Chapter 196

196 Ice Queen, Pt Eva sniffled as she laid in her bunk and stared at the wall next to her. Her eyes were red and damp from constant tears.

On her DI was her last conversation with Mack, about her grandparents. Even though it was painful for her to see, she couldn’t help but read it over and over again.

–

Mack: your grandma passed last night... im so sorry

Mack: and i had to check your granddad into the hospital too

Mack: he just kinda shut down and stopped doing stuff – eating, drinking, sleeping

Mack: i think he just gave up... stopped talking to everyone, even me

Mack: i get it tho

Mack: i want to bring the pc into his room so you can call

.....

Mack: but the doctor wont let me

Mack: says it could mess with his machines or someshit

Mack: and i def can’t bring him out to my apartment

Mack: not the way he is

Mack: im sorry

Eva: It’s okay

Eva: Tell him I love the both of them

Eva: Tell him I’ll always be with them, now and forever

–

While Eva wallowed in her sadness, Amal came up and sat on the floor next to her bunk.

“Hey Eva,” she said, “we all know you’re going through a seriously rough time right now. And we want you to know that we don’t have to keep going. We can go back to Helios for a bit, take a break. Give you a little time to mourn properly, you know?”

“It’s fine,” Eva replied. “I’m fine.”

She didn’t even flip over in her bunk to talk, and barely moved. Her voice was a little raspy and certainly more subdued than normal.

This was a kind of depression she had lived with before, and was used to, so she fell into the pattern all too easily.

“We’ve got contracts to fulfil,” she continued, “and I don’t wanna get in the way of that.”

“Seriously, you can’t process what you need to if you’re distracting yourself with work,” said Amal. “You need real time to heal from this.”

“Like I said, it’s fine. I’ll just stick to the bridge and take everyone everywhere for a while. If all I’m doing is flying, then I’ll have time to spend thinking things through. I can zone out behind the wheel, or something like that.”

Amal sighed deeply, then she spun around onto her knees, leaned into Eva’s bunk, and hugged her with all her might.

“Fine,” she said. “You stay on the ship and clear your head a bit while we go gallivant around the galaxy. Try not to bury yourself in the meantime, alright?”

Amal gave one last squeeze, then she got up and left Eva to her darkness. Halfway out the doorway, she turned her head and said one last thing.

“Come by the bridge when you’re ready to go.”

~

It was little over an hour later when Eva found the energy and dragged herself to the bridge. She plopped down into the pilot’s chair and primed the ship’s launch procedures. The others simply watched as she did so.

Amal reached across the throttle and rubbed Eva on her upper arm to comfort her. Then she gave her an encouraging smile.

Claire looked over at Miko to get a read, but all Miko could give her was a shrug. She was the last person to understand these sorts of things, and instead refocused on her own tasks.

In the end Claire decided to ask for herself.

“Everything okay?” Claire asked.

“Not really, no,” Eva answered. “But thanks for looking out anyway.”

She pulled upwards on the yoke gently, which caused the ship’s bottom thrusters to fire off in unison. Together, they lifted the Spirit of Amelia off the landing pad, and further up into the air.

A number of colonists at the settlement they had just visited waved goodbye as their ship rose higher and higher. Then it sped off into the distance, high up into the sky.

“You gonna be okay flying while you’re... you know,” asked Claire.

“Take the ship from A to B, right?” Eva replied. “Should be easy enough, even for me.”

Eva pushed the throttle forward slowly and allowed the ship to speed up to its maximum even as they climbed up higher. At the same time, she pulled back on the yoke and pulled the ship’s nose upwards until they were at a 90 degree angle from the ground.

They were all pressed into their seats as they climbed higher and higher through the atmosphere.

Eva’s heart and mind cleared significantly while she was sitting in the pilot’s chair. To her it was obvious that flying was the only time when all of her burdens seemingly slipped away.

And it was in those precious few moments that she felt truly free of everything that pressed down on her. Even the overbearing weight of loss and death. Especially those.

Once they broke the atmosphere and left the planet’s gravitational pull, Eva pulled back and zeroed out her throttle, which ceased acceleration. The ship now maintained a steady 212 meters per second in space, and all gravitational pressure relented.

She allowed the ship to drift for a few seconds before she applied reverse thrust and slowed Amelia down. Eventually, they came to a smooth standstill, at which point Eva exhaled loudly, and for a long period of time.

For the first time in hours, she felt significantly lighter. And it wasn’t just the zero-g weightlessness talking.

“Who knew takeoff could be so therapeutic?” she said. “Anyway, where to next?”

“I just set the coordinates,” answered Amal, “aaaand, punching it.”

She hit a few buttons on her control dash, and watched as the ship’s navigational intelligence automatically calculated their arrival point and negotiated with the destination’s beacon.

“Teleport Drive engaged,” said the ship, “Please maintain zero velocity and acceleration for a minimum of fifteen seconds, thank you...

After the requisite few seconds, Amelia said, “Teleporting now.”

Space spun around them as the ship flashed in and out of existence. When reality snapped back into place, they were in a whole different quadrant of colonial space.

Below them was a sheer white planet blanketed with ice and snow. Even as high up as they were, they could easily see the multitudes of storm clouds that raced their way across the planet’s sky.

“Planet HDV-502,” said Amal. “Boring name I know.”

“It appears to be right on the fringes of this system’s home star,” chimed in Miko. “Probably why it’s a frozen ball.”

She tapped on her display as she brought up the results of her planetary scan.

“Average 263 degrees kelvin,” she continued. “That is what, -7 celsius? The planet contains close to 11 psi of oxygen.”

“So it’s light, but breathable,” Claire said. “That’s good.”

“We will also be elevated, where the oxygen will appear to be even thinner. Breathing will be difficult for all of us, no matter what. We should not remove our environmental helmets.”

Eva sighed deeply.

“Well, I’m glad to be stuck in the ship for once,” she said. “The cold and I are not friends.”

She turned to Miko with a quizzical look on her face.

“Can Amelia even handle that kind of temperature?” she asked.

“Isn’t space crazy cold in the first place?” asked Claire. “I mean, if ships can handle the frigid vacuum of space, I’d presume they could also handle planets, right?”

Miko half-nodded in response.

“Yes, in a way,” she replied. “All ships can handle vacuum temperatures of very close to 0 kelvin. But that is in an absolute vacuum, with little environmental variables in the way. Down there, it is more than just the temperature that could damage the ship.

“Pressure shifts could warp the structure, ice could block sensors, excessive moisture could freeze and cause coolant lines to fail, and so on.”

“So should we avoid places like this from now on?” asked Amal. “Or should we instead fix up the ship more so she can handle it?”

“It is best if we avoid extremes, yes. But technically we should be able to go anywhere humans can settle. If their ships can make it, so can Amelia.”

“No offense to her,” said Eva, “but she isn’t exactly in the best condition. I mean, sure, we replaced a buncha parts, but not all of ’em. We’ve still got a lot of the old stuff from who knows when. Like the ramp pivot gears – we don’t exactly know if all this ice and cold’s gonna stress it out finally.”

“She will be fine,” said Miko. “Since we had the time, I performed three stress tests just before we left. All systems are working very well. And if anything fails, our repair ingots are topped up to full.”

“To worry is to add another hazard,” the ship piped in.

“Thank you Amelia,” Miko responded.

“Alright, well, hopefully she makes it through landing,” said Eva.

She then pushed her yoke forward and increased the throttle slightly. The entire ship pitched down gently and headed towards the planet. It didn’t take long for them to reach the exosphere, where the planet’s sharp winds began to tug at her.

Although the air surrounding the ship burned up during re-entry, it was far less than on most other planets they had been to. The lighter oxygen worked with the temperature to keep things quite cold.

Even the ship’s nose barely glowed as they descended. The flames of re-entry barely lasted ten seconds as they dipped down into the lower exosphere.

The further down they went, the more the winds whipped at them. The dense, highly chaotic atmosphere battered the Spirit of Amelia with slivers of ice and snow. All of them could feel and hear as the armor was constantly pelted by chunks of frozen rain, sleet, and hail.

Miko sat wide-eyed as her MFDs revealed that Amelia’s armor plates were taking actual damage. It was very slight, mere fractions off its durability, but damage nonetheless.

.....

More than that, it was the choppiest they had ever flown. It took both Eva and Amal to keep the ship steady as they descended. Their yokes shook violently in their hands, but they held on and persevered.

At the same time, Miko poured extra power into their thrusters while Claire kept a very close eye on all sensor readings.

Together, the four of them tamed the ice storm, even as they drew closer to their destination – a wide mountain range covered in pure white snow.

Eva switched a number of her smaller MFDs to reveal multiple live feeds of the outside of the ship. Though it was mostly ice and snow going in all directions, she could just barely see the lights of the settlement halfway up one of the mountains.

She headed for it slowly and steadily in spite of Amelia getting pushed around by the winds, and once they reached the settlement, eased down onto one of the available landing pads. Most others either had ships or piles of snow on it, but a scant few were still mostly serviceable.

Not that they were in great condition. The one they were on had a layer of ice coating it, which cracked and shattered into large chunks when they landed on top of it.

Once the ship had settled down, Amal stood up from the copilot’s seat. She put a hand on Eva’s shoulder and squeezed it to comfort her.

“You stay here and keep Amelia warm,” she said. “We’ll go and see what good we can do out there.”