First Contact (Galactic Axia Adventure) Read Online Free

way soon enough.”
    The captain considered their options. “Everyone suit up!” Since he was in a critical station, the pilot was already suited as a matter of course. “Maintain battle stations. Reduce everything else to minimal power.”
    “No hot coffee tonight,” quipped the trooper struggling with the engineering panel which was lit up like a poorly wired winter solstice holiday tree. It showed very little news that wasn’t bad or worse.
    “Pilot, it’s your ship,” Leatha stated, transferring tactical command while she slipped into her pressure suit and went to help with engineering. “Try to set us down in one piece somewhere.”
    “Thanks a lot,” the pilot said through pursed lips. He had been expecting the command as soon as they were clear of the battle. It allowed the captain, now with little else to do, to help where she could make a difference. The lights flickered, dimmed, and then remained lit with minimal brightness.
    Delmar scanned the surrounding space on his heads-up display. The barren planetoid where they’d been heading was within easy reach. He nursed his controls to vector them on a safe approach. Behind him he could hear the rest of the crew frantically working to keep the ship together as metal groaned, snapped, and popped under the strain of his maneuvering. The inertial dampeners were failing, causing the stress of the gravitational field of the planetoid to pull on the already-damaged mainframe of the ship. Delmar mentally balanced their safety against preserving the ship somehow. No matter how he figured it, their situation looked bleak.
    This mission reminded Delmar of the training cruise he had just returned from where he’d spent a month onboard a two-man trainer with Trooper-First Ace Vmac mapping planetoids and other obscure objects out on the rim of the Axia. He remembered speaking to his friend, Ert, the Horicon computer about how boring the mission was and how it seemed like such a waste of time, and that Ert had told him that there must be a purpose in the mundane mission even if it wasn’t readily clear. How many times had Ace ordered him to land the trainer on lifeless planetoids? And how many crash landing and enemy attack drills had Ace put him through? He shivered at the thought of Ace flipping an emergency proximity klaxon simulating the presence of a Red-tail invader. He always did it at times when Delmar was relaxed or feeling cocky about being in command of his own ship.
    Delmar remembered his conversation with Ian Cahill, a civilian space trader he’d met in the pilot lounge on the Axia’s home planet Shalimar, and how Ian had told him about his encounter with a Red-tail while on a simple cargo run. “Life can sneak up on you, kid,” Ian had said. “One minute you’re the king of the universe and the next you’re dinner on a Red-tail table. So you just better have a few tricks up your sleeve and be ready for anything to happen because sooner or later, it will.”
    And now here he was faced with a similar situation, only this time he had the lives of a half-dozen other people riding on his ability to get them out of a serious situation. What would Ace or Ian do?
    Delmar thought about the new Optiveil cloaking device that Ian had installed on his ship, the Cahill Express . “It’s a miracle of engineering,” Ian told him. “You can hide a whole planet behind it. It will turn the tide in our fight with the Red-tails. You just wait and see.”
    I’d give the rest of my pay from now on for that invisibility shield to hide behind, Delmar thought . But even if I had it, I don’t have the power to use it.
    The view out the front of the damaged patroller was not a heartening sight. The surface of the airless planetoid was anything but smooth. Jagged crags jutted toward the inky blackness of space, interspersed by deep, forbidding chasms. Only occasionally was the sweating pilot able to see small spots suitable to land the damaged ship.
    This hunk of rock