Page 34 of Full Speed to a Crash Landing

My hand reaches his, and he yanks me up the last bit. I fall down on the flat rock at the top of the cliff, panting, staring up at the stars and the void between them.

My hand still in his.

13

Iunzip my outer pouch and pass over the cryptex drive to Rian. “Comm Magnusson,” I tell him. “First isn’t down here, and I need him.”

“Need him? Why?” Rian asks.

“To carry me.”

“You say that like you don’t scale cliffs in your spare time on a regular basis.” Rian’s joking with me, but I notice that he’s pretty damn careful about storing the cryptex drive in his suit’spocket. He ignores me as I stare up at the black sky and millions of stars and wonder when my muscles will quit burning.

I’m lying flat on my back, but I hold my arms up. “You’ll do if Magnusson is busy.”

“I’m not carrying you, Ada.”

Oof, I do like the way that man says my name. Leave it to me to develop a crush on the enemy.

Rian bends down when I don’t move even after he summons Saraswati and Magnusson to meet back on the shuttle.Nowconcern’s written all over his face under his helmet. “Are you okay? That was a big climb, and—”

“Ugh, you ruin it when you treat me like that,” I say, scrambling up. “I’m fine; let’s go back to the ship and get something to eat. And bysomething, I meaneverything.”

I hear a snort of appreciation from him as he sets his pace to match my own slower one.

In the distance, Magnusson approaches the shuttle from one direction—where the aft wreckage is—and Saraswati is several paces ahead of us.

“Switch over to the public comm channel,” Rian tells me. As soon as I do, I hear Magnusson reporting in—he found nothing but debris.

“Incoming,” Saraswati says, interrupting him. Her voice is pitched high. “We’re getting at least two soon. Volcanic eruption four klicks north indicates a plate shift—”

Before she finishes speaking, the earth undulates. Rian grabs my arm, holding me up. “Can you run?” he asks, already half-dragging me into a quicker pace.

I don’t want to, but I also don’t want to let this planet eat me, so I start jogging, my legs burning. In the distance I see a bright spurt of orange-red—the volcano Saraswati was keeping an eye on has erupted. Moments later, the earth rumbles. We’re almost to the ship. Rian’s about to rip my arm off, he’s yanking me so hard, but I don’t mind. The only thing that’s in our favor is that the land here is pretty flat and hard, but the only reason the land here is flat andhard is because it’s dried-up lava, and that sort of indicates we’re right in the middle of where the flow is going to reach.

Magnusson and Saraswati are already inside the shuttle when Rian and I race up the ramp. I stumble the last few steps—Magnusson started raising the ramp before I was completely offit—and Rian catches me. The shuttle lurches as Magnusson takes off, sending both me and Rian crashing onto the floor.

“Not exactly how I pictured you under me,” I mutter.

“What?” Rian asks.

“Nothing.” I push up, staggering as the shuttle shifts again. “We need to get strapped in.”

We make our rocky way up to the command center of the shuttle. Magnusson is focused on the controls, but Saraswati turns as Rian and I grab our seats and hastily harness in.

“All good?” she asks, already turning back to the controls before we answer.

“We’ll live,” Rian says. His brow furrows when he looks at me, though. My suit’s messy, but overall, everything’s working inside and out. I think. I’ll do a recharge and full diagnostic back on theHalifax.

I turn my attention to the main carbonglass window extending over the nose. The flat, black land Rian and I were just running over is starting to crack, snaking lines of bright lava infiltrating the desolate landscape.

“Oh, shit,” Magnusson whispers under his breath as therift I just climbed out of shivers, the edges rippling. It’s beautiful, but it’s also horrific, witnessing the way a world is born, how easy it all falls apart. It will be formed again and again, the surface of this planet, and one day it will be whole and stable and perhaps even full of life. But it must break first. Again. And again.

On the ground below, the forward section of theRoundabout, including the bridge that held the cryptex drive, jostles free from the tentative position it held, crashing down into the rift. The rift itself grinds like the maw of a hungry monster, shifting and crunching as lava sprays up. It’s enough of a heat blast to blow the shuttle back before Magnusson gets it restabilized.

“That was good timing,” I say. “I mean, if that thing was going to drop into the lava, at least it waited until I had the cryptex drive first. And until I was out of the rift.”

Saraswati twists around in her seat again, straining against the harness just to give me an incredulous look. Sure, if I’d been an hour later in climbing out of the rift, I’d be dead, but that was the point of me saying it was good timing. Any timing that doesn’t end in death by lava is good timing. Obviously.

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