the wrist-thin hoses of the little emergency hand pump system directly into the sealed tanks. By the time the tanks are full, we all smell like aviation fuel, even the XO.
“So, the bird is full,” Commander Campbell declares when we gather in the mess hall again. “We’ll be going down to see what’s going on at Willoughby City. I’d rather not take everyone along for this, just in case we run into trouble.”
“No argument,” Mister Hayward says. “We’re not military. We’d just be baggage to you guys.”
“I suggest we go light,” Halley says. “I’ve never flown this thing with atmo fuel in it, so I have no idea how much she’ll lift, anyway.”
“What if you run into trouble, sir?” Corporal Schaefer asks. “You may want some rifles on the ground when you get there.”
Commander Campbell shakes his head.
“Not likely, Corporal. Let’s be realistic--if that colony’s gone, the bad guys have more firepower than we can handle, and the four of you aren’t going to make any difference. I’d rather be able to make a quick exit without having to worry about getting your guys down safely, too.”
“Understood, sir,” the corporal says.
“Lieutenant Adams, you’re in charge while I’m gone. If we lose comms, and we’re not back in twelve hours at the most, you are to stay holed up and wait for the rescue ship to arrive, is that clear?”
“Aye-aye, sir,” the lieutenant replies. “Stay put and wait for the cavalry.”
“Corporal Schaefer, you and your men will unload the drop ship’s armory and supply lockers while Ensign Halley does her preflight. Just leave us three rifles and a launcher, in case we end up having to put down in the boonies. I don’t want all that hardware going to waste if they blot us out of the sky.”
“Copy that, sir. We’ll get right on it.”
“Very well.” The commander claps his hands again. “Let’s get this show on the road, people.”
“Here we go again,” Halley says as we strap into our seats in the cockpit once again. The engines are warming up, but their drone sounds different now, lower and rougher than before.
“Make sure those straps are tight,” she advises. “If we have to bail out, you don’t want to slip out of your harness on eject.”
“That would be bad,” I agree. “Now would you stop talking about ejecting out of this thing? I’m not too keen on adding a parachute ride to my list of new experiences today.”
“Oh, those are kind of fun,” Halley says. “In a white-knuckled terror sort of way.”
I watch as she goes through her pre-flight checklists, at a more leisurely pace than back in the Versailles’ hangar a few hours ago.
“Okay, board’s green. We’re looking good. Are you strapped in back there, Commander?”
“That’s affirmative,” the XO replies over the intercom. “Take us up whenever you’re ready.”
Halley seizes her throttle and stick, and a few moments later, we are hovering above the landing pad. She waggles the tail of the ship left and right cautiously to test the control surfaces. Once again, I am amazed at how agile such a huge, ugly machine can be.
“Here we go,” she says, and increases thrust. “Stinger Six-Two is back in business.”
Soon, we are once again cruising twenty thousand feet above the rocky surface of the peninsula.
“Give me the bearing for the settlement again,” Halley says. I check the satellite map on the admin deck.
“Willoughby City is at bearing one-seven-niner from the terraforming station, distance two-eight-two-one nautical miles.”
“Give me the coordinates, please.”
I read off the satellite coordinates, and she plugs them into her navigation console.
“There. Now the computer in this bird knows where we’re headed. Makes me feel a little better about going back into that.”
She points at the windshield, and the huge storm cell that’s blanketing the continent ahead.
Without the ability to go into space, the drop ship is merely a huge, inefficient aircraft. Halley is not happy with the way the ship behaves with the inferior fuel in its tanks.
“This thing feels like someone put in a governor,” she says when we are crossing the mountain range mentioned by Mr. Hayward earlier. “I’m having trouble just getting up to twenty thousand feet, and I’m getting four hundred knots airspeed. We should be almost twice as fast.”
“Better than walking, though,” I say.
“Barely. I feel like I’m transporting a hold full of rocks.”
On the way to the central settlement, Halley picks up more emergency locator beacons from stranded escape pods. By now, we’re back above severe weather, and even though Halley broadcasts