GENELLAN: PLANETFALL(15)

"Eh..." MacArthur stammered, blushing as he pushed the hood from his wide forehead. "Hardly, sir—er...I mean, you're welcome, sir. No disrespect intended." He shot Chastain a withering glare, his fine features revealing determination more than anger.

"You can't be denying your fame, Lieutenant," interrupted the sergeant-major, a chesty, square-jawed, broken-veined space veteran. "Sergeant-Major Shannon, sir."

"My pleasure, Sergeant-Major," she said, turning to meet the newcomer. "I've seen you around the mothership. Sorry we didn't get introduced earlier, but we've been busy." Buccari put out her hand. Shannon enveloped it.

"I would agree, sir," Shannon said. "Very busy."

"You were evidently caught on board by accident?" she asked. "Yes, sir," the sergeant said. "I was inspecting MacArthur' s squad when GQ sounded. Just my luck."

"I hope your luck gets better, Sergeant-Major."





Chapter 5





On the Ground


Buccari moved into the lander bay and found Boatswain Jones, slickly burly in his silver pressure suit, floating at the EPL hatch. "All strapped in. All injection units checking good," he told her.

"Let's hustle," Buccari said, "before they get claustrophobic." She made final adjustments to her pressure suit and then dove into the open lander hatch. With practiced agility, she moved forward in the craft, pulling herself into the single pilot station. Positioned in the acceleration seat, she donned her helmet, connected harness and comm fittings, and commenced pre-flight checkout of the Endoatmospheric Planetary Lander—the apple.

"Compute! Systems status—initiate," she barked. "Pilot Buccari."

Ladder lights on the power console sequenced and the EPL's control computer replied with a machine-generated voice: "Pilot Buccari. Control authorizations check. Pilot has command."

"Launch sequence," she ordered, adjusting to the snug cockpit.

"All systems checking good, sir," Jones reported from his station.

"Boats, I'd be surprised if they didn't," Buccari acknowledged. They ran through prestart and start checklists. The lander was in good order; the injection systems displayed green lights. Buccari felt anxious for the Marines stuffed into their penetrator casings—human artillery shells.

"Stand by to jettison EPL!" Buccari announced.

"Apple cleared to launch," Hudson responded. "Report clear. Rendezvous will be launch plus ninety-three. One orbit. Control set to button four. You copy?"

"Roger, launch plus ninety-three; button four. EPL retros in two minutes. Counting down." Buccari settled into the pilot's seat, anticipating the launch of the lander, to separating from the larger corvette, which was itself launched from a mothership—a spawn from a spawn, each with diminishing purposes, powers, and ranges. But this was her ship. She was pilot.

To starboard the bay doors yawned smoothly open; an overwhelming blackness crept through the widening aperture. Buccari cut the lights in the cockpit, cursing herself for waiting to start night vision adaptation. Red light bathed the cockpit, and a constellation of reflections fell back at her from the umbrella of the canopy. She palmed down the intensity. The white brilliance of genuine stars blossomed.

Vibration hummed through metal; the lander moved outboard, pushed by a spidery gantry crane, until it was clear of the confined bay. Ahead were the first signs of sunrise, a perfect red-gold arc starkly defining the limb of the ebony planet, silhouetting it against the utter blackness of space. Buccari released the attachment fitting, fired a micro-pulse on the port maneuvering rockets to initiate a separation rate, and reported "Clear." At the correct moment she rolled the lander on its back and commenced retrofire, falling toward the dark pre-dawn. The corvette, glinting in the rising sun, retreated on its orbital trajectory and disappeared into black infinity. The flowering sun-star, Rex-Kaliph, climbed rapidly over the planet's limb—a harsh, glaring blossom of light.

During the helpless waiting and hard chopping turbulence of reentry Buccari considered her drop target. The granite-topped plateau chosen for the landing site was located in the interior of the largest of the planet's four continents. Curving around the plateau was a major river, providing excellent navigational references. A spectacular chain of mountains to the west was a concern; radar returns indicated peaks in excess of eight thousand meters— geological giants. The mountains were ominous, but radar returns also showed the expansive plateau to be hard and flat—an ideal landing site. Hudson had discovered the plateau and unromantically christened it "Landing Site Alpha." Everyone else called it Hudson's Plateau.