Storms of Destiny (Return to Destra #2)

Chapter 1

TORVEN

The approach vector to Destra was a nightmare, and that was on a good day.

I kept my hands steady on the navigation controls as my ship descended through the planet’s outer atmosphere, watching the readouts with the focused attention that had kept me alive through a dozen different disasters.

The atmospheric pressure readings were already fluctuating wildly, and we weren’t even close to the real storm layers yet.

“Captain,” Chief Navigation Officer Henic called from his station, his voice tight with concentration. “I’m seeing some unusual electromagnetic signatures in the lower atmosphere.”

“Define ‘unusual,’” I said, without looking up from my own screens.

The ship’s hull was already starting to vibrate as we hit the first of Destra’s infamous wind shears.

My previous crew would have been making jokes by now, trying to lighten the mood as we descended into what could charitably be called controlled chaos.

This crew stayed silent, focused, professional.

Better that way. Safer.

“The patterns are…erratic,” Henic continued. “Almost like the electromagnetic field is reacting to something, rather than following natural atmospheric dynamics.”

I glanced up at that. The weather on the planet we were approaching was unpredictable, but electromagnetic anomalies usually had sources. “Any chance it’s interference from the settlements?”

“Negative, sir. The readings are coming from uninhabited regions. Grid sections seven through twelve.”

Grid sections seven through twelve. Right where Dr. Rivers would be conducting her atmospheric analysis once we made landfall.

The thought of Zara standing in the middle of an electromagnetic storm with a bunch of delicate scientific equipment made something twist unpleasantly in my chest. I pushed the feeling aside.

She was a competent scientist. She could take care of herself.

The fact that she had a habit of getting so absorbed in her work that she forgot about minor details like safety protocols wasn’t my problem.

Except, it would become your problem if something happened to her, a voice in the back of my mind pointed out unhelpfully.

I clenched my jaw and focused on the descent.

The ship shuddered as we hit another patch of turbulence, and I made a minor course correction to avoid the worst of it.

My hands had done this before. As long as there were no big surprises, I could keep us stable without fighting the atmospheric currents more than necessary.

“How much longer until we reach the lower atmosphere?” asked Dr. Vasquez from the passenger compartment behind me.

Cleo’s voice carried the kind of forced casualness that meant she was trying not to sound nervous.

Fair enough. Most people found their first descent to a storm-ridden planet to be an unsettling experience.

“Approximately forty minutes,” I replied. “I’d recommend securing any loose equipment now. The real turbulence starts once we hit the storm layers.”

“Already done,” came a different voice, and every muscle in my shoulders tensed involuntarily.

Dr. Zara Rivers. The source of my current headache and, if I was being honest with myself, several sleepless nights over the past few weeks.

She emerged from the passenger compartment carrying an armload of equipment cases, her light blond hair pulled back in a ponytail that somehow managed to make her look both competent and…

distractingly pretty. Her brown eyes were bright with the kind of excitement most sane people reserved for things that didn’t involve descending into a planetary atmosphere known for chewing up spacecraft and spitting out wreckage.

“I’ve triple-checked all the atmospheric monitoring devices,” she said, setting the cases down in the designated cargo area and securing them with straps.

“The electromagnetic readings we’re getting are fascinating.

I think we might be seeing some kind of interaction between Destra’s magnetic field and the ionized particles in the upper atmosphere. ”

Of course she was fascinated by the electromagnetic anomalies. Of course she thought unpredictable atmospheric conditions were interesting rather than potentially lethal.

“Dr. Rivers,” I said, keeping my voice level and professional. “How many pieces of equipment are in those cases?”

“Well, I brought the primary atmospheric composition analyzer, plus the backup unit, and the electromagnetic field detector, and the barometric pressure sensors, and…” She paused, apparently counting in her head. “I brought…what was necessary for a comprehensive atmospheric analysis.”

I pulled a deep breath in through my nostrils, and slowly let it out. “Dr. Rivers, I told you that storage space is limited. You were to bring three devices.”

“Most of them are small.” The protest came out more vehemently than she’d probably intended, and I watched her face flush slightly.

“I mean, we don’t know what kind of conditions we’ll encounter on the surface.

Different atmospheric compositions require different analytical approaches, and if I don’t have the right equipment—”

“Enough,” I said flatly. “What’s done is done. But I will include this in my report.”

She didn’t look worried about that, just offended by my apparent lack of scientific respect.

My report, if I even wrote one, would go to the two leaders of the Sola she lived on.

And they were her close friends. Even the Sola—the living organic ship that Destrans, and some humans, lived on—liked her. “Do what you must, Captain.”

“I will,” I said, then turned back to my controls before I could see the full extent of her indignation.

It wasn’t that I enjoyed frustrating her.

Well, not entirely. The problem was that Dr. Zara Rivers brought out every protective instinct I’d spent the last two years carefully suppressing.

When she got that look of fierce determination on her face, when she talked about her work with such passion that her whole face lit up, when she bit her lower lip while concentrating on a problem…

I forced my attention back to the navigation display as my pants started to feel tight.

The electromagnetic readings were getting stronger as we descended, and the last thing I needed was to get distracted by a brilliant, stubborn scientist who somehow managed to make arguing about equipment storage look appealing.

Making her happy is not your responsibility. Keeping her alive is, I reminded myself. Keep your distance. Do your job. Get everyone to the surface safely and then get out.

“Captain,” Henic called, and the tension in his voice made me forget all about equipment arguments. “I’m showing massive atmospheric disturbance building in our approach vector. It’s like… It’s like the storm systems are reorganizing themselves.”

I looked up at the navigation display and felt my blood turn cold. The storm patterns that had been relatively stable when we’d entered the planet’s atmosphere were shifting, consolidating into something that looked suspiciously like a supercell formation.

“Time to impact?” I asked.

“Based on current development rate… Twenty-two minutes.”

Twenty-two minutes. We needed at least thirty to reach a safe landing zone, and that was assuming optimal conditions.

I ran through our options quickly. We could try to outrun the storm, but that would mean pushing the engines beyond safe parameters in an already unstable atmosphere.

We could attempt to navigate around it, but the storm was so sprawling, there’d be no avoiding it.

The only viable option left was to punch through it before it reached full intensity.

“Dr. Rivers,” I said without turning around. “How quickly can you get those atmospheric readings you need?”

“Why?” she asked, but I could hear her moving closer to look at the navigation display. “Oh. Oh, that’s… That’s not good.”

“It’s a planetary-scale electromagnetic storm,” said Cleo, leaning over Zara’s shoulder to peer at the readings. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“I have,” Zara said quietly, and something in her tone made me finally turn to look at her.

Her face had gone pale, but her eyes were focused and determined.

“But only in studies. When a magnetic field destabilizes, the atmospheric layers start to reorganize themselves, and the electromagnetic energy has to go somewhere.”

I could barely follow her science-babble, but I caught the gist of what she was saying. “Where?” I asked.

“Usually? Into the ground, in the form of massive lightning strikes.” She looked up at me, and I saw not fear in her expression, but calculation. “We need to land before the storm reaches full intensity, or we could be caught in an electrical discharge that will fry every system on this ship.”

Perfect. Just perfect. Not ideal conditions to be visiting what we hoped was the Destran home planet, that was for sure.

I turned back to the controls and began plotting a new descent trajectory.

Fast, steep, and dangerous as hell, but it could get us to the surface before the storm turned lethal.

From there, we’d just have to wait it out before exploring the surface.

“Strap in,” I announced to the cabin. “We’re going down fast.”

“How fast is fast?” Cleo asked, but she was already moving toward the passenger seats.

“Fast enough that Dr. Rivers might want to reconsider which three pieces of equipment are most important to her,” I said dryly.

I heard Zara make a sound that might have been a laugh or might have been a sob. “At this point, I’m more concerned about whether any of us are going to survive to use the equipment.”

“We’ll survive,” I said, adjusting our descent angle to take advantage of a gap between two developing storm cells. “I don’t lose passengers.”

Not anymore, I added silently.

The ship bucked violently as we hit a downdraft, and I heard equipment cases shifting in the cargo area, despite the restraints.

Through the cockpit viewport, I could see flashes of electrical discharge beginning to arc between the cloud layers below us.

Beautiful and deadly, like everything else I’d seen so far of this planet.

“Torven,” Zara said, and the use of my first name instead of my rank made me glance back at her. She was strapped into her seat now, but her hands were gripping the armrests tightly enough that her knuckles had gone white. “Thank you in advance. For getting us down safely.”

I grunted and turned back around, but something warm twisted in my chest at the trust in her voice.

Don’t get attached, I warned myself. Do your job and walk away.

But as I guided the ship through the increasingly violent atmospheric turbulence, I couldn’t quite ignore the way my pulse had spiked when I saw fear in Zara’s eyes.

Or the way every protective instinct I’d tried to bury was suddenly clawing through my skin…

which was probably a very interesting color right now.

With my gloves on, I couldn’t see what tones my skin had shifted to, but they were likely alarming.

Destrans showed their emotions on their faces—literally.

The ship’s proximity alarms began to wail as we plunged through the cloud layers, chasing a safe landing ahead of a storm that could tear us apart.

And all I could think about was that if we got stuck here for longer than expected, keeping my distance from Dr. Zara Rivers was going to be a lot harder than keeping us all alive.

The electromagnetic storm lit up the sky around us like an aurora gone mad, and I pushed the ship into a dive that would have terrified my previous crew. But my previous crew was dead, and these people were counting on me to get them down safely.

I’d failed once before at protecting the people I was responsible for.

I wasn’t going to fail again.

Even if it meant dealing with a profusion of scientific equipment and one stubbornly brilliant atmospheric scientist who made me want things I had no business wanting.

“Twelve minutes to touchdown,” I announced. “Assuming we don’t get struck by lightning.”

“What happens if we get struck by lightning?” Cleo asked.

“We find out if Dr. Rivers is right about those electromagnetic field interactions,” I replied.

Zara made a sound that was definitely a laugh this time, though it had a hysterical edge to it. “I really hope I’m wrong about this one.”

“So do I.” Because the alternative was going to be a very short conversation about equipment storage.

The storm reached for us with fingers of pure energy, and I dove the ship toward Destra’s surface like our lives depended on it.

Which, unfortunately, they did.