Full Speed to a Crash Landing

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Full Speed to a Crash Landing by Beth Revis

Ada Lamarr is in trouble. Her ship, Glory, has a huge fucking hole in the side and she's down to just 10% in her oxygen tank. There's another ship nearby but it has not responded to her distress signals. Finally, with like 1% left in her tank, the Halifax comms her. She asks them to open one of their airlock doors and she jumps, luckily making it to the other ship with the help of her jetpacks just before she completely runs out of oxygen and she passes out.

Ada wakes with people staring down at her. The captain of the Halifax, First, presumably the first mate, a handsomely plain guy, and a medic called Nandina. Ada is carried by First to the medbay and checked over. She's remarkably fine. Nandina hooks up Ada’s oxygen tank to refill it and tries to hook up her jetpack, but it is a special kind, a jaxon jet, very expensive, and doesn't require refueling. No one seems impressed, not even the handsomely plain guy, whose name is Rian White. When she's released from the medbay, they all go to eat.

After lots of lentils and spinach – real food! not worms!, – plus some smooth law talking, the Captain of the Halifax, Ursula, decides that Ada can stay as a refugee. Ada offers her help scavenging the ship that crashed below on the protoplanet, what brought them all there, but she is denied. They don't quite believe that Ada is there to scavenge, after all, no one is supposed to know about that ship, the Roundabout, but here she is. There are no restrictions on scavenging since the government hasn't declared that ship off-limits, but they clearly sent the Halifax for something. Ada says she scavenged the wreckage for scrap metal, but Rian seems curious.

They talk about the Roundabout crashed below and how Rian and the Halifax seem to be looking for something specific and they don't seem worried that Ada might've already retrieved it. She wonders what it could be, but she changes the topic of conversation to the fact that it's only ever people like them who leave things behind, ships, trash, other scrap, and that one day, maybe the protoplanet beneath them might grow into a world with sentient life and archaeologists might discover the Roundabout in millions of years and know they're not alone in the universe.

Ada retrieves her spacesuit and jetpack, removed during her time in the medbay, everything she'd need to leave the ship if she had to. Nandina questions her, but that suit and her pack are all she has, so Nandina understands. Ada asks her for a data recorder so she can take down her thoughts and is given one without hesitation. It fits neatly into a tiny pocket on the front of her suit. 

Soon, two others arrive back on the ship from the wreckage below, Saraswati and Magnusson. Saraswati is much nicer than Magnusson and Ada introduces herself as the newest member of their crew. Captain Ursula shoots that down immediately and before the two newcomers can be debriefed, Rian escorts Ada away. They end up on the bridge where Ada spots some key places to hide important things that she makes note of. She toys with her earring that is actually a secret recorder, thinking she could take it out and retrieve it later, full of secret conversations, but Rian might notice it's missing. He questions Ada about the hole in her ship and she comes clean. Ada says she might've found some expensive fuel cells on the Roundabout and she might've taken one, but it had a hairline fracture and she didn't realize until it was too late and she had a giant hole in the side of her ship.

They go to eat and are joined by the rest of the crew. They discuss where they came from (Sol-Earth, the original, Centauri-Earth, Rigel-Earth, Gliese-Earth) and how the original Earth Earth is basically a garage heap now with some locations active with tourism. Ada is from Earth Earth and so is Magnusson, Ursula is from Gliese-Earth, the worst most pretentious one, Rian is probably from Rigel-Earth and Saraswati from Centauri-Earth. Rian asks if Ada knows Jane Irwin, and she's like, no, just because I'm from Earth doesn't mean I know everyone there. Magnusson reacts to the question but no one suspects that Ada has any idea what's going on. Good. She is finally able to convince them all that she can help them retrieve whatever it is they're looking for because it's small and probably somewhere dangerous.

Rian takes Ada to his room and shows her a scan of the wreckage and points out where he's certain what they are searching for has landed. It ejected from the ship in the crash and is perched precariously on a ledge over a river of lava. Ada explains that her suit and her jaxon jetpack are, in probably not at all a Star Wars reference, no who are we kidding here, it's Beth Revis, their only hope.

When they arrive on the protoplanet, full of earthquakes and volcanoes and lava rivers, they see the ship teetering into its crevice, which isn't good. Ada and Magnusson investigate the ship and Magnusson begins communicating through sign language with Ada. Most space explorers know some sign language in case their comm units are impaired, but he asks her again if she knows Jane. Jane isn't a person, but a code word for a pro-Earth movement, and yes, Ada has worked with them before. He also asks about the Jarra, a group of bloodthirsty freedom fighters, and she shuts that down quick. They're no good. They go back to speaking out loud about retrieving the box they've come to get, and the recorder box if they can find it. Magnusson and Saraswati go off in search of something else while Ada goes after the precariously perched box. 

Ada manages to grab the box while earthquakes happen around her, causing the temperature to increase and making her jetpack unstable. She removes the item, which turns out to be an external drive, very important to billions of people on Earth Rian says, from the box to secure it in her little pocket… and to the recorder that is also conveniently in there. Ada tells Rian over the comms that she can't use her jetpack to fly out of this crevice, so she's going to have to climb, which will take a long time. Checking her sensors, she sees that the outside temperature is dangerously high, but her temperature is stable, her download is at 2% and her jetpack is on standby. She begins to climb.

The climb takes a lot of time, which is good, and effort, which is not so good, but Ada has to do it. She and Rian discuss needing a key to access the drive she retrieved and where it might be and he sends Magnusson to look for it in the cargo hold like Ada suggests. She knew they were looking for it while she went after the box because it's also very important, but not as important as the drive. As she continues climbing, Rian asks about her worst job, and she decides to tell him the truth. It's a story about a ghost ship where everyone died because a tiny, simple, o-ring cracked and it changed her life completely. 

Ada finishes the climb and the transfer finishes too. When she reaches the top of the cliff, Saraswati and Magnusson are there with Rian, but they don't have much time to celebrate their survival before Saraswati alerts them that a volcano is about to erupt, so they rush to their shuttle back to the Halifax. They take off just in time to see the nose of the ship fall into the lava river. 

Back on the Halifax, Captain Ursula is surprised about something, maybe that Ada willingly risked her life on the climb with the drive or that she easily handed it over. It is locked away and protected now. Ada wonders if anyone other than Rian, and herself, knows about what is on that drive. She has to convince him that she doesn't know. But she also has to eat, and that's way more important right now. They have actual real chicken and potatoes and butter and green beans to celebrate retrieving the drive and they all toast Ada, which makes her feel uncomfortable. She wishes they could all actually be friends, and with Rian, she wishes for more. Just for the night.

When Ada sits down for more food after everyone else has finished, Rian takes her to his room. He gives her a peach. A real, fresh, actual peach from his family's heirloom luxury food farm on Rigel-Earth. He tells Ada that what she did was important, but doesn't tell her why. Luckily, she already knows but pretends to piece things together.

Rian has told her that the drive was important for Earth, and she muses that it must be something to restore the polluted atmosphere or clean up the polluted oceans or something and that the key isn't just a key but another part of whatever it is that will do the cleaning. Probably nanobots. And probably the Roundabout was going to test the nanobot device and make sure it works before it is taken to Earth. Rian says that he has worked hard to make sure this equipment is freely available and in the hands of the government and not something sold to the highest bidder, but Ada knows the government is the worst and that none of this is going to work out the way Rian believes it will.

The next day, Rian finds Ada at the airlock, thinking she's readying herself to go back down to the remains of the Roundabout to search for the key. They talk of bravery but Ada’s convinced bravery doesn't exist, only survival does. Rian reveals that he's learned of Ada’s past and sure, she's committed some petty crimes, and also some not so petty ones, like hacking the advertising system for the entire European continent. Rian calls her an anarchist but she's not. She's a realist who doesn't believe the government is effective and she doesn't trust it to do what is right. Before they leave to suit up for their next trip, Ada kisses Rian, knowing it's the right thing to do.

As they're about to head down to the wreckage, Ada turns back, telling Nandina that she needs to get her data recorder. Rian seems startled that she has one. She says she'll be right back, but she's lying. Instead of going to her room, she goes to the airlock, the data recorder still in her pocket where it's always been. Rian arrives, thinking she's stolen the drive, but she hasn't. She's just copied everything on it onto her recorder. He asks her about needing the key, but she tells him he's asking the wrong questions and that he should ask Magnusson why there were no bodies found in the wreckage of the Roundabout. The airlock opens and Ada leaves.

On board Glory, Ada seals herself in the front, perfectly undamaged part of her ship. Rian is trying to comm her, but she ignores him. She thinks of the perfect timing of the Halifax's arrival, three days after she arrived at the Roundabout. Her client paid her to pay the crew to abandon their ship and she made sure they all escaped safely. She has had the key to the drive the entire time and staged her damaged ship and her rescue by the Halifax to get the data from the drive. Now, it's time for her to move on to the next part of her plan. 

(There's lots of frustrating notes that follow from Rian to various members of various government agencies with lots of delightful footnotes that basically leave him where he started. He had no idea Ada was capable of what she pulled off, stealing the information on the drive, taking the nanobot prototype, retrieving the key for the drive, sabotaging her own ship, or who she's working with. He knows he's going to be the one who stops her though. He's pretty sure she's on her way to a charity event where she's probably going to steal something important.)