Bringing Stella Home Read Online Free PDF Page A

the
surface by now, and if they aren’t, they’re caught up in the middle
of the battle. We have to get out now, while we can. I’m
sorry.”
    “ No!” James screamed,
sitting upright in his chair. “We can’t just leave them like
this!”
    “ We don’t have a choice,
James,” his father shouted. “Now strap in and prepare for
launch—that’s an order.”
    “ Y-yes, sir,” James
stammered.
    He strapped himself into
his seat and activated the gravitic dampers. Outside the main
forward window, the stars spun and the station passed out of view
as Adam maneuvered the Llewellyn toward the sun, away from the approaching night
side of Kardunash IV. James swallowed, choking back
tears.
    “ Prepare for hard burn in
five, four, three, two, one—”
    An invisible hand pressed James
against his seat, starting gradually but gaining strength with each
passing second. He glanced down at his computer—ten gees of
acceleration outside the gravitic damper field, rising quickly.
Inside the bridge, they were at point-five gees, rising to
point-six.
    He watched on the rear video feed as
the station shot away, rapidly growing smaller against the backdrop
of the planet’s surface. The drifting drums of steel from the cargo
hold shrunk until they were barely visible against the angelic
white clouds.
    A bright pink flash filled
the rear display and the sky to the right of the bridge window.
Only a nuclear bomb could cause an explosion that huge. The lights
on the bridge flickered as the Llewellyn’s cosmic ray shielding
absorbed the radiation from the blast. In the rear video feed, the
brilliant afterglow took several seconds to fade.
    “ Dad, we have to turn
around!”
    “ I’m sorry, Son,” said his
father. “We can’t save them.”
    The scanners showed the
changing path of the Llewellyn as she continued to accelerate at ten gees. The
arcs curved up away from the night side of the planet, unraveling
like a handful of lighted strands, each pointing to a predicted
end-path at their current rate of acceleration.
    “ But what
about—”
    “ We have no way of knowing
where they are or of getting to them. For all we know, they’re
already on the surface.”
    “ You don’t know that,”
James said quickly. “They might still be in orbit. They might be
waiting for us, for all we—”
    “ That’s enough,” his father
said sharply.
    James fell silent. On the
scanners, the arc of the Llewellyn’s flight path peeled out
from orbit entirely, their trajectory pointing directly away from
the planet.
    “ Map a course for home,”
his father said, his voice low. “Help me switch to
autopilot.”
    The counter ticked up to twenty gees
outside—two-point-three on the bridge. Enough to make anyone squirm
in their seats. James was hardly aware of it, however. His fingers
flew over the keyboard and his eyes danced with the numbers across
the screen, but all his motions were merely automatic.
    Stella is so much better
at this, he thought to himself. She should be the one setting the course—not
me.
    The thought no sooner entered his head
than he remembered how they’d drawn straws to see who got to go
planetside first. She was down there because of him.
    His fingers became stiff, and his
whole body began to shake. His eyes went wide, and his vision went
blurry. He drew in a sharp breath, and tried in vain to bring
himself under control.
    “ James,” said his father.
“Son, are you all right?”
    “ It should have been me,”
James cried, his voice cracking. He didn’t even care. “Stella
should be here—I should be the one down there, not her!”
    His father reached out against the
growing gee forces and put a hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry,
Son,” he said. “We’re going to get through this. Keep yourself
together.”
    How am I supposed to keep
myself together? James thought to himself,
clenching his hands into fists. It should
be me down there, not her.
    On the rear video feed, a series of
nuclear explosions cast