Powerless

By Kenneth McDonald

Captain Kevan "Mac" McDougal chose a solitary life by choice, running freight across the vast empty reaches of interstellar space. But his self-imposed isolation from the rest of the galaxy goes an unexpected step further when his ship runs into an anomaly in a distant star system. Mac’s ship crashes, and he finds himself trapped on a planet where no powered systems function. Caught between rival factions formed from the survivors of past wrecks, Mac must learn to survive on a harsh world locked in a permanent winter, while trying to decipher the mystery of who or what is behind the dampening field that holds him and the other survivors hostage.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kenneth McDonald
• Release date: Oct 26, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310455315

Kenneth McDonald

I am a retired education consultant who worked for state government in the area of curriculum. I have also taught American and world history at a number of colleges and universities in California, Georgia, and South Carolina. I started writing fiction in graduate school and never stopped. In 2010 I self-published the novella "The Labyrinth," which has had over 100,000 downloads. Since then, I have published more than fifty fantasy and science fiction books on Smashwords. My doctorate is in European history, and I live with my wife in northern California.

Book preview

Chapter 1

Mac was dragged into wakefulness by a loud, persistent buzzing.

He groaned and blinked, trying to cut through the thick haze that clouded his senses. His brain felt sluggish, a common side effect of augSleep.

Whazzit? he croaked.

Captain, sensors have detected a Class Three anomaly, Dee’s voice sounded from the speakers built into the enclosed medbay.

Captain, Mac thought. That’s how he knew it was serious. If it had been a routine matter Dee would have just used his name. Or wouldn’t have woken him at all, more likely.

Slip fold, he said.

I have already returned the ship to normal space, sir, per the parameters of your standing directives.

Right, right, Mac said. He rubbed a hand over his face. His skin was still a little numb, one of those fun lingering effects of augSleep. Another was the jolt of the cold floor on his feet when he slid out of the medbay’s cryobed.

Get me a stim, he told the medbay. There was a soft whirr and then a jolt as one of the bay’s actuators fired a shot of white fire into his hip. For a moment it was almost as if he could feel the stuff pouring through his body, filling him up until it reached his brain.

Thanks a lot, he said. He reached out to grab the shipsuit handing on a hook by the door. By the time he had gotten his still-awkward limbs into the outfit he felt almost human again.

Dee’s mobile was waiting for him in the corridor. The drone was tiny, a little shy of point-two meters from end to end. The faint ripple of its grav field surrounded its base as it hovered at the level of Mac’s head.

Report, he said. He considered the galley, its doorway opposite the medbay on the far side of the corridor, but decided that coffee on top of the stim would only end up giving his gastrointestinal system trouble to match his lingering headache. He walked toward the bridge, the drone falling into place beside him.

The system is identified in the Registry as J-57321. Our course took us by it at extreme sensor range, but the passive array picked up a series of odd power spikes.

Natural, or manufactured? Mac asked as they made their way down the corridor that bisected the ship’s habitation deck. They passed the cubicles that could have accommodated up to ten crew members, but which were now all sealed and empty, their life support systems powered down to save energy.

Sensors detected no readings consistent with a civilization of Type-I or higher.

Mac ducked through the forward bulkhead door and up the short flight of steps that accessed the command deck. The steps were slightly rounded and he had to focus on where he put his feet. The stim had cleared away most of the effects of the augSleep, but as always it had made his muscles a bit jittery. Dee mercifully did not add commentary and merely floated up to the top of the stairs to wait for him.

Only one of the four stations was powered up, and as he settled into the padded chair schematics and data erupted out of the holo display. He took it in. Hmm, nothing since the original survey… wow, almost five hundred years? That must have been in the first or second wave, right after the invention of the Fordham Drive.

You do like to pick out-of-the-way routes, Dee intoned dryly. Mac shot the drone a hard look; for a machine the AI had developed a fairly subtle sense of sarcasm. The drone merely hovered.

All right, Mac said, turning back to the display. So nobody’s come and visited recently, at least not as far as we know. Not much from the initial survey, but no indications of any power anomalies. Looks like three planets, one on the outer band of the habitable range. How much you want to bet that’s the source of our readings?

A wager I would not care to make, the drone replied. Do you wish to investigate?

I thought that was why you woke me up, Mac said.

I woke you up in accordance with the protocols that you established…

Just ribbing you, my artificially intelligent friend. He sat back in the chair, looked over the readings again. Not much to go on. Could be a ship, I suppose.

No indications of vessels on either the passive or active arrays, Dee said.

League tech could dodge a scan at this range, if the ship’s active systems were down.

To what end? Dee asked.

I don’t know. Mac studied the display in silence for a long span of time. The drone didn’t interrupt his thoughts.

Finally he leaned back again. Prepare to disengage the command module and set a course to approach the second planet.

And the freight module?

I assume you’ll leave a piece of yourself in charge. Have it follow along at best speed, pick a spot far enough away that it’s out of the way, but close enough that we can rendezvous if necessary.

Done, the drone replied. Mac looked at it again, trying to detect if there had been any more of that sarcasm in the word, but couldn’t tell. How long until we’re close enough for a full scan?

A course popped into being on the system display in the holo. On the most expedient course consistent with a conservative fuel consumption rate, six point three hours. I can give you more accelerated options if you like…

Don’t bother, Mac said, levering himself out of the chair. His body was reluctant, but he was used to making it comply. Four months out, another quarter-day isn’t going to matter. Keep the arrays scanning as we approach, and ping me if something else notable comes in. I’m going to get cleaned up and then get something to eat.

The ship, Interstellar Bulk Freighter (Gold Series) 3519, turned ponderously toward the lonely star system J-57321. Reaction engines that were tiny in contrast to the massive cargo modules fired, accelerating the craft toward the distant point of light. Once it was underway engines fired again, but this time to pull the ship apart. A sleek hundred-meter craft, perched atop the stacked modules like a parasitic insect, separated and accelerated toward the system with a lengthy pulse of its own reaction drives. The mass of the freighter was left behind, following the command module in its own unhurried pursuit.

* * *

Mac was back at the control station as the ship entered system J-57321.

The ship’s progress was marked as a yellow arc on the holo display, the star and its trio of planets swelling on their pale red orbits as they drew closer. Mac could feel the thrum of power through the ship as its reaction engines continued the steady deceleration that had begun automatically at the halfway point of the arc that Dee had programmed into the ship’s navigation systems. The grav array of the freighter’s command module was good, dampening even the slightest vibration from the twenty-plus gees that the engines were subjecting the ship to, but Mac had spent enough time on starfaring vessels to be able to detect even the faint sensations of motion that made it through.

He could see the planet now with his own eyes through the forward viewport. It was a faintly glowing speck that gradually swelled into a bright orb as the ship closed the range. While Mac scanned the data from the various arrays the planet took on further definition. Its topography was distinct, with broad caps of pure white at its poles. Each of those icy regions was thicker than the narrow band of green and blue—generously striated with more white—that passed around the center of the planet. The data that flicked over the holo confirmed the impression given by what he could see, that the place was cold and unwelcoming. Gravity was higher than standard, just enough to make the idea of going down there to take a look sound unappealing.

Dee, confirm those power readings for me. Are you seeing what I’m seeing?

It appears that you were correct, the AI confirmed. Though I am still not getting enough data to identify the nature of the anomaly, its point of origin is definitely the planet’s surface.

What about life readings? Shouldn’t we be close enough now to get a clear scan?

I believe that the anomaly is interfering with our scanning, the drone replied.

Hmm. Could it be masking a ship? Behind the planet’s mass, perhaps?

I am unable to confirm or deny that supposition.

But if there was something there, they’d almost certainly know we were coming. They’d have to have moved there when we came out of fold. Mac tapped his chin with a finger. And still no power readings from the surface indicative of intelligent life?

No, though any such signals could likewise be masked by the anomaly.

Mac ran his hand along the edge of the console. Finally he tapped an indicator. A comm window popped into being within the display. "This is Captain McDougal of the Bulk Freighter Gold Three Five One Nine, he said. If anyone is receiving this signal, please respond."

The man and the machine waited, but only silence answered.

Could the anomaly also be interfering with communications? Mac asked.

The most likely explanation is that there is no one capable of responding within communications range, Dee replied.

Mac’s brow furrowed. Do you have a source of information that I cannot access? the AI prompted.

No, it’s just… I’ve got a strange feeling. Is the freight module on course?

Yes. I have been monitoring it since we separated. At current course and speed it will reach the rendezvous point in approximately one hundred and sixty-seven point five hours. I would notify you immediately if there was any discrepancy.

I know, I know. He glanced up at the drone. Think I’m being foolish? This whole business?

There is insufficient data to justify an opinion at this time. However, while I lack the emotion identified as ‘curiosity,’ I admit to perplexity at the conflicting readings coming from the planet.

Something new… that’s often profitable.

And risky.

Risk and reward are two sides of the same coin, Dee. Mac stared at the planet growing steadily larger in the viewport. Their speed had slowed significantly now, but the mostly-white orb now filled almost half of the meter-wide aperture. How long until we establish orbit, on current course and speed?

Seventeen point four minutes, the AI replied.

Maybe prudence is the better part of valor in this case. Plot an alternative course, once that keeps us out beyond half a million kilometers.

At that range our sensors won’t likely be any more effective than they are now, Dee pointed out.

Still, I’d like to…

Mac didn’t get a chance to elaborate as a shudder passed through the ship. That was followed by a loud alarm that seemed to emanate from the core of the vessel like the cry of a wounded animal. The holo display flickered once then steadied again, though the active columns of data had suddenly frozen. A red light glowed on the panel below it, bathing his face in its light.

For a moment Mac froze. In that instant he was back on the Helios, right after the explosion that had begun the series of events that to this day played out vividly in his nightmares. But that hesitation lasted only a second, and then he was tapping out commands on the panel. Or trying to; the entire control system seemed to be as frozen as the data shown on the display.

Dee! What’s happening?

The drone seemed to be having some difficulty as well. The normally subtle antigrav pulses were flaring around its shell as it drifted around the cabin. Malfunction, malfunction, the drone said, its voice thin and warbly. Multiple system failures.

I can see that much, Mac said. Change course, get us out of here, full burn!

Navigation systems are off line, the drone replied.

What about the overrides?

Also… off line. Sensors, communications… I am showing power… failures… The drone’s voice hissed with static.

Mac looked up at the sole source of information left to him, the open port directly ahead. The planet looked ominously larger than it had been just seconds before, but he knew that was just a sensory illusion born of the crisis. Manual… I’ll have to hit the manuals…

He started to get up, but was interrupted by Dee. Gravity systems failing… main engine safeties are engaging… acceleration force impending!

The warning came even as Mac recognized the sound of the engines shutting down, the strained whine nothing like the usual muted sensation of building acceleration. The emergency restraints activated, thankfully, erupting out from around the edges of the chair to enfold his body in a web of padded fibers. They had barely closed when his body jerked roughly forward. The safeties were designed to stop the engines in case of a failure of the ship’s grav array in order to keep a devastating amount of acceleration from tearing the ship and everything in it apart. The system worked, but even so it felt to Mac as though there was a building pushing on him from behind, slamming him against the restraints so hard that he felt like they would carve his body into pieces. In that first impact he felt almost as though his head would be torn from his neck by that inexorable force. His breath was crushed out of his lungs, and he could feel his head start to swim as the g-forces kept the blood from flowing to his brain.

He could only withstand a few seconds of that before he blacked out.

* * *

He woke to a persistent low buzzing. The pressure that had knocked him out was gone, though his body still felt like he’d been the target drone in a martial arts competition. He sucked in a deep breath and realized that instead of falling back into the chair he was still pressed up against the straps. It took his confused mind a moment to realize the significance of that.

He hit the release on the restraints and floated up into the air. With the grav systems down, and acceleration gone when the engines cut out, he was weightless. The holo display had flickered out, and while the emergency lights had come on the control panel was dark, the red alarm indicator now black. Through the viewport he saw that the planet now filled the opening; they’d come a lot closer in the time that he’d been out.

Dee? Dee!

He looked around for the drone, floating forward past the forward control station. A faint warble drew his attention to the space between the engineer’s station and the starboard bulkhead, and he pushed off that way to find the drone floating near the floor by the corner of the cabin.

Dee?

The drone’s metal skin felt cold. For a moment Mac thought it was deactivated, but then a faint voice shuddered from within. Primary system failure, it said. I am running on my auxiliary processor, but that system is failing as well. I estimate that I have… undefined minutes before complete failure.

Let me get you down to engineering, he said.

No time. Course and speed have been altered by an outside force.

Were we hit with a gravitic weapon?

Insufficient data. But there is a more immediate problem.

Mac looked up and realized what the AI meant. The planet looked almost placid in the viewport, but even without the telemetry data from the ship’s navigation array his experienced eyes could make sense out of the subtle clues that he was seeing.

We’re coming in too steep, he said. We’re going hit the atmo like a belly flop. He looked down at the drone in his hands. What still works?

Main engines and thruster control are down, the drone said.

Can we vent some air, use that to change our attitude?

Atmospheric systems and external ports are off line.

Manual overrides, Mac said. He started toward the cabin door, but the drone interrupted him with another beep. Pilot station, it said.

Right, right, Mac said, shaking his head to clear the lingering cobwebs.

It was a bit tricky navigating through the interior space with the drone in one hand, but Mac moved with the easy familiarity of one who had spent hundreds of hours in zero-g. He floated back over the empty control stations to the front of the compartment, almost directly under the slanted viewport that showed the mass of white and green that promised a fast-approaching doom. The pilot’s station was there, left empty almost since he’d started flying the freighter a little more than four years ago. The name was almost redundant, as he could control the ship from any of the four control stations crowded into the space of the command deck.

Or at least he could have done so under normal conditions.

The pilot’s station was separated from the others by a long protruding bulkhead that offered no obstacle in the null gravity. Mac floated over it and grabbed onto the back of the pilot’s chair with his free hand, using it to lever his body down into the seat. He reached over and flicked the latches on the access port built into the bulkhead. It popped open to reveal an array of heavy control mechanisms that looked nothing like the elegant displays on the main panels. The big metal handles had an industrial look to them, legacies of a past era when technology was substantial and required effort.

Hang in there, Dee, he said, manipulating the drone into the space between the chair and the access door so he could get settled. He got a chirp in response, but couldn’t tell if that was encouragement or a last gasp from a failing system. He quickly fastened the seat straps to hold himself in place then turned the chair toward the override controls. Even though he’d never had cause to use them, not on this ship, he had no difficulty in sorting everything out.

Taking a deep breath to steady himself, he took hold of the manual thruster control and pulled hard to engage the mechanism. There was a growl from below the deck plates, but nothing more. Mac felt a cold pressure in his gut; whatever the anomaly had done to his ship had apparently also frozen the manual overrides. And without them he and the ship were as good as dead.

As if in response to that cynical thought, the ship bucked underneath him. That wasn’t an internal failure, but the first announcement of what would soon become a fiery descent. The initial shock was followed by more, a shaking that slowly built into a rumbling noise. Gravity took hold again, the pressure of his body increasing until it pressed hard against the straps holding him to the chair. Flashes of light started to glow around the viewport as the ship dove head-first into the atmosphere.

Fordham… came a faint voice, so weak that he almost didn’t hear it over the sounds of the struggling ship. Mac leaned over and recovered the drone. He held it up so that his ear was almost touching its surface. Dee? he asked.

Fordham… Drive… the drone repeated.

Mac shook his head. We can’t fold so close to a planetary body, let alone in atmosphere. Thought it might be preferable to this slow destruction, he thought.

Don’t fold… just… activate drive.

Mac didn’t stop to think, the vision of the blazing planet in the viewport looming large in his mind. He shifted the seat back so he could access the override controls for the Fordham Drive, activated the switches that would send power to the fold coils. He couldn’t see how that would work, not with every other powered system on the ship failing so suddenly and so spectacularly, but he trusted the AI to understand what he did not. And there was a response, a soft shuddering that he felt even over the increasingly violent bucking of the ship against the planet’s atmosphere. His shoulders were sore now from the jolts against the chair’s restraints, but Mac accepted that pressure with relief as he gripped the thruster control knob with his right hand.

The ship was sluggish, resisting his efforts, but at least he had some control. He could feel the ship turning, could feel it even without the all but useless viewport, now filled only with a bright nimbus of fire. But that glow softened as the ship’s nose came up, and he was able to steady the approach vector into something close to normal.

The descent seemed to take forever, but it could not have been more than a minute before the rough ride began to soften. They were inside the bubble of the planet’s atmosphere now but still descending rapidly.

Using the thrusters to reorient the ship, Mac brought the nose down until he could again see the planet below. Or at least, he could see glimpses of it. Heavy clouds obscured the screen. Without sensors, lacking even a basic altimeter, he had to hope that he wasn’t flying directly at a mountainside. Whatever force had directed his ship had apparently pointed him at the temperate belt that circled the planet rather than the generous poles. He fired short pulses of the thrusters to slow the ship. The control module hadn’t been built for aerodynamic flight, but the extended wings that were designed to embrace the freighter’s cargo modules granted some degree of lift. With the main engines and sensors working it would have been trivial to find a place for a safe landing, but as it was it was all he could do to keep his descent on a level and reasonable trajectory.

And then, so suddenly that it took him a moment to recover, he burst from the cloud cover and the planet’s surface spilled out below him.

There wasn’t much to see, just a landscape of forests and mountains that looked decidedly unwelcoming. Everything was either green or white or some combination of the two. He didn’t immediately see anything that looked like civilization, or even an indicator of intelligent life. What he did see was that he was losing altitude swiftly. He estimated that he had barely thirty seconds of flight left before his ship touched down.

He touched the thrusters lightly, guiding him onto a course that would take him by a snow-cropped peak. He cleared its almost sheer shoulder by a scant few kiloms. As soon as he was past it the forest resumed. More clouds loomed low in the sky ahead, though it looked like he would come in underneath them.

He was looking for something that looked even remotely flat and open when his eyes flicked on something. Leaning forward as much as the restraints on the pilot chair allowed, he focused on a spot on the viewport. It might have been a smear on the duraplas, but it might have been a rising column of smoke.

He’d hit the thruster controls almost before he registered the thought. Unfortunately it was clear that his current rate and angle of descent would take him well past the place where the smoke—if that’s what it was—originated.

But he didn’t have more time to think about it. He was losing altitude too quickly. The thrusters alone didn’t have enough power to land the ship, and he had to hope that there was enough fuel left after the maneuvers he’d already conducted to guide it to somewhere he could put it down safely. He was descending into a valley dozens of kiloms across, but ahead he could see that the ground rose sharply until it crested in a ridge that he would not be able to clear. It was here or nowhere, but all he could see was a vast green carpet, undulating with the ebb and flow of the land beneath.

There! Again the thrusters fired without conscious thought, his hand tight on the control. The ship veered sharply, and it took Mac a moment before he could compensate and bring it back to level. The move cost him even more precious altitude, the tops of the trees almost close enough to brush the bottom of the ship. The thicker air here was fighting him more, and he could feel the added gravity pulling the ship down.

His target was a winding gap he’d spotted in the dense forest. It opened beneath him and he caught a brief glimpse of stark blue before the angle of the viewport reverted to the brown and green of the surrounding forest. By instinct his hand twisted the thruster control to full open. He was pushed against the seat restraints as the forward jets bit hard, cutting his speed as much as the straining mechanisms could manage. But at the same time the ship seemed to drop out under him, and he stifled a reflexive scream at the sensation of uncontrolled falling. But he would not have had time to scream anyway as the ship impacted the ground a fraction of a second later. The world seemed to tear apart from the sheer force of the impact. A pain exploded in his right wrist, but even as that sharp wedge penetrated through the haze of his senses it was overwhelmed by a terrible crashing wave that proved finally too much for his battered body to absorb. His last conscious thought was, I’ll never collect the insurance on this bucket, and then the black enfolded him.

* * * * *

Chapter 2

Lessa crouched low and leaned forward under the low-hanging branches of the fur-oak, careful not to let her soft boots crunch the crust of ice that lay atop the fresh snow. The scoop of her sling was cupped in her hand, the solidity of the rock reassuring through the thin leather.

The air was cold and fresh. She slid forward slowly, raising her other hand to slowly brush back the dangling tendrils of the fur-oak.

The scooter was there, not ten meters distant. It was scampering merrily over the ice, its broad paws letting it maneuver easily atop the snow without breaking through the crust. Its head probed left and right as it looked for shoots of growth sticking up out from the snow. It was facing mostly away from her. From that angle it presented mostly the leathery spread of its body, the armored bulk of its back-plate draped protectively over its limbs. She knew from experience that her sling stone would only have an effect if she struck a leg or its head.

She twisted her wrist and let the scoop of her sling drop until it dangled from her hand with the stone a scant inch above the snow. Another flick and it would begin its rapid spinning. The tree provided some obstruction, but its cover had allowed her to get this close. Scooters tended to be nervous and careful. They had reason, out here beyond the Rim. She had reason too, which was why she carefully scanned her surroundings before she took a slight step forward, letting the limb of the tree rest lightly on her shoulder. The scooter still hadn’t detected her. Its perambulations would bring its head around eventually, and when it did she would launch her stone. In anticipation she began to spin it, picking up speed slowly so as not to alert her prey.

But before the scooter could turn around a noise shook the snowy hillside. It started as a faint rumbling in the sky but grew louder very quickly. She glanced up reflexively, only to curse as she saw the scooter vanishing into the undergrowth further down the slope. Half a cycle’s stalk wasted.

But any worry about the missed chance faded quickly as the rumbling continued to build in intensity. She started running, not down the hill after the scooter but up, toward the sharp crest that reached its summit about fifty meters behind her former shelter. She ran easily despite the snow, her long legs almost flying under her. She recaptured her sling and held it ready, not forgetting the dangers of the forest above the Rim despite the urgency.

It only took her a few moments to reach the summit of the hill. By then it sounded almost like the rumbling was directly over her head. She broke out into the open air in time to see something streak past in the sky above. It looked small but that was only because it was far away, farther than she could have managed to reach with even her best cast. It was coming down out of the sky with great speed, but thankfully not toward her or toward the Refuge.

A meteor! she thought, but that belief lasted only a second. Her eyes widened in surprise as the descending shape suddenly turned, banking hard and slowing noticeably before falling into a new course.

A ship, she thought with amazement, staring at it. But it only remained in view for a heartbeat longer, dropping out of sight beyond the trees to the north. Its disappearance was followed almost instantly by a fresh wave of sound, a violent concussion of impact. It seemed like the ground should have shook from that shock, but no, that was only an illusion. She stood there and stared as the reverberations faded. Smoke rose up over the trees in the distance, a thin cloud that was quickly caught up by the wind and dissipated. Using the techniques trained by her father she mentally assembled a map. The river, it must have crashed by the river, she thought. Close to Bear territory, a sharp voice echoed in her mind. It sounded a lot like Kayla, that warning whisper.

The whisper was offering sense, common sense. She shouldn’t be out this far at all, technically, but hunting beyond the Rim was one thing, this unexpected arrival something else entirely. You almost had to go beyond the Rim to do any hunting, as the Aura kept most creatures well clear of the Refuge, just about everything save for bugs and the stupid mudporks that the villagers raised in their pens all around the settlement. She knew what she should do. She should head back at once, find Kayla, and report to the Magistrate what she had seen. Take her punishment. The way that Father had.

But by the time that her thoughts had finished their course along that path Lessa was already moving, heading down the far side of the hill at a steady lope. Not back toward the Refuge, but forward in the direction where the strange ship had fallen from the sky and crashed. Nothing like this had happened in her lifetime. As far as she knew, the only event like this since the Founding had been the arrival of the Bears, but that had been more than forty years ago, almost before Father had been born.

Now Father was gone. But she was his daughter, gifted with his wanderlust and his desire to know. She had his training, and while she had shared that with Kayla, born three years the elder, she had been the one who had taken her studies beyond those lessons, claimed hunts beyond the Rim when much older men never left the Refuge. Many spent their entire lives huddled under the protection of the Aura, spent their lives hiding when a great big world existed beyond the boundaries of their little settlement.

There was another reason she was going forward rather than back, of course. There was no way that the Magistrate would have let her accompany the expedition that would no doubt be sent to investigate the appearance of the strange ship. She was both a girl—No, a young woman, she corrected herself—and the daughter of her father. No. She was right there, a direct witness to this unprecedented event, and at the very least she would see for herself before she returned.

She picked up speed again as she neared the bottom of the hill, and she was running again as she started up the next, a slight form darting lightly through the forest. Once within the trees again she couldn’t mark the thinning plume of smoke that marked the crash, but she didn’t need to see it a second time. She was her father’s daughter, and this was her forest. She knew it and it knew her, and no hazards emerged to stop her as she ran quickly through the snowy landscape.

* * *

Cold. Cold greeted Mac as he stirred sluggishly back into consciousness. It was a freezing cold, so deep that it felt like it was trying to burrow into his bones.

He tried to move and found that there was something that went even deeper than the cold: pain. His chest felt like there were loose pieces rattling around inside; broken ribs, the part of his brain that was working suggested. His right arm felt like it was on fire, and he dimly remembered striking his wrist on the override controls in the moment of impact.

He tried to rally, and with a huge effort managed to get both his head up and his eyes open. He was in the ship, still lashed into place in the pilot’s seat, but it took him a moment to make sense of what he saw. The ship was canted forward at an angle. The viewport was empty; he stared at it for a long moment before he realized that the clear duraplas panel was simply gone. That wasn’t the only damage to the hull. There was a broad crack along the bulkhead that ran back along the ceiling behind him to the right. The cold air came in through those openings, accompanied by trickles of icy water. The sight of the water jolted him. He wasn’t wet, not yet, but it was entirely possible that the ship was being flooded even as he sat there.

He got the restraints off, though it took a while with only one working hand. Nothing requiring power worked; no big surprise there. It took him a considerable effort just to push himself fully upright, even leaning against the pilot’s console for support. His body felt unnaturally heavy, though it was likely that part of that was the result of his injuries. He tried to remember the scanner data on the planet’s gravitational field but trying to recover specific facts was like trying to find something tiny buried in a mound of sand. He probably had a concussion on top of everything else, he thought.

Mac started back toward the rear of the compartment and the exit, but hesitated. Turning around, he headed back the way he had come, scanning the floor. The bridge compartment was tilted forward but the water wasn’t gathering, not yet, suggesting that there was a breach into the deck below. But it was slippery, and he had to move with caution lest he lose his footing. He doubted that in his current condition that a jarring impact would be good for him.

He spent several minutes in his search, and was about to give up when he saw a familiar glint behind the navigator’s console. Bending down to recover Dee proved about as difficult as he’d expected, those ribs reminding him that they needed attention.

The drone was inert. Holding it in the crook of his good arm, Mac retraced his steps back to the rear of the compartment. It felt like climbing a mountain. The cold was getting worse, and he noticed that some of the water that dripped through the hull breach had already frozen in an icy sheen over the interior bulkheads. He needed medical attention, but first he needed to protect his body from the cold.

His fingers fumbled on the latch of the locker beside the aft bulkhead. He was about to give it up when the panel finally popped open. It jarred his battered hand and he let out a ferocious curse. As if in response the ship creaked alarmingly underneath him.

I have to keep moving, he thought. If I stop I’m dead.

The coat was where he’d stashed it. He’d put it there shortly after he’d signed the contract to run freight for Transverse Shipment. How long ago? He started to count up the months before he realized that his mind was drifting. The coat had been in the locker ever since. He hadn’t even looked at it, but he hadn’t forgotten it was there, not even for a moment. He reached out and fingered the League insignia worked into the material. He imagined it looked faded, though that was probably just an effect of the bad light. The coat would probably last longer than he would.

The heavy fabric resisted him a bit, and it took another brief stab of agony to get his damaged hand through the sleeve. The thermals didn’t work, of course, but he gave the embedded control a few quick flicks just in case. But the duraplas weave was tough, and it was both warm and rigid enough to offer some support for his sore ribs. When he closed the seals on the front of the coat he felt much better.

He almost closed the locker but hesitated again. It doesn’t matter, he thought. Not going to work any better than anything else in this crate. But after a long pause he reached into the back of the locker and drew out the belt.

Even without touching the weapon itself its weight was familiar. It was a bit dated, the gun. The blaster was an Andres Foundry IV Series, the power unit making the grip sticking out from the holster fat and bulky. It was a bit awkward buckling it on, but once he shifted Dee into one of the spacious pockets of the coat he was able to manage it.

He’d just gotten the belt settled when he heard a sound from the aft corridor. It wasn’t like the continuing decompressions of the settling ship, but a more imminent rattling, as if someone had gotten inside and was searching through the compartments on the habitation deck.

Or maybe one of the supply bins in the galley toppled over, Mac thought, but his hand had drifted by reflex to the grip of his blaster, and he’d started to draw it before his conscious mind caught up to the instinct. He checked the tiny power display window in the side of the charge chamber, only to confirm that his original suspicions were confirmed; the weapon was dead. Angry at himself he shoved the useless blaster back into its holster. If nothing else he could use it as a club, he thought.

He listened for a few moments but the sounds weren’t repeated. He started back toward the rear of the ship. The stairs were difficult, altered by the tilt of the ship into a row of beveled teeth. The corridor was mostly dark, but he could see a glow at the end that suggested another hull breach aft. He could hear the gurgle of running water. If he’d landed in the river, it could be that the entire ship was flooding and at any moment icy water could begin rising at his feet. There was a slight fog in the air. That was easily explained. The ship had come in hot, and while cold was winning the battle of temperatures it