Chapter 52
Haven
It was impossible to know how long it had been since Haven last slept.
She knew it had to be longer than a full day.
She had a short, fitful sleep back on the Humility when they’d been swinging here through subspace.
But worry for Vytln and her own life meant it hadn’t been a good sleep.
And she had no idea how many marks it had been since then.
She only knew that she felt a strange combination of awake and exhausted.
She knew it was long past time for her to eat and sleep, but she also had a rush of adrenaline that was powering her to keep going.
The combination of fatigue and chemical alertness left her feeling strange, almost floating in her own head.
There was also a general sense of muscle fatigue weighing her down as well.
Crawling through Kldyn’s ship had been a lot of physical work.
But wrapping the shelter room in ropes and tying it to the evac pod had also, surprisingly, been a lot of work.
She might be weightless in space, but it was like swimming.
Her muscles were still doing a lot to move and adjust her around.
But the fatigue, the exhaustion, the gripping but distant sense of thirst and hunger were easy to shove in the back of her mind as she strapped herself into the evac pod.
Vytln, who had to be just as tired as her – if not more – and injured on top of that, was in the pilot seat now.
He had the navigation information she had stolen and was using it to move them around.
The shelter room now towed behind them like a hillbilly trailer strapped to a truck, they flew out of the debris field. Spot was stored safely in the back. Alred was strapped beside her in a seat. She put a hand on him to make sure he stayed still and safe.
And they were heading towards a nearby planet.
Relatively nearby, of course. She hadn’t been able to see it while floating out in space. She did see a distant sun, but it looked like a faraway star. So, she hadn’t thought about looking around for planets.
But this was a place that Alred had brought them. It had to be safe somehow.
They were silent, both exhausted, both hungry, both uneasy.
They were moving though. And just sitting there, tense as she was, Haven could finally feel the weight of the last day or more starting to drag her down. She was going to collapse soon, she knew. But she continued to hold on tight as she relied on Vytln to get them somewhere safe.
It took a couple marks of flying before Vytln finally said-
“Starting re-entry. I’m going to try to keep it smooth, but this shuttle isn’t built for a totally smooth entry. Not like the landing shuttle. So, it’ll be bumpy.”
“I’m ready,” Haven assured him, her free hand clenching on her belt straps.
It was bumpy, though not as much as she expected.
Haven hadn’t been planetside since she left the Earth.
She’d never gone through re-entry. Her only experience with it was movies and TV shows on Earth where it was an extremely turbulent, often very dangerous process.
This was like turbulence on an airplane.
She bounced and rocked around a bit, but it wasn’t super jarring.
At least, not until they landed.
The touchdown process, thanks to the shelter room they were towing behind them, was not a smooth and easy drop. It was a hard strike against the ground, then a rough and bumpy grind to a slow stop as she bounced in her seat, hitting hard against the seatbelt.
She hoped the others were okay. She hadn’t been in the shelter room. Vytln promised her they’d designed it to survive re-entry, but this seemed like a really hard landing. And after it was already compromised after surviving an explosion?
It took some time for them to come to a halt. And when they did, to her surprise, they were at an angle. She was pressing down into the seatbelt. She could push herself back against the seat, but they were definitely tilting.
“Where are we?” She asked, pulling at the buckle.
“I don’t know,” Vytln said, yanking his seatbelt away and getting to his feet. He grimaced and winced when he put weight on his injured knee. They had been weightless so long, it seemed he forgot how badly he’d injured it.
“Staying there,” Haven said, getting to her own feet. She stumbled a bit as well, also not prepared for her full weight to come back, but she gathered herself quickly. “I’ll check.”
“Haven, let me-”
He tried to stop her, but injured as he was, he wasn’t quick enough as she climbed the ladder up to the hatch.
She had to use a button to force it open.
Their space inside was still airless. But there was hard pop that pushed her down as air rushed in and her helmet display began flashing a whole bunch of new information at her.
She ignored it, however, and she pushed the hatch up and out.
The bright, harsh yellow sunlight burned her eyes after so long in space.
She grimaced as she climbed up. She sat on the edge of the ship and found herself looking out over a sea of golden red sand.
It expanded in front of her all the way to the horizon.
Smooth, tall, rolling dunes in every direction.
Whisps of sand blown into the air by the passing breeze.
A cloud of it trying to settle in their path after they had crashed through.
Behind them, a long trail was drug out in the sand.
The shelter room was half buried. The evac pod and shelter room both smoking from the force of re-entry.
The readout on the helmet informed her that the air was partially safe to breathe for a short time, but she didn’t take it off as she stared around.
Planetside for the first time in years. This was not how she imagined ever returning turfside.
“Okay,” she said, clenching her teeth, reaching deep and grasping for whatever energy and strength she might have left.
It was time to check just how bad off they were.