Prologue

February 6, 1971

Apollo 14

Vicinity Fra Mauro Base, Lunar surface

The sky was a dark, pitch black expanse stretching from gray horizon to gray horizon. The tiny stars sprinkled across the vastness lent no illumination, but offered plenty of mystery to the eyes that gazed upon them. Against the terrain that looked like one would see on a pale rocky beach that stretched beyond sight, moved two tiny figures swathed in bulky white. Their ridged foot prints detailed their course across the undulating, silty terrain, their progress performed with lurching jumps against the incredibly light gravity.

Far behind them, a lone structure stood out from the moon's pale face as a tiny white glimmer. The black and silver of the lunar lander Antares stood as only a few human structures did on the moon. Rare and out of place, it was a tiny life-line to the small blue marble lifting over the horizon. The two men, astronauts from the United States of America, were only a select few of humans to ever step on the surface, and they were lost.

Not in the sense that they didn't know where they were, but in that they couldn't find where they were going.

"I could have sworn that the boys in Houston said they left the crater right here," joked Alan Shephard, commander of the mission.

His companion, Lunar Module pilot Edgar Mitchell chuckled, his breath loud in the suit's helmet. "Well, if they can't get even these directions right, maybe we shouldn't be trusting them to strap our asses to rockets!"

Their comms crackled and then filled with the voice of Stuart Roosa, the Command Module pilot currently still in orbit. "I don't know what you guys are complaining about. I can see it from up here. Just a couple paces to your left Alan."

"Right, just that easy. Tell you what, Stuart, why don't you put your hand out the window and point it out to us."

In orbit, weightless within the cramped confines of the Command Module Kitty Hawk, Stuart grinned while holding a bulky 70mm camera to one of the windows. He was snapping pictures of the terrain and the craters and gullies that littered the surface. He was far too high to see his commander and fellow pilot, but joking around relieved the tedium of performing experiments and watching tree seeds floating around in their baggies. It also helped with the loneliness that he would never admit to. It had only been a few days since the Antares had descended to the surface, but there was a lot of emptiness out there to get lost in, and far too little room in the tiny command module to try and fool oneself into believing that they weren't alone, 116 kilometers above the moon, and almost 230,000 miles from Earth...

"I would do that boss, but it's a mite cold out there, and the wind chill I hear is just to die for…"

"Alright then. Keep it locked tight. We wouldn't want our ride home getting too cold. Okay, Fredo. We are in the middle of a fairly large boulder field. It covers as much as a quarter mile. And, as the pan will show, I don't believe we have quite reached the rim yet. However, we can't be too far away."

"Shepard, Houston," came the crackled voice of Fred Haise from Houston, Texas. "Do you wish to continue on ahead?"

Alan shared a look with Edger, receiving an agreeing nod.

"That's affirmative, Fred. Just a little longer anyway. Then I think we'll be able to take the last LPM reading at the next stop."

"Roger Al. Very good. And Al and Ed, when you can work it in, we'd like an EMU check."

"Okay," responded Alan. "It is now 3.75 and reading 52 on oxygen. I'm in medium flow and comfortable. No flags."

"Ed here, I'm reading at 3.75 and I'm 48 on oxygen. I'm in Min flow now, having just shifted. I'm comfortable."

"Roger that. All systems still in the green?"

"Yes, still in the green, Fred."

They continued on in companionable silence for another few yards, approaching the rocky rise of Saddle Rock. Their breaths were loud in the enclosed helmets, their shadows stretching ahead of them up the rise that they struggled against.

"What do you say, Al? A few more yards then turn back?" asked Edgar. "I know it should be easy to find a 1000 foot wide crater, but this is ridiculous. Against the horizon, we could be a few feet or a mile away from what little perspective I have. Besides," he added with a grin Alan could hear over the comm, "you didn't bring those golf clubs up here just so they could take up space in the LEM."

Alan stopped, puffing in his breath, for though their weight was only one fourth of what it would be on Earth, they were lugging around a lot of equipment just to keep themselves alive. And though their weight was less, their mass was still the same. Hopping around like a kangaroo made you get tired real quick.

"Dammit," he muttered. The moon's surface was deceptive, rising and dipping like a rolling sea forever frozen in time. The rim of Cone Crater could be just past the next roll in the terrain. Or it could be off to their left or right and passed already. "Alright, let's hold up. Fredo, this country is so rolling and undulating, with rises and dips everywhere, that we could be walking by a fairly good sized crater and not even recognize it. I don't like saying it, but we may have to wait to the next trip up here," he said, which was wishful thinking on his part.

Even before Apollo 13, budget cuts to the space program had been digging deep into NASA's pockets. While he was talking about a next time, he realized that this time might be his only walk on this endless gray beach. And he didn't want it to end. It was lonely and stark, with sharp contrasts between dark space and shiny gray moon, and it was incredibly beautiful. Heart stopping.

"Al, that big bolder you pointed out before is… You're just about at Saddle Rock now? Is that right?"
"Ah, probably a couple of meters short now, yes."

"Okay, Al. We're on Saddle Rock Task. We'd like a pan and grab samples at Saddle. And we'll pick up most of our tasks that we bypassed at E when we got to Triplet."

"Okay, I'll get the pan," said Alan as he turned slowly, letting the camera strapped to his suit chest get an image of the area. "It's beautiful country up here, Fred. We'd have a better time if they'd hurry and get those dune buggies up here already. I'd like to go out and explore a little more…"

"We understand that too. Rather than golf clubs, maybe you should have brought along a pogo stick," joked Haise.

Edger and Stuart laughed as Alan pressed his lips tight to keep from joining in. As they chuckled it out, he turned and took a step to start back, then nearly pitched backward.

Not a pace behind him, Edger grabbed a hold of his bulky pack to keep from him falling. At one fourth gravity it wouldn't be a hard fall, but then again it wouldn't take much force for a rock to break his face shield.

"Wow there, you alright, Al?"

"Yes, good. Thanks, Ed." He gained his footing and turned to look down. His heavy, thick soled boot had caught on a rocky protuberance jutting up from the shifty powder of the lunar regolith. "Watch your step there, I caught my toe on that… rock…"

"Which rock? Or is that just another excuse for you being a clumsy old fart?" Edger joked. Except that Alan wasn't paying attention, and Edger's smile started to slip when he looked down as well. "What the Hell…"

Hardly hearing him, Alan painstakingly knelt down in the bulky suit, his eyes not leaving the sharply defined edge that his boot track had exposed under the gray lunar powder. The edge itself was only about five or six inches long, one end disappearing under the regolith as the other came to a barely defined corner just breaching the surface.

More disbelieving, Alan reached down and brushed his thick gloves over it, his heartbeat increasing as he found the surface smooth and hard. A few more strokes of his hand brushed enough of the lunar soil aside to expose an undeniably smooth white surface with a gap underneath. He wedged his bulky fingers under it and gave it a tentative tug. With almost no weight, the object popped up in a rising slow motion shower of powdery regolith.

He looked at Edger, seeing the other man's eyes going as wide as he felt his own were. It was metal. Stiff and light, the gray lunar soil drifting off to expose a white smooth surface. About fifteen inches long, it reached a corner, the edge there being only four or five inches before it became warped and jagged and connected back with the first edge in a roughly elongated triangle. He turned it over. The bottom was dark gray with strengthening corrugations running perpendicular to the long edge, their ends also bent and warped, and actually torn. Along the long edge there were evenly spaces holes, which Alan's befuddled mind wanted to imagine would be perfect for rivets or screws…

"What the Hell is this?" he asked softly.

"Trash, I guess. Leave it to humans to find trash where no one else has ever been, huh?" Edger weakly tried to joke. "That's probably all it is. Possibly some junk fell off one of the orbiting satellites."

Alan's gaze met his. "Most of this was covered with almost four inches of regolith, Ed…"

'Regolith' was simply the word used for the powdery debris kicked up from asteroid impacts. The impact would launch a cloud of it up from the surface, which the moon's week gravity would soon pull back down, and spread about in the process. Millions of years of impacts had left the surface of the moon cratered and pockmarked over much of its surface, and had also left this lunar 'soil.' Solar winds distributed it even more, to the point that regolith would accumulate as much as one millimeter per century. And with four inches equaling to about one hundred millimeters…

Edger didn't have an answer for that. He tried for one, but none would reach past his lips. They could both do the numbers, and just the implications of it were staggering. Trying to keep his breath even, Alan couldn't help but look around, his eyes seeing the terrain in ways he would not have considered before. It was ridiculous to even think it, but then it was difficult to imagine what he was holding in his trembling hands.

In his ears, Fred at mission control in Houston was calling for an update, with Edger replying back to wait one. The stress in his tone reminded Alan that they needed to keep calm and think through this. It was possible that a piece of debris from a satellite had landed at such an angle as to dig itself in under the soil. It was possible, despite the fact that before he pulled it up, there had been almost no disturbance in the surface that he remembered seeing but for their own bulky footprints.

This part of the moon's surface was rolling with gentle hills, marked with low rocky outcrops barely hip high, except for Saddle Rock just ahead and to their right. Then there was the rise they were following…

With a lance glance at the object he held, Alan handed it to Edger and started forward again. He tuned out Edger and Fredo, answering only to the urge within himself, to see if there was anything more than just that fragment. His gaze swept left and right, knowing it was ludicrous to expect to see some shape among the rolling and jagged landscape that could be seen as anything but natural. But he couldn't slow down. That urge to explore, to see beyond the highest hill in the distance that burned in the blood of every human still simmered within him, and now it had a goad to take that last step more.

Edger followed, saving his breath to match his commander's pace, and continuing to tell Fred and Stuart repeatedly to 'hold one.' And then Alan came to a lurching stop, and Edger hurried to reach his side.

The ground dropped away before them, a raised ridge circling into the distant left and right to define the edge of Cone Crater. They'd found it. But there was no thrill at having reached their goal. Any thoughts of comparing samples from the bottom of Cone to the ejecta blanket of the surrounding terrain suddenly seemed terribly unimportant.

The slope dropped away at their feet, a leisurely decline pebbled with varying sized rocks that could still make footing treacherous. A third of the crater bottom was in shadow, a delineation that in space would mean the difference between warm sunlight and freezing dark, but the rest was not. It was brilliantly lit, and would have been - if not for being on the Moon - sadly unimpressive. Would have been, had their eyes not settled immediately on the peculiar shape nestled at the very bottom of the incline…

"Al, Fredo. What's going on up there guys? You being silent and all is kinda worrying us down here."

Alan found his voice first. "We copy, Fredo. I believe we're at the edge of Cone. We can see the bottom from here. Hold one."

"We can't keep holding forever, Alan. We have a mission to perform."

"Understood. Just hold and give us a moment."

Not waiting for a reply, Alan started down the slope, his breath coming sharp and ragged. And even more so as he neared the shape, a whirl of disbelief filling his head. The closer he went the higher it was, its form shrouded in gray regolith around its base and up the sides, as if it had been there for so long that it was becoming part of the moon itself. Finally he was only a few paces away, and even in the low lunar gravity, his knees felt too weak to keep him on his feet.

"My God, Alan, was is it?" asked Edgar, his voice hushed.

Alan shook his head. 'It' was almost eight feet tall at its highest point and easily almost twenty feet long. It probably would have been even longer, but the far end was bent and ragged and half buried in lunar soil, meaning the part that faced them was lifted upward at about ten degrees. More than enough to expose what looked like a trio of darkened engine nozzles, one stacked above a lower pair, with the white, grimy surfaces of their nacelles sweeping forward.

Alan moved around it, trying to comprehend what he was seeing, eyes following the slender curves and straight lines, and finding himself unable to. It was a wreck, its shape mangled, and above the regolith it was the same dirty white hue as the part Edger still held lax in one hand. But there was red too. A stripe of it climbing what was now so obviously a tail structure mounted from the high nacelle. And in front of that…

The canopy had come loose. And considering the forces involved when it impacted the crater, Allan dearly hoped that the suited figure slumped in the seat hadn't lived long after that.

"Dear God…" he muttered.

"Alan, this is Fredo. What the Hell's going on up there? Alan?" Fred asked again, his voice becoming more than just worried or agitated. "Commander Shepard?!"

"Fredo… Fred…" Alan shook himself, realizing that he was worrying his friends, and knowing that they should be worried! He got his voice under control. "Houston, this is Apollo 14. We have a- We have a situation up here…"

Chapter One

Present Day

It was as the alert sirens and the cries of terror and pain were sounding that the deck canted sharply once again. It hurled the young woman hard into the bulkhead, the painful cry wrenched from her throat joining similar screams as others tried to keep upright. The air was filled with the blaring of emergency klaxons as the alert lighting turned all they saw into a flashing haze of red.

With a determined shove, Cadette Daels pushed herself upright, a hand frantically hauling up the zipper on her jumpsuit as wet golden bangs dripped water onto her anxious face. She had been in the shower, preparing for her watch on deck when the first shift of the floor had slammed her against the shower stall. There had been no emergency address to follow the sudden warble of the alert siren, just the sudden sick knowledge that death was hovering over them all and she needed to be on deck to 'Do Something' about it.

What that 'something' was, was as yet unknown to her and it was with an urgent need to fight that she pushed on and dashed down the passage. Her pace increased as deep and mournful groans rumbled through the deck and bulkheads. Wet feet slapped hard against the rubberized decking, her shouted order clearing a path up the nearest stairwell as others hugged the walls and then she was on the next level and racing to her post.

Over the intercom, as the sounds of the alarms were finally dimmed, she now heard Ilse's voice calling general quarters and ordering all personal to their emergency action stations. But Cadette didn't need the urgency in the other woman's voice to know that what was happening was riding the razor's edge between life and death. She could feel it in the rumble and heaving of the deck under her feet and hear it in the tortured cry of stressed metal…

Vanguard Explorer was dying.

The deck twisted sharply with cries echoing along the passages and Cadette was sprawled along the wall and suspended there as the weight of the universe pressed upon every square inch of her body. She couldn't even scream out with the pain that wrung through her and yet even before it truly registered did artificial gravity kick back in and release her to fall in a heap to the deck.

Cadette lay gasping from the shock, not just from the physical trauma but from the realization that they had minutes, if not seconds to live. The artificial gravity, still a new technology, was a primary system with near a dozen back-ups in the event that it should fail under main acceleration, yet there had been none just then to take up the slack. That meant that the secondary systems were out with just the primaries to stand alone against whatever was killing her ship.

Her bare feet again found purchase as she forced herself up and staggered on to the end of the corridor. The hatch was open and within the next compartment were jumbled orders and shouts of alarm, the captain's voice rising above all for order. She entered and stopped, stunned as she beheld the universe out of the forward screens. It wasn't the majesty of the stars or the terror of the deep dark in between, it was the curving planetary arm of LM-03A as it swept from left to right that held her. It told her that Vanguard was in a hard roll, something the big ship was never designed to withstand, the harsh light of the system's primary binary star, named LM-A, filling the deck like a flood light being turned on, only to extinguish seconds later as the ship rolled. Flashing on and off, on and off, it was disorienting as Cadette dashed across the deck and threw herself into her couch. Frantic hands hauled the restraints across her torso as she beheld with dread the myriad of dead and darkened systems across her readouts.

She felt the certainty of death clenching around her heart. Two thirds of the ship's systems were gone, and the rest were going crazy.

"It's a little early for your shift, Cadie," observed a dry voice from her left and she turned to meet the worried gray eyes of Captain Eddington.

"What's happening, Bill?"

"We don't know. All systems were operating smoothly, green all across the board when we registered a sensor spike. We thought it might have been a solar flare, but then everything went crazy before we could confirm. Automation is out and we've lost primary reaction control. Life support is holding but we don't know for how long, but that's not my biggest concern." He paused, his eyes grave and haunted. "We're slipping, Cadie. We're falling."

Anxious green eyes moved forward to the two stations just before the screens to witness the silent struggle as Johnson McDowell and Alice Shawn fought their controls to keep the struggling ship in orbit. From behind her was Ilse's voice, now frantically sounding a ship's distress, the ancient mayday call that all mariners have dreaded since the fledgling days of Morse code and radio. But she knew as well as they all did that this was only perfunctory, for there would be none to respond. Vanguard Explorer was one of only two deep space surveyors. It would take years for any other vessel to follow in their lead in the best of times and the signal alone would take eons to reach the nearest relay outpost along the edge of the Sol System. They were on their own in this as they were in everything since departing Earth Dock over three years ago, and it was never a more lonely feeling to Cadie.

"Johnson, what's our altitude?" she asked, her own displays showing varying readings that were anything but true.

The tall chief helmsman's hand was gripped tight around the control stick at his side, his hand in constant motion as he struggled to overcome the wild, sporadic firing of the RCS. Sweat beaded along his mahogany tinted face as he had to constantly correct and then correct again. He could barely spend the time to respond. "We're passing below 200 kilometers now."

"Can you hold?"

"No chance. I have no auxies and automation is gone. We're barely holding this roll rate from accelerating."

All the possibilities clicked into place, taught from many months of long training and Cadie's heart sank at the few options open to them. But they were clear to anyone in their profession and it really only needed to be said to bring it to life. "We're halfway into reentry already. Captain we have to stop our roll, and that's not going to happen with the Pig throwing our center of gravity around."

The 'Pig' she referred to was the multi-mission rig that the Vanguard itself was strapped to, a massive construct of open girders and cylindrical cargo containers. Within it was the massive array of their phased-radio gear, stowed food-stuffs and replacement parts, the massive cold fusion drives and the revolutionary FTL that let them traverse between the stars. It was life and communication, their touchstone with home and their way back to Earth, but now it was the anchor dragging the crippled Vanguard to her death.

There was no time for hesitation as the seconds of their lives sped inexorably away. "I concur," said Eddington, and the decision was made. He lifted a hand to his right ear and tapped into the ship's address through his headset mic. "Attention all personnel, this is the Captain. I'm going to keep this short. Our situation is critical and the chances of regaining stability are slim. As of this time I am ordering all crew members to their lifeboat stations in preparation for evacuation and all flight personnel to their shuttles.

"All flight ops report to the bridge with your 'Go - No Go' for launch. Then you will launch, but be aware, we will be jettisoning the Pig to try and increase ships stability. There will be debris in our wake. Seek a safe distance and go for individual stable orbit. Captain out."

Far from the bridge deck, men and women were racing for the lifeboats and shuttles, their feet pounding on the padded decking. In their eyes were mixed emotions of shock, determination and fear as voices were raised against the klaxons that drowned out a child's cries. On any long distance survey cruise families were inevitable, and the youngest were now clutched in the arms of their desperate parents as they were the first to board the lifeboats.

Further back, in the shuttles mounted near amidships, the harried flight crews were throwing themselves into their accel couches and drawing their restraints tight. In the best of times it would take fifteen minutes to half an hour to prep and launch the shuttles, but time no longer allowed for procedure and the commands sent from the bridge to the flight computers had already begun the cold start. Thankfully, whatever was happening to the Vanguard had not affected the flight systems, more than likely because they were shut down when it occurred. Warning lights and ready signals answered their rushed queries and shouted orders had as many personnel as possible scrambling aboard to fill every available seat. It seemed to take an eternity as endless seconds crept away before the hatches were slammed shut and dogged tight.

Experienced hands coaxed life into the hybrid drives and the steady, comforting rumble of power trembled through the composite bones of all four shuttles strapped to Vanguard's belly. In the lead shuttle named Falcon, flight commander Hideki Satori brought the engines up from their idle sets, the comm feeding from the bridge letting him know how badly the situation was going. It was deteriorating nearly as fast as it was taking them to secure for launch. That was a minor concern however, as what was not was how those left aboard would fare, for unless they could stabilize the ship's orbit, they would be going down, either in the ship, or in an escape pod.

The entire compliment of three hundred men and women, and children, would not be able to fit into the shuttles. Those whose stations were closest to them, either while on duty or off, were loaded up already. All the rest were rushing for the escape pods dotted around the ship, throwing themselves into the crash couches and strapping in for the rough jettison. Hopefully Vanguard would stay up and they could re-dock before too long, but if not, it was going to be an even rougher ride down through the atmosphere. And onto a world that they had yet to survey and knew little to nothing about.

But it was the only land upon which to turn to. And if they were going to jettison the Pig, then there were no other options around.

"All pilots, this is Hideki. Confirm that you are sealed and ready for separation!"

Quickly the other three shuttles, Eagle, Osprey and Owl replied that they were just then buttoning up and switching to internal power and life support.

"Good. All navigators, once orbit is achieved, begin scanning the ground for landing zones and all flight crews prepare for search and rescue. Track each lifeboat transponder as they're launched and let's hope the Vanguard can stay up. Because if not, then it'll be up to us to gather the crew from the lifeboats on the ground, and that could be a planet wide search if we don't keep an eye on them."

"Copy that, Hideki," responded assistant flight officer Edward Collins from Eagle. "All shuttles show green for EMSEP and orbit. If we do this, we do it now."

"Confirmed. Bridge, this is Satori, all shuttles are go for emergency separation."

Captain Eddington checked the readouts, finding them all green for the shuttles, their bright emerald showing starkly against panels glowing red with warnings. "Then go, Hideki. Get those people away from the ship. We'll try and hold her together up here."

"Roger, bridge. All shuttles, prime and go for emergency jettison on procedure. On my Mark. Three… two… one… Mark. Go, Owl!"

The hard mounts securing the fourth shuttle tight against the ship's belly were obliterated as their emergency charges were activated. Propelled by the Vanguard's roll, the sleek, swing-wing shuttle was literally thrown off the hull, its RCS thrusters firing in kaleidoscopic bursts of fire as the autopilot began to orient it against the bulk of the planetary body. It rolled belly up and tail down before its fusion drives lit to break the flight path imparted from the Vanguard and make its own orbit.

The other shuttles followed only seconds after, flung off by the ships wild gyrations, their crews gripping their restraints tight against the g-forces as their passengers screamed and cried out against the strain. Against the Pig's massive bulk, they were like bits of debris, cast aside as so much flotsam as it swung the smaller hull of the Vanguard around its center of gravity. But like the Owl, the other three fired their RCS and slowed their wild flight and retained their orbits, even as their mothership continued to cartwheel towards the planet's horizon.

"They're away!" shouted Cadie.

"And now it's our turn," responded William. "Set interlocks for emergency jettison. If we're going to do this, then we have to do it before we pass 200km. Any lower and we can't risk launching the lifeboats. John, Alice, she's going to buck like a Midwest bronco. Without the autopilot it's going to be up to you two to keep us up. So John, authorization for release is at your command!"

"Understood, I have the Go for EMSEP." His voice was rough from the physical strain, his palms slick on the controls. "Get ready, Alice. I'm going to time the rolls. We'll jettisons after the planet swings off our port. Hopefully, that'll fling us across the planetary curve rather than down or away." The last thing they wanted, other than not crashing, was flying out to deep space on a ship that was rapidly dying.

"Whenever you're ready," called Cadie. Set under her touchpad console was a set of manual back up controls, and she was quickly flipping up the protective covers for the docking clamp releases. Then the master release that would throw them all open.

LM-03A swung around another arc and their altitude dropped with it as John timed their rotations. It had to be perfect, as there was only one shot at this. No retakes. Get it right, and the real fight to save their lives could begin.

"Alright, on three. Wait. Wait." The planet's long arm was coming around again, almost directly overhead as the terminus between night and day slid by above them, and then passed. "On three… two… one. Mark!"

Cadie hit the master release hard, and the entire ship jolted as explosive bolts, ten times more massive than those which had secured the shuttles, fired as one. And like the shuttles, the smaller hull of the ship was flung aside, hurled away from the rolling Pig like a bolt from a gun. G-forces slammed the crew up against their restraints, as their world turned gray and upside down, then slammed them around.

Behind them, the Pig was also flung aside as centrifugal force threw them away from each other. Its far larger structure, girders and containers, not meant for the wrenching strain, suddenly twisted and crumpled like a collection of tortured tin cans. At its center, the massive fusion core was breached, releasing the massive fount of power it contained. A brilliant star lit the dark as it exploded.

On Vanguard, they didn't note the destruction of the Pig, as there were far more immediate concerns than the loss of their only way home. John and Alice were fighting hard with failing systems, trying to right the ship against the added force imparted by the separation. And it was proving difficult. There had been no time for precise calculations and a guess after all would only ever be a guess. Whether the release had come too soon or too late, all that mattered was that they thankfully weren't being flung across the atmosphere like a skipping stone. But neither were they keeping their altitude.

Their roll rate was slower however, as Cadie could see as LM-03A arced in its dance around them. Across the hull, RCS quads ignited in sporadic bursts, some at only half thrust as others burned at full power, making steadying the wounded ship far more difficult. But the flight team was pulling through. Not fast enough as they continued, but their efforts were showing as the g's pressing them against their restraints lessened.

Cadie started to breathe again as the planet's arc finally steadied out. That was the only good news however, as the ship started to jolt and shake under them. Across the windscreens ahead, the planets curve was climber higher and higher as Vanguard continued to sink into the atmosphere.

"John, can you hold her up?" asked Eddington, the tone of his voice showing that he was only asking for clarification for what he already knew.

"Can't do it, Captain. Main thrusters aren't responding, so we can't climb to a higher orbit and RCS is beginning to fail. When it does, I'll have no control at all. I'd rather use it while I still have it."

Eddington nodded sharply. "That's it then. What's are altitude?"

"134 kilometers."

"Commander Daels," he ordered, "eject the lifeboats now. Lieutenant Denia, inform the shuttles that we are going down. Tell them to keep clear until we land," he continued, his choice of wording showing an optimism that was as much prayer as hope. Land or crash, dear God, just help us to walk away from this…

With motions driven more by practice then thought, Cadie flipped up another protective cover, this one glowing a satisfying green, and slammed her palm against it. Along Vanguard's flanks, bright orange capsules began popping free, kicked out by their ejection charges and then away by the flash burns of their escape motors to clear the ship.

In their higher orbit, the shuttles watched and tracked each one, Hideki assigning his crews to follow the growing clusters. Thirty in all were spreading out in the ship's wake, their aero shells already reacting with the upper atmosphere. The lifting bodies sought their own stability as they decelerated against the friction, their leading edges beginning to heat up. Inside each, ten men, women and children held on as the small craft bucked under them, very much like a ship slamming into sea swells.

Bill activated the ship wide address for the benefit of anyone still left on board. Hopefully, very few. "All personnel, this is the Captain. Retreat to emergency crash zones. We are going down. Retreat to emergency crash zones. Repeat, we are going down."

Eyes locked on the sweep of the forward screens, Cadie watched as the planet quickly filled the entire view. "Oh shit," she breathed.

…