. "Kill life support to the cabin. Everyone, make sure those helmets are on tight!"

"Max Q in three seconds!" Maddie yelled, her voice rushing over Kit's. "Hold onto your tails!"

Kit fell still again, resting all her weight into the harness. It helped, though the strain on her body still made her fingers and toes tingle. Just have to stay awake through the launch. 

"We're up!" Maddie said, a few moments later. "Returning to full engine burn. Sixty seconds to stage one separation!"

"Captain?" Abel couldn't turn his head to look at her, but his voice was still doubtful. "Are you sure about life support?"

"Positive! Sound off, everyone seeing green from their suits?"

They confirmed one at a time. Sadie and Emma sounded terrified, while the others were so overcome with shock that they didn't seem to register what they were saying.

Soon the rush of air joined all the other noises, as they depressurized the cockpit. 

"We should be well within safety margin on our EVA suits through launch," Kit said. "How's second stage?"

"E-bolts are primed!" Maddie shifted in her seat. She was somehow strong enough to swish that tail back and forth. Granted, it got easier to move with each second, as the acceleration crushing them backward began to ease.

"Mara orbital," Sadie said. "Ready for separation."

"Detonating ignition bolts," Maddie said.

The Neophyte jerked sharply under Kit, then—she floated up in her restraints. Her tail lifted, and she floated above her seat. Not far—the belt would keep her from hovering away. So far. For a single moment, there was no roar, no rumble of the Neophyte—just total silence.

"We're flying," Emma whispered, finally breaking the moment. "I always wanted to fly."

"Don't get used to it," Abel said. "Second stage pumps coming online. Oxidizer green, reserve green."

"Navigation reads course plotted for injection," Sadie said. "We could always give it another orbit if we want to look down at Mara first. Should get a great view of the Institute when we come back around."

"Tempting," Chase said. But it probably would be for Kit too, if she didn't have to do anything. Sure would be nice to sit in the back row and watch.

"Not with that coolant problem," Kit said. "That will be a lot easier to fix after the Ravana injection burn, when we don't have to accelerate anymore. Maddie, engage the second stage when ready."

"First stage is looking good for its return trajectory," Forerunner said. "We should be able to recover it this time. Coming around for rendezvous burn now." 

Great news—Kit could celebrate when she called Jay, once they were safely on their way to Ravana.

"Will be a few minutes," Maddie said. "First we have to make a few attitude adjustments, prepare our angle. Stay in your seats, everyone."

"High pressure tank is ready," Abel said. "Should have enough for the whole maneuver. I can keep the pumps running if you think we need a little extra juice."

"No need," Maddie said. "Captain, are we good?"

Kit checked the course on her screen one last time, memorizing each subtle adjustment they would make. A few short burns to adjust their angle, correct a slow rotation they'd acquired during separation. 

Forerunner broke the burn into a series of brief bursts, marked with heading and duration.

"You're go for navigational burn," Kit said. "Will we even feel it?"

"Compared to the first stage?" Maddie tapped her screen. Kit could feel it, though the sound was far reduced this time. Without atmosphere in the cockpit, it would have to reach her body directly through vibration.

It felt more like a gentle nudge than being smashed back into her seat—several little nudges all at once anyway, all in different directions. Kit watched the path of the Neophyte on her screen, as it tracked the dotted line of their charted course.

She saw the problem almost instantly. Her ship moved along the path at first—but as the seconds passed, they soon left the line. How were they...

"I'm seeing deviations in the flightpath," Sadie said, a second later. "Is that rotation? We shouldn't be..."

She wasn't wrong. That nudge along one direction slowly moved the sky overhead. Though still floating, now there was planet beneath them, visible primarily as a solid darkness that obscured much of the sky, unbroken by stars. Surya was too pale a star to have any reflection, even on a surface made from ice.

"We are," Kit said. "We're rotating. Maddie, what's going on?"

The fox floated at the edge of her restraints, pressed up against the controls. Her legs kicked out behind her in sequence, as though she could somehow paddle the Neophyte back onto course. "It's, uh... there! Aft attitude thruster G, it's... it's not responding! Not signaling it, but..." She tapped a few times on the screen, then a new image joined the blackness in front of them—a camera angle down the side of the second stage.

Sure enough, one of the little thrusters continued firing, a little roar of flame of vibrant purple blue. "Abel, cycle it."

The bunny made a few decisive gestures at his console, tapping and clicking something. The screen flashed red at the borders, and made several loud, angry sounds. "It's not responding!"

"Control, Forerunner, whoever's listening. We have a locked attitude control thruster, please advise. Aft clockwise, unit G."

There was no reply over the radio, just static.

"We're off-course," Kaden said, twisting the dials at his own console with growing urgency. "There's no chance of getting a link on our end! Maybe if we can stop the spinning."

"I can!" Maddie announced. "Kit, go to manual control! Throttle counterclockwise at... 5 kilonewtons. Ramp it up nice and gradually..."

Kit took the controls, pulling them gently up to her chest. She flicked the switch, then tapped a few buttons that would link her directly to 2nd-stage attitude control. The yoke twisted to one side, representing the malfunctioning thruster's acceleration as a tug to the right. Kit twisted to the other side, holding tight.

The ship responded. Instead of spinning faster, they began to slow. The Neophyte rumbled and shook under her, as the carefully balanced systems blasted against each other.

"Can't keep doing this forever," Kit said, through gritted teeth. Indeed, her screen had a large section showing the remaining gas pressure in the staging tank, dropping rapidly. "Full burn in both directions..."

"I know," Maddie said. "Abel, get ready to override the emergency pumps on the staging tank."

Kit no longer looked to see what the others were doing, or what was happening on their controls. Her focus was only on her projection and providing exactly the acceleration required to keep them from spinning. 

Ten painful seconds ticked away, with the Neophyte rumbling and shaking through every awful moment of it. Then the yoke went slack, and warning lights filled Kit's screen. "Thruster pressure zero," it said, just as the yoke in her fingers went limp. 

She released it, ignoring the screen to stare through the window just ahead. Through it, the stars drifted slowly. "Now attitude control is dead, and we're still spinning," she said. Yet they weren't accelerating, which meant she could float out of her seat again. So long as she focused on the ship and not her view outside, her stomach would probably behave.

"Yeah," Maddie said, grumbling. "I'm... running the numbers on a burn program to direct us back to the Institute. Shouldn't be too hard, just... has to compensate for G to be burning the whole time. Shouldn't take that long."

"Wait. Back?" Chase asked, from the back row. "We made it out to space. Who cares if the second stage has some bugs—we're leaving it behind after we fire anyway, right? Just point us the right way and flip the switch."

"Point us," Abel repeated, "is the operative problem there. Running diagnostics of the whole system, but it looks like... yeah, you can see it in the video. Thruster is still open, even though it's bone dry."

"If we go back... that human dies, doesn't he?" Emma whispered; voice quiet over the radio. "We'll never build another rocket in time."

"We won't try again," Morgan said. "We wasted so many resources getting this far. But if we fly back now, we can keep most of the mass. Might even be able to get the second stage back to land, if the separation bolts don't malfunction. We can't put the blood back in our body, but we can stop the bleeding."

Kit saw it then—Maddie would find a way. They would land, end up rushed to Remedial for treatment. By the time Kit was normal sized again, a century would've passed, and Wren would be right back to all her old lies. Kit probably wouldn't even remember any of this. Garrick would die, and the injured survivors waiting in stasis aboard the Ravana were probably doomed too.

"Maddie," Kit said. "Could we write a program onto our Ravana trajectory while compensating for thruster G?"

"No," Morgan said, before the fox could answer. "Absolutely not. We're not taking that risk." 

"Is it possible?" Kit asked again, louder.

Maddie shifted in her seat, kicking out with both legs again. She hummed to herself as she worked, making a few hasty doodles on her screen. Finally, she looked up. "So the second stage uses the same fuel for main engines and attitude control thrusters. Those thrusters sip fuel compared to the main engines, we're not gonna run out of hydrogen. The real limiting factor is the staging tank. They weren't meant to be continuously fired. The pumps can't keep the tank full. That means we have to make every adjustment over about thirty seconds, then we have to wait five minutes for the tank to refill. Maybe we can pull that off, but the margins are tight. If anything goes wrong, if anything else breaks down, not even Forerunner can predict where we'll end up."

"Dead," Morgan said. "Kit, we have to go back. Our first priority is keeping everyone on this ship safe. This mission is a failure, but so far everyone is still alive."

For now. They'll run out of material soon enough and die on Mara instead.

Kit flicked through her display for a few seconds, searching for a section of the operations manual she'd only read in passing. Finally, she sat up. "We'll use the Neophyte's attitude control thrusters along with the second stage. That should make up for any shortfall."

"You mean the fuel supply we need to reach Ravana?" Sadie asked. "The third stage? Can we even do that?"

"The main engine, no," Kit said. "But I see it right here. I can use my code to override the safeties on the other rockets. There are even calculations in here for acceleration based on which stages are still attached."

"For emergencies," Morgan yelled. Even without atmosphere in the control room, Kit felt her voice far louder than speakers alone could explain. "For getting home, not continuing the mission! We failed. It's okay to fail if you live, there's always another shot."

"Like there was always another shot for eleven thousand years? Like we had to keep emptying our reserves year after year until we die? Not this time!" Her fingers moved quickly along the touchscreen, and a faint alarm began to sound. "Safety override engaged. Third stage navigational thrusters pressurizing."

"I don't—" Maddie twisted around to look back, but not at Kit. It wasn't her approval she wanted, despite the fancy chair. "Maybe we could! But what if something goes wrong? What if—"

"Captain, I believe I can help," Forerunner said. His voice came in clear, despite the previous silence. "I generated a viable program proposal while acquiring radio lock. Sadie and Maddie should have it now."

Both stations lit up as he said it. Kit's did too, showing another dotted line. This one curved similar to the last one, stretching up and away from Mara below. It led them onto a similar course as the first one, only this one had many more burn numbers than the last one. Most of their other thrusters were involved.

"Will it work?" Kit pressed, louder. "Maddie, can we do it?"

"Yes." She pushed away from the controls, though she left one hand extended. Ready to tap a few buttons next to each other, probably activate the program. "It would work. We have about... two more minutes to wait? Until the tank is pressurized again."

"We could die," Morgan said. "Their deaths will be on you, Kit. They're terrified. Poor Emma looks like she's going to crawl under her desk."

She'll have plenty of time to recover on the trip.

"Guidance computer gives me the green light," Sadie said. "Program is valid, will leave us on target for Ravana injection."

Kit settled back into her seat. "Abel, be ready to ignite the main engine as soon as we're green. I'll compensate for any drift manually using the Neophyte's thrusters." She settled both hands on the controls again, careful to keep the yoke in a neutral position. 

"I'm ready," Abel said. Both ears perked up in his helmet, angled slightly forward in the glass. He leaned forward to match, eyes unblinking on his map.

"Maddie?" Kit said, louder. When there was no reply, she stopped using the radio entirely, and focused on the bright green bow instead. Her interface implant could do more than give her nightmares during medical procedures—it could also send messages. "You don't have to think about it, Maddie. I'm making the decision."

Her voice came back a split-second later, far faster than anyone could talk. "If we go off course, it could be a slow, cold death, Kitty."

"If that happens, I'll give you pointers," Kit shot back. "I've already done that, and I turned out okay. Please."

"None of you should listen to her," Morgan said. "Director Kit isn't thinking rationally. She's caught up in the sunk cost of her failed mission. She blames herself for wasting Institute resources, and she's going to get us all killed."

"It's now or never!" Sadie interrupted. "Maddie, are we—"

"Yeah!" Maddie smashed her hands forward onto the controls. "Running program! Thrusters firing!"

The Neophyte rocked again, nudging them in several different directions. Kit watched her horizon, tracking the rocket's intended path towards Ravana injection. If they lost another attitude thruster now, if those calculations were even slightly off...

They rolled and spun, angling upward and away from Mara's cradle. Kit held perfectly still; eyes fixed on the rocket in front of her.

The Aether had never suffered through problems like this—it was the finest ship of her era, with every system tested for a decade or more before installation. But Kit had been tested too. She knew every possible failure condition. Losing attitude control before activating her primary engines wouldn't just require more adjustment over the course of the flight, it would strand her in the fathomless abyss, where no soul would ever think to look to recover her frozen corpse.

"You are going to get us killed," Morgan said, using the same mechanism Kit had just used. She didn't sound like the tiny soldier—her voice was deep, hardened by a lifetime of war. "My kids deserve better than a cold death in space."

"You're right," Kit thought back. "They deserve to live. No more starvation, no more timelines and lies." She saw the drift coming—another engine on the 2nd stage had started to malfunction. Kit nudged the other direction, and a second roar of thrusters filled the air. 

The plastic yoke creaked and groaned under the force of her grip. “A few more seconds..."

"That's it!" Maddie said, flopping back. "Thruster tank is empty again."

Just a few more newtons of thrust... The third stage trickled down with every movement, draining before her eyes. It hadn't ever been intended to fire at the same time as the second, its thrust could barely nudge them by comparison.

But a nudge was all she needed. Her yellow screen turned green, and Kit released the yoke. "That's it! Abel, now!"

"Second stage main engine start!" Force smashed Kit into her seat again. She was ready for it this time, and kept her eyes focused on the screen. Her view expanded, charting the route all the way to Ravana. If they didn't get enough acceleration now...

Mara's outline faded off the back of her map, shrinking away to a faint smear off to one side. 

"Automatic attitude adjustment isn't working!" Maddie said. "Obviously. Tanks are empty, and it would just throw us off. Check the projections!"

Kit was. She eased her controls lightly, making a few brief burns. They only needed a subtle nudge, or they might completely lose control.

"Burn complete," Abel said, another moment later. They jerked, and suddenly they were floating freely again. 

"Second stage separation," Maddie said. A faint rumble passed through the room from below. "Separation successful. Don't think we'll be steering the second stage back to Mara now, not with those thrusters."

"Doesn't matter," Kit whispered, slumping against her restraints. Though she hadn't moved, it felt as though she'd run a marathon in the last hour, maybe more than one. Her chest still shuddered with the hummingbird pace of her alternating hearts. "How's our heading?"

Sadie made a few quick gestures. "Within margins." She glanced back over her shoulder, mouth hanging open. "How are we still alive, captain?"

We would still be alive if we failed, we just wouldn't be able to get anywhere, Kit thought. Instead, she smiled, forcing a confidence she didn't feel. "Training, margin, and redundancy. Now... we should look into that faulty coolant pump. Chase, can you go down and..." 

"No problem." He stood up. "Emma, come with me. Make sure I don't crossfeed antifreeze into our water supply."

Emma reached for her restraints, then they clicked open. She tried to stand, only to push off the floor, and drift up towards the ceiling. Sadie caught her ankle, tugging her back down. "Switch on your magnets, bunny."

Kit watched them go, still frozen to her seat. She followed the Neophyte's path, firmly within the dotted lines of the Ravana course. We did it.