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Wolf 1061c was a giant ball of rust up above. Massive scars ran along its cracked surface and even from orbit the Commander could almost feel the dryness of its sun side arid landscape. It reminded him of ancient tales of the birth of civilization back on Earth, of ancient Assyrian builders breaking rock day and night in the blazing sun. He imagined that’s what it must have felt like to the colonists; that they were progenitors of a new dawn of mankind…

“Reaction wheels engaged for orientation correction. Please do not touch manual control,” a quaint, artificial voice said through the pod’s radio. With a whoosh and a feeling of inertia the planet sank from high above his head to down below his feet. He’d been through these manoeuvres enough times to not lose his sense of direction, the trick was to define a new object to act as a reference point for relative location and since the ship was no longer anywhere near – it was presently the size of a thumbtack, receding from the pod at an almost hyperspace pace – Wolf 1061c would do as his new centre of the universe. On either side of his periphery the other pods came into view now. They glistened against the backdrop of the void as they spun into orientation, a view of their occupants hidden away by vast distance.

Two drop pods lay on the outskirts of his sight, another two lay between them and dead centre. The Commander conjectured that the pods were in a simplistic, star-shaped formation, each pod roughly a few hundred meters apart. He flipped a switch which opened his local radio comms. The others were already squawking, O’ Rourke and Juno in the midst of some playful bickering. The familiar voices gave him comfort in the dark.

“You may address me as Chicxulub while I function as a potential meteorite!” O’ Rourke’s baritone sauntered over the radio, “Oh I’m so excited, this has actually been a dream of mine for a long, long time, ha ha!”

“Calm yourself O’ Rourke!” roared Juno over his laughter. “We’re not going to explode into the planet, too much excitement and you’ll pass out before we get there. Are you listening to me?”

“Maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad thing…” the point man, Wicklow, coyly added.

Juno’s scoff was easily distinguished over the radio, “O’ Rourke? O’ Rourke, quit your giggling like a schoolgirl and control yourself, Dio aiutami…”

The Commander flicked on his comm circuit and spoke playfully, “I can’t leave you youngsters alone for five minutes without all hell breaking loose.”

“Apologies sir!” Juno’s voice crackled through the comms, “As the team’s resident medical practitioner it is my duty to ensure the well-being, both mental and physical, of the squad. O’ Rourke has been hysterical for the past five minutes, well… more so than usual. It was not my intent to clutter up the comm channel.”

“What a lick-arse,” O’ Rourke teased, knowing she wouldn’t retaliate whilst speaking to the Commander; that and he felt quite safe knowing she didn’t have the piloting skills to intercept his pod and give him hell.

“Shut it O’ Rourke.” the Commander cut in, “Even you’re not crazy enough to make an enemy out of our only medic.”

“You’re right, I apologize Juno.” he responded rather lethargically. “Please don’t leave me to die alone in some dank, dark cave down there.”

“No promises,” was her humourless reply.

“At ease people, we have some time before we descend so try to get some R&R.” The Commander cleared his throat and addressed them in a more serious manner, “Alright, you can’t see it but there’s a mass tether in the middle of us. The Lieutenant is setting it up remotely. In a few minutes you’ll feel your pod being pulled in, don’t engage the manual flight control or we’ll have to recalibrate the entire manoeuvre over again. Good? Good. I’ll let you get back to your hysterics now.”

A short chuckle from Wicklow was the last thing he heard before switching off the comms unit.

A startling clunk from outside of pod jostled the Commander a few minutes later. Some moderate inertia gave rise to a sensation of discomfort as his head receded into the cheap fabric of the headrest. He could sense that the other pods were silently getting closer now. A blinking indicator light conveyed that someone was reaching out to him on the general comm channel; flicking it on he said, “I’m here.”

“Commander,” Lieutenant Frakes’ familiar greeting reverberated inside the pod. “We’ve begun the tethering process.”

“Yep, we know Frakes,” interrupted O’ Rourke, “I can barely move my neck in here!”

“The feeling of inertia will pass momentarily,” LOTUS, the mothership’s sentient AI, politely made her presence known on the channel.

Presently it felt as if someone had just slammed on the brake pedal and the Commander was whooshed forward, the safety belt preventing his face from smacking against the reinforced glass of his pod’s viewport; the mass tether had begun to cancel out the change in velocity (or delta-v) it had generated pulling in each pod. Gradually he fought against the impulse and managed to sit back upright; they were now in proper formation to breach the planet. He was close enough to see the faces of his team; on his far left he could tell Frakes was busy talking by the way he mimed words, no doubt feeding LOTUS information on the team’s biometric readings; in the next pod over Wicklow seemed completely unphased by the drastic change in momentum; while both Juno and O’ Rourke on his right were heaving having never experienced the sudden push/pull of a mass tether before.

“Everyone ok?” the Commander asked over the comms, “The worst of it is over, the remaining sensations will all be familiar to you.”

He saw the flash of Juno’s beret as she shook her head, “I think I am going to be sick.”

“Fresh… as a daisy,” O’ Rourke lied.

“It’s just from the motion,” the Commander said nonchalantly, “keep it together, the feeling will pass.” He turned his attention to Frakes, “Are we locked into the tether?”

“Yes. Finalizing the retrograde burn calculations to the planet now.”

LOTUS reappeared over the radio, “Ensign Wicklow, I need you to release the manual flight control before moving.”

“I am not touching anything LOTUS,” he replied.

“Hmm,” she paused for a moment. “Never mind, I have corrected it.”

“Is everything ok LOTUS?” there was a hint of wariness in his voice.

“Peachy.”

A slight sizzle sounded from beneath the Commander’s feet. He recognized it as the sound of the propulsion system firing up. The ship had already been in high Wolf 1061 orbit when they decoupled from it. By firing their thrusters in the direction opposite of the direction they were traveling, i.e. retrograde, they would lower their velocity to begin on an intercept course with the planet; a few simple radial burns would off-centre the orbit, placing the planetary insertion point in the region they needed. Then, gravity would pull them, they’d hit the atmosphere at a blistering speed – the thick ablation shielding preventing the pods from burning up – and the remaining momentum would be used to pierce the planet’s crust.

A surge of pressure ran up his legs as the thrusters blazed up to full throttle; the descent had begun. From the viewport he saw the other pods following suit, all were positionally synced by the mass tether essentially quintupling the thrust power available. The planet grew below, slowly. It resembled a giant, off-coloured mandarin, pale and swelling as one of its semi hemispheres creeped up the viewport.

LOTUS’ nonchalant tone came over the radio, “Drop pods currently on intercept course with planet. Initiating radial burn manoeuvre for surface insertion alignment, T-minus ninety-six seconds until contact.”

No more than a few seconds after the pods had shifted for the radial burn everything went wrong. A rapid series of flashes seen from the corner of his eye blinded the Commander; they came silently from the thruster area of Wicklow’s pod; then a blip of flame and they all spun out of control. He caught a glimpse of Juno as her pod smashed into his, sending them both tumbling in the void.

The Commander fumbled to reach the off switch for the master alarm and shouted, “LOTUS, what the hell is going on!?”

“I’ve detected an ignition system rupture within Wicklow’s pod,” she stated indifferently, her voice never wavering, “it has destabilized the mass tether. I’m currently trying to stabilize the pods to minimize the crew’s chances of mortality upon collision with the planet; there is no window to abort.”

Wolf 1061c flew past his viewport, appearing and disappearing in a chaotic dance of night and day; for a few seconds it was a vast panorama then it would be broken by space. Fighting against the dizzying changes in orientation, with some effort the Commander managed to ask, “Can you redirect Wicklow?”

He heard the others scream over the radio, all except Wicklow who had remained characteristically quiet during the mayhem. He pushed them out and concentrated solely on the information from LOTUS, “Negative. His flight controls are unresponsive, and the planet is coming up fast; I calculate a fifty-four percent chance of survival for him. He is on his own.”

“Damnit! Send me his projected coordin-“

She cut him off skillfully, “You don’t have time Commander. Brace for impact.”

A flash of amber then hissing flames engulfed the viewport. Precisely a second later came a huge, muffled thump, then everything went dark: the planet had swallowed him…

^{Copyright © 2024 Giuseppe Gillespie}

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*A Klemperer Rosette describes a gravitational system of bodies orbiting in a symmetrical pattern around a common barycenter (the dynamical point about which the bodies orbit) – it is a reference to the team’s drop pod formation around the mass tether; I originally heard of it in Larry Niven’s novel Ringworld.