Total pages in book: 60
Estimated words: 56021 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 280(@200wpm)___ 224(@250wpm)___ 187(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 56021 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 280(@200wpm)___ 224(@250wpm)___ 187(@300wpm)
“Shan did not say you were crazy,” I say. My hope is to take the weapon from her. This is not my first time handling an upset underling. Most of the saurians who end up under my wing are terribly reactive when they first arrive. I talk down a madman with a gun every other day.
“I’m not crazy!” Lettie exclaims in an entirely unhinged way. “I just hate everybody and don’t care if they die. That’s a perfectly reasonable perspective to have.”
I have to hope that I can appeal to logic, if she has any.
“You’re inviting the alpha and his armies to open fire on this ship. Which contains you, and your baby.”
“He wouldn’t dare.”
“He absolutely would,” I say. “That is what it means to be an alpha. To put the welfare of the many over the interests of the few. You are, by definition, the few. Eliminating you is becoming an increasingly sane choice.”
I pride myself on always knowing the right thing to say and having the gravitas to control the wilder impulses of those who are out of control. In this moment, I have not said the right thing, and all the gravitas in the world is not going to save me.
Lettie draws herself upright, her expression one of complete offense. “Well, if he’s going to eliminate me, then I intend to eliminate him first…”
She dives for the controls, dropping the gun because she forgot about it. It clatters to the ground, discharging a bolt of energy that hits something on the bridge that I just have to hope isn’t that important.
WEEOOW WEEOOW WEEOOW WEEOOW
An alarm starts blaring, indicating that it probably was very important.
I feel the ship tilt hard to the left and then put on a burst of speed.
“Oh fuck,” she says. “Oh, that’s not good. Oh no.”
Navigation Malfunction
The ship makes the announcement very calmly.
It is quite apparent what is going to happen next. I can tell, not because I understand human technology, but because we have rocketed who knows how many hundreds, perhaps thousands of miles away from alpha city, and now the ground is starting to come at us very fast.
Brace for impact.
Impact in 3…2…1
8 CRASH, BANG
Allie
Ever wondered what the inside of a spaceship looks like? Not the interior. I mean, the stuff between the interior and the outer shell.
Now I know.
It looks like the inside of anything when you smash it open, it looks like nonsense. It looks like spaghetti and odd shaped organs, which might have been that shape to begin with, or maybe not.
I am lying in the wreckage, looking up at the sky. I can’t feel my body. I’m not sure if I still have one, or if this is just how it feels when you’ve passed from one world to the next.
The ship is still somewhat around me, but in the same way a shattered teacup spreads itself across a kitchen floor. I am inside it, but also outside it. The brig has split wide open, and the fuselage is cracked in dozens of places.
“The crash systems work impeccably!”
I hear an excited, cheerful voice.
“Impeccably!” Another ecstatic tone replies.
Cadence and Casey are clambering out of the wreckage with the smugness of technical engineer types who have done a very good job. It might have been quite literally the only job they ever did.
“Come on,” they say. “We should try to vacate the ship before it collapses around us.”
I follow them over the crushed bits and pieces until we find ourselves sitting on the side of the volcano, looking out over a primordial view that includes the incredible wreckage of the Mare. I feel incredible grief, not to mention, incredible confusion.
“How are we alive?”
“It’s foam,” Cadence says. “We installed chemical reservoirs in the walls, and when a crash is detected, they break open, mix, and create a brief high-impact shielding around biological life forms. It happens in seconds.”
“Seconds?” Casey echoes incredulously. “Nanoseconds. When your ship is ploughing into the side of a volcano, you don’t have seconds. Seconds are a luxury.” She laughs.
“Microseconds!” Cadence replies. “That’s what you’ve got.”
“You don’t even have microseconds. A nanosecond is a thousand times less time. It’s much smaller. But chemistry happens in even less time than that. Chemistry is fast.”
“Chemistry is king,” Cadence agrees, finally saying something that Casey doesn’t want to immediately argue with.
“So we’re all alive? We’re all okay?”
“Well, I am, and she is, and you are. That’s a pretty good start.
“What about the baby?”
They look at one another.
“Oh, that’s right. The baby. The baby was very small. I wonder if the surface area was broad enough to allow the foam to work?” Casey muses.
“I don’t know. Babies are relatively very dense,” Cadence replies.
“I don’t think that is true. Infants and young people have a greater ratio of surface area to size,” Casey says.