Read Online The Immortal Game (Rook's Song) by Chad Huskins - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Chad Huskins
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3
Before making its descent to the planet’s surface, the Sidewinder must first leave orbit. To slow the ship from its orbit al speed, the Sidewinder is turned around and flies backward. The OMS (orbital maneuvering engines) now thrust the ship out of orbit, and the ship begins its plunge.
The descent has to be handled carefully, for despite having a much thinner atmosphere than, say, Earth, there is no less a terrible disturbance from the unusually high levels of sulfur. The Sidewinder holds its own, making most of the necessary adjustments itself—extending flaps to break speed, activating reverse thrusters, calculating the necessary pitch, et cetera—leaving the larger motions such as steering to Rook.
The particles of air surrounding the ship cause immense friction, or drag. While useful to reentry, this can also be dangerous. The Sidewinder’s exterior hull begins to heat up to dangerous levels, and the compristeel plates, despite being coated in an ablative material, do little to protect the circuits, wires, and computers running through the walls—the ship’s energy shields angle forward to deflect the resistance coming at it straight on. However, this temporarily puts the Sidewinder in a bubble of “floatingness” that often surprised rookie pilots at the Academy. Going from jarring drag to sudden and almost gliding conditions once caused Rook to fail an ASCA simulator exam. Presently, he compensates for the abrupt transition without overcorrecting, and switches off the OMS.
There are other ways of bleeding off the intense heat surrounding the ship, and that includes techniques going back centuries. The Sidewinder was, naturally, built with blunt-body design in mind. By pitching its body just right, it forms a blunter wall, which creates a shockwave in front of the ship. This keeps the heat at a distance away from the ship, and allows Rook to dial back the energy shields so that he doesn’t have to use up as much power.
The Sidewinder reaches the typical angle of descent, which is about forty degrees. Below it, clouds of sulfur are spreading across its belly as it glides smoothly over a region of volcano-made valleys. This region is directly on the border between the tortured western hemisphere and the relative flatness of the eastern hemisphere. Here, there are no volcanic mountains, though there are hills of black lava rock, with rivers of red-hot lava moving between them, slow as molasses in December, we might’ve said back on Earth. This is a rogue planet, of course, with an unstable core generating enough heat to keep hot the lava that is freshly ejected, yet, having no parent star, the temperature just outside the ship is -28° degrees F. It ought to be colder, but the concentration of sulfur—and the fact that it keeps getting pumped out—has kept this planet at barely survivable arctic levels.
But the atmosphere is far from breathable. The air is replete with ashy dust, with such small amounts of oxygen that only certain pockets of the planet could ever be terraformed. This planet has long been doomed, and would have never been of any other interest to humans besides an astrophysicist’s study.
Distant thunder rattles the world. Thor’s Anvil has struck another spark. Wicked arcs of purple volcanic lightning split the sky over a hundred miles away, then the world goes dark again, Rook’s face lit only by the lights on the console. Some of his sensors are showing strange data because of high-atmosphere static energies. Looking at the gloomy landscape and even gloomier sky, Rook feels the need to lighten the mood, and, if he is being honest, a need to remind himself what he’s fighting for. He taps a few keys, brings up the immense song library:
SEARCH: CLASSIC BANDS: ERA/YEAR: 1966
ARTIST NAME: THE BEACH BOYS
ALBUM NAME: PET SOUNDS
SONG TITLE: WOULDN’T IT BE NICE
It doesn’t take long for the
3
Before making its descent to the planet’s surface, the Sidewinder must first leave orbit. To slow the ship from its orbit al speed, the Sidewinder is turned around and flies backward. The OMS (orbital maneuvering engines) now thrust the ship out of orbit, and the ship begins its plunge.
The descent has to be handled carefully, for despite having a much thinner atmosphere than, say, Earth, there is no less a terrible disturbance from the unusually high levels of sulfur. The Sidewinder holds its own, making most of the necessary adjustments itself—extending flaps to break speed, activating reverse thrusters, calculating the necessary pitch, et cetera—leaving the larger motions such as steering to Rook.
The particles of air surrounding the ship cause immense friction, or drag. While useful to reentry, this can also be dangerous. The Sidewinder’s exterior hull begins to heat up to dangerous levels, and the compristeel plates, despite being coated in an ablative material, do little to protect the circuits, wires, and computers running through the walls—the ship’s energy shields angle forward to deflect the resistance coming at it straight on. However, this temporarily puts the Sidewinder in a bubble of “floatingness” that often surprised rookie pilots at the Academy. Going from jarring drag to sudden and almost gliding conditions once caused Rook to fail an ASCA simulator exam. Presently, he compensates for the abrupt transition without overcorrecting, and switches off the OMS.
There are other ways of bleeding off the intense heat surrounding the ship, and that includes techniques going back centuries. The Sidewinder was, naturally, built with blunt-body design in mind. By pitching its body just right, it forms a blunter wall, which creates a shockwave in front of the ship. This keeps the heat at a distance away from the ship, and allows Rook to dial back the energy shields so that he doesn’t have to use up as much power.
The Sidewinder reaches the typical angle of descent, which is about forty degrees. Below it, clouds of sulfur are spreading across its belly as it glides smoothly over a region of volcano-made valleys. This region is directly on the border between the tortured western hemisphere and the relative flatness of the eastern hemisphere. Here, there are no volcanic mountains, though there are hills of black lava rock, with rivers of red-hot lava moving between them, slow as molasses in December, we might’ve said back on Earth. This is a rogue planet, of course, with an unstable core generating enough heat to keep hot the lava that is freshly ejected, yet, having no parent star, the temperature just outside the ship is -28° degrees F. It ought to be colder, but the concentration of sulfur—and the fact that it keeps getting pumped out—has kept this planet at barely survivable arctic levels.
But the atmosphere is far from breathable. The air is replete with ashy dust, with such small amounts of oxygen that only certain pockets of the planet could ever be terraformed. This planet has long been doomed, and would have never been of any other interest to humans besides an astrophysicist’s study.
Distant thunder rattles the world. Thor’s Anvil has struck another spark. Wicked arcs of purple volcanic lightning split the sky over a hundred miles away, then the world goes dark again, Rook’s face lit only by the lights on the console. Some of his sensors are showing strange data because of high-atmosphere static energies. Looking at the gloomy landscape and even gloomier sky, Rook feels the need to lighten the mood, and, if he is being honest, a need to remind himself what he’s fighting for. He taps a few keys, brings up the immense song library:
SEARCH: CLASSIC BANDS: ERA/YEAR: 1966
ARTIST NAME: THE BEACH BOYS
ALBUM NAME: PET SOUNDS
SONG TITLE: WOULDN’T IT BE NICE
It doesn’t take long for the
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