Bastion Saturn by C. Chase Harwood Read Free Book Online Page B

Great, she thought. On top of everything else, I’ve got to worry about radiation exposure. She glanced at the walls around her and spoke to the ship. “You’re old, but you’ve got good shielding, right?”
    She ate while watching a tutorial on the ship’s operation. Caleb had given her a lesson on the flight controls in case he or Monty couldn’t be revived, but there hadn’t been time to practice. She highly doubted that she could land the thing, but just in case, she figured she should at least learn. Nearly every other ship in the system had pilot-thought flight control. Simple. The pilot thought about where he wanted to go and what procedures to use, and the ship pretty much did it, but not this old clunker. It had a rudimentary version of this tool, but still relied on some physical skill and knowledge on the pilot’s part. The program featured a simulator that allowed her to use the actual ship’s controls. She had the simulator replicate the current conditions: fuel, speed, ship size, along with the intended landing zone on Phoebe, then proceeded to crash the ship over and over into the rocky moon’s harsh surface. She grew obsessed with the program, struggling with it for hours until her eyes dried up from lack of blinking and her stomach pleaded for mercy, signaling the back of her head to conjure up a headache as retribution. When the simulator ship crashed for the hundredth time, she yelled out “Son of a bitch!” and flinched at the curse and the sound of her own voice.
    It wasn’t her, it was the fuel. No matter how carefully she finessed the landing, burning the bare minimum for a supposedly sustainable crash landing, the touchdowns were unsustainable. She needed the nonfunctioning harpoon system to work. Otherwise, any attempt to land on Phoebe would mean smashing the ship down hard enough on the surface to kill or critically injure them all. She had almost a week left to think about it. She resolved to meditate and do some light judo exercises. Ostensibly the only one using the remaining oxygen, she hoped the scrubbers would provide her with plenty of it for the work out. Judo in zero G was sort of a ridiculous concept, but she locked her feet to a wall and began with some simple moves. As her confidence built, she shifted into a deeper workout. As she concentrated on the flow of energy through her muscles, thinking about each group firing and reacting to her wishes, a deep satisfaction spread throughout her being. Her mother had been a champion in the octagon. With hopes of a family legacy, she had taught her daughter well. Jennifer had never been a fighter, but she loved the discipline. Loved the joy that the mindfulness brought her.
    When she was finished, a sheen of sweat covered her whole body. She looked at her long lean limbs with both admiration and appreciation. With a tinge of guilt, she took another sponge bath, then, exhausted, turned in.
    She hated sleeping in zero G and glanced at her mates strapped to the walls while slightly envying their state. She tossed and turned for a long time before she slipped into a semidream state and had a nightmare about being blown off Dione, ending up as a spec in the icy dust of Saturn’s rings. Frustrated, she opened her eyes and listened to what was clearly a struggling motor somewhere in the cabin. The sound slowly became her singular focus and began to drive her nuts. She zipped out of the sleep sack determined to find it, her ear to the walls until she got to the galley and felt the counter above the small vibrating refrigerator.
    Great. Now the fridge in its death throes. She rested her hand on the counter and got a flash memory from her childhood. Her father had insisted on using an old-fashioned riding mower. As far as she knew, they were the only family in their whole town that didn’t have either a fake lawn or a genetically modified one that grew to a certain height. Her dad insisted on “good ole American grass,” but he hated mowing