Arrival by Ryk Brown Read Free Book Online Page A

continued to drag them down.
    The shaking was becoming unbearable. Even with the comm-sets, they had to yell to be heard over the intense rumbling of the plasma wake streaming past them outside.
    “Jack! We’re still losing altitude! Even with the OMS pods burning!” Frank told him.
    Damn! Jack thought. There has got to be a way out of this! His mind ran through all possible options. “Frank? How much more of this do you think she can take?”
    The question caught Frank off guard. Jack knew as much about the Icarus and her tolerances as Frank did. “If we can hold this altitude? Maybe ten minutes, twelve tops.” It was a conservative estimate, and he was sure that Jack knew it. “I’ll tell you one thing,” Frank added. “If we go much deeper, we’ll fry for sure.”
    Jack searched his mind desperately, looking for some way out. But he kept coming back to only one option. “Spin up the reactor, Frank,” Jack ordered calmly. “Full power.”
    Frank wasn’t sure what to say. He really wanted to caution Jack against bringing the reactor into play while the ship was being tossed about so violently. Anti-matter was a difficult thing to contain, even under the best of circumstances. A breach in the electromagnetic containment field would end their worries once and for all, wiping all evidence of their ship out of existence. But Jack surely knew what he was doing, didn’t he? Had they thrown this same scenario at him in simulation runs? Still, despite his preaching about timing to Lynn only a few hours earlier, he felt compelled to remind Jack about the risk. “Uh, Jack?” he asked meekly.
    Jack didn’t even let him speak, he already knew what was on Frank’s mind. It was on his mind as well. “I know,” he responded as he continued to punch numbers into the navigation computer. “I know.”
    “Reactor coming up,” Frank answered back, trying to hide the uncertainty in his voice.
    Lynn said nothing. This time she had no idea what to do except try to maintain some degree of control as the ship plunged through the thickening atmosphere.
    “Bring the main drive online,” Jack added. He looked over at Lynn. “We’ll have to blast our way out of this, Lynn.”
    Lynn silently nodded agreement. Either she understood the situation better than Jack had expected, or she was too scared to object. At the moment, it didn’t matter.
    “Reactor at one hundred percent, mains are online,” Frank reported.
    “Let’s do it,” Jack ordered. “Light’em at twenty-five percent.”
    Frank set the main engines as instructed, braced himself, and gently depressed the main engine start button. “Firing mains.”
                    
    The main engines at the tail of the Icarus lit up in a brilliant yellow-white flash, their exhaust nozzles squeezing into a tight cone to increase their thrust. The main drive of the Icarus was quite powerful. Usually, it was not lit at more than ten percent, the sudden acceleration considered unsafe for human occupants. But their situation was desperate.
                    
    The force of the main engines pushed them all against their seats, although not as much as they would have expected. The atmosphere was fighting the ship’s efforts to accelerate, the friction of the balloots working against them. “Mains at twenty-five percent!” Lynn reported as she struggled to regain the air that had just been knocked out of her lungs. “Speed still dropping!”
    “Bring them up to fifty percent!” Jack ordered.
    She slowly pushed the main throttles forward until the display read fifty percent. The increased thrust pushed everyone back deeper into their seats, and the shaking grew even more violent. “Mains at fifty.” She again watched the display. “Speed holding steady!”
    “Seventy-five percent!” Jack ordered.
    Lynn moved the throttle up a quarter more. “It’s working!” she announced. “Speed increasing! Slowly, but it’s going up!”
    It’s working