Soul Solution

1. Down Time

In the darkness there was hissing; the slow, steady sound of filtered air somewhere in the dark recesses of the Hole. Then the slight sucking of inhalation, a deep breath drawing in, out, in, out, slow, methodical, ceaseless, as if the very darkness that surrounded her was alive and breathing over her shoulder. It marked the seconds almost precisely, which helped her mark the minutes, and the minutes into hours that seemed to stretch on as long as the darkness was deep.

The only way to push back the encompassing black was when she moved, triggering a little green nano-firefly that winked on, creating a halo about a meter around her. A small bubble of cold, green light to hold back the night.

And from somewhere behind her came a whimper or groan; the only sounds that let Maria Osbourne know that she was still alive.

The interface still strapped to her temple, she could feel Piers pulling at her mind. She hesitated, then linked up and could see him in her helmet interface sitting on a virtual beach, toying with mechanical parts that floated in the air about his head, growling to himself. She shook off the spooky feeling she always got when she interfaced, and for once felt a bit of relief. He was still functioning and outside the V-wing somewhere upon the cool ice and slush of Titan, assessing the damage.

Their approach vector had been cleared all the way to the habitat, but the shifting winds and mysterious turbulence that seemed to explode into existence from nowhere shook the sleek boomerang, ripping control thrusters from their moorings and warping the wing tips. The alarms had sounded. The flyer went down.

She drew a deep breath of cool, dark air, remembered the screeching sound of the siren, the dung-colored clouds swishing by, Anya wrestling with the controls. Then the nano-bugs wrapped them each in a luminescent web of finely spun threads and dragged them down into the crash Hole in the belly of the ship. Then her suit drugged her. The rest was merciful blackness.

There was movement behind her. A firefly winked on.

"Anya," she said. "Anya, you okay?"

"What happened?" came a raspy, dry voice. "Are we down?"

"Yeah, we’re down. Down and out," she replied heavily. "Welcome to Titan."

Maria could hear a grunt and some shuffling. Anya testing her muscles. "Give me a run down. How’s the ship? Are we in danger?"

"No immediate danger," said Maria. "The V-wing is a mess, though."

"What’s Piers say?"

If Anya could see her glare "Thanks" at her in the dim light she would. Of all things, she enjoyed interfacing with Piers the least. She drew a deep breath before she tapped into Piers’ mind. She shuddered at the level of intimate contact. A three-dimensional picture of the ship hovered before her in grid-space. Piers threw as much information at her as her brain could handle. "Main power is off-line and the hull has been breached in many quarters. Basically there’s too much damage for Piers to handle. On the lighter side, Cassini should be coming out of darkside soon and run smack-dab into the distress siren. She’ll make a course correction to come get us, pronto." Maria shook herself, as if bugs were crawling up her flesh.

"Aw, shit!" Anya murmured. "It’ll be at least three, maybe four days before she makes it back from Saturn. Cassini doesn’t use fusion boosters. She’s a coaster ship, babe, uses basic chemical fuel for acceleration and then drifts along. We’ll run out of air."

"Great!" Maria replied.