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summoned from her link
memory. She had images of the entire crew and the Iridar ferreted away
there. Out in space, she had no place to download the images, so
she had to keep them tucked away in her link. It had a lot of
storage capacity, but not an unlimited amount. She’d have a lot in
there by the time they returned, she thought.
    At first she had found the man distant
and mysterious, almost rude, but through the lessons he gave her,
she saw that he genuinely cared about her. His voice, which had at
first sounded cold and flat, started to sound softer, almost
intimate to her. Telisa wondered if it were just wishful thinking
on her part. She resolved to find out—after their first
expedition.
    Thomas spent more and more time in the
command room as they neared the planet. Telisa gave him plenty of
space, as her own nervousness increased. If the space force
detected them here and caught them, Telisa would find herself under
arrest before their expedition even began. She tried to calm
herself and put her faith in Thomas, but it didn’t work.
    Jack dropped in on Telisa and Magnus in
the gym. He didn’t usually stop by in person like this, since they
could all communicate through their intracranial links. Telisa
wondered if he was curious to see her training.
    “ We came out of FTL pretty
far from the planet and took a little look-see,” Jack explained.
“No sign of the original exploration vessel. We’re going to insert
into an orbit where we shouldn’t be detectable by the ground
bases.”
    “ Then we’ll select our
site?” Telisa asked.
    “ That’s the plan. He should
skip us in closer—”
    Red lights flashed on and Telisa’s
computer link emitted a warning tone with a calm synthetic voice
instructing her to find the nearest g-damper. There was one
terrible second when panic rose in her throat and she froze, then
she was scrambling for the exit. Magnus ran behind her, a
protective hand on her back. Jack had run for the other
side.
    Telisa came to the first pod, nothing
more than a port in the corridor just large enough for a person to
dive into. The tiny chamber was designed to protect a human from
sudden accelerations that the pilot might have to apply in a combat
situation. She slammed into the dampener module and grabbed the
mask to put over her face. In less than three seconds the tiny
cramped space filled with protective foam and Telisa was plunged
into darkness. Her only connection with the outside world was her
wireless computer link, still droning its warning.
    Telisa wondered if the dampener module
would be her tomb. If the ship was blown apart, would the module
break open and spill her into space, or would it remain intact
until she suffocated? Or would the ship tumble into the atmosphere
until she cooked to death? Telisa took a long gulp of oxygen and
tried to calm down, telling herself that whatever was going to
happen would happen. It was out of her hands now.
    The ship buffeted violently. An
explosive sound of metal clunking and rockets firing echoed into
the g-dampener and she screamed. But it wasn’t the end. The ship
was still rocking back and forth. Suddenly everything smoothed out
and Telisa just breathed, wrapped up like a child in a metal womb.
A distant rumbling became noticeable, but Telisa just
waited.
    Oh shit. Oh shit. I should
have stayed at home , she
thought.
    “ We were spotted by a space
force supply ship,” Thomas said over the link. “Luckily those
things are slugs, and lightly armed. Just hang in there, we’re
going to be planetside in a few minutes.”
    Spotted by a UNSF ship. Telisa’s terror
washed away into a terrible sadness, a feeling of being cheated. If
the patrol had found them, there would be no expedition, no grand
adventure.
    Telisa waited forever and then she
waited some more. Finally Thomas’s voice came again.
    “ You can leave the pods.
We’re on the ground.”
    Telisa brought up her pod controls with
her link and actuated the release. A spray of