"Hah, and you believe also in Lady Quaramundi."
"Sorry, I have no idea about your lady."
"Never mind", she waved it away. "Now what about me and the others there?"
"You mean there", he pointed to the hatch. "Yes, 32 slaves like you. I wish I could do something. But we have no fuel. We have to land on this planet to get refuelled. I think I can hide you. But you see the cabin space, you", he trailed off.
"Now that this hideous huge beast fills your cabin", she took a deep breath. "But, yes, I see. I do not want to end up on this planet."
"Don't feel bad, it is me who is responsible. I am happy if I can save at least you from slavery. And then let's go the Fallerian and to freedom."
"I can't go home and face my parents like this."
"You can sue whoever did this to you. I mean this was illegal, no matter what was written in the contract. Serious modding of humans is forbidden on most human worlds, I heard. Maybe they can be ordered to reverse it. And then search for your home world and go back. "
"Thank you. But how a poor peasant girl like me could get justice?"
"Well, next jump is Fallerian. I’m from there, I can help you there for sure." His shoulders sagged. "But first I have to deliver the others to the planets safely. Are you hungry?"
She nodded.
He sighed, took the next to last 'complete meal' out of the drawer and poured the water on it. "Here, that is all we have."
He ate a cup-soup to calm his empty stomach while she wolfed down the instant meal.
"I will be in the cockpit." He pointed to the ladder.
With their new approach vector, their reentry would be easier, the simulations had much larger margins for success. Now, he could address such things as avoiding the maser beams from the energy harvesting satellites. After another half a day it looked quite good, now 8 of 10 touchdowns were successful and none had ended in a crater. Two had ended prematurely, fried by the maser beam during decent, and the rest in hard touchdowns, damaging the ship too much to take off again. But alive. He became confident that he would be alive tomorrow evening.
"Pilot", came it from downstair, harried.
He was immediately down.
"Sorry, I forgot your name. I really need to go."
"It's Marik Llanadroß", he replied on automatic. "Err, I mean where is your", he stammered.
She blushed as well. "Back there."
He was looking at the door to the toilet/shower unit. No way to fit her backside into it. "Well, the 0 g toilet has an extendable vacuum hose. But it is quite short. So I would need to, err, hold it to your, err." He blushed hard.
She cursed. He shrunk together. "Not your doing", she sighed. "What should I do?"
Turning around in the small cabin was difficult. In the end, he ordered 0 g and she could float her backside right up to the shower/toilet unit's door. He held the hose to her privates and switched the suction on. It worked relatively well. But taking a dump, he shivered. Given her size, it would likely clog the hose. Well, not a concern this time.
He put the hose back, vacuumed his hands dry as well, and when the deceleration came up again, washed them properly. Still, a slight stench of urine lingered, as it always did from using the 0 g toilet.
They both avoided eye contact for a few moments. But it was futile, given the close quarters.
"Thank you", she finally uttered, looking at him. "This is so embarrassing. Sorry, for bothering you."
"Don't worry, I am happy to have rescued at least you from slavery." He yawned. "How about a soup?"
Soon he was sitting at the table and she bent her torso to face him. The cup seemed tiny in her hands. And it was not even enough for him, so he prepared another two. And a third for her. At this rate, even the soups would not last until Fallerian.
He yawned again. Today's excitement had taken a toll on him, not to forget the 4D microjumps and the final excitement. He dimmed the light and went into his cabin capsule, deliberately keeping the door hatch open.
* * *
It was already 4200, when he awoke, more than a third of the day had passed. "Blackbeard, status!"
"No issues, deceleration 0.13 g, reentry in about 2500 with a delta v of less than 0.87 of the escape velocity."
Great, so absolutely no risk of skipping the atmosphere and then bouncing off into infinity again.
He climbed out of his cabin capsule.
"Good Morning!" The former slave Lalleli looked at him expectantly.
"Good Morning, I guess you are hungry?"
She nodded.
He switched on the water boiler and went for the toilet. When he was finished, her look told him, she needed to go as well. 0 g, and the same procedure as yesterday. And then cleaning his hands and his face. At 0 g she could turn floating, and she washed her face as well, while the soup cooled down enough to be eaten.
Another four soups for her and two for him. They would definitely need provisions from the planet.
She started to open up about her previous life. Her parent were farm helpers on a relatively new colony planet, ok, settled 200 years ago or so. Still old enough to divide their society between landowners and the rest. Her parents were in the latter group. By their planet's laws, it meant they could not marry officially. Thus, she was born out of wedlock, which meant she was farm property, like her parents. That farm had a population like a village or so, with hundreds of helpers in the same situation. Even given his meagre knowledge of the state of affairs on the planets below the stations that he had visited, such a kind of inherited slavery was not so uncommon for the galaxy.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
By now the soups were empty. "I am sorry, I would like to hear more. But I really need to prepare for the landing. I have overslept."
"Sorry, yes, please."
"I am happy to hear the rest later." And with this, he climbed to the cockpit.
"Blackbeard, were there any messages while I had been asleep?"
"Yes, to confirm the approximate arrival time, which I did. And you will get some local food."
"Blackbeard, thank you."
"You can probably talk to them soon. They will switch on the guidance and the full station equipment in 1581."
"Blackbeard, thanks too."
He was still thinking about their freight manifest which missed now one slave. He was quite sure that the encryption on that was unbreakable for him. And then there was the rack in the hold which had 33 compartments and was outfitted for that number. So the best course was probably to feign ignorance. The lock on the cargo hatch would certainly help his case.
"Blackbeard, you did not report the guest in the cabin?"
"No, no action was taken so far."
"Is the cargo manifest for the outgoing leg already closed?"
"No, the manifest is still open until takeoff since we will get cargo from the planet too."
"Blackbeard, add a passenger to our route to Fallerian. Name is Lalleli."
"Added."
He did another five simulations, and all of them ended with a soft enough landing. By now, he was confident enough that he could spot a dangerous course deviation and could correct it. He believed Blackbeard that the AI had landed on it own before. However, after the near misses during the microjumps, he was not sure if this wasn't before whatever mods the AI had installed for its pleasure.
When he went down the ladder, Lalleli immediately woke from dozing, lifting her head from the table. "Sorry, I"
"Don't worry. We will be landing soon, and there will be quite some forces. So."
"I had thought about this already. Here, I push my lower body under the table." She did so, and it barely fit. The table groaned and was visually bent upwards. Hopefully, only elastic deformation.
"Indeed, most of the forces would be now on your, er, behind. But there could be also some shaking in this direction."
"I can put my shoulders under the bench." The bench also squeaked a little when she pushed it up with force but kept its shape.
"Ok", he said. But his voice betrayed his doubts. "I will just go for the bathroom and then I will be up until we have landed."
* * *
The planet was overdue. Finally, they answered, only 0040 before the reentry blackout. Any decent planet would have some guided laser communication satellite but this backwater world had nothing. Not even a relay satellite, something he could cobble together in this workshop. And thus, there would be two blackouts, first the station disappearing behind on the planet's other side and a real blackout, like during a jump but this time engulfed in a superheated atmosphere becoming a conducting plasma that would shorten out any electromagnetic waves. And even after that, they would be out of range of the single reception station. It felt medieval.
There were three people visible on the screen, the speaker and two in the background. At least the two in the background had similar bodies to Lalleli.
"Hello, I am receiving your data and visuals. I am Marik, Pilot. The reentry is a little tricky with the maser beams and the thin atmosphere. So we will have a long blackout. For more bandwidth, I will switch off the image feed." Also, their image vanished immediately. "And then, your atmosphere is not viable for me."
"Yes, we know. Will still take some centuries for full humans."
"So I will wear some kind of breathing apparatus. But I am currently not sure how to exit as there is no proper."
"We have the codes for the lock."
"I am not sure if I can move the cargo hold hatch on the planet. That really depends on the centre of gravity after landing. What I say it that we may not be able to meet face to face."
"I see. Well, we will unlock and you find your food with the agreed cargo in. I am uploading the freight manifest."
It was crates of spices. That sounded quite legit, a light cargo with still a high value. Seems like at least the leg to Fallerian would be a nice legal one. But first, they needed to survive this. "We are getting behind the horizon. So expect the next signal at 0620."
"Yes, we will be rea-"
And their station had sunk below the horizon.
The ship slowly rotated to face the atmosphere with its belly, the cockpit windows pointing to the planet for now. The latter was mainly for his sake. After entering, they would rotate again to face the thickening atmosphere with their blunt belly. For now, he saw a mostly rocky world even with some craters and no open water or vegetation. Unless the vegetation here had the same brown colour as the rocks. There were also no clouds apart from two stripes almost going around half the planet. "Blackbeard, are those clouds affiliated with winds?"
"Unknown."
"Please avoid them."
"They are at even higher latitudes, we will never reach them."
Since they still were quite north and stationary satellites had to orbit over the equator, the maser of the first satellite was far south. At the southern horizon, he thought he saw a ring cloud. Maybe this was where the maser hit the planet's atmosphere about the large receiver antennas.
It was just the fifth reentry in his life, and the first not as a passenger. He had never before cared for clouds or winds. He had experienced winds once and, of course, the drafts from circulation. But he had never worried about winds or clouds. But on the other hand, he had never that great of a view. Of course, the commercial vessels which he had boarded before, had lots of ccamera views that one could call up on one's screen. Not the same, this was the real thing, breathtaking. They just crossed the terminator, the night and day line, and the planet became pitch-black, no artificial lights, no lighting, no moon.
Their course took them for one last oscillation south, crossing the equator and passing the maser beam of the second harvesting satellite by only less than 500 kilometres. The planet now filled the entire view, a pitch-black hole where not even stars shone. More nothingness even than space.
Finally, returning back from the most southern oscillation or their orbit, it began to dawn. A fake dawn, a faint green and yellow glow appeared, first at the rims of the windows. They were encountering the first outer traces of the atmosphere. The glow slowly built up in brightness and became more orange as the plasma built up. Now, the cockpit was illuminated like the Cobasian station and a slight deceleration could be felt. The shine became stronger, a Cobasian would need heavy sunglasses by now. He followed the AI's advice and closed the window shutters. The plasma emitted some soft X-rays and the heat might damage the windows. And there was only the orange glow, the conductive plasma shut them off from all optical and radio communication. As soon as the shutters were closed, the AI rotated the belly facing forward for higher drag.
From now on, they relied fully on the ancient technique of inertial navigation, just summing up the forces and distances, using their last known speed and height as the reference point. Like natives did in the sail ships already on the oceans, worlds and aeons ago. Now they had to wait until they had become slow enough and the atmosphere had become dense enough that the plasma could no longer be sustained. Then the atmosphere would become insulating again, no longer shorting out the antennas. The radar would work again and by correlating the surface contours, they would have precise information of height and position even without satellite aid. Although with that many craters, the correlation may take a few moments to find the right patterns.
He really hoped that the AI would not glitch now. At least the diagrams on the screen looked reasonable and correlated with the small forces he felt. His pilot seat swivelled more into a sideward position so that the screens were still in front of him and the forces would be downwards. They had only reached 0.15 g so far.
"All good down there?"
"Yes, no problem." She really sounded fine, he was relieved. There was still some time until the maximum deceleration.