36. I’m Sorry, Captain
THIRTY-SIX
I’M SORRY, CAPTAIN
REYNA
Captain Reyna Solas walked onto the Bridge, and the woman who had been swaying in nebula light four minutes ago stopped existing.
"Report."
"Distress beacon, Captain." Torvax didn’t look up from his console. "Automated. Coalition relay, third bounce. Origin is Korallis Minor."
"Population?"
"Zero."
Reyna stopped halfway to her chair.
"Say that again?"
"Zero, Captain. The colony began evacuations nine hours ago. Seismic instability across the southern shelf. They got everyone off planet." Torvax finally looked up. "The beacon is not for them."
He put it up on the main display.
Korallis Minor came up, a squat brown world under a heavy sky, and Reyna knew what it was before Torvax said it.
She had spent her professional life reading places like this with high gravity, flat landscape, and everything on it built low and dense and wide, because the alternative was being crushed.
"They took most of the animals," Torvax said. "Every enclosure on that colony they could transport."
"Except?" Reyna asked.
"Except two," Torvax answered. "A breeding pair of Gravhorn Palu," Torvax said.
"Eleven thousand kilos apiece. The colony had no lift capacity for them, no reinforced hold, nothing rated to carry that mass at that gravity differential.
" A pause. "They left the beacon running so somebody would come. "
The Bridge was quiet.
"Structure of the enclosure?"
"Holding. For now. The southern shelf is where the activity is. The enclosure is nineteen kilometers north of it."
"Time?"
"Estimates vary. Days, most likely. Possibly less."
"And the tremors?"
"Constant, Captain. The shelf has been slipping in increments since yesterday and every increment goes through the crust. The colony logged four hundred and six tremors in the last nine hours." Torvax scrolled. "No pattern."
"Nineteen kilometers of margin against a shelf collapse."
"Yes."
"And no margin at all against the shaking?"
"No, Captain. There is nowhere on that planet that isn't moving."
"Who else is in range?"
Torvax tapped some buttons on his console, and within seconds, it chirped with answers. He read them. Then he read them again before he said anything.
"Nobody rated, Captain. There are, in fact, five vessels closer than us.
But none of them are properly rated. The Corvane has the tonnage but no floor for the Palu.
The rest won't even be able to open a door that wide.
" He set the datapad down. "We have the shuttle.
We have the bay. Essentially, the Emberkind is the only ship in this sector that has the ability to collect. "
Because they had done it before.
Reyna had been standing right there, a first mate who was certain her captain had lost her mind, when Elena Voss said they were going to need a bigger floor.
"Understood," Reyna said.
"Then it is a task for engineering." Reyna turned to the room. "Twice that mass, at a gravity differential, up a ramp rated for a colony that no longer exists? I am not solving that from a chair. Engineering runs this one on the ground."
"All of Engineering, Captain?"
"All leadership. Breck, Laith, and my Chief Engineer.
Two lifts, no margin, and a ramp nobody has certified since the colony emptied.
I want three people down there who can each solve it alone, in case the other two are occupied.
" Reyna kept going. "Borran will go for the animals with Selowen's advisement from here.
He's the only one on this ship they will walk toward. "
"Yes, Captain," Torvax said, tapping his datapad.
"Kess will manage the field kit but monitor from up here. I want the deck as clear as possible."
"Understood, Captain."
Hours ago, the Admiral had told her that job title did not belong to Charlie. That a committee three sectors from here had decided the woman who held it was a filing problem.
My Chief Engineer.
Let them come and take it out of her mouth.
"Parameters, Captain?" Torvax said.
"The shelf is well south of the enclosure. Stay as far from it as possible. This is just a simple lift and carry." Reyna sat down in her chair. "Nobody goes near that shelf."
Reyna watched the shuttle bay cycle on the display and allowed herself a moment to step out of Captain mode. Instead, she thought about what she was going to say when Charlie got back.
She had about two hours, and she was going to use them. She was to go down to Engineering once the rescue was complete, and she wasn't going to be careful, but she was going to finish her damn sentence.
Charlie, I—
Two hours.
"Shuttle is clear, Captain. Engineering is on board with Borran accompanying," Torvax said. "Mission is underway."
CHARLIE
Korallis Minor was heavy.
That was the first thing Charlie noticed when she came down the shuttle ramp into a gravity that grabbed her by the shoulders and pulled her straight down. Every step after that was a negotiation. Her suit compensated, as it was meant to, but her knees didn't seem to care what her suit did.
Ninety seconds on the surface and she'd already recalculated the ramp load twice, because eleven thousand kilos on Earth is exactly that, but here it’s a number that makes you want to sit down.
"You okay, kid?" Tavi said through comms three meters behind her. Of course he was unbothered, because Tavi Breck was built like a tank and this planet could do no harm to him.
"I weigh six hundred pounds," Charlie whined.
Tavi laughed. "You get used to it!"
"I don't want to get used to it! I want to file a complaint."
Then the ground moved. Not much, almost like a shrug that lasted two seconds.
"That's the shelf," Maren said. "South of us."
"Feels closer," Charlie remarked.
"It always does. The crust is dense here. It carries everything."
Almost nothing on Korallis Minor was broken.
In the residential ring, one structure had come down.
It was a low wide building at the end of a row, folded in on itself from when the ground dropped out from under one corner.
Charlie noted it and walked past. On a world that had moved four hundred times since yesterday, one collapsed building was the least interesting thing she had seen all day.
Everything else was immaculate.
The doors were shut. The equipment was stacked and strapped.
Somebody had gone around and closed every window in a whole town on their way out, and there were chalk marks on the loading bays where the crates had been sorted by weight.
In the middle of one street, a kid's ball sat with a note pinned under it. Charlie's Voxlink turned it into WE WILL COME BACK FOR YOU.
They hadn't panicked. They'd packed.
Four hundred people had walked out of their homes in an orderly line, carrying everything they could, and every single one of them had known exactly what they were leaving behind.
"Charlie," Maren said. "The gate. Look."
The enclosure was on the north edge, and the Palus were standing inside.
Charlie had seen the file, but as she looked at these creatures now, she realized the file had not prepared her in the least.
The Palus were the size of a delivery truck each, low and wide and armored in overlapping plates the color of wet slate. They were standing perfectly still in a paddock with the gate hanging wide open, doing absolutely nothing about it.
"They could leave," Charlie said. "The gate's open. Why aren't they leaving?"
"Where would they go?" Maren said gently.
And that was a hell of an answer.
Charlie got to work.
The hinge assembly on the shuttle was the problem. That was the reason Charlie was here.
The shuttle was reinforced to take the weight and size of the Palus, but the hinges hadn't been serviced prior to the drop.
They had gone from a beacon to a drop in under forty minutes, which meant nobody had put a hand on that ramp assembly before it left the bay.
No service cycle or inspection, just relying on a stack of numbers in a log somewhere that had been true the last time anybody checked.
And eleven thousand kilos walking up an incline at this gravity put a serious load on it.
Charlie got down on the deck plate and ran the scanner. Then she put a boot on the hinge housing and rocked her weight onto it, twice, and listened.
"Well?" Tavi said.
"It'll hold."
"Good enough for me."
"You don't want the numbers?"
"Why would I need the numbers?"
"To check my calculations?"
Tavi laughed, loudly. "Have you met yourself, Spark Plug? You're a walking micrometer! I don't need to check anything you tell me." He turned towards her. "I trust you implicitly. So don't fuck it up."
Charlie grinned at him. Three legs of the tripod, holding.
Thirty minutes later, Borran was walking the Palus out of the paddock.
Charlie stood back and watched alongside Tavi and Maren.
Borran had gone into the paddock alone. He didn't hurry, instead slowly approached an armored prehistoric tank, stopping about four feet away. The Palu looked at him while Borran looked back, and neither of them moved at all for a long moment.
Then Borran moved forward and put his hand flat on the male's shoulder plate before saying something to the creature.
Charlie couldn't hear it. Her Voxlink had caught nothing, which meant it wasn't language, and the Palu leaned its enormous head into him.
The ground moved again while Borran was standing there.
Charlie grabbed for the fence while Tavi swore. Somewhere behind them a shutter came loose and banged twice.
Borran didn't move and neither did the Palu.
The Palus had been standing in an open paddock through nine hours of this, with the gate hanging wide open. It had never once occurred to either of them to leave because there was nowhere on this planet that wasn't moving.