Chapter 23: Shaking Ground — Part 1

Shadow’s anger put a squint to her eyes as she focused on the auxiliary sensors. Her sensors were run on residual battery power that had been siphoned, essentially, from the pulse cannon’s combat batteries. They’d barely gotten ready for a hard landing when some unforeseen outside force ripped through her ship, disabling all the electronics and wiping out her primary batteries, which had not been shielded quite so well as the cannon batteries had been. She’d hardly had time to tear Roxy free of the equipment before the ship’s other computer crystals shattered. She put Roxy into her storage case and dropped that case into her pocket before checking Ferret. Even as the computer memory crystals continued to pop, one by one, Shadow was worried that Ferret might be suffering damage from the resonance blast that had so crippled her ship. If her sensors had not been analog in nature, she would not even have had radar to monitor her descent with. Shadow ignored the sparks and small fires the pulse wave had caused, focused instead on the safety of her crew.

“Are you all right?” Shadow asked of Ferret, Xeti and Didi would be her next concern.

Ferret shrugged off a random electrical discharge. “I’m fine. Even if the distruptive pulse was set on a frequency harmful to my crystal, I’m protected in this body. Roxy should be safe too, especially since you have removed her from the ship’s network. Whoever pulsed us seemed to know exactly what frequencies to avoid.” Ferret rubbed his arm, which twitched painfully from recent contact with sparking electrical current. A last violent burst of electricity pulsed from ceiling to floor, and Ferret avoided it nervously, not wanting to endure another painful interaction.

“They have control of our descent.” Shadow said, trying to sound only half as worried as she actually was. “They own us. ”

Didi calmed everybody’s worries. “I sense psionic interference. They won’t let us crash to pieces.”

“Yeah, but then again, they may imprison us, enslave us, or worse.” Shadow said. “We don’t know them, after all. And I don’t consider being blasted with energy and crippled a friendly gesture.”

Didi and Xeti both remained quiet after that, each hoping for the best, but trusting Shadow’s experience to see them through safely. Several minutes after they entered atmosphere, the Mercy settled onto Antans’s surface. Its front port view, already weakened by the fight with the Ridgeback, shattered, throwing pieces of armored glass both forward onto Antans’s soil, and back into the cockpit. Despite the sharp, two inch thick pieces of partially slagged glass that flew about the cabin, to settle almost lazily to the ground, nobody was seriously injured. Despite this, Shadow knew her battle-worn crew was too stressed, and she decided, as Captain, to confront the enemy alone. She tossed Ferret Roxy’s crystal. “Take care of your future wife while I settle this dispute.”

Ferret nodded holding the crystal carefully so as not accidentally open its case. Shadow headed for the airlock. “There’s a quarantine on this planet. Aren’t you going to wear a suit?” Xeti asked, terrified.

“If there’s an airborne contagion, we were exposed when that window gave way.” She tried calming them when she saw their distress. “There’s human life here. If they live here, they probably are immune. If they are immune, they may be able to make us immune. So worry less.”

Shadow walked back to her room, strapped a sword and dagger to her side. The magnetic pulse had undoubtedly destroyed her blaster, and a pistol would be worthless in such thick fog. But Shadow knew how to use a sword, and she knew she could rely on her hearing to keep others from getting too close, too quickly.

Xeti, sitting in the corner of the cargo bay, spoke to her as she pulled herself out of the shattered port view. “What exactly are you planning to do?” He asked, wanting to help.

“Have a talk with the locals. Injure a few of them, if I have to.” Shadow said this to Xeti as she stood on a catch platform just beneath the port window. She pulled her cape tightly about her shoulders, turning from the others. “Always good to make that important first impression a strong one. I’d have you out there with me, Xeti, but whereas you can hide from the enemy, you can’t sense where they are.”