Ch. 55 The Last Shuttle

Chapter 55: The Last Shuttle

The colony’s name was Halden’s Reach.

Dinraal learned that before he learned anything else.

It appeared at the top of the evacuation request, above population figures, damaged equipment reports, and the increasingly uncertain positions of two missing survey craft.

Two thousand one hundred and thirty-six residents.

One hospital.

Three functioning surface shuttles.

No vessel capable of taking everyone out of the system.

He read the figures while Arcturus assembled the fleet.

“We can lift them in one departure,” Arcturus said. “Two transports, one medical vessel, and escorts.”

“How soon?”

“Six hours.”

Dinraal looked up.

Arcturus met his eyes.

“We need to load supplies, install additional life support, and give the crews enough information to avoid repeating whatever happened there.”

Six hours felt unbearable.

It also sounded impossibly fast.

Dinraal nodded.

“What do you need from us?”

“The reference assembly secured aboard the medical vessel. A team who can operate it. And nobody dismantling my departure plan because they think leaving half an hour earlier will help.”

Gilgamesh, who had just entered, looked offended.

“I hadn’t said anything.”

“I’m saving time.”

The common hall filled before the evening meal.

Hearth’s council gathered around the long table while the expedition preparations continued outside.

“We can receive some of the evacuees here,” Cleopatra said. “The rest will need to remain aboard ship until we finish more housing.”

Halen examined the construction schedule.

“If we use the stored sections intended for workshops, I can have another habitat row ready before they arrive.”

“Use them,” Meret said. “I’ll extend the water line.”

Nessa looked at the population breakdown.

“There are children.”

“Yes,” Isolde said.

“How many?”

“More than we have room to teach at once.”

Nessa considered that.

“Then we’ll teach in shifts.”

Dinraal stood at the end of the table.

Nobody asked whether they should help.

The discussion concerned beds, water, food, and where to put a family when the only available room had no door.

He felt something ease beneath his ribs.

Aurelius noticed.

He said nothing, merely moved the spare-chair count closer to Julius.

Rhiannon entered with a stack of folded blankets.

“Stop looking at the figures as though they’ll carry themselves,” she said. “There are crates outside.”

Gilgamesh rose immediately.

“So there is a part of this I understand.”

Tiamat joined the rescue expedition.

She announced the decision while Dinraal checked the loading ramp.

“I’m coming.”

He looked at her.

She wore her armor in its resting form. Her expression was calm.

“Aramaeis is staying,” she continued. “He and Aurelius can help defend Hearth.”

“You don’t have to prove anything.”

“I know.”

She stepped beside him and watched a pallet of medical supplies disappear into the ship.

“I know what it feels like to wait for help while the instruments tell you something impossible.”

Dinraal considered arguing.

Then he remembered how often he had hated hearing his own fear treated as a reason to exclude him.

“All right.”

Tiamat glanced at him.

“That easily?”

“You’ve trained. We need you.”

Her mouth softened.

“Thank you.”

Isolde approached from the cargo deck.

“Good. You can help Johanna tell us when we’re being foolish.”

Tiamat smiled.

“I assumed that was a permanent responsibility.”

They departed before dawn.

Dinraal and Isolde traveled aboard the medical vessel with Tiamat, Johanna, and Asha. Alexander commanded the escorts. Gilgamesh accompanied the boarding and evacuation crews.

Arcturus remained in command of the operation from the lead escort.

The repaired reference assembly occupied a reinforced bay near the medical vessel’s center.

Asha checked its mounting twice.

Then a technician checked her work.

She stood aside without complaint.

Dinraal took that as a measure of how seriously she regarded the mission.

Their route avoided the old relay corridor.

The Imperial colony had already dispatched a faster courier carrying instructions to Halden’s Reach: disconnect the relay, cease automated exchanges, gather everyone near the landing field, and begin boarding the hospital patients.

Nobody knew whether those instructions had arrived in time.

During transit, Dinraal tried to sleep.

He managed an hour.

When he woke, Isolde sat beside the bunk, reading the latest boarding plan.

“You should rest too.”

“I did.”

He studied her.

She looked up.

“Two hours. Johanna will confirm it.”

“Everyone has witnesses now.”

“It seemed necessary.”

She closed the tablet.

He moved over.

For a little while, they lay together and listened to the ship.

Halden’s Reach orbited a pale orange star.

The colony occupied a dry plateau on the inner edge of a broad agricultural valley. From orbit, Dinraal could see long rectangles of cultivated ground and a cluster of low buildings around the landing field.

Beyond the planet, the relay station hung in darkness.

Too much darkness.

Stars remained visible around it, but a narrow region behind its central structure looked smeared, as though someone had dragged a thumb across wet paint.

“Local instruments only,” Arcturus ordered. “No network synchronization.”

The command passed through the fleet.

The courier had arrived.

Its captain met them at the designated outer rendezvous and transferred the current colony roster.

The relay’s main transmitter had been physically disconnected.

The distortion had continued.

Asha studied the readings.

“They stopped answering, but something had already established itself.”

“Can we get the transports down?” Dinraal asked.

“Yes,” the navigator said. “Approach geometry is still consistent.”

“Then start.”

The first thing Dinraal noticed on the surface was the silence.

Two thousand people should have made more noise.

Instead, they stood in lines beneath the landing lights with bags against their feet and children held close.

Most watched the sky.

The colony administrator met them halfway down the ramp.

Her name was Mara Den.

She wore a dusty coat over clothes that looked as though she had slept in them.

“We moved everyone we could,” she said. “The eastern work crews came in last night. Hospital patients are waiting in the terminal.”

“Missing personnel?”

“The survey crews. Nine between the two vessels.”

Dinraal glanced at the tablet in her hands.

She understood.

“They’re included in the total.”

He nodded.

“Nobody else?”

“One maintenance team at the relay. Five people. They stayed to cut the transmitter.”

His attention sharpened.

“Still there?”

“They couldn’t get their shuttle to accept a navigation solution.”

Tiamat looked up at the dark sky.

Dinraal touched his communicator.

“Arcturus. We have five on the relay.”

A pause.

Then Alexander answered.

“I’ll move an escort into retrieval position.”

“Keep outside the distortion.”

“I intended to.”

Mara’s shoulders lowered slightly.

Dinraal pointed toward the waiting line.

“Let’s get these people aboard.”

The terminal smelled of antiseptic, dust, and overused machinery.

Johanna took one look at the hospital group and began issuing instructions.

Isolde worked beside her, helping secure beds into transport frames. Tiamat carried equipment that ordinarily required a loading vehicle.

Gilgamesh discovered a freight lift had failed between floors.

He removed its door.

Then he became the freight lift.

Dinraal moved through the boarding lines with the colony staff.

An old man refused to leave without a small metal box.

His daughter stood beside him, exhausted.

“He thinks we’re taking his tools.”

“They are my tools,” the man said.

Dinraal looked at the box.

It was small enough to fit beneath a seat.

“Bring them.”

The daughter closed her eyes in relief.

Farther along, a boy clutched a pot containing a half-dead plant.

Dinraal thought of the two green shoots on their table.

“That comes too.”

Mara watched him.

“We told them one bag.”

“We still have room.”

“For now.”

He met her eyes.

She was right.

He turned toward the loading officer.

“Tell me before that changes.”

Then he bent to help the boy carry the pot.

The relay team’s shuttle launched forty minutes later.

Alexander’s escort guided it through a narrow approach lane using direct visual bearings.

For a while, it worked.

Then the shuttle appeared in two places.

Dinraal saw the images on his wrist display while standing beside the second transport.

One shuttle moved toward the escort.

Another hung several hundred meters behind it.

Both returned the same engine signature.

Both carried the same identification.

Alexander’s voice remained steady.

“Shuttle, cut your drive.”

A strained answer came back.

“Drive is off.”

One image continued accelerating.

The other began to tumble.

Tiamat stepped beside Dinraal.

“That one,” she said.

“Which?”

“The one that stopped correcting.”

On the channel, Alexander reached the same conclusion.

His escort shifted course.

A retrieval drone caught the tumbling shuttle.

The second image elongated, flickered, and vanished.

Dinraal realized he had been holding his breath.

“Five aboard,” Alexander reported. “All alive.”

Asha spoke next.

“The distortion is increasing. We need the departure sequence moving.”

Dinraal looked toward the terminal.

People were still inside.

“How long?”

“Until departure becomes unreliable?” she asked. “I don’t know.”

He hated that answer.

He was glad she gave it.

The first transport lifted with more than nine hundred people aboard.

The medical vessel followed, carrying the hospital patients and several hundred others.

Asha remained with the reference assembly.

Isolde stayed on the ground with Dinraal, Tiamat, and the last boarding crews.

The remaining transport sat with both ramps down.

Families moved past them.

Names were checked.

Bags were abandoned when straps broke.

One woman returned to the terminal for a sleeping child she believed was missing.

They found him aboard the transport with his grandfather.

Isolde walked her up the ramp and waited until she saw them together.

The engines deepened.

Dust moved across the landing field.

Mara checked the last line on her roster.

“Terminal clear.”

“Workshops?”

“Clear.”

“Emergency shelters?”

“Checked twice.”

Dinraal looked across the colony.

A window stood open in a nearby house.

A cloth moved behind it.

Someone had left dishes beside a sink.

He forced his attention back to Mara.

“Board.”

She hesitated.

“I should be last.”

“You’re needed aboard to confirm the count.”

For a moment, he thought she would argue.

Then she nodded and climbed the ramp.

Isolde approached.

“That’s everyone here.”

Above them, the sky bent.

The far edge of the landing field appeared to rise toward the horizon.

Tiamat caught Dinraal’s arm.

“Now.”

The transport lifted badly.

Its left stabilizer flared as the navigation system tried to correct a tilt that did not exist.

“Manual control,” the pilot said.

The deck lurched.

Dinraal braced himself against the bulkhead while Isolde helped a crew member secure a loose stretcher.

Through the forward display, he saw the medical vessel’s marker drift away from its visual position.

Asha’s voice came over the fleet channel.

“We can establish a local reference around us. It won’t cover the planet.”

“How much space?” Arcturus asked.

“Enough for a close formation. If the others can reach it.”

Dinraal looked at Isolde.

She was already moving toward the inner airlock.

Tiamat joined them.

“Johanna can hold the assembly,” she said.

Asha answered before anyone asked.

“She’s here.”

Dinraal closed his helmet.

“Then we help the ships reach her.”

Outside, the planet occupied half the sky.

Dinraal refused to look toward the relay.

He could feel it.

That was enough.

Silver light spread around the medical vessel as Johanna fed the assembly. Its rings established a small region in which distances stopped shifting.

The nearest escort crossed into it.

Its marker snapped into agreement with its hull.

“Reference holding,” Asha said.

Dinraal took position ahead of the final transport.

Isolde moved along its port side.

Tiamat remained behind, watching the shuttle lanes.

They did not attempt the severing technique.

The relay was too far away.

The connection was too large.

Instead, Dinraal held a short stretch of space steady ahead of the transport, using the same narrow precision that had frustrated him on the training moon.

The vessel advanced through it.

Isolde established the next stretch before his began to fail.

Between them, the transport moved toward the medical ship.

Dinraal’s arms trembled.

The distance looked absurdly small.

He had destroyed Ashen vessels across far greater spans.

Holding this one route open felt harder.

“Easy,” Isolde said.

“I am.”

“I meant breathe.”

He did.

The transport entered the reference field.

Its pilot’s relief came through as a broken laugh.

“Navigation stable.”

Dinraal let his field collapse.

Then Tiamat spoke.

“Contact behind us.”

For an instant, he thought the Questioner had arrived.

Then he saw the survey craft.

A small vessel drifted above the atmosphere, its engine flickering.

The colony’s registry identified it immediately.

One of the missing ships.

A voice burst across the open channel.

“Halden control, we have wounded. Please respond.”

Dinraal turned.

Arcturus’s voice cut in.

“Do not connect that channel to fleet systems.”

The call repeated.

Isolde moved beside Dinraal.

“Can you see inside?”

He narrowed his attention.

There were shapes behind the forward canopy.

People.

Perhaps.

Tiamat’s breathing sounded harsh over their private channel.

“That’s how they did it.”

Dinraal looked toward her.

“Before?”

“A ship we knew. People calling.”

The survey craft’s drive flared.

It began moving toward the formation.

“Hold position,” Alexander ordered over a separate transmitter. “Rescue craft will approach.”

The ship continued.

Dinraal felt the old urge to rush forward.

Nine missing people.

Perhaps some of them alive in that cabin.

Then the voice changed.

“Dinraal.”

His blood went cold.

Mara had not known who would lead the rescue when the survey ship disappeared.

The voice spoke again.

“You came back for the others.”

Isolde caught his wrist.

The survey craft’s canopy lit from within.

For a fraction of a second, the shapes behind it leaned forward together.

All at once.

Dinraal raised his free hand.

“Alexander. Keep it away from the transports.”

The escort fired into the survey craft’s engine.

Its forward motion slowed.

From the ruined drive, something pale began unfolding.

Tiamat struck first.

Her silver formed a broad plane between the damaged craft and the fleet.

The thing emerging from the engine hit it hard enough to drive her backward.

Dinraal caught the edge of her field with his own.

Isolde reinforced the other side.

Behind them, the transports began their departure sequence.

“Go,” Dinraal said.

“We need you inside the formation,” Arcturus replied.

“Ten seconds.”

The pale shape pressed against the barrier.

Dinraal saw fingers.

Then too many joints.

Then the impression of a face that never settled into one arrangement.

It was still using the survey crew’s voices.

Isolde’s voice reached him clearly.

“Don’t follow it with your eyes.”

He focused on the line between his field and hers.

The pressure increased.

Tiamat gritted her teeth.

“Ships?”

“First transport away,” Arcturus said. “Medical vessel preparing.”

The pale shape withdrew.

Dinraal nearly pursued the release of pressure.

Tiamat caught it first.

“Back!”

They broke away together.

A narrow darkness opened where their barrier had been.

The damaged survey craft vanished into it.

No flash.

No debris.

The three of them raced toward the final escort.

Its bay remained open.

Dinraal crossed the threshold behind Tiamat and caught Isolde’s forearm as she came through.

The doors closed.

“Jump,” he said.

The deck fell beneath his boots.

Then the stars changed.

They counted everyone twice.

Two thousand one hundred and twenty-seven colonists.

Nine still missing.

Five relay workers among the rescued, all receiving treatment.

No rescue crew lost.

Dinraal sat on the bay floor while the figures arrived.

Isolde sat beside him.

Across from them, Tiamat had removed her helmet but not the rest of her armor.

Nobody spoke until Alexander entered.

“We’re taking the indirect route. Full inspection at the outer rendezvous before we approach Hearth.”

Dinraal nodded.

“The survey vessel?”

“Gone before the jump. No contact following us that we can detect.”

Nine names remained on the list.

He stared at them.

Isolde’s shoulder touched his.

“We couldn’t bring that ship into the fleet.”

“I know.”

Knowing did not make the voices disappear.

Tiamat leaned forward.

“It used people I knew once.”

Dinraal looked up.

“I thought hearing them meant there was still time.”

He waited.

She did not finish the memory.

Instead, she said, “You stopped it reaching the transports.”

Alexander crouched beside them.

“Those people are alive. You should go and see them.”

The medical decks were crowded.

Children slept against parents. Crew members distributed water. Johanna moved from bed to bed with the fierce concentration of someone who intended to postpone exhaustion until everyone else had been attended to.

Mara met Dinraal near the entrance.

Her eyes were red.

He did not try to soften the report.

“We couldn’t recover the survey crews.”

She closed her eyes.

After a moment, she nodded.

“I’ll speak to their families.”

“I’ll come with you.”

She studied him.

Then she stepped aside.

Before they reached the first family, a small hand caught Dinraal’s fingers.

The boy from the landing field stood beside a bench.

His plant rested safely between his feet.

“Is this the ship going to your town?”

Dinraal crouched.

“Eventually. We have a few stops first.”

“Does it rain there?”

“Yes.”

The boy looked pleased.

His mother watched from the bench, tired enough that even smiling seemed difficult.

Dinraal rested one hand briefly on the pot’s rim.

“Someone there can help you find a place for it.”

When he stood, Isolde was waiting.

They went with Mara.

Far behind them, Halden’s Reach continued turning beneath its sun.

The relay station no longer occupied the position marked on the old charts.

Around it, the stars had vanished.

But the landing field was empty.

The hospital was empty.

In the houses overlooking the valley, there was no one left to answer the voices calling from the sky.